Introduction

A unique feature of Cambodian temple complexes dating from the early to the late Angkorian periods was a small annex building (of brick and sometimes stone or laterite) with ventilation holes, built in the southeastern quarter of the main temple, which scholars have tentatively called either a ‘library’ or a ‘fire shrine’. These enigmatic structures and their function call for further investigation.

In what follows we tentatively seek to establish the original function of those structures, and its possible evolution from the early Angkorian through the Angkorian period, by analysing their peculiar architectural features against the background of the Sanskrit inscriptional record from the Khmer domains and Sanskrit transmitted texts from South Asia describing the observances and ritual practices of (Pāśupata or Pāśupata-influenced) early Śaivism. We do not deny the possibility that (some of) these annex buildings might have functioned as manuscript repositories, but rather argue that they served predominantly (or, perhaps, even simultaneously) as sacred spaces for specific Śaiva rituals, including ash-related rituals of the Pāśupata sect, as well as initiation- and homa-rituals.

Having first analysed the architectural features of the annex buildings and similar structures, for which we propose a threefold taxonomy, we review the interpretations thus far advanced by scholars on the basis of both archaeological data and Sanskrit inscriptions from the ancient Khmer domains, and start to elaborate our own in terms of a possible dual function for the buildings. Then we look for traces of Pāśupata practices and their underlying ideology in the Khmer temple architecture, in particular in the annex buildings under scrutiny, by matching the archaeological data with textual data, including Pāśupata texts and early Śaiva sources like the Śivadharmottara. We conclude by elaborating on the importance of sacred fire and the bestowal of the Śaiva gnosis by the ācārya in the Pāśupata initiation ritual, which may have provided one of the raisons d’être for the annex buildings, and by giving a brief survey of the archaeological finds recovered from some of those buildings, which would seem to support their use for homa rituals.

Architectural Features And Functions Of The Annex Buildings

Introduction

This chapter explores the religious and political significance of the goddess Prajñāpāramitā during Jayavarman VII’s reign (c. 1181–1220) from trans-regional comparative perspectives. The unique iconography of Angkorian Prajñāpāramitā helps to illustrate her relationship with other Mahāyāna cultic deities such as Avalokiteśvara and Tārā in known textual sources. Here, it is important to underscore that Khmer examples are not ‘outcasts’ in the iconographic genealogy of the goddess Prajñāpāramitā, but innovative yet politically sensitive creations that can help us understand the historical process behind the formation of a religious iconography. While a recent study on Prajñāpāramitā by Multzer o’Naghten (2016) puts a due emphasis on the Mahāyāna characteristics of the goddess Prajñāpāramitā, her importance in the Esoteric Buddhist tenets demands reconsideration. Exploring Prajñāpāramitā through a trans-regional lens supports the importance of Esoteric Buddhism in Jayavarman VII’s state operation that scholars like Hiram W. Woodward (1981, 2004) and Peter Sharrock (2009, 2012, 2013) have brought to light. It also helps to locate Angkor in the trans-regional network of Esoteric Buddhism of the 12th–13th centuries across South and Southeast Asia, from Alchi in the Western Himalayas to Java.

Prajñāpāramitā is the title of the eponymous text of Mahāyāna Buddhism, and the Prajñāpāramitā related texts have been extensively examined in the Buddhological studies. With more studies on the early manuscript corpus from Gandhāra underway, a refined picture of the early historical development of the Prajñāpāramitā as a Mahāyāna text has emerged (Falk and Karashima 2013; Harrison and Hartmann 2014; Harrison 2018). It remains unclear when the Goddess Prajñāpāramitā, the female personification of the famed text, and her worship appeared in the historical horizon. It seems to have been some centuries after the suggested date of the text’s formulation at the beginning of the Common Era. The earliest surviving identifiable image of Prajñāpāramitā may be a standing bronze statue of a two-armed goddess holding a manuscript in her left hand (von Hinüber 2007) (Fig. 5.10). Prajñāpāramitā and her worship was an important aspect of Pāla Buddhism in India between the 9th and 12th centuries (Kinnard 1999; Kim 2013). As an embodiment of a foundational Mahāyāna Buddhist text and the wisdom expounded therein, the goddess Prajñāpāramitā is frequently treated as a quintessential Mahāyāna goddess (Conze 1948, 1949–50, 1951; Shaw 2006).

