Singapore's Zafar Anjum of Computerworld and India's Virender Aggarwa of HCL Tehonologies continue the story of how Asian parners have trailblazed electronics sectors since Norman Macrae considered Japan's 1960 lead of Asia into these sectors

In the 1990s, many Japanese consumer electronics companies began facing tougher competition from South Korean companies who established their supremacy mainly in budget electronics. The South Koreans showed that they could produce budget items with similar quality to Japanese lower-end items, but charge much less for it. But South Korea quickly emerged as an early adopter nation to take a lead in all market segments and not just the budget ones. South Korea's government has long used economic policy to encourage development, and its people responded wholeheartedly. Hence the South Koreans also laid emphasis on R&D (research & development) and globalised marketing which helped them make ingrowths into newer markets faster than their Japanese counterparts. While Japanese firms stayed focused on the developed markets, South Korean firms invested in customising products for emerging markets. The rapid growth of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) nations helped South Korean companies to establish a global leadership position. Furthermore, South Korean companies jumped on to the global outsourcing bandwagon faster, which helped them to lower their costs of production.

Additionally, to some extent, analysts believe that against this background, South Korean manufacturers also enjoyed advantages of an undervalued Korean won in global trade. On the other hand, Japanese competitiveness suffered from high manufacturing costs, overcrowded markets, poor profitability and a depressed domestic economy. Another blow came from the traditional Japanese-style consensus management which led to near-paralysis. To some extent, while the cost-cutting and restructuring of the 1990s helped improve Japanese producers' competitiveness, the key to their salvation now appears to be the rapid advance of digital consumer electronics which represents a major transformation similar to the shift from radio to TV. Crucially, it is this technology transformation that could benefit Japanese companies in particular as they are believed to have the expertise to drive these new consumer markets, from high quality picture-making skills to digital compression technology.The kind of experience Japanese groups have accumulated over more than half a century as leading manufacturers of TVs and audio products places them in a strong position to achieve higher standards than their competitors.Hence, many believe the Japanese electronics industry may be on a cusp of new growth. Interestingly, this time round, having recognised that some inherent weaknesses continue in the Japanese economy primarily as a rapidly ageing workforce and consequent shortage of skills, Japanese enterprises are increasingly willing to outsource higher-end skills to a wider cultural array of offshore service providers. This has resulted in a larger Japanese focus on Indian service providers and to some extent on Brazilian service providers

 s.korea: Lim Globalizing Asia (2007)

  The negative impacts of top-down economic globalization have shown us that the structural adjustment programs end with social dissolution, political decay, and economic stagnation. Given his, this article suggests, tentatively, an alternative development paradigm for Globalizing Asia: the “stakeholder model”  of capitalism. This model highlights the critical role of NGOs in committing themselves to the organized interests of the peoples public goods.

The Rise of Asia
(1) More than thirty years ago, Norman Macrae (1975), who was then the
deputy editor of the  Economist, talked about the coming of the “Pacific
Century.” According to him, the world had gone through the “British
Century” (1775-1875), the “American  Century” (1875-1975), and now was
entering the “Pacific Century” (1975-2075?). Asia was seen as a newly
rising leader in the international  political and economic system. Its
extraordinary vitality has forced development scholars and practitioners to
“ReOrient” the history of capitalist development in the region. [1]

 dad and 2010 obit by British Ambassador to Tokyo

1962 consider japan

1975 asia pacific century

 muhammad yunus

growing up with 2 giants

ending human bonsai

vision of pan-asia free market region

 social business case for superport of cox's bazaar