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Singapore's success story is essentially a'people'story. Singaporeans have good reason to celebrate the nation's golden jubilee with pride. In the short space of five decades the country has moved from Third World to First, and its real GDP has grown by 40 times! For this phenomenal progress, credit must go to its people, the Republic's primary resource.Against all odds and amidst dire predictions, Singaporeans proved that a united and resourceful community could build a nation from scratch. This book is dedicated to one segment of these Singaporeans — the Chinese community. In particular, this collection of essays focuses on the Chinese speaking members of the community whose many contributions are less familiar to those brought up on a strict diet of the English language.This celebratory book is divided into four broad categories. The first section examines the major Chinese organisations and their contributions in the past five decades. These include the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce & Industry, the Singapore Federation of Chinese Clan Associations, the Chinese Development Assistance Council and the Chinese Heritage Centre. In addition, it looks at the history and work of some of the social clubs and charitable organisations in the Chinese community.The second section examines some community issues that have engaged the Chinese community in Singapore's first 50 years. Two senior journalists and two academics review the evolution of the Chinese language, the integration of new immigrants from China and the influence of Chinese religions. The five essays in the third section trace the development of Chinese visual and performing art in the Republic. The last section looks at the interactions between Singapore's Chinese community and China on the one hand, and with the regional Chinese communities on the other.The contributors of this salute to the Chinese community are/ have been directly involved or are passionate about the subjects of their essays.Readership: General public, researchers and students interested in learning about the significant roles and contributors of the Chinese community in Singapore in the last 50 years.Keywords:Chinese Community;Chineses Language;New Immigrants;Chinese Organisations;Chinese Culture;External RelationsKey Features:This is first of its kind in English, credible, holistic and readableA good summary of the community after 50 years of independenceContributors are specially invited because of their close association to the organisations and the different topics'As Singapore celebrates SG50 this year, the publication of this book to document the Chinese community's contributions towards nation-building, is indeed timely and of great significance. This book records the resilience, the gumption and the confidence exemplified by our forefathers as they toiled to build a nation we are proud of today.The book not only encapsulates the development of the Chinese community in Singapore, it is also a tribute to our pioneers who have dedicated their lives to the nation.'Chua Thian PohPresident of Singapore Federation of Chinese Clan Associations“We are delighted that the Chamber's achievements and contributions have been included in this celebratory book on Singapore's Chinese community. We take pride that the SCCCI with its network of 4,000 corporate members and more than 150 trade association members covering 40,000 enterprises, has made its mark in the history of Singapore.”Thomas ChuaPresident of the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce & Industry

Nine years of violent conflict between Christians and Muslims in Poso from 1998-2007 elevated a previously little known district in eastern Indonesia to national and global prominence. Drawing on a decade of research, for the most part conducted while the conflict was ongoing, this book provides the first comprehensive history of this violence..

An up-to-date, comprehensive analysis of the high-yield bond market in Asia Beginning with a general definition of high-yield bond products and where they reside within the corporate capital structure, this newly updated guide looks at the development of high-yield bonds in the United States and Europe before analysing this sector in Asia. It covers issuer countries and industries, ratings, and size distributions, and also covers the diversification of the high-yield issuer universe. It includes a thorough technical analysis of high-yield bond structures commonly employed in Asian transactions, including discussion of the respective covenants and security packages that vary widely across the region. Chapters and sections new to this edition cover such subjects as high-yield bond restructuring, the new high-yield " Dim Sum" market, and the high-yield placement market shutdown of 2008 - 2009. Finally, the book looks at the new characteristics of Asian economies for indicators on how the high-yield market will develop there are the near future. Offers an extremely detailed analysis of Asia's high-yield bond market Features new and updated material, including new coverage of the key differences between Asian structures and United States structures Ideal for CFOs of companies contemplating high-yield issuance, as well as investment bankers, bank credit analysts, portfolio managers, and institutional investors

Advances in Business in Asia examines current trends and issues facing organisations operating in a global business milieu. The book comes at a pivotal time when many businesses are emerging from the 2008 Gobal Financial Crisis, and are seeking a way forward in dealing with the opportunities and challenges presented by global capitalism in general, and China, India, and the ASEAN region specifically.The book is a compilation of selected papers presented at AFBE conferences. All contributions were double-blind peer reviewed prior to acceptance, and represent the contributions of eminent academics in their particular field of expertise.The Asian Forum on Business Education (AFBE) is a not-for-profit organisation whose aim is to provide a forum of scholarly exchange in the areas of business, economics and management, with a particular focus on the Asia region.

