Work and Family Life among Migrant Factory Workers in China and Vietnam

ABSTRACT

Through on-site interviewing, a comparative study has been carried out about migrant factory workers in industrialised parts of China’s Guangdong province and in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City. Even though China and Vietnam possess similar legacies of socialist transformation and have household registration regulations that restrict rural migrants’ access to urban social services and impede their settlement in cities, there exist marked differences in Guangdong and Ho Chi Minh City in migration patterns, factory work conditions and migrant worker family livelihoods. In particular, migrant families in Ho Chi Minh City largely stay intact and tend to settle there permanently, while married migrant workers in Guangdong normally need to split up their families and remain trapped in circular rural–urban migration. As shall be seen, the national and local governments play important roles in determining the inclusion or exclusion of migrants from urban life, the wages they are paid and their standard of living and, most important of all, their children’s access to education. Each of the two countries’ differences in implementing policies is examined and comparatively analysed.     

Chinatown as home base

Abstract

During the recent U.S.-China friendship celebrations in San Francisco there was a struggle between the pro-China groups in Chinatown and the Chinese Six Companies over the use of Portsmouth Square, a key locale in Longtime Californ’. The old establishment of Chinatown succeeded in preventing a celebration in the historic park on the twenty-fourth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, and on the eve of October First the Square was encircled with strings of Kuomintang flags while on the same day a pro-China rally was held at St. Mary's Square several blocks away. Despite the recent developments in U.S.-China relations, the friction of past years between two political Chinatown factions continues as before.     

The Initiation of the Sino-Indian rivalry

ABSTRACT

Sino-Indian interactions after the mid-19th century had a causal influence on Chinese and Indian elite perceptions. Modern China encountered modern India as an agent of British imperialism. China perceived India as an “imperial” power in the late 1940s by resorting to the availability heuristic while doubting India’s intentions in Tibet/Southeast Asia. By contrast, India viewed China as a fellow victim of colonialism that had sought India’s help during World War II. Consequently, India perceived China as a “partner” in postwar/postcolonial Asia. This interpretation was based on confirmation bias after 1947, despite contradictory Chinese signals. India’s image of China changed only after the 1950–51 invasion/annexation of Tibet. India then ascribed the image of an “expansionist/hegemonic” power to China based on historical analogy. Nevertheless, they carefully calibrated their strategies towards each other in consonance with these images until the 1959 Lhasa Uprising, thereby preventing their relationship from descending into militarized hostilities.     

Managing Small Allies Amidst Patron–Adversary Rapprochement: A Tale of Two Koreas

ABSTRACT

What explains variation in how a patron manages its existing alliance with a client state when improving relations with an adversary? I theorize that the patron’s alliance management strategy is influenced by the client’s degree of bargaining power over its patron. Bargaining power derives from the availability of an outside option. Using archival and interview evidence, I show variation in alliance bargaining dynamics during US–China rapprochement. While the United States was dismissive toward South Korea, China was highly placating toward North Korea, making concessions and providing compensation. However, China became more dismissive during Sino-South Korean normalization, when North Korea’s bargaining power decreased. The findings have important policy implications for understanding how a patron could simultaneously manage alliance and adversary relationships.     

“A Cat’s Paw of Indian Reactionaries”? Strategic Rivalry and Domestic Politics at the India–China–Myanmar Tri-Junction

ABSTRACT

Ostensibly driven by concerns over a military standoff with China similar to Doklam, India increased military deployment at the Myanmar tri-junction. This article assesses the inevitability of systemic factors such as rivalry with China in determining India’s approach on border issues. It asks why India sought formalization of its boundary with Burma in 1967. Given its territorial disputes with China, resolving the Burma boundary should have been high priority. Still, it took India two decades after independence to broach the subject. Based on fresh archival and interview data, this article answers the question by examining the India–Burma Boundary Agreement. A three-party territorial dispute, the making of this agreement witnessed simultaneous interplay between states with visible power differentials, and various stakeholders within India’s polity and bureaucracy. The article argues that even when inter-state competition is apparent, domestic factors may be more important in triggering foreign policy change.     

Hiding in Plain Sight? Japan’s Militarization of Space and Challenges to the Yoshida Doctrine

ABSTRACT

Japan’s security discourse – despite accelerating shifts in its security stance over the last two decades, and more recently, under the Abe administration – remains dominated by views of essential continuity and maintenance of the “Yoshida Doctrine.” The case of Japan’s militarization of space is used to create a framework for systematically dismantling default assumptions about the durability of the Yoshida Doctrine. The militarization of space serves as a driver of broader trends in Japan’s security policy manifested in the procurement of dual-use assets in launch systems, communications and intelligence satellites, and counterspace capabilities necessary for active internal and external balancing with the US–Japan alliance; the strengthening domestically of security policymaking institutions; and the jettisoning of anti-militaristic norms. Japan’s increasingly assertive military stance, bolstering of the US–Japan alliance and cessation of hedging, facing down of China’s rise, and departure from the Yoshida Doctrine as grand strategy are thus revealed as hiding in plain sight.     

