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Begin New Search Political Geography Asia Content Type Commentary and Analysis Publication Year within 5 Years

201. Digital Authoritarianism, China and C0VID

Author:
Lydia Khalil
Publication Date:
11-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Lowy Institute for International Policy
Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic has emboldened Beijing to expand its use of digital technologies in the name of public health and safety. From mass surveillance, tracking intelligence, and internet censorship to the use of social credit systems, augmented data-collection capabilities, and big data, China’s new normal exposes and expands encroachments on civil liberties. The pandemic has provided a ‘proof of concept’, but China’s actions in the new digital landscape extend beyond managing its own pandemic response and controlling its own citizens. China is aggressively pursuing global technological dominance by investing in its indigenous tech sector and exporting technological surveillance tools. The reach of Chinese-engineered and monitored social control systems has wide-ranging implications, with current pandemic conditions serving as the justification for a significant increase in state surveillance, the adoption of digital authoritarian tools, and the deterioration of privacy and civil liberties.
Topic:
Human Rights, Intelligence, Science and Technology, Authoritarianism, Surveillance, COVID-19, Civil Liberties, and Social Control
Political Geography:
China and Asia

202. The Economic Impact of COVID-19 on Asia-Pacific

Author:
Oxford Economics
Publication Date:
04-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Oxford Economics
Abstract:
In this report, Oxford Economics looks at the impact the COVID-19 pandemic on the economies of Asia-Pacific. We look at the impact of lockdown measures to contain the pandemic in China and other economies in the region, and their toll on business and households. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues around the globe, governments, investors, business and households are beginning to understand the financial and economic costs more clearly. In this report we examine the channels through which COVID-19 has impacted on the economies of the Asia-Pacific region. We explore the economic cost of lockdown measures, particularly so in China, as well as knock-on effects through supply-chains, tourism, and financial markets. We set out our forecasts for an historically-sharp downturn in the first half of 2020, but potential for a rapid recovery starting later this year and into 2021. Finally, we examine a downside scenario, simulated using our Global Economic Model, in which lockdown measures spread globally and the economic cost is even greater than in our baseline forecast.
Topic:
Economics, Public Health, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Asia and Asia-Pacific

203. The Avoidable War: The Case for Managed Strategic Competition (Collection of Speeches by the Hon. Kevin Rudd)

Author:
Kevin Rudd
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Asia Society
Abstract:
Throughout the recent 18 months of the U.S.-China trade war, which has landed in a “phase one” deal, and awaits the tackling of more difficult economic elements in phase two negotiations, there has been a slow and steady structural shift in the U.S.-China relationship as it continues to head in a more adversarial direction. Against the backdrop of this drift toward confrontation occurring in the absence of any common strategic understanding or high-level diplomatic mechanism to manage the mounting economic, security, and technological tensions into the future, Asia Society Policy Institute President the Hon. Kevin Rudd brings together a series of speeches delivered during 2019 in the collection, The Avoidable War: The Case for Managed Strategic Competition. This volume works to help make sense of where the U.S.-China relationship is heading in the current period of strategic competition, and follows on from Rudd’s 2018 collection, The Avoidable War: Reflections on U.S.-China Relations and the End of Strategic Engagement. In this new volume, Rudd focuses not only on the bilateral relationship, but also on China's domestic politics, economics, and its strategic vision. But on the bilateral relationship, Rudd writes that while there may be a truce of sorts on the trade front during 2020, that will not be the case across the rest of the economic, political, and security relationship. Challenges will continue in areas such as the future of 5G mobile telecommunications infrastructure, the Belt and Road Initiative, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, allegations of Chinese political influence and interference in foreign countries’ internal democratic processes, and China’s increasingly close strategic collaboration with Russia. Militarily, tensions will continue in the East China Sea, the South China Sea, and the wider Indo-Pacific, together with confrontations less visible to the public eye in espionage, cyber, and space. Against this backdrop, and the steady erosion of diplomatic and political capital in the overall relationship, Rudd asserts that the “2020s loom as a decade of living dangerously in the U.S.-China relationship.” The Avoidable War: The Case for Managed Strategic Competition includes six speeches from 2019 covering a range of critical challenges in the U.S.-China relationship, as well as a December 2019 conversation at the Harvard Kennedy School which begins to outline an approach to managing the growing tinderbox of tensions across the spectrum of the bilateral relationship.
Topic:
Security, Bilateral Relations, Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Trade, and Strategic Competition
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

