East Asia

About: East Asia is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 17591 publications have been published within this topic receiving 274073 citations. The topic is also known as: Eastern Asia.

Cardiovascular epidemiology in the Asia-Pacific region.

Abstract: By 2020, non-communicable diseases including cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are expected to account for seven out of every 10 deaths in the developing countries compared with less than half this value today. As a proportion of total deaths from all-causes, CVD in the Asia–Pacific region ranges from less than 20% in countries such as Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia to 20–30% in urban China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and Malaysia. Countries such as New Zealand, Australia and Singapore have relatively high rates that exceed 30–35%. The latter countries also rank high for coronary heart disease (CHD) mortality rate (more than 150 deaths per 100 000). In contrast, death from cerebrovascular disease is higher among East Asian countries including Japan, China and Taiwan (more than 100 per 100 000). It is worth noting that a number of countries in the region with high proportions of deaths from CVD have undergone marked declining rates in recent decades. For example, in Australia, between 1986 and 1996, mortality from CHD in men and women aged 30–69 years declined by 46 and 51%, respectively. In Japan, stroke mortality dropped from a high level of 150 per 100 000 during the 1920s–1940s to the present level of approximately 100 per 100 000. Nonetheless, CVD mortality rate is reportedly on the rise in several countries in the region, including urban China, Malaysia, Korea and Taiwan. In China, CVD mortality increased as a proportion of total deaths from 12.8% in 1957 to 35.8% in 1990. The region is undergoing a rapid pace of urbanization, industrialization and major technological and lifestyle changes. Thus, monitoring the impact of these changes on cardiovascular risks is essential to enable the implementation of appropriate strategies towards countering the rise of CVD mortality.

Emerging models of social enterprise in Eastern Asia: a cross‐country analysis

Abstract: Purpose – This paper aims to compare profiles of social enterprises as they are emerging in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea and to highlight common features across countries allowing the identification of (partly) East‐Asian‐specific model(s) of social enterprise.Design/methodology/approach – The paper first examines the socio‐economic contexts in which new public policies and new NPOs' initiatives were launched to offer innovative solutions to current challenges, especially unemployment. Interactions between Eastern Asia and Western regions (EU, USA) are also analysed as to experiments and conceptions of social enterprise. In order to identify major convergences and divergences across countries in Eastern Asia, we rely on country studies presented in this issue as well as on a broad literature, related more specifically to the development and roles of NPOs and co‐operatives in this region.Findings – Five major models of social enterprise with specific dynamics can be identified in Eastern...

Developmental states in transition: adapting, dismantling, innovating, not ‘normalizing’

Abstract: Capitalist diversity is doomed in a global economy and the coming century will see ever more countries adapting their institutions to resemble more closely the Anglo-American model. Or so many believe. But to what extent have the ideological and institutional fundamentals of East Asian developmental states been eroded and in what measure is change being driven by an external-economic logic? Five propositions are developed in the light of the catch-up process, the sources and outcomes of financial liberalization, the Asian financial crisis, and Japan's bank crisis. The article concludes that the East Asian experience offers little comfort to those who expect that liberalization will lead to ‘normalization’.

de-Orientalizing the Chinese family firm

Abstract: Since the 1960s, East Asia's «four little dragons» have become the fastest growing areas of the world economy. Inspired by a newfound pride in the traditions of Chinese culture, Chinese scholars and China specialists have traced the roots of the region's economic dynamism to its «traditional ConAjcian culture,» one of familism, collectivism, and mutual benefit. Focusing in this article on one embodiment of Confucian culture, the Chinese family firm, I question the substantive interpretations and emancipatory implications of this new discourse. Historical study of 25 Taiwanese enterprises suggests that the reality is one of conspicuous gender disparities in the distribution of work and reward. The division of labor in these firms was not a natural reflection of tradition but a political construction of the family/firm head, who was pressed to build his firm out of family resources by several features of the national and global political economies. I argue that the Confucian thesis is a form of Orientalist economics that arose in the context of, and in turn supported, a very conservative politics. By simultaneously valorizing Chinese «collectivism» and obfuscating the gender, ethnic, and other inequalities on which it is based, this discourse not only reproduced Orientalist constructions of Chinese culture, but it also discouraged the discovery of subjugated knowledges and lent support to a new, flexible form of capitalist accumulation that is based on exploitation of gender and other social inequalities. [Orientalism, power/knowledge, gender inequality, family business, political economy, flexible accumulation, China/Taiwan]

Powerplay: Origins of the U.S. Alliance System in Asia

Abstract: In East Asia the United States cultivated a “hub and spokes” system of discrete, exclusive alliances with the Republic of Korea, the Republic of China, and Japan, a system that was distinct from th...