Introduction

The authorities in Vietnam have never ceased to fret over “toxic content” (nội dung xấu độc) on the Internet; and indeed the definition of “toxic content” has shifted over the years. In the 1990s, “toxic content” was mostly associated with pornography. In December 1996, for example, in order to convince the authorities to allow for the arrival of the Internet in Vietnam, its advocates reportedly had to prove to Vietnam’s top leaders that pornographic websites could be effectively blocked. They succeeded, and the Internet was officially launched in Vietnam a year later, but on condition that the World Wide Web was placed under state scrutiny and censorship. The stated need to censor pornographic content, however, masked a greater concern of the powers that be, and that was that the Internet would open the floodgates for anti-government propaganda and facilitate a freer flow of information, which would end up posing major threats to the Communist Party.

This fixation on anti-state content shaped the way Vietnamese authorities deployed various censorship strategies aimed at the goal of projecting some level of openness while maintaining a tight grip on online discourses. Like China, Vietnam also hoped to rein in the Internet from the outset. But while Beijing was able to erect a system that is now more akin to a nationwide intranet than the Internet, Hanoi’s more ambivalent approach bred a hybrid infrastructure that keeps developing and that evolves faster than the government’s ability to regulate and control it.

The Internet and social media being a threat started haunting Vietnamese authorities in the mid-2000s, when informal groups of intellectuals, retired government officials, professors, students, writers and independent activists took great strides in mustering up the power of the blogosphere to rail against government thinking and policy. Such threats probably became more manifest during the Arab Spring, when uprisings, fuelled by social media, forced Vietnam’s leaders to acknowledge the possibility of a similar revolution breaking out in the country.

This paper examines how over the past two decades, from the import of the Internet in Vietnam to the blossoming era of social media, the Vietnamese government has justified employing various online censorship tactics at different junctures to crack down on perceived anti-state content.

This edited volume is the first of two forming an anthology that programmatically reconsiders the creative contribution of the littoral and insular regions of Maritime Asia—Southeast Asia in the first place—to shaping new paradigms in the Buddhist and Hindu art and architecture of the mediaeval Asian world. Far from being a mere southern conduit for the maritime circulation of Indic religions, in the period from ca. the 7th to the 14th century those regions transformed across mainland and island polities the rituals, icons, and architecture that embodied these religious insights with a dynamism that often eclipsed the established cultural centres in Northern India, Central Asia, and mainland China. This collective body of work brings together new research aiming to recalibrate the importance of these innovations in art and architecture, thereby highlighting the cultural creativity of the monsoon-influenced Southern rim of the Asian landmass. This approach aims at favouring the integration of these findings into the mainstream academic discourse pertaining to various disciplines, such as Art History, Archaeology, Religious Studies and Textual Studies, which too often have ignored the constitutive role played by the (supposedly ‘peripheral’) maritime regions in the genesis and development of cultural, religious, and artistic motifs across the mediaeval Indic world.

Current research increasingly shows that the Southeast Asian ‘peripheries’ were freer to innovate than the traditional ‘centres’, while the flourishing trade routes provided them with the necessary flow of human and material resources. As a result, the early kingdoms of Maritime Asia became wellsprings of cults, ritual technologies, sacred art/ architecture, and the new political models they underpinned. A transforming southern stream flowed from India and Sri Lanka, across the emerging island and littoral states, touching East Asia and eventually reaching Northeastern India, Nepal, and Tibet. For instance, images in the Chinese Mogao and Yulin caves, which have been hitherto ascribed to Tibetan influence, can now be seen to be influenced by the art of the Pallava dynasty of Southern India and related to teachings introduced to China by Vajrabuddhi/Vajrabodhi and popularized by his pupil Amoghavajra (Khokhlov, this volume). The early propagation of the new maṇḍala- and mantra-based soteriological and ritual systems beyond the subcontinent begins to be recorded in the late 7th century in the journeys of learned and enterprising monks over the so-called (land) ‘Silk Routes’.

INEQUALITY IN MALAYSIA: CLEAR PRIORITIES AND UNSETTLED QUESTIONS

Malaysia is generally regarded a success story in reducing income inequality, especially between ethnic groups, while sustaining growth and eradicating poverty over the long term. In recent years, the country has also increased attention to national inequality—particularly, by emphasizing the poorest 40 per cent of households (or B40, for “Bottom 40”) as beneficiaries of more inclusive economic growth and social policy—and by addressing gender disparities in opportunity, participation and mobility. The policy priority is premised on an assessment that inequality has remained high, that the lower income segments are being left behind, and that women face barriers to equal participation and remuneration.

