An East Asian Development Model: Empirical Explorations

The North East Asia, geographically belongs to the sub-system in the East Asia, has once created the ”East Asian Community” which consists of China and its surrounding countries, as referred to ”Chinese World Empire” in this article. It popularized the Confucius thinking in term of culture, Suzerain-vassal System in politics, and Tribute Trade System in economy. In short, it was a China-center traditional regional integration in East Asia and also a life community with common culture value. Passed downward through the modern history, Japan, under this common culture value, promoted actively the ”Asianism” as well as the ”Great East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere”, which was once popular in the North East Asia but abandoned in WWⅡ. Meanwhile, the existing Chinese ”Universalism” and ”Chinese World Empire” in the East Asia were suppressed by Western influence to East and were succeeded by Japan afterward. The ”Chinese World Empire” was contained by the U.S. in the postwar period and encountered the crisis of the civil war. For the hundred years, it was merely self-protected. Therefore, the theory and practice of traditional eastern ”East Asian Community” were all collapsed. After WWⅡ, following by the defeat of Japan, Japanese style ”Great East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere” was buried in the ash. The defeated Japan, learned the lesson and protected by the U.S. military, revived its economy and became the economic great power, and a technology great power because of reinvestment in RD it might be less attractive comparing to the Chinese-blood relations and interests of abundant resources and huge market. The ”Allying U.S. to restrain China” of Japan could be defeated by the ”Alienating Japan to engage China” of Korea. But for the purpose of national survival, the rivalry status between state and state is the last choice. The regional political and economical integration, such as ”East Asia Free Trade Area” or ”East Asian Community”, is not only the temporal phenomenon, rather the vision for co-existence and prosperity among the nations in the future. To lead by ”Japan as No. 1” or ”Peaceful rising China” in the regional integration towards ”East Asian Free Trade Area” or ”East Asian Community”, it will be defined by the result of duel between China and Japan for hegemony. Whoever winning the leadership in the East Asia would share with U.S. of its world leadership, arrange the international order, break the status quo, and reach the 2050 new era described by Goldman Sachs. The voice for ”East Asian Free Trade Area” or ”East Asian Community” has already been spoken loudly. The East Asian nations are also on the way to organize the ”Community”. Those nations are not bounded to the idea of boundary and have to learn to abandon ”Exclusive Sovereignty”. With gradual concession to the coming ”Asian” era and the agreement of peace, equality, consensus, they will push the regional integration in East Asia and build a life community of fellow feeling ”State of East Asia”. Let the power struggle among nations limit to the leadership of ”East Asian Free Trade Area” or ”East Asian Community”. That is the imminent issue for the intellectuals to work on with all effort.

Entering the 21(superscript st) century, East Asia is poised to become the new strategic center of gravity in international politics. The development of East Asia's security situation is characterized by economic development and strategic competition, paving the way for various scenarios of regional security order construction. This study seeks to explain the development of East Asia's security order through three different pathways-”hegemonic stability”, ”balance of power”, and ”multilateral institutions”. It concludes that with the exception of China, most regional actors have regarded the maintenance of status quo as the major goal of constructing regional order. East Asia has formed some regional security order to ease and manage regional tensions. On the issues of low politics, East Asia's multilateral security institution such as ASEAN has constructed international norms i.e. nonalignment, noninterference and common security to regulate regional actors' behaviors. As for the issues of high politics, they are mainly managed by US hegemony's diplomatic and military interference or, by multilateral consultations among regional great powers. The analysis of this study has shown that different pathways have been developed to construct East Asia's security order and these pathways are increasingly tempered by transnational cooperation.

