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This paper examines how the proliferation of the new Japanese food-safety regime has influenced the edamame industries of China and Taiwan--the two largest producers of edamame beans in the world. Edamame is not only a popular cuisine in the Asia-Pacific region, it is also responsible for the largest-scale frozen vegetable flow in East Asia. This study addresses how the interaction between geopolitical realities and the subcontracting of edamame crops has created an access regime governing the vegetable trade in East Asia. By addressing the complexity of the geopolitics related to contract farming, this study considers the extent to which the Japanese edamame trade has sub-ordinated edamame producers in multiple places in Asia, while Taiwan's edamame industry has positioned itself to obtain preferential access to the edamame flow between Japan, Taiwan, and China. Keywords: contract farming, East Asia, edamame beans, food safety, geopolitics., In North America and the European Union (EU) in the 1990s, a series of food crises--for example, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), avian influenza, foot-and-mouth disease, and agricultural chemical residues--provoked regional [...]

This article shows that the descriptions of Southeast Asian geography contained in Ming and Qing Chinese sources that used observations collected from contemporary mariners reflect the structure of the maritime trading networks in the region. It examines several Chinese textual studies of Southeast Asia, navigational rutters, and maps, and uses geographic information system mapping to visualise and compare the extent of the authors' and cartographers' knowledge of the region. The article then takes the findings and situates them in the context of early modern Southeast Asian economic history to explain how the Chinese networks were transformed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]