Stanford University

2020 Shorenstein Journalism Award: Featuring Award Recipient Tom Wright

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This event is available through livestream only. Please register in advance for the webinar by using the link below.

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Inside the Billion Dollar Whale Scandal: 2020 Shorenstein Journalism Award Recipient Tom Wright to Headline Award Panel Discussion

The $7 billion 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) scandal, one of the largest-ever financial frauds, exposed the depths of corruption in global markets. The story starts in Malaysia, but a raft of institutions from Goldman Sachs to Big Four auditors and Manhattan lawyers enabled the graft. Five years after the story came to light, almost no one has gone to jail. What’s in store for the main players, how can our justice system ensure history does not repeat itself, and how do political actors shape the trajectories of anticorruption efforts in Asia?
 

Tom Wright, winner of the 2020 Shorenstein Journalism Award, addresses these questions and more in his keynote address.

Wright is the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Billion Dollar Whale, which unravels the story of one of the world's greatest financial scandals involving the multibillion-dollar looting of the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB. Wright’s work sparked investigations by law enforcement and regulators in multiple countries and outrage in Malaysia, where the ruling coalition, after 61 years in power, suffered a landslide defeat in a shocking 2018 election.

The keynote will be followed by a guided interview with the award winner led by Meredith Weiss, Professor and Chair of Political Science at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, University at Albany, SUNY.

The event will conclude with an audience Q&A session moderated by Donald K. Emmerson, Director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

Follow us on Twitter and use the hashtag #SJA20 to join the conversation.

Speakers:

Portrait of Tom Wright, winner of 2020 Shorenstein Journalism Award
Tom Wright is an author, journalist, and speaker who over the past twenty-five years has lived and worked mainly in South and Southeast Asia. He is a Pulitzer finalist, a Loeb winner, and co-author of the New York Times bestseller Billion Dollar Whale, about the 1MDB scandal. A theme running through Tom’s work is the blight of corruption in Asia, abetted by Western companies and institutions. He started his career with Reuters in Indonesia in the 1990s at a time when Gen. Suharto’s military dictatorship was crumbling. During the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998, Tom joined Dow Jones Newswires in Bangkok, later moving to the Wall Street Journal.
 
He has investigated corruption in Indian companies, the failure of the U.S. civilian aid program for Pakistan, and was one of the first journalists to arrive at the scene of the raid in which Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden. In 2013, Tom spearheaded the coverage of the Rana Plaza factory disaster in Bangladesh, which killed over 1,000 people, earning the Wall Street Journal a Sigma Delta Chi award from The Society of Professional Journalists. The series exposed how international garment manufacturers turned a blind eye to safety violations in order to reduce costs.
 
As Asia Economics Editor in Hong Kong, Tom managed a number of correspondents in the region, while continuing to report. In 2015, he began investigations into the 1MDB scandal, an almost unbelievable series of events in which bankers at Goldman Sachs helped a young Malaysian financier steal at least $4 billion from Malaysian state fund 1MDB, one of the largest financial frauds of all time. The three-year investigation showed the degree to which Western institutions, from Wall Street banks, law firms, auditors, and even Hollywood film companies, ignore malfeasance in the pursuit of profits.
 

Portrait of Meredith Weiss, Professor and Chair of Political Science in the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at the University at Albany, State University of New York
Meredith Weiss is Professor and Chair of Political Science in the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy at the University at Albany, State University of New York. Her research addresses social mobilization and civil society, the politics of identity and development, parties and elections, institutional reform and (anti)corruption, and subnational governance in Southeast Asia, with particular focus on Malaysia and Singapore. She has conducted fieldwork in those two countries as well as Indonesia, the Philippines, and Timor-Leste, and has held visiting fellowships or professorships in Australia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and the US.

Her books include Protest and Possibilities: Civil Society and Coalitions for Political Change in Malaysia (2006), Student Activism in Malaysia: Crucible, Mirror, Sideshow (2011), The Roots of Resilience: Political Machines and Grassroots Politics in Southeast Asia (2020), and eleven edited or co-edited volumes, most recently, The Political Logics of Anticorruption Efforts in Asia (2019) and Toward a New Malaysia? The 2018 Election and Its Aftermath (2020).  Her articles appear in Asian Studies Review, Asian Survey, Critical Asian Studies, Democratization, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Journal of Democracy, Taiwan Journal of Democracy, and elsewhere.

Professor Weiss co-edits the Cambridge University Press Elements book series on Politics and Society in Southeast Asia and is an associate editor for Southeast Asia of the Association for Asian Studies’ (AAS) Journal of Asian Studies. She co-founded the Southeast Asian Politics related group of the American Political Science Association (APSA) and chairs the APSA’s Asia Workshops steering committee, is past chair of the AAS’s Southeast Asia Council, and is on the Southeast Asia Research Group (SEAREG) Council. She received her MA and PhD in Political Science from Yale University and a BA in Political Science, Policy Studies, and English from Rice University.

About the Shorenstein Journalism Award:

The Shorenstein Journalism Award, which carries a cash prize of US $10,000, recognizes outstanding journalists who have spent their careers helping audiences around the world understand the complexities of the Asia-Pacific region, defined broadly to include Northeast, Southeast, South, and Central Asia and Australasia. Award recipients are veteran journalists with a distinguished body of work. News organizations are also eligible for the award.

