Critics of Orientalism have pointed out that the concept of “Asia” lacks any real substance and that it was invented in opposition to the idea of “Europe.” Consequentially, by speaking of shared characteristics within Asia, one risks being dismissed as simply reproducing the foundations for either Euro-centric notions of “Asian despotism” and “Asiatic modes of production” or the ethnocentrism of modern Japan. Traditionally attempts to employ a politico-cultural approach that analyzes particularistic qualities of political phenomenon and systems different from Europe and America have been critiqued as tautological exercises fostering racism and stereotypes. However, while refraining from arguments based on innate particularities of a region or ethnicity, by looking at the diffusion and formation of shared systems of possible exchange, is it still not possible to historically consider a sort of political culture of the Asian region formed through path dependency? The birth of the EU brought us a greater focus on the leadership of politicians that initiated such a project, and at the same time highlighted the importance of common factors that accumulated in Europe such as the legacies of the Roman empire in the form of law and Christianity, post-medieval political unification, the history of tariff and monetary exchange, the Marshall Plan, and NATO.
By employing a framework of broader regional Asian history, it may be possible to conceive of nations and regions in a new manner that corresponds to a globalization not bound by national borders. This trend was begun by pre-modern historians and has continued with recent research employing the notion of intellectual and cultural chains. However, attempts to historically analyze modern political, economic, and social conditions of a wider regional Asia as a whole have remained insufficient. To this end, this Introduction presents an historical model of six world orders that have come to exist in Asia over the course of history and thus hopes to relate events currently taking place in the greater Asian region during this century to earlier developments. The six imperial world orders elaborated include; 1) the imperial Chinese world order, 2) the Western imperial order (represented by the greater British empire), 3) the Japanese imperial order (The Greater Asian Co-prosperity Sphere), 4) the first American imperial order (from WW I to the end of the Cold War), 5) the Soviet imperial order, 6) and the second American imperial order (post-Cold War).
This special issue has brought together both diplomatic historians and other specialists in order to historically analyze several phenomena unfolding on the stage of greater Asia between 1910 and 2000. Their articles all point to new possibilities for an Asian history that analyzes what traditional approaches based on unilateral and bilateral histories could not and, in their substantive quality, take a first step toward deconstructing the image of “Asia.”

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It was a the end of 1912 when the communication concession that the Japanese government granted to The Great Northern Telegraph Co., Ltd. (GNT) and The Eastern Extension Australasia & China (EEA&C) expired, posing a challenge for the first time to their predominant positions over their operations of telegraph communication in East Asia. Taking this opportunity, the Japanese government began to construct its first external submarine cable line; “the Imperial Line (Teikoku-sen)”. With GNT's submarine cable line (hereinafter called the Great Northern Line) that was constructed in 1870 between Nagasaki and Shanghai, “the Imperial Line” was to play a vital role in the telegraph communication between Japan and China. For the Sino-Japanese negotiations to reach an agreement, it took as long as two years from the end of 1912. And, from January 1st, 1915, the communication with Japanese code telegraph was made available through the line. The author of this paper examined earlier the negotiation process on the construction of the Qingdao-Sasebo Line that lined Japan and China with Japanese code telegraph six months after the completion of the Imperial Line (Kishi 2002). The first task of this paper, then, is to clarify the negotiation process of the Imperial Line, which turned out to be a larger diplomatic issue than that of the Qingdao-Sasebo Line. At the same time, it purports to explore the historical significance of the communication concessions granted to GNT and EEA&C.
The second task of this paper relates to the situation in which the dominant positions of GNT and EEA&C were placed again in jeopardy at the end of 1930. At this point, the communication concessions grated by the Chinese government to other countries and firms were to expire, which eventually necessitated that the treatment of the submarine cable lines between Japan and China would be thoroughly revised. The second task of this paper, therefore, is to explore how the Imperial Line's operation was transformed in the course of the negotiations for the revision, and also to investigate the role of communication concessions grated by China to Japan, such as the cable landing right, throughout the negotiation process. Further, the paper will clarify how the Imperial Line was utilized in 1931 when the Manchurian Incident broke out, and also during the period of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937.
To investigate these issues, this paper relies on three historical sources; the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archive documents at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica in Taiwan; Diplomatic correspondences of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and the historical materials archived at the Japanese Ministry of Communications.

