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Boosting business in the Philippines: Gold mining firm cleared of toxic dumping charges in Indonesia - Pacific Time on Public Radio International

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Newmont Mining, the world's second-largest producer of gold, was acquitted this week by an Indonesian court. The firm, headquartered in Denver, Colorado, was accused of dumping toxic mercury and arsenic waste off Indonesia's Sulawesi Island. Shorenstein APARC's Donald K. Emmerson is interviewed by K. Oanh Ha on KQED's Pacific Time about the court's decision. Listen to the show.
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Beyond apology, moral clarity - op-ed by Shorenstein APARC's Gi-Wook Shin

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Gi-Wook Shin
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The House of Representatives is considering a resolution to urge Japan to acknowledge and apologize for the Imperial Army's forced organization of brothels during the war, staffed by so-called comfort women. It is an overdue but encouraging step, and Congress should pass it. Urging Japan to apologize for war crimes is not enough. The U.S. must confront its own role in ignoring Asians' suffering, says Shorenstein APARC's director, Gi-Wook Shin.
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Ethnic identities questioned after Virginia Tech

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In the aftermath of last week's Virginia Tech massacre, the national Korean-American community has reportedly suffered a backlash similar to that unleashed against Muslims in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, but Asian Americans on campus largely agree that they are being treated with respect and sympathy and credited the media's portrayal of the attack as objective and fair.

A number of Facebook groups, such as "Cho Seung-Hui does NOT represent Asians," are continuously amassing new members, while a YouTube post with the words "I belong in Korea" over Cho's face is receiving hundreds of hits per day.

While the Virginia Tech shooter, Cho Seung-Hui, was South Korean, other ethnic groups have expressed empathy for Asians in the wake of last week's attack. Ahmed Ashraf '07, vice president of the Muslim Student Awareness Network, said he had similar fears before the identity of the shooter was disclosed.

"I know that when I first heard about the Virginia Tech tragedy, I was very, very nervous about the gunman's background," Ashraf said in an email to the Daily. "If a Muslim student were involved in the massacre, it [would have] hit way too close to home."

Media coverage of the shootings has drawn an ambiguous reaction from Asian students and faculty members at the University.

"This shows that race and ethnicity is still a key source of collective identity in the United States," said Sociology Prof. Gi-Wook Shin. "Non-white ethnic groups and females can be self-conscious and extra careful precisely because they are still minorities in American politics of identity."

Others said they were pleased with the focus on Cho's mental state, rather than his ethnicity.

"The media has been pretty good at being neutral," said Kenny Kim '08, co-president of the Korean Students Association. "As a member of the Asian-American community, I was inclined to think of the worst possible outcomes, but the discussion has now turned more to Cho's mental health than to his ethnic background."

"This, sadly, is not a new crime in America and is not seen in new terms now that the latest perpetrator is of Korean origin," Shin added. "Experts have compared him to the Columbine shooters, saying that he fits the same profile. This is a judgment about mental state and behavior patterns that have nothing to do with race or ethnicity."

In South Korea, reaction to the Blacksburg, Va. tragedy brought up deeper, cultural issues.

Shortly after the shooter's ethnicity was revealed, the South Korean government and media went into a frenzy, debating whether Cho's actions warranted an official national apology.

Such a phenomenon has raised discussion of collective guilt. Yet Kim emphasized the importance of a clear-cut distinction between guilt and shame.

"Koreans are a unique race," he said. "We often blur the lines between the nation and the people. Thus when we found out that the shooter was Korean, every Korean felt a bit of shame that one of 'us' committed a horrible act."

"However, this is not to say we feel any guilt for what happened," he added. "The act that Cho committed is an isolated event and has no linkage with him being Korean or Korean American."

On campus, students and faculty said they have faith in the community's power to overcome the blame and guilt.

"This tragedy was not about Korean or Asian Americans, and I am sure the Stanford community is well aware of that," Shin said. "In a sense, Cho himself was a victim and we have social responsibility to make sure that this kind of tragedy won't happen again."

Reprinted with permission by the Stanford Daily.

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Conflicting Priorities? Security and Democracy as Challenges to Regionalism in Southeast Asia

Security has been a priority for regionalism in Southeast Asia since well before ASEAN's inception in 1967. Democracy has not. But as Southeast Asia has become at least formally more democratic, some members of the Association have begun to question its original commitment to respecting the national sovereignty of its members and not criticizing abuses within their borders. The stage is now set for a reconsideration of democracy as a legitimate regional concern.

There are at least three (non-mutually-exclusive) ways in which democracy could become a higher priority for ASEAN: (i) instrumentally, if regional elites are sufficiently convinced that a lack of democracy inside a given country makes the larger region insecure; (ii) normatively, to the extent that these elites value transparency, accountability, and the protection of rights and freedoms as regional ends in and of themselves; and (iii) externally, to the extent that such elites are subjected to pressures from domestic and/or foreign actors to make democracy a regional priority.

This conference, and the subsequent volume, will review and assess these possibilities with particular reference to how democracy may be related to security in Southeast Asia. If security is a benefit of democracy, the instrumental case is made. Normatively, security can be enlarged to incorporate democracy as a matter of "human security," to cite an increasingly popular concept. Security-democracy linkages can also be drawn by external actors with democratizing agendas -- governments outside the region as well as activists inside it.

How do security and democracy interact in Southeast Asia? Can and should democracy become a regional priority in Southeast Asia? Why, or why not, to what extent, and with what policy implications -- and recommendations? These are the core questions that the conference and the book will try to answer.

