Soon after the American Revolution, ?certain of the founders began to recognize the strategic significance of Asia and the Pacific and the vast material and cultural resources at stake there. Over the coming generations, the United States continued to ask how best to expand trade with the region and whether to partner with China, at the center of the continent, or Japan, looking toward the Pacific. Where should the United States draw its defensive line, and how should it export democratic principles? In a history that spans the eighteenth century to the present, Michael J. Green follows the development of U.S. strategic thinking toward East Asia, identifying recurring themes in American statecraft that reflect the nation's political philosophy and material realities. Drawing on archives, interviews, and his own experience in the Pentagon and White House, Green finds one overarching concern driving U.S. policy toward East Asia: a fear that a rival power might use the Pacific to isolate and threaten the United States and prevent the ocean from becoming a conduit for the westward free flow of trade, values, and forward defense. By More Than Providence works through these problems from the perspective of history's major strategists and statesmen, from Thomas Jefferson to Alfred Thayer Mahan and Henry Kissinger. It records the fate of their ideas as they collided with the realities of the Far East and adds clarity to America's stakes in the region, especially when compared with those of Europe and the Middle East.

Aging is a challenge which countries in East Asia and Pacific (EAP) regions are grappling with or will soon confront. It raises many questions for policymakers ranging from potential macroeconomic impacts, to fiscal challenges of supporting pension, health and long-term care systems, and labor market implications as countries seek to promote productive aging. The urgency of the aging challenge varies across the region, but it will confront all EAP countries in time and early preparation is essential to avoid the missteps of other regions. Live Long and Prosper discusses the societal and public policy challenges and reform options for EAP countries as they address aging. It aims to strike a balance between aging optimists and pessimists. On the one hand, the impacts of aging on growth, labor markets and public spending are not the unavoidable catastrophe often feared. However, minimizing the downside risks of aging and ensuring healthy and productive aging will require proactive public policy, political leadership, and new mindsets across society. The report reviews the evidence on demographic transition in EAP and its potential macroeconomic impact. It addresses the current policy environment including pensions and social security, health, and long-term care and labor markets to assess the risks of 'business as usual'. It also suggests policy directions to promote healthy and productive aging in EAP, and emphasizes that aging is not just about older people, but requires policy and behavioral change across the life cycle.

In this singular collection, indigenous experts describe the social welfare systems of fifteen East Asian and Pacific Island nations and locales. Vastly understudied, these lands offer key insight into the successes and failures of Western and native approaches to social work, suggesting new directions for practice and research in both local and global contexts. Combining international experiences and professional knowledge, contributors illuminate the role of history and culture in shaping the social welfare systems of Cambodia, China, Hong Kong (SAR, China), Indonesia, Malaysia, the Micronesian region (including the Federated States of Micronesia, Guam [Unincorporated Territory, U.S.A.], Marshall Islands, Northern Mariana Islands [Commonwealth, U.S.A.], and Palau), Samoa and American Samoa (Unincorporated Territory, U.S.A.), South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. The contributors link the values and issues that concern populaces most to the development of social work practice, policy, and research. Sharlene B. C. L. Furuto then conducts a comparative analysis of the essays including their data and social service programs, highlighting the similarities and differences between the evolution of social welfare in these nations and locales. She contrasts their indigenous approaches, the responses of governments and NGOs to social issues, the availability of social work education, as well as API models, paradigms, and templates, and the overall status of the social work profession. Furuto also adds a chapter comparing the distinct social welfare systems of Samoa and American Samoa. The only volume to focus exclusively on social welfare in East Asia and the Pacific, this anthology holds immense value for practitioners and researchers eager for global perspectives.

China's importance in the Asia-Pacific has been on the rise, raising concerns about competition the United States. The authors examined the reactions of six U.S. allies and partners to China's rise. All six see China as an economic opportunity. They want it to be engaged productively in regional affairs, but without becoming dominant. They want the United States to remain deeply engaged in the region.

There is great interest in the Pacific Century and what its implications for the future will be. The rapid economic growth of East Asia was already setting the region apart from the rest of the world by the 1970s. By the 1980s the trend was seen to have spread southward to Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, while China's provinces had also become integral to the regional economic boom. In this exciting new study many of the ideas and expectations associated with the Pacific Century are placed under critical scrutiny. The book includes studies of particular countries such as China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia. There is analysis of economic and political trends in the region, the reasons behind its rise and its importance on a global scale. The rise of East Asia represents an historic turning point with immense significance world-wide. This book will be of interest to anyone concerned about the new approaches to and the debate about the rise of east Asia and the coming of the Pacific Century.

Asia-Pacific in the New World Order critically explores the notion that a distinctive regional power bloc is developing linking countries bordering the Pacific, with East Asia at its core. This student-friendly volume sheds light on the complex interplay between global, regional and national forces which have transformed the Asia-Pacific area into one of the most vibrant and economically successful regions in the world. Historical narratives alongside geopolitical and geoeconomic perspectives are deployed to examine the shifting pattern of power relations and security structures across the region, set within a wider world context. Key issues addressed include: * what are the primary security problems of the region and how are they being resolved? * does the dynamic growth of the region, and particularly the rise of China, pose a challenge to existing structures of world order? The text has a strong interdisciplinary flavour drawing on analytical approaches from the international relations, political economy and political geography literature. Authors have been drawn from the Asia-Pacific region and the UK and all are established scholars in their specialist fields.

Recently, real and artificial barriers to international transactions have fallen sharply, causing a rise in the overall volume of international trade. East Asia has been particularly affected by the economic stresses and gains derived from deregulation. Deregulation and Interdependence in the Asia-Pacific Region explores the broadly similar experiences of certain economies in the region—China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea—in dealing with the potentially volatile process of deregulation, and examines the East Asian response to a rapidly transforming economic environment.

East Asian Dynamism continues to offer a succinct account of Pacific regional political economy from the dawn of the modern world system to projections of alternative futures. Steve Chan is a master at demystifying the geography, history, and culture of the region while bringing to life the current policy choices and dilemmas facing its people

China's importance in the Asia-Pacific has been on the rise, raising concerns about competition the United States. The authors examined the reactions of six U.S. allies and partners to China's rise. All six see China as an economic opportunity. They want it to be engaged productively in regional affairs, but without becoming dominant. They want the United States to remain deeply engaged in the region.

East Asian countries are now pursuing greater formal economic institutionalization, weaving a web of bilateral and minilateral preferential trade agreements. Scholarly analysis of “formal” East Asian regionalism focuses on international political and economic factors such as the end of the Cold War, the Asian financial crisis, or the rising Sino-Japanese rivalry. Yet this work pays inadequate attention to the strategies of individual government agencies, business groups, labor unions, and NGOs across the region. Moreover, most studies also fail to adequately characterize different types of trade arrangements, often lumping together bilateral accords with minilateral ones, and transregional agreements with those within the region. To fully understand this cross-national variance, this book argues that researchers must give greater attention to the domestic politics within East Asian countries and the U.S., involving the interplay of these subnational players. With contributions from leading country and regional trade specialists, this book examines East Asian and American trade strategies through the lens of a domestic bargaining game approach with a focus on the interplay of interests, ideas, and domestic institutions within the context of broader international shifts. With respect to domestic politics, the chapters show how subnational actors engage in lobbying, both of their own governments and through their links to others in the region. They also trace the evolution of interests and ideas over time, helping us to generate a better understanding of historical trends in the region. In addition to scholars of East Asian and comparative regionalism, this book will be of interest to policy-makers concerned with international trade and U.S.-Asia relations, and those interested in understanding the rich trade institutional landscape that we see emerging in the Asia-Pacific.