From tariff wars to torn-up trade agreements, Michael Beeman explores America's recent and dramatic turn away from support for freer, rules-based trade to instead go its own new way. Focusing on America's trade engagements in the Asia-Pacific, he contrasts the trade policy choices made by America's leaders over several generations with those of today-decisions that are now undermining the trading system America created and triggering new tensions between America and its trading partners, allies and adversaries alike.

With keen insight as a former senior U.S. trade official, Beeman argues that America's exceptionally deep political divisions are driving its policy reversals, giving rise to a new trade policy characterized by zero-sum beliefs about the kind of trade America wants with the world and about new rules for trade that it wants for itself. With enormous implications for the future of regional and global trade, this timely analysis unravels the implications of America's seismic shift in approach for the future of the rules-based trading order and America's role in it.

Walking Out is essential reading for anyone interested in the domestic and international political economy of trade, international relations, and the future of America's role in the global economy.

Like in many other states worldwide, democracy is in trouble in South Korea, entering a state of regressionin the past decade, barely thirty years after its emergence in 1987. The society that had ordinary citizensleading candlelight protests demanding the impeachment of Park Geun-Hye in 2016-17 has becomepolarized amid an upsurge of populism, driven by persistent structural inequalities, globalization, and therise of the information society.

The symptoms of democratic decline have been increasingly hard to miss: the demonization of politicalopponents, erosion of democratic norms, and the whittling away of the courts' independence. Perhapsmost disturbing is that this all took place under a government dominated by former pro-democracyactivists. Will the election victory of opposition leader Yoon Suk-Yeol end this democratic erosion, or willthe rift between South Korea's progressives and conservatives only deepen with the next administration?

The contributors to this volume trace the sources of illiberalism in today's Korea; examine how politicalpolarization is plaguing its party system; discuss how civil society and the courts have become politicized;look at the roles of inequality, education, and social media in the country's democratic decline; andconsider how illiberalism has affected Korea's foreign policy.

Imperfect Partners is a unique hybrid - part memoir, part foreign policy study of U.S. relations with Southeast Asia, a critically important region that has become the central arena in the global U.S.-China competition. From the People Power revolt in the Philippines to the opening of diplomatic relations with Vietnam, from building a partnership with newly democratic Indonesia to responding to genocide in Myanmar and coups in Thailand, Scot Marciel was present and involved. His direct involvement and deep knowledge of the region, along with his extensive policymaking work in Washington, allows him to bring to life the complexities and realities of key events and U.S. responses, along with rare insights into U.S. foreign policy decisionmaking and the work of American diplomats in the field.

In 2009, while working on a PhD in Seoul, Andray Abrahamian visited North Korea, a country he had studied for years but never seen. He returned determined to find a way to work closely with North Koreans. Ten years and more than thirty visits later, Being in North Korea tells the story of his experiences setting up and running Choson Exchange, a non-profit that teaches North Koreans about entrepreneurship and economic policy.

Abrahamian was provided a unique vantage into life in North Korea that belies stereotypes rampant in the media, instead revealing North Koreans as individuals ranging from true believers in the system to cynics wishing the Stalinist experiment would just end; from introverts to bubbly chatterboxes, optimists to pessimists. He sees a North Korea that is changing, invalidating some assumptions held in the West, but perhaps reinforcing others.

Amid his stories of coping with the North Korean system, of the foreigners who frequent Pyongyang, and of everyday relationships, Abrahamian explores the challenges of teaching the inherently political subject of economics in a system where everyone must self-regulate their own minds; he looks at the role of women in the North Korean economy, and their exclusion from leadership; and he discusses how information is restricted, propaganda is distributed and internalized, and even how Pyongyang's nominally illicit property market functions. Along with these stories he interweaves the historical events that have led to today's North Korea.

Drawing on the breadth of the author's in-country experience, Being in North Korea combines the intellectual rigor of a scholar with a writing style that will appeal to a general audience. Through the personal elements of a memoir that provide insights into North Korean society, readers will come away with a more realistic picture of the country and its people, and a better idea of what the future may hold for the nation.

Demographic transition, along with the economic and geopolitical re-emergence of Asia, are two of the largest forces shaping the twenty-first century, but little is known about the implications for innovation. The countries of East Asia have some of the oldest age structures on the planet: between now and 2050, the population that is age 65 and older will increase to more than one in four Chinese, and to more than one in three Japanese and Koreans. Other economies with younger populations, like India, face the challenge of fully harnessing the demographic dividend from large cohorts in the working ages.

