The concluding chapter recaps a number of points made in the book. It expresses views on the co-evolution of culture and institutions in developed and developing states, and recognizes the need to avoid a deterministic approach when exploring the impact of culture. The chapter suggests that, although competition laws in China, Japan, and Korea are understandably considered legal transplants, they exhibit distinctive characteristics that differ from the legal regimes of the ‘West’. A culture-based investigation of the factors that underlie the substance, enforcement patterns, institutions and legal and regulatory features in the countries concerned facilitates a better understanding of the distinctiveness of competition law and practice in East Asia.

Chapter 7 further elaborates and defends the idea that it is Confucian culture’s emphasis on hard work, savings, and education that has enabled China (and other East Asian economies influenced by Confucian culture) to rapidly accumulate both physical and human capital and to absorb existing Western technologies and develop indigenous innovation capacity better than other developing countries, leading to its rapid economic rise. It addresses some of the common objections to the cultural theory as well as some misunderstandings of the theory. This chapter also shows that there has been a cultural awakening in economics in the past two decades and that an increasing number of leading economists have explored both theoretically and empirically the role of culture in economic growth and development. The last section of the chapter considers the role of some other Confucian values such as benevolence and trustworthiness in helping to promote economic growth in a society with a weak rule of law.