One of the great puzzles in the historiography of American religion is the dearth of studies on the role of religion during the Vietnam War. The untimely death of Walter Capps, member of Congress and former professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, probably contributes to the relative absence of such studies, but it remains something of a mystery why so few scholars have stepped into the breach. This is all the more puzzling when one recalls that the Vietnam era in American history was a time of extraordinary religious ferment. Young people in particular, disillusioned with tradition and distrustful of all things institutional, embarked on an unprecedented quest for spiritual fulfillment and religious experimentation, a journey that introduced them – and, by extension, all Americans – to an array of gurus, various meditative techniques, and the rich panoply of Eastern religions. Finally, one has only to think back over the twentieth century to realize that some of the most important theological reflection has occurred during times of war; the names Richard Rubenstein, Jacques Ellul, Karl Barth, Elie Wiesel, and the Niebuhr brothers, Reinhold and H. Richard, come immediately to mind. The American response to the Vietnam War was not without its religious dimension. Consider the activism of William Sloane Coffin, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Dorothy Day, A. J. Muste, and another set of brothers, the Berrigans, Phillip and Daniel, not to mention the work of organizations like the American Friends Service Committee, Clergy and Laity Concerned, and the Fellowship of Reconciliation. When Martin Luther King Jr. strode to the lectern at New York City's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, a year to the day before his tragic assassination in Memphis, he added his considerable moral voice to the chorus of religious opponents of the war. Not all religious voices opposed the war, of course, and these ranks included a spectrum of voices from Billy Graham and Carl McIntire to John Bennett and Paul Ramsey. It is in sifting through these complexities surrounding religion during the Vietnam War that Rick Nutt's work is so important. After providing a brief and useful history of the Vietnam War, Nutt delves into the vagaries of religious life during the Vietnam era in American history. The author finds that those religious leaders who supported the war generally did so because they, like Lyndon Johnson himself, viewed it through the prism of the cold war. Add to that, very often, the notion of American exceptionalism – the conviction that the United States occupies a special place in the divine economy – and you had a very powerful rationale for prosecuting the war in Southeast Asia. Nutt also provides a nuanced reading of various theologians and their attitudes toward the war. American exceptionalism was also invoked by opponents of the war to call Americans to a higher moral standard. The author finds that the just war doctrine also cut both ways, invoked both to defend and to denounce the war. Such are the complexities of a vexed and vexing age. And Nutt demonstrates evolving attitudes toward the war, showing how people like John Bennett and organizations like the National Council of Churches altered their positions over time. The author expertly navigates these troubled waters, and the result is a judicious treatment of religious attitudes toward the Vietnam War. This is a good and important book, exhaustively researched and compellingly presented.

Asian Economic Systems provides readers with a crisp analytic framework, concepts and narrative highlighting contemporary Asia's systemic diversity. The framework facilitates insightful comparison with the western neoclassical ideal. This method allows students to easily appreciate the special virtues of various Asian economic systems, and compare them with those offered in the west. This objective is buttressed with background material on Asian economic history where appropriate, together with basic data on Asian and global economic performance to help students integrate concepts with experience.The approach provides an objective platform for discussing Asia's place and future in the new global order. It makes it clear that there is no universally best economic system. There are a variety of good systems and nations should choose the system that best suits their cultural heritage, values and aspirations.The approach informs discussions about the wisdom of forming regional free trade zones, economic communities (like ASEAN), and unions (analogous to the European Union), as well as forging a one-world system of economic governance.Also, Asian Economic Systems has a secondary goal. It provides the tools needed for training students in how to apply microeconomic, macroeconomic and financial principles to practical issues of systems and policies. The book focuses on East and Southeast Asia. The term Asia is used as a shorthand for the cultural region dominated historically by Confucian kinship networks, Japanese communalism and Theravada Buddhism, and more recently by Marxist–Leninist communism. It excludes the Middle East, Central Asia, the Himalayan states, South Asia, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Russia and America's Asia Pacific possessions.The book identifies and elaborates four rival market systems in contemporary Asia each with its own distinctive performance characteristics, potentials and humanist properties: (1) communist (China, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia), (2) Confucian (Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea), (3) communal (Japan), and (4) Theravada Buddhist (Thailand and Sri Lanka). Their comparative merit is partly obscured by differences in stages of economic development, epochal, and conjunctural factors, but their special positive and negative attributes are unmistakable, and are compared with North Korea's communist command system which is the region's fifth core alternative to democratic free enterprise.Contents:Universal Economy:Economics and Economic SystemsAsian Economy:Contemporary AsiaAsian Economic GovernanceAsian Economic Performance 1500–2006Core Asian Systems:Communism:North KoreaMarket Communism: China and Southeast AsiaConfucianism:Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and South KoreaCommunalism:JapanBuddhism:ThailandPan-Asian and Global Systems:Asia's FuturesReadership: Researchers, academics, graduates, undergraduates and general public who are interested in Asian economic systems.

