ABSTRACT
This chapter is the product of some observations on the general problematic of competitive austerity. In South East Asia, as elsewhere, the official vision of the elites is to pursue a strategy of rapid accumulation on world markets. Export growth seems to be the panacea of post-Cold War development policy discourse. Yet this proposition raises the problem that the extension of the export oriented strategy has grave consequences for the world market as well as for each national competitor. For example, who is going to bear the payments deficit as all companies and countries squeeze costs to pursue the high value-added, export oriented industrialisation strategies? That is, who will bear the costs of the fact that there is asymmetry between countries seeking export markets? The answer translated into macroeconomic policies is to push down wage levels and social standards in the individual countries concerned.
