Asia’s transformation presents both challenges and opportunities at international, regional, and domestic levels. One key to a peaceful, prosperous Asia in the 21^st century is good relations between the United States and China. But other challenges exist: nuclear proliferation, maritime security, violent conflict, environmental degradation, natural disasters, food security, cyber-security, and social and gender inequality, among others. Social transformation is outpacing political and institutional reform in many Asian countries, and the widening gap between state and society is a potent force for change. How will Asians address these challenges over the next one to two decades? What role will Asian women play in this transformation? How should the United States respond? The panelists and the discussant have contributed answers to these and other questions regarding Asia’s future in the latest iteration of The Asia Foundation’s quadrennial investigation and dissemination of Asian views of America’s role in Asia, including policy recommendations for the Trump administration. Stanford’s Southeast Asia Program director Don Emmerson will chair the session.

Chheang Vannarith

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This panel discussion is co-sponsored by The Asia Pacific Research Center and The Asia Foundation with support from The Carnegie Corporation of New York

Indonesia has not signed the 1951 Refugee Convention and does not offer legal pathways for the permanent integration of refugees into its society. Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar across the Andaman Sea to Aceh in 2015 did, nevertheless, receive “hospitality” in the form of a humanitarian welcome by local non-state actors. Indonesian authorities have argued that this “Aceh model” deserves emulation by other countries experiencing emergency in-migrations. Since the crisis, academics and policymakers in Indonesia and elsewhere have debated the merits of the model compared with state-funded refugee-protection schemes.

Dr. Missbach will examine the reactions of the Indonesian hosts towards the Rohingya through the conceptual lens of “hospitality.” The diverging motivations of the different stakeholders and groups who provided hospitality, she will argue, were not always as altruistic as claimed. By documenting the tensions inherent in hospitality practices, Dr. Missbach will reveal a subtle instrumentalization of hospitality by non-state actors for non-refugee related purposes, and thus question the effectiveness of such ad hoc approaches when it comes to ensuring basic refugee rights. Privately offered hospitality alone, traditional or religious, cannot resolve migration crises in ways that respect those rights. Accordingly, in Indonesia and Southeast Asia generally, the state should take more responsibility for helping refugees seeking safety.

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Co-organized with the Mr. and Mrs. S. H. Wong Center for the Study of Multinational Corporations

First proposed by President Xi Jinping in Indonesia in 2013, China’s Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI) aims to finance and build infrastructure—roads and railroads, ports and pipelines, power grids and telecom networks—that will link China southwestward through Southeast Asia and on across the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean to Europe.  In the near term, the initiative may unfold fairly smoothly to the benefit of China’s economic and political stature and influence.  In the longer run, however, the success of the project may limit or even undercut China’s gains.  Capitalizing on American withdrawal from global leadership, Beijing wants the MSRI and its sister scheme—the Silk Road Economic Belt—to lay the sea-and-ground-work for a new Asian-Indo-Pacific order that China would launch and manage.  But will China be able to supplant US power and articulate the values necessary to underwrite this new order?  Professors Blanchard and Zhao will explore this and other questions raised by the MSRI.  Stanford’s Don Emmerson will moderate their discussion within the panel and with the audience.

Jean-Marc F. Blanchard is Distinguished Professor in the School of Advanced International and Area Studies at East China Normal University (Shanghai).  He has edited, co-edited, or contributed to 13 edited volumes and special issues of journals; written more than 50 other articles and book chapters; and is the co-author of Economic Statecraft and Foreign Policy (2013).  He has been a visiting professor/scholar at Shorenstein APARC twice, in 2013 and 2014.

Suisheng Zhao is Professor in the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver.  The founder and chief editor of the Journal of Contemporary China, he has written or edited more than a dozen books and dozens of articles in scholarly and policy journals.  Previous positions include residence at Stanford as a Campbell National Fellow at the Hoover Institution and two elective terms as a member of the Board of Governors of the US Committee for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific.