Reading the Trump Administration’s China Policy

The policy toward China under the Trump Administration is a rare combination of the toughest part of that of the Democratic Party, which is trade, and of the Republican Party, which is national security. The National Security Strategy by the Trump Administration defined China and Russia as competitors. It is the first time for the US Government to be harsh against both China and Russia (the Soviet Union included) since the late 1960s. Though trade is by far the most salient aspect of President Trump’s confrontational China policy, it is in fact a whole-of-the-government approach or pushback that the US government is taking with China, which means that not just the White House but various Departments and the Congress are tough with China, dealing with many issues from trade to human rights to national security. The President might actually be the softest link, almost exclusively focusing on trade. This might be a historic turnaround in US policy toward China.     

Reading the spirits in Julia Alvarez’s A Wedding in Haiti

Dominican writer Julia Alvarez’s 2012 memoir, A Wedding in Haiti: The Story of a Friendship, documents her first-time travel from the Dominican Republic to Haiti over land in order to attend the wedding of Piti, a young Haitian man who had worked for her and her husband for a number of years. She deploys the literary non-fiction genre of memoir, a genre that is relatively new to her, to explore both the Dominican (collective) relationship with Haiti and her individual relationship with both Haiti and its people centering on her connection to Piti and his family. Drawing on Vodou, a nature religion that strives for balance, this article explores Alvarez’s memoir through several lwa. I argue that the lwa are deployed and manifest as mechanisms from within Vodou epistemology to restore balance to a world relationship between Haiti and the DR that reverberates in the metaphysical world. Examinations of this unequal relationship between the two nations are even more prescient contemporarily considering the recent decision by the Dominican Constitutional Court to strip children of “irregular” migrants born in the DR after 1929 of their Dominican citizenship.     

Conceptualizing Japan’s Foreign Policy Trajectory Through Social Identity Theory

East Asia - Regional security studies of the Asia-Pacific commonly center upon China’s rise, leaving other actors underresearched. Among these is Japan, whose ongoing reinterpretation of its...     

The Future Instability of Cross-Strait Relations: Prospect Theory and Ma Ying-Jeou’s Paradoxical Legacy

The 2016 Taiwanese elections which saw a sweeping victory of Tsai Ing-wen and the DPP have revived the question of cross-Strait instability. While observers have generally focus on whether or not the Tsai administration could cross Beijing’s red lines, few have taken into consideration the dynamic nature of these red lines, and how Ma’s presidency had impacted them. This article fills this gap by drawing on prospect theory hypotheses to assess the shift of Beijing’s preferences in the Taiwan Strait. It explains that Ma’s accommodative policy have left a paradoxical legacy as China is likely to be today more risk-acceptant on a comparatively wider range of cross-Strait outcomes, making cross-Strait relations more crisis-prone than they have ever been.     

Sex as a Ritual: Transforming Women’s Sexual Being from ‘Human-like’ to ‘Animal-like’ in Taiwan

This paper aims to explicate the cultural meaning of sex in the Chinese society of Taiwan with reference to marriage in the Chinese kinship system in Taiwan. Through an examination of how Taiwanese informants talk about sex and their sexual behaviours, we demonstrate that their discourse on sex involves not only the notion of active-male/passive-female but also a symbolic transformation of the ‘human-like’ woman into an ‘animal-like’ man. This is arguably the core meaning of sex in Taiwan: sex is a ritual through which women’s sexual beings are symbolically transformed from ‘human-like’ into ‘animal-like’. As we shall show, the transformative nature of sex has a significant parallel with the logic of marriage in Chinese kinship system in Taiwan. In other words, there is a significant parallel between marriage in kinship system and sexual discourses in Taiwan. In conclusion, we shall spell out the epistemological implications of this parallel to the studies of Chinese societies: the relevance of kinship studies to the understanding of Chinese societies.     

A.H. Tammsaare’s Truth and Justice as a Postcolonial Bildungsroman

A.H. Tammsaare’s pentalogy Truth and Justice is considered a central text in Estonian culture, perceived virtually as a second national epic. The article analyzes it from the perspective of comparative genre studies. It is discussed as an idiosyncratic example of Bildungsroman, a genre narrativizing modernizing change focusing on the lives of everyday individuals, thus symbolically domesticating and humanizing the global developments of modernization. The emplotment of Tammsaare’s novel is comparatively discussed against the background of the Western European Bildungsroman on the one hand and of non-European postcolonial Bildungsroman on the other. The analysis enables to gain new insight into the reception and cultural working-through of the belated rapid modernization in Estonia. It also helps to explain the canonical position of Tammsaare’s novel in Estonian literature: The novel is a poetic tour de force that forges a both intra- and internationally acceptable model of modern Estonia.     

