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Scientific exegesis has been adapted by religious scholars in this region beginning in the early 20th century, and later developed and is widely accepted by the scholars. The number of scholars who use the exegesis in writing their religious texts particularly in interpreting verses of the Quran have increased throughout the years. Therefore, the objective of this article is to uncover and analyze the progress of the Quranic Scientific Exegesis in South-East Asia through its scholars. This study uses qualitative methodology and library research methods by analyzing various primary and secondary sources. The content analysis method is used to sort and analyze the data with certain characteristics objectively and systematically. The findings of this study clearly show that the prominent scholars in the region such as Shaykh Muhammad Idris Al-Marbawi, Shaykh Muhammad Saʾid ibn Umar, Shaykh Mustafa Abdul Rahman, Shaykh Abdul Hayei Abdul Sukor, Ustaz Zawawi Ahmad, Prof. Hasbi Ash-Shiddieqy, Prof. Buya Hamka, K.H. Bisyri Mustafa, Prof. Achmad Baiquni and Shaykh Ahmad Sonhadji Muhammad, have contributed a lot and played an important role in the development of this the Quranic scientific exegesis. It is also discovered that the government agencies in the region also play a role in supporting the efforts to promote the development of the Quranic scientific exegesis so that it can be accepted and widely used by the Muslim community as a branch of the Quranic interpretation in learning and understanding the Quran.

The study of political decision-making cannot exclude the actors involved in the process. Neither can it disregard the interplay between decision-makers and political institution where they operate. This article aims to explain how perception of survival affects decision-making by focusing on leaders, specifically by analysing Benigno S. Aquino III’s leadership (2010–2016). Built on political psychology, I will show that motivation to maintain power may bias leaders’ reasoning leading to suboptimal decision. Accountability can help leaders mitigate bias, or de-bias, by stimulating their use of cognitive complexity. But the same effort may backfire and make leaders resort to heuristics instead. Where leaders end up in the cognitive spectrum depends on the types of audiences to whom they feel accountable: core (the ruling elites and loyal voters) and external (the opposition and its supporters) audiences. Preoccupation with core audiences can make leaders downplay the opposition challenge. Furthermore, leaders’ perceived understanding of their support base may be erroneous. The result is overconfidence in their perception of survival. I argue that President Aquino’s misperception of survival was rooted in his belief that (1) Filipinos would like to have his legacy continued and that (2) his popularity would help his successor Manuel Araneta Roxas II win the 2016 presidential race. This overconfidence turned out to be detrimental. Roxas’s electoral loss to Rodrigo Duterte put an end to the Daang Matuwid, President Aquino’s good governance platform.

A little over a month after the coronavirus (COVID-19) was declared as a pandemic, the World Health Organization expressed the need for open data to support policies that seek to address COVID-19, even as governments were called upon to facilitate access to data and information. Adopting the transparency framework developed by Fung, Graham and Weil (2007), this study examines ‘laginghanda.gov.ph,’ the official Philippine government website for COVID-19 data, to determine if it serves the open government data (OGD) goals as outlined and identified by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and as agreed under the Open Government Partnership. Using an exploratory research approach, a documentary analysis and content audit of the laginghanda.gov.ph showed that the website did not provide timely data even as the website contained mostly static, general information. Health statistical data could be accessed but it was neither machine readable nor timely; while, financial and economic data were lacking. In other words, the website does not contribute to government transparency and cannot be used to determine the accountability of government agencies. Thus, the author concludes that it fails as a tool for democratization.

Unrelenting animosity continues to define the relationship between the United States and North Korea, but in the mid-1980s, P’yŏngyang began to seek non-confrontational measures to fulfill one of its major diplomatic objectives—opening a channel of direct negotiation with Washington. The bodies of U.S. soldiers who had perished or gone missing in North Korea in 1950 during the Korean War became bargaining chips for the North Koreans. This article analyzes the political stakes of these remains for the two countries. It traces the meetings between Congressman Gillespie V. Montgomery and North Korean officials in 1989 and 1990, which led to the first return of U.S. soldiers’ remains since October 1954. North Korea’s insistence on delivering the remains to Montgomery, rather than the Korean War Military Armistice Commission, was an attempt to force the United States to acknowledge its legitimacy. Unable to abandon the bodies, U.S. officials offered limited concessions, while endeavoring to maintain the status quo in Korea. The 1990 remains repatriation revealed the possibility of cooperation between the two countries.

