In Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism (2007), Ha-Joon Chang dismantles a set of long-standing Western claims that attributed the economic failures of countries such as Korea, Japan, and China to so-called “Confucian values.” These explanations portrayed Confucianism as inherently hostile to innovation, entrepreneurship, and modern economic organization, yet Chang demonstrates that such arguments were both historically inaccurate and logically inconsistent—particularly in light of the later, spectacular success of East Asian economies that were supposedly constrained by the same cultural traits.
A modern sequel to this argument can be seen in contemporary debates about China. Once again, cultural explanations are invoked to predict economic stagnation or systemic failure, even as China’s trajectory echoes earlier East Asian development paths that confounded similar predictions. The parallel underscores a recurring pattern: when confronted with unfamiliar economic models, critics often fall back on cultural determinism, only to see those claims unravel as history unfolds.
From Cultural Blame to Rule-Based Restraint: How Success Rewrites the Explanation
In Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism (2007), Ha-Joon Chang challenges the long-standing claim that Confucian culture was inherently hostile to capitalism and modern economic development. For decades, Confucian societies were portrayed as valuing hierarchy, harmony, tradition, and scholarship at the expense of entrepreneurship, innovation, and commercial dynamism. These cultural explanations were widely invoked to justify why countries such as Korea, Japan, and China were supposedly incapable of industrial capitalism. Chang argues that this diagnosis was not only wrong, but intellectually lazy.
The book demonstrates that the very societies once dismissed as culturally “backward” later became among the most technologically dynamic economies in the world. Far from suppressing innovation, Confucian-influenced countries excelled at absorbing, adapting, and improving foreign technologies—precisely the process that historically underpins successful industrialization. Chang emphasizes that economic development rarely depends on isolated originality; it depends on institutional capacity, learning, and strategic state support. What mattered was not culture, but whether governments had the policy space to build industries, protect infant firms, and acquire technology.
Similarly, traits criticized as cultural weaknesses—such as respect for hierarchy and authority—often functioned as strengths within specific institutional contexts. In East Asia, these norms facilitated coordinated industrial policy, long-term planning, and disciplined workforce organization. What outsiders interpreted as passivity or lack of individual initiative instead enabled governments to direct credit, impose performance standards, and sustain national development strategies. Confucian societies also proved strikingly pragmatic rather than fatalistic, aggressively pursuing foreign knowledge through education, imitation, and reverse engineering whenever political conditions allowed.
Chang further dismantles the claim that Confucian disdain for commerce blocked capitalist development. Merchant activity expanded rapidly once states created supportive industrial and financial institutions. Persistent poverty, he argues, stemmed not from cultural hostility to markets but from colonial domination, imposed free trade, and restrictions on policy autonomy. When countries lacked the freedom to protect industries or manage technology transfer, failure was blamed on culture rather than on the international rules that constrained development.
The broader pattern Chang exposes is deeply revealing. Culture was blamed when countries were poor, but quietly reinterpreted once they succeeded. Values once condemned as obstacles were later praised as virtues—discipline, respect for education, and hard work—after economic catch-up had occurred. In this sense, cultural explanations functioned as retrospective rationalizations rather than genuine causal accounts. The real story, Chang insists, is not about immutable values but about power, institutions, and rules. When nations fail, culture is blamed; when they catch up, rules are invoked to prevent others from following the same path.
From Japan and Korea to China: A Recycled Western Narrative
Western commentary on China today often follows a familiar script. China is portrayed as a society that can imitate but not innovate, constrained by authoritarian governance, Confucian cultural norms, and heavy state involvement that allegedly suppress creativity and distort markets. These claims are frequently presented as cultural truths—timeless explanations for why China is presumed to fall short of sustained technological or economic leadership.
Yet this narrative is strikingly unoriginal. Nearly identical arguments were once leveled at Japan during its postwar rise and at South Korea during its industrial takeoff. Both were described as copy-driven economies, culturally inclined toward obedience rather than originality, and structurally dependent on state intervention that supposedly precluded genuine capitalism. Earlier still, similar critiques were directed at nineteenth-century Germany and even the United States, both accused by British observers of protectionism, state meddling, and an inability to innovate “properly.”
