Globalization and the Asia Pacific and South Asia

Kimura, Ehito. “Globalization and the Asia Pacific and South Asia.” In The SAGE Handbook of Globalization, edited by Manfred B. Steger, Paul Battersby, and Joseph M. Siracusa, Vol. 2. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2014.

13 Globalization and the Asia Pacific and South Asia Ehito Kimura

ASIA PACIFIC AND SOUTH ASIA AND THE WORLD Two processes, seemingly in tension with one another are occurring in world politics today. The first is the acceleration of globalization, defined as the worldwide integration along economic, political, social, and cultural lines. The second is the emerging influence of Asia as a global force. Neither of these processes is absolute, each contains elements of variety, contingency, and uncertainty. But given these broad trends, this essay explores the relationship between the process of globalization and the region of Asia Pacific and South Asia. The essay proposes a framework along three trajectories, the region as an object impacted by globalization, the region as a subject pushing globalization forward, and the region as an alternative to globalization. These three ideals are proposed acknowledging that they are neither complete nor wholly distinct. Instead, they highlight the different ways we might think about varying processes of

globalization from a regional perspective. The essay chooses breadth over depth and presents a series of snapshots as a way to offer a larger, if incomplete, tapestry of the relationship between process and place, between globalization and Asia Pacific and South Asia. The term ‘Asia’ itself comes from the ancient Greeks who categorized the world into three continents, Europe, Africa, and Asia. In this sense, Asia as a region was initially defined externally rather than from within. The exact boundaries of Asia have been a matter of contention since its inception and demarcation has often been made along cultural or political lines rather than according to any clear geographical rationale. For example, while Russia occupies a vast amount of the Asian continent, it is not usually considered a part of Asia. The Middle East, too, while sometimes included as part of Asia is typically referred to as its own region. A more recent and even less precise regional label is ‘Asia Pacific’. This refers broadly to the area of the world in or around Asia and the Pacific Ocean. Typically, it

GLOBALIZATION AND THE ASIA PACIFIC AND SOUTH ASIA

includes the states in East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania. Occasionally, it refers to an even broader area as evidenced by the regional grouping, APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation), which includes economies of the ‘Pacific Rim’ such as Canada, the United States, Chile, Mexico, and Peru. Sometimes, Asia Pacific includes South Asia and even Central Asia, though usually it does not. The ‘Pacific’ part of Asia Pacific usually refers to the Pacific Islands, or Oceania, the island groupings of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. For purposes of this essay, the Asia Pacific and South Asia refer together to the regions of East (or Northeast) Asia, Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and South Asia. In addition to differences in language and culture, the variation among states and peoples in this region is vast. It also includes some of the world’s most economically developed states such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, and highly impoverished countries such as Cambodia, Laos, and Nepal. It includes the largest and most populous states on the globe including China and India and some of the world’s smallest such as the Maldives and Bhutan. The countries in the region also vary widely according to geography, political systems, historical experience, and broad demographic characteristics. Lumped together, the area makes up nearly a third of the world’s land mass and two-thirds of the global population. The combined economies of the region now generate the largest share of global GDP (gross domestic product) at 35 per cent, compared with Europe (28 per cent) and North America (23 per cent) (Asian Development Bank, 2012: 156). It also accounts for just over a third of total world exports of merchandise goods up from a quarter in 2001 (Asian Development Bank, 2012: 211). Despite this economic growth, there are still millions of people affected by poverty, hunger, HIV/AIDS, gender inequality and other socio-economic problems in the region. In addition to its sheer size, the Asia Pacific and South Asia has emerged over the past decade as a new political force in the world. Much

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of this is driven by the robust economic growth in China and India and the strategic implications this brings to regional and global players. Japan also remains a relevant if declining force in the region and the world, and other countries including the Koreas, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Pakistan all have economic and strategic relevance in today’s global system. For all of these reasons, global powers outside of the region are focused intently on the Asia Pacific and South Asia. The United States has implemented a foreign policy shift dubbed the ‘Pacific Pivot’ committing more resources and attention to the region. In a widely read article in Foreign Affairs, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called this the shift from the ‘Atlantic Century’ to the ‘Pacific Century She notes: The Asia-Pacific has become a key driver of global politics. Stretching from the Indian subcontinent to the western shores of the Americas, the region spans two oceans – the Pacific and the Indian – that are increasingly linked by shipping and strategy. It boasts almost half the world’s population. It includes many of the key engines of the global economy, as well as the largest emitters of greenhouse gases. It is home to several of our key allies and important emerging powers like China, India, and Indonesia. (Clinton, 2011)

How then are we to think about the relationship between globalization and this economically and politically important region? The rest of this essay divides into three parts. The first section takes an externalist view illustrating the way in which the region has been affected by globalization. The second section takes a generative view showing how the region is an active agent pushing the process of globalization forward. The third perspective shows how the region can be understood as posing an alternative to globalization. Ultimately, no one view is complete, but together they illustrate the dynamism and complexity of globalization. In putting forward these perspectives, the essay also sees globalization in broad historical terms focusing not just on the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries but further back to colonial and even pre-colonial times.