Popular discourses on inequality in Malaysia have also, for the past decade and into the present, maintained a broad consensus that inequality has increased, or at least stayed high—with particular emphasis on class-based disparities within ethnic groups. Such diagnoses and outlooks draw on the structural features of Malaysia’s political economy, anecdotal observations and public perceptions: masses struggling to cope with cost of living while the fortunes of the elites appear to be burgeoning, concentration of the benefits of growth at the top alongside sluggish employment conditions, and real wage stagnation for the working classes. Official statistics, however, paint an opposite picture of rapidly declining inequality.

This chapter proceeds in three main segments. First, we revisit household income inequality, examining the plausibility of the official account and extracting new insights from the data. The government’s calculation of Malaysia’s household income Gini coefficient, based on national survey data, has registered a declining trend from 2004 to 2016, far in excess of regional neighbours and even global comparator countries. This is on the back of rapid income growth for the bottom 40 per cent and slower rates of increase for the top 20 per cent. Intraethnic inequalities have reached all-time lows. Perplexingly, inequality rose between 2016 and 2019, based on the latest update. Furthermore, inequality drops precipitously in a few intervals, but these intervals do not correspond with momentous shocks, structural change or policy reforms that can explain the findings.

Optimism derived from the initially successful containment of the COVID-19 pandemic in Brunei was short-lived as new infections hit the country like a tsunami in the second half of 2021. Strict restrictions that had earlier been relaxed were reintroduced.

Amid the ongoing battle against COVID-19, Brunei assumed chairmanship of ASEAN in January 2021. The military coup in Myanmar in February put Brunei in a tight spot as all eyes were on ASEAN’s reaction to the crisis. Although an unusually bold decision was made to exclude Myanmar from the ASEAN Summit in late October hosted virtually by Brunei, on other occasions the ASEAN chair appeared to be lending legitimacy to the military regime.

Apart from addressing the issue of low growth rates as a result of overdependence on oil and natural gas, rising unemployment remains a major concern for the sultanate. In realizing economic diversification, a new blueprint, Towards a Dynamic and Sustainable Economy, unveiled in January, emphasizes the emergence of a strong private sector in Brunei. As a further move, the sultanate plans to nurture a digital economy.

Brunei maintained close security and defence relations with its traditional partners in 2021. The year also marked the thirtieth anniversary of the establishment of relations between Brunei and the People’s Republic China (PRC). The PRC is Brunei’s largest foreign direct investor and has pledged to increase its investments, especially under its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The COVID-19 Pandemic: The Tsunami of the Second Wave

Brunei began facing the COVID-19 pandemic when the first case was confirmed on 9 March 2020. It was triumphant in restraining the outbreak for much of 2020 and even into at least August 2021. In fact, as of 31 December 2020, Brunei only had 157 cases, with four deaths. For a country with a population of 429,999 (2021), this figure was indeed minuscule and spoke volumes of the government’s impressive efforts in curbing the pandemic. Further evidence of this was the absence of locally transmitted cases of COVID-19 for three hundred days by 4 March 2021. During this period, all infections that were reported in the country were imported cases.

As such, on 7 March 2021, the country’s Ministry of Health announced some relaxations to the restrictions that had been imposed to enable Bruneians to return to the new normal.

Introduction

This chapter identifies a number of factors which influence, if not determine, Indonesia’s foreign policy. These factors include Indonesian leaders’ perceptions of territorial boundaries, Indonesia’s role in world affairs, and the constraint on its behaviour posed by the country’s available resources. Indonesian political culture and elite perceptions of external threat will also be examined because they may throw light on Indonesia’s foreign policy behaviour.

Indonesia’s Territory and Role in World Affairs

The perception of Indonesia’s territory and role in world affairs by its leaders is important because of its effect on Indonesia’s foreign policy behaviour. The difficulty, however, is in determining whose perceptions should be accepted as valid. Should they be those of the foreign policy elite or should they be those of Indonesian leaders in general? It is reasonable to assume that the perceptions of Indonesian leaders responsible for formulating foreign policy are the crucial ones. In the case of Indonesia, however, domestic policy-makers and foreign policy leaders are often the same individuals. This has been reflected in the role of the President, especially during the Guided Democracy and New Order periods.

Indonesia’s history and traditions have been mainly responsible for the perceptions of Indonesian leaders concerning the nation’s territory and role in world affairs. Indonesia, before August 1945, was known as the Dutch East Indies and the country is still defined today by the former boundaries of the Dutch colony. (Since 1976, Indonesia has also included the former Portuguese East Timor.) Most Indonesian leaders, however, especially the pre-war nationalists and the 1945 generation, consider Indonesia to be a continuation of two ancient empires, Sriwijaya and Majapahit.

