CIAO DATE: 03/05/07

Pacific Affairs:
An International Review of Asia and the Pacific

 

Winter 2005/2006 (Vol. 78 No. 4)

Articles

• Introduction: Globalization and Southeast Asian Capital Cities
  K.C. Ho

  This paper represents an attempt to show how globalization is interacting with local political and social forces in the shaping of Southeast Asian capital cities. Southeast Asia is known for the political and economic dominance of its capital regions. In the recent two decades, the concentration of government, expenditures, services and amenities in the capital city has been reinforced by new foreign investments and international migration. The paper introduces three papers which examine the tensions and promises globalization brings for the capital city. It concludes with the challenge national governments face to balance spatial policies that strengthen the competitiveness of its capital regions with redistributive policies that are needed to develop subregions in the shadow of globalization.

• Local City, Capital City or World City? Civil Society, the (Post-) Developmental State and the Globalization of Urban Space in Pacific Asia
  Mike Douglass

  The rise of civil society and the breach of urban space by global finance and retail capital are creating new dynamics in the capital city as its spaces for local and national social and political life are marginalized by world city formation and commodification of urban space for global accumulation. Case studies show that the active participation of civil society in the public sphere is crucial to sustaining and producing new community and civic spaces in the face of these trends.

• The Cultural Role of Capital Cities: Hanoi and Hue, Vietnam
  William S. Logan

  Hanoi promotes itself both as a place for foreign investment in urban development and as the 'cradle of Vietnamese civilisation'. Special status is given to places of national heritage significance, and policy makers and planners face challenges of balancing heritage conservation and modern development. By contrast, the former capital, Hue, continues to decline economically relative to other Vietnamese cities and is discovering value in its imperial heritage as a 'vector for development'. These Vietnamese capital cities demonstrate that heritage conservation is a key consideration in government efforts to improve the position of their constituencies in the newly-shaping global and national economic systems.

• Colonial Capital, Modernist Capital, Global Capital: The Changing Political Symbolism of Urban Space in Metro Manila, the Philippines
  Gavin Shatkin

  This paper traces the relationship between shifts in state strategies for capital building in Manila and changes in the political symbolism of urban space. It discusses three distinct epochs in capital building strategies in the Philippines during the past century: the American colonial period, the period of Ferdinand Marcos' authoritarian rule, and the Philippines' current integration into the global economy. It argues that the global era has been marked by the privatization of urban development and the degradation of public space, and that this has led Manila residents to seek new forums for political action, with important implications for the country's democracy.

• The Politics of the Dalai Lama's New Initiative for Autonomy
  He Baogang and Barry Sautman

  In the late 1980s, the Dalai Lama first asserted that he was willing to no longer press for an independent Tibet. Until recently, however, scant progress was made toward negotiations between the Tibetan exiles and the government of the People's Republic of China: the PRC had shown no inclination to negotiate about matters beyond the Dalai Lama's own status, while the exiles had insisted that China renounce all control over affairs in Tibet, except foreign affairs and defense. In 2002, largely in response to external pressures, China invited one of the Dalai Lama's brothers to visit Tibet and in 2002-2005 the Dalai Lama's representatives have visited Tibetan areas of China on three occasions and, most recently, have met with PRC representatives in Switzerland. The Dalai Lama has since gone some way toward accommodating PRC pre-conditions for negotiations. He has acknowledged that Tibet is part of China and Tibetan culture part of Chinese culture, as well as refocusing his concerns away from political demands to questions of cultural and religious autonomy. Formidable obstacles to negotiations remain, including exile demands that they be about unification of all PRC Tibetan areas and the establishment of liberal democracy in Tibet. Compromise solutions are available, however, and China can take a number of steps that would facilitate acceptance of compromise in the exile community and that would substantially benefit Tibetans in Tibet.

Books Reviewed In This Issue

Asia General

• Legitimacy: Ambiguities of Political Success or Failure in East and Southeast Asia. Edited by Lynn White.
  Reviewed by Linus Hagström

China and Inner Asia

• China Rising: Power and Motivation in Chinese Foreign Policy. Edited by Yong Deng and Fei-ling Wang.
  Reviewed by Colin Green

• Chinese Foreign Policy: Pragmatism and Strategic Behavior. Edited by Suisheng Zhao.
  Reviewed by André Laliberté

• Guangdong: Preparing for the WTO Challenge. Edited by Joseph Y.S. Cheng.
  Reviewed by David Zweig

