The Modern Planning History of East Asia: a brief guide from the Japanese perspectives

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. …

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.

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.

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.

Ocean drilling in the Bengal Fan has revealed the uplift history of the Himalayas and Indian monsoon,but there is no analogous deep-water fan in the Western Pacific marginal seas that can be drilled and used to constrain the Tibet uplift history from its eastern side.The Yangtze river,originating from northeastern Tibet and draining a large area prevailed by monsoon precipitation,is highly sensitive to plateau uplift and monsoon evolution.A systematical study of the Yangtze river deposits will test various hypotheses concerning plateau uplift and its link with monsoon evolution.Along the modern Yangtze river,the upper reach is decoupled from the lower reach by the Three Gorges.About 30% of the total sediment load from the Yangtze river is laid in the Jianghan Basin immediately out from the Gorges,~40% is deposited in the lower reach and delta,and only ~30% is transported to the East China Sea.Therefore,a combination of ocean and continental drilling along the Yangtze River will recover records useful for carving the history of uplift and monsoon.A close timing of tectonic and climatic events mainly at four time intervals has been proposed as evidence for a link between Tibet uplift and the Asian monsoon initiation: the late Pliocene(2~3 Ma),the late Miocene(~8 Ma),the early-middle Miocene(~15 Ma) and the latest Oligocene(~25 Ma).On the basis of the Three Gorges incision or delta development data,however,the history of the Yangtze River can be traced back only to the late Pliocene or early Pleistocene,and the East China Sea came into existence only in the latest Miocene.A younger Yangtze river is in a sharp contrast to the early uplift of Tibet.In the Paleogene,a broad belt of aridity stretched across China from west to east,and numerous lake basins developed in rift grabens,prohibiting any east-flowing large rivers.Large rivers like the Yangtze river could have developed only since Neogene with the advent of an east-tilting topography and monsoon in East Asia.The proposed joint IODP/ICDP project will provide sediment records from marine and terrestrial basins to help clarify the most puzzling issues in East Asian environmental evolution and to test the hypothetical link between Tibetan uplift and monsoon climate from the eastern side of the plateau.

After the Sino-Japan War broke out in 1937, the Chinese coastline harbors gradually fell under the Japanese control. When Guangdong province was occupied in October 1938, the Republic of China had completely lost her control on the main harbors on its soil. As a consequence, the development of all fishery related matters was suspended, When Japan surrendered in August 15, 1945, the Chinese government regained the control of her coastline harbors. However, all of the war-time damages to China's economic structure had to be reorganized. For that purpose, the Chinese government re-opened the discussions on territorial waters, in the hope of recovering the fishery prosperity through rectifying and reforming the system, and reducing the disputes with other countries over fishery rights before the war. After Japan's surrender, the Allied Forces established the General Headquarters (GHQ) in Tokyo immediately; it controlled the substantial domestic and diplomatic affairs of Japan. Japan was in a non-normal state before signing the Treaty of Peace in San Francisco. For this reason, Japan could not practice fishery right, which was a symbol of the sovereign right. Due to the need of solving the famine issue in Japan, the General Headquarters delimited the fishing boundaries of Japan, the so-called ”MacArthur Line”. But the delimitation caused subsequent disputes between Japan and other neighboring countries, including the Republic of China. The Far Eastern Commission discussed issues concerning the draft of the ”Fishing and Aquatic Industries in Japan” in 1947. To reduce her burdens of the trusteeship of Japan and strengthening her importance in the East Asia, the USA took an arbitrary altitude toward the fishery draft, and this attitude prompted discontent of Japanese neighboring countries (e.g. R. O. C. and USSR). As a result, Far Eastern Commission did not adopt this version of draft. However, the General Headquarters still extended Japan's fishery zone without the consents of neighboring countries. From 1948 to 1952, many Japanese fishing boats were still transgressing the fishery delimitation. The government of the Republic of China established domestic laws to counteract Japanese intrusion, but this action led to conflicts with the functions and powers of the General Headquarters. Finally, due to the consideration of the international circumstances, the government of the Republic of China gave way to the General Headquarters. When the Treaty of Peace with Japan came into effect in 1952, Japan became independent without trusteeship. The fishery negotiation between the Republic of China and Japan turned a new page without the GHQ's interferences. This study uses the archives in Taiwan and Tokyo to clarify the issue of the fishery right discussed among the General Headquarters, the Republic of China and Japan after the WWII.

