2024/30 “The Power of a Vote in Malaysia: Malapportionment Under UNDI18, AVR, and MA63” by Kai Ostwald
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- While often overlooked, electoral boundaries can strongly shape political competition and policy priorities. In Malaysia, the long-dominant United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) manipulated boundaries in ways that amplified the power of votes in its stronghold areas. This created significant discrepancies in the number of voters across electoral districts—known as malapportionment—and is strongly associated with distortions to governance and disillusionment with the political process.
- The 2019 UNDI18 constitutional amendment lowered the voting age to 18 and introduced automatic voter registration. This increased the size of the electorate by a remarkable 40% between the 2018 and 2022 general elections. More recently, Anwar Ibrahim’s unity government has pledged to increase the parliamentary seat share of East Malaysia’s Sabah and Sarawak from the current 25% to 35%, despite the states already being significantly over-represented. Both these developments worsen the malapportionment in the country, potentially causing further political distortions.
- Against the backdrop of already high levels of malapportionment, the impact of UNDI18 on malapportionment is more modest than most narratives suggest, though it is responsible for creating a number of problematic mega-districts. By contrast, implementing the proposed seat increase for Sabah and Sarawak would substantially worsen state and district level malapportionment. While this may be justified, given East Malaysia’s unique position in the federation—as well as a newfound political agency—there is little obvious justification for the ongoing discrepancies within Peninsular Malaysia, particularly the under-representation of Selangor.
- A dominant narrative in Malaysia, voiced by numerous political elites in recent months, holds that reducing malapportionment is disadvantageous for ethnic Malays. This however reflects assumptions that are no longer valid following demographic developments and changes to Malaysia’s party system since 2013. To the contrary, in terms of electorate size, there are substantial similarities in the seats won by the Malay-majority Parti Islam se Malaysia (PAS) and their arch-rival Chinese-majority Democratic Action Party, while on average the largest seats were won by the Malay-majority Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) and Amanah.
- In short, there is no empirical basis for the ethnic-focused narrative. Recognizing this would facilitate constructive discussions around addressing malapportionment, particularly in light of the significant political reordering that a seat increase for East Malaysia would produce.
* Kai Ostwald is Associate Senior Fellow with the Malaysian Studies Programme at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute. He is also Director of the Institute of Asian Research at the University of British Columbia, and Associate Professor in UBC’s School of Public Policy and Global Affairs.
ISEAS Perspective 2024/30, 25 April 2024
INTRODUCTION
The size and shape of electoral districts can profoundly impact political outcomes. Malaysia is a case in point: the strategic manipulation of district boundaries over decades played a key role in sustaining the electoral dominance of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) and its Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition partners prior to their 2018 defeat. This was achieved primarily through malapportionment—the unequal distribution of voters across electoral districts—which amplified the influence of voters in the BN’s stronghold areas, allowing the coalition to consistently secure parliamentary majorities well above their level of popular support.[1]
While Malaysian politics have evolved dramatically since 2018, manipulated electoral districts continue to shape political representation and competition. Three key questions stand out. First, the UNDI18 constitutional amendment (in 2019) significantly increased the size of the electorate and appears to have exacerbated malapportionment, although to what extent and effect is yet unclear. Second, the BN’s defeat in 2018 decoupled East Malaysia’s party system from the Peninsula’s and catalyzed demands for greater East Malaysian influence in federal politics, including via an increase in parliamentary seats from the current 25% to 35% — which the manifesto of Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s coalition pledged to do. If implemented, this move would further increase malapportionment, but it is likewise unclear to what extent. Finally, given the broader fragmentation of the party system, it is uncertain whether previous patterns of who benefits and who is disadvantaged from malapportionment still hold.
This Perspective addresses those questions and reaches several conclusions. Malapportionment, which entails myriad costly distortions to politics and governance, remains high and would increase significantly through the introduction of new East Malaysian seats. While the unique position of East Malaysia may justify that, the extensive malapportionment in Peninsular Malaysia is less defensible. Importantly, constituency-level demographic changes and new coalition compositions mean dominant narratives around who benefits from malapportionment are now outdated and flawed. Updating the underlying assumptions provides an opportunity to address the most problematic boundary distortions.
THE POWER OF A VOTE
Malapportionment arises when there are disparities in the number of voters across electoral districts. The figure below illustrates the effect through two hypothetical districts: District A has one voter, while District B has eight voters. Since each district has one seat in parliament, District A’s voter has significantly more power to shape parliamentary outcomes than does a voter in District B. In short, malapportionment amplifies the influence of voters in districts with relatively few voters, while diluting the influence of voters in districts with relatively many voters. As a result, the preferences of District A’s voter are overrepresented, which contradicts the normatively important “one person, one vote” principle. By creating incentives for political leaders to focus resources and policy decisions on over-represented voters, this dynamic creates extensive political distortions and fosters clientelistic behaviours.[2] On the side of voters, perpetual under-representation is associated with political disengagement.
Malapportionment illustrated
During its decades in power, UMNO systematically reshaped Malaysia’s electoral process in ways that provided it and its coalition partners fundamental advantages (Lim 2002, Ostwald 2017). This included reducing the size of electoral districts in areas where the coalition enjoyed strong support, allowing it to inflate its parliamentary seat share relative to its vote share. The effect of this cannot be overstated: in the 2013 general election, for example, malapportionment allowed the BN to secure a 20% parliamentary seat advantage despite losing the popular vote by 4%. By 2018, decades of manipulating electoral boundaries left Malaysia with unusually high levels of malapportionment by global standards (Ong, Kasuya, and Mori 2017).[3]
The Pakatan Harapan (PH) government that took power in 2018 pledged extensive reforms, including of the electoral process (Ting and Horowitz 2023). Among its successes was the UNDI18 constitutional amendment that lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 and introduced Automatic Voter Registration (Weiss 2022). The measures were implemented prior to the 2022 general election, increasing the number of eligible voters by over 40%. A disproportionate number of these new voters were registered to districts that already had a relatively high number of voters, exacerbating the disparity in district sizes. The figure below illustrates this by arranging Malaysia’s 222 electoral districts from smallest to largest (in terms of registered voters) for both the 2018 (dark grey) and 2022 (light grey) elections. Several things are striking. First, the range in district-level electorate size has grown even larger: the largest district (303k) in 2022 had over ten times as many voters as the smallest (28k). Second, the disparities are significant even beyond the extremes: the 75th percentile district (117k) in 2022 is almost twice as large as the 25th percentile (62k). Finally, the largest increases in electorate size appear to be in districts that were already disproportionately large.
UMNO’s defeat in 2018 fundamentally altered the political dynamic between the peninsula and the East Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak. Specifically, major East Malaysian parties that once belonged to the BN left the coalition post-election and leveraged their seats to play a stronger role in federal-level politics. Since 2018, this has included more prominent cabinet positions, including the current Deputy Prime Minister from the Sarawak-based PBB. Notably, the manifestos from the three major coalitions contesting the 2022 election all outlined intentions to empower East Malaysia through such things as greater revenue sharing from petroleum exploitation and political empowerment (Lee 2022).
The PH manifesto—from current Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s coalition—went furthest in offering Sabah and Sarawak a 35% parliamentary seat share, a significant increase from the current 25%. This reflects demands from East Malaysian political leaders, who see the increase as integral to fulfilling the original terms of federation under the 1963 Malaysia Agreement (MA63), as well as critical to ensuring that the peninsula’s domination of politics is kept in check. It is unclear whether, how, and when this rebalance might occur, but there are signs of growing momentum in its favour.[4]
Given the political difficulty of removing seats from peninsular states, the path of least resistance is likely through adding new seats in East Malaysia. Procedurally, this can be done through a two-thirds majority parliamentary vote, which is theoretically attainable given the supermajority that Anwar’s unity government currently holds.
Assuming the number of peninsular seats remains unchanged, East Malaysia would require 33 additional seats to reach the 35% seat target. At present, the seat split between Sabah and Sarawak is 45% and 55% respectively; the electorate split is similar at 46.5% and 53.5% respectively. Assuming the new seats are divided at that proportion, Sabah and Sarawak would receive 15 and 18 new seats respectively. That would bring Sabah’s total to 40 and Sarawak’s to 49 seats. Given that existing seats in Sabah and Sarawak already tend to be smaller than their peninsular counterparts in terms of electorate size, the proposed seat additions would further elevate malapportionment.
There is real and growing urgency to this question, given the complex sequencing challenge that arises due to the redelineation exercise currently in motion for Sarawak and on the horizon for Sabah (in 2025).[5] The key question is how many seats the Electoral Commission is basing the exercise on. If it is the current number, then a resource intensive redelineation exercise would have to be re-conducted following any Parliamentary approval of new seats. If it is an expanded number (for example, the promised increase to 35% of the total), then the exercise assumes Parliamentary approval that has not yet been attained. This has further implications for redelineation of state-level seats, which are likewise highly malapportioned.[6]
THE SIZE AND SCALE OF MALAPPORTIONMENT
Both the UNDI18 increase in electorate size and the proposed MA63-related seat increase impact malapportionment in ways that affect political competition and representation. We now turn attention to systematically measuring the magnitude of those changes, which provides insights into their effects.
The starting point is inter-state malapportionment, in other words, the unequal distribution of seats across Malaysia’s thirteen states and three federal territories. The figure below illustrates this, comparing inter-state malapportionment in the 2018 election (light grey), 2022 election (medium grey), and under the potential MA63 plan that increases East Malaysia’s seat share to 35% (dark grey). The figure shows how many seats above or below a state has relative to its share of the total electorate. For example, in the 2018 election, Terengganu had approximately 5% of Malaysia’s electorate but only 3.6% of seats, making its voters underrepresented in parliament: based on its electorate size, it had 3 seats too few, as indicated by the -3 value. In short, the figure captures how over- or underrepresented states are, relative to the size of their electorate.
Three states stand out. Sabah and Sarawak are already significantly overrepresented in parliament relative to their electorate size: Sabah had approximately 7 seats above what the size of its electorate called for in 2022, while Sarawak had 11 more. Should the MA63 proposal be implemented, that would increase to a surplus of 20 and 26 seats, respectively. To put that into concrete terms, the mean number of voters per district would fall from 67,575 (in 2022) to 42,235 for Sabah, and from 62,680 (in 2022) to 39,655 for Sarawak, relative to 106,040 for peninsular seats. That may be justifiable given their unique position in the federation and the many features that continue to make them distinct. There is little clear justification, however, for Selangor being so vastly underrepresented: it had 14 and 17 seats too few in 2018 and 2022 based on its number of voters; this would climb to a deficit of 22 seats should the MA63 proposal be implemented.[7] That amounts to a mean number of 167,175 voters per district in 2022. In short, the weight of one East Malaysian voter would be approximately four times that of a voter in Selangor.
There is substantial malapportionment of federal seats within the states as well. The figure below captures the number of voters in each district (left columns are from 2018, right columns are from 2022) for each state and federal territory. As is clear, the UNDI18 reforms and natural population growth increased the size of nearly all districts, but the effect—visible both as a general upward shift and the greater dispersion of seats—is more pronounced in some states than others. The growth of problematic mega districts is also evident. In 2018, only two districts—both in Selangor—had more than 150,000 voters. By 2022, twenty-five districts were above that threshold, now including Kedah, Perak, Negri Sembilan, Malacca, Johor, and a majority of Selangor’s districts.[8]
An international comparison helps contextualize the scale of malapportionment in Malaysia. The primary measure for malapportionment is the percentage of seats that need to be shifted from over-represented districts (with relatively small numbers of voters) to under-represented districts (with relatively large numbers of voters) in order to achieve an equal apportionment of voters across districts (Samuels and Snyder 2001). In short, higher values denote greater malapportionment. The figure below compares malapportionment in several high-income democracies—which Malaysia seeks to join—and regional counterparts to Malaysia in 2018, 2022, and under the MA63 35% proposal.[9]
As anticipated, the UNDI18 reforms did increase malapportionment between 2018 and 2022, but against the backdrop of already very pronounced levels, this increase is modest in scale. Implementing the MA63 proposal without addressing existing malapportionment would have a far more substantial effect. Regardless, the primary conclusion is that under all three conditions, malapportionment in Malaysia is considerably higher than in counterparts, with the exception of Myanmar (which based its electoral districts primarily on colonial-era administrative boundaries). This is significant, given the evidence from around the world that malapportionment has pernicious effects on a range of important matters including governance, economic development, conflict, and voter motivations.
POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Malapportionment in Malaysia is fundamentally a political issue. The founding 1957 Constitution called for constituencies to contain a nearly equal number of voters, with some deviation—limited to no more than 15%—to account for differences in population density, means of communication, and community composition. That limit was relaxed in 1962 and repealed entirely in 1973, paving the way for the current significant disparities. Indeed, each redelineation before 2016 saw the addition of new seats, typically allocated disproportionately to areas under the BN’s control (Chacko 2019).
This pattern of redelineation contributed to the BN’s dominance and supported a (generally unspoken) view that malapportionment provides additional assurance of Malay-Muslim political dominance. Consequently, reforms that mitigate malapportionment are sometimes cast as ploys to empower ethnic Chinese, particularly the DAP. For example, in mid-2019, UMNO’s president Zahid Hamidi suggested the DAP’s interests in redelineation were driven by a desire to gain more seats, which would be unfavourable to Malays.[10] More recently, former Selangor UMNO chief Noh Omar warned while campaigning for the PN that redelineation would be favourable to the DAP, would reduce the number of Malay-majority seats, and might even lead to a DAP prime minister.[11]
The narrative that the DAP would be the sole beneficiary of more equal apportionment is not reflected in more systematic analyses. That is because today’s malapportionment reflects not current party strengths and alignments, but rather party strengths and alignments at the time of previous redelineations, which were conducted under BN domination. The main implication is that parties that were historically associated with the BN tended to win smaller seats in 2022, while parties historically opposed to the BN tended to win larger seats. Given the comprehensive fragmentation of Malaysia’s party system relative to the era of BN dominance, that no longer cleanly aligns with current coalition structures.
The figure below shows the electorate size of districts won by major parties (or coalitions in East Malaysia) in 2022. The middle line of each box indicates the median district, while the upper and lower bounds of the box indicate the 25th and 75th quartiles, and the dots indicate outliers. For example, the median district won by UMNO had approximately 68k voters (54k and 79k respectively for the 25th and 75th percentiles), while its largest seat has 133k voters.
The distribution is striking. On the peninsula, small seats were won primarily by UMNO and Bersatu, despite them being bitter rivals in 2022 campaigning. This reflects Bersatu’s status as essentially an UMNO-clone party, at least initially comprised primarily of former UMNO elites with existing ties in over-represented areas. By contrast, PAS’s median district had 106k voters (83k and 116k at 25th/75th percentiles), significantly larger than their bumiputera rivals and reflective of their historical position as an opposition party. In fact, excluding a small number of outlier mega districts, PAS and DAP districts are quite similar in terms of size, especially in comparison to the smaller UMNO, Bersatu, or East Malaysian districts. On the high end of the distribution are PKR and Amanah districts, both of which are not only historically oppositional to the BN, but also primarily Malay-oriented. This underscores a related key point: (typically large) urban districts are now often more diverse—and more Malay—than in earlier decades, further undermining the narrative that malapportionment is primarily an ethnic issue. In fact, when controlling for party and geographic factors, an OLS regression analysis finds no evidence for an independent effect of ethnic composition on district size.[12]
Two overarching conclusions emerge from this brief study. Malapportionment in Malaysia, which was already high from a comparative perspective, increased modestly through the 2019 UNDI18 constitutional amendment and would grow significantly greater if a proposed seat increase for East Malaysia is implemented. Given the many pernicious distortions associated with malapportionment, this is a concern for issues ranging from governance to development and political polarization. Even if the unique relationship between West and East Malaysia justifies the aforementioned increase, there is no clear justification for the considerable inter- and intra-state malapportionment on the peninsula. That leads to the second conclusion: given the fragmentation of Malaysia’s party system, the simple race-based narratives around malapportionment and redistricting are no longer empirically substantiated. On the contrary, a Malay-Muslim party such as PAS has potentially as much to gain from reducing malapportionment as does its Chinese-majority rival DAP. Given that the obstacles to reducing malapportionment are ultimately political rather than technical, updating assumptions about the potential effects of reform could generate the cross-party support to see it through.
