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On 9 August 2015, Singapore celebrated its 50th year of national independence, a milestone for the nation as it has overcome major economic, social, cultural and political challenges in a short period of time. Whilst this was a celebratory event to acknowledge the role of the People’s Action Party (PAP) government, it was also marked by national remembrance as founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew died in March 2015. This book critically reflects on Singapore’s 50 years of independence. Contributors interrogate a selected range of topics on Singapore’s history, culture and society – including the constitution, education, religion and race – and thereby facilitate a better understand...
This text addresses the corporate causes of the collapse of the Qing Dynasty and the emergence of modern Republican China. Weaving together political, legal and business histories, it focuses on the key relationship between China, cement and corporations, and demonstrates how the particular circumstances of cement manufacturing in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century China serve to illuminate key aspects of Chinese political economy and illustrate the importance of legal frameworks in the emergence of industrial enterprises. Examining the centrality of legal personality in China’s historical story, seen from the angle of cement manufacturing corporations, it offers an alternative historical perspective on the making of the modern Chinese States and delves into the involvement of larger-than-life historical figures of modern China such as Yuan Shikai, Chiang Kai-shek and the revolutionary and the father of modern China, Sun Yat-sen, in the unfolding of these events.
"Tells the story of the entanglement of politics and technology during Indonesia s rapid post-World War II development. In this innovative volume, Anto Mohsin brings Indonesian studies together with science and technology studies to understand a crucial period in modern Indonesian history.".
In this book, Shelby Chan examines the relationship between theatre translation and identity construction against the sociocultural background that has led to the popularity of translated theatre in Hong Kong. A statistical analysis of the development of translated theatre is presented, establishing a correlation between its popularity and major socio-political trends. When the idea of home, often assumed to be the basis for identity, becomes blurred for historical, political and sociocultural reasons, people may come to feel "homeless" and compelled to look for alternative means to develop the Self. In theatre translation, Hongkongers have found a source of inspiration to nurture their identity and expand their "home" territory. By exploring the translation strategies of various theatre practitioners in Hong Kong, the book also analyses a number of foreign plays and their stage renditions. The focus is not only on the textual and discursive transfers but also on the different ways in which the people of Hong Kong perceive their identity in the performances.
Known in the West primarily through poorly subtitled films, Chinese martial arts fiction is one of the most iconic and yet the most understudied form of modern sinophone creativity. Current scholarship on the subject is characterized by three central assumptions against which this book argues: first, that martial arts fiction is the representation of a bodily spectacle that historically originated in Hong Kong cinema; second, that the genre came into being as an escapist fantasy that provided psychological comfort to people during the height of imperialism; and third, that martial arts fiction reflects a patriotic attitude that celebrates the greatness of Chinese culture, which in turn is variously described as the China-complex, colonial modernity, essentialized identity, diasporic consciousness, anxieties about globalization, or other psychological and ideological difficulties experienced by the Chinese people.
This book provides an overview of the current state of Malaysia, looking at political and economic developments and at governance, and discussing the impact of ethnicity, patronage and the reform movement. Apart from discussing issues such as Islamisation and identity transformations within Malaysian society, it reviews policies like privatisation and provides an examination of business enterprise, exploring how control of 'corporate Malaysia' is interlinked with political developments. This study's primary focus is an analysis of why the reform movement failed to secure substantial support in the late 1990s even though many Malaysians then appeared ready to hold the government accountable for its poor record of a democratic and transparent form of governance. This volume also assesses the likelihood of change as a result of the retirement of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad
Observing that the division between theory and empiricism remains inextricably linked to imperial modernity, manifest at the most basic level in the binary between “the West” and “Asia,” the authors of this volume re-examine art and aesthetics to challenge these oppositions in order to reconceptualize politics and knowledge production in East Asia. Current understandings of fundamental ideas like race, nation, colonizer and the colonized, and the concept of Asia in the region are seeped with imperial aesthetics that originated from competing imperialisms operating in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Such aesthetics has sustained both colonial and local modes of perception in...
Sparrow is a seldom-heard but uplifting story of the Sparrows – the Battle of Britain gunners who defended Timor as part of Sparrow Force. It is the story of Charlie McLachlan’s war: a triumph of stubborn Scottish defiance and laconic Aussie genius over the relentless violence of man and nature. From the Rudolph Hess crash-landing to the atom bomb, from history’s last bayonet charge to the war’s greatest aerial bombardment, Charlie McLachlan survives and bears witness to some of the landmark days of World War II. At one time or other in his four-year ordeal he is fired upon by the armies, navies and/or air forces of Germany, Japan, Australia, the Netherlands, Great Britain and the Un...
This book posits that when foreign actors face high opportunity costs of intervention in a weak state, their behavior may foster state sovereignty. This occurs as foreign actors work with local groups to avoid their worst fear, domination of the polity by rivals. Drawing from primary and secondary sources, Ja Ian Chong examines this argument by considering China, Indonesia, and Thailand between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. The book augments existing perspectives on nationalism, sovereignty, and state formation by introducing insights from research on foreign intervention and local collaboration.
In 1938, one year into the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Chinese military found itself in dire medical straits. Soldiers were suffering from deadly illnesses, and were unable to receive blood transfusions for their wounds. The urgent need for medical assistance prompted an unprecedented flowering of scientific knowledge in China and Taiwan throughout the twentieth century. Wayne Soon draws on archives from three continents to argue that Overseas Chinese were key to this development, utilizing their global connections and diasporic links to procure much-needed money, supplies, and medical expertise. The remarkable expansion of care and education that they spurred saved more than four million lives and trained more than fifteen thousand medical personnel. Moreover, the introduction of military medicine shifted biomedicine out of elite, urban civilian institutions and laboratories and transformed it into an adaptive field-based practice for all. Universal care, practical medical education, and mobile medicine are all lasting legacies of this effort.