16 Days of Activism Against GBV Blog Series| Holding Both Ends of the Line in the fight Against Digital Violence

By Posted on 633 views

Prevailing responses to digital violence against women and girls remain overwhelmingly reactive. We demand justice only after revenge‑porn, doxxing, or cyber‑bullying has already shattered a woman’s livelihood, dignity, or sense of safety. The scale of the crisis is undeniable: globally, between 16-58% of women have experienced some form of online violence, and in Nigeria, 45% of women self‑report digital abuse. Yet our interventions continue to treat symptoms while leaving the systems that enables digital violence unchallenged.

We are holding only one end of the line.

In this blog, Emaediong Akpan argues for a dual approach that confronts both the structural and cultural roots of digital violence. First, we must hold tech platforms and legal systems accountable for the architectures that make abuse easy, anonymous, and viral. Second, we must rethink how we prepare and support the next generation, beginning with digital literacy from childhood. This is not about shifting responsibility to users; it is about building collective resilience against the weaponized shame that underpins digital abuse. When we meet survivors with belief, care, and solidarity, we disrupt the culture of silence and return shame to its rightful place — with abusers and the systems that protect them.

 

Photo Credit: UN Women


Beyond Reactions

Nearly half of the world’s women and girls, have no legal protection from digital violence. The uncomfortable truth in our fight for digital safety is that we are often act after the fact. There is an overwhelming number of safety nets: legal, social, psychological, designed to ‘protect’ women and girls after they have experienced harm in digital spaces. However, according to Amnesty International, 76% of women report altering their online behavior due to abuse. This statistic reveals the limitation of our reactionary approach. We are treating the consequences of digital violence but failing to confront the architecture that exposes women and girls to harm. Our reactionary approach, though vital, is a partial victory at best, it means holding one end of the line. My call is to extend our hands and hold both ends.

The reactionary approach operates after the fact, after the harm has been done. It fails to confront the underlying issue: a digital ecosystem that is engineered through its architecture, business model and algorithms to facilitate and profit from such harm. To address digital violence against women and girls, we must adopt a dual-approach. This approach requires us to hold the line of platform accountability on one hand while engaging in foundational prevention rooted in early digital literacy and communal care on the other.

Understanding the Impact of Digital Violence on Women’s Participation in Public Life

Globally, 16-58% of women have experience online violence. In Nigeria, 45% of women self-report experiencing digital violence, with girls aged 12-17 and young women up to 35 being targeted. 85% of women globally have witnessed digital violence such as cyberbullying, false and misleading smear campaigns, doxxing, image and text-based threats, and more. Although the forms of digital violence vary, the motive remains the same: to shame, silence, and exclude women and girls from public life. Below I explain the impact of two particularly insidious forms.

  • Cyber-Stalking: Research indicates that an estimated 7.5 million people have experienced cyberstalking, demonstrating that anyone with a smartphone, social-media or GPS-enabled device is vulnerable.  Data from domestic violence programs in multiple countries indicates that 71-85% of domestic violence perpetrators use technology from smartphones and GPS to spyware, to stalk, monitor and threaten survivors. The intimate violence of the physical world now follows women into every digital space, collapsing any boundary between public and private life.

 

What Do We Mean by ‘Digital Violence’?

Without a universal conceptualization, this phenomenon operates under a cluster of terms, each highlighting a different aspect of this menace.

I use “digital violence” throughout this blog because it is conceptually encompassing. It captures not only the act of violence (harassment, doxing) but also the structural nature of the harm. It points to a violent digital environment shaped by the algorithmic amplification of harm and the prioritization of engagement/virality over safety. Digital violence as a concept draws attention to the platform not as a neutral mirror of gender-based violence offline but as an active participant in these acts of violence.

Holding Platforms and Systems Accountable

Our response ought to begin with the platforms whose digital architectures are designed to maximize ‘engagement’ irrespective of whether these engagements are driven by joy, outrage or hatred. The algorithms reward inflammatory contents with increased visibility, providing a fertile ground for digital violence to thrive. In adopting this approach, we must move beyond reactive content moderation to safety-by-design principles that places the responsibility on these platforms to mitigate systemic risks, including gender-based violence.

Our laws should specifically criminalize forms of digital violence including but not limited to cyber-stalking, disinformation, revenge porn, and doxxing. Although the Nigerian Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act 2015 is a good starting point, its effective application to address digital violence requires both amendment and judicial activism. The Act currently lacks explicit provisions for image-based sexual abuse, cyber-stalking, and platform liability. Courts must be willing to interpret existing provisions broadly while legislators work to close these gaps. We need legal frameworks that recognize the unique harms of digital violence—its permanence, its viral spread, its capacity to follow victims across every platform and into every space.

Digital Literacy as a Complimentary Strategy

Preventive approaches have been critiqued —often rightly for placing the responsibility on potential victims while absolving platforms of responsibility. My suggested approach does not absolve platforms of their responsibility. Rather, I argue that building communal resilience is not a parallel response but a complimentary strategy in this fight against digital violence. Even in a utopia with perfectly regulated platforms, harm can exist. The goal is to change the social and psychological terrain on which these attacks land.

Fostering a child’s critical consciousness does not excuse a platforms toxic design; it can help mitigate the effect of that design. This is the inoculation I speak of, is not against infection, but against the shame that digital violence weaponizes. Where young girls and women have the nonjudgmental support of their community, it becomes harder to manipulate them into feeling shame and equips them to identify, and resist abusive dynamics.

Building Communal Resilience from the Cradle

Today’s children are digital natives in a profound sense. Globally, one in three internet users is a child. In high-income countries, 60% of children use the internet by age five. In Africa, with the world’s youngest population and smartphone adoption surpassing 50%, children are primary users of family devices, entering complex digital publics with little to no guidance. This strategy ought to begin with digital literacy.

Critical consciousness from early childhood: Teaching children to question what they see online, who benefits from this content? Who might be harmed? Why is this being shown to me? This is media literacy adapted for an algorithmic age.

Bodily autonomy and consent: Children need to understand they have the right to set boundaries online, to say no to requests for images or information, and that consent given under pressure is not consent at all. These conversations must happen before children encounter coercion, not after.

Trusted adult networks: Every child should be able to identify at least two adults they can turn to if something online makes them uncomfortable or afraid. This requires adults who respond without panic, judgment, or punishment, a significant cultural shift in many contexts.

Community response models: When digital violence occurs, the community’s response matters as much as the legal one. Schools, religious institutions, and community organizations must be prepared to support survivors with unwavering belief rather than interrogation, with resources rather than blame. In Nigeria, organizations like the International Federation of Women Lawyers, Feminist Coalition, and StandToEndRape have pioneered such models, but they need to become the norm, not the exception.

The evidence supports this approach. In Finland, where comprehensive digital literacy has been integrated into education since 2014, young people report higher confidence in identifying misinformation and manipulation online. In South Korea, where digital citizenship education is mandatory, rates of cyber-bullying have declined even as internet usage has increased. Nigeria has the capacity to develop contextually grounded approaches that respond to our specific realities of digital violence.

Conclusion: Holding Both Ends of the Line

The fight against digital violence is a struggle for the future of public space, discourse, and democracy itself. A singular focus on post-harm justice, while morally imperative, is strategically incomplete. It addresses the symptoms but does not prepare the next-generation for these realities. We must confront digital violence by contesting the exploitative architectures of platforms and by building a critically conscious population from the cradle. This dual-approach is critical in this moment.

We must confront digital violence by contesting the exploitative architectures of platforms while simultaneously building a critically conscious population from the cradle. We must demand that platforms redesign their systems for safety while teaching young people to navigate these systems with critical awareness. We must prosecute abusers while building communities that refuse to shame survivors. This dual approach is not a compromise, it is recognition that structural change and cultural transformation must advance together. One end of the line without the other leaves us perpetually playing catch-up, counting casualties, offering comfort after the fact.

It is time to hold both ends of the line. Our children are counting on it.

 

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

 

About the author:

Emaediong Akpan is a legal practitioner and an alumna of the International Institute of Social Studies. With extensive experience in the development sector, her work spans gender equity, social inclusion, and policy advocacy. She is also interested in exploring the intersections of law, technology, and feminist policy interventions to promote safer digital environments. Read her blogs here: 1, 2, 3, 4,5

Are you looking for more content about Global Development and Social Justice? Subscribe to Bliss, the official blog of the International Institute of Social Studies, and stay updated about interesting topics our researchers are working on.

 

 

Early Warning is one of the most important components of Disaster Risk Reduction – and one of the most successful!

By Posted on 1042 views

In this blog to mark the International Day of Disaster Risk Reduction (October 13), HSC Coordinator Tom Ansell dives into the role of ‘Early Warning’ systems and policies as part of Disaster Risk Reduction initiatives. They fit within greater DRR programming to make sure that people are warning in advance and can take precautions, or other measures, to prepare for an upcoming shock or hazard. The 2004 Asian Tsunami highlighted the need for more early warning systems for countries with Pacific and Indian Ocean coasts – these systems were triggered earlier this year after an 8.8 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Russia.

Photo Credit: UNDRR

Introduction – DRR on multiple levels

Managing the risks to people’s lives and livelihoods before, during and after a disaster (whatever the cause) requires looking beyond just ‘responding to a disaster’. Since the 1990’s, and the UN’s ‘International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction’, attitudes towards the disaster cycle have matured and within many emergency management agencies there is some reference to several ‘phases’ of a disaster in a ‘cycle’. For example, the Australian Emergency Management Agency refers to the ‘prevention, preparedness, response, recovery’ phases (now considered a bit old fashioned!). The ‘risk management approach’ is currently the most modern frame for disaster preparation for and responding to a disaster, which focuses on risks rather than timelines: “establish contexts, identify risks, analyse risks, assess risks, treat risks” – and repeat!

Risks are themselves a mixture of hazards/shocks (something that might cause a disaster), vulnerability (socioeconomic conditions that might exacerbate the hazard), exposure (how close people, livelihoods, etc, are to the hazard), and coping capacity (the resources and protocols in place to manage risk).

It’s all put together as the following formula:

Risk = Hazard x Vulnerability x Exposure
Coping capacity

To make a risk assessment, practitioners consider the severity of a risk, and the likelihood of it occurring, to make a compound ‘score’. Disaster Risk Management involves activities, policies, procedures and so on to mitigate risks (DRR), often by reducing vulnerabilities or exposure, or by increasing coping capacity.

So a systematic approach to DRR will approach all of these various components. It’s easy to see why knowing about a hazard early might make it easier to protect people and livelihoods. Or, in technical language: Early Warning increases coping capacity, by giving more time to prepare for a hazardous situation (by taking anticipatory action), thereby decreasing exposure! Within the humanitarian sector, programmes and interventions around this are usually referred to as Early Warning, Early Action (EWEA). Ideally, these activities should be contextual, appropriate, ‘people-centred’, community-based and/or managed, and inclusive.

What do Early Warning systems look like?

What an early warning system looks like is completely dependent on the context and hazard in question. The logic behind most early warning systems, though, is monitoring a hazard (say, a river level) and then triggering information sharing and next steps once a certain level of immediacy has been reached.

For example, the Syria Civil Defence (the White Helmets) co-developed an app-based early warning system for airstrikes, military activities, and knock-on emergencies during the Syrian civil war. A central command room processes incoming reports of, say, jets taking off from an air base, and then sends a warning via app and SMS to mobile phones in the region, with instructions to take cover. Prior to this system, early warnings of air strikes were spotted by people in watch-towers, and communicated by word of mouth and a walkie-talkie radio network, which led to delays in warning people about incoming danger. This app-based system could be used to warn of other incoming hazards, for example a particularly violent winter storm, upstream flooding, or seismic activity. The Netherlands utilizes a similar system for all manner of hazards, NL-Alert.

But whilst tech-enabled Early Warning systems have grown in the last 15 years, there are plenty of contexts where word-of-mouth, radio broadcasting, or an emergency network (the ‘telephone tree’ method) is the most effective way of getting information to people in time to evacuate, take precautions, or otherwise prepare. For example, if there is a river close to a community that periodically floods, people ‘upstream’ can monitor river levels, and spread the words to communities ‘downstream’ if there is particularly high water. This is also the case for knowledge passed down through the generations: if a particular species of animal usually leaves just before a violent storm, for example, this can serve as the ‘trigger’ to warn people.

Early Warning systems are equally useful for slow-onset disasters. An example here is part of the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) in Ethiopia, which is designed to reduce the risk of famine during poor harvests by offering cash-for-work and cash transfers for people that mainly rely on local agriculture for income and to maintain access to food. The programme is ‘activated’ when drought has been detected for a certain number of months, depending on the region.

Early Warning for Tsunami since 2004

On 26 December 2004, a large underwater earthquake off the coast of Indonesia triggered 50-metre high waves that killed over 220,000 people, as well as leaving more than 2 million people homeless in 15 countries. At the time, Indonesia was not considered an especially high-risk country for tsunami, meaning that the at the time there was little monitoring of underwater seismic activity, or sea level surface. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre was only able to find out about the impending disaster through internet news stories about devastation in Thailand (itself also unprepared for underwater earthquakes or tsunami at the time), and so couldn’t warn countries with Indian Ocean costs in time.

Following the destruction of the 2004 tsunami, national governments, UN agencies, and NGOs all put renewed efforts into reducing exposure to tsunami and oceanic hazards. At an intergovernmental level, the tsunami sped up development and adoption of the Hyogo Framework for Risk Reduction (now surpassed by the Sendai Framework). At a national level, Thailand created a multi-hazard oceanic early warning system, with tsunami detection buoys and information sharing with Indonesian, Australian, and Indian detection buoys. These signals are sent to a national coordination centre, whereupon various operating procedures are activated. A warning is then broadcast in five languages by fax, SMS, through ‘warning box’ speakers, radio relay towers, public tannoys, social media and through radio and TV warnings. The system will be developed further to give direct to mobile phone warnings in the coming decades.

Indonesia, meanwhile, has developed a network of 553 seismographs, as well as using oceanographic modelling and local hazard mapping for low-lying coastal areas. Once this network detects seismographic activity, procedures include public announcements, vertical evacuation routes, and evacuation signage.

Outside of the Pacific region, the destruction of the 2004 tsunami impelled Caribbean governments to put together the Tsunami and other Coastal Hazards Warning System for the Caribbean Sea and Adjacent Regions (ICG/CARIBE EWS), a multi-hazard coastal early warning system, and since 2011 have integrated the CARIBE WAVE exercise, which simulates a tsunami or underwater earthquake evacuation. In 2024, over 700,000 people were ‘evacuated’ during the exercise.