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THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF GLOBALIZATION

AN EXTERNALIST VIEW OF GLOBALIZATION One thesis about globalization in the Asia Pacific and South Asia is that it is an external phenomenon being pushed into the region by world powers, particularly the United States and Europe. From this perspective, globalization can be understood as a process that transforms the Asia Pacific and South Asia. On the one hand, it can be seen as a force for good bringing economic development, political progress, and social and cultural diversity to the region. Others see the darker effects of globalization including its role in economic underdevelopment and the uprooting of local tradition and culture. One of the earliest manifestations of this externalist discourse emerges from the historical narratives about the Western ‘arrival’ to the Asia Pacific and South Asia. According to this view, the technologically and industrially more advanced Western powers found their way to the region and alternatively prodded and muscled their way to political and economic dominance. Western superiority at the time existed for a variety of reasons, ranging from environmental and ecological advantages to other social, political, and/or cultural characteristics.1 While we will question some of these assertions later, there is little doubt that colonialism in the region beginning from the 1500s brought enormous, often devastating changes. This ‘first globalization’ had deep implications for domestic political structures in many local indigenous polities. One early example of this was the Portuguese invasion of Melaka in 1511 and the subsequent fall of the sultanate, which shifted political and economic dynamics in Melaka and beyond. Ferdinand Magellan arrived in the Visayan region of what would become the Philippines in 1521 marking the beginning of extended Spanish colonial rule in those islands. The Dutch followed in the seventeenth century and slowly strengthened their position in the Dutch East Indies. The British also consolidated their power in South Asia, Burma and

the Malay peninsula while the French eventually took control of Indo-China in the late nineteenth century. The mode of colonial rule and domination varied over both space and time. JS Furnivall famously made the distinction between direct colonial rule through colonial administrators and indirect rule though ‘native’ administrators (Furnivall, 1956). Depending on the context, some local rulers were simply deposed, but in other instances, colonial powers propped up rulers, formed alliances, or faced significant resistance. Despite these differences, the breadth and depth of transformation that colonialism brought to the region would be difficult to understate. Europeans brought new economic practices, religious beliefs, cultural values, and political structures that changed the region drastically. Even places that did not experience colonial rule decidedly had to deal with the consequences of Western influence. Japan, which had been closed off during the reign of the Tokugawa shogunate, was forced open by the ‘black ships’ of Commodore Matthew Perry in the late nineteenth century. Combined with other factors, this brought about the Meiji Restoration and the subsequent political and economic transformation of Japan turning it into a regional and eventually world power (Jansen, 2002). Thailand too was never technically colonized, but the country underwent significant changes under the rein of King Mongkut (Rama IV) and King Chulalongkorn (Rama V). Rama V in particular is still remembered as a ‘Great Modernizer’ who brought major political, social, and economic reforms to Thailand (Stifel, 1976). By the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, movements for nationalism and independence emerged in many parts of the world including the Asia Pacific and South Asia. While important in its own historical right, these movements were also products of an increasingly globalized world. Scholars of nationalism argue that the roots of national identity lie in the rise of western industrialization and capitalism. Once developed, it became manifested politically in concrete


movements in colonial areas such as Latin America and Asia. Benedict Anderson, for example highlights the global experiences of nationalist leaders such as Jose Rizal in the Philippines, who came to imagine themselves as Filipino after being influenced by life in Spain and elsewhere (Anderson, 2007). He also highlights how as the idea of nationalism gained steam, it became modular and spread to other parts of the globe (Anderson, 1991). World War II marks another way in which the region comes to be at once integrated and influenced by external forces. The rise of Japan and the outbreak of war in the Pacific theater after the bombing of Pearl Harbor marked the beginning of the end of Japan’s own imperial domination in the region. After the war, the region became mired in the emerging politics of the Cold War. After World War II, concerns about political instability, faltering economic reform, and the fall of China all pushed the United States and their occupation to stress Japan’s economic growth and its incorporation into the world economy (Ikenberry, 2007: 52). This meant opening up American markets to Japanese goods, drawing on the Japanese market to supply equipment and goods for US armed forces and other aid programs, and eventually incorporating Japan into the multilateral economic order including the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (Ikenberry, 2007). Much ink has been spilled about Japan’s subsequent economic ‘miracle’ of the 1970s and 1980s with authors attributing the success to statist policies, market policies, cultural characteristics, and international relations (Johnson, 1982: 6–16). While interpretations vary, one argument is that Japan and other East Asian states including Korea and Taiwan were able to adapt their economic policies in line with what they understood as an increasing globalized economic system and benefitted from export oriented growth policies in the 1980s and 1990s. The growth model suggested an important role of the state, contrary to neo-liberal economic thought but it was a far cry from collectivist