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This article considers some relationship between the home country and some colonies of the Empire of Japan with the viewpoint of the flow of Portland cement, Japanese architects and architectural information within the territory ruled by Japan in the first half of the twentieth century. I have mainly two reasons why I focus on the flow of them. The first one is that all of buildings by Japanese on any cities ruled or occupied by the Empire of Japan had been necessary for colonization. The second one is that I have already recognized a lot of Japanese architects to move into Japanese colonies and to work in the first half of twentieth century.
On chapter 1 I try to analyze two matters, the one is to research some history of Portland cement factories in Japan and the Japanese colonies. In the Japanese colonies the first Portland cement factory is the Dairen branch factory of Onoda Portland Cement Co. Ltd., established in 1909 in Dalny, in the Kwantung Leased Territory, in the Manchuria. Not only it had supplied any Portland cement to the Kwantung Government General and the South Manchuria Railway Company, but also it had shipped to the Japanese colony Chosen until 1916 and exported to China. The other is to make analysis some statistics of output of Portland cement, to make it clear that a lot of Portland cement made in Japan and the Japanese colonies had been exported to China, Hong Kong, Java, Philippine, Malaya, Indo-China, Thailand and India, etc.
On chapter 2 I research each transfer of some Japanese colonial architects who were the first chief architect of each architectural office on colonial government or the South Manchuria Railway Company Limited. All of them had experienced building activity on the Japanese colony before becoming a chief architect of architectural office. Then transfers of them were not via Japan, but they moved directly one colony to another.
On chapter 3, I try to analyze some architectural magazines published in the Japanese colonies from 1920's to 1930's. I find out that all of them had carried any information on new buildings not on each Japanese colony, but on other territory in the East Asia or whole of the world. By reading them, Japanese architects on the Japanese colonial territory had gained latest design and theory of architecture in the world, and they had put the information to their building activity.
In conclusion, the territory ruled by the Empire of Japan was the place where Japanese architects had experience to get some new information and to product new works.

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Raja Mahendra Pratap (1886-1979) was born the third son of the Mursan royal family of Uttar Pradesh in India, and received his education under strong Muslim influence in Aligarh. At the age of 21, young Raja traveled around the world through Europe, the United States, Japan, and to China.The next year (1908), having become aware of the finiteness of material wealth, Pratap established the “Prem Mahavidyalya (University of Love)” in Vrindavan.
With the outbreak of World War I, Pratap went to Europe hoping to gain the support of Germany for the cause of liberating India from British rule. He joined in secret maneuvers with Germany and Turkey, and in 1915 went to Afghanistan as part of a delegation for both nations to ask the royal king to enter the war against England. The negotiations failed, and he established the Provisional Government of India in Kabul.
In 1918 Pratap rushed to the post-revolutionary Soviet Union, and had a meeting with Trotsky. Since he could not continue carrying out activities in Germany because of WWI, he fled to Budapest in Hungary, and there, established the religious organization “Religion of Love.” He began to appear for the idea of “World Federalism” based on the spirit of “love.”
In 1922 Pratap went to Japan in order to strengthen sympathies for the Indian independence movement in East Asia, at which time he also began to associate with R. B. Bose. His goal of visiting various nations gradually shifted to one of propagating his ideas regarding the “Religion of Love” and “World Federalism”, and to this end he published many articles while in Japan. In September 1929 he founded the “World Federation” magazine in Berlin. Moving from the United States to Japan to Manchu-kuo, he continued to publish a total of 100 issues until March 1942. His unique notion of religious ontology influenced many Japanese Pan-Asianists and produced various linkages among their ideas.
Pratap settled down in Japan in November 1930, and became involved in anti-British maneuvers in Manchu-kuo. The results of these activities however did not turn out well. His social position drastically declined in the mid-1930s and he gradually lost the influence he once had in Japan. Nonetheless, Pratap kept a wide range of personal connections all over the world, and managed to maintain certain ideological associations by means of correspondence with people of different races, nations, and religions.
This paper focuses on the process of how the World Federation movement, which Pratap developed, inspired connections with Japanese Pan-Asianists, and how it was used as propaganda to expand Japanese Imperialism. The relations between Pan-Asianism and both anti-colonial and religious networks that allowed Pratap to travel the globe are also discussed in this paper.

