Today Trends

Authors: Melissa Conley Tyler, AP4D, Allan Rahari, FFA, and Keith Symington, Sustainable Fisheries Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing impacts ecosystems, economies, human security, international law, governance and human development. IUU fishing is a priority issue across the Indo-Pacific region, with ASEAN member states experiencing over US$6 billion in economic losses per year from IUU fishing. Australia needs to reset how it looks at IUU fishing — this will require strong cooperation and engagement with regional partners. Australia can show global leadership in combatting IUU fishing through strengthened engagement in bilateral and multilateral cooperation. IUU fishing is not a single-country issue and needs cooperative regional mechanisms. Even when there is no transboundary nature to IUU fishing, such as in coastal artisanal fleet fishing, there are lessons to be learnt between countries and information sharing is critical. Australia has an important role to...

Author: Tien Foo Sing, National University of Singapore Singapore’s housing market is going through some big changes. It has a dual market structure consisting of a public and a private market. The public housing market is divided into a primary and a secondary (resale) market. The Housing & Development Board is responsible for building and selling public housing flats at concessionary prices in the primary market to Singaporeans. The primary public housing market is regulated and only open to Singaporean families, subject to a monthly household income cap of 14,000 Singapore dollars (~US$10,400). After meeting the minimum occupation period of five years, owners can sell their flats in the secondary public housing market to Singaporean citizens and permanent residents who do not own private houses. The private housing market is a laissez-faire market which supplies non-landed houses, such as apartments and condominiums, as well as landed houses, such as terrace, semi-detached ...

Author: Minglu Chen, University of Sydney The 20th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) National Congress, held in October 2022, caught the world’s attention — not least because there was not a single woman among the Politburo’s 24 members, breaking a tradition of two decades. While the number of women in key political roles globally is steadily improving, female representation in the CCP has worsened over time. Patriarchal norms undoubtedly contribute to Chinese women’s underrepresentation in political leadership, but this is not a situation that Chinese women alone face. In many societies, women pursuing a career in politics are challenging their traditional gender roles. Hence they are often seen as lacking the necessary credentials or criticised for not being ‘real’ women. There are several factors that have made the absence of women so severe in Chinese politics. The CCP’s commitment to women’s emancipation is reflected in Mao Zedong’s famous claim that ‘women hold up half the sky’....

Authors: Ida Aju Pradnja Resosudarmo, Rini Astuti and Peter Kanowski, ANU Indonesia remains one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases, ranking eighth in the world in 2019. Indonesia has a pivotal role to play in addressing climate change. In 2016, it set Paris Agreement targets to reduce emissions by 29 per cent (unconditional) and 41 per cent (conditional) below business-as-usual levels by 2030 and has developed strategies to reduce its land and forest-based emissions. Despite its own emissions profile , Norway plays an important role in assisting tropical countries like Indonesia to reduce forest loss and degradation. In the lead up to the COP27 summit in September 2022, the governments of Indonesia and Norway entered into a renewed bilateral partnership on forests and climate. The 2022 agreement superseded the 2010 Indonesia–Norway agreement on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+), which Indonesia terminated in September 2021 a...

Author: Edward Vickers, Kyushu University The comfort women controversy has dogged Tokyo–Seoul relations since the early 1990s, but Japan’s wartime network of ‘comfort stations’ or military brothels was located mainly in China. Though the ‘Patriotic War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression’ has long been central to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) patriotic education campaign, Beijing has proven comparatively hesitant and ambivalent on this issue. Advocacy on behalf of comfort women emerged out of an upsurge of feminism in post-Cold War East Asia, sometimes intersecting awkwardly with anti-Japanese nationalism . Across the region, state-led modernisation came at the heavy cost of institutionalised discrimination against women. The fact that East Asia today boasts the world’s lowest fertility rates is attributable in part to female dissatisfaction with a developmental model and employment practices that depend on women’s unpaid labour. The particular enthusiasm with wh...

