Today Trends

Author: Scott O’Neill, World Mosquito Program As we enter the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is growing frustration over the lack of an effective global response to this unprecedented crisis. The recent emergence of the Omicron variant has underscored the risks that all nations face when they fail to follow the science and fight for equitable, high-impact solutions to the world’s most pressing health challenges. If COVID-19 has taught us anything, it is that the universal right to health is not just a noble aspiration — a lofty multilateral goal to be achieved at some far-flung date — it is an urgent strategic imperative for an increasingly interconnected and rapidly changing world. Omicron has defeated the most rigorous national testing protocols, proving yet again that pandemics show no regard for international borders. But COVID-19 is not the only urgent disease threat facing the global community, and if we want to save lives and strengthen the resilience of our hea...

Author: Arun R Swamy, University of Guam Late last year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the repeal of three laws intended to liberalise agricultural trade within the country. The announcement attracted worldwide attention, giving some indication of how enormous a political headache the laws had become. For over a year, mass protests by farmers camped in and around New Delhi had been an international talking point . Concerns were often borne out by the government’s heavy-handed responses and accusations that the protestors were unpatriotic . That the protestors’ victory was framed as a win for democracy against an autocratic regime is not surprising. But at its core, the protests were not about democracy. It was about the economic interests of some farmers in maintaining a set of policies dating back to the food shortages of the 1960s when the government promoted hybrid high-yield varieties of rice and wheat with a wide range of subsidies. Over time, the subsidies ...

Author: Nicholas Thomas, City University of Hong Kong The start of 2022 has seen Hong Kong’s COVID-19 pandemic firewall well and truly breached. Months had passed with only isolated community cases, but by the end of January there were hundreds of new cases being identified weekly. The rapid spread of COVID-19 caught officials off guard, leading to harsh lockdowns and mass testing. How did Hong Kong, a poster child for zero-COVID with some of the harshest quarantine measures in the world, see such a massive increase in infections within such a short period of time? The first major breach occurred in December 2021 but the rate of infections accelerated in January 2022. In the first week of January 2022, over 200 of Hong Kong’s political elite attended a birthday party for Witman Hung, a delegate to the National People’s Congress. Among the attendees were several people infected with the Omicron variant of COVID-19. This outbreak significantly impacted public trust in the government...

Author: Hai Hong Nguyen, UQ According to a recent report by Transparency International, Vietnam’s corruption levels significantly decreased in 2021, down to 87th most corrupt from 104th in 2020. But this encouraging shift does not reflect a seismic corruption case relating to COVID testing kits that came to light in the last days of 2021. The sheer scale of it — and the engagement of public officials — shocked the country. The case involved Viet A Technologies JSC, a private company that allegedly gained illegal revenue of nearly 4 trillion Vietnamese dong (US$176 million) by overcharging  for COVID testing kits and colluding with hospital managers across the nation. Following investigations, several prominent figures were arrested — including the CEO of Viet A, and several senior officials from the ministries of Public Health and Science and Technology and  provincial Centers for Disease Control . Prior to these criminal prosecutions, the Communist ...

Author: Jeremy Youde, University of Minnesota Duluth A divide is emerging between how the Asia Pacific region has responded to the Omicron wave of COVID-19, and how North American and Western European countries have responded. If you were to visit the United States, you might be forgiven for thinking that the COVID-19 pandemic is over. Life in many parts of the country is seemingly back to normal. As the number of COVID-19 cases decreases across the United States and the Omicron wave peaks, states like California and New Jersey have removed some mask mandates. Anthony Fauci, the Chief Medical Advisor to the US President, has said that the United States is rapidly moving toward the endemic phase of COVID-19 and that many restrictions will be lifted. By contrast, many countries in the Asia Pacific have maintained or even strengthened their COVID restrictions. Hong Kong banned most public activities and flights from eight countries. Throughout much of Japan, bars and restaura...

