tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/singapore-1613/articlesSingapore – The Conversation2024-03-21T14:35:28Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2238782024-03-21T14:35:28Z2024-03-21T14:35:28ZPangolins in Africa: expert unpacks why millions have been traded illegally and what can be done about it<p>Pangolins are fascinating creatures known for their unique appearance and distinctive scales. They are mammals belonging to the order Pholidota and are <a href="https://www.savepangolins.org/what-is-a-pangolin">native to Africa and Asia</a>. Due to their primary diet of ants and termites, pangolins are often referred to as “scaly anteaters”.</p>
<p>The African pangolin species are dispersed throughout southern, western, central and east Africa. </p>
<p>Pangolins face rapid declines across Asia and Africa, with all eight species classified as <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/facts/pangolins#:%7E:text=There%20are%20eight%20species%20of,bellied%E2%80%94are%20listed%20as%20vulnerable.">vulnerable, endangered</a>, or critically endangered. They are <a href="https://www.savepangolins.org/threats">threatened</a> by poaching and habitat loss, driven by the demand for their meat and scales.</p>
<p>Pangolins are the <a href="https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2023-02-17-operation-pangolin-launches-save-world-s-most-trafficked-wild-mammal">most trafficked wild mammal in the world</a>. <a href="https://davidshepherd.org/species/pangolins/trade-statement/">Their meat is considered a delicacy</a> in Asia while their scales are also used in traditional medicines, fetching huge sums on the black market. As many as <a href="https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2023-02-17-operation-pangolin-launches-save-world-s-most-trafficked-wild-mammal">8.5 million pangolins</a> are estimated to have been removed from the wild in west and central Africa for the illegal trade between 2014 and 2021. </p>
<p>The trade route analysis of pangolin trafficking <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2665910720300876">points to</a> Lagos as the main connection point both domestically and worldwide, including south-east Asian countries. Malaysia, Laos and Singapore also serve as key transit countries for pangolin-scale shipments from Nigeria.</p>
<p>China and Vietnam are the main <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2665910720300876">destinations for these illegal shipments</a>.</p>
<p>I am a zoologist who’s passionate about the environment and biodiversity conservation. I am also the founder and chair of Pangolin Conservation Guild Nigeria. In my view, effective protection, law enforcement and changes in consumer behaviour are necessary to address the complex drivers of poaching and trafficking.</p>
<h2>What makes pangolins special</h2>
<p>Pangolins are interesting for a number of reasons. </p>
<p><strong>Scales:</strong> Unlike any other mammals, they are covered with keratin scales. This adaptation is a defence against predators. The scales, <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/facts/pangolins">made of the same material as human fingernails</a>, provide armour-like protection as they curl into a ball when threatened, shielding their vulnerable underbelly. The scales can account for up to <a href="https://www.awf.org/blog/5-things-you-didn%E2%80%99t-know-about-pangolin">20% of a pangolin’s total body weight</a>. A pangolin’s scales are a reminder of the incredible diversity of adaptations in the natural world. </p>
<p><strong>Habitats:</strong> Pangolins, as a group, are also adaptable to different environmental conditions. Their habitats include tropical forests, dry woodlands and savannahs. Some pangolin species, like the white-bellied, are adept climbers and spend much of their time in the canopy, foraging for insects among the branches. These arboreal habits provide them with both food and shelter, as well as protection from ground-dwelling predators. Other pangolin species, such as the ground pangolins, live on the forest floor or in grasslands. They may dig burrows underground where they retreat for rest and safety, particularly during the heat of the day or to escape potential threats.</p>
<p><strong>Defence:</strong> The name “pangolin” <a href="https://www.wwf.org.uk/learn/fascinating-facts/pangolins">originates</a> from the Malay word <em>pengguling</em>, which translates to “rolling up”. They tuck in their head and limbs and curl into a tight ball when faced with danger, wrapping their body in a protective layer of overlapping scales. This has helped pangolins survive predators such as big cats, hyenas and humans. </p>
<p><strong>Diet:</strong> <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9686612/#:%7E:text=The%20food%20of%20pangolins%20in,feeding%20%5B15%2C16%5D.">Pangolins primarily feed on ants and termites</a>, making them essential players in controlling insect populations within their ecosystems. They find the insects using their keen sense of smell and their tongues – which are often longer than their bodies. These long tongues are coated with sticky saliva, allowing them to probe deep into ant and termite nests to extract their prey. Their strong claws are also well-suited for tearing open insect nests and breaking through hard soil to uncover hidden prey. Pangolins’ diets play a crucial role in maintaining the health and stability of their environments.</p>
<h2>Pangolins in Africa</h2>
<p>In west and central Africa, the giant pangolin is distributed in a variety of habitats, including primary and secondary forests, swamp forests and wooded savannahs. Temminck’s pangolin (<em>Smutsia temminckii</em>) is the <a href="https://africanpangolin.org/discover/temmincks-ground-pangolin/#:%7E:text=Smutsia%20temminckii,to%20date%20weighing%2019%20kg">most widely distributed African pangolin</a>, occurring mainly in southern and east Africa. The <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780128155073000083">black-bellied pangolin</a> (<em>Phataginus tetradactyla</em>) is an arboreal pangolin species, and occurs in west and central Africa. The <a href="https://pangolinsg.org/portfolio/white-bellied-pangolin/#:%7E:text=Distribution,%3B%20Togo%3B%20Uganda%3B%20Zambia">white-bellied pangolin</a> (<em>Phataginus tricuspis</em>) is the most frequently encountered pangolin in Africa. The white-bellied pangolin is <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S277281372200018X?via%3Dihub">found in north-central and south-western Nigeria</a>.</p>
<p>In Nigeria, pangolins are found in various habitats, including <a href="https://www.savepangolins.org/what-is-a-pangolin">forests, savannahs and grasslands</a>. Their distribution and abundance in Nigeria are uncertain, highlighting the need for further research and conservation efforts.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/400-000-african-pangolins-are-hunted-for-meat-every-year-why-its-time-to-act-111540">400,000 African pangolins are hunted for meat every year -- why it's time to act</a>
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<p>Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, serves as a hub for the illegal trade of pangolins. It is a transit route to Cameroon and is involved in shipments of pangolins from sub-Saharan Africa to Asia. Cameroon is at <a href="https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/04/peace-poaching-and-pangolins-central-africa">the centre of wildlife trafficking in central Africa</a>. It is both a source country of animal products as well as a transit route for contraband from neighbouring Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.</p>
<p>In 2022, Nigerian customs officials <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-67134651">seized</a> 1,613 tonnes of pangolin scales and arrested 14 people. In October 2023, Nigeria <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/nigeria-destroys-seized-pangolin-parts-deter-wildlife-trafficking-2023-10-17/">burned</a> four tonnes of seized pangolin scales, valued at US$1.4 million. Officials said this was the first time they had publicly destroyed seized wildlife products to discourage illegal trafficking. </p>
<h2>Why pangolin conservation is important</h2>
<p>Pangolin conservation is crucial for several reasons. </p>
<p>Firstly, pangolins play a vital role in ecosystems by controlling insect populations, particularly ants and termites, which helps maintain ecological balance. </p>
<p>They also contribute to soil health through their digging behaviour, which aerates the soil and promotes nutrient cycling.</p>
<p>Moreover, pangolins are indicators of ecosystem health. Their presence or absence can reflect the overall well-being of their habitats. Protecting pangolins helps safeguard biodiversity and the integrity of their ecosystems.</p>
<p>They also have cultural and economic value in many regions, contributing to ecotourism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223878/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Olajumoke Morenikeji is affiliated with the Pangolin Conservation Guild Nigeria, which she founded. The organisation educates and creates awareness on pangolin conservation, conducts scientific research, collaborates with relevant organisations, advises policymakers, and facilitates pangolin rescue, rehabilitation and release into protected forest areas. I also chair the West Africa region International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Species Survival Commission (SSC) Pangolin Specialist Group.</span></em></p>Pangolins are among the most trafficked and poached mammals in the world.Olajumoke Morenikeji, Professor Department of Zoology, University of IbadanLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2110632023-08-23T16:33:00Z2023-08-23T16:33:00ZProtecting endangered languages feels right, but does it really help people?<p>Headlines <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/16/linguists-language-culture-loss-end-of-century-sea-levels-rise">abound</a> with the <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25834430-800-the-unique-vanishing-languages-that-hold-secrets-about-how-we-think/">plight</a> of <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/we-will-save-this-one-desperate-effort-to-save-a-language-and-way-of-life-20190404-p51ar6.html">endangered</a> minority <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/pti-feed/story/more-than-40-languages-may-be-heading-for-extinction-officials-1172251-2018-02-18">languages</a> around the <a href="https://www.timeout.com/news/mapped-the-most-endangered-languages-in-the-world-right-now-033122">world</a>. Read a few of these and you’ll see some common themes: the rising number of languages dying worldwide, the distressing isolation of individual last speakers, and the wider cultural loss for humanity.</p>
<p>These stories often mention efforts to protect such languages. This is seen as a way to buttress their speakers’ sense of identity, to resist the grinding homogenisation of globalisation, and to set right minorities’ historical marginalisation. However, these stories tend to focus less on how such efforts materially help speakers of endangered languages. As I explore in a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/ijal.12463">peer-reviewed, open-access article</a>, such efforts sometimes help, sometimes harm, and sometimes they do both at once.</p>
<h2>Questions of identity</h2>
<p>Encouraging someone to keep speaking – or to learn anew – a shrinking minority language could certainly buttress his or her sense of identity. But when a bigger language is adopted somewhere, it doesn’t erase everything that came before. Often, intense contact between big and small languages leads to a fascinating new mixture – for example, <a href="https://hir.harvard.edu/sheng-in-kenya/">Sheng in Kenya</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.24.09mes">Tsotsitaal in South Africa</a> and <a href="https://www.okayafrica.com/journal-gbaye-ivorian-street-slang-nouchi/">Nouchi in Côte d'Ivoire</a>.</p>
<p>In other cases, such language contact results in something closer to the incoming language, a new localised dialect. But as <a href="https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/the-traces-that-we-cant-shift/">linguist Peter Trudgill argues</a>, this too can hold a highly local identity. In another study in Ghana, one <a href="https://doi.org/10.1075/eww.33.2.03ofo">research interviewee</a> says of the localised form of English: “I own this language that everyone speaks”. Similarly in Singapore, “Singlish” (a mix of English, Cantonese, Malay, and others) holds an <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2021.1997710">important identity function</a>. After all, these different new varieties are spoken nowhere else on earth.</p>
<p>These new contact-based vernaculars are globally unique, and many are spoken by disadvantaged minorities, but nobody calls for them to be celebrated or protected. Indeed, they are often looked down upon – for example, Singapore’s government has <a href="https://www.languagecouncils.sg/goodenglish/resources/grammar-rules/singaporean-blunders">a campaign to eradicate the “blunders” of Singlish</a>. Linguistically, though, these are just as fully structured as any other language. Perhaps it’s harder to romanticise something new than something old.</p>
<h2>Addressing historical wrongs</h2>
<p>The theme of righting historical wrongs among minority groups assumes they will somehow benefit from defence of their language. Sure enough, enabling a people to use their traditional language can <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1367006920920939">make them feel better about themselves</a>. But is it really <em>helping</em> them? Let’s take this one step at a time.</p>
<p>If a people lost their language after being oppressed by colonialism and then further trampled on by rampant globalism, they probably lost a whole lot more than language. Canadian researcher Chris Lalonde focused his work on health and well-being in Canada’s indigenous communities, and what he found was much more complicated. A <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1016/j.cogdev.2007.02.001">co-authored report</a> did find positive effects of increased fluency in their native languages, but here comes the most important – and politically most difficult – point. In a later analysis (chapter 30 of <a href="https://www.routledge.com/p/book/9781138690431">this book</a>), he and his colleagues showed that simply promoting language on its own – even language <em>and</em> indigenous culture – was not influential on a fundamental measure of well-being, suicide rates:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“While culture [and language are] important, it is the integration of social, family, education and training, job creation and other elements that bring cohesion to a community. Indigenous youth suicide must be addressed as a community by forming community cohesion.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Simply adding your ancestral language as a new school subject isn’t very helpful if your school is falling down, you’re not eating well, your people are <a href="https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/jr/oip-cjs/oip-cjs-en.pdf">disproportionately incarcerated</a>, or you don’t have adequate political representation. To think anything much can be solved just by performing CPR on a minority language is to ignore how complicated human society is, and how many different simultaneous needs we have.</p>
<h2>Details matter</h2>
<p>If it’s possible to intervene but not really help, is it also possible to intervene and cause harm? Let’s look at a couple of examples.</p>
<p>In Wales, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_language#Status">legal recognition of the Welsh language</a> has been momentous, countering centuries of denigration and decline. There have been significant benefits, but closer inspection reveals drawbacks as well.</p>
<p>Welsh is currently taught in schools across Wales, and that’s good news for families, be they Welsh- or English-speaking. Some schools use Welsh a bit, some a lot, and an <a href="https://statswales.gov.wales/Catalogue/Education-and-Skills/Schools-and-Teachers/Schools-Census/Pupil-Level-Annual-School-Census/Schools/schools-by-localauthorityregion-welshmediumtype">increasing number use only Welsh</a>. According to the 2021 census, only around <a href="https://www.gov.wales/welsh-language-wales-census-2021-html">20% of Wales’s population</a> (538,300) is fluent in Welsh and the government’s plan is to <a href="https://www.gov.wales/cymraeg-2050-welsh-language-strategy">reverse that decline</a> and reach 1 million speakers by 2050.</p>
<p>It’s an ambitious goal, and requires children from non-Welsh-speaking families to attend Welsh-medium schools. Sometimes parents actively choose this – indeed, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-63784681">it’s often prized</a> – while in other cases it’s the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/jun/20/storm-welsh-only-schools-minority-language">only option</a>. Either way, there are upsides and downsides.</p>
<p>On the one hand, students who leave school with Welsh proficiency go on to <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/1680990.stm">earn more on average</a> than their monolingual peers, at least within Wales. There is also cultural enrichment that comes with any additional language, and some studies have suggested bilinguals generally enjoy cognitive advantages in life, though the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000301">evidence is mixed</a>. But on the other hand, those who didn’t speak Welsh before entering a Welsh-medium school <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2012.706248">often struggle</a> and their grades can suffer. Overall, Welsh-medium schools report <a href="http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/27969/1/161206-pisa-2015-en.pdf">lower grades</a> than English-medium schools (page 120 of that linked report has some sobering detail), and this despite <a href="https://senedd.wales/writtenquestionsdocuments/answerstothewrittenassemblyquestionsforansweron13may2013(pdf,95kb)-13052013-246535/waq20130513-cymraeg.doc">receiving equal or higher funding</a>. </p>
<p>As is to be expected, Wales’s ambitious plan to substantially increase the use of Welsh brings with it many challenges. These include a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-politics-65639738">shortage of teachers fluent in Welsh</a>, reported <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2012.676622">tensions between Welsh- and English-medium students</a>, and difficulties accommodating <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/02667363.2023.2186835">children with additional learning needs</a>. Understanding and facing up to these and other challenges could enable a more accommodating and ameliorative approach.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Canada and French flags" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543798/original/file-20230821-17-crwynw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C15%2C2560%2C1686&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543798/original/file-20230821-17-crwynw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543798/original/file-20230821-17-crwynw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543798/original/file-20230821-17-crwynw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543798/original/file-20230821-17-crwynw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543798/original/file-20230821-17-crwynw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543798/original/file-20230821-17-crwynw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">While French remains a majority language in Quebec, the percentage of native speakers has fallen slightly despite numerous laws to protect and promote it.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2016-08_Canada_Quebec_Flags.jpg">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Another example is in Canada, where French is a minority language that has been <a href="https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/statistics-canada-to-release-2021-census-data-on-languages-today">declining for decades</a>. In Québec, French remains dominant, with just under 75% of residents having it as their native language, but the percentage has <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-proportion-of-french-speakers-in-canada-declines-everywhere-except/">fallen slightly over the past five years</a> despite muscular policies to promote its use.</p>
<p>Most recently, in 2022 the Québec Legislature passed <a href="https://www.publicationsduquebec.gouv.qc.ca/fileadmin/Fichiers_client/lois_et_reglements/LoisAnnuelles/en/2022/2022C14A.PDF">Bill 96</a>, which among other changes, <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/9739267/quebec-french-bill-96-changes/">requires civil servants</a> to exclusively use French for official speech and writing, with certain exceptions. While the government has said that the bill will not affect access to health care and social services in English, medical professionals and students have expressed serious concerns about the <a href="https://healthydebate.ca/2022/07/topic/bill-96-quebec-health-care/">law’s potential impacts</a>. This is an example of the prioritisation of language even in matters as essential as health care, yet it’s unclear if the law will actually improve Québec residents’ lives, or even help preserve French in Québec.</p>
<h2>Uncomfortable questions</h2>
<p>These are uncomfortable questions to ask given the scale of minority language loss worldwide, alongside an acrid legacy of colonialism and repression. However, it’s in no one’s interests to cause new problems while trying to right past wrongs.</p>
<p>So, next time you see a media report about efforts to preserve a minority language, think whether they’ll be part of a broader range of support. Next, consider potential unintended negative consequences, and how those balance against the positive ones.</p>
<p>Promoting endangered languages can be a positive force, but we shouldn’t assume that’s universally true. In the end – and this is especially difficult for a linguist to say – perhaps we should focus less on languages in themselves, and pay more attention to the lives of the people who speak them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211063/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dave Sayers ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Media accounts on endangered languages abound, but they don’t always explore how to materially help native speakers. Peer-reviewed research shows that such efforts don’t always have positive effects.Dave Sayers, Senior Lecturer in Sociolinguistics, University of JyväskyläLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2112402023-08-16T11:15:32Z2023-08-16T11:15:32ZDespite domestic political turmoil, Pakistan is well placed to boost regional integration<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542129/original/file-20230810-23-200ert.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=32%2C17%2C2358%2C1587&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Karachi could channel exports from central Asia.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/karachi-pakistan-jan-02-large-numbers-1885815538">Asianet-Pakistan/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Pakistan is showing clear signs of economic and political crisis. <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/6/2/pakistan-inflation-hits-record-for-second-consecutive-month">Inflation was recently</a> almost 38%, and the country faces a debt crunch as it tries to manage its trade deficit with the rest of the world. <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/06/28/pakistan-imf-deal-economy-crisis-inflation-austerity/">Talks with the IMF</a> over emergency loans have dragged on for months. </p>
<p>On the political side, elections are <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-66446957">being delayed</a> in the aftermath of the <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/imran-khan-former-pakistani-prime-minister-detained-12876959">controversial arrest</a> of former prime minister Imran Khan, which led to widespread protests. </p>
<p>Some of these events coincided with <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/1751679/south-central-asia-need-to-enhance-socioeconomic-ties">a conference</a> I attended recently in Pakistan, where there was actually much positive discussion of the country’s economic potential – particularly with regards to improved relations with central Asia. </p>
<p>Several countries in central Asia (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan) can provide what <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09584935.2020.1855112">Pakistan needs</a> – wheat, gas and oil – to help it cope with rampant food and energy price rises. </p>
<p>In return, Pakistan has what central Asia needs – the ability to transport central Asian goods south to large ports in Gwadar and Karachi, potentially transforming the region into one which is “land-linked” as opposed to land-locked.</p>
<p>But the state of Pakistan’s relationship with central Asia is complicated. The vast expanse of the Himalayas which separates them is not just a massive physical obstacle – it is also a metaphor for the many centuries of economic, political and <a href="https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/S2377740019500179">cultural estrangement</a> between the two regions. And central Asia can seem disinclined to look southwards in its international ambitions.</p>
<p>In foreign policy, the gaze of central Asia is now resolutely north towards Russia. Earlier this year, all five presidents of central Asia <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/89741">visited Moscow</a> for the annual Victory Day holiday where they applauded Putin’s speech. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, in economics, central Asia looks resolutely east towards China. In <a href="https://www.silkroadbriefing.com/news/2023/02/20/chinas-2023-trade-and-investment-with-kazakhstan-development-trends/#:%7E:text=China's%20exports%20to%20Kazakhstan%20reached,staggering%20US%24%2431.2%20billion.">2022, Kazakhstan exported</a> US$13.2 billion (£10.3 billion) of goods and services to China. Two years earlier, by comparison, <a href="https://tradingeconomics.com/kazakhstan/exports/pakistan">it exported</a> less than US$20 million to Pakistan. </p>
<p>Yet there are signs of improvement. In 2021 Pakistan and Uzbekistan, together with Afghanistan, signed off on a US$5 billion project to build a <a href="https://www.silkroadbriefing.com/news/2021/03/05/pakistan-afghanistan-uzbekistan-agree-573km-connecting-railway/">573km railway line</a> connecting their three capital cities, which still <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/1765398">looks promising</a>. The <a href="https://jamestown.org/program/revival-of-tapi-pipeline-project-brings-serious-geopolitical-implications-for-russia/">Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline</a> has been under construction since 2015.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, China is pouring more than US$60 billion into a network of road, rail, energy, energy pipelines and fibre optics to link it with Pakistan. And while the “<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/dragon-from-the-mountains/90AB5FED65A409F5ACCAB5BC92C68555">China Pakistan Economic Corridor</a>” is expected to have <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09584935.2020.1855112">positive implications</a> for trade, investment and technology transfer between the two countries, it is also likely to generate major benefits for the wider region, improving transport links between southern and central Asia. </p>
<h2>A second Singapore?</h2>
<p>With political and bureaucratic will, this could inspire a far better connection between Pakistan and central Asia, where Pakistan could seek to emulate the role that Singapore took on in the 1960s and 1970s. Acting as a link between east and west, Singapore <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/from-third-world-to-first-lee-kuan-yew?variant=32118179135522">helped to drive globalisation</a> as well as its own soaring economic growth. </p>
<p>At the time, Singapore was perfectly placed to connect cheap labour in the east with investment and technology from the west. But it was not a wholly smooth transition. </p>
<p>For while Pakistan today faces the threat of Islamic extremism, in the 1960s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Singapore/History">Singapore faced</a> a local communist insurgency, and bombings were a regular part of a four-year long Indonesian state-backed campaign. Yet Singapore does show that such threats can be overcome. </p>
<p>The key will be gaining sufficient political stability to encourage investors that Pakistan is a good bet, something achieved by the “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/opinion/international-world/singapore-autocracy-democracy.html%5D">benevolent autocracy</a>” of Lee Kuan Yew, under which Singaporeans arguably traded off certain social and political freedoms for stability and prosperity.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Singapore skyline." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542290/original/file-20230811-15-9migfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542290/original/file-20230811-15-9migfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542290/original/file-20230811-15-9migfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542290/original/file-20230811-15-9migfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542290/original/file-20230811-15-9migfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542290/original/file-20230811-15-9migfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542290/original/file-20230811-15-9migfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Singapore reaped economic benefits.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/singapore-skyline-marina-during-twilight-313516310">Sean Pavone/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today, Pakistan sits aside many of the principal crossroads of the global economy. It has long been a close partner of China, and has has unparalleled diplomatic and cultural reach into Afghanistan and the Middle East. It is already deeply embedded in the west through a well-established diaspora. </p>
<p>But we shouldn’t forget the elephant in the room when it comes to any discussion about regional connectivity – and that is India. Any historic or cultural connections Pakistan has with central Asia are dwarfed by those it retains with its next door neighbour.</p>
<p>The national languages of India (English and Hindi) are completely comprehensible to Pakistan (English and Urdu). The two countries share traditions in English law and parliamentary political systems, and both speak the cultural languages of cricket and Bollywood films. </p>
<p>Reconnecting India and Pakistan does not require new infrastructure – the roads and routes are already there; they just aren’t being used to their full potential. In fact, the <a href="https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/9f3f97ac-4007-5b30-9b2d-f1d1070c16b7/content">World Bank</a> estimates that untapped trade between India and Pakistan in 2015 was US$35 billion (compared to just over US$2 billion of existing annual trade). </p>
<p>Peace and openness with India would not just complete the reconnection of South Asia, but also offer Pakistan the chance to become a genuine regional hub – a Singapore for the 21st century. And if freedom to trade could take any of the nuclear heat out of Pakistan-India relations – what former US president Bill Clinton called “<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/687021.stm">the most dangerous place on earth</a>” – then regional endeavours would have globally transformational benefits.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211240/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew McCartney does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Could Pakistan become a Singapore of the 21st century?Matthew McCartney, Senior Researcher, Charter Cities Institute; Research Associate, SOAS, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2092912023-08-03T12:22:36Z2023-08-03T12:22:36ZMyanmar crisis highlights limits of Indonesia’s ‘quiet diplomacy’ as it sets sights on becoming a ‘great regional power’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540124/original/file-20230731-16223-lebhyc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=532%2C1391%2C5750%2C3261&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Myanmar's seat was left empty at a recent meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/this-picture-shows-an-empty-seat-reserved-for-a-myanmar-news-photo/1521950355?adppopup=true">Achmad Ibrahim/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With regional power comes regional responsibilities – as Indonesia is finding out.</p>
<p>The world’s fourth most populous nation aspires to be a “<a href="https://setkab.go.id/keketuaan-asean-dan-visi-politik-luar-negeri-indonesia/">great regional power” by 2030</a>, playing a stabilizing role in Southeast Asia.</p>
