Kimura, Ehito. “Globalization and the Asia Pacific and South Asia.
” In The SAGE
Handbook of Globalization, edited by Manfred B. Steger, Paul Battersby, and Joseph M.
Siracusa, Vol. 2. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2014.
Globalization and the Asia Pacific
and South Asia
ASIA PACIFIC AND SOUTH ASIA AND
THE WORLD
Two processes, seemingly in tension with
one another are occurring in world politics
today. The first is the acceleration of globali-
zation, defined as the worldwide integration
along economic, political, social, and cul-
tural lines. The second is the emerging influ-
ence of Asia as a global force. Neither of
these processes is absolute, each contains
elements of variety, contingency, and uncer-
tainty. But given these broad trends, this
essay explores the relationship between the
process of globalization and the region of
Asia Pacific and South Asia.
The essay proposes a framework along
three trajectories, the region as an object
impacted by globalization, the region as a
subject pushing globalization forward, and the
region as an alternative to globalization. These
three ideals are proposed acknowledging that
they are neither complete nor wholly distinct.
Instead, they highlight the different ways
we might think about varying processes of
13
Ehito Kimura
globalization from a regional perspective. The
essay chooses breadth over depth and presents
a series of snapshots as a way to offer a larger,
if incomplete, tapestry of the relationship
between process and place, between globali-
zation and Asia Pacific and South Asia.
The term ‘Asia’ itself comes from the
ancient Greeks who categorized the world
into three continents, Europe, Africa, and
Asia. In this sense, Asia as a region was ini-
tially defined externally rather than from
within. The exact boundaries of Asia have
been a matter of contention since its inception
and demarcation has often been made along
cultural or political lines rather than accord-
ing to any clear geographical rationale. For
example, while Russia occupies a vast
amount of the Asian continent, it is not usu-
ally considered a part of Asia. The Middle
East, too, while sometimes included as part of
Asia is typically referred to as its own region.
A more recent and even less precise
regional label is ‘Asia Pacific’. This refers
broadly to the area of the world in or around
Asia and the Pacific Ocean. Typically, it
 GLOBALIZATION AND THE ASIA PACIFIC AND SOUTH ASIA
includes the states in East Asia, Southeast
Asia, and Oceania. Occasionally, it refers to
an even broader area as evidenced by the
regional grouping, APEC (Asia Pacific
Economic Cooperation), which includes
economies of the ‘Pacific Rim’ such as
Canada, the United States, Chile, Mexico,
and Peru. Sometimes, Asia Pacific includes
South Asia and even Central Asia, though
usually it does not. The ‘Pacific’ part of Asia
Pacific usually refers to the Pacific Islands, or
Oceania, the island groupings of Melanesia,
Micronesia, and Polynesia.
For purposes of this essay, the Asia Pacific
and South Asia refer together to the regions
of East (or Northeast) Asia, Southeast Asia,
the Pacific Islands, and South Asia. In addi-
tion to differences in language and culture,
the variation among states and peoples in this
region is vast. It also includes some of the
world’s most economically developed states
such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and
Taiwan, and highly impoverished countries
such as Cambodia, Laos, and Nepal. It
includes the largest and most populous states
on the globe including China and India and
some of the world’s smallest such as the
Maldives and Bhutan. The countries in the
region also vary widely according to geogra-
phy, political systems, historical experience,
and broad demographic characteristics.
Lumped together, the area makes up nearly
a third of the world’s land mass and two-thirds
of the global population. The combined econ-
omies of the region now generate the largest
share of global GDP (gross domestic product)
at 35 per cent, compared with Europe (28 per
cent) and North America (23 per cent) (Asian
Development Bank, 2012: 156). It also
accounts for just over a third of total world
exports of merchandise goods up from a quar-
ter in 2001 (Asian Development Bank, 2012:
211). Despite this economic growth, there are
still millions of people affected by poverty,
hunger, HIV/AIDS, gender inequality and
other socio-economic problems in the region.
In addition to its sheer size, the Asia Pacific
and South Asia has emerged over the past dec-
ade as a new political force in the world. Much
201
of this is driven by the robust economic growth
in China and India and the strategic implica-
tions this brings to regional and global players.
Japan also remains a relevant if declining force
in the region and the world, and other countries
including the Koreas, Indonesia, Vietnam, and
Pakistan all have economic and strategic rele-
vance in today’s global system.
For all of these reasons, global powers
outside of the region are focused intently on
the Asia Pacific and South Asia. The United
States has implemented a foreign policy shift
dubbed the ‘Pacific Pivot’ committing more
resources and attention to the region. In a
widely read article in Foreign Affairs, US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called this
the shift from the ‘Atlantic Century’ to the
‘Pacific Century She notes:
The Asia-Pacific has become a key driver of global
politics. Stretching from the Indian subcontinent
to the western shores of the Americas, the region
spans two oceans – the Pacific and the Indian –
that are increasingly linked by shipping and strat-
egy. It boasts almost half the world’s population.
