Challenging the prevailing wisdom on Asia's "miracle economies," Dragons in Distress argues that South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore are headed for crisis. Writing for a diverse audience, Walden Bello and Stephanie Rosenfeld lead their readers on an exploration of the different dimensions of this crisis: environmental degradation, agriculture on the road to extinction, deteriorating labor-management relations, eroding political legitimacy, and deepening structural fissures in the industrial economy.

Showing how these problems stem from the dynamics of the model of high speed,...