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The History of the World travels from East to West for Europe is absolutely the end of History, Asia the Beginning (Hegel, 1956, p. 103).In 1721 Christian Wolff gave a lecture on Confucius at Halle...

From the British Century of the 1800s to the American Century of the 1900s to the contemporary Asian Century, tourism geographies are deeply entangled in broader shifts in geopolitical power (Luce,...

This paper explores public discourses of race and nation in Australia and Singapore, focusing on their historical and contemporary relationship with China and the Chinese. Both countries are govern...

What does the advent of an ‘Asian Century’ portend for critical tourism geographies? This commentary argues that two recent developments have made a critical reckoning with the Asian Century more p...

Tourism academics, practitioners, governments and agencies around the world are in general agreement about the future of tourism in the ‘Asian Century’ of a Post-Western World. As late as 2001, Mee...

The present poses challenges, coping with which requires a revision of our thought process-an un-worlding, if one may. On the other hand, critiquing Eurocentrism alone does not guarantee a more jus...

This paper re-reads a selection of critical interdisciplinary theories in an attempt to open a space in higher education for cross-cultural dialogue during the rise of Asia. Theories of globalization, deterritorialization, power/knowledge and postcolonialism indicate that students and academics have the ability to re-imagine and influence globalization processes in higher education. The current power effects of global discourses restrict the imaginaries and territories of globalization – leading to specific enactments in ways that prioritize western understandings of higher education. The paper argues for the need to explore hegemonic discursive formations of globalization to uncover processes of “othering” and the subjugation of knowledges. In this regard, a postcolonial perspective can help by opening up scenarios for the future of higher education in the Asian Century.

This article analyses the policy discourse of Australian right-wing governments, exploring how such governments have combined neo-liberal economic policies with social conservatism, populism, cultu...

Every several years there is a new book reviewing Australia’s relationship with Indonesia, looking at the state of play and making suggestions for the future. They tend to follow a common pattern, ...

After a period of significant gains, achieved largely through the establishment of institutions that promoted international liberalism, the global order today finds itself at a crucial juncture. Rising inequality, the proliferation of nationalist politics, technology-induced disruptions and the resurgence of zero-sum geopolitics, are all beginning to shake the foundations of the global governance architecture built assiduously over the past 70 years. It is clear that the liberal order, as it is frequently referred to, will not be able to sustain its influence in the 21st century unless it finds new torchbearers in Asia, where politics and economics are scripting a story very different from that of post-war Europe. To some, it is evident that India, which has successfully combined economic growth with its own liberal traditions, will indeed be the heir to and guarantor of this system as an emerging and leading power.

A largely forgotten history exists of extensive connections between Asia and Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) in the first half of the nineteenth century. Although it was a harsh and deadly place for Indigenous people and incarcerated convicts, Van Diemen’s Land offered opportunity for a growing society of merchants, farmers, bureaucrats, governors, judges, retired military men and their families. Asia was a lived presence in everyday life through the purchase and consumption of foodstuffs, clothing and furnishings from India and China. Cashed-up Vandemonians in the 1820s and 1830s could buy rice, silk, bamboo furniture and at least five different types of tea. Many colonial administrators had experience in Asia and brought Indian servants with them. Due to its climate, the island was touted as the perfect retirement destination for British military families retiring from India and other Asian postings. Asian ship crews were an everyday sight in port. Today, however, these past connections have been forgotten. Tasmania’s current turn to Asia as a key strategy for the state’s future economic prosperity appears to be something new. This article argues that revealing the heterogeneous past challenges contemporary views of historical Tasmania as isolated and monocultural and is essential in reshaping Tasmania’s imagined Asian future.

Since President Jokowi came to power in October 2014, Indonesia’s foreign policy has undergone fundamental change, most obviously in the state’s emphasis on domestic priorities rather than global e...

Asia is a region of economic miracles, and this festschrift for the esteemed development economist Prema-Chandra Athukorala highlights a major driver of Asia’s success: globalisation. Economic prog...

[Extract] The seeming “rise of Asia” and the advent of the “Asian century” has resulted in significant shifts to the gaze Western-orientated countries cast to Asia. Countries such as Australia, New Zealand, and Canada are increasingly challenging their colonial origins to ponder the possibilities of realigning themselves along new geo-political, cultural, and geographical orientations. This realignment takes many forms. In Australia it is referred to as “Asia literacy”, a term of debated origins but one that has nevertheless proved itself to be enduring, though inherently problematic, policy speak. Promoted primarily as an education solution to various economic, strategic, and cultural problems, it has failed to gain traction and widespread acceptance despite over 50 years of promotion by government bodies, policies, and interest groups. A major recurring criticism of the promoted solution is its inherent articulation within dominant instrumentalist discourse and colonial constructs (Salter, 2015; Singh, 1996; Takayama, 2016; Williamson-Fien, 1996).

