The relations between ASEAN and China occupy a unique and important position in the foreign relations of the Asia-Pacific region. China and Southeast Asia’s political, strategic and economic importance in the realm of international relations has been transformed by the region’s unprecedented economic growth, unexpected financial crisis, and turbulent political changes. This volume investigates the impacts of global changes and regional challenges confronting the contemporary developments of China–ASEAN relations. Topics include: changes in strategic perceptions, the economic challenges and legal considerations of the China-ASEAN FTA in the context of a multilateral trading system, the role of “East Asia”, non-traditional security issues, prospects of regionalism, China-Taiwan-ASEAN triangular relations, and Malaysia’s and Singapore’s diplomatic engagement with China. It offers authoritative arguments and a rich collection of ideas for policy-makers and interested readers to mull over.

In Taiwan's 18 March 2000 presidential election, the Kuomintang (KMT) government was defeated, for the first time after fifty-five years in power, by the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Chen Shui-bian's election victory has significantly changed and further complicated the political and strategic scenarios across the Taiwan Strait. This book is the first major study to investigate what led to this change, how it has affected cross-strait relations and how China will deal with the new government in Taiwan. The author also provides a detailed reading of U.S. military, economic and political involvement in the region and its strategy for Asia and China. Indications of strategic change under the Bush Administration and the possible impact of 11 September on U.S.-China relations are also examined.

The bilateral trade relationship between China and ASEAN has improved substantially in recent years. Considering China's fantastic economic growth and its increasing role in the world economy, ASEAN countries are more cautious about China's presence. In order to promote mutual understanding, to continuously search for new fields and ways for cooperation, and to find possible approaches to attaining a propitious outcome of the competition, and ways to ameliorate adverse effects of the rivalry, this book examines the trade relations between China and ASEAN that will have great impact on the China-ASEAN relationship as a whole in the future.

This book is a study of the Taiwan issue after the Cold War. It focuses on the changes in Mainland China's Taiwan policy in the period between Lee Teng-hui's 1995 U.S. tour and his "two states" theory in 1999. It discusses why the tension across the Taiwan Strait flared up in 1995 and 1999, and how Mainland China handled, and is going to handle, its relations with Taiwan and the United States in the 21st century.

This volume honours, and reflects on, the life and work of the Australian Indonesianist, Charles A. Coppel. His interests -- reflected in this volume -- are broad, ranging from history, politics, legal issues, and violence against the Chinese, through to culture and religion. The chapters in the volume, contributed by scholars from Australia, Indonesia, Europe, and Singapore, also all reflect a theme, inspired by Charles Coppel’s expression, “remembering, distorting, forgetting”, by which he drew attention to misrepresentations of the Chinese, seeking to locate the realities behind the myths that form the basis for the racism and xenophobia the Chinese have often experienced in Indonesia.

The history of modern Chinese schools in Peninsular Malaysia is a story of conflicts between Chinese domiciled there and different governments that happened or happen to rule the land. Before the days of the Pacific War, the British found the Chinese schools troublesome because of their pro-China political activities. They established measures to control them. When the Japanese ruled the Malay Peninsula, they closed down all the Chinese schools. After the Pacific War, for a decade, the British sought to convert the Chinese schools into English schools. The Chinese schools decoupled themselves from China and survived. A Malay-dominated government of independent Peninsular Malaysia allowed Chinese primary schools to continue, but finally changed many Chinese secondary schools into National Type Secondary Schools using Malay as the main medium of instruction. Those that remained independent, along with Chinese colleges, continued without government assistance. The Chinese community today continues to safeguard its educational institutions to ensure they survive.

This book briefly recounts the history of the establishment and expansion of Christianity in Southeast Asia from the colonial times onwards. With the exception of the Philippines, Christianity has been a minor religion in much of Southeast Asia, albeit one whose followers have sometimes had a disproportionate impact on education and other sectors of society. The author focuses on the current expansion of aggressive evangelical Christian groups in particular, and their prospects for increasing their following in various countries in the region and what the possible implications could be.

What is the relevance of civil society to people empowerment, effective governance, and deepening democracy? This book addresses this question by examining the activities and public participation of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the areas of religion, ethnicity, gender and the environment. Examples are taken from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. State regimes' attempts to co-opt the concept or reject it as alien to "Asian values" have apparently not turned out as expected. This is evident from the fact that many Southeast Asian citizens are inspired by the civil society concept and now engage in public discourse and participation. The experience of civil society in Southeast Asia shows that its impact -- or lack of impact -- on democratization and democracy depends on a variety of factors not only within civil society itself, but also within the state.

This book is the first on the history of the marine fisheries of Southeast Asia. It takes as its central theme the movement of fisheries into new fishing grounds, particularly the diverse ecosystems that make up the seas of Southeast Asia. This process accelerated between the 1950s and 1970s in what the author calls “the great fish race”. Catches soared as the population of the region grew, demand from Japan and North America for shrimps and tuna increased, and fishers adopted more efficient ways of locating, catching, and preserving fish. But the great fish race soon brought about the severe depletion of one fish population after another, while pollution and the destruction of mangroves and coral reefs degraded fish habitats. Today the relentless movement into new fishing grounds has come to an end, for there are no new fishing grounds to exploit. The frontier of fisheries has closed. The challenge now is to exploit the seas in ways that preserve the diversity of marine life while providing the people of the region with a source of food long into the future.

Many cities in the Asia-Pacific region serve as financial centres in their respective national jurisdictions or local areas. Noting that most were engaged in efforts to become premier international financial centres (IFCs) in competition with one another, the Korea National Committee for Pacific Economic Cooperation (KOPEC) convened an international conference in Seoul, Korea in October 2007 to examine the prospects for success for seven such financial centres (Hong Kong, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo and Wellington), weigh the costs and benefits of such competition for local economies as well as the region as a whole, and derive implications for cooperation among the regional governments. The present volume consists of case studies and commentaries presented at the conference as well as the synthesis report, which draws conclusions from those papers and commentaries. One of those conclusions is that, given the power of scale economies as well as the lack of integration of the financial markets in the region, none of the regional financial centres, even Hong Kong, Singapore or Tokyo, considered alone represents a meaningful rival to London or New York, the two existing global financial centres. The synthesis report thus argues for regional cooperation to integrate all those financial centres into an Asia-Pacific IFC network. It further argues that the present global financial crisis presents a major opportunity for regional governments to create such an IFC network that will challenge London and New York in quality as well as quantity of international financial business while helping the latter two overcome the current global crisis. This would open the path towards a stable and resilient Asia-Pacific financial community, with the constituent regional economies no longer vulnerable to the problems of the so-called original sin and double mismatch.