This thesis investigates the question of how East Asian universities have engaged in urban processes as spatially grounded variegated social processes from the colonial era to recent decades by adopting a comparative urbanism approach. Historically, universities in the US and Europe have been influential urbanisation actors in their hosting cities, having occupied a substantial amount of land. The relationship between a university and its hosting city was often defined as ‘Town and Gown’; that implies an adversarial link, but this traditional relationship has changed. Universities in East Asia have also participated in urbanisation processes in diverse ways since their birth, but the dynamics behind this multi-faceted process has rarely been addressed. Using research data collected mainly from fieldwork in Singapore and South Korea, including 42 interviews and archival records, this thesis highlights the relationship between universities and cities in East Asia, focusing on three distinctive periods: the colonial, developmental, and postdevelopmental eras. In all these enquiries, land ownership by universities acts as a thread that weaves the diverse facets of the role of universities into different periods. The findings of this thesis can be summarised as follows: Firstly, colonialism has been influential in the university-urbanisation relationship. During the colonial era, the East Asian university emerged as a symbolic and political institution in the city. Various colonial and local actors surrounded the colonial universities to promote or fight against the ideology of imperialism, which demonstrates the diverse aspects of colonialism in cities of East Asia. Such legacies of colonialism are still found today. Secondly, the East Asian developmental state is a variegated concept. The university plays an important role in society, but the way in which the university engages with the developmental state has varied across geographies. The developmental state attempted to utilise universities to support rapid economic and urban development, but such efforts were not always successful. This finding challenges the conventional understanding that assumes a homogeneous conceptualisation of the East Asian developmental state. Lastly, the entrepreneurial character of East Asian universities has become increasingly evident while the presence of the state is still visible. Thus the role of East Asian universities in urban processes has also become more diverse and dynamic in the postdevelopmental state since the 1990s. While the entrepreneurial university has a long history in East Asia, the globalised and financialised interests are penetrating the university more actively through various urban development projects. This thesis concludes that there is an emerging need to recognise East Asian universities as land-based institutions playing an influential role in diverse and uneven urban processes. Investigating universities also provides an opportunity to identify linkages between their colonial legacies and contemporary urban processes in East Asia.

The Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Vienna was established on January l, 2000 by merging the Institutes of Sinology and Japanese Studies. Initially comprising the pillars Sinology, Japanese, and Korean Studies, the fourth pillar, the Chair of East Asian Economy and Society (EcoS), was established in 2007. The first Head of Department was Erich Pilz (2000-2001), followed by Sepp Linhart (2001-2012), both leading researchers on Japanese history, society, and culture. The current head is Rudiger Frank (since 2012), specialized in East Asian politics and economics, in ge- neral and North Korea, in particular. In addition to six professors, the Department of East Asian Studies currently has a staff of about 50 permanent and temporary researchers and lecturers (Institut fur Ostasienwissenschaften der Universitat Wien, 2001-2013).In addition to language courses, the disciplines Sinology, Japanology, and Koreanol- ogy offer strong social and cultural science studies. EcoS focuses on current political, security, and economic relations in East Asia and the respective national political and economic systems. The Department of East Asian Studies applies a broad area defini- tion of East Asia by incorporating North-East and South-East Asia. In this context, South-East Asia, in particular the role of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in promoting East Asian regionalism, has always figured prominently in the respective EcoS courses. Yet, in order to demonstrate the growing international rel- evance of this region, it has been a strategic aim of Rudiger Frank to institutionalize South-East Asian Studies at the EcoS Department to complement its range. In Octo- ber 2013, the position of a university assistant at the postdoc level was created. Two university assistants (praedoc) and one study assistant, concentrating on North-East Asia, complete the EcoS team. Overall, the teaching and research program at EcoS reflect the interconnectedness of North-East and South-East Asia. For instance, two key areas of research are state socialist systems (notably China, North Korea, and Vietnam) and climate change, the environment, and energy.Since October 2008, EcoS offers a four-semester Master of Arts (MA) as well as a PhD course on East Asian Economy and Society. Since an adaption of the curriculum in 2011, the MA is offered exclusively in English, and South-East Asia features explic- itly as an area of research in addition to the North-East Asian countries China, Japan, and the two Koreas. The Master course promotes the inter- and transdisciplinary comparative analysis of international relations and of domestic politics and econom- ics in the region in the twentieth and twenty-first century. In their Master thesis, students have to compare specific topics in at least two countries, either in North- or South-East Asia. The program provides students with a broad range of possibilities to specialize in topics of their choice. In addition, students have to acquire basic lan- guage skills in an East Asian language, particularly in Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. An admission requirement is a Bachelor or an equivalent college or university degree; eligible majors are, for instance, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese Studies, (Internation- al) Business Studies, or Political Science. The five core modules are Contemporary East Asian Language, East Asian Economy, East Asian Politics, East Asian Society and Research, and Master's Colloquium.Due to the popularity of the program in other European but also East Asian coun- tries, student numbers have far exceeded the initial planning for 25 students per study year (217 Master students in the summer term 2013). Due to the shortage in staff, room, and teaching resources, the rectorate decided to introduce admission re- quirements, starting with winter term 2013/2014. Since then, students have to apply for admission to EcoS; inter alia, they have to submit a demanding letter of motiva- tion, detailing their research interests and goals after graduation. …