Unfortunately, well-functioning early warning systems are not enough to completely mitigate the risk of a large disaster, as the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami demonstrates. More than 20,000 people died during the quake and 39-metre tsunami wave, with knock-on effects including the Fukushima Daichi nuclear accident, despite Japan having a well-developed tsunami early warning system. The worth of all of this preparation work was evident this July, though. An 8.8 magnitude offshore earthquake occurred off the coast of Russian Kamchatka, triggering early warning systems and causing precautionary policies in several countries (including Japan, Indonesia, Russia, and China), including evacuations. The earthquake did cause tsunami-like waves, though did not have the same destructive force as the 2004 tsunami.

Conclusion – early warning as part of a multi-level DRR framework

Early warning systems, then, are a key part of reducing disaster risk, especially to climactic and environmental hazards. But we shouldn’t equate that with completely eradicating risks, or indeed think that early warning is the only part of risk management and reduction that should be concentrated on. Early warning systems work best as part of a full multi-level DRR framework, with training and education on detecting hazards, well-developed protocols for early action, evacuation, or other mitigation measures; and a general policy to reduce societal vulnerability through equitable policies, reducing socio-economic inequalities, and strong governance structures.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

 

About the Author

Tom Ansell

Tom Ansell is the coordinator and programme manager of The Hague Humanitarian Studies Centre, and the Coordinator of the International Humanitarian Studies Association. He has a study background in religion and conflict transformation, as well as an interest in disaster risk reduction, and science communication and societal impact of (applied) research.

 

Are you looking for more content about Global Development and Social Justice? Subscribe to Bliss, the official blog of the International Institute of Social Studies, and stay updated about interesting topics our researchers are working on.

Society Must Be Defended! Rethinking Defence and Security in the age of Cognitive Warfare and the WPS Agenda

By Posted on 1320 views

In his 1975–76 lecture series at the Collège de France, Michel Foucault famously declared, ‘Society must be  defended’. While framed within the context of biopolitics and the genealogy of state violence, this provocation has found renewed relevance in the 21st century as new forms of warfare emerge. Today, the greatest threats to societies are not only kinetic or territorial but epistemic and cognitive. Cognitive warfare – an increasingly salient form of conflict – operates by targeting perception, social cohesion and identity, often exploiting the fault lines of gender, race, and class, to undermine collective resilience.

Photo Credit: United Nations

This blog post explores how NATO’s instrumental engagement with the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda intersects with these new threat environments. Despite normative commitments to inclusion, NATO’s implementation of WPS remains structurally tethered to operational efficiency and military effectiveness, rather than transformative gender justice. The rise of cognitive warfare, which thrives on polarization and symbolic manipulation, underscores the urgent need to reassess what it means to defend society. Rethinking defence in the cognitive age requires not merely stronger militaries but stronger democracies – and this is only possible by fully integrating marginalized voices, particularly women, into the foundations of security thinking and practice.

Cognitive Warfare: Targeting the social fabric

Cognitive warfare is a strategic practice that seeks to influence, destabilize and control the minds and behaviours of target populations through information manipulation, disinformation, psychological operations and narrative disruption. Unlike traditional warfare, its objective is not the destruction of infrastructure but the corrosion of shared meaning and societal coherence. In this form of conflict, the ‘battlespace’ is everyday life: news media, education systems, social media platforms and interpersonal trust.

Actors – both state and non-state – engage in cognitive warfare to reshape identities, manipulate emotions and undermine public consensus. These operations often capitalize on gender, ethnic and ideological divisions to deepen internal discord. For example, campaigns may weaponize narratives about gender roles, women’s rights, or ‘wokeness’ to generate backlash, recruit supporters or delegitimize institutions. Importantly, cognitive warfare targets not just what people believe, but their capacity to believe ‘together’, fragmenting the cognitive unity that underpins democratic societies.

The challenge cognitive warfare presents to traditional security paradigms is profound. Institutions such as NATO, built on hierarchical, masculinized models of defence, remain structurally oriented toward external threats, kinetic action and deterrence. However, when societies themselves become the battleground – through misinformation, distrust and symbolic violence – conventional tools fall short. A broader, more inclusive understanding of what constitutes security and who is responsible for producing it becomes indispensable.

The WPS Agenda and NATO: Between inclusion and instrumentalization

Since the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000, the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda has sought to mainstream gender perspectives within security and peacebuilding processes. NATO, as one of the earliest international actors to adopt a WPS action plan, has made formal commitments to increasing women’s participation, integrating gender-sensitive policies and addressing conflict-related sexual violence. However, feminist critiques have consistently argued that NATO’s engagement with the WPS Agenda has remained instrumental rather than transformative.

Rather than challenging militarized logics or hegemonic masculinity, NATO has largely used gender inclusion as a means of enhancing operational efficiency. Gender advisors, female engagement teams and gender training have been deployed to bolster mission success – particularly visible during operations in Afghanistan – without addressing the broader patriarchal structures of the alliance itself. Gender becomes a force multiplier, not a site of political transformation.

This approach not only limits the potential of the WPS Agenda but also creates vulnerabilities within the alliance. In an age of cognitive warfare, where legitimacy and perception are key, superficial inclusion can be co-opted or weaponized. Anti-gender movements, emboldened by populist and nationalist currents, have already begun to frame gender-sensitive policies as distractions from ‘real’ military priorities. Recent statements by US officials, such as Pete Hegseth’s denunciation of the WPS programme as ‘woke’, reflect a broader backlash against gender equality within defence institutions.

Such politicization renders NATO’s fragile engagement with WPS even more precarious. It also highlights a core contradiction: an institution that seeks to defend democratic societies cannot afford to marginalize the very constituencies that embody those democratic values. In failing to fully embrace gender justice, NATO not only undermines its own legitimacy but also cedes ideological ground to actors who seek to destabilize democratic cohesion through cognitive means.

The intersection of cognitive warfare and WPS reveals the limitations of a security architecture premised on traditional threat-response frameworks. Defence, in this context, cannot merely be about protecting borders or building military capacity. It must involve cultivating epistemic resilience, narrative sovereignty and social inclusion.

Women’s participation is not just normatively important – it is strategically essential. Excluding or tokenizing women undermines collective intelligence and leaves societies vulnerable to the very divisions cognitive warfare exploits. Conversely, including women in meaningful, leadership-level roles across security institutions expands the range of perspectives, narratives and strategies available to resist cognitive incursions.

Moreover, feminist security thinking – rooted in care, relationality and structural critique – offers tools for reimagining defence beyond violence. It prompts us to ask: What are we defending? Whose society is being protected? And how do we define threat in the first place? These are not ancillary questions but central ones in an age when the terrain of conflict is symbolic, social and affective.

To truly defend society, institutions must undergo epistemic transformation – not just integrate more women, but reconfigure how knowledge is produced, valued and operationalized. This involves dismantling the false binary between hard and soft security, and recognizing that resilience against cognitive warfare begins with inclusion, trust and equity.

Rethinking defence: Defending democracy from within

In light of these dynamics, it is time to revisit Foucault’s challenge: ‘Society must be defended’ – but how? The answer lies not in a return to fortress mentalities or reactive militarism, but in a proactive commitment to inclusive, democratic resilience. In the face of cognitive warfare, defending society means defending its pluralism, its capacity for critical thought and its inclusive institutions. It means moving beyond tokenistic gender inclusion toward structural empowerment.

NATO and other security actors must rethink what constitutes strength. In the long run, it is not military hardware but social cohesion, narrative legitimacy and institutional trust that will determine whether societies withstand the assaults of cognitive conflict. Women are not auxiliary to this project – they are central to it. As the global security landscape evolves, so too must our understanding of defence. In an age where societies themselves are the battlefield, the imperative is not only to defend, but to transform. And that transformation begins by taking seriously the voices, knowledges and futures that have long been sidelined.

 

This blog post is based on the authors’ presentations delivered at the Pre-NATO Summit event at De Haagse Hogeschool / The Hague University of Applied Sciences on 5h June 2025.

 

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors

Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits

Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits is an Associate Professor in Conflict and Peace Studies at ISS/Erasmus University Rotterdam. She is a transdisciplinary researcher specializing in Political Science, with expertise in International Relations and Critical Peace and Conflict Studies. Her research and teaching focuses on the intersections of governance, development, armed conflict, post-war transitions, and peacebuilding.

Bilge Sahin

Bilge Sahin  is an Assistant Professor of Conflict and Peace Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her teaching and research explore the complex intersections of gender, sexuality, war, and security.

Are you looking for more content about Global Development and Social Justice? Subscribe to Bliss, the official blog of the International Institute of Social Studies, and stay updated about interesting topics our researchers are working on.

Amsterdam’s Troubling Children’s Book

By Posted on 1634 views

Amsterdam marked its 750th anniversary by distributing 60,000 copies of a commemorative book, Mijn Jarige Stad (“My Birthday City”), to children across the Dutch city. But what was intended as a celebratory gift has instead sparked controversy over its casual perpetuation of racial stereotypes. In this blog, Zhiqi Xu, PhD student at the International Institute of Social Studies, reflects on how unconscious bias infiltrates children’s literature and its wide-reaching impacts.

An expanded Image of the full Board Game. Image: Het Parool

On page 31, within the book’s board-game section, young readers encounter this instruction: “Ni Hao! Chinese tourists are blocking the bike path. To avoid them, go back to square 39.”

The passage, framed as playful gameplay, exposes a more troubling reality: how racial stereotypes can be seamlessly woven into educational materials, normalizing prejudiced thinking from an early age. What publishers likely viewed as harmless humour instead demonstrates how unconscious bias infiltrates children’s literature—and how such casual stereotyping can shape young minds in ways that extend far beyond the pages of a book.

 

The cover of the book. Image: Reddit
The problematic passage in question. Image: Reddit

The incident raises critical questions about editorial oversight in educational publishing and the responsibility institutions bear when shaping children’s understanding of diversity and inclusion. For a city celebrating nearly eight centuries of history, the oversight represents a missed opportunity to model the inclusive values Amsterdam claims to champion.

Who are Amsterdam’s Tourists?

The idea of Chinese tourists “blocking the bike path” paints a vivid, supposedly familiar image—but it’s not supported by data. According to the 2023–2024 Toerisme MRA report, visitors from Asia accounted for only 8% of hotel overnight stays in Amsterdam in 2023. In contrast, 54% came from the rest of Europe, 17% from the Americas, and 18% were Dutch.

Tourism growth between 2019 and 2023 was highest among European and American guests, not Asian ones. The visibility of Asian tourists is being exaggerated and weaponized through cognitive distortions like availability bias, where rare but vivid impressions are perceived as more common than they are.

From Bias to Dehumanization

In psychology, stereotypes are heuristics— mental shortcuts used to categorize and simplify. They reduce people to flattened, predictable group traits. Although they ease mental load, they cause real harm when used to navigate social life.

Children absorb stereotypes early. By age seven, many have already internalized group-based categories learned from books, media, and adults. When a schoolbook casts a specific ethnic group, in this case, Chinese, as a social nuisance, it builds implicit biases: automatic associations between group identity and negative traits.

But the path doesn’t end there. As Gordon Allport outlined in his “scale of prejudice,” stereotypes escalate. When repeated enough, they lead to objectification — seeing people not as individuals, but as representatives of a group. That group is then more easily dismissed, mocked, blamed, or even harmed, with less guilt.

The dehumanizing tone becomes especially stark when we read the other obstacles in the same game section:

  • “Een reiger heeft op je hoofd gepoept. Je moet terug naar huis (vakje 18) om je haar te wassen.”
    (A heron pooped on your head. Go back home to wash your hair.)
  • “Plons. Je probeert een mega-duif te ontwijken met je fiets, maar valt in de gracht. Je moet helemaal terugzwemmen naar start.”
    (Splash. You try to dodge a mega-pigeon on your bike, but fall into the canal. Swim all the way back to the start.)

In this context, Chinese tourists are the only human obstacle, grouped alongside animal accidents and fictional giant birds. This reinforces a subconscious lesson: some people are not peers — they are problems.

A historical pattern

The casual stereotyping found in Amsterdam’s children’s book follows a well-documented historical pattern where seemingly minor representations precede more serious discrimination. The Amsterdam book incident, while seemingly minor, fits within this broader historical context of how prejudice becomes embedded in society’s foundational institutions.

In 1930s Germany, anti-Semitic imagery and language appeared in school textbooks and public messaging years before systematic persecution began. Educational materials depicted Jewish citizens through derogatory caricatures and false narratives, gradually normalizing prejudice in the public consciousness.

During the latter half of the 20th century in America, media portrayals consistently framed Black Americans through the lens of criminality and violence. These representations helped build public support for policies that would lead to mass incarceration, with communities of colour disproportionately targeted by law enforcement and judicial systems.

Following 9/11 attacks, Muslims faced increasingly negative portrayals in media and popular culture, depicted as inherently threatening or suspicious. This narrative shift preceded and justified expanded surveillance programs that specifically monitored Muslim communities and individuals.

Scholars who study the sociology of discrimination have identified this progression as a common precursor to institutional bias: stereotypical portrayals in popular culture and educational materials gradually shift public perception, creating the social conditions necessary for discriminatory policies to gain acceptance.

East Asians, especially those perceived as Chinese, have long faced similar treatment. During COVID-19, Asians across Europe were verbally harassed and physically attacked. In Tilburg, a Chinese-Dutch student at Tilburg University, Cindy, was brutally attacked in an elevator after asking a group to stop singing a racist song: Voorkomen is beter dan Chinezen (“Prevention is better than Chinese”). She suffered a concussion and knife wounds. Before leaving her unconscious, the attackers said they would “eradicate the coronavirus.”

Cindy’s story illustrates the continuum from mockery to violence, and how normalized stereotyping can desensitize people to cruelty.

And racists don’t differentiate between Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese. When one is mocked, all are targeted.

Systemic Roots

Equally troubling is that, according to the publisher’s own statement, the book passed through multiple levels of review and testing—city departments, school boards, and teachers, without objection. This reflects a deeper issue: normative bias, where majority-group perspectives are mistaken for neutrality.

It’s not necessarily malice. But when no one notices, it signals a system that is not built to detect or understand minority harm.

Public reactions have further exposed this divide. Dutch media figure Tina Nijkamp publicly criticized the passage and highlighted the absence of East Asian representation in Dutch TV and media. However, some online commenters called the backlash oversensitive, arguing “it’s just a joke” or “I’m Chinese and I’m not offended.”

