Today Trends

Author: Francis E Hutchinson, ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute Long characterised by ‘stability’ and excessive concentration of power, Malaysia’s politics have become fluid and unpredictable. With elite compacts and agreements hammered out behind closed doors, the country now has public plot twists worthy of a Netflix series. Until 2018, Malaysia was ruled by Barisan Nasional (BN), a multi-ethnic coalition led by the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO). That year, a perfect storm of discontent swept the coalition from power as anger against then-prime minister Najib Razak’s financial wrongdoings, the phasing out of key subsidies, and the imposition of a goods and services tax reached a crescendo. Splits among the Malay elite, as well as three-way contests pitting BN against the Malaysian Islamic Party, meant that the Pakatan Harapan coalition was able to expand into Peninsular Malaysia’s rural heartland for the first time . Malaysia’s political institutions have since been in flu

Author: Ronald D Holmes, De La Salle University A Philippine commentator described Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr’s victory as overwhelming . This is apt based on the current vote count. Bongbong will be the first president after the 1986 political transition to be elected by a majority of voters in a plurality electoral system. He takes on the presidency with an unequivocal mandate that even outgoing president Rodrigo Duterte did not have. Bongbong’s victory testifies to an effective rebranding of his persona. The rebranding was actively prosecuted on social media and started with stories in various social media platforms that glorified martial law and refuted narratives about the family’s ill-gotten wealth. The rebranding was abetted by Duterte’s decision to bury Bongbong’s father — the late dictator — in the National Heroes’ Cemetery. This affirmed the imagined heroism of the dead despot, a historical distortion Marcos Sr peddled in the early 1960s as he prepared to vie for t

Authors: Katherine M Nelson, Reiner Wassmann and Björn Ole Sander, International Rice Research Institute At the COP 26 Glasgow, Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh joined more than 100 countries in signing a methane emission reduction pledge . Rice production contributes almost half of Vietnam’s total methane emissions and is the centre of action for reducing the powerful greenhouse gas. Reaching the goal of reducing methane emissions from rice by 30 per cent will require transforming millions of smallholder practices to low-emissions cultivation. Methane is a short-lived pollutant with a lifetime of around 12 years, compared to carbon dioxide’s several hundred years. But methane’s global warming potential is 28 times that of carbon dioxide, which means reducing methane emissions can curb global warming with comparably quick effect. Rice production is a major contributor to global anthropogenic methane emissions and Vietnam is one of the few top rice-producing countries to s

Author: Genevieve Donnellon-May and Hongzhou Zhang Against the backdrop of trade tensions with the United States, a worsening geopolitical environment and growing supply chain vulnerabilities due to climate change and COVID-19, China is introducing policies to boost domestic production of critical agricultural and food products. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs’ Five-Year Plan , which was released in December 2021, sets out China’s new self-sufficiency targets . This includes full self-sufficiency for poultry and eggs, 95 per cent self-sufficiency for pork, 85 per cent for beef and mutton and 70 per cent for dairy. China’s current self-sufficiency levels for meats and dairy are already high, but rising incomes and rapid urbanisation means that China is consuming more animal proteins. Maintaining the current level of self-sufficiency will require greater domestic production. China’s meat output target for 2025 is 89 million tonnes, about 15 per cent higher than 2020.

Authors: Pradeep S Mehta and Sandra George, CUTS International Emerging cooperation between India and Australia is widely understood as a response to the China challenge that is facilitated by multilateral groupings like the Quad. But the recent signing of the Australia–India Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement (ECTA) on 2 April suggests the bilateral relationship is much more substantial. The bilateral virtual summit held on 21 March — and the subsequent agreement — marks a new phase in India–Australia relations, especially in the larger security and defence context. While some argue that taking away the ‘China glue’ will lead to cracks in India’s relationship with the other Quad countries, it is not what has caused the linkages that matter the most — it is the nature of the bilateral engagement itself. Since the 2000s, dialogue partnerships between India and Australia have seen a new phase of engagement. The signing of several bilateral agreements — such as the Memorandum

