Rapid Growth and Structural Inconsistencies in China

China has realised excellent rapid economic growth for the last 27 years following Taiwan and Korea, which maintained rapid growth for nearly 40 years. This has mainly been achieved by extraordinary high fixed assets investment, especially investment in real assets, as well as export expansion. However, new structural contradictions have emerged. They include workers laid off through downsizing of state-owned corporations, non-privileged farmers who have migrated into cities, and landless peasants. China is now at a turning point for the central government to drastically transform existing fiscal institutions in order to redistribute the dividends of high economic growth to the poor and poor areas, against the trinity of local bureaucracy, real estate developers, and state-owned banks.     

Rising giants: Development in China and India

Can economic growth turn overpopulation from a liability to an asset? China and India tantalize investors as the “last frontiers” of emerging consumer markets; together, they hold 37 percent of the world's 5.7 billion people. Despite their many contrasts, China and India face similiar, immense development hurdles. Mired in economic stagnation and poverty, both countries undertook economic reforms that gained momentum in the 1980s. In this comparative study, IIPS Senior Research Fellow Eimon Ueda analyzes their ongoing economic liberalization efforts and prospects. Ueda comes to IIPS from the Ministry of Finance and has served at the Japanese Embassy in India.     

Hedging Against China: Japanese Strategy Towards A Rising Power

Debates about how states deal with rising powers have been mainly concentrated on a continuum comprising on balancing and bandwagoning strategies. While theory has principally offered realist and liberal explanations, Japanese behavior vis-à-vis China does not match with them. Japan is not powerful enough to balance against China but remains too strong to bandwagon. Accordingly, Tokyo is pursuing a mixed strategy of both containment and engagement, which may be better described as a hedging strategy against Beijing. This article analyzes which strategies states can adopt when dealing with a rising power and proposes a framework to analyze Japan’s recent policy towards China based on Kuik’s analysis. We argue that Japan’s hedging strategy towards China is consistent with how middle-power states deal with rising power.     

A Rising China and the Normative Changes in International Society

Normative changes in the Western-dominated international society have been taking place, symbolized by the evolution from the “standard of civilization” to the “new standard of civilization”. And the West has always been the developer of the new norms in international society, and changes in international norms reflect the link between power on one hand and norms, rules and institutions on the other. That is a fact or an invented reality which a rapidly rising China has to deal with, and its implications on China’s future relationship with the international society are sure to be great and far-reaching.     

中国崛起时代的东南亚华侨华人社会:变迁与挑战

本文试图回答以下几个问题:中国的崛起对东南亚区域以及当地的华侨华人社会造成哪些影响?在中国崛起的大背景之下,东南亚华侨华人社会出现了哪些变化?我们应该如何解读这些变化的学术与政策意涵?具体来说,这些问题涉及三个不同但又密切相关的主体:东南亚华侨华人社会自身,东南亚华侨华人所在国的政治、社会、经济和文化环境,中国的角度和立场。本文认为,中国的崛起及其与东南亚密切的政治、经济、文化、社会关系,成为东南亚华侨华人社会变迁重要的外在因素,并通过国内政策而内化。当今及未来的东南亚华侨华人社会既面临众多的机遇,但也不可避免地面对新的挑战。     

Competitive Cooperation for Regional Development: Japan's New Strategy towards Rising China

This article questions why Japan has taken a neutral position in the Sino‐American trade tensions in 2018, despite its political rivalry with Beijing. It claims that the Japanese strategy towards China between 2012 and 2018 has moved from confrontational competition to competitive cooperation over third‐country markets; this is because of their shared beliefs and methodology regarding regional development. The paper undertakes three major tasks. Firstly, it compares Chinese and Japanese academic discussions regarding East Asia. It finds that experts on both sides admit the significant implications of the politico‐economic divide in the regional system. However, the realistic Chinese tend to consider the divide as a problem to be solved through power, whereas the more liberal Japanese expect it to provide a coordinating function for the regional order as a whole. Secondly, the article reviews the shifts in the Japanese government's behaviours toward China in recent years. It argues that Japan has moved for collaboration with China to maintain the liberal rule‐based order in the region. Finally, founded on the estimate of China's economic leverage over its neighbours, the paper claims that Japan will expand its responsibility in order formation in East Asia in future, becoming more independent from American influences.     

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.     

Addressing Corruption in Post-Soeharto Indonesia: The Role of the Corruption Eradication Commission

ABSTRACT

Anti-corruption became one of the top priorities in post-Soeharto Indonesia, with democratisation, market liberalisation and institutional anti-corruption frameworks pursued as means to enhance transparency and accountability in public governance. A core component of these efforts was the establishment of a powerful anti-corruption agency, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK). This article assesses the effectiveness of the KPK, using evidence from two contrasting cases to identify factors that facilitated or impeded its ability to successfully investigate, prosecute and thus contain high-level corruption. The analysis highlights the threats to the KPK posed by resilient networks that were able to reconsolidate and resist anti-corruption efforts in post-Soeharto Indonesia. However, it also identifies countervailing social forces that emerged in the context of democratisation – in particular, an active civil society and a largely free press. While these supportive pressures from civil society could not fully counter the attacks on the KPK, they were able to prevent its marginalisation in the two major cases examined. Overall the KPK’s success in addressing high-level corruption is shown to be dependent on the interaction of political dynamics, interests and power relations, with no guarantee that anti-corruption forces will prevail in future cases.     

