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This paper examines urban and well-educated Taiwanese women's resistance to the dominance of the valorization of female appearance, providing ethnography of undoing beauty in East Asia's era of post-developmentalism. Findings reveal the importance of the factor of time in their resistance to bodily grooming. First, participants have a "holistic" understanding of "doing beauty"; they consider this set of gender inequalities "chrono-normativity," which serves as a vector of social control. Second, the burden of long-term sustainability of aesthetic investment often turns into an unbearable weight that includes an endless quest for extreme slenderness, the exhausting immaterial labor of enacting cuteness and hetero-likability, and the difficulty of long-term financial affordability. Third, due to a bleak economic outlook and strong gender inequalities, disapproval of the quest for beauty showcases women's rejection of pursuing market success based on an aspirational and future-oriented temporality. Participants' "lying down" attitude and their emphasis on "assured little happiness" are witness to an anti-aspirational temporality, since women seek a present-focused and non-dominated experience of temporality. I argue that this anti-aspirationalism should be seen as an alternative configuration of neoliberal rationality where the care of the self and its ethos of individualism eclipse the pursuit of economic productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the ideology of pro-work conservatism prevails in East Asia, scholars have largely overlooked its discursive construction in media communication from a linguistic perspective. This paper examines the discursive construction of pro-work conservatism in 3,000 Weibo posts with the most "likes" in response to China's implementation of the three-child policy. Using the sociosemantic approach as an analytic framework, the paper finds that three dominant themes underpin the discourse of pro-work conservatism: women's sacrifice in the labour market, the high cost of raising children, and gender-essentialist norms. This discourse is articulated in the posts via a number of discursive strategies, including authorization, morality, and rationalisation. This paper sheds light on the influence of the one-child policy and the awakening of feminist consciousness in the new era and highlights the implications of language use in shaping gender-role ideologies to influence public perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introductory article aims to present an overview of the contribution that East Asian scholars have made to Translation Studies as a field of enquiry. Apart from some contributions from countries such as Thailand and Vietnam, most of the publications of the last four decades involve Chinese, Korean, and Japanese themes and are authored by scholars from these areas or focused on the languages and cultures of China, Korea and Japan. The article considers the publications on audiovisual as well as literary and news translation, highlighting articles, book chapters and monographs that have delved into translations involving East Asian languages, notably Chinese, Korean and Japanese. The final section introduces the selection of papers that conform this thematic issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Just as they are to the events themselves, the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics have become central to academic research on the Games and their political, social, and cultural roles. And so the recent string of Olympic Games held in East Asia – two of them under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic – offer the opportunity to think both about region-specific meanings associated with these highly scripted affairs and about the ways they might destabilize broader judgments about the Olympics and their implications. This paper introduces the contributions to this special volume on the Opening Ceremonies at Asia's recent Olympic Games, aiming to draw attention not only to the specific contributions of each paper but also to the themes that they collectively engage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professor Gavin W. Jones dedicated an impressive 58-year career to extensive research on various aspects of population and development in Asia. As a seasoned consultant, he was pivotal in shaping population policies and programs in more than 10 Asian countries, impacting the region’s demographic landscape. Throughout his illustrious career, Gavin has left an indelible mark through his prolific publications, with 30 books, over 180 journal articles, and book chapters. His body of work covered various demographic subjects in the Asia-Pacific region, significantly contributing to our understanding of population dynamics in Southeast, South, and East Asia. His research has been instrumental in informing policy decisions in these regions by providing evidence-based recommendations. In addition to his consultancy and academic achievements, Gavin actively engaged in professional networks, fostering collaborations and facilitating knowledge exchange among fellow demographers and researchers. His commitment to mentorship has been invaluable, nurturing emerging demographers and supporting the next generation of population scholars in population and development. The present paper aims to delve into Professor Gavin W. Jones’s specific contributions to elucidate the intricate relationship between population and development, an area that inevitably intersects with other papers in this festschrift on marriage, fertility, and urbanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a sample of East Asian banks covering the period 1999–2014, this paper analyses the impact of natural disasters on commercial bank performance and how financial integration moderates this relationship. A dynamic GMM model reveals that natural disasters significantly lower deposit ratios but have no contemporaneous relationship with liquidity, credit risk, profitability and default risk. There is also evidence of a lagged effect of disasters, increasing deposits and lowering liquidity one year after the event. Furthermore, foreign banking claims, specifically those extended by regional Asian lenders, help to alleviate the deposits decline in the aftermath of natural disasters. These baseline findings are mainly driven by severely affected countries. Overall, the paper highlights the role of commercial bank deposits and foreign banking claims as sources of finance for post-disaster recovery. In particular, the resilience of Asian foreign claims in the event of natural disasters provides evidence to support intra-regional financial integration in East Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on three Far East cabinets that have ended up in Sweden for various reasons and on various routes. Some specific characteristics have been analysed using various scientific methods: sectional microscopy, wood taxonomy, X–ray fluorescence microscopy, pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, strontium isotope ratio measurement, and radiocarbon dating. The results show that the cabinets contain wood from species endemic to Japan, namely asunaro (Thujopsis