The award is sponsored and presented by the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) at Stanford University. It honors the legacy of the Center’s benefactor, Mr. Walter H. Shorenstein, and his twin passions for promoting excellence in journalism and understanding of Asia. It also symbolizes the Center’s commitment to journalism that persistently and courageously seeks accuracy, deep reporting, and nuanced coverage in an age when attacks are regularly launched on the independent news media, on fact-based truth, and on those who tell it.

An annual tradition, the Shorenstein Journalism Award alternates between recipients whose work has mostly been conveyed through American news media and recipients whose work has mostly been conveyed through news media in one or more parts of the Asia-Pacific region. Included among the latter candidates are journalists who are from the region and work there, and who, in addition to their recognized excellence, may have helped defend and encourage free media in one or more countries in the region.

Learn more at https://aparc.fsi.stanford.edu/events/shorenstein-journalism-award.

Virtual Webinar Via Zoom

Registration Link: https://bit.ly/34pAVrb

Tom Wright <br>Journalist, Author, Speaker</br><br>
Meredith Weiss <br>Professor and Chair of Political Science, University at Albany,SUNY</br>
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Shorenstein Journalism Award

A New Look at Cinema in Southeast Asia from Former LKC Fellow Gerald Sim

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The 2018 blockbuster Crazy Rich Asians is many people’s first and only experience seeing Southeast Asia portrayed onscreen. Kevin Kwan’s enthralling, uber-rich characters jet-set across glittering scenes of cosmopolitan Singapore and paradisiacal beaches in Malaysia. But for Gerald Sim, APARC’s 2016-17 Lee Kong Chian Fellow at the Southeast Asia Program, the scope of cinema in Southeast Asia is much broader than the occasional Hollywood breakout success.

In a new book, Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinema, Sim examines how countries in Southeast Asia navigate the legacies of their unique colonial histories through film media. His writing focuses on Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia and how their cultural identities and postcolonial experiences are stylistically portrayed across commercial films, art cinema, and experimental works.

Sim explores the nuance of these works beyond the typical tropes of hybridity and syncretism in postcolonial identity. His analysis unpacks themes such as Singapore’s preoccupation with space, the importance of sound in Malay culture, and the ongoing investment Indonesia has made into genre and storytelling. Taken together, the book helps situate the regional cinematic traditions and local ideologies in the broader narrative of globalization.

The book builds on research Sim undertook as a fellow at APARC with support from the Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Fellowship on Southeast Asia. He is currently an associate professor of Film and Media Studies at Florida Atlantic University, where he continues to teach about and research the thriving but understudied contributions of Southeast Asian film to world cinema.

Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinemas will be available for purchase from Amsterdam University Press on September 1.

Read Amsterdam University Press' interview with Sims about the book.

Lee Kong Chian Fellowship

The Lee Kong Chian Fellowship is the core of the Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Initiative on Southeast Asia, a joint effort established in 2007 by the National University of Singapore and Stanford University to raise the visibility, extent, and quality of scholarship on contemporary Southeast Asia. The infrastructure for research pursued through the fellowship is provided by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at NUS and the Southeast Asia Program in the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) at Stanford.
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Call for Stanford Student Applications: APARC Hiring 2020-21 Research Assistants

To support Stanford students working in the area of contemporary Asia, the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Center is offering research assistant positions for the fall, winter, and spring quarters of the 2020-21 academic year.
Call for Stanford Student Applications: APARC Hiring 2020-21 Research Assistants
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Gerald Sim, a former Lee Kong Chian Fellow with the Southeast Asia Program, explores how Southeast Asian identities, histories, and cultures are portrayed in film in a new book, ‘Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinema.’

Southeast Asia's Approach to China and the Future of the Region

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Donald K. Emmerson
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As the U.S.-China competition heats up, other countries in the Asia-Pacific region are watching closely. But despite rhetoric about third parties “being forced to choose sides,” the countries of Southeast Asia have more agency than outside analysts often give them credit for. A new collection of essays on Southeast Asia’s approach to China, The Deer and the Dragon, highlights just that. Donald K. Emmerson, head of the Southeast Asia Program in the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, is the editor of and contributor to the book. He talks with The Diplomat about the China-Southeast Asia-U.S. triangle, including the South China Sea question, and the fallout from COVID-19.

This interview was conducted by Shannon Tiezzi for The Diplomat. The original article is available here.

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Many commentators (in the region and without) have raised questions recently on the future of the “ASEAN Way” amid China’s efforts to use its allies within ASEAN to cast “proxy vetoes on Beijing’s behalf” (as you put it in the opening chapter). Do you see ASEAN’s modus operandi evolving in the face of such challenges? Is serious consideration being given to calls for “ASEAN Minus” formulations or minilateral groupings?

A way is a path or a principle, not a codified rule. Beijing’s ability to stop an ASEAN member from saying or doing something that China doesn’t like is a function of what the would-be proxy expects to gain from compliance and suffer from defiance. The purpose of the “ASEAN Way” is intramural, harmonic, and cosmetic — to ensure that the members’ fealty to public consensus limits their discord and veils their friction. ASEAN’s inability to evolve from an intergovernmental to a supranational body is in part a consequence of its success in keeping itself intact at an anodyne level of least disagreement. Significant “ASEAN minus” innovations on matters of security such as the South China Sea are almost certainly not being considered.

The book rejects the idea that the states of Southeast Asia are passive objects of the U.S.-China tug of war. In what way can regional states shape the outcome of that contest – and their own destinies?

