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Development Policies and Patterns of Agrarian Dominance in the Malaysian Rubber Export Economy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Martin Rudner
Martin Rudner
Affiliation:
The Australian National University
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Extract

SINCE Malaysian independence over two decades ago, rubber production there has undergone a significant and far-reaching structural transformation, in social as well as economic dimensions. This transformation represented the outcome of policy responses to changing world market conditions for the export of natural rubber, which coincided with a political transition to independence and parliamentary government. In its response, government policy since the mid-1950s released many of the earlier administrative constraints on the spread of new rubber planting. The ensuing entrepreneurial re-awakening led to large-scale re-planting and new planting with high-yielding rubber. This increasingly widespread wave of technological innovation was accompanied by the dissolution of marginal estate enterprises, which was more than offset by a parallel expansion of peasant participation in rubber cultivation. Productivity and therefore producer incomes generally tended to improve, notwithstanding cyclical fluctuations in world rubber prices. Yet, by the middle 1970s this policy trend favouring technological cumentrepreneurial innovation appears to have altered direction. Indeed,recent Malaysian rubber policy indicates that structural transformation has run its course, at least for present intents and purposes. As will be seen, the current policy goal has reverted to protecting the newly established economic and social order in the Malaysian rubber planting against further pressures for developmental change.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , February 1981 , pp. 83 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

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42 Subsequently, shortly after these lines were written, the producer countries decided, in January 1978, to defer for the time being the establishment of the projected buffer stock since natural rubber prices were currently on a rising trend (Malaysian Digest, 15 January 1978). However, preparations for the eventual introduction of the buffer stock and supply rationalization schemes reportedly continue under the aegis of the ANRPC Secretariat.Google Scholar

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