The future of coastal development in the Yellow Sea Rimlands

With its strategic location in East Asia, the Yellow Sea Rim is becoming an important economic region, where the socialist economies of China and North Korea and the market economies of Japan and South Korea interact and exchange for their mutual benefit. In light of the recent rapprochement among Northeast Asian countries, the article describes the emerging pattern of development in the Yellow Sea Rim. It assesses the potential gains of opening up the region by assuming a complete or partial removal of political barriers. Anticipating the future of cooperative regional development in the Yellow Sea Rimlands, the article discusses regional strategies and key issues involved in cooperation, in particular between China and South Korea.     

Implications of foreign direct investment for national sovereignty: The Wal-Mart/Massmart merger as an illustration

The Wal-Mart/Massmart merger has caused concern about its possible influence on the South African economy, employment and the autonomy of the state. This study analyses strategic considerations for states that allow foreign corporations to engage in their domestic markets. Globalisation and transnational harmonisation have led to an impetus for corporations to extend their activities across national borders and foreign markets. Based on the theory of sovereignty, this is evaluated against a trilateral background of home country, host country and corporation. The outcome that emerges is that in some cases states have lost a significant share of sovereignty to multinational authorities. With the Wal-Mart/Massmart merger, role-players such as the government, competition commission and trade unions got involved early on and ensured maximum advantage to the country and its citizens. The final conclusion is that such partnerships between host, home governments and transnational corporations can minimise the loss of national sovereignty, but this can only be achieved against a backdrop of economic, societal and political stability and co-operation.     

Economic development of Pacific Rim countries and Southern Africa

This paper examines the economic relationships between Japan and her neighbours as well as commenting on South African relations with the area in general. Brief case‐studies are also selected with emphasis on the economic factors governing the degree of success in development.     

Divergent paths,divergent outcomes: linking differences in economic reform to levels of US foreign direct investment and business in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan

This article compares two transition economies that have diverged in their progress on important economic reform areas and then seeks to link these differences to their resulting levels of investment and business. For this study, interviews were conducted with firm representatives that had invested or conducted business in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in order to determine the areas of reform that were the most important for their investment and business decisions. The analysis indicates a relationship between Kazakhstan's advanced economic reforms in such areas as foreign investment legislation, tax legislation, banking system reform, and higher levels of investment and business. Uzbekistan's lack of progress in these reform areas has affected the level of investment in the country, but not the number of firms conducting business. This was primarily because firms could secure financing for the business through the US Export–Import Bank.     

Harmonizing investment incentives in the APEC process

Security of access to markets is critically important in international trade in goods and services. Security is also critically important to foreign direct investment. With the “globalization” of production, international attention has been turning to improving the institutional environment for FDI, especially in developing economies. In APEC, the focus has been on principles and a non-binding code, but in due course the focus will have to shift to a binding agreement with rules that instill the confidence needed for providers of capital to invest in the major infrastructure projects that will make a difference in East Asia’s development. The focus here is on limits on the level of investment incentives that governments can use to attract foreign investors.     

Trade and investment in Southeast Asian development

Expansion of foreign trade and investment has been a vital factor underlaying the high economic growth of the Southeast Asian economies over the last ten years. As East and Southeast Asian economies continue to deregulate and prosper, trade and investment flows are becoming increasingly interconnected within the region. The character of this regional economic integration, however, has shifted recently. The role of the Japanese has declined while that of China and the overseas Chinese has boomed. Whereas China has absorbed huge amounts of foreign investment, investment to the Southeast Asian economies appears to be weakening significantly. This weakening of investment is occurring just as many Southeast Asian countries struggle to uppgrade the technical levels of their production of goods and services to accommodate the rising wages and income levels that are fundamental to sustained and broad-based increases in standards of living throughout the region.     

Azerbaijan and its foreign policy dilemma

Nazrin Mehdiyeva is a PhD research student in International Relations in St Antony's College, Oxford.     

Sub-state diplomacy and the foreign policy-development nexus in South Africa

This article examines the role of sub-state diplomacy, defined as the transnational linkages of sub-national governments, in bridging the gap between foreign policy and the domestic development agenda in South Africa. It argues that, as territorial sub-state actors, provinces and municipalities are strategically positioned to use their international relations to make foreign policy more responsive to domestic socio-economic priorities. In the South African case, however, this potential is yet to be fully realised, mainly because of institutional fragmentation of the foreign policy apparatus, but also owing to enduring challenges in the foreign activities of sub-national governments. The article concludes by making the case for a new diplomatic paradigm in South Africa, one that actively promotes and harnesses the foreign activities and capacities of different national stakeholders, including those of sub-national governments, in the interest of the domestic development agenda.     

Foreign investment in Africa: Challenges and benefits

Foreign direct investment in Africa has not sparked the benefits that policy makers had hoped for. This article looks at some of the problems that are preventing this growth and highlights the positive developments in parts of the continent.     

Japan-Asia economic relations: Trade, investment, and the economic crisis

Japan has been and will continue to be an important economic player in the Asian region through its internationalization policy involving trade, foreign investments, aid, technical and other forms of economic cooperation. More recently, despite its own domestic problems, Japan has extended financial and other forms of assistance and support to the Asian economies which have been hit by the economic crisis. As it is in its interests that the Asian region survives and recover, Japan will indeed continue to lend a helping hand to Asia, either through unilateral or multilateral forms of assistance or both. Due to growing interdependence, Asia needs Japan and Japan needs Asia. This article analyzes Japan's economic relations with Asia. In particular, it hopes to present an overview of Japan’s involvement in Asia through trade and investments prior to the Asian economic crisis which began in July 1997. Moreover, this article provides an assessment of the crisis and identifies Japan’s responses and involvement towards the economic recovery of the crisis-hit economies in the region. The article draws from earlier versions of various papers presented at conferences and seminars in Washington, D.C. (1997), Japan and Mexico (1998), and Singapore and Thailand (1999).     

Hongkong Chinese emigration and investment patterns in response to the 1997 problem

The transfer of Hongkong from British to PRC sovereignty has resulted in an apparently large outflow of Hongkong Chinese emigrants and investments abroad. The outflow is motivated by a variety of causes: Political fear, uncertainty, and economic considerations. These motivations in turn are mediated by the socio-economic position of potential migrants, their preference for developed. Western, liberal, English-speaking countries and the interplay of these factors with the international institutional system of legal migration. Because of these factors, the possibility of Communist rule after 1997 has in fact generated not a single response from Hongkong Chinese, but a variety of different responses. They range from economically eligible migrants choosing to stay and invest in Hongkong to outright emigration and divestment.     

Japanese foreign policy: Inaction and reaction

Japan's tendency to simply react to international trends rather than to formulate its own policies is as prevalent today as during the Meiji period when the country was trying to catch up to the West, says Gerald Curtis, professor of political science at Columbia University. When international trends are murky, such as before World War II, this tendency can easily lead to disaster, Curtis says. Japan must break with the past and define its international role in the post‐Cold War era, Curtis argues, but the public debate required to achieve this is unlikely until Japan's domestic politics become more sharply defined.     

Chinese foreign policy and American social science

Abstract

Karl Marx and Mao Tse-tung, C. Wright Mills, Barrington Moore, Jr. and Fei Hsiao-t'ung also described themselves as social scientists. Thus when Boardman contrasts radical scholarship with authentic social science he is merely using a debater's tactic, using a label to place his adversaries at a rhetorical disadvantage, trying to monopolize the term science for only his outlook on events.