ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a basic, general overview of the main features of Myanmar’s political economy to help contextualise the more specific chapters that follow in this section. Myanmar’s economy today contrasts starkly with those of its more developed Southeast Asian neighbours like Thailand and Malaysia. While the latter underwent rapid industrialisation from the 1970s, becoming middle-income economies, Myanmar remains one of the world’s poorest countries, with socio-economic indicators slightly worse than Southeast Asia’s other post-‘socialist’ economies and comparable to underdeveloped African states (see Table 18.1).
