Today Trends

Authors: Christopher Findlay, ANU and Hein Roelfsema, Utrecht University Worried about disruptions to global supply chains, policymakers are pledging to get gifts on the shelves for Christmas. But US retailers are taking their own steps. They have brought the shopping season forward by launching their Christmas ‘sales’. This extended shopping period reduces the uncertainty of whether presents will be on time. The higher costs and lower reliability of international freight transport have been a problem since the start of COVID-19. For instance, the price of shipping a container from Asia to the United States went up from US$2000 at the beginning of 2021 to US$20,000 in August. Ships are still queued outside US ports and arrivals outside of booked times have knock-on effects through the use of trucks and warehousing. Delivery times have lengthened and reliability has fallen. At the heights of the pandemic, there was greater demand for goods, which had to be shipped — mainly from t

Author: Davis Florick, Missouri State University Chinese interference has negatively impacted Cambodian politics and allowed Prime Minister Hun Sen to lean more fully into authoritarianism. As illiberalism calcifies in Cambodia, the country grows further isolated from the international community — making it further dependent on China and unlikely to escape Beijing’s influence in the short- or medium-term. Sen has pursued authoritarian methods to maintain political control. During the 2018 parliamentary elections, his Cambodian People’s Party won all 125 seats. In April 2020, Sen used COVID-19 to justify enacting a new law on ‘ national security and social order ’ that has been used to detain individuals that release information which could be used to disparage the government’s handling of the pandemic. With each authoritarian step, Sen has further isolated himself from the United States, the European Union, Japan, South Korea and many non-governmental organisations with operation

Authors: Kevin Zhang, ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute and Joshua Wan, Columbia University After winning only two out of the 28 seats in Malaysia’s recent Melaka state election, Chairman of the Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition Muhyiddin Yassin found himself defending against calls to disband and return to the victorious Barisan Nasional (BN). ‘We hold to the principles of transparency, integrity, combating corruption and abuse of power’, Muhyiddin said . ‘We will be steadfast, cooperate and work harder so that we will be the main challenger to Barisan Nasional’. Unlike the 2018 general election, where BN suffered an unprecedented defeat in the Melaka state assembly, in the November 2021 state election, BN secured 21 out of the 28 seats and emerged as the clear winner . PN gained two seats while Pakatan Harapan (PH) won the remaining five seats. The lack of optimism for PN in the recent state election stems partly from the coalition’s weak grassroots network and less established bra

Author: Toshiya Takahashi, Shoin University Economic security is becoming crucial to Japan’s national security portfolio. In October 2021, the Kishida government created a ministerial position for economic security. One month later, it decided to subsidise half of the estimated US$7 billion investment by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to construct a semiconductor plant in Kumamoto prefecture. The government is discussing a new ‘economic security law’ to submit to the National Diet in 2022, which would strengthen supply chains and protect Japanese patents. This legislation is targeted at China’s increasing economic clout over Japanese companies and the risk of trade disruption as experienced when China halted shipments of rare earth elements in 2010 and during the shortage of medical supplies at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Japan’s economic security used to be identified with resource security due to its economic dependence on the import of natural resources s

Author: Editorial Board, ANU In retrospect, the final month of 2001 was a pivot point in history. Five days before China joined the WTO on 11 December, the United States and its allies routed the Taliban in its last stronghold in Kandahar, ringing in the start of a twenty-year military adventure in the Middle East that cost the superpower blood, treasury and not a small amount of its reserves of goodwill in the international community. Those two events were turning points in the global geopolitical landscape. China’s accession to the WTO transformed the global economy as well. Over half a billion Chinese people were lifted out of poverty in two decades and China is now the largest economy in purchasing power parity terms, second largest measured at market exchange rates, and the world’s largest trading nation. China is the largest trading partner for 120 countries, including the United States. The growth of Chinese manufacturing meant that consumers in the rest of the world could e

Author: Tom Westland, ANU It’s twenty years this week since China was admitted to membership of the World Trade Organization (WTO). That presaged a remarkable surge in Chinese trade, an industrial transformation on a scale not seen before in human history, China’s emergence as the world’s largest trading nation and its integration into the global economy in a way that was hardly possible to imagine just two decades earlier. It’s little wonder that the WTO is among the most widely respected international institutions in China today. China’s rapid growth since its accession to the WTO — per capita incomes are now well over four times as high today as they were in 2001 — was the single most important poverty-reducing event of the past century. China’s decision to join the WTO, and the stringent conditions it had to meet to be accepted, have been major drivers of the vast structural change away from subsistence agriculture, making China the undisputed factory of the world economy. Its

Author: A Chong, Singapore The 2020s may well be remembered as an era where defensive alliances strove to avoid naming the enemies they were set up to deter. Such is the strategy behind the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), a loose grouping of India, Japan, Australia and the United States established in 2004 as an association of democratic powers to offer an alternative pole of power to China in the Indo-Pacific. Fast forward to 2017, the Quad regained significance when the United States relaunched its Indo-Pacific vision of Asian cooperation, with the Quad as its linchpin. In 2004, as in 2017, thwarting China’s diplomatic inroads into its Asian peripheries was the Quad’s overarching mission. This is worth keeping in mind amid the low expectations widely interpreted of the Quad’s first in-person summit since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, which took place on 24 September 2021. The difference between the two benchmark dates lay in Australia’s initial pivot towards Chines

Authors: Don S Lee, Sungkyunkwan University and Fernando Casal Bértoa, University of Nottingham History has shaped party politics and electoral instability in Asian democracies. History remains a critical factor in understanding how young Asian democracies can be strengthened and stabilised in the future. Our research on the determinants of electoral instability in 19 Asian democracies found that constrained electoral competition during the pre-democratic period distorted the formation of free and fair electoral environments after the democratic transition process. But not all authoritarian regimes are the same. The detrimental impact of authoritarian legacies on democratic party system development depends on the degree to which they disrupt political development after transition. In countries like South Korea, where strong authoritarian parties existed, the same parties tend to re-emerge after transition. Voters will already have some attachment to them and the level of electoral

Author: Olivia Cheung, SOAS University of London On 15 November 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden held their first virtual meeting. According to the White House’s readout , Biden told Xi that the two countries should establish ‘common sense guardrails to ensure that US–China competition does not veer into conflict and to keep lines of communication open’. Judging from the press release published by Xinhua , the Chinese state news agency, which is over six times the length of the White House’s readout, the precondition for any ‘common sense guardrails’ appears to be that Washington must treat China with ‘respect’. Treating China with respect is the first of the three principles that Xi mentioned to Biden during their meeting . The other two were peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation . This means that China not only wants the United States to not criticise or subvert its one-party system. It wants the United States to go a step further : to recognis

Author: Jun Arima, University of Tokyo As the world enters the implementation phase of the Paris Agreement, countries are increasingly under pressure to announce their 2050 carbon neutrality goals and update their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) for 2030. As of March 2021, more than 120 countries have pledged carbon neutrality by 2050. Last October, former prime minister Yoshihide Suga announced that Japan would aim to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Three months before Suga’s announcement in July 2020, Japan entered a process of formulating the Sixth Strategic Energy Plan, which seeks to introduce new energy sources that will underpin its new NDC. A cabinet-approved version was submitted at the COP26 Summit in Glasgow. Formulated in 2015, Japan’s previous NDC pledged a 26 per cent reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from 2013 levels by 2030. Under this target, Japan’s total power generation was made up of a 44 per cent share of non-fossil fuels (22–24 per cen