Developing together or Drawing Each Other Back?

Happy New Year everybody, and I feel very bored of having nothing much to do during holidays.
However, I feel grateful to be here, alive and kicking and went Ice-Skating and saw the Christmas Pentomime at the local theatre.

Last month I just got a new book and it has started to made me question what I always believe in (again). I never title myself as a neo-liberalist, but may be I was (and slightly sitting on the fence), but I still disagree with Marxism in so many ways.

Ha-Joon Chang has amazingly express in his book '23 Things they dont tell you about capitalism' (yeh, that's the new book I got from Pei Shan) that perhaps the reason why developing countries are struggling to develop was because they have been put into the condition of dependency to the rich countries. However, this argument has lasted for a long time, and usually been discussed by the IPE students under the topic of dependency in contrast with globalisation and regionalisation.

I would have said as a supporter for regional development that the greater the cooperation is, the better outcome it will yield. However, until recently that my thoughts have come to the contrast point, as I have been finding answer why does my country cannot further develop - the answer which I come to disagree with the government that it is not materialistically education development (e.g. tablets and computer), but the  infrastructural development.

Nontheless, we will put the topic of the education-infrastructural development aside in this blog, but rather we are going to look at the coming changes the ASEAN is going to go through in a few years - which is to become an economic community.

John Ravenhill would truly support the cooperation. He has been quoted many times in my Master dissertation for regional development that it is going to bring a greater benefits for the region, and could (with high ambition of the member states) to become a political unit like the confederation states.

However, the economic community has to be done after the region has successfully liberalise their trades, and hence means the greater competition among member states in the same product line. At this stage, trade agreement will be created in order to prevent the massive competition in market share.

Here, if we have a look at our main actor, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), whose member states contains mostly the developing countries - which based most of their products on agricultural goods, with only about 10-30% share on manufacturing goods. Will it seem likely for ASEAN to develop?

Back to Ha-Joon Chang discussion, he said that most of the developed countries did not liberalise their trades when they were still developing. This means they liberalise their trade when they are ready and have a large amount of products and possibility of successful trades in their hands. Not to mention the prosperity of technology that they need not to rely on international supply, these developed countries were already possess the strong domestic infrastructure, technology, and markets before they starts to liberalise their trade.

On the other hand, ASEAN does not seem likely to liberalise their market at the moment, as the countries still suffer from the wounds from old and new economic crises. Thailand, for example, still cannot become an technological manufacturing country on its own. The manufacturing sectors are still relying mostly from Japan, which is the home countries of most companies whose based their manufacturing in Thailand. The agricultural sector of the country still needs a large amount of subsidy from the government and do not yield the great productivity. The labour section are quite competible, but still (as I believe) need to be restructure through education systems. Hence, I could only see that Thailand (and may be the whole region) in heading to a massive competition against each other, which might not end up well in good international relations.

Not only with the rush from the international institutions like IMF and World Bank, but also their eager for greater development, ASEAN is not hesitate to jump into a speedy highway without the appropriate vehicles. Their poor regional institutions and rule of law would also play the big part in changing the game, and whether who is the winner or loser. This game is not just ASEAN member states against each other, but also their chance to be integrated into the global economy or get totally destroyed. (That's just too exaggerated :P)