Ha-Joon Chang Quotes

Rich countries have been sending aid to poor countries for the last 60 years. And, by and large, this has failed.

Quite a few people who are in the media and in control of the big money seem to want to see these Southeast Asian countries - and, in particular, Malaysia - stop trying to catch up with their superiors and to know their place.

A cynic had defined aid as simply the system by which poor white people in rich countries gave money to rich black people in poor countries to put into Swiss bank accounts.

In many ways Africa subsidised America and Europe's development.

After WWII .... the West exchanged the old racist coinage for new currency. "Uncivilized" became "underdeveloped". "Savage people" became the "third world". There was a genuine change of heart away from racism and toward respect for equality, but a paternalistic and coercive strain survived.

Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries

More than one billion people in the world live on a dollar a day or less. Nothing keeps them poor more than barriers and subsidies in wealthy countries, which cost the developing world much more than it gets in aid.

The developing world is poor. It needs capital.

The World Trade Organization is a fearful instrument of re-colonialization and exploitation

The lack of equity and of a sense of solidarity in international transactions works to the advantage of the industrialized nations so that the gulf between the rich and the poor is ever widening. Hence derives the feeling of frustration among third world countries, and the accusations of exploitation and economic colonialism brought against the industrialized nations.

There is a dismal record of failure in Africa on the part of the developed world that shocks and shames our civilization.

Many developing nations have such severe debt and budget problems that the money given by developed nations will never be spent the way it is intended.

While other countries may espouse the liberal utopian dream of a global community, it's usually only to get the richer countries to pay more money for the world's problems.

You Americans, you treat the Third World in the way an Iraqi peasant treats his new bride. Three days of honeymoon, and then it's off to the fields.

Britain has no divine right to be one of the richest countries in the world.

In a world of global dependencies with no corresponding global polity and few tools of global justice, the rich of the world are free to pursue their own interests while paying no attention to the rest.

Africa is poor because its investors and its creditors are unspeakably rich.

We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.

The Muslim leaders swallow the advice of the Western powers and bodies like the IMF and World Bank, even when it is bad for their countries and they know this.

Energetic action on debt would make a radical difference to the prospects of many of the poorest countries in the world, at no practical cost to creditor countries.

For a free country to continue thriving, there have to be regular reforms, because any society, any economy that stays in place, you're going to see repeated attempts to exploit the openings for twisting policy to the advantage of those who already have wealth and power.

As it is, the grotesque distortions of the global market mean that for every dollar the West dispatches to Africa in the form of aid, two dollars are clawed back through subsidies and tariff barriers: a monumental rip-off by the rich as they instruct the poor to accept 'free' trade or else.

This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men. I was very much a part of that.

For a long time, rich countries have promised to reduce poverty but have failed to match their words with adequate action. Of course, some important progress has been made and millions of lives have been saved, but millions more could be saved.

Of course, Third World leaders love you. By ascribing third world ills to First World sins, you absolve them of blame for their countries' failure to advance.