Search

The British Government’s future defence posture was to be re-oriented towards ensuring the security of Britain by concentrating its major efforts within Europe and NATO. In South-East Asia, its role had moved from military commitment to commercial opportunism, aided by diplomatic influence. Clearly Wilson wanted to continue Britain’s world role, but changing from one as a global military power to one of global diplomatic influence. This became apparent with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office paper of 1968 on non-military means of influence. It was the beginning of Britain’s transformation to a ‘modern, medium-sized world power’.1 In this new role, the government pledged to continue to support the region through the provision of a global military capability, although this special force was created with the knowledge that it was unlikely to be used. The onset of regional cooperation had provided hope that Britain would no longer be involved militarily in South-East Asia, and the region would not anymore be characterised by violent instability, but by economic growth and commercial opportunity.

In April 1967, the British Cabinet decided to withdraw its substantial military presence from Singapore and Malaysia. At that point, Britain had 28,000 uniformed personnel, 2000 civilians and 3300 Gurkhas in Singapore alone. In addition, British bases occupied 17,069 acres, which equated to 12 per cent of the island’s total land area.1 London continued to discuss the idea of basing a smaller force at facilities in northern Australia, funded by the Australian Government, despite some claims that the Defence Committee hoped that Canberra would reject this idea. Nevertheless, Canberra was not interested: refusing to pay for military bases that might promote a quicker British withdrawal from the region, which might well encourage the Americans to follow suit. In addition, while the Vietnam War continued, Canberra was spending a considerable amount on defence, and would have had difficulty persuading the electorate to accommodate British soldiers while Australians were fighting overseas, a commitment that had involved the reintroduction of conscription.

The United States Department of State during the Johnson presidency claimed that the development of East Asian regional economic cooperation began with a speech the American President delivered at Johns Hopkins University in April 1965. The speech resulted in increased American efforts in promoting regional economic development and cooperation among South-East Asian nations.1 As discussed in Chapter 1, regional associations were not a new concept, and had already been established in the region. Western support for regional cooperation had been building for several years and was part of wider policies connected to Western military disengagement in South-East Asia and associated efforts to contain China’s influence in the region. However, this had been impossible until after Confrontation ended and a change of government in Indonesia.

In order to reduce expenditure while maintaining defence commitments, Britain proposed to withdraw from Singapore to smaller base facilities in Australia and establish a four-power defence arrangement for the Indo-Pacific. Britain would no longer participate in major conflicts in the region, except in cooperation with its allies. The Americans and Australians did not want to see a change in Britain’s defence posture, although it was becoming evident that the United States was also contemplating a military retreat from South-East Asia to offshore defence positions that would include Japan, the Philippines and Australia as the main bases.1 However, this repositioning of American forces represented a longer-term aim, dependent on the end of the Vietnam War, and conflicted with British aspirations to withdraw much of their forces at the end of Confrontation. This disharmony concerning long-term defence policies resulted in conflicts over respective short-term aspirations, despite both allies supporting economic development and regional organisations that would eventually pave the way for a Western military retreat from South-East Asia.

The 26th Hong Kong International Film Festival, in 2002, held a retrospective entitled ‘Back to Dreamland: Cathay Showcase’. This was followed by a retrospective, on show over the following couple of months at the Hong Kong Film Archive (as well as at other venues throughout the city and the New Territories) entitled ‘Back to Dreamland: Cathay Retrospective’. Eventually, a lengthy, handsome bi-lingual anthology was issued by the Film Archive, entitled The Cathay Story (Wong 2009). It is likely that few overseas visitors to the festival, especially younger and non-Chinese audience members, knew much, if anything, of Cathay Studios. A few pages in Stephen Teo’s Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions (1997), and some sparkling pictures and effusive tribute in Paul Fonoroff’s far less well-known work, Silver Light: A Pictorial History of Hong Kong Cinema 1920–1970 (1997) was pretty much the English language extent of the scholarship devoted to this once-prominent film-making concern before The Cathay Story appeared in print. The retrospective screenings of Cathay’s output held throughout the city drew an almost exclusively older audience, those who perhaps had seen the films upon their first release in the 1950s and 1960s. Otherwise, these films were only the province of Chinese speakers in Hong Kong or South East Asia, who had seen some of the films over the years on television.

