China as a Rising Norm Entrepreneur: Examining GDI, GSI and GCI PDF Download

Author: Manoj Kewalramani
Publisher: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute
ISBN: 9815203134
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 46

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Book Description
This paper discusses Chinese President Xi Jinping’s flagship global initiatives’ normative implications for the world order. It argues that the Global Development Initiative (GDI), Global Security Initiative (GSI) and Global Civilization Initiative (GCI), which are key pillars of China’s proposal to build a community of common destiny for mankind, are driven by Beijing’s desire to cultivate authority in the international system. Analysing the speeches by Chinese leaders, policy documents, media and analytical discourse in China, along with policy decisions, this study provides an assessment of the Chinese leadership’s worldview. It places the launch of GDI, GSI and GCI within this context, before detailing the elements of each initiative and offering a critical analysis. This study concludes that through GDI, GSI and GCI, the Chinese leadership hopes to shape an external environment that not only ensures regime security but is also favourable to China’s development and security interests. In doing so, however, it is reshaping key norms of global governance towards a fundamentally illiberal direction.

Author: Hoang Thi Ha
Publisher: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute
ISBN: 9815203649
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 50

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Book Description
Vietnam’s foreign policy towards China and the United States (US) involves a delicate process of reconciling and balancing competing perceptions, goals and interests within the country. This leads to foreign policy decisions that may respectively lean towards either China or the US, depending on specific circumstances and issues, while trying to maintain an overall equilibrium between the two powers. Vietnam’s foreign policy adopts the paradigm of “cooperation” and “struggle” in its relations with major powers, and defines “national security” as encompassing both national sovereignty and regime security. Given the common ideology and imperative of preserving political control of their respective communist parties, China may be a critical partner for Vietnam in terms of regime security but is often an “object of struggle” on national sovereignty. On the other hand, the US is Vietnam’s partner in the South China Sea but an “object of struggle” when it comes to regime security. The Vietnamese public’s favourable sentiments towards the US, contrasted with their distrust towards China, pose a challenge for the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) in mobilizing public opinion to bolster its legitimacy while preventing any potential threat to its political authority. A friendly relationship with China is essential for Vietnam’s favourable external environment, warranting Hanoi’s accommodation and deference to Beijing on non-critical issues. However, it has meticulously avoided dependencies and vulnerabilities to China through diversifying economic ties and engaging in “soft balancing” with other powers and through ASEAN. Party-to-party links provide China with powerful access to Vietnamese leaders, but the US is catching up by giving assurances to respect Vietnam’s political system, and strengthening “party diplomacy” with the CPV. In its relationship with the US, Vietnam prioritizes economic ties, addressing war legacy issues, leveraging US support to build capacities in traditional and non-traditional security, and avoiding geopolitical posturing that could provoke China. Vietnam-US relations are characterized by pragmatism, with both sides prioritizing shared geopolitical and economic interests over ideological differences. The sustainability of this approach is uncertain, given the CPV’s tightening of domestic control and the “securitization of the Vietnamese state” in the anti-corruption campaign. Vietnam has thus far benefited from the US-China rivalry but it faces substantial challenges ahead, including heightened vulnerabilities to an assertive China in the South China Sea and Lower Mekong, potential trade tensions if Donald Trump is re-elected as US president, and risks in balancing its ideological ties with Beijing while maintaining its strategic alignment with the US.

Author: Amitav Acharya
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 080145946X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Asia is a crucial battleground for power and influence in the international system. It is also a theater of new experiments in regional cooperation that could redefine global order. Whose Ideas Matter? is the first book to explore the diffusion of ideas and norms in the international system from the perspective of local actors, with Asian regional institutions as its main focus. There's no Asian equivalent of the EU or of NATO. Why has Asia, and in particular Southeast Asia, avoided such multilateral institutions? Most accounts focus on U.S. interests and perceptions or intraregional rivalries to explain the design and effectiveness of regional institutions in Asia such as SEATO, ASEAN, and the ASEAN Regional Forum. Amitav Acharya instead foregrounds the ideas of Asian policymakers, including their response to the global norms of sovereignty and nonintervention. Asian regional institutions are shaped by contestations and compromises involving emerging global norms and the preexisting beliefs and practices of local actors. Acharya terms this perspective "constitutive localization" and argues that international politics is not all about Western ideas and norms forcing their way into non-Western societies while the latter remain passive recipients. Rather, ideas are conditioned and accepted by local agents who shape the diffusion of ideas and norms in the international system. Acharya sketches a normative trajectory of Asian regionalism that constitutes an important contribution to the global sovereignty regime and explains a remarkable continuity in the design and functions of Asian regional institutions.

Author: Manoj Kewalramani
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 9354350968
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
In January 2020, the COVID-19 outbreak in China was viewed as a black swan event, threatening the Communist Party's rule. Two short months later, however, China appeared to have controlled the virus, while the rest of the world struggled to respond. As country after country imposed lockdowns of varying strictness and the human cost began to rise, geopolitical frictions flared up over the origins of the virus, along with Beijing's early failures, diplomacy and discourse. Smokeless War: China's Quest for Geopolitical Dominance offers a gripping account of the Communist Party of China's political, diplomatic and narrative responses during the pandemic. Drawing on the latest academic research and Chinese language sources, it discusses the Party–State's efforts to achieve greater discourse power and political primacy, as it sought to convert a potentially existential crisis into a historic opportunity. In doing so, the author provides an insightful account of the Communist Party of China's approaches to cultivating sources of strength and exercise of power.

