Japan & US at G7 can bask in multilateral momentum

By:
On:
In: Asia

The year 2023 is bringing a renewed focus on the US-Japan partnership as a fulcrum of global and regional diplomacy.

With an eye to this weekend’s G7 Summit in Hiroshima, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida began the year with visits to G7 counterparts in Europe and North America. Later in the spring, he toured Africa in an effort to gain understanding from countries of the Global South.

The Joe Biden administration looks ahead to a lively economic agenda, as it hosts the APEC Summit in November on the heels of the G20 Summit in New Delhi in September. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan laid out in detail the economic ambitions of the Biden national strategy on April 27, giving further clarity to how the administration thinks its foreign policy will meet the needs of the American middle class.

Regional collaboration continues to expand. Both leaders will be present in Australia on May 24 as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese hosts the third in-person meeting of the leaders of the Quad.

Also noteworthy is the progress in ties between Japan and South Korea. Trilateral consultations began early in the Biden administration and, after the election of President Yoon Suk Yeol last spring, the groundwork for resolving the many difficulties in the bilateral relationship began. This spring, Yoon and Kishida revealed their progress in a set of visits to each other’s capitals. A trilateral summit is planned for the G7 Summit, which Yoon will attend as an observer.

Overshadowing this active multilateral calendar is the continuing war in Ukraine. Both Kishida and Biden have visited President Volodymyr Zelensky in his capital. The United States and Japan remain stalwart supporters of the Ukrainian defense effort as Ukrainians prepare for the spring counteroffensive against Russian forces. Yet questions have arisen within the US Congress over the scale and duration of military aide provided to Zelenskyy.

Interestingly, there remains little doubt about the Kishida cabinet’s support of Ukraine. While Japan does not provide lethal aid, it has joined in solidarity with European nations to contribute humanitarian relief.

Political choices will also shape the remainder of the year. President Biden on April 25 announced his run for a second term in the 2024 election.

In Tokyo, talk of a national snap election continues, with the latest rumors suggesting that Kishida, coming off his party’s good showing in local elections in April, might opt for a ballot after the G7 Summit.

Prepping for the G7 Summit

Early in the year, Kishida began consultations with other G7 partners for the summit to be held in Hiroshima from May 17-19. As host, Japan will set the agenda for the meeting, and the prime minister aimed to highlight his home constituency as a gathering place for global leaders. Traveling first to Europe and then to North America, Kishida met the French president and Italian, British, and Canadian prime ministers before his final stop at the White House for talks with Biden.

High on the agenda was rallying global support for Ukraine. Kishida then visited Ukraine in March, quietly traveling there from India, where he had met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. While in Kyiv, Kishida pledged to provide additional aid and create a “special global partnership” between Japan and Ukraine. In addition, he invited President Zelensky to speak to the G7 leaders at the summit.

There are other aims as well. Notably, Japan intends to highlight the repercussions to the Global South of the war in Ukraine. Kishida traveled to Africa on a week-long trip beginning April 29 to offer assistance to those suffering from the global hike in food and energy prices caused by the war. Similarly, Tokyo will be looking to engage developing countries to ensure they avoid becoming overdependent on Chinese largesse. On May 1, during his meeting with Ghanaian President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Kishida pledged $500 million in financial support to Africa.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida prepares for this weekend’s G7 Summit in Hiroshima. Photo: Kyodo

The Japanese prime minister will have Indo-Pacific security balance on his mind as G7 leaders gather in Japan. As Kishida made clear throughout last year, a conflict similar to the Ukraine war is easily imaginable in the Indo-Pacific as cross-Strait tensions between China and Taiwan have intensified. Gaining deeper European understanding of the strategic challenges he sees being posed by China will be high on his priority list. Some European nations, such as France and Germany, see economic ties with China as indispensable, especially as sanctions on Russia have been costly.

Finally, Kishida will have the opportunity to remind the world of the nuclear risk. A visit by Biden and other G7 leaders to the Hiroshima Peace Park, and possibly to the Nagasaki Peace Park, will highlight the consequences of nuclear weapons and provide a platform for global condemnation of the threat to use them again.

