Asia Pacific Viewpoint最新文献

Macau, an internationally renowned gambling city, has experienced rapid growth in casino space expansion and tourism since 2002 when the new Macau SAR government liberalised gambling. Despite the impact of COVID-19 on the city's economy over the past three years, infrastructure construction and remodelling of casino resorts continue. This study focuses on the spatial production of casino resorts and tourist identity in Macau's Cotai Strip. Methodologically, the study conducts an assemblage analysis to interpret the data collected mainly through participant observation and in-depth interviews. The research findings show that the Cotai Strip homogenises the human and non-human elements through the repetitive rhythms of buildings and multi-tiered enclosed territorialisation. The identity of Macau casino tourists emerges from their interactions with other components within the Strip assemblage. The emerging identity is defined as a post-postmodern flâneur, characterised by their programmed and controlled tourist activities and their intensified visual sensations and photographic gazes.

The community-based participatory research (CBPR) conceptual model has emerged as a popular methodological approach to facilitate collaboration between health professionals and community members to achieve project goals and improve health outcomes. Most existing literature has either introduced or explored the direct application of the CBPR conceptual model to paediatric care projects. Few have studied the mechanisms by which partnerships are built following this model. For the study described in this article, interviews were conducted with the health professionals and community participants on a research team about their application of the CBPR conceptual model to promote partnership in a project serving families of children with cancer in western China. Twenty themes identified from the results validated and expanded existing constructs and added new ones (challenges from COVID-19, enhanced stigma, researcher–practitioner divide, misunderstanding in the process and validity and research integrity issues) to the model. The findings presented can be used to enlighten those engaging in partnerships and the framework created can be directly applied to guide participants to identify critical issues at the beginning of a project as well as to reflect on the sustainability of the partnership both during and after the project.

Formal education in Nauru can only be fully understood in the light of the external influences, mostly Australian in origin, acting upon it as a small island state in the Central Pacific. Australia's influence began in the early 1900s as a leading stakeholder in Nauru's lucrative phosphate reserves. In the last few decades Nauru's dramatic economic decline has meant it has come into the orbit of Australia's official development assistance (ODA) to the Pacific region. However, Australia has ties to Nauru that go beyond mere economic and development assistance, for example, the country is a crucial site in Australia's own immigration policy and the offshore processing of asylum seekers bound for Australia. Geopolitically, Nauru is also important to Australia as one of a decreasing number of Taiwan-loyal Pacific nations in the face of China's increasing assertiveness in the region. The nature of the relationship with Nauru has meant that for many decades Australia has provided an almost exclusive conduit of educational ideas, values, beliefs and practices flowing into the country to uniquely shape formal education provision. The purpose of this article is twofold. Firstly, via a synthesis of research literature and debate, it critiques the long-running, primarily, Australia-facing relationship Nauru has in terms of the educational assistance it receives, including the Nauru Education Program, a significant Australian development assistance initiative about to commence through to 2030. Secondly, with a basis in the advocacy literature of the Rethinking Pacific Education Initiative, the article highlights the possibility of a much more Pacific regionally facing Nauru over the next few decades as a result of relatively recent regional instrumentalities such as the Pacific Island Forum's 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent.

Extant scholarly discourse on ecological governance within China predominantly underscores the salient role of the central state. This is unsurprising given the statist policy trajectory transitioned from an emphasis on swift economic growth to focusing on emerging ecological challenges in the last decade. However, this article deviates from this prevailing emphasis, pivoting instead to the tangible practices and realities of ecological governance at the grassroots level. Through an ethnographic investigation, this article delves into the nuances of ecological governance within the Tibetan regions of Qinghai Province, China, emphasising the interplay between local communities, environmental non-governmental organisations and the local state. The article introduces the concept of ‘pluralistic ecological governance’, advocating for the integration of diverse governance structures, institutional frameworks and stakeholder involvements. This approach encompasses a thorough consideration of diverse knowledge systems, motivations of community participation and local-state relations, vital for addressing the complex nature of ecological issues. The study contends that ‘pluralistic ecological governance’ not only encompasses different stakeholders but also critically examines various forms of knowledge and motivations, along with the diverse interests these stakeholders contribute to both the discourse and practice of ecological conservation on the ground.

The main objectives of this research are to identify (i) how women in Can Tho City experience the impacts of flooding on their health, income, household and personal finances; and (ii) limitations to women's participation in flood-related planning activities. Qualitative data collection included a household survey, followed by field observation and in-depth interviews of the affected women and other actors. Following a feminist framing, the research not only offers insight into the unique harms that women experience from floods, but also demonstrates that women have important knowledge and insights into flood-related planning. The research found that women took on additional flood management roles in the home. Carrying out this work in polluted flood waters placed a physical burden on their bodies, and led to associated financial burdens related to health treatment and protective equipment. Moreover, the time dedicated to this labour resulted in a reduction in women's incomes. Their houses were also damaged by the floods, resulting in repair costs. Women in higher income of full-time employment are dealing with the losses of income activity and housing, women in lower income or unemployment are dealing with the losses of personal expense and housing. Though women have a unique understanding of and relationship to flooding, government officials exclude them from local planning and training workshops about flooding risks. As a result, they have limited opportunities to use their knowledge to shape flood mitigation efforts. This research concludes that addressing vulnerability to future flooding must draw on Vietnamese women's knowledge and experiences.

