Author: Sandy Gordon, ANU
India’s Look East policy was initiated out of failure: the failure of India’s Cold War strategy of ‘playing both ends against the middle’ while at the same time attempting to adopt a pro-Soviet ‘tilt’; and the failure of India’s command economy, which by 1990 had managed to command only 0.4 per cent of world trade – insufficient to cushion India from the 1989-90 oil shock. While the collapse of the Soviet Union was no fault of India, it left New Delhi searching for an alternative set of economic and strategic approaches. The ‘Look East’ policy seemed to fit both needs.
India, however, initially had a hard job to claw its way back into those parts of Asia to its east. ASEAN itself was borne out of concern about an encroaching communist bloc and tempered in the fires of the Vietnam War. It viewed India’s still clunky economy and former Soviet bloc ‘tilt’ with suspicion. Read more…
Author: Evan A. Feigenbaum, CFR
It’s been a long and frustrating (and bloody exhausting … ) seventeen months for American trade policy. But on the margins of last month’s G20 summit, President Obama at last committed to complete the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement (KORUS).
Seoul hosts the next G20 summit in November. So the move—and Obama’s timing—makes a lot of sense. Indeed, as my friend Phil Levy puts it, ‘the failure to move on KORUS was calling into question US credibility on trade in general and US standing in Asia in particular. Read more…
Author: Ernest Bower, CSIS
Anyone near the corner of 18th & K Streets last week would immediately align themselves with remarks attributed to Singaporean leader Lee Kuan Yew regarding air conditioning’s role as the breakthrough technology that helped transform Southeast Asia’s post-colonial commodity-dominated economies into some of the world’s fastest-growing financial and industrial markets.
In addition to enabling ASEAN leaders’ economic plans to be realized, nuclear power can play a significant role providing electricity for running those air conditioners. Read more…
Author: Andrew Rothe, Macquarie University
The Mekong River is one of the largest and most important rivers in Southeast Asia. It is an important source of income and sustenance for many in the riparian countries including China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Through large-scale development over the past few decades the river has become a valuable source of power for China.
In 1957, a study by the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (UNECAFE) saw great potential in developing the Mekong River. This development has boomed in the last two decades with a focus on large-scale infrastructure programs. China’s eight dam cascade in southern Yunnan province is a good example of such large scale hydro-power and irrigation programs. The development of the Mekong provides notable benefits, from large-scale power production and the economic development of impoverished areas, to curbing the frequency and ferocity of seasonal floods. Read more…
Author: Aurelia George Mulgan, UNSW@ADFA
What prime minister would try to sell a tax rise to voters one month in advance of a general election? What prime minister would disregard the advice of his party’s chief electoral strategist who had previously delivered stunning victories to his party in two general elections? What prime minister would sacrifice a vital majority in a house of parliament for the sake of his tax-rise policy? The answer? Japan’s Prime Minister Kan. Not only was the timing of the issue mishandled – the election should have been held after the fact, not before it – but Kan’s dithering on the details of the tax rise during the campaign was redolent of Hatoyama’s fumbling of the Futenma base issue.
Kan took his eye off the ball, which was to secure an outright majority in the Upper House. Read more…
Author: Bill Hayton, BBC News
Fulbright scholar and celebrity lawyer Le Cong Dinh is to remain in prison in Vietnam. Recently, the Appeals Court in Ho Chi Minh City upheld his five-year sentence for ‘trying to overthrow the state’ and returned Dinh and his two co-accused to their cells. The fate of this man – who famously defended his country’s catfish farmers against US trade restrictions; was deputy head of the Ho Chi Minh City Bar Association; briefed international legal delegations; and married a former Miss Vietnam – has now clearly defined the limits of political activity the ruling Communist Party (CPV) will tolerate.
The Party was prepared to ignore Dinh so long as he remained an outspoken voice calling for legal reform. Read more…
Author: Justin Li, ICE
China’s civil aviation industry has recently been shocked by a series of scandals and many powerful officials from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the major State-owned airlines have been either arrested or placed under investigation for corruption.
For seasoned China watchers, these scandals should not have come as surprise. Corruption scandals in China are about as common as sexual innuendos about sports stars in the West. Read more…
Author: Jonathan Fox
July 7 marked 90 days since Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva declared a state of emergency in Thailand. Even though Thai security forces quelled the Red Shirt protests in late May, the Abhisit administration recently extended the emergency decree over nearly a third of the kingdom for an additional three months. While much has been said about the political, economic and social impacts of the kingdom’s recent unrest, little attention has been given to the dangerous erosion of freedom of expression in Thailand.