dolabrata) and hinoki (Chamaecyparis obtuse). They are coated with urushi sap derived from Toxicodendron vernicifluum trees, in two cases confirmed to be harvested in China, and one case probably blended with sap exuded from Toxicodendron succedanea harvested in North Vietnam. Their black appearance is due to a soot pigment typical of many products from the early Edo period or older. The data obtained with scientific methods, unavailable in the past, improve knowledge about these cabinets. Such new information should be made available to scholars and the general public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This conceptual article is to problematize Western-centered comparative curriculum studies in South Korea, drawing on research related to postcolonial criticisms of comparative education and curriculum studies, and to suggest a decolonial research imagination for comparative curriculum research in South Korea and East Asia broadly, based on Kuan-Hsing Chen's idea of Asia as method. To this end, I elaborate on Chen's concepts of inter-referencing and critical syncretism for decolonizing the compliant research imagination. Additionally, I argue for the shift of the point of reference towards Asia, the extension of curriculum manifestation as a unit of comparison with curriculum conceptualized as a space for constructing cultural imaginary and subjectivity, and curriculum researchers' onto-epistemological considerations as a comparativist. I conclude the paper with a caution not to dismiss Western contributions to curriculum research in Asia and the possibilities of the existence of resistance to Western-dominant knowledge structure in South Korean curriculum scholarship in the forms of translation and/or hybridity. This study can contribute to decolonizing the intersection of comparative education and curriculum studies that has been Western-centered in South Korea and suggesting a transgressive onto-epistemological orientation for comparative curriculum studies in the contexts of South Korea in particular and East Asia in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IPHS offers prizes and awards in urbanism, history, planning and the environment, mainly focusing on cities from the late nineteenth century. This year IPHS 2022 Prize and Award Winners were announced at the Awards Ceremony, which took place at the Delft Hybrid Format Conference on the 6th of July 2022. At the ceremony, IPHS Planning Perspectives Prize, IPHS Book Prizes, Anthony Sutcliffe Dissertation Award, IPHS Best Post-Graduate Planning History Paper Prize, Sir Peter Hall Award for Lifetime Achievement, East Asia Planning History (EAPH) Prize, and Koos Bosma Prize in Planning History Innovation have found their owners. This document provides information about the Prize and Award winners and their award-winning works and includes commendations based on the Judging Panel and Committee Reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a Bourdieusian field analysis to unpack the intersection among sexuality, place, and mobility through an ethnographic study of Taiwanese gay men's trips to Bangkok. It unveils that how the societal cause of 'Eastern orientation'— a racialised sexual desire for 'white Asians' among Thai gay men — and other material circumstances have transformed distinct scales of territory, including nation-states and gay establishments, into nuanced yet not thoroughly disparate sexual fields. Such nuances are closely associated with gay men's intra-Asian mobility between Thailand and Taiwan that I elucidate through the concept of 'sexuality on the move.' This concept suggests that individuals' geographical movements may diversify their sexual habitus as well as fluctuate their tiers of desirability and vice versa, delineating how different aspects of human sexuality are reshaping and reshaped during or after their embodied mobility. At the same time, their yearning for sexuality alterations also shapes the pattern of individuals' trans-national and intra-urban movements. Moreover, the paper underscores that these alterations are not just objective reality but these gay men's subjective belief which, along with their sexual desire, embodied practices and personal experiences composing a conceptual 'circuit of sex and tourism', attracting and captivating gay men to participate in and then be obsessed with this form of sexual/touristic practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theory of international regime complexity that frames this study specifies expectations for international cooperation stemming from different combinations of hierarchy and differentiation among institutions in regime complexes. This paper compares relationships between regional financial arrangements and the International Monetary Fund in the regional complexes for crisis finance in East Asia, Latin America, and the euro area during 2000-2019 and tests these expectations. Creditor states that sit at the nexus between global and regional institutions are particularly influential in the choice of architecture (the combination of hierarchy and differentiation) for these complexes but are constrained by arrangements inherited from previous decades. Once chosen, the complex's architecture in turn shapes policy adjustment in borrowing countries and influences whether states pursue regime shifting or competitive regime creation when dissatisfied with institutions. These findings generally coincide with expectations, but exceed the degree of policy adjustment that the core theory expected for the euro area. Interinstitutional collaboration, the dynamics of which are elaborated, fills this explanatory gap. The paper concludes that relations among institutions are essential for understanding the outcomes and evolution of regime complexes and underpin a more complete explanation than provided by singular institutionalism, the power-gap hypothesis and other alternative approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the mid-2000s, the Russian Far East (RFE) has seen a revival of agriculture accompanied by rapid agrarian transformation that has taken a unique form because of the area's proximity to China. However, the existing literature either does not recognize Chinese presence or only studies it in terms of capitalist relationships transplanted directly from China and isolated from local realities. This paper seeks to remedy this oversight by exploring the influence of the multifaceted Chinese presence on RFE agriculture. We use the concept of social topology to demonstrate how different forms of economic life have not evolved as "Russian" or "Chinese," but instead present a bundle of capitalist and non-capitalist relationships that are continuously changing and rewriting themselves. We also explain the observed effect of China's simultaneous presence and absence in RFE's agriculture: Chinese agricultural practices are tightly embedded in local social networks and are loosely tethered to local infrastructure, but the Chinese presence also manifests in perceptions and imaginaries that influence and determine the strategies of the Russian state, agroholdings, and Russian farmers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

