Today Trends

Author: Nyi Nyi Kyaw, Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities Myanmar’s military, known as the Tatmadaw, is often considered the strongest institution in the country. This is true in terms of force. But the armed institution is now more vulnerable than ever to threats from within and without. The Myanmar Spring revolution has rebelled against the Tatmadaw’s despotism for over eight months in reaction to the February coup . In addition to armed self-defence, the revolution undermines the Tatmadaw’s internal unity, which is founded on three linkages between command and rank and file. The first linkage is ideological. The Tatmadaw is, in its own narrative, Myanmar’s saviour — first from British and Japanese colonisers and then from communist and ethnic armed insurgencies. Tatmadaw leaders also see themselves as responsible for Myanmar politics, as demonstrated by coups in 1958, 1962 and 2021 due to alleged chaos and civilian political corruption. Research on the Tatmadaw is ...

Author: Yusaku Yoshikawa, JIN Corporation On 10 August 2021, the Immigration Services Agency of Japan (ISA) published its final report on the recent death of a young female detainee from Sri Lanka in an immigration detention facility. The report admits that the ISA failed to understand her poor health conditions and did not take appropriate medical measures. The role of the ISA in the death of the detainee was seized on by protesters to push for a halt to a proposed amendment of Japan’s Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act. Opponents of the amendment argue that it would have entitled the ISA to deport too many detainees too easily, including those in the process of seeking asylum. Seemingly, this discussion was closed after the amendment was rejected and the ISA promised to implement organisational reform to improve its medical responses toward detainees. But is this a happy ending for opponents of the amendment? The cabinet approved the amendment and submitted it ...

Author: James Curran, University of Sydney The spectre of Donald Trump stalks Joe Biden’s White House and other corridors of power in Washington. A recent Iowa poll showed that Trump would win the state comfortably if a poll were held now, despite a disapproval rating of 99 per cent among Democrats. Trump’s popularity there is higher now than when he was President. The Trumpian legacy animating Biden’s trade policy was also on full display in a recent headline speech by US Trade Representative Katherine Tai. On 4 October, Tai presented the findings of the administration’s comprehensive review of the US-China trade relationship. Its essence was continuity with the first two phases of Trump’s deal. Where Biden during the campaign attacked Trump’s tariffs on China as ‘disastrous’, he now commits to them. Tai’s opening salvo could have been uttered at a Trump rally: ‘China’s lack of adherence to global trading norms has undercut the prosperity of Americans and others around the worl...

Author: Sourabh Gupta, Institute for China-America Studies The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) countries are racking up a series of impressive firsts, progressing through to quadrilateral naval exercises in the Bay of Bengal in 2020 and an in-person leader-level summit at the White House in September 2021. The Quad is here to stay as a loose entente of like-minded democracies in the Indo-Pacific. But can it claim the moral high ground when it comes to the rule of law? The idea of the Quad dates back to 2006 when the Bush administration, encouraged by the workings of the Tsunami Core Group formed in the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean Boxing Day Tsunami, proposed that the four countries — as democracies with substantial naval capabilities — set up a platform for exchange of views on regional maritime challenges. One of the foremost priorities of the grouping is to ‘champion adherence to international law, particularly as reflected in the United Nations Convention on the Law of ...

Author: Richard Katz, Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs Japan stands apart in a world where most countries seeking to boost growth encourage foreign companies to set up new facilities on their soil or buy domestic companies. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) helps because the fresh ideas of foreign companies spill over into the broader economy, boosting the performance of their local suppliers, business customers and sometimes even their own competitors. The spectacular success of China, Southeast Asia and post-Communist Eastern Europe would have been impossible without it. Only one major country has said ‘no thank you’ to these benefits: Japan. In 2019, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development ranked 196 countries’ stock of inward FDI as a share of GDP. Japan came in dead last — just behind North Korea. How is this possible when, almost 20 years ago, Tokyo incorporated inward FDI into its growth strategy? In 2001, FDI was a miniscule 1.2 per cent of...

