The geese stop flying: Why some Asian nations can’t take off
Countries, once they became rich, let poorer ones replace some of their factories. China isn’t doing that.
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A small garment factory in China. Despite rising wages, the country continues to have a large presence in the sector.
PHOTO: REUTERS
In wholesale markets across Malaysia, traders selling joss sticks are being undercut by Chinese-made imports sold on the online platform Temu at roughly half their own wholesale cost – a finding first reported recently by Straits Times Malaysia correspondent Lu Wei Hoong.
The undercutting doesn’t stop at incense. Light bulbs, earphones, toys, footwear, furniture – the same pattern is being repeated in hundreds of low-tech product lines, and across South-east Asia, not just Malaysia. It looks like ordinary price competition. It is actually something more consequential: the slow collapse of the “flying geese” model that explained, and enabled, decades of Asian development.