Commentary: Will India’s name go the way of Turkey and Türkiye?

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The Philippines, where I was born, has been at odds with its title for more than a century. It originates from” Islas Felipinas ,” which Spanish explorers bestowed upon the islands in honor of the country’s then-heir to the throne, & nbsp, The Future Philip II, who would dispatch that armada against England in 1588. It’s an humorous holdover from a colonial energy that for 300 years ruled the island.

A number of decades ago, an attempt was made to rename the nation” Maharlika ,” a pre-Spanish word for nobility. Although some patriots were passionate, it was too late to catch on because it came from the past. Instead, Filipinos have adopted the slang term” pinoy ,” which is a little irreverent, to describe themselves. With that to & nbsp, perhaps a portmanteau national name can be created that captures the essence of the nation. & nbsp,

A Clement OF NAMES FROM THE State

Or perhaps it is irrelevant. Being confident in your identity and choosing to live with the name you have or with a & nbsp, babel of them, may be the better part of bravery( and value, should you need to worry about branding budget ).

Germans refer to their nation as Deutschland, but Poles, French, German, Chinese, and Danes call it” Niemcy ,”” Allemagne ,” and” Deguo.” Regardless of their title, the Germans ( who were once East and West themselves ) are still very European.

Confoederatio Helvetica is the Latin using that covers Switzerland’s four official dialects, hardly a font, according to its constitution. The Alpine state won’t soon be mistaken for another location. Yet Spanish are able to distinguish between Suiza residents and Suecia( Sweden ) residents. & nbsp,

China doesn’t demand that foreign listeners address it as Zhongguo. Japan doesn’t have to be referred to as Nihon-koku( unless you want to ).

As it stands, the Turks have generally referred to their nation as Türkiye, and Bharat is now widely used in India. These names may live with those used by the rest of the world.

There is no need to compel general conformity. at least not right away. Provide the rest of us some time to come near.

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Commentary: Is China finally getting serious about hukou reform?

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RESPONSIBILITIES TO Revolution

Regional challenges range from the banal to the more serious problems with China’s political economy. People of larger cities are hesitant to share their equivalent( if not absolute ) prosperity in China, as they are elsewhere. Timing is important as well, as evidenced by the slowing economy and the higher than 46 % youth unemployment rate.

The charge must also be taken into account. According to modeling done in 2014, granting urban hukou standing to China’s migrant workers may cost 1.5 percent of the country ‘ gross domestic product annually over a 15-year period. This amount would now be significantly higher. Although the national economic benefits would likely more than make up for these costs, the entire process might be unequal.

The more important problem is who pays. Local governments foot the bill for approximately 85 % of public service despite only receiving 50 % of the profits. The eagerness of most localities to increase social spending is seriously questioned by the extremely perilous nature of native government finances. The following are: & nbsp,” ,’

Hukou change would probably cause regional government revenue to experience even if overall GDP increases because only about 10 % of people in China( and very few metropolitan refugees) pay income tax. The implication is that more profound and even more contentious financial and tax reforms are necessary for sustainable hukou reform.

It’s possible that there are intellectual obstacles at work as well. For thousands of years, the Taiwanese government has employed a variation of the hukou program. Taiwan is one of many East Asian countries where similar techniques have been abolished, but usually by governments with distinctly more democratic and market-oriented policies.

This is not a stable position. The political and economic calculus of hukou reformation could theoretically change as demographic decline bites China, whose population is now declining. Whether China may adopt more extensive hukou transformation will function as a litmus test for whether Beijing’s commitment to global growth is genuine or merely facetious, at least in the short term.

Social risk scientist Henry Storey previously served as an editor for Young Australians in International Affairs and Foreign Brief. This article first appeared on The Interpreter, a site run by Lowy Institute.

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Commentary: ‘I almost lost my will to live’ – preference for sons leaves women in China exploited and abused

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Ode To Joy ( 2016 ), All Is Well( 2019 ), and I Will Find You A Better Home( 2017 ), three well-liked Chinese television shows in recent years, have brought back attention to the family discrimination and mistreatment that many female children still experience in modern Chinese society.

Many of these people have discussed their circumstances on social media. In my most recent research, I looked at a few of the thousands of articles and video clips on Chinese websites like Zhihu( a Q & amp, A forum ) and Bilibili, which are all about son preference. My research demonstrates how challenging it is for people to end this abusive relationship, even after they reach adulthood.