This book delves into how such demographic changes shape the supply of innovation and the demand for specific kinds of innovation in the Asia-Pacific. Social scientists from Asia and the United States offer multidisciplinary perspectives from economics, demography, political science, sociology, and public policy; topics range from the macroeconomic effects of population age structure, to the microeconomics of technology and the labor force, to the broader implications for human well-being. Contributors analyze how demography shapes productivity and the labor supply of older workers, as well as explore the aging population as consumers of technologies and drivers of innovations to meet their own needs, as well as the political economy of spatial development, agglomeration economies, urban-rural contrasts, and differential geographies of aging.

North Korea is consistently identified as one of the world's worst human rights abusers. However, the issue of human rights in North Korea is a complex one, intertwined with issues like life in the North Korean police state, inter-Korean relations, denuclearization, access to information in the North, and international cooperation, to name a few. There are likewise multiple actors involved, including the two Korean governments, the United States, the United Nations, South Korea NGOs, and global human rights organizations. While North Korea's nuclear weapons and the security threat it poses have occupied the center stage and eclipsed other issues in recent years, human rights remain important to U.S. policy.

The contributors to The North Korean Conundrum explore how dealing with the issue of human rights is shaped and affected by the political issues with which it is so entwined. Sections discuss the role of the United Nations; how North Koreans' limited access to information is part of the problem, and how this is changing; the relationship between human rights and denuclearization; and North Korean human rights in comparative perspective.

Innovation and entrepreneurship rank highly on the strategic agenda of most countries today. As global economic competition intensifies, many national policymakers now recognize the central importance of entrepreneurship education and the building of financial institutions to promote long-term innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic growth. Drivers of Innovation brings together scholars from the United States and Asia to explore those education and finance policies that might be conducive to accelerating innovation and developing a more entrepreneurial workforce in East Asia.

Some of the questions covered include: How do universities in China and Singapore experiment with new types of learning in their quest to promote innovation and entrepreneurship? Is there a need to transform the traditional university into an entrepreneurial university? What are the recent developments in and outstanding challenges to financing innovation in China and Japan? What is the government's role in promoting innovative entrepreneurship under the shadow of big business in South Korea? What can we learn about the capacity of services to drive innovation-led growth in India?

Drivers of Innovation will serve as a valuable reference for scholars and policymakers working to develop human capital for innovation in Asia.

Innovation and entrepreneurship rank highly on the strategic agenda of most countries today. As global economic competition intensifies, many national policymakers now recognize the central importance of entrepreneurship education and the building of financial institutions to promote long-term innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic growth. Drivers of Innovation brings together scholars from the United States and Asia to explore those education and finance policies that might be conducive to accelerating innovation and developing a more entrepreneurial workforce in East Asia.

Some of the questions covered include: How do universities in China and Singapore experiment with new types of learning in their quest to promote innovation and entrepreneurship? Is there a need to transform the traditional university into an entrepreneurial university? What are the recent developments in and outstanding challenges to financing innovation in China and Japan? What is the government's role in promoting innovative entrepreneurship under the shadow of big business in South Korea? What can we learn about the capacity of services to drive innovation-led growth in India?

Drivers of Innovation will serve as a valuable reference for scholars and policymakers working to develop human capital for innovation in Asia.

Imperfect Partners is a unique hybrid - part memoir, part foreign policy study of U.S. relations with Southeast Asia, a critically important region that has become the central arena in the global U.S.-China competition. From the People Power revolt in the Philippines to the opening of diplomatic relations with Vietnam, from building a partnership with newly democratic Indonesia to responding to genocide in Myanmar and coups in Thailand, Scot Marciel was present and involved. His direct involvement and deep knowledge of the region, along with his extensive policymaking work in Washington, allows him to bring to life the complexities and realities of key events and U.S. responses, along with rare insights into U.S. foreign policy decisionmaking and the work of American diplomats in the field.

Like in many other states worldwide, democracy is in trouble in South Korea, entering a state of regressionin the past decade, barely thirty years after its emergence in 1987. The society that had ordinary citizensleading candlelight protests demanding the impeachment of Park Geun-Hye in 2016-17 has becomepolarized amid an upsurge of populism, driven by persistent structural inequalities, globalization, and therise of the information society.