After the end of the Cold War, the interactions of international community have gradually moved from the confrontation of high-politics to the non-traditional security of low-politics such as economic cooperation and competition. East Asia’s economic integration is mainly influenced by the US-led “Asia-Pacificism”, Chinese and Japanese “East- Asianism” as well as the ASEAN-proposed “Aseanism”. The interactions among these three regionalisms have formed the major pillars for the development trend of East Asia’s economic integration. The realization of Chinese “continental East-Asianism and Japanese “oceanic East-Asianism” focuses on the operations of “East Asian Summit” and the construction of “East Asian community”. In the process of regional integration, ASEAN is one of the most important “actors”; however, in the operations of ASEAN+3 and East Asian Summit, ASEAN has no sufficient capability to establish a path for East Asia’s integration. ASEAN’s role is more like a “pioneer” than a “power source” for regional integration. The real “power source” for East Asia’s integration is China and Japan. While China plays such a role as “active leader” for the development of East Asia Summit, Japan is an “integrator” for the summit. Both countries compete with each other for the dominance of East Asia’s integration. In essence, the development of East Asia’s integration will depend on Chinese and Japanese relations. This thesis intends to study the differences between East-Asianisms proposed by China and Japan respectively. It also examines the cooperation and competition between the two. How these two countries make use of East Asia Summit as platform to realize their own ideas concerning the development of East Asianism is another concern of this study. It should be noted that the US factor is a key force that can influence the future development of East Asia’s economic integration. To be sure, to examine Chinese and Japanese East Asianism must consider the role of the US, thus the complexity of analysis will be increased.

From the point of view of modern geopolitics, China lies at the crossroad between world marine geographical strategic region and Eurasia continental geographical strategic region. The unique strategic position protrudes that China can exert an important influence on the two great strategic regions, and that its security environment is tied to the big powers relationship of the regions at the same time. In addition, in the 20th century only, China had military conflicts with the USA, Soviet Union, Japan, India, Vietnam, South Korea and Taiwan within or near China’s territory; it implies that a war could most likely be taken place within the Chinese territory, but not overseas. Since Deng Xiaoping, the second generation of leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, headed the administration, China’s national policies have significantly been changed: while they insisted the course toward a “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” they realized the importance of “peace” and “development” in solving the problems among “East-West” and “South-North” relations, they re-established their foreign policy following the “Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence”, and they actively expanded their foreign relations with neighboring countries, especially with the ASEAN countries. It is based on two considerations that China seeks to improve and develop a peaceful and steady relationship with the surrounding countries: for the needs of their own economic development, and for strategic purpose. The ASEAN countries have sensitive and contradictive psychology: on one hand, they are afraid China will be like a magnet siphoning away all of the foreign capitals from the ASEAN countries, and on the other hand, they expect a large Chinese market urgently. Based on the “Good Neighboring Principle”, China has successfully signed a couple of protocols with the ASEAN countries in recent years, including the “Framework Agreement on Comprehensive Economic Cooperation between ASEAN and China,” the ”Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea”, “The Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia” and the “Joint Declaration on Strategic Partnership for Peace and Prosperity”. These protocols have not only effectively reduced the negative impression of “China Threat” and the qualm of the neighboring countries to China’s emerging, but also provided enormous opportunities and interests for the neighboring countries through economic cooperation. The trends and results of the close relations between China and the ASEAN will inevitably generate great impact on the strategic interests of the United States in the Asian-Pacific area, on Japan’s and India’s seeking for big powers in political and economic arena, and furthermore on the more complicated and uncertain situation in east Asia in the post-Cold War era. The Document Analysis will be used in this thesis to explore the strategic meaning of China’s “Good-Neighboring Principle”, in view of traditional realism and Neo-realism theories, to find out the importance and outcome of the principle in the course of “Peaceful Emerging” of China, and to empirically describe the achievement of the Chinese Communist Party regime, after having abandoned the dogmatic ideology and adapted a practical and realistic approach to achieve the goal of peaceful emerging.