I nearly lost my will to survive.

Daughters are molded from beginning to realize that they are worthless recipients of household resources and are indebted to their household for being born in families with robust son preferences. This causes them to feel extremely insecure and low in self-esteem and creates a lifelong obligation to pay back their” debt” by supporting the family.

A senior high school scholar made a remark about how expectations that she provide financial support for her family are shaping her life. She now feels worthless, unloved, and even suicidal as a result of this: & nbsp,” My mother has been very honest with me and keeps reminding me that, I bring you up for old age security, you should give me how much in the next month and you ought to provide for your younger brother and help financially with his studies.” Despite my constant desire to be loved, I have not felt loved. I wanted to jump off stairways to commit suicide so that I could eventually be happy because I am uncomfortable and have a very low sense of self-worth.

Another article emphasized how cruel and degrading comments can instill a preference for sons in even younger girls:” Andnbsp, when my auntie was expectant and I was still young, my uncle told me that I may pray it’s going to be little brother because only then will we get to eat chicken drumsticks.” We’ll just take chicken poop if it’s a girlfriend.

One lady talked about how desperate she felt about having to pay for her mother’s monthly living expenses. She claimed that she even gave her mother the hongbao, a financial product she had received from her partner, during the Chinese New Year.

” In the first few months after starting my first job, they pestered me so relentlessly for income that I nearly lost my will to live.” Despite the fact that I currently have a partner, I am ready to end our relationship at any time. I was curious as to why they didn’t simply kill me to dying despite the fact that they were aware of my gender.

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Commentary: Biden skipping the ASEAN Summit is a mistake

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SHORTSIGHTED Performance Technique

Theoretically, Indonesia should be Washington’s biological partner. It is a sizable, active republic with close military relations to the US in the past. However, the island has been open to the & nbsp, economic efforts from Beijing in recent years, under President Joko Widoo. & nbsp,

It would be a mistake for the US to allow China’s influence to maintain. Jakarta’s tension is natural given that it has the largest market in Southeast Asia and has promising futures. & nbsp, And it no longer believes that in order to maintain its relevance, it must submit to either Beijing or Washington. & nbsp,

It is obvious that globalism is no longer as significant to the US or China. The US considers its approach of pursuing nations in the region one at a time to be effective and productive.

And if the goal is to counteract its main rival’s position in Asia, a significant improvement in the & nbsp, partnership with Vietnam is far more beneficial than staying in Jakarta for one day. & nbsp,

Biden’s cut, however, is blind. He is unlikely to show up at the ASEAN conference that will be held in Laos either because there is an election in the US the following month.

While Biden has been successful in persuading some Asian partners that the US is back and engaged in the region, others don’t feel the same way about the Trump era of pulling out trade agreements and America First & nbsp.

Relationships, especially fine ones, require time, effort, and function. Being sincere and genuine in those endeavors is necessary to foster confidence.

A stopover in Jakarta would have been an easy victory for Biden at a time when China was weaker financially. By skipping it, the US & nbsp appears to be only interested in a marriage of convenience with Asia, rather than an alliance of any real substance.

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Snap Insight: Ahmad Zahid’s discharge over corruption charges is politically awkward for Malaysia PM Anwar

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JADED BY Sloppy POLITICS ARE MALAYSIANS

Ordinary Malaysians who are already weary of the country’s chaotic politics will undoubtedly look more closely at other politically sensitive corruption studies after the creation on Monday.

Some of Mr. Anwar’s political rivals, including former premier Muhyiddin Yassin, as well as Rosmah Mansor, the wife of former prime minister and currently imprisoned Najib Razak, are defendants in the continuing trials. & nbsp,

In private conversations with near associates, Mr. Anwar has made it clear that he is appreciative of Mr Ahmad Zahid for supporting the PH alliance that helped him win the premiership, but his colleagues insist that there was no interference.

It is fair to say that Anwar and the state will not benefit from the magnification of all of this. A mature businessman who has been a member of the president’s inner circuit for the past three decades said,” We need to drive this out.”

