Today Trends

Author: Susannah Patton, United States Studies Centre Australia and China both had diplomatic wins in Southeast Asia this year, particularly through the region’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Both Canberra and Beijing upgraded its ties with ASEAN to ‘ comprehensive strategic partnership ’, showing that the association sees both Australia and China as valued partners. ASEAN wants balance — closer ties with China, but also with other countries. What is curious is that it is Australia, not the United States, that is providing the counterweight to China. The fact that the US-ASEAN relationship is lagging should worry Canberra. For the past 30 years, Australia has seen regional multilateral institutions like ASEAN, the East Asia Summit and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) as ways to entrench the United States in Asia. Australia has had high-profile wins on this front, contributing to the establishment of APEC in the early 1990s and supporting the expansion

Author: Jon Fraenkel, Victoria University of Wellington The emphatic 96.5 per cent victory of the anti-independence side in New Caledonia’s referendum on 12 December 2021 has been applauded by many French politicians. French President Emmanuel Macron says that it ends the ‘ binary choice’ that has long pre-occupied France’s distant Pacific territory. Macron dismissed the low turnout of 43.9 per cent as legally insignificant, despite this being only just over half of the 85.6 per cent who cast ballots in the previous independence referendum in October 2020. Appeals by the pro-independence Front de Liberation Kanak et Socialiste (FLNKS) to delay the poll due to the debilitating impact of COVID-19 on Kanak communities fell on deaf ears. Pro-independence parties therefore refused to participate, leaving the polling booths in majority-Kanak districts empty. The staunchly anti-independence parties in New Caledonia have preferred to speedily conclude the three ballots anticipated under t

Author: Editorial Board, ANU At this time of uncertainty, the fulcrum of geopolitical global affairs is in East Asia. While Taiwan and the Korean Peninsula might be the main flashpoints of big power strategic tension, it’s Southeast Asia that’s the frontline of non-military competition between the United States and China, and where peace will be lost or won. Singapore’s steady pair of hands are crucial to guiding the way through. In thinking about China and its influence in East Asia, Southeast Asia is front and centre. Its organising grouping, ASEAN, is the buffer in dealings with the great powers across Asia and the Pacific, including for partners like Australia and Japan. Both of the great powers need the cooperation of ASEAN. A fracture in ASEAN and its central balancing role in East Asia would be a major threat to security throughout the region. ASEAN and its member countries have sought to find solutions to big power strategic competition in a way that maintains an open regim

Author: Michael Barr, Flinders University Singapore politics appears confused, directionless and overwhelmingly defensive on nearly every front. The leadership transition — choosing the next prime minister — has dragged into its fifth year without resolution, and has now creaked to a halt that leaves Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (at 69) as a visibly tired placeholder, occupying the seat of power but not really leading. Widely publicised instances of provocative racist behaviour shocked the government and perceptions of economic injustice and insecurity are worrying it too, but neither have prompted any serious revision of policy settings and the issues continue to fester. There are only two areas of policy where the government appears energised and focused: harassing critics and the opposition and managing COVID-19 and its economic challenges . Only when it comes to attacking dissent and harassing the opposition does the government have clarity, mostly thanks to Minister

Author: Maiko Ichihara, Hitotsubashi University South and Southeast Asia have experienced a sharp decline in liberal democracy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Under the pretext of combating COVID-19, the Philippines and Thailand have suppressed freedom of speech, while Indonesia has concentrated power in the hands of government. India has promoted a COVID-19 tracking application that violates personal privacy while the military coup in Myanmar subverted the democratic elections of November 2020. With democracy in retreat across Asia , the future of the liberal international order is at stake. The momentum to curb this crisis of liberal democracy has come not from Asia but from the United States. The Biden administration’s explicit recognition of the importance of defending and revitalising democracy around the world – particularly after four years of democratic backsliding at home under Donald Trump – is a norm-defending move. The present crisis of democracy threatens to put an end

