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In this period in Japan. the progress of elementary education in particular was
most rapid. The recruiting army officers were impressed by the fact that while in 1893 one
third of the army recruits were illiterate. already by 1906 there was hardly anyone who was not
literate. By 1913. though Japan was economically still quite underdeveloped. it had become
one of the largest producers of books in the world publishing more books than Britain and
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indeed more than twice as many as the United States. An early priority on public education
is a central feature of Japanese economic development. and greatly aided its rapidity and

spread.

Pre-reform China and Its Post-reform Success
To different extents the successful economies in East and South East Asia from
South Korea to Thailand have tended to follow a similar route. They got there in varying ways.
Perhaps the most remarkable is the experience of mainland China. Even though the use of the
market economy in China flowered only after the economic reforms in 1979. a major part of

the basic foundations for this expansion was laid in the social developments that occurred in
the pre reform period. before 1979 indeed a lot of it during the active days of Maoist policy.
China went for a widespread expansion of basic education. thereby making it possible for
people to enter the market economy in a way that had happened earlier in Japan and some
parts of East Asia and had not happened in many other regions of comparable poverty.
including my own country. India. Pre-reform China also provided a very widespread coverage
of basic health care. thereby eliminting or nearly eliminating some of the traditional epidemic
and endemic diseases that make orderly economic progress so difficult. Land reforms had also
eli minted the hold of the landlords. and even though the communication of land was achieved

at very high human cost. when the economic reforms came. land could be made available to
the rural families for their cultivational use in a way that would not have been possible had the
hold of the landlords not been eliminated already.

Thus. through a series of economic and social changes. a strong foundation for the
possibility of a flourishing and widely shared market economy was already laid. even though
these changes occurred in China through a very different political system from that in Japan

and in the rest of East Asia. Was Mao intending to build the social foundations. of a market
economy and capitalist expansion (as he certainly did succeed in doing)? That hypothesis
would. of course. be absurd to entertain. and may even make him turn in his grave. And yet
the Maoist policies of land reform. expansion of literacy. enlargement of public health care,
etc. had a very favourable effect on economic growth in post-reform China. The extent to
which post reform China draws on the results achieved in pre reform China needs greater
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recognition • What Adam Smith had called the "unintended consequences of human action"

'For these data. see Gluck, pp. 12, 172. and the references cited by her.
40n this see Drezed and Sen. India : Economic DeveioRment and Social 0pRortunity (1995 J. Chapter 4.