Editorial

In January 2011, an 8m high statue of Confucius was erected in front of the National Museum of China located on Tian’anmen Square. The Sage now stands side by side with Mao on one of the most symbolical location of China’s recent history.

The Strait of Malacca is a major axis in worldwide maritime traffic and a vital artery of intraregional commerce. It is located at the juncture of the transoceanic merchandise shipping lines between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, intra-Asian lines and east-west circumterrestrial maritime routes. Often considered solely as a narrowing of the maritime region in which navigating conditions frequently become difficult, the Strait of Malacca is rarely considered a separate territory structured by longitudinal as well as latitudinal flow. The originality of the Strait of Malacca is precisely the fact that it is both a zone of major exchange and transit in international commerce, in which the nations situated along its coasts have always been deeply integrated, and a region in itself, shaped, despite the borders that separate the opposing coasts, by a tight web of commercial and cultural relations between the two coasts.

For over three decades, supporters and critics of globalization considered it a synonym for Americanization. Emblematic of this American globalization was corporate America’s sway over the world, shown by the omnipresent Golden Arches of MacDonald’s and the vermillion red billboards proclaiming “Things go better with Coke”. The arches and Coca-Cola billboards with different slogans are still there but the fizz has gone out of Americanized globalization.

Wutaishan, or Five Plateau Mountain, in China's Shanxi province has been attracting pilgrims from across the Buddhist world for centuries, thanks to its position as residence to Mañjuśrī, bodhisattva of wisdom for Mahayana Buddhists. Owing to the coexistence of Chinese and Tibetan Buddhist groups and Wutaishan’s location at the edge of Chinese territory, from the thirteenth century onwards, these sacred peaks became a cosmopolitan meeting place between Han, Tibetan, Mongol and Manchu people. During the Republican era, Wutaishan was certainly the most important site for dialogue and contact between Chinese and Tibetan Gelugpa Buddhists. Today, Wutaishan is one of the most active Buddhist centres in China, home to over a hundred preserved or rebuilt monasteries, continually enriched by donations from not only the Chinese world but from places like Korea, Japan and Nepal as well. The mountain was recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2009 and attracts tourists, pilgrims, hikers and Buddhists on retreat.

In September 2009, the Democratic Party won the general elections. For the first time in over half a century, the Conservatives lost their power in both houses and became the opposition party. Some observers thus thought it appropriate to announce to the world that a significant historical event had occurred in Japan, comparable, in some respects, to the Renovation in 1868 of all things!

Since President Ma Ying-jeou’s election and the Kuomintang (KMT)’s return to power in 2008, Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have entered a period of unprecedented detente. Unofficial contact and meetings between the Taiwanese and the Chinese governments have increased; twelve commercial and technical agreements have been signed; in June 2010 an Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (EFCA) was concluded, deepening Taiwanese economic dependence already stimulated by ever-increasing bilateral trade (US$120 in 2009); PRC tourism in Taiwan is developing very rapidly (over a million visits since 2009); a genuine rapprochement is taking place between the Nationalist Party and the Chinese Communist Party, easing a reconciliation between the two arch-enemies of the civil war period and promoting its “Chineseness” again in an almost militant way and having gotten rid of its “Taiwaneseness”, the current KMT government is daring less and less to make decisions that might offend Beijing (such as refusing to meet with the Dalai Lama or issuing a visa to Rebiya Kadeer). In other words, Taiwan is increasingly under the PRC’s influence.

The Moken's lifestyle, as well as that of their Moklen and Urak Lawoi cousins, has changed over time and they have shown remarkable cultural resilience .  Three groups of Austronesian maritime nomads are spread out along the west coast of Thailand and Burma, forming the northern point of Austronesian migration. 

