The Belt and Road Initiative and the Future of Regional Order in the Indo-Pacific

The Belt and Road Initiative and the Future of Regional Order in the Indo-Pacific

Author: Michael Clarke

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2020-01-20

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 1498582761

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The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is emerging as a vital lynch-pin in China's efforts to establish a maritime and continental zone of influence in the Indo-Pacific region. The Belt and Road Initiative and the Future of Regional Order in the Indo-Pacific interrogates to what extent BRI represents an achievable vision of a China-centric order in Asia and explores its major security implications for the region. The contributions to this volume provide up-to-date analysis of the effect of BRI on the region's foreign policy and alliance patterns, its connection to geo-economics and domestic Chinese politics, and the policy responses of key Indo-Pacific actors. While acknowledging that BRI remains prey to a variety of internal and exogenous shocks, the contributors conclude that at the very least BRI will continue to disrupt the existing alignments of economic and strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific and that on this minimal basis BRI will likely be judged a success by China. For regional actors, however, the BRI simultaneously enhances choice while presenting strategic and economic risks of greater dependency on China - a dilemma intensified by the disruptive effects of the Trump administration on regional confidence in the longevity of American commitments and leadership.


Dilemmas of a Trading Nation

Dilemmas of a Trading Nation

Author: Mireya Solis

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Published: 2017-08-01

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 0815729200

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The balancing of competing interests and goals will have momentous consequences for Japan—and the United States—in their quest for economic growth, social harmony, and international clout. Japan and the United States face difficult choices in charting their paths ahead as trading nations. Tokyo has long aimed for greater decisiveness, which would allow it to move away from a fragmented policymaking system favoring the status quo in order to enable meaningful internal reforms and acquire a larger voice in trade negotiations. And Washington confronts an uphill battle in rebuilding a fraying domestic consensus in favor of internationalism essential to sustain its leadership role as a champion of free trade. In Dilemmas of a Trading Nation, Mireya Solís describes how accomplishing these tasks will require the skillful navigation of vexing tradeoffs that emerge from pursuing desirable, but to some extent contradictory goals: economic competitiveness, social legitimacy, and political viability. Trade policy has catapulted front and center to the national conversations taking place in each country about their desired future direction—economic renewal, a relaunched social compact, and projected international influence. Dilemmas of a Trading Nation underscores the global consequences of these defining trade dilemmas for Japan and the United States: decisiveness, reform, internationalism. At stake is the ability of these leading economies to upgrade international economic rules and create incentives for emerging economies to converge toward these higher standards. At play is the reaffirmation of a rules-based international order that has been a source of postwar stability, the deepening of a bilateral alliance at the core of America's diplomacy in Asia, and the ability to reassure friends and rivals of the staying power of the United States. In the execution of trade policy today, we are witnessing an international leadership test dominated by domestic governance dilemmas.


Japan's New Regional Reality

Japan's New Regional Reality

Author: Saori N. Katada

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780231190725

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Japan's regional geoeconomic strategy -- Foreign economic policy, domestic institutions and regional governance -- Geoeconomics of the Asia-Pacific -- Transformation in the Japanese political economy -- Trade and investment : a gradual path -- Money and finance : an uneven path -- Development and foreign aid : a hybrid path.


Banking on the Future of Asia and the Pacific

Banking on the Future of Asia and the Pacific

Author: Peter McCawley

Publisher: Asian Development Bank

Published: 2017-04-01

Total Pages: 564

ISBN-13: 9292577921

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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.


The China Path to Economic Transition and Development

The China Path to Economic Transition and Development

Author: Yinxing Hong

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-04-01

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 9812878432

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This book by the renowned Chinese scholar Dr. Yinxing Hong provides the reader with a perceptive analysis of what has worked in China’s development model. Over the past 30 years, China has experienced a remarkable economic rise, but it now faces the challenge of switching the drivers of this economic growth, which have proven so successful. The path has not been an easy one, and many challenges lie ahead. However, the rise of the Chinese economy has been the most significant global development in recent years. Is there a specific Chinese model? How was the Chinese transition, from a Soviet-style economic structure to one that is more open to market influences and the global market, achieved? In 15 essays, Dr. Hong provides fascinating insights to these and other key questions. The essays cover the challenges involved in transition and how the market-oriented reforms progressed; what the consequences of the transition were for public goods provision and how China opened up its economic system. The essays in Part II address the remaining challenges facing rural areas trying to develop a more consumer-driven economic base, and how to effectively modify the model of economic development. This book provides a sound basis for policymakers and scholars alike, as well as anyone who wants to get an insider’s view of the progress and challenges faced by China’s economic development.