In recently published academic texts on Asia and China, two contradictory trends seem to dominate the research. One is characterized by a fascination with China's meteoric ascent, its economic succ...

Strangers Next Door? Indonesia and Australia in the Asian Century is the most comprehensive scholarly analysis of the Australia–Indonesia relationship this century. It is a wide-ranging 548-page bo...

This article explores the utility of a constructivist-media communications approach to understanding the production of national identity in Australia through a case study of the Australian Labor Party's 2011 decision to allow uranium sales to India. The decision came at a time when Australian foreign policy, political debate and news media discourse were increasingly concerned with India and China, as ‘rising’ superpowers whose prominence offered opportunities for economic prosperity even as it undermined settled regional power balances. This article finds that, rather than a matter of rational strategy, the decision was made in a context of considerable anxiety about the ‘Asian century’ as the Australian public, politicians and policymakers struggled to comprehend geopolitical change. It further argues that the constructivist project in international relations can benefit from engaging with insights from media and communications methodologies and by taking a less hierarchical approach to ‘elite’ ...

Why has the military dimension of the US-Japan relationship remained the central point of reference for Japanese foreign relations, despite the demise of the Soviet Union? Why has Japan, deepening economic interdependence notwithstanding, remained politically distant from East Asia? Based on analysis of statements by Japanese and US political elites and academics regarding the US-Japan alliance, this article argues that the rise of China, coterminous with the rise of ‘Asia’, challenges the notion of the ‘West’ as, according to standards of industrial modernity, a superior social and political order. These moving ideational boundaries question Japan’s position as the most advanced Asian nation and member of the (Western) international society of states. Therefore, the US-Japan alliance has since the mid-1990s become increasingly important for securing Japan in the ‘West’ and the ‘West’s boundaries in East Asia.

Since 1969, over 60 Australian government and non-government policies, documents, committees, working parties and organisations have explored the need to ‘know Asia’. In schools, this engagement is conceptualised as ‘Asia literacy’ and disseminated in the emerging Australian Curriculum through the cross-curriculum priority ‘Asia and Australia's engagement with Asia’. However, ‘Asia literacy’ often struggles for purchase in Australian education. I argue that finding traction requires disruption of the dominant discourse of ‘Asia’ as a unitary construct and questioning what constitutes ‘Asia’. This article explores how discourse can be reconceptualised to open up space for schools to engage with ‘knowing Asia’.

Using evidence from what is probably Vietnam's most visited tourism site, the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, this article explores the presentation of the “American War” in the construction of nationhood. The article has three objectives. First, I illustrate how nation-building in a postcolonial and postimperial context is generated through tourism, specifying how the Communist Party communicates Vietnam to lay international tourist audiences. Tourism's political instrumentality for the party is highlighted here. Second, I show how the United States is imaginatively constructed to shape Vietnam's identity. Finally, I use the conclusion to reflect on the implications for the “Asian Century” when considering Vietnam's multifaceted connections to the United States and the West.

The twentieth century saw the rise of two important and interrelated norms. The first is the norm of self-determination, which advances the right of stateless nations to govern themselves. The second is the norm of territorial integrity, which upholds the principle that political borders should be respected. A consequence of these norms has been an increase in secessionism, a decline in conquest, and a proliferation of states. This paper will examine the development of these norms, their interrelationship, and their prospects for the future. Attention will be given to three important questions: (1) Under what conditions does a norm endure beyond a power transition? (2) How likely is an ascendant China or India to support the norms? (3) What does a power transition and the corresponding support of these norms augur for the future of secession, conquest, and the number of sovereign states?

Australian teacher education programmes that prepare teachers of English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) are confronting the nexus of two facets of globalization: transformations in the Asian region, captured in the notion of the “Asian century”, and shifting conceptions of professionalism in TESOL in non-compulsory education. In booming Asian economies, English language learning is integral to the demand for high-quality education. This has produced increases in TESOL Teacher Education Programme (TTEP) enrolments of both domestic Australian students and international students from Asia. Growth in demand for TTEPs has necessitated that they cater to student diversity, and the intended contexts of practice. This demand has coincided with a concurrent movement towards professional standards for TESOL that, we argue, confronts complexities around quality, accountability, and professional identity and achieving conceptual and contextual coherence. Drawing on discourses of managerialism and performativi...

At almost 500 pages and 25 chapters, this is a lengthy and densely packed edited collection. Such a format has advantages. It enables the editors to cover a vast range of topics. We can find assess...

The rise of the West to a position of dominance is one of the most important developments in world history in recent centuries. All writing about the world in recent times has to take into account the rise of the West. However, from its zenith at the beginning of the twentieth century, Europe's hold over Asia was dramatically weakened. The twenty-first century is increasingly ‘The Asian Century’. It is time to remove the Eurocentric lens through which much of recent world history has been viewed. The removal of this lens is the purpose of London 2012. Will a new Wilsonian Moment now occur? Will the ambitious vision of Woodrow Wilson be realised at last in sport if not politics? Will the world experience a Neo-Wilsonian Moment in sport with the nations of the East celebrating the full fruits of full national equality, recognition and acceptance in a long delayed post-1919 harvest earned in recent global sports mega-events? Will future Olympic Games fully embrace the histories, values and traditions of both...

The present study investigated multidimensional motivation and engagement among Chinese middle school students in Australia (N = 273), Hong Kong (N = 528), and Mainland China (N = 2106; randomly selected N = 528). Findings showed that a multidimensional model of motivation and engagement fit very well for all three groups. Multi-group invariance tests showed that the number of factors, factor loadings, factor correlations and item uniquenesses were invariant across the three groups – as were inter-correlations with a set of cognate correlates (class participation, school enjoyment, positive intentions, academic buoyancy) – hence no differences of ‘kind’. However, differences of ‘degree’ were indicated through significant mean-level effects between groups, with self-reports favouring Australian Chinese students over Hong Kong and (to a lesser extent) Mainland Chinese students. We propose these findings shed important light on Chinese students’ academic motivation and engagement and also on socio-cultural p...

In the wake of the Asian century, the Asia-Pacific region has seen a proliferation of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). The driving force behind the initial formation of these agreements since the 1990s, however, has moved away from focusing on economic incentives to more strategic geopolitical concerns. This article examines the employment of FTAs by the United States (US), China, and Australia to further their geopolitical interests in the Asia- Pacific region in the context of the strong trading relationship between China and Australia on the one hand, and the strong strategic relationship the US has had with Australia on the other. Australia's roadmap to the future as set out in its recently released White Paper provides valuable insights into this interlinked relationship.

Recent changes within Australian soccer reflect changes that have taken place in the wider Australian context. Equally, the changes in soccer in Australia and the world reflect significant trends, such as postmodern consumerism and globalization. Whilst soccer in Australia had long been derided as a platform for ethnic nationalism, its current utility is as a vital cultural, geopolitical and economic commodity for Australian ‘engagement’ with Asia. The government-sanctioned Crawford Report (2003) and the New Football Era bookend the evolution of Australian soccer for the ‘Asian Century’ and the transformation to a new, post-multicultural, post-industrial Australia. This paper questions the legitimacy of the New Football Era and whose interests were served in its implementation, and whether what has been lost will have consequences that will outweigh and outlive the promised Asian riches.

This paper examines the strategic arguments articulated in calls for the teaching and learning of Asia in schools. "Asia literacy" is currently framed as a necessary "solution" for Australian education, but acceptance of this "solution" into the mainstream educational policy agenda has been problematised as a neoliberal and neocolonial construct. Subsequent policy debate indicates the dominance of an economic rationale that is seemingly impossible to resist. This paper suggests that critical policy approaches can be used to identify alternatives to these dominant frameworks, which imagine Asia literacy in alternate ways. Re-imagining the "solution" offers three alternatives: working within an economic agenda; restructuring Asia literacy away from a distinct policy agenda; and treating policy gaps as spaces in which teachers can generate locally relevant possibilities.

This paper analyzes the current and prospective implications of Asia's energy consumption revolution for regional stability. Adopting a comparative and historical approach, I argue that Japanese energy security anxieties worked to reinforce regional alignment patterns in East Asia for nearly two decades following the Shanghai communique, thereby strengthening regional stability. Conversely, the post-Cold War period has seen in China and India's rise the emergence of Asian energy super-consumers that are not formally aligned with the United States, but that are increasingly dependent on imported energy supplies to fuel their industrialization. This newfound dependence on energy imports has seen both countries follow Japan's longstanding example in securitizing energy as a policy issue. In the context of an already more contested Asia, this trend towards energy securitization has aggravated regional tensions and will continue to do so unless greater efforts are undertaken bilaterally, regionally an...

This paper aims to build the case for a new Canadian Asia strategy. It begins with a historical review of the Canadian government's diplomatic relations with the region while revisiting the role of Canada in the global order as a middle-power state. It then introduces a framework that links Joseph Nye's concept of soft power with the pragmatic features of foreign public diplomacy (PD). It shows that a strategic, coordinated and informal approach to PD can bring important soft-power gains for Canada in the world's most dynamic region. Finally, it calls for a distinct Asia-focused diplomacy built on sustainable development, governance and education. It concludes by recommending that the government spearhead an annual regional forum on sustainability, strengthen relationships with Canada's Asia-based diaspora, as well as develop an incentive program to entice young Canadians to study and work throughout the region.