REFERENCES
Bhavnani, Rikhil. 2021. “The effects of malapportionment on economic development”. PLoS ONE, 16(12): e0259150.
Chacko, Danesh Prakash. 2019. “Winning Elections by Rigging Borders? Barisan Nasional’s Brazen, and Failed, Attempt”. In Hutchinson and Lee (eds), The Defeat of Barisan Nasional: Missed Signs or Late Surge? Singapore: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.
Chai, James. 2022. “Bigger Constituencies, Lesser Political Clout”. ISEAS Fulcrum, no. 175.
Daxecker, Ursula. 2020. “Unequal votes, unequal violence: Malapportionment and election violence in India”. Journal of Peace Research, 57(1): 156-170.
Lee Hwok Aun. 2022. “Malaysia’s GE-15 Manifestos: Wading Through a Flood of Offerings”, ISEAS Perspective, no. 113.
Lee Hwok Aun. 2023. “Will UMNO’s Mutant Electoral Map Bite Pakatan Harapan?” ISEAS Fulcrum, no. 177.
Lim Hong Hai. 2002. “Electoral Politics in Malaysia: ‘Managing’ Elections in a Plural Society”. In Croissant, Bruns and John (eds), Electoral Politics in Southeast and East Asia, Singapore: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.
Ong Kian Ming, Yuko Kasuya, and Kora Mori. 2017. “Malapportionment and Democracy: A Curvilinear Relationship”. Electoral Studies, 49: 118-127.
Ostwald, Kai. 2017. “Malaysia’s Electoral Process: The Methods and Costs of Perpetuating UMNO Rule”. ISEAS Trends, no. 19.
Ostwald, Kai. 2023. “The Politics of Malapportionment and Electoral Reform in a Dominant-Party Regime”. In Ting and Horowitz (eds) Electoral Reform and Democracy in Malaysia, Copenhagen: NIAS Press.
Ostwald, Kai, and Constant Courtin. 2020. “Malapportionment in Myanmar’s Elections: A Slumbering Menace”. Contemporary Southeast Asia, 42(2): 145-173.
Samuels, David, and Richard Snyder. 2001. “The Value of a Vote: Malapportionment in Comparative Perspective”. British Journal of Political Science, 31(4): 651-671.
Tindak Malaysia. 2023. “Persempadanan untuk Sarawak”, available at: https://www.tindakmalaysia.org/persempadanan/sarawak_redelineation
Ting, Helen, and Donald Horowitz (eds). 2023. Electoral Reform and Democracy in Malaysia, NIAS Press.
Washida, Hidekuni. 2019. Distributive Politics in Malaysia: Maintaining Authoritarian Party Dominance. Routledge.
Weiss, Meredith. 2022. “Can Youth Save Malaysia’s Democracy?” RSIS Working Paper, no. 337.
Wong Chin Huat. 2018. “Constituency Delimitation and Electoral Authoritarianism in Malaysia”. The Round Table, 107(1): 67-80.
ENDNOTES
For endnotes, please refer to the original pdf document.
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2024/29 “Indonesian Mainstream Media in the Digital Age: Corporate Convergence, Low-quality News and Staff Exploitation” by Sofie Syarief
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- News as a business, especially in its most traditional press and broadcast models, is suffering from shrinking readership and viewership, and thus becoming less profitable. The digital revolution has ushered significant changes into Indonesia’s mainstream media landscape.
- In response to the rise of digital media, mainstream outlets have implemented various strategies to remain relevant and competitive. Corporate mergers in the already highly oligopolistic media industry have created a less hospitable environment for smaller players. The bigger players are better able to create multi-media platforms to reach their audiences.
- Faced with diminishing advertising revenues, the media conglomerates have been forced to cut costs in the creation of news content, such as in their consolidation of production facilities and pooling of resources, to be shared across their respective array of multiple platforms for distribution. One significant consequence of such consolidation efforts has been the cutting of jobs for journalists.
- These changes have raised questions about a likely decline in the quality of journalism and news content. There seems to be a trend towards acquisition of news from common sources, with less scope for independent investigation or in-depth analysis and commentary. Responsible and good quality journalism is a matter of public interest, but it would be an uphill journey to muster the political will or funding to deliver the desired policy interventions.
* Sofie Syarief is a former Visiting Fellow at the Media, Technology and Society at ISEAS –Yusof Ishak Institute Singapore and a PhD student at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK.
ISEAS Perspective 2024/29, 18 April 2024
INTRODUCTION
Indonesia’s mainstream media landscape has always been oligopolistic and capital-intensive. The diversity of content needed to cater to its diverse citizenry has never been satisfactory due to the fact that the industry is controlled by a few powerful conglomerates (Nugroho, Putri and Laksmi, 2012). Contrary to earlier expectations that the growth of the internet would threaten the power of media moguls (Couldry and Curran, 2003), Indonesia’s digitalisation in the early 2000s enabled a select number of conglomerates to further consolidate the industry into a small number of multi-platform companies (Tapsell, 2017). The country’s media industry is currently controlled by eight politically-connected individuals – viz., Perindo Party chairman Hary Tanoesoedibjo’s MNC Group, Nasdem Party chairman Surya Paloh’s Media Group, Golkar Party politician Aburizal Bakrie’s Visi Media Asia, Minister of State Owned Enterprises Erick Thohir’s Mahaka Media, ex-minister Chairul Tanjung’s Trans Corp, Jakob Oetama and PK Ojong’s KG Media, EMTEK founder Edy Sariaatmadja’s SCMA Group, and Lippo Group heir James Riady’s B Universe (previously Berita Satu) (Syarief, 2022). But even these powerful conglomerates have had to adapt to more powerful trends disrupting the industry. This paper discusses how Indonesia’s media conglomerates have had to make significant adjustments to their business models in order to meet disruptive challenges from the digitalisation of media consumption and the rise of Big Tech social media platforms.
Traditional media is no longer the primary source of regular daily news for digitally adept Indonesians.[1] According to the Reuters Institute 2022 Digital News Report,[2] roughly 88 per cent of surveyed respondents regard online media—including social media—as their news source. In addition, social media platforms are the news source of choice for 68 per cent of the population. At the same time, the percentage of respondents who indicated television and print media as their preferred news sources were 57 per cent and 17 per cent, respectively. Juxtapose these numbers with the estimation that 70 per cent of Indonesia’s online population is under the age of 35, most of whom are using social media platforms daily (Sinpeng and Tapsell, 2020), and we see an ageing population of traditional media consumers.
The rise of the digital has disrupted the traditional revenue model of the mainstream media industry. In 2021,[3] television—the most popular medium in the country—held the top spot as the preferred platform for advertising. Meanwhile, other forms of traditional media, such as print media and radio, only accounted for 5.5 per cent and 0.4 per cent of all advertisement spending, respectively. Moreover, the challenges for print media have been even more significant; as subscriptions and paywalls became increasingly important for these media outlets to generate revenue, they had largely not been successful in making the transition to online due to their inability to garner enough subscriptions—only 19 per cent of Indonesians are willing to pay for online news.[4]
This overall decline in consumer and advertising in traditional media happened mainly due to digitalisation. The grip of Google and Meta in the digital world was apparent by 2017 when both companies accounted for 84 per cent of global digital media investments.[5] This number was naturally followed by both receiving large shares of digital advertising, driving down the significance of the advertising middlemen, including the media. It also shifted the economic value of news from production to distribution almost entirely. While convergence enabled elements of the Indonesian mainstream media, such as news producers, to also become news distributors in the early wave of digitalisation, a massive reallocation of revenue from news/content creators to platform owners started to occur. Digitalisation saw search engines and social media becoming the go-to places to find news (Whittaker, 2020). Increasingly, mainstream media outlets in Indonesia have felt compelled to align themselves with the playbook of these giant digital platforms.
The challenges of digitalisation for Indonesia’s media conglomerates led to a significant shift within journalism, and financial rewards moved from the producer to the distributor. Given shrinking advertising dollars and the growing preference among the younger generation to consume their news via social media sites, Indonesia’s media conglomerates were compelled to transition from the production of longer, in-depth journalism to shorter-form content that could be more easily digested online.
MEDIA CONVERGENCE
In addition, digitalisation paved the way for platform convergence. In responding to the fragmentation of advertising revenue from solely traditional media to traditional and online media, large media corporations have shifted their businesses into multi-platform companies by buying up smaller online outlets or creating new ones (Tapsell, 2017). This enabled them to disseminate their news publications via multiple content platforms, each usually containing similar information. In most cases, these common outlets are merged into one large newsroom for editorial, content or business purposes.
One of the most significant examples is MNC Media, Indonesia’s largest television network, which is a part of a multinational conglomerate known as the MNC Group. It is owned by tycoon and chairman of the Perindo Party Hary Tanoesoedibjo. MNC Media has been integrating its newsrooms since 2016, essentially merging the news-gathering divisions of their four television channels (RCTI, MNCTV, GTV, and iNews) into one large division. The news gathered by this division is then supplied to all MNC television channels, including their digital platforms (e.g. Okezone.com, Sindonews.com, and iNews.id). On one hand, this approach can be seen as efficient. But on the other hand, this practice essentially removes a significant number of media-related jobs. This creates a single low-cost news-gathering pipeline that produces news which then can be aired—and, by extension, sold to advertisers in various media outlets, be it national, local, or digital.
By creating an umbrella company for these various channels, deciding what news to cover and what needs to be aired or published becomes easier and more efficient as only one director of news is needed for all of these media channels. Other than having an integrated newsroom for all video-format channels, MNC created a one-for-all newsroom for their online text-based outlets, called MPI (MNC Portal Indonesia). In contrast, the Kompas Gramedia Group, owned by late journalists Jacob Oetama and PK Ojong, has been approaching the idea of convergence differently and is creating a system of content sharing among all media outlets under their corporation without actually merging the newsrooms.
Regardless of the means to achieve convergence, at the end of the day, when large corporations with large numbers of outlets streamline their news gathering and production processes, there is always the possibility that this comes at the expense of a diversity of content and perspectives. Newsroom integration decreases the diversity of perspectives that the different outlets used to have. One prevalent example of this is the practice of deploying one journalist to cover a particular event and then asking said journalist to send brief articles to the company’s online media sub-team, longer articles to their print media sub-team, as well as requiring them to do live reports for their radio or television broadcast media, sometimes without adequate training or preparation.[6]
In Indonesia, media convergence has also paved the way for mainstream media corporations to penetrate other businesses outside the media industry, such as acquiring communications and network infrastructure. Many among the eight key players in the Indonesian media landscape (Syarief, 2022) now possess their own television companies, online streaming services, internet service providers, telecommunications companies, other communication infrastructures, or all of the above.[7]
Such convergence of the media industry and the imperative to cut costs has led to massive lay-offs and the closing down of outlets. Within the past three years, several media companies have resorted to either of the two approaches. Koran Sindo (the only print newspaper of Hary Tanoesoedibjo’s MNC Group) ceased their operations on 15 April 2023, while Republika (owned by the current Minister of State-Owned Enterprises, Erick Thohir), Suara Pembaruan (owned by Lippo’s Berita Satu), Koran Tempo (part of the TEMPO Media Group), and Indopos (part of the Jawa Pos Group) closed down their print division to go fully digital.[8] Meanwhile, mass lay-offs have been carried out by various outlets such as Net TV (owned by the Indika Energy Group, a conglomerate focusing on mining), Berita Satu TV (part of the Lippo Group), and Kumparan (supported by venture capital investments from Djarum’s GDP and Go-Jek’s Argor). AJI, the Alliance of Independent Journalists, estimated that there were nearly 1,000 journalists, mainly from mainstream media, who were laid off in 2023 alone.[9] While the COVID-19 pandemic has had significant impact on the overall health of the media industry,[10] it has also been used as a cover for lay-offs due to business restructuring.[11]
Another common way of cutting costs within the media industry is to get rid of expensive news, especially if it is deemed as not bringing in enough of an additional audience. Indonesian news consumers are now seeing less and less investigative journalism and local news. Specifically for television channels, documentary programmes have generally been slashed. For example, Kompas TV and Trans 7 are currently the only two outlets with specific documentary programmes, and even so, the quantity of such documentaries has been reduced significantly over the past decade. Within the larger television industry, the common practice is to replace expensive programmes with non-news features, social media trends, as well as commentary programmes (especially talk shows designed to be heated debates) that are largely cheaper to produce and that attract more emotional responses from the audience. This approach is useful in boosting viewership and social media engagement, including clicks from clips that get uploaded on other platforms after the shows conclude on television.
THE DUMBING DOWN OF CONTENT: THE USE OF CLICKBAITS
One notable shift in Indonesia’s journalism landscape has been the prioritising of news that is more likely to generate clicks and engagement, even if it deviates from traditionally important news topics. This includes the rampant production of clickbait and sensationalist news articles—from which the traffic is then used as part of the sales pitch by these media companies to advertisers. A dataset of clickbait in the Indonesian language (William and Sari, 2020)[12] actually shows how this is used among 12 online media websites—eight of which are mainstream media outlets, the focus of this paper. As shown in figure 1, all outlets are not immune to the use of clickbait, but some utilise it more than others.
Source: Adapted from William and Sari (2020)
While clickbait is used to simply attract more traffic for most media, it is worth noting that for Kompas Gramedia, the largest media conglomerate in Indonesia and owner of Kompas.com and Tribunnews.com, clickbait may also be used to offset the cost of their ‘good’ journalism such as lengthy investigative pieces[13] and expedition features[14] in Kompas, or Kompas TV’s documentary programmes. While Kompas Gramedia is generally seen as one of the most trustworthy media groups in Indonesia,[15] one of their subsidiaries, Tribunnews.com—consistently in the top three of most visited media websites in Indonesia,[16] has been heavily criticised for their tendency to publish low-quality clickbait articles. According to the media studies and monitoring institute Remotivi, it would seem that Tribunnews.com has been tasked by their parent company (Kompas Gramedia) with “stealing” as many clicks as possible while the rest of the members of the group are instructed to practice responsible journalism.[17] What Tribunnews.com is essentially doing is producing sensationalist news with bombastic titles and headlines, from celebrity gossip to coverage of government policies. The consequences of this can be unexpected. Remotivi observed that during a series of terror attacks in Indonesia in the first half of 2018, Tribunnews.com’s publications ended up glorifying terror to muster clicks.
As views and clicks have become the new currency for online news media, TikTok has also become a platform of choice for the dissemination of news content. As of 2022, 90 per cent of Indonesia’s top news media publishers have routinely been uploading news content on TikTok, placing the country’s media on the top list of TikTok adoption followed by Australia (89 per cent), Spain (86 per cent), France (86 per cent), the UK (81 per cent), and the US (77 per cent).[18]
However, this trend has mainly put an emphasis on virality rather than quality. The general belief is that young people are more interested in entertaining news, or news stories that are packaged in more entertaining ways.[19] This comes from the industry’s own analysis of their broad social media reach/view reports, essentially showing that entertaining news and news packaged in a more accessible and entertaining manner are generally seen by more people without any further information on the consumers of the content. By combining the need of online media outlets to muster clicks and the tendency of reformatting news for social media, we now have the propensity of trivialising important stories.[20]
OTHER TUSSLES WITH BIG TECH
The latitude for Indonesian media conglomerates to produce independent content is further crimped by the powerful influence of Big Tech companies. The most notable policy from Alphabet’s Google to make sure they always have a say in the content that flows over news platforms is the creation of the Google News Initiative (GNI).[21] Funding from GNI is often worded as “no strings attached”.[22] However, what these programmes generally do is assist news media in developing digital skills, offering them various resources such as training, tools, as well as funding and sponsorship, allowing Google to act as a media patron (Fanta and Dachwitz, 2020). While these partnerships have helped many local media outlets develop digital business models and increase their revenue or even combat disinformation, the initiative essentially pushes news media outlets to produce content tailored for specific platforms, such as YouTube, using technical and content practices aimed at aligning headlines with Google’s search ranking algorithms. This makes it difficult to “sell” news that does not conform to these specifics.