It includes many of the key engines of the global
economy, as well as the largest emitters of green-
house gases. It is home to several of our key allies
and important emerging powers like China, India,
and Indonesia. (Clinton, 2011)
How then are we to think about the relation-
ship between globalization and this economi-
cally and politically important region? The
rest of this essay divides into three parts. The
first section takes an externalist view illus-
trating the way in which the region has been
affected by globalization. The second section
takes a generative view showing how the
region is an active agent pushing the process
of globalization forward. The third perspec-
tive shows how the region can be understood
as posing an alternative to globalization.
Ultimately, no one view is complete, but
together they illustrate the dynamism and
complexity of globalization. In putting for-
ward these perspectives, the essay also sees
globalization in broad historical terms focus-
ing not just on the late twentieth and early
twenty-first centuries but further back to
colonial and even pre-colonial times.
202 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF GLOBALIZATION
AN EXTERNALIST VIEW OF
GLOBALIZATION
One thesis about globalization in the Asia
Pacific and South Asia is that it is an external
phenomenon being pushed into the region by
world powers, particularly the United States
and Europe. From this perspective, globali-
zation can be understood as a process that
transforms the Asia Pacific and South Asia.
On the one hand, it can be seen as a force for
good bringing economic development, politi-
cal progress, and social and cultural diversity
to the region. Others see the darker effects of
globalization including its role in economic
underdevelopment and the uprooting of local
tradition and culture.
One of the earliest manifestations of this
externalist discourse emerges from the his-
torical narratives about the Western ‘arrival’
to the Asia Pacific and South Asia. According
to this view, the technologically and industri-
ally more advanced Western powers found
their way to the region and alternatively
prodded and muscled their way to political
and economic dominance. Western superior-
ity at the time existed for a variety of reasons,
ranging from environmental and ecological
advantages to other social, political, and/or
cultural characteristics.1
While we will question some of these
assertions later, there is little doubt that colo-
nialism in the region beginning from the
1500s brought enormous, often devastating
changes. This ‘first globalization’ had deep
implications for domestic political structures
in many local indigenous polities. One early
example of this was the Portuguese invasion
of Melaka in 1511 and the subsequent fall of
the sultanate, which shifted political and eco-
nomic dynamics in Melaka and beyond.
Ferdinand Magellan arrived in the Visayan
region of what would become the Philippines
in 1521 marking the beginning of extended
Spanish colonial rule in those islands. The
Dutch followed in the seventeenth century
and slowly strengthened their position in the
Dutch East Indies. The British also consoli-
dated their power in South Asia, Burma and
the Malay peninsula while the French even-
tually took control of Indo-China in the late
nineteenth century.
The mode of colonial rule and domination
varied over both space and time. JS Furnivall
famously made the distinction between direct
colonial rule through colonial administrators
and indirect rule though ‘native’ administra-
tors (Furnivall, 1956). Depending on the
context, some local rulers were simply
deposed, but in other instances, colonial pow-
ers propped up rulers, formed alliances, or
faced significant resistance. Despite these
differences, the breadth and depth of transfor-
mation that colonialism brought to the region
would be difficult to understate. Europeans
brought new economic practices, religious
beliefs, cultural values, and political struc-
tures that changed the region drastically.
Even places that did not experience colo-
nial rule decidedly had to deal with the con-
sequences of Western influence. Japan, which
had been closed off during the reign of the
Tokugawa shogunate, was forced open by the
‘black ships’ of Commodore Matthew Perry
in the late nineteenth century. Combined with
other factors, this brought about the Meiji
Restoration and the subsequent political and
economic transformation of Japan turning it
into a regional and eventually world power
(Jansen, 2002). Thailand too was never tech-
nically colonized, but the country underwent
significant changes under the rein of King
Mongkut (Rama IV) and King Chulalongkorn
(Rama V). Rama V in particular is still
remembered as a ‘Great Modernizer’ who
brought major political, social, and economic
reforms to Thailand (Stifel, 1976).
By the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
movements for nationalism and independ-
ence emerged in many parts of the world
including the Asia Pacific and South Asia.
While important in its own historical right,
these movements were also products of an
increasingly globalized world. Scholars of
nationalism argue that the roots of national
identity lie in the rise of western industriali-
zation and capitalism. Once developed, it
became manifested politically in concrete
 GLOBALIZATION AND THE ASIA PACIFIC AND SOUTH ASIA
movements in colonial areas such as Latin
America and Asia. Benedict Anderson, for
example highlights the global experiences of
nationalist leaders such as Jose Rizal in the
Philippines, who came to imagine them-
selves as Filipino after being influenced by
life in Spain and elsewhere (Anderson,
2007). He also highlights how as the idea of
nationalism gained steam, it became modular
and spread to other parts of the globe
(Anderson, 1991).
World War II marks another way in which
the region comes to be at once integrated and
influenced by external forces. The rise of
Japan and the outbreak of war in the Pacific
theater after the bombing of Pearl Harbor
marked the beginning of the end of Japan’s
own imperial domination in the region. After
the war, the region became mired in the
emerging politics of the Cold War. After
World War II, concerns about political insta-
bility, faltering economic reform, and the fall
of China all pushed the United States and
their occupation to stress Japan’s economic
growth and its incorporation into the world
economy (Ikenberry, 2007: 52). This meant
opening up American markets to Japanese
goods, drawing on the Japanese market to
supply equipment and goods for US armed
forces and other aid programs, and eventually
incorporating Japan into the multilateral eco-
nomic order including the General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade (Ikenberry, 2007).
