Ha-Joon Chang, a South Korean economist, gave a lecture for the New America Foundation on February 1, 2008 titled Why The World Isn’t Flat. The lecture was on why developing nations should look at the history of successful nations, rather than just adopting the orthodox free market approach being demanded of them. Chang’s speech was based on his book , in which he demonstrates why unfettered capitalism is not a good idea for developing countries.

The conventional wisdom states that out of thirty or so successful countries, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan were the only ones to succeed with subsidies and government intervention while all the others had an orthodox free market, but Chang says that the opposite is actually true – the Netherlands, Hong Kong, and Switzerland were the only countries that managed to succeed with an orthodox free market.

Chang gives Japan’s support of Toyota as one example of the success of protectionism. He also brings up Alexander Hamilton’s support for a protected manufacturing economy in the United States.

A metaphor Chang uses to refute Thomas Friedman’s “flat world” in which all countries compete on a level playing field, is that of boxing’s weight classes. It makes no sense for an economic lightweight like Honduras to want to go up against a heavyweight like the United States. The global economic competition is a game of unequal players. The developing countries like Honduras need a titled playing field on which they can protect and subsidize their producers in order to compete.

Ha-Joon Chang’s full lecture is available to view below: