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CloudMile has announced the opening of its CloudMile Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Malaysia, serving customers across Southeast Asia (SEA). The firm claims that the CoE, is a first-of-its-kind initiative in the cloud industry,…Continue Reading
JAKARTA: Following a decree by Indonesian President Joko Widodo for digital platforms in the country to pay media that provide them with content, Meta Platforms – the parent company of Facebook – on Wednesday (Feb 21) said that the firm has no obligation to do so.
Mr Rafael Frankel, Meta’s Director of Public Policy for Southeast Asia, said that despite the new regulation, the firm is not obliged to pay for news content posted by publishers voluntarily.
“After undergoing several consultations with policymakers, we understand that Meta will not be obliged to pay for news content posted by news publishers voluntarily to our platform,” Mr Frankel was reported as saying by CNN Indonesia.
The media outlet further reported that Meta claimed that its users do not go to its platforms to look for news content. Instead, the tech giant said that news publishers have voluntarily decided to share its content on their various platforms and not the other way around.
Earlier on Tuesday, Mr Widodo signed the regulation that requires digital platforms to pay media that provide them with content, in a move the outgoing Indonesian president said is aimed at helping the media industry level the field with big tech, Reuters reported.
“The spirit of the regulation is … to ensure a fair cooperation between media and digital platforms, provide clearer cooperation framework between them,” said Jokowi, as the president is popularly known.
Digital platforms in Indonesia include Meta Platforms’ Facebook, Alphabet’s Google and some local aggregators.
Google said it will review the regulation. It has worked with news publishers and the government to build a sustainable news ecosystem in Indonesia, its spokesperson said.
Google had last year said that the regulation would restrict public access to diverse sources of news instead of promoting quality journalism.
Australia in 2021 became the first country to require digital platforms to pay for news, while Canada followed in June 2023. Other countries such as Brazil, New Zealand and the United States are also looking to pass similar laws.
Jokowi said the drafting process of the regulation, proposed three years ago, had been very long due to different opinions among media and digital platforms.
The regulation posted on the government’s website suggests cooperation between digital platforms and media companies could be in the form of paying licenses or sharing data of news users.
A committee would be formed to ensure digital platforms fulfil their responsibilities to the media companies, it said.
The regulation, which takes effect in six months, would not harm content creators as it applied only to digital platforms, Jokowi said.
Following Jokowi’s announcement on Tuesday, the head of the country’s Press Council – an independent institution to protect press freedom in Indonesia – said that it will form a committee to support the new regulation, Tempo reported.
“This committee is tasked with making considerations, receiving input, and seeing developments,” said Press Council Chair Ninik Rahayu, adding that it will be tasked with ensuring the fulfillment of the obligations of digital platform companies and the implementation of quality journalism practices in Indonesia.
Content creators had previously complained it could restrict their operations.
Indonesia’s communication and information minister, Mr Budi Arie Setiadi, in a statement said the regulation was part of government efforts to ensure media companies “are not eroded” by digital platforms.
In Australia, the News Media Bargaining Code took effect in March 2021 and tech firms have since signed deals with media outlets compensating them for content which generated clicks and advertising dollars, according to a report by its Treasury Department.
Hun Sen visit spurs hope on OCA talks
Former Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen has invited Pheu Thai Party leader Paetongtarn Shinawatra to Cambodia next month. He extended the invitation while paying a personal visit to former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra at his home in Bangkok on Wednesday.
The former Cambodian leader posted a message on Facebook saying the visit was to reminisce on their 32 years of friendship. He said invited Ms Paetongtarn, Thaksin’s youngest daughter, to visit Cambodia on March 14-15, to strengthen their ties further. “I visited Thaksin at his home in Bangkok. He is unwell, but gave me a warn welcome as a brother,” he wrote.
“We, the two former prime ministers, didn’t discuss politics, we simply recalled the memories of our 32 years of friendship. Thank you, my brother and my niece, for having me,” he said.
