Today Trends

Author: Yasuo Takao, Curtin University Japan’s House of Councillors (upper house) election was held on 10 July 2022, placing 125 of the country’s 284 upper house seats up for grabs. Japanese newspapers ran headlines celebrating the record number of women who won seats. But this praise may not stand up to close scrutiny. A record 181 female candidates ran for office in the upper house election, accounting for 33 per cent of all candidates who ran. This new record came very close to the government’s 35 per cent target by 2025 as part of the Fifth Basic Plan for Gender Equality . Female candidates subsequently won 28 per cent of the 125 contested seats. This brought the total number of female lawmakers , including those whose seats were uncontested in this election, to a new high of 64. Candidate selection, including the decision to put forward a female lawmaker, is based on political considerations and party ideology in Japan. The Japan Communist Party (JCP) has a long history of s...

Author: Kevin Nielsen M Agojo, CityU During the regime of former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippine National Police (PNP) played an instrumental role as ‘chief executioner’ in the war on drugs. By securitising the drug problem and elevating order over the rule of law , Duterte gave the PNP and vigilantes a carte blanche to kill suspected users and traders — exacerbating violence and injustice throughout the Philippines. Government data shows that a total of 239,218 anti-illegal drug operations were conducted during Duterte’s term in office, resulting in the confiscation of illicit drugs worth over US$1.6 billion. The government also reported a total of 6252 casualties, though the constitutionally independent Commission on Human Rights and International Criminal Court have both made higher estimates. Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr won the presidency in the 2022 election through a message of unity — with the help of authoritarian nostalgia , disinformation...

Author: Anyu Lee, Sichuan University and Fujian Li, China Foreign Affairs University As countries sought quick access to medical devices during the COVID-19 pandemic, they ran into roadblocks associated with different regulatory standards. These differences hampered China’s ability to provide supplies in a global system dominated by US standards. China took the lead in early 2020 by getting the pandemic under control and producing critical medical supplies. But regulatory obstacles and difficulties in cross-border transactions and payments caused serious delays in the delivery of Chinese medical products, impacting the global pandemic response. Variations in standards and regulations have increased non-tariff trade barriers in the medical industry and caused endogenous problems for traditional regulatory models when major public health crises emerge. The different policies adopted by countries during the pandemic also created difficulties in cross-border payments which hindered e-...

Author: Eduardo Pedrosa, PECC Before COVID-19 struck, there were warnings that the world was underprepared for a global pandemic. Since then, numerous reports have noted what needs to be done to avoid the tremendous cost to lives and livelihoods that the world has gone through. The common message is that being prepared is the most timely and cost-effective way to handle global health risks. The Report by the G20 High Level Independent Panel on Financing the Global Commons for Pandemic Preparedness and Response points out that the global health system is fragmented. It notes the major initiatives undertaken by the African Union and Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in fighting the pandemic — a regional capacity that the Asia Pacific lacks. Looking beyond COVID-19, an Asia Centre for Disease Control would complement the global system. ASEAN is one possible host for such an institution. But ASEAN members do not belong to the same World Health Organization office — so...

Author: Evan A Laksmana, NUS China is subjecting Indonesia to maritime grey zone tactics — competitive acts between states short of all-out warfare — in the North Natuna Sea. China pursues these objectives in the knowledge that Indonesia will fail to properly respond. The latest North Natuna Sea crisis between December 2019 and January 2020 saw the incursion of Chinese fishing vessels, backed by coastguard and maritime militia, into Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Indonesian maritime law enforcement officials claim these incursions have not stopped since then — they have simply become less publicised. China upped the ante in August 2021 after a Chinese survey vessel spent seven weeks conducting seabed mapping inside Indonesia’s EEZ. Jakarta has been relatively silent on the matter despite up to nine Indonesian navy and coastguard patrol craft observing the encroachment under apparent orders not to intervene. A December 2021 Reuters report suggests that China has effect...

