B/ordering nature and biophysical geopolitics: A response to Hirsch

This response to Hirsch's examination of Mekong geopolitics raises challenges to the geo-economics’ capture of common property resources and fragmentation of the Mekong commons by stressing flows, migrations and socio-ecological relations that should be central biophysical elements within deliberative geopolitics in the region.     

大湄公河次区域旅游合作开发研究

大湄公河次区域经济合作区由中国云南省、缅甸、老挝、泰国、柬埔寨、越南等六个国家和地区组成。次区域内自然和人文旅游资源丰富,互补性强,并有一条天然大通道——湄公河将次区域的各个国家和地区联系起来,具有合作发展旅游的优越条件。本文在分析了次区域各方面的条件后认为,将投资少、见效快的旅游合作开发置于次区域经济合作的优先地位是最佳选择;同时对次区域旅游合作开发提出了具体的措施和建议。     

Vietnam's Coastal Communities: An Assessment of Poverty

A Vietnamese geographer examines factors leading to the persistence of poverty in the coastal regions of Vietnam, against the backdrop of the country's overall recent success in poverty amelioration. After reviewing the spatial pattern of poverty for Vietnam as a whole, based on current government statistics, the author contrasts the situation in the country's interior relative to coastal locations, based on a detailed survey of over 200 households in Khanhhoa Province, located in south-central Vietnam. The changing labor market conditions in East Asia are discussed briefly in light of continued poverty reduction in the country. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: D31, I31, O15, P20. 4 figures, 5 tables, 33 references.     

The Geographical Names of Vietnam

A Soviet place-name specialist analyzes the structure of Vietnamese place names on the basis of his attendance at a place-name seminar in Hanoi and a field trip through North Vietnam in 1963–64. Similarities with Chinese place names are found, particularly in the names of administrative divisions and towns. A wide range of generic terms, some of limited local use in mountain and river names, is discussed. The possible derivation of well-known place names such as Hanoi, Saigon, Mekong, etc., is analyzed.     

Salt production in pre-Funan Vietnam: archaeomagnetic reorientation of briquetage fragments

Bronze to Iron Age briquetage found in the northern Mekong Delta has an appearance similar to analogous material from Europe and Asia; however, the orientation in which the briquetage was employed during the production of salt is still under debate. As a consequence of the heating and subsequent cooling of the briquetage during the evaporative recovery of salt, the magnetic mineral particles within the ceramic formed a stable thermoremanent magnetization in alignment with the Earth's magnetic field. It thus becomes possible to find the orientation in which the ceramics were last fired by aligning their recorded archaeomagnetic signal with estimates of the Earth's ancient field direction in Vietnam. The archaeomagnetic directions obtained from 22 samples taken from five different briquetage artefacts are somewhat scattered, but they reveal a consistent orientation and thus the mode in which the briquetage was employed can be reconstructed.     

The alliance echoes and portents of Australia's longest war

Afghanistan was Australia's longest war, yet the consensus between Australia's major political parties on the commitment never wavered over 12 years. The bipartisan unity held even as the nature of the war changed and evolved, Australian casualties rose and popular support fell away. The enduring centrality of the US alliance explains much—probably almost all you need to know—about the unbroken consensus of the Australian polity. Afghanistan was an example of the Australian alliance addiction, similar to Vietnam. As with Vietnam, the Australian military left Afghanistan believing it won its bit of the war, even if the Afghanistan war is judged a disaster. As Australia heads home it finds the USA pivoting in its direction; with all the similarities that can be drawn between Vietnam and Afghanistan, this post-war alliance effect is a huge difference between the two conflicts.     

Rethinking transboundary waters: A critical hydropolitics of the Mekong basin

Efforts to understand the geographical and political complexities of transboundary river basins—both within national jurisdictions and at international levels—must embrace critical interdisciplinary perspectives. In this paper, we focus attention on underdeveloped aspects of transboundary water conflicts and cooperation—e.g., how ecological understandings of river basins are transformed within transboundary institutional arrangements; the way multiple actors in transboundary basins construct geographical scales; and how control over water is represented and exercised within governance and management institutions. We advance the notion of critical hydropolitics as a way of explicating these processes. We draw on a case study of conflict over and within the transboundary waters of the Mekong River basin to illustrate this approach. Our aim is to complement and extend ongoing research and policy debates concerning transboundary waters.     