Purpose - This paper objectively analyzes the effects of globalization on Zimbabwe’s business and economic development using the Business in Context (BIC) model. Research design, data, and methodology - We employed a qualitative research methodology, following an exploratory secondary research design in this paper. Results - The findings reveal that businesses in Zimbabwe have benefited from globalization as it has drawn investments from international companies in the country. In addition, the business sector is benefiting from the economies of scale realized from the investments made by companies in Africa, East Asia, Europe, and America. However, we also discover that globalization has resulted in the proliferation of cheap sub-standard goods and services from East Asia, and has increased competition between indigenous companies and foreign-owned multinationals. Conclusion - Our findings suggest that globalization has both positive and negative effects on business and economic development in Africa in general, and Zimbabwe in particular. However, we note that the advantages, to a certain extent, outweigh the disadvantages. What, then, could be the way forward for Zimbabwe, in the face of globalization? As a solution, this paper recommends the development of a policy on global associations by the Zimbabwean government, to enhance business and economic development.

East Asia is a powerhouse of economic and social development, with cultural industries that have burgeoned as countries in the region have generated consumer economies and a middle class. Despite ongoing security tensions, growing evidence suggests that a vigorous cultural trade in such commodities as comics, cinema and TV drama is creating a shared regional popular culture. The widespread diffusion of the Internet, and the concomitant rise of non-professional online publishing and social networking, is creating new communities among the consumers of these cultural commodities. Rivalry for leadership in the sphere of the culture industries provides a fertile field for the study of soft market power versus hard political power. The competing national discourses of the Korean Wave (hallyu) and Japans Gross National Cool indicate a struggle for new forms of influence in the East Asian region, a struggle that is becoming more intense as China, too, starts to exert soft power influence on a global scale in the form of cultural industries and foreign aid. Complicated Currents: Media Flows, Soft Power and East Asia addresses transnational production and consumption of media products such as cinema, television dramas, popular music, comics and animation in Japan, South Korea and China. Its multidisciplinary approaches include cultural studies, gender studies, media studies, and a content analysis of the popular discourse of otherness in the East Asian context. While suggesting the emergence of a shared East Asian popular consumer culture, it critically examines the proposition that such a shared popular culture can resolve tensions between nation-states, and highlights the appropriation of popular culture by nation-states in an attempt to exercise soft power. Complicated Currents: Media Flows, Soft Power and East Asia will be of interest to researchers and students in Asian Studies, Cultural Studies and Media Studies, and will be particularly useful to researchers in the emerging area of Inter-Asian Cultural Studies.

The paper argues that an economy's industry/technology structure is endogenously determined by the economy's endowment structure. For the convergence to occur, the government of an LDC should target the upgrading of endowment structure instead of the industry/technology structure in its development strategy. If the government chooses to pursue an industry/technology structure, which is inconsistent with the comparative advantage determined by the economy's endowment structure, the firms in the government's priority sectors will be nonviable and the government needs to suppress the function of market and distort all kinds of prices as a way to protect the nonviable firms. Convergence will fail to occur as a result. Regression results from cross-country panel data are consistent with the predictions of the above arguments.

