“Determinants of COVID-19 Vaccine Rollouts in Southeast Asia” by Tham Siew Yean and Andrew Kam Jia Yi
2022/86 “The State of Southeast Asia’s Green Recovery Post Covid-19” by Melinda Martinus and Sharon Seah
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- ASEAN countries are eager to make a quick economic recovery to make up for lost time. It is timely therefore to evaluate their planned trajectories for a green transformation as some actions taken presently could inadvertently lock in their future decisions.
- ASEAN countries (minus Brunei and Laos) launched a total of US$472.95 billion worth of stimulus packages during the period of 2020-2021, which is equivalent to 14 per cent of the region’s total GDP in 2020. The distribution of support varies from country to country.
- Seven countries in the region received green-related donor assistance in the period 2020-2021 amounting to US$9.92 billion. These were Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam. However, over 96 per cent of this assistance was in the form of repayable loans.
- Despite the high levels of interest in green investments in the region, some governments are wavering in their commitments to clean energy transition; this is partly due to the Ukraine crisis which has led to high energy and food prices, compounded by sustained inflationary pressures.
* Melinda Martinus is Lead Researcher (Socio-Cultural) at the ASEAN Studies Centre, while Sharon Seah is Senior Fellow and Coordinator of the ASEAN Studies Centre and Climate Change in Southeast Asia Programme, at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute . The authors thank Beatrice Celine Zamora Riingen for providing data assistance and Siwage Dharma Negara for comments and suggestions.
ISEAS Perspective 2022/86, 26 August 2022
INTRODUCTION
ASEAN countries are moving at full speed to reopen their economies after more than two years of living with COVID-19. In the first quarter of 2022, Singapore, Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Indonesia fully reopened their travel borders for vaccinated tourists, signalling a determination to accelerate their economic recovery this year. The Philippines, Laos, and Brunei followed suit by lifting their pre-departure COVID-19 tests for fully vaccinated international travellers in May 2022. By July 2022, there were practically no restrictions left for travellers. Relaxation on mask-wearing was implemented in some countries.
Despite the spread of the Omicron variant and the war in Ukraine triggering global economic uncertainty and disruptions in commodity markets, the Asian Development Bank upgraded its forecast for the ASEAN region from 4.9 to 5 per cent in its July Supplement Outlook (ADB, 2022a). The top three economies with the highest predicted GDP are Vietnam (6.5%), the Philippines (6.5%), and Indonesia (5.2%) (ADB, 2022b).
ASEAN governments are now preoccupied with ensuring a quick and full economic recovery to make up for two and a half years of lost time. These unprecedented times also make it timelier than ever to evaluate their planned trajectories for a green transformation, especially since some actions presently taken could inadvertently lock in governments’ future decisions; for example, existing technologies and infrastructure with a combination of institutional governance structures and behavioural norms may lock in countries to a certain path dependency in their efforts to decarbonise (Seto et al, 2016).
This perspective seeks to evaluate ASEAN’s green recovery post-COVID-19. The first section will evaluate how ASEAN economies have utilised their stimulus funding during the period of COVID-19. Looking at the assistance provided by multilateral banks, the second section will analyse the green transformation component in donor assistance. This is particularly important to understand the big picture and the overall appetite for green transformation. Zooming in on the energy sector specifically, the third section will focus on three ASEAN countries to examine if they have been inspired to leverage the COVID-19 crisis and the Ukraine war crisis to transition to cleaner energy.
HOW STIMULUS PACKAGES WERE UTILISED
Over the past two years, the bulk of COVID-19 stimulus measures in ASEAN countries has been targeted at ramping up economic recovery and public health capacity. At the same time, development experts have suggested that countries should embed green stimulus measures to stimulate short-run economic activity while preserving, protecting, and enhancing environmental and natural resources in the long term (Strand and Toman, 2010). Green stimulus could include fiscal measures with a long-term vision, fossil subsidy reform, environmental taxation, and natural capital investment. Countries could also focus on key sectoral areas to expand their green recovery efforts in electricity decarbonisation, building efficiency, sustainable transportation, nature-based solutions, circular economy, and green finance (Dagnet and Jaeger, 2020).
ASEAN countries mostly launched various financial and monetary measures to cushion the impact of COVID-19 reversal from the year 2020 to 2021, however, and most of these were in the form of short-term economic assistance through (1) disbursement of cash assistance to retrenched workers and vulnerable groups, (2) supporting micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) operations, (3) providing financial assistance and incentives to the heavily-hit critical economic sectors, namely aviation and tourism, and most importantly (4) strengthening emergency health responses such as testing capacity and vaccination (Martinus and Seah, 2020).
According to the COVID-19 Stimulus Tracker provided by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for West Asia (UNESCWA), ASEAN countries (minus Brunei and Laos) launched a total of US$472.95 billion worth of stimulus packages during the period of 2020-2021 or the equivalent of 14 per cent of the region’s total GDP in 2020 (see Appendix 1). Among these countries, Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia were the top three spenders on COVID-19-related stimulus relative to their GDP; Singapore spent approximately 37.36 per cent on stimulus spending relative to their GDP, while Thailand and Malaysia spent more than 20 per cent of the same.
There were differences in how ASEAN countries disbursed their stimulus packages. Stimulus packages in low and low-medium-income countries such as Myanmar, the Philippines, and Cambodia were intended to help with the poor and vulnerable population. As Appendix 1 illustrates, in Myanmar, for instance, more than 70 per cent of the total stimulus packages were disbursed for social insurance. In the Philippines, more than 50 per cent of the country’s total stimulus spending was intended for social assistance.
Medium to high-income countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand spent significantly less of their stimulus expenditure for health-related support compared to other low-income countries. This is probably due to the fact that these countries already have relatively robust health care infrastructure and facilities in place.
It is also interesting to note that Vietnam spent its stimulus packages (85.62 per cent) mostly on granting loans and tax benefits — the highest rate among ASEAN countries. This could be due to the national government’s priority to incentivise industries, businesses, and manufacturers rather than households and individuals during the pandemic (Medina, 2020). During the first stage of the pandemic, Vietnam saw a low spread of COVID-19 infection due to its proactive approaches in containing the disease, and it thus spent relatively less on public health and social assistance (Chi, 2021). But subsequently, the country was hit hard by the delta variant which led the government to increase measures to contain the outbreak (Huong, 2021).
Unfortunately, where environmental measures are concerned, ASEAN countries have missed the window of opportunity to leverage the COVID-19 crisis. A study from the Global Recovery Observatory found that six ASEAN countries; Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, and Vietnam allocated zero recovery spending for the environment in 2020 (Oxford University Economic Recovery Project, 2022); the other four ASEAN countries were not covered in the study. Our previous study revealed that only three ASEAN countries, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Singapore introduced a modest amount of green investments in 2021 in their national budget. But even those measures were not necessarily a direct response to the pandemic, but were instead part of their national planning (Martinus and Seah, 2021).
GREEN TRANSFORMATION ASSISTANCE
During the pandemic, various multilateral donors played a critical role in assisting ASEAN member states, particularly low and middle-income countries. Our previous research estimated that as of 30 April 2021, seven ASEAN countries: Cambodia, Lao PDR, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam received US$ 15.67 billion in health-related assistance from four multilateral banks: the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the World Bank (WB), the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank (AIIB), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (Martinus and Seah, 2021).
In the period 2020 to 2021, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the World Bank (WB) and the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank (AIIB) disbursed a total of US$9.92 billion to fund green-related activities in seven ASEAN countries: Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Philippines, and Vietnam (see Appendix 2). The assistance was disbursed through a combination of loans and grants—notably with 96 per cent in the form of repayable loans. This green-related assistance includes investments in improving disaster risk resilience, sustainable agriculture, green energy transition, water infrastructure, and sustainable forestry, and so forth.
Indonesia and the Philippines were the two largest recipients with more than US$3 billion green-related assistance provided to each over the course of two years. Various assistance provided to these two countries showed the high appetite of both governments and donors for green-related investments. This could be due to relatively high economic growth projection on both countries. Indonesia and the Philippines are among the top three ASEAN countries with the highest predicted GDP growth in 2022 (ADB, 2022c). It should be noted that further studies on private sector green-related investment are needed for a holistic view of appetites for green transformation in these two countries.
There is no scope within this paper to examine the debt levels of Southeast Asian countries when accepting these loans. Global debt rose to US$226 trillion due to the Covid-19 crisis. The IMF’s Global Debt Database documented the largest one-year debt surge after World War II in 2021 with government borrowing accounting for slightly more than half of the increase (IMF, 2022). The emerging markets and low-income developing countries accounted for small shares of the global debt increase but they also faced higher debt ratios due to the large fall in nominal GDP in 2020 (Ibid). The danger, as the IMF warns, is that if global interest rates increase at a rapid pace and growth falters, the debt sustainability of governments would be in question (Ibid). It may bear watching to see how the combination of recovery loans against sustained high inflationary patterns affect the repayment abilities of these countries later on.
POLICIES AND MEASURES FOR CLEAN ENERGY TRANSITION
The steady flow of donor-related assistance to the region demonstrates high levels of interest in green investments in the region. We observe a similar pattern in the issuance of sustainable bonds in the region. The ASEAN Sustainable Finance State of the Market 2021 report reported exceptionally strong growth of green, social and sustainability (GSS) bonds, and loans for the region (Manuamorn, Nguyen, and Tukiainen, 2022). The ASEAN sustainable debt market expanded 76.5 per cent year-on-year with nearly two-thirds of GSS deals being green themed (ibid, p.4). According to one report, ASEAN and East Asia constituted 18.1% of the global sustainable bonds, second only to Europe (Loh and Regalado, 2022).
Despite these trends, some ASEAN governments’ efforts in energy transitions are wavering (see Appendix 3). Over the course of the pandemic, they leveraged the economic crisis to introduce various energy transition policies but nevertheless adopted some environmentally-harmful measures. Due to the absence of data, we decided to focus on Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam as case studies of commitment to green transformation.
In the early stages of the pandemic, the government of Indonesia inevitably provided tax incentives for oil and gas and aviation companies to save employment in these industries and protect the economy at large. When the economy recovered slightly, the appetite to increase investments in the renewable energy sector improved. Various policies and programmes such as Program Listrik Surya Nusantara and the elimination of Value Added Tax (VAT) and income tax for various renewable energy projects were introduced. Unfortunately, the war in Ukraine which caused global energy supply crunch inadvertently pushed Indonesia to provide a subsidy package for energy consumption.
The governments of the Philippines and Vietnam are also found to be similarly faltering in their commitments. Although both governments had introduced relatively progressive policies to advance renewable energy and decarbonisation plans when their countries were able to mitigate the COVID-19 crisis, the surging energy and food crisis resulting from the Ukraine war has inevitably pushed them to return to environmentally harmful measures. But unlike Indonesia, which has plans (Sulaiman and Soroyo, 2022) to introduce an additional fossil fuel subsidy package for general consumers, the Philippines (Lagare, 2022) utilised a more targeted measure by providing cash grants and fossil fuel subsidies for low-income groups such as fishermen, farmers and public utility vehicle (PUV) drivers. Similarly, Vietnam does not plan to increase fossil fuel subsidies but intends to temporarily reduce its environmental tax on petroleum products (Viet Nam News, 2022).
Although Vietnam’s and the Philippines’ measures are relatively more calibrated in responding to the global inflationary crisis, there will be those who may potentially backtrack their climate commitments they made earlier at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow last year. Vietnam and Indonesia pledged to achieve a net-zero target in 2050 and 2060 respectively, while the Philippines is committed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 75% by 2030. State Parties to the Paris Agreement have been urged to strengthen their commitments in the lead-up to COP27 in Egypt.
CONCLUSION
The ASEAN region is currently facing a double whammy challenge of COVID-19 recovery and the global inflationary pressures caused by the Ukraine war. Although in general the appetite for green transformation of the governments and international organisations in the region remains high, reducing dependence on oil, gas, and coal has proven difficult. Should ASEAN countries fail to make ambitious moves towards greening the energy sector – one of the largest contributors of greenhouse gas emissions in the region, they are at risk of not achieving their net-zero pledges or their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement. There remains much needed progressive decarbonisation, and energy transition levers such as regulatory framework, investments, national planning, public-private partnerships, and carbon taxation to help them accelerate their climate ambitions.
References
Asian Development Bank, “Asian Development Outlook, Supplement, July 2022,” July 2022a, https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/page/810921/ados-july2022-presentation-slides.pdf.
Asian Development Bank, “GDP Growth in Asia and the Pacific, Asian Development Outlook (ADO),” 2022b, https://data.adb.org/dataset/gdp-growth-asia-and-pacific-asian-development-outlook. (accessed 15 July 2022)
Asian Development Bank, “GDP Growth in Asia and the Pacific, Asian Development Outlook (ADO).”, 2022c, (accessed 15 July 2022).
Ayman Falak Medina, “Vietnam to Issue Incentives to Counter COVID-19 Impact,” ASEAN Briefing, March 17, 2020, https://www.aseanbriefing.com/news/vietnam-issue-incentives-counter-covid-19-impact/.
Chi Nguyen Thi Yen et al., “Vietnam’s Success Story against COVID-19,” Public Health in Practice 2 (November 1, 2021): 100132, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.puhip.2021.100132.
Dylan Loh and Francesca Regalado, “ASEAN Governments Rush to Issue Green Bonds”, 4 July 2022, https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/Bonds/ASEAN-governments-rush-to-issue-green-bonds
Huong Le Thu, “Delta Variant Outbreak Challenges Vietnam’s COVID-19 Response Strategy,” Brookings (blog), August 11, 2021, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2021/08/11/delta-variant-outbreak-challenges-vietnams-covid-19-response-strategy/.
IMFBlog, “Global Debt Reaches a Record $226 Trillion,” IMF Blog (blog), accessed August 7, 2022, https://blogs.imf.org/2021/12/15/global-debt-reaches-a-record-226-trillion/.
Jon Strand and Michael Toman, “‘Green Stimulus,’ Economic Recovery, and Long-Term Sustainable Development” (Washington, DC: World Bank, January 2010), https://doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-5163.
Jordeene Lagare, “Additional P600-M Fuel Subsidy for Farmers, Fishers | Inquirer News,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, March 12, 2022, https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1567044/additional-p600-m-fuel-subsidy-for-farmers-fishers.
Karen C. Seto et al., “Carbon Lock-In: Types, Causes, and Policy Implications,” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 41, no. 1 (November 1, 2016): 425–52, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-110615-085934.
Melinda Martinus and Sharon Seah, “Are ASEAN Stimulus Dollars Going towards Sustainability?,” ISEAS Perspective 87, no. 2020/87 (August 19, 2020), /wp-content/uploads/2020/08/ISEAS_Perspective_2020_87.pdf.
Melinda Martinus and Sharon Seah, “ASEAN’s COVID-19 Recovery Measures: Missing Opportunities for a Green Future,” ISEAS Perspective, no. 2021/92 (July 9, 2021), /wp-content/uploads/2021/06/ISEAS_Perspective_2021_92.pdf
Ornsaran Manuamorn, Phi Minh Nguyet, and Krista Tukiainen, “ASEAN Sustainable Finance State of the Market 2021,” June 2022, https://www.climatebonds.net/files/reports/cbi_asean_sotm2022_final.pdf.
Oxford University Economic Recovery Project, “Global Recovery Observatory,” Oxford University Economic Recovery Project, accessed August 11, 2022, https://recovery.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/tracking/.
Stefanno Sulaiman and Gayatri Suroyo, “Indonesia Pumps Additional $24 Bln into Energy Subsidies,” Reuters, May 19, 2022, sec. Asia Pacific, https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/indonesia-govt-asks-parliament-24-bln-additional-energy-subsidies-2022-05-19/.
Viet Nam News, “MoF Proposes Further Cut to Environmental Protection Tax for Petrol,” Vietnamnews.Vn, June 23, 2022, https://vietnamnews.vn/economy/1252731/mof-proposes-further-cut-to-environmental-protection-tax-for-petrol.html.
Yamide Dagnet and Joel Jaeger, “Not Enough Climate Action in Stimulus Plans,” September 15, 2020, https://www.wri.org/insights/not-enough-climate-action-stimulus-plans.
Appendix 1: Covid-19 Stimulus Spending in Selected ASEAN Countries (2020-2021)
Source: UNESCWA COVID-19 Stimulus Tracker https://tracker.unescwa.org (accessed May 2022)
* GDP as of 2020
** There are various stimulus amount data on the Philippines. Some sources indicated a much higher amount than this number because some COVID-19 interventions were also embedded in the national budget announcements.
Appendix 2: Green-Related Assistance Provided by Multilateral Banks for ASEAN Countries (2020-2021)
Sources: Asian Development Bank, World Bank, and AIIB Websites
Appendix 3: Policies and Measures in the Energy-Related Sector in Indonesia, Philippines, and Vietnam (2020-2022)
Sources: collected from various media sources
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2022/85 “Peddling Secrecy in a Climate of Distrust: Buzzers, Rumours and Implications for Indonesia’s 2024 Elections” by Yatun Sastramidjaja, Pradipa P. Rasidi, and Gita N. Elsitra
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- In Indonesia, public debates on political issues are increasingly influenced by “buzzers” or anonymous social media influencers. Undoubtedly serving as their patrons’ cyber-army, buzzers portray themselves as information brokers, claiming to serve the public interest by purportedly revealing secrets gained through their privileged access to political players behind the scenes.
- The strong appeal of the “information” spread by buzzers is rooted in longstanding public distrust of mainstream media and official sources, and it persists even when the information is exposed as fake news. Despite the easing of restrictive media policies in the post-Soeharto era, public scepticism remained strong because the media industry is largely controlled by oligarchs linked to political patrons.
- Buzzers therefore command a large audience on social media because they seem to offer more authentic facts and perspectives without the taint of official censorship. Ironically this has given them more leeway to purvey falsehoods and unverified conspiracy theories, aggravated by the deep-seated perception that political theatre is endemic in Indonesian politics, i.e., the belief that most political events reflect the hidden hands of puppet-masters.
- Responding to concerns that buzzers will wield undesirable influence over the 2024 General Elections, the General Election Supervisory Agency (BAWASLU) recently announced efforts to curb the role of buzzers. Nevertheless, it admits this will be difficult due to inadequate legal frameworks.
- Regardless of legal measures and censorship efforts, buzzers will continue to reach receptive audiences for as long as the trust deficit towards mainstream media and official sources remains unaddressed.
* Yatun Sastramidjaja is Assistant Professor in Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam, and an Associate Fellow with the Regional Social and Cultural Studies Programme at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute. Pradipa R. Rasidi holds an MA in Anthropology from the University of Indonesia and works as Digital Rights Program Officer at EngageMedia. Gita N. Elsitra is an Associate Researcher at LP3ES, Jakarta, and an MA candidate at the Graduate School of Asia Pacific Studies, Waseda University.
ISEAS Perspective 2022/85, 24 August 2022
INTRODUCTION
The liberalisation of Indonesia’s media landscape since 1998, following 32 years of Soeharto’s New Order authoritarianism, has provided Indonesians with numerous channels to obtain political information.[1] However, the greater diversity in Indonesia’s media ecosystem did not ease the public’s distrust of the mainstream media’s political news. Two developments have exacerbated the distrust: first, the conglomeration of Indonesia’s main media outlets into the hands of a few “media oligarchs” with close ties to political elites;[2] second, the rise of social media in the late 2000s, which became a favoured site for information-seeking and free flow of political expression. In a climate of distrust, this also “contributed to the online intermingling of legitimate critical discourse with fake news and disinformation”.[3] Such intermingling of real and fake political commentary is increasingly being spurred by “buzzers”, or anonymous social media influencers.
Political buzzers rose to prominence in Indonesia’s electoral campaign industry after the victory of then-gubernatorial candidate Joko Widodo (“Jokowi”) in the 2012 Jakarta election, and particularly since the 2014 presidential election, now dubbed as Indonesia’s first full-fledged social media election.[4] They are known to spread online propaganda and disinformation and to manipulate social media trends in order to influence public opinion, and promote certain political candidates and discredit others.[5] Beyond serving as their patrons’ cyber-army, buzzers also frame themselves as a new breed of citizen journalists on a mission to enlighten ignorant or misinformed audiences. In doing so, they act as information brokers who offer rare glimpses into the political backstage. By purportedly revealing secret “facts”, exposing scandals and disclosing privileged political forecasts that cannot be found in mainstream media, they satiate the public’s thirst for “hidden truths” in the world of politics. Furthermore, by claiming to be obtaining confidential information from inner political circles, and to be sharing this knowledge (albeit selectively) for public interest, they establish themselves as political insiders with a moral rather than a political agenda.
In this article, we discuss the political and cultural conditions that allow buzzers to thrive in their role as peddlers of secrecy. We show how social media enables buzzers to gain credibility precisely by sustaining the grey area between rumours and facts. Thereby, buzzers both sow and reap distrust towards mainstream media, causing audiences to depend yet more on “hidden truths” disseminated on social media.
This trend is especially problematic in view of the next General Elections, scheduled for 14 February 2024. Fearing a repeat of the 2019 elections during which buzzers wreaked havoc of political debate on social media,[6] calls from civil society groups have grown louder to curb them. However, this will not be an easy task, given that buzzers are well-fitted to a political culture in which public distrust and political rumourmongering are deeply engrained.
INTELLIGENCE IN A WORLD OF PUPPET MASTERS
During the New Order, political participation was strongly discouraged. According to the regime, politics only confused and divided the masses, therefore the role of citizens was being a “floating mass” with no need to concern themselves with politics beyond the five-yearly elections. This policy of depoliticisation created a considerable gap between ordinary citizens and political elites. In recent years this gap is widening once more, as Indonesia’s democracy appears to regress to a form of dynastic politics, with power being divided among the president’s family and closest associates.[7] This has also revived the notion of Indonesia resembling a “theatre state”,[8] in which the ruling elites’ frontstage performance is perceived as symbolic drama that serves to cloak political affairs behind the scenes, and to distract audiences (citizens) from the country’s real political issues and how these remain unaddressed. As one political commentator wrote, “the political elites manipulate the stage play without feeling the need to improve reality”; he added that, “in the theatre state, [elites] will continue to make use of buzzers to perpetuate the dramatisation”.[9] However, if buzzers play a key role in buttressing a “theatre state” in Indonesia today, they also cleverly play with the notion of a political frontstage and backstage.
In line with this notion, political events are often believed to be orchestrated by a hidden puppet master or dalang,[10] especially when the event turns sour and ends in violence. This is another legacy of the New Order, during which the regime frequently alleged that protests and riots were instigated by a hidden mastermind, also called aktor intelektual (“intellectual actor”). However, since these “masterminds” were rarely exposed, such allegations fed the popular rumour mill, and often the state itself was rumoured to be orchestrating political occurrences. Political rumour was therefore instrumental in the delegitimisation of Soeharto’s regime, contributing to its downfall, and rumour has since remained an intrinsic part of Indonesian political culture.[11] Whereas, in the past, political rumours circulated mainly in private domains, the liberalisation of the mass media after 1998 led to a mushrooming of news tabloids that thrived on sensational crime news and political rumour. Often intermingling with local rumours, tabloid rumours frequently linked local conflicts and violent events to hidden actors or hidden intentions from within the state.[12]
The arrival of social media significantly expanded the reach and currency of political rumours. Rumours spreading rapidly across online social networks exacerbated scepticism of mainstream news reports; even the tabloids could not compete with people’s growing reliance on social media for discovering the “real” stories behind the official ones. Moreover, it affected notions of reliable knowledge and expertise. In the age of social media, the role of political analyst is no longer reserved for well-known experts in the field, whose professional credentials validate their ability to distinguish fact from fiction. In contrast, new types of political commentators have emerged whose credibility derives from some sort of closeness to the subject. This includes citizen journalists who use smartphones to deliver news coverage directly from the ground to social media—or “from street to tweet”.[13] The “rawness” of their stories, which bypass editorial interference, makes them appear more genuine. The new type of “political analyst” also includes buzzers, who similarly claim to deliver “raw” information, although their claim to credibility derives not from closeness to events on the ground but from professed access to privileged political information.
Pseudonymised social media accounts were the precursors of today’s political buzzers. Appearing around the time of the 2009 elections, these social media accounts by purported political insiders would spread political rumours online. Known as “intelligence (intel) accounts”, they “leaked” information about alleged puppet masters behind political incidents or scandals, indirectly implicating their candidate’s opponents.[14] Such speculations were often conspirational in nature, giving readers the sense that they were privy to “classified” information. This method was adopted by buzzers during the 2014 and 2019 elections; and thereafter it was no longer limited to election periods. In today’s polarised political climate, social media abounds with political rumours disseminated by buzzers, serving the interests of their political patrons.