Japanese food first became the focus of serious attention in the United States during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), when Japan’s victory over the Russian empire signaled that nation’s arrival as a new world power. This newfound interest had nothing to do with gastronomy. The conviction driving it was that diet and preventative health care in the Japanese military, which had been critical to its unexpected success, could serve as models for the United States. Military doctors, home economists, dietitians, businesses, vegetarians, and physical fitness fans joined this discourse, each with their own agendas. Many participants were women whose advocacy linked the supposed innate feminine propensity for nurturing and care giving with a shared faith in science to solve the problems facing the modern world. All believed Japan’s rice, vegetable, and fish-based diet contributed to the exceptional physical strength and stamina of the Japanese people because, unlike their own, “it was plain, rational, and easily digested, metabolized and assimilated.” More enthusiasm than knowledge in their claims, but this mattered little since the goal was not to popularize Japanese culinary culture, but to reform U.S. eating habits. This article examines the American discourse on Japanese food and health and how it shaped and reflected domestic political, social, and economic priorities in the 20th Century’s first decade.

Measures of presidential satisfaction have long been in the public’s attention, but the factors that drive them have brought about much discussion. As a contribution to the literature, this study empirically examines presidential approval data in the Philippines using a unique survey of 1200 low-income voting age residents of Metro Manila. Using individual-level data, this study unpacks the possible factors underpinning survey results on citizens’ satisfaction with leadership in the Philippines. While accounting for the personal circumstances of the respondents, this study finds evidence of bandwagoning among survey respondents; and partial evidence of personal economic conditions and disinformation possibly linked to presidential satisfaction. The findings here suggest there should be more caution in interpreting presidential satisfaction indicators.

In 1975, the explosive growth of Sino-U.S. trade that only had resumed after 1971 ended with a severe decline from $920 million a year to just $461 million. The cause of the collapse was the unilateral decision of the People’s Republic of China (prc) to cancel several orders from late 1974 to early 1975. Scholars have advanced three reasons for the prc’s action, blaming to trade disputes, Beijing’s desire to punish the Americans for slow progress on the Taiwan issue, and Chinese trade officials preventing radicals from labeled them “compradors.” Each explanation, however, overstates the importance of high-level politics and ignores mid-level exchanges, as trade delegations shuttled back and forth across the Pacific in 1975. The article demonstrates that the real obstacle to trade in 1975 was China’s limited ability to purchase American grain in the same quantities as in the last four years, along with indications of a good future harvest in China emerging at the end of 1974. Economic factors therefore better explain the decline in prc-U.S. trade, providing an example of how in the last years of the Cultural Revolution, Beijing’s economic policy was more pragmatic than one would expect.

Prominent China studies academics who, with the assistance of members of the business and religious communities, founded the National Committee on United States-China Relations (ncuscr) in 1966 did not build it to last. Its leaders foresaw the organization’s work as “catalytic” and envisioned that it would be “going out of business as soon as possible.” By March 1971, with a new era of U.S. relations with China on the horizon, its leaders saw little reason to continue operations, and seriously contemplated closing up shop. Yet that April, the government of the People’s Republic of China hosted the U.S. Table Tennis team, and pledged to have its team make a reciprocal visit to the United States the following year, which the ncuscr funded and organized. This visit’s controversies mirrored the previous ideological divides the group had weathered. Conservative anti-Communist protesters and pro-Taiwan activists disrupted the earliest public events, but antiwar demonstrators, who appeared at later exhibition matches to protest President Richard M. Nixon’s bombing of Haiphong in North Vietnam, soon superseded them. Despite these pitfalls, the visit proved to be a great success for the nsuscr, which received a new lease on life and gained a renewed sense of purpose.

