Today Trends

Author: Richard Katz, Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs Half a million people in Japan have bought the book Capital in the Anthropocene , which claims that the answer to climate change is to shrink the economy. ’Degrowth communism’ is what the author, a Marxist professor named Kohei Saito, calls his policy. If followed, it would keep billions of people in abject poverty while slashing living standards in rich nations. Were environmentalism to be associated with either communism or ‘degrowth’ — as a minority of environmentalists in the United States, Asia and Europe advocate — it would be the political death knell of the movement and a gift to the peddlers of fossil fuels. The problem with capitalism , Saito contends, is that it worships economic growth. The problem with growth, he claims, is that it inevitably brings on ecological disasters. While Karl Marx claimed that, under socialism, growth would create abundance galore while still protecting nature, Saito ...

Author: Melissa Conley Tyler, AP4D This week, Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Penny Wong, will be visiting Thailand. 2022 marks the 70th anniversary of Australia–Thailand relations, with a special logo of a kangaroo and an elephant ‘walking forward together’ created to celebrate the occasion. Significant effort is going into the bilateral relationship, including a joint plan of action to implement the 2020 Strategic Partnership having recently been announced . Complementing the work taking place at the official level, the Asia Foundation and Australian National University recently held a dialogue on strengthening relations in security, trade, climate and development. What are the prospects for and limits on increased collaboration between these two Asian middle powers? On the surface, the relationship is very positive . Thai Ambassador to Australia Busadee Santipitaks refers to ‘longstanding ties of friendship and cooperation ’, while former Australian ambassador Bill...

Author: Paul Heer, CFTNI The Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, released in February 2022, affirms that the United States will work through ‘a latticework of strong and mutually reinforcing coalitions’ to foster ‘the collective capacity’ of the region to confront 21st century challenges. To that end, Washington has played a leading role in promoting multilateral institutions and shared interests in the region. These efforts include the Quad — a dialogue process that combines Japan, Australia, India and the United States — and AUKUS — a security agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. In the economic realm, Washington has partnered with multiple countries in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), as a substitute for US membership in the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. The Biden administration also includes the Indo-Pacific in the Build Back Better World (B3W) P...

Author: Soyoung Kim, Nanyang Technological University South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s tendency to avoid uncomfortable questions and attack specific media outlets undermine his promised initiatives for enhanced communication. His open contempt for and persecution of media outlets that report on his flaws and failures are an attack on democracy itself. President Yoon was broadcasted asking ‘wouldn’t it be darn embarrassing for Biden if those idiots at [the] legislature don’t approve [the Global Fund]?’ This was captured by a pool of South Korean media and aired by public broadcaster Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC). In the face of low domestic approval ratings, Yoon’s spokesperson insisted that ‘idiots’ referred to the opposition-controlled Korean National Assembly, not the US legislature, and that he didn’t say ‘Biden’ but actually ‘nal li myun’, which can be understood in Korean as meaning ‘if it’s thrown away’. Putting aside the question of whether swearing at your o...

Author: Yvette To, CityU US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan and President Joe Biden’s pledge that the United States would defend the island have escalated tensions in the Taiwan Strait. At the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, President Xi Jinping stressed the importance of reunifying with Taiwan. The escalating US–China technology rivalry and global chip shortage make Taiwan’s role as a leading global supplier of semiconductors strategically and economically important to both powers. The question is what will happen to global chip production in the event of a cross-Strait military conflict. COVID-19 lockdowns have already disrupted global semiconductor supply. Since global semiconductor production capacity is highly concentrated in Asia, including in Taiwan, South Korea and China, a cross-Strait military conflict will crimp the global production of semiconductors. In a military confrontation, China might impose an embargo ...

