Today Trends

Author: Shankaran Nambiar, Malaysian Institute of Economic Research Things were rough for the Malaysian economy the past year. The government’s response to the COVID-19 crisis was made within a narrow fiscal space, though Kuala Lumpur did make valiant efforts to minimise the impact of the pandemic, which saw high infections, deaths and a public health system under severe pressure. The government came out with a series of initiatives to provide support for a broad range of segments in the economy. These measures — termed Penjana, Prihatin, Permai and Permekasa+ — amounted to some US$90 billion (RM380 billion) in spending. The main targets for these measures were micro, small and medium sized enterprises, the informal sector and those in the bottom 40 per cent of household income. The government’s relief packages were about 43.5 per cent of GDP as of November 2021. The government was subject to reproval for not having done as much as some advanced economies. The criticisms were not

Author: Robert Ayson, Victoria University of Wellington As the first full year of Jacinda Ardern’s second term as New Zealand’s Prime Minister, 2021 began with the promise of political continuity. The October 2020 general election left her Labour Party in a commanding electoral position . National, the leading opposition party, was in tatters, and a rapid succession of leaders would offer few answers to Ardern’s popularity. Winston Peters’ New Zealand First Party, Labour’s main coalition partner since the 1997 election, failed to retain a single parliamentary seat. Able to govern alone if it had so wished, Labour nonetheless gifted portfolios to the Greens’ two co-leaders, and the Climate Change portfolio found James Shaw defending New Zealand’s unconvincing pathway to emissions reductions when he travelled to the COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow in November. But Labour put its own stamp on the government’s two main externally facing roles. In Foreign Affairs, Nanaia M

Author: Dr Tess Newton Cain, Pacific Hub, Griffith Asia Institute It was quite the year for the Pacific islands in 2021. Countries have had to negotiate the ongoing impacts of COVID-19, while climate change has continued to be a focal point. But while there has been plenty of commentary too narrowly focussed on the impacts of geostrategic competition, domestic and regional politics is where the rubber has really hit the road. The health impacts of COVID-19 remained minimal in many countries of the region, although that has changed in 2022. There are countries who have yet to have any recorded cases, whilst several others have had a small number of infections that were successfully contained at the border. But there have been serious outbreaks elsewhere — such as in Fiji , French Polynesia , New Caledonia and Papua New Guinea . Vaccination programs have been rolled out across the region, with mixed results. Fiji sought to vaccinate its way out of the Delta wave and was largely succ

Author: Aurelia George Mulgan, UNSW Canberra Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s new economic program is gradually taking shape via a series of major policy announcements and record-breaking government spending initiatives. These include ‘an economic stimulus package that dwarfs anything announced by his predecessors’, the biggest supplementary budget in history amounting to 36 trillion yen (US$314 billion) for fiscal year 2021, a national budget plan allocating 107 trillion yen (US$933 billion) for fiscal year 2022 and a fiscal year 2022 tax reform plan. The stated mission of the government is to deliver economic measures that will ‘ overcome COVID-19 and pioneer a new era ’ including ‘the realization of a new form of capitalism, the linchpin for reviving the Japanese economy’. For Kishida, ‘ new capitalism ’ represents a necessary economic model upgrade where ‘rather than leaving everything to markets and competition … public and private sector entities together play their ro

Author: Editorial Board, ANU Japan’s borders are closed but unlike zero-COVID China or Western Australia, it’s in the middle of an Omicron wave of infections with 100,000 daily cases and rising — though still with far fewer cases than Australia on a per capita basis. The closed-border policy is popular in Japan but it’s hurting its international reputation and engagement. Domestic politics means that Japan looks unlikely to make significant changes to ease its border policies soon. On 30 November 2021, Japan re-enacted the country’s strict COVID-19 border control measures in response to the Omicron variant. It has since copped significant international flak with accusations that its border policies are ‘unscientific,’ unfairly discriminate against foreign nationals, and out of step with the industrialised democracies of the G7. Japan had just started to re-open its doors on 8 November. With the lower house election in October out of the way and 74 per cent of the country double-j

Authors: Saya Soma, University of Waterloo and Yves Tiberghien, UBC As COVID-19’s Omicron variant surges around the world, advanced democracies are generally responding vigorously but with lower levels of restrictions on social life and travel than in 2020 and 2021. Japan has chosen a different course. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has reacted with powerful border control measures that exceed those of previous years. Past disappointments with government policy and deeper social changes have bred extreme public sensitivity to pandemic-related policies. The Kishida government knows that its popularity and survival are tightly connected to COVID-19 numbers. Even with the recent surge, Japan’s new infection numbers are about five times lower per capita than in many European countries or the United States, and at least three times lower than in Australia. Japan’s death rate has been contained to 146 deaths per million people from November 15 to January 20, only inching up to 14

Author: Deepa Ollapally, George Washington University Last year political and economic low points plagued Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government at home and abroad. The catastrophic second wave of COVID-19 that swept across India and the shocking and very public breakdown of the healthcare system was undoubtedly the country’s lowest point of the year. At home, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) repealed three new farm laws in November after it failed to win over thousands of farmers who waged a successful high-profile protest for more than a year. Passed hurriedly without sufficient parliamentary scrutiny, these laws that were directed toward privatising the agricultural sector threatened the existing rights of farmers and they lost trust in the government. The retraction by the government represented a visible victory for democracy even as India’s democratic credentials came into serious questioning . Earlier in the year, Freedom House changed India’s status from ‘

Author: Andrey Gubin, Far Eastern Federal University Russia and ASEAN celebrated the 30th anniversary of official relations in 2021. There was no special ceremony for the occasion, but Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed a congratulatory speech virtually to participants at the 4th Russia–ASEAN Summit in October. As cooperation deepens, the two parties are now realising how much they have in common. Putin stressed that both parties often shared positions on global and regional issues and advocated for equal, fair and beneficial cooperation in the Asia Pacific. The Joint Statement from the summit acknowledges that national security cannot be achieved at the ‘expense of the others’, and reinforces ASEAN’s key role in shaping security architecture in the Asia Pacific and Indian Ocean. This is one of the first official Russian documents that combines the Pacific and Indian oceans together, although not into the ‘Indo-Pacific’ as Russia officially still rejects the term and phe

Author: Troy Stangarone, Korea Economic Institute of America South Korea’s economic performance since 2020 cannot be divorced from its handling of COVID-19 and its role in global supply chains. After winning praise for its handling of the pandemic, Seoul was able to minimise the initial economic damage of the pandemic and saw a relatively strong economic recovery in 2021. South Korea must now navigate a slowdown in exports and rising inflationary pressures to maintain economic growth in 2022. South Korea weathered the first year of the pandemic through a combination of fiscal and monetary stimulus , strong second-half export growth , and its use of contact tracing to manage the pandemic domestically. It experienced a modest 0.9 per cent GDP decline in 2020 and had returned to pre-pandemic levels of economic activity by May 2021. Trade was important for minimising South Korea’s economic damage in 2020. Despite ongoing global supply chain disruptions, South Korea’s economic recove