South by Southeast? From Miracle and Debacle to Pragmatism

Summary

The 1993 World Bank publication of The East Asian Miracle celebrated the region’s rapid growth and transformation but also obscured important variations within. Japan’s endaka and Big Bang ended its post-war boom and anticipated the 1997 East Asian financial debacle. Meanwhile, coerced economic liberalization from the 1980s gave way to an era of globalization in a seemingly unipolar world following the West’s victory in the Cold War. But liberalization and globalization’s downsides soon accelerated U-turns. American sovereigntism was soon eroded by some consequences of its unipolar hegemony. Earlier liberalization and globalization also undermined industrial capitalism in favour of financialization. Capturing rents for wealth concentration has accelerated with enabling changes in the rule of law. Most of Southeast Asia remains focused on generating wealth, jobs, and revenue. But the ‘New Cold War’ is forcing Southeast Asian nations to take sides as the rules of engagement become fluid. Already Southeast Asian countries are implementing measures previously deemed to be unthinkable, measures which may well provide policy inspiration if not leadership to the Global South.

In this episode, Prof John Sidel talks with Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Senior Adviser at the Khazanah Research Institute, Fellow of the Academy of Sciences Malaysia, and Emeritus Professor of the University of Malaya, to explore the diverse trajectory of the region’s economic transformation.

This episode is part of LSE Southeast Asia Forum 2024, Please find out more by checking our website https://www.lse.ac.uk/SEAC and following us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.

Thanks to Jonas from Pixabay for the intro music.

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Dialogues on Southeast Asia

"Dialogues on Southeast Asia" is hosted by the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre (SEAC), a cross-disciplinary, regionally-focused academic centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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