Events
Jumping Boats: Inter-Asian Wealth-making and Social Protection after Globalization | Engseng Ho
| Date | : | 12 Aug 2026 |
| Time | : | 15:30 - 17:00 |
| Venue | : | Block B, Seminar Room 3-2 |
This lecture is jointly organised by the Centre on Asia and Globalisation, and the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore.
CHAIRPERSON
Prof Khong Yuen Foong, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore
ABSTRACT
Engseng Ho argues that the post-Cold War era of globalization—built on American-guaranteed security and self-regulating free markets—is ending, as the second Trump administration shifts from global protector to predator (Venezuela, Iran, Greenland), collapsing the separation of politics from economics. As top-level global guarantees crumble, it’s worth turning to the deeper, historically embedded layer of “Inter-Asia”: the centuries-old web of mobile merchant societies (Arab, Persian, Malabari, Tamil, Malay, Bugis, Hokkien Chinese) who embedded themselves in local port-cities through intermarriage, partnerships and moral economy, paying modest protection to local rulers rather than relying on a single hegemonic guarantor. Lacking state backing, these mobile societies built resilient, self-protecting welfare institutions that absorbed market shocks without the backlash into fascism or socialism seen in the West. Ho traces this logic into the present: Southeast Asian states and firms navigate US-China rivalry by hosting relocated factories, while Hokkien AI-chip tech CEOs (Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Broadcom’s Hock Tan, Intel’s Lip-Bu Tan) nimbly switch protectors—China, Singapore, the US—as circumstances demand, much as Hokkien traders/smugglers did among Ming/Qing bans and European empires centuries ago. He closes by reading Taiwan’s TSMC, sited defiantly at China’s doorstep, as the modern version of this Hokkien self-protection strategy: unable to rely on any external guarantor and unable to flee, Taiwan built its own irreplaceable “Silicon Shield”, converting global technological indispensability into a kind of commercial DIY protection state power never provided.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Engseng Ho is Professor of Anthropology and History at Duke University. He is a leading scholar of transnational anthropology, history and Muslim societies, Arab diasporas, and the Indian Ocean. His research expertise is in Arabia, coastal South Asia and maritime Southeast Asia, and he maintains active collaborations with scholars in these regions. He is the co-editor of the Asian Connections book series at Cambridge University Press, and serves on the editorial boards of journals such as Comparative Studies in Society and History. He has previously worked as  Professor of Anthropology, Harvard University; Senior Scholar, Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies; Country and Profile Writer, The Economist Group; International Economist, Government of Singapore Investment Corporation/Monetary Authority of Singapore; Alagil Distinguished Visiting Professor, Asia Research Institute; Director, Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore. He was educated at the Penang Free School, Stanford University, and the University of Chicago.
REGISTRATION
Please register your attendance at this link.
For more information, please visit: https://lkyspp.nus.edu.sg/cag/events/details/jumping-boats–interasian-wealth-making-and-social-protection-after-globalization.