The island's rapid industrialisation over the past decade and its development as the main trade and financial centre of South-East Asia, supported by a phenomenal growth in tourism, constitute yet another Asian economic miracle.

While bringing unprecedented prosperity to post-war Japan, her "economic miracle" at the same time led to greater vulnerability owing to a much higher degree of dependency on raw material imports and outlets for export goods. This was brought home to the Japanese by events in the early 1970’s....