Insular Southeast Asia - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 484

60,000 guerrillas fighting for an independent Muslim
state in Mindanao. Half the Philippines' army was fighting
that battle. Most of the others were fighting communist-
controlled guerrilla attacks elsewhere in the country .
Opposition to Marcos became strident. He called an
election in 1986 and lost to Corazon Aquino, wife of
assassinated popular politician Benigno Aquino. Marcos
ultimately fled the Philippines.
Although the government returned to its 1970s'
democratic form, little changed in the social structure.
The landed elite retained their riches, land reform was
minimal, and political loyalties remained personal rather
than institutional. However, there was an impressive eco-
nomic turnaround.

building operations employing 15,000 workers. In
addition to the shipyard, more than 600 companies
have located in the Subic Bay Freeport Zone.
Subic is divided into four key investment areas:
the Central Business District, Subic Gateway , Subic
Bay Industrial Park, and the Subic T Techno Park.
These areas house manufacturing-related busi-
nesses, electronic communications and computer
industries, warehousing and transshipment opera-
tions, financial and educational facilities, and a vi-
brant tourism, resort, and lodging industry .

The traditional industrial base was the processing of
agricultural products, but this was altered in the 1990s
with a policy of import substitution. For example, the
Philippines' largest company , the San Miguel Corpora-
tion (of beer fame) diversified into food and soft-drink
processing and invested in coconut products, banking,
and other commodities.
Recent emphasis has been placed on export-oriented
industrialization. Export-processing zones (EPZs) are lo-
cated near Manila, Cebu, and in Baguio. In addition to
Subic' is free port, Clark Air Base is now a special eco-
nomic zone. Numerous private enterprises have been es-
tablished in other areas, mainly in Metro Manila. T Today, ,
the leading exports of the Philippines are electronics and
apparel. Gateway Electronics has developed a business
park, and numerous chip manufacturers have gravitated
to the site. T Texas Instruments, Motorola, and Philips
have also established industrial sites near Manila.
Manufacturing is highly concentrated in Metro
Manila. Its metropolitan area accounts for more than half
the total Philippine manufacturing employment. The
next largest centers are Cebu and Davao.
Cebu is a world center for the manufacture of rattan
products. Nearby locations such as Mactan Island—where
Ferdinand Magellan was killed during the first circumnav-
igation of the globe—include an international airport and
an export-processing zone. Mactan has also been devel-
oped for tourism, with fine hotels and beach resorts. One-
third of all foreign tourists, mostly Japanese and
Taiwanese, visit Cebu and Mactan. The Japanese are the
major foreign investors in the EPZ. One of the zone' s first
factories was Timex. Now , 80 percent of all Timex watches
are made in the Mactan plant. Other companies produce
semiconductors, cameras, furniture, apparel, and so forth.
Another important manufacturing center is General
Santos City on the southern coast of Mindanao. The ma-
jor industries here are food processing, especially of fish.

ECONOMIC PROGRESS
Ferdinand Ramos took power in 1992, and by the mid-
decade the Philippines had reached growth levels ap-
proaching those of other ASEAN countries. However, the
country has a long way to go. Although the agricultural
sector has remained relatively constant, with 17 percent
of the total economy , it employs 34 percent of the labor
force. Industry and manufacturing account for 15 per-
cent of employment while services account for 51 per-
cent. But still, a third of the population is unemployed or
underemployed.

Subic Bay

In 1992, under pressure from the Philippine govern-
ment and people, the United States gave up the
Subic Bay Naval Base and Clark Air Base, both lo-
cated on the island of Luzon. Subic Bay alone had
employed 32,000 local people and indirectly created
200,000 jobs. However, it also imported some nega-
tive aspects of American culture, such as sex work
and rampant consumerism. Soon Subic Bay was
turned into a free-trade zone, and 200 companies—
including many from Taiwan—pledged investments
in the zone. In 1995, the American company Federal
Express established Subic Bay as its air hub for
overnight parcel deliveries in the region.
Many consider the Subic Bay Freeport zone' s
greatest asset, in terms of its potential, to be its deep-
water harbor. In 2007, South Korea' s Hanjin Heavy
Industries Corporation, one of the largest shipbuild-
ing companies in the world, began its container-ship