Introduction

Herukas, fierce icons of the supreme Buddhas of the esoteric Vajrayāna (‘thunderbolt’) vehicle, emerged as key soteriological aids in the monasteries of northern India under the Pāla dynasty (8th–11th centuries). Recent archaeological research suggests that they achieved a second, quite different florescence as instruments of royal power in the 11th–15th centuries across Maritime Asia. Even as the Herukas headed towards extinction under armed Islam in the great monasteries of Bengal and Bihar in the late 12th century, the flight of the Indian Buddhist masters fuelled a sudden growth and refinement of Buddhism in Nepal and Tibet, while their monastic vehicle entered the courts of the kings and emperors defending their domains in Maritime Asia. Indian Buddhist strategists had apparently long aspired to overlay a Heruka maṇḍala on Śaiva holy sites to implement forms of ‘state protection Buddhism’ that would rival the hold of Śaivism over the courts of the subcontinent. This aspiration was to materialize only outside India.

This chapter brings together the patches of evidence scattered over the wide and varied geography of the southern seas to trace this royal rebirth of the Herukas in Maritime Asia. In so doing, it attempts to carry the baton forward for the final seaward leg of the history of fierce Buddhist deities that Rob Linrothe (1999) brilliantly traced across the subcontinent. He concluded with these notable remarks on the eight-headed, sixteen-armed Heruka ‘Hevajra’:

INTRODUCTION

The Global Methane Pledge was ratified at the end of 2021. While intense discussion of its significance dominated the climate discourse in North America and Europe, the reception of the Pledge in Southeast Asia was lukewarm. This paper aims to help the policy community understand four major aspects concerning methane emissions: basic science, global ambition, regional trends, and sector challenges.

In 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its First Assessment Report, in which scientists stated with certainty that human-caused greenhouse gases were accumulating in the atmosphere. One of these significant gases was methane. Since then, global methane emissions have increased by 17.4 per cent, reaching 8.3 billion tCO2e in 2018. Unlike carbon dioxide, which can persist in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, methane only lasts around 12–15 years before being broken down. Despite being emitted in smaller amounts, methane is a highly potent greenhouse gas compared to carbon dioxide. In fact, methane has been responsible for about 30 per cent of global temperature rise since the industrial revolution. Its relative potency is measured by its Global Warming Potential (GWP), a metric that reflects the global warming impact of each type of greenhouse gas relative to carbon dioxide over a particular time period. Over a period of 100 years, methane has a GWP of 27.9 —that is, 1 kg of methane has the same warming impact as 27.9 kg of carbon dioxide. Global greenhouse gas emissions measured in carbon dioxide equivalents consist of 74.4 per cent carbon dioxide and 17.3 per cent methane, making them the two most important greenhouse gases to tackle. Across a shorter time horizon of twenty years, methane has an even higher GWP of 81.2, making it particularly impactful on warming in the near future. Methane is thus a crucial factor in this decade’s challenge of achieving immediate and drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

SOURCES OF METHANE COME FROM VARIOUS SECTORS

Around 60 per cent of global methane emissions are human-caused, and this comes largely from agriculture, fossil fuels and waste. Agricultural emissions are mainly attributed to enteric fermentation (digestive processes in animals like cattle) and manure in livestock as well as rice cultivation, where methane-emitting bacteria grow in flooded rice paddies. In this article, estimates of animal agricultural production exclude eggs, the production of which does not have significant methane emissions.

INTRODUCTION

A lot have been published on the subject of democracy in Malaysia, yet there are few comprehensive survey-based academic studies on how Malaysians view the state of democracy, and, even rarer, in relation to election management and the country’s Election Commission (EC). Welsh (1996) on political attitudes among Malaysians in 1994 was one such study and based on a survey of 400 respondents, while the study by Muhammad Fathi Yusof et al. (2015) on public perception towards the EC is based on a small survey of seven questions among 1,104 respondents in 2014/15. Periodic and systematic international surveys on democracy have been conducted by the Asian Barometer of Democracy surveys, and Malaysia has been included since 2007 during its Second Wave Asian Barometer Survey (ABS). Thus far, three working papers or report with a focus on Malaysia have been produced from the ABS (Welsh, Suffian and Aeria 2007; Welsh Suffian and Aeria 2008;Welsh 2014). Otherwise, outputs from ABS have been in the form of cross-country regional studies among several Asian countries which include Malaysia (Chang, Chu and Welsh 2013, Chu, Welsh and Chang 2013, Huang, Chu and Chang 2013; Ikeda 2013; Lu 2013; Mujani and Liddle 2013; Park 2013; Wang and Tan 2013; Chu and Welsh 2015; Kang and Lee 2018). While cross-country comparative studies are useful in contextualizing political perception in Malaysia within an international context, they do not provide a detailed understanding of Malaysians’ perceptions on the EC and other state institutions, the management of elections, and the state of democracy.