The social twist this week also has significant repercussions for UMNO, which lost the 2018 standard election after more than 60 years in power in Malaysia. The state-owned 1Malaysia Development Bhd( 1MDB ) fiasco and corruption allegations against Najib and Mr. Ahmad Zahid caused widespread public outrage, which led to the spectacular defeat.

After being found guilty of corruption-related charges in connection with the 1MDB scandal just over a year ago, Najib handed over the UMNO president to Mr. Ahmad Zahid and was given the death penalty of 12 years in prison.

Since then, Mr. Ahmad Zahid has consolidated his control over UMNO by ousting group rivals. He claims that Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, who briefly held the position of prime minister for a second time following the ouster of the party, and Mruhyiddin were politically motivated by his corruption accusations.

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Commentary: Cross-strait relations loom large in Taiwan’s presidential election

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Possibly NO CHANGE TO THE CURRENT CHINA POLICY

In order to win the most seats, all three candidates have taken confusing stances on China plan, preferring to gauge public opinion first. But according to record, either the DPP or the KMT may probably continue to implement their respective policies if they were to win.

Both outcomes carry some danger. While the KMT’s pro-China approach does little to defend Taiwanese sovereignty, the approach of the DPP, which strengthens Taiwans democracy, ties with the United States, and self-defense abilities, may increase the likelihood of conflict.

Despite the fact that the majority of polls place Lai forward, followed by Ko and Hou, the assertive pro-independence position of the latter also runs the risk of retaliation from Beijing.

Ko appears to be the most logical choice for Taiwan’s next leader based on three crucial indicators: the likelihood of conflict, economic outlooks, and the potential for improving cross-Strait relations. Additionally, he might be the simplest for China to chew. Whether the non-progressive camp may unite is the main concern right now.

Tech billionaire Terry Gou declared his intention to run independently on August 28. However, he also needs to secure roughly 300,000 voter signatures by November 2 in order to do so. Despite Gou’s assertion that his goal is to promote group switching, all domestic and international media analysis concur that Lai will win the election if he runs for office.

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Commentary: How ending mine disasters could help China’s energy security

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Cracking down on this should be a priority for any nation – but it’s particularly important in China, given its hunger to pay foreign countries for the same gas its own coal mines are throwing away.

Chinese companies have been on a shopping spree in the global gas market lately. China National Petroleum in June signed a 27-year liquefied natural gas deal with Qatar.

LNG imports could double over the coming decade to about 188 billion cubic meters, according to consultants Rystad Energy. Pipelines totaling 85 billion cubic meters from Russia and Turkmenistan could add close to the same amount again.

The country is so desperate for more molecules that it’s started drilling a 10,000m gas well in Sichuan province, one of the deepest ever.

CLEANING UP COAL MINE METHANE

Why has it been so hard to clean up China’s coal mine methane? The technology to do so is fairly straightforward, and widespread in other coal-mining regions such as the US and Australia: Drilling into coal seams to release their gas, and if necessary fracturing the rock to drive more of it out.

Regulations introduced by Beijing during the 2000s even provide incentives and penalties to encourage mine owners to drain their pits before work begins. There’s little firm evidence of success, though. Satellite monitoring indicates that waste gas has, if anything, accelerated.

A separate study that found some positive effects still saw them falling short of government targets. Abandoned pits can also release methane long after mining ceases.

At root, the problem is the same one that plagues the country’s entire coal industry: Government fears about power cuts, combined with an electricity market set-up that makes poor use of renewables and the declining quality of local coal, are twisting the sector out of shape.

Hitting tonnage targets is all that counts. If doing so means skimping on gas recovery and putting workers at risk, it’s seen as a necessary price to pay.

That’s a dangerous mistake. China is compounding the problems of an industry that mines half the world’s coal by failing to deal with its noxious waste products. The sooner it regulates, reins in and shrinks its solid fuel mines, the better for both the planet, and its own pit workers.

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Commentary: Japanification? China should be so lucky

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PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY IN ONE-PARTY CHINA?

One key difference is public accountability. When public dissatisfaction sufficiently mounted in post-bubble Japan, voters could dump the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from power, as they did briefly in 1993 and again in 2009 (the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, now obsolete, was similarly punished in elections in 2012 that restored the LDP to power.)

Much is made of the party’s post-war dominance of the political system, but it needs to stay keenly attuned to the public mood – witness current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s current struggles with an unpopular identification card scheme. Can one-party, election-free China find the same pressure valves? 