US-Japan Regional Cooperation

The Biden and Kishida governments have continued to expand their regional agenda. Striking this spring was progress made in improving trilateral US-Japan-South Korea ties. Security cooperation began in the early months of the Biden administration in 2021 and gained momentum with the election of Yoon last year. This year consultations deepened. Foreign ministers met on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, where the three democracies restated their joint condemnation of recent North Korean missile tests. Further agreement is expected at a trilateral leaders’ meeting to be held during the Hiroshima G7 Summit.

Nonetheless, concerns over US extended deterrence in South Korea prompted a significant statement of reassurance during the state visit of President Yoon to Washington in April. Yoon gained a clear statement of the US commitment to South Korean defenses in the so-called “Washington Declaration.” Speaking during a joint press conference in the Rose Garden, Biden said that “a nuclear attack by North Korea against the United States or its allies or partners is unacceptable and will result in the end of whatever regime to take such an action.” In return, Biden received Yoon’s reassurance of South Korea’s commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Strategic stability on the Korean Peninsula has a significant impact on Japan as well, and North Korean missile tests continued to make it clear that a robust trilateral agenda of security cooperation was all the more necessary.

The new National Defense Plan put forward by Prime Minister Kishida suggests an early purchase of counterstrike capabilities, ensuring that Japan, like South Korea, will have its own conventional deterrent. But close coordination between Tokyo, Seoul, and Washington will be indispensable.

US Special Representative for the DPRK Sung Kim, Japanese Director-General of the Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau Takehiro Funakoshi and South Korean Special Representative for Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs Kim Gunn met in Seoul on April 7 and called for joint efforts to block North Korea from sending workers abroad and engaging in malicious cyber activities to fund its nuclear program.

US Special Representative for the DPRK Sung Kim, Japanese Director-General of the Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau Takehiro Funakoshi and South Korean Special Representative for Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs Kim Gunn hold a trilateral meeting to address North Korean affairs. Photo: News1

Most welcome have been the accompanying improvements in bilateral ties between Tokyo and Seoul. Washington has been supportive of the bilateral diplomacy that produced first Yoon’s visit to Tokyo on March 16 and then Kishida’s visit to Seoul on May 7. The former produced a Japanese commitment to improve favorable treatment of South Korean companies under the export control laws.

Progress made by the Yoon administration on ensuring compensation for the plaintiffs in the Supreme Court forced labor decision has also been a major signal of progress. On April 17, Japan and South Korea held their first bilateral security dialogue in five years. Finally, Kishida’s visit suggested far greater cooperation on strengthening supply chain resilience and advancing high-tech industries will be coming in the months ahead.

Yoon’s attendance at the G7 Summit will provide the opportunity for US-Japan-South Korea leaders to move their agenda forward, with Yoon hinting in press remarks that the leaders might use the meeting to form a new trilateral security forum. Media reports also suggest that the three countries hope to reach an agreement on linking radar systems, to better detect North Korean missiles, when their defense ministers meet in Singapore in early June.

The US and Japan have continued their cooperation in the Quad. The Quad foreign ministers met in New Delhi on March 3 in preparation for the leaders’ summit planned for May 24 in Australia. Already, Quad working groups have produced considerable progress across a host of issues. From April 10-14, the US, Japan, Australia, and India hosted the Quad Cyber Challenge, a coordinated campaign to promote responsible cyber habits across corporations, schools, and individuals in the four nations.

And, the US and Japan are joining with the Philippines to deepen security cooperation. On April 5, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno announced that Japan would begin to offer bilateral Overseas Security Assistance to help smaller Indo-Pacific nations strengthen their defenses. One of the first candidates will be the Philippines.

A month earlier, the Japanese Self-Defense Force (SDF) participated in the annual US-Philippine Salaknib military exercises as an observer to encourage a more formal role for the Japanese SDF participation in contributing to stability in the South China Sea.

This pattern of inviting Japan to join bilateral military exercises with allies proved successful in expanding Japanese security cooperation with Australia and then India in the 2000s, and ultimately to a Quad dialogue on maritime and other regional security needs.

