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Increasing tensions in the South China Sea have propelled the dispute to the top of the Asia-Pacific's security agenda. Fuelled by rising nationalism over ownership of disputed atolls, growing competition over natural resources, strident assertions of their maritime rights by China and the Southeast Asian claimants, the rapid modernization of regional armed forces and worsening geopolitical rivalries among the Great Powers, the South China Sea will remain an area of diplomatic wrangling and potential conflict for the foreseeable future. Featuring some of the world's leading experts on Asian security, this volume explores the central drivers of the dispute and examines the positions and policies of the main actors, including China, Taiwan, the Southeast Asian claimants, America and Japan. The South China Sea Dispute: Navigating Diplomatic and Strategic Tensions provides readers with the key to understanding how this most complex and contentious dispute is shaping the regional security environment.
The study of historical Buddhism in premodern and early modern Southeast Asia stands at an exciting and transformative juncture. Interdisciplinary scholarship is marked by a commitment to the careful examination of local and vernacular expressions of Buddhist culture as well as to reconsiderations of long-standing questions concerning the diffusion of and relationships among varied texts, forms of representation, and religious identities, ideas, and practices. The twelve essays in this collection, written by leading scholars in Buddhist Studies and Southeast Asian history, epigraphy, and archaeology, comprise the latest research in the field to deal with the dynamics of mainland and (pen)insular Buddhism between the sixth and nineteenth centuries C.E. Drawing on new manuscript sources, inscriptions, and archaeological data, they investigate the intellectual, ritual, institutional, sociopolitical, aesthetic, and literary diversity of local Buddhisms, and explore their connected histories and contributions to the production of intraregional and transregional Buddhist geographies.
The level of outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) flows from ASEAN countries has increased rapidly in the past two decades. This book examines OFDI trends and patterns in the ASEAN region, including the impact of the ASEAN Economic Community. It also provides analyses of country policies affecting OFDI and the drivers of OFDI in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam. Myanmar is studied as an investment frontier for other ASEAN countries.
'The dynamic economies of Southeast Asia have historically been very large recipients of foreign direct investment (FDI). As global capital markets have opened up, and these economies have developed their technological and commercial capabilities, in more recent years Southeast Asia has emerged as a significant source of outward FDI both within the region and beyond. This important volume, by a group of leading regional scholars, offers a timely, comprehensive, accessible and authoritative analysis of this phenomenon.' – Hal Hill, H.W. Arndt Professor of Southeast Asian Economies, Arndt-Corden Department of Economics, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
Asia has witnessed a proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs) since the turn of the millennium. The first regional agreement – the ASEAN FTA – was transformed into the ASEAN Economic Community at the end of 2015. In the meantime, ASEAN forged five ASEAN+1 FTAs and began to negotiate a sixteen-member Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Agreement. In parallel, the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), supporting U.S. foreign policy of "Pivot to Asia", was broadly agreed in October 2015. The RCEP and the TPP are accompanied by other mega-regional integration processes developing elsewhere in the world, including the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership for the European Union and the United States, and the Pacific Alliance among four Latin American member states. Meanwhile, APEC is also striving to meet its Bogor Goal targets and create a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific.Each of these mega-regionals aims to achieve greater trade and investment liberalization and facilitation and more harmonized trade and investment rules so that all member economies can participate in the global value chain of production. Instead of undermining, these regional exercises can be building blocks for a more liberal global trading system supported by the World Trade Organization.This book ruminates on these regional agreements, their economic and strategic rationales and challenges during negotiations and afterwards. The book brings together eminent scholars and experts to deepen our understanding of the complex nature of the mega-regional trade agreements and their implications. It is useful both for the academic and research community and for policymakers who focus on trade and economic cooperation issues.