One event that was rife with online rumours was the protest against the passing of the Omnibus Law on Job Creation in October 2020, which in Jakarta ended in riots after bus stops were set on fire, justifying police repression.[15] Online speculations abounded about the puppet master behind the incident. On Twitter, the majority of tweets on the topic, pushed by pro-government buzzers,[16] pointed to a subversive plot allegedly masterminded by the opposition. Others, however, accused the state of orchestrating the chaos. One viral tweet claimed to have proof of a state intelligence agent, caught on camera, inciting the bus-stop burning, disclosed by reliable yet confidential sources: an “A1 information”, claimed the author—a phrase commonly used in Indonesian military and security agencies, evoking its “top secret” nature. Media investigations later showed that the burning was started by “unidentified people”,[17] and there was no evidence of the involvement of intelligence agents, nor provocateurs from the opposition’s camp. Like many political events in Indonesia, the incident remained unresolved, further fanning popular beliefs about “hidden truths” being withheld from the public, and hence raising the currency of buzzers’ disclosures vis-à-vis mainstream media reports.
INFORMATION WARRIORS
According to a Reuters Institute report, Indonesians’ overall trust in mainstream news in 2021 was as low as 39 per cent.[18] This was partly due to citizens’ awareness of media conglomeration, with powerful media tycoons thought to have replaced state censorship with their strict editorial processes. Interestingly, our interviews with pro-government and pro-opposition buzzers point out that both share the same distrust of mainstream media, albeit that they frame things differently. Those supporting the opposition reinforce the belief that news outlets are either closely affiliated to the state or strongly pressured by it. “Mainstream media are fabricated”, said one pro-opposition influencer, insinuating that the editors-in-chief are “contaminated by the authorities”. Meanwhile, pro-government buzzers tend to lament the declining quality of journalism. As one of them put it, “We are no longer in the era of ethical journalism”, claiming that journalists transgress the ethics of journalism by publishing sensationalist and misleading news stories.
Thus, on either side, many buzzers take their role as information brokers quite seriously, framing themselves as a new brand of citizen journalists filling the information gap in a “corrupted” media landscape. A pro-government buzzer saw himself as having a moral obligation to actively support the government in fighting “evil”, including “extremists” in the opposition. Pro-opposition buzzers similarly frame their cyber-actions as a moral crusade—even “jihad” as one of them said—against the “evil” government. On both sides, this “moral struggle” appears to justify immoral tactics, and being vindicated by the “truth” claim.
Buzzers use three types of tactics to position themselves as brokers of “truth”. First, they “expose” information spread by their opponents as “hoaxes” (fake news), and accuse those disseminating it as hoax spreaders. This serves not only to neutralise these opponents—if possible, by getting them arrested for violating anti-disinformation laws (hence, buzzers often tag law enforcers’ accounts to draw their attention to the violation)[19]—but also to substantiate their own credibility as “non-hoax”, or “real fact” spreaders. However, this tactic can backfire when accounts targeted as hoax spreaders nonetheless retain their online reputation as reliable information brokers. Those are the accounts that consistently carry out the second tactic of exposing secret “facts”—notably “open secrets” about powerful institutions rather than personal scandals about individual politicians—although this is typically presented in the form of a series of clues and hints, which makes readers return repeatedly for more.
One such account is @Lockedon (pseudonymised), whose reputation for exposing state corruption has gained it tens of thousands of followers on Twitter. One of its posts from 2021 exposes corruption in the recruitment process of civil servants, alleging that those candidates paying the highest bribes received the highest test scores (Figure 1). While this is a long-rumoured problem in Indonesia’s bureaucracy,[20] the details exposed in @Lockedon’s post offer readers a rare glimpse into the mechanisms of the rumoured corruption. Furthermore, by tagging the accounts of the Civil Service Agency, the Corruption Eradication Commission, the National Police and the Attorney General, @Lockedon signals that his post is not merely intended to perpetuate the rumour but to expose a truth that must be acted upon.
Figure 1. A tweet from @Lockedon, exposing value manipulation in a civil servant selection test.
@Lockedon’s disclosures are usually not limited to single tweets. Following up on the civil servant exam case, it posted a long thread of about 50 tweets, exposing the institutionalised nature of the corruption and holding specific officials accountable (Figure 2). Due to @Lockedon’s unverifiable claims—making him a frequent target of pro-government buzzers’ “hoax” labelling—the account has been suspended more than 15 times. Yet it always returns with loyal followers. If anything, the frequent suspension reinforces followers’ conviction that @Lockedon is honestly exposing the hidden corruption of elites. Each time the account gets suspended, its followers eagerly await its return on social media—keen on getting more glimpses into political reality, albeit in the form of fragmentary tweets.
Figure 2. Part of @Lockedon’s long tweet thread, disclosing more snippets of information on the alleged corruption at the Civil Service Agency.
In similar fragmentary fashion, the third tactic is to expose a puppet master, indicating the buzzer’s familiarity with the political backstage. While this is risky, buzzers often find ways to dodge legal ramifications. One example is @James77 (pseudonymised). Frequently hinting at the confidential sources of his information, he usually uses coded language in his posts, intelligible only to readers familiar with his writing style. It was his tweet that purportedly exposed the hidden actor behind the riots during the anti-Omnibus Law protest, based on “A1 info” (Figure 3). While accusing the State Intelligence Agency, nowhere in this tweet was this literally stated. @James77 instead wrote “3 letters without recycle”. The phrase refers to “recycle bin”, but denotes the State Intelligence Agency (Badan Intelijen Negara, or BIN), as the “3 letters” (BIN) without the “recycle” in “recycle bin”. Similarly, “uwu.uwu.auntiebuslaw” is a code for Omnibus Law; while “uwu.uwu” denotes undang-undang or “law”, @James77 plays with the word “om” in “Omnibus Law”, literally meaning “uncle”, which he gender-swapped to the word “auntie”.
Through this tweet, which received more than 2,200 likes and 670 retweets, @James77 confirmed popular beliefs about puppet masters orchestrating schemes behind the scene. While @James77 is a pro-opposition buzzer, pro-government buzzers similarly disseminate truth claims about hidden puppet masters. One viral post insinuated that the Democratic Party (the largest opposition party) orchestrated riots during the Omnibus Law protest (Figure 4). It used doctored images that could not be verified, just as @James77’s “A1 info”, or @Lockedon’s incriminating screenshot, could not be proven true or false. However, as with conspiracy theories generally, the credibility of a truth claim does not depend on its verifiability. In a “post-truth” climate—which in Indonesia long preceded the advent of social media—buzzers are perceived to be no less credible than the “fabricated news” produced by mainstream media, if not more credible for confirming the public’s suspicions.
Figure 3. Using code language to expose “top secret” information on a supposed conspiracy by the State Intelligence Agency during the anti-Omnibus Law protest.
Figure 4: A viral image alleging the Democratic Party masterminded a protest-turned-riot.
PREPARING FOR ELECTIONS
The currency of buzzers has many observers worried about their potential influence on the 2024 elections. In the shadows of the pre-election negotiations occurring on the political frontstage and backstage, buzzers are set on social media to sway the public to support one or the other candidate. They do so not by discussing their patrons’ political standpoints, but by peddling rumours about their opponents and attacking critics, thus further impoverishing Indonesia’s already weak climate for political debate.
Acknowledging the risk of buzzers’ influence, on 14 June 2022 the General Election Supervisory Agency, or BAWASLU (Badan Pengawas Pemilu), announced that it was committed to monitoring and countering buzzers ahead of the elections. According to BAWASLU, buzzers are a major threat to Indonesia’s democracy, alongside “money politics” and “identity politics”. Therefore, BAWASLU intends to work closely with the Communications and Information Ministry, National Police and social media platforms to counter disinformation spread by buzzers. But BAWASLU’s chairperson Rahmat Bagja admits that this is easier said than done, since the legal framework for monitoring social media allows them to do no more than suspend suspected accounts and take down posts—while, “once we take one down, ten more appear”. Furthermore, he doubted that the “intellectual actor” behind these buzzer operations can be exposed.[21]
By hinting at the “hidden hand” behind buzzers, without specifying whether this are political parties or other actors, BAWASLU too perpetuates the popular discourse of Indonesian politics being characterised by puppet-mastery. However, Bagja’s estimation that mere censorship will not be effective in countering buzzers does point out the need to take broader conditions into account. As long as there is public demand for political information thought to be kept hidden from ordinary citizens—if not by the state, then by corrupted media—buzzers will continue to thrive. Hence, to counter the influence of buzzers, or online disinformation generally, Indonesia’s media ecosystem needs to be strengthened and further democratised in order to raise the credibility of political news provision, and thereby take the wind out of buzzers’ sails. The trust deficit towards mainstream media and official sources cannot remain unaddressed.
ENDNOTES
[1] Krishna Sen and David T. Hill, Media, Culture and Politics in Indonesia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
[2] Ross Tapsell, Media Power in Indonesia: Oligarchs, Citizens and the Digital Revolution (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017).
[3] Ross Tapsell, “The Media and Democratic Decline”, in Democracy in Indonesia: From Stagnation to Regression?, edited by Thomas Power and Eve Warburton (Singapore: ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute), p. 211.
[4] Pradipa P. Rasidi, “Of Play and Good Men: Moral Economy of Political Buzzing in Indonesia,” in Digital Technologies and Democracy in Southeast Asia, edited by Yatun Sastramidjaja (Singapore: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, forthcoming); Andrew Thornley, “Indonesia’s Social Media Elections”, InAsia, The Asia Foundation, 2 April 2014, https://asiafoundation.org/2014/04/02/indonesias-social-media-elections/.
[5] Yatun Sastramidjaja and Wijayanto, Cyber Troops, Online Manipulation of Public Opinion and Co-optation of Indonesia’s Cybersphere. Trends in Southeast Asia, no. 7/2022 (Singapore: ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute), /wp-content/uploads/2022/03/TRS7_22.pdf; Yatun Sastramidjaja, Ward Berenschot, Wijayanto and Ismail Fahmi, “The Threat of Cyber Troops”, Inside Indonesia, Edition 146 (Oct–Dec 2021), https://www.insideindonesia.org/the-threat-of-cyber-troops.
[6] Jennifer Yang Hui, “Social Media and the 2019 Indonesian Elections: Hoax Takes Centre Stage”, Southeast Asian Affairs (2020): 155–172.
[7] Yanuar Nugroho, Yoes C. Kenawas and Sofie S. Syarief, “How the 2020 Pilkada Reflected Major Structural Flaws in Indonesian Politics”, ISEAS Perspective, no. 2021/5, 25 January 2021, /articles-commentaries/iseas-perspective/iseas-perspective-2021-5-how-the-2020-pilkada-reflected-major-structural-flaws-in-indonesian-politics-by-yanuar-nugroho-yoes-c-kenawas-and-sofie-s-syarief/.
[8] The notion that Indonesian politics resembles a “theatre” was introduced by Clifford Geertz in his book Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); it has been frequently used by Indonesia observers to characterise the New Order state.
[9] Catatanmap, “Negeri Panggung: Di antara Democracy, Simulakra dan Korupsi Kebijakan”, 12 January 2022, https://catatanmap.wordpress.com/2022/01/12/negeri-panggung-di-antara-democracy-simulakra-dan-korupsi-kebijakan/. The author is M. Arief Pranoto, a former police officer and member of the Global Futures Institute, a geopolitical thinktank in Jakarta.
[10] Dalang refers to the puppet master in Javanese wayang shadow plays, who remains invisible behind his screen.
[11] Dedy N. Hidayat, “‘Don’t Worry, Clinton is Megawati’s Brother’: The Mass Media, Rumours, Economic Structural Transformation and Delegitimization of Suharto’s New Order”, Gazette: The International Journal for Communication Studies 64 (2002): 157–181; Patricia Spyer, “Fire without Smoke and Other Phantoms of Ambon’s Violence: Media Effects, Agency, and the Work of Imagination,” Indonesia 74 (2002): 21–36.
[12] Nicholas Herriman, “‘Hard-Copy Rumours’: Print Media and Rumour in Indonesia”, South East Asia Research 23 (2015): 45–60.
[13] Rajab Ritonga and Iswandi Syahputra, “Citizen Journalism and Public Participation in the Era of New Media in Indonesia: From Street to Tweet”, Media and Communication 23 (2019): 79–90.
[14] According to two senior buzzers that we interviewed, such accounts emerged as an outflow of the election campaign for then-president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, whose campaign team was among the first to use online marketing techniques (although Yudhoyono’s official Twitter account was created only in 2013).
[15] Yatun Sastramidjaja and Pradipa P. Rasidi, “The Hashtag Battle over Indonesia’s Omnibus Law: From Digital Resistance to Cyber-Control,” ISEAS Perspective, no. 2021/95, 21 July 2021, /articles-commentaries/iseas-perspective/2021-95-the-hashtag-battle-over-indonesias-omnibus-law-from-digital-resistance-to-cyber-control-by-yatun-sastramidjaja-and-pradipa-p-rasidi/.
[16] Lailuddin Mufti and Pradipa R. Rasidi, “Selling the Omnibus Law on Job Creation”, Inside Indonesia, Edition 146 (Oct–Dec 2021), https://www.insideindonesia.org/selling-the-omnibus-law-on-job-creation.
[17] Aqwam Fiazmi Hanifan and Arbi Sumandoyo, “62 Menit Operasi Pembakaran Halte Sarinah,” Buka Mata, NarasiTV, 28 October 2020, https://www.narasi.tv/buka-mata/62-menit-operasi-pembakaran-halte-sarinah.
[18] Janet Steele, “Indonesia,” in Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2021, edited by Nic Newman et al. (Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 2021, 10th Edition), pp. 136–137, https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2021/indonesia.
[19] The label “hoax” has been increasingly used to silence critics and imprison opponents. SAFEnet, Bangkitnya Otoritarian Digital: Laporan Situasi Hak-Hak Digital Indonesia 2019 (Denpasar: SAFEnet, 2020).
[20] Stein Kristiansen and Muhid Ramli, “Buying an Income: The Market for Civil Service Positions in Indonesia”, Contemporary Southeast Asia 28 (2006): 207–233.
[21] “Jelang Pemilu 2024, Bawaslu Sebut ‘Buzzer’ Bakal Ditindak”, Kompas, 14 June 2020, https://nasional.kompas.com/read/2022/06/14/12240301/jelang-pemilu-2024-bawaslu-sebut-buzzer-bakal-ditindak?page=all.
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2022/84 “The Undetermined Costs and Benefits of Cambodia’s Engagement with China’s Belt and Road Initiative” by Chanrith Ngin
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- Cambodia is perceived as a ‘client state’ of China due to its dependence on Chinese aid and investment, particularly within the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Lack of agency and debt default are potential pitfalls that Cambodia is perceived to have.
- Cambodia does have agency to manage BRI projects in that it can coordinate and diversify donors and investors to meet its economic needs.
- In the infrastructure sector, Cambodia has used coordination and diversification strategies to boost economic growth as well as reduce poverty and inequality.
- Cambodia has also hedged with the United States to maintain access to the largest market for the country’s garment and agricultural exports.
- Even though Cambodia needs more BRI loans to enhance its infrastructure for post-pandemic recovery, the risk of debt distress will remain low for the country as it has a public debt management strategy, and has furthermore also increasingly diversified its lending sources.
- However, the economic benefits of the BRI need to be considered along with adverse impacts on local livelihoods and the environment. Thus, a holistic project-specific assessment is essential to shed light on the costs and benefits of BRI.
* Chanrith Ngin is Wang Gungwu Visiting Fellow at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute and Honorary Academic at The University of Auckland, New Zealand. The author thanks Cassey Lee and Jayant Menon for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.
ISEAS Perspective 2022/84, 23 August 2022
INTRODUCTION
Cambodia is commonly deemed a ‘client state’ of China[1] over-depending on the latter’s economic and political support, particularly within the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). A loss of sovereignty and the likelihood of falling into a ‘debt trap’ are often cited as the key tenets of this over-dependence.[2] Among ASEAN countries, Cambodia is seen to support China’s position in the South China Sea dispute.[3]
Given the bilateral asymmetry, does Cambodia’s engagement in the BRI provide more costs than benefits? This essay argues that it is too early to conclude that BRI’s costs exceeds benefits for the country, by first describing how Chinese investment and aid, including BRI projects, have contributed to overall economic growth and poverty reduction in Cambodia despite some adverse impacts on local livelihoods and the environment. It then discusses Cambodian efforts to reduce dependence on China by diversifying investors and donors. Finally, it argues that costs and benefits related to BRI schemes in Cambodia have been only partially examined, thus preventing a complete assessment.
ECONOMIC GROWTH AND POVERTY REDUCTION
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Cambodia enjoyed rapid economic growth, achieving an average annual growth rate of 7.7 percent, between 1998 and 2019.[4] The country’s GDP per capita rose from US$269 in 1998 to US$1,643 in 2019, and is estimated to be US$1,648 in 2021.[5] During that period, garment exports and tourism were the main drivers of growth, followed by construction and agriculture.[6] In 2019, tourism, manufacturing exports, and construction contributed over 70 percent of economic growth and provided 39 percent of the total paid employment. The Covid-19 pandemic severely impacted these key sectors, and the economy contracted by 3.1 percent in 2020.[7] The country entered the endemic phase since 2021, and the economy is expected to grow by 2.1 percent in 2021 and 5.1 percent in 2022.[8] This positive outlook is premised on a strong recovery in manufacturing, particularly the garment, travel goods, footwear and bicycle industries, and in agriculture.[9]
Economic growth over the past two decades has contributed significantly to reducing poverty and inequality, mainly due to the substantial rise in labour (especially wage) earnings.[10] The poverty rate declined from 53.2% in 2007 to 13.5% in 2014.[11] Notwithstanding this, under a redefined poverty line, about 18 percent of the population was identified as poor in 2019, with the lowest poverty rates being in Phnom Penh (4.2 percent) and other urban areas (12.6 percent), and the highest in rural areas (22.8 percent).[12] Along with poverty reduction, income inequality has also decreased over the last two decades, with the Gini coefficient declining from 40.4 in 1997 to 37.5 in 2008 and 29 in 2012.[13]
While causal links between Chinese investment and aid and poverty reduction in Cambodia have not been precisely substantiated[14] China has crucially contributed to economic growth in the country as the top investor and donor. Among other things, its salient contribution has been job creation and increased business opportunities.[15]
Between 1994 and 2021, Cambodia received US$41.0 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI), of which China (Cambodian institutions dealing with statistics refer to China as “the Greater China region”, covering mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan) accounted for 43.9 percent, followed by South Korea (11.9 percent), Vietnam (6.1 percent), Singapore (6.5 percent), Japan (5.9 percent), and Malaysia (4.6 percent).[16] The main sectors that attracted Chinese investors were manufacturing (30.7 percent), electricity (13.0 percent), finance (10.9 percent), real estate (10.7 percent), hotels and restaurants (9.6 percent), agriculture (6.4 percent), and construction (5.2 percent). Despite the pandemic, Chinese investment in Cambodia rose substantially, with fixed-asset investment reaching US$2.32 billion in 2021, up by 67 percent from US$1.39 billion in 2020.[17] In other words, Chinese investment in 2021 comprised 50 percent of overall approved investment of US$4.35 billion, followed by the U.S. (4 percent) and Singapore (3 percent). Over the last decade, many Chinese investment schemes have been related to the BRI.[18]
BRI PROJECTS IN CAMBODIA
No official definition or formal list of BRI projects in Cambodia exists. One useful approach to identify BRI projects has been proposed by Wang (2022),[19] defining BRI projects as those: (i) financed by loans from Chinese financial institutions, totally or partially; (ii) invested in by Chinese state-owned and/or private companies; (iii) invested in by joint ventures between Chinese firms and their local partners; and (iv) as part of China’s foreign assistance programme. BRI projects are implemented by Chinese provincial authorities and state-owned enterprises (SOEs).[20] The BRI has political, economic and development objectives addressed in a number of sectors.[21] Although the BRI also includes trade pacts, technologies and social sectors (such as health and education), its eminent feature is infrastructure projects that involve Chinese SOEs.[22] Based on Wang (2022)’s criteria, from January 2021 to March 2022, Cambodia had 17 BRI projects, comprising one bid awarded, six completed projects, two projects whose construction just started, four contracts signed, and four projects in progress (see details of the projects in Appendix). By type of sector, these are two agriculture projects, one chemicals project, two construction projects, four energy projects, one entertainment project, one health services project, and six transportation projects. Also, there have been projects undertaken before the start of the BRI in 2013 that later were labelled as part of the BRI.[23] From 2004 to 2021, the Chinese government funded 101 projects in Cambodia, the bulk of which concerned road networks and agricultural and power infrastructure.[24]
DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE AND DONOR DIVERSIFICATION
Alongside the soaring investment, China has increased its development aid to Cambodia through the BRI apparatus. By 2019, 48 percent of Cambodia’s official development assistance (ODA) worth about US$ 7.22 billion had come from China.[25] China also pledged to provide around US$ 600 million in aid for the period of 2019-2021.[26] Further, China is Cambodia’s top lender, which accounted for 41 percent of the foreign debt of US$ 9.8 billion by June 2022.[27] Other main debtors included Japan (10%), France (5%), and multilateral agencies (32%). Recently, thanks to massive donations of COVID-19 vaccines from China, Cambodia was able to fully inoculate over 90 percent of its populace. The high vaccination rates have enabled the kingdom to open up and gradually resuscitate its economy.[28]
China is a major donor, with spent and planned disbursements of ODA totalling US$1,750 million in 2019-2024, while other donors such as Japan (US$1,693 million) and South Korea (US$790 million) have also been providing significant amounts of aid (see Table 1).[29] This signifies that Cambodia has a diverse range of donors, from both Asian and non-Asian sources.
Table 1: Disbursement of Official Development Assistance, by Selected Donor (as of May 2022)
Source: Extracted from Cambodia ODA Database. Available at: http://odacambodia.com/Reports/reports_by_updated.asp?status=0 (Accessed on 26 May 2022)
Given the dominant shares of Chinese investment and aid, and in the overall context of donor dependence, it is presumed that Cambodia does not have any bargaining power. In fact, recent studies show that Cambodia does hold some leverage in dealing with its donors, including China. For instance, Calabrese and Cao (2021)[30] found that the Cambodian government has employed its Development Cooperation and Partnerships Strategies[31] to coordinate aid to developing infrastructure, both BRI and non-BRI related, to meet its economic needs. Despite China considerably funding infrastructure through the BRI, there are dozens of other donors financing transport and energy infrastructure in Cambodia. What has optimized the aid in this sector is the strategy of “diversification” that Cambodia uses to spread infrastructure financing and implementation across donors.[32] Evident examples have included assistance to construct roads, bridges, ports, and Special Economic Zones (SEZs).
There are, for example, both the grant-funded ‘Cambodia-China Friendship Bridge’ and the ‘Cambodia-Japan Friendship Bridge’ standing next to each other over Tonle Sap River in the capital city of Phnom Penh (see Figure 1). South Korea is building a “Cambodia-Korea Friendship Bridge” through a grant in 2023 over the same river and city, just about one kilometer from the ‘Japanese’ and ‘Chinese’ bridges.[33] While China has a dominant investment in Sihanoukville in general and a Sihanoukville SEZ in particular, Japan has substantially been aiding the Sihanoukville deep-sea port.[34]
Figure 1: Bridges built by Japan and China and the bridge to be built by South Korea (in yellow lines)
Sources: Based on Google Earth and Chea (2022)
Another instance of donor diversification is in national road construction and repairing. The government has purposefully assigned sections of roads to specific donors to construct or rehabilitate. For example, the construction of the Phnom Penh–Preah Sihanouk Expressway has been allocated to China, while Japan has done a preparatory study of the Phnom Penh–Bavet Expressway.[35] South Korea has upgraded National Roads 2, 22 and 48, while Japan has repaired National Road 5 and China has improved National Roads 3 and 7.[36] This division strategy is also evident in the assignment of infrastructure sub-sectors to donors based on the government’s priorities.[37] In each sub-sector, the portfolio is allocated to at least three donors. If a sub-sector has high priority, more than three donors are involved.
The diversifying and balancing of donors have enabled Cambodia to avoid over-reliance on China, reduce transaction costs, and to use emerging donors as alternatives to conventional ones.[38] In this manner, the government has generated “competition” among donors that have over time increased investment in infrastructure. For instance, loans and grants for the infrastructure sector (communication, energy, and transport) rose from US$ 242 million in 2010 to US$ 306 million in 2017.[39] While the increase in the disbursement in the energy sector was mainly due to loans from China, the transport sector benefited from significant funding from Japan and the Asian Development Bank. Thus, Cambodia has effectively used a “diversification” strategy to increase funds to improve infrastructure, which is a strategic priority for economic recovery and inequality reduction.