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and autarchic economic policies followed by India and China in the post-war period. The success of the East Asian economies was followed in the late 1980s and 1990s by the highly high-flying growth of Southeast Asian countries including Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam. The Southeast Asian ‘tigers’ had some similarities to their East Asian counterparts including relatively close ties between the state and business elite, some degree of autonomous decisionmaking structure, and the rise of manufacturing. However, the Southeast Asian economies were also much more reliant on infusions of foreign capital, based on fixed exchange rate policies and corresponding investments and returns (Garnaut, 1998: 1–11). Much of the rise in financial investment can also be attributed to the role of International Financial Institutions (IFIs), namely the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Part of the Bretton Woods system, they were the cornerstones of economic liberalization and globalization in the post-war global economy. While initially designed to help rebuild Europe, the World Bank and the IMF soon turned their attention to the developing world including Southeast Asia. During the Cold War, these institutions came under the heavy influence of the West and so they simultaneously promoted neoliberal economic policies while also propping up Western and US allies, often times authoritarian figures. In Indonesia, Suharto’s policies and the economic framework under the IMF and World Bank provided crucial assistance as well as a foundation for the legitimacy of the authoritarian Suharto regime. And despite providing some basis for economic coherence, the lenders looked away from the massive amounts of corruption and patrimonialism that occurred in the Suharto regime (Winters, 1996: 86). In Thailand, the IFIs pushed liberalization and export oriented growth which led to increasing amounts of foreign investment and double digit GDP growth (Hewison, 1999). In the Philippines, the World Bank and the IMF had a cozy relationship with

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Ferdinand Marcos whose tenure had a disastrous impact on the country’s economy and left it straddled with nearly US$30 billion in debt (Bello, 1982). By the mid-1990s, the policies that had driven high levels of growth in the ‘tiger’ economies began to show their limits. Much of the investment going into places such as Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia was speculative ‘hot’ money looking for quick returns on capital. When investors began to realize the unsustainability of this model, financial speculators began to attack the currencies, betting that the central banks would have to readjust their rates thereby netting huge gains for the speculators. In July 1997, the Thai economy collapsed as investment fled like a massive herd and the crisis spread to much of the region (Bullard, Bello and Malhotra, 1998). Once again, interpretations of the Asian Financial Crisis varied. The IFIs and orthodox economists argued that the crisis occurred due to poor policies, weak governance, corruption, poor institutions, and inadequate liberalization (Rahman, 1998). In other words, they argued that globalization had not gone far enough. Other more critical voices argued that the problem was precisely the unfettered capital resulting from processes of globalization over the past several decades (Bello, Bullardand Malhotra, 2000). Both views however, recognized the deep impact globalization has had on the economies in the region and the influence it played in the creating the 1997 crisis. More recently, attention has turned from Southeast Asia to China and India. For its part, China began liberalizing their economy in the late 1970s with the reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping. India began to liberalize their economy in 1991 and increased levels of trade and foreign direct investment particularly in the textile and services sectors of the economy. While there are significant differences in their approaches to liberalization, both countries have experienced high levels of economic growth as a result and have also become much more integrated into the global

