Indonesia 195.5 (population, 1995) [41 / 63] [139 / 56] [61 / 17] [46,780 / 9,410]
South Korea 44.9 (population, 1995) [54 / 71] [85 / 11] [29 / 2] [3,540 / 1,160]
Thailand 60.2 (population, 1995) [52 / 69] [103 / 36] [32 / 6] [7,950 / 6,290]
Malaysia 20.1 (population, 1995) [54 / 71] [73 – 13] [42 / 18] [7,020 / 1,930]
Philippines 68.6 (population, 1995) [53 / 67] [80 / 43] [28 / 6] [na / 6,570]
One country reduces the number of people living in poverty from 70% to 15% in 30 years; another achieves a meagre reduction from 55% to 37 % in 50 years. No two nations so starkly oppose economic prosperity to political freedom as Suharto's Indonesia and post-independence India. Nor was Suharto the pure kleptocrat he has been made out to be: true, his family made around $35 billion, but, unlike, say, Nigeria, Indonesia's oil wealth, according to historian David Reynolds, was made use of to provide ''massive aid to poorer regions and the promotion of rural infrastructure'' (David Reynolds, One World Divisible: A Global History Since 1945, (New York: W.W.Norton and Co., 2000), pp. 430-431). Where Sukarno had been against birth control, Suharto inaugurated family planning, and the fertility rate dropped from 5.4 births per woman in 1960-65 to 3.3 in 1985 – 90 (in India, the figures were 5.8 and 4.3, respectively) (Reynolds, 442).
Suharto resigned on May 12, 1998. Foremost among those who demanded his departure had been student protesters. What triggered the protests was a financial crisis blamed by the uninformed students on Suharto and his family.
The financial crisis began in Thailand, and had been expected as far back as 1994, when the Mexican peso came under attack from speculators. Thailand ran a current account deficit of 5 %, thanks to inflows of capital from Wall Street force-fed to the East Asian countries by the International Monetary Fund in a bid to increase return for American financial companies.
''The global economic crisis began in Thailand, on July 2, 1997. The countries of East Asia were coming off a miraculous three decades: incomes had soared, health had improved, poverty had fallen dramatically. Not only was literacy now universal, but, on international science and math tests, many of these countries outperformed the United States. Some had not suffered a single year of recession in 30 years. (http://www.mindfully.org/WTO/Joseph-Stiglitz-IMF17apr00.htm)''
The other East and South-East Asian countries all had very low current account deficits (with the possible exception of Malaysia), and yet they were affected by what economists call ''contagion'' – investors taking irrational fright as a herd fleeing non-existing danger.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