Author: Kuyoun Chung, Kangwon National University Although only a few months remain before the end of Moon Jae-in’s presidential term, Seoul is relentlessly pursuing a declaration of an end to the Korean War between Washington and Pyongyang and attempting to revitalise momentum for a denuclearisation dialogue. But the United States and South Korea seem to perceive the tactical value of this declaration differently and are not on the same page over the scenarios they might confront once they issue the declaration.  As a step towards a peace agreement, the Moon administration intends to build trust between the United States and North Korea with the declaration and restart a denuclearisation negotiation. Critics stress the significance of legal enforcement nested in the declaration. Without legal enforcement that ’ends the Korean War,’ as President Moon has suggested, the declaration will not reduce the threat perception in Pyongyang of US ‘hostile policies’ or catalyse the momentum f

Author: Bikram Timilsina, Griffith University Nepal’s Supreme Court is in crisis due to unprecedented protest from its justices and lawyers. Despite over a month of protests demanding the resignation of Chief Justice Cholendra Shumsher JB Rana, Rana has refused to step down . But nor have the political parties filed a motion of impeachment against him. This is not the first time that Nepal’s Supreme Court has confronted a crisis. In May 2017, Nepal’s first female Chief Justice, Sushila Karki, was suspended after two main political parties filed an impeachment motion . The key reasons behind Karki’s suspension were her strong stance against corruption , Supreme Court rulings against the government’s appointment of a police chief and decision to provide amnesty to the Maoist leader Balkrishna Dhungel. This suggests that political parties are willing to interfere if the judiciary is acting against their interests, but not to preserve judicial independence and integrity. It has bee

Author: Timothy Gitzen, University of Hong Kong Since 2015, the annual Seoul Queer Culture Festival held at Seoul City Hall Plaza has grown steadily. The event hosts booths, performances and a parade through downtown Seoul, attracting tens of thousands of participants. The wide media coverage of these ostensibly progressive events sits against a still discriminatory and homophobic South Korean social, political, economic and cultural landscape, particularly influenced by the Christian right. While there is no anti-homosexuality or anti-sodomy law in the Korean civil code, there is an anti-sodomy law in Korea’s military penal code. Given that all able-bodied Korean men are required to serve for at least 18 months in the military, activists claim that the law is a de facto national anti-homosexuality law. The battle for an anti-discrimination law and marriage equality rages on, while discrimination against transgender soldiers is slowly gaining public recognition. The latter is su

Author: Madoka Fukuda, Hosei University Since Prime Minister Fumio Kishida took office in September 2021, Japan’s policies toward China and Taiwan have been attracting attention from other countries in the region. Will the Kishida administration change Japan’s policy toward China and Taiwan from those of his predecessors, Shinzo Abe and Yoshihide Suga? The current discussion about Kishida’s stance towards China focuses on several factors. These include Kishida’s position as the leader of the traditionally progressive Kochikai faction in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the growing influence of Komeito within the ruling coalition and Kishida’s picks for his cabinet appointments. But it is not these personal and partisan factors that have determined Japan’s China policy in recent years. Instead, it has been international and domestic factors. As long as these factors remain unchanged, Japan’s new administration is unlikely to make any major changes in its policy toward Chi

Author: Jay Song, University of Melbourne As of September 2021, data from the South Korean Ministry of Reunification suggest that 33,800 North Korean defectors currently live in South Korea. This number has soared over the past two decades — before 1998, they numbered under 200. Following the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the devastating famine in North Korea in the mid-1990s, the turn of the century saw an influx of North Korean arrivals into South Korea rise each year, reaching its peak in 2009 at 2914 . Since Kim Jong-un took power in 2012, the flow has largely stagnated and decreased, with COVID-19 reaching an all-time low . Following Kim’s succession, annual arrivals have not exceeded 1600. In 2020, with increased border restrictions due to COVID-19, only 229 entrants were recorded. A number of factors explain this. The first is strengthened border control between North Korea and China . In the 1990s and 2000s, there were few barbed wire barricades across the exit route o