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1622. The Climate Crisis Needs a Global Green New Deal
- Author:
- Ariana Bennett
- Publication Date:
- 09-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Cairo Review of Global Affairs
- Institution:
- School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, American University in Cairo
- Abstract:
- A Global Green New Deal would equitably prevent dangerous levels of warming, but it must be implemented soon.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Environment, Green Technology, and Green New Deal
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
1623. COVID-19, Supply Chains, and Dependence on China: The Indian Perspective
- Author:
- Amitendu Palit
- Publication Date:
- 07-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Joint U.S.-Korea Academic Studies
- Institution:
- Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI)
- Abstract:
- China is India’s largest source of imports, nearly 15 percent of which are sourced from China. Many of India’s major imports—electrical machinery, electronic and semiconductor devices, fertilizers, antibiotics, iron and steel products, and vehicular parts—are extensively sourced from China. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the critical dependence of India’s pharmaceutical industry on China for active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). The dependence on China for both intermediate and finished products, has encouraged India to incentivize greater production at home through production-linked-incentives (PLIs) and to work with Japan and Australia on reorganizing regional supply chains. The paper examines the repositioning of supply chains in the strategic industry of pharmaceuticals. Efforts to reduce dependence on China assume great importance in this regard as India strives to become the leading supplier of affordable vaccines for tackling COVID-19.) The decade of the 2020’s has begun with India embarking on the dedicated mission of reducing import dependence and increasing self-reliance. The COVID-19 pandemic has starkly exposed the frailties of supply chains relying heavily on China. For India, which relies extensively on China for several critical imports, no sector is more vulnerable to disruptions from over-dependence than its pharmaceuticals. India’s reputation as the “pharmacy of the world” drawn from its great proficiency in making affordable pharmaceutical formulations and vaccines, relies fundamentally on sourcing essential drug intermediates from China. As one of the leading actors in the world’s fight against COVID-19, India is wary of sourcing disruptions from China affecting its ability to contribute to expanding global health security. After focusing on the import dependence of India’s pharmaceutical industry on China, this paper analyzes the recent initiatives announced by India for increasing economic self-reliance and reducing such dependence. It concludes by reflecting on the prospects of India decoupling from China in sourcing pharmaceutical ingredients.
- Topic:
- Economics, COVID-19, Imports, and Supply Chains
- Political Geography:
- China, South Asia, India, and Asia
1624. Taiwan’s Shifting Role in the Global Supply Chain in the U.S.- China Trade War
- Author:
- Jinji Chen, Hong-yu Lin, and Yi-ting Lien
- Publication Date:
- 07-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Joint U.S.-Korea Academic Studies
- Institution:
- Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI)
- Abstract:
- The U.S.-China trade war and the pandemic have had a profound impact on cross-border supply chains. In the past few years of U.S.-China tensions, China has been accused of engaging in unfair competition by abusing its national power, from trade and technology to COVID-19 responses. Amid such accusations, some countries have been stepping back from cooperating with China due to national security concerns. As the lockdowns have further disrupted value chains and highlighted the vulnerability of global supply chains, enhancing supply chain resilience has now become a national imperative for the U.S., Japan, and other countries, with an emphasis on strengthening their production capabilities in the semiconductor and medical care industries.
