The East Asian Miracle

In the 1970s China began opening to the West after two decades of virtual isolation. At the end of the '60s, the Chinese leaders, observing America's post-Vietnam withdrawal from Asia and concurrent Soviet aggresiveness--manifested by invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, an attack on the Chinese border in 1969, and Soviet hints of taking out China's nuclear capacity--concluded that the Soviet Union now posed China's main threat. contacts with the West would be useful in reducing the dangers from the Soviets and they suddenly became receptive to diplomatic, cultural, and economic ties with other industrial powers: Western Europe, the United States, and Japan. In 1971, following a ping pong tournament in Nagoya, the Chinese orchestrated an enticing opening for selected Americans, and within the year Kissinger was in Peking paving the way for the Nixon visit.

Within two or three years Western European countries that had not yet recognized China moved to add formal recognition, newly-elected Prime Minster Tanaka visited China to begin Japan's formal recognition of Peking, and China was voted into the United Nations. Before the end of the decade, the United States had added its formal recognition and American officials were busy at work clearing up the various entanglements of frozen assets to confer most-favored-nation status on China. For Americans the initial exoticism and Pollyannish reporting began to fade after several years as thousands of American traveled to China each year, including several hundred scholars who would remain beyond a quick tourist trip, and several hundred businessmen who hoped for opportunities from one billion potential customers.

Not only the opening to capitalist countries, but the initial succession to Chairman Mao Zedong was accomplished without a major military struggle. Mao, who had attended the founding of the Chinese Communist Party of 1921 and who became the Chinese Communists; supreme leader in 1935, died in September 1976, only a few months after Zhou Enlai. The opening to the West had been legitimized while Mao was still alive as "the revolutionary line of chairman Mao," but after his death a brief struggle broke out between his widow and three of her more radical cohorts ("the gang of four") on the one hand and the Party hierarchy whom they deposed in the Cultural Revolution.

Chairman Hua Goufeng had been anointed by Mao shortly before his death as one who might bridge both sides, but within a year after Mao's death, the Party hierarchy emerged victorious Deng Xiaoping, former Secretary General and now newly anointed as Vice Premier, led the return of the Party. With the legacy of poverty and ineffective educational and economic leadership, it is unlikely, despite new pragmatic rhetoric and uneven progress toward openness, that China will join the ranks of the advanced industrial powers before the 21st century.

But even more momentous than the opening to China was the unprecedented economic performance by Japan and the East Asian "Gang of Four" (Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore). By the end of the 1970s, Japan was producing about almost ten million cars, about one hundred times the car production 20 years earlier. From a nonexistent steel production in the early '50s, Japan was producing by the end of the 70s about as much steel as all of Europe combined or as much as the United States, but in much more modern facilities. It was producing more ship-building tonnage than Europe and the United States combined. Its industries dominated the world in fields as diverse as watches, hi-fi equipment, television, ceramics, motor bikes, and pianos. By the end of the 1970s, the Japanese total industrial output was about three-quarters of that of the United States, with half the population or about one and one-half times as much industrial output per person as in the United States. The standards of living and the average income was of roughly the same order as in the United States. Japanese investment in new industrial plant and equipment already rivalled the United States (it totalled twice as much per capita), but with overall economic growth--especially industrial growth and productivity--increasing much more rapidly than the United States, Japan had the momentum to become the world's dominant economic power.

In Korea, President Park maintained his power by military force, and, increasingly afraid of powerful opposition, clamped down on potential opponents until assassinated in 1979. However, most Koreans, aware that their capital was only 30 miles from hostile North Korean Forces which had devastated their country in the early 1950s, were willing to cooperate with military leaders in preventing what they thought of as threats to their security. At the same time, Korea in the 1970s was extraordinarily dynamic growth rate that corresponded to Japan's peak growth rate in the 1960s, bringing the Korean economy by the end of the 1970s up to the level of a major European power. Although disturbed by rising energy costs and inflation by the end of the 1970s, most Koreans had benefited enormously by the unbelievably rapid improvement in standard of living, all of which gave them a dynamism not currently found in Europe and North America.

Taiwan, despite its tenuous political status and the growing number of countries which recognized mainland China and re-recognized Taiwan, continues bravely to maintain its independence and to develop economically at a pace close to that of Korea. Not far beyond economically were the small industrial city-states of Hong Kong and Singapore, which also witnessed remarkable attainment.

During the 1970s, American trade with Asia passed that of trade with Europe, and the gap of Asian trade over European trade continued to grow. The American Embassy in Tokyo became America's largest overseas outpost. Historically the 1970s may well be known as the beginning of the Pacific Century.

Most Americans, lulled by the massive ignorance of American journalists and other media representatives about Asia, remained blissfully unaware that America was being surpassed as the world's greatest industrial power and of the consequences for our standard of living, welfare, overseas strength, and internal divisiveness that would inevitably follow.

Ezra F. Vogel is professor of sociology and chairman of the Council on East Asian Studies.