The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic emergency has had a major impact in Asia – from South Asia, through Southeast Asia all the way to North Korea. It has allowed states to further centralize control over economic and social affairs – arguably also for good reasons – and has lent legitimacy to a recrudescence of nationalist and […]
Chapters
The US-Japan Security Alliance – Ready and equipped to deal with China?
In 2021 Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait have made it back into US-Japan joint statements. Tokyo and Washington have talked (more or less) openly and on the record about what to do jointly in the worst-case scenario: a US-Chinese conflict over Taiwan. The quality and scope of Japanese contributions to US-led military operations in a […]
China, United States, COVID-19 and the Long-standing Question of Human Rights: Problems of a dichotomous approach
The paper aims to argue that the conflictual debate on human rights between China and United States is characterized by a dichotomous approach which still reflects a Cold War logic and can have a detrimental impact on the full understanding of social, economic, political processes which are undergoing during our age. The argument has […]
China’s Official Narratives on Xinjiang: Interethnic mingling, economic prosperity and religious terrorism
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The northwest province of Xinjiang in the People’s Republic of China has drawn international attention recently because of state-perpetrated violence towards its non-Han population. This paper examines how Chinese authorities construct their narratives about the Xinjiang issue and justify their actions in the region. The analysis will focus […]
COVID-19 and China’s Global Image
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf With the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, the PRC experienced one of its worst internal and international crises, in economic terms but above all in terms of image and prestige. The COVID-19 pandemic, in fact, came at a critical juncture in both China’s internal and international relations, given […]
The role of South Korea amid US-China Competition
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Due to its crucial strategic position, over the course of history Korea has several times found itself subject to the consequences of great power rivalry, with very negative results. The cases of the conflict between the Chinese Empire and Japan at the end of the 19th century and […]
Democratic backsliding amid the COVID-19 pandemic in India
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic led many analysts to worry about the fate of global democracy, as governments the world over centralised power and enacted emergency legislation. In India, the world’s largest democracy, this prediction has turned out to be accurate. However, this article will argue that […]
The Road to Galwan Valley: An alternative view of India’s relations with China and the US since 2005
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf This article analyses the reasons of the dramatic worsening of the India-China relation which became apparent in the 2020 border crisis, particularly during the confrontation which took place in the Galwan Valley. The analysis is focussed on the historical evolution of the India-China bilateral relations since the beginning […]
The US-China Rivalry in South Asia and Pakistan’s hedging dilemma
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf China’s re-emergence as a great power, and the ensuing competition with the United States over the norms, rules and values underpinning the international order, has signalled the return of great power rivalry in global politics. Asia is at the very heart of these dynamics, as testified by […]
Migration, Borders, and Security Discourses in the time of COVID-19: The case of migration from Bangladesh to India
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Migration has taken place throughout human history and continues to do so in the 21st century. In many recent instances, states that are destination of migration flows framed migration as a security issue, i.e. a threat to their citizens’ livelihood, safety, and cultural identity. Discourses that securitize migration, […]
The Young Abe Kōbō’s Engagement in Post-war Japanese Literary and Artistic Societies
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Abe Kōbō represents a milestone in Japanese literature. He stands as the ideal link between modern and contemporary times, the best embodiment of so-called «advanced modernism», halfway between modernism and postmodernism, together with authors such as Endō Shūsaku, Nakagami Kenji and Ōe Kenzaburō. This article analyses his involvement […]
Chapters
China in 2023: Stimulating Economic Recovery along with Patriotic Education
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2023, the People’s Republic of China witnessed two major significant developments. Firstly, the Chinese Communist Party demonstrated a clear intention to increase Party ideological rectification through important political gatherings, institutional reforms, and the introduction of new laws. This reflected an effort by the Xi Jinping leadership […]
China in 2023: A «Global-Security-Attentive» Foreign Policy
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf This article provides an in-depth analysis of China’s foreign policy in 2023, exploring four dimensions: global security, China-United States relations, China-Russia ties, and China’s «active» approach in the Global South. 2023 witnessed an attempt to depart from China’s historical «non-interference principle», marked by the conceptual redefinition of the […]
Korean peninsula 2023: A year of rising tensions and political polarization
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf After the years of the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2023 both Koreas started a process of domestic and external consolidation and restructuring. This process however had the main effect of increasing tensions and political polarization on the peninsula. After a very close presidential election in South Korea, in […]
Japan 2023: Still walking in Abe Shinzō’s footsteps
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf On the basis of a wide range of critically assessed and triangulated secondary and primary sources, including elite interviews and official documentation often in the original language, this article suggests that Japan’s domestic politics, and also its foreign and security policies, displayed a remarkable degree of continuity […]
Hong Kong 2023: The new Chinese province
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Three years after the implementation of the National Security Law (NSL) in 2020, time is ripe to affirm that the Hong Kong Special Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China (HKSAR) has completed its full integration into the Chinese political and economic system. This article argues […]
Taiwan 2023 and the 2024 Elections: A DPP partial victory after a contested electoral campaign
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The year in review was marked by a year-long electoral campaign for the presidential and legislative elections eventually held on 13 January 2024. The candidate of the Democratic Progressive Party, Vice-President Lai Ching-te, won the presidential race, beating the Kuomintang candidate Hou Yu-ih and the Taiwan People’s […]
The Philippines 2022-2023: A turbulent start for the New Era of Marcos leadership
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf This article provides a two-year analysis of events spanning the country’s leadership transition from the 2022 national elections to the initial year of the new administration. The electoral triumph of Marcos Jr. and Duterte-Carpio’s UniTeam alliance marked the resurgence of the Marcos family and the continuation of […]
Malaysia 2023: A reform agenda overshadowed by identity politics
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2023, public discourse in Malaysia was dominated by identity politics, framed around the imperative of safeguarding Malaysia’s national core. These dynamics obscured the intricate interplay of geographical, socio-demographic and economic marginalization, further polarizing voter preferences across the country. Within this framework, the newly appointed unity government […]
Vietnam 2020-2023: Covid Pandemic Recovery, Unprecedented Leadership Turnover, and Continued Multilateralism
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The years 2020-2023 in Vietnam witnessed three overarching trends. First, on the domestic front, Vietnam succeeded in managing the COVID crisis with overall net economic growth, while witnessing unprecedented change in the character of top political leadership. Second, the period saw the passage of landmark free trade […]
Cambodia 2022-2023: Securing dynastic autocracy
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 2023 was an historic year for Cambodia. Following elections widely deemed not to be fair and free, Prime Minister Hun Sen handed over power to his son Hun Manet. In doing so, he ended his 38-year premiership, and secured the transformation of Cambodia into a dynastic autocracy. […]
Myanmar 2023: New conflicts and coalitions reshape war narrative, challenging an embattled junta
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The crisis in Myanmar continues to eschew easy categorisations or even a simple meta-narrative of the post-coup dynamics. The complexities on the ground, including the fluidity of context-specific alliances and conflict dynamics, have come to encompass an ever-growing number of regions across the country. In 2023, as […]
India 2023: Towards the general elections amid rising social tension
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2023, India’s political parties started preparations ahead of the 2024 general elections. The ruling BJP banked on Narendra Modi’s enduring popularity and his virtual monopoly of India’s political scene. Particularly important was the year-long spectacle of India’s presidency of the G20, which gave the Prime Minister an […]
India 2023: Tactical wins and strategic setbacks in foreign policy?
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf India had a busy and increasingly tumultuous year in foreign policy. New Delhi played host to both the Group of 20 and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, providing opportunities to shape agendas in multiple areas of global governance and international security. It used both presidencies to showcase the […]
Nepal 2020-2023: From the Institutional Crisis to New Political Paths
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The article analyses some of the main events in Nepal between 2020 and 2023 in order to outline the political and economic framework of the Himalayan country during the pandemic and the political-institutional crisis that led to the dissolution of the Communist Party of Nepal and the […]
Sri Lanka 2023: Wickremesinghe’s first six months between economic recovery and political uncertainty
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The country’s effort to emerge from the economic and political crisis characterized the year under review for Sri Lanka. After long negotiations, Colombo managed to reach an agreement with international partners on financial aid, accompanied by a program of profound economic, fiscal and government reforms. These have […]
Pakistan 2023: Multiple crises in the lead-up to the general elections
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The salient events that characterized Pakistan in the period covered in this article (January – December 2023) were the political and economic crises that occurred in the lead-up to the general elections and the postponement of these elections to 2024. Former Prime Minister, Chairman of the Pakistan […]
Afghanistan 2023: Taliban governance and international isolation
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The year under examination was characterised by the Taliban attempts at consolidating control over Afghanistan, following a tumultuous first 18 months in power. Security has overall improved across the country but the equilibrium remains fragile. From a political standpoint, the Taliban have expanded their reach across all […]
Iran 2023: Intensified Focus on the Eastward Strategy and Ongoing Fractures in State-Society Relations
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The Islamic Republic of Iran persists in its ambition to counterbalance the adverse effects of Western sanctions by strengthening ties with «the East» and participating in regional organizations with influential Asian countries as guiding members. A significant shift in Iran’s regional policy occurred with the agreement to […]
Appendix
Appendix
LIST OF THE ASIA MAIOR’S ANNUAL ISSUES With, in brackets, the recommended citation style Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Vol. I Giorgio Borsa e Paolo Beonio-Brocchieri (a cura di), Asia Major. Un mondo che cambia, Ispi/il Mulino, Bologna 1990 (Asia Maior, Vol. I/1990); Vol. II Giorgio Borsa e Paolo Beonio-Brocchieri (a cura di), […]
Special Article
When history rhymes: China’s relations with Russia and the war in Ukraine
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In a recent publication, the renowned expert on Sino-Russian relations, Inge Bekkevold, wrote that in the last century «China has seen Russia as imperialist, a comrade in arms, an enemy and a partner, and is now debating whether it should be an ally». This paper attempts to […]
The return of the ‘Indo-Pacific’
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf This article studies the Indo-Pacific, the warm waters surrounding Asia as a concept in geography in the later part of the 19th century. It shows how the concept was refashioned in geopolitical and geocultural commentary in the earlier part of the 20th century, and then rediscovered […]
Asia Maior Vol. XXI / 2010
Premessa I – I primi vent’anni di Asia Maior: l’eredità politico-culturale di Giorgio Borsa
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Il presente volume di «Asia Maior» è il ventesimo della serie originariamente ideata e voluta da Giorgio Borsa. Non parrà quindi fuori luogo se, quest’anno, il volume stesso si apre con questa premessa dedicata al passato di «Asia Maior» e, quindi, implicitamente, anche al suo futuro. Il modo […]
Ripresa economica, conflitti sociali e tensioni geopolitiche in Asia
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf * Desidero ringraziare Michela Cerimele, Francesca Congiu, Barbara Onnis, Sa- brina Perra e Michelguglielmo Torri per i preziosi consigli e per aver commentato e corretto la prima versione di questo scritto. Ovviamente la responsabilità per ogni rimanente imperfezione o errore è solo mia. 1. La ripresa economica […]
Iran: repressione, sanzioni e stallo sul nucleare
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Il pugno di ferro e la fine delle proteste Il 2009 si era chiuso con la ripresa di nuove proteste antigovernative e con dimostrazioni popolari in occasione dei funerali del grande ayatollah Hoseyn ‘Ali Montazeri, l’ex «delfino» di Khomeyni, che per due decenni aveva rappresentato la […]
Un paese fortemente euroasiatico: il Kazakistan di Nursultan Nazarbayev
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Premessa Pochi paesi al mondo come il Kazakistan sembrano, almeno a prima vista, rispondere meno alla massima napoleonica per cui la politica di un paese sarebbe nella sua geografia. Ancora pochi anni fa, infatti, nulla sembrava predisporre questo immenso territorio così scarsamente antropizzato, la cui popolazione […]
Il Kirghizistan tra crisi dello Stato e normalizzazione della violenza
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Introduzione Il 2010 è stato un anno particolarmente violento per il Kirghizistan, piccola repubblica dell’Asia Centrale post sovietica. Proteste popolari causate dagli aumenti delle tariffe per il metano e per l’energia elettrica ed una coalizione alquanto eterogenea dell’élite hanno portato al secondo cambio di regime in cinque […]
L’Afghanistan nel 2010. La nuova impasse elettorale e i tentativi di riconciliazione nazionale
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Introduzione L’evento principale che ha caratterizzato, sul piano politico, il 2010 in Afghanistan è dato dalle elezioni per il rinnovo della Wolesi Jirga – la camera bassa del parlamento – che si sono svolte il 18 settembre. Nonostante le attese, queste elezioni sono state caratterizzate da problemi […]
Pakistan: un anno nero per Zardari
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Premessa Il periodo in analisi (1 ̊ gennaio – 31 dicembre 2010) è stato caratterizzato da una delle peggiori alluvioni mai verificatesi in Pakistan, che ha innescato una grave crisi umanitaria la cui gestione metteva a dura prova le istituzioni. Le ricadute politiche delle numerose critiche […]
Ripresa economica, conflitti sociali e scandali politici in India
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf * Desidero ringraziare Elisabetta Basile per le critiche da essa fatte alla prima stesura di questo scritto e per i consigli che mi ha dato. Come sempre, sono risultati preziosi. 1. Premessa Nel corso del 2010, l’India è comparsa sulle pagine della stampa internazionale soprattutto in concomitanza con […]
Nepal, la difficile costruzione della nazione: un paese senza costituzione e un Parlamento senza primo ministro
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Premessa Questo articolo esamina la situazione del Nepal dal febbraio 2009 al dicembre 2010. Nonostante la dichiarata intenzione dei maggiori partiti – che dall’aprile 2008 fanno parte dell’assemblea costituente – di scrivere la nuova costituzione per rimpiazzare quella ad interim nel giro di due anni, la scadenza […]
Sri Lanka 2010: l’anno del presidente
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Premessa Il 2010 si è caratterizzato, nello Sri Lanka, per due aspetti principali: il protagonismo del presidente Mahinda Rajapaksa, il cui operato ha dominato la scena politica del paese, e la questione dei crimini di guerra. Al termine del 2009, il presidente Rajapaksa aveva manifestato l’intenzione di […]
Myanmar: spiragli di democrazia?
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Introduzione: un percorso lungo e tortuoso Il biennio 2008-2010 è stato per il Myanmar un periodo di transizione culminato, nel mese di novembre 2010, in due episodi politicamente significativi: le elezioni generali e la liberazione di Aung San Suu Kyi. Le premesse di questi importanti eventi […]
La crisi politica in Thailandia
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Introduzione Dal punto di vista politico, per la Thailandia il 2008 si era chiuso con la nomina a primo ministro di Abhisit Vejiajiva. La discussa elezione è stata resa possibile dal cambio di fronte messo in atto dal Friends of Newin Group, in precedenza parte del […]
La Malaysia fra crisi economica globale e transizione politica interna
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Introduzione Il 2010 è stato un anno di passaggio, economico e politico, per una Malaysia che ha dovuto affrontare la grande crisi economica globale. È un paese emergente che può legittimamente aspirare a diventare una nazione progredita. Ma per riuscirvi, Kuala Lumpur deve avviare ed applicare significative […]
Singapore: successi economici e autoritarismo
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf * Desidero ringraziare Annamaria Baldussi per le critiche e i suggerimenti sempre utili e efficaci. 1. Introduzione Gli avvenimenti verificatisi a Singapore nel corso del 2010 hanno contribuito al rafforzamento della narrazione più diffusa della città-stato, quella cronachistica caratterizzata dalla scansione dei successi materiali in campo economico e […]
Indonesia: in bilico fra aspirazioni internazionali e l’eredità di Suharto
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Il nuovo mandato di Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono Il 20 ottobre 2009 si inaugurava il nuovo mandato del presidente Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, ottenuto con una vittoria netta e che superava anche le pur ottimistiche previsioni della vigilia. I sostenitori del presidente ritenevano che tale successo segnasse l’inizio di […]
Cosa resta a Timor Est?
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Premessa Da quasi nove anni, esattamente dal 20 maggio 2002, riconosciuta dalla comunità internazionale come stato indipendente, la Repubblica Democratica di Timor Est, meglio nota come Timor-Leste, è uno degli stati più poveri del mondo, con il 49,9% della popolazione che vive con meno di 0,88 dollari […]
L’elezione di Benigno Aquino alla presidenza delle Filippine: finalmente una svolta?
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Introduzione Anno importante (per il futuro immediato ma anche per quello più lontano), il 2010, per le Filippine, che il 10 maggio sono state chiamate a eleggere il loro quindicesimo presidente della Repubblica (il sesto da quando è caduta la dittatura di Ferdinando Marcos). Si è trattato […]
Cina: lavoro al centro
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Tra conflitto sociale e conflitti geopolitici Nel corso del 2010 il processo di modernizzazione in atto nella Cina popolare dava l’avvio ad una fase fondamentale che ha avuto come centro nevralgico le questioni legate al mondo del lavoro nel settore industriale [AM 2009, pp. 223-26]. Si è […]
La penisola coreana tra questione successoria e rischio di una nuova guerra
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Introduzione Le vicende che hanno contrassegnato la penisola coreana, nel corso del 2010, hanno ruotato attorno a due avvenimenti «apparentemente» legati l’uno con l’altro. Da un lato, l’avvio della questione successoria a Nord; dall’altro, il rinnovato stato di grave tensione nei rapporti inter-coreani, che alla fine dell’anno […]
Giappone: il declino del gigante?
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Il sorpasso cinese: Japan as number three? Per parafrasare il titolo di un saggio apparso alla fine degli anni Settanta, dal titolo provocatorio (quanto spesso frainteso), «Japan as Number One», il 2010 era l’anno del sorpasso della Cina sul Giappone, in termini di PIL. La notizia, rilanciata […]
Reviews
Modern Erasures: Revolution, the Civilizing Mission, and the Shaping of China’s Past
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Pierre Fuller, Modern Erasures: Revolution, the Civilizing Mission, and the Shaping of China’s Past, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2022, 362 pp. (ISBN9781009026512) Modern Erasures represents the culmination of the extensive research of Pierre Fuller, a prominent scholar whose primary focus has concerned Chinese political cultures, […]
A County in Manchukuo
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Filippo Dornetti, Integrazione politica e società nella Manciuria coloniale: L’Associazione della Concordia nella Contea del Fushun, Milano: Franco Angeli, 2021, 130 pp. (ISBN 978-8-83-514620-9). Manchukuo was the puppet state created in the early 1930s by the Japanese in Manchuria. The head of the state was Puyi, the […]
The politics of famine and relief in india, ca. 1880-1950: an integrated approach
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Joanna Simonow, Ending Famine in India: A Transnational History of Food Aid and Development, ca. 1890-1950, Leiden: Leiden University Press 2023, 286 pp. (ISBN 9789087284046). According to the World Food Programme (WFP), nearly up to 783 million people do not have enough to eat and 47 million […]
On Balancing Histories Large and Small: Modern India and K.M. Panikkar
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Mauro Elli and Rita Paolini, Indian National Identity and Foreign Policy: Re-Evaluating the Career of K.M. Panikkar (1894-1963), Cham: Palgrave Macmilllan, 2023, 270pp. (ISBN 978-3-031-36242-2). Can an individual life speak to larger historical developments? A cursory glance at the bookcase in my office that is devoted to […]
“Rivalry and Reconciliation: Charting the Middle East’s Power Dynamics between Iran and Saudi Arabia”
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Ibrahim Fraihat, Iran and Saudi Arabia: Taming a Chaotic Conflict, Edinburgh University Press, 2020, 248 pp. (ISBN 978-1474466189). Simon Mabon, The Struggle for Supremacy in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia and Iran, Cambridge University Press, 2023, 268 pp. (ISBN 978-1108473361). In 2023, an intriguing development occurred […]
Seeking security and trade in Asia? Obstacles and opportunities for Australia
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Sam Roggeveen, The Echidna Strategy, Australia’s Search for Power and Peace, Collingwood: La Trobe University Press in conjunction with Black Inc., 2023, 1+233pages (ISBN: 978174823279 ebook). Andrew Charlton, Australia’s Pivot to India, Collingwood: Black Inc., 2023, 1+311pages (ISBN: 9781743823316 ebook). Roggeveen’s The Echidna Strategy and Charlton’s Pivot […]
Asia Maior Vol. XXV / 2014
Foreword 2014: «Asia Maior» and its Asia
This short foreword is an introduction both to the «Asia Maior» project – namely a project which has been going on for a quarter of century – and to the contents of the present volume, which is the latest – but, hopefully, not the last – offshoot of this project. At the end of November […]
China in 2014: China and the Pivot to Asia
Introduction Differently from the approach used in the previous essays on China in Asia Maior, concerned especially with domestic politics, we have chosen here to privilege some aspects of China-US relations in order to investigate Chinese domestic politics and political economy through such a prism. The reasons for this preference lie mostly in the growing centrality […]
Japan in 2014: Between a China Question and a China Obsession
Introduction Events in 2014 confirmed the centrality of Prime Minister Abe Shinzō in Japan’s political landscape, in line with the expectation of the previous year’s analysis.[2] Following the landmark Cabinet decision allowing the exercise of the right of collective self-defense, much-coveted by the Prime Minister, and the insistence on expansive monetary and fiscal measures under the […]
Penisola coreana 2014: «ombre» all’interno e «luci» all’esterno
Premessa Il 2014, che avrebbe dovuto rappresentare la definitiva consacrazione della presidente sudcoreana Park Geun-hye, si è invece rivelato come uno spartiacque in negativo per la sua presidenza, complici alcuni disastri nazionali, fra cui la tragedia del traghetto Sewol. In seguito a questi disastri emergevano in maniera ancora più clamorosa radicate pratiche negative: corruzione, collusione […]
Indonesia 2014: Joko Widodo e la sfida all’élite del “new order”
Premessa In un’era di crescenti tensioni geopolitiche a livello internazionale, nel 2014 l’Indonesia affrontava un vasto processo elettorale che, non senza ostacoli, si concludeva in aprile con l’elezione democratica del nuovo presidente della repubblica, Joko Widodo (Jokowi). Per la prima volta, dalla fine del regime di Suharto, acquisiva la carica più importante dello stato una […]
Malaysia 2014: Reforms and challenges in the year of flight MH370
Introduction In 2014, Malaysian politics were largely determined by the general election of the year before, in which Prime Minister Najib Razak’s governing alliance, the Barisan Nasional (National Front, BN), led by Najib Razak’s party, the United Malay National Organization (UMNO, or United Malays National Organisation), finally achieved a majority. Yet despite its victory, the BN faced some serious […]
Cambodia 2014: The continuation of the Hun Sen-Sam Rainsy political duel and the surge in social conflict
Introduction In late 2013 and early 2014, a lengthy series of working class protests broke out in several Cambodian towns and violent clashes with the police were the order of the day. The most serious episode occurred during the demonstration on January 4, 2014, when four protesters were killed, a countless number injured, and 23 […]
Thailandia 2014: nascita di una dittatura nel nome del re
Introduzione La fragile democrazia tailandese nel 2014 ha conosciuto il più triste degli epiloghi. Il 22 maggio l’esercito ha attuato un colpo di stato e ha preso la guida del paese, approfittando del vuoto di potere conseguente alla destituzione del primo ministro, la signora Yngluck Shinawatra, da parte della suprema corte. L’evento del 22 maggio […]
Myanmar 2014: un processo di democratizzazione molto lento ma reale
Introduzione: attesa e stagnazione Dal 2010, anno delle elezioni generali che hanno decretato la svolta riformatrice e il progressivo allontanamento dei militari dal potere assoluto, che detenevano da quasi cinquant’anni, i cambiamenti avvenuti sono stati tali da ridisegnare l’intero assetto politico, sociale, economico del Myanmar. Senza dubbio si è trattato di una svolta che ha […]
Bangladesh 2014: Old Patterns, New Trends
Preface 2014 opened in Bangladesh with the elections, held on 5thJanuary amidst unprecedented political violence which led to the killing of 29 people. The 2014 elections were recorded as the most violent in Bangladesh’s history.[1] Throughout 2014, the government of the re-elected Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina faced several challenges. Firstly, the political crisis, fuelled by […]
India 2014: the annihilation of the congress party and the beginning of the Modi era
Introduction In India, the dominant event in the year 2014 was the 16th general election and its results, namely the resounding victory of the Narendra Modi-led BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) and the catastrophic defeat of the Indian National Congress (hereafter, the Congress). The Congress, which headed the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), in power during the […]
Nepal 2013-14: breaking the political impasse
Introduction In 2014, Nepal was headed towards a resolution of the problems that caused the political and constitutional impasse of 2012 and 2013. The first Constituent Assembly resolved on May 28, 2012, before drafting the new Constitution, to replace the interim Constitution of 2007. This brought the country to a political deadlock. In March 2013, […]
Sri Lanka Sri Lanka 2014: la continuazione del regime autoritario e la crescente insoddisfazione popolare
Introduzione Lo Sri Lanka ha visto, durante il 2014, il perdurare delle dinamiche che hanno caratterizzato lo scenario politico e sociale del paese dalla fine al conflitto civile, nel 2009. In particolare, il supremo potere politico ha continuato ad essere esercitato dal presidente Mahinda Rajapaksa (il cui vero nome è Percy Mahendra Rajapaksa). Eletto presidente […]
Pakistan 2014: Gli attacchi al governo di Sharif e le tensioni con i militari
Dal dialogo con i militanti alla campagna militare nel Waziristan del nord I propositi di dialogo con il TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, alleanza di una dozzina di gruppi militanti operativi in Pakistan), con i quali il nuovo governo di Nawaz Sharif aveva iniziato il proprio mandato nel maggio del 2013, si erano scontrati con l’irrigidimento delle […]
Afghanistan 2014: political transition without democracy?
Introduction In 2014 Afghanistan was dominated by the presidential election that led to the victory of Ashraf Ghani, after two successive terms in office by Hamid Karzai. Despite the ultimate success of the transition, the election has been marred by the same problems of fraud and ballot stuffing that characterised the previous polls. The declaration […]
Kyrgyzstan 2014: The painful march towards the Eurasian Union as the lesser evil?