Furthermore, as Google’s power over the media industry strengthens, digital media outlets in Indonesia are now facing harsh realities in trying to defy their playbook. In an attempt to protect digital news outlets from losing advertising revenue to online aggregators, the Indonesian government, as well as Indonesia’s Press Council and media associations, had been drafting a regulation, initially called the Publishers’ Rights, aimed at providing a level playing field between domestic news industries and digital platforms. In this draft, tech giants are deemed to be benefitting from using and displaying news content without providing proper compensation to publishers.[23] This move has been rejected by Google on the grounds that the regulation is unworkable because it will give power to non-governmental agencies to determine what content is allowed to appear online and which publisher is allowed to earn revenue from advertising, without seriously addressing the initial complaints from the news outlets.[24] Meta shared the same sentiment, threatening to block news content from Indonesia on all their platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram.[25] The draft was finally passed on 20 February 2024 as a presidential decree titled “Responsibility of Digital Platform Companies to Support Quality Journalism”. It necessitates the establishment of an independent committee to ensure the fulfilment of digital platform companies’ obligations to “give (their) best effort” in facilitating and commercialising news by press companies, providing fair treatment to press companies, and designing news distribution algorithms that support quality journalism. However, as much as it forces the cooperation and profit sharing between digital platforms and press companies, the decree does not spell out how and in what proportion these cooperation and profit-sharing arrangements will occur.[26] Moreover, a mere one day after the decree was signed, Meta said that it had no obligation to pay for news content posted by Indonesian publishers voluntarily.[27] While more details may emerge in the next six months during the formation of derivative regulations, it is quite apparent that everyone involved in the drafting of the decree are opting to be very cautious, so as not to offend these companies.
CONCLUSION
What needs to be addressed, then, is the urgency of finding new economic models that will allow mainstream media to thrive without compromising their journalistic quality. As it stands currently, large media companies might no longer serve the best interests of both the public and the media industry. Moreover, the Indonesian media’s dependency on advertising needs to be revisited, while other schemes such as public funding warrants serious consideration. Although public funding for journalism organised by the state might be a long shot—as Indonesia’s power structure might skew the outcome of it (Tapsell, 2020), limited public funding such as subscriptions or memberships needs to be promoted and woven into the media industry in order to ensure the media’s commitment to the public interest and, at the same time, create an avenue for media diversification by allowing small, independent media companies—with no chance of competing in the capitalistic media landscape—to flourish.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Couldry, N. and Curran, J. (eds) (2003) Contesting media power: alternative media in a networked world. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield (Critical media studies).
Dwyer, T. (2010) Media convergence. Maidenhead: McGraw Hill/Open University Press.
Fanta, A. and Dachwitz, I. (2020) ‘Google, the media patron: How the digital giant ensnares journalism’. Otto Brenner Foundation. Available at: https://www.otto-brenner-stiftung.de/fileadmin/user_data/stiftung/02_Wissenschaftsportal/03_Publikationen/AH103_Google_EN.pdf.
Nugroho, Y., Putri, D.A. and Laksmi, S. (2012) Mapping the landscape of the media industry in contemporary Indonesia. Jakarta: CIPG and Hivos. Available at: https://cipg.or.id/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/MEDIA-2-Media-Industry-2012.pdf.
Singer, J.B. (2004) ‘Strange bedfellows? The diffusion of convergence in four news organizations’, Journalism Studies, 5(1), pp. 3–18. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670032000174701.
Sinpeng, A. and Tapsell, R. (2020) ‘Sinpeng, Aim, and Ross Tapsell. “From Grassroots Activism to Disinformation: Social Media Trends in Southeast Asia.”’, in A. Sinpeng and R. Tapsell (eds) From Grassroots Activism to Disinformation: Social Media in Southeast Asia. Singapore: ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute, pp. 1–18.
Souisa, H.Y. (2017) ‘Regulating Convergence: Challenges for Contemporary Media in Indonesia’, Asian Journal of Media and Communication, 1(1), pp. 35–50. Available at: https://doi.org/10.20885/asjmc.vol1.iss1.art3.
Syarief, S. (2022) ‘The Media Landscape in Indonesia: The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same’. ISEAS, Perspective No. 2022/77. Available at: /articles-commentaries/iseas-perspective/2022-77-the-media-landscape-in-indonesia-the-more-things-change-the-more-they-stay-the-same-by-sofie-syarief/.
Tapsell, R. (2017) Media power in Indonesia: oligarchs, citizens and the digital revolution. London: Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd (Media, culture and communication in Asia-Pacific societies).
Tapsell, R. (2020) ‘The media and democratic decline’, in T. Power and E. Warburton (eds) Democracy in Indonesia: from stagnation to regression? Singapore: ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute (Indonesia update series), pp. 210–227.
Whittaker, J.P. (2020) Tech Giants, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of Journalism. S.l.: Routledge.
William, A. and Sari, Y. (2020) ‘CLICK-ID: A novel dataset for Indonesian clickbait headlines’, Data in Brief, 32, p. 106231. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2020.106231.
ENDNOTES
For endnotes, please refer to the original pdf document.
| ISEAS Perspective is published electronically by: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace Singapore 119614 Main Tel: (65) 6778 0955 Main Fax: (65) 6778 1735. Get Involved with ISEAS. Please click here: /support/get-involved-with-iseas/ | ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute accepts no responsibility for facts presented and views expressed. Responsibility rests exclusively with the individual author or authors. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. © Copyright is held by the author or authors of each article. | Editorial Chairman: Choi Shing Kwok Editorial Advisor: Tan Chin Tiong Editorial Committee: Terence Chong, Cassey Lee, Norshahril Saat, and Hoang Thi Ha Managing Editor: Ooi Kee Beng Editors: William Choong, Lee Poh Onn, Lee Sue-Ann, and Ng Kah Meng Comments are welcome and may be sent to the author(s). |
2024/28 “Thailand’s Ageing Society and Young Thais’ Changing Views and Expectations” by Panarat Anamwathana
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- Thailand is facing a historically low birthrate which could negatively impact the country’s economy in the near future.
- According to recent surveys, the main causes of low fertility are people’s aversion to the high costs of care and pessimistic outlook on Thailand’s economic and political future.
- Traditional cultural values also encourage adults and children to take care of their parents, making the working population even less likely to start families to add to their current care responsibilities. At the same time, young people are expecting that the responsibility of care will be shifting from private citizens to state-funded social welfare.
- The government’s proposed solution is to increase access to fertility services. These measures are unlikely to fully reverse the trend of falling birthrates, as they do not address the root causes of the problem, namely the burden of care, and economic and political uncertainty.
* Panarat Anamwathana is Visiting Fellow at the Regional Social and Cultural Studies Programme at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.
ISEAS Perspective 2024/28, 15 April 2024
INTRODUCTION
One of the most imminent problems facing Thailand today is its rapidly ageing population. Depending on measurements, Thailand is either the oldest or second oldest country in Southeast Asia, with Singapore being the other contender.[1] Thailand’s birthrate has been steadily dropping for decades, hitting a record low at 1.16 children per woman in 2023.[2] According to the World Bank, Thailand is currently experiencing its highest age dependency ratio since 2000 at 44%.[3] That same year, the Thai labour force shrank for the first time, showing a higher number of retirees (aged 60-64) than new entrants (aged 20-24).[4] Indeed, demographer Prof. Dr. Kuea Wongboonsin estimates that if the current trend persists, Thailand’s population will be halved within the next 60 years. In 2083, the projected number of children will have fallen from 10 million to 1 million, the working population will decrease from 46 million to 14 million, and the number of elderly rise from 8 million to 18 million.[5]
This would have profound negative effects on Thailand’s economic outlook, from labour shortages, rising healthcare and pension costs, and falling productivity and aggregate demand. Thai scholars and economists have identified demographics as one of the factors affecting the country’s slow growth.[6] Similarly, the World Bank has forecasted that Thailand’s economy will only grow 3% over the next two decades, the lowest in ASEAN, due to low levels of private investment and the ageing population.[7]
The new government under Prime Minister Sretta Thavisin has described this demographic change as a “crisis,” and is proposing various health-related policies to increase fertility rates. This paper argues that these measures are insufficient to alleviate the crisis, and do not adequately address the main causes of the problem. According to surveys from 2023, major concerns behind people opting to be childless are the pessimistic outlook for Thailand’s economic and political future, coupled with the high costs of care driven by cultural expectations of filial obligations. At the same time, younger generations of Thais seem to worry less than their predecessors about who would take care of them in old age, reflecting a shifting perception of familial obligations and expectations of state support. A more effective means to increase fertility rates would be for the Thai state to meet young people’s higher expectations of government assistance, expand social welfare, as well as work to improve their perception of Thailand’s economic and political prospects.
WHY IS FERTILITY DECLINING?
People of child-rearing age in Thailand currently are the older Gen-Z (aged 18-27) and Gen-Y or millennials (aged 28-43).
Their decision to refrain from having children is primarily driven by political and economic concerns and is closely related to their pessimistic outlook on Thailand’s future.
These sentiments are clearly presented in opinion polls from late 2023. In a September survey conducted by the National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA), only 44% of childless adults in Thailand indicated that they want children someday. Among the 334 respondents who do not want children, the primary reasons cited by 38.32% were the reluctance to incur child-rearing expenses, and concerns about the social and political environment’s negative impact on their children. The second most common reason (37.72%) is that they do not want the burden of childcare, while 33.23% indicate a preference for maintaining their current lifestyle and personal freedom. Other respondents cite concerns about their own parenting abilities (17.66%), prioritisation of careers (13.77%), and health issues (5.39%) as contributing factors.[8] Other scholarly studies offer similar findings: the additional costs of having a child are the main reasons young people do not want children, coupled with poor economic outlook, demanding jobs, unemployment, and the spread of COVID-19.[9]
Childcare expenses stand out as one of the most important deterrents, which is unsurprising given the extremely high cost of raising a child in Thailand. In 2022, a Bank of Thailand study showed that the cost of raising a child from birth to finishing an undergraduate degree in Thailand was roughly 1.6 million baht per person, roughly 6.3 times higher than GDP per capita.[10] Furthermore, the “child penalty” on wages is significant, especially for women. While the gender wage gap in Thailand has been decreasing over the past few decades, workers with children experience salary setbacks. A 2019 study from the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce found that, on average, men and women with children respectively earn 17% and 22% less than their childless counterparts. The main reason for this is the time constraints associated with raising young children.[11] It is thus understandable that many young people choose not to have children, as doing so would not only increase their expenses but also negatively affect their earnings.
The other main deterrent to having a child is people’s pessimism towards Thailand’s future. This sentiment is reflected in a separate poll from December 2023 from NIDA, which surveyed Thai people on their expectations of quality of life and political landscape. Regarding political stability, 45.65% of respondents anticipate that the situation would “still be chaotic,” 28.40% predict “things to be more chaotic,” and only 14.34% responded that it would be “less chaotic.” Thai people’s outlooks on the country’s economic future are mixed, with 35.65% anticipating improvement in 2024 and 31.22% responding that the economy will “remain bad.” Similarly, while 31.98% of respondents believe that their quality of life will improve in 2024, 31.76% feel that it will “remain bad.”[12] If young people perceive bleak economic and political prospects for themselves and the nation, they will likely refrain from having children. While these data offer meaningful insights into why Thai fertility is declining, they do not paint a complete picture. There is an additional cultural factor to this demographic change.
“WHO WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU IN YOUR OLD AGE?”: A CULTURAL SHIFT
When young people say that they will remain childless, they are often asked, “Who will take care of you in your old age if you do not have children?” However, Thai youths do not seem to be concerned about this question, which signifies a shift in young people’s perception of their duties and relationship to their families, as well as their changing expectations of the state.
This question is asked with the assumption that children would take care of their parents when they grow old. It is rooted in the Asian concept of filial piety. The traditional Thai value of katanyu katavedi has no direct translation in English but it conveys a deeper meaning of gratitude towards parents for their sacrifice and hard work, and implies an obligation to reciprocate. It is thus a reasonable expectation of the older generation that their children be katanyu katavedi and care for them financially, physically, and emotionally in their old age.
It has been remarked that Thailand “got old before it got rich”; the country’s GDP per capita is far lower than that of other ageing societies in Asia like Japan and South Korea.[13] Without readily available social security that requires a high GDP and the expectation of katanyu katavedi, parts of Thailand’s rapidly ageing society might not have thought about how to take care of themselves in their old age. The elderly’s plan after retirement was simply to rely on their children or the young people in their families. It is estimated that in Thailand, one working person is responsible for the care of 6 elderly people.[14] This has put further financial strain on the working population and offers further insights into the findings of NIDA’s surveys. Adding expenses for children on top of these financial obligations has been almost unthinkable, making many people less likely to have children.
Furthermore, many young Thai people have started to move away from this traditional expectation. Some young people have begun questioning katanyu katavedi. For instance, they argue that as it was their parents’ decision to have children, they should not be obligated to repay them, causing much alarm and confusion among the older population, who in turn label such questioning as “ungrateful.”[15] Furthermore, due to economic demands and competitive labour markets, many parents have had to leave their children in the care of grandparents in the countryside or babysitters in urban areas, further weakening katanyu katavedi. However, this does not mean that young people intend to abandon caring for their parents. Rather, much of the working population do not have the same anticipation to be cared for in their old age, lifting the obligation of katanyu katavedi from the children they may or may not have. This can be interpreted as the import of the Western conceptualisation of family and parental relationships, in which parents tend to encourage children to be independent, sometimes as soon as they are of legal age. Young Thais have begun to plan for their childless retirement, with options for retirement and pension plans, care homes, and elderly communities becoming more available.[16] This independent retirement plan aligns with young people’s mixed outlook for Thailand’s economic and political future. They do not need to incur the financial costs of children or worry about the negative impact of society on their children, while making arrangements to take care of themselves in their old age.
Yet, the issue of katanyu katavedi bears more social weight than just a generational shift away about familial relationships, but also informs us of what young people expect of their societies and governments. Some have argued that katanyu katavedi was a means for the state or society to push the responsibility of social care to private citizens. In an ideal world, katanyu katavedi would not be obligated as there would be an adequate system of social care and safety net for the old, sick, and vulnerable. Indeed, while no government policy can be a substitute for loving familial relationships, it can alleviate some of the burden on the working population and perhaps encourage them to have children if they environment was emotionally less obligatory and financially less stressful.[17]
STRATEGIES FOR INCREASING BIRTHRATES
The best approach to Thailand’s ageing demographic is for the Srettha government to alleviate care expenses, and enhance public confidence in the nation’s economic and political future. The Thai state is however promoting measures that do not engage with the root causes of the problem and which are likely to be insufficient.
The Ministry of Public Health (MOPH) has announced that increasing Thailand’s fertility rate as one of its top 12 priorities and one of the “national agendas.” Dr. Cholnan Srikaew of Pheu Thai Party, the Minister of Public Health, has stated that the government aims to increase the birthrate to 2.1.[18]
To assist in this national agenda, the government’s 13th National Economic and Social Development Plan[19] (2023-2027) includes three slightly vague measures to assist in this national agenda: First, to create an “enabling environment” to have children by offering financial assistance to raise and care for children. Second, to change the attitude and values of people to recognise that “all births are important,” as well as to support diverse forms of family. Third, to give comprehensive support to those who decide to have children, such as fertility services and offering assistance to promote the growth and development of children.[20]
The Thai state appears to be making progress in the latter two measures. The MOPH launched a “Give Birth, Great World” campaign and announced that it is setting up fertility clinics at public hospitals to promote having children, and offer consultancy services and infertility treatment.[21] There are currently 800 fertility clinics in Thailand, but most are concentrated in urban areas. The MOPH aims to expand this number and establish at least one state-funded fertility clinic in every province.[22] It has announced that it will provide cheaper and easier access to reproductive technology for single people who want to be parents, or couples who have trouble conceiving, such as intrauterine insemination (IUI) and in-vitro fertilisation (IVF). The government is also working on legislation to make these services available to members of the LGBTQIA+ community.[23] Thailand is on track to pass a marriage equality bill within the year, expanding the definition of “family” and making it easier for people of diverse sexualities to have children.[24]
While these efforts are commendable, especially to make fertility services more accessible to a wider range of people, they are unlikely to reverse the trend of falling fertility rates. It is true that these services might be beneficial to certain subsets of the population, such as older individuals or those who are struggling to conceive, but the main concerns for people who decide against having children are not health related, and thus these measures do not address the causes of the fertility crisis. The government should instead focus on the first strategy of its development plan to create an “enabling environment” by alleviating some of the burden of care and improving the country’s economic and political stability.
