About the Conference

At a time of geopolitical uncertainty and with multilateralism under pressure, this conference brought together diverse actors to explore the evolving role of international law on critical security and economic issues in the Asia-Pacific. From trade agreements to deep-sea mining, cyberwarfare to territorial disputes, the breadth of the discussion illustrated the growing reach of international law in the region.

Hosted by the International Law Programme and the Asia-Pacific Programme at Chatham House on 27 March 2019, the conference focused on three themes: trade and investment, maritime security and governance, and emerging security challenges. What trends are emerging in terms of engagement with international law in the region, and how can international standards play a greater role in encouraging collaboration and reducing tensions? And, with the eastward shift in geopolitical power, how will Asia-Pacific states shape the future of international law?

Almost four years since it was established, the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has approved 49 projects and proposed 28. The AIIB claims to be more efficient and less bureaucratic than traditional multilateral development banks (MDB’s) which has threatened the existing model of multilateral development finance. At the same time, China’s increased role in previously Western-led economic institutions, such as the WTO and IMF, has raised questions over the future of the international trade order. How will a rising China shape the international institutional order? Where are there opportunities for potential collaboration and what areas pose challenges? And how should other states and international organizations respond?

Attendance at this event is by invitation only. 

The study of secrecy and spies remain subjects dominated by Anglo-American experiences. In recent years there has been some effort to refocus the lens of research upon ‘intelligence elsewhere’, including the global South. This is partly because of intense interest in the Arab Spring and ‘managed democracy’, placing a wider range of secret services under the spotlight. However, the approach to research is still dominated by concepts and methods derived from studying the English-speaking states of the ‘Five Eyes’ alliance and their European outriders. This article calls for a re-examination of research strategies for Intelligence Studies and for those theorizing surveillance, suggesting that both fields have much to learn from area studies and development studies, especially in the realm of research practice and ethics. If the growing number of academics specializing in intelligence genuinely wish to move forward and examine the global South they will need to rethink their tool-kit and learn from other disciplines. We suggest there is a rich tradition to draw upon.

Julia Gillard, you became the first female prime minister in Australian history in 2010, what have been the challenges and opportunities for you as a woman working in politics? Have the obstacles women face in positions of power changed over the years, and if so, how? 

I want to start positive and say I’m a huge advocate for people going into politics – particularly women. I believe there’s no better way of putting your values into action than going into politics but I’m not going to pretend that there’s no gender bit.

There still is a gender bit and I experienced that personally. A disproportionate focus on appearance, a disproportionate focus on family structures – for example the fact that I didn’t have kids – and the gendered insults becoming the go-to weapon when politics got turbulent, which inevitably happens, as governments make decisions that not everybody agrees with.

In terms of politics past and politics present, I think a lot has changed for the positive. There are more women in politics now which means more role models for other women. There’s been more of an attempt to have the system offer flexibilities for work and family life too. In Australian politics, famously, the non-members bar was replaced by a childcare centre, so that’s giving you a sense that there has been progress. We’ve also just hit the stage where our Senate is now 50 per cent men and 50 per cent women.

But I do think that there’s a new toxicity for women that’s been introduced through social media – through the fact that it’s anonymous and people can say anything and the kinds of revolting material many women politicians receive. I think that there’s a new coarseness in our traditional media too which means things will be said about people in politics today, especially women, which would not have been put in the pages of respectable newspapers 10 or 20 years ago.

So, it’s a mixed picture, where there has been major steps forward but there are still some huge issues to resolve.

Following this year’s elections, there are now a record number of female members of parliament in Australia, yet some argue that women are still underrepresented across the major political parties, and over the past 20 years, the country has fallen from 15th in the world to 50th for gender diversity in its parliament.

Given some of the recent experiences of women in Australian politics, do you think the major political parties are doing enough to address gender diversity in their ranks? 

I certainly think on the Labor side of politics important changes have happened in our political party and the benefit of those changes has showed. I’m of that generation of Labor women that fought for an affirmative action target and we had that adopted as a Labor party rule in the early 1990s. It started at 30 per cent, and it’s gone up over time, and the benefit of that now is that the Labor Party is almost at 50-50 per cent men and women, coming off a very low base in the early 1990s where we were at 14 per cent men and women. 

The Conservative side for politics hasn’t embraced a target or quota as of yet. They have done some things, through mentoring and networking and training, but that hasn’t seen as significant a shift in the gender diversity in their ranks. They’ve moved slowly from when they were 13 per cent women to now where they’re in the mid-20 per cent. 

Of course that doesn’t mean the work within Labor is done: we’ve got to keep delivering to the affirmative action target, having women come through for all of the ministries, the Cabinet and for all of the portfolios and to make sure that we’re embracing the full diversity of women too. Australia is a very multicultural society and there is more to do to make sure that women – and men – in the Australian parliament represents that diversity. 

During your premiership, you delivered a famous speech on misogyny and sexism and described there being 'gender wars' in Australian politics. How far has Australia addressed its problems regarding everything from unconscious bias to gender stereotypes? Do you think social attitudes in Australia to women in leadership are changing?

I don’t think these issues are particularly an Australian problem. When I left politics, people kept asking me about my experiences and it became convenient for them to say ‘That’s Australia and its macho culture and Crocodile Dundee and all of that.’ I was always quick to point out, actually, a number of the insults hurled at me were first hurled at Hillary Clinton when she originally put her name forward to be considered as a candidate for US president. So this is not an Australian problem – it’s a global problem. 

I can see progress in Australia though. When I was prime minister, the sort of fashionable analysis by the press was that nothing, in my experience, had anything to do with gender – I was just being treated like every prime minister had always been treated.

Today, there is a very lively debate about sexism in Australian politics and about how women can feel excluded from these structures with various conservative women making complaints about bullying within their political party. So the preparedness to report issues due to the understanding of gender is now much higher and I’m a big believer that you never solve a problem unless you start talking about it so I’m glad we’re talking about it now.