UNESCO's relatively high prestige across East Asia has spurred intensifying efforts by governments to use its imprimatur to legitimate official narratives of the past and visions of the future. This article focuses on China's use of UNESCO as an arena for competitive national 'branding' in the education field, especially relating to STEM and AI. We analyse the Chinese state's engagement with UNESCO's education work in the context of shifts in budgetary and political influence within the organisation, and of a growing 'securitisation' of education within China itself. We show how Chinese engagement with UNESCO's educational agenda reflects both domestic political considerations and the 'major country diplomacy' of Xi Jinping, as manifested in the 'Belt and Road Initiative' and intensifying strategic competition with the USA. We conclude by discussing the implications of rising Chinese influence within the organisation for UNESCO's capacity for articulating a coherent and consistently humanistic vision for education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anoplophora chinensis Forster (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) is a highly polyphagous and invasive species native to East Asia that makes tunnels in the stems of a variety of broad-leaved plant species and cultivated plant species, as well as citrus and hazelnut. In this study, we collected A. chinensis from hazelnut orchards in Sakarya province of Türkiye, and subsequently recovered the parasitoid Megaselia scalaris (Diptera: Phoridae) from dead adult beetles. The present study reports M. scalaris as a new natural enemy of A. chinensis, and more study is needed on this species' behaviour and biological parameters as a parasitoid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese Tofu (1971), edited by the acclaimed female writer Lin Haiyin in Taiwan, came out in a rapidly changing Cold War order in East Asia. Focusing on this previously neglected work, this article offers a close reading of how a mundane foodstuff shed light on contested Chineseness, one informed by Lin's own gendered experience in the diaspora. Rather than reifying or essentializing "Chinese" foodways, tofu opened up the possibility of a more cosmopolitan geography. That geography pointed to former imperial frontiers, the Sinitic cultural sphere, and beyond. The book's afterlife in reform-era China underscores the ongoing debate over what it means to be Chinese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that amid intensifying Sino-U.S. rivalry, middle powers in East Asia have contributed towards regional peaceful change through the exercise of good regional citizenship, a concept which draws on and modifies from the more commonly known good international citizenship which is closely associated with middle powers. Specifically, good regional citizenship involves proactively strengthening inclusive multilateralism, enhancing the rules-based order, and contributing to bridging efforts in East Asia. The paper examines the good regional citizenship of two middle powers, namely Australia and Indonesia. It finds that while both countries have exercised good regional citizenship, their specific strategies or the outcomes of their initiatives on regional dynamics have varied as a result of their relations with the respective major powers and their general foreign policy approaches. Australia's good regional citizenship has supported the preservation of U.S. leadership in East Asia vis-à-vis the rise of other regional powers, while Indonesia's good regional citizenship has helped to narrow the gaps among regional actors through mechanisms led by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the consequences of the rise of foreign state-led investment for international politics? Existing research oscillates between a 'geopolitical' and a 'commercial' logic driving this type of investment and remains inconclusive about its wider international reverberations. In this paper, I suggest going beyond this dichotomy by analyzing its systemic consequences. To do so, I conceptually delineate a geoeconomic approach that emphasizes the globalized nature of foreign state investment. I argue that foreign state investment creates system-level patterns, which can be studied by observing similar sectoral and geographic investment behavior. I map this phenomenon globally for the first time, drawing on the largest dataset on foreign state investment. Empirically, I show how foreign state investment is highly concentrated in Europe, North America and East Asia, and is owned by a handful of dominant states. It is especially European geo-industrial clusters that represent the hotspots of such concentration. The findings also suggest that three global industries – energy production, high-tech manufacturing, and transportation and logistics – form the key areas for current and future state-led investment concentration. With these contributions, the paper illuminates the increasing presence of states as owners in the global political economy, and facilitates its study as a geoeconomic phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights the highly contingent and constrained possibilities for states concerned with gaining and maintaining economic and, relatedly, strategic advantage in East Asia in a world dominated by global value chains (GVCs) owned and controlled by transnational capital. While the reorganisation of production has given rise to new contender states such as China, challenging the economic and strategic positions of others, the ability for states to engage in non-market conforming behaviour designed to reduce technological dependence, accumulate reserves and embolden national positions against competitors is far more constrained than it once was. Prioritising the relative power and leverage of states operating in various contexts over time, three types of state are identified within contemporary East Asia: former developmental states under persistent competitive pressures compelling very different policy agendas to those that underpinned their respective development stories; a somewhat exceptional constrained "aspirant state", attempting mercantilist strategies to achieve strategic upgrading under the spectre of systemic exclusion and formidable domestic challenges; and, finally, relatively vulnerable "eke-out" competition states, attempting to leverage labour cost, geography and regulation to maintain economic relevance within the context of hyper competitiveness while also engaging in forms of quarantining and patronage. Our overarching argument is that the latitude to both pursue and leverage ES strategies common in the past is all but gone, even for the most powerful of contender states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review essay summarizes recent research on the topics of gender inequalities, family obligations, and intergenerational support in East Asia. We introduce four papers featured in a special issue published in 2021 and 2022 in this journal. We conclude by highlighting the continual importance of intergenerational support and family obligations in East Asian societies. We foresee that families and gender relations in East Asia will continue to evolve with characteristics of both modern gender egalitarian values and traditional family responsibilities. We call for more research on the topics and recommend