As tension grows between China and the United States, its effects are felt across Asia. APARC's Southeast Asia Program Director Donald K. Emmerson sat down with Michael McFaul, FSI's Director and host of FSI's podcast World Class, to talk about why Southeast Asia in particular is caught in that rising tension between China and the United States and what can be done to prevent it from becoming a battle ground for a new Cold War between the two superpowers.

Listen to the conversation:

Shorenstein APARC's annual overview of the Center's 2017-18 activities  is now available to download. 

Feature sections look at the Center's seminars, conferences, and other activities in response to the North Korean crisis, research and events related to China's past, present, and future, and several Center research initiatives focused on technology and the changing workforce.

The overview highlights recent and ongoing Center research on Japan's economic policies, innovation in Asia, population aging and chronic disease in Asia, and talent flows in the knowledge economy, plus news about Shorenstein APARC's education and policy activities, publications, and more.

A Q&A with Paul Schuler

by Thom Holme

The start of a new academic year is always filled with excited anticipation by all of us at Shorenstein APARC. We're delighted to welcome a diverse cohort of accomplished postdoctoral fellows, research fellows, and visiting scholars to our research community for the 2018-19 academic year. Among them is Paul Schuler, who joins the Center as a Lee Kong Chian Fellow on Southeast Asia.

The Lee Kong Chian Visiting Fellowship on Southeast Asia is part of a joint initiative by the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Stanford, whose aim is to raise the visibility, extent, and quality of research on contemporary Southeast Asia. Here at Stanford, the infrastructures for research is supported by our Southeast Asia Program.

I recently spoke with Shuler about his research plans for the duration of his fellowship. An assistant professor at the University of Arizona's School of Government and Public Policy, Schuler specializes in institutions and public opinion within authoritarian regimes, with a particular focus on Vietnam. He was also a 2014-15 Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow on Contemporary Asia. The following conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Q. Welcome back to Stanford! What's it like being at APARC once more?

A. It's great! It feels like I'm coming home again. It's very rare to have an institution with so much expertise on East Asia as APARC, and that contextual knowledge helps both inform the issues I'm working on and generate new research ideas. The opportunity to benefit from intellectual exchange with China experts at Stanford would be especially useful for me as I'm writing a book comparing the evolution of particular Vietnamese political institutions to those in China.

Q. What are some findings we might expect to see in this publication?

A. It is often assumed that, in China and in Vietnam, democratic politics and elections have been slowly becoming more meaningful, and that the forces that support or push for these quasi-democratic openings are the reform-minded people or the soft-liners in the regimes.

My argument is that the expansion of these democratic forces in Vietnam isn't always driven by soft-liners or reform-minded people wanting to open the institutions for democratic purposes. Oftentimes, the more conservative elements of authoritarian regimes are the ones looking to attack their more reform-minded rivals within the party. In some cases, it's actually the conservatives and the hardliners who increase the visibility of the democratic institutions for such short-term tactical reasons.

However, it's very hard to shut down the institutions once they open up. So, in some ways, conservatives facilitate democratization, but not because it was initially pushed by people supporting that process.

What trust actually does, in our opinion, is breed conservatism. If you happen to live in a democracy, then it's great because it helps breed support for that system; if you live in an autocracy, then it means that it is also hard to change that system...

Paul Schuler

Q. What drew you to research political behavior of institutions within authoritarian regimes, and specifically in Vietnam?

A: I’m fascinated by how political systems evolved the way they did. In the United States, people are largely drawn to politics because of the captivating figures and their personalities, the elections, the campaigns. By contrast, politics in Vietnam is very different. What you read in the newspapers is very much an attempt to play down the individual. In fact, many people in Vietnam have a hard time naming their politicians and top leaders.

And while this situation has changed somewhat in China with Xi Jinping, in Vietnam it's still the case that people don't have that high level of engagement with politicians that we see in democracies. And so I wondered, "How do people engage with politics? Is this, in fact, a better arrangement? Are the people satisfied with it, or just take it for granted? And, ultimately, what would it take to change that type of system?”

Q. You're working on a coauthored paper for the journal Comparative Politics on the link between trust and democratic regime change. What is the connection between the two, and how is it related to engagement with politicians—or lack thereof?

