This study of Thailand's economic crisis explores the role and consequences of foreign investment. It provides a sustained critique of the vested interests that have led to the current situation, and a picture of its unsustainability in human, social, ecological and economic terms.

Opening with the catastrophic economic collapse of 1997-98, this book argues that the Thai economic miracle always had feet of clay. Are Thailand's difficulties a short-term blip in the race to build a modern industrial economy, or is there a real prospect of the country being pushed back to Third World status? In this book, the authors explore the role of foreign investment and its consequences in pollution and environmental destruction, and the human effects of the Thai model on workers, rural villagers, women and child labour. What emerges is a critique of the vested interests, local and international, which have propelled the Thai people down this particular path, and a picture of its unsustainability in terms of human exploitation, social disruption, ecological damage and economic fragility.

Introduction - survey of an economic debacle
back to the Third World
Thailand under the IMF
the failure of industrial deepening
labour and capital
Bangkok - vicissitudes of a megapolis
pollution haven
the erosion of agriculture
the dynamics of deforestation
damming the countryside
the AIDS debacle
conclusion - revisioning the future.