Declining Risk and State-Multinational Bargaining: Japanese Automobile Investments in India, Indonesia, and Malaysia
By Ali Nizamuddin
This study examines the bargaining interaction between host countries and multinational corporations over the life cycle of an investment project. During the early phase of an investment in an underdeveloped sector, market risks are high. Most foreign firms are reluctant to enter such an environment without guarantees. In the cases examined here, state protection was extended to automobile joint ventures so as to maximize returns. In this early phase, foreign firms were able to negotiate more favourable terms. However, once production developed, market risks began to decline. Consequently, host economies became attractive to other prospective investors and liberalization led to the influx of new foreign investment activity. The increase in new projects reduced state dependence and enabled host countries to play one MNC against another in order to increase their bargaining power.
Borrowing the Hong Kong Identity for Chinese Diplomacy: Implications of Margaret Chan’s World Health Organization Campaign
By Simon Shen
This article studies the campaign of Margaret Chan, the Chinese candidate who became the director-general of the World Health Organization in 2006, by analyzing the advantage of her Hong Kong identity to Chinese diplomacy. The following questions are addressed in detail: What was the benefit of using Chan’s Hong Kong identity for Beijing and what precisely is this identity? How did Chan’s fellow citizens view the campaign? Will Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” approach be enhanced, or hampered, by the campaign? The tactic of emphasizing Chan’s Hong Kong identity for the purposes of Chinese diplomacy is likely to benefit Beijing, within the liberalrealist framework, in the short term. However, an inevitable result seems to be the eventual diminishing of Hong Kong’s unique identity developed from the colonial era if, and when, other regions of China could develop the same attributes that could groom a Margaret Chan one day.
Ethnographic Studies of Voting among the Austronesian Paiwan —The Role of Paiwan Chiefs in Contemporary State System of Taiwan
By Kun-hui Ku
This paper analyzes the encounter of the indigenous peoples of Paiwan with the stateintroduced electoral mechanism within a democratic representation and multi-party system in Taiwan, and examines the position of Paiwan chiefly tradition within the state polity. Some models of “identity” voting treat electoral identities as more-orless fixed. This paper shows that electoral identities are more contextually mutable than can be accommodated in such models. The analysis is based on ethnographic investigations of Paiwan elections in southern Taiwan. The finding indicates that each election sets the framework for people to align and de-align themselves. It shows how the constituency of each candidate may change according to the type of election, the territory defined by the election, and the social positions of a candidate’s opponents. Moreover, it examines the ways in which the rhetoric of “tradition” is deployed differently in various types of elections, with a special focus on the ways in which candidates and voters alike strategically manipulate cultural idioms/house histories, and the affiliations they entail. It argues that traditional idioms and the symbolic capital of chiefly titles are still deployed by individuals at a regional level to engage with state electoral mechanisms, yet the persistence of chiefly titles also serves as a symbol of opposition to the encompassing Taiwanese state. Compared with other indigenous peoples encapsulated by the nation-state in the Pacific Rim region, this case study also shows the uniqueness of Taiwan in terms of political representation of indigenous populations.
Employment Problems with Irregular Workers in Korea: A Critical Approach to Government Policy
By Joonmo Cho, GiSeung Kim and Taehee Kwon
This study offers an in-depth analysis of the social security system with the externalization of employment relations. We particularly focus on the enticement for employers to engage in social security law-dodging measures, through management’s strategic use of irregular employment. The empirical results allow us to deduce why the Korean government tolerates law-dodging practices with irregular workers, which fosters their exclusion from the social security system. The results infer that the Korean social security system may cater to the interests of insiders in large companies, labour unions and the government, and thereby contributes to the exclusion of irregular workers from the social security system.
The empirical evidence confirms that one reason employers take on irregular workers is the possibility of avoiding social security obligations. Of course, such illegal practices are overlooked in part because of government policies that take measures to exclude small businesses from social security-related regulations and because of weak law enforcement. The Korean government may prefer to focus enforcement in the formal sector only until the enforcement capacity increases or the majority of the informal-sector members seek to cooperate with the government in obeying the regulations. There must be complementary social policy measures to guarantee access to universal social security. This paper suggests several policy measures from which a government such as that of South Korea could choose.
Myanmar: Prospects and Perils for the Military Junta
Review Article
By Bruce Matthews
Books Reviewed In This Issue
Asia General
Asia Pacific in World Politics. By Derek McDougall.Reviewed by Kazuhiko Noguchi
Business In Asia. Edited by Russell Smyth and Maria Vicziany.Reviewed by David Edgington
Asia-Pacific Security: US, Australia and Japan and the New Security Triangle. Edited by William T. Tow, Mark J. Thompson, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Satu P. Limaye.Reviewed by Carlyle Thayer
Asia, America, and the Trans formation of Geopolitics. By William H. Overholt.
