Asian Studies Commons^™

Detecting Fake News In Social Media: An Asia-Pacific Perspective, Meeyoung Cha, Wei Gao, Cheng-Te Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In March 2011, the catastrophic accident known as "The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster" took place, initiated by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The only nuclear accident to receive a Level-7 classification on the International Nuclear Event Scale since the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in 1986, the Fukushima event triggered global concerns and rumors regarding radiation leaks. Among the false rumors was an image, which had been described as a map of radioactive discharge emanating into the Pacific Ocean, as illustrated in the accompanying figure. In fact, this figure, depicting the wave height of the tsunami that followed, …

Tackling Regional Climate Change Impacts And Food Security Issues: A Critical Analysis Across Asean, Pif, And Saarc, Md. Saidul Islam, Edson Kieu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Climate change and food security issues are multi-faceted and transcend across national boundaries. Therefore, this paper begins with the premise that regional organizations are optimally positioned to address climate change and food security issues while actively engaging global partners to slow down or reverse current trajectories. However, the potential of regional organizations to play a central role in mitigating these vital concerns has not been realized. In this paper, we focus on three regional organizations—the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and set out to investigate …

Early Polls Make Sense In A Worsening Pandemic, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In a commentary, SMU Associate Professor of Law Eugene Tan opined there is no good time for a general election amid the global pandemic, and it is a judgment call on when to hold Singapore's 13th general election, which must take place by April next year at the latest. He believes early polls make sense in a worsening pandemic if the Government ensures that even as candidates campaign, there is no let-up in the fight against the outbreak.

The Spatial Optimization And Evaluation Of The Economic, Ecological, And Social Value Of Urban Green Space In Shenzhen, Yuhan Yu, Wenting Zhang, Peihong Fu, Wei Huang, Keke Li, Kai Cao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Urban green space (UGS) is important in urban systems, as it benefits economic development, ecological conservation, and living conditions. Many studies have evaluated the economic, ecological, and social value of UGS worldwide, and spatial optimization for UGS has been carried out to maximize its value. However, few studies have simultaneously examined these three values of UGS in one optimization system. To fill this gap, this study evaluated the economic value of UGS in terms of promoting housing prices, its ecological value through the relief of high land surface temperature (LST), and its social value through the provision of recreation spaces …

What The Resilience Budget Can And Cannot Do In Helping Singapore Tackle Covid-19, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In a commentary, SMU Associate Professor of Law Eugene Tan discussed the challenges brought about by the Covid-19 global pandemic and explained the three broad objectives of the Resilience Budget in tackling the crisis. He also discussed the valuable learning points that Singaporeans can learn from this pandemic.

Welfare Consequences Of Access To Health Insurance For Rural Households: Evidence From The New Cooperative Medical Scheme In China, Jessica Ya Sun

Research Collection School Of Economics

This study evaluates the welfare benefits of the New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS), the main public health insurance plan for the rural population in China. The findings show that the value of the NCMS to recipients is slightly lower than the government's costs of implementation, ranging from 0.79 to 0.97 per RMB of the resource cost of the NCMS. The estimated moral hazard costs are low compared with the total benefits. It is also estimated that the benefits originating from the NCMS's insurance function only constitute 20% of the total benefits, suggesting a need for higher generosity levels among rural …

With The Release Of Electoral Boundaries Report, All Eyes Now On Political Parties’ Next Moves, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In a commentary, SMU Associate Professor of Law Eugene Tan discussed the implications of the Electoral Boundaries Review Committee (EBRC) report and what it means for the political parties and Singapore politics in general. He expects the election to be held sooner rather than later with the ERBC report's release, and there will be little time for parties, especially the opposition, to prepare.