<p>It is getting an early taste of what that entails. As the <a href="https://theconversation.com/chairing-asean-what-does-it-mean-for-indonesia-in-2023-190208">current chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations</a>, Indonesia has been called upon by international bodies, including the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/06/un-expert-urges-coordinated-action-indonesia-and-other-nations-address">United Nations</a>, to show leadership in resolving one of the region’s bloodiest conflict: <a href="https://theconversation.com/military-violence-in-myanmar-is-worsening-amid-fierce-resistance-and-international-ambivalence-203646">Myanmar’s civil war</a>. And progress has been slow.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=JhojdBgAAAAJ&hl=en">scholar of international relations</a> and Indonesian foreign policy, I see the nation’s handling of the Myanmar crisis as an early test of how Indonesia could fare as the region’s great power.</p>
<h2>The limits of ‘quiet diplomacy’</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-60144957">civil war</a> between the military and the anti-military groups in Myanmar has <a href="https://www.prio.org/news/3062">claimed thousands of lives</a>. It followed a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/19/myanmar-coup-2021-explained-in-30-seconds">2021 coup</a> that returned the country to military rule, with the junta embarking on a <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/01/28/myanmar-year-brutality-coups-wake">brutal crackdown of the opposition</a>. Since then, the ruling generals have <a href="https://theconversation.com/military-violence-in-myanmar-is-worsening-amid-fierce-resistance-and-international-ambivalence-203646">encountered fierce resistance</a> from armed groups.</p>
<p>In April 2021, a few months into the conflict, ASEAN leaders meeting in Indonesia’s capital Jakarta <a href="https://asean.org/wp-content/uploads/Chairmans-Statement-on-ALM-Five-Point-Consensus-24-April-2021-FINAL-a-1.pdf">agreed to a “five-point consensus”</a> on Myanmar, calling for an immediate cease-fire, constructive dialogue between all parties, a special envoy to help mediate the conflict, humanitarian assistance from ASEAN and a delegation visit to Myanmar to facilitate the peace process.</p>
<p>More than two years on, the first point of the <a href="https://asean.org/wp-content/uploads/Chairmans-Statement-on-ALM-Five-Point-Consensus-24-April-2021-FINAL-a-1.pdf">five-point consensus</a> has still not been implemented, and chances of a cease-fire look remote under the current level of fighting. In May, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/indonesia-quietly-engaging-key-stakeholders-myanmar-crisis-foreign-minister-2023-05-05/">responding to criticism over perceived inaction</a> over the crisis, said Indonesia was relying on “<a href="https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230505-indonesia-says-using-quiet-diplomacy-to-help-solve-myanmar-crisis">quiet diplomacy</a>.” Such a policy forms part of Indonesia’s attempts to balance the <a href="https://www.e-ir.info/2012/02/08/asean-and-the-principle-of-non-interference/">nonintervention principal</a> of ASEAN – by which meddling in the domestic affairs of neighboring states is unacceptable – with the need to address the internal crisis in Myanmar. But efforts to influence the behavior of another state through discreet negotiations or actions have clearly not yet succeeded.</p>
<p><iframe id="RI5Dq" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/RI5Dq/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>It doesn’t bode well for Indonesia’s desire to be a stabilizing factor in the region. </p>
<p>In theory, Indonesia should be well placed to assume regional leadership. It is a member of the G20 gathering of richest nations and is poised to have the <a href="https://setkab.go.id/en/indonesia-will-be-worlds-4th-largest-economy-by-2045-president-jokowi-says/">world’s fourth largest economy within two decades</a>. Its military is <a href="https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing-southeast-asia.php">ranked the most powerful</a> in the region. Added to this economic and military might is a willingness to assume the role of regional leader.</p>
<p>Yet Indonesia’s calls for a cease-fire in Myanmar have fallen on deaf ears, in part because the warring parties know Indonesia is unwilling to punish Myanmar for failing to end the fighting. Any such punitive action would be deemed unacceptable under the ASEAN nonintervention principle. </p>
<h2>No end to war</h2>
<p>The pressure that Indonesia may have been able to assert on Myamar’s warring parties has been blunted for a number of reasons.</p>
<p>Theoretically, the high cost of war <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/ebook/9781400824465/committing-to-peace">should encourage combatants</a> to the negotiating table – the idea being that when coffers dry up and civilian suffering mounts, peace becomes a more attractive option. Yet the worsening violence on the ground suggests that both sides are absorbing the costs.</p>
<p>Myanmar’s ruling junta is aided here by revenue generated from the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/05/un-expert-exposes-1-billion-death-trade-myanmar-military">Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise</a>, which allows the military to finance the purchasing of arms. And <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/us-slap-new-sanctions-myanmar-state-owned-banks-sources-2023-06-21/">despite sanctions</a> imposed by the United States and several Western nations, the generals are able to replenish weapon stocks through deals with countries <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/18/world/un-myanmar-report-military-junta-deadly-arms-sales-russia-china-intl-hnk/index.html">including Russia, China</a> <a href="https://www.rfa.org/english/news/myanmar/arms-07032023152856.html">and India</a>. </p>
<p>Part of the problem is that implementation of the <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/what-burma-act-does-and-doesnt-mean-us-policy-myanmar">current targeted</a> round of Western sanctions partly relies on support from other countries. And the story of sanctioned arms dealers such as business tycoon <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-17/myanmar-tycoons-arms-dealer-sanctioned-by-us-finds-shelter-in-singapore">Tay Za</a>, who has been accused by the U.S. of supplying arms and equipment to the junta but still manages to operate his business from Singapore, provides an example of how traders are able to circumvent international sanctions.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, through the BURMA Act – incorporated into the <a href="https://armedservices.house.gov/ndaa">National Defense Authorization Act</a> and <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3252968/biden-signs-national-defense-authorization-act-into-law">signed by President Joe Biden</a> in December 2022 – the U.S. pledged to provide nonlethal assistance, such as medical supplies, radar equipment and armored military vehicles, to pro-democratic forces in Burma. </p>
<p>Although this is welcomed by supporters of Myanmar democracy, it nonetheless makes it harder to force a weakened opposition to the negotiating table – especially if it believes it is winning the war.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="M16 assault rifles lean against a wall that appears to be blood-stained." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540409/original/file-20230801-25-v5y65s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540409/original/file-20230801-25-v5y65s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540409/original/file-20230801-25-v5y65s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540409/original/file-20230801-25-v5y65s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540409/original/file-20230801-25-v5y65s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540409/original/file-20230801-25-v5y65s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540409/original/file-20230801-25-v5y65s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Myanmar’s civil war: well armed and bloody.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/rifles-lean-against-the-wall-of-a-karenni-nationalities-news-photo/1549096325?adppopup=true">Daphne Wesdorp/Getty Images)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And finally, although the junta is finding it difficult to force an emboldened pro-democracy opposition into submission, it is still the <a href="https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/myanmar-s-military-numbers">strongest party in the conflict</a>. Knowing that might make it more reluctant to negotiate. As it is, any mediator faces the problem of trying to force a military junta <a href="https://humanrightsclinic.law.harvard.edu/beyond-the-coup-in-myanmar-in-accordance-with-the-law-how-the-military-perverts-rule-of-law-to-oppress-civilians/">used to being in power and accustomed to impunity over its actions</a> to the table. </p>
<h2>So what is Indonesia’s role?</h2>
<p>So where does that leave Indonesia’s attempt to play regional peacemaker?</p>
<p>Patience is <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2023/04/time-is-running-out-for-indonesia-to-turn-the-tide-on-myanmar/">understandably running thin</a> for <a href="https://jakartaglobe.id/news/quiet-diplomacy-raises-expectations-on-asean-chair-indonesia">international observers</a> who watch the military junta committing atrocities on the opposition daily. Some have <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/After-success-with-G-20-Indonesia-now-must-rally-ASEAN-to-act">called on Indonesia to suspend</a> Myanmar’s ASEAN membership. </p>
<p>Although Indonesia and the rest of ASEAN member states decided <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/26/asean-summit-begins-without-myanmar-after-top-generals-exclusion">not to invite</a> the representative of the junta to attend this year’s summit, I believe they are unlikely to suspend its ASEAN membership out of concern for destabilizing the region further.</p>
<p>As an aspiring <a href="https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780199743292/obo-9780199743292-0222.xml">regional power</a>, Indonesia has the ability to harness not only its economic and military weight but its moral voice by continuing to appeal to warring parties to better protect the lives of Myanmar civilians.</p>
<p>Getting the combatants to agree to end the violence might be an unattainable goal during its tenure as the chair of ASEAN. But if Indonesia is to become a stabilizing leader in the region, it will need to continue efforts long after it relinquishes that role in December 2023.</p>
<h2>Getting the big guns involved</h2>
<p>In the final few months of ASEAN leadership, Indonesia can lay the foundation for a resolution of the Myanmar crisis. That includes holding the junta accountable or at least cutting its capacity to violently attack the anti-junta forces. </p>
<p>Such a goal would require coordinated action among the U.S. and China, as well as other ASEAN members, to exert pressure on Myanmar’s generals. </p>
<p>And here Indonesia can play a role by making sure the Myanmar crisis is not being overlooked by the U.S. and the West in general, or by China, which has <a href="https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/02/limits-beijings-support-myanmars-military">continued close ties</a> with Myanmar’s generals. As the emerging regional power, Indonesia’s “quiet diplomacy” can extend to bringing up the issue of Myanmar in high-level meetings in Beijing and Washington, as well as in regional bodies.</p>
<p>In such bilateral discussions, Indonesia can help steer the direction of sanctions. Although the junta has survived multiple Western sanctions, the threat of a well-coordinated round of tougher, targeted sanctions could gradually deprive the junta of resources. Indonesia, can further assist by encouraging regional governments to crack down on sanction-breaking junta supporters supplying military equipment to the generals from places such as Singapore. Similarly, coordination with Washington over the type of lethal assistance it provides the opposition could support humanitarian efforts while not inflaming the situation further.</p>
<p>Perhaps before becoming the “great regional power” it aspires to be, Indonesia is best placed to lean into its position as a conduit to the current geopolitical power brokers in Washington and Beijing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209291/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Angguntari Ceria Sari does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As current chair of the regional body ASEAN, Indonesia is tasked with resolving a conflict that has killed thousands. Progress has been slow.Angguntari Ceria Sari, Lecturer in International Relations, Universitas Katolik ParahyanganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2069372023-06-02T12:42:30Z2023-06-02T12:42:30ZDialogue is vital ‘guardrail’ in dealing with China, Albanese tells international security forum<p>Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has told a regional security forum that dialogue is a vital “guardrail” in dealing with China, and praised US President Joe Biden’s effort to establish “reliable and open” US-China channels of communication. </p>
<p>Delivering a keynote speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Friday night, Albanese said “the silence of the diplomatic deep freeze” only bred suspicion, making it easier for countries “to assume the worst of one another”. </p>
<p>But the forum, attended by defence ministers, officials and military chiefs, comes amid tensions after China <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/us-china-tensions-expected-dominate-asia-security-meeting-2023-06-01/">declined</a> an American request for a meeting on the sidelines between US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and his counterpart, Li Shangfu.</p>
<p>Austin <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-declines-lloyd-austin-meeting-shangri-la-dialogue-singapore/">has not spoken</a> with Li since he became the Chinese defence minister in March. He had met with Li’s predecessor, General Wei Fenghe, on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue last year.</p>
<p>Albanese, in an address promoted as the most important he has made as PM on foreign policy, warned of the dangers where there was not “the pressure valve of dialogue”. </p>
<p>“If you don’t have the capacity – at a decision-making level – to pick up the phone, to seek some clarity or provide some context, then there is always a much greater risk of assumptions spilling over into irretrievable action and reaction.</p>
<p>"The consequences of such a breakdown – whether in the Taiwan Strait or elsewhere - would not be confined to the big powers or the site of their conflict, they would be devastating for the world.</p>
<p>"That’s why as leaders in this region – and as citizens of it – we should be doing everything we can to support the building of that first and most fundamental guardrail.” </p>
<p>Albanese said Australia had put dialogue “at the heart of our efforts to stabilise our relationship with China”.</p>
<p>It was not naïve about the process or its limitations, he said. </p>
<p>“But we begin from the principle that whatever the issue, whether we agree or disagree, it is always better and more effective if we deal direct.” </p>
<p>Albanese said the government’s investments in new defence capability was “unapologetically about our national defence and our national sovereignty.” </p>
<p>“They are also an investment in regional stability, strengthening our capacity to contribute to the collective security of the Indo-Pacific.</p>
<p>"From shared peacekeeping missions such as the regional assistance mission in Solomon Islands, to providing essential support in times of humanitarian and environmental disaster, most recently in Vanuatu.</p>
<p>"Australia is determined to deepen this cooperation with more shared exercises, building on the recent success of Talisman Sabre and our flagship regional engagement activity Indo-Pacific Endeavour.</p>
<p>"In boosting our nation’s defence capability, Australia’s goal is not to prepare for war but to prevent it - through deterrence and reassurance and building resilience in the region.</p>
<p>"Doing our part to fulfil the shared responsibility all of us have to preserve peace and security.</p>
<p>"And making it crystal clear that when it comes to any unilateral attempt to change the status quo by force: be it in Taiwan, the South China Sea, the East China Sea or elsewhere, the risk of conflict will always far outweigh any potential reward.”</p>
<p>Albanese on Saturday will travel to Vietnam for a two-day official visit before returning home.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206937/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Albanese, in an address being promoted as the most important he has made internationally, warned of the dangers where there was not “the pressure valve of dialogue”.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2062372023-05-31T16:30:46Z2023-05-31T16:30:46ZWhy 40°C is bearable in a desert but lethal in the tropics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529429/original/file-20230531-17-razap9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C5586%2C3712&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Phew: heat plus humidity can make Bangkok an uncomfortable place in a heatwave.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/bangkok-thailand-may-2020-security-guard-1726455493">Pavel V.Khon/SHutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>This year, even before the northern hemisphere hot season began, temperature records were being shattered. Spain for instance saw <a href="https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/extreme-april-heat-in-spain-portugal-morocco-algeria-almost-impossible-without-climate-change/">temperatures in April</a> (38.8°C) that would be out of the ordinary even at the peak of summer. South and <a href="https://earth.org/southeast-asia-heatwave/">south-east Asia</a> in particular were hammered by a very persistent heatwave, and all-time record temperatures were experienced in countries such as Vietnam and Thailand (44°C and 45°C respectively). In Singapore, the more modest record was also broken, as temperatures hit 37°C. And in China, Shanghai just recorded its highest May temperature for <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/29/shanghai-records-hottest-day-in-may-in-100-years">over a century</a> at 36.7°C.</p>
<p>We know that climate change makes these temperatures more likely, but also that heatwaves of similar magnitudes can have very different impacts depending on factors like humidity or how prepared an area is for extreme heat. So, how does a humid country like Vietnam cope with a 44°C heatwave, and how does it compare with dry heat, or a less hot heatwave in even-more-humid Singapore? </p>
<h2>Weather and physiology</h2>
<p>The recent heatwave in south-east Asia may well be remembered for its level of heat-induced stress on the body. Heat stress is mostly caused by temperature, but other weather-related factors such as humidity, radiation and wind are also important. </p>
<p>Our bodies gain heat from the air around us, from the sun, or from our own internal processes such as digestion and exercise. In response to this, our bodies must lose some heat. Some of this we lose directly to the air around us and some through breathing. But most heat is lost through sweating, as when the sweat on the surface of our skin evaporates it takes in energy from our skin and the air around us in the form of latent heat.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529422/original/file-20230531-21-l84yh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="annotated diagram of person" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529422/original/file-20230531-21-l84yh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529422/original/file-20230531-21-l84yh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529422/original/file-20230531-21-l84yh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529422/original/file-20230531-21-l84yh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529422/original/file-20230531-21-l84yh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529422/original/file-20230531-21-l84yh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529422/original/file-20230531-21-l84yh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How humans heat up and cool down.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-earth-053018-060100">Take from Buzan and Huber (2020) Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Meteorological factors affect all this. For example, being deprived of shade exposes the body to heat from direct sunlight, while higher humidity means that the rate of evaporation from our skin will decrease. </p>
<p>It’s this humidity that meant the recent heatwave in south-east Asia was so dangerous, as it’s already an extremely humid part of the world.</p>
<h2>The limit of heat stress</h2>
<p>Underlying health conditions and other personal circumstances can lead to some people being more vulnerable to heat stress. Yet heat stress can reach a limit above which all humans, even those who are not obviously vulnerable to heat risk – that is, people who are fit, healthy and well acclimatised – simply cannot survive even at a moderate level of exertion. </p>
<p>One way to assess heat stress is the so-called <a href="https://www.weather.gov/tsa/wbgt#:%7E:text=The%20WetBulb%20Globe%20Temperature%20(WBGT,is%20calculated%20for%20shady%20areas.)%20(WBGT),%20which%20measures%20a%20combination%20of%20temperature,%20humidity,%20wind%20speed,%20sun%20angle%20and%20solar%20radiation.%20The%20safe,%20survivable%20WBGT%20limit%20is%20%5Boften%20taken%20to%20be%20around%2040%C2%B0C%5D(https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS2542-5196(18)30240-7/fulltext">Wet Bulb Globe Temperature</a>. In full sun conditions, that is approximately equivalent to 39°C in temperature combined with 50% relative humidity. This limit will likely have been exceeded in some places in the recent heatwave across south-east Asia. </p>
<p>In less humid places far from the tropics, the humidity and thus the wet bulb temperature and danger will be much lower. Spain’s heatwave in April with maximum temperatures of 38.8°C had WBGT values of “only” around 30°C, the <a href="https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/binaries/content/assets/metofficegovuk/pdf/weather/learn-about/uk-past-events/interesting/2022/2022_03_july_heatwave_v1.pdf">2022 heatwave in the UK</a>, when temperatures exceeded 40°C, had a humidity of less than 20% and WBGT values of around 32°C.</p>
<p>Two of us (Eunice and Dann) were part of a team who recently used climate data to map heat stress around the world. The research highlighted <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac71b9">regions most at risk of exceeding these thresholds</a>, with literal hotspots including India and Pakistan, south-east Asia, the Arabian peninsula, equatorial Africa, equatorial South America and Australia. In these regions, heat stress thresholds are exceeded with increased frequency with greater global warming. </p>
<p>In reality, most people are already vulnerable <a href="https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysiol.00738.2021">well below the survivability thresholds</a>, which is why we can see large death tolls in significantly cooler heat waves. Furthermore, these global analyses often do not capture some very localised extremes caused by microclimate processes. For example a certain neighbourhood in a city might trap heat more efficiently than its surroundings, or might be ventilated by a cool sea breeze, or be in the “rain shadow” of a local hill, making it less humid.</p>
<h2>Variability and acclimatisation</h2>
<p>The tropics typically have less variable temperatures. For example, Singapore sits almost on the equator and its daily maximum is about 32°C year round, while a typical maximum in London in mid summer is just 24°C. Yet London has a higher record temperature (40°C vs 37°C in Singapore).</p>
<p>Given that regions such as south-east Asia consistently have high heat stress already, perhaps that suggests that people will be well acclimatised to deal with heat. Initial reporting suggests the intense heat stress of the recent heatwave lead to <a href="https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/extreme-humid-heat-in-south-asia-in-april-2023-largely-driven-by-climate-change-detrimental-to-vulnerable-and-disadvantaged-communities/">surprisingly few direct deaths</a> – but accurate reporting of deaths from indirect causes is not yet available.</p>
<p>On the other hand, due to the relative stability in year-round warmth, perhaps there is <a href="https://theconversation.com/india-heatwave-why-the-region-should-prepare-for-even-more-extreme-heat-in-the-near-future-182452">less preparedness for the large swings in temperature</a> associated with the recent heatwave. Given that it is not unreasonable, even in the absence of climate change, that natural weather variability can produce <a href="https://theconversation.com/statistically-impossible-heat-extremes-are-here-we-identified-the-regions-most-at-risk-204480">significant heatwaves that break local records</a> by several degrees Celsius, even nearing a physiological limit might be a very risky line to tread.</p>
<hr>
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<img alt="Imagine weekly climate newsletter" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><strong><em>Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?</em></strong>
<br><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/imagine-57?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=Imagine&utm_content=DontHaveTimeTop">Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead.</a> Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/imagine-57?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=Imagine&utm_content=DontHaveTimeBottom">Join the 10,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.</a></em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206237/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alan Thomas Kennedy-Asser receives funding from NERC. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dann Mitchell receives funding from NERC. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eunice Lo receives funding from NERC and the Wellcome Trust. </span></em></p>A heatwave isn’t just about the temperature.Alan Thomas Kennedy-Asser, Research Associate in Climate Science, University of BristolDann Mitchell, Professor of Climate Science, University of BristolEunice Lo, Research Fellow in Climate Change and Health, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2002492023-03-01T09:43:26Z2023-03-01T09:43:26ZFrom Chinua Achebe to Toyin Falola – 5 essential books Nigeria’s new president should read<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511370/original/file-20230221-22-lymjhm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/nigerian-flag-with-pile-of-books-isolated-on-white-royalty-free-image/843290280?phrase=nigeria%20books&adppopup=true">Golden Brown/Getty Images </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Not many African political leaders are known to have publicly declared their love of reading. US president Barack Obama popularised the idea of a recommended <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2022/12/23/barack-obama-2022-favorites-books-movies-songs/10948842002/">reading list</a> and he still shares his annual choice. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/olayinka-oyegbile-1297384">a communications scholar</a> and a book reviewer, I made a short list of essential reads for Nigeria’s new president. My selection of books is based on what a new president needs to know when he takes the reins of <a href="https://businessday.ng/news/article/nigeria-more-divided-today-than-four-years-ago-report/">a deeply divided and disillusioned country</a>.</p>
<p>Nigeria has many problems. Disunity deepened under the Muhammadu Buhari government, and <a href="https://nairametrics.com/2022/07/29/controlling-nigerias-rising-population-could-reduce-long-term-inflation-report/">galloping inflation</a> has led to a <a href="https://www.premiumtimesng.com/business/577603-nigerians-groan-as-fuel-scarcity-bites-harder.html">shortage of essential goods</a> and services. <a href="https://theconversation.com/nigeria-insecurity-2022-was-a-bad-year-and-points-to-need-for-major-reforms-194554">Insecurity</a> remains a challenge too. </p>
<h2>The Trouble with Nigeria, by Chinua Achebe</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Chinua-Achebe">Chinua Achebe</a>, Nigeria’s preeminent novelist, took a break from fiction <a href="https://africanbookaddict.com/2015/05/25/the-trouble-with-nigeria-by-chinua-achebe/#:%7E:text=Even%20though%20this%20book%20was,administrations%20in%20several%20African%20nations.">in 1983</a> to write <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Trouble-Nigeria-Chinua-Achebe/dp/9781561475">The Trouble with Nigeria</a>. I recommend it first because of its slim size. Many of our leaders have a well-known disdain for anything intellectual or rigorous. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511367/original/file-20230221-20-kf5afl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511367/original/file-20230221-20-kf5afl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511367/original/file-20230221-20-kf5afl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=957&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511367/original/file-20230221-20-kf5afl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=957&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511367/original/file-20230221-20-kf5afl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=957&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511367/original/file-20230221-20-kf5afl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1202&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511367/original/file-20230221-20-kf5afl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1202&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511367/original/file-20230221-20-kf5afl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1202&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Trouble With Nigeria.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amazon</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The incoming president should find time to sit down and pore over the 68 pages of this book and see what Achebe has said about our country. The writer says: “The trouble with Nigeria is leadership.” Simple. The president should then ask himself how he can make a difference. Perhaps after reading this small but powerful book, the incoming president might see where he fits into the “trouble” with Nigeria and how to fix it.</p>
<h2>From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965-2000, by Lee Kuan Yew</h2>
<p>I know this is a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Third-World-First-Singapore-1965-2000/dp/0060197765">big book</a>. But it earns my recommendation because it is written from experience. Achebe was never a leader of a country. Lee Kuan Yew was. As prime minister of Singapore, he led a nation that was poor, scorned and derided. But through stern determination, he led it out of the dungeon. Nigeria needs a leader like Lee, without his <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/23/lee-kuan-yews-legacy-of-authoritarian-pragmatism-will-serve-singapore-well">dictatorial tendencies</a>. Nigeria has long been a subject of scorn, even among its own citizens who have decided to vote with their feet in search of better fortunes in other countries. </p>
<p>How did Lee transform his small, decrepit country into an internet economy? There is no need to reinvent the wheel for Nigeria; this has been done in Singapore. All the president needs to do is adapt it to local needs. </p>
<h2>Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson</h2>
<p>I recommend <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719227">this book</a> because it is simple and straightforward without economic or political jargon that might bore or scare the incoming president. Daron Acemoglu is <a href="https://economics.mit.edu/people/faculty/daron-acemoglu">an economist at MIT</a> while James A. Robinson is <a href="https://harris.uchicago.edu/directory/james-robinson">an economist and political scientist at the University of Chicago</a>. </p>
<p>The authors did a great job of synthesising the reasons why nations fail – it’s an easy read. Many have argued that Nigeria is failing or has failed because of its culture, geography, climate or ethnic composition. These authors have punctured all that. </p>
<p>The new president will get a clear picture of how to move out of the bind Nigeria is in, 62 years after <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Nigeria/Independent-Nigeria">independence</a> and <a href="https://www.refworld.org/docid/5278c70012.html">24 years after a return to democracy</a>. To the authors, nations find themselves where they are because of the choices made by their leaders in setting up economic and political institutions. They conclude it’s possible to break out of the poverty cycle. This is what Nigeria needs now to restore citizens’ faith in the system. It is political and economic institutions that underlie economic success. </p>
<h2>Understanding Modern Nigeria: Ethnicity, Democracy, and Development, by Toyin Falola</h2>