Author: Melissa Conley Tyler, AP4D In his analysis of the early days of the Albanese Government, Allan Gyngell noted significant change in the Australian government’s approach to foreign policy. This might surprise those who watched an election campaign in which the Australian Labor Party (ALP) was at pains to show no difference in its substantive positions on national security and international relations to the Liberal–National coalition. Looking at the new government’s foreign policy, do we see changes of style or of substance? One of the wilder claims made during the election campaign was that a vote for the ALP would be a vote for China . Perhaps conscious of the dangers of such claims , the Albanese government has said over and over again that there is no change of substance in its policy on China. It explicitly states that the only changes will be in tone and that it will continue to stand up for Australia’s national interests . But according to Defence Minister Richard...

Author: Editorial Board, ANU Just as all national politics is local, all international politics is domestic. The intrusion of the domestic onto the international stage gets a bad rap — from Trump to Brexit to the Taiwan Strait. But individual countries’ activism in pursuit of domestic political and economic interests can be good for the international system. A keen eye for where national economic self-interest lies has been at the heart of the process of international economic integration and the institutions designed to further it throughout the Asia Pacific over the decades. The Australian governments that liberalised the Australian economy from the beginning of the 1980s saw domestic microeconomic reform, negotiating multilateral trade liberalisation in the GATT Uruguay Round and helping build a new multilateral architecture to liberalise trade and investment across the Asia Pacific as inseparable elements in a process of ‘making the world safe’ for a newly competitive post-indus...

Authors: Richard A Bitzinger, RSIS and Kenneth Boutin, Canberra Russia’s importance as an arms supplier to Asian states is likely to decline in the short term due to export constraints resulting from the Russia–Ukraine conflict. Russia’s need to use more of its own armaments in the Russia–Ukraine conflict, the sanctions imposed by the United States and European Union, and the perceived poor performance of Russian arms in the conflict itself may provide an opening for exports from competing arms suppliers including the United States and China. Russia’s arms industry has long depended on exports to Asia. Moscow’s two biggest arms customers are India and China. More than 61 per cent of Russian arms sales between 2017 and 2021 went to Asia and Oceania. China has in recent years acquired turbofans from Russia for its indigenous fighter jets, while also buying S-400 air defence systems, helicopters and naval guns from Moscow. While India has sought to diversify its arms procurement — pa...

Author: Prem Singh Gill, Thammasat University Thailand has been a popular expatriate destination for investment and retirement for decades. But foreign land ownership has long been restricted. Foreigners can own no more than 49 per cent of any condominium development and are restricted from owning most freehold estates. Yet Thailand is keen to attract wealthy international investors — particularly those from China. Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-O-Cha proposed a policy that would allow foreigners to own land for residential use on 15 July 2022. Thai officials claim this will boost the economy by luring wealthy foreigners to spend and invest in the country. Investing 40 million baht in Thai property, securities or funds for a period of at least three years is now one of many preconditions for foreign nationals to own up to 1 rai (approximately 1,600 square metres) of land from September 2022. Still, there are other ways foreigners can acquire rights to land — including thr...

Authors: Demas Nauvarian and Putu Shangrina Pramudia, CSGS On 26 July 2022, Indonesian President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in China. The meeting was a surprise given Beijing’s strict zero-COVID-19 policy. A main outcome was the renewal of the memorandum of understanding on cooperation between Indonesia’s Global Maritime Fulcrum (GMF), a framework to to turn Indonesia into a global maritime hub, and China’s Maritime Silk Road under its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The visit and agreement seem to demonstrate Jokowi’s commitment to his cooperative GMF vision. Said to be Indonesia’s maritime cooperation strategy, the GMF received support from India, Australia, Japan, the United States and China when presented at the East Asia Summit in November 2014. Others argued that the GMF was Indonesia’s ‘ middle power strategy ’ — to strengthen economic cooperation with China while keeping Washington engaged in Indo Pacific security — in response to great powe...