Imperialism and Subimperialism in Mainland Southeast Asia Quantifying Relations of Unequal Exchange

Main Article Content

Charlie Thame
Jana-Chin Rue-Glutting

บทคัดย่อ

This article presents results of an exploratory study on imperialism and subimperialism in the Mekong subregion, including an overview of classical and contemporary debates on imperialism and methodologies developed to quantify unequal exchange. It extends these to analyse trade and investment trends based on existing data for the subregion. Previous studies have incorporated analysis of Thailand and Vietnam, this is the first to incorporate Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia too. It finds existing data is inadequate but also evidence that Thailand and to a lesser extent Vietnam have benefited from subimperialist relations with neighbouring countries at the expense of ecology and fractions of labour. It concludes that developing countries should remain sceptical of mainstream development economics and statistical data based on them and that Thailand and Vietnam can be considered subimperialist powers with a functional role of mediating imperialist relations between the subregion and the world market. The research contributes to historical materialist scholarship on the international relations and development of mainland Southeast Asia and the political economy of contemporary imperialism and has implications for subaltern classes across the subregion and other peripheral and semi-peripheral economies across the world. It can also be used to support future research that challenges realist, liberal, and constructivist approaches to minilateral institutions such as the GMS, ACMECS, and the LMC from a historical materialist perspective.

Article Details

How to Cite
Thame, C., & Rue-Glutting, J.-C. (2025). Imperialism and Subimperialism in Mainland Southeast Asia: Quantifying Relations of Unequal Exchange. รัฐศาสตร์นิเทศ, 11(1), 167–272. สืบค้น จาก https://so05.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/RatthasatNithet/article/view/276288
บท
Articles

References

Books

I. Alami, “Global Finance Capital and Third World Debt,” in A. Ness and Z. Cope (eds.), The Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism, (Cham: Springer, 2019).

P.A. Baran, The Political Economy of Growth, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1957).

W. Bello, “China: An Imperial Power in the Image of the West?, (Bangkok: Focus on the Global South, 2019).

A. Boron. Empire and Imperialism, (London: Zed Books, 2005).

G. Carchedi and M. Roberts (eds), World in Crisis, (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2018).

G. Carchedi and M. Roberts, “The Long Roots of the Present Crisis,” in G. Carchedi and M. Roberts (eds.), World in Crisis, (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2018), 13-35.

T. Carroll, “The Political Economy of Southeast Asia’s Development from Independence to Hyperglobalisation,” in T. Carroll, S. Hameiri, and L. Jones (eds.) The Political Economy of Southeast Asia (Chaam: Palgrage Macmillan), 35-84.

K. H. Chen, Asia as Method, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010).

Z. Cope, The Wealth of (Some) Nations, (London: Pluto Press, 2019).

J.B. Foster and B. Clark, The Robbery of Nature, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2020).

J. Glassman, ‘Imperialism Imposed and Invited’, in D. Gregory and A. Pred (eds.), Violent Geographies (London: Routledge, 2007), 93-110.

M. Hardt and A. Negri, Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000).

D. Harvey, The New Imperialism, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

D. Harvey, Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism, (London: Profile Books, 2014).

D. Harvey, “A Commentary on a Theory of Imperialism,” in U. Patnaik and P. Patnaik (eds.), A Theory of Imperialism, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), 154-172.

J. Hickel, The Divide (London: Penguin, 2017).

V.I. Lenin, Imperialism, (Sydney: Resistance Books, 2009).

M. Li, China and the Twenty-first Century Crisis (New York: Pluto Press, 2016).

R. Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital, (London: Routledge. 2003).

H. Magdoff, Imperialism, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978).

R.M. Marini, Subdesarrollo y Revolucion (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1969).

R.M. Marini, Dialectica de la Dependencia, (Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 1973).

K. Marx, Capital: Volume III, (London: Penguin, 1991).

W. S. Milberg and D. Winkler, Outsourcing Economics, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

T. Norfield, The City, (London: Verso, 2017).

U. Patnaik and P. Patnaik, A Theory of Imperialism, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017).

U. Patnaik, "The Free Lunch: Transfers from the Tropical Colonies and their Role in Capital Formation in Britain During the Industrial Revolution," in K. S. Jomo (ed.) Globalisation Under Hegemony (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 30-70.