Already, media reports suggest that the US, Japan, and the Philippines are planning to create a trilateral consultative mechanism for their national security advisors.

Politics in the Air

Kishida faced a series of challenges toward the end of 2022. His decision to host a state funeral for former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sparked controversy, while growing public discontent arose over Kishida’s management of the LDP’s connections with the Unification Church. The resignation of four Cabinet members due to their ties with the church and other scandals added to the mounting pressure on Kishida’s leadership.

Some polls even indicated that Kishida’s approval rating, which had already been on a declining trajectory, had fallen below 30%, entering the so-called “danger zone” where prime ministers face the risk of losing office.

But Kishida has seemingly bounced back since the start of 2023. His support rating has steadily climbed, with one Nikkei poll in late April finding that support for the prime minister surpassed 50% for the first time in eight months.

What factors contributed to this successful turnaround in public support? Some of it can likely be attributed to Kishida’s vigorous engagement in high-profile diplomacy in the leadup to G7.

Kishida has also benefitted from positive developments on the domestic front. His ruling coalition performed better than anticipated in the unified local elections and parliamentary by-elections held in April. While the LDP and its coalition partner Komeito experienced some setbacks in the two rounds of local elections on April 9 and 23, they managed to secure victories for most of their preferred candidates.

However, it was the LDP’s better-than expected performance in the five parliamentary by-elections on April 23 that was particularly significant for the Kishida government. Although Kishida had set a target of winning three out of five seats, LDP-backed candidates exceeded expectations by securing four victories.

A man is detained by police after throwing an explosive device towards Prime Minister Kishida, who was unharmed during the incident. Photo: Kyodo

Support for Kishida further increased after he survived an assassination attempt on April 15. While Kishida was delivering a stump speech at a fishing port in Wakayama, an assailant hurled an explosive device at him, but he managed to escape unharmed. The incident evoked memories of the assassination of former Prime Minister Abe, who was shot and killed less than a year ago on July 8, 2022, during an Upper House campaign event in Nara.

With the upswing in Kishida’s support rating, speculation has arisen about the possibility of a snap election for the Lower House. Kishida must call a new election by October 2025 at the latest when the term for the Lower House expires. While concerns exist that voters may experience election fatigue after the busy month of April, Kishida is likely contemplating the optimal timing to secure victory at the polls and strengthen his position before the LDP’s next party leadership election in September 2024.

Another crucial factor influencing Kishida’s decision on election timing is its impact on support for his policy proposals, particularly in terms of how he plans to pay for them. Kishida has made ambitious pledges to double Japan’s spending on defense and childcare, but specific details have been limited, causing some confusion about the prime minister’s plans for implementation. Opinion polls indicate that the public is not inclined toward new taxes, and Kishida himself has said that he would seek a public mandate through an election before considering any tax hikes.

While Kishida has recently dismissed the possibility of an imminent election, only time will reveal whether this stance changes. Meanwhile, observers will closely monitor the performance of the Kishida administration during the G7 Summit and parliamentary deliberations in June, as it is expected that the government will unveil more information regarding its spending priorities.

As for Biden, his support ratings have largely managed to hold steady at just over 40% through the first few months of the year, but significant challenges lie ahead. As Biden heads to Japan to meet Kishida and world leaders in Hiroshima, domestic concerns will likely be looming large on his mind as the US needs to raise the debt ceiling by June 1 or risk default.

The last time the US came within just days of default in 2011, Standard & Poor’s downgraded the country’s top-tier credit rating for the first time. How the Biden administration handles the issue will have substantial implications for the global economy and will also likely continue to be a point of contention as the president seeks reelection in 2024.

Sheila A. Smith is senior fellow for Japan studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She is the author of Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and Rising China and Japan’s New Politics and the U.S.-Japan Alliance. Charles T. McClean is Japan Foundation CGP postdoctoral associate in East Asian Studies at the Yale MacMillan Center. Previously he was the Toyota visiting professor at the University of Michigan’s Center for Japanese Studies.

