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ASIAN PERSPECTIVE

Current Issue

Vol. 48, No. 3 SUMMER 2024

Special Session on China’s Rise in Asia: China-Host Country Interactions and Transformations
Guest Editors – Alvin Camba, Guanie Lim, and Victoria Chonn Ching

Special Session Introduction—Strategies and Adaptations to China’s Rise Across Asia
Victoria Chonn Ching, Guanie Lim, and Alvin Camba

The Relational Dynamics of China’s Sharp Power and Korea’s Chordal Triad of Agency
Youngjune Chung

Chinese Financing and Domestic Politics in Sri Lanka—Parallel Evolution across Mid-20th vs 21st Century Episodes of Bilateral Interactions
Umesh Moramudali and Thilina Panduwawala

Crafting Bhutan-China Ties: Small State Agency in Emergent Diplomatic Relations
Passang Dorji and Nicholas Thomas

The Clashes Within: How Do Thai Government Agencies and NGOs View China’s Rise?
Narut Charoensri

Southeast Asian Civil Society Organizations and Digital Rights in the Age of China’s Digital Silk Road
Thomas P. Narins

BOOK SYMPOSIUM
Book Symposium on Dan Slater and Joseph Wong. 2022. From Development to Democracy: The Transformations of Modern Asia. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Ja Ian Chong
Kevin J. O’Brien
Myungji Yang
Dan Slater and Joseph Wong

The current issue of the journal can be found at https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/53079

FORTHCOMING ISSUE

Vol. 48, No. 4 FALL 2024

China and Gulf Council States
Electric Vehicle Market: A New Arena for Cooperation between China and Gulf Cooperation Council States
Mordechai Chaziza

China and the United States
Living with the Global Hegemon: How the Chinese Public Views the United States
Yida Zhai

US-China Relations in Retrospect: Revisiting the Debate on Realists, Liberals, and Constructivists
Brian C.H. Fong

Vietnam-China Relations
Dualism in Vietnam-China Relations:
Vietnam’s Diplomatic Interactions with Chinese Envoys from the 10th to the 19th Century
Nguyen Thi My Hanh

Security Policy in Asia
Role and Threat: An Assessment of Australia’s South China Sea Policy Amid Great Power Rivalry
Shuqi Wang

Why Change Prevails over Continuity?
Critical Junctures, Motivations, Cognitions, and Temporals in Japanese Security Policy Tradition
Sam-Sang Jo

The Two Koreas
Why Did Kim Jong-un Delete Unification? Issues and Implications of
North Korea’s Position on ‘Hostile Relations Between Two States’
Kap-sik Kim

BOOK SYMPOSIUM
Book Symposium on Sumit Ganguly, Manjeet S Pardesi, and William R Thompson. 2023. The Sino-Indian Rivalry: Implications for the Global Order. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Manoj Joshi
Jingdong Yuan
Mahesh Shankar
Sumit Ganguly, Manjeet S. Pardesi, and William R. Thompson

Current and back issues of the journal can be found at https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/733

Special Session Introduction—Strategies and Adaptations to China’s Rise Across Asia

This special session continues the discussion on China-host country interactions. In the special session on “China’s Rise in Asia: China-Host Country Interactions and Transformations,” published in the Fall 2023 issue of Asian Perspective, we examined how host country actors in South and Southeast Asia respond differently to Chinese actors, outlining diverse bureaucratic strategies to negotiate with Chinese firms, policy banks, or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. These same host country actors also face domestic tensions and challenges, influencing the processes and outcomes of choosing Chinese projects or the mode of Chinese financing. The current set of papers explores the complexity of Chinese power and the ... Read More

The Relational Dynamics of China’s Sharp Power and Korea’s Chordal Triad of Agency

The open, rules-based global order is experiencing strain due to the ascendance of China and its various elements of national power. China’s global expansion, aimed at influencing behavior, along with its array of tools to shape identity and interests, is overshadowing collective actions for multilateralism and shared governance. In this emerging era, China’s power projections have become increasingly hybrid and intricate, operating within low-intensity settings and gray zone areas, thereby allowing for plausible deniability.Particularly, in recent years, South Korea has increasingly become a target of Chinese diplomatic sanctions, economic reprisals, legal warfare, and military adventurism (Ahn, Choi, and Kweon ... Read More

