Kevin Fogg – COVID19 Asia

How Taiwan’s Success with COVID-19 Negatively Impacts US-China Relations

A guest post today from UNC junior Morgan Hanchard, a 2019 Phillips Ambassador to Shanghai, China, and a double-major in HIstory and Peace, War & Defense:

As COVID-19 swept across the globe, its effects presented differently in differing regions. Some countries saw lethal numbers of cases, in which population densities significantly decreased. In some countries, the virus was tackled effectively, minimizing damage to populations. Taiwan’s number of confirmed cases has yet to reach the 500 mark, largely due to their universal healthcare system. To praise Taiwan for its success in handling the pandemic, the United States sent a U.S. Cabinet member to Taiwan, simultaneously hoping to learn from their “incredibly effective” response to COVID-19. On August 10, United States Health and Human Services Secretary, Alex Azar, spent three days in Taiwan with President Tsai Ing-Wen, demonstrating Washington’s support for positive U.S.-Taiwan relations.

However, this success comes at a cost. With tensions between the United States and China at a breaking point as President Trump continuously demonizes China, even calling COVID-19 the “Chinese virus,” Azar’s trip to Taiwan cannot ignore its geopolitical intentions. This interaction was a foreign policy rarity. Azar is the highest U.S official to visit Taiwan since 1979, when the Taiwan Relations Act was signed into effect under the Carter Administration. This legislation ended all diplomatic relations between the United States and Taiwan, under the terms that the United States solely recognize the People’ Republic of China, breaking ties with Taiwan completely. By sending a delegation into Taiwan, which is not lawfully recognized by the United States, the Trump Administration is likely to spark controversy within Beijing.

On August 11, Azar spoke at National Taiwan University, where he stated that “in these trying times, the United States knows that we will always have a friend in Taiwan.” In addition, Azar praised Taiwan’s democratic values, implying that Taiwan’s success can be contributed to its democratic society. This statement set off anger in Beijing and amongst the Chinese Communist Party, as the U.S. gets dangerously closer to brinkmanship with China. Azar claims that his trip was solely based on public health issues and Washington’s effort to gain insight on their treatment methods. Even with COVID-19 in mind, the political consequences within U.S.-China relations cannot be ignored. By ameliorating their relationship with Taiwan, Washington runs the risk of pushing tensions with Beijing to the brink. China may view Azar’s visit to Taiwan as a challenge to its sovereignty, polarizing the two sides even further. The Trump administration is utilizing Taiwan as a strategic ploy to provoke China, which could seriously taint the bilateral relationship.

Find out more about this story at the Washington Post, CNN, or the Wall Street Journal.

Asian Businesses Respond to COVID-19

A guest post today from UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School student Youthika Chauhan, a doctoral candidate and Graduate Phillips Ambassador for 2020, as well as a past Mahatma Gandhi Fellow through UNC Sangam and the Carolina Asia Center:

COVID-19 has created an impact on each of our lives in many different ways. But with the onset of the July, more and more countries are relaxing their measures. Several organizations have been instrumental in helping local communities to cope with the stringent legal measures. As a PhD candidate at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, I have the opportunity to study several socially impactful organizations. Many scientists, educators, and other professionals shared their insights about how their organization helped their local communities to cope with the recent difficult times. Their stories are as not only impactful but also inspirational for they symbolize the better times that lie ahead of us.

Smart Air is multi-country social enterprise based in China, India, Mongolia, Philippines, Bangladesh, Thailand and Indonesia that makes affordable air purifiers. Dhariyash Rathod, the CEO of Smart Air India shares that on the outbreak of COVID-19, Smart Air team ran tests to determine the best material suited for making DIY masks. Then, the firm shared their data, and released the “Ultimate Guide to Homemade Face Masks for Coronavirus” on their website.

Kagal Education Society, an educational non-profit based in rural India has been working on some very innovative teaching approaches. Their simple, yet effective use of technology has not only prevented the education of their students from being disrupted, but has also ensured that the educational needs of their each of their students is met even in these difficult times. According to Sharmilee Mane, Director of YD Mane Research Center for Agriculture and Rural Development (part of the Kagal Education Society), “students have goals for their studies.” Sharmilee describes how their organization makes sures that their students can accomplish all of their goals. “Our teachers deliver lectures on Zoom. They share their homework on WhatsApp with the parents. The parents then make the students complete their homework, and share it with the teachers on WhatsApp. We have been conducting classes with not more than 15 students at a time, as per the government’s regulation.” With the right use of technology, Kagal Education Society has set an example for educational institutes to follow, not only in rural India, but also in developing regions across the world.

Winkler Partners, a Taiwan-based law firm has made significant effort to ameliorate vulnerable lives impacted severely by COVID-19. James Hill, Community Coordinator at Winkler Partners shared about their work with me. “We weren’t that badly affected by COVID-19, however a lot of charities stopped supporting or providing services to the homeless because people were encouraged to not interact with each other, to be socially distant. A lot of charities, pulled out of doing the kind of on-the-ground work that they’ve been doing. So, we helped support a charity that was stepping into to provide regular meals to homeless people.”

Indeed, efforts like these allow not only organizations to be resilient in hard times, but also enable local communities to be resilient, and recover soon. While we look forward to better times, it is important to acknowledge the efforts of all those who have provided their time, resources, and efforts in dealing with the pandemic.

South Korea’s response to COVID-19, with Prof. Ji-Yeon Jo

The Carolina Asia Center’s director, Prof. Ji-Yeon Jo, was interviewed by the department chair of Asia and Middle East Studies, Prof. Morgan Pitelka (also a former CAC director) about the way that South Korea has managed its response to the novel coronavirus pandemic. This video interview comes from the DAMES series “Forty for Forty.”

