Table Of ContentOUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,12/8/2020,SPi
Compressed Development
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,12/8/2020,SPi
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,12/8/2020,SPi
Compressed
Development
Time and Timing in Economic
and Social Development
D. HUGH WHITTAKER
TIMOTHY J. STURGEON
TOSHIE OKITA
TIANBIAO ZHU
1
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Praise for Compressed Development
Compressed Development assesses the dynamic interactions between industrial
policy,financialization,organization,technologicalinnovation,employment,and
automation. It illuminates the tensions between economic, social, and environ-
mental challenges facing contemporary globalization, including climate change,
inequality,andvulnerability.Itprovidesananalyticalandempiricaltourdeforce,
which is essential reading for all scholars and policy actors focused on contem-
porary industrial and technological innovation, global value chains, and digital
platforms. It comes at a pivotal time for assessing seismic geo-political shifts,
reflected in US-China trade and technological conflicts, as well as nationalist
campaigns for de-globalization. Written before the COVID pandemic, it lays
out an essential exploration of the diverse economic and social counter forces
thatwillinfluencetheoutcome,whetherbrutalorbenign,andtheimportanceof
proactiveinternationalpolicyinshapinganyfutureglobalrecovery.
StephanieBarrientos,ProfessorofGlobalDevelopment,
UniversityofManchester
Compresseddevelopmentusedtobeseenasaspecialfeatureofsomeexception-
ally successful countries in late economic development. This book, while not
repudiating such views altogether, convincingly leads us to realize that com-
presseddevelopmenthaslongbeenagenericmodeoftransformationembedded
in the global ecology of industrial, technological, financial, and demographic
relations. Even China’s recent ‘developmental miracle’, among other national
cases, is forcefully reinterpreted in respect to the opportunities, resources, and
pressures from the specific world-era in which developmental compression is as
mucharequirementasanachievement.
ChangKyung-Sup,ProfessorofSociology,SeoulNationalUniversity
Bold in its theoretical ambitions and panoramic in its empirical scope,
Compressed Development breaks new ground in its projections of the global
dynamics of development. Moving firmly beyond encumbering old schemas,
the authors project a vision of the current global matrix of technological and
organizationalchange,mediatedbystatesandmarkets,inwhichtheevolutionof
sectors and strategies is compressed, and China becomes the most telling
national case. Any scholar hoping to keep pace with the dizzying world ofthe
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,12/8/2020,SPi
21st century global political economy needs to start by confronting the com-
plexitiessetoutinthisbook.
PeterEvans,ProfessorEmeritusofSociology,UniversityofCalifornia,
BerkeleyandSeniorResearchFellow,WatsonInstituteforInternational
StudiesandPublicAffairs,BrownUniversity
Thetideofglobalization,whichappearedtobeanirresistibleforceattheturnof
the 21st century, splintered into a confusing welter of economic, political, and
social scenarios in the 2010s. Compressed Development offers a framework that
helpsexplainwhythedividinglinebetweenearlyandlatedevelopingeconomies
hasbecomeblurred,andwhytherivalrybetweentheUnitedStatesandChinais
likely to define the main features of the global economy in the coming decades.
While Compressed Development provides no simple answers about the future of
development,itgivescountries,companies,civilsocietyorganizations,andordin-
arycitizensessentialtoolsneededtonavigatethechoicesandchallengesaheadof
us.Ahighlyrecommendedbookfordecision-makers,scholars,andstudents.
GaryGereffi,ProfessorEmeritusofSociologyandDirector,
CenteronGlobalValueChains,DukeUniversity
Inthis booktheauthorscoinanewterm –‘compresseddevelopment’–toshed
lightonwhat’snewandwhat’sdifferentinthedevelopmentexperienceafterthe
1990s; economic change is taking place both at a much faster rate and in an
internationalcontextthatallowsstatesfarlesscontrol.Theyexplainwhytoday’s
developingcountries are facing challenges thatare fundamentallydifferentfrom
any in the past. This is a fascinating synthesis of the technological, institutional,
andideologicaltransformationsofourera.