This article, abridged from one originally published by the Pacific Forum in Honolulu, is extracted from Comparative Connections: A Triannual E-Journal of Bilateral Relations in the Indo-Pacific, Volumw 25, Number 1, May 2023.

Continue Reading

Asia is spending big to battle low birth rates – will it work?

By:
On:
In: Asia
Crying baby at Japanese festivalGetty Images
By Mariko Oi
Business reporter

Falling birth rates are a major concern for some of Asia’s biggest economies.

Governments in the region are spending hundreds of billions of dollars trying to reverse the trend. Will it work?

Japan began introducing policies to encourage couples to have more children in the 1990s. South Korea started doing the same in the 2000s, while Singapore’s first fertility policy dates back to 1987.

China, which has seen its population fall for the first time on 60 years, recently joined the growing club.

While it is difficult to quantify exactly how much these policies have cost, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol recently said his country had spent more than $200bn (£160bn) over the past 16 years on trying to boost the population.

Yet last year South Korea broke its own record for the world’s lowest fertility rate, with the average number of babies expected per woman falling to 0.78.

In neighbouring Japan, which had record low births of fewer than 800,000 last year, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has pledged to double the budget for child-related policies from 10tn yen ($74.7bn; £59.2bn), which is just over 2% of the country’s gross domestic product.

Globally, while there are more countries that are trying to lower birth rates, the number of countries wanting to increase fertility has more than tripled since 1976, according to the most recent report by the United Nations.

New born baby in China

Getty Images

So why do these governments want to grow their populations?

Simply put, having a bigger population who can work and produce more goods and services leads to higher economic growth. And while a larger population can mean higher costs for governments, it can also result in bigger tax revenues.

Also, many Asian countries are ageing rapidly. Japan leads the pack with nearly 30% of its population now over the age of 65 and some other nations in the region are not far behind.

Compare that with India, which has just overtaken China as the world’s most populous nation. More than a quarter of its people are between the age of 10 and 20, which gives its economy huge potential for growth.

And when the share of the working age population gets smaller, the cost and burden of looking after the non-working population grow.

“Negative population growth has an impact on the economy, and combined that with an ageing population, they won’t be able to afford to support the elderly,” said Xiujian Peng of Victoria University.

Graphic showing China's birthrate per 1,000 people, from 1978 to 2022. There has been a steady decline in recent years. The figure in 1978 was 18.25, while it was 6.77 in 2022.

Most of the measures across the region to increase birth rates have been similar: payments for new parents, subsidised or free education, extra nurseries, tax incentives and expanded parental leave.

But do these measures work?

Data for last few decades from Japan, South Korea and Singapore shows that attempts to boost their populations have had very little impact. Japan’s finance ministry has published a study which said the policies were a failure.

It is a view echoed by the United Nations.

“We know from history that the types of policies which we call demographic engineering where they try to incentivise women to have more babies, they just don’t work,” Alanna Armitage of United Nations Population Fund told the BBC.

“We need to understand the underlying determinants of why women are not having children, and that is often the inability of women to be able to combine their work life with their family life,” she added.

But in Scandinavian countries, fertility policies have worked better than they did in Asia, according to Ms Peng.

“The main reason is because they have a good welfare system and the cost of raising children is cheaper. Their gender equality is also much more balanced than in Asian countries.”

Asian countries have ranked lower in comparison in the global gender gap report by the World Economic Forum.

Japan has the highest debt in the G7

There are also major questions over how these expensive measures should be funded, especially in Japan, which is the world’s most indebted developed economy.

Options under consideration in Japan include selling more government bonds, which means increasing its debt, raising its sales tax or increasing social insurance premiums.

The first option adds financial burden to the future generations, while the other two would hit already struggling workers, which could convince them to have fewer children.

But Antonio Fatás, professor of economics at INSEAD says regardless of whether these policies work, they have to invest in them.

“Fertility rates have not increased but what if there was less support? Maybe they would be even lower,” he said.

Governments are also investing in other areas to prepare their economies for shrinking populations.

“China has been investing in technologies and innovations to make up for the declining labour force in order to mitigate the negative impact of the shrinking population,” said Ms Peng.

