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Urbanizing villages are erstwhile rural villages that are spatially enveloped and are characterized by their dual relation to the state, which expresses itself as an issue of citizenship; of land ownership; of governance; and building regulations. This paper transcends the current focus on villages in Southern China, by comparing village urbanization between China and India through four narratives of village extensions. Four parallel readings are offered, namely that urban villages are characterized by; shared tenure rooted in their rural past; inherited administrative boundaries that are re-imbued with new legal designations; emulation of traditional practices; and sustained modes of self-governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Out of all the essential eight trace elements, boron is an indispensable nutrient required for the growth and development of plants. The importance of boron as an essential micronutrient in agriculture cannot be overstated because both its deficiency and toxicity in soils can have a negative impact on plant growth and development. Boron deficiency is the second most widespread nutrient deficiency and gained economic importance in horticultural crops. Boron plays a significant role in cell wall formation; its functioning and strength as the majority amount of boron (>90%) is found in the cell wall of plants. India ranks second in fruit production after China. Fruits are considered a vital source of carbohydrates, protein, fiber, essential amino acids, minerals, vitamins etc. The immobile nature of boron increases its unavailability in plants and hence produces a wide range of deficiency symptoms in younger parts of fruit crops. Imbalanced boron uptake disrupts the pollination process which consequently reduces flowering, fruit set, yield, and henceforth deteriorates fruit quality by increasing fruit acidity. Application of boron fertilizers at different rate has shown a significant influence on the yield and quality of fruits. So, the main objective of this paper is to focus on the critical role and significance of boron in managing higher fruit crop yield as well as their quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) was resuscitated in November 2017, it was framed as a minilateral grouping of liberal democratic countries to build a free and open Indo-Pacific in the shadow of China's growing assertiveness. However, this Quad 2.0 had not taken collective action until 2021. The four states neither held leaders' summit meetings nor issued joint statements after lower-level meetings. They took no joint quadrilateral actions to deter China either. From a constructivist perspective, this paper addresses this puzzle by critically revisiting the alleged common identity of the four states. It argues that India's national identity has not been built on the ontological difference between liberal democracy and autocracy but on a complex amalgamation of non-alignment, post-imperial ideology, Hindu nationalism and Indian exceptionalism. India, having held a vision of establishing an India–China partnership in Asia, did not regard China as its significant Other until the deadly border clashes between them in June 2020. China's expansionism has challenged India's identity as the pre-eminent power in South Asia and its vision of an equal China–India partnership. Despite India's increased cooperation with its Quad partners since then, the Quad is built more on geopolitical pragmatism than on shared liberal norms and values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following decades of relative isolation, China and India have become the world's largest new traders. In this paper, we focus on their Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs). While the two economies initially followed similar paths, with a growing number of PTAs signed in the first decade of the 21st Century, since 2011 India has taken a U-turn and stopped completing them. China, on the other hand, has widened and deepened its trade agreements. We present a novel theoretical framework to analyze international economic negotiations by emerging economies and use it to study the puzzling divergence of the trade policies of China and India. By adapting the two-level game framework to emerging economies, we argue that there are key differences in the political economies of countries like China and India (compared to Western industrialized ones), which requires a more specific focus on the domestic side of the two-level game. We show that accounting for non-legislative domestic ratification processes and for iterative games and experiential learning by domestic actors are crucial in understanding the trade strategies of emerging economies. While much of the literature explains large emerging economies by looking at external systemic factors, we instead suggest that their domestic politics trumps international politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper constructs long-run estimates of total missing women (including missing girls at birth and excess female deaths) in China and India over seven decades from 1950 to 2020. We find that the number of missing women in India has been higher than in China throughout the seven decades. Over time, missing girls at birth grew faster in China than in India, but China has made more rapid progress in reducing excess female deaths after birth. While the share of missing girls at birth in total missing women has risen since the 1980s, there has also been a shift in excess female mortality from younger to older age groups. Our estimated trends are consistent with key economic, social, demographic and technological events and developments in the two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigating a country's navy provides a means of assessing the country's strategic, political, economic as well as international perspectives. Being overwhelmingly strategic in orientation, Indian Ocean occupies an important position among the strategic calculations of all major powers, and as a result has become the centre of gravity due to its increasing economic, military and diplomatic activities in the post-cold war period. Since 1990s China's policies in the region have also changed, primarily due to its high stakes in the region. Its spectacular and constant economic growth has made it an attractive player for markets and its growing activities are an important imperative that shape the strategic environment of the Indian Ocean Region today. Since both India and China are rising simultaneously and have large stakes in this region, both are turning their policies to expand their