Monday, March 27, 2017

Capitalism Comes to Cambodia

The New York Times is reporting that Cambodians have replaced Karl Marx with Peter Drucker. You know all about Marx. As for Drucker, I have mentioned him occasionally on the blog. He was a famed management consultant, someone whose advice was sought out by the titans of American industry.

The Times reports:

For years, Tep Khunnal was the devoted personal secretary of Pol Pot, staying loyal to the charismatic ultracommunist leader even as the Khmer Rouge movement collapsed around them in the late 1990s.

Forced to reinvent himself after Pol Pot’s death, he fled to this outpost on the Thai border and began following a different sort of guru: the Austrian-American management theorist and business consultant Peter Drucker.

“I realized that some other countries, in South America, in Japan, they studied Drucker, and they used Drucker’s ideas and made the countries prosperous,” he said.

The residents of this dusty but bustling town are almost all former Khmer Rouge soldiers or cadres and their families, but they have come to embrace capitalism with almost as much vigor as they once fought to destroy class distinctions, free trade and even money itself.

After being impoverished by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, former Communist officials have discovered the virtue of prosperity. They are a bit late to the game. China turned got on the capitalist road in the late 1970s, under the aegis of Deng Xiaoping. Like the Chinese, the Cambodians decided to stop railing about inequality and to seek prosperity. They drew the same lesson that the Chinese did. Capitalism is better than starving to death. Who knew?

Here is one story of one former soldier, with a nod to the horrors that were inflicted on the Cambodian people by Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge:

“We joined the communists, and now we have joined the capitalists, which is much better,” said Dim Sok, a local official.

Mr. Dim Sok, 65, was a nearly illiterate farmer when he became a revolutionary in 1970, fighting in the jungles with the Khmer Rouge for five years before they seized power. In an effort to remake the country into an agrarian utopia, the Khmer Rouge government swept the urban population into the countryside to live like peasants and smashed up banks and schools. At least 1.7 million people died under their nearly four-year rule.

The Times returns to Tep Khunnal, and show how he developed his business:

Malai was still a malaria-infested jungle stronghold when Mr. Tep Khunnal moved here in 1998, bringing with him Pol Pot’s widow, whom he married shortly after his boss’s death.

Along with a barely educated but savvy ex-soldier, Soom Yin, he took out a bank loan to test some of his ideas. Their company bought the area’s first corn-drying machine, imported a new breed of sun-resistant corn from Thailand and set up a quality-control system for the corn and cassava that moved through their warehouse.

Today, Mr. Soom Yin owns the largest export firm in the area and can talk for hours about the minutiae of the cassava trade, from moisture levels to price fluctuations. In his spare time, he said, he reads books on management.

The Khmer Rouge ways are “very old now,” he said. “Even me, I don’t even dream about that anymore. We just do business.”

Today Khunnal has retired and is teaching management theory in universities:

He said he began reading about economics while serving as a Khmer Rouge envoy to the United Nations in the 1980s. Although he liked Milton Friedman, the free-market economist, and Frederick Taylor, who pioneered scientific management, he was most drawn to Drucker’s insistence that employees were central to an enterprise’s success.

“What I find interesting for me is that he talks about individuals, he gives power to individuals, not to collectivism,” he said of Drucker. “Frederick Taylor in the early 20th century, he talked about efficiency, but Drucker talked about effectiveness.”

During a recent lecture, Mr. Tep Khunnal exhorted his students to remember that good management was just as important as good ideas.

“In-no-vation,” he said, using the English word, “means a new idea, but to be successful you need strategy.”

It’s not just an idea. In order to succeed you need to have a plan and an organization. And one thing is clear. Rail all you want about inequality, collectivizing agriculture is, as the Chinese discovered in the early 1960s, a formula for mass starvation.

5 comments:

James said...

I wonder how the survivor from the fabled days of "wearing cafe tabletop cloths on your head" would deal with a Black Bloc specimen. I bet he hasn't forgot everything from the old times.

James said...

Ps. I'm sure that Mr Yin and Mr Khunnal realize their are still several hundred thousand Cambodians who would have good reason to cheerfully put a bullet in their heads (if they are lucky enough to die that way).

Sam L. said...

That was in the NYT? Will wonders never cease?

sestamibi said...

I been following a certain real estate blog for a number of years now, and I caught on to this when the blogger started linking to reports about opportunities for investors in condo development in Phnom Penh and the challenges involved for Vietnamese looking for second homes. Amazing to think that these were once places where piles of human skulls could be found.

SAMIR SARDANA said...

SAMIR SARDANA
F
30 JUL 2020 — 14:37
Investors have to read Khmer history - when assessing the supply chain and political risk in Cambodia.

Ultimately,Cambodia will become a SAR of the PRC. dindooohindoo

The Khmer nation was pillaged by looted,by the Thai and Vietnamese Kings. Large tracts of land and treasures, of the Khmer, are with the Thais and Viets.

This is the history of the Khmer,after the 1st invasion of Thais 1000 years ago.Thereafter came the French and Pol Pot and the US-Viet war.

Today the nation and economy and real estate of the Khmer,is owned by the Chinese,Viets and Thais - who hold KHMER PASSPORTS.

The Viets have taken over Khmer land and timber ( as a compensation for the war on the Khmer Rouge), There are millions of Viets settled in Khmer land - as traders - and not manufacturers or industrialists. They are also the hidden voters of Hun Sen and the eyes and ears of Viet Intelligence in Khmer land.

Hoon Sen has not raised the issue of the millions of Viet, in Khmer land - as they vote for him ! And Hoon Sen has not raised Khmer Krom with the Viet govtt, ever - not the land seized by the Viets !

Y ? Hoon Sen is a Viet spy and stooge.The Viet intel have dirt on Hoon Sen - w.r.t his work with Pol Pot and his collaboration with Viet Intel - when he was with the Khmer Rouge - and his extra-marital affairs, rapes,murders and mistresses.

The Viet contribution to the nation of the Khmer is Nil and if the Khmer cannot do, what the Viets do - then the Khmer do not deserve a nation.Even the Rubber and timber goes back to Vietnam for processing.

The Thais are on the Thai-Khmer border with rice mills and other industries,which run on the concessional power sold by the Thai Grid.Inspite of that,the marginal Thai Population is settled only near the border areas

The Chinese have built the infra,ports,SEZ,roads and whatever little industry exists in Khmer land.Like in Thailand - the Han Chinese control the trade, commerce, manufacturing etc.Even in so called Muslim nations like Indon-ass-eeah, all that works, from Railways to bureaucracy is due to the Han Chinese

In essence, THE KHMER ARE SLAVES TO THE VIETS,THAI AND CHINESE.

Once Hun Sen dies,the Viets,Thai and Chinese will try to instal the son of Hun Sen - and if the Khmer people revolt (courtesy the CIA etc.),they will target the Viets in Cambodia,There are millions of Viets in Cambodia

That is Civil war - it is an inevitable,as is the death of Hun Sen.