This op-ed by Donald K. Emmerson originally appeared in The Diplomat.

On November 20, 8,300 people in 83 countries attended a virtual Global Town Hall to watch and hear 66 speakers in multiple countries discuss “Rebuilding from the Covid-19 World.” Organized in Jakarta by the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia (FPCI), the event ran 15 consecutive hours.

Few would choose virtual diplomacy over the in-person kind, other things being equal. When speakers are confined to flat boxes on small screens watched by strangers, the disincentives to candor and creativity are too high—not to mention the necessarily disadvantageous clashing of time zones. Gone are the clues and nuances of physical proximity, the creative chats in coffee breaks, the security from digitally prying eyes and ears afforded by a conversational stroll outdoors. But the technology of virtual discourse is here to stay, at least until such time as direct brain-to-brain or bot-to-bot communication is innovated and programmed on a planetary scale.

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Viewed in this cautionary light, the November town hall was distinctive and promising. It was organized not in the world of industrialized democracies where the ubiquity of electronic gatherings has already prompted webinar fatigue.  Nor was it sponsored by the United Front Department of the Communist Party of China or by Russia’s Internet Research Agency to propagandize for Beijing or Moscow. Indonesia’s virtual Global Town Hall was the brainchild of Dr. Dino Patti Djalal, a public figure well known in and outside his country for having founded and led the FPCI. (Although I know him, I played no role in the event or its preparation.)

The Community’s mission is to encourage “healthy internationalism” in Indonesia; “resist xenophobia”; “bring foreign policy to the grassroots”; and serve as “a dynamic meeting point” where Indonesians can interact on foreign affairs with each other and with foreigners “as equals.”

The Global Town Hall lived up to these promises in the size of its audience, the length and scope of its program, and the diversity of its many panels and speakers. Topics discussed during the marathon ranged from narrow to vast—from vaccines against Covid-19 to broad concepts and challenges such as the Indo-Pacific and climate change; development and democracy; nationalism and populism; emerging leaders and world order.

The conference was designed to call for new beginnings in a post-pandemic world.  One session debated the need for a “great social reset.” Another considered the contours of a no less urgent “geo-political reset.”  A third looked for “the light at the end of [a] tunnel” of global contagion and conflict, while a fourth pictured “the worst economic recession of our time” as “the edge of a cliff.” Just as Djalal and his team had intended, the sense of a global turning point calling for creative responses was palpable throughout.

The pandemic is not only planet-wide.  It is an all-of-society problem that cannot be reduced to adjustments in foreign policy. Accordingly, the town hall’s speakers were not only from different countries but from different walks of life as well.  Impressively, they included, alongside the foreign ministers of Australia, China, the European Union, India, Indonesia, Russia, and South Africa, influencers and analysts from think tanks, international organizations, and universities around the world.

The absence of someone from the Trump administration did not create a vacuum filled by China. On the contrary, the five speakers from the PRC were outnumbered three-to-one by the 15 Americans who spoke.  Yet the program was not stacked against Beijing.  Brainstorming in public is not China’s forte. In any conference that invites originality, creativity, and diversity, China is structurally disadvantaged by its authoritarian system, which limits what people are willing to say. Why invite speakers who are limited to thinking and speaking inside the box traced by a one-party line?

Only one Chinese think tank was among the town hall’s 44 sponsors and partners—the China Institute of International Studies (CIIS), an adjunct of China’s foreign ministry. Beijing actively promotes Chinese centers of research and opinion as no less deserving of praise and influence than their counterparts in democratic countries. But that campaign for global legitimacy is not helped by the oxymoronic status of free thinking and speaking in an unfree society.

A case in point is the Pangoal Institution, an ostensibly non-governmental think tank in Beijing. On its website, it upholds “objectiveness, openness, inclusiveness,”  and “innovation.” Yet in 2018, its president warned China’s think tanks to shun “the Western model” of what a think tank should be; eschew “so-called ‘independence’”; and adhere instead “to the leadership of the [Chinese Communist Party] and socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The risk of not channeling the groupthink required by the CPC was implied, as was the need to think “Xi Jinping Thought,” a guideline added to the CPC’s constitution in 2017.

China’s handicap in free speech and candor was also implicitly displayed at the very end of the conference, in its 12th and final panel. Harvard’s Joseph Nye and a balanced set of Washington-based analysts freely and critically discussed a range of sensitive issues in foreign and domestic policy including the jeopardized transition to a Joe Biden presidency. The event was coordinated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, one of three American think tanks chosen by FPCI to partner in holding the town hall.