Maritime sector. The increasing encroachments by China in the Indian Ocean has caused significant amount of friction in their bilateral ties and has led to overlapping spheres of influence with India. The paper establishes that China is expanding its Maritime power in all dimensions creating a security imbalance in South Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: The beneficial effects of many substances have been discovered because of regular dietary consumption. This is also the case with curcumin, whose effects have been known for more than 4,000 years in Eastern countries such as China and India. A curcumin-rich diet has been known to counteract many human diseases, including cancer and diabetes, and has been shown to reduce inflammation. The effect of a curcumin treatment for neurological diseases, such as spinal muscular atrophy; Alzheimer's disease; Parkinson's disease; amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; multiple sclerosis; and others, has only recently been brought to the attention of researchers and the wider population. Methods: In this paper, we summarise the studies on this natural product, from its isolation two centuries ago to its characterisation a century later. Results: We describe its role in the treatment of neurological diseases, including its cellular and common molecular mechanisms, and we report on the clinical trials of curcumin with healthy people and patients. Discussion: Commenting on the different approaches adopted by the efforts made to increase its bioavailability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tobacco use is associated with an annual global economic cost of two trillion dollars and mortality of half of its regular users. Tobacco leaf cultivation is the starting point of the tobacco cycle. Tobacco farming employs millions of small-scale tobacco farmers around the globe, most of whom are out growers who rely on the tobacco industry. This paper aims to map the regions of greatest tobacco production globally (i.e., the US, Brazil, China, Indonesia, India, and Zambia) and tobacco use rates in these locations. Smoking rates were higher in those areas, except for India, where important population subgroups reported an upward trend for tobacco smoking. In general, there was a relationship between tobacco farming and tobacco smoking. Tobacco farming may lead to a higher risk of tobacco use and lower adherence to tobacco control policies. Therefore, promoting viable alternative livelihoods for tobacco farmers must have dual benefits. Additionally, specific health prevention policies might be necessary for those populations reporting higher tobacco use and lower perception of tobacco-related health risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the consequences of the hugely successful expansion of South-South Cooperation since the new millennium. For all the achievements, variations and change over the 1950s-late 1990s, 'SSC 1.0' was characterised by relative neglect within the 'international' development community, and by many orthodox and critical scholars. In the chronological schema of the paper, 'SSC 2.0' refers to the period of remarkable expansion from the early 2000s to the present. The emergence of 'SSC 3.0', I suggest, is currently revealed by a discernible set of shifts driven in large part by the expansionary successes of SSC 2.0, as well as other turns in the global political economy. Three contemporary trends are identified: cooperation narratives that are increasingly 'muscular', nationalistic and pragmatic; difficulties sustaining claims to 'non-interference' in partner countries; and the further erosion of ideational and operational distinctiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A contemporary definition of diaspora points to communities that are transnationally dispersed but remain connected to their place of origin. Accordingly, diaspora do not have an objective existence but are forged through a variety of means, involving multiple agencies and sites of formation. One of these sites is higher education. Based on interviews conducted with Indian and Chinese students in Australia, this paper suggests that recent policies and practices of internationalisation of higher education, shaped by market rationality, have steered international students in Business Studies towards particular forms of diaspora, aligned to a range of beliefs about the importance of their participation within the global economy and in particular their role in facilitating transnational regimes of business activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the short and long-run impact of foreign direct investment, electricity consumption, and real GDP on ecological footprints in the context of environmental Kuznets and Pollution haven hypothesis for China, India, and Pakistan over 1970–2016. Panel and time series models have been adopted in this research. Results of the cointegration test revealed the long-run association among the considered variables. Furthermore, Fully-Modified and Dynamic Ordinary Least Square validated the pollution haven and environmental Kuznets hypothesis for the study area. On the other hand, the linkages between income and ecological footprints have identified U-shaped EKC in the case of China and India. The empirical results of the Dumitrescu and Hurlin panel causality test indicated a unidirectional causality from income to ecological footprints. In contrast, bidirectional causality found between ecological footprints and foreign direct investment and between ecological footprints and electricity consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the evolving geopolitical developments in the Indo-Pacific region, especially through the lens of an India–US–China trilateral/tripolar framework. At a time when ‘strategic unease’ has become a defining characteristic of the region and ‘security alignments and strategic hedging’ a prevalent diplomatic tendency, this paper captures an evolving trend of convergence in the strategic visions of the three key Indo-Pacific players – India, China and the US, and rising bilateral strategic/defence cooperation between them. Using a constructivist approach, this paper explores the feasibility of a trilateral cooperative framework among the three countries in near future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper looks at the insertion of China and India in the contested and highly legalised regime of intellectual property rights (IP). In doing so it pays particular attention at two dimensions, the internal adoption of this regime and external endorsement/contestation of international IP norms. Much has been written