Author: Editorial Board, ANU When the G20 leaders first met in November 2008, they recognised that a recovery from the global financial crisis could not be orchestrated by rich economies alone. The composition of the G20 reflected the shift in the world’s economic centre of gravity, towards Asia and the emerging economies around the world. Its agenda back in 2008 reflected the fact that a global recovery could only be achieved with truly global cooperation. But as the G20 leaders prepare to meet in Rome later this week, it is not clear that their agenda still reflects the group’s raison d’être . Despite a COVID-19 vaccination campaign that began nearly a year ago, and pledges to supply billions of vaccine doses to developing countries, the overwhelming majority of the world’s poorest have not yet been inoculated. Meanwhile, the economic rebound from the world’s worst economic downturn since the Great Depression is weakening. The G20’s agenda focuses more on medium and long-term cha...

Author: Adam Triggs, Accenture The world economy is facing a two-speed recovery. The rich world is overheating. The poor world is stagnating, with Asia’s developing countries at its centre. Left to fester, both worlds will soon start exporting problems to each other, creating a dangerous feedback loop. Addressing this two-speed global economy should be the top priority of G20 leaders when they meet in Italy on 30 October. But early indications suggest it’s not. The G20’s agenda is too focused on rich world problems. If it wants to be relevant, the G20 needs to stop recycling the G7’s agenda. It needs to deal with the challenges facing Asia’s developing economies and the developing world before it’s too late. The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) latest forecasts reveal just how divided the post-COVID-19 economic recovery will be. Rich countries are expected to reach their pre-pandemic level of output by 2024, while poor countries will remain 5.5 per cent behind their pre-pandemic...

Author: Ravinder Sidhu, University of Queensland Maintaining that ‘people are its most precious resource’, Singapore has made a name for itself as a country committed to human resource development . The city-state has invested in research infrastructure and matching budgets to turn itself into an educational and knowledge hub . But the future of international higher education in Singapore is far from guaranteed. The closing decade of the 20th century was a performative moment in the globalisation of higher education. Many anglophone universities increased their cross-border activities by entering into ‘mutually beneficial’ transnational partnerships with universities elsewhere. These partnerships consolidated their neoliberal credentials and allowed them to cede responsibility for fiscal and operational matters to these transnational partners. Singapore rode this wave of globalisation, pioneering a novel form of cross-border education that involved bankrolling and leveraging the g...

Author: Dushni Weerakoon, Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka Sri Lanka recently passed emergency regulations to deal with food shortages and price increases. Such powers are typically invoked to address public security concerns. But in this instance, they are being used to give the government extra powers to seize stocks of essential food items hoarded by traders. This justification sidesteps a fundamental question about the economic policy choices that have created the need for such drastic measures. An artificially maintained ‘official’ exchange rate in an economy hobbled by high debt levels has disincentivised food importers from releasing stocks at controlled domestic prices. At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic odds were heavily stacked against Sri Lanka. It entered 2020 with a government determined to cast off the shackles of an IMF austerity program, over the course of which GDP growth plummeted to an 18 year low. To revive economic activity, gene...

Author: Anil Sigdel, Nepal Matters for America The alliance between the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist and Leninist) (CPN-UML) and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) (CPN-MC), which won a landslide victory in the elections three years ago, has now fractured into three different political parties. The merger between the CPN-UML, led by then prime minister KP Sharma Oli , and the CPN-MC, led by former rebel leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal (known as Prachanda ) — which unified almost all strands of communists in the country into a long-awaited single party — has broken after only three years. The opposition Nepali Congress has now taken government . The CPN-UML, the largest communist party, suffered a painful blow as senior leader Madhav Kumar Nepal , who had been general secretary of the party and prime minister of the country in the past, left his long-time rival Oli, current party chairman and erstwhile prime minister. Nepal took with him several leaders and register...