Power and developmental regimes in Singapore,China and Malaysia

This paper examines three developmental regimes in Singapore, China and Malaysia. In these three cases, heavy state intervention was necessary because their economies required significant economic restructuring. For Singapore, state intervention was necessary for the process of industrial transformation. For Malaysia, state intervention was necessary because the government wanted to reallocate economic resources as a means to deal with ethnic conflict. For China, state intervention was necessary in order to gradually “marketize” the socialist economy. The paper also briefly discusses the impact of the Asian Financial Crisis (1997–1999) on these developmental regimes. It finds that for all three cases, economic restructuring was successful because of long-term and heavy state intervention. It explains that, unlike the other developmental states of Asia, these developmental regimes were able to undertake such significant restructuring because of the state's power base, which even managed to survive the Asian Financial Crisis. It concludes with some comments about the future of state intervention in a rapidly globalizing world.