Malaysia Archives - InsideOver

Big Cats, Big Businbess

io-admin — Wed, 29 Apr 2020 14:17:08 +0000

The illegal market for exotic animals is thriving across Southeast Asia. Now reports are indicating that it may be linked to the coronavirus epidemic

L'articolo Big Cats, Big Businbess proviene da InsideOver.

Big Cats, Big Business

io-admin — Mon, 30 Mar 2020 09:59:45 +0000

Wildlife trafficking is the fourth largest illegal industry in the world, generating $26 billion a year – and it is growing. The biggest market? China. Watch the full report here: Big Cats, Big Business

L'articolo Big Cats, Big Business proviene da InsideOver.

Muhyiddin Named Malaysian Prime Minister – is the Chaos Finally Over?

Daniel Davis — Wed, 04 Mar 2020 10:13:02 +0000

Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin has only been in power for a few days, but his integrity is already being called into question. Muhyiddin was appointed following a week of disorder after former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad unexpectedly resigned after two decades of public service.

Mahathir had become synonymous with Malaysian politics, his shadow looming over the state after he stepped down in 2003 before he returned as a purported savior in 2018. His return was orchestrated to counter the corruption-plagued government of then Prime Minister Najib Razak who is currently on trial for multiple counts of corruption. Najib’s party, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), has now risen from the ashes with the appointment of Muhyiddin.

Short-Lived Victory

Both Muhyiddin and Mahathir were members of UMNO under Najib’s leadership, however, they both left the party when Najib was implicated in the 1MDB scandal. The United States Department of Justice estimated $4.5 billion was stolen from Malaysia’s 1MDB sovereign wealth fund.

Over $1 billion of the misappropriated funds went to Najib’s personal bank accounts. He is facing five trials, one of which could reach a verdict within a few months. His ouster from Kuala Lumpur was delivered on the back of the Alliance of Hope, a coalition of parties united for the sole purpose of taking down Najib and his corrupt government.

Muhyiddin and Mahathir found a new home in the Malaysian United Indigenous Party (MUIP), which quickly joined the Alliance of Hope in its successful defeat of UMNO.

Betrayal

Less than two years after casting off the shackles of Najib’s corrupt UMNO government, the Alliance of Hope splintered. As it turned out, the only thing they could agree on was their opposition to Najib. After he was dealt with, there was little left to unify the coalition.

As a result, the power that brought 94-year-old Mahathir back to the realm of Malaysian politics had evaporated. Unable to maintain his grip on the situation, he resigned last week. After an unsuccessful attempt to reorganize the alliance as a bloc that could sustain his position of power, Mahathir was cast aside when Muhyiddin cut a deal between MUIP and UMNO.

Mahathir called the move a betrayal and said he would never join a partnership with the corrupt party, even if it was the only way to keep his post.

The elder statesman accused Najib of orchestrating the political coup as a means to avoid serving prison time. Muhyiddin previously served in Najib’s government as his deputy prime minister before he was let go for questioning Najib’s role in 1MDB. Although sources told Reuters Muhyiddin has no intention of helping Najib, his complicit party has returned to power and actors within it may have less honourable intentions.

“If Najib can be part of the government now, he can do all sorts of things to free himself,” Mahathir said at a party meeting.

The new prime minister pledged to make fighting corruption a priority for his government, but as it is backed by UMNO, there are reasons to doubt the sincerity of his words.

Mahathir Threatens to Fight Back

Mahathir threatened to call for a vote of no confidence when the parliament convenes March 9. He continues to push for an earlier date. The alliance issued a statement declaring Mahathir has the support of 112 out of 222 seats.

“Pakatan Harapan (Alliance of Hope) has decided to ask the Dewan Rakyat Speaker to convene an emergency meeting for all members of parliament to show who commands majority support,” said Johari Abdul, the party’s chief whip.

In the civilian sphere, police are investigating two human rights protestors for leading a democracy gathering, one of them being Mahathir’s daughter. Like her father, Marina Mahathir called for an emergency session of parliament.

“This special parliamentary sitting must happen to test the majority vote. We must make this demand and it must happen this week,” Marina said.

Perhaps the Alliance of Hope can be reunited amid the threat of UMNO’s return to power and the possibility of a free Najib.

L'articolo Muhyiddin Named Malaysian Prime Minister – is the Chaos Finally Over? proviene da InsideOver.

