Southeast Asia Faces Surge of Investment and Pollution from New 'Flying Geese' Shift
A new wave of relocating industries, dubbed the “new flying geese,” is bringing both foreign capital and mounting waste to Southeast Asia as China tightens its environmental regulations. This phenomenon, highlighted in a recent Nikkei Asia opinion article, signals a momentous shift in regional manufacturing that may reshape Southeast Asia’s economies and environment for years to come.
The “flying geese paradigm” originally described how industrialization travels in formation from advanced economies to less-developed ones—first from Japan, and more recently from China to Southeast Asia. Today, as China ramps up its enforcement on pollution and waste, manufacturers and recycling businesses—long byproducts of foreign investment—are relocating their operations to Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia. This move is accompanied not just by new jobs and capital inflows but also by an influx of plastic, electronic, and other hazardous wastes in their wake (CFR; National Geographic).