A. With counties like Vietnam, one of the topics that people are most interested in is if—and when—there will be a transition to a more democratic system. Vietnam, like China, has been shown to have a high-degree of social trust. Francis Fukuyama observed how trust helps facilitate democracy, given that people are willing to make compromises with others if they somehow trust them. Vietnam and China are anomalous in that regard because both exhibit high levels of this generalized trust, yet they are obviously not democracies. In our forthcoming paper, my coauthor and I theorize that trust does not facilitate democracy; rather, what it does is facilitate support for whatever the status quo happens to be. People who are highly trusting assume that whatever system is currently in place must be working.

What trust actually does, in our opinion, is breed conservatism. If you happen to live in a democracy, then it's great because it helps breed support for that system; if you live in an autocracy, then it means that it is also hard to change that system to something new, because generalized trust basically makes people adverse to change. We find that in Vietnam, people who score higher in this sort of trust are much less likely to advocate for regime reforms.

Q. You mentioned president Xi Jinping and the shift he represents for China. Do you see the Xi model as having influence on Vietnam’s evolution?

A. There is always a debate in Vietnam as to whether or not they should follow certain choices made by China. China, on average, has grown 2-3% faster than Vietnam annually. And while Vietnam has done very well, there is this sense for some that moving towards a system that looks more like China could actually help further increase their growth.

There are people, particularly in the Organization Committee in Vietnam and at higher levels in the Politburo, who are trying reduce the division between the party and the state; trying to centralize power in party institutions. It's not yet clear whether they'll be able to go as far as China did, let alone if they will be successful at putting forward the reforms they've already suggested.

One big difference is that in Vietnam, the president and the general secretary are different positions, whereas in China, Xi Jinping holds both roles. While there have been attempts by Vietnamese general secretaries to combine these positions, they have been rebuffed by the central committee, and I don't think that's going to happen. And while Vietnam is making changes elsewhere that mirror China, I think the greater degree of separation between the government and the party will probably survive.

Q. Social media’s impact on democracy and influence on the public’s trust in government are hotly debated issues today, both in the United States and in Southeast Asia. What have you observed in Vietnam in that regard?

A. It’s hard to study to the impact of social media on political attitudes, but one thing I've found through surveys is that people who are active online appear more likely to find their local government corrupt. They also tend to be more pessimistic about corruption.

In Vietnam, another thing we found is that social media may have different effects depending on whether one lives in an urban or rural area. There’s evidence that social media in rural areas might actually inhibit protests and social movements, because the central government is much more aware of what is happening in the countryside and can quickly launch a crackdown on protesters.

In urban areas, however, the dynamics are somewhat different: the conditions exist for more spontaneous protest, as horizontal communication overwhelms the central government’s ability to move in and stop it.

So yes, I believe social media is having an impact on people’s relationship to the government in Vietnam, but it's a complex impact. To some extent, it is inhibiting the possibilities for rural revolt, but at the same time it’s helping to facilitate spontaneous urban protest movements.

LKC Fellow Talk

On September 27, 2018, Paul Schuler delivers his seminar "Shadows on the Wall: Legislative Politics in Post-Reform Vietnam"

RSVP Now

This editorial was originally carried by Asia Times on June 13, 2018, and reposted with permission.

Bedecked with skyscrapers, Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur is a high-rise city. In that lofty context, the headquarters of the People’s Justice Party (PKR) are down to earth.

They occupy one in a row of nondescript low-rise buildings unfashionably far from downtown. Even the lettered number of the floor that includes the PKR leader’s office is anomalous: 3A.

As if the “A” stood for Anwar—Anwar Ibrahim, the head of the PKR. As if, years ago, the builder had presciently inserted the “A” floor, predicting correctly that the trials and incarcerations of Malaysia’s most famous political prisoner would end years later, on May 9, 2018, in a historic, peaceful, electoral ouster of Prime Minister Najib Razak and his inter-communal National Front, or Barisan Nasional (BN).

Included in the defeated coalition was its leading member party, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), which had been returned to power in every general election held in Malaya/Malaysia since 1959.

This writer has known Anwar since the 1980s. In November 2014 at Stanford University, I joined him and my colleagues Larry Diamond and Frank Fukuyama on a panel to discuss Islam and democracy, with specific reference to Malaysia. Anwar was on his way back to Kuala Lumpur.

He and we knew he was almost certain to be detained again on politically motivated charges of sodomy, a crime under Malaysian law. He could have gone into exile. He did not. He went home to face his accusers in the ruling UMNO party.

He was jailed three months later, in February 2015, and was not released until more than three years later still, on May 16, 2018, not coincidentally a week after Malaysians had voted his four-party “Alliance for Hope”, or Pakatan Harapan (PH), coalition into office.

