Asia and Pacific

A Region of Regimes: Prosperity and Plunder in the Asia-Pacific

BY T. J. PEMPEL. Cornell University Press, 2021, 252 pp.

Pempel comprehensively analyzes the growth strategies of ten economies during the Asian economic miracle that started in the 1960s. Four patterns emerge. “Developmental regimes” that had competent bureaucracies, homogeneous societies, and U.S. support, such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, were able to build advanced modern economies, although their growth rates declined in the 1990s due to U.S. trade restrictions and growing domestic political contention. “Ersatz developmental regimes,” such as Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, also enjoyed substantial growth, based mostly on their exploitation of labor, land, and natural resources. But they suffered from weaker bureaucracies and more divided societies and did not develop advanced economies. Even the “rapacious regimes”— Myanmar, North Korea, and the Philippines—had occasional growth spurts, but they never developed competent state institutions or skilled workforces. China combined elements of all three types: deep industrialization, cheap labor, and authoritarian institutions. Relations among these places—and between each of them and the United States—played an important role in fostering growth for all but Myanmar and North Korea. The regional stability on which they have relied, however, is now threatened by the U.S.-Chinese rivalry.

When People Want Punishment: Retributive Justice and the Puzzle of Authoritarian Popularity

BY LILY L. TSAI. Cambridge University Press, 2021, 278 pp.

Many students of China have analyzed the sources of popular support for the authoritarian regime in Beijing. To the usual list of causes—economic performance, propaganda, nationalism, and culture—Tsai adds a new explanation: anticorruption campaigns, she argues, buttress the regime’s popularity because people want to see the enemies of the social order punished. The theory is attractive, even if her data leave some ambiguity about whether the wish for punishment is driven by a moral conviction or just a pragmatic preference for good government. Beyond China, she shows that authoritarian movements everywhere feed on the promise to punish perceived enemies of the social good. One wishes Tsai had compared the weight of this moral outrage with other factors that previous scholars have linked to regime support. And some readers will wonder whether a regime can get just as much public approval by promising to punish external enemies as it gets from targeting domestic malefactors.

Rethinking Chinese Politics

BY JOSEPH FEWSMITH. Cambridge University Press, 2021, 231 pp.

Fewsmith offers a spirited rebuttal of the conventional view that China’s post-Mao regime has avoided power

struggles and maintained control by creating institutionalized rules for policymaking, policy implementation, and leadership succession. He deploys a deep knowledge of elite political networks and party organizational dynamics to reconstruct what must have happened behind the scenes as the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and his successors maneuvered to consolidate and exercise power, sometimes following rules but just as often twisting, replacing, or violating them. The stately façade of Chinese politics conceals the “personalization of power, factionalism, . . . [the] arbitrary abuse of power, corruption, and . . . [a] lack of discipline.” Fierce rivalries and wily maneuvers have left some leaders weakened and have concentrated too much power in the hands of President Xi Jinping. Fewsmith implies that a system saddled with this much “corrosion and dysfunction” will sooner or later decay, but he does not forecast when or how.

Democracy and Nationalism in Southeast Asia: From Secessionist Mobilization to Conflict Resolution

BY JACQUES BERTRAND. Cambridge University Press, 2021, 301 pp.

Do transitions to democracy inflame or calm ethnonationalist movements that took shape under authoritarian regimes? Bertrand draws together years of research into five such movements in Southeast Asia to show that violence tends to surge right after the democratic transition, when separatists see an opportunity to achieve their goals. If the new democratic elites offer plausible concessions, however, the conflict has a good chance at least of being diminished, if not resolved. In Indonesia in 2006, for example, the post-transition government offered the province of Aceh a strong form of local autonomy, which addressed many of the demands issued by a pro-independence movement there and greatly reduced violence. By contrast, Thai politicians during the democratic period in the 1990s and early years of the next decade refused to negotiate with Malay Muslims in the south, allowing a low-level insurgency to continue there. The three other case studies lie between these extremes. Violence in the Cordillera highlands of the Philippines abated after 1997, when the government granted local groups special status as indigenous peoples. Meanwhile, however, the Moro uprising in the same country kept flaring up because the government failed to implement its agreements. In Papua, the inconsistent implementation of a 2001 special autonomy law kept a resistance going. It is hard for any kind of regime to compromise on national unity, but Bertrand shows that negotiation is a better way to manage separatist challenges than repression.

Colonial Institutions and Civil War: Indirect Rule and Maoist Insurgency in India

BY SHIVAJI MUKHERJEE. Cambridge University Press, 2021, 415 pp.

The Maoist, or Naxalite, insurgency has flared up and cooled down several times over the past half century in scattered districts of eastern India. Its geographic pattern is difficult to explain solely with conventional theories that focus on the distribution of economic and ethnic grievances and topographical

remoteness. Mukherjee shows that the insurgency has flourished in districts where the British colonists ruled through traditional princes or the local landlord caste instead of with their own bureaucracy. Exploitation under indirect rule was harsher and the policing system weaker than under direct rule. This left behind deep inequality, discrimination against subordinate castes and tribes, thin infrastructure, and understaffed administrative institutions—all favorable conditions for the revolutionaries to recruit support when they launched their movement in the late 1960s. Mukherjee’s analysis promises to enrich the understanding of how historical legacies shape civil conflicts.

Middle Class Shanghai: Reshaping U.S.China Engagement

BY CHENG LI. Brookings Institution Press, 2021, 484 pp.

Based on decades of original research, this book provides a nuanced counterpoint to alarmist caricatures of China and its citizens by exploring the diversity and dynamism of Shanghai and its large middle class. The city’s progressive outlook and eclectic culture stem from its history as a vital port town teeming with bankers, industrialists, architects, and missionaries from around the world. Its avant-garde political ferment gave birth to the revolutionary Chinese Communist Party in 1921. Present-day Shanghai is a cosmopolitan metropolis with the most skyscrapers, international banks, cafés, and art galleries in China. Surveys show that the city’s residents are significantly more concerned than the wider population about numerous political and environmental issues, including climate change, inequality, the plight of migrant workers, and government accountability. In China’s major cities, U.S.-trained professionals now hold leadership positions in academia, law, business, the creative arts, and even politics. Li makes the persuasive case that this middle class can help improve relations between China and the United States. He recommends a U.S. strategy of engagement with, rather than decoupling from, China, one that is sensitive to these dynamics and works toward pursuing shared goals.

KELLEE TSAI

Flying Blind: Vietnam’s Decision to Join ASEAN

BY NGUYEN VU TUNG. ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, 2021, 236 pp.

Nguyen provides a peek into communist Vietnam’s strategic deliberations regarding the Association of Southeast Asian Nations at the tail end of the Cold War. Using internal party documents and high-level interviews, Nguyen, a scholar and a diplomat, reveals the twists and turns leading to Hanoi’s decision to join asean in 1995. Initially, Vietnamese leaders maintained a hostile policy toward the regional association, viewing it first as an organization that would advance U.S.-style anticommunism in the waning years of the United States’ war in Vietnam and later as a vehicle for China’s anti-Vietnam campaign following Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia at the end of 1978 and the outbreak of the Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979. The ideological underpinnings of Vietnam’s foreign policy during these conflict-ridden times prevented policymakers from seeing asean on its own terms. Peacetime changed

Hanoi’s calculus. Vietnamese leaders began to understand asean as a regional community that could support Hanoi’s bid for rapid economic development. Nguyen deftly guides his readers through Hanoi’s decision-making, turning once opaque dealings transparent.