From the implementation of ‘womenomics’ in Japan, to gender-responsive budgeting in Indonesia, countries around the world are making progress towards addressing gender issues, yet, structural and cultural barriers that prevent women’s economic, political and social participation remain.

What are the biggest barriers that women face around the world and do you think enough is being done to address these barriers?

I think so much is context-specific that it’s hard to say, but I would say, in some parts of the world, unequal access to education is the fundamental barrier.

Now that’s not true in the UK or in Australia, where the statistics tell you that disproportionately graduates today are women and not men, but if we look at many of the poorer parts of the world, like in sub-Saharan Africa and other places, there are 260 million children out of school – and the face of a child most likely to miss out is a female face. So there still needs to be a lot more progress on things such as equal access to education around the world. 

In many parts of the developed world, there is actually an assault now on long-held rights around women’s reproduction so I think that is another foundation stone – and then really it comes to a set of issues and barriers around the world of work and full access to every level of work.

Much of this is what we research at the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership because we continue to see workplaces and organizations that have a very traditional view of what merit looks like. It’s a sort of male-defined view of the world and it is one that is not inclusive of women. We are still seeing the unequal sharing of domestic labour which has ramifications for women’s engagement in the world of work and their ability to achieve leadership within it too. 

With a broad brush, I would point to all of this, but the most pressing problems that women continue to face varies from place to place.

Globally, increasing numbers of women are being elected to political office, from the first female president of Slovakia to the first female mayor of Tunis. This comes at a time of record numbers of female ministers in Egypt and Jordan as well as gender-balanced cabinets in 10 countries worldwide – six of which were achieved in 2018 alone.

Do you think women’s rights and gender equality are benefitting from more female representation in politics and how are female voters responding, if at all, to this increase in the number of women holding political office?

I think, even if women didn’t bring new policy perspectives to the world of politics, I would still be an advocate of gender equality in politics because I believe merit is equally distributed between the sexes.

If you see women being represented at less than 50 per cent then that’s got to mean that there are women of merit who didn’t get there – who should’ve gotten there. I think it’s important to make that point otherwise we’re saying ‘Women should only be there if, when they are there, they do this, this and this’. We don’t tend to put that ‘if’ in sentences about men.

But I do think the evidence shows that more women, being involved in politics, does diversify the public policy agenda. That doesn’t mean that a male politician couldn’t focus his career and advocacy on childcare or domestic violence or combating sexual assault or furthering women’s reproductive rights. But I think the evidence shows that there is a lived experience that women bring to politics that enables them to mobilize around a set of issues that are of particular concern to women.

On the role model effect, I think the evidence shows that, if women and girls do see role models, they are more likely to think that that is a pathway open to them. One of the things that does slightly concern me is whether that evidence is now retrospective evidence and whether the prospective evidence is going to be – because of the toxicity of social media – more women thinking about the real-world threats that being in politics presents for them. And so the role modelling effect will work in reverse because it will show how women are treated in politics is more of a negative than a positive.

I certainly hope this doesn’t happen and young women are encouraged to go into politics. That’s where we still have to shine a light on the positive aspects of what working in politics has to offer.

Despite all of the progress we are seeing, women are still faced with gender-based discrimination and gender-based violence, virtually and physically, with 40 per cent of women and girls living in countries which fail to guarantee basic standards of gender equality. What do you think needs to happen to ultimately realize women’s rights and gender equality globally? Are you hopeful this will be achieved in the future?

Yes I’m an optimist overall. People like to quote the great Martin Luther King quote ‘The moral arc of the universe bends towards justice.’ I believe that but I think sometimes the imagery of the arc as if it’s always in a forward movement hides the nitty-gritty struggle that is there beneath. 

Inevitably, at some points, it feels like there’s more of a backlash against women than a forward movement. But, over time, I’m an optimist that the forward movement wins through. 

I do believe we can reach a stage where societies are generating societies where women can live their lives free from the threat of sexual violence or discriminatory treatment based on gender.

Video: Marianne Schneider-Petsinger and Dr Yu Jie discuss key themes from the research paper

Summary

• The underlying driver of the ongoing US–China trade war is a race for global technological dominance. President Trump has raised a number of issues regarding trade with China – including the US’s trade deficit with China and the naming of China as a currency manipulator. But at the heart of the ongoing tariff escalation are China’s policies and practices regarding forced technology transfer, intellectual property theft and non-market distortions.
• As China’s international influence has expanded it has always been unlikely that Beijing would continue to accept existing global standards and institutions established and widely practised by developed countries based on ‘the Washington Consensus’.
• China’s desire to be an alternative champion of technology standard-setting remains unfulfilled. Its ample innovation talent is a solid foundation in its quest for global technology supremacy but tightening controls over personal freedoms could undermine it and deter potential global partners.
• It is unclear if Chinese government interventions will achieve the technological self-sufficiency Beijing has long desired. China’s approach to macroeconomic management diverges significantly from that of the US and other real market economies, particularly in its policy towards nurturing innovation.
• Chinese actors are engaged in the globalization of technological innovation through exports and imports of high-tech goods and services; cross-border investments in technology companies and research and development (R&D) activities; cross-border R&D collaboration; and international techno-scientific research collaboration.
• While the Chinese state pushes domestic companies and research institutes to engage in the globalization of technological innovation, its interventions in the high-tech sector have caused uneasiness in the West.
• The current US response to its competition with China for technological supremacy, which leans towards decoupling, is unlikely to prove successful. The US has better chances of success if it focuses on America’s own competitiveness, works on common approaches to technology policy with like-minded partners around the globe and strengthens the international trading system.
• A technically sound screening mechanism of foreign investment can prevent normal cross-border collaboration in technological innovation from being misused by geopolitical rival superpowers.

At face value, recent years have seen a deepening in Sino-Russian cooperation, from energy agreements, to the recent Huawei-MTS deal developing a 5G network in Russia. Ever larger-in-scale joint military exercises add to fears by some that the 'axis of convenience' is now a more genuine – and threatening – partnership.

This workshop will offer a sober assessment of the latest developments in Sino-Russian relations, shedding light on the underpinnings and practical realities of the relationship as well as on the long-term challenges of upholding cooperation.