Another strategy that Cambodia has employed to minimize dependence on China is to diversify foreign investors, with such efforts being intensified recently. This strategy is jointly executed by the Cambodia Chamber of Commerce (CCC), the Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC), and the Ministry of Commerce.[40] Furthermore, besides Japan and South Korea, the government is forging a free trade agreement with India. The CCC will open a representative office in Canada in June this year to lure the Canadian business community to invest in Cambodia.[41] In the same month, a CCC delegation will discuss investment opportunities with the New York Chamber of Commerce in the US, which will conduct a reconnaissance visit to the kingdom. Improving economic relations with the US is paramount for Cambodia since the super power is its largest export market, specifically through the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) system. In 2021, the US Congress suspended Cambodia’s GSP status for its deteriorating human rights, restrictions on civil society, and suppression of dissent voices.[42]
Before the GSP suspension, more specifically in 2021, Cambodia exported more than $8.7 billion worth of goods, mostly agricultural and garment products, to the US, an increase from US$6.5 billion in 2020.[43] This amount made up over 30 percent of the total export, while export to China was at only about 7 percent. This US export share represents a critical economic leverage since garments and agriculture are the key sectors that provide jobs conducive to poverty reduction. Although China is the main investor in these industries, Cambodia cannot afford to lose the American market. In 2019, the garment industry employed 750,000 workers and its export earnings accounted for 15 percent of the GDP.[44]
Hence, on the political front, Cambodia applies an ‘open position’[45] policy with the U.S. while attempting to refine their relationship and desiring ‘a full reconciliation’[46] with the superpower. For instance, though Cambodia is not invited to join the U.S.-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, it wants to be a member of this regional bloc.[47] To improve the political relation and attract investment from US businessmen, the Cambodian government has hired US lobby firms to convince American politicians about the ‘true’ situation and mutual interests in the country, spending over US$ two million by 2021 for this purpose.[48]
Another pivotal donor and investor that Cambodia hedges with is Japan, who exercises a ‘balancing-China strategy’ by providing quality and sustainable development assistance and investment, particularly ‘quality infrastructure’, to the kingdom.[49] With this strategy, Japan is highly valued among Cambodians, given their ‘mixed perceptions’ about China. Despite its investor and donor diversification, Cambodia is often criticized as being too reliant on China and becoming vulnerable to a ‘debt trap’.[50]
FEAR OF THE ‘DEBT TRAP’
In addition to the aid/investment coordination and diversification strategies, Cambodia has a ‘conservative’ debt management strategy.[51] The Ministry of Economy and Finance is the only institution mandated to borrow money and strategize loans and repayments. The key borrowing principles focus on: (i) the amount affordable by the state budget and the economy; (ii) high concessional loans; (iii) the sectors that support growth sustainability and productivity enhancement; and (iv) transparent and effective use of loans.[52] This strategy is applied to loans from all bilateral and multilateral institutions, including those from China. As an example of targeting loans to boost growth, by the end of 2018, Cambodia used 87 percent of its debts to fund infrastructure.[53] In June 2022, 32 percent of concessional loans was spent on improving infrastructure.[54] Specifically, in 2017, China financed around 70 percent of Cambodia’s roads and bridges.[55] Infrastructure improvement is key to pre-pandemic economic growth, post-pandemic recovery,[56] and further inequality reduction.[57] Cambodia still faces a substantial infrastructure gap. Bridging this gap would make the country more competitive with greater connectivity, driven by investments in rural and urban infrastructure.[58] An IMF analysis has shown that inequality can be reduced faster by targeting infrastructure spending in rural areas.[59] The government is devising a master plan to upgrade transport and logistic infrastructure, which will cost about US$50 billion.[60]
Contrary to the popular perception, Cambodia’s public external debt is well below the benchmarks set for sustainability. Foreign debts accounted for 25 percent of the GDP in 2018[61] and 24.9 percent in June 2022.[62] Given its development status and growth rates, Cambodia can safely borrow up to 40 percent of its GDP.[63] While the pandemic-induced economic slowdown may have weakened Cambodia’s ‘debt carrying capacity’, and the debt-to-GDP ratio may rise during the next decade,[64] but given the growth projections and present policies, the country remains at low risk of debt default. Specifically, while Cambodia’s borrowings from China for improving infrastructure is expected to soar,[65] it faces low risk of debt distress if it continues to effectively apply its debt management strategy and increasingly diversifies its strategic lenders.
COSTS AND BENEFITS OF THE BRI
Besides the debt and sovereignty issues, studies on BRI projects in Cambodia have focused on the socio-economic and environmental impact of infrastructural and agricultural investments on local livelihoods.[66] These have been specific case studies focusing on individual projects and using qualitative methods (such as interviews and group discussions). Environmental damage, land grabbing, forced evictions, loss of livelihoods, limited participation by local communities, and lack of transparency and accountability are common findings from these studies. There are also studies examining BRI projects in general and discussing their economic, social and environmental ramifications in broad economic and political terms.[67] The conclusions of these analyses are based on macro factors (such as economic growth and national sovereignty) and associated regional and global geopolitics and geo-economics. Costs and benefits of the BRI are discussed based on broad assumptions rather than concrete measures. For instance, a claim is made that since Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are involved in BRI-related investments, most benefits will go to China.[68] Another presumptuous claim is about the ‘few’ benefits that locals in Sihanoukville have gained given the omnipresence of Chinese businesses in the city.[69] While these assumptions appear to make sense, they lack an analytical rigour to draw sound and specific conclusions to make useful and actionable policy recommendations.
Moreover, while qualitative project-specific research has provided detailed accounts of impacts from the perspectives of local communities, it has not fully captured the views of diverse stakeholders and, as such, provides incomplete assessments of the impact of the projects reviewed. For example, perspectives from the private sector as well as national and sub-national government actors, who are normally hard to access, are often not presented. Furthermore, socio-economic and environmental impacts are qualitatively examined and perception-based, with quantitative back-up of maps and satellite images at times. What is missing are longitudinal studies that examine before-and-after-the-project conditions using large-N surveys to quantify measurable changes, particularly concerning economic effects in the medium and long term.
In conclusion, even though the BRI projects in Cambodia have had some adverse impacts on local livelihoods and the environment, their full economic impacts have not been holistically scrutinized. Hence, it is crucial to undertake more comprehensive studies of the costs and benefits of BRI schemes.
Without a proper comprehension of project-specific or sector-based performance, the public assessment of policy and business decisions can be easily distorted.
Appendix: BRI projects in Cambodia, January 2021-March 2022
Source: Extracted from a database provided by Wang (2022)
ENDNOTES
[1] David Hutt, “How China Came to Dominate Cambodia,” The Diplomat, 01 September 2016, https://thediplomat.com/2016/09/how-china-came- to-dominate-cambodia/.
[2] Ciorciari, John D., “A Chinese model for patron-client relations? The Sino-Cambodian partnership,” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Vol. 15, No. 2 (May 2015), 245–278.
[3] Colin Meyn, “Asean Unity Tested Under Cambodia’s Watch,” The Cambodia Daily, 23 November 2012, https://english.cambodiadaily.com/summits/ asean-unity-tested-under-cambodias-watch-6272/.
[4] World Bank, “Resilient Development: A Strategy to Diversify Cambodia’s Growth Model- Cambodia Country Economic Memorandum (English),” 2021, http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099925001262213662/P1719580f183f60bb0ac1e01e64a9c905ea.
[5] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=KH
[6] World Bank, “Resilient Development: A Strategy to Diversify Cambodia’s Growth Model- Cambodia Country Economic Memorandum (English),” 2021, http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099925001262213662/P1719580f183f60bb0ac1e01e64a9c905ea.
[7] ibid
[8] International Monetary Fund, “Cambodia: Staff Report of the 2021 Article IV Consultation,” 2021, https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/CR/Issues/2021/12/08/Cambodia-2021-Article-IV-Consultation-Press-Release-and-Staff-Report-510848.
[9] Sodeth Ly, “Cambodia Economic Update: Living with COVID- Special Focus: The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Learning and Earning in Cambodia (English), 2022, http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099350012062137172/P1773400f35a770af0b4fa0781dffcd517e.
[10] World Bank, “Cambodia- Sustaining strong growth for the benefit of all,” 2017, https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/cambodia/publication/Cambodia-Systematic- Country-Diagnostics.
[11] National Institute of Statistics, “Cambodia Socio-Economic Survey 2015,” 2015, https://nis.gov.kh/nis/CSES/Final%20Report%20CSES%202015.pdf.
[12] World Bank, “Resilient Development: A Strategy to Diversify Cambodia’s Growth Model- Cambodia Country Economic Memorandum (English),” 2021, http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099925001262213662/P1719580f183f60bb0ac1e01e64a9c905ea.
[13] Niels-Jakob Harbo Hansen and Albe Gjonbalaj, “Advancing Inclusive Growth in Cambodia,” IMF Working Paper WP/19/197, 2019, https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2019/09/06/Advancing-Inclusive-Growth-in-Cambodia-48563.
[14] Ouch Chandarany, Saing Chanhang and Phann Dalis, “Assessing China’s Impact on Poverty Reduction in the Greater Mekong Sub-region: The Case of Cambodia,” CDRI Working Paper Series No. 52, 2011, https://cdri.org.kh/storage/pdf/wp52e_1617794231.pdf; Senh Senghor and Chan Sophal, “Inclusive Development and Chinese Direct Investments in Cambodia,” Study Report No. 05, 2016, http://www.cps.org.kh/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Study_Report_05_2016_Inclusive_Development_and_Chinese_Direct_Investments.pdf.
[15] ibid
[16] Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC), “Report on foreign investment in Cambodia 2021,” 2022, Phnom Penh: CDC.
[17] ibid
[18] Linda Calabrese, Olena Borodyna, and Rebecca Nadin, “Risks along the Belt and Road: Chinese investment and infrastructure development in Cambodia,” Research Report, 2022, www.odi.org/en/publications/risks-along-the-belt-and-road-chinese-investment-and- infrastructure-development-in-cambodia/.
[19] Wang Zheng, “Assessing the Belt and Road Initiative in Southeast Asia amid the COVID-19 Pandemic (2021-2022),” ISEAS Perspective 2022/57, 26 May 2022, /articles-commentaries/iseas-perspective/2022-57-assessing-the-belt-and-road-initiative-in-southeast-asia-amid-the-covid-19-pandemic-2021-2022-by-wang-zheng/.
[20] Juliet Lu, “Grounding Chinese Investment: Encounters Between Chinese Capital and Local Land Politics in Laos,” Globalizations, Vol.18, No. 3 (July 2021), 422-440.
[21] Lee Jones and Jinghan Zeng, “Understanding China’s ‘Belt and Road Initiative’: Beyond ‘Grand Strategy’ to a State Transformation Analysis,” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 8 (February 2019),1415–1439.
[22] Jean-Marc F. Blanchard, “Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Blues: Powering BRI Research Back on Track to Avoid Choppy Seas,” Journal of Chinese Political Science, Vol. 26, (March 2021), 235-255.
[23] Ellis Mackenzie, Sarah Milne, Lorrae van Kerkhoff, and Bunthin Ray, “Development or dispossession? Exploring the consequences of a major Chinese investment in rural Cambodia,” The Journal of Peasant Studies, (March 2022), DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2022.2026929.
[24] Linda Calabrese, Olena Borodyna, and Rebecca Nadin, “Risks along the Belt and Road: Chinese investment and infrastructure development in Cambodia,” Research Report, 2022, www.odi.org/en/publications/risks-along-the-belt-and-road-chinese-investment-and- infrastructure-development-in-cambodia/.
[25] Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC), “Development cooperation and partnership report,” 2021, Phnom Penh: CDC.
[26] Reuters Staff, “Cambodian leader, in Beijing, says China pledges nearly $600 million in aid,” Reuters, 22 January 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cambodia-china-idUSKCN1PG0CZ.
[27] Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF), “Cambodia Public Debt Statistical Bulletin No. 14,” 2022, Phnom Penh: MEF.
[28] David Freedman and Jayant Menon, “Cambodia’s Post-Pandemic Recovery and Future Growth: Key Challenges,” ISEAS Perspective 2022/40, 20 April 2022, /wp-content/uploads/2022/03/ISEAS_Perspective_2022_40.pdf.
[29] Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC), “Cambodia ODA Database,” 2021, http://odacambodia.com/Reports/reports_by_updated.asp?status=0.
[30] Linda Calabrese and Yue Cao, “Managing the Belt and Road: Agency and development in Cambodia and Myanmar,” World Development, Vol. 141 (May 2021), 105-297.
[31] Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC), “Development Cooperation and Partnerships Strategy (2013-2018),” 2013, Phnom Penh: CDC; Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC), “Development Cooperation and Partnerships Strategy (2019-2024),” 2019, Phnom Penh: CDC.
[32] Linda Calabrese and Yue Cao, “Managing the Belt and Road: Agency and development in Cambodia and Myanmar,” World Development, Vol. 141 (May 2021), 105-297.
[33] Chea Vanyuth, “Construction of Cambodia-South Korea Friendship Bridge to start next year,” Khmer Times, 7 March 2022,
[34] Port Autonome de Sihanoukville, “Port History, Port Autonome de Sihanoukville,” (no date), www. pas.gov.kh/en/page/port-history.
[35] Hort Sroeu, “Infrastructure development in Cambodia,” 27 January 2017, https://www.slideshare.net/HortSroeu/final-draft-infrastructure- development-in-cambodia-85232687.
[36] ibid
[37] Linda Calabrese and Yue Cao, “Managing the Belt and Road: Agency and development in Cambodia and Myanmar,” World Development, Vol. 141 (May 2021), 105-297.
[38] Jin Sato, Hiroaki Shiga, Takaaki Kobayashi, and Hisahiro Kondoh, “Emerging Donors” from a recipient perspective: An institutional analysis of foreign aid in Cambodia,” World Development, Vol. 39, No. 12 (December 2011), 2091–2104.
[39] Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC), “The Cambodia aid effectiveness report,” 2010, Phnom Penh: CDC; Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC), “Development cooperation and partnership report,” 2018, Phnom Penh: CDC.
[40] Hom Phanet, “Cambodia’s FDI surges 11.2% to $41B in 2021,” The Phnom Penh Post, 26 April 2022, https://www.phnompenhpost.com/business/cambodias-fdi-surges-112-41b-2021#:~:text=Foreign%20direct%20investment%20(FDI)%20inflows,according%20to%20a%20new%20report.
[41] ibid
[42] US Department of State, “2021 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Cambodia,” 2021, https://www.state.gov/reports/2021-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/cambodia.
[43] United Nations COMTRADE database, (no date), https://tradingeconomics.com/cambodia/exports-by-country.
[44] World Bank, “Resilient Development: A Strategy to Diversify Cambodia’s Growth Model- Cambodia Country Economic Memorandum (English),” 2021, http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099925001262213662/P1719580f183f60bb0ac1e01e64a9c905ea.
[45] Chheang Vannarith, “Cambodia’s Embrace of China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Managing Asymmetries, Maximizing Authority,” Asian Perspective, Vol. 45, No. 2 (2021), 375-396.
[46] FRANCE 24, “Cambodian minister ‘believes’ full reconciliation with US to come,” FRANCE 24, 24 May 2022, https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/the-interview/20220524-cambodian-minister-believes-full-reconciliation-with-us-to-come.
[47] ibid
[48] Ung Soben, “Cambodian Government Pays Over $2 Millions to Lobby Firms in D.C.,” Khmer Post USA, 11 February 2022, https://khmerpostusa.com/cambodian-government-pays-over-2-millions-to-lobby-firms-in-d-c/.
[49] Luo Jing Jing and Kheang Un, “Japan Passes China in the Sprint to Win Cambodian Hearts and Minds,” ISEAS Perspective 2021/59, 30 April 2021, /articles-commentaries/iseas-perspective/2021-59-japan-passes-china-in-the-sprint-to-win-cambodian-hearts-and-minds-by-luo-jing-jing-and-kheang-un/.
[50] Heng Kimkong and Sovinda Po, “Cambodia and China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Opportunities, Challenges and Future Directions,” UC Occasional Paper Series, Vol.1, No. 2 (2017), 1–18.
[51] Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF), “Public Debt Management Strategy 2011–2018,” 2011, Phnom Penh: MEF; Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF), “Public Debt Management Strategy 2019-2023,” 2019, Phnom Penh: MEF.
[52] ibid
[53] Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC), “Development cooperation and partnership report,” 2018, Phnom Penh: CDC.
[54] Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF), “Cambodia Public Debt Statistical Bulletin No. 14,” 2022, Phnom Penh: MEF.
[55] Janelle Retka, “China Funded 70% of Cambodian Roads, Bridges: Minister,” The Cambodia Daily, 24 July 2017, https://english.cambodiadaily.com/business/china-funded-70-of-cambodian-roads-bridges-minister-132826/.
[56] David Freedman and Jayant Menon, “Cambodia’s Post-Pandemic Recovery and Future Growth: Key Challenges,” ISEAS Perspective 2022/40, 20 April 2022, /wp-content/uploads/2022/03/ISEAS_Perspective_2022_40.pdf.
[57] Niels-Jakob Harbo Hansen and Albe Gjonbalaj, “Advancing Inclusive Growth in Cambodia,” IMF Working Paper WP/19/197, 2019, https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2019/09/06/Advancing-Inclusive-Growth-in-Cambodia-48563.
[58] David Freedman and Jayant Menon, “Cambodia’s Post-Pandemic Recovery and Future Growth: Key Challenges,” ISEAS Perspective 2022/40, 20 April 2022, /wp-content/uploads/2022/03/ISEAS_Perspective_2022_40.pdf.
[59] Niels-Jakob Harbo Hansen and Albe Gjonbalaj, “Advancing Inclusive Growth in Cambodia,” IMF Working Paper WP/19/197, 2019, https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2019/09/06/Advancing-Inclusive-Growth-in-Cambodia-48563.
[60] Fresh News, “កម្ពុជាមានផែនការមេអភិវឌ្ឍន ហេដ្ឋារចនាសម្ព័ន្ធ ក្នុងតម្លៃ៥០ពាន់លានដុល្លារ, អ្នកជំនាញយល់ថានឹងធ្វើឲ្យវិស័យដឹកជញ្ជូន កាន់តែមានភាពល្អប្រសើរ និងទាក់ទាញអ្នកវិនិយោគ,” Fresh News, 21 June 2022, http://www.freshnewsasia.com/index.php/en/localnews/246583-2022-06-21-08-42-23.html.
[61] Sebastian Horn, Carmen Reinhart, and Christoph Trebesch, “China’s Overseas Lending,” Kiel Working Paper No. 2132, (2019), https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26050/w26050.pdf.
[62] Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF), “Cambodia Public Debt Statistical Bulletin No. 14,” 2022, Phnom Penh: MEF.
[63] International Development Association (IDA) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), “Cambodia: Joint World Bank-IMF Debt Sustainability Analysis,” 2019, https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/588311640307710742/cambodia-joint-world-bank-imf-debt-sustainability-analysis.
[64] International Monetary Fund, “Cambodia: Staff Report of the 2021 Article IV Consultation,” 2021, https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/CR/Issues/2021/12/08/Cambodia-2021-Article-IV-Consultation-Press-Release-and-Staff-Report-510848.
[65] Linda Calabrese, Olena Borodyna, and Rebecca Nadin, “Risks along the Belt and Road: Chinese investment and infrastructure development in Cambodia,” Research Report, 2022, www.odi.org/en/publications/risks-along-the-belt-and-road-chinese-investment-and- infrastructure-development-in-cambodia/.
[66] Young Sokphea, “Protests, regulations, and environmental accountability in Cambodia,” Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, Vol. 38, No. 1 (May 2019), 33–54; Young Sokphea, “China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Patron-Client and Capture in Cambodia,” The Chinese Journal of Comparative Law, Vol. 8, No. 2 (September 2020), 414–434; Ellis Mackenzie, Sarah Milne, Lorrae van Kerkhoff, and Bunthin Ray, “Development or dispossession? Exploring the consequences of a major Chinese investment in rural Cambodia,” The Journal of Peasant Studies, (March 2022), DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2022.2026929.
[67] Chheang Vannarith, “Cambodia’s Embrace of China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Managing Asymmetries, Maximizing Authority,” Asian Perspective, Vol. 45, No. 2 (2021), 375-396; Heng Kimkong and Sovinda Po, “Cambodia and China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Opportunities, Challenges and Future Directions,” UC Occasional Paper Series, Vol.1, No. 2 (2017), 1–18; Vannarith Chheang and Pheakdey Heng, “Chapter 15: Cambodian perspective on the Belt and Road Initiative, 2021, 176–190. In Joseph Chinyong Liow, Hong Liu, and Gong Xue (eds.), “Research Handbook on the Belt and Road Initiative,” Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.
[68] Fang Hu, Xiekui Zhang, Mingming Hu, and David Lee Cook, “Chinese Enterprises’ Investment in Infrastructure Construction in Cambodia,” Asian Perspective, Vol. 43, No. 1 (2019), 177–207.
[69] Po Sovinda and Heng Kimkong, “Assessing the Impacts of Chinese Investments in Cambodia: The Case of Preah Sihanoukville Province,” Issues and Insights Working Paper, Vol. 19, WP4 (May 2019.), https://pacforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/issuesinsights_Vol19WP4_FINAL.pdf.
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2022/83 “Thailand Approaches an Historic Turning Point Amid Political Uncertainties” by Termsak Chalermpalanupap
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- The Thai Constitutional Court will soon be requested to make a historic ruling on when Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-ocha’s premiership will reach the limit of eight years specified under the 2017 Constitution. There are three possible outcomes.
- One possible outcome is that the court decides that General Prayut shall reach the limit on 23 August, because he was first appointed prime minister on 24 August 2014, about three months after seizing power in a coup on 22 May 2014.
- Second, the court may decide that the constitutional limit on General Prayut’s tenure as prime minister began to apply only when he returned to the premiership on 9 June 2019, following elections the previous March.
- The third possible outcome is a ruling that the constitutional limit began to apply, not only to General Prayut but also to former Thai prime ministers who could potentially return to office, on the day that the current constitution entered into force, 6 April 2017.
- Despite uncertainty over the pending Constitutional Court decision, General Prayut seems confident that he will be able to stay on in the premiership beyond 23 August.
- His “Big Brother” and key supporter Deputy Prime Minister General Prawit Wongsuwan — leader of Phalang Pracharat, the largest government party — seems to believe that the third possible outcome is most likely, and that General Prayut is thus eligible to serve as premier for another two years.
- Whatever the outcome, the Constitutional Court’s decision will certainly lead to significant and far-reaching political changes in Thailand.
*Termsak Chalermpalanupap is Visiting Fellow in the Thailand Studies Programme, ISEAS –Yusof Ishak Institute. Previously he had been a researcher on ASEAN political and security cooperation at the Institute’s ASEAN Studies Centre.
ISEAS Perspective 2022/83, 18 August 2022
INTRODUCTION
Thailand is approaching an historic turning point amid political uncertainties and heightened tensions. The country’s Constitutional Court will soon be asked to rule on when Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-ocha reaches the constitutional limit of eight years in the premiership. Regardless of the outcome, the Constitutional Court’s decision will have significant and far-reaching consequences.
Three possible outcomes have been widely discussed in the Thai media.
The first scenario would amount to a coup de grâce from the Constitutional Court: General Prayut’s premiership shall reach the eight-year constitutional limit by midnight of 23 August. Thereafter, he must relinquish his premiership. And he shall also be henceforth disqualified from returning to the top government post.
The second scenario would be a political windfall for the prime minister: The constitutional limit would be seen to begin applying in the case of General Prayut, who first assume the premiership following the May 2014 coup, only when he re-assumed the premiership on 9 June 2019 under the current constitution. That constitution entered into force on 6 April 2017. This decision would mean that Prayut can stay in power until June 2027, or at least serve another four-year term after the next general election.
The third scenario would be a compromise: The court could find that the eight-year limit on tenure of the premiership began to apply in all cases, including those of General Prayut and of individuals who served as prime minister in the past and could potentially return to office,[1] when the 2017 Constitution first entered into force. Therefore, if he returns to head another government after the next general election, General Prayut’s premiership shall reach the limit only in early April 2025, just about half-way through the next government’s four-year term.
PULLING THE TRIGGER
Phuea Thai (PT), the chief opposition party in the current Thai parliament, is determined to spearhead a new attack to remove General Prayut from power once and for all. It planned on 17 August to submit its request for a ruling by the Constitutional Court on when he will reach the eight-year limit on service as prime minister. The request will first go to the House Speaker, who is expected to quickly forward it to the Constitutional Court, after the House Secretariat has verified the signatures of all MPs endorsing the request.
The Constitutional Court is expected to reach its decision quite speedily, perhaps before 24 August. This is because the pertinent facts are undisputed. There is no need for any additional fact-finding probe or for calling witnesses to testify.
Three months after seizing power in a bloodless coup on 22 May 2014, coup leader General Prayut was appointed the prime minister on 24 August 2014 by King Bhumibol. After the March 2019 general election, General Prayut was reappointed to the premiership by King Vajiralongkorn on 9 June 2019.
At issue is the purely legal or constitutional question concerning when the eight-year limit on service as prime minister began to apply in his case. Section 158, Paragraph 4, of the 2017 Constitution stipulates that “The Prime Minister shall not hold office for more than eight years in total, whether or not consecutively.” The drafters of the constitution recorded their rationale and objective for setting the eight-year limit to be guarding against the lengthy monopolisation of power, which could be the source of a political crisis.[2]
Opposition MPs began to raise the issue of this limit last year.[3] One can thus surmise that the nine justices of the Constitutional Court and their staff have already done extensive research in anticipation of a request for a judgement on this constitutional provision as it applies to General Prayut.
When the Constitutional Court receives the request to offer such a judgement, one crucial response to watch for is whether or not it first issues an injunction for General Prayut to cease functioning as the prime minister by 24 August.[4] If it does, this means the Constitutional Court has valid reasons to believe that General Prayut will have reached the eight-year limit.
A NIDA poll conducted during 2-4 August showed that 64.25 per cent of respondents believed that General Prayut’s premiership would reach the eight-year limit on 23 August.[5]
WHAT IF GENERAL PRAYUT GOES?
If the Constitutional Court rules that General Prayut will reach the eight-year limit at the end of 23 August, then he must relinquish his premiership before 24 August. Immediately, (First) Deputy Prime Minister General Prawit Wongsuwan, shall become the acting prime minister. The 77-year-old former Army chief and current leader of the Phalang Pracharat Party (PPP), the largest party in the ruling coalition, shall then work with the House Speaker and the Senate President to organise a joint parliamentary session to select a new prime minister within 30 days.
Those who were nominated for the premiership by political parties prior to the 2019 general election shall be considered first. Three of the more prominent nominees who could be considered are (Third) Deputy Prime Minister and Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, leader of the Bhumjaithai Party, the second largest party in the ruling coalition; Abhisit Vejjajiva, a former prime minister, and the former leader of the Democrat Party, the third largest party in the ruling coalition; and Chaikasem Nitisiri, the chief legal advisor to the PT.
The PT actually had three nominees in 2019. But the other two have left the party. They are Sudarat Keyuraphan, who is now leader of the Thai Sang Thai Party, and Chadchart Sitthipunt, who in May was elected Bangkok’s governor as an independent candidate. Both would most likely decline to enter the race for the premiership under the PT’s nomination now.
To win the premiership, a nominee must have the support of at least the minimum simple majority of a joint session of the House of Representatives (477 MPs) and Senate (250 senators); this means receiving at least 364 votes.
The PT has 132 MPs. When the party joins forces with seven other opposition parties with 93 MPs, the opposition side will have only 225 votes, still 139 votes short of the winning majority. In the no-confidence vote held in the House last month, the opposition could mobilise only 206 votes against the prime minister. And it is highly unlikely that any opposition nominee for prime minister will be able to attract significant support from senators.[6]
A nominee from the government side, notably Anutin, could receive sizeable support from senators and win the premiership – if most of the PPP’s 97 MPs join other colleagues in the ruling coalition to vote for him. However, most MPs and others in the PPP may not want to see Anutin rise to the premiership so soon; otherwise, he and his Bhumjaithai Party may overshadow General Prawit and the PPP in the next general election. The Bhumjaithai Party, now with 62 MPs, looks set to gain more House seats in that election, partly because it is attracting defectors from other parties, and partly because it has succeeded in decriminalising marijuana and hemp – a popular move which will win votes in rural Thailand, especially in the Northeast.
Nevertheless, should there be no winner in the premiership race, the votes of two-thirds of the parliamentarians (or 485 votes) in the joint sitting of the House and the Senate can decide to look for outsiders to take the premiership. One such possible outside nominee is General Prawit. The PPP leader is not an MP, but he knows how to control MPs, not only in his own party but also in the small parties and micro-parties in the ruling coalition.
Moreover, General Prawit appears to have good working relations with a large number of senators. This is due partly to the fact that he headed the secretive search committee of the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) junta set up to find appointees in 2018 to fill the 250-member Senate.
Another outsider who could be considered is former Prime Minister Anand Panyarachun. Even though he is now 90, he appears to be in good health and remains articulate about the Thai economy and world affairs. He can be the ideal Thai leader to host this year’s APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting, scheduled in Bangkok from 18 to 19 November.
Moreover, former Prime Minister Anand is a non-partisan figure. No party will gain undue political advantage if he is in charge of supervising the next general election, to be held between 45 and 60 days after the current four-year term of the House of Representatives ends on 23 March 2023.
AND IF GENERAL PRAYUT STAYS?
At least three arguments can be made in support of General Prayut’s eligibility to remain in the premiership after 23 August. First, when he was originally appointed prime minister on 24 August 2014, he was neither nominated by any political party nor chosen by a majority of parliamentarians, unlike the requirements and procedures in the 2017 Constitution.
Second, in serving concurrently as the head of the NCPO junta, he was not in the 2014–2019 period an ordinary prime minister. Rather, he held absolute state power, which an ordinary prime minister does not have. And lastly, no constitutional provisions can have adverse retroactive effect.
For these reasons, supporters of General Prayut believe that the eight-year constitutional limit only began to apply to his premiership on 9 June 2019, when King Maha Vajiralong signed his royal proclamation appointing General Prayut to the premiership following the March 2019 general election.
If the Constitutional Court concurs on this crucial point, then General Prayut’s eligibility to serve as prime minister will last until mid-2027. If his government completes its four-year term on 23 March 2023, and a general election is held in April or May 2023, General Prayut can still head a new government for another four-year term without exceeding the eight-year limit.
General Prawit has already stated that the PPP will renominate General Prayut to serve as prime minister following the country’s next elections, as in the 2019 general election. But at what price this time?
Within the restless PPP, there has been talk of nominating not only General Prayut alone, but also General Prawit, because the 2017 Constitution allows each party to propose up to three nominees for the premiership in the run-up to an election.
Many in the PPP also want to see General Prawit assume the post of the minister of interior, in order to be in the position of supervising the next general election. The incumbent minister of interior, General Anupong Paochinda, could be moved to head the Energy Ministry and even given an additional title as one of General Prayut’s deputy prime ministers as a consolation.
This move would, however, require edging out (Sixth) Deputy Prime Minister and Energy Minister Supattanapong Punmeechaow, a non-partisan technocrat who has been frequently blamed for failing to help needy Thais cope with the rising cost of fuel and electricity. There would be, in other words, no serious political cost to General Prayut if he let General Anupong replace Supattanapong.
On his part, General Prayut seems confident that he will be able to hold the premiership beyond 23 August. In fact, on 12 July he announced on his official Facebook page, three core development strategies to help Thailand and its people cope with economic problems and global disruptions.[7]
On the same day, he also announced the launching of the seven-year plan of action, covering 2021–2027, to drive the bio-circular-green national development.[8] Moreover, he has chaired substantive meetings to prepare for the approaching the APEC economic summit in Bangkok.
These activities indicate that General Prayut believes that he need not leave the premiership any time soon.
Undoubtedly, if General Prayut can stay on as prime minister beyond 23 August, protestors might return to Bangkok’s streets to renew their longstanding demand for his immediate resignation. A rally inside Thammasat University’s Rangsit campus on 10 August saw several speakers call on him to make a “sacrifice” for the sake of Thai democracy by stepping down immediately.[9]
A POSSIBLE COMPROMISE?
One possible compromise solution to the question of when General Prayut will reach the eight-year limit to service as prime minister is to take the day on which the current constitution went into force, on 6 April 2017, as the date on which the clock on his premiership began to run. This would be consistent with the principle that new legal or constitutional provisions cannot have retroactive adverse effect.
General Prawit seems to believe the Constitutional Court could adopt this compromise in its pending decision. He has told the Thai media that the prime minister will stay on for two more years and that there is therefore no need for General Prawit himself to prepare to assume the premiership anytime soon.[10]
If the Constitutional Court does in fact decide the case in this manner, then General Prayut will confront a new political challenge. His eligibility to serve as prime minister will end in mid-2025, just about-half way through the four-year term of the new government that takes power after the next general election.
This circumstance will make it less likely that the PPP will renominate only General Prayut for the premiership. The party will have to include one or two other viable options.
In fact, General Prayut is no longer a political asset for the party. His popularity has been in decline, dropping from 17.54 per cent in September 2021 to 11.68 per cent in June 2022.[11] For the party to nominate only him as its candidate for the premiership will not boost PPP candidates’ chances in the next general election.
Nevertheless, General Prayut is not completely helpless. At least two new parties have been set up recently to support him. The United Thai Nation Party was launched on 3 August, led by Pirapan Salirathavibhaga, a veteran politician and political advisor to the prime minister.[12]
The other party is called the Thoet Thai Party, registered on 5 August. It is led by Dr Seksakol Atthawong, a former political advisor to the prime minister. He is rallying former Red Shirts all over Thailand to oppose the PT (and exiled former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra) and support General Prayut.[13]
If General Prayut does entertain the wish to continue in power after the next general election, he will face a serious dilemma: he can give his consent to being nominated by just one party. But which one?
Neither United Thai Nation nor Thoet Thai appears to have the capability to win up to 25 House seats (5 per cent of the total in the House) in order to qualify to propose its premiership nominee for consideration.
One possible solution is for General Prayut to assume leadership of the United Thai Nation Party, to accept the party’s nomination for the premiership, and thus to contest the next general election as a full-fledged politician. This move might give the party a better chance of winning House seats, though whether the prime minister’s “brand name” will, in the absence of strong local networks of professional politicians supporting the party, be sufficient to enable United Thai Nation to capture 25 seats is an open question.
If General Prayut does not opt to make that move, he will have to consider accepting renomination by the PPP, and prepare to pay quite dearly. Perhaps, a “down payment” in the form of a cabinet reshuffle and surrender to the PPP’s demands, including especially giving the interior minister post to General Prawit, will in this case soon be required.
CONCLUSION
Uncertainties in Thai politics will continue to trouble politicians and voters alike until the Constitutional Court settles the question of when General Prayut’s premiership will reach its eight-year limit.
After that, it will be slightly clearer which direction Thailand is heading.
As far as General Prayut is concerned, he seems confident he will be able to stay on as prime minister to welcome APEC leaders in mid-November, and to lead a new government after the next general election.
Questions remain, however, on how far General Prayut is prepared to go, and how many political concessions he is willing to yield in order to remain in power.
ENDNOTES
[1] This means, for example, that Anand Panyarachun, who served as prime minister twice (2 March 1991 – 7 April 1992 and 10 June – 23 September 1992) for altogether 1 year and 141 days in office, might legally serve in the premiership for another 6 years and 224 days. Current House Speaker Chuan Leekpai, who also served as prime minister twice (23 September 1992 – 13 July 1995 and 9 November 1997 – 9 February 2001) for altogether 6 years and 20 days in office, would in contrast have only 1 year and 345 days of premiership eligibility left. And former Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva, who served as the prime minister from 17 December 2008 – 5 August 2011, might return to the premiership for 5 years and 343 days.
[2] “ความมุ่งหมาย และคำอธิบาย ประกอบรายมาตราของรัฐธรรมนูญแห่งราชอาณาจักรไทย พุทธศักราช 2560” [Objectives and explanations of each section of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand B.E. 2560], published by the Secretariat of the House of Representatives in May 2019 and revised in October 2019 (www.parliament.go.th/ewtcommittee/ewt/draftconstitution2/download, accessed 12 August 2022). In Thai, the rationale for and objective of setting the eight-year limit for holding the premiership “เพื่อมิให้เกิดการผูกขาดอำนาจในทางการเมืองยาวเกินไป อันจะเป็นต้นเหตุเกิดวิกฤติทางการเมืองไทย”.
[3] See the author’s article, “How Much Longer Can Thailand’s Prime Minister Rule Before Reaching the Eight-year Limit?”, ISEAS Perspective No. 2021/139, October 2021 (/articles-commentaries/iseas-perspective/2021-139, accessed 11 August 2022).
[4] In two earlier cases against General Prayut, the Constitutional Court did not order him to cease functioning as the prime minister during its deliberations. The court ruled in his favour in both cases. There was a July 2019 challenge from opposition parties on whether his having led a coup and serving as head of the NCPO junta made General Prayut a state authority and thus disqualified him from holding the premiership after that year’s election. The second case, which the court received on 17 June 2020, questioned whether General Prayut’s residence in a house provided by the Royal Thai Army on base in Bangkok, long after his retirement as Army chief at the end of September 2014, meant that he benefited from corruption, violated ethical standards, and lacked the honesty to lead a government.
[5] NIDA Poll, 7 August 2022 (www.nidapoll.nida.ac.th/data/survey/uploads/FILE-1659690540614.pdf, accessed 12 August 2022).
[6] In the contest for the premiership after the 2019 general election, 249 of the 250 senators voted for General Prayut, who won with 500 votes—251 from MPs in the 19 parties comprising the government coalition. Senate President Pornpetch Wichitcholachai registered a vote of “abstention” out of political correctness.
[7] “ตอกย้ำกลยุทธ์ภาพใหญ่ เดินหน้าสร้างอนาคต” [Stressing big picture strategies, moving forward to build the future], a video clip posted on General Prayut Chan-ocha’s official Facebook page on 12 July 2022 (www.facebook.com/prayutofficial, accessed 12 August 2022). The three core strategies involve completing major infrastructure projects, promoting investment in electric vehicles and supporting electronic and other modern industries, and reforming the banking sector to help needy Thais gain access to low-interest loans for household spending and ensuring bank credits to support SMEs.
[8] “นายกรัฐมนตรีประกาศเดินหน้าแผนปฏิบัติการด้านการขับเคลื่อนการพัฒนาประเทศไทย ด้วยโมเดลเศรษฐกิจ BCG ภายใน 7 ปี (พ.ศ. 2564 – 2570)” [The prime minister announces launch of plan of action to drive Thailand’s national development under the BCG economic model within seven years (B.E. 2564 – 2570)] (www.nstda.or.th/home/news_post/bcg-model2/, accessed 12 August 2022).
[9] “สภานักศึกษา มธ. จัดชุมนุม ‘ม็อบ 10 สิงหา’ ประชาธิปไตยต้องไปต่อ” [Student Union of Thammasat University organises a ‘10 August Mob’ rally: Democracy must move ahead], Bangkok Business News, 10 August 2022 (www.bangkokbiznews.com/politics/1020262, accessed 12 August 2022).
[10] “‘ประวิตร’ ลั่น ‘ประยุทธ’ เป็นนายกฯ ต่ออีก 2 ปี” [ ‘Prawit’ declares that ‘Prayut’ will be prime minister for two more years], Thai PBS News, 10 August 2022 (www.news.thaipbs.or.th/content/318288, accessed 12 August 2022).
[11] See NIDA Poll survey in the second trimester of 2022 (www.nidapoll.nida.ac.th/data/survey/uploads/FILE-1656155887431.pdf/, accessed 12 August 2022). In the survey conducted during 20-23 June 2022, topping the political popularity poll was Paethongtharn Shinawatra of the Phuea Thai Party, the younger daughter of exiled former Prime Minister Thaksin, with a 25.28 per cent rating; her rating doubled from 12.53 per cent in a similar survey in March 2022.
[12] “เปิดโฉม ‘รวมไทยสร้างชาติ’ เวอร์ชั่นแม่ทัพ ‘พีระพันธุ์’” [Unveiling ‘Ruam Thai Sang Chat’, the version with Pirapan as party leader], Thai Post, 3 August 2022 (www.thaipost.net/dominate-the-situation-news/192502, accessed 12 August 2022).
[13] “‘แรมโบ้’ เปิดหมดเปลือกเบื้องลึกตั้ง ‘พรรคเทิดไท’ ลั่นส่งครบทุกเขต ใช้ความจริงใจสู้กระสุน” [‘Rambo’ discloses the deep background of his ‘Thoet Thai Party’, saying that his party will contest in all constituencies, using sincerity to fight bullets], Thai Post, 6 August 2022 (www.thaipost.net/hi-light/195150, accessed 12 August 2022). ‘Rambo’ is the nickname of Dr Seksakol, who was a well-known Red Shirt leader before his defection to General Prayut’s camp.
| 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). |
2022/82 “New Battle Lines Appear in the Wake of Malaysia’s Historic Enfranchisement Bill” by James Chai
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- The Constitutional Amendment Act 2019 (“CA2019”) was passed by a unanimous vote in the Malaysian parliament. Every political party assumed they had a political advantage by expanding the nationwide voter base from 15.22 million to 21.02 million.
- In fact, CA2019 has different effects in different parts of the country. To illustrate the impact of CA2019 on each seat and political party, this paper calculates the percentage of new voters that the runner-up in GE14 needs to overturn the majority of the victor. The most-affected seats are thus the ones where the percentage needed is lowest, and vice versa.
- Overall, the least-affected seats are primarily urban, Chinese-majority, and held by the opposition parties, DAP and PKR. On the other hand, the most-affected seats are Bumiputera-majority, semi-urban and rural with low economic status, and held by a mix of large and small parties.
- Among the most-affected seats, half are held by current ministers and deputy ministers, introducing an unprecedented level of vulnerability to high-stature politicians in the country.
- Bersatu holds the highest number of most-affected seats, and PAS is the most-affected old party, making the Perikatan Nasional (“PN”) coalition vulnerable. Amanah holds the second highest number of most-affected seats, potentially making them the weakest link in the main opposition coalition, Pakatan Harapan (“PH”).
* James Chai is Visiting Fellow at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, and a columnist for MalaysiaKini and Sin Chew Daily.
ISEAS Perspective 2022/82, 16 August 2022
INTRODUCTION
Malaysia’s Constitutional Amendment Act 2019 (“CA2019”), which lowered the voting age and created automatic voting registration, was passed by a unanimous vote in both houses of parliament. It appeared that every party assumed that they had a political advantage in enabling 5.8 million new voters into the system, and bringing the latest total to 21.02 million. Approximately 6.85% of voters are now between 18 and 20 years old, and mostly based in urban areas.[1] The then-coalition government, PH, pushed strongly for lowering the voting age, as they had probably been the primary beneficiaries of youth votes in the past. Barisan Nasional (“BN”) and Islamic party PAS, on the other hand, insisted on automatic voter registration; this was most likely due to their assumption that their rural-centred voter base would expand if the logistic difficulties of registration were removed.
The literature on new enfranchisement efforts similar to that created by CA2019, has studied their effects on inequality, economic development, welfare, and communication quality between citizens and elected representatives. This paper analyses the political effects of CA2019 on parliamentary seats and political parties in order to identify the constituencies where political battles will be enhanced in the coming general elections.
The most recent political composition—from May 2022—shall be used in the analysis. Remarkably, a series of high-profile defections have substantially changed the composition of the Malaysian parliament since the last general election in 2018 (“GE14”). Three different prime ministers and three different parties have spearheaded governance of the country over a short span of four years, with the latest seeing a return of UMNO with its vice president, Ismail Sabri, becoming the country’s prime minister and the party’s unlikely figurehead.[2]
Table 1: Parliamentary composition of the first government post-GE14, between 10 May 2018 to 10 March 2020
Table 2: Parliamentary composition of the third government post-GE14, from 21 August 2021 to the present (May 2022)[3]
Note: Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah from UMNO, a long-time prime minister hopeful, has taken a stance of neutrality to the current government led by his party, and has conducted meetings with opposition parties independently.
Table 1 and 2 illustrate the parliamentary composition changes between the first post-GE14 government and the present. Political changes at the federal level also affected state governments. Five state governments – Sabah, Melaka, Johor, Kedah, and Perak – changed hands, with four to BN, and one—Kedah—to PAS. As a result of deaths, election petitions, and a resignation, five parliamentary by-elections have also taken place. Including by-election outcomes in the final analysis is still acceptable, notwithstanding the lower-than-usual turnout rates; in fact, only one seat, Tanjung Piai, changed hands, and these results could more accurately have been reflecting prevailing political sentiments.
METHODOLOGY
To analyse the independent effect of CA2019, the GE14 results for each seat shall be used as a benchmark. Three groups of votes are then taken into account: GE14 winner’s votes, GE14 runner-up’s votes, and the new voter group. The difference between the GE14 winner’s votes and the GE14 runner-up’s votes is considered the majority of that seat. A mathematical calculation is performed to determine the percentage from the new voter group required by the GE14 runner-up to gain the majority in each seat.
As a general rule, the lower the percentage of new voters needed to overturn the GE14 majority, the more affected that seat will be by CA2019. Conversely, the higher the percentage of new voters needed to gain that effect, the less affected is the seat. For instance, a seat in Negeri Sembilan where the GE14 majority can be overturned by a mere 1.44% of new voters is more affected by CA2019 than a seat in Sarawak where the majority can be overturned only with support from 99.70% of new voters.
Once this condition is computed for every seat, they are ranked on a table from the most-affected to least-affected, with the degree of safety classification being as shown in Table 3 below:
Table 3: Degree of safety classifications based on the percentage of support from new voters needed to overturn the current seat majority[4]
This paper assumes that the votes that had been received by the winner and the runner-up remain unchanged, with neither party gaining or losing from the past general election. It also assumes that the nationwide three-cornered fight of GE14 remains. Whilst it is reasonable to assume that a straight fight is unlikely in the next general election, the recent sprouting of new parties and coalitions may mean that the next general election will be more competitive, with vote share received by parties spread thin across more players.
These two assumptions give rise to a limitation in the methodology. It cannot function as an election simulation of the GE15 results, nor can it predict an exact number of seats distributed by their degree of safety. Instead, this paper serves to broadly delineate the potential political impact of CA2019 on each seat and on political parties by taking the percentage of new voters and referencing the GE14 winner’s vote in each seat.
Table 4: Top 20 of seats least-affected by CA2019
We start by looking at the seats that are least affected by CA2019. Inclusive of the seats shown in Table 4, 30 seats require percentages of above 100% for the GE14 majority to be lost. This means that even if all the new voters turn out to vote against the incumbent, it will still not be sufficient for the seat to change hands. An extremely high vote-majority and a relatively low new voter percentage, coupled with a pre-existing electoral malapportionment,[5] have created these strongholds.
Unsurprisingly, the least affected seats are overwhelmingly urban (primarily in Pulau Pinang and Kuala Lumpur) and Chinese-majority, where DAP controls 90% of the seats and the rest are under PKR and PBB. Among them, almost all seats have above-average median income levels, with half of the seats belonging to the top 20% quartile of the richest seats in Malaysia.
The least affected seat is Tanjong, a seat currently held by Pulau Pinang Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow. Historically, this seat has symbolic significance as it was held by party leaders like Lim Chong Eu and Koh Tsu Koon from Gerakan, and Lim Kit Siang from DAP. Chow’s party, DAP, first won this seat in 1986, with Lim Kit Siang, and has held onto it for 36 years since. With 53,089 total voters, this seat was considered a highly governable territory, making DAP’s retention of this seat a virtual certainty, solidifying the party’s control as state government. The second least-affected seat followed the same tenor, is Bagan, which is currently held by Pulau Pinang’s former chief minister and former DAP secretary-general, Lim Guan Eng.
A notable seat to watch in the list is Batu Gajah from Perak, which is currently held by V Sivakumar, the deputy secretary-general of DAP, and also the first ethnic Indian to hold the seat. Though new voters alone will not overturn the massive vote-majority of 43,868, the seat has a high absolute poverty incidence of 7.3%,[6] and an unemployment rate of 5.4%, both of which are above the country average. Median income in Batu Gajah is only RM3,870 – the lowest among the seats in Table 4. While DAP’s current hold is the longest of any party, the seat had switched to DAP’s rival, MCA, twice before, and one of the state seats under Batu Gajah, Tronoh, had a rare DAP defection by Paul Yong to Parti Bangsa Malaysia (“PBM”), which exposed vulnerability and threatened to shake up party dynamics in the locale.
Studying least-affected seats is also a study of malapportionment. CA2019 exacerbated pre-existing malapportionment that made many seats hyper-uncompetitive; any serious challenge against the incumbents in these areas is highly unlikely. Sabah-based Warisan’s recent attempts to pull disgruntled DAP members in Pulau Pinang to contest against their former party will not amount to anything more than a symbolic gesture. Electoral attention will not be centred on these sure-win seats, and the middle-class voters from these seats are likely to be ignored where federal policy discussions are concerned. These voters have to rely on the state governments to serve them, and this will cement the impression of DAP being the de facto government in the eyes of Penangites.