Much ink has been spilled about Japan’s
subsequent economic ‘miracle’ of the 1970s
and 1980s with authors attributing the suc-
cess to statist policies, market policies, cul-
tural characteristics, and international
relations (Johnson, 1982: 6–16). While inter-
pretations vary, one argument is that Japan
and other East Asian states including Korea
and Taiwan were able to adapt their eco-
nomic policies in line with what they under-
stood as an increasing globalized economic
system and benefitted from export oriented
growth policies in the 1980s and 1990s. The
growth model suggested an important role of
the state, contrary to neo-liberal economic
thought but it was a far cry from collectivist
203
and autarchic economic policies followed by
India and China in the post-war period.
The success of the East Asian economies
was followed in the late 1980s and 1990s by
the highly high-flying growth of Southeast
Asian countries including Thailand, Indonesia,
Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam. The
Southeast Asian ‘tigers’ had some similarities
to their East Asian counterparts including rela-
tively close ties between the state and business
elite, some degree of autonomous decision-
making structure, and the rise of manufactur-
ing. However, the Southeast Asian economies
were also much more reliant on infusions of
foreign capital, based on fixed exchange rate
policies and corresponding investments and
returns (Garnaut, 1998: 1–11).
Much of the rise in financial investment
can also be attributed to the role of
International Financial Institutions (IFIs),
namely the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund (IMF). Part of the Bretton
Woods system, they were the cornerstones of
economic liberalization and globalization in
the post-war global economy. While initially
designed to help rebuild Europe, the World
Bank and the IMF soon turned their attention
to the developing world including Southeast
Asia. During the Cold War, these institutions
came under the heavy influence of the West
and so they simultaneously promoted neo-
liberal economic policies while also prop-
ping up Western and US allies, often times
authoritarian figures.
In Indonesia, Suharto’s policies and the
economic framework under the IMF and
World Bank provided crucial assistance as
well as a foundation for the legitimacy of the
authoritarian Suharto regime. And despite
providing some basis for economic coher-
ence, the lenders looked away from the mas-
sive amounts of corruption and patrimonialism
that occurred in the Suharto regime (Winters,
1996: 86). In Thailand, the IFIs pushed liber-
alization and export oriented growth which
led to increasing amounts of foreign invest-
ment and double digit GDP growth (Hewison,
1999). In the Philippines, the World Bank
and the IMF had a cozy relationship with
204 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF GLOBALIZATION
Ferdinand Marcos whose tenure had a disas-
trous impact on the country’s economy and
left it straddled with nearly US$30 billion in
debt (Bello, 1982).
By the mid-1990s, the policies that had
driven high levels of growth in the ‘tiger’
economies began to show their limits. Much
of the investment going into places such as
Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia was spec-
ulative ‘hot’ money looking for quick returns
on capital. When investors began to realize
the unsustainability of this model, financial
speculators began to attack the currencies,
betting that the central banks would have to
readjust their rates thereby netting huge
gains for the speculators. In July 1997, the
Thai economy collapsed as investment fled
like a massive herd and the crisis spread to
much of the region (Bullard, Bello and
Malhotra, 1998).
Once again, interpretations of the Asian
Financial Crisis varied. The IFIs and ortho-
dox economists argued that the crisis
occurred due to poor policies, weak govern-
ance, corruption, poor institutions, and inad-
equate liberalization (Rahman, 1998). In
other words, they argued that globalization
had not gone far enough. Other more critical
voices argued that the problem was precisely
the unfettered capital resulting from pro-
cesses of globalization over the past several
decades (Bello, Bullardand Malhotra, 2000).
Both views however, recognized the deep
impact globalization has had on the econo-
mies in the region and the influence it played
in the creating the 1997 crisis.
More recently, attention has turned from
Southeast Asia to China and India. For its part,
China began liberalizing their economy in the
late 1970s with the reforms introduced by
Deng Xiaoping. India began to liberalize their
economy in 1991 and increased levels of trade
and foreign direct investment particularly in
the textile and services sectors of the econ-
omy. While there are significant differences in
their approaches to liberalization, both coun-
tries have experienced high levels of eco-
nomic growth as a result and have also
become much more integrated into the global
economy including membership in the World
Trade Organization (WTO) (Mahtaney, 2008).
Economic globalization and liberalization
has arguably had other broad regional effects
as well. In terms of working conditions in the
Asia Pacific, a study by the International
Labor Organization (ILO) highlights how
labor practices are undergoing significant
changes. Among many of the developed
countries in the region such as Japan, Korea,
and Australia, a more global economy has
meant an uptick in non-standard employ-
ment, characterized by temporary and part-
time employment (Lee, Sangheaon and
Eyraud, 2008: 3). In developing countries
such as Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam,
there has been an increase in informal
employment such as self-employment, fam-
ily workers, and informal enterprise workers.