The panel will discuss the different and potentially diverging interpretations of contemporary Sino-Russian relations as well as the implications for the rules-based international order.

This event is co-organized by the Chatham House Russia and Eurasia Programme and the University of Exeter and is supported by the British International Studies Association.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only. 

2019 saw a number of political developments in India that brought into question Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) commitment to one of India’s founding principles: secularism. The fallout from Modi and his party’s revocation of Articles 370 and 35A, updates to the National Register of Citizens and the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Bill have arguably demonstrated that power-sharing arrangements based on group divisions and representations fail to accord adequate protection to minorities in India in line with the country’s constitution.

This panel assesses the capacity of India’s republican framework to withstand the BJP and Prime Minister Modi’s brand of nationalism. What do recent developments tell us about Modi and the BJP’s vision for India and how do we explain this paradox where, despite a strong political centre, the BJP is faced with regional insecurity?

How might India reconcile its behaviour in the domestic sphere with its ambition as an emerging power that supports the rules-based order? And in the year of its 70th anniversary, how compatible has India’s constitution proved with the country’s ongoing religious and cultural divides?

Afghanistan has suffered decades of armed conflict resulting in a heavily armed and militarized society involving multiple armed actors and with children being disproportionately affected by the conflict. In March 2019, the Afghanistan government criminalized the harmful practice of bacha bazi, or ‘boy play’, which triggers a range of human rights violations against boys and young men. However, recent research conducted by the All Survivors Project and Youth Health and Development Organisation demonstrates that the practice is widely prevalent due to poverty, prevailing gender norms and widespread impunity. This event will look at research that was conducted in the four provinces of Balkh, Herat, Kandahar and Kabul following interviews with over 100 key informants, 24 survivors and with 13 focus group discussions. 

The event will be preceded by the screening of a documentary on the practice of bacha bazi in Afghanistan which includes interviews with survivors, key government officials and NGOs. The speakers will discuss how an increase in the intensity of conflict in recent years has removed protection mechanisms and increased the vulnerability of all children to conflict-related sexual violence.

In response to the changing geopolitical landscape in Asia, both China and the United States attempt to alter the regional order in their own favour, both in the economic and security realms. This article shows how diverging views on future arrangements are leading to strategic shifts and increasing tension between these two Great Powers. As part of its quest for Great-Power status, China has been actively pushing its regional initiatives such as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), as well as adopting assertive security policies towards its neighbours. In contrast, in order to counter China's growing influence America's regional strategy is undergoing a subtle shift from ‘rebalancing to Asia’ to focusing on the ‘Indo-Pacific’ region. However, amid an intensifying trade war and other challenges facing the region, China has chosen to moderate its proactive foreign policy-orientation in the past few years. In particular, China has made attempts to downplay its domestic rhetoric, rebuild strategic relationship with India and Japan, and to reassure ASEAN states in the South China Sea. In response to the Indo-Pacific strategy, it would be more effective for China to articulate a more inclusive regional vision and promote an institutional framework that also accommodates a US presence in the region.

The ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ (FOIP) strategy, actively promoted by the United States with support from its allies and partners, is a significant geopolitical response to China's growing power and expanding influence in Asia and beyond. Beijing has adopted various new strategies to cope with the challenges related to FOIP. One of these strategies is to secure a robust relationship with south-east Asia in order to make these regional states either neutral to or less supportive of the Indo-Pacific vision. In addition to economic statecraft and soft power, Beijing believes that it can also tap into the domain of non-traditional security (NTS) to strengthen relations with this region to position itself better in the intensifying regional geopolitical competition. The article addresses the following question: what is the impact of China's NTS cooperation with south-east Asia on Beijing's geopolitical rivalry with other major powers in the Indo-Pacific region? The article argues that China's NTS cooperation with south-east Asian countries may help China maintain its geopolitical standing in the region, but it is unlikely to lead to any dramatic increase of China's strategic influence in the region. This essentially means that Beijing may be able to prevent ASEAN or most ASEAN member states from lending substantive and strong support to the Indo-Pacific construct, but it will not be able to stop ASEAN states from supporting some elements of the FOIP.

Japan's primary objective of the ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ (FOIP) strategy is to shape and consolidate regional order in the Indo-Pacific region based on the existing rules-based international order. The concept initially aimed to achieve two different objectives—shaping a regional order in the Indo-Pacific and ensuring the defence of Japan; however, Japan has gradually shifted its strategic focus onto the former, separating national defence from the FOIP concept, which reflects a change in the degree of its commitment to the two objectives. On the one hand, as its overall security strategy, Japan has determined to steadily enhance its national defence by increasing its own defence capabilities and strengthening the US–Japan alliance, while transforming its partnerships with like-minded states, such as Australia and India, into a diplomatic, and potentially military, alignment. This has been brought about by shifts in the regional balance of power, particularly the rise of China and the relative decline of the United States. On the other hand, as part of its FOIP strategy, Japan's attempts to build a new regional order in the Indo-Pacific region aim to defend the existing rules-based order established by the United States from challengers, particularly China. Yet, given the strategic uncertainty over Japan's international coalition-building efforts to create a new regional order, Japan has made its approach flexible; Tokyo is using its ambiguous FOIP concept to gauge other states' responses, understand their perspectives, and change its strategic emphases accordingly—so-called ‘tactical hedging’. Japan has pursued similar means to achieve the two key objectives. Nevertheless, the country's core interest, the defence of Japan, is more imperative than building a regional order in the Indo-Pacific region, and Japan faces different types of challenges in the future.

India has adopted the Indo-Pacific concept with uncharacteristic speed. This article examines India's Indo-Pacific strategy, which evolved out of its earlier ‘Look East’ and ‘Act East’ policies but is much more focused on strategic concerns than on trade or connectivity. As such, the strategy is subset of its China policy, and includes contradictory elements of balancing China by building partnerships with the United States as well as with regional powers, while simultaneously pursuing a reassurance strategy to convince Beijing that India is not really balancing China. The combination of these contradictory elements is characterized as evasive balancing, which is a more useful concept than either pure balancing or hedging for understanding the policies of India and of many other countries in the region that are trying to manage China's rise. However, reassurance strategies rarely work and the combination of balancing and reassurance is even less likely to be viable.