Author: Claude Barfield, American Enterprise Institute Entering its second year, the Biden administration has failed to produce a coherent economic policy for the Indo-Pacific. Meanwhile, two major regional trade agreements are moving forward. US businesses and workers will increasingly suffer from legal economic discrimination from these new regional trade rules of the road — the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The parallels and contrasts with the Obama administration are striking. Like US President Joe Biden, Obama came into office proclaiming the need to fix the US economy first, with no plans for advancing new trade initiatives. But within a year, faced with rising security and diplomatic challenges in Asia — China’s growing assertiveness and North Korea’s missiles over surrounding seas — the Obama administration reversed course and joined negotiations for the Trans-Paci...

Author: Dr Biswajit Dhar, Jawaharlal Nehru University From early 2022, India’s exports have looked distinctly different. India seemed to have turned towards economic isolationism in 2019 when the government decided to walk away from the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) negotiations. The government also announced its intent to review India’s three major Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreements (CEPAs) with ASEAN, South Korea and Japan. The rationale for that course was effectively neo-mercantilist , an export heavy capital accumulation strategy, as the government was unhappy with the growing trade deficit with India’s CEPA partners. In the wake of the COVID-induced economic downturn, the government announced the ‘ Atma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan’ , Self Reliant India Campaign, whose cornerstone was the slogan, ‘vocal for local’. The message was clear: domestically produced goods should be preferred over imports. As the economy began to emerge from the depths of t...

Author: Editorial Board, ANU The pandemic is far from over. Some 40 per cent of the world’s population is yet to receive a single shot of a COVID-19 vaccine. More virulent or contagious strains are likely to emerge. The virus doesn’t recognise borders. Putting the pandemic behind us is a global weakest-link public good issue. People in advanced economies are not safe until the poorest countries are protected from the virus. In December 2021, the major global institutions — the World Bank, WTO, IMF and World Health Organization — called for urgent action to vaccinate 70 per cent of the population in all countries by mid-2022. There are 20 countries with less than 10 per cent of their populations vaccinated , including less than 0.5 per cent of the population of 90 million in the Congo and just over 3 per cent of Papua New Guineans. Asian nations, especially in Southeast Asia, have done better with the connectivity through existing supply chains and strong state capacity. As Ken He...

Author: Ken Heydon, LSE Among the G20 goals being pursued by the Indonesian chair this year is ‘ ensuring equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines ’. This has become a pressing task, though one that’s part of a bigger picture. Developing country vulnerability means global vulnerability. The Delta variant , first detected in India in April 2021 before becoming a world crisis, illustrates the danger of having large pockets of unvaccinated people. There is both an ethical and a self-interested reason for helping poorer countries cope with COVID-19. Between mid-2020 and the end of 2021, 10 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses were produced and there is now global capacity to produce 12 billion doses a year. But distribution has been highly uneven with less than 1 per cent of the vaccines going to low-income countries. The World Health Organization’s (WHO) COVAX initiative has fallen well short of its target of delivering two billion doses to lower-middle and low-income countries by the end of ...

Author: Ronald May, ANU In Papua New Guinea (PNG), as in many countries, the dominant narrative in 2021 was COVID-19. The outbreak of the pandemic posed a threat to PNG, as the country’s health services had been in decline for years and were struggling to cope with drug-resistant tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and other chronic health issues. At the end of January 2021, PNG had officially recorded only 867 COVID-19 cases and 9 deaths. Low levels of testing and poor awareness of the pandemic mean these figures were likely understated. This changed in February 2021 as infection rates rose exponentially. By 19 March, recorded cases had more than tripled and deaths had risen to 36. Most of these cases were in Port Moresby and the two provinces, Western and West Sepik, on the border with Indonesia. Despite moves to restrict the movement of people, the virus quickly spread to most of the country. PNG’s vaccine rollout commenced as further surges in recorded cases occurred in May and then Septem...