Author: Mong Cheung, Waseda University While the US-Japan alliance, US military bases in Japan, and its geographical proximity make Japan an important country across the Taiwan Strait, it is yet to formulate any specific plans or legislation to guide its response to a potential crisis. If the United States were to request military assistance from Japan, Tokyo might be well in chaos. Several key factors have shaped Japan’s foreign policy to Taiwan over the past two decades. Former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe sought to thaw Japan’s frosty attitude to China during his first stint in the top job in 2006–2007. Despite historically being tough on China, Abe who avoided visiting the controversial Yasukuni Shrine at this time and resumed the long interrupted summit meetings between Japanese and Chinese leaders. According to former deputy chief cabinet secretary Hakubun Shimomura, easing Japan–China tensions was part of Abe’s strategy for the upper house election in 2007. Former Jap

Authors: Yingli Wang, CU and Imtiaz Khan, CMU International supply chains are lengthy, complex and face risks of disruption. There is also public pressure on firms and governments to ensure supply chains adhere to social and environmental standards. While supply chain resilience can be achieved by developing transparency and traceability capacity, establishing end-to-end (E2E) supply chain visibility is the holy grail of supply chain management — and it can be achieved through blockchain technology. Cross-border supply chains are often ladened with paper documents. Although bills of lading are one of the most important documents issued from carriers to shippers, only 0.1 per cent of original bills are digitised. The handling and exchange of such paper documents is costly, error prone and time consuming. Supply chain finance transactions share the same problem and typically involve a complicated paper trail that can take as long as a month to be completed . Distributed ledger techn

Author: Matt Withers, ANU Sri Lanka is in the grips of its worst economic crisis since independence. Behind recent headlines, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed structural problems that were decades in the making. The origins of today’s foreign exchange crisis are rooted in the colonial plantation sector, failed industrial policy and the façade of stability afforded by migrant remittances. There are numerous immediate causes for the sovereign debt crisis , some of which are certainly attributable to the economic mismanagement of the Rajapaksa and Sirisena governments. Heavy international borrowing, excessive spending on largely uneconomical infrastructure projects, populist tax reforms and misguided agricultural policies have all contributed to Sri Lanka’s inability to weather the economic consequences of the pandemic. Fixation on these interventions has lent support to a simplistic belief that Sri Lanka’s macroeconomic problems would disappear under a liberal market economy. Am

Author: Sharon Seah, ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute In hindsight, perhaps ASEAN was too optimistic about the Biden presidency. Who could blame them? After four years of the Trump administration, the region was more than ready to return to deeper engagement with the United States. A survey of regional elites showed that confidence that the United States would increase its engagement jumped from 9.9 per cent in 2020 under Trump to 68.6 per cent under Biden. That optimism has dissipated amid COVID-19, the Myanmar crisis, the Ukraine war, supply chain disruptions, fears of stagflation and increasing food and energy insecurity . This is the context in which eight ASEAN leaders, with the exception of Myanmar’s Min Aung Hlaing and the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte, will meet President Joe Biden in a US–ASEAN Summit this week. This will only be ASEAN’s second in-person special summit with the United States since 2017 — and a symbolically important one, because its leaders met with Xi Jinping

Author: Xunpeng Shi, UTS The energy price surge and crunch in late 2021 and the ongoing crisis in Ukraine have renewed global momentum for replanning energy transition roadmaps. While some suggest accelerating clean energy transitions to cope with surging energy prices, others are taking the opposite approach. For example, Germany, a pioneer in the energy transition, is reconsidering the future of coal and nuclear power to reduce its dependency on Russian gas. China is another example of retrenching climate plans. Chinese President Xi Jinping announced in April 2021 that China will start cutting coal consumption from 2026. But in March 2022, he said China could not simply ‘slam the brakes’ on coal since the green transition is a long and arduous process. In reality, China’s coal output hit a record high in 2021 and the nation recorded its biggest increase in total energy consumption and coal use in a decade. The adjustment of energy transition roadmaps started in mid-2021