that future research should investigate the intersection of gender and other dimensions of social inequality, employ advanced research methods, and examine the impacts of recent policies on gender and family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to read Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945) as a New Confucian, with a focus on his early moral philosophy. While the influence of Buddhism on Nishida's philosophy is surely significant, this paper argues that it is actually Confucianism which plays a more important role. It is for this reason that fruitful comparisons can be made between his work and the so-called New Confucianism. I would like to explore three key questions with respects to this important yet relatively overlooked aspect: Firstly, in what way has Nishida conformed to Confucian discourse in his moral philosophy? Secondly, what elements of Confucianism has Nishida revisited? Thirdly, what lessons can Nishida offer to philosophy as a New Confucian? It is my suggestion that reading Nishida as a New Confucian may help to further open up the potential of Nishida philosophy, Confucian philosophy, as well as philosophy in East Asia in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the latest issue's "Editor's Note" of EASTS, Wen-hua Kuo made a call to East Asian science studies scholars to commit to an archeology of the social and technical infrastructure of epidemics. Coincidently, ten historians and sociologists working on science, technology, medicine, and environment with a focus on China, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea had just begun a collective effort to understand how face masks had become the most important part of the current pandemic governance in East Asia. As its first step, a virtual workshop, "The Socio-Material History of Masked Societies in East Asia," was held at the Max-Planck Institute for the History of Science on 26 October 2020. This forum aims to introduce the virtual meeting's outcome to the wider EASTS community and encourages them to engage with the collaborative enterprise to investigate the history of masks. All papers focus on the socio-material dimension of masks while problematizing current culturalist explanatory narratives about "masked societies" in East Asia. By doing so, the papers show how mask use is closely linked to heterogenous but interconnected entanglements of environmental governance, political movements, and risk cultures in East Asian polities. It interrogates these relationships in the context of scientific controversies and quarantine regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how middle-class migrant East Asian mothers approach their children's education in England, where educational culture is perceived to be considerably different from East Asia. Based on dichotomous perceptions about East Asian and English education cultures, dialectical perspectives were used to analyse the life history interview data, particularly four dialectical frameworks developed by [Baxter, L.A. (1990). Dialectical contradictions in relationship development. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 7, 69–88. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407590071004]: selection, separation, neutralization, and reframing. In order to release tensions arising from the two-perceived different educational systems these mothers used different dialectical strategies. The paper argues that East Asian mothers' behaviour towards their children's education cannot be categorized using a uniform cultural framework and a diasporic space provides multiple possibilities for exercising divergent approaches for them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on gender relations has overlooked the similarities and differences among East Asian societies. To fill this gap, this study investigated the association among men's gender-role attitudes, the actual share of housework, and perceptions of fairness in housework division, and how it differs across four East Asian societies. Using data from the 2012 International Social Survey Programme, the results demonstrated that Japanese and Taiwanese men had more egalitarian attitudes than mainland Chinese and South Koreans, while mainland Chinese men did more housework. Korean men held the most traditional gender-role attitudes and were least likely to feel they did less than their fair share. The paper concludes with implications for the gender revolution, suggesting policies should promote men's involvement in the family besides helping mothers balance work and family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past few decades, the pendulum of regime change across the world has swung dramatically from democratization to autocratization. There has been much contention and debate about the extent, variation, and causes surrounding these processes. This special issue turns the spotlight away from regime change and political elites towards societal agents, particularly societal agents who mobilize and resist against autocratization unfolding within democratic and authoritarian regimes. In this introductory article, we review and critique the literature on autocratization studies, and introduce our concept of "agents of resistance." We argue that agents of resistance can develop and engage in repertoires against autocratization under any regime type. Specifically, the contributions in this special issue highlight seemingly mundane repertoires of resistance, and how they can grow through cumulative interactions among societal agents, and between societal agents and the state. Scholars should recognize the full spectrum of resistance and both their liberal and illiberal elements to better assess the impact on global trends of democratization or autocratization. Finally, this article discusses some methodological trends with regards to the existing literature, and introduces the contributions that compose this special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The feasibility of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) is assessed against the established Suez Canal route (SCR) and the longer Cape of Good Hope route. The analysis reflects real practices of route choice for oil products between the Far East and Europe depending on varying market conditions. A required freight rate (RFR) model is developed based on both optimal speeds and real speeds. Automatic Identification System (AIS) data are used to identify route choice patterns and real speeds of Long Range 2 (LR2) tankers during 2013–2020. Cargo value on-board and alternative fuel types/modes based on oil, and current and future technologies of dual fuel Oil/Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) are considered. Cape is a competitive alternative under low fuel/commodity prices, and its use is explained, especially during the oil oversupply in 2015–2016 and 2020. The NSR is more competitive when moving towards short-hauls, under high fuel/commodity prices, and discounted or zero icebreaking fees, but is uncompetitive most of the times when ice damage repairs are included in the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including history of science in East Asia; Korean and Taiwanese academic contexts; and conversations among Asian societies.