Translation Of: Place: Derrida And Nishitani, Rolf Elberfeld, Steven Burik

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In his works Chora [Derrida, Jacques. 1993. Khôra. Paris: Galilée] and “Comment ne pas parler? Denegations” Derrida used the metaphor chora from Plato’s Timaeus (49a and following) to continue his struggle with the metaphysics of presence. In 1926 Nishida, the founder of the Japanese Kyōto School, used the same metaphor to create a new foundation of philosophy. Nishitani, a disciple of Nishida, developed the work of Nishida in close connection to Zen Buddhist experiences. Derrida tries to show the limits of language within the game of language, whereas Nishitani starts from an experience beyond language, but tries to make …

The Effect Of Language On Voter Opinion: Results From A Survey Experiment In Thailand, Jacob I. Ricks

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Politicians have long engaged in marketing themselves by employing distinct speaking styles to signal social standing, competence, or a shared background with their audience. What effect does this use of different language appeals have on voter opinion? Utilizing a survey experiment in Thailand, I test a set of hypotheses about the effect of language on respondent opinions. Relying on three distinct treatments, a formal language register, an informal language register, and an ethnic language, I demonstrate the multiple effects of language on political appeal. The use of a formal register has mixed effects, signaling both high education as well as …

Fertility And Rural Electrification In Bangladesh, Tomoki Fujii, Abu S. Shonchoy

Research Collection School Of Economics

We use contemporaneous and retrospective panel datasets to examine the household-level relationship between fertility and access to electricity in Bangladesh. We find that access to electricity reduces fertility by about 0.2 children over a period of five years or total fertility rate by about 1.2 in most estimates. This finding is robust with respect to the choice of the estimation method, the choice of sample, and potential presence of endogeneity. The finding also corroborates the theoretical predictions on time use and consumption pattern derived from our model of electrification and fertility. The results also suggest that television is an important …

Asian Ip Law: An Area Of Rising Importance, Kung-Chung Liu, Shufeng Zheng

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Intellectual property (IP) laws are an important instrument for promoting cooperation and peace in Asia. In their own ways, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, China and India all serve as IP success stories. Structural features of the IP landscape in major Asian jurisdictions include the following: technocrat-driven IP law, national IP strategies and specialized IP or patent judges. In addition, there are five distinctively Asian developments worth noticing: the sweeping criminalization of copyright infringement, an explosion in the number of registered trademarks, the very limited use of compulsory patent licensing and the convergence on certain standards for the licensing …

The Doctrine Of Wilful Blindness In Drug Offences: Adili Chibuike Ejike V Public Prosecutor [2019] 2 Slr 254, Rennie Whang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In Adili Chibuike Ejike v Public Prosecutor [2019] 2 SLR 254, the Court of Appeal clarified the operation of the wilful blindness doctrine in the context of knowing possession for drug offences. In particular, it affirmed wilful blindness as a doctrine of substantive rather than evidential law, which applies as a limited extension to the legal requirement of actual knowledge. The court then articulated a three-part test for the finding of wilful blindness in relation to knowledge as an ingredient of possession. However, it left open the content of the doctrine as applied to the element of knowledge in drug …

Translation Of: Interview With Jacques Derrida: The Western Question Of "Forgiveness" And The Intercultural Relation, Ning Zhang, Steven Burik

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

These two interviews with Jacques Derrida were conducted by Ning Zhang in 1999 and 2000, respectively, in preparation for the publication of his book Writing and Difference in Chinese and his first academic trip to China in 2001. In the first interview, Jacques Derrida tries to clarify the ethical concerns with regard to his deconstructive analysis of Western traditions, through his critical reading of the concept of forgiveness. In this interview he gives us a clearer insight into his ideas about the problem of intercultural exchange, especially concerning questions of translation, translatability, and untranslatability, as central issues of his work. …

Examining The Cross-Cultural Validity Of The Positive Affect And Negative Affect Schedule Between An Asian (Singaporean) Sample And A Western (American) Sample, Sean Teck Hao Lee, Andree Hartanto, Jose C. Yong, Brandon Koh, Angela K. Y. Leung

