Fragmented Integration in the Singapore‐Indonesian Border Zone: Southeast Asia’s ‘Growth Triangle’ Against the Global Economy

Abstract

Singapore-Indonesian investment cooperation in the Riau islands forms the key part of an initiative in cross-border cooperation including Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Four flagship projects - Batamindo Industrial Park, Bintan Industrial Estate, Bintan Beach International Resort, and the Karimun marine and industrial complex - are a key test of the effectiveness of a development strategy that seeks to 'fast track' development by creating enclaves of investment, protected from the diseconomies and constraints of their surrounding environment. This paper evaluates the progress of the flagship investments and their interaction with their surrounding communities. It shows the constraints on securing enclaves of investment opportunity in the midst of poverty and high population growth. Lessons from the development experience are linked to the political processes affecting cross-border cooperation in Southeast Asia. This discussion reveals the retention of interstate processes predicated on the continued existence of strong nation-states, rather than trans-state processes which permit the weakening of national sovereignty. The negotiating pitfalls and development dilemmas emerging in this political context are identified. Copyright Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1999.

One Bridge, Two Towns and Three Countries: Anticipatory Geopolitics in the Greater Mekong Subregion

“…17 Studies of larger Asian economic borderlands include the Upper Mekong River region, which encompasses the borderlands of northwestern Laos, northern Thailand, northeastern Burma, and Southwestern China 18 , and the Indonesia-Malaysia-Singapore Growth Triangle. 19 We recognize that previous and current works on economic borderlands have done well to focus on getting insights from the borderlands to tease out the intensity and extent to which (re)development projects affect people on both sides of the border. To provide an example, we refer to the Indonesia-Malaysia-Singapore Growth Triangle.…”

“…Grundy-Warr, Peachey and Perry argue how this particular economic borderland in Southeast Asia is a reflection of fragmented integration against the global economy because the surrounding environments of the flagship projects which took place saw limited progress and success. 20 By carrying out grounded research, borderlands scholarship examines processes that include analysis of top-down perspectives, but also incorporate many individual border narratives and experiences. 21 However, there appear to be two angles that do require more research attention.…”

Geographies of Power in the Indonesia–Malaysia–Singapore Growth Triangle

“…Clearly, although the island is now home to over 500 foreign companies and its population had grows to 781,000 by 2009 (Azis, 2010), Batam is not even close to rivalling the levels of investment and urban development prized by Singapore. However, the plans that Habibie did make to invest in Batam and turn it into a duty free trade zone have led to remarkably rapid industrial development (Grundy-Warr et al, 1999). In 1990 private investment in the island reached US$2199 million per year, and by 1996 the same figure had more than doubled to US$4704 million (Van Grunsven, 1998, p. 189 (based on BIDA data)).…”

“…Macleod and McGee (1996) early on pointed out the region's unevenness, arguing that, given the dominance of Singapore and the very limited ties between Johor and Riau, the Triangle is by no means 'equilateral' (see also Grundy-Warr et al, 1999). More recently, in a sustained ethnographic investigation of the experiences of 'development' in Batam, Lindquist (2008) contrasted the formal cross-border Triangle of the business planners and technocrats with the informal links and, more significantly, the many curtailed links of frustrated and exploited migrants.…”

The borders within: Mobility and enclosure in the Riau Islands1

“…These accounts take as the object of their analysis the material and symbolic practices of (b)ordering and control exercised by Singaporean and Indonesian immigration and customs officials, other government bodies, and naval patrols. While these studies also begin to examine the multiple ways in which the IMS-GT supports and inhibits other forms of movement within and along the Singapore-Indonesia border, important distinctions between the realities of different local communities are often lost in a literature which 2 concentrates primarily on the island of Batam and generally either ignores local communities elsewhere in the Riau Islands or otherwise aggregates their experiences with those of Batam Islanders (cf Grundy-Warr et al 1999;Mack 2004;Sparke et al 2004). …”