Search

Begin New Search Topic Health Political Geography Asia

11. North Korea’s Covid-19 Outbreak: An Opening for Engagement?

Author:
Lorenzo Mariani and Leonardo Bruni
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
In January 2020, in response to the novel coronavirus, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK; North Korea) closed its borders and for the next two years claimed it had not experienced a single case of Covid-19. However, on 12 May 2022, North Korea disclosed a severe domestic outbreak and in the following weeks began reporting millions of cases of “fevers” and several deaths.[1] Pyongyang’s admission was initially interpreted as a veiled request for international assistance as the country is particularly vulnerable due to its zero per cent vaccination rate, inadequate healthcare system and chronic food insecurity. However, as with previous attempts during the height of the pandemic, offers of aid and vaccines from the Republic of Korea (ROK; South Korea), the US, international organisations (IOs) and multilateral initiatives like COVAX received no response; most likely due to suspicion of the aid being politicised.[2]
Topic:
Health, Foreign Aid, European Union, Economy, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Asia and North Korea

12. A Just Response to Beijing’s COVID-19 Abuses

Author:
David Asher, Miles M. Yu, David Feith, Matthew Zweig, and Thomas DiNanno
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
Nearly 18 months after word of a deadly new virus began leaking out of Wuhan, China, the Chinese government’s response remains fundamentally hostile to international cooperation and transparency. Despite hundreds of offers of assistance, polite diplomatic entreaties, and demands for access to data by governments and health authorities across the globe, the world still knows far too little about COVID-19’s origin. As in a Dali painting, the clocks have melted but time has not stood still. China’s initial silencing and censoring of its doctors and scientists, followed by misinformation about COVID-19’s dangers—especially denials concerning the virus’s ability to be spread human-to-human, invisibly and asymptomatically—helped cost the world trillions of dollars and millions of lives. Whether one believes COVID-19 originated in a zoonotic host, a bat cave, a frozen food shipment, or a Wuhan lab’s dangerous “dual-use” research supporting undeclared bioweapons programs, the world needs answers from the Chinese Communist Party. These are answers Beijing won’t provide unless it faces a high price for refusing. For the good of public health and international security, the Biden administration and the Congress can unite in a coordinated, long-term response.
Topic:
Security, Health, Research, Transparency, Public Health, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
China and Asia

13. Promoting health diplomacy in the fight against COVID-19: the case of Vietnam

Author:
Le Dinh Tinh and Nguyễn Tiền Thanh
Publication Date:
09-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional (RBPI)
Institution:
Instituto Brasileiro de Relações Internacionais (IBRI)
Abstract:
The global but uneven course of the Covid-19 pandemic highlights the importance of international cooperation and negotiation on such matters as financial assistance, medical equipment provision, vaccine development and distribution, and other pandemic response measures. This article will present a theoretical overview of “health diplomacy” and analyze the case of Vietnam within this framework, showing how the country’s political response to the pandemic demonstrates an increasingly proactive engagement in health diplomacy. The article argues that health diplomacy will become more relevant for international relations in the time to come and that the case of Vietnam might yield valuable lessons.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Health, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Asia and Vietnam

