Migrant workers from Myanmar fill a critical niche in Thailand’s multi-billion-dollar seafood industry. As Thais increasingly shy away from shrimp and seafood processing jobs that many consider “3D” work – dirty, dangerous, and difficult – migrants are stepping in to fill these positions. Of the 700,000 workers in Thailand’s shrimp sector alone, 80 percent are migrants, primarily from Myanmar. Many of these workers travel to Thailand with their families, and the coastal provinces where the shrimp and seafood processing industries are based are home to large migrant communities.

Asia Foundation Chief Economist Véronique Salze-Lozac’h (second from left) and Ellen Boccuzzi (far right) at the Bangkok launch of the report.

To better understand the conditions in which these migrants work, and to explore the experiences of the industry’s youngest workers, The Asia Foundation and the International Labour Organization (ILO) conducted a joint research project focused on children working in Thailand’s shrimp and seafood processing industries. The study looks not only at the substantial number of children aged 15-17 who work legally in these sectors, but also at younger children who work informally – through home-based shrimp peeling, by accompanying parents to the workplace where they perform light tasks, or by staying home from school to care for younger siblings so that their parents can work.

The study sheds light on a number of issues affecting children in the shrimp and seafood sectors. Children working in seafood processing are more frequently exposed to workplace hazards than children in other industries, and they are twice as likely to incur an injury. Boys are particularly at risk, as they tend to take on more hazardous tasks, such as unloading crates of fish from ships in the early morning hours – a task that exposes them to heavy loads and slippery surfaces during hours when they may be drowsy and vulnerable to injury. Despite such hazards, 44 percent of children in the industry lack personal protective equipment such as boots and gloves, and migrant children are less likely to have such equipment than Thais. Moreover, few working children are aware of labor laws requiring protective equipment, limiting working hours, and ensuring safe working environments. Only three percent of children surveyed held a written contract for their work.

The study also found that large numbers of children in the shrimp and seafood industry, both migrant and Thai, are not attending school. Although Thai law guarantees access to education for all children to age 15, regardless of citizenship or registration status, the study found that about one-quarter of migrant children drop out at the end of sixth grade (around age 12), and nearly half of those that remain drop out when they reach the legal working age of 15.

With these stark numbers in mind, the research team explored the factors that are leading families to pull their children from school for work. Through focus group discussions with migrant parents, NGO representatives, school administrators, and others, we confirmed that the strongest factor, particularly for poorer families and those in debt, is the possibility of earning income for the family. In addition, migrants who believe they will soon return to Myanmar are more likely to let their children work, as these families tend to be focused on accruing savings before returning to an unknown economic future in Myanmar. The study revealed that many families also pull children – particularly girls – from school after age 12 so that they can care for younger siblings, thus freeing up parents and children over age 15 for work.

Another factor leading migrant children to drop out of school is the difficulty many experience when transitioning into the formal Thai school system. Part of the problem is the common practice of enrolling new migrants at the first grade level – regardless of their age. School administrators believe that this helps them learn Thai and catch up with the curriculum, but it also has unintended consequences: older Myanmar children are embarrassed to be paired with much younger Thai classmates; teachers find themselves struggling to manage classrooms of children at vastly different levels of development. Frustration with this system, and the difficulty of achieving a quality education within it, lead many migrants to choose work over school.

Equipped with these findings, the research team developed a number of recommendations to improve workplace safety for children aged 15-17 and incentives for families to send younger children to school. The recommendations involve a combination of independent actions by government, the private sector, civil society, and the international community, as well as multi-stakeholder collaboration among these actors.

With regard to labor conditions, international buyers and the government have an important role to play in ensuring compliance with international labor standards. Buyers hold substantial leverage over suppliers, and this leverage can be used to encourage improvement. NGOs can support this progress by providing technical assistance to small and medium-sized producers to help them upgrade their operations. Such improvements will help workers in the near term and support the development of a sustainable seafood industry for Thailand in the long term.

To improve education for migrant children, the report recommends that they start school early – ideally at three to four years of age – by enrolling in childcare centers managed by the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security (MSDHS). An early start to school will give these children the proficiency in Thai to enter first grade with their peers (in turn making it more likely that these migrant children will stay in school). Migrant children’s enrollment in early childhood education will also help ease the burden of childcare that is currently falling on their adolescent siblings, enabling these older children to stay in school past the age of 12.

For migrant children who come to Thailand later, and therefore do not have the option of entering Thai school at an early age, we recommend that tutoring be provided to prepare them to enter Thai school with peers their own age, and that ongoing tutoring be made available to ensure that this transition is smooth. Vocational training should also be made available to migrant children aged 13 to 14 to encourage parents to keep them in school during the years when many drop out. School-based vocational training programs linked to market needs (and if possible, to employment at age 15) will provide a strong incentive for parents to keep their children in school.

As a complement to the preceding recommendations, the report identifies a timely opportunity to improve migrant children’s enrollment. In March of this year, Thailand implemented a new regulation that allows migrant workers to renew their four-year work permit after just 30 days out of the country (rather than three years as required under the previous policy). We believe that this change holds enormous potential to reduce child labor and encourage more migrant children to go to school. As discussed, many of the migrants surveyed who were not sending their children to school were focused on the accumulation of family savings in the immediate term, as their time horizon for earning was a short one. By giving migrants the assurance that they can stay in Thailand for the long term (as long as they continue to have productive working relationships with their employers), this new regulation will help parents feel more invested in a life in Thailand for themselves and their children. Our research suggests that this change will increase migrants’ willingness to send their children to primary school to learn Thai and to secondary school to develop marketable skills, keeping them in school throughout their childhood years.

