2
In the 1980s the Asian NIEs have become well-established
players in the world economy. Their increasing international
weight and influence has to be understood as an integral part of an increasingly interdependent economy at world-wide level.
This development is irreversible and a new generation of NIE`s
may follow soon. Therefore, any protectionist policy will prove a risky strategy and short-term advantages will
translate into losses in international competitiveness in the longer term. European policy must therefore develop a view how
to integrate the Asian NIEs smoothly into the international system and how to provide the adequate institutional framework
for this task.
I. Definition
1. What are NIEs?
1)
The rather novel term Newly Industrializing Countries (NIC's)
or in its Asian version, "Newly Industrializing Economies"
(NIES) has undergone an interesting shift of accent:
The first stage of its use had the imprints of Balassa's seminal work on "The Newly Industrializing Countries", portraying the NICS as market oriented "models of development". This view shaped the thinking of the World Bank and others at the time to a considerable degree.
In the late 1970s followed a recognition of those NICS which had pursued an outward-looking industrial growth strategy as serious challengers for the position of advanced
industrialised countries (ICs). The discussion centered on the effects exerted by the NICS exports on employment in certain sectors.
During the 1980s the accent of the NIC debate shifted again. After a preoccupation with energy questions in the 1970s and the debt crisis in the early 1980s, the OECD came to underline the growth-inhibiting, longer-run disadvantages of the wide
Countries like Argentina, Chile, India, Pakistan and Egypt, which have followed policies geared to import-substitution, were no longer included in the NIC list. Neither were Co- lombia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand, as the expan- sion of manufactured exports was comparatively insignificant. Resource-rich OPEC countries with their industrialization ef- forts dependent on cheap, subsidized inputs for their highly capital- and resource intensive petrochemical industries form again a different group.