Lecture: Southeast Asia: Miracle, Debacle and the New Cold War. 9am London, 4pm KL

Links to recent podcasts below before lecture link details

Southeast Asia: Miracle, Debacle and the New Cold War

South by Southeast? From Miracle and Debacle to Pragmatism 

Date and time: Thursday 23 May 2024, 9.00am to 10.30am, London

Location: online via Zoom

Speaker: Jomo Kwame Sundaram (Khazanah Research Institute)

Chair: Prof John Sidel

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.