A collection of papers that were presented at the Conference on ASEAN-EEC Economic Relations organized by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore from 6 to 8 August 1981. Part I on trade includes an overview article and papers on trends and problems of EC-protection; issues relating to the EC's imports of ASEAN primary products; ASEAN manufactured exports in the EC markets - an empirical assessment of common and national tariff and non-tariff barriers confronting them; and a constant market shares analysis of ASEAN manufactured products to the EC. Part II on investment includes an overview article and papers on EC investment in ASEAN and transfer of technology - the Malaysian experience, and ASEAN-EC joint ventures - a case of promoted firms in Thailand.
This book takes stock of the results of some two decades of intensive archaeological research carried out on both sides of the Bay of Bengal, in combination with renewed approaches to textual sources and to art history. To improve our understanding of the trans-cultural process commonly referred to as Indianisation, it brings together specialists of both India and Southeast Asia, in a fertile inter-disciplinary confrontation. Most of the essays reappraise the millennium-long historiographic no-man's land during which exchanges between the two shores of the Bay of Bengal led, among other processes, to the Indianisation of those parts of the region that straddled the main routes of exchange. Some essays follow up these processes into better known "classical" times or even into modern times, showing that the localisation process of Indian themes has long remained at work, allowing local societies to produce their own social space and express their own ethos.
In late 2004, Myanmar's best known general and long-serving leader of the military regime, General Khin Nyunt, was suddenly dismissed. This shock development, perpetrated by a regime that has defied all predictions of its demise and disintegration, generated widespread uncertainty both inside and outside the country. Official reassurances about continuing the 2003 "Road Map" process left many questions about the path ahead unanswered. Would political dialogue with opposition groups be resumed? How would increasingly restive ethnic groups respond? Would nascent civil society groups be able to play a role in national reconciliation? How would the new leadership deal with the flagging economy? What are the prospects for the large but under-funded and highly regulated agricultural sector? This book addresses these issues.
Religious and ethno-religious issues are inherent in many multiethnic and multi-religious societies. Singapore society is no exception. It has long been multiethnic, multicultural and multi-religious, being at the crossroads of many major and minor civilizations, cultures and traditions, and its religious diversity continues to develop in the current contexts of growing religiosity, religious change and conflict often in the name of religion. Despite this background, there is lack of in-depth knowledge, nuanced understanding and regular dialogue about religions and the meanings of living in a multi-religious world.This volume covering major themes of Singapore's religious landscape, religion in schools and among the young, religion in the media, religious involvement in social services, and interfaith issues and interaction fills important gaps in the knowledge and understanding of Singapore's religious diversity and complexity. A collective effort of researchers and practitioners, it is a timely and useful reference for scholars, decision-makers, leaders and practitioners as well as for concerned citizens and followers.
Financial crises after financial crises have occurred, but for many countries the last one, the 2008-09 global recession, was the deepest since the 1930s great depression. This book started with an objective to understand the impact of high inflation on poverty and food security in Southeast Asia. However, the global economy moved quickly into recession in 2008. Global recession has also come to Southeast Asia. Anticipating that the impact of global recession would be more severe than that of high inflation, we refocused the title of the book to Poverty and Global Recession in Southeast Asia. This book attempts to contribute a better understanding of poverty and food security in Southeast Asia during the recent global recession, considering both recent developments and the previous major crisis of 1997-98.
This volume is a collection of essays from a diverse group of scholars. Collectively, they present a multidimensional perspective of globalization in Southeast Asia. They delve into the political, economic, security, social, and cultural dimensions of globalization and local responses, offering evidence of complex interfacing between the global and the local, thus championing the need for a multidisciplinary approach to globalization studies. This volume depicts globalization as an uneven and, sometimes, undesired process, and resists the temptation for easy conclusions to the challenges facing the region today.
While extensive literature is available on various aspects of economic development in the ASEAN countries, there has been no book-length treatment of the fiscal systems and practices in these countries. This study fills the gap in the existing literature. In addition to the five country papers, an introductory chapter provides a comparative overview of ASEAN fiscal systems and practices, as well as compares the levels and structure of taxation in the ASEAN countries with those in the East Asian and industrialized countries. The contributors are public finance specialists from the various ASEAN countries.
