When the U.S. Senate voted to expand NATO into the USSR’s sphere of influence in Europe in 1988, American diplomat-scholar George Kennan called it "the beginning of a new [U.S.-Russia] cold war” and said that Moscow would “gradually react quite adversely." Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 following a joint statement by Moscow and Beijing criticizing the United States. In May 2022, China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi said U.S.-China relations were on the "brink of a new Cold War.”  What does this mean for Southeast Asians? Are they refusing to choose between the United States and its opponents? How much does the fate of Ukraine matter to Southeast Asians? Do they want peace or justice—to prevent big-power escalation or to reverse imperial expansion? How are they balancing those different views and the contending pressures to side with the United States or Russia+China?

This event is part of APARC’s 2022 Fall webinar series, Asian Perspectives on the US-China Competition.

Richard Heydarian is a Manila-based scholar and columnist serving as a senior lecturer at the Asian Center, University of the Philippines Diliman. His academic career has included professorial positions in political and social science at the University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University, De La Salle University, and a visiting fellowship at National Chengchi University. As a columnist, he has written for leading publications such as Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, and The New York Times, and has regularly contributed, for example, to Al Jazeera English, Nikkei Asian Review, South China Morning Post, and The Straits Times. His books include The Indo-Pacific: Trump, China, and the New Struggle for Global Mastery (2019); The Rise of Duterte: A Populist Revolt against Elite Democracy (2017), and Asia's New Battlefield: The USA, China and the Struggle for the Western Pacific (2015).

Huong Le Thu, an Australia-resident analyst of geopolitics in Southeast Asia, is a principal policy fellow at the Perth USAsia Centre, University of Western Australia and a non-resident fellow in CSIS Washington’s Southeast Asia Program. She has worked in universities and think tanks in Australia, Singapore, and Taiwan, and has held visiting positions in the University of Malaya and the ASEAN Secretariat among other places.  Her scholarly writings have appeared in journals including Asia Policy, Asia-Pacific Review, Asian Security, and Foreign Policy, and  she has been quoted in the Financial Times, The Japan Times, The New York Times, The Straits Times, and The Washington Post among other media.  Her degrees are from the National Chengchi University (PhD) and Jagiellonian University in Poland (MA).  She speaks five languages and has published in four of them.

Stark contradictions mark Asia’s news and information landscape.  Citizens have gained unprecedented ability to express and inform themselves through media.  Yet the internet, once thought of as a great liberator and equalizer, has been harnessed by powerful interests.  Social media platforms, even as they facilitate collective action, have deepened divisions, circulated hate, and undermined public-interest journalism.  What are the political and other effects of this combination of abundant informative discourse and divisive manipulative bias?  A media scholar and a media practitioner with professional experience in both Southeast Asia and Hong Kong will reflect on these contrary trends and their implications.

Cherian George, a media professor at Hong Kong Baptist University, is a visiting scholar at Stanford’s Department of Communication. His books include Red Lines: Political Cartoons and the Struggle Against Censorship, a double finalist for the American Association of Publishers PROSE award for scholarly books (2021); Media and Power in Southeast Asia (2019); and Hate Spin: The Manufacture of Religious Offense and its Threat to Democracy (2016).

Zuraidah Ibrahim is executive managing editor at Hong Kong’s English language daily, South China Morning Post, where her responsibilities include overseeing Hong Kong and international coverage. She was previously deputy editor and political editor of Singapore’s Straits Times. Her books include Rebel City: Hong Kong’s Year of Water and Fire (2020); Singapore Chronicles: Opposition (2017); and Lee Kuan Yew: Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going (2011).

The 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party is scheduled to begin on October 16, 2022. Its outcomes will determine the country’s trajectory for years to come. Join APARC’s China Program for an expert panel covering the Congresses’ context, coverage, and policy implications for the future. This panel discussion will provide expert analyses of what was expected, what was unexpected, how the policies announced may play out over the coming years, and some lesser-covered policy changes that may herald implications for China and the world.

Speakers 

 

Jude Blanchette holds the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Previously, he was engagement director at The Conference Board’s China Center for Economics and Business in Beijing, where he researched China’s political environment with a focus on the workings of the Communist Party of China and its impact on foreign companies and investors. Prior to working at The Conference Board, Blanchette was the assistant director of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego. 

 

Emily Feng is NPR’s Beijing correspondent. Feng joined NPR in 2019. She roves around China, through its big cities and small villages, reporting on social trends as well as economic and political news coming out of Beijing. Feng contributes to NPR’s news magazines, newscasts, podcasts, and digital platforms. Emily is the recipient of the 2022 Shorenstein Journalism Award for excellence in coverage of the Asia-Pacific region. 

 

Qingguo Jia is professor of the School of International Studies of Peking University. Currently, he is a Payne Distinguished Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1988. He is a member of the Standing Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. He is vice president of the China American Studies Association，vice president of the China Association for International Studies, and vice president of the China Japanese Studies Association. He has published extensively on US-China relations, relations between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan and Chinese foreign policy.

 

Alice L. Miller is a historian and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2001 to 2018, she was editor and contributor to Hoover’s China Leadership Monitor. 

This event is part of APARC’s 2022 Fall webinar series, Asian Perspectives on the US-China Competition.

The China Program brings Inaugural China Policy Fellow Laura Stone to provide on the ground views of what the U.S.-China competition means for the region. As Asia perspectives on U.S.-China competition and Chinese intentions in the region develop and change, Laura will give us insights into how Washington stakeholders’ understanding of these perspectives has shifted and evolved. In a complex iterative process, Chinese and U.S. actions — and the reactions from the countries and countries and entities in Asia — shape a dynamic policy process within the region.