The symptoms of democratic decline have been increasingly hard to miss: the demonization of politicalopponents, erosion of democratic norms, and the whittling away of the courts' independence. Perhapsmost disturbing is that this all took place under a government dominated by former pro-democracyactivists. Will the election victory of opposition leader Yoon Suk-Yeol end this democratic erosion, or willthe rift between South Korea's progressives and conservatives only deepen with the next administration?

The contributors to this volume trace the sources of illiberalism in today's Korea; examine how politicalpolarization is plaguing its party system; discuss how civil society and the courts have become politicized;look at the roles of inequality, education, and social media in the country's democratic decline; andconsider how illiberalism has affected Korea's foreign policy.

From 2007 to 2011 South Korean filmmaker and newspaper reporter Hark Joon Lee lived among North Korean defectors in China, filming an award-winning documentary on their struggles. Crossing Heaven's Border is the firsthand account of his experiences there, where he witnessed human trafficking, the smuggling of illicit drugs by North Korean soldiers, and a rare successful escape from North Korea by sea.

As Lee traces the often tragic lives of North Korean defectors who were willing to risk everything for their hopes, he journeys to Siberia in pursuit of hidden North Korean lumber mills; to Vietnam, where defectors make desperate charges into foreign embassies; and along the 10,000-kilometer escape route for defectors stretching from China to Laos and to Thailand.

Student mobility in Asia has reached unprecedented levels. Inbound and outbound student mobility creates opportunities for Asian societies but also challenges, such as growing diversity and brain drain. This book examines these and other related, timely issues for the case of South Korea, a major player in the internationalization of higher education in Asia, and draws on the comparative experiences of other key players in the Asia-Pacific region-Japan, China, Singapore, and the United States. By doing so, it offers critical perspectives on the internationalization of Korean higher education as well as innovative, policy-relevant solutions for Asian countries undergoing similar challenges. It will be a valuable addition to the growing literature on comparative and international education in Asia and can aid university administrators and policymakers striving to internationalize their higher education systems to meet new challenges.

Will the nations of Southeast Asia maintain their strategic autonomy, or are they destined to become a subservient periphery of China?

This book's expert authors address this pressing question in multiple contexts. What clues to the future lie in the modern history of Sino-Southeast Asian relations? How economically dependent on China has the region already become? What do Southeast Asians think of China? Does Beijing view the region in proprietary terms as its own backyard? How has the relative absence, distance, and indifference of the United States affected the balance of influence between the US and China in Southeast Asia?

The book also explores China's moves and Southeast Asia's responses to them. Does China's Maritime Silk Road through Southeast Asia herald a Pax Sinica across the region? How should China's expansionary acts in the South China Sea be understood? How have Southeast Asian states such as Vietnam and the Philippines responded? How does Singapore's China strategy compare with Indonesia's? How relevant is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations? To what extent has China tried to persuade the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia to identify with 'the motherland and support its aims? How are China's deep involvements in Cambodia and Laos affecting the economies and policies of those countries? This rich collection, writes renowned author-journalist Nayan Chanda, answers these and other questions while offering fresh insights and new information and analyses to explain Southeast Asia's relations with China.

In the past fifty years, two factors have led to global population aging: a decline in fertility to levels close to-or even below-replacement and a decline in mortality that has increased world average life expectancy by nearly 67 percent. As the population skews toward fewer young people and more elderly who live longer postretirement lives, demographic changes-labor force participation, savings, economic growth, living arrangements, marriage markets, and social policy-are transforming society in fundamental, irreversible ways. Nowhere are these effects of aging and demographic change more acute-nor their long-term effects more potentially significant-than in the Asia-Pacific region. How will these developments impact the economies and social protection systems of Japan, South Korea, China, and, by extension, the United States?

To assess this question, Aging Asia showcases cutting-edge, policy-relevant research. The first section focuses on demographic trends and their economic implications; the second section approaches select topics from a global comparative perspective, including social insurance financing, medical costs, and long-term care.

Coverage of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) all too often focuses solely on nuclear proliferation, military parades, and the personality cult around its leaders. As the British ambassador to North Korea, John Everard had the rare experience of living there from 2006, when the DPRK conducted its first nuclear test, to 2008, just before Kim Jong Il's stroke. While stationed in Pyongyang, Everard's travels around the DPRK provided him with numerous opportunities to meet and converse with North Koreans.

Only Beautiful, Please goes beyond official North Korea to unveil the human dimension of life in that hermetic nation. Everard recounts his impressions of the country and its people, his interactions with them, and his observations on their way of life. He provides a picture as well of the life of foreigners in this closed society, considers how the DPRK evolved to its current state, and discusses the failure of current approaches to tackle the challenges that it throws up. The book is illustrated with striking and never-before-seen photographs taken by Everard during his stay in North Korea.