Psychologically, this reflects pluralistic ignorance and false consensus bias: the assumption that one’s view is universal, and the failure to recognize diverse lived experiences.

But the data contradicts these dismissals. In March 2024, the Dutch government released the first national survey on discrimination against people of (South)East Asian descent. One in three reported experiencing discrimination in the past year. Minister Van Gennip responded:

“Discrimination against people of (South)East Asian descent must stop.”

Asian-Dutch community leader Hui-Hui Pan (@huihui_panonfire) posted a widely shared critique:

“Mijn stad is jarig. Maar waarom vieren we het met racisme?”
(“My city is having a birthday. But why are we celebrating it with racism?”)

She called it “racism in children’s language.” The Pan Asian Collective, which she founded, launched a national campaign and is organizing the National Congress against Discrimination and Racism on 26 June 2025, where Utrecht University and Dataschool will present findings on Asian underrepresentation in 25 years of Dutch media coverage.

Their message: this isn’t about one book—it’s about a long, visible pattern of exclusion.

Entrenched Normalization

In response to public concern, various institutions linked to Mijn Jarige Stad began clarifying their roles. The Amsterdam Museum stated it was not involved in content creation, despite its name appearing in the book. Stichting Amsterdam 750 funded the project, but delegated execution to the Programmabureau Amsterdam 750, part of the city government. The publisher, Pavlov, initially issued a standard response emphasizing positive intent and broad involvement:

“The book was developed in collaboration with all primary schools through the Breed Bestuurlijk Overleg (BBO), and extensively tested with students and teachers from three different Amsterdam schools… We sincerely had no intention to insult or hurt any group.”

This response—focused on process, intention, and positive feedback—sidestepped the core issue: harm was done, and a line that dehumanizes East Asians passed through supposedly inclusive safeguards. The problem isn’t that one group failed; the problem is how normalized and institutionally invisible anti-Asian stereotypes remain, even in materials for children.

This is not a matter of blaming a single actor or demanding symbolic apologies. The book should be recalled, and what’s needed now is an honest reckoning — not just of the production process, but of how certain forms of discrimination are so implicit, so embedded in everyday thinking, that they go unnoticed by those involved and even by broader audiences who dismiss criticism as oversensitivity.

Yet this very invisibility is reinforced by the fragmentation of accountability. It highlights a deeper issue: when everyone is involved, no one is responsible. And when no one notices the harm, it reveals how profoundly such portrayals are normalized in our collective imagination.

From Learning to Living

From a behavioral science perspective, the issue extends far beyond questions of political sensitivity. Research demonstrates how cognitive shortcuts—the mental patterns children use to navigate social situations, become deeply embedded through repeated exposure to stereotypical representations.

Child development studies reveal that young minds absorb social hierarchies through seemingly innocuous content, internalizing messages about which groups hold value and which can be dismissed. These early lessons shape neural pathways that influence decision-making well into adulthood.

The potency of stereotypes lies not in their malicious intent but in their subtle persistence. They need not provoke outrage to encode prejudice, nor offend every reader to establish harmful categories of human worth. When children encounter these patterns repeatedly—whether in games, stories, or casual conversation—they learn implicit lessons about power dynamics and social belonging.

Educational content serves a dual purpose: it teaches explicit knowledge while simultaneously transmitting unspoken values about empathy, respect, and human dignity. A board game instruction becomes more than entertainment; it becomes a framework for understanding who deserves consideration and who can be overlooked.

The distribution of 60,000 books represents more than a municipal celebration. It constitutes the widespread dissemination of social scripts—subtle but powerful instructions that will influence how an entire generation of children perceives and interacts with others throughout their lives.

In this context, editorial choices carry profound responsibility, shaping not just individual attitudes but the social fabric of communities for decades to come.

This blog was first published by the Contrapuntal

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the Author:

Zhiqi Xu

Zhiqi Xu is a behavioral scientist, psychologist, and development policy researcher. She investigates how people and communities respond to policy interventions and social change, uncovering the social and behavioral roots of transformation across contexts. Her work bridges disciplines to promote more inclusive and human-centered development thinking.

Are you looking for more content about Global Development and Social Justice? Subscribe to Bliss, the official blog of the International Institute of Social Studies, and stay updated about interesting topics our researchers are working on.

 

 

 

The need for ‘Impact’: whatever ‘Impact’ means

By Posted on 1367 views

What happened to the scholar that didn’t embrace new media? They ran out of cassette tapes! Awful jokes aside, it’s more and more important for scientists, and particularly social scientists, to be plugged in to society to better interact with it. A recent Economist article highlighted that academic research papers in the humanities and social sciences are getting harder to read, more convoluted and stuffed full of jargon and incomprehensible sentences. There is a perception in the ‘outside world’ (perhaps pushed by populist political currents!) that academics are starting to talk more just to other academics rather than to society at large, which is at the very least not conducive to a high level of public discourse. In some cases, it has led to the removal of experts from the policymaking process. At the same time, and partially thanks to the growing legions of science communications officers and the phenomenon of ‘cool geeks’, there are more opportunities than ever for (social) scientists to spread their ideas and research in accessible, bite-sized and socially engaged ways. Even the Lowlands Festival has a science pavilion to show off the latest research on everything from the psychology of perceptions of equality, quantum physics, the creative possibilities of generative AI and much more besides.

Tom Ansell,  Sarah Njoroge (MSc) and Gabriela Anderson intend this blog as a call to academics to think along, repackage their work into fun and digestible gobbets and make use of the science communications talent available to help boost our collective ‘impact’… whatever ‘impact’ means!

This image was taken at Research InSightS LIVE #4 Conflict Compounded: Implications of the war in Ukraine on global development challenges

Social science is best when it’s in conversation with society

Aside from the self-fulfilment element, and the satisfaction of personal curiosity, social scientific research has a function of providing evidence-based approaches to societal questions that can inform various stakeholders in how they act. That could be the government, organizations, businesses or people themselves. Like many forms of scientific enquiry, it serves to further human knowledge, and so (indirectly and ideally) improve people’s lives or the society that they live in. The link between the academic and the society in which they function should be one of constant conversation, where ideas are presented to people, and then validated or reconsidered through their experiences and their interaction with the everyday (this is also expressed by Anthony Giddens as the ‘double hermeneutic’). Of course, this sentence may spark flashing lights in the minds of many academics reading this, but in short – social science is rooted in society and so should seek to be in conversation with ‘real’ people all the time. A social scientist that hides away in a university is an isolated one! This means that researchers must have a way of being in conversation with people. At least part of that conversation must be a clear transmission of social science theories in a compelling and clear way, and knowledge sharing in a form that is digestible, interesting and (hopefully) means that people in the ‘real world’ can see their own lives and questions in cutting-edge research.

This is especially true in the last few years , where a significant portion of the world’s institutions face ‘alternative facts’ and the rise of public discourse strongly influenced by a ‘post-truth’ world. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, the need to provide accurate and evidence-based advice to the general public was literally a matter of life and death. Knowledge of the mechanisms of how an mRNA vaccine worked (the Moderna one) helped ensure that enough people went and received the jab to reach the critical mass of vaccinated people. Now imagine if the various biologists had remained hidden behind a wall of jargon and specific terminology, and all the while remained in their labs and refused to speak to the public in understandable language. Naturally, the immediate risks aren’t quite the same in social science research uptake, but the need for public trust and mandate is the same. Where the influence of rigorous social scientific research would help, however, is in government policymaking. Imagine how the new Dutch international aid policy would look had various members of ISS’ work been consulted in its drafting. We can’t make policymakers listen to good research, but we can make it as easy as possible for them to find, digest and be interested by it.

Avoiding extractivism and ‘closing the loop’

Considering the other side of the conversation between research and the public, we need to move beyond the effort of making sure our writing reflects our values as researchers to be ethical and non-extractive only during the research process. Research even in these most critical and conscious of times still teeters on the lines of opinion-mining, often masquerading through notions such as ‘collaboration’ and ‘co-creation’. Jamie Gorman expresses this quite well in the quote (almost jokingly): ‘What does a social researcher have in common with an oil rig operator? The answer is that both can be miners engaged in the extraction of a precious resource’. For social science researchers, that precious resource is knowledge. A key part of making sure that research is non-extractive is ‘closing the loop’ and making sure that the people that have contributed to the research are both involved and can get something out of it (something called participatory research).

The potential impact of research does not stop before and during the research process, it needs to extend into the dissemination and communication of said research. By looking beyond the production of a research to how it can be shared to an audience outside of the academic community, we allow for a greater reach through inclusivity, accessibility and even opening up for future potentials in participation and, most importantly, allowing research to be useable (from theory to practice and vice versa). How is this done? By sharing research in different mediums and through different mediums and media. Examples include translated versions, both in terms of language and even the softening of academic and ‘waffle’ jargon, different (relevant) and contextual forms of outputs, such as radio broadcasts (in the case of the Democratic Republic of Congo), video abstracts, infographics, posters, dialogue cafes, podcasts, etc. In doing so, we reach people at their different levels in all their differences of backgrounds, making room for a greater impact from our research.

Moving from inaccessible papers to socially engaged media

So, how do we actually move from rigorous, well-researched ideas to public discourse and policy that reflect them? The best science communication doesn’t just ‘simplify’ research, it translates, distils, demystifies and engages. It meets people where they are, using formats that are accessible without compromising complexity, and applies sky high thinking to everyday life.

Take podcasts, for instance. The Good Humanitarian bridges the gap between academic research and humanitarianism and the real-world challenges practitioners face. MOOCS, or open access-learning, allows people – whether they have an educational background in social sciences or not – to engage with contemporary debates. Written and visual storytelling, from in-depth interviews, infographics and posters to interactive web experiences, has made complex and socio-political topics more digestible for a general audience. Live shows, such as Research InSightS LIVE or dialogue cafes invite people to listen and engage on topics in enjoyable, yet succinct formats. In addition, social media is increasingly becoming more important for visibility, and as a way to link research that proposes an alternate world to the people that can achieve it. Even platforms like TikTok have been effectively used to debunk misinformation and explain key social science concepts in under a minute, but all face potential challenges of course.

At the same time, researchers must be empowered to engage in these spaces. Not everyone who can run a hefty statistical model or analyse complex patterns can seamlessly translate these insights for public consumption. This is precisely where science communicators come in – not to dilute these ideas but to ensure that big ideas are clarified and shared widely. Closing the loop isn’t just an ethical responsibility in participatory research – it’s a vital step toward ensuring that knowledge serves people by feeding back into their livelihoods.

Science communicators do more than just support researchers. They can be catalysts for expanding the reach and impact of academic work at its inception. Research can often benefit from creativity and audience awareness that can make it resonate beyond academia. In other words, researchers and science communicators can make an excellent team – if they truly collaborate. That means not just seeing communicators as an ‘add-on’, but valuing their input, trusting their instincts and recognizing their ability to turn rigorous research into compelling narratives that engage policymakers, practitioners and the public alike, also extending their inclusion to before and during the research process, not only after.

If universities and research institutes truly want to make an impact, they need to rethink the way they communicate knowledge. The challenge isn’t just about writing readable research papers. It’s about shaping public discourse, informing policy and making social science a living, breathing conversation. After all, what good is knowledge if it’s locked away in academic journals?

 

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

 

About the authors:

Tom Ansell

Tom Ansell is the coordinator and programme manager of The Hague Humanitarian Studies Centre, and the Coordinator of the International Humanitarian Studies Association. He has a study background in religion and conflict transformation, as well as an interest in disaster risk reduction, and science communication and societal impact of (applied) research.

Sarah Njoroge

Sarah Njoroge (MSc) is a multi-skilled communications professional who tells stories on societal issues through videos, articles, podcasts and more. She has extensive experience writing, designing and co-producing content on international development. Sarah is currently a Digital Content Manager at RNW Media and formerly worked as a Communications Officer at ISS.

Gabriela Anderson

Gabriela Anderson is the community manager of The Hague Humanitarian Studies Centre and coordinates the Humanitarian Observatories Network. Graduating with a Master’s from the International Institue of Social Studies in 2022 with a focus on the Governance of Migration and Diversity, her research focuses on notions of (self-)representation, placemaking and the importance of inclusive communication in its various forms and through its different mediums, especially in areas of Conflict & Peace with both academic and practitioner related organizations.

 

Are you looking for more content about Global Development and Social Justice? Subscribe to Bliss, the official blog of the International Institute of Social Studies, and stay updated about interesting topics our researchers are working on.

 

 

Beyond victimhood: The untold realities of Nepali brides in South Korea

By Posted on 5514 views

Nepali brides in South Korea are often portrayed as victims of violence, abuse, exploitation, slavery, and trafficking. But are these the only realities of Nepali brides? Nilima Rai in this article, challenges the dominant monolithic narrative of victimhood and sheds light on the other realities of these women – many of whom navigate such matrimonies with resilience, academic and professional achievements, and significant socioeconomic and cultural contributions in Korea and Nepal. Through patchwork ethnography, this article reveals Nepali brides’ overlooked agency, aspirations, achievements, and contributions beyond their image as victims.

Image by Sukanto Debnath

‘They call us Bhote ko budi,1 someone with Pothi Visa,2 who didn’t find a suitable man to marry, the victims of domestic violence and abuse, and someone who is miserably sitting in a corner and crying over their ill fate,’ one of the Nepali brides said. This illustrates the racist, sexist, and negative remarks the Nepali brides encounter in their day-to-day lives. This article discusses how the dominant narrative of victimhood further reinforces stigmas and prejudices of Nepali brides.

Transnational marriage in South Korea: Nepali brides

Transnational marriage between Nepali brides and Korean men began in the early 1990s when Nepali migrant workers entered Korea through the Industrial Trainee System.3 These brides, mainly belonging to socio-economically marginalised Tibeto-Burmese ethnic groups, are preferred4 due to their physical similarity to Korean people.

Nepali women participate in transnational marriage as an opportunity created by globalisation but with an expectation to fill the bride shortage vis-à-vis the ongoing crisis of social reproduction in South Korea. Like other foreign brides,5 Nepali brides make compromised choice of marrying foreign men and settling outside their country to escape poverty, attain upward mobility, or find access to labour markets that are otherwise denied to them.6  Conversely, Korean men7 rejected in the local marriage market due to their low socio-economic status and societal expectations of women seeking brides outside their racial/ethnic pool in countries such as China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Cambodia, Mongolia, and Nepal to name a few.

