Deakin Asia-Pacific Research Network

Australia and South Korea have been targets of China's coercive statecraft in recent years, and foreign policymakers in both countries need to develop strategies to combat it. This project will bring together experts and business leaders from both countries to exchange views on coercive statecraft, which exploits asymmetric economic interdependence and vulnerability to further China's foreign-policy goals. The investigators will produce a detailed report on China's use of coercive statecraft against South Korea and Australia, based on evidence gathered through interviews and a public forum. The report will suggest options for foreign policymakers in both countries seeking to combat this form of statecraft in the decade ahead. The findings will also be conveyed to the public through op-eds, presentations, and to scholars of Indo–Pacific politics through an academic article.

In June 2023 at Deakin Downtown, the research team organised the workshop on South Korea and Australian Responses to China’s New Statecraft in an Age of Great-Power Rivalry: Past and Possible Futures.

Over the last two decades, a wide range of consultative and deliberative meetings have been introduced in Asia. From the reinvigoration of traditional village deliberation to the introduction of western models of Deliberative Polling®, public participation is burgeoning. Nevertheless, the scholarly work on Asian deliberative democracy is lacking. Although there is a growing literature on some Asian countries, the Asian story of deliberative democracy has seldom been heard as a whole. This research project is the first to take a comparative perspective on the emergence and evolution of deliberative practices in Asia, and their relationship with democracy. It analyses the main motivations for introducing public deliberation in different political regimes, the effectiveness of public deliberation in Asia, and whether deliberative democratic tools, in particular the Deliberative Polling technique, can apply to all societies and cultures regardless of their political and cultural differences. In doing so, it examines the prospect of deliberative democracy in Asia.

Outcome of this project:

Deliberative Democracy in Asia, Editors: Baogang He, Michael Breen and James Fishkin, London: Routledge, published August 2021.

North Korea has proven to be largely impervious to change, across the life of various US administrations. Different governments have attempted to address both human rights and security issues in relation to the North, but no administration can point to discernible change. This project contributes to new thinking and concrete proposals for overcoming the lack of progress in North Korea, by taking China’s perspective much more seriously. China, as a neighbour and erstwhile ally of North Korea, has a large stake in bringing out change in the DPRK. China has expressed its opposition to the North’s possession of nuclear weapons, and it has – more quietly – urged the Kim regime to address socio-economic issues, especially the living standards of its people. At the same time. China has made clear its distaste for the approaches offered by the US and South Korea. In this project, we analyse the variety of proposals that Chinese scholars and think-tankers have made for addressing security and human-rights issues in North Korea. In doing so we seek to ascertain to the degree to which China’s proposals are based on its own direct experience in security-sector reform and socio-economic development, and the degree to which China’s proposals are motivated by an attempt to differentiate itself from the dominant US (and South Korean) approaches.

Outcome of this project:

China and North Korea’s Human Rights, Editors: Baogang He, David Hundt, Chengxin Pan, London: Routledge, published November 2021.

Context

In the 1940s and 50s, many Asian countries attempted to build federal systems. Federalism was seen as a way of achieving a form of political union between India and Pakistan and between Malaysia and Singapore. This federalism imposed by the British failed, with partition between India and Pakistan and secession of Singapore from Malaysia.

Despite the earlier failures, there have been recent proposals for using federalism to address multiple identity questions in many Asian countries; for example, in the Philippines, China, Myanmar, Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, where there has been resistance amongst ethnic and religious minorities and secessionist movements.

Our research

By looking at these historical efforts and contemporary challenges, our research extends knowledge of comparative political institutions and government in Asian countries.

We do this by investigating how decentralised governance arrangements and hybrid federalism can maintain national unity while achieving sufficient autonomy in ethnically distinct sub-national regions, as well as further democratisation and human rights.

These are substantial issues in traditional and cutting-edge contemporary literature, with enormous national and policy interest for particular Asian countries.

Outputs include:

2023

• Comparative Federalism in Asia (Baogang He, Michael Breen and Laura Allison-Reumann, June 2023, Routledge).

2017

• ‘The Origins of Holding-Together Federalism: Nepal, Myanmar and Sri Lanka’, Publius: The Journal of Federalism, Michael Breen, DOI: https://academic.oup.com/publius/article/48/1/26/3078065.
• Blending accommodation and moderation through federal constitutional change in Nepal, Myanmar and Sri Lanka, Michael Breen, paper presented to the IPSA Colloquium on Democratization and Constitutional Engineering in Divided Societies, Nicosia, Cyprus, June 2017.

2016

• Contested Ideas of Regionalism in Asia, Baogang He, London: Routledge.
• In Search for a Just World in Asia, Baogang He, Singapore: World Scientific Publisher.
• 'Hybrid Federalism in India, Sri Lanka and Nepal', Baogang He and Laura Allison-Reumann, in Federalism and Decentralization: Perceptions for Political and Institutional Reforms, Singapore: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung.

