Showing papers in "Journal of East Asian Studies in 2004"

The Adaptive Developmental State in East Asia

Abstract: In 1997, several of Asia’s economies collapsed and the international community was called in to help mend the ailing region The crisis attracted a great deal of attention among both the scholarly and policy communities At that time, it seemed that the Asian miracle had come to an abrupt end Places such as South Korea enjoyed a prosperous run though suffered a dubious demise Later developers in Southeast Asia and China, having just emerged from out of the starting gate, quickly stalled in their attempts to ride the wave of Asia’s postwar economic dynamism Fortunately, things would not remain dour for too long Some countries, such as Taiwan and Japan, made it through the crisis relatively unscathed Both China and South Korea quickly rebounded Southeast Asian countries, such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand, adapted and have consequently begun new growth trajectories In the end, it seemed that the most severe and lasting casualty of the 1997 crisis was the East Asian developmental state model itself 1 To be sure, the more recent literatures on East Asian political economy have taken a sharp turn, wherein terms like “booty capitalism” and “crony capitalism” have quickly come to replace more laudatory titles such as the “East Asian Miracle” 2

The Chinese Axis: Zoning Technologies and Variegated Sovereignty

Abstract: Concepts of regionalization and regionalism have dominated discussions of emerging global orders. With the rise of the European Union (EU), scholars have begun to look for similar multilaterally negotiated regional organizations in the Asia-Pacific region.

Regionalism and Critical Junctures: Explaining the "Organization Gap" in Northeast Asia

Abstract: Northeast Asia, where the interests of three major nuclear powers and the world's two largest economies mingle around the unstable pivot of the Korean Peninsula, is a region rife with political and economic uncertainties. It is arguably one of the most dangerous areas in the world, plagued by security problems of global importance, including nuclear and missile proliferation. It has, to be sure, been widely touted as a region of economic promise. Yet despite Northeast Asia's demonstrable economic success at the macro level, and a panoply of highly regarded individual economic managers at the micro level, its collective economic management has nevertheless been disappointing.

Postindustrial Pressures, Political Regime Shifts, and Social Policy Reform in Japan and South Korea

Abstract: This article examines how postindustrial pressures and political changes have shaped recent social policy reforms in Japan and South Korea. Postindustrial pressures are categorized into exogenous and endogenous factors: exogenous being economic globalization and internationalization, endogenous being changing family and gender relations and demographic shifts such as population aging and declining birthrates. I argue that we need to attend more closely to the interactions between postindustrial and political factors to explain social and welfare policies in these countries. The conventional view on East Asian welfare states no longer adequately explains recent social welfare policy changes in the region.

After the Developmental State: Civil Society in Japan

Abstract: The Japanese developmental state catapulted Japan into economic prominence. However, almost just as world attention focused on Japan's distinctive model, the era of the developmental state was drawing to a close. A generation of scholars has ably documented the story of Japan's developmental state by focusing on industrial policy. They chronicled how a strong bureaucracy buffered by insulation from politicians lay at the heart of the developmental state. As Joseph Wong points out in the introductory essay to this special issue, scholars have also argued that the developmental state contained within itself the seeds of its own dismantling.1 Since the 1960s, formal powers had been stripped from the bureaucracy, leaving it increasingly dependent upon “administrative guidance” not legally enforceable.2 By the late 1980s, the very success of the developmental state had eroded the powers of the bureaucracy to set industrial policy.

Development, the Second Time Around: The Political Logic of Developing Western China

Abstract: The Great Development of the West is no more than grand conferences held in the west (Xibu Dakaifa zhishi xibu dakaihui). —State Council officials in charge of developing the west On the surface, the Great Development of the West (GDW, Xibu Dakaifa) campaign seems like a classic maneuver by a developmental state to bolster the growth of an underdeveloped region. Even in 2002, GDP per capita in western China, which includes the provinces of Xinjiang, Tibet, Ningxia, Gansu, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Chongqing, Qinghai, Yunnan, and Guizhou, remained at U.S.375, roughly equivalent to Haiti's GDP per capita in 1999. The effort to develop western China, according to the official rhetoric, was aimed at shifting western China's developmental trajectory closer to that of the rest of China, thus decreasing regional inequality and bolstering overall growth.

Regionalization and Regionalism in East Asia

Abstract: What will the future of East Asia be like in the years ahead? More than a decade after the end of the Cold War, we are still confronted with the fundamental question of whether a new world order will be shaped primarily by state, regional, or global forces and actors. This great puzzle of both theoretical and real-world significance has been widely debated among scholars and policy pundits of diverse normative and theoretical orientations, only to generate many competing explanations and prognostications.

Industrial Policy, Chinese-Style: FDI, Regulation, and Dreams of National Champions in the Auto Sector

Abstract: Long after the start of the reform period, and well after the proven success of the private sector, the fate of the state-owned sector in China continued to disturb the sleep of many policymakers in the Chinese central government.

