For Tiffany
I went out in the heat of the moment, and in the bitterness of my heart…
William Gladstone, Midlothian campaign
Two key data sources I have used are the International Monetary Fund's World Economic Outlook database, which starts from 1980, and the World Bank's World Development Indicators database, which starts from 1960. If no source is given for a data point, it has been taken from one of these two databases. The decision to not always quote the IMF and World Bank sources aims to reduce the number of endnotes.
The World Bank has changed its terminology and now refers to Gross National Product (GNP) as Gross National Income (GNI). While some readers may be used to the older term, GNP, GNI has been used throughout this book. According to the World Bank, there is no methodological difference between the two. The methodological difference that readers should take note of is that between GNI, which covers a country's income from both domestic and international sources, and GDP, which reflects income in the domestic economy alone.
Despite my efforts to contain the number of endnotes, there are still a good many that are necessary to elucidate a point or show that there is a substantive source for what I am saying. It is not expected or intended that readers will look up all the notes. The best way to proceed for many people will be to only turn to the endnotes if the point being made is one you consider particularly important or controversial. For those interested, I hope to publish more of the academic research that supports what I say in a separate addendum. Any progress on this front will be reported at www.howasiaworks.com.
Unless otherwise noted, exchange rates are those that applied in the year or period that is being discussed.
Finally, pretty much every country in Asia has produced competing systems of romanisation of Asian languages. In writing names of people and places, I have attempted to use the romanised forms that are most familiar to contemporary English language readers. Hence Deng Xiaoping is rendered in the mainland Chinese pinyin system, whereas Chiang Kai-shek is rendered in the Wade-Giles system favoured in Taiwan. In South Korea, a degree of romanisation anarchy reigns. The McCune-Reischauer system, the Yale system, the new Revised Romanisation system and more exist concurrently and Koreans take their pick when romanising their names. Moreover, there is no accepted convention for the hyphenation and capitalisation of given names. I have therefore followed expressed preference or what appears to be the most common usage. Park Chung Hee preferred to be styled thus. Ha-Joon Chang writes his name thus. Byung-kook Kim is styled thus. And South Korea's first president insisted on, and is still known as, Syngman Rhee (if I called him the more standard Lee Seung Man, no one would know him.) In North Korea, there is unanimity that Kim Il Sung is the way to style a name. In Indonesia I have avoided the older, Dutch-influenced spellings such as Soeharto, since post-colonial spelling, such as Suharto, is now very widely accepted. I apologise in the knowledge that in dealing with eight countries there will be some romanisation choices, and some name stylings, that readers disagree with.