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On June 1931, three agents of International Communist movement in Asia were arrested in Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai. A French man arrested in Singapore, Joseph Ducroux, tried to make Singapore a regional center (“hub”) of Communist movement. The person arrested in Hong Kong was Nguyen Ai Quoc, who later became the first president of Vietnam under the name of Ho Chi Minh after the World War II. He was a regional promoter assigned to instruct Communist movements in French Indochina, Siam and British Malaya, and to connect these Southeast Asian movements to Shanghai. The last man arrested in Shanghai was Hilaire Noulens, real name Yakov Matveevich Rudnik, a liaison officer of the Far Eastern Bureau of Comintern.
These arrests (which I call the “Noulens Case”) had a strong impact on the International Communist movement in Asia and also on the activity of the British Security System. In this paper, I first reconstruct the International Communist movement in Asia mainly from archival documents on the “Noulens Case” in the Shanghai Municipal Police Files. I then explain how the British Security System monitored this movement and arrested three agents in 1931. The British Security System checked the human movements in and out the empire by combining the Passport Control System with the Political Intelligence such as Special Branch in colonial police. Finally, I analyze the International Communist movement in Asia, the activity of the British Security System, and the impact of “Noulens Case” on these two from the network point of view defined by US physicist Albert-Laszlo Barabasi. In his book “Linked: The New Science of Networks”, Barabasi argues that the key component of the network is the “hub”. Once we focus on “hub”, we can explain the rise and fall of the network, i. e. “the dynamics of the network”.
In the International Communist movement in Asia, the “hub” was a liaison officer such as Noulens in Shanghai and a regional promoter such as Nguyen Ai Quoc in Hong Kong. Their arrest meant the disappearance of a “hub” from the movement, and the movement itself was set back severely for a while. On the other hand, from the “Noulens Case”, the British Security System was able to obtain a lot of information about the activity of the International Communist movement in Asia and the agents who joined it.

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The first half of the 1930s, the years following the Great Depression, marked a major shift in the Chinese economy in terms of China's position in the international monetary system. Until November 1935, China was virtually the only country in the international monetary system still adhering to the silver standard. Fluctuations in the international price of silver in the 1930's destabilized its economy. Establishing a new monetary system, the foreign exchange standard, required committed government intervention, and ultimately, the process of economic recovery and monetary change politicized the entire Chinese economy. The previous scholarships point out that the powers in East Asia, namely Great Britain, United States, and Japan, tried to influence China's currency reform in 1935. However, China's own ideas about the change of its monetary system and its views of the post-reform economic recovery still wait for further investigations. With the newly opened archives of the Chinese government, this paper studies implications and influences of the currency reform particularly in terms of the Chinese government's economic policies.
The key issue of the currency reform was to secure the public credit in the money newly issued by the government. Under the silver standard, domestic trust in the currency rested on its convertibility to silver. Under the new monetary system, the government's management of the monetary system became much more important. However, there was a fear of the government's arbitration of the monetary system to finance its budgetary deficits. Against this background, recognizing Chinese economy's close integration to the world economy in terms of trade and of capital flow, the government found it necessary to cultivate mass confidence in the currency by keeping the Chinese yuan convertible and stabilizing its exchange rate. The Chinese government's policy, being significantly open at a time when economies were being nationalized in many parts of the world after the Great Depression, was unique, and was apparently different from those by the powers that had hoped to have Chinese yuan linked to their currencies.
The government, in its maintaining currency convertibility and exchange stability, could not issue notes freely and bonds excessively in order to sustain the value of the currency. In this way, the government succeeded in reforming the monetary system but gave up its discretion in banking and fiscal policies. As long as the credibility of the domestic monetary system was linked to the international monetary system, the government was not free to formulate economic policies. Although the paths taken by the regimes in 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s might be different, China's linkage with the international monetary system continued to regulate the government from the mid-1930 onward.