- Topic:
- Economics, National Security, Trade Wars, and Supply Chains
- Political Geography:
- China, Taiwan, Asia, North America, and United States of America
1625. The Pandemic’s Impact on Supply Chains from China and their Evolution: The View from South Korea
- Author:
- Jin Kyo Suh
- Publication Date:
- 07-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Joint U.S.-Korea Academic Studies
- Institution:
- Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI)
- Abstract:
- Today’s global economy is highly interconnected and interdependent. Supply chains across the world are finely tuned to deliver parts just when they are needed, so that companies and industries do not need to waste money on maintaining big warehouses. The economic system runs with remarkable efficiency, and companies are able to keep inventory to a minimum. However, firms have started rethinking their supply chains in response to changing labor costs, advances in automation, rising protectionism, and external shocks, such as natural disasters. In particular, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the structural fragility of current global supply chains and has forced many global enterprises to fundamentally reconsider their approach to global manufacturing and sourcing. The crisis has also highlighted geopolitical tensions, trade restrictions, and nationalist politics aimed at promoting a country’s domestic industries, which are likely to continue reshaping the global business landscape. As a consequence, most global enterprises are going to be under greater political and competitive pressure to increase their domestic production, grow employment in their home countries, and rethink their use of lean manufacturing strategies that involve minimizing the amount of inventory held in their global supply chains. Previously, supply chains were designed to keep costs low and inventories lean. However, supply chains are now being reworked to reduce the risks of future disruption even if doing so means incurring additional costs. Because China is decidedly the world’s largest goods exporter and is also currently mired in a trade conflict with the United States, supply chains going through China may be among the most vulnerable to future disruptions. Hyundai, South Korea’s largest automaker, temporarily stopped production lines at its factories in South Korea because of shortages of Chinese parts. The Hyundai shutdown—encompassing the first factory lines to be idled outside China—could foreshadow considerably more serious disruptions in the complex networks that supply automakers with essential components and materials (Automakers are especially susceptible to interruptions in the flow of goods because the industry is global, and cars are complex products with a myriad of precision parts). Recognizing the risk that dependency on China poses to national industries, some governments have offered manufacturers incentives to exit China and ease the pain of diversification. For example, Japan put $2.2 billion of its COVID-19 economic stimulus package into supporting its manufacturers moving toward shifting production outside of China. There was also mounting public pressure in some countries, such as the United States, to move essential production of pharmaceuticals and medical equipment out of China and closer to home. It is, however, not that simple to reduce global supply chain reliance on China: the nation still retains not only considerable comparative advantages in many areas (e.g. electronics, machinery, and equipment manufacturing), but also enormous purchasing power as the world’s second largest market. Even those companies that have diversified production are finding it hard to break free of China’s pervasive influence. Anticipating a rise in tariffs due to the U.S.-China trade conflict, videogame producer Nintendo shifted the manufacturing of its blockbuster gaming console called Switch to Vietnam in 2019. There was, however, a shortage of Switch consoles in stores in early 2020 due to a lack of essential components flowing to the company’s Vietnamese factories, as COVID-19 paused production of component parts by Chinese suppliers. In addition, most businesses have developed complex interdependencies, resulting in a deep tiering of supply chains. Many manufacturers depend on first-tier suppliers which, in turn, rely on a second-tier, and so on. Therefore, relocating factories or replacing all Chinese suppliers would be infeasible in the short-term. This chapter reviews the impact of supply chain disruption caused by COVID-19 on the South Korean economy and examines the future of regional supply chains centered on China. The rest of the paper is structured as follows. How supply chain disruption caused by COVID-19 will affect the South Korean economy, including trade, is discussed in Section 2. According to the latest national GDP report by the Bank of Korea (BOK), South Korea is going to see a mere 1 percent GDP contraction for 2020, the second-best performance among major economies behind only China. Reasons for why the South Korean economy was not seriously affected by the pandemic are also discussed in Section 2. Section 3 highlights the difficulty of reducing global supply chain reliance on China. China is likely to remain a key player, and the world must look at the reality that global supply chains are highly interconnected with China and that disconnecting from China’s supply chain is not an easy economic task for many multinational companies. The final section offers a few concluding remarks on deepening regionalism specifically in Asia, including policy implications for South Korea.
- Topic:
- Economics, COVID-19, and Supply Chains
- Political Geography:
- China, Asia, and South Korea
1626. The Future of U.S. Supply Chains: National Security and the Pandemic
- Author:
- Troy Stangarone
- Publication Date:
- 07-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Joint U.S.-Korea Academic Studies
- Institution:
- Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI)
- Abstract:
- The COVID-19 pandemic has been the most significant economic disruption to the international economy since the Great Depression. The IMF estimates that the global economy contracted by 3.5 percent last year, while the WTO has projected a 5.3 percent decline in global trade. The economic impact on the United States has been significant as well. Early in the pandemic the United States experienced shortages of critical medical supplies and products, while the need to social distance has continued to place restrictions on the overall economy. For 2020, the pandemic saw GDP decline by 2.3 percent, while exports fell by 12.9 percent and imports by 6.4 percent. All of this has resulted an increased focus on supply chains and their vulnerabilities.