14. China’s Public Procurement Protectionism and Europe’s Response: The Case of Medical Technology

Author:
Fredrik Erixon, Anna Guildea, Oscar Guinea, and Philipp Lamprecht
Publication Date:
09-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE)
Abstract:
This paper concerns China’s market for medical technologies and how the Chinese state is assisting its own companies to gain greater sales at the expense of producers from Europe and other advanced manufacturing economies. The medical technology sector captures a variety of products, services and solutions which are essential to the provision of healthcare to citizens. Examples range from fairly simple technologies such as sticking platers, to complex ones, such as coronary stents, orthopaedics and pacemakers. In the last decades, Europe’s exports of medical devices to China have grown robustly. On the back of vibrant innovation, firms from Europe and elsewhere have not just followed the growth of Chinese demand for medical devices – they have also increased their share of Chinese imports. Now, however, this market is at risk of being gradually closed off for European firms as China doubles down on various policies that advantage local firms, while ultimately harming innovation and Chinese patients. China has recently introduced a new element in its industrial policy for its medical technology sector – a policy that builds on its long-term ‘made-in-China’ ambition to have local firms taking up the lion’s share of the market for medical devices by 2030. Beijing and provincial governments are using many different policies to provide support to the domestic industry and are in effect pursuing a policy for import substitution. Accessing the Chinese market for medical devices has never been easy but it has become increasingly challenging in recent years. Direct financial support, tax benefits, R&D support, local content requirements, opaque approval systems and other forms of advantages to domestic MedTech producers are now becoming major sources for the behaviour and development of the Chinese medical device market. China’s Fourteenth Five-Year Plan and the country’s new economic model of ‘dual circulation’ reinforces this trend. The Chinese market is becoming less open. Added to that is centralised state procurement – a new public procurement policy in China that was launched in 2019 for medical devices which has led to a grossly distorted procurement market. While this policy has reduced the price of medical devices in a drastic way, it has also paved the way for Chinese firms to take up a larger market share. This procurement policy is gradually squeezing European firms out of the Chinese market. Competition in China is becoming less fair. These policies follow a pattern. In several sectors, Chinese firms have grown their domestic market share through industrial subsidies and policies that restrict market access for foreign firms – or make it more difficult for foreign firms to compete in China. From their domestic market, these firms have then expanded abroad and taken a more prominent role outside of China. Backed by the Chinese state, these firms can squeeze market opportunities even more for otherwise-competitive European producers. Now this development is happening in the MedTech sector. It is urgent for Europe to respond to China’s procurement protectionism. MedTech manufacturers in Europe are often small and medium-sized enterprises, and they already struggle with getting into the Chinese market. China’s new procurement policy has also had a significant impact on Chinese imports of medical devices: a 1.3 billion euro trade deficit for China in medical technology products in 2019 turned into a 5.2 billion euro surplus in 2020. In Africa, Asia and Latin America, competitive European manufacturers are now confronted with competition from Chinese MedTech companies that have the backing of the Chinese state. The competitive distortions in the Chinese market now spill over to the global market – making European MedTech manufacturers even more disadvantaged. Europe should consider a case at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) against China’s policies which reduce European market presence for medical devices. Once agreed, a new International Procurement Initiative might be a useful instrument to wield pressure against the Chinese government to agree to free and fair competition. Europe can also negotiate with China – for instance in the framework of the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) or through the new initiative on trade and health that Europe proposed to the Ottawa Group in 2020. These responses should focus both on remedying China’s current policy for growing its domestic medical technology industry by distorting its market and setting out the core policies and rules that should guide the future market for medical technologies. Fredrik Erixon and Anna Guildea are Director and Research Associate, respectively, at ECIPE. Oscar Guinea and Philipp Lamprecht are Senior Economists at ECIPE. The authors are grateful to a number of experts in the private sector and from the European Commission, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy in Germany, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology that have taken their time to share their knowledge with us.
Topic:
Health, Science and Technology, European Union, and Public Procurement
Political Geography:
China, Europe, and Asia

15. ASEAN Matters for America/America Matters for ASEAN

Author:
East-West Center
Publication Date:
12-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
This project maps the trade, investment, employment, business, diplomacy, security, education, tourism, and people-to-people connections between the United States and the 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at the national, state, and local levels. Part of the Asia Matters for America initiative, this publication, the one-page connections summaries for states, and the AsiaMattersforAmerica.org website are resources for understanding the robust and dynamic US-ASEAN relationship.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Agriculture, Diplomacy, Health, and Infrastructure
Political Geography:
Asia, North America, Southeast Asia, and United States of America

16. Educational Policies and Healthy Aging in China

Author:
Xi Chen and Qi Gao
Publication Date:
03-2021
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
A considerable amount of attention has been paid to the relationship between education and the promotion of one’s own health. This talk presents the latest evidence and discusses both the upward and downward multigenerational impacts of educational reforms in China over the past few decades on healthy aging. Cosponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, the Columbia China Center for Social Policy, and the Columbia School of Social Work.
Topic:
Education, Health, Aging, and Domestic Policy
Political Geography:
China and Asia

17. China’s Improvised Mask Diplomacy in Chile

Author:
Urdinez. Francisco
Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
During the pandemic, Chinese medical and equipment supplies to Chile have come mostly from a diverse cast of Chinese players with local experience in Chile. They adapted to Chile’s unique system of emergency and disaster management. China has become a global power, but there is too little debate about how this has happened and what it means. Many argue that China exports its developmental model and imposes it on other countries. But Chinese players also extend their influence by working through local actors and institutions while adapting and assimilating local and traditional forms, norms, and practices. With a generous multiyear grant from the Ford Foundation, Carnegie has launched an innovative body of research on Chinese engagement strategies in seven regions of the world—Africa, Central Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, the Pacific, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Through a mix of research and strategic convening, this project explores these complex dynamics, including the ways Chinese firms are adapting to local labor laws in Latin America, Chinese banks and funds are exploring traditional Islamic financial and credit products in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and Chinese actors are helping local workers upgrade their skills in Central Asia. These adaptive Chinese strategies that accommodate and work within local realities are mostly ignored by Western policymakers in particular. Ultimately, the project aims to significantly broaden understanding and debate about China’s role in the world and to generate innovative policy ideas. These could enable local players to better channel Chinese energies to support their societies and economies; provide lessons for Western engagement around the world, especially in developing countries; help China’s own policy community learn from the diversity of Chinese experience; and potentially reduce frictions.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Disaster Relief, Health, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
China, Asia, South America, and Chile