Hun Sen, president of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, arrived at Thaksin’s Chan Song La home on soi Charan Sanitwong 69 in Bang Phlat district at 10.51am, spent two hours there and left for his flight back home about 1pm. They also had lunch, with grilled prawns from Suphan Buri and Thai desserts on the menu. Ms Paetongtarn replied to Hun Sen’s social media post, wishing him a safe journey home and thanking him for his love and support.
Hun Sen’s visit came three days after Thaksin was released from detention on Sunday morning. Thaksin, widely seen as de-facto leader of the ruling party, is being closely watched for his next move, especially if he tries to assert control over the Pheu Thai Party and the government.
Thaksin and Hun Sen are known to have close ties. Before his return to Thailand on Aug 22 last year, Thaksin and his sister Yingluck Shinawatra attended Hun Sen’s 71st birthday party in Phnom Penh on Aug 5. In 2009, Thaksin was appointed as a Cambodian government adviser.
Prof Jaran Maluleem, a lecturer on international relations at Thammasat University, said on Wednesday the Thaksin-Hun Sen relationship reflects a pattern adopted by nations in the Southeast Asian region, where bilateral ties are developed based on the good personal ties of country leaders. They can also help alleviate tensions or de-escalate conflicts.
Although Hun Sen has no governing power, he could help alleviate Thai-Cambodia border tensions, an ongoing problem, he said. Both countries are also likely to deepen their ties and expand cooperation while the Pheu Thai Party stays in power, Prof Jaran said.
Talks about the overlapping claims area (OCA) between the countries, an area believed to have rich fossil fuel deposits, are expected to proceed. Both nations are also likely to resolve spats surrounding cultural heritage items, he said.
“Country leaders still play a pivotal role in diplomacy in Southeast Asia, especially leaders who have influence in a political party,” he said.
Phichai Ratnatilaka Na Bhuket, political science lecturer at the National Institute of Development Administration, said Hun Sen’s visit indicates solidarity between the pair. “However, in terms of politics, it undermines the image of Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin who is perceived by some as a proxy of Thaksin,” he said.
Panitan Wattanayagorn, an academic on security and foreign affairs, said the Thai government has proposals, including joint development in the OCA with Cambodia, which await a response. No matter what Cambodia decides on those issues, its decision would be linked to this meeting and the possible role of Thaksin in it, he said.
The Singapore Film Commission (SFC)’s 25th anniversary documentary will delve into the journey of Singaporean cinema over the past 25 years and showcase its impact on Asian cinema.
The 45-minute documentary, titled Singapore Films: To The World And Back, will feature exclusive interviews with Singapore’s best-known industry veterans, including Jack Neo, Anthony Chen, Eric Khoo, Nicole Midori Woodford, Teh Su Ching, Raihan Halim, Janice Chua and Tan Si En.
Produced by an all-woman team of Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) SG Digital scholars and led by BAFTA-winning filmmaker Low Ser En, the documentary will also show how Singaporean filmmakers collaborated with film industries and talent across Southeast Asia.
“In Singapore Films: To The World And Back, we wanted to tell a human story of Singapore filmmakers, whose passion and tenacity triumph (over) various challenges, including the pandemic, in the film industry,” said local filmmaker Low Ser En.
MANILA – Wu Shicun, chairman of China’s state-funded Huayang Center for Maritime Cooperation and Ocean Governance, fired a shot across the Philippines’ bow by saying China should “show our swords when necessary” in the South China Sea.
The Chinese maritime expert added that “patience and self-control from China would not be enough” to manage the sea disputes, according to a provocative article he penned this week in the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.
Wu’s saber-rattling aligns with China’s warning earlier this month that the Philippines is “playing with fire” amid reports it is fortifying its military presence with troops and construction on remote but strategically important islands near Taiwan’s southern shores.
China is clearly perturbed by Manila’s possible decision to grant traditional security partners, namely the United States but also Japan, access to military facilities in Batanes, the island-nation’s northernmost province less than 200 kilometers from Taiwan’s southern shores.