• Contract And Property In Early Modern China. Edited by Madeleine Zelin, Jonathan K. Ocko and Robert Gardella.
  Reviewed by Christopher M. Isett

• Policing Chinese Politics: A History. By Michael Dutton.
  Reviewed by Gregor Benton

• The Clash Of Empires: The Invention of China in Modern World Making. By Lydia H. Liu.
  Reviewed by Alexander Woodside

• China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia. By Peter C. Perdue.
  Reviewed by Diana Lary

• Untying The Knot: Making Peace in the Taiwan Strait. By Richard C. Bush.
  Reviewed by Steven Phillips

• Consolidating Taiwan's Democracy. By John F. Copper.
  Reviewed by Su-Mei Ooi

Northeast Asia

• Notes from Toyota Land: An American Engineer in Japan. By Darius Mehri.
  Reviewed by Aviad E. Raz

• Final Days: Japanese Culture and Choice at the End of Life. By Susan Orpett Long.
  Reviewed by John Traphagan

• Ritual Practice in Modern Japan: Ordering Place, People, and Action. By Satsuki Kawano.
  Reviewed by Millie Creighton

• Native Anthropology: The Japanese Challenge to Western Academic Hegemony. By Takami Kuwayama.
  Reviewed by Harumi Befu

• Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan. By Tsuyoshi Hasegawa.
  Reviewed by J. Charles Schencking

• Making Waves: Politics, Propaganda, and the Emergence of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1868-1922. By J. Charles Schencking.
  Reviewed by Frederick R. Dickinson

• Punishment and Power in the Making of Modern Japan. By Daniel V. Botsman.
  Reviewed by Robert Eskildsen

• Negotiating with Imperialism: The Unequal Treaties and the Culture of Japanese Diplomacy. By Michael R. Auslin.
  Reviewed by Robert G. Kane

• Japan's Modern Prophet: Uchimura Kanzô, 1861-1930. By John F. Howes.
  Reviewed by Jeff Alexander

• Beyond Birth: Social Status in the Emergence of Modern Korea. By Kyung Moon Hwang.
  Reviewed by Michael J. Seth

• Human Remolding In North Korea: A Social History of Education. By Hyung-chan Kim with Dong-kyu Kim.
  Reviewed by Roland Bleiker

South Asia

• Will Secular India Survive? Edited by Mushirul Hasan.
  Reviewed by Ali Mir

• Stitches on Time: Colonial Textures and Postcolonial Tangles. By Saurabh Dube.
  Reviewed by Anand Pandian

Southeast Asia

• The Naga Challenged: Southeast Asia in the Winds of Change. Edited by Victor R. Savage and May Tan-Mullins.
  Reviewed by Dean Forbes

• The Economics of the Enterprise for Asean Initiative. By Seiji F. Naya and Michael G. Plummer.
  Reviewed by Robert L. Curry, Jr.

• Realism and Interdependence in Singapore's Foreign Policy. By N. Ganesan.
  Reviewed by Richard Stubbs

• Asian Ethical Urbanism: A Radical Postmodern Perspective. By William S.W. Lim, with an introduction by Leon van Schaik.
  Reviewed by John Friedmann

• Viet Nam: A Transition Tiger? By Brian Van Arkadie and Raymond Mallon.
  Reviewed by Adam Fforde

• State and Society in the Philippines. By Patricio N. Abinales and Donna J. Amoroso.
  Reviewed by Aprodicio Laquian

• Investing in Miracles: El Shaddai and the Transformation of Popular Catholicism in the Philippines. By Katharine L. Wiegele.
  Reviewed by Vicente L. Rafael

• Indonesian Literature vs. New Order Orthodoxy: The Aftermath of 1965-1966. By Anna-Greta Nilsson Hoadley.
  Reviewed by John Roosa

• Guardians of the Land in Kelimado: Louis Fontijne's Study of a Colonial District in Eastern Indonesia. Edited by Gregory Forth.
  Reviewed by Andrew Goss

Australasia and the Pacific Region

• East Timor, Australia and Regional Order: Intervention and its Aftermath in Southeast Asia. By James Cotton.
  Reviewed by Tim Anderson

• The Unseen City: Anthropological Perspectives on Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. By Michael Goddard.
  Reviewed by Richard Scaglion

• Colonial Dis-ease: US Navy Health Policies and the Chamorros of Guam, 1898-1941. By Anne Perez Hattori.
  Reviewed by Glenn Petersen

• Australia's Money Mandarins: The Reserve Bank and the Politics of Money. By Stephen Bell.
  Reviewed by Evan Jones