In Nepal, such marriages occur through commercial marriage brokers, mutual friends and relatives living and working in Korea. Since the early 2000s, Nepali women have entered transnational marriage through the marriage agencies/bureaus in Korea and Nepal.

The media’s victim narrative and its impact on Nepali brides

With the active involvement of the marriage brokers as matchmakers and the negative implications of such commercialised marriages, Nepali brides are often disparagingly depicted as ‘victims’ – the victims of trafficking, slavery, domestic violence, abuse, and deception. For more than a decade and even today, domestic and international news media have been replete with the sufferings of Nepali brides in Korea, portraying them as pitiful, bleak, wretched, sold, trafficked, and enslaved in Korean households. A rapid increase of unregulated marriage agencies in Nepal and Korea has resulted in increased numbers of fraudulent marriages engendering domestic violence and abuse of some of the Nepali brides. News media have widely reported cases of violence against Nepali brides along with their testimonies. Such efforts have highlighted the grave concerns of violence against those Nepali brides who experienced domestic violence and abuse. However, the paucity of research on the overall experiences of these brides, and the overwhelming representation of these women in media not only created their image as ‘women in peril’ and labelled them as ‘victims’ but also reinforced the already existing stigmas and prejudices against these women within the Nepali diaspora community in Korea.

These brides are subjected to gender-oppressive slurs by the Nepali diaspora community which sees them as ‘promiscuous’, ‘leftovers’, or someone who has a problem or is behaving strangely, thus ineligible to marry a man from their vicinity. The media’s tendency to depict Nepali brides merely as victims, the lack of research as well as the condescending attitudes of the Nepali diaspora community and the potential threat of oppressive slurs has often resulted in the silencing of Nepali brides.

‘Other Nepali brides in our community scolded me for allowing them to take my video and giving an interview to one of the media people,’ said one of the Nepali brides. This illustrates the negative implications of such narratives of Nepali brides fostering distrust and discontentment not only towards the media but also within the Nepali diaspora community. Some expressed their resentment through words, while others demonstrated it through their act of refusal, hesitation and constant need for reassurance that those approaching them were not affiliated with the media.

The realities of other Nepali brides

Narrating these women’s stories only through victimhood perspectives obscures the other realities of brides who claim to be empowered through economic gain, freedom of mobility and the acquisition of new knowledge and skills. These are the Nepali brides whose lived realities differ from those who suffer from violence and abuse.

‘Do we look like the victims of domestic violence or unhappy in our marital life, like how these journalists often portray us? Rather, I think I made the right decision getting married and coming here as I have more freedom to work, earn and live my life on my own terms,’ one of the Nepali brides said.

Similarly, another Nepali bride expressed her frustration, saying, ‘I am sick and tired of how these Nepali media represent us. A few years back, one of the journalists asked for our (her husband and her) photo, saying they wanted to cover the stories of Nepali brides. Still, in the end, they published our photo under the awful title and story that talked about how pitiful Nepali brides are. I am more than happy with my husband, who speaks fluent Nepali and actively contributes to Korean and Nepali literature and society. We both are hotel entrepreneurs. So, do you think my story fits into one of those stories published in the newspaper?’

Nepali bride with her husband tending their kitchen garden at Jeju-do, South Korea

The Nepali brides who were not victims of violence – and whose stories did not fit in with the articles published in news media – claimed to have made adjustments early on in their marriage, particularly in terms of language, food, and culture. They are now content with their familial relationships, have successfully established their professional careers, and are able to support their left-behind/natal families in Nepal.

These brides wish to be recognised as successful entrepreneurs, educators, nurses, police officers, poets, counsellors, interpreters, and promoters of Nepali culture, food, and language across the Nepali border. Instead of questioning their intentions in choosing a foreign spouse and vilifying them as ‘gold diggers’ – those who marry old Korean men for ‘card’/citizenship – and helpless victims of violence – who are beaten, battered, and abused by their husbands and in-laws – they want their achievements and contributions in both Korea and Nepal to be valued and acknowledged.

Furthermore, these women are often fluent in the Korean language and are pursuing/pursued further academic and professional endeavours in Korea; things they believe they could not have achieved in Nepal. Based on my research, Nepali migrant workers and students rely heavily on these brides to book public venues and bargain in local shops. They also rely on them for critical services such as translating/interpreting sensitive court cases and counselling in medical and mental health cases. Furthermore, these brides provide constant support and services as teachers and educators in schools, institutes, and migrant worker centres; provide health and safety orientations in factories and industries; act as counsellors to facilitate immigration procedures; work as nurses in hospitals, as police officers, established women’s shelters for migrant workers and provide all the necessary support in the rescue and repatriation of undocumented migrant workers.

Highlighting these women’s stories as achievers and contributors is not to trivialize the gravity of the issues related to violence against Nepali women/brides at all levels in and outside the country. The main aim of this article was to discuss the consequences of one-way narratives of victimhood that have negative implications on the lives of other Nepali brides who are happy with the positive outcome of their struggles in a foreign land. There is a need for in-depth research into the broader experiences of these women and for a multi-stakeholder dialogue and deliberation with state and non-state actors such as news media.

Endnotes

1. ‘Bhote’ is “a derogatory term for ethnically Tibetan people from northern Nepal (Gurung 2022, 1746). This kind of racial slur has been used against Nepali brides in Korea due to the resemblance or the similar physical features of Korean men with these ethnically Tibetan people.

Gurung, Phurwa.2023. ‘Governing caterpillar fungus: Participatory conservation as state-making, territorialization and dispossession in Dolpo, Nepal’ EPE: Nature and Space 6, No.3: 1745-1766.

2. In Nepal, the word ‘poth’” or ‘hen’ is a derogatory colloquial term often used as an oppressional slur that evinces male dominance or superiority over women (Lama and Buchy 2002).

Lama, Anupama and Marlene Buchy. 2002. ‘Gender, Class, Caste and Participation: The Case of Community Forestry in Nepal’ Indian Journal of Gender Studies 9, No.1: 27-41.

3. Before the Employment Permit System (2004), Korea systematised the inflow of migrant workers by introducing the Industrial Trainee System in 1991. Nepali migrant workers entered Korea through this trainee system. In 1990, 43,017 Nepali migrant workers were recorded in Korea.

Rai, Nilima, Arjun Kharel, and Sudeshna Thapa.2019. Labour Migration from Nepal-Factsheet: South Korea, Centre for the Study of Labour and Mobility and Foreign Employment Board, Nepal. https://archive.ceslam.org/fact-sheets/factsheet-south-korea

Based on my research findings, some Nepali brides were found to enter Korea through the trainee system in the early 1990s and later married Korean men.

4. Kim, Kyunghak, and Miranda De Dios. 2017. ‘Transnational Care for Left-Behind Family in Nepal with Particular Reference to Nepalese Married Migrant Women in Korea’ Global Diaspora and the Transnational Community: Migration and Culture.

5. Kim, Minjeong.2018. Elusive Belonging: Marriage Immigrants and ‘Multiculturalism’ in Rural South Korea. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

6. Based on the findings of the study.

7. Kim, Hansung, Sun Young Lee, and In Hee Choi. 2014. ‘Employment and Poverty Status of Female Marriage Immigrants in South Korea’ Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 23, No.2: 129-154.

This blog post is based on the empirical evidence collected from field research in South Korea and Nepal (2023-24) for my doctoral study.

 

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

 

About the author

Nilima Rai is a Ph.D. candidate in Gender Studies at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. Her research explores the lived realities of Nepali brides in South Korea. She holds master’s degrees in Development Studies from Erasmus University, the Netherlands, and in Conflict, Peace, and Development Studies from Tribhuvan University, Nepal, and the University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka. Her interests include migration, marriage and labor mobility, social justice, women’s rights, and the intersections of conflict, disaster, and gender.

Are you looking for more content about Global Development and Social Justice? Subscribe to Bliss, the official blog of the International Institute of Social Studies, and stay updated about interesting topics our researchers are working on.

Disaster Risk Reduction doesn’t (always) need to be expensive: introducing Frugal DRR

By Posted on 1988 views
Photo credit : Pixabay

In this blog, to mark global Disaster Risk Reduction Day, Tom Ansell (HSC Coordinator) considers whether disaster risk reduction activities can be made less-resource intensive through Frugal Innovation. Whilst Frugal DRR shouldn’t be considered a money-saving replacement for development and infrastructure work, it does provide an opportunity for communities to reduce their vulnerability and increase their capacity for dealing with the consequences of hazards that could include extreme weather, geological hazards, or other environmental hazards.

What is DRR? And what’s wrong with the term ‘natural disasters’?

Disaster Risk Reduction, according to the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) is activities that are “aimed at preventing new and reducing existing disaster risk and managing residual risk, all of which contribute to strengthening resilience and therefore to the achievement of sustainable development.” So, in simple terms, activities that work to prevent and mitigate risks to reduce the effects of disasters. It’s important to note here that we use the term disaster in connection with hazards like earthquakes, floods and others while avoiding the ‘natural disaster’, as this ignores the social dimension of disasters.

People across the world live in places that have different levels of risk and have different vulnerabilities in the face of these risks. More than the hazard itself, a much larger defining factor for how much damage, social upheaval, and loss of life occurs is how vulnerable people are, and how prepared they are for when a potential hazard becomes a disaster. In other words, an earthquake of magnitude 8 will have significantly different effects in a wealthy country with a strong governance system, to a much poorer country with (for example) a fragmented government. In the words of Margaret Arnold at the World Bank, “the key lesson is that disasters are social constructs. People are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and natural hazards due not just to their geographical context, but their financial, their social status, their cultural status, their gender status, their access to services, their level of poverty, their access to decision making, and their access to justice.”

For example, Tokyo often suffers from extreme stormy weather: as many countries with a Pacific coast do. The city of Tokyo, however, also has one of the largest storm drains in the world to help divert water resulting from storms or extremely heavy rainfall. The project, completed in the 1990s and costing around 3 billion US Dollars, means that though the city is often affected by tropical cyclones and typhoons, there is typically much less loss of life in the Tokyo area than others affected by the same typhoon – especially as the city of Tokyo has well-developed evacuation routes, early warning and information systems, and more besides.

This example serves to demonstrate the purpose of DRR activities: to prevent risks and – where this is not possible – to minimize the overall damage caused by extreme weather. As the ‘no natural disasters’ movement emphasizes, reacting after the event is a less intelligent way to respond to disasters, compared to prevention, pre-preparation, and planning is a much more productive and intelligent way to ‘respond’ to disasters. Various frameworks for ‘good’ risk management activities have been devised, including the Hyogo Framework (2005-2015) and Sendai Framework (2015-2030).

Are DRR activities always expensive?

In the example above, of the city of Tokyo, a major contributing factor to mitigating climate risks for the city involved constructing a large piece of public infrastructure. Similar projects have taken place around the world, for example the Delta Works in the Netherlands , the Thames Barrier in the UK, or the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway West Closure Complex in New Orleans in the USA. These three examples are all related to storm surges, flooding, or other water-related hazards. But (expensive) risk-reducing infrastructure also exists to mitigate the effects of rockfall (for example in Interlaken in Switzerland), avalanches (for example the Gazex system), or to stabilize land vulnerable to landslides through enormous retaining walls (for example in West Bengal, India).

At this point, it might seem that all DRR activities are exceptionally expensive, very large public infrastructure that are only available to the very wealthiest regions in the world. But that would be a serious oversimplification of what smaller groups of citizens, with or without the support of institutions, can achieve to mitigate risk and so reduce their vulnerability. DRR activities also include mapping areas that will be most affected by an extreme event, creating evacuation routes, developing information systems and early-warning systems, training citizens on flood-proofing their homes, or even making informational videos on what to do should a disaster strike.

This is not to say that large infrastructure projects aren’t important: indeed they can be transformational. However, it is important to emphasize that DRR activities are not always expensive: even though an all-round DRR plan for a place will likely include both more expensive infrastructure, less economically-expensive activities can also make a difference.

Can ‘Frugal Innovation’ inspire low-cost but effective interventions?

In order to develop new ideas around lower-cost (frugal) risk reduction activities, it is useful to dive into the world of Frugal Innovation. The International Centre for Frugal Innovation (ICFI), based at ISS and part of LDE, considers the practice and approach to be a potentially transformative way of finding new solutions to growing societal problems, in a non-excessive way. Andre Leliveld and Peter Knorringa, in an article from 2017 setting out the potential relationship between Frugal Innovation and development, note that the field sprouted from multiple sources but takes much inspiration from jugaad practices in South Asia. Jugaad is an excellent catch-all term (borrowed from Hindi, and with similar terms in Punjabi, Urdu, and various Dravidian languages including Telugu and Malyalam) for low-cost and often ingenious solutions to nagging problems; as well as the kind of mindset that allows the creative thinking around these solutions to occur. Whilst the term and thinking is often used in business (to create products for people with less purchasing power), it is very versatile.

Utilising some of the thinking inherent within Frugal Innovation in relation to DRR activities requires taking a solutions-oriented approach, and making use of existing resources, skills, or initiatives to reduce vulnerability by mitigating risk.

Painting and planning: Frugal Disaster Risk Reduction in action

How urban communities adapt to heatwaves across India is an interesting way to demonstrate how integrating Frugal Innovation techniques into Disaster Risk Reduction carries the potential for meaningful reduction in vulnerability.

Heatwaves have the potential to be very destructive, and one solution that is being rolled out across several areas that have a high number of informal dwellings in cities including Mumbai and Nagpur is the low-cost but high-yield technique of painting roofs white (to reflect the sun) and installing secondary ‘shade roofs’ on buildings. This can reduce inside temperatures by several degrees on the hottest of days. Similarly, a network of inexpensive recording devices has been installed to track ‘hotspots’ in the city, which can inform where communal ‘cooling zones’ need to be set up local city corporations or voluntary groups. And, in Ahmedabad in the north-west of India, a ‘Heat Action Plan’ was developed by the city corporation and scientific partners that is estimated to have prevented hundreds of fatalities.

Developing evacuation routes, making sure that citizens are prepared for what to do in a disaster, small and uncomplicated changes to people’s homes, or even utilising close-knit communities and communication networks as informal warning systems may not structurally reduce peoples’yet vulnerabilities yet can make a difference in preventing the worst of disaster impacts. And, whilst not as transformational as large public infrastructure projects, any gain in a communities’ resilience is an important step. Luckily ‘Frugal Innovation’ techniques show us that DRR doesn’t always need to be expensive.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author

Tom Ansell

Tom Ansell is the Coordinator of the Humanitarian Studies Centre and International Humanitarian Studies Association.

