国際経済環境とアジアNICs(<特集>経済特集 : 貿易・直接投資と経済発展)

Abstract

This paper considers the causes and limits of successful economic development in Asian Newly Industrializing Countries (NICs) in the face of changes in the international economic environment. Asian NICs had neither superior production technologies, capital, managerial skills nor foreign markets for manufactured goods. It is therefore natural that they had to depend on enterprises in industrialized countries. However, their desire to introduce direct investments from industrialized countries could be realized only if enterprises in industrialized countries were willing to make such investment. In the 1960s, when technical innovations did not emerge and existing technologies were rapidly transferred to other industrialized countries through licence and direct investment, those wishing to survive and to grow under the severe competition had incentives for direct investment in Asian NICs that offered such conditions as political stability, and better and cheaper labor. Thus the international economic environment provided better conditions for Asian NICs in the 1960s and in the first half of the 1970s. In the latter half of the 1970s, the international economic environment changed markedly : frequent trade conflicts arose between members of the economic triangle comprising the U. S., the E. C. and Japan; economic growth in industrialized countries slowed mainly due to the oil crisis of 1973; and quasi-NICs emerged in Asia. And the success of Asian NICs brought about rapid wage increases due to the smaller populations in those countries. Under these conditions, Asian NICs have become obliged to make an industrial transformation away from labor-intensive toward capital-intensive or technology-intensive industries. Thus Asian NICs have been, once again, turning to dependence on direct investments from industrialized countries, whose trade is tending toward the "organized" one and which are aiming to promote direct investments between members of the economic triangle in order to avoid trade conflicts. Furthermore, past experience of the fade-out policy adopted by Asian NICs may deter new direct investments into them because of the risks involved. Thus it is recommended that Asian NICs should introduce technology and technical guidance rather than direct investment. The emergence of machines with numerical control systems and robots due to technical progress in semiconductors will help Asian NICs to overcome some of the technical barriers.