Editing Openai/69506a45-4fb4-8000-a3c2-ac90a29b94e3 (section)

=== Assistant: Good question — and your instinct is right. ===
Good question — and your instinct is right. Democratic East Asian countries didn’t copy socialism, but they ''converged'' toward social-democratic outcomes, often for very practical reasons.

I’ll break it down clearly and tie it to Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan (the main democratic cases).

==== After WWII and civil wars: ====
* Japan: destroyed economy, mass poverty
* Korea: war-torn, one of the poorest countries in the 1950s
* Taiwan: refugee state after the Chinese Civil War

👉 When a society starts that poor, laissez-faire capitalism doesn’t work fast enough. The state had to intervene.

So they built:
* Strong public education
* Universal healthcare
* Industrial policy
* Housing and land reform

This looks “social democratic,” but it came from survival, not ideology.

==== Unlike the U.S., East Asia had: ====
* Long traditions of state responsibility
* Emphasis on collective stability, family duty, and social harmony
* Less moral stigma around receiving public services

So policies like:
* National health insurance
* Pension systems
* Public housing were seen as order-maintaining, not “handouts.”

This is similar to Nordic societies:

: 

==== This is huge and often overlooked. ====

East Asian democracies were frontline states against communism:
* South Korea vs North Korea
* Taiwan vs China
* Japan vs USSR/China

The U.S. pushed them to:
* Be capitalist
* But avoid the kind of inequality that fuels revolution

So governments adopted:
* Land reform (very radical by U.S. standards)
* Labor protections
* Universal education
* Broad middle-class growth

👉 This is exactly what Nordic countries did to neutralize socialist movements.

==== They first built developmental states: ====
* Government guided markets
* Picked strategic industries
* Controlled finance and trade

Once rich enough, these states:
* Expanded healthcare
* Expanded pensions
* Expanded unemployment insurance

So welfare came after growth, but it was planned from the start.

Nordics did the same:

: 

==== When these countries democratized (especially Korea and Taiwan in the 1980s–90s): ====
* Workers gained voting power
* Middle class demanded security
* Governments expanded welfare to stay legitimate

Democracy + capitalism =
pressure for social democracy.

==== East Asian governments are: ====
* Bureaucratically strong
* Technocratic
* Relatively efficient

That means:
* Taxes are actually collected
* Services actually work
* Less corruption than many developing states

People are willing to pay taxes if the system delivers — same as Scandinavia.

==== ### ====
* Universal healthcare since 1961
* Strong labor protections
* Heavy regulation of markets
* High public debt, but strong social stability

===== - Universal healthcare =====
* Rapid expansion of pensions and welfare post-democratization
* Still more work-intense than Nordics, but clearly social-democratic leaning

===== - One of the best single-payer health systems in the world =====
* Strong SME support
* Extensive public investment in tech and education

==== Quick contrast: ====
* U.S. never experienced total collapse on its own soil after WWII
* Deep racial divisions undermined universal welfare
* Strong anti-state ideology
* Corporations shaped policy earlier and harder

==== East Asian democracies became social-democratic in practice because: ====

: 

Not because they were leftist —
but because it worked.

If you want, I can also:
* Compare East Asian vs Nordic social democracy
* Explain why China is not social democracy
* Or discuss why Southeast Asia hasn’t fully followed this path