Today Trends

Author: Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits, Erasmus University Rotterdam In 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic provided additional cover for a regressive turn in Sri Lankan politics. The consequences of economic and political crisis became starkly evident shortly before the year ended as the hold of the Rajapaksa family on the Sri Lankan state tightened. From early 2021, the dead came to haunt the Rajapaksa regime, as the government — against all medical and scientific advice — continued to enforce the cremation of deceased Muslims. This drew major backlash from local civil society groups, the medical community and some in the international community. When the policy was eventually changed, it was not due to any government change of heart, but more likely intended to avert harsh words at the UN Human Rights Council’s March deliberations in Geneva, when a country-specific resolution on Sri Lanka was delivered. While alleged war criminals continue to enjoy impunity, the regime clamped down o...

Author: Chen Wang, United States China has benefited tremendously from neoliberal globalisation and its accession to the World Trade Organization — this helped the country become the world’s second-largest economy and leverage its political power throughout the global economy. But once-conducive international and domestic environments have changed in ways that mean China’s internal and external economic policies need a rethink. Externally, US policy towards China has shifted from strategic engagement to salient trade and technological competition . And internally, economic return on China’s existing low value-added export-led paradigm is declining. Many highly speculated sectors — like real estate — are also posing systemic financial risks as evidenced by the recent Evergrande debt crisis . China is responding to these challenges by prioritising state-led domestic economic reforms to sustain growth and deploying economic diplomacy to secure a less hostile political environment to ...

Author: Sujeev Shakya, Beed Management 2021 was a year of political upheaval and continued global disconnect for Nepal, but it was also a year of economic recovery. Nepal saw the fury of COVID-19 in May 2021 when it reeled under a shortage of oxygen and medical supplies, queues at cremation centres and thousands of lost lives. By the middle of December 2021 nearly 12,000 people had died of COVID-19, more than had died as a result of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake in 2015. When 2021 began, it was unclear whether caretaker Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli — who had just come to office after parliament was dissolved in December 2020 — would last. In February 2021, the Supreme Court overturned the verdict that had let to Oli’s prime ministership. In May, the President Bidya Devi Bhandari again ordered the house to be dissolved. Parliamentarians who opposed this move took their case to the Supreme Court which overturned the President’s decision, warned the President not to meddl...

Author: Michael Rose, ANU In May 2022, Timor-Leste will mark 20 years of renewed independence. No one could say that the past two decades have been smooth for Asia’s youngest nation, and 2021 was no exception. Over the past 12 months, its people have faced fire , flood and pestilence. But while there is cause for sadness looking back at 2021, there is also room for pride. A year that brought more than its share of problems to Timor-Leste was also one in which its people showed their determination to overcome them. Even in a year defined by disaster the April floods stand out. Over Easter torrential rains associated with Cyclone Seroja swept across the region, leaving at least 45 dead, thousands homeless, and two things very clear. One is that although floods are nothing new in Dili, the urbanisation, erosion, population growth and climate change that exacerbate the threat they pose is becoming more pronounced. Prior governments could have heeded calls to mitigate this through b...

Author: Xunchao Zhang, University of Wisconsin-Madison If you access any Chinese state media or pro-state social media published in late 2021, you will be bombarded with attacks on US President Joe Biden’s ‘Summit for Democracy’ and relentless insistence that China is the world’s largest democracy. Beyond the fear of geopolitical containment, it is puzzling why China cared about Biden’s democracy summit. It is not initially clear why China would insist on being a democracy when claiming democratic status risks falling into a rhetorical trap. While most Western media dismisses China’s claim to democracy as simply a cynical propaganda ploy, some ‘ democratisation optimists ’ in the West have suggested that China’s reaction to Biden’s summit shows China’s commitment to some vague notion of eventual democratisation. These observations miss the point. China’s reaction to the summit — clinging onto the concept of democracy — largely reflects a lack of a conceptual alternative, geopolit...

Author: Soe Nandar Linn, Yangon Myanmar’s transition from military government to a civilian-led democracy that began in 2011 has failed. The country’s administration and economy have been paralysed since February 2021 when the military junta seized power from the civilian government. The junta stated that widespread electoral fraud in the November 2020 general election justified the coup, although election observers found the election was free and fair. The pro-democracy party, National League for Democracy (NLD), won more than 80 percent of elected seats in the national level bicameral parliament and subnational parliaments. Myanmar had already experienced institutionalised corruption, multiple ethnic armed conflicts, poverty, an unstable regulatory environment, mismanagement of extractive industries and human rights abuses under the military dictatorship for 50 years before 2011. Since 2011, the country’s economy and living standards improved through a range of political, econo...

Author: Arrizal Jaknanihan, Gadjah Mada University With its strongman leader and pro-China outlook, analysts remain doubtful about Cambodia’s pledge to ‘strengthen ASEAN centrality’ under its chairmanship in 2022. The prospect of reinforcing an ASEAN-centred region, as envisioned by the ASEAN’s Outlook on the Indo-Pacific, is also being questioned. It is true that the Outlook has various shortcomings, including a lack of actionable policy . It is also premised on the flawed assumption that existing ASEAN-led platforms are sufficient to stabilise tensions in the Indo-Pacific. And as geopolitical feuds continue to intensify, the document remains vague and includes no detailed framework to link the different Indo-Pacific visions of ASEAN’s partners. The five-page document does not include a roadmap for implementation, making it little more than an aspirational statement . Still, much of the criticism of the Outlook is based on incorrect assumptions about how ASEAN operates. As vete...

Author: Ali Riaz, Illinois State University Bangladesh remained firmly under the grip of the incumbent Bangladesh Awami League in 2021. The ruling party faced no formidable opposition, the country celebrated its 50th year of independence and the COVID-19 pandemic was less devastating than was predicted. Bangladesh’s exclusion from US President Joe Biden’s Democracy Summit in December 2021 was the first indication that the United States is noticing the ongoing democratic backsliding in the country. The US Treasury then imposed sanctions against the Bangladeshi paramilitary force Rapid Action Battalion and seven of its current and former officers. This was followed by the US State Department’s travel ban on two former Bangladeshi officials — including the head of police — for human rights violations, including allegations of extrajudicial killings. While the Bangladesh government denied these allegations and criticised the ‘ unilateral ’ decision, discussions at home and abroad ...

Author: David Brown, California COVID-19 broke loose in Vietnam in June 2021, a year after most of East Asia. Until June, countermeasures and aggressive contact tracing had held the pandemic at bay and allowed the economy to keep growing. Perhaps those successes produced a false sense of security. Vietnam had almost no vaccine in inventory, which forced it to implement a draconian lockdown in Ho Chi Minh City and surrounding provinces while it negotiated urgently for supplies. By September, doses were plentiful and the regime, spooked by signs that some manufacturing orders were being rerouted away from Vietnam, declared that the nation would ‘live with COVID-19’. Hanoi’s gamble seems to have paid off. After contracting sharply in the third quarter of 2021, the Vietnamese economy revived in the fourth. For the whole year, the nation posted GDP growth of 2.6 per cent and now seems poised to return in 2022 to its accustomed 6 per cent plus annual growth rate. The year began with the...