• The aim of this course is primarily to understand the rise of East Asia in the international system, focusing mainly on the period between the early twentieth century and the present.
The course will adopt an historical approach, beginning with an examination of the legacies of Japanese and European imperialism in East Asia, the establishment of US hegemony in the aftermath of the Second World War, and their implications for continued transformations in the regional and international system. The course will examine the rise of the authoritarian developmentalism in Northeast Asia, and these state forms will be compared and contrasted with that of Southeast Asian and, more recently, Chinese development. One session will be devoted to the role of labour repression and resistance in the region, and another will examine the linkages between the East Asian economic and financial crisis in the late 1990s and wider geopolitical transformations. We will also examine the emergence of regional institutions in East Asia and what they tell us about the changing power relations between
East Asia and the rest of the world. We will examine the changing nature of China-US relations after the recent global financial crisis and to what extent a ‘hegemonic transition’ may be under way. We'll also examine China's with the developing world, posing the question of to what extent a so-called “Beijing Consensus” may be emerging. Through the module, various analytical frameworks and debates concerning the development and geopolitics will be examined, including neoclassical economics, structural institutionalism, as well as Marxist, dependency and world system theories.

• Week 1 – Introduction.
• Week 2 – The Cold War and the Rise of US hegemony in East
Asia. This seminar explores the global conjuncture at the end of the Second World War. It provides an overview of the origins of
East Asian capitalism and the immediate role of the US in shaping the post-war East Asian order.
• Week 3 –Northeast Asian National Developmentalism. This seminar involves a critical examination of dominant explanations of East Asian industrialisation. This will involve an examination of the distinctive institutions of the Japanese, Taiwanese and South
Korean states, such as the state-bank-business nexus, within the context of the Cold War.

• Week 4 – Southeast Asia’s Dependent Development. From a comparative perspective, to what extent does the experience of Malaysia, Thailand and
Indonesia resemble that of the Northeast Asian? What are the legacies of
British colonialism as opposed to Japanese? What are the implications for the development-geopolitics nexus?
• Week 5 – Chinese ‘Market Socialism.’ This seminar provides an overview of China’s post-1978 development. To what extent does China resemble the East Asian ‘miracle’ states? This seminar will also examine the effect that China’s development has on the East Asian regional system.
• Week 6 – Labour and Capital in East Asia. To what extent have workers been affected by wider geopolitical and developmental experiences, and how in turn have they shaped them? What is the relationship between political authoritarianism and late development?

• Week 7 – The East Asian Financial Crisis. Was the East Asian crisis caused by factors internal to the East Asian countries, i.e. crony capitalism and the
“high-debt” model? Or was the crisis a consequence of “globalisation” and particularly of financial liberalisation?
• Week 8 – Capitalist Transition in Vietnam and North Korea. This seminar adopts a comparative approach to the transition towards market socialism in Vietnam and North Korea. It raises the question of why the process has been relatively more successful in Vietnam and how that can be explained with reference to the region’s geopolitics.
• Week 9 – East Asian Regionalism. In the first decade of the 21 st century, does the proliferation of regional institutions in East Asia signify an attempt to marginalise the political influence of the US? What are the barriers to EU-style regional community?

• Week 10 – Dissertation Supervision
• Week 11 – China, the US, and the Future of Global Hegemony.
What are the implications of the current global financial crisis for
China’s rise? To what extent can China’s engagement with the developing world can be seen as a case of ‘south-south’ solidarity or does China’s global search for resources represent a ‘new imperialism’? Is a ‘Beijing Consensus’ emerging and to what extent does China’s rise provide a new alterative to the neoliberal
Washington Consensus. Does the crisis signify the decline of US global power and an opportunity for China to exercise leadership/hegemony globally?
• Week 12 - Dissertation Supervision

By the end of the course, a successful student should be able to:
• Identify core themes and events in the historical development of the East Asian regional political economy since the early 20 th century.
• Relate empirical practices to the relevant theoretical approaches in the fields of IR/IPE and development, and to critically explain how such theories themselves in the power struggles that have shaped the region.
• To move beyond elite-centred accounts of international relations and development and to analyse the role of social forces in the formation of the East Asian regional political economy.
• Conduct a theoretically and empirically informed piece of original research study of a theme in East Asian development and geopolitics.
Seminars will be based on a combination of lectures by the seminar leader and student-centred discussion.
The module is assessed by a 3,500 term paper on a topic of the student’s choice, a 1,000 words book review, and an assessed group presentation.