" In 1963, when the author was born, South Korea was one of the world's poorest countries, with half the per capita income of Ghana. The fratricidal war with interventions by the United States and China had destroyed half her industry and three quarters of her railways. The country's principal exports were fish, tungsten, and wigs made of human hair. In 1982, when the author finished high school, South Korea was a middle-income country, on par with Ecuador. In 1997, when he was an adult professor of economics, she was an upper-middle income country, on part with Portugal. She has since left Portugal behind, and is now a rich country on par with Italy; her principal exports are semiconductors, computers, ships, cars, and steel. The way South Korea did it was to limit her imports (in school, Chang was told to report to the authorities anyone smoking foreign cigarettes), and expand her exports in order to accumulate the capital necessary for launching the new industries. A lot of the new industries were state-owned; their management was focusing not on short-term profits, but on the long-term industrialization of the country. The ruthless exploitation of the workers that this entailed was incompatible with democracy, so the country was a military dictatorship through much of the period. This book claims that the rich countries, through the "Bad Samaritan" institutions of the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO, deliberately hurt the poor countries by forcing them to adopt neo-liberal policies such as free trade, low tariffs and privatization; they would be better off following in South Korea's footsteps. In fact, says the author, that is what most rich countries themselves did when they industrialized. Now, in order for South Korea to be able to export so much, there had to be a market for her exports. The market was the United States, which wanted to support this outpost of anti-Communism. South Korea could not export to the Soviet Union, or to the People's Republic of China; likewise, North Korea could not export to the United States. Now, all the poor countries could not follow in South Korea's footsteps because they do not have wealthy patrons like that; how could all the poor countries limit their imports and expand their exports if they trade with each other? The industrializing United States in the late nineteenth century did have large tariffs, but how else could the government collect revenue and finance the American Civil War, there being no income tax? Among other criticisms of the "Bad Samaritans", Chang says that their fight against corruption is misguided: Indonesia under Suharto experienced large economic growth despite being a very corrupt country; Chang says that this is because in Indonesia, unlike in Zaire, the bribes were invested inside the country. First, apparently, Suharto did stash billions outside his country. Second, Zaire's Mobutu did spend a lot inside his country: he built a replica Versailles in the middle of his tribal territory in the jungle near the border with the Central African Republic, where he could quickly escape should things take a wrong turn for him, with a landing strip that could accommodate the Concorde; it is just that this spending did nothing for the country's welfare. I think, William Easterly wrote that many African presidents-for-life liked to build new national capitals in their tribal homelands. Is it really misguided for the IMF to demand that this practice stop before giving out new loans? "
— Ilya, 1/29/2014