In the late 1970s, after the tumultuous period of the Cultural Revolution, the policy of the government of the People’s Republic of China (prc) in terms of scientific and technological exchanges and cooperation with the United States changed from rejection and exclusion to active participation and promotion. In this process, ideas and views played an important role. The outlook of the Chinese leadership and particularly Deng Xiaoping on science redefined China’s national interests, turning the promotion of Sino-U.S. science and technology cooperation into an active policy of the Chinese government. During the 1970s, the two countries conducted large-scale intergovernmental cooperation in the field of civil science and technology, signed the agreement on scientific and technological cooperation and dozens of memorandums of understanding and protocols, and finally, in 1979, established a long-term scientific and technological cooperation system. The article explores Sino-American relations through the prism of scientific and technological cooperation, showing how this contributed to creating long-term friendly relations beyond other high politics issues.

This paper explores what factors contribute to distinguishing gay sounding and straight man sounding speech; linguistic cognate or social knowledge and whether the gender of listeners also determines ability in identification. To answer these questions, 286 participants were classified by nationality into 3 groups of participants: Thai listeners as a control group, Zhuang, and Other listeners. They were asked to listen to 12 voice stimuli in Thai from straight and gay men and identify the gender of the speakers. The outcome revealed that the accuracy rate in identifying a speaker’s gender varied among the 3 groups of listeners with Thai listeners scoring the highest in gender identification, followed by the Others and Zhuang respectively. This indicates that social knowledge gained from one’s presence Thailand is more important than linguistic cognate. Gender identification may have been made based on the expectation of the ‘typical’ social scene such as the high visibility of gay men in Thailand. The results also suggest that gender of the listeners does not have a significant bearing on the ability to differentiate gay and straight male voices.

The rescue mission at Tham Luang cave in Chiang Rai, Thailand, presents a scenario in which magical rituals and technical knowledge were marshaled against hostile natural conditions. While practical endeavors were made to mitigate the risks and impediments posed by malign weather and topographical features of the cave, myths and rituals were enacted to control unruly factors not subject to human manipulation. In this paper, I argue that: 1) Magical rituals at Tham Luang cave did not originate from the participants’ confidence in the reality of supernatural beings but from their attempt to use alternative approaches to remedy a precarious situation when practical efforts and technical knowledge did not yield a desired outcome. 2) In this case, the participants regarded the reality of supernatural beings and their role in the rescue as a possibility rather than a self-evident truth.

This article examines the process of combining three distinct traditional music cultures in Pattani, Thailand, into one piece of music. The author was the music director of the “Hoamroang Sam Prasan” (Overture: Harmony of the Three). Since the three musical traditions – Nora, Rong Ngeng and Digir Hulu, and Chinese drums ensemble – are similar yet different, the work was both easy and difficult. As someone with long experience in intercultural music, I developed a distinct way to do collaborative work. I seek to ensure musicians contribute their best to the piece, establish bonds of trust to co-operate, so they are willing to share in different ideas and training. The project drew the best from traditional musicians so they could develop new work on their own terms with their own musical abilities in a mode I call “conservative contemporary music.” Both artists and audiences could better appreciate the vitality of different musical traditions and their lively interactions more fully.

Venus, a play written by Suzan-Lori Parks, employs unconventional theatrical approaches in retelling the history of a 19th-century freak show attraction. This study examines how the critique of gender bias and sexual manipulations in Venus is explored and projected in ways that can be described as postmodern. Through the subversion of conventional forms and language, the blending of fact and fiction, the pastiches of both low and high generic and linguistic presentations, the liberating of a marginalized voice, and the revision of the philosophical premises that subordinate the female to the male order, the play questions the masculine determinacy inherent in social institutions and traditions and invites a conscious reconsideration of default meaning and truth.

