Southeast Asia's Capacity to Govern Is Mostly a Byproduct of Massacre and War
When investing in Southeast Asia, first ask whether the regime can push its orders down to the lowest level: in Indonesia that capacity came out of a post-massacre purge, in Vietnam out of more than a decade of war — it has nothing to do with growth rates.
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The argument · tap a timestamp to hear it
Indonesia did not pick its largest ethnic group's language as the national tongue
Javanese is the most widely spoken language in Indonesia, at 22%, but it is used only on Java. Malay, at just over 10%, was the language of the trading community, the middle class and the wealthy merchant class, and was spread very widely. Huang Yuxiang says making Javanese the national language would have had severe political consequences: it would amount to "Greater Javanism," the other islands would become extensions of Java, and people would be forced to learn it — and 22% is not an overwhelming share, so over time it could have slid into civil war. The second reason is cleverer still: Sukarno at the time had a "Greater Indonesia" idea, wanting to merge the areas where Malay peoples lived into one country, and Malay happened to be the lingua franca of Malaya. Indonesian and Malay are the same language, differing only the way Mandarin differs from a Shandong dialect.
— Huang YuxiangOne massacre produced a nationwide apparatus of control
After Suharto came to power he eliminated all socialist forces. Huang Yuxiang first corrects a widely circulated claim: those killed were mainly not Chinese, but socialists and communists; Chinese were swept up because they were associated with socialism, otherwise there would not have been an even larger anti-Chinese pogrom in 1998. His figures are roughly 200,000 to 300,000 direct deaths, with about three million dealt with afterwards. From a humanitarian standpoint this was an appalling catastrophe, but he points to one objective consequence: when you kill people you still have to deal with their families, and control therefore had to reach down into the villages. Through this process the Indonesian central government extended its tentacles into every corner and built a nationwide apparatus of control that had not existed in the colonial period — the colonisers had occupied only a few ports and left the interior to indirect rule by chiefs and aristocrats.
— Huang YuxiangMalaysia's Chinese cannot escape the race question
At independence the Chinese and Malay populations were roughly 40 to 40; today it is about 20 to 60, and the Chinese have become a minority. Every election has to be fought under an anti-racism banner, yet the power to set the agenda rests with the majority group. A Malay film about resistance to the British, “莫基如英雄崛起”, illustrates the rift best: Chinese audiences found it crude, Malay-centric, and portraying Chinese as collaborators with the British, while Malay audiences watched it with their blood up — it ended up the highest-grossing local film in Malaysian box office and was also hugely popular in Indonesia. Malaysia is also the only place outside China that has stuck with Chinese-language education, with the "Chinese independent high schools" that do not sit the national unified exams. Laws from Mahathir's era also required that even if a company was dominated by Chinese capital, it had to appoint a Malay director or form a joint venture.
— Huang YuxiangDemocratisation in the Philippines bought family politics
At its founding the Philippines was one of Asia's most developed countries; the Marcos-era martial law and the later People Power Revolution are like the two ends of a pendulum. The People Power Revolution toppled the dictator, at the cost of dismantling the country's previously strong apparatus of control, and politics became a matter of attachment to big families: the Cojuangco and Marcos families took turns in power. Duterte was originally a henchman of the Cojuangco family and only got his chance to break free after the patriarchs of both families died in succession. He survived three assassination attempts in office; his power was not as secure as it looked. One poll showed 90% of Filipinos supported the drug war, while 90% also feared being killed by mistake — supporting it, and fearing the other side would run amok.
— Huang YuxiangThailand is ruled by the king, governed by the military
To Thailand's west was British Burma, to its east French Indochina; it was a buffer both sides deliberately preserved, so the country had relatively more autonomy and no decolonisation crisis. The price was that it never built a strong central government — in Huang Yuxiang's phrase, "orders from Bangkok do not leave Bangkok." Since the advent of constitutional monarchy Thailand has had more than twenty coups, promulgated more than twenty constitutions and held more than twenty democratic elections, with a major upheaval every few years. He uses "monarchy network" to explain royal power: the king does not exist through the royal household alone but must form an alliance with the military and the monks. Bhumibol reigned for seventy years and died in his nineties, building this system on personal prestige; with his son Vajiralongkorn, who has long lived in Germany and lacks that prestige, the old division of labour in which "the king plays the good cop and the military the bad cop" leaves only the bad cop.
— Huang YuxiangInvesting in Southeast Asia starts with whether the regime is stable
Huang Yuxiang's judgment is blunt: the more stable the country, the more at ease investors are, because what investors want is predictable — politics with a pattern is easy to invest in, and long-term chaos is not. The second variable is "who decides" — if the central government decides, you only have to deal with one counterparty; if every level is different, paying off and buying off people becomes far too much trouble. He gives one concrete difference: Malaysia's problem is that "they take the money and still don't do the job," whereas Chinese take the money and do the job, so although you have to pay, that is just part of the transaction cost and can still be handled. By this standard Vietnam and Indonesia are both good places to invest; after Indonesia's 1998 democratisation local power increased, but the central government's tentacles of control can still effectively cover the whole country.