Are you looking for more content about Global Development and Social Justice? Subscribe to Bliss, the official blog of the International Institute of Social Studies, and stay updated about interesting topics our researchers are working on.

 

Transformative Methodologies | A reflection on collaborative writing across sex worker organisations and academia

By Posted on 5355 views

We – members of Empower Foundation – a sex workers’ rights organisation in Thailand – and two scholar-activists from International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS) in the Netherlands, reflected on our experience of collaboration in light of our search for social transformation.

 

About us and what brought us together

Empower Foundation is a leading organisation in the defense of sex workers’ rights, and is located in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It has almost 40 years experience of working with creative and transformative methodologies – doing community-based research which then feeds into policy proposals, that are brought to the attention of governmental and international organisations, such as International Labour Organisation (ILO). It models best labor practices in their own ‘Can Do Bar’. Empower is the space for sex workers to exchange experiences, organise and create ways, often using art and culture, to inform and influence society on many issues, including the harms caused by anti-trafficking policy and practices.

What brought us together initially was the interest in bringing insights from labor studies – Karin’s area of research – on the one hand, and gender and sexuality studies – Silke’s field of expertise – on the other, in conversation with each other, in order to explore how that could contribute to proposals for structurally improving labor conditions of sex workers. Our first paper was on analysing ILO discussions around decent work, and how sex work and sex workers have been systematically excluded from conversations around the decent work agenda. It was in this context that in 2014 Silke and Karin contacted members of Empower Foundation that Silke had met the year before at an event co-organised with Mama Cash at ISS.

Trying to make a difference in the way we collaborate

While Silke and Karin had an initial idea about the paper, there was explicit room for adapting the focus, approach, and language. Neither of the three partners had experience in this kind of joint project, so we had an open conversation about the ways in which we wanted to collaborate from the beginning, thereby establishing some common guiding principles – that we would explore how to go about it along the way, keeping in mind that the contribution of the expertise and perspectives of Empower was crucial to the paper, both in terms of the kind of knowledge that we wanted to produce, as well as in terms of the social impact that we were seeking, namely, to improve sex workers’ labor conditions. We also agreed that Empower’s involvement could be more or less, depending on their availability, while our shared preference would be to have the collective as co-author.

This conversation was particularly important given the previous negative experience of working with academics. Liz Hilton from Empower Foundation summarised: “We’ve had one or two earlier experiences with people who wanted to collaborate and that was really terrible. The whole premise of collaboration was theft, of stealing our work.” Liz mentioned the importance of being aware of the differences in our language – “…not just the difference between Thai and English, but also the difference between sex worker language and academic language. We don’t see this as an obstacle, but it will be an adventure!”. The problem with academic jargon, as Empower also explained in a preparatory note for a meeting of sex workers organisations at ISS that took place at a later stage, is not that sex workers are not able to understand it, but that it does not reflect their experiences or realities properly, and it often operates with implicit assumptions that are problematic.

One common assumption in both academia and policy for instance is the conflation between sex work and trafficking that occurs when using the term “sexual exploitation”, to refer to what in any other economic sector would be called either “forced labor” or “labor exploitation”. Moreover, even within academic language, there were many different ways of talking about sex work with important political implications. Empower has published a dictionary that provides many examples of such – often problematic – assumptions and disconnects that occur. So, one of the first things that Silke and Karin asked was: how does (or doesn´t) the language that we use speak to members of Empower Foundation? In which ways do they think we should change it?

We also talked about timelines, and the need to adapt those to the realities of the different parties involved. For Empower, this compared positively with earlier collaborations with academics: “Other people that we were collaborating with didn’t want to give us the time to properly translate, think, come back to it, put forward what we can do, will do, and what we think. They were very rushed. Everybody has deadlines, we know that, but their rush was quite rude. They were continuously trying to fit us into what they already decided.”

Final reflections

We co-authored the paper that came out two years later. Empower Foundation made a tremendous contribution to the paper by critically analysing the language used, and by bringing in the findings of the community-based research that Empower was conducting independently –  both through previous research on the adverse impact of anti-trafficking measures, published under the title “Hit and Run”, and the study on “Moving Toward Decent Sex Work”. This contributed towards a very nuanced and very tangible understanding of what decent work and labor exploitation means for sex workers in Thailand, by looking at these not as a binary, but as a continuum and as multidimensional.

Finally, and most importantly, in this process we developed a relationship of trust, friendship, and deep appreciation that became the basis for our further collaboration.

Now, has this collaboration lessened the precarity and contributed to more decent working conditions experienced by sex workers, as our chapter’s title suggests? Probably not. Yet, in a context in which sex workers’ knowledge about their lives and work is continuously devalued and ignored, we like to believe that a respectful collaboration that challenges these hierarchies of knowledge, and augments sex workers’ own voices can make a small, yet, meaningful contribution to a changed discourse on sex work – and ultimately to more respect and rights for them.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Sex Worker Networking Zone at the International AIDS Conference 2018, Amsterdam.” by junomac is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Empower Foundation is a Thai sex worker organization promoting opportunities and rights for sex workers for more than 30 years

 

 

 

 

 

 

Silke Heumann is a Sociologist and Assistant Professor (Senior Lecturer) in the Major Social Justice Perspectives (SJP). Her areas of expertise and interest are Gender and Sexuality Studies, Social Movements, Latin American Politics, Discourse Analysis and Social Theory.

 

Karin Astrid Siegmann is Associate Professor in Labour and Gender Economics at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS).

 

Are you looking for more content about Global Development and Social Justice? Subscribe to Bliss, the official blog of the International Institute of Social Studies, and stay updated about interesting topics our researchers are working on.

Nth Room Crimes and intensifying gender conflict in South Korea: attempting to unite a highly divided society

By Posted on 10692 views

The horrific case of videos showing the sexual exploitation of women in South Korea being sold on the social media platform Telegram was recently uncovered, prompting a public outcry and leading to feminist action in the country. Known as the Nth Room Crimes, this case shows just how far South Korean society still is from eliminating the oppression of women and addressing skewed gender relations. The strong backlash from men against efforts to redress gender inequality makes matters even worse. This article shows that toxic masculinity in South Korea urgently needs to be addressed for any real change to take place and suggests some possible first steps.

Source: Voice of America https://www.voanews.com/east-asia-pacific/south-koreas-metoo-movement-challenges-workplace-sexual-harassment

Disclaimer

This article carries a trigger warning. It contains descriptions of events related to sexual exploitation that may be distressing to sensitive readers.

Between 2018 and 2020, thousands of videos of women being sexually exploited were sold on the social media platform Telegram by a pimp known as Doctor. A copycat followed suit and even more videos were sold online. As the sordid details of these horrific crimes, known as the Nth Room Crimes, were uncovered, South Korean society was shaken to the core. Besides the fact that the perpetrator was a young man with a ‘good background’, the extent of the crimes also led to widespread shock and disbelief. More than 60,000 people had paid using cryptocurrency to watch these videos, and over 100 women had been sexually abused in the videos, including more than 20 minors.

In response, South Koreans signed an online petition pressing for the identities of the perpetrators to be made public; over two million signatures were collected in a short period. The perpetrators’ real names were pasted in the media for all to see and condemn. Yet this is not enough. These events should lead us to urgently question the extent of misogyny in South Korea and to come up with ways to counter it. This article looks at how gender stereotyping and misogyny are well alive in South Korea and what effect it has on the efforts to press for real and enduring change.

A highly unequal society

Despite the flourishing of activities promoting gender equality in South Korea, women are still suffering the burden of highly skewed gender relations. Economic development has resulted in the increased participation of women in the labour market; however, only 4.5% of women occupied executive positions in South Korean companies as recently as 2019. Digital technologies have also contributed to the rise of feminist movements and awareness-raising about gender issues (Kim, 2017; Hasunuma and Shin, 2019). Nevertheless, they have also increased cyber gender-based crimes, including the phenomenon of spycams, misogynistic commentary on social media platforms, and the Nth Room Crimes discussed above. It is clear that the commodification of female bodies has been accelerated through those online activities.

The current situation in South Korea has several roots: nation-building based on neoliberalism, Confucianism, and toxic masculinity. Specifically, neoliberal national building efforts apply a ‘(neo)-Confucian’ philosophy that supports traditional gender hierarchies and divisions (Kim, 1996; Lee, 2014). This patriarchal system has led South Korean women to become and remain second-class citizens and the men to become the breadwinners or “salaryman” ‘who were middle-class men and full-time salaried employees during the post-war period’ (Taga, 2005, cited in Lee and Parpart, 2018).

In response to these developments, the country’s feminist movement has led several activities. It joined the #MeToo movement, the #Iamfeminist movement, and the post-it movement. After a public testimony by female prosecutor Seo Ji Heyon of harassment and intimidation by male seniors in 2018, which made news headlines, not only activists, but also many citizens started to speak up, showing how widespread sexual harassment and assault were and criticising structural gender inequality (Hasunuma and Shin, 2019). However, little has changed; as the case of the Nth Room Crimes shows, gender inequality and misogynistic attitudes are well and alive.

Source: BBC https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-43534074

Contending discourses on the position of men: a nation divided

Some South Korean men have opposite views of the extent of gender discrimination in Korean society. In the view of young men, the social privileges enjoyed by men of the previous generation have been sharply diminished, and they feel isolated by the current government’s female-oriented policies (Kwon, 2019). Moreover, changing expectations about the role of men in running households and raising children has intensified gender conflict (Kwon, 2019). Furthermore, some Korean men feel disadvantaged when competing against women for job positions and feel that women have more opportunities to be appointed. Moreover, women are seen to benefit from self-improvement through employment and other opportunities made available to them, while men are conscripted, leading to widespread resentment among men towards women. Thus, while men’s opportunities to further themselves are perceived to decrease, those of women are sharply increasing.

Indeed, female participation in economic activity steadily increased between 2011 and 2019. However, The Economist in 2018 found that the gap between male and female labour participation remains large, with South Korea faring worst compared to other OECD countries (see graph below). Men still have an advantage over women in the labour market, yet they feel that women are unfairly benefiting from new opportunities for participation.

As seen above, men and women have different perspectives on gender inequality in South Korea. Lee and Parpart (2018) criticised inequitable gender divisions in terms of employment and emphasised that there is a need to deconstruct the silence on gender relations (p. 317). Nowadays, many South Korean women are attempting to make their voices heard and participate in the feminist movement, but some men are against it.

An ongoing dialogue between genders that is sorely needed is not yet taking place as men and women navigate gender conflicts separately instead of collaboratively.

But something is being done to attempt to change these conflicts. The Korean Institute for Gender Equality Promotion and Education (KIGEPE) under the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family of the Republic of Korea (MOGEF) has developed ‘GENDERON’, a knowledge-sharing platform seeking to promote gender equality and prevent gender violence through furthering education on gender equality. This platform offers free monthly educational video clips to introduce gender conflicts and gender-related laws to the public and encourages citizens to participate in discussions by offering incentives and staging competitions. Moreover, the MOGEF has attempted to develop an open forum for youth participation, giving young people the opportunity to directly propose policies related to gender equality and consult with relevant ministries.

Yet it is questionable whether these platforms are actually making a difference when it comes to such a deep-seated problem. Only those who seek to change the structural inequalities are likely to engage in discussions, and the discussions are likely to address just the tip of the iceberg. In the meantime, the support of young adult men for the current government continues to decline. It is clear than an active, open conversation between men and women is necessary to address gender hatred and conflict. Education programmes and measures to prevent online gender crimes can be a start. The media should also make an effort to adhere to the broadcasting ethics code in a way that would foster healthy discussions on gender inequality without amplifying gender conflicts. Above all, the government should pay attention to preventing men from feeling alienated in its preparation and implementation of gender-related policies and should encourage all genders to participate in an open conversation on gender issues that continue to divide this country.

References

BBC (2018) “#MeToo movement takes hold in South Korea”. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-43534074 (Accessed: 4 February 2021).

Cho, Y (2020), “Nth Room case: How many years for ‘digital sex crime’ in Korea? [VIDEO]”, The Korean Times, October 22, Available at; https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2021/01/718_298005.html  (Accessed: 4 February 2021)

Kwon, J (2019) “South Korea’s young men are fighting against feminism”. Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/21/asia/korea-angry-young-men-intl-hnk/index.html (Accessed: 4 February 2021).

GENDERON (2019). KIGEPE MEDIA, Available at: https://genderon.kigepe.or.kr/geme/inf/gemeIntro.do (Accessed: 4 February 2021).

Hasunuma. L and Shin. K (2019) “#MeToo in Japan and South Korea: #WeToo, #WithYou”, Journal of Women, Politics & Policy, 40:1, 97-111, Available at; DOI:10.1080/1554477X.2019.1563416 (Accessed: 6 January 2021)

Jeong, E, Y (2019), “South Korea’s Male-Dominated Workplaces in Spotlight After Sexual Harassment Accusations”, The Walls Street Journal, 20 August, Available at; https://www.wsj.com/articles/south-koreas-male-dominated-workplaces-in-spotlight-after-sexual-harassment-accusations-11597915806 (Accessed: 31 January 2021)

KIGEPE (2017), “main Project”, KIGEPE, Available at: https://www.kigepe.or.kr/eng/main/main.do?menuNo=22000 (Accessed: 4 February 2021).

Kim. K. (1996), “Nationalism: An advocate of, or a barrier to, feminism in South Korea”, Women’s Studies International Forum ,19, (1–2), pp 65–74, Available at; doi: 10.1016/0277-5395(95)00063-1. (Accessed: 4 February 2021).

Lee N (2014) “The Korean Women’s Movement of Japanese Military’ comfort Women’: Navigating between Nationalism and Feminism,” THE REVIEW OF KOREAN STUDIES, 17(1), pp. 71–92.

Lee, J. and Parpart, J. L. (2018) “Constructing Gender Identity through Masculinity in Csr Reports: The South Korean Case,” Business Ethics, 27(4), pp. 309–309. Available at: http://doi: 10.1111/beer.12191. (Accessed: 8 April 2021)

Statistics KOREA Government (2021) Index Korea, Available at: https://www.index.go.kr/potal/main/EachDtlPageDetail.do?idx_cd=1572 (Accessed: 4 February 2021).

The Economist (2019), “The glass-ceiling index”, Daily Chart , March 8,  Available at: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/03/08/the-glass-ceiling-index (Accessed: 4 February 2021).

