Today Trends

Author: Editorial Board, ANU Shoehorning every political development in China today into a black box of the natural behaviour of a Marxist-Leninist authoritarian state is the daily pastime of political commentators and pundits of many stripes and colours around the world. This sophistry, passed off as analysis, doesn’t add much to understanding what is going on in China and why. There’s no doubt that the legacy of ideology and political culture weighs heavily on the decisions of political leaderships everywhere, particularly in China where its antecedents and institutions are so deeply entrenched. But the huge changes and problems that China and its leaders have to deal with at this point in the country’s history defy interpretation though a one-dimensional ideological lens. Why leaders and their advisers come up with particular policy platforms and prioritise certain strategies to deal with them warrants more detailed and careful analysis. President Xi Jinping’s elevation of ‘comm

Author: Cai Fang, CASS Two hands run the Chinese economy, the market and the government. Market forces overwhelmingly allocate resources, after getting prices and incentives right. Government regulates competition, corrects market failures and safeguards fairness of distribution. China’s political leadership proposes and frames principal policy concepts to signal new policy directions to the people and direct various levels of government on policy priorities. A prominent organising policy idea now is the concept of ‘common prosperity’. The Chinese leadership calls for promoting common prosperity in the course of high-quality development and building the necessary institutional structures to achieve this. The institutional structures will serve to coordinate the three domains of distribution — primary, secondary and tertiary. Primary distribution refers to income distribution among capital owners, labourers, and the government. Secondary distribution refers to government-led redistri

Author: Allan Gyngell, ANU Much is still uncertain about the new AUKUS ‘enhanced trilateral security partnership’. The deal for at least eight nuclear submarines to be built in Australia is described as a ‘first initiative’ but the partnership’s aims, and whether there will be a governing treaty, are not yet clear. Nor is the practical form that engagement in other foreshadowed areas will take. For Australian defence officials wrestling with the search for an ‘optimal pathway’ to get the submarine project under way, it will be a busy 18 months as a massive list of regulatory, technological, security and workforce issues present themselves. Boris Johnson, Joe Biden and Scott Morrison  each had something to prove with this agreement. Johnson was looking for a way of demonstrating that Britain had a global future after Brexit while taking over handy trade prospects from the French. Joe Biden wanted to put the Afghanistan withdrawal behind him and show he was adding substance to his

Author: Lindy Kanan, ANU Gender-based violence (GBV) is a wicked policy problem that plagues governments across the world. Papua New Guinea (PNG) is no exception and has some of the highest rates of violence against women globally. For decades, grassroots activists and development actors have thrown their hands up in the air at the lack of national leadership on the issue in PNG. Despite an absence of political will at the highest levels, champions have emerged in a handful of provinces and some progress has been made towards more coordinated sector responses in urban areas. Over the past year, an unprecedented series of events has taken place in the GBV policy space in PNG. A bipartisan ‘Coalition of Parliamentarians Against GBV’ was formed following a ‘High Level Meeting on GBV’ in August 2020. The Coalition includes 20 of PNG’s 111 (all male) members of parliament and has been active on social media and in declaring their commitment to support change. Subsequently in Novem

Author: Christian Bachheimer, SOAS China’s growing influence on ASEAN affairs has featured increasingly in international news. The dominant narrative is that China is deploying a mercantilist strategy to drive ASEAN acquiescence to matters of diplomatic importance for China, forcing ASEAN states to choose between China and the United States. But ASEAN’s trade in goods and investment data from China and other geopolitical alliances from 2015 to 2019 present a different narrative. ASEAN-5 — Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam — collectively constituted 84 per cent of ASEAN’s US$3.1 trillion GDP in 2019 and accounted for over 90 per cent of its trade and investment flows. Data analysis of trade in goods for 2015–2019 reveals that the main geopolitical blocs consisting of the ‘US alliance’, ‘Atlantic alliance’ and ‘China bloc’ did not evolve as a share of ASEAN-5’s economies. The China bloc — China, Hong Kong and Macao — represented 20 per cent of trade with

