Export processing zones, special economic zones and the long march of capitalist development policies during the Cold War

Patrick Neveling

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

This chapter develops a framework for understanding significant changes to the political economy of global trade at the onset of the Cold War. These changes were shaped by the establishment of the world‘s first export processing zone
(EPZ) regime in 1947 in Puerto Rico. which would become a role model for the various US administrations' policies towards the (capitalist) Third World. The EPZ regime in Puerto Rico was investor friendly in various ways and was promoted by sponsored invitations of developing countries‘ officials to that Caribbean island. The example of successful export-oriented development was ever more important in the 1960s and 1970s as an increasing number of independent nation-states considered closing off their markets to Western corporations and goods and saw this as a way to complete the process of decolonisation. Outlining how the EPZ-regime spread around the world with further hotspots of diffusion
emerging in postcolonial Ireland and Taiwan, I show how EPZs became an institutionalised model in development economics and global development policies. This model significantly changed global political economic interaction, not least when it became central to the opening of the Chinese economy in the late 1970s. EPZs then provide important examples for the economic calculus of (in-)dependent relations between ex-colonisers and ex-colonised that would shape development policies during the Cold War and foreshadow the neoliberal era that would end the Cold War.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationDecolonization and the Cold War
Subtitle of host publicationNegotiating independence
EditorsLeslie James, Elisabeth Leake
Place of PublicationLondon
PublisherBloomsbury Academic
Pages63-84
Number of pages21
ISBN (Electronic)978-1-4725-7122-9
ISBN (Print)978-1-4725-7120-5
Publication statusPublished - 2015

Publication series

NameNew Approaches to International History

Keywords

  • Cold War
  • Capitalism
  • Export Processing Zones
  • Special Economic Zones
  • Decolonization
  • independence
  • inequality
  • exploitation

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