Authors: Leonard C Sebastian and James Guild, RSIS Indonesia’s hosting of the G20 Summit in 2022 was widely viewed as a success, as Indonesia assumed the role of international mediator between global rivals. By establishing itself as a non-aligned entity unbound to a particular ideological or geopolitical bloc, Indonesia was able to credibly broker dialogue between opposing parties. This success begs the question of whether a similar outcome should be expected with Indonesia’s ASEAN chairmanship in 2023. While the situation in Myanmar will be an important issue, it is unlikely to dominate the agenda. The agenda will likely focus on economic issues, regional consolidation and how best to use ASEAN to achieve certain strategic objectives. Economic self-interest will likely be the defining feature of Indonesia’s ASEAN chairmanship. This reflects the adaptability of Indonesia’s independent and active ( bebas aktif ) foreign policy philosophy. Bebas aktif , as articulated by Indonesia...

Author: James Curran, University of Sydney The speech in Washington in late April by US President Joe Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan is critical to the United States’ future, US–China relations and Australia. But the speech barely registered in Australia. In his address, Sullivan gave renewed expression to the administration’s commitment to running a ‘foreign policy for the middle class’. It shows how much the spectre of a hollowed out US heartland — which helped Donald Trump win the presidency in 2016 — also shapes how this White House thinks about the relationship between trade, economics and national security. Sullivan put on record what has been apparent since Biden’s election: in key trade and economic areas the United States is retreating into industry policy, heavy subsidies for manufacturing and high technology and trade restraint on its partners. Cast adrift, then, is the rules-based order of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which remains vit...

Author: Suryaputra Wijaksana, Bank Rakyat Indonesia The COVID-19 pandemic posed a tremendous economic challenge, especially for emerging economies such as Indonesia. But it also marked a watershed moment for the country’s economic reform efforts. The crisis enabled Indonesia to reduce its reliance on volatile foreign capital inflows and rethink its growth pathway. During the pandemic, Indonesia was temporarily set free from its reliance on foreign capital as global investors fled emerging markets bonds and equity . At the same time, slumping domestic demand, which suppressed imports, and relatively large national savings ameliorated Indonesia’s current account deficit problem. Russia’s war in Ukraine led to a commodity price boom that further boosted the domestic economy while it was still recovering from the pandemic. Indonesia’s current account deficit problem stems from insufficient foreign direct investment (FDI). In 2021, Indonesia’s FDI inflow was only 1.8 per cent of GDP, c...

Author: Editorial Board, ANU Your friends on the left will always be ready to tell you about the supposed contradictions between capitalism and democracy. By the same token, the latent influence of big business could be a bulwark against the ambitions of authoritarian states to monopolise political and social control. Today’s China is neither democratic nor truly socialist. But, for those reasons, it’s the world’s most prominent testbed of some of the tensions between markets and the party-state’s new national agenda and its impulses towards unquestioned pre-eminence in the country’s political, economic and social life. As Yvette To explains in this week’s lead article , China’s technology industries are a key area in which these tensions have played out in recent years. The tech sector is distinctive in that it has flourished largely through the leadership of private firms— often those founded by charismatic and outspoken entrepreneurs — with the SOE sector playing a large bit-pa...

Author: Yvette To, City University of Hong Kong As China lifts COVID-19 restrictions and returns to normalcy, prospects for private business in the post-COVID economic recovery remain uncertain. Despite former Vice Premier Liu He’s reiteration of the central government’s adherence to market principles at the World Economic Forum in January 2023, there are mixed messages about the Party’s stance towards the private tech sector. The detention of Bao Fan , Chairman and CEO of investment bank China Renaissance Holdings, in February sent shockwaves through international markets and among Chinese tech entrepreneurs. Bao was widely regarded as the country’s top dealmaker, whose company presided over several high-profile domestic tech deals. On the other hand, Alibaba’s Jack Ma made a surprise reappearance in China in March, after traveling abroad for over a year. In a seemingly friendly gesture to the private sector, the Cyberspace Administration of China announced a campaign to crack...