Australia has been among the most prominent advocates of the increasingly popular Indo-Pacific concept. This article argues that Canberra's enthusiasm for the concept stems from its appeal to the two dominant traditions of Australian foreign policy—a ‘dependent ally’ tradition and a ‘middle power’ approach. While these two traditions are typically seen as being in tension, the Indo-Pacific concept provides a rare point of convergence between them. The article begins by outlining the appeal of the Indo-Pacific concept to each of these traditions. Using a case-study of recent Australian policy toward the South China Sea disputes, however, the article then demonstrates that Australia has in practice implemented its stated Indo-Pacific strategy far less consistently than its very vocal support would appear to suggest. This disjuncture is attributed to the growing influence of a third, generally understudied, ‘pragmatic’ Australian foreign policy tradition. Because Australia has been such a prominent champion of the Indo-Pacific concept, the article concludes that this divergence between the rhetoric and the reality of Australia's Indo-Pacific strategy threatens to have a negative impact on the concept's broader international appeal and sustainability, particularly among Australia's south-east Asian neighbours.

Indonesia has taken a leadership role within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in drafting a common outlook on the Indo-Pacific concept. The widening of Indonesia's geostrategic canvas from the Asia–Pacific to the Indo-Pacific is in line with President Joko Widodo's intent to make Indonesia a Global Maritime Fulcrum (GMF). In view of the rivalry between the US and China and the emergence of various Indo-Pacific initiatives from other countries, Indonesia believes that ASEAN must try to maintain its centrality. The draft of Indonesia's perspective for an ASEAN outlook on the Indo-Pacific: towards a peaceful, prosperous, and inclusive region was submitted for considerations by ASEAN, and after 18 months of intensive lobbying by Indonesia the concept was finally adopted at the ASEAN Summit in June 2019. The ASEAN outlook promotes the principles of openness, inclusiveness, transparency, respect for international law and ASEAN centrality in the Indo-Pacific region. It proposes a building-block approach, seeking commonalities between existing regional initiatives in which ASEAN-led mechanisms will act as a fulcrum for both norm-setting and concrete cooperation. Rather than creating a new regional architecture, the East Asia Summit (EAS) is proposed as the platform for advancing the Indo-Pacific discourse and cooperation. Indonesia's ASEAN outlook on the Indo-Pacific marks its renewed foreign policy activism as a middle power and underlines the continuing importance that Indonesia places on ASEAN as the cornerstone of its foreign policy, emphasising ASEAN's centrality as the primary vehicle for managing relations with the major powers in the Indo-Pacific region.

This article assesses how south-east Asian countries and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have responded to the ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ (FOIP) strategies promoted by the United States and the other countries in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the ‘Quad’: US, Japan, Australia and India). Their nuanced ripostes imply a persistent commitment to hedging and shifting limited alignments in the face of growing great rivalry and the lack of a clear FOIP vision among Quad members. In the face of external pressure to take sides, the ASEAN states are likely to keep hedging through working selectively with China and the United States. Given the United States' apparent preference to balance China and Trump's disregard for multilateralism, ASEAN's ability to maintain its centrality in the evolving regional architecture is in doubt—despite the Quad countries' (belated) accommodation of ASEAN in their FOIP strategies. However, the success of the US strategy depends on Washington's ability to build and sustain the requisite coalition to balance Beijing. ASEAN has undertaken efforts to enhance bilateral security collaboration with China and the United States respectively. In doing so, ASEAN is arguably seeking to informally redefine its centrality in an era of Great Power discord and its ramifications for multilateralism.

Although the term ‘Indo-Pacific’ has become popular in the foreign policy discourse of some countries, we have yet to see any significant institution-building in the Indo-Pacific region. Borrowing insights from functional institutionalism and political leadership studies of international regimes, we introduce a ‘leadership–institution’ model to explore the problems and prospects of institutionalizing the Indo-Pacific. Through a comparative case study of the institutionalization of the Asia–Pacific vs the Indo-Pacific, we argue that two crucial factors contributed to the slow institutionalization of the Indo-Pacific as a regional system in world politics: the lack of ideational leadership from an epistemic community and the weak executive leadership from a powerful state. While ideational leaders can help states identify and expand common interests in cooperation, executive leadership will facilitate states to overcome operational obstacles in cooperation, such as the ‘collective action’ problem and the ‘relative gains’ concern. The future of institution-building in the Indo-Pacific will depend on whether and how these two leadership roles are played by scholars and states in the region. In the conclusion, we discuss the challenges of institutionalizing the Indo-Pacific and highlight China as a wild card in the future of Indo-Pacific regionalism.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been regarded by international society as a major policy tool in China's geo-economic strategy. Under this policy platform, Beijing has pledged to invest billions of dollars in the infrastructure and industrial sectors across Eurasia and in the Indo-Pacific nations. It is widely believed that such huge amount of investment will inevitably generate significant geostrategic repercussions in these regions. In response to the BRI, the United States and other powers have come up with a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ strategy. This article attempts to address the following question: what impact is the BRI likely to have on the security ties between China and the other major players in the Indo-Pacific? The author finds that the BRI may significantly transform China's international security policy and the expansion of Beijing's security influence may further intensify the security competition between China and other major powers in the Indo-Pacific region. The article also proposes a new analytical angle for the study of geo-economics that unpacks the role of economic activities and processes in generating geopolitical intentions and catalysing geopolitical competition.

