A new myth is in the making. Once held as a model of development by practitioners and theorists alike, East Asia's Newly Industrializing Countries (NICs) are now identified as an epitome of ‘crony capitalism,’ a perversely deformed system of political and economic exchange driven by rent seekers. The privileged few have allegedly captured the state to pillage banks and sabotage market forces in pursuit of rents. But imbued with Confucian norms, which Francis Fukuyama (1995) once characterized as limiting the ‘radius’ of trust to familial ties, society cannot weed out rent seekers. The emphasis on personal loyalty is held as breeding clientelistic networks, which easily degenerate into a collusion for monopoly profits. Hiding behind a profoundly opaque corporate governance structure and protected by dense political patronage networks, business firms engage in shady deals to share rents with party politicians and state bureaucrats. From this perspective, the 1997 financial crisis was a logical outcome of East Asia's exclusionary cultural proclivities, opaque institutional arrangements, and shady business practices.

On the eve of the tenth anniversary of its democratization, Korea was hit by an unprecedented financial crisis marked by massive capital outflows, a sharp depreciation of the won and severe distress in the corporate and financial sectors. Korea's anniversary gift from the interntional community was an IMF conditionality program that imposed a comprehensive package of neoliberal economic reforms. Compared with the South American and East European experiences, economic reform in Korea has been implemented without significant policy obstructions, political instability or social disruptions. Despite much skepticism, the backbreaking reforms quickly began to pay off. The reforms created a V-shaped (rather than U-shaped) pattern of recovery, though more determined financial and corporate restructuring is needed in order for the nation to achieve sustainable growth. And, the quality of democracy has not deteriorated because of conflicts resulting from the economic reform program (neither, however, has it improved).

Environmental goals are linked to regionalism, but they are often a low priority for advocates of nationalism. Early in the 1990s idealists assumed that reallocations of money, newly active social movements, and a lively process of regionalism would boost environmentalism to one of the top priorities across Northeast Asia. Soon they found, as regionalism floundered, that countries did not have a strong commitment to the environment and some showed little concern. In a region where state-centered development and national dignity remain powerful concerns, environmental hopes rest on gradual acceptance as a secondary theme as part of balanced regionalism. After fading before great power competition in 1996–99, regionalism made a partial comeback in 2000. Hopes for environmental cooperation rest on new gains for regionalism, but strains in the summer of 2001 suggest that progress will be slow.

Ever since the destruction of Hiroshima in 1945, states all over the world have been faced with the issue of whether or not to acquire the ‘absolute weapon’ for themselves. The question of ‘going nuclear’ has been especially acute on the Korean peninsula, with its history of conflict, division and great power meddling. Has any one of the two Koreas, or both, ever attempted to acquire nuclear weapons? Did either of them decide to abandon that quest? If so, when and why? These are the questions that motivate this paper.

There are two opposing views regarding the prospects of establishing a regional environmental regime in Northeast Asia. The first view considers the environment as a dependent variable of progress towards regionalism and suggest that regional environmental cooperation is impeded by political rivalries, historical animosities and economic disparities among Northeast Asian countries. The opposing view treats the environment as an independent variable of sustainable regionalism. The premise of this view is that inter-state environmental cooperation can become a confidence building measure that will pave the way for improved regional relations. Regardless of which view proves in the end to be right, the high environmental interdependence of countries in Northeast Asia makes it imperative to create a framework to promote greater cooperation within the region. Given that the region lacks institutions for region-wide dialogue and cooperation, the formation of an effective regional environmental regime will be a long-term process. However, the process itself is pivotal as it can increase dialogue and exchanges from which a regional environmental regime can evolve, and hopefully, if given the political opportunity, will promote security and peace in the region.

