Cylchgronau Cymru

1. CATCHING UP AND FALLING BEHIND: SOUTH-EAST ASIA AND WALES INTRODUCTION The Welsh economy has undergone a profound structural change over the last two decades. In particular, the once-dominant coal and steel industries have given way to a much more diversified manufacturing sector, a substan- tial and increasing share of which is foreign owned. Yet unemployment seems to have settled at a much higher rate than in the 1970s and previous decades, while earnings have steadily declined relative to those in Britain as a whole. At the same time, a process of profound structural change has been occur- ring at a global level. Since the 1960s, a rapidly growing share of world manufacturing production and exports has been accounted for by the 'newly industrializing countries' or NICs. Amongst these the truly exceptional growth rates are to be found in south-east Asia, with four countries outshining the others. These so-called 'Tigers' are Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. One might be forgiven for supposing that the dynamics of change in Wales are independent of, or only weakly related to, the dynamics propelling the evolution of the world economy. The purpose of this paper is to argue that they are in fact intimately connected. More precisely, it is argued that the processes that have been helping to redefine the global North-South division (i.e., that between the rich, industrialized countries and the poor, mainly primary- producing countries) are, to a considerable degree, the same as those that have been helping to consolidate Britain's own long-standing division between North (Wales included) and South. (Since this chapter makes frequent reference to the global North-South divide and Britain's North-South divide, it should be stressed that this 'poor/prosperous' distinction in the former case is the geographical inverse of that in the latter.) Lynn Mainwaring