Metal artifacts from the Paleometal Epoch (ca. 1100 BC–400 AD) of the Primorye (Russian Far East) have shed new light on the introduction of the earliest bronzes into the Pacific coastal areas of prehistoric Eurasia. However, little is known about raw material circulation and the role of metal in the context of inter-regional exchange. This paper investigates 12 copper artifacts from major Paleometal settlements using alloy composition, trace elements, and lead isotopes to explore the metal sources and distribution networks. The results suggest that most objects are made of a copper-tin alloy, but some have arsenic as a significant minor element. Geologically, copper is unlikely to have come from local ore sources, but rather from the Liaoxi corridor and Liaodong Peninsula in Northeast China. This may indicate an inland route of metal trade across Northeast China or alternately, a coastal route via the northern Korean Peninsula. Archaeologically, the combined study of artifact typology and chemistry indicates two possible origins for the metal: the Upper Xiajiadian culture in Northeast China and Slab Grave culture in Mongolia/Transbaikal. Remarkably, the connection with Upper Xiajiadian communities parallels the transport route along which millet agriculture spread from Northeast China to the Primorye during the Neolithic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a relatively novel theoretical approach to investigate cross border student mobilities in East Asia, a region growing in importance as a provider of international education. It does so by bringing Sara Ahmad's writings on the sociality of emotions, with Jacques Derrida's analyses of hospitality, We draw on empirical data from a cross national study to explore the emotions that shape student decisions to choose East Asian study destinations. By problematising the gift of the scholarship, using Derridean understandings of hospitality, we reveal the limits of contemporary forms of international education. Reflecting on histories of Asia-focused student mobilities, the paper highlights the entanglements of hostility and hospitality, and the inseparability of hosts and guests. It is this realisation that will enable ethical, non-exploitative forms of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effects of trade regionalism in East Asia from 1995 to 2018, by applying a series of gravity models. An initial, basic gravity model is repeatedly augmented to account for a range of economic, geographical, cultural, and above all institutional factors representing free trade agreements in effect. Unlike previous studies, this investigation distinguishes between the bilateral and multilateral measures of regional trading arrangements. Two interesting findings are reported. First, the results confirm the impact of trade regionalism on the export flows between the economies of East Asia in the period under study. Second, the effects of multilateral trading agreements vary greatly depending on the agreement and on the particular country's range of influence, in particular cases showing no sufficient economic benefits. Overall, the results point to the complementarity of bilateral and multilateral trading arrangements in the region and to the emergence of a certain distinctive model of cooperation and integration in East Asia – which has been underpinned during the COVID-19 pandemic by the conclusion of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), and which will be further verified in the post-COVID character of global trade and regional trading arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Top-of-atmosphere (TOA) outgoing longwave radiation (OLR), a key component of the Earth's energy budget, serves as a diagnostic of the Earth's climate system response to incoming solar radiation. However, existing products are typically estimated using broadband sensors with coarse spatial resolutions. This paper presents a machine learning method to estimate TOA OLR by directly linking Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) TOA radiances with TOA OLR determined by Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) and other information, such as the viewing geometry, land surface temperature and cloud top temperature determined by Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA-2). Models are built separately under clear- and cloudy-sky conditions using a gradient boosting regression tree. Independent test results show that the root mean square errors (RMSEs) of the clear-sky and cloudy-sky models for estimating instantaneous values are 4.1 and 7.8 W/m2, respectively. Real-time conversion ratios derived from CERES daily and hourly OLR data are used to convert the instantaneous MODIS OLR to daily results. Inter-comparisons of the daily results show that the RMSE of the estimated MODIS OLR is 8.9 W/m2 in East Asia. The developed high resolution dataset will be beneficial in analyzing the regional energy budget. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many developing countries have recently adopted a swathe of development strategies ranging from extremely selective to non-discretionary, functional policies – some if not all of which constitute what we may term 'industrial policy'. The collection provides an overview on the state of the art about new industrial policy and the place of politics in contemporary analysis of state intervention in the global political economy. This introduction revisits the importance of state-backed economic policies not simply as a reaction to the limitations of market reforms implemented in the 1980s and 1990s, but as a radically new development strategy moving on to the twenty-first century. The task of the paper is two-fold: first, it maps out the lessons from East Asian industrial policy and demonstrates how a new generation of political economy scholars have brought in a more political approach to industrialisation; and second, it synthesises the political economy literature to build a framework that incorporates new aspects of industrial policy, notably on the significance of economic linkages and rent management as a way of addressing global value chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the effect of Confucianism, an influential cultural belief and ethical philosophy in East Asia, on business strategy. Employing a large-scale archival dataset of Chinese public firms covering 2007 to 2020, we provide evidence that Confucianism is positively associated with analytical-oriented strategies. Our empirical findings remain intact after accounting for alternative Confucianism measures, controlling formal institutions