The construct of a ‘21st Asian century’ revolves around the trajectory of China’s enormous rise simultaneously in economic stature and political prowess. China’s steep growth in a short span has el...

Australian foreign and strategic policy has not yet begun to address the implications for Australia's international situation of China's growing power. China today already challenges the American leadership that has kept Asia peaceful and Australia secure for many decades. There are real and growing risks that Washington and Beijing will not find a way to work together peacefully as relative power shifts from one to the other. Unless they do, Asia's future is bleak, and so is Australia's. Australia therefore needs to work to promote a new order in Asia which accommodates China's power without conceding more than is necessary to keep the peace. This will mean encouraging America to forgo primacy in Asia in favour of working with China and others in a shared regional leadership. Australia also needs to start preparing for the possibility that Asia will nonetheless become a more contested and dangerous place over coming decades, and consider what its options would be. None of them appear attractive.

Hugh White has advanced a lucid, provocative but ultimately unduly pessimistic assessment of the region's strategic trajectory in his latest Quarterly Essay. While White argues that American primacy has underwritten the past forty years of peace, and that shifting power relativities will likely catalyse a revival of regional strategic contestation, I contend that Asian states have themselves played a critical role in consolidating and deepening the post-1972 peace through their adoption of self-strengthening strategies that link their continued security and prosperity to the preservation of the existing international order. Whereas the region's demographic giants (China, India and Indonesia) once pursued self-strengthening strategies involving a mixture of autarky at home and revisionism abroad, they have each since progressively abandoned these policies in favour of self-strengthening programs that seek to enhance states' security and prosperity through their deeper integration within a predominantly lib...

Within the foreign policy community, no shortage of emphasis is placed on the importance of U.S.–China relations. We are, after all, in “the Asian century,” having emerged from the cold war into a ...

As we move further and further into the twentieth century, the Western ‘global governance’ norm of interventionism is being challenged by East Asian norm of non-interference and territorial integrity. The two sets of norms are historically and philosophically rooted and have influential backers. Intriguingly, while the two approaches appear irreconcilable, some countries have lent their support to both sets of norms. As East Asia emerges as a major force in global relations can a way be found for the two sets of contrasting norms to exist side-by-side, perhaps each governing particular regional relations, or is it even possible that a compromise set of ‘global’ norms might be developed?

This collection of papers focuses on the domestic and international politics of Australia's recent engagement with Asia. The theme of Asian engagement appears to be of particular pertinence to the current study of Australian politics given numerous pronouncements that we are entering an ‘Asian century’ during which key Asian economies will gain greater ascendancy and certain Asian states will come to play a more prominent role in global politics. We employ the idea of ‘re-engagement’ in order to show how engagement with Asia has been turned to again and again by Australian governments, albeit in different political and strategic contexts. This collection aims to consider the politics of re-engagement from a number of different theoretical positions, as well as from a number of different perspectives (be it international relations/foreign policy, domestic politics, identity politics, or from the perspective of bilateral Asian partners). Emphasis is placed not simply on the foreign policy prerogatives behin...

Because of Asia's remarkable economic performance since the 1980s, some observers have predicted Asia's rise and the coming of a Pacific Century. We doubt this optimistic view. In the knowledge-based economy, ways of amassing wealth have changed, and better criteria for evaluating economic development are needed. This study compares research and development activities of four Asian developing countries – China, India, South Korea and Taiwan – with those of two advanced economies – the USA and Japan – to emphasise a neglected trend. The Asian cases do succeed in the information technology industry, a typical sector in the knowledge-based economy. None the less, Asia may be lagging further behind in relative terms. We show that this may not be the Asian century. In addition, it is possible that the battlefield between multinationals will switch from markets to intellectual property courts.

For over 30 years, East Asia has been free of major wars. But East Asia's stable order is based on a unique and remarkable triangular relationship among the region's three biggest powers, and that relationship is now under pressure from China's growth. Asia's future peace will depend on the ability of the United States, China and Japan – and eventually India – to create a new regional order which reflects the emerging economic and power relativities of the Asian Century. Creating a stable new order will require major sacrifices from all three powers: America will have to concede primacy and learn to treat China and Japan as equals; China will have to forgo its own dreams of primacy and accept Japan as a legitimate major power; and Japan will have to accept the costs and complexities of strategic independence. We cannot assume they will meet these challenges successfully.

Management in China has become a topic that is more and more under the spotlight of attention both from an academic as well as from a practitioner’s viewpoint. However, much of the large body of li...