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The positive affect and negative affect schedule (PANAS) is a popular measure of positive (PA) and negative affectivity (NA). Developed and validated in Western contexts, the 20-item scale has been frequently administered on respondents from Asian countries with the assumption of cross-cultural measurement invariance. We examine this assumption via a rigorous multigroup confirmatory factor analysis, which allows us to assess between-group differences in both strength of scale item-to-latent factor relationship (metric invariance test) and mean of each scale item (scalar invariance test), on a large sample of 1,065 respondents recruited from Singapore (Asian sample) and the United States (Western sample). …

Berita Winter 2019/2020, Dominik M. Müller

Berita

Table of Contents

Letter from the Chair ... 2

MSB Group Events at the AAS Conference 2020, Boston, MA (March 19-22) ... 3–4

Article: ‘A Fresh Look at Fish Through a Brief History of Fish Head Curry’ (Geoffrey K. Pakiam) ... 5–10

Article: ‘‘My Second Home’: An Interview with Rose Chew,Ticketing Officer of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, 1990–2016’ ... 11–13

MSB Member News ... 14

Publications ... 14–16

Job Opportunities ... 16

Call for Applications: M.A. and PhD Programs ... 17–18

Call for Papers ... 18

Editorial Information ... 18

A Multimodal Analysis Using An Exemplar From Japanese Television Advertising, Noel Murray

Business Faculty Articles and Research

A multimodal analysis is used to investigate for the presence of situated meanings of uchi/soto in Japanese advertising. The analysis supports the proposition that discourses of gendered relations of uchi/soto may be found in contemporary Japanese television advertising. The article argues that relations of uchi/soto provide a unique window into Japanese consumption behavior. I advocate for multimodal critical discourse analysis as a preferred methodology and theoretical framework for multimodal advertising research applications. I discuss social and economic implications of reproducing gendered relations of uchi/soto in advertising and offer suggestions for future research on situated meanings.

Singapore’S National Ai Strategy, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

The island state is banking on industry-wide projects and building an AI ecosystem to transform its economy

The Rising Importance Of Chinese Monetary Policy, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Expert expects the influence of Chinese monetary policy to rise as the country’s share of the global economy increases

The Value Of Transgender Women In The Philippine Call Centre Industry, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

While call centres provide an otherwise unavailable path to corporate work for trans individuals, they also extract value while conferring social status

Brain Drain: The Impact Of Air Pollution On Firm Performance, Shuyu Xue, Bohui Zhang, Xiaofeng Zhao

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

By exploiting the exogenous variation in air pollution caused by China’s central heating policy, we find that air pollution reduces the accumulation of executive talent and high-quality employees. We also find that firms located in polluted areas have poorer performance, especially for firms with greater dependence on human capital.

Whose War Is It Anyway? How Afghanistan Became A Battlefield Over Global Hegemony During The Cold War, Kathryn Shapiro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Traditional scholarship depicts the Cold War, which began immediately after World War Two and ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, as a battle of freedom and democracy over communism and authoritarian control. Cold War propaganda cartoons often show an Uncle Sam figure facing off against the Soviet Union, or a Soviet Bear reaching out to grab and control Western Europe. While this may have been popular Cold War discourse, a close look at internal documents from the United States Government at the time reveals that the United States was more interested in protecting resources and their …

Strategic Intent Of Obor: Enhancing Energy Supply Resilience, Loon Ching Tang, Joyce M. W. Low

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Since the launch of the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative in 2015, China has announced its intention to invest in major infrastructure projects to promote trade and co-operation with its trading partners along OBOR. This paper examines the current level of trading and key projects underway along OBOR so as to provide insights to understand its strategic intent. In particular, a network model is constructed to analyze the impact to China current and future demand for energy under various conditions especially during prolonged periods of supply uncertainties. Since these key projects are closely connected to the current and proven …

Amid The Covid-19 Outbreak, What Can Singapore Expect In Budget 2020, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The Covid-19 outbreak has placed significant and urgent demands on Budget 2020 that will be unveiled on Tuesday (Feb 18). The Government has given a strong affirmation that the Budget will be equal to the task and that it will reinforce the “never fear” spirit that Singapore and Singaporeans will need to adopt to come out stronger of this challenging period.

