{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02346041055718475, 'fraction_numerical': 0.007331378299120235, 'mean_word_length': 5.319444444444445, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
The Asian Economic Crisis and the Future of Asian Capitalism

The economic and political fallout from the Asian economic crisis of 1997 is unabated. Economic uncertainty, social hardship, political instability, and popular unrest are evident in nearly every country in the region. Four years after the financial collapse that began in Thailand, the search for explanations continues. In Thailand, what the Asian Wall Street Journal called “the blame game” (8 May 2001) includes foreign investors, speculators, the World Bank/IMF (International Monetary Fund), local politicians, and bankers; efforts to extradite Thai financiers who fled abroad continue today. Why has understanding the crisis proven to be so difficult? Interpretations of capitalist crises have always been the Achilles heel of the Left. The historic divide between revolutionaries and reformists in the late nineteenth century turned on the fundamental question of whether capitalism was capable of internal reform or whether it was so deeply contradictory that it required radical transformation. Interpretations of the Asian crisis are thus politically charged. The questions the crisis raises are broad: (1) Is the crisis a symptom of the failure of capitalist development in general or only of its Asian variant (the “miracle economies,” as the World Bank called them a year or so before the