Conclusion: Patterned Underdevelopment in the New World Order

What characterises the new imperialism is networks of power, not just between production, marketing and finance within particular advanced countries but also networks linking the latter to one another. The result is that they increasingly operate as a single system of power, even though the conflicts which divide them are never fully transcended by their common purposes vis-à-vis the less developed countries. I have thus hitherto refrained from attributing the unevenness of capitalist development in Southeast Asia or anywhere else to Japanese FDI, trade or finance, because the significant thing about any one of these is its relations with the others. Underdevelopment and its typical manifestations are the overall outcomes of this power structure, and not of any one or more of its functional elements or geographical centres. It was therefore not possible to look at what I call patterned underdevelopment until each part of that system, at least as they come from and extend into Japan, had been examined. Even though capitalist development in Asia has been more successful than in Africa, the Middle East, Oceania or even Latin America, some of the most telling examples of this phenomenon are to be found within the Asian region, in the very countries targeted by Japanese investment, trade and finance.