and religions, instrumental variable methods, and other approaches to addressing endogeneity and robustness issues. Cross-sectional analyses further reveal that the documented effect is more evident for non-state-owned firms, firms with executives lacking overseas experience, and those operating in higher economic policy uncertainty. Overall, our study sheds light on how traditional culture, an important dimension of informal institutions, shapes corporate strategic decisions in emerging markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To date, research on traumatic stress and treatment-seeking behavior has primarily focused on Western populations. Despite experiencing similar levels of symptomatology, mental health service utilization appears lower among East Asian populations. Stigma toward mental health services may be one barrier to treatment-seeking, especially among individuals who have experienced potentially traumatic events; however, previous research has been primarily conducted in the United States. Less is known about predictors of treatment-seeking attitudes among populations residing in East Asia, particularly college students. The present study examined the relationship between trauma, mental health services stigma, and treatment-seeking attitudes among undergraduate students in Southwestern China. Self-report measures of trauma exposure, posttraumatic stress disorder symptomatology, mental health services stigma, and treatment-seeking attitudes were administered. We hypothesized that students with greater severity of traumatic symptoms would endorse more positive attitudes toward treatment-seeking if they reported lower levels of mental health services stigma. Mental health services stigma was a strong predictor of negative attitudes toward treatment-seeking, whereas neither trauma exposure nor traumatic symptomatology were associated with treatment-seeking attitudes. The significant association between mental health services stigma and treatment-seeking attitudes underscores the importance of destigmatizing mental health to encourage treatment-seeking among the Chinese college student population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1980s, East Asian regions have gradually grown into the biggest importers and producers of animal products in the world. Among them, Taiwan has become the world's biggest pork exporter since 1990 but the export market suddenly crashed owing to the outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease in 1997. Since then, biosecurity has been increasingly deemed necessary to manage animal lives. While food regime theory has been steadily employed by critical scholars to examine this rapid 'meatification' process in East Asia, it has suffered from 'inclusionary bias', paying less attention to the consequences of market failure. Informed by social studies of economisation and marketisation and work on multispecies, I contend that the studies of global agri-food production need to be more attentive to the issue of disarticulations: the 'dark sides' of network incorporation. With a specific focus on the Taiwanese pork sector after 1997, this paper argues that 'politics of domestication' emerged as markets broke down. I outline three characteristics which have shaped the politics of domestication: disentanglement, marginalisation, and co-becoming. While biosecurity seeks to manage life by separating hog bodies from other species, this paper points out that this enclosure strategy is always subject to threats from within. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

East Asian developmentalism is often depicted as a derivative ideology with its origins in the diffusion of Western thought to the region, first to Japan after the 1868 Meiji Restoration and then to the rest of the region in the twentieth century following the Japanese example. Recent scholarship has challenged that perspective by highlighting important endogenous roots of the developmentalist ideology of Meiji Japan. This paper shows that Chinese developmentalism also has deep local origins in China's own intellectual history that long predated the importation of Western (and Japanese) political economy to the country in the early twentieth century. It also demonstrates that locally-originated Chinese developmentalist ideology diffused beyond China's borders in ways that influenced the emergence of 'developmental mindsets' elsewhere in the East Asia region in the nineteenth century, including in Meiji Japan. Rather than being a laggard in the regional embrace of developmentalist ideology diffusing from the West, China was a key source and exporter of this ideology to the region. For these reasons, Chinese thinkers deserve a more prominent place in histories of the origins of East Asian developmentalism, and of developmentalist thought in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do African migrants become stuck-in-place and experience stuckedness in China? This article interrogates the concepts of stuckedness and social navigation to examine what it means to be 'stuck-in-place' using the stories of four Nigerians—a woman and three men—in Guangzhou City. Two modes of stuckedness were observed: 'truncational stuckedness' and 'identity stuckedness'. While the former resulted from being spatially stuck in Guangzhou on their way to South Korea and Hong Kong, the latter was a product of identity appropriation, where a migrant uses the passport of another country. Despite the constraint of stuckedness and the precarity that those without valid immigration papers faced, migrants managed to reinterpret their situations and stayed put while being opened to emplacement in Guangzhou—albeit a transitory kind. In calibrating their practice of 'moving on' in Guangzhou, however, economic integration, the local and transnational networks of migrants, hope, prolonging one's stay and management of micro-mobilities of the everyday were deployed singly or in combination with one another. The article advances debates in China-African relations and Afro-mobilities in East Asia while also contributing to discourses on migrant trajectories, stuckedness, and mobilities studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For forty years, the East Asian regional order has delivered widespread peace and prosperity. That order faces possible upending by an economically and militarily more powerful China and a decreasingly robust and engaged United States. While accepting the possibility that such structural shifts could upend the regional order, this paper contends that three powerful counterweights are working to counter disruptive conflicts and to foster peaceful change, namely strong and rising economic interdependence, expanding institutionalization, and active preservation efforts by number of other Asian states, particularly the region's middle powers. This article analyzes the contribution of these three forces to creating the existing order and to their roles in its continuation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

