Malaysia’s role in two South-East Asian insurgencies: ‘an honest broker’?

The conflicts in Thailand’s southern border provinces and Mindanao have not only posed a challenge to the Thai and Philippine governments, but have also affected the respective governments’ relations with Malaysia. From a comparative perspective, this article aims to illustrate how a complicated web of interactions between domestic and international factors has not only shaped domestic decision-making, but also influenced how states interact with one another in regard to the conflicts, which has resulted in a mix of cooperation and contention. It is argued that despite past downturns in bilateral relations, various developments have paved the way for Malaysia to play a role in the current peace processes in Thailand’s southern border provinces and Mindanao. However, Malaysia has been able to accomplish more in Mindanao’s peace process due to several favourable conditions, including the Philippine government’s openness towards third-party involvement, regional security concerns and politics that have been less polarised until 2016.     

影响晚清西方来华传教士宗教旅游的因素分析

本文从旅游的视角,认为西方来华传教士的活动是一种宗教旅游活动,论文选取西方传教士大规模进入我国的晚清时期作为研究时段,根据旅游系统三体论的思路,对晚清西方来华传教士宗教旅游的影响因素进行系统分析,研究结论表明:影响晚清西方来华传教士宗教旅游的主要因素有三个。其一是西方传教士旅游客源地的文化和经济因素;其二是中国作为西方传教士旅游目的地的政治开放、宗教政策以及安全保障因素;其三是西方传教士从其客源地到中国旅游目的地之间及其内部的交通因素。     

毛泽东与新中国谈判建交的开创

谈判建交是新中国独立自主外交的一项重要实践,是毛泽东将中华民族争取独立、平等和获得尊重的努力与国际法相结合的一次成功创新。毛泽东不仅是谈判建交的首倡者,而且在具有开创意义的中国同印度和英国的建交谈判中,扮演了决策者、设计者和领导者的角色,起到了举足轻重的关键作用。     

Does a turbulent history lead to turbulent life expectancy trends? Evidence from the Baltic States

After the time of the Great Duchy of Lithuania and that of their inclusion to Russian Empire, the three Baltic countries got their first independence after WWI, but WWII forced them to enter the Soviet Union for almost five decades before getting their second independence and resuming with market economy, to finally join the European Union. Such strong historical changes caused major impacts (either positive or negative) on the implementation of the health transition in the region, quite interesting to document, but they also produced dramatic changes in the quality and the accuracy of information required to compute mortality indicators. The aim of this article is to briefly summarize existing knowledge on mortality in the Baltic region for the past two centuries, but focusing more precisely on the consequences of getting in and then getting out of the Soviet system in terms of health and survival.     

冷战后日本国家战略的"普通化"与中日关系

本文将冷战后日本国家战略的演变明确定义为“普通化”即成为“普通国家”的进程,探讨这种变化与中日关系发展的内在联系,提出“普通国家间关系”应该成为21世纪中日关系的发展方向,并对形成未来双边关系机制的必要性做了相应阐述,认为这一分析框架是从国家战略层面把握中日关系发展的现实需要。     

The role of zoning in the strategic planning of protected areas: lessons learnt from EU countries and Serbia

This paper aims to highlight the problems and possibilities for improving the nature protection zoning of protected areas (PA) in spatial planning. It analyses and compares the systems of spatial planning and the legal basis for protecting nature in PAs in selected EU countries and Serbia. It investigates and compares the role of nature protection zoning and the practice of spatial planning for selected European countries. The case study of a national park in each of the selected countries is used to analyse the nature protection zoning and its role in the coordination of spatial planning for PAs and their surroundings. The initial hypothesis is tested and confirmed that, regardless of differences in the planning systems of the selected European countries, the models of nature protection zoning established for PAs are defining for the coordination of planning instruments in achieving the protection and sustainable development of PAs. The lessons learnt concern the identification of similarities and differences in approaches to nature protection zoning, and their relationship with the spatial planning for PAs in six European countries. Based on these lessons and existing research, recommendations are given for improving the legal basis for the nature protection zoning and spatial planning of PAs in Serbia.     

What kind of region reaps the benefits of a currency union?

What is the economic impact of joining a currency union? Is this impact heterogeneous across regions? And how does it change in case of a recession? We answer these questions by investigating the economic impact of joining the euro area for the latecomers, that is, the eastern European countries that adopted the euro after 2002. Differently from previous literature, we use NUTS-2 regions as units of analysis. This novelty allows us to investigate the theoretical predictions of a currency union impact at a more appropriate geographical level. Using a recently developed counterfactual approach, we estimate the overall as well as the disaggregated impact of joining the euro area. We find that the adoption of the euro brought about a small positive effect, which was, however, dampened by the Great Recession. Individual regional estimates suggest heterogeneous returns with benefits accruing mostly to core regions.     

The Black Death

The purpose of the present research is to examine various theories concerning the origin of the Black Death, to record its routes of dissemination in the Nordic countries and across the British Isles, and to compare the pattern of that dissemination with trade routes carrying grain throughout northern Europe in the period up to and including 1350.