Big Cats, Big Business

Nathan Paul Southern — Thu, 27 Feb 2020 10:06:48 +0000

Reportage / Environment 27.02.2020

Big Cats, Big Business

Lindsey Kennedy

Nathan Paul Southern

The luxurious resort island of Gaya in Malaysian Borneo is the epitome of a tropical paradise. Just a 15-minute boat ride from Kota Kinabalu – the capital of Malaysia’s eastern State of Sabah – here the region’s famous wildlife has no qualms about asserting dominance over human guests. Mischievous monkeys pinch sunglasses, and occasionall – the staff warn – they’ll also grab an ice-cold beer. Bearded pigs congregate just yards from the beach restaurant. Rare birds and marine life abound.

Yet just 30 minutes into a hike through the dense jungle, our guide is dismayed. A makeshift camp and charred firewood lie abandoned beside a quiet stream: poachers.

Poachers? “This Is Normal” Says The Guide

“This is normal,” says the guide. They come on boats, he says, and are often in and out of the island before the rangers have the chance to catch them. It’s impossible to know what the poachers were after. Long-nosed proboscis monkeys – an endangered species – are common prey, but Gaya is also home to a spectacular array of birds, primates and exotic mammals, not to mention rare and expensive timber. Any of these could have been the target of the poachers. Even here, a tiny ecotourism bubble fringed by resorts that make it hard to moor a boat undetected, there is no escaping Southeast Asia’s booming illegal wildlife trade.

Southeast Asia’s Booming Illegal Wildlife Trade

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region accounts for under 3% of the world’s land mass but 25% of the global trade in wildlife. As a supplier, consumer and transit hub for the booming black market, Southeast Asia is one of the world’s primary marketplaces for capturing, selling, eating and shipping protected species to countries all over the world.

The outlook is not good. According to the European Commission, wildlife trafficking is now among the four biggest illegal industries in the world, generating $26 billion per year and growing. By far the greatest demand for endangered species products comes from China, and as the superpower’s population and economy blows up, so too does its demand for rare and protected animals.

Export Market Number One For Rare Species: China

Rare species have long played a role in traditional Chinese medicine, but ordinary people didn’t always have the means to buy them. Today, though, the country’s expanding middle class has more money to spend. “The number of people with the ability to buy [wildlife products] has, I think, unquestionably increased,” says Dr Thomas Gray, Science Director of Wildlife Alliance in Cambodia. Coupled with improved infrastructure in the region, which makes it faster and easier than ever to move black market goods from one place to another, Southeast Asia’s wildlife populations and biodiversity risk total decimation.

Take the pangolin, a scaly mammal that resembles an anteater and is the world’s most trafficked animal. Southeast Asia is home to most of the 10,000 pangolins or more captured by poachers each year for their meat and scales, highly sought after as an ingredient both in traditional Chinese medicine and the manufacture of crystal meth. So much so, in fact, that all eight species of pangolin now risk being pushed to extinction. In the first half of 2019, over eight tonnes of scales from roughly 14,000 pangolins were seized in Hong Kong alone.

Thailand And Laos: Hundreds Of Tigers “Go Missing” Annually

Meanwhile in Thailand and Laos, hundreds of tigers “go missing” each year from breeding farms, supposedly established to protect the last of their dwindling numbers. Tigers are in high demand in traditional Chinese medicine, especially in the production of tiger bone wine, and there is a growing appetite for their meat. Legal tiger farms say they breed the rare cat to relieve the burden on those in the wild, but in reality this removes the stigma of trading tiger parts. In 2018 China formally relaxed the laws on importing tiger products, effectively introducing a legal way to trade the endangered species.

Often, the decline of a hunted species has a serious knock-on effect on the health of its wider ecosystem. The unique helmeted hornbill was once found in abudance throughout Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Brunei. The birds act as “farmers of the forest” by eating seeds and either regurgitating them or defecating throughout the trees, helping replenish biodiversity over several square miles.

Unfortunately for the hornbill, its skull is made of a similar substance to elephant ivory, but softer and easier to carve into ornamental designs. A symbol of wealth in China for centuries, the recent surge in demand has seen poaching levels rise dramatically, with the bird now critically endangered. This is a tragedy for the species, but also for Southeast Asia’s jungles. Accounting for 15% of the world’s biodiversity, the region is already suffering rapid deforestation. The decreasing numbers of fruit-eating animals like elephants, hornbills and deer exacerbates this detrimental impact on the forest and its ability to store carbon.

The Horrors Of The Illegal Wildlife Business

Seen from any angle, the illegal wildlife trade is a disaster. The depletion of species and biodiversity undermines any prospects of long term, maintainable economic development, making it “inherently unsustainable” according to the United Nations Office On Drugs And Crime (UNODC). The lasting impact on the environment removes a resource relied upon by local communities for generations while closing the door on potentially employment-generating opportunities, such as developing a lucrative ecotourism industry.

