East Asia is central to the book’s account of why prosperity changes across regions and over time: its postwar growth shows that development is neither fixed by geography nor explained by a single culture or religion, while the contrasting paths of South Korea and China demonstrate that rapid economic expansion can coexist with sharply different political institutions. The region also complicates the book’s broader pattern of persistent global inequality, because countries once far from the richest group have experienced dramatic growth without making institutional outcomes uniform.

Regional Position in the Global Pattern

The book places East Asia within a changing geography of prosperity. The first sustained modern economic growth began in England in the second half of the eighteenth century, as the Industrial Revolution took root, and spread to much of Western Europe and the United States. By contrast, several East Asian economies, including Taiwan and later China, entered a period of rapid growth much more recently. South Korea and Singapore are included among the world’s richest countries, a status they would not have held in the same way fifty years earlier. Their rise shows that rankings can remain stable over long periods while still being altered by consequential episodes of growth.

This regional contrast matters to the book’s account of global inequality because the broad distribution of rich and poor countries has proved persistent, but not immutable. Much of the inequality visible today emerged after the late eighteenth century, and the rankings observed over the past century and a half do not extend unchanged into earlier history. The rapid growth of much of East Asia since the Second World War is one of the clearest examples of nations changing their position. It does not, however, mean that growth inevitably lasts or produces the same political result everywhere.

Culture and Religion as Explanations

East Asia challenges accounts that treat religion as a necessary foundation of economic success. The book notes that the early modern successes of the Netherlands and England were predominantly Protestant, but finds little basis for a special relationship between Protestantism and prosperity. France, a predominantly Catholic country, soon matched their economic performance in the nineteenth century, and Italy later became comparably prosperous. The economic successes of East Asia, meanwhile, had no connection to any form of Christianity. The contrast weakens the claim that one religious inheritance accounts for modern growth.

The same caution applies to cultural explanations. Differences in beliefs and attitudes between the United States and Latin America do not, in the book’s analysis, independently explain their different economic outcomes; such differences are themselves shaped by distinct institutions and institutional histories. The comparison with East Asia reinforces the point: cultural attitudes change slowly, making them an inadequate explanation on their own for the region’s growth miracles and China’s rapid expansion. Institutions can also persist, but in particular circumstances they can change quickly. The argument therefore treats culture not as a fixed cause that determines a region’s fate, but as something whose effects must be understood alongside the political and economic arrangements that shape it.

China: Growth Under State Direction

China’s recent expansion is described as a change in economic policy brought about through political struggle, not as the discovery of better economic advice by newly enlightened rulers. After Mao Zedong’s death, Deng Xiaoping and his allies gradually abandoned socialist economic policies and institutions, first in agriculture and then in industry. The people who drove this shift were no less self-interested than their rivals; they prevailed because their political interests and objectives differed. The change thus illustrates the book’s broader claim that institutional transitions depend on political incentives and contests over power, not simply on whether leaders understand which policies promise prosperity.

The form of Chinese growth has also varied by sector. Radical market reforms in agriculture spearheaded its early stages, while industrial reforms were more limited. Even as the economy grew rapidly, the state and the Chinese Communist Party continued to decide which sectors and companies would receive additional capital and expand, decisions capable of making and breaking fortunes. The book therefore characterizes this as growth under extractive institutions: economic expansion was real, but economic decision-making remained substantially under state control, with little sign of a transition to inclusive political institutions. The distinction prevents growth itself from being mistaken for political pluralism.

China’s trajectory also carries a qualification rather than a prediction. Because its economic institutions remained far from fully inclusive, the book judged a South Korean–style transition less likely, but explicitly not impossible. The comparison leaves open the possibility of institutional change while refusing to treat rapid growth as proof that such change has already occurred. Economic expansion and political inclusion are related questions, not interchangeable measures of development.

South Korea and the Limits of Extractive Growth

South Korea provides a contrasting path within East Asia. By the 1970s, its economic institutions had become sufficiently inclusive to reduce one important reason for economic elites to favor their own or the military’s political dominance: they had less to gain from controlling politics. Relative equality of income also reduced elite fears about pluralism and democracy. The book links these economic conditions to the weakening rationale for maintaining extractive political institutions, rather than presenting democratization as an automatic consequence of growth alone.

The military dictatorship nonetheless persisted, and the course of political change was not uninterrupted. The United States, particularly in light of the threat from North Korea, was a key influence, while a strong democracy movement challenged military rule. General Park’s assassination in 1979 was followed by another military coup, led by Chun Doo-hwan. Chun’s chosen successor, Roh Tae-woo, then initiated political reforms; after 1992, these reforms led to the consolidation of pluralistic democracy. The sequence shows both the force of political conflict and the contingent nature of institutional change: a coup followed Park’s death, but the later outcome was not a permanent restoration of military rule.

The book sets this transition against the Soviet Union’s different experience. Soviet growth ran out of steam, the economy began collapsing in the 1980s, and it fell apart in the 1990s. China shares features with both cases: like the Soviet Union at its height, it achieved rapid growth under centralized state direction; like South Korea, it underwent significant market-oriented reform. But the political transition that followed in South Korea had not occurred in China. East Asia therefore does not represent one developmental model. Its examples distinguish growth from inclusion and show how political centralization can support economic transformation without ensuring a pluralistic settlement.

Centralization, Extraction, and the Region’s Significance

Political centralization is essential to the book’s explanation of growth under extractive institutions. A state with a firm grip on power can coordinate economic activity and direct resources toward higher-productivity areas. In South Korea, military elites could undertake significant economic reforms while retaining political control; in China, the Communist Party has similarly been able to direct capital and coordinate development. This capacity helps explain how rapid growth can occur without inclusive political institutions.

Centralization, however, is not sufficient to make such growth sustainable. The Soviet comparison shows that growth under state coordination can lose momentum and end in collapse. South Korea’s later political reforms represent a different possible development, in which inclusive economic institutions and reduced elite resistance to pluralism helped make political transition possible. China’s still-limited industrial reforms and continuing state direction, by contrast, leave its political outcome open. The book uses these regional contrasts to separate a government’s ability to mobilize resources from the broader distribution of economic and political power.

East Asia’s significance is therefore comparative rather than reducible to a single regional character. Its growth undermines simple religious and cultural explanations; China shows that market-oriented change can be initiated by political coalitions with particular interests; South Korea shows how greater economic inclusion can reduce elites’ incentives to block pluralism; and the Soviet contrast warns that centralized growth may eventually falter. Together, these cases make the region a test of the book’s central proposition: prosperity depends not on geography or a uniform cultural inheritance, but on institutions and the political conflicts that shape them.