Introduction Since his victorious presidential campaign back in 2011, Almazbek Sharshenovich Atambayev had pledged that Kyrgyzstan’s foreign policy would be markedly pro-Russian, heralding a break with the small Central Asian republic’s post-independence multi-vector foreign policy. While this policy tous azimuts has eventually tired all foreign partners because of Bishkek’s unrelenting efforts at securing greater revenues in exchange […]
Turkmenistan 2014: Security concerns and unfulfilled diversification of export energy routes
Introduction In 2014 Turkmenistan further enhanced its position in the regional political and economic chessboard, developing relations of cooperation with both Central Asian countries and non-regional countries, mainly interested in the Turkmen gas. Ashgabat’s support to the realization of regional infrastructures of transport – such as the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran railway – represents the main contribution of […]
Recensione: Un viaggiatore italiano dell’800. Dal Borneo al Giappone
Paolo Puddinu (a cura di), Un viaggiatore italiano in Borneo nel 1873, Il Giornale Particolare di Giacomo Bove (Parte I), Regione Piemonte, Provincia di Asti, Astigrafica 2014. Paolo Puddinu (a cura di), Un viaggiatore italiano in Giappone nel 1873, Il Giornale Particolare di Giacomo Bove (Parte II), Ieoka, Sassari, 1999. Il libro curato da Paolo Puddinu, Un viaggiatore […]
Recensione: Burocrazia della miseria: un’etnografia critica dell’incontro tra Stato e cittadino nell’India postcoloniale
Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence and Poverty in India/ Akhil Gupta – Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012, pp. 384 (ISBN: 9780822351108) Red Tape, il nastro rosso che storicamente lega i documenti ufficiali e rimanda alle pratiche amministrative che li producono, è un importante punto d’arrivo nella bibliografia dell’antropologo Akhil Gupta. Accademico indiano, nato a […]
Review: Enlightening Asia: a new perspective on Enlightenment and Violence
Enlightenment and Violence. Modernity and Nation-Making / Tadd Fernée – New Delhi: Sage Publications India, 2014, pp. LXVII/386. Theoretical Ground In the Fernée’s framework, the Enlightenment heritage has to be interpreted as a question in the history of ideas, an “interconnected web spanning debates on nationalism, revolution and post-structuralism”. Starting from some of Bipan Chandra’s comparative reflections […]
Asia Maior Vol. XXVI / 2015
Foreword: Asia Maior in 2015
As has been pointed out in the foreword of the previous Asia Maior volume, Asia – even the portion of it that the Asia Maior think-tank defines as «Asia Maior», namely Asia south of the Caucasus and Siberia and east of Turkey and the Arab countries – is a profoundly diverse area, basically devoid of […]
China 2015: Implementing the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road
The present article sees as the most important political-economic development in China in the year 2015 the fulfilment of the first phase of a gargantuan political-economic project: the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road, known also as the «One Belt, One Road» (OBOR) initiative. This project, launched by the Chinese government in […]
Korean peninsula 2015: one step forward and two steps back
In 2015, in South Korea, President Park Geun-hye’s decline in popularity, which had begun in the previous year, further accelerated. In particular, the outbreak of the MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) crisis between May and June contributed, once again, to show the government’s inability to act quickly and effectively. The already difficult situation worsened in […]
Japan 2015: Confronting East Asia’s Geopolitical Game of Go
This essay focuses on the mounting geopolitical tensions around the South China Sea so as to gauge Japan’s growing assertiveness in foreign and security policy there. It defines regional strategic interaction in 2015 along the lines of a «game of go» (known as go or igo in Japan, and as weiqi in China): China calmed […]
Philippine 2014-2015: Domestic politics and foreign relations, a critical review
This article analyses some of the key issues in Philippine domestic politics and foreign policy during the years 2014 to 2015. The analysis is divided into two main parts. First, the article examines domestic politics from the lens of political corruption, President Aquino’s good governance programme, and electoral politics. Second, the article examines the principal […]
Indonesia 2015: The First Year of the «People’s President»
Joko Widodo’s election in 2014, after a long and harshly contested presidential race, raised great expectations: not beholden to the military and political elites of the Suharto era, Indonesian people considered him a representative of new democratic forces vis-a-vis the deep-seated «New Order» legacy. Accordingly, 2015 was important to see the extent to which these […]
Singapore 2011-2015: A Tale of Two Elections
The electoral authoritarian regime of Singapore has experienced two very different general elections in 2011 and 2015. The first was a watershed election that allowed the opposition to capture the largest number of seats ever, including a group representative constituency, which was once believed to be impossible. It had also fielded the most candidates ever, […]
Malaysia 2015: Najib Razak’s hardest year
In 2015 Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak’s leadership was badly shaken by the eruption of a huge corruption scandal in July. This same scandal contributed to making the Malaysian economic outlook negative, while the national currency fell to an all-time low against the US dollar. This was accompanied by a massive protest movement (Bersih 4.0), […]
Thailand 2015: Anxiety over the royal succession in the post coup 2014
The military staged a coup on 22 May 2014, overthrowing the elected government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. Outwardly, the military justified its political intervention with the classic claim that corruption was the rot of Thai politics and the coup was needed to purify the political domain. At a deeper level however, the military intervened […]
Cambodia 2015: 30 years of Hun Sen’s government and the progressive centralization of power
In 2015 Cambodia celebrated the anniversary of 30 years of Hun Sen’s government. This article argues that this anniversary coincided with a crisis of hegemony of both the leadership and the Hun Sen’s government. During 2015 Hun Sen tempted to face the crisis without a precise strategy. The most important was the so called «culture […]
Vietnam 2014-15: the strengthening of relations between Vietnam and the United States
The strengthening of Vietnam-US relations in recent years has been one of the most interesting traits of the so-called US Pivot to Asia. Such a strengthening needs to be understood at the intersection between geopolitical and geo-economic factors and in triangulation with the rise of China. While in many regards the emerging of Vietnam as […]
Myanmar 2015: Political turning point, economic and social challenges
The year 2015 will be remembered as a watershed in the political evolution of Myanmar. After 5 years of semi-civilian government, the country was allowed to hold free elections for a new national parliament and regional assemblies. In November, the National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Aung San Suu Kyi won by a landslide […]
Bangladesh 2015: The emergence of radical Islam
The main issues that shaped Bangladeshi politics in 2015 were the emergence of radical Islamic terrorism, the continuation of the trial related to the war crimes committed by pro-Pakistan organizations during the 1971 war of independence, the continuation of the Rana Plaza case, and the positive evolution of the bilateral relations with India. It is […]
India 2015: The uncertain record of the Modi government
Narendra Modi’s 2014 election generated enormous expectations in the economic sphere. However, in 2015, on the one hand, Modi was unwilling or unable to push through any «big bang» reforms; on the other hand, jobs generation – one of Modi’s key electoral promises – proceeded at an excruciatingly slow pace. At the macroeconomic level, the […]
Sri Lanka 2015: The downing of a new era?
At the beginning of the year under review, the Opposition common candidate, Maithripala Sirisena, emerged as the winner of the January presidential election. The new Presidency brought with it the promise of a new political phase, characterised by the restoration of both democratic institutions and the rule of law, seriously eroded during the previous ten […]
Pakistan 2015: domestic and foreign policy challenges
In Pakistan, the period under review (January–December 2015) was characterised by the overall stable rule of the Nawaz Sharif-headed government of the PML-N (Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz) of the Prime Minister. The main challenge to the Nawaz Sharif government was the internal militancy. The cruelty of the 2013 attack on an army-run school in Peshawar that […]
Afghanistan 2015: the national unity government at work: reforms, war, and the search for stability
he end of the Karzai era and the establishment of a coalition government were the most important events of 2015 in Afghanistan. After the disputed 2014 presidential election, Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah signed an agreement for the formation of a government of national unity. On this basis, Ghani took office as President, while Abdullah […]
Kyrgyzstan 2015: a country adrift?
In August 2015 Kyrgyzstan completed the accession process to the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). Bishkek now firmly gravitates in Russia’s orbit. In October parliamentary elections returned a six-party national assembly, where the president, Almazbek Atambayev, could count on a strong pro-presidential power base, consisting of the «president’s party», the Social-Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan (SDPK), and […]
Turkmenistan 2015: existing challenges to the permanent neutrality and the strategic development of the multivector energy policy
As the country with the fourth largest natural gas reserves in the world, Turkmenistan is aiming to diversify its energy export routes in order to enhance its strategic role as an energy supplier. In 2015, this central Asian republic paved the way for the implementation of the eastward and westward export corridors, starting the completion […]
Iran 2013-15: in the midst of Change
Iran has gone through great changes in the past two and a half years. After Hassan Rouhani’s election in June 2013, the country has reached a deal with the P5+1 (the permanent five members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany) that promises to bring an end to the twelve-year old dispute over its […]
The other side of the chinese economic miracle: the dilemmas of access to health care in the People’s Republic Of China
Daniele Brombal, Curarsi è difficile. Curarsi è costoso. Storia, politica e istituzioni della sanità cinese, 1978-2013, Roma, Aracne, 2015, 167 pp. (ISBN 9788854883390). Daniele Brombal’s book focuses on an extremely relevant issue – health care in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In some respects, health care can be seen as a litmus test of […]
The development of the most challenging relationship of our times
Dong Wang, The United States and China: A History from the Eighteenth Century to the Present, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013, 377 pp. (ISBN 978-0742557826) The relationship between the United States and China is likely the most studied and analyzed topic of the post-bipolar world. The growing interest towards the Sino-American issue arose since the […]
Asia Maior Vol. XXVII / 2016
Foreword: Asia Maior in 2016
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – The second and final four-year mandate of US President Barack Obama came to an end on Friday 20 January 2017, making of 2016, the year under review in this volume, the concluding one of what can be defined the Obama Era. The end of the Obama era […]
China 2016: Defending the legitimacy of the party-state’s authority*
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – The present article focuses on what seemed to be the main issue at stake in China during the year 2016: the legitimacy of the party-state’s domestic authority.[1] Partystate’s legitimacy was indeed affected by an enduring and worsening economic slowdown and above all by various forms of protests […]
Taiwan 2012-2016: From consolidation to the collapse of cross-strait rapprochement
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – From 2012 to 2016, the relation between Mainland China and Taiwan saw landmark achievements and underwent profound shockwaves. During the second term of President Ma Ying-jeou, China and Taiwan reached the zenith of a process of cross- Strait rapprochement. This process began in 2008, as Ma and […]
Korean Peninsula 2016: The never-ending crisis
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – The year 2016 was characterized by major crises throughout the entire Korean peninsula. The decline in popularity of South Korean president Park Geun-hye further deteriorated after the election for the National Assembly in April, which gave the majority to the opposition parties. The serious scandal in November […]
Japan 2016: Political stability amidst maritime contestation and historical reconciliation*
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – This article assesses the stability of the Abe administration in the face of a rapidly changing international environment. Important displays of historical reconciliation testified to the toning down of Prime Minister Abe Shinz ’s revisionism, thus feeding into international and domestic stability. At the same time, continued […]
The Philippines 2016: Democracy in dispute?
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – President Rodrigo Duterte’s 2016 election was a divisive moment in Philippine politics. The promise to disrupt élite-centric politics and restore national peace and order won him strong popular support throughout the country. His satisfactory track record of turning Davao City from a haven of criminals to the […]
Indonesia 2016: A difficult equilibrium amid global anxiety
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – The year 2016 in Indonesia saw President Joko Widodo consolidate his power after last year’s uncertain start. Domestic policy focused on curbing terrorism linked to the Islamic State (IS), especially following a deadly attack in the capital in January. Nevertheless, the rise of religious intolerance and political […]
Vietnam 2016: The aftermath of the 12th congress, between continuities and changes
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – In the aftermath of the heated January 2016 12th Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), Vietnam seemed face multiple challenges, both at the domestic and at the international level. For what concerns domestic affairs, this paper argues that one major challenge for the newly elected […]
Laos 2016: The 10th congress of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (Lprp) and its domestic and international aftermath
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – The 10th Congress of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP) concluded in January 2016 with a reshuffle of the Politburo. The new leadership confirmed a «steady-as-you-go» policy continuing to base its political legitimacy both on economic growth cum social equity and the fight against the spread of […]
Thailand 2016: The death of King Bhumibol and the deepening of the political crisis
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – A military coup in May 2014 was the last turn in a political crisis that has affected the country since the beginning of the century. As the country grew richer and its society more demanding, a quite liberal constitution had been approved in 1997, leading to a […]
Myanmar 2016: From enthusiasm to disillusionment
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – 2016 was the year when political change finally came to Myanmar. After a fiveyear transition from military rule to a (semi-)civilian government, the two electoral rounds of November 2015 (parliamentary) and March 2016 (presidential) ushered in a new phase of formally – if substantially constrained – democratic […]
Bangladesh 2016: A laboratory for Islamic radicalism
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – In 2016 political violence continued to upset Bangladesh. Radical Islam contin-ued to rage in the country and to disseminate terror: people belonging to ethnic and religious minorities, along with moderate Muslims were brutally killed. The violence escalated in 2016, reaching its apex with the 1 July attack […]
Sri Lanka 2016: Does the new era continue?
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – The year under review witnessed the continuation of the new political phase in Sri Lanka, which began in 2015 with Mahinda Sirisena’s victory at the presidential polls and, later in the year, the electoral victory of the United National Front for Good Governance (UNFGG) led by the […]
India 2016: Reforming the economy and tightening the connection with the US
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – As in 2015, in 2016 India’s political and economic landscape appeared to be dominated by Narendra Modi, the incumbent Prime Minister. Differently from what was the case in 2015, behind the pervasive self-praising rhetoric of the Indian government and the deafening chorus of applause of the bulk […]
Appendix to India 2016 – A brutal and violent year in the Kashmir Valley
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – In 2016, in concomitance with the worsening in the India-Pakistan relations, the situation in the Vale of Kashmir, which is part of the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir, took a turn for the worse. Although the reciprocal Indian and Pakistani claims to the whole of the […]
Pakistan 2016: Economic features
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – This essay analyses the predominant domestic and foreign policy events that occurred in Pakistan in 2016 through the lens provided by the country’s main economic developments. With the aims of decreasing the fiscal deficit/GDP ratio and following the guidelines of the international financing institutions, Pakistan was implementing […]
Afghanistan 2016: Military crisis and contested reforms
Afghanistan’s political and economic scene in 2016 was largely conditioned by the on-going war. The uneasy balance between Afghan National Security Forces and the insurgents has shown a tendency to shift in favour of the latter. US air support has increasingly emerged as the government forces’ only element of military superiority over the Taliban. This […]
Iran 2016: From the Saudi embassy attack to the demise of Rafsanjani
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – The year 2016 was an internal and external test for Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. The February legislative elections represented strong support for both his administration and the nuclear accord with the P5+1 group of nations. But the lack of visible improvements at the economic level, the increasing […]
Kazakhstan 2015-2016: Balancing regime stability amidst local and global challenges
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – Twenty-five years after independence, Kazakhstan is still under the rule of its first President, Nursultan Nazarbayev. The biennium 2015-2016 confirmed the continuity of the process of stabilization of the political system started in the previous years. These were also years of challenges to the stability of Nazarbayev’s […]
How public opinion on the north korean threat has influenced Japanese foreign policy
Seung Hyok Lee, Japanese Society and the Politics of the North Korean Threat, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016, 200 pp. (ISBN 9781442630345) North Korea has been portrayed in various guises in Japanese media, such as a «paradise on earth»; a socialist regime that enforces the unique socialist ideology of Juche; a hermit kingdom isolated […]
The Worlds of Words of the Ibis trilogy by Amitav Ghosh
Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies, London: John Murray, 2008. 471 pp. (ISBN 978-0-7195-6895-4 hb). Amitav Ghosh, River of Smoke, London: John Murray, 2011. 522 pp. (ISBN 978-0-71956-898-5 hb). Amitav Ghosh, Flood of Fire, London: John Murray, 2015. 616 pp. (ISBN 978-0-7195-6900-5 hb). When Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies was published in 2008[1] as the first […]
Reconsidering Tokugawa Japan: Finding Christians where they should Not Be
A Christian Samurai. The Trials of Baba Bunkō. William J. Farge, SJ-Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America, 2016, pp. XXV/300. At least since George Elison’s Deus Destroyed: The Image of Christianity in Early Modern Japan was published by Harvard University Press in 1973, historians of early modern Japan have been inclined to accept Elision’s […]
A (new) revisionist history of early modern China
Evelyn S. Rawski, Early Modern China and Northeast Asia. Cross-border Perspectives, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2015, 339 pp., (ISBN 9781107471528) Early Modern China and Northeast Asia. Cross-border Perspectives represents the culmination of a long research work dedicated to the study of Chinese history through a new perspective that goes beyond national histories, while the […]
Asia Maior Vol. XXVIII / 2017
Foreword: Asia Maior in 2017. The unravelling of the US foreign policy in Asia and its consequences
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In previous years, the authors of the forewords to the Asia Maior volumes have been arguing that the dominant leitmotiv in the present evolution of Asia was the conflict between a declining world hegemon, the US, and a rising challenger, China. In particular, the history of the decline […]
China 2017: Searching for internal and international consent
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf This article argues that the Chinese party-state’s most pressing question in 2017 continued to be its quest for legitimacy. In the period under review the party-state’s main strategic answer to the legitimacy crisis was its effort to strengthen Chinese nationalism and build an ideology based on Chinese exceptionalism. […]
Korean Peninsula 2017: Searching for new balances
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf After the major crises of 2016, the year 2017 on the Korean peninsula was characterised by an attempt to restore stability, both at the domestic and the international level. The social and political crisis that involved President Park Geun-hye in South Korea, which left the country without a […]
Japan 2017: Defending the domestic and international status quo
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The year 2017 proved a transitory testing time for the Abe administration, because the prime minister faced a series of new international and domestic hurdles. While the North Korean crisis dominated Japanese media, China and the US remained Japan’s main strategic concern. Following the US’s withdrawal from the […]
Taiwan 2017: Stalemate on the Strait
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf After a tumultuous 2016, cross-Strait relations between the Republic of China (ROC) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) continued to be tense throughout 2017. The increasing divergence over the issue of national unification between Beijing and Taipei, epitomised by President Tsai Ing-wen’s refusal to acknowledge the 1992 […]
The Philippines 2017: Duterte-led authoritarian populism and its liberal-democratic roots
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte led a phenomenal campaign to win the 2016 national election. During his first two years in power Duterte has become the protagonist and exemplar of a key new development – the social formation of a regime of authoritarian populism. Based on an analysis of […]
Indonesia 2017: Towards illiberal democracy?
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2017, in the third year of Joko «Jokowi» Widodo’s presidency, Indonesia was already preparing for the next general elections, scheduled in April 2019. The country’s political arena saw on the one hand the mobilisation of political Islam, which resulted in the arrest and defeat of Jokowi’s ally, […]
Cambodia 2016-2017: The worsening of social and political conflicts
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In continuity with the previous years, in 2016-2017 the hegemonic crisis of the CPP, the ruling Cambodian party of the authoritarian leader Hun Sen, continued and was epitomised by two main developments: the declining popular consensus, revealed by the June 2017 communal elections, and the government-imposed dissolution of […]
Thailand 2017: Political stability and democratic crisis in the first year of King Vajiralongkorn
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In January 2017 King Maha Vajiralongkorn of the Chakri dynasty, who had ascended the throne only one month earlier, demanded a change to the constitution drafted by the military junta ruling the country since May 2014. This change regarded the expansion of the royal prerogatives, de facto augmenting […]
Myanmar 2017: The Rohingya crisis between radicalisation and ethnic cleansing
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 2017 was Myanmar’s annus horribilis. This essay revisits the 2017 Rohingya crisis and discusses its immediate triggers and background causes. It contends that the latest outbreak of violence should not be seen as a one-off occurrence, but rather be understood as part of a long history of anti-Rohingya […]
Bangladesh 2017: The Rohingya’s carnage
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2017 Bangladesh’s political landscape was dominated by the Rohingya crisis, deflagrated at the end of August in Myanmar, causing 600,000 Rohingyas to flee to Bangladesh. This article provides a short historical background of the Rohingya issue to prove that these people, although of Bengali descent, have been living […]
India 2017: Narendra Modi’s continuing hegemony and his challenge to China
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2017 the situation of Indian democracy deteriorated, as shown by the continuing attacks against Muslims and Christians, and by the intimidation against the opponents of political Hinduism. This intimidation culminated in the assassination of well-known journalist and BJP critic Gauri Lankesh. Meanwhile Narendra Modi, in spite of […]
India 2017: Still no «achhe din» (good days) for the economy
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2017 the Indian economy appeared to be on a declining trend up to Quarter 1 (Q1) 2017-18 (April-June 2017). The data for Q2 of 2017-18 (July-September 2018) – the last available at the closing of the present article – were better, but insufficient to conclude that the […]
Nepal 2015-2017: A post-earthquake constitution and the political struggle
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2015 the young Nepalese republic finally approved a new constitution, but before it could be adopted, its institutions found themselves facing the consequences of a series of devastating earthquakes that hit the country and in particular its capital. The tragedy forced the main political parties to reach […]
Sri Lanka 2017: The uncertain road of the «yahapalayanaya» government
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2017, the Lankan internal situation was a constant cause of difficulty for President Sirisena and the governing coalition. First, the government was challenged by the unexpected political initiative of former President Rajapaksa’s «Joint Opposition». Second, the Tamil communities in the north and the east of the country […]
Pakistan 2017: Vulnerabilities of the emerging market
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In July 2017, following his family’s involvement in the Panama Papers scandal, Nawaz Sharif was disqualified and ousted from the prime ministership by a Supreme Court decision. The ruling party, the PML-N (Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz), appointed the Petroleum and Natural Resources Minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, as […]
Afghanistan 2017: Trump’s «New Strategy», the Af-Pak conundrum, and the crisis of the National Unity Government
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The political evolution in Afghanistan in 2017 was dominated by the release of the US president’s new policy towards the region. Although the strategy was characterised by a substantial continuity with the Obama policy, there were some important changes. The most relevant was the revision of US-Pakistan relations, […]
Iran 2017: From Rouhani’s re-election to the December protests
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The 2017 was a challenging year for the President Hassan Rouhani despite his reelection. The Presidential and Municipal elections in May represented a clear and strong support for his administration and the nuclear deal or famously the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement. But lack of visible […]
Kazakhstan 2017: Institutional stabilisation, nationbuilding, international engagement
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In continuity with previous years, in 2017 Kazakhstan pursued the stabilisation of its political system while still embracing global trends. Domestically, the leadership attempted to consolidate its institutions, possibly in preparation for President Nursultan Nazarbayev´s retirement. A reform of the constitution made over some of the presidential powers […]
Review. Wang Hui’s China in Twentieth Century
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Wang Hui (edited by Saul Thomas), China’s Twentieth Century – Revolution, Retreat and the Road to Equality, London and New York, Verso Books, 2016, 361 pp. (ISBN 9781781689066) Wang Hui is certainly one of the most prominent and well-known scholars in the academic world, and one of the […]
Review. Culture and ideology: The making of the special Thai-American relationship during the Cold War
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Matthew Phillips, Thailand in the Cold War, New York: Routledge, 2016. xiv + 217 pp. ISBN 978-1-138-01416-9. Matthew Phillip’s Thailand in the Cold War is a welcome addition to the growing historiography on the Cold War in Southeast Asia. A key political ally of the United States, […]
Review. Not a community, but a multilateral institution: A Korean perspective on the East Asian International Society
동아시아 국제사회와 동아시아 상상: 한국국제정치사상 연구[Dong-asia Gugjesahoe-wa Dong-asia Sangsang: Hangug-gugje-jeongchi-sasang Yeongu] (Imagining International Society in East Asia: International Political Thought of Korean Intellectuals) /장인성 [Jang, In-Sung] – 서울: 서울대학교출판문화원 (Seoul: Seoul National University Press), 2017, 590 pp. According to In-Sung Jang, the East Asian international society is both real and imagined. This is reflected […]
Review. Media coverage and mediatic strategies of Japanese New Religious Movements
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Erica Baffelli, Media and New Religions in Japan, London/New York: Routledge, 2016, 191 pp. Erica Baffelli introduces the reader to her highly engaging research book on Media and New Religions in Japan by quoting the final sentence from a commercial shown on Shibuya giant video screens related to […]
Review. Global Maoism and the long 1960s as a Turning Point in Asian Studies: the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars in Retrospective
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Fabio Lanza, The End of Concern. Maoist China, Activism and Asian Studies, – Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2017, XII-262 In the last few years, interest in global Maoism and its impact on the West in the 1960s and 1970s has been one facet of the current […]
Review. Another Vision of Pakistan: Islam and Society in a South Asian Environment
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Michel Boivin, Le Pakistan et l’Islam. Anthropologie d’une République Islamique, Paris : Téraèdre, 2015, 223 pp., (ISBN 9782360850648) In comparison with India, Pakistan has received less extensive attention from scholars. In addition to this disadvantage, there has also been the misfortune that a large part of the research […]
Asia Maior Vol. XXIX / 2018
Foreword: Asia Maior in 2018. Caught between Trump’s trade and sanctions war and the internal problems of inequality and exploitation
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The Asia Maior editors, in delineating year after year the historical trends taking shape in Asia, have highlighted with increasing emphasis a phenomenon characterising the current political and economic evolution of that part of the world, and influencing to a greater or lesser extent most Asian countries (as […]
China 2018: bringing the party back into state institutions
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf This article attempts to explain how and why the year 2018 represented a major turning point for Chinese domestic politics, characterized by the transition from a collective authoritarianism to a centralized, repressive and personalistic authoritarian leadership. It analyses the institutionalization and systematic legalization of the centralized Communist party’s […]
China’s foreign policy 2018: implementing the China Dream
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2018, China’s foreign relations were dominated by the centralization of its foreign policy-making, designed to strengthen the hold of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese president himself on the decision-making system. The aim was to create a more efficient system that could better serve the interests […]
Korean peninsula 2018: the calm after the storm
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The year 2018 represented a real turning point for the Korean peninsula. After years of increasing tension related to the North Korean nuclear and missile programme, the diplomatic process begun after Kim Jong Un’s New Year address marked a clear change from the previous decade, with consequences for […]
Japan 2018: Fleshing out the «Free and Open Indo-Pacific» strategic vision
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf This year-in-review essay highlights the Abe administration’s attempts at defining its Free and Open Indo-Pacific grand strategic vision with like-minded parties. It assesses Japan’s engagement with states that have demonstrated active interest in the concept: the United States, Australia, India, France and the United Kingdom. The essay underscores […]
Taiwan 2018: heavy setbacks for the Tsai administration
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Relations between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China remained frozen, as President Tsai Ing-wen continued to refuse Beijing’s diktat to accept the 1992 Consensus as a roadmap for national unification. With no breakthrough in sight, both sides across the Strait remained firmly entrenched in their positions, relying […]
Malaysia 2016-2018: an uncertain and incomplete transformation
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The year 2018 saw a significant transformation in Malaysian domestic politics, with the Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition winning Malaysia’s 14th general election, and a first time loss for the former ruling coalition Barisan Nasional (BN – National front). Even though the incumbent prime minister, Najib Razak had recently […]
Thailand 2018: a country suspended between an illiberal regime and the hope of a democratic transition
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In May 2014 the Thai army seized power from the elected government led by Yingluck Shinawatra. The military coup promised to restore peace and harmony in the country and to allow political elections within one or two years. However, in 2018 Thailand was still under military rule and […]
Vietnam 2017-2018: strengthening the legitimacy of the VCP
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The aim of this article is to analyse the main political processes in Vietnam during the two years 2017-2018. After the reshuffle of the leadership following the 12th Congress of the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP), the new party’s elite worked to strengthen the VCP’s legitimacy to achieve two […]
Myanmar 2018: botched transition and repatriation plan
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The year was defined by the Rohingya crisis, which lingers on and remains unresolved. The agreement signed by the governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh in November 2017 had several aborted starts in 2018. Both governments came under the pressure of China to deal with the repatriation of the […]
Bangladesh 2018: Sheikh Hasina’s triumph
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Bangladesh’s parliamentary elections, held on 30 December 2018, saw Sheikh Hasina’s landslide victory. Hasina’s fourth term and third consecutive mandate was a sign of undisputable continuity. Throughout the year the government continued an intensive anticorruption campaign, started when the Awami League came back to power in 2009. As a […]
India 2018: political uncertainty and economic difficulties
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2018, India’s internal evolution was characterised, at the political level, by two main developments, both a continuation of trends already visible the previous year. The first was the weakening of Modi’s aura of invincibility, epitomised by a string of defeats suffered by the BJP in that year’s […]
India 2018: the resetting of New Delhi’s foreign policy?
