newly industrializing countries

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newly industrializing countries (NICs) The dozen or so countries which, in the 1970s and 1980s, achieved high levels of industrial output and penetration of external markets. These include the so-called Four Little Dragons (Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan), a group of Latin American countries including Brazil and Mexico, and a handful of late industrializing states in Europe such as Spain and (for a time) Yugoslavia. The emergence of the NICs was seen by neo-classical economists as significantly undermining the claims of dependency theorists that less developed nations were doomed to stagnation because of their inability to compete with the West for markets. However, the success of the NICs has been contingent on a considerable degree of state intervention, in order to secure the conditions favourable to industrialization. The NICs therefore offer no simple formula by which the Third World can emulate its more industrialized counterparts.