economy including membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) (Mahtaney, 2008). Economic globalization and liberalization has arguably had other broad regional effects as well. In terms of working conditions in the Asia Pacific, a study by the International Labor Organization (ILO) highlights how labor practices are undergoing significant changes. Among many of the developed countries in the region such as Japan, Korea, and Australia, a more global economy has meant an uptick in non-standard employment, characterized by temporary and parttime employment (Lee, Sangheaon and Eyraud, 2008: 3). In developing countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam, there has been an increase in informal employment such as self-employment, family workers, and informal enterprise workers. The Philippines estimates that 18 per cent of workers are underemployed while in Indonesia, nearly a quarter of all workers are either unemployed or involuntarily underemployed (Lee, Sangheaon and Eyraud, 2008: 19). Often these workers do not have legal contracts and even in places where they do, observers have raised serious concerns about working conditions and safety issues at factories that manufacture goods for Western companies (Yardley, 2012). Politics too has been a defining characteristic of globalization. Proponents often argue that liberal and democratic political values should not be interpreted as Western, but rather as universal thus explaining the expansion of democracy worldwide. In the region, the past three decades have witnessed a substantial fall in authoritarian regimes with a corresponding rise in democratic regimes. This has been attributed to a number of factors including rising middle classes, a more globally connected world, and the end of the Cold War (Huntington, 1991). The fall of the Suharto regime in Indonesia in 1999 is illustrative. Suharto had been in power for over 30 years. When the Asia Financial Crisis brought the country’s economy to its knees, large-scale protests, the flight of capital, and the lack of international support


led Suharto to step down in May of 1998. The financial crisis showed how deeply integrated the economy was in the global financial system. The demands made by the international financial institutions demonstrated the growing clout of these global bodies (Robison and Hadiz, 2006). Furthermore, the absence of international support for Suharto, who had been a strong anti-communist ally for a decade, illustrated the lack of concern the United States and the West had for the communist threat in Asia. In this way, the increasingly globalized world had come to weaken Suharto’s position and ultimately laid the foundation for his ousting. Finally, one of the most prevalent critiques of globalization has been its effects on ‘culture’. This critique has come from a number of different directions, the most prominent being the idea that globalization is a form of cultural Westernization summed up in the term ‘McWorld’ (Barber, 2003). Critics argue that globalization is leading to cultural homogenization and the destruction of cultural diversity. The number of McDonalds stores in Asia has grown dramatically over the last several decades, from 951 in 1987 to over 7,000 in 2002. Furthermore, many domestic fast food chains are also popping up throughout Asia to compete with Western brands including Jollibee in the Philippines, California Fried Chicken (CFC) in Indonesia, MOS Burger in Japan, Jumbo King in India, and so on. There has also been a rapid expansion of supermarkets in the region. The share of supermarkets in the processed/packaged food retail food market in 2001 was 33 per cent in Southeast Asia and 63 per cent in East Asia. The supermarket share of the urban food market in China grew from 30 per cent in 1999 to 48 per cent in 2001. Similar trends abound in South Asia (Pingali, 2007). As a result, there is also strong evidence to suggest that diets in Asia have been increasingly Westernized. One study in Japan shows that younger people consume more beef and beer than older counterparts and the older people eat more rice, vegetables, and fruits (Mori H, Lowe E, Clason D, and Gorman W, 2000) . Similar patterns are evident through

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much of the region. While wheat, increasingly considered an inferior product in the West is declining in per capita consumption, it is increasingly becoming the preferred staple in much of the region displacing the central role of rice and other staples. While much of the McDonaldization thesis has revolved around food, it has also referred to changing tastes in areas such as music, clothing, television, and film. In this light, McDonaldization might also be referred to as ‘MTV-ization’ or ‘Hollywoodization’. The point here is that Western and particularly American cultural trends have spread globally and increasingly marginalize the way in which local cultural practices are expressed (Banks, 1997). In sum, one way to view the relationship between globalization and the region of Asia Pacific and South Asia is as a largely oneway process whereby outside forces have brought fundamental and far-reaching changes to the region, for better or for worse, in ways that would not have occurred otherwise. This view is of course simplistic and the remaining sections of this essay seek to offer alternative perspectives as well.

GENERATING GLOBALIZATION: THE ASIA PACIFIC AND SOUTH ASIA AS A SPRINGBOARD An alternative way to see the relationship between globalization and the Asia Pacific and South Asia is one where the region is more of an autonomous agent serving as an engine for globalization. This view, while acknowledging the external impacts on the region shows important ways in which the region is also influencing and transforming the nature of globalization itself. This framework mirrors a broader intellectual change in scholarship that seeks to re-interpret the facile narrative that globalization is simply a form of Westernization imposing itself upon Asia. Historically, for example, many scholars now argue that for much of early modern