Internationalisation of the Chinese subnational state and capital: the case of Yunnan and the Greater Mekong Subregion

This article examines the participation of China's Yunnan Province in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) in order to understand the dynamics behind the regionalisation and internationalisation strategies adopted by a Chinese subnational state. It argues that the Yunnan case demonstrates the outflow of state capital—both national and provincially based—to have been instrumental in harnessing Beijing's and Kunming's political support for programs of subregional economic cooperation. This political support has led to a state capital alliance underpinning the economic expansion of provincial state capital into the GMS. It also argues that subregional governance arrangements, such as those featuring in the GMS, embed the competitive advantage of state capital through new forms of extra-territorial governance that ostensibly de-emphasises the political dimensions of state capital. The internationalisation of Yunnan subnational state is reflected in its political strategy of subregional governance. These changes point to complex rescaling of not just national state but also subnational states in Asia that find expression in variegated regional and subregional political projects.     

The class route to nationhood: China,Vietnam, Norway,Cyprus – and France*

ABSTRACT. This essay explores the proposition that China and Vietnam represent a fourth class route to modern nationhood, in addition to the ethnic (German), civic (French) and plural (American) routes. Nation‐states emerging along the class route are characterised by an exclusive membership based on social class rather than just ethnicity, living under the same laws or participation in liberation from foreign rule. The essay compares China's and Vietnam's class‐based nationalism with the more inclusive labour movement nationalisms of Norway and Cyprus. Then it explains how the class route differs from the French civic route. In the conclusion, the author concedes that the Chinese and Vietnamese class route is perhaps a detour rather than a route of its own, since it leads to inevitable tension between the divisive history of how the nation was formed and the need of its later leaders to include and represent the same social classes that were originally excluded. These leaders and their national storytellers are forced to undertake a redefinition of the national self as ethnic, civic and/or plural in an attempt to recreate national legitimacy, often in competition with more radically nationalist opposition groups.     

Vietnam: Two Decades of Urban Development

Doi moi, adopted as a policy of economic reform in Vietnam in 1986, has ushered in fundamental and sweeping economic and social changes spearheaded by its cities. The paper, by a senior Hong Kong-based geographer, reviews the country's progress over a twodecade period ending in 2006. Discussion of the first decade focuses on deterioration of urban infrastructure and its causes (as well as the onset of reconstruction) based largely on field interviews, reconnaissance, and review of official documents and reports. Coverage of the second decade's more rapid change highlights legal reforms, privatization, foreign direct investment, as well as regional development. The favorable prognosis for urban Vietnam is examined in the context of the country's accession to the WTO and its hosting of the APEC Summit in late 2006. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O10, O18, O30, P20. 4 figures, 1 table, 26 references.     

The Political Economy of the Three Gorges Project

This paper examines the debates over the decision to build the Three Gorges Dam, the subsequent flows of income to the firms involved in its construction, and the continuing implications of the dam for the Chinese space economy. The paper makes and justifies three claims. First, the construction project has been responsible for both dispossession and the formation of capital (primitive accumulation). But it is too simple to interpret the project as merely the face of modernity or development: proponents were reflecting traditional attitudes to bureaucracy and environmental management, whereas opponents sought liberalisation, marketisation, and opening up. It turns out that the concept of modernity, as a western programme introduced into China after the formation of the People's Republic, is of remarkably little value in understanding the construction of this dam. Secondly, the decision to build the dam reflects both structure and happenstance – particular political events and individuals were critical. Notably, the project shows few signs of having come into being to absorb over‐accumulated capital: mega‐projects like this do not have to satisfy any capitalist logic. Finally, I emphasise that such huge projects have long run effects on the structure of power in China – indeed, events at Three Gorges underpinned much of the later debate and struggle over dams on the Mekong, Salween, and Changjiang above Three Gorges.     

The shifting regional geopolitics of Mekong dams

The Mekong is a region whose geopolitics are shifting in complex ways. They are shifting with the post-Cold War reconfiguration of ideological as well as strategic power deployments. They are also shifting with rapid economic development and associated regional integration. This paper employs these various dimensions of shifting geopolitics to explore and partially explain the (re)emergence of hydropower development in the Mekong. It does so by outlining both the shifting geopolitics of river and region, and showing how the Mekong as metaphor extends to much more than the materiality of the river from which the multiply constructed region derives its name. It suggests that the regional geopolitics produced by these shifts is key to the re-emergence of mainstream hydropower.     