A Region of Regimes

A Region of Regimes

Author: T. J. Pempel

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2021-09-15

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 1501758829

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A Region of Regimes traces the relationship between politics and economics—power and prosperity—in the Asia-Pacific in the decades since the Second World War. This book complicates familiar and incomplete narratives of the "Asian economic miracle" to show radically different paths leading to high growth for many but abject failure for some. T. J. Pempel analyzes policies and data from ten East Asian countries, categorizing them into three distinct regime types, each historically contingent and the product of specific configurations of domestic institutions, socio-economic resources, and external support. Pempel identifies Japan, Korea, and Taiwan as developmental regimes, showing how each then diverged due to domestic and international forces. North Korea, Myanmar, and the Philippines (under Marcos) comprise "rapacious regimes" in this analysis, while Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand form "ersatz developmental regimes." Uniquely, China emerges as an evolving hybrid of all three regime types. A Region of Regimes concludes by showing how the shifting interactions of these regimes have profoundly shaped the Asia-Pacific region and the globe across the postwar era.


Megaregulation Contested

Megaregulation Contested

Author: Benedict Kingsbury

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 753

ISBN-13: 0198825293

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The Japan-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPPA) of 2018 is the most far-reaching 'megaregional' economic agreement in force, with several major countries beyond its eleven negotiating countries also interested. Still bearing the stamp of the original US involvement before the Trump-era reversal, TPP is the first instance of 'megaregulation': a demanding combination of inter-state economic ordering and national regulatory governance on a highly ambitious substantive and trans-regional scale. Its text and ambition have influenced other negotiations ranging from the Japan-EU Agreement (JEEPA) and the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) to the projected Pan-Asian Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). This book provides an extensive analysis of TPP as a megaregulatory project for channelling and managing new pressures of globalization, and of core critical arguments made against economic megaregulation from standpoints of development, inequality, labour rights, environmental interests, corporate capture, and elite governance. Specialized chapters cover supply chains, digital economy, trade facilitation, intellectual property, currency levels, competition and state-owned enterprises, government procurement, investment, prescriptions for national regulation, and the TPP institutions. Country studies include detailed analyses of TPP-related politics and approaches in Japan, Mexico, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, and Thailand. Contributors include leading practitioners and scholars in law, economics, and political science. At a time when the WTO and other global-scale institutions are struggling with economic nationalism and geopolitics, and bilateral and regional agreements are pressed by public disagreement and incompatibility with digital and capital and value chain flows, the megaregional ambition of TPP is increasingly important as a precedent requiring the close scrutiny this book presents.


Contest for the Indo-Pacific

Contest for the Indo-Pacific

Author: Rory Medcalf

Publisher: La Trobe University Press

Published: 2022-01-31

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 1743821042

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The definitive guide to the world's most contested region Updated edition covering the strategic impacts of Covid-19, China's economic coercion against Australia, the Afghanistan withdrawal, Joe Biden, the Quad and US-China rivalry. The Indo-Pacific is both a place and an idea. It is the region central to global prosperity and security. It is also a metaphor for collective action. If diplomacy fails, it will be the theatre of the first general war since 1945. But if its future can be secured, the Indo-Pacific will flourish as a shared space, the centre of gravity in a connected world. What we call different parts of the world - Asia, Europe, the Middle East - seems innocuous. But the name of a region is totemic- a mental map that guides the decisions of leaders and the story of international order, war and peace. In recent years, the label 'Indo-Pacific' has gained wide use, including among the leaders of the United States, India, Japan, Australia, Indonesia and France. But what does it really mean? Written by a recognised expert and regional policy insider, Contest for the Indo-Pacific is the definitive guide to tensions in the region. It deftly weaves together history, geopolitics, cartography, military strategy, economics, games and propaganda to address a vital question- how can China's dominance be prevented without war? 'The complexities of our region can easily bewilder those used to the Manichaean simplicity of the Cold War. Rory Medcalf's book is an elegant, keenly insightful tour of the Indo-Pacific's strategic horizon.' -Malcolm Turnbull