NGOs, government, and employers who seek to retain workers can support this positive development through education and advocacy that encourages migrant parents to choose education over work for their children. Thailand has been proactive in supporting migrant children’s access to education through Education for All legislation. By working together to ensure that all children take advantage of this right, we can combat child labor, while providing children with the space to learn and develop into productive and contributing adults.

Ellen Boccuzzi is acting director of The Asia Foundation’s Governance and Law Program, and lead author of Migrant and Child Labor in Thailand’s Shrimp and Other Seafood Supply Chains: Labor Conditions and the Decision to Study or Work, a joint study with the International Labour Organization. She can be reached at ellen.boccuzzi@asiafoundation.org. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author, not those of The Asia Foundation.

When 32 million Myanmar voters go to the polls on November 8 to choose their representatives in national, state, and regional parliaments, many will be voting for just the first or second time in their lives. After decades of military rule, this will be Myanmar’s first election in which all political parties will participate, with 91 parties fielding 6,074 candidates. While expectations for the elections are high, many voters lack basic knowledge of electoral processes and the roles and functions of state institutions. Given this situation, The Asia Foundation and its local partners have reached out to Myanmar’s rapidly growing tech community to bring the power of information technology to voter education with the MaePaySoh (Let’s Vote) Hack Challenge.

Participants at the MaePaySoh Hack Challenge.

Urgent Need for Voter Education

As Myanmar prepares for this historic election, voters’ familiarity with the organs of state, the electoral process, the political parties, and the candidates is exceptionally low. A recent Asia Foundation survey, Myanmar 2014: Civic Knowledge and Values in a Changing Society, found that just 12 percent of respondents knew how the president is elected. In a nationwide survey completed in June 2015 by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, eligible voters reported feeling substantially uninformed about many aspects of the upcoming elections, including basic mechanics of voting such as how to mark the ballot and where and when to vote. Respondents also reported feeling least informed about the participating parliamentary candidates and political parties.

Engaging Technology to Inform Voters

To bridge this yawning voter information gap, The Asia Foundation, along with other election-related and civil society organizations, turned to Myanmar’s small but rapidly growing tech community. On September 12, more than 130 developers and designers in 30 teams entered the MaePaySoh Hack Challenge, a competition to create mobile and web applications that are fun, user-friendly, and full of essential information for voters about the general elections.

The teams are making use of an extensive library of election-related data provided in digital format by The Asia Foundation and its partners. Working closely with the Union Election Commission, the Foundation has digitized essential biographical information on all 6,074 candidates, including age, gender, ethnicity, religion, education, occupation, and party affiliation. For candidates who served as members of parliament at the national level between 2011 and 2015, the Foundation collaborated with the local research organization Open Myanmar Initiative to provide data about their parliamentary records, including the subjects of questions they raised and motions they submitted.

A voter FAQ data set, developed by the local voter education organization Charity Oriented Myanmar and The Asia Foundation in consultations with communities around the country, addresses voters’ frequently asked questions. The content of the voter FAQ ranges from the functions of state institutions to the electoral system and the mechanics of voting in 2015. Details about each of the 91 political parties, including party leadership, logos, platforms, and contact information, are also included in the database. The Myanmar Information Management Unit, a project of the United Nations and the NGO and donor communities in Myanmar, created constituency maps showing the borders of national parliamentary districts. Pulling together all these data sets, the Foundation has made them available to the competing teams of developers through the open-source MaePaySoh Application Programming Interface, or API.

MaePaySoh and the Connectivity Revolution

Internet access in Myanmar has been estimated at just two to four percent, but the country is actually in the midst of a connectivity revolution. The opening of the telecom sector has led to tremendous growth in data access via the cheaper smartphones that dominate the market. There are more than 32 million active SIM cards in Myanmar today, and more than half of them regularly access information from the Internet. With MaePaySoh, the Foundation hopes to reach the public via this channel, while also engaging the young, tech-savvy generation in Myanmar’s nascent civic life. The Foundation has partnered with Phandeeyar, the leading center for civic tech and social innovation in Yangon, and with the local developer groups Myanmar Geek Girls and Google Developer Group Yangon, to reach out to the tech community to participate in MaePaySoh.

Who Will Build the Best Voter App?

The teams of developers have been hard at work since September 12. The MaePaySoh Hack Challenge ends on September 27, when the teams will display the results of their work to the judges. Winners will receive cash and other valuable prizes, including automatic membership in the Accelerate Track of Facebook’s FBStart program, which provides mentors and $80,000 worth of services to technology entrepreneurs. Join us for live updates as winners are announced on September 27, 2015, at www.facebook.com/maepaysoh.

Kim N. B. Ninh is country representative, Susan Lee is program manager, and Mi Ki Kyaw Myint is program and operations officer for The Asia Foundation in Myanmar. They can be reached at kim.ninh@asiafoundation.org, susan.lee@asiafoundation.org, and miki.myint@asiafoundation.org, respectively. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors, not those of The Asia Foundation.

America’s willingness to accommodate China’s growing political and economic power will be crucial to U.S.-China relations. That was the observation of journalist Liu Yang, deputy newsroom director of China’s Global Times, who visited the U.S. recently as The Asia Foundation’s L. Z. Yuan Fellow in Media and International Relations.

The five-week fellowship in Washington DC and the San Francisco Bay Area provided Liu with extensive opportunities to interact with top experts on both coasts, and included a summer course on U.S. foreign policy at George Washington University, and a professional placement at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington. In San Francisco, Liu attended meetings with Bay Area specialists on U.S.-China trade and economic relations.

Liu Yang: “In the beginning, the Global Times was just another publication established by the People’s Daily, but now it is one of the main voices of Chinese media.”