Speaker

Laura Stone joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) as Visiting Scholar and Inaugural China Policy Fellow for the 2022-2023 academic year. She was formerly the Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for China and Mongolia, the Director of the Office of Chinese and Mongolian Affairs, and the Director of the Economic Policy Office in the Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs. She served three tours in Beijing as well as tours in Bangkok, Tokyo, the Public Affairs Bureau, the Pentagon Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Most recently, she serves the U.S. Department of State as Deputy Coordinator for the Secretary's Office for COVID Response and Health Security. While at APARC, she will be conducting research with the China Program and Professor Jean Oi regarding contemporary China affairs and U.S.-China policy.

Since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has advocated “Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP)” Vision in 2016, various scholars have analyzed policy formulation process of FOIP. Most of them refer to the rise of China as an influential power in the Indo-Pacific region with its own initiative, namely, the Belt and Road Initiative as a major factor which prompted the Second Abe Administration to launch FOIP.

It is the contention of this presentation that the current configuration of the Japanese political institutions has made it possible for the Second Abe administration to launch and pursue such a comprehensive strategy while an international factor is important. It demonstrates that a series of political reforms since 1990s have strengthened the power of the prime minister as an institution to initiate key cabinet policies and coordinate policy formulation among different ministries. The strong institutional foundation of the Japanese prime ministerial power has made it possible for the Abe administration to effectively pursue such a broad vision, engaging various ministries and organizations.

The existing research on Japan's diplomacy often evaluates Japan as a passive state. It considers that in the past Japan only responded to foreign pressure while it did not proactively push forward its own policies. The presentation suggests that Japan has changed and become more eloquent as a result of changes in domestic political institutions.

Speaker

Harukata Takenaka is a professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) in Tokyo. He holds a PhD from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Tokyo.

His key research areas are the role the prime minister in Japanese politics, changes in Japanese external policy, and democratization in Pre-war Japan.

Prof. Takenaka’s recent publications include: “Kyokoku Chugoku” to Taijisuru Indo-Taiheiyo Shokoku [Indo-Pacific Nations facing China aspiring to be a “Great Country”](edited) (Tokyo: Chikura Shobo, 2022), “Evolution of Japanese security policy and the House of Councilors,” Japanese Journal of Political Science, 22:2, (June 2021), 96-115, Korona Kiki no Seiji [Politics of Covid 19 Crisis](Tokyo: Chuo Koron Shinsha, 2020), “Expansion of the Japanese prime minister’s power in the Japanese parliamentary system: Transformation of Japanese politics and the institutional reforms,”Asian Survey,59:5:844-869 (September 2019); Futatsu no Seiken Kotai [Two Changes of Government] (edited) (Tokyo: Keiso Shobo, 2017); Failed Democratization in Prewar Japan (Stanford University Press 2014),

In the years following the 2011 general election in Myanmar, there were reasons to think that the country might be growing more democratic, and that dialogue between rulers and ethnic minorities might alleviate the latter's long-standing rebellions against the state.  Instead, in 2021, a military coup ended democratic reform, triggered mass opposition, and plunged Myanmar back into civil war.  In ostensibly democratic Indonesia and the Philippines, on the other hand, rebellions respectively by the Moros and the Acehnese transitioned to peace.  Could one conclude, from this and other evidence, that autocracy engenders and prolongs ethnic civil war, and that, in contrast, democracy alleviates or even resolves it?  Jacques Bertrand, in two recent books (noted in his bio below), challenges the notion that democracy necessarily fosters peaceful outcomes.  He stresses the importance of interactive process between the state and its opponents and argues for a dynamic and contingent understanding of democracy’s impact. Although democratic institutions and negotiations can help to resolve deep and enduring conflicts, he concludes, they can also be used and have been used, mainly by the state, to manipulate and undermine insurgent ethnic minority groups.

Jacques Bertrand is a professor of political science at the University of Toronto, where he also directs the Collaborative Master’s Specialization in Contemporary East and Southeast Asian Studies at the Asian Institute in the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. He both founded and headed the institute’s Centre for Southeast Asian Studies and is a co-founder of the university’s Postcor Lab, a research hub for the study of civil wars and war-to-peace transitions.

Professor Bertrand has worked for many years on issues of ethnic conflict, nationalism, and secessionism in Southeast Asia.  His research has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the United States Institute of Peace, and the International Development Research Centre.  His latest book, just published in July 2022 and co-authored with Ardeth Thawnghmung and Alexandre Pelletier, is Winning by Process: The State and Neutralization of Ethnic Minorities in Myanmar. His sole-authored Democracy and Nationalist Struggles in Southeast Asia: From Secessionist Mobilization to Conflict Resolution appeared in 2021.

Discussant:

Scot Marciel is Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, affiliated with the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Previously, he was a 2020-22 Visiting Scholar and Visiting Practitioner Fellow on Southeast Asia at APARC.  A retired diplomat, Mr. Marciel served as U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar from March 2016 through May 2020, leading a mission of 500 employees during the difficult Rohingya crisis and a challenging time for both Myanmar’s democratic transition and the United States-Myanmar relationship.  Prior to serving in Myanmar, Ambassador Marciel served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asia and the Pacific at the State Department, where he oversaw U.S. relations with Southeast Asia.