Towards relational geometries of public participation and hydropower governance in the Lower Mekong River Basin

The Lao People's Democratic Republic's aspirations to become the ‘battery’ of Southeast Asia has involved plans for a cascade of hydropower dams on the mainstream of the transboundary Mekong River. This has triggered the unprecedented undertaking of public stakeholder consultations under the Mekong River Commission's Procedures for Notification, Prior Consultation and Agreement (PNPCA). This paper focuses on PNPCA stakeholder consultations organized in Thailand and Cambodia, and seeks to understand how these stakeholder consultations, despite their merits in information sharing, have come to be criticized by civil society as a ‘rubber stamp’ for ‘participation’ in Lao hydropower development. Building upon the literature on public participation in development, critical hydropolitics, and stakeholder engagement in Mekong water governance, we seek to conceptualize a critical politics of public participation by adopting a relational approach towards identifying the key challenges relating to participation. We suggest that a relational approach must consider how the interrelations between the multiple formal and informal tracks of stakeholder engagement shape one another and overall opportunities for participation, and how power relations within these spaces impact on perceptions towards public participation. Distrust towards state-organized participatory spaces can be traced from the state-organized participatory spaces to another key interrelation: the power relations between state and nonstate actors in the multi-scalar political spaces that extend beyond participatory spaces. This paper examines how anti-participatory forces pose a challenge to the emergence of both state and nonstate participatory spaces, providing additional insights into the state-society dynamics that influence environmental outcomes around large-scale infrastructural development.     

Choosing Sides in the Global Cold War: Switzerland,Neutrality, and the Divided States of Korea and Vietnam

This article examines neutral Switzerland's recognition policy towards the divided states of Korea and Vietnam. Drawing comparisons with other neutrals, notably Austria and Sweden, allows us to assess the credibility of neutrality in the Global Cold War. All three neutrals explicitly or implicitly aimed to reinforce their neutrality through the principle of universality, which entailed the recognition of all regimes, no matter their political couleur. Yet this principle was not applied consistently, but rather pragmatically. Until the beginning of the 1970s, Switzerland, as well as Austria and Sweden, favoured the Western-oriented over the Communist halves of Korea and Vietnam. Thereby, this article argues, they undermined the credibility of neutrality. They were, however, willing to take that risk, because they feared that the recognition of North Korea and North Vietnam could irritate the United States, and provoke East German claims for recognition, which was undesirable due to the Hallstein doctrine and West Germany's economic weight. It was only with the rise of the Third World as a political force, and the softening of the US position that the neutrals, which saw themselves in competition with each other for status and influence, eventually recognised North Korea and North Vietnam.     

Changing trends in international marriages between Korean men and Southeast Asian women, 1993–2013

Korea witnessed a large increase in the fraction of men marrying spouses from Southeast Asia. In the 1990s, about one per cent of Korean men’s new marriages were to Southeast Asian women but by 2005, this increased to over nine per cent with even higher rates in rural areas. With the use of a logit model and Marriage Register data from 1993–2013, the determinants of international marriages are explored using a more rigorous approach and over a longer period of observation compared to previous studies. Older Korean men with lower socioeconomic status were more likely to marry a woman from Southeast Asia (compared to a fellow Korean). The predictors of international marriage differed depending on the wife’s birth country: if the wife had some college education there was a higher probability of marriage to a Filipino woman, but less likely to a woman from China or Vietnam, compared to marriage to a Korean woman. Finally, over the past two decades the education level, age at marriage, and country of origin of the foreign wives have changed substantially. The data shows fewer women migrating from China (of which about 70% are ethnically Korean), and a rising number from Vietnam. This ‘marriage migration’ has implications for the demographics, ethnicity, and occupational composition of those living in Korea.     

The politics of hydropower: developing the Mekong

With renewed economic interest in the Southeast Asian region following the `peace dividend' of the early 1990s, numerous hydrodevelopment plans have been initiated in the Mekong basin. The river-as-resource, in a glibly bioregional metaphor, has been transformed from a Cold War `front line' into a `corridor of commerce', drawing six riparian states together in the pursuit of sustainable development through economic and infrastructural integration and cooperation, promoted by multi- and bilateral donors and lending institutions. Through a brief examination of the discursive framing of Mekong hydrodevelopment, this paper uncovers some of the implications of an emerging regional geopolitical imagination centred on the naturalising metaphor of the watershed. Through a discussion of the increasing involvement of private capital, and the politicisation of resource use, the implications of hydrodevelopment for Laos, an upstream state currently undergoing major hydrodevelopment, and Cambodia, a downstream state, are explored.     

