Asian Review of Political Economy最新文献

China’s special access policies for unapproved drugs and medical devices represent a key institutional innovation in its healthcare regulatory system. In recent years, tailored versions of this policy have been implemented in Hainan Lecheng, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA), and Beijing Tianzhu, each exhibiting differentiated trajectories in institutional design and management mechanisms. This study identifies a pattern of policy evolution termed Strategy-Embedded Diffusion, a model wherein the central government does not mandate a uniform policy model, but strategically deploys this tool to different strategic regions in alignment with national objectives. To analyze this phenomenon, this study develops a three-tiered interactive framework encompassing central delegation, local innovation, and social feedback. A comparative case analysis reveals that: the central government delineates distinct scopes of authorization based on each region’s strategic positioning and risk tolerances; local governments engage in selective learning and institutional reproduction tailored to local conditions; and key societal stakeholders actively shape policy refinement through continuous feedback.

Social resilience is crucial for a social system to effectively respond to various internal and external challenges. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, countries worldwide have faced increasingly complex challenges, highlighting the significance of social resilience research. The “Arab Spring” during 2010–2012 triggered continuous unrest, threatening social stability in MENA countries. This upheaval has become a focal point of political science research and provides a practical case for studying social resilience. Numerous scholars have conducted multi-dimensional analyses and discussions on the crisis causes of certain countries during the “Arab Spring”. Building upon previous researches, this article extends the research scope to all countries involved in the upheaval, employing fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis to examine the reasons for different resilience performances among countries during the “Arab Spring” and explore the mechanisms of social resilience. The result of the QCA analysis reveals distinct logics in social resilience construction between monarchical and republican countries: in republican countries, whether there was a history of serious unrest became the watershed for maintaining resilience; while in monarchical countries, the existence of serious ethnic and religious conflicts was the core driving factor. These findings identifies a paradox in social resilience construction: recent social stability actually becomes a factor weakening resilience, while past turbulent experiences enhance society’s ability to respond to shocks—this paradoxical finding provides insights for understanding the complex logic of social resilience.

This paper examines the securitization of UK–China academic exchange in the context of intensifying geopolitical tensions and higher education marketization. It argues that UK universities are caught in a dilemma: compelled to navigate growing state-imposed security imperatives while remaining financially dependent on international students from China. Drawing on securitization theory and interpretive analysis of policy documents, media narratives, and ethnographic insights, the paper conceptualizes universities as active sites of controlled interdependence—negotiating risks, compliance demands, and academic freedom. The analysis highlights how securitization processes, framed as safeguarding national security, can lead to racialized suspicion and epistemic exclusion. This dynamic is compounded by austerity-driven budget cuts that disproportionately affect language and area studies, further shrinking the space for open, critical inquiry. The paper concludes with reflections on policy and scholarly implications, calling for renewed investment in China expertise and more balanced, evidence-based governance of international academic partnerships.

This study examines how globalization has engendered capital disembeddedness and consequently eroded the foundational features of developmental states. Focusing on South Korea, this study traces three key steps in this process. First, international organizations forced Korea to open its domestic markets, marking the beginning of capital disembedding. Second, financial globalization prompted the government to develop alternative financing sources for enterprises amid deregulation, effectively diminishing the state’s control over capital. Furthermore, global production networks provided enterprises opportunities for technological advancement and hands-on learning, reducing their reliance on government support. Taken together, globalization has empowered capital to evade state oversight and reshaped the government-business relationship. Paradoxically, the economic crisis and market failures triggered by globalization have compelled the Korean government to re-regulate its markets and revitalize the economy. However, its regulatory ability remains weaker than that of a classic developmental state, and state-business relations have not rebounded to their former heights.