The Philippines estimates that 18 per cent of
workers are underemployed while in
Indonesia, nearly a quarter of all workers are
either unemployed or involuntarily underem-
ployed (Lee, Sangheaon and Eyraud, 2008:
19). Often these workers do not have legal
contracts and even in places where they do,
observers have raised serious concerns about
working conditions and safety issues at fac-
tories that manufacture goods for Western
companies (Yardley, 2012).
Politics too has been a defining character-
istic of globalization. Proponents often argue
that liberal and democratic political values
should not be interpreted as Western, but
rather as universal thus explaining the expan-
sion of democracy worldwide. In the region,
the past three decades have witnessed a sub-
stantial fall in authoritarian regimes with a
corresponding rise in democratic regimes.
This has been attributed to a number of fac-
tors including rising middle classes, a more
globally connected world, and the end of the
Cold War (Huntington, 1991).
The fall of the Suharto regime in Indonesia
in 1999 is illustrative. Suharto had been in
power for over 30 years. When the Asia
Financial Crisis brought the country’s econ-
omy to its knees, large-scale protests, the flight
of capital, and the lack of international support
 GLOBALIZATION AND THE ASIA PACIFIC AND SOUTH ASIA
led Suharto to step down in May of 1998. The
financial crisis showed how deeply integrated
the economy was in the global financial sys-
tem. The demands made by the international
financial institutions demonstrated the grow-
ing clout of these global bodies (Robison and
Hadiz, 2006). Furthermore, the absence of
international support for Suharto, who had
been a strong anti-communist ally for a dec-
ade, illustrated the lack of concern the United
States and the West had for the communist
threat in Asia. In this way, the increasingly
globalized world had come to weaken
Suharto’s position and ultimately laid the foun-
dation for his ousting.
Finally, one of the most prevalent critiques
of globalization has been its effects on ‘cul-
ture’. This critique has come from a number of
different directions, the most prominent being
the idea that globalization is a form of cultural
Westernization summed up in the term
‘McWorld’ (Barber, 2003). Critics argue that
globalization is leading to cultural homogeni-
zation and the destruction of cultural diversity.
The number of McDonalds stores in Asia has
grown dramatically over the last several dec-
ades, from 951 in 1987 to over 7,000 in 2002.
Furthermore, many domestic fast food chains
are also popping up throughout Asia to com-
pete with Western brands including Jollibee in
the Philippines, California Fried Chicken
(CFC) in Indonesia, MOS Burger in Japan,
Jumbo King in India, and so on. There has also
been a rapid expansion of supermarkets in the
region. The share of supermarkets in the pro-
cessed/packaged food retail food market in
2001 was 33 per cent in Southeast Asia and 63
per cent in East Asia. The supermarket share of
the urban food market in China grew from 30
per cent in 1999 to 48 per cent in 2001. Similar
trends abound in South Asia (Pingali, 2007).
As a result, there is also strong evidence to
suggest that diets in Asia have been increas-
ingly Westernized. One study in Japan shows
that younger people consume more beef and
beer than older counterparts and the older
people eat more rice, vegetables, and fruits
(Mori H, Lowe E, Clason D, and Gorman W,
2000) . Similar patterns are evident through
205
much of the region. While wheat, increas-
ingly considered an inferior product in the
West is declining in per capita consumption,
it is increasingly becoming the preferred sta-
ple in much of the region displacing the
central role of rice and other staples.
While much of the McDonaldization the-
sis has revolved around food, it has also
referred to changing tastes in areas such as
music, clothing, television, and film. In this
light, McDonaldization might also be referred
to as ‘MTV-ization’ or ‘Hollywoodization’.
The point here is that Western and particu-
larly American cultural trends have spread
globally and increasingly marginalize the
way in which local cultural practices are
expressed (Banks, 1997).
In sum, one way to view the relationship
between globalization and the region of Asia
Pacific and South Asia is as a largely one-
way process whereby outside forces have
brought fundamental and far-reaching
changes to the region, for better or for worse,
in ways that would not have occurred other-
wise. This view is of course simplistic and
the remaining sections of this essay seek to
offer alternative perspectives as well.
GENERATING GLOBALIZATION: THE
ASIA PACIFIC AND SOUTH ASIA AS A
SPRINGBOARD
An alternative way to see the relationship
between globalization and the Asia Pacific
and South Asia is one where the region is
more of an autonomous agent serving as an
engine for globalization. This view, while
acknowledging the external impacts on the
region shows important ways in which the
region is also influencing and transforming
the nature of globalization itself. This frame-
work mirrors a broader intellectual change in
scholarship that seeks to re-interpret the
facile narrative that globalization is simply a
form of Westernization imposing itself upon
Asia.
Historically, for example, many scholars
now argue that for much of early modern
206 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF GLOBALIZATION
history Asia led the global economy only
‘falling behind’ from the eighteenth cen-
tury. As Anthony Reid notes, the Europeans
did not create the spice trade. The thriving
spice trade in the region and beyond is what
drew the European powers to the region.