Chinese Financing and Domestic Politics in Sri Lanka—Parallel Evolution across Mid-20th vs 21st Century Episodes of Bilateral Interactions

Considering Sri Lanka’s 2022 sovereign default, this marks a crucial phase for China-Sri Lanka relationship, given that around 20 percent of public external debt was owed to Chinese creditors at year’s end 2021. Sovereign default was followed by a request for an International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout and debt restructuring negotiations, both of which were heavily influenced by China’s approach. Against this backdrop, Chinese lending to Sri Lanka as a driver of a debt crisis is once more in the limelight.While this phenomenon seems to be a part of an ongoing rivalry of global powers, the 70-year-old China–Sri Lanka bilateral relationship is not new to such controversy and impacts both foreign and domestic ... Read More

Crafting Bhutan-China Ties: Small State Agency in Emergent Diplomatic Relations

The rise of China as a geopolitical and economic power has shaped global and regional architecture. In South Asia, its influence extends from the regional-structural domain into the domestic economy and social realms (Raju 2022). China is now the leading trading partner for every South Asian state. It is a major investor in the region and has upgraded its diplomatic and strategic ties with countries from Pakistan to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Bhutan is no exception. However, China’s ability to hegemonically reshape policy agendas that are beneficial to its interests is constrained by internal dynamics at the state and individual levels. Hence, rather than the emergence of a feared, new hegemon—one able to reshape ... Read More

The Clashes Within: How Do Thai Government Agencies and NGOs View China’s Rise?

The economic and political impacts of China’s rise in Asia are unquestionably significant. International Relations scholars worldwide have endeavored to analyze these impacts, examining how China’s ascent has affected the international order, particularly the regional dynamics in Southeast Asia, from various perspectives (Feng and He 2020; Kokubun and Wang 2004; Xing 2016). Given the complexities of regional economic and political arrangements and the ongoing rivalry between the United States and China, Southeast Asia faces a strategic positioning dilemma. The region’s political and economic diversity, alongside the distinct historical and political contexts of each Southeast Asian country after the Second World ... Read More

Southeast Asian Civil Society Organizations and Digital Rights in the Age of China’s Digital Silk Road

Since 2013, academic and media coverage of China’s political and economic engagement beyond its borders has been dominated by depictions of Chinese state-led infrastructure construction projects, known collectively as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Initially composed of two parts: the Silk Road Economic Belt (land route) and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road (sea route), the BRI encapsulates Beijing’s evolving vision (which some term “grand strategy,” e.g., Struye de Swielande and Orinx 2021) of long-term diplomatic and financial engagement with the world—a vision that has been framed as being guided and managed by Chinese leaders in Beijing. While a recent global decline in BRI-related transportation and ... Read More

Liberalizing in Confidence: From Development to Democracy and Authoritarian-Led Democratization in Asia

Dan Slater and Joseph Wong’s new volume, From Development to Democracy, presents a fascinating—and counterintuitive—claim: not only do autocrats grant democratization, but democratization from authoritarian strength is more stable, effective, and durable. Political liberalization can lock in gains for autocratic elites before domestic popular demands bubble up and a range of exogenous shocks shift this fortuitous calculus. Slater and Wong’s proposition challenges the conventional understanding that democratization occurs when autocrats are forced to concede through weakness. Their position extends and modifies the conceptual insights of developmentalism in explaining economic growth and state strength to ... Read More

Special Session Introduction—Strategies and Adaptations to China’s Rise Across Asia

This special session continues the discussion on China-host country interactions. In the special session on “China’s Rise in Asia: China-Host Country Interactions and Transformations,” published in the Fall 2023 issue of Asian Perspective, we examined how host country actors in South and Southeast Asia respond differently to Chinese actors, outlining diverse bureaucratic strategies to negotiate with Chinese firms, policy banks, or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. These same host country actors also face domestic tensions and challenges, influencing the processes and outcomes of choosing Chinese projects or the mode of Chinese financing. The current set of papers explores the complexity of Chinese power and the ... Read More