This paper explores the growing trend of academic collaborations between China and Arab countries as a form of Track II diplomacy, offering a counter-narrative to the securitization of knowledge exchange that has emerged in Western countries. As the geopolitical landscape shifts, Western nations have increasingly framed academic cooperation with China through the lens of national security and ideological competition, epitomized by initiatives like the U.S. China Initiative. In contrast, many in Arab countries view China-Arab academic partnerships as opportunities to foster peaceful international relations and mutual development, with less political scrutiny than often accompanies Western collaborations. However, perceptions of these collaborations can vary within the Arab world, depending on national, political, and institutional contexts. For example, while some Arab nations embrace these engagements as part of broader development goals, others may be more cautious due to their historical and geopolitical relationships with both China and Western powers. This paper examines how these collaborations function as a tool for China to engage with the Arab world on the basis of shared academic and cultural values, promoting understanding and cooperation. By investigating key initiatives such as joint research programs, university partnerships, and student exchanges, this paper highlights the role of China-Arab academic diplomacy in promoting regional stability and global collaboration, positioning it as an alternative to the politically charged academic exchanges occurring between China and the West.

Technological competition is a crucial dimension of inter-state rivalry. Against the backdrop of Sino-U.S. strategic competition, technology has undeniably emerged as a central focus in political economy research. Drawing on three recently published books on the political economy of technological change, this article explores the reciprocal relationship between technological development and both international and domestic politics. It examines the different stages of technological change and the political economy forces that shape its dynamics. This study argues that state capacity, market scale, and inclusive institutions constitute the three core determinants of technological innovation, diffusion, and embeddedness, respectively. To illustrate these dynamics, the essay analyzes China’s innovation trajectory, using its technological development as a unique experimental ground for the political economy theories of technological change. Finally, the article calls for bridging the gap between international and domestic factors and underscores the significance of exploring variations in centralized and decentralized institutional arrangements as promising directions for future research.

The BRICS + collective (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, with the + to denote the expansion in membership) claims to represent Global South (GS) interests. Core among these interests is to ameliorate global structural exchange inequalities through reforms to global governance architectures and encouraging collaboration among members. Reforms and collaborative work aim at improving economic conditions in the GS, which is a long-standing local demand. At the same time, GS regions suffer from rivalries among its constitutive members states. Regional rivalries contribute to worsening economic conditions by discouraging investments, limiting the utilization of regional complementarities, and channeling money towards arms build-up. This article argues that given BRICS + emphasis on fostering economic reforms and members’ interdependence, membership in this collective incentivizes rivals to de-escalate so that they can capture benefits in the service of their national interests. BRICS + members observe the behavior of rivals since it is in the interest of the collective to uphold its credibility and fulfil its promises. De-escalation occurs as states prioritize cooperation over conflict, benefiting from economic opportunities and shared platforms for exchanges and dialogue. The article examines the potential of BRICS + to create conditions conducive to rivalry de-escalation in West Asia and the Maghreb (WAM). The organizational structure of BRICS + as a flexible, Global South-oriented coalition makes it attractive to states with existing tensions, encouraging pragmatic steps toward de-escalation. But BRICS + itself accepts membership based on existing members unanimously accepting potential newcomers; these newcomers are primarily evaluated on the premise of their positive contributions to the goals of the collective and are (apparently) shunned if their membership brings divisions and rivalry to within the collective. We select for our analysis three case studies which vary in their demonstration of the effects of BRICS + membership/promise of membership on the rivalry. The cases offer insights into how the BRICS + collective has utilized the membership process to promote de-escalation—instrumentalizing it as a preliminary condition for joining. Accordingly, the Morocco-Algeria rivalry provides the strongest evidence of BRICS + activism, the Egypt-Ethiopia rivalry yields mixed results, and the Saudi Arabia-Iran rivalry presents the least robust evidence of instrumentalization (relative to other cases). This categorization is based on how strongly each case supports our study’s claims. Curiously, we find that the impact of these processes on security dynamics in the regional order varied – the outcome is reversed. This means that BRICS + succeeded in leveraging membership to de-escalate the Saudi Arabia-Iran rivalry and, to a lesser extent, achieved similar results with Egypt and Ethiopia. In contrast, the Morocco-Algeria rivalry