“Don’t force us to choose between China and the United States,” or words to that effect, have become an entrenched mantra in statements by more than a few Southeast Asian leaders. In its most damaging form, the plea falsely assigns equivalence to the two big powers and assigns to Southeast Asia a purely reactive position equidistant between them. Next-door China is an entirely plausible future regional hegemon. The threat from far-off America lies not in its presence but in what could happen in its absence.  Emphasizing what you want others not to do begs the question of what you yourself should be doing to ensure, increase, maintain, or restore your own strategic autonomy and the independent creativity and proactivity that it allows.

Relevant in this regard are developments in the South China Sea. Beijing’s former fluctuation between “smile” and “frown” diplomacy has given way to expansionary Chinese anger not only along the PRC’s southern coasts, from Hainan through Hong Kong to Taiwan, but in acts of harassment and intimidation in the EEZs [exclusive economic zones] of some ASEAN states as well. Rhetorical pushback by some of those states has helped to revive a dormant 2016 ruling by an international arbitral court, convened at Manila’s request, against Beijing’s claims and behavior in the South China Sea.

As if to follow the Philippine example, Vietnam might possibly decide to pursue legal redress against Beijing under international maritime law. If Vietnam does muster a case, China will punish it for its temerity, and years will elapse before a judgment is made. Merely having strategic autonomy does not assure its successful use. But recent evidence of agency by some governments in Southeast Asia does at least suggest that they have not yet succumbed to fatalist passivity in the face of Chinese coercion.

With that in mind, how have Southeast Asian states reacted to the United States’ new rejection of China’s “historic rights” in the South China Sea?

The question deserves context. Omitted on lists of China’s exports to the world is a vital if hard to measure item: self-censorship. Southeast Asia’s leaders have learned to avoid publicly criticizing China for reasons of practicality and fear. Why endanger actually or potentially beneficial economic relations? Why risk retaliation?

A recent case in point:  On July 14, 2020 U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a blistering rejection of China’s efforts. “The world,” he said, “will not allow Beijing to treat the South China Sea as its maritime empire.” Most of the governments in Southeast Asia probably hoped Pompeo was right, and officials in Hanoi, Manila, and Jakarta did make relevant remarks. They were circumspect, however, so as not to anger Beijing.  Vietnam’s foreign ministry “welcome[d]” the “positions” taken by “countries” on the South China Sea “issues” as “consistent with international law.” The Philippine defense secretary “strongly agree[d]” with “the international community” that there should be “a rules-based order” in the South China Sea.” Indonesia’s foreign minister reiterated her country’s defense of its EEZ as consonant with international law and the 2016 court ruling. Understandably, however, most Southeast Asian governments, even as they agreed with Washington’s position, preferred not to align themselves explicitly with the United States.

In your chapter on the South China Sea, you suggest that Southeast Asian claimants could push back against growing Chinese control in the South China Sea if regional states (for example, the Philippines and Vietnam) negotiate a resolution to their own maritime disputes. Has there been any movement toward this goal in Southeast Asian capitals? What obstacles stand in the way?

Little to nothing has been done. Nationalisms are the obstacle. The disputes over sovereignty are many and complex. They may never be resolved. Without having to agree on the ownership of land features, however, the locations and extents of particular maritime zones and the rights of access to and usage in them are in principle more amenable to agreement. With claimant-specific conflicts over sovereignty set aside to the extent possible, three approaches do come to mind: negotiation, arbitration, and application.

ASEAN countries whose claimed zones are superimposed could acknowledge and try to negotiate or arbitrate the claims’ locations. An example: Although the coastal EEZs claimed by Vietnam and the Philippines do not overlap with each other, they both overlap with the coastal EEZ claimed by Malaysia. The three countries could seek a compromise with regard to these zones while applying the 2016 arbitral decision and leaving open the possibility of further alterations, contingent upon feedback from other littoral states and possible future court rulings. Another possibility: One or more ASEAN states, in cooperation with each other or with nonpartisan outside bodies, could draw up, apply, and publicize new navigational and other maps of the South China Sea — representations of the 2016 arbitral decision on computer screens and paper charts usable at sea. The most promising aspect of the latest pushback against China is the resuscitation of the court’s ruling as a prospective guide to conduct. Last but not least, legality aside, a coalition of the willing could agree to, and seek broad international support for, a brief statement that no single country should control the South China Sea.

What is the state of China’s soft power (and, as you evocatively call it, the opposite of “repellent power”) in Southeast Asia?

At the end of each year, the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute surveys the opinions of foreign policy elites in Southeast Asia. Confidence in China to “do the right thing” for “global peace security, prosperity and governance” was low in 2018 and still lower a year later. Among those who answered the question, the proportion who were “confident” or “very confident” that China would “do the right thing” shrank from 29 percent in 2018 to 16 percent in 2019. Those expressing such confidence in the United States actually grew a little, from 27 to 30 percent. And 60 percent in 2019 surely had Trump in mind when they agreed that a change of leadership in Washington would improve their confidence in the U.S. as a “strategic partner.” Also striking was the large proportion of respondents — 73 percent — who saw China as a “revisionist” power bent on turning their region into its “sphere of influence” (38 percent) or as “gradually” replacing America as “a regional leader” (35 percent). If there is an asset for Beijing in these results, it may not be enthusiasm for China’s soft power so much as resignation in light of its hard power.

What impact is the COVID-19 pandemic – which some analysts theorize could be a pivotal moment in the future of the world order – having on Southeast Asian countries’ relationships with China, the U.S., and each other?

