While the media tends to pay the most attention to violent secessionist movements or peaceful independence movements, it is just as important to understand why there are regions where political ...movements for autonomy fail to develop. In neglecting regions without political movements or full-blown independence demands, theories may be partial at best and incorrect at worst. State Institutions, Civic Associations, and Identity Demands examines over a dozen regions, comparing and contrasting successful cases to abandoned, unsuccessful, or dormant cases. The cases range from successful secession (East Timor, Singapore) and ongoing secessionist movements (Southern Philippines), to internally divided regional movements (Kachin State), low-level regionalist stirrings (Lanna, Taiwan), and local but not regional mobilization of identity (Bali, Minahasan), all the way to failed movements (Bataks, South Maluku) and regions that remain politically inert (East and North Malaysia, Northeast Thailand). While each chapter is written by a country expert, the contributions rely on a range of methods, from comparative historical analysis, to ethnography, field interviews, and data from public opinion surveys. Together, they contribute important new knowledge on little-known cases that nevertheless illuminate the history of regions and ethnic groups in Southeast Asia. Although focused on Southeast Asia, the book identifies the factors that can explain why movements emerge and successfully develop and concludes with a chapter by Henry Hale that illustrates how this can be applied globally.
Southeast Asian tiger economies feel threatened by competition from other countries and worry that their growth momentum might be flagging. Even though their growth rates are above the average for ...the world and for developing countries, they fall short of yesterdays economic performance. The underlying worry is that they presage the beginning of a downward trend, the harbingers of which are lower rates of investment, persistently low rates of total factor productivity and low levels of innovativeness. The South East Asian tigers worries motivate three questions: First, are the tigers rightly threatened by a creeping economic sclerosis or what some observers are calling the "middle income trap"? Second, if the threat is real, what are the underlying causes? Third, are there ways of neutralizing the problems and at least maintaining if not raising the growth rates of the recent past?This book tackles these questions by means of a comparative analysis of the Southeast Asian tiger economies, centered on Malaysia. This analysis draws upon a comprehensive set of techniques and indicators to assess competitive pressures, gauge industrial and technological capabilities and to indicate the directions of industrial change in Southeast Asia could take.
This book offers an illuminating account of how material and ideational dynamics shape the evolution of Malaysia–Indonesia relations. It addresses the circumstances, conditions and constraints that ...determine the double-edged effects of the culturally bound “special relationship”. The author argues that while their shared serumpun identities and strategic interests do give rise to a considerable closeness between Malaysia and Indonesia, the politics of power (im)balance have prevented the transformation of the special relationship into a “pluralistic security community”, as their egoistic understanding averts the formation of collective self.
•Several machine learning methods can be used to predict ground conditions ahead of TBMs with high accuracy.•Ensemble methods have better ground condition prediction accuracy than other machine ...learning models evaluated.•The classification system used in characterizing the ground condition affects the performance of the machine models.•The prediction performance of the machine models is different in soils and rocks of different lithologies.
This paper reviews literature on data-driven approaches for characterizing rock mass and ground conditions in tunnels. There have been significant advances in the use of both unsupervised and supervised machine learning (ML) methods to predict the ground condition or rock mass class ahead of tunnel boring machines (TBMs). This study evaluates the likelihood of a single ML model being able to predict ground conditions or rock mass ahead of TBMs regardless of the TBM type, rock mass condition, or the rock mass classification system used in classifying the rock mass conditions. To do this, extensive literature review was conducted to develop a list of ML models for the evaluation. Ground conditions/rock mass data and TBM operational data collected from the Pahang-Selangor Raw Water Transfer Tunnel (PSRWT) project were used to evaluate the selected models. The selected models were trained and evaluated on the PSRWT dataset. The performance metrics obtained from these models using the PSRWT data were then compared to the performance metrics reported by the respective authors. The second part of this paper focused on determining the best model among all the models reviewed using nine input variables from the from PSRWT dataset. Variable importance evaluation was conducted to determine the relevant input variables for this analysis. The results revealed that the ML models performed well in correctly predicting the rock mass conditions on the PSRWT dataset, but the performances were relatively lower compared to the performances reported by the various authors. However, when all the nine selected variables were used to train and test the models, better performances were achieved. This indicates that it is highly unlikely that a single ML model can predict every rock mass behavior with the same degree of accuracy using the same input variables. The model type, number and input parameters required for a given model will depend on among other factors, the soil and rock types and their conditions. It is worth noting that where rock mass classes were similar to the PSWRT data, the models’ performances were similar. It is therefore highly recommended to conduct site-specific modeling to understand which parameters are relevant and determine the kind of model that works well for the different cases. If a model is being adopted due to similarities in rock mass, it is recommended to proceed with caution and ascertain that model works in a similar manner.