The repetition reveals less about China’s actual trajectory than about a recurring pattern in Western interpretation. Culture is invoked not as a historically grounded analytical tool, but as a retrospective justification for skepticism toward late-developing challengers. In each case, cultural explanations served to naturalize an expected outcome—failure or stagnation—that history later contradicted. Seen in this light, today’s narratives about China are less a novel diagnosis than the latest iteration of a well-worn story once told about yesterday’s Japan and Korea.
From “Korea Can’t Innovate” to “China Can’t Innovate”: A Recycled Argument
The claim that “China can’t innovate” is not new; it is a familiar refrain in the history of industrial development. Variations of the same argument were once directed at Germany in the nineteenth century, Japan before the Second World War, and later at Korea and Taiwan during their early stages of industrialization. In each case, cultural explanations were invoked to assert a fundamental incapacity for creativity or originality—claims that quietly disappeared once these countries succeeded. What changes is not the culture, but the verdict rendered after success becomes undeniable.
As Ha-Joon Chang notes in Bad Samaritans, culture is routinely blamed when countries are poor and retroactively celebrated when they become rich. China fits this pattern with striking precision. When its economy was centered on assembling toys and textiles, critics attributed its role to a supposedly imitation-prone Confucian culture. As China moved into electric vehicles, drones, advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, and space exploration, the narrative shifted again: its achievements were dismissed as subsidized, stolen, or inherently unsustainable. The underlying claim—China’s inability to innovate—remained constant, even as the evidence mounted against it.
These critiques mirror almost exactly what was once said about Japan and Korea. Their products were labeled cheap knockoffs, their firms accused of intellectual property theft, and their technological progress portrayed as derivative and state-dependent. Yet these same countries are now widely recognized as leaders in automobiles, electronics, semiconductors, and industrial design. The historical record shows that imitation and adaptation are not signs of incapacity but standard phases of industrial development. The United States borrowed heavily from British textile technology; Germany learned from British steel and chemistry; Japan adapted American manufacturing systems; Korea built on Japanese electronics.
Innovation, in other words, is cumulative and institutional rather than cultural or moral. It emerges from learning-by-doing, scale, competition, and sustained investment in human and industrial capabilities. China’s current trajectory—absorbing existing technologies, adapting them to local conditions, improving upon them, and increasingly setting global benchmarks—follows this well-established path. What distinguishes China is not the nature of its development, but its speed and scale. To continue invoking cultural determinism in the face of such broad, cross-sectoral technological acceleration is less an explanation than a refusal to learn from history.
Authoritarianism and the Shifting Standards of Development
Debates about development are often framed by a rigid claim from advanced economies: that authoritarian political systems are inherently incapable of innovation, and that political liberalization must precede sustained economic growth. This argument is presented as a universal principle, yet its application has been strikingly inconsistent. What is condemned in some cases has been tolerated—or even ignored—in others, suggesting that the standard itself is neither fixed nor neutral.
Historical experience complicates the claim. Germany’s industrial ascent occurred under authoritarian governance; Japan’s modernization unfolded within a semi-militarized state; South Korea achieved its fastest growth under dictatorship; and Singapore, despite its prosperity, remains tightly controlled. These cases were not dismissed as developmental dead ends because of their political structure. Instead, they were recognized for their capacity to mobilize resources, discipline capital, and accelerate learning. The political form was treated as secondary to performance.
China, however, is judged by a different metric. Its political system is cited as a fundamental obstacle precisely where similar arrangements were once excused or overlooked elsewhere. This pattern reveals authoritarianism as a moving goalpost rather than a consistent criterion. The decisive factor in development has not been regime type alone, but the state’s ability to coordinate capital, technology, and institutional learning. When that capacity exists, political objections tend to recede; when it does not, they are elevated to principle.
Selective Memory, State Power, and the Politics of Corruption
Western commentary on development often treats corruption and state intervention as decisive evidence of economic failure. China, in particular, is routinely portrayed as incapable of sustained development because of corruption, while state involvement in the economy is assumed to generate inefficiency and stagnation. These claims are presented as universal truths rather than historically contingent judgments.
Yet this narrative rests on a selective reading of history. The United States’ Gilded Age was marked by pervasive corruption, patronage, and collusion between business and politics. Europe’s industrialization unfolded amid cartels, political favoritism, and weak regulatory institutions. Japan’s postwar rise relied heavily on bureaucratic coordination through MITI, while South Korea’s growth was driven by chaebol–state alliances that were frequently entangled with corruption. These experiences were not anomalies; they were integral to how late industrializers mobilized capital, protected infant industries, and disciplined labor.