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Even more telling than the remarks the Americans made at that final panel, however, was its title, chosen by Djalal and the FPCI, which amounted to a collective sigh of relief after Donald Trump: “Welcome Back, America!”  The welcome suggested that the challenge of “Rebuilding from the Covid-19 World” posed by the Global Town Hall could not be met without the United States fully on board, as if, once on board, Joe Biden would do the right thing.

In November 2019, by a two-to-one margin, elite respondents in Southeast Asia named China over the U.S. as the outside power with the most “political and strategic influence” in their region. But of those who picked China, merely 15 percent welcomed Chinese influence, a fraction of the 53 percent of U.S.-choosers who welcomed American influence.

Soft power is perishable. Goodwill can be transient. But the pop-up Global Town Hall put together so creatively by Djalal and his colleagues in Indonesia, apart from its value as an experiment in worldwide policy discourse, delivered an encouraging reminder: America is welcome. The anti-multilateral jingoism of Donald Trump has failed to destroy the willingness of Djalal, his colleagues, and policy influentials elsewhere in Southeast Asia to work with a United States that can once again, openly and self-critically, interact with others to achieve common goals.

The China Program at Shorenstein APARC had the pleasure of hosting Professor Min Ye of Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies on October 14, 2020. Her program, moderated by China Program Director Jean Oi, focused on the much-discussed but poorly-understood Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), announced in 2013 by President Xi Jinping. While it is not widely known exactly what the BRI is or what Beijing hopes it will accomplish, it has been described as something of a modern silk road, connecting China to dozens of other countries through trade and extensive infrastructure projects. Based on research conducted for her recently published book, The Belt Road and Beyond: State-Mobilized Globalization in China: 1998-2018, Professor Ye enlightened the audience on a surprisingly critical element of this global program: the domestic component.

While Ye began her research with the assumption that many hold about the BRI—that it is primarily a global, internationally-focused initiative—as she continued her research, she found that many, if not most, BRI projects are either entirely domestic or have strong ties to domestic programs. To this end, she posed three questions during her program: Why did Chinese leadership launch the BRI in 2013? How did the Chinese state and businesses implement the BRI? and, What are the internal and external outcomes of the BRI?

To answer these questions, Ye explained the theoretical frameworks she used to understand both the BRI and China's "state-mobilized globalization." Firstly, Ye's "Chinese-State Framework" breaks the Chinese governmental system into three parts: Party Leadership, State Bureaucracy, and Subnational Actors. Each of these elements affect the others, as well as policy surrounding the BRI. However, this division also creates fragmentation in authority and ideology. Secondly, her “State-Mobilized Globalization” framework explains the process surrounding Chinese national strategy. Ye posits that national strategies are generally prompted by crises faced at lower levels of government, particularly when a lack of efficiency or communication is causing “state paralysis.” Once the strategy is announced in order to coordinate efforts and solve the crisis, it enters a feedback loop in which plans are adjusted and changed according to ground-level conditions. These frameworks informed the empirical studies used to answer Ye’s research questions.

The drivers of the BRI, argues Ye, were threefold: strategic, diplomatic, and economic. It was believed by interested parties within China that such an international initiative could ease tensions related to the United States and maritime Asia, as well as generally improve diplomatic relations for the country. China’s industries were also facing problems related to overcapacity, and economic and financial groups wished to use their excess capital to invest abroad. Actors from several different levels in China, including national agencies, local governments, and private entrepreneurs, were involved in executing BRI projects intended to alleviate these tensions. Different cities saw different sides of this implementation: Chongqing, one of China’s largest cities, is heavily dominated by state capital, with its main BRI actors being State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs). Wenzhou, a port city in Zhejiang province, is by contrast dominated by private entrepreneurs.

With diverse implementation comes diverse outcomes. Ye argues that some BRI projects have been helpful in reforming cities’ structural economy, while others have helped upgrade industry. The BRI has managed to alleviate some of the tensions listed above, but at the same time, it has created its own problems. While there has been a massive internal mobilization effort for BRI projects, there exists a disconnect between the domestic situation and demands for transparency from outside actors.