The recent cycle of deadly violence began on March 12, when tens of thousands of Red Shirt protesters rallied against the Abhisit government. Read more…
Author: Ron Huisken, ANU
Australia’s democratic system of governance is grounded in an acknowledgement of human imperfection. Governance is as necessary as greed for wealth and power is inescapable, so our system is characterised by checks and balances at all levels, by procedures to investigate, expose and, if necessary, punish. Regular elections re-legitimise those to whom we delegate the function of governance. We prize our system not because it necessarily delivers superb governance but because the package of participation, control, and governance seems better than any alternative.
The system in China, in contrast, appears to be rooted in the belief that perfection is attainable. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale
The election of Benigno S. ‘Noynoy’ Aquino III as President at the end of last month, on the surface at least, appears to offer a chance to set the country on a new course, away from the corruption and scandal that plagued the last two Presidencies in the Philippines.
As Paul Hutchcroft observes in this week’s lead essay, despite his pedigree, Noynoy is the unlikely President, swept to power on a wave of nostalgia for the days of the ‘innocent’ revolution on which his mother, Cory Aquino, rode to power. Read more…
Author: Paul D. Hutchcroft, ANU
When Benigno S. ‘Noynoy’ Aquino III assumed the presidency of the Philippines on 30 June, he promised big changes ahead. Rather than trying to dampen the high expectations raised by his decisive victory in the May election, Noynoy proclaimed a new era in Philippine politics: ‘No more turning back on pledges made during the campaign….No more influence- peddling, no more patronage politics, no more stealing….no more bribes. It is time for us to work together once more.’
While this represents a major and very welcome shift in leadership goals, the actual achievement of these goals will require far more than a change in leadership or a shift in leadership styles. Read more…
Author: Tobias Harris, MIT
If there is one lesson that this upper house campaign has taught us, it is a lesson that we all should have already learned: there is no stopping Ozawa Ichirō. Despite what looked like a marvellous coup by Hatoyama Yukio in getting Ozawa to step down as DPJ secretary-general, Ozawa has been a public critic of the Kan government throughout the campaign.
However, is Ozawa’s criticism of the government — he’s been particularly harsh about the Kan government’s comments about raising the consumption tax to 10 per cent, which he argues with plenty of justification that the government has made life more difficult for DPJ candidates — the prelude to Ozawa’s being a thorn in Kan’s side after the election (as Yuka Hayashi suggests in this post at the Wall Street Journal’s Japan Realtime)? Read more…
Author: Vikas Kumar, Bangalore
The controversial replacement of General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, has exposed the strategic confusion at the heart of NATO’s War on Terror. The strategies pursued so far have not only failed to stabilise Afghanistan but have also destabilised Pakistan. Consequently, this war is unlikely to end in the near future, if victory, howsoever defined, is the objective. Even if victory is obtained, the subsequent revival of Islamic extremists (henceforth, Islamists) is quite likely. So, without an ‘ideological war’ strategy, there is no point wasting taxpayers’ billions in temporarily repulsing ragtag Islamist militias.
NATO believes that a decisive victory coupled with democratisation and development is sufficient to conclusively defeat the Islamists. Read more…
Author: Frank Jotzo, ANU
If the government is re-elected, can it deliver a carbon price for Australia? Prime Minister Julia Gillard has flagged that a consensus about climate action needs to be reached first. A broad community consensus of this kind existed about two years ago, then it eroded amid a global campaign against the science of climate change, disappointment about Copenhagen, confusion about emissions trading, and political mud-slinging. But there is a clear way forward.
The temptation for the Gillard government might be to announce some climate projects before the election, and go slow on the issue after the election. But that would fail the country on a long-term issue that simply will not go away, and would guarantee political pain if the Greens hold the balance of power in the Senate, as is highly likely. Read more…
Author: Boonwara Sumano, University of London
The future of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states is a source of considerable discussion, with economic recession, internal and interstate conflict, and environmental degradation remaining top concerns. This decade signals the increasing significance of another issue in the structure of member countries’ populations.
The ASEAN Statistical Yearbook 2008 reports that population in most ASEAN countries is declining. Read more…
