A Brookings Institution Press and the Council on Foreign Relations publication Something new is happening across East Asia. A region notable for its lack of internal economic links is discussing ...regional cooperation on trade, investment, and exchange rates. Because of negotiations elsewhere around the globe on regional trade--such as those that led to the consolidation of the European Union, the formation of the North American Free Trade Area, and the rapid proliferation of bilateral free trade areas--the talk is not surprising. Nevertheless, East Asia's past inertia with regard to forming a regional partnership raises many questions about its emerging regionalism. Why has the region suddenly shifted from taking a global approach to economic issues to discussing a regional bloc? How fast and how far will the new regionalism progress? Will the region become a version of the European Union, or something far less? What is the probable impact on American economic and strategic interests--are the likely developments something that the U.S. government should encourage or discourage? Edward Lincoln takes up these questions, exploring what is happening to regional trade and investment flows and what sort of regional arrangements are the most sensible. Lincoln argues that an exclusive grouping is unlikely. Free trade negotiations have brought some economies in the region together, but they also have led to links with nations outside the region. Some regional governments most notably Japan, continue to have difficulty embracing the concept of free trade, even with favored regional partners. In the wake of the Asian financial crisis, governments also have looked at cooperating on exchange rates, but they have done little to move forward. The U.S. government must decide how to respond to these developments in East Asia. An exclusively
Asian form of regionalism could run counter to American economic interests, and the U.S. government has reacted negatively to some of these proposals in the past. Because trade and investment links between the co.
The phenomenal success of the East Asian Newly Industrializing Economies (NIEs) of Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore is now well-known and documented. Their success has been discussed to such ...an extent that it has become entrenched as part of the folklore of development economics. The Newly Industrializing Economies of East Asia takes a fresh look at the relevant literature and sifts the rhetoric from the reality. In the course of surveying the vast range of writing two competing paradigms become clear: the neo-classical approach which interprets the East Asian economic miracle as the predictable outcome of `good' policies; and the statist perspective which draws attention to the central role of the government in guiding East Asian economic development. Throughout the book the authors mix country-specific experiences with broader trends.
East Asia spans more than 10 million square kilometers. The human remains examined by the contributors in this volume date from the Early Neolithic (more than 12,000 years ago) to the Iron Age (up to ...AD 500).
Bioarchaeology of East Asia interprets human skeletal collections from a region where millets, rice, and several other important cereals were cultivated, leading to attendant forms of agricultural development that were accompanied by significant technological innovations. The contributors follow the diffusion of these advanced ideas to other parts of Asia, and unravel a maze of population movements. In addition, they explore the biological implications of relatively rare subsistence strategies more or less unique to East Asia: millet agriculture, mobile pastoralism with limited cereal farming, and rice farming combined with reliance on marine resources.
Diverse scholarly traditions--from China, Japan, Mongolia, Russia, Australia, and the United States--supply a constructive mix of conceptual frameworks and methodologies. Chinese-to-English translations make chapters available that might not otherwise be published outside of China. Ideas stemming from this collection will significantly boost collaborative work among bioarchaeologists and other scientists working in East Asia.
What is the relationship between globalization and economic security? Globalisation and Economic Security in East Asia is an incisive new engagement with this important question that uses detailed ...conceptual exploration and fresh empirical analysis.
Viewing traditional neorealist conceptions of economic security as overly narrow, this new study suggests that any conception of economic security in the contemporary era needs to also pay close attention to the nature of global capitalism, and the insecurities it generates for societies and individuals.
This uniquely open-ended approach to conceptualizing economic security is supported by the East Asian experience. The country case studies included here reveal that while economic security has largely been posed as one of ensuring sustainable economic growth and equitable social development, particularly following the 1997 to 1998 Asian financial crisis, other, more realist conceptions of economic security have not become irrelevant. This is also an exploration of whether and how national, regional and multilateral institutions, as well as non-state regional mechanisms, help policy makers meet the task of governing in the interests of economic security.
This book will be of great interest to all students and scholars of international relations, international political economy of East Asia globalization and security studies.
Many have viewed the tribute system as China's tool for projecting its power and influence in East Asia, treating other actors as passive recipients of Chinese domination. China's Hegemony sheds new ...light on this system and shows that the international order of Asia's past was not as Sinocentric as conventional wisdom suggests. Instead, throughout the early modern period, Chinese hegemony was accepted, defied, and challenged by its East Asian neighbors at different times, depending on these leaders' strategies for legitimacy among their populations. This book demonstrates that Chinese hegemony and hierarchy were not just an outcome of China's military power or Confucian culture but were constructed while interacting with other, less powerful actors' domestic political needs, especially in conjunction with internal power struggles. Focusing on China-Korea-Japan dynamics of East Asian international politics during the Ming and High Qing periods, Ji-Young Lee draws on extensive research of East Asian language sources, including records written by Chinese and Korean tributary envoys. She offers fascinating and rich details of war and peace in Asian international relations, addressing questions such as: why Japan invaded Korea and fought a major war against the Sino-Korean coalition in the late sixteenth century; why Korea attempted to strike at the Ming empire militarily in the late fourteenth century; and how Japan created a miniature tributary order posing as the center of Asia in lieu of the Qing empire in the seventeenth century. By exploring these questions, Lee's in-depth study speaks directly to general international relations literature and concludes that hegemony in Asia was a domestic, as well as an international phenomenon with profound implications for the contemporary era.