Table 5: Top 20 of seats most-affected by CA2019
Compared to the seats least affected, Table 5 shows a vastly different picture. While the picture is less uniform than Table 4, it is safe to conclude that Bumiputera-majority seats dominate the list of most-affected seats, with Malay-majority seats in West Malaysia being most prominent. In terms of urbanity, 70% of the seats are semi-urban seats with a rural lean, contrasting to a total-urban picture in Table 4. Other than Sabah showing five seats, the most affected seats are spread across the states rather evenly. The economic status also varies, with 75% of the seats in Table 5 having below-average median income, and a poverty incidence and unemployment rate above the national average. The distribution of political parties also varies, with smaller parties like Bersatu, Amanah, MCA, and MIC taking up noticeable shares.
Interestingly, 10 out of 20 of the most affected seats are currently held by ministers and deputy ministers in Ismail Sabri’s cabinet. Granted, the current cabinet size has been criticised for being bloated, with 69 of the 116 government-aligned MPs appointed as ministers or deputies. Still, it is generally rare for cabinet members to lose their seats, since they have the pontential largesse of selectively deploying economic development funds in their constituencies to amass political influence. CA2019, however, may have created an unprecedented level of vulnerability for them.
The three ministers holding the most-affected seats are the Minister of Transport, Wee Ka Siong, the Minister for Human Resources, Saravanan Murugan, and the Minister for Sabah and Sarawak Affairs, Maximus Ongkili. Not only will a loss embarrass these high-statured ministers, these three seats also hold a special significance for these ministers’ parties. The Ayer Hitam seat of Wee Ka Siong, MCA’s president, is one of the two remaining under MCA control, whereas Saravanan’s seat of Tapah is the only MIC seat won in GE14 and is considered the party’s last fortress. Maximus’s Kota Marudu is a stronghold seat that he has held since 2004, and remains the only seat for his Sabah-based party. In particular, Kota Marudu is the second poorest seat in the country, with a median income of RM2,424, a poverty incidence of 44.20% and an unemployment rate of 8.60%. It is conceivable that the economic problems of these areas will simmer into political dissatisfaction, and a small number of angry new voters would then be enough to flip the table.
The six other seats currently held by deputy ministers are shown in Table 6 below.
Table 6: Deputy minister seats most affected by the CA2019
The deputy ministers holding the most-affected seats, as seen in Table 6, are likely to suffer the same dilemma as the ministers in Ayer Hitam, Tapah and Kota Marudu.
Three other most-affected seats that are worth paying attention to are Keningau, Selangau, and Pontian. Keningau, a hilly constituency with low access to piped water and high poverty incidence, has been held by the Kitingan brothers since 1986, but Jeffrey Kitingan has changed political parties three times since 2018—and the seat was won by a meagre 45 votes. This means that Warisan and/or BN putting up a decent candidate would stand a good chance of overturning the Kitingan hold over the seat. On a similar wavelength, Baru Bian of Selangau, a constituency with comparable poverty to Keningau, has also changed parties three times, including being part of the infamous “Sheraton Move” faction led by minister Azmin Ali which caused the downfall of the PH government. Baru’s opponents, especially GPS, have been eyeing to defeat him, as evidenced in a five-cornered contest during the Sarawak state elections in 2021. However, the ethnic Lun Bawang politician managed to retain the seat, proving the strength of his personal appeal to local voters. Lastly, Pontian is also an interesting seat to watch as it involves a high-profile UMNO politician, Ahmad Maslan, who is the current BN secretary-general and a former deputy minister. Pontian being already a marginal seat, the influx of new voters with unknown allegiances will put the veteran politician at risk, especially given his proneness to gaffes.
A few implications follow from the above analysis of the most-affected seats. First, the main battlegrounds will now shift to Malay-majority semi-urban and rural seats, as further observed in Table 7 below. The distance between a safe and an unsafe seat is now widened dramatically, lending credence to the notion that resource-scarce political parties will be devising political strategies and expend resources in battleground seats at the expense of safe seats. Furthermore, voters, especially youths residing in urban areas will receive less political attention, and in turn, become more disinterested or disillusioned with politics.
The racial nature of the least affected and most affected should certainly not be ignored. Table 4 shows that the least affected seats are mostly Chinese-majority seats, whereas Table 5 reveals the most affected areas to be Malay-majority seats. The political issues that get highlighted will subsequently be affected; politics that pays attention to one race and ignores the other would enhance further the already highly polarized electorate, and for subsequent elections ahead.
Table 7: Demographics of the states most affected by CA2019
Second, much attention will be paid to Sabah as it is the state with the highest number of most-affected (or “unsafe”) seats, as seen in Table 7. Coincidentally, the most-affected seats in Sabah are also seats with the worst poverty incidence, unemployment rate, and inequality. People with the least economic strength will now have the largest political strength in determining the future. This is one of the positive effects of CA2019. Politicians who seek to win these seats will have to campaign on issues closest to the voters; the traditional means of buying off voters will be harder with a larger swathe of voters being involved.
Third, once Sabah is removed from the analysis, the CA2019 effect on smaller parties become obvious. Notably, the PH component party, Amanah, has a high number of most-affected seats that may be lost. Taken together with the analysis from Table 4, the dynamics of PH would change, with Amanah becoming the weakest link and DAP carrying the coalition. The perception of PH being controlled by DAP would become harder to change, and would demand even more than before, a Malay-based party to play the role of neutralizer. Other smaller parties, such as Bersatu, PSB, STAR, MCA, and MIC, will similarly find it increasingly hard to win as there are more voters to persuade now.
Lastly, the disproportionate number of cabinet members holding the most-affected seats will also change political behaviour. More development projects may target these constituencies, and more campaign funds may be expended during elections to reflect the higher number of voters. Since these seats also happen to be poorer, voters may experience a net gain in welfare and development, though the risk of corruption and bribery may also skyrocket.
Table 8: Political parties most affected by CA2019, ranked by safety of seats
As observed in Table 8, the party with the highest percentage of very unsafe and unsafe seats is Bersatu at 31%, followed by Amanah at 27%. Notably, most of the seats currently held by Bersatu are defected seats originally won by PKR and UMNO. This is not a coincidence as defection offers were targeted at candidates from marginal seats. Not only is Bersatu now in a precarious position from holding a high number of unsafe seats, additional punishment from voters for prior defections could also follow.
Worse, PAS is the most affected old party, and holds over 18% of seats considered unsafe.[7] The current PN coalition of PAS and Bersatu thus risks a poor electoral showing, and potentially even elimination. PN will have to decide between defending their marginal seats or to go on the offensive in other parties’ marginal seats in order to retain political relevance.
Furthermore, UMNO’s percentage of unsafe seats appears substantially higher than for PKR and DAP; this lends credence to the notion that PH, with the exception of Amanah, will be the primary beneficiaries of CA2019. Losing the 16% of unsafe seats would deflate UMNO’s chances of being the largest party in parliament and their chances at forming the government.
The numbers of Amanah, PKR, and DAP confirm the hypothesis above that DAP will likely be the main anchor for the PH coalition, with Amanah becoming more of a laggard than before.
CONCLUSION
Knowing which seats are the most vulnerable would shed light on where politicians are likely to expend campaigning resources in the coming elections. This paper has shown that the election battlegrounds are likely to be semi-urban and rural seats that are Bumiputera- and Malay-majority, where median income, unemployment, and inequality are below the national average. On the same vein, urban seats that are Chinese-majority and wealthier are likely to be ignored; long-term malapportionment has exacerbated the difference between each seat, making campaigning in such seats a poor use of election resources today.
For new voters, the effects of CA2019 are not evenly distributed. Voters in the most-affected seats have greater opportunity than those in the least-affected seats to influence the outcome of the election. Smaller parties will also find it increasingly hard to compete.
ENDNOTES
[1] Chai, J. 2022. “The Paradox of Lowering the Voting Age – Expanded Enfranchisement Devalued by More Unequal Representation”. /articles-commentaries/iseas-perspective/2022-63-the-paradox-of-malaysias-lowering-of-voting-age-expanded-enfranchisement-devalued-by-more-unequal-representation-by-james-chai/
[2] UMNO has three vice presidents in total; Mahdzir Khalid and Mohamed Khaled Nordin are the other two.
[3] The current parliamentary composition adds up to only 220 seats out of the required 222 seats, as 2 seats have been left vacant and unfilled following the deaths of the parliamentarians for Batu Sapi and Gerik.
[4]Past election analyses considered seats with a 5% or lower vote-majority as marginal seats in threat of changing hands. This range informs the two lowest bands of the classification in Table 3. At the upper limit, 25% is determined as the cut-off point as the two groups that make up the new voter cohort – youth voters and previously unregistered voters – are traditionally considered to be politically disinterested. Election Commission deputy chairman Azmi Sharom has surmised that turnout among the new voter groups will not be high due to general disinterest in politics, and the recent Johor state election did not refute this. The average turnout rate of Malaysia in the last five general elections was 76.44%, thus making an approximation of 50% a conservative and acceptable assumption of how the new voter groups will behave.
[5] Malapportionment is an electoral manipulation where the seats are deeply unequal in voter size, violating the longstanding democratic requirement of one-person, one-vote. See Chai, J. 2022. The “Paradox of Lowering the Voting Age – Expanded Enfranchisement Devalued by More Unequal Representation”. /articles-commentaries/iseas-perspective/2022-63-the-paradox-of-malaysias-lowering-of-voting-age-expanded-enfranchisement-devalued-by-more-unequal-representation-by-james-chai/.
[6] The absolute poverty incidence is calculated by taking the percentage of the population in the constituency with monthly income below the absolute poverty line set in 2019.
[7] For this paper, an old party is defined as one with at least 20 years of history since its formation. See table below states the year each party was formed, and how old each is.
| 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). |
2022/81 “The Roots of Cambodia’s Actions against Illegal Vietnamese Immigrants” by Jing Jing Luo and Kheang Un
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- Since 2015, the Cambodian government has been addressing the politically and diplomatically sensitive issue of illegal Vietnamese immigrants through methods such as documentation, deportation, eviction, relocation and registration.
- These actions are the ruling Cambodian People’s Party’s response to the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party’s successful politicisation of anti-Vietnamese sentiments among Cambodian voters.
- The Cambodian government’s Vietnamese immigrant policies also serve the ecological development goal of improving Cambodian water systems, as well as beautifying and developing its urban areas.
- Given Cambodia’s asymmetrical power relationship with Vietnam and the sensitive issue of illegal Vietnamese immigrants, the closer bond between Cambodia and China serves as an enabling factor for the Cambodian government in adopting tougher policies.
- The Cambodian government’s measures will however neither reduce the fear held by many Cambodians of Vietnamese domination nor will they alleviate the potential diplomatic fallout.
*Jing Jing Luo is Post-Doctoral Researcher at the School of Public Affairs, Xiamen University, China. Kheang Un is Professor of Political Science at Northern Illinois University, USA.
ISEAS Perspective 2022/81, 11 August 2022
INTRODUCTION
Since 2015, the Cambodian government, under the control of the Cambodian People’s Party (CCP), has taken measures to address the long-standing issue of Vietnamese immigrants living in Cambodia. These measures include documentation, deportation, eviction, relocation and re-registration of Vietnamese immigrants. Against this backdrop, extant literature has focused on controversies over alleged violations of the human rights of Vietnamese immigrants, their liminal citizenship status, and anti-Vietnamese sentiments in Cambodia.[1] Unlike these works, this article offers a preliminary analysis of under-discussed factors that underlie the Cambodian government’s current policies towards Vietnamese immigrants. These include: (1) the Cambodian National Rescue Party’s (CNRP) successful politicisation of anti-Vietnamese sentiments among voters; (2) Cambodia’s improved state capacity and changing needs; and (3) Cambodia’s narrowing power gap with Vietnam due to increasingly close Sino-Cambodian relations.
BRIEF HISTORY OF ETHNIC VIETNAMESE IN CAMBODIA
The influence of the Vietnamese court over Cambodia in the 1600s made possible the settlement of ethnic Vietnamese in the country. French colonisation of Indochina in the 19th century further facilitated the movement of ethnic Vietnamese into Cambodia. Particularly, French colonial policies of agro-industry development and administrative consolidation led to the recruitment of ethnic Vietnamese to staff the French colonial bureaucracy and work in the rubber plantations in Cambodia.[2] The French colonial administration also encouraged Vietnamese traders to settle in Cambodia. A significant Vietnamese population continued to live in Cambodia following Vietnam’s independence from France in 1945. The Vietnamese community in Cambodia subsequently grew, to approximately 450,000 members by 1970.[3] Between 1970 and 1979, this minority group faced state-sanctioned anti-Vietnamese campaigns, which led to the expulsion of approximately 200,000 ethnic Vietnamese to Vietnam under the Lon Nol regime (1970-1975). Still worse, the ultranationalist Khmer Rouge government forced many to flee to Vietnam and undertook ethnic cleansing policies against those remaining in Cambodia.[4]
Following the Vietnamese military intervention in Cambodia in 1979, many ethnic Vietnamese who had previously been forced to leave Cambodia returned. In addition to these returnees were new Vietnamese immigrants who moved in to settle in Cambodia. The Khmer resistance movements against the Vietnamese army and the new People’s Republic of Kampuchea claimed that a “settler colonization of Cambodia” was occurring. Hoang Minh Vu contests such a claim, arguing that the movement of people from Vietnam to Cambodia in the 1980s was the outcome of a “refugee crisis” caused by an “economic collapse” associated with “draconian economic, monetary, land, and political reforms” imposed on southern Vietnam by the communist government following the unification of the country in 1975.[5] He further states that “There was no need for the Vietnamese government to institute a policy of settler colonialism; people were simply voting with their feet.”[6] This is the locus of the controversy over ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia. Independent sources estimate the number of ethnic Vietnamese living in Cambodia to be between 400,000 and 700,000.[7] These immigrants engage in diverse economic activities such as trade, retail, carpentry, mechanical repair, restaurants, construction, and fishing. A large number of them live on floating houses on rivers and lakes, particularly the Tonle Sap Lake and the Mekong and Bassac Rivers. There is a widespread belief among Cambodians that most ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia are not descendants of those who had lived in the country before the war. Rather, they were those who accompanied the invading Vietnamese army in 1979 and their descendants, or more recent immigrants.
Since 2015, the Cambodian government has identified approximately 70,000 Vietnamese who possess “irregular administrative documents”.[8] The new immigration laws require that these people apply with a fee for a residency card, which is subject to renewal every two years; in year seven, they are eligible to apply for citizenship.[9] The Cambodian government has also tightened its immigration policies and, since 2015, has expelled 5,223 Vietnamese from the country.[10]
CAUSES OF ACTIONS AGAINST ILLEGAL VIETNAMESE IMMIGRANTS
Countering the CNRP’s Rise
Since Cambodia allowed multi-party elections in 1993, ethnic Vietnamese have become one of the core campaign issues for opposition parties. They link the presence of ethnic Vietnamese to Vietnam’s alleged broader intention of “swallowing Cambodia”. Such claims resonate among many Cambodians, given the long history of animosity between the two countries and Cambodia’s loss of territory to Vietnam’s southward expansion. Given the absence of exit polls and survey data on voters’ behaviour, the effectiveness of opposition electoral appeals to anti-Vietnamese sentiments is unknown. However, the International Republican Institute’s (IRI) multiple-year surveys on Cambodians’ opinions about the future of Cambodia allow us to gauge the general appeal of the opposition parties’ anti-Vietnamese rhetoric. The IRI surveys indicate that many Cambodians considered “illegal immigrants” a pressing issue for Cambodia, to a level as salient as issues of corruption, inflation, nepotism, poverty, and the environment.[11] Moreover, in 2013, 17 percent of respondents to the IRI Survey ranked “illegal immigrants” as the reason for Cambodia moving in the wrong direction.[12]
Therefore, the issue of Vietnamese illegal immigrants has been, in Dr. Kin Phea’s words, “a political wound for the CPP”.[13] Arguably, the CPP government’s indecisiveness in addressing the issue offered the opposition the pretext to label the CPP “a Vietnamese puppet”; this cost the party much popular support in the 2013 national election.[14]
It should be noted that prior to the 2013 national election, the issue of Vietnamese immigrants on the CPP’s electoral performance was mitigated by several other factors. The first was divisions within the opposition camp. These, compounded by an electoral system that favours large political parties, offered the CPP an advantage in capturing votes.
The second factor was the CPP’s institutional and resource strength which permitted it to maintain nationwide and top-down patronage networks, and thus electoral domination.[15] In the years leading up to the 2013 national election, however, rapid socio-economic transformation lessened the CPP’s domination. Population growth in recent decades meant that youth constituted the majority of voters. Being more educated, more politically active and engaged, and more mobilized as a result of information technology, Cambodian youth began to seek changes to the status quo dominated by the CPP.[16]
The third factor was the merger of the Human Rights Party and the Sam Rainsy Party into the CNRP—a union that offered the opposition a united rural and urban front. These changes, compounded by the CNRP’s intensified politicisation of the issue of Vietnamese immigrants, boosted the party’s electoral gains in the 2013 general election to a level that shocked the CPP. Particularly, in areas with large numbers of Vietnamese immigrants, the CNRP outperformed the CPP.[17] It was the first time that an opposition party was able to expand into and deepen its electoral footprints in rural Cambodia, the CPP’s stronghold.[18] It was at this critical juncture that the CNRP became a clear and present danger to the CPP. These conditions forced the CPP to initiate new policies to strengthen state capacity, promote economic development, and address the issue of Vietnamese immigrants.
Development Goals and Increased State Capacity
If Vietnamese immigrants had been only an electoral issue for the CPP, then logically any measure to address it would not have been necessary following the dissolution of the CNRP in 2017. However, as suggested earlier, one of the factors that undermined the CPP’s electoral performance in 2013 was Cambodians’ dissatisfaction with the CPP’s patronage-based development and its low state capacity. With the dissolution of its main political opponent—the CNRP—the CPP realised that its future legitimacy and thus political domination rest on its ability to strengthen state capacity and promote broad-based economic development, improve social order, and strengthen national sovereignty. To improve state capacity, the CPP has focused on strengthening state revenue mobilisation. Tax revenue increased substantially from 12.1 per cent of GDP in 2013 to 15.25 per cent in 2016, 19.4 per cent in 2019,[19] and 20 per cent in 2020.[20] Indicators of governance effectiveness significantly improved by 46.15 percentage points (from -0.91 in 2013 to -0.46 in 2020).[21] Such increased state capacity allows the government to address its development goals, including improving Cambodian water systems, beautifying cities and towns, and restoring order so as to attract investment.
Beginning in 2012, as part of the government’s development plan, Phnom Penh and provincial capital cities were required to enter a contest for the most “beautiful city”. Provincial governors’ and city mayors’ potential promotions rested in part on their provinces’ success in beautifying their provincial capitals. Furthermore, it should be noted that “cleaning up” the floating communities (that were primarily but not exclusively ethnic Vietnamese) in Phnom Penh opened up prime real estate areas along the river for investment, particularly from China. In Kampong Chhnang, floating communities are also located in the vicinity of the provincial capital. “Messy” floating communities, whose members raised fish in cages, allegedly contaminated the areas’ ecosystems, violated people’s sense of orderliness, and consequently reduced the value of nearby properties and investments.[22] These floating communities included ethnic Vietnamese, Khmer, and Cham (also called Khmer Islam). Thus, city development and environmental improvement necessitated the eviction and relocation of Vietnamese people along rivers and lakes.
Sino-Cambodian Relations: An Enabling Factor
Given the historically close ties between the two countries’ ruling parties—the CPP and the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV)—Vietnam and Cambodia have maintained comprehensive cooperation on key issues, including trade, security and diplomacy.[23] Two-way trade turnover has been increasing steadily since the early 2000s. Vietnamese exports to Cambodia grew from US$81 million in 2000 to US$182 million in 2005, US$501 million in 2010, US$1.682 billion in 2017 and US$2.725 billion in 2019.[24] Cambodia’s exports to Vietnam also increased substantially from US$20 million in 2000 to US$46 million in 2005, US$96 million in 2010, US$326 million in 2017, and US$359 million in 2019.[25] By 2019, Vietnam had become Cambodia’s third-largest trading partner after China and the United States.[26] Vietnam is currently the third largest investor in Cambodia after China and South Korea.[27]
Diplomatically, the two countries have also maintained high-level party and government dialogues.[28] Vietnam is a key CPP security partner, providing assistance in terms of training and medical care for senior Cambodian military officers. During Cambodia’s border conflicts with Thailand in 2008 and 2011, Vietnam provided security assistance—albeit limited in scope—in response to requests from the Cambodian government.[29] Moreover, the ruling parties of the two countries have worked closely to combat forces deemed “hostile” and “unfriendly” toward their respective governments.[30]
At the same time, there are also issues that can potentially disrupt the seemingly close Vietnam-Cambodia relations. Apart from the issue of Vietnamese immigrants in Cambodia, some segments of the two countries’ border have not been demarcated, allowing border disputes to persist. These are challenging issues within the context of the asymmetrical power relationship between the two countries. Since Vietnam is more powerful than Cambodia, the latter needs to exercise caution to avoid drawing reactions from the former in ways that could have a negative impact on Cambodia’s security and economic interests. Such reactions could be Vietnam’s non-cooperation on border issues or military training, for example.
But Cambodia’s asymmetrical power relationship with Vietnam began to change in the early years of the 21st century when the rise of China provided new opportunities for Cambodia to balance against its more powerful neighbours, Vietnam and Thailand, and Western powers. China became Cambodia’s natural ally given its economic potential and ideological appeal. Cambodia has also been a beachhead for China’s soft-power projection into Southeast Asia.[31] In 2010, China and Cambodia upgraded their relations to the level of a “comprehensive strategic partnership”. Consequently, the volume of two-way trade rose from US$1.4 billion in 2010 to US$9.53 billion in 2020.[32] During the same period, China’s aid to Cambodia rose from US$54.1 million in 2010 to US$420.56 million in 2020, while its investment in Cambodia jumped from just over US$1 billion[33] in 2010 to US$2.96 billion in 2019.[34] Sino-Cambodian military relations have also been strengthened, evidenced by increases in military aid, training and annual joint military exercises.[35] China also funded the renovation of Ream Naval Base, which has drawn much scrutiny and suspicion of China’s geostrategic ambitions.[36] Apparently, closer Sino-Cambodian relations have provided Phnom Penh with more leverage, and enabled it to narrow its perceived power gap with Vietnam. Cambodia has therefore been able to reassert its sovereignty and tackle the sensitive issue of Vietnamese immigrants without being too concerned about reprisals from Vietnam.[37]
The Vietnamese government has not publicly protested over the Cambodian government’s immigrant policies. Rather, it has extended its support by assisting poor Vietnamese to pay the residency card fees, and creating employment opportunities for those resettled from Tonle Sap Lake through Vietnamese companies operating in Cambodia.[38] Arguably, the lack of public protests by the Vietnamese government suggests that Vietnam is concerned that confrontation with Cambodia over the issue might push the latter further into China’s orbit. Given its ongoing territorial conflict with China in the South China Sea, and past efforts by China to encircle Vietnam through its alliances with Democratic Kampuchea, the Vietnamese government seems to fear history repeating itself.
CONCLUSION
Vietnam’s past territorial expansion and wars with Cambodia have made ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia an explosive political issue, even reaching the level of state-sanctioned discrimination and massacre in the 1970s. The extent of the Cambodian public’s satisfaction with their government’s recent actions against Vietnamese immigrants, as well as the Vietnamese government’s reactions, remain to be seen. If the 70,000 Vietnamese who have been granted temporary residency are denied citizenship status and deported to Vietnam, there will likely be a strong reaction from the Vietnamese government. However, many Cambodians will be frustrated if expulsions do not occur. The citizenship status of the thousands of Vietnamese living in Cambodia remains a controversial issue and therefore, anti-Vietnamese sentiments will continue to be salient in Cambodia for the foreseeable future.
However, the Cambodian government’s recent policy of granting temporary residency to Vietnamese living in Cambodia with the possibility for them to become Cambodian citizens is a step in the right direction in resolving a long-standing and contentious issue.
It should be noted that such a policy is effective only when the governments of both Cambodia and Vietnam undertake two additional measures. First, the two governments need to strengthen joint efforts in patrolling their porous borders to combat the flow of new illegal Vietnamese immigrants into Cambodia. Second, the Cambodian government needs to strengthen the capacity of, and reduce the venality within its immigration agency.
ENDNOTES
[1] See, for example, Christoph Sperfeldt, “Minorities and statelessness: Social exclusion and citizenship in Cambodia.” International Journal On Minority And Group Rights 27, no. 1 (2020): 94-120; Ben Mauk, “A People in Limbo, Many Living Entirely on the Water”, The New York Times Magazine, 28 March 2028, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/28/magazine/cambodia-persecuted-minority-water-refuge.html.
[2] David Chandler, The History of Cambodia, (Oxford, UK:Routledge, 2008).
[3] Ramses Amer, “The Ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia: A Minority at Risk?” Contemporary Southeast Asia 16, No. 2 (1994), p. 214.
[4] Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2002).