MOGEF(2019) “청년 참여 플랫폼, 청년이 주도하는 문화 혁신! [Youth participation outh participation platform, cultural innovation led by youth!(translated by author)]”, MOGEF, Available at: http://www.mogef.go.kr/nw/enw/nw_enw_s001d.do?mid=mda700&bbtSn=707617 (Accessed: 4 February 2021).

Yonhap (2020), “Sex crime chat room ignites public fury”, The Korea Herald, March 23, Available at; http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20200323000289 (Accessed: 4 February 2021).

Opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the ISS or members of the Bliss team.

About the authors:

Inhwa Jeong is currently studying Economics of Development in the MA program from Development Studies at ISS. She has five years of development cooperation experience, specialising in project management. Her interests lie in the economic empowerment of marginalised people and particularly keen on gender and environmental issues.

Kanae Inage is in the MA program of Human Rights, Gender and Conflict Studies at ISS. Her research interests focus on gender-based violence and feminist movements specifically in East Asian areas.

 

Are you looking for more content about Global Development and Social Justice? Subscribe to Bliss, the official blog of the International Institute of Social Studies, and stay updated about interesting topics our researchers are working on.

 

Covid-19 | Strengthening alliances in a post-Covid world: green recovery as a new opportunity for EU-China climate cooperation?

By Posted on 5312 views
Chinese and EU flag

As nations turn their attention to fighting the economic crisis resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, green recovery seems to be a good—and perhaps for the first time, possible—option. As climate change remains the most pressing challenge despite the severity of the global Covid-19 pandemic, a green recovery plan to slow down global warming and meet climate goals becomes imperative. Leaders in the EU are taking the lead in greening the recovery, while China seems to be following suit. A ‘green consciousness’ seems to be emerging. Could these efforts improve EU-China relations and help these two global powerhouses work together to fight climate change? asks Hao Zhang.

Chinese and EU flag
Credit: Friends of Europe on Flickr

As the IMF’s latest report on fiscal policies shows, the Covid-19 crisis won’t change the global climate that is also in crisis, but responses to it might. Even though science hasn’t produced an answer on whether the current economic crisis induced by the pandemic will indeed affect the stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, efforts to address it certainly will. It is undeniable that the current health and economic crisis together create a threat to our current development trajectory and that the scope and severity of the issue to some extent make lasting efforts and immediate actions crucial. These decisions on how we will recover from the pandemic and the resulting crisis will shape our society for the next few decades and, even more importantly perhaps, how we deal with our climate and environmental challenges. As the IPCC’s report warned that our current ambition and willingness are far from pushing us to reach our goal of containing global warming, a green recovery plan becomes imperative in a post-Covid-19 world.

The question then arises: How do we green our recovery? As the IMF suggests, fiscal policymakers should take the lead in making policies that support climate goals without undermining the purpose of boosting the economy. Then, finance ministries should be able to set up concrete and practical projects to implement these policies. In addition, public support for the green policies with the rationale that curbing emissions would likely reduce the risk of respiratory diseases is indispensable. In a post-Covid-19 world, this might sway the public in support of green measures in a way it never has before.

The EU seems to be taking the lead in employing green measures to recover its lockdown-hit economies. As policymakers tend to believe that a green plan can better help revive the economy, concrete actions can be witnessed. In May this year, the European Commission proposed a €750 billion recovery fund with green conditions, 25% of which is to be set aside for climate action, meaning that one-quarter of expenditure with a ‘do-no-harm’ clause can potentially rule out environmentally damaging investments.[1] In addition, the Commission also issued a €1.85 trillion, seven-year budget and pandemic recovery package. This EU green recovery package could be introduced elsewhere to stimulate the economy while fighting climate change.

In addition, the EU launched the world’s largest programs for innovative low-carbon technologies under the fund from the EU’s emissions trading system. This innovation fund is created to finance breakthrough technologies for renewable energy, energy-intensive industries, carbon capture, use and storage, etc. These could help create local job opportunities, lead the economy to a climate-neutral place, and also help the EU maintain its technological leadership in climate change. It is obvious that the EU pays great attention to the future of clean technologies, yet it allows member states and the market space to decide how the money is spent. The member states will be allowed to use their allocations from the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility for a wide range of green projects detailed in their national energy climate plans, and their proposals will be reviewed by the Commission; at the same time, private capital will be encouraged to invest in clean energy technologies.

On the other side of the world, in China, residents also survived the first wave of the pandemic, and the government is now also making recovery plans. This May, in the report on the work of the government, the development of renewable energy and efforts toward the clean and efficient use of coal were emphasized.[2] At the same time, this year for the first time Beijing has decided not to set an economic growth target, which is interpreted as a way to help China shift away from energy-intensive infrastructure projects.[3] This indeed has sent out a very positive signal; however, given that China still hasn’t submitted its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) for the next reporting round, it also raises concerns about a lack of practical assurance.

Nevertheless, the cooperation between the EU and China in regard to green recovery seems promising. At the recent 22nd China-EU Summit on September 14 this year, President Xi Jinping stated that

China is interested in forging a green partnership with the EU and constructively participating in the global process of tackling climate change and preserving biodiversity. We are researching on reaching our long-term vision in the mid-century,[4] which includes carbon-peaking and carbon-neutrality.[5]

It is thus obvious that economic recovery after the Covid-19 pandemic is considered a top priority for leaders of both the EU and China, and it becomes increasingly clear that both parties are interested in a recovery package that aligns with their green transition goals.

Looking ahead, the EU and China can cooperate with each other in a few fields. First, the EU’s experiences could help China transition more rigorously to the use of green energy, especially in cutting the number of carbon-powered plants and subsidizing new energy vehicles. Second, the EU and China could agree to channel public and private funds to low-carbon investments both at home and abroad. Both parties are big investors of overseas development projects; they can thus work together to invest in projects subject to green terms. Going a step further, the EU and China could also work on developing international standards for sustainable finance[6], and China could learn from the EU’s experience in committing to more ambitious climate targets, specifically making ‘decarbonization’ a top priority in its next five-year plan.[7] Hopes are high for future cooperation between the EU and China in leading the world toward a green recovery, yet key decisions need to be made by both parties.

[1] Refer to Climate Home News, “EU €750 billion Covid recovery fund comes with green conditions”, May 27, 2020.

[2] Refer to ccchina.org.cn, 一图读懂2020政府工作报告, May 29, 2020.

[3] Refer to Climate Home News, “China prioritises employment over GDP growth in coronavirus recovery”, May 22, 2020.

[4] President Xi confirmed that China will try to reach carbon-neutrality before 2060 in his speech at a high-level meeting to mark the UN’s 75th anniversary on September 22nd, 2020.

[5] Refer to Global Times, “推动疫后全球经济复苏 中欧领导人视频会晤定目标”, September 15, 2020.

[6] Refer to China Dialogue, “Hopes for EU-China climate deal centre on a green recovery”, June 17, 2020.

[7] Refer to China Dialogue, “中欧气候协议前景如何？”, September 14, 2020.

About the author:

Hao ZhangHao Zhang is a PhD candidate at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR). Before joining ISS, she was a master’s student majoring international affairs at School of Global Policy and Strategy at University of California, San Diego. Her current research focus on policy advocacy of Chinese NGOs in global climate governance. Her research interests lie in Chinese politics, global climate politics and diplomacy.

Are you looking for more content about Global Development and Social Justice? Subscribe to Bliss, the official blog of the International Institute of Social Studies, and stay updated about interesting topics our researchers are working on.

 

COVID-19 | Is deglobalization helping or hindering the global economy during the coronavirus crisis? by Peter A.G. van Bergeijk

By Posted on 4007 views

We are only starting to see the economic impact of the COVID-19, but it is likely to have far-reaching effects and will result in unprecedented economic transformation. We are currently in a phase of deglobalization and the impact on livelihoods is closely linked to how we respond to the pandemic. The bad news is that we’re not yet responding very well. The silver lining is that we will nevertheless stay globally connected.

Suddenly deglobalization is no longer a hypothetical possibility, but a reality: the IMF in its April 2020 World Economic Outlook predicts a reduction of the world trade volume for this year by 11%, which pales in comparison to the 13% best-case scenario of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in which the economy is somewhat robust and its 32% worst-case scenario that sees the world economy in free fall.

What can we learn from earlier periods of deglobalization?

World openness 1880 – 2021

graph

Source: P.A.G. van Bergeijk, Deglobalization 2.0, updated using IMF WEO April 2020

The Great Depression of the 1930s with its enormous negative impact on world openness and economic welfare was preceded by the worst pandemic of the previous century: the Spanish Flu. Estimates of its death toll vary widely from 20 to 100 million fatalities. With a world population of about two billion people, that amounts to a mortality rate of 1-5%. With COVID-19 these numbers look like a chilling possibility as well.

The pandemic that preceded the Great Depression did not cause it. Recovery of the recession triggered by the Spanish Flu was relatively quick and spontaneous. World trade did not collapse. A major difference between the context of the Spanish Flu and the economic background against which COVID-19 now is emerging is that our world was already in the downward phase of Deglobalization 2.0 when COVID-19 hit. The pandemic appeared at top of the deglobalization wave.

Pandemics are signs of the times

Indeed, in hindsight the Spanish Flu was a sign of the impact of a virus on a globalized world, in a sense a warning of a turning point in globalization. That turning point was due to the rising costs and decreasing benefits of globalization. It would bring the world what I have called Deglobalization 1.0.

COVID-19 can of course not be seen as such a sign, but the fact that preparation for pandemics was not sufficient, in addition to the breakdown of international cooperation, reflect the second underlying mechanism of deglobalization. We can observe both in the Great Depression of the 1930s and in the Great Recession that the leading power of the time (the hegemon) deserted the rules of the game that underpinned globalization and were actually designed by its interest in an open trade and investment climate. An open, stable and relatively peaceful system allows other countries to develop and grow faster, capturing a larger share of the benefits of globalization. In the early phase of globalization, a smaller share from a larger economic pie may still be an improvement. At some point, the costs of being a hegemon, however, outweigh the benefits. This is where the emergence of China as the new hegemon comes into play.

It is ironic, but sad, that the United States and the United Kingdom (the hegemons that helped to build a constellation in which trade, democracy, and peace were reinforcing aspects of the world order) are spoiling global and European governance. Proceeding with Brexit is a dangerous mistake, but it is an outright disaster that the United States, in the midst of a pandemic, has cut its support to the World Health Organization, in the same vein as it paralysed the World Trade Organization earlier this year. This attack on global governance is dangerous, but it is not unexpected—it is after all behaviour that one can expect from a declining hegemon in a period of deglobalization.

Lessons from history

The first thing is that isolationism offers no protection against a highly contagious virus. Indeed, probably the scariest thing about the Spanish Flu was its ability to reach even the most remote corners of our planet. Mind you, that was a world without mass tourism, global production networks and refugee flows. We have also learned that sound policies can counteract the negative economic forces that turned the 1930s into the Great Depression.

I do not think that the expansionary monetary policy does any good in this crisis that is essentially a negative supply shock x it is perhaps best seen as a signal – but support of effective demand is welcome especially if it can be organized more efficiently by focusing on the needs of new industries that we need to fight COVID-19—machinery and protective gear for the health sector, the testing industry (including case monitoring), distribution and logistics, and ICT. Finally, we have learned that the deglobalization virus in the 1930s spread especially in autocratically governed countries, but that it first showed up in the democratic world during the recent phase of deglobalization.

A striking difference between autocracies and democracies is the difference in death toll of the virus, and it may reflect the fragmentation and lack of solidarity in modern democracies.

Room for optimism

The first reason to be optimistic is because of the significant resilience of world trade and investment during global crises. Global firms have had a good exercise with the collapse of world trade by 20 percent in 2008. That collapse did set in motion the process of deglobalization, but the good news is that world trade and investment recovered to previous peak levels within a year. The finding that deglobalization started during the Financial Crisis is also a reason for optimism because Deglobalization 2.0 thus preceded Brexit and the “Make America Great Again” movement.

We should not confuse the symptoms and the disease. The attack on supranational governance has an underlying disease that can be cured if we fight the underlying causes that have driven the deglobalization process so far, that is greater inequality and a lackluster trickling down of the benefits of international trade and investment.

And last but not least, the outlook for openness of the world economy is still much better than in the 1930s. Yes, deglobalization exists. Yes openness will be much lower than previously expected. But as illustrated in Figure 1, it will in all likelihood remain at a level that is two to three times the level in the 1950s. Even if trade and investment flows would decrease according to the WTOs gloom and doom scenario our societies would remain much more open than in the 1950s, connected via the internet at a level never seen before in history.

This blogpost appeared April 21 on Edward Elgar blog and is reproduced with permission. Readers of Bliss can order the paperback Deglobalization 2.0 by Peter A.G. van Bergeijk at a discount (enter VANB15 in the discount code box at the basket stage of ordering here). The article is part of a series about the coronavirus crisis. Find more articles of this series here.

pag van bergeijkAbout the authors:

Peter van Bergeijk (www.petervanbergeijk.org) is Professor of International Economics and Macroeconomics at the ISS.

To fight or to embrace? Divergent responses to the expansion of Southern China’s industrial tree plantation sector by Yunan Xu

By Posted on 2684 views

The industrial tree plantation sector has been expanding rapidly and massively in Southern China, affecting the livelihoods of the local population residing in the region. But is change resisted or embraced? A recent study on the political economy of Southern China’s industrial tree plantation sector shows that differentiated positions of villagers in their communities lead to distinct political responses to the expansion of the sector.

In the past two decades, the industrial tree plantation (ITP) sector has been expanding rapidly and massively in Southern China, and especially in Guangxi Province. ITPs refer to monocultures of fast-growing tree crops (such as eucalyptus, pine and acacia) mainly used for inedible industrial raw materials. The rise of the ITP sector, involving both foreign and domestic actors, has led to extensive changes in land use and land control, as well as in labour conditions and livelihoods of the villagers in this region. These changes and the resulting encroachment by the ITP sector have led to diverse political reactions by affected villagers residing in this region.

A recent study analysed the dynamics of the ITP boom in Southern China. The main finding of the study is that, contrary to what has been observed in many other places around the world where a crop boom has taken place, the local population in Guangxi Province did not necessarily lose and thus did not always resist the expansion. It shows a more complicated trajectory of the livelihood change and political reaction from below in the course of the crop boom, which is beyond “resistance against expulsion”.

