Economics, Politics and Public Policy in East Asia and the PacificAuthor: Thom Woodroofe, Left Right Think-Tank
A year ago Barack Obama declared himself the first ‘Pacific President’ but so far his engagement with the region leaves a lot to be desired.
President Obama hosted the second US-ASEAN Summit in New York recently. Many are hopeful the insubstantial two-hour lunch meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations will signal a turning point in the Obama Administration’s approach to Asia.
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Author: Evan A. Feigenbaum, CFR
Now that India has a seat at many of the top tables of international relations, why is America’s dialogue with India less global in scope than with any major power, even China?
The good news, I think, is that the two sides have established some new dialogues in recent months, including a timely and important exchange on East Asia and China. But the ultimate test won’t be how many meetings the two governments hold but whether they turn common interests into complementary policies around the world. Read more…
Author: Patrick Chin-Dahler, ANU
The issue of implementing universal human rights (specifically Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which articulates the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion) continues to be a sensitive and ongoing issue between various Western and Asian governments. While most of these issues have been concerned with empirical developments regarding human rights abuses, the conceptual underpinnings that inform this debate are less often analysed. In particular, how do cultural relativism and Asian values, as posited against universal values, help legitimise repressive policies and actions through various conceptual manoeuvres.
Cultural relativism is the position to which local cultural traditions (religious, political and legal practices included) properly determine the existence and scope of civil and political rights enjoyed by individuals in a given society. It is premised on the idea that all cultures are equally valid and that standards of evaluation are internal to traditions. Read more…
Author: Ron Huisken, ANU
In the international arena, the shortest distance between two points is rarely a straight line. A particularly good example is the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting (ADMM).
The first ADMM took place in 2006. It will meet next in Hanoi later this month in a new ASEAN+8 format. The eight being Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea and the United States. East Asia may have over-indulged in forum-creation, but, even so, this development merits more recognition than it has received. Read more…
Author: Donald Emmerson, Stanford University
Having so prominently stuck out its maritime tongue at Southeast Asia in its claim to virtually the entire South China Sea, China knew that it might face a backlash in July 2010 when the ASEAN Regional Forum was scheduled to meet in Hanoi. Instead of moderating its position, however, Beijing reportedly contacted all of ASEAN’s member governments and strongly urged them not to broach the subject of the Sea in Hanoi.
The effort failed. At the meeting of the Forum in Hanoi on 23 July, nearly half — 12 — of the heads of the 27 delegations present mentioned the South China Sea.
There can be no doubt, based on accounts by individuals who were in the room, that Foreign Minister Jiechi Yang was angry. Read more…
Author: Rupa Chanda, IIMB
Recently, there has been considerable furore in India regarding Ohio’s ban on outsourcing of IT and back-office work under government funded projects to locations such as India. This ban came following a discovery that the Texas-based firm Parago Inc., which was contracted by the Ohio Department of Development to administer a US $11 million federally funded energy-efficient appliance rebate program, had offshored the call handling and application processing work to El Salvador.
Ohio Governor Ted Strickland immediately issued an executive order prohibiting the spending of public funds for offshore provision of services, as this would deprive Ohioans and other Americans of employment opportunities. Read more…
Author: Haruko Satoh, CSIS
Kan Naoto’s re-election as leader of the ruling DPJ has given him the mandate to continue as prime minister. Most Japanese welcomed this outcome. They are dismayed by the state of national politics and the country’s inability to produce stable leadership since Koizumi Junichiro left office in 2006. Kan is the fifth prime minister since then.
But the path of political renewal in Japan is not over yet. For Kan’s re-election to become truly meaningful and restore the public sense that the change of power last August was the right choice, Kan needs to cast off the legacies of the 1955-regime of left-right tension within his party. Read more…
Author: Henry Makeham, ANU
The Asia-Pacific region has entered an unprecedented era of change. As the current growth engine of the global economy, China is more and more deeply linked to Australia through the strategic resource trade. The rise of China means that today’s youth in Australia and China – tomorrow’s stakeholders in Sino-Australian affairs – will be charged with a hugely important regional relationship in a period of fluidity, as the face of international politics and economics undergoes a fundamental paradigm shift.
