Asian Studies Commons^™

Contemporary Human Displacement: A Comparative Analysis Of Syria, Yemen, Honduras, And Venezuela, Rav Carlotti

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What is causing the surge in human displacement around the world? Large-scale displacement in Syria, Yemen, Honduras, and Venezuela has generated unprecedented humanitarian crises in Latin America and the Middle East as millions of displaced people end up as refugees or immigrants. Humanitarian organizations like the UNHCR and host countries have had their resources overextended by these ongoing crises, and there is no end in sight. This thesis shows that contemporary human displacement is rooted in the increasing inability of governments to manage their societies amid great political demands and socio-economics strains. These causes are difficult to tackle because they …

Arbitration By Ssos As A Preferred Solution For Solving The Frand Licensing Of Seps?, Kung-Chung Liu

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In the last decade, the licensing of standard essential patents (SEPs) on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms has been a thorny issue for SEP holders in the US and Europe on the one hand, and major SEP implementers in major Asian economies on the other, such as Japan, Korea, the PRC, Taiwan and even India. With the rise of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, driven by the Internet of Things (IoT), 5G, driverless vehicles, and artificial intelligence (AI), which relies even more on interconnectivity, more and more new standards and SEPs will emerge, and the issue of FRAND licensing of …

The Ccp At 100: Can It Lead China To Be The Wave Of The Future?, Eugene K. B. Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The author discussed about the foremost geopolitical challenge China is facing as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) marks its centenary on July 1. He pointed out that bilateral ties between US and China are patently lacking in trust, but believes both can find convergence and achieve mutual respect if determined efforts are channelled towards policies, institutions, norms, and cooperation that seek to incrementally enhance security and cooperation for both countries even as they robustly engage each other on the issues.

Circuits Broken, Remade, And Newly Forged: Tracing Southeast Asia's Foreign Relations After The Vietnam War, Wen-Qing Ngoei

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article (2021) in Diplomatic History's pandemic feature examines how the principles and consequences of Singapore's "circuit breaker" policy offers a conceptual framework for studying the history of Southeast Asia's foreign relations in the 1970s to 1990s. With this approach, the essay considers how a study of Southeast Asia's culture-makers (artists, writers, dramatists), their works and transnational circuits, may open a productive inquiry into a diverse array of regionalisms that compete and complement ASEAN.

How To Talk About Racism, Benjamin Joshua Ong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In a commentary, SMU Assistant Professor of Law Benjamin Joshua Ong wrote that recent debates about race and race relations have reminded him that using a single word to describe something can lead to quibbles over the precise definition, while discussion of the thing itself is neglected. He believes that in addressing important questions related to race, we should not reduce the potentially rich discussion to a simplistic argument over whether the incidents are "racist" or not, but should keep an open mind when having difficult conversations.

Demanding Images: Democracy, Mediation, And The Image-Event In Indonesia By Karen Strassler, Colm A. Fox

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Karen Strassler takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride through Indonesia’s turbulent democratic developments of recent years—including stages of disappointment, fear, and tragedy, but also periods of joy, hilarity, and hope. To set the scene, the book opens with a photo-essay montage of full-colour images

The Influence Of Tertiary Education Disciplines On Self-Construals And Conflict Management Tendencies, Sheila Xi Rui Wee, Wan Yee Choo, Chi-Ying Cheng

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

While cultural difference on self-construal are well-documented, how acculturation to a new cultural environment could change an individual’s self-construal remains under-explored. In this research, how tertiary education disciplines could be associated with the endorsement of self-construals which, in turn, affect students’ conflict management tendencies were explored. Study 1 revealed that across the United States and Singapore, college students from business and social science disciplines exhibited the trend of endorsing more independent and interdependent self-construal respectively, regardless of the different dominant self-construals in the two countries. Study 2 explored how tertiary education disciplines is associated with individuals’ conflict management tendencies via …

Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case Written By Bai Tongdong [Book Review], Sor-Hoon Tan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Why Do Robots Have Smiley Faces?, Mark Findlay

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The author discussed why engineers and designers provide machines with the semblance of friendliness, and why it takes more than that for humans to trust AI. The ground-breaking AI in community research and policy initiative by CAIDG, supported by the National Research Foundation Singapore under its Emerging Areas Research Projects Funding Initiative, seeks to understand how and why trust can be established when humans and machines come together.

The Curious Case Of Horseracing Data Caught In A Tangled Web Of Relationships – The Racing Partnership Ltd V. Sports Information Services Ltd [2020] Ewca Civ 1300, Cheng Lim Saw

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This paper comments on the recent split decision of the English Court of Appeal in The Racing Partnership Ltd v. Sports Information Services Ltd [2020] EWCA Civ 1300 concerning the common law action for misuse of confidential information. Although the majority overturned the decision of the trial judge and found in favour of the defendant, this author will explain why the conclusion reached by the dissenting judge is the more compelling.

Running Bodies And The Affective Spaces Of Health In And Beyond Marathon Running In China, Xiaomei Cai, Orlando Woods, Quan Gao

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper explores the affective formation of health and space/place through an examination of the affective, bodily and digital practices of marathon runners in China. By elaborating on the idea of “affective spaces of health”, we investigate not only the affective potential of running bodies that enables a therapeutic and individualised form of selfhood in response to the post-socialist transformation but also the affective atmospheres that condition and discipline runners’ affective capacities of health. The paper therefore questions the simplistic association of health with particular qualities of place and calls for studying the affective and fluid spaces of health.

