In Asia: Weekly Insight and Features from Asia

On September 8, the Charities Aid Foundation released the first-ever “World Giving Index” (WGI). The Index ranks 153 countries according to answers interviewees gave to three questions: amount of money donated, amount of time volunteered, and whether or not those interviewed “helped a stranger” in the month preceding the interviews. While one may well question the reliability of the rankings and should not draw any sweeping conclusions from them, one of the most striking outcomes was China’s extremely low ranking: China came in 147th out of 153 countries surveyed. Perhaps even more significantly, only 11 percent of those interviewed in China said they had made any financial donations to charity. This percentage is anywhere from 5 to 7 times less than the top 50 countries ranked in the index.

According to official Chinese sources, in 2009, 121 of China’s biggest philanthropists donated a combined total of $272 million to charity. This figure is less than the amounts donated by any number of individual family foundations in the U.S. – and that excludes the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

This is particularly noteworthy considering China now has 477,000 millionaires (in U.S. dollars), trailing only the U.S., Germany, and Japan, and second only to the U.S. in total number of billionaires.

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Large-scale labor migration and related social tensions have long been issues of concern in China. Lack of integration of hundreds of millions of rural farmers into urban “receiving” cities, left-behind families in “sending” villages, and harsh working conditions for migrants have been common problems here for many years now. More recently, a so-called “new generation” of migrant workers has emerged and is driving a shift in priorities and strategies for assisting a more diverse and dynamic migrant population.

A new, younger generation of migrant workers in China aspire to move beyond the factory floor to more ambitious careers, such as managers and entrepreneurs.

This new generation of migrants, which accounts for nearly half of the estimated 200 million migrant workers in China, is younger (early 20s), more educated (many have completed high school and/or vocational school), and more urban (many “migrants” have actually lived for most of their lives in cities). Consequently, these migrants are more cognizant and demanding of the rights to which they are entitled, including labor contracts, and the benefits and services to which their urban peers have access, such as healthcare and low-income housing options.

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In May 2010, the U.S. Government unveiled Feed the Future (FtF) as its global initiative to combat hunger and food security. And, at last week’s Millennium Development Goals Summit in New York, President Obama declared better agriculture production as a way to help developing nations on the long-term path to prosperity. Thus, President Barack Obama made good on the agreement made by G8 leaders in July 2009 to “act with the scale and urgency needed to achieve sustainable global food security.”

Whether or not President Obama's Feed the Future program is a success will depend largely on whether the U.S. Administration pays close attention not only to agricultural productivity, but also effective governance, which is critical to achieving food security. Photo by Karl Grobl.

President Obama’s pledge of at least $3.5 billion for agricultural development and food security over three years helped to leverage some $18.5 billion from other donors in support of a common approach to achieve sustainable food security – an approach that builds upon the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and the Accra Agenda for Action.

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Nearly four years after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Accord marked a ceasefire between the government of Nepal and the Maoists, many marginalized groups still remain on the fringes of the decision-making process. Across political, ethnic, and social divides, Nepal’s young people are finding it particularly difficult to make their priorities matter in the halls of power.

Although 60 percent of Nepal's population is believed to be below 25 years old, the youth still struggle to be heard in policy-making decisions. Above, young people gather to discuss Nepal's constitution in town hall meetings organized by The Asia Foundation.

And given that 60 percent of Nepal’s population is believed to be below 25 years of age, the youth represent a critical constituency for ensuring a successful peace process and developing a legitimate constitution. If the current government is able to meaningfully engage the growing youth population, it could mean the difference between sustaining the achievements of the pro-democracy movement of 2006 and allowing the country to descend once again into violence and conflict.

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Nepal has endured two decades of political turbulence, a Maoist insurgency that cost 13,000 lives, a constitutional process that has stalled numerous times, and widespread poverty, joblessness, and other challenges. But amidst the national-level political ferment, an important problem has been overlooked, says George Varughese, Asia Foundation country representative in Nepal. Watch this new video where Varughese explains why local governance and local institutions are critical to Nepal’s future.