Every other year, the L. Z. Yuan Fellowship, named for a former journalist and senior advisor for China programs at The Asia Foundation, brings Chinese journalists to the U.S. in the belief that mutual understanding will encourage closer U.S.-China relations. Liu is the eleventh Fellow since the program began. Past fellows have included journalists from Xinhua and CCTV, the business magazine Caijing, and the Shanghai Morning Post. The Global Times is a daily newspaper with English and Chinese editions, established by the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party. This visit to the U.S. was Liu Yang’s first, and he described it as “eye opening.”

Shortly after Liu’s fellowship ended, we asked him about his experience here, and about the role of the Global Times in China.

Given your discussions with specialists on U.S.-Asia relations in the U.S., what will you be writing about upon your return to China? Have your views changed over the course of the fellowship?

I have already written a report to tell Chinese readers that a huge, historic debate on China policy is going on in the U.S. The report, which is titled “Discussing Sino-U.S. Relations with Ten Top U.S. Scholars,” was published on August 26. In this report, scholars such as Jeffrey Bader, Bonnie Glaser, Douglas Paal, Alan Romberg, and David Dollar share their perspectives on whether the U.S. policy community is, or should consider, changing U.S. policy toward China. In conclusion, I tell readers that the mainstream attitude in Washington D.C. now is to accommodate China’s rise while working to influence China’s choices.

Before this trip, I had heard that this kind of debate was going on. Some reports in China have told of U.S. scholars feeling nervous and worrying about China. My interviews during this trip confirmed that for me. But I am most surprised by the mistrust between our two countries. Some U.S. scholars have advised President Xi to give a public speech clarifying China’s real intentions. But Ms. Glaser [of the Center for Strategic and International Studies] told me this kind of promise was useless. Xi and Obama have made promises to each other several times, but the problem is that they do not trust each other.

You say China watchers on both the east and west coasts talked about the need for China to improve its use of “soft power.” In your view, how can this be accomplished?

To be honest, that is a difficult question. I believe “soft power” comes from confidence. But China is still developing, and is facing more troubles than several years ago. In Chinese society, people are often angry and anxious. They are worried about the future, and fighting for more money. At this time, I do not think China has much “soft power,” but in the future, I believe it will.

For example, when you become an elegant British gentleman, or a charming and thoughtful scholar, you gain followers. People admire you and learn from you. That is soft power. China is still learning. China needs more time.

How do you see the role of the Global Times in Chinese society, and how has it changed over time?

In the beginning, the Global Times was just another publication established by the People’s Daily, but now it is one of the main voices of Chinese media. In Washington, a think-tank scholar told me he felt GT was the most unboring newspaper in China. That made me feel proud of our newspaper.

The core culture of Global Times is to defend China’s national interest and to tell the truth. In China, the editorials of GT stir both huge public attention and controversy. People who do not like GT criticize us as being too pro-government on domestic issues and too nationalistic on international issues. I think this proves that China is becoming more diverse.

Liu Yang’s recent articles on U.S.-China relations for the Global Times can be read here:

(Chinese) http://www.globalview.cn/html/global/info_5491.html
(English) http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/939965.shtml
(Chinese) http://world.huanqiu.com/exclusive/2015-09/7402617.html

Julia Chen is The Asia Foundation’s senior program officer for Asian American Exchange. She can be reached at julia.chen@asiafoundation.org. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and the interviewee, not those of The Asia Foundation.

Two-man search teams enter a darkened classroom to look for survivors. They work in pairs, systematically exploring the jumble of overturned desks and chairs. In a corner of the room, Dominic Marzano and Wilson Lee are watching closely. Minutes earlier, the two trainers had given their instructions. “Please keep in mind that safety always comes first,” Marzano told them. “Never work alone,” added Lee. “Always have a buddy with you.” The tension is high, even though this is just a simulation – a group exercise for 50 Chinese participants conducted by a six-member team from the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). They have gathered here in Chengdu, in southwestern Sichuan Province, for an intensive, eight-day trainers’ workshop less than 100 kilometers from the epicenter of the devastating 2008 Sichuan earthquake.

China and the U.S. face similar challenges in disaster management – large populations, a diverse geographic landscape, and a range of potential natural and man-made disasters.

Disaster management has been an area of growing cooperation between the United States and China. This training, with funding from USAID and Chinese partners, was highlighted during the Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Washington DC in June, the seventh round of these bilateral talks. Since 2006, The Asia Foundation has worked with Chinese partners from both governmental and non-governmental institutions who believe that a swift government response to disasters is not enough, and that training citizens in thousands of local communities to cope with emergencies is essential to making the country more resilient.

There has been renewed focus on U.S.-China relations ahead of President Xi Jinping’s first state visit to the United States this week. Last year marked the 35th anniversary of the establishment of official diplomatic relations between the two countries. The world’s two largest economies have become increasingly intertwined, with annual trade exceeding $550 billion last year. But recent tensions over issues ranging from cyberattacks to the South China Sea have clouded the current climate. Xi’s visit will be an opportunity to reset the course of relations between the two countries and find areas for practical cooperation.

China and the U.S. face similar challenges in disaster management – large populations, a diverse geographic landscape, and a range of potential natural and man-made disasters. Working together on disaster preparedness and risk reduction has provided the two countries with common ground for collaboration. The recent training in August focused on FEMA’s Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) program, which is designed to prepare ordinary members of the community to help themselves and others during the early stages of a catastrophic disaster, when professional emergency services personnel may be overwhelmed. The CERT concept was first developed by the Los Angeles Fire Department, and later expanded by FEMA into a nationwide preparedness initiative in the United States.

Most of the Chinese participants are professional responders from the National Earthquake Response Support Service and emergency management agencies in Chengdu City and Shaanxi Province. The newly trained group will now become “master trainers” who can deliver the CERT program and support community-based disaster management activities in the project’s pilot communities. In addition to basic CERT training, the FEMA trainers introduced them to more efficient teaching techniques, and shared lessons learned from conducting CERT programs in American communities. The Chinese master trainers also shared thoughts on tailoring CERT for the Chinese context, including resources they could tap into and challenges confronting them.

