Economic Openness and Development

While other contributions in this volume delve into the fine-grained detail and diversity of development processes in Asian countries and sub-regions, this chapter analyses the opening-up experiences of China, India, and Malaysia by triangulating between: (i) the orientation of selected policy tools in trade, technology, investment, and finance in shaping a country’s degree of economic openness; (ii) the rational co-ordination of operational controls of these policy tools; and (iii) the overall development trends observed in the Asia region. The ‘rational co-ordination of operational controls’ is interpreted with reference to the strategic use of selected policy tools in the successful cases of earlier East Asian industrialization. The chapter contends that divergence in Asian growth can be understood by variations in pragmatic policy experimentation by national policymakers in search of more effective institutional mechanisms to achieve desired development outcomes.