Also, while it remains unpopular in countries like Japan and South Korea, lawmakers are discussing changing their immigration rules to try to entice younger workers from overseas.

“Globally, the fertility rate is falling so it’ll be a race to attract young people to come and work in your country,” Ms Peng added.

Whether the money is well spent on fertility policies, these governments appear to have no other choice.

Related Topics

More on this story

Continue Reading

China’s great bond market opening leap forward

By:
On:
In: Asia

Beijing regulators are leaning into a seven-week rally in China’s sovereign bond market by widening access to onshore interest-rate swaps. Yet what sounds like a rather technical turn of the screw is a huge and timely reform win for institutional investors keen on trading Asia’s biggest economy.

“Timely,” because it coincides with Group of Seven (G7) members heading to Hiroshima, Japan to contain any number of financial troubles. They include runaway inflation, failing Western banks, the specter of a US default and desperate attempts to woo Global South countries.

In China, though, the vibe is more about opening a recovering financial system to global investors hungry for growth and higher-yielding assets as the post-Covid-19 trade gains momentum.

Here, the new “Swap Connect” program between China and Hong Kong is wisely timed. It opens the way for overseas funds to access derivatives vital to hedging bets in China’s bond market. The dearth of hedging tools has long turned off the biggest of the big money.

The swap scheme will enable punters to deal in key money-market rates tied closely to People’s Bank of China (PBoC) policies. This will likely deepen institutional investors’ involvement in China markets, building on the existing Bond Connect plan. The move dovetails with a powerful bond rally driven by expectations that the central bank will add more liquidity this year.

For Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Swap Connect helps fulfill a pledge to open mainland capital markets to international funds. It turns the page, to some extent, from the regulatory crackdowns of 2020 and 2021. It also reminds top investment banks that geopolitical turbulence between Beijing and Washington isn’t getting in the way of market reforms.

The program “will be a huge leap forward in developing the domestic derivatives and bond markets,” says Rose Zhu, chief China country officer at Deutsche Bank, which Beijing named as a key market maker for Swap Connect.

“Leveraging our cross-border strengths, we look forward to playing an active role in helping international investors get a head start via Swap Connect” and “helping accelerate the opening up of China’s financial markets and RMB internationalization.”

Monish Tahilramani, head of Asia Pacific markets at HSBC, says the hedging tool marks “an important complement to Bond Connect and a positive sign that onshore markets continue to open up.”

It’s not that simple, of course. Nicolas Aguzin, CEO of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited, is absolutely right to call Swap Connect “the latest chapter in our ‘connect’ story.”

The reference here is to Xi’s habit of connecting markets to Hong Kong’s first-world system to increase China’s financial street cred. First it was Stock Connect, then Bond Connect. Now, Swap Connect rounds out Xi’s regional ambitions.

Yet the question is whether this time financial reforms will keep pace with rising investor optimism? Or will this be another episode of China over-promising and under-delivering?

Li Qiang is promising big market reforms. Image: Screengrab / NDTV

New Premier Li Qiang has signaled the former. Since March, when he formally took over as Xi’s No 2, Li seems to have hit the brakes on the tech company crackdown that in recent years has sent foreign capital fleeing.

In March, for example, Li said that “for a period of time last year, there were some incorrect discussions and comments in the society, which made some private entrepreneurs feel worried.

“From a new starting point, we will create a market-oriented, legalized and internationalized business environment, treat enterprises of all types of ownership equally, protect the property rights of enterprises and the rights and interests of entrepreneurs.”

The plan, Li explained, is to “promote fair competition among various business entities and support the development and growth of private enterprises” and to “shore up” investor confidence.

Hence the importance of Swap Connect. It’s equally important, though, that Li’s reform team ensures that China follows through this time.

Earlier episodes of market opening saw Xi’s government putting the proverbial cart before the horse. In 2014, for example, the Stock Connect program lured tidal waves of capital but steps lagged to increase transparency, level playing fields and reduce limits on yuan convertibility.

The same with Bond Connect in 2017. Regulatory upgrades lagged as capital zoomed in. In between there, in 2016, China gained access to the International Monetary Fund’s “special drawing-rights” program.

