Catching the Wind: Penang in a Rising Asia

However impressive the economic success of Penang has been over the past four decades, structural conditions in the region call for a fundamental reconfiguration of this Malaysian state's competitive advantage. In the 1970s, the ageing entrepôt transformed itself into a manufacturing hub for the electronics industry and a well-known tourist site. This outward-looking model of economic growth has underpinned Penang's economic development up until the present. The question that now arises is whether Penang's present mode of development will continue to be effective, or whether it will have to transform itself.

Francis E. Hutchinson is Research Fellow and Coordinator of the Regional Economic Studies Programme at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore. Johan Saravanamuttu is Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore and was formerly professor of political science at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) in Penang where he served as Dean of the School of Social Sciences (1994-96).