Search

This open access book provokes critical thinking regarding the most ambitious Chinese project since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The book presents extensive quality research and original insights in assessing the status of China’s outbound investment and construction projects under the BRI umbrella. Referring to case studies and projects of selected countries from Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East, the author sheds new light on the issues and problems associated with the BRI's implementation and discusses both the readjustments and prospects for the BRI. Finally, this book demarcates the limits and potential of the world’s second largest economy in pushing for the BRI, which is challenged by enormous domestic tensions and external pressures. It also identifies and analyzes potential new collaboration areas between the Belt and Road countries and China under the BRI framework in the context of the post-COVID-19 era. It provides an outstanding reference for academics, students, policymakers, and the business community working in areas of international affairs and Asian economics and development, particularly those interested in Sino-relations and Chinese power dynamics in the global world order.

This book argues that a resilient region should act reactively and proactively in the face of shocks and disruptions and asserts that the institutionalization of regional cooperation may be the answer to development challenges in times of uncertainty and instability. It considers regional, transregional, and subregional cooperation initiatives for building regional resilience and critically examines a broad spectrum of issues, such as international security and trade, economic development, value chains in production, and social welfare. Adopting the concept of resilience allows for a holistic, dynamic, and systematic approach to the studies on the regional process of institutionalization, responsiveness, and adaptability to challenging circumstances. The economic and social indicators of the countries in the region are examined alongside an analysis of the regional institutional architecture. The reader is acquainted with the essence of resilience concerning each category of challenges and the mechanisms of its achievement and strengthening through regional integration. The interdisciplinary character of the book makes it suitable for usage not only by economists but also by lawyers. As such, the book will be helpful to scholars and students of international economics, international security, and policymakers.

• A comprehensive introduction to small states, with a mixture of detailed examples (Quebec and Japan) and a broader range of case studies; • Addresses core questions of what a “state” is, what it is for and the role of small states in the international system; • Refocusses the study of small states away from the usual case studies, refocussing on the North American and East Asian contexts. ; With emphasis on East Asian and North American examples – notably Japan and Quebec – Date, Laniel and their contributors take a new approach to the understanding of small nations and their role in the international system. Small nations, by their very nature, raise significant questions about what a nation is. Some small nations are sovereign states with relatively small populations and limited territory, others are nations within larger sovereign states, with distinctive cultures, governance structures or other features that differentiate them from their “parent” state. By focussing on non-European nations in particular, the contributors to this volume challenge our conceptions of what a small nation is and how it operates within the international system. They focus in particular on the nation-within-a-nation-state of Quebec and on Japan, supplemented by further examples from East Asia. By interrogating what these examples have to show us about the typology and character of small nations, they offer a critique of superpower and draw out the potential of small nation studies. A valuable resource for students and scholars of international relations and theories of the nation and nation state.

This book provides an overall picture of East Asian international politics during the early interwar period and examines the various foreign policy trends of the major powers involved, including Japan, China, Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Based on extensive original research, it posits that East Asia experienced four waves of international change during the interwar period: the transition to the post-World War I international order; the appearance of Nationalist China and the Soviet Union as actors in East Asian international politics; the Japanese invasion of Manchuria; and Japanese implementation of the North China Buffer State Strategy. It considers the new challenges brought about by each of these waves, how the powers – particularly Japan, Britain, and the United States – were able to meet these challenges by working together, and how this became more difficult as time went on. It argues that the Washington System – the international order established at the 1921–1922 Washington Naval Conference – was not a break with the past, as is frequently argued, on account of new forms of foreign policy, including the ideological approaches of the United States and the Soviet Union, but that rather spheres of influence diplomacy continued as before. In addition, in discussing Japanese foreign policy, the book provides a comprehensive picture of the diversity of views towards China among Japanese actors and the ways these shifted over time. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

