1. Change in the Industrial Structure from an Agricultural base to a Manufacturing base
Asia, especially the East Asian and Pacific region countries, has rapidly
realized the conversion from an agricultural to a non-agricultural industrial structure in the last half century. In the 1950's, the agricultural percentage in all countries was much higher than that of manufacturing in the GDP composition ratio, except for Japan whose economic development had already moved ahead, and Hong Kong and Singapore who had 'City State' characteristics. The entire Asian region really had an agricultural status, as its agricultural share was two to three times greater than its manufacturing portion, and in China, Indonesia and India the agricultural ratio was high at around fifty percent.
If we define the point in time when the agricultural share falls below the manufacturing share as the conversion from one state to the other, Japan changed over first in the forties, Korea in the seventies, and the ASEAN countries in the eighties. Those common trends caused a declining agricultural base, which accelerated in the eighties, even though ASEAN countries were slower to change, and it is now about twenty percent.
As will be described later, the declining share of agriculture which includes the low-ranking working class could be due to the expansion of the service industry, including informal sectors, and not necessarily to an increased manufacturing share. That is the characteristic of the Asian region, but I shall not detail that here. When we look at the length of time it takes to change in the relationship of the share between agriculture and manufacturing, from the point in time where the agricultural ratio is ten percent above that of manufacturing, to the positions being reversed, in most countries it only took about twenty years, which is quicker than the Japanese pace of change (around thirty years), so the rate of conversion in the Asian region should be evaluated even though there are some differences from country to country.
Although it doesn't show in the tables, when we analyze the factors in the