about whether emerging countries will challenge or support the maintenance of an open rules-based multilateral trade system. In this context, the differentiated integration of these two countries in the IP regime is notable. Domestically, China despite much criticism for widespread IP infringement has followed a maximalist interpretation of TRIPS. India, on the contrary has followed other emerging countries in pursuing a more critical, minimalist understanding. These positions have also been visible at the multilateral arena. This empirical finding runs contrary to the assumption that defiance results from market power. The divergence is the more surprising given a recent explosion of patent filings in both countries. From a political economy perspective, this should translate into support for stricter rules under TRIPS. In explanaining the two countries’ divertent insertion this paper looks beyond economic (market) power and domestic interests and underlines the role of ideational legacies, domestic interests and regulatory capacity. The paper thus stresses the need to look deep into domestic politics and ideational cleavages, as well as at their evolution over time, in order to better understand the international behaviour of emerging countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper attempts to explore the connections between expanding female education and the participation of women in paid employment in Japan, China and India, three of Asia's largest economies. Analysis based on existing data and literature shows that despite the large expansion in educational access in these countries in the last half century, women have lacked egalitarian labour market opportunities. A combination of social discouragement and individual choice largely explains the withdrawal, non-participation or intermittent female presence in the labour force, notwithstanding increased educational access. In taking stock of these issues and debates across these countries, it is argued that the parallel experiences of women in these countries can be traced back to persistent gender norms which, amongst other things, imply the centrality of marriage and non-market unpaid labour for women. The paper argues that there is a need for gender-sensitive public policy in order for increased education to translate to labour market gains for women, leading to sustainable development outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The objective of the paper is to assess the usefulness of conceptions of different modes of governance for understanding policy outcomes by studying the experience with hierarchical and non-hierarchical governance modes in the health care sector in China, India, and Thailand. The paper shows their experience with non-hierarchical modes to have been largely disappointing and that all three, but especially Thailand, are in the process of reverting to a more hierarchical mode of service delivery. The conclusion from this study is that non-hierarchical governance is not a substitute for or an improvement upon hierarchical governance in health care due to the many market and government failures that afflict the sector and affect the ability of different governance modes to function effectively. The hierarchical mode of government is also imperfect but less so than the alternatives in delivering health care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The purpose of this paper was to highlight the importance of cultural infl uence in understanding hearing-help seeking and hearing-aid uptake. Design: Information on audiological services in different countries and ' theories related to cross-culture ' is presented, followed by a general discussion. Study sample: Twenty-seven relevant literature reviews on hearing impairment, cross-cultural studies, and the health psychology model and others as secondary resources. Results: Despite the adverse consequences of hearing impairment and the significant potential benefits of audiological rehabilitation, only a small number of those with hearing impairment seek professional help and take up appropriate rehabilitation. Therefore, hearing help-seeking and hearing-aid uptake has recently become the hot topic for clinicians and researchers. Previous research has identified many contributing factors for hearing help-seeking with self-reported hearing disability being one of the main factors. Although significant differences in help-seeking and hearing-aid adoption rates have been reported across countries in population studies, limited literature on the infl uence of cross-cultural factors in this area calls for an immediate need for research. Conclusions: This paper highlights the importance of psychological models and cross-cultural research in the area of hearing help-seeking and hearing-aid uptake, and consequently some directions for future research are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or drones, have undoubtedly attained a prominent position in contemporary and future defence technologies. Likewise, Asian militaries have continued to realise the operational value of such vehicles, whether for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) or combat purpose. In the current times, wherein UAVs are proliferating globally, it remains pivotal to understand their relevance, uses and implications, particularly with regard to emerging powers. It is in this context that the paper seeks to explore and compare the cases of the two rising Asian giants, India and China. The paper explores their UAV programmes, possible defence-oriented employments, and current technological capabilities to produce UAVs. The relevance of UAVs is assessed in terms of India and China's present military doctrines, security requirements (current and future) and how the UAVs fit into their security landscape. Finally, the article delves into the strategic implications of the greater proliferation and rampant employment of UAVs in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports in the British media over the last 4 years have highlighted the schisms and contestations that have accompanied the reports of gender selective abortions amongst British Asian families. The position that sex-selection may be within the terms of the 1967 Abortion Act has particularly sparked controversy amongst abortion campaigners and politicians but equally among medical practitioners and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service who have hitherto tended to stay clear of such debates. In what ways has the controversy around gender-based abortion led to new framings of the entitlement to service provision and new ways of thinking about evidence in the context