The training concluded with a simulated disaster scenario where participants could demonstrate their new skills under the watchful eyes of their FEMA instructors. At the end of the simulation, with all the injured victims treated and safely evacuated, trainer Marzano gave his assessment. “There is still some room for improvement, but your performance impressed me,” he said. “Well done!” The new master trainers were enthusiastic: “Eight days is too short for us. We invite FEMA’s instructors to visit our province. How about at the end of this year?” proposed one middle-aged official from Shaanxi Province at the closing session.

Both Chengdu City and Shaanxi Province are expected to roll out their own local experiments with CERT very soon. The hope is that this training will plant seeds for an ongoing program to prepare communities to respond when disaster strikes. The U.S. trainers praised the new Chinese master trainers, and pledged to return during the next stage of implementation in the pilot communities, a valuable opportunity for both sides to learn from each other. By working to create a solid foundation in disaster management skills, emergency management practitioners from the United States and China are finding new ways to cooperate and collaborate.

Hao Shanli is a program associate in The Asia Foundation’s Community Development Program in China. She can be reached at shanli.hao@asiafoundation.org. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author, not those of The Asia Foundation.

Singapore went to the polls on September 11, returning the governing People’s Action Party (PAP) to power once again. The PAP won 83 out of 89 seats in Parliament, with a resounding 70 percent of the vote, 10 percent more than in the previous general election in 2011 (GE 2011).

This was the first election since Singapore’s independence from Britain in which former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who died in March, was not a candidate. It was also the first election since Singapore became a republic, in 1965, in which all the seats in Parliament were contested.

Campaign signs for the PAP and SDP in Singapore. Photo/Flickr user Jack at Wikipedia http://bit.ly/1Vb0qNF

Depending on the factors one considers, the decisive PAP victory was either predictable or surprising.

Amidst the feel-good mood of a country celebrating 50 years of nationhood, the outpouring of grief and gratitude on the death of Lee Kuan Yew, the PAP’s nimble policy changes following GE 2011, and the shaky performance of the new parliamentary opposition, the show of support for the PAP seems hardly surprising.

During much of the campaign, on the other hand, there were strong signs of support for the opposition, including attendance at election rallies, online media traffic, and popular trends on social media such as WhatsApp and Facebook. Attendance was generally far higher at opposition rallies. Social media, texts, and videos favoring the opposition appeared to be more widely shared.

Following GE 2011, when the opposition won an unprecedented six seats in the midst of great public dissatisfaction over jobs, housing, and transport, the PAP government launched a slew of new measures and policies. Steps were taken to restrict the influx of foreign workers, and new funding was made available to train Singaporeans for the new jobs of a restructuring economy. The former head of the Ministry of National Development, which is responsible for housing, was removed. The new minister was quick to ramp up construction of several more blocks of government-subsidized flats to meet pent-up demand. Anti-speculation measures such as additional taxes were also introduced to stem escalating property prices. Several infrastructure investments were made to cool frustrations over the inadequacy of public transport. The government stepped up construction of new metro lines, and, in recognition of the time it would take for the new trains to come on line, it also provided funding to buy more public buses.

At the same time, the election was held when Singapore was still basking in the afterglow of the fireworks and handouts of the country’s jubilee festivities. Reflections on how far the city-state had progressed were inevitably linked to the role of Lee Kuan Yew as the architect of modern Singapore. Emotions were heightened by his death in March and his absence from National Day celebrations in August. All these would have helped the PAP.

For their part, the opposition Workers’ Party (WP) had done itself no favors since its electoral breakthrough in GE 2011. Its lackluster performance in Parliament disappointed many supporters, who had voted for the WP to create more “checks and balances” to the PAP-dominated government. The WP’s clumsy handling of municipal issues also became a factor in the latest election.

In the end, the WP kept the six seats it had won in GE 2011, but its share of the vote fell from 47 percent to 40. It also lost the seat it had won in the 2013 by-election, called when a PAP member of Parliament resigned over an extra-marital affair. While voters still wanted some opposition voices in Parliament, they did not go so far as to reward WP with more seats. The other, smaller opposition parties also saw their shares of the vote fall.

In the final analysis, Singapore’s voters used the GE 2015 ballot box to express their disappointment with the Workers’ Party’s performance over the last four years, and to reward the ruling People’s Action Party for listening to their voices in GE 2011.

The message from the Singapore electorate to both governing and opposing parties was clear: promises are not enough; convincing performances are needed. Votes have to be fought for, not just at election time, but during the years of governing in between.

Peggy Kek is the former country director for The Asia Foundation in Singapore, and former director of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author, not those of The Asia Foundation.

2015 is a critical year for the Asia-Pacific region. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), backed by the U.S. Senate’s recent approval of “fast-track” authority, is now entering the final round of negotiations in Hawaii. Another Asian free trade agreement (FTA), the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), is also due by the end of 2015, with a round of substantive talks in August and another to come in October.

With TPP spearheaded by the U.S. and RCEP led by China, there has been a lot of attention lately on how the two countries are using the FTAs to benefit themselves and keep each other out of their respective regional economic arrangements. Meanwhile, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its member states are also playing an important role in the future of trade arrangements in the Asia-Pacific. As its economic cooperation and integration efforts have reached a crucial stage, ASEAN is concerned not only about the welfare effects of TPP and RCEP on its member states, but also about their impact on the development of ASEAN as an economic community.