As Ha-Joon Chang argues in Bad Samaritans, corruption tends to decline as a consequence of development, not as its prerequisite. Institutional refinement, transparency, and accountability are usually products of rising incomes and state capacity, not conditions that precede them. To demand that contemporary developing countries meet the governance standards of already-rich nations is to ignore how those standards were historically achieved.
China, then, is not being measured against historical reality but against an idealized and sanitized version of Western development. The fixation on corruption and state power reflects not empirical consistency but selective amnesia—one that erases the messy, politicized, and state-driven paths through which today’s wealthy economies actually emerged.
The Rhetoric of “Temporary Triumph”: A Strategy of Ideological Containment
The claim that a rival’s victory is merely temporary is less an act of analysis than one of ideological damage control. When applied to China’s rise, this argument functions to stabilize a threatened worldview rather than to explain shifting material realities. It reassures its audience that present disruptions do not require deep reassessment, because history will eventually restore the familiar hierarchy. In this sense, the “temporary victory” thesis is not predictive; it is preservative.
This rhetoric serves three tightly linked purposes. First, it preserves Western moral and civilizational superiority by framing non-Western success as contingent or derivative. Second, it avoids acknowledging structural decline by relocating failure into a short-lived anomaly. Third, it postpones reckoning by allowing existing policies and assumptions to persist unchanged. The argument appears not at moments of confidence, but precisely when relative advantage is eroding.
Historically, this pattern is unmistakable. Britain invoked similar language when German industry began to outpace it in the late nineteenth century. The United States deployed it during Japan’s ascent in the 1980s. Today, the same logic is applied to China. In each case, the insistence on impermanence followed concrete losses of economic or technological ground, functioning as a narrative buffer against strategic recalibration.
The selective invocation of the Needham Question is especially revealing. Rather than being used to seriously interrogate historical divergence, it often becomes a civilizational assertion: that genuine scientific creativity possesses an essentially European character—something others may imitate but never truly own. This is not an economic claim grounded in institutions or incentives; it is a metaphysical one, rooted in assumptions about cultural essence.
The irony is sharp. Europe’s scientific and industrial breakthroughs rested heavily on technologies, knowledge systems, and administrative practices with deep non-European origins, from printing and gunpowder to navigation, metallurgy, and bureaucracy. Yet once Europe industrialized first, that contingency was retroactively transformed into destiny. As Bad Samaritans illustrates, being first is later rebranded as being fated—and the language of “temporary victory” is one of the tools by which that rebranding is defended.
Education, Creativity, and the Myth of a Western Cultural Essence
Debates contrasting “American leadership” with “Chinese test-takers” recycle one of the oldest myths in development discourse: the belief that creativity and innovation are rooted in a distinctive Western cultural essence. This narrative frames educational systems as destiny and culture as cause, obscuring the material and institutional conditions that actually produce innovation. Far from being an objective analysis, it reflects historical amnesia and contemporary status anxiety.
The first false assumption is that innovation arises primarily from individual genius rather than from systems. In reality, sustained innovation depends on scale, manufacturing feedback, engineering depth, and iterative learning. These are systemic capacities, not cultural traits. China today possesses them in abundance, just as earlier industrial powers did at comparable stages of development. Breakthroughs emerge not from isolated brilliance, but from dense ecosystems that reward experimentation and cumulative improvement.
A second misconception is that rote learning and creativity are opposites. History shows otherwise. Germany, Japan, South Korea, and the Soviet Union all built advanced scientific and technological capabilities through rigorous, exam-driven educational systems. Only after reaching industrial maturity did they diversify pedagogical styles. Development reshapes educational culture over time; culture does not preordain development.
The third, and quietest, assumption is that Western creativity exists independently of material dominance. Western universities and innovation hubs appear “creative” because they sit atop centuries of accumulated capital, stable institutions, and geopolitical privilege. If creativity were purely cultural, Silicon Valley would not have relied so heavily on immigrant engineers, Chinese students would not dominate global STEM outputs, and “independent thinking” would not flourish most where material risk is lowest.
