China's nuclear arms development and arms transfers to the Third World

China's increasing military expenditures are often cited as a main cause of concern for China's neighbors. The fact that China's military buildup has not been limited to conventional forces — it has been developing a nuclear arsenal since the early 1970s —exponentially increases the unease felt by other nations in East Asia. Shigeo Hiramatsu, professor of China Studies at Kyorin University, here explores China's advancing nuclear arms program and the issue of arms transfers to the Third World.     

Why the World Bank can't lead us to a just world order

Abstract

Gail Omvedt makes some telling points in her critique. Dependency theorists have been too quick to discount the possibility of capitalist development in the Third World. It is good to be reminded of the dangers of allowing wishful thinking to color our assessments of popular struggles, and it is useful to have our attention drawn to how elites often use populist rhetoric to mask their defense of power and privilege. In a number of respects, however, I find Omvedt's analysis flawed and even troubling.     

An extempore government in Syria

Radical Politics in West Bengal. By Marcus F. Franda. Cambridge, Mass, and London, The M. I. T. Press, 1971. Pp. xiv+287. Index. £5.85.

The Urbanization Process in the Third World: Explorations in search of a Theory. By T. G. McGee. London, G. Bell and Sons, 1971. Pp. 179. £2.25.

Economic Theory and the Underdeveloped Countries. By H. Myint. New York, London, Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1971. Pp. xii+353. Index.

Tropical Development 1880–1913: Studies in Economic Progress. Edited by W. Arthur Lewis. London, George Allen &; Unwin, 1970. Pp. 346. Index. £3.25.

Modernization without Development: Thailand as an Asian Case Study. By Norman Jacobs. New York, Washington, London, Praeger Publishers (Praeger Special Studies in International Economics and Development), 1971. Pp. ix+420. Bibliog. £7.75.

Russian Agriculture: A Geographic Survey. By Leslie Symons. London, G. Bell and Sons, 1972. Pp. xii+348. Maps. Bibliog. Index. £4.00.

Agricultural Change and the Peasant Economy of South China. By Evelyn Sakakida Rawski. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1972. Pp. xi+282. Bibliog. Glossary. Index. £5.25.     

An African response to the new wave of afro‐pessimism

The Afro‐pessimism that has resurfaced in parts of the world has no foundation and has provoked strong objections on several grounds. First, the timing is inappropriate as a number of new development indicators suggest that a good basis is now being laid in Africa for a better future economic performance. Secondly, there is an upsurge of Afro‐optimism among African and world leaders with the advent of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad). But more fundamentally, the growth concept which forms the basis for bleak projections on Africa's ability to reduce poverty, is flawed and the presumed strong growth‐poverty correlation empirically discredited. Additionally, it is a fallacy to assume that the reforms of the past 20 years were consistent with the continent's long‐term development trajectories given that the continent was unresponsive, remaining poor and ‘structurally undevelopable’.

On the contrary, these reforms have been pronounced by a World Bank assessment team as being defective in objectives and design, operationally dysfunctional and an example of massive resource misallocation, all of which have collectively worsened Africa's poverty and income disparity conditions. Particularly ironic is the concept of ‘structural stability’ prescribed in the ‘Memorandum for a New Start for German African Policy’, as it falls short of engaging fully and comprehensively the broader spectrum of structural distortions, weaknesses and rigidities, including the lack of economic structural transformation which is critical for achieving sustained economic growth and significant poverty reduction. The international community will now have to look at channelling resources to reshape, support and refine Africa's own initiative — Nepad.     

The Philippines: Another Vietnam?

Abstract

The historic relationship between the U.S. and the Philippines today gives an exceptional importance to the massive economic and strategic legacy of over 70 years of American domination of that nation. Apart from its prime significance to the future of American military power in Asia after the Indochina debacle, the Philippines is the most important example of a sustained U.S. effort to transform a Third World country in its own image. Now, with a martial-law regime's fate very much in doubt and the U.S.'s economic investments and military bases all hanging in the balance, the objective pressures for a potentially open-ended American commitment to preserve its interests and credibility in yet one more Asian nation are again re-emerging in a form substantially more compulsive than those in Indochina before 1965.     

