Asia Pacific Viewpoint最新文献

The Korean Wave, a cultural phenomenon originating in East Asia, initially gained popularity in countries such as Japan, China and Taiwan before spreading globally, driven by advancements in digital technology. However, an ‘anti-Korean Wave (AKW)’ (or ‘hate-Korean Wave’) has emerged simultaneously. Various studies have identified factors influencing the spread and success of the Korean Wave via social media. Nonetheless, the AKW remains poorly explored. The present study employed social network analysis to examine the various forms, issues and contents of AKW discourse on YouTube. Analysis of network structures using the keywords ‘AKW’ and ‘hate-Korean Wave’ revealed a prevalent ‘community cluster’ pattern. Specifically, the ‘AKW’ keyword demonstrated a structure resembling a ‘brand cluster,’ dominated by the top five clusters. The content often featured negative portrayals of Korean politics, society, and culture, with local media serving as the primary dissemination source. These findings underscore the significance of active media diplomacy by the Korean government. Efforts are also necessary to create ‘shared understandings and meanings’ with other parties through social media beyond merely delivering information and activities. Producing uniquely Korean cultural content while regularly monitoring digital media and taking countermeasures where necessary must be continued.

The rise of online travel agents (OTA) has substantially changed the ecology of the tourism industry, which in turn has impacted the market of traditional travel agencies. Although OTA is a future tourism trend, there is still much room for improvement in terms of its brand and customer service. Therefore, this study investigates the relationships among customer satisfaction, brand loyalty and consumer repurchase intentions from the perspective of service quality, and form a conceptual model for constructing consumer repurchase intentions. This study conducted a structural equation model (SEM) analysis of 226 samples. Based on the analysis results, there were two findings: First, for the influencing factors of consumer repurchase intentions, the positive direct impact of service quality is higher than brand loyalty and customer satisfaction. Second, in the proposed model, brand loyalty and customer satisfaction play the mediation variable between service quality and repurchase intention. The service quality will not only directly affect the repurchase intention, but also has an indirect impact through brand loyalty and customer satisfaction.

Studies on the impact of COVID-19 on ethnic minorities are often centred around racism and socio-economic inequality. Accordingly, people with Asian heritage are frequently portrayed as victims, rather than as people with agency. Drawing from interviews with middle-class Asian migrant women, we examine the various im/mobilities Asian migrant women experienced during the pandemic: in the public/private sphere, from urban to regional cities, in intimacies and as international students. Our research demonstrated how Asian female migrants empowered themselves during the pandemic by becoming mobile in multiple ways. Certainly, the study's participants did encounter immobility. However, their circumstances benefitted significantly from their middle-class status, relatively young age and independent visa status. The study's attention to participants' lives before and during the pandemic also enabled insight into the relationality of im/mobility: how even as the pandemic immobilised many people, it could mobilise middle-class Asian migrant women to reconfigure the pandemic as opportunity.

This article explores China's global economic presence by focusing on the changing dynamics of diasporic Chinese entrepreneurship in France. Since the turn of the new century, the ethnic Chinese population in France has become increasingly heterogeneous in migratory trajectory and socioeconomic profile. Accordingly, the focus on economic activities among tight-knit groups in the traditional model of an ethnic enclave economy might not be adequate to capture new developments in Chinese entrepreneurship that also involve transnational religious practises. Drawing on a multi-year ethnographic study of the Chinese Christian community in Paris—a major business centre of Chinese wholesale products in Europe, this article explores the Chinese congregational life in one of the most secularised areas of Europe in order to provide an alternative explanation for the relationship of religion and Chinese entrepreneurship. It shows that the main stakeholders spearheading diasporic church growth are those first-generation male Chinese family entrepreneurs who place paramount emphasis on maintaining ethnic cultural roots and a traditional patriarchal social order. The image of Chinese Christian entrepreneurs with both intense economic aspirations and religious zeal navigating daily life in diaspora provides a timely counterpoint to the popular view of global Chinese migrants as purely economic agents.

The islands of the Pacific Ocean have been the subject of much study with regard to change and transformation. Current concerns with the effects climate change have not always been central and other discourses, such as development and progress, social change and decolonisation have interested the work of social scientists over several decades. Furthermore, until recently such research has been mainly carried out by individuals and institutions from outside the region. In this paper, we revisit a series of intensive fieldwork-based studies conducted over 50 years ago out of the Australian National University and included in a book The Pacific in Transition edited by Harold Brookfield. We focus on three authors in this collection (Diana Howlett, William Clarke and Isireli Lasaqa). These, we argue, contained important and sometimes prescient insights into not only some of the fundamental processes of change in the region but also the limits of the dominant theoretical paradigms of the time. In addition, they also provide valuable lessons for the present day ways we conceive, study and interpret change in Oceania, as well as the need to foreground the agency, knowledges and realities of Pacific island people.