Beijing has seized upon the pandemic as a chance to exercise soft power by donating or selling personal and protective equipment (PPE) to countries and organizations around the world. All 11 Southeast Asian countries have received gifts of Chinese PPE. These are humanitarian acts. But “mask-donor” diplomacy also serves to compensate for the damage done to China’s reputation by the coronavirus’ apparent origin in Wuhan.  Intentionally or not, gifts of Chinese PPE may also attenuate the bad press Beijing has received for its repressive-aggressive moves in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and the South China Sea, and for the bluntly disparaging comments leveled by some of its “wolf-warrior” diplomats against criticisms of China. Chinese fans borrowed the lupine label from “Wolf Warrior 2,” a popular action film starring the People’s Liberation Army. Its tagline runs: “Even though a thousand miles away, anyone who affronts China will pay.”

Washington has provided some pandemic-related help to Southeast Asian states, but on a scale insufficient to compete with China’s vigorous self-promotion across the region. By comparison, America, largely preoccupied with its crisis-wracked self, has gone missing in Southeast Asia. And available data show that, ranked by its ability to overcome the virus at home, the United States is the worst-performing country in the world. How could one expect it to be able to lead that world?  Three-fifths of the Southeast Asian influentials surveyed by ISEAS were right to agree in 2019 that replacing Trump would improve America’s standing as a would-be strategic partner — and that was before the pandemic got underway.

As for the virus’s impact on relations among Southeast Asian states, Singapore and Vietnam have been helping some of their fellow ASEAN members, and Indonesia has donated equipment to Timor-Leste. But ASEAN has not launched its own collective campaign against the pandemic.

Finally: If COVID-19 does not abate and disappear reasonably soon, habits acquired during shutdowns could become a new normal. In-person consultations and negotiations could remain less common than they were before the virus struck and Zoom took over. A lasting reduction in physical travel will save time and energy. But it will sacrifice direct awareness of the ideas, demeanors, and local involvements of counterparts and partners in their home environments. That loss of context could impede the diplomacy that will be needed to recover, repair, and rethink the multilateral arrangements that will be called upon to sustain a future international order — redux or revamped — and protect it from wolf warriors and animus-driven cold warriors alike.


<< Pre-order The Deer and Dragon here >>

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Strategy in the South China Sea

Donald K. Emmerson analyzes China’s tactics in the South China Sea and how the countries of Southeast Asia are reacting to the tensions in the disputed waterway.
Strategy in the South China Sea
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In an interview with The Diplomat, Donald Emmerson discusses how factors like the South China Sea, U.S.-China competition, and how COVID-19 are affecting relations between Southeast Asia, China, and the United States.

Scot Marciel

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Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow
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Scot Marciel was the Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, affiliated with the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center from 2022-2024. Previously, he was a 2020-22 Visiting Scholar and Visiting Practitioner Fellow on Southeast Asia at APARC.  A retired diplomat, Mr. Marciel served as U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar from March 2016 through May 2020, leading a mission of 500 employees during the difficult Rohingya crisis and a challenging time for both Myanmar’s democratic transition and the United States-Myanmar relationship.  Prior to serving in Myanmar, Ambassador Marciel served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asia and the Pacific at the State Department, where he oversaw U.S. relations with Southeast Asia.

From 2010 to 2013, Scot Marciel served as U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country.  He led a mission of some 1000 employees, expanding business ties, launching a new U.S.-Indonesia partnership, and rebuilding U.S.-Indonesian military-military relations.  Prior to that, he served concurrently as the first U.S. Ambassador for ASEAN Affairs and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Southeast Asia from 2007 to 2010.

Mr. Marciel is a career diplomat with 35 years of experience in Asia and around the world.  In addition to the assignments noted above, he has served at U.S. missions in Turkey, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Brazil and the Philippines.  At the State Department in Washington, he served as Director of the Office of Maritime Southeast Asia, Director of the Office of Mainland Southeast Asia, and Director of the Office of Southern European Affairs.  He also was Deputy Director of the Office of Monetary Affairs in the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs.

Mr. Marciel earned an MA from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and a BA in International Relations from the University of California at Davis.  He was born and raised in Fremont, California, and is married with two children.

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Strategy in the South China Sea

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Stretching from China in the north to Indonesia in the south, the South China Sea – the third largest of the world’s 100-plus seas – possesses rich oil and natural gas reserves, constitutes a thriving fishing zone, and transits a vast amount of trade. It is also the center of disputes over issues of territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests involving China, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam.

No Chinese behavior in Southeast Asia illustrates the “binary of strength over weakness more clearly than Beijing’s unilateral, adamant, and expansive assertion of full sovereignty over or proprietary rights in virtually all of the waters and land features in the South China Sea,” writes APARC’s Southeast Asia Program Director Donald K. Emmerson in his upcoming volume The Deer and the Dragon: Southeast Asia and China in the 21st Century. The fallout from COVID-19 and increased military activity in the region raise the risk of conflict between China and the United States, which has a strong interest in preventing China from controlling the disputed waterway.

Shorenstein APARC · Strategy in the South China Sea | Donald K. Emmerson

Against this background, the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, hosted a virtual conversation with Emmerson, titled “Strategy in the South China Sea.” Held on May 12, 2020 (May 13 in Kuala Lumpur), the discussion drew attendees from across the United States and Southeast Asia. Emmerson's analysis focuses on issues such as the tactics China has used to advance its goal in the South China Sea; how the countries of Southeast Asia are reacting to the situation and whether they are pursuing defined strategies regarding the tensions in the region; and what an ASEAN strategy in the South China Sea might look like. Listen to his presentation above or on our SoundCloud channel.