— Huang YuxiangSingapore killed the dialects first, then chose English
Ethnic Chinese make up about 75% of Singapore, with the other 25% Malay and Tamil, and there are four official languages. What Lee Kuan Yew tackled first was not a common language but the Chinese dialect problem: he found that his own speeches had to be given simultaneously in Malay, English, Mandarin, Hokkien and Hakka, and there was no way to communicate outside those groups, so he banned dialects from public and even private broadcasting, and Hokkien essentially vanished from the public sphere — the process took more than twenty years. Only then came the common language. If Mandarin had been chosen, the remaining 25% would have felt discriminated against; in his memoirs he cites Sri Lanka — where a majority group of 75% to 80% made its own language the national language and a large-scale insurgency broke out — and so chose English, the compromise everyone could just about accept.
— Huang YuxiangSingapore has eleven founding fathers
Huang Yuxiang is currently researching the founding fathers of various countries. Singapore's government has never said who the founding father is, but the widely accepted formulation is "founding fathers of Singapore," eleven people in all, including Malays, whites, Chinese and Tamils; Lee Kuan Yew is only the most prominent of them, in English the first among equals. He stresses that the list of founding fathers must be consistent with the state and its ideology, and where it is not, titles have to be added: Malaysia counts not only Tunku Abdul Rahman as founding father but also Mahathir as "father of modernisation." Another common threshold is anti-colonialism — Aung San was willing to cooperate with Japan for that end, which may not be acceptable to Chinese, but locals see it as a necessary compromise in the struggle for independence.
— Huang YuxiangIn their own words · checked verbatim
There is a very serious political consequence — a Greater Javanism — the other places become extensions of Java, and people are forced to learn this language.
就有一个很严重的政治后果 就是一个大爪哇主义 其他地方就是爪哇的延伸了 就强迫人家去学这个语言
Huang Yuxiang21:27
But it had one objective benefit for the country: because of this kind of high-pressure massacre — because after you kill people you still have to deal with their families — that kind of control.
但是呢 他有一个客观的对这个国家的好处 就是因为这种高压屠杀 因为杀了人之后 你还要处理他的家属啊 那种控制呢
Huang Yuxiang26:31
In the Philippines, 90% of people support the drug war, but at the same time 90% of people are very worried about being killed by mistake.
就是菲律宾呢 百分之九十的人都支持要禁毒 但同时也百分之九十的人很担心 自己被误杀
Huang Yuxiang1:03:57
So when we talk about rule, this Thailand section is the king rules, the military governs.
所以呢 就我们讲统治啊 泰国这段就是国王统军人治啊
Huang Yuxiang1:21:13
Why does Malaysia have problems with economic development? It's that they take the money and still don't do the job, so that's the worse problem.
马来西亚为什么经济发展会有问题 就是说他们是收了钱也不办事 所以是这个问题比较糟糕
Huang Yuxiang1:33:18
He said, this is what I did my whole life, how can you overturn it? Doesn't that just throw all my hard work down the drain?
他说 这个是我干了一辈子的事情 你怎么能把这个推翻了 就这不就把我的心血付诸流水了吗
Huang Yuxiang1:44:30
Singapore is very clean and very orderly, but a hospital is also very clean and very orderly, and you wouldn't want to live in a hospital.
就是新加坡很干净 也很有秩序 但医院也很干净很有秩序 但你不会想住在一个医院里边
Huang Yuxiang1:55:39
Figures
| Indonesia, 930 incident deaths and those implicated | roughly 200,000 to 300,000 direct deaths, about three million dealt with afterwards | 26:31 |
| Indonesia population | about 280 million | 31:36 |
| Indonesia foreign direct investment (FDI) growth | 30% in the third quarter, the highest in nearly a decade | 32:37 |
| Indonesia GDP growth and economy ranking | 5.5% growth in the third quarter, a top-20 world economy | 32:37 |
| Malaysia Chinese/Malay ratio | about 40 to 40 at independence, about 20 to 60 now | 50:50 |
| Thailand coups/constitutions/elections since constitutional monarchy | more than twenty coups, more than twenty constitutions, more than twenty democratic elections | 1:18:10 |
| Thailand Chinese population | about eight million to ten million | 1:19:12 |
| Singapore ethnic ratios | about 75% Chinese, about 25% Malay and Tamil | 1:37:23 |
| Voyage savings if the Kra Canal is built | shortens the voyage by only one to two hours | 1:37:23 |
Glossary
- monarchy network
- The alliance of Thailand's king, military and monks, on which royal power depends to function in practice.
- indirect rule
- Colonisers occupied only a few ports and left the interior to local chiefs and aristocrats to govern autonomously and pay tribute.
- First Among Equals
- Lee Kuan Yew's position among Singapore's eleven founding fathers: prominent, but only one of them.
- People Power Revolution
- The Philippine revolution that toppled the Marcos dictatorship, the first dictator in Southeast Asia to be overthrown.
How to listen
Founders and investors making calls on going overseas, supply-chain relocation and Southeast Asian investment, plus Chinese-language readers trying to understand the political bedrock of the six countries.
The first ten-odd minutes on why Southeast Asian studies is so thin can be skipped.