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2018, India’s foreign policy was characterised by two opposing trends. The pro-US approach, which had been a distinguishing feature of India’s policy, in particular since the beginning of Narendra Modi’s premiership, continued, at least as far as its military aspect was concerned. However, the growing closeness at […]
Nepal 2018: the communist search for new political and trade routes
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf This article traces the main events of the internal situation and foreign policy of Nepal in 2018, after the electoral victory of the far-left parties and the defeat of the Nepali Congress at the end of 2017 and the consequent birth of the Oli government. The unification of […]
Sri Lanka 2018: the unfinished drama of an island state democracy
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf As in 2017, the political landscape in Sri Lanka in 2018 appeared to be characterised by constant difficulty with democracy. First, through an unexpected landslide electoral victory, the former President Mahinda Rajapaksa was back on the political stage and he was able to challenge the governing coalition and […]
Pakistan 2018: general elections and the government of Imran Khan
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2018, for the third time in Pakistan’s 70 year-long history, a parliament completed its five-year term. For the second time in a row, a transfer of power between elected civilian governments eventuated. For the first time since the establishment of the political party in 1988, a PML-N […]
Afghanistan 2018: parliamentary elections and regional power shifts
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The year 2018 was characterized by parliamentary elections, held on 20 October. While the elections represented an important moment for Afghanistan’s democracy, both the run up and the aftermath were characterized by confusion and insecurity, with the election results still not announced by the end of 2018. The […]
Iran 2018: the year of living dangerously
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Two developments marked the year 2018; the re-imposition of unilateral sanctions by the United States, which under President Donald Trump decided to abandon the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA); and the protests, strikes and economic grievances that seriously affected Iranian society and economy. Both of these events […]
Review. Rethinking the Commune: a Revisionist Take on Maoist Collectivisation
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Joshua Eisenman, Red China’s Green Revolution. Technological Innovation, Institutional Change, and Economic Development Under the Commune, New York: Columbia University Press, 2018, pp. xxxii/436 In this new, incredibly well-researched book, Joshua Eisenman gives us a bold reappraisal of history of the organisation that more than any other embodied […]
The Most Important Aspects of Contemporary Japanese Politics. Building a Bridge Between Academia and the General Public
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Masaru Kohno, Is Science of Politics Possible?, Tokyo: Chuokoron-Shinsha, Inc., 2018, vii/224. In this global age, is it meaningless to write about Japanese politics in the Japanese language? Professor Masaru Kohno firmly answers «no». Being a leading Japanese political scientist, Kohno published many scholarly articles in top-ranked international […]
Reconsidering Japanese Diplomacy During the Cold War: the Case of the Cambodian Conflict
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Andrea Pressello, Japan and the Post-Vietnam Southeast Asia: Japanese Di- plomacy and the Cambodian Conflict, 1978–1993, New York: Routledge, 2018, 264 pages. Based on thorough research of English and Japanese sources, Andrea Pressello’s Japan and the Post-Vietnam Southeast Asia: Japanese Diplomacy and the Cambodian Conflict, 1978–1993 provides a […]
India’s Self, Others, and World View: Explained Through Discourse Theory
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Thorsten Wojczewski, India’s Foreign Policy Discourse and Its Conceptions of World Order: the Quest for Power and Identity, Abingdon: Routledge, 2018, 222 pp. (ISBN 9781138297180). The Republic of India celebrated the 70th anniversary of its independence in 2018, and its 70th Republic in January 2019, commemorating the coming […]
Escaping Thucydides’s Trap: the Fate of US-China Relations According to Graham Allison
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucy- dides’s Trap?, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017. Destined for War by Graham Allison, former dean of Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and advisor to various US administrations, has aroused a lively debate in the […]
A Different Perspective on Kashmir: a People’s Narrative
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Haley Duschinski, Mona Bhan, Ather Zia, Cynthia Mahmood (eds.), Resisting Occupation in Kashmir, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018, 302 pp. (ISBN 9780812249781). The post-1947 history of Kashmir is often exclusively understood as a political and territorial dispute between India and Pakistan. Moreover, following the narrative of «clash […]
Asia Maior Special Issue 2018
Foreword: Traditional and «new» donors in Asia: an introduction
Since the mid-1990s, international development cooperation, including multilateral cooperation, has undergone profound changes. The number of actors (including non-state actors) engaged in development activities has increased; intervention methods and tools have transformed and multiplied (for example, foreign direct investment and remittances of migrant workers have assumed particular importance). In addition, the contribution of the private […]
A historical perspective on South-South co-operation: a view from the UN
The «emerging economies» of the Global South – which include BRICS, some Latino-American, African and South-Eastern countries – have become new international donors or have enhanced their aid policies over the last two decades, shaping a new architecture of international development cooperation. Such change not only refers to the massive increase in the flow […]
The Indian model of South-South cooperation: broader international cooperation in a historical perspective
The paper traces the historical evolution of the development cooperation implemented by India in Africa. It then outlines the map of the main Indian wider cooperation tools. The paper applies a deductive method and underlines that India utilises a singular development cooperation model following her historical, political and cultural specificity. Since Independence, India’s strategic priority […]
China and the development discourse at the United Nations. Multilateralism «with Chinese characteristics»?
Transformations in China’s foreign policy in the last forty years, along with its economic growth, have been the subject of numerous analyses, which have inter alia focused on the Chinese attitude towards international organizations. The interest of international aid scholars has instead turned to the growing activism that China has been showing in this field […]
History of Japanese cooperation in Cambodia beyond realist and idealist approaches
Since 1991, Japanese aid offered to Cambodia has been the most significant in the context of the donor community, contributing to Cambodian conflict resolution, material reconstruction of infrastructures, national reconciliation and democratisation. The Realist school of international relations sustains that cooperation is an instrument of soft power, used by Japan to contain China’s assertiveness in […]
Looking for new forms of cooperation: EU-ASEAN relations
This article aims to analyse relations between the EEC/EU and ASEAN during the 1980s and 1990s. These are examined from a bilateral point of a view and in the larger context of the relations that the European Community developed with Asian countries. While the Cooperation Agreement with ASEAN was only signed in 1980 relations started […]
Asia Maior Vol. XXX / 2019
Foreward. Asia in 2019: The escalation of the US-China contraposition, and the authoritarian involution of Asian societies
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf No meaningful analysis of the continuing political and economic evolution of Asia can avoid focusing on the increasingly evident and increasingly dangerous contraposition between a declining superpower – the US – and a rising one – China. Also, the point must be stressed beyond any possible doubt […]
China 2019: Xi Jinping’s new era and the CPC’s agenda
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2019, China’s domestic politics was characterized by Xi Jinping’s striking consolidation of power. This stabilization involved three important trends. First, institutional events organized through the course of the year were all aimed at fortify a political narrative envisioning Xi Jinping as the one and only leader able […]
China’s Foreign Policy 2019: Xi Jinping’s tireless summit diplomacy amid growing challenges
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The aim of this article is to analyse the developments in Chinese foreign policy in 2019, which can be summarised by two main trends. On the one hand a strong diplomatic activism by the Chinese paramount leader aimed at both deepening the tendencies that had become apparent in […]
Hong Kong 2019: Anatomy of a social mobilisation through the lenses of identity and values
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Our contribution analyses the Anti-Extradition Bill protests in Hong Kong, which constitute the largest mobilisation of people in the Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China so far since the handover in 1997. We examine the dimensions and stakeholders of this protest, arguing that its roots reside in the […]
Japan 2019: Inaugurating a new era?
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The present chapter is the outcome of a joint research effort. The introduction and conclusion were co-authored, part 2 was written by Sebastian Maslow, and parts 3 and 4 were written by Giulio Pugliese. The authors wish to acknowledge the valuable feedback provided by Masashi Murano, Brad Glosserman, […]
Korean peninsula 2019: The year of missed opportunities
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Despite very high expectations for the Korean peninsula, the disappointing outcome of the summit between Kim Jong Un and Trump in Hanoi led to a progressive deterioration of the relations on the peninsula and also in the region. In South Korea, President Moon Jae-in had to struggle with […]
Mongolia 2019: Crisis, obstacles & achievements on the domestic, economic and foreign policy fronts
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf This article analyses the main issues and developments on Mongolia’s domestic, foreign economic and foreign policy agenda in 2019, and concludes that the country’s almost complete dependence on Russia and China in terms of trade and energy is here to stay. On a positive note, the article concludes […]
Taiwan 2019 and the 2020 elections: Tsai Ing-Wen’s Triumph
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Relevant terms and expressions are reported in English followed by a transcription in Chinese characters. Traditional characters are used for terms and statements drawn from Taiwanese sources, while simplified characters are used for terms and statements drawn from Chinese sources. Given the lack of a standardised system for […]
The Philippines 2018-2019: Authoritarian consolidation under Duterte
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Philippine democracy has crumbled under President Rodrigo Duterte. This article reviews the main political and economic developments in the country from 2018 to 2019. It argues that a process of authoritarian consolidation occurred during this period. This is not the result of a sudden breakdown or suppression of […]
Timor-Leste 1945-2019: From an almost forgotten colony to the first democratic nation of the 21st century
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf A different format has been used from that usually adopted in the essays published in this journal. It was considered constructive to offer not only an analysis of the most recent political and economic developments in Timor-Leste, but a historical introduction as well. It is the editors’ view […]
Malaysia 2019: The politics of fear and umno’s renewed relevance
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The Barisan Nasional (BN) opposition coalition led by the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) won four out of five by-election contests in 2019. The relatively short time frame between BN’s by-election wins and its historic electoral defeat in May 2018 convinced UMNO’s leadership that its party recovery strategy […]
Vietnam 2019: Pursuing harmonious labour relations and consolidating its reliable international role
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf I would like to thank Simona Raffo for helping and supporting my work and Michela Cerimele and Pietro Masina for sharing their analysis on Vietnam’s development model and for their advice. Moreover, I would like to thank all the Vietnamese who, during my fieldwork in Vietnam, with their […]
Myanmar 2019: «The Lady and the generals» redux?
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The author is grateful to the anonymous reviewers of the paper for their valuable comments. He would also like to express his gratitude to the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (Research Networking Grant AH/S00405X/1) for its support to research in Myanmar. The year 2019 has been […]
India 2019: The general election and the new Modi wave
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In the first part of 2019 India was shaken by two major political events. In February, a major terrorist strike hit Pulwama, in Jammu and Kashmir, which was followed by airstrikes by the Indian Air Force into Pakistani territory. This episode set the tone for the 2019 general […]
India 2019: Assaulting the world’s largest democracy; building a kingdom of cruelty and fear
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The title has been borrowed from an article of Prem Shankar Jha (‘This Independence Day Was a Grim Reminder of a Nation Running on Empty Promises’, The Wire, 19 August 2019), where Jha decries «the kingdom of lies and fear» that India has become. The seven months […]
India 2019: Foreign policy dilemmas and their domestic roots
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf If the shifting balance of power and the triangular strategic competition between the US, China and Russia were not troubling enough, in 2019 Indian foreign policy had to also contend with the global ramifications of Narendra Modi’s polarising domestic politics. Dwindling power resources – both material and ideational […]
Nepal 2019: Attempts at mediation in domestic and foreign policies
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The article outlines the key issues related to international relations, domestic politics and the economic situation of Nepal in 2019. In the first section, particular emphasis is given to Xi Jinping’s visit in October 2019. A separate paragraph is dedicated to the non-signature of the extradition treaty between […]
Afghanistan 2019: Between peace talks and presidential elections, another year of uncertainty
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Afghanistan in 2019 was characterised by the Presidential elections, held on 28 September, and whose results were announced at the end of December 2019, and by the peace talks between the US and the Taliban. Against such backdrop, the analysis presented in this article traces the evolution of […]
Pakistan 2019: The challenges of the first PTI government
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The 2018 electoral success of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party was based on its commitment to improve economic conditions in Pakistan and the lives of the less advantaged sections of society, and to combat the endemic corruption and cronyism of Pakistan’s political and institutional establishments. Once in power, […]
Kazakhstan 2018-2019: Change and continuity amid economic stagnation
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Stability has been Kazakhstan’s political mantra since the early years of independence from the Soviet Union. Despite an unexpected transition of power in early 2019, the outgoing president continued to play an important role in the institutional structure of the country. Nursultan Nazarbayev, who ruled for three decades […]
Exploring the «underground» of China’s modernity: Coal, science, imperialism and State-making between the end of the Qing dynasty and the early Republic
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Shellen Xiao Wu, Empires of Coal: Fueling China’s Entry into the Modern World Order, 1860-1920, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015. xii + 266 pp. (paperback) (ISBN: 978-0-8047-9284-4). The history of coal has seldom received the attention it deserves beyond the scholarly circle focused on the economic and industrial […]
«Children Of A Lesser God»: A narration Of Southern Chinese Minority Nationalities
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Guo Wu, Narrating Southern Chinese Minority Nationalities. Politics, Disciplines, and Public History, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, 229 pp. (ISBN 978-981-13-6021-3). The issue of national minorities – their classification, their recognition and the definition of their relationship with the central government – is one of the crucial issues of 20th-century […]
Rethinking Think Tanks in Contemporary China
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Silvia Menegazzi, Rethinking Think Tanks in Contemporary China, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, 207 pages (ISBN 978-3-319-57299-4). If you study the Chinese political system, whichever methodological perspective you adopt, you will inevitably come across two long-term crucial issues: one is the complex relation between the State, the Chinese Communist […]
Contested legacies of Chinese communism: Words, concepts and practices from Mao to Xi
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Christian Sorace, Ivan Franceschini, Nicholas Loubere (eds.), Afterlives of Chinese communism. Political concepts from Mao to Xi, Acton: ANU Press and Verso Books, 404 pages, (ISBN 9781788734769). Well before the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the communist leadership was aware of the great importance of propaganda […]
The Italian effort to gain the Chinese market: Reconstructing the history of Italy-China trade relations
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Donatella Strangio, Italy-China Trade Relations: A Historical Perspective, Cham: Springer, 2020, 131 pp. (ISBN: 978-3-030-39083-9). The year 2020 marks an important landmark in relations between Italy and China. It’s the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, which aligns with the Italy-China Year […]
The Eu–Japan partnership in the shadow of China: Natural allies or untapped potential?
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Axel Berkofsky, Christopher W. Hughes, Paul Midford & Marie Sӧderberg, The EU–Japan Partnership in the Shadow of China. The Crisis of Liberalism, Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2019, 266 pp. (ISBN 9780367895013). The EU–Japan Partnership in the Shadow of China represents a very timely and very significant contribution […]
Federalism in India: Questions about state capacity and national policy
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Louise Tillin, Indian Federalism, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019, 184 pp. (ISBN 978-0-19-949561-0). This is an indispensable introduction to the phenomenon of Indian federalism. The drafters of the constitution made no mention of federalism; in the tragic circumstances of partition they preferred an explicitly strong Union. But […]
A colonial monument de-constructed: Majeed on Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Javed Majeed, Nation and Region in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India, London: Routledge, 2018, 230 pp., (ISBN 9780429439223). Javed Majeed, Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India, London: Routledge, 2018, 266 pp., (ISBN 9780429439230). Dubbed by its contemporaries «monumental», G.A. Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India (LSI) […]
Asia Maior Vol. XXXI / 2020
Foreword. Asia in 2020: The COVID-19 pandemic and its impact
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The most important development of 2020 was, without doubt, the pandemic of the Coronavirus disease (henceforth COVID-19). The outbreak began at the end of 2019 and rapidly escalated to become a worldwide phenomenon within the first few months of 2020. The first cases of the novel coronavirus were […]
China 2020: The successful struggle against the COVID-19 pandemic and the Xinjiang question
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The year 2020, more than any other previous year, posed serious questions about the nature of the Chinese state and society and their relations with the world. China was the first global epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic and, in fighting it, demonstrated a highly effective management of the […]
China 2020: A foreign policy characterized by growing resilience, fading responsibility and increasing uncertainty
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2020 Chinese foreign policy had to contend with the global repercussions of the spread of an unprecedented virus causing a global pandemic, the SARS-CoV-2 (commonly known as COVID-19). Suspicions about the Chinese origin of the virus have strongly weakened the image of a responsible country much promoted […]
Korean peninsula 2020: Overcoming the challenges of COVID-19
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The COVID-19 pandemic had disruptive effects on the Korean peninsula, as well as in the rest of the world. Deploying two very different strategies, both Koreas were able to spare their populations from the most tragic consequences in terms of public health. However, the pandemic had important effects […]
Japan 2020: Abe’s well-laid plans go awry
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Like elsewhere, the COVID-19 pandemic caused substantial disruptions in Japan. While generous fiscal spending mitigated the pandemic’s economic fallout, and Japan is poised in 2021 to rebound from its year-on-year 4.8% fall in GDP, there was significant political fallout in 2020. The postponement of the Olympic Games, the […]
Hong Kong 2020: The downfall of «one country two systems»
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In this watershed year the Hong Kong Special Autonomous Region (HKSAR) was fundamentally reshaped by the concatenation of two major events, namely COVID-19 and the roll out of the National Security Law (NSL). While Beijing had already set in train advanced plans for the «second takeover», with mass […]
Taiwan 2020: Crossroads of COVID-19 international politics
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The year 2020 started with President Tsai winning a second term and the DPP obtaining once again a parliamentary majority in the general elections held on 11 January. By the end of the year, Taiwan emerged as one of the few polities able to effectively put the COVID-19 […]
The Philippines 2020: The gamble of the populist leadership
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The year 2020 was an eventful one for the Philippines. Still recovering from the aftermath of the Taal volcano eruption, the country soon faced a public health crisis. Contrary to Duterte’s belief that the new coronavirus (COVID-19) would just die a natural death, the pandemic turned out to […]
Timor-Leste in 2020: Containing the pandemic in a changing political environment
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2020 Timor-Leste became a successful case of managing to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to the early diligent action undertaken by the state authorities, albeit with significant popular resistance to the harsh measures imposed. Following a brief introduction, the second section of this article deals with the […]
Malaysia 2020: Democratic backsliding amid the COVID-19 pandemic
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The pernicious effects of political polarisation and unresolved intra-coalition differences resulted in political party defections that contributed to the fall of the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government and the tenuous position of the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government that replaced it. Domestic politics through much of 2020 was marked by […]
Myanmar 2020: Elections in a pandemic
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The year 2020 in Myanmar was not substantively different from that of so many other countries. The year was dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic, its socio-economic impact and the government’s attempt to cushion its effect and fight against it. The authorities sought to seal off the country from […]
Bangladesh 2019-2020: Issues of democracy, disasters, development
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2019-2020, the Awami League maintained its grasp on power by resorting to repressive measures. Political dissent was silenced through both legal and extrajudicial means. Poor civil rights protection confirmed that negative trends already emerged in previous years worsened further, as the country continued losing its democratic features. […]
India 2020: Under the COVID hammer
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf When the COVID-19 pandemic hit India, its economy was going through a difficult phase. This left the government ill prepared to tackle the pandemic and its economic dislocation. Furthermore, India’s health infrastructure – suffering from decades of under investments – was at serious risk of being rapidly overwhelmed. […]
India 2020: The deepening crisis of democracy
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The following article, focussed on the analysis of the ongoing crisis of Indian democracy in the year 2020, is articulated in two parts. The first, after a synthetic summing up of how the crisis started in 2019, is an overview of the main developments which characterized the struggle […]
India 2020: Confronting China, aligning with the US
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf During 2020, India’s foreign policy was unaffected by the COVID-19 and dominated by two key developments, on whose analysis this article is focussed. One was the turning for the worse of the India-China relation, of which the heating up of the Himalayan border, which saw clashes between the […]
Sri Lanka 2019-2020: Extremism, elections and economic uncertainty at the time of COVID-19
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Sri Lanka in 2019 and 2020 was characterised by Islamist violence and its aftermath, a presidential and general election, and COVID-19. This article traces the internal, economic and foreign policies of Sri Lanka chronologically and thematically across the two years under examination. These policies were deeply interconnected during […]
Pakistan 2020: The PTI government amidst COVID-19 pandemic
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Austerity measures tied to disbursement of the bailout programme that Pakistan agreed upon with the International Monetary Fund in 2019 helped Islamabad progress towards macroeconomic stabilisation. After the COVID-19 outbreak hit the country in February 2020, related disruptions strained economic activity and put pressure on Pakistan’s fiscal position. […]
Afghanistan 2020: The US-Taliban peace deal, intra-Afghan talks and regional implications
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The year 2020 was a landmark year for Afghanistan. The country witnessed the signing of the peace deal between the US and the Taliban as well as the beginning of intra-Afghan negotiations that, for the first time since 2001, brought together representatives from the Taliban and the Government […]
Iran 2019-2020: The double impact of crippling sanctions and the COVID-19 pandemic
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Two main external developments marked the years 2019 and 2020 in Iran: the unilateral sanctions re-imposed by the United States in late 2018 after abandoning the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and the COVID-19 Pandemic that had its first case in Iran in February 2020. The heavy […]
Kazakhstan 2020: Between a rock and a hard place
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf With its society deeply affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and its economy struggling due to low oil prices, 2020 was the year in which Kazakhstan’s government was compelled to continuously adopt emergency measures. This contributed to a looming uncertainty about the country’s ability to cope with the multiple […]
The life and death of indian democracy
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Yogendra Yadav, Making Sense of Indian Democracy, Ranikhet (Uttarakhand, India): Permanent Black, 2020, 422 pp. (ISBN108178245469). The political theorist Sunil Khilnani once remarked that every general election in India sets a new record, as the largest exercise of the popular will in the history of humankind. More people […]
Policy making in India: How two civil service insiders got things done
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Montek Singh Ahluwalia, (2020) Backstage: The Story Behind India’s High Growth Years. New Delhi: Rupa, 2020, xiv+434 pages (ISBN: 978-93-5333-821-3). Ram Sewak Sharma, The Making of Aadhaar: World’s Largest Identity Platform. New Delhi: Rupa (Kindle Edition), 235 pages (ISBN: 978-93-9035-12-6). At first sight these two books make unlikely […]
Japan’s search for a foreign policy path between China and the US
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Victor Teo, Japan’s Arduous Rejuvenation as a Global Power: Democratic Resilience and the US-China Challenge, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, 242 pp. (ISBN 9789811361890). Victor Teo’s Japan’s Arduous Rejuvenation as a Global Power is a study of Japanese foreign relations in the contemporary times that offers a new perspective, […]
The importance of China’s strategic culture in the Korean War
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Li Xiaobing, China’s War in Korea. Strategic Culture and Geopolitics, Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, xvii + 245 pp. (ISBN 9789813296749). The Korean War has customarily represented one of the most studied themes in the historiography of Cold War in the Asian continent. This gargantuan production has articulated in […]
Chinese and US influence in the «Indo-Pacific»
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Bonny Lin et al., Regional Responses to U.S.-China Competition in the Indo-Pacific. Study Overview and Conclusions, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2020, 141 pp. (ISBN 101977405185). In several countries, expanding interactions with China have triggered intense discussions on China’s influence in the economic, political and cultural spheres. While […]
Borders in revolt: Hong Kong youth and contested sovereignty
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Au Loong-Yu, Hong Kong in Revolt: The Protest Movement and the Future of China, London: Pluto Press, 2020, 216 pp. (ISBN 9780745341460). Hong Kong in Revolt is one of several recent book-length studies providing an overview of the 2019 movement. Hong Kong labour activist Au Loong-Yu unfolds the […]
A grand sweep of the history of Sino-Japanese relations
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Teng, Jun, The history of Sino-Japanese cultural exchange. Translated by Wu, Li. Routledge China perspectives, Abingdon: Routledge, 2019, 182 pp. (ISBN 9780367663681). This book is a translation of the author’s Zhong Ri wenhua jiaoliu shi [中日文化交流史], published by the Peking University Press in 2011. It appears in Routledge’s […]
Asia Maior Vol. XXXII / 2021
Yi Gwangsu’s Literary Contribution to Korea’s 1919 March First Movement
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Michael Shin, Korean National Identity under Japanese Colonial Rule: Yi Gwangsu and the March First Movement of 1919, London: Routledge, 2011, 246 pp. In present-day Republic of Korea (ROK), March First is still celebrated as a day to commemorate the Korean people’s most important statement of protest against […]
Foreword Asia Maior in 2021: Pandemic crisis; US-China confrontation; authoritarian involution
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The political and social evolution of Asia Maior1 during the year 2021 was shaped by three main developments: the COVID-19 pandemic; the US-China confrontation; the authoritarian involution of the region. All three developments, far from representing something new, were the continuation of trends which had started before – […]
China 2021: Coping with the resilience dilemma of the Chinese model
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2021 Chinese internal politics were dominated by the domestic economy and the COVID-19 pandemic. The celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) worked well to project the numerous successes of Chinese politics through history. Yet, Beijing’s insistence on the need to rethink the […]
Japan 2021: The Liberal Democratic Party emerges stronger despite domestic tumult
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The COVID-19 pandemic continued to impact the Japanese economy as well as the political fortunes of Japan’s leader in 2021. For the second year in a row, Japan’s Prime Minister was forced to stand down, portending a return to the revolving door of one-year prime ministerships that […]
Korean Peninsula 2021: Managing the crisis and adapting to the new situation
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf After the initial shock caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, during 2021 the two Koreas focused their efforts in managing the crisis and adapting to the changed situation. If, on the one hand, North Korea maintained its strategy of total isolation to protect the country from the spread of […]
Taiwan 2021: Heightened geo-economic relevance amid rising cross-strait tensions*
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Taiwan remained one of the crossroads of international politics in the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Cross-Strait relations with China continued their downward trend, with increasing military tensions in the airspace and waters surrounding the island, leading to speculations of a military takeover. The PLA activism in […]
The Philippines 2021: Populist legacy and looming uncertainties
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The Philippines started 2021 with a temporary relief as the arrival of limited COVID-19 vaccine supplies ushered in the government’s launch of its national inoculation programme. However, the periodic surge of COVID-19 cases exposed the constant inadequacies of the Philippine pandemic response, straining once again the country’s […]
Laos 2017-2021: Revival of the subsistence ethic
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Since 2016, Laos has seen a tightening of social control by the ruling Communist Party. At the same time, socialism has returned as the cornerstone of the official discourse. While some have argued that the socialist discourse only serves the purpose of legitimizing either one-party rule or capitalist […]
Cambodia 2018-2021: From democracy to autocracy
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The years between 2018 and 2021 continued a pattern for Cambodia of a rolling back of democracy, human rights, and civil liberties, and saw the completion of the transition from a multi-party illiberal democracy to a one-party, authoritarian state. As attacks against political opposition increased, and political space […]
Malaysia 2021: A widening political legitimacy crisis
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2021, Malaysia saw the deepening of a political legitimacy deficit as demands for reforms and political change remained largely unattended. The first half of the year was marked by a state of emergency, declared by the government in the face of a new wave of COVID-19 infections. […]
Thailand 2019-2021: Military, monarchy, protests
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 2019-2021 was a peculiar triennium for Thailand. In 2019, the military leaders who had seized power five years earlier with a coup d’état formed a civilian government via a carefully managed general election. Concomitantly, King Maha Vajiralongkorn, on the throne since 2016, underwent his coronation. While the rituals […]
Myanmar 2021: Repression and resistance in a multi-cornered conflict
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The parliamentary elections of November 2020 which were won – once again – in a landslide by the National League for Democracy (NLD) were followed by three months of mounting tensions between the winning party and the Tatmadaw (the armed forces) and its party affiliate. On 1 February […]
Bangladesh 2021: The year of the golden jubilee and the second wave of pandemic
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2021, the pandemic continued inflicting a burdensome disruption on the Bangladeshi economy, weighting heavier on the poor and the new poor. However, in terms of macroeconomic indicators, the economy gave signs of early recovery. Also, Bangladesh was declared ready to officially graduate from Least Developed Country (LDC) […]
India 2021: Politics amid the pandemic
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The most important development of 2021 in India was a devastating second wave of COVID-19 infections that brought the country’s healthcare system to its knees between April and June. While the management of the pandemic in a country like India represented an enormous challenge in itself, the Bharatiya […]
Sri Lanka in 2021: From pandemic emergency to political and economic crisis
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The political evolution in Sri Lanka in 2021 confirmed the negative predictions that had been made in the previous year, both for domestic and foreign policy. Internally, president Rajapaksa’s tendency to centralize power in his own hands, and in those of his family and close supporters continued. The […]
Pakistan 2021: In pursuit of a pivotal role in post-pandemic South Asia
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2020, the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan launched an economic diplomacy project titled Economic Outreach Initiative. It aims to unlock Pakistan’s growth potential and showcase national trade, tourism and foreign investment capacities through a paradigm shift of foreign policy from geopolitics to geoeconomics. The Khan administration […]
Afghanistan 2021: US withdrawal, the Taliban return and regional geopolitics
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Afghanistan in 2021 was characterised by the withdrawal of US troops and by the sudden fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August. After 20 years of war, and US$ 2.3 trillion spent in the conflict, the US was eventually out of Afghanistan and the Taliban back in […]
Iran 2021: The year of transition
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The election of Ebrahim Raisi as the new president of Iran in June has been the most significant development in Iran during 2021. It represented the end of an era -the reformist-pragmatist one- and the beginning of a new one controlled by the conservative establishment. This article analyses […]
Azerbaijan 2021: Towards a new beginning?