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Michael McFaul, Xueguang Zhou, Karen Eggleston, Gi-Wook Shin, Don Emmerson, and Yong Suk Lee
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FSI Hosts APARC Panel on COVID-19 Impacts in Asia

Scholars from each of APARC's programs offer insights on policy responses to COVID-19 throughout Asia.
FSI Hosts APARC Panel on COVID-19 Impacts in Asia
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COVID-19 in the Philippines – at a Glance

Marjorie Pajaron, assistant professor at the University of the Philippines School of Economics, describes the unfolding of the pandemic in the country and how Filipinos have coped with the evolving situation.
COVID-19 in the Philippines – at a Glance
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U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Meets with Stanford Experts

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Donald K. Emmerson analyzes China’s tactics in the South China Sea and how the countries of Southeast Asia are reacting to the tensions in the disputed waterway.

Modernization and Democratic Citizenship in East Asia

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Do middle-class citizens in East Asia support democracy? Do they prefer democracy to other regime types, as modernization theory contends? In this talk, Hannah Kim, a Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow in Contemporary Asia at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, examines democratic attitudes among middle-class citizens in East Asia. She argues that the classic relationship between modernization and democratization may not be applicable in East Asia due to low democratic commitment among middle-class citizens. She demonstrates this through the notion of democratic citizenship, which observes the cognitive, affective, and behavioral patterns of democratic support. Using data from the Asia Barometer Survey, Kim finds low democratic citizenship among middle-class respondents in three democracies and three nondemocracies. Moreover, she finds that middle-class respondents with higher government dependency are less likely to view democracy favorably. These results indicate that the classic causality between modernization and democratization is unlikely to be universally applicable to different cultural contexts.

Hannah Kim
Hannah Kim completed her doctorate in the department of political science at the University of California, Irvine, in 2019. She received an MA in international studies from Korea University and a BA from UCLA.

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Hannah Kim Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow in Contemporary Asia <i>Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow in Contemporary Asia</i>, Stanford University
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High-Speed Rail Holds Promise and Problems for China, Explains David M. Lampton

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This time last year, business in China was booming. In April 2019, Bejing welcomed numerous world leaders and businesspeople at the second annual Belt and Road Forum, a glittering production of statesmanship where partners and potential investors were toasted at gala-style events and received with pomp. China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) aims to develop large-scale infrastructure projects, both domestically and internationally, using Chinese firms and funding. The goals set for and promises made by the overall BRI endeavor are broad-reaching in scale and breath-taking in scope, but its realities are incredibly complicated, argues David M. Lampton, the Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow at APARC.

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In his forthcoming book chapter, “All (High-Speed Rail) Roads Lead to China," Lampton examines the people, organizations, and institutions within China who support and oppose BRI, focusing on the high-speed rail component of the massive endeavor in Southeast Asia. His chapter is part of the upcoming volume, Fateful Decisions: Choices That Will Shape China’s Future, edited by Shorenstein APARC Fellow Thomas Fingar and China Program Director Jean Oi. We sat down with Lampton to talk about some of the tough choices China and partner nations will have to make regarding their continuing support of BRI, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic fallout.

“No matter where you look," says Lampton, "there are a set of economic, political, military, security risks . . . Big construction infrastructure projects almost all run at least twice as long as initially anticipated and cost at least twice as much on balance . . . So, I think the first thing China's going to see externally is some resentment against the degree of intrusion that something this massive represents."

Listen to the full conversation with Lampton here, or on our SoundCloud channel. A transcript of the conversation is available for download below.

TRANSCRIPT: "All (High-Speed Rail) Roads Lead to China"
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This is the third installment in a series leading up to the publication of Fateful Decisions: Choices that will Shape China's Future (Stanford University Press, available May 2020), edited by Thomas Fingar and Jean Oi. To read the first two parts of this series follow the links below.

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Karen Eggleston Examines China’s Looming Demographic Crisis, in Fateful Decisions

Karen Eggleston Examines China’s Looming Demographic Crisis, in Fateful Decisions
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Now It Gets Much Harder: Thomas Fingar and Jean Oi Discuss China’s Challenges in The Washington Quarterly

Now It Gets Much Harder: Thomas Fingar and Jean Oi Discuss China’s Challenges in The Washington Quarterly
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In a new audio interview, Lampton discusses some of the challenges, uncertainties, and decisions that loom ahead of China's Belt and Road Initiative.

Virality Project (China): Pandemics & Propaganda

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An expanded version of this article was published on June 8, 2020 in the Harvard Misinformation Review.

The perception of China’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic has been a significant challenge for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) over the past two months. The CCP has been attempting to control the narrative and deflect blame since the start of the outbreak, both domestically and abroad. It has done this by drawing on its substantial state- and CCP-owned media apparatus.  

Chinese state media produces and disseminates daily English-language content to English-speaking audiences via Facebook and Twitter (platforms that are technically banned in China). Chinese state media’s English-language Facebook pages post very frequently, and have extremely large audiences. CGTN has over 96 million Page likes; CNN in contrast has only 32 million. These media properties run ads regularly to grow their audiences, which suggests that China invests in these pages as a tool for communicating its message to the English-speaking world. Facebook’s Ads Library shows specific regional ad targeting in India (Punjab State), Nepal, Bangladesh (Dhaka) and the Philippines (Manila), suggesting that English is used to communicate state views to a broad global audience.