John Milton, lauded as the most significant poet after William Shakespeare, is often considered a literary treasure of the English nation. However, there has been a rising interest in Milton's reputation in cultures other than the English speaking world in recent years. Among the non-English speaking cultures being studied, receptions of Milton in the Japanese- and Chinese-speaking worlds have been examined carefully. Several reviews on the development of Milton scholarship in Japan have been published since the 1960s. Research on the reception history of Milton in China in late-Qing China and the early 20th century has been conducted, although investigations on Milton's stature in China beyond 1949 as well as in the other parts of the Chinese-speaking world such as Taiwan and Hong Kong are yet to be done. The historical-cultural links between Taiwan and China suggests continuity while political separation has resulted in metamorphosis in the reception of Milton in Taiwan as opposed to the earlier development in China. It is therefore interesting to conduct an overview on the images of Milton in Taiwan so as to complete the picture of Milton's reception in the Chinese-speaking world. While examining the reception history of Milton in Taiwan with respect to its relation with earlier reception in China, an understanding of Milton's fate in the neighboring Japan will enable us to consider the factors that might be involved in Milton's cross-cultural journeys to the Far East and to bring some light on the nature of Milton's fate in East Asia.

Asianism has played an important role in modern East Asian history. Much academic research has highlighted its problematic nature. However, most such research has only focused on the development of Asiaism after the Meiji period. This article discusses the emergence of discourses of Asia from the late Tokugawa period, focusing on the view of the national imagination of Aizawa Seishisai (1782-1863). Aizawa Seishisai was a Japanese nationalist thinker of the Mito School, which he played a major role in developing. I first survey the intellectual trends of Aizawa Seishisai's time, focusing on the question of how he imagined Japan and the world through the knowledge systems of Han learning, National learning, and Dutch learning. This article then clarifies the entangled relations between the national imagination of Aizawa Seishisai and the emergence of discourses of Asia in nineteenth-century Japan, thus contextualizing Asianism.

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.

This lecture is concerned with some historical issues of “China,” “territory,” “culture” and “identity” that are placed against the background of politics, culture and scholarship in contemporary China. I want to draw attention to the question of how historians understand and interpret “China.” It addresses the following questions. First, where did the idea of “China” come from? and how did it become a topic of scholarly research? What kind of dilemmas does “China” confront in its current condition and historical interpretation? Second, how do various new historical theories and methods in international academic circles enrich our understanding of “China”? Third, how does China’s history and reality challenge the theories of “empire” and “nation-state”? Fourth, is it possible to write “East Asian history”? Does “national history” prove still effective in describing China or East Asia?

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.

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.

Exhibitions of Asian art in Japan experienced a turning point with the establishment of the Asian Art Museum in Fukuoka in 1999. Fukuoka serves as a gateway to continental Asia by way of its geographical location. The new museum was a response to a global tendency to overcome the supremacy of Western art systems; to represent our own and to dissolve the hierarchy between these two. To support the potentialities of Asian art ”now,” the museum systematically collects and exhibits only modern and contemporary Asian art. This is a totally new concept in the Asian region. Nevertheless, the concept of exhibitions of Asian art in Japan seems to have gradually departed from the politic of the West vs non-West dualism, and has gone beyond the simple schema of multiculturalism. The exhibition entitled The Elegance of Silence: Contemporary Art From East Asia, which was held at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo in 2005, is one such example. It seemed predominantly based on the ”art for art's sake” approach, in relation to the concept of traditional thought in East Asia. The assertion of this exhibition was that China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan have inherited the intellectual traditions of ancient China, especially the culture of writing, and other reciprocal cultural influences. Through these common aspects, the exhibition was to show the beauty of nature and landscapes, as well as silence, as the title of the exhibition suggests. Both old and new, tradition and modernity are taken up dialectically and within this oppositional structure. There is an assumption that a new dynamism in art is rising. Yet the cultural unity of East Asia was, and is, both uncertain and provisional. The cultural consciousness is not definitive either. So, in the case of this exhibition, we have to firstly question: is nature or a collective view of traditional East Asian Art--”silence,” ”non-presence,” ”vacuum”-- effective enough after modernization? Secondly, are these characteristics even indigenous to East Asian art? German Romanticism and Abstract Expressionism in the USA during the 19th and 20th centuries, for example, was also pursued with this mentality, especially that of ”silence.” This distinct awareness between difference and commonality might be necessary. The art historian Michael Baxandall, in the well-known book Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display (1991), remarked that the principle of exhibitions is to recognize the cultural differences of the artist, the exhibitor and the viewer. This approach was very effective in the era of multiculturalism, which had a tendency to offend the identities of each. However, as trans-culturalism and a sense of crossing boundaries are more authentic in the current context, art exhibitions as cultural politics may latently carry the message of a reactionary cultural consciousness for oneness.