of reproductive rights? We reflect on these issues drawing on critiques of what constitutes best evidence, contested notions of reproductive rights and reproductive governance, comparative work in India and China as well as our involvement with different groups of campaigners including British South Asian NGOs. The aim of the paper is to situate the medical and legal provision of abortion services in Britain within current discursive practices around gender equality, ethnicity, reproductive autonomy, probable and plausible evidence, and policies of health reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building information modelling (BIM) is being heralded as a remarkable innovation in the built environment sector with expectations of lofty sector-wide improvements. Some countries have shown remarkable levels of uptake of BIM, along the way documenting some evidence of benefits stemming from BIM. However, countries such as India and China are late entrants in the BIM adoption journey and are seeing a slower adoption rate. This study develops a model using the technology–organization–environment framework to study the factors influencing BIM adoption by architectural firms in India and reasons for this slow adoption. The proposed model of BIM adoption is tested using the partial least square method against responses collected from 184 industry professionals based in India. Findings reveal that the adoption of BIM by Indian architectural firms is at the ‘experimentation’ stage with variables such as expertise, trialability, and management support exhibiting a strong positive influence on BIM adoption. The study also explains the status of BIM adoption in India with the help of a multi-level social construct, which places the level of BIM adoption in India between the micro- and meso-levels of organizational scales. Similarities and dissimilarities with previous findings are discussed in the paper to highlight the findings of this study. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper assesses the role of the BASIC countries — Brazil, South Africa, India, and China — in UN climate change negotiations. The paper explores the formation and evolution of the group, and focuses on how the four major developing countries of China, India, Brazil, and South Africa have coordinated their positions and acted jointly to achieve an agreed outcome with other players in the recent UN Climate Change Conferences in Copenhagen and Cancun, based on an analysis of their country profiles and negotiation positions on a wide range of climate issues. The paper argues that the emergence of the BASIC Group is a reflection of the ongoing power shift from EU–US agreement to BASIC–US compromise in UN climate negotiations since the early 1990s. The rise of BASIC also has its roots in recent global market dynamics and further reflects the power transformation in the economic dimension of the international system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rationale behind this paper is to stimulate reflection, open a debate and provide its readers with some much overlooked perspectives, perceptions and approaches from China, India and the Tibetan émigrés in India as regards the Tibet issue. These are formulated on the basis of author's interviews and enquiries with the representatives of the Dalai Lama's Tibetan Government in Exile, the leaders of Tibetan Youth Congress, the representatives of Students for a Free Tibet, as well as the Tibetan émigré in India and ordinary Indians. Besides, the paper also throws light on major differences and contradiction between India and China over Tibet issue; the future course of the Tibetan movement; and explores the possibilities of establishing a mechanism between India and China on Tibet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using firm-level data collected through a survey in 2008 followed by semi-structured interviews with firms in 2009-2010, this article systematically compares the geography of linkages of the software industry between two regions, one in India (Pune) and one in China (Great Beijing). In contrast to what the literature on knowledge bases and regional innovation systems argues the paper points out to marked differences both in the organization as well as in the geographical spread of the knowledge sources in the software industry between Pune and Greater Beijing. The paper suggests that the literature of knowledge bases could benefit from incorporating the insights from strategy studies as well as innovation systems studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on recent and upcoming mega-events in South Africa, China and Brazil, this paper contrasts and critiques the associated image and identity opportunities and risks, as well as comparative motivations for hosting such events. Accordingly, the paper considers the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the scheduled 2014 World Cup and 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics in Brazil. In the context of an increasing number of mega-events being hosted in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India and China; South Africa is to join), the paper provides broader continuity and introduces a broader research agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents population forecasts for China and India till 2100. The rise in sex ratios at birth in these countries has been observed to be the longest-running and most pronounced in Asia. The paper is based on different hypotheses on the future evolution of birth masculinity in each of these countries. These hypotheses are derived from an examination of present trends across Asia. The population forecasts allow us to explore the influence of various trajectories of sex ratio at birth on the demographic structures of both countries till 2100. In particular, the specific impact of skewed sex ratios on the adult population in which gender imbalances may translate into a major marriage squeeze in the future will be examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores some of the key features of the ‘second’ global shift or offshoring of a range of service functions from America and Europe to countries like India and China. Service offshoring or global sourcing is perceived by the media, policy-making communities and trade unions as a significant threat to existing and future service employment in developed market economies. This paper explores two issues. First, it explores the growth of call centres and data-processing warehouses in India and elsewhere as strategies that are being used to develop a new international spatial division of service labour based on blended