Contested Citizenship in East Asia: Developmental Politics, National Unity, and Globalization

Theories of citizenship from the West – pre-eminently those by T.H. Marshall – provide only a limited insight into East Asian political history.

The Marshallian trajectory – juridical, political and social rights – was not repeated in Asia and the late nineteenth-century debate about liberalism and citizenship among intellectuals in Japan and China was eventually stifled by war, colonialism and authoritarian governments (both nationalist and communist). Subsequent attempts to import western-...