Taiwan and the geopolitics of late development

Abstract

Through a case study of Taiwan, this paper seeks to address recent debates surrounding the transformation of developmental states in East Asia. Whilst a number of authors have cited the Taiwanese state as being both cautious and resilient in the midst of global restructuring, this paper seeks to critically engage with such arguments by highlighting the dynamic and mutually constitutive relations between the forms of social relations that underpin late development and the wider geopolitical system in which such development occurs. Specifically, Taiwanese industrialisation can be viewed as an outcome of the US intervention in the Chinese civil war and subsequent exclusion of China from the regional political economy in the period between the Korean and Vietnam Wars. The Kuomintang (KMT)'s retreat to Taiwan established the basis for the autonomous developmental state, and the US underpinned this state through military protection, aid and access to its own domestic market. However, the relative decline of US hegemony and the readmission of China into the international system have posed significant challenges to Taiwan's developmental state. The US sought to redress its trade imbalance with East Asia by placing pressure on Taiwan to liberalise its political economy. Furthermore, the very process of development itself served to undermine the autonomy of the state as it came under pressure from new social forces. Taiwan has more recently been faced with a dilemma of closer integration with the mainland or the maintenance of its de facto economic and political independence at the risk of becoming isolated from the global trading system.     

Green tea in the Sahel: The social history of an itinerant consumer good

Since the liberalisation of the market in the 1990s, the amount of green tea imported from China to the Sahel has dramatically increased. This article traces some of the stages in the development of green tea from its introduction in the early nineteenth century by Moorish traders from Morocco to a mass consumer good in the Sahel and the adjoint Savannah regions. Having started as a beverage with medicinal and vitalising properties, it was adopted by the aristocratic urban elite in Sahelian trading towns, and much later via the pastoralists by the general population, while spreading out further south. The gradual democratisation of green tea is related to the changing norms of tea consumption, of family authority, and to different stages in the packaging, naming and presentation of tea, together with sugar. Green tea has become the most popular drink in cities such as Bamako, where it remains strongly associated with its Moorish introduction.     

The Second Wave of Indian Investments Abroad

This article makes an assessment of the recent international expansion of Indian companies by contrasting it to the earlier – much more modest – wave of investments abroad. It also traces the evolution of the Indian government's policy towards outwards investments and makes the claim that an important reason for the rise of investments abroad is the gradual relaxation of the Indian government's restrictions on capital outflow after the economic reforms of the 1990s. The new Indian investments abroad are characterised by being dispersed over a very large number of countries and economic sectors and – most remarkable – Indian companies are now also targeting the markets in Europe and the USA through acquisitions of local companies. At the same time, Indian companies have continued to expand their presence in other developing countries, where their activities may contribute to both economic progress and a reduction of economic dependence on relations with developed countries.     

Ubuntu. The missing link in the rights discourse in post-apartheid transformation in South Africa

ABSTRACT

A human rights discourse has been central to both the anti-apartheid struggle of South Africa and the country's post-apartheid transformation. But in the drive to extend constitutionally mandated social and economic rights to all South Africans, the approach has had shortcomings. The current neo-liberal economic policy framework constrains policy choices and, in some instances, restricts fair adjudication of rights by the courts. The revival of notions of African Renaissance and indigenous ethnophilosophies, notably ubuntu, which shares the primacy of human dignity of a rights discourse, offers new perspectives. This article looks at the limitations of the human rights discourse and at how ubuntu, as a principled basis for judicial decision making, can contribute to the evolution of the rights discourse in South Africa and lead towards greater realisation of constitutional rights for all.     

South African cinema after apartheid: A political-economic exploration

Abstract

When South Africa was emancipated from the oppressive apartheid regime in 1994, it was a severely divided society in need of an inclusive national identity to bind its citizens and maintain peace. Therefore, the state targeted the cultural industries, including film, as a means of promoting symbolic representations of national unity. The film industry was further identified as a priority sector for economic growth and as a potential platform for equitable redress. This article discusses existing and emerging finance, distribution and exhibition structures in the post-apartheid film industry. It considers government interventions in the form of film policies and development strategies with the purpose of examining the influence of globalising forces, in particular neoliberalism, on the apparent market-orientation of such interventions. The results presented indicate that the post-apartheid vision of equality, freedom and diversity does not always sit comfortably with the neoliberal, free-market principles promoted in the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) programme of 1996. Moreover, it suggests that in this commercial environment, the voices of the historically oppressed black majority, rather than enjoying a sense of artistic and creative freedom, can in fact encounter commercial censorship through the commodification of films for an export-orientated market.     