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history Asia led the global economy only ‘falling behind’ from the eighteenth century. As Anthony Reid notes, the Europeans did not create the spice trade. The thriving spice trade in the region and beyond is what drew the European powers to the region. Circumnavigating the globe was a means to find cheaper and faster ways to bring the goods back to Europe (Reid, 1988). Spices were already making their way to various parts of the globe, but the Europeans were interested in cutting out the middleman. In the same vein, some have argued that Asia, not the West, was the central global force in the early modern world economy. For much of the early modern era, it was the site of the world’s most important trade routes and in some places more technologically advanced than the West in key areas such as science and medicine. China, of course, had a historically unprecedented maritime fleet in the early fifteenth century under admiral Zeng Ho which traveled within the region and as far as Africa (Levathes, 1997). The rise of Europe in the eighteenth century came only after the colonial powers extracted silver from the colonies and pried their way into the Asian markets. In that context, the re-emergence of Asia today is seen as a restoration of its traditional dominant position in the global economy (Gunder Frank, 1998). Colonialism too has come under a new lens recently as scholars have argued that colonies in the Asia Pacific and South Asia and elsewhere influenced the West as much as vice versa. Stoler argues that colonies were often ‘laboratories of modernity’ where ‘innovations in political form, and social imaginary, and in what defined the modern itself, were not European exports but traveled as often the other way around’ (Stoler, 2006: 41). In the Philippines, colonial policing in the American colony can be understood as a social experiment that transformed both the Philippine polity as well as the US national security state. Practices and technologies such as counter-insurgency, surveillance, and torture were developed and perfected in the colonial Philippines before making their way

back to the core (McCoy and Scarano, 2009). In the fields of medicine and public health, American scientists and physicians in the Philippines brought back colonial bureaucratic practices and identities to urban health departments in the United States in the early twentieth century (Warwick Anderson, 2006). In the Dutch East Indies the colonial experience in the realm of the intimate and the personal influenced European notions of sexuality and social reform (Stoler, 2010). In other words, colonialism was not simply a practice of Western domination, but also productive of what we think of as Western and modern. In the post-colonial era, the assertion that the Asia Pacific and South Asia are mere beneficiaries (or victims) of globalization is even less tenable. The earlier discussion of Japan suggested that the end of World War II and the rise of the Cold War helped bring Japan into the global economy. What this view overlooks is the extent to which Japanese development in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s actually shaped and in many ways globalized key parts of the world economy. Japan as a resource poor nation-state embarked on a massive project to procure raw materials such as coal and iron at unprecedented economies of scale allowing them to gain a competitive edge in the global manufacturing market. This not only transformed the market for these materials but also globalized shipping and procurement patterns which influenced other sectors as well. Furthermore, as Japan’s competitive advantage became visible, other countries modeled their practices on theirs further deepening the globalized patterns of procurement and trade blazed by the Japanese (Bunker, 2007). In many ways, China can be seen as pursuing a similar pattern of development today. It is now one of the world’s largest importers of basic raw materials such as iron and has surpassed Japan, the United States, and Europe in steel production. In this context, the simple scale of China’s development is shaping and furthering globalization. In terms of its low wage labor and supply chain management,


China has also had an enormous impact on the availability and consumption of goods around the globe (Nolan, 2004). China has also now surpassed the World Bank in lending to developing counties. The China Development Bank and the China Export Import Bank signed loans of at least US$110 billion to other developing country governments and companies in 2009 and 2010, surpassing the US$100.3 billion from mid-2008 to mid-2010 by the IFIs (Dyer et al., 2011). The implications here are political as well as economic. Grants and loans made by states can often have economic and political strings attached as the Japanese experience has shown (Islam, 1991). South Asia and, in particular, India is often mentioned in the same breath as China for its scale and impact on globalization. While the political and economic systems vary considerably from China, India too has opened up and emphasized an export-oriented strategy. Textiles and other low wage sectors have been a key part of the economy, but high value exports such as software development have also been highly successful. It is also playing a key role in global service provision as trends in outsourcing and off-shoring increase (Dossani and Kenney, 2007). India and China, among others in the region, have also become a major source of international migrant labor, which is also one of the fundamental characteristics of the era of globalization. This includes the migration of highly skilled labor into the high tech industry based in Silicon Valley, which includes a disproportionate number of immigrants from India and China. But much more prominent is the flow of domestic workers to other places in the region, or to the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. Much of this migration has received international attention because it is often undocumented and working conditions can be poor, even deadly. Women constitute a large majority of many countries’ migrant pool including Indonesian (79 per cent), the Philippines (71 per cent) and Sri Lanka (66 per cent) (Kee, Yoshimatsu and Osaki, 2010: 30).