Figure 1: ASEAN, RCEP, and TPP member states

The Impact of TPP and RCEP on ASEAN

One of the most widely recognized benefits for ASEAN of these high-level regional agreements is to calm the “noodle bowl” effect of small, overlapping FTAs. As common frameworks, RCEP and TPP are expected to help unify the trade standards in ASEAN’s other FTAs. However, recent studies, including a working paper from the Asian Development Bank, have expressed concerns that the two FTAs may affect ASEAN solidarity and hinder its internal economic cooperation and integration.

The current TPP talks include just four ASEAN member states: Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam. Some ASEAN members have shown reluctance to join the talks because of the demanding requirements for regulatory convergence in areas such as intellectual property rights (IPR), state-owned enterprises, and competition. Moreover, strict entry requirements make the agreement less attractive. For example, newcomers will have to negotiate with all incumbents on a bilateral basis before they can join, which will significantly prolong the negotiation period and increase their negotiation costs.

The absence of six ASEAN member states from the TPP talks poses a possible threat to the internal economic integration of ASEAN. For example, within the TPP there is the issue of ASEAN’s regulatory coordination of IPR. Due to large development gaps among its 10 members, harmonizing the IPR provisions is a tough task for ASEAN. TPP’s demanding requirements could not only put a burden on the four ASEAN signatories, but also pose a challenge to cooperation within ASEAN, as it is likely to further widen the gap in IPR regulation among member countries.

Moreover, some scholars argue that TPP’s welfare effects on ASEAN are unpredictable. Recent studies show that the agreement favors the four ASEAN members already engaged in the current TPP talks. But the ASEAN economies that have not yet joined TPP talks, such as Thailand and Indonesia, will gain only modestly, or even experience some loss, as current trade partners like the U.S. and Japan divert some of their trade to TPP members such as Vietnam and Malaysia for preferable tariff and regulatory treatment.

It is also likely that TPP will influence the global value chain of some specific industries and sectors. For example, according to Chiou’s estimates (RIETI, 2014), Vietnam and Malaysia are likely to benefit from new electronics supply chains under TPP. But these benefits may come at a cost to other ASEAN members. Electronics sectors in Cambodia and Laos are expected to experience slower growth, or even some losses, as American and Japanese companies move their assembly lines to TPP members in Asia and Latin America. Moreover, Cambodia and Laos, two of the fastest-growing economies in Asia, may miss some chances to improve manufacturing productivity and advance sustainable development by participating in global supply chains.

Cambodia and Laos, two of the fastest-growing economies in Asia, may miss some chances to improve manufacturing productivity and advance sustainable development by participating in global supply chains. Photo/Conor Ashleigh

Because ASEAN is unlikely to exert much influence as an economic community on the current TPP talks, it has focused most of its efforts on the RCEP talks. RCEP is perceived as an expansion of the five FTAs that already exist between ASEAN and its six partners – China, India, Japan, South Korea and Australia, and New Zealand. Based on these five existing ASEAN-centered FTAs, ASEAN has sought to attain “functional centrality” in RCEP, whereby it would act as a platform for cooperation and have stronger negotiating power to secure its own interests in the talks. One of ASEAN’s goals is that RCEP take a more pragmatic approach to accepting less-developed ASEAN members. In this way, ASEAN expects that RCEP negotiations will support its efforts to improve ASEAN internal economic cooperation and integration. Compared to TPP, RCEP is expected to bring income gains that are more balanced among ASEAN member states.

To realize those gains, however, negotiations must yield results beyond the five existing FTAs between ASEAN and its six trade partners. But here the talks face challenges from both ASEAN members and non-members. For example, with huge differences between the existing FTAs, the tariff elimination coverage of RCEP is currently targeted at 90 percent, with all five FTAs to be adjusted accordingly. However, if India, with the lowest commitment to elimination (78.8 percent), cannot meet this objective by the end of 2015, the RCEP talks will likely lower the target to achieve consensus. This will reduce ASEAN’S economic gains from RCEP, because the tariff elimination coverage will not significantly improve the current FTAs for ASEAN.

There are other divergent interests within ASEAN, among which security concerns about China are the most significant source of division over RCEP. With the escalation of South China Sea disputes between China and several ASEAN members over the past decade, the deterioration of diplomatic relations has put a strain on ASEAN and China’s joint efforts at economic integration.

ASEAN’s Role in FTA Negotiations

In general, the outcomes of both FTAs will largely depend on the quality and breadth of negotiations by ASEAN as a unified group. Regarding the TPP, ASEAN should voice its preference for a more inclusive approach for future TPP talks. Including all ten ASEAN member states in the talks will help narrow the development gaps among ASEAN members and facilitate the future efforts at ASEAN economic integration. To strengthen its negotiating power in the RCEP talks, ASEAN’s priority should be to improve its own institutional structure to unify interests and actions among member states. In addition, ASEAN should be an active coordinator between the two regional initiatives, facilitating the co-existence of TPP and RCEP and paving the way to a larger-scale trade framework in the Asia-Pacific region.

Jingyang Chen is a 2016 masters candidate in international finance at Johns Hopkins University, and a recent intern with The Asia Foundation’s Economic Development Program in Bangkok. She can be reached at jchen193@jhu.edu. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author, not those of The Asia Foundation.

As landmark November elections approach, Myanmar is experiencing its most intensive armed conflicts in decades, particularly in the country’s north, where a handful of ceasefires and informal arrangements for local autonomy had maintained stability since the early 1990s. Meanwhile, in the east of the country, ceasefires with numerous ethnic armed groups have brought a degree of stability, and have led to negotiations for a nationwide ceasefire agreement including some of the groups still at war. It is hoped that this nationwide agreement will lay the basis for a political dialogue that will lead to a renegotiation of the country’s political system.