The East Asian model of economic development focuses on 5 shared characteristics that seem significant in the contemporary economic development of Japan Taiwan and Korea. They are economic characteristics and include 1) high investment ratios 2) small public sectors 3) competitive labor markets 4) export expansion and 5) government intervention in the economy. Large and efficient investments in human capital and well-developed capacities to absorb new technology are 2 other economic features shared by The Three. One could add overcrowding (high man/land ratios) and scarcity of natural resources though these are handicaps rather than sources of economic strength. It is possible however that virtue springs from necessity and that ample arable land or abundant natural resources mainly permit governments to postpone the difficult decisions needed to promote development rather than provide the wherewithal needed to finance development. Other noneconomic characteristics of The Three such as ethnic and linguistic homogeneity relatively compact geography manageable population size and the Confucian tradition have not been considered in the model even though they have undoubtedly influenced labor productivity savings behavior and other aspects of economic performance. Whether the East Asian model ought to be followed depends on whether current and foreseeable circumstances are sufficiently like those faced by The Three to justify using the same policies that they used. Applicability of the East Asian model should also depend on whether the strategy employed by The Three has been responsible for their economic success. 2 aspects of the East Asian models policy features are noteworthy: 1) the policies typically work by influencing rather than replacing private market decisions and 2) the public expects government to intervene to influence economic growth.

The government of Taiwan has passed the ”Free Trade Zone Establishment Statue” in 2003 and promulgated the new law on July 23 in the same year. Under this new law, six free trade zones (FTZ), namely, Kaohsiung FTZ, Taipei FTZ, Taichung FTZ, Suao FTZ, Taoyuan FTZ have been approved and launched into operation. The FTZ facility performs a variety of functions. In the aspect of operation: pragmatic (the zone harbored companies, representative offices, and business centers) and diversity in operation (restructuring, processing, and manufacturing). In the aspect of costing: easing the constraints on the proportion for hiring foreign workers and preferential treatment in taxation. In the aspect of efficiency: the customs declaration process has been simplified, which allows for free flows of goods and business personnel as well as the holding of exhibition and trade events. In the aspect of service: one-stop administrative service and integrated coordination by a cross-agency task force.The division of labor in Asia has been transforming over the years. With the launch of the ASEAN + 1 (China economic zone), the regional economy in East Asia is expected to perform much better. In addition, global economy is in the process of diverting to Asia, which will turn China into the dual-role of ”World Factory” and ”World Market”. Indeed, China will be the engine driving global economy forward. In the wake of economic integration in East Asia, economic and trade development of Taiwan should aim at East Asia with the establishment of corporate headquarters by Taiwanese investors in the region. By taking the advantages of Taiwanese investors in China and the integration of export market with gravity in the EU and America, coupled with the added value from the free trade zones, goods can be shipped out via Kaohsiung Port. A number of factors will make Kaohsiung Free Trade Zone the base for outsourced processing and assembly in Asia. They are the legal rules governing the free trade zones that provide incentives for the investors and the high efficiency of the government, the supply of materials, assembly, engineering management and technological-know-how of the manufacturers, the professional knowledge of marine transport, warehouse storage, and logistics, and the distinguished location and management of Kaohsiung Port.The development strategy of Kaohsiung FTZ in the short run: integration of government resources, establishment of a global logistics task force at the national level, integration of flow volume of goods from Taiwan firms, attracting goods of Taiwan origin back to Taiwan for adding value and shipment. In addition, the establishment of a Taiwan-centered logistic network through the acquisition of bonded logistics facilities in China is also important. Pool up domestic investment in international logistics and to increase the volume of logistics in the domestic market of China will be vital for expanding the territory of logistic services. The free trade zones should be opened to enterprises from China for processing and adding value, and as a buffer zone for linking China to the world. The development strategy in the long run: domestically, national resources should be integrated through the free trade zones in trading and operation in order to build up the zone into a modernized harbor city. Internationally, the policy of stretching out the territory of Taiwan shall be adopted whereby free trade zones shall be extensively developed for the integration of resources of the Taiwanese investors and building up Taiwan into a global logistic hub. In the advent of regional economic integration, this study is an attempt to explore interactions of Kaohsiung FTZ with the outside world, the operation environment provided by the zone, and the strategic mindsets of cooperation between China and Taiwan through the integrated operation in the zone, and the development of free trade zone. The findings of this study are expected to contribute to development of Kaohsiung FTZ in the future.