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Remittances from migrants have also become a core source of income for many of the region’s economies. Sometimes, these exceed the flow of official development assistance (ODA) or foreign direct assistance (FDI) (Kee, Yoshimatsu and Osaki, 2010: 32). In the Philippines, remittances are now equal to 11 per cent of the entire economy (The Economist, 2010). In 2007, India, China, and the Philippines were three of the top four recipient states of migrant remittances totaling US$70 billion (the other country was Mexico) (Kee, Yoshimatsu and Osaki, 2010: 32). In other words, the region is both the source and recipient of the influences of the massive globalization of migration. Another broad trend in the Asia Pacific and South Asia is the rise of regional free trade arrangements. This regionalism can be interpreted either as a kind of bulwark to globalization (discussed in the next section) or as compatible and even pushing forward the process of global economic integration. Proponents of the latter view argue that regionalism can promote learning, assuage domestic audiences to the benefits of free trade, and form the institutional framework to scale up from regional cooperation to global cooperation (Lee and Park, 2005). In other words, regionalism can act as a springboard for globalization. One of the distinguishing features of regional institutions in Asia Pacific and South Asia has been the adoption of ‘open regionalism’ which aims to develop and maintain cooperation with outside actors. This form of regionalism was meant to resolve the tension between the rise of regional trade agreements and the push for global trade as embodied by the WTO (Bergsten, 1997). ‘Open’ refers to the principle of non-discrimination, more specifically an openness in membership and openness in terms of economic flows (Sutton, 2007). Most regional trade agreements and organizations in other regions including North America (NAFTA) and Europe (the European Union) tend to be exclusive and thereby ‘closed’.

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Open regionalism is embodied by Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC. Formed in 1989, it includes 21 member economies along the Pacific Rim including East Asian and Southeast Asian states but also Russia, Peru, Chile, the United States and Canada. As the 1990 Ministerial Declaration states, ‘it was desirable to reduce barriers to trade in goods and services among participants so long as such liberalization was consistent with GATT principles and was not to the detriment of other parties’.2 To be sure, APEC has faced significant challenges especially in the wake of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis and the more recent global economic crisis. However, it continues to push for a vision of regional cooperation that is consistent with and advances globalization. A final area to consider is the broad area of culture and globalization in the region. The earlier section put forth a perspective that argues Western culture has come to dominate forms of music, entertainment, and culture more broadly around the globe and in the Asia Pacific and South Asia in particular. While this MTV-ization and McDonaldization have some elements of truth, they also belie a profoundly complex phenomenon. The region is the source of a wide variety of cultural phenomena that have also spread outward to the West and the rest of the world. ‘Hello Kitty’, created in Japan by the Sanrio Group in 1974, for example, has become a massive global success. It can be seen on a range of products from pencils and erasers to designer handbags and diamondencrusted watches and generates a billion dollars in revenue annually. Anime (and other entertainment products from Japan) has become a regional and global phenomenon including Pokemon, Mario Brothers, Astroboy, and Power Rangers among others. Much of this has come to be understood as the spread of a kawaii or ‘cute’ culture, or what some have called ‘Pink Globalization’ (Yano, 2009: 681–8). Japan holds no monopoly in this domain of cultural globalization. In terms of cinema

for example, films ranging from ‘Kung-fu’ movies to Bollywood have become massively popular in the West, not to mention individual filmmakers from the region with global acclaim. More recently, there has been a regional and global rise in Korean popular culture dubbed the ‘K-Wave’ that includes the spread of Korean dramas as well as music (K-pop). Nothing demonstrates this better than the smash hit, ‘Gangnam Style’ by Korea pop star PSY. Released in July 2012, the song and music video became a viral sensation on YouTube, topping music charts in over two dozen countries including France, Germany, Poland, Mexico, Australia, Norway, and Lebanon, and subsequently won Best Video at the MTV Europe Music Awards (Gangnam Style: PSY 2012). Globalization has not been a one-way street. While there is little doubt that the Asia Pacific and South Asia have very much been on the receiving end of globalization, it is also true that the region is generative of many aspects of the globalization process. This can be seen both historically and more recently and across a broad variety of domains from the economy to political structures to culture.