But it’s the promise of short-term cash that lures many poachers in the first place.

“One can talk about the damage to the environment and sometimes multiple repercussions to ecosystems and ultimately to the wildlife. But those long-term, large costs are often discounted for the immediate, very significant economic gain,” says Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and author of the Extinction Market: Wildlife Trafficking and How to Counter it.

The bleak but pragmatic reality, explains Felbab-Brown, is that a person’s ability to feed, house and clothe their children, to afford medication or send relatives to hospital, will always overshadow other demands. “Conservation is a luxury they cannot afford,” she says.

The Hugely Profitable Wildlife Smuggling Business

Wildlife smuggling is certainly profitable. A recent report found that that the value of the trade has soared by 1,600% in a decade. A trade so lucrative can hardly go unnoticed by mafia groups for long.

“The level of organized crime in the trade is high,” says Southeast Asia Traffic Director Kanitha Krishnasamy. “We are talking about individuals and parties being able to acquire, accumulate, pack, store, transport, distribute and redistribute across continents, with numerous other steps in between this trade chain. This would be an impossible feat without a well-organized machinery at work.”

In fact, as law enforcement starts to take wildlife smuggling seriously, involving criminal groups – especially Chinese ones – has become a logistical necessity. So says Dr. Daan Van Uhm, Assistant Professor at the Willem Pompe Institute for Criminal Law and Criminology at Utrecht University. In fact, he says, there is evidence that wildlife smugglers and drug gangs have begun working together to smuggle high value products into China.

Collaboration with drug smuggling networks also means adopting their approach to business, with terrible consequences for forests and endangered species.

As Felbab-Brown explains, a criminal syndicate trafficking cocaine expects to lose 60% of its cargo to the authorities. To anticipate this, they simply order 60% more cocaine from the farmers that supply them. When you apply this to the wildlife trade, though, the same approach to product supply becomes catastrophic.

“If you’re assuming that in smuggling pangolin scales you will lose 50% of your shipment because 50% of your cargo will be discovered and seized, then you order 50% greater amount of pangolin to be killed,” she says. Clearly, any approach that focuses solely on seizures and not enough on dismantling the networks themselves is doomed to make the problem worse.

Chinese Tourism To Southeast Asia Boosts Demand For Illegal Wildlife Products

Another problem is that Chinese tourists and diaspora frequently carry demand with them. In Sihanoukville, a seaside Cambodian town now dominated by criminal gangs and sprawling Chinese-owned casinos, the amount of ivory available for sale is 11 times higher than it was just a few years ago.

“At the same time, the number of Chinese tourists has doubled,” explains Dr Gray. ”These things are probably not coincidences, particularly when you also see that the ivory ban in China is maybe displacing some of this market to the more poorly regulated countries of Southeast Asia, particularly Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos.”

Organized crime networks not only use Sihanoukville as a marketplace for ivory but as a global transit hub. The record-breaking seizure of 3.2 tonnes of Ivory from Mozambique in 2018 exposed the staggering extent of the trade.

“We have absolutely seen that the increased presence of Chinese nationals is associated with significant increases in poaching and wildlife consumption,” says Felbab-Brown.

Another striking example is the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone wedged between Laos, Myanmar and Thailand – and bordering towns such as Boten (in Laos) and Mong La (Myanmar).A multibillion-dollar joint venture between the Laotian government and the mega-corporation Kings Romans Group, a Hong Kong entity, here everything is Chinese: the language, money and even the time.

The arrangement was, officially, to broker investment into a remote corner of northern Laos. Shopping malls, industrial zones and even an international airport were part of the initiative’s proposals to boost economic growth in north-western Bokeo Province. Instead, it has been transformed into a playground for Chinese visitors wishing to gamble, solicit prostitutes in the town’s many new massage parlours, eat endangered animals and freely purchase tiger pelts and elephant tusks in open air markets. It has now become one of the world’s primary wildlife trafficking transit points.

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‘Wildlife Trafficking Is Flourishing’

“Wildlife trafficking is flourishing without any law enforcement activity in the area,” says Van Uhm. “So, you can buy basically anything you want quite easily. From rhino horn to ivory, to the hornbill.”

Even low-level business connections make it easier to feed demand elsewhere. Van Uhm describes how local villagers in Myanmar, Laos and Thailand developed links with Chinese middlemen involved in the trade, bridging the gap between poachers and end buyers.“Some Chinese migrated to other Southeast Asian countries and from there they also established illegal wildlife businesses, with small shops such as grocery shops and home decoration outlets as cover”, he explains.

