Introduction

As a starting point, this research analyses the imagery in a distinctive Indian artistic mode found in various paintings from Mogao and Yulin caves. The material under review belongs to the 8th to 11th century and often features Esoteric Buddhist imagery. Since some of the early examples within this group belong to the period of the Tibetan occupation of the Hexi Corridor, their artistic mode has often been ascribed—erroneously, in my view—to the cultural influence of Tibet. Several recent publications on this topic provoked me to address the issues that I see in such attributions. Contrary to this common opinion, I will argue that this artistic mode is, in fact, influenced by Southern Indian art and, in particular, certain stylistic and iconographic features can be traced exclusively to the art of the Pallava kingdom in Tamil Nadu and the Pallava influenced art of the Western Deccan, thereby ruling out alleged artistic influences from Tibet. Moreover, the discussed images are closely affiliated with teachings introduced to China by Vajrabodhi (or Vajrabuddhi, Ch. 金剛智, 671–741) in the first half of the 8th century and specifically propagated in Hexi by Amoghavajra (Ch. 不空 Bukong, 705–774) in the mid-8th century. Thus, the presence of such depictions in artwork from the Tibetan period merely signifies the continuation and Tibetan appropriation of the artistic and religious trends that existed in Hexi before the Tibetan conquest. Furthermore, it will be shown that this artistic mode was transmitted to Central Tibet during the Tibetan occupation of the Hexi Corridor and can be recognized in sculptures from a number of early Central Tibetan temples. I argue that this artistic transmission was a result of significant religious transmission, which included, but was likely not limited to, the cult of Vairocana and the eight great bodhisattvas, as well as the teachings of the Yoga tradition (i.e. Yogatantras according to the Tibetan classification).

This article is divided into four major parts. Part 1 presents a brief historical overview of Buddhism and artistic trends in Hexi before the Tibetan conquest. Part 2 discusses the most representative depictions within this group of materials and their connection to Southern Indian art and Amoghavajra’s textual heritage. In Part 3, I will provide an overview of Southern Indian influence on Buddhist art in China in general and situate this Hexi group of images within a larger picture.

Executive Summary

• • In the first half of 2021, COVID-19 vaccine doses from the COVAX Facility were in short supply, and the plan to mass produce COVAX vaccines through the Serum Institute of India (SII) faltered as the pandemic surged in India in March 2021.

• • Due to COVAX’s shift in approach towards convincing richer nations to redistribute their excess doses, the second half of 2021 saw increases in the frequency and volume of its shipments. Donors were however able to “earmark” their dose donations and identify their intended recipients.

• • The six Southeast Asian countries which qualified for free COVAX shots—Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, the Philippines, Timor-Leste and Vietnam (the AMC6)—received 16 million doses in the first half of 2021. In the second half, they received 128 million doses from COVAX, 80.9 per cent of which were earmarked donations.

• • Despite making up 7 per cent of the world population, the AMC6 collectively accounted for 24.3 per cent of all earmarked dose donations (and 25 per cent of the United States’ total dose donations) to COVAX in 2021.

• • The AMC6 greatly benefitted from COVAX’s pivot to dose donations. This demonstrated the region’s strategic salience to Washington and its allies, but came at the expense of vaccine equity, which the region has prudential reasons to care about.

• • The execution of COVAX hammers home the hard truth that multilateral governance is a difficult act to pull off even with the best intentions and is not impervious to the geopolitical interests and agendas of the major powers.

Introduction

In the previous chapter Indonesia’s foreign policy under Suharto has been discussed to show the increasing role of the military and the President himself in the decision-making process. From the early 1980s, Suharto was the major foreign policy-maker. In this chapter, discussion focuses on the rise of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Indonesia’s role in this regional grouping. The role of the military and the President in Indonesia’s bilateral relations with individual ASEAN states (except Vietnam) will also be examined.

The Rise of ASEAN

It has been argued by many Indonesian leaders, at least prior to 1988, that ASEAN is the cornerstone of Indonesia’s foreign policy. In other words, the ASEAN states are crucial to Indonesia’s national interests, that is, its stability and security. It is not surprising, then, that Indonesia was instrumental in establishing this regional organization.

When Suharto came to power in 1966, he immediately ended the confrontation with Malaysia and began to show to the world, especially to the West, that he would abandon the aggressive policy of Sukarno. He was convinced that, with political stability, he would be able to develop Indonesia’s economy through foreign investment and foreign aid. The economy during the Sukarno era was seriously troubled. This partly accounted for the political instability of that time. Economic rehabilitation was perceived by the new leadership as a way to legitimize their new regime. Thus, the major concern of the new elite was to create political stability in the region, particularly among the non-Communist ASEAN states. ASEAN, as a regional organization, would serve this purpose. Only under stable conditions would Indonesia be able to develop economically.

