The authors suggest that China's renewable energy system, the largest in the world, will quickly supersede the black energy system that has powered the country's rapid rise as workshop of the world and for reasons that have more to do with fixing environmental pollution and enhancing energy security than with curbing carbon emissions.

Why has East Asia emerged as the global leader in green energy industries but - until recently - lagged on carbon emission reduction? What is new and distinctive about East Asia's approach to the green energy transition? And what does this approach mean for the world? Developmental Environmentalism provides the first comprehensive account of East Asia's green energy shift. It highlights the powerful and symbiotic role of state ambition, geostrategic competition, and capitalist market dynamics in driving forward the region's greening efforts. Through an analysis of the ambitious national strategies of China and South Korea, the authors show how state actors have pursued a distinctively East Asian approach to transforming their energy systems, involving first the rapid creation of new green energy industries and then the coordinated destruction of fossil-fuel incumbencies. This approach - described as 'Developmental Environmentalism' - is aimed at establishing East Asian economies as leaders in the green industries of the future, while at the same time addressing the pressing environmental, social and political problems associated with the carbon-intensive industries of the past. By developing four detailed, longitudinal case studies of green industry creation and fossil-fuel phase out in China and Korea, the authors identify the key successes and failures of East Asia's green shift to date and anticipate its most likely future trajectory. Based on their findings, the authors reject the idea that East Asia's greening strategies are mere exercises in 'greenwashing' or fossil-fuelled 'business as usual'. Rather, there is something fundamentally transformative underway in the region at the level of elite ideation, strategic ambition, and policy action; the green energy shift represents much more than continuity in Asia's erstwhile developmental states. To execute their analysis, the authors synthesise insights from cutting-edge Developmental State and Schumpeterian theorising. They show how state actors in East Asia are engaging in a sophisticated kind of economic statecraft, strategically harnessing the capitalist market dynamics of 'creative-destruction' to advance their transformative green ambitions through green growth. They also assess the implications of developmental environmentalism for developed and developing countries, and the future of the global green shift in an era of geostrategic rivalry.

"There has been a growing rebellion, both among economists and analysts of business strategy, against the static view of the competitive process contained in neoclassical economics, and movement towards the very different picture of the competitive environment within which firms operate put forth by Joseph Schumpeter and developed in modern economic evolutionary theory. This fine book places firms squarely within an environment marked by Schumpeterian competition, and develops the implications regarding business strategies that can work in such a context. This reorientation of theorizing about business strategy is much needed, and very well done."--Richard R. Nelson, Columbia University
"Unlike most books on the theory of the firm, this one takes reality into account. Mathews has researched the semiconductor and other leading-edge industries, studied both small and large entrepreneurial firms, and analyzed trade agreements between nations. His accumulated wisdom is woven into a simple yet elegant framework, and his arguments for firm strategizing under conditions of disequilibrium are compelling. Both economists and organizational scholars will learn a great deal from this refreshing work."--Charles Snow, Penn State University

This book grows out of a five-year collaborative research project undertaken by the authors in East Asia. They have worked with firms and institutions in Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia, to inquire into the micro-processes of firm-level organizational learning that underpin technology leverage in an industry such as semiconductors. The processes investigated are not specific to microchips, but can be seen working in one knowledge-intensive sector after another. Mathews and Cho argue that indeed these are the processes that will shape industrial evolution in the twenty-first century, not just in East Asia but in the developed world as well. Tiger Technology concludes with an important observation - that wealth can be generated just as much through management of technology diffusion as through conventional concerns with innovation, provided the institutions of leverage are carefully constructed.

"There has been a growing rebellion, both among economists and analysts of business strategy, against the static view of the competitive process contained in neoclassical economics, and movement towards the very different picture of the competitive environment within which firms operate put forth by Joseph Schumpeter and developed in modern economic evolutionary theory. This fine book places firms squarely within an environment marked by Schumpeterian competition, and develops the implications regarding business strategies that can work in such a context. This reorientation of theorizing about business strategy is much needed, and very well done."--Richard R. Nelson, Columbia University
"Unlike most books on the theory of the firm, this one takes reality into account. Mathews has researched the semiconductor and other leading-edge industries, studied both small and large entrepreneurial firms, and analyzed trade agreements between nations. His accumulated wisdom is woven into a simple yet elegant framework, and his arguments for firm strategizing under conditions of disequilibrium are compelling. Both economists and organizational scholars will learn a great deal from this refreshing work."--Charles Snow, Penn State University

Mathews examines a handful of multinationals from the "Periphery" that have globalized their operations extremely rapidly. These firms have utilized strategies of international linkage and leverage to speed their global coverage. Mathews contends that the new global business world will offer unprecedented opportunities for firms that know how to enmesh themselves in global networks.

As China, India, and other industrializing giants grow, they are confronted with an inconvenient truth: They cannot rely on the conventions of capitalism as we know them today. Western industrialism has achieved miracles, promoting unprecedented levels of prosperity and raising hundreds of millions out of poverty. Yet, if allowed to proceed unencumbered, this paradigm will do irreversible harm to the planet.
By necessity, a new approach to environmentally conscious development is already emerging in the East, with China leading the way. Positioning its argument against zero-growth advocates and free-market environmentalists, "Greening of Capitalism" charts this transformation and sketches out a framework for more sustainable capitalism.
State-mandated changes in energy use (as opposed to carbon taxes), a circular flow of resources (as opposed to emissions standards), and the introduction of new financial instruments that support green growth are cornerstones of China's framework. John A. Mathews argues that these tenets will be emulated around the world--first in India and Brazil. In light of this emerging shift, Mathews considers core debates over national security, international relations, and economic policy, ultimately addressing the question of whether these measures will be far-reaching or timely enough to prevent further damage.