The historic June 2000 summit and subsequent exchanges between North and South Korea have added a new dimension to not only South-North Korean relations but also the situation in Northeast Asia as a whole. On one hand, the thawing South- North Korean relations has generated great optimism among those who see it as an irrefutable sign of North Korea's intention to join the rest of the world as a constructive player. At the other extreme, it is seen as a deceptive, if not desperate, act on the part of North Korea to reap economic gains and lower the guard of South Korea and its allies, principally the United States. Perhaps a more realistic assessment lies somewhere between these polar analyses.

The George W. Bush presidency has raised wide speculation about future United States' policy toward the Korean peninsula. The conventional wisdom among pundits in Washington, Seoul and elsewhere is that the incoming administration will switch to a ‘harder line’ regarding the Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea (DPRK) and move away from the engagement policy practiced during the Clinton administration. In a similar vein, others have argued that Bush will place a premium on reaffirming and consolidating ties with traditional allies and friends like the Republic of Korea (ROK), Japan, and Taiwan while downplaying strategic engagement with China. The problem with such punditry is that it is usually overstated and under analyzed. Given the current state of relations, there is little incentive for dramatic changes in U.S. policy toward North Korea or with regard to the U.S.-ROK alliance. Moreover, given what is known of the Bush administration's foreign policy vision, there is little evidence upon which to predict an unadulterated hard line swing in policy toward Pyongyang.

Women are under-represented in politics in Northeast Asian countries. Yet, in the environmental realm, women have assumed prominent political, bureaucratic, and NGO positions. This article examines some of the forms that women's participation in environmental protection has taken in Japan, Korea, and China and attempts to assesses the reasons why women are engaging more actively with environmental issues than they are with many other policy areas.

This article, adapted from the author's new book, Mao's War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China (Cambridge University Press, 2001), argues that Mao and the Chinese Communist Party's “war” to bend the physical world to human will often had disastrous consequences both for human beings and the natural environment. The Chinese ideal of “harmony between heaven and humans” was abrogated in favor of Mao's insistence that “Man Must Conquer Nature,” and the link between the abuse of people and the abuse of nature became unusually stark and transparent. Shapiro argues that the Mao years offer a cautionary tale with wide-ranging implications for societies struggling to achieve a more harmonious relationship with nature.

On March 18, 2000, Taiwan experienced an electoral earthquake. After half a century in power on the island of Taiwan and eight decades of an undisrupted ruling position dating back to its heyday on the Chinese mainland, the Kuomintang (KMT) lost power in a free and fair presidential election. The power rotation at the close of the century is historic by any measure. It has closed an epoch of one-party dominance and inaugurated a period of party dealignment and realignment. It deflated Lee Teng-hui's charisma and brought his era to an abrupt and calamitous end. At the elite level, it has triggered a generational turnover, pushing the baby boomers to the forefront of governing responsibility. Most significantly, it pushed the island's political system for a major step forward toward the consolidation of democracy.

China in 1978 embarked on a major economic transformation, seeking to alter the stance of the previous 30 years and engage economically with the rest of the world in several dimensions—trade, foreign direct investment by private firms, external borrowing by government from both private and public sources, and education. Each of these represented a major change in policy. The transformation in the intervening 22 years has been dramatic and palpable, as can be seen in the sky-lines of the major cities. On official figures, agricultural output has jumped more than two and a half times from 1978 to 1998, and industrial output increased more than nine-fold. The service sector, discouraged under central planning, increased eight-fold. Exports during this period grew from $10 billion to $184 billion, making China now the world's ninth largest trading country (just ahead of Belgium). The current account was roughly in balance over most of the last 20 years (although in surplus since the currency consolidation and anti-inflation program of 1994), but thanks to large inward foreign investment, foreign exchange reserves have grown to $160 billion, second largest in the world after Japan. China experienced various bouts of inflation, followed by policy constriction; prices during 1999 declined by 3 percent, exceptional for a developing country.