<p>Abiodun Alao, a professor of African Studies at King’s College London, writing a blurb for <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Modern-Nigeria-Ethnicity-Development/dp/1108837972">this book</a>, said: “Falola has brought together, under one cover, answers to all the questions anyone may want to ask about Nigeria.” </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511368/original/file-20230221-14-xabhxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511368/original/file-20230221-14-xabhxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511368/original/file-20230221-14-xabhxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511368/original/file-20230221-14-xabhxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511368/original/file-20230221-14-xabhxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511368/original/file-20230221-14-xabhxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511368/original/file-20230221-14-xabhxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511368/original/file-20230221-14-xabhxt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Understanding Modern Nigeria.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amazon</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/history/faculty/falolaoo">Toyin Falola</a> is a Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and a distinguished teaching professor at the University of Texas at Austin in the US. </p>
<p>This is truly a magisterial book about Nigeria. In its 672 pages it covers everything about the country from colonialism to post-colonial and modern times, religious identities, fault lines, youth, popular culture and politics.</p>
<p>It is arguably one of the most detailed books about contemporary issues in the country. The new president can learn a lot from it. </p>
<h2>New York, My Village: A Novel, by Uwem Akpan</h2>
<p>Unlike the four other books, this is fiction. Why a novel? It earns its place because fiction has a way of telling some home truths that non-fiction may gloss over. In <a href="https://www.amazon.com/New-York-My-Village-Novel/dp/0393881423">this book</a> about <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nigerian-civil-war">the Nigerian civil war (1967-70)</a>, Akpan has been able to give a voice to the minority. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511369/original/file-20230221-18-19pgjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511369/original/file-20230221-18-19pgjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511369/original/file-20230221-18-19pgjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511369/original/file-20230221-18-19pgjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511369/original/file-20230221-18-19pgjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511369/original/file-20230221-18-19pgjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511369/original/file-20230221-18-19pgjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511369/original/file-20230221-18-19pgjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">New York, My Village.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Goodreads</span></span>
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<p>Nigeria has been dogged by the issue of a majority accused of lording it over minority ethnic groups. Akpan’s short stories and autobiographical pieces have appeared in various magazines locally and abroad. He currently teaches at the University of Florida. </p>
<p>In this novel, Akpan gives minorities a voice. The majority have to listen instead of ramming their ideas down the throats of others. The incoming president would gain a lot from reading this book and understanding that we must always have the patience to listen to the minority.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200249/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Olayinka Oyegbile does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What a new president needs to know as he takes the reins of a deeply divided and disillusioned country.Olayinka Oyegbile, Journalist and Communications scholar, Trinity University, LagosLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1976882023-01-13T03:22:53Z2023-01-13T03:22:53ZThe A$30 billion Sun Cable crash is a setback but doesn’t spell the end of Australia’s renewable energy export dreams<p>Sun Cable – considered to be the world’s biggest renewable energy export project – <a href="https://suncable.energy/sun-cable-enters-voluntary-administration-strong-development-progress-and-portfolio-provides-opportunity-for-refreshed-alignment-between-company-and-investor-objectives/">announced</a> this week it had entered voluntary administration <a href="https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/duelling-billionaires-burn-sun-cable-20230111-p5cbw2#:%7E:text=Sun%20Cable%20said%20the%20appointment,be%20achieved%2C%E2%80%9D%20it%20said">following</a> “the absence of alignment” with shareholders. </p>
<p>Sun Cable is expected to cost <a href="https://www.infrastructureaustralia.gov.au/map/australia-asia-powerlink">over A$30 billion</a>. It <a href="https://suncable.energy/">proposes to</a> build an enormous, 12,000 hectare solar farm in the Northern Territory, add an enormous (40 gigawatt hour) battery for electricity storage, then connect Australia to Singapore via Darwin through an undersea cable over 4,000 kilometres long. This would be by far the world’s longest electricity cable if it existed today.</p>
<p>It would see Darwin access 800 megawatts of additional electricity and Sun Cable could supply “up to” 15% of Singapore’s electricity by 2030. To put this into context, Singapore’s annual electricity consumption <a href="https://www.ema.gov.sg/singapore-energy-statistics/Ch03/index3#:%7E:text=Electricity%20Consumption&text=The%20Industrial%2Drelated%20sector%20remained,%25%20or%208.3%20TWh">is about</a> one quarter of Australia’s.</p>
<p>While this prominent and well funded project has gone into voluntary administration, those enthused about rapid decarbonisation and Australia’s renewable energy export potential need not despair. These events are part of the usual discovery processes. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/it-might-sound-batshit-insane-but-australia-could-soon-export-sunshine-to-asia-via-a-3-800km-cable-127612">It might sound 'batshit insane' but Australia could soon export sunshine to Asia via a 3,800km cable</a>
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<h2>What Sun Cable promises</h2>
<p>Sun Cable offers an enticing possibility of putting Australia’s land, and the rays of sunshine that fall on it, to use in <a href="https://www.eia.gov/international/analysis/country/SGP">displacing gas</a> for electricity production in a distant land. Singapore is keen to procure renewable electricity, and has limited ability to produce that electricity itself. </p>
<p>The project has attracted the enthusiastic support of Australia’s two richest men: Mike Cannon-Brookes and Andrew Forrest. Each has already <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/cannon-brookes-takes-swipe-at-forrest-commits-to-rebuilding-sun-cable-20230112-p5cc0e.html">committed</a> about $50 million to the project and both are experienced investors in renewable electricity in Australia.</p>
<p>When Cannon-Brookes first invested in the project he <a href="https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/cannon-brookes-plan-to-export-aussie-solar-power-to-singapore-20190924-p52u9o">described</a> it as “batshit insane” but also that the “engineering all checks out”. </p>
<p>Sun Cable is also supported by Australia’s governments. The NT government passed <a href="https://ntrebound.nt.gov.au/news/2022/propelling-the-sun-cable-project-forward-with-new-legislation#:%7E:text=The%20Territory%20Government%20has%20passed,construction%2C%20and%20350%20during%20operations">laws</a> last year to facilitate its development. The federal government <a href="https://territorygas.nt.gov.au/projects/sun-cables-australia-singapore-power-link">gave it</a> “major project” status. And Infrastructure Australia <a href="https://www.infrastructureaustralia.gov.au/sites/default/files/2022-06/Evaluation%20Summary%20-%20Australia-Asia%20PowerLink.pdf">called</a> the project “investment ready” and placed it on its National Infrastructure Priority List. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/sun-cable-running-joke-or-visionary-decarbonisation-project-20230112-p5cc5f">Media commentary</a> since Sun Cable’s announcement has drawn attention to the differences of view of its two most prominent <a href="https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/sun-cable-collapses-despite-backing-from-forrest-cannon-brookes-20230111-p5cbu">shareholders</a>, particularly about their differing level of support for Sun Cable’s management. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cannon-brookes-shakes-up-agl-what-now-for-australias-biggest-carbon-emitter-194625">Cannon-Brookes shakes up AGL: what now for Australia's biggest carbon emitter</a>
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<p>But the exact nature of their disagreement is unclear, and both men <a href="https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/double-bay-jesus-versus-god-20230111-p5cbwt">have said</a> <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/cannon-brookes-takes-swipe-at-forrest-commits-to-rebuilding-sun-cable-20230112-p5cc0e.html">they remain</a> interested in the project.</p>
<p>Commentators have suggested the apparent disagreement is a reflection on the commercial and technical viability of the project itself. Matthew Warren, former chief executive of the Australian Energy Council, went so far as <a href="https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/sun-cable-was-a-colossus-that-collapsed-under-its-own-weight-20230112-p5cc1b">to describe</a> Sun Cable as “a quiet running joke inside the electricity industry” and that it:</p>
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<p>reflected the ignorance, egos and quest for notoriety of its proponents rather than the needs of its prospective customers.</p>
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<p>But Federal Energy and Climate Minister Chris Bowen, commenting on conversations with Sun Cable’s management, <a href="https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/accusations-fly-in-billionaire-battle-for-sun-cable-20230112-p5cc0l">said</a> he was assured the project would proceed. He said the latest developments reflected only a change in corporate structure and approach.</p>
<h2>Comparable projects overseas</h2>
<p>Sun Cable is obviously a very ambitious project. Yet much too little information is publicly available to pronounce, with any certainty, on its commercial and technical viability. </p>
<p>While the project will certainly break new ground, it is not totally in its own league. The similar <a href="https://xlinks.co/renewable-energy-project-announcement">Xlinks project</a> was proposed overseas in 2021 and is now advancing quickly. This project would connect Morocco and England with similar capacity renewable generation and storage, and has a comparably long cable to Sun Cable’s. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-needs-much-more-solar-and-wind-power-but-where-are-the-best-sites-we-mapped-them-all-196033">Australia needs much more solar and wind power, but where are the best sites? We mapped them all</a>
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<p>And at the end of last year, the European Commission <a href="https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/eu-commission-approves-first-energy-corridor-between-italy-africa/">committed funding to</a> a high-voltage direct current link between Tunisia in North Africa and Sicily, Italy. It would export 600 megawatts of (mainly) solar electricity produced in Tunisia. </p>
<p>Although a much less ambitious project than either Xlinks or Sun Cable, it is founded on the same vision of long distance inter-continental transmission of renewable electricity. And it is almost certain to proceed.</p>
<p>Just like fossil fuel resources, the world’s renewable resources are unevenly distributed. There are powerful incentives now, on economic and sustainability grounds, to find ways to reliably and cost effectively move renewable electricity from where those resources are abundant to where they are scarce. </p>
<h2>No need for hand wringing</h2>
<p>Inevitably, the latest Sun Cable developments draw attention to the questions of how best to exploit Australia’s endowment of land, sun and wind and how to capitalise on our track record as a reliable supplier with credible government and trusted courts. </p>
<p>For example, instead of trying to export electricity, should we focus on exporting renewably produced <a href="https://theconversation.com/for-australia-to-lead-the-way-on-green-hydrogen-first-we-must-find-enough-water-196144">hydrogen</a> or ammonia for fuel and fertilisers? Or, should we focus on using renewables to process and refine mineral resources before shipping higher-valued products (such as steel, alumina, aluminium and silicone metal) to distant shores? </p>
<p>These questions have attracted considerable interest from policy makers, investors and researchers – in particular, in books from economist Ross Garnaut (<a href="https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Superpower/KPiPDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover">Superpower</a> and <a href="https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/The_Superpower_Transformation/JRZmEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover">The Superpower Transformation</a>) and in former Australian chief scientist Alan Finkel’s forthcoming book <a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/powering">Powering Up</a>. </p>
<p>Both authors canvass many possibilities and neither categorically rule out direct renewable electricity export. They also suggest ore processing using renewable electricity is likely to offer great immediate value. </p>
<p>As best I can see, the latest Sun Cable developments provide no new publicly available information to confidently provide new insights into these issues.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/red-dirt-yellow-sun-green-steel-how-australia-could-benefit-from-a-global-shift-to-emissions-free-steel-179286">Red dirt, yellow sun, green steel: how Australia could benefit from a global shift to emissions-free steel</a>
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<p>The outpouring of “I-told-you-so” commentary following Sun Cable’s voluntary administration is to be expected. But perhaps the main import of Sun Cable’s developments is to draw attention to Australia’s good fortune in attracting ambitious and enterprising developers, supported by rich Australians who have been successful swimming against the tide. </p>
<p>Rather than dipping their hands into the public’s pocket to fund the discovery of the best way to exploit Australia’s renewable resources, these enterprising people are risking their own money and reputations in a discovery process likely to benefit us all. </p>
<p>There is no need for a crisis of confidence or a bout of hand wringing about the viability of Australia’s renewable energy export prospects. </p>
<p>Disagreements arise between investors all the time. Administrative and legal processes should provide ways for these to be resolved quickly and amicably, as we should expect here. Viva the discovery process.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197688/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Mountain does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While this prominent and well funded project has gone into voluntary administration, those enthused about rapid decarbonisation and Australia’s renewable energy export potential need not despair.Bruce Mountain, Director, Victoria Energy Policy Centre, Victoria UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1842462022-06-06T05:17:54Z2022-06-06T05:17:54ZMarcos junior is the latest beneficiary of ‘bloodlines’ in Southeast Asian politics<p>While there is widespread <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/11/asia/marcos-philippines-president-explainer-intl-hnk/index.html">nervousness</a> at the victory of Ferdinand Marcos junior in the Philippines, for many of us it was a reminder that “blood” is still an important element in the politics of the developing world. </p>
<p>Before you get smug, it’s called “political dynasties” in the developed world. In the US, it’s the Kennedy, Bush and Clinton families.</p>
<p>In much of Southeast Asia, the idea of political blood is taken much more seriously. Despite the modernisation process, politics is still stuck in the old ways.</p>
<p>A brief look is disturbing. In the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III both succeeded their parents as president of the Philippines. In Indonesia, Megawati Sukarnoputri is the daughter of the country’s first president, Sukarno. In Thailand, Yingluck Shinawatra succeeded her brother Thaksin as prime minister. Singapore is ruled by Lee Hsien Loong, son of Lee Kuan Yew. Najib Razak is the son of Malaysia’s second prime minister, Abdul Razak Hussein. And Hun Manet, the son of Hun Sen, is almost certain to take over Cambodia soon.</p>
<p>These are the most prominent ones. The truth is thousands of others in the region hold high political office due to their bloodline. </p>
<p>Others are waiting: Mahathir Mohamad’s son Mukhriz in Malaysia, Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono, the son of former Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), Panthongtae Shinawatra, the only son of Thaksin, all have a shot at their nation’s highest office. Hishammuddin Hussein, son of Malaysia’s third prime minister, is in the same boat. If they did not come from rich and powerful families, it is unlikely they would ever attain high office.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-well-has-the-morrison-government-handled-relations-with-southeast-asia-181958">How well has the Morrison government handled relations with Southeast Asia?</a>
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<p>Are they simply a natural product of political families? The argument goes that if you grow up in that kind of household you cannot escape your “calling”. Some even liken it to “national service”. The other argument is that since it’s a democracy, if the polity voted for them, that should be the end of the argument.</p>
<p>But the reality is that political dynasties are created, and often accompanied by formalities steeped in custom and traditional political culture. They are nothing to do with meritocracy. In Southeast Asia, it’s often linked to “patron-clientism”, where a powerful person (patron) and a follower (client) mutually benefit from the relationship. </p>
<p>In a nutshell, why should you hold high office just because you are born with a certain surname or lucky enough to be born into a particular family?</p>
<p>In almost all cases, political dynasty members use their superior wealth, connections and education to rise. Along the way, they attract the followers of their forebears and keep them loyal with patronage, sometimes called the “coat-tail effect”. I take the view that political dynasties, in all societies, are bad in the long run and have negative consequences for political development.</p>
<p>First, political dynasties hinder meritocracy and fair competition. In rural areas of Southeast Asia, it is extremely rare for a political unknown to defeat a “name” that has been in power for generations. This explains why the power bases of many political dynasties are often found in rural constituencies.</p>
<p>Second, political dynasties promote the idea of political elitism. That is, the selection process is closed and the leaders are drawn from the same pool of people.</p>
<p>Third, political dynasties are closely linked to economic power. Concentration of political power among a few families benefits a narrow set of economic interests. This process institutionalises economic and income inequalities and creates a culture in which “connections” become the most important criteria for everything. These political families are able to claim a major portion of the state’s resources legally through their control of the political system, leaving the country vulnerable to corrupt practices.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mutual-respect-and-genuine-partnership-how-a-labor-government-could-revamp-our-relationship-with-indonesia-183116">'Mutual respect and genuine partnership': how a Labor government could revamp our relationship with Indonesia</a>
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<p>However, it seems political dynasties’ hold on politics in Southeast Asia remains unshakeable. Some countries have “term limits” to stop political dynasties, but they are totally ineffective in practice. For example, there is nothing to stop a brother or sister from the same political family succeeding each other.</p>
<p>Will social media and the internet change the situation? It is very unlikely. The most important criterion for political change is probably education, which means an education system that teaches citizens to be critical and think in a rational way.</p>
<p>But in Southeast Asia, state education is about producing citizens who obey authority – in bureaucratic speak they are called “loyal” or “patriotic” citizens. </p>
<p>So, should we be surprised by Bong-Bong Marcos’s victory? Not in the least. There will be similar victories by people with very familiar names in the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184246/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Chin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Political families have a strong hold on power in Southeast Asian countries – often to the detriment of the people they serve.James Chin, Professor of Asian Studies, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1621172021-11-24T05:03:47Z2021-11-24T05:03:47ZHow Singapore’s water management has become a global model for how to tackle climate crisis<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432344/original/file-20211117-19-p74xyq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Swapnil Bapat/Unsplash</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Singapore is at the forefront of nearly all countries that have formulated a long-term plan for managing climate change and is steadfastly implementing that plan. </p>
<p>The small island state of 6 million people was among the 40 nations invited by the US President Joe Biden to attend his leaders’ summit on tackling <a href="https://www.state.gov/leaders-summit-on-climate/">climate change</a> last April. </p>
<p>Singapore is one of <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/most-densely-populated-countries">most densely populated countries in the world</a>. It faces the twin challenges of ensuring sustainable water supply during droughts as well as effective drainage during intense rain seasons amid climate change. </p>
<p>Much of Singapore is also as flat as a pancake and stands no more than <a href="https://www.nccs.gov.sg/faqs/impact-of-climate-change-and-adaptation-measures/">5 metres above the mean sea level</a>. This puts the country at risk from rising sea level due to climate change. </p>
<p>But thanks to its water system management, Singapore has been a success story as a resilient and adaptable city.</p>
<h2>Water-resilient Singapore</h2>
<p>The country has to be prepared for when rights to draw water from Malaysia <a href="https://www.mfa.gov.sg/SINGAPORES-FOREIGN-POLICY/Key-Issues/Water-Agreements">end in 2061</a>. Singapore draws up to 50% of its water supply from the neighbouring country. </p>
<p>For over two decades, Singapore’s National Water Agency, PUB, has successfully added <a href="http://bwsmartcities.businessworld.in/article/Harvesting-Every-Drop-The-Singapore-Water-Story/16-03-2017-114513/">large-scale nationwide rainwater harvesting</a>, used water collection, treatment and reuse, and seawater desalination to its portfolio of conventional water sources, so the nation-state can achieve long-term water sustainability. </p>
<p>The agency has been collecting and treating all its sewage to transform it into clean and high-quality reclaimed water. As a result, the PUB has become a leading exponent of using recycled water, dubbed locally as NEWater, as a source of water.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.pub.gov.sg/Documents/PUBOurWaterOurFuture.pdf">In 2017</a>, NEWater succesfully supplied up to 40% of the total water demand of 430 million gallons per day in Singapore. As the projected demand will double by 2060, the PUB plans to increase NEWater supply capacity up to 55% of demand.</p>
<p>Under the plan, desalinated water will supply 30% of total demand in 2060 – a 5% increase from its share in 2017.</p>
<p>The remaining share of the country’s water demand (15%) in 2060 will come from local catchments, which include 17 reservoirs, and imported water. The country does not have the land area to collect and store enough run-off despite abundant tropical rains.</p>
<p>To increase the economic viability of these plans, much of the PUB’s current <a href="https://www.pub.gov.sg/resources/publications/research">research and development effort</a> is aimed at halving energy requirements for desalination and used water treatment.</p>
<p>Other than that, reducing carbon emissions from water treatment and generating energy from the byproducts of used water treatment have become essential for Singapore. </p>
<h2>Embracing ‘life and death’ matters</h2>
<p>Based on this success story, the Singapore government applies the same approach of long-term planning and implementation to tackle threats of climate change, including rising sea level. </p>
<p>In 2019, Singapore’s Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, described the country’s seriousness in treating climate change as <a href="https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/national-day-rally-2019-100-billion-needed-to-protect-singapore-against-rising-sea-levels">“life and death matters”</a>. The government estimates it will need to spend US$75 billion, around 20% of the country’s GDP, on coastal protection over the coming decades. </p>
<p>The government has tasked PUB to lead and co-ordinate whole-of-government efforts to protect these coastal areas. The agency is working hard to ensure Singapore does not become a modern-day Atlantis, Plato’s famous sunken city.</p>
<p>PUB’s first order of business is to develop an <a href="https://www.pub.gov.sg/news/pressreleases/2021pr001">integrated coastal-inland flood model</a>. This will allow it to simulate the worst-case effects of intense inland rainfall combined with extreme coastal events. PUB expects its flood model to become a critical risk-assessment tool for flood risk management, adaptation planning, engineering design and flood response.</p>
<p>The agency has also undertaken coastline protection studies of different segments. The first study began in <a href="https://www.pub.gov.sg/news/pressreleases/2021PR003">May 2021 along City-East Coast</a>, covering 57.8km of the coastline. This section had been identified as prone to flooding and has various critical assets such as airports and economic and industrial districts.</p>
<p>Other segments to be analysed are in Jurong Island, in southwestern Singapore, with the study to begin later this year, and the north-west coast, comprising Sungei Kadut and Lim Chu Kang, starting in 2022. </p>
<p>Rather than mere adaption to coming crisis, protection measures will be designed for multi-functional land use. Nature-based solutions will be incorporated whenever possible, to create <a href="https://www.pub.gov.sg/news/pressreleases/2021PR003">welcoming spaces for living, work and play</a>.</p>
<p>For sure, whatever Singapore does in climate mitigation will never move the global needle. But it is a very good example of what a country can do to successfully adapt to the dangers of climate change through good planning. </p>
<p>If its policies are duplicated in other countries, these combined efforts will most certainly cause the needle to move significantly.</p>
<p>After the United Nations High Level meeting on climate change, COP26, just completed this month in Glasgow, UK, Singapore can be considered to be a very good model of how countries can successfully adapt to the dangers of climate change in the coming decades. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425222/original/file-20211007-21-13iq3op.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425222/original/file-20211007-21-13iq3op.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425222/original/file-20211007-21-13iq3op.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425222/original/file-20211007-21-13iq3op.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425222/original/file-20211007-21-13iq3op.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=969&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425222/original/file-20211007-21-13iq3op.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=969&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425222/original/file-20211007-21-13iq3op.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=969&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-joo-hee-ng-8a412314a/?originalSubdomain=sg">Peter Joo Hee Ng</a> is a co-author of this article.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162117/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Asit K. Biswas tidak bekerja, menjadi konsultan, memiliki saham, atau menerima dana dari perusahaan atau organisasi mana pun yang akan mengambil untung dari artikel ini, dan telah mengungkapkan bahwa ia tidak memiliki afiliasi selain yang telah disebut di atas.</span></em></p>The government is working hard to ensure Singapore does not become a modern-day Atlantis, Plato’s famous sunken city.Asit K. Biswas, Distinguished visiting professor, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1641322021-07-28T14:23:04Z2021-07-28T14:23:04ZBrexit: UK services are losing out to EU rivals – but Asia could be big winner<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413532/original/file-20210728-13-u8gtvi.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Singapore looks like one of the big winners from Brexit. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/singapore-downtown-beautiful-dawn-160541894">joyfull</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Seven months after Britain’s exit from the EU, the chilly effects on UK trade are being felt. Total exports of UK goods and services were down by 13% (£36 billion) and imports down 22% (£66 billion) for January to May 2021 compared to the same period in 2019, <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/balanceofpayments/articles/theimpactsofeuexitandcoronaviruscovid19onuktradeinservices/july2021">according to</a> the Office for National Statistics (ONS). </p>
<p>In a separate new <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/internationaltrade">ONS report</a> into UK services, exports and imports fell 12% and 24% in the first quarter of 2021 compared to the same period in 2019. To some extent this is due to the pandemic, but the decline with EU countries was more severe (exports down 15% and imports by 39%), which suggests Brexit was relevant too. The difference between services exports to EU and non-EU countries was particularly marked in sectors like construction (-43% vs +24%), maintenance and repair (-62% vs +11%), and manufacturing services (-40% vs -12%). </p>
<p>It seems to confirm that the UK’s services offering has been made less competitive by the <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/info/relations-united-kingdom/eu-uk-trade-and-cooperation-agreement_en">EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement</a> hardly covering such business. This has left EU members free to decide whether to allow different UK providers into their markets. But as we shall see, other services exporting countries outside the EU may also benefit as a result.</p>
<p>In our <a href="https://research.aston.ac.uk/en/publications/uk-trade-in-the-time-of-covid-19-a-review">recent paper</a>, Ireland looked like the big winner. It has probably benefited from firms relocating and business being re-routed from the UK, not to mention low corporation tax and a young well-educated workforce. Between 2016 and 2019, Ireland’s services exports rose 24% (that’s €144 billion or £123 billion), driven by financial services, IT and transport. </p>
<p>Speculation still abounds about which other EU cities will benefit in the medium term. <a href="https://theconversation.com/amsterdam-ousts-london-as-europes-top-share-hub-taking-trading-back-to-where-it-all-began-155236">Amsterdam surpassed London</a> as Europe’s largest share-trading centre in January by absorbing much trade in euro-denominated assets, though <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/business/health-pharma/london-reclaims-top-share-trading-spot-from-amsterdam-1.4609855#:%7E:text=London%20reclaims%20the%20top%20spot,city's%20volumes%20to%20the%20continent.">London has been</a> back on top recently. Other potential winners include Frankfurt (banking), Luxembourg (banking and asset management) and Paris (financial, professional and business services). Even a less serious contender like Berlin can attract tech talents thanks to its culture clusters and affordability. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/brexit-impact-on-london-financial-center-by-howard-davies-2021-05">On the other hand</a>, most financial traders have so far remained in London. The city is <a href="https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/audit-services/ipo-centre/assets/pwc-global-ipo-watch-q1-2021.pdf">still strong</a> in hosting stock market flotations and other forms of capital raising. And the flow of financial jobs out of London <a href="https://newfinancial.org/brexit-the-city-the-impact-so-far/">has been</a> a fraction of what remainers predicted. A four-year regulatory transition period for <a href="https://www.skadden.com/insights/publications/2021/02/insights-special-edition-brexit/a-temporary-solution-for-data-protection">areas like</a> data protection and electronic trade will undoubtedly be helping. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413549/original/file-20210728-15-8hvqyc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="View over Millennium Bridge in London at dusk" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413549/original/file-20210728-15-8hvqyc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413549/original/file-20210728-15-8hvqyc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413549/original/file-20210728-15-8hvqyc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413549/original/file-20210728-15-8hvqyc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413549/original/file-20210728-15-8hvqyc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413549/original/file-20210728-15-8hvqyc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413549/original/file-20210728-15-8hvqyc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">London vs EU rivals is only half the story.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/tvPvROBv0F4">James Padolsey/Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>Yet all this misses a bigger picture, namely that Europe’s ability to provide services may have been weakened overall. Imagine a group of US investors wants to invest £1 billion in European shares and other financial assets. In the past it might have set up a fund in London, making use of the city’s network of lawyers, accountants, bankers and other finance professionals, while filtering some of the work to specialists in, say, Paris and Frankfurt for issues related to France and Germany. </p>