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The Fall of 2020 represented a watershed in Azerbaijan’s contemporary history, as a result of the victory in the «44 Days War» over Nagorno-Karabakh against Armenia, on the one hand, and the start of natural gas export to European markets through the EU Southern Gas Corridor, on the […]
The unhappy ending of the «India story»
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Debasish Roy Chowdhury and John Keane, To Kill a Democracy: India’s Passage to Despotism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021, 320 pp. 1. Introduction In their book, Debasish Roy Chowdhury (a journalist) and John Keane (a political scientist) question the widespread conviction that India is the «largest democracy in […]
Continuity and Change in India: Views from below
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf John Harriss, Craig Jeffrey and Trent Brown, India: Continuity and Change in the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020, pp. xv+384. ISBN-13: 978-5095-3970-3; ISBN-13; 5095-3971-0 (pb). This review of social change and persistence in India is a timely study of transitions and attempted transitions. It is by authors […]
An «alternative» reading of the relations between Europe and China during the Cold War
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Janick M. Schaufelbuehl, Marco Weiss & Valeria Zanier (eds.), Europe and China in the Cold War. Exchanges Beyond the Bloc Logic and the Sino-Soviet Split, Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2019, 242 pp. (ISBN: 9789004388123). In the last few years, the relations between Europe and China during the Cold War captured […]
Asia Maior Special Issue 2 / 2022
Foreword: US-China Competition, COVID-19 and Democratic Backsliding in Asia
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic emergency has had a major impact in Asia – from South Asia, through Southeast Asia all the way to North Korea. It has allowed states to further centralize control over economic and social affairs – arguably also for good reasons – and has lent legitimacy to a recrudescence of nationalist and […]
The US-Japan Security Alliance – Ready and equipped to deal with China?
In 2021 Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait have made it back into US-Japan joint statements. Tokyo and Washington have talked (more or less) openly and on the record about what to do jointly in the worst-case scenario: a US-Chinese conflict over Taiwan. The quality and scope of Japanese contributions to US-led military operations in a […]
China, United States, COVID-19 and the Long-standing Question of Human Rights: Problems of a dichotomous approach
The paper aims to argue that the conflictual debate on human rights between China and United States is characterized by a dichotomous approach which still reflects a Cold War logic and can have a detrimental impact on the full understanding of social, economic, political processes which are undergoing during our age. The argument has […]
China’s Official Narratives on Xinjiang: Interethnic mingling, economic prosperity and religious terrorism
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The northwest province of Xinjiang in the People’s Republic of China has drawn international attention recently because of state-perpetrated violence towards its non-Han population. This paper examines how Chinese authorities construct their narratives about the Xinjiang issue and justify their actions in the region. The analysis will focus […]
COVID-19 and China’s Global Image
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf With the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, the PRC experienced one of its worst internal and international crises, in economic terms but above all in terms of image and prestige. The COVID-19 pandemic, in fact, came at a critical juncture in both China’s internal and international relations, given […]
Appendix
LIST OF THE ASIA MAIOR’S ANNUAL ISSUES With, in brackets, the recommended citation style Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Vol. I Giorgio Borsa e Paolo Beonio-Brocchieri (a cura di), Asia Major. Un mondo che cambia, Ispi/il Mulino, Bologna 1990 (Asia Maior, Vol. I/1990); Vol. II Giorgio Borsa e Paolo Beonio-Brocchieri (a cura di), […]
The role of South Korea amid US-China Competition
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Due to its crucial strategic position, over the course of history Korea has several times found itself subject to the consequences of great power rivalry, with very negative results. The cases of the conflict between the Chinese Empire and Japan at the end of the 19th century and […]
Democratic backsliding amid the COVID-19 pandemic in India
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic led many analysts to worry about the fate of global democracy, as governments the world over centralised power and enacted emergency legislation. In India, the world’s largest democracy, this prediction has turned out to be accurate. However, this article will argue that […]
The Road to Galwan Valley: An alternative view of India’s relations with China and the US since 2005
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf This article analyses the reasons of the dramatic worsening of the India-China relation which became apparent in the 2020 border crisis, particularly during the confrontation which took place in the Galwan Valley. The analysis is focussed on the historical evolution of the India-China bilateral relations since the beginning […]
The US-China Rivalry in South Asia and Pakistan’s hedging dilemma
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf China’s re-emergence as a great power, and the ensuing competition with the United States over the norms, rules and values underpinning the international order, has signalled the return of great power rivalry in global politics. Asia is at the very heart of these dynamics, as testified by […]
Migration, Borders, and Security Discourses in the time of COVID-19: The case of migration from Bangladesh to India
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Migration has taken place throughout human history and continues to do so in the 21st century. In many recent instances, states that are destination of migration flows framed migration as a security issue, i.e. a threat to their citizens’ livelihood, safety, and cultural identity. Discourses that securitize migration, […]
The Young Abe Kōbō’s Engagement in Post-war Japanese Literary and Artistic Societies
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Abe Kōbō represents a milestone in Japanese literature. He stands as the ideal link between modern and contemporary times, the best embodiment of so-called «advanced modernism», halfway between modernism and postmodernism, together with authors such as Endō Shūsaku, Nakagami Kenji and Ōe Kenzaburō. This article analyses his involvement […]
Asia Maior Vol. XXXIII / 2022
Foreword Asia in 2022: The consequences of the war in Ukraine, US-China rivalry, democratic decline and popular protests
In introducing the political and economic situation in Asia in the year 2022 one feels like quoting Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr’s well-known aphorism, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, «the more things change, the more they stay the same». In fact, while discussing the Asian situation in 2021, this journal pointed out that it […]
China 2022: The 20th party congress and popular discontent in Xi Jinping’s China
The most significant issue of 2022 in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) held from 16 to 22 October 2022. The outcome was unprecedented: after a decade in office, Xi Jinping was confirmed for a third mandate as the general secretary of the CCP. […]
China 2021-2022: A foreign policy of «re-branding»
In 2021 and 2022, China’s foreign policy had to come to terms with the re-starting of in-person diplomatic exchanges worldwide after the two-year hiatus imposed by COVID-19 mobility restrictions, the US’s China policy under the democratic presidency of President Joe Biden, and, above all, the instability caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. With the […]
Korean peninsula 2022: Stuck between new leadership and old practices* **
The most consequential political event that took place on the peninsula in 2022 was the election of a new president in South Korea. The very narrow victory of the conservative candidate Yoon Suk-yeol marked a clear break with his predecessor Moon Jae-in and returned the image of a very divided country. The division continued throughout […]
Japan 2022: Putin and Abe Shocks thwart Kishida’s enjoyment of three golden years despite major defence overhaul
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the assassination of record-setting former Prime Minister Abe Shinzō impacted heavily on Japan’s domestic politics and international relations. Diplomatically, Tokyo forcefully aligned with its Western partners against Russia’s aggression while making progress in enhancing awareness that the European and Indo-Pacific strategic theatres are politically intertwined. In addition to doubling down […]
Taiwan 2022: Cross-Strait security spirals further down*
Tensions between Beijing and Taipei in 2022 reached their heights since the 1995-1996 Third Strait Crisis. The decision by the outgoing Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi to visit Taiwan in August, few months prior to the momentous 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, was immediately followed by an unprecedented display […]
Hong Kong 2021-2022: A new life in the shadow of China
After the implementation of the National Security Law (NSL) in 2020 the Hong Kong Special Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China (HKSAR) has gone through a period of tremendous changes. This paper argues that the enactment of the NSL has not only imposed a stricter frame on Hong Kong civil society in terms […]
Indonesia 2019-2022: The authoritarian turn as leitmotif of President Jokowi’s second term
Now approaching the last year of his second and last presidential term (2019-2024) Indonesia’s businessman president, Joko Widodo (Jokowi), is becoming increasingly pragmatic in his political objectives. His goal of achieving high economic growth has led him to adopt policies that sacrifice democratic principles for immediate financial gain. At the same time, his cooptation of […]
Timor-Leste 2021-2022: Electoral change and economic reset
The years under review have seen an important political shift stemming from the victory in presidential elections in April 2022 of renown diplomat José Ramos-Horta, himself backed by another veteran, the former guerrilla hero of the resistance, José «Xanana» Gusmão. Coming out of a well-managed yet constricting COVID-19 crisis abetted by highly damaging floods […]
Malaysia 2022: 15th general elections and deepening political polarisation
None of the three main political coalitions in the 15th Malaysian General Elections in 2022 was able to win a simple majority to form the next government. The hung parliament situation ended after the Malaysian King appointed Anwar Ibrahim as prime minister to lead a unity government including Pakatan Harapan (PH), the United Malays […]
Thailand 2022: The «post-pandemic» era
In 2022, Thailand entered a period labelled by state agents as «post-pandemic». Citizens resumed their lives as normal, but discontents for a stagnant political environment and a slow economic recovery intensified. In particular, civil society expressed frustration toward the Constitutional Court for allowing PM Prayuth Chan-ocha to remain in office despite the alleged legal expiry […]
Myanmar 2022: Fragmented sovereignties and the escalation of violence in multiple warscapes
The events that followed the military coup of February 2021, and the violence that ensued throughout 2022 serve as stark reminders that any notion that Myanmar is and operates as a single polity are a fiction, and one that neither captures the complex reality on the ground nor serves to guide policy to contain violence […]
Bangladesh 2022: Challenging post-pandemic times
In 2022, Bangladesh was criticized at the national and international level due to poor protection of civil and political rights. The country experienced spiking inflation, also due to global post-COVID monetary policies, while floods brought again destruction to the northeastern districts. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine contributed to increase the price of certain imports and […]
India 2022: Political realignments in a BJP-dominated system
During 2022 there were three main political developments in India. First, state elections were held in seven states and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won in five of these, confirming its enduring popularity and dominance over the country’s political system. Second, several political parties started to manoeuvre in light of the 2024 general […]
India 2021-2022: Playing against China on different chessboards
This article focusses on the five major developments which characterized Indian international relations in 2021 and 2022. The first of them was the gradual disengagement between Indian and Chinese military forces along the Himalayan undefined border. The second was the launching of an ambitious «vaccine diplomacy» aimed mainly to strengthen India’s influence world-wide, but […]
Sri Lanka 2022: The aragalaya protest movement and the Rajapaksas’ fall from power
The year in Sri Lanka was dominated by a severe economic crisis which led the central bank to declare financial default for the first time in the country’s history. The crisis has generated a large popular movement against President Rajapaksa and the Prime Minister which, after months of massive street protests, led to the […]
Pakistan 2022: The geopolitics of Imran Khan’s fall and the fledgling government of Shehbaz Sharif
In early 2022, opposition parties, led by the Pakistani People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistani Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N), stepped up their attacks on Prime Minister Imran Khan to oust him. Allies of the Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) governmental coalition also expressed dissatisfaction with Khan due to dire financial straits from worsening national economic distress. […]
Afghanistan 2022: Life under the Taliban
2022 was the first full year under Taliban rule. Partly overshadowed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, political and economic developments in Afghanistan received comparatively much less attention than those occurring in the former Soviet space. Nevertheless, Afghanistan witnessed a tumultuous year, amid domestic political adjustments, ethnic power struggles and a dramatic economic and humanitarian […]
Iran 2022: Domestic challenges to state legitimacy and isolation in the global arena
The Islamic Republic of Iran has faced severe domestic and international challenges that have progressively brought the country to the brink of global isolation. The ongoing impasse over nuclear negotiations, due largely to contentious demands from the Iranian side, has only served to exacerbate the negative effects of international sanctions on ordinary Iranian citizens. […]
Armenia 2022: Looking for a way out of the Nagorno-Karabakh impasse
In 2022, the Republic of Armenia struggled with a complex set of challenges and opportunities; a by-product of the precarious path towards a peace agreement with Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, following the 2020 escalation, and from the reverberations of the war in Ukraine. Yerevan faced Baku’s coercive bargaining strategies coupled with Russia’s partial yet […]
Review Article – Narratives of the origins of the Korean war: A review of seven decades
The Armistice that the belligerent forces negotiated to end the Korean War was finalized on 27 July 1953, over seven decades ago. However, there has been no serious discussion since then among the signees – the United States (which signed on behalf of the UN Command), the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and China (The […]
Signals of dialogue: Exploring Sino-Vatican relations
Chu, Cindy Yik-yi, and Paul Philip Mariani, eds. People, Communities, and the Catholic Church in China. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. xix+157 pp. ISBN: 978-981-15-1679-5. On 22 October 2022, the Holy See announced a second two-year extension of the controversial Provisional Agreement with People’s Republic of China (PRC) regarding the appointment of Bishops. The volume People, […]
The end of the great game in Mongolia
Matteo Miele, Mongolian Independence and the British: Geopolitics and Diplomacy in High Asia, 1911-1916, Bristol: E-International Relations, 2022, xv+222 pp. (ISBN: 978-1-910814-64-2). Looking at Mongolia today, we see a country squeezed between two giant neighbors. A fledgling democracy, Mongolia is dependent economically on both Russia and China, and must often tailor its foreign and […]
Korea’s colonial history as seen from abroad
Ku Daeyeol, Korea 1905-1945: From Japanese Colonialism to Liberation and Independence, Kent, CT: Renaissance Books, 2021, 468 pp. (ISBN: 978-1-912961-21-4). The period of Japanese colonial rule over the Korean Peninsula has been covered widely. Ku Daeyeol’s treatment is unique, however, in that he examines the vicissitudes of Korean history between 1905 and 1945 from […]
Recovering the Asian roots of the Philippine revolution
Nicole CuUnjieng Aboitiz, Asian Place, Filipino Nation. A Global Intellectual History of the Philippine Revolution, 1887-1912, New York: Columbia University Press, 2020, 272 pp. (ISBN: 9780231192156). For long, Filipino, Spanish, and US historiographies that dealt with the long Philippine Revolution (1896-1906) did so following national boundaries.1 They generally placed their respective institutions and agents at […]
Laos and the Global Land Rush: Precarious gains and the ongoing strive for state-building
Michael B. Dwyer, Upland geopolitics: Postwar Laos and the Global Land Rush, Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2022, xvii+232 pp. (ISBN: 9780295750491). In James Scott’s enlightening perspective, the uplands of Southeast Asia have long been loci of desertion and opposition to the state. In these natural theaters, characterized by mountainous and forest environments, […]
How the BJP wins: It did not win and then it did
Vinay Sitapati, India Before Modi: How the BJP Came to Power, London: Hurst and Company, 2021, xiv+409 pages (ISBN: 9781787385375). Nalin Mehta, The New BJP: Modi and the Making of the World’s Largest Political Party, Chennai: Westland Non-Fiction, 2022, xxxvi+809 pages (ISBN: 9789391234003). 1. Introduction These books offer timely and complementary insights into the […]
The historian, the colonial past of India, its persistence, and the duty of enquiry
Aditya Mukherjee, Political Economy of Colonial and Post-Colonial India, New Delhi: Primus Books, 2022, pp. 592 (ISBN: 978-93-5572-180-8), Hard-cover price ₹1950; $84.95; £74.95. From many points of view, India’s relationship with colonialism is not a closed chapter in the country’s history. Although British rule over the subcontinent ended 77 years ago, its legacies are still […]
The role of citizenship in the coming of Hindu Rashtra
Anupama Roy, Citizenship Regimes, Law, and Belonging: the CAA and NRC, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022, 270 pp. (ISBN: 978-0-19-285908-2) Since the Indian People’s Party (Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP) gained national power in New Delhi for the first time in 1998, Hindu nationalist organisations have started to transform the Indian republic in mainly two ways: […]
India’s first dictatorship: The emergency, 1975-77
Christophe Jaffrelot & Pratinav Anil, India’s First Dictatorship: The Emergency, 1975-77, London: C. Hurst & Co., 2020, 508 pp. (ISBN: 9781787384026). Historians working on South Asia have long regarded the end of British rule in the Indian subcontinent as a veritable boundary for their research. This caesura has been rapidly dismantled in the last decade […]
Asia Maior Vol. XXXIV / 2023
China in 2023: Stimulating Economic Recovery along with Patriotic Education
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2023, the People’s Republic of China witnessed two major significant developments. Firstly, the Chinese Communist Party demonstrated a clear intention to increase Party ideological rectification through important political gatherings, institutional reforms, and the introduction of new laws. This reflected an effort by the Xi Jinping leadership […]
China in 2023: A «Global-Security-Attentive» Foreign Policy
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf This article provides an in-depth analysis of China’s foreign policy in 2023, exploring four dimensions: global security, China-United States relations, China-Russia ties, and China’s «active» approach in the Global South. 2023 witnessed an attempt to depart from China’s historical «non-interference principle», marked by the conceptual redefinition of the […]
Korean peninsula 2023: A year of rising tensions and political polarization
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf After the years of the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2023 both Koreas started a process of domestic and external consolidation and restructuring. This process however had the main effect of increasing tensions and political polarization on the peninsula. After a very close presidential election in South Korea, in […]
Japan 2023: Still walking in Abe Shinzō’s footsteps
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf On the basis of a wide range of critically assessed and triangulated secondary and primary sources, including elite interviews and official documentation often in the original language, this article suggests that Japan’s domestic politics, and also its foreign and security policies, displayed a remarkable degree of continuity […]
Hong Kong 2023: The new Chinese province
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Three years after the implementation of the National Security Law (NSL) in 2020, time is ripe to affirm that the Hong Kong Special Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China (HKSAR) has completed its full integration into the Chinese political and economic system. This article argues […]
Taiwan 2023 and the 2024 Elections: A DPP partial victory after a contested electoral campaign
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The year in review was marked by a year-long electoral campaign for the presidential and legislative elections eventually held on 13 January 2024. The candidate of the Democratic Progressive Party, Vice-President Lai Ching-te, won the presidential race, beating the Kuomintang candidate Hou Yu-ih and the Taiwan People’s […]
The Philippines 2022-2023: A turbulent start for the New Era of Marcos leadership
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf This article provides a two-year analysis of events spanning the country’s leadership transition from the 2022 national elections to the initial year of the new administration. The electoral triumph of Marcos Jr. and Duterte-Carpio’s UniTeam alliance marked the resurgence of the Marcos family and the continuation of […]
Malaysia 2023: A reform agenda overshadowed by identity politics
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2023, public discourse in Malaysia was dominated by identity politics, framed around the imperative of safeguarding Malaysia’s national core. These dynamics obscured the intricate interplay of geographical, socio-demographic and economic marginalization, further polarizing voter preferences across the country. Within this framework, the newly appointed unity government […]
Vietnam 2020-2023: Covid Pandemic Recovery, Unprecedented Leadership Turnover, and Continued Multilateralism
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The years 2020-2023 in Vietnam witnessed three overarching trends. First, on the domestic front, Vietnam succeeded in managing the COVID crisis with overall net economic growth, while witnessing unprecedented change in the character of top political leadership. Second, the period saw the passage of landmark free trade […]
Cambodia 2022-2023: Securing dynastic autocracy
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 2023 was an historic year for Cambodia. Following elections widely deemed not to be fair and free, Prime Minister Hun Sen handed over power to his son Hun Manet. In doing so, he ended his 38-year premiership, and secured the transformation of Cambodia into a dynastic autocracy. […]
Myanmar 2023: New conflicts and coalitions reshape war narrative, challenging an embattled junta
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The crisis in Myanmar continues to eschew easy categorisations or even a simple meta-narrative of the post-coup dynamics. The complexities on the ground, including the fluidity of context-specific alliances and conflict dynamics, have come to encompass an ever-growing number of regions across the country. In 2023, as […]
India 2023: Towards the general elections amid rising social tension
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2023, India’s political parties started preparations ahead of the 2024 general elections. The ruling BJP banked on Narendra Modi’s enduring popularity and his virtual monopoly of India’s political scene. Particularly important was the year-long spectacle of India’s presidency of the G20, which gave the Prime Minister an […]
India 2023: Tactical wins and strategic setbacks in foreign policy?