[5] Hoang Minh Vu, “Vietnam’s Near Abroad? Vietnam-Cambodia Relations in Historical and Regional Perspective, 1975-present”, paper presented at the Annual Association of Asian Studies, March 2019.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Minority Rights Group International, Cambodia: Ethnic Vietnamese, at https://minorityrights.org/minorities/ethnic-vietnamese/.
[8] Ate Hekstra and Meta Kong, “Vietnamese in Cambodia: Stateless, discriminated and in fear of deportation”, LICAS.NEWS, 15 September 2015, https://www.licas.news/2020/09/15/vietnamese-in-cambodia-stateless-discriminated-and-in-fear-of-deportation/.
[9] Ibid.
[10] General Department of Immigration, Foreigner Deportation Statistics, 2015-2022. Kheang Un’s personal communication.
[11] International Republican Institute, Survey of Cambodian Public Opinion, 30 November-15 December, 2011, at https://www.iri.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/201220May201020Survey20of20Cambodian20Public20Opinion2C20November203020E2809320December20252C202011.pdf; 12 July-6 August, 2010, at https://www.iri.org/wp-content/uploads/legacy/iri.org/2011 January 20 Survey of Cambodian Public Opinion, July 12-August 6, 2010.pdf.
It should be noted that the survey does not explicitly refer to “illegal immigrants” as Vietnamese, but based on extant literature and the authors’ own research, it is certain that respondents equate “illegal immigrants” predominantly to illegal Vietnamese immigrants.
[12] International Republican Institute, “Survey of Public Opinion.” 12 January-February 2, 2013, at https://www.iri.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Cambodian20Poll20920Final20PUBLIC.pdf.
[13] Dr. Phea Kin, Director, International Relations Institute, Royal Academy of Cambodia, interview with authors, 7 April, 2022.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Kheang Un, Cambodia: Return to Authoritarianism (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019). See also David Craig and Kimchoeun Pak, “Party Financing of Local Investment Projects: Elite and Mass Patronage”, in Cambodia’s Economic Transformation, edited by Caroline Hughes and Kheang Un (Copenhagen, Denmark: NIAS, 2011), pp. 219-244.
[16] Caroline Hughes and Netra Eng. “Facebook, Contestation and Poor People’s Politics: Spanning the Urban–Rural Divide in Cambodia?” Journal of Contemporary Asia 49, no. 3 (2019): 365-388.
[17] Dr. Phea Kin, interview with authors via Zoom, 7 April 2022.
[18] Kheang Un, Cambodia.
[19] World Bank, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.ZS?locations=KH (accessed 20 April 2022).
[20] Ministry of Economy and Finance, Annual Review Meeting, “Report on Monitoring and Evaluation of Implementing PFMRP and Q4 and 2021 PFMRP Program.” March 23, 2022 (power point presentation, in Kheang Un’s possession).
[21] These indicators measure “perceptions of the quality of public services, the quality of the civil service and the degree of its independence from political pressures, the quality of policy formulation and implementation, and the credibility of the government’s commitment to such policies”. The score ranges from -2.25 (weak) to +2.25 (strong). For more details, see World Bank, Worldwide Governance Indicators, at http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/Home/Documents (accessed 20 April 2022).
[22] Cambodian researcher, interviews with authors via Zoom, 03 April 2022.
[23] Steve Heder, “Cambodia–Vietnam: Special Relationship against Hostile and Unfriendly Forces.” In Southeast Asian Affairs 2018, edited by Malcolm Cook and Daljit Singh (Singapore: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, 2018), pp. 113–32.
[24] World Integrated Trade Solution, Cambodia, at https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/KHM/StartYear/2015/EndYear/2019/TradeFlow/Import/Indicator/MPRT-TRD-VL/Partner/VNM/Product/all-groups (accessed 20 March 2022).
[25] World Integrated Trade Solution, Cambodia, at https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/KHM/StartYear/2015/EndYear/2019/TradeFlow/Export/Indicator/XPRT-TRD-VL/Partner/VNM/Product/all-groups (accessed 20 April 2022).
[26] World Integrated Trade Solution, Cambodia, at https://www.google.com/search?q=cambodia+largest+trading+partners&rlz=1C1HIJC_enUS838US838&oq=Cambodia+largest+trading+&aqs=chrome.0.0i512j69i57j0i390l3.8320j1j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 (accessed 20 April 2022).
[27] U.S. State Department of State, 2021 Investment Climate Statements: Cambodia, at https://www.state.gov/reports/2021-investment-climate-statements/cambodia/#:~:text=Investment%20into%20Cambodia%20is%20dominated,by%20the%20end%20of%202020 (accessed 20 April 2022).
[28] Heng Kimkong, “Cambodia-Vietnam Relations: Key Issues and The Way Forward,” ISEAS Perspective, no 36, 2022, 12 April 2022, at /articles-commentaries/iseas-perspective/2022-36-cambodia-vietnam-relations-key-issues-and-the-way-forward-by-kimkong-heng/ (accessed 20 April 2022).
[29] Chanborey Cheunboran. Cambodia’s China Strategy: Security Dilemmas of Embracing the Dragon. Routledge, 2021.
[30] Heder, “Cambodia–Vietnam.”
[31] Jing Jig Luo and K. Un, “Cambodia: Hard Landing for China’s Soft Power?” ISEAS Perspective, Issue 2020, no. 111, 6 October 2020, at /wp-content/uploads/2020/09/ISEAS_Perspective_2020_111.pdf (accessed 22 April 2022).
[32] OEC, Cambodia/China, at https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-country/khm/partner/chn?redirect=true (accessed 21 April 2022).
[33] Prak Chanthul, “China Pumps Up Cambodia Economy, but at What Cost?” Reuters, 05 April 2011, at https://www.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-56123620110405 (accessed 26 April 2022).
[34] Heimkhmera Suy, “No Simple Solution to China’s Dominance in Cambodia.” East Asia Forum, 26 December 2020, at https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2020/12/26/no-simple-solution-to-chinas-dominance-in-cambodia/ (accessed 24 April 2022).
[35] Jing Jing Luo and Kheang Un, “China’s Role in the Cambodian People’s Party’s Quest for Legitimacy”, Contemporary Southeast Asia 43, no. 2 (2021): 395-419.
[36] Ellen Nakashima and Cate Cadell, “China Secretly Building Naval Facility in Cambodia, Western Officials Say,” Washington Post, 6 June 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/06/cambodia-china-navy-base-ream/.
[37] Cambodian Researcher, interview with authors via Zoom, 03 April 2022.
[38] Hoang Minh Vu, interview with authors, 3 October 2019. See also Kheang Un and Jing Jing Luo, “Cambodia in 2019: Entrenching One Party Rule and Asserting National Sovereignty in the Era of Shifting Global Geopolitics.” In Southeast Asian Affairs 2020, edited by Malcolm Cook and Daljit Singh (Singapore: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, 2020), pp. 117-134.
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2022/80 “The Complicated Role of Kerohanian Islam (Rohis) Alumni in Disseminating Islam in Indonesia” by Sari Oktafiana and A’an Suryana
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- The role of the Rohis (Kerohanian Islam) group in disseminating Islam (dakwah) in Indonesia has been understudied. The organization’s executives are in fact responsible for organizing significant events such as religious learning forums (majelis taklim) and Quranic studies for senior high school students.
- This article discusses the unique role played by the Rohis alumni in transmitting Islamic faith to their juniors in high schools. In particular, the Rohis alumni influence students’ minds through intense personal approaches; liqo (mentoring); and reading materials.
- The Rohis alumni and the organizations associated with them are however not monolithic. On the one hand, they are perceived to be disseminating conservative and radical Islam. Indeed, they predominantly subscribe to conservative Tarbiyah and Salafi teachings.
- On the other hand, many Rohis alumni subscribe to moderate versions of Islam, such as those promoted by Nadhlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah. This diversity among Rohis alumni-based organizations often results in disagreement among them on which Islamic orientation should be taught in schools.
* Sari Oktafiana is a Ph.D. student at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. A’an Suryana is Visiting Fellow at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute. Sari would like to thank Prof. Arnim Langer, Faculty of Social Sciences, KU Leuven, Belgium, for his guidance and VLIR-UOS for funding for the research. Both authors thank Syafiq Hasyim, Burhanuddin Muhtadi and Norshahril Saat for their constructive feedback and Irna Nurlina binte Masron for her editing assistance.
ISEAS Perspective 2022/80, 10 August 2022
INTRODUCTION
Kerohanian Islam (Rohis) is a largely understudied group in Indonesia despite playing an important role in the dissemination of Islam within the country’s education system. It has been shaping the minds and behaviour of students since the 1980s.[1] The few existing articles on Rohis’ strategic role in shaping Muslim students’ behaviour argue that its activities are designed to prevent the spread of Western culture, and help tackle the negative effects of globalization and modernization. Najib Kailani, for instance, explains that the rise of Rohis’ activism in the 1980s was due to moral panic among Muslims. He argues that Rohis’ activism helped defuse the spread of Western and East Asian popular culture.[2] Other articles discuss the increasing role of Rohis in disseminating exclusivist[3] and fundamentalist views of Islam.[4] Also included in this category is the research done by Maarif Institute (2018) and Litbang Kemenag Semarang (2017), which found that the religious activities sanctioned by Rohis tend to promote conservatism, intolerance and discrimination, especially targeting Muslim students who do not wear the veil (jilbab).[5] A 2016 survey jointly organized by the Wahid Foundation and the Ministry of Religious Affairs, had 68 per cent of Rohis activists expressing readiness to perform jihad (holy war), and agreeing to the use of violence in the name of defending Islam.[6]
Even fewer scholars have focused their attention on Rohis alumni’s role in transmitting Islam in schools, especially in senior high schools. Yusuf, Tahun and Asyhari (2015) explain how Rohis alumni work with Rohis executives at their former schools to organize study circles (liqo) to transmit their version of Islam to the students.[7] The Ministry of Religious Affairs’ Report on the Evaluation of Rohis’ Literature in Central Java and Yogyakarta (2017) shows that some Rohis alumni working with Rohis executives are Salafi-affiliated.[8] Salafi is a conservative brand of Islam that promotes a return to Islamic teachings as practised by Prophet Muhammad and the two generations after him. Aidulsyah (2016) presents a study on the role of Rohis alumni who are affiliated with the Indonesian Muslim Student Action Union (KAMMI) [Prosperous Justice Party (PKS)], Muhammadiyah, Nadhlatul Ulama, Salafi and many others.[9]
This article focuses on the role of former executives of the Rohis group (the Rohis alumni) and the influence they continue to exert in senior high schools. In many cases, Rohis executives at senior high schools sustain their religious activism after finishing their education. Many continue their studies in universities where they join extra-campus Muslim student organizations such as HMI (Himpunan Mahasiswa Islam/Islam Student Association), Tarbiyah student movement represented by KAMMI (Kesatuan Aksi Mahasiswa Muslim Indonesia), Ikatan Mahasiswa Muhammadiyah (IMM) and Persatuan Mahasiswa Islam Indonesia (PMII). Others join groups that promote transnational Islam such as the Salafi, and caliphate movements represented by Gema Pembebasan.
To shed light on their role and impact, we interviewed several Rohis alumni to understand the methods they use or challenges they face when conducting mentoring programmes. In contrast to dominant narratives that Rohis alumni constitute a monolithic organization, this article argues that they are fragmented. Infighting among Rohis alumni is common, especially when they subscribe to different strains of Islam, which reveals how they shape the religious narratives that they propagate to students. Their fragmentation makes it harder to describe how they collectively shape students’ minds.
THE HISTORY OF ROHIS
Rohis is a student executive body (OSIS) section in Indonesia’s private and public schools, and its executives are responsible for organizing religious events for students, including religious learning forums (majelis taklims), and Quranic classes. Rohis provides additional lessons to students to complement the limited formal Islamic education they receive in schools; two hours every week. Hence, Rohis’ aim is to offer more knowledge of Islam to students in junior and senior high schools. It is also known as a youth association at schools, with their executives being responsible for handling all mosque activities.
Rohis began to appear in junior and senior high schools in Indonesia in the 1980s. In the 1990s, their numbers grew when religious conservatism flourished in the country, and the numbers skyrocketed following the fall of Soeharto’s secular regime in 1998.[10] Rohis is present in almost all high schools in Indonesia. If we suppose that the average number of Rohis executives in a school is at least ten students, and since there are 27,930 general and vocational high schools in Indonesia,[11] then there are at least 279,930 Rohis executives throughout the country. The estimated number of students who become members or sympathizers of Rohis is undoubtedly much higher. A study by the Ministry of Religious Affairs in 2017 found that at least 70 students became members of Rohis in a Muslim-dominated senior high school.[12] It means the number of Rohis members in senior high schools is approximately seven times the number of Rohis executives; hence the estimated number of Rohis members in high schools in Indonesia is at least two million students. (Rohis executives are students who run Rohis activities, while Rohis members here refer to students who are active in, or at least frequently, following Rohis activities).
ROHIS ALUMNI AND THE DISSEMINATION OF ISLAM (DAKWAH)
Various surveys and research indicate that schools’ networking with external parties, such as Rohis alumni, contribute to shaping the narratives that Rohis Islam conveys to students at senior high schools in Indonesia.[13] In particular, the Rohis alumni influence the minds of students through intense personal approaches, through liqo (mentoring) and the dissemination of reading materials that represent their religious views.
The Rohis alumni are keen to mentor their juniors for various reasons. Some are driven by religious ideals, such as one stated in Hadith Al-Bukhari: “Muslims will be divinely rewarded if they disseminate Islamic faith, albeit only one verse.” These alumni also have interest in disseminating the teachings of other organizations where they actively participate, such as extra-campus Muslim student organizations and organizations that promote transnational Islam.
Rohis alumni mentor their juniors in their personal and organizational capacities. In some schools, Rohis alumni join forces to establish a Rohis alumni organization dedicated to serving as mentors to juniors in their school. Examples of Rohis alumni organizations in several cities are the Bontang Rohis alumni forum (East Kalimantan),[14] the Rohis alumni forum throughout Bandung (West Java),[15] and the Jakarta Rohis Alumni Association. This benefits Rohis development since the grouping offers more support and guidance to Rohis executives and members in running Rohis programmes and events than individual Rohis alumni can offer.
School authorities have increasingly been careful in approving certain Rohis alumni to serve as Rohis executives’ mentors in their respective schools because religious radicalization remains a hot topic in Indonesia today. Even more worrying, Rohis can be a breeding ground for terrorists. One Rohis executive and Rohis alumni of a state-run senior high school in Klaten, Central Java were arrested and convicted for their role in a terrorism case in 2011, including making homemade bombs.[16] Their group was convicted of carrying out various acts of terror during the Christmas and New Year celebrations.[17] This case should serve as a wake-up call for school authorities to tighten their vetting of Rohis alumni who wish to mentor their juniors.
STEREOTYPING AGAINST ROHIS ALUMNI AND THEIR ORGANIZATIONS
Rohis alumni, in several studies, have been accused of being the culprits behind the rise of radicalism among Rohis executives and students.[18] Many Rohis alumni have developed dakwah models and crafted mentoring activities that follow models developed by radical Muslim groups; this has raised some concern among school staffs and parents of students. This stereotyping has also scared some senior high school students away from joining Rohis in their respective schools. These students (who are not Rohis executives) think that Rohis executives and alumni are close to, and even affiliated to certain Islamic political parties. Hence, the students hesitate to join, let alone be the executives of Rohis.
Not only non-Rohis students, but school and government authorities also harbour suspicions toward Rohis alumni. They question why it is necessary for Rohis alumni, in many cases, to get along intensely with Rohis executives in schools. They also think that Rohis alumni, mostly university students, are not neutral in their dakwah motives,[19] and they are often suspicious that the Rohis alumni tend to propagate their religiously radical views to high school students. The school and government authorities argue that to prevent radicalization at schools, Rohis alumni’s mentoring activities need to be accompanied by the school’s Islamic religious teachers. These authorities contend that the move is necessary because, in many cases, mentoring activities have been conducted without the schools’ permission. Rohis alumni are aware of these suspicions, and the Rohis alumni who serve as informants in this research state that the suspicion is baseless, arguing that they had already rejected any affiliation with political parties or radical Muslim groups.[20]
CONTESTATION OF ISLAMIC VIEWS
There is a dominant perception that Rohis alumni and their organizations are monolithic and disseminate conservative and even radical views. The truth is that Rohis alumni and organizations are fragmented. Rohis alumni usually come from varied activist backgrounds[21] such as HMI, Salafi, KAMMI, PMII, Muhammadiyah, Maiyah[22] and dakwah activities in campus mosques. When they get together to establish a Rohis alumni organization dedicated to mentoring juniors at their former school, they tend to face internal infighting within the organization. For example, Fachri Aidulsyah has shown in his journal article that a Rohis alumni organization operating in Kerjo Senior High School in Karanganyar regency, Central Java province, consists of members with diverse religious orientations. Their members subscribe to different strains of Islam, ranging from moderation (Nadhlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah) to the more conservative forms of Islam such as those promoted by KAMMI [PKS], Salafi and even Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI) that campaigns for the establishment of an Islamic caliphate. This diverse membership can also be found in a public school (SMAN 3 Boyolali) in Boyolali regency, Central Java province. The Rohis alumni organization that operates in this school consist of people whose religion orientations are affiliated with KAMMI [PKS] and Muhammadiyah.[23]
As a result, in many cases, no group or individual with a definite religious background is able to dominate discussions in Rohis alumni organizations, for instance, on the design of the organization’s work programmes that can shape religious narratives for students. Differences in theological views and cultural practices affect their internal negotiations in, among others, mentoring curriculum, methods, and recommendations on which Muslim organizations Rohis and schools can collaborate with when organizing events. Each Rohis alumni has its own definite agenda.
One of the authors of this article found in her fieldwork that, in some senior schools in Yogyakarta province, this competition often becomes a source of conflict. For example, Rohis alumni who identify themselves as Salafists tend to be suspicious about Tarbiyah activists for covertly attempting to persuade their juniors to join the Tarbiyah movement.[24] Personal interviews with Rohis alumni at three senior high schools in Yogyakarta reveal that they disagree with the mentoring programmes proposed by their colleagues in the alumni organization, saying that the programme looks like a liqo programme (cell system) formulated and implemented by proponents of the Tarbiyah movement following the footsteps of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.[25] On another occasion, a Nadhlatul Ulama (NU) Rohis alumni invited juniors to study with NU religious figures about their religious views, and be exposed to NU cultural practices such as visiting graves, and asking the deceased to be an interlocutor to get blessings from Allah.[26] In addition, the specific religious view of an Rohis alumni organization can influence decisions on the mentoring curriculum and on which clerics are to be invited to conduct Islamic studies in schools run by the alumni. For example, a Salafist Rohis alumnus would develop a mentoring curriculum according to his view,[27] while Rohis alumni who are HMI and Muhammadiyah would be reluctant to invite an Ustadz (cleric) from NU.[28]
This proves that Rohis alumni organizations, while useful in pooling resources and strength, usually consist of Rohis alumni members with different Islamic ideological ideas. The resulting contestations then affect the formulation and the implementation of Rohis alumni programmes in a particular school. For example, Rohis alumni often engage in disputes on which mentoring method to implement. This contrasts with the popular belief that Rohis alumni and their organizations are monolithic in their religious orientations and espouse dominant religious narratives. These contestations temper the domination of certain strains of Islam affecting school students’ minds.
ENDNOTES
[1] Supriyanto et al. 2017. Peran Organisasi Kerohanian Islam (Rohis) Dalam Membentuk Perilaku Keagamaan Siswa Di Sekolah Menengah Atas. Jurnal Sosio Akademika Vol. 10/No. 01/November. See also: Wibowo, A. M. (2015). Peran Rohis dalam Pembentukan Sikap Keagamaan Peserta Didik (Studi atas Peran Kerohanian Islam Nurul Ilmi SMAN 3 Pekalongan) dalam Taruna (ed.). Peran Rohis di Sekolah dan Pelaksanaan Kurikulum 2013 di Madrasah. Prosiding Bidang Pendidikan Agama dan Keagamaan, Kemenag. And see: Astuti, R. (2010). Peran Organisasi Kerohanian Islam (Rohis) dalam Membentuk perilaku Keagamaan Siswa di SMA Negeri 1 Godean Sleman Yogyakarta. Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta.
[2] Kailani, N. (2011). Kepanikan Moral dan Dakwah Islam Populer (Membaca Fenomena ‘Rohis’ di Indonesia). Analisis: Jurnal Studi Keislaman, 11(1), 1-16.
[3] According to Husein (2004:29), Exclusivist Muslims are the Muslim groups with four characteristics: the literal approach to understanding the foundation texts of Islam, The Quran, and The Sunna; they are past-oriented; believe that Islam is the only way to salvation; and refuse the separation between Islam and state (Islam din wa dawla). They believe in a conspiracy between the Indonesian government and the Christian group that treats Islam with disrespect. See: Husein, F. (2004). Muslim-Christian relations in the New Order Indonesia: the exclusivist and inclusivist Muslims’ perspectives. PT Mizan Publika.
[4] CRCS (2008). Laporan Tahunan Kehidupan Beragama di Indonesia. Yogyakarta: CRCS UGM. p. 27. Also see: Rosidin, D. N. (2013). Muslim fundamentalism in educational institutions. A case study of Rohani Islam in high schools in Cirebon. In Islam in Indonesia (pp. 215-226). Amsterdam University Press.
[5] Muslim, A. A. (2018). Menjaga benteng kebinekaan di sekolah: studi kebijakan OSIS di Kota Padang, Kab. Cirebon, Kab. Sukabumi, Kota Surakarta, Kota Denpasar, dan Kota Tomohon. Maarif Institute for Culture and Humanity. And Laporan Hasil Penelitian Evaluasi Buku Bacaan Rohis SMA di Jateng dan DIY, Kemenag, 2017. Also see Farha, Ciciek. 2008. Laporan Penelitian Kaum Muda dan Regenerasi Gerakan Fundamentalis di Indonesia: Studi tentang Unit Kerohanian Islam di SMU Negeri. Penelitian tidak diterbitkan. Jakarta: Rahima Institute.
[6] Huda, M. N. (2017). Intoleransi kaum muda di tengah kebangkitan kelas menengah Muslim di perkotaan. Jakarta: Wahid Foundation & Australia Indonesia Partnership for Justice,p. 12-13.
[7] Yusuf, M., Tahun, M., & Asyhari, B (2015) The Politics Of Religious Education, The 2013 Curriculum, and The Public Space Of The School.CRCS, UGM. P. 63.
[8] Laporan Hasil Penelitian Evaluasi Buku Bacaan Rohis SMA di Jateng dan DIY, Kemenag, 2017.
[9] Aidulsyah, F. (2016). Berebut Ruang Publik Sekolah Pasca Orde Baru: Studi Kasus Pertarungan Politik Ideologi di Kerohanian Islam (ROHIS). Jurnal Studi Pemuda, 5(1), 370-385.
[10] Laporan Hasil Penelitian Evaluasi Buku Bacaan Rohis SMA di Jateng dan DIY, Kemenag, 2017. Also see Rosidin, D. N. (2013). Muslim fundamentalism in educational institutions. A case study of Rohani Islam in high schools in Cirebon. In Islam in Indonesia, p. 2016
[11] Indonesian Central Statistics Agency, 2021: p. 175-178
[12] See Laporan Hasil Penelitian Evaluasi Buku Bacaan Rohis SMA di Jateng dan DIY, Kemenag, 2017, p. 19-32.
[13] Thohiri, M. K. (2019, November). Radikalisme Islam dan Moderatisme Islam di Sekolah Menengah (Kontestasi Ideologi, Aktor dan Jejaring Sosial). In Proceedings of Annual Conference for Muslim Scholars (Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 598-607). See also: Suprastowo, P., Sudrajat, U., Utama, B., Nurrochsyam, M. W., & Tri Rahmadi, U. (2018). Menangkal Radikalisme dalam Pendidikan. Pusat Penelitian Kebijakan Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan, Badan Penelitian dan Pengembangan, Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan. P.127-128. See: Yani, Z. (2014). Bacaan Keagamaan Aktivis Rohis: Studi Kasus di SMA Negeri 3 dan 4 Kota Medan. Penamas, 27(1), 47-62. Also see: Qodir, Z. (2013). Perspektif Sosiologis tentang Radikalisasi Agama Kaum Muda. Maarif, 8(1), 45-66.
[14] More information Bontang Post, “Forum Alumni Rohis Bontang Terbentuk Jadikan Wadah Pembinaan Berkarakter”, https://bontangpost.id/forum-alumni-rohis-bontang-terbentuk-jadikan-wadah-pembinaan-berkarakter-islami/ , 9 May 2017.
[15] See Detik News, “Alumni Rohis Kota Bandung Demo Pemberitaan Soal Teroris”, https://news.detik.com/berita-jawa-barat/d-2025462/alumni-rohis-kota-bandung-demo-pemberitaan-soal-teroris, 19 September 2012.