To look at how coronavirus narratives targeting English-speaking audiences have played out on Chinese state media, and how they evolved as the outbreak has moved through various phases, we analyzed a data set of Facebook posts containing the keyword “coronavirus” from two distinct sets of media properties: 1) a collection of English-language Chinese (state) media outlets, and 2) a collection of U.S. media outlets*. This “coronavirus” dataset contained 6,870 posts from Chinese media between December 31, 2019 and March 16, 2020, and 13,522 posts from U.S. media outlets over the same period. While Chinese media has increased its coronavirus coverage in January and stayed at a consistent level since then, U.S. media Facebook posts on the coronavirus stayed at low levels until late February, then soared (see histograms below).

 

 
Chinese outlets (left) increase the number of Facebook posts on coronavirus in late January. U.S. media coverage was light until a sudden increase of posts since late February.

China’s media spin: rapid recovery 

Chinese and U.S. media articles display different levels of both alarmism and optimism in their coverage of the global pandemic. Chinese outlets included many articles with a focus on positive stories such as the number of recovered patients and examples of successful treatments, while U.S. media reported on new cases of infections and trends in death. For example, Chinese state media reported on a coronavirus patient who gave birth to a healthy baby not infected with coronavirus, whereas the U.S. media told the story of a different newborn in Wuhan who had become the youngest coronavirus patient. CNN credited the story’s source as Chinese state media CCTV, yet no English-language Chinese state media posted this story on their Facebook pages. 


Chinese state outlet China Daily (left) reports on a baby born to a coronavirus patient with no infection, whereas CNN (right) reports on a newborn baby becoming the youngest person diagnosed with coronavirus

We searched our dataset for the word “patient” and analyzed words commonly used before or after “patient” in Facebook posts made by Chinese state media and U.S. mainstream media. From December 31, 2019 to March 16, 2020, the term “infected” was commonly used in connection with “patient” in both the American and Chinese media (see word clouds below). However, beyond that common term, there are significant divergences, such as the U.S. media reporting on patients as “sick” or “affected”, and the Chinese media frequently mentioning treatment- and recovery-related terms such as “treating”, “recovered”, “discharged” and “cured”.


Words frequently used in connection with the word “patient” by Chinese media (left) and U.S. media (right); Exclude “patient” and the term “coronavirus” for better visibility of other terms. Chinese media use several recovery- and treatment-related terms.

The English-language Chinese state media has also aggressively reported positive stories about the make-shift hospitals built for China’s immediate emergency response to the coronavirus outbreak. Leishenshan and Huoshenshan hospitals were built in just a few days in late January to early February. Chinese state media disseminated stories about how the international community was “impressed” with China’s rapid building capacity, calling the quick progress of the construction a “miracle.” U.S. media also reported on the rapid building of the hospitals but presented them in a less positive light, saying they were a response to overwhelmed medical facilities or that the temporary structures should not be characterized as hospitals. 

 
Chinese state outlet CGTN (left) calls the hospital a “construction miracle”, whereas NPR (right) reports on the building, but qualifies it that the term “hospital” for the building ”may not be exactly on point”

The Li Wenliang Case

A significant story that played out as the coronavirus outbreak unfolded was that of late whistleblower doctor Li Wenliang, who was one of the first to report the existence of the novel disease warning fellow medics in a chat group on December 30, 2019. His warnings were shared publicly and reached a wide audience online. On January 3, 2020 police detained and forced him to sign a letter stating he had made “false comments.” In a late January post on Chinese social media Weibo, Li reported from his hospital bed that he was in an intensive care unit with breathing difficulty. Li Wenliang died of COVID-19 on February 7, 2020 at age 34. The significant public anger that erupted over his death created a very dangerous moment for the Chinese regime, and required Chinese media to delicately balance covering his story without casting the Chinese government in a bad light.

In our dataset, there are 24 posts by Chinese media and 24 posts by U.S. media containing “Li Wenliang”. The word clouds below represent the 50 most common words used in these articles after filtering out common words such as “the” and excluding the terms “coronavirus”, “li”, and “wenliang”. While in U.S. media, prominent terms associated with Li Wenliang include “silenced”, and “authorities”, these terms are notably absent in Chinese media. Chinese media instead focus on him being an “ophthalmologist” and expressing “condolences”.

  
Words frequently used in Facebook posts mentioning Li Wenliang by Chinese media (left) and U.S. media (right); Exclude Li Wenliang’s name and the term “coronavirus” for better visibility of other terms

Individual popular Facebook posts illustrate this contrast: The Facebook post with the highest engagement (49,093 Reactions, 2,242 times shared) posted by Chinese state media in English state they “deeply mourn” his death and that he passed away after “all-effort rescue.” There is no mention of the whistleblower controversy and the restrictions placed on him early in the outbreak.


Chinese state media outlet People’s Daily (left) post on Li Wenliang “mourning” his death, without mentioning his whistleblowing and repression faced by authorities; Most popular post in U.S. media on Li Wenliang (right) mentions he was “threatened” by Chinese officials

In contrast, the most popular social media posting on Li Wenliang in the U.S. media (27,263 Reactions, 43,190 times shared) mentions that he was “threatened” and that he had “sounded the alarm” on coronavirus. Other articles and posts in U.S. media link Li Wenliang’s case to censorship and suppression in China, mentioning how Chinese netizens have demanded freedom of speech since the details of Wenliang’s story were brought to light.


