CIAO DATE: 02/2008
Volume: 79, Issue: 4
Winter 2006-2007
Editor's Introduction
Timothy Cheek
Australia, America and Asia
Mohan Malik
This article examines the changing nature of Australian-American relations in the aftermath of the Iraq imbroglio and China's rise. While many observers see differences in Australian and US approaches toward China as a reflection of different interests, it is the contention of this paper that these different Australian-US perspectives on China are, in fact, premised more on some highly skewed assumptions and fallacious beliefs, misconceptions and myths that have lately come to underlie Australia's China policy than on divergent Australian-US interests. This article looks at the proposition that China's rise has the potential to divide Australia and America but concludes that Beijing is unlikely to succeed in driving a wedge between Washington and Canberra. The shared values and shared strategic interests ensure broad support for the Australia-US alliance in Australia which has now expanded into a global partnership encompassing the transnational security issues as well as the traditional geopolitical issues of managing the rise of new powers.
Australia, the US and East Asia: Are Close Ties with the Bush Administration Beneficial?
Mark Beeson
Australian policymakers have traditionally made cultivating close strategic ties with the dominant power of the era the centerpiece of foreign policy. As Australia's prominent role in the "coalition of the willing" in Iraq demonstrates, this strategy is alive and well. It is, however, no longer clear whether this strategy is in either Australia's national interest or that of the international community more generally. I argue that, in reality, close ties with the current Bush administration have been costly and may further complicate Australia's relations with an East Asian region in which China is becoming an increasingly important actor.
In Medias Res: The Development of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation as a Security Community
Marc Lanteigne
As the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation observed its fifth anniversary in June 2006, the question of where the regime fits within the expanding area of international strategic institutions in Asia and elsewhere assumes an even greater importance. The SCO has begun to establish itself as a more formal actor in the complex area of Eurasian security, and has evolved from a largely consultative grouping into a security community. As well, the SCO has become the cornerstone of China's Central Asian diplomacy and its promotion of "non-alliance" forms of strategic cooperation. However, despite the SCO's endeavours to portray itself as a forum for information-sharing and confidence-building, as well as political and economic cooperation, hard power considerations remain an important part of the organisation's policymaking. Although the SCO was seen as marginalized when Western forces entered Central Asia after September 2001, the organisation plays key roles and should not be dismissed as a strategic actor and source of regional cooperation. Moreover, with American forces remaining in Central Asia for the foreseeable future and Central Asian governments becoming increasingly concerned about the potential after-shocks of the recent "colour revolutions" in the former USSR, there is the greater possibility that a more mature SCO may engage in overt power-balancing behaviour vis-à-vis the West, resulting in rivalries rather than cooperation. To prevent this scenario, it is argued that the international community should take the opportunity to better engage the SCO in the name of promoting peace and stability in Eurasia.
Dilemmas Confronting Social Entrepreneurs: Care Homes for Elderly People in Chinese Cities
Linda Wong, Jun Tang
In socialist China, rapid aging, severe shortage of public provisions for frail elders, and the state's admitted failure to meet vast unmet needs have led the state to promote the use of non-profits as a key peg of welfare policy for the elderly. To this end, the Chinese government passed the Provisional Regulation on the Registration and Management of Civilian-run Non-enterprise Units in 1998 to set out the legal framework. Using tax exemption and preferential utility charges as baits, the 1998 decree encourages the birth of nonprofits to meet the shortfall in social services. The sharp rise in nonprofit organizations (NPOs) after 1998 suggests the policy is achieving its intended effect. However, the insistence on self-sufficiency and ban on profit taking means that such agencies have to operate as social enterprises, combining their social mission with an entrepreneurial mode of management as they rely on fee charges as the primary income source. The paper begins by examining the policy and demographic contexts for old age care and the concepts of NPOs, social enterprises and social entrepreneurship. It then presents research findings on the agency profiles and operational experiences of 137 non-state care homes in three Chinese cities. This is followed by an analysis of the motives for social entrepreneurship, namely family circumstances, personal attributes, social commitment, and entrepreneurial drive. The final part discusses the link between the nonprofit policy, NPO attributes and social entrepreneurship. It is argued that it is the peculiarity of the existing policy that attracted a very special group of social investors into the old age care business.
Minorities and Protest in Japan: The Politics of the Fingerprinting Refusal Movement
Michael Strausz
In 1985, 10,000 foreign residents of Japan refused to be fingerprinted by the Japanese state. Why did this protest take place when it did, and why have we not seen a movement of similar size and intensity since the end of the fingerprinting refusal movement? This article argues that the fingerprinting refusal movement occurred because a convergence of factors—including demographic change, Japan's ratification of human rights treaties, ideational changes within the Japanese state and the Korean community in Japan, and local political developments—opened a window of political opportunity for activism. Moreover, the reforms that Japan made in the 1970s and 1980s closed that window because they satisfied many of the demands of foreign activists, and activists subsequently had a difficult time finding an issue on which to focus community outrage.
Lost Modernities: China, Vietnam, Korea, and the Hazards of World History. By Alexander Woodside.