Comparing colonial differences: Baltic literary cultures as agencies of Europe’s internal others

ABSTRACT

The article discusses the Baltic colonial experience in historical and comparative perspective. It sketches the ways in which Baltic societies are best linked to theoretical discussions on postcolonial issues, and whether they might be looked upon in a more global context. The main question posed by the article is in what ways Baltic identity has been determined by processes of foreign settlement, occupation and colonization of the territory of each respective country and whether we can see Baltic societies as potential agencies of Europe’s internal others.     

Japan’s Shifting Military Priorities: Counterbalancing China’s Rise

This article analyzes the most recent phase of Japan’s security policy reform, focusing on its shifting priorities towards the Japan Self-Defense Forces and the Japan–US alliance since mid-2010. From a realist perspective, it argues that these shifting military priorities first and foremost represent a traditional counterbalancing response to China’s rise. Conforming to the logic inherent in balance of threat theory, it moreover argues that this balancing behavior is explained by a confluence of two primary factors, namely Japanese perceptions of aggressive Chinese behavior in the maritime domain and concerns relating to the changing distribution of capabilities in China’s favor.     

The First Time as Tragedy,the Second as Farce? Lebanon’s Nascent Petroleum Sector and the Risks of Corruption

This article analyses the risks of corruption in Lebanon’s nascent governance structures established in preparation for a thriving petroleum sector. Engaging with comparative theory on the ‘oil curse’, the article assesses the risks of corruption in the institutional and regulatory measures and policy tools that have thus far been developed down the sector’s value chain and including revenue management and expenditure. Lebanon’s political settlement, or the ways in which its political decision-making process evolved since the Ta’if Accord, consistently caused disappointing outcomes when it comes to sound institution-building and countering corruption; despite signs of awareness of the large stakes involved, this tendency is once again discernible in the country’s preparations for petroleum sector governance.     

Singapore’s 2015 General Election: Explaining PAP’s Resounding Win

Abstract

While Singapore’s 15th general election came about as expected, the ensuing results did not. In view of the opposition’s performance in the 2011 general election and the general sense that the ruling party had done well despite its performance being anything but sterling, the results were somewhat shocking. Even the leaders of the ruling party were caught by surprise at the party’s ability to garner 70% of the valid votes, 10% more than in the previous election. While many factors played a role, it was the opposition parties that lost the election rather than the ruling party that won it. Most of the opposition parties were rejected by the voters on grounds of not being worthy of support. The leading opposition party, the Workers’ Party, also suffered as many voters feared that it might perform too well to the detriment of the ruling party. In the end, the 2015 general elections strengthened the one-party-dominant state in Singapore and the quest for greater political representation was placed on the back burner.     

Collaboration gone awry: The formation of women’s shelters as public institutions in Turkey

Turkey is an interesting case in that its women’s shelters are mainly both established and run by public actors; in many other countries these institutions, though funded by public authorities, are mainly run by NGOs. By looking at the relationship between the feminist movement and the public authorities from the 1990s onwards, this paper argues that in the case of public women’s shelters, the engagement of non-public actors in policy-making processes has resulted in the perpetuation (rather than the retreat) of the state’s presence.     

Singapore’s Phantom Workers

In 2009, the Singapore state prosecuted a string of businesses for listing fictitious local workers on their books in order to stretch their foreign worker entitlement. These “phantom” worker scams, prevalent since the 1980s, appear out of place in Singapore – a country with a strong international reputation for its government’s efficiency and strict legal enforcement. This paper examines the state’s prosecutions of the phantom worker scams in the context of the exceptional economic and political stresses in 2009, when Singapore was most severely affected by the global economic crisis, in order to address the employment regime in Singapore. It argues that the belated efforts to tackle the phantom worker scams reflected the pro-business state’s reluctance to tackle illegalities crucial to facilitating employers’ otherwise unlawful access to wealth and resources in Singapore.     

Addressing Myanmar’s Citizenship Crisis

Among many problematic issues surfacing in reformist Myanmar is a citizenship crisis with four main dimensions. First, in a state with fragile civil liberties, skewed political rights and limited social rights, there is a broad curtailment of citizenship. Second, Rohingya Muslims living mainly in Rakhine State are denied citizenship, and other Muslims throughout the country are increasingly affected by this denial. Third, designated ethnic minorities clustered in peripheral areas face targeted restrictions of citizenship. Fourth, the dominant Bamar majority concentrated in the national heartland tends to arrogate or appropriate citizenship. The result is growing social tension that threatens to undermine the wider reform process. To examine this crisis, the article sets Myanmar in a comparative context. In particular, it considers how multicultural states in the developed world have sought to manage a political switch from racial or ethnic hierarchy to democratic citizenship. Drawing on global experience with multiculturalism and enabling civic integration, it advances a series of policy options focused on rights, duties and identity. It argues for domestic political leadership, backed by global political support, to address Myanmar’s citizenship crisis.