Human Security and East Asia: In the Beginning

Abstract: Though operating at the margins of security discourse and policy, the idea of human security is of growing significance. Human security comes in two basic packages, one concerned with multiple aspects of human well being and the other more directly focussed on the protection of individuals and communities in situations of violent conflict. The reports of two international commissions, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (2001) and the Commission on Human Security (2003), reflect these different emphases. In East Asia the concept has been debated with some intensity. The initial reaction was cautious and negative, not surprising considering that the region has embraced a state-centric, neo-Westphalian, security order emphasizing national sovereignty and non-interference in domestic affairs. But since the economic crisis in 1997, states, regional institutions, academics and civil society groups have taken a more positive approach to the concept. Most of the attention ...

The Changing Shape of Islamic Politics in Malaysia

Abstract: Islamic polity. Muslims and non-Muslims have enjoyed the same civil and political rights,1 and Islamic parties have competed alongside secular ones in periodic elections, in spite of the distinctly Islamic timbre of Malaysia's state and society. Growing domestic polit ical volatility, however, has led many to question the viability of polit ical moderation. Mounting Islamism among the public, reflected both in the rise of Islamic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and in the greater priority placed on public displays and enforcement of piety, has spurred and been reinforced by increasingly Islamist political parties. Discussions of political change have come to revolve largely around the place of Islam in party platforms and state institutions. The relative position of Muslim and non-Muslim citizens in the polity has altered with the incremental Islamization of state and society, and observing religious rituals has become a matter as much of state law as of per sonal choice for Muslims. Internationally, too, Malaysia has come to emphasize more its ties with non-Western and especially Muslim majority states. Islam has thus become increasingly central to Malaysian politics—even though only slightly more than half the pop ulation (all ethnic Malays, and a small proportion of Indians, Chinese, and others) is Muslim.2 Fostering this trend has been a combination of ideational shifts, generational change, and geopolitical transformation. Malaysia pro vides a valuable example of how redefinition of Islam and its relation ship with other political discourses (primarily democracy and ethni cism), the rise of younger leaders who came of age amid the Islamic resurgence, and attempts to position a Muslim-majority state strategi cally in a world focused intently on the purported dangers of Islam force religion to the forefront of political debates. This reconfiguration makes religion a primary—and perhaps the preeminent—line of cleav age dividing the Malaysian electorate. Rather than simply a Muslim/

From Learning to Creating: Biotechnology and the Postindustrial Developmental State in Korea

Abstract: focus away from conventional manufacturing sectors toward postin dustrial sectors including biotechnology, nanotechnology, and advanced information and communications technologies. As such, the ongoing processes of postindustrial restructuring in South Korea have involved a transition from the industrial learning paradigm to a new knowledge creation paradigm where technology innovation, rather than technology borrowing, is key. This article examines this transformative process in the area of biotechnology and bioindustry development. It specifically looks at how the South Korean developmental state has begun to reinvent itself in order to meet the challenges of innovation driven industrialization.

Taxation Without Representation in Contemporary Rural China. By Thomas P. Bernstein and Xiaobo Lu. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, Cloth. 282 pp.

Abstract: The authors of this book tackle a subject crucial to understanding contemporary China. They place their subject-state taxation of Chinese peasants-in explicit historical perspective, and their analysis and conclusions can be usefully put in a broader comparative perspective. After an introductory chapter that distinguishes between central and local states, each with its own agenda and related challenges, the authors identify in chapter 2 similarities and differences between state exaction from the countryside in the Maoist era and in late imperial and Republican times. Chapter 3 addresses the open-ended, large, and often increasing exactions levied in the reform era. Chapter 4 links these changes to the pressures for expanding the local level of state activity and the crisis in funding new projects, and chapter 5 considers peasant resistance to levies placed upon them. Chapters 6 and 7 analyze administrative and popular efforts to limit and even reduce peasant tax burdens. Together these chapters prepare the authors to argue in their concluding chapter that the central government has attempted to stimulate local-level efforts at development while at the same time seeking to define and maintain political and social order throughout the countryside. The authors show that the locales best able to expand their revenue bases after 1980 tap the incomes of township and village enterprises (TVEs), which developed rapidly in some areas and not others. In general, the eastern parts of the country with relatively good resource endowments (including capital and labor) benefited most from TVE development. For many areas in the middle portion of the country and most in the western section of the country, the central government expected larger local government expenditures without really knowing how more local revenue would be raised. More problematic yet, the western parts of the country least able to expand local-level revenues were also most in need of additional resources to promote economic development because they were already poorer than locales in the east before the reforms and the economic gap between them only grew through the 1980s and 1990s. The problems of the uneven

Growing into Trouble: Institutions and Politics in the Thai Sugar Industry

Abstract: Why do some economies grow for several years and then stall? One obvious answer is that these economies have “overheated.” Another is that foreign demand for their products has dried up. This article explores a longer-term explanation—namely, that the institutions favorable for one stage of economic growth are less suitable for a subsequent stage. This idea of “growing into trouble” is consistent with Dani Rodrik's argument that the institutions required to stimulate growth may not be sufficient to sustain growth. We push this idea further by exploring the different requirements of structural change versus upgrading. Structural change connotes an economy's diversification through new investments, often producing real income growth. But economies can diversify without being more efficient, or their initial competitiveness can be based largely on transient factor endowment advantages. Upgrading refers to the competitiveness of these diverse activities achieved through locally based productivity improvements.