"In 1511, a Portuguese expedition under the command of Afonso de Albuquerque arrived on the shores of Malacca, taking control of the prosperous Malayan port-city after a swift military campaign. Portugal, a peripheral but then technologically advanced country in southwestern Europe since the latter fifteenth century, had been in the process of establishing solid outposts all along Asia’s litoral in order to participate in the most active and profitable maritime trading routes of the day. As it turned out, the Portuguese presence and influence in the Malayan Peninsula and elsewhere in continental and insular Asia expanded far beyond the sphere of commerce and extended over time well into the twenty-first century.Five hundred years later, a conference held in Singapore brought together a large group of scholars from widely different national, academic and disciplinary contexts, to analyse and discuss the intricate consequences of Portuguese interactions in Asia over the longue dure. The result of these discussions is a stimulating set of case studies that, as a rule, combine original archival and/or field research with innovative historiographical perspectives. Luso-Asian communities, real and imagined, and Luso-Asian heritage, material and symbolic, are studied with depth and insight. The range of thematic, chronological and geographic areas covered in these proceeding is truly remarkable, showing not only the extraordinary relevance of revisiting Luso-Asian interactions in the longer term, but also the surprising dynamism within an area of studies which seemed on the verge of exhaustion. After all, archives from all over the world, from Rio de Janeiro to London, from Lisbon to Rome, and from Goa to Macao, might still hold some secrets on the subject of Luso-Asian relations, when duly explored by resourceful scholars.”—Rui M. LoureiroCentro de Historia de Alem-Mar, Lisbon“This two-volume set pulls together several interdisciplinary studies historicizing Portuguese ‘legacies’ across Asia over a period of approximately five centuries (ca. 1511-2011). It is especially recommended to readers interested in the broader aspects of the early European presence in Asia, and specifically on questions of politics, colonial administration, commerce, societal interaction, integration, identity, hybridity, religion and language.”—Associate Professor Peter BorschbergDepartment of History, National University of Singapore
This edited volume containing thirty-five chapters focuses on three main contemporary issues: the phenomenon of "new Indians" in the past five decades, the impact of rising India on settled Indian communities, and the recent migrants. By examining these interrelated aspects, this study seeks to address questions like: what does "Rising India" mean to Indian communities in East Asia? How are members of Indian communities responding to India's rise? Will India pay greater attention to people of Indian origin? And last but not least, will Indians in East Asia identify themselves with their ancestral land or view such identification as problematic?
Seeking to look beyond the day-to-day headlines and judgemental comments on developments in Myanmar, this volume gets under the surface to look at the underlying issues which the country faces regardless of its political future. After looking back to essay the historical forces and human agencies which have shaped contemporary Myanmar, the volume addresses health care and public policy provision with suggestions as to what potential roles the international community might have in assisting Myanmar's future socioeconomic development. Myanmar: Beyond Politics to Societal Imperatives broadens the debate on this state of more than 50 million people beyond the usual narrow didactics about democratization and economic policies.
The large market size and abundant resources of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS), including a large, motivated and cheap workforce, a rich agricultural base, extensive timber and fisheries resources, considerable potential mineral resources, and vast energy resources have seen the subregion increasingly recognized as a new frontier of Southeast Asian economic strength. This book aims to assess the recent economic, social and political developments in the GMS and identify emerging opportunities and challenges facing the successful transition towards a market-driven economy. The countries of the GMS are at a critical juncture where subregional efforts and cooperation must be made to fully address the rapidly evolving issues that are vital to appropriate policy formation, yet which remain widely debatable. The deliberations here shed light on the development stages and offer policy recommendations for pushing forward subregional cooperation.
