Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

when the Asian crisis happened, his criticism of the IMF (cited in chapter 1) was more trenchant than those by some ‘left-wing’ commentators.

What should give us real hope is that the majority of Bad Samaritans are neither greedy nor bigoted. Most of us, including myself, do bad things not because we derive great material benefit from them or strongly believe in them, but because they are the easiest thing to do. Many Bad Samaritans go along with wrong policies for the simple reason that it’s easier to be a conformist. Why go around looking for ‘inconvenient truths’ when you can just accept what most politicians and newspapers say? Why bother to find out what is really going on in poor countries when you can easily blame it on corruption, laziness or the profligacy of their people? Why go out of your way to check up on your own country’s history when the ‘official’ version suggests that it has always been the home of all virtues? – free trade, creativity, democracy, prudence, you name it.

It is exactly because most Bad Samaritans are like this that I have hope. They are people who may be willing to change their ways, if they are given a more balanced picture, which I hope this book has provided. This is not just wishful thinking.There was a period, between the Marshall Plan (announced sixty years ago, in June 1947) and the rise of neo-liberalism in the 1970s, when the rich countries, led by the US, did not behave as Bad Samaritans, as I discussed in chapter 2.[11]

The fact that rich countries did not behave as Bad Samaritans on at least one occasion in the past gives us hope. The fact that that historical episode produced an excellent outcome economically – for the developing world has never done better, either before or since – gives us the moral duty to learn from that experience.

Copyright

Copyright © 2008 by Ha-Joon Chang

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Published by Bloomsbury Press, New York

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Chang, Ha-Joon.

Bad samaritans : the myth of free trade and the secret history of capitalism / Ha-Joon Chang.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

1. Free trade. 2. Capitalism. I. Title.

HF1713.C5185 2008

382.71-dc22

2007022958

First published in the United Kingdom by Random House Business Books in 2007

First published in the United States by Bloomsbury Press in 2008

This e-book edition published in 2010

eISBN: 978-1-59691-399-8

www.bloomsburypress.com

,

Notes

Prologue

1

The Korean income figure is from H.-C. Lee (1999), Hankook Gyongje Tongsa [Economic History of Korea] (Bup-Moon Sa, Seoul) [in Korean], Appendix Table 1. The Ghanaian figure is from C. Kindleberger (1965), Economic Development (McGraw-Hill, New York), Table 1–1.

2

http://www.samsung.com/AboutSAMSUNG/SAMSUNGGroup/Time-lineHistory/timeline01.htm

3

Calculated from A. Maddison (2003), The World Economy: Historical Statistics (OECD, Paris), Table 1c (UK), Table 2c (USA), and Table 5c (Korea).

4

Korea’s per capita income in 1972 was $319 (in current dollars). It was $1, 647 in 1979. Its exports totaled $1.6 billion in 1972 and grew to $15.1 billion in 1979. The statistics are from Lee (1999), Appendix Table 1 (income) and Appendix Table 7 (exports).

5

In 2004, Korea’s per capita income was $13, 980. In the same year, per capita income was $14, 350 in Portugal and $14, 810 in Slovenia. The figures are from World Bank (2006), World Development Report 2006 – Equity and Development (Oxford University Press, New York), Table 1.

6

Life expectancy at birth in Korea in 1960 was 53 years. In 2003, it was 77 years. In the same year, life expectancy was 51.6 years in Haiti and 80.5 years in Switzerland. Infant mortality in Korea was 78 per 1, 000 live births in 1960 and 5 per 1, 000 live births in 2003. In 2003, infant mortality was 76 in Haiti and 4 in Switzerland. The 1960 Korean figures are from H-J. Chang (2006), The East Asian Development Experience – the Miracle, the Crisis, and the Future (Zed Press, London), Tables 4.8 (infant mortality) and 4.9 (life expectancy). All the 2003 figures are from UNDP (2005), Human Development Report 2005 (United Nations Development Program, New York), Tables 1 (life expectancy) and 10 (infant mortality).

7

The criticisms of the neo-liberal interpretation of the Korean miracle can be found in A. Amsden (1989), Asia’s Next Giant (Oxford University Press, New York) and H.-J. Chang (2007), The East Asian Development Experience – The Miracle, the Crisis, and the Future (Zed Press, London).

8

He continues: ‘Any nation which … has raised her manufacturing power and her navigation to such a degree of development that no other nation can sustain free competition with her, can do nothing wiser than