Before independence, Indonesian leaders debated the boundaries of an independent Indonesia. One view, represented by Mohammad Yamin, a nationalist poet and statesman, for example, subscribed to the “Great Indonesia” concept (Indonesia Raya). He maintained that the height of the Majapahit Empire was the period of greatest glory in Indonesia’s history. Citing the work of Prapanca, a fourteenth century poet of Java, Yamin said that Indonesia, under Majapahit rule, had included the Dutch East Indies, Malaya (Peninsular Malaysia), Borneo, Timor, and Papua (New Guinea). He believed that an independent Indonesia should include the former territory of the Majapahit Empire.

Under the British colonial regime, and during the 1950s, there was a small but vibrant community of scholars in Myanmar, notably those associated with the Burma Research Society, which was founded in 1910. A number of major works were published by local figures, some in English or by foreign publishing houses. Also, the Journal of the Burma Research Society (JBRS), which began publication in 1911, was the outlet for over 1,300 peer-reviewed articles and commentaries, in both English and (mainly after Myanmar regained its independence from the British in 1948) the Burmese language.In 1960, when the society celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, the society published two volumes of articles and papers read at a celebratory conference.After the 1962 coup, the journal was permitted to continue publication but was closely monitored by the government. Both the Burma Research Society and the JBRS were closed down by General Ne Win in 1980. The baton was picked up to a certain extent by the officially sponsored Burma (later Myanmar) Historical Commission, which was created in 1955. However, until the advent of a more tolerant quasi-civilian government in 2011, academic research inside the country was still crippled by the lack of access to sources and other restrictions.

Under Ne Win, Myanmar scholars were limited not only in what they could study but also in what they could write, and how they could publish their findings. For example, as David Steinberg has noted in the foreword to this book, all academic research results (even in science and medicine) were considered classified until they had been cleared for public release by the government.Publications were carefully vetted for political correctness. One result of this demand for intellectual orthodoxy was a split between national and international research traditions. There was an effective division of Myanmar studies into what Hans-Bernd Zollner has described as “research from within” and “research from without”.“Research from within” tended to focus on Myanmar as a national entity (and then only within permitted bounds). Research conducted outside the country did not face such constraints, but was obliged by a lack of access to focus on aspects of Myanmar that could be examined relatively easily or, being deemed “safe” by the authorities, could gain a measure of official sponsorship. Such subjects included archeological discoveries, aspects of ancient civilizations, the traditional cultures of certain ethnic groups and Myanmar’s Buddhist traditions.

It gives me great pleasure to write this foreword to Charnvit Kasetsiri’s volume on the struggle to build the nation called Thailand. Given his long-held view that the country should have retained its name as Siam, he has brought an exceptional perspective to how Thailand approached the idea of modern nationhood—both before and after the age of imperialism. The name change that followed the military coup of 1932 and the end of the historic monarchy had created greater insecurity in a region that was about to be transformed. The uncertainty was compounded by Japanese ambition and the outbreak of the European War that became worldwide. This was followed after the war by a total change in the regional environment when the imperialist powers retreated and new nations gained their independence.

Siam had the difficult experience of remaining sovereign and independent during the nineteenth century when its neighbours were being invaded. The wisdom of its rulers and the skills of its diplomats were the envy of all those who were colonized. Having survived multiple threats with exceptional success, those who were set to build a new kind of nation in 1945 would have assumed that Thailand was free from that particular burden. Indeed, many post-war studies made the process of Thai nationhood appear to be a seamless development that required no special attention. They therefore concentrated on economic, diplomatic and security affairs that enabled the country to play important roles in the region’s fresh start as new polities.

It needed someone with Charnvit’s historical sensitivity to go behind the country’s confident front to discover other dimensions to the special kind of nationhood that the various peoples of Thailand sought to establish. His focus on the long reigns of the royal house as determinants in the country’s political architecture is original and illuminating. It does not only emphasize a unique phenomenon but also throws light on how the kings could find the space to strengthen their position under some extremely unstable conditions.

As a historian, he is not satisfied simply to have found an instructive angle from which to explore the mysteries in a modern experimental monarchy. His keen sense of time has filled his narrative with insights that only few people could have identified. To me, that is a mark of one with a fine sense of what the past can mean.

In writing this book, I have benefited greatly from numerous discussions that I have had with many friends and scholars over the last 20 years. I have also profited from various seminars on Indonesia’s foreign affairs given by Indonesian officials, diplomats and academics. Many of these seminars and talks were behind closed doors or off the record, and therefore they cannot be cited. Nonetheless, they have had a strong influence on my study.