That came after years of lobbying by former PBoC Governor Zhou Xiaochuan. The yuan’s inclusion in the IMF’s club of reserve currencies along with the dollar, euro, yen and the pound signaled China was achieving prime-time status.

Unfortunately, seven years on, the yuan still isn’t fully convertible. That’s limiting the yuan’s appeal as a rival to the dollar — even as the US government does its worst to damage the reserve currency’s credibility.

Part of the problem, though, is what this state of affairs says about Xi’s first 10 years in power: China doesn’t trust markets to decide the yuan’s value. If so, the thinking goes, why would investors trust Team Xi?

Still, the Swap Connect narrative is a powerful one if Li can reinvigorate the reform process as Xi’s third term heats up. It’s a “northbound” trading system enabling dealing in mainland yuan-denominated contracts with a net cap of 20 billion yuan (US$2.9 billion) per day. Next, a “southbound” channel might be added from China to Hong Kong.

As Hong Kong’s Chief Executive John Lee said this week: “The new scheme will strengthen Hong Kong’s role as an offshore yuan trading center and as a risk-management center.”

Julia Leung, CEO of the Securities and Futures Commission, added that Swap Connect “deepens connectivity between mainland and overseas capital markets and bolsters Hong Kong’s position as a risk-management hub.”

In a note to clients, HSBC argued that “compared to offshore interest-rate swaps, onshore interest-rate swaps are less volatile and correlate better with onshore bond yields. This makes onshore interest rate swaps more efficient interest rate hedges of onshore bonds. The other benefit of entering the onshore swap market is having access to SHIBOR interest rate swaps, which are rarely quoted in the offshore market.”

China has big plans to rein in local government debt. Image: Screengrab / CNBC

HSBC analyst Candy Ho notes that “Swap Connect has immediate value for global investors and is a timely move in China’s ongoing commitment to its markets opening up.” She adds it will make “participating in the world’s second-largest fixed-income market more attractive by introducing a central clearing model and providing better access to the deep onshore liquidity in financial derivatives markets.”

A deep and vibrant bond market is needed to finance everything from the growth of the private sector to adjust to an aging and shrinking population to funding bigger social safety nets so China can pivot to a consumption-led growth model. Beijing is expected to rack up a record 3.88 trillion yuan ($557 billion) deficit this year.

A more resilient debt market would help PBoC Governor Yi Gang’s team gain greater traction when it tweaks monetary policy. The odds of more assertive PBoC easing may have increased Tuesday with news that retail sales, industrial output and fixed investment expanded much less than hoped in April. The youth unemployment rate meanwhile hit a record high of 20.4%.

“China’s activity indicators missed expectations by a wide margin even with a favorable base,” says economist Xiangrong Yu at Citigroup. “With China now out of the sweet spot of reopening, hope of further sentiment repair could be diminishing in the absence of decisive government actions.”

Such trends may be more positive for Chinese bonds than stocks in the short-to-medium term. And here, news that Beijing is stepping up efforts to develop a more developed bond market to provide the economy with a bigger shock absorber if global markets go awry will bolster confidence. The ability to hedge is an important step in that direction.

The new risk-hedging instrument is being introduced just as rising US interest rates put foreign outflow pressure on China’s bond market, with overseas funds cutting their holdings by $169 billion over the past five quarters. At the same time, global investors still own 10 times as many of the securities as they did a decade ago.

Before May 15, Beijing only allowed foreign funds to access onshore interest-rate swaps via the China Interbank Bond Market framework. Swap Connect vastly broadens access at a moment when G7 members are giving investors reasons to seek opportunities elsewhere – not least China.

Follow William Pesek on Twitter at @WilliamPesek

Continue Reading

Maid jailed for stealing employer’s S,000 Patek Philippe watch, jewellery

By:
On:
In: South-East Asia

SINGAPORE: A single mother who came to Singapore to work as a maid to support her family was dragged into loan shark harassment because of a friend.

She turned to stealing her employers’ luxury watch and jewellery to pay off her debts.

Indonesian national Maya Amara Putri, 40, was sentenced to 21 months and one week’s jail on Tuesday (May 16).