Felbab-Brown agrees. “We have very much seen that wherever Chinese businesses increase their presence significantly, there is an increase in poaching and smuggling of particular local animals into China and East Asia,” she says.

What’s more, as part of its Belt and Road initiative, Beijing is investing billions in Southeast Asia, through railways, bridges and huge infrastructure projects. This will inevitably foster more and more businesses catering to Chinese tastes, including the illegal wildlife trade. Meanwhile, China’s growing influence over the region makes smaller governments reluctant to criticize the behavior of its emissaries.

Crafting An Effective Policy Response To Wildlife Trafficking

Global criminal networks unquestionably play a huge role in wildlife trafficking, but many experts are wary of taking a punitive approach.

“There is a failed policy shift towards projects that are about law enforcement and about kind of military style training,” explains Professor Rosaleen Duffy, a wildlife trafficking and poaching expert at the University of Sheffield. “It doesn’t tackle the kinds of inequality and poverty that might drive people into the poaching economy.” Far more helpful, she says, to treat this as a development issue, working on reducing demand and providing sustainable livelihoods.

Duffy stresses that headline-grabbing busts ignore common small-scale activities best addressed through education. “It might be a really enthusiastic plant trader who sells stuff on eBay,” she says. “The seller can then transport the illicit item, without always knowing they have committed an offense.” The knock-on impact can be just as damaging to the environment, but attracts no interest from government agencies.

Professor Tanya Wyatt, a Green Criminologist at Northumbria University and expert on the illegal wildlife trade, is more cynical. “It’s a funding issue,” she says. “If you are a victim of organized crime or fighting terrorism, chances are you’re going to get more money.”

It’s hard to dispute. The British government has invested over £23 million in 75 projects to combat the illegal wildlife trade since 2013. Only 14 of these projects, worth £4.4 million, have been aimed at reducing demand, community engagement or alternative livelihoods. The rest have primarily focussed on the organised crime element of the trade by targeting poachers, smuggling networks and money laundering, and by providing training and capacity-building to law enforcement.

Another problem is that laws intended to inhibit poaching are often ignored by local communities, who view them – not without justification – as a hangover of colonialism. As Duffy points out, many laws banning local communities from removing wildlife were initially created for the benefit of European hunters. These urgently need to be revised to tackle social and ecological issues on the ground today.

Ultimately, much like the global War on Drugs, ignoring the driving factors and simply fixating on enforcement is likely to be a losing battle.

“There is absolutely no doubt that the US has tremendous incentives, tremendous motivation to stop drug trafficking into the United States,” says Felbab-Brown. “They have devoted incredible amounts, on the order of $40 billion a year, towards that effort. This is a country with vast resources and a hundred percent motivation to accomplish it. Nonetheless, the supply of drugs to the United States has not abetted.”

So Far Prohibition Efforts Are Mostly Failing

To date, prohibition efforts have proved disappointing. China banned the import of ivory products in 2017, but while demand has almost halved, it remains at an unsustainable level. Worse, it hasn’t stopped poachers from actually killing elephants – they just use other parts of the animal. Vanda Felbab-Brown explains that traders have switched to producing jewellery made from elephant blood, skin and fat, successfully manufacturing a “fad” in China that didn’t exist before. This is especially bad news for the dwindling populations of Asian elephants across Southeast Asia. Since these don’t always have tusks, they used to be hunted less than their African cousins, but now they’re just as vulnerable.

Some conservationists believe providing legal avenues for buying endangered wildlife is the only way to curtail poaching. Strictly regulated, sustainable hunting of endangered species and farming rare animals in high demand present two possible alternatives to total bans.

Others fear that this grey area disguises or even legitimizes black market activity. Having illegal and permitted products side-by-side confuses the issue and sends the wrong message to consumers. Certificates of origin can be faked, gifting traffickers a way to transport and sell endangered animal parts with impunity.

“When you get into that grey area you have obvious loopholes for laundering and corruption,” says Wyatt. “I think that’s the biggest problem. When you have a captive industry that’s legal it’s in a place where there’s corruption, it’s never going to work.”

Slaughterhouses Disguised As Breeding Centers

Corruption is so rife that even breeding centers claiming to exist for conservation purposes are often caught slaughtering their animals for profit. The London-based Environmental Investigation Agency estimates that as much as 38% of seized tiger parts and live animals come from legal tiger farms. When the infamous “Tiger Temple”, a tourist attraction in Thailand run by monks, was shut down in 2016, officers discovered 40 dead cubs stored in a freezer, 20 more preserved in jars and 1,600 items made of tiger skin, bone and teeth.