On Friday, September 24, President Barack Obama will meet in New York City with 10 leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), including eight heads of state, for the second U.S.-ASEAN Leaders’ Meeting, also known as the U.S.-ASEAN Summit. For much of the past two decades, critics in Southeast Asia said the United States treated ASEAN members as a set of bilateral relationships, often with benign neglect or indifference. In addition, after Sept. 11, 2001, many Southeast Asians criticized the U.S. for viewing the region through the uni-dimensional prism of terrorism.

Since coming to office, the Obama administration has shown it wishes to engage with the countries of Southeast Asia through ASEAN, rather than as 10 bilateral relationships. And while terrorism remains an important issue in U.S.-ASEAN relations there are numerous other important issues that will be addressed in New York – from maritime, energy, food, and water security to economic cooperation, climate change, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.   

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Almost three months after taking office on June 30, President Noynoy Aquino is this week making his first trip out of the Philippines, traveling to New York to address the UN General Assembly and to attend the 2nd U.S.-ASEAN Leaders’ Meeting, also known as the U.S.-ASEAN Summit, on September 24. He will round out his U.S. trip in California’s San Francisco Bay Area, where he plans to meet local business leaders, interact with the Filipino-American community, and address the gala dinner of the newly-established Philippine Development Foundation.

President Aquino is not a keen traveler, famously lacking a valid passport when he assumed office. In this, as in so many things, he is styled as the opposite of his predecessor, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who was sharply criticized for traveling too much and for claiming her trips brought her country gains in aid, security, etc.

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The benefits of a connected and integrated Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are evident to many. In aviation, ASEAN is home to AirAsia, the world’s fastest growing airline in the past decade. To support this growth, ASEAN leaders have agreed to implement an open skies regime by 2015. In the Greater Mekong Sub-region, significant investments have been made in road infrastructure.

But connectivity in Maritime Southeast Asia remains a serious challenge. Thousands of scattered, small, and isolated islands face enormous barriers, such as high transport costs and poor access to local and regional markets that hamper both trade and tourism.

Source: REID Foundation Inc.

ASEAN is beginning to address these issues. In 2009, the ASEAN High Level Task Force on Connectivity was established to develop a “Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity,” which the Task Force will submit to the 17th ASEAN Summit in October 2010 in Hanoi as its flagship project.

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In a just-released paper from The Asia Foundation, chief economist and Economic Reform and Development Director Bruce Tolentino examines how reforms are shaped by the context of political decision-making, and how politics affect economic choice. This latest paper, the third in the Foundation’s new “Occasional Paper” series, sketches out the operational features of emerging political economy-based approaches to sectoral economic policy reform.

The paper traces some of the literature on the political economy analysis of reforms, outlines the international development community’s increasing recognition of the political economy aspects of economic governance, and identifies elements of operational reform approaches that move beyond disengaged political economy analysis toward on-the-ground implementation of political strategies in policy reform processes. Download the paper.

“Despite tremendous economic growth achieved over the past two decades,” says Asia Foundation Director of Economic Reform and Development Programs Bruce Tolentino, “hunger continues to beset much of Asia. Estimates show that there are 850 million hungry people globally.” This is a stubborn challenge for Asian governance, and future predicted population growth, dwindling land and water resources for agriculture, and significant uncertainties from climate change only increase the stakes. On September 30, The Asia Foundation and Give2Asia host an event in San Francisco to mark the release of a landmark report from the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) Task Force on Food Security and Sustainability in Asia and the Asia Society that examines the multiple factors contributing to Asia’s growing food insecurity. The paper lays out a strategy for the future that emphasizes the critical importance of rice as a source of nutrition, livelihoods, and environmental sustainability.

Speakers will include principal advisor on the task force Dr. Peter Timmer and prominent food security experts, IRII Head of Development in the Philippines Duncan Macintosh and President and CEO of the Rice Trader Jeremy Zwinger, in discussion with Dr. Tolentino, from 6-7:30 p.m. at The Asia Foundation in San Francisco.

Visit The Asia Foundation’s website to register and to learn more about the event.