In 2020, Rohingya men, women, and children continue to embark across the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea, and States continue to lack safe and predictable disembarkation protocols and standards. From a protection perspective, the situation in 2020 has played out as it did in 2015 showing a lack of progress. After decades of discriminatory policies, denial of basic human rights, and targeted violence, at least 1.5 million stateless Rohingya refugees have fled Myanmar’s Rakhine State to seek refuge in the region and scattered locations around the globe, often surviving horrendous journeys by sea in the hope of disembarking with even marginally better prospects. The reception of the Rohingya in each of their places of refuge has been mixed, but it has rarely if ever been one of unqualified welcome. How do we engage with challenges that seem so intractable? The academic literature looking at refugee protection in the Asian region has largely dealt with its absence or inadequacy. Yet if we look more closely at any specific context in Asia, we can see that States may have laws, policies, or practices that can be utilised to recognise or respond to protection needs; international institutions like the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (unhcr) are often recognised and permitted to conduct protection activities; civil society actors in every jurisdiction have developed substantial capacity for operationalising protection in practice; and refugees themselves are coping and contributing to their own protection in every case. It is at the national and local levels where protection capacity must be built towards implementation of a ‘whole-of-society’ approach.

Political dynasties, by limiting political competition, are thought to exacerbate corruption, poverty, and abuse of power. This paper examines the economic effects of the presence of political dynasties in Philippine cities and municipalities, taking into account possible channels in the local dynastic cycle – the framework in which politicians try to balance their goals to perform well for their constituents, to divert resources for personal gain, and to continue to be in power. Due to the lack of extensive income accounts or other economic indicators in finer geographical units (i.e., city or municipality level), we use the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program-Operational Linescan System (DMSP-OLS) nighttime light data as our proxy for economic activity. Using a panel of Philippine municipalities and cities, we find that, in general, the relationship of political dynasties on economic performance is weak. However, we find that a higher share of economic expenditures leads to lower economic development in municipalities where the mayor, governor, and congressman belong to the same clan. We see this as an indication of weak institutions of checks and balances in localities with dynasties.

This article analyzes on a new directorial approach to Venice Vanija (เวนิสวาณิช), a Thai version of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (written 1596–99) and translated by King Rama vi (r. 1910–1925). It aimed to create a new space and new rules that would encourage Thai audiences to embrace new perspectives by watching the performance. The production was directed by the author in 2018 in the Department of Dramatic Arts in the Faculty of Arts at Chulalongkorn University. The directing approach focused on the play’s famous line “all that glitters is not gold;” (Act ii, scene vii, line 65), and stressed how struggles between majorities and “the Other” are connected to identity conflicts that contrast with tensions with other people and conflicts within the whole community. The above focus was elaborated by using alienation effects, including a grotesque modern fairytale-like look, a nearly all-female cast, a distinctive traverse stage and set design, effeminate costumes for male characters portrayed by actresses, and mixed acting techniques. The director achieved his goals by concentrating on the message and the main conflicts in the play, transforming “aliens into the allies” through using good surprises and friendly attacks, and respecting every party.

This article discusses the diverse impacts of the Sinsai Roo Jai Ton research project based at Khon Kaen University from 2016 to 2019. Designed as a puppet performance by university students working with local artists in northeastern Thailand (Isan), the project inspired many other groups interested in making puppet performances by collaborating with local artists in Isan communities. Beyond collaborative performances, the project developed new interests in students who participated in the project and helped develop new types of teaching and learning, of research, and creating contemporary performances from artistic materials in local Isan communities such as narratives, stories, folk singing and playing music, murals, folk-dance, traditions and rituals, by using modern drama/theatre concepts and techniques as tools to find creative methods to present a new contemporary performance, to communicate new voices, ideas and aesthetics to audiences and to shape new modes of Isan identity.