DaniRodrik,FordFoundationProfessorofInternationalPolitical
Economy,JohnF.KennedySchoolofGovernment,HarvardUniversity
Compressed Development is an eye-opener for those of us who study capitalism,
globalization, and development. The authors present a new approach to under-
standing economic and social development on a global scale, especially since
1990. Developing countries have faced intense pressure to ‘run faster to stand
still’, meaning to make institutional changes faster and across a wider range of
institutionsthanthe‘latedevelopers’ofthepost-wardecades.Thebookcompares
JapanearlierandChinamorerecently,withsideanalysesoftheUnitedStatesand
‘emerging Asia’, and draws in debates about global value chains, the middle-
incometrap,thedevelopmentalstate,healthandeducation,financialization,and
thedigitaleconomy.Itconcludesthatprogressinreducingtheenormousdiffer-
ences in living conditions across the world’s territories depends on navigating
throughthenewdynamicsof‘compresseddevelopment’.
RobertH.Wade,ProfessorofGlobalPoliticalEconomy,
LondonSchoolofEconomicsandPoliticalScience
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Acknowledgements
This book is the product of empirical puzzles, some theoretical unease, and our
interdisciplinary predilections. One empirical puzzle was the seemingly simple
observation that factories in recent developers that we visited during our field
research were using a wide range of technologies and labour processes at the
same time, from very old to ultra-modern. Some factories were embedded in
global value chains; some were rapidly internationalizing themselves. In some
respects they resembledfactories in othercountries, from multiple time periods.
This prompted a set of questions; ultimately, how can we compare the develop-
mentexperiencesof,forexample,mainlandChina,Taiwan,Japan,andtheU.K.?
Moreimportantly,howcanweexplainthedifferences,andsimilarities?
Theorieshelpuswithexplanations,butfrequentlyatacost;favouredphenomena
are highlighted, others disappear. As students we were exposed to competing
theoretical explanations of East Asia’s (re-)emergence, each highlighting different
phenomena.Latedevelopmentperspectivesemphasizedtheroleandcapabilitiesof
thestate,andstate-businessinteractions,butoftenwithanattenuatedviewofcross-
border interactions. Neoclassical explanations focused on the creation of efficient
marketsandmarketallocation,withlittleornoroleforcorporatestrategy,indus-
trial policy, history, or institutional differences. Institutionalism shed light on
businessandorganizationprocesses,butlostsightofthestateand,typically,change.
Mostly set in ‘national containers’, scant attention was paid on any front to the
growing importance of subnational and supranational processes, including the
cross-borderintegrationofindustry-specificbusinesssystemsandtechnologyeco-
systems(i.e.,globalvaluechains).Moreover,theoriesofeconomicdevelopment,at
best, treated social development and policy as either historical antecedent or the
naturaloutcomeofvariousdevelopmentexperiencesratherthananintegralpartof
developmentitself.
Hence our attempt to create a framework which brings states and markets,
organisations and technology, and the subnational, national, and supranational
intoarelationshipratherthanoppositionorexclusion.Theframework,moreover,
neededtoaccommodatechangeovertime,andtodemonstatetheimportanceof
time and timing in economic and social development. We cannot claim to have
fullysucceededinthisendeavour,butthisiswhatwesetouttodo.
We held our first workshop on compressed development in Beijing in 2007.
This resulted in a 2010 piece that set out an initial framing and research
agenda. We thought, naively in retrospect, that if we expanded on this skeletal
thesis and continued our various research efforts, we could produce a book
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versionbyturningthesectionsofthearticleintochapters.Alas,intheprocesswe
encountered many new challenges and questions which demanded answers.
Initially, we expected that we could update and supplement Gerschenkron’s
notion of ‘late development,’ for the 1980s onward, using East Asia, especially
China, as our emblematic case, as others had done by focusing on the global
integration of South Korea and Taiwan in the 1970s and 1980s. But we found
ourselvestravelingbackintime,aswellasforward,andtocountriesfarfromEast
Asia.Confidentthatwecouldmelddevelopmentandglobalizationperspectives,we
wereforcedtojourneyintonewconceptualterritory.AlexanderPope’sAnEssayon
Criticism (‘Fools rushin...’) springsto mind;thebookbeforeyouisthe product
ofourdecade-longfolly,aswellasourblindspotsandcollectivepredilections.
All this took long enough to bring us to the current moment of turmoil,
upheaval, and confusion. The danger of writing a book over a protracted period
oftime,especiallyonewhichseekstobetimely,isthatthepresentkeepschanging.
