alled the "four tigers:" South Korea, Taiwan (Nationalist China), Hong Kong, and Singapore. Two or three decades ago, these were among the world's poorest nations; today, following a development course pioneered by Japan a few decades earlier, they have emerged as industrial powers. They are distinguished by "Confucian" political and social systems with few democratic elements and a strong commitment to state guided but privately managed economic growth programs. (In spite of its more democratic political system and position as an established economic power, Japan has much in common in its business culture with these "tigers.") The foreign business person doing business in these countries finds many of the advantages of a fully industrialized economy, but is also liable to encounter both formal and informal barriers to an "even playing field" in competition with native firms (Jameson, 1990, p. D1).
A third major category of nations one which only began to exist at the beginning of the 1990s is that of formerly Communist nations in Eastern Europe
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