Palgrave Series in Asia and Pacific Studies

This book analyses how authoritarian rulers of Southeast Asian countries maintain their durability in office, and, in this context, explains why some movements of civil society organizations succeed while others fail to achieve their demands. It discusses the relationship between the state-society-business in the political survival context. As the first comparative analysis of strategies of regime survival across Southeast Asia, this book also provides an in-depth insight into the various opposition movements, and the behaviour of antagonistic civic and political actors in the region.

The book emanates from the geopolitical and geo-economic churning and transformations set in motion by the unprecedented economic rise of China resulting in its expanding political influence across the region and the world. In both the economic and the security realms, the United States and China alike are increasingly seen contesting in shaping the Indo-Pacific regional order to their own advantage. 

This book unfolds the contours and dimensions of China’s responses to various multilateral initiatives of the US and its friends and allies like Japan, Australia, and India and, to some extent, even ASEAN. While China’s medium-term strategy envisages a non-hostile external environment in order to focus on domestic priorities; reducing dependence of littoral nations of the Indo-Pacific region on America while increasing their engagement and dependence on China. China's expanding reach and influence overseas has resulted in US-led initiatives being China-focused inviting a response from China where adverse reactions have become increasingly palpable.

Based on an extensive literature review, in-depth interviews, fieldwork, and anecdotal evidence, this text examines China’s engagement with East Africa (notably Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda) and considers these relationships through the lens of history, diplomacy, education, trade, media, cultural exchanges, and infrastructure. It probes the sentiments of pessimism, optimism, and pragmatism to explore perceptions about China in East Africa Africa. China’s ancient connection to the East African coast, as well as other incidents of contact in the past, are analyzed from the viewpoint of the deployment of Chinese soft power capital in current times.

The book notably examines the significant role China is playing in the construction of new infrastructure and housing throughout East Africa and addresses China’s involvement in the natural resources sector and the political debate surrounding the construction of gas and oil pipelines, its investment in the tourism sector, in the news media and information and communication technology sectors as well as in educational and cultural programs.

Through engaging media coverage of the public lives of Bollywood actresses, this book unveils understandings of idealized femininity and gender within this cultural context. Beyond its own borders, such a context is unique given the global relevance of content from and about Bollywood with members of the diaspora as well as those culturally Indian individuals that are no longer part of the diaspora. This book thus engages these actresses as global Indian celebrities who are framed and presented as contemporary urban Indian exemplars of gender via media coverage about them. The book therefore offers a robust and detailed case study of the Bollywood star system so as to demonstrate how the nuances of this unique cultural context influence the dimensions of postfeminism and celebrity culture therein.