204. Russia’s Struggle to Gain Influence in Southeast Asia

Author:
Bennett Murray
Publication Date:
08-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI)
Abstract:
As the United States and People’s Republic of China jostle for influence among member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Russian Federation has also declared the bloc a priority. Southeast Asian nations, in turn, would like third powers to counterbalance Beijing and Washington in the region. However, Russia has not made a huge impression in the bloc since its first summit with ASEAN in 2005. Economic success has been mostly limited to bilateral trade centered around arms sales, while security partnerships have not been forthcoming. Part of the problem is that Russia lacks historic ties in its former Cold War rivals, which are also ASEAN’s largest economic powerhouses, to lean on. More crucially, Southeast Asian nations perceive Moscow as deferential to Beijing’s geopolitical ambitions in the region.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, Geopolitics, Soft Power, and Economic Diplomacy
Political Geography:
Russia, Eurasia, Asia, and Southeast Asia

205. The Future of the Kuomintang in Taiwan: Reform, Recalibrate, or Stay the Course?

Author:
Thomas J. Shattuck
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI)
Abstract:
Once again, the future of Kuomintang (KMT), the political party headed by Chiang Kai-shek for decades and that favors a closer relationship with Mainland China, is in doubt due to the results of the recent presidential and legislative elections in Taiwan. President Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was reelected in a landslide against her opponent Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu of the Kuomintang. Tsai received a record 8+ million votes, and the DPP retained its majority in the country’s national legislature by winning 61 seats—though it did lose seven compared to the 2016 election when the party won its first-ever majority. The blowout victory puts the KMT’s future into question—though more senior analysts note that this conversation occurs after every election, particularly the 2016 election, and nothing really changes. Maybe, just maybe, this time will be different.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Politics, Reform, History, and Kuomintang
Political Geography:
Taiwan and Asia

206. What North Korea’s Coronavirus Measures Say About Its System

Author:
Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein
Publication Date:
02-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI)
Abstract:
The North Korean government response to the coronavirus has been extreme, but prudent and reasonable in context. It has closed the border to China almost entirely to both goods and people though surely some transports are still getting through. No travel is allowed to or from China although there must be exceptions to this rule as well. The state (under the banner of the Red Cross, whose branch in North Korea operates as a government entity) has dispatched people around the country to inform people about the virus. No reports have been confirmed at this time of writing, but exile journalists based in South Korea have reported several deaths from the virus from North Korea. Its actions have been blunt and all-encompassing, mainly because the state lacks the necessary capacity to act differently. North Korea doesn’t have the sort of equipment required to monitor people coming from China or to test people at the pace required.
Topic:
Government, Health, Authoritarianism, Border Control, Coronavirus, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Asia and North Korea

207. Lack of Demand: The Coronavirus Pandemic and China’s Belt and Road Initiative

Author:
Felix Chang
Publication Date:
04-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI)
Abstract:
The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which arose in China and swept around the globe, has devastated the lives of hundreds of thousands. But however large the health impact of COVID-19 ultimately is, hundreds of millions more have already felt its economic impact. With people worldwide ordered to social distance and stay at home, entire industries have been shuttered. And though national economies will recover in time, fully restoring them may prove to be a slow process. No doubt, the longer the disease lingers, the longer an economic recovery will take. That could create one more economic casualty: China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Topic:
Infrastructure, Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Coronavirus, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
China and Asia

208. The Swiss Model vs. Swedish Model in Dealing with China

Author:
Joseph de Weck
Publication Date:
05-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI)
Abstract:
Do you want to know how Beijing would like Europe to act? Take a look at Switzerland. Switzerland and China have been close for decades. It was the first Western nation to establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in January 1950. Bern wanted to protect investments in the new People’s Republic from nationalization and hoped Swiss industry could lend a hand in rebuilding China’s infrastructure after the civil war. Being friendly to China paid off, but only 30 years later, once reformer Deng Xiaoping took the reins of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In 1980, Swiss elevator producer Schindler was the first foreign company to do a joint venture in China. Today, Switzerland is the only continental European country to have a free trade agreement (FTA) with China.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, International Trade and Finance, Treaties and Agreements, and Bilateral Relations
Political Geography:
China, Europe, Asia, Switzerland, and Sweden

