York W. Bradshaw and Michael Wallace (95) identified South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong as the ôfour little dragonsö while further characterizing Japan as the quintessential Asian success story and China and Vietnam as awakening economic giants. All of these countries share some characteristics: they either have well-developed or emerging market-driven economies and a group oriented approach to economics and society. This essay will consider characteristics of the four dragons, the degree to which they represent modernization theory, the primary factors contributing to their development, and the inequalities that continue to plague these countries today.
With a population of 2.8 million, a gross national product (GNP) of $19,310 per capita, and an infant mortality rate of 7 per 1,000 population, Singapore is the smallest of the four dragons. Hong Kong has 5.8 million residents, per capita GNP of $17,860, and identical infant mortality rates as Singapore. The dominant ethnic group in both of these countries is Chinese. Taiwan, with a population of 20.7 million, has a per capita GNP of $10,568 and an infant mortality rate of 6 per 1,000. South Korea is the largest of this group with 43.7 million people and has the lowest per capita GNP at $7,760. South Korea also has the highest infant mortality rate of this group at 9 per 1,000 people (Bradshaw and Wallace, 95).
Also linking these countries is the fact that they came to industrialization relatively late. All four of these dragons, and in particular Taiwan and South Korea, benefited from generous U.S. economic and military aid from 1956 to 1985. Both are strong Western allies and have received massive influxes of aid as part of the U.S. foreign policy of containing communism (Bradshaw and Wallace, 97).
Additionally, all four countries shed colonial influence in the twentieth century and the colonial era was effective over at the end of World War II...