THE ANTI-GLOBAL IMPULSE: REGIONAL ALTERNATIVES TO GLOBALIZATION A third and final paradigm to understanding the relationship of Asia Pacific and South Asia to globalization is as a regional alternative to globalization. The arguments from this perspective see the region as a source of resistance to globalization or to global or Western powers. This section views initiatives for regionalism through this lens in part because the rising critical discourse of globalization resonates in much of the region and because the idea of Asian exceptionalism has been prevalent both historically and in contemporary times. One place to begin is with Japanese colonialism in the 1930s and 1940s. Japan’s


colonization of the region and the building of a supposed East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere merely replicated imperial relationships in East and Southeast Asia with new masters. However, it was also arguably a push back against Western imperialism. Much of the propaganda during the time centered on the idea of ‘Asia for Asiatics’ and the need to ‘liberate’ the region from Europe. The ‘Sphere’ referred initially to Japan, China, and Manchukuo. However, with the outbreak of World War II, Japan also looked beyond Northeast Asia to South and Southeast Asia. The members of the Sphere included Japan, Manchukuo, Mangjiang (Outer Mongolia), the Republic of China, States of Burma, Republic of the Philippines, Empire of Vietnam, Kingdom of Kampuchea, Kingdom of Laos, Azad Hind, Kingdom of Thailand (Beasley, 2000). While the geography of the Sphere delimited to Asian states, it was also constructed and argued directly in opposition to the West. Japan’s General Tojo at the Greater East Asia Conference in November 1943 declared that Asia had a ‘spiritual essence’ that opposed the ‘materialistic civilization of the West’ (Beasley, 2000: 89). The failure of the Co-prosperity Sphere was a result not only of Japan’s loss in World War II, but also the overt racism of Japan itself towards its supposed co-members. It soon became clear that the Sphere was for Japanese interests only often at the expense of the interests of the fellow members. Despite its failure and the continued bitter legacy of World War II, the notion of an Asian region that serves as a kind of opposition to globalization and western imperialism manifests itself in different ways still today. A more recent manifestation has been the concept of Asian values that became popular among leaders in the region in the mid-to late 1990s. Proponents of Asian values such as then-Prime Minister Mohamed Mahathir of Malaysia argued that Asia has culturally distinct characteristics that make it different from Western liberal democracies. As Mahathir noted, ‘The Asian way is to reach

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consensus on national goals within the democratic framework, to take the middle path, the Confucian Chun Yung or the Islamic, awsatuha; to exercise tolerance and sensitivity towards others’ (Langlois, 2001: 15). This contrasts with Western values where ‘every individual can do what he likes, free from any restraint by governments [and] individuals soon decide that they should break every rule and code governing their society’ (Langlois, 2001: 15). Proponents of the Asian values thesis argued that Asians (not clearly defined) tend to respect authority, hard work, thrift, and emphasize the community over the individual. Asia operates on the basis of harmony and consensus rather than majority rule. Concepts such as individual rights, political liberalism, and democracy are Western concepts, antithetical to the Asian tradition. To that end, the leaders of these states justified their authoritarian regimes based on Asian values. To be sure, the concept of Asian values has come under fire from both within and outside the region. Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysian opposition leader noted, ‘It is altogether shameful, if ingenious, to cite Asian values as an excuse for autocratic practices and denial of basic rights and liberties’.3 In fact, after the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and the emergence of political reform in several countries in the region, the discourse of Asian values seemed to lose it political potency (Thompson, 2001). Another way the region serves as an alternative to globalization is through the lens of regional arrangements. Earlier, it was noted that some regional institutions did little to counter and even expanded economic globalization through their principles of ‘open regionalism’. However, there are other institutions proposed or implemented at the regional level that are more exclusively and self-consciously ‘Asian’. The East Asia Economic Caucus (EAEC) is one such example. Floated as early as 1990, the EAEC was pushed as an alternative to APEC, more precisely an APEC without

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Western states. The proposed member states were ASEAN, China, South Korea and Japan. The United States strongly objected and at the time, Japan saw the exclusion of the United States as a threat to their strategic partnership and effectively vetoed the idea. Today’s ASEAN +3 (APT), which includes China, South Korea and Japan, is seen as a successor to the EAEC but because it is embedded in a slew of other institutional arrangements, is not seen as the radical alternative of the earlier vision (Terada, 2003). A second institutional example along the same lines was the proposed Asian Monetary Fund (AMF). While the idea had been gestating for several years, Japan’s Ministry of Finance proposed it in the wake of the 1997 financial crisis, surprising many. The fund was envisioned to have a capitalization of US$100 billion and include ten members – China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines (Lipscy, 2003). Notably absent from the proposed membership was the United States. Furthermore, the initial draft proposal suggested that the AMF would act autonomously from the IMF. Although the AMF proposal received nearly universal praise and support among its potential members, the United States immediately sought to strike down the proposal. US opposition succeeded and the failure of the AMF meant a continuation of an IMF-centered neo-liberal approach to financial governance (Lipscy, 2003). Another, more subversive articulation of regionalism posed as an alternative to the West is the emergence of regional terror networks, such as Jemaah Islamiyah or JI. The origins and the extensiveness of JI are murky, but its main operations have been in Indonesia with apparent links in Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand among others (International Crisis Group (ICG), 2002a). JI is infamous for the 2002 Bali bombings which took place in a night club in the resort town of Kuta and killed more than 200 people, mostly Australian and other foreign nationals (ICG, 2002b).