Maritime-raiding or ‘piracy’ already existed when the Portuguese arrived in Asia at the turn of the sixteenth century.1 But the incidence of piracy in South East Asia only rose dramatically in direct response to colonialism and Western enterprise. There is a strong interconnective relationship between the ascendancy of long-distance maritime-raiding on a regional scale and the development of an economic boom in South East Asia linked to the advent of the China trade at the end of the eighteenth century. In this context, maritime-raiding was closely linked to slaving and slavery as social and economic phenomena that became a crucial part of an emergent global commercial system and economic growth in the Asian region.

Even further east of Suez than Aden, the confrontation between Indonesia and Malaysia, known locally as the Konfrontasi, was the most dangerous conflict in which Britain was directly involved under Douglas-Home. The confrontation originated from the British decision to create a federation of her former colonies of Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak and Sabah. The resultant new state of Malaysia came into being in September 1963. It immediately attracted the attention of President Sukarno of Indonesia, and British and Malaysian troops stationed in Borneo soon found themselves repelling Indonesian border raids. Although the confrontation continued until 1966, it reached its peak during 1963–4, costing £250 million and involving 66,000 troops.1

The earliest formation of a Muslim-centred organization in the UK can be dated to post-World War II migration, when the ‘settler’ communities of Muslims began to evolve (Nielsen, 2004). These migrants originated from areas such as South East Asia, Yemen, and Africa. Self-identification by these migrants as followers of Islam emerged as a result, and the need for religious places of worship arose. This led to these new citizens mobilizing to create spaces for devotional duties (Nielsen, 2004).

One of the big innovations in history was made by a sailor of unknown origin, who may have been born in Genoa, but according to some was born in Mallorca in 1451 and died in Valladolid in 1506. His name was Christopher Columbus. Columbus thought that he could bring innovation to the transportation of spices by sea to Europe. At this time, the spice trade with India was a very lucrative business. Big companies and countries funded expeditions that left Europe in search of silk, perfumes, precious stones, pepper, cloves, cinnamon, etc. The usual route to the Indies — a name which Marco Polo gave to the whole of South East Asia — crossed the Persian Gulf and then by land to Central Asia. This route was dangerous, because it crossed so many borders and difficult terrains, and encountered aggressive tribes controlling the main routes. Added to this, in the time of Columbus, the Ottoman Empire had a stranglehold on the main routes.

The development of Danish shipping over the 50 years from 1960 to 2010 has been characterized by an overall fleet growth. However, there have been important dips disrupting the general development, some of which have been long-lasting and had distressing results for individual entrepreneurs. Half a century ago, around 1960, Denmark owned about 1.75 per cent of the world fleet and Danish shipping companies engaged successfully in all the main shipping segments. A decade later, Danish shipping proved more resilient to the downturn in world shipping markets than its Nordic competitors. The survival rate for Danish companies was higher than that in Sweden and Norway. In the mid-1980s shipowners cut costs and started reflagging their ships into open registries. Throughout the 1990s Danish shipping was in the doldrums, as it were, with some companies prospering and others failing spectacularly. In the initial decade of the twenty-first century Danish shipping companies proved able to exploit the global growth opportunities created by the demand-driven upswing in North America and South East Asia. By the end of the period covered in our analysis Danish shipping proved more successful than ever, controlling almost 5 per cent of the world fleet in 2008 and, according to the Danish Shipowners’ Association (Danmarks Rederiforening, 2010), carrying 10 per cent of world trade as measured in terms of the value of the goods carried.