Between 4-6 October, in Beijing and Shanghai, the inaugural Australia-China Youth Dialogue sought to break down misconceptions and enhance mutual respect, trust and understanding between future stakeholders in Sino-Australian affairs. Read more…
Author: Pavin Chachavalpongpun, ISEAS
The second US-ASEAN Leaders Meeting ended in New York on 24 September 2010. After much anticipation, particularly from the ASEAN countries, the meeting produced a 25-point joint declaration which covered almost everything under the sun, but did not discuss the real strategic concerns that have complicated US-ASEAN relations in the first place.
One of the main points of the joint declaration is that ASEAN and the United States will set up an Eminent Persons Group (EPG) in order to offer recommendations for the elevation of their partnership to a strategic level, through the adoption of a new five-year Plan of Action for 2011-2015. Read more…
Author: Jonas Parello-Plesner, European Council on Foreign Relations
The saying ‘forget about Europe’ has become common in Asia in 2010. It has been reinforced by the euro crisis provoked by massive Greek debt. After the euro crisis the Chinese financial press largely wrote Europe off or compared it to Latin America after the 1980s debt crisis. The economic basis for the EU’s power is decreasing. The eternal process that characterised the Lisbon treaty, which is now finally in place, has been perceived as endless procedure for Asian outsiders with little impact while the global order moves on.
Yet the EU still has something to offer in Asia. It is moving ahead on one important area where it has overtaken the US: trade. It is often said that the business of Asia is business. Read more…
Author: Yiping Huang, ANU and Peking University
The US Congress is increasingly agitated by China’s exchange rate policy as US politicians blame the undervalued renminbi for their own economic problems. For now, however, the Chinese government is content with trying its best to avoid a sharp currency adjustment that could significantly damage China’s export sector.
Fortunately, risks of a trade war still look manageable. Both the US and Chinese governments appear to favour multilateral frameworks for resolving the renminbi dispute. This should help reduce the risk of direct confrontation between the US and China. After all, economic imbalances are a global issue. A critical question, however, is what specific policy approach the G20 might adopt for dealing with such problems.
Author: Aidan Foster-Carter, Leeds University
Even by its own eccentric standards, North Korea is erratic when it comes to due process. Until the past week, it is not clear if the WPK Central Committee (CC) had even met since Kim Jong-il succeeded his father in 1994. A micro-manager when his health allows, the dear leader sits spider-like at the centre of a vast web of state, Party and military bodies, all reporting ultimately only to him.
Yet even in Pyongyang there comes a time when naked absolutism does not quite cut it. If North Korea were an actual rather than merely an aspirant monarchy, King Jong-il could simply anoint Prince Jong-eun as his heir. But successions are the Achilles’ heel of dictatorships. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale
The value of China’s currency, the renminbi (RMB), or yuan, has become the lightning rod for fixing everything in China’s economic relations with the rest of the world, especially the United States. Were it so simple.
This week’s lead essay from Ron McKinnon at Stanford carefully explains the predicament that China is in with its currency and why floating might well create more problems for China and the rest of the world than we all would have if a steadier and controlled appreciation of the RMB took place, accompanied by other perhaps even more important measures to deal with the imbalances that an under-valued RMB is supposed to cause. Read more…
Author: Ronald I McKinnon, Stanford University
Going into the G20 a headline if understated issue will be how to manage the exchange rate regime. Exchange rate flexibility is commonly seen to be at the nub of the ‘global imbalance’ problem. China is again under heavy political pressure from the US to appreciate the renminbi (RMB) or yuan. ‘Rebalancing’ and exchange rate movements are key political questions domestically in two the largest members of the G20; essential to any significant progress on any issue will be achieving a currency win-win.
Behind much of the political clamour is the academic view that exchange rate ’flexibility’ is itself desirable — particularly as a way of correcting imbalances in foreign trade. Bowing to this foreign pressure, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) announced in June it was unhooking its two-year old peg toward flexibility. Read more…
Author: Ashima Goyal, IGIDR
India’s exchange rate regime has evolved considerably over the reform years. In the current official view, it is a managed float. The market discovers the rupee value and the RBI intervenes only to reduce volatility. Excessive exchange rate volatility will hurt the Indian economy, which is increasingly dependant on international commerce. So what level of exchange rate flexibility should the RBI allow?
Until 2008, changes in the nominal rate kept the real exchange rate more or less constant. But the guiding hand behind the markets has weakened. In the past two years swings in nominal and real exchange rates exceeded 10 per cent. Read more…