This report is an analysis of the findings from a nationwide survey conducted with 2,627 respondents between March and April 2021. The objectives are to find out how Malaysian citizens evaluate the performance of the EC in managing elections, perceive the neutrality of the EC, and also how they perceive the state of democracy and of political authorities in the country. As the EC is one of the fundamental institutions in the operationalization of democracy, i.e., in conducting popular elections, public perception of its performance and function is best understood in the general context of the latter’s evaluation of the state of democracy and perception of the legitimacy of state institutions as a whole.

I am delighted that my book Indonesia’s Foreign Policy under Suharto: Aspiring to International Leadership (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1996) is now reissued with a postscript.

When the original edition of the book was published, I received feedback from many Indonesian scholars. I was pleasantly surprised. Not long after that Lembaga Penelitian, Pendidikan dan Penerangan Ekonomi dan Sosial (LP3ES), a leading academic publisher in Jakarta, asked for my permission to translate the book into Bahasa Indonesia. I gladly consented. The Indonesian version (Politik Luar Negeri: Indonesia di Bawah Soeharto) was to be published in early May 1998, a few weeks before the downfall of President Suharto. Therefore, I included a short postscript for the Indonesian edition, covering the last two to three years of his rule. I was informed that Politik Luar Negeri had become a major reference book for the politics and international relations courses at least at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta and Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta. I was so pleased that when I met some lecturers and graduates from these universities, they often discussed the book with me. I felt very honoured and encouraged.

In 2019, I received an unexpected request from an editor of the LP3ES in Jakarta that they wanted to reissue the Indonesian version of the book. He told me that there were still demands on the book. Students and scholars are still looking for the book. They asked me to write a new postscript for the book, but I did not have the time to do so as I was busy with my projects. I proposed to write a new preface, explaining briefly why the book, without revision, is still relevant to the present situation. The LP3ES agreed and the book was eventually republished in October 2019.

The reissuing of Politik Luar Negeri made me re-read the original version of Indonesia’s Foreign Policy under Suharto. The book was published when I was still teaching in the Department of Political Science at the National University of Singapore (NUS). It took me several years to complete writing the book. Two chapters had been published in Asian Survey before the book was published. I benefited from the discussions with friends and colleagues in writing the manuscript.

China’s Foreign Policy and Security Strategy

China’s continuing growth in power and influence is arguably the single most important question unfolding in international security and politics. By most measures, China has already completed a regional power transition, with the regional distribution of its capabilities and wealth changing rapidly over the past generation. For instance, China’s share of the Asia-Pacific’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew from 7 per cent in 1988 to 46 per cent in 2014, while Japan’s share fell from 72 per cent in 1988 to 24 per cent today. During this period, China’s GDP saw a thirty-fold increase to more than US$10 trillion and it is now the second-largest economy in the world. Its GDP per capita hovers at $10,000 and its military spending currently accounts for nearly 10 per cent of total global military expenditures.

A delicate balance of continuity and change in the Chinese leadership’s priorities appears to undergird its broader and longer-term foreign and security policy strategy. The regime continues to be guided by the overarching tenet that maintaining a peaceful and stable external security environment is essential for continued structural reforms, domestic growth and development. This core idea builds from Deng Xiaoping’s vision in the early 1980s where he concluded that the world was tending towards peace and development, that the likelihood for major, global wars were diminishing, and as such China could expect and benefit from a stable international environment to carry out its much-needed domestic reform and development. This basic principle was continued under Deng’s successors with such principles as the “new security concept” and “China’s peaceful development”.

Reaffirming these preceding strategic concepts, the current Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, presented the “Chinese dream” upon taking the helm. The concept has been linked to Xi’s call for the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”, achieved through “good external conditions for China’s reform, development, and stability”. The vision promotes two major aspirations that are of significance to the regime: first, the vision to build a “moderately well-off society” by this year, the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party; and, second, the vision of becoming a fully industrialized nation in under three decades, by 2049, the hundredth anniversary of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China.

In recent years, there have been more studies on the ethnic Chinese, especially with regard to their identities. There are a few in-depth studies on the Peranakan Chinese in Malacca (by Tan Chee Beng), Penang (by Ho Eng Seng), and Singapore (by Jurgen Rudolph). These studies are significant and have thrown new light on these Chinese. Tan Chee Beng has also done a general study on the Peranakan Chinese beyond the Straits Settlements.