Author: Artyom Lukin, Far Eastern Federal University Moscow’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine has ushered in a new geopolitical reality. The Kremlin and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) may become increasingly close, perhaps even to the point of resurrecting the quasi-alliance that existed during the Cold War. From the start of the Ukraine crisis, Pyongyang has unequivocally supported Moscow. The DPRK was among the five countries that voted against the UN General Assembly’s resolution demanding Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine. Pyongyang has repeatedly expressed its support for Russia’s actions, blaming the Ukraine crisis on the United States, NATO and Kyiv . Apart from Russia, Syria and North Korea are the only UN member states that recognise the Russian-sponsored republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. In retaliation, Kyiv severed diplomatic relations with Pyongyang, but ties were not substantial anyway. Kyiv’s Western allies were also of no concern to the DPRK...

Author: Yao-Yuan Yeh, University of St Thomas The ‘lying flat’ or tang ping movement is a phenomenon that emerged in China in 2021. It describes the generations born in the late 1990s and 2000s who, disappointed by their lack of social mobility and economic stagnation, have decided not to ‘not strive for their futures’. They do not want to follow the values of hard work, home ownership, marriage or living standards sought after by past generations.   Ever since the ‘lying flat’ movement resonated with younger netizens, the Chinese government has sought to put the fire out by restoring the ‘good old values’ of past generations. The question is why the movement has spread among Chinese youth despite forty years of economic prosperity. The reality is that Chinese GDP growth has steadily declined since 2010. GDP growth had already dropped from 10.6 per cent to 6 per cent before the COVID-19 pandemic. Now an economic downturn — due to worldwide inflation from the pandemic, the Ukr...

Author: Noriko Tsuya, Keio University After hovering around zero growth in the late 2000s, Japan’s population has been shrinking since 2010, with the decline accelerating in recent years. Breaking its own record every year for the last 10 years, the country experienced another record population loss of 644,000 in 2020–2021. The population is projected to shrink well into the middle of this century, dropping to an estimated 88 million in 2065 — a 30 per cent decline in 45 years. Japan’s rapid population shrinkage is primarily caused by persistently low fertility. Japan’s fertility rate has been declining since the mid-1970s, reaching a total fertility rate (TFR) of around 1.3 children per woman in the early 2000s. Japan’s TFR hit a low of 1.26 in 2005, but there was a modest recovery to a TFR of around 1.4 in the 2010s. There is little out-of-wedlock childbearing in Japan. Childbirths outside of marriage have constituted around 2 per cent of all births since the 1950s. The decli...

Author: Eric Lai, Georgetown University On 26 September 2022, a university professor, two former lawmakers, a Cantopop singer and a Catholic cardinal were charged by the Hong Kong government for failing to register a humanitarian aid fund with the police. The five defendants — 90-year-old Cardinal Joseph Zen, singer Denise Ho, cultural studies professor Po-Keung Hui and former lawmakers Margaret Ng and Cyd Ho — are well-known supporters of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. The five founded the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund in 2019 to assist protestors who faced financial difficulties in seeking legal and medical assistance during the six-month-long anti-extradition bill movement. The Fund also sponsored various civil society activities, including peaceful rallies and international advocacy. Drawing on continuous popular support via crowdfunding, the Fund has aided more than 14,000 protestors and civilians involved in the 2019 movement. The Fund decided to cease operation in l...

Author: Sourabh Gupta, ICAS Almost five years to the day that he  inaugurated a ‘new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics’, General Secretary Xi Jinping  returned to the Great Hall of the People to renew his ‘common prosperity’-based agenda of modernisation and national rejuvenation. In his  Report to the 20th National Party Congress, Xi acknowledged the darkening geopolitical clouds on the horizon — the ‘black swans’, unpredictable dangerous events and ‘grey rhinos’, foreseeable but unaddressed dangers. There was no reference this time to global ‘peace and development [being] irreversible trends’ or to ‘countries … becoming increasingly interconnected and interdependent’, as was the case during his 19th Party Congress address. China would stay vigilant in the face of ‘external attempts to blackmail, contain, blockade and exert maximum pressure’, he observed. But it would not be deflected from the path of development and from realisin...