Ye concluded her talk by tying her research to current developments related to COVID-19. While one might imagine that a global pandemic would be a significant inhibitor to an international trade and infrastructure project, Ye finds just the opposite. Because the BRI is, in fact, quite domestically focused, many BRI projects are continuing at a rapid pace, albeit with digital adjustments. Some projects, such as the New Infrastructure Plan, were actually fast-tracked in the wake of the pandemic outbreak. Ye predicts that as COVID-19 restrictions ease and the world returns to “normal,” these domestic and digital elements will be combined with the BRI’s original projects.

An audio recording of this program is available at the link below, and a video recording is available upon request. Please contact Callista Wells, China Program Coordinator at cvwells@stanford.edu with any inquiries.

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Speaking at the Shorenstein Award’s nineteenth annual discussion, which was held virtually due to COVID-19, Wright detailed the 1MDB story and its beginning with an unknown Chinese-Malaysian Wharton graduate named Jho Low, who allegedly set in motion a fraud of unprecedented scope and magnitude. An epic true-tale of corruption and greed involving heads of state and Hollywood stars and enabled by a raft of Western institutions, the story is the subject of Wright’s coauthored bestseller Billion Dollar Whale, based on his years of reporting on the scandal for the Wall Street Journal.  Mr. Low, who was indicted by U.S. authorities and by prosecutors in Malaysia, remains at large. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Wright’s exposure of the scandal has reverberated around the world. It was read by millions of people in Malaysia and sparked popular revulsion with the corrupt government of Prime Minister Najib Razak, leading to his shocking election loss in 2018. Wright’s revelations also shook the global financial system, underpinned investigations by law enforcement and regulators in six countries, and unveiled flaws of China’s Belt and Road signature program.

Accountability Journalism in Asia

“Tom Wright’s work represents the essence of accountability journalism,” said Jay Hamilton, the Hearst Professor of Communication, Chair of the Department of Communication, and Director of the Journalism Program at Stanford, who also serves as a member of the selection committee for the Shorenstein Journalism Award. “Wright takes the time, often enumerated in months or years, to discover facts about how institutions are operating. When his work is published, the world changes, debates ensue, individuals lose jobs or an election, policies are corrected, and there are people, often in Asian governments and Western companies, who wish they had done a better job of keeping their corruption secret.”

Wright is honored with the Shorenstein Journalism Award for his stellar reporting done over 25 years, mainly in South and Southeast Asia. A theme running through Wright’s work is the blight of corruption in Asia, abetted by Western organizations. In 2008, his investigation revealed how Indian wind turbine producer Suzlon, backed by U.S. investors, was hiding technology defects that made its turbines unsafe, leading to a collapse in the company’s shares. In 2011, he broke new ground reporting about the Obama administration's multibillion-dollar civilian aid program in Pakistan. He was one of the first journalists to arrive at the scene of the raid in which Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden. And in 2013, Wright spearheaded the coverage of the Rana Plaza factory disaster in Bangladesh, which killed over 1,000 people, exposing how international garment manufacturers turned a blind eye to safety violations to keep costs down.

A Triumph for Impunity

Five years after the 1MDB story came to light, however, almost no one has gone to jail. In Malaysia, Najib Razak was sentenced to 12 years in jail but is now in the process of appealing the case and continues to campaign in the meantime. In July 2020, Goldman Sachs reached a $2.5 billion settlement with the Malaysian government to resolve all criminal and regulatory proceedings in the country involving the firm, and on October 19, 2020, a day before the Journalism Award discussion, it was announced that the firm had reached a $2.2 billion settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice. While the penalties will cost the firm about two-thirds of a year’s profits, Goldman will avoid the harshest sanctions that prosecutors had sought. And while a Singapore-based Goldman subsidiary tied to the misconduct was expected to plead guilty, no one at the parent firm will face criminal charges.

“I don't think any of this is going to deter the kind of behavior that enabled this scandal,” said Wright. “Goldman just had a record-profit quarter and, astoundingly, in my view, there is no criminal liability […] We’re seeing democracy challenged around the world and, having spent so long on the 1MDB scandal, I feel very strongly that this kind of enabling behavior by Western institutions in foreign countries with poor rule of law is one of the reasons why democracy is so badly rooted in these places. Western institutions need to be held accountable for their actions in these countries.”

The Role of International Media in Exposing Global Corruption

Wright’s discussion was followed by a conversation with Meredith Weiss, professor and chair of Political Science at the University at Albany, SUNY. Weiss has published widely on the politics of identity and development, electoral politics and parties, organizational reform, and subnational governance in Southeast Asia, with particular focus on Malaysia and Singapore. Her current research projects include studies focused on “money politics” and on democratic representation and political elites in Southeast Asia, as well as a monograph on Malaysian sociopolitical development.

