PAPER TIGERS TO GOLDEN DRAGONS -- IN JUST FIVE YEARS 

Eight years ago when I first wrote about the tremendous developments occurring in the Far East it was difficult to interest many people in the implications. But now most North Americans are aware that something big is happening in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea. These original "Four Tigers", with a total combined population of only 73 million (58 percent of the Japanese population) are shipping more goods and services abroad than Japan!

Now the new growth areas of Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia are springing rapidly into action. These countries, along with the Four Tigers are becoming known as the Seven Dragons. Take a look at these statistics from TIME magazine. COUNTRY POPULATION GROWTH EXPORTS (Millions) (92 GNP Increase) (Proj. '92 increase) South Korea 44.3 7.5% 11.4% Taiwan 20.8 6.8% 9.2% Hong Kong 5.7 5.4% 18.0% Singapore 2.8 6.0% 9.5% Total 73.6 avr 6.0% avr 12.0% Indonesia 184.5 6.4% 14.3% Thailand 56.3 8.6% 12.3% Malaysia 18.7 8.5% 18.0% Total 259.5 7.83% 14.88% The economic boom, so familiar to Europeans and North Americans, even up to four years ago, has now moved to the Near West, once known as the Far East. Today the Orient is just like anywhere else, only a non-stop flight away.

Still not in the spotlight, but following close behind the Seven Dragons, an even greater economic threat appears, (that is if we use industrial age thinking -- the current equivalent to the flat earth theory of the 13th century), in the form of India. With a population of 800 million, India's middle class of 250 million people has emerged from the dusty stereotype villages of the Indian hinterland during the past five years. Slower to awake, but potentially more overwhelming, is China with 1.1 BILLION people and growing. They are starting to move. The last eight months of China's production exceeded C$400 billion.

The numbers seem threatening. The three new "dragons" alone have a population equal to that of the United States. And all these rising economies have learned well from their mentor: Japan.

Some, like Singapore, travelled the route of Hong Kong and Taiwan, initially making low-priced toys (remember when "Made in Japan" was an American joke), then appliances, and today sophisticated electronics. Tomorrow, they will be ahead in bio-technology, in ways we may not comprehend.

What may be even more shocking is the approaching day when they really don't need North American or European business anymore. That will diminish whatever economic and/or political clout the West may have had in the past. Unless we move more swiftly than during the past decade of economic decline, especially in Canada and the U.S., that funny Vancouver joke may not go over so well in Kansas City. "Why did the Asian cross the road?"

"To buy the other side, silly."

The concept of high taxes to pay for a host of social safety nets in North America is unknown in most of these emerging countries. The concept of saving a huge amount of personal income, is not. Remember that the phenomenal rise of the Rising Sun was due to a national devotion to savings of 22 percent annually for many years. Such savings also gives countries that try to succeed in matching Japan, the capital to invest in the infrastructure that provides continuing growth rates. They are also studying more, continuing to work longer hours, working for less and are much more patient than the West in waiting for the eventual personal pay-off that such actions produce.

Meanwhile back in North America and Europe, the Longshoreman's Union whose members obtain $83,000 annual income is still demanding more to move boxes from ship to shore. Eventually, the same pattern will emerge that almost wrote off totally the militant members of John Lewis's coal miners in the anthracite areas of Pennsylvania, where I lived in my childhood. Rates demanded by miners became so outrageous (remember, coal was king then) that forces emerged, including the funding, to produce an alternative, the automated coal mining machine, reminiscent of today's "Tree Farmer" in the forest industry, which cut labor costs as the United Wood Workers also demanded ever more. There is a moral here. When any group demands more than society is willing to pay -- be they coal miners, loggers, stevedors or politicians -- heads roll. Even more painful, those sweat shops, one reason, we claimed Asian manufacturers did so well, may be the next export from tomorrow's Seven Dragons.

The East may eventually export their sweat-shops to the West. To fill a need for low-cost labor. Of course now we would have to compete with their robots.

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