Taiwan and Romania join a very special club

So in the last three years or so — since COVID, basically — Romania and Taiwan have both joined a very special club of countries.

There are not a lot of countries in this club. If you’re very generous, you could include perhaps a dozen or so. But to my way of thinking, there are only about eight. They include:

Ireland (pretty much the type specimen)
South Korea
Singapore
All three Baltic states — Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia
Taiwan
Romania

There are some definitional issues. Romania, in particular, s a borderline case.  It only qualifies as… half a member, let’s say. Microstates are excluded; to join this club, you must have at least half a million people. In theory, you could argue for the list to include Australia, Israel, Slovenia, and even the United States, but I except them because reasons.  

Okay, so:  What is this club?

The answer is below the cut.  But first: take a moment, look at that list, think about it.  (Here’s a hint: remember what I do for a living.)  Try to come up with an answer, and then put it in the comments. I’ll be curious to see what people think.


Okay, so….

It’s the list of former colonies that are now clearly richer, in terms of per capita GDP, than their former colonial masters.  

Ireland — is now comfortably better off than the UK.  Yes, official Irish GDP is inflated by all the multinationals that use Ireland as a base.  Correcting for that cuts Ireland’s numbers by over 40%!  Which leaves Ireland… still comfortably better off than the UK.
South Korea — pcGDP is now about 15% higher than Japan’s.
Singapore — much richer per capita than the UK, it’s not even close.  Like, pcGDP is about 60 percent higher!  (Note that while Singapore is physically small, it’s definitely not a microstate. Singapore has six million people.)
Baltic States — all much richer than Russia.
Taiwan — in just the last few years, has surpassed former colonial master Japan.
Romania — in just the last few years, has become richer than Hungary.  I said Romania was “maybe half a member” because only about half of Romania was owned by Hungary.  But Hungary has been richer than Romania since basically forever, so this is actually a big deal. 

What were my definitions?  Well,  1)  Must be a fully sovereign state: no autonomous provinces or special administrative regions.  Sorry, Hong Kong!  2) No microstates: must have at least half a million people.  Alas, Cayman Islands!   3)  No petrostates: because that’s the development equivalent of winning the lottery.  Too bad, Guyana!  

And finally, I’m talking about colonies that gained their independence since 1945.  (Iceland is a bit richer than former colonizer Denmark, but they gained independence in 1944, and they also miss out under my “microstate” definition — Iceland has well under half a million people.)  If I pushed the cutoff date back to 1918, we could add Finland and Poland to the mix: internationally recognized in 1919, both much richer than former colonial master Russia.  If I pushed it back still further, we could include Australia, Greece and even the USA.  But if you go far enough back, damn near everyone was someone else’s colony at some point.  Restricting it to the last 80 years at least allows for clarity, and it does have the advantage that the class of candidates — countries that were someone else’s colony in 1945 — includes more than half the countries in the world.

Excluded because reasons:  Slovenia and Croatia, because after 1945 they weren’t really colonies of Serbia in the way that the Baltic States were colonies of Russia.  Yes, you can @ me.

May have joined already: by some measures, Israel is richer now than the UK.  But I consider them as “pending” because (a) it’s very close, and (b) both countries seem likely to have weird growth patterns over the next few years.  

You could argue against:  Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were richer than Russia long before they became independent.  So they didn’t need to overtake and pass the former colonial master the way that the others did.  All they needed to do was not backslide.  But they /didn’t/ backslide, so they’re in.

Right, then.  Before we start arguing about who should be on or off, let’s take a look at the list again.  Is there anything in common?

Short answer: all of these countries have mostly had good-to-excellent policies for promoting rapid economic growth, while their former colonial masters — Japan, the UK, Hungary and Russia — have mostly not.  This is why I excluded petrostates!  Having oil is random geological good luck.  But you can’t argue that South Korea or Ireland have any advantages in resources or location over the UK or Japan. If anything, quite the opposite.  They had to get their growth the hard way.

(What I do for a living:  I work in development.  So I spend a certain amount of time thinking about this stuff.)