Brain drain and talent capture are important issues globally, and especially crucial in countries such as Malaysia and Singapore, which aspire to be innovation-driven advanced economies. This book provides a thorough analysis of the impact of brain drain on middle-income Malaysia and high-income Singapore, where the political salience of the problem in both countries is high. It discusses the wider issues associated with brain drain, such as when rich countries increase their already plentiful stocks of, for example, medical practitioners and engineers at the expense of relatively poor countries, examines the policies put in place in Malaysia and Singapore to counter the problem and explores how the situation is further complicated in Malaysia and Singapore because of these countries’ extensive state interventionism and sociopolitical tensions and hierarchies based on ethnicity, religion and nationality. Overall, the book contends that talent enrichment initiatives serve to construct and secure privilege and ethnic hierarchy within and between countries, as well as to reinforce the political power base of governments.

The past two decades have witnessed far-reaching socioeconomic and political changes in Asia, such as the growing intraregional flows of capital, goods, people, and knowledge, the rise of China as the world’s second largest economy, and its increasing influence in Southeast Asia, intensified US–China confrontations in the global arena, and the onslaught of the global Covid-19 pandemic. Focusing on multidimensional interactions (including geopolitical and economic relationships, diaspora engagement, and knowledge exchange) between China and Southeast Asia, this book argues that an interwoven perspective of the political economy, transnational governance, and regional networks serves as an effective analytical framework for deciphering these transformations as well as their global and theoretical implications. Drawing upon a wide range of primary data and engaging with the latest interdisciplinary scholarship on contemporary Asia, this book’s thought-provoking and nuanced analyses will appeal to scholars and students in Chinese and Southeast Asian studies, international political economy, international relationships, ethnic and migration studies, and public governance.

This book presents the future development of Malaysia. It puts together building blocks to achieve a better future. These blocks are poverty and income inequality, population, demography and urbanization, growth and technological progress, education, human capital and skills, finance, labor, the environment, and health care. It examines the reasons for the decline in the agricultural sector with an emphasis on food security. It discusses Malaysia’s economic growth and structural change compared to some of the Northeast East Asian and Southeast Asian countries. It explains the projections of population and demographic change and its bearing on government policies. It evaluates the country’s education sector and discusses the strategies to improve its role in the country further. It argues for replacing ethnic-based approaches with a needs-based system for the future direction to build a plural Malaysia. This insightful book is of interest across several fields, including demography, economic development, and urbanization.

The 2018 Malaysian General Election will stand as a major defining event in Malaysian history, when the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition unexpectedly lost power in the country they had ruled for over half a century. This volume brings together scholars who assess one fundamental factor that brought about this game-changing event in Malaysian politics: intra-elite feuding in the leading Malay-based political parties. This study provides an analysis of individual state politics as well as national trends shaped by the actions of leaders in government and the opposition. An indispensable guide for scholars studying the politics of Malaysia and of Southeast Asia more broadly, it will be of great interest for all readers with an interest in Malaysian politics.

To date, most studies of Malaysia’s aboriginal people, the Orang Asli, have studied the community in either the rural or forest settings. This book, however, outlines the dynamics of Orang Asli migration to Kuala Lumpur – Malaysia’s most urbanised region – and explores the lived experiences of these individuals in the urban space. The book begins by charting the history of the Orang Asli under British colonial rule followed by the community’s experiences under the Malaysian government, in an attempt to provide a deeper understanding of the economic and social complexities facing the Orang Asli today. Based on extensive original research, the book goes on to discuss the interesting changes taking place among urban Orang Asli migrants with regards to gender dynamics, while exploring the unique ways in which these urban indigenous migrants maintain close links with their home communities in the rural spaces of Peninsular Malaysia. The book concludes by assessing how research on the urban Orang Asli fits into broader studies of urban and contemporary indigeneity in both Malaysia and abroad.

Written by Sultan Nazrin Shah - the author of the highly acclaimed works Charting the Economy and Striving for Inclusive Development - this book is a pioneering study of the many economic and social changes in the natural resource-rich Malaysian state of Perak over the last two centuries. When globalization first took hold and international trade networks broadened and deepened in the first half of the 19th century, and a new capitalist world order emerged in the second, Perak was a key player. Its tin was in high demand in Western industrializing countries and foreign capital, labour, and technology propelled it forward. By 1900, Perak accounted for almost half of Malaya's tin output and a staggering quarter of world output, with its prosperity making it the Malay peninsula's commercial hub. Likewise, during the global rubber boom that began in the early 20th century as cars were mass produced for the first time, Perak was the largest rubber-producing state in the peninsula. This book brings together a range of key sub-themes - economic geography, the institutional legacy of colonialism, increasing federal government centralization, forces of economic agglomeration, and human migration - which drove Perak's fortunes in sometimes dramatic economic cycles and ultimately led to the collapse of its tin and rubber industries and the migration of many of its young and skilled. The book concludes by looking forward, analysing Perak's characteristics, and extrapolating lessons from formerly wealthy industrial centres originally blessed with natural resources but subsequently left behind by new waves of globalization, such as Cornwall and Sheffield in the United Kingdom, and Pittsburgh and Scranton in the United States. With a new vision Perak can regenerate itself and once again emerge triumphant against a tough global background-Covid-19, war, and deglobalization.

There are a variety of reasons underlying the remarkable development of science and technology (S&T), and innovation in post-1978 China. This book seeks to achieve an understanding of such development from an institutional or a political economy perspective. Departing from the literature of S&T and innovation studies that treats innovation as a market or enterprise's behavior in Schumpeter's sense, Sun and Cao argue that it involves politics, institutions, and the role of the state. In particular, they examine how the Chinese state has played its visible role in making innovation policies, allocating funding for R&D programs, making efforts to attract talent, and organizing critical S&T programs. This book appeals to scholars in S&T and innovation policy, political economy, innovation governance, and China studies as well as policymakers and business executives.

A complete and accessible overview of how politics and economics collide in a global context This text surveys the theories, institutions, and relationships that characterize IPE and highlights them in a diverse range of regional and transnational issues. The bestseller in the field, Introduction to International Political Economy positions students to critically evaluate the global economy and to appreciate the personal impact of political, economic, and social forces.

This title brings together contributions from around the world that analyse and reflect on the way curriculum is configuring and reconfiguring that world.

This book explores the theoretical and empirical relationship between democracy and governance in the Asia-Pacific region. Examining a variety of country cases and themes addressing the theoretical tension between governance and democracy, it illuminates how this impacts political and civil societies across the region. Analysing the character, structure and current trajectories of polities in the Asia-Pacific, democratic or otherwise, this book demonstrates that the role of civil society, political society and governance has significantly differed in practice from what has been commonly assumed within the international community. The book includes both theoretical investigations tracing the modern development of the concepts of governance, development and democratization as well as regional and country-specific observations of major issues, presenting comprehensive country-level studies of China, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines, Myanmar, Fiji and the Solomon Islands. Presenting fascinating insight into non-democratic governance, civil society and the rule of law in illiberal contexts, Governance and Democracy in the Asia-Pacific will prove to be of great use to students and scholars of Asian politics and society, as well as international and comparative politics.