delivery systems. Second, it explores the impact that the second global shift is having on service operators living in India. Service work is a hybrid form of work that contains within it various types of emotional labour. Emotional labour is usually understood to be implicated in face-to-face encounters between service producers and consumers. The second global shift, however, involves distanciated emotional labour in which firms located in developed market economies encourage foreign workers to alter the ways in which they project their identities. The offshoring of services to India and China encourages call centre operators based in India and China to become American or English at night and Indian or Chinese during the day. Unlike the first global shift, the geographies of the second global shift are partially determined by a country's colonial heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a comparative overview of urban transport in the world's two most populous countries: China and India. Cities in both countries are suffering from severe and worsening transport problems: air pollution, noise, traffic injuries and fatalities, congestion, parking shortages, energy use, and a lack of mobility for the poor. The urban transport crisis in China and India results from continuing population growth, urbanization, suburban sprawl, rising incomes, and skyrocketing motor vehicle ownership and use. This paper critically assesses government policies in each country and suggests a range of specific improvements. It advocates a slowdown in the massive roadway investment in recent years and a shift in emphasis to expanding and improving public transport, cycling, and walking facilities. While continued growth in motor vehicle use is inevitable, China and India should restrict motor vehicle use in congested city centres and increase taxes, fees, and charges to reflect the enormous social and environmental costs of motor vehicle use. At the same time, much stricter regulations should be imposed on manufacturers to produce cleaner, more energy-efficient, quieter, and safer cars, motorcycles, buses, and trucks. Mitigating the many social and environmental impacts of rising motorization is obviously important for the future well-being of Chinese and Indian cities. It is also crucial for the future of the rest of the world. Unless the problems of motorization in China and India can be effectively dealt with, the world faces sharp increases in greenhouse gases, accelerating climate change, and rapid depletion of a range of non-renewable resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarizes the phenomenon of offshore outsourcing and relates it to the history and current state of engineering education and the engineering profession in Europe and the USA. In order to assess the climate affecting employment decisions by and about engineers we have used as sources mostly the serious press, with an emphasis on material dating from 2004 forward. The authors conclude that despite anxiety about the out-migration of engineering and technical jobs to places such as India and China, there is reason to see offshoring as the result of Western investment in capacity building in developing countries and to believe that the creation of new jobs will outpace the rate of job loss in Europe and the USA. The paper should serve as a prod to policy-makers and educators to set about creating an environment in which highly educated engineers and technical employees can continue a pattern of economic revitalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the different strategies pursued by China and India in their ongoing security competition in Nepal, and the latter's foreign policy responses to this competition. It examines whether both China and India have accepted the status quo in Nepal, or are incessantly looking for opportunities to expand their influence in the country. First, a theoretical framework of great power politics is provided to examine the Sino-Indian power competition vis-à-vis Nepal. This is followed by an examination of Chinese and Indian foreign policy strategies in Nepal. Finally, Nepal's foreign policy response to preserve its sovereignty and security is examined. This paper has broader implications for small states seeking to preserve their sovereignty in the context of the great power competition for exercising hegemony over them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the domestic sources of the internationalization of national oil companies (NOCs) in China and India. It argues that – counter to notions of state-led internationalization – the going abroad of NOCs reflects a pattern of ‘coopetition,’ i.e., the co-existence of cooperation and conflict between increasingly entrepreneurial NOCs and partially supportive and interventionist home governments. In China, the state has predominantly assumed the role ofresource supplier, rarely stepping in as aveto player. In India, the NOC–government relationship has been more adversarial, with the state intervening more often as aveto playerthan its Chinese counterpart and only slowly emerging as aresource supplier. These patterns of internationalization can be explained by how two major trends have been playing out in the two countries: (1) the marketization of NOCs, and (2) the reform of the governance of overseas investments. The findings matter to theory and policy. First, they unpack the relational dynamics of business–government relations in hybrid models of capitalism beyond notions of top-down and bottom-up dynamics. Second, our analysis shows that the state intervenes in the international energy strategies of emerging economies as the occasional veto player rather than actively leveraging NOC internationalization for geopolitical goals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study compares living standards in China, India and Vietnam using the recent multidimensional approach. A distinguishing feature of this study is the use of unit record datasets containing household-level information on access to a wide range of dimensions. The study uses the methodology of principal component analysis to measure household wealth. The wealth index is then used to examine the distribution of deprivation and poverty by wealth percentiles. The study distinguishes between multidimensional deprivation and multidimensional poverty and compares the living standards in these countries based on both measures. This paper also presents comparative evidence on the percentage contribution to total deprivation by the various dimensions in each country, and reports several differences between China, India and