Benefitting from the above studies, this chapter re-examines the Peranakan identities in Singapore and Malaysia, from the colonial era to the present. Was the Peranakan identity a sociocultural identity or a political identity or both? Was it a self-identity or an identity given by others? Were the Peranakan Chinese confined to the British Straits Settlements? The chapter also discusses the life experiences of the Peranakan Chinese after independence, what the present Peranakan identities are and what the future holds for them.

It is generally known that the ethnic Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia are heterogeneous. One of these groups, known as the Peranakan Chinese or Cina Peranakan, is also known as “Straits Chinese”, “Straitsborn Chinese”, and Baba (male Peranakan Chinese) and Nyonya (female Peranakan Chinese).

It should be pointed out that the earliest term used to call the local Malay and English-speaking Chinese was Straits Chinese or Straits-born Chinese. The term Baba also has early currency among this community, while the term peranakan came into use only in the twentieth century, especially after World War II.

Nowadays, Straits Chinese and Straits-born Chinese are used in the historical context, but Baba remains quite popular. Some writers and the Peranakans themselves use Peranakan and Baba interchangeably, but in fact they are not identical. For a detailed discussion on various definitions of these terms, see the previous chapter.

Typical Peranakan or Baba?

We often assume that the Peranakan or Baba in Malaysia constitute a homogeneous group. In reality, the Peranakan or Baba are heterogeneous. There is no typical Peranakan or Baba. Peranakan Chinese/Baba can be considered as a spectrum ranging from those who are most Malaynized (“localized”, as Tan Chee Beng calls it) to the least Malaynized. While the Penang Baba are the least Malaynized, the Malacca Baba are the most Malaynized. Malaynization involves the use of the Malay language and the adoption of Malay dress and cuisine.

The main thesis of this chapter is that in fighting a crisis, policymakers often sow the seeds for the next crisis. There are three sections in this chapter. Section 1 argues that COVID-19 made its appearance on an unstable financial stage and exposed the fractures and flaws of the present financial system, which we term as financialized capitalism. We briefly show how this system evolved historically, the defining features of financialized capitalism, and how it led to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Section 2 examines the monetary policies adopted to contain the GFC and their impact on the economy, society and politics. Section 3 looks at the monetary policies used to tackle the economic crisis arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, their impacts and how they are laying the foundation for the next financial crisis.

Section 1: Finance—An Unstable Stage

Many writers of different political persuasions (from right, to moderate, to left) commenting on the COVID-19 pandemic, agree that this crisis has exposed fundamental flaws and fractures in our society (see Financial Times 2020a; Friedman and Hatheway 2020; Varoufakis 2020). These include problems in the financial, economic, social and political systems. What are some of these fractures? The economy is weak and unemployment high, the financial system is fragile and volatile, political division is deep and widespread, social and economic inequality is at threatening levels, the environment is degraded and climate change looms ominously, spurring forest fires, rising sea levels, super hurricanes and floods.

To understand the problems we face today, we need to step back and look at history. Chapter 1 discusses some of these problems and places them in the historical context of the rise of the self-regulating market in a capitalist economy. In this chapter, the focus is on the place and the role of finance in the evolution of capitalism, and the role and impact of finance on society.

Stages of Capitalist Development

Finance has historically played an important role in the economy. Banks and moneylenders financed trade in the medieval era. Later they financed large-scale industrial development in Europe, the United States and Japan. Big finance also bank-rolled governments and the wars they waged.

The relationship between finance and economy occupies centre stage in Minsky’s analysis of capitalist development (Whalen 1999).

Introduction: The Dynastic History of Siam

Few instruments of power are as vital for the modern Thai state as the idea of a bounded nation-state and its corresponding history. To understand nationalism and nation-building in modern Siam, it is therefore crucial to look at how present-day national Thai History was achieved. The official history of Thailand is taught in schools and colleges as a ceaseless forward march of the nation, beginning in ancient times when the Thai people lived in China. The golden age of the mighty Kingdom of Nan Chao (Nanzhao) which they had established in Yunnan, was followed by a mighty fall and swift resurrection.

Driven out by the Mongols, the Thais entered mainland Southeast Asia. By the thirteenth century, they had established their first kingdom after freeing themselves from the yoke of the Khmer of Angkor. The Kingdom of Sukhothai was ruled by the benevolent hero-kings Si Intrathit (?1240s–?1270s) and Ramkhamhaeng (?1279–1298), who brought the Thais another golden age.

