On WTO: The WTO tarrif reductions and quaot eliminations have made it much more difficult to have a wall against exports, but that’s not the only reason the Asian ‘tiger’s’ had high GDP growth in the cold-war. Conventional Wisdom is that these countres engaged in a export dirven strategy, as opposed to the import-substitution strategies of South Asia (incl. Pakistan).

But I would not blame South Asian leaders too much. Post WWII, import-substitution was cutting-edge development strategy. It was the Asian-tiger that were out of sync with then prevailing trends. Pakistan’s first and second five-year plans were done by an American advisor, and India mimicked Soviet plans.

Unrelated Anecdote: In the early nineties, a good way to tell is a foreign (or immigrant student was from HK, Taiwan or the Mainland would be to look at their haircuts. HK people had very stylish (for small-town Canada) haircuts, and whole all-black and expensive clothing. Mainlanders had atrocious five-dollar ‘bowl’ cuts. (Taiwanese fell in the middle, better hair cuts, not so cutting-edge clothing).

The mainland must be richer now, or hair-cut-technology has advanced, because it’s harder to diffrentiate along those lines.

Japan, of course, the biggest economic success story outside W. European culture and institutions, was never a colony. So Hong Kong and Singapore succeeded for different reasons than Japan, or partly so.

During their rise S, Korea and Taiwan were highly favored by the US and were highly protectionist. (Taiwan had high tariffs — up to %200 — and many major state monopolies — grain, energy, alcohol, tobacco –when I was there in 1983-4). The WTO does not offer the third world these developmental options.

Of course, if “culture” is regarded as “everything but nature and genes” what I said is meaningless. But if you distinguish culture from law/institutions (as you have to if you want to talk about seriously multicultural societies such as India or Singapore), then a different form of analysis becomes possible.

The legal fact that China has had a cash economy and alienable private property in land for well over a thousand years is a major consideration in accounting for their success in the diaspora. This is a “modern” institutional trait.

i’ve asked. the first thing i have to say is this-though human biodiversity can predict/intuit a lot from big differences between populations that are geographically and historically (ergo genetically) divergent, for example, zulus, welsh and japanese, it is less usefull and more tenditious for peoples that are more closely associated, for example, the thai, khmer and north chinese. second, as i’ve noted, there might be a difference in the genetic lineages using mtDNA & y chromosome markers and the phenotypes that might be selected for.

i know from doing some research in my undergraduate years trying to figure out the possible female irish contribution to icelandic genetics that answering historical questions with molecular biology when the groups in question are very close (irish and norwegians in this case) is difficult because the noise level in the data is so high. for instance, i’ll be convinced about the presence or lack of irish mtDNA lineages after a dozen studies that point the same way unequivocally. on the other hand, the presence of european y chromosome genes in places like accra, ghana, is a little easier for me to swallow, because the historical process (european sailors forming liasons with local women) is easy to connect to the alien y chromosome lineages.

of course, the simplest answer right now to my mind is that the genetic differences are minimal enough that chinese culture is the prime determinant of economic performance. but remember that the initial question was sparked by comparisons between the chinese and indians, who are genetically different enough to note (and usually cluster on different branches of cladistic trees).

the idea that one can become chinese is i think more problematic in the modern day practice. it is similar to the fact that beurs can not become “french” even though nearly half of the french are descendents of european immigrants themselves (italian & polish generally), while in germany the turks can not become german, though a sizable portion of the natives of berlin can almost certainly trace their ancestor to french hugenots. modern day ethnic definitions have become curiously static as literacy & national self-awareness has spread….

So anyway, the South became Chinese at least as much by assimilation as by settlement. “Under the Ancestors’ Shadow” by Hsu is a description of a Sinified bilingual people. Hsu was an anthropologist and had hoped to study a tribal people, but when he got there he found that they had become almost completely Sinified. So he basically did an anthropological study of Chinese culture. (In “Americans and Chinese” he did an anthropological study of American culture).

As I remember, the late KC Chang said that North Chinese are physically closer to Koreans and Japanese than to South Chinese.

Singapore and Hong Kong have been international trade cities under British law for over a century; Taiwan was a backwater until 1890, and then a Japanese colony until 1945. The Japanese provided rational administration, infrastructure, and education,but real development only began after 1960 (people said that you would still see oxcarts there in the early 60′s.)

In 1984 my students told me that mainlanders were simple and sincere (a Chinese ideal, but not usually really striven for; this was not an expression of Communist sympathies), the Taiwanese more businesslike and selfish, the Hongkongers (?) still more, and the Singaporeans (?) were the most ruthless businessmen in the world. New Yorkers told me that HK matched New York in that respect, so maybe my students were right.