Question

In terms of “development “ what was the “ladder” that Ha-Joon Chang said core governments were “kicking away”. In what way was “kicking it away” damaging.

Answer 1

In terms of “development “what was the “ladder” that Ha-Joon Chang said core governments were “kicking away”. In what way was “kicking it away” damaging.

Ha Joon Chang is a well-known economic writer who rightly wrote the theory which is crux of the question listed above. He indicated that most developed countries across the globe are those which had implemented measures to protect their own infant industries in the early 19th Century with the use of tariffs and rapidly copied technology which was implemented in other nations to allow higher growth rates for themselves.

The writer has largely criticized the hypocrite behavior of the developed nations towards the developing nations in which the developing counterparts have been forced to form policies which rather favor the developed ones.

In the Ladder to Success and Economic Development, developed countries used every means possible to reach to a position above the rest of the world. These include but were not limited to protecting their own manufacturing companies, implementing higher tariffs on imports and providing subsidies to home countries for their development wherever possible.

These countries now are supporting democratic views and strong intellectual property laws and free trade which has cause major crisis among developing economies which have seen major economic blunders due to the hypocrite nature of the developed nations.

Haa Joon Chang has widely criticized the Adam Smith model of development in which free trade had been advocated. He indicated that no developed economy has become developed unless they followed restrictive trade practices for their own industries and now expecting developing countries to follow a free trade mechanism is like kicking away the ladder of growth which they previously used for themselves respectively.

In what way was “kicking it away” damaging.

Haa Joon correctly observes that most developing countries require some form of economic protectionism which was rapidly followed by other developed countries during the 19th Century when industrialization had just started.

Thus, developed countries he believes is kicking away the ladder they themselves used for development for other counterparts which are yet on the development path.

The kicking away has meant that countries such as India, Bangladesh, China etc. which were developing and were industrialized and liberalized owing to the increase of Globalization which was backed by developed nations, saw a rapid decline during times of economic crisis for developed countries like the 2008 crisis in the United States.

Being connected to international trade for developing countries meant that they had to rely on their development on foreign countries which may not be the right thing to do for nascent industries which will never be able to compete with developed counterparts.

Thus, the effects of the kicking away was that developing countries saw great falls during international recessions which could be protected if they followed the same ladder to development which developed countries had earlier followed during their path to success.

Please feel free to ask your doubts in the comments section if any.