Economics, Politics and Public Policy in East Asia and the PacificConcerning the 2019 coronavirus disease pandemic.
Authors: Nick Wilson and Michael Baker, University of Otago
Having successfully eliminated COVID-19, New Zealand now faces the option of sitting tight or exploring various ways of loosening its stringent border controls. All these options involve complex health and economic trade-offs. Read more…
Author: Asyura Salleh, Pacific Forum
COVID-19 is showing the world how a health crisis can exert disproportionate pressure on existing social and political fissures. The Asia Pacific maritime environment is no exception, with hybrid challenges persisting and non-conventional incidents on the rise. As state budgets adjust to accommodate the health crisis, non-state actors are escalating violence on land that is spilling over into the maritime domain. Read more…
Author: Hunter Marston, ANU
2020 has been an extremely difficult year for Southeast Asia. Multiple countries are expecting an economic contraction as tourism and intraregional trade grind to a halt in the wake of COVID-19. China has donated enormous quantities of personal protective equipment (PPE) and testing equipment to the region, while the United States has directed roughly US$80 million in pandemic assistance to Southeast Asian countries. Read more…
Author: Rainer Heufers, Center for Indonesian Policy Studies
Governments around the world have been borrowing money during the COVID-19 crisis to fund programs to protect vulnerable citizens. Additional debt is deemed acceptable because problems are not directly related to unsound economic policies but to a pandemic beyond government control. Yet sound policies matter more than ever. Read more…
Author: Sean Turnell, Macquarie University
On 1 July 2020, the European Union and six of its member governments announced a moratorium on debt repayments due from Myanmar. The agreement allows Myanmar to ‘focus efforts on economic recovery from COVID-19’ and is worth almost US$100 million — 20 per cent of Myanmar’s current debt payments schedule.
Author: Ranjan Ray, Monash University
The number of COVID-19 cases in India is increasing dramatically — the country recently overtook Russia and is now behind only the United States and Brazil in the global rankings. While much of the discussion in India is dominated by the sudden lockdown and ensuing hardship for migrant workers, stories of patients being refused admission to hospitals are shifting attention to the nation’s inadequate public healthcare system. Read more…
Author: Mason Richey, HUFS
South Korea’s public health-based response to COVID-19 has been rightly lauded as a successful model for other democracies. Seoul’s strategy of testing, contact tracing, isolation and treatment has become a gold standard for flattening the virus curve and bending it toward zero. Schools were closed, large gatherings prohibited, tele-working encouraged, masks ubiquitous and social distancing implemented. South Korea has avoided the harsh lockdowns adopted in other countries. Its economy is disrupted, but not so dramatically as in the United States and Europe. Read more…
Author: Christian Bachheimer, Singapore
Countries across the world are already attempting to decouple global value chains (GVCs) in preparation for the post-COVID-19 future. This is both motivated by security concerns brought about by COVID-19 and a continuation of the post-global financial crisis deglobalisation campaign. But are the forces of decoupling really operating unimpeded, or will GVCs prove too resistant? Read more…
Author: Hsien-Li Tan, NUS
When COVID-19 cases first appeared in the ASEAN region early in 2020, there were fears that public health systems would be overwhelmed. Responses around the region have varied. After decisive action — and missteps — in the initial months, Vietnam, Thailand, Brunei, Malaysia, and Singapore are now cautiously relaxing restrictions while working to avert a second wave. Indonesia and the Philippines continue to see significantly higher infection and death rates, leading to strong criticism against the Jokowi and Duterte administrations.
Authors: Donny Pasaribu and Krisna Gupta, ANU
Predictions of recessions in countries affected by COVID-19 no longer surprise anyone, but the outlook may be getting even worse for commodity-exporting countries. The World Bank forecasts that the economies of commodity-exporting developing countries will shrink by 4.8 per cent, a much sharper decline than other developing countries. This is important for Indonesia, where natural resources — especially oil, gas, coal and palm oil — have an outsized role in the economy.
Author: William Case, University of Nottingham Malaysia
The COVID-19 crisis has served as a fierce accelerant in Malaysia’s politics. Amid the fog of pandemic, a trajectory of events that might have unfolded anyway has been catalysed. Malaysia’s new Perikatan Nasional (National Alliance) government has restored the country’s politics to old contours of party-state fusion and hybrid modes of authoritarian control.
Author: Shamika Ravi, New Delhi
India has a federal governance structure where the delivery of healthcare services is primarily the responsibility of state governments. The central government formulated national policies to manage the outbreak of COVID-19, including instituting four consecutive national lockdowns and establishing testing protocols and travel advisories. But the experiences of individual citizens in India is largely a function of local state and district administrative capacities.
Author: Usha M Rodrigues, Deakin University
India is now the 3rd most impacted country by COVID-19, with cases nearing 900,000 and deaths surpassing 23,000 as of 13 July. India is also one of the leading nations when it comes to the sharing of ‘fake news’.
Authors: Bingqin Li, UNSW, Qian Fang, UNSW, and Li Sun, University of Leeds
Western universities are confronting the looming challenge that students from mainland China may no longer desire to study abroad after COVID-19. To continue attracting Chinese and other international students, host universities will need to show that they care about the wellbeing of the students. But if student numbers stay low post-COVID-19, they will have to adapt and implement different strategies. Read more…
Author: Razeen Sally, NUS
The COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating changes underway since the global financial crisis (GFC) in 2008. It is ushering in a new era of deglobalisation and protectionism — a new mercantilist world order. Three global shifts will likely shape international trade beyond the immediate crisis and into the ‘post-vaccine’ future. Read more…
