Globalization on Trial: The Politics of The Asian Crisis

• Main Authors: Songok Han, 韓松沃
• Other Authors: Samuel Charng Yeong Ku
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2005
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/31332060168293579674

博士 === 國立中山大學 === 中山學術研究所 === 93 === The Asian Crash of 1997 gave final closure to the era of Cold War geoeconomics. For decades American liberal capitalism had maintained an oddly symbiotic relationship with East Asia’s far more centrist economies. The end of the Cold War, however, opened the door for full-thrust globalization on Washington’s terms. At first, foreign investment and money market speculation stoked what looked like a new super-miracle on the Pacific Rim. Few took serious notice of how the lending binge of the mid-1990s recklessly expanded foreign debt relative to reserves. When the bubble broke in 1997, massive capital exodus sent the region into a ruinous plunge. The IMF took its time in responding, and finally applied a dubious rescue formula that helped to turn the Crash into a protracted Crisis. Taking the Crisis as a window on the politics of globalization, this study builds on the development theory of Amartya Sen. It follows from Sen’s axiom of “development as freedom” that just and sustainable development is best achieved where economic and political priorities are balanced in what I term the “concurrence” approach to development. From this vantage the post-Crisis condition of the Rim was hardly more conducive to political development than was the pre-Crisis situation, for poverty can be as much a developmental roadblock as authoritarianism is. Neoliberal globalism could no longer hide behind the democratic veneer of “third wave” or “end of history” determinism. By the mid-1990s the specter of cultural anarchy already haunted much of the developing world outside the Rim, and the Crash threatened to expunge that crucial exception. Nor was this just a Third World dilemma. The socioeconomic efficacy of the whole capitalist system was on trial. In Sen’s view, the Asian Crisis spotlighted the high cost of undemocratic governance. Asian exceptionalists held that Western liberal democracy was not needed in this high-growth sphere, and indeed would be a hindrance. Sen argues, however, that the cultivation of freedom, as both an end and means, is not just a Western imperative. Indeed, his expansive view of social well-being is rooted in Asian values. In lieu of the statist economism that was falsely identified as Asian values during the “miracle” years, Sen proposes an “Eastern strategy” that draws on the more humane dimensions of Asian development. He credits state interventions such as public education and land reform as major contributions not only to the “Asian miracle” but to all sustainable development. Much more is involved in the Senian model than the slightly modified economism that has appropriated the “Third Way” label. This study draws positive and negative cases in point from the development records of the Philippines, Indonesia and South Korea. While all three countries were hard hit by the Crash and the subsequent Crisis, each reacted in its own way. What they had in common, however, was the undertow effect of neoliberal globalization, whereby foreign capital and policy constraints eroded their effective autonomy. Unfortunately, Sen’s attention to the glaring inequalities of global capitalism is not matched by much attention to the transnational corporations (TNCs) that dominate the global economy. Likewise he has tended to neglect crucial postmaterial issues such as cultural and environmental sustainability. Useful as his informational strategies are for averting social catastrophies such as famine, he fails to adequately contest the political, cultural, and environmental inroads of globalization. For that it is necessary to move beyond the pallid globalism of Sen’s own politics. The paradoxical task of this study, therefore, is to free the Senian model from Sen himself.