Today, rural and mountainous areas in much of Myanmar are a patchwork of ethnic minority regions where multiple actors make overlapping territorial and governance claims. Photo/Nick Freeman

But while some of these new ceasefires have brought respite to local communities, allowing greater freedom of movement and reducing human rights abuses, their failure to establish clear territorial arrangements remains a source of instability and a hindrance to good governance and inclusive economic development. A brand new Asia Foundation report, Ethnic Armed Conflict and Territorial Administration in Myanmar, examines the local administration systems of armed subnational groups and how they relate to the central government.

Ethnic armed conflicts in Myanmar are as old as the country itself, having erupted in the same year as independence, 1948, in disputes over the country’s first constitution. These disputes, mostly over the degree of autonomy that would be afforded to various ethnic states, sprang from a much longer history within Myanmar of distinct cultural and linguistic groups with separate forms of political organization.

Today, rural and mountainous areas in much of Myanmar are a patchwork of ethnic minority regions where multiple actors make overlapping territorial and governance claims. In dozens of territories, ethnic armed groups have much deeper relations with local communities than the state does; in many cases, they have been the only administrative authorities in these regions in the country’s history. The largest and best organized of these groups have well-developed bureaucracies that provide relatively robust social services such as health and education, often with support from international aid agencies. The role that these groups play in the future of the country will be central to the achievement of peace, and to long-term governance reforms in Myanmar.

While stopping short of secessionist demands, the attempts of these ethnic groups to achieve autonomy through military resistance have been met with further centralization and militarization of the state, creating a vicious security cycle. These conflicts have become increasingly antagonistic since the non-violent Federal Movement began in the early 1960s, leading the military to seize power, and to announce just days later that “the issue of federalism [is] the most important [reason] for the coup.” This paved the way for almost 50 years of military rule, during which armed conflict continued nonstop in Myanmar’s non-Bamar regions, as successive regimes further centralized all functions of government and ethnic armed actors augmented autonomous enclaves in their areas.

The ongoing failure of Myanmar to establish constitutional arrangements that reflect – and thus are able to regulate and utilize – the actual power relations and political systems that exist in contested areas remains a fundamental source of state fragility. Under the present constitution, local government bodies enjoy very little formal autonomy and remain under the firm control of the military-led Ministry of Home Affairs’ General Administration Department. In practice, however, ethnic armed actors without official power-sharing agreements have continued to govern wide swathes of rural territory through largely informal arrangements.

Although some groups have depended on the use of guerilla warfare to defend their territories, many have entered into ceasefires or alliances with the state over the years in order to secure tolerated or even highly accommodated roles in local governance. None of these informal accommodations have been enshrined in law or the constitution, however, leading to an acute disconnect between the structure of subnational administration that exists on paper and the realities that exist on the ground. Successive Myanmar governments have seemingly envisioned tolerance of armed actors’ governance roles as a temporary expedient, to be discarded when centrally conceived state designs are implemented. These efforts have failed, however, and the result has been an extremely complex patchwork of armed governance actors that leaves these regions open to recurring armed conflicts.

In the long term, sustainable peace and the successful reform of governance systems in Myanmar will require a political settlement among parties to conflict that establishes formal arrangements for subnational administration in ethnic areas. To be effective, these arrangements must reflect the actual power relations and systems of authority that exist in the contested areas, rather than the centralized order envisioned – but never actualized – by successive governments. This will not be achieved, however, by simply granting official powers to all actors that can demonstrate military capability. What is needed is a political pact among those parties to conflict who are truly committed to building a stable and peaceful union, and who are willing to demilitarize the political sphere once compromises can be made.

In the absence of such a pact, Myanmar’s conflict-affected areas will remain both fragile and hard to understand. Local governance actors, civil society, and the international community have all expressed the need for a better understanding of the political geography in these areas, and for evidence-based guidance on how to strengthen local governance, improve access to services, and provide space for inclusive economic development, all within the context of the peace process and the country’s process of reform.

To address this need, The Asia Foundation has begun a broader research program exploring the complexities of governance and social service delivery in contested areas to build understanding and provide policy guidance to all stakeholders. The program is conducting extensive outreach to governance actors in Myanmar as well as national and international aid actors, and, along with last year’s report, Ethnic Conflict and Social Services in Myanmar’s Contested Regions, the new Ethnic Armed Conflict and Territorial Administration in Myanmar marks the beginning of a dedicated program of research into the complexities of governance and social service delivery in parts of Myanmar where state control remains contested. Future discussion papers and briefings will be available online.

Kim Jolliffe is the author of Ethnic Armed Conflict and Territorial Administration in Myanmar, and a consultant to The Asia Foundation. He can be reached at spcm88@gmail.com. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author, not those of The Asia Foundation.

The village of Tanou lies in a quiet corner of Cambodia, about 13 kilometers down a dusty road off National Highway 1 as you head towards the Mekong Delta from Phnom Penh. Trees provide a canopy of shade for most of the way to the village, beating back the blazing sun and screening the vast, partially flooded rice paddies that stretch to the horizon on either side.

This week, Books for Asia and its Cambodian partners announced a first-of-its-kind, digital library pilot project called Let’s Read! Photo/Wendy Rockett

A single electrical line is strung along the edge of the road. The poles that carry it are built of concrete, protecting it from the flooded landscape of the next monsoon season. This solitary line is the village’s one source of electricity, and it only works part of the time.

But it is the villagers of Tanou that make this a special place.

Tanou Primary School was recently offered donated tablet computers to help the teachers teach and help the students learn. Despite the obvious hurdles – a lack of electricity, and new, modern methods of teaching that can be a challenge in small villages like this – Tanou Primary School pooled its resources and added solar panels to the school so they could take full advantage of the new tablets.