Fluctuations in economic activities are quite normal in market-based economies. However, such fluctuations may become severe and take the form of a crisis. Indeed, both the volatility of economic growth and the frequency of severe fluctuations in growth that warrant the use of the term ‘crisis’, appear to have increased during the past three decades compared to the earlier decades. An ILO report (2004b) shows that during the period 1980–2000, the degree of volatility of GDP growth and per capita GDP growth has been higher than that observed during the period 1960–80. Lustig (2000) mentioned that, during the period 1990–98, there were over 40 cases in Latin America alone in which per capita GDP fell by 4 per cent or more. During the Asian economic crisis of 1997–98, a number of countries of East and South East Asia experienced sharp declines in the levels of economic growth. Sharp economic downturns experienced by several central Asian countries during their period of economic reforms in the 1990s also assumed crisis proportions (Torm 2003). The global economic recession of 2008–09 caused down-turns in economic activities in a large number of developing countries.

The period 1860–80 saw the zenith of cable telegraph technology as the first global electronic communications network was successfully installed. India was at the centre of this network that linked the imperial powers of the west to the colonies and captive markets in the east. The Indian subcontinent was the hub that controlled these lines that stretched from western India to Europe and eastern and southern India to south East Asia and Australasia. It was the crucial element in the imperial telegraph system. The period 1860–80 was one of immense expansion, frantic building and the return of the romance of travel and exploration through the construction of telegraph lines. It saw an enormous investment in terms of money and men, as the project to girdle the globe with lines of telegraph was taken up with fervent zeal. Below the surface of this picture lie relatively uncharted tales of contesting technologies, technological fashions, standardisation of speed and cost, and competition between various telegraph companies, nations and men.

Western businesspeople travelling to South-East Asia or preparing to work with South-East Asian business partners for the first time often make one of two mistakes. The first is to assume that the business culture they are entering will be just like their own, and the same rules, methods, procedures and ways of doing things will apply. The second is to assume the opposite, that the business culture they are entering is entirely alien and foreign, and nothing will look remotely familiar.

Economics and politics have always been closely linked together in South-East Asia, even more so than in the West. The political and cultural development of the region, including the Chinese migration and settlement described in the first half of this book, have had a strong impact on the economies and business cultures of the region, and continue to do so. At the same time, business and commerce, especially trade with China and with the West, have in turn helped shape the politics and culture of the region. To understand the history of South-East Asia, it is also necessary to understand its economy — and vice versa.

Since the peak of public awareness in the early 1990s the global environmental problem known as climate change1 has been developing and transforming rapidly in recent years, as evidenced in the recent Stern Report (Stern, Peters, Bakhshi, et al. 2006). One of the most important factors has been the transformation of adaptation from an issue that early on was either ignored or given as an afterthought in the overall climate change debate, whereas now it is a much more significant theoretical and policy issue. This book examines the theoretical and practical aspects of adaptation to climate change from an economic perspective. The basis for this analysis is the implementation of a dynamic optimisation integrated model that will be used to explore and expand upon the issues and arguments that will be raised in this book. The model implemented here will be based upon the Dynamic Integrated Climate and Economy model (DICE) of Nordhaus (see Nordhaus and Boyer 2000) and its geographical scope will be the region of South East Asia (SEA). This type of modelling is still developing and is burdened with high levels of uncertainty.

The estimates made in Chapter 3 for the aggregate economic impacts of 2×CO2 climate change for SEA will be used towards the main objective of this chapter, which is to implement a dynamic optimisation climate-economic model for the region of SEA. To achieve this objective this chapter begins by reviewing the integrated assessment models of climate change literature. A discussion then follows of the reasons behind the choice of DICE (Nordhaus and Boyer 2000) as the basis for the SEADICE model. The method of optimisation of the model implemented in this chapter is also justified with respect to the choice between GAMS and Excel. The structure of the SEADICE model is then provided, after which some forecasting results of the model are presented.

