Appendix A: The DPRK's Debts

The global value chain concept has become one of the most influential frameworks used in the study of globalization. The paradigm, however, is deficient in explicating the exploitative nature of global value chain governance. Based on a study of soccer ball production in China and Pakistan, this article analyzes global production from three perspectives: the role of the state in shaping the host countries' mode of production and legal framework, the issue of how surplus value is created and distributed, and the use of child labor or prison labor to remain competitive in the chain. The article shows, in the case of Pakistan, how a country using a lower-labor-costs strategy to retain a place in a global value chain allows its workers to be exploited and pauperizes its people.     

Appendix: Lim Li-suat

Abstract

In his “Comments on Cham Population Figures,” Michael Vickery criticizes my 1988 article “Orphans of Genocide: The Cham Muslims of Kampuchea under Pol Pot.” “Kiernan has tinkered with the statistics in a tendentious manner in an attempt to prove the case for genocide,” he claims. Vickery accuses me of making “propaganda” and using “doctored evidence” to support it, of failing to make “honest use” of data, and of “fiddling with statistics to prove a particular political case, which cannot be made.”     

Appendix

Abstract

An unresolved controversy exists in development literature over the nature and function of the informal sector in urban areas of the Third World. The controversy revolves around the presumed relationship between the modern system of industrial production (often termed the “formal sector”) and that part of the urban economy operating outside it (the “informal sector”). The earlier view that the informal sector is a source of employment which can be realized if the linkages between the two sectors are improved through policies designed to regularize the informal sector, has been shown to be non-generalizable and even inaccurate. Increasingly, researchers have come to the conclusion that the modern industrial sector in the Third World is parasitic and detrimental to the development of the remainder of the urban economy. Their research implicitly or explicitly points out that a net transfer of value from the informal sector to the formal sector is occurring. The transfer is in the form of undervalued labor drawn from the informal sector, undervalued goods and services produced in the informal sector which are directly or indirectly consumed in the formal sector, and a transfer of the welfare burden to the informal sector. In the process, that segment of the population in a Third World city that earns a living primarily in the informal sector is moving toward a situation of increasing immiseration.     

Appendix B: Koreans in Japan and the DPRK

Abstract

It is not often that an entire group of people change their minds on a foreign policy issue, at least within a short space of time. On Kampuchea, this did occur around 1978, when most of those who had previously sympathized with the Khmer Rouge declared their disillusionment. It meant admitting that there was much truth to the militant anti-communists' well-publicized case against the Khmer Rouge, who were indeed one of history's most brutal regimes. In the same period, however, as Michael Vickery has shown in “Democratic Kampuchea—CIA to the Rescue,” many of the same anti-communists suddenly dropped their opposition to the Khmer Rouge, whom they now saw as a useful opponent of Vietnamese communism.     

The Secret of Akom: II

This concludes the study, by a Methodist Minister in Nzima,of the orthodox Gold Coast fetish religion.     

The 1934 Southern Railway Strike in Peru

This article examines the 1934 Southern Railway Strike, a largely neglected yet important episode in Peruvian labour history. The strike, which pitted the British-owned Peruvian Corporation against its workforce, resulted in victory for the company. Drawing on a variety of original primary sources, I examine the factors that shaped the development and outcome of the strike. I pay particular attention to the strategies developed by the company managers to defeat the workers. The success of these strategies, I suggest, owed in no small measure to the volatile political situation created by the insurgency tactics of APRA and the Communist Party, which made victory for the workers politically impossible, and to the capacity of the Peruvian Corporation managers to draw on 'imperial connections' in their dealings with the Peruvian government.     

Mother's Darlings of the South Pacific: The Children of Indigenous Women and U.S. Servicemen,World War II

Mother's Darlings of the South Pacific: The Children of Indigenous Women and U.S. Servicemen, World War II. Edited by Judith A. Bennett and Angela Wanhalla (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2016), pp.xxiv + 379, US$65.00 (hb).     

Drivers of China’s Regional Infrastructure Diplomacy: The Case of the Sino-Thai Railway Project

ABSTRACT

The land-based Silk Road Economic Belt, as a part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, has become central for the country’s economic diplomacy since 2013. As part of these initiatives, Chinese authorities have been keen to expand their high-speed railways across the country’s border into neighbouring countries. Thailand has been one of the front-runners in negotiating high-speed railway projects with China. This article seeks to answer the following questions: what are the driving forces behind the land-based Silk Road Belt; what are the rationales behind the Sino-Thai rail project; and how can the process and outcome of Sino-Thai negotiations be understood? These questions reflect on whether we are witnessing Chinese economic diplomacy to advance commercial and wider economic goals or Chinese economic statecraft to serve foreign policy objectives. Overall, after examining the evidence, the article argues that Silk Road Economic Belt diplomacy and the Sino-Thai rail project are driven predominantly by economic motivations.     

《盛京时报》视野下的中东路事件

1929年张学良趁蒋介石推动所谓"革命外交"之机挑起了中东路事件,企图强行收回中方在中东路上应享有的权益。代表日本立场的《盛京时报》对此特别关注,从其发表的一系列文章中我们可以发现其对事件的报道经历了相对客观、恶意挑拨、重新回到相对客观的过程,由此可以比较清晰的发现日本立场的转变。