Conference cosponsor: Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University.

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Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room

Donald K. Emmerson

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Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Affiliated Faculty, CDDRL
Affiliated Scholar, Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies
aparc_dke.jpg PhD

At Stanford, in addition to his work for the Southeast Asia Program and his affiliations with CDDRL and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Donald Emmerson has taught courses on Southeast Asia in East Asian Studies, International Policy Studies, and Political Science. He is active as an analyst of current policy issues involving Asia. In 2010 the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars awarded him a two-year Research Associateship given to “top scholars from across the United States” who “have successfully bridged the gap between the academy and policy.”

Emmerson’s research interests include Southeast Asia-China-US relations, the South China Sea, and the future of ASEAN. His publications, authored or edited, span more than a dozen books and monographs and some 200 articles, chapters, and shorter pieces.  Recent writings include The Deer and the Dragon: Southeast Asia and China in the 21st Century (ed., 2020); “‘No Sole Control’ in the South China Sea,” in Asia Policy  (2019); ASEAN @ 50, Southeast Asia @ Risk: What Should Be Done? (ed., 2018); “Singapore and Goliath?,” in Journal of Democracy (2018); “Mapping ASEAN’s Futures,” in Contemporary Southeast Asia (2017); and “ASEAN Between China and America: Is It Time to Try Horsing the Cow?,” in Trans-Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia (2017).

Earlier work includes “Sunnylands or Rancho Mirage? ASEAN and the South China Sea,” in YaleGlobal (2016); “The Spectrum of Comparisons: A Discussion,” in Pacific Affairs (2014); “Facts, Minds, and Formats: Scholarship and Political Change in Indonesia” in Indonesian Studies: The State of the Field (2013); “Is Indonesia Rising? It Depends” in Indonesia Rising (2012); “Southeast Asia: Minding the Gap between Democracy and Governance,” in Journal of Democracy (April 2012); “The Problem and Promise of Focality in World Affairs,” in Strategic Review (August 2011); An American Place at an Asian Table? Regionalism and Its Reasons (2011); Asian Regionalism and US Policy: The Case for Creative Adaptation (2010); “The Useful Diversity of ‘Islamism’” and “Islamism: Pros, Cons, and Contexts” in Islamism: Conflicting Perspectives on Political Islam (2009); “Crisis and Consensus: America and ASEAN in a New Global Context” in Refreshing U.S.-Thai Relations (2009); and Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia (edited, 2008).

Prior to moving to Stanford in 1999, Emmerson was a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he won a campus-wide teaching award. That same year he helped monitor voting in Indonesia and East Timor for the National Democratic Institute and the Carter Center. In the course of his career, he has taken part in numerous policy-related working groups focused on topics related to Southeast Asia; has testified before House and Senate committees on Asian affairs; and been a regular at gatherings such as the Asia Pacific Roundtable (Kuala Lumpur), the Bali Democracy Forum (Nusa Dua), and the Shangri-La Dialogue (Singapore). Places where he has held various visiting fellowships, including the Institute for Advanced Study and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. 



Emmerson has a Ph.D. in political science from Yale and a BA in international affairs from Princeton. He is fluent in Indonesian, was fluent in French, and has lectured and written in both languages. He has lesser competence in Dutch, Javanese, and Russian. A former slam poet in English, he enjoys the spoken word and reads occasionally under a nom de plume with the Not Yet Dead Poets Society in Redwood City, CA. He and his wife Carolyn met in high school in Lebanon. They have two children. He was born in Tokyo, the son of U.S. Foreign Service Officer John K. Emmerson, who wrote the Japanese Thread among other books.

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Donald K. Emmerson Senior Fellow Panelist Shorenstein APARC, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Mely Caballero Anthony Assistant Professor Panelist S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University
Termsak Chalermpalanupap Director of Research Panelist ASEAN Secretariat, Jakarta, Indonesia
Joern Dosch Professor, Asia Pacific Studies Panelist University of Leeds
Kyaw Yin Hlaing Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science Panelist National University of Singapore
Brian Job Director, Centre of International Relations Panelist University of British Columbia
David Jones Senior Lecturer, Political Science Panelist University of Queensland
Erik Kuhonta Assistant Professor Panelist Department of Political Science, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
Michael Malley Assistant Professor, Department of National Security Affairs Panelist Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey
Rizal Sukma Deputy Executive Director Panelist Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Jakarta
Simon SC Tay Chairman Panelist Singapore Institute of International Affairs
Dionisio da Costa Babo Soares Co-Chairman, Commission of Truth and Friendship Panelist Timor Leste, Indonesia
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Trade Liberalization, Rising Imports and China's Food Economy: The Case of Soybeans

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In our report, our overall goal is to understand how soybean trade policy changes and changes in soybean trade flows that China has experienced between 1997 and 2003 have affected China's producers, consumers and users of soybeans. To do so, we will:

1. briefly analyze the nature of China's soybean markets; and understand the nature of the links between soybean trade, domestic market development, price, production, and consumption;

2. analyze the responses of households that are affected by soybean trade-related changes;

3. predict the magnitude and direction of responses to trade liberlalization-induced price shifts and suggest if policies are needed to offset adverse effects

In order to meet these objectives, we will describe in great detail using a number of data sets: the nature of soybean markets in China; the linkages between soybean producers, consumers and poverty; use our CAPSIM model to understand the impacts of trade changes on soybean producers, livestock producers and consumers; and finally discuss policy options.

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Scott Rozelle
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