This is convergence at work. Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore have already caught up. Inevitably, the opportunity for rapid growth is a function of the size of the remaining gap. On average, argues Jeffrey Sachs of Harvard University, a doubling of real income per head reduces the underlying growth rate by 1.4 percentage points. Yet these are merely tendencies.
Individual countries can do better.
Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan have done so. As if to prove there is nothing geographically determined about east Asian performance, the Philippines has, until quite recently, done far worse. What is striking about the region, however, is how many countries have managed to seize available opportunities to import modern technology and managerial skills and converge on the incomes enjoyed by advanced countries. They have done so because of their imitation of one another. The question raised by the present turmoil is whether such fundamental forces for rapid growth have become irrelevant.