Today Trends

Author: Willem Thorbecke, RIETI Japan has used monetary policy to stoke inflation since Shinzo Abe became prime minister in 2012. But as inflation exceeds 8 per cent in the United States and Europe and 10 per cent in the United Kingdom, Japanese inflation averaged less than 2 per cent between January and July 2022. The question is why the Bank of Japan (BOJ) has failed to hit its inflation target despite purchasing 400 trillion yen (US$2.8 trillion) worth of government bonds over the last ten years. Japan has a long history of monozukuri, or manufacturing. During the post-war period, firms such as Toyota, Panasonic and Sony became world-class manufacturers. Competing in world markets forced them to innovate to satisfy consumer demand. Profits and wages increased as they succeeded — and out emerged the Japanese economic miracle. Many shocks then buffeted the Japanese economy. The global financial crisis was particularly devastating. Japanese industrial production fell by 35 per cen...

Author: Ernils Larsson, Uppsala University The assassination of Japanese former prime minister Shinzo Abe on 8 July 2022 brought to light the role that religious organisations play in Japanese politics. While the Unification Church was not directly involved in the incident, Abe’s shooter is outspoken about being motivated by the ties between Abe and the church. Although the incident has led to some debate about mental health and Japan’s ‘ lost generation ’, it has also reignited discussions about the role of religious organisations in contemporary Japanese society. Concerns about the public role of religious organisations were high following the 1995 sarin gas attacks carried out by the cult movement, Aum Shinrikyo , but data shows that these concerns have diminished over the last two decades. An NHK survey showed that concerns about the influence of religious leaders in politics fell from 65 per cent in 1998 to just over 45 per cent in 2018. The same survey showed a steady dec...

Author: Gary Hawke, Wellington Internal and external evaluations often differ in politics. Occasional appearances by political leaders overseas do not reflect the continual grind of local challenges and political rivalry. New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern benefitted from her image as a personable and articulate woman and gained support when she combined political office with motherhood. Ardern earned high evaluations — both in popularity polls and from informed commentators — for her response to the terrorist shooting at a Christchurch mosque in 2019. Her government’s initial communication about COVID-19 also resonated. Ardern’s ‘team of 5 million’ mantra was approved by all but a few contrarians. The costs and benefits of lockdowns and border closures were much less visible than low numbers of COVID-19 cases. The prime minister continues to be identified with these successes abroad. She has also been an effective leader of trade delegations. But the domestic context ha...

Author: Sayuri Shirai, Keio University The Bank of Japan’s (BOJ) monetary policy framework has been characterised by yield curve control since 2016. That involves the stabilisation of the 10-year government bond yield — the cost of borrowing for the Japanese government — at around zero per cent and a so-called negative interest rate policy in which -0.1 per cent interest is charged on a small portion of excess reserves. Massive quantitative easing is no longer the main element of the BOJ’s monetary policy, with the exception of expanding its balance sheet to cope with the pandemic-induced recession in 2020–2021. Many of its monetary accommodation tools, including most lending operations to commercial banks, treasury bills, stock exchange traded funds and corporate bonds, were terminated or are now undertaken infrequently — shrinking the BOJ’s balance sheet. The BOJ introduced flexibility into their 10-year bond yield target by introducing plus or minus 0.2 per cent of leeway in Jul...

Author: Mikael Gravers, Aarhus University 18 months after the Tatmadaw seized power, General Min Aung Hlaing and the junta are not inclined to negotiate with the National Unity Government (NUG) and the resistance he describes as ‘terrorists’. ASEAN’s five-point peace plan for the country is a failure and China merely worries about its investments in support of the regime. While the generals use visits from envoys from the UN and ASEAN to legitimise their regime, the NUG and the resistance are similarly unwilling to negotiate. The question is whether or not ASEAN and the other neighbouring states can afford to allow Myanmar to descend into total social and humanitarian chaos . It is critical for these states to recognise the NUG and help the resistance. The military misjudged the civilian resistance at the start of the conflict. The Tatmadaw’s decade-long indoctrination in the nationalist ideology of preventing national disintegration, protecting Buddhism and stopping foreign influ...