This argument has been echoed by academics. For instance, Assoc. Prof. Napaphorn Atiwanichayapong argue that “social factors in all aspects” that have accumulated for many years are now the causes for declining fertility, including political instability and a highly competitive capitalist environment that has produced a poor economic outlook. To make young people more optimistic about society and their futures, the government will need to make “comprehensive” changes to Thailand and many of its systems.[25]
Expanding social welfare programmes and state-mandated benefits for both child and elderly care would directly address many of the deterrents to having children. In March 2024, the Thai parliament accepted a proposal to expand maternity leave to 180 days and paternity leave to 90 days. In the same session, however, it rejected a labour protection bill that would limit working hours to 40 per week, increase minimum wage to match inflation, allow for 15 days of leave per year for familial care, and mandate that workplaces accommodate breastfeeding mothers.[26] Increasing the minimum wage could have been the first step towards alleviating the financial strain on the working population, as well as improve their outlook for their own well-being. Similarly, the 15-day leave especially could have helped the Thai labour force care for their aging parents and family members. After the vote, many Thai netizens expressed their frustration with the Thai state for campaigning for people to have more children but remain unwilling to expand social welfare or assist working mothers. Some even say sarcastically that “extinction” seemed like a good option if the state failed to provide necessary benefits, while others imply that not having children is an appropriate punishment for a state that cannot protect or help its people.[27] Thai parliament’s actions are seemingly out of step with young people’s changing perception that the state should expand social welfare to support vulnerable members of society, rather than relying on personal obligations such as katanyu katavedi.
Another possible avenue would be to enhance public’s confidence in Thailand’s economic and political future. As it is, the Sretta government has inherited a stagnant economy due to the COVID-19 crisis, low exports, diminished private investment, and tourism spending below initial projections.[28] The government is still struggling to overcome legal and political hurdles to deliver its flagship stimulus policy of giving certain Thai citizens 10,000 baht (roughly 280USD) in digital wallets.[29] At the same time, political tension in Thailand escalated after the coalition government was formed under Sretta.[30] More charges are being brought against activists and academics.[31] Move Forward Party, the main opposition party that won the most votes in the 2023 general election, faces dissolution by the constitutional court.[32] Expanding medical access is largely insufficient to increase birth rates in the face of such low levels of confidence in the economy and political instability.
CONCLUSION
Without a doubt, Thailand will face an economic crisis if the trend of falling birthrates is left unchecked. However, the Sretta government does not seem to fully grasp the root causes of this problem. Their proposed policies of making fertility care more accessible, while commendable and could make a difference to the lives of poor or LGBTQIA+ people, are largely going to be ineffective in increasing fertility to meet its current goals. The majority of people are not deciding to be childless because they have no access to fertility treatment, but because they cannot afford the additional expenses of childcare and because they feel pessimistic about their future.
Understanding the cultural context and changes in expectations towards familial relationships and the state’s obligations towards its citizens is a good first step. Poll data and academic studies all concur that expanding social welfare to assist in the costs of caring for both infants and the elderly would alleviate some of the burden borne by Thailand’s working population. The state should also work to convince young people that it can improve the Thai economy and political stability, and create a good environment for future children. Without these measures, Thailand can expect the falling fertility rate to only worsen.
ENDNOTES
For endnotes, please refer to the original pdf document.
| ISEAS Perspective is published electronically by: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace Singapore 119614 Main Tel: (65) 6778 0955 Main Fax: (65) 6778 1735. Get Involved with ISEAS. Please click here: /support/get-involved-with-iseas/ | ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute accepts no responsibility for facts presented and views expressed. Responsibility rests exclusively with the individual author or authors. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. © Copyright is held by the author or authors of each article. | Editorial Chairman: Choi Shing Kwok Editorial Advisor: Tan Chin Tiong Editorial Committee: Terence Chong, Cassey Lee, Norshahril Saat, and Hoang Thi Ha Managing Editor: Ooi Kee Beng Editors: William Choong, Lee Poh Onn, Lee Sue-Ann, and Ng Kah Meng Comments are welcome and may be sent to the author(s). |
2024/27 “Something Old, Something New: The Philippines’ Transparency Initiative in the South China Sea” by Edcel John A. Ibarra & Aries A. Arugay
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- Since February 2023, the Marcos Jr. administration has embarked on a transparency initiative for exposing China’s grey zone tactics within Philippine maritime zones in the South China Sea.
- Officially dubbed as a policy of “measured transparency”, the Philippine government has received a modicum of support from like-minded states as well as severe reactions from China.
- Exposing China’s unlawful activities in the South China Sea goes as far as the Aquino III administration after the Scarborough Shoal standoff in April 2012.
- At present, public opinion agrees with this approach, further contributing to the political legitimacy of the Marcos Jr. administration. At the international level, Marcos Jr. has attracted the attention, support, and solidarity of major regional powers.
- This measured transparency approach carries with it risks and challenges but it is not sufficient to protect and promote Philippines interests in the SCS. Apart from sustaining this approach, the Marcos Jr. administration must develop and articulate a clear maritime strategy adhered to by the security sector and the civilian bureaucracy.
* Edcel John A. Ibarra is Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of the Philippines-Diliman. Aries A. Arugay is Visiting Senior Fellow and Coordinator of the Philippine Studies Programme, ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute and Professor of Political Science, University of the Philippines-Diliman.
ISEAS Perspective 2024/27, 12 April 2024
INTRODUCTION
After a China Coast Guard vessel aimed its laser weapon at a Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) ship on a resupply mission to Second Thomas (Ayungin) Shoal in February 2023,[1] the Philippines embarked on a markedly different approach to counter Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea (SCS). The government under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. began exposing China’s coercive grey-zone tactics: attempts short of war to deny the Philippines access to its own waters, such as by bullying or blocking ships in transit or by “swarming”—staking out reefs with large numbers of military and paramilitary vessels.
The transparency initiative is not limited to Second Thomas Shoal. Since it began, the Philippines seemed to have become more proactive in defending its maritime rights in the SCS as affirmed by the arbitral tribunal’s ruling in 2016. This is a refreshing contrast to the country’s seeming inactivity under former president Rodrigo Duterte (2016-2022), whose foreign and security policies appeared chaotic, ad hoc, and transactional rather than structured, deliberate, and strategic.[2] Yet although the Marcos government’s new approach is welcome, evidence so far suggests it to be a policy that lacks the qualities of a properly constituted strategy.
This article discusses the main tenets of the new approach of the Marcos administration in the SCS. We argue that some of the principles and motivations behind the transparency initiative are continuations of the approach under former president Benigno Aquino III (2010-2016). So far, this approach has yielded some strategic benefits at home and abroad. These include garnering international solidarity and support from major regional powers as well as cultivating strong domestic public approval for the government’s efforts to defend the country’s national interest. However, this article argues that merely exposing China’s grey-zone tactics is insufficient, given the risks associated with such an approach. There have been many pendulum swings in the country’s foreign policy in the recent past and sustaining this approach is the main challenge, particularly amidst potential domestic distractions as well as external developments beyond the control of the Philippines.
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
The Philippines’ transparency initiative exposes China’s coercive and unlawful actions against an SCS littoral state, effectively debunking Beijing’s narrative portraying itself as a benevolent and responsible great power, and the SCS as a peaceful and calm waterway where territorial and maritime disputes can be managed among directly concerned parties. Philippine officials have assigned various names to the new approach. Assistant Director-General Jonathan Malaya, the communications chief of the National Security Council, referred to it as “measured transparency”,[3] whereas a spokesperson of the PCG described it as “assertive transparency”.[4] Analysts also called it “radical transparency” and “strategic transparency”.[5] Everyone agrees on the need for transparency, but the degree to which the government wants to be transparent is an open question. “Measured” and “strategic” suggest selectiveness on information to be disclosed, while “assertive” and “radical” hint at a determination to expose just about everything.[6] Unfortunately, bickering over the name and confusion over meanings may indicate bureaucratic in-fighting and the tentative nature of the policy, rather than demonstrate a united resolve and adherence to a whole-of-government approach.
In a webinar hosted by the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute in February 2024, Malaya identified National Security Adviser Eduardo Año as the architect of “measured transparency”. Malaya also claimed that “measured transparency” was inspired by the military’s information operations during the siege of Marawi in Mindanao in 2017, during which Año was chief of staff of the Armed Forces of Philippines (AFP). In the battle to reclaim the city from Islamic militants, the AFP successfully deployed counter-messaging, promoted civil-military cooperation (such as by bringing the media along in humanitarian operations), and projected an image of transparency in their community engagements (such as by regularly holding press conferences).[7] Malaya argued that this experience of “measured transparency” in Marawi brought valuable lessons for the Philippines in the SCS context.
In fact, the strategy of “naming and shaming” was a hallmark of former president Benigno Aquino III’s foreign policy, culminating in the historic filing of an arbitration case against China in 2013—probably the Philippines’ most dramatic effort to expose China’s behaviour in the SCS before an international arbitral tribunal and the global community. History shows that the challenge the Philippines is now facing at Second Thomas Shoal is not new, and Manila’s resort to transparency is also not new. Among those that the Philippines exposed and formally complained about during the arbitration was China’s attempt to block a resupply mission to Second Thomas almost a decade ago, in March 2014. The Philippines withdrew its ship at the time and held a press conference afterward to publicise the incident. The Philippines attempted another resupply a few weeks later, this time bringing journalists on board to witness China’s harassment.[8] The second attempt succeeded, and no public record exists of another incident at Second Thomas under Aquino. Still, in the months and years that followed, China was able to dredge and transform nearby Mischief Reef into a de facto military base, allowing Chinese ships to conduct sustained patrols around Second Thomas and harass incoming Philippine boats more frequently and for longer periods.[9]
PAY-OFFS & TRADE-OFFS OF THE SCS TRANSPARENCY INITIATIVE
Evaluating the effectiveness of the transparency initiative may not offer a straightforward answer because it depends on the objectives set for maritime transparency. If the objective is to facilitate the Philippines’ resupply missions to its SCS outposts, then the approach appears successful. The PCG reported that China had deployed smaller and fewer ships in Philippine waters,[10] and the National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea said that it had accomplished nearly all of its humanitarian missions to Philippine-occupied reefs.[11] With regard to Second Thomas Shoal, however, the approach appears less successful. Ship tracking data collected by the Center for Strategic and International Studies from 2021 to 2023 shows that Chinese ships have increased their presence around the shoal, and they have increasingly engaged in physical encounters with Philippine vessels. The US-based think tank also noted that since the Philippines pursued the transparency initiative in February 2023, major incidents substantially increased over Second Thomas.[12] Worryingly, incidents this March included not only damages to Philippine vessels but also injuries to crew.[13]
If the objective is to rally international sympathy and domestic support amid Chinese maritime coercion, then the approach also appears successful. One advantage of the new approach is the strong diplomatic support extended by major powers such as the US, Japan, and Australia. Even countries that used to be muted in Chinese intrusions in the Philippines’ part of the SCS have voiced their fear and calls for sobriety.[14] The list includes Vietnam, South Korea, India, and several European Union states, which were previously ambivalent about supporting the Philippines after the arbitral tribunal’s ruling but are now explicitly siding with Manila.[15] Still, there is the question of audience: whose support must be courted? The Philippines may be preaching to the choir. Although several major powers and Western countries have shown support for the Philippines, other ASEAN states, including fellow SCS claimants, except Vietnam, have been more careful. ASEAN issued a statement of concern with the SCS situation in December 2023,[16] but the veneer of an ASEAN consensus was soon dismantled when Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim echoed Beijing’s narrative of China’s peaceful rise earlier this year, seemingly unmoved by the evidence produced by the Philippines’ transparency initiative.[17]
The overall increase in international support for the Philippines is also reflected in domestic public opinion. Surveys have shown that Filipinos strongly approve of the Marcos administration’s approach in the SCS disputes, which includes the transparency initiative.[18] As domestic public opinion solidifies, even the country’s political elites, notably senators, have had no choice but to rally behind the government’s policy.[19] Some of these now-vocal senators included former allies of Duterte, who had previously either defended the ex-president’s soft stance on China or stayed silent amid news of Chinese maritime coercion.[20]
But if the objective is to dissuade China from pushing ahead with its coercive grey-zone tactics, then the approach has not succeeded. China persists in conducting blockades and swarming in the SCS. Although China has so far refrained from inflicting economic punishments,[21] the Philippine Foreign Affairs Department is not discounting the possibility in the future.[22] Additionally, in recent weeks, Chinese hackers have repeatedly attempted to breach Philippine government websites and email servers, including the PCG’s.[23] Disinformation has also increased, targeting academics, journalists, and the general public through social media.[24] Pro-Beijing narratives are also being echoed in the public discourse by Filipino influencers and groups seen as proxies for China.[25]
If the objective is to ease maritime tensions between the Philippines and China, then the approach has clearly had the opposite effect. Rhetoric from both sides has heated up, and China has also made veiled threats of force.[26] These are raising worries about escalating prospects of armed conflict in the region.
China, of course, bears much of the responsibility for the situation. Not only is China the prime mover of coercive grey-zone tactics, it is also an outlaw. The arbitral tribunal already ruled in 2016 that China has no right to prevent Filipinos from accessing waters 200 nautical miles west of the Philippine archipelago in the SCS. The panel also ruled that China has no right to claim, much less commandeer, mid-ocean reefs that submerge at high tide, like Second Thomas Shoal. At best, China, like the rest of the world, enjoys freedom of navigation in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone—but not freedom to swarm.
China also categorises any action in the SCS that falls short of acquiescing to its demands as provocation. Other than inaction or appeasement, the Philippines finds itself with little meaningful leeway to defend its maritime rights without “provoking” China. In any case, none of the Philippines’ actions so far have matched China’s seizure of Scarborough Shoal, construction of militarised artificial islands, use of coercive grey-zone tactics, and undermining of the rule of international law. The Philippines has too few and too small ships to effectively challenge the much larger fleets and vessels of the People’s Liberation Army–Navy and even the China Coast Guard. The Philippines also has too tiny and too underdeveloped installations in the SCS to support advanced military operations. The installation on Second Thomas, the decommissioned World War II warship BRP Sierra Madre, is the poorest in condition among the Philippines’ SCS outposts. The ship is so besieged by leaks and rust and so exposed to the elements that no soldier would survive there for long without regular resupplies.[27] China objects that Philippine resupply missions include construction materials, but these are necessary to provide decent living conditions for Philippine soldiers.[28] The materials being sent are also too rudimentary compared to the coastal defence and ground-based missile systems that China has built on its illegally occupied reefs in the SCS. China’s anger towards the Philippines is simply too disproportional to its own maritime activities.
DOMESTIC FOUNDATION OF MARCOS JR.’S SCS POLICY
Although the transparency initiative is not new, the current policy differs in two important respects from previous ones. First, the Marcos administration seems more assertive than the Aquino government. The increased confidence is a function of the legal clarity that the arbitration win now affords the Philippines. The Aquino government, while tough on rhetoric, was much softer on the ground because they were trying to avoid incidents that may jeopardise the Philippines’ case. This confidence is further bolstered by the US’ explicit endorsement of the arbitral tribunal ruling and Washington’s unambiguous security reassurances that their mutual defense treaty applies to “armed attacks on either nation’s armed forces or public vessels anywhere in the South China Sea”.[29]
Second, Marcos himself so far appears more tamed in his rhetoric than his officials are. He refrained from mentioning the disputes, much less calling out China, in all his previous state of the nation addresses. Although happy to paint himself as a defender of the Philippines’ maritime entitlements, Marcos often balances his public statements with declarations of openness to continued dialogue with China. This messaging affords Manila room to remain cooperative with Beijing. Indeed, unlike under Aquino, no dialogue mechanisms are being cancelled, and the other aspects of Philippines-China relations remain largely business as usual. Marcos probably wants to keep it that way. Fortunately, it seems that China is balking at being the first to cut off bilateral ties with the Philippines despite reacting that way before towards the Aquino government.
