Today Trends

Author: Collin Koh, NTU Attention shifted away from the South China Sea (SCS) in 2022 as the world confronted the Ukraine War and the Taiwan Strait crisis in February and August. Fears that a Ukraine-inspired conflict would erupt in the Taiwan Strait have not eventuated. Domestic economic and political concerns, such as inflationary pressures on the economy and the 20th Party Congress have seized much of Beijing’s attention. Still, China’s maritime coercion against its Southeast Asian and extra-regional rivals have continued in the SCS throughout 2022, with widely-reported incidents involving Indonesia , the Philippines , Taiwan and Australia . Various claimants, including China and the Philippines , have continued to engage in construction activities on their existing Spratly Islands outposts. Vietnam has been observed to have undertaken significant dredging and landfill work since early this year . Yet there could be reason for optimism. Late 2022 caps off a flurry of regional...

Author: Jenny Balboa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and Hosei University Former president Rodrigo Duterte dramatically changed the foreign policy landscape of the Philippines when he announced his intentions to pivot to China during his term. Duterte’s decision to shift away from the United States and build stronger alliances with China and Russia sent shockwaves through the Philippines’ economy and its political and diplomatic relations. In pursuit of this so-called pivot, Duterte actively encouraged Chinese investment in the Philippines and teamed up with the Chinese government to finance his own flagship infrastructure project — ‘Build, Build, Build’. Duterte also visited Russia to seek the support of Russian President Vladimir Putin on his new foreign policy path. By the end of Duterte’s term in June 2022, it became clear that his controversial foreign policy pivot did not yield the expected returns. China failed to fulfill its promise to finance Duterte’s big-ticket inf...

Author: Dien Luong, ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute A fear-cloaked dynamic has increasingly percolated Vietnam’s information environment, in both cyberspace and the mainstream media. A decree  guiding the controversial Cybersecurity Law, which took effect in October 2022, looks to further empower Vietnamese authorities to censor online content they disfavour and bolster the state’s digital surveillance capacity. This regulatory move is just one of the latest in a spate of laws and regulations that reflect Hanoi’s attempt to exert ever-tighter controls over the digital space. The heyday of Vietnam’s critical journalism in the 2000s was short-lived. In 2008, an unprecedented state-sanctioned crackdown  on the press led to the arrest of two Vietnamese investigative journalists and the dismissal of the editors-in-chief of Tuoi Tre and Thanh Nien — the two most influential newspapers. The authorities never clearly articulated their rationale for the crackdown, but it was l...

Author: Michael Barr, Flinders University Singapore’s biggest news story of 2022 was that Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong finally settled on his successor , choosing his former personal private secretary and current Finance Minister Lawrence Wong. Wong’s selection was widely greeted as a resumption of business as usual after a long period of missteps and uncertainty . Supporters looked forward to more competent handling of both the business of government and the business of politics, especially given Wong’s impressive track record as one of the key managers of the COVID-19 pandemic. Critics feared that repression and intolerance under Lee were unlikely to ease. Both critics and supporters may be right. There was no sign of the government becoming of more open to fresh ideas or criticism in 2022. The year opened with strategically publicised but unfulfilled threats to prosecute the leader of the opposition, Pritam Singh, for supposedly deceiving parliament. It closed with Lawrence ...

Author: Giulia Ajmone Marsan, ERIA After a couple of years of spectacular growth, tech start-ups and tech giants alike are now facing a less optimistic outlook. During the third quarter of 2022, venture capital (VC) investments and deals globally fell to levels not seen since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic . This slowdown in investment is hitting North America and Europe particularly hard — but Asia is being affected too. During 2022, the slowdown in investments hit both high-income and emerging Asia, with Asia’s largest economies, India and China, being heavily affected. Layoffs of tech workers are becoming increasingly common. The negative outlook is the result of a complex combination of factors: the largely hawkish policies of central banks, developed economies attempting to curb post-COVID-19 inflation (primarily the rate hikes by the Federal Reserve resulting in a very strong US dollar), Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent volatility in food and energy pr...