U. Patnaik, “Revisiting the ‘Drain,’ or Transfer from India to Britain in the Context of Global Diffusion of Capitalism,’ in S. Chakrabarti and U. Patnaik (eds.), Agrarian and Other Histories, (New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2017), 277-317.

K. Samphantarak, “Thailand's Corporate Sector and International Trade,” in P. Chachavalpongpun (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Thailand, (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019), 204-213.

J. Smith, Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2016),

I. Suwandi, Value Chains (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2019).

N. Tarling, Imperialism in Southeast Asia, (London: Routledge, 2002).

C. Thame, SEZs and Value Extraction from the Mekong, (Bangkok: Focus on the Global South, July 2017).

C. Thame, Joint Survey of SEZs and CBSEZs, (Khon Kaen: Mekong Institute, 2018).

C. Thame, Fragile, Fraught, and in a Straitjacket, Unpublished paper. (Bangkok: The Asia Foundation, August 2020).

C. Thame and J. C. R. Glutting, Expropriation, Exploitation, and Unequal Exchange, (Hanoi: Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, January 2021),

D. Weatherbee, International Relations in Southeast Asia, (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009).

E.M. Wood, Empire of Capital, (London: Verso, 2003).

World Bank. Taking the Pulse of Poverty and Inequality in Thailand, (Bangkok: World Bank Group, March 4, 2020).

A.S. Valencia, Sub-Imperialism Revisited, (Leiden: Brill, 2017).

B. Zawacki, Thailand: Shifting Ground between the US and a Rising China, (London: Zed Books, 2017).

Articles

P. Ball, “China’s Complex Material Footprint,” Nature Materials, 19, (2020), 133. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-019-0599-6

W. Bello, ‘U.S. Imperialism in the Asia‐Pacific’, Peace Review, Vol. 10, No. 3 (September 1998), 367–73,

S. Böhm, M. C. Misoczky, and S. Moog., "Greening Capitalism? A Marxist Critique of Carbon Markets," Organization Studies, Vol. 33, No. 11 (November 19, 2012), 1617–38.

S. Campbell and G. R. Aung, “Bringing Imperialism Back in: For an Anthropology against Empire in the Twenty-First Century,” Dialectical Anthropology, Vol. 48, 145-161 (2024) https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-024-09724-0.

P. Chambers and P. Bunyavejchewin. "Thailand’s Foreign Economic Policy Toward Mainland Southeast Asia," ISEAS Perspective, August 20, 2019, 1–11.

R. H. Chilcote, "Celebrating the Life and Thought of Ruy Mauro Marini," Latin American Perspectives, 36 (November 2009), 131–33.

P. Chiengkul, "Uneven Development, Inequality and Concentration of Power: A Critique of Thailand 4.0," Third World Quarterly, Vol.40, No. 9 (May 22, 2019), 1689–1707.

B. Clark and J. B. Foster, "Ecological Imperialism and the Global Metabolic Rift," International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Vol. 50, No. 3–4 (June 2009), 311–34.

C. Dorninger, et al., "Global Patterns of Ecologically Unequal Exchange," Ecological Economics 179 (September 4, 2020), 106824. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106824.

J. B. Foster and H. Holleman, "The Theory of Unequal Ecological Exchange," The Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 41, No. 2 (2014), 199–233.

J. B. Foster and I. Suwandi, "COVID-19 and Catastrophe Capitalism," Monthly Review, June 1, 2020, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.14452/MR-072-02-2020-06_1.

J. Glassman, "Lineages of the Authoritarian State in Thailand," Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol. 50, No. 4 (2020)n 573.

D. Harveyn "The ‘New’ Imperialism: Accumulation by Dispossession," Socialist Register, No. 40 (March 2009)n 63–87.

D. Harvey, "Realities on the Ground: David Harvey Replies to John Smith," Review of African Political Economy, February 5, 2018.