[16] Hayadin, H. (2016). Tragedi Kecolongan ROHIS Keterlibatan Alumni ROHIS SMKN Anggrek pada Aksi Radikalisme. Al-Qalam, 19(2), 231-240. See: Liputan6. “Remaja yang Diduga Teroris Ternyata Pelajar”, https://www.liputan6.com, 27 January 2011, https://www.liputan6.com/news/read/317754/remaja-yang-diduga-teroris-ternyata-pelajar.
[17] See: Riky Ferdianto. “Dalang Teroris Klaten Divonis Enam Tahun Penjara”, https://nasional.tempo.co/, 8 December 2011, https://nasional.tempo.co/read/370648/dalang-teroris-klaten-divonis-enam-tahun-penjara.
[18] Arrobi, M. Z. (2020). Islamisme ala Kaum Muda Kampus: Dinamika Aktivisme Mahasiswa Islam di Universitas Gadjah Mada dan Universitas Indonesia di Era Pasca Soeharto. UGM Press. Also see: Thohiri, M. K. (2019, November). Radikalisme Islam dan Moderatisme Islam di Sekolah Menengah (Kontestasi Ideologi, Aktor dan Jejaring Sosial). In Proceedings of Annual Conference for Muslim Scholars (Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 598-607). See: Aidulsyah, F. (2016). Berebut Ruang Publik Sekolah Pasca Orde Baru: Studi Kasus Pertarungan Politik Ideologi di Kerohanian Islam (ROHIS). Jurnal Studi Pemuda, 5(1), 370-385. And see: Salim, H., Kailani, N., & Azekiyah, N. (2011). Politik Ruang Publik Sekolah: Negosiasi dan Kontestasi di SMUN Yogyakarta. Yogyakarta: Monograf CRCS UGM.
[19] In-person interview with officials from the local education office and the regional Ministry of Religious Affairs, AT, RD, AR, and BK in Yogyakarta, June-August 2021.
[20] Interviews with AG and FR through focus group discussions held in Yogyakarta, February 2021.
[21] In-person interview with nine Rohis alumni in Yogyakarta during December 2020-July 2021.
[22] Maiyah is a follower of Emha Ainun Najib, a Muslim intellectual who follows Sufism.
[23] Aidulsyah, F. (2016). Berebut Ruang Publik Sekolah Pasca Orde Baru: Studi Kasus Pertarungan Politik Ideologi di Kerohanian Islam (ROHIS). Jurnal Studi Pemuda, 5(1), 376-378.
[24] In-person interview with IN, Rohis alumni, July 2021.
[25] In-person interview with AG (December 2020) and FR (February 2021), Rohis alumni, and members of the Rohis alumni organization.
[26] In-person interview with AG (December 2020) and FR (February 2021), Rohis alumni, and members of the Rohis alumni organization.
[27] In-person interview with IN, Rohis alumni, July 2021.
[28] In-person interview with RW, the Rohis alumni, July 2021. Also, in person interview with DY, April 2021, a teacher in a public high school of Yogyakarta.
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2022/79 “How the Party-State Retains Controls over Vietnam’s Blossoming Media Landscape” by Dien Nguyen An Luong
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- Most of the popular news sites in Vietnam are currently run by three private tech conglomerates, namely FPT, Zalo/VNG and VCCorp. On the face of it, this situation poses a challenge to the Vietnamese party-state. But in fact, there are no signs that these tech companies have ventured into editorial independence.
- The nexus between tech conglomerates and the Vietnamese party-state has augmented, not curtailed, new constraints on the media, with the former being subject to market pressures while remaining answerable to and at the mercy of propaganda officials.
- Vietnamese authorities have justified the controversial Press Shakeup Blueprint 2025 as a much-needed move to overhaul the bloated bureaucracy and overlapping ownership that have plagued the news industry. While legitimate to some extent, critics of the blueprint point out that it is a testament to how the Vietnamese party-state has constantly looked to weaponize regulations to induce news uniformity and instill self-censorship across the board.
- The façade of innovation of Vietnamese news outlets should not be interpreted as a harbinger of a more independent press. In fact, its continued strong control over mainstream media is emblematic of how the Vietnamese party-state has sought to engineer a superficial openness to camouflage a tighter grip on public discourse.
* Dien Nguyen An Luong is Visiting Fellow of the Media, Technology and Society Programme at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute. Point of disclosure: before being appointed a Visiting Fellow, he worked for Thanh Nien, VnExpress and Zing News, the news organizations analysed in this paper.
ISEAS Perspective 2022/79, 5 August 2022
INTRODUCTION
This paper seeks to give a sense of the biggest and most influential media outlets in Vietnam, who owns and controls them, and what sorts of tools, methods and policies are employed to ensure the regime’s control over the information ecosystem. It addresses these questions: What are the vested interests behind private conglomerates that run newly emerging news outlets? Do these media entities exhibit a particular editorial slant that challenges the party line? How have the authorities sought to keep exerting control and influence on the press in this new media landscape at a time when they are struggling to rein in online discourse?
The vast majority of the most popular news sites in Vietnam are currently run by three private tech conglomerates, namely FPT Corporation, Zalo/VNG and VCCorp. On the face of it, this situation poses a potential challenge for the Vietnamese party-state, which does not allow private media ownership and has always sought to control public discourse. This paper argues that, in fact, there are no signs that these tech companies have exhibited any editorial independence; rather, they seem to be adopting a pragmatic stance and consulting closely with the government.
THE NEXUS BETWEEN TECH FIRMS AND THE PARTY-STATE
Internet growth in Vietnam got off to a rather low start. The Internet arrived in Vietnam only in 1997 and three years later, a mere 203,000 Vietnamese (or 0.25 per cent of the then total population) were online.[1] But due to growing demands from the business community and consumers for cheaper, faster and better Internet access[2], as well as the need to boost e-commerce as Vietnam opened up to the global economy[3], the authorities allowed for more competition from the private sector and the development of online media. As of January 2022, around 72 million Vietnamese, or 70 per cent of the population, were online.[4] In the early 2000s, established newspapers, including the mouthpiece of the Communist party, started to launch their online versions. Major tech companies entered the fray in the mid-2000s, accelerating the development of Vietnam’s online media space with prominent entrants that remain the most popular and most read today.[5] Since Vietnam ushered in economic liberalisation policies known as “Doi Moi” (renovation) in 1986, the party-state has “actively outsourced the burden of funding media to the market.”[6] All this attests to a rat race for readers’ attention and advertising dollars in an increasingly commercialised and growing media industry.
Just like everywhere else, Vietnam’s print newspapers have been haemorrhaging readers to online news sites. Of the top ten most-read online news sites in Vietnam, VnExpress has been the most popular. Among state-run sites that cracked the list, Tuoi Tre (Youth) and Thanh Nien (Young People), which also launched their online versions in the early 2000s, have remained the most influential established print newspapers in the country. Tuoi Tre operates under the remit of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union and Thanh Nien under the Vietnam Youth Federation. Considered the most progressive newspapers in Vietnam in the 2000s, both were at the forefront of pushing the envelope in their coverage of endemic corruption, government malfeasance and social injustice. The other two state-run news outlets that are on the list are VietNamNet, owned by the Ministry of Information and Communications, and Dan Tri (Public Intellectual), which is under the Central Association for Education Promoting.
FIGURE 1. THE TOP 10 MOST-READ ONLINE NEWS SITES IN VIETNAM
(Sources: SimilarWeb and Semrush, February 2022[7])
The other news sites on the list centre on three tech conglomerates: FPT Corporation (the Corporation for Financing and Promoting Technology), Zalo Group, and VCCorp (Vietnam Communication Corporation). FPT Corporation owns VnExpress. Zalo Group, owned by VNG, runs Zing News and baomoi.com. VCCorp owns Kenh14.vn and Soha.vn. Closer scrutiny of the profiles of those corporations, how they are beholden to the authorities and what shapes the editorial line of their news outlets offer a glimpse of the nexus between tech conglomerates and the Vietnamese party-state.
What are their profiles?
FPT: Starting out as a food processing technology company in 1988, FPT Corporation is currently the largest IT group in Vietnam.[8] Its core business revolves around three sectors: information technology, telecommunications and education.
Zalo/VNG: VNG, the parent company of Zalo, has been billed as Vietnam’s first ever unicorn startup specialising in online gaming, e-commerce, music streaming and messaging application.[9] Zalo owns the eponymous premier chatting app in Vietnam, boasting more than 70 million users.[10]
VCCorp: The conglomerate brands itself as a leading technology and Internet player in Vietnam.[11] Its core business models focus on e-commerce, online content, online advertising and mobile content.
How beholden are these tech conglomerates to the Vietnamese government?
Of note, the interests of the Vietnamese party-state and those of such tech conglomerates have become increasingly aligned and intertwined.
FPT: According to Nikkei Asia, the government holds a 5.9 per cent stake in FPT Corporation while foreign investors own 48.75 per cent.[12] The conglomerate has been a major Internet Service Provider (ISP) that has been a part of the country’s Internet filtering regime, blocking sites at the behest of Vietnamese censors.[13]
Zalo/VNG: A major communication channel between the Vietnamese government and its citizens, Zalo has also been utilised as part of the e-government infrastructure across the country.[14] Vietnamese authorities have tapped into patriotic nationalism to talk the public into using the app.[15] Since 2018, Zalo/VNG, along with VCCorp and another Vietnamese tech firm, has been at the vanguard of what amounts to a national mission. The government has tasked those tech firms with jacking up the number of social media customers that use domestic platforms, a move designed to rival Meta’s Facebook and Google’s YouTube.[16]
VCCorp: VCCorp bankrolled and developed Lotus, a Vietnamese social network that was launched in 2019 to much fanfare and with wholehearted support from the government.[17]
What dictates their editorial line?
News outlets run by the private tech companies tailor their content to a young, Internet-savvy audience, a growing middle class, and the business community. Their topics of coverage are diverse, ranging from politics to society, world affairs to education, business to urban life, technology to youth, and entertainment to sports. But when it comes to politics, their editorial line has revolved chiefly around amplifying official sources and state-sanctioned narratives under the banner of innovative online journalism that embraces long form, visual and interactive storytelling. The treatment of any contentious issues is well within the boundaries of the permissible, serving mostly as a useful local-level overview. Coverage of governance malfeasance and corruption at the central level has been dictated by the political consensus and elite framing of the Vietnamese party-state. In sum, news outlets run by private tech conglomerates have never seemed intent on adopting any editorial slant that challenges the party line. As Nguyen-Thu (2018) observes, the growing clout of businesspeople in the media industry only means that they are likely to be inclined to shun “sensitive” topics and to focus instead on “commercially rewarding but politically benign content.”[18] The nexus between tech conglomerates and the Vietnamese party-state has augmented, not curtailed, new constraints on the media, with the former being subject to market pressures while remaining answerable to and at the mercy of propaganda officials. As Nguyen-Thu (2018) encapsulates, “the defining characteristics of the contemporary Vietnamese media is thus not just political censorship, but the raw combination of political surveillance and commercializing pressure.”[19]
“UNPREDICTABLE AND ARBITRARY” CENSORSHIP
Under the Press Law 2016, all press agencies in Vietnam, including those run by private tech companies, must be placed under the remit of the party, the government or various political, social, professional or religious associations and organizations.[20] Private participation in news organizations and television is allowed, but their editorial content must not be related to political and current news events.[21] In practice, private production of content has taken place for years. Many outlets have produced TV shows, hosted online news portals and published local versions of foreign magazines and publications. The same dynamic can also be observed in the television industry, where state-run stations are allowed to privatise their shows, apart from those on news and current affairs.[22]
Still, the bottom line is that in order to operate in Vietnam, private companies are required to partner with a state entity. FPT’s VnExpress is concurrently under the ownership of the Ministry of Science and Technology and Zalo’s Zing News under the remit of the Vietnam Publishing Association. The case of VCCorp is a bit trickier, however. All news sites run by the conglomerate, including the two on the most-read list, are technically licensed as “aggregated information websites”, not online newspapers. This means that these sites are obliged to operate effectively as news aggregators[23]; they are allowed to only republish news information from a state-approved whitelist. But in practice, many such aggregated information websites have had their own staff produce original content. Their technical workaround has been to publish such information in the name of citing from certain state-affiliated online newspapers, with the latter’s consent.[24] In that spirit, the VCCorp-run aggregated information websites are affiliated with news outlets that are owned by the Young Intellectuals and Scientists Association, and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.
The Central Commission of Propaganda and Education and the Ministry of Information and Communications have been at the helm in controlling the press, dictating over all state-run print, broadcast, online, and electronic media.[25] The Central Commission of Propaganda and Education acts as an ideological gatekeeper, advising the Communist party of Vietnam on how to keep tabs on the press. The Ministry of Information and Communications is mainly charged with regulating Vietnamese media through the licensing system and overseeing other legal, technical and economic aspects of the industry.[26] All editors-in-chief of those press agencies are Communist party members; this requirement has extended to those who hold senior editorial positions at established newspapers. Senior editors, including those of private-run ones, are summoned to weekly meetings with propaganda officials either every Tuesday in Hanoi, the capital, or every Wednesday in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s economic hub. In those meetings, published articles are reviewed and news outlets are subject to dressing-down or even fines if they are deemed not subservient enough to the party line. Propaganda officials also set the boundaries of what is publishable for upcoming topics of importance and public interests.
But such out-of-bounds markers have never been straightforward and have in fact become increasingly fuzzy. As Cain (2013, 3) observes, Vietnam’s media controls are “purposefully unpredictable and arbitrary”[27] in a bid to induce and perpetuate self-censorship among journalists and their editors in particular. Indeed, it is the Vietnamese party-state’s deployment of vagueness and uncertainty that plays a crucial role in enabling the authorities to keep the media on their toes. Thanks to a conflicting array of laws, decrees, and even the Constitution as far as it provides for press freedom, Vietnamese authorities on the one hand allow for criticism of the party-state but on the other can make such practices an offense.[28] All this puts the media in an ironic position: It is tasked with serving as a “forum for the people” while at the same time serving as a “mouthpiece of the Party.”
KILL THE CHICKEN TO SCARE THE MONKEY
The heyday of Vietnam’s critical journalism in the 2000s was short-lived. In mid-2008, after forcing a minister of transport to step down and exposing graft that sent scores of high-ranking officials to jail, two prominent Vietnamese journalists from the two most influential established newspapers, Tuoi Tre and Thanh Nien, were arrested.[29] Later that year, the editors-in-chief of the same newspapers were also fired. The authorities never clearly articulated their rationale for their dismissal, but it was not difficult to fathom: Their corruption coverage crossed the line. The concurrent dismissal of the top editors of Vietnam’s legacy news organisations was an unprecedented move in the history of the country’s journalism. This crackdown has since upended the country’s media landscape, perpetuating a climate of fear and self-censorship that only appears to exacerbate day by day.
A decade later, Tuoi Tre became the casualty to another unprecedented move. In 2018, its online version was suspended for three months after being accused of misquoting the then-Vietnamese president and publishing readers’ comments deemed by the authorities as undermining “national unity”.[30] The incident was likely to bring about a sense of déjà vu for VnExpress. The site was also on the brink of shutdown in 2004, three years into its operation, due to readers’ comments that were critical of the government policy on car imports.[31] VnExpress narrowly escaped the closure but since then, critical and investigative journalism has effectively been off its editorial agenda. Those cases are likely to have served as cautionary tales for the rest of the media landscape: Any editorial slant that crosses the party line risks imperilling the very survival of any news organisation, let alone private-run ones. Such tactics are in line with how the Vietnamese party-state controls the media. As Cain (2013) observes, because the authorities lack the wherewithal to punish every single transgressor, their strategy of choice is to kill the chicken to scare the monkey, or to go after “a handful of exemplars to keep the rest in line.”[32]
The 2018 punishment against Tuoi Tre has also appeared to further embolden Vietnamese authorities to dangle the no-holds-barred threat of withdrawing the license of any news outlet they consider straying from the party line. Nowhere is this strategy of choice more manifest than in what has been referred to as the Press Shakeup Blueprint 2025.[33] The blueprint, which was announced in 2015, seeks, among other things, to increase and centralise state control over the media by axing or merging hundreds of press organisations. The authorities have justified this move as being essential to the revamping of the bloated bureaucracy and overlapping ownership that have plagued the news industry.[34] While this justification is legitimate to some extent, critics of the blueprint point out that one of its key aims is to rein in media organisations deemed decamping from ideology. Most notably, the authorities seem intent on explicitly prohibiting news outlets from covering topics that are not aligned with the raison d’être of the agencies or associations they belong to.[35] For instance, judging by the tenor of the plan, Zing News would be allowed to run articles mostly on publishing activities since it falls under the remit of the Vietnam Publishing Association. If the outlet ventures into coverage of other topics deemed editorially sensitive or slanted by the censors, that could be considered in contravention of the stated aims of the license, which could lead to its withdrawal. This scenario is poised to affect almost half of all press organisations in Vietnam, which technically belong to various socio-political-professional associations (See Figure 2). The press overhaul has been enforced unevenly since 2019 and it remains to be seen what will become of Vietnam’s media landscape by 2025. But for now, the prospect of the blueprint appears to add another layer of uncertainty and suspense for a press that has already been cowed into submission. It is alsoa testament to how Vietnamese authorities have constantly looked to weaponise regulations to induce news uniformity and instill self-censorship across the board.
FIGURE 2. OWNERSHIP STRUCTURE OF PRESS ORGANISATIONS
(Source: Ministry of Information and Communications)
APPETITE FOR ALTERNATIVE NEWS SOURCES REMAINS HIGH
Vietnamese authorities have repeatedly urged the mainstream media to get out of the rut to enhance professional practices and embrace digital technology at what they call a make-or-break juncture for Vietnamese journalism. But as we have seen, the façade of innovation in Vietnam’s media landscape should not be understood as a harbinger of a more independent press.[36] In fact, its continued strong controls over mainstream media is emblematic of how the Vietnamese party-state has sought to engineer a superficial openness to camouflage a tighter grip on public discourse.
The era of swelling social media activism seems to have elicited a policy response aimed at further constraining traditional media in their coverage of contentious issues that cast the regime in an unflattering light. The fact that the privately-owned media outlets have also toed the Party’s line suggests that the appetite for alternative news sources will remain high.
ENDNOTES
[1] “The Internet Turns 20 in Vietnam: P6—Wi-Fi and Household Internet”, Tuoi Tre News, 12 November 2017, https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/features/20171112/ the-internet-turns-20-in-vietnam-p6-wifi-and-household-internet/42600.html
[2] Bjorn Surborg, “On-line with the People in Line: Internet Development and Flexible Control of the Net in Vietnam”, Geoforum 39, no.1 (2008): 344–57, http://citeseerx. ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.458.505&rep=rep1&type=pdf
[3] Tim Kelly and Michael Minges, Vietnam Internet Case Study (Switzerland: International Telecommunication Union, 2002), p. 29, https://www.itu.int/ ITU-D/ict/cs/vietnam/material/VNM%20CS.pdf
[4] “Digital 2022: Vietnam”. DataReportal, 15 February 2022. https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2022-vietnam
[5] Zachary Abuza, Stifling the Public Sphere: Media and Civil Society in Vietnam, (Washington DC: National Endownment for Democracy 2015), p .9, https://www.ned.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Stifling-the-Public-Sphere-Media-Civil-Society-Vietnam-Forum-NED.pdf
[6] Giang Nguyen-Thu. 2018. “Vietnamese Media Going Social: Connectivism, Collectivism, and Conservatism”. The Journal of Asian Studies 77, no. 4: 895–908
[7] “Digital 2022 Vietnam: The Essential Guide to the Latest Connected Behaviours”. We Are Social and Kepios, 15 February 2022.
[8] “FPT Corp.” Nikkei Asia, https://asia.nikkei.com/Companies/FPT-Corp
[9] Lien Hoang, “Vietnam’s first unicorn bets on AI and overseas growth”. Nikkei Asia, 30 April 2021. https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Business-Spotlight/Vietnam-s-first-unicorn-bets-on-AI-and-overseas-growth
[10] “Zalo was honored as the leading messaging app in Vietnam”. Vietnam Insider, 29 March 2022. https://vietnaminsider.vn/zalo-was-honored-as-the-leading-messaging-app-in-vietnam/
[11] VC Corp. https://www.linkedin.com/company/vccorpvietnam/about/
[12] “FPT Corp.” Nikkei Asia, https://asia.nikkei.com/Companies/FPT-Corp
[13] Dien Nguyen An Luong, A Study of Vietnam’s Control over Online Anti-state Content, no. 05/2022 (Singapore: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, 2017), p. 8
[14] Uyen Diep with Ha Dang, “COVID-19: For Vietnam, Information Is A Public-Health Weapon”. Reporting Asean, 18 June 2021. https://www.reportingasean.net/covid-19-vietnam-iinformation-public-health-weapon/
[15] Phuong Loan, “‘Ở đâu có người Việt, ở đó có Zalo’” (Zalo will follow Vietnamese wherever they may go). Zing.vn, 15 January 2019. https://
news.vn/o-dau-co-nguoi-viet-o-do-co-zalo-post889846.html
[16] “Vietnam wants 50 percent of social media users on domestic platforms by 2020”. Reuters, 8 November 2020. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-vietnam-socialmedia/vietnam-wants-50-percent-of-social-media-users-on-domestic-platforms-by-2020-idUSKCN1ND1FM
[17] “Vietnam’s social media crowd swells with new entrant to take on Facebook, Google”. Reuters, 17 September 2019. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-vietnam-cybersecurity/vietnams-social-media-crowd-swells-with-new-entrant-to-take-on-facebook-google-idUSKBN1W20NH
[18] Giang Nguyen-Thu. 2018. “Vietnamese Media Going Social: Connectivism, Collectivism, and Conservatism”. The Journal of Asian Studies 77, no. 4: 895–908
[19] Ibid., p.898
[20] Vietnam Press Law 2016. https://wipolex-res.wipo.int/edocs/lexdocs/laws/en/vn/vn111en.html
[21] Nguyen T.N., Bui C.T. 2019. “The state management of media activities in Vietnam “. The Russian Journal of Vietnamese Studies. Vol. 3. – N. 3. – P. 18-27. 10.24411/2618-9453-2019-10024
[22] Nguyen-Thu. “Vietnamese Media Going Social, p. 898
[23] Thi Thanh Phuong Nguyen-Pochan. “State management of social media in Vietnam.” The Russian Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Institute of the Far Eastern studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2021, 5 (1S), pp.23 – 33.
[24] Hien Minh, “Zing.vn và 18 tờ báo khác sẽ không còn được là “báo” nữa” (Zing.vn and other 18 newspapers will no longer be allowed to function as “newspaper”). Luat Khoa Magazine, 3 March 2020. https://www.luatkhoa.org/2020/03/zing-vn-va-18-to-bao-khac-se-khong-con-duoc-la-bao-nua/
[25] Zachary Abuza, Stifling the Public Sphere: Media and Civil Society in Vietnam, (Washington DC: National Endownment for Democracy 2015), p .10, https:/
/www.ned.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Stifling-the-Public-Sphere-Media-Civil-Society-Vietnam-Forum-NED.pdf
[26] Giang Nguyen-Thu. 2018. “Vietnamese Media Going Social: Connectivism, Collectivism, and Conservatism”. The Journal of Asian Studies 77, no. 4: 895–908
[27] “Kill One to Warn One Hundred: The Politics of Press Censorship in Vietnam”, Cain, Geoffrey. ISSN: 1940-1612 , 1940-1620. The international journal of press/politics, Vol.19(1), p.85-107
[28] Ibid., p. 94
[29] Martha Ann Overland, “Top Vietnamese Journalists Arrested”. TIME, 16 May 2008. http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1807113,00.html
[30] Vietnam withdraws licence of news site, issues fine. Bangkok Post, 17 July 2018. https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/1505098/vietnam-withdraws-licence-of-news-site-issuesfine
[31] “VnExpress mất Tổng biên tập” (VnExress’ Editor-in-chief gets the ax). BBC Vietnamese, 10 November 2004. https://web.archive.org/web/20211208004318/https://www.bbc.com/vietnamese/forum/story/2004/11/printable/041110_vnexpress_mercedes
[32] “Kill One to Warn One Hundred”, Cain, p. 92
[33] “Vietnam introduces draft planning for national press management”. Tuoi Tre News, 26 September 2015. https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/society/20150926/vietnam-introduces-draft-planning-for-national-press-management/38123.html
[34] Nguyen T.N., Bui C.T. 2019. “The state management of media activities in Vietnam “. The Russian Journal of Vietnamese Studies. Vol. 3. – N. 3. – P. 18-27. 10.24411/2618-9453-2019-10024
[35] “Quyết liệt triển khai Quy hoạch phát triển và quản lý báo chí toàn quốc đến năm 2025” (Drastically implementing the Press Plan 2025). The Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information, 25 December 2020. https://abei.gov.vn/phat-thanh-truyen-hinh/quyet-liet-trien-khai-quy-hoach-phat-trien-va-quan-ly-bao-chi-toan-quoc-den-nam-2025/107464
[36] “2021 World Press Freedom Index”. Reporters Without Borders. https://rsf.org/en/ranking/2021
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2022/78 “Between Taipei and Beijing: Education Options among the Yunnanese Chinese of Northern Thailand” by Aranya Siriphon
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- Yunnanese Chinese in Northern Thailand are generally made up of two different ethnic groups, the Hui and the Han. This article focuses on the Han; these were mainly supporters of the Chinese Nationalist Army (Kuomintang-KMT).