Circumnavigating the globe was a means to
find cheaper and faster ways to bring the
goods back to Europe (Reid, 1988). Spices
were already making their way to various
parts of the globe, but the Europeans were
interested in cutting out the middleman.
In the same vein, some have argued that
Asia, not the West, was the central global
force in the early modern world economy. For
much of the early modern era, it was the site
of the world’s most important trade routes
and in some places more technologically
advanced than the West in key areas such as
science and medicine. China, of course, had a
historically unprecedented maritime fleet in
the early fifteenth century under admiral
Zeng Ho which traveled within the region and
as far as Africa (Levathes, 1997). The rise of
Europe in the eighteenth century came only
after the colonial powers extracted silver
from the colonies and pried their way into the
Asian markets. In that context, the re-emer-
gence of Asia today is seen as a restoration of
its traditional dominant position in the global
economy (Gunder Frank, 1998).
Colonialism too has come under a new
lens recently as scholars have argued that
colonies in the Asia Pacific and South Asia
and elsewhere influenced the West as much
as vice versa. Stoler argues that colonies
were often ‘laboratories of modernity’ where
‘innovations in political form, and social
imaginary, and in what defined the modern
itself, were not European exports but traveled
as often the other way around’ (Stoler, 2006:
41). In the Philippines, colonial policing in
the American colony can be understood as a
social experiment that transformed both the
Philippine polity as well as the US national
security state. Practices and technologies
such as counter-insurgency, surveillance, and
torture were developed and perfected in the
colonial Philippines before making their way
back to the core (McCoy and Scarano, 2009).
In the fields of medicine and public health,
American scientists and physicians in the
Philippines brought back colonial bureau-
cratic practices and identities to urban health
departments in the United States in the early
twentieth century (Warwick Anderson,
2006). In the Dutch East Indies the colonial
experience in the realm of the intimate and
the personal influenced European notions of
sexuality and social reform (Stoler, 2010). In
other words, colonialism was not simply
a practice of Western domination, but also
productive of what we think of as Western
and modern.
In the post-colonial era, the assertion that
the Asia Pacific and South Asia are mere ben-
eficiaries (or victims) of globalization is even
less tenable. The earlier discussion of Japan
suggested that the end of World War II and
the rise of the Cold War helped bring Japan
into the global economy. What this view
overlooks is the extent to which Japanese
development in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s
actually shaped and in many ways globalized
key parts of the world economy. Japan as a
resource poor nation-state embarked on a
massive project to procure raw materials such
as coal and iron at unprecedented economies
of scale allowing them to gain a competitive
edge in the global manufacturing market.
This not only transformed the market for
these materials but also globalized shipping
and procurement patterns which influenced
other sectors as well. Furthermore, as Japan’s
competitive advantage became visible, other
countries modeled their practices on theirs
further deepening the globalized patterns of
procurement and trade blazed by the Japanese
(Bunker, 2007).
In many ways, China can be seen as pursu-
ing a similar pattern of development today. It
is now one of the world’s largest importers of
basic raw materials such as iron and has sur-
passed Japan, the United States, and Europe
in steel production. In this context, the simple
scale of China’s development is shaping and
furthering globalization. In terms of its low
wage labor and supply chain management,
 GLOBALIZATION AND THE ASIA PACIFIC AND SOUTH ASIA
China has also had an enormous impact on
the availability and consumption of goods
around the globe (Nolan, 2004).
China has also now surpassed the World
Bank in lending to developing counties. The
China Development Bank and the China
Export Import Bank signed loans of at least
US$110 billion to other developing country
governments and companies in 2009 and
2010, surpassing the US$100.3 billion from
mid-2008 to mid-2010 by the IFIs (Dyer
et al., 2011). The implications here are
political as well as economic. Grants and
loans made by states can often have economic
and political strings attached as the Japanese
experience has shown (Islam, 1991).
South Asia and, in particular, India is often
mentioned in the same breath as China for its
scale and impact on globalization. While the
political and economic systems vary consid-
erably from China, India too has opened up
and emphasized an export-oriented strategy.
Textiles and other low wage sectors have
been a key part of the economy, but high
value exports such as software development
have also been highly successful. It is also
playing a key role in global service provision
as trends in outsourcing and off-shoring
increase (Dossani and Kenney, 2007).
India and China, among others in the
region, have also become a major source of
international migrant labor, which is also one
of the fundamental characteristics of the era of
globalization. This includes the migration of
highly skilled labor into the high tech industry
based in Silicon Valley, which includes a dis-
proportionate number of immigrants from
India and China. But much more prominent is
the flow of domestic workers to other places
in the region, or to the Middle East, Europe,
and the United States. Much of this migration
has received international attention because it
is often undocumented and working condi-
tions can be poor, even deadly. Women consti-
tute a large majority of many countries’
migrant pool including Indonesian (79 per
cent), the Philippines (71 per cent) and Sri
Lanka (66 per cent) (Kee, Yoshimatsu and
Osaki, 2010: 30).
