Enhancing our understanding of HRM in the Chinese industrial sector, this book explores the emerging role of HRM in China's industrial enterprises. A significant contribution to the theory of HRM, this book will be essential reading for students and researchers of Business and Management, HRM and Asian Business.

This volume explains the beginnings and expansion of China's space program, analyzing how China is now able to hold such ambitions and how the interaction between technology, politics and economics has influenced the Chinese space program. It opens by tracing out the earlier development of the space program and identifying the successes and problems that plagued this initial effort, later focusing upon its development over the past decade and into the future. As China is now able to reach into outer space with its machines and, since 2003, with its humans, the authors examine how this move from a non-participant status to a state operating at the highest level of space activities has confirmed its potential place as the new economic and military superpower of the twenty-first century. They also demonstrate how recent successes mean that China is now confronted by an issue previously encountered by other space 'powers', such as the United States and the former Soviet Union: what is the value of the space program, given its high costs and likelihood of dramatic failure? Chinese Space Policy will be of great interest to students of space studies, Chinese politics, security studies, and international relations in general.

Samkhya and Yoga are two of the oldest and most influential systems of classical Indian philosophy. This book provides a thorough analysis of the systems in order to fully understand Indian philosophy. Placing particular emphasis on the metaphysical schema which underlies both concepts, the author adeptly develops a new interpretation of the standard views on Samkhya and Yoga. Drawing upon existing sources and using insights from both Eastern and Western philosophy and religious practice, this comprehensive interpretation is respectful to the underlying spiritual purpose of the Indian systems. It serves to illuminate the relation between the theoretical and practical dimensions of Samkhya and Yoga. The book fills a gap in current scholarship and will be of interest to those concerned with Indology as well as philosophies in general and their similarities and differences with other traditions.

This book examines the relationship between land tenure, conservation and rural development in the context of the Southeast Asian archipelago. In particular, it is concerned with people living in and around national parks and other protected areas. It discusses the value of reinforcing indigenous tenure and sustainable resource use practices and of including them in policies and projects that attempt to integrate conservation and development.

Social Policy in East and South East Asia provides the first systematic comparison of the policy sectors of income maintenance, health, housing and education in Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. It focuses particularly on the provision and financing arrangements of these four Asian newly industrialized economies and their outcomes in terms of adequacy, efficiency and equity, drawing on extensive primary research carried out by the author. Locating the importance of Asian social policies in the wake of the recent financial crisis in the region, this work provides a comprehensive analysis of the different types of welfare state in contemporary Asia.

The only collection of its kind on the market, this reader gathers the work of some of the most esteemed urban ethnographers in sociology and anthropology. Broken down into sections that cover key aspects of ethnographic research, Ethnography and the City will expose readers to important works in the field, while also guiding students to the study of method as they embark on their own work.

The essay film – ‘a form that thinks’ – serves to create a self-reflexive space for contemporary society by challenging expectations and demanding the creative involvement of the spectator. Using film to provoke thought has never been more important than now, when non-fiction films are gaining in popularity and playing a growing part in debates about culture and politics. This timely publication argues that the appeal of the essay film lies primarily in the dialogic engagement with the spectator and the richness of the intellectual and artistic debate it stimulates. The book focuses on the work of three key European film directors associated with the essay film: Chris Marker, Harun Farocki and José Luis Guerín. It provides a detailed analysis of several films by each director, exploring the relationship between dialogism and essayism in their work and placing this in the wider context of debates on the cinematic essay as a genre. Central aspects of essayistic filmmaking are explored, including its radical approach to knowledge, its distinctive patterns of subjectivity, its challenging of the formal representation of reality, and its contribution to new understandings of spectatorship. Written with clarity and perception, this volume offers new insights into the rise of the non-fiction film and the essay film, in particular.

The first book-length study of adoption in Japan, this impressive work tackles the innovative and sometimes controversial subject of the policies of adoption agencies in Japan. The book places special adoption in the context of a liberal reformist agenda that has challenged traditional concepts of the family through the efforts to place children with difficult family backgrounds, including mixed and minority ethnic backgrounds. Drawing on empirical source material gathered since the late 1980s, the authors consider the central policy issue of whether agencies should be given a free hand to create their own policies, or whether they should be more tightly regulated. Finally, the book analyzes how different agency strategies for finding homes for hard to place children are related to different assumptions about the psychology and reasoning of prospective parents. Adoption in Japan makes a significant contribution to the academic literature in the fields of Japanese studies, public policy, social work and sociology. It will also be of interest to professionals involved in adoption agencies, specialist social work and adoption panels.