American grand strategy and the assassination of the third world

Peter Gowan's brilliant analysis of U.S. primacy provokes this discussion on the role of the Third World since the 1940s. One cannot think of the cold war epoch without the constant pressure from the Third World on the two major camps, and one cannot conceive of the post-cold war alignment by sections of the Third World without a class assessment of the regimes and programs in the darker nations. This essay attempts to supplement Gowan's framework with the addition of the Third World, at the same time as it offers a synoptic study of India's relationship with the United States as an example.     

The transnational construction of “national allegory”: China and the cultural politics of postcolonial Indonesia

Abstract

“The story of the private individual destiny,” declares Fredric Jameson, “is always an allegory of the embattled situation of the public third-world culture and society.” Using the case of China's involvement in the cultural politics of postcolonial Indonesia, this essay examines the transnational dynamisms of the making of a national allegory and discusses the production and reception of the China images in Sukarno's Indonesia (1949–65), with a focus on the PRC's cultural diplomacy and how Chinese literary principles were appropriated and domesticated, subsequently constituting an integral component of Indonesian cultural politics. Arguing that the narratives about China (both as a sociopolitical entity and a cultural symbol) served as an important transnational inspiration to public deliberations and cultural polemics—thus contributing to the formation of national allegories in postcolonial Indonesia, this essay takes the Jamesonian thesis a step further by suggesting that a transnational imaginary within Third World countries plays a significant part in the making of domestic literary politics. This essay may also be taken as an exercise in going beyond the nation-state-centric historiography that has been the defining characteristic of Asian Studies and pointing to the need to study Sino-Southeast Asian relations from the angle of cultural politics and its intertwining ambiguities with conventional diplomacy.     

The establishment of the South African Development Partnership Agency: Institutional complexities and political exigencies

Since 2007 there has been discussion to formalise, rationalise, coordinate and provide structure to South Africa's development cooperation through the establishment of a centralised South African Development Partnership Agency (SADPA). Progress in rolling out the new institution, however, has been extremely slow, owing to the political and technical complexities of South Africa's institutional environment. This paper elaborates on the rationale and driving forces which have led to the establishment of SADPA and the steps which have been taken to gradually operationalise the new agency and the partnership fund dedicated to providing development support on the continent. As plans move forward, will SADPA be expected to manage all of South Africa's development cooperation — bilateral, multilateral, regional, trilateral — as well as concessional loans, humanitarian aid and development financing, public and private? Clarity of roles and coordination is critical. The paper will examine the different mechanisms for the financing, implementation and oversight that need to be in place to take forward Pretoria's development cooperation, and the challenges of leadership, coordination, accountability and information management that face the new agency.     

DEVELOPMENT AS LOCALIZATION

Since China initiated a series of post-socialist transformations in the late 1970s, it has presented itself as a developing country that is pursuing a challenging and ambitious project of socioeconomic construction. It adopted economic development as its primary ideological orientation to complement Marxist thought. China's recent attempts to develop its western region — specifically in the form of the Western Development Project (WDP) — give the ideology of developmentalism a new meaning. This article's close examination of the WDP reveals an interesting interdependence between the issues of development and ethnicity: in addition to addressing problems of unequal regional development, solving increasing security concerns, and tackling poverty, official and scholarly writings in China repeatedly ascribe the WDP with minority features. The author exposes and analyzes the ethnic minority label that China's dominant discourse on development attaches to the WDP and argues that this discourse prevents ethnic minorities from becoming fully recognized participants in the economic transformations taking place in China. It does so by localizing ethnic minorities in one region, China's West, and by characterizing them in a derogatory fashion.     