Beyond expulsion

In this case of Guangxi Province, interviewed villagers’ livelihoods were not fully threatened even when some of their collectively owned forest land was appropriated due to their diverse livelihood sources and their ability to retain of their farmland owing to certain institutional settings in China (e.g. the household responsibility system). As a result, when part of their land was leased out, they remained capable of maintaining their subsistence. Hence, when studying the local population’s livelihood change during the massive changes of land use and land control, examining what and how much is left to the villagers is just as important as analysing what and how much has been taken from them.

Moreover, affected villagers are not a homogeneous group, but have varying interests and resource endowments, including land control, labour conditions, financial resources and social relations, and were thus affected differentially during the crop boom. Those villagers who controlled little (or even no) means of production and had little (or even no) access to alternative livelihoods became more vulnerable, whereas those with privileged access to livelihood resources were able to benefit from the sector.

In a few cases, some villagers gained control over the land from local or nearby village collectives and became owners of ITPs. Over the course of these practices, grabbers were not outsiders, but local villagers themselves. They were then able to accumulate land and the associated benefits at the expense of their fellow villagers, rather than simply being victims or resisters in a land deal. Such relatively small-scale land grabbing dominated by local villagers is called intimate land grabbing.

These are critical reminders to go beyond the dichotomies of “small vs. large”, “outsider vs. local actors” and “victims vs. grabbers”, and to focus, instead, on the dynamics of social relationships around land and production processes. 

Beyond resistance

Because of their distinct positions and diverse degrees of dispossession (or no dispossession), villagers had varying perspectives and diverse political responses towards the expansion of the sector. When villagers were able to get actively incorporated into the crop boom, benefiting from the crop boom, they tended to embrace these changes. When the villagers were passively excluded and had lost out, they were more likely to resist. Thus, the villagers’ concerns were mainly centred on their subsistence and economic gains/losses, which are closely associated with the terms of the villagers’ inclusion/exclusion and their access to the alternative livelihood opportunities. Hence, to understand the trajectory of political reactions, the villagers’ differentiated interests and wins and losses should be the key focus of future analyses.

About the author:

Yunan XuYunan Xu is a recent PhD graduate of Development Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague. She has published several  journal articles, reports and conference papers. Her research interests include: land politics and policies, rural livelihood, rural politics, agrarian transformation, crop booms, flex crops and food politics, with the geographic areas both in China and beyond (Southeast Asia and Latin America).

 

 

Deglobalisation Series | China: ‘restarting’ globalisation? by Chenmei Li

By Posted on 1784 views

After benefiting from international trade and investment for the past 30 years, China’s global position is starting to change. This is perhaps most evident when regarding its position at the centre of an ongoing ‘trade war’ with the United States. Given its role as leader in international trade, will China be able to ‘restart’ globalisation and offer an alternative to globalisation and deglobalisation as defined by the West?

As developed countries appear to step back from globalisation, China senses an opportunity to step forward and set new rules for globalisation. A major component of the Chinese strategy to lead changes in how globalisation is thought of and practiced is the One Belt and One Road Initiative (OBOR) of the Chinese government. Aimed at improving infrastructure and connectivity between China and the world, this initiative comprises more than physical connections. The Chinese government argues that this initiative includes not just economic, but also socio-cultural linkages, ultimately leading to mutual benefits for all countries involved. The OBOR defines China’s idea of globalisation in a new era in which emerging economies backed by rising economic power and strong alliances are seeking greater influence on global issues.

2000px-One-belt-one-road.svg.png
Figure 1. Map of China’s One Belt One Road Initiative, with China in red and the land (black) and sea (blue) routes indicated. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Belt_One_Road_Initiative

China’s push for globalisation has evoked mixed reactions across the world, and Beijing has had to deal with multiple obstructions to its vision. Moreover, logistical and bureaucratic issues are plaguing countries participating in the OBOR. For instance, although China has signed bilateral cooperation agreements with Pakistan, Hungary, Mongolia, Russia, Tajikistan, and Turkey, with a number of projects planned under those agreements, the proposed projects have not been implemented. Most such projects are infrastructure-related, for example a proposed train connection between eastern China and Iran, which eventually may be expanded to Europe. Powerful Western economies and neighbouring Asian giants have remained cautious in their assessments and acceptance of the initiative.

Sustaining the benefits of globalisation

An important motivation behind the OBOR is the endeavour to continue to benefit from globalisation. Since 1979, China has implemented an Opening and Reforming Strategy. However, its export in percentage of GDP (trade openness) in 1980 was only 5.9% and outward Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) was 1.7 billion US dollars. Only after the 1990s China’s globalisation process really began. Joining the WTO in 2001 pushed its trade openness to the highest point—higher than the world average and the levels of the UK and US (Figure 2).

openness
Figure 2. Trade openness from 1960 to 2016 for four of the world’s largest economies, with the world average also indicated. Source: World Development Indicators (2018).

China is said to have been the largest beneficiary of globalisation until the economic crisis hit in 2008. After the economic crisis, the international market became weak and the Chinese economy could no longer count on export as its most powerful economic ‘carrier’ (besides investment and consumption). Immediately following the crisis, the Chinese government injected 4 trillion renminbi (RMB) into the economy and boosted short-term investment and consumption. Its long-term plan, which was not clear until 2012, is to further stimulate trade openness and integration into the world economy. China thus seeks to leverage the global market and resources to boost its economic growth.

At the helm of rebuilding globalisation efforts?

China does not only want to continue to benefit from globalisation, but also wants to lead the rebuilding of a global system where it could assume a leading role. The current deglobalisation phenomenon does not mean that the general globalisation trend will cease, because the core driver of globalisation is technology, which is advancing faster than ever. However, it does suggest a splintering (if not collapse) of the current globalisation system created after World War II and shaped to its current state largely by developed economies.

Trumpism and Brexitism are both symbols of the deglobalisation phenomenon but are not evidence that the traditional leaders of globalisation are deglobalising their economies. Instead, such symbols show the recognition of the need for a new globalisation system by both ‘traditional’ world leaders like the US and UK as well as emerging powers who were largely excluded from the last global rulemaking process and now hold a share of the world GDP so significant that they cannot be ruled out again.

However, globalisation in China has always been selective, well-managed, and restricted mainly to economic and trade-related activities. Besides its achievement regarding global trade, China shows little achievement or/and willingness to be globalised in terms of, for example, finance, human resources, and culture. The exchange rate is under careful control. English education in China is mandatory since middle school, but the real usage of English is still quite limited. China is known to be the most difficult country for foreigners to attain residence permits, and to date it blocks direct access to the global internet. These are all signs that Beijing is not too eager to participate in all forms of globalisation.

China needs to tread carefully

And thus its attitude may jeopardise China’s idea of globalisation through the OBOR initiative. The explanation often used by Chinese government for the selectivity related to the initiative is its desire to minimise the negative effect of Western-Defined Globalisation and to respect China’s special country situation. However, China’s attitude towards the OBOR must be open-minded and holistic, both tolerable of and acceptable to a wide range of ideologies.

The Chinese government seems to realise that and is promoting the OBOR as ‘the most inclusive globalisation system’. Formally, the OBOR emphasises five key areas of cooperation, including economic, financial and social exchanges, and the private sector is encouraged and expected to be the main driver of the initiative. Unfortunately, the current situation suggests that OBOR has been largely driven by state-owned enterprises and government-level trade agreements, and is limited to global trade. The areas that are not engaged by the plan, such as culture, education, data sharing and immigration, are likely to hinder China’s efforts towards globalisation, especially in a digital world where technology is developed at such a high speed.

In conclusion, China will continue to seek leadership in restoring the globalisation system, with the OBOR initiative as its core measure. However, both traditional leaders and other emerging powers still have a say in how and whether the globalisation system is re-established. Consensus may not have been reached between countries, but the globalisation trend is likely to continue—and at a faster pace due to new technologies. If China truly wants to become a major global leader in the quest to ‘restart’ globalisation, private sector involvement in areas other than trade need to be encouraged through a more open-minded attitude.

Also see: Deglobalisation 2.0: Trump and Brexit are but symptoms by Peter. A.G. van Bergeijk and Challenges to the liberal peace by Syed Mansoob Murshed

untitled.pngAbout the author:

Chenmei Li is a Project Analyst at Institute of New Structural Economics, Peking University—one of the top 25 think tanks in China. She is working on economic transformation of developing countries (especially in Africa) and China’s engagement with LDCs. She received a Master’s degree from the ISS in 2016.

 

 

The imperial intentions of Trump’s trade war babble by Andrew M. Fischer

By Posted on 2813 views

In defence of his trade war with China, Trump claims that ‘when you’re $500bn down you can’t lose.’ The problem with this stance is that persistent US trade deficits with China are arguably a sign of US strength or even imperial privilege, not weakness. However, on this issue, he has much of conventional economics wisdom supporting him in his delusions that the US is being treated unfairly or is ‘behind’ based on these deficits.

Trump’s trade tirades are being vigorously disputed by liberal economists the world over, although the riposte is usually in defence of free trade and existing trade deals. However, many of these same economists have promulgated the underlying idea that US trade deficits are the result of some sort of disadvantage or decline.

For instance, as I discussed in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012, many prominent economists such as Paul Krugman argued then (and many still do now) that China’s undervalued currency gave it an unfair advantage, causing deficits and even financial bubbles in the US. Many economists on the left have taken a similar line of argument. For instance, Yanis Varoufakis argues that US trade deficits have planted the seeds for the downfall of the US ‘Minotaur’ because it has made the country increasingly dependent on the willingness of other countries to finance these deficits.

Beyond methodological nationalism

The problem with this reasoning is that international trade, income and financial data mostly represent the trade, income and asset movements made by corporations. Conversely, our system of international accounts is severely out of date given that these data are still reported on the basis of country residence rather than ownership. It also treats these flows as if they were arm’s length trades in final goods, or so-called ‘autonomous’ flows of income or finance, rather than the internalised operations of lead firms and their networks of subsidiaries, affiliates, or subcontractors.

The country-based framing of the international accounts serves to obscure the very resilient and virulent foundations of US power, based in the private corporate sector. Corporate ownership and/or control of trade, income and financial flows have become increasingly internationalised, even while remaining predominantly centred in the North and with a strong allegiance to maintaining US dominance. International efforts to track and govern these aspects of ownership or control from the 1970s onwards have also been systematically undermined, especially by the US. As a result, the antiquated international accounting system is very unfit for the task of tracking these corporate activities. Most of the discussion on global imbalances avoids this reality.

In this sense, as argued by Jan Kregel already a decade ago, the US shift to systemic trade deficits from the late 1970s onwards is best understood as a reflection of this internationalisation of US-centred corporations as well as the increased profitability of these US corporations operating in the international economy.

A simple stylised example is the iPhone. When Apple sends a production order to a subcontractor, this is not recorded as a service export from the US. However, the return export of the iPhone is reported as a goods export from China, even though the export is contracted by Apple, a US company. The iPhone is then sold in the US at many times its exported value, and the vast majority of the value of the final sale is accrued in the US. The US has a merchandise trade deficit in this production and distribution network, even though this deficit is associated with the immense value-added accrued in the US and the profitability of Apple. The same applies when Walmart exports from itself in China to itself in the US.

The idea that China’s surpluses and foreign exchange reserves constitute increasing power is similarly based on this flawed understanding of international accounts. As I have argued in 2010 and 2015, a rarely acknowledged attribute of the explosion of China’s surpluses in the 2000s was their rapid denationalisation. Foreign funded enterprises (FFEs)—most fully foreign funded—quickly came to dominate the exports of China, and then the trade surpluses themselves, to the extent that by 2011, FFEs accounted for over 84% of the merchandise trade surplus.

This share subsequently fell sharply due to a surge in exports from non-FFEs, although this was also in a context of falling current account surpluses as a proportion of GDP. As shown in the figure below, this was due to increasing deficits on China’s services account, which reached 2% of China’s GDP in 2014-16, knocking out about half of its goods surplus in 2014 and 2016.

China also returned to running deficits on its income account from 2009 onwards (with the slight exception of 2014), despite being a major international creditor. As explained by Yu Yongding, this is because China’s foreign assets mostly earn very low returns, such as in US treasury bills, whereas foreign investment in China is very profitable, possibly in excess of 20-30% per year, thereby cancelling out any of the balance of payments benefits that would normally accrue to being a major international creditor.

Graph Andrew Fischer article
Source: Author’s calculations from IMF balance of payments and international finance statistics (last accessed 21 March 2018).

Notably, the US is the mirror image of China: it is a major international debtor and yet it earns a surplus on its income account. Both situations were due to profit remittances, e.g. profits leaving China and entering the US. Indeed, Yilmaz Akyüz estimates that the net current account position of FFEs in China has been in deficit in recent years, meaning that their profit remittances were cancelling out their merchandise trade surpluses.

In other words, after the exceptional but historically brief period of running very large ‘twin surpluses’ (on both the current and financial accounts), the current account structure of China has reverted to a pattern that, as I explain in a recent article, is common among peripheral developing countries. The pattern is characterised by goods trade surpluses that counterbalance service account deficits (dominated by payments to foreign corporations) as well as the profit remittances of foreign corporations (and of other foreign investments, whether licit or illicit).

These rapid transformations have been reflective of the increasingly deep integration of China’s foreign trade into international networks dominated by Northern-based transnational corporations. The model has resulted in exceptional export performance, although this has occurred through the injection of considerable but underappreciated sources of vulnerability.

Indeed, as noted by Yu Yongding, from 2015 to 2017 the People’s Bank of China undertook the largest intervention in foreign exchange markets that any central bank has ever taken in order to prevent a run on the renminbi. This depleted its foreign exchange reserves by over 1 trillion US dollars. In another recent article, Yu adds that from 2011 to 2017, around 1.3 trillion US dollars of China’s foreign assets had effectively disappeared, probably reflecting capital flight. Together with the run on the renminbi, these were the principal reasons that the Bank of China put a hold on capital account liberalisation and tightened capital controls to an extent not seen since the East Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s.

Considering that much of such capital flight is destined for the US, either directly or indirectly via multiple offshore financial centres, in addition to the profitability that US corporations derive from China’s trade with the US, it is clear that the US is in the more powerful position in this bilateral relationship.

The imperial utility of trade decline discourses

From this perspective, the deep US trade deficits that have persisted since the early 1980s arguably represent a new form of advanced capitalist imperialism, the emergence of a system of tributes whereby states around the world effectively subsidise the expansion of US-centred capitalism. At the very least, the deficits are signs of a structural shift underlying global power relations, based on an increasingly predatory form of financialised capitalism, with the US still at its helm.

