Distinguished experts explain the economic trends and varied political goals at work in Southeast Asia. With China’s emergence as a powerful entity in Southeast Asia, the region has become an unlikely site of conflict between two of the world’s great powers. The United States, historically regarded as the protector of Pacific Southeast Asia—consisting of nations such as Vietnam, the Philippines, Myanmar, and Malaysia—is now called upon to respond to what many would consider bullying on the part of the Chinese. These and other countries have become the economic and political engine of China. While certainly inclined to help the country’s former allies, the United States has grown undeniably closer to China in the recent decades of global interconnected economic growth. China, the United States, and the Future of Southeast Asia uncovers and delves into the complicated dynamics of this situation. Covering topics such as the controversial response to human rights violations, the effects of global economic interconnectedness, and contested sovereignty over resource-rich islands, this volume provides a modern and nuanced perspective on the state of the region. For anyone interested in understanding the evolving global balance of power, China, the United States, and the Future of Southeast Asia illuminates how countries as different as Thailand and Indonesia see the growing competition between Beijing and Washington.
This book introduces readers to the deep political tensions in the Asia-Pacific and offers classroom simulations designed to encourage students to delve deeper into the issues and dynamics of the region.
Will the nations of Southeast Asia maintain their strategic autonomy, or are they destined to become a subservient periphery of China? This book’s expert authors address this pressing question in multiple contexts. What clues to the future lie in the modern history of Sino-Southeast Asian relations? How economically dependent on China has the region already become? What do Southeast Asians think of China? Does Beijing view the region in proprietary terms as its own backyard? How has the relative absence, distance, and indifference of the United States affected the balance of influence between the US and China in Southeast Asia? The book also explores China’s moves and Southeast Asia’s responses to them. Does China’s Maritime Silk Road through Southeast Asia herald a Pax Sinica across the region? How should China’s expansionary acts in the South China Sea be understood? How have Southeast Asian states such as Vietnam and the Philippines responded? How does Singapore’s China strategy compare with Indonesia’s? How relevant is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations? To what extent has China tried to persuade the “overseas Chinese” in Southeast Asia to identify with “'the motherland” and support its aims? How are China’s deep involvements in Cambodia and Laos affecting the economies and policies of those countries? “This rich collection,” writes renowned author-journalist Nayan Chanda, answers these and other questions while offering “fresh insights” and “new information and analyses” to explain Southeast Asia’s relations with China.
This book is a history of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), a multilateral development bank established 50 years ago to serve Asia and the Pacific. Focusing on the region’s economic development, the evolution of the international development agenda, and the story of ADB itself, this book raises several key questions: What are the outstanding features of regional development to which ADB had to respond? How has the bank grown and evolved in changing circumstances? How did ADB’s successive leaders promote reforms while preserving continuity with the efforts of their predecessors? ADB has played an important role in the transformation of Asia and the Pacific the past 50 years. As ADB continues to evolve and adapt to the region’s changing development landscape, the experiences highlighted in this book can provide valuable insight on how best to serve Asia and the Pacific in the future.
This multi-authored book looks at one of the most dynamic regions of the Third World within the context of the rapidly changing international system of the 1990s. Among the many themes it explores are ASEAN's new political roles and new modes of economic cooperation, the growing importance of ecological and human rights issues, the policies of the major external powers towards the region, the Cambodian and Spratly conflicts, and the relevance of Southeast Asian experience in the 'New World Order' to the ongoing theoretical debates about democracy, the market, the state and multilateralism.
'Demographic transition, along with the economic and geopolitical re-emergence of Asia, are two of the largest forces shaping the twenty-first century, but little is known about the implications for innovation. The countries of East Asia have some of the oldest age structures on the planet: between now and 2050, the population that is age 65 and older will increase to more than one in four Chinese, and to more than one in three Japanese and Koreans. Other economies with younger populations, like India, face the challenge of fully harnessing the "demographic dividend" from large cohorts in the working ages. This book delves into how such demographic changes shape the supply of innovation and the demand for specific kinds of innovation in the Asia-Pacific. Social scientists from Asia and the United States offer multidisciplinary perspectives from economics, demography, political science, sociology, and public policy; topics range from the macroeconomic effects of population age structure, to the microeconomics of technology and the labor force, to the broader implications for human well-being. Contributors analyze how demography shapes productivity and the labor supply of older workers, as well as explore the aging population as consumers of technologies and drivers of innovations to meet their own needs, as well as the political economy of spatial development, agglomeration economies, urban-rural contrasts, and differential geographies of aging.'--Publisher description.
