{"title":"The United Front Principle","authors":"F. Sapio","doi":"10.1163/15700615-01802001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700615-01802001","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This paper contributes to existing work by exploring how the idea of the United Front in China has gradually changed and developed over time. This has had the power to shape policies and institutions which, at least in the intentions of their reformers, will have a definite impact outside the borders of the People’s Republic of China.","PeriodicalId":35205,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15700615-01802001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45389704","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Image-building as Impetus for the Growth of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)’s Engagement in International Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HA/DR) Operations","authors":"Gregory Coutaz","doi":"10.1163/15700615-01801006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700615-01801006","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA’s) engagement in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR) enables China to reassure the international community and change perceptions of its global intentions. Natural disasters are expected to increase worldwide, requiring greater PLA involvement in international HA/DR missions. However, maximising the public relations benefits of participating in such missions will require leadership to avoid short-term irritations and political speculation that often accompany China’s foreign intervention, hampering Beijing’s soft-power initiatives.","PeriodicalId":35205,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15700615-01801006","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47683288","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
T. Mukti, T. Warsito, Surwandono, Idham Badruzaman, Ulung Pribadi
{"title":"Paradiplomacy Management and Local Political Movement in Aceh, Indonesia, and Catalonia, Spain","authors":"T. Mukti, T. Warsito, Surwandono, Idham Badruzaman, Ulung Pribadi","doi":"10.1163/15700615-01801003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700615-01801003","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article focuses on paradiplomatic management in Aceh, Indonesia, and Catalonia, Spain, as a comparative study. The two different regions have at least two similar characteristics: both are recognised by central government as widely autonomous provinces compared to other provinces, and both obtained the wider autonomy in the same period, 2006; they also have same problems with revolutionary groups that attempt to withdraw from central government. This qualitative research aims to examine paradiplomatic management in both local governments. The main objective is to identify similarities and differences in paradiplomatic patterns and to scrutinise paradiplomatic activism pertaining to the instrument of political movements in both regions. The findings confirm that patterns of paradiplomacy management are typically similar, and influenced by the dynamic of local political movements, and that paradiplomatic activism is an instrument in political movements. It is argued that paradiplomatic management by secessionist regions performs the same pattern both in federal and unitary systems, and is reflected in the changes of regional laws on paradiplomatic affairs.","PeriodicalId":35205,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15700615-01801003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49114530","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Foreword","authors":"P. Régnier, P. P. Masina","doi":"10.1163/15700615-01801004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700615-01801004","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":35205,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15700615-01801004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47768269","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Hong Kong Nguyen-To, Q. Vuong, Manh-Tung Ho, Thu-Trang Vuong
{"title":"The ‘Same Bed, Different Dreams’ of Vietnam and China","authors":"Hong Kong Nguyen-To, Q. Vuong, Manh-Tung Ho, Thu-Trang Vuong","doi":"10.1163/15700615-01801007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700615-01801007","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Vietnam–China relations could be captured in the Chinese expression ‘同床异梦’, ‘same bed, different dreams’. Analysing Vietnam–China’s asymmetric relationship, cultural and political similarities, divergences in global ambition and the involvement of foreign powers, this study shows how the relationship is increasingly interdependent but is equally fragile. One possible cause is the low level of trust on both sides, evidenced by repeated calls to ‘consolidate political trust’ or ‘enhance mutual trust’ in their high-level bilateral dialogues.","PeriodicalId":35205,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15700615-01801007","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41844152","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Understanding the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)","authors":"Y.-Y. Chang","doi":"10.1163/15700615-01801005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700615-01801005","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article re-examines China’s proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) taking into account historical and philosophical narratives. It assumes that the BRI has crucial strategic implications; in particular, that it is not as altruistic as claimed but rather a self-interested proposal aiming to restore China’s grandeur and influence. The Chinese Dream (中國夢) and the concept of Tianxia (天下), ‘all under heaven’) are discussed to illustrate how the initiative is ‘marketed’. It ends with an interpretation of the impacts that the BRI might have on other parts of the world.","PeriodicalId":35205,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15700615-01801005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47126203","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Postcolonial Capitalism and the Politics of Dispossession","authors":"Geoffrey