The author approaches the development story of the East Asian newly industrialising countries known as “tigers” in the light of Russian and Latin American experience. The successful alleviation of socio-economic backwardness in the previously peripheral countries of East and Southeast Asia, as well as the fantastic growth of the Chinese economy, excited many social scientists and politicians to talk about the long-term relocation of the world economic core eastward. However, as the author argues, the growth of the East Asian economies has internal limits rooted in their successful development. Since they have been dependent, as in the cases of Russia and the Latin American countries, they can meet the serious difficulties that Russia and Latin America have faced in the course of their past industrialisation.