The Asian financial crisis in 1997 heavily damaged some East Asian countries and induced cooperative dialogues among them. In 1999, financial cooperation officially staged itself among other topics of regional cooperation in ASEAN Plus Three (APT). Regional financial dialogues after 1999 focused on three important issues: emergency liquidity support, regional bond market and the birth of a possible common currency. In this dissertation, the concepts of “bias” and “mobilization of bias” are mobilized for analyzing the development of regional financial cooperation in the three issues. The Chiang Mai Initiative initiated by Japan and supported by APT unanimously in 2000 started the cooperation on emergency liquidity support, and has evolved into a multilateralized reserve pool of 240 billion dollars in size. Moreover, competition between China and Japan for leadership in East Asia not only stifled the AMF proposal, but also promotes CMI and CMIM. China and Japan, the biggest two in East Asia, share the common interest and sentiment as a camp of East Asian regionalism resist the globalist drive led by the U.S. for regaining regional autonomy on development path. The later developments in reducing the proportion of IMF-linked bail-out resources and the establishment of AMRO show consistency on pursuing regional autonomy as the management of financial crisis is concerned. As for the regional bond market cooperation, the dissertation offers its explanation of APT members’ choices between integrating market to enlarge regional bond market and keeping regulation on cross-border movement of capital to stabilize exchange rate. By analyzing the Annual Report on Exchange Arrangements and Exchange Restrictions 2011 and the actions that APT countries took in promoting the Asia Bond Fund and the Asian Bond Market Initiative, the author defines various preferences of individual APT countries for bond market cooperation and the priority of preserving exchange rate stable for some of them. Therefore, though the scale of local currency bond outstanding grows, mobilization of local bond markets is still in a low level. In addition, dispersed actions of APT countries in ABMI cooperation didn’t help enhancing the role of bond market in domestic finance, nor balancing the existing over reliance of local funding demand on banking. It is presented that the bias of the existing “East Asia dollar standard system” has contributed to Japan’s long lasting deflation. That’s why Japan keens to encourage regional monetary cooperation in East Asia for decomposing the system. Given this desire of Japan, the 1997 Asia financial crisis and the 2008 American subprime mortgage default presented golden chances for Japan to persuade her neighbors to join regional monetary cooperation. However, moving toward a regional common currency though helps reducing heavy reliance on dollar and releasing worries on devaluation of dollar reserves, the default of Euro zone countries extends the flaw of common currency cooperation as well. Considering that it takes time to form a regional common currency, as well as the issues declared in the flaws of Euro case, China unilaterally accelerates controllable RMB internationalization in 2009 as an alternative. Therefore, it is very unlikely to set off the necessary regional cooperation in constructing a common currency in a decade. RMB internationalization will continue to consume China’s motivation for participating common currency cooperation in East Asia. Besides, RMB internationalization is an acceptable solution to Japan for it’s helpful to decomposing the East Asia dollar standard system.

Much of Chiang Kai-shek's 'returning virtue for malice' (yide baoyuan) postwar Japan policy remains to be examined. This thesis mainly shows how the discourse of 'returning virtue for malice' facilitated Japan's diplomatic recognition of the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan during the Cold War era. More conceptually, this study re- conceptualizes foreign policy as discourse-that of moral reciprocity-as it sheds light on the question of recognition as well as the consensual aspect of hegemony. By adopting a genealogical approach, this discourse analysis thus traces the descent and emergence of the 'returning virtue for malice' trope while it examines its discursive effect on Tokyo's recognition of Taipei under American hegemony. After tracing the emergence of Chiang's postwar Japan policy as discourse, this thesis first delves into the rise of 'returning virtue for malice' as it demonstrates how the discursive formation of Tokyo's recognition of Taipei constituted US hegemony in East Asia at the inception of the Cold War. Second, this study then highlights the heyday of 'returning virtue for malice' as it shows how a powerful coalition formed around the discourse in the domain of Japanese politics, thereby reproducing the recognition of Nationalist China as well as consolidating American hegemony at the height of the Cold War. Third, this research sheds light on the decline of 'returning virtue for malice' as it depicts the erosion of the Japanese discourse coalition and US hegemony due to the lack of consent between Tokyo, Taipei, and Washington as the nature of the Cold War dramatically changed in East Asia. In short, the discourse of Chiang Kai-shek's 'returning virtue for malice' postwar Japan policy represented Chiang as the benefactor to whom the Japanese should repay their 'debt of gratitude', thereby making Japan's recognition of the Republic of China on Taiwan possible. In effect, this thesis presents a way of reading bilateral relations as it mainly shows how recognition can be constructed by the political actors who draw on hegemonic practices from the past-such as moral reciprocity-under hegemony.

