Prior to the era of globalization, education in Southeast Asia was viewed in the context of the national state and it was deployed in the service of state and nation-building and national economic development. States monopolized education, and public-funded centralized education systems were established to teach literacy, transmit national cultures and promote social cohesion, and to produce literate workers. Globalization forces, however, dramatically impacted in varying ways and degrees the national education systems across the region. As states begun to see their citizens as resources to enhance the countries' competitiveness in the global market, it, among other things, led to the increasing demand for highly skilled and qualified human capital. The accompanying neoliberal ideology led to varying degrees of decentralization, privatization and internationalization of education, especially of higher education, in Southeast Asia. The chapters in this volume focus on a number of issues and challenges confronting the education sector in Southeast Asia, including: (i) the contrasting language in education policy in Singapore and Malaysia; (ii) the introduction of an English-medium private education sector in Malaysia; (iii) the internationalization of Thai higher education; (iv) access and quality issues in the massification of Malaysian higher education; (v) secondary school quality and higher education participation in Indonesia; (vi) equity, access and retention in primary school education in Malaysia; and (vii) reforms in the primary and secondary education in Myanmar.

Southeast and East Asian countries are undergoing varying stages of population ageing. The social, economic and political implications of population ageing will be enormous, and because of the fast speed of ageing in the region, the countries cannot afford the luxury of time for the gradual evolution of social and structural support systems and networks for the older population. The essays in this volume critically examine national ageing policies and programmes, the sustainability of existing pension systems, housing and living arrangements, inter-generational transfer, and aspects of quality of life of the elderly population. While the findings show that most Southeast Asian countries have started to formulate and implement national ageing policies, they also indicate that the existing policies are by and large inadequate and underdeveloped in serving the needs of the older population and indeed much more must be done to prepare for the future.

Language policies in Southeast Asia have been shaped by the process of nation-building on the one hand and by political and economic considerations on the other. The early years of nation-building in Southeast Asia generated intensive language conflicts precisely because state policies privileged the idea of a monolingual nation and thus endeavoured to co-opt or even do away with troublesome ethnic identities. In recent years, language policies are increasingly influenced by pragmatic considerations, especially globalization and the awareness of a linkage between language and economic development, such that Southeast Asian states in varying degrees have become less insistent on promoting monolingual nationalism. This book evaluates the successes and drawbacks of language policies in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar, especially the ways in which these policies have often been resisted or contested. It is an invaluable primer on this linguistically complex region and a resource for scholars, policy-makers, civil society activists and NGOs in various parts of the world facing equally challenging ethnic/language issues.

This collection of papers examines a variety of topics on the Chinese in Malaysia: the nature of Malaysian multi-ethnic society and the position of the ethnic Chinese, the conflation between ethnicity and religion, the 8 March 2008 election and its impact on the community, the similarities and dissimilarities of the Chinese positions in East and West Malaysia, the new developments in the economy, and the media and education in the past few decades under the New Economic Policy which have major bearings on the 8 March 2008 election and the post-election Malaysian Chinese community.

In view of the 100th anniversary of the 1911 Revolution and Sun Yat-sen's relations with the Nanyang communities, the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies and the Chinese Heritage Centre came together to host a two-day bilingual conference on the three-way relationships between Sun Yat-sen, Nanyang and the 1911 Revolution in October 2010 in Singapore. This volume is a collection of papers in English presented at the conference. While there are extensive research and voluminous publications on Sun Yat-sen and the 1911 Revolution, it was felt that less had been done on the Southeast Asian connections. Thus this volume tries to chip in some original and at times provocative analysis on not only Sun Yat-sen and the 1911 Revolution but also contributions from selected Southeast Asian countries.

Like the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) was known for having its bastion in Johor, with the state containing the highest number of parliamentary seats contested and won by the party. Two features of the MCA stand out: (1) its relative resilience in that its near elimination in other states since 2008 did not occur in Johor until the recent 14th General Elections, and (2) that most MCA presidents had some connections to Johor, either as having been born in Johor, contested in a Johor constituency, been chairman of the Johor state liaison committee, or a combination of three. Although historical institutional linkages such as the New Villages and the Chinese guilds and associations (CGAs) gave the MCA a strong footing in Johor initially, changing political and socioeconomic circumstances gradually eroded the party's support among the Johorean Chinese. As it began to lose appeal as an individual party, the MCA Johor had to depend on a strategy of mixed voter pooling so that the significant loss of support from the Chinese could be compensated for by the Malay electorate that was until recently highly supportive of the Barisan Nasional (BN). The strategic dependence of the MCA on the UMNO was rendered void when the latter was defeated in the state. As it stands, the revival of the party's standing both within Johor and nationally is far from certain.