East Asia offers a fertile ground for applying dominant theoretical perspectives in International Relations and understanding their relevance and limitations. As this region has seen much conflict and cooperation historically and is re-emerging as a key theater of great power competition in the 21st century even when states maintain high levels of economic interactions, our understanding of the regional order will be enhanced by the theoretical tools available in the larger mainstream IR perspectives. The existence of a peculiar regional order of no war, yet a number of simmering disputes (along with high levels of economic interdependence) can be characterized as cold peace which deserves an explanation. The paper applies two variants of realism—balance of power and hegemonic stability – and the key arguments in liberalism to analyze the cold peace in Northeast Asia and normal peace in Southeast Asia from a historical perspective. It finds both grand theoretical approaches have partial applications for understanding the East Asian order. A hybrid approach is more valuable to better explain regional order during diverse time periods and different sub-regions of East Asia. Although the presence of both hegemony and balance of power can prevent major wars for a period, they do not help resolve the pre-existing disputes. Deepened economic interdependence mitigates some spiraling tendencies as states fearful of losing too much economically do not escalate crises beyond a point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current paper offers a protocol for the analytic assessment of the intraspecific variability of dental morphology in shrews. Our approach blends a temporal aspect together with a comparative morphological analysis in terms of a unified morphogenetic concept based on the 'activator-inhibitor cascades model' and 'decreasing heritability model'. We used material from the upper Pleistocene and Holocene fossiliferous deposits of Koridornaya and Sukhaya caves in the Russian Far East and analysed the first upper molars of specimens that were similar in size to the teeth of Crocidura lasiura but differed in some proportions and qualitative features. We analysed the temporal variation of the molar shape against samples of the extant species C. lasiura, Crocidura sibirica and Crocidura shantungensis along with fossil specimens using geometric morphometry based on three-dimensional landmarks and semi-landmark datasets. Our results revealed correspondence of the fossil teeth to intraspecies variation of C. lasiura with a slight increase in the morphospace size. We also found two deviant teeth, which, however, also fell in the range of C. lasiura and were determined as Crocidura cf. C. lasiura. A detailed description of the dental features became possible with the use of the computed microtomography approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between workforce competence, migration, and quality improvement in the Asia-Pacific through analysis of Early Childhood Education (ECE) policy texts from three East Asia Summit countries. Content (word level) analysis of salient policy texts was undertaken to address two questions: How are culture and diversity conceptualized in these texts? How are diverse educators positioned in these texts? We show that, despite differing historical trajectories of ECE, policy frameworks in all three countries fail to sufficiently acknowledge the potential contribution of migrant educators to quality improvement initiatives. We conclude by calling for greater attention to workforce mobility and diversity in ECE policies, and for further research into the untapped competence of migrant educators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postponement of first births is a key cause of declining fertility rates, especially in East Asia where recovery from delayed childbearing has been weak. This paper investigates achievement of ideal ages at marriage and first birth in Singapore using survey data on 657 married women aged 25–34. Almost 50 per cent marry within one year of their ideal age, but less than 30 per cent have their first child within six months of their ideal interval to first birth, with around 50 per cent waiting longer than ideal. The high proportion of women experiencing a longer-than-ideal first birth interval was observed across all age and educational groups. Regression results show that co-residence with a foreign domestic worker and paid leave entitlements are associated with higher probability of achieving their ideal first birth interval, whereas availability of parents/in-laws, husband's help and unpaid leave do not reduce time to childbearing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

East Asian countries signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP) in November 2020. This paper demonstrates the importance of ASEAN centrality in East Asian economic integration and makes a preliminary assessment of the agreement in terms of the four expected roles: liberalization, rulemaking, reducing policy risks, and forming a pro-trade middle power coalition. The comparison with the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) reveals the strengths and weaknesses of RCEP. The paper emphasizes the importance of dynamic aspects of mega-FTAs after being in effect and claims that RCEP must be further developed as an evolving agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current paper first time describes a small Beremendia from the late Pleistocene deposits in the Koridornaya Cave locality (Russian Far East), which associated with the extinct Beremendia minor. The paper is the first attempt to use a comparative analytical method to evaluate a possible case of redeposition of fossil remains of this shrew. In this case, the 'comparative' part of the method corresponds to the 'faunistic approach' of Jelle Reumer, and the 'analytical' part of the method corresponds to his extended 'morphological approach. ' The analytic method uses morphospace size estimation (MSE) based on principal component analysis and estimation of the variance to evaluate redeposition of Beremendia minor from the late Pleistocene deposits in the Koridornaya Cave. This