<p>But now Brexit means the fund can’t invest in certain EU securities from London. The investors would have to set up a second fund in, say, Dublin to get exposure to all the EU assets they want. The additional expense and time involved makes them decide it will be more lucrative to set up an Asia-focused fund in Singapore instead. </p>
<p>When you multiply this effect across every sector, it is potentially huge. Certainly some investors will decide to either switch attention from the UK to EU countries, or to live with the extra cost of doing business across both the UK and EU. But others are deciding that an opportunity somewhere else in the world now looks more attractive. The danger is that this adds up to a global shift in economic weight over time. In fact, we could be seeing signs of this already. </p>
<h2>Winners and losers</h2>
<p>In follow-on research that we have yet to publish, we have been analysing the services exports of the major service providers in Europe and globally, using <a href="https://www.lbpresearch.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Feeding-the-Celtic-Tiger-%E2%80%93-Brexit-Ireland-and-Services-Trade.pdf">trade data</a> jointly collected by the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). </p>
<p>The data shows the UK was and is the biggest services exporter in Europe and second only to the US worldwide, but appears to have been losing ground since Brexit. Ireland and the Netherlands are the major growth stories in Europe, while China, India and Singapore are leading the way elsewhere. </p>
<p><strong>Services exports by country, 2019 vs 2015</strong></p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410635/original/file-20210709-21-1k45d5n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Graph showing services exports by country 2019 vs 2015, outlined above and below." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410635/original/file-20210709-21-1k45d5n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410635/original/file-20210709-21-1k45d5n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=277&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410635/original/file-20210709-21-1k45d5n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=277&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410635/original/file-20210709-21-1k45d5n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=277&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410635/original/file-20210709-21-1k45d5n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410635/original/file-20210709-21-1k45d5n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410635/original/file-20210709-21-1k45d5n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trends in services exports. Left: 2015 data in solid coloured bars; 2019 change in yellow markers. Right: Green bars represent accelerating service growth; red bars represent decelerating growth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BaTIS</span></span>
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<p>The UK’s services growth trend fell 11% in the 2016-2019 period compared to 2010-15. This backs up our recent <a href="https://www.lbpresearch.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Feeding-the-Celtic-Tiger-%E2%80%93-Brexit-Ireland-and-Services-Trade.pdf">published research</a> finding that the UK’s global share of exported services fell from 8.9% in 2005 to 7% in 2019. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, France, Spain, Italy and Belgium’s growth has also been declining, while Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Austria and also the US were static. Ireland was the fastest growing services exporter among all, but Singapore and India gained momentum too. </p>
<p>Strikingly, we see increasing growth in Asia between 2016 and 2019 in sectors like travel, financial, IT and creative services. This includes extraordinary growth in Singapore in finance, business, insurance and pension provision, and also in China in numerous segments. It looks like nothing short of a boom. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413550/original/file-20210728-15-1o3ve8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413550/original/file-20210728-15-1o3ve8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413550/original/file-20210728-15-1o3ve8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413550/original/file-20210728-15-1o3ve8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413550/original/file-20210728-15-1o3ve8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413550/original/file-20210728-15-1o3ve8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413550/original/file-20210728-15-1o3ve8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413550/original/file-20210728-15-1o3ve8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Shanghai has been on the up and up.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/lS02c1ZEgJI">Krzystsztof Kotkowicz</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>This may partly reflect the <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/10/are-traditional-multinationals-ready-for-emerging-markets/">industrial transformation</a> taking place in the <a href="https://voxdev.org/topic/macroeconomics-growth/how-services-drive-growth-emerging-economies-evidence-india">Asian developing world</a> from manufacturing to services. It may also capture a <a href="https://www.edhecstudentfinanceclub.com/how-to-build-a-financial-center-lessons-from-history/">long-term shift</a> of services centres from the west to the east – a reshuffle on a truly global scale. </p>
<p>But at the same time, it’s evidence that Brexit has weakened the UK as the European centre for services. Yes, business shifted to Ireland (and Luxembourg) to some extent, but that could be hiding a wider collective setback. </p>
<p>The question for the years ahead, for the UK and its European services peers, is whether they can come up with arrangements that help maintain their collective strengths – and to what extent they can exploit opportunities elsewhere, particularly on developing countries, where US services providers <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/10/are-traditional-multinationals-ready-for-emerging-markets/">have traditionally</a> been far ahead.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164132/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New data shows the recent damage to UK’s prized services sector – and potentially to Europe as a whole.Jun Du, Professor of Economics, Centre Director of Lloyds Banking Group Centre for Business Prosperity (LBGCBP), Aston UniversityOleksandr Shepotylo, Senior Lecturer in Economics, Aston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1553082021-02-22T14:50:25Z2021-02-22T14:50:25ZThe basis of South Africa’s annual budgets needs an overhaul. Here’s why, and how<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385545/original/file-20210222-15-19y6588.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">This week South Africa's finance minister Tito Mboweni will deliver the country's medium term budget review.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Jeffrey Abrahams/Gallo Images via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Governments in most developing countries use medium-term expenditure frameworks as fiscal policy instruments to match the imperatives of policy, planning and budgeting over the medium-term horizon. </p>
<p>South Africa <a href="http://www.treasury.gov.za/documents/mtbps/1998/speech.pdf">adopted the framework</a> in 1998.</p>
<p>Countries with strong ties to the Bretton Woods institutions – the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank – have <a href="https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/2157.pdf">adopted the medium-term expenditure framework</a> as the main driver of budget policy. Like macroeconomic management orthodoxy, the <a href="https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/2476.pdf">Washington consensus</a> forms the basis of this approach. The World Bank’s push for the adoption of frameworks has been subtle. For instance since 1991, they have been an integral part of the Bank’s products such as <a href="https://www.imf.org/external/np/seminars/eng/2013/fiscalpolicy/pdf/brumby.pdf">technical assistance, lending operations, and analytical and advisory services</a>. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.imf.org/external/np/seminars/eng/2013/fiscalpolicy/pdf/brumby.pdf">thrust</a> of medium-term expenditure frameworks is budgeting and public financial management. Indeed, the planning inherent in them is financial planning. That is the problem. They facilitate multi-year budget planning. Since the framework is an expenditure planning tool, it pays little attention to comprehensive economic development. </p>
<p>Budgeting is an important feature of economic management, the precursor to any development plans. Just like households, the limited resources that accrue to government have to be distributed across many competing demands. The question is, budgeting to what ends? It is here that we seem to have lost the plot. We lack a cogent development plan that drives the budget process. </p>
<p>Medium-term expenditure frameworks can be useful only when they are based on comprehensive medium-term development plans. </p>
<h2>Economic transformation</h2>
<p>No country since the Second World War has transitioned from a developing to a developed country without recourse to <a href="https://www.dbsa.org/EN/About-Us/Publications/Documents/DPD%20No%208.%20Comparative%20development%20planning.pdf">systematic economic development planning</a>. <a href="https://www.ndc.gov.tw/en/Content_List.aspx?n=16081B8F505ABB7B">Taiwan</a>, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/30172285.pdf?casa_token=KOsd_90OAngAAAAA:2C_V2-uHndhWRAOlMget6CemjZbLD38IjzA3PGOiI59y_X2AjvSbyW3abhMdSA1DWFT22i8FJ49ATWqt3GFD2l9lCB1B6qpyp4IhExYqzHfhnLZSz3U">South Korea</a>, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/cje/article-abstract/19/6/735/1688941?redirectedFrom=fulltext">Singapore</a>, and <a href="https://en.ndrc.gov.cn/">China</a> are some of the countries that have seen an incredible transformation over the past 50 years. </p>
<p>Each has adopted (mostly five-year) medium-term economic development planning as an instrument of development. The budgets of these countries have always been premised on the requirements of the medium-term plans. </p>
<p>Over two decades, South Africa has developed its own ritual. This involves a <a href="https://www.gov.za/state-nation-address">state of the nation address</a> by the president to mark the opening of parliament, followed – usually a week later – by the presentation of the budget by the finance minister. This <a href="http://www.treasury.gov.za/publications/guidelines/2021%20MTEF%20guidelines.pdf">involves</a> setting out policy priorities, tax policies, and division of revenue among various tiers of government. </p>
<p>But the lack of progress on crucial development benchmarks over the past two decades suggests that it’s time to reflect and question the effectiveness of the medium-term expenditure frameworks as an instrument of true economic development.</p>
<p>Since the turn of the century average incomes in South Africa have been stagnant – the average annual growth rate is 1.1%. At this rate it would take two generations for average incomes today to double. The Human Development Indicator, a broader measure of economic development, also shows that South Africa’s economic development over the past two decades has been well below comparator countries in the <a href="http://hdr.undp.org/sites/all/themes/hdr_theme/country-notes/ZAF.pdf">high human development group</a>. </p>
<p>Nor is pursing economic growth the panacea. Take <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/botswana/overview">Botswana</a>, which has recorded impressive economic growth numbers for more than 50 years. According to the <a href="https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators#">World Bank Group’s database</a>, Botswana recorded a real GDP growth rate of 8% a year over the period 1971 to 2019.</p>
<p>Yet one out of five people is poor and without a job. </p>
<p>Over the same period, South Korea, like the three other East Asian countries that underwent a phenomenal rate of industrialisation between the 1960s and the 1990s, recorded a growth rate of 7%. </p>
<p>So why has Botswana not achieved the same level of economic development as South Korea, Singapore or Taiwan? </p>
<p>The answer is: it failed to adopt an economic policy strategy that could produce real economic development. Even though Botswana has had <a href="https://www.finance.gov.bw/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=28&Itemid=126">development plans</a>, they have not had the preeminent role in economic management as compared to those of the East Asian countries. As a result they have been ineffective: the incredibly low level of industrialisation and high level of unemployment in Botswana after decades of economic growth points to this.</p>
<p>The stark contrast in economic development between Botswana and South Korea is instructive. South Korea has drawn on economic development planning and the allocative strengths of markets. </p>
<p>The Korean economy, which was largely agrarian, has been transformed into an industrial giant over <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030107697">four decades</a>. The country can also boast of global corporate giants such as Samsung, SK Holdings and the Hyundai Group, among many others. </p>
<p>The country’s unemployment rate of 5.4% reported in January 2021 is reckoned to be <a href="https://asian-links.com/gdp/south-korea-largest-companies">the highest in two decades</a>. </p>
<p>The country has used medium-term development plans since the Korean Development Board was set up in 1961. Each plan has had very clear economic development objectives. The development plans have then informed the expenditure framework. South Korea – and most of the successful Asian countries – drew on the positives of centralised planning and a price-mediated market system to drive economic development. </p>
<p>Even today, most of these countries continue to guide their economic development path with the aid of well thought through medium-term national development plans.</p>
<p>A distinctive feature of the development planning structures in the East Asian countries was the way they operated. They ensured <a href="https://www.kdi.re.kr/kdi_eng/publications/publication_view.jsp?pub_no=13671">an effective integration</a> of planning, financial resource allocation, monitoring and evaluation. </p>
<h2>What’s needed</h2>
<p>The international financial institutions have often <a href="https://www.dbsa.org/EN/About-Us/Publications/Documents/DPD%20No%208.%20Comparative%20development%20planning.pdf">denigrated centralised planning</a> </p>
<p>In the 1960s when most newly independent countries in Africa took to planning, it was seen as anathema by neoclassical economists. Rather, the West and the international financial institutions promoted unbridled free-market ideals. Yet there has not been a single country in the global South that has developed by strict adherence to free-market ideals. </p>
<p>It is in this vein that South Africa’s quest for economic development and improved well-being of its population has to be interrogated. The <a href="https://www.gov.za/issues/national-development-plan-2030#">National Development Plan</a>, which was released in 2012, only constituted a vision. It is thus not surprising that most of its objectives have eluded the country. The country has failed to distil its vision into medium-term development plans that could drive the national budget cycles. </p>
<p>What South Africa needs now is a comprehensive medium-term economic development plan. This would ensure that the country’s intractable social and economic problems are addressed in an integrated fashion. The problems are often interrelated. </p>
<p>Implementation should be coordinated by a super-ministry. In the case of South Korea the “super-ministry” controlled four levers of economic management: planning, budgeting, material resource mobilisation and the statistical service. The ministry was headed by the deputy prime minister. </p>
<p>A poignant observation that forms a thread that runs through the diverse East Asia development models is the role of government. The acute limitation of the market in facilitating efficient allocation of resources underscores the critical role of government intervention in fostering economic development. The dominant view that countries can outsource the economic development enterprise to the private sector is a ruse. </p>
<p>The developed countries in the West, the chief proponents of the Washington consensus, don’t even believe in the pre-eminence of markets. The massive government intervention in the wake of the pandemic and the pivoting towards <a href="https://www.industryweek.com/the-economy/public-policy/article/21154441/the-us-has-an-emerging-industrial-policy-biden-should-build-on-it">the overt adoption of industrial policies</a> by the US is ample demonstration of why South Africa has to look East for economic development lessons.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155308/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Kofi Ocran does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Medium-term expenditure frameworks can be useful only when they are based on comprehensive medium-term development plans.Matthew Kofi Ocran, Professor of Economics, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1485202020-10-25T19:04:16Z2020-10-25T19:04:16ZOf all the places that have seen off a second coronavirus wave, only Vietnam and Hong Kong have done as well as Victorians<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364916/original/file-20201022-21-1tikofo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4866%2C3241&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Of the 215 nations and territories that have reported COVID-19 cases, 120 have experienced clear second waves or late first waves that began in July or later. That’s according to the <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries">Worldometer global database</a>, which sources data from national ministries of health and the World Health Organisation.</p>
<p>Of these 120, only six have definitively emerged from their second wave: Australia, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Vietnam and Singapore. I am not including <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/new-zealand/">New Zealand</a>, as the series of clusters that arose in Auckland in mid-August never evolved into a clear second wave.</p>
<p>Ultimately, <a href="https://www.covid19data.com.au/victoria">Victoria</a> has performed extremely well by international standards. Only Vietnam and Hong Kong have enjoyed comparable success in quashing the second wave. Victorians’ sacrifice during lockdown has left Australia well placed to sustain very low numbers of cases through the coming summer.</p>
<h2>A grim global context</h2>
<p>Any comparison between Australia and other countries takes place amid a grim global context. The worldwide tally of cumulative cases is adding one million new cases every three or four days. On Wednesday, of the <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries">100 countries</a> with the highest total reported cases, just seven reported fewer than 50 new cases: Australia, China, Nigeria, Singapore, Ivory Coast, Zambia and Senegal. The same day, France and the United Kingdom each reported more than 26,000 new cases, and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-22/20-european-countries-record-highest-daily-covid-infections/12800772">20 European countries</a> posted all-time daily record numbers.</p>
<p>Some European countries, such as the <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/czech-republic/">Czech Republic</a>, <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/poland/">Poland</a> and <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/poland/">Georgia</a>, are now reporting daily case numbers 25-30 times higher than during their first waves.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/lockdown-relax-repeat-how-cities-across-the-globe-are-going-back-to-coronavirus-restrictions-142425">Lockdown, relax, repeat: how cities across the globe are going back to coronavirus restrictions</a>
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<p>Europe and North America face enormous challenges to control their outbreaks as winter looms and pandemic fatigue sets in. But already there are signs of decisive measures including a national lockdown in Ireland — <a href="https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2020/1020/1172828-australia-virus/">very similar to Melbourne’s</a> — and night curfews in Paris, seven other French cities, Brussels, Athens and Rome. Their current struggles stand in stark contrast to Australia’s situation. </p>
<h2>Israel’s second wave came early</h2>
<p>Which countries offer the most instructive comparison with Australia? Let’s start with <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/israel/">Israel</a>, one of the first countries to experience a second wave far more severe than the first. </p>
<p>Israel was also a founding member of the long-forgotten <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/inside-the-first-movers-group-of-countries-that-turned-virus-around-20200619-p554ft.html">First Movers Group</a>, comprising Austria, Denmark, Norway, Greece, the Czech Republic, Israel, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. Each member nation implemented restrictions early in the pandemic, and held a virtual summit in May to share tips about controlling the virus. Since then, every member except New Zealand has experienced a major second wave. </p>
<p>Israel’s <a href="https://burnet.edu.au/system/asset/file/4126/7.3-Update_-_Global_Case_Study_South_Korea_Israel_Brief.pdf">second wave</a> was largely caused by transmission among high school and middle school students, and an uncoordinated exit from the first lockdown. By the end of May, citizens were allowed to go to shopping centres and community gatherings, despite a growing resurgence of cases. During the Israeli summer there was minimal enforcement of face mask use, and moderate restrictions were reimposed on July 17.</p>
<p>Cases continued to surge, prompting a second lockdown introduced on September 18. This included restricting people’s movement to within 1km from their homes. The mishandling of the first wave had eroded public trust in the government, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/04/opinion/israel-coronavirus-lockdown.html">morale</a> was seemingly bleak during what was the first national lockdown in the world in response to a second wave. While cases have declined in the past few weeks the country has not yet emerged, with daily new case numbers still between 800 and 1,100.</p>
<h2>National lockdowns not essential for success</h2>
<p>Four of the five Asian countries that have emerged from their second wave demonstrate that lockdowns aren’t an all-or-nothing choice. There are intermediate options, but they only work if certain conditions are met. These include effective testing, contact tracing and isolation capacities; a culture of wearing masks and following public health directives; electronic contact tracing; and selective local restrictions such as closing bars, restaurants and places of worship.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/viet-nam/">Vietnam</a> was one of the first countries to contain its first wave and did not record a single death until July. Measures included early border closures, aggressive testing and tracing, and enforced quarantine of all cases and their contacts. This may not be an option in less authoritarian countries. Vietnam did have a national lockdown for a two-week period in April.</p>
<p>Clear communication with the public was a crucial element of Vietnam’s response. The government used a range of creative ways to spread messages about symptoms, prevention and testing sites, including via state media outlets, social media, text messages and, famously, a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hslWez3q6Ak">viral song about the importance of handwashing</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Vietnam’s viral video.</span></figcaption>
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<p>After 99 days of zero daily cases, Vietnam’s first community transmission case was reported in Da Nang on July 25. It started with a man who tested positive without any travel history, and it’s still unclear how he contracted the virus. </p>
<p>By September 4, Vietnam’s health ministry had confirmed 632 new cases and 35 deaths. As during the first wave, blanket testing was conducted in Da Nang, transport in and out of the city was cancelled, and bars and restaurants closed. The same local measures were implemented in certain neighbourhoods in Hanoi when new cases were identified. The country has not reported any community transmission since early September.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/europes-second-wave-is-worse-than-the-first-what-went-so-wrong-and-what-can-it-learn-from-countries-like-vietnam-147907">Europe's second wave is worse than the first. What went so wrong, and what can it learn from countries like Vietnam?</a>
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<p>Besides enforced quarantine, Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea have mostly followed the same strategy as Vietnam and haven’t imposed blanket lockdowns. After two months of near zero daily cases, <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-korea/">South Korea</a> experienced a series of spikes linked to bars, nightclubs and karaoke venues, with a major surge in August linked to a large church. The response has been characterised by robust decentralised testing, contact tracing and isolation, and a registration system at entertainment venues based on QR codes. However, the country is not yet out of the woods, reporting 50-90 cases a day.</p>
<p>Likewise, <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/japan/">Japan</a> continues to report 400-700 cases a day. But <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china-hong-kong-sar/">Hong Kong</a> is approaching the same level as Victoria, reporting between five and 18 cases a day.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/singapore/">Singapore</a> is a very different case. It has by far the highest per capita number of cases in Asia. With a population of just 5.8 million, the country has reported 57,921 cases — more than twice the number of <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/australia/">Australia</a> (which has more than four times the population).</p>
<p>Between mid-April and mid-June, Singapore experienced a massive spike in cases mostly among overseas migrant workers. On June 19, the country eased restrictions opening restaurants and gyms. In the seven subsequent weeks leading up to August 8, Singapore reported 13,096 new cases or 267 per day. Cases have subsequently declined to single digits, comparable to Victoria.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148520/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The Burnet Institute receives grants from both the Commonwealth and Victorian governments, and has provided modelling and advice to inform the Victorian government's coronavirus response. </span></em></p>How does Victoria’s response to a second COVID-19 wave compare internationally? Very favourably - only a handful of other jurisdictions have enjoyed anything like the same level of effectiveness.Michael Toole, Professor of International Health, Burnet InstituteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1480892020-10-22T18:59:50Z2020-10-22T18:59:50ZAsian countries do aged care differently. Here’s what we can learn from them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364867/original/file-20201021-19-1lin813.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of our series on aged care. You can read the other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/aged-care-series-2020-94869">here</a>.</em></p>
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<p>Unlike in Western countries like Australia, traditional Asian cultures place a heavy emphasis on filial piety — the expectation children will support their parents in old age. </p>
<p>Historically, filial piety played an important role when families were large, pension schemes unavailable and life expectancy was around 50 years old. </p>
<p>Today, however, families in east and southeast Asia are much smaller, divorce rates and rates of non-marriage are increasing, and fewer adult children are living with their parents. These demographic shifts are nowhere more apparent than in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.</p>
<p>Also, people are living much longer. By 2030, the <a href="https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/pdf/ageing/WPA2015_Highlights.pdf">UN estimates</a> 60% of the world’s older population (60+) will reside in Asia. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364868/original/file-20201021-13-1o4xza4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364868/original/file-20201021-13-1o4xza4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364868/original/file-20201021-13-1o4xza4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364868/original/file-20201021-13-1o4xza4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364868/original/file-20201021-13-1o4xza4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364868/original/file-20201021-13-1o4xza4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364868/original/file-20201021-13-1o4xza4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Demographic changes in places like China are putting huge pressures on societies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
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<h2>Families can only do so much</h2>
<p>In the midst of these demographic and cultural changes, Asian governments continue to promote the idea families should be primarily responsible for the care of older family members. </p>
<p>But for many adult children, the pressures to fulfil the demands of filial piety are immense. Those who are unable to provide care because of work demands or their own family responsibilities often find it emotionally difficult to put their parents or grandparents in institutional care. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/aged-care-failures-show-how-little-we-value-older-people-and-those-who-care-for-them-103356">Aged care failures show how little we value older people – and those who care for them</a>
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<p>Research has shown even hiring a live-in domestic worker is associated with <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23723433/">negative self-esteem among adult children</a>. Care-giving for older parents can therefore become a harrowing journey requiring time, money and in-depth knowledge of the health and social care systems. </p>
<p>Because of these challenges — as well as the rapidly ageing populations in many Asian countries — we are being forced to think creatively about how to improve community care for older people who don’t have around-the-clock family support. </p>
<p>Asian countries are at the forefront of this research out of necessity. But many of these strategies can easily transfer to other parts of the world — and in some cases already are — despite any cultural differences that may exist. </p>
<h2>Why integrated care is the way forward</h2>
<p>The average Singaporean born in 2020 can expect to live 84.7 years, the <a href="https://www.singstat.gov.sg/find-data/search-by-theme/population/death-and-life-expectancy/latest-data">fifth-longest life expectancy in the world</a>. By 2030, approximately <a href="https://www.population.sg/articles/older-singaporeans-to-double-by-2030">one-quarter</a> of the population will be aged 65 and above.</p>