Van Uhm describes visiting a tiger farm in the north of China where tiger bone wines were sold openly for several hundreds to thousands of euros per bottle. “They advertise it as Tiger Bone Wine, but it is labelled in Latin as containing ‘lion’”, he says. The mislabelling was designed to confuse law enforcement, but those working at the farm insisted it was the real thing.

Additional Wildlife Trafficking Export Markets: US And EU

While Chinese consumers are undoubtedly the worst offenders, demonizing them doesn’t help.

That’s partly because the EU and the US are also, as Wyatt says, “absolutely massive consumers of wildlife that should get their own houses in order,” but also because the problem can’t be tackled without their involvement and consent. The illegal wildlife trade can only end when poachers have better ways to earn money—and when demand for their quarry ceases.

Until now, Chinese buyers have often been left out of the conversation. As Dr. Gray points out, “We need to be employing a few more Chinese in conservation NGOs in Cambodia to allow us to properly engage with this Chinese market that is unquestionably driving the wildlife trade.”

The Coronavirus Connection

There may be another, even more pressing reason for buyers to sit up and take notice. It appears that the illegal wildlife trade may now have triggered a major international health crisis.

For years, disease experts have warned that increasingly close contact between humans, livestock and wild animals risks exposing us to millions of unknown bacteria and viruses for which our immune systems are entirely unprepared. When these move from wildlife into the human body, they can mutate into potentially lethal “zoonotic diseases” such as anthrax, Ebola and SARS.

In China, pangolins trafficked from the wild are often sold live in open-air animal markets – including the now-notorious Wuhan market believed to be the source of the coronavirus epidemic that has killed nearly 1,000 people to date. Despite being peddled as a medicinal product, the latest research shows that these pangolins are probably the virus carriers that bridged the gap between bats and humans, leading to a total lockdown of one of China’s key industrial cities and over 30,000 cases of the virus in mainland China and beyond.

Clearly, transporting wildlife to places it shouldn’t be can have dire consequences, and making buyers understand that will have a much greater impact on ending the trade than a smattering of prosecutions. As Kanitha Krishnasamy puts it: “it’s not all just about the errant traders: it’s about time that consumers started becoming part of the solution and not the problem.”

L'articolo Big Cats, Big Business proviene da InsideOver.

Pakistan Does Damage Control In Malaysia

Mutaher Khan — Tue, 11 Feb 2020 15:21:15 +0000

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan embarked on a two-day visit to Malaysia last week, his second since taking the highest office in August 2018. His visited included a broad agenda focused on expanding investment and boosting Malaysian-Pakistani bilateral ties.

Khan met with his Malaysian counterpart, Mahathir Mohamad, someone Khan has shown great admiration towards and previously praised for his reform agenda as well. The two leaders discussed a range of issues including the regional and international political situation, collaboration in the fields of science and technology and much more.

Strengthening Malaysia-Pakistan Ties

Though separated by vast swathes of land and large expanses of water, the two countries have found common ground lately on multiple issues. Islamabad has found a close ally in Kuala Lumpur that is willing to back its stance internationally. That support manifested in the form of Malaysia condemning New Delhi’s siege of Kashmir in August, 2019 and denouncing India’s blockade since then. Mohammed criticized this move more than once, even risking his trade relations with one of the largest markets in the world in terms of India.

That eventually led to a fallout as India restricted its imports of palm oil from Malaysia, a major source of proceeds for the southeast Asian republic. In fact, New Delhi was Kuala Lumpur’s seventh largest export destination and sold just palm oil worth $1.5 billion in 2018-19.

Khan Promises To Boost Trade With Malaysia To Make Up For Kuala Lumpur’s Falling Out With India

Khan, for his part, promised to increase palm imports from Malaysia as a way to compensate for the latter’s losses but Pakistan’s trade with the Southeast Asian country is a mere fraction in comparison to what it enjoyed formerly with India. Nonetheless, Mohammed seems to be undeterred as even in the latest meeting with his Pakistani counterpart, he endorsed his earlier stance on Kashmir. In fact, the text explicitly mentioned the situation in the Indian-held territory of the valley and called for resolving the dispute.

The Saudi Factor

The growing ties between Malaysia and Pakistan don’t sit too well with another Pakistani ally, Saudi Arabia, which is indicative of the internal rift between rival Muslim blocs. In fact, it was at the behest of Riyadh that Islamabad was forced to back out of the Kuala Lumpur summit in December—which it masterminded and helped organize but could not attend at the last moment due to pressure from Saudi Arabia—dealing an extremely embarrassing blow to Khan’s government.

