International relations

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.

South and Southeast Asian farmers and COVID’s impact

COVID-19 has affected many different work demographics in unprecedented ways, and farmers are no exception. As the virus continues to threaten lives and livelihoods of millions around the world, in South and Southeast Asia, added concerns about the long-term health of the sub-regions’ food systems are being raised. (See also last week’s post about the impact on seafood supply chains.)

Some farmers in Central Luzon, located in the Philippines, claim that the fertilizers that they’ve received from the Department of Agriculture (DA) as a part of COVID-19 aid are overpriced. Two farmers, William Laureta and Ernesto Agustin Domino, on June 10th, said that the DA stimulus program bought roughing 1.8 million bags of urea fertilizer for a total of P1.8 billion (2.22B USD)- around P1,000 (1,200 USD) per bag – however, the average retail price of the fertilizer was only P850 (1,000 USD) per bag, creating an overprice of P271.6 million (335.4M USD).

Laureta stated [in translation] “farmers could barely survive this crisis, and even the government is vitally scraping the bottom of the barrel now just to look for funds to help the most vulnerable sectors, including farms, and to keep the economy afloat.” Domingo added “these agriculture officials should be taken to task for knowingly entering into an anomalous and overpriced contract. They have betrayed us farmers who need all the help we can get and have defrauded the government of millions of pesos of crucial funds.” Both agree that the savings the DA could have garnered could be used to add to the government’s COVID-19 response, as President Rodrigo Duterte said that the country was running out of funds.

Malaysia is the world’s second-largest palm oil producer, and relies on foreigners, drawn mainly from the neighboring Indonesia and South Asian countries, for roughly 70% of its plantation workforce. Recruitment has been stalled as a result of the stay-at-home orders, and this has caused the country’s plantation industry to be short 500,000 workers, according to the Malaysian government. “We have not received new workers in the last three months,” said Nageeb Wahab, chief executive of the Malaysian Palm Oil Association (MPOA), “many workers have repatriated and absconded during the lockdown. A lot of estates will be short of workers.”

Plantation and Commodities Minister Mohd Khairuddin Atman Razali has urged the companies to hire more local workers. “If we talk about the introduction of new foreign workers in the sector, it will not happen in the near future because we have restricted their entry until further notice. The current batch of foreign workers are those who have a work permit[…] when their permit ends, they will be sent back to their respective countries. This is an opportunity for us to replace them with locals.”

India is home to 120 million smallholder farmers who contribute over 40% of the country’s grain production, and over 50% of its fruits, vegetables, oilseeds and other crops. While each year, India’s farmers face challenges like low rainfall, price volatility, and debt, the pandemic is adding new risks and challenges, as the nationwide lockdown came during the harvest season. This has created shortages of both labor and equipment, as migrant workers are unable to move to rural areas as they usually would, and the harvesting equipment that smallholder farmers need is unavailable for renting.

Farmers have been unable to harvest their bumper crops (cereal and oilseed) this season, while in some places the crops have been delayed or completely abandoned. Though India’s feedback had the minimum operational buffer in stock three times over, supply and access is the critical issue. Long supply chains are heavily affected as transport is restricted and some drivers abandoned trucks full of produce in the middle of interstate highways. Markets ran short on supplies as a result.

Read more on WBCSD’s article on the “Impact of COVID-19 on smallholder farmers” found here:

Impact of COVID-19 on smallholder farmers – insights from India

Author: Camryn Thomas

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.

China’s President Xi Jinping backs WHO-led International Investigation into COVID Origins

On Monday, May 18, 2020, China’s President Xi Jinping delivered a speech via video backing a WHO-led investigation into the origins of COVID-19, after weeks of opposing the United States’ proposal into said investigation. After Russia, Turkey, and other European and African countries began to support Western inquiries about the virus’ origins, drafts of the suggested resolution focused toward international collaboration on managing the pandemic. Among these countries is also Australia, which China threatened with a boycott of Australian-made products after that country suggested that the WHO should be able to dispatch investigators to emergency sites within China. Some of these threats have been acted on; Australia has since had its beef imports cut and 80 percent tariffs imposed on its barley.

Xi pledged $2 billion in relief aid over two years to help countries in response to the pandemic, as well as an independent evaluation into their response when the pandemic comes to an end. The $2 billion is not currently designated to any particular recipient; however, this amount would eclipse the $893 million the US committed to contributing over 2018 and 2019. Current aid from the US toward the WHO budget has been frozen since April.

The European Union’s draft resolution, supported by over 100 countries, did not mention Wuhan or China, simply asking the WHO to identify the source and route of introduction to humans. The document also ruled out the possibility that the virus was manufactured, as proposed by US officials.

Information in this post was gathered from the Washington Post article found here, written by Gerry Shih, Emily Rauhala, and Josh Dawsey.

Author: Camryn Thomas