Scholars from Deakin have been working on various aspects of Asian federalism and multiculturalism. In recent years three international workshops have been convened; two in Singapore and one in Nepal.

The workshops involved academics and practitioners from across Asia, including Malaysia, Nepal, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. The main purpose of the workshops was to test and further develop key concepts and lessons for federalism in Asia, such as how democracy interacts with the federalisation process.

The workshop in Nepal also engaged political actors, policy makers and the research team to discuss options for the new federal constitution of Nepal.

Courses and units that focus on the Asia-Pacific region include:

• Master of International and Community Development
• Asian language courses, available at the undergraduate level, including specific diplomas, and postgraduate level, in Chinese, Arabic and Indonesian.
  Find out more about Chinese language courses
  Find out more about Arabic language courses
  Find out more about Indonesian language courses
• Study tours, including the India Law study tour as part of the Master of Business Administration (International), and the Japanese Politics, Society and Culture study tour, which is offered as part of the Bachelor of International Studies.

Individual Asia-focused units include:

• AIS203 Study Tour: Japanese Politics, Society and Culture
• AIC387 Advanced Chinese for Business Purposes C
• AIC389 Advanced Chinese for Business Purposes D
• AIR202 Australia and the Changing Asia-Pacific
• AIP209 Asylum Challenges in Australia and Asia
• AIR701 - China and the World
• AIR728 - Global Political Economy.

Deakin offers the innovative Global Citizenship Program, which is designed to engage participants with a variety of global programs and activities that can build up their skills in areas that are important in the global workplace and global community.

The Global Citizenship Program is aimed at supplementing students' studies at Deakin, and involves a combination of international activities such as international study experiences and participation in internationally focused units.

Find out more about the program

Deakin provides information and advice for prospective international students to make informed choices about where to study, and the options available to those choosing to pursue their interests at Deakin University.

A number of international offices have been established in the Asian region and information sessions for prospective students are regularly held in major regional centres.

Find out more about international students at Deakin

Deakin’s Asia-Pacific expertise has received further recognition with the appointment of Deakin academics as editors of two prominent regional journals. Associate Professor David Hundt took the role of Editor in Chief for Asian Studies Review from 2018.

Asian Studies Review is a multidisciplinary journal of contemporary and modern Asia. The journal sets out to showcase high-quality scholarship on the modern histories, cultures, societies, languages, politics and religions of Asia through publishing research articles, book reviews and review articles.

The Australian Institute of International Affairs announced the appointment of Professor Baogang He, Associate Professor David Hundt and Dr Danielle Chubb of Deakin University as the new co-editors of Australia in World Affairs in 2017.

The AIIA has been publishing Australia in World Affairs since 1950 to document Australia’s foreign policy and examine Australia’s role in the world. The Deakin team edited the volume Australia in World Affairs, 2016-2020: A Return to Great Power Rivalry, scheduled to be published in 2023 by Cambridge University Press.

In August 2017, the Deakin Asia-Pacific Research Network, together with the Alfred Deakin Institute, held an international workshop called ‘Global Perspectives on the One Belt One Road’.

The workshop brought together leading scholars and practitioners from across Asia, including China and Pakistan, to examine the historical and contemporary engagement between China and Australia, and other countries in the region, and the driving forces, opportunities, obstacles and limits of cooperation.

The One Belt and One Road (OBOR) initiative was first articulated in 2013 by President Xi Jinping. The OBOR aims to boost connectivity and commerce between China and 65 other countries, connecting city to city, country to country, and continent to continent. It also aims to transform China from 'world factory' to 'world builder', by establishing its own or hybrid global production networks and trade routes. The OBOR initiative increasingly impacts global investment and global infrastructure building. However, the long-term impact is uncertain, with many risks along the way.

Currently, the study of the OBOR is narrowly China-centric and, in Australia, preoccupied with national security considerations. Day one of this conference took a global perspective of the OBOR, in particular a Global South perspective concerning the impact of the OBOR on Global South countries and their responses, desires and demands. It examined the origin, evolution and current state of affairs of the OBOR, and investigated how the OBOR has impacted domestic politics in Iran, Pakistan, South Korea and Myanmar, on the politics of ASEAN, and on the global supply chain and politics of regulation.

Day two of the conference placed the Pacific Islands countries in focus. With the rise of China, the Chinese central government, several provincial governments (e.g. Guangdong), and Chinese private companies are writing a new history of Chinese engagement with the region. In 2015, China proclaimed that the OBOR will extend to the Pacific Islands region. China is now the major development assistance donor to Fiji, and the second biggest in Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, and Papua New Guinea. The main question is: it is possible for Australia and China to develop collaboration, or is such collaboration an impossible mission given the asymmetric power relations between Australia and China and the increasing strategic competition in the region?