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf India had a busy and increasingly tumultuous year in foreign policy. New Delhi played host to both the Group of 20 and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, providing opportunities to shape agendas in multiple areas of global governance and international security. It used both presidencies to showcase the […]
Nepal 2020-2023: From the Institutional Crisis to New Political Paths
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The article analyses some of the main events in Nepal between 2020 and 2023 in order to outline the political and economic framework of the Himalayan country during the pandemic and the political-institutional crisis that led to the dissolution of the Communist Party of Nepal and the […]
Sri Lanka 2023: Wickremesinghe’s first six months between economic recovery and political uncertainty
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The country’s effort to emerge from the economic and political crisis characterized the year under review for Sri Lanka. After long negotiations, Colombo managed to reach an agreement with international partners on financial aid, accompanied by a program of profound economic, fiscal and government reforms. These have […]
Pakistan 2023: Multiple crises in the lead-up to the general elections
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The salient events that characterized Pakistan in the period covered in this article (January – December 2023) were the political and economic crises that occurred in the lead-up to the general elections and the postponement of these elections to 2024. Former Prime Minister, Chairman of the Pakistan […]
Afghanistan 2023: Taliban governance and international isolation
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The year under examination was characterised by the Taliban attempts at consolidating control over Afghanistan, following a tumultuous first 18 months in power. Security has overall improved across the country but the equilibrium remains fragile. From a political standpoint, the Taliban have expanded their reach across all […]
Iran 2023: Intensified Focus on the Eastward Strategy and Ongoing Fractures in State-Society Relations
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The Islamic Republic of Iran persists in its ambition to counterbalance the adverse effects of Western sanctions by strengthening ties with «the East» and participating in regional organizations with influential Asian countries as guiding members. A significant shift in Iran’s regional policy occurred with the agreement to […]
When history rhymes: China’s relations with Russia and the war in Ukraine
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In a recent publication, the renowned expert on Sino-Russian relations, Inge Bekkevold, wrote that in the last century «China has seen Russia as imperialist, a comrade in arms, an enemy and a partner, and is now debating whether it should be an ally». This paper attempts to […]
The return of the ‘Indo-Pacific’
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf This article studies the Indo-Pacific, the warm waters surrounding Asia as a concept in geography in the later part of the 19th century. It shows how the concept was refashioned in geopolitical and geocultural commentary in the earlier part of the 20th century, and then rediscovered […]
Modern Erasures: Revolution, the Civilizing Mission, and the Shaping of China’s Past
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Pierre Fuller, Modern Erasures: Revolution, the Civilizing Mission, and the Shaping of China’s Past, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2022, 362 pp. (ISBN9781009026512) Modern Erasures represents the culmination of the extensive research of Pierre Fuller, a prominent scholar whose primary focus has concerned Chinese political cultures, […]
A County in Manchukuo
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Filippo Dornetti, Integrazione politica e società nella Manciuria coloniale: L’Associazione della Concordia nella Contea del Fushun, Milano: Franco Angeli, 2021, 130 pp. (ISBN 978-8-83-514620-9). Manchukuo was the puppet state created in the early 1930s by the Japanese in Manchuria. The head of the state was Puyi, the […]
The politics of famine and relief in india, ca. 1880-1950: an integrated approach
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Joanna Simonow, Ending Famine in India: A Transnational History of Food Aid and Development, ca. 1890-1950, Leiden: Leiden University Press 2023, 286 pp. (ISBN 9789087284046). According to the World Food Programme (WFP), nearly up to 783 million people do not have enough to eat and 47 million […]
On Balancing Histories Large and Small: Modern India and K.M. Panikkar
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Mauro Elli and Rita Paolini, Indian National Identity and Foreign Policy: Re-Evaluating the Career of K.M. Panikkar (1894-1963), Cham: Palgrave Macmilllan, 2023, 270pp. (ISBN 978-3-031-36242-2). Can an individual life speak to larger historical developments? A cursory glance at the bookcase in my office that is devoted to […]
“Rivalry and Reconciliation: Charting the Middle East’s Power Dynamics between Iran and Saudi Arabia”
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Ibrahim Fraihat, Iran and Saudi Arabia: Taming a Chaotic Conflict, Edinburgh University Press, 2020, 248 pp. (ISBN 978-1474466189). Simon Mabon, The Struggle for Supremacy in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia and Iran, Cambridge University Press, 2023, 268 pp. (ISBN 978-1108473361). In 2023, an intriguing development occurred […]
Seeking security and trade in Asia? Obstacles and opportunities for Australia
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Sam Roggeveen, The Echidna Strategy, Australia’s Search for Power and Peace, Collingwood: La Trobe University Press in conjunction with Black Inc., 2023, 1+233pages (ISBN: 978174823279 ebook). Andrew Charlton, Australia’s Pivot to India, Collingwood: Black Inc., 2023, 1+311pages (ISBN: 9781743823316 ebook). Roggeveen’s The Echidna Strategy and Charlton’s Pivot […]
Chapters
Foreword: Asia Maior in 2015
As has been pointed out in the foreword of the previous Asia Maior volume, Asia – even the portion of it that the Asia Maior think-tank defines as «Asia Maior», namely Asia south of the Caucasus and Siberia and east of Turkey and the Arab countries – is a profoundly diverse area, basically devoid of […]
China 2015: Implementing the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road
The present article sees as the most important political-economic development in China in the year 2015 the fulfilment of the first phase of a gargantuan political-economic project: the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road, known also as the «One Belt, One Road» (OBOR) initiative. This project, launched by the Chinese government in […]
Korean peninsula 2015: one step forward and two steps back
In 2015, in South Korea, President Park Geun-hye’s decline in popularity, which had begun in the previous year, further accelerated. In particular, the outbreak of the MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) crisis between May and June contributed, once again, to show the government’s inability to act quickly and effectively. The already difficult situation worsened in […]
Japan 2015: Confronting East Asia’s Geopolitical Game of Go
This essay focuses on the mounting geopolitical tensions around the South China Sea so as to gauge Japan’s growing assertiveness in foreign and security policy there. It defines regional strategic interaction in 2015 along the lines of a «game of go» (known as go or igo in Japan, and as weiqi in China): China calmed […]
Philippine 2014-2015: Domestic politics and foreign relations, a critical review
This article analyses some of the key issues in Philippine domestic politics and foreign policy during the years 2014 to 2015. The analysis is divided into two main parts. First, the article examines domestic politics from the lens of political corruption, President Aquino’s good governance programme, and electoral politics. Second, the article examines the principal […]
Indonesia 2015: The First Year of the «People’s President»
Joko Widodo’s election in 2014, after a long and harshly contested presidential race, raised great expectations: not beholden to the military and political elites of the Suharto era, Indonesian people considered him a representative of new democratic forces vis-a-vis the deep-seated «New Order» legacy. Accordingly, 2015 was important to see the extent to which these […]
Singapore 2011-2015: A Tale of Two Elections
The electoral authoritarian regime of Singapore has experienced two very different general elections in 2011 and 2015. The first was a watershed election that allowed the opposition to capture the largest number of seats ever, including a group representative constituency, which was once believed to be impossible. It had also fielded the most candidates ever, […]
Malaysia 2015: Najib Razak’s hardest year
In 2015 Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak’s leadership was badly shaken by the eruption of a huge corruption scandal in July. This same scandal contributed to making the Malaysian economic outlook negative, while the national currency fell to an all-time low against the US dollar. This was accompanied by a massive protest movement (Bersih 4.0), […]
Thailand 2015: Anxiety over the royal succession in the post coup 2014
The military staged a coup on 22 May 2014, overthrowing the elected government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. Outwardly, the military justified its political intervention with the classic claim that corruption was the rot of Thai politics and the coup was needed to purify the political domain. At a deeper level however, the military intervened […]
Cambodia 2015: 30 years of Hun Sen’s government and the progressive centralization of power
In 2015 Cambodia celebrated the anniversary of 30 years of Hun Sen’s government. This article argues that this anniversary coincided with a crisis of hegemony of both the leadership and the Hun Sen’s government. During 2015 Hun Sen tempted to face the crisis without a precise strategy. The most important was the so called «culture […]
Vietnam 2014-15: the strengthening of relations between Vietnam and the United States
The strengthening of Vietnam-US relations in recent years has been one of the most interesting traits of the so-called US Pivot to Asia. Such a strengthening needs to be understood at the intersection between geopolitical and geo-economic factors and in triangulation with the rise of China. While in many regards the emerging of Vietnam as […]
Myanmar 2015: Political turning point, economic and social challenges
The year 2015 will be remembered as a watershed in the political evolution of Myanmar. After 5 years of semi-civilian government, the country was allowed to hold free elections for a new national parliament and regional assemblies. In November, the National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Aung San Suu Kyi won by a landslide […]
Bangladesh 2015: The emergence of radical Islam
The main issues that shaped Bangladeshi politics in 2015 were the emergence of radical Islamic terrorism, the continuation of the trial related to the war crimes committed by pro-Pakistan organizations during the 1971 war of independence, the continuation of the Rana Plaza case, and the positive evolution of the bilateral relations with India. It is […]
India 2015: The uncertain record of the Modi government
Narendra Modi’s 2014 election generated enormous expectations in the economic sphere. However, in 2015, on the one hand, Modi was unwilling or unable to push through any «big bang» reforms; on the other hand, jobs generation – one of Modi’s key electoral promises – proceeded at an excruciatingly slow pace. At the macroeconomic level, the […]
Sri Lanka 2015: The downing of a new era?
At the beginning of the year under review, the Opposition common candidate, Maithripala Sirisena, emerged as the winner of the January presidential election. The new Presidency brought with it the promise of a new political phase, characterised by the restoration of both democratic institutions and the rule of law, seriously eroded during the previous ten […]
Pakistan 2015: domestic and foreign policy challenges
In Pakistan, the period under review (January–December 2015) was characterised by the overall stable rule of the Nawaz Sharif-headed government of the PML-N (Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz) of the Prime Minister. The main challenge to the Nawaz Sharif government was the internal militancy. The cruelty of the 2013 attack on an army-run school in Peshawar that […]
Afghanistan 2015: the national unity government at work: reforms, war, and the search for stability
he end of the Karzai era and the establishment of a coalition government were the most important events of 2015 in Afghanistan. After the disputed 2014 presidential election, Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah signed an agreement for the formation of a government of national unity. On this basis, Ghani took office as President, while Abdullah […]
Kyrgyzstan 2015: a country adrift?
In August 2015 Kyrgyzstan completed the accession process to the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). Bishkek now firmly gravitates in Russia’s orbit. In October parliamentary elections returned a six-party national assembly, where the president, Almazbek Atambayev, could count on a strong pro-presidential power base, consisting of the «president’s party», the Social-Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan (SDPK), and […]
Turkmenistan 2015: existing challenges to the permanent neutrality and the strategic development of the multivector energy policy
As the country with the fourth largest natural gas reserves in the world, Turkmenistan is aiming to diversify its energy export routes in order to enhance its strategic role as an energy supplier. In 2015, this central Asian republic paved the way for the implementation of the eastward and westward export corridors, starting the completion […]
Iran 2013-15: in the midst of Change
Iran has gone through great changes in the past two and a half years. After Hassan Rouhani’s election in June 2013, the country has reached a deal with the P5+1 (the permanent five members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany) that promises to bring an end to the twelve-year old dispute over its […]
Chapters
Foreward. Asia in 2019: The escalation of the US-China contraposition, and the authoritarian involution of Asian societies
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf No meaningful analysis of the continuing political and economic evolution of Asia can avoid focusing on the increasingly evident and increasingly dangerous contraposition between a declining superpower – the US – and a rising one – China. Also, the point must be stressed beyond any possible doubt […]
China 2019: Xi Jinping’s new era and the CPC’s agenda
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2019, China’s domestic politics was characterized by Xi Jinping’s striking consolidation of power. This stabilization involved three important trends. First, institutional events organized through the course of the year were all aimed at fortify a political narrative envisioning Xi Jinping as the one and only leader able […]
China’s Foreign Policy 2019: Xi Jinping’s tireless summit diplomacy amid growing challenges
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The aim of this article is to analyse the developments in Chinese foreign policy in 2019, which can be summarised by two main trends. On the one hand a strong diplomatic activism by the Chinese paramount leader aimed at both deepening the tendencies that had become apparent in […]
Hong Kong 2019: Anatomy of a social mobilisation through the lenses of identity and values
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Our contribution analyses the Anti-Extradition Bill protests in Hong Kong, which constitute the largest mobilisation of people in the Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China so far since the handover in 1997. We examine the dimensions and stakeholders of this protest, arguing that its roots reside in the […]
Japan 2019: Inaugurating a new era?
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The present chapter is the outcome of a joint research effort. The introduction and conclusion were co-authored, part 2 was written by Sebastian Maslow, and parts 3 and 4 were written by Giulio Pugliese. The authors wish to acknowledge the valuable feedback provided by Masashi Murano, Brad Glosserman, […]
Korean peninsula 2019: The year of missed opportunities
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Despite very high expectations for the Korean peninsula, the disappointing outcome of the summit between Kim Jong Un and Trump in Hanoi led to a progressive deterioration of the relations on the peninsula and also in the region. In South Korea, President Moon Jae-in had to struggle with […]
Mongolia 2019: Crisis, obstacles & achievements on the domestic, economic and foreign policy fronts
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf This article analyses the main issues and developments on Mongolia’s domestic, foreign economic and foreign policy agenda in 2019, and concludes that the country’s almost complete dependence on Russia and China in terms of trade and energy is here to stay. On a positive note, the article concludes […]
Taiwan 2019 and the 2020 elections: Tsai Ing-Wen’s Triumph
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Relevant terms and expressions are reported in English followed by a transcription in Chinese characters. Traditional characters are used for terms and statements drawn from Taiwanese sources, while simplified characters are used for terms and statements drawn from Chinese sources. Given the lack of a standardised system for […]
The Philippines 2018-2019: Authoritarian consolidation under Duterte
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Philippine democracy has crumbled under President Rodrigo Duterte. This article reviews the main political and economic developments in the country from 2018 to 2019. It argues that a process of authoritarian consolidation occurred during this period. This is not the result of a sudden breakdown or suppression of […]
Timor-Leste 1945-2019: From an almost forgotten colony to the first democratic nation of the 21st century
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf A different format has been used from that usually adopted in the essays published in this journal. It was considered constructive to offer not only an analysis of the most recent political and economic developments in Timor-Leste, but a historical introduction as well. It is the editors’ view […]
Malaysia 2019: The politics of fear and umno’s renewed relevance
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The Barisan Nasional (BN) opposition coalition led by the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) won four out of five by-election contests in 2019. The relatively short time frame between BN’s by-election wins and its historic electoral defeat in May 2018 convinced UMNO’s leadership that its party recovery strategy […]
Vietnam 2019: Pursuing harmonious labour relations and consolidating its reliable international role
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf I would like to thank Simona Raffo for helping and supporting my work and Michela Cerimele and Pietro Masina for sharing their analysis on Vietnam’s development model and for their advice. Moreover, I would like to thank all the Vietnamese who, during my fieldwork in Vietnam, with their […]
Myanmar 2019: «The Lady and the generals» redux?
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The author is grateful to the anonymous reviewers of the paper for their valuable comments. He would also like to express his gratitude to the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (Research Networking Grant AH/S00405X/1) for its support to research in Myanmar. The year 2019 has been […]
India 2019: The general election and the new Modi wave
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In the first part of 2019 India was shaken by two major political events. In February, a major terrorist strike hit Pulwama, in Jammu and Kashmir, which was followed by airstrikes by the Indian Air Force into Pakistani territory. This episode set the tone for the 2019 general […]
India 2019: Assaulting the world’s largest democracy; building a kingdom of cruelty and fear
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The title has been borrowed from an article of Prem Shankar Jha (‘This Independence Day Was a Grim Reminder of a Nation Running on Empty Promises’, The Wire, 19 August 2019), where Jha decries «the kingdom of lies and fear» that India has become. The seven months […]
India 2019: Foreign policy dilemmas and their domestic roots
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf If the shifting balance of power and the triangular strategic competition between the US, China and Russia were not troubling enough, in 2019 Indian foreign policy had to also contend with the global ramifications of Narendra Modi’s polarising domestic politics. Dwindling power resources – both material and ideational […]
Nepal 2019: Attempts at mediation in domestic and foreign policies
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The article outlines the key issues related to international relations, domestic politics and the economic situation of Nepal in 2019. In the first section, particular emphasis is given to Xi Jinping’s visit in October 2019. A separate paragraph is dedicated to the non-signature of the extradition treaty between […]
Afghanistan 2019: Between peace talks and presidential elections, another year of uncertainty
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Afghanistan in 2019 was characterised by the Presidential elections, held on 28 September, and whose results were announced at the end of December 2019, and by the peace talks between the US and the Taliban. Against such backdrop, the analysis presented in this article traces the evolution of […]
Pakistan 2019: The challenges of the first PTI government
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The 2018 electoral success of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party was based on its commitment to improve economic conditions in Pakistan and the lives of the less advantaged sections of society, and to combat the endemic corruption and cronyism of Pakistan’s political and institutional establishments. Once in power, […]
Kazakhstan 2018-2019: Change and continuity amid economic stagnation
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Stability has been Kazakhstan’s political mantra since the early years of independence from the Soviet Union. Despite an unexpected transition of power in early 2019, the outgoing president continued to play an important role in the institutional structure of the country. Nursultan Nazarbayev, who ruled for three decades […]
Chapters
Foreword: Traditional and «new» donors in Asia: an introduction
Since the mid-1990s, international development cooperation, including multilateral cooperation, has undergone profound changes. The number of actors (including non-state actors) engaged in development activities has increased; intervention methods and tools have transformed and multiplied (for example, foreign direct investment and remittances of migrant workers have assumed particular importance). In addition, the contribution of the private […]
A historical perspective on South-South co-operation: a view from the UN
The «emerging economies» of the Global South – which include BRICS, some Latino-American, African and South-Eastern countries – have become new international donors or have enhanced their aid policies over the last two decades, shaping a new architecture of international development cooperation. Such change not only refers to the massive increase in the flow […]
The Indian model of South-South cooperation: broader international cooperation in a historical perspective
The paper traces the historical evolution of the development cooperation implemented by India in Africa. It then outlines the map of the main Indian wider cooperation tools. The paper applies a deductive method and underlines that India utilises a singular development cooperation model following her historical, political and cultural specificity. Since Independence, India’s strategic priority […]
China and the development discourse at the United Nations. Multilateralism «with Chinese characteristics»?
Transformations in China’s foreign policy in the last forty years, along with its economic growth, have been the subject of numerous analyses, which have inter alia focused on the Chinese attitude towards international organizations. The interest of international aid scholars has instead turned to the growing activism that China has been showing in this field […]
History of Japanese cooperation in Cambodia beyond realist and idealist approaches
Since 1991, Japanese aid offered to Cambodia has been the most significant in the context of the donor community, contributing to Cambodian conflict resolution, material reconstruction of infrastructures, national reconciliation and democratisation. The Realist school of international relations sustains that cooperation is an instrument of soft power, used by Japan to contain China’s assertiveness in […]
Looking for new forms of cooperation: EU-ASEAN relations
This article aims to analyse relations between the EEC/EU and ASEAN during the 1980s and 1990s. These are examined from a bilateral point of a view and in the larger context of the relations that the European Community developed with Asian countries. While the Cooperation Agreement with ASEAN was only signed in 1980 relations started […]
Chapters
Foreword: Asia Maior in 2018. Caught between Trump’s trade and sanctions war and the internal problems of inequality and exploitation
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The Asia Maior editors, in delineating year after year the historical trends taking shape in Asia, have highlighted with increasing emphasis a phenomenon characterising the current political and economic evolution of that part of the world, and influencing to a greater or lesser extent most Asian countries (as […]
China 2018: bringing the party back into state institutions
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf This article attempts to explain how and why the year 2018 represented a major turning point for Chinese domestic politics, characterized by the transition from a collective authoritarianism to a centralized, repressive and personalistic authoritarian leadership. It analyses the institutionalization and systematic legalization of the centralized Communist party’s […]
China’s foreign policy 2018: implementing the China Dream
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2018, China’s foreign relations were dominated by the centralization of its foreign policy-making, designed to strengthen the hold of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese president himself on the decision-making system. The aim was to create a more efficient system that could better serve the interests […]
Korean peninsula 2018: the calm after the storm
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The year 2018 represented a real turning point for the Korean peninsula. After years of increasing tension related to the North Korean nuclear and missile programme, the diplomatic process begun after Kim Jong Un’s New Year address marked a clear change from the previous decade, with consequences for […]
Japan 2018: Fleshing out the «Free and Open Indo-Pacific» strategic vision
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf This year-in-review essay highlights the Abe administration’s attempts at defining its Free and Open Indo-Pacific grand strategic vision with like-minded parties. It assesses Japan’s engagement with states that have demonstrated active interest in the concept: the United States, Australia, India, France and the United Kingdom. The essay underscores […]
Taiwan 2018: heavy setbacks for the Tsai administration
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Relations between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China remained frozen, as President Tsai Ing-wen continued to refuse Beijing’s diktat to accept the 1992 Consensus as a roadmap for national unification. With no breakthrough in sight, both sides across the Strait remained firmly entrenched in their positions, relying […]
Malaysia 2016-2018: an uncertain and incomplete transformation
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The year 2018 saw a significant transformation in Malaysian domestic politics, with the Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition winning Malaysia’s 14th general election, and a first time loss for the former ruling coalition Barisan Nasional (BN – National front). Even though the incumbent prime minister, Najib Razak had recently […]
Thailand 2018: a country suspended between an illiberal regime and the hope of a democratic transition
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In May 2014 the Thai army seized power from the elected government led by Yingluck Shinawatra. The military coup promised to restore peace and harmony in the country and to allow political elections within one or two years. However, in 2018 Thailand was still under military rule and […]
Vietnam 2017-2018: strengthening the legitimacy of the VCP
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The aim of this article is to analyse the main political processes in Vietnam during the two years 2017-2018. After the reshuffle of the leadership following the 12th Congress of the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP), the new party’s elite worked to strengthen the VCP’s legitimacy to achieve two […]
Myanmar 2018: botched transition and repatriation plan
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The year was defined by the Rohingya crisis, which lingers on and remains unresolved. The agreement signed by the governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh in November 2017 had several aborted starts in 2018. Both governments came under the pressure of China to deal with the repatriation of the […]
Bangladesh 2018: Sheikh Hasina’s triumph
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Bangladesh’s parliamentary elections, held on 30 December 2018, saw Sheikh Hasina’s landslide victory. Hasina’s fourth term and third consecutive mandate was a sign of undisputable continuity. Throughout the year the government continued an intensive anticorruption campaign, started when the Awami League came back to power in 2009. As a […]
India 2018: political uncertainty and economic difficulties
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2018, India’s internal evolution was characterised, at the political level, by two main developments, both a continuation of trends already visible the previous year. The first was the weakening of Modi’s aura of invincibility, epitomised by a string of defeats suffered by the BJP in that year’s […]
India 2018: the resetting of New Delhi’s foreign policy?