The transparency initiative conveniently aligns with Marcos’s regime legitimacy considerations. Surveys since the Duterte administration have consistently shown that Filipinos support a more assertive approach to the SCS disputes. The transparency initiative satisfies this yearning and is a popular policy for Marcos to champion. Indeed, public opinion polls in 2023 show that Marcos’s approval rating for handling the SCS disputes increased to 58 percent.[30] Marcos also seems to base his legitimacy on economic performance and, counterintuitively, adherence to democratic rules—even if only at face value, for performativity’s sake. He is aware of the baggage associated with Chinese developmental assistance and has pulled the Philippines out of some China-funded infrastructure projects.[31] He is also aware of his association with authoritarian politics, not only through his father but also through his electoral alliance with Duterte and his daughter Sara. By explicitly aligning with the West, Marcos is simultaneously able to court higher quality sources of developmental funds and boost his democratic credentials, allowing him to claim membership in the free world.
Moreover, toning down reliance on China and painting himself as a democratic leader also allow Marcos to implicitly criticise Duterte and, in the process, distance himself from his autocratic predecessor. Rifts with the Dutertes are an unavoidable consequence of Marcos’s legitimation strategies.
CONCLUSION & PROSPECTS
Going forward, sustaining the transparency initiative depends on external factors such as how committed the US will be in supporting the Philippines and how long China’s patience will remain. It will also depend on the Philippine government’s ability to weather domestic political disturbances that rifts in the Marcos-Duterte alliance could unleash. Yet the first step is for the Marcos administration to clarify the objectives it wants to achieve with transparency. Of course, the new approach can be used as leverage to request for more concrete support from major powers, but towards what end should the Philippines garner support for? Isolating China diplomatically, rallying regional states and major powers, enhancing Philippine maritime domain awareness, modernising the AFP and the PCG, establishing new security partnerships, or all? The government will need to think strategically about this.
Some red lines must be drawn, however. We believe that transparency should not be a bargaining chip that the Philippines can dial down in exchange for concessions from China. Manila must remain steadfast in exposing Beijing’s coercive grey-zone tactics. Relying solely on quiet diplomacy could be dangerous. Left behind closed doors, Philippine leaders may promise deals that are unconstitutional, or China may make up accounts of Philippine promises. Indeed, China keeps referring to various supposed deals on Second Thomas Shoal, and previous Philippine leaders are avoiding public scrutiny of whether these promises were indeed made. Quiet diplomacy must be conducted alongside transparency operations to keep China in check that its reassurances in meetings matches its behaviour at sea. The Philippines must make it clear that the transparency initiative is reactive to breaches of international law, peace, and stability in the SCS. As long as China behaves in line with these norms, there would be nothing to expose.
Although the maritime transparency initiative is a necessary step forward, it alone does not transform the Philippines into a rational strategic actor in world affairs under Marcos Jr. Ultimately, the government must have strategic hindsight to recognise what worked in the past and what did not, and apply those lessons accordingly. It must also have strategic foresight to forge ahead towards a more comprehensive strategy on the SCS.
ENDNOTES
For endnotes, please refer to the original pdf document.
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“Beyond Slacktivism: The Dynamic Relationship between Online and Offline Activism among Southeast Asian Youths” by Iim Halimatusa’diyah
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
• As digital platforms continue to evolve, youths increasingly employ social media, online forums, and digital campaigns to advocate for social and political change. While this phenomenon is often considered disparagingly as slacktivism, recent studies find that individuals engaging in digital activism often also participate in other conventional forms of activism.
• Despite a surge in youth activism across Southeast Asian countries, comparative analysis in this region remains scarce. Using data from the World Values Survey of several studies, and case studies on Indonesia, this article examines the extent to which online political activism serves as a catalyst for mobilization, awareness and community building among young people in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines.
• Additionally, it examines the interplay between online and offline political activism and its impact on traditional forms of activism.
• The study argues for a reciprocal relationship between online and offline political activism, particularly noting the potential for digital efforts to influence real-world action, especially on cohesive issues such as corruption.
Trends in Southeast Asia 2024/10, April 2024
2024/26 “The China-Philippines Bilateral Consultation Mechanism on the South China Sea: Has it Worked for China?” by Lye Liang Fook
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- The China-Philippines Bilateral Consultation Mechanism (BCM) was established in May 2017 for discussing issues of mutual concern in the South China Sea and exploring possible areas of cooperation, especially in oil and gas development. It was intended as a confidence-building measure and to show how China can cooperate with Southeast Asian claimant states.
- However, after eight rounds of meetings, the BCM has yet to embark on any oil and gas joint development. Despite some initial progress, cooperation in this area has stalled, due primarily to constitutional and legal constraints on both sides.
- The 2023 ruling by the Philippine Supreme Court, which declared that the 2005-2008 Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking involving companies from China, the Philippines and Vietnam was unconstitutional, has made it more challenging for Beijing and Manila to achieve a breakthrough in joint oil and gas development.
- China’s actions to prevent the Philippines from conducting oil and gas activities in the Philippines’ EEZ and Continental Shelf have led Manila to impose a ban on such activities in the West Philippine Sea, thereby complicating efforts to explore joint oil and gas development with China.
- The working groups on fisheries, oil and gas, marine scientific research and environmental protection, and political security, formed under the BCM framework, function more like discussion groups, without producing any concrete results.
- Rising tensions in the SCS between China and the Philippines, compounded by the Taiwan issue, have further hindered the BCM’s ability to fulfil its original objectives. Nevertheless, Beijing is likely to press ahead with the BCM, in line with its position that the SCS disputes must be left to the directly concerned parties.
* Lye Liang Fook is Senior Fellow in the Regional Strategic and Political Studies Programme at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.
ISEAS Perspective 2024/26, 9 April 2024
INTRODUCTION
Almost seven years have passed since the China-Philippines Bilateral Consultation Mechanism (BCM) was established in May 2017 to discuss mutual issues of concern and work towards practical cooperation in the South China Sea (SCS). But at their last 8th BCM in January 2024, the two countries failed to reach agreement on any concrete projects, particularly on oil and gas cooperation, despite some initial progress made in the earlier years.
In fact, the 8th BCM reflected growing differences between the two countries, with China calling on the Philippines to properly manage maritime emergencies related to Ren’ai Jiao (or Second Thomas Shoal), where Beijing had interdicted Manila’s resupply missions to the Sierra Madre, a marooned ship on the shoal. More significantly, China demanded that the Philippines abide by the one-China principle on the Taiwan issue.
How did the BCM, meant to foster trust and confidence between the two countries, end up amplifying their differences? To shed light on this issue, this paper examines China’s rationale for establishing the BCM, the state of progress of the BCM, the challenges faced by the BCM and China’s expectations of the BCM going forward.
BCM’S ORIGINS AND PURPOSES
Beijing is against the internationalisation of and involvement of third parties on the SCS issue. However, its expansive claims in the SCS came under international spotlight when the 2016 arbitral tribunal ruled that its claims based on its self-proclaimed historic rights had no legal basis.[1] Before the ruling, Beijing had been criticised for building artificial islands in the SCS. After the ruling, Beijing insisted that it would complete the building of these islands and outfit them with military structures and facilities.[2] It even took punitive action against the Philippines for initiating the ruling,[3] and other countries for siding with the United States on this issue. [4]
To improve its image and regain the initiative on the SCS issue, Beijing devised the idea of a BCM to discuss and cooperate on mutual issues of interest in the SCS with the Philippines. If the BCM made progress, it would bolster Beijing’s call for the SCS issue to be left to the directly concerned parties, i.e., the claimant states themselves. By extension, argued Beijing, extra-regional powers like the United States would have no grounds to interfere.
Beijing was provided the opportunity to showcase its preferred approach when Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte assumed office in June 2016 and ended his predecessor’s policy of confronting China on the SCS issue. During Duterte’s visit to Beijing in October 2016, the two countries agreed to establish a BCM that would meet regularly to address mutual issues of concern, and explore areas of cooperation in the SCS.[5]
The BCM convened its first meeting in Guiyang, China, in May 2017,[6] just after the ASEAN-China Senior Officials Meeting (SOM), to discuss the implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC).[7] By hosting the BCM back-to-back with the ASEAN-China SOM, China sought to reinforce the message that the directly concerned parties were taking proactive measures and were capable of handling the SCS issue themselves.
The BCM underpins Beijing’s “dual track” approach on the SCS issue. One track involves China and ASEAN working together on the DOC and a prospective code of conduct of parties in the SCS (COC) to address wider issues related to peace and stability in the SCS. The other track, encompassing the BCM, involves the directly concerned parties working bilaterally to address their differences and finding a way forward on the SCS issue. The BCM was further meant to be a confidence-building measure to build trust and strengthen China-Philippines relations through practical cooperation. If successful, it could be a reference for China to collaborate with other Southeast Asian claimant states in the SCS.[8]
BCM’S LIMITED OUTCOMES
So far, eight BCMs have been held (see Annex). At the 1st BCM in May 2017, China organised a ceremonial launch, with the Chinese and Philippine co-chairs jointly sounding a gong, followed by an exchange of gifts and a photo-taking session, to get the meeting off on a positive footing. It saw the launch as an indication of the “great importance” the two countries attached to consultations, and their commitment to properly manage the SCS issue with a “positive and constructive attitude”.[9]
Some progress was made in the initial years. The first BCM agreed on its terms of reference, the composition of its members and the frequency of its meetings. The 2nd BCM in February 2018 agreed to convene technical working groups in the specific areas of fisheries, oil and gas, marine scientific research and environmental protection, and political security.[10] These working groups were convened in subsequent BCMs although there is scant information to date on what was achieved. It appears that the working group discussions were largely confined to exchanging views and fostering understanding of each other’s positions. By the 7th and 8th BCMs in 2023 and 2024 respectively, there was no further mention of the convening of these working groups.
The only area where there was initially some progress was in the oil and gas sector. At the 3rd BCM in October 2018, China and the Philippines discussed the possibility of joint exploration and development in oil and gas. They subsequently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Cooperation on Oil and Gas Development during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to the Philippines in November 2018.[11]
China regarded the MOU as a “new step forward” and expressed its wish to comprehensively advance practical cooperation with the Philippines in various maritime areas. It even looked forward to strengthening communication with the other SCS littoral states to cooperate in similar areas to make the SCS a sea of peace, friendship and cooperation.[12] Beijing had expected the BCM to be a model for its cooperation with other Southeast Asian claimant states.
The MOU called for the setting up of an inter-governmental joint steering committee to negotiate and agree to the cooperation arrangements and the maritime areas to which they will apply.[13] The two countries committed themselves to agree on the cooperation arrangements 12 months from the MOU signing, i.e., by November 2019.[14] However, the inter-governmental joint steering committee only convened in October 2019, around the same time as the 5th BCM,[15] with no specific agreement reached.
The Covid-19 pandemic further disrupted progress with the 6th BCM held online 19 months later in May 2021. In June 2022, the Philippines initiated the termination of joint oil and gas negotiations with China.[16] At the 8th BCM in January 2024, there was no more talk about oil and gas cooperation. Instead, China called on the Philippines to properly manage emergencies related particularly to the Second Thomas Shoal. It further brought up the Taiwan issue which was beyond the scope of the BCM.
OBSTACLES IN OIL AND GAS COOPERATION
Intractable Constitutional and Legal Constraints
The foremost reason for the lack of progress on the China-Philippines oil and gas cooperation are the intractable constitutional and legal constraints, which both sides could not overcome. China’s preference was for both countries to temporarily set aside sovereignty-related issues while pursuing joint development in a disputed area.[17] However, setting aside sovereignty-related issues is unacceptable to the Philippines because Manila views this oil and gas cooperation as taking place within its own exclusive economic zone (EEZ), thus falling under the Philippines’ sovereign rights. For example, according to the 2016 arbitral tribunal ruling, the gas-rich Reed Bank is a fully submerged feature within 200 nautical miles from the archipelagic baselines of the Philippines, and is hence part of the Philippines’ EEZ.
Meanwhile, China sees the Reed Bank as a disputed feature and does not accept that the Philippines has exclusive sovereign rights to resources in this area. Doing so would contravene China’s own domestic laws.[18] Article 2, Chapter 1 of China’s “Regulation on Foreign Cooperation in the Exploitation of Offshore Petroleum Resources” states that “all petroleum resources in the internal waters, territorial sea and continental shelf of the People’s Republic of China and in all sea areas within the maritime jurisdiction of the People’s Republic of China belong to the People’s Republic of China”. The same article further states that in the sea areas mentioned above, “all buildings and structures set up and vessels operating to exploit petroleum, as well as the corresponding onshore oil (gas) terminals and bases, shall be under the jurisdiction of the People’s Republic of China.”[19]
Two earlier failed attempts underscore the difficulties of overcoming existing constitutional and legal constraints. The first is the Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking (JMSU)[20] between China, the Philippines and Vietnam from 2005-2008 in Block SC-72 on the Reed Bank, which lapsed as Manila considered it a violation of the Philippine Constitution. In 2012, a second attempt was made by China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC) and Philex Petroleum (now PXP Energy) to collaborate in SC-72. However, just before the two companies were about to sign an agreement, the Philippine government wanted to include additional wording to clarify the roles of both parties in terms of the owner and developer. This would require China to recognise the Philippines as having sovereign rights over SC-72, which was unacceptable to Beijing. Hence, the deal fell through.[21]
The 2016 arbitral tribunal award, which reaffirmed the Philippines’ sovereign rights in its EEZ and Continental Shelf, has become central to Manila’s diplomatic positions in the BCM discussions with China.[22] Even President Duterte, who advocated closer China ties, affirmed the award as part of international law and rejected attempts to undermine it in 2020.[23] Furthermore, the 2023 Philippine Supreme Court’s ruling that the JMSU was unconstitutional has made it imperative for the Philippines to adhere to the safeguards provided in Section 2, Article 12 of its Constitution in joint oil and gas development with China.[24] This article states that “The exploration, development, and utilisation of natural resources shall be under the full control and supervision of the State.”[25]
According to Antonio Carpio, former Supreme Court associate justice, the 2023 Supreme Court’s ruling upholds the four modes in the Philippine Constitution for joint oil and gas development, namely, direct undertaking, co-production, joint venture, and production-sharing agreements. Only companies that are 60% owned by Filipinos can participate under the last three modes; foreign majority-owned companies can only participate in a direct undertaking by the State by becoming a service contractor of the State. Under this arrangement, the Philippine government has full control and supervision over all activities.[26]
China’s Opposition to the Philippines’ Unilateral Oil and Gas Activities
China’s maritime vessels have prevented Philippine vessels and other foreign vessels from working with Manila to conduct research and seabed exploration activities in the Philippine EEZ and Continental Shelf disputed by China.[27] These actions appear to be aimed at pressuring the Philippines to conclude an oil and gas deal with Beijing via the BCM framework. Beijing is cognizant that the Philippines urgently needs alternative oil and gas resources to replace the existing Malampaya gas field that supplies a fifth of the country’s energy needs and that is expected to run dry by 2027.[28]
China is also apparently telling the Philippines that it cannot conduct oil and gas activities, either unilaterally or jointly with other countries, in these areas without Beijing’s approval. And seeking approval would mean that the Philippines recognises China’s claims in its EEZ and Continental Shelf. Even if the Philippines were to conclude an oil and gas deal with China, there is no indication that Beijing would grant permission for Manila to conduct oil and gas activities in these areas.
Rather than give in to Beijing’s pressure, the Philippines opted to impose a ban on oil and gas activities in the West Philippine Sea (WPS), which stalled any attempt at reviving oil and gas cooperation between the two countries.[29] One reason behind the ban announced in March 2022 was China’s harassment of the survey vessels hired by the Philippine service contractors.[30] The ban was aimed at preventing any untoward incidents at sea in the disputed areas involving Chinese and Philippine vessels.[31] Thereafter, in June 2022, the Philippines unilaterally called off oil and gas negotiations with China, effectively handing over the responsibility to conclude a deal to the incoming Ferdinand Marcos Jr. administration.