Japan's environmental policy has shifted its focus from domestic pollution control in the 1960s and 70s to global environmental policy initiatives in the 1990s, most visibly demonstrated by its hosting of the Kyoto conference on global warming in 1997. This article reviews the nation's effort to restructure its environmental administration and policy since the 1990s and assesses its promises and shortcomings. The discussion includes administrative reform and its impact on environmental policy, Japan's domestic and diplomatic responses to global warming, environmental ODA, and the public's environmental consciousness. It concludes that the administrative restructuring that took place at the beginning of 2001 is but one part of the change Japan needs to undergo in order to realize its goal of sustainable development at home and to live up to the promises its environmental diplomacy has made, including the successful implementation of the Kyoto Protocol.

Northeast Asia constitutes a “regional environmental security complex” wherein the actors and societies are enmeshed together in a web of positive and negative externalities with respect both to environmental problems and efforts to solve them. The three sets of environmental issues relevant to the security architecture can be summarized as follows: damage to and destruction of peaceful relations, stability and order of the state-based system of international relations caused by environmental decay and resource scarcity; threats to human security rooted in environmental decay and resource scarcity; and damage to and destruction of environmental integrity caused by instability and conflict. Environmental degradation can degrade human security by damaging the health of human populations; economic security by impacting adversely on local, national, regional and international economies; and national security by undermining stable relations among countries. Equally, though, recurring patterns of human, economic and national behavior can deplete the earth's resources and degrade the physical environment.

Ever since Richard Nixon's 1972 “opening” to China, U.S. presidential election campaigns have been the occasion for the opposition party to strongly challenge the incumbent president's policy of engagement toward China. Once in power, however, successful challengers (Carter, Reagan, Clinton) have softened their criticism and accepted the strategic necessity of cooperation with China. In the first stage of this cycle, the 2000 election appeared to be no exception, as presidential challenger George W. Bush sharply criticized Bill Clinton's notion of a “strategic partnership” with the PRC and proposed instead that the U.S. and China were “strategic competitors.” This paper examines the first six months of the Bush presidency to see if the historic pattern of post-election reversion to the status-quo ante is repeating itself in the Bush Administration. Looking, inter alia, at the individual preferences of key administration policymakers, the administration's enhanced arms sale package to Taiwan, the president's pledge to do “whatever it took” to defend Taiwan, and the mid-summer visit of Secretary of State Colin Powell to Beijing, the paper documents the existence of a sharp division between “soft” realists and “hard” realists within the Bush Administration; and it concludes that while there has been a perceptible shift toward a more adversarial outlook, it is too soon to tell whether this shift will be partly offset by the normal first-term “regression to the mean.”

This article argues that the village election in China is a case of “politics by other means” in that it is a state act imposed on the peasantry with the purpose of reorganizing the peasantry and maintaining the state's macroeconomic and political control under the conditions of economic reform. In analyzing village elections, the paper examines the institutional limbo in the countryside and the state's motivations for introducing this electoral process in the 1980s. The paper also analyzes the inherent limitations of the “Organic Law of Villagers' Committee” by reviewing the central role of the state in village elections processes as well as by discussing economic aspects of the politics of village elections.

For the General Elections in 2000, nearly one thousand civic groups in South Korea joined forces to stage so-called “defeat campaign” against allegedly corrupt, incompetent or “ill-mannered” politicians. While sociologists and political scientists are still engaged in debates as to the success of the campaign, there is no denying that it played a significant role in thwarting many politicians from getting nominated or elected. It is also true that the defeat campaign has heralded a new era of Korean politics in which civic groups have emerged as a major political force, capable of challenging government or party policies and pending bills as well as influencing agenda setting in a diverse array of policy areas. The paper shows that the enthusiastic public support, effective strategies of the campaign and attentive mass media, among others, contributed to the campaign's “success.” The paper also shows that a complex political calculation was involved in the parties' differing reaction to the alliance's effort, which increasingly constrained the latter's manoeuvrability. It is also argued that greater political involvement by civic groups is likely to lead to more pluralistic, open and competitive form of democracy in which voters become more aware of political issues and participate more actively in political processes.