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2018, India’s foreign policy was characterised by two opposing trends. The pro-US approach, which had been a distinguishing feature of India’s policy, in particular since the beginning of Narendra Modi’s premiership, continued, at least as far as its military aspect was concerned. However, the growing closeness at […]
Nepal 2018: the communist search for new political and trade routes
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf This article traces the main events of the internal situation and foreign policy of Nepal in 2018, after the electoral victory of the far-left parties and the defeat of the Nepali Congress at the end of 2017 and the consequent birth of the Oli government. The unification of […]
Sri Lanka 2018: the unfinished drama of an island state democracy
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf As in 2017, the political landscape in Sri Lanka in 2018 appeared to be characterised by constant difficulty with democracy. First, through an unexpected landslide electoral victory, the former President Mahinda Rajapaksa was back on the political stage and he was able to challenge the governing coalition and […]
Pakistan 2018: general elections and the government of Imran Khan
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2018, for the third time in Pakistan’s 70 year-long history, a parliament completed its five-year term. For the second time in a row, a transfer of power between elected civilian governments eventuated. For the first time since the establishment of the political party in 1988, a PML-N […]
Afghanistan 2018: parliamentary elections and regional power shifts
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The year 2018 was characterized by parliamentary elections, held on 20 October. While the elections represented an important moment for Afghanistan’s democracy, both the run up and the aftermath were characterized by confusion and insecurity, with the election results still not announced by the end of 2018. The […]
Iran 2018: the year of living dangerously
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Two developments marked the year 2018; the re-imposition of unilateral sanctions by the United States, which under President Donald Trump decided to abandon the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA); and the protests, strikes and economic grievances that seriously affected Iranian society and economy. Both of these events […]
Chapters
Premessa I – I primi vent’anni di Asia Maior: l’eredità politico-culturale di Giorgio Borsa
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Il presente volume di «Asia Maior» è il ventesimo della serie originariamente ideata e voluta da Giorgio Borsa. Non parrà quindi fuori luogo se, quest’anno, il volume stesso si apre con questa premessa dedicata al passato di «Asia Maior» e, quindi, implicitamente, anche al suo futuro. Il modo […]
Ripresa economica, conflitti sociali e tensioni geopolitiche in Asia
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf * Desidero ringraziare Michela Cerimele, Francesca Congiu, Barbara Onnis, Sa- brina Perra e Michelguglielmo Torri per i preziosi consigli e per aver commentato e corretto la prima versione di questo scritto. Ovviamente la responsabilità per ogni rimanente imperfezione o errore è solo mia. 1. La ripresa economica […]
Iran: repressione, sanzioni e stallo sul nucleare
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Il pugno di ferro e la fine delle proteste Il 2009 si era chiuso con la ripresa di nuove proteste antigovernative e con dimostrazioni popolari in occasione dei funerali del grande ayatollah Hoseyn ‘Ali Montazeri, l’ex «delfino» di Khomeyni, che per due decenni aveva rappresentato la […]
Un paese fortemente euroasiatico: il Kazakistan di Nursultan Nazarbayev
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Premessa Pochi paesi al mondo come il Kazakistan sembrano, almeno a prima vista, rispondere meno alla massima napoleonica per cui la politica di un paese sarebbe nella sua geografia. Ancora pochi anni fa, infatti, nulla sembrava predisporre questo immenso territorio così scarsamente antropizzato, la cui popolazione […]
Il Kirghizistan tra crisi dello Stato e normalizzazione della violenza
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Introduzione Il 2010 è stato un anno particolarmente violento per il Kirghizistan, piccola repubblica dell’Asia Centrale post sovietica. Proteste popolari causate dagli aumenti delle tariffe per il metano e per l’energia elettrica ed una coalizione alquanto eterogenea dell’élite hanno portato al secondo cambio di regime in cinque […]
L’Afghanistan nel 2010. La nuova impasse elettorale e i tentativi di riconciliazione nazionale
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Introduzione L’evento principale che ha caratterizzato, sul piano politico, il 2010 in Afghanistan è dato dalle elezioni per il rinnovo della Wolesi Jirga – la camera bassa del parlamento – che si sono svolte il 18 settembre. Nonostante le attese, queste elezioni sono state caratterizzate da problemi […]
Pakistan: un anno nero per Zardari
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Premessa Il periodo in analisi (1 ̊ gennaio – 31 dicembre 2010) è stato caratterizzato da una delle peggiori alluvioni mai verificatesi in Pakistan, che ha innescato una grave crisi umanitaria la cui gestione metteva a dura prova le istituzioni. Le ricadute politiche delle numerose critiche […]
Ripresa economica, conflitti sociali e scandali politici in India
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf * Desidero ringraziare Elisabetta Basile per le critiche da essa fatte alla prima stesura di questo scritto e per i consigli che mi ha dato. Come sempre, sono risultati preziosi. 1. Premessa Nel corso del 2010, l’India è comparsa sulle pagine della stampa internazionale soprattutto in concomitanza con […]
Nepal, la difficile costruzione della nazione: un paese senza costituzione e un Parlamento senza primo ministro
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Premessa Questo articolo esamina la situazione del Nepal dal febbraio 2009 al dicembre 2010. Nonostante la dichiarata intenzione dei maggiori partiti – che dall’aprile 2008 fanno parte dell’assemblea costituente – di scrivere la nuova costituzione per rimpiazzare quella ad interim nel giro di due anni, la scadenza […]
Sri Lanka 2010: l’anno del presidente
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Premessa Il 2010 si è caratterizzato, nello Sri Lanka, per due aspetti principali: il protagonismo del presidente Mahinda Rajapaksa, il cui operato ha dominato la scena politica del paese, e la questione dei crimini di guerra. Al termine del 2009, il presidente Rajapaksa aveva manifestato l’intenzione di […]
Myanmar: spiragli di democrazia?
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Introduzione: un percorso lungo e tortuoso Il biennio 2008-2010 è stato per il Myanmar un periodo di transizione culminato, nel mese di novembre 2010, in due episodi politicamente significativi: le elezioni generali e la liberazione di Aung San Suu Kyi. Le premesse di questi importanti eventi […]
La crisi politica in Thailandia
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Introduzione Dal punto di vista politico, per la Thailandia il 2008 si era chiuso con la nomina a primo ministro di Abhisit Vejiajiva. La discussa elezione è stata resa possibile dal cambio di fronte messo in atto dal Friends of Newin Group, in precedenza parte del […]
La Malaysia fra crisi economica globale e transizione politica interna
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Introduzione Il 2010 è stato un anno di passaggio, economico e politico, per una Malaysia che ha dovuto affrontare la grande crisi economica globale. È un paese emergente che può legittimamente aspirare a diventare una nazione progredita. Ma per riuscirvi, Kuala Lumpur deve avviare ed applicare significative […]
Singapore: successi economici e autoritarismo
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf * Desidero ringraziare Annamaria Baldussi per le critiche e i suggerimenti sempre utili e efficaci. 1. Introduzione Gli avvenimenti verificatisi a Singapore nel corso del 2010 hanno contribuito al rafforzamento della narrazione più diffusa della città-stato, quella cronachistica caratterizzata dalla scansione dei successi materiali in campo economico e […]
Indonesia: in bilico fra aspirazioni internazionali e l’eredità di Suharto
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Il nuovo mandato di Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono Il 20 ottobre 2009 si inaugurava il nuovo mandato del presidente Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, ottenuto con una vittoria netta e che superava anche le pur ottimistiche previsioni della vigilia. I sostenitori del presidente ritenevano che tale successo segnasse l’inizio di […]
Cosa resta a Timor Est?
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Premessa Da quasi nove anni, esattamente dal 20 maggio 2002, riconosciuta dalla comunità internazionale come stato indipendente, la Repubblica Democratica di Timor Est, meglio nota come Timor-Leste, è uno degli stati più poveri del mondo, con il 49,9% della popolazione che vive con meno di 0,88 dollari […]
L’elezione di Benigno Aquino alla presidenza delle Filippine: finalmente una svolta?
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Introduzione Anno importante (per il futuro immediato ma anche per quello più lontano), il 2010, per le Filippine, che il 10 maggio sono state chiamate a eleggere il loro quindicesimo presidente della Repubblica (il sesto da quando è caduta la dittatura di Ferdinando Marcos). Si è trattato […]
Cina: lavoro al centro
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Tra conflitto sociale e conflitti geopolitici Nel corso del 2010 il processo di modernizzazione in atto nella Cina popolare dava l’avvio ad una fase fondamentale che ha avuto come centro nevralgico le questioni legate al mondo del lavoro nel settore industriale [AM 2009, pp. 223-26]. Si è […]
La penisola coreana tra questione successoria e rischio di una nuova guerra
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Introduzione Le vicende che hanno contrassegnato la penisola coreana, nel corso del 2010, hanno ruotato attorno a due avvenimenti «apparentemente» legati l’uno con l’altro. Da un lato, l’avvio della questione successoria a Nord; dall’altro, il rinnovato stato di grave tensione nei rapporti inter-coreani, che alla fine dell’anno […]
Giappone: il declino del gigante?
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 1. Il sorpasso cinese: Japan as number three? Per parafrasare il titolo di un saggio apparso alla fine degli anni Settanta, dal titolo provocatorio (quanto spesso frainteso), «Japan as Number One», il 2010 era l’anno del sorpasso della Cina sul Giappone, in termini di PIL. La notizia, rilanciata […]
Chapters
Foreword 2014: «Asia Maior» and its Asia
This short foreword is an introduction both to the «Asia Maior» project – namely a project which has been going on for a quarter of century – and to the contents of the present volume, which is the latest – but, hopefully, not the last – offshoot of this project. At the end of November […]
China in 2014: China and the Pivot to Asia
Introduction Differently from the approach used in the previous essays on China in Asia Maior, concerned especially with domestic politics, we have chosen here to privilege some aspects of China-US relations in order to investigate Chinese domestic politics and political economy through such a prism. The reasons for this preference lie mostly in the growing centrality […]
Japan in 2014: Between a China Question and a China Obsession
Introduction Events in 2014 confirmed the centrality of Prime Minister Abe Shinzō in Japan’s political landscape, in line with the expectation of the previous year’s analysis.[2] Following the landmark Cabinet decision allowing the exercise of the right of collective self-defense, much-coveted by the Prime Minister, and the insistence on expansive monetary and fiscal measures under the […]
Penisola coreana 2014: «ombre» all’interno e «luci» all’esterno
Premessa Il 2014, che avrebbe dovuto rappresentare la definitiva consacrazione della presidente sudcoreana Park Geun-hye, si è invece rivelato come uno spartiacque in negativo per la sua presidenza, complici alcuni disastri nazionali, fra cui la tragedia del traghetto Sewol. In seguito a questi disastri emergevano in maniera ancora più clamorosa radicate pratiche negative: corruzione, collusione […]
Indonesia 2014: Joko Widodo e la sfida all’élite del “new order”
Premessa In un’era di crescenti tensioni geopolitiche a livello internazionale, nel 2014 l’Indonesia affrontava un vasto processo elettorale che, non senza ostacoli, si concludeva in aprile con l’elezione democratica del nuovo presidente della repubblica, Joko Widodo (Jokowi). Per la prima volta, dalla fine del regime di Suharto, acquisiva la carica più importante dello stato una […]
Malaysia 2014: Reforms and challenges in the year of flight MH370
Introduction In 2014, Malaysian politics were largely determined by the general election of the year before, in which Prime Minister Najib Razak’s governing alliance, the Barisan Nasional (National Front, BN), led by Najib Razak’s party, the United Malay National Organization (UMNO, or United Malays National Organisation), finally achieved a majority. Yet despite its victory, the BN faced some serious […]
Cambodia 2014: The continuation of the Hun Sen-Sam Rainsy political duel and the surge in social conflict
Introduction In late 2013 and early 2014, a lengthy series of working class protests broke out in several Cambodian towns and violent clashes with the police were the order of the day. The most serious episode occurred during the demonstration on January 4, 2014, when four protesters were killed, a countless number injured, and 23 […]
Thailandia 2014: nascita di una dittatura nel nome del re
Introduzione La fragile democrazia tailandese nel 2014 ha conosciuto il più triste degli epiloghi. Il 22 maggio l’esercito ha attuato un colpo di stato e ha preso la guida del paese, approfittando del vuoto di potere conseguente alla destituzione del primo ministro, la signora Yngluck Shinawatra, da parte della suprema corte. L’evento del 22 maggio […]
Myanmar 2014: un processo di democratizzazione molto lento ma reale
Introduzione: attesa e stagnazione Dal 2010, anno delle elezioni generali che hanno decretato la svolta riformatrice e il progressivo allontanamento dei militari dal potere assoluto, che detenevano da quasi cinquant’anni, i cambiamenti avvenuti sono stati tali da ridisegnare l’intero assetto politico, sociale, economico del Myanmar. Senza dubbio si è trattato di una svolta che ha […]
Bangladesh 2014: Old Patterns, New Trends
Preface 2014 opened in Bangladesh with the elections, held on 5thJanuary amidst unprecedented political violence which led to the killing of 29 people. The 2014 elections were recorded as the most violent in Bangladesh’s history.[1] Throughout 2014, the government of the re-elected Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina faced several challenges. Firstly, the political crisis, fuelled by […]
India 2014: the annihilation of the congress party and the beginning of the Modi era
Introduction In India, the dominant event in the year 2014 was the 16th general election and its results, namely the resounding victory of the Narendra Modi-led BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) and the catastrophic defeat of the Indian National Congress (hereafter, the Congress). The Congress, which headed the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), in power during the […]
Nepal 2013-14: breaking the political impasse
Introduction In 2014, Nepal was headed towards a resolution of the problems that caused the political and constitutional impasse of 2012 and 2013. The first Constituent Assembly resolved on May 28, 2012, before drafting the new Constitution, to replace the interim Constitution of 2007. This brought the country to a political deadlock. In March 2013, […]
Sri Lanka Sri Lanka 2014: la continuazione del regime autoritario e la crescente insoddisfazione popolare
Introduzione Lo Sri Lanka ha visto, durante il 2014, il perdurare delle dinamiche che hanno caratterizzato lo scenario politico e sociale del paese dalla fine al conflitto civile, nel 2009. In particolare, il supremo potere politico ha continuato ad essere esercitato dal presidente Mahinda Rajapaksa (il cui vero nome è Percy Mahendra Rajapaksa). Eletto presidente […]
Pakistan 2014: Gli attacchi al governo di Sharif e le tensioni con i militari
Dal dialogo con i militanti alla campagna militare nel Waziristan del nord I propositi di dialogo con il TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, alleanza di una dozzina di gruppi militanti operativi in Pakistan), con i quali il nuovo governo di Nawaz Sharif aveva iniziato il proprio mandato nel maggio del 2013, si erano scontrati con l’irrigidimento delle […]
Afghanistan 2014: political transition without democracy?
Introduction In 2014 Afghanistan was dominated by the presidential election that led to the victory of Ashraf Ghani, after two successive terms in office by Hamid Karzai. Despite the ultimate success of the transition, the election has been marred by the same problems of fraud and ballot stuffing that characterised the previous polls. The declaration […]
Kyrgyzstan 2014: The painful march towards the Eurasian Union as the lesser evil?
Introduction Since his victorious presidential campaign back in 2011, Almazbek Sharshenovich Atambayev had pledged that Kyrgyzstan’s foreign policy would be markedly pro-Russian, heralding a break with the small Central Asian republic’s post-independence multi-vector foreign policy. While this policy tous azimuts has eventually tired all foreign partners because of Bishkek’s unrelenting efforts at securing greater revenues in exchange […]
Turkmenistan 2014: Security concerns and unfulfilled diversification of export energy routes
Introduction In 2014 Turkmenistan further enhanced its position in the regional political and economic chessboard, developing relations of cooperation with both Central Asian countries and non-regional countries, mainly interested in the Turkmen gas. Ashgabat’s support to the realization of regional infrastructures of transport – such as the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran railway – represents the main contribution of […]
Chapters
Foreword: Asia Maior in 2016
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – The second and final four-year mandate of US President Barack Obama came to an end on Friday 20 January 2017, making of 2016, the year under review in this volume, the concluding one of what can be defined the Obama Era. The end of the Obama era […]
China 2016: Defending the legitimacy of the party-state’s authority*
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – The present article focuses on what seemed to be the main issue at stake in China during the year 2016: the legitimacy of the party-state’s domestic authority.[1] Partystate’s legitimacy was indeed affected by an enduring and worsening economic slowdown and above all by various forms of protests […]
Taiwan 2012-2016: From consolidation to the collapse of cross-strait rapprochement
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – From 2012 to 2016, the relation between Mainland China and Taiwan saw landmark achievements and underwent profound shockwaves. During the second term of President Ma Ying-jeou, China and Taiwan reached the zenith of a process of cross- Strait rapprochement. This process began in 2008, as Ma and […]
Korean Peninsula 2016: The never-ending crisis
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – The year 2016 was characterized by major crises throughout the entire Korean peninsula. The decline in popularity of South Korean president Park Geun-hye further deteriorated after the election for the National Assembly in April, which gave the majority to the opposition parties. The serious scandal in November […]
Japan 2016: Political stability amidst maritime contestation and historical reconciliation*
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – This article assesses the stability of the Abe administration in the face of a rapidly changing international environment. Important displays of historical reconciliation testified to the toning down of Prime Minister Abe Shinz ’s revisionism, thus feeding into international and domestic stability. At the same time, continued […]
The Philippines 2016: Democracy in dispute?
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – President Rodrigo Duterte’s 2016 election was a divisive moment in Philippine politics. The promise to disrupt élite-centric politics and restore national peace and order won him strong popular support throughout the country. His satisfactory track record of turning Davao City from a haven of criminals to the […]
Indonesia 2016: A difficult equilibrium amid global anxiety
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – The year 2016 in Indonesia saw President Joko Widodo consolidate his power after last year’s uncertain start. Domestic policy focused on curbing terrorism linked to the Islamic State (IS), especially following a deadly attack in the capital in January. Nevertheless, the rise of religious intolerance and political […]
Vietnam 2016: The aftermath of the 12th congress, between continuities and changes
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – In the aftermath of the heated January 2016 12th Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), Vietnam seemed face multiple challenges, both at the domestic and at the international level. For what concerns domestic affairs, this paper argues that one major challenge for the newly elected […]
Laos 2016: The 10th congress of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (Lprp) and its domestic and international aftermath
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – The 10th Congress of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP) concluded in January 2016 with a reshuffle of the Politburo. The new leadership confirmed a «steady-as-you-go» policy continuing to base its political legitimacy both on economic growth cum social equity and the fight against the spread of […]
Thailand 2016: The death of King Bhumibol and the deepening of the political crisis
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – A military coup in May 2014 was the last turn in a political crisis that has affected the country since the beginning of the century. As the country grew richer and its society more demanding, a quite liberal constitution had been approved in 1997, leading to a […]
Myanmar 2016: From enthusiasm to disillusionment
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – 2016 was the year when political change finally came to Myanmar. After a fiveyear transition from military rule to a (semi-)civilian government, the two electoral rounds of November 2015 (parliamentary) and March 2016 (presidential) ushered in a new phase of formally – if substantially constrained – democratic […]
Bangladesh 2016: A laboratory for Islamic radicalism
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – In 2016 political violence continued to upset Bangladesh. Radical Islam contin-ued to rage in the country and to disseminate terror: people belonging to ethnic and religious minorities, along with moderate Muslims were brutally killed. The violence escalated in 2016, reaching its apex with the 1 July attack […]
Sri Lanka 2016: Does the new era continue?
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – The year under review witnessed the continuation of the new political phase in Sri Lanka, which began in 2015 with Mahinda Sirisena’s victory at the presidential polls and, later in the year, the electoral victory of the United National Front for Good Governance (UNFGG) led by the […]
India 2016: Reforming the economy and tightening the connection with the US
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – As in 2015, in 2016 India’s political and economic landscape appeared to be dominated by Narendra Modi, the incumbent Prime Minister. Differently from what was the case in 2015, behind the pervasive self-praising rhetoric of the Indian government and the deafening chorus of applause of the bulk […]
Appendix to India 2016 – A brutal and violent year in the Kashmir Valley
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – In 2016, in concomitance with the worsening in the India-Pakistan relations, the situation in the Vale of Kashmir, which is part of the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir, took a turn for the worse. Although the reciprocal Indian and Pakistani claims to the whole of the […]
Pakistan 2016: Economic features
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – This essay analyses the predominant domestic and foreign policy events that occurred in Pakistan in 2016 through the lens provided by the country’s main economic developments. With the aims of decreasing the fiscal deficit/GDP ratio and following the guidelines of the international financing institutions, Pakistan was implementing […]
Afghanistan 2016: Military crisis and contested reforms
Afghanistan’s political and economic scene in 2016 was largely conditioned by the on-going war. The uneasy balance between Afghan National Security Forces and the insurgents has shown a tendency to shift in favour of the latter. US air support has increasingly emerged as the government forces’ only element of military superiority over the Taliban. This […]
Iran 2016: From the Saudi embassy attack to the demise of Rafsanjani
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – The year 2016 was an internal and external test for Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. The February legislative elections represented strong support for both his administration and the nuclear accord with the P5+1 group of nations. But the lack of visible improvements at the economic level, the increasing […]
Kazakhstan 2015-2016: Balancing regime stability amidst local and global challenges
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf – Twenty-five years after independence, Kazakhstan is still under the rule of its first President, Nursultan Nazarbayev. The biennium 2015-2016 confirmed the continuity of the process of stabilization of the political system started in the previous years. These were also years of challenges to the stability of Nazarbayev’s […]
Chapters
Foreword: Asia Maior in 2017. The unravelling of the US foreign policy in Asia and its consequences
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In previous years, the authors of the forewords to the Asia Maior volumes have been arguing that the dominant leitmotiv in the present evolution of Asia was the conflict between a declining world hegemon, the US, and a rising challenger, China. In particular, the history of the decline […]
China 2017: Searching for internal and international consent
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf This article argues that the Chinese party-state’s most pressing question in 2017 continued to be its quest for legitimacy. In the period under review the party-state’s main strategic answer to the legitimacy crisis was its effort to strengthen Chinese nationalism and build an ideology based on Chinese exceptionalism. […]
Korean Peninsula 2017: Searching for new balances
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf After the major crises of 2016, the year 2017 on the Korean peninsula was characterised by an attempt to restore stability, both at the domestic and the international level. The social and political crisis that involved President Park Geun-hye in South Korea, which left the country without a […]
Japan 2017: Defending the domestic and international status quo
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The year 2017 proved a transitory testing time for the Abe administration, because the prime minister faced a series of new international and domestic hurdles. While the North Korean crisis dominated Japanese media, China and the US remained Japan’s main strategic concern. Following the US’s withdrawal from the […]
Taiwan 2017: Stalemate on the Strait
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf After a tumultuous 2016, cross-Strait relations between the Republic of China (ROC) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) continued to be tense throughout 2017. The increasing divergence over the issue of national unification between Beijing and Taipei, epitomised by President Tsai Ing-wen’s refusal to acknowledge the 1992 […]
The Philippines 2017: Duterte-led authoritarian populism and its liberal-democratic roots
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte led a phenomenal campaign to win the 2016 national election. During his first two years in power Duterte has become the protagonist and exemplar of a key new development – the social formation of a regime of authoritarian populism. Based on an analysis of […]
Indonesia 2017: Towards illiberal democracy?