Critics regard the ban as the Philippines buckling under Chinese pressure. They noted that Malaysia and Indonesia have persisted with oil and gas activities in their respective EEZs despite China’s threats and harassment. In their view, the Philippines should proceed with oil and gas activities in the WPS without being subjected to the restart of joint exploration talks with China.[32]
This is easier said than done. China is likely to continue to interdict such activities, which could lead to an escalation in the event of a miscalculation or mishap. Furthermore, if the Philippines were to provide some form of protection for its companies to harness resources in the WPS, China would probably do likewise, which could complicate matters. In fact, President Duterte disclosed in 2017 that China had threatened “war” if the Philippines insisted on drilling for oil and gas in disputed areas in the WPS.[33]
Deteriorating China-Philippine Relations
The deterioration in China-Philippine relations in the past two years has made it difficult for the BCM to deliver results, especially on oil and gas cooperation despite initial efforts after Marcos Jr. assumed office in June 2022. When Marcos visited China in January 2023,[34] both sides affirmed the importance of the BCM as a confidence-building measure and agreed to resume discussions on oil and gas development at an early date.[35]
However, during the 7th BCM in March 2023, two months after Marcos’ visit, the meeting merely made a general commitment to promote practical cooperation in areas such as diplomacy, defence, coast guard, oil and gas development, fisheries, maritime affairs, maritime search and rescue, and marine scientific research and marine environmental protection.[36] No breakthrough was achieved in terms of oil and gas joint development.
Moreover, the tone at the 7th BCM became more guarded, with the Chinese read-out saying that both sides agreed to “exercise restraint, make good use of the hotline between the two foreign ministries, improve maritime communication and dialogue mechanisms, and enhance talks and exchanges between different departments and on multiple levels”. Both sides further agreed to “manage and control differences and properly handle emergencies at sea through friendly consultations”.[37] This came after a series of incidents at sea especially one involving a Chinese coast guard vessel pointing a military-grade laser at a Philippine coast guard vessel on a resupply mission to Second Thomas Shoal in February 2023.[38] Also in February 2023, much to China’s chagrin, Manila granted US access to four more military bases in the Philippines during US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin’s visit to the Philippines.[39]
By the 8th BCM in January 2024, China-Philippines relations had hit a new low. China’s read-out of the BCM said both sides agreed to “properly handle maritime emergencies, in particular, the situation on the ground at Ren’ai Jiao” (Second Thomas Shoal). This was the first time Second Thomas Shoal was specifically mentioned, reflecting rising tensions between the two countries near the shoal.[40]
More significantly, the 8th BCM exceeded its mandate with China lodging “solemn representations with the Philippines on Taiwan-related issues”, demanding that the Philippine “earnestly abide by the one-China principle” and “immediately stop its wrong words and deeds on Taiwan-related issues”.[41] The strong language was directed at Marcos who had earlier congratulated Taiwan’s independence-leaning candidate Lai Ching-te on his presidential election victory in January 2024.[42] In contrast, the Philippine read-out did not mention the Taiwan issue at all.[43]
WITHER THE BCM?
The BCM has not met its original objective of being a confidence-building measure, i.e., to discuss issues of mutual concern in the SCS and pursue practical cooperation especially on oil and gas development. Six years after the 2018 MOU was signed, the two countries have not reached agreement on any specific project.
The BCM has also not fulfilled its “pathfinder” role of showing that only the directly concerned parties, in this case the Philippines and China, are able to resolve their differences in the SCS through bilateral negotiations and without external interference. By extension, China’s longer-term expectation for the BCM to serve as a basis for similar cooperation with other claimant states such as Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam, remains elusive.
Nevertheless, Beijing is likely to press ahead with the BCM as it bears President Xi Jinping’s personal imprint; he had agreed with Philippine President Duterte to establish this mechanism in October 2016. Discarding the BCM would be tantamount to acknowledging that his diplomacy had failed.
Moreover, the BCM enables Beijing to portray itself as a reasonable party by keeping the door open for consultation and cooperation despite current tensions with Manila. This was evident when China’s foreign ministry spokesperson said that the 8th BCM enabled both countries to: (i) implement the important consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries on maritime-related issues; (ii) continue to properly manage maritime-related conflicts and differences through friendly consultations; (iii) continue to promote practical maritime cooperation, and; (iv) jointly maintain maritime peace and stability.[44]
There is also a quasi-official Chinese view lauding Beijing’s effectiveness in getting the Philippines back onto the BCM track by using various means at its disposal including diplomacy, maritime rights protection, law enforcement, and military preparations.[45] Inherent in this message is a veiled threat that while Beijing remains open to talks with the Philippines, it could resort to tougher action if the need arises.
For the time being, given the tensions in the SCS between the two countries, Beijing is likely to continue with the BCM and hold it up as a strand of its multi-pronged approach in engaging the Philippines on the SCS issue. Even though Beijing appears to be wielding more of the stick now based on actions it has taken against Philippine vessels in the SCS, the BCM is there to show that China stands ready to talk with the Philippines at some future point.
ANNEX
| Event | Date | What transpired |
| 1st BCM | 19 May 2017 (Guizhou) | Co-chaired by China’s Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin and Philippine Ambassador to China Jose Santiago L. Sta. Romana. Agreed that the BCM should be a platform for confidence-building measures and for promoting maritime cooperation and maritime security. It will comprise equivalent officials from the respective foreign ministries and relevant maritime affairs agencies, and will meet alternately in China and the Philippines once every six months. Discussed the promotion of next-step practical maritime cooperation and possible establishment of relevant technical working groups. |
| 2nd BCM | 13 Feb 2018 (Manila) | Co-chaired by China’s Vice Foreign Minister Kong Xuanyou and Philippine Foreign Affairs Undersecretary for Policy Enrique A. Manalo. Exchanged views on ways to strengthen cooperation in areas such as marine environmental protection, fisheries, marine scientific research, and oil and gas. Discussed mutually beneficial joint initiatives and agreed to convene technical working groups in the areas of fisheries, oil and gas, marine scientific research and environmental protection, and political security. The technical working groups identified a number of possible cooperative initiatives although details of these initiatives were not made public. |
| 3rd BCM | 18 Oct 2018 (Beijing) | Co-chaired by China’s Vice Foreign Minister Kong Xuanyou and Philippine Foreign Affairs Undersecretary for Policy Enrique A. Manalo. Exchanged views on ways to enhance maritime cooperation in areas such as on recent developments in the SCS carrying political and security implications, maritime search and rescue, maritime safety, marine scientific research and environmental protection, and fisheries in relevant working group meetings under the framework of the BCM. Discussed possible cooperation in joint exploration and development of offshore oil and gas. |
| 4th BCM | 2-3 Apr 2019 (Manila) | Co-chaired by China’s Vice Foreign Minister Kong Xuanyou and Philippine Foreign Affairs Assistant Secretary Meynardo LB. Montealegre of the Office of Asian and Pacific Affairs. Exchanged views on strengthening maritime cooperation through the respective working groups. Areas covered included the development of the political and security situation in the SCS, maritime search and rescue, maritime security, marine scientific research and environmental protection and fisheries. Discussed cooperation in offshore oil and gas development. |
| 5th BCM | 28 Oct 2019 (Beijing) | Co-chaired by China’s Vice Foreign Minister Luo Zhaohui and Philippine Foreign Affairs Undersecretary for Policy Enrique A. Manalo. The working groups on political security, fisheries cooperation, and marine scientific research and environmental protection were convened. Considered to undertake mutually agreed practical maritime cooperation initiatives covering maritime search and rescue, maritime safety, and marine research or marine environment protection and fisheries cooperation in the SCS. Discussed establishing possible mechanisms for exchanges of visits and communication. (First meeting of the Philippines-China Inter-Governmental Joint Steering Committee on Cooperation on Oil and Gas Development was convened on the sidelines of the 5th BCM.) |
| 6th BCM | 21 May 2021 (via video link) | Co-chaired by China’s Assistant Foreign Minister Wu Jianghao and Philippine Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Elizabeth Buensuceso. The working groups on political security, fisheries cooperation, and marine scientific research and marine environmental protection were convened. |
| 7th BCM | 24 Mar 2023 (Manila) | Co-chaired by China’s Vice Foreign Minister Sun Weidong and Philippine Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Maria Theresa P. Lazaro (the first face-to-face BCM meeting since the onset of Covid-19). Agreed to promote practical cooperation in areas such as diplomacy, defence, coast guard, oil and gas development, fisheries, maritime affairs, maritime search and rescue, and marine scientific research and marine environmental protection. |
| 8th BCM (Shanghai) | 17 Jan 2024 | Co-chaired by China’s Assistant Foreign Minister Nong Rong and Philippine Undersecretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs Maria Theresa P. Lazaro. The Chinese side said that both sides agreed to improve maritime communication mechanism, properly manage maritime disputes and differences through friendly consultation, “properly handle maritime emergencies, in particular, the situation on the ground at Ren’ai Jiao” (i.e. Second Thomas Shoal), and constantly promote practical maritime cooperation. The Chinese side added that it “lodged solemn representations with the Philippines on Taiwan-related issues, demanding that the Philippine side should earnestly abide by the one-China principle and immediately stop its wrong words and deeds on Taiwan-related issues. The Philippines reiterates its adherence to the one-China policy and will continue to implement the policy in earnest”. The Philippine side did not mention the Taiwan issue in their read-out of the 8th BCM meeting. On the situation near Second Thomas Shoal, it said that “both sides presented their respective positions on the Ayungin Shoal and assured each other of their mutual commitment to avoid escalation of tensions.” It further said that both sides agreed to improve maritime communication mechanisms in the SCS, including communications between foreign ministries and coast guards of the two countries. It added that both sides agreed to initiate talks on academic exchanges on marine scientific research between Filipino and Chinese scientists. |
Meetings of the China-Philippines Bilateral Consultation Mechanism (BCM)
ENDNOTES
For endnotes, please refer to the original pdf document.
| ISEAS Perspective is published electronically by: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace Singapore 119614 Main Tel: (65) 6778 0955 Main Fax: (65) 6778 1735 Get Involved with ISEAS. Please click here: /support/get-involved-with-iseas/ | ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute accepts no responsibility for facts presented and views expressed. Responsibility rests exclusively with the individual author or authors. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. © Copyright is held by the author or authors of each article. | Editorial Chairman: Choi Shing Kwok Editorial Advisor: Tan Chin Tiong Editorial Committee: Terence Chong, Cassey Lee, Norshahril Saat, and Hoang Thi Ha Managing Editor: Ooi Kee Beng Editors: William Choong, Lee Poh Onn, Lee Sue-Ann, and Ng Kah Meng Comments are welcome and may be sent to the author(s). |
“Shifting to a Higher Gear: The Saga of Malaysia’s National Carmaker Proton” by Pritish Bhattacharya and Francis E. Hutchinson
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
• Proton has been a vital part of Malaysia’s industrialization journey and a key pillar of its modernization drive.
• Launched in 1983 to fulfil then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s vision of a pride-infused national car company, the state-owned Proton grew quickly and captured a dominant share of the country’s domestic car market, aided in no small measure by generous protective measures and subsidies.
• However, in the subsequent decades, the car giant lost market share and power due to a variety of challenges, such as non-market performance requirements, less effective protection, and growing competition from a second national car firm and from global car companies.
• The automaker has had a variety of ownership structures over time, but was resolutely kept in domestic hands—public and private. This did increase control over the corporation, but did so at the expense of exposure to and adoption of leading-edge technology.
• This impasse was resolved in 2017, when Proton sold a 49.9 per cent share to the Chinese auto firm Geely. The joint venture has rejuvenated the carmaker, which has begun to reconquer market share through a number of popular SUVs.
• Despite this, the Malaysian auto market is becoming increasingly competitive. Going forward, Proton will need to begin to export significantly to expose its vehicles to new niche markets as well as global standards, obtain and retain skilled workers, and continue to rationalize costs in its supply chains and distributorship.
Trends in Southeast Asia 2024/9, April 2024
“Scrutinizing the DAP’s Success in the 2023 Malaysian State Elections” by Ong Kian Ming
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
• Following the formation of the Unity Government in December 2022, two of its component coalitions, Pakatan Harapan (PH) and Barisan Nasional (BN), jointly campaigned during the state government elections held in August 2023. A key question arising from this cooperation between PH and the BN lead party, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), was the extent to which it would strengthen the appeal of both coalitions, especially among Malay voters.
• Using granular polling station and polling stream data for forty-seven seats contested by the PH member Democratic Action Party (DAP), this paper explores the effect of this relationship on voter support. This Trends in Southeast Asia finds that, contrary to expectations, DAP actually gained voter support from campaigning with UMNO.
• DAP gained an average 5 per cent increase in the level of support from 2022 to 2023, with an 8 per cent increase in Malay support and a 2 per cent increase in Chinese support.
• DAP would probably still have won at least forty-one of these state seats without transferring BN/UMNO votes, but working with UMNO allowed the DAP to win by comfortable margins some of what would usually be marginal seats for the party.
• The increase in support for the DAP was highest in Negeri Sembilan, at 6.7 per cent, followed by Selangor at 5.2 per cent Penang at 4.3 per cent and finally Kedah at 1.4 per cent.
• In general, DAP gained the largest transfer of Malay votes from older voters who show stronger allegiance to BN. These findings show that UMNO’s grassroots outreach is still somewhat effective among older voters but much less so among younger voters.
• The average support for PN in these DAP-contested seats increased from 13.1 per cent in GE2022 to 19.2 per cent in the 2023 state elections. Clearly, more of the Malay votes that previously supported the BN went to the Perikatan Nasional (PN) than to PH. The calculations in this article show that four out of five Malay voters who previously supported BN in these seats voted for PN in the 2023 state elections.
• Going forward, the DAP’s stranglehold over these seats may well become weaker, due to demographic changes, and if turnout and support for PH and the DAP should decrease among non-Malay voters.
Trends in Southeast Asia 2024/8, April 2024
2024/25 “Former Thai PM Thaksin at the Centre of Intrigues and Political Rumours: As Mastermind or Just Victim of Fate?” by Termsak Chalermpalanupap
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- Former two-time Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra is back in Thailand after 17 years of exile overseas.
- He has lately captured a great deal of media and public attention and been at the centre of political intrigues and rumours.
- A recent poll showed him to be the most powerful person in Thai politics – even though he is a convict, whose jail term has just been commuted in a royal clemency from eight years to one.
- It is unclear whether he is actually the mastermind in the Thai political arena, or just a victim of his own complicated fate.
- His youngest daughter Paetongtarn is now leader of Pheu Thai, the main government party. She has no ministerial post in the Srettha Administration; however, she is widely regarded as the prime minister-in-waiting.
- Thaksin still faces two criminal charges in an old lese-majeste case. His younger sister, former prime minister Yingluck, is in exile, fleeing since 2017 a jail term of five years for dereliction of duty.
- Thaksin hopes to be absolved of all pending charges, and to enable Yingluck to return home scot-free.
- In return, Thaksin and Pheu Thai will – under some “secret deals” – work with the conservative establishment to keep the reformist Move Forward Party from gaining government power.
* Termsak Chalermpalanupap is Visiting Fellow and Coordinator of the Thailand Studies Programme, ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.
ISEAS Perspective 2024/25, 5 April 2024
INTRODUCTION
Former two-time prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra[1] has undoubtedly captured a great deal of media and public attention in Thailand lately. In a recent survey, the 75-year-old IT media tycoon turned politician was voted the most influential person in Thai politics, eclipsing Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, who came a distant second.[2]
Thaksin’s youngest daughter, Paetongtarn (36), is now leader of Pheu Thai (PT), the main government party. Thaksin has been grooming her to be prime minister, and she is in line to be the fourth in the Shinawatra family to head a Thai government.[3]
But how soon Paetongtarn, a mother of two with little political experience, will rise to the premiership depends, according to political rumours, on how promptly Thaksin delivers on his “secret deals” with the powers-that-be in the restless conservative establishment.[4]
Ever since he returned from 17 years of exile overseas on 22 August 2023, Thaksin has been at the centre of political intrigues and rumours. What is unclear is whether he is actually the mastermind in the political arena, or just a struggling captive of his own schemes and controversial past.
On his first return, Thaksin looked normal, cheerful and healthy. He paid careful respect to the portrait of King Maha Vajiralongkorn – obviously set up by his family for media consumption. Then he moved swiftly to greet his supporters and several PT bigwigs, including Phumtham Wechayachai, a deputy PT leader and one of the key negotiators for the formation of a new government. Thaksin was then whisked to a Bangkok prison, presumably to start serving eight years of a jail term stemming from past three convictions for corruption and conflict of interest.