The Balance of Power, Globalization, and Democracy: International Relations Theory in Northeast Asia

Abstract: The end of the Cold War has given rise to a wide-ranging debate about the future of international relations in the Asia-Pacific. This debate has been difficult to assess in part because of the elusive quality of the outcomes being explored, such as whether the region is characterized by “stability” or “rivalry.” What exactly do we want to explain?

State Preferences and International Institutions: Boolean Analysis of China's Use of Force and South China Sea Territorial Disputes

Abstract: Thanks to supercharged economic growth, coupled with abundant physical and human capital, as well as political clout as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, China is a rising great power on the world stage. Whereas the former China under its closed, mysterious, and communist ideology was characterized as a threat to Asian and world peace during the Cold War years, today, ironically, a more open and internationally engaged China again triggers the “China threat” rhetoric. Despite China's constant assurance of peaceable foreign policy intentions and claims that it will “never seek hegemony,” skeptics rebuke these as a mere smokescreen that covers an enormous forward thrust, evidenced, for example, by the expansionist moves toward islets in the South China Sea. On the one hand, whether aggressive moves qualified China as a threat is still debated. On the other hand, whether provocative actions would escalate into large-scale militarized conflicts that jeopardize regional stability constitutes the immediate concern.

State-Technologist Nexus in Taiwan's High-Tech Policymaking: Semiconductor and Wireless Communications Industries

Abstract: The literature on East Asia's political economies identifies cohesive state bureaucracy and its effective intervention in the market as the key factors that have enabled the East Asian economic miracle and that differentiate the success of East Asian newly industrializing countries (NICs) from the failure of other developing countries. However, the sharply diverging growth trajectories of the Taiwanese semiconductor and wireless communications industries show that cohesive state bureaucracy and its effective intervention are not the generic trait of the Taiwanese developmental state, repeatedly found across industries and through time. On the contrary, the scope, depth, and coherence of state intervention are a variable rather than a constant. The semiconductor industry had an activist state promoting its growth from its very inception, whereas the wireless communications industry has failed to acquire consistent state support. Explaining the variation of state intervention requires not only an analysis of the state apparatus but also a study of its institutional links to the industry. This article develops an institutional explanation of the Taiwanese state's differing roles in promoting the semiconductor and wireless communications industries, but it differentiates itself from the existing literature of the developmental state and network theories by privileging the role of overseas technologists in influencing the scope, depth, and coherence of state intervention in two industries.

Machiavelli's Children: Leaders and Their Legacies in Italy and Japan. By Richard J. Samuels. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003. 456 pp.

Abstract: Despite all the merits mentioned above, this book has one conspicuous weakness common to many edited books: the lack of thematic consistency and uniformity among chapters. Even though the editors try to make the authors share a theoretical framework, the authors' interests are too country-specific to bring at least tentatively generalized statements. Their emphasis on country-specific contexts makes it difficult to present even a loose typology or systematic understanding of the relationship between domestic situations and globalization's effects. Ii Dong-loon 10 Center for International Studies Seoul National University

Patterns of Market Polarization and Market Matching in the Korean Film Industry

Abstract: Despite its embedded ambiguity, conventional wisdom tends to prevail over time. This may be because old adages recurrently embrace some ingredients of truth. As James A. Mathisen highlights, conventional wisdom plays a significant role in constituting knowledge as a starting point.1 For many people, numerous adages (the rich get richer while the poor get poorer; birds of a feather flock together) are most commonly perceived as true. More interestingly, the accuracy of the two folk wisdoms appears to be more salient in culture-producing industries, including the motion picture industry. Concomitantly, the two adages have long been connected to diverse societal phenomena and sociological knowledge. Although the movie market is a sociological topic, prior research concerning the motion picture industry has been relatively sparse in sociology. Among meager previous studies, Robert R. Faulkner and Andy B. Anderson's work is conspicuous.2 They sought to scrutinize the U.S. motion picture industry, Hollywood, in depth in terms of the interaction between markets and career mobility. They argued that the movie business, which operates through a single project (per movie), tightly interconnects with career trajectory for those who participate in the project. In particular, Hollywood tends to generate the embedded patterns of market polarization (the rich get richer while the poor get poorer) and market matching (birds of a feather flock together). That is, the key operating mechanism of Hollywood is saliently recurrent mar ket polarization and market pairings. Furthermore, in the movie industry, patterns of market polarization and market pairings have been reiterated under the cloak of a coping mechanism for a high degree of risk and uncertainty. The film industry per se is an epitome, which contains an element of volatile risk and uncertainty. There appear to be extreme risk and ambiguity involved in