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2017, in the third year of Joko «Jokowi» Widodo’s presidency, Indonesia was already preparing for the next general elections, scheduled in April 2019. The country’s political arena saw on the one hand the mobilisation of political Islam, which resulted in the arrest and defeat of Jokowi’s ally, […]
Cambodia 2016-2017: The worsening of social and political conflicts
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In continuity with the previous years, in 2016-2017 the hegemonic crisis of the CPP, the ruling Cambodian party of the authoritarian leader Hun Sen, continued and was epitomised by two main developments: the declining popular consensus, revealed by the June 2017 communal elections, and the government-imposed dissolution of […]
Thailand 2017: Political stability and democratic crisis in the first year of King Vajiralongkorn
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In January 2017 King Maha Vajiralongkorn of the Chakri dynasty, who had ascended the throne only one month earlier, demanded a change to the constitution drafted by the military junta ruling the country since May 2014. This change regarded the expansion of the royal prerogatives, de facto augmenting […]
Myanmar 2017: The Rohingya crisis between radicalisation and ethnic cleansing
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 2017 was Myanmar’s annus horribilis. This essay revisits the 2017 Rohingya crisis and discusses its immediate triggers and background causes. It contends that the latest outbreak of violence should not be seen as a one-off occurrence, but rather be understood as part of a long history of anti-Rohingya […]
Bangladesh 2017: The Rohingya’s carnage
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2017 Bangladesh’s political landscape was dominated by the Rohingya crisis, deflagrated at the end of August in Myanmar, causing 600,000 Rohingyas to flee to Bangladesh. This article provides a short historical background of the Rohingya issue to prove that these people, although of Bengali descent, have been living […]
India 2017: Narendra Modi’s continuing hegemony and his challenge to China
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2017 the situation of Indian democracy deteriorated, as shown by the continuing attacks against Muslims and Christians, and by the intimidation against the opponents of political Hinduism. This intimidation culminated in the assassination of well-known journalist and BJP critic Gauri Lankesh. Meanwhile Narendra Modi, in spite of […]
India 2017: Still no «achhe din» (good days) for the economy
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2017 the Indian economy appeared to be on a declining trend up to Quarter 1 (Q1) 2017-18 (April-June 2017). The data for Q2 of 2017-18 (July-September 2018) – the last available at the closing of the present article – were better, but insufficient to conclude that the […]
Nepal 2015-2017: A post-earthquake constitution and the political struggle
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2015 the young Nepalese republic finally approved a new constitution, but before it could be adopted, its institutions found themselves facing the consequences of a series of devastating earthquakes that hit the country and in particular its capital. The tragedy forced the main political parties to reach […]
Sri Lanka 2017: The uncertain road of the «yahapalayanaya» government
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2017, the Lankan internal situation was a constant cause of difficulty for President Sirisena and the governing coalition. First, the government was challenged by the unexpected political initiative of former President Rajapaksa’s «Joint Opposition». Second, the Tamil communities in the north and the east of the country […]
Pakistan 2017: Vulnerabilities of the emerging market
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In July 2017, following his family’s involvement in the Panama Papers scandal, Nawaz Sharif was disqualified and ousted from the prime ministership by a Supreme Court decision. The ruling party, the PML-N (Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz), appointed the Petroleum and Natural Resources Minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, as […]
Afghanistan 2017: Trump’s «New Strategy», the Af-Pak conundrum, and the crisis of the National Unity Government
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The political evolution in Afghanistan in 2017 was dominated by the release of the US president’s new policy towards the region. Although the strategy was characterised by a substantial continuity with the Obama policy, there were some important changes. The most relevant was the revision of US-Pakistan relations, […]
Iran 2017: From Rouhani’s re-election to the December protests
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The 2017 was a challenging year for the President Hassan Rouhani despite his reelection. The Presidential and Municipal elections in May represented a clear and strong support for his administration and the nuclear deal or famously the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement. But lack of visible […]
Kazakhstan 2017: Institutional stabilisation, nationbuilding, international engagement
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In continuity with previous years, in 2017 Kazakhstan pursued the stabilisation of its political system while still embracing global trends. Domestically, the leadership attempted to consolidate its institutions, possibly in preparation for President Nursultan Nazarbayev´s retirement. A reform of the constitution made over some of the presidential powers […]
Chapters
Foreword. Asia in 2020: The COVID-19 pandemic and its impact
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The most important development of 2020 was, without doubt, the pandemic of the Coronavirus disease (henceforth COVID-19). The outbreak began at the end of 2019 and rapidly escalated to become a worldwide phenomenon within the first few months of 2020. The first cases of the novel coronavirus were […]
China 2020: The successful struggle against the COVID-19 pandemic and the Xinjiang question
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The year 2020, more than any other previous year, posed serious questions about the nature of the Chinese state and society and their relations with the world. China was the first global epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic and, in fighting it, demonstrated a highly effective management of the […]
China 2020: A foreign policy characterized by growing resilience, fading responsibility and increasing uncertainty
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2020 Chinese foreign policy had to contend with the global repercussions of the spread of an unprecedented virus causing a global pandemic, the SARS-CoV-2 (commonly known as COVID-19). Suspicions about the Chinese origin of the virus have strongly weakened the image of a responsible country much promoted […]
Korean peninsula 2020: Overcoming the challenges of COVID-19
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The COVID-19 pandemic had disruptive effects on the Korean peninsula, as well as in the rest of the world. Deploying two very different strategies, both Koreas were able to spare their populations from the most tragic consequences in terms of public health. However, the pandemic had important effects […]
Japan 2020: Abe’s well-laid plans go awry
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Like elsewhere, the COVID-19 pandemic caused substantial disruptions in Japan. While generous fiscal spending mitigated the pandemic’s economic fallout, and Japan is poised in 2021 to rebound from its year-on-year 4.8% fall in GDP, there was significant political fallout in 2020. The postponement of the Olympic Games, the […]
Hong Kong 2020: The downfall of «one country two systems»
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In this watershed year the Hong Kong Special Autonomous Region (HKSAR) was fundamentally reshaped by the concatenation of two major events, namely COVID-19 and the roll out of the National Security Law (NSL). While Beijing had already set in train advanced plans for the «second takeover», with mass […]
Taiwan 2020: Crossroads of COVID-19 international politics
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The year 2020 started with President Tsai winning a second term and the DPP obtaining once again a parliamentary majority in the general elections held on 11 January. By the end of the year, Taiwan emerged as one of the few polities able to effectively put the COVID-19 […]
The Philippines 2020: The gamble of the populist leadership
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The year 2020 was an eventful one for the Philippines. Still recovering from the aftermath of the Taal volcano eruption, the country soon faced a public health crisis. Contrary to Duterte’s belief that the new coronavirus (COVID-19) would just die a natural death, the pandemic turned out to […]
Timor-Leste in 2020: Containing the pandemic in a changing political environment
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2020 Timor-Leste became a successful case of managing to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to the early diligent action undertaken by the state authorities, albeit with significant popular resistance to the harsh measures imposed. Following a brief introduction, the second section of this article deals with the […]
Malaysia 2020: Democratic backsliding amid the COVID-19 pandemic
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The pernicious effects of political polarisation and unresolved intra-coalition differences resulted in political party defections that contributed to the fall of the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government and the tenuous position of the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government that replaced it. Domestic politics through much of 2020 was marked by […]
Myanmar 2020: Elections in a pandemic
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The year 2020 in Myanmar was not substantively different from that of so many other countries. The year was dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic, its socio-economic impact and the government’s attempt to cushion its effect and fight against it. The authorities sought to seal off the country from […]
Bangladesh 2019-2020: Issues of democracy, disasters, development
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2019-2020, the Awami League maintained its grasp on power by resorting to repressive measures. Political dissent was silenced through both legal and extrajudicial means. Poor civil rights protection confirmed that negative trends already emerged in previous years worsened further, as the country continued losing its democratic features. […]
India 2020: Under the COVID hammer
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf When the COVID-19 pandemic hit India, its economy was going through a difficult phase. This left the government ill prepared to tackle the pandemic and its economic dislocation. Furthermore, India’s health infrastructure – suffering from decades of under investments – was at serious risk of being rapidly overwhelmed. […]
India 2020: The deepening crisis of democracy
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The following article, focussed on the analysis of the ongoing crisis of Indian democracy in the year 2020, is articulated in two parts. The first, after a synthetic summing up of how the crisis started in 2019, is an overview of the main developments which characterized the struggle […]
India 2020: Confronting China, aligning with the US
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf During 2020, India’s foreign policy was unaffected by the COVID-19 and dominated by two key developments, on whose analysis this article is focussed. One was the turning for the worse of the India-China relation, of which the heating up of the Himalayan border, which saw clashes between the […]
Sri Lanka 2019-2020: Extremism, elections and economic uncertainty at the time of COVID-19
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Sri Lanka in 2019 and 2020 was characterised by Islamist violence and its aftermath, a presidential and general election, and COVID-19. This article traces the internal, economic and foreign policies of Sri Lanka chronologically and thematically across the two years under examination. These policies were deeply interconnected during […]
Pakistan 2020: The PTI government amidst COVID-19 pandemic
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Austerity measures tied to disbursement of the bailout programme that Pakistan agreed upon with the International Monetary Fund in 2019 helped Islamabad progress towards macroeconomic stabilisation. After the COVID-19 outbreak hit the country in February 2020, related disruptions strained economic activity and put pressure on Pakistan’s fiscal position. […]
Afghanistan 2020: The US-Taliban peace deal, intra-Afghan talks and regional implications
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The year 2020 was a landmark year for Afghanistan. The country witnessed the signing of the peace deal between the US and the Taliban as well as the beginning of intra-Afghan negotiations that, for the first time since 2001, brought together representatives from the Taliban and the Government […]
Iran 2019-2020: The double impact of crippling sanctions and the COVID-19 pandemic
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Two main external developments marked the years 2019 and 2020 in Iran: the unilateral sanctions re-imposed by the United States in late 2018 after abandoning the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and the COVID-19 Pandemic that had its first case in Iran in February 2020. The heavy […]
Kazakhstan 2020: Between a rock and a hard place
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf With its society deeply affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and its economy struggling due to low oil prices, 2020 was the year in which Kazakhstan’s government was compelled to continuously adopt emergency measures. This contributed to a looming uncertainty about the country’s ability to cope with the multiple […]
Chapters
Foreword Asia Maior in 2021: Pandemic crisis; US-China confrontation; authoritarian involution
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The political and social evolution of Asia Maior1 during the year 2021 was shaped by three main developments: the COVID-19 pandemic; the US-China confrontation; the authoritarian involution of the region. All three developments, far from representing something new, were the continuation of trends which had started before – […]
China 2021: Coping with the resilience dilemma of the Chinese model
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2021 Chinese internal politics were dominated by the domestic economy and the COVID-19 pandemic. The celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) worked well to project the numerous successes of Chinese politics through history. Yet, Beijing’s insistence on the need to rethink the […]
Japan 2021: The Liberal Democratic Party emerges stronger despite domestic tumult
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The COVID-19 pandemic continued to impact the Japanese economy as well as the political fortunes of Japan’s leader in 2021. For the second year in a row, Japan’s Prime Minister was forced to stand down, portending a return to the revolving door of one-year prime ministerships that […]
Korean Peninsula 2021: Managing the crisis and adapting to the new situation
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf After the initial shock caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, during 2021 the two Koreas focused their efforts in managing the crisis and adapting to the changed situation. If, on the one hand, North Korea maintained its strategy of total isolation to protect the country from the spread of […]
Taiwan 2021: Heightened geo-economic relevance amid rising cross-strait tensions*
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Taiwan remained one of the crossroads of international politics in the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Cross-Strait relations with China continued their downward trend, with increasing military tensions in the airspace and waters surrounding the island, leading to speculations of a military takeover. The PLA activism in […]
The Philippines 2021: Populist legacy and looming uncertainties
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The Philippines started 2021 with a temporary relief as the arrival of limited COVID-19 vaccine supplies ushered in the government’s launch of its national inoculation programme. However, the periodic surge of COVID-19 cases exposed the constant inadequacies of the Philippine pandemic response, straining once again the country’s […]
Laos 2017-2021: Revival of the subsistence ethic
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Since 2016, Laos has seen a tightening of social control by the ruling Communist Party. At the same time, socialism has returned as the cornerstone of the official discourse. While some have argued that the socialist discourse only serves the purpose of legitimizing either one-party rule or capitalist […]
Cambodia 2018-2021: From democracy to autocracy
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The years between 2018 and 2021 continued a pattern for Cambodia of a rolling back of democracy, human rights, and civil liberties, and saw the completion of the transition from a multi-party illiberal democracy to a one-party, authoritarian state. As attacks against political opposition increased, and political space […]
Malaysia 2021: A widening political legitimacy crisis
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2021, Malaysia saw the deepening of a political legitimacy deficit as demands for reforms and political change remained largely unattended. The first half of the year was marked by a state of emergency, declared by the government in the face of a new wave of COVID-19 infections. […]
Thailand 2019-2021: Military, monarchy, protests
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf 2019-2021 was a peculiar triennium for Thailand. In 2019, the military leaders who had seized power five years earlier with a coup d’état formed a civilian government via a carefully managed general election. Concomitantly, King Maha Vajiralongkorn, on the throne since 2016, underwent his coronation. While the rituals […]
Myanmar 2021: Repression and resistance in a multi-cornered conflict
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The parliamentary elections of November 2020 which were won – once again – in a landslide by the National League for Democracy (NLD) were followed by three months of mounting tensions between the winning party and the Tatmadaw (the armed forces) and its party affiliate. On 1 February […]
Bangladesh 2021: The year of the golden jubilee and the second wave of pandemic
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2021, the pandemic continued inflicting a burdensome disruption on the Bangladeshi economy, weighting heavier on the poor and the new poor. However, in terms of macroeconomic indicators, the economy gave signs of early recovery. Also, Bangladesh was declared ready to officially graduate from Least Developed Country (LDC) […]
India 2021: Politics amid the pandemic
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The most important development of 2021 in India was a devastating second wave of COVID-19 infections that brought the country’s healthcare system to its knees between April and June. While the management of the pandemic in a country like India represented an enormous challenge in itself, the Bharatiya […]
Sri Lanka in 2021: From pandemic emergency to political and economic crisis
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The political evolution in Sri Lanka in 2021 confirmed the negative predictions that had been made in the previous year, both for domestic and foreign policy. Internally, president Rajapaksa’s tendency to centralize power in his own hands, and in those of his family and close supporters continued. The […]
Pakistan 2021: In pursuit of a pivotal role in post-pandemic South Asia
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf In 2020, the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan launched an economic diplomacy project titled Economic Outreach Initiative. It aims to unlock Pakistan’s growth potential and showcase national trade, tourism and foreign investment capacities through a paradigm shift of foreign policy from geopolitics to geoeconomics. The Khan administration […]
Afghanistan 2021: US withdrawal, the Taliban return and regional geopolitics
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Afghanistan in 2021 was characterised by the withdrawal of US troops and by the sudden fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August. After 20 years of war, and US$ 2.3 trillion spent in the conflict, the US was eventually out of Afghanistan and the Taliban back in […]
Iran 2021: The year of transition
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The election of Ebrahim Raisi as the new president of Iran in June has been the most significant development in Iran during 2021. It represented the end of an era -the reformist-pragmatist one- and the beginning of a new one controlled by the conservative establishment. This article analyses […]
Azerbaijan 2021: Towards a new beginning?
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf The Fall of 2020 represented a watershed in Azerbaijan’s contemporary history, as a result of the victory in the «44 Days War» over Nagorno-Karabakh against Armenia, on the one hand, and the start of natural gas export to European markets through the EU Southern Gas Corridor, on the […]
Chapters
Foreword Asia in 2022: The consequences of the war in Ukraine, US-China rivalry, democratic decline and popular protests
In introducing the political and economic situation in Asia in the year 2022 one feels like quoting Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr’s well-known aphorism, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, «the more things change, the more they stay the same». In fact, while discussing the Asian situation in 2021, this journal pointed out that it […]
China 2022: The 20th party congress and popular discontent in Xi Jinping’s China
The most significant issue of 2022 in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) held from 16 to 22 October 2022. The outcome was unprecedented: after a decade in office, Xi Jinping was confirmed for a third mandate as the general secretary of the CCP. […]
China 2021-2022: A foreign policy of «re-branding»
In 2021 and 2022, China’s foreign policy had to come to terms with the re-starting of in-person diplomatic exchanges worldwide after the two-year hiatus imposed by COVID-19 mobility restrictions, the US’s China policy under the democratic presidency of President Joe Biden, and, above all, the instability caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. With the […]
Korean peninsula 2022: Stuck between new leadership and old practices* **
The most consequential political event that took place on the peninsula in 2022 was the election of a new president in South Korea. The very narrow victory of the conservative candidate Yoon Suk-yeol marked a clear break with his predecessor Moon Jae-in and returned the image of a very divided country. The division continued throughout […]
Japan 2022: Putin and Abe Shocks thwart Kishida’s enjoyment of three golden years despite major defence overhaul
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the assassination of record-setting former Prime Minister Abe Shinzō impacted heavily on Japan’s domestic politics and international relations. Diplomatically, Tokyo forcefully aligned with its Western partners against Russia’s aggression while making progress in enhancing awareness that the European and Indo-Pacific strategic theatres are politically intertwined. In addition to doubling down […]
Taiwan 2022: Cross-Strait security spirals further down*
Tensions between Beijing and Taipei in 2022 reached their heights since the 1995-1996 Third Strait Crisis. The decision by the outgoing Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi to visit Taiwan in August, few months prior to the momentous 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, was immediately followed by an unprecedented display […]
Hong Kong 2021-2022: A new life in the shadow of China
After the implementation of the National Security Law (NSL) in 2020 the Hong Kong Special Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China (HKSAR) has gone through a period of tremendous changes. This paper argues that the enactment of the NSL has not only imposed a stricter frame on Hong Kong civil society in terms […]
Indonesia 2019-2022: The authoritarian turn as leitmotif of President Jokowi’s second term
Now approaching the last year of his second and last presidential term (2019-2024) Indonesia’s businessman president, Joko Widodo (Jokowi), is becoming increasingly pragmatic in his political objectives. His goal of achieving high economic growth has led him to adopt policies that sacrifice democratic principles for immediate financial gain. At the same time, his cooptation of […]
Timor-Leste 2021-2022: Electoral change and economic reset
The years under review have seen an important political shift stemming from the victory in presidential elections in April 2022 of renown diplomat José Ramos-Horta, himself backed by another veteran, the former guerrilla hero of the resistance, José «Xanana» Gusmão. Coming out of a well-managed yet constricting COVID-19 crisis abetted by highly damaging floods […]
Malaysia 2022: 15th general elections and deepening political polarisation
None of the three main political coalitions in the 15th Malaysian General Elections in 2022 was able to win a simple majority to form the next government. The hung parliament situation ended after the Malaysian King appointed Anwar Ibrahim as prime minister to lead a unity government including Pakatan Harapan (PH), the United Malays […]
Thailand 2022: The «post-pandemic» era
In 2022, Thailand entered a period labelled by state agents as «post-pandemic». Citizens resumed their lives as normal, but discontents for a stagnant political environment and a slow economic recovery intensified. In particular, civil society expressed frustration toward the Constitutional Court for allowing PM Prayuth Chan-ocha to remain in office despite the alleged legal expiry […]
Myanmar 2022: Fragmented sovereignties and the escalation of violence in multiple warscapes
The events that followed the military coup of February 2021, and the violence that ensued throughout 2022 serve as stark reminders that any notion that Myanmar is and operates as a single polity are a fiction, and one that neither captures the complex reality on the ground nor serves to guide policy to contain violence […]
Bangladesh 2022: Challenging post-pandemic times
In 2022, Bangladesh was criticized at the national and international level due to poor protection of civil and political rights. The country experienced spiking inflation, also due to global post-COVID monetary policies, while floods brought again destruction to the northeastern districts. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine contributed to increase the price of certain imports and […]
India 2022: Political realignments in a BJP-dominated system
During 2022 there were three main political developments in India. First, state elections were held in seven states and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won in five of these, confirming its enduring popularity and dominance over the country’s political system. Second, several political parties started to manoeuvre in light of the 2024 general […]
India 2021-2022: Playing against China on different chessboards
This article focusses on the five major developments which characterized Indian international relations in 2021 and 2022. The first of them was the gradual disengagement between Indian and Chinese military forces along the Himalayan undefined border. The second was the launching of an ambitious «vaccine diplomacy» aimed mainly to strengthen India’s influence world-wide, but […]
Sri Lanka 2022: The aragalaya protest movement and the Rajapaksas’ fall from power
The year in Sri Lanka was dominated by a severe economic crisis which led the central bank to declare financial default for the first time in the country’s history. The crisis has generated a large popular movement against President Rajapaksa and the Prime Minister which, after months of massive street protests, led to the […]
Pakistan 2022: The geopolitics of Imran Khan’s fall and the fledgling government of Shehbaz Sharif
In early 2022, opposition parties, led by the Pakistani People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistani Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N), stepped up their attacks on Prime Minister Imran Khan to oust him. Allies of the Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) governmental coalition also expressed dissatisfaction with Khan due to dire financial straits from worsening national economic distress. […]
Afghanistan 2022: Life under the Taliban
2022 was the first full year under Taliban rule. Partly overshadowed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, political and economic developments in Afghanistan received comparatively much less attention than those occurring in the former Soviet space. Nevertheless, Afghanistan witnessed a tumultuous year, amid domestic political adjustments, ethnic power struggles and a dramatic economic and humanitarian […]
Iran 2022: Domestic challenges to state legitimacy and isolation in the global arena
The Islamic Republic of Iran has faced severe domestic and international challenges that have progressively brought the country to the brink of global isolation. The ongoing impasse over nuclear negotiations, due largely to contentious demands from the Iranian side, has only served to exacerbate the negative effects of international sanctions on ordinary Iranian citizens. […]
Armenia 2022: Looking for a way out of the Nagorno-Karabakh impasse
In 2022, the Republic of Armenia struggled with a complex set of challenges and opportunities; a by-product of the precarious path towards a peace agreement with Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, following the 2020 escalation, and from the reverberations of the war in Ukraine. Yerevan faced Baku’s coercive bargaining strategies coupled with Russia’s partial yet […]
Events
The EU and ASEAN – Real partners or Summit Friends?
Il 15 aprile 2019 presso il Campus Luigi Einaudi a Torino si terrà la conferenza organizzata congiuntamente dall’Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) e dal Torino World Affairs Institute (T.wai) The EU and ASEAN – Real partners or Summit Friends? Link: Programma
GANDHI AFTER GANDHI – International Conference
GANDHI AFTER GANDHI Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary (2 October 1869-30 January 1948) INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE University of Turin 2-3 December 2019 CALL FOR PANELS/PAPER This international conference is promoted by the University of Turin and Sereno Regis Center to commemorate Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary. The conference aims to foster a […]
GANDHI AFTER GANDHI – Convegno internazionale
GANDHI AFTER GANDHI Per i 150 della nascita di Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2 ottobre 1869-30 gennaio 1948) CONVEGNO INTERNAZIONALE Università di Torino 2-3 dicembre 2019 CALL FOR PANELS/PAPERS A 150 anni dalla nascita di Gandhi l’Università di Torino e il Centro Studi Sereno Regis propongono un convegno internazionale dal titolo Gandhi after Gandhi. Lo […]
GANDHI AFTER GANDHI – International Conference
PROGRAMME 2 December Aula Magna 9:30-10:00 Welcome and opening 10:00-11:30 Keynote Lecture: Shruti Kapila Gandhi and the Truth of Violence 11:30-12:00 Break 12:00-13:30 Giuliano Pontara “Gandhi, nonviolenza e giustizia sociale” in dialogo con Anna Bravo 13:30-14:30 Lunch break 14:30- 16:00 ROOM H6 Panel 1 Gandhian grass root movements and their experiences I F. Lovisolo Environmental […]
THE RISE OF ASIA 2021 – CALL FOR PAPERS
60 YEARS AFTER BELGRADE: WHAT NON-ALIGNMENT IN A MULTIPOLAR WORLD AND FOR A GLOBAL FUTURE? INTERNATIONAL AND MULTIDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE Paris, February 10, 2021 Le Havre, February 11-12, 2021 http://www.bandungspirit.org/ CALL FOR PAPERS AND FOR PARTICIPATION The conference is open to individual and group paper presentations. Those willing to present their papers are invited […]
Review Article
Review Article – Narratives of the origins of the Korean war: A review of seven decades
The Armistice that the belligerent forces negotiated to end the Korean War was finalized on 27 July 1953, over seven decades ago. However, there has been no serious discussion since then among the signees – the United States (which signed on behalf of the UN Command), the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and China (The […]
Reviews
The other side of the chinese economic miracle: the dilemmas of access to health care in the People’s Republic Of China
Daniele Brombal, Curarsi è difficile. Curarsi è costoso. Storia, politica e istituzioni della sanità cinese, 1978-2013, Roma, Aracne, 2015, 167 pp. (ISBN 9788854883390). Daniele Brombal’s book focuses on an extremely relevant issue – health care in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In some respects, health care can be seen as a litmus test of […]
The development of the most challenging relationship of our times
Dong Wang, The United States and China: A History from the Eighteenth Century to the Present, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013, 377 pp. (ISBN 978-0742557826) The relationship between the United States and China is likely the most studied and analyzed topic of the post-bipolar world. The growing interest towards the Sino-American issue arose since the […]
Reviews
Review. Rethinking the Commune: a Revisionist Take on Maoist Collectivisation
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Joshua Eisenman, Red China’s Green Revolution. Technological Innovation, Institutional Change, and Economic Development Under the Commune, New York: Columbia University Press, 2018, pp. xxxii/436 In this new, incredibly well-researched book, Joshua Eisenman gives us a bold reappraisal of history of the organisation that more than any other embodied […]
The Most Important Aspects of Contemporary Japanese Politics. Building a Bridge Between Academia and the General Public
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Masaru Kohno, Is Science of Politics Possible?, Tokyo: Chuokoron-Shinsha, Inc., 2018, vii/224. In this global age, is it meaningless to write about Japanese politics in the Japanese language? Professor Masaru Kohno firmly answers «no». Being a leading Japanese political scientist, Kohno published many scholarly articles in top-ranked international […]
Reconsidering Japanese Diplomacy During the Cold War: the Case of the Cambodian Conflict
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Andrea Pressello, Japan and the Post-Vietnam Southeast Asia: Japanese Di- plomacy and the Cambodian Conflict, 1978–1993, New York: Routledge, 2018, 264 pages. Based on thorough research of English and Japanese sources, Andrea Pressello’s Japan and the Post-Vietnam Southeast Asia: Japanese Diplomacy and the Cambodian Conflict, 1978–1993 provides a […]
India’s Self, Others, and World View: Explained Through Discourse Theory
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Thorsten Wojczewski, India’s Foreign Policy Discourse and Its Conceptions of World Order: the Quest for Power and Identity, Abingdon: Routledge, 2018, 222 pp. (ISBN 9781138297180). The Republic of India celebrated the 70th anniversary of its independence in 2018, and its 70th Republic in January 2019, commemorating the coming […]
Escaping Thucydides’s Trap: the Fate of US-China Relations According to Graham Allison
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucy- dides’s Trap?, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017. Destined for War by Graham Allison, former dean of Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and advisor to various US administrations, has aroused a lively debate in the […]
A Different Perspective on Kashmir: a People’s Narrative
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Haley Duschinski, Mona Bhan, Ather Zia, Cynthia Mahmood (eds.), Resisting Occupation in Kashmir, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018, 302 pp. (ISBN 9780812249781). The post-1947 history of Kashmir is often exclusively understood as a political and territorial dispute between India and Pakistan. Moreover, following the narrative of «clash […]
Reviews
Exploring the «underground» of China’s modernity: Coal, science, imperialism and State-making between the end of the Qing dynasty and the early Republic
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Shellen Xiao Wu, Empires of Coal: Fueling China’s Entry into the Modern World Order, 1860-1920, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015. xii + 266 pp. (paperback) (ISBN: 978-0-8047-9284-4). The history of coal has seldom received the attention it deserves beyond the scholarly circle focused on the economic and industrial […]
«Children Of A Lesser God»: A narration Of Southern Chinese Minority Nationalities
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Guo Wu, Narrating Southern Chinese Minority Nationalities. Politics, Disciplines, and Public History, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, 229 pp. (ISBN 978-981-13-6021-3). The issue of national minorities – their classification, their recognition and the definition of their relationship with the central government – is one of the crucial issues of 20th-century […]
Rethinking Think Tanks in Contemporary China
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Silvia Menegazzi, Rethinking Think Tanks in Contemporary China, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, 207 pages (ISBN 978-3-319-57299-4). If you study the Chinese political system, whichever methodological perspective you adopt, you will inevitably come across two long-term crucial issues: one is the complex relation between the State, the Chinese Communist […]
Contested legacies of Chinese communism: Words, concepts and practices from Mao to Xi
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Christian Sorace, Ivan Franceschini, Nicholas Loubere (eds.), Afterlives of Chinese communism. Political concepts from Mao to Xi, Acton: ANU Press and Verso Books, 404 pages, (ISBN 9781788734769). Well before the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the communist leadership was aware of the great importance of propaganda […]
The Italian effort to gain the Chinese market: Reconstructing the history of Italy-China trade relations
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Donatella Strangio, Italy-China Trade Relations: A Historical Perspective, Cham: Springer, 2020, 131 pp. (ISBN: 978-3-030-39083-9). The year 2020 marks an important landmark in relations between Italy and China. It’s the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, which aligns with the Italy-China Year […]
The Eu–Japan partnership in the shadow of China: Natural allies or untapped potential?