This article investigates the storytelling and mythmaking about the American Volunteer Group (avg), popularly known as the Flying Tigers, in the United States during World War ii. The avg was an aircrew of discharged U.S. military pilots and mechanics that China hired to assist in its war against Japan. Although this group was in combat for only seven months, its exploits became legendary in the United States. Based on examination of newspaper reports, magazine articles, Hollywood movies, popular biographies, and declassified documents, this article shows that Americans interpreted the avg’s service as proof of U.S. benevolence and superiority. It demonstrates that wartime stories about the avg helped many Americans regain confidence and assure their identities as racially and technologically superior people after enduring the shock of Pearl Harbor and Japan’s advance in Asia and Pacific. In this mythmaking process, Americans marginalized both the harmful impact of the avg personnel’s misconduct and the important contributions Chinese made to the avg. This article not only challenges the “Good War” image of World War ii in U.S. popular memories, but also seeks to contribute to the broader scholarly understanding of how popular memories of a nation’s overseas interventions affect its identity.

Analysis of the writings of Kuang Qizhao and other Chinese self-strengtheners suggests that their emphasis on promoting education before democracy and continuing to endorse classical Confucianism were not signs of a retrograde kind of conservatism, but an entirely rational decision based on the actual experiences of late Qing observers of 19th Century American democracy. Observing the U.S. Congress’s passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Chinese officials observed the real dangers of demagogue led populism without an educated, moral citizenry and the apparent importance of Christianity to creating the moral foundation for an effective modern society. For Kuang, Confucianism was equivalent to Christianity to establish that moral basis, and not a conservative desire to preserve the old social order. Kuang would pass on his thoughts to some of China’s most important reformers and officials on his return home, suggesting he and the officials he associated with had a more realistic and sophisticated understanding of American society and democracy than is currently assumed.

In October 2019, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Telecommunication and Information Technology Ministers adopted the ASEAN Guidelines for Strengthening Resilience and Repair of Submarine Cables. This instrument represents an important increase in awareness by the Association of the importance of a swift process for authorising the repair of submarine cables. This article suggests the next steps to be taken by ASEAN to improve the process of granting permits for repairing submarine cables in ASEAN Member States.

In this article, we argue that a consequence of Duterte’s presidency is the further weakening of the party system in the Philippines, or the emergence of “anarchy of parties.” Traditionally, Philippine presidents used their power of patronage in a quid-pro-quo manner vis-à-vis the legislators to achieve presidents’ goals, and this executive-legislative transaction was coordinated mainly through the president’s party. However, evidence suggests that Duterte bypassed Congress to achieve his policies by riding on his popularity and did not have to use his power of pork to co-opt politicians. As a result, the president’s party decreased its value as a coordination device for congressional affairs and party nominations at elections. Consequently, what we observe is an anarchy of parties where inter-party competition has become even more fluid and fragmented than before the Duterte presidency. We provide corroborative evidence to support our claim by mainly focusing on the 2019 midterm elections.

This study investigates whether partisanship influences the cognitive processing of statements made by President Rodrigo Duterte. It adopts a pre-test/post-test design and involves 254 college students from Metro Cebu and Metro Manila Philippines. Findings suggest that partisanship significantly influenced the cognitive processing of statements attributed to President Duterte. Political support was significantly and positively associated with belief. Supporters were more likely to express belief in attributed statements. Even when informed that the statements were false, their political support did not significantly decline. Non-supporters were less likely to believe attributed statements and more likely to change their minds when shown information that the statements were false. “Motivated reasoning” or “expressive responding” may explain these findings but there is not enough data in this study to establish this. The implication is that fact-checking may have a limited impact on changing the minds or diminishing the political support of the strongly partisan.

Since the Philippines elected President Rodrigo Duterte in 2016, the country’s foreign policy seems to have become more uncertain. President Duterte’s mercurial personality and antagonistic tirades against the country’s traditional Western allies, including the United States (US) and the European Union (EU), and his statements of building closer ties with China and Russia, had changed the political and diplomatic tone of the Philippines overall. Certainly, the political relationship between the Philippines and the West has been changed by Duterte’s strong remarks against the US and EU. Has this change spilled over to the economy? The paper presents an international political economy framework in examining the impact of Duterte’s foreign policy pivot to the country’s foreign economic relations, focusing on trade and investment. The paper argues that Duterte’s foreign policy shift is mainly shaped by Duterte’s “politics of survival”. Not firmly anchored in any idea, norms, or interest that can clearly benefit the country, Duterte is unable to provide coherent guidance and leadership on the foreign policy pivot, particularly on the economy. Duterte’s lack of guidance provided the technocrats with the policy space to continue the policies from the previous administration and not to divert radically from previous economic policies. The stability of the economic institutions provided a refuge in the period of uncertainty. As a result, the foreign economic relations of the Philippines has not radically shifted. The trade and investment situation of the Philippines remained stable, and economic relations with traditional partners are maintained.