This open access book examines an interdependent approach to happiness and well-being, one that contrasts starkly with dominant approaches that have originated from Western culture(s). It highlights the diversity of potential pathways towards happiness and well-being globally, and answers calls - voiced in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals - for more socially and environmentally sustainable models. Leading global organizations including the OECD, UNICEF, and UNESCO are now proposing human happiness and well-being as a more sustainable alternative to a myopic focus on GDP growth. Yet, the definition of well-being offered by these organizations derives largely from the philosophies, social sciences, and institutional patterns of Europe and the United States. Across seven chapters this book carefully probes the inadequacy of these approaches to well-being globally and reveals the distorting effect this has on how we imagine our world, organize institutions, and plan our collective future(s). It shares a wealth of evidence and examples from across East Asia - a region where interdependence remains foregrounded - and concludes by provocatively arguing that interdependence may provide a more sustainable approach to happiness and well-being in the 21st century. A timely and accessible book, it offers fresh insights for scholars and policymakers working in the areas of psychology, health, sociology, education, international development, public policy, and philosophy. This is an open access book.

The world's two largest economies, the United States and China, are locked in a trade war, complicating policy choices internationally. These choices are sharper for the countries of East and Southeast Asia than they are elsewhere, because the multilateral rules-based economic order on which East Asian economic integration and cooperation is built is under threat. Economic policy has never been separate from security considerations. For decades, the national security risks inherent in economic exchange have been mitigated under a US-led system that allowed the strengthening of economic ties, including between China and the rest of the world. But economics and security are increasingly entangled in a way that is damaging to both, creating a dangerous trade-off. Now, as global uncertainties grow, the risks of international exchange—rather than its benefits—are beginning to dominate the calculus for some policymakers. Against this backdrop, how can Southeast Asian countries and US allies in Asia balance their security interests and their economic interests? And how can these countries, individually and collectively, broaden their policy options and deepen economic integration? This volume investigates the domestic and international dimensions of these questions.

The start of ceramic industry is an important stage in mass production and is closely related to social complexity and social exchanges including the immigration of specialists. The introduction of high-temperature operations and varying firing regimes is a technological breakthrough in ceramic production. This book discusses the introduction and the background of kilns and advanced technology in the wider area of East Asia, covering the early appearances of the typical East Asian kiln technology in China, and its distribution to the Russian Far East, the Korean peninsula, and the central Japanese archipelago. Using both scientific and archaeological analysis, this book tries to help better understand the introduction factors of kilns, management of kilns by each regime, and the development of technology. An extensive glossary at the end of the book orientates readers not familiar with research in East Asia or languages referenced in this book.

This Open Access book explains ASEAN’s strategic role in managing great power politics in East Asia. Constructing a theory of institutional strategy, this book argues that the regional security institutions in Southeast Asia, ASEAN and ASEAN-led institutions have devised their own institutional strategies vis-à-vis the South China Sea and navigated the great-power politics since the 1990s. ASEAN proliferated new security institutions in the 1990s and 2000s that assumed a different functionality, a different geopolitical scope, and thus a different institutional strategy. In so doing, ASEAN formed a “strategic institutional web” that nurtured a quasi-division of labor among the institutions to maintain relative stability in the South China Sea. Unlike the conventional analysis on ASEAN, this study disaggregates “ASEAN” as a collective regional actor into specific individual institutions—ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, ASEAN Summit, ASEAN-China dialogues, ASEAN Regional Forum, East Asia Summit, and ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting and ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting-Plus—and explains how each of these institutions has devised and/or shifted its institutional strategy to curb great powers’ ambition in dominating the South China Sea while navigating great power competition. The book sheds light on the strategic potential and limitations of ASEAN and ASEAN-led security institutions, offers implications for the future role of ASEAN in the Indo-Pacific region, and provides an alternative understanding of the strategic utilities of regional security institutions.

This book compiles lectures by the world's leading practitioners of postdramatic theatre from East Asia and the German-speaking world, which were given at Asia's only dramaturgy degree program at The Central Academy of Drama in Beijing 2018/19. It includes first-time English-language scripts of the discussed plays. The material is complemented by contextualizing essays by the program founder Li Yinan and its co-developer Kai Tuchmann. Hans-Thies Lehmann contributes the foreword to this volume. This rare compilation enables the reader to gain a unique insider's impression of postdramatic theatre's artistic thinking and working methods and informs about its manifold manifestations. With contributions from Hans-Werner Kroesinger, Lee Kyung-Sung, Li Yinan, Boris Nikitin, Kai Tuchmann, Wang Mengfan, Wen Hui, Zhao Chuan and Zhuang Jiayun.