Half a century since the adoption of democracy in South Korea, the Korean people's high hopes for popular governance have not been met. There is widespread skepticism about what Korea's implementation of democracy has brought to the nation and whether it will be able to respond effectively in the future to the demands of an evolving society and world. What accounts for the conservative complacency of Korea's democratic system? Why do democratic administrations in Korea seem so incompetent? Do political parties in Korea legitimately represent the voice of civil society in legislating and policymaking on issues with a direct impact on the freedom and welfare of the people?

Taking an issue-oriented approach, renowned Korean political scientist Jang-Jip Choi endeavors to answer such questions as he examines the origins, structures, and conflicts of conservative democracy in South Korea as well as democratization's impact on the state, economy, and civil society.

Will China come to dominate global high-tech innovation?

In the future, perhaps. Today, however, Greater China-Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong-is focused on the quest for innovation. The dominant paradigm on the Mainland is one of execution, not innovation. Beijing now aims to turn China-historically an adopter of technologies from elsewhere-into a major technology creator. Self-reliance has become the government's watchword and its ultimate goal.

The talents and resources available are impressive. More Chinese young people are well-educated, international patents and research and development (R&D) spending are on the rise, and China boasts a growing presence in world scientific literature.

Still, negatives remain. China must overcome the legacies of a top-down, state-run research system that is largely disconnected from commerce, and an academic system not always supportive of independent scholarly inquiry. The government is working to change these outdated institutions, but such shifts do not occur overnight.

Taiwan and Hong Kong have followed different paths to high-tech innovation. Taiwan's route has been dominated by government but implemented by mostly small- and medium-sized firms, with help from its Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), a model for moving concepts to commerce. Significantly, Taiwan's companies maintain strong links to multinational firms both in the United States and in Mainland China. Taiwan's Hsinchu Science-based Park is seen as a model high-tech cluster throughout Asia and beyond.

Hong Kong has taken another road. While its formal R&D activity is small, it innovates in business models, particularly in logistics chains that reach into the Mainland and globally. It is a (largely unheralded) story of great success.

The big question is: When will Greater China's high-tech innovation have a major impact on the world economy?

Kim Jong-il once declared he would transform North Korea into a great and powerful country by 2012, apparently believing that nuclear weapons would compel the international community to engage on his terms. With no such prospect in sight and Kim himself now in failing health, his regime faces a multitude of intractable problems. Kim has apparently chosen his twenty-something third son as his successor, but will North Koreans accept this inexperienced young man as their leader, and will he embrace new thinking to solve the country's problems? Why do North Korean leaders resist reform of an economic system that impoverishes the people? Can a country so dependent on outside help continue to defy the international community?

In Troubled Transition, leading international experts examine these dilemmas, offering new insights into how a troubled North Korea may evolve in light of the ways other command economies and totalitarian statesfrom the Soviet Union and East Germany to Vietnam and Chinahave transitioned.

Scholar and senior journalist Kim Hakjoon provides a timely analysis of the rise of the Kim Il Sung family dynasty and the politics of leadership succession in Pyongyang, including Kim Jong Il's death and the advent of his son Kim Jong Un. Drawing on official North Korean statements and leaked confidential documents, journalistic accounts, and defector reports, the book synthesizes virtually all that is known about the secretive family and how it operates within a bizarre governing system. Particularly valuable for a Western audience is the author's extensive use of South Korean studies of the Kim family, many of which have not been translated into English. Dynasty is insightful reading for officials, journalists, scholars, and students interested in the Korean Peninsula and its prospects.

As the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) set about reforming its centrally planned economy, it faced the thorny policy question of how to reform its state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Should it support a shift from public to private ownership of the means of production? Such a shift would challenge not only the CCP's socialist ideology but also its very legitimacy. Mixing the business of corporate restructuring with the politics of socialism presented nothing short of a policy nightmare.

With policy-relevant acuity, the contributors to this wide-ranging volume address the questions about reform programs that have plagued China-and East Asia more broadly-since the 1990s. While China, Japan, and South Korea have all been criticized for implementing reform too slowly or too selectively, this volume delves into the broader contexts underlying certain institutional decisions. The book seeks to show that seemingly different political economies actually share surprising similarities, and problems. While Going Private in China sheds new light on China's corporate restructuring, it also offers new perspectives on how we think about the process of institutional change.