The Philippines is now reportedly considering major exercises with the US and other allies in its northernmost provinces later this year, maneuvers that would stir China’s growing concern that the Southeast Asian nation aims to serve as a hub for an expanded Western military presence south of Taiwan.
US forces and military equipment could be formally deployed to Batanes on a rotational basis under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), which Manila recently agreed to expand to allow US forces access to more bases across the country. A similar agreement is reportedly in the works with Japan.
However, US access to Batanes is apparently not yet a done deal. That likely explains why Beijing’s foreign ministry warned last week that Taiwan is “at the center of China’s core interests and represents an insurmountable red line and bottom line.”
Despite those threats and warnings, the Philippines is doubling down on efforts to preserve its sovereignty in the disputed waters while preparing for contingencies in nearby Taiwan, which is separated by the narrow Bashi Channel from northernmost Philippine provinces.
As such, Manila is stepping up its acquisition of increasingly high-end military equipment while expanding sophisticated military exercises with partners including the US, Japan and Australia.
Aside from relying on US military aid, including a recently delivered C-130 transport plane, the Philippines is aiming to procure modern fighter jets, submarines and strategic missile systems under a 2 trillion peso (US$36 billion) military modernization program.
That big gun budget has gained the attention of regional arms vendors. Over 20 Indian defense companies visited the Philippines recently to explore expanded military cooperation following New Delhi’s recent delivery of its Brahmos supersonic missiles to the Southeast Asian nation.
Meanwhile, the Philippines and Sweden are also exploring a major fighter jet deal as Manila aims to modernize its relatively small and aging fleet.
Most dramatically, France is offering a multibillion-dollar submarine deal to the Philippines amid negotiations over a reciprocal access agreement.
The European power is expected to participate for the first time this year in the Philippine-US Balikatan exercises, among the region’s largest. Other new partners such as South Korea and Spain are also offering modern weapons systems to the Southeast Asian nation.
Although the continent-sized China has territorial and maritime disputes with a wide range of nations across its massive borders, tensions with the Philippines have reached a fever pitch in recent months.
For China, the Southeast Asian nation has rapidly transformed from a “special friend” in Southeast Asia under the Rodrigo Duterte presidency (2016-2022) into a major enabler of Western power projection under the Ferdinand Marcos Jr administration.
Despite pronouncing a “new golden era” in bilateral relations, Marcos Jr has steadily adopted an uncompromising stance on the two sides’ South China Sea disputes.
That shift came after his largely fruitless state visit to Beijing last year, which produced no tangible agreements on outstanding bilateral concerns including the intensifying maritime spats and the billions of dollars of unfulfilled Chinese infrastructure investment pledges made but not delivered to the Duterte administration.
For Duterte’s successor, that meant it was time for the Philippines to draw a hard new line and fundamentally reset relations. In that direction, Marcos Jr greenlighted the expansion of defense cooperation with traditional allies as well as more assertive patrols by Philippine maritime forces.
These moves, the president appears to believe, allow him to deal diplomatically with China from a comparative position of strength.
For China, however, the Philippines is flirting with armed conflict by engaging in what sees as overtly provocative actions.
Those include Manila’s plans to fortify its de facto maritime military bases reaching from the Second Thomas Shoal to Thitu Island and the increasing frequency and scope of joint maritime drills with Western powers in the South China Sea.
Now and perhaps most crucially, Beijing is closely monitoring Manila’s emerging new strategic posture on Taiwan. The Marcos Jr administration has so far sent mixed signals on whether it will grant US access to prized Philippine bases near Taiwan’s southern shores.
But given Beijing’s rising preparations for possible kinetic action against the self-ruling island, it’s clearly in no mood for Manila’s strategic reorientation toward the West and its regional allies.
By all indications, vigorous debates are underway in China on how to dissuade the Philippines from its current course, with some experts like Wu calling for a more decisive and coercive response.
Wary of China’s immense military superiority, the Philippines is leaning into an expanding network of strategic partners who share similar threat perceptions about the Asian superpower.