Seen in this light, the caricature of Chinese students as uncreative “bookworms” is not serious analysis. It is a projection of insecurity from systems accustomed to cultural explanations for advantages that were, in fact, structural. Creativity follows capacity, security, and opportunity—and these are products of development, not of mythologized civilizational essence.
Subsidies and the Selective Morality of Rich Nations
The debate over industrial subsidies exposes a persistent double standard in the global economic order—one that reveals deep hypocrisy among wealthy nations. When advanced economies deploy subsidies, protectionism, and state support, these actions are framed as prudent governance or strategic policy. When late-developing countries do the same, they are accused of cheating and distorting markets.
History makes this contradiction difficult to deny. Germany, the United States, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan all relied heavily on industrial subsidies, trade protection, state-directed credit, public procurement, and targeted technology policies during their periods of rapid industrialization. These are not marginal footnotes to their success; they are central chapters. China’s current development strategy draws from the same policy toolkit.
Yet identical instruments now receive radically different moral labels. Subsidies in the United States are defended as environmental protection or national security measures, while Chinese subsidies are condemned as unfair interference. The tool remains unchanged; only the country wielding it has shifted. This is the essence of what has been described as “kicking away the ladder”—denying others the methods once used to climb.
The current outrage over electric vehicles, solar energy, shipbuilding, drones, and semiconductors is therefore less about economic principle than about power and loss. Industries long assumed to be the permanent domain of Western economies are now contested. If subsidies truly invalidate success, then the industrial achievements of aerospace in the United States, manufacturing in Germany, electronics in Japan, and shipbuilding in Korea would also stand condemned. Yet the rule is never applied retroactively—only selectively, and only against those still catching up.
Blame-Shifting and the Refusal to Acknowledge Chinese Agency
A recurring feature of contemporary Western discourse on China’s rise is a persistent tendency toward blame-shifting and the denial of Chinese agency. Explanations commonly attribute China’s success to Western actions or failures—Nixon’s diplomatic opening, China’s accession to the WTO, the greed of multinational CEOs, internal betrayal by “elites,” or shadowy systemic forces. In this framing, China does not rise through its own efforts; it merely benefits from accidents, concessions, or Western self-sabotage. Such narratives are less analytical than defensive.
What these accounts systematically exclude is precisely what matters most: Chinese labor discipline, engineering competence, institutional learning, state coordination, and long-term strategic planning. By omitting these factors, China is reduced to a passive object rather than an active historical subject. Its development is portrayed not as the result of deliberate policy choices and social adaptation, but as an unintended byproduct of Western mistakes. This erasure is not incidental; it is structurally necessary to preserve a particular worldview.
Acknowledging Chinese agency would require admitting that China learned faster, organized more effectively, and in key domains planned better. Such an admission threatens the deeply held myth of civilizational essence—the belief that enduring superiority is innate rather than contingent. If outcomes contradict this belief, then causation must be displaced elsewhere. Success becomes explainable only as cheating, external generosity, or internal Western betrayal, never as genuine capability.
As Bad Samaritans anticipates, when material outcomes can no longer be denied, narratives are rewritten to protect hierarchy. Blame-shifting thus functions as a psychological and ideological refuge for a declining hegemon. It allows failure to be externalized and agency to be denied, even as the evidence of deliberate, cumulative Chinese achievement becomes increasingly difficult to ignore.
Culture as an Instrument of Power Rather Than an Analytical Lens
Cultural explanations are frequently invoked in discussions of development, not to illuminate reality, but to foreclose debate. By attributing economic outcomes to culture, structural and political factors are pushed aside. Inequality is rendered natural rather than produced, policy choices are reframed as immutable traits, and the competitive dimensions of global development are obscured. Culture, in this sense, becomes a convenient substitute for political economy: it explains everything while interrogating nothing.
This pattern is especially visible in shifting narratives about China. When China was poor, its culture was described as backward, collectivist, and hostile to innovation—an impediment to progress that conveniently absolved the international system of responsibility. As China became technologically capable and economically competitive, the same cultural characteristics were reinterpreted as threats: no longer stagnant, but dangerous; no longer inefficient, but unfair; no longer merely different, but authoritarian. The descriptors change, yet the evaluative judgment remains fixed.