A popular NPR post links Li Wenliang’s name to censorship in China

‘Buying the world time’ vs. ‘Botching the response’

Early in the global outbreak, Chinese outlets declared a local victory over the virus, stating that China’s efforts had prevented coronavirus from infecting the world, boasting: “Were it not for the unique institutional advantages of the Chinese system, the world might be battling a devastating pandemic.”  As global coronavirus infections near two hundred thousand, and cases of infection and deaths outside China surpass those within, this narrative has become less defensible.

 China has responded by increasing its efforts to position itself as a world leader in virus response and a model of effective governance whilst blaming the United States for the coronavirus pandemic. While U.S. National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien has stated that China’s silencing of whistleblowers and covering up early cases in fact exacerbated the global outbreak, Chinese state media has disseminated a statement by Bruce Aylward, Assistant Director-General of the WHO who visited China on a WHO-mission, saying that China’s response “bought the world time” and that the global community should be “grateful.”


Chinese state media (here: Xinhua) widely shared a statement by Bruce Aylward of the Chinese WHO office saying that China’s response had bought the world time 

The narrative of China’s strategy ‘buying the world time’ has been covered and discussed in U.S. media as well, after World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also stated that China's response had bought the world time. MSNBC included the phrase in a Facebook post from March 13, 2020, which went on to discuss whether U.S. leadership had in fact missed the opportunity to take advantage of that time. The New York Times also referenced the phrase in the headline of a nuanced article on the same day, which similarly wondered why the rest of the world had simply watched the epidemic unfold. 


U.S. media outlet MSNBC discussing the comparative response of China and the U.S., including the narrative that “China has bought the world time”

Looking Forward

Chinese state media is not unique in evolving its narratives, or in spreading misinformation or omitting facts to cast itself in the best light possible for a global audience. In the U.S. media environment, the Fox News network has also dramatically shifted their coverage of the coronavirus disease in response to political considerations, adjusting their coverage to make the U.S. executive branch leadership look like leaders. This tone change was so brazen that the Washington Post labeled it “a petri dish for misinformation.” While we did not include far left or far right U.S. media sources in our data set for the above analysis, other US news outlets also downplayed the threat.

In the latest activity from the U.S. media, there is now a dichotomy in coverage: many conservative outlets are accusing the Chinese government of causing a global pandemic due to the significant missteps in their early response, and deflecting blame from the Trump Administration's own failures. The other side is reporting on the problematic response in the United States, while highlighting later successful Chinese containment efforts.

The blame game will not be helpful. It is both true that the Chinese government made strikingly bad decisions in its early response to the virus - and also that the United States will suffer from its own lack of preparation. Meanwhile, amid the bungled U.S. COVID-19 response - including a lack of coordination even with close allies - the Chinese government is supporting hard-hit countries by sending supplies and medical experts, garnering praise from around the world. As Western democracies struggle to land on effective COVID-19 responses, experts expect a more aggressive narrative to come from Beijing.

 

* Chinese media: CGTN; People’s Daily, China; China Xinhua News; China Daily; Global Times; CGTN America
U.S. media: ABC News; ABC World News Tonight with David Muir; AP; CBS News; CNBC; CNN; CNN Politics; Fox News; Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, NBC News, NPR; NPR Politics; POLITICO; Reuters; The Atlantic; The New York Times; The Wall Street Journal; TIME; Washington Post

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Shorenstein Postdoc Spotlight: Hannah Kim

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Living and studying all over East Asia, some of Hannah Kim’s most favorite activities were to meet and talk to diverse people from different backgrounds. Those conversations sparked her interest in how public opinion and perceptions of democracy differ across societies — a question that turned into the focus of her doctoral dissertation, which she completed last year at the University of California, Irvine.

Dr. Hannah June Kim
Hannah is spending the 2019-20 academic year at APARC as a Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow in Contemporary Asia. While here, she has been researching material for a forthcoming book about the relationship between the middle class and democratic ideals in different Asian societies. Her work has been published in The Journal of Politics, PS: Political Science & Politics, and the Japanese Journal of Political Science.

We sat down with Hannah to talk about her current work and her plans for future projects.

Q: As you’ve been here at APARC researching your book, what kinds of relationships have you found between the middle classes of East Asia and their perceptions of a democratic society?

Middle-class groups in many East Asian countries are significantly different than those in other regions because they are newer and smaller. They also tend to be much more dependent on the state, and this state dependency has led to fundamentally different views of democracy than we see in other places.

Modernization theory — which is one of the most prominent theories in comparative politics — contends that higher levels of economic growth lead to a rise of a middle class. This middle class then becomes a driving force for democracy. In East Asian countries, however, state-led economic growth played a central role in the creation and development of middle-class groups, which fostered a dependent and mutually supportive relationship between middle-class groups and the state. This suggests that middle-class groups may prefer a stronger role of the state and be less likely to support liberal democracy relative to other groups.

Q: What research findings surprised you about the relationship between the middle class and democracy?

There have been a number of unexpected results. For one, middle-class East Asians are more likely to support good governance ahead of freedom and liberty, which is often reversed among middle-class groups in Western democracies. I’ve found that many East Asian middle-class citizens view democracy more illiberally and prefer a political system that has a mix of democratic and autocratic properties — a hybrid regime — rather than a liberal democracy.

For example, the most recent wave of the World Values Survey (2010-14) shows that 62% of Taiwanese respondents, 31% of Chinese respondents, 29% of Japanese respondents, and 49% of South Korean respondents stated that it is “Very good” or “Fairly good” to have a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections. This indicates a culture of implicit support for an authoritarian-like leader. Recent studies also show that there is a negative correlation between the middle class and support for democracy in China.