That same afternoon, PT’s premiership candidate, Srettha, won approval in parliament to be the 30th prime minister of Thailand.[5] Those who voted for the 61-year-old real estate tycoon included 152 senators who were allies of then Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha. Those senators who supported Deputy Prime Minister General Prawit Wongsuwan, a premiership candidate of Palang Pracharat Party (PPRP), mostly abstained.
The PT has switched sides to team up with the PPRP, Bhumjaithai, and United Thai Nation (three major parties from the previous Prayut Administration), after ditching the Move Forward Party (MFP), which came first in the May 2023 general election. Srettha getting the premiership is widely believed to be part of “secret deals” done between Thaksin and whoever represented the conservative establishment, most probably, in this case, General Prayut.[6] Thaksin and General Prayut used to be sworn enemies, but both have found common interest in stopping the MFP from gaining government power.
Against all poll surveys and pundit predictions, the MFP had scored a huge surprise victory in the general election. It beat the PT – the hottest frontrunner – and came first with 151 House seats and nearly 14.44 million votes (in the second ballot for party-list House seats). The PT finished second with only 141 House seats and about 10.795 million votes. The MFP alone won more House seats and popularity votes than the PPRP, Bhumjaithai, and United Thai Nation combined.[7]
The spectacular victory of the MFP happened despite Thaksin’s active participation behind the scenes from his exile base in Dubai to drum up support for the PT. He even dispatched Paetongtarn to attract young voters. In March 2022, Paetongtarn assumed a high-profile but informal role as the “Head of Pheu Thai Family”. But it was too little and too late. Her political debut could not stop the MFP from overtaking the PT in the election.
THAKSIN’S “SECRET DEALS”
Thaksin’s return from exile is believed to be part of the “secret deals” widely discussed by news commentators and pundits. Their common assumption is that Thaksin, with the support of the PT, agreed to counteract the rise of the reformist MFP, protect the vested interests of the conservative establishment in general, and defend the monarchy in particular.
But what will Thaksin receive in return for his invaluable service?
For starters, Thaksin who had for more than a decade been talking about a homecoming,[8] would finally be allowed to return to Thailand safely, which he did on 22 August 2023. On the day of his return, PT’s premiership candidate, Srettha, won the top government post in parliament, with strong support of senators from General Prayut’s camp. This came in exchange for the PT’s break-up of their alliance with the MFP . The PT+MFP coalition had in July 2023 failed to win the premiership for MFP leader Pita Limjaroenrat – chiefly because of a lack of active support from senators.
Next, Thaksin would be given special consideration for his health issues while in fictitious “detention”. Before midnight on his first day in a Bangkok prison, Thaksin complained of severe chest pain and shortness of breath. He was rushed to the Police Hospital, arriving at 00:20 a.m. on 23 August, and sent to a premium suite on the 14th floor of the hospital. The whole process seemed well-planned and promptly executed.
According to the Corrections Department, Thaksin has had a long history of sickness, including long COVID and damage in his lungs, myocardial ischemia (reduced oxygen and blood flows in heart arteries), high blood pressure, and a weakened spine.[9] Thaksin had to be sent to the Police Hospital – instead of the prison hospital which would have been the case under normal circumstances – because he was suffering from some life-threatening heart conditions, and the prison hospital was not adequately equipped to handle such an emergency.[10]
Thaksin soon received the news that he had been waiting for. On 1 September, in response to Thaksin’s request for royal clemency, the Royal Gazette published the King’s decision to commute Thaksin’s jail term, reducing it from eight years to one.[11] However, in the published announcement, Thaksin was called a “male convict” (นักโทษเด็ดขาดชาย) who “admits guilt of his offence” (ยอมรับผิดในการกระทำ), and “repents for his wrongdoings” (มีความสำนึกในความผิด).[12]
Counter-signing the royal command was General Prayut, in his capacity as the caretaker prime minister. On 29 November, General Prayut was appointed a member of the Privy Council. The appointment, in effect, has removed the 70-year-old army strongman from national politics.
Thaksin might have hoped for a full pardon, so that he could return home as soon as his health permitted. Another setback is that his criminal record cannot be erased.[13] This means he is no longer eligible to hold public offices, certainly not a third premiership term.
Thaksin reportedly underwent several undisclosed treatments, including a surgery to repair torn ligaments in his right shoulder. He was seen in public only once, on 23 October, when he was wheeled out of his room to undergo CT and MRI scans.[14]
On 18 February, Thaksin was released under parole, having served the first 180 days of his one-year jail term under “detention” in the hospital. On his ride home, he was seen wearing a neck brace, and a protective elbow sling on his right arm.
However, unlike others released under parole, the Corrections Department said Thaksin did not need to wear any ankle electronic monitor device due to his old age and health conditions.
On 19 February, he was seen in a wheelchair at the Office of the Attorney-General, where he acknowledged a criminal case against him. He has been charged with violating Section 112, the so-called lese-majeste law, because of a media interview in Seoul in May 2015. He was accused of insulting the previous monarch, King Bhumibol, by implying that the king, who passed away in October 2016, had supported the Army’s coup against Thaksin a decade ago.
Thaksin was also charged with violating the Computer Law of 2017 for causing the creation and circulation of fake news harmful to national security. This particular violation carries a maximum jail term of five years; the violation of the lese-majeste law carries a jail term ranging from three to 15 years. Thaksin pledged not guilty to both charges. He was released on bail of 500,000 baht.
This is not the first time Thaksin has faced the charge of violating the lese-majeste law. Previously. all such similar charges against him had either been dropped by public prosecutors due to lack of evidence, or he was ruled not guilty in court.
The Chief Attorney-General has scheduled 10 April for announcement of his decision on how to proceed in this case against Thaksin. In late 2015, a different Chief Attorney-General put on record his opinion that the case was prosecutable, pending the arrest of Thaksin. Should the Chief Attorney-General decide to prosecute Thaksin, it will still take quite some time, perhaps years, before a final verdict can be reached. Meanwhile, Thaksin will be handicapped by uncertainties, not knowing how and when the lese-majeste case against him will end.
On 20 February, Thaksin received his first VVIP guest at home – former Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen. After a private lunch, Hun Sen returned to Phnom Penh without calling on Prime Minister Srettha.[15] Three days later, it was Srettha’s turn to visit Thaksin. Thaksin has been permitted to travel to his hometown of Chiang Mai, from 14-16 March, for an early Sheng Meng, to pay respect to his deceased parents and ancestors (Hakka Chinese in Moichu, Canton).
BEATEN BUT STILL HOPEFUL
For a short while, the Constitutional Court’s ruling on 24 January to acquit Pita for holding iTV shares[16] raised new hope in the MFP. With his return as an MP, Pita could help the MFP score more political points as the chief opposition party in the House of Representatives. The MFP, after all, can be a potent counterbalance to the PT.
The short-lived optimism was soon brutally dashed by another Constitutional Court’s ruling just one week later. The Constitutional Court, in a unanimous decision by all its nine judges, ruled that the MFP had abused freedom and liberty in order to overthrow the democratic system of government of the constitutional monarchy; this is prohibited under Section 49 of the Constitution. The Constitutional Court ordered the MFP to stop all activities relating to the call to abolish Section 112 of the Criminal Code (the lese-majeste law).[17]
The Constitutional Court cited as unconstitutional two major incidents: the MFP’s use of Section 112 as a campaign issue in the general election of May 2023; and the MFP’s proposed bill submitted on 25 March 2021 by Pita and 43 MPs of the MFP to amend Section 112.[18]
However, the Constitutional Court’s ruling did state that any change to the lese-majeste law can only be done through proper legislative means.[19] This has raised a sticky legal question whether the Constitution Court could find fault with the 44 MPs of the MFP who submitted the controversial bill in 2021, since they were exercising their legitimate legislators’ rights.
After the ruling, the MFP removed from its website all references to its policy on Section 112. Yet, the MFP still questions whether the Constitutional Court has the authority to prevent MPs from doing their job in the House. On 6 March, the MFP proposed to the House Speaker the formation of an ad hoc House committee to study this issue.[20]
The MFP now faces a grim prospect of imminent dissolution as a follow-up punishment for the serious wrongdoings. The offences cited in the ruling of the Constitutional Court constituted a violation of Section 92 (Paragraph 1) of the 2017 Political Party Act. On 11 March, the Election Commissioners reached a unanimous decision to request the Constitutional Court to dissolve the MFP.[21]
The Constitutional Court, when it is its turn to act, may ask the MFP to testify to defend itself. In the case of Future Forward Party, the MFP’s predecessor, the Constitutional Court took less than two months to announce its final decision on 21 February 2020 to that party, and to ban its executive committee members, including founder and party leader, Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, from national politics for ten years.
Facing a similar ban are Pita and other members of the MFP’s executive committee from 2020 to September 2023. Pita and four others are party-list MPs.[22] They can resign before the dissolution of their party and thus enable the MFP to keep those five House seats by filling them with others on the party’s list. After dissolution of a party, its MPs (who are not on the affected executive committee) will have 60 days to join another party and keep their House membership.[23]
Also facing a ban are those 44 MPs who sponsored the bill to propose amendments to the lese-majeste law in 2021. Apart from Pita, the others in this group included several well-known MFP rising stars, notably: Ms Sirikanya Tansakul, Viroj Lakhana-adisorn, Rangsiman Rome, Natthawudh Buapathum, Ms Benja Saengchan, and Pakornvudh Udompipatsakul.[24]
In addition, Pita was saddled with a new criminal conviction on 5 February for organising an unlawful “flash mob” within 150 metres of a royal residence (namely Princess Sirindhorn’s) near the MBK Mall. He is appealing the conviction, which includes 4 months of suspended jail term.[25] A criminal conviction, once finalised in the Supreme Court, disqualifies the convicted from holding public offices – just like in the case of Thaksin.
Once Pita and his colleagues are knocked out from active national politics, who shall then emerge to form the third generation of reformists to continue working for structural changes in Thailand? Some party insiders hold hope of seeing some among the MFP’s current economic advisors to step forward.[26] Ms Sirikanya, leader of the group, should be able to do so, at least temporarily.[27]
WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
Obviously, most in the embattled MFP would not give in to despair. They believe the MFP, standing on the shoulder of its dissolved predecessor Future Forward Party, has woken up Thailand with its convincing call for reforms. A significant number of Thai voters have embraced the MFP’s reformist ideas and can-do mentality. More than 14 million of them voted for MFP candidates in the last election, even without knowing many of them personally. Their common goal now is to win more than 250 House seats in the next general election and form a single party government in order to change Thailand for the better.
However, in the next electoral battle, it will be much more difficult for any single party to score a majority victory. Traditional conservative parties are trying to rebrand themselves as “neo-conservative”, “modern conservative” or “liberal democratic”. They still enjoy implicit support from their allies in the bureaucracy, the military, and even the judiciary.
At the same time, the skilful PT will be able to make good use of its government power to gain popular support. It can also count on Thaksin’s political ingenuity and connections. Once again, the PT + Thaksin and the conservative establishment will still share one common interest in the unfinished crucial mission to stop the reformist movement.
Rumours are spreading, once again, that a “new secret deal” is being developed. Thaksin certainly hopes to be absolved of all remaining criminal charges in the pending lese-majeste case. More importantly, he also wants Yingluck to be able to return from exile without having to face any charges.
The former first Thai female premier mysteriously fled the country through the Thai-Cambodian border in August 2017. Her bail money of 30 million baht has been confiscated. One month after her disappearance, she was convicted for dereliction of duty (for failing to stop the massive corruption in the paddy pledging scheme of her government). And she was sentenced to five years in jail.
Spending time in a hospital, a la Thaksin, after returning from exile and awaiting a royal clemency will be more difficult to arrange for Yingluck. The 56-year-old single mother of one teenage son looks healthy and in high spirits in her seventh year of exile. One practical alternative for Yingluck is “home detention” in lieu of actual imprisonment.[28] All in all, Thaksin will be asking for quite a lot of favours for himself and Yingluck. But what can he give in return?
CONCLUSION
Several past rumours have turned out to be true: It had turned out that Thaksin has not needed to spend time in prison; Srettha – who has no leadership role in the PT – did become the 30th prime minister of Thailand; Paetongtarn did walk in unopposed to lead the PT; and Move Forward Party is facing dissolution, etc.
More exciting developments are unfolding in Thailand. And soon it will be clearer whether Thaksin is indeed the mastermind, or just a victim of his own complicated fate.
ENDNOTES
For endnotes, please refer to the original pdf document.
| ISEAS Perspective is published electronically by: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace Singapore 119614 Main Tel: (65) 6778 0955 Main Fax: (65) 6778 1735 Get Involved with ISEAS. Please click here: /support/get-involved-with-iseas/ | ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute accepts no responsibility for facts presented and views expressed. Responsibility rests exclusively with the individual author or authors. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. © Copyright is held by the author or authors of each article. | Editorial Chairman: Choi Shing Kwok Editorial Advisor: Tan Chin Tiong Editorial Committee: Terence Chong, Cassey Lee, Norshahril Saat, and Hoang Thi Ha Managing Editor: Ooi Kee Beng Editors: William Choong, Lee Poh Onn, Lee Sue-Ann, and Ng Kah Meng Comments are welcome and may be sent to the author(s). |
2024/24 “Japan and Southeast Asia Set to Co-Create an Interwoven Future” by Hoang Thi Ha and Pham Thi Phuong Thao
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- Decades of cultivating relations between Japan and Southeast Asia have not only strengthened their diplomatic and economic ties but also deepened interpersonal and societal interactions, ultimately shifting Southeast Asians’ postwar animosity towards Japan into a prevailing positive sentiment today.
- While Japan’s significance to the region in the economic sphere has relatively declined, its soft power and people-to-people connections with the region have never been more profound.
- The burgeoning human connections between Japan and Southeast Asia are exemplified by their increasingly symbiotic labour relations, Japan’s longstanding contributions to Southeast Asia’s human resources development, and growing mutual tourist flows and cultural appreciation.
- These connections will invigorate Japan-Southeast Asia relations going forward, and underscore Southeast Asia’s growing importance to Japan beyond its traditional role as a market or investment destination.
- Southeast Asia is becoming a reservoir of alternative resources for sustaining Japan’s economic growth, signifying a more balanced and reciprocal partnership.
*Hoang Thi Ha is Senior Fellow and Co-coordinator of the Regional Strategic and Political Studies Programme, and Pham Thi Phuong Thao is Senior Research Officer of the ASEAN Studies Centre at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore.
ISEAS Perspective 2024/24, 3 April 2024
INTRODUCTION
Last year, ASEAN and Japan celebrated the 50th anniversary of their dialogue relations with the establishment of the ASEAN-Japan comprehensive strategic partnership. The evolution of this relationship, initially overshadowed by bitter memories of Japan’s occupation and atrocities during the Second World War, as well as concerns over Japan’s economic expansion in the 1960s and 1970s, into one characterised by deep strategic trust and mutual interdependence today is a remarkable achievement. This transformation has been made possible thanks to Southeast Asia’s forward-looking and pragmatic approach that prioritised their security and development needs rather than their past trauma. It has also been nurtured through decades of Japanese strategic assurances, economic engagements, and sustained efforts to be a steadfast friend and a good neighbour.[1] A milestone in this journey is the Fukuda Doctrine, which laid the foundations for Japan’s contemporary relations with Southeast Asia. Launched in 1977 amid a wave of anti-Japanese sentiments, the doctrine committed Japan to pursue peace and relinquish military dominance, support regional economic growth, and foster a “heart-to-heart” equal partnership with Southeast Asian nations.[2]
Today, Japan enjoys the highest level of trust among the public and the elite circles in Southeast Asia, surpassing all other major powers.[3] This achievement has been attributed to several factors. First, Japan has played a crucial and constructive role in shaping the regional order through its active engagement with and support for ASEAN multilateralism and its member countries, serving as a stabilising force amid periods of US disengagement, neglect or distraction from the region. Second, Japan has been a significant contributor to Southeast Asia’s economic ascendancy through its investments, trade ties and development assistance. It is the largest provider of Official Development Assistance (ODA) to the region, its fourth largest trading partner, and among its top sources of foreign direct investment (FDI).[4]
Another crucial yet often overlooked factor is the intensity of people-to-people connections between Japan and Southeast Asians. These connections have never been more profound in history. Nearly 50 years since the Fukuda Doctrine, the “heart-to-heart” dimension in the relationship is coming to fruition not only at the inter-governmental level but also in the broader fabric of societal and interpersonal interactions.[5] This article delves into the expanding human connections between Japan and Southeast Asia in three dimensions, namely (i) labour cooperation; (ii) education and human resource development; and (iii) tourism and cultural flows. It argues that these connections will bring new momentum to Japan-Southeast Asia relations. Notably, these human ties underscore the growing importance of Southeast Asia to Japan, transcending its traditional role as a market and production base for Japanese products and companies. The region is becoming a reservoir of alternative resources for sustaining Japan’s economic growth, signifying a shift towards a more balanced and reciprocal partnership between both sides.
