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Welfare developmentalism in singapore and malaysia
Huat, Chua Beng
Huat, Chua Beng
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chua.pdf
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Abstract
"Singapore and the then Malaya shared similar history as British colonies from the nineteenth century until after World War II. Malaya gaining political independence in 1957 and Singapore in 1965; independence of Singapore was enabled through a brief period of membership in Malaysia (1963-65). The extractive colonial economy of British Malaya and the entrepot economy of Singapore left the two territories at the point of political independence without any significant industrialization. Malaya was dependent on declining fortunes of rubber and tin exports, while Singapore remained a ‘trading post’ increasingly unable to utilize adequately the rapidly increasing local-born population. Industrialization, which was synonymous with social and economic development and both with nation building, was thus the overwhelming preoccupation of the two independent governments. To the extent that then Malaya and subsequently Malaysia had a resource extraction economy and a sizable population which provided a domestic consumption sector, pressure for industrialization was less immediate than in Singapore. Furthermore, it could follow the popular economic wisdom of the 1960s of ‘import substitution’ industrialization development strategy. Indeed, as a member of Malaysia, Singapore was looking toward the larger domestic market as the immediate destination of the products of its nascent industries. It was only after political separation that Singapore changed course to export-oriented industrialization, following the by then well trodden path taken by South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and before Japan."(pg 1)
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2000
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With permission of the license/copyright holder