The internationalization of the Thai economy and the Thai state analysed in the last two chapters was—like all processes of internationalization—highly uneven. The modern Thai state was formed historically through collaboration between the Siamese monarchy, based in Bangkok, and British colonial officials, with Chinese merchants playing an important subsidiary role (Suehiro 1989; Chaiyan 1994; Thongchai 1994). By the early twentieth century, internationalization of capital and the state under this triple alliance had already led to the emergence of the Bangkok-centred political economy and strongly centralized state that has characterized Thailand throughout the past one hundred years (Dixon and Parnwell 1991). Thus, by the time rapid agrarian and industrial transformation began to take hold in the post-World War II period, it did so against a backdrop of already substantial Bangkok primacy and political dominance. The patterns of internationalization that have developed in the post-World War II period have largely strengthened this primacy and political dominance. Bangkok was the centre of the new triple alliance based on collaboration between military capitalists, Chinese merchants, and the US Cold War state (Suehiro 1989). As Cold War counter-insurgency and development projects proceeded, significant numbers of displaced peasants left agrarian society to seek urban-industrial employment and, as the overwhelmingly dominant centre of industry, Bangkok received a disproportionate share of the rural-tourban migration stream, with secondary cities remaining small and economically underdeveloped (Tables 4.1 and 4.2; London 1980; 1985). Consequently, the transformation of urban-industrial labour and the labour relations system described in Chapter 3 took place fundamentally in and around Bangkok, which remained the core area of manufacturing growth. For most of the post-World War II period up to 1985, the BMR’s industrial development was centred on low-wage, low value-added products such as textiles, garments, and low end electronics components, and though there were a number of very large firms in these lines, most manufacturers remained very small in scale, this being the case even among investment-constrained exporting firms. Small size was even more the norm with firms in upcountry regions, where manufacturing development was largely very rudimentary and generally centred in industries such as textiles, garments, and food processing (Table 4.3; Department of Labour 1985–6).
Experience in Supporting Industry Development in Japan and Lessons for Viet Nam