If the predictions of the IPCC (2001a) are correct then the rates of climate change will test many of the limits of human adaptation in the decades to come. As Yohe (2000, p. 371) states, ‘the research community has long passed the point of considering adaptation in the abstract’. Where Chapter 5 used positive analysis to determine what adaptations are likely, this chapter will be a normative exercise where the key question is: What adaptations are recommended?34 The chapter begins by defining climate change adaptation policy and then examining its treatment in the international context and why its stature is increasing. This is followed by a discussion of the range of methods that have been used to identify possible adaptation policy options, and whether they are likely to be implemented. Given the significance of adaptation policy, the options that are available, the modelling results and relevant discussions from previous chapters, and based on these factors recommendations are made regarding the future path for the identification of adaptation policies for SEA.

The year 2000 was a watershed in the post-Cold War battle against organized crime as leaders from 154 counties gathered in Palermo, Italy, in order to sign a new UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. Since then, government leaders in the world identified the transnational nature of organized crime as a ‘security’ threat, a threat eroding the sovereignty of nation states and one also damaging to the well-being of civil society.

The eradication of smallpox in India would not have been possible but for the contributions of many actors. The World Health Organization headquarters (WHO HQ) in Geneva, Switzerland, and its South East Asia Regional Office, based in New Delhi, India, played an extremely prominent role. So did the health ministries of the Indian central government and state governments. All these agencies set up a series of special ‘eradication units’, which deployed several energetic medical and public health personnel all over the sub-continent. The Soviet Union, the United States of America, Sweden and a host of other Asian and European countries provided generous doses of aid, often on a bilateral basis, in the form of field operatives, vaccine, operating kits and money. Indian and international charitable institutions made significant contributions at crucial junctures as well.1

The objective of this chapter is to discuss the options for mitigation policy action in SEA. To achieve this the main mitigation policy options of the CDM, emissions trading, joint implementation (JI), carbon tax and no regrets are all explained and their relevance for the countries for SEA discussed. Given the characteristics of these options and the present international obligations, mitigation policy recommendations are made to conclude the chapter.

This chapter leads on from the discussions in Chapter 2 of the economic and climate change emission structure of SEA to make an aggregate estimate for the impact15 of 2×CO2 climate change for the region. It is based upon and expands on the preliminary estimates made for SEA in Sanderson and Islam (2001). As explained in Section 1.5, a 2×CO2 climate change aggregate impact estimate refers to a prediction of the extent of the economic effects of climate change given in terms of aggregate GDP for the future situation of the benchmark level of double pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Others have estimated the equivalent impacts for particular countries within SEA (Qureshi and Hobbie 1994) and have distinguished the SEA region as part of global estimates (Tol 1996). However, this is the first example (to the author’s knowledge) of an aggregate 2×CO2 climate impact assessment for the region of SEA which uses data specifically related to the region and not extrapolated solely from other regions.

Among the key controversies in development has been the contribution of the state to the achievement of particular development goals. Themes of ‘state capacity’ and ‘state autonomy’ have been used to highlight the importance of the state in developing and fostering economic development, such as during ‘second wave’ industrialization (such as 19th century Germany) or in the countries of South East Asia (Evans 1995; Polidano 2001).

When Lord Selkirk, the last British Commissioner-General for South East Asia, sat down in his Singapore residence and reflected on a ‘Greater Malaysia’, he usually came to the conclusion that this scheme was a marvellous idea. Malaysia was designed to bring together Malaya, the former British colony which had become independent in 1957, and the remaining British dependencies in South East Asia, namely the State of Singapore, the oil-rich Sultanate of Brunei, and the Crown Colonies of Sarawak and North Borneo. In 1960, Lord Selkirk impressed on Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd that Malaysia was ‘the only evolution which can give stability to the area’.1 In a personal letter to Prime Minister Harold Macmillan Selkirk insisted that the new federation was ‘of first importance for the orderly development of [South East Asia]’.2

In the last few decades, labor-intensive industries such as garment production have increasingly been relocated from developed countries to developing countries with lower labor costs, such as China, the Philippines and Indonesia (Dicken 1998, pp.290–1). In many of these developing countries, human rights standards are lower, and garment firms violate some of the key internationally accepted human rights. This chapter examines the impact of transnational garment firms on human rights in South and South-East Asia by focusing on labor rights.