209. Social Distancing: Australia’s Relations with China

Author:
Felix Chang
Publication Date:
05-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI)
Abstract:
Affronts to Australia by China’s top diplomat in Canberra and the Chinese Communist Party’s Global Times newspaper reached new heights in April 2020. What prompted their verbal barbs was the Australian government’s backing for an independent review into the origins and spread of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). While Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison may have regarded such a review as a way to avert future pandemics, Beijing saw it as support for finger-pointing at China. Whichever is the case, the affronts shone a light on how Beijing has come to view Australia and what it and other countries in the Indo-Pacific region might expect from China in the future. Still, China’s diplomatic and editorial barbs were surprising. China has long worked to move Australia closer into its orbit and away from that of the United States. And, by and large, those efforts had been paying off. Over the last decade, several Australian foreign policy analysts had come to believe that greater accommodation of China would be needed to ensure Australia’s future prosperity. Indeed, Canberra has already shown more sensitivity on issues, like Taiwan, which Beijing deemed strategic. But rather than being content with Australia’s gradual shift, China has undertaken actions that could undermine it, from cyber-espionage to political influence-buying in Australia. China’s most recent affronts are likely to deepen Australian concerns over what Chinese power means for the region.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Bilateral Relations, Economy, and Coronavirus
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and Australia

210. No Sanctuary: China’s New Territorial Dispute with Bhutan

Author:
Felix Chang
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI)
Abstract:
Resting at the eastern end of Bhutan is the Sakteng Wildlife Sanctuary. Spanning some 750 square kilometers, it is spread out across a densely forested area of the Himalayan Mountains. The sanctuary is far better known for its unique flora and fauna (including the red panda and, reputedly, the fabled yeti) than its geographic boundaries. But the latter is precisely what brought it to international attention in June 2020. Early that month, Bhutan sought a grant for the sanctuary from a global environmental organization that funds sustainable development projects. Unexpectedly, China’s representatives to that organization opposed the grant. Their reason: China considers the sanctuary to be “disputed territory.”
Topic:
Development, Environment, Territorial Disputes, and History
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and Bhutan

211. COVID-19 and Authoritarian Regimes: China vs. Russia

Author:
Yaroslav Shevchenko
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI)
Abstract:
The Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China are certainly the two most prominent authoritarian regimes in the world today, with their quasi-alliance characterized as an “axis of authoritarians” and portrayed as a major threat to the West and global liberal democracy. However, despite unmistakable similarities that exist between Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia, the reality is far more complex. Their respective responses to the COVID-19 crisis shed some light on differences between the political-governance models of these two countries.
Topic:
Authoritarianism, Economy, Crisis Management, COVID-19, and Health Crisis
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Eurasia, and Asia

212. China’s Monopoly on Rare Earth Elements—and Why We Should Care

Author:
June Teufel Dreyer
Publication Date:
10-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI)
Abstract:
According to geologists, rare earths are not rare, but they are precious. The answer to what appears to be a riddle lies in accessibility. Comprising 17 elements that are used extensively in both consumer electronics and national defense equipment, rare earth elements (REEs) were first discovered and put into use in the United States. However, production gradually shifted to China, where lower labor costs, less concern for environmental impacts, and generous state subsidies enabled the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to account for 97 percent of global production. In 1997, Magniquench, then-America’s leading rare earths company, was sold to an investment consortium headed by Archibald Cox, Jr., son of the same-named Watergate prosecutor, with two Chinese state-owned metals firms, San Huan New Materials and China National Nonferrous Metals Import and Export Company. The chairman of San Huan, son-in-law of paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, became chairman of the company. Magniquench was shut down in the United States, moved to China, and reopened in 2003, where it fit in well with Deng’s Super 863 Program to acquire cutting-edge technologies for military applications, including “exotic materials.” This left Molycorp as the last remaining major rare earths producer in the United States until its collapse in 2015.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, Natural Resources, Exports, and Supply Chains
Political Geography:
China and Asia