This article adopts a constructive approach to examining the problem of the Indo-Pacific construct. Through reflection on the east Asian experience, it proposes an analytical framework of developmental peace as a constellation of international practices, which means that the more economic development is prioritized by states in regional processes, the more likely it is that a sustainable peace will be achieved. States participating in regional integration comprise a community of practice. On the basis of a shared understanding that development is of overriding importance and underpins security and state legitimacy, the community takes economic development as the anchoring practice; this practice embodies and enacts constitutive rules and fundamental norms for a broader set of practices in regional processes, such as peaceful coexistence and non-interference. The more economic development is prioritized on domestic and regional agendas, the more likely it is that conflicts in the security realm will be relaxed or even resolved to protect security interests. The author draws some useful implications from the developmental peace in east Asia for the Indo-Pacific construct, among which the most important include building shared understandings on the prioritization of economic development, taking advantage of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and using the code of conduct process as a vehicle and best practice to facilitate rule-making for the maritime order. Finally, the author briefly discusses the contributions of the study and limitations of the model.

As a geographical concept, ‘Indo-Pacific’ has existed for decades. As a political and strategic concept, it has since 2010 gradually become established in the foreign policy lexicon of some countries, especially Australia, India, Japan and the United States. However, China seems to be reluctant to identify itself as part of the Indo-Pacific; Chinese leaders believe that the US-led Indo-Pacific strategy aims to contain China's rise. While the battle between the two geographical concepts ‘Indo-Pacific’ and ‘Asia–Pacific’ may be fairly easily settled in the future, US–China strategic competition has just begun. Will the Indo-Pacific become a battlefield for US–China rivalry? How will China cope with the US ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ (FOIP) strategy? How will other regional actors respond to the US–China strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific? What are the strategic implications of the ‘Indo-Pacific’ concept for regional order transformation? How will the Indo-Pacific be institutionalized, economically, politically and strategically? This article introduces the January 2020 special issue of International Affairs, which aims to address those questions, using both country-specific and regional perspectives. Seven articles focus on the policy responses of major players (Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan and ASEAN) to the US FOIP strategy and related US–China rivalry in the region. A further three articles examine the profound implications of Indo-Pacific dynamics for regional institution-building and for geopolitical and geo-economic architecture.

This closed-door roundtable explores possible strategic shifts in the Indo-Pacific between now and 2024.

Focusing on trade security, climate change disruptions and security cooperation, it aims to enhance the understanding of the regional goals of, and strategic relationships between, the key countries active in the region.

The workshop is part of a larger project funded by the Strategic Policy Division of the Australian Department of Defence.

The project includes workshops in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, India and the Pacific Islands (Tonga).

Just a few years ago the West was celebrating what appeared to be the conclusion of a quarter-century long contest between Myanmar’s democrats and a military dictatorship. Today, the country stands charged with genocide at the International Court of Justice, with Aung San Suu Kyi leading the defence. Is Myanmar a democratic transition gone awry? Or something else entirely?  

The speaker will argue that Myanmar is not the simple morality tale often portrayed. It has instead become the stage for some of the world’s most pressing challenges such as climate change, explosive inequality and rising populism, the impact of social media; and the rise of China as the next global superpower.

In this context, are 20th century democratic institutions and free-market reforms the correct remedy for a country plagued by the legacies of colonialism, decades of civil war, tyranny and a predatory economic system? The speaker will offer a prognosis for Myanmar’s future, assessing the question of whether it will become Asia’s next failed state.

This event will be held off the record.

 

China’s growing power and assertiveness in Asia has led the United States and other liberal partners to move toward an Indo-Pacific strategy. While Japan embraces this, South Korea remains noticeably reticent. Moreover, tensions between the two countries have escalated into crisis with the reinvigoration of historical disputes. This roundtable will explore the root causes of current animosity between Seoul and Tokyo, and the potential ways it can be overcome.

This event is co-hosted with Dartmouth College. 

THIS EVENT IS NOW FULL AND REGISTRATION HAS CLOSED.

Asia’s political class learnt many lessons on digital governance in 2019, not all of them positive.

The prolonged protests in Hong Kong and India, led by disaffected young citizenry and enabled by social media tools, powerfully demonstrated how things could spiral out of control when the virtual and the real streets come together.

Not surprisingly, governments across the region are taking a step back. Instead of placing the citizen at the heart of digital public policy – with privacy, trust, security and inclusion as drivers of digital governance – Asian governments are focusing instead on surveillance and command and control, which contradicts the spirit of a decentralized Internet and undermines citizen’s rights.

Asia’s digital governance is fragmenting from the global norm and morphing into two platforms with remarkably similar characteristics.

One is a China-driven model aptly called the Great Firewall where surveillance of citizens is an explicit objective and any external material deemed to be subversive is kept out. A complementary model has also emerged more recently, which can best be described as China-light, which seeks to emulate the control aspects of the Great Firewall.

There are of course overlaps between emulators of the China model (this list includes Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos) and those pursuing China-light (Singapore, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia). A common thread running through these two approaches, which differ only in intensity and scope, is the belief that the state is best positioned to police social media and protect the rights of citizens.

This was not how it was supposed to be. A decade ago, Asian political leaders spoke about the virtues of an open internet. Such talk has faded, and a narrowing of Asia’s digital space is taking place against a backdrop of an intensifying trade war between America and China, where regional supply chains run the risk of a decoupling into distinct Sino and American spheres, upending Asia’s durable economic model of the past few decades.

Digital fragmentation in the world’s fastest growing region, with five G20 members, will complicate efforts to build global governance and standards.

Asia’s digital landscape

Asian governments, including democratic ones, have developed an unhealthy obsession with what their citizens are up to on a daily basis. Their solution is round-the-clock monitoring in cities and towns, powered by new surveillance technologies.

Name tagging and facial recognition to track movement of citizens has become pervasive across the region, with China emerging as the preferred source of technology, knowledge, and techniques. While India’s Supreme Court has ruled that privacy is a fundamental right, translating this into concrete citizen’s protections will be difficult with the Modi government eager to emulate China’s approach.

Asian governments are also following China in requiring that their citizen’s data be housed within national borders and are rebelling against the established practice of data offshoring.

In the post-Snowden era and amidst increasing cyber risks, there are rational national security reasons for why governments may want to ring-fence customer data within national boundaries. However, Asian governments are paying little or no attention to how companies are using customer data within national boundaries, with widespread abuses going unchecked.

