The ‘Unrepentant Capitalist-Roaders’: Taiwan and Korea

Abstract

It is said that during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s in mainland China, one of the worst terms of censure was to be called a ‘capitalistroader’. The banishment of Deng Xiaoping allegedly was imposed for his being an ‘unrepentant capitalist-roader’, which is presumably several times worse than being repentant about it. Among the eight Asian countries reviewed in this volume, probably all could be termed ‘the capitalist-roaders’ (along with Japan) in comparison to, say, mainland China, North Korea, Vietnam, and Burma. Since a strong government has played an important role in most of these success stories, perhaps ‘state-capitalists’ or ‘entrepreneurial nations’ would be more descriptive terms. The two nations discussed in this chapter, South Korea and Taiwan, probably would be rather proud, on balance, to be called ‘unrepentant’ about being that as well.¹