Addressing a joint press conference with his Malaysian counterpart, Khan said: “Unfortunately, our friends, who are very close to Pakistan as well, felt that somehow the conference was going to divide the ummah [the global Muslim community]. It was clearly a misconception because that was not the purpose of the conference as evident from when the conference took place.”

“Malaysia and Pakistan will further increase collaborative efforts in international fora in upholding the true values of Islam and in addressing the common challenges facing the Ummah, including Islamophobia and the rights of Muslim minorities,” the joint statement issued at the end of the visit affirmed.

Malaysia, Pakistan And Turkey’s Future Ties: ‘Broad Areas Of Strategic Cooperation’

It continued that “Malaysia and Pakistan together with Turkey will proceed with the initiatives in broad areas of strategic cooperation under the Joint Committee Meeting (JCM) to complement the efforts by the community of the Muslim world.” However, just in the same breath, the text added “while being mindful of the centrality of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and in this regard,” thus trying to placate Saudi Arabia at the same time.

How much of that appeasement worked is yet to be seen, but from the looks of it, Khan seems to be growing impatient on the issue of Kashmir. In Malaysia, he criticized the Muslim community for the lack of unity. “The reason is that we have no voice and there is a total division amongst [us]. We can’t even come together as a whole on the OIC meeting on Kashmir,” Pakistan’s PM was quoted as saying.

These comments came just days after the OIC’s extraordinary meeting that saw the rejection of Trump’s peace plan but again, had no mention of Kashmir. However, some news reports since then have suggested that Riyadh is willing to advance this issue at the Council of Foreign Ministers summit in April.

Kuala Lumpur has also turned out to be a godsend for Islamabad in its dealings with the Financial Action Task Force. The Paris-based watchdog put Pakistan on the grey list for lax regulation on counter-terrorism financing and anti-money laundering over a year ago and has review due this month. And just in time, during Khan’s visit, Malaysia endorsed his guest’s efforts.

Growing Cooperation On Malaysia-Pakistan Trade And Investment

Even beyond politics, there is growing cooperation between both countries. Malaysia has lately become a major destination for Pakistani expatriates who then send back remittances—a major source of foreign exchange for the embattled economy struggling on the external account front—with 2018-19 inflows amounting to around $1.6 billion.

In the sphere of investment too, there has been notable progress. Last year Proton—the state-owned company and Malaysia’s second largest automaker—set up an assembly plant in Pakistan with cars expected to roll out in a few months.

Khan was lucky on his latest visit in that Mohammed graciously let ghosts of the past be set aside. However, in order to truly expand Pakistan’s ties with Malaysia, Islamabad will have to ensure an independent foreign policy that cannot be swayed at the first sign of pressure from another ally.

L'articolo Pakistan Does Damage Control In Malaysia proviene da InsideOver.

Kuala Lumpur Summit Exposes Underlying Cracks Within Muslim Nations

Fayaz Mahessar — Fri, 27 Dec 2019 09:52:11 +0000

Last week, dozens of world leaders, intellectuals and scholars around the world attended the Kuala Lumpur Summit (KLS) to discuss issues facing the Muslim world (ummah) ranging from Islamophobia, poverty and sanctions to persecution in China and India.

Instead Of Bringing Muslims Nations Together The Summit Highlighted Their Rifts

Despite its lofty objectives, the summit ended up exposing a major rift between Muslim countries. The attendance of one bloc⁠—Qatar, Iran, Turkey⁠—and absence of the other⁠—UAE, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Bahrain⁠—followed by the trading of barbs between the leaders of both sides took center stage and took attention away from the objective of the meeting.

KLS was first conceived by Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad, Pakistan’s leader Imran Khan and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of United Nations General Assembly meeting this year. The plan was to broadcast and examine challenges faced by Muslims across the world, especially their persecution at the hands of India and China in Kashmir and Xinjiang, respectively.

Why The Split Occurred

PM Mohammad’s invitation to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, and Qatar’s Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani irked Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The Saudis and Emiratis have shunned Iran and Qatar in recent years and refuse to share any stage with them.

Saudi Arabia and Iran have long competed for influence in the Muslim world. Both have been⁠—and are currently⁠—engaged in proxy wars across the Middle East. Moreover, the Saudis consider themselves de-facto leaders of the Islamic world given the importance of Mecca and Medina in Islam. To them, participating in any Islamic forum that they did not lead was unacceptable.