Mao,Stalin, and Kim il sung: An interpretive essay

To secure Soviet interests in Manchuria after the Yalta agreement on the Far East had been invalidated by the Kuomintang’s defeat, Stalin was forced to welcome the PRC into the “socialist camp.” In attempting to eliminate Mao’s foreign policy alternatives, he was assisted by an unwitting United States, where Truman was under fire for “losing” China. Data which has recently become available shows that Stalin cemented his accord with Mao by urging him to lead revolution in Asia. Mao’s heroic self-image and need to prove to Stalin that he was not “another Tito,” caused him to overrule his Politburo and plunge China into the Korean War, thereby assuring its isolation and lasting dependence on the Soviets. The author has long been a student of relations among socialist states; a few interviews in Beijing with Mao Zedong’s personal interpreters and a multitude of newly declassified documents have inspired him to reconstruct the Stalin-Mao-Kim relationship during the formative years of the PRC.     

The Struggle for Recognition of the Indigenous Voice: Amerindians in Guyanese Politics

Abstract

In Guyana’s racialised geography, Amerindians live in scattered villages in the vast hinterland that covers 90% of the country. Amerindian iconography is appropriated in state-making, even while Amerindians themselves are consigned to a patron–client relationship with the dominant ‘coastlander’ society. In the late 1950s, Amerindians made up only 4% of the national population but voted as a bloc in the national elections of 1957, 1961 and 1964, rallying around Stephen Campbell, the first Amerindian member of the legislature. Their unified position allowed their political leaders to negotiate a commitment to the settlement of Amerindian land claims as a condition of Independence in 1966. After losing its parliamentary majority in 2011, the coastlander-based party in power has been working to disrupt cohesion among Amerindian community leaders. The government uses a variety of funds to reward community leaders who will sign pre-prepared resolutions at the statutory National Toshaos Council meetings, and denies funds to leaders and communities that protest at government neglect and mismanagement of the traditional areas claimed by the indigenous peoples.     

China in Pacific Regional Politics

Abstract

Foreign aid from China to the island countries of the Pacific has grown rapidly over the last few decades and an expanding body of literature has examined various aspects of what this means for politics in the region generally. This article focuses on China’s impact on Pacific regional politics partly from the perspective of identity politics. It suggests that China has substantially increased its engagement with the Pacific island states by making use of its own identity as a South–South development partner in contrast to traditional (mainly Western) donors in the region. Unlike most traditional donors, however, China’s diplomacy and engagement are based largely on bilateralism, and this is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. This approach could continue to limit its impact on Pacific regionalism, regardless of how it projects its image.     

What Money Can’t Buy: The Security Externalities of Chinese Economic Statecraft in Post-War Sri Lanka

ABSTRACT

China’s growing trade, investment, and aid links are commonly believed to constitute a potent instrument of statecraft, generating important security externalities. Yet there is insufficient research tracing the precise mechanisms linking economic relationships between a “sender” and “target” state to actual influence in the security domain. We offer three contributions. First, we map out the theoretical mechanisms of influence in a sender–target relationship. Second, we empirically investigate these mechanisms through a case study of China’s economic influence in Sri Lanka since 2009. Third, we use our findings to generate new insights on the mechanisms of influence in the economic statecraft literature and the dynamics of great-power competition in South Asia. Beijing’s ability to convert its considerable economic resources into strategic influence in Sri Lanka is currently hampered by the poor planning and implementation of infrastructure projects, domestic politics, and Sri Lanka’s relationship with India, a regional competitor and rising power.     

Examining the Shift to Services: Malaysia and China Compared

ABSTRACT

When do countries that pursue industrialisation through the development of their manufacturing sector shift to services? Does the shift take place because manufacturing development has matured with the development of indigenous technology? What is the role of policy in this shift? Understanding this shift is crucial due to the changing nature and role of services in development and its association with deindustrialisation. This article seeks to compare Malaysia and China’s shift from manufacturing to services and the challenges and prospects of such a shift. The main findings indicate that Malaysia’s shift occurred earlier than China’s and was prompted by the failure of its manufacturing sector to deepen as it has not produced any world-class domestic technology firms. China’s more recent shift is associated with on-going upgrading in its manufacturing sector while some global domestic technology firms have also emerged. Both countries used similar policies to drive this shift in response to domestic and external changes. The services sectors of both countries are still dominated by domestic market orientated, labour-intensive services. Developing competitive knowledge-intensive services in both countries will need a reform of their state-owned enterprises and the production of more talents that are needed for these types of services.     