Global standards are still evolving and there is a strong case here for a uniform regional approach, perhaps via ASEAN or APEC, on standards governing customer privacy, payments, data collection and handling. Big tech companies and platforms operate across much of Asia and a regional approach will curb their current instinct of conducting regulatory arbitrage.

There is a genuine problem in Asia, as elsewhere in the world, with the proliferation of fake news and extremism. But instead of addressing the source of this problem, governments are clamping down by generously expanding the definition of fake news (Singapore) or by shutting down the internet altogether (India, Sri Lanka, and China being serial offenders).

As disseminators of news of all stripes, including the fake variant, the big tech firms have a primary responsibility in policing their platforms. However, the regulatory capacity of many Asian governments to monitor this is weak and in crisis situations, governments prefer to shut the pipes altogether.

Digitalization of course is not all about surveillance and holds the promise of driving inclusion. There is considerable hype within Asia on the promise of fintech as an enabler of this inclusion.

Hong Kong and Singapore are licensing new digital banks, India’s UPI (unified payments interface) is reducing friction in domestic payments and China’s BAT companies (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) are disrupting traditional commerce and payments, and seeking to expand in the region.

However, there is an elite focus in many of these initiatives, with the target market being the region’s rising middle class rather than those at the bottom of the income ladder. Making fintech work for all will require micro-initiatives with the support of NGOs, local governments and small enterprises, with the objective of digitalizing microfinance.

Here developing Asia will again benefit from learning from each other and in building regional approaches. India’s Aadhar for example, with appropriate security safeguards, is a model for Asia in terms of building digital identity.

Given differing regional and national objectives, it is difficult to imagine a global accord for digital governance any time soon. However, by signing on to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Transpacific Partnership (CPTPP, the successor to the TPP), Asia has consistently demonstrated its leadership in trade and regional governance.

This is why the region needs to come together to ensure that the promise and potential of digitalization flows evenly and equitably to the region, with the region’s 3.8 billion citizens at the heart, rather than at the margins of sensible public policy.

The Asia-Pacific region continues to increase in geopolitical and geoeconomic importance. The rise of China and tensions with the US are affecting bilateral relationships and traditional alliances in the region. Whether seen from the perspective of the Quad – Australia, India, Japan and the US – or the Indo-Pacific concept embraced by a wide range of countries but with no shared consensus on scope and objectives or with ASEAN who insists on the importance of its own centrality, the region is redefining and reconceptualising itself.

With a diverse range of initiatives – including the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) – there are a plethora of regional agreements and institutional groupings that add further complexity.

As the Bretton Woods architecture continues to be dominated by Western powers, China is also spearheading parallel governance initiatives such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the Belt and Road Initiative and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as a means of enhancing its geopolitical and geoeconomic influence.

This one-day conference will focus on how such networks and alliances have been built, and sustained, in the Asia-Pacific region. In order to understand how new regional initiatives might open up opportunities for new forms of international cooperation, the conference will focus on the themes of cyber-technology and innovation, sustainable development and mitigating the impacts of climate change and new infrastructure initiatives. It will assess whether there is a zero-sum conflict between competing networks and agendas or whether a common approach can be developed.

This conference will be the fifth in an annual conference series exploring global geopolitical and geoeconomic trends and their respective influences on Japan and the UK.

This conference will be held in partnership with the Daiwa Institute of Research.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only. 

The 2019–20 fire season in Australia has been unprecedented. To date, an estimated 18 million hectares of fire has cut swathes through the bush – an area greater than that of the average European country and over five times the size of blazes in the Amazon.

This reflects previous predictions of Australian science. Since 2008 and as recently as 2018, scientific bodies have warned that climate change will exacerbate existing conditions for fires and other climatic disasters in Australia. What used to be once-in-a-generation fires now re-appear within 10–15 years with increased ferocity, over longer seasons.

In a country known for climate denial and division, debate has erupted around bushfire management and climate change. One of these is whether controlled burns are the answer to Australia’s climate-affected fire conditions.

There is no single risk reduction strategy. Controlled burning remains key, if adapted to the environment and climate. 

But when three out of four seasons in a year can support destructive bushfires, there are clear limits to what controlled burning and other fire management techniques can achieve. Other ‘adaptation’ measures are also likely to provoke intense debate – including bush clearance. As one Australian expert offered to highlight where Australia has got to, families should probably not go on holiday to bush and beach during the height of summer when temperatures and fire risk peaks. 

So, unless Australia is prepared to debate radical changes to where people live and how land is used, the limits to adaptation imply the need for mitigation. This means supporting ambitious global greenhouse emissions reductions targets. As research from Victoria, one fire-prone state in Australia, highlights, ‘the emissions pathway we follow is the largest determinant of change to many variables [such as temperature] beyond the next few decades.’

Can Australia become a more active global partner on emissions?

Australia accounts for just over one per cent of global emissions, so reducing domestic emissions – even though on a per capita basis they are the highest in the world – will not reduce Australia’s climate risk. Showing international leadership and supporting a powerful coalition of the willing to tackle climate change is the only way ahead. By showing a willingness to adopt climate ambition, Australia can help more constructive worldwide action, and thereby reduce its own risk exposure. 

Leading by example is a politically difficult issue for Australia. Prime Minister Scott Morrison was re-elected in May 2019 on an economic stability platform, and a promise not to imperil employment growth through climate action. Australia has contested UN estimates that it will not meet its existing modest goals for domestic emissions, by seeking to rely on carryover credits from action under the Kyoto Protocol as proof of progress.

It has also distanced itself from concerns over global supply and demand in fossil fuels. Australia remains a global supplier for fossil fuels, including coal – the nation’s coal exports accounted for $67 billion in revenues in 2019 in an expanding but changing Asian market, supplying ‘some of the cheapest electricity in the world’.

Possible influencers of change

With Australians experiencing first-hand the risks of climate change, there is already pressure to do more. Many are sceptical this will translate into domestic targets or export policies that give Australia the moral authority to ask for more action on the global stage.