The Relational Dynamics of China’s Sharp Power and Korea’s Chordal Triad of Agency

The open, rules-based global order is experiencing strain due to the ascendance of China and its various elements of national power. China’s global expansion, aimed at influencing behavior, along with its array of tools to shape identity and interests, is overshadowing collective actions for multilateralism and shared governance. In this emerging era, China’s power projections have become increasingly hybrid and intricate, operating within low-intensity settings and gray zone areas, thereby allowing for plausible deniability.Particularly, in recent years, South Korea has increasingly become a target of Chinese diplomatic sanctions, economic reprisals, legal warfare, and military adventurism (Ahn, Choi, and Kweon ... Read More

Chinese Financing and Domestic Politics in Sri Lanka—Parallel Evolution across Mid-20th vs 21st Century Episodes of Bilateral Interactions

Considering Sri Lanka’s 2022 sovereign default, this marks a crucial phase for China-Sri Lanka relationship, given that around 20 percent of public external debt was owed to Chinese creditors at year’s end 2021. Sovereign default was followed by a request for an International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout and debt restructuring negotiations, both of which were heavily influenced by China’s approach. Against this backdrop, Chinese lending to Sri Lanka as a driver of a debt crisis is once more in the limelight.While this phenomenon seems to be a part of an ongoing rivalry of global powers, the 70-year-old China–Sri Lanka bilateral relationship is not new to such controversy and impacts both foreign and domestic ... Read More

Crafting Bhutan-China Ties: Small State Agency in Emergent Diplomatic Relations

The rise of China as a geopolitical and economic power has shaped global and regional architecture. In South Asia, its influence extends from the regional-structural domain into the domestic economy and social realms (Raju 2022). China is now the leading trading partner for every South Asian state. It is a major investor in the region and has upgraded its diplomatic and strategic ties with countries from Pakistan to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Bhutan is no exception. However, China’s ability to hegemonically reshape policy agendas that are beneficial to its interests is constrained by internal dynamics at the state and individual levels. Hence, rather than the emergence of a feared, new hegemon—one able to reshape ... Read More

The Clashes Within: How Do Thai Government Agencies and NGOs View China’s Rise?

The economic and political impacts of China’s rise in Asia are unquestionably significant. International Relations scholars worldwide have endeavored to analyze these impacts, examining how China’s ascent has affected the international order, particularly the regional dynamics in Southeast Asia, from various perspectives (Feng and He 2020; Kokubun and Wang 2004; Xing 2016). Given the complexities of regional economic and political arrangements and the ongoing rivalry between the United States and China, Southeast Asia faces a strategic positioning dilemma. The region’s political and economic diversity, alongside the distinct historical and political contexts of each Southeast Asian country after the Second World ... Read More

Southeast Asian Civil Society Organizations and Digital Rights in the Age of China’s Digital Silk Road

Since 2013, academic and media coverage of China’s political and economic engagement beyond its borders has been dominated by depictions of Chinese state-led infrastructure construction projects, known collectively as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Initially composed of two parts: the Silk Road Economic Belt (land route) and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road (sea route), the BRI encapsulates Beijing’s evolving vision (which some term “grand strategy,” e.g., Struye de Swielande and Orinx 2021) of long-term diplomatic and financial engagement with the world—a vision that has been framed as being guided and managed by Chinese leaders in Beijing. While a recent global decline in BRI-related transportation and ... Read More

Liberalizing in Confidence: From Development to Democracy and Authoritarian-Led Democratization in Asia

Dan Slater and Joseph Wong’s new volume, From Development to Democracy, presents a fascinating—and counterintuitive—claim: not only do autocrats grant democratization, but democratization from authoritarian strength is more stable, effective, and durable. Political liberalization can lock in gains for autocratic elites before domestic popular demands bubble up and a range of exogenous shocks shift this fortuitous calculus. Slater and Wong’s proposition challenges the conventional understanding that democratization occurs when autocrats are forced to concede through weakness. Their position extends and modifies the conceptual insights of developmentalism in explaining economic growth and state strength to ... Read More

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