Q: You have also been doing work that looks at democratization and gender in East Asia. How do gender, gender roles, and traditional culture impact the progress and perception of democratization?

Even though there are three full-fledged democracies in East Asia – namely, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan – their citizens’ views on gender equality remain far from liberal. A majority of respondents to surveys in those democracies support the ideas that men should have more employment and education opportunities than women, and that men make better political and business leaders than women. This may be in part due to the historically patriarchal culture that continues to legitimize these views. However, in my study, I suggest that culturally democratic citizens are more likely to break away from these traditional patriarchal norms and challenge gendered practices within these societies. Increasing democratic citizenship, therefore, may enhance support for gender equality and other liberal values.

Q: What pressing challenges do you see facing Asia’s democratic societies?

The last ten years have been described as a decade of decline for liberal democracies worldwide and public opinion data further shows that support for democracy is rapidly declining. East Asian democracies, many of which democratized during the so-called second and third waves of that trend in the late twentieth century, are no exception to this democratic recession. While there are many institutional limitations, the biggest challenge for East Asian democracies may come from authoritarian legacies that encourage middle-class citizens to support traditional values that often go against liberal democracy. While East Asian democracies may not necessarily evolve towards autocracy, it may be a while before the middle class and the general public in East Asian countries fully support liberal democratic values and help democracies overcome this democratic recession.

Q: What’s next on your research agenda?

After my fellowship with APARC concludes, I will be moving to Omaha, Nebraska, where I’ll be working as an assistant professor of political science at the University of Nebraska. I’m scheduled to teach Asian politics there this coming fall, which I am really looking forward to. My immediate research goal is to continue working on my book, but I would also like to start pursuing research on gender and political behavior in South Korea.

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Demystifying China

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Livestream: Registration is required and will close 24 hours before the event. Click here to register.

This event is available only to CISAC faculty, fellows, staff, and honors students.

 

About this Event: Jeopardizing U.S. research enterprises, provoking regional nationalism, and building a technological panopticon to rate every citizen's behavior: these assumptions about China fuel US foreign policy shadow-boxing with misplaced concerns. Our panel challenges prevalent narratives on China, providing informed, nuanced investigations that cut across a range of research methods. Julien de Troullioud's argues that the rise of China in science and technology is not a threat to the US but instead an opportunity to jointly work to solve global issues. Data shows that the current policies to protect the US research enterprise in science is hurting American and international scientific research. Xinru Ma finds that nationalism in China and in Southeast Asia are not necessarily all anti-foreign, and is more of a liability rather than an asset for domestic regimes, according to evidences from formal modeling and social media data. Shazeda Ahmed's interviews with Chinese government officials, tech firm representatives, and legal scholars reveal that the Chinese social credit system is more limited in its data collection and fragmented in its on-the-ground implementation than the dystopic institution its foreign critics presume it to be. Our research presents new data and fresh perspectives for rethinking US-China dynamics.

 

About the Speakers:

Shazeda Ahmed is a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley who researches how tech firms and the Chinese government are collaboratively constructing the country's social credit system. She will be joining CISAC and the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence in Fall 2019 as a pre-doctoral Fellow. Shazeda has worked as a researcher for the Citizen Lab, the Mercator Institute for China Studies, and the Ranking Digital Rights corporate transparency review by New America. In the 2018-19 academic year she was a Fulbright fellow at Peking University's law school.

 

Xinru Ma is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Political Science and International Relations (POIR) program at University of Southern California, and will join CISAC as a Postdoctoral Fellow for 2019-2020. Originally from China, Xinru is interested in combining formal modeling and computational social science with research on nationalist protests and maritime disputes, with a regional focus on East and Southeast Asia. Her research is informed by extensive field research in Vietnam, Philippines and China, during which she interviewed protestors, think tanks, diplomats, government officials, and foreign business owners that were impacted by nationalist protests. In addition to informing her of the complicated strategic interaction between mass mobilization, government repression and foreign policy-making, the field research further motivated her to focus on the methodological challenges for causal inference that stem from strategic conflict behavior. More broadly, Xinru is interested in public opinion and new methods of measuring it, foreign policy formation, alliance politics, East Asian security dynamics, and the historical relations of East Asia. 

 

Julien de Troullioud de Lanversin will be joining CISAC as a Stanton Postdoctoral Fellow. Julien is finishing his Ph.D. at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security. He is interested in how to verify and reconstruct past fissile material production programs with scientific tools. To that end, he developed innovative methods that use isotopic analysis from nuclear reactors to gain information on their past operation (nuclear archeology) and designed an open source software that can compute the istopic composition of fissile materials from nuclear reactors. His current research looks at the various modalities of the production of plutonium and tritium in production reactors and how transparency on tritium could be used to improve estimates on plutonium stockpiles. Julien also studies security questions related to civil and military nuclear programs in Northeast Asia through the lens of fissile material, with a focus on China and North Korea. Julien visited the Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technologies at Tsinghua University for one semester in 2018 to collaborate with Chinese experts on work related to nuclear engineering and arms control. Julien’s work on nuclear archaeology has been published in the Journal of Science and Global Security. He received his Diplôme d’Ingénieur (M.Sc. And B.Sc.Eng.) from Ecole Centrale de Marseille in 2014. The same year he also obtained a M.Sc. in Nuclear Science and Engineering from the University of Tsinghua where he was a recipient of the Chinese Government Scholarship. Julien speaks and uses Chinese in his research and is a native French speaker.

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Shazeda Ahmed, Xinru Ma, Julien de Troullioud de Lanversin
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