The economic factor in the Sino-Vietnamese split, 1972–75: An analysis of Vietnamese archival sources

Relying on so far untapped Vietnamese archival sources, this article examines the impact of China's gradual curtailment of its economic assistance to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam's (DRV) war and economic recovery efforts and its implications for Sino-Vietnamese relations between 1972 and 1975. While Beijing's gradual reduction of aid to the DRV during this period was primarily motivated by the declining importance of North Vietnam to China's strategic security combined with the reality of China's domestic economic hardship which largely resulted from the disastrous Cultural Revolution of 1966–69, Hanoi's reactions and policy responses were driven by their deep-rooted perception of Beijing's insincerity and hidden intention to keep Vietnam weak. The Sino-Vietnamese conflict that ensued after 1975 was not inevitable; Hanoi's leaders launched concerted diplomatic efforts to improve economic relations with Beijing throughout 1975 because they clearly recognised the importance of China's continued economic assistance and preferential trade agreements to its first five year plan (1976–80). However, Beijing's unchanged position and hasty decision to totally cut off aid to Vietnam and additionally take punitive economic measures against Vietnam's first five-year plan in late 1975 while at the same time increasing economic and military aid to the Democratic Kampuchea compelled Hanoi to tilt closer towards Moscow.     

MARRIAGE MIGRANTS AS EMIGRANTS

This article examines the emigration dimension of marriage migration in Asia by focusing on remittances received by parents from daughters who married and migrated abroad. Based on a study of 250 migrant-sending households in Vietnam with a daughter living in an Asian country as a ‘foreign wife’, the analysis provides empirical evidence that emigrant spouses make substantial financial contributions to their natal families through remittances. A multivariate analysis of the determinants of remittance-sending shows that a woman's characteristics and living conditions abroad largely determine whether or not she remits, while the relative poverty level of her natal family has limited influence. Findings call for a broader conceptualization of ‘women who marry foreigners’ or ‘foreign brides’ as emigrants who contribute to the social development of their sending countries.     

Moyes,Menzies, and the Vietnam War: New Insights Into the Public Correspondence Between the Prime Minister and the Bishops

In March 1965 a group of Anglican bishops signed an open letter to the prime minister of Australia, Sir Robert Menzies, expressing its concerns about the rapid deterioration of the situation in Vietnam. The letter had been composed by the retired Bishop of Armidale, John Stoward Moyes. The bishops urged Menzies to use his influence with the United States Government to ensure that the possibility of a negotiated settlement of the conflict could be explored to the full. The letter, and the prime minister's public response, thrust John Moyes and his episcopal co‐signatories into the centre of a national debate on Vietnam. Following Menzies's brusque reply, Moyes composed a second and more critical open letter. The prime minister then issued a more detailed response one week before he committed Australian combat troops to the Vietnam War. The initiative taken by Bishop Moyes constituted the first major instance of public debate in Australia concerning the wisdom and morality of the government's policy on Vietnam.     

‘A good wife stays home’: gendered negotiations over state agricultural programmes,upland Vietnam

Rural and livelihood studies, alongside development organisations, are stressing the importance of gender awareness in debates over food security, food crises and land tenure. Yet, within the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, these gender dynamics are frequently disregarded. In Vietnam, rice is intimately linked to the country's food security. Over the last decade, rice export levels, production methods, and local and global market prices have remained constant preoccupations for governmental and development agencies. Steadfast official approval for agricultural technologies and intensification has seen the domestic growth and importation of hybrid varieties of rice and maize seeds. Yet, the impacts of these technologies on upland ethnic minority rice producers and consumers in Vietnam have been overlooked. For these women and men, such as Hmong and Yao farmers, food security is a daily concern for their near-subsistence livelihoods. While strongly encouraged to grow these new seeds, insufficient research has examined the social realities and experiences of these upland minority groups. Moreover, how such agrarian policies and practices are being implicated in reconfiguring gender roles, relations and identities through transformations to individual and household livelihoods has been ignored. In this article, we focus on the gendered consequences of the government's hybrid rice programme for upland farmers. We reveal recent impacts on family relations, including rising intergenerational tensions across genders, and shifting responsibilities and new negotiations between young spouses. These dynamics are further complicated by household economic status, as household members access specific opportunities available to them to improve everyday food security.