Promptly at the new government’s request, Malaysia’s king issued a pardon amounting to an exoneration that covered not only Anwar’s latest detention, but an earlier political jailing from 1999 to 2004 on the same sodomy charge.

On June 6, 2018 I visited Anwar at his office. He was in fine spirits. Had he chosen not to fly back to Malaysia after speaking at Stanford in 2014, had he opted for exile instead, he would not have been able to stage a martyr’s comeback into his country’s political life. “Out of sight, out of mind” applies to politicians as well as lovers.

Now Anwar is very much in sight, out of jail, and leading the PKR, the main party in the Alliance of Hope that ousted Najib’s National Front including UMNO.

The words “I’M BACK” appear next to his photograph on a poster in the elevator to his office. But the man upon whom Anwar’s immediate political future depends is also back.

The blunt, decisive, nonagenarian Mahathir Mohamad, who led the PH’s winning campaign against the incumbent BN, has reassumed the prime ministership that he held for 22 years from 1981 to 2003.

Prior to the May 2018 election, Mahathir apparently agreed that if the PH won, he would, as prime minister, free Anwar and eventually cede the position to him. Already the world’s oldest head of state, Mahathir will be 93 in July. In August, Anwar will be 71.

The gap of more than two decades between them suggests that time is on Anwar’s side. Or is it? Could history repeat itself? After all, it was Mahathir as prime minister who, in 1998, blocked his then-deputy Anwar’s ascent to the top slot. Mahathir fired him and, in effect, hounded him into prison.

The reason? In 1997-98, while the Asian financial crisis raged, Anwar as finance minister argued for relatively liberal, International Monetary Fund-friendly economic reform and opposed the corruption associated with Mahathir’s rule. Mahathir disagreed. He responded to the crisis along more or less state-nationalist lines, and he resented what he thought was Anwar’s premature ambition to replace him.

There are no visible signs of such acrimony between the two men today. They are indebted to each other. Technically, Anwar owes his freedom to Mahathir. But politically, without Anwar’s iconic status and popularity, the PH might not have won the lower-house majority that enabled Mahathir, as prime minister, to obtain his former rival’s release.

The good news is that Najib’s massively corrupt and incrementally despotic nine-year rule is over. The cautionary news is that Malaysian democracy is not yet fully secured, given the uncertainties and contingencies that could affect its future.

As for my having met Anwar on floor 3A, the “A” does not of course stand for Anwar. The elevator rises directly from 3A to 5 for a different reason. In spoken Mandarin, “four” sounds like the word for “death.” Only the tones differ. Whoever built the building, knowing that superstitious Chinese occupants would shun a numerically fatal fourth floor, called it “3A” instead.

Will the ruse fool the devil? Will renascent Malaysian democracy survive? Bandwagoning is already underway, as venal officials and executives who benefited from Najib’s kleptocratic ways seek political safety by ingratiating themselves with the new government, potentially weakening its ability to clean house.

Nor were reformers necessarily encouraged when Mahathir chose his long-time ally Daim Zainuddin to head a Council of Eminent Persons to advise the new government. Daim both preceded and succeeded Anwar as minister of finance during Mahathir’s long and controversial earlier reign as prime minister.

Also concerning in this context was the June 8, 2018 decision by the Council’s head of media and communications to resign from the position because it prevented him from speaking freely. A veteran journalist, he had been criticized for reporting in his blog that the Najib administration had allocated public funds for the royal family’s expenses in 2017-18 far in excess of the amount allowed by law.

Anwar himself felt obliged to warn against disrespecting the country’s basically symbolic and constitutional monarchy—an arrangement whereby the national kingship in effect rotates every five years among the ceremonial rulers of Malaysia’s nine states.

In Anwar’s plausible if debatable view, the country’s newborn and vulnerable administration can ill-afford to criticize royals whose symbolic support it may well need in the years ahead.

The newly ruling “Alliance of Hope” for democracy in Malaysia, as it transitions from opposing to governing, will need to navigate skillfully the problematic space between reformist candor and pragmatic restraint.

That dilemma instantiates, on a far-from-whimsical scale, Anwar’s need to protect the democratic freedom of Malaysians to be outspoken in principle, while he works on a floor whose number is unspoken in practice.

Donald K. Emmerson heads the Southeast Asia Program at Stanford University where he is also affiliated with the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.