Maya pleaded guilty to four charges, including theft by servant and transferring criminal proceeds out of the country.

Another seven charges were considered in sentencing.

The court heard that Maya worked for a German couple who lived in the Bukit Timah area.

She was the sole breadwinner for her two children and sick mother back in Indonesia, and would pawn her jewellery at pawnshops in Singapore whenever her children needed money.

However, in 2022, Maya agreed to a friend’s request to let her use her work permit to borrow money from a moneylender.

Her friend later returned to Indonesia without repaying the loans, and the loan sharks began harassing and threatening Maya instead.

Maya decided to steal items from her employers’ house and pawn them off for cash to repay her loans and debt. 

In March 2023, she saw her boss’ Patek Philippe watch on the basin of the master bedroom toilet and stole it. She pawned it off for S$6,000 (US$4,492) on her day off.

The watch was worth S$63,840.

When Maya’s employer realised his watch was missing, he confronted his two helpers about it. Maya admitted to stealing it and her employer called the police.

Investigations revealed that Maya also stole other items including a gold ring worth S$4,758 and a pair of ear studs worth S$5,400.

The theft of other jewellery and watches belonging to her employers, including a S$10,000 Omega watch and a S$20,000 Rolex, were in the charges taken into consideration.

Of the money she obtained from pawning off the precious items, Maya remitted S$204 back to her son in Indonesia. She also made bank transfers as directed by the loan sharks.

All the stolen items were recovered and seized by the police, with Maya’s employers paying S$6,800 to the pawn shops involved to relinquish their claims on the stolen items.

The prosecutor asked for 21 months and one week’s jail to 24 months and two weeks’ jail.

In mitigation, Maya said she was remorseful and pleaded for a lighter sentence.

In sentencing, the judge said the jail term asked for by the prosecution in view of the number of charges and value of the items stolen was fair and reasonable.

He backdated her jail term to take into consideration her period of remand.

Continue Reading

China courts Central Asia as Russia’s influence wanes

By:
On:
In: Asia

“GROWING PHOBIAS” China’s inroads into Central Asia have not always been popular, however. In 2019, protests broke out in Kazakhstan, which has described itself as the “buckle” in the Belt and Road project, over perceived Chinese expansionism in the country. The following year, a Chinese investor that had planned toContinue Reading

Why Biden’s really headed to Papua New Guinea

By:
On:
In: Asia

Later this month, President Biden is scheduled to make an official visit to Papua New Guinea while en route to the Quad Leaders’ Summit from the G7 Leaders’ Summit. The visit is being hailed as the first time that a sitting American president has ever visited a Pacific island country. It also builds on three prior events attended by senior leadership figures.

In 2018, former vice president Mike Pence visited Papua New Guinea to attend the APEC CEO Summit. At that event, he highlighted the value of multi-billion dollar investments made in Papua New Guinea by ExxonMobil.

He declared that the United States would partner with Australia and Papua New Guinea on Lombrum Naval Base. And he promised that the United States government would protect the sovereignty and maritime rights of Pacific island countries.

Last July, Vice President Kamala Harris addressed the 51st Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting. In her remarks, she acknowledged that the Pacific Island Countries have not received the diplomatic spotlight that they deserve from the US government. She also delivered a commitment to strengthen the partnership between the United States and the Pacific island countries.

Last September, Biden hosted the US–Pacific Island Country Summit, where participants jointly issued a Declaration on the US-Pacific Partnership.

Separately, the Biden administration published a formal roadmap for how to implement the commitments made on the American side. This coincided with the release of a Pacific Partnership Strategy as an addendum to the Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States.

During the upcoming visit, the Biden administration will seek to further strengthen the partnership between the United States and the Pacific island countries. This will start by putting Papua New Guinea on the list of Presidential Travels Abroad. But, it will not end there. This trip will need to be about much more than a touch and go on a runway in Port Moresby.

The Biden administration will need to make this trip worth the risks. That will require President Biden to deliver on multiple commitments in the space of only a few hours. That will present its own challenges.