One major challenge facing both countries is demographics. Japan’s low birth rate and greying population have long been on policymakers’ minds. When it was fashionable to deride Japan, subpar fertility was something to be wielded against the country, a sign that a kind of permanent twilight was settling over what’s still one of the world’s biggest economies.

What doesn’t get nearly enough attention is that Japan isn’t doing too badly, relative to the neighbourhood and advanced economies: The total fertility rate (TFR), the number of children a woman can expect to bear in her lifetime, fell to 1.26 last year. South Korea has it far worse at 0.78, as does Singapore, where the TFR dropped to 1.05. Japan’s is closer to Spain and Italy than to its neighbours.

In China, the rate plummeted to 1.09 last year from 1.30 in 2020, according to a study by a government agency reported by Reuters and the Wall Street Journal. Japan almost looks hale by comparison.  

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Commentary: Taiwan’s nascent #MeToo movement – from ‘eating tofu’ to Netflix

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“EATING TOFU”, MALE VICTIMS

Sexual harassment is so prevalent in Taiwan that Taiwanese people have adopted the phrase “eating tofu” to describe unwelcome social interactions faced daily by women and girls – from verbal comments regarding women’s bodies to various types of unwanted physical and sexual contact.

Taiwan’s mainstream heterosexual script expects women to embody two contradictory gender roles. On the one hand, being deemed sexually attractive under the male gaze is still a core element of femininity. On the other hand, this understanding of femininity also demands women to be sexually passive.

Men are encouraged to initiate physical contact while women are expected to dodge or resist. This gendered script imposes an outdated femininity on Taiwanese women while also misrepresenting women’s refusal of unwanted sexual attention as “flirtation”.

The #MeToo movement has also shown men and boys to be victims of sexual harassment in workplaces, schools and universities. But the stigma surrounding same-sex desire works to silence male victims.

The risks associated with speaking up about one’s experiences of sexual harassment continue to be underestimated by mainstream society. Victims are subject to all kinds of questioning, with their motivations for making an allegation to the time elapsed between the assault and its reporting. In the digital era, many victims are subject to various rumours and defamation once they post their testimonies on social media.

The ways that Taiwanese society deals with sexual harassment not only serves to silence victims but also neglects the societal taboos preventing women and girls from talking about sex – be it sexual pleasure or violence. As women and girls are taught to associate sex with reputational damage and shame, many women have kept their stories silent until now – when the #MeToo movement has created a community that allows for their voices to be heard.

Taiwan still has a long way to go in terms of gender and sexual equality and the DPP’s “zero-tolerance” policy on sexual harassment is demands that the social fabric change substantially. It would be beneficial to treat the #MeToo movement as an opportunity to create space for women and girls to talk about their experiences and for collective work to be done on how society can better support and rehabilitate victims.

Mei-Hua Chen is Professor in the Department of Sociology at National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan. This commentary first appeared on East Asia Forum.

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Commentary: India landed a spacecraft on the moon, but where are its corporate moonshots?

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Put a capability like that under a computer software tsar in Bengaluru, and you’ll get a flourishing outsourced service. But that’s all you will get.

“Technology can and must be the great amplifier of our human potential, our humanity,” Vishal Sikka, the chief executive of Infosys, wrote in the software exporter’s 2015-16 annual report. The former SAP computer scientist, a co-author of a natural language processing patent, was talking about a small donation to a nonprofit lab in San Francisco.

By the time OpenAI went commercial in 2019 – and Microsoft invested US$1 billion in the ChatGPT maker – Sikka was no longer around at the Indian company to write another cheque. Infosys may make plenty of money by helping its global clients run other people’s large language models. But will it ever have another chance to own a foundational technology?  

Capital is no longer a constraint, at least for large Indian companies. And yet they haven’t quite flexed their muscles.

Tycoon Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries spent US$363 million on R&D last financial year. This was 15 per cent more than the previous year, but still only 0.3 per cent of revenue. 

Among other things, the telecom-to-petrochemicals firm is trying to come up with in-house technologies for carbon capture, so that its gigantic refinery could go from dirty “grey” hydrogen to less-polluting “blue” H2. That’s just scratching the surface of the experimentation India – and the world – will need in low-carbon molecules.    

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