Since2010digitizationhasbecomemuchmorecentraltoeconomic,politicaland
social processes, and debates about them. The Global Financial Crisis set in
motion a series of events which arguably led to Brexit, Trump and an intensifi-
cationoftechno-nationalism,signalingaturnawayfromtheformsglobalization
and multilateralism that had helped shape the first decades of the compressed
developmentera.Callsforareformofcapitalismandareininginof‘bigtech’,and
along-overduereckoningwiththefactthatracismandexploitationofvulnerable
populations have underpinned capitalist accumulation from the start, have all
recently gained momentum. China’s rise and the United States’ retreat from the
global stage suggestamajor reshaping ofglobal influences, anda risein geopol-
itical tensions. Keeping up with these changes has not been easy; ensuring that
our conceptual framework captured and was not over-run by them was even
morechallenging.
Then,asweweresubmittingourfinishedmanuscript,apandemiccamewhich
spreadwithunprecedentedspeedandferocity.Wouldthisbethedeathknellfor
compressed development? How should we respond? Upon reflection, we are
convinced that compressed development as we have depicted it can shed light
on the speed of spread and devastating effects of Covid-19, and that the pre-
pandemic trajectories of change which we set out in Chapter9 are likely, if
anything, to be hastened in the pandemic’s wake. We have therefore left the
manuscriptunchanged,buthave added an Afterword ontheeffectsofCovid-19
asweseetheminJune2020.Readerscanjudgethroughthepassageoftimehow
compresseddevelopmenthasactuallychanged.
Thisbookisalsotheproductofsupportandadvicefrommanygenerouspeople
and organizations. It has been so long in the making, it is not easy to recall all
thosewhohavecontributedalongtheway.Weparticularlywishtoacknowledge
ourcolleagueMonHanTsai,aswellasourlatefriendandcolleagueSeishiKimura
fortheirearlycontributions;SuzanneBergerforintroducingus;andRonaldDore,
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Peter Evans and Robert Wade for their encouragement to write the book. Mark
DallasandIanNearywereexcellentfirstreaders.
Warm thanks are also due to Antonio Andreoni, Michael Best, Robert Boyer,
Loren Brandt, Dan Breznitz, Ha-Joon Chang, Wan-Wen Chu, Rick Doner,
Xiaolan Fu, Kazunori Fujimoto, Gary Gereffi, Chris Gerry, Gary Hamilton,
Nigel Haworth, Takashi Hikino, Xiaoming Huang, Takeshi Inagami, Kyle Jaros,
Kara Juul, Nahee Kang, Takehiko Kariya, Raphael Kaplinsky, Momoko
Kawakami, Matthew Kidder, Sarosh Kuruvilla, Sébastien Lechevalier, Song Lei,
Tomoo Marukawa, Matthew McCartney, Yoshifumi Nakata, Sean O’Riain, Bill
Pritchard,EricProtzer,ThomasRawski,JohnRavenhill,RobertRowthorn,Mari
Sako,DiegoSánchez-Ancochea,Jang-SupShin,NoëlSturgeon,EricThun,Linda
Weiss, Eleanor Westney, Toby Whittaker, Nobuo Yokokawa and Ezequiel
Zylberberg. All were either instigators, kibitzers, commenters, contributors, or
supporters.WeacknowledgeparticipantsinourBeijingworkshopinMarch2007,
our Compressed Development in Emerging Asia conferences in Auckland and
WellingtoninDecember2012,andourprepublicationconferenceatStAntony’s
College,OxfordinMay2018.
Financialandmaterialsupportfromthefollowingsourcesisgratefullyacknow-
ledged: Japan Foundation; MEXT 21st Century COE Program, ITEC, Doshisha
University; New Zealand Asia Institute; EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innov-
ation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No
645763; Asian Studies Centre, St Antony’s College, Fell Fund, School of
Interdisciplinary Studies, Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, Oxford
University; China’s National Social Science Fund (project number 13BJL027)
and the Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences,
ZhejiangUniversity.
Finally,TimwouldliketothankRichardLesterandElisabethBeckReynoldsof
MIT’s Industrial Performance Center for their unflagging support and encour-
agement, as well as his wife Judithand daughter Maxine for putting up with his
manyabsences,bothgeographicandotherwise.Tianbiaowouldliketothankhis
wifeShirleyandsonsJimandWillfortheirpatienceandsupport,andToshieand
HughwouldliketothankNinaandTobyrespectivelyfortheirtoleranceandgood
humourthroughoutthismarathonproject.