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The objective of this study is to examine, first, the foreign policies that China adopted in developing its civil aviation industry during and after the Second Sino-Japanese War, and second, the impact of those policies on its international relations.
Following the end of the Second World War, China, as one of the victorious nations, was incorporated into the new liberalized world order. Upon signing the IMF Articles of Agreement and joining the GATT, China had to assume a leading role in the efforts to open up international trade and foreign exchange. This was also the case in the area of civil aviation. The United States advocated “freedom of the air, ” a policy that would allow commercial air carriers the freedom to fly into any nation's airspace. As a result of the U. S. demand that China also comply with this principle, China entered into free passage agreements with many nations, expanding its international aviation network.
China was not, however, forced to liberalize its civil aviation industry in the postwar period simply because of the pressure from the United States. There are several facts to illustrate this. First, a number of postwar international flight routes had already been opened during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Second, when the war ended, China reversed its stance and became reluctant to open its skies to outside aircraft. Lastly, most international routes that were opened after the war were with its neighboring Asian countries. In many cases it was China that initiated the establishment of such routes for the purpose of strengthening ties with overseas Chinese.
Behind these policies were the special circumstances surrounding China. In civil aviation, unlike other industries, there were few pre-existing foreign interests. China was thus able to establish equal relations with other nations, and the Nationalist Government made efforts to maintain its sovereignty over the issue. In addition, because of delays in centralizing the civil aviation administration, the military authorities maintained a strong say in the matter and were resistant to opening civil aviation to other nations.
As outlined above, China did not accept the liberalization of its civil aviation unconditionally. Hence, the prevailing notion that China's civil aviation industry was under the control of the United States after the Second World War cannot stand. At the same time, however, it cannot be said that China has developed its civil aviation on its own. The primary provider of international flights at the time was China National Aviation Corporation, which remained a joint venture with the United States, while the government-owned Central Air Transport Corporation was still unable to enter into the market. In other words, China was never able to free itself from its dependence on the United States for technology. This is a reflection of the dualistic nature of the Nationalist Government at that time, which, in turn, mirrors China as it was, characterized by simultaneous independence and dependence.