<p>At present, the mandatory retirement age in Singapore is 62. The old-age dependency ratio — the number of working-age people available to support one older person — has decreased from 13 in 1970 to four in 2020. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/at-the-heart-of-the-broken-model-for-funding-aged-care-is-broken-trust-heres-how-to-fix-it-147101">At the heart of the broken model for funding aged care is broken trust. Here's how to fix it</a>
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<p>This is why the Singaporean government has made it a priority to come up with new solutions for aged care.</p>
<p>One solution is the provision of <a href="https://www.racp.edu.au/docs/default-source/advocacy-library/integrated-care-physicians-supporting-better-patient-outcomes-discussion-paper.pdf">integrated care</a>. </p>
<p>Like many developed economies, aged care in Singapore has become increasingly fragmented. Today, an older person typically has specialists for each organ and may visit a general practitioner, a doctor in a polyclinic, a hospital or a traditional healer over the course of a year. None of these health records are integrated. </p>
<p>Thus, older people are seen as a sum of parts — and this not only affects the efficacy of their care, but also their quality of life. </p>
<p>The World Health Organisation has recognised the limitations of this kind of fragmented care and last year launched the <a href="https://www.who.int/ageing/health-systems/icope/en/">Integrated Care for Older People framework</a> for countries dealing with rapidly ageing populations. This framework promotes people-centred and integrated health services for older persons via a seamless network of families, communities and health care institutions. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364869/original/file-20201021-23-vbwur1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364869/original/file-20201021-23-vbwur1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364869/original/file-20201021-23-vbwur1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364869/original/file-20201021-23-vbwur1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364869/original/file-20201021-23-vbwur1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364869/original/file-20201021-23-vbwur1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364869/original/file-20201021-23-vbwur1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Ageing in place is a strategy being embraced in Singapore.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
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<p>In its ideal form, integrated care allows older people to “<a href="https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/aging-place-growing-older-home">age in place</a>”, that is in their own homes. Older people can have their health and social care needs satisfied without having to be institutionalised, which decreases the need for government spending on institutional aged care. </p>
<p><a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-017-9331-5_5">Previous</a> <a href="https://academic.oup.com/gerontologist/article-abstract/59/3/401/5230750">research</a> has shown older adults who “age in place” are happier and have a higher quality of life than those in institutions.</p>
<p>In order to achieve an integrated care system, there has to be an alignment of goals across players in the health and social care systems. </p>
<p>In Singapore, this ethos has taken hold in the last decade. In 2009, the government established an <a href="https://www.aic.sg/">Agency for Integrated Care (AIC)</a>, which acts as a central repository of information for older adults and provides them with referrals and placements with health and social services. </p>
<p>For example, older people can contact the AIC to obtain referrals for things like dementia day care or rehabilitation services. </p>
<p>The idea is to provide older people with the medical and social support when they need it, but not to take them out of their communities. </p>
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<h2>Bringing nurses to residents in their communities</h2>
<p>At the same time, community health and social care services are being ramped up and new models of care are being tested in order to achieve a truly integrated care system.</p>
<p>One example of a new model of care that is being piloted is a program called <a href="https://www.duke-nus.edu.sg/care/research/research-detail/lists/listsProvider3/evaluation-studies/an-evaluation-of-the-care-close-to-home-programme-(c2h)-assessing-the-impacts-of-home-personal-care-services-on-low-income-older-adults-in-singapore#:%7E:text=The%20Care%20Close%20to%20Home%20(C2H)%20programme%20supports%20vulnerable%20older,psychosocial%20support%20for%20enrolled%20clients.">Care Close to Home</a> (C2H). In this model, a registered nurse and health care assistants are situated in communities and provide health and social care to residents living in the area during weekdays. </p>
<p>Residents are encouraged to seek help from the C2H team if, for example, they have an asthma attack or a non-serious fall. In most cases, the nurse can manage the situation. </p>
<p>Again, the goal of this system is to manage people’s health and social care needs at home to reduce frequent hospitalisations and entry into nursing homes. </p>
<p>The importance of these kinds of community health and social care services is recognised at the government level in other countries, too. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/despite-more-than-30-major-inquiries-governments-still-havent-fixed-aged-care-why-are-they-getting-away-with-it-147736">Despite more than 30 major inquiries, governments still haven't fixed aged care. Why are they getting away with it?</a>
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<p>China, for example, is currently <a href="https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/96/12/18-214908/en/">experimenting</a> with different models of community health services to achieve an integrated care system. Japan has <a href="https://www.ijic.org/articles/10.5334/ijic.2451/">invested heavily</a> in the training of geriatricians and the development of community care services.</p>
<p>In the next decade, the models of health and social care for older adults must be re-imagined like this to support ageing populations. </p>
<p>Integrated care is the way forward — this is the best solution for maintaining a high quality of life among older adults. We can no longer rely on the family as the primary support system for older adults. </p>
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<p><em>Correction: this story has been updated to correct the date AIC was established and make minor clarifications on the AIC and C2H programs.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148089/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Angelique Chan receives funding grants from Ministry of Health, Singapore and the Tsao-NUS Initiative for Ageing Research, National University of Singapore.</span></em></p>Integrated care is the way forward in Asian societies — this is the best solution for maintaining a high quality of life among older adults.Angelique Chan, Executive Director of the Centre for Ageing Research & Education, Duke-NUS Medical School, National University of SingaporeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1459552020-09-11T15:34:46Z2020-09-11T15:34:46ZThe absurdity of empire in JG Farrell’s The Singapore Grip<p>In 2017, the then British foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, paid a visit to the sacred <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/sep/30/boris-johnson-caught-on-camera-reciting-kipling-in-myanmar-temple">Shwedagon Pagoda in Myanmar</a>. Approaching the giant Tharawaddy Min bell that hangs in the pavilion, Johnson began muttering lines from Rudyard Kipling’s classic imperial poem <a href="http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_mandalay.htm">The Road to Mandalay</a>:</p>
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<p>For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:</p>
<p>“Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!”</p>
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<p>In a scene worthy of TV political satires like Yes Minister the horrified British ambassador, accompanying Johnson, discretely intervened to remind the minister of the danger of offending his hosts: “You’re on mic … Probably not a good idea”.</p>
<p>The incident seems to capture something of the nostalgic spirit, the hold exerted by past imperial glories incongruously rehashed for the modern world, that characterises the contemporary political landscape. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8010340/">The Singapore Grip</a>, the final volume of <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/212463/the-empire-trilogy-by-jg-farrell/">JG Farrell’s Empire Trilogy</a>, is now being screened on ITV as a glossy period drama. The novel is built on an awareness of that same self-mythologising of imperial Britons and points up its absurdity.</p>
<h2>Vainglorious imperialist attitudes</h2>
<p>Farrell is interested in depicting what he called individuals undergoing history: his subject matter, the decline of the British empire. In The Singapore Grip, the focus is on the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in early 1942. The typical Farrellian protagonist – here, Matthew Webb the idealistic son of a deceased rubber magnate – is essentially a bystander to great events. The novel turns on the everyday and the mundane, paying attention to characters’ frantic, incongruous attempts to maintain normality in the face of encroaching chaos.</p>
<p>Although the novel’s celebrated humour is often wry, it sometimes works up to farcical set-pieces which encapsulate the vaingloriousness of the imperial attitudes on show. A high point comes with attempts to fire a female daredevil from a cannon at the Great World amusement park. It is a symbolic enactment of the defence of the colony, which ends with the human projectile missing her target and landing head first in a safety net. Safely captured: “she jumped and arched and flapped like a netted salmon”. </p>
<p>The main target of The Singapore Grip is economic imperialism. Farrell skewers self-serving justifications for indefensible economic practices, which ensure that Europeans cream off the lion’s share of profits from Singapore industries while keeping the local workforce in poverty. At one point, Matthew and his Eurasian girlfriend visit a dying house inhabited by ailing Malay labourers who one-by-one rise from their deathbeds to point an accusing finger at this son of British imperialism.</p>
<h2>Pampered colonialists</h2>
<p><a href="https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/itv-singapore-grip-criticism-asian-characters-colonialism-beats-1234761364/">Early reactions</a> to the ITV adaptation have called out “cultural colonialism” and erasure of Asian bodies. Yet, similar criticisms of the novel would be wide of the mark. </p>
<p>The personal tribulations of the Europeans do offer the main focus, but Farrell punctuates the book with other perspectives. He does so to remind us of those paying the heaviest price for imperial malpractice. </p>
<p>At one point the narrative pulls away from the pampered colonialists to take us into the experience of an elderly Chinese wharf-worker who inhabits a tiny cubicle in a decaying dockside tenement. On a starlit night he leaves the building to visit the privy, oblivious to the first bombing raid over the city by Japanese aircraft which is about to begin:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As he returns, stepping into the looming shadow of the tenement there is a white flash and the darkness drains like a liquid out of everything he can see. The building seems to hang over him for a moment and then slowly dissolves, engulfing him. Later, when official estimates are made of this first raid on Singapore (61 killed, 133 injured), there will be no mention of this old man for the simple reason that he, in common with so many others, has left no trace of ever having existed either in this part of the world or in any other. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Far from erasing marginal figures, Farrell reinserts them in a challenge to that very act of historical erasure. </p>
<p>Farrell’s novel is most notable, however, for its comic evisceration of a certain imperial style, a kind of bluster familiar once more as we live through a time in which the inequities of the past are downplayed and patriotic slogans replace a truthful reckoning with the challenges of the present. For us today, JG Farrell’s ability to prick the alluring delusions of the British Empire is more relevant than ever.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145955/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Morey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. </span></em></p>JG Farell’s novel mocks the delusions and vanity of imperial attitudes that persisted even as the empire collapsed.Peter Morey, Professor of Twentieth-Century Literature, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1455692020-09-03T13:13:15Z2020-09-03T13:13:15ZJG Farrell’s The Singapore Grip: new TV adaptation brings to life the final book by one of the UK’s finest novelists<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356311/original/file-20200903-24-1g5z6s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=130%2C147%2C4896%2C2918&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">SIngapore Grip: the final book in JG Farrell's Empire Trilogy.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ITV Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In March 2020, when it became clear that my university campus was about to close due to the coronavirus pandemic, I hastily grabbed from my office shelves my well-thumbed copies of <a href="https://www.nyrb.com/collections/j-g-farrell">JG Farrell’s Empire Trilogy</a>: Troubles (1970), The Siege of Krishnapur (1973), and The Singapore Grip (1978). This was no sentimental choice on my part. I believed that Farrell could help me deal with my queasy feelings that everyday life as I knew it was dissolving frighteningly into incertitude.</p>
<p>As a writer, Farrell was concerned with those suddenly tipped into uncertainty, no doubt because of his own life being irreversibly turned upside down due to the sudden advent of sickness. Aged 21, he had become seriously ill after playing rugby at Oxford University in December 1956 and was diagnosed with polio. A spell in an iron lung was followed by a long and painful recovery. Farrell’s upper body was permanently affected by the disease. He never recovered full mobility. </p>
<p>Almost overnight, a young, healthy and ambitious undergraduate had become physically fragile and equipped with a keen sense of how quickly and unexpectedly all we take for granted is lost. Cruelly, his illness would play a part in his untimely <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/last-gaze-of-jg-farrell-as-ocean-took-him-kdql22lqfd0">death by drowning in August 1979</a>, aged 44. While fishing near his new home in Ireland’s Bantry Bay, he was swept into the rough sea. Unable to swim strongly, he was soon lost to the water.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Middle-aged man in evening dresss photographed in profile." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356318/original/file-20200903-20-18rjcod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356318/original/file-20200903-20-18rjcod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356318/original/file-20200903-20-18rjcod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356318/original/file-20200903-20-18rjcod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356318/original/file-20200903-20-18rjcod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356318/original/file-20200903-20-18rjcod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356318/original/file-20200903-20-18rjcod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Taken too young: JG Farrell.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Farrell’s early novels had often dwelt gloomily on the frailty of life. His second novel, The Lung (1965), in particular, sought to explore the dispiriting emotional and existential upset of his sudden illness. Yet, along with A Man From Elsewhere (1963) and A Girl in The Head (1967), it drew little attention – today, all three remain out of print. </p>
<h2>Making it as a writer</h2>
<p>His fortunes changed with the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2010/may/21/jg-farrell-troubles-lost-booker">publication of Troubles</a>, where he deployed more purposefully his consciousness of life’s latent fragility when depicting British colonial societies falling apart. </p>
<p>This turn to matters of Empire was not fanciful. Born to an Irish mother in Liverpool, Farrell had lived a modestly affluent childhood between England and Ireland before going up to Oxford. He knew the privileged social circles that were home to British colonialist attitudes but took a postcolonial position regarding the unhappy treatment of colonial subjects, such as the Irish. </p>
<p>Troubles imagines the lives of the <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095413526">Anglo-Irish Ascendency</a> as the Irish War of Independence (1919-21) develops. Its often comical depiction of the Ascendency’s decline pokes fun at their arrogance and short-sightedness. </p>
<p>But Farrell’s sensitivity to the bewilderment and anxiety felt by all undergoing history also brings to the novel a measured sense of compassion for those whose worlds were at last evaporating. Indeed, the Empire Trilogy would uniquely combine the compassionate and condemnatory, the sensitive and the satirical, in its indulgent if unforgiving presentation of the colonial establishment. The novel established his critical reputation: it received the 1971 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, while in 2010 it was awarded the “<a href="https://thebookerprizes.com/lostmanbooker/2010">Lost Booker Prize</a>” after a public vote.</p>
<h2>End of Empire</h2>
<p>Farrell’s next novel, the <a href="https://thebookerprizes.com/books/siege-krishnapur-by">Booker prize-winning The Siege of Krishnapur</a>, depicted the ready collapse of British civility during the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Buoyed by its success, Farrell used part of his prize money to travel to south-east Asia to research his next – and, sadly, last – full-length novel, The Singapore Grip, which has just been adapted for television by Christopher Hampton.</p>
<p>Punctuated in turn by scenes of high comedy and historical solemnity, the novel portrays Singapore prior to its humiliating surrender to the Japanese in February 1942. At its heart is one of Farrell’s least likeable befuddled expatriates, the rubber magnate Walter Blackett, whose business empire exemplifies the unholy grip of capitalism and colonialism over the region’s impoverished workers.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Mustachioed man in linen suit on varandah." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356324/original/file-20200903-16-2bvzs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356324/original/file-20200903-16-2bvzs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356324/original/file-20200903-16-2bvzs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356324/original/file-20200903-16-2bvzs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356324/original/file-20200903-16-2bvzs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356324/original/file-20200903-16-2bvzs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356324/original/file-20200903-16-2bvzs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Unpleasant and manipulative: David Morrissey as Walter Blackett in The Singapore Grip.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ITV Pictures</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Keen to secure his firm’s future, Walter plots to marry his daughter Joan to Matthew Webb, the son of his geriatric business partner – a scheme all the more bizarre in an increasingly besieged and dangerous city. </p>
<p>An idealist at heart, Matthew’s progressive vision of a world where wealth and wisdom are equitably enjoyed soon becomes as battered as the bombed-out city. Events in Singapore appear instead to prove the “Second Law” often quoted by his American friend, James Ehrendorf: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In human affairs, things tend inevitably to go wrong. Things are slightly worse at any given moment than at any preceding moment.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet The Singapore Grip never loses faith in the capacity for survival and endurance. It mixes its unforgiving vision of colonialism’s absurdity and collapse with an unyielding and often warmly humorous embrace of human fellowship. And, while Matthew fails to flee in time, one important figure significantly escapes: an abandoned, diseased and distressed King Charles spaniel, sardonically named “The Human Condition” by one of Matthew’s friends, who is last seen bolting up the gangplank to safety on a soon-to-depart ship.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Young man with glasses, dirty uniform." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356326/original/file-20200903-20-1620dyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356326/original/file-20200903-20-1620dyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356326/original/file-20200903-20-1620dyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356326/original/file-20200903-20-1620dyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356326/original/file-20200903-20-1620dyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356326/original/file-20200903-20-1620dyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356326/original/file-20200903-20-1620dyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Captured: Luke Treadaway as Matthew Webb in The Singapore Grip.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ITV Pictures</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Highly amusing and deeply penetrating by turns, Farrell’s fiction often renders the human condition as precarious and insubstantial as the ailing dog in The Singapore Grip. But it crucially recognises that people are as complicated as the changing historical circumstances into which they are mercilessly thrust. Farrell’s firm condemnation of Empire never stopped him trying to understand humanely those undergoing its decline.</p>
<p>In reaching for Farrell when lockdown commenced, I had hoped to deal less fearfully with the experience of sudden change. But he soon reminded me, too, of the humane resources we also need at life-changing moments: steadfast hope, a saving sense of humour, and – for those lucky to escape or recover from illness – the wisdom of survival.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145569/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John McLeod does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The writer was drowned at the age of 44, but he left three novels which have come to represent the decline of the British Empire.John McLeod, Professor of Postcolonial and Diaspora Literatures, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1448042020-08-27T06:34:56Z2020-08-27T06:34:56ZAnother day, another hotel quarantine fail. So what can Australia learn from other countries?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355002/original/file-20200827-14-176owu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C4%2C994%2C648&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/yellow-hotel-exterior-small-balconies-windows-1058155418">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>This week, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-26/guests-complaints-preceded-coronavirus-sydney-hotel-evacuation/12595198">we heard</a> how conditions at a Sydney quarantine hotel were so bad almost 400 returned travellers had to be moved to another one.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1298480452617924609"}"></div></p>
<p>Before that, we heard from Victoria’s <a href="https://www.quarantineinquiry.vic.gov.au/">inquiry</a> into hotel quarantine. We learned the bulk of cases during the state’s second wave could be tracked down to <a href="https://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/news/hotel-quarantine-shocking-breaches-poor-security-and-infection-control-exposed-in-inquirys-first-week/news-story/39db84288819801c0acae6fc05af1efa">a family of four returned travellers</a> staying at a single quarantine hotel.</p>
<p>But Australia isn’t the only country to have quarantine issues. Some countries don’t use hotel quarantine at all. And others have turned to technology to keep track of returned travellers. </p>
<p>So what can we learn from other countries’ successes and failures?</p>
<h2>A short trip around the world</h2>
<p><strong>Cyprus</strong></p>
<p>The Mediterranean island of Cyprus also uses hotel quarantine for international arrivals. But rather than “<a href="https://9now.nine.com.au/a-current-affair/coronavirus-hotel-quarantine-under-fire-after-popstar-dannii-minogue-exempted-from-process-but-critically-ill-australians-refused/e779d430-3ac2-4ead-b475-97597ae72cc4">hotel quarantine hell</a>”, hotels in Cyprus are said to have a “<a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-8411131/Cypruss-deputy-tourism-minister-says-quarantine-hotels-holiday-vibe.html">holiday vibe</a>”, despite not being able to leave your room. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br0dCB6fgG0">Travellers praised</a> Cyprus for its luxury and <a href="https://www.cntraveler.com/story/my-government-mandated-quarantine-at-a-five-star-hotel">positive</a> hotel quarantine experience. Some have even said they would return for a (real) holiday.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Br0dCB6fgG0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Hotel quarantine, Cyprus style.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cyprus <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/cyprus/">recorded</a> a peak in daily cases of only 58, in early April, and now has an average of new cases a day in the teens.</p>
<p><strong>Canada</strong></p>
<p>Returned travellers must give Canadian authorities a plan for how they intend to spend their mandatory <a href="https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/services/covid/non-canadians-canadiens-eng.html#s2">14-day quarantine</a>. This doesn’t have to be in a hotel; it can be at home. You have to <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/publications/diseases-conditions/2019-novel-coronavirus-information-sheet.html">monitor your own symptoms</a>, and police will <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/police-have-checked-in-on-nearly-2-200-quarantining-travellers-at-home-1.4949021">check up on you</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1297452891280674816"}"></div></p>
<p>However, <a href="https://www.citynews1130.com/2020/04/10/rcmp-to-enforce-quarantine-act/">violations can result</a> in large fines of up to C$750,000 (A$788,000) or six months in jail.</p>
<p><strong>Taiwan</strong></p>
<p>Taiwan <a href="https://www.thestar.com.my/news/regional/2020/05/02/taiwan-expands-hotel-quarantine-orders-for-new-arrivals">introduced</a> 14-day hotel quarantine for returned travellers who didn’t have a single room with a separate bathroom or who lived with vulnerable people. </p>
<p>Since late June, <a href="https://mb.com.ph/2020/08/23/how-czech-republic-israel-and-taiwan-are-preparing-for-travelers/">business travellers</a> from low-risk countries can visit Taiwan and spend only five days in quarantine. But they need to take a COVID-19 test before leaving quarantine.</p>
<p>Taiwan has <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/taiwan/">18</a> active COVID-19 cases.</p>
<p><strong>Singapore</strong></p>
<p>After flattening the curve, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-24/singapore-coronavirus-update-travel-restrictions-australia/12587270">Singapore</a> decided to relax its 14-day hotel quarantine to seven days self-quarantine for travellers arriving from specific countries.</p>
<p>But all travellers over the age of 12 not staying in a quarantine facility have to wear an <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-17/covid-coronavirus-quarantine-tracking-devices-to-stop-breaches/12557736">electronic tracking wristband</a>. Authorities <a href="https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/quarantine-monitoring-devices-also-being-used-by-others-worldwide">are alerted</a> if people go outside or tamper with the device.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1298376264034787329"}"></div></p>
<p>Hong Kong and South Korea have also introduced <a href="https://www.travelweekly.com/Travel-News/Travel-Agent-Issues/Countries-testing-wearable-devices-to-track-arrivals-location-and-health">wristbands</a> to track people’s movements upon arrival and to check people comply with quarantine regulations. </p>
<p><strong>Poland</strong> </p>
<p>Travellers arriving in Poland <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-25/coronavirus-poland-tracking-quarantine-selfie-app/12173884">have to install</a> a home quarantine phone app developed by the Polish government. </p>
<p>For 14 days, the app uses facial recognition and geolocation algorithms to monitor people. It also prompts people to take selfies at random times during the day. </p>
<p>Individuals have 20 minutes to respond to these prompts, otherwise they risk police knocking on their door.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1242308219654959105"}"></div></p>
<p><strong>UK</strong></p>
<p>A major “<a href="https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18630807.quarantine-failure-allowed-10-000-travellers-bring-covid-19-uk-say-mps/">quarantine failure</a>” was the UK’s experience at the start of the pandemic, when 10,000 travellers spread the virus across the country. </p>
<p>Members of parliament accused the responsible ministers of making errors, such as having no border checks, no specific quarantine arrangements, and lifting self-isolation regulations. </p>
<p>This eventually led to the UK dealing with <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/">a total</a> of 328,846 cases and 41,465 COVID-19-related deaths.</p>
<p>The UK has since tightened its quarantine arrangements.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1294188006375596033"}"></div></p>
<h2>These ideas are worth adopting in Australia…</h2>
<p>More than <a href="https://www.thetelegraph.com/news/article/Australia-caps-number-of-returning-citizens-15398982.php">70,000 returned travellers</a> have been quarantined in Australian hotels since it became mandatory in late March. We don’t know exactly how many of these people have gone on to test positive. But about <a href="https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alerts/novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov-health-alert/coronavirus-covid-19-current-situation-and-case-numbers#at-a-glance">one in five</a> of Australia’s cases were acquired overseas.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-aggressive-hotel-isolation-worth-the-cost-to-fight-covid-19-the-answer-depends-on-family-size-142283">Is aggressive hotel isolation worth the cost to fight COVID-19? The answer depends on family size</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>As the headlines show, we can clearly do better in how we manage our quarantine system. </p>
<p>Adopting a “Cyprus-style” model of luxury hotel quarantine is simply beyond reach in Australia given the sheer number of people requiring quarantine facilities. However, improving the quality of facilities, ensuring a safe environment, and supervising staff is vital. This includes training both staff and travellers on <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1450">infection control measures</a>. </p>
<p>People in quarantine also need access to <a href="https://www.socialscienceinaction.org/resources/february-2020-social-science-humanitarian-action-platform/">health care</a> as well as to financial, social and psychosocial support, to ensure their safety and mental health.</p>
<h2>…but we need to be careful about electronic tags</h2>
<p>We would be particularly concerned about the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/COVID-19.aspx">human rights implications</a> of returned travellers having to wear electronic monitoring devices.</p>
<p>Although we might be familiar with electronic monitoring devices in the criminal justice system, when used in the context of infection they <a href="https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2020/06/ankle-monitors-could-stigmatize-wearers-research-says">could stigmatise</a> people for simply being at higher risk of disease.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/lockdown-returns-how-far-can-coronavirus-measures-go-before-they-infringe-on-human-rights-141782">Lockdown returns: how far can coronavirus measures go before they infringe on human rights?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>They go against the presumption that all persons will be law-abiding and perform their civic duty, with no evidence to the contrary.</p>
<p>There are also potential privacy concerns. There is no guarantee data collected through electronic monitoring — especially when using <a href="https://privacyinternational.org/examples/apps-and-covid-19">smartphone apps</a> — will not be used for purposes other than monitoring pandemics.</p>
<h2>No system is perfect</h2>