Much like with discourses of Soviet rivalry in the 1960s and 1970s, the current babble of US decline and lagging serve an ideological purpose within these continuing transmutations of US-centered power. It is effectively aimed at subordinating other countries and shifting the burden of adjustment onto them, while distracting attention away from the US-centered, corporate-led restructurings of global production systems that underlie US deficits in the first place.

 

Main photo: https://pixabay.com/en/donald-trump-politician-america-1547274/

About the author:

Andrew mug shot.JPGAndrew M. Fischer is Associate Professor of Social Policy and Development Studies at the ISS, and laureate of the European Research Council Starting Grant, which he won in the 2014 round. He is also the founding editor of the book series of the UK and Ireland Development Studies Association, published by Oxford University Press, titled Critical Frontiers of International Development Studies. He is also editor of the journal Development and Change. His forthcoming book, Poverty as Ideology, won the 2015 International Studies in Poverty Prize, awarded by the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP).

 

Deglobalisation Series | Challenges to the liberal peace by Syed Mansoob Murshed

By Posted on 4151 views

We may have reached a stage where economic interactions have become so internationalised that further increases in globalisation cannot deliver greater prospects of peace.[1] But the logic of the capitalist peace still holds water; the intricate nature of the economic interdependence between advanced market economies almost entirely rules out war, but other hostile attitudes can still persist, and even grow.  

Liberal peace theories posit that peace among nations is not a result of a balance of power, but rests on the pacific nature of commonly held values, economic interdependence, and mutual membership of international organisations. Ideal theories of the liberal peace can be traced back to the work of Immanuel Kant, who in his essay on the Perpetual Peace[2] argued that although war is the natural state of man, peace could be established through deliberate design. This requires the adoption of a republican constitution simultaneously by all nations, which inter alia would check the war-like tendencies of monarchs and the citizenry; the cosmopolitanism that would emerge among the comity of nations would preclude war. The European Union is the most obvious, albeit imperfect, example.

Mirroring Kant’s thoughts is the contemporary philosopher John Rawl’s [3] notion of peace between liberal societies, which he refers to as peoples and not states. He speaks of well-ordered peoples. These are mainly constitutional liberal democracies, which arrive at such a polity based on an idea of public reason. In a well-ordered society, based on public reason, human rights are respected, and the distribution of primary goods (a decent living standard, dignity, respect and the ability to participate) for each citizen’s functioning is acceptably arranged.

Another version of the liberal peace theory based on economic interdependence is the ‘capitalist’ peace notion.[4] The intensity of international trade in an economy is the least important feature in the peace engendered by capitalism. The nature of advanced capitalism makes territorial disputes, which are mainly contests over resources, less likely, as the market mechanism allows easier access to resources. The nature of production makes the output of more sophisticated goods and services increasingly reliant on “ideas” that are research and development intensive, and the various stages of production occur across national boundaries. Moreover, the disruption to integrated financial markets makes war less likely between countries caught up in that web of inter-dependence. It is also argued that common foreign policy goals reflected in the membership of international treaty organisations (such as NATO and the European Union) also produce peace.

The chances of the well-ordered, tolerant societies envisaged by Rawls living in peace within themselves and with one another have greatly diminished with the recent rise in inequality, the growing wealth and income share of the richest 1-10% of the population, and the rise in varieties of populist politics. Also, the quality of Kant’s foedus pacificum has been dealt a severe blow by nations such as the UK choosing to leave the European Union, adversely affecting the utilisation of soft power via common membership of international organisations.

We also may have come to a stage where economic interactions such as the exchange of goods, provision of services and the movement of finance have become so internationalised that further increases in globalisation cannot deliver greater prospects of peace.[5] But the logic of the capitalist peace still holds water; the intricate nature of the economic interdependence between advanced market economies almost entirely rules out war, but other hostile attitudes can still persist, and even grow, given recent developments. This includes the rise in populist politics.

The rise of populist politics

The growth in inequality, but more especially the creeping rise in the social mobility inhibiting inequality of opportunity, has spawned the illiberal backlash manifesting itself in the rise in mainly right wing populist politics. A large segment of immiserated voters vote for populists knowing that, once elected, the populist politician is unlikely to increase their economic welfare, as long as they create discomfiture for certain establishment circles, vis-à-vis whom these voters see themselves as relatively deprived. Immigrants and immigration is scapegoated and made responsible for all economic disadvantage and social evils following the simplistic and simple-minded message of right-wing demagogues. It has to be said that left-wing populism, too, has emerged in many societies, mainly among educated millenarians whose economic prospects are often bleaker than those of their parents, and in regions (such as Latin America) with a strong Peronist tradition.

By contrast, during the golden age, which lasted for a little over a quarter of a century after World War II, no particular group in society was disadvantaged by economic growth and the advance of capitalism. The elites appeared to internalise the interests of the median and below-median income groups in society. Social mobility was palpably present, and social protection cushioned households against systemic and idiosyncratic economic shocks. The growth in inequality linked to globalisation and labour-saving technological progress since the early 1980s has disadvantaged vast swathes of the population: it first pauperised the former manufacturing production worker through either job offshore relocation or stagnating real wages, and latterly it is emasculating even median service sector occupations. At the same time the income and wealth share of the top 1-10% of the population grows at an accelerating pace, faster than the rise in national income.[6]

In developing countries there has been a growth in autocratic tendencies, the liberal half of a liberal democracy, even when the other part of democracy, the electoral process, is broadly respected. The use of plebiscites by strong men to garner greater power has been a frequently used tool. There is even talk of autocratic rulers delivering development and economic growth and autocratic tendencies may be greater in nations that have achieved economic structural transformation. But the logic of the “modernisation”[7] hypothesis that argues that democracy is demanded by society as it becomes affluent may still ring true, even if the process is non-linear, and other complex factors need to be taken into account.

A hyper-globalisation trilemma?

Faced with these challenges, we need to abandon our “Panglossian” faith in the ability of markets to always do good. The rules of globalisation and capitalism only serve elites who are owners of internationally mobile skills and wealth. There may be a hyper-globalisation trilemma[8], whereby the simultaneous achievement of national sovereignty, democracy and hyper-globalisation is impossible. It is worth reiterating that hyper-globalisation refers to a situation where for the collective the pains from increased globalisation in terms of adverse distributional consequences outweigh the gains in terms of enhanced income.

Earlier advances of globalisation was made relatively more acceptable in Europe compared to the United States, given the greater prevalence of social protection in the continent. Gradually, after 1980, and especially since the dawn of the new millennium, more and more groups have been disadvantaged by globalisation, and the politics of austerity has diminished social protection, fraying pre-existing domestic social contracts. Thus, many advocate a more limited globalisation, akin to the halcyon days of the golden age, also known as the Bretton Woods era (1945-73), whose hallmark was that the demands of globalisation never exercised veto powers on the domestic social contract.

A retreat from hyper-globalisation is desirable, but not through channels that diminish international cooperation and partnership, like Brexit and President Trump’s protectionist sabre rattling that undermine agreements like NAFTA. What is needed is internationally coordinated checks on hyper-globalisation and agreements on certain wealth taxes on the richest individuals, which is needed to address the alarming rise in wealth inequality given the fact that social protection can only have a palliative, and not curative, impact on these stupendous inequalities.

References:
[1] Rodrik, Dani (2017) Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy, Princeton: University Press.
[2] Kant, Immanuel (1795) Perpetual Peace and Other Essays on Politics, History and Morals, reprinted 1983. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.
[3] Rawls, John (1999) The Law of Peoples, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
[4] Gartzke, Erik (2007) ‘The Capitalist Peace’, American Journal of Political Science 51(1): 166-191.
[5] Rodrik, Dani (2017) Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy, Princeton: University Press.
[6] Piketty, Thomas (2014) Capital in the Twenty-first Century, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
[7] Lipset, Seymour (1960) Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. New York: Doubleday.
[8] Argued by Dani Rodrik; see, for example, Rodrik (2017), op. cit.

Also see: Backtracking from globalisation by Evan Hillebrand

csm_6ab8a5ef34f1a5efe8b07dff07d52162-mansoob-murshed_0833a7fcf4About the author:

Syed Mansoob Murshed is Professor of the Economics of Peace and Conflict at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands. His research interests are in the economics of conflict, resource abundance, aid conditionality, political economy, macroeconomics and international economics.

 

 

Deglobalisation Series | Backtracking from globalisation by Evan Hillebrand

By Posted on 2160 views

While globalisation still enjoys strong support in the Global South, major economies in the Global North now seem less enthusiastic about its purported benefits. This article explores how the United States through its previous policies came to backtrack from globalisation, showing that it is an altogether unsurprising development.

From the perspective of the United States (US), embodied in US president Donald Trump’s recent discourses, the liberal international trading system faces at least three major economic and socio-political challenges going forward: (1) income redistribution, (2) the rise of Asia and a potential shift in comparative advantage, and (3) the rise of China and the national security argument. Given the growing domestic unease with free trade and the fact that these exacerbating issues are worsening, I suggest that US policies will become less supportive of globalisation.

US withdrawal: surprising or expected?

In our 2011 article, “Backtracking from Globalization” (1), my coauthors and I discussed the declining support for globalisation in the United States and elsewhere. Since then the trend has gotten worse.

But why shouldn’t it? The US, after all, has only had a liberal trade policy for 60 or so years. In its early years, US policy focused on high tariffs, large subsidies to key industries, and infrastructure investment designed to create an industrial economy for the sake of military and economic power (sounds not too dissimilar to China today). The US moved to a freer-trade stance when the US was economically dominant and an expansion of global markets seemed as if it would be economically beneficial.

The US free trade strategy was also based on political theories and grand strategy. After World War II, trade expansion was seen as a good way to bolster Europe economically, tie it to the West, and strengthen the West against the Soviet Union. The US spurred the creation of the GATT/WTO in an effort to bring all countries into a democratic rule-based system under the assumption that trade would help all countries prosper under US leadership. Since 1980 or so, the US has tried to lure China into the world market system to foster interdependence and peace. In many respects, that policy can be considered a great success—ushering in a vast improvement in the material standard of living almost everywhere and many decades of great-power peace. China also did turn away from its Maoist phase of development.

 Ebbing enthusiasm for globalisation

Support for globalisation, however, is clearly headed in a negative direction and the ebbing of enthusiasm has been particularly dramatic in the United States. Recent polling data from the Pew Foundation and the Council on Foreign Relations (2) show that there is still support for international trade, but a majority worry that trade generates labor market costs in terms of job destruction and lower wages. This worry helped elect the current US president and his administration talks more about fair trade than free trade: ‘Nothing about the theory of comparative advantage would lend itself to a defense of a status quo that imposes higher barriers to exports on American producers than on foreign producers’ (Economic Report of the President 2018: 219) (3).

It is important to understand that it is not ignorance that has led US policy in this direction.

Many voters were lured to Donald Trump’s “America First” pitch because of a perception that wages were stagnant and communities were hurt because of globalisation. In reality it is more than just a hunch: income distribution in America has worsened and academic research by Paul Krugman (4) and others attributes some of that worsening to trade, although the magnitude of trade’s contribution is (and always will be) in dispute.

Support for globalisation has to some extent rested on the theory of comparative advantage, but that theory has never been the “slam dunk” argument that enthusiasts have made it out to be. It depends on so many assumptions that do not fit the current world economy, so the theory should only be relied upon as a general principle, not the decider of every policy dispute. Paul Samuelson (5) claimed in 1972 that the aggregate gains from trade are not necessarily positive. He expanded on this idea in his (2004) paper, ‘Where Ricardo and Mill Rebut and Confirm Arguments of Mainstream Economists Supporting Globalization’, saying that growth in the rest of the world can hurt a country if it takes place in sectors that compete with its native exports—where it has comparative advantage.

The rise of China

Relative, and even absolute, per capita GDP can fall in such a situation (6). Whether China’s rise can actually diminish the US is not clear, but the current Chinese government continues to employ active trade policies to push its industries up the value chain, aiming explicitly at sectors that have been the mainstay of US industrial pre-eminence. Samuelson says that ‘economic history is replete with examples like this, first insidiously, and later decisively’, pointing explicitly to British manufacturing being overtaken by US industry after 1850.

In addition to the economic threat posed by China, the US government has long worried about the security threat posed by China’s rise. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission is an organisation chartered and funded by the US Congress and dedicated to the proposition that China poses a multifaceted threat to the US. It yearly issues a massive report that cites declines in the US defense industrial base, insecurity of defense supply lines, financial threats, Chinese ownership of critical US facilities, cyber threats, and other problems—all related to China. In the most recent report (7), it lists 26 recommendations for congressional action, many of which would amount to new trade restrictions.

Trade policies, while often rooted in interest groups scrambling for distributional gains, are also related to national economic and security concerns. In the past, pragmatic national interests have pushed trade policy in varying directions. There is no reason now to believe that the US is giving up on international trade, but there is every reason to believe that for a variety of national interests it will be much less enthusiastic about globalisation in the future.

References:
(1) Hillebrand, E.E., J. Lewer and J. Zagardo (2011) ‘Backtracking from Globalization’, Global Economy Journal 10(4).
(2) Poushter (2016) American Public, Foreign Policy Experts Sharply Disagree over Involvement in Global Economy. Pew Research Center, http://www.pewresearch.org/author/jpoushter.
(3) Council of Economic Advisors (2018) Economic Report of the President. Washington, D.C. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/ERP_2018_Final-FINAL.pdf
(4) Krugman, P.R. (2008) ‘Trade and Wages, Reconsidered’, Proceedings of the Brookings Panel on Economic Activity. Spring conference. Available at: (http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/pk-bpea-draft.pdf).
(5) Samuelson, P.A. (1972) ‘Heretical Doubts About the International Mechanism’, Journal of International Economics, 2(4): 443-453.
(6) Samuelson, P. (2004) ‘Where Ricardo and Mill Rebut and Confirm Arguments of Mainstream Economists Supporting Globalization’, Journal of Economic Perspectives 18(3): 135-146.
(7) U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (2017) 2017 Report to Congress. Washington, D.C. Available at https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/annual_reports/2017_Annual_Report_to_Congress.pdf

Also see: Deglobalisation Series | Is anti-globalisation only a preoccupation in the Global North? by Rory Horner, Seth Schindler, Daniel Haberly and Yuko Aoyama

UntitledAbout the author:

Professor Evan Hillebrand taught international economics at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. His most recent book is Energy, Economic Growth, and Geopolitical Futures (MIT Press, 2015).