Regional financial cooperation in East Asia is proceeding with unprecedented intensity. Latest developments include creation by the regional central bankers group of two Asian bond funds and the launching of an Asian Bond Market Initiative by the finance ministers of ASEAN + 3 (China, Japan, South Korea). Some observers continue to attribute such cooperation to sharpened antagonism between East Asia and the West since the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. But this view overlooks a key internal driver: China's remarkable shift toward a more proactive stance toward regional cooperation. Current 2005 East Asian financial cooperation is motivated by factors that differ considerably from those observed in the immediate aftermath of the Asian financial crisis and with implications that extend beyond East Asia.

Jennifer Amyx is a 2004-2005 Shorenstein Fellow at the Asia-Pacific Research Center. She is the author of Japan's Financial Crisis: Institutional Rigidity and Reluctant Change (2004), articles on East Asian financial cooperation, and a book-in-progress on the latter topic. Since earning a Stanford PhD in political science in 1998 she has held fellowships at Australian National University and been a visiting scholar at several Japanese financial policy and research institutions including the Bank of Japan.

China's rapid growth and increasingly close integration with world markets is transforming Northeast and Southeast Asian regional production and trade. Southeast Asia's relatively resource-abundant economies are expected to lose comparative advantage in low-skill, labor-intensive manufacturing activities while gaining comparative advantage in natural resource products. The latter shift will increase incentives to exploit and export the products of forestry, fisheries, and agriculture.

What are the implications for long-run growth and welfare, particularly in the poorest and least industrialized economies, including Indonesia and Vietnam? How will this trend interact with the other major phenomenon sweeping through Southeast Asia, i.e., decentralization? With reduced national authority and minimal local accountability, the potential for disastrous rates of resource exploitation is high. A race to liquidate natural resource assets, if sufficiently pronounced, could expose parts of the region to a new variant of the "natural resource curse" - the idea that resource-abundant economies grow more slowly than others.

Ian Coxhead is an economist and serves as director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His specialty is the economic development of Southeast Asia. His many publications on trade, development and the environment include The Open Economy and the Environment: Development, Trade and Resources in Asia (2003, with Sisira Jayasuriya). Prof. Coxhead's current research features the impacts of globalization, regional growth, and domestic policy reforms on the structures of production and employment, issues of poverty and the environment, and the exploitation of natural resources in Vietnam and the Philippines.

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is Indonesia's new president. He and his vice presidential running mate, Jusuf Kalla, were elected by a landslide on 20 September 2004 and inaugurated one month later. On 18 November, when Prof. Liddle speaks, the new government will have been in office for nearly a month. What can be said about its performance to date - and in the future? Prof. Liddle will cover a range of topics related to the new leadership in Jakarta, including the prospects for democratic consolidation.

R. William Liddle is a well-known Indonesia specialist. He has written about Indonesian politics since the early 1960s. His recent scholarly publications include: "Indonesia's Approaching Elections: Politics, Islam, and Public Opinion" (with Saiful Mujani), Journal of Democracy (January 2004) and "Indonesia's Democratic Transition: Playing by the Rules," in Andrew Reynolds, ed., The Architecture of Democracy (2002). Prof. Liddle writes and speaks often for international and Indonesian media.

Bahtiar Effendy has written widely on Islam and politics in Indonesia. His latest book is Islam and the State in Indonesia (2003). He is deputy director of the Institute for the Study and Advancement of Business Ethics. He also co-hosts a popular Indonesian television talk show on public affairs.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard's government has strongly reaffirmed the ANZUS (Australia-New Zealand-US) alliance and his country's cultural ties to Europe. Critics have replied that these policies impede the development of Australian relations with Southeast Asia, especially now that the US is so unpopular in much of the region. How valid is the critique? And how will likely trends in Southeast Asia and the outcome of the American presidential election affect Australia's search for a balance between its proximity to Asia and its alliance with America? In addition to addressing these questions, Dr. Engel will argue that in making foreign policy, identity politics need not be sacrificed to or precluded by pragmatic interest. In Southeast Asian international relations, rhetoric and realism hardly rule each other out.

Dr. David Engel's responsibilities at the Australian Embassy in Washington include policies toward Southeast Asia. He has directed the Indonesia section of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (2001-03) in Canberra, served in Jakarta (1998-2001) and Phnom Penh (1993-95), and worked on Australia's relations with Vietnam and Laos as well. He received his PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 1989.