Coincident with emerging as one of the region’s fastest-growing economies, the Philippines is also becoming a major defense market. The US will deliver three new C-130J-30 Super Hercules airlifters worth $400 million between July 2026 and January 2027.
Ongoing negotiations are also underway for the potential sale of American F16 fighter jets to the Philippine Air Force, though they have reportedly hit a snag over price issues.
Manila is also reportedly considering alternative European options, most notably from Sweden, which is offering more affordable alternatives such as the Saab Jas-39 Gripen multirole fighter.
The French, Spanish and South Koreans, meanwhile, are offering multi-billion submarine deals. The Philippine Navy has indicated its preference for up to three submarines, which, according to military experts could be a game changer in shifting the heavily lopsided regional naval balance of power.
“Three is the magic number…one [submarine] in operation, one in training and one in refit or maintenance,” Ian Storey, a leading maritime security expert, told the media.
Meanwhile, a large delegation of Indian defense companies including Mahindra Emirates Vehicle Armouring, Bharat Dynamics Ltd, Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, DCM Shriram Industries Ltd, and MKU Ltd recently visited Manila for the inaugural India-Philippines defense industry seminar.
“We have announced our intent to offer a soft loan for defense procurements and this could also cover activities that would eventually extend some sort of joint industrial activity,” Indian Ambassador Shambhu Kumaran said on the sidelines of the defense industry seminar in Manila on February 16.
“India’s unique selling proposition is that we are able to bring cutting-edge technology at competitive prices,” the diplomat said.
Follow Richard Javad Heydarian on X at @Richeydarian
So we now know that it is both fashionable and acceptable to criticize globalization, for even Mario Draghi is doing it.
In his speech in the United States to a prestigious economics association, he joined all the many much less expert voices who are blaming populism and illiberal trends in Western democracies on the effects of globalization. But this is not quite right, as he ought to know.
Giving a speech in the land of President Joe Biden’s protectionist industrial subsidies and of the threat of an even more protectionist Donald Trump in November’s election, it was undoubtedly correct to acknowledge some of the genuine social and economic problems that these illiberal, anti-trade policies are seeking to address.
Yet is globalization really to blame for those problems? As a good economist, Draghi must know that it is not.
The essence of the problem, he rightly said, is that both income inequality and job insecurity have grown, leaving large numbers of middle- and working-class people to feel they have been “left behind” not only in the United States but also in many European countries and even Japan.
This phenomenon has manifested itself in a declining share of “labor income,” as economists call it, or “wages” as normal people say, and a rising share of company profits.
This, however, is not the result of globalization. Primarily, economic research tells us that it is the result of technology – the automation of manufacturing and, more recently, of services, too.
In addition, it is the result of government policies that have deliberately reduced welfare entitlements and have reduced the bargaining power of labor unions as well as removing protective regulations from labor markets.
Another way of looking at this is to say that as inequality and job insecurity increased during the 1990s and 2000s, governments should have been introducing measures to mitigate this trend.
That is what had happened many times during the postwar decades: As competition and innovation threatened to divide society, public efforts were made to counter or at least soften those divisions.
But during the 1990s and into the 21st Century, too many governments either failed to act to manage these impacts or introduced policies that made things worse.
The important question to ask is: Why? One answer is probably that they didn’t understand what was happening until it was too late. Another is a traditional problem for democracies: Powerful companies and groups of billionaire owners lobbied against policies to manage inequality and insecurity, often using their political donations to enforce their desires.
Democracy was being bought, first by big industrial companies and now, especially, by technology companies.
What about globalization, then? Draghi is correct to say that free trade can work properly and sustainably only when there are agreed rules to govern it and agreed methods to enforce those rules and to settle disputes.
Yet the reason why the foundation of the World Trade Organization in 1995 was celebrated was precisely the fact that, under the WTO, at last trade was going to be governed by a dispute settlement system and according to agreed rules.
