Search

Outlines the tradition of scholarly communication in four East and Southeast Asian countries. Compares the similarities and differences in history and current conditions of research and publication practices in China, Japan, Korea, and Myanmar. Highlights challenges brought up by the advances of information and communication technologies. By analyzing existing imbalances in the development, the paper evaluates various solutions implemented or proposed by these countries. It discovers that each country has its own characteristics of scholarly communication, making the world diverse and colorful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia was an active member of the Colombo Plan for aid to South and Southeast Asia, beginning in 1951 as a loosely organized umbrella of multiple bilateral aid agreements between Commonwealth countries and quickly expanding in geographical reach and membership. Towards the end of the 1950s, as members of this ‘plan’ geared up for a new wave of aid projects, they also attached new importance to information activities associated with aid. In this Australian case study, journalists were thrust to the fore of story-generation relating to Australia’s involvement in the Colombo Plan. These written stories, and also still and moving images, were aimed at both domestic Australian audiences and also overseas audiences. Thus began some of the first important steps in what today is called ‘public diplomacy’, and what, at the time, was a new experiment in foreign policy and reputation-making. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Information is presented about a conference sponsored by the Special Libraries Association on cooperation among information professionals in Asia. Topics discussed include rural information services, digital libraries and archival preservation, information literacy, and global business trends. Speakers included information professionals such as Jack W. Plunkett, Krishan Lal, and Stephen Abram.

The similarities and differences between the experiences of prisoners of war and civilian internees of the Japanese have largely been overlooked by studies of Japanese-held prisoners. This article aims to provide this critical comparative perspective by examining the experiences of prisoners of war and civilians in four key theatres of the war in British Asia: Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore and Borneo. It draws largely, however, on the intriguing case study of the Lintang Camp in Borneo (Sarawak) where prisoners of war were imprisoned alongside civilian internees during the war. It argues that there were overarching similarities and constraints to both sets of experiences, but key differences in Japanese wartime policies and a variety of other factors such as combatant status, class, rank, active agency, leadership, and gender also contributed to how captivity was experienced during this tumultuous period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the existing 276 international river basins, the increase in water variability projected by most climate change scenarios may present serious challenges to riparian states. This research maps the institutional resilience to water variability in transboundary basins and combines it with both historic and projected variability regimes, with the objective of identifying areas at potential risk of future hydropolitical tension. To do so, it combs existing international treaties for sources of institutional resilience and considers the coefficient of variation of runoff as a measure of past and future water variability. The study finds significant gaps in both the number of people and area covered by institutional stipulations to deal with variability in South America and Asia. At present, high potential risk for hydropolitical tensions associated with water variability is identified in 24 transboundary basins and seems to be concentrated mainly in northern and sub-Saharan Africa. By 2050, areas at greatest potential risk are more spatially dispersed and can be found in 61 international basins, and some of the potentially large impacts of climate change are projected to occur away from those areas currently under scrutiny. Understanding when and where to target capacity-building in transboundary river basins for greater resilience to change is critical. This study represents a step toward facilitating these efforts and informing further qualitative and quantitative research into the relationship between climate change, hydrological variability regimes, and institutional capacity for accommodating variability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article studies the effects of conflict onset on asset markets applying the event study methodology. The authors consider a sample of 101 internal and inter-state conflicts during the period 1974—2004 and find that a sizeable fraction of them has had a significant impact on stock market indices, exchange rates, oil and commodity prices. This fraction is inconsistent with pure chance, that is, with the selected probability of type-I errors in our tests of statistical significance. The results suggest that, on average, national stock markets are more likely to display positive than negative reactions to conflict onset. When the authors distinguish between internal and inter-state conflicts, they find that the fraction of significant results is higher for international conflicts. When the authors classify events according to the region where they occur, they find that Asia and the Middle East are the regions where conflicts tend to have the strongest effects. Finally, the article reports evidence that abnormal returns would have accrued to investors systematically exploiting conflict onset to implement conflict-driven strategies. Results are robust to selecting a subset of high-intensity conflicts and to expanding the time window over which conflict events are defined. The findings of the article confirm the economic importance of the effects of conflicts on asset markets. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Drawing on recent liberal peace and Asian security research, this article assesses the relevance of prominent 'Kantian' hypotheses for understanding the international politics of Asia. While there is some evidence that the dynamics of war and peace are different in Asia than in other parts of the world, this does not mean that liberal theories are irrelevant. There is at best weak support for the pacific effects of democracy or international institutions in Asia. But liberal expectations, and those of some Asia analysts, about the importance of economic interdependence for reducing conflict in Asia are robustly confirmed. This result obtains even with a control for the simultaneous trade-dampening effect of conflict using structural equations. But the strong intra-Asian effect of trade interdependence does not translate into a robust pacific effect between Asian states and those outside the region. A more nuanced picture emerges: the democratic peace appears most relevant for interactions between Asian states and the rest of the world. The findings show that analysts can rely neither on beliefs that Asia is sui generis nor on purely realist models as guides to Asian security issues. Kantian and realist theories are both relevant. The results also indicate that some common assumptions of analysts, especially regarding the importance of alliances and institutions, are not in accord with the regularities of conflict and peace in Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the establishment of a British Military Administration (BMA) led by Vice-Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten after Japan surrendered Malaya and Singapore in August 1945. Proclamation to reimpose British rule; Revival of interest in the attempted European 'recolonization' of Southeast Asia after the Japanese surrender; Political contest between Mountbatten and Major-General Herbert Ralph Hone.

The article reports that the National Library Board, Singapore (NLB) will serve as the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions' (IFLA) Regional Office for Asia and Oceania. The Regional Manager will be Tan Keat Fong; she is a librarians with thirty years of career experience. Fong has worked to improve collaboration between international and local libraries. The National Library of Singapore contains the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library, Central Lending Library and the Drama Centre.