<p>Even if we implement a <a href="https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/considerations-for-quarantine-of-individuals-in-the-context-of-containment-for-coronavirus-disease-(covid-19)">world best quarantine system</a> for returned travellers, SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can still slip in.</p>
<p>That’s because people can still be infectious before feeling sick, before being diagnosed, or before being directed to quarantine. This becomes more likely the more people are kept under quarantine.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144804/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maximilian de Courten has received funding from the NHMRC. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bo Klepac Pogrmilovic, Deborah Zion, and Jaimie-Lee Maple do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Some quarantine hotels provide more of a ‘holiday vibe’ than others. Some countries don’t use quarantine hotels at all. Others use technology to make sure people stick to the rules.Maximilian de Courten, Health Policy Lead and Professor in Global Public Health at the Mitchell Institute, Victoria UniversityBo Klepac Pogrmilovic, Research Fellow in Health Policy at the Mitchell Institute for Education and Health Policy, Victoria UniversityDeborah Zion, Associate Professor and Chair, Victoria University Human Research Ethics Committee, Victoria UniversityJaimie-Lee Maple, Research Assistant and Policy Analyst, Mitchell Institute, Victoria UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1355572020-07-27T20:04:23Z2020-07-27T20:04:23ZPivot to coronavirus: how meme factories are crafting public health messaging<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348056/original/file-20200716-27-10ava0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=35%2C8%2C5955%2C5982&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">United Nations COVID-19 Response//unsplash</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Memes might seem like they emerge “naturally”, circulated by like-minded social media users and independently generating momentum. But successful memes often don’t happen by accident.</p>
<p>I’ve spent the past two years studying the history and culture of “meme factories”, especially in Singapore and Malaysia.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-are-memes-20789">Explainer: what are memes?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Meme factories are a coordinated network of creators or accounts who produce and host <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/what-defines-a-meme-1904778/">memes</a>. </p>
<p>They can take the form of a single creator managing a network of accounts and platforms, or creators who collaborate informally in hobby groups, or groups working as a commercial business. </p>
<p>These factories will use strategic calculations to “go viral”, and at times seek to maximise commercial potential for sponsors. </p>
<p>Through this, they can have a huge influence in shaping social media. And – using the language of internet visual pop culture – meme factories can shift public opinion. </p>
<h2>When meme factories were born</h2>
<p>The first mention of meme factories seems to have been a slide in a <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_moot_poole_the_case_for_anonymity_online/transcript">2010 TED talk</a> by Christopher Poole, the founder of the controversial uncensored internet forum <a href="https://mashable.com/category/4chan/">4chan</a>. </p>
<p>4chan, said Poole, was “completely raw, completely unfiltered”. He introduced his audience to the new internet phenomenon of “memes” coming out of the forum, including <a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/lolcats">LOLcats</a> and <a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/rickroll">Rickrolling</a> – the largest memes to have emerged in the 2000s.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="LOLcat meme reading: Im in ur foldur keruptin yr fylez" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348059/original/file-20200716-35-l1ws9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348059/original/file-20200716-35-l1ws9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348059/original/file-20200716-35-l1ws9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348059/original/file-20200716-35-l1ws9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348059/original/file-20200716-35-l1ws9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348059/original/file-20200716-35-l1ws9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348059/original/file-20200716-35-l1ws9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘LOLcats’ were one of the meme forms of the 2000s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Clancy Ratliff/Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today, corporate meme factories systematically <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/instagrams-content-factories-are-huge-and-thats-a-problem-for-facebook/ar-AAHVGAh?li=BBoPU0R">churn out</a> posts to hundreds of millions of followers. </p>
<p>They <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2012/10/24/3541836/2012-presidential-">commissioned artists</a> to “live-GIF” the 2012 US Presidential Election debates in an assembly line of soft political content. They <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josehernandez/this-is-what-we-know-about-the-facebook-group-that">congregated on a closed Facebook group</a> to decide who could “take credit” for a school shooting. They created <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/style/michael-bloomberg-memes-jerry-media.html">sponsored political posts</a> for Michael Bloomberg’s Presidential campaign.</p>
<p>On reddit’s gaming communities, activating a meme factory (sincerely or in jest) requires willing members to react with coordinated (and at times, inauthentic) action by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/99qe89/its_time_to_start_the_mem">flooding social media threads</a>. </p>
<p>Amid K-pop fandoms on Twitter, meanwhile, K-pop idols who are prone to <a href="https://twitter.com/_ILLhoonie/status/972846205465108481">making awkward or funny expressions</a> are also affectionately called meme factories, with their faces used as reaction images. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"972846205465108481"}"></div></p>
<h2>Three types of factories</h2>
<p>In <a href="https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/meme-factory-cultures-and-content-pivoting-in-singapore-and-malaysia-during-covid-19/">my research</a>, I studied how memes can be weaponised to disseminate political and public service messages. </p>
<p>I have identified three types of factories: </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348304/original/file-20200720-27-10n7vyt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348304/original/file-20200720-27-10n7vyt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=274&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348304/original/file-20200720-27-10n7vyt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=274&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348304/original/file-20200720-27-10n7vyt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=274&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348304/original/file-20200720-27-10n7vyt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=345&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348304/original/file-20200720-27-10n7vyt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=345&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348304/original/file-20200720-27-10n7vyt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=345&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Meme factories can be single curators or collaborative groups.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Crystal Abidin</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Commercial meme factories are digital and news media companies whose core business is to incorporate advertising into original content. </p>
<p>For instance SGAG, owned by Singaporean parent company <a href="https://www.thedrum.com/news/2020/05/04/laughter-the-best-medicine-hepmil-media-group-using-humour-during-coronavirus">HEPMIL Media Group</a>, has commissioned memes for various business partners, including promotions of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/sgag.sg/videos/281974762890592">radio stations</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CBnM_WUBmcB/">groceries</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CBPYiBJJ0oP/">COVID-19 recovery initiatives</a>. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/CBnM_WUBmcB","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>Hobbyish niche meme factories, in contrast, are social media accounts curating content produced by a single person or small group of admins, based on specific vernaculars and aesthetics to interest their target group. </p>
<p>One example is the illustration collective <a href="https://www.instagram.com/highnunchicken/?hl=en">highnunchicken</a>, which creates original comics that are a critical — and at times cynical — commentary about social life in Singapore. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/B-EuDPilfym","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/STcomments/">STcomments</a>, meanwhile, collates screengrabs of “ridiculous” comments from the Facebook page of The Straits Times, calling out inane humour, racism, xenophobia and classism, and providing space for Singaporeans to push back against these sentiments. </p>
<p>The third type of meme factory is meme generator and aggregator chat groups – networks of volunteer members who collate, brainstorm and seed meme contents across platforms. </p>
<p>One of these is <a href="https://t.me/joinchat/C-bhhEwufsxZaUsv0TiSdA">Memes n Dreams</a>, where members use a <a href="https://justaskthales.com/en/telegram-different-messaging-apps/">Telegram</a> chat group to share interesting memes, post their original memes, and brainstorm over “meme challenges” that call upon the group to create content to promote a specific message.</p>
<h2>Factories during coronavirus</h2>
<p>Meme factories work quickly to respond to the world around them, so it is no surprise in 2020 they have pivoted to providing relief or promoting public health messages around COVID-19. </p>
<p>Some factories launched new initiatives to harness their large follower base to promote and sustain small local businesses; others took to intentionally politicising their memes to challenge censorship laws in Singapore and Malaysia. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/CAmdNCVDZze","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>Factories turned memes into public service announcements to educate viewers on topics including hand hygiene and navigating misinformation. </p>
<p>They also focused on providing viewers with entertainment to lighten the mood during self-isolation. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/B-HS2eAHsZJ","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>Memes are highly contextual, and often require insider knowledge to decode. </p>
<p>Many memes that have gone viral during COVID-19 started out as satire and were shared by Millenials on Instagram or Facebook. As they spread, they evolved into misinformed folklore and misinformation, shared on WhatsApp by older generations who didn’t understand their satirical roots.</p>
<p>An early Facebook meme about how rubbing chilli fruits over your hands prevent COVID-19 (because the sting from the spice would burn and you would stop touching your face) very quickly evolved into a WhatsApp hoax saying the heat from chilli powder would kill COVID-19 viruses. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348301/original/file-20200720-37-emuodt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348301/original/file-20200720-37-emuodt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348301/original/file-20200720-37-emuodt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348301/original/file-20200720-37-emuodt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348301/original/file-20200720-37-emuodt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348301/original/file-20200720-37-emuodt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348301/original/file-20200720-37-emuodt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A meme that was shared among Instagram Millennials became distorted and shared on WhatsApp among Boomers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Crystal Abidin</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Memes can be orchestrated by savvy meme factories who operate behind the scenes; or by ordinary people engaging in democratic citizen feedback. Beyond the joy, laughs (and misinformation), memes are a crucial medium of public communication and persuasion.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/135557/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Crystal Abidin receives funding from Facebook and the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>Successful memes don’t often happen by accident. And COVID-19 has become a popular topic for their creators.Crystal Abidin, Senior Research Fellow & ARC DECRA, Internet Studies, Curtin University, Curtin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1369242020-05-07T12:23:04Z2020-05-07T12:23:04ZHow disorderly democracies can outperform efficient autocracies in tackling coronavirus<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333240/original/file-20200506-49542-17d113s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=46%2C73%2C4426%2C2441&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Germany has succeeded in fighting the coronavirus in part by combing strong national leadership with regional autonomy.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">John MacDougal/POOL via AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, some countries have consistently received accolades for their rapid, coordinated responses, while others have been roundly condemned as laggards.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/taiwans-coronavirus-example-11588026299">Taiwan</a>, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/both-new-zealand-and-australia-contained-coronavirus-but-one-is-set-to-pay-a-heavier-price-11588158002">Australia</a>, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/18/asia/singapore-coronavirus-response-intl-hnk/index.html">Singapore</a>, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/jordan-flattening-covid-19-curve-200422112212466.html">Jordan</a> and the <a href="https://eurasianet.org/georgia-gets-rare-plaudits-for-coronavirus-response">Republic of Georgia</a> were able to “flatten” the curve and limit the outbreak. By contrast <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/26/spain-coronavirus-response-analysis">Spain</a>, <a href="https://hbr.org/2020/03/lessons-from-italys-response-to-coronavirus">Italy</a> and the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/04/24/us/politics/ap-us-virus-outbreak-americas-failures.html">U.S.</a> have struggled to contain the virus’s spread. </p>
<p>What do the countries that have dealt effectively with COVID-19 have in common? </p>
<p>Many factors have likely contributed to their success, including <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/11/us/us-health-care-system-coronavirus/index.html">preexisting health systems</a>, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2020/04/05/why-organizational-agility-is-key-to-defeating-the-coronavirus/#149fa89f68ad">bureaucratic agility</a> and <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2020/03/democracy-autocracy-coronavirus-doesnt-care/">the decision to act early</a>. </p>
<p>Equally important, in my view as a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Y58-EhUAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">political scientist</a>, are each country’s political institutions – whether top-down autocracies, federalized democracies or something else. Determining which ones work best is the tricky part.</p>
<h2>Of autocracies and democracies</h2>
<p>Some autocratic regimes have argued that they are <a href="https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1182074.shtml">uniquely equipped</a> to deal with the pandemic, prompting <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/coronavirus-empowering-dictators-and-changing-world-order-139127">a fair bit</a> of <a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/coronavirus-crisis-could-spark-authoritarian-revival/">soul searching</a> in the democratic world. </p>
<p>But the success of democratic countries like <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/28/global-leadership-coronavirus-pandemic-germany-united-states-china/">Germany</a>, combined with the failure of autocracies like <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/24/how-iran-botched-coronavirus-pandemic-response/">Iran</a>, make it clear that things are not so simple. Indeed, the crisis arose in part because autocratic China did not <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/27/the-future-is-asian-but-not-chinese-coronavirus-pandemic-china-korea-singapore-taiwan/">move swiftly enough</a> to contain it.</p>
<p>A related but more subtle argument is that <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/federalism-coronavirus-problem-government/">more centralized</a> governments are better able to confront crises like the coronavirus. According to this take, countries with strong regional and local governments – and especially <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/u-s-federalism-creates-chaos-in-fighting-coronavirus.html">federal countries</a> like the U.S. – are at a disadvantage. By contrast, strongly centralized democracies like <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/does-french-political-system-work-main-parties/">France</a> and high-functioning autocracies like <a href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/southeast-asia-strong-state-democratization-in-malaysia-and-singapore/">Singapore</a> are in a better position to act. </p>
<h2>The benefits of central coordination</h2>
<p>There is no question that centralized leadership – even when exercised coercively – provides certain real benefits during a public health crisis. </p>
<p>This is because pandemics are an example of a policy area with <a href="https://www.bis.org/publ/bisbull04.htm">strong spillover effects</a>. A citizen could be infected in a city or state with weak social distancing rules and transmit the disease when traveling to another city or state. Or the efforts of one state to hoard masks could produce a critical shortage in another.</p>
<p>U.S. states, for example, have been <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/09/why-states-and-the-federal-government-are-bidding-on-ppe.html">forced to compete</a> for personal protective equipment, which has generated inefficiencies and a bidding war. And some places <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/04/29/georgia-coronavirus-death-rate-could-double-as-lockdown-eases/">have begun to reopen</a> businesses against the advice of experts. If this move causes a spike in transmission, it could spill over into other states that have taken more risk-adverse stances.</p>
<h2>The critical role of local governments</h2>
<p>But the results of <a href="https://www.elgaronline.com/view/9781788972161/9781788972161.xml">ongoing research</a> that I’m conducting with two colleagues suggests that success during a pandemic is not just a question of strong national leadership. </p>
<p>Our findings indicate that the countries best able to provide local public goods – including primary health care, critical during a pandemic – are not those that are most centralized. Rather, they are ones that strike “a fine balance” between the powers of central governments and those at the state and local level.</p>
<p>There are several reasons for this. </p>
<p>A more decentralized approach to government will facilitate the targeting of policy to the needs of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1826343?seq=1">different locales</a>. When the pandemic is concentrated in certain areas of a single country, for example, it <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/opinion/coronavirus-end-social-distancing.html">may make sense</a> for sub-national authorities to decide when to reopen. And the better information and stronger accountability enjoyed by local and regional governments are likely to matter even more during the economic recovery.</p>
<p>Germany, for its part, has enjoyed the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/04/angela-merkel-germany-coronavirus-pandemic/610225/">strong national leadership</a> of Angela Merkel, but it is relying also on the individual states to decide how to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52382196">ease social distancing</a>.</p>
<p>Decentralized and federal systems also allow states and locales <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2008.00346.x">to learn</a> from each other and to emulate what works. They <a href="http://webarchive.urban.org/publications/204582.html">put pressure on those states and locales</a> that are doing poorly to do better. </p>
<p>Moreover, strong regional and local governments can serve as a backstop when national policy is insufficient, limiting the damage of central misgovernment. </p>
<p>The most <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/here-are-government-s-biggest-failures-coronavirus-response-n1175791">obvious example</a> of this phenomenon is the United States, where the Trump administration’s mixed signals, incorrect information and slow reaction time arguably made the U.S. <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-federal-governments-coronavirus-actions-and-failures-timeline-and-themes/">more vulnerable</a> to the coronavirus. At the same time, states like California, Oregon and Washington have succeeded in limiting local cases enough that they are <a href="https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/04/06/california-sends-500-ventilators-back-to-national-stockpile-1272393">now shipping ventilators</a> to places where they are needed more. </p>
<p>In France, too, regional and city governments have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/29/world/europe/coronavirus-france-masks.html">tried to pick up the slack</a> for the perceived failures of the central government in Paris. But the country’s highly centralized political institutions have put strong limits on their freedom of action.</p>
<h2>It’s not too late</h2>
<p>It’s no surprise, then, that most countries that have succeeded in containing the virus – <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/05/germanys-devolved-logic-is-helping-it-win-the-coronavirus-race">Germany</a>, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/taiwanese-authorities-stay-vigilant-virus-crisis-eases-n1188781">Taiwan</a> and <a href="https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/coronavirus-in-australia-most-of-the-country-is-effectively-in-full-lockdown-as-state-governments-help-stop-the-spread-c-902028">Australia</a> for example – combine central coordination with active regional and local involvement.</p>
<p>Of course, some centralized – and autocratic – countries are coronavirus success stories. Interestingly, however, these tend to be relatively small countries with very strong governments, for example <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-in-jordan-seemingly-kept-in-check-by-drastic-early-lockdown-measures/">Jordan</a> and especially Singapore. Larger centralized countries like China and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/world/europe/coronavirus-russia-putin.html">Russia</a> tend not to perform as well. Put differently, the larger a country’s territory and population, the less effective a purely top-down strategy will be.</p>
<p>While the United States and most decentralized democracies aren’t yet on the list of success stories, it’s not too late to take advantage of their inherent strengths for the recovery. To accomplish this, my research shows their leaders should guard the autonomy of local authorities, while building cooperation and trust across all levels of government.</p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklysmart">You can get our highlights each weekend</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/136924/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charles Hankla does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While some authoritarian governments have won early praise, research shows that democratic countries with a balance of power between central and regional bodies are best able to succeed.Charles Hankla, Associate Professor of Political Science, Georgia State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1372682020-05-06T19:51:12Z2020-05-06T19:51:12ZThe coronavirus risk Australia is not talking about: testing our unlawful migrant workers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332963/original/file-20200506-49584-1pzn0fs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As Australia starts to <a href="https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-juggling-the-curves-as-we-ease-the-covid-restrictions-137940">emerge from its coronavirus lockdown,</a> authorities are on high alert for any fresh breakouts of the disease.</p>
<p>One of the risks we need to keep an eye on is hard to see: the tens of thousands of unlawful migrants who work here every day without a valid visa. </p>
<p>My research shows Australia’s unlawful migrant workers already face routine exploitation and in some cases, terrible work conditions. But the arrival of COVID-19 presents new and worrying health challenges, for them and the broader Australian population. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/this-is-why-singapores-coronavirus-cases-are-growing-a-look-inside-the-dismal-living-conditions-of-migrant-workers-136959">This is why Singapore's coronavirus cases are growing: a look inside the dismal living conditions of migrant workers</a>
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<p>In recent weeks, Singapore has gone from <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-singapores-coronavirus-response-worked-and-what-we-can-all-learn-134024">global poster child for tackling coronavirus</a>, to the home of <a href="https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html">more than 19,000 cases</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/this-is-why-singapores-coronavirus-cases-are-growing-a-look-inside-the-dismal-living-conditions-of-migrant-workers-136959">after infections took off among its migrant workers</a>. </p>
<p>Singapore’s migrant workers live in purpose-built accommodation and are officially known to the government. In Australia, our unlawful migrant workers live under the radar, so are even harder to identify and support. </p>
<h2>Unlawful migrant workers in Australia</h2>
<p>There is little data about the precise numbers of people working in Australia illegally. The best estimate is still a <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/30680909.pdf">2011 report to the Gillard government</a> suggesting there are between 50,000 and 100,000 non-citizens working here without permission. </p>
<p>This group is different from temporary visa holders, <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/plea-for-1-1-million-on-temporary-visas-as-expert-warns-of-public-health-disaster-20200430-p54op9.html">who are also facing their own financial struggles during the lockdown</a>. </p>
<p>Unlawful migrants workers come to Australia on valid visas and then breach their visas conditions. This includes those who overstay their visas and those who come on a visa without work rights. </p>
<p>In my 2017 <a href="https://bridges.monash.edu/articles/Exploited_and_illegal_Unlawful_migrant_workers_in_Australia/7159193">research across NSW and Victoria</a>, I spoke to such people who worked in industries including domestic labour, agriculture, hospitality and commercial cleaning. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332972/original/file-20200506-49569-vvjqq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332972/original/file-20200506-49569-vvjqq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332972/original/file-20200506-49569-vvjqq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332972/original/file-20200506-49569-vvjqq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332972/original/file-20200506-49569-vvjqq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332972/original/file-20200506-49569-vvjqq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332972/original/file-20200506-49569-vvjqq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">It is estimated that tens of thousands of people work in Australia without a valid visa in industries such as fruit picking.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
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<p>They described physical and verbal abuse, no or low pay, poor accommodation, withholding of passports and threats of being reported to immigration authorities.</p>
<h2>The COVID-19 challenge</h2>
<p>The arrival of COVID-19 presents new risks for unlawful workers in Australia. </p>
<p>They face destitution if work disappears and new opportunities fail to arrive. A key concern is that unlawful migrants will accept exploitative working conditions, with little or no pay, and no incentive to come forward for help. </p>
<p>In April, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-03/coronavirus-pm-tells-international-students-time-to-go-to-home/12119568">Prime Minister Scott Morrison told visitors to “return to their home countries”</a> if they cannot support themselves in Australia. </p>
<p>However, this is not a solution for unlawful workers: it is not clear how people would leave or how they would pay for their travel. It is also likely many will be compelled to stay. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/6-countries-6-curves-how-nations-that-moved-fast-against-covid-19-avoided-disaster-137333">6 countries, 6 curves: how nations that moved fast against COVID-19 avoided disaster</a>
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<p>In my research, I spoke with people who had been in the country for a matter of days and people who had been in the country for close to 20 years - undocumented and working. Often they were sending money home to their family in their country of origin, with some setting up new homes and families in Australia. </p>
<p>Leaving is not a straightforward option.</p>
<h2>The public health risks</h2>
<p>Unlawful workers also present a public health risk for Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic. </p>
<p>Not only do they tend to live in overcrowded accommodation, they also tend to move around frequently, seeking work and better living conditions. </p>
<p>Critically, unlawful migrant workers are also reluctant to access community support - for any reason - due to fears they may be reported to immigration authorities and then detained and deported. My research found this group will actively avoid any contact with formal service providers from police to health care workers. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332978/original/file-20200506-49589-yr1onp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332978/original/file-20200506-49589-yr1onp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332978/original/file-20200506-49589-yr1onp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332978/original/file-20200506-49589-yr1onp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332978/original/file-20200506-49589-yr1onp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332978/original/file-20200506-49589-yr1onp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332978/original/file-20200506-49589-yr1onp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Unlawful migrant workers are unlikely to access healthcare services, such as COVID-19 testing, for fear of being reported to immigration authorities.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Loren Elliott/ AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>This reluctance presents a risk to their health and that of the broader community: if an unlawful migrant has COVID-19 symptoms, they are unlikely to access testing or health care. </p>
<p>As Australia starts to ease some lockdown restrictions and <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/australia-ramps-up-coronavirus-testing-to-include-anyone-with-respiratory-symptoms">boosts testing for any signs of COVID-19</a>, it is critical all relevant people in the community come forward if they have symptoms. </p>
<h2>We need to build a ‘firewall’</h2>
<p>Before the global pandemic, there has been growing recognition, at <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/593f6d9fe4fcb5c458624206/t/5bd26f620d9297e70989b27a/1540517748798/Wage+theft+in+Silence+Report.pdf">national</a> and <a href="https://picum.org/firewall-3/">international levels</a>, of the need for a firewall between protections for migrant workers and immigration processes. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-slowing-australias-population-growth-really-the-best-way-out-of-this-crisis-137779">Is slowing Australia's population growth really the best way out of this crisis?</a>
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<p>A firewall offers dedicated protection for undocumented workers to come forward - to seek health care, or police or other assistance in the context of workplace exploitation - with the clear understanding that their visa status will not be referred on to immigration authorities. </p>