Here, diverse groups who share a common interest in seeing Australia recover from the bushfires and address future climate risks could be key.

Importantly this includes rural and urban-fringe communities affected by the bushfires. They were part of Morrison’s traditional supporter-base but are angry at the government’s handling of the crisis and increasingly see how tiptoeing around emissions (including exports) has also ‘buried’ open discussion at home on climate-readiness.

Australian states could also find themselves taking a lead role. Virtually all jurisdictions have now committed to their own goals, most based on zero-carbon goals by 2050 (as has New Zealand). These can support modelling for Australia’s energy transition from coal, through gas, to market competitive renewables, while also help to ensure this reflects community expectations on jobs, electricity prices and other costs. 

Other emerging voices include the insurance and banking sectors (the Reserve Bank of Australia warned of the long-term financial stability risks of climate change before the fires) and indigenous Australians (one group of Torres Strait Islanders have filed a complaint to the UN Human Rights Committee which, if heard, will place Australia’s emissions record under the spotlight again). Their challenge now is finding a common language on what a cohesive approach to addressing climate change risk looks like. 

The international picture is mixed. The United States’ poor federal climate policy is a buffer for Australia. French President Emmanuel Macron has tried to raise the cost of inaction for Australia in current EU–Australia trade negotiations, but many large emitters in the Indo-Pacific region remain key Australian trading partners, investors and buyers of Australian coal. 

In the meantime, the United Kingdom is preparing for the meeting of parties to the Paris Agreement in Glasgow in November. A key global event following Brexit, the UK will no doubt be hoping to encourage a leadership circle with national commitments that meet global need to make the Glasgow meeting a success.

The UK public has expressed enormous sympathy for Australia in the bushfires and outrage over ‘climate denialism.’ Australia’s experience will be a cautionary tale of the effects of climate change at the meeting. Could the UK also support Australia to become a less reluctant partner in global climate action?

The decision by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that Myanmar should take all measures available to prevent acts of genocide against the persecuted Rohingya minority is truly ground-breaking. The case shows how small states can play an important role in upholding international law and holding other states accountable. 

The Gambia, acting with the support of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, skilfully used Article IX of the Genocide Convention, which allows for a state party to the convention to pursue cases against another state party where it is felt there has been a dispute regarding the ‘interpretation, application or fulfilment’ of the convention.

Seventeen states have entered reservations against this specific provision but Myanmar is not one of them. It was on this basis that The Gambia was able to take its case to the ICJ. This exciting development expands the possibilities of international accountability at the state-to-state level.

But it should be noted that the current ruling is focused on provisional measures – the central case could still take years to conclude. There is still a long road ahead on the court determining whether the Myanmar authorities committed acts of genocide.

And, while the decision was unanimous and binding, the ICJ cannot enforce its ruling. Myanmar has shown itself resistant to international criticism and there is a real risk they will fail to comply.

One way forward, should Myanmar not respect the ruling, is that the UN Security Council could agree a resolution to compel action. However, it seems unlikely that China would ever vote for such a resolution, given its strong stance on non-intervention and its economic interests in the country. 

Read all our analysis on the Coronavirus Response

The coronavirus outbreak comes at a difficult time for China’s ruling party. A tumultuous 2019 saw the country fighting an economic slowdown coupled with an increasingly hostile international environment. As authorities take assertive steps to contain the virus, the emergency has - at least temporarily - disrupted global trade and supply chains, depressed asset prices and forced multinational businesses to make consequential decisions with limited information. 

Against this backdrop, panellists reflect on the country’s nascent economic transition from 2020 onward. What has been China’s progress towards a sustainable innovation-led economy so far? To what extent is the ruling party addressing growing concerns over job losses, wealth inequality and a lack of social mobility? And how are foreign investors responding to these developments in China?

The coronavirus outbreak in China poses a tremendous test for Beijing. Beyond the immediate public health crisis, the Chinese Communist Party faces a stuttering economy, growing public anger and distrust, and a potentially heavy blow to its global reputation.

The hesitant early response to the outbreak sheds light on the way the Chinese bureaucracy approaches crises at a time when the party leadership is tightening control at almost all levels of society. At first, officials in Wuhan attempted to censor online discussions of the virus. This changed only after President Xi Jinping’s call for a much more robust approach was followed by a sudden increase in the state media coverage of the outbreak. There is no doubt that Xi’s intervention will greatly speed up the response to the crisis, which should be welcomed.

Despite China’s experience with the SARS epidemic between 2002 and 2004, the sluggish reaction by officials in Wuhan should not have come as a surprise. The tendency among bureaucrats to play down crises is deeply entrenched. And, ironically, the party leadership’s recent push for greater bureaucratic accountability and its promise of stiffer punishment for those who take a 'do little' approach have also contributed to the habit of covering up disasters.

Xi has launched an ambitious programme to reform the governance of the Communist Party and re-centralize political control. This has reinforced the tendency of officials to avoid making important decisions and instead to wait for instructions from the party leadership.

For decades, local governments have made things happen in China. But with tighter regulation of lower-level bureaucrats, civil servants across the system now seem less ready, and able, to provide their input, making ineffective and even mistaken policy more likely.

Moreover, the coronavirus outbreak could not have happened at a worse time. Last year was tumultuous and saw China fighting an economic slowdown while also dealing with an increasingly hostile international environment. Now, as the authorities take steps to contain the disease, economic activity has come to a near standstill, with public transport curbed and restaurants and entertainment venues shuttered.

This contrasts with SARS, when double-digit growth in gross domestic product enabled Beijing to raise government expenditure to tackle the outbreak. Today, the Chinese economy is running into some of the most difficult challenges it has faced since the global financial crisis.

In response to the slowdown in growth, Beijing has adopted loose fiscal policy, with an emphasis on public investment. It also continues to push big banks to cut interest rates for individual borrowers and small businesses which were already suffering from the effects of the trade war with the US before the coronavirus struck.