Democratisation, External Exposure and State Food Distribution in The Dominican Republic

The Dominican Republic shares the island of Hispaniola with a 'failed' state, requires regular financial assistance from international funds and remains exposed to external economic pressures. State food distribution in the country, however, adheres to traditional statist policies and institutions that disappeared elsewhere in Latin America and the Caribbean during the 1980s and 1990s. Relevant literature arguably does not anticipate this outcome. This article proposes that political institutions associated with Dominican democratisation since the late 1970s, particularly strong presidentialism, a stable, non-ideological party system and high voter turnout at elections, provide incentives for a status quo, clientelistic policy in this strategic area of social policy.     

Social divides in the age of globalization

Abstract

In recent decades, a new integration-demarcation cleavage has emerged in Europe, pitting political parties in favour of globalisation against those opposing globalisation. Although a lot is known about the socio-structural basis and the political organisation of this cleavage, we do not know the extent to which these political divides have led to social divides. Therefore, this article investigates how losers and winners of globalisation oppose each other. On the basis of representative online experiments in Germany and Austria, this article studies attitudes and behaviour towards people with different nationalities, education, and party preferences, which correspond to the cultural, socio-structural, and organisational elements of the new cleavage. More particularly, the extent to which people are willing to interact with each other in daily life and how much they trust each other is investigated. The main results show that people who identify with different parties (especially if they belong to the other side of the cleavage) oppose each other much more strongly than people with different nationalities. There is no divide, however, between the low-skilled and high-skilled. Finally, it appears that the social divides are asymmetrical: the winners of globalisation resent the losers more than the other way round.     

Old wine in new bottles? Reassessing the effects of globalisation on political preferences in Western Europe

In both public and scholarly debates, globalisation has recently been accredited with a massive impact on the political preferences and electoral behaviour of Western citizens. Some go as far as to declare a new cleavage between winners and losers of globalisation, driven, for example, by individuals’ exposure to international competition and their degree of national as opposed to cosmopolitan identification. Extant tests of this argument have, however, relied on class and education as proxies for these processes. In contrast, this study provides a direct test of the influence of the globalisation processes on attitudes to economic distribution, the European Union and immigration as well as on vote choice across nine West European countries. The results show that variables tapping the core aspects of globalisation have relatively little impact on attitudes and vote choice; are largely unable to account for the effects of class and education; and do not seem to lead to the establishment of new divisions between winners and losers within or across classes. Rather, the winners and losers of globalisation seem to be the traditional winners and losers with respect to material positions and political influence in modern Western societies – that is, those placed higher as opposed to lower in the class and education hierarchies. In this way, the proposed cleavage between winners and losers of globalisation may seem to be rather much like old wine in new bottles.     

East Asia in the Global Economy: Theoretical and Empirical Questions for Marxism

ABSTRACT

As Marxism and socialism pass through watershed years it is important to reflect on the abiding questions of Marxist theory and empirical analysis. This article takes up this task in the context of East Asia under the impetus of globalisation and neo-liberalism, introducing a collection of five articles collected in the special issue. The article shows that questions Marx posed about the global economy more than a century ago remain prescient and continue to animate cutting-edge research, as shown in the articles in this special issue.     

Signs of the times: the discourse of ‘three represents’ and globalisation

In the past two decades, the economic reforms in China not only put Chinese society on the stage of globalisation, but also eroded the established significatory system set in Mao's China, the stability of meaning of governmental linguistic production has also been challenged. It is against such background that the official discourse of ‘Three Represents’ emerged. This paper intends to analyse the discourse of ‘Three Represents’ in the light of articulation as advanced by Stuart Hall, and examine the semiosis of these representations in the context of the reconstruction of epistemological theory. It argues that this on-going discursive practice is, in a way, a significant theoretical response by the CCP to the increasingly diversified social formation, the ‘signs of the times’, brought along by a new globalising economic structure. When signs of wealth are reinterpreted and re-evaluated in a new economic order, signs of authority (Bourdieu, 1991) which are intended to be believed and obeyed by the masses, have also shifted and been renegotiated to accommodate social changes.