Wang Gungwu
Military Modernization in an Era of Uncertainty: Strategic Asia 2005-06. Edited by Ashley J. Tellis and Michael Wills.
Colin Green
Japan, Australia and Asia-Pacific Security. Edited by Brad Williams and Andrew Newman.
Hugo Dobson
Election Campaigning in East and Southeast Asia: Globalization of Political Marketing. Edited by Christian Schafferer.
Duncan McCargo
The Politics of CANDU Exports. By Duane Bratt.
Robert S. Anderson
New Directions in the Study of China's Foreign Policy. Edited by Alastair Iain Johnston and Robert S. Ross.
Andrew Scobell
China's New Order: Society, Politics, and Economy in Transition. Edited by Wang Hui and Theodore Huters.
Yiching Wu
From Comrade to Citizen: The Struggle for Political Rights in China. By Merle Goldman.
Jasper Becker
China's Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy. By Minxin Pei.
Scott Kennedy
Imagined Enemies: China Prepares for Uncertain War. By John Wilson Lewis and Xue Litai.
Colin Green
The Chinese Communist Party in Reform. Edited by Kjeld Erik Brodsgaard and Zheng Yongnian.
Bruce J. Dickson
La Chine au Carrefour des Traditions Juridiques. By Hélène Piquet.
Rene Goldman
Chinese Women Writers and the Feminist Imagination, 1905-1948. By Yan Haiping.
Norman Smith
Hedda Morrison's Hong Kong: Photographs and Impressions, 1946-47. By Edward Stokes.
Graham E. Johnson
Educational Import: Local Encounters with Global Forces in Mongolia. By Gita Steiner-Khamsi and Ines Stolpe.
John C. Weidman II
If China Attacks Taiwan: Military Strategy, Politics and Economics. By Steve Tsang.
Harlan W. Jencks
Global Cinderellas: Migrant Domestics and Newly Rich Employers in Taiwan. By Pei-Chie Lan.
Nichole Constable
The Subtle Revolution: Poets of the Old Schools during Late Qing and Early Republican China. By Jon Kowallis.
Jerry Schmidt
Beyond Japan: The Dynamics of East Asian Regionalism. Edited by Peter J. Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi.
Gilbert Rozman
Small Firms and Innovation Policy in Japan. Edited by Cornelia Storz.
Kathryn C. Ibata-Arens
Confronting Income Inequality in Japan: A Comparative Analysis of Causes, Consequences, and Reform. By Toshiaki Tachibanaki.
Kenji Kosaka
Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers. By Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney.
Roger Brown
Turning Pages: Reading and Writing Women's Magazines in Interwar Japan. By Sarah Frederick.
Barbara G. Holthus
Japan in Print: Information and Nation in the Early Modern Period. By Mary Elizabeth Berry.
James L. Huffman
Japanese-German Relations, 1895-1945: War, Diplomacy and Public Opinion. Edited by Christian W. Spang and Rolf-Harald Wippich.
John Stephan
Practical Pursuits: Takano Chôei, Takahashi Keisaku, and Western Medicine in Nineteenth-Century Japan. By Ellen Gardner Nakamura.
Mieko Macé
The Imjin War: Japan's Sixteenth-Century Invasion of Korea and Attempt to Conquer China. By Samuel Hawley.
Nam-Lin Hur
Environmentality: Technologies of Government and the Making of Subjects. By Arun Agrawal.
J. Mark Baker
Political Ideas in Modern India: Thematic Explorations. Edited by V. R. Mehta and Thomas Pantham.
Pahi Saikia
Chronic Poverty and Development Policy in India. Edited by Aasha Kapur Mehta and Andrew Shepherd.
Raghbendra Jha
Red Hills: Migrants and the State in the Highlands of Vietnam. By Andrew Hardy.
Terry Rambo
Subject Siam: Family, Law, and Colonial Modernity in Thailand. By Tamara Loos.
Fred R. von der Mehden
Chinese Indonesians: State Policy, Monoculture and Multiculture. Edited by Leo Suryadinata.
Abidin Kusno
Historical Dictionary of the Peoples of the Southeast Asian Massif: Historical Dictionaries of Peoples and Cultures, No. 4. By Jean Michaud.
Michael C. Howard
Pacific Islands Regional Integration and Governance. Edited by Satish Chande.
Nancy Sullivan
Texts and Contexts: Reflections in Pacific Islands Historiography. Edited by Doug Munro and Brij V. Lal.
Jacqueline Leckie
Dobu: Ethics of Exchange on a Massim Island, Papua New Guinea. By Susanne Kuehling.
Martha Macintyre
Strangers in the South Seas: The Idea of the Pacific in Western Thought. Edited by Richard Lansdown.
Victor Suthren
American Paper Son: A Chinese Immigrant in teh Midwest. By Wayne Hung Wong; edited and with an introduction by Benson Tong.
Shehong Chen
Chinese Immigrants, African Americans, and Racial Anxiety in the United States, 1848-82. By Najia Aarim-Heriot.
K. Scott Wong