Labor and Development Policy in East Asia

The rapid industrial transformation of South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong has in part been sustained by state development strategies oriented exclusively toward the needs of capital. Less often have criteria relating to the welfare of workers entered directly into state policy except insofar as such criteria are supportive of growth. Underlying this pattern of strategic priorities is the insulation of development planners and corporate executives from the political demands and opposition of workers. While political controls go some distance in explaining the political weakness of East Asian workers, the more fundamental causes are to be found, first, in the nature of employment relations in these countries and, second, in the sequencing of political and economic changes during the course of industrialization.