In 1351, the second kingdom was founded by King Uthong in the city of Ayutthaya. It remained the main centre of the Thais for more than 400 years, governed by another set of hero-kings (aided by very few women) such as Naresuan (1590–1605) and Narai (1656–88), until, in 1767, Ayutthaya was defeated and sacked by the Burmese. The Thais successfully fought back.

After the defeat of the eternal enemy from the West came the last and present Kingdom of Rattanakosin/Bangkok with ten great King Ramas of the Chakri Dynasty. Siam preserved her independence and became modern during the reign of King Chulalongkorn (1868–1910) who was followed, two generations later, by another great modernizer who steered Thailand through a troublesome time of change, King Bhumibol Adulyadej (1927–2016).

Following this national history of Siam, the story of Siam’s geo-body, as Thongchai Winichakul’s Siam Mapped (1994) deemed it, would appear neatly woven, linear, progressive, and easily traced back through lines of kings, dynasties and kingdoms.

The stage of trade facilitation implementation in each country is based on the UN Global Survey on Digital and Sustainable Trade Facilitation. This is divided into four stages, namely no implementation, pilot stage of implementation, partial implementation, and full implementation (UNESCAP 2021). The full implementation of a trade facilitation measure refers to full compliance with commonly accepted international standards, recommendations and conventions such as the Revised Kyoto Convention, UN/CEFACT Recommendations or the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA); it is implemented in law and in practice; it is available to essentially all relevant stakeholders nationwide, and supported by adequate legal and institutional frameworks as well as adequate infrastructure, and financial and human resources.

Partial implementation of a trade facilitation measure refers to partial compliance with commonly accepted international standards, recommendations and conventions; or the process of rolling out the implementation of such measure; or the implementation of such measure on an unsustainable, short-term or ad-hoc basis; or the implementation of such measure in some—but not all—targeted locations (such as key border crossing stations); or some—but not all—targeted stakeholders involved in the implementation of such measure.

The pilot stage of implementation of a trade facilitation measure refers to the implementation of such measure that is available only to a very small portion of the intended stakeholder group (or at certain locations). No implementation of a trade facilitation measure refers to the fact that such measure has not been implemented, but it may still include initiatives or efforts towards implementation of the measure.

Table A.1.1 summarizes key indicators for cross-border paperless trade measures in the UN Global Survey. For digital signatures to work, a trusted third party known as a Certification Authority is needed to issue digital certificates that certify the electronic identities of users and organizations. Some examples of this are the Controller of Certification Authorities in Malaysia and Singapore. If such a certification authority does not exist, the situation is regarded as No implementation.

An eventful twelve months saw Southeast Asia beset by a number of familiar challenges. In some respects, the year began where the previous left off, with the COVID-19 pandemic threatening to take more lives and cause further damage to regional economies as new variants of the virus circulated. Not unlike the preceding year, the pandemic hampered hopes for a return to a more normal diplomatic schedule comprising in-person meetings, with many having to continue being conducted over sub-optimal virtual platforms. Indeed, this state of affairs was used to explain the delay in the completion of the much-awaited Code of Conduct on the South China Sea between China and ASEAN, which was originally targeted for 2021.

At the same time, the year also witnessed several new—in some cases, unexpected—developments that further complicated the conduct of regional affairs. The election of a new president in the United States was met with, in some sense, a sigh of relief from regional states as it signalled a return to a more predictable and familiar—but by no means straightforward—tone and tenor in relations with Washington. Nevertheless, American re-engagement in the Indo-Pacific has also occasioned the emergence of new Washington-led initiatives in the region that created ripples that Southeast Asian states have had to adjust to. Arguably the biggest test for ASEAN over the last year, however, must surely be developments in Myanmar; specifically, how to respond to the seizure of power by the military and creation of the State Administration Council (SAC) government, whose credibility and legitimacy were challenged both domestically and internationally. To be sure, the question of how to manage the fallout from the military coup in Myanmar exercised ASEAN tremendously as the international spotlight shone harshly on the organization.

The Persistent Cloud of COVID-19

For the governments of Southeast Asia, there is no gainsaying that COVID-19—and its impact on their respective economies and societies—persisted as a hangover from the previous year.

Despite initial success in containing the virus via prompt and strict social distancing measures in some Southeast Asian countries, the appearance of the more infectious Delta variant quickly placed the region back on the defensive as governments scrambled to reimpose lockdowns and movement controls.