Privatization and the State: Russia, Eastern Europe, East Asia

A comparison of the economic transformation of the Soviet Union and East Asia (for the purposes of this chapter, the newly industrialized countries — excluding Hong Kong — China and Vietnam) produces an impression of clear similarity and radical contrast. The aim of transformation seems to have been similar in both sets of cases: the transformation of a militarily inspired, state-run economy into a market-oriented one. The outcomes of the process have been vastly different — an ‘economic miracle’ on the one hand, decline and collapse on the other.