Today Trends

Author: Zhiqun Zhu, Bucknell University US–China competition is a defining challenge of the present. Much attention has focussed on the behaviour of these two great powers and their impact on global affairs. But as the US–China rivalry persists, an important question is what third parties can do — especially countries like Australia that have huge stakes in maintaining productive relations with both powers.   The challenges facing third parties and their policy options are understudied. These countries have their own interests and agency. Their decisions will not only affect themselves but may also shape the course and outcome of US–China competition. While the United States provides security protection to its allies, China is the largest trading partner of over 120 countries, including most US allies and partners. This tension between their political and economic interests will not change any time soon. Instead of siding with either the United States or China in their great ...

Author: Paul Teng, NTU The COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and the Russia–Ukraine conflict have exacerbated global food insecurity. The current crisis has highlighted the reliance of many ASEAN states on staple food and animal feed imports, as well as ASEAN’s lack of coordinated strategy for food production. ASEAN needs to reduce import dependency to minimise the impact of global market fluctuations on regional food security.   While ASEAN’s staple food is rice, there has been increased demand for wheat, soybean and maize over the past decade — an increase that ASEAN production cannot meet. Soybean and maize have become particularly important as animal feeds needed to support an exponential growth in livestock demand. Meeting this demand requires large imports from outside ASEAN. Food insecurity has highlighted ASEAN’s vulnerability to disruptions in the importation of foodstuffs. Several states are now prioritising localised production and shorter, more reliable supply chai...

Laos faces unprecedented financial difficulties, including US$14.5 billion worth of public and publicly guaranteed debt — around half of which is owed to China. But unlike Sri Lanka, there is no chance that Laos will default on its external debt obligations. China, its largest creditor and political ally, will not let Laos default . People’s Bank of China, Beijing, 20 June 2022 (Photo: Kyodo). The size of Laos’ debt obligations make it seem like a default is inevitable. The country’s total public and publicly guaranteed debt stock was 88 per cent of GDP in 2021. With an average of US$1.3 billion worth of yearly debt servicing owed between 2022 and 2026, the Lao government needs to seek debt service deferral and continue to refinance its existing debt stock. Laos also faces a liquidity challenge — it does not have enough assets to meet its external debt obligations — with its foreign exchange reserves (US$1.3 billion) equal to the annual amount needed to service its debt. Geo-ec...

Author: Albert Jehoshua Rapha, Diponegoro University Artificial intelligence (AI) technology has experienced exponential advancement and widespread deployment globally since its initial exploration in 1950. With this pace of change, policy adaptation is needed in the Asia Pacific to secure the resilience of online platforms to cyber threats. AI is now one of many technologies that power ‘critical infrastructure’ — health systems, surveillance networks and payment systems — many of which underpin the real economy. AI involves the  programming of computers  to undertake tasks accomplished by human intelligence — the ability to make predictions, reason, grasp visual or auditory information and cooperate with humans and machines. AI is powered by machine learning, a field of research in which algorithms are trained on historical data to predict output values. This enables software, like search engines or spam filters, to become more accurate without being explicitly progr...

Author: Kati Suominen, Nextrade Group East Asia is in the midst of a historic e-commerce boom. Online transactions of goods and services grew rapidly during COVID-19 lockdowns, at 58 per cent per annum in the Southeast Asian region alone in 2020. In 2022, the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam are expected to rank among the top five fastest growing e-commerce markets in the world. China remains the region’s largest business-to-consumer e-commerce market, with more than 50 per cent of retail sales made online. East Asia’s online buyers and sellers are buoyed by a vibrant ecosystem of digital trade services, such as e-commerce marketplaces, digital payment and fintech services, logistics platforms and so-called ‘super-apps’ that provide users with services including delivery, shopping and ride-hailing. Businesses are realising the opportunity that e-commerce presents, mounting online stores and onboarding marketplaces to reach hundreds of millions of global buyers. In ASEAN count...

Author: Stephen Howes, ANU Papua New Guinean Prime Minister James Marape achieved a landslide victory in Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) 2022 general election. Marape and his PANGU party posted the second most successful electoral performance in the country’s 11 general elections held since independence in 1975. Marape has been Prime Minister since 2019. He is not new to the job, but what challenges will he face and where should his policy priorities lie this term? PNG’s economy has been in a slump since the country’s commodity boom ended in 2014. Non-resource GDP per capita — GDP minus the output of the resources sector — and employment have both been on a downward trajectory since. The COVID-19 pandemic has made things worse. It is not all gloomy. There is a massive road investment program underway and a large new resource project may finally be approved, with several already at advanced stages of negotiation or preparation. High commodity prices will also help boost government revenu...

Author: James Gannon, JCIE COVID-19 saw the stunning failure of wealthy countries to adequately aid their struggling neighbours, allowing a chasm to open between haves and have-notes in terms of access to vaccines, diagnostics and treatments. This has fuelled calls to reform global health financing and help low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) prepare for the next pandemic. But world leaders are coming up short. The first and only truly global effort to coordinate the worldwide COVID-19 response involved the Access to COVID 19-Tools (ACT) Accelerator, a coalition convened in April 2020 by the WHO, the European Union, the United Nations and an array of global health organisations. The ACT Accelerator has deployed US$23.4 billion to aid COVID-19 pandemic management and deserves praise for saving countless lives. It was a minor miracle that it could have a measure of success given how it lacked active support at the start from many of the world’s powers. The United States initia...

Author: Cameron Hill, ANU As a student of Paul Keating, Treasurer Jim Chalmers would be aware of the prominence of ‘lever’ analogies in the former Australian prime minister’s economic policy lexicon. While Australia does not have many levers to pull when it comes to minimising the escalating debt, food and fuel crisis facing many low- and middle-income countries, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government has recently utilised one of the few at its disposal. The Albanese government’s decision to redistribute Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) issued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to assist low- and middle-income countries by supplementing foreign exchange assets is commendable. But with global economic conditions and the outlook for many developing economies worsening, the Albanese government will need to draw on other policy levers to help minimise the instability and scarring arising from current and future shocks. SDRs are the currency of the IMF and, as an internationa...

Author: Editorial Board, ANU Taiwan’s status as a potential trigger point for conflict amid escalating strategic competition between the United States and China has only been confirmed in the wake of Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei. There is risk of miscalculation, mistake and escalation that could have devastating consequences. China’s flexing its military might over Pelosi’s visit is currently feeding global uncertainty. Even if conflict is avoided, the new status quo will sit uncomfortably with the United States and the West and tensions are likely to worsen. The United States and China are now engaged in policies of mutual technology ‘decoupling’ as the next phase of their trade war. Japan is enacting economic security laws aimed at China — in part to avoid becoming collateral damage in US decoupling policies. Australia, having been a target of Beijing’s trade coercion, seems to have also chosen to side with America in its futile attempt to diversify trade away from China. Thes...

Author: Sourabh Gupta, Institute for China-America Studies Seventy-five years ago this July, the US diplomat George Kennan published his seminal essay in  Foreign Affairs  introducing the idea of ‘containment’. In  The Sources of Soviet Conduct , Kennan advocated for a policy of containment against Soviet expansionism. As some in Washington prepare for a new Cold War with China, the Kennan-era template is being pressed into service again. A key chapter on The Intellectual Sources of China’s Conduct published in a 2020 US State Department paper even borrows from Kennan’s famous title. Others seek a softer variant of the policy that would encircle or contain China’s influence by excluding it from bespoke security and non-security focused minilateral groupings. Diplomats, like generals, may be wedded to their last war strategy but the challenge posed by China today is vastly different from that which was posed by the Soviet Union. Kennan report...