The consistency lies not in the analysis, but in the conclusion. Culture is mobilized not as an explanation grounded in evidence, but as a weapon that adapts to circumstances while preserving existing hierarchies. Its function is rhetorical rather than analytical: to legitimize exclusion, constrain alternatives, and mask competition as moral critique. In this role, culture does not help us understand development—it helps us police it.
Exposing the Developmental Double Standard of Rich Nations
The historical record reveals a persistent double standard in how today’s wealthy countries achieved industrial success versus how they now prescribe development for others. Advanced economies did not rise through unqualified adherence to free-market principles. Instead, during their formative periods, they relied heavily on protectionist measures, actively shielding infant industries from foreign competition. They combined this with managed trade policies, state subsidies, and deliberate coordination between government and industry to accelerate industrialization and secure strategic advantages.
These countries also pursued aggressive strategies to acquire technology. Forced technology transfer, industrial espionage, and other non-market mechanisms were widely used to close technological gaps with more advanced producers of the time. Currency manipulation and other macroeconomic tools further reinforced export competitiveness. Taken together, these policies reflect a pragmatic, state-led approach to development rather than the laissez-faire model often presented in retrospect.
Yet when countries like China adopt comparable strategies today, they are sharply criticized and urged to refrain from precisely the practices once deemed essential by the now-rich nations. Protectionism is condemned, state coordination is labeled distortionary, and strategic trade policy is framed as illegitimate. As Ha-Joon Chang argues in Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism, this “do as we say, not as we did” posture obscures historical reality and constrains the policy space of late-developing economies. The result is not a neutral defense of free trade, but a selective rewriting of economic history that entrenches global inequality rather than alleviating it.
The Recurring Logic Beneath Global Economic Judgment
Ha-Joon Chang’s Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism identifies a recurring logic in the way dominant economies interpret the rise and fall of others. When countries struggle, their difficulties are routinely attributed to alleged cultural flaws—deficient values, poor work ethics, or incompatible traditions. These explanations present underdevelopment as an internal failing rather than the outcome of historical constraints, power asymmetries, or policy choices shaped by external pressure. Culture, in this framing, becomes a convenient and depoliticized explanation for inequality.
As countries begin to catch up, however, the narrative shifts. Cultural arguments recede and are replaced by appeals to rules: free trade disciplines, institutional standards, and supposedly universal norms that latecomers are accused of violating. These rules are often presented as neutral and principled, yet they tend to reflect the interests and developmental paths of those who are already dominant. What was once tolerated or actively practiced by today’s advanced economies during their own rise is reframed as illegitimate once others attempt similar strategies.
When competition becomes real and threatening, morality enters the discourse. Ethical language—about fairness, responsibility, or acceptable behavior—is increasingly weaponized to constrain challengers. In this light, contemporary claims about China’s “cultural deficiencies” are less a genuine diagnosis than a strategic response to its growing economic and technological competitiveness. The deeper pattern Chang highlights is not about culture or morality per se, but about how shifting justifications are deployed to defend incumbent advantage as global power balances change.
Key Takeaways
What we are witnessing today is not a novel debate but a familiar historical replay: a well-worn script of cultural scapegoating, updated for a new challenger. China now occupies the position once held by Germany vis-à-vis Britain, Japan vis-à-vis the United States, and Korea vis-à-vis Japan. In each case, early failure was attributed to cultural deficiency, policy choices were ignored, initial success was dismissed as temporary or derivative, and—once the challenge became serious—the rules were quietly rewritten. The deeper and more unsettling truth is that China’s rise, like those before it, reveals development to be not a cultural miracle but a political, institutional, and strategic process. That realization threatens not only material interests but also the moral narratives through which rich nations justify their dominance.
This is why the critique keeps shifting while the verdict remains constant: even if the challenger succeeds, its success is said not to count. China, like Japan and Korea before it, was accused of lacking innovation until it innovated, of copying until it led, and of cultural backwardness until outcomes forced a reframing of the story. History suggests that today’s objections will likewise fade or be repackaged once results become undeniable. The real question, then, is not whether China can innovate, but whether advanced economies are willing to acknowledge that their own development was never as fair, orderly, or culturally virtuous as they now claim.
References
- Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism. By Ha-Joon Chang, 2007
- Kicking Away the Ladder: An Unofficial History of Capitalism, Especially in Britain and the United States. By Ha-Joon Chang, 2002