Reviewed by Edward Olsen
The Politics of Ant i-West ernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought. By Cemil Aydin.Reviewed by Sven Saaler
China and Inner Asia
China’s Republic. By Diana Lary.Reviewed by R. Keith Schoppa
China Rising: Peace, Power, and Order in East Asia. By David C. Kang. Reviewed by Robert Bedeski
Marketization and Democracy In China. By Jianjun Zhang. Reviewed by Bruce Gilley
China Turns to Multilateralsim: Foreign Policy and Regional Security. Edited by Guoguang Wu and Helen Lansdowne. Reviewed by Weixing Hu
Provincial Patriots: The Hunanese and Modern China. By Stephen R. Platt. Reviewed by Joseph Esherick
Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People’s Republic of China. Edited by Jeremy Brown and Paul G. Pickowicz.Reviewed by Nicholas Simon
Intimate Politics: Marriage, the Market, and State Power in Southeastern China. By Sara L. Friedman.Reviewed by Janice Stockard
It’s All Chinese to Me An Illustrated Overview of Culture and Etiquette in China. By Pierre Ostrowski and Gwen Penner.Reviewed by Josephine Smart
The First Decade: The Hong Kong SAR in Retrospective and Introspective Perspectives. Edited by Yue-man Yeung.Reviewed by Maurice Copithorne
EAST-WEST IDENTITIES: Globalization, Localization, and Hybridization. Edited by Chan Kwok-bun, Jan W. Walls and David Hayward.Reviewed by Tan Chee-Beng
Northeast Asia
Institutions, Industrial Upgrading, and Economic Performance in Japan: The ‘Flying Geese’ Paradigm of Catch-Up Growth. By Terutomo Ozawa.Reviewed by Tim Reiffenstein
Japan rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose. By Kenneth Pyle.Reviewed by David Arase
East Asia and the Global Economy: Japan’s Ascent, with Implications for China’s Future. By Stephen G. Bunker and Paul S. Ciccantell.Reviewed by Kevin Cai
Okinawa and the U.S. Military: Identity Making in the Age of Globalization. By Masamichi S. Inoue.Reviewed by Dennis Frost
MONEY POLITICS IN JAPAN: New Rules, Old Practices. By Matthew Carlson.Reviewed by Axel Klein
POPULATION DECLINE AND AGEING IN JAPAN: The Social Consequences. By Florian Coulmas.Reviewed by Ruth Campbell
PAN-ASIANISM AND JAPAN’S WAR 1931-1945. By Eri Hotta.Reviewed by J. Victor Koschmann
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS IN KOREA: The Evolution of the Market in the Globalization Era. By O. Yul Kwon.Reviewed by Semoon Chang
THE KOREAN ECONOMY: The Challenges of FDI-led Globalization. By Wan-Soon Kim and You-il Lee.Reviewed by Judith Cherry
NATION BUILDING IN SOUTH KOREA: Koreans, Americans, and the Making of a Democracy. By Gregg Brazinsky.Reviewed by Tae Yang Kwak
SUSTAINING THE REGIME: North Korea’s Quest for Financial Support. By Robert Wallace.Reviewed by Bradley Babson
Towards Korean Reconc iliation: Socio-Cultural Exchanges and Cooperation. By Gabriel Jonsson.Reviewed by Young Whan Kihl
South Asia
DANGEROUS DETERRENT: Nuclear Weapons Proliferation and Conflict in South Asia. By S. Paul Kapur.Reviewed by John Harriss
INDIA: The Definitive History. By D.R. SarDesai.Reviewed by Abhishek Kaicker
Contentious Politics And Democratization In Nepal. Edited by Mahendra Lawoti.Reviewed by Maya Chadda
KASHMIR New Voices, New Approaches. Edited by Waheguru Paul Singh Sindhu, Bushra Asif and Cyrus Samii.Reviewed by Reeta Tremblay
Southeast Asia
HO CHI MINH: A Biography. By Pierre Brocheux.Reviewed by David Marr.
Mien Relations: Mountain People and State Control in Thailand. By Hjorleifur Jonsson.Reviewed by Peter Vandergeest
A History Of Cambodia. Fourth Edition. By David P. Chandler.Reviewed by Eve Zucker
BEYOND SUSPICION? The Singapore Judiciary. By Francis T. Seow, with a foreword by Gary Woodard.Reviewed by Michael Barr
Australasia and the Pacific Region
ABORIGINAL HEALTHWORKERS: Primary Health Care at the Margins. By William Genat with Sharon Bushby, May McGuire, Eileen Taylor, Yvette Walley and Thelma Weston.Reviewed by Judith Fitzpatrick
ONCE WERE WARRIORS: The Aftermath. The Controversy of OWW in Aotearoa New Zealand. By Emiel Martens.Reviewed by Morten Pettersen
ASIA IN THE PACIFIC ISLANDS: Replacing the West. By Ron Crocombe.Reviewed by Kate Barclay
BIOLOGY UNMOORED: Melanesian Reflection on Life and Biotechnology. By Sandra Bamford.Reviewed by Doug Dalton
