Asian Investment in the Rural Industries of Papua New Guinea: What’s New and What’s Not?

One part of the Australian colonial legacy in PNG is the Australian government’s attempt to forge partnerships with different groups of foreign companies in different economic sectors in order to lay the economic foundations for rural development in the newly independent nation. American and Australian capital was invited to develop the mining industry, European capital to develop the oil palm industry, and Japanese capital to develop the forest industry. Nowadays, the Australian government seems to have forgotten its late colonial enthusiasm for this form of state capitalism, and its aid to PNG is largely framed by the neo-liberal policy prescriptions which the World Bank was able to impose on the PNG government through a sequence of structural adjustment programs beginning in 1990. However, members of PNG’s national political elite have persistently sought refuge from this economic orthodoxy through their engagement with Asian governments and companies. In this paper I examine the way in which changing political and economic conditions have affected the actual pattern of Asian investment in PNG’s forestry and agriculture sectors, and the way in which different stakeholders have responded to this changing pattern of investment. Despite the prevalence of a policy narrative which holds Asian investors responsible for the corruption of PNG’s political institutions when mineral resource booms liberate national politicians from the constraints of Western economic orthodoxy, I show that Asian investment in these two sectors has taken several different forms, and there is no simple sense in which PNG’s national economy and political system are subject to a concerted takeover by Asian business interests.

巴布亞新幾內亞鄉村工業亞洲投資的新老特點

澳大利亞在巴布亞新幾內亞的殖民遺產之一是澳大利亞政府試圖與不同種類的外國公司在各個經濟領域里打造夥伴關係 ，從而為這個新獨立國家的農村發展打下經濟基礎。來自美國和澳大利亞大的資本被邀請來發展採礦業，歐洲資本則參與到了棕櫚油產業的發展中，而日本資本則投入到了發展森林工業中。如今，澳大利亞政府似乎已經忘記了其在殖民地晚期對這種形式的國家資本的熱情，其目前對巴布亞新幾內亞的援助主要依循的是新自由主義政策。這些政策由世界銀行通過一系列在1990年初開始實行的結構調整計劃強加給巴布亞新幾內亞政府。然而，巴布亞新幾內亞的國家政治精英們一直試圖通過與亞洲各國政府和企業的合作來躲避這些經濟規範。本文探討政治經濟條件的變化對亞洲在巴布亞新幾內亞林業和農業部門的投資模式的影響，以及不同的利益相關者對這一模式轉變的反應。當巴布亞新幾內亞礦產資源業的快速發展使該國的政治家從西方經濟規範的約束中解放出來後, 盛行的政策敘事將巴布亞新幾內亞政治機構的腐敗歸罪於亞洲投資者。本文表明，亞洲投資在這兩個行業中採取了各種不同的形式，而關於巴布亞新幾內亞國家經濟和政治體系被亞洲商業利益徹底接管的說法也過於簡單化。

Translated from English by Xin Huang