scholarly journals East Asian ‘Econophoria’ in Theory and Practice

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-120
Author(s):  
Brendan Howe
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Wealth Distribution ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Operating Environment ◽  
Economic Growth And Development ◽  
Success Stories ◽  
Governance Challenges ◽  
Low Tension

‘Econophoria’ is the hope that the solution of all governance challenges, whether international or domestic, can be sought through economic growth and development. It is prevalent in the East Asian region, where tremendous economic development success stories have gone hand-in-hand with lengthy periods without interstate war. This paper explores the theoretical underpinnings and antecedents for econophoria, and how it has manifest in practice in East Asia. It also raises, however, a number of questions which challenge the underlying assumptions of peace though trade and economic growth paradigms in East Asia. How does the skewed wealth distribution that is associated with macro-economic growth affect the internal stability and peace of the societies in East Asia? Does this have an impact on the propensity of the governments to contain the conflicts they have with their neighbours at a level of low tension? Is the pursuit of economic growth prior to, or at the expense of, human rights and the wellbeing of the most vulnerable sustainable in the contemporary international operating environment?

The Developmental Trading State

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex J. Bellamy
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
East Asia ◽  
National Economy ◽  
East Asian ◽  
The State ◽  
State Model ◽  
Principal Function ◽  
Mass Violence ◽  
The Way

This chapter demonstrates that the downwards pressure that state consolidation placed on mass violence was amplified by the type of state that emerged. Across East Asia, governments came to define themselves as “developmental” or “trading” states whose principal purpose was to grow the national economy and thereby improve the economic wellbeing of their citizens. Governments with different ideologies came to embrace economic growth and growing the prosperity of their populations as the principal function of the state and its core source of legitimacy. Despite some significant glitches along the way the adoption of the developmental trading state model has proven successful. Not only have East Asian governments succeeded in lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, the practices and policy orientations dictated by this model helped shift governments and societies away from belligerent practices towards postures that prioritized peace and stability. This reinforced the trend towards greater peacefulness.

Economic Growth and Power Sector Developments in South East Asia

1997 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-14
Author(s):  
Pavan Gupta ◽  
Ross L Chapman
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Developing Economies ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Direct Foreign Investment ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Infrastructure Development ◽  
Power Sector ◽  
Financial Investment

In recent years, many South East Asian nations have shown strong economic growth coupled with success in attracting considerable direct foreign investment. In order to sustain the current and projected growth levels, many countries in South East Asia will need to focus on major investments for infrastructure development, especially in their power generation and distribution sectors. As highlighted by the current financial crises being experienced in several South East Asian nations, the future growth of this region will require much stronger support from the international financial institutions, which in turn will lead this region toward a greatly increased level of privatization. The establishment of contestable energy markets is a particularly good example of the type of developments required in these nations. In order to create a healthy climate for the massive financial investment needed for a truly liberalized energy market, a number of difficult political and social issues common to many of these rapidly developing economies must be resolved.

scholarly journals Islamic Dimensions of the East Asian Economic Miracle

1999 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. v-xvii
Author(s):  
M. A. Muqtedar Khan
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Islamic Philosophy ◽  
Economic Miracle ◽  
Asian Economies ◽  
East Asian Economies ◽  
Growing Region

in PerspectiveThis editorial seeks to identify the missing dimensions of Islamic economicsand the Islamic dimensions of East Asian economies. In doing so,it advances a critical review of the present discourse on Islamic economicsand highlights some of its oversights. At the outset, it must be clearlyunderstood that I am not critical of the very idea of an Islamic economics.I think that at a time when global intellectual leadership has been usurpedby those who consciously subvert the idea of the divine and the role ofdivine mandates in the organization and governance of human affairs,Islamic economics, like Islamic philosophy and Islamic social sciences, hassucceeded in at least presenting a paradigmatic alternative that still maintainesthe centrality of transcendence in human existence.While I am all for sustaining the resistance to secularization of all knowledges,I am critical of the current discourse on Islamic economics becauseof its disconnection between theory and practice and because, for reasonsthat have not been explored systematically but are intuitively discernable,it has made Islamic economics synonymous with' interest-free banking.Many important elements of Islamic economics are completely ignored oreven suppressed. Perhaps this may be a reason why Islamic economieshave not really materialized. The importance of these less studied principlescan be discerned by studying how they have played a cardinal role inthe world's fastest growing region, East Asia. I intend to show how EastAsian economies have institutionalized Islamic principles in their contemporaryeconomic practices and are harvesting great benefits. It is ironic that ...

Economic Growth, Wealth and Wealth Inequality in Asia before, during and after the Global Financial Crisis

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 459-483
Author(s):  
Jenny Chesters
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Wealth Distribution ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The Global Financial Crisis

Abstract Although economic growth is regarded as an indicator of the success of an economy and, therefore, an indicator of rising living standards, there is no guarantee that living standards will improve for all members of society unless the benefits derived from economic growth are shared equally. If the wealth generated by economic growth accrues to those at the top of the wealth distribution, levels of inequality will increase. In this paper, I use publicly available data from the World Bank, Credit Suisse, and Forbes Magazine for 11 countries in East Asia/ South East Asia: Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam, to examine whether increases in GDP/capita were accompanied by increases in wealth/adult and levels of wealth inequality between 2000 and 2016. In China, Hong Kong, and Vietnam, wealth inequality increased substantially despite, or perhaps due to, the rapid expansion of their economies. In other words, it would appear that the rising tide lifted some boats but swamped others.

