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Geopolitics -- East Asia. United States -- Foreign relations -- East Asia. East Asia -- Foreign relations -- United States. East Asia -- Politics and government -- 21st century.

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.

In the 20 years since the Paris accords of 1991 brought peace to Cambodia, the country has undergone what can only be described as astounding change. From a polity where the entire fabric of society had been rent asunder through years of war and genocide, contemporary Cambodia is fast becoming a vibrant state and assuming a new position in the Asia-Pacific region.

In 1955, Ngo Dinh Diem organized an election to depose chief-of-state Bao Dai, after which he proclaimed himself the first president of the newly created Republic of Vietnam. The United States sanctioned the results of this election, which was widely condemned as fraudulent, and provided substantial economic aid and advice to the RVN. Because of this, Diem is often viewed as a mere puppet of the United States, in service of its Cold War geopolitical strategy. That narrative, Jessica M. Chapman contends in Cauldron of Resistance, grossly oversimplifies the complexity of South Vietnam's domestic politics and, indeed, Diem's own political savvy.Based on extensive work in Vietnamese, French, and American archives, Chapman offers a detailed account of three crucial years, 1953-1956, during which a new Vietnamese political order was established in the south. It is, in large part, a history of Diem's political ascent as he managed to subdue the former Emperor Bao Dai, the armed Hoa Hao and Cao Dai religious organizations, and the Binh Xuyen crime organization. It is also an unparalleled account of these same outcast political powers, forces that would reemerge as destabilizing political and military actors in the late 1950s and early 1960s.Chapman shows Diem to be an engaged leader whose personalist ideology influenced his vision for the new South Vietnamese state, but also shaped the policies that would spell his demise. Washington's support for Diem because of his staunch anticommunism encouraged him to employ oppressive measures to suppress dissent, thereby contributing to the alienation of his constituency, and helped inspire the organized opposition to his government that would emerge by the late 1950s and eventually lead to the Vietnam War.

This is the only English language publication with a distinctly Northeast Asian (outside Japan) and Chinese perspective on pan-East Asian Regionalism (including both Northeast and Southeast Asian Regionalism) published within the last 5 years that is distributed internationally. It traces the development of Asian regionalism and analyzes China's role and policy on East Asian cooperation and integration. The 15 chapters in this volume directly involve all major policy researches and project designing in the process of the East Asia cooperation. They provide valuable information for knowing, understanding and studying the ongoing process of regional cooperation in East Asia.Contents:East Asian Cooperation: Path & ApproachEmerging East Asian RegionalismProjecting East Asian Community-BuildingEast Asian Cooperation: Where is It Going?Northeast Asian Community: Is It Possible to Turn Vision into Reality?The Development of East Asian FTA China's FTA Strategy: An Overview Designing East Asian FTA: Rational and FeasibilityHow to Promote Monetary and Financial Cooperation in East AsiaThe Asian Financial Crisis and Regional Cooperation Environment and Energy Cooperation in East Asia China's Economic Emergence and Regional CooperationChina's Accession to WTO and Its Impact on China–ASEAN RelationsChina–ASEAN FTA and Its ImpactComparing China and Japan in Developing Partnership with ASEANReadership: Academics, researchers and students interested in the development of the East Asian Cooperation Movement.

This volume is an updated survey and assessment of the recent policy initiatives of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, which have come to be known as the Hu-Wen's New Deal. Individual chapters are written by scholars from different academic disciplines and backgrounds. These scholars hail from Singapore, the United States, Australia, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China.Topics cover the patterns and process of leadership succession, emerging political factions, social unrest, sources of economic growth, income disparities, social security reform, land use policy, banking reform, corporate governance, labor and population policies, rule of law, and changes in the Party and ideology. On the external aspects, discussion includes China's changing relations with the U.S., Japan and ASEAN. In many ways, the Hu-Wen leadership today is still coming to grips with the same issues and problems as discussed in this book.Contents:Introduction:The Hu-Wen New Deal (J Wong & H Lai)Strengthening Governance and Rule of Law:Hu Jintao's Consolidation of Power and His Command of the Gun (J You)Deciphering Hu's Leadership and Defining New Elite Politics (C Li)Hu Jintao's Approach to Governance (J Fewsmith)Re-Making the Party's Image: Challenges for the Propaganda Department (Y Zheng & L F Lye)Reforming the Party and the State Under Hu Jintao (S-C Hsu)Rule of Law and Governance (K Zou)Sustaining Economic Growth and Reform:New Patterns of Economic Growth (Y Wu)Changes and Reform in Financial Markets (H Davies)Strengthening Corporate Governance: Completing the Unfinished Business of SOE Reform (S Y Tong)The Effects and Implications of Foreign Direct Investment in China for Other Developing Economies: Hollowing Out or Filling in? (B Chantasasawat et al.)Changing Land Policies: Ideology and Realities (J Wong & R Liang)Coping with Social Issues and Tensions:Income Inequalities, Limited Social Mobility and Remedial Policies (H Lai)Labor Market Reforms Under Hu-Wen Administration (L Zhao)Managing Social Unrest (Y Cai)From Social Insurance to Social Assistance: Welfare Policy Change (E X Gu)Governments, Markets, and the Health Care Sector (? Blomqvist)Population Development Strategies: The New Thinking (X Peng)Managing China's External Relations:Bush's Asia Policy and US-China Relations (Q Zhao)China and Northeast Asian Cooperation: Building an Unbuildable? (J H Chung)China and Southeast Asia Cooperation: New Developments and Challenges (H Zhang)Readership: University and academic libraries, experts in politics, diplomacy, economics, law and sociology analysts, officials, journalists and segments of public interested in China.