- Topic:
- Economics, National Security, COVID-19, and Supply Chains
- Political Geography:
- China, Asia, North America, and United States of America
1627. Shared History, Divided Consciousness: The Origins of the Sino-ROK Cultural Clash amid the Pandemic
- Author:
- Dong Xiangrong
- Publication Date:
- 07-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Joint U.S.-Korea Academic Studies
- Institution:
- Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI)
- Abstract:
- Since 1992, bilateral relations between China and South Korea have sustained a state of positive development, although there have naturally been some moments of friction and contradictions. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, a number of disputes arose between netizens in China and South Korea over such things as the origin of pickled vegetables (paocai in Chinese, kimchi in Korean) and the Van Fleet award acceptance speech of South Korea’s BTS singing group. Different interpretations of a few thousand years of bilateral interactions—cultural, political, military, historical, and other topics mutually entangling the two—have led to some sharply vitriolic disputes between netizens in the two neighboring countries. Today’s tensions over national identity issues are rooted in how history is understood in the two countries and the enduring salience of cultural symbols of identity tied to history. Nobody could have anticipated that pickled vegetables would, ultimately, become a focus of the 2020 dispute between netizens of China and South Korea. Since over a decade ago when the Gangneung Danoje (端午祭) was granted UNESCO recognition and other developments occurred, all the way up to today’s pickles, it seems that almost all ongoing Sino-South Korean identity disputes are connected to the entangled histories of the two sides. Seen from the history of cultural exchanges from long ago, is traditional medicine, after all, your Chinese medicine or my Korean medicine? Is traditional dress our Han Chinese clothing or your Korean clothing? Is the May 5 festival our Duanwujie (端午節,Dragon Boat Festival) or your Danoje? Are vegetables marinated by pickling, our “paocai” or your “kimchi”? A thousand-year cultural legacy should be a factor to strengthen shared identity and tighten cultural connections in Sino-South Korea relations. However, against the current geopolitical and geo-economical background, shared cultural connections unexpectedly became the focus of contention between the two neighbors. Geopolitically, China and South Korea have been involved in different political camps since World War II. During the decades of Cold War, these two countries unfortunately fell into hot war although they were not each other’s main enemy. Each country describes the war and justifies its actions through its own lens. Was the war, after all, our “War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea” or your “Korean War”? Different memories of the war led to widespread, fervent protest from Chinese fans against South Korea’s popular singing group BTS’s acceptance speech in receiving the Van Fleet Award by the Korea Society. Sensitivity toward remarks about the war some 70 years ago has unexpectedly heightened recently. Geo-economically, China and South Korea have been interdependent over the past three decades. China has been the biggest trade partner of South Korea for many years. The Chinese market is bigger than the U.S. and Japanese ones combined for Korean products. The market matters. The Samsung Group and Hyundai Group have had to react to the voices of customers and stop showing an advertisement performed by BTS. Also, when Seoul and Washington decided to deploy THAAD in South Korea, Seoul had to face the negative economic consequences of its deteriorating bilateral relationship with China. Both geopolitical differences and historical memories are now capable of arousing economic retaliation. This chapter analyzes from the angle of how history and the present are linked the current identity conflicts between China and South Korea. It recognizes that using today’s concepts to evaluate history leads clearly to tearing asunder Sino-South Korean mutual historical recognition. At the same time, the influence of values, geopolitics, differences in level of development, and other factors, along with cultural clashes between China and South Korea intersecting with political and security topics mutually arouse and even worsen relations between the two peoples. Security confrontations and ideological divergence have severely worsened public relations between the Chinese and South Koreans. These disputes, such as the Korean War and THAAD, have become important backdrops for the emergence and exacerbation of cultural rifts.