The outbreak should give new impetus to governments, not least those that have close economic ties with China. Being a great power with ambitions for global leadership, as well as domestic reform, is not easy. Even without multi-party elections, it involves increasing, and often uncomfortable, scrutiny. As President Xi himself has put it: the road is long and the task is weighty.

This article was originally published in the Financial Times.

This roundtable explores possible strategic shifts in the Indo-Pacific between now and 2024. Focusing on trade security, climate change disruptions and security cooperation, it aims to enhance the understanding of the regional goals of, and strategic relationships between, the key countries active in the region.

The workshop is part of a larger project funded by the Strategic Policy Division of the Australian Department of Defence. The project includes workshops in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, India and the Pacific Islands (Tonga).
 

Internet shutdowns in Asia have become frequent and persistent, an ominous sign of shrinking public space for debate and discourse. The shutdowns have become an irresistible option for governments of all stripes and ideological affiliations. Democratic India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Philippines are prodigious offenders. So are Asia’s more repressive regimes, notably China.

In their defence, governments have offered real and imagined threats to national security as reasons for shutting down the pipes. It is useful to examine these claims as well as to objectively frame the issue. Are internet shutdowns in Asia legitimate and can be defended and explained as threats to national security? Or should we take a broader approach where international law, norms, values, rights and indeed economic stability could be invoked to curb this invidious practice?

Let’s start with the shutdown in Kashmir, where Indian authorities clamped down on internet access for a straight 165 days, described by rights group Access Now as the ‘longest shutdown ever in a democracy’. The Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry estimates that the shutdown had huge economic costs, estimated at over £1.9 billion.

The economic cost of the continuing surveillance and shutdown in China’s Xinjiang province is likely to be higher. But India is a democracy and could be a role model, which is why the recent assertion of Communications and Information Technology Minister Ravishankar Prasad is worrying. He asserted in Parliament that the Indian citizen’s right to the internet was not a fundamental right. ‘While right of internet is important, security of the country is equally important…Can we deny (that) the internet is abused by terrorists…?’.

The minister’s primary defence of the shutdown – that the internet was being abused by terrorists and others to foment unrest – has some merit. Our starting point therefore is that big tech platforms should be doing a significantly better job in monitoring content and in removing material designed to provoke violence and hatred. This is the original sin and Asian governments are right to worry about messaging platforms, for example, becoming preferred channels for venom and hate speech.

To date, the big tech firms have made the right noises about monitoring and moderating content, but they have not gone far enough, providing governments with the excuse to routinely shut down access. To be blunt, self-regulation of the platforms is not working and tougher global regulation, enforcement and sanctions, possibly via the G20, would help.

At the same time, better policing of the platforms will not resolve the issue entirely because governments regard internet shutdowns as a useful way to restrict human rights and to consolidate political control and surveillance over citizens. The international community – including nation-states, NGOs and the private sector – needs to come together and embrace two overarching principles:

First, digital access is a fundamental human right and integrated into global declarations and norms.

Second, to protect fragmentation and Balkanization of the internet, the digital pipes which carry data across national boundaries should be embedded into international law as being part of the global commons (just like oceans are under maritime law). This would raise the bar on countries which frequently restrict digital access to their citizens.

Sensible though these recommendations might seem, it is obvious that many Asian governments would be loath to sign up to global declarations which would limit their policy options at home. There is an economic dimension to internet shutdowns, as the Kashmir case makes clear, which could be addressed by naming and shaming, just as the OECD’s Financial Action Task Force does for countries falling foul of money laundering regulations. Recommendations include:

• Digital access should be included in the UN’s Human Development Index.
• The World Bank’s closely followed Doing Business Index (DBI) should score countries favourably based on their commitment to offering unimpeded access to the internet. China and India watch the DBI rankings very closely and will be forced to pursue a more liberal approach if their rankings fall precipitously.
• Since internet shutdowns have a clear economic cost, particularly in payments and financial services, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) should make an annual determination of member countries (as part of its surveillance mandate) of the impact of shutdowns on economic activity and financial stability.

Finally, all Asian governments have declared a public commitment to drive financial inclusion by providing digital access and identity to the poor and vulnerable. This mandate is at odds with frequent internet disruptions. A small vendor in Kashmir, Xinjiang or elsewhere in the region has limited or no recourse when the pipes are shut down. Central banks in the region need to step in by offering some level of protection, just like deposit insurance coverage.

It is clear that many of these recommendations would be rejected outright by many Asian governments. They regard internet shutdowns as part of their policy toolkit to deal with external and internal threats to national security. In pursuing such a rigid approach, governments are wilfully curbing their citizens’ space for debate and ignoring a much broader issue of rights to digital access.

Armed with a hammer, it is tempting for governments to regard the internet as a nail. The international community and citizens’ groups have an obligation to make such hammering very expensive.

Japan and Russia are often referred to as 'distant neighbours'. 

In the early days of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's second term in 2012, Japan sought to open a new era of bilateral relations with Russia. However, recent negotiations on the Kuril Islands/Northern Territories territorial dispute have stalled. Despite Abe’s extensive efforts to resolve the dispute, no concrete agreement has been reached so far. 

The speaker will provide an overview of the current state of Japan-Russia relations, including the prospect of resolving the territorial dispute during Prime Minister Abe's remaining days in office.

 

Bangladesh's recent gains in economic and social indices, set against its record of corruption and poor civil rights, has at times been termed the ‘Bangladesh Paradox’. Yet this label is overly simplistic; the current situation proves that these trends can coexist.

The Awami League government, in power since 2009, has increased political stability, delivered unprecedented economic and social advances, and adopted a counter-terrorism strategy to stamp out extremist groups. At the same time, it is criticized for curbing civil rights and failing to hold credible elections. However, as the two previous regimes have demonstrated, the rights situation is unlikely to improve even if the Awami League were replaced.

How did worsening rights become a feature of the state irrespective of its political dispensation? An unresolved contest between political and non-political state actors may hold the key to that puzzle. The perils of the current dispensation have recently manifested in weakening economic indicators, which jeopardize the very stability and social progress for which the country has garnered much praise.