Many friends in Indonesia have shared their expertise with me, and in doing so have enriched my understanding of both Indonesia’s domestic politics and foreign policy. Their names are too many to be mentioned here but I would like to offer all of them my sincere thanks.

A significant portion of the study was conducted between 1988 and 1989 during my sabbatical leave in three institutions: the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore (ISEAS), Ohio University and Cornell University. Each possesses an excellent library, and I am grateful to the staff of those libraries for assisting me in my research.

A few friends have read the early version of my manuscript, either in part or in full. I would like in particular to thank Chin Kin Wah, N. Ganesan, Michael Leifer, Jamie Mackie and Nancy Viviani for their useful suggestions. I am also grateful to Triena Ong who has given me editorial advice. Nevertheless, for any mistakes and shortcomings which still exist in this book, I am alone responsible.

Leo Suryadinata

July 1995

Singapore

This section analyses the relationship between the usage of a particular fintech app and individual user socioeconomic and psychological factors. We use logistic regression to empirically verify the factors affecting personal decisions to use fintech. Table A1 shows a list of dichotomous dependent variables used in the model. Y1–Y5 are dependent variables concerning usage of different fintech platforms, i.e., M-banking, E-wallet, lending, investment, and donation. Y6–Y7 are dependent variables concerning fintech usage for social activities and expanding one’s network. Finally, Y8–Y9 are dependent variables concerning one’s perception of data security and fraud related to fintech usage.Table A2 shows a list of independent variables used in the estimation. It covers individual-specific characteristics such as age, gender, income, job type, and residential area. It also covers some psychological factors, such as feeling in control, being afraid of data leaks or fraud, and being worried about being extravagant or trapped in unsustainable debt, among others.Overall, the estimation results show that having many choices for the needed financial services (KAT_CHOICE) and feeling in control (KAT_ TAKE_CONTROL) make people like to use various types of fintech applications. These variables are statistically significant and positive in all model estimations (Table A3).Table A3 shows that men tend to like investment apps, while women tend to like E-wallet and lending apps (KAT_GENDER). Younger people (Generations Y and Z) tend to like E-wallet and investment apps (KAT_ AGE). Those with higher education (post senior high school) tend to use fintech more, especially M-banking, investment apps and donation apps (KAT_EDUC), compared to those with lower education. And people who have full-time jobs tend to like fintech, i.e., M-banking and investment apps (KAT_JOB). Finally, lower-income groups tend to like E-wallet apps (KAT_SES), while the higher income groups tend to like M-banking apps.Location variable (KAT_AREA) stands out as significant in all estimations (Table A3). It shows that those living in the Jabodetabek area have a higher probability of using fintech platforms than those outside Jabodetabek. Later we re-estimate the model using the Jabodetabek sample to check the robustness of the estimation results.Table A4 indicates that fintech use is not associated with expanding social networks (KAT_BROADEN NETWORK). However, people who use fintech for social activities (KAT_SOCIAL_ACT) tend to install E-wallet, donation and investment apps.

The remarkable negative shift in American policy against China dominates US policy in Southeast Asia and the broader Indo-Pacific region, one of two top policy arenas of acute US rivalry with China. The other is competition for dominance in the high-technology industries determining which country will be the world’s economic and military leader. In both critical policy areas, the United States seeks to counter Chinese challenges and prevent feared Chinese dominance and its negative impact on American security and well-being.

President Joseph Biden entered office in January 2021 with clear priorities focused on countering the pandemic that ravaged the country amid the national government’s mismanagement, reviving and making more competitive the stalled economy in ways beneficial to American workers, reducing partisan divides that have caused government gridlock and mass protests that undermine the democratic process, and protecting minority rights against unjust law enforcement. Foreign policy was secondary. There was a strong emphasis on a return to close cooperation with allies and partners; cooperation with international groups seeking multilateral solutions to salient global issues involving public health, climate change and nuclear non-proliferation; and a priority on Asia as the most important region for American security, economic and political interests.

President Biden and senior members of his administration came late in endorsing the dramatic negative turn in US policy towards China carried out by senior leaders of the Trump administration and bipartisan majorities in Congress beginning with the administration’s National Security Strategy in December 2017. Candidate Biden disparaged China’s ability to challenge US power. By early 2021, however, the president and senior aides repeatedly warned against major dangers posed by China’s challenges. Biden stressed that China had reached a stage, through predatory economic practices, where it challenged the United States for leadership in high-technology industries that provided the foundation for US economic and military leadership, thereby threatening US domination by China. Meanwhile, the president’s countering of Chinese expansionism in Asia showed repeatedly in his meetings with key allies and partners, giving high importance to the four-party Quad grouping involving Australia, India, Japan and the United States to advance US interests in the region in contrast to China’s ambitions for dominance and control.