This is the Forum's 1st seminar of the 2004-2005 Academic Year

This project seeks to provide a comprehensive review of the study of Southeast Asian politics. It intends to develop state of the art essays on most of the issues of established relevance in comparative politics, governance, development, and social structure. It aims to do so through a sharply focused conversation revolving around theory-building, research methodology, and comparative analysis. The end-result of this project will be an edited book at a university press. In the interim, a workshop will be held on June 18, 19, 2004 under the auspices of the Southeast Asia Forum at the Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University.

Future historians will mark the first national election to be held in Malaysia since the retirement of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad (1981-2003) as a watershed in the country's political history. Among key questions circulating in the run-up to the voting on 21 March 2004 were these: Would the ruling National Front gain or lose votes and seats? (Surprise: gained greatly.) Would the opposition Islamic Party, now in control of two states, improve or worsen its position? (Surprise: worsened sharply.) Would KeADILan, the political party which emerged after the sacking of Anwar Ibrahim, gain or lose? (Surprise: lost badly.) Answers to other questions were still unknown: Would the election benefit Malaysia's current Prime Minister, Abdullah Badawi, at the congress of his political party later this year? What would the ruling coalition's landslide imply for Malaysian democracy, stability, and development? For Malaysia's role in the campaign against terrorism? For the country's relations with its neighbors and with the U.S.? (Surprise: Come hear Elizabeth Wong and find out.)

This is the ninth seminar of the 2003-2004 academic year Southeast Asia Forum.

Consider the paradox: Singapore's economy is well developed, yet civil society in the city-state has failed to generate significant pressure for greater openness and more democracy. Nor does Singapore appear to have been affected by the ?Third Wave? of democratization that has swept other parts of the world. Scholars have tried to account for the conundrum by noting the deterrent effect of extensive state power, including the Internal Security Act (ISA), which allows for detention without trial. The state in Singapore has been likened to a large banyan tree whose omnipresent foliage casts shadows so wide and deep that no other organisms can take root or grow.

In her talk, Prof. Kadir will challenge this explanation as overdrawn. She will question the extent to which the Sinagpore state has remained immune from societal pressures, and explore the increasingly complex dynamics of society-state interaction. Based on a review of different civil-society actors and actions, she will highlight two modes in which social groups are proactive toward the state: by engaging it through interest advocacy, and by resisting it through efforts to protect their own autonomous space. The conventional wisdom is partly correct: Civil society does suffer the stunting shadows of the banyan tree. Yet social pressures are being felt. Ironically, some of these pressures, far from undermining the state, have helped it to remain strong.

Suzaina Kadir, currently a fellow at the Asia Research Institute in Singapore, is writing a book on state power and religious authority in Indonesia.

Many have argued that the terrorist attacks on the U.S. in September 2001 and the bombings in Indonesia in October 2002 (Bali) and August 2003 (Jakarta) have revamped the security situation for America?s partners in and near Southeast Asia. Is this true? What security challenges do America?s partners now face in the region? Are these challenges so thoroughly domestic and political in nature that that they cannot be addressed by military force, or through military cooperation? And to the extent that military approaches are viable, are America?s Southeast Asian and Australian partners equipped and trained to undertake them? For example: How interoperable are the relevant Southeast Asian, Australian, and American forces? How well does Australia in particular fit into this picture? Is Canberra disdained by Southeast Asian governments as a ?deputy sheriff? of Uncle Sam? Should Washington develop meetings of defense ministers into an alternative to the so far unimpressive ASEAN Regional Forum? Or is hub-and-spokes bilateralism the better way to go? Should Washington try to upgrade its warming security relations with Singapore into a fully fledged security treaty along U.S.-Japanese lines? How should nontraditional security threats?not only terrorism but piracy, drugs, and people-smuggling?be factored into these calculations? Sheldon Simon is a leading American specialist on Southeast Asian security. The author or editor of nine books--most recently The Many Faces of Asian Security (2001)--and more than a hundred scholarly articles and book chapters, Professor Simon has held faculty appointments at George Washington University, the University of Kentucky, the University of Hawaii, the University of British Columbia, Carleton University (Ottawa), the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and the American Graduate School of International Management. He visits Asia annually for research and is a consultant to the U.S. Departments of State and Defense. He earned his doctorate in political science from the University of Minnesota in 1964.