A fundamental rethinking of the way in which foreign assistance should be delivered and how the development process is to be managed took place in the 1990s alongside the redefinition of priorities for foreign aid. As we have seen with regard to the definition of priorities for foreign aid in the context of the emerging challenges of globalization, UN conferences provided the main vehicle both for rethinking the issues and for reaching agreed objectives. However, with respect to the delivery of foreign aid and the management of development, no UN conference was organized specifically to address this question. Yet given the fundamental changes being brought about by liberalization and globalization, aid delivery and development management have also been subjects for rethinking. In this respect, successful models of development in contemporary East and South East Asia and elsewhere, as well as other examples drawn from history, have proved instructive.

The last decade has seen an explosion of work on the fast growing economies of East and South-East Asia, by individual scholars and by the international development institutions. Influential books by Amsden (1989) and Wade (1990), as well as the work of Johnson (1982, 1995) have explored the nature of the East Asian developmental state, and especially the role of government in determining the allocation of resources to particular industries, in building infrastructure and in the development of the educational system. The widely discussed report published by the World Bank (1993) on the East Asian ‘Miracle’ endeavoured to draw lessons not just from the experience of Japan, Taiwan and Korea but also from four fast-growing economies in South-East Asia, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. The recent growth experience of China was also discussed. This report and the large literature which it generated have tended to convey the impression that the huge area of the world which the term ‘East Asia’ embraces have all experienced rapid economic growth over the last three decades, and that from their experience a coherent set of ‘lessons’ can be drawn for less successful economies in other parts of the world.1

The likely effects of the events in South East Asia were from the start seen as difficult to predict. It was even said that observers could be divided into two classes: ‘those that knew that they didn’t know and those that did not know that they didn’t know’ what the effects would be. Clearly, judgments about the effects on the rest of the world stand to be modified progressively over the course of time; and the effects will depend to a great extent on the period over which the effects are being assessed. Moreover, as time passes, other events will occur that will obscure the effects of the events in South East Asia. Quantitative assessments of the effects that were expected to be felt during 1998 were made by international bodies such as the IMF and the OECD, as well as by many other observers. That by the OECD in December 1997 expected growth in the OECD as a whole to be reduced by nearly 1 per cent, and that of Japan by 1.4 per cent. In what follows, attention will be focused on outlining the main channels through which the effects on the rest of the world will make themselves felt. There will then be some discussion of the policy reactions in the rest of the world that have been observed, or which are likely to occur. Finally, there will be some discussion of the need for institutional reform to minimize the risk of similar problems arising for the world economy in future.

SCANCEM is one of the leading cement and building materials companies in the world with over 10000 employees, active in 35 countries, and with its headquarters in Malmo, Sweden. Scancem has major operations in many parts of the world but in 1997 the board was considering and interested in expanding its activities in a new emerging market region. Before doing so in a significant way, it was decided to utilize its annual action learning programme for high potentials and then its Senior Management Seminars to access the past experiences that Scancem had in emerging markets. At the same time they were to address the issue as to whether or not the company had developed the right competencies to work well in new emerging markets, especially in South East Asia.

During the two-year period July 1997–July 1999, the world as a whole had been preoccupied with the South East Asia crisis, its contagion to East and North Asias, the European Union, North and South Americas, and its economic and financial impact worldwide. Our previous contribution to the subject, to provide a better understanding of the causes, impact, cures, effectiveness and outcomes of the crisis, includes two books, Causes and Impact of the Asian Financial Crisis (editor with C. Harvie) (Macmillan, 1999), and The Asia Crisis: The Cures, Their Effectiveness and the Prospects After (Macmillan, 1999), and a number of other reports and publications.

This chapter analyses the environmental impact of vehicle use in South and South East Asia and the range of policy responses available to reduce this impact. The countries of South and South East Asia are very disparate in terms of economic development. Over the last three decades these countries have experienced growing urbanisation and affluence, although this growth has been unevenly distributed, both spatially and over time. While levels of car ownership remain generally low compared to Western Europe or North America, high rates of growth of traffic in cities have led to congestion on roads and environmental damage from atmospheric pollution, noise and land use impacts.