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This paper analyses how British cultural policies in South-East Asia changed its scope and nature from 1942 to 1960 as her rivals shifted in the turbulent postwar international environment. The paper looks at both short-term information campaigns and long-term policies aiming at acculturation or changes in perception conducted by various government offices including Foreign Office and Colonial Office, and by more independent organisations such as the British Council and the BBC.
Throughout the period, as with the cases of British political and military policies, the primary objective of British cultural policies in South-East Asia was to retain her informal empire in the region despite the tide of decolonisation and Britain's reliance on American economic and military power.
From 1942 to 1947, when the main cultural rivals for Britain in the region were the effect of Japan's Pan-Asianism and American influence, Britain made efforts in ‘projecting’ her traditional political and artistic culture to Japan and areas which had come under the Japanese military administration. As the Malayan Emergency unfolded and through the establishment of the Communist China, Britain placed weight on defending her empire in and around Malaya by short-term propaganda against communist infiltration from China. She also competed with the expansion of American influence and anti-colonial campaign in the region. The biggest challenge to British influence in the region came between 1954 and 1956 as Afro-Asian anti-colonialism, through the Bandung Conference and the Suez War. This challenge made Britain embark on ‘A New Look for Asia’ and expand its scope of cultural policies with the idea of cooperation with America, Australia and New Zealand. Britain also stepped forward to ‘project’ modern Britain rather than ‘a country of cathedrals’. She went further beyond ‘projection’ by helping cultural transfer of British cultural elements such as technology and English as universal language and by focusing policy targets to prospective opinion-leaders.
In addition, through the interdepartmental discussion of possible withdrawal from the UNESCO soon after the Suez War, British cultural policy-makers recognized the shortcomings of unilateral propaganda and bilateral cultural cooperation, and realized the necessity to pursue multilateral cultural cooperation through international organization such as the UNESCO in order to retain cultural influence in Asia and Africa.
The choice of local elites as the main target, encompassing of Japan within the scope of South-East Asia, and social-engineering efforts for multicultural integration within her colonies are also the outstanding and continuous features of British cultural policies towards South-East Asia during the postwar period until the 1950s.

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The Japanese Formula is a diplomatic framework conceived in the Cold War era to solve the “two-China Dilemma.” The aim was to create a framework that would permit substantial relations with a derecognized China, in addition to a formal diplomatic relationship with a recognized China. In relations with the derecognized China, actors were non-governmental and could only develop economic, cultural, and other private relations within a non-political sphere. In order to cultivate non-governmental relations with the derecognized China, nations mutually exchanged permanent “unofficial” offices, an alternative to consular posts. This system was first explored hypothetically within the Sino-Japanese relations of the 1960s, and actually formulated during the 1972 Japan-PRC normalization, when Japan chose to recognize the PRC instead of the ROC and switched its diplomatic partnerships accordingly.
Within today's international community, this formula seems to be a sort of universal policy to solve the cross-strait controversy. It was not institutionally agreed upon nor produced at one specific stage in time. Instead, as it became more successful it propagated itself until it was generally accepted throughout the international community. Therefore, the Japanese Formula can be regarded as a long-term solution that allowed the creation of a new yet widely acceptable international habit, which has since become the convention in terms of conducting relations with the PRC and Taiwan. More importantly, also it creates a sub-rule which supports norms such as “One China” or “peace in the cross strait.” Either way, the Japanese Formula has realistically secured the existence of Taiwan through the use of a universally applicable diplomatic technique.
This article first explains the concept of the Japanese Formula with theoretical interpretations and historical backgrounds. Then it traces the spread of the “Japanese formula” among Asia-Pacific nations in the 1970s. Additionally, it introduces several case studies of Asia-Pacific countries which adapted the Japanese Formula. Each case differs as to which actor or actors initiated the Japanese Formula. Japan invented the formula as part of the controversial Japan-ROC-PRC relations, and the PRC later demanded that the US adopt the formula. Three ASEAN nations (Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand) adopt the same formula as a result of the silent cooperation or the unconscious division of labor by both PRC and Taiwan. Finally, in contrast to the usual pattern of propagation, the PRC initially refused to adopt the formula with Australia, which eventually came to adopt it after undertaking long-term practical efforts with Taiwan.