(Un)Tethered Masculinities, (Mis)Placed Modernities: Queering Futurity In Contemporary Singapore, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper considers how socio-political prescriptions can bring about the queering of futurity in Singapore. In Singapore, state-sponsored narratives of progress view futurity in terms that are bound to place, and reproduced through the heteronormative family unit. These factors have caused constructions of masculinity to be tethered to the family, and placed within public housing. Recently, this narrative has become an increasingly inflexible and marginalizing construct that can cause straight males to be queered by their prescribed futures. In contrast, gay males are more likely to be untethered from their families, and thus occupy “unplaced” positions in Singapore’s social structure.

Wto Reform And China: Defining Or Defiling The Multilateral Trading System?, Henry S. Gao

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In November 2001, China finally acceded to the World Trade Organization, in a deal described by then WTO Director-General Mike Moore as a “defining moment in the history of the multilateral trading system”. In recent years, however, China has been accused of defiling the letter and spirt of WTO rules with its unique economic model. Believing that existing WTO rules are inadequate in dealing with the China challenge, key WTO Members have launched a new round of WTO reform, which is the subject of this article. Contrary to popular belief, most of the problems concerning China are not new but …

Divide And Conquer: A Hygienic, Efficient, And Reliable Assembly-Line For Housekeeping, Xiao Alison Chen, Rowan Wang, Jianghua Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Problem definition: This work focuses on the hotel housekeeping process. In a field study, a possible channel of disease transmission between consecutive guests in hotel rooms is revealed. In order to prevent the transmission, an innovative assembly-line housekeeping method is developed. Academic/practical relevance: The transmission of infectious diseases during hotel stays (e.g., by touching unclean towels or bed linens) has been reported globally. Under the current COVID-19 pandemic, having contact with saliva or mucus left by an infected person could cause infection. The standard housekeeping process used by the majority of hotels leaves a channel for new towels and bed …

Japanese Monetary Policy And Its Impact On Stock Market Implied Volatility During Pleasant And Unpleasant Weather, Marinela Adriana Finta

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We investigate the effect of Japan's Monetary Policy Meeting releases on the intraday dynamics of the Nikkei Stock Average Volatility Index and its futures during pleasant and unpleasant weather. We show that at the time of a monetary policy release when the temperature is pleasant, there is a significant decline in Japanese equities' implied volatility and futures, which lasts for about 10 min and 5 min, respectively. This decline is longer and exhibits a greater variation when releases occur during cold days. Finally, we emphasize the achievable economic profits and losses, given the reaction of Nikkei VI futures to the …

Entitled To Property: Inheritance Laws, Female Bargaining Power, And Child Health In India, Plamen Nikolov, Shahadath Hossain

Economics Faculty Scholarship

Child height is a significant predictor of human capital and economic status throughout adulthood. Moreover, non-unitary household models of family behavior posit that an increase in women’s bargaining power can influence child health. We study the effects of an inheritance policy change, the Hindu Succession Act (HSA), which conferred enhanced inheritance rights to unmarried women in rural India, on child height. We find robust evidence that the HSA improved the height and weight of children. In addition, we find evidence consistent with a channel that the policy improved the women’s intrahousehold bargaining power within the household, leading to improved parental …

A Comfort Women Redress Movement Without Comfort Women, Jenna Shin

Student Work

A 2020-2021 Williams Prize for best essay in East Asian Studies was awarded to Jenna Shin (Morse '21) for her essay submitted to the East Asian Studies Program, "A Comfort Women Redress Movement without Comfort Women” (Yukiko Koga, Associate Professor of Anthropology, advisor).

While the comfort women issue is often framed within contested relations between the victims and the perpetrators, such as South Korean survivors and/or South Korea’s relationship with Japan, Jenna Shin’s essay, “A Comfort Women Redress Movement without Comfort Women,” shifts her reader’s attention to the relationship between the surviving comfort women and their main advocacy group, the …

Imperial Crossings: Chinese Indentured Migration To Sumatra's East Coast, 1865-1911, Gregory Jany

Student Work

A 2020-2021 Williams Prize for best essay in East Asian Studies was awarded to Gregory Jany (Jonathan Edwards, '21) for his essay submitted to the Department of History, “Imperial Crossings: Chinese Indentured Migration to Sumatra's East Coast, 1865-1911" (Denise Ho, Assistant Professor of History, advisor).

Gregory Jany’s thesis, “Imperial Crossings: Chinese Indentured Migration to Sumatra's East Coast, 1865-1911,” is elegantly written, deeply researched in multiple archives—British materials, Dutch archives, and Qing documents—and uses several languages beyond English: Bahasa Indonesia, Dutch, Chinese, and Classical Chinese. Grounded in the literatures of the late imperial China, the Chinese diaspora, and colonial Southeast Asia, …

Important Factors For Changing Plastic Consumption Among Highly Educated People In China, Shen Shen

Master's Theses

As the global plastic pollution situation is getting much more serious, how to change the trend of plastic pollution to save humankind itself has become an urgent issue. In China, the country with the world's fastest-growing economy and the largest population, solving the problem of plastic pollution presents a serious challenge. This thesis draws on a survey of highly educated people in China to investigate how these people's understanding and awareness of plastic pollution, willingness to change their behavior and perceptions of who is responsible for addressing the problem might inform strategies for reducing plastic pollution in China. The analysis …

Placing God: Defining “Post-Christianity” For Contemporary Japanese Christians, Leryan Anthony Burrey

Master's Projects and Capstones

This work suggests that we consider a new, working definition of post-Christianity. This new paradigm is in response to Western Christian thought being too dominant a force that fails to take into enough account other global experiences— like those of Japanese Christians. These reflections are based on scholarly opinions claiming that Christianity is a “global culture,” and ultimately argues for more international inclusivity in Western Christian thought and institutions, especially regarding the Asia-Pacific. Moreover, this paper illuminates how iitoko dori allows Christian thought to peacefully coexist in Japan’s greater society. The research also explores specific Japanese cultural practices that make …