Older persons are often portrayed as social and financial burdens because pensions, health and social care have to withstand increasing old age dependency ratios. Due to a lack of access to representation or a lack of social and economic power, older people have found few opportunities to have their voices heard, making age an immensely political issue. Written by an impressive team of authors, this book provides an in-depth analysis of the experience of ageing in Singapore examining key issues such as health, work, housing, family ties and care giving. It looks at how social categorization enters into everyday life to elucidate the multiple meanings of age and identity encountered in a rapidly changing economy and society. Providing original critical discourse from Asian writers recording Asian voices, Ageing in Singapore will appeal to a wide readership and is an invaluable resource for policy makers, service practitioners and scholars working on Asian gerontology.

Hagiographies or idealized biographies which recount the lives of saints, bodhisattvas and other charismatic figures have been the meeting place for myth and experience. In medieval Europe, the 'lives of saints' were read during liturgical celebrations and the texts themselves were treated as sacred objects. In Japan, it was believed that those who read the biographies of lofty monks would acquire merit. Since hagiographies were written or compiled by 'believers', the line between fantasy and reality was often obscured. This study of the bodhisattva Gyoki - regarded as the monk who started the largest social welfare movement in Japan - illustrates how Japanese Buddhist hagiographers chose to regard a single monk's charitable activities as a miraculous achievement that shaped the course of Japanese history.

Economic reform in China has resulted in a widening gap between the rich and the poor, and urban poverty has emerged as a key factor which may affect future development. This new book examines the poverty problem in relation to housing and social changes in large inland cities, and assesses the effectiveness of recent government anti-poverty policies. The book also puts the Chinese experience in the wider context of transitional economies and discusses the similarities and differences between China and Central and Eastern European countries. The book is based on a long period of research on Chinese urban development, and benefited from several research projects conducted in Chinese cities. It is an important reference for all of those interested in housing, urban studies and social change, and is a key text for students of the Chinese economy and society.

After more than four decades the Cold War ended with the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union. Almost simultaneously China emerged as the new potential disruptor of international stability, with Beijing replacing Moscow as the key source of Western insecurity. Drawing upon extensive primary resources, Ali questions the logic behind this perception, reflected both in popular and academic literature. Disclosing hitherto unknown aspects of the Soviet Union's disintegration, the text reveals a secret strategic alliance between the USA and China during the Cold War's final decades. Presenting an in-depth analysis of the relationship between the two countries, the book identifies the bases on which the alliance emerged; the growing mutual concern of a 'Soviet threat'. Using documentation from the three capitals, Ali presents a compelling tale of intrigue and conspiracy at the highest level of the international security system. The text brings a new dimension to the current literature and deepens our understanding of a key aspect of the Cold War - its end.

Jia Pingwa, whose novels have caused both fame and controversy, has an enormous readership throughout the Chinese speaking world. However, despite Pingwa's cultural significance and the use of his poetry, novels and prose in schools and universities, there has never been any substantial academic study of the writer and his writings. Filling that gap, this book examines the corpus of Pingwa's writing and emphasizes his importance, prominence and relevance to contemporary Chinese society. This pioneering study discusses Pingwa's works in the light of 'cultural nationalism', showing how he links the cultural identity of China with the cultural authenticity of his local Shaanxi Province. In addition, the book highlights issues of nationalism in contemporary Chinese literature and underpins the significance of regional writing in negotiating China's national identities.

During the period 1949 to 1979, communist China was officially pursuing a policy of self-sufficiency, and the United States and its allies were officially implementing a trade embargo against communist China. However, this book, based on extensive original research, demonstrates that China was highly dependent on Western/Japanese grain imports. The text shows that groups lobbying on behalf of Western/Japanese grain producers and related industries had successfully found ways of by-passing the embargo. This book charts the complicated picture of how economic relations between China, the West and Japan developed in these years.

Laos - the Lao People's Democratic Republic - is one of the least understood and studied countries of Asia. Its development trajectory is also one of the most interesting, as it moves from state, or perhaps more appropriately subsistence, to market. Based on extensive original research, this book assesses how economic transition and marketisation are being translated into progress (or not) at the local level, and at the resulting impact on poverty, inequality and livelihoods. It concludes that the process of transition in fact contributes to the growth of poverty for some people, and shows how people manage to cope in very unfavourable circumstances.