213. The Battle for the Soul of Islam

Author:
James M Dorsey
Publication Date:
10-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
It is not the caliphate that the world’s Muslim powerhouses are fighting about. Instead, they are engaged in a deepening religious soft power struggle for geopolitical influence and dominance. This battle for the soul of Islam pits rival Middle Eastern and Asian powers against one another: Turkey, seat of the Islamic world’s last true caliphate; Saudi Arabia, home to the faith’s holy cities; the United Arab Emirates, propagator of a militantly statist interpretation of Islam; Qatar with its less strict version of Wahhabism and penchant for political Islam; Indonesia, promoting a humanitarian, pluralistic notion of Islam that reaches out to other faiths as well as non-Muslim centre-right forces across the globe; Morocco which uses religion as a way to position itself as the face of moderate Islam; and Shia Iran with its derailed revolution. In the ultimate analysis, no clear winner may emerge. Yet, the course of the battle could determine the degree to which Islam will be defined by either one or more competing stripes of ultra-conservativism—statist forms of the faith that preach absolute obedience to political rulers and/or reduce religious establishments to pawns of the state.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Islam, Politics, and Ideology
Political Geography:
Russia, Iran, Indonesia, Turkey, Middle East, Asia, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates

214. Toynbee Coronavirus Series: Dominic Sachsenmaier on China, geopolitics, and global history post-COVID-19

Author:
Dominic Sachsenmaier
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The Toynbee Prize Foundation
Abstract:
Living through historically unprecedented times has strengthened the Toynbee Prize Foundation's commitment to thinking globally about history and to representing that perspective in the public sphere. In this multimedia series on the covid-19 pandemic, we will be bringing global history to bear in thinking through the raging coronavirus and the range of social, intellectual, economic, political, and scientific crises triggered and aggravated by it. Dominic Sachsenmaier, the President of the Toynbee Prize Foundation, is Chair Professor of Modern China with a Special Emphasis on Global Historical Perspectives in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Göttingen. His expertise centers on global and transnational Chinese history, with a focus on Chinese concepts of society and multiple modernities, among other topics. He is co-editor of the Columbia University Press book series “Columbia Studies in International and Global History“ and an elected member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Topic:
Health, International Affairs, Geopolitics, Global Focus, Coronavirus, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and Global Focus

215. Thinking Through Water: An Interview with Sunil S. Amrith

Author:
Sunil S. Amrith
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The Toynbee Prize Foundation
Abstract:
“The history of water,” writes Sunil S. Amrith, “shows that nature has never truly been conquered.” Nature is a dynamic presence in Amrith’s oeuvre. As a historian of South and Southeast Asia, his research engages the spaces, movements, and processes of a uniquely Indian Oceanic region. The worlds recounted by Amrith are often ones marked by the ambitions of empires and polities, the mass migration of human labour, and indeed, the furies of nature itself. In his latest book, Unruly Waters, Amrith shows how “the schemes of empire builders, the visions of freedom fighters, the designs of engineers—and the cumulative, dispersed actions of hundreds of millions of people across generations—have transformed Asia’s waters over the past two hundred years.” It testifies to the dreams that societies have often pinned to water, as well as its unwieldy and turbulent nature. In his account of “the struggle for water” and control over the Asian monsoon, we come to understand how climate change exacerbates a problem both already in-progress and connected to histories of “reckless development and galloping inequality.” Sunil S. Amrith is presently the Mehra Family Professor of South Asian History at Harvard University. He was the 2017 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship. From July 2020, Amrith will be the Dhawan Professor of History at Yale University. His most recent book publications include: Unruly Waters: How Rains, Rivers, Coasts, and Seas Have Shaped Asia's History (Basic Books and Penguin UK, 2018), Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants (Harvard University Press, 2013), and Migration and Diaspora in Modern Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2011). In this conversation, we discuss the role of water, nature, and inequality vis-à-vis history; the fields of global and environmental history; and lastly, some of the thoughts and practices that underlay the historian’s craft.
Topic:
Globalization, History, Water, and Oceans and Seas
Political Geography:
Asia and Global Focus

