(Post-) Asian ‘Crisis' and ‘Greater China'

The Asian ‘Crisis’ has been explained from many viewpoints. Rather than engaging in a debate on the causes of the ‘Crisis’, this chapter focuses on two issues: the differential impact of the ‘Crisis’ on economies in the region; and its role in reorienting and restructuring accumulation regimes. The differential impact was largely related to the pre-existing strengths and embedded capacities of economies in the region, e.g., the relative levels of foreign currency reserves and external debts (see next section). During the early phase of the ‘Crisis’, the economies in the cross-border region of ‘Greater China’ (Hong Kong, southern China and Taiwan) ¹ escaped the worst and most direct impact of the ‘Crisis’. As the ‘Crisis’ continued, however, these economies began to experience secondary effects, such as the bursting of the ‘stock/property and Itic bubbles’. ² Thus governments in the region developed diverse stimulus packages covering new stabilization schemes in supporting the property markets and bailout measures. Such confidence-building projects were criticized for favouring vested interests, and it is certainly important to explore their connections with the politics of distribution (see page 193). Nonetheless, as we shall see, governmental resort to ‘institutional quick fixes’ such as increasing public spending, raising tax rebates and buying up some shares, failed to re-vitalize domestic demand and exports. Hence, since late 1999, these economies have also been actively engaged in promoting a politics of (Internet) optimism. There is a general adoption of the discourses of ‘information technology’, ‘Silicon Valley’ and ‘e-commerce’. This suggests that one way in which economies in the region aim to remake themselves is through the strategy of siliconization in which private-public, and local-regional-global actors seek to develop new modes of techno-economic coordination that are derived from the ‘Silicon Valley’ metaphor. This strategy involves the reinvention of new objects of economic growth as well as subjectivities and practices that may create new opportunities as well as grounds for competition (see page 201). In this regard, the remaking of the ‘Greater China’ region is characterized by sometimes competing, sometimes complementary strategies and projects that may (or may not) be regularized into a new regional division of labour. Whilst it is too soon to say whether this will happen, it is important to be aware of the significant new trends and projects identified below.