Continued rapid industrialization is expected to make East Asia the largest source region for air pollution in the coming decades. This chapter reviews the import and export of air pollutants, mainly carbon monoxide and ozone, by long-range transport to and from East Asia. Air pollutant sources and transport characteristics dominated by the monsoon regime over Northeast and Southeast Asia are summarized. Over Northeast Asia both import and export of air pollution contribute significantly to the intercontinental transport of pollution. Trans-Eurasian transport of air pollution by westerly flows from Europe to Northeast Asia, and trans-Pacific transport of Northeast Asian pollution to the Pacific and North America have been verified by both observations and model studies. The influence of Siberian forest fires on pollutants over Northeast Asia has also been clearly identified. Over continental Southeast Asia, import of air pollution occurs mainly from source regions over the Indian subcontinent during the summer monsoon and from Northeast Asia during the early winter monsoon. Biomass burning within the region, however, strongly dominates regional pollution. The transoceanic export of air pollution from Southeast Asian biomass burning is known to be one of the most significant sources of ozone and CO over the North Pacific in the springtime.

The modern history of Taiwan begins from the early 17th century, and the history of dramatic performances dates from the beginning of the Qing dynasty (1683). Before that, few performances were recorded, which does not, however, mean there were no dramatic performances. At that time, Taiwan was the area that traders, pirates and the western imperialists scrambled for; it was also the place fought for by the Ming and Qing dynasties. The history of drama in Taiwan during the Dutch and the Koxinga periods is worth researching because it shows unique and multifaceted responses to the international situation.In Taiwan in 1624, the 38-year domination by the Dutch began; it was also the birth year of Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong) in Hirado, Japan. When this ”Japanese man” came back to Fujian, he became a subject of the Ming dynasty. As an adult, he led the Southern Ming army fight against the Qing dynasty; in 1661, he turned to Taiwan and forced the Dutch to withdraw.To observe the ethnic groups in Taiwan during that time, there are some clues of the Han people's drama performances that can be traced in the dramatic elements of the aboriginals' songs and dances, as well as some Dutch records of the Han people's seasonal festivals. It is worth wondering whether the Dutch, being rulers of the Han people, staged Dutch or European drama performances in the communities. It is also unknown if there were any drama performances in the Japanese communities. However, after the Koxinga era was destroyed, there was a Japanese playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1724), who in his thirties wrote ”The Battles of Koxinga” (”Kokusen'ya Kassen”). Although it was far from the historical truth, it reveals the interest of the Japanese in Taiwanese issues, and it also provides clues about the relation of Taiwan and Japanese drama. Moreover, after Koxinga landed successfully on Luermen, he forced the Dutch missionary Anthonius Hambroek to persuade the Dutch to surrender. However, Hambroek told the Dutch to fight back instead, and was killed by Koxinga. He became a martyr of the dispute between the Dutch and Koxinga. A hundred years later, a Dutch playwright Joannes Nomsz (1738-1803) wrote ”Anthonius Hanbroek, of de Belegering van Formosa”, which was performed in the theatre in Amsterdam. These dramas more or less reveal the international situation of the issues in 17th century Taiwan.During the Japanization Movement, the Japanese rulers tended to pursue their dream of revival of Greater East Asia by deliberately establishing Taiwan as a Center of Greater East Asian Drama, which responded to the historical background of 17th century Taiwan. The dream was finally unrealized, but it showed the historical characteristic of early Taiwanese drama: it is a multi-cultural integration under the impact of different regimes, and is itself also a stage for creating dramas.