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We've spent a lot of this series talking about capitalism gone wrong – the panics and the busts, the schemes and the cons – so today we visit a time and place where capitalism did amazing things. We'll visit a time when governments harnessed the free market to make their countries richer.
In the middle of the twentieth century, China and its neighbors in East Asia were poor, mostly rural economies. China had been wrecked by a brutal civil war. Taiwan became the home of people fleeing from that conflict. Japan and Korea were rebuilding after their own wars. And then in the later half of the twentieth century, they started their comeback. The governments made some explicit choices that unleashed the power of individual incentives and free market forces and lifted millions of people out of poverty. We focus specifically on China and Taiwan during this time, when they showed a burst of economic progress rarely seen on this globe. Why then? Why there? Can other nations copy that? We'll try to find out.
We cover:
- Industrial policy
- East Asian Miracle
This series is hosted by Robert Smith and produced by Audrey Dilling. Our project manager is Devin Mellor. This episode was edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark and fact-checked by Sofia Shchukina.
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