In their conversation, Wright and Weiss addressed issues including the implications of current political trends in Southeast Asia for supporting or dismantling systems for accountability or anti-corruption, China's role in enabling corruption, how an international media outlet like the Wall Street Journal was able to carry forward the 1MDB story, the role of investigative journalism in battling endemic corrupt practice, and how the shifting media landscape — especially in the context of social media, changes in media freedom around the world, and the rise of “fake news” — affect this role in shedding light on corruption.

“It’s very important that journalists don't become pulled into the latest political trend,” said Wright. “And it's a very difficult fine line to balance. I think investigative journalism is in trouble. By the way, journalists don't call themselves ‘investigative journalists’ — we are just journalists who do our work, and if we're lucky enough to come across a big story, then so be it. But you need bosses [like I had at the Journal], who give you the space to do that kind of work, even though you don't necessarily sell more newspapers and more online subscriptions because of it.”

A Higher Standard

There have been some positive changes following the lessons learned from the IMDB scandal, such as pilot projects in the United States and in London to stop cash purchases from shell companies. Yet it is still too easy to get around such measures, said Wright. He concluded the discussion on a rather somber note, recognizing that the prospects for large-scale change are not bright. “If you've lived and worked in Asia, you know you can shake a stick in any direction and you’ll find corruption. What I learned through the process of working on the 1MDB story was just how complicit foreign institutions are in all of this. I guess I had a naive view, thinking that they had a higher standard of behavior. What I learned was that they only have a higher standard of behavior when there are rules in place to stop them from behaving badly. Maybe things can change, but I don't feel so optimistic about it.”

On September 29, the APARC China Program hosted Thomas Fingar and Stephen Stedman for the program “Rebuilding International Institutions.” The program, which was moderated by China Program Director Jean Oi, examined the future of international institutions such as the United Nations (UN), World Trade Organization (WTO), and World Health Organization (WHO) in our evolving global political landscape. While Fingar and Stedman acknowledged that such institutions facilitated attainment of unprecedented peace and prosperity after WWII, they also asked difficult questions: Are these institutions still adequate? And if not, how will we change them?

Shorenstein APARC Fellow Thomas Fingar kicked off the session by asking whether or not US-China tensions would impede cooperation on major global challenges, or if those challenges were so serious as to render such rivalries immaterial. Perhaps the most obvious example of such a crisis is the current COVID-19 pandemic. The efforts to curb the virus’ spread not only by individual countries, but also by international organizations like the WHO, have proven largely inadequate. According to Fingar, our existing institutions need to be reformed or supplemented to deal with these types of threats. However, such an overhaul of our international systems will be difficult, he says.

How, then, will we go about such a massive project? Stephen Stedman, Deputy Director at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), responded by explaining that the current failure of international cooperation makes such undertakings tough. Globalization has been a double-edged sword: On one hand, more contact, perhaps inherently, leads to increased tension. The resurgence of traditional notions of sovereignty in 2010, kickstarted by the opposition of countries like Russia and China to what was seen as UN overreaching, has led to a reduction of international cooperation overall. On the other hand, Fingar posits that our interconnectedness may force us toward cooperation despite rivalries as we face more and more transnational threats. International institutions create rules to organize and manage our many interconnected relationships so that we can deal with our problems effectively and reduce friction.

Stedman also pointed to the upcoming US elections and the major impact their outcome will have on how these problems are addressed—or not. In the last four year, the United States has pulled back significantly from international institutions and agreements, leaving a gap that China has started to fill. Furthermore, despite the US’s retreat from international responsibility, the country still remains a critical actor in global initiatives. China’s embrace of a global leadership role is not inherently negative, but its future relationship with the US will need to be “managed in a way that you get greater cooperation and not just paralysis.” Stedman says that it is likely that progress will need to be made on a bilateral front in order to have productive conversations about international issues with China.

Concluding on an optimistic note, Fingar voiced his hope that the current tensions and negative perceptions between rivals might ultimately “be mitigated by success in dealing with a common problem,” because “experience does shape perceptions.”

A video recording of this program is available upon request. Please contact Callista Wells, China Program Coordinator at cvwells@stanford.edu with any inquiries.