Vietnam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses growing inequality in the rising powers, concentrating on the situation in China and India. It describes the various processes that are currently underway to reduce inequality in these economies. These processes include a combination of tightening the labour market, as best seen in China, increasing rural productivity and implementing government measures to boost basic rural incomes in all such countries. Reductions in inequality in the emerging economies have a global macro-economic effect of increasing consumption, thus counteracting the current global slowdown. They also have the benefit of creating more space at the bottom for poorer economies to take up more of the world's low-skill production, as the emerging economies themselves move up to higher skill production and exports. This sequential upgrading is being driven by the growth of emerging economy markets and by wage increases in these economies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Maritime violence perpetrated by non-state actors is a feature of the Indian Ocean. This includes the piracy, which has occurred most prominently off Somalia but also in the waters of Bangladesh, India and Indonesia, and terrorism perpetrated by al-Qaeda, the Tamil separatist movement in Sri Lanka, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and the Pakistani Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) against the Indian city of Mumbai. This paper aims to chart why opportunities for non-state actors to use violence to advance their interests may continue across the region. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is concerned essentially with the question of how does financial globalization affect economic welfare? Orthodox theory suggests that because of the greater risk-sharing between countries that financial liberalization entails, there should be no welfare losses. Greater risk-sharing should lead to greater smoothing of consumption and/or growth trajectories for developing countries. Yet there is widespread evidence of crises following liberalization. Apart from these international macro-economic issues, it is argued here that financial globalization changes the very nature of capitalism from managerial to finance capitalism. This profoundly affects at the micro-economic level corporate governance, corporate finance and income distribution. Both macro-economic and micro-economic factors outlined here influence human development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent debates within and beyond Marxism around empire and imperialism focus on deterritorialization, but fail to see non-Western states as anything other than collaborators or victims. Highlighting the importance of center-periphery relations within the territorially bounded political space of the nation-state, this paper puts forward a new concept of the Postcolonial Informal Empire (PIE) to characterize the emerging powers of China and India. The greatest paradox of PIEs is that a postcolonial impulse—to critically appropriate Western ideas and technologies such as sovereignty, nationalism, and the free market to build the multinational state and combine it with an affirmation of stories of historical greatness and long existing, pre-Westernized, civilizational-national cultures—enables the political entities to consolidate and discipline their borderlands and reduce diverse inhabiting peoples to culturally different but politically subservient subjects. It is predominantly a nationalist politics, and not economic calculability or financial interests, that shapes PIEs’ center-borderlands relations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent years what has been witnessed is that Indians have been encouraged to study contemporary China not only due to the cultural richness of that civilization, but also because of China's already significant influence on world events. In fact, with the incorporation of Tibet into the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1950 and the Government of India's oft-repeated official acknowledgement of Tibet as an autonomous region of China, the PRC ceased to be a ‘distant neighbour’ and became as proximate to India as the states of the Indian subcontinent itself. Obviously, for Indian scholars whose prime focus is South Asia, there is an imperative to study China as well. Tibet, which has been one of the key areas of China studies, needs to be researched comprehensively so as to gauge the extent of its influence on China studies in India in general and India-China relations in particular. It is in this context that this paper seeks to examine how academics, journalists, policy makers, politicians and China studies experts in India have viewed Tibet so far as its influence on India-China relations in the broader context is concerned. It also highlights the viewpoints of Chinese scholars on such issue, besides examining whether Tibet would continue to be an important factor impacting China Studies in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The clean development mechanism (CDM) could play an important role in the power generation sector of developing countries and emerging economies by providing additional revenue to support the diffusion of renewable energy sources (RES). This paper investigates the contribution of the CDM to deployment of renewable electricity projects in China and India, and highlights the main potentialities and limitations of this mechanism for their support. The outcome of our analysis shows many differences and similarities in the way and scale of CDM projects for renewable electricity generation have been implemented in the two countries. In both cases, the CDM has made a contribution to greening investments in the power generation sector, which is still largely dominated by subcritical coal-fuelled power plants. Nonetheless, some major problems still remain and they are mainly related to the distribution of projects across different technologies and to the environmental integrity of the mechanism. In view of the likely revision of the CDM in the post-Kyoto period, we find that the differentiation of the credit generation rate of different project categories could bring some level of improvement without significantly altering the current system functionality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to assess the nature of competition in the information technology (IT) services sector between India and China. Using primary and secondary data sources, we compare and contrast the strengths and weaknesses of the IT services sector in the two countries along the main dimensions of Porter's competitive advantage