Author: Alexander R Arifianto, RSIS In 2022, two leading moderate Indonesian Islamic figures, Ahmad Syafii Ma’arif and Azyumardi Azra, passed away. With their departure, Indonesia’s Islamic discourse lost two moderate voices. As chairman of Muhammadiyah — Indonesia’s second largest Islamic organisation — Ma’arif was instrumental in promoting theological reforms. Between 1998 and 2005, Ma’arif reoriented Muhammadiyah’s theological outlook from a rigid, conservative direction towards one that is progressive and compatible with Indonesia as a multicultural, religiously diverse and democratic nation. Ma’arif’s passing marked the death of one of the last Indonesian neo-modernist Islamic thinkers . Neo-modern Islam arose alongside the movement of theological reformers who became prominent Muslim intellectuals from the 1970s to the 1990s. Neo-modernist figures such as Nurcolish Madjid, Dawam Rahardjo and Abdurrahman Wahid became founders and spokespersons of the moderate Islamic movem...

Author: Greg Raymond, ANU For Thailand, 2022 was marked by two critical trends: the revival of the economy and, paradoxically, the decline of the government political party, Palang Pracharat (PPRP). Revelations concerning transnational Chinese gangsters colluding with Thai bureaucrats and politicians, the horrific mass slaying of school children in Thailand’s northeast, and the rise of a new political leader with prime ministerial potential were also significant news. In 2022, Thailand reopened to tourism without conditions for vaccinated travellers and saw a significant rebound in economic growth. Tourist numbers are expected to top 10 million over the year, after less than half a million in 2021. This represents a significant shot in the arm for the tourism-dependent economy, which was decimated by the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Economic growth is expected to return to pre-pandemic levels of around 3 per cent . This is still lower than other Southeast Asian countries such as Vie...

Author: Stepan Golovin, Institute of World Economy and International Relations The economic component of Cambodia’s ASEAN chairmanship in 2022 was relatively less visible against the background of US–China tensions and the Ukraine and Myanmar crises . But promoting prosperity, deepening economic integration and bridging the region’s development gaps remain key ASEAN goals. It is important that ASEAN follows this track, especially as Phnom Penh’s priorities build on ASEAN’s previous initiatives to bring important deliverables in strengthening the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). ASEAN member states showed good results in their post-COVID-19 economic recovery. According to ASEAN data , the association’s nominal GDP in 2021 surpassed its pre-pandemic levels and reached US$3.3 trillion, while in 2022 it is projected to grow by 5 per cent. This prognosis is echoed by both the Asian Development Bank and the IMF’s outlooks. ASEAN in 2022 further underscored that recovery should be peo...

Author: Gyorgy Busztin, NUS The G20 summit has symbolically elevated Indonesia’s status in the Asia Pacific region. Bali 2022 confirmed Jakarta’s role as political stabiliser and economic heavyweight for ASEAN. As the seventh-largest economy globally, with a huge workforce and ample natural resources, Indonesia has it all — but it is still striving to harness its full potential. Following years of political turbulence — as Indonesia saw four presidents grapple with terrorism, natural disasters and the fallout of the 2008 global financial crisis — Indonesian President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo’s program aims at propelling the country into the ranks of the region’s advanced economies. Jokowi set to work resolutely to drum up support for his ambitious development plans. Indonesia faces several major development challenges. Indonesia lags woefully behind the region in infrastructure. Upgrades are necessary to support the internal market of the sprawling island nation. Roads, ports, airpor...

Author: Neil DeVotta, Wake Forest University Economically, 2022 will rank as Sri Lanka’s worst year ever.  The immediate reason for the year’s economic carnage was a balance of payments crisis. It was exacerbated by high debt, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia–Ukraine War, global central banks hiking interest rates and dumb policy decisions made by the Gotabaya Rajapaksa administration. The crisis prevented Sri Lanka from purchasing essential goods — especially cooking gas, gasoline, fertiliser and medicine. The year 2022 will be associated with the days-long queues people grappled with to procure essential items and seeing and hearing of people dying while standing in those same lines. It was also the year of the political aragalaya (struggle) that . The aragalaya was tamed, but not before it forced former prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa to flee his official residence in May and his brother, former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, to flee the presidential palace in July 2...