We construct the drug menace as a standard 2×2 collective action problem with two self-interested households A and B, each facing a strategy set (C, D) = (Cooperate, Don’t Cooperate). If the households cooperate, that is attain (C, C), they stop the drug menace; if not, which is the usual outcome of these games under laissez faire, non-cooperation rules instanced by the Nash equilibrium (D, D) and the drug menace overruns the community. We introduce a game transformation via a third party-intervention-by-statute (TPIS) mechanism: a third party promulgates and enforces a statute S which penalizes non-cooperation D, spells out the contribution c of households, the statutory penalty p for, and the likelihood f of being caught, playing D. For certain combinations of c, p and f, the intervention is efficient, that is, attains (C, C) as the Nash equilibrium of the transformed game. The likelihood of an efficient statute rises the lower is c and the higher the expected penalty pf, features associated with a strong and wise third party. The TPIS mechanism is a parable for the role of governments in general: to consolidate and galvanize the local forces to overcome collective action problems. The third party is normally identified with the government in the hands of persons who hold the mantle of government. When the mantle is contestable and the basis of contestability is electoral, there is a vent for good governance in the form of welfare-improving interventions. The perception of households matter in elections and aspirants with a perceived superior track record on or one that promises superiority at solving the most salient community problems will rise to the top of the voting preference. Whether the track record is real or constructed matters little as long as it is perceived by the voter as true. Duterte won the Philippine presidency for a variety of reasons but the most cogent and tailor-made for his persona was the narrative that he got rid of the drug problem by employing a death squad which carried out extrajudicial executions in Davao City. By showing himself capable of bypassing the widely despised corrupt due process was an electoral plus for many poor people. Duterte’s electoral victory was rooted in the narrative that drug menace was a collective action problem number one and that if there was a solution it was inexorably tied to Duterte’s real or imagined persona.

Why and how did the Philippine Congress intervene in the policies of Arroyo (hedging), Aquino III (balancing), and Duterte (appeasement) on the South China Sea disputes? In particular, why and how did the Philippine Congress challenge each president’s attempt to forge either cooperation or confrontation towards China? Guided by the domestic politics – foreign policy nexus, this article explores the dynamic role of the Philippine Congress in the country’s foreign policy process. It combines comparative case-study and content analysis methods to examine relevant congressional records, government documents, public speeches, and news reports. This article finds that the impetus behind Congress’ intervention was to seek accountability, legitimacy, and transparency via registering a bill or passing a law, filing legislative resolutions, holding congressional hearings, calling for impeachment proceedings, delivering privilege speeches, and issuing press releases. This article offers its empirical and theoretical contributions to broaden current understanding of the relationship between domestic politics and foreign policy.

Two influential explanations of Duterte’s surprising rise and rule are his “penal populist” leadership style and a structural crisis of oligarchic democracy. The populist leadership perspective explains “too little” about the extreme violence of Duterte’s illiberal rule and the vulnerability of the prevailing political order to it. The oligarchic-democracy-in-crisis view, on the other hand, explains “too much” because it is overly generalized and determinist, thus unable to account for what in particular triggered Duterte’s rise despite political stability and economic growth. The article offers a third explanation that integrates a leadership perspective into an oligarchic framework using a “structuration” approach. It focuses on how Duterte’s leadership style enabled him to take advantage of a disjunctive moment in the country’s “liberal reformist” political structure, a distinct subset of oligarchic democracy.