207
Remittances from migrants have also
become a core source of income for many of
the region’s economies. Sometimes, these
exceed the flow of official development assis-
tance (ODA) or foreign direct assistance
(FDI) (Kee, Yoshimatsu and Osaki, 2010:
32). In the Philippines, remittances are now
equal to 11 per cent of the entire economy
(The Economist, 2010). In 2007, India, China,
and the Philippines were three of the top four
recipient states of migrant remittances total-
ing US$70 billion (the other country was
Mexico) (Kee, Yoshimatsu and Osaki, 2010:
32). In other words, the region is both the
source and recipient of the influences of the
massive globalization of migration.
Another broad trend in the Asia Pacific
and South Asia is the rise of regional free
trade arrangements. This regionalism can be
interpreted either as a kind of bulwark to
globalization (discussed in the next section)
or as compatible and even pushing forward
the process of global economic integration.
Proponents of the latter view argue that
regionalism can promote learning, assuage
domestic audiences to the benefits of free
trade, and form the institutional framework
to scale up from regional cooperation to
global cooperation (Lee and Park, 2005). In
other words, regionalism can act as a spring-
board for globalization.
One of the distinguishing features of
regional institutions in Asia Pacific and
South Asia has been the adoption of ‘open
regionalism’ which aims to develop and
maintain cooperation with outside actors.
This form of regionalism was meant to
resolve the tension between the rise of
regional trade agreements and the push for
global trade as embodied by the WTO
(Bergsten, 1997). ‘Open’ refers to the princi-
ple of non-discrimination, more specifically
an openness in membership and openness in
terms of economic flows (Sutton, 2007).
Most regional trade agreements and organi-
zations in other regions including North
America (NAFTA) and Europe (the European
Union) tend to be exclusive and thereby
‘closed’.
208 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF GLOBALIZATION
Open regionalism is embodied by Asia
Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC.
Formed in 1989, it includes 21 member
economies along the Pacific Rim including
East Asian and Southeast Asian states but
also Russia, Peru, Chile, the United States
and Canada. As the 1990 Ministerial
Declaration states, ‘it was desirable to reduce
barriers to trade in goods and services among
participants so long as such liberalization
was consistent with GATT principles and
was not to the detriment of other parties’.2 To
be sure, APEC has faced significant chal-
lenges especially in the wake of the 1997
Asian Financial Crisis and the more recent
global economic crisis. However, it contin-
ues to push for a vision of regional coopera-
tion that is consistent with and advances
globalization.
A final area to consider is the broad area of
culture and globalization in the region. The
earlier section put forth a perspective that
argues Western culture has come to dominate
forms of music, entertainment, and culture
more broadly around the globe and in the
Asia Pacific and South Asia in particular.
While this MTV-ization and McDonaldization
have some elements of truth, they also belie
a profoundly complex phenomenon. The
region is the source of a wide variety of cul-
tural phenomena that have also spread out-
ward to the West and the rest of the world.
‘Hello Kitty’, created in Japan by the
Sanrio Group in 1974, for example, has
become a massive global success. It can be
seen on a range of products from pencils and
erasers to designer handbags and diamond-
encrusted watches and generates a billion
dollars in revenue annually. Anime (and
other entertainment products from Japan) has
become a regional and global phenomenon
including Pokemon, Mario Brothers,
Astroboy, and Power Rangers among others.
Much of this has come to be understood as
the spread of a kawaii or ‘cute’ culture, or
what some have called ‘Pink Globalization’
(Yano, 2009: 681–8).
Japan holds no monopoly in this domain
of cultural globalization. In terms of cinema
for example, films ranging from ‘Kung-fu’
movies to Bollywood have become mas-
sively popular in the West, not to mention
individual filmmakers from the region with
global acclaim. More recently, there has been
a regional and global rise in Korean popular
culture dubbed the ‘K-Wave’ that includes
the spread of Korean dramas as well as music
(K-pop). Nothing demonstrates this better
than the smash hit, ‘Gangnam Style’ by
Korea pop star PSY. Released in July 2012,
the song and music video became a viral
sensation on YouTube, topping music charts
in over two dozen countries including France,
Germany, Poland, Mexico, Australia, Norway,
and Lebanon, and subsequently won Best
Video at the MTV Europe Music Awards
(Gangnam Style: PSY 2012).
Globalization has not been a one-way
street. While there is little doubt that the Asia
Pacific and South Asia have very much been
on the receiving end of globalization, it is
also true that the region is generative of
many aspects of the globalization process.
This can be seen both historically and more
recently and across a broad variety of
domains from the economy to political struc-
tures to culture.
THE ANTI-GLOBAL IMPULSE:
REGIONAL ALTERNATIVES TO
GLOBALIZATION
A third and final paradigm to understanding
the relationship of Asia Pacific and South
Asia to globalization is as a regional alterna-
tive to globalization. The arguments from
this perspective see the region as a source of
resistance to globalization or to global or
Western powers. This section views initia-
tives for regionalism through this lens in part
because the rising critical discourse of glo-
balization resonates in much of the region
and because the idea of Asian exceptionalism
has been prevalent both historically and in
contemporary times.