Since the financial turmoil broke in Thailand in July 1997, triggering a financial crisis across South East Asia, China, the only major country isolated from the financial crisis in East Asia, has remained the bright spot of this area and its growth engine. While the financial crisis appears to be approaching its end, we cannot help but speculate whether China will still suffer from the after-effects of the financial crisis arising from the changed economic and policy environment which will exist in the South East Asian countries.

In the preceding chapters, we have covered the major aspects of the human dimension in a number of countries in South East Asia, East Asia and the Oceania (Australia) that have been affected by the financial Asian crisis and its contagion. The crisis has been regarded by politicians, policy-makers and economic experts alike as the greatest event in our recent times and one that has had damaging consequences worldwide. It has turned the economic miracle countries into the needing ones. The major aspects we have dealt with include not only the four social sectors broadly defined by such international organizations as the World Bank (i.e., poverty, education, health and nutrition, and employment) but also other important issues such as women and child labour and, to a lesser extent, environment.

Following the termination of the Cold War, the formation of conflicts in the international system has been altered. Many regional Cold War-inspired conflicts were either resolved or changed nature. The struggle for limited resources, be it oil, fish or water, is one of the most commonly mentioned reasons for future conflicts (Homer-Dixon, 1994). These changes carry considerable importance for the development and security of the Mainland South East Asia. The Cambodia conflict, which was fuelled by the superpowers and involved, directly or indirectly, the regional great powers of Thailand and Vietnam, was largely resolved in 1993. There is, however, no lack of tension in this subregion. In this case I am exploring the potential for regional co-operation in order to avoid conflicts over limited water resources.2 This chapter serves the double purpose of emphasizing the importance of establishing a common water use agreement for encouraging co-operation rather than triggering conflict, and, in the light of this, analyses the recently concluded agreement between the riparians in the Lower Mekong River Basin.

Acknowledgements Notes on the Contributors The Social Impact of the Asia Crisis: An Overview T.Van Hoa Indonesia: The Human Dimension of the Asia Crisis T.Van Hoa Asia Crisis and the Philippines: Counting the Social Costs M.R.Valenzuela Thailand: The Asian Financial Crisis and Social Changes S.Kittiprapas Korea: Financial Crisis, Structural Reform and Social Consequences Y.Y.Lee & H.Lee Vietnam: Economic and Social Impact of the Asia Crisis T.Van Hoa Social Influences of the South East Asia Financial Crisis on China Z.Yanyun & Z.Xiaopu Australia: Has It Weathered the Crisis? D.Johnson The Asian Crisis and Australia's Export Sector P.M.Summers Social Impact of the Asia Crisis: A Fundamental Prescription and Management T.Van Hoa Index

Vietnam, a country which was isolated and in a serious socioeconomic crisis in the mid-1980s, has recently emerged as a new marketplace attracting the interest of the international business community. Many people around the world recognize the substantial success that Vietnam has so far achieved in its reform process, and some even see it as ‘the next tiger’ in South East Asia.

Vietnam is located in South East Asia, covering a land area of 331 700 square kilometres; in 1996, its population was 76 million.

The miraculous economic growth of the South-East Asian economies in the last decade cannot be considered in isolation from the active foreign direct investment (FDI) into this region, and the resulting changes in the pattern of trade. The South-East Asian countries started growing rapidly after they changed their policy stance from protectionist import substitution policies to more liberal attitudes to capital inflow and a policy orientated towards exports. The changes in their trade positions have coincided with very active foreign direct investment from some countries such as Japan.