- Now Thai citizens, but historically, they had had a strong attachment to Taiwan and have also retained their traditional culture and political attitudes.
- Recently, Thailand has developed stronger economic ties with China, while Taiwan has been reducing its development aid. China’s soft power has also gained traction in the country and its impact on the Yunnanese Chinese community is also being felt. China also provided educational assistance to compensate for the shortage of schools resulting from Taiwan withdrawing its support.
- As a result of China’s soft power strategies, the Yunnanese KMT Chinese in Northern Thailand today appear to have shifted their position towards being more pro-Beijing. Of the 110 Yunnanese schools in Northern Thailand registered as private ‘tutoring-informal schools’ under the Private School Act B.E. 2550 (2007), more than 40 have accepted Beijing’s support and modelled their school structure under PRC schooling guidance.
- This paper contends that despite this development, Yunnanese Chinese have tried to signal their neutrality in the struggle between Taipei and Beijing, in order to reap benefits from ties with both sides. Chances are that they will eventually tilt more towards Beijing in the future.
*Aranya Siriphon is Visiting Fellow at the Regional Social and Cultural Studies Programme at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute. She is also Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University.
ISEAS Perspective 2022/78, 4 August 2022
INTRODUCTION
The Yunnanese Chinese living in Northern Thailand— categorized as “overland Chinese”, or “overland Yunnanese”[1] — are differentiated from other ethnic Chinese migrants. The former came from either the south or southwest of China; the term Yunnanese Chinese can be further separated into the Hui and the Han, both having distinct ethnicities, histories, and political identities.[2] The Hui is a fragmented group,[3] while a considerable number of the Han are known for being former soldiers and supporters of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang-KMT)who in 1949, escaped from Yunnan into Burma after the communist victory. After the 1960s, they settled in Northern Thailand.[4]
This paper focuses on the Han, or “KMT Chinese”. Over six decades, four generations have dwelled in the mountainous borderland, gradually receiving Thai citizenship and at the same time getting multiple forms of support from Taiwan (e.g. agricultural technology, infrastructure, and development aid). The political outlook of this group emphasizes anti-Communism, in line with the official view in Taipei. The community also maintains a distinct Yunnanese identity: retaining practices of traditional Chinese culture, customs and popular rituals; upholding Taiwan-based Chinese education; and using traditional Chinese characters and curricula as taught in Taiwan.
Over the past two decades, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has increasingly deployed ‘soft power’ strategies through the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office (Qiaoban)[5] and other official and non-governmental organizations dealing with overseas Chinese matters. Where Thailand’s ethnic Chinese are concerned, it collaborates with schools to export its brand of Chinese education and culture. The KMT Chinese are among those receiving this support. But while other ethnic Chinese in Thailand have readily accepted this aid — and this has led to extensive collaboration — the KMT Chinese by contrast is divided on how they are to deal with this development. The crux of the matter is: Should they ride on China’s rise or should they retain the stance of their ancestors, who were anti-communists and Taiwan supporters?
In short, the KMT Chinese are caught between Taiwan and China. While Taiwan has become less relevant to the current generation and its influence is significantly reduced, China’s hard and soft powers have gone in the opposite direction. This article follows up on previous co-research completed in 2018.[6] For this purpose, I have revisited Arunothai, a KMT village in Chiang Mai, and spoken to several respondents to gather their views.
Coined by Nye,[7] soft power refers to actors’ ability to shape preferences, win hearts and minds, charm others, or attract international audiences to their favour. Several researchers have confirmed that China uses soft power offensively as a rising power.[8] Others have documented policies that China implements as part of its soft power strategy using cultural, educational, academic, business, public and official diplomatic activities around the world.[9] Some researchers have emphasized the role of Hanban and extensive Confucius Institutes (CI),[10] and how these view education as the major source of influence.[11]
China’s soft power strategy appears to have been effective in Thailand, when observed through the proliferation of CIs and the acceptance of Chinese-affiliated schools and universities throughout Thailand.[12] This is due to three main reasons: (1) The existing historical background of Sino–Thai relations (2) Thailand’s openness towards China motivated by its economic interests and (3) The role of ethnic Chinese communities in Thailand in helping to propagate international collaboration via trade, economy and culture.[13]
China’s soft power strategy in Southeast Asia and particularly in Thailand also reflects the Chinese state’s perception that the ethnic Chinese are an important target group since they ‘represent’ Chinese traditional culture. Moreover, it takes into account the successive generations of ethnic Chinese ‘public diplomats’. Together, this amounts to a major shift in China’s diaspora policy.[14]
This article shows that because of China’s soft power, some KMT Chinese in Northern Thailand have gradually shifted their position from being pro-Taipei to being pro-Beijing. This is seen in their educational preferences. Out of the 110 private tutoring Yunnanese schools in Northern Thailand, more than 40 have begun to accept Beijing’s support and modelled their school structure in accordance with PRC’s guidance. The article posits that Jiaolian School, as the pioneer school that connected with the PRC, illustrates the ongoing dispute among the KMT Chinese. It also shows that despite China’s soft power, some Yunnanese Chinese choose not to take sides between Taipei and Beijing; this allows them to reap benefits from both countries for their children (and themselves). I argue however that they will eventually side with PRC.
THE KMT CHINESE AND TAIWANESE SUPPORT
In 1953-1954 and again in 1961, the Taiwanese government was forced by international pressure to evacuate KMT Chinese stationed in Burma back to Taiwan. However, around 3,300 KMT Chinese of the two KMT units (the Third and Fifth Field Army) including former soldiers, their families and refugees, decided to retreat to the Northern Thai border.[15]
Over the past decades, the Thai government has considered this group as “hill tribes”. They are often associated with negative stereotypes: mountainous people with unstable population movement; ambiguous near-stateless identities; engaged in extensive narcotic drug usage and drug-related violence; opium cultivators; susceptible to Communist ideals and infiltration; and responsible for deforestation and underdevelopment.[16] As a general policy, the Thai government made an attempt to integratehill tribes, including the KMT Chinese, into Thai culture and society. The policy extends Thai citizenship to them—providing Thai education through Thai schooling, and endorsing the teaching of state-sponsored Theravada Buddhism. Besides Thai efforts, assistance from Taiwan also helped raise the economic and social status of KMT Chinese.
Today, the Yunnanese Chinese population in Northern Thailand numbers around 200,000. Most are Thai citizens and they inhabit 108 villages in three provinces: Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai and Mae Hong Son. Some of their young have moved to Bangkok, Phuket and other cities for work. They are represented by four associations in Bangkok, Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai, and Phuket.
There are around 110 Chinese schools—registered as private “informal tuition schools” under the Private School Act B.E. 2550 (2007)—established within 108 Yunnanese Chinese villages in Northern Thailand. These provide Chinese education from primary to high school levels. Registered under the Thai Ministry of Education, these schools teach multiple subjects in the Chinese language during weekday evenings, and provide Chinese education to Yunnanese children and other ethnic groups such as Shan, Lahu and Akha, who live in surrounding villages.
In Arunothai, a village located in Chiang Dao, Chiang Mai (also known as KMT village for having had the Third Field Army based there), the Department of Provincial Administration (DOPA) in Thailand’s Ministry of Interior, reported in 2021 that there were 1,932 households with a total population of 9,728 people.[17] The village population is made up of 90 per cent Han Chinese, and 10 per cent of other diverse ethnic peoples (Shan, Lisu, Lahu, Ahka and Kachin). Like other Yunnanese Chinese communities in Northern Thailand, those in Arunothai gradually accepted Thai citizenship after the 1980s, having become long-term residents in Thailand. Most Yunnanese Chinese maintain traditional Chinese culture and practise customs and popular rituals. The schools launched by Yunnanese Chinese leaders in past decades followed a Taiwan-based curriculum, teaching Confucianism and other subjects to cultivate attachment to Taiwan. The Chinese writing system also used the traditional Chinese characters retained in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and overseas Chinese communities. Textbooks, educational materials and other resources were also sent from Taiwan at the request of village leaders.[18]
CHINA’S SOFT POWER
During the 1980s–2000s, the KMT Chinese leaders, with unofficial support of political leaders in Taipei, maintained through their schools a patriotic Chinese identity tied to the history of the KMT in Taiwan. Furthermore, the Free China Relief Association (FCRA), a semi-official organization that works closely with the KMT in Taiwan, came to Northern Thailand in 1982,[19] aiming to improve not only social and economic development but also to actively promote a sense of loyalty to Taipei.[20]
By 1994, however, Taiwan and Thailand appeared to be changing their approach. On the one hand, Thailand gradually developed economic regionalism within Southeast Asia under the slogan “turn battlefields into marketplaces”.[21] On the other hand, the FCRA projects were terminated due to regime change in Taiwan during the 2000s from the KMT to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). This was because the Kuomintang (KMT) which supported the FCRA projects, and the DPP’s interest in the Yunnanese Chinese in Thailand went in opposite directions.[22] As a result, Yunnanese schools not only faced challenges in continuing their operations, they also struggled to retain the loyalty of the younger generations towards Taiwan. [23]
To run the Chinese schools smoothly, second-generation leaders in Arunothai, and the Chinese Language Teachers Association (CLTA) of Chiang Mai, sat down to discuss how they were to solve the shortage of teachers, textbooks and other resources. In 2004, Wang Xiangxian, leader and former director of the Hua Xing School in Arunothai,[24] along with CLTA teachers, visited the Chinese Consulate General in Chiang Mai, to seek assistance for Yunnanese schools. Wang and the other teachers wanted to prioritize Yunnanese children’s education over political allegiance. The Consul General did not respond promptly, but in 2009, he did visit the village, providing student scholarships worth 250,000 baht, and 12 boxes of textbooks. However, the visit — which was warmly welcomed by children and young villagers waving the PRC flag — raised tensions within the community.[25] Subsequent PRC assistance also caused division among leaders, finally leading to Wang’s resignation. Wang was deemed to have brought a communist leader, “his ancestors’ enemy” to the village. In 2011, after his forced resignation, Wang set up a new school called Jiaolian School, 清迈教联高级中学) which received the full support of the Chinese consulate in Chiang Mai and the Qiaoban. CLTA was changed into the Jiaolian Foundation, built education networks and received monetary donations from the PRC, and other forms of support from external organizations. Polarized sentiments between older and younger generations were evident during Jiaolian School’s operational processes; with old KMT leaders lamenting “how could we betray our ancestors who [were] attached toward Taiwan, we should not have received any assistance from communists”.[26]
Despite tensions in Arunothai, since 2012, Wang Xiangxian and his teachers have continued to accept PRC’s help. Wang adopted standard Mandarin, used simplified characters for teaching, and imported Chinese textbooks from China. Consequently, he was recognized as an “Outstanding Person in Overseas Chinese Education” by the Qiaoban (Overseas Chinese Affairs Office).[27]
Jiaolian School is generally a tuition centre licensed under the Private Education Commission of theThai Ministry of Education. Under this license, Jiaolian School teaches multiple subjects; Mathematics, English, Geography (Global and Chinese Geography), and History (Global and Chinese), applying simplified-character writing system in these cases. It also provides education from kindergarten to high school with about 1,200 students enrolling each year. The school caters to all ethnicities. China’s soft power strategy via education is reflected in how the Qiaoban headquarters in Beijing and Qiaoban of Yunnan, as the provincial administrative institute, work with Southeast Asia countries. At Arunothai, the Qiaoban (1) provides free textbooks, stationery and study materials for every student enrolled at Jiaolian School, (2) sends 8-10 Chinese language teachers from China to this school every year, (3) trains local teachers, both in this school and at those nearby which are affiliated with Jiaolian School, in standard Mandarin for 4-12 months. Besides the Qiaoban, the Chinese consulate in Chiang Mai also provides scholarships for students pursuing Higher Education in China. For students who do not have a Thai identification card (which impedes them from applying for a Thai passport), the Chinese consulate grants overseas Chinese passes to allow them to enter China for education. Additionally, the Chinese consulate donates desks and other materials to the school.[28]
GRADUALLY WINNING HEARTS
Jiaolian School demonstrates how China’s consistent exercise of soft power has made the country more attractive to the KMT Chinese. Some village leaders recently said “Wang Xiangxian and Jiaolian School are going in the right direction, growing the future along with a rising China”. The school’s success since 2010 is evident in the fact that 300 of its graduating students have received Chinese scholarships for tertiary education. The school’s network has been extended to connect with Chinese universities, contributing to student mobility. Some universities in Guangxi, Yunnan, Sichuan and Zhejiang provinces have proposed to give full scholarships to students who want to specialize in the sciences and digital technology. In 2018, Jiaolian School was selected by the Hanban headquarters in Beijing as a major centre in Chiang Mai province for Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK), the Chinese Proficiency Test which is also an internationally standardized exam.
Following Jiaolian School’s success, 40 Yunnanese schools have decided to join the bandwagon and receive PRC support. The 60 remaining schools are hesitant and prefers to wait for clearer signals from leading community members and Yunnanese Chinese associations. Besides the fear of being regarded as being disloyal to their ancestors, another primary concern is that modern PRC teachers do not sufficiently emphasize Confucian ethics or traditional Chinese customs and cultures. In the meantime, these remaining schools retain Taiwanese traditional writing characters and quality assurance evaluation; to be sure, the curriculum has been modified to incorporate both Thailand-based issues and Yunnanese Chinese historical contexts.
Can the Yunnanese Chinese resist China’s soft power? At the village level, the Chinese media and social media are additional vessels for extending PRC soft power. The current generation regularly watches CCTV (China Central Television) in the Chinese language and learn more about China today than in the past. Signboards in the village have also switched from using traditional characters to simplified characters.
At the institutional level, even though the Yunnan Association of Chiang Mai, and the Chinese Language Teaching School Club —the two main organizations representing Yunnanese Chinese in Chiang Mai — keep in touch with Taiwan by meeting with representatives of the Culture Center of Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) located in Thailand. in 2020,[29] in the following year, they also invited the Chinese consulate in Chiang Mai to visit the associations for the purpose of developing Chinese education in the Yunnanese Chinese schools.[30] The Chairman of the Yunnan Association confirmed that “we should stop taking sides today since PRC and Taiwan are our brother and sister. Although Taiwan may feel unhappy and some KMT leaders may respond negatively, we should consider our children and engage China and the modern world. I think within five years, the Yunnanese Chinese schools in Northern Thailand will transform to follow the rise of China”.[31]
Students and their families also have other attractive opportunities to consider, such as scholarships, cheap tuition and affordable dormitories sponsored by the PRC. More importantly, parents are forward-thinking and future-oriented in wanting their children to be exposed to well-established networks within Chinese universities.
CONCLUSION
This case study of the Yunnanese Chinese in Northern Thailand shows the tendency of China’s soft power strategy to intersect with particular histories and with local situations. Different generations of the Yunnanese Chinese community have responded differently to China’s soft power, illustrating complexities within the ethnic community. Although the tension within the Yunnanese Chinese villages will continue to exist, the success of the Jiaolian School shows a gradual change in the mind of the villagers. The educational preference of the 40 private tutoring schools after having accepted Beijing’s support and modelling syllabus after PRC schools, demonstrates the shifting position from being pro-Taipei to being pro-Beijing. The Yunnanese Chinese adopt an enterprising strategy to gain benefits for their children and the community, and this trend will likely continue into the future.
ENDNOTES
[1] Forbes, A. The “Čin‐Hō” (Yunnanese Chinese) Muslims of North Thailand. Journal of Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, 7, 1: 173–186, 2007.; Chang, WC. Beyond Borders: Stories of Yunnanese Chinese Migrants of Burma. (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2014): 3–4.
[2] Huang, S. Reproducing Chinese Culture in Diaspora: Sustainable Agriculture & Petrified Culture in Highland Northern Thailand. (Maryland: Lexington Books, 2010): 6.
[3] The Hui refers to the Muslim caravan traders who once engaged in long-distance trade in mountainous areas of the upper Mekong Region, or descendants of Hui refugees and ex-soldiers. Then there are the non-Muslim ethnic minorities who fought against the Manchu rulers of the Qing dynasty in southwestern Yunnan Province during the nineteenth century. They are locally called Ho, Haw, Chin Ho, Cin‐Ho or Chin Haw by the Thais and others. See reference in Hill, A.M. Merchants and Migrants: Ethnicity and Trade amongst Yunnanese Chinese in Southeast Asia. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); Forbes, A. and Henley, D. The Haw: Traders of the Golden Triangle. (Bangkok: Amarin Printing and Publishing Company, 1997).
[4] Chang, W.C. Beyond the Military: The Complex Migration and Resettlement of the KMT Yunnanese Chinese in Northern Thailand. PhD dissertation, University of Leuven, 1999.; Chang, W.C. 2001. From War Refugees to Immigrants: The Case of the KMT Yunnanese Chinese in Northern Thailand. International Migration Review, 35, 4: 1086–1105.
[5] The Qiaoban refers to “Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China” (OCAO). It is an administrative office which assists the government in handling qiaowu, or Overseas Chinese affairs. The Qiaoban and its various institutional organs have been the most prominent, gradually gaining attention from overseas Chinese communities in Thailand, collaborating with Chinese schools founded for the ethnic Chinese, and extending their curricula and programmes into several levels of formal Thai education.
[6] The previous co-research paper is entitled “Chinese Capitalism, ASEAN Economic Community and Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, financially supported by Thailand Research Fund (TRF) in 2015–2018.
[7] Nye, J. Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American power. (New York: Basic Books, 1990); Nye, J. Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. (New York: Public Affairs, 2004).
[8] For the notion of Charm Offensive, see Kurlantzick, J. Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power Is Transforming the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007); Liu, T.T. Public Diplomacy: China’s Newest Charm Offensive. E-International Relations, 2018, url: https://www.e-ir.info/2018/12/30/public-diplomacy-chinas-newest-charm-offensive/.
[9] d’Hooghe, Ingrid. China’s Public Diplomacy (Leiden: Brill Nijhoff, 2015); Zhu, Zhiqun. China’s New Diplomacy: Rationale, Strategies and Significance (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013).
[10] See some examples; Ding, S. and Saunders, R. Talking up China: an analysis of China’s rising cultural power and global promotion of the Chinese language, East Asia 23, 2: 3–33, 2006.; Ding, S. To Build a ‘‘Harmonious World’’: China’s Soft Power Wielding in the Global South’, Journal of Chinese Political Science 13, 2: 193–213, 2008; Hartig, F. Communicating China to the World: Confucius Institutes and China’s Strategic Narratives, Politics 35, 3–4: 245–258, 2015.; Paradise, J. China and International Harmony: the Role of Confucius Institutes in Bolstering Beijing’s Soft Power, Asian Survey 49, 4: 647–669, 2009; Liu, T. Exporting Culture: the Confucius Institute and China’s Smart Power Strategy, in O’Brien, D., Miller, T. and Durrer, V (eds.). The Routledge Handbook of Global Culture Policy (New York: Routledge, 2017): 233–246.
[11] Raimzhanova, A. Hard, Soft, and Smart Power — Education as a Power Resource (German: Peter Lang, 2017).
[12] See Li, Jiangyu. Practicing ‘Nation-State Work’ Abroad: International Chinese Teachers of Confucius Institutes in Thailand, PhD dissertation, Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University, 2020; Wang, Yujiao. Confucius Institutes in Thailand: Revealing the Multi-dimensionality of China’s Public Diplomacy. Journal of the Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies, 37, 3: 99–113, 2019.
[13] Kornphanat Tungkeunkunt. Culture and Commerce: China’s Soft Power in Thailand. International Journal of China Studies 7, 2: 151–173, 2016.
[14] See He, Lan and Wilkins, S. The Return of China’s Soft Power in Southeast Asia: An Analysis of the International Branch Campuses Established by Three Chinese Universities. Higher Education Policy, 2018.; Thunø, M. Reaching Out and Incorporating Chinese Overseas: The Trans-Territorial Scope of the PRC by the End of the 20th Century. The China Quarterly 168: 910–929, 2001; Thunø, M. China’s New Global Position: Changing Policies toward the Chinese Diaspora in the Twenty-First Century, in Wong, P.B and Tan, Chee-Beng (eds.) China’s Rise and the Chinese Overseas. (London: Routledge, 2017): 184–208.
[15] The Fifth Field Army settled in Mae Salong, the mountainous area in Chiang Rai. The Third Field Army settled down near the mountainous area of Chiang Mai. Huang, S. Reproducing Chinese Culture in Diaspora: Sustainable Agriculture & Petrified Culture in Highland Northern Thailand (Maryland: Lexington Books, 2010): 6–12; Duan, Y. Kuomintang Soldiers and Their Descendants in Northern Thailand: An Ethnographic Study Journal of Chinese Overseas 4, 2: 238–57, 2008.
[16] Pinkaew Laungaramsri. Hill Tribe Discourse. Journal of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University 11, 1: 92–135, 1998. (In Thai).
[17] However, a report by local leaders suggests that there are more than 2,500 households, and a total population of 21, 000. Please see Sosing Methatarnkul and Chatkrit Ruenjitt. A Final Report: Adaptation and Change of Chinese Schools in Chinese Community in Northern Thailand under the Context of China as Superpower: A Comparison between Huaxing School and Jiaolian Language School in Arunothai Village, Chiang Dao District, Chiang Mai (Chiang Rai: Mae Fah Luang University, 2020): 41.
[18] Aranya Siriphon and Sunanta Yamthap. Contesting ‘Chinese’ Education Schooling in the Kuomintang Chinese Diaspora in Northern Thailand, 1975–2015, in Jolliffe, P.M, and Bruce, T.R (eds.) Southeast Asian Education in Modern History Schools, Manipulation, and Contest. (London and New York: Routledge, 2018).
[19] Chang, W.C. 2001: 1099.
[20] Chang, W.C. 1999: 132–134.
[21] Szalontai, B. From Battlefield into Marketplace: The End of the Cold War in Indochina, 1985–1989, in Kalinovsky, A. and Radchenko, S. (eds.). The End of the Cold War in the Third World: New Perspectives on Regional Conflict (London: Routledge, 2011): 155–172.
[22] Huang, S. 2010.:181–183.
[23] Aranya Siriphon. The Qiaoban, the PRC Influence and Nationalist Chinese in the Northern Thai Borderland. International Journal of Asian Studies 13, 1: 1–17, 2016.
[24] The Hua Xing School was established by KMT leaders desired to continue Chinese education and transmitting Chinese culture to successive generations. In past decades, this school and other Yunnanese Chinese schools were supported by Taiwanese organizations.
[25] Sosing Methatarnkul and Chatkrit Ruenjitt. A Final Report: Adaptation and Change of Chinese Schools in Chinese Community in Northern Thailand under the Context of China as Superpower: A Comparison between Huaxing School and Jiaolian Language School in Arunothai Village, Chiang Dao District, Chiang Mai (Chiang Rai: Mae Fah Luang University, 2020): 39–41.
[26] Interview with current director of the Jiaolian School, 13 March 2022.
[27] See more at “Visit to Thai-Myanmar border Chinese schools: Chiang Mai Federation of Education Senior High School”, 29 November 2021<http://world.people.com.cn/n1/2021/1129/c1002-32294502.html>.
[28] Interview with the current director of the Jiaolian School, 13 March 2022.
[29] Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Thailand. 11 February 2020. The Representative of Overseas Chinese Affairs, Taiwan, visited the Overseas Chinese Association, and the Schools in Northern Thailand (ฝ่ายกิจการชาวจีนโพ้นทะเล สำนักงานตัวแทนไต้หวันในไทย เดินทางเยือนชมรมชาวจีนโพ้นทะเลและโรงเรียนชาวจีนโพ้นทะเล ในพื้นที่ทางภาคเหนือของไทย) <https://th.taiwantoday.tw/print.php?unit=469&post=171178 and https://nspp.mofa.gov.tw/nsppth/news>.
[30] Please see “Consul General Visits Yunnan Association of Chiang Mai”, 8 March 2021 <http://chiangmai.chineseconsulate.org/eng/news/202103/t20210316_10020736.htm>.
[31] Interviewed Mr. Lek Ratiromphan, the former Chairman of the Association on 12 April 2022.
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