The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good

Easterly believes in the possibilities brought by homegrown development and focuses on the examples of Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, India, Turkey, Botswana, and Chile. According to Easterly, “it is easier to search for solutions to your own problems than those of others” (345). Easterly uses success stories from different countries that received little foreign aid and did not spend a lot of time in IMF programs. He argues that the West played a small part in the success stories of some of these countries and uses Singapore and Hong Kong, ex-British colonies, as examples of regions that experienced more stability and growth. He writes, “What is unique about these two colonies is that they were unoccupied territories that the British colonized with the permission (or coercion) of the nearby local rulers. […] The British also left the Chinese communities free to pursue their incomprehensible customs and more or less govern themselves, only intervening if social upheaval threatened” (348). As a result, Hong Kong and Singapore had their own autonomy.

China epitomizes the ability of a poor nation that spurred itself “into an economic powerhouse that scares the Chinese-made underpants off Western companies and other poor countries alike” (354). Easterly links this success to unconventional homegrown strategies that fail to follow traditional Western pathways.