<p>While my research did not find health services reporting unlawful migrants to the Australian Border Force, the role of a firewall is to ensure there is a formal commitment that this will not happen across any community service.</p>
<h2>What we need to do now</h2>
<p>In the short term, a formal firewall is unlikely because it would require a shift away from the Morrison government’s strong emphasis on border control. </p>
<p>But national and state leaders could send clear reassurances that we want all people to come forward to seek testing and health care workers will not be asking immigration-related questions. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332975/original/file-20200506-49565-1m8txo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332975/original/file-20200506-49565-1m8txo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332975/original/file-20200506-49565-1m8txo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332975/original/file-20200506-49565-1m8txo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332975/original/file-20200506-49565-1m8txo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332975/original/file-20200506-49565-1m8txo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332975/original/file-20200506-49565-1m8txo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Singapore has seen an increase in coronavirus cases after outbreaks among its migrant workers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">How Hwee Young/ AAP</span></span>
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<p>This then needs to filter down to localised programs. Proactive efforts to reach undocumented individuals and groups is detailed but necessary work and requires trust between parties.</p>
<p>If this message does not get through, we risk a quiet spread of COVID-19 among untested, unlawful residents, who live in close quarters and are often very mobile - and who are unlikely to come forward until they are very unwell.</p>
<p>Singapore’s <a href="https://time.com/5825261/singapore-coronavirus-migrant-workers-inequality/">situation shows</a> what can happen when groups of migrant workers are not prioritised.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137268/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marie Segrave receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>If Australia wants to avoid a Singapore-style spike in COVID-19 cases, it must encourage its unlawful migrant workers to come forward for testing.Marie Segrave, Associate Professor, Criminology, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1373332020-04-29T20:07:09Z2020-04-29T20:07:09Z6 countries, 6 curves: how nations that moved fast against COVID-19 avoided disaster<p>To understand the spread of COVID-19, the pandemic is more usefully viewed as a series of distinct local epidemics. The way the virus has spread in different countries, and even in particular states or regions within them, has been quite varied.</p>
<p>A New Zealand <a href="https://www.tepunahamatatini.ac.nz/2020/04/22/effect-of-alert-level-4-measures-on-covid-19-transmission/">study</a> has mapped the coronavirus epidemic curve for 25 countries and modelled how the spread of the virus has changed in response to the various lockdown measures.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/latest-coronavirus-modelling-suggests-australia-on-track-detecting-most-cases-but-we-must-keep-going-136518">Latest coronavirus modelling suggests Australia on track, detecting most cases – but we must keep going</a>
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<p>The research, which is yet to be peer-reviewed, classifies each country’s public health response using New Zealand’s <a href="https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-system/covid-19-alert-system/">four-level alert system</a>. Levels 1 and 2 represent relatively relaxed controls, whereas levels 3 and 4 are stricter.</p>
<p>By mapping the change in the <strong>effective reproduction number</strong> (R<sub>eff</sub>, an indicator of the actual spread of the virus in the community) against response measures, the research shows countries that implemented level 3 and 4 restrictions sooner had greater success in pushing R<sub>eff</sub> to below 1.</p>
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<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331197/original/file-20200428-110742-1gpjvry.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331197/original/file-20200428-110742-1gpjvry.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331197/original/file-20200428-110742-1gpjvry.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331197/original/file-20200428-110742-1gpjvry.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331197/original/file-20200428-110742-1gpjvry.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331197/original/file-20200428-110742-1gpjvry.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331197/original/file-20200428-110742-1gpjvry.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">R0 can be viewed as an intrinsic property of the virus, whereas the Reff takes into account the effect of implemented control measures.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Conversation</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<p>An R<sub>eff</sub> of less than 1 means each infected person spreads the virus to less than one other person, on average. By keeping R<sub>eff</sub> below 1, the number of new infections will fall and the virus will ultimately disappear from the community.</p>
<p>Conversely, the larger the R<sub>eff</sub> value, the more freely the virus is spreading in the community and thus the faster the number of new cases will rise. This means a higher number of cases at the peak of the epidemic, a greater risk of the health system becoming overwhelmed, and ultimately more deaths.</p>
<p>Here are some of study’s findings from states and nations around the world:</p>
<h2>New South Wales, Australia</h2>
<p>The effect of Australia’s strict border control measures, implemented relatively early in the pandemic, can clearly be seen in the graph below. Federal and state governments introduced strict social distancing rules; schools, pubs, churches, community centres, entertainment venues and even some beaches were closed.</p>
<p>This prompted the R<sub>eff</sub> value to drop below 1, where it has stayed for some time. Australia is rightly regarded as a success story in controlling the spread of COVID-19, and all states and territories are now mapping their paths towards relaxing restrictions in the coming weeks.</p>
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<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331303/original/file-20200429-51461-1hdzd3k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331303/original/file-20200429-51461-1hdzd3k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331303/original/file-20200429-51461-1hdzd3k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331303/original/file-20200429-51461-1hdzd3k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331303/original/file-20200429-51461-1hdzd3k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331303/original/file-20200429-51461-1hdzd3k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=958&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331303/original/file-20200429-51461-1hdzd3k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=958&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331303/original/file-20200429-51461-1hdzd3k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=958&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Conversation</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/90-out-of-work-with-one-weeks-notice-these-8-charts-show-the-unemployment-impacts-of-coronavirus-in-australia-136946">90% out of work with one week’s notice. These 8 charts show the unemployment impacts of coronavirus in Australia</a>
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<h2>Italy</h2>
<p>Italy was relatively slow to respond to the epidemic, and experienced a high R<sub>eff</sub> for many weeks. This led to an explosion of cases which overwhelmed the health system, particularly in the country’s north. This was followed by some of the strictest public health control measures in Europe, which has finally seen the R<sub>eff</sub> fall to below 1.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the time lag has cost many lives. Italy’s death toll of over 27,000 serves as a warning of what can happen if the virus is allowed to spread unchecked, even if strict measures are brought in later.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331304/original/file-20200429-51470-a1b3qg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331304/original/file-20200429-51470-a1b3qg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331304/original/file-20200429-51470-a1b3qg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331304/original/file-20200429-51470-a1b3qg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331304/original/file-20200429-51470-a1b3qg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331304/original/file-20200429-51470-a1b3qg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=718&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331304/original/file-20200429-51470-a1b3qg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=718&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331304/original/file-20200429-51470-a1b3qg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=718&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Conversation</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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</figure>
<hr>
<h2>United Kingdom</h2>
<p>The UK’s initial response to COVID-19 was characterised by a series of missteps. The government prevaricated while it considered pursuing a controversial “herd immunity” strategy, before finally ordering an Italy-style lockdown to regain control over the virus’s transmission. </p>
<p>As in Italy, the result was an initial surge in case numbers, a belatedly successful effort to bring R<sub>eff</sub> below 1, and a huge death toll of over 20,000 to date.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331588/original/file-20200429-51470-cown7f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331588/original/file-20200429-51470-cown7f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331588/original/file-20200429-51470-cown7f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331588/original/file-20200429-51470-cown7f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331588/original/file-20200429-51470-cown7f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331588/original/file-20200429-51470-cown7f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331588/original/file-20200429-51470-cown7f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331588/original/file-20200429-51470-cown7f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Conversation</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<h2>New York, USA</h2>
<p>New York City, with its field hospital in Central Park resembling a scene from a disaster movie, is another testament to the power of uncontrolled virus spread to overwhelm the health system. </p>
<p>Its R<sub>eff</sub> peaked at a staggeringly high value of 8, before the city slammed on the brakes and went into complete lockdown. It took a protracted battle to finally bring the R<sub>eff</sub> below 1. Perhaps more than any other city, New York will feel the economic shock of this epidemic for many years to come.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331589/original/file-20200429-51485-kpsh3f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331589/original/file-20200429-51485-kpsh3f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331589/original/file-20200429-51485-kpsh3f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331589/original/file-20200429-51485-kpsh3f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331589/original/file-20200429-51485-kpsh3f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331589/original/file-20200429-51485-kpsh3f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331589/original/file-20200429-51485-kpsh3f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331589/original/file-20200429-51485-kpsh3f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Conversation</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<h2>Sweden</h2>
<p>Sweden has taken a markedly relaxed approach to its public health response. Barring a few minor restrictions, the country remains more or less open as usual, and the focus has been on individuals to take personal responsibility for controlling the virus through social distancing. </p>
<p>This is understandably contentious, and the number of cases and deaths in Sweden are far higher than its neighbouring countries. But R<sub>eff</sub> indicates that the curve is flattening.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331307/original/file-20200429-51474-1arr5j1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331307/original/file-20200429-51474-1arr5j1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331307/original/file-20200429-51474-1arr5j1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331307/original/file-20200429-51474-1arr5j1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331307/original/file-20200429-51474-1arr5j1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331307/original/file-20200429-51474-1arr5j1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=731&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331307/original/file-20200429-51474-1arr5j1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=731&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331307/original/file-20200429-51474-1arr5j1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=731&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Conversation</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<h2>Singapore</h2>
<p>Singapore is a lesson on why you can’t ever relax when it comes to coronavirus. It was hailed as an early success story in bringing the virus to heel, through extensive testing, effective contact tracing and strict quarantining, with no need for a full lockdown.</p>
<p>But the virus has bounced back. Infection clusters originating among migrant workers has prompted tighter restrictions. The R<sub>eff</sub> currently sits at around 2, and Singapore still has a lot of work to do to bring it down.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331310/original/file-20200429-51500-1weslmg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331310/original/file-20200429-51500-1weslmg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331310/original/file-20200429-51500-1weslmg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331310/original/file-20200429-51500-1weslmg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331310/original/file-20200429-51500-1weslmg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331310/original/file-20200429-51500-1weslmg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331310/original/file-20200429-51500-1weslmg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331310/original/file-20200429-51500-1weslmg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Conversation</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/this-is-why-singapores-coronavirus-cases-are-growing-a-look-inside-the-dismal-living-conditions-of-migrant-workers-136959">This is why Singapore's coronavirus cases are growing: a look inside the dismal living conditions of migrant workers</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Individually, these graphs each tell their own story. Together, they have one clear message: places that moved quickly to implement strict interventions brought the coronavirus under control much more effectively, with less death and disease.</p>
<p>And our final example, Singapore, adds an important coda: the situation can change rapidly, and there is no room for complacency.</p>
<hr>
<p><iframe id="uxXe2" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/uxXe2/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137333/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hassan Vally does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Countries aiming to flatten the coronavirus curve have one crucial aim: reduce the “effective reproduction number” of the virus to below 1. This means the spread is slowing, rather than accelerating.Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1369592020-04-29T20:06:52Z2020-04-29T20:06:52ZThis is why Singapore’s coronavirus cases are growing: a look inside the dismal living conditions of migrant workers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331216/original/file-20200429-110738-1i101hr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wallace Woon/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In recent weeks, Singapore went from <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-singapores-coronavirus-response-worked-and-what-we-can-all-learn-134024">global success story</a> in its response to the coronavirus outbreak to having the largest number of cases in Southeast Asia.</p>
<p>There are some <a href="https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html">15,000 confirmed cases</a> in Singapore as of this week – more than Japan, South Korea and Indonesia. </p>
<p>Most startlingly, though, is the number of migrant worker infections in the country, which dwarfs that of the general population. For example, of the <a href="https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/covid-19-528-new-cases-april-28-12682712">528 new cases detected on Tuesday</a>, 511 were foreign workers living in dormitories, while another seven were workers living outside the dormitories.</p>
<p>Singapore’s approach to disease mitigation, generally speaking, mirrors the country’s approach to just about everything – control, surveillance and containment. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-singapores-coronavirus-response-worked-and-what-we-can-all-learn-134024">Why Singapore's coronavirus response worked – and what we can all learn</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But the increasing COVID-19 infection rates among migrant workers suggest there is another side to the tight regulation that governs nearly every aspect of life in Singapore – the institutionalised neglect of the country’s <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-singapore-migrants/the-s11-dormitory-inside-singapores-biggest-coronavirus-cluster-idUSKBN2230RK">300,000-plus</a> migrant workers. </p>
<p>And it is this neglect that, my research suggests, lies at the heart of explanations for Singapore’s COVID-19 crisis.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331212/original/file-20200429-110748-h5yl3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331212/original/file-20200429-110748-h5yl3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331212/original/file-20200429-110748-h5yl3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331212/original/file-20200429-110748-h5yl3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331212/original/file-20200429-110748-h5yl3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331212/original/file-20200429-110748-h5yl3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331212/original/file-20200429-110748-h5yl3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The majority of Singapore’s COVID-19 infections are among foreign workers in dormitories.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wallace Woon/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Cramped rooms with one toilet for 80 men</h2>
<p>In 2014-15, I carried out a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303636329_The_art_of_not_being_caught_Temporal_strategies_for_disciplining_unfree_labour_in_Singapore's_contract_migration">large study</a> of transient migrant workmen from India and Bangladesh in Singapore, interviewing close to 200 men over 18 months. Most worked in the construction and shipping industries, and some in the landscaping and cleaning sectors.</p>
<p>As well as uncovering stories of routine labour exploitation and debt bondage among the workers, I also found most workers’ living conditions were shockingly substandard. </p>
<p>Employers are supposed to <a href="https://www.healthserve.org.sg/s/Food-Insecurity-and-Health-of-Bangladeshi-Workers-in-Singapore-A.pdf">provide meals for migrant workers</a>, for example, but workers complained the food was often no more than soggy rice and gravy. Often, it was spoiled and inedible. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331214/original/file-20200429-110742-eyev3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331214/original/file-20200429-110742-eyev3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331214/original/file-20200429-110742-eyev3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331214/original/file-20200429-110742-eyev3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331214/original/file-20200429-110742-eyev3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331214/original/file-20200429-110742-eyev3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331214/original/file-20200429-110742-eyev3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Migrant workers lining up to collect their food at a dormitory in Singapore.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">How Hwee Young/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My research also found substandard accommodation greatly compounded the difficulties these workers faced. </p>
<p>Many migrant workers live in the cramped, purpose-built dormitories (PBDs) shown <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/singapores-cramped-migrant-worker-dorms-hide-covid-19-surge-risk">in media reports in recent days</a>.</p>
<p>These dormitories only became common a couple of years ago when migrant-rights organisations began focusing on housing conditions of workers. The government’s response was to build large dormitories in remote, outlying areas. </p>
<p>This enabled the government to claim it had addressed criticisms of poor worker housing. At the same time, it ensured these workers were further separated spatially and socially from the rest of Singapore’s population. </p>
<p>This separation has been an ongoing concern of the government since the so-called “<a href="https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/little-india-riot-one-year-later-the-night-that-changed-singapore">Little India riots</a>” of 2013, which broke out after a migrant worker was knocked down and killed by a bus. More than 50 police officers and eight civilians were hurt, and dozens of Indian workers were either charged with offences or sent home.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/riots-in-singapore-as-it-struggles-to-juggle-growth-and-migration-21387">Riots in Singapore as it struggles to juggle growth and migration</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But not all, or even the majority, of workers live in dormitories. Many live on the upper floors of small construction subcontracting firms, or in shipping containers and other temporary housing on work sites. </p>
<p>The conditions are abhorrent: cramped rooms housing up to 30 men apiece, no air-conditioning or appropriate ventilation, bed bugs and cockroaches, and often just one filthy toilet shared by more than 80 people. </p>
<p>In both dormitories and these accommodations, two men often rotate on one bed. When the day-shift worker returns to the room to sleep, he takes the place of the night-shift worker using the same bed.</p>
<p>In these conditions, dengue and other waterborne diseases thrive. A few weeks before I arrived in Singapore in 2012, there was a massive outbreak of dengue among migrant workers in the industrial northwest. Many men were infected, and most swiftly deported.</p>
<p>In 2015, I visited a factory where five Bangladeshi men were pursuing a case for unpaid salary against their employer. They told me previous workers had contracted dengue and were deported while they were still sick. As a result, they were pushed by their boss to work longer hours, despite not being paid. The <a href="http://twc2.org.sg/2016/12/18/held-in-windowless-room-shahjahan-faced-forced-repatriation-twc2-rescues-him/">deportation</a> of injured and sick workers is a common occurrence in Singapore.</p>
<p>These living and working conditions explain why we are seeing such high rates of COVID-19 infections now. The government’s main response has been the construction of several large dormitories for workers, but beyond that, it has yet to take comprehensive steps to improve conditions. </p>
<p>The government does have a salary and injury claims system for migrant workers, but <a href="https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2217/">NGOs in the country claim it</a> – like policies to improve workers’ living conditions – is woefully inadequate. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331211/original/file-20200429-110761-y1j9wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331211/original/file-20200429-110761-y1j9wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331211/original/file-20200429-110761-y1j9wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331211/original/file-20200429-110761-y1j9wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331211/original/file-20200429-110761-y1j9wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331211/original/file-20200429-110761-y1j9wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/331211/original/file-20200429-110761-y1j9wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Workers have largely been restricted to their dormitories since the pandemic worsened.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wallace Woon/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Workers now very afraid of COVID-19</h2>
<p>Last week, one of the participants in my research, a 32-year-old Bangladeshi man named Monir, sent me an email saying: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We are in lockdown for two months. Can’t go out. Singapore very danger now. But we are lucky we not stay worker’s dormitory. We sleep Geylang [a district of Singapore] company store. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>During the current crisis, the workers in the dormitories are currently only allowed outside their rooms at certain times to reduce contact with others. Some have been relocated to offshore, floating accommodations where they are similarly confined. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.ihrb.org/focus-areas/migrant-workers/podcast-debbie-fordyce">Debbie Fordyce</a>, a longtime migrant worker rights advocate, told me, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>When returning Singapore students were give a two-week holiday in five-star hotels rather than be a potential source of infection to their family, these men are being bunched together with a far higher vulnerability than if they were in a space alone or with fewer people. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The government should have been better prepared for a possible outbreak among these workers. Instead, it turned a blind eye to their needs.</p>
<p>When the government <a href="https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/health/each-spore-household-to-get-4-free-masks-for-contingencies">issued face masks</a> to all Singaporeans at the fist sign of COVID-19 in early February, migrant workers were excluded. (The philanthropic arm of a state investor later <a href="https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/covid-19-migrant-workers-domestic-helpers-masks-donation-12656902">distributed more than 1 million masks</a> to migrant workers and domestic helpers.)</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/refugees-need-protection-from-coronavirus-too-and-must-be-released-136961">Refugees need protection from coronavirus too, and must be released</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Last week, the government <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/28/world/asia/coronavirus-singapore-migrants.html">imposed a stay-at-home order</a> for 180,000 migrant workers in the construction industry until May 4, confining them to their dormitories. Advocacy groups have <a href="https://twc2.org.sg/2020/04/17/is-singapore-falling-behind-in-testing-for-covid-19/">warned</a> about quarantining large groups of people together like this, comparing it to cruise ships.</p>
<p>While recent media coverage on the COVID-19 crisis in Singapore has exposed the substandard conditions of migrant workers, my study shows there is a longer history of institutionalised neglect of these men. </p>
<p>This is not an exceptional time for these workers – their rights have long been ignored because they are transient and, for the most part, deemed disposable.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/136959/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sallie Yea does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Singapore, once a success in containing coronavirus, now has the most cases in Southeast Asia. One of the main reasons: the government’s neglect of its 300,000 foreign migrant workers.Sallie Yea, Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Studies, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1369942020-04-23T10:06:07Z2020-04-23T10:06:07ZSingapore’s spike in coronavirus cases shows the road to recovery will be a bumpy ride<p>Singapore is <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-singapores-coronavirus-response-worked-and-what-we-can-all-learn-134024">widely praised</a> as one of the countries that reacted quickly and effectively to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. It managed to keep daily cases below 50 for two months following its first case on January 23. But subsequent spikes – though still low compared to global levels – show how long and bumpy the road to recovery from coronavirus will be.</p>
<p>Singapore was well positioned to deal with coronavirus. The small island state was hit by the SARS pandemic in 2002-03 and then swine flu in 2009. The result was that government agencies had a strong working relationship with scientists and public health experts. It beefed up its healthcare capacity and put plans in place for future outbreaks. </p>
<p>So its response to the COVID-19 pandemic was rapid. Singapore quickly imposed travel restrictions, screened arrivals, and implemented a test-trace-quarantine regime, with temperature checks in schools and workplaces. 40% of infections were detected through contact tracing while the individual was still asymptomatic – efficiency levels every country needs as they contemplate ending lockdown. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330035/original/file-20200423-47832-xel3yq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330035/original/file-20200423-47832-xel3yq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330035/original/file-20200423-47832-xel3yq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330035/original/file-20200423-47832-xel3yq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330035/original/file-20200423-47832-xel3yq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330035/original/file-20200423-47832-xel3yq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330035/original/file-20200423-47832-xel3yq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330035/original/file-20200423-47832-xel3yq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html">Data: Johns Hopkins University</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Social distancing measures were progressively introduced, allowing businesses and people to plan for restrictions. Contrast this with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/indias-coronavirus-lockdown-will-hit-women-and-migrant-workers-hardest-134689">big-bang approach in India</a>, where lockdown was introduced with four hours’ notice, and the dizzyingly contradictory messages prior to lockdown being introduced in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-why-the-us-is-in-a-mess-and-how-to-fix-it-133413">US</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/14/uk-governments-coronavirus-response-beset-by-mixed-messages-and-u-turns">UK</a>.</p>
<p>Singapore is known for its effective, technocratic, non-corrupt government, which adopts a long-term perspective to policy. In terms of economics, Singapore runs <a href="https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/singapore-covid-19-solidarity-budget-heng-swee-keat-12617488">budget surpluses during good times</a>. This gives it sufficient fiscal space to cope with the massive ongoing economic upheaval. The current stimulus plan exceeds S$50 billion (15% of GDP), drawing on national reserves for the first time since the global financial crisis of 2008-09. </p>
<p>This has enabled it to fund testing, treatment and help for those in quarantine. To prevent companies from laying off staff, which will make recovery more difficult, it is paying a portion of employee wages. </p>
<h2>A marathon, not a sprint</h2>
<p>After nearly two months of keeping cases down to a manageable number, Singapore <a href="https://www.moh.gov.sg/news-highlights/details/circuit-breaker-to-minimise-further-spread-of-covid-19">introduced a lockdown on April 7</a>, with schools and most workplaces shuttered to slow the spread of coronavirus.</p>
<p>Two shocks led to the lockdown. As countries rapidly started closing borders, Singaporeans and permanent residents returned home, <a href="https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/health/70-new-coronavirus-patients-in-singapore-of-which-41-are-imported-cases">inadvertently carrying the virus</a> – especially from the US and UK, two countries that were very slow in their responses. </p>
