Today Trends

Author: Editorial Board, ANU You could forgive Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for wondering whether the election he won in May 2022 was a good one to lose. Resurgent inflation and slowing growth , a winter wave of COVID-19 , and a post-pandemic budget crunch are giving his new Labor Party government a tough start. Luckily, it’s a truism of Australian politics that prime ministers can breathe a sigh of relief when their VIP jet lifts off from Australian soil. Notwithstanding the tumult of world affairs, foreign policy is one area where an Australian government can enjoy a near-endless political honeymoon if it so chooses. Australia’s parliament is a bit player in foreign policy, lacking the expansive role the United States Congress has in trade and foreign affairs. Big business and the farm lobby (not to mention the average voter) are overall well-disposed to free trade and liberal investment — unlike many countries where vested interests seek to block them. With a stro...

Author: Allan Gyngell, ANU Australian observers seem to think that the Albanese government’s foreign and national security policies will not differ much from those of its predecessor. The argument makes sense. Australian foreign policy has always had a strong bipartisan core — commitment to the United States alliance, engagement with the region and support for a rules-based international order. During the 2022 election campaign, the Labor Party was determined to let no exploitable gap on national security policy appear between it and the Morrison government. But while some of the early statements and speeches from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Defence Minister Richard Marles have strongly echoed those of their predecessors, the changes to come will be greater than expected. Albanese’s early trips to the Quad leaders’ meeting in Tokyo, to Madrid for the NATO summit and to Kyiv reassured allies that the new Australian government’s support for the United States and the Quad an...

Author: Salvador Santino F Regilme Jr, Leiden University. Alongside the global decline of democratisation , the spread of authoritarianism and deterioration of human rights in Southeast Asia continues at an accelerated pace. The region appears to be on a trajectory towards autocracy , with countries undoing their progress towards democracy. Indonesia — the region’s largest electoral democracy — has witnessed the deterioration of civil liberties , an expanded military presence in civilian politics and increased influence of political dynasties. Both Laos and Vietnam remain under their own forms of Leninist dictatorship, while Singapore has long been under a one-party authoritarian rule where political opposition is effectively curtailed. Brunei remains an absolute monarchy with severe problems in the harshness of its justice system. Cambodia has been a constitutional monarchy under the nearly four-decade personalistic rule of Hun Sen. There are only two countries in the region tha...

Author: Ryosuke Hanada, Macquarie University Prime Minister Kishida Fumio has promised to ‘substantially increase’ Japan’s defence budget in the ongoing process of revising key national security documents by the end of 2022. While some observers expect Japan to double defence spending over the next five years, the jury is still out — the ambitions of Japan’s defence spending hawks clash with certain fiscal realities. Kishida has so far prudently avoided numerical targets, a ‘2 per cent of GDP’ target in his official remarks. During his meeting with US President Joe Biden and the keynote speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Kishida only expressed his desire to ‘fundamentally reinforce Japan’s defence capabilities within the next five years and secure a substantial increase of Japan’s defence budget’. In April 2022, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) suggested the government increase the defence budget while ‘bearing NATO’s two per cent target in mind’. The LDP’s proposal ...

Author: Fran Martin, University of Melbourne In recent years, the Western media has depicted Chinese international students as either a worrisome source of political influence or an economic resource to be secured post-COVID-19. The gender perspective has rarely featured in discussions — even though a majority of Chinese students in Western countries, including Australia , are women. Chinese women currently studying abroad are a historically unique cohort. They are largely from China’s wealthier first- and second-tier cities, and belong to China’s most highly educated generation of women. Due to the combined effects of the one-child policy and the growth of China’s middle classes since the 1980s, they have unprecedented parental resources available to them to support their studies. In China’s post-socialist society, a powerful, state-endorsed neoliberal-style discourse of individual self-reliance and competitive self-advancement appeals to these well-resourced young women. ...

Author: Passant Mamdouh Ridwan, Fudan University The introduction of the Health Silk Road (HSR) and Digital Silk Road (DSR) in 2015 as part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) shows the expansion of China’s diplomacy from infrastructure and construction into the health and technology sectors. Multiple areas of cooperation increase China’s leverage and promote the longevity of the BRI framework beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. The HSR is an extension of China’s long history of medical assistance in various regions. Africa–China medical cooperation dates back to 1963, when China was the first country to send a medical team to Algeria. The COVID-19 pandemic has seen a new phase of medical cooperation with China investing in health care infrastructure and sending medical equipment, workers and pharmaceutical products overseas. The Chinese government is now focusing on which can benefit both recipient and donor countries. It can improve health care systems in poor regions and will creat...

Author: I Gusti Bagus Dharma Agastia, President University Three years after its formulation and wide acceptance, progress on fulfilling the objectives set out by the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP) remains slow. The AOIP lacks the teeth to deal with the increasing great power rivalry that has come to characterise the Indo-Pacific, so it simply continues to be an aspirational document . Flexibility and inclusivity are the AOIP’s greatest strengths, but neither make the AOIP operational. The AOIP was formulated to ‘guide cooperation’ and ‘promote an enabling environment for peace, stability, and prosperity’ while ‘upholding the rules-based regional architecture’ — but it does not specify how to achieve this. Answering the how is left to ASEAN, its member states and external partners. But coordination remains a fundamental hurdle to overcome. Without proper operationalisation, the AOIP risks becoming another redundant contribution to the trove of other fruitless ASEAN do...

Author: Melissa Conley Tyler, AP4D and Alexandre Dayant, Lowy Institute Investment in Pacific infrastructure has become an area of geopolitical competition. The landscape includes multilateral development banks, China’s Belt and Road Initiative , the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) and minilateral initiatives such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue . In this crowded space, Australia should take an approach that judges proposed infrastructure investments by their impact on service delivery. The exception is in the physical infrastructure required to build Pacific digital connectivity. Australia remains the biggest aid donor to the Pacific. But, in contrast to China, Australian investments in the region are not always visible . This led to an increased focus on infrastructure investments. Many in the development community have argued that physical infrastructure cannot stand alone without concurrent investments in social infrastructure, esp...

Author: Kazuhiko Togo, University of Shizuoka The assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe on 8 July 2022 was a shock for Japan, but the longest-tenured head of government after WWII leaves behind a significant legacy. One of Abe’s most important policy objectives was to shift the interpretation of the post-war pacifist constitution — as embodied in the preamble and Article 9. Abe knew revising Japan’s constitution was politically sensitive, so he focused on legislative decisions as an avenue for change. Immediately after Abe resumed power in 2012, he raised the issue of collective self-defence. Article 9, as it was interpreted, only allowed for the right of individual self-defence and prohibited the use of collective force. This meant that Japan could only engage in logistical support of US military activities within its region. It took Abe years, from 2013–2016, to change that interpretation by law. The change means that the Japanese Self-Defence Forces can be mobilised...

Author: Yu Sheng, Peking University China has made great efforts to meet increasing domestic food demand over the past four decades. From 1978–2021, China’s real agricultural output grew on average 5.4 per cent a year (over five times the population growth), with increased diversification towards high protein and high-value products. Yet a substantial gap remains between food demand and domestic supply — and is expected to increase. In 2021, net imports of grains were 165 million tonnes, including 96.5 million tonnes of soybeans (58.6 per cent) and 10.4 million tonnes of cooking oils (6.3 per cent) and 28.35 million tonnes of corn (35.1 per cent), accounting for around a quarter of domestic production. Given their high-quality protein and relatively low production costs, aquaculture products are seen as having higher economic value than the livestock industry — both as food and substitutes for feed grains. This makes aquaculture a prioritised industry in China — the world’s biggest ...