As a matter of fact, ASEAN was not the first regional organization in Southeast Asia. As early as 1955, the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO) was established by the United States to combat Communism in the region. But only two (namely, the Philippines and Thailand) out of its eight members were from Southeast Asia. This military pact failed to achieve its goal because the threat posed by Communism took the form of subversive activities and could not be solved through conventional military means. In addition, most of the members were not committed to the goal. Like the Communist states, anti-colonialist Indonesia was hostile towards this organization.

INTRODUCTION

The recent performance of the Philippine economy poses a number of conundrums for analysts of growth and development. Regarded as the “sick man of Asia” since its mid-1980s debt crisis (Balisacan 2015), the country’s economic prospects until onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic have dramatically improved over the past decade, catapulting the economy to the ranks of Asia’s leading growth performers, and onto several lists of promising emerging economies such as Goldman Sachs’s “Next-Eleven”, Turner Investment Partners’ “TIMPs” (Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines), and Time magazine’s “PINEs” (Philippines, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Ethiopia). Nevertheless, parallel to this economic resurgence, deep-seated challenges of structural poverty and marginalization have persisted, with the country’s record in reducing poverty and inequality, generating quality employment, and promoting social mobility, having been disappointing. More troublingly, there is growing evidence that wealth inequality has risen, even while the social mobility prospects of most of the population have been hampered by entrenched forms of social and economic insecurity. These, in turn, have elicited concern from observers about the “exclusive” and even “oligarchic” character of the Philippine economy, which have yet to be decisively tackled by policymakers and the country’s political leadership (Habito 2012; Teehankee 2017).

Underlying these dynamics are political and economic systems that in the case of the Philippines have undergone extended transformations over the past few decades. In line with growing concern on rising domestic inequalities as well as entrenched obstacles towards achieving inclusive growth (Albert, Dumagan and Martinez 2015; Albert and Raymundo 2015), this chapter aims to situate inequality trends in the country amidst transformations in the Philippines’ political economy since the return to democracy in the mid-1980s—focusing on the contribution of structural and institutional change on the distribution of wealth and incomes, as well as social mobility. Starting with an overview of these transformations in the next section, we survey more specific trends in inequality and exclusion, and examine the factors that have driven such processes. In so doing, we stress the underlying political economy constraints that have impeded significant advances in the Philippines’ efforts to address inequality and exclusion, and attest to how incoherencies in the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic are linked to these structural issues.

Overview of Global Value Chains and GVC Participation

International trade and production are increasingly structured around global value chains (GVC). Value chains can be defined as the totality of activities involved in the production process, which includes the design, manufacture, marketing and distribution of the product, as well as the provision of after-sales support for consumers. These different activities in the value chain can be carried out by the same or different companies. With more countries involved in these different stages, value chains have become global.

A country’s exports can be differentiated by whether these goods and services are produced with domestically sourced inputs or imported (foreign) value-added inputs (Figure 1). Furthermore, these exports can head to a foreign market either for final consumption or be used as intermediate manufacturing inputs in products that will then be exported to a third country (or the original country). A GVC analysis typically considers both the foreign value-added in a country’s exports (the upstream perspective) as well as the country’s exported value-added that were incorporated in other third-country exports (the downstream perspective).

To determine a country’s level of involvement in the GVC, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has developed a methodology based on three indicators. The first indicator measures the share of foreign value-added in exports. This reflects the portion of imported inputs used in a country’s exports and that is not included in its gross domestic product (GDP). The second indicator measures the domestic value-added in exports, or the proportion of domestically produced inputs in a country’s exports. This is the share of a country’s exports that contributes to GDP (i.e., domestic value-added trade share). The third indicator, the indirect value-added (DVX), measures the portion of a country’s exports that is involved in a multi-stage trade process, which can be calculated by adding the foreign value-added used in a country’s own exports and the value-added supplied to other countries’ exports.

The participation rate is a useful indicator showing the extent to which a country’s exports are integrated into international production networks, both upstream and downstream. Moreover, measuring a country’s GVC participation rate as a share of its exports will reveal how much the country relies on the GVC.

Why This Book?

On 20 March 2019, I represented the Philippines at a High-Level Dialogue on Indo-Pacific Cooperation hosted in Jakarta by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Indonesia, Retno Marsudi, and which was attended by Ministers, Senior Officials and Ambassadors of the eighteen countries belonