Japan provides a fascinating case for studying economic development. With her real GNP rising at an annual rate of 4 percent during the period 1878–1942, Japan was the only Asian country that emerged from a backward agrarian society to become a modern industrial power. Her postwar economic performance has been even more phenomenal; the average growth rate of real GNP in 1955–1964 was 10.4 percent—the highest in the world. Her investment rate reached an astonishingly high level of over 40 percent in several years in early nineteen sixties. Believing that there is no miracle in economic affairs, economists began to search the secrets of Japan's extraordinary achievements in economic development. To offer possible explanations, they usually stress the active role played by the Japanese government in economic modernization, the vigor of the country's response to new stimuli, and a strong national consciousness. These factors, while undoubtedly important, do not reveal the whole story. There are in Japan a number of institutional traits which, in my opinion, are highly conducive to economic growth. However, the contribution of these institutions to Japan's economic development has not been fully recognized because, in part, they were not designed for that purpose. Their growth-stimulating effects are accidental and unexpected. As a matter of fact, some of these institutions may even appear as economically irrational or socially unjust. Consequently, when students of the Japanese economy study these institutional factors, attention is usually directed to the negative side.

On August 20th, 1917, Edwin Montagu declared in the House of Commons that: “the policy of His Majesty's Government … is that of the … gradual development of self-governing institutions with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire.” This announcement, more than any other single event, may properly be described as signalling the creation of the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms and the breakup of the third British Empire. It affirmed that a nonwhite portion of the empire could aspire to the same goal of self-government as the white colonies of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa had successively achieved.

Few features of modern South Asian history have received more comment than communalism, its impact on the development of nationalism and its threat to the continued existence of a secular Indian state. For many supporters of Indian nationalism, communalism was the result of British machinations, of a “divide and rule” policy used to impede and, finally, to frustrate the ambitions of those who desired a free, united India. For the proponents of Pakistan, communalism was not an issue, since they premised their actions on the concept of “two nations,” one Hindu and one Islamic, which both sought to establish themselves as political entities. Their world was defined by religion and what others called communalism was nationalism in such a world. Communalism exists as a historic reality and a common though ambiguous and increasingly pejorative analytic concept.

One of the most striking phenomena in early twentieth-century China is her rapid adaptability to modern nationalism. Viewed from the events of the period 1902 to 1911, this newly emerged spirit was expressed in many ways, and China's response to foreign investment in her mining industry was certainly one index of them. Indeed, this response had fully developed into a national movement in which China's major purpose was first to confront the established interests of foreign powers in China, and second, to implement what later proved to be an unsuccessful program of industrialization under her own control, with heavy emphasis on mining and railway development. However, the development of the spirit, in this phase, did not constitute an overall defiance of the treaty system which consisted of unequal terms and served as the foundation of Sino-foreign relations. China's objective was basically a negative one and had only limited positive perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to explore some salient characteristics of the Korean economy in historical context and to appraise the role of foreign influences in changing the economic structure of Korea since the beginning of Western influence. First, the historical background will be briefly surveyed in terms of evidence of the changes in factor supply, categorized as capital (especially social overhead capital), labor, land, and entrepreneurial factors. The causes of change will be identified with emphasis on causes external to the economic system. Second, the pattern of structural change and the nature of “disequilibrium” will be described and explained. The following items will be relevant for our consideration: dual structure, changes in output composition and occupational distribution, external disequilibrium (i.e., deficits in the balance of international payments, foreign aid), financial disequilibrium (i.e., deficit financing of the government, inflation, overvalued currency), and structural disequilibrium (i.e., unemployment, excess capacity in some sector of the economy). The conclusion summarizes our discussion briefly and speculates on Korea's economic future.

The ethical values and norms which are to guide social behavior in Communist China are often conveyed through fables and stories. It thus might not be inappropriate to begin a discussion of these values with a story that is now perhaps as familiar to students of contemporary Chinese affairs as it is to the Chinese. The story is from traditional Chinese folklore, but it became a part of the Chinese Communist tradition when it was retold by Mao Tse-tung in his concluding speech to the Seventh National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in June of 1945:

“In ancient China there was a fable. ‘How Yu Kung Removed the Mountains.’ It is the story of an old man in North China in ancient times, by the name of Yu Kung of the North Mountain. His house faced south and its doorway was obstructed by two big mountains, Taihang and Wangwu. With great determination, he led his sons to dig up the mountains with pickaxes. Another old man, Chih Sho witnessed their attempts and laughed, saying: ‘What fools you are to attempt this! To dig up two huge mountains is utterly beyond your capacity.’ Yu Kung replied: ‘When I die, there are my sons; when they die there will be their own sons, and so on to infinity. As to these two mountains, high as they are, they cannot become higher but, on the contrary, with every bit dug away, they will become lower and lower. Why can't we dig them away?’ Mr. Yu Kung refuted Mr. Chih Sho's erroneous view and went on digging at the mountains day after day without interruption. God's heart was touched by such perseverance and he sent two celestial beings down to earth to carry away the mountains on their backs.”

In the seventeenth century, at the end of the Ming and the beginning of the Ch'ing dynasties, China produced three outstanding scholars: Huang Tsung-hsi (1619–95), Ku Yen-wu (1613–82), and Wang Fu-chih (1619–92), all great thinkers, voluminous writers, and ardent patriots. The social and political chaos, economic deterioration, excess of Wang Yang-ming's intuitionism, and, above all, the conquest of China by the Manchus must have stimulated the best minds to develop their ideas in a more practical direction. They were contemporaries of René Descartes 1596–1650) and Blaise Pascal (1623–62) and only slightly earlier than Isaac Newton (1642–1727). Confined by their cultural tradition and living in a vast but largely isolated empire, these men naturally developed ideas different from those of their European contemporaries. But they had enough challenges of their own to meet. The originality in their ideas bespeaks the intellectual vigor of late imperial China.

It is a well known fact that the friendly foreign policy of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in 1860 was a failure. It is also known that this failure was largely due to the non-cooperation of the British and French authorities in China. However, it is not so well known how the policy was introduced, how anxiously the Taipings were seeking the friendship of Western powers at one time, how the failure of this friendly foreign policy took place, and how it affected the leadership of the Taiping regime.

The predominance of British interests in China from the closing years of the eighteenth century up until the nineteen thirties has left us a voluminous documentation, not only of the activities of the British in China but also of the activities of other people, foreigners as well as the Chinese themselves. The English language records of the Foreign Office and missionary archives in London have already been consulted by scholars from all over the world. The recent addition of Chinese language materials, deposited at the Public Record Office (hereafter, PRO), undoubtedly makes London one of the most important centers outside China for research in modern Chinese history.

A wealth of information about individual land properties on Taiwan appears as part of the land records of various Chinese government agencies. The records contain reliable and accessible data on lowland properties since 1904 and on upland properties since about 1925. The purposes of this paper are to describe the information and its sources and to indicate some of the types of problems related to land properties which bear examination.