The alleged goals of JI are territorial and also regionalist, namely to create an Islamic state in Indonesia followed by a pan-Islamic caliphate incorporating Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and the southern Philippines. Certainly, this notion of regionalism is much narrower than the broad scope of Asia Pacific and South Asia. And ultimately, the vision of the caliphate is to expand from a regional to a global structure. The point here is that JI articulated an alternative vision of political and social organization in the region, one that clashes directly with the paradigm of globalization (ICG, 2002b). A final way to think about the region as an alternative to globalization is to explore the various local movements that have emerged. The movements are not exclusive to the Asia Pacific and South Asia region, but they are characteristic of trends there vis-à-vis the process of globalization with respect to their emphasis on disengagement from globalization. The village of Santi Suk in Thailand, for example, created their own currency following the Asian financial crisis that struck the region in Thailand (Hookway, 2009). The currency is called the ‘bia’, loosely translated as ‘merit’ and operates through a ‘central bank’ located in the village. The currency can be used to purchase various commodities but cannot be used outside of participating villages and cannot be exchanged for Thailand’s national currency, the baht. Homemade currencies are not exclusive to Asia but they did take on a new prominence in the wake of economic turmoil. Community currency is an example of a larger trend in self-sufficiency movements that emerged in Thailand after the Asian financial crisis. Related initiatives included associations such as traditional herbal practitioners, ‘selfsufficiency’ groups, community owned rice mills, and cooperative shops. Local production movements are also in line with the overall philosophy of being an alternative to being part of a globalized system. In Japan, for example, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and the Seikatsu Club both encourage consumers to buy ethically and locally (Starr and Adams, 2003: 24). Examples abound in


India as well including the Lok Samiti group which advocates local village level education and development and campaigns against the Coca Cola bottling plant in Mehdiganj.4 There have been a variety of ways in which the Asia Pacific and South Asia region can be seen also as a region that poses an alternative to globalization. For the most part, these alternative paradigms are consciously articulated alternatives to external forces. Local movements eschew global capitalism, states push back against the perception of Western imperialism, and religious movements emerge from the perceived threat of secularism. Not all of these visions are coherent and few have been successful in the long term.

CONCLUSION The purpose of this essay has been to suggest various lenses through which to explore the relationship between globalization and the region of Asia Pacific and South Asia. The point has not been to argue that one lens is more appropriate than the other. Instead, it shows how globalization is a complex process where regional dynamics must be understood as both a cause and a consequence. Because this essay focuses particularly on the concept of a region and the way to understand its relationship to globalization, it has done less to question the category of region and the delineation of the region vis-à-vis other areas of the world. It began by loosely defining the region and laying out alternative perspectives. The essay has proposed a view of the Asia Pacific and South Asia as an object of globalization, a subject of globalization, and an alternative to globalization. In so doing, it has also perhaps simplified the possible ways to view the interactions between region and process. Some argue that what we see today is but a dual process of ‘hybridization’ (Shinji and Eades, 2003: 6) Cultures are dynamic and emerge and adapt in the context of external and even internal changes. In this way, processes can be recursive and include both the role of subject and

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object simultaneously. While this may be true, the benefit of this framework has been to disaggregate and illustrate the different perspectives instead of subsuming them in one whole theoretical approach. The essay has chosen breadth over depth and tried to offer a variety of snapshots of the variety of ways in which to think about globalization in the region. It has seen globalization as a process occurring over the longue durée, even if manifesting itself most clearly in the past two decades. And within that variety, it has tried to offer a frame through which to interpret that process. While incomplete and contradictory, this is also the essence of globalization and its relationship to the Asia Pacific and South Asia.

NOTES 1 See, for example, Diamond (1998). 2 Refer to the ‘1990 APEC Ministerial Meeting Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation’ (APEC, 1990). 3 See ‘What would Confucius say now?’ (1998) The Economist, 23 July. www.economist.com/ node/169045 (Accessed December 11, 2012). 4 About US, Lok Samiti, n.d. Accessed December 11, 2012. http://www.loksamiti.org/index_files/ aboutus.htm

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Globalization and the Asia Pacific and South Asia

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