This book examines common themes related to gender and ageing in countries in Southeast Asia. Derived from quantitative or qualitative methods of data collection and analysis, the chapters reveal how ageing has become tempered by globalization, cultural values, family structures, women's emancipation and empowerment, social networks, government policies, and religion. The chapters are concerned primarily with the following questions related to gender and ageing: (a) how do women and men experience old age? (b) do women and men have different means of coping financially and socially in their old age? (c) does having engaged in wage work for longer periods of time serve as an advantage to older men in contrast to older women? (d) does a woman's primary role as caregiver serve to disadvantage her in old age? (e) what kinds of identities have older women and men constructed for themselves? (f) do women and men prepare for ageing differently and has this preparation been mediated by educational levels? (g) does having a higher level of education make a difference to how one experiences ageing? (h) how does class shape the way women and men cope in old age? and (i) what does it mean to be a 'single' older person who has either lost a spouse through death or has never been married? Because the book employs a cross-country analysis, readers gain an understanding of contemporary emergent trends not only in each of the countries but also in Southeast Asia as a whole. Wherever relevant, some chapters have also identified similarities in trends on gender and ageing between countries in the Western hemisphere and those in Southeast Asia to highlight broader patterns across the world."The share of the elderly in Southeast Asia's population is steadily rising, and it is increasingly important to understand and plan for the implications of this trend. While in some aspects, the situation of older women and men in the region is similar, their life experiences of education, marriage, child-raising, work, and social networks differ, and this makes for different issues as they grow older. Moreover, a much higher proportion of elderly women than men face old age without a spouse. This book makes a major contribution to understanding the issues arising from ageing trends in Southeast Asia. Individual chapters in the book deal authoritatively with almost every country in the region, and are written by noted experts on the subject. The book will be an essential reading for anyone wishing to understand ageing issues in Southeast Asia, particularly from the perspective of gender." - Gavin Jones, Director, JY Pillay Comparative Asia Research Centre, National University of Singapore
The book aims to further the debate on the impacts of fisheries policies in the Indian Ocean Region in order to facilitate a new regional policy direction. A key argument of the volume is that ecologically sustainable and socially just development and management of Indian Ocean fisheries require a paradigm shift in the perceptions and policies of major stakeholders. A central policy challenge is to identify a collective regional interest for fisheries and accordingly the development of integrated management policies that link ecology and society and which incorporate individuals, communities, agencies, states and regimes into a holistic cooperative endeavour. Successful ocean governance therefore requires greater inter-state and inter-agency consultation and cooperation, an improvement in linking national initiatives to local action, increased participation of local government and local communities and the enhancement of local capability. In order to achieve this overall goal requires either the enhancement of existing regional institutions or the creation of a new regional body.
International trade is the life-blood of the countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Faced with several global trade issues the ASEAN countries individually and collectively pursue a multilateral approach by actively participating in the current Uruguay Round of GATT. The seven studies in this volume assess the strengths and weaknesses of international trading.
Is Myanmar (Burma) democratizing, or is it moving towards a new form of authoritarianism, perhaps one more consonant with other contemporary authoritarian regimes in Asia?Coming at a critical time, and one of growing interest in this Southeast Asian country among researchers and policy-makers, Debating Democratization in Myanmar addresses this complex question from a range of disciplinary and professional perspectives. Chapters by leading international scholars and practitioners, activists and politicians from Myanmar and around the world cover political and economic updates, as well as the problems of democratization; the re-engagement of democratic activists and exiles in domestic affairs; the new parliament, the electoral system, and everyday politics; prospects for the economy; ethnic cooperation, contestation and conflict; the role of the army and police forces; and conditions for women. Together they constitute an empirically deep and analytically rich source of readable and relevant material for anyone keen to obtain a greater understanding of what is happening in Myanmar today, and why.
The proposal for an Asia-Pacific-wide free trade agreement is one of the oldest ideas for promoting mutually beneficial regional cooperation dating back to the mid-1960s. In more recent times, the idea has found new support for two main reasons: as a plan B to the stumbling Doha Development Agenda (DDA) round of WTO negotiations; and as a solution to the noodle bowl of bilateral agreements in the region.This report assesses the political feasibility of the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) proposal and looks at alternative modalities for achieving free trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific. The report includes trade policy perspectives from the three largest economies of the region: the United States, China and Japan, lessons from similar proposals such as the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), possible convergence among the many preferential trade agreements (PTAs) in the region, and alternative approaches to regional economic integration.