INCREASINGLY SYMBIOTIC LABOUR RELATIONS
Beyond trade, aid and investment, the symbiosis between Japan and Southeast Asia extends significantly into the labour sector. Southeast Asia has become an increasingly important source of labour for Japan, which has been grappling with economic challenges stemming from its ageing population and shrinking workforce. The Japanese population was 122.4 million in 2023, down 800,523 from a year earlier, marking the largest drop since 1968.[6] Of these, 59.5% or 72.8m are of working age (15-64), and this figure is projected to drop to 45.4 million in 2070.[7] According to the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), to maintain economic growth, Japan will need 6.74 million foreign-born workers by 2040, nearly quadrupling the number of foreign workers in Japan in 2020.[8]
As Japan’s demographic challenges become more acute, the importance of foreign workers is poised to grow. In October 2023, the number of foreign workers hit a record 2.05 million, up 12.4% from 2022 and a two-fold increase from 2012. Vietnam is now the largest source of foreign labour in Japan, with 518,364 workers (25.3% of the total). The Philippines is another significant source, with 226,846 workers (11.1%).[9] The number of workers from Indonesia and Myanmar is increasing rapidly.[10] Southeast Asian nationals collectively represent one-third of all foreign residents in Japan (Table 1).
Table 1: Southeast Asian Nationals in Japan
| Total foreign residents in Japan | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 |
| 2,887,116 | 2,760,635 | 3,075,213 | |
| Indonesia | 66,832 | 59,820 | 98,865 |
| Cambodia | 16,659 | 14,736 | 19,604 |
| Singapore | 2,958 | 2,738 | 3,306 |
| Thailand | 53,379 | 50,324 | 56,701 |
| The Philippines | 279,660 | 276,615 | 298,740 |
| Viet Nam | 448,053 | 432,934 | 489,312 |
| Malaysia | 10,318 | 9,659 | 11,045 |
| Myanmar | 35,049 | 37,246 | 56,239 |
| ASEAN | 912,908 | 884,072 | 1,033,812 |
Source: Immigration Services Agency of Japan, 2023
Japan’s demand for foreign labour has necessitated the establishment of legal and regulatory frameworks for this purpose. In 1993, Japan introduced the Technical Intern Training Programme (TITP) with the intent to make international contributions through human resource development. However, the TITP with its strict transfer restrictions has been criticised as providing a backdoor for Japanese employers to secure cheap labour without sufficient protection of foreign workers’ rights, leading to labour abuses.[11] In 2019, the Specified Skilled Worker (SSW) system was launched to recruit foreign specialists to work in certain industrial fields. All Southeast Asian countries, except Brunei and Singapore, have signed cooperation agreements with Japan regarding the SSW system. Vietnam is the largest participant in both the TITP and SSW schemes, accounting for 54% of TITP trainees and 59% of SSW.[12]
Amid mounting criticisms of the TITP, an advisory panel for the Japanese government issued a report in 2023 proposing its replacement with an alternative scheme to be incorporated within the SSW framework. One of the aims is to facilitate foreign workers trained under the new scheme to shift to the SSW so that more foreign workers will be able to perform highly skilled jobs.[13] The report is anticipated to pave the way for the Japanese government to submit a bill to the parliament in 2024 to enact the new scheme.[14] The imperative to reform the TITP, originally designed to foster human resources for the benefit of the sending countries, reflects the evolving nature of labour cooperation between Japan and Southeast Asia, underscoring the significance of Southeast Asia as a co-creator of prosperity for Japan rather than merely being a beneficiary.
However, a significant segment of the Japanese populace maintains deep-seated reservations about migration. 35% of Japanese respondents in a 2020 survey done by the International Labour Organization (ILO) said that their country does not need low-skilled workers, 52% thought that crime rates had increased due to migration, and 41% thought that migrant workers threatened Japanese culture and heritage. The survey also pointed out that Japanese people have the lowest level of encounters with foreign workers, compared to Southeast Asian labour importing countries such as Singapore and Malaysia.[15]
While being mindful of public backlash, the Japanese government has taken incremental steps to attract more foreign labour. As highlighted by Yusaku Yoshikawa, “attracting foreign workers is not an act of kindness, but an imperative for Japan”.[16] This has become all the more urgent as Japan is becoming less appealing to Southeast Asians due to the situation of stagnant wages, a weakened Yen, and limited prospects of job replacement and long-term residence associated with the TITP scheme. New measures adopted by the Japanese government in 2023 include two new immigration pathways to attract foreign talents[17] and amending the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act which is meant to enhance immigration management and protect the rights of foreign nationals.[18] The SSW visa will likely be expanded to include new sectors of road transportation, railways, forestry and timber.[19]
As for Southeast Asia, Japan has made concrete commitments in the Implementation Plan of the 2023 ASEAN-Japan Joint Vision Statement to “further ease barriers to entry for foreign workers in professional and technical fields to work in Japan”, including through language training, education and skill programmes for Southeast Asian workers, and explore mutual recognition of workers’ skills.[20] Japan should also foster mutual understanding and integration between local communities and foreign workers. With foreign nationals projected to constitute 10.2% of Japan’s population in 2067, they will increasingly become an integral part of local communities in both cities and rural areas.[21] Therefore, adjustments and accommodations are imperative to prevent backlash from arising on either side. On their part, Southeast Asian countries should step up efforts to curb misconduct by sending organisations, eliminate brokers in the process, and educate their workers about Japanese laws and regulations.
C0-CREATING TALENT: JAPAN’S SUPPORT FOR SOUTHEAST ASIA’S HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT
Closely intertwined with Southeast Asia-Japan labour relations is the significance of Japan’s support for education, training, and capacity building in the region over many decades. Japan has been a trailblazer in this respect with the roll-out of the ASEAN Human Resources Development Project in the 1980s aiming to “cultivate talent for the future of the ASEAN region”. Japan has played an instrumental role in aiding industrial human resource development and higher education in the original ASEAN members in the 1980s and in providing capacity-building for the newer ASEAN members – Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam (CLMV) since their opening-up and reforms in the 1990s.
Japan’s support includes the establishment of human development institutions in these countries (Table 2), capacity building projects for their government and education institutions, and provision of scholarships in Japanese universities. According to JICA, Japan-supported programmes have cultivated 12,508 industrial talents in the region as of 2022.[22] Japan is also the biggest bilateral ODA provider for Southeast Asia’s education sector with US$1.03 billion spent for 2,760 projects from 2015 to 2021, surpassing the US which contributed US$670 million for 651 projects. Conversely, China’s contribution in this domain remains modest, totalling only US$155 million for 41 projects.[23]
Table 2: Japan-Supported Human Development Institutions in Southeast Asia
| Country | Japan-Supported Human Development Centres |
| Brunei | N.A. |
| Cambodia | Cambodia-Japan Cooperation Centre |
| Indonesia | Center for Vocational and Extension Service Training |
| Laos | Laos-Japan Human Resource Development Institute |
| Malaysia | Centre for Instructor and Advanced Skill Training |
| Myanmar | Myanmar-Japan Center for Human Resources Development |
| Philippines | Philippines Human Resources Development Center |
| Singapore | Singapore Productivity Development Project (the Kaizen project) |
| Thailand | Thailand Primary Healthcare Training Center; Thai-Japan Institute for Technological Promotion; Sirinthorn International Institute of Technology |
| Vietnam | Vietnam-Japan Institute for Human Resources Development |
Source: Compiled by authors, based on different sources
In addition to bilateral frameworks, Japan has sponsored several multi-year multilateral initiatives that have earned widespread acclaim and appreciation from generations of participants. These initiatives include the Japan East-Asia Network of Exchange for Students and Youths (JENESYS)[24] and the Attachment Programme at the ASEAN Secretariat for CLMV Diplomats/Officials.[25] Japan’s support for ASEAN integration through education and human resources development has garnered significant appreciation from Southeast Asians, as evidenced in a public survey conducted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan in 2019.[26]
This support does not merely represent a benefactor-beneficiary relationship but as a collaborative endeavour in human resource development. Japanese companies, both domestically and overseas, increasingly rely on quality labour from Southeast Asian countries. Therefore, investing in human capital development in the region not only benefits Southeast Asia but also strengthens Japan’s economic ties and competitiveness in the global market. Acknowledging this symbiotic relationship, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) includes “building an ecosystem for co-creation of dynamic human capital” as a key component of its ASEAN-Japan Economic Co-Creation Vision and Future Design and Action Plan. This component encompasses building a network of young Japanese and ASEAN business leaders and promoting the circulation of human resources through endowed courses, overseas internship programmes and job fairs, among other things. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s announcement at the 2023 ASEAN-Japan commemorative summit further underscores Japan’s dedication to human resources development in Southeast Asia, with a plan to train 5,000 people in domains such as maritime safety and digitalisation over the next three years.[27]
MUTUAL TOURISM AND CULTURAL APPRECIATION
One of the most remarkable achievements in Japan-Southeast Asia relations is the transformation of Southeast Asians’ postwar animosity into a prevailing positive attitude towards Japan across the region. This stands in contrast with Northeast Asia, where Japan’s militant past remains deeply apprehended and heavily politicised. According to a public survey in 2023, the perception of Japan as “a combative nation” has significantly diminished among Southeast Asians, registering at only 4% whereas 88% positively appreciate Japan as a “peace-loving nation”.[28] Instead, their top impressions about Japan are its strong economy and advanced technology, rich traditions and culture, natural beauty, high standard of living, and its introduction of new cultural trends such as animation, fashion, and cuisine. As noted by Lam Peng Er, “Time does not naturally heal, but common interests, patience, goodwill, and political wisdom on both sides helped to eventually overcome this problem of the heart”.[29]
The “heart-to-heart relationship” between ASEAN and Japan finds its most tangible expression in the cultural sphere and the burgeoning tourism ties between their peoples. Initially, cultural and tourist flows predominantly represented a one-way movement from Japan to Southeast Asia. However, in the past decade, there has been a notable shift towards more balanced, two-way interactions and mutual appreciation. For instance, visitor arrivals to Japan from six major ASEAN countries, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, increased more than six folds from 325,000 in 1990 to more than 2 million in 2015.[30] Between 2008-2018, the number of Vietnamese tourists to Japan soared by 868.1%, followed by Thailand (489.3%) and Indonesia (448.7%).[31] Before the pandemic, Southeast Asian tourists visiting Japan surpassed 3.8 million, comprising 12% of total international arrivals to Japan in 2019. They also play a significant role in Japan’s post-pandemic tourism recovery, with 3.6 million arrivals in 2023, accounting for 14.5% of total international arrivals to Japan (Table 3).[32] According to the State of Southeast Asia 2023 survey done by ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, Japan is the most popular tourist destination for more than 27% of Southeast Asian respondents, surpassing the second-place EU (15.3%) and third-place US (9.7%).[33]
Table 3: Southeast Asian Visitors to Japan
| 2019 | 2023 | |
| Thailand | 1,318,977 | 995,500 |
| Singapore | 492,252 | 591,300 |
| Malaysia | 501,592 | 415,700 |
| Indonesia | 412,779 | 429,400 |
| The Philippines | 613,114 | 622,300 |
| Vietnam | 495,501 | 573,900 |
| ASEAN-6 | 3,834,215 | 3,628,100 |
| International visitors | 31,882, 049 | 25,066, 100 |
(Source: Japan Tourism Statistics https://statistics.jnto.go.jp/en/graph/)
The burgeoning tourism ties between Japan and Southeast Asia are underpinned by a growing understanding and familiarity at the societal level between both sides while memories of wartime experiences with imperial Japan – though not forgotten – have gradually faded away particularly among younger generations.[34] Japan’s cultural influence in Southeast Asia extends across domains such as cuisine, design, lifestyle, traditional arts, and trendy fashion. According to an opinion poll on perceptions of Japan conducted by Japan’s foreign ministry in 2023, the top aspects of Japanese culture that attract Southeast Asians are its food (81%), lifestyle and way of thinking (63%), and animations (61%).[35] The appreciation of Japanese culture and design has boosted Southeast Asian consumption of Japanese products especially in the content and creative industries. This trend has been propelled by initiatives such as the “Cool Japan Strategy” and the “Cool Japan Fund” which were introduced by the Japanese government in 2012 and 2013, respectively. These aim to leverage Japan’s cultural influence to stimulate demand for Japanese products and services. In Southeast Asia, the fund has supported various endeavours, including opening of Japanese retail and dining outlets, promotion of Japanese content, and collaboration with local companies to co-create products that blend Japanese and local elements.[36]
A compelling illustration of this phenomenon is the success of Uniqlo clothing, Japan’s most valuable retail brand. Since opening its first Southeast Asian store in Singapore in 2009, Uniqlo has significantly expanded its footprint, and plans to quadruple its number of stores in the region within 10 years, aiming to reach the same level as in China. The Uniqlo story shows the potential of Southeast Asia as a driver for Japanese economic growth. Furthermore, Japanese pop culture – notably anime and manga – is in high demand among young Southeast Asians, with the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia being among the top five countries globally in terms of anime consumption.[37] This has even given rise to “glocalised versions” of Japan’s cultural products such as hijab cosplay, Duterte anime and Doreamon tofu.[38]
ASEAN countries are also popular destinations for Japanese people; more than 5.7 million Japanese tourists visited the region in 2019, a million more than in 2015.[39] Singapore, Manila and Bangkok are among the top ten overseas destinations for Japanese travellers.[40] With its cultural tapestry and beautiful landscapes, the region offers a wealth of experiences that are both distinct from and complementary to Japanese culture and nature. In recent years, there has been a growing presence of Southeast Asia delicacies in Japan. Another noteworthy trend is the increasing number of Japanese long-stay tourists or lifestyle migrants to Southeast Asia, particularly among retirees and young individuals seeking a better cost of living and a different way of life.[41] There are over 200,000 Japanese nationals residing in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, accounting for 16% of the Japanese expatriate population worldwide.[42]
CONCLUSION
Decades of nurturing connections between Japan and Southeast Asia have deepened their cultural and social bonds, laying the foundation for a more balanced and mutually beneficial relationship. Now more than ever, these people-to-people connections also provide the ballast for Japan’s soft power, given that its economic influence has relatively declined with the rise of other competitors, especially China and South Korea. Recognising this, the ASEAN-Japan commemorative summit in 2023 agreed to further the “Heart-to-Heart Partners” and “Partners for Co-creation of Economy and Society of the Future” initiatives, alongside “Partners for Peace and Stability”.[43] The “heart-to-heart” and “co-creation” themes underscore a shift in the relationship between Japan and Southeast Asia towards greater reciprocity and equality. This is because the region is now becoming a centre of global growth and offers a large pool of human talent, creativity and entrepreneurship that can synergise with Japan’s needs. The recently revised Development Cooperation Charter guiding Japan’s ODA also highlights the imperative for “co-creation” of social values and new solutions with developing countries, based on dialogue, cooperation and equal partnership.[44] Of note, Japan aims to bring back these values and solutions to Japanese society with a hope to spur its economy. Among those values, one of key significance to both Southeast Asia and Japan is the acceptance of foreign workers and a multicultural and inclusive community.[45] This forward-looking vision marks the beginning of an important shift in Japan’s perspective, as it recognises the significance of Southeast Asia in fostering mutual growth and collaboratively addressing new challenges to its evolving society.
ENDNOTES
For endnotes, please refer to the original pdf document.
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