Pakistan: Stuck In The Middle

Caught in the middle of this tug-of-war between the two power blocs was Pakistan’s Imran Khan, who hastily agreed to the summit without anticipating the repercussions given Islamabad’s close ties with Riyadh. Khan decided to pull out of it at the last moment after meeting with the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister said the decision was made in order to allay concerns raised by Saudi Arabia that the meeting could create a parallel bloc to rival the existing Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The OIC is headquartered at Riyadh and is led by Saudi Arabia. The Saudis saw the KL Summit as an attempt to dislodge their dominance over the Islamic world.

Erdogan: Saudi Arabia ‘Blackmailed’ Pakistan Over The Summit

Malaysia’s Mohammad, however, denies that the summit is intended to rival the OIC. In a statement, he said “the KL Summit is not intended to create a new bloc as alluded to by some of its critics.” Mohammad said that he had clarified his position to Crown Prince bin Salman in a telephone call. But while Mohammad was careful in his response to those criticizing the summit, Turkey’s Erdogan was not.

Lambasting the Saudi Crown Prince, Erdogan alleged that Saudi Arabia had “blackmailed” and “threatened” Pakistan. “Unfortunately, we see that Saudi Arabia pressures Pakistan. Now, there are promises that the country has given to Pakistan regarding the central bank. However, more than that, there are four million Pakistanis working in Saudi Arabia. They (threatened by saying that they) would send (Pakistanis) back and re-employ Bangladeshi people instead,” Erdogan said. Meanwhile, Erdogan also added that Indonesia⁠—which also decided to pull out after first agreeing to attend the meeting⁠—had also suffered from being similarly threatened by the Saudis.

Saudi Denies Erdogan’s Charges

Saudi Arabia has denied putting any pressure on Islamabad. A release issued by the Saudi embassy in Pakistan stated that, “the relations between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Islamic Republic of Pakistan are superior to the language of threat … and the two countries enjoy a consensus of views on most regional and international issues, especially the issues of the Islamic nation.”

But even as Saudi Arabia denied applying any pressure on Islamabad, the infighting ended up overshadowing the summit. The world’s Muslim population⁠—around 1.8 billion across the world⁠—who had pinned their hopes on the summit to raise a voice for their rights watched with dismay as their leaders failed to agree on any way forward for their future.

L'articolo Kuala Lumpur Summit Exposes Underlying Cracks Within Muslim Nations proviene da InsideOver.

What Does the ASEAN Business Summit Mean for the Region’s Future?

Laura Jurgeleviciute — Tue, 03 Dec 2019 08:33:33 +0000

ASEAN is one of the few successful examples of a trade bloc in an emerging region. The latest ASEAN business and its parent summit produced many interesting resolutions and outcomes. How will they influence the trade blocs and Southeast Asia’s future?

The ASEAN 2019 Business and Investment Summit crystallized the trade blocs joint political positions. It also brought new views on business into light. The summit which ran from 2nd to 3rd of November ended on a largely positive note.

The most important joint political statements reaffirmed were the movement to a unified position on the South China Sea, and greater digital connectivity.

A common theme in the summit was how innovative businesses and models should be supported.

Before the summit began, the main goals were set as the movement into the digital age, and human development and empowerment.

From a social standpoint, activist groups also influenced the goals and discussions of the summit. Before the summit, Rohingya supporters sent demands to the leaders of ASEAN member countries. Discussion panels about human rights were a part of the summit.

The main outcomes of the summit have been the development of the RCEP agreement, a new direction for intra-bloc relations, and business development in SE Asian countries.

India’s exit from the RCEP is not necessarily a failing on the part of the ASEAN members or the potential members of the RCEP agreement.

Demolishing trade barriers has helped many of the world’s economies achieve massive growth in GDP, trade diversification, and the wealth of residents. Yet, even a good solution may not be the exact fit for a certain economy.

India is still a developing economy and not a mature one. India’s trade balance has been negative and continued to decrease and now for the past 15 years, lowering import barriers for the RCEP would have compounded this negative balance of trade tendency for India.

Intra-bloc relations have deepened because of the 2019 summit. Multiple leaders urged to increase the bloc’s unity on foreign problems.

Written resolutions do not always turn into active projects. Yet, the united front on digital economy and empowerment, is a strong indicator of declarations becoming actions.

Business and investment talks at the summit show that a new age of business is coming to ASEAN. Multiple calls from some of the members of the ASEAN for a move to business 4.0 (a reference to the fourth industrial revolution) show that the bloc has chosen to rapidly innovate, instead of going through the usual course of development.