This book includes chapters that investigate the development of international migration policy in major emigrant countries in Asia; and that in today's highly mobile world, migration has become an increasingly complex area of governance, inextricably interlinked with other key policy areas including economic and social development, national security, human rights, public health regional stability and inter-country cooperation. Role of institutions in facilitating or de-facilitating migration, the potential impact of environmental degradation on population displacement are key contents of the book. This book recommends that migration policy be aligned in a way so as to incorporate migrants'rights. Migrants, wherever they move on and whatever their status is must not be stripped of their human rights. Due to the fact that migrants, especially female migrants are more vulnerable at the destination point to multiple abuses than at their original location, migration policy has to take this into account. (Imprint: Nova)

Mainland Southeast Asia is one of the world's key regions for the smuggling and trafficking of illegal goods. Armed conflict in the region has spurred an international trade in small arms, and organized nuclear smuggling rings are now believed to operate as well. Human trafficking is widespread, with children being especially vulnerable either for slave labour or sexual exploitation. The region is being flooded with contraband and counterfeit goods such as pirated movies, designer label clothes and currency, especially US dollars, whilst antiques, oil and medicinal drugs - counterfeit as well as authentic ones - are also being smuggled. While such activity has been drawing increased attention, the scope, nature and mechanisms of smuggling and trafficking across the region are far from understood. Even less is known about the various synergies that may exist between the different trafficking activities. An Atlas of Trafficking in Southeast Asia brings together a team of key researchers and cartographic specialists to provide a unique overview of the major forms of illegal trafficking in the region. The contributors have been drawn from a range of disciplines, reflecting the complex reality of this diverse and thriving illegal economy. Geographer Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy provides a history of the drug trafficking routes in and out of the Golden Triangle, whose opium and heroin networks have played such a significant role in both the regional and global history. Anthropologist David Feingold, focuses on human smuggling and trafficking, a highly complex trade with many causes and consequences, whilst political scientist David Capie examines the illegal trade in small arms. There has been impressive rhetoric about the need to tackle the illicit arms trade but much less in the way of practical action. Southeast Asia has the highest rate of deforestation of any major tropical region, whilst wildlife is currently being extracted at six times the sustainable rate. Vanda Felbab-Brown, also a political scientist, examines the key interrelated topics of illegal logging and wildlife trafficking. Finally, journalist Bertil Lintner surveys the trade in counterfeit goods and contraband, two thriving activities in mainland Southeast Asia. Accompanying the text is a unique series of thirty-two full-colour maps. These maps have been especially drawn for the atlas and detail the trafficking hubs, counter-trafficking facilities and border status for each of the trafficking activities. Political, historical, topographic, ecological and linguistic regional maps are also included. An Atlas of Trafficking in Southeast Asia sheds valuable light on the complex and shadowy world of one of the key regions for illegal trading. An unparalleled reference resource, it will be welcomed by professionals and academics across a wide range of disciplines.

After a two-month stand-off between Red Shirt protestors and the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, violence and arson scarred central Bangkok in mid-May 2010. This shocking turn of events underlined how poorly understood the deep divisions in the society and politics of Thailand remained, even five years into the country's prolonged crisis. This volume collects analysis and commentary on those divisions from an unusually large and prominent group of Thai and foreign scholars and observers of the country. Contributions examine socio-economic, political, diplomatic, historical, cultural, and ideological issues with rare frankness, clarity, and lack of jargon.

When the Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia in 1975, they inherited a war-ravaged and internationally isolated country. Pol Pot's government espoused the rhetoric of self-reliance, but Democratic Kampuchea was utterly dependent on Chinese foreign aid and technical assistance to survive. Yet in a markedly asymmetrical relationship between a modernizing, nuclear power and a virtually premodern state, China was largely unable to use its power to influence Cambodian politics or policy. In Brothers in Arms, Andrew Mertha traces this surprising lack of influence to variations between the Chinese and Cambodian institutions that administered military aid, technology transfer, and international trade.Today, China's extensive engagement with the developing world suggests an inexorably rising China in the process of securing a degree of economic and political dominance that was unthinkable even a decade ago. Yet, China's experience with its first-ever client state suggests that the effectiveness of Chinese foreign aid, and influence that comes with it, is only as good as the institutions that manage the relationship. By focusing on the links between China and Democratic Kampuchea, Mertha peers into the “black box” of Chinese foreign aid to illustrate how domestic institutional fragmentation limits Beijing's ability to influence the countries that accept its assistance.