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The shift from Cultural Revolution to Reform and Open Door policy in China had a great impact on the general perception of overseas Chinese within Southeast Asia. It changed the image and value of the Overseas Chinese from “threat” to “entrepreneur.”
This paper focuses on Indonesia-China relations. Indonesia has the largest number of Overseas Chinese population and implemented the harshest policies on the “Chinese Problem” among other Southeast Asian countries in this period. The fear of, and scramble for, overseas Chinese between the two countries were important features of both Chinese and Indonesian politics during the period before normalization of Indonesian diplomatic ties with China. The politics of China's Overseas Chinese policy and the Indonesian government's reaction is another crucial aspect of international relation between China and Southeast Asia.
This paper argues that the crucial shift in perception happened twice both in China and Indonesia. The first shift dated from the Cultural Revolution in China in 1966, which coincided with the regime shift from Sukarno to Suharto in Indonesia. Activist Chinese youth in Indonesia agitating against Suharto, the “imperialist minion”, fueled the view that overseas Chinese were acting as the fifth column of China and were consequently a “threat”. Such a view resulted in severe restriction of their political and cultural rights in Indonesia as well as the abandoning of the diplomatic relationship.
The second shift occurred when both countries began orienting their main agenda toward economic development. Deng Xiaoping's Reform and Open Door policy redefined the Overseas Chinese by transforming the erstwhile “enemies” of class revolution into “patriotic heroes”. The Overseas Chinese Affairs Office was established not only at the central level but also at the provincial and municipal levels, and worked together with hometown networks to attract Overseas Chinese investment to finance infrastructure building in those “hometown” regions (prominently in Fujian and Guangdong). In Indonesia, there were two reactions to this shift in China's policy. One was embodied by Indonesian Chinese capitalist Tong Djoe, who acted as negotiator in opening direct trade between the two countries. (No longer were military personnel appointed to oversee this issue.) The other, a consequence of the drastic fall in oil prices in 1982, underscored the importance of utilizing the Chinese capitalists in non-oil industries for the benefit of Indonesian economy.
Economic development of Chinese “entrepreneur” thus provided opportunities for financing both the Indonesian economy as well as China's economy. This mutual benefit paved the way for the normalization of diplomatic relations between the two countries in August 1990.

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International labor movement in the Asian region has become widely recognized as an important factor giving potentially multi-level and complex socio-economic impacts on sending as well as receiving countries. Conventionally, today's cross-border activity is understood in the context of economic globalization embodied as expanding multidirectional foreign trades and direct investments, and also interpreted as a natural consequence of the differentials in job opportunities and income levels among separate regions. This article, however, demonstrates that the international movement of labor is not a simple function of the globalizing market economy, nor one driven merely by industrial forces. Rather, it states that, in some instances, the causes and effects of accepting foreign workers, become unavoidably political and even highly diplomatic in nature.
In the late 1980s, Taiwan began to import low-skilled labor from neighboring countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia, intending to solve serious labor shortages in construction, manufacturing, and, more recently, care industries. Afterward, economic downturns and sociocultural frictions between migrant workers and the host society led Taiwan to employ a more restrictive policy toward foreign labor. In spite of the policy changes, Taiwan acquired new exporting countries: Vietnam in 1999 and Mongolia in 2004.
Taiwan's labor importing policies are conditioned by the particular international political contexts in which the island has been placed. Taiwan has been desperate for low-skilled labor from abroad in order to avoid a decline in its industrial competitiveness and thus economic performance, which is believed to be a key to Taiwan's international status. However, it had to be achieved without recourse to the rising economy of People's Republic of China, which may threaten the autonomy of the Taiwan polity itself. Under these constraints, policy towards foreign workers in Taiwan has been gradually recognized as not only a temporary measure to mediate the labor shortages, but a diplomatic component of Taiwan's “Go South” policy.
Throughout the case of the air dispute with the Philippines (1999-2000), the denial of an senior Taiwanese official visit to Thailand (2002), and many others, these examples show that foreign labor was utilized as Taiwan's diplomatic resources to enhance foreign relations or as bargaining chips to give Taiwan an advantage in diplomatic negotiations. Suspending, or hinting at an intention to suspend, the import of workers from source countries has contributed to Taiwan's self-interest in several instances. Despite the unclarity of Taiwan's international legal position and the difficulty of evaluating the actual effects of this diplomatic resource on Taiwan's external relations, this case analysis indicates the logic of how labor movement across borders can be turned into a crucial variable of the contemporary international political economy.

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