From a geographical standpoint, the push for innovative businesses and business models could be the answer to the trade bloc’s members’ reliance on agricultural commodities and goods exports. Innovative digital businesses are less dependent on location and aren’t dependent on worldwide commodity price fluctuations. Increasing the share of digital business could create a strong and stable business ecosystem in the ASEAN.

The 2019 summit will be an influential one. The trade bloc members will feel the impact from its outcomes both directly, and indirectly. SE Asia and the whole of Asia will become different because of the outcomes of the ASEAN summit, and the related Business and Investment summit.

India pulling out of the RCEP agreement will undermine its benefits. Nevertheless, the majority of the potential signatories of it shouldn’t find more drawbacks than benefits for them individually.

The RCEP centres around opening up trade barriers, through the lowering of tariffs and a phaseout of them. Out of all potential signatory countries, only Malaysia and Thailand face some of the same concerns that caused India to decide to not pursue the signing of the agreement. A significant share of exports of both Thailand and Malaysia belongs to machines and chemical products – similar to India. Being a signatory of the RCEP would mean an increased risk of a potential decline in these exporting industries. That’s the reason why India’s Mr Modi took the step to pull India out of the negotiations

Malaysia and Thailand are unlikely to pull out. Increasing trade liberalisation in the region would benefit these already strong exporting economies. Geopolitical alliances and allies also could have played a part in India’s decision to withdraw. The unending land territorial disputes with China, in the face of a phaseout of trade barriers to Chinese goods, would have likely not been a popular decision with some voters. That’s not the case with Malaysia and Thailand, whose disagreements with China aren’t as complex as India’s.

Major geopolitical trends in Asia will be affected by the outcomes of the ASEAN 2019 business summit.

A theme of discussions and resolutions in the Business and Investment summit was the digital age and innovative businesses. Members of the summit agreed that increasing cooperation is needed. Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mr Mahathir, said that “[…] we need to overcome the separation of the members of the ASEAN countries”.

Association of South East Asian Nations, from its founding, has laid foundations to a stronger South East Asia. Increasing development of the region through cooperation should spur states in other regions of Asia. Whether increasing digitalisation of the region and its businesses will contribute to the whole continent’s state, or just the region’s, remains to be seen.

ASEAN previously released an indirect resolution on its stance about the South China Sea islands, and the wider Pacific Ocean territory (The ASEAN outlook on the Indo-Pacific). The resolution called for peaceful dispute resolution. The division of Asian countries on this issue will decline, as the parent event of the Business and Investment Summit, the ASEAN summit, ended with progress made on the code of conduct agreement for the South China Sea.

Asia, as a region, is opening up to free trade with other trade blocks or countries. The recent free trade agreements between the European Union and Japan, Republic of Korea, and Singapore have facilitated trade between mostly East Asian countries, and the 2nd largest economy in the world.

As every trend, it won’t last forever. More and more Asian, and particularly East and South-East Asian economies will become mature ones in the next few decades (Republic of Korea, Singapore). The terms of previously signed free trade deals may then no longer suit the needs of these countries.

Each trade deal is also causing increasing discussions in the continent about the benefits of trade agreements. The discussions have led to increasing pressure on local politicians for talks and signing of free trade agreements (India is the clearest example).

Along with corruption issues (Asia Pacific region received an average score of 44 in the 2018 edition of CPI) and economic inequality in the region, the pressure could lead new political parties into power.

The wider continental trend is to increase free trade and to lower tariffs on foreign products. It is a way of gaining access to lucrative markets. The doubts about intra-regional trade could lead to a diverging consensus on trade in the continent. Consequently, declining opportunities for access to lucrative markets.

Countries, and their allies, which have already signed agreements with trade partners, could slow down the phaseout of tariffs. Increasing doubts about the benefits of FTAs by countries like India have a strong possibility to become a wider anti-free trade trend.

Diverging opinions on wider regional trends are an inevitable consequence of meetings where countries with very different economies meet. South and South East Asian nations members range from island to continental states, and from those relying on agricultural exports to full services economies.

A way to increase cooperation could be information exchange. H. Milner in International Theories of Cooperation Among Nations, argues that even critics of the parent theory, agree that greater information sharing and communication, should strengthen cooperation between governments. The greater cooperation will be needed, as in the next decade, some of these nations will have to deal with major territorial and economic decisions (South China Sea islands, the RCEP).

ASEAN is not only its trade component, it is also a fruitful political forum which facilitates development through cooperation. From the outcomes of the summit, the region’s future will take an increasing turn towards digitalisation. However, due to many differences between the members, joint actions could meet resistance.

L'articolo What Does the ASEAN Business Summit Mean for the Region’s Future? proviene da InsideOver.