A critique of America's flawed Asia policy that centres on US-Japan relations but harkens back to the same disastrous views that drew America into Vietnam. The technique is a narrative flow of short vignettes woven into longer chapters; the main strands are personal reflections and interviews.
Using a conceptual framework, this 2007 book examines the processes of legal reform in post-socialist countries such as China. Drawing on Bourdieu's concept of the 'field', the increasingly complex and contested processes of legal reform are analysed in relation to police powers. The impact of China's post-1978 legal reforms on police powers is examined through a detailed analysis of three administrative detention powers: detention for education of prostitutes; coercive drug rehabilitation; and re-education through labour. The debate surrounding the abolition in 1996 of detention for investigation (also known as shelter and investigation) is also considered. Despite over 20 years of legal reform, police powers remain poorly defined by law and subject to minimal legal constraint. They continue to be seriously and systematically abused. However, there has been both systematic and occasionally dramatic reform of these powers. This book considers the processes which have made these legal changes possible.
As the richest cities in the world's most populous nation, Hong Kong and Shanghai have recently experienced dynamic growth spurred by more and better-managed capital. These cities also have social problems whose solutions will cost money. Their urban populations are aging. Health finance at the level these "First World" cities demand threatens to consume a large portion of the municipal budgets. Eldercare and social security are now less well covered by traditional Chinese families. Education has become more complex and public tuition, where it occurs, brings with it official plans for schools. Immigrants have flocked to Shanghai from inland China, and Hong Kong's border has become a protector of the former colony's high productivity jobs. Housing problems also have deeply affected both cities, albeit in somewhat different ways. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the similarities and differences between social policies in the two cities. Each chapter covers a different issue: health finance, housing, education, labor, poverty and social security, eldercare, and migration and competitiveness. The contributors explore pertinent developments in each city and analyze the similarities and differences between the two cities' approaches to social policies. They focus on policy reform and the interface between social policy and its environment. One main theme throughout the book is the extent to which spending for capital accumulation is in conflict with spending for social policies.
Why have Taiwan, rich parts of China, and Thailand boomed famously, while the Philippines has long remained stagnant both economically and politically? Do booms abet democracy? Does the rise of middle “classes” promise future liberalization? Why has Philippine democracy brought no boom and barely served the Filipino people? This book, unlike previous books, shows that both the roots and results of growth are largely political, not just economic. Specifically, it pays attention to local, not just national, power networks that caused or prevented growth in the aforementioned countries. Violence has been common in these politics, along with money. Elections have contributed to socio-political problems that are also obvious in Leninist or junta regimes, because elections are surprisingly easy to buy with corrupt money from government contracts. Liberals should pay more serious theoretical attention to the effects of money on justice, and Western political science should focus more clearly on the ways non-state local power affects elections. By considering the role of local money and power (above all, from small- and medium-sized firms that emerged after agrarian reforms) on elections and justice, this book asks democrats squarely to face the extent to which electoral procedures have failed to help ordinary citizens. Students and scholars of Asia will all need this book — as will students of the West whose methods have become parochial.
Why have Taiwan, rich parts of China, and Thailand boomed famously, while the Philippines has long remained stagnant both economically and politically? Do booms abet democracy? Does the rise of middle “classes” promise future liberalization? Why has Philippine democracy brought no boom and barely served the Filipino people?This book, unlike most previous studies, shows that both the roots and results of growth are largely political rather than economic. Specifically, it pays attention to local, not just national, power networks that caused or prevented growth in the four places under consideration. Violence has been common in these polities, along with money. Elections have contributed to socio-political problems that are also obvious in Leninist or junta regimes, because elections are surprisingly easy to buy with corrupt money from government contracts. Liberals should pay more serious theoretical attention to the effects of money on justice, and Western political science should focus more clearly on the ways non-state local power affects elections. By considering the effects on fair justice of local money and power (largely from small- and medium-sized firms that emerge after agrarian reforms), this book asks democrats to face squarely the extent to which electoral procedures fail to help ordinary citizens. Students and scholars of Asia will all need this book — as will students of the West whose methods have become parochial.
In recent years China has experienced intense economic development. Previously a rapidly urbanising industrial economy, the country has become a post-industrial economy with a service sector that accounts for almost half the nation’s GDP. This transformation has created many socio-political changes, but key among them is social mobilisation. This book provides a full and systematic analysis of social mobilisation in China, and how its use as part of state capacity has evolved.
Philippine political history, especially in the twentieth century, challenges the image of democratic evolution as serving the people, and does so in ways that reveal inadequately explored aspects of many democracies. In the first decades of the twenty-first century the Philippines has nonetheless shown gradual socioeconomic "progress". This book provides an interpretive overview of Philippine politics, and takes full account of the importance of patriotic Philippine factors in making decisions about future political policies. It analyses whether regional and local politics have more importance than national politics in the Philippines. Discussing cultural traditions of patronism, it also examines how clan feuds localize the state and create strong local policies. These conflicts in turn make regional and family-run polities collectively stronger than the central state institution. The book goes on to explore elections in the Philippines, and in particular the ways in which politicians win democratic elections, the institutionalized role of public money in this process, and the role that media plays. Offering a new interpretive overview of Philippine progress over many decades, the author notes recent economic and political changes during the current century while also trying to advance ideas that might prove useful to Filipinos. Presenting an in-depth analysis of the problems and possibilities of politics and society in the Philippines, the book will be of interest to those researching Southeast Asian Politics, Political History and Asian Society and Culture.