Who are the NICs?
In the late 1960s, a small number of the more advanced developing countries located principally in Asia and Latin America-referred to collectively a few years later as the NICs-individually embarked on similar strategies for creating a national industrial base. Whether by state-developed heavy engineering industries (machinery, shipbuilding, even armaments) and/or state-encouraged manufacturing of goods for export, these industrializing approaches resulted in sustained (even high in some countries) growth rates. They became relatively industrialized economies, compared to the developed countries in the First World (the West) and the Second World (the East-the ex-Soviet bloc)-now more accurately viewed as the North. By the end of the 1970s, these “established NICs” accounted for almost three-quarters of the Third World’s manufactured exports [R. Broad and J. Cavanagh, Foreign Policy, Fall 1988, p.81]. While this increased capacity was closely linked to state investment and joint commerc