There are a lot of upstream dependencies and downstream uncertainties. The Biden administration will therefore need to be prudent in their selection. Here are four of those options that they are likely to consider:

First, Biden could have a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister James Marape of Papua New Guinea. Assuming the negotiations will be concluded, that meeting would provide an opportunity to sign new defense and surveillance cooperation agreements between the United States and Papua New Guinea. That would mark an important bilateral win.

Second, Biden could have a joint meeting with Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr, Marshall Islands President David Kabua, and then-Micronesian President David Panuelo.

Assuming the negotiations will be concluded, that meeting would provide an opportunity to announce the Compact of Free Association agreements between the United States and the freely associated states. That would enable the next phase in the renewal process to kick-off prior to the debt limit X-date and the summer recess for the United States Congress.

Third, Biden could have a multilateral meeting with the member states of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF).

That meeting would not only provide an opportunity for all parties to attest to the broadening and deepening of regional cooperation on priority issues such as climate change, economic recovery, maritime security, environmental protection, and international security, it also would present a platform for the PIF member states to independently observe that the US government is making progress against the Roadmap for a 21st-Century US-Pacific Island Partnership.

Of course, not all commitments can be fulfilled through bilateral and multilateral meetings. The American public tends to exhibit limited knowledge about geography, foreign policy, and the world. It also appears to be uncertain about the economy and impatient with the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape during his swearing in Port Moresby on May 30, 2019. Photo: AFP/ Gorethy Kenneth

There is a risk that such sentiments could endanger the billions of dollars that the United States government intends to spend on a revised diplomatic and military posture in the Pacific islands region. The Biden administration will need to mitigate that risk.

This presents the fourth option. The Biden administration could try to use the setting to their advantage. The American public may have severe gaps in their knowledge about Papua New Guinea, but many Americans know about the region through war stories about places like Bismarck Sea and Guadalcanal.

Some even have personal memories involving family members. President Biden is one of them. He reportedly had two uncles who were based in Papua New Guinea during World War II. The Biden administration could try to leverage these historic battles and personal memories to persuade a wider audience of the myth that America is a Pacific nation.

Michael Walsh is a senior adjunct fellow at Pacific Forum. He also is an affiliate of the Center for Australian, New Zealand, and Pacific Islands Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University. The views expressed are his own.

Republished with kind permission. Read the originally published article here.

Continue Reading

Commentary: Amid graft probe in Malaysia, migrant labour reform becomes an urgent challenge for Anwar’s government

By:
On:
In: Asia

Since the early 1990s, Malaysia has been recruiting workers from a host of countries, beginning with Indonesia and the Philippines, before enticing labour from countries, such as Myanmar, Vietnam, Nepal, and India. But it is Malaysia’s conscription of Bangladeshi workers that continues to attract the most adverse public opprobrium and allegations of graft. 

Exporting labour is big business in Bangladesh and the ties between the players that control the foreign recruitment chain in both countries are very strong.

There are reportedly more than 1,300 registered agents operating in Bangladesh and the bigger players among them have operations in Malaysia that deal directly with a private entity called Bestinet Sdn Bhd. Bestinet secured exclusive rights in 2013 to operate a foreign worker management system that supervises the movement of workers into Malaysia.

Typically, a single recruit pays roughly RM20,000 (US$4,500) to the cast of players in the convoluted recruitment process. The hefty fee is paid largely through loans that immediately lock workers into a debt bondage that can only be paid by working long hours and accepting poor living conditions. 

A government appointed task force that was set up in 2018 to review foreign worker management observed that the entire system was riddled with mismanagement and corruption, reported The Edge Malaysia last month.

The recommendations for a complete overhaul to the Bestinet-managed Foreign Workers Centralised Management System were eclipsed in Malaysia’s subsequent political strife, which saw the change of three administrations before Mr Anwar took power in November.

Mr Santiago and other labour reform activists noted that the trade is extremely lucrative and runs into several billion dollars annually.

“The country is paying too high a price and nothing short of bringing down the current opaque system and replacing it with a more transparent straightforward process to recruit workers is what is needed,” Mr Santiago added.

Continue Reading