This book examines the strategic interactions among China, the United States, Japan, and Southeast Asian States in the context of China's rise and globalization after the cold war. Engaging the mainstream theoretical debates in international relations, the author introduces a new theoretical framework-institutional realism-to explain the institutionalization of world politics in the Asia-Pacific after the cold war. Institutional realism suggests that deepening economic interdependence creates a condition under which states are more likely to conduct a new balancing strategy-institutional balancing, i.e., countering pressures or threats through initiating, utilizing, and dominating multilateral institutions-to pursue security under anarchy. To test the validity of institutional realism, Kai He examines the foreign policies of the U.S., Japan, the ASEAN states, and China toward four major multilateral institutions, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum (ARF), ASEAN Plus Three (APT), and East Asian Summit (EAS). Challenging the popular pessimistic view regarding China's rise, the book concludes that economic interdependence and structural constraints may well soften the "dragon's teeth." China's rise does not mean a dark future for the region. Institutional Balancing in the Asia Pacific will be of great interest to policy makers and scholars of Asian security, international relations, Chinese foreign policy, and U.S. foreign policy.

This iconoclastic work on the prehistory of Japan and of South East Asia challenges entrenched views on the origins of Japanese society and identity. The social changes that took place in Japan in the time-period when the Jomon culture was replaced by the Yayoi culture were of exceptional magnitude, going far beyond those of the so-called Neolithic Revolution in other parts of the world. They included not only a new way of life based on wet-rice agriculture but also the introduction of metalworking in both bronze and iron, and furthermore a new architecture functionally and ritually linked to rice cultivation, a new religion, and a hierarchical society characterized by a belief in the divinity of the ruler. Because of its immense and enduring impact the Yayoi period has generally been seen as the very foundation of Japanese civilization and identity. In contrast to the common assumption that all the Yayoi innovations came from China and Korea, this work combines exciting new scientific evidence from such different fields as rice genetics, DNA and historical linguistics to show that the major elements of Yayoi civilization actually came, not from the north, but from the south.

This book tracks the phases of Singapore's economic and political development, arguing that its success was always dependent upon the territories links with the surrounding region and the wider global system, and suggests that managing these links today will be the key to the country's future. Singapore has followed a distinctive historical development trajectory. It was one of a number of cities which provided bases for the expansion of the British empire in the East. But the Pacific War provided local elites with their chance to secure independence. In Singapore the elite disciplined and mobilized their population and built successfully on their colonial inheritance. Today, the city-state prospers in the context of its regional and global networks, and sustaining and nurturing these are the keys to its future. But there are clouds on the elite's horizons; domestically, the population is restive with inequality, migration and surplus-repression causing concern; and internationally, the strategy of constructing a business-hub economy is being widely copied and both Hong Kong and Shanghai are significant competitors. This book discusses these issues and argues that although success is likely to characterize Singapore's future, the elite will have to address these significant domestic and international problems.

On July 1st, 2007, Hong Kong celebrated the 10th anniversary of its return to the People's Republic of China, but the past decade has been a bumpy ride for both the Hong Kong people and the central leaders in China. In fact, in 2003 Beijing had already succumbed to public pressure within the fairly short period of its rule by abruptly replacing its handpicked first Chief Executive with a British-groomed civil servant. This book examines the origin and evolution of Hong Kong's political system, analyses the current contradictions in the system, and discusses how the system might develop in future. It focuses in particular on the office of Chief Executive in the context of Hong Kong's transformation from a British colony to a Special Administrative Region in China. The dualistic structure of the Chief Executive's office embodies a dilemma between two competing imperatives - Communist China's imperative to retain a colonial political system where executive power is concentrated at the top; alongside the need to accommodate new, increasing demands for democratic representation within the territory. The Political Future of Hong Kong demonstrates how the British legacy left its imprint on Hong Kong's political system. It analyses the strategies adopted by the Sovereign state as it attempted to cope with demands for representative government in the post-handover years, and the strains placed on Hong Kong's political institutions by the uneasy relationship between central government and local forces of liberal autonomy. Kit Poon examines the possibility of the introduction of universal suffrage for the selection of the Chief Executive, and considers how Hong Kong can secure a democratic future in the context of broader Beijing-Hong Kong relations.

Since the late nineteenth century, hundreds of thousands of Chinese have moved to Russia and Eastern Europe. However, until now, very little research has been done about the initial migrants in the nineteenth century, the presence of the Chinese in Europe and Russia in the twentieth century before the collapse of the 'socialist' regimes or about the great wave of Chinese migration to Eastern Europe and Russia which occurred after 1989.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the Chinese in Russia and Eastern Europe from the nineteenth century to the present day. Particularly important is the movement of entrepreneurs in the early 1990s, who took advantage of unmet demand, inadequate retail networks and largely unregulated markets to become suppliers of cheap consumer goods to low-income Eastern Europeans. In some villages, Chinese merchants now occupy a position not unlike that of Jewish shopkeepers before the Second World War. Although their interactions with local society are numerous, the degree of social integration and acceptance is often low. At the same time, they maintain close economic, social, and political ties to China.