model. The principal findings indicate that the IT services sectors in the two countries are distinctively different, have developed along different paths and are highly complementary to each other. China has a well-established hardware sector and its IT services sector focuses mostly on servicing its domestic market. India's IT services sector is predominantly export orientated with focus on the US and Western European markets. Contrary to popular beliefs, given the complementary characteristics of the IT services sectors in India and China, it is unlikely for the two countries to compete against each other in the near future and greater strategic co-operation between IT service providers in the two countries is a more likely outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines defense industrialization in three leading arms-producing states in Asia - India, Japan, and South Korea - and how their experiences compare to China's recent defense industrial developments. It argues that despite decades of considerable effort and investments in pursuit of a techno-nationalist self-arming strategy, these countries have experienced only modest success when it comes to achieving such self-reliance. Most regional defense industrial bases lack the necessary design skills and technological expertise in order to truly innovate, and at best these countries act as 'late innovators' when it comes to armaments production. The experiences of these countries have lessons for China as it attempts to move into the first tier of arms-producing states. China has over the past 15 years made significant progress in modernizing its defense technological and industrial base. At the same time, China faces the same long-term challenges that currently confront other regional arms industries - that is, making techno-nationalism work at the later stages of innovation. This is particularly critical as China's defense industry strives to move from a basically platform-centric to an increasingly network-centric technological-industrial process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As low income societies are aging rapidly, government and families face challenges to support the seniors, who are already at greater risks of being negatively affected by many other social, cultural, and global changes occurring around them. This paper reviews some of the major challenges faced by seniors in China, India, Mexico, and African countries. It also examines some of the sustainable solutions to these challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid rise of competitive space activities within Asia, this study examines the prospects for increasing international cooperation. After discussing relevant conceptual issues, it surveys the space policies particularly of China, India, Japan, and South Korea and examines the skewed patterns of cooperation seen at the international, regional, and bilateral levels. It then analyzes the historical, technology, and political factors that have impeded, especially regional, space cooperation in Asia to date. The study concludes that expanded regional space cooperation is an unlikely near-term outcome, but the paper also argues that the risks entailed in the current situation are growing and that US policy initiatives could make a difference in helping to lead countries out of this dead-end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A dual-frequency global positioning system (GPS) receiving set-up at Guwahati (26° 10' N, 91° 45' E), has been in operation for the last year and a half, providing total electron content (TEC) data as input for understanding pre-earthquake contributions to low-latitude atmospheric dynamics. The major China earthquake of 12 May 2008, with magnitude 8.0 and an epicentre at 31° 24' N, 103° 58' E is a rare event to facilitate extracting earthquake features on the TEC data, and hence low-latitude system perturbations. This paper begins with a brief discussion on the methods adopted in identifying TEC performance before an impending earthquake from ionospheric data, and presents results of analysis of the event of 12 May. TEC magnitudes recorded with latitude / longitude and elevation of satellites for every pass are linked with pre-earthquake TEC features and are used as inputs to identify epicentre position. The role of seismic-time refractive index variations is examined to explain the observed TEC characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that existing categories defining the geography of the world's wine industry, principally the Old World/New World dichotomy, are flawed. Not only do they fail to represent adequately the complexity of production and marketing in those two broad regions but also, crucially, they do not acknowledge the significant and rapidly expanding production and consumption of wine in 'Third World' developing countries. Rather than argue for the addition of a 'Third World' category, we instead use the lens of recent work on globalisation to argue that such production requires us to re-examine the dichotomous Old/New distinction which structures much of the thinking around the global wine industry. It also requires us to more closely link changes in patterns of global wine consumption with developments in global production. Changing geographies of wine production have been driven, to a large extent, by the rapid expansion of both local wealthy elites and burgeoning middle classes in countries such as China and India. This has resulted in the development of local wineries, large and small, throughout the developing world. It has also seen new flows of investment both from established wine regions to these new sites of production and from companies and individuals in the developing world who have invested in established wine regions, whether in France or Australia. Increasingly, the various worlds of wine will become more complex, accommodating new regions and also different forms of production and marketing, from traditional and modern artisanal production, closely tied to place and vintage, to large-scale industrial production for a mass market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates to what extent the improving Sino-Indian relations coincide with a mitigation of military threat perceptions. A critical review of the demilitarisation of the border, the military strategies with respect to the Indian Ocean and nuclear arms programmes, reveals that the two countries are still locked in a military security dilemma. Distrust still results in military balancing. The outcome is a complex and multi-level military balance of power that might not bring about peace but enhances stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strategic historians and practitioners associated with the 32-day Sino-Indian border conflict of autumn 1962 have for long argued that India's appeal for US military assistance during the war led to the abandonment of India's foreign policy of non-alignment. By asking for military assistance, India entered into an alliance with the US. Triangulation of different accounts of the war, declassified US State Department Papers and correspondence between Indian leaders during the time of the war counter these claims. This article demonstrates how India's political elite, informed by cultural beliefs had in fact resisted allying with the US. Cultural beliefs, and not rational claims prescribing alliances, guided the strategic decision-making process in this period of national security crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of development co-operation—the 'development paradigm'—took shape during the decades of global decolonisation and growing political autonomy of the former colonies. It can be understood as a historic reconfiguration of the centre-periphery relationship originally established through colonisation. The rise of new state donors such as China or India questions not only the established modes of development co-operation but also the development paradigm as a whole. Themselves historical products of anti-colonialism and political autonomy understood as non-alignment as well as absolute sovereignty, these new 'Southern' donors question the very idea of development (co-operation) as a Western, postcolonial concept. This paper, first, attempts to characterise the 'development paradigm', providing a historical contextualisation of the development discourse in its continuities and ruptures. Second, it asks what the rise of new state donors such as China and India looks like at the political-normative level as well as at the level of Realpolitik. Lastly, some future consequences of these trends are discussed illustrating the far-reaching (normative) consequences and the necessity to reconsider the established political discourse on development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the determinants of household saving in China and India over the last few decades using the life cycle model, with appropriate modifications to account for the expected benefits of pension saving. Consistent with the predictions made in the life cycle model, higher income growth promotes more household saving, and higher age dependency does the opposite. An increase in the inflation rate appears to encourage household saving. Interestingly, the evidence suggests that an increase in expected pension benefits tends to discourage household saving in China in the long run, but the reverse is found in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an undeniable power surge in Asia, primarily in India and China. Speculation about a strategic joining of forces of India and China into a muscular economic alliance known as “Chindia” has been floated. Despite once being bitter enemies, the two nations have engaged in a recent detente with each other. Building upon each other's strengths helps advance this cause. However, until now the Chindia concept has appeared to be more theoretical than practical in nature because of lingering boundary issues between the nations. Such an alliance, however, cannot be summarily dismissed. This paper focuses upon how India and China partnering with the United States could form a transregional triangle that would tighten America's grip on power in the Asia-Pacific Region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) emerged under the Kyoto Protocol to facilitate collaboration between developed and developing countries in order to mitigate greenhouse gases. The CDM allows developed countries to receive credits towards meeting their obligatory targets by investing in emission reduction projects in developing countries. The countries are required to set up a Designated National Authority (DNA) to approve the CDM projects. This paper examines the role of the DNA in ensuring sustainable development, using the empirical case of China and India. Three aspects of the DNA's role are examined: the institutional structure, the policy context and the CDM project market. All three aspects highlight the important role of the DNA in meeting the countries' sustainable development priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Eastern Karakoram is a remote and under studied region of Ladakh in the northwestern Himalaya. The geology of the area provides insight into the evolution of the south Asian margin since the Paleozoic and is dominated structurally by the Karakoram fault, an ∼800 km long dextral strike-slip fault that bounds western Tibet. In this paper, a 1:250,000 geological map is presented based upon fieldwork and interpretation of satellite imagery. An overview of the geology of the Eastern Karakoram is also presented and includes a discussion of the architecture and kinematics of the central segment of the Karakoram fault. The construction of the map has aided our understanding of the initiation and evolution of the Karakoram fault and of the geology of the south Asian margin in this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China and India, with four out of ten of the world's inhabitants, must loom large in any discussion of global international migration, especially so-called South-North migration. They have become major sources of migrants to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations. This paper focuses on the migration relationship between China and India and one of the OECD nations, Australia. Australian international migration data allow a comprehensive picture of all movement in and out of the country to be made, and for this article, flows with China and India are analysed. It is argued that the migration relationship is best depicted as a complex migration system involving flows in both directions and circularity, reciprocity, and remigration. A conceptual scheme is developed to identify the main components of the migration system and it is shown that many migrants transit between the different elements in the system. The analysis demonstrates that the traditional conceptualisation of the migration relationship between India and China on the one hand and high income countries on the other hand as being 'South-North' in nature is inappropriate. Some of the implications of reconceptualising mobility in this way for understanding the migration process and for the development of migration policy in China, India and Australia are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]