‘Pink 2.0’: A 21st-century reform agenda
Cambridge—The long 20th century is over. Yet, we still live in its shadows, or, rather, are still haunted by its aspirations and traumas. Nothing better exemplifies this than the shockingly stagnant and stale state of the national discourse in the Philippines. Our economic debates, for instance, are broadly divorced from all major developments of the past quarter century, which culminated in the wholesale repudiation of standard neoliberal economics in both academic and policy circles.
Forget about Germany, Canada, or Japan, which are doubling down on dirigiste “industrial strategy” to preserve their national economic security. No less than the United States, the heartland of neoliberalism, is embracing a surreal form of “state capitalism,” which only shows how we have entered an entirely new age of economic thinking. As one top official at Japan’s renowned Ministry of International Trade and Industry told us during a visit last year: “We no longer can separate matters of economics and politics…”
Battered by decades of corrosive deindustrialization, which has ravaged American industries and countless communities across the so-called “rust belts,” US presidents from across the political spectrum are embracing a more interventionist vision of economic policy. While the Joseph Biden administration launched a trillion-industrial policy under the CHIPS and Science Act and Inflation Reduction Act, the Donald Trump administration has effectively buried ”free market” economics: it has purchased a ”golden share” in US steel production in partnership with Japan’s Nippon Steel; acquired a 10-percent equity stake in tech giant Intel; and finalized a major export-license-for-revenue deal with Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices to preserve American advantage in cutting-edge technologies. On top of that, the Pentagon also became the top shareholder in rare earth-mining firm MP Materials after purchasing a 15 percent stake in the critical minerals industry.
America’s bizarre flirtation with “state capitalism” is a desperate response to the so-called “China shock,” namely, how Beijing has redefined the very physics of geoeconomics in the past decade. Under the Made in China 2025 strategy, China has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into vital industries with tremendous success. China has not only reduced its reliance on industrial and tech imports but also increased its share of global manufacturing from 19 percent (2010) to 34 percent (2024).
According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, China now leads in 37 out of 44 critical technologies. Western businesses, according to one authoritative survey, expect that China will catch up across all cutting-edge industries within a decade. And yet, hardly any prominent Filipino economic thought leaders seriously engage the industrial policy debate that is ubiquitous in all major capitals—and central to national development strategy of our immediate neighbors, especially Vietnam.
Even more pitifully stagnant and stale is our state of political discourse. The “good governance” mantra has become a cottage industry among countless pundits, civil society organizations, and social scientists, who tend to reduce national development to simply fighting corruption. But anyone with even an elementary understanding of comparative economics knows that corruption is a symptom of deeper systemic problems, including widespread poverty, weak state capacity, regulatory loopholes, and the relatively small size of a (potentially) activist middle-class electorate, which could serve as an independent check on any abuse of power.
Yet, few among our prominent political analysts and scientists effectively engage with a more encompassing reform agenda, which would have to include state capacity development and inclusive growth as a singular policy goal. The upshot is a corrosive poverty of national public policy discourse, which has created a perilous illusion that all we need to take off as a country is to simply to eject crooks in favor of squeaky-clean public servants.
We surely need to jail and punish crooks. But we also desperately need to create a movement that consolidates disparate reform agendas in favor of “effective governance,” which goes far beyond just having noncorrupt leaders. We need competent and decisive public servants who can get things done, understand the right economic policies, and are capable of creating prosperity for the Filipino people.
This is indispensable to creating a virtuous cycle, whereby new wealth energizes the electorate, enriches public policy discourse, and empowers institution-building. We desperately need to transcend simplistic, moralistic, and process-obsessed performative politics in favor of a genuinely deliberative democracy—one driven by the shared agenda of abundance-creation, effective governance, and accountable statesmanship.
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richard.heydarian@inquirer.net