This story is not a common one in developing Asia, where spending per pupil is often significantly lower than in many other parts of the world, and local communities rarely have the means to supplement these small sums, making opportunities for new books, tools, and resources relatively unheard of.

The organization where I work, The Asia Foundation’s Books for Asia program, and others have tried to fill this resource gap by donating books and educational materials. These programs can produce remarkable results: Books for Asia, for example, estimates that its donations to 21 countries reach nine million readers each year. But while these donations of books and printed materials are highly valued by the readers and institutions that receive them, they are difficult to carry out because of the significant costs of printing and of transportation to remote areas.

E-books, on the other hand, require no transportation and no printing. Although the initial cost of hardware such as tablets and e-readers can be high, the cost of delivering additional e-books is nearly zero. Providing schools with e-books can dramatically increase the number of books children have access to.

This week, Books for Asia and its Cambodian partners announced a first-of-its-kind, digital library pilot project called Let’s Read! Let’s Read! works with five schools and two mobile libraries to put an entire digital library into the hands of children. The library lives on an Android-based app, created by the nonprofit Library for All, that has been adapted for Khmer, the local language.

The challenge for this project and others like it is to match this vision of a digital future with the reality on the ground today. Getting the community enthusiastic enough to support the program and having local expertise on the ground are critical. This is what makes the village of Tanou such a special case, and this is why Books for Asia is working closely with local partners Kampuchean Action for Primary Education, Sipar, and the Cambodia chapter of the International Board on Books for Young People to find schools and communities that are looking for innovative solutions, and to make sure that the technology is not overly burdensome and that the content of the library is appropriate and useful.

In working closely with local partners and responding to the needs of local communities, Books for Asia hopes that the Let’s Read! pilot project will provide a model for future digital library projects throughout Cambodia and across developing Asia.

You can be part of Let’s Read! Asia – A Digital Library and join us to deliver an entire library to the hands of underserved children and communities. Please help get the word out and contribute to Books for Asia’s first ever crowdfunding campaign, on Indiegogo, September 8 – October 9.

Kyle Barker is assistant director of Books for Asia. He can be reached at kyle.barker@asiafoundation.org. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author, not those of The Asia Foundation.

On August 13, the Philippine polling organization Social Weather Stations (SWS) observed its 30th anniversary with the publication of Filipino Public Opinion on the Bangsamoro Basic Law and the Mamasapano Incident. The report is based on the results of nationwide surveys in March and June, and a February survey in Mindanao, supported by The Asia Foundation.

Since the resumption of peace talks in 2011 between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the Foundation has been collaborating with SWS to measure public attitudes towards the peace agreements, along with related issues such as perceptions of Bangsamoro as an identity, views on Islam and Christianity, support for constitutional amendments, and attitudes towards public institutions, ethnic groups, and foreign countries.

Even as nationwide sentiment turned negative, the residents of areas directly affected still approved of the peace agreements. Photo/Karl Grobl

The March nationwide survey and the February poll in Mindanao came roughly a month after the deadly Mamasapano incident, a government operation to capture two alleged terrorists, Basit Usman and Zulkifli Bin Hir, that tragically turned into a bloody firefight between the Special Action Forces of the Philippine National Police and elements of the MILF and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters. Forty-four Special Action Force members, 17 MILF fighters, and five civilians died in the fighting.

In national surveys conducted by SWS from December 2012 to June 2014, nearly half of respondents approved of the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro (FAB), the peace agreement signed by MILF and the government in October 2012. Those favoring the FAB outnumbered those opposed by a 22-point margin in December 2012 and March 2013, and 26 points in March 2014. Although support for the FAB declined in June 2014, supporters still outnumbered opponents by 16 points.

In the wake of the Mamasapano incident, however, the March 2015 survey found that just 23 percent supported the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL), the draft bill to implement the Framework Agreement, submitted to Congress in September 2014. The June survey, less than a month after the BBL was approved for plenary debate in the House of Representatives, found just a one-point rebound in public support for the Law.

In Mindanao, on the other hand, separate February results from the projected core territories of the proposed Bangsamoro region consistently registered net approval of the Framework Agreement and the BBL, even after Mamasapano. Thus, even as nationwide sentiment turned negative, the residents of areas directly affected still approved of the peace agreements.

Public opinion polls play an important role in policy discourse in the Philippines. The news media regularly conduct informal polls and surveys on social concerns, which they share with public officials, and they draw a constant stream of opinion from social media. Nationwide surveys measure public confidence and rate the performance of the national administration and key government institutions.

SWS pollsters interviewing respondents in the field.

In this superheated environment, scientifically rigorous opinion polling has an important public role to play. SWS regularly shares its survey results with the Third Party Monitoring Team, which monitors the implementation of the peace agreements between MILF and the government. The polls have been an important tool for promoting the peace process by increasing public understanding of the peace agreements, the BBL, and key issues such as the creation of a Bangsamoro police force. Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has cited the March SWS survey to argue that the Filipino people still prefer peaceful negotiations to military action against the MILF, despite a 17-point decline in support for negotiations after the Mamasapano incident – from 62 percent in March 2014 to 45 percent in March 2015. Teresita Quintos Deles, presidential adviser on the peace process, has called those results an “affirmation” of the need to continue the peace process.

With the latest survey results showing the BBL in apparent limbo, careful attention to public perception may help peace negotiators and advocates find the best way forward in building public support for the peace process. At the SWS publication launch, Mohagher Iqbal, chair of the Bangsamoro Transition Commission and the MILF peace panel, praised the SWS for “putting science into public opinion,” and for giving a voice, both to the ordinary people of the Philippines and to the Bangsamoro people, who can now be heard, he said, by the rest of the country. Based on the February SWS results showing majority support for the BBL in the Bangsamoro core territories, Iqbal’s counterpart from the government, Miriam Coronel-Ferrer, called on Congress to recognize the voices of the “people from the margins,” the people of the Bangsamoro, as the ones who will be most affected by the legislators’ decision on the BBL.