18. Medical Security, Covid Challenge and the U.S. - Japan Alliance

Author:
Kent Calder
Publication Date:
12-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Fletcher Security Review
Institution:
The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Abstract:
National security has been classically conceived as a narrowly military and state-centric concept, especially in the Western industrial world. Security is, generations of strategists and statesmen have told us, a matter of defending core nation-state values and interests by force of arms. Two world wars across the first half of the twentieth century, and a long nuclear confrontation to follow, engrained this military and state-centric conception deeply into global consciousness and public discourse. The tragic COVID-19 crisis now confronting us suggests that this logic may be flawed, or at least oversimplified. Over 2.3 million people worldwide died in the first year of this global pandemic, with well over 100 million infected. These figures are likely understated.44 Untold millions of people continue to suffer from “long COVID” maladies around the world.
Topic:
Economics, Health, National Security, COVID-19, and Health Crisis
Political Geography:
Japan, Asia, North America, and United States of America

19. The Effects of Financial Inclusion on Development Outcomes: New Insights from ASEAN and East Asian Countries

Author:
Rajabrata Banerjee, Ronald Donato, and Admasu Afsaw Maruta
Publication Date:
09-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)
Abstract:
This study empirically examines the effects of financial inclusion on economic development, – economic growth, education, health, and income inequality – in 20 Asian countries in the period 2004-2015. The financial inclusion index at an aggregate level is constructed using a hybrid methodology (reported in the previous paper) and we empirically examine its relationship with particular development outcomes. We then disaggregate the index into the three dimensions of financial inclusions – access, usage, and quality – and further into the top two indicators from each dimension based on principal component analysis scores (reported in the previous paper), to examine whether specific dimensions or indicators are more strongly associated with particular development outcomes than with others. Our results show that aggregate financial inclusion has a strong positive effect on all development outcomes and this effect improves for countries with lower political risk. At the dimension level, while usage is the only dimension impacting on economic growth, and access is the only dimension impacting on health outcomes, both usage and access influence education and income inequality. Moreover, the top ranked indicators in each dimension exert a far greater positive influence on development outcomes than the second highest ranked indicators. Our findings show that adopting a single blanket policy may not be appropriate to realise the full potential of financial inclusion in a less developed country. Policy prescriptions should therefore target specific dimension and indicators of financial inclusion to maximise the positive effect on development outcomes.
Topic:
Development, Health, Finance, and Fiscal Policy
Political Geography:
Asia

20. Intended and Unintended Consequences of a New Limit on Working Hours in South Korea: Implications for Precarious Employment

Author:
Sungchul Park and Hansoo Ko
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Effective as of July 1, 2018, South Korea set a new cap on employees’ weekly working hours, decreasing the maximum number from 68 to 52. In this study, we comprehensively analyze the effectiveness of the law’s implementation by observing changes in work time, health status, health care utilization, health behavior, monthly expenses, and satisfaction between pre- and post-implementation periods (2014–2017 vs. 2019). We find evidence of both intended and unintended consequences—and, in this last category, some are beneficial and some not. As intended, employees eligible for the 52-hour work week saw their average working hours decrease, while their monthly spending on leisure increased substantially. A beneficial unintended consequence was that work time also decreased in firms with less than 300 employees that had not yet implemented the 52-hour work schedule (they have done so since, in January 2020). Among adverse unintended consequences, the most notable were heterogeneous effects across employment types (full-time vs. precarious employment) and, in particular, negative impacts on precarious employees (that is, those facing relatively high levels of job insecurity). Despite almost no change in their work time, precarious employees saw substantial increases in outpatient visits and monthly expenses for health care, indicating suggestive evidence of adverse health consequences. Another adverse unintended consequence was that overall job satisfaction decreased among several groups of employees. This may reflect a heavy workload among employees still expected to work overtime, especially experienced employees or those working in large firms. While employment rates increased after the new schedule’s implementation, the majority were in precarious jobs. This has negative implications because of the adverse health impacts of being in precarious employment; also, the workload of experienced employees in this field might have intensified amid all the new hiring. Our findings suggest key policy recommendations for how to leverage the benefits of the 52-hour cap on weekly working hours while addressing its negative unintended consequences.
Topic:
Health, Labor Issues, Employment, and Labor Policies
Political Geography:
Asia and South Korea