Developing the North,Defending the Nation? The Northern Australia Development Committee, 1945–1949*

The Northern Australia Development Committee (NADC) was established in late 1945 to coordinate the efforts of the Commonwealth, Queensland and Western Australian governments in developing the north of the continent. At the outset, defence considerations were uppermost. However, the NADC soon became entangled in disputes among Commonwealth departments and personalities over the relevance of northern development to national defence. Some — notably the Department of Defence — insisted that northern Australia no longer possessed special strategic significance. Others — notably the Department of External Affairs — argued that northern development must be conceived within a broader geo‐political context. This paper examines the NADC's entanglement in these disputes, and explains how this entanglement contributed crucially to the committee's ineffectualness and early demise.     

Cooking the Goose: Fiji's Coup Culture Contextualised

Abstract

In the 40 years since Fiji became independent, there has been no shortage of perspectives from which to frame its development: its colonial past, its dual status as a Third World and Pacific island state, and, most pervasively perhaps, race conflict. This article focuses on another perspective: the failure of ethnic Fijian leaders to democratise their community politically and economically. Its consequences for the country have been long-standing and lie behind Fiji's developing coup culture     

The three Mini Dragons: Economic development in Thailand,Malaysia, and Indonesia

The rapid pace of economic growth in Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia indicates that all three ASEAN countries are quickly becoming Newly Industrialized Economies (NIEs). Yet a close comparison of the three leads the author to conclude that there are dissimilarities in their economic development resulting from each country's unique social and economic conditions. Masato Hayashida was a senior economist in the Economic Research Division at The Mitsubishi Bank before being seconded to IIPS as a senior research fellow.     

Reflections on Japan's past

Fifty years after the devastation of World War II, Japan's remarkable long‐term, export‐driven economic success is known as the East Asian development model and East Asian economies have become the engine for the world's economic growth. Yet the collapse of Japan's 1980s over‐inflated “bubble economy” has created apathy and pessimism, says former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone. In May 1995, on the occasion of his seventy‐seventh birthday, after more than 45 years in the Diet, IIPS Chairman Nakasone reflects on Japan's modern history and issues a call for renewal in the following speech. Above all, he says, “Japan does have a few mavericks” and “people with true convictions [should] come forward . . . the Japanese are waiting for genuine leadership.”     

HOW THE QOR'AN LED TO THE DOWNFALL OF MOSSADEGH

Apparently, in 1953 the World Bank put forward a compromise proposal to break the impasse between Mossadegh and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Mossadegh asked Hassibi, a devout Muslim, to advise him whether he should accept the proposal. Hassibi consulted Abbas Parkhideh, a member of the oil company board, another devout man. As the story goes, the two men decided to resort to Estekhareh, the Persian practice of using the Qor'an to help with a difficult decision. On the basis of the ensuing consultation of the Qor'an, Habibi advised Mossdegh to reject the Bank's proposal. He did so. The coup that overthrew him occurred within a month.     

Japan's Economy and the Global Financial Crisis

After the prolonged stagnation that followed the post-Bubble economic collapse at the end of the 1980s, from 2002 onwards the Japanese economy exhibited its longest period of economic expansion (albeit gradual) since World War Two. As this expansion came to an end and the economy was on the verge of the downward curve of the economic cycle, it was confronted with the current financial and economic crises, which originated in the USA. Nevertheless, Japanese financial institutions had invested little in sub-prime-related financial products, and with the lessons learned from the issue of bad loans in the 1990s, Japan's financial system enjoyed greater stability than that of any other major nation. However, in the period from the end of 2008 to early 2009, Japan experienced the sharpest economic decline of any major nation.

