Japan colonial development and industrialization

 Chomsky writes that one of the philosophical foundations to Free Market economics is that the 'level-playing field'. However, the countries now advocating for worldwide Free Market reforms became wealthy under conditions of extreme protectionism. Europe, the U.S. and Japan developed 'by radically violating approved Free Market doctrine. He argues the same is true for the East Asian growth areas of today. Japan and the U.S. were able to develop, as they escaped European colonization. Japan developed its colonies in East Asia at relatively the same pace as itself, which had led to these colonies becoming world economic powers in their own rights through protectionist measures such as the limiting of capital flow. Midgley has shown how Asia's development experience leads to a rejection of the idea that state intervention is an impediment to economic growth or that it is an instrument of injustice. Instead statist intervention has contributed to Asia's positive development with huge reductions of poverty and remakably even income distributions. This is in constrast to the colonies of Europe, which were heavily exploited.

Japan is the only colonial power to have located various heavy industries--steel, chemicals, hydro-electric power--in its colonies, a remarkable fact when considered comparatively. They were built during the second phase of Japanese industrialization and probably accounted for about a quarter of Japan's industrial base by 1945.