One place to begin is with Japanese
colonialism in the 1930s and 1940s. Japan’s
 GLOBALIZATION AND THE ASIA PACIFIC AND SOUTH ASIA
colonization of the region and the building of
a supposed East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere
merely replicated imperial relationships in
East and Southeast Asia with new masters.
However, it was also arguably a push back
against Western imperialism. Much of the
propaganda during the time centered on the
idea of ‘Asia for Asiatics’ and the need to
‘liberate’ the region from Europe. The
‘Sphere’ referred initially to Japan, China,
and Manchukuo. However, with the outbreak
of World War II, Japan also looked beyond
Northeast Asia to South and Southeast Asia.
The members of the Sphere included Japan,
Manchukuo, Mangjiang (Outer Mongolia),
the Republic of China, States of Burma,
Republic of the Philippines, Empire of
Vietnam, Kingdom of Kampuchea, Kingdom
of Laos, Azad Hind, Kingdom of Thailand
(Beasley, 2000).
While the geography of the Sphere delim-
ited to Asian states, it was also constructed
and argued directly in opposition to the West.
Japan’s General Tojo at the Greater East Asia
Conference in November 1943 declared that
Asia had a ‘spiritual essence’ that opposed
the ‘materialistic civilization of the West’
(Beasley, 2000: 89). The failure of the
Co-prosperity Sphere was a result not only of
Japan’s loss in World War II, but also the
overt racism of Japan itself towards its sup-
posed co-members. It soon became clear that
the Sphere was for Japanese interests only
often at the expense of the interests of the
fellow members. Despite its failure and the
continued bitter legacy of World War II, the
notion of an Asian region that serves as a
kind of opposition to globalization and west-
ern imperialism manifests itself in different
ways still today.
A more recent manifestation has been the
concept of Asian values that became popular
among leaders in the region in the mid-to late
1990s. Proponents of Asian values such as
then-Prime Minister Mohamed Mahathir of
Malaysia argued that Asia has culturally dis-
tinct characteristics that make it different
from Western liberal democracies. As
Mahathir noted, ‘The Asian way is to reach
209
consensus on national goals within the demo-
cratic framework, to take the middle path, the
Confucian Chun Yung or the Islamic, awsat-
uha; to exercise tolerance and sensitivity
towards others’ (Langlois, 2001: 15). This
contrasts with Western values where ‘every
individual can do what he likes, free from
any restraint by governments [and] individu-
als soon decide that they should break every
rule and code governing their society’
(Langlois, 2001: 15).
Proponents of the Asian values thesis
argued that Asians (not clearly defined) tend
to respect authority, hard work, thrift, and
emphasize the community over the individ-
ual. Asia operates on the basis of harmony
and consensus rather than majority rule.
Concepts such as individual rights, political
liberalism, and democracy are Western con-
cepts, antithetical to the Asian tradition. To
that end, the leaders of these states justified
their authoritarian regimes based on Asian
values.
To be sure, the concept of Asian values has
come under fire from both within and outside
the region. Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysian oppo-
sition leader noted, ‘It is altogether shameful,
if ingenious, to cite Asian values as an
excuse for autocratic practices and denial of
basic rights and liberties’.3 In fact, after the
Asian financial crisis of 1997 and the emer-
gence of political reform in several countries
in the region, the discourse of Asian values
seemed to lose it political potency
(Thompson, 2001).
Another way the region serves as an alter-
native to globalization is through the lens of
regional arrangements. Earlier, it was noted
that some regional institutions did little to
counter and even expanded economic glo-
balization through their principles of ‘open
regionalism’. However, there are other insti-
tutions proposed or implemented at the
regional level that are more exclusively and
self-consciously ‘Asian’.
The East Asia Economic Caucus (EAEC)
is one such example. Floated as early as
1990, the EAEC was pushed as an alternative
to APEC, more precisely an APEC without
210 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF GLOBALIZATION
Western states. The proposed member states
were ASEAN, China, South Korea and
Japan. The United States strongly objected
and at the time, Japan saw the exclusion of
the United States as a threat to their strategic
partnership and effectively vetoed the idea.
Today’s ASEAN +3 (APT), which includes
China, South Korea and Japan, is seen as a
successor to the EAEC but because it is
embedded in a slew of other institutional
arrangements, is not seen as the radical alter-
native of the earlier vision (Terada, 2003).
A second institutional example along the
same lines was the proposed Asian Monetary
Fund (AMF). While the idea had been gestat-
ing for several years, Japan’s Ministry of
Finance proposed it in the wake of the 1997
financial crisis, surprising many. The fund
was envisioned to have a capitalization of
US$100 billion and include ten members –
China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea,
Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore,
Thailand, and the Philippines (Lipscy, 2003).
Notably absent from the proposed member-
ship was the United States. Furthermore, the
initial draft proposal suggested that the AMF
would act autonomously from the IMF.
Although the AMF proposal received nearly
universal praise and support among its poten-
tial members, the United States immediately
sought to strike down the proposal. US oppo-
sition succeeded and the failure of the AMF
meant a continuation of an IMF-centered
neo-liberal approach to financial governance
(Lipscy, 2003).