After a long political crisis, on the 7^th of April 2010, the official government was once again overthrown in Kyrgyzstan – the second change of power in twenty years.  The first, known as the Tulip Revolution, put an end to Askar Akayev’s authoritarian regime on the 23^rd of March 2005 and was replaced by Kurmanbek Bakiev’s government, which was no less authoritarian.  Is this small Central Asian country (with a population of 5.5 million and an area of 198,500 km²) heading towards a permanent state of instability?  Some local researchers have attempted to interpret this chronic instability using culturalist models. Because the Kyrgyz are traditionally nomads, they were supposedly unable to adopt “artificial” structures following independence in 1991, which allegedly led to the repeated rejection of the State. This explanation, however, does not clarify why each coup d’état is followed by attempts to democratise, which would suggest Kyrgyz approval of the notion of a fair State. Furthermore, we suspect that external players may have orchestrated this change in power. It would therefore have been in the interest of the United States and Russia to oust the despotic Bakiev and replace him with a more “docile” candidate. Thus, is this situation the result of domestic social upheaval or an event organised with the help of the superpowers?

According to the UN Security Council’s classification, Australia is part of the ‘Western Europe and other’ regional group. This somewhat surrealistic view underlines the contradiction between the country’s historical heritage, in which the links between the former British colony and Europe predominate, and its geographic context, which is that of the Asia-Pacific region.

Are you familiar with Turkmenistan and its leaders? If you attempt to ask your entourage this question, it will most likely be met with a grimace – uncertainty about its location, cultural heritage or even the extent of its wealth, despite being as large as our Iberian neighbour and the world’s third biggest gas reserve, being common.

In India, hardly a day goes by without the media reporting a protest or posting a debate on the country’s Special Economic Zone (SEZ) policy. What is the policy about? Why is it so controversial? What are the main issues of conflict and who are the protagonists? How does the future look for India’s SEZs?

A country almost unknown to most, Kazakhstan holds the presidency of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe this year.  This organisation is recognised under the regional agreement of the United Nations Charter and offers a platform for dialogue and decision-making in conflict prevention, crisis management and post-conflict recovery (human, politico-military, economic and environmental aspects of regional security) to European and ex-USSR countries since 1994, following the Helsinki Final Act.  It may be surprising that such a responsibility be given to a young Muslim nation that only became independent in 1991.  A brief overview of its history enables us to shed some light on its remarkable development. 

The inauguration of the Suramadu Bridge by the Indonesian President in June 2009 was a great event. The bridge links the town of Surabaya, Indonesia’s secondlargest city, capital of the province of East Java and an industrial and port city with a population of 2.5 million, to the island of Madura, which is densely populated and impoverished. The modern design of the 5.4 km long cable-stayed bridge, the road infrastructure created to provide the bridge access and the possibilities for urban development opened up in Madura are all advantages for the city of Surabaya as it competes to attract national and international investors as a secondary city.

The medical system that has flourished for over two thousand years in China is extraordinary from both a historical and an anthropological perspective. During its long process of development it has maintained a remarkable epistemological continuity. China is the only country in the history of civilization that has preserved its traditional medical system, which was reinstated in the 1950s as a state-sanctioned health care system and accorded an official status comparable to that of biomedicine.

Through contacts with neighbouring nomadic and sedentary populations, the Shamanist Mongols were exposed early to various religions such as Buddhism, Nestorian Christianism, Islam or Taoism, not to mention influences of Zoroastrism and Manicheism in former steppe kingdoms. Chinggis Khan and his successors were interested in the spiritual and political benefits which could be gained from supportive mainstream religions in their dominions and consequenltly exempted religious institutions from taxes and military conscription. Although Nestorianism was initially favoured at the imperial court thanks to influent Christian wives of several Chinggisids, Mongol rulers eventually converted either to Islam (the Golden Horde khans in Russia, the Ilkhanids of Persia and the Chagataids in Central Asia) or, for those ruling in China, to Tibetan Buddhism.

The Environment often makes the headlines these days in China, especially in the case of problems related to water shortages or pollution. Indeed, water is an important issue in the Middle Kingdom since it is badly needed for economic development but also because China’s hydrological situation is rather paradoxical. General data are favourable, but precipitation is unevenly spread across the nation. When linked to population, these resources can be considered as meagre and put China at the hydric stress limit (1700 m³/year/inhabitant) since it sometimes falls as low as 1800 m³/year/inhabit.