result allows us to suggest the significant environmental contribution to the East Asian beremendiin extinction, such as climatic fluctuation, landscape changes and shrew community changes between the late Pliocene and early Pleistocene. We discuss the last remains of East Asian Beremendia (Peisorex) described from the Chinese early Pleistocene localities (Chiachiashan, Haimao, Renzidong) and the last remains of Lunanosorex described from the Chinese late Pliocene localities (Qipanshan Hill and Houxushan Hill). MSE was performed for soricine tribes with the 'elongated' condylar process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction of railroad infrastructure in East Siberia and the Russian Far East was a key aspect of Soviet industrialization during the 1970s and 1980s. Although built primarily for freight transportation, the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) and the Amur-Yakutsk Mainline (AYaM) have also been used for passenger transport and have thus contributed to increased mobility and heightened local expectations about future mobility. This article presents the results of an extensive survey carried out in the BAM/AYaM region, which maps experiences of individual mobility, including usage-related needs, practices, and expectations. The findings show low levels of satisfaction differing across the region's social and spatial diversity. The paper argues that hierarchies of mobility prevail at two related levels in the BAM/AYaM region: 1) the state's regional development policies favor industrial development, focusing on freight transportation while neglecting local passengers' needs for improved individual mobility; and 2) intersectional structural conditions along lines of diversity, such as gender, age, ethnicity, and place of residence, result in mobility disadvantage and lower mobility satisfaction. These hierarchies are embedded in the broader social and spatial inequality structures in the Russian Federation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the formation of networked ceramic factories before the mid-eighteenth century in early modern China. Enquiring into the role of the state and private entrepreneurs in production innovation and design, it explores the notion of a 'factory'. In the context of large scale traditional production in East Asia, I periodize the evolving organizational structure of China's model of ceramic production and discuss two aspects of the state's negotiation with regional commercial kilns: 1) the impact on kiln structures and the exploitation of raw materials such as porcelain stones and colour pigment, and 2) an early modern design system which simultaneously regulated aesthetic forms, technological experiments, and fiscal planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that the political and social upheavals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century also engendered novel ideas and cross-national debates about dynasties in East Asia. The Japanese notion of a 'line of Emperors unbroken for ages eternal' became the most emblematic provision of the Meiji Constitution. Under the impact of the Japanese model and of modern discourses on constitutional law, the Qing and Korean governments sought to radically transform traditional concepts of dynastic rule by constitutionally perpetuating the ruling dynasties. However, the notion of an unbroken lineage proved to be highly ambiguous outside of the Japanese context. Its adoption in the Qing constitutional outline of 1908 met with considerable resistance and nurtured suspicions that 'constitutional preparation' was only serving the Court's selfish interests. But under the surface, the Japanese model of an unbroken ruling dynasty was de-dynasticised and applied to the notion of constitution and even to the State itself. As the Confucian classics were no longer sufficient to legitimise rulership, the new notion of an eternal fundamental law fused with traditional notions of permanent principles of governance and helped establishing written constitutional charters as ineluctable elements of the modern nation-state in East Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adopting Salazar's 'imaginaries of mobility,' this paper investigates how transnational mobility becomes imaginable, desirable or even experientially imperative for mobile Taiwanese young adults in the context of globalisation. It analyses the ways by which they interpret their mobilities as a pursuit of self-identity while negotiating the tensions between collectivism and individualism of Taiwanese society. Based on personal profiles and self-narratives of mobility appearing on a Taiwanese media website devoted to the topic of transnational mobility, I demonstrate how writers present a 'mobile self' characterised by being geographically mobile, socially transgressive and culturally cosmopolitan. This self is depicted in sharp contrast with the immobile at home and narrated as an integral part of achieving identity through three kinds of self-transformation: becoming true to oneself, becoming independent, and becoming a dreamer. While these narratives resonate Western discourses of mobility, they are interpreted from the lens of individualism-collectivism opposition in East Asia and of generational conflicts in Taiwan. Specifically, transnational mobility, regardless forms, is framed as a generational revolt against a collectivist society that represses individuality. The results show how imaginaries of mobility are recontextualised, producing meaning and practice based on local references. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Slow Movement brought with itself a focus on the speed of our living, and a desire to slow down our daily activities, including movement activities. Also, in the time of the current pandemic, many people were forced to experience a certain slowing down. One question raised in the context of a slow life is the limit of slowness: what is the limit of slowness in human movement? And: is it desirable to slow down to the maximum possible? The aim of this paper is to show the limit of slowing down, which is described as 'stopping', based on meditative practices from the Far East, especially the Zen practice of 'just sitting' (shikantaza—只管打坐). This may seem radical, since 'stopping' one's pragmatic activity and thinking may seem odd and worthless: empty, boring and death-like. However, from the Zen point of view the 'stopping' is not some static expression of our existence, but rather brings about a new kind of experiencing and a new quality of movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]