Another, more subversive articulation of
regionalism posed as an alternative to the
West is the emergence of regional terror net-
works, such as Jemaah Islamiyah or JI. The
origins and the extensiveness of JI are murky,
but its main operations have been in Indonesia
with apparent links in Malaysia, Philippines,
and Thailand among others (International
Crisis Group (ICG), 2002a). JI is infamous
for the 2002 Bali bombings which took place
in a night club in the resort town of Kuta and
killed more than 200 people, mostly
Australian and other foreign nationals (ICG,
2002b).
The alleged goals of JI are territorial and
also regionalist, namely to create an Islamic
state in Indonesia followed by a pan-Islamic
caliphate incorporating Malaysia, Singapore,
Brunei and the southern Philippines. Certainly,
this notion of regionalism is much narrower
than the broad scope of Asia Pacific and South
Asia. And ultimately, the vision of the cali-
phate is to expand from a regional to a global
structure. The point here is that JI articulated
an alternative vision of political and social
organization in the region, one that clashes
directly with the paradigm of globalization
(ICG, 2002b).
A final way to think about the region as an
alternative to globalization is to explore the
various local movements that have emerged.
The movements are not exclusive to the Asia
Pacific and South Asia region, but they are
characteristic of trends there vis-à-vis the pro-
cess of globalization with respect to their
emphasis on disengagement from globalization.
The village of Santi Suk in Thailand, for
example, created their own currency following
the Asian financial crisis that struck the region
in Thailand (Hookway, 2009). The currency is
called the ‘bia’, loosely translated as ‘merit’
and operates through a ‘central bank’ located
in the village. The currency can be used to
purchase various commodities but cannot be
used outside of participating villages and can-
not be exchanged for Thailand’s national cur-
rency, the baht. Homemade currencies are not
exclusive to Asia but they did take on a new
prominence in the wake of economic turmoil.
Community currency is an example of a
larger trend in self-sufficiency movements that
emerged in Thailand after the Asian financial
crisis. Related initiatives included associations
such as traditional herbal practitioners, ‘self-
sufficiency’ groups, community owned rice
mills, and cooperative shops. Local production
movements are also in line with the overall
philosophy of being an alternative to being
part of a globalized system. In Japan, for
example, Community Supported Agriculture
(CSA) and the Seikatsu Club both encourage
consumers to buy ethically and locally (Starr
and Adams, 2003: 24). Examples abound in
 GLOBALIZATION AND THE ASIA PACIFIC AND SOUTH ASIA
India as well including the Lok Samiti group
which advocates local village level education
and development and campaigns against the
Coca Cola bottling plant in Mehdiganj.4
There have been a variety of ways in which
the Asia Pacific and South Asia region can be
seen also as a region that poses an alternative
to globalization. For the most part, these
alternative paradigms are consciously articu-
lated alternatives to external forces. Local
movements eschew global capitalism, states
push back against the perception of Western
imperialism, and religious movements
emerge from the perceived threat of secular-
ism. Not all of these visions are coherent and
few have been successful in the long term.
CONCLUSION
The purpose of this essay has been to suggest
various lenses through which to explore
the relationship between globalization and the
region of Asia Pacific and South Asia. The point
has not been to argue that one lens is more
appropriate than the other. Instead, it shows how
globalization is a complex process where
regional dynamics must be understood as both a
cause and a consequence.
Because this essay focuses particularly on
the concept of a region and the way to under-
stand its relationship to globalization, it has
done less to question the category of region
and the delineation of the region vis-à-vis
other areas of the world. It began by loosely
defining the region and laying out alternative
perspectives. The essay has proposed a view
of the Asia Pacific and South Asia as an
object of globalization, a subject of globali-
zation, and an alternative to globalization.
In so doing, it has also perhaps simplified
the possible ways to view the interactions
between region and process. Some argue that
what we see today is but a dual process of
‘hybridization’ (Shinji and Eades, 2003: 6)
Cultures are dynamic and emerge and adapt
in the context of external and even internal
changes. In this way, processes can be recur-
sive and include both the role of subject and
211
object simultaneously. While this may be
true, the benefit of this framework has been
to disaggregate and illustrate the different
perspectives instead of subsuming them in
one whole theoretical approach.
The essay has chosen breadth over depth
and tried to offer a variety of snapshots of the
variety of ways in which to think about glo-
balization in the region. It has seen globaliza-
tion as a process occurring over the longue
durée, even if manifesting itself most clearly
in the past two decades. And within that vari-
ety, it has tried to offer a frame through
which to interpret that process. While incom-
plete and contradictory, this is also the
essence of globalization and its relationship
to the Asia Pacific and South Asia.
NOTES
1 See, for example, Diamond (1998).
2 Refer to the ‘1990 APEC Ministerial Meeting -
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation’ (APEC, 1990).
3 See ‘What would Confucius say now?’ (1998)
The Economist, 23 July. www.economist.com/
node/169045 (Accessed December 11, 2012).
4 About US, Lok Samiti, n.d. Accessed December
11, 2012. http://www.loksamiti.org/index_files/
aboutus.htm
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