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Junyan Chen, Asymmetrical neighbors: borderland state building between China and southeast Asia, International Affairs, Volume 96, Issue 2, March 2020, Pages 556–558, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiaa046
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The past two centuries of colonization, independence movements and globalization have witnessed the spread of the nation-state from Europe to the whole world. This process crafted modern states and demarcated territorial boundaries, while leaving some ethnic groups residing across borders. Many newly independent states are multi-ethnic, and not all people have automatically accepted the political arrangements created by their respective central governments, or identified themselves as part of the national community. Political scientists and sociologists have distinguished the processes of statebuilding and nationbuilding, viewing the former as crafting state institutions and capacity, and the latter as creating a sense of belonging and identification. Across comparative research on both processes, one key question is why efforts at state- and nationbuilding are more successful in some countries than in others. Asymmetrical neighbors by Enze Han is an attempt to address this question. The book focuses on upperland south-east Asia, where Tai groups reside across the borders of modern-day China, Myanmar (Burma) and Thailand. The areas inhabited by the same ethnic group, such as Tai municipalities of Chiang Rung in China, Chiang Tung in Myanmar and Chiang Mai in Thailand, constitute a natural example of how state- and nationbuilding projects targeting the same ethnic group generate varying results.