Debate surrounding "China's rise," and the prospects of its possible challenge to America's preeminence, has focused on two questions: whether the United States should "contain" or "engage" China; ...and whether the rise of Chinese power has inclined other East Asian states to "balance" against Beijing by alignment with the United States or ramping up their military expenditures.
By drawing on alternative theoretic approaches-most especially "balance-of-threat" theory, political economic theory, and theories of regime survival and economic interdependence, Steve Chan is able to create an explanation of regional developments that differs widely from the traditional "strategic vision" of national interest.
He concludes that China's primary aim is not to match U.S. military might or the foreign policy influence that flows from that power, and that its neighbors are not balancing against its rising power because, in today's guns-versus-butter fiscal reality, balancing policies would entail forfeiting possible gains that can accrue from cooperation, economic growth, and the application of GDP to nonmilitary ends. Instead, most East Asian countries have collectively pivoted to a strategy of elite legitimacy and regime survival based on economic performance.
In The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Jeremy Yellen exposes the history, politics, and intrigue that characterized the era when Japan's "total empire" met the total war of World War II. He ...illuminates the ways in which the imperial center and its individual colonies understood the concept of the Sphere, offering two sometimes competing, sometimes complementary, and always intertwined visions-one from Japan, the other from Burma and the Philippines.
Yellen argues that, from 1940 to 1945, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere epitomized two concurrent wars for Asia's future: the first was for a new type of empire in Asia, and the second was a political war, waged by nationalist elites in the colonial capitals of Rangoon and Manila. Exploring Japanese visions for international order in the face of an ever-changing geopolitical situation, The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere explores wartime Japan's desire to shape and control its imperial future while its colonies attempted to do the same. At Japan's zenith as an imperial power, the Sphere represented a plan for regional domination; by the end of the war, it had been recast as the epitome of cooperative internationalism. In the end, the Sphere could not survive wartime defeat, and Yellen's lucidly written account reveals much about the desires of Japan as an imperial and colonial power, as well as the ways in which the subdued colonies in Burma and the Philippines jockeyed for agency and a say in the future of the region.
The increasing economic and political importance of East Asia in the global political economy requires a deeper analysis of the nature of the capitalist systems in this region than has been provided ...by the existing literature on comparative capitalisms. This volume brings together conceptual and empirical analyses of the evolving patterns of East Asian capitalism against the backdrop of regional and global market integration and periodic economic crises since the 1980s. Focusing on China, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Thailand, it provides an interdisciplinary account of variations, continuities, and changes in the institutional structures that govern financial systems, industrial relations, and product markets, and that shape the evolution of national political economies. While the volume encompasses a range of different cases, specific issues, and diverse methodologies, all the chapters address two dominant themes - the continuities and changes in the institutional underpinnings of capitalist development and the main driving forces behind them. The book thus provides an integrated analysis of how changing institutional practices in business, financial, and labour systems interact and affect the evolution of capitalist political economies in the region. Contributors to this volume - Shaun Breslin, Professor of Politics and International Studies and Director of the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation, the University of Warwick. Richard W. Carney, Assistant Professor, the Department of International Relations, Australian National University. Frederic Deyo, Professor of Sociology, the State University of New York, Binghamton. Karl J. Fields, Professor of Politics and Government and Director of Asian Studies, the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington, USA. Edmund Terence Gomez, Professor, the Faculty of Economics and Administration, University of Malaya. Masahiro Kotosaka, DPhil candidate in Management Studies, Said Business School, Oxford University. Ching Kwan Lee, Professor of Sociology, the University of California, Los Angeles. Thomas Pepinsky, Assistant Professor, the Department of Government, Cornell University. Mari Sako, Professor of Management Studies, Said Business School, University of Oxford. Wataru Takahashi, Director-General, the Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, the Bank of Japan. Andrew Walter, Reader in International Political Economy, the London School of Economics and Political Science. Xiaoke Zhang, Professor, Manchester Business School, the University of Manchester.
Territorial disputes are one of the main sources of tension in
Northeast Asia. Escalation in such conflicts often stems from a
widely shared public perception that the territory in question is
of the ...utmost importance to the nation. While that's frequently not
true in economic, military, or political terms, citizens' groups
and other domestic actors throughout the region have mounted
sustained campaigns to protect or recover disputed islands. Quite
often, these campaigns have wide-ranging domestic and international
consequences.
Why and how do territorial disputes that at one point mattered
little, become salient? Focusing on non-state actors rather than
political elites, Alexander Bukh explains how and why apparently
inconsequential territories become central to national discourse in
Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. These Islands Are Ours
challenges the conventional wisdom that disputes-related campaigns
originate in the desire to protect national territory and traces
their roots to times of crisis in the respective societies. This
book gives us a new way to understand the nature of territorial
disputes and how they inform national identities by exploring the
processes of their social construction, and amplification.