Buddhist Statecraft

Buddhism ◽  
2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
South Central ◽  
Wheel Turning ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Buddha

In the modern day, the connection between Buddhism and statecraft is readily seen in the Theravada monarchies of Southeast Asia; however, in premodern times, Buddhist kings and Buddhist methods of statecraft were commonplace across South, Central, and East Asia as well. This link between Buddhism and political leadership is rooted in two powerful legends that came out of the early tradition and which have been invoked across all of Asia. The first is that of the birth and life story of the historical Buddha, Śākyamuni, who was himself a prince of a small kingdom and destined to be either a “Wheel-Turning King” (cakravartin) and universal monarch or an “Enlightened One” (buddha). Though his father preferred that he extend his birthright by becoming a universal monarch, he went on to renounce palace life, go in search of awakening, and become a buddha. Nonetheless, the mythic connection between the Buddha (otherworldly power) and the Wheel-Turning King (worldly power) remains an essential aspect of a buddha’s identity. The second legend is that of Mauryan Emperor Aśoka (r. 262–238 bce); uniting the Indian subcontinent through violent means, Aśoka is believed by the tradition to have converted to Buddhism and then become the religion’s most generous and powerful benefactor who ruled according to Buddhist law, or dharma. Across the entirety of Asia, connections between Buddhism and statecraft have taken on regionally specific forms. There is a long history of rulers in South and Southeast Asia who have sponsored Theravada Buddhism as the state religion and have sanctified their rules and their reigns through close relations with the monastic community. In the Tibetan context of the practice of Vajrayāna Buddhism, rulers themselves became identified as bodhisattvas in a system reminiscent of the divine right of kings in Europe. In East Asia, there was a Chinese-style bureaucratic governance that looked to the Buddha as an otherworldly figurehead while translating long-standing Chinese imperial systems into something that we might call “Confucian with a Buddhist inflection.” As Chinese modalities of statecraft were adopted and adapted by other polities in the East Asian cultural sphere—notably, Korea and Japan, but also Vietnam—this Chinese form of imperial Buddhism became a mainstay of East Asian life throughout the entire premodern period. Therefore, we can see various different manifestations of Buddhist statecraft in theory and practice across Asia and throughout history up until the present.

scholarly journals An Elephant’s Graveyard? Democracy and Development in East Asia

2016 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 162-183
Author(s):  
Benjamin Reilly
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Modernization Theory ◽  
Democratic Reform ◽  
North East ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Foundation Stone

Using Przeworski et al.’s paradigmatic work on democracy and development as a touchstone, this review examines East Asia’s lessons for comparative politics. It focuses particularly on the challenges that China and South-East Asia present for modernization theory, a foundation stone of political science. In most of the rich world, including north-east Asian cases of modernization such as Korea and Taiwan, economic development and democratization have tended to go hand in hand. In South-East Asia, by contrast, almost none of the expected relationships between democracy and development seems to work. The most striking anomaly of all today is China, which appears to be moving ever further away from democratic reform as it grows richer. This disjuncture between theory and practice is explored, along with other, more positive, East Asian contributions to scholarship on democracy and development.

scholarly journals What Is the “Middle Income Trap”?

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Shaojie Zhou ◽  
Angang Hu
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Low Income ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Development Stage ◽  
Poverty Trap ◽  
Development Phase ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Income Development ◽  
Middle Income Trap

Abstract In 2007, Indermit Gill and Homi Kharas (2007), two World Bank economists, published a report titled An East Asian Renaissance: Ideas for Economic Growth, which suggested that East Asia would soon develop into a middle-income region and proposed the concept of the “middle income trap”. It should be noted that the report did not provide an in-depth interpretation of the concept, nor did it offer a clear income range for the “middle income trap”. In 2011, Homi Kharas and Harinder Kohli (2011) further elaborated on the concept, specifying that when a country escapes the poverty trap in the low-income development stage and enters into the middle-income development phase, the country may face growth stagnation and inability to further move up the ladder into the high-income range.

The Colonial Documentary Film in South and South-East Asia

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
East Asian ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Historical Perspectives ◽  
The Third ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Global Understanding

Writing from a wide range of historical perspectives, contributors to the anthology shed new light on historical, theoretical and empirical issues pertaining to the documentary film, in order to better comprehend the significant transformations of the form in colonial, late colonial and immediate post-colonial and postcolonial times in South and South-East Asia. In doing so, this anthology addresses an important gap in the global understanding of documentary discourses, practices, uses and styles. Based upon in-depth essays written by international authorities in the field and cutting-edge doctoral projects, this anthology is the first to encompass different periods, national contexts, subject matter and style in order to address important and also relatively little-known issues in colonial documentary film in the South and South-East Asian regions. This anthology is divided into three main thematic sections, each of which crosses national or geographical boundaries. The first section addresses issues of colonialism, late colonialism and independence. The second section looks at the use of the documentary film by missionaries and Christian evangelists, whilst the third explores the relation between documentary film, nationalism and representation.

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