Asia Matters Podcast

We’re heading to familiar territory again on this week's podcast - the Indo-Pacific. Increasingly, the area is becoming the centre of the geopolitical conversation being had all around the world.  China's showcasing of its increasing might there is a big reason for this of course. But the sheer size of this complex region and the wealth of its resources means the Indo-Pacific's many other diverse players cannot be overlooked. How can the United States and its European allies best manage relations with the powers in this all-important region - and how should the transatlantic allies work together to best serve their respective goals? Our guests this week could not be better placed to answer those questions. Admiral Harry Harris was US ambassador to South Korea from 2018 to 2021. Before that he served as the commander of the US Pacific Command, which has now been renamed the Indo Pacific Command, and also served as direct representative to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Secretaries of State, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry. We're also delighted to welcome Dr Michael Reiterer back to Asia Matters, who has an equally distinguished career as a long term diplomat. He has worked for his own national service, and also the European External Action Service. He served as EU ambassador to Korea, from 2017 to 2020 - where he crossed over with Admiral Harris. He is now a distinguished professor at the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy at the Brussels School of Governance.This episode is a recording of a webinar held in collaboration with the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London, and Senior Associate Fellow Raffaello Pantucci is our host for this episode. The podcast is part of a project on transatlantic dialogue on China that RUSI is running at the moment with Chatham House, which has been generously supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. This episode was also produced in conjunction with the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy at the Brussels School of Governance.As ever, you can find more information on our website -  www.asiamatterspod.com 

This week we take stock of COP26, the latest major international meeting on climate change which just wrapped up in Glasgow - billed beforehand as the "last best hope for the world to get its act together". Asia, of course, is crucial to the debate over climate change. It’s home to some of the world’s biggest polluters, but also some of its fastest-growing economies, that are at the forefront of the world’s shift to cleaner energy.The 197 countries involved in COP26 did at least agree on rules to limit greenhouse gas emissions.  But the meeting's outcome has drawn plenty of criticism, particularly over the final deal’s language on the use of coal - and China and India's role in shaping that language. Joining Andrew this week we have Dr Sam Geall. He's the CEO of China Dialogue, a website devoted to understanding and analyzing China’s approach to tackling climate change; and is also an associate fellow at Chatham House in London. Dr Tom Hale is an associate professor in public policy at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University, who specializes in the way multilateral institutions tackle global challenges. He also co-leads the Net Zero Tracker which monitors different countries’ and companies’ progress on meeting their climate change commitments.We also have Yan Qin with us on the show; she is the lead analyst at Refinitiv, and has over a decade’s experience analyzing energy and carbon markets in China and Europe. 

This week we look at China's tech industry - few sectors have been more dynamic or grown as fast in recent years, with the likes of e-commerce giant Alibaba and video games maker Tencent rising to become among the world’s most valuable companies.Until recently, that is. Over the past year China’s government has taken a series of steps that together have come to be seen as a crackdown on the tech sector, from restricting big companies’ plans to float on the stock market to limiting the time Chinese kids can play video games. So what’s behind Xi Jinping’s government taking on one of Chinese business’s biggest success stories -- and why is this happening now? And what could be the broader global implications?Joining us to discuss these questions and more we have two excellent guests.Rui Ma is a longtime investor and adviser on the tech sector in both China and the U.S., and the founder of Tech Buzz China, which provides insights and research on Chinese tech companies across different platforms, including its own podcast.And we’re also joined by Graham Webster. Graham is editor in chief of the DigiChina project at the Stanford University Cyber Policy Center, where he leads a network of specialists who produce analysis on China’s digital policy developments.

For those hoping the coronavirus pandemic was under control in Asia, the summer has been a nasty shock. A resurgence of Covid-19 across Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Indonesia and elsewhere, mainly associated with the spread of the Delta variant, has put paid to the idea the region was nearing the end of the health crisis. Even in countries like China, where the virus seems to have been restrained, the way forward is not clear. Almost two years into the pandemic, as economies reel and populations chafe under continuing restrictions, questions are mounting over how sustainable a hardline approach may be.Joining us to discuss the current state of play in the region are Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations; and Peter Mumford, a political risk analyst who is now the practice head for South East and South Asia at Eurasia Group in Singapore.As usual you can find more information at our website, asiamatterspod.com 

In any list of influential tech powers in the world, South Korea would undoubtedly be near the top. In this episode we delve into how the country achieved this status,  transforming the nature of its economy and producing global industry leaders like Samsung and LG Electronics. But  we'll also look to the future, and at how South Korea is working with the international community to build up the world's tech infrastructure. How is Seoul cooperating with other regions and countries when it comes to issues such as regulating the internet? How are issues of data collection and privacy being received in Korean society? Like most globally connected powers, South Korea is also highly attuned to the risk of cyber attacks -  particularly given its volatile neighbour North Korea.  We are delighted to have Dr Michael Reiterer, former EU ambassador to Korea, and now the distinguished professor for international security and diplomacy at the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy in Brussels, on the show. He has specialized in the EU’s relations with Korea and Japan during his career, particularly in the security realm. Also joining us is Dr Robyn Klingler-Vidra, a reader in International Political Economy at King’s College, London, whose research has focused on how east and southeast nations have developed their tech sectors. For this episode, we are once again partnering with the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy at the Brussels School of Governance. 