Industrial seafood systems in the immobilizing COVID‑19 moment with Prof. Elizabeth Havice

Elizabeth Havice, an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at UNC-Chapel Hill, has a new “Rapid Response” piece out in the academic journal Agriculture and Human Values about “Industrial Seafood Systems in the Immobilizing COVID-19 Moment.” Along with colleagues from University of Ottowa and York University (Canada), she writes about the dilemmas that an inherently international business supply chain (industrial fishing and seafood processes in Southeast Asia) faces when cross-border mobility is so constrained:

Immobilization is a key tool for containing COVID-19. Yet, mobility is a hallmark of industrial seafood systems that are an important source of food security and employment around the world. For example, tuna might be caught through the labor of Indonesian workers on Taiwanese flagged vessels that fish throughout Solomon Islands’ and Papua New Guinea’s waters; and it might be processed and canned by Myanmar workers in processing plants in Thailand, before being sold in major supermarkets globally. So what then comes of industrial seafood systems, including the workers in them, when managing the spread COVID-19 focuses on restricting mobilities? …

Industrial seafood systems are organized around continuous flow of product through global value chains (Campling and Havice 2018). COVID-19 has accelerated some flows and introduced chokepoints for others.

Find the full article – along with many other open-access pieces on food systems and COVID-19 – on the website of Agriculture and Human Values here. Read more about Prof. Havice’s work here.

Indonesian Islamic extremists see Covid-19 as a godsend?

Sidney Jones, the director of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, is well-known for being a sharp eye and a clear voice on extremist Muslim groups in Indonesia. Her institute put out a report last month on “Covid-19 and the Mujahidin of Eastern Indonesia (MIT),” and it’s a fascinating look at a very different set of security concerns in this time of global pandemic.

Surprisingly, the radical group in this report is not new (violent interreligious conflict has been seen in the province of Central Sulawesi off-and-on for over two decades, since the fall of the Suharto regime), but had a new inspiration from the current pandemic. From the report:

The arrival of Covid-19 in Indonesia instilled a new optimism in MIT. … They saw that not only was it infecting and killing kafirs (non-believers) but it was also weakening the economies of all the states engaged in the war against ISIS, including America, Britain,Australia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran – and Indonesia. This belief was enough to convince the tiny group of combatants that they could eventually defeat the Indonesian state.

Although much of this 8-page document really gets in the weeds of this tiny minority of extremists (there is a reason why Sidney Jones is a go-to expert on Southeast Asian Islamic terrorism for governments around the world), it also presents a fascinating picture of the alternative interpretation of this crisis from a very different point of view.

http://www.understandingconflict.org/en/conflict/read/91/IPAC-Short-Briefing-No3-COVID-19-and-the-Mujahidin-of-Eastern-Indonesia-MIT

Filipino American nurses on the front lines

Asian Americans are very well-represented in the ranks of healthcare workers in the United States, and serving on the front lines of the covid-19 health crisis in America is impacting them particularly. The medical and health media outlet STAT recently ran an article about the heavy toll on the Filipino American community, which provides 4% of America’s nurses.

From the article:

Filipinos are famous for, and justly proud of, their nursing acumen. The history of Filipino nurses in the United States is a long and complicated one, a symbiotic relationship borne of war and colonialism, and as some see it, racism and the exploitation of a critical medical workforce that has often been hesitant, because of cultural norms, to complain about poor workplace conditions. …

Filipino nurses [are] continuing to go unnoticed even as they take on the most dangerous and wrenching tasks in Covid-19 units, like bathing or suctioning intubated patients and comforting and holding those who are dying without family present. …

But many Filipino nurses feel they are treated as expendable even though their large numbers and work ethic, they say, keep the American health care system functioning. Many also complain about “the bamboo ceiling” that until recently kept Filipino nurses out of positions of leadership.

Malaysia cracks down on migrant workers as part of Covid-19 response

The government of Malaysia, relatively new after a realignment in parliament led to a surprise and controversial new administration at the end of February 2020, has moved to crack down on migrant workers—claiming this is part of its response to the coronavirus pandemic.

On Friday, May 1, 2020, the Malaysian government office overseeing immigration conducted raids in areas of Kuala Lumpur with many migrant workers (story in the leading Malaysian government-aligned paper, New Straits Times), rounding up those claimed to be in the country illegally and laying the groundwork to expel them. Many have criticized the way these operations were conducted (story from the BBC), including an observer from Human Rights Watch who said they herding of large groups in close quarters was likely to increase the spread of the virus, not contain it, and Malaysian NGOs that say this will create a culture of fear (story from the online media outlet with old ties to the opposition MalaysiaKini). The government’s explanation (again from the New Straits Times) is that migrant workers would be hard to track and control if they became vectors of infection, so the government must act preemptively. The government is also saying (MalaysiaKini) that those migrants whose paperwork is not in order may leave without any penalties—as long as they get out of Malaysia.

This story has some resonances of the recent second wave of infections in Singapore, which centered on (legal) migrant workers with few health protections living in crowded dormitories (story from Bloomberg). It seems non-citizens are particularly vulnerable at this time because they do not receive health support from the governments in the places where they live, and this is more acute for low-income laborers.

Malaysia has been living under a Movement Control Order (basically, shelter-in-place orders) since March 18, 2020, but the Prime Minister has announced these will be loosened effective May 4 (story from Singapore’s state-backed paper, Straits Times). It is unclear how the round-up of migrant workers may be connected to loosening restrictions as Malaysia hopes to begin opening the economy.

Author: Kevin W. Fogg