Author: Jakob Vlietstra
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1447102630
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 703

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Book Description
This Dictionary covers information and communication technology (ICT), including hardware and software; information networks, including the Internet and the World Wide Web; automatic control; and ICT-related computer-aided fields. The Dictionary also lists abbreviated names of relevant organizations, conferences, symposia and workshops. This reference is important for all practitioners and users in the areas mentioned above, and those who consult or write technical material. This Second Edition contains 10,000 new entries, for a total of 33,000.

Author: Amitav Acharya
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801466342
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
Developing a framework to study "what makes a region," Amitav Acharya investigates the origins and evolution of Southeast Asian regionalism and international relations. He views the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) "from the bottom up" as not only a U.S.-inspired ally in the Cold War struggle against communism but also an organization that reflects indigenous traditions. Although Acharya deploys the notion of "imagined community" to examine the changes, especially since the Cold War, in the significance of ASEAN dealings for a regional identity, he insists that "imagination" is itself not a neutral but rather a culturally variable concept. The regional imagination in Southeast Asia imagines a community of nations different from NAFTA or NATO, the OAU, or the European Union. In this new edition of a book first published as The Quest for Identity in 2000, Acharya updates developments in the region through the first decade of the new century: the aftermath of the financial crisis of 1997, security affairs after September 2001, the long-term impact of the 2004 tsunami, and the substantial changes wrought by the rise of China as a regional and global actor. Acharya argues in this important book for the crucial importance of regionalism in a different part of the world.

Author: Gerard McCarthy
Publisher: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute
ISBN: 9814843555
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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Military enterprises, ostensibly set up to feed and supply soldiers, were some of the earliest and largest Burmese commercial conglomerates, established in the 1950s. Union Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited (UMEHL) and Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC) are two profit-seeking military enterprises established by the military after the dissolution of the Burma Socialist Programme Party in 1988, which remain central players in Myanmar’s post-2011 economy. Military conglomerates are a major source of off-budget revenue for the military and a main employer of retired soldiers. Yet few veterans receive more than a small piece of the profits from UMEHL. The vast bulk of formal dividends instead disproportionately benefit higher ranking officers and institutions within the Tatmadaw. Military capitalism entrenches the autonomy of the Tatmadaw from civilian oversight. Despite this, obligatory or semi-coerced contributions from active-duty soldiers are a source of cash flow for UMEHL, effectively constituting a transfer from the government budget to the military’s off-budget entities. The most significant source of livelihoods support for most veterans is the service pension dispersed by the Ministry of Finance and Planning (MoPF). Despite delivering suboptimal welfare outcomes for most soldiers and veterans while eroding the legitimacy of ceasefires, successive governments since 1988, including Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) administration, have entrenched military capitalism by encouraging commercial activities of armed groups that enter into ceasefire agreements. Extending military pensions already paid by the Ministry of Planning and Finance to retired members of armed groups could deliver a far more consistent and tangible “peace dividend” than the commercial extraction of resources from ceasefire areas. More balanced civil–military relations, and fairer social outcomes for military personnel, will rely on civilian-led state institutions delivering effective and substantive welfare support beyond the commercially oriented welfare arrangements of military conglomerates.

Author: Amitav Acharya
Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
ISBN: 9814379735
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
This study revisits one of the most extensive examples of the spread of ideas in the history of civilization: the diffusion of Indian religious and political ideas to Southeast Asia before the advent of Islam and European colonialism. Hindu and Buddhist concepts and symbols of kingship and statecraft helped to legitimize Southeast Asian rulers, and transform the political institutions and authority of Southeast Asia. But the process of this diffusion was not accompanied by imperialism, political hegemony, or "colonization" as conventionally understood. This book investigates different explanations of the spread of Indian ideas offered by scholars, including why and how it occurred and what were its key political and institutional outcomes. It challenges the view that strategic competition is a recurring phenomenon when civilizations encounter each other.

Author: Ho Khai Leong
Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
ISBN: 9789812302984
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
The relations between ASEAN and China occupy a unique and important position in the foreign relations of the Asia-Pacific region. This volume investigates the impacts of global changes and regional challenges confronting the contemporary developments of China-ASEAN relations.

Author: Andrea Acri
Publisher: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute
ISBN: 981476275X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 587

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Book Description
This volume seeks to foreground a “borderless” history and geography of South, Southeast, and East Asian littoral zones that would be maritime-focused, and thereby explore the ancient connections and dynamics of interaction that favoured the encounters among the cultures found throughout the region stretching from the Indian Ocean littorals to the Western Pacific, from the early historical period to the present. Transcending the artificial boundaries of macro-regions and nation-states, and trying to bridge the arbitrary divide between (inherently cosmopolitan) “high” cultures (e.g. Sanskritic, Sinitic, or Islamicate) and “local” or “indigenous” cultures, this multidisciplinary volume explores the metaphor of Monsoon Asia as a vast geo-environmental area inhabited by speakers of numerous language phyla, which for millennia has formed an integrated system of littorals where crops, goods, ideas, cosmologies, and ritual practices circulated on the sea-routes governed by the seasonal monsoon winds. The collective body of work presented in the volume describes Monsoon Asia as an ideal theatre for circulatory dynamics of cultural transfer, interaction, acceptance, selection, and avoidance, and argues that, despite the rich ethnic, linguistic and sociocultural diversity, a shared pattern of values, norms, and cultural models is discernible throughout the region.