216. Challenges and Responses to COVID-19: Experience from Asia

Author:
Nancy Davis Lewis and Jonathan D. Mayer
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
Experience in Asia suggests that public health and medical capacity are critical for an effective response to an emerging infectious disease. Political will and previous experience with disease outbreaks also play a role. Singapore ignored an important segment of its population and is now experiencing a huge spike in cases. China and Vietnam were able to enforce draconian measures, while in Japan and Hong Kong, civil society had a greater role in initiating effective controls. In several countries, local political outcomes have been affected by the perceived success or failure of leaders in controlling the crisis.
Topic:
Health Care Policy, Leadership, Crisis Management, Public Health, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Japan, China, Asia, Vietnam, Singapore, and Hong Kong

217. US-China Economic Relations Under Pressure From COVID-19

Author:
Christopher A. McNally
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
With both the US and China facing a long economic slowdown, the bilateral relationship between the globe's two largest economies faces massive challenges. Making matters worse, Washington and Beijing have attempted to divert domestic attention away from their own substantial shortcomings by blaming each other. Given the economic uncertainty, each side has limited leverage to force the other into making concessions. Harsh rhetoric only serves to inflame tensions at the worst possible time. For better or worse, the US and China are locked in a messy economic marriage. A divorce at this time would exact an enormous cost in an already weakened economy.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Bilateral Relations, Economy, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

218. An Aging Population in Asia Creates Economic Challenges

Author:
Andew Mason, Sang-Hyop Lee, and Donghyun Park
Publication Date:
05-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
Elderly populations in Asia are expanding more quickly than other age groups. This shift in population age structure had two major impacts: demand for income support for the elderly will rise because their labor income tends to be extremely low; and gross domestic product (GDP) and other aggregate economic indicators will grow more slowly as growth in the effective labor force declines. In countries where government programs play an important role in old-age support, tax rates will have to rise or benefits will have to be curtailed or both—all options with significant political costs.
Topic:
Demographics, Labor Issues, Population, GDP, and Economy
Political Geography:
Asia and Asia-Pacific

219. New Findings on Links between Urban Expansion and Viral Disease in Vietnam Offer Lessons for COVID-19

Author:
James H. Spencer, Sumeet Saksena, and Jefferson Fox
Publication Date:
04-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
The current COVID-19 pandemic, which started in Wuhan, China, underscores what the public health community has warned about for more than two decades—the risk of viral diseases capable of spreading from animal to human hosts. The first outbreaks of “bird flu” (highly pathogenic avian influenza—HPAI, subtype H5N1)—raised similar concerns 20 years ago, concerns that have persisted with the outbreak of SARS in 2002–2004 and COVID-19 today. A recent study compared information on infrastructure and other aspects of economic development in Vietnam with outbreaks of avian influenza. While this research focuses on avian influenza in Vietnam, the study of links between infrastructure characteristics and new and reemerging health risks has broad applicability, especially given the global importance of today’s rapidly expanding urban landscapes.
Topic:
Infectious Diseases, Urban, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and Vietnam

220. China is Not Conducting Debt Trap Diplomacy in the Pacific--At Least Not Yet

Author:
Jonathan Pryke
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
In an atmosphere of heightened geostrategic competition, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has raised questions about the risk of debt problems in less-developed countries. Such risks are especially worrying for the small and fragile economies of the Pacific. A close look at the evidence suggests that China has not been engaged in debt-trap diplomacy in the Pacific, at least not so far. Nonetheless, if future Chinese lending continues on a business-as-usual basis, serious problems of debt sustainability will arise, and concerns about quality and corruption are valid.There have been recent signs that both China and Pacific Island governments recognize the need for reform. China needs to adopt formal lending rules similar to those of the multilateral development banks, providing more favorable terms to countries at greater risk of debt distress. Alternative approaches might include replacing or partially replacing EXIM loans with the interest-free loans and grants that the Chinese Ministry of Commerce already provides.
Topic:
Debt, Development, Diplomacy, Geopolitics, and Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and Asia-Pacific