- Topic:
- Politics, Culture, History, and COVID-19
- Political Geography:
- China, Asia, and South Korea
1628. The Pandemic and its Impact on the South Korea-Japan Identity Clash
- Author:
- Scott Snyder
- Publication Date:
- 07-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Joint U.S.-Korea Academic Studies
- Institution:
- Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI)
- Abstract:
- The global pandemic caused by the onset of the novel coronavirus known as COVID-19 has tested governance at both the national and international levels by challenging the capacity of nations to provide effective public health solutions to protect their citizenry. The pandemic has deepened preexisting international rivalries while also creating diplomatic opportunities to promote international cooperation and public diplomacy. Rather than serving as a turning point for a new era in international relations, the pandemic and the global response appear primarily to have accelerated preexisting trends. In Northeast Asia, the pandemic has accelerated deepening rivalry between the United States and China, reinforced political paralysis between Japan and South Korea, primarily by providing a pretext for privileging domestic concerns and constituencies at the expense of international relations, and has generated heightened new foreign policy challenges resulting from deepening identity-based major power rivalries. This chapter reviews the deepening of identity-based challenges facing Japan-South Korea relations prior to 2020, examines the conditions generated by leadership responses in both countries to the pandemic, identifies missed opportunities for pandemic-related cooperation between the two countries, and addresses challenges and opportunities facing the Japan-South Korea relationship in the context of anticipated recovery from the pandemic as well as the shifting geopolitical environment as tensions mount between China and the United States.
- Topic:
- Culture, Domestic Politics, COVID-19, and Identity
- Political Geography:
- Japan, Asia, South Korea, North America, and United States of America
1629. The Coronavirus: Fueling Concerns and Contrasts between India and China
- Author:
- Tanvi Madan
- Publication Date:
- 07-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Joint U.S.-Korea Academic Studies
- Institution:
- Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI)
- Abstract:
- On February 26, 2020, an Indian plane landed in Wuhan carrying medical supplies for China, which was then the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak. On its return, it evacuated a number of Indian and Bangladeshi nationals, as well as citizens of other countries. On the face of it, this is the kind of cooperative effort that is expected during a global public health crisis, with countries—even competitors—coming together at a time of need. However, the saga of that flight reflected another (prescient) dynamic—that COVID-19 would reinforce and increase rather than alleviate competition between China and India and complicate cooperation, with pandemic response and recovery efforts being seen through a competitive prism. That flight to Wuhan was not smooth; indeed, it was much delayed. Delhi had announced it a week earlier. It was a way to help China, demonstrate India’s capacity, and assist India’s neighbors by evacuating their citizens. But then Indian officials publicly, albeit anonymously, revealed that Beijing was not clearing the flight. The reason was unclear—China, after all, had been requesting international support. There also did not seem to be a bureaucratic snafu. So, was it the visual of Beijing accepting support from India, which Chinese officials and analysts sometimes dismiss as a less capable, even chaotic, neighbor? Was it the desire not to give India a soft power win, including with its neighbors? Was it because the flight involved a military transport aircraft procured from the U.S.? Was it retaliation for the temporary Indian detention of a Chinese ship bound for Pakistan due to a tip-off of dual-use items on board? Or was the reason Chinese unhappiness about Indian travel restrictions to and from China, or Indian export limits on certain medical products? Whatever the reason, China eventually gave the flight clearance, but only a week later and after much Indian negotiation. It was an early sign that the public health arena would not be immune from the competitive atmosphere prevailing between the two countries, and in the region as a whole. Subsequent events only bore that out. There has been considerable discussion about how countries’ perceptions of China would change due to the pandemic—at the beginning because of its mishandling, and then because of its recovery. This chapter argues that, rather than change perceptions, Beijing’s handling of COVID-19 increased the largely skeptical views of China that prevail in India, which had at least 29 million cases and over 385,000 deaths in India by mid-June 2021 (the 2nd and 3rd highest in the world respectively). This trend was further bolstered by the worst boundary crisis between the two countries since they fought a war in 1962. Together, the pandemic and the boundary crisis have ensured that the competitive and conflictual elements of the India-China relationship have been front and center over the last year. They have reinforced and accelerated concerns in India about China’s lack of transparency, its uncertain commitment to the rules-based order, as well as its growing influence in the Indo-Pacific and in international institutions. And they have demonstrated that despite Delhi and Beijing’s efforts to cooperate and to stabilize their relationship over the last two decades, it remains a fundamentally competitive one that can spill over into conflict. This chapter examines the impact of first the pandemic and then the boundary crisis on perceptions of China among the Indian government, establishment, and public. It proceeds to outline the consequences of these perceptions on Indian domestic policy, its partnerships with like-minded major and middle powers, and its counter-COVID activism. Finally, it considers China’s response, particularly to Indian policy changes.
