South Korea’s and China’s catching-up: a new-developmentalist analysis

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to analyze the catching-up processes of South Korea and post-1978 reforms China, based on a new-developmentalist approach that considers four fundamental factors: 1) a complementarity relationship between the state and the market as a dynamic process that changes over time; 2) necessary complementarity between macroeconomic policy and industrial policy; 3) the key role of public and development banks in attacking the problem of “development financing”; and a particular focus on 4) the centrality of exchange rate and balance of payments administration for the development process in these countries. The paper’s fundamental question is to what extent the catching-up process in these countries can be understood as the application of a new-developmentalist strategy, taking each country’s particular historical traits into account.