Futures thinking and foresight is a powerful planning approach that can help Asia and the Pacific countries meet economic, political, social, and environmental and climate change challenges. This publication shows how the Asian Development Bank (ADB) piloted this approach to understand entry points to support transformational change in the region. It compiles lessons from an ADB initiative to apply futures and foresight tools in Armenia, Cambodia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, the People's Republic of China, the Philippines, and Timor-Leste. Futures terminology is introduced as are specific tools such as emerging issues analysis, scenario planning, and backcasting. It also describes how futures and foresight tools were applied in the countries.
In recent times, the United States, Japan and Australia have all promoted extremely similar visions of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific as the central organizing concept to guide their efforts in the region. The concept is essentially a reaffirmation of the security and economic rules-based order which was cobbled together after the Second World War — especially as it relates to freedom of the regional and global commons such as sea, air and cyberspace, and the way nations conduct economic relations. Be that as it may, the Free and Open Indo-Pacific is an updated vision of collective action to defend, strengthen and advance that order. It signals a greater acceptance by the two regional allies of the U.S. of their security burden and takes into account the realities of China’s rise and the relative decline in dominance of the U.S. There are a number of noteworthy “updates” which include: • A deliberate move from “Asia-Pacific” to “Indo-Pacific” as the primary geo-strategic and geo-economic area of interest and responsibility for the three countries; • An increased emphasis on creating and sustaining a “balance of power” in favour of the rules-based order; and • A greater emphasis on the liberal aspects of a preferred order including the importance of rule-of-law and limitations on how governments wield their power, and greater separation of political and strategic objectives on one hand with commercial activities on the other. While operationalization of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific concept is at an early stage, trilateral strategic cooperation between the U.S., Japan and Australia is significant and quickly deepening. On the other hand, and with respect to misalignment and inconsistency, the economic policies of the Trump administration are causing considerable frustration. The three countries have also been strong supporters for the revival of the Quadrilateral grouping which also includes India. However, and notwithstanding some apprehension in Southeast Asia, about where the “Quad” is heading, the latter grouping is only still a fledgling one and its shape and development will depend on the extent to which the four countries become concerned about China’s activities in both Oceans. Finally, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its member states continue to delay any definitive response to the Free and Open Indo-Pacific concept. Although its principles are attractive to many ASEAN member states, long-held conceptions of ASEAN centrality and its meaning gives the organization apparent reason for hesitation. The reasons include fears of diminished centrality and relevance, and reluctance to endorse a more confrontational mindset being adopted by the U.S. and its allies — including the revival of the Quadrilateral grouping with India — with respect to China. The reality is that while ASEAN and major member states are focused primarily on the risks of action, there are considerable risks of inaction and hesitation. The current era will either enhance or lessen the relevance of ASEAN in the eyes of these three countries in the years ahead depending on how the organisation and its key member states respond. Indeed, the paper argues that ASEAN is more likely to be left behind by strategic events and developments if it remains passive, and that the ball is in ASEAN’s court in terms of the future of its regional “centrality”.
Soon after the American Revolution, ?certain of the founders began to recognize the strategic significance of Asia and the Pacific and the vast material and cultural resources at stake there. Over the coming generations, the United States continued to ask how best to expand trade with the region and whether to partner with China, at the center of the continent, or Japan, looking toward the Pacific. Where should the United States draw its defensive line, and how should it export democratic principles? In a history that spans the eighteenth century to the present, Michael J. Green follows the development of U.S. strategic thinking toward East Asia, identifying recurring themes in American statecraft that reflect the nation's political philosophy and material realities. Drawing on archives, interviews, and his own experience in the Pentagon and White House, Green finds one overarching concern driving U.S. policy toward East Asia: a fear that a rival power might use the Pacific to isolate and threaten the United States and prevent the ocean from becoming a conduit for the westward free flow of trade, values, and forward defense. By More Than Providence works through these problems from the perspective of history's major strategists and statesmen, from Thomas Jefferson to Alfred Thayer Mahan and Henry Kissinger. It records the fate of their ideas as they collided with the realities of the Far East and adds clarity to America's stakes in the region, especially when compared with those of Europe and the Middle East.
