Description: The rapid growth of Taiwan's postwar "miracle" economy is most frequently credited to the leading role of the state in promoting economic development. Megan Greene challenges this standard interpretation in the first in-depth examination of the origins of Taiwan's developmental state.
Brief description: J. Megan Greene is Associate Professor of History at the University of Kansas.
Review Quotes: The idea of the 'scientific management' of an economy was discussed everywhere and little practiced anywhere over the course of the twentieth century. One exception is the case of Taiwan's economic miracle after 1949. Megan Greene shows that this was a Chinese and international endeavor, based on enduring trends in science, technology, and economic planning on the Chinese mainland under Nationalist rule--patterns that reasserted themselves in the People's Republic after the end of Maoism. To understand better contemporary China's technocratic inheritance, read this book.--William C. Kirby, Harvard University