Catching the Wind Institute of Southeast Asian Studies; Hutchinson, Francis E; Saravanamuttu, Johan
06/2013
eBook
However impressive the economic success of Penang has been over the past four decades, structural conditions in the region call for a fundamental reconfiguration of this Malaysian state’s competitive ...advantage.
In the 1970s, the ageing entrepôt transformed itself into a manufacturing hub for the electronics industry and a well-known tourist site. This outward-looking model of economic growth has underpinned Penang’s economic development up until the present. The question that now arises is whether Penang’s present mode of development will continue to be effective, or whether it will have to transform itself.
First, Malaysia in general, and Penang in particular are caught in a middle-income trap. Second, while the evolving weight of the global economy is shifting towards Asia, many of its emerging powers are competing with Penang in areas where it formerly excelled. Third, Penang is a state within a federation, and its capital, George Town, is a secondary city. Neither can rival Kuala Lumpur in terms of size or facilities, and thus must offer investors other attributes.
Effectively meeting these challenges while retaining Penang’s vibrant and living culture are the key issues that are dealt with in this second volume of the Penang Studies Series.
The consumption of the East Paleotethyan Ocean was the final step in creating the united SE Asia continent. However, uncertainties remain as to the significance of Paleotethyan-associated granitoids ...and when ocean closure finally occurred in west Indonesia and Malaysia. This paper presents new U-Pb geochronological, petrologic, elemental and Sr-Nd-Pb-Hf isotopic results for granitoids from west Kalimantan, West Java, Bangka-Belitung and Peninsular Malaysia. These granitoids are geochemically subdivided into the Eastern and Main Range granites. The Eastern granites include the granitoids from west Kalimantan, West Java and East Peninsular Malaysia and are dated at ~256–207 Ma, ~208–207 Ma and ~289–217 Ma, respectively. They have εNd(t) = +0.2 ~ −9.1, with two-peaks of +0.1 and −5.6, (206Pb/204Pb)i = 18.64–19.49, (207Pb/204Pb)i = 15.61–15.78 and (208Pb/204Pb)i = 38.56–39.47, and originated from a mixed source involving juvenile crust and Indochina basement. The Main Range granites occur in Bangka-Belitung (West Indonesia) and West Peninsular Malaysia, and have crystallization ages of ~226–198 Ma. They share the similar Sr-Nd-Pb-Hf isotopic compositions with those in the South China and Inthanon Triassic granites, with 87Sr/86Sr(t) = 0.70725–0.72652, εNd(t) = −5.6 ~ −10.8, ∆8/4 = 28.1–109 and ∆7/4 = 13.7–23.6, and were derived from a meta-greywacke source. Our data reveals the development of the Paleotethyan-associated Permo-Triassic granitoids in West Java, Belitung and west Kalimantan. The Bentong-Raub suture forms the East Paleotethyan suture boundary in Peninsular Malaysia, and extends southwards into the easternmost Bangka-Belitung Islands (and even West Java). To the north, it links to the Inthanon-Changning-Menglian suture in NW Thailand and SW China. It is concluded that the temporal pattern of the East Paleotethyan Ocean in west Indonesia and Malaysia correlates with that in NW Thailand and SW China. Its evolution switched from subduction to assembly of the Indochina-East Malaysia and Sibumasu at ~230 Ma. The Eastern granites might reflect active margin processes in response to the eastward subduction of the Paleotethyan Ocean, and the Main Range granites represent the post-collisional igneous rocks.