Aung","doi":"10.1163/15700615-01702006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700615-01702006","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article examines the trajectory of struggles over land and resources in Dawei, a town in southern Myanmar. The site of a major special economic zone project, Dawei has seen sustained mobilisation around displacement, dispossession and environmental degradation, against the backdrop of national political and economic reforms. Recently, scholars have argued that earlier visions of postcolonial transition have lost their empirical and political purchase, as farmers dispossessed of land increasingly become excluded from formal capitalist production. What happens to politics and political form if dynamics of exclusion, rather than transition, organise political activity under today’s conditions of accumulation? Repurposing Kalyan Sanyal’s concept of postcolonial capitalism, this article describes and theorises the politics of dispossession in Dawei. Tracing the political activities of activist groups and villagers, it argues that two contrasting political trajectories—one secular–egalitarian, one situational–differential—constitute a heterogeneous political field, reflecting the complexity of postcolonial capitalism itself.","PeriodicalId":35205,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15700615-01702006","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49202183","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Capitalist Trajectories in Mekong Southeast Asia","authors":"Dennis Arnold, S. Campbell","doi":"10.1163/15700615-01702002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700615-01702002","url":null,"abstract":"Recent scholarship on labour and development in the global South has renewed critiques of modernisation theory along two main lines. The first has highlighted the unsuccessful transition of peasant smallholders into wage workers, whose incomes and employment benefits, it was once argued, would both satisfy their social reproduction needs and allow for expanded consumption. As a consequence of this apparently ‘stalled transition’ a contradiction has emerged between modernisation theory’s valorisation of wage labour/full employment, and the precarious reality of work and un/underemployment in contemporary capitalism. The second critique to emerge has focused on the failure of numerous late industrialising economies to transition from low to high value-added manufacturing. In the face of this latter failure of themodernisation project, governments and non-governmental advisers have sought to adapt their strategies to more effectively regulate growth in low value-added accumulation. Among the more prominent illustrations of such adaptive responses, international financial institutions and development think-tanks have advocated expanded forms of spatially regulated industrialisation—including export processing zones, industrial corridors and integrated subregions, of which the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) is a prominent example. There is, however, limited evidence to date that the promise of well-remunerated wage labour is likely to be realised anytime soon. The evident contradiction between the promise and the reality of contemporary development strategies has led to disillusionment with industrial and other forms of waged and non-waged work. As a result, growing frictions at the point of production and beyond have emerged, exposing tensions and fissures in development models across the Mekong region.","PeriodicalId":35205,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15700615-01702002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43562362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Corporatist Institutions and Militant Actions","authors":"Jinyoung Park","doi":"10.1163/15700615-01702007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700615-01702007","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Drawing on data from archives and fieldwork in Myanmar, a country in political change from a five-decade authoritarian regime to a quasi-civilian one, this study explores the reasons for a prevalence of corporatist aspects at the early stage of reforms. The early introduction of corporatism in Myanmar diverges from other Asian countries that experienced transitions accompanied by labour militancy, and only later embraced corporatism when political power shifted to elected pro-labour parties. This article argues, first, that corporatism prevails in the rhetoric of the labour movement and in Myanmar’s industrial relations institutions, while labour militancy has simultaneously increased; second, corporatism in Myanmar has few historical precedents but has recently been promoted primarily by the International Labour Organisation (ILO); and third, while corporatism has failed to bring about industrial peace, the rhetoric and institutions of corporatism may limit the political potential of Myanmar’s labour movement by restricting unions’ activities to economic concerns.","PeriodicalId":35205,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15700615-01702007","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43626360","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Laos’s Peripheral Centrality in Southeast Asia","authors":"James Alan Brown","doi":"10.1163/15700615-01702005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700615-01702005","url":null,"abstract":"Laos’s position at the centre of the Southeast Asian mainland has entailed peripherality to regional loci of power. Its geography of peripheral centrality has however resulted in Laos becoming a realm of contestation between powerful neighbours. The analysis traces the construction of Laos within a regional space from pre-colonial times to contemporary special economic zones. Laos has been produced through mobility, foreign actors’ attempts to reorient space to their sphere of influence, and transnational class relations incorporating Lao workers and peasants, Lao elites and foreign powers. These elements manifest within current special economic zone projects.","PeriodicalId":35205,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15700615-01702005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46438015","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}