- Topic:
- Bilateral Relations, Culture, Domestic Politics, and COVID-19
- Political Geography:
- China, South Asia, India, and Asia
1630. The Russo-U.S. National Identity Gap and the Indo-Pacific in 2021
- Author:
- Gilbert Rozman
- Publication Date:
- 07-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Joint U.S.-Korea Academic Studies
- Institution:
- Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI)
- Abstract:
- The start of the Biden administration demonstrated how far Russo-U.S. relations had sunk. On the heels of the massive cyber-hacking of U.S. government files, attributed to Russia, hearings for Biden’s appointees showcased harsh accusations. These were compounded by the arrest of Aleksey Navalny on his return to Moscow from convalescence in Germany after a near fatal poisoning in Russia, arousing severe rebukes in the U.S. Meanwhile, Russian officials and news sources attacked Biden personally as senile or a figurehead, a flawed U.S. system of democracy as a farce and dysfunctional, and U.S. plotting through Navalny as aimed at taking down Putin. Mutual accusations intensified in mid-March 2021 when Biden responded to a query whether he considered Putin a killer by saying, “I do,” which reverberated in sharp retorts by Putin and from many in Russia. In late April, as Russia massed troops on Ukraine’s border, Biden placed new sanctions on Russia, and Russian language grew even more threatening, relations had sunk even further. If there was no direct focus on the Indo-Pacific in such vitriolic exchanges, that can be seen elsewhere, especially in a further tilt toward China in a reputed “strategic triangle.” The Indo-Pacific is where relations between Moscow and Washington have the most potential, spared of the quandaries of NATO expansion and Soviet nostalgia over a sphere of influence or Middle East intrigues leading to shifting alliances. Many in Washington thought that a win-win scenario could be achieved if Moscow accepted integration into a dynamic region, a balance of power welcoming Beijing’s rise but preventing it from domination, the denuclearization and stabilization of Pyongyang, and breakthroughs in bilateral relations with Tokyo and Seoul. All of these objectives appeared consistent with Russian aspirations in the early 1990s, but they were thwarted by the national identity that was being reconstructed in the following quarter century, especially under Vladimir Putin from the mid-2000s. Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific proved to be a casualty of Russian thinking toward the United States, most of all, but also toward China, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, and India. The Russo-U.S. identity gap has widened further in 2021. As Dmitry Medvedev wrote on January 16, the relations of Moscow and Beijing with the new U.S. administration are likely to remain extremely cold after years in which the trajectory of relations between Washington and Moscow had already been heading steadfastly downhill. Russo-U.S. bilateral relations and conflicting agendas in Europe and the Middle East draw avid interest, but the Indo-Pacific appears to be an inconsequential factor in their sharp rivalry. Nor do their differences in this region appear to have much significance for the development of the area, where China casts a broad shadow and U.S. alliances and partnerships are being renewed. To argue to the contrary leads one down several possible pathways: 1) this is the one promising arena for rebuilding relations; 2) Russia has a special role to play, distinct from China’s, due to its ties to India, North Korea, or ASEAN; 3) continued strengthening of Sino-Russian ties adds an element of concern for U.S. policies in the Indo-Pacific; or 4) Russia’s animus toward the U.S. may find an unexpected outlet in this region. Whichever pathway is explored, it is important to grasp how Russians perceive this region and its various sub-regions, while keeping in mind the context of the broader clash of national identities severely affecting the Russo-U.S. relationship. In this chapter, I offer an overview of the Russo-U.S. identity gap, turn to Russian thinking about the Biden administration, review Russian national identity, focus on aspects of Sino-Russian ties and their identity gap, subsequently shift to how Russians have viewed other parts of Asia of late, and conclude with an assessment of the prospects for Russo-U.S. relations in the region.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Bilateral Relations, Culture, Domestic Politics, and Identity
- Political Geography:
- Russia, United States of America, and Indo-Pacific