On June 4, ISET hosted a Seminar featuring Levan Nadibaidze, a strategy consultant specializing in governance, economic development, and large-scale transformations. His presentation, titled “Collapse and Recovery: East Asian Development after the 1950s and Its Implications for Georgia,” examined how Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China recovered from the devastation of WWII, the Korean War, and the Chinese Civil War to become some of the world’s leading economies.
The presentation explored the common export-focused economic strategy pursued by successful East Asian states, the ways in which they mobilized large amounts of domestic resources to fund recovery and industrial upgrading, and the experiences of countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines that attempted similar approaches but failed. Particular attention was given to the mistakes that contributed to these failures and the lessons they offer.
The seminar concluded with a discussion of the possible implications of these experiences for present-day Georgia and other resource-poor post-Soviet countries.