The different paths of economic development between Manchuria and the China proper in modern times has long been noticed and attributed to the distinctive Japanese colonialism and imperialism. Contrary to the literatures that examine Manchuria through national historical perspectives, this thesis proposes a Manchuria-centered regional economic point of view that cuts through Chinese warlord, Japanese imperialist, Nationalist, and Communist political regimes between 1918 and 1954, and reconnects these fragmented periods back into a continuous pattern of political economy, conceptualized as the heavy industrial state. Four major characteristics of the heavy industrial state in Manchuria are described and analyzed in a chronological order with the existing and recently unveiled historical records. First, the Manchurian state consistently spends a considerable portion of revenue on increasing industrial output by building, consolidating and expanding modern fiscal and monetary power. It prioritizes heavy industrialization under shifting geopolitical pressures through empowered central planning agencies and in the form of annual or five-year plans. In addition, the state enterprise system and its government managing apparatus are the main developmental actors to carry out the economic plans conceived and financed by the state. And finally, the heavy industrial state derives its core technological and managerial assistances and acquires the advanced machinery mostly through exclusive political-military alliances with preferential terms. As a fertile soil for experimenting European anti-liberal capitalism ethos, military, political, economic and technological elites of East Asia, though implacable foes against each other in many respects, explored a resembling prototype of the future developmental and socialist state in Manchuria. However, they also built a special state-economy/society relationship into the semi-periphery state that exudes the chronic problem of addressing national autonomy at the expense of profitability, despite its merits in claiming miraculous economic results in Asia. This cradle and training camp of Manchurian Atlas becomes a focal point once again when China is poised for deepening the reform of its economic system and widening its integration into the global capitalist system in the 21st century.

Asia, even excluding Malaysia, has the richest family and subfamily flora of angiosperms in the world, 478 of 755 total families and additional subfamilies recognized in my system of classification. Eastern and southeastern Asia are especially rich in conifers (6 of 7 families plus Agathis of the seventh family, Araucariaceae, in Malaya) and those angiospermous families and subfamilies retaining many primitive features, 27 of 41 families of Magnoliidae (Magnolianae, Nymphaeanae, and Rafflesianae) and Ranunculidae (Ranunculanae) (with 7 more families in Malesia and northeastern Australia that might have migrated from southeastern Asia since the junction of the Asiatic and Australian tectonic plates, possibly 15 million years before the present). Also represented in eastern and southeastern Asia are 9 of 9 families and additional subfamilies of Hamamelidales (Rosidae) and 26 of 32 families of Alismatidae (Triuridanae, Acoranae, Aranae, Alismatanae), and Liliales (Liliidae), which seem to be the least specialized monocots. The much studied close floristic relationships between eastern Asia and eastern North America were much stronger in Cretaceous and Tertiary time. Indeed, many of the archaic genera of seed plants now restricted to eastern Asia once were widely distributed in North America and other parts of the northern hemisphere. Hence, one can state that eastern and southeastern Asia are indeed a living museum of archaic vascular plants, but fossil evidence is presently inadequate to prove that the region is the major birthplace of the conifers and flowering plants. It is probable, however, that some of the gymnosperms and archaic angiosperms did evolve in eastern and southeastern Asia, and especially in the Sino-Japanese Region.