Globalization's impact on the Malaysian workforce

This article provides a partial analysis of the socio-political impact of the so-called IMF reforms that were implemented by the South Korean government in response to the financial crisis of 1997–98. We find that at least in one key area — namely policies related to foreign investment — the IMF reforms fundamentally altered and reshaped Korea's development path. In fact, the policy changes affecting foreign investment produced what amounts to a paradigm shift in Korea's well-known model of developmental state. Alternatively put, these reforms led to the demise of the “Korea, Inc.,” the symbiotic relationship between government and businesses that was at the core of Korea's developmental state. As such, our analysis suggesting a paradigm shift in Korea's developmental state stands in contrast with previous (pre-crisis) arguments that proclaimed the demise of the developmental state.     

Neo-liberalism in post-crisis South Korea: Social conditions and outcomes

South Korea's post-war development pattern has been considered to be a developmental state model, where the basic institutional framework was the “state-banks-chaebol nexus.” Since the financial crisis of 1997, however, the country has been swiftly transformed from the developmental state model and has acquired more neo-liberal characteristics. This has been made possible through intense reforms implemented by the post-crisis South Korean government under the IMF's guidance and encouraged by domestic political, ideational, and social conditions. Among those, significant conditions for this swift transformation include chaebols' legitimacy problems, neo-liberal consensus among the domestic elite, democracy hijacked by neo-liberalism, and the role of some NGOs. As social outcomes of the transformation, we find the enlarged presence of transnational capital, increased labour flexibility, inequality and poverty, and an increasing cultural gap in the country. Huge social costs of such neo-liberal transformation necessitate an alternative path of political economy.     

A critique of ADB policies towards the Greater Mekong Sub-region

This article takes issue with the rhetorical construction of what constitutes a “regional market economy” that informs much official thinking around the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) Program. It is argued that this is a limited construction that privileges the unimpeded movement of goods and resources within the area. Missing from this construct are more fundamental dimensions of what constitutes a proper “economy,” such as production and the institutional foundation to support such activity. Without these, the GMS may be constrained in its future development, rising little beyond an entrepôt basis. If the Program is to realise its full promise, further initiatives will be required, particularly to firmly embed a productive capacity within the region and establish a coherent institutional framework in its support.     

Surviving Financial Crises: The Chinese Overseas in Malaysia and Singapore

This article analyses key elements of the Thaksin government's public sector reform program since 2001 in the context both of a longer history of public sector reform in Thailand, and of Thaksin's style of political rule. Carefully chosen instruments of new public management reform such as budgeting for results and performance management have been accompanied by an agenda of wholesale restructuring of the bureaucracy. However, these instruments do not include many familiar items of the public management reform agenda. The reforms are best viewed as part of a politicisation strategy aimed at asserting political control at the centre. Managerial reforms are being deployed to reshape the bureaucracy into an instrument of the Thaksin government's political program. In the process, the traditional power of the bureaucracy is being challenged and undermined. The long-term impact of the bureaucratic modernisation program on administrative performance is less certain.     

State,bureaucracy and polity in modern Thai politics

We test the comparative foreign labor policies of Korea and Japan within a vein of international relations literature addressing the effects of international norms on changes in state policies. Building on the efforts to emphasize a state's domestic structure as a source of variations in the impact of international norms, this study enriches this debate further by demonstrating the role of the Korean state in developing international human rights norms domestically. In contrast to the previous studies that tend to dichotomize between states and human rights activists, which result in focusing their empirical studies on the question of whether states are constrained in developing immigration policies under the influence of international human rights norms, we demonstrate that state actors in coalition with human rights activists were actively involved in the process of enacting the Employment of Foreign Workers Act (EFWA) in Korea. More precisely, by offering a detailed account of how Korea finally suc ceeded in adopting the EFWA in 2003 after two failed attempts in 1997 and 2000, we attribute the success to the more extensive, organized pro-foreign workers coalition of state actors and human rights activists over the course of actions. When this observation is applied to Japan, the absence of an active role of the state accounts for Japan's relative silence on the EFWA.     

China,globalisation and the World Trade Organisation

This article claims that membership of the WTO will help industrialisation, rather than make China more dependent. Hedley Bull's realist paradigm helps to understand why China joined this organisation, any counter arguments are wishful thinking. Friedrich List's ideas for self-reliant industrialisation were used successfully by Mao Zedong, but globalisation has changed development strategy. Globalisation, if handled wrongly can make China jobless, voiceless, rootless, ruthless and futureless. If handled right, it can strengthen independence, sovereignty and self-reliance. The Chinese government needs stable external, as well as internal economic conditions. There are benefits for the vast majority of Chinese, but there are also possible disadvantages. David Ricardo's “comparative advantage” has not really helped Less Developed Countries, on the other hand, China should not become a crumbled “Somalia,” this means that China has to engage with globalisation, and this means also the WTO. After all, agency does exist and globalisation is a “two-edged sword.”     