To increase the understanding of how the external environment impact the local industrial development, this study builds a conceptual framework of industrial evolutionary development by integrating evolutionary and developmental theories from the perspective of evolutionary economic geography. This study emphasised the combination of two mechanisms. The first evolutionary mechanism consisting of variation, selection and retention, and the diversity within and between enterprise clusters serves as the starting point for evolution. The external environment selects and retains the most competitive enterprises under the mechanism of selection. The second developmental mechanism is the influence of the external environment on enterprises. The external environment screens and affects the development of firms at and across multiple levels, same level and across levels. Based on the case studies of the e-sports industry in China, this study finds that technological development has driven the transformation of the e-sports industry. Additionally, location cost, spatial proximity, local policy, urban strategy and national planning have been identified as crucial factors that influence the location choice of the e-sports industry. This study highlights the importance of paying more attention to environmental dynamics in the research and practice of industrial evolution.

In order to improve local governance, the central government has, among other strategies, begun to introduce institutions for deliberation in rural China. This article analyses the implementation and consequences of this framework in two villages in rural Gansu Province. It shows that the current promotion of these institutions is a top-down political effort and not a system with genuine local roots. Our findings also suggest that without strict legal requirements for deliberative institutions, village cadres do not follow the enactment of officially warranted procedures, which often may lead to rather formalistic implementation. Opportunities for deliberation seem to be offered only to those members of the community who are the most likely to be able to contribute social or financial capital to the local administration's agenda. This suggests that at least in this local setting, the rationale of introducing deliberation institutions clearly was to improve existing policy implementation and not to provide meaningful new avenues for participation. While this variant of deliberative institutions further raises the status of the rural elite, it appears to frustrate ordinary villagers and reduce their interest in these instruments.

The literature has long recognised non-democratic regimes that are increasingly using Internet manipulation to undermine the opposition. Apart from network control, content surveillance and paying for Internet commentators, the implications of the new trend of online counter-mobilisation remain to be explored. By analysing 5124 YouTube videos of Hong Kong's Anti-extradition Bill Protests, this study examines how pro-regime opinion leaders counter-mobilised pro-regime contents and Internet users responded to their videos. The results indicate that the main concern of the pro-regime opinion leaders was to (i) demobilise the protests, (ii) condemn opposition figures and (iii) show their support for the authorities. Users were mainly participative in videos related to (i) justify suppression, (ii) support for front-line police officers against protesters and (iii) criticism of the opposition. These differences reflect the apparent asymmetry between opinion leaders, who provide more negative contents, and followers, who have better responses to positively framed contents. The findings further contribute to exploring the strategies of the pro-regime counter-framing to overcome the challenges of the opposition camp.

This study explores the appropriation and distribution of surplus in caterpillar fungus collection in Qinghai using a diverse economies of surplus approach. Ethnographic fieldwork included semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, oral histories and participant observations during collection. Findings suggest that one particular enterprise type, with more typically capitalist features has come to dominate caterpillar fungus collection in Qinghai. The surplus appropriation and distribution in this enterprise poses problems for rural farmer collectors in terms of insecure incomes and stringent working conditions that deprive them of their dignity of labour. This study suggests a rethink of surplus appropriation and distribution based on culturally valued dignity of labour to design more sustainable and equitable livelihood within and beyond the dominant model.

Since the late 1970s, China has gradually risen as a global power, which culminates in the present moment when large-scale geopolitical and economic ventures such as the Belt and Road Initiative have generated diversified cross-border connections. This is most forcefully felt in the Chinese diaspora, and particularly those in Southeast Asia since the region is home to the largest and most diverse diasporic Chinese population. Chinese voluntary associations (CVAs), as crucial social institutions in the Chinese diaspora, are actively engaging with China's rise and responding to the (trans) regional political-economic and socio-cultural changes. In this introduction of the special section, we open up a collection of five research articles and one commentary that discuss the ambivalences and tensions in CVAs’ engagement with China's rise. We conceptualize CVAs as ever-evolving ancestral communities which actively (re)position themselves in relation to complex configurations of power dynamics taking place between actors in China and the Chinese diaspora. Ancestral communities evolve through a constant mediation of the two mutually-constitutive processes of transnationalization and localization, which take on dual-facing and double-embedded orientations. This special section also highlights the continuing significance and renewed engagement of CVAs and potential tensions and conflicts generated in changing geopolitical and domestic environment.