List of Figures Notes on the Contributors Abbreviations Introduction P.B.Rich The Emergence and Significance of Warlordism in International Politics P.B.Rich The Arms Trade and Militarised Actors in Internal Conflict N.Cooper Warlordism and Drug Trafficking from South East Asia to Sub-Saharan Africa G.Segell Privatising Security, Privatising War? The New Warrior Class and Regional Security K.O'Brien The Militarisation of Ethnicity and the Emergence of Warlordism in Rwanda M.McNulty The Collapse of Albania and a Different Type of Warlord: Criminal Gangs P.Tripodi Clan Conflict and Factionalism in Somalia S.Makinda Warlordism and Political Violence in Jammu and Kashmir 1988-97: Gun Rule? A.Evans The Warlord and Global Order S.Chan Index

East and South-East Asia (ESEA) is the most populous of the regions into which the contemporary world economy is typically classified. In recent decades this has also been the most dynamic region of the world economy. This chapter analyses the performance of the region during the accelerated globalization of the world economy that has taken place since the beginning of the 1980s.

South-East Asia experienced grave rice shortages during the Second World War as a result of increasing demand on the part of the Japanese and maladministration of the wartime economy. Before the war there were three big rice-surplus areas in the region; the largest was Burma, which produced an average of 4.9 million tons of white rice annually between 1936 and 19401 and exported 3 million tons.2 Then followed French Indochina, with production of about 6.5 million tons and exports 1.5 million tons.3 The other rice-surplus country was Thailand, which produced about 3 million tons and exported half of this amount.4 Thus these three areas accounted for exports of approximately 6 million tons of rice annually in the pre-war period.5 Part of this grain was sent to nearby rice-deficit countries, such as the Philippines, British Malaya, the Straits Settlements, British Borneo, and the Netherlands East Indies. Among these territories, British Malaya had the largest deficit, and imported about 700 000 tons annually during the 1930s.6 After the needs of these South-East Asian countries had been met, large rice-surpluses remained which were exported to South Asia, East Asia and Europe.

List of Tables - List of Maps - Preface - Notes on the Contributors - Introduction P. Kratoska - The Impact of the Second World War on Commercial Rice Production in Mainland South-East Asia P. Kratoska - Transportation and Rice Distribution in South-East Asia During World War II A. Kurasawa - Food Production and Food Distribution Programmes in the Philippines During the Japanese Occupation R. Trota Jose - Malayan Food Shortages and the Kedah Rice Industry During the Japanese Occupation P. Kratoska - Agriculture and Food Supplies in Sarawak During the Japanese Occupation R. Cramb - Oppression and Romanticism: the Food Supply of Java During the Japanese Occupation S. Sato - Regulation and Control: Explaining the Decline of Food Production in Java, 1940-1946 P. van der Eng - Japanese Food Policies and the 1945 Great Famine in Indochina N. Thj Anh - A Survey of Village Conditions During the 1945 Famine in Vietnam M. Furuta - Index

Japan has emerged as a leading international investor in the past decade. During much of the 1980s Japanese FDI increased alongside a rigorous expansion of its domestic economy, a strong pace of domestic investment and exports. In the 1990s, by contrast, Japanese FDI has continued apace but its economy entered a prolonged recession and experienced an unprecedented decline in domestic capital formation and a slowdown in export growth. Furthermore, since the late-1980s Japanese manufacturing FDI has shifted from major industrial countries to developing countries, particularly to East and South East Asia.

The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of ASEAN perceptions concerning the importance of the EC to ASEAN. It is not intended to provide details of every topic to be discussed separately in the agenda of this Conference. Its contents are largely drawn from official ASEAN sources, thus reflecting to a certain extent the views of ASEAN officials and policymakers.

1. It has been a fashionable view among observers of international affairs during the past two decades that the rich resource endowments, impressive economic growth and development ambitions of Asian-Pacific countries would bring about a radical transformation in the global balance of power with the establishment of the Pacific region as the focal point of the world economy. Visions of a ‘Pacific age’ or ‘Pacific century’ have been variously articulated by scholars and experts as well as by political and business leaders.1 Further-more, several attempts have been made to translate the somewhat vague aspiration to a ‘Pacific Community’ into a blueprint for collective and pragmatic action. In fact, the growing recognition of a substantial interest in developing regional Cooperation has originated a number of proposals intended to build a stronger relationship among Asian-Pacific countries and eventually to set up a framework for permanent inter-governmental Cooperation in economic, political and security matters.2