Public health in Burma: Anatomy of a crisis

Burma has been ruled by a military government since 1962. A steady deterioration in public health standards has accompanied such rule, with a particularly marked decline following the crushing of the pro-democracy movement in that country in 1988. This article draws attention to a number of aspects of this decline and the growing precariousness of the overall public health system. As it will be suggested, primary responsibility for this state of decay should be borne by the military regime. Through several policies and practices, the military has severely compromised the functioning of the public health system and perverted it in ways that fulfill its narrow political interests, rather than those of the nation as a whole. The article concludes by emphasizing the urgent need for a reinstatement of democratic norms and institutions in Burma, so that the nation's public health needs may be meaningfully addressed and a looming humanitarian disaster averted.     

Citizenship,economy and social exclusion of mainland Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong

Hong Kong is often viewed as a Chinese immigrants' city. This article discusses three interrelated dimensions of the social exclusion of migrants designated as “new” Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong. First, it is argued that globalisation has triggered intense economic rivalry among world cities as they undertake economic restructuring. Second, the political attempts of territorial states to establish their own legitimacy and strengthen their governing capacity are major catalysts that induce the social exclusion of immigrants. Third, the nature and strength of local place-based social identity is vital to determine the difficulties new immigrants face in being included in the host society. After recounting the history of Chinese immigrants and their recent profile in Hong Kong, the article examines the relationships between Hong Kong's economic development and the state's immigration policies, and how Hong Kong's state policies have constructed a form of Hong Kong identity vis-à-vis Mainland Chinese, drawing out the mechanisms that determine the social exclusion of Mainland immigrants since the 1990s.

“We asked for workers but human beings came.” Max Frisch(quoted in Hollifield,2000:149)     

South Korea's search for an independent foreign policy

South Korea's independent foreign policy should be understood as a growing self-reliant attitude in the process of managing foreign affairs, and not as a strict policy target that must be achieved within a single term of a specific government. In theory, an instrumental approach, rather than an ideological adherence, toward the alliance system with the US is relevant for South Korea. Most importantly of all, the Korean dream of independent foreign policy will be hard to realize until Koreans abandon the dependent mind-set in terms of national security and foreign policy.     

The politics of Japan's free trade agreement

For a long time, the Japanese government showed awkward and indecisive attitudes towards trade policy. There was strong opposition from the two political actors — bureaucrats at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) and politicians in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) — to market opening in the agricultural sector. This article highlights private interests and the public interest of MAFF bureaucrats and LDP politicians and examines how the evolving perception of the interests has influenced debates and the progress of free trade agreement (FTA) policy over agriculture. The central argument is that economic linkages and institutional cooperation in East Asia have changed basic interests of MAFF bureaucrats and LDP politicians, and such changes, then, have induced new moves in Japan's FTA policy towards countries of the region.     

The East Asian financial meltdown

In view of China's economic growth and rising international status, Latin American and Caribbean countries will accord increasing priority to their relations with the Asian giant. China's permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council is also a factor to reckon with. Today, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and Mexico have established strategic partnerships with China. While the vast distance between China and Latin America generates difficulties in transportation and mutual understanding, it also means that both parties have no serious conflicts of strategic and political interests. Their Third World orientations in diplomacy contribute to a 95% concurrence in their votes in the United Nations. While the Chinese leadership seeks to promote multipolarity to curb US unilateralism, it appreciates its limitations in Latin America. In addition, China and the Latin American and Caribbean countries value good relations with the US. In the foreseeable future, China will increase its investment in Latin America and more Sino-Latin American business joint ventures will be formed. These trends may well reduce trade frictions associated with China's economic expansion.     

The meaning of war: A heterodox perspective

This article raises serious methodological, conceptual, historical and empirical questions concerning the notion of China as the next world superpower. The most dynamic sector of growth is the private sector, but within that sector foreign capital is growing the fastest, especially in strategic export sectors and increasingly in finance and the domestic market. Historically China has passed from a semi-colony to a collectivist state to a state capitalist economy toward a neo-liberal economy which contains the seeds for the re-emergence of a foreign capitalist-dominated economy. Contradictions in the current neo-liberal economy are leading to increased class struggle especially in the countryside and increasing tension between the super-rich Chinese bourgeois allied to foreign capital and ‘national statist’ sectors of the governing class. The efforts by the new leadership to ameliorate the contradiction through increased social spending are too little and too late.     