•The granitoids from West Kalimantan and East Peninsular Malaysia formed at 289–207 Ma.•The granites from Bangka-Belitung and West Peninsular Malaysia formed at 226–198 Ma.•The Bentong-Raub suture southerly extended along the easternmost Bangka-Belitung.•The Permo-Triassic granites in west Indonesia were the Paleotethyan-related products.
Malaysia’s 13th general election, held 5 May 2013, saw an unprecedentedly close race between the incumbent Barisan Nasional (National Front, BN) and Pakatan Rakyat (People’s Alliance, Pakatan) ...coalitions. For the first time in Malaysian history, a challenger coalition not only kept the BN from regaining the two-thirds parliamentary super-majority it had lost in the previous election, in 2008, but eked out a slim majority of the popular vote. While many Malaysian election is a big event, this one in particular merits close scrutiny. The present volume offers evidence and analysis with which to probe both the merits of common interpretations of who voted how, and why, and to suggest new readings on Malaysian politics.
“This team of well-coordinated young scholars has produced what is, without any argument, the best, most comprehensive and broadly based study ever of Malaysian electoral politics. With a common approach and format, their local case studies highlight not the ‘wholesale’ politics of broad national party strategy but the ground-level ‘retail’ promotion of local candidates. Malaysian electoral politics is local, these closely-focused studies show. Because voters wish to ‘own’ their local representatives, and they can own only those whom they know and can in some measure control. This is how fresh, young eyes see the familiar ‘slog’ of this country's ground-level electioneering. Thanks to them we now have a new base-line for future Malaysian electoral studies.”
— Clive Kessler, The University of New South Wales
This volume is a book of reflections and encounters about the region that the Chinese knew as Nanyang. The essays in it look back at the years of uncertainty after the end of World War II and explore ...the period largely through images of mixed heritages in Malaysia and Singapore. They also look at the trends towards social and political divisiveness following the years of decolonization in Southeast Asia. Never far in the background is the struggle to build new nations during four decades of an ideological Cold War and the Chinese determination to move from near-collapse in the 1940s and out of the traumatic changes of the Maoist revolution to become the powerhouse that it now is.
This book is an original, comprehensive and critical evaluation of Malaysia's 40-year strategy of 'poverty eradication' that has been successful in reaching its targets and yet controversial for ...being linked to the ethnically-oriented social engineering laid down by the New Economic Policy. Departing from narrowly focused studies of limited poverty reduction, the contributors to this volume of essays have brought together in-depth analyses of economic transformation, class and ethnic inequalities, social protection policies, the provision of key social services, political mobilization, and state capacity for planning. The result is a detailed examination of the scope and efficacy of changing policy regimes affecting Malaysia's post-colonial course of economic development, record of industrialization, and its relative resilience in adapting social policies to national pressures and global changes.
The story of Penang would be incomplete without the Big Five Hokkien families (the Khoo, the Cheah, the Yeoh, the Lim, and the Tan). It was the Big Five who played a preponderant role not only in ...transforming Penang into a regional entrepot and a business and financial base, but also in reconfiguring maritime trading patterns and the business orientation of the region in the nineteenth century. Departing from the colonial vantage point, this book examines a web of transnational, hybrid and fluid networks of the Big Five comprising of family relationship, sworn brotherhood, political alliance and business partnerships, which linked Penang and its surrounding states (western Malay states, southwestern Siam, southern Burma, and the north and eastern coasts of Sumatra) together to form one economically unified geographical region, having inextricable links to China and India. With these intertwining networks, the Big Five succeeded in establishing their dominance in all the major enterprises (trade, shipping, cash crop planting, tin mining, opium revenue farms), which constituted the linchpin of Penang's and its region's economy. By disentangling and dissecting this intricate web of networks, this book reveals the rise and decline of the Hokkien mercantile families' nearly century-long economic ascendancy in Penang and its region.
