Introduction

Abstract

Sequential Social Changes?

Since the Second World War, Japan, South Korea, and China have experienced an interesting combination of sequential social changes. It was Japan that first boosted fast economic growth. The countrys real growth rate was already close to ten percent annum in the second half of the 1950s and remained double digit throughout the 1960s. Then came South Korea with its GDP growth above or around 10 percent for most of the 1970s and 1980s. Chinas growth also jumped up in the 1980s but was strongest during the 1990s. Japans recession started in 1991 with the burst of its asset price bubble, continuing into the lost twenty years and perhaps more. South Korea also began to recede after 1997 when the Asian Financial Crisis hit the country hard. China is beginning to show some signs of economic slowdown since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. In other words, these countries have come though the phases of industrialization and deindustrialization in a sequential manner. Of course we do not believe in unilinear evolutionary stages of social change among these countries. However, there is no denying that Japan, South Korea, and China have experienced a sequential social change in this respect.