Rodrigo Duterte is imaged as an ideology through narratives, texts, discourses and representations which emerge in a highly contentious discursive terrain. This paper places this in two domains, namely in academic theorizing and popular culture, particularly in social media, both of which are implicated in representational politics. Academic theorizing about Duterte attempts to be objective and scholarly, but is dominated by anti-Duterte sentiments that are mainly born from liberal and critical orientations. The pro-Duterte social media is not only anti-elite but also has an anti-intellectual orientation. Social media is an effective contrapuntal in painting academic theorizing as a weapon of the anti-Duterte elites. Written using narratives drawn from an auto-ethnographic account of this author, this paper first analyzes the academic and social media domains around which myths and representations about Rodrigo Duterte are produced. It concludes by drawing from the analysis the implications to ideological and discursive bases for the maintenance of political order in Philippine society, particularly on the role of leaders in the context of the country’s communitarian political culture.

Chi Ki-ch’ŏl’s story reveals a man not driven by ideology, but buffeted by it. He began adulthood as a Korean exile in Manchuria, where the Japanese occupation army conscripted him. After Japan’s defeat in August 1945, he joined a Korean contingent of the Chinese Communist Army and fought in the Chinese Civil War. His unit later repatriated to North Korea, where it joined the invasion of South Korea on 25 June 1950. When U.S.-led forces of the United Nations shattered that invasion in September, he quickly arranged to surrender to U.S. troops. While in custody, Chi worked with Republic of Korea (rok) intelligence to organize prisoner of war (pow) resistance to their being returned to North Korea after the impending armistice. He enjoyed privileges as an anti-Communist in the pow camps, and hoped it would continue. Although an active anti-Communist, Chi judged that he would not be able to live in South Korea as an ex-pow. After refusing repatriation to North Korea, he also rejected staying in South Korea. But Chi would survive elsewhere. He relocated to India, where he thrived as a businessman. He chose the space of neutrality to succeed as an anti-Communist, where life nevertheless reflected the contentious energy of the Cold War. Chi’s decision demonstrated how ideology, despite its importance to him, was not sufficient to translate his rejection of Communist North Korea into a commitment to South Korea.

Thai missionary monks are viewed as passive in the new land on the grounds that though they work abroad, they still serve Thai communities rather than adapt Buddhism to attract the locals. Missionary work in Indonesia is, however, exceptional. This article questions how Thai monks attracted Chinese followers, who have a different background of beliefs. Ethnographic methodology was conducted in Central Java and Sumatra for three months. It found that in order to negotiate with educated lay religious leaders, Thai monks choose to invent an identity of traditional forest monks who are experts in meditation as found in Northeast Thailand. This special figure cannot be found among the laypeople who are immersed in worldly matters like the family and business. Thus, meditation masters from Thailand are often invited to Indonesia not only to provide meditation guidance but also to invent a new identity of Thai Buddhism in Indonesia.

Thailand is regarded as a country of the expanding circle (EC). The fact that English has become a working language in the asean community makes it vital that Thai students are aware of the varieties of English. The study examined the perception of English majors towards varieties of English pronunciation. Listening tasks spoken by speakers in the expanding circle (EC), the inner circle (IC) and outer circle (OC), were presented to students enrolled in a course on Sound and English Sound System. The students rated accent preference and intelligibility. A semi-structure interview was included for more in-depth information. The results revealed that the variety of English that was perceived as the most favorable accent by the participants was English spoken by speakers from IC. The participants were more aware of varieties of English, especially those spoken by non-native speakers of English. However, English spoken by speakers from the EC was perceived as the most intelligible.

This article analyses the walled defensive system of the Khmer city centre of Vimayapura (modern Phimai, Thailand) to evaluate the theoretical level of military effectivity of both the walls and the moats against potential attackers, considering their technical characteristics and the enemy’s weapons. We also study the layout of the urban enceinte, the constructive material, the gateways as well as weakness and strengths of the stronghold and the symbolic, monumental and ornamental functions in the overall role of the walls. Based on comparisons with similar cases, as well as in situ observations of the archaeological remains and a bibliographical research, our study reveals that the stonewalls were not designed primarily to resist military attacks. Instead, the army, the moat, and possibly the embankments and/or palisades would have been the first lines of defence of the city.

