Asian Politics & Policy最新文献

In South Korea, conservatism and progressivism were formed under major political and socioeconomic challenges since the establishment of the country in 1948. Moreover, the intensifying ideological polarization between conservatives and progressives since 2010 is discussed. Considering that these ideological terms were developed while overcoming national challenges, it is highly likely that deepening ideological polarization is related to the new challenge of economic inequality, which became rampant at the time. This article argues that the Korean government's measures to address inequality have affected ideological polarization. Specifically, the development of conservatism and progressivism in the Korean context are discussed and conservative governments' market-oriented policies and progressive governments' policies to address inequality are examined. Conservatism expanded during this process while progressivism strengthened, which was critical to the deepening of ideological polarization. Finally, the implications of this study are discussed.

Drawing on data from the 2018 China Internet Survey, this article analyzes the channels through which Chinese citizens acquire political information and how such information changes people's political attitude and behavior. It finds that while many people particularly among the younger generations are using social media, an equally large number of people continue to rely on the officially controlled TV news for political and social information. As hoped by those who want to bring down the authoritarian regime through social media, the Internet contributes to questioning the government and developing liberal ideas among its users but fails to promote bottom-up political participation. Interestingly, government-controlled TV programming meets its goals of improving regime support as well as mobilizing mass political participation. The authoritarian government also seems effective in pushing social media into its orbit of political control. These findings suggest that techno-Utopianism exaggerated the role of technology in liberal democratization.

The long-standing Rohingya crisis has become complicated due to geopolitical complexities, and more than a million Rohingya refugees remain stranded in Bangladesh. This situation has had a dramatic impact on Bangladesh. Shortages of international funding exacerbate the situation further, and a regional security threat could be created if the current situation continues unabated. The empirical research undertaken in this paper examines the impact of the Rohingya refugees on the social, economic, and political aspects of Bangladesh from a micro level perspective. This study follows a qualitative research methodology that uses analysis of documents and analytical interpretations of 20 in-depth interviews from Bangladesh. Environmental destruction and the government's dilemma with controlling law and order are apparent consequences of the Rohingya influx. Competition in the labor market, economic hardships, acquiring land, and deforestation create a conflict between the host community and the Rohingya refugee group. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

This article revisits Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang (KMT) party-state during the Nanjing Decade (1927–37) of the Republic of China (ROC) and assesses how the actions and ideological propensities of the Nationalist regime affected prewar China's external relations with the United States. While both the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were constituted as Leninist parties in the 1920s, due to the Soviet Union's military and economic aid for Sun Yat-sen's republican revolution, they had very different political objectives and socioeconomic perspectives on China's state/nation-building. Consequently, the KMT's and CCP's respective attitudes towards the United States also differed. Though Leninism is an antithesis to Western liberal democracy, it is not inevitable for a Leninist dictatorship to engage in confrontations with Washington, as the central leadership's inclinations and actions would determine how China approaches America. Chiang's Confucian Leninism opened up the friendly ties with the United States in 1928, which eventually consolidated into a strong U.S.-ROC alliance during WWII and beyond, despite the KMT's autocracy. The essay will contrast briefly with the post-1949 People's Republic of China (PRC), as the CCP experienced from Mao Zedong's radical Leninism, Deng Xiaoping/Jiang Zemin/Hu Jintao's consultative Leninism, to Xi Jinping's expansionist Leninism today. The evolving CCP positions have also affected the extent of cooperation and hostility between Beijing and Washington and illustrated how the changing attributes of the Chinese Leninist regime are crucial in determining U.S.-PRC strategic trajectories.

In recent years, democratic societies have relied heavily on online news to enlighten the public on current issues in politics. This study investigates voters' gratification in using online news and its implication on the political landscape. This study examined how information seeking, social utility, guidance/judgment, and personal fulfillment drawn from the Uses and Gratification theory, change Malaysians' voting decisions. The survey included a sample of 700 registered voters from the Malaysian Klang Valley. The data were gathered using convenience and purposive sampling using nonprobability sampling technique. Analysis from Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling using SmartPLS 3.0 demonstrated that information seeking, social utility, guidance, and personal fulfillment could positively determine the people's vote choice. Using online news for guidance is the strongest predictor of the people's vote choice. This study provides important implications where the government can capitalize on the effectiveness of online media to reach the public and rationalize major policy decisions. Future research may utilize a longitudinal approach.

Although COVID-19 may soon be history, gaining a better understanding of its origins and how to address the multidimensional challenges it has raised will keep scholars busy for years. However, one of the challenges for policy-makers will be to select the appropriate measures necessary to address public health issues in ways that are efficient while maintaining trust with public authorities. This book is timely and offersed some pointers in that direction, but it left open some important gaps that I wish could have been better addressed. The texts presented in this book offered much analysis of the major public health issue that has affected the world since January 2020, in conjunction with one key aspect of the global political economy, labor migration, that has complexified the spread of the contagion. The selection of case studies, circumscribed regionally, included cases that are too extremely dissimilar to generate feasible policy prescriptions. On the other hand, the discussion of migrant labor that is announced as a key dimension of global health governance, did not include mention of some of the key actors.

Most of the case studies assembled here, included in the series “Health, Medicine, and Science in Asia,” have been found in East Asia, except for Indonesia and Malaysia. Two chapters each dealt with China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, and three chapters dealt with the response of international organizations. The overarching argument presented by the authors was that Asia is diverse and therefore that countries in the region have offered a wide range of responses to the pandemic. This wide-open conclusion called for more research and more structured comparisons that could address more specific issues, such as trust in health authorities, improvement in global health governance, access to all for public health, and reform of labor migration. The selection of case studies presented in this book would have been better if it had adopted a most comparable cases research design, with smaller but more useful case selections, more suited to identify appropriate policies. Hence, while measures adopted in Taiwan and South Korea can yield useful lessons for policymakers in other pluralist democracies in Europe and North America, the Chinese and Vietnamese cases would be less likely to do so.

On the other hand, the inclusion of Indonesia and Malaysia in this book begged the question of the noninclusion of other major countries such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Philippines, which are among the top 10 sending countries for migrants worldwide. Since the book announced a discussion of transnational labor migration in relation to public health in Asia, it would have benefited from the insights gained from these countries. I am aware that these additions could have made for a more voluminous book, but as pointed out above, only one chapter per country would have left space for these very important issues. Another lim

This study conducts the first systematic review of major United States (US) think tank policy and strategy positions regarding defense of the Senkaku Islands. An analytical framework for content analysis is created and then applied to 76 documents spanning the 2010–2020 period. The policy orientations of 10 leading think tanks are identified, as is the strategic rationale behind their arguments. Because think tanks in the US exert tremendous influence on policymaking, the thick description conducted in this study can shed a great deal of light not only on the past but also the future scope of potential US policy options in the East China Sea.