Developmental Perspectives
Developmental Perspectives is Industrial Policy Lab Indonesia’s article and blog series, focusing on topics related to industrialization, industrial policy, developmentalism, and development economics.
Writers are Research and Policy Fellows of Industrial Policy Lab Indonesia. For any feedback or comments, please share them with us via contact@industrialpolicylab.id.
Message from Bonn: The Fight Over Climate Finance is Also a Fight Over Green Industrialization
“The question of who finances this transition is separate, and history offers a clear answer. Major industrial transformations have rarely been driven by private capital alone. South Korea used state-directed credit to build globally competitive steel and shipbuilding industries, while China’s solar manufacturing sector expanded through sustained public banking support long before private investors entered at scale. Today, the European Union follow a similar model through extensive subsidies and public support for clean technology manufacturing. These cases demonstrate that the state absorbs the early risks that private markets are unwilling to take and thereby creates the conditions for new industries to emerge and grow.”
The Rules-Based International Order is Unraveling, Indonesia Must Accelerate its Reindustrialization
“The only alternative is vulnerability. It is vulnerability to commodity price shocks, to becoming passive actors in other countries’ trade wars, to losing strategic autonomy bit by bit in a world increasingly governed less by rules but by strength. After all, to slightly rephrase Thucydides, we must do what we can, so that we do not suffer what we must.”