Summer School 6: China, Taiwan and how nations grow rich
Planet Money
NPR
4.6 • 29.8K Ratings
🗓️ 14 August 2024
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the middle of the twentieth century, China and its neighbors in East Asia were poor, mostly rural economies. China had been wrecked by a brutal civil war. Taiwan became the home of people fleeing from that conflict. Japan and Korea were rebuilding after their own wars. And then in the later half of the twentieth century, they started their comeback. The governments made some explicit choices that unleashed the power of individual incentives and free market forces and lifted millions of people out of poverty. We focus specifically on China and Taiwan during this time, when they showed a burst of economic progress rarely seen on this globe. Why then? Why there? Can other nations copy that? We'll try to find out.
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| 0:00.0 | On the TED Radio Hour, MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle, her latest research into the intimate |
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| 0:10.1 | Technologies that say, I care about you, I love you, I'm here for you, |
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| 0:21.0 | that's on the Ted Radio Hour from NPR. |
| 0:25.0 | This is Planet Money from NPR. |
| 0:28.0 | Welcome back everyone to Planet Money Summer School, Economic History of the World. |
| 0:36.0 | We've spent a lot of this semester talking about capitalism gone wrong, the panics and the busts, the schemes and the cons. So today we are going to visit a time |
| 0:46.0 | period where capitalism did some amazing things and will ask, how can governments harness the free market to make their countries richer? |
| 0:56.1 | This is lesson number six, the Asian miracle. |
| 0:58.8 | I'm Robert Smith. |
| 1:00.5 | In the middle of the 20th century, China and its neighbors in East Asia were poor, mostly rural economies. |
| 1:06.0 | China had been wrecked by a brutal civil war. Taiwan had become the home of people fleeing from that conflict. |
| 1:12.0 | Japan and Korea were rebuilding after wars of the war. become the home of people fleeing from that conflict. |
| 1:12.6 | Japan and Korea were rebuilding after wars of their own. |
| 1:15.9 | And then in the later half of the 20th century, |
| 1:18.6 | they started their comeback. |
| 1:20.2 | Today we wanted to focus specifically on China and Taiwan during this time when they showed a burst of economic progress rarely seen on this globe. |
| 1:28.5 | Our summer school professor today is an expert in the Asian economies. He was born in Taiwan and grew up in South America |
| 1:34.9 | from the Booth School of Business |
| 1:36.4 | at the University of Chicago, Chang Thai Shia. |
... |
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