Page 294 - Cultures and Organizations

Yesterday, Now, or Later? 263

Poverty, however, did not disappear. From 1970 to 2000 some countries
were extremely successful in moving from “rags to riches.” The absolute

winners were the five Dragons: Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong
Kong, and Japan—this in spite of a serious economic crisis in their region
in 1997. In U.S. dollars, Taiwan’s 2000 GNI per capita was thirty-six
times as high as its 1970 GNI per capita. Japan’s nominal GNI per capita
increased by a factor of eighteen. On the other hand, the GNIs per capita of
the countries of sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America rose insignifi cantly
or not at all.
The economic success of the Dragons had not been predicted by econ-
omists. (Even after it happened, some failed for a time to recognize it.)
A forecast for the region by prominent World Bank economists in the
64
American Economic Review in 1966 did not even include Hong Kong and

Singapore, because they were considered insignificant; it underrated the
performances of Taiwan and South Korea and overrated those of India and
Sri Lanka. Fifteen years later Singapore, with a population of 2.5 million,
exported more than India with its 700 million.
After the Dragons’ economic miracle had become undeniable, econom-
ics had no explanation for it. According to economic criteria, Colombia, for
example, should have outperformed South Korea, while the reverse was
65
66
true. The American futurologist Herman Kahn (1922–83) formulated a
neo- Confucian hypothesis. He suggested that the economic success of the
countries of East Asia could be attributed to Confucian values, common
cultural roots going back far into history.
Kahn’s hypothesis remained unproved until the Chinese Value Survey
appeared. Economic growth in the last three decades of the twentieth cen-

tury was highly significantly correlated with LTO-CVS; this was Geert’s
initial reason for adopting long-term orientation as a fi fth dimension.
The Chinese Value Survey was conducted in 1985 and covered twenty-

three countries around the world; the LTO index derived from it not only
correlated with the economic growth of these countries in the preceding
twenty years (1965–85) but also turned out to even better predict their
growth in the next ten years (1985–95). 67

As of this writing, fifteen more years have passed, and our LTO-CVS
has been succeeded by a new scale, LTO-WVS, extending our database
from twenty-three countries to ninety-three. Does our new LTO scale still
explain economic growth, across so many more countries in a changed
world?