D. Hayward, et al., "Chinese Investment into Tissue-Culture Banana Plantations in Kachin State, Myanmar," MRLG Case Study Series #4. Vientiane, Yangon: MRLG, 2020.

J. Hickel, D. Sullivan, and H. Zoomkawala, "Plunder in the Post-Colonial Era.," New Political Economy X (March 30, 2021), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2021.1899153.

T. Jenmana and A. Gethin, "Extreme Inequality, Democratisation and Class Struggles in Thailand," WID World Issue Brief, March 2019. https://wid.world/document/democratisation-and-the-emergence-of-class-conflicts-income-inequality-in-thailand-2001-2016-wid-world-working-paper-2018-15/.

B. Jones, "Lenin's Imperialism: Highest Stage of Capitalism," International Socialist Review, No. 44 (2005). http://www.isreview.org/issues/44/imperialism.shtml.

Justice for Myanmar, "Is Total Profiteering in Myanmar?," May 4, 2021. https://www.justiceformyanmar.org/stories/total-profiteering. (accessed May 5, 2021).

P. Kaewkamol, "What Causes Changes in International Governance Details?," Review of International Political Economy, X (September 10, 2020), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2020.1819371.

P. Kongkirati and V. Kanchoochat, "The Prayuth Regime: Embedded Military and Hierarchical Capitalism in Thailand," TRaNS: Trans-Regional and National Studies of Southeast Asia 6 (July 2018), 1–26.

S. King, "Lenin’s Theory of Imperialism," Marxist Left Review, No. 8 (2014). https://marxistleftreview.org/articles/lenins-theory-of-imperialism-a-defence-of-its-relevance-in-the-21st-century/.

K. K. Mead, "A Revisionist History of Thai-US Relations," Asian Review, Vol. 16 (2003).

I. H. Kvangraven, "Beyond the Stereotype: Restating the Relevance of the Dependency Research Programme," Development and Change, Vol 1, No. 104 (June 4, 2020), 1–26.

M. Li., "China: Imperialism or Semi-Periphery?," Working paper, Department of Economics, University of Utah, 2020.

M. J. Montesanto, "The Place of the Provinces in Thailand’s Twenty-Year National Strategy," ISEAS Perspective #18, August 8, 2019.

T. Norfield, "Value of Labour-Power, Wages, Productivity and Imperialism," Economics of Imperialism, https://economicsofimperialism.blogspot.com/2016/07/value-of-labour-power-wages.html. (July 30, 2016, accessed May 15, 2021).

W. Pajai. "Burning Dilemma," Southeast Asia Globe, December 7, 2020. https://southeastasiaglobe.com/thailand-sugarcane-burning/ (accessed December 8, 2020).

C. Robinson, C. Thame, and C. Branchini, "Anti-Human Trafficking in Thailand: A Stakeholder Analysis of Thai Government Efforts, the U.S. TIP Report and Rankings, and Recommendations for Action," Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health / Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Royal Thai Government, June 2016.

J. Smith, "David Harvey Denies Imperialism," Review of African Political Economy, January 10, 2018. https://roape.net/2018/01/10/david-harvey-denies-imperialism/ (accessed March 17, 2021).

K. Tejapira, "The Sino-Thais’ Right Turn Towards China," Critical Asian Studies, Vol. 49, No. 4 (2017), 537–54.

C. Thame, "The Economic Corridors Paradigm as Extractivism," Review of International Studies, Vol. 47 (2021), 549–69. DOI: 10.1017/S0260210521000292

United Nations Human Rights Council, "The Economic Interests of the Myanmar Military: Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar," A/HRC/42/CRP.3, September 16, 2019.

P. Warr, "A Nation Caught in the Middle-Income Trap," East Asia Forum Quarterly, Vol, 3, No. 4 (October-December 2011), 32–35.

T. Wiedmann, et al, "The Material Footprint of Nations," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 112, No. 20 (2015), 6271–76.

Z. Xu, The Ideology of Late Imperialism," Monthly Review, March 1, 2021.