Political Corruption in Central America: Assessment and Explanation

Analysts agree that political corruption is an obstacle to democratic consolidation but disagree about how to measure the extent of corruption in individual nations. This analysis of the Central American countries demonstrates that the most important competing quantitative measures of political corruption produce strikingly different rankings. These contradictory results are caused less by poor measurement techniques than by the existence of two different dimensions of corruption that do not always coincide. Statistical indicators based on expert perceptions of corruption and alternative indicators based on ordinary citizens' firsthand experiences with bribery measure, respectively, grand corruption by senior officials and petty corruption by lower‐level functionaries. This study attempts to explain why several Central American nations suffer primarily from one or the other rather than both. It advances recommendations for future research and future anticorruption policies that may be applied to Latin America as a whole.     

中国和平崛起:何以能与何以为

在人类历史上相继出现了"全面对立与冲突,对内剥削压迫、对外侵略扩张";"局部的和平共处,西方国家共同发展";"共同发展范围的扩大,依附发达国家技术与市场"等三种崛起和振兴模式之后,中国的崛起历史性地创造了"全面和谐与合作,与发达国家和发展中国家协同发展"的第四种模式.与美国霸道地将它的发展理念与模式推向全球的做法不同,中国倡导和而不同,坚持发展理和模式的多样性.中国的崛起将推动东亚地区现有的垂直分工格局朝水平分工方向发展,带动周边国家共同繁荣.     

文化、政治与腐败--关于亨廷顿论新加坡有效治理腐败原因的一点质疑

本文对亨廷顿关于新加坡有效治理腐败的原因提出了质疑.亨廷顿认为,李光耀及其政府的政治作为成功地改变了新加坡的文化,在文化已经西化的基础上,新加坡治理腐败取得了成功.但是,笔者以为,新加坡的文化并没有西方化或发生了根本性的变化,其变化主要是表层和生活方式上的,而不是深层的价值观和思维方式上的.从这种变化的原因来看,也并非主要是李光耀及其政府的政治作为所致,而是各种外在的挑战和内在的主客观条件所致.笔者还对关于文化与政治之间关系的不同流派的主流观点进行了评述.     

腐败问题与印尼执政党的更迭

印尼执政党的更迭与腐败有着密切的关系.本文通过对比研究苏哈托和梅加瓦蒂执政期间腐败与反腐的基本特征及其对政党执政的影响,总结了印尼执政党在反腐方面的经验教训.     

The Paradox of the State-Run Media Promoting Poor Governance in China: Case Studies of a Party Newspaper and an Anticorruption Film

ABSTRACT

This essay draws on the analysis of media texts and ethnographic fieldwork to present case studies of the production, distribution, and consumption of two kinds of media products in China that are used for educating cadres about official policies, law and morality, namely, a Party-produced prefectural newspaper and an anticorruption film. Such pedagogic media products merit study because they are consumed by a huge audience of cadres who are entrusted with interpreting and implementing state policy and with carrying out the daily work of the different institutions that make up the Party-state. The case studies show that the internal circulation of pedagogic media products within the Party-state apparatus works in two ways to reinforce “organizational involution,” which causes poor governance. First, the content of the media products and their methods of distribution buttress the norms and institutional practices that entrench unchallenged power, corruption, and official malfeasance within the system. Examples include the role of top-down administrative fiat in determining the content of the media products and the ways in which individuals and institutions are compelled to purchase materials and participate in pedagogic activities to secure their positions. Second, state pedagogy deflects attention away from the structural failings of the Party-state system. The pedagogic products enable the Party-state to portray itself as the leading crusader in the fight against corruption, despite the corrupting consequences of its continuing unsupervised monopoly on power. Meanwhile, self-improvement exhortations in the media texts sidestep the question of systemic political reform.     

东亚市民社会:新兴组织与中产阶层

长期以来学界对东亚市民社会形成状况的宏观研究比较多,但是从中产阶层和社会组织视角进行的微观研究比较少.市民社会在东亚的形成受政治、经济、文化等多种因素制约,找到其中起重要作用的因素一直是一个比较大的难题.文章通过对中产阶层和社会组织的功能进行分析后指出:在东亚,决定市民社会形成的关键因素是兴起于草根社会的各种各样的具有"公共性"的社会组织,而西方学者指出的"伴随中产阶层登上社会舞台,必然形成市民社会"这一命题却不具有普适性.