When translation is considered as an integral part of larger social systems (Even-Zohar 1990), the ways in which translations are produced to serve readers’ specificity could be affected. This paper examines whether there is a preference for a specific global translation strategy due to a readership that is specialized in terms of education level. Adopting Venuti’s (1995/2008) division of global translation strategies into exoticizing and domesticating translation, it examines the frequency of local translation strategies, which are part of a global translation strategy, used in translating English-Thai religious markers in Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons, The Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol, Inferno and Origin. The religious markers cover words/phrases of belief systems in either Eastern or Western culture. The results show that exoticizing translation is a dominant global translation strategy that translation agents, such as translators and editors, use in literary translations of Anglo-American novels.

This paper studies the activities of American enterprises, technology, and related business organizations and engineering groups in China from the outbreak of World War i to the Pacific War and explains how these activities helped establish connections between China and the world. It borrows the concept of “networks” from Professor Sherman Cochran’s extraordinary book titled Encountering Chinese Networks, but broadens the scope of the term to include activity at the level of management and competition, as well as placing Sino-American relations in transnational perspective. Using a multi-archival approach to examine China’s major attempts at internationalization, this article focuses on the cases of the American Asiatic Association, the American Chamber of Commerce of China, and the Association of Chinese and American Engineers to show how these networks played important roles in the development of Chinese-American relations. It also discusses the issues of standardization, “scientific management,” and professionalism of entrepreneurs and engineers in influencing network making.

Secretary of Navy Frank Knox declared a week after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor that fifth columnist activities were partly responsible for the success of Imperial Japanese forces. Who and what he meant when he used the phrase “fifth columnist activities” is subject to debate. Most assume he was referring to all Japanese Americans or Japanese nationals residing in Hawai’i. But this essay, based on Knox’s personal correspondence, supplemented with the Pearl Harbor Attack hearings’ published reports, Judge Advocate General records, and the 14th Naval District Intelligence Officer reports, finds that Knox was referring to the Japanese Consul-General Office and a small handful of Japanese American assistants who voluntarily carried out the task of keeping the U.S. Fleet and military installations under surveillance, thereby contributing to the success of the Imperial Japanese attack.

The possibility of oil reserves under the seabed of the East China Sea created competition between Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan to claim ownership of these natural resources. The dispute marked the start of international cooperation in maritime East Asia and introduced the United States into this power game due to its exploration techniques and financial power. While Taibei, Tokyo, and Seoul put sovereignty-related disputes aside in an attempt to explore resources jointly, the change in international politics in East Asia and Washington’s perception of the western Pacific rim led to the failure of cooperation. This article argues that this international power game over natural resources management epitomized the dynamic politics between the United States and its East Asian allies. The roles of sovereignty, local interests, and U.S. international security created a dynamic scenario revealing how oil reserves were never the issue, but instead the embodiment of the actual concerns of these players behind their diplomatic language. Situating the 1970s oil exploration in the context of the Cold War, this article provides a historical lens to understand the contours of the shifting geopolitical structure in maritime East Asia.

Little is known about the perceptions of Chinese citizens regarding U.S. domestic politics, particularly among university students in the People’s Republic of China. During their time at institutions of higher learning, U.S. students often experience heightened political awareness and increased engagement with political issues. Scholars have conducted minimal research, however, among their Chinese counterparts. Given the current political climate, as the United States and the prc have an exceptionally contentious relationship, the opinions of Chinese students regarding the most recent U.S. presidential candidates have particular interest. This case study examines 506 Chinese university students’ perspectives on U.S. 2020 presidential election candidates Donald J. Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr. Findings indicate that there is a negative perception of Trump, a great deal of uncertainty regarding Biden, and considerable diversity among opinions overall.