Christian Hope Reyes is an assistant program officer for The Asia Foundation in the Philippines. She can be reached at christianhope.reyes@asiafoundation.org. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author, not those of The Asia Foundation.

“Now it’s quite obvious, because so many nations have developed incredibly fast – I mean, the South Koreans are 390 times richer that their grandparents were in the 1950s.”

What is the theme of this year’s Development Cooperation Report?

The theme is very simple: what are the conditions under which you can create coalitions of the willing for global purposes. “Coalition of the willing” – we think it’s a beautiful term; we should revive it, because there are so many issues which cannot be resolved by individual nations or companies or by the present UN or other global bodies. It comes from the very firm conviction that, yes, governments are crucial, yes, private businesses and non-governmental organizations are crucial, but we will be able to move much more rapidly ahead if we are able to create coalitions for action, coalitions of the willing.

This year’s Report arrives just a couple of weeks before the Sustainable Development Goals summit in New York. Is this just a coincidence? What have we learned from the Millennium Development Goals that we can apply to the SDGs?

To me, the number one lesson is that it’s all about getting the policies right. If you look to the amazing success stories of development, those nations that jumped ahead at amazing speed, it’s about getting those basic policies right. I mean, take the biggest of all global examples: if Deng Xiao Ping had not taken power in China in 1978, if the Gang of Four had remained in power in China, China would still have remained poor. With simply the change of political leadership, you could try another completely different path; and wherever you go – to African nations like Ethiopia, Asian nations like Korea or Malaysia, or to Brazil or Turkey – wherever you go, it’s about political leadership, getting the main policies right, mobilizing and believing in the market and the private sector. These are the general conditions for moving ahead. Money helps, but it is a complete misunderstanding that money is the most important issue.

That’s a very strong statement: “It’s a complete misunderstanding that money is the most important issue.”

Take a very, very simple story. When Lee Kwan Yew became the prime minister of Singapore in the 1960s, the GDP per capita of Singapore was somewhere in the range of 500 US dollars. Now it’s approaching 60 thousand US dollars per capita – this in the lifetime of one man. No one has claimed that that was because Singapore had more money than any other nation. It was about getting major political decisions right, creating a developing state at the core, believing in market forces, and keeping trust in education. These are key elements of the success of that one nation.

If you want to discuss this further, I can give you another example. The OECD just provided statistics for education in the world, and what is an enormous surprise is that there’s a very limited correlation between the money spent and the educational results. True, there is a slight tendency that if you spend more money on education you get better results. Anything else would be a surprise. But to provide another Asian example, Vietnam is now having better results for their 15-year-olds in school than the United States of America, or indeed my nation Norway, and everyone knows that is not because the Vietnamese are spending more money on education than the US or Norway. It’s about policies, ambitions, aspirations in society, and other aspects. So, again, money helps. We need to provide money for development, but it’s much more important to get the right policies.

How is the landscape of development cooperation changing? Are there different players, different problems, or even a different scale of work?

Still, of course, most of the aid is provided by the historical aid providers – basically North America, Japan, and Europe. But what is new is that there are new kids on the block. China is a major provider of aid. So are Arab nations. And the big news is that the vast majority of nations in the world in the next decade will be both providers and recipients at the same time. You will have a small group of African nations that will remain just recipients. You will have a few, like the US and Norway, that will remain just providers. But Mexico, Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia, China, they’re all both providers and recipients at the same time. So that is the news.

The other news, of course, is that when it comes to aid, a number of private institutions – and Bill Gates’s foundation is the biggest example, but there are many others – are providing more money than states.

And adding to this, of course, is the realization that aid is an important tool for development, but taxes and private investment are much more important. When it comes to education, for instance, close to 99 percent of all education in the developing world is provided for by taxes, not by global aid. Taxes are absolutely crucial for development.

Development partnerships can involve developing and developed countries, governments at all levels, civil society, and the private sector. Where are the thorniest challenges in 2015? What are the hardest partnerships to make work?

We are still far away from making real partnership with the private sector. Very often it’s a public-sector conversation about the private sector, rather than a real partnership. We still spend a lot of effort in the global system quarreling about non-issues. Whenever there is a global conference, both developed and developing nations want to score political points on symbolic issues of no real value for the people out there. So we need at least to reduce quarrels about non-issues and have a real conversation with the private sector.

Of course, the overall political climate in the world is essential. At the core of that is the relationship between the United States and China. Everything making that relationship smoother will help resolve whatever issues there may be; whether it’s the environment, or education, or peacemaking, a good relationship between the US and China is at the core.

The Development Cooperation Reports seems to read very much as a handbook for how to do it right. Is that a fair assessment?

There is no handbook, of course, but what is new is that there is an enormous amount of evidence as to what works and what does not work for development. When development assistance started, maybe at the time of John F. Kennedy and the Peace Corps, in the very early days, it was not that easy, not obvious, what works. Now it’s quite obvious, because so many nations have developed incredibly fast – I mean, the South Koreans are 390 times richer that their grandparents were in the 1950s – we know what works. To cut it very short: you need a development-oriented state; it helps if the top leaders of that state are not personally corrupt, make the right political decisions – that’s number one. Secondly, you must believe in the market and the private sector – no nation has taken off without the private sector. And thirdly, education must be a key priority if you really want to develop. There are other aspects, for sure. I mean, you should not do it in the same way everywhere. But these are key elements of development wherever it has happened up to this point.

Erik Solheim is chair of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee. He can be reached at erik.solheim@oecd.org. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the interviewee, not those of The Asia Foundation.