Author: Adam Simpson, University of South Australia A recent decision by Myanmar’s National Unity Government (NUG) may offer a path to justice for the victims of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide in Myanmar. The NUG was formed by elected representatives of the parliament and others who were ousted by the February military coup. On 20 August the NUG announced that it had lodged a declaration with the International Criminal Court (ICC) accepting the court’s jurisdiction with respect to all international crimes in Myanmar since 2002. The NUG had been considering this option since March , but this was the first formal submission by the government-in-exile under Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute. The day prior to the announcement, Fortify Rights, an NGO, released a lengthy report on the legal basis for the diplomatic manoeuvre. This announcement was significant for four reasons. First, this was a major shift in policy regarding the ICC since the former National League f

Author: Shaikh Abdur Rahman, CFISS As the world continues to struggle with the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic , Bangladesh has been able to maintain economic growth with the help of its readymade garment sector and foreign remittances. But it has also relied significantly on assistance from its development partners, including Japan. Immediately after Bangladesh gained independence in 1971, Japan lent Dhaka a helping hand to reconstruct the war-torn country. Bangladesh and Japan started diplomatic relations on 10 February 1972. Since then, the two countries have enjoyed a fruitful and trustworthy relationship. Japan is one of Bangladesh’s largest development partners and a vital source of aid as the country attempts to graduate from least developed country status by 2026 and become a developed country by 2041. Bangladesh’s bilateral relations with Japan range from socio-economic to people-to-people links. But the relationship can be further strengthened through signing a

Authors: Hunter Marston, ANU and Akhil Ramesh, Pacific Forum July was a busy month for US diplomats who have been traversing the Indo-Pacific region, reinforcing US commitment to the region in light of growing concern that Southeast Asian states are moving closer to China. US Vice President Kamala Harris travelled to Singapore and Vietnam, following trips by Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman to Japan, South Korea, Mongolia and China, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to India. Meanwhile, Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Defence Minister Peter Dutton have embarked on a flurry of 2+2 diplomatic meetings in India, Korea, the United States, and Indonesia, in an effort to reboot Canberra’s international diplomacy. For a region that sees China as an increasingly unavoidable and influential economic and strategic power, this newfound interest by Western powers presents significant opportu

Author: Daniel P Aldrich, Northeastern University Until recently, it may have been hard for the average person to grasp how deadly and damaging disasters and shocks can be. No longer. Few anywhere in the world have emerged from the past year and a half without a strong appreciation of the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Along with COVID-19 taking more than 4.5 million lives and upending health systems, business revenue and global logistics, other acute and long-term shocks and stressors have affected communities around the world, including bushfires in Australia, North America and Europe, lethal heatwaves in Oregon, and mudslides in Japan. Policymakers often respond to disasters by falling back on standard responses involving physical infrastructure and megaprojects. Extreme weather events such as flooding and heatwaves are among the most common disasters. In Japan, central and regional government officials have pushed for the construction of massive concrete seawalls and

Author: Sim Vireak, Asian Vision Institute According to the Asian Development Bank, Cambodia’s economy contracted by 3.1 per cent in 2020. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) predicts that Cambodia’s poverty rate will rise to 17.6 per cent , around 8 percentage points higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic. UNDP modelling suggests that a social protection stimulus of 3.5 percent of GDP in Cambodia would prevent 570,000 people from sliding back into poverty. In response, the Cambodian government is providing cash transfers to poor and vulnerable households, wage subsidies, low-interest loans and tax relief for businesses in hard-hit sectors, a cash-for-work program in rural areas and support to small and medium-sized enterprises. Government cash relief has reached nearly 700,000 poor and vulnerable families . The economic contraction adversely affected employment. According to a study by the Asia Foundation and the Center for Khmer Studies, average households in th