A critical note on UNDP's gender inequality indices

This article explains the diverse responses among the Chinese bourgeoisie in Hong Kong and Singapore to Chinese nationalist movements in the 1930s. In Singapore, the slogan of “Chinese buy Chinese goods” boosted the Chinese bourgeoisie in their business competition with Japan. The same slogan was used by the Chinese bourgeoisie in Hong Kong to emphasize increased sales of Chinese goods while Japanese imports were used by Chinese manufacturers in Hong Kong. I also interpret Chinese bourgeois nationalism in Hong Kong and Singapore as a move toward transnational economic citizenship. Emphasising their Chinese ethnicity, the bourgeoisie in Hong Kong and Singapore asked the Chinese government for favourable import tariffs. At the same time, the bourgeoisie requested the British for favourable tariffs, when they wished to export goods to markets in Britain and its colonies.     

UNESCO and the politics of cultural heritage in Tibet

This article examines United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) cultural heritage policies and Chinese state-directed tourism policies in contemporary Tibet. It begins with a brief overview of the tourism industry in Tibet, and moves to a discussion of UNESCO's focus on the preservation of world cultural sites in the name of universal values, noting how this aids state claims to authority over culture as a tool in state-building in places such as Tibet and Indonesia. The article then examines the effects state tourism policies have had on specific Tibetan sites, based on field visits to Lhasa and Shigatse in 2001 and 2002 and Xiahe (Gansu Province) in 2004.

In a word, the Potala Palace, as a world cultural heritage and a place of religious activities, has drawn the attention of the world. With the deepening of the reform, opening and modermization drive and along with the implementation of the going-west strategy, the Potala Palace has become a treasure of the world. - Potala Palace Management Office (2002)     

Ethnicity and capital: Changing relations between China and Southeast Asia

This article seeks to debunk the persistent myth of an ethnically-based Chinese capitalism and the culturalist view of an “economic miracle” created by Asians of Chinese descent. This myth claims that Chinese entrepreneurs constitute a closed category with homogenous ethnic attributes and cultural values that have enabled them to achieve economic success. This article disputes such primordialist views and proposes an alternative analysis of the cultural economy of regionalisation and constructions of Chineseness. It deconstructs the politics of culture and identity, and argues for the need to analyse Southeast Asian Chinese entrepreneurship within specific historical, geographical, economic, political and socio-cultural contexts.     

Chinese networks and enterprise development: Malaysian investments in China

This study assesses the argument that common ethnic identity has facilitated the creation of transnational business networks leading to the rise of a new economically powerful “global tribe” comprising ethnic Chinese from East and Southeast Asia. The primary contention in this article is that a network with the economic clout of a “global tribe” would entail interlocking stock-ownership ties, a sharing of resources and cooperation to the point of merger. Through an in-depth analysis of investments in China by ethnic Chinese from Malaysia, this article proves that even major Chinese-owned companies have little or no interlocking stock ownership and directorate links, either domestically or across borders, with other Chinese-owned companies. The growing inflow of investments into China by ethnic Chinese from Southeast Asia is primarily due to endeavours by government leaders in the region and China to encourage businesses to invest in the Mainland.     

The crisis of governance in New Subsistence States

In the sixty years since the establishment of the United Nations on 24^th October 1945, societies across the world have endeavoured to reshape themselves in accordance with the model of the modern state. Whereas the institutions of the modern state have proved appropriate for societies with historical experience of the production and administration of large surpluses, the adoption of state institutions presents an ongoing challenge for many other societies. Only a minority of states operate free from foreign aid, and weak states composed of stateless societies with minimal surplus generation capacity continue to face particular difficulties as they seek to adapt to the modern state system. Like other New Subsistence States, East Timor possesses grass-roots administrative capacities grounded in its village social structures. Short of the skills and resources necessary to support its formal justice system, East Timor has the option to formally integrate elements of its traditional mediation and conflict resolution capacities into the structure of the state.     

Perspectives on the economic relations between China and Russia

History of interactions between China and Russia and the countries' geographic juxtaposition are described with a view toward how these have affected earlier and contemporary economic relations between them. Special attention is paid to developments in the transition era. Quantitative data are examined to evaluate bilateral trade and investment activities in a comparative context. Both the level and composition of trade are evaluated. Potential for labor flows from China to Russia are assessed, and economic data on the border regions are examined to describe interaction at the regional level. Future trends in Chinese-Russian economic relations are projected.     

Building Hong Kong: Nepalese labour in the construction sector

There is now a large body of work on foreign workers in Hong Kong. Most studies have concentrated on foreign domestic workers (most of whom are female and from the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand), with the result that researchers have paid less attention to working conditions that prevail for other non-Chinese employees, particularly males. As a consequence, Nepalese construction workers — despite their relatively large numbers — are almost invisible outside of the industry that employs them. This article is an initial attempt to broaden understanding of work-related issues confronting a small community and is based on data from a survey conducted in conjunction with the Far East Overseas Nepalese Association. The primary issues examined are hiring practices, occupational health and safety, job related training, the work environment, work place supervision and discipline, wages, and hours and benefits.