On Mandatory Criminal Sentences, Legislative Interpretation, And The Prospective Application Of The Law: A View From Singapore, Kwan Ho Lau

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Cana court find that a criminal sentence is mandatory under the penal legislation butchoose, exceptionally, to apply that finding only to future cases? This raisesan interesting question on the prospective application of a correctconstruction of legislation, requiring consideration of difficult issuessurrounding not just the temporal application of the law but also theprotection of the interests belonging to all citizenry, including convictedpersons. Recent decisions in Singapore and elsewhere provide an opening for amore detailed inquiry to be undertaken.

Superstition, Conspicuous Spending, And Housing Market: Evidence From Singapore, Jia He, Haoming Liu, Tien Foo Sing, Changcheng Song, Wei-Kang Wong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study the effect of superstition and conspicuous spending motives on housing demand and price in Singapore. We find that buyers pay less for homes with unlucky addresses and more for homes with lucky addresses. There were fewer housing transactions on inauspicious days of the lunar calendar when people are advised to avoid making major economic decisions. This suggests that superstitious belief still affects economic activities. The demand for lucky addresses is also weaker on these inauspicious days, suggesting that superstitious belief indeed affects the demand for lucky addresses. Moreover, the price premium for a lucky address is significantly higher …

Financial Illiteracy And Pension Contributions: A Field Experiment On Compound Interest In China, Changcheng Song

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

I conduct a field experiment to study the relationship between peoples’ misunderstanding of compound interest and their pension contributions in rural China. I find that explaining the concept of compound interest to subjects increased pension contributions by roughly 40%. The treatment effect is larger for those who underestimate compound interest than for those who overestimate compound interest. Moreover, financial education enables households to partially correct their misunderstanding of compound interest. I structurally estimate the level of misunderstanding of compound interest and conduct a counterfactual welfare analysis: lifetime utility increases by about 10% if subjects’ misunderstanding of compound interest is eliminated.

How Inheritance Law Affects Family Firm Performance: Evidence From A Natural Experiment, Yong Kyu Gam, Min Jung Kang, Junho Park, Hojong Shin

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We argue that changes in the inheritance system affect incentives leading to sibling rivalry among descendants and therefore have a material impact on family firm performance. Using South Korea's 1991 inheritance law reform that stipulates the equal distribution of a deceased person's property to descendants, we find that the performance and operating growth rate in family firms show significant enhancement compared with those of nonfamily firms. Moreover, the positive effects are greater for family firms that undergo a business succession with multiple sons and married daughters. Overall, our results suggest that changing to equal bequests of inheritance has a positive …

Apply Liberally: Towards A Model Of Liberal Management Education, Howard Thomas

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Howard Thomas argues the case for integrating the liberal arts into management education so that the existing curricula emphasis on technological and analytical acumen is balanced with skills of critical thinking and ethical intelligence necessary for managerial judgment.

Subverting The Logics Of "Smartness" In Singapore: Smart Eldercare And Parallel Regimes Of Sustainability, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper argues that the divergent logics of “smartness” and “sustainability” can lead to parallel regimes of sustainability. Whilst sustainability is often used to justify the need for smart cities, smart cities are often undermined by the neoliberal logics of digital governance. Moreover, because the intersection of digital technologies and society is a negotiated one, smart solutions often fail to provide adequate solutions to social problems. This is especially true when smart solutions are used to augment or replace hitherto human-centred processes, like caregiving.Parallel regimes of sustainability are a response to these failures. Drawing onan analysis of a trial of …

Authoritarian Innovations And Democratic Reform In The “New Malaysia”, Sebastian Carl Dettman

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Malaysia’s National Front coalition, one of the world’s most durable authoritarian governments, lost power in national elections held in 2018. Although incumbent turnover represents a significant step toward democratization, the reform of institutions and practices associated with political domination by the country’s Malay Muslim majority has been slowed in the face of challenges from a new configuration of opposition forces. The new opposition, which includes UMNO, the former dominant party of the National Front, has framed democratic reforms initiated by the new government – and the more multiethnic ruling government itself – as a threat to the rights of the …