Empirical in focus, and full of rich ethnographic data, Pal Nyiri has produced a book that will be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese studies, international migration, diaspora and transnationalism.

The Indonesian term adat means 'custom' or 'tradition', and carries connotations of sedate order and harmony. Yet in recent years it has suddenly become associated with activism, protest and violence. This book investigates the revival of adat in Indonesian politics, identifying its origins, the historical factors that have conditioned it and the reasons behind its recent blossoming. It considers whether the adat revival is a constructive contribution to Indonesia's new political pluralism or a divisive, dangerous and reactionary force, and examines the implications for the development of democracy, human rights, civility and political stability. The Revival of Tradition in Indonesian Politics provides detailed coverage of the growing significance of adat in Indonesian politics. It is an important resource for anyone seeking to understand the contemporary Indonesian political landscape.

The political downfall of the Suharto administration in 1998 marked the end of the "New Order" in Indonesia, a period characterized by 32 years of authoritarian rule. It opened the way for democracy, but also for the proliferation of political Islam, which the New Order had discouraged or banned. Many of the issues raised by Muslim groups concerned matters pertaining to gender and the body. They triggered heated debates about women's rights, female political participation, sexuality, pornography, veiling, and polygamy. The author argues that public debates on Islam and Gender in contemporary Indonesia only partially concern religion, and more often refer to shifting moral conceptions of the masculine and feminine body in its intersection with new class dynamics, national identity, and global consumerism. By approaching the contentious debates from a cultural sociological perspective, the book links the theoretical domains of body politics, the mediated public sphere, and citizenship. Placing the issue of gender and Islam in the context of Indonesia, the biggest Muslim-majority country in the world, this book is an important contribution to the existing literature on the topic. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars of anthropology, sociology, and gender studies.

This book charts the experiences of a textile enterprise in Russia during the 1990s, analysing post-Soviet management and managerial practices in order to illuminate the content, nature and direction of industrial restructuring in the Russian privatised sector during the years of economic transition. Based on extensive factory-level fieldwork, it focuses upon changes in ownership, management and labour organisation, unveiling the complex texture of social, communal and gender relations in the workplace over an extended period of time, including through crisis and bankruptcy, acquisition by new capitalist owners and attempted restructuring. It argues, contrary to dominant Western managerial theories which blame the failure of transition on the irrationality of Russian managerial strategies, that the rationale for the continued reliance on Soviet era managerial practices lay in the peculiar form of social relations in the workplace which were characteristic of the Soviet system. It engages with key issues, often neglected in the literature, such as social domination, power and conflict, that capture the problematic and open-ended character of social and economic transformation in post-Soviet production. It demonstrates that far from a simple transition to a market economy, the post-Soviet transition has reproduced most of the features of the old Soviet system, including its patterns of labour relations.

Parliaments or legislatures are the keystone of democratic governance and they are critical in securing government accountability. This book presents a comparative analysis of the role of parliamentary committees in securing government accountability in the three largest and most important functioning democracies in South Asia: Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. The author compares the nascent democracy of Bangladesh with the stable and vibrant democratic system of India since its independence from the British in 1947 and Sri Lanka's longstanding and established democracy. He argues that in each country, parliament has been able to survive and perform the key parliamentary tasks of representation, legislation, oversight of the executive, conflict resolution and regime maintenance; concluding that parliamentary committees in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka do not perform as successfully as their counterparts in the Western world in controlling the government and holding it to account; however, their role in securing government accountability is not irrelevant. Parliamentary Control and Government Accountability in South Asia will be a useful reference for studying third world parliaments in particular.

The dramatic surge in regional integration schemes over the past two decades has been one of the most important developments in world politics. Virtually all countries are now members of at least one regional grouping. South Asia is no exception to this trend. In December 1985, seven South Asian countries came together to establish South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to address issues of peace and development in the region. This book examines regionalism in South Asia, exploring the linkages between institutional structures, government capabilities, and domestic actors' preferences to explain the dynamics of regional cooperation. It considers the formation and evolution of SAARC, explaining why its growth in terms of institutional developments and program implementation has remained modest and slow over the past two decades. It also addresses the impact of important issues such as the acquisition of nuclear capabilities by India and Pakistan, the unending conflicts in Kashmir, the war against global terror in Afghanistan, and India's growing economy. Drawing on a wealth of empirical research, including elite interviews and trade transaction data, this book sheds new light on the main cooperation issues in South Asia today and provides important information on the trends and prospects for regional cooperation in future years.