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Axel Berkofsky, Christopher W. Hughes, Paul Midford & Marie Sӧderberg, The EU–Japan Partnership in the Shadow of China. The Crisis of Liberalism, Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2019, 266 pp. (ISBN 9780367895013). The EU–Japan Partnership in the Shadow of China represents a very timely and very significant contribution […]
Federalism in India: Questions about state capacity and national policy
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Louise Tillin, Indian Federalism, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019, 184 pp. (ISBN 978-0-19-949561-0). This is an indispensable introduction to the phenomenon of Indian federalism. The drafters of the constitution made no mention of federalism; in the tragic circumstances of partition they preferred an explicitly strong Union. But […]
A colonial monument de-constructed: Majeed on Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Javed Majeed, Nation and Region in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India, London: Routledge, 2018, 230 pp., (ISBN 9780429439223). Javed Majeed, Colonialism and Knowledge in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India, London: Routledge, 2018, 266 pp., (ISBN 9780429439230). Dubbed by its contemporaries «monumental», G.A. Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India (LSI) […]
Reviews
Recensione: Un viaggiatore italiano dell’800. Dal Borneo al Giappone
Paolo Puddinu (a cura di), Un viaggiatore italiano in Borneo nel 1873, Il Giornale Particolare di Giacomo Bove (Parte I), Regione Piemonte, Provincia di Asti, Astigrafica 2014. Paolo Puddinu (a cura di), Un viaggiatore italiano in Giappone nel 1873, Il Giornale Particolare di Giacomo Bove (Parte II), Ieoka, Sassari, 1999. Il libro curato da Paolo Puddinu, Un viaggiatore […]
Recensione: Burocrazia della miseria: un’etnografia critica dell’incontro tra Stato e cittadino nell’India postcoloniale
Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence and Poverty in India/ Akhil Gupta – Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012, pp. 384 (ISBN: 9780822351108) Red Tape, il nastro rosso che storicamente lega i documenti ufficiali e rimanda alle pratiche amministrative che li producono, è un importante punto d’arrivo nella bibliografia dell’antropologo Akhil Gupta. Accademico indiano, nato a […]
Review: Enlightening Asia: a new perspective on Enlightenment and Violence
Enlightenment and Violence. Modernity and Nation-Making / Tadd Fernée – New Delhi: Sage Publications India, 2014, pp. LXVII/386. Theoretical Ground In the Fernée’s framework, the Enlightenment heritage has to be interpreted as a question in the history of ideas, an “interconnected web spanning debates on nationalism, revolution and post-structuralism”. Starting from some of Bipan Chandra’s comparative reflections […]
Reviews
How public opinion on the north korean threat has influenced Japanese foreign policy
Seung Hyok Lee, Japanese Society and the Politics of the North Korean Threat, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016, 200 pp. (ISBN 9781442630345) North Korea has been portrayed in various guises in Japanese media, such as a «paradise on earth»; a socialist regime that enforces the unique socialist ideology of Juche; a hermit kingdom isolated […]
The Worlds of Words of the Ibis trilogy by Amitav Ghosh
Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies, London: John Murray, 2008. 471 pp. (ISBN 978-0-7195-6895-4 hb). Amitav Ghosh, River of Smoke, London: John Murray, 2011. 522 pp. (ISBN 978-0-71956-898-5 hb). Amitav Ghosh, Flood of Fire, London: John Murray, 2015. 616 pp. (ISBN 978-0-7195-6900-5 hb). When Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies was published in 2008[1] as the first […]
Reconsidering Tokugawa Japan: Finding Christians where they should Not Be
A Christian Samurai. The Trials of Baba Bunkō. William J. Farge, SJ-Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America, 2016, pp. XXV/300. At least since George Elison’s Deus Destroyed: The Image of Christianity in Early Modern Japan was published by Harvard University Press in 1973, historians of early modern Japan have been inclined to accept Elision’s […]
A (new) revisionist history of early modern China
Evelyn S. Rawski, Early Modern China and Northeast Asia. Cross-border Perspectives, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2015, 339 pp., (ISBN 9781107471528) Early Modern China and Northeast Asia. Cross-border Perspectives represents the culmination of a long research work dedicated to the study of Chinese history through a new perspective that goes beyond national histories, while the […]
Reviews
Review. Wang Hui’s China in Twentieth Century
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Wang Hui (edited by Saul Thomas), China’s Twentieth Century – Revolution, Retreat and the Road to Equality, London and New York, Verso Books, 2016, 361 pp. (ISBN 9781781689066) Wang Hui is certainly one of the most prominent and well-known scholars in the academic world, and one of the […]
Review. Culture and ideology: The making of the special Thai-American relationship during the Cold War
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Matthew Phillips, Thailand in the Cold War, New York: Routledge, 2016. xiv + 217 pp. ISBN 978-1-138-01416-9. Matthew Phillip’s Thailand in the Cold War is a welcome addition to the growing historiography on the Cold War in Southeast Asia. A key political ally of the United States, […]
Review. Not a community, but a multilateral institution: A Korean perspective on the East Asian International Society
동아시아 국제사회와 동아시아 상상: 한국국제정치사상 연구[Dong-asia Gugjesahoe-wa Dong-asia Sangsang: Hangug-gugje-jeongchi-sasang Yeongu] (Imagining International Society in East Asia: International Political Thought of Korean Intellectuals) /장인성 [Jang, In-Sung] – 서울: 서울대학교출판문화원 (Seoul: Seoul National University Press), 2017, 590 pp. According to In-Sung Jang, the East Asian international society is both real and imagined. This is reflected […]
Review. Media coverage and mediatic strategies of Japanese New Religious Movements
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Erica Baffelli, Media and New Religions in Japan, London/New York: Routledge, 2016, 191 pp. Erica Baffelli introduces the reader to her highly engaging research book on Media and New Religions in Japan by quoting the final sentence from a commercial shown on Shibuya giant video screens related to […]
Review. Global Maoism and the long 1960s as a Turning Point in Asian Studies: the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars in Retrospective
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Fabio Lanza, The End of Concern. Maoist China, Activism and Asian Studies, – Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2017, XII-262 In the last few years, interest in global Maoism and its impact on the West in the 1960s and 1970s has been one facet of the current […]
Review. Another Vision of Pakistan: Islam and Society in a South Asian Environment
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Michel Boivin, Le Pakistan et l’Islam. Anthropologie d’une République Islamique, Paris : Téraèdre, 2015, 223 pp., (ISBN 9782360850648) In comparison with India, Pakistan has received less extensive attention from scholars. In addition to this disadvantage, there has also been the misfortune that a large part of the research […]
Reviews
The life and death of indian democracy
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Yogendra Yadav, Making Sense of Indian Democracy, Ranikhet (Uttarakhand, India): Permanent Black, 2020, 422 pp. (ISBN108178245469). The political theorist Sunil Khilnani once remarked that every general election in India sets a new record, as the largest exercise of the popular will in the history of humankind. More people […]
Policy making in India: How two civil service insiders got things done
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Montek Singh Ahluwalia, (2020) Backstage: The Story Behind India’s High Growth Years. New Delhi: Rupa, 2020, xiv+434 pages (ISBN: 978-93-5333-821-3). Ram Sewak Sharma, The Making of Aadhaar: World’s Largest Identity Platform. New Delhi: Rupa (Kindle Edition), 235 pages (ISBN: 978-93-9035-12-6). At first sight these two books make unlikely […]
Japan’s search for a foreign policy path between China and the US
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Victor Teo, Japan’s Arduous Rejuvenation as a Global Power: Democratic Resilience and the US-China Challenge, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, 242 pp. (ISBN 9789811361890). Victor Teo’s Japan’s Arduous Rejuvenation as a Global Power is a study of Japanese foreign relations in the contemporary times that offers a new perspective, […]
The importance of China’s strategic culture in the Korean War
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Li Xiaobing, China’s War in Korea. Strategic Culture and Geopolitics, Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, xvii + 245 pp. (ISBN 9789813296749). The Korean War has customarily represented one of the most studied themes in the historiography of Cold War in the Asian continent. This gargantuan production has articulated in […]
Chinese and US influence in the «Indo-Pacific»
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Bonny Lin et al., Regional Responses to U.S.-China Competition in the Indo-Pacific. Study Overview and Conclusions, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2020, 141 pp. (ISBN 101977405185). In several countries, expanding interactions with China have triggered intense discussions on China’s influence in the economic, political and cultural spheres. While […]
Borders in revolt: Hong Kong youth and contested sovereignty
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Au Loong-Yu, Hong Kong in Revolt: The Protest Movement and the Future of China, London: Pluto Press, 2020, 216 pp. (ISBN 9780745341460). Hong Kong in Revolt is one of several recent book-length studies providing an overview of the 2019 movement. Hong Kong labour activist Au Loong-Yu unfolds the […]
A grand sweep of the history of Sino-Japanese relations
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Teng, Jun, The history of Sino-Japanese cultural exchange. Translated by Wu, Li. Routledge China perspectives, Abingdon: Routledge, 2019, 182 pp. (ISBN 9780367663681). This book is a translation of the author’s Zhong Ri wenhua jiaoliu shi [中日文化交流史], published by the Peking University Press in 2011. It appears in Routledge’s […]
Reviews
Yi Gwangsu’s Literary Contribution to Korea’s 1919 March First Movement
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Michael Shin, Korean National Identity under Japanese Colonial Rule: Yi Gwangsu and the March First Movement of 1919, London: Routledge, 2011, 246 pp. In present-day Republic of Korea (ROK), March First is still celebrated as a day to commemorate the Korean people’s most important statement of protest against […]
The unhappy ending of the «India story»
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Debasish Roy Chowdhury and John Keane, To Kill a Democracy: India’s Passage to Despotism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021, 320 pp. 1. Introduction In their book, Debasish Roy Chowdhury (a journalist) and John Keane (a political scientist) question the widespread conviction that India is the «largest democracy in […]
Continuity and Change in India: Views from below
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf John Harriss, Craig Jeffrey and Trent Brown, India: Continuity and Change in the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020, pp. xv+384. ISBN-13: 978-5095-3970-3; ISBN-13; 5095-3971-0 (pb). This review of social change and persistence in India is a timely study of transitions and attempted transitions. It is by authors […]
An «alternative» reading of the relations between Europe and China during the Cold War
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Janick M. Schaufelbuehl, Marco Weiss & Valeria Zanier (eds.), Europe and China in the Cold War. Exchanges Beyond the Bloc Logic and the Sino-Soviet Split, Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2019, 242 pp. (ISBN: 9789004388123). In the last few years, the relations between Europe and China during the Cold War captured […]
Reviews
Signals of dialogue: Exploring Sino-Vatican relations
Chu, Cindy Yik-yi, and Paul Philip Mariani, eds. People, Communities, and the Catholic Church in China. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. xix+157 pp. ISBN: 978-981-15-1679-5. On 22 October 2022, the Holy See announced a second two-year extension of the controversial Provisional Agreement with People’s Republic of China (PRC) regarding the appointment of Bishops. The volume People, […]
The end of the great game in Mongolia
Matteo Miele, Mongolian Independence and the British: Geopolitics and Diplomacy in High Asia, 1911-1916, Bristol: E-International Relations, 2022, xv+222 pp. (ISBN: 978-1-910814-64-2). Looking at Mongolia today, we see a country squeezed between two giant neighbors. A fledgling democracy, Mongolia is dependent economically on both Russia and China, and must often tailor its foreign and […]
Korea’s colonial history as seen from abroad
Ku Daeyeol, Korea 1905-1945: From Japanese Colonialism to Liberation and Independence, Kent, CT: Renaissance Books, 2021, 468 pp. (ISBN: 978-1-912961-21-4). The period of Japanese colonial rule over the Korean Peninsula has been covered widely. Ku Daeyeol’s treatment is unique, however, in that he examines the vicissitudes of Korean history between 1905 and 1945 from […]
Recovering the Asian roots of the Philippine revolution
Nicole CuUnjieng Aboitiz, Asian Place, Filipino Nation. A Global Intellectual History of the Philippine Revolution, 1887-1912, New York: Columbia University Press, 2020, 272 pp. (ISBN: 9780231192156). For long, Filipino, Spanish, and US historiographies that dealt with the long Philippine Revolution (1896-1906) did so following national boundaries.1 They generally placed their respective institutions and agents at […]
Laos and the Global Land Rush: Precarious gains and the ongoing strive for state-building
Michael B. Dwyer, Upland geopolitics: Postwar Laos and the Global Land Rush, Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2022, xvii+232 pp. (ISBN: 9780295750491). In James Scott’s enlightening perspective, the uplands of Southeast Asia have long been loci of desertion and opposition to the state. In these natural theaters, characterized by mountainous and forest environments, […]
How the BJP wins: It did not win and then it did
Vinay Sitapati, India Before Modi: How the BJP Came to Power, London: Hurst and Company, 2021, xiv+409 pages (ISBN: 9781787385375). Nalin Mehta, The New BJP: Modi and the Making of the World’s Largest Political Party, Chennai: Westland Non-Fiction, 2022, xxxvi+809 pages (ISBN: 9789391234003). 1. Introduction These books offer timely and complementary insights into the […]
The historian, the colonial past of India, its persistence, and the duty of enquiry
Aditya Mukherjee, Political Economy of Colonial and Post-Colonial India, New Delhi: Primus Books, 2022, pp. 592 (ISBN: 978-93-5572-180-8), Hard-cover price ₹1950; $84.95; £74.95. From many points of view, India’s relationship with colonialism is not a closed chapter in the country’s history. Although British rule over the subcontinent ended 77 years ago, its legacies are still […]
The role of citizenship in the coming of Hindu Rashtra
Anupama Roy, Citizenship Regimes, Law, and Belonging: the CAA and NRC, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022, 270 pp. (ISBN: 978-0-19-285908-2) Since the Indian People’s Party (Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP) gained national power in New Delhi for the first time in 1998, Hindu nationalist organisations have started to transform the Indian republic in mainly two ways: […]
India’s first dictatorship: The emergency, 1975-77
Christophe Jaffrelot & Pratinav Anil, India’s First Dictatorship: The Emergency, 1975-77, London: C. Hurst & Co., 2020, 508 pp. (ISBN: 9781787384026). Historians working on South Asia have long regarded the end of British rule in the Indian subcontinent as a veritable boundary for their research. This caesura has been rapidly dismantled in the last decade […]
Dalits and «Hindu» nationalism: an ex-insider’s perspective
Meghwanshi, Bhanvar, I Could not be Hindu: The Story of a Dalit in the RSS, New Delhi: Narayana Private Publshing, 2020, 236 pp. (ISBN 9788189059934). Translated from Hindi by Nivedita Menon. This lucidly written riveting autobiography narrates the political journey and activism of an estranged RSS (Rashtriya Swayam-sevak Sangh/National Self-help Organisation) worker from a […]
Oration and narration: Fashioning India through prime ministerial speeches
Anandita Bajpai, Speaking the Nation: The Oratorical Making of Secular, Neoliberal India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018, 335 pp. (ISBN: 9780199481743). Oratory occupies a crucial position in electoral and mass politics in many countries around the world, including India. This is so much so that certain speeches become stately rituals themselves; for instance, […]
A brief political history of Iran 1979-2022
Mehran Kamrava, Triumph and Despair: In Search of Iran’s Islamic Republic, London: Hurst and Co., 2022, 304 pp. (ISBN 978-1-78-738803-1). A prolific writer and scholar of the Persian Gulf studies, Mehran Kamrava publishes his latest book Triumph and Despair: In Search of Iran’s Islamic Republic at an intense time as the Iranian regime faces […]
A superb book for understanding Iran
Mehran Kamrava, A Dynastic History of Iran: From the Qajars to the Pahlavis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022, 230 pp. (ISBN 978-1-0092-2464-2). A dynastic history of Iran is a superb book for understanding Iran – Persia until the 1930s – since the late 18th century until the 1978-1979 revolution. Mehran Kamrava is an authority on […]
Saudi Arabia and Iran: The struggle to shape the Middle East
Edward Wastnidge and Simon Mabon (eds.), Saudi Arabia and Iran: The Struggle to Shape Middle East, Manchester University Press, 2022, pp. 200 (ISBN 978-1-5261-5083-7). If one single phenomenon marked the last 40 years of Middle Eastern politics, it would be the long-standing rivalry between the two regional powerhouses of Saudi Arabia and Iran. This […]
The Journal
Foreword 2014: «Asia Maior» and its Asia
This short foreword is an introduction both to the «Asia Maior» project – namely a project which has been going on for a quarter of century – and to the contents of the present volume, which is the latest – but, hopefully, not the last – offshoot of this project. At the end of November […]
China in 2014: China and the Pivot to Asia
Introduction Differently from the approach used in the previous essays on China in Asia Maior, concerned especially with domestic politics, we have chosen here to privilege some aspects of China-US relations in order to investigate Chinese domestic politics and political economy through such a prism. The reasons for this preference lie mostly in the growing centrality […]
Japan in 2014: Between a China Question and a China Obsession
Introduction Events in 2014 confirmed the centrality of Prime Minister Abe Shinzō in Japan’s political landscape, in line with the expectation of the previous year’s analysis.[2] Following the landmark Cabinet decision allowing the exercise of the right of collective self-defense, much-coveted by the Prime Minister, and the insistence on expansive monetary and fiscal measures under the […]
Penisola coreana 2014: «ombre» all’interno e «luci» all’esterno
Premessa Il 2014, che avrebbe dovuto rappresentare la definitiva consacrazione della presidente sudcoreana Park Geun-hye, si è invece rivelato come uno spartiacque in negativo per la sua presidenza, complici alcuni disastri nazionali, fra cui la tragedia del traghetto Sewol. In seguito a questi disastri emergevano in maniera ancora più clamorosa radicate pratiche negative: corruzione, collusione […]
Indonesia 2014: Joko Widodo e la sfida all’élite del “new order”
Premessa In un’era di crescenti tensioni geopolitiche a livello internazionale, nel 2014 l’Indonesia affrontava un vasto processo elettorale che, non senza ostacoli, si concludeva in aprile con l’elezione democratica del nuovo presidente della repubblica, Joko Widodo (Jokowi). Per la prima volta, dalla fine del regime di Suharto, acquisiva la carica più importante dello stato una […]
Malaysia 2014: Reforms and challenges in the year of flight MH370
Introduction In 2014, Malaysian politics were largely determined by the general election of the year before, in which Prime Minister Najib Razak’s governing alliance, the Barisan Nasional (National Front, BN), led by Najib Razak’s party, the United Malay National Organization (UMNO, or United Malays National Organisation), finally achieved a majority. Yet despite its victory, the BN faced some serious […]
Cambodia 2014: The continuation of the Hun Sen-Sam Rainsy political duel and the surge in social conflict
Introduction In late 2013 and early 2014, a lengthy series of working class protests broke out in several Cambodian towns and violent clashes with the police were the order of the day. The most serious episode occurred during the demonstration on January 4, 2014, when four protesters were killed, a countless number injured, and 23 […]
Thailandia 2014: nascita di una dittatura nel nome del re
Introduzione La fragile democrazia tailandese nel 2014 ha conosciuto il più triste degli epiloghi. Il 22 maggio l’esercito ha attuato un colpo di stato e ha preso la guida del paese, approfittando del vuoto di potere conseguente alla destituzione del primo ministro, la signora Yngluck Shinawatra, da parte della suprema corte. L’evento del 22 maggio […]
Myanmar 2014: un processo di democratizzazione molto lento ma reale
Introduzione: attesa e stagnazione Dal 2010, anno delle elezioni generali che hanno decretato la svolta riformatrice e il progressivo allontanamento dei militari dal potere assoluto, che detenevano da quasi cinquant’anni, i cambiamenti avvenuti sono stati tali da ridisegnare l’intero assetto politico, sociale, economico del Myanmar. Senza dubbio si è trattato di una svolta che ha […]
Bangladesh 2014: Old Patterns, New Trends
Preface 2014 opened in Bangladesh with the elections, held on 5thJanuary amidst unprecedented political violence which led to the killing of 29 people. The 2014 elections were recorded as the most violent in Bangladesh’s history.[1] Throughout 2014, the government of the re-elected Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina faced several challenges. Firstly, the political crisis, fuelled by […]
India 2014: the annihilation of the congress party and the beginning of the Modi era
Introduction In India, the dominant event in the year 2014 was the 16th general election and its results, namely the resounding victory of the Narendra Modi-led BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) and the catastrophic defeat of the Indian National Congress (hereafter, the Congress). The Congress, which headed the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), in power during the […]
Nepal 2013-14: breaking the political impasse
Introduction In 2014, Nepal was headed towards a resolution of the problems that caused the political and constitutional impasse of 2012 and 2013. The first Constituent Assembly resolved on May 28, 2012, before drafting the new Constitution, to replace the interim Constitution of 2007. This brought the country to a political deadlock. In March 2013, […]
Sri Lanka Sri Lanka 2014: la continuazione del regime autoritario e la crescente insoddisfazione popolare
Introduzione Lo Sri Lanka ha visto, durante il 2014, il perdurare delle dinamiche che hanno caratterizzato lo scenario politico e sociale del paese dalla fine al conflitto civile, nel 2009. In particolare, il supremo potere politico ha continuato ad essere esercitato dal presidente Mahinda Rajapaksa (il cui vero nome è Percy Mahendra Rajapaksa). Eletto presidente […]
Pakistan 2014: Gli attacchi al governo di Sharif e le tensioni con i militari
Dal dialogo con i militanti alla campagna militare nel Waziristan del nord I propositi di dialogo con il TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, alleanza di una dozzina di gruppi militanti operativi in Pakistan), con i quali il nuovo governo di Nawaz Sharif aveva iniziato il proprio mandato nel maggio del 2013, si erano scontrati con l’irrigidimento delle […]
Afghanistan 2014: political transition without democracy?
Introduction In 2014 Afghanistan was dominated by the presidential election that led to the victory of Ashraf Ghani, after two successive terms in office by Hamid Karzai. Despite the ultimate success of the transition, the election has been marred by the same problems of fraud and ballot stuffing that characterised the previous polls. The declaration […]
Kyrgyzstan 2014: The painful march towards the Eurasian Union as the lesser evil?
Introduction Since his victorious presidential campaign back in 2011, Almazbek Sharshenovich Atambayev had pledged that Kyrgyzstan’s foreign policy would be markedly pro-Russian, heralding a break with the small Central Asian republic’s post-independence multi-vector foreign policy. While this policy tous azimuts has eventually tired all foreign partners because of Bishkek’s unrelenting efforts at securing greater revenues in exchange […]
Turkmenistan 2014: Security concerns and unfulfilled diversification of export energy routes
Introduction In 2014 Turkmenistan further enhanced its position in the regional political and economic chessboard, developing relations of cooperation with both Central Asian countries and non-regional countries, mainly interested in the Turkmen gas. Ashgabat’s support to the realization of regional infrastructures of transport – such as the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran railway – represents the main contribution of […]
Recensione: Un viaggiatore italiano dell’800. Dal Borneo al Giappone
Paolo Puddinu (a cura di), Un viaggiatore italiano in Borneo nel 1873, Il Giornale Particolare di Giacomo Bove (Parte I), Regione Piemonte, Provincia di Asti, Astigrafica 2014. Paolo Puddinu (a cura di), Un viaggiatore italiano in Giappone nel 1873, Il Giornale Particolare di Giacomo Bove (Parte II), Ieoka, Sassari, 1999. Il libro curato da Paolo Puddinu, Un viaggiatore […]
Recensione: Burocrazia della miseria: un’etnografia critica dell’incontro tra Stato e cittadino nell’India postcoloniale
Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence and Poverty in India/ Akhil Gupta – Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012, pp. 384 (ISBN: 9780822351108) Red Tape, il nastro rosso che storicamente lega i documenti ufficiali e rimanda alle pratiche amministrative che li producono, è un importante punto d’arrivo nella bibliografia dell’antropologo Akhil Gupta. Accademico indiano, nato a […]
Review: Enlightening Asia: a new perspective on Enlightenment and Violence
Enlightenment and Violence. Modernity and Nation-Making / Tadd Fernée – New Delhi: Sage Publications India, 2014, pp. LXVII/386. Theoretical Ground In the Fernée’s framework, the Enlightenment heritage has to be interpreted as a question in the history of ideas, an “interconnected web spanning debates on nationalism, revolution and post-structuralism”. Starting from some of Bipan Chandra’s comparative reflections […]
Foreword: Asia Maior in 2015
As has been pointed out in the foreword of the previous Asia Maior volume, Asia – even the portion of it that the Asia Maior think-tank defines as «Asia Maior», namely Asia south of the Caucasus and Siberia and east of Turkey and the Arab countries – is a profoundly diverse area, basically devoid of […]
China 2015: Implementing the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road
The present article sees as the most important political-economic development in China in the year 2015 the fulfilment of the first phase of a gargantuan political-economic project: the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road, known also as the «One Belt, One Road» (OBOR) initiative. This project, launched by the Chinese government in […]
Korean peninsula 2015: one step forward and two steps back
In 2015, in South Korea, President Park Geun-hye’s decline in popularity, which had begun in the previous year, further accelerated. In particular, the outbreak of the MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) crisis between May and June contributed, once again, to show the government’s inability to act quickly and effectively. The already difficult situation worsened in […]
Japan 2015: Confronting East Asia’s Geopolitical Game of Go
This essay focuses on the mounting geopolitical tensions around the South China Sea so as to gauge Japan’s growing assertiveness in foreign and security policy there. It defines regional strategic interaction in 2015 along the lines of a «game of go» (known as go or igo in Japan, and as weiqi in China): China calmed […]
Philippine 2014-2015: Domestic politics and foreign relations, a critical review
This article analyses some of the key issues in Philippine domestic politics and foreign policy during the years 2014 to 2015. The analysis is divided into two main parts. First, the article examines domestic politics from the lens of political corruption, President Aquino’s good governance programme, and electoral politics. Second, the article examines the principal […]
Indonesia 2015: The First Year of the «People’s President»
Joko Widodo’s election in 2014, after a long and harshly contested presidential race, raised great expectations: not beholden to the military and political elites of the Suharto era, Indonesian people considered him a representative of new democratic forces vis-a-vis the deep-seated «New Order» legacy. Accordingly, 2015 was important to see the extent to which these […]
Singapore 2011-2015: A Tale of Two Elections
The electoral authoritarian regime of Singapore has experienced two very different general elections in 2011 and 2015. The first was a watershed election that allowed the opposition to capture the largest number of seats ever, including a group representative constituency, which was once believed to be impossible. It had also fielded the most candidates ever, […]
Malaysia 2015: Najib Razak’s hardest year
In 2015 Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak’s leadership was badly shaken by the eruption of a huge corruption scandal in July. This same scandal contributed to making the Malaysian economic outlook negative, while the national currency fell to an all-time low against the US dollar. This was accompanied by a massive protest movement (Bersih 4.0), […]
Thailand 2015: Anxiety over the royal succession in the post coup 2014
The military staged a coup on 22 May 2014, overthrowing the elected government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. Outwardly, the military justified its political intervention with the classic claim that corruption was the rot of Thai politics and the coup was needed to purify the political domain. At a deeper level however, the military intervened […]
Cambodia 2015: 30 years of Hun Sen’s government and the progressive centralization of power
In 2015 Cambodia celebrated the anniversary of 30 years of Hun Sen’s government. This article argues that this anniversary coincided with a crisis of hegemony of both the leadership and the Hun Sen’s government. During 2015 Hun Sen tempted to face the crisis without a precise strategy. The most important was the so called «culture […]