We turn again to the Korean peninsula in this week's episode, in another collaboration with CSDS. We often talk about North Korea's future in terms of how the issue plays out amid the region's broad geopolitical rivalries, and between the US and China. Less discussed is how the issue is viewed in South Korea - which technically remains at war with its northern neighbour - and whose interest in the matter is existential.Seoul's approach to the DPRK is set to come more sharply into focus in the coming months, with candidates gearing up for next spring’s presidential elections, where a successor to Moon Jae-in will be chosen. So what shapes South Korean attitudes towards North Korea? How united has the country been behind Moon’s approach over the last few years? And what might change as the country enters a period of new leadership?Joining us we have Dr Jina Kim, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, who specializes in North Asian security issues and has also advised the South Korean government.Our other guest is Ramon Pacheco Pardo, the Korea Chair at the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy at the Brussels School of Governance. This episode was produced in conjunction with the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy at the Brussels School of Governance. CSDS is home to a rich expertise on Asia, and is working to enhance understanding of Asia’s security matters in Europe and promote greater engagement between the two regions. You can find more information on the topic on their website, as well as on our own - www.asiamatterspod.com

The most shocking political development in Asia so far this year is arguably the seizure of power by the military in Myanmar, and the arrest of the country’s former de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The military’s crackdown on protests and other resistance against the coup has so far resulted in hundreds of deaths and thousands of arrests.In this episode we discuss the impact of the coup on the South East Asian nation, which is also often known as Burma, and how the current situation may develop in the months ahead.Joining us to do so we are pleased to welcome back to the podcast Thant Myint-U, one of the best known historians of the country and the author most recently of ‘The Hidden History of Burma’.As ever - you can find out more on our website, www.asiamatterspod.com

Against all odds, and after much compromise,  the Tokyo Olympic Games are set to go ahead this summer.  With no foreign fans and most spectators banned, it's certainly not the event  Japan would have wanted. In this episode we’ll assess the impact and significance of past Olympics in the Asian region, as well as what this summer’s event may mean for Japan. Previous Olympics in Asia have often held huge symbolic importance - from Japan's post WWII 'coming out' Games in 1964, right up until most recently in 2008, when a newly powerful and confident China hosted the Beijing games. Indeed, throughout recent history, hosting the Games has been a chance for countries to not just show off their sporting prowess, but also to demonstrate their cultural and economic power,  and to shape powerful narratives about themselves both on the global and domestic stage. Joining us this week is the man who literally wrote the book on the politics of sport in Asia - Victor Cha, currently the Senior Vice President and Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and author of ‘Beyond the Final Score’.Our other guest is the University of Birmingham's Shushu Chen, an expert in sport policy and management who has published extensively on the legacies of various Games. As ever - you can find out more on our website, www.asiamatterspod.com

This week we turn our attention to the Indo-Pacific -   the new geopolitical groupings emerging there, from multilateral trade deals to nascent security arrangements - and how Europe fits in to the picture. The most well-known of these new security groups is probably the Quad, a grouping of the major democracies with skin in the game in the region -  namely India, Japan, Australia, and the US.  But what of Europe, the world's largest trading bloc? Back in April, the EU published a strategy document aimed at boosting its presence in the region. But what does that mean in practice - what does the bloc hope to achieve, what limitations is it up against - and what do the major players situated in the region make of this renewed European focus? This is Asia Matters' latest collaboration with the Centre for Security, Strategy and Diplomacy at the Brussels School of Governance - and its Senior Japan Fellow  Eva Pejsova is one of our guests as we discuss where Europe fits into the shifting geopolitical picture in the region. Joining Andrew and Eva are Abhijit Singh, Senior Fellow and head of the Maritime Policy Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation; and Kei Koga, Assistant Professor at the School of Social Sciences at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. As ever - you can find out more on our website, www.asiamatterspod.com

In July the Chinese Communist Party turns 100. From humble beginnings in a small building in Shanghai's French Concession, the party would go on to seize power, retaining it into the present day, and fundamentally alter the course of China's history. A century ago, the CCP's founders would probably not have been able to imagine the influence they would wield and the modern country their party would forge, even if they might have hoped for it.  China in 1921 was fracturing, impoverished, and often found itself at the mercy of the era's great powers. But today's China is a global economic behemoth; and its international political influence is inexorably on the rise too, seen in its growing power in multilateral institutions like the UN. Many would argue that it's seen by the world's leading superpower, the United States, as its main rival. But is China what we might call a great power? And crucially - whilst we certainly know a lot about what everyone else thinks about this - how does China perceive itself?  To answer these very big questions, we've assembled some of the biggest brains in the field. The incomparable Rana Mitter, Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China at the University of Oxford, is our guest host for this episode. He's joined by Professor Shaun Breslin of the University of Warwick and Suyan Pan, Associate Professor at the Education University of Hong Kong. As ever - you can find out more on our website, www.asiamatterspod.com