ABSTRACT
In 2003 Singapore’s prime minister, Goh Chok Tong, predicted a prosperous East Asia with four bases of growth in 2025 – China, Japan/South Korea, Southeast Asia and India – all grouped in a web-like, market-driven structure.1 His prediction was plausible enough, although it overlooked the marked inequalities in the region. Japan, in alliance with the US, had been the regional growth centre of East Asia for most of the 1990s. The Newly Industrializing Countries (NICs) – Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore – were the semi-core, while the next generation NICs were Malaysia and Thailand. The Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam were semiperipheral because of their slower growth; Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia were and are the periphery. After the 1997 Asian crisis China was the epicentre of risks and opportunities. What follows will trace the origins of communications regionalism in mainland Southeast Asia up to 1997, with some flash forwards to events after that time.