Economic Statecraft,Structural Power,and Structural Violence in Sino-Kyrgyz Relations

Abstract

This article employs the concepts of structural power and structural violence to a undertake critical study of China’s use of economic statecraft toward Kyrgyzstan. The article argues that China’s reliance on economic exchange to secure its strategic ends in Kyrgyzstan has resulted in asymmetric economic exchange between the two states. Through this asymmetric exchange, China has gained influence over Kyrgyzstan’s domestic structures. Chinese structural power, in turn, contributes to violence across Kyrgyzstan’s structures of economy, environment, and society and within the country’s state-society relations. Structural violence within Kyrgyzstan also results in periphery instability and domestic insecurity for China. As such, the article argues that China’s use of economic statecraft to achieve its strategic aims in Kyrgyzstan is self-defeating.     

State-building and patronage networks: how political parties embezzled the bureaucracy in post-war Kosovo

ABSTRACT

Why has the internationally promoted Weberian-style bureaucracy failed to replace patronage as the dominant principle of state organization in post-war Kosovo? This article explores how international actors’ rule-promotion activities and local actors’ strategies of resistance play out and interact to explain the failure. The empirical analysis focuses on rules of recruitment in the civil service system in the period 2000–2016. The analysis juxtaposes two consecutive stages of the state-building process, which are marked by different degrees and forms of international involvement: the pre-independence period, 1999–2008; and post-independence period, 2008–2016. Evidence from the case suggests that during the pre-independence period, legal inconsistencies embedded in the internationally promulgated legislation enabled local actors’ formal and informal strategies to recruit political cronies in the newly created civil service system. The transfer of authority from international administrators to elected local authorities, especially after Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008, did not solve the problem of legal inconsistencies, and instead, served to consolidate governing parties’ strategies of control over recruitment in the state bureaucracy. More often than not, patron–client relationships that thrive at the borderline between formality and informality of political behaviour, continued to undermine external rule transfers.     

China’s rising naval ambitions in the Indian Ocean: aligning ends,ways and means

ABSTRACT

China’s naval footprint in the Indian Ocean has expanded considerably over the last decade. This growing presence has led to significant debates about China’s goals and capabilities in the region. This article argues that China’s trajectory over the last ten years reflects an alignment of ends, ways and means in the Indian Ocean. The main driver behind China’s ambitions in the region is the need for Beijing to secure pivotal maritime lines of communications that carry a large share of Chinese oil imports and a sizable part of Chinese exports. Fulfilling this mission has required a significant adjustment of China’s naval strategy, and the addition of ‘open seas protection’ to the core missions of the PLA Navy. This strategy has, in turn, been supported by the development of a navy with increased sea control capabilities and overseas basing plans that have started to materialize in Djibouti.     

Bhopal revisited: The view from below

Abstract

The night of 2–3 December 1994 will mark the tenth anniversary of the world's largest industrial disaster. Over the years the attention Bhopal has attracted has centered on the extended legal negotiations between the Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) and the Indian government. What is less known is that despite a settlement in 1989 and a review in 1991, the gas survivors continue to suffer untold misery. Indeed their lives are more insecure today than they were in 1984.     

The Power of Prestige: Explaining China’s Nuclear Weapons Decisions

ABSTRACT

The majority of the nuclear proliferation literature is dedicated to understanding why states acquire nuclear weapons. While this question remains important, it is also advantageous to push beyond this inquiry to ask what motivates a state’s nuclear decisions after acquisition. Recent research indicates that a state’s nuclear force structure is heavily influenced by its threat environment. But what explains decisions relating to specific nuclear weapon systems? If security is a sufficient explanatory variable, then why would a state pursue nuclear weapons with high development and production costs but relatively low security gains? Using China as a case study, this article explores the power of prestige in explaining such decisions.     

New Perspectives on Malaysia and a Rising China: Essays Honouring Lee Poh Ping

ABSTRACT

This article introduces the feature collection titled Malaysia and China in a Changing Region: Essays in Honour of Professor Lee Poh Ping. As well as introducing the six articles in the collection, this article pays tribute to Professor Lee, who passed away in late 2016. The article links some of the key themes of Professor Lee’s research and publications to the themes of the six articles, each of which is concerned with the rise of China and the various impacts this has for Malaysia’s political economy.     

Chinese Nationalism and Trust in East Asia

ABSTRACT

China’s rise has been accompanied by a rise in nationalism. But what are the characteristics of this nationalism now being witnessed? Does it support China’s constructive engagement with the international order, or does it seek to assert China’s supremacy? These questions lie at the hub of a rapidly expanding secondary literature on the emergence of nationalism in China and its impact on China’s foreign relations. What is, however, absent from the academic discourse is the voice of the Chinese people themselves. What are their perceptions of the nation-state, and how do these beliefs shape their views of China’s relationship with East Asia? To address this gap, we conducted a series of large-scale surveys in Beijing between 2011 and 2013 on the twinned topics of domestic nationalism and international relations. Our findings, as reported below, represent an initial attempt to answer this final and, arguably, most critical set of questions.