When China joined the WTO and yet paid huge subsidies that did not follow those rules, this was clearly a problem, as Draghi said. The right question to ask is why other governments, including those of the United States and the European Union, did not enforce those rules.
Was it, as some Americans claim and as Draghi hints in his speech, because they expected globalization to turn China into a rule-obeying democracy? Or was the reason, in fact, a blend of complacency and, again, the pressure of powerful lobbies that wanted to make billions in the Chinese market?
The fact is that globalization, and with it the general economic phenomenon that this fancy word glamorized, namely competition, is getting unfair and misleading criticism. The problem facing liberal democracies results from the failure of governments to take action to deal with inequality and insecurity, inaction that is entirely a domestic political matter, not one to do with trade, China or indeed globalization.
Yes, as Draghi says, globalization is changing, partly thanks to geopolitics and the war in Ukraine. But it is not going away. Plenty of countries are benefiting from new patterns of production and trade, including India, Indonesia and much of Southeast Asia, which are now growing more rapidly than China. Capitalism is always inventive and technology facilitates that inventiveness even further.
Where Western liberal democracies have a problem is in the distortion of their political systems by concentrated corporate power, but also in the high level of their public debts. With such high debts, and with aging populations requiring more health care and social spending, they are going to find it hard to manage inequality and the impact of technology. That is where they need to find solutions.
To blame globalization serves to divert attention from the real problems – which is why populists like to do so.
Formerly editor-in-chief of The Economist, Bill Emmott is currently chairman of the Japan Society of the UK, the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the International Trade Institute.
Originally published on his Substack, Bill Emmott’s Global View, this is the English original of an article published on February 17 in Italian by La Stampa, following Mario Draghi’s speech at the National Association for Business Economics on February 15. It is republished here with kind permission.
SINGAPORE: The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) provided a grant to help bring Taylor Swift’s world tour to the country next month, her only stop in Southeast Asia.
STB and the Ministry of Community, Culture and Youth (MCCY) said this on Tuesday (Feb 20) in response to media queries, although they stopped short of confirming if an exclusive deal was struck preventing the US pop sensation from holding her Eras world tour elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
Questions surrounding a performance deal surfaced on Friday when Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin said that the Singapore government offered US$2 million to US$3 million per show in exchange for exclusivity in Southeast Asia.
According to Mr Srettha, concert promoter AEG had informed him of the arrangement.
In their joint response to CNA’s queries, MCCY and STB did not specify the size of the grant or the conditions attached to it.
They said MCCY and the Kallang Alive Sport Management had “worked directly” with AEG for Swift to perform in Singapore at the National Stadium, recognising that there would be “significant demand” from local and regional fans.
“STB also supported the event through a grant,” they added.
Kallang Alive Sport Management, a wholly owned entity under MCCY, manages the Singapore Sports Hub where the National Stadium is located.
Swift has six sold-out shows scheduled to be held from Mar 2 to Mar 9.
More than 300,000 tickets have been sold, with a “significant” number of fans travelling from other countries, said MCCY and STB.
“It is likely to generate significant benefits to the Singapore economy, especially to tourism activities such as hospitality, retail, travel and dining, as has happened in other cities in which Taylor Swift has performed,” they added.
Singapore is one of two stops in Asia on her Eras tour. Swift performed four shows in Tokyo earlier this month.
After Singapore, her next show will be in Paris on May 9, followed by other European destinations like London, Amsterdam, Milan, Munich and Vienna.
BEIJING: Chinese travellers flocked to tourist hot spots across Asia over the Chinese New Year break, with visitor numbers and spending in destinations including Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia exceeding pre COVID-19 levels. Visa-free access for Chinese tourists to Southeast Asia countries boosted traffic and signalled a robust revival in travelContinue Reading
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Another difference is that e-commerce firms have a less-robust revenue stream, while the other tech companies have either multiple or more reliable revenue streams. Professor Lawrence Loh, director of the Centre for Governance and Sustainability at the National University of Singapore (NUS), said that for e-commerce firms, their ability toContinue Reading