The beginning of East Asia’s remarkable transition in the 1970s and 1980s was
initially powered by major Japanese multinational investments, which established
subsidiaries across the region. But it was the unprecedented economic reforms
unleashed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the late 1980s that provided
the fodder for exponential expansion. “Production networks” were born, coupled
with a complex web of intermediate goods increasingly produced and traded
among developing countries in Asia.