Newly industrialized country

The category of newly industrialized country (NIC) is a socioeconomic classification applied to several countries around the world by political scientists and economists.

NICs are countries whose economies have not yet reached a developed country's status but have, in a macroeconomic sense, outpaced their developing counterparts. Another characterization of NICs is that of countries undergoing rapid economic growth (usually export-oriented). Incipient or ongoing industrialization is an important indicator of an NIC. In many NICs, social upheaval can occur as primarily rural, or agricultural, populations migrate to the cities, where the growth of manufacturing concerns and factories can draw many thousands of laborers.

NICs usually share some other common features, including:

The term came into use around 1970, when the Four Asian Tigers of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan rose to global prominence as NICs in the 1970s and 1980s, with exceptionally fast industrial growth since the 1960s; all four economies have since graduated into advanced economies and high-income economies. There is a clear distinction between these countries and the countries now considered NICs. In particular, the combination of an open political process, high GNI per capita, and a thriving, export-oriented economic policy has shown that these countries have now not only reached but surpassed the ranks of many developed countries.

All four economies are classified as high-income economies by the World Bank and Advanced economies by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). All of them, like Western European countries, have a Human Development Index considered "very high" by the UN.

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