Yet, with the worst period having ended in the spring of 2009, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has predicted in its October 2009 forecasts that Japan will experience real economic growth of 1.7% in 2010—a higher rate than the USA (with 1.5%) or the Euro Zone (with 0.3%). Despite forecasts of a protraction of excessive US imports as a direct result of excessive US consumption, Japan is being forced to reduce its degree of reliance on exports to the USA and to make major adjustments to its export structure—both in terms of the regions to which it exports and the products that it exports. Japan also faces the task of setting itself on the path to economic growth, using the twin drivers of foreign demand and domestic demand, and this will necessitate the cultivation of domestic demand. Now, the long-term strategy for Japan is to promote the expansion of regional demand in Asia, to couple this regional demand with domestic demand, and to latch on to Asia's economic dynamism.     

Facsimile edition of CCAS newsletter,no. 1 (May 1968)

Abstract

We have heard a great deal about the greening of the World Bank. The Bank now has an Environmental Department, its projects go through an environmental impact assessment, and it even finances “green” projects through the Global Environment Facility. However, the financing of nature's destruction and people's destitution and disempowerment continues unabated. It is not enough to look at projects directly funded by the World Bank to see the social and ecological disruption that it has caused over the past half a century and still continues to create. The impact of the World Bank is increasingly being felt through structural and sector adjustment loans that influence the macropolicies of entire countries. These loans have much wider influence because they make the World Bank's destructive policies more diffused and more invisible than its projects. The third and deeper level of the World Bank's responsibility in rupturing the social and environmental fabric of survival emerges from the paradigms it diffuses throughout the world through its research, publications, and advice. The social and ecological impact of the World Bank therefore needs to be assessed on the basis of its interventions at all three levels—projects, policies, and paradigms.     

From Bandung to Brasilia: IBSA and the political lineage of South–South cooperation

This article aims to trace South–South cooperation political lineages connecting the Non-Aligned Movement and the IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa) Forum. In order to determine whether IBSA could be considered the ‘heir’ to Bandung's principles, we analyse the concepts of ‘Third World’ and ‘Global South’ as well as their current applicability, the interpretations provided by existing literature on the IBSA grouping, and its member countries' shared views on different issues of the international agenda. The article also considers the historical evolution of ‘Southern’ diplomatic thought and actions. IBSA's actions and history, as well as its members, are studied to grasp how they are related to the Third World movement in the Cold War.     

Towards a Third World Critique of Tourism: Resources for Global Action and Solidarity

Abstract

Third World tourism continues to expand apace. The tourism industry's promotional materials are replete with images of a “frontier” industry, new vistas of “paradise,” “virgin” beaches, and “untouched” landscapes. Indeed, the imagery is that of exploration, conquest, and domination. For the people of the Third World, whose natural, human, and cultural resources provide the raw material for this industry, this is no imagery, it is reality.     

Political suicide among Korean youth

Abstract

A striking aspect of the South Korean political protest movement of the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s was the frequent self-immolation of young Korean activists. This trend toward political suicide—politically motivated voluntary death—began with the laborer Chun Tae-il's suicide in 1970 and increased dramatically in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It is estimated that in the 1980s alone nearly one hundred young Koreans put an end to their lives as a form of antigovernment protest! This article explores why so many young people in Korea have chosen to take their own lives in this way.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this issue. The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab‐Israeli Peace , by Aaron David Miller. Negotiating Arab‐Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East , by Daniel C. Kurtzer and Scott B. Lasensky. The Arab‐Israeli Conflict — A History , by David W. Lesch. A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance , by Mary Elizabeth King. Hezbollah: A Short History, by Augustus Richard Norton. Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty‐First Century , by Marc Sageman. Freedom's Unsteady March: America's Role in Building Arab Democracy , by Tamara Coffman Wittes. An Iraq of Its Regions: Cornerstones of a Federal Democracy? Reidar Vissar and Gareth Stansfield, eds. A Political Economy of the Middle East, Third Edition, by Alan Richards and John Waterbury. Arguing the Just War in Islam , by John Kelsay. Secular and Islamic Politics in Turkey: The Making of the Justice and Development Party , Edited by Umit Cizre. REVIEW ESSAY: Kurdish Scholarship Comes of Age