Authors: Robyn Klingler-Vidra, KCL and Yu-Ching Kuo, Kaohsiung The importance of semiconductors to economic security adorned newspaper headlines in 2022. As part of its technological competition with China, the United States has introduced a policy of ‘friendshoring’ its semiconductor production to secure its supply of high-end chips that enable daily life and stock the inventory of major technology firms such as Apple. The term friendshoring rose to prominence after a speech by US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in April 2022. Yellen proposed a shift towards ‘favouring the friendshoring of supply chains to trusted countries’, arguing that this would ‘lower the risks’ to the US economy and its partners. In an effort to boost national competitiveness , the United States passed the ‘ CHIPS and Science Act ’ in August 2022 to enhance domestic chipmaking capacity through major investment in regional centres and support for talent development. Washington’s efforts also include the Chi...

Author: Ryo Sahashi, University of Tokyo The globalised world is suffering and the liberal international order is at risk. The pandemic and US–China technology rivalry are eroding transnational production and labour mobility networks. Democracies are in retreat in a growing number of countries where authoritarian leaders are undermining political institutions. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has dashed confidence in the liberal international order put in place after World War II. Distrust has come to dominate relations among major powers and the foundations of international cooperation are weakened. A protracted Russia–Ukraine war now seems inevitable. There is a call for more dialogue in US–China relations, but it is unlikely that the United States will loosen its hard-line stance towards China any time soon. China’s military power, scientific and technological capabilities, and the influence it exerts on the back of these capabilities have rung alarm bells. Concern about human righ...

Author: Levi McLaughlin, NCSU On 14 July 2022 , Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced plans to hold a state funeral for his predecessor Shinzo Abe , who was gunned down while campaigning for the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on 8 July. In the weeks that followed, this funeral plan grew unpopular. A surge of revelations flooded broadcast and social media about Abe and his family’s generations-long connections with the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification — a South Korea-based religion formerly known as the Unification Church (UC). Public sympathy has seemingly swung in favour of Abe’s accused assailant, Tetsuya Yamagami , who killed the former prime minister as an act of revenge against church leaders who reportedly pressured his family into bankruptcy by convincing his mother to make ruinous donations. Japanese media has been dominated by updates about politicians’ links to the Unification Church. They have unveiled the success of the church in appealin...

Authors: John Walsh, Krirk University, Trung Quang Nguyen and Burkhard Schrage, RMIT Vietnam Foreign direct investment in Vietnam continues to increase, rising from US$11.57 billion in July to US$12.8 billion in August 2022, signalling the country’s recovery from COVID-19. The growth is partly due to Hanoi’s consistent efforts to provide a safe and welcoming environment for foreign business through Special Economic Zones (SEZs) — ensuring companies have access to a local workforce in favourable conditions. There is a new impetus to invest in Vietnam due to the disruption in supply chains from China’s zero-COVID-19 policy, the threat of Chinese aggression towards Taiwan and Beijing’s strengthening ties with Russia. Taiwan’s electronic manufacturing giant Foxconn plans to increase its in-country presence , with first-ever plans to manufacture Apple Watches and MacBooks in Vietnam. Yet South Korea remains the country’s largest investor and Samsung Electronics  remains its most...

Author: Jiro Yamaguchi, Hosei University The assassination of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe has shed light on a concerning relationship between the Unification Church and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). The suspected assassin, Tetsuya Yamagami, harboured a grudge against the church because of the significant donations made by his mother that left his family bankrupt. Tetsuya Yamagami is one of many victims of the Unification Church’s questionable relationship with extravagant donations. The church’s potentially criminal activities have frequently been reported in the media since the 1980s. Still, Abe delivered a video message at an event hosted by an affiliated group of the church, during which he praised its leader. The church has had close connections with LDP lawmakers since the time of former prime minister Nobusuke Kishi (1957–1960), Abe’s grandfather. Kishi and the church found common ground in the fight against communism. After seeing the video messag...

Author: Editorial Board, ANU At times during the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, it seemed that the Philippines’ foreign policy was to not have much of a policy at all. After Duterte’s election in 2016, Manila’s approach towards its most important international relationships was pulled in different directions by personalities, politics, and the tensions between the interests at stake in its relationships with China and the United States. A big variable was the president himself, whose madcap governing style extended to how he handled the management of these two critical partnerships. The Philippines wasn’t by any means unique in this regard. What appear to be Southeast Asian states’ finely calculated strategies of hedging and balancing amid great-power competition are, when scrutinised closely on the ground, often a process of trial and error in which policy fights are shaped by domestic economic, and even personal, interests and short political time horizons. The Philippines was d...