<p>Next, an even greater proliferation in the last two weeks came came from the dormitories where migrant workers live in tightly packed quarters. Cases in these dorms continue to rise even as the government does extensive testing, introduces quarantine procedures, and builds new accommodation for the virus-free and beds for the infected. As of April 22, 8,094 out of the total of 10,141 cases <a href="https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/covid-19-singapore-moh-new-cases-apr-22-10000-dormitory-12665430">were dormitory residents</a>, with a single dormitory accounting for <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-52320289">22% of all cases in the country</a>.</p>
<p>Many countries are seeing a flattening of cases and deaths after two to three weeks of lockdown. People are cautiously optimistic that the pandemic is being beaten and that life, markets, everything will revert to normal. But this may only be a semblance of normality and Singapore provides a cautionary tale. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/329798/original/file-20200422-47788-osvn8t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/329798/original/file-20200422-47788-osvn8t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329798/original/file-20200422-47788-osvn8t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329798/original/file-20200422-47788-osvn8t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329798/original/file-20200422-47788-osvn8t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329798/original/file-20200422-47788-osvn8t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329798/original/file-20200422-47788-osvn8t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">COVID-19 cases reported in Italy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://g.co/kgs/R4EUYo">Google</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Like the 1918 flu, we can expect waves of infection and cycles of <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-03/who-warns-of-cycle-of-virus-lockdowns-following-hasty-exits">confinement and deconfinement</a>. What is critical is that restrictions are lifted cautiously when economies are reopened, with political leaders setting expectations that lockdowns may be reintroduced. Meanwhile, we need a warlike effort to build healthcare, and especially testing capacity.</p>
<h2>Perils and promise of globalisation</h2>
<p>If we want to return to a world of movement across borders, it will require all countries to control the pandemic. This is unlikely due to the vast differences in healthcare capacity and institutional capability around the world.</p>
<p>To minimise the risk of secondary waves of infection, borders must be opened sequentially and to countries where we can be fairly confident that the spread has been successfully contained. This, in turn, implies that a quick return to the previous world of globalised travel is a distant prospect. </p>
<p>Instead, we may see a split world with travel only among a subset of countries that have sufficient healthcare capacity and can effectively carry out test-trace-quarantine procedures. These are likely to be advanced economies and countries with competent leaders and good institutions. Countries where the infection rages will be shunned. Global cooperation, of which we see few signs today, is the only route back to the globalised world.</p>
<h2>Perils of inequality</h2>
<p>Singapore is a rich country. But to keep the country gleaming and working, an <a href="https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/population-number-singapore-foreign-workers-new-citizens-11941034">army of workers</a> from poor Asian countries carry out essential repair, construction and domestic work. Many of these workers live in crowded dormitories and cramped quarters, sharing rooms and bathrooms. The government monitored their salaries to ensure they were paid on time, but struggled to contain the spread of the virus. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-people-in-tall-buildings-may-be-more-at-risk-heres-how-to-stay-safe-135845">high-density living</a> meant that they were always at risk of becoming virus hotspots.</p>
<p>Now think of slums in developing countries where density is even higher, sanitation poorer, and overall healthcare capacity sparse. These countries will struggle to arrest the spread of COVID-19. For many people, from the urban slums in Manila and Mumbai to favelas in Rio de Janeiro, social distancing is an <a href="https://theconversation.com/indias-stark-inequalities-make-social-distancing-much-easier-for-some-than-others-134864">unattainable privilege</a>. Is herd immunity the only option for such places? How will the socioeconomic structure of these countries survive if the poor die in vast numbers, while the rich soldier on lamenting the lack of preferred food stocks?</p>
<p>The poor in many of these countries, who usually provide the workforce and services to keep cities running, have temporarily migrated back to rural areas. When countries reopen – and potentially close again – reverse migration will be needed. Will economic incentives be sufficient to compel economic migrants to continually undertake these moves or do policymakers have to worry about flattening migration curves as well? Many gig workers, in the meantime, are allowing the rest of us to shelter in place, while running the risk of <a href="https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/covid19-mcdonalds-singapore-suspends-all-operations-12656294">infection</a>. How long can this last?</p>
<p>Unlike the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-can-the-black-death-tell-us-about-the-global-economic-consequences-of-a-pandemic-132793">Black Death, which reduced inequality</a> and triggered a significant increase in real wages in Europe, the current epidemic is revealing the <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-is-hitting-bame-communities-hard-on-every-front-136327">contours</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-ways-coronavirus-lockdowns-increase-inequality-135767">of</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-coronavirus-pandemic-is-already-increasing-inequality-135992">inequality</a>, across countries and within countries.</p>
<p>Singapore on April 21 <a href="https://www.gov.sg/article/circuit-breaker-extension-and-tighter-measures-what-you-need-to-know">extended its lockdown</a> for a month. Many of the choices that it continues to make will provide a window into the future for the rest of the world. While Singapore can lead by example, its future is inextricably linked to outcomes in the wider world, over which it exercises scant control.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/136994/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pushan Dutt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Lockdowns will have to be lifted cautiously and new waves of infection are likely.Pushan Dutt, Professor of Economics and Political Science, INSEADLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1345292020-04-09T12:10:21Z2020-04-09T12:10:21ZClear, consistent health messaging critical to stemming epidemics and limiting coronavirus deaths<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326629/original/file-20200408-42853-flef22.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6596%2C3051&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ireland's health minister, center, models social distancing at his nightly coronavirus press briefing March 27, 2020.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/chief-medical-officer-tony-holohan-taoiseach-leo-varadkar-news-photo/1208436468?adppopup=true">Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews.ie/PA Images via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>While the deadly coronavirus <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/22/these-charts-show-how-fast-coronavirus-cases-are-spreading.html">spreads rapidly in the United States, United Kingdom, France and beyond</a>, several countries in Asia and Europe have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-simulator/">flattened the curve</a> or slowed outbreaks, including Ireland, Singapore and Hong Kong. </p>
<p>Testing and isolation practices in these places vary. But one strategy they share is using early and consistent public messaging to convince people to act in ways that prevent COVID-19 transmission.</p>
<p>I’m a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=QFZQ3-kAAAAJ&hl=en">public health expert</a> who specializes in health behavior related to infectious diseases. Studies show that when officials are <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/eis/field-epi-manual/chapters/Communicating-Investigation.html">transparent and accountable to the public</a> – explaining who is vulnerable in an outbreak, what is known and unknown about the disease and the steps necessary to control its spread – it enhances <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2013.840696">public trust</a>. </p>
<p>Trust, in turn, aids compliance. </p>
<p>But when health messaging is vague, inconsistent or unrealistic, it engenders the kind of confusion, <a href="https://theconversation.com/social-media-fuels-wave-of-coronavirus-misinformation-as-users-focus-on-popularity-not-accuracy-135179">misinformation</a> and non-cooperation now seen in some of the world’s hardest-hit countries.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326650/original/file-20200408-128829-17fiojn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326650/original/file-20200408-128829-17fiojn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326650/original/file-20200408-128829-17fiojn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326650/original/file-20200408-128829-17fiojn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326650/original/file-20200408-128829-17fiojn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326650/original/file-20200408-128829-17fiojn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326650/original/file-20200408-128829-17fiojn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326650/original/file-20200408-128829-17fiojn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">At press briefings on the coronavirus, the U.S. president frequently contradicts his aides, March 17, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/national-institute-for-allergy-and-infectious-diseases-news-photo/1207923141?adppopup=true">Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Ireland slows the spread</h2>
<p>In Ireland, the <a href="https://www.independent.ie/world-news/coronavirus/taoiseach-brings-back-communications-guru-for-covid-19-public-campaign-39054064.html">prime minister appointed a communications expert</a> to coordinate public messaging. Days after coronavirus <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51693259">first appeared on Feb. 29</a>, every household had received a booklet by mail with simple information on symptoms and instructions for how to <a href="https://twitter.com/LeoVaradkar/status/1242819638964236289?s=20">self-isolate</a>. </p>
<p>Every night at 7 p.m., the Irish Health Minister <a href="https://www.finegael.ie/our-people/ministers/wicklow/simon-harris/">Simon Harris</a> briefs the public on cases and deaths, the stock of test kits and hospital bed availability. Harris has framed social distancing as a patriotic duty, and makes himself <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/coronavirus-government-to-seek-to-keep-public-spaces-open-1.4209705">available on Facebook to answer questions</a>. </p>
<p>For his part, Ireland’s <a href="https://www.finegael.ie/our-people/ministers/dublin/dublin-west/leo-varadkar/">Prime Minister Leo Varadkar</a>, a physician who has <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/06/828252726/irish-leader-returns-to-medicine-to-help-battle-covid-19-pandemic">returned to medical practice once a week</a> to treat COVID-19 patients, reminds people that sharing <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/18/tech/whatsapp-coronavirus-misinformation/index.html">unverified health information</a> undermines <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(19)30063-5/fulltext">public health efforts</a>. </p>
<p>Ireland’s postal workers are now checking in on the elderly while on their rounds, and delivering two postcards to every household that can then be <a href="https://twitter.com/Postvox/status/1241042158578253824">mailed for free to loved ones</a>. </p>
<p>As of April 8, there were <a href="https://geohive.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/29dc1fec79164c179d18d8e53df82e96">6,704 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Ireland</a>. Infections in the country of 4.7 million were once projected to <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/coronavirus-two-more-deaths-and-235-new-cases-confirmed-in-republic-1.4211896">reach 15,000 cases by the end of March</a>. Now Ireland won’t likely <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52105846">reach that peak until late April</a>. </p>
<h2>Singapore eased anxiety</h2>
<p>Singapore, where COVID-19 is spreading much slower than in the rest of the world, has been touted as a <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-singapores-coronavirus-response-worked-and-what-we-can-all-learn-134024">global model for coronavirus control</a> for its excellent tracing of those potentially exposed and quick isolation of ill patients in hospitals. </p>
<p>A disciplined and strategic communications effort is another reason for Singapore’s success. Both politicians and health officials in Singapore have been <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/20/understanding-what-works-how-some-countries-are-beating-back-the-coronavirus/">openly communicating with the public</a> throughout the entire coronavirus crisis, sending WhatsApp messages <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/23/singapore-teach-united-states-about-covid-19-response/">straight to residents’ phones</a> and <a href="https://govinsider.asia/innovation/singapore-coronavirus-whatsapp-covid19-open-government-products-govtech/">offering two-way chats</a> with employers to answer policy concerns. </p>
<p>When <a href="https://time.com/5802293/coronavirus-covid19-singapore-hong-kong-taiwan/">anxiety about food shortages</a> arose in early February, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong dispelled fears by reassuring people that they would have local access to household essentials and <a href="https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/ntuc-fairprice-wuhan-virus-coronavirus-supermarket-shops-12412592">encouraging them not to hoard</a>. </p>
<p>Together, these <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/23/singapore-teach-united-states-about-covid-19-response/">actions reduced fears</a>, enhancing the public trust and compliance with strict social distancing. In early April, Singapore – home to 5.7 million people – had <a href="https://www.gov.sg/article/covid-19-cases-in-singapore">around 500 active COVID-19 cases and six deaths</a>, though there are <a href="https://www.moh.gov.sg/news-highlights/details/29-more-cases-discharged-142-new-cases-of-covid-19-infection-confirmed">some signs of an uptick</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326632/original/file-20200408-150164-1g5igm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326632/original/file-20200408-150164-1g5igm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326632/original/file-20200408-150164-1g5igm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326632/original/file-20200408-150164-1g5igm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326632/original/file-20200408-150164-1g5igm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326632/original/file-20200408-150164-1g5igm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326632/original/file-20200408-150164-1g5igm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/326632/original/file-20200408-150164-1g5igm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Singapore only closed nonessential businesses in early April after aggressive messaging and testing to contain coronavirus, April 8, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/man-buys-takeway-food-as-dining-areas-are-cordoned-off-as-news-photo/1209376100?adppopup=true">Suhaimi Abdullah/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Hong Kong succeeded, then slipped</h2>
<p>People in Hong Kong have experience with pandemics: In 2003, an <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/sars/about/fs-sars.html">outbreak of SARS</a> – a respiratory illness not unlike COVID-19 that brings fever, muscle aches and diarrhea – killed 286 people and shut the city down for <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC539564/">12 weeks</a>. </p>
<p>Many Hong Kong residents mistrust their government, but they <a href="https://time.com/5802293/coronavirus-covid19-singapore-hong-kong-taiwan/">support their public health workers</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/LeungKaiChiHK/status/1223198938494193664?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1223198938494193664&ref_url=about%3Asrcdoc">recent polling shows</a>. So when coronavirus broke out in neighboring China in December and health officials raised the alarm, Hong Kong residents voluntarily adhered to <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/3076034/coronavirus-go-home-vancouver-stay-home-covid-19">social distancing</a>, donned masks and <a href="https://time.com/5802293/coronavirus-covid19-singapore-hong-kong-taiwan/">stayed home from work</a>. </p>
<p>Even <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/15/hong-kong-with-coronavirus-curbed-protests-may-return">the protesters</a> – who demonstrated for months in 2019 against a <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/20/hong-kong-residents-are-least-optimistic-in-25-years-poll-shows.html">pro-China government they view as anti-democratic</a> – voluntarily left the streets. </p>
<p>Even without the <a href="https://chp-dashboard.geodata.gov.hk/covid-19/en.html">kind of mass testing</a> seen in <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-south-korea-put-into-place-the-worlds-most-aggressive-coronavirus-testing-11584377217?mod=article_inline">success stories like South Korea</a>, Hong Kong’s preventative measures had a significant effect. Two months after beginning social distancing in January, the <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/3076637/coronavirus-hong-kong-has-flattened-curve-can-it">coronavirus case curve</a> on the island had flattened. </p>
<p>But on March 2, Hong Kong’s civil servants <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/23/asia/hong-kong-coronavirus-quarantine-intl-hnk/index.html">returned to their offices</a> and travelers returned to Hong Kong. It was too early: <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/26/coronavirus-hong-kong-resurgenece-holds-lesson-defeating-it-demands-persistence/">Coronavirus cases soon resurged</a>, with 759 new cases reported between <a href="https://chp-dashboard.geodata.gov.hk/covid-19/en.html">March 13 and April 4</a>. </p>
<p>The shelter-in-place order is now back in effect, and public spaces that had just reopened have shuttered. </p>
<p>Hong Kong is both a warning about easing up on social distancing too soon and a lesson in how government officials can adapt their recommendations as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0005077">new containment challenges arise</a>.</p>
<h2>Lessons learned from Ebola</h2>
<p>When I was conducting <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0005077">research</a> on the Ebola outbreak of 2014 and 2015 in West Africa, I observed firsthand the dangers when officials bungle early communications about an epidemic.</p>
<p>Sierra Leone officials did <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/su/su6503a10.htm">communicate with the public</a> about Ebola. But their messaging largely repeated that Ebola was real, explained how to avoid transmission, and reassured residents that with proper treatment they could survive it. That wasn’t enough.</p>
<p>Few government messages addressed popular health misunderstandings and fears, like the need for people who’d previously tested negative for the disease to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0005077">re-test if symptoms developed</a>. Nor did they explain why chlorine spraying at homes of suspected Ebola cases was necessary. The government was likewise slow to address how <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0003567">families could safely care for sick members without abandoning them</a>.</p>
<p>As a result, Sierra Leoneans delayed <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0005077">taking up preventive behaviors</a>. They were also reluctant to report Ebola cases, fearing – based on previous observations – that their loved ones would be taken away to die. So people with symptoms lingered in communities, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4584562/">spreading Ebola</a>. </p>
<p>Sierra Leone’s Ebola outbreak lasted 22 months and killed <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/history/2014-2016-outbreak/index.html">3,956 people</a>, making it one of <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/history/2014-2016-outbreak/index.html">Africa’s hardest-hit countries</a>. </p>
<h2>Trust in government</h2>
<p>Public messaging alone cannot solve a pandemic. Testing, hospital and lab capacity and scientific research are also essential. </p>
<p>But none of these steps will work without a good communications plan. </p>
<p>In Sierra Leone, faith <a href="https://afrobarometer.org/publications/ad103-sierra-leone-perceived-corruption-rises-public-trust-and-leaders-job-approval">in public institutions</a> was already low when people began to see Ebola kill many around them, including those taken to the country’s <a href="https://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/one-year-report/sierra-leone/en/">ill-equipped hospitals</a>. This distrust persisted even after Sierra Leone’s treatment capacity improved with international assistance. It quite likely led to more deaths from Ebola.</p>
<p>Ireland, Hong Kong and Singapore demonstrate how officials who communicate openly, accessibly and transparently about an outbreak can quell anxieties, motivate citizen cooperation – and, eventually, beat coronavirus. </p>
<p>But when <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2013.840696">the government stumbles in its health messaging</a>, the death toll mounts.</p>
<p>[<em>You need to understand the coronavirus pandemic, and we can help.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=upper-coronavirus-help">Read The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/134529/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thespina (Nina) Yamanis receives funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.</span></em></p>When a government’s health messaging during a crisis is inconsistent or unrealistic, it engenders the kind of confusion, misinformation and non-cooperation seen in the US and UK.Thespina (Nina) Yamanis, Professor of Global Health, American University School of International ServiceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1348942020-03-27T08:10:05Z2020-03-27T08:10:05ZTracking your location and targeted texts: how sharing your data could help in New Zealand’s level 4 lockdown<p>New Zealand and much of the world is now under an unprecedented lockdown. <a href="https://theconversation.com/overjoyed-a-leading-health-expert-on-new-zealands-coronavirus-shutdown-and-the-challenging-weeks-ahead-134395">Public health experts say</a> this is the best way to suppress the spread of the virus. But how long will such a lockdown be socially sustainable? </p>
<p>As someone who’s worked in the mobile device software industry and now lectures on business analytics at the University of Auckland, I’d argue technology could play a bigger role in ensuring more New Zealanders <a href="https://covid19.govt.nz/government-actions/covid-19-alert-level/">stay home</a> to save lives. </p>
<p>Data analytics, based on our <a href="https://theconversation.com/privacy-vs-pandemic-government-tracking-of-mobile-phones-could-be-a-potent-weapon-against-covid-19-134895">mobile phone usage</a>, would allow us to provide a mixture of incentives and gentle <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-richard-thaler-won-the-2017-economics-nobel-prize-85404">nudges</a> to do the right thing, while also supplying crucial information for health researchers. </p>
<p>But using mobile phone data can be a threat to personal privacy: critics rightly warn that once tracking systems are put in place, those in power have little incentive to remove them. While we need to act quickly to stop the virus spread, we also need to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/technology/coronavirus-surveillance-tracking-privacy.html">respect personal privacy</a>. </p>
<p>So what more could New Zealand be doing to use our phones and our love of the internet to fight COVID-19?</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/as-nz-goes-into-lockdown-authorities-have-new-powers-to-make-sure-people-obey-the-rules-134377">As NZ goes into lockdown, authorities have new powers to make sure people obey the rules</a>
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<h2>Using big data for the greater good</h2>
<p>Different nations have chosen different models to fight coronavirus – and some of those approaches clash with our values in New Zealand. </p>
<p>While some point to the success of China’s lockdown of Wuhan as a model of how to stamp out transmission, the scenes of people literally <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/06/warning-chinese-authoritarianism-is-hazardous-your-health/">welded inside</a> their apartment buildings shouldn’t be forgotten. Clearly, that is not what we want our society to look like.</p>
<p>But the social problem we face in New Zealand now is a classical liberal dilemma: pitting individual rights to free movement and privacy against those of the community. Right now, given the scale and severity of COVID-19, it is currently the right choice to prioritise community health and safety over individual rights. </p>
<p>That means some of our normal concerns about digital privacy may have to be temporarily overridden in favour of a greater good. However, we must remain true to our liberal traditions and continue to try to balance individual and community rights. </p>
<h2>What New Zealand can learn from overseas</h2>
<p>Europe has strong privacy laws but has also <a href="https://apnews.com/711ec49215d39d1c420622ade1a18f93">endorsed the use of personal data</a> in a limited set of circumstances to fight the spread of the virus.</p>
<p>While the United States and Europe struggle with containment, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-singapores-coronavirus-response-worked-and-what-we-can-all-learn-134024">Singapore</a> seems to have escaped some of the worst effects of the virus. Tracking information voluntarily provided by <a href="https://www.gov.sg/article/help-speed-up-contact-tracing-with-tracetogether">a contact tracing app on mobile phones</a> has made it possible to find people who have been in contact with infected people. </p>
<p>Other nations are beginning to <a href="https://www.top10vpn.com/news/surveillance/covid-19-digital-rights-tracker/">implement similar solutions</a> but valid concerns about privacy remain.</p>
<p>Tracking applications on phones or using the data mobile network operators collect could allow authorities to trace the prior movements of people found to be infected, and test those they came into contact with. Israel has implemented a system designed to <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-unveils-app-that-uses-tracking-to-tell-users-if-they-were-near-virus-cases-1.8702055">protect user privacy</a>.</p>
<p>Crucially, both <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/25/coronavirus-singapore-to-make-contact-tracing-tech-open-source.html">Singapore</a> and <a href="https://medium.com/proferosec-osm/hamagen-application-fighiting-the-corona-virus-4ecf55eb4f7c">Israel</a> have committed to making their software freely available through copyright-free, open-source licences. This means software developers wouldn’t have to start from scratch in implementing similar solutions here in New Zealand.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-singapores-coronavirus-response-worked-and-what-we-can-all-learn-134024">Why Singapore's coronavirus response worked – and what we can all learn</a>
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<h2>Safeguards and time limits on digital surveillance</h2>
<p>We can and should take advantage of this opportunity. Until recently, the adoption of such <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com.au/countries-tracking-citizens-phones-coronavirus-2020-3?r=US&IR=T">tools for surveillance would be unprecedented</a> and concerning for many, myself included. Before the crisis, tech companies’ use of big data to monitor and track people’s everyday habits was increasingly coming under scrutiny by legislators across the globe. </p>
<p>To gain acceptance, the public needs to have confidence that more intrusive data collection is necessary for public health, that it will not have negative effects for them or enrich others at their expense, and that it will be shut down after the crisis. </p>
<p>Any system implemented in New Zealand needs to have a clear end date, with public reporting and independent oversight. For instance, that public reporting could be done via <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/412520/special-committee-set-up-as-parliament-is-adjourned">the new cross-party committee</a> led by opposition leader Simon Bridges, which is scrutinising the government’s response to COVID-19. Once the crisis is over, the program needs to be shut down.</p>
<p>What kind of tracking and targeted public health prompts might be possible in New Zealand? </p>
<p>Mobile phone companies can use standard GPS and triangulation between phone towers to track your location when you’re out. One possible idea would be for mobile phone network providers to use their real-time data to text message people who appear to be a long way from home – in breach of the <a href="https://covid19.govt.nz/government-actions/covid-19-alert-level/">level 4 lockdown rules</a>, unless you’re working for an <a href="https://covid19.govt.nz/government-actions/covid-19-alert-level/essential-businesses/">essential business</a>.</p>
<p>These automated messages would be sent by an algorithm if certain criteria were met, and could remind people of lockdown rules and let them know their choices have consequences for others. </p>
<p>It appears that New Zealand is already exploring how it can use software in these kinds of ways. As <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120518745/could-nz-use-mobile-phones-to-trace-the-contacts-of-covid19-cases">Stuff has reported</a>, the director-general of health has been holding early talks with the private sector – including software developers and mobile network operators – about using technology in the fight against COVID-19.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/privacy-vs-pandemic-government-tracking-of-mobile-phones-could-be-a-potent-weapon-against-covid-19-134895">Privacy vs pandemic: government tracking of mobile phones could be a potent weapon against COVID-19</a>
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<h2>Free data, discounted internet: ideas to keep people home</h2>
<p>Incentives could also encourage New Zealanders to follow social distancing rules. </p>
<p>Modern analytics allow us to target incentives at specific individuals or groups deemed to be at higher risk of flouting the level 4 rules. One idea worth considering would be paying internet and mobile service providers to offer discounts or other incentives for people staying home: such as free mobile data at home for those who don’t have wifi, subsidised internet for those working or studying from home, or game subscriptions or access to online classes.</p>
<p>Such incentives would likely be paid for out of the public purse. But targeted analytics could minimise costs while maximising the health benefits for us all – potentially ending New Zealand’s lockdown sooner.</p>
<p>These types of policies could also have positive economic effects. For instance, at a time when some of those households might have difficulty paying internet or phone bills, such incentives could enable some lower-income people to stay employed by having more opportunities to work from home, or provide children without current internet access at home with the ability to keep learning while schools are closed.</p>
<p>These are just a few ideas that could be effective. The difference between ideas such as these and those employed by surveillance states is that they use analytics to nudge people to make better choices, rather than relying solely on policing people in a heavy-handed manner.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/134894/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jon MacKay does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Automated text messages if your phone detects you’re a long way from home, or discounted home internet, are just a few possible technology solutions to make New Zealanders “stay home to save lives”.Jon MacKay, Lecturer, Business Analytics, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata RauLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.