Quote Originally Posted by RickyR View Post
Exactly! I wonder what would have happened if the Philippines had remained under the US and become like Hawaii. Think it would have been one of the wealthiest economies in South East Asia.
I'm not so sure about that Ricky. Look at the other former colonies in the region and which ones have good economies. It's only really Singapore and Hong Kong that you can say benefitted from colonialisation. India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia have only just started to progress economically.
Singapore and HK could grow economically very quickly as they are small places, approx 200sq km and have relatively low populations, 1-3M people. Therefore getting a good infrastructure in place would have been much simpler and cheaper. the other countries in SEA are all much larger land masses and have larger populations spread out all over the place. The reason why these countries took longer to take off economically was that the colonialists didn't want to invest in the infrstructure to join a few farms hundreds of KM apart together. The Phil's is even more of a logistical nightmare due to the fact it is lots of Islands. The US would never have had enough money to invest properly and turn it into another Asian Tiger economy. If you look behind the scenes, you may even find that the US knew that it was going to take far more than they could afford to turn Manila into another Asian economic hub (especially after the cost of WW2) which is why they decided to give it up - and the same reasons why Britain gave up most of it's colonies in the mid 1900's.
Guam is also a US colony, it has a good strategic location on the Pacific. The only investment the US have made there is Naval and Air Force bases. Personally I think the only reason the US was ever interested in the Phils was to turn it into another base so it could wage war in the region. After unsucessful campaigns in Korea and Vietnam they gave up interest and eventually abandoned Subic...etc.
Now that China is a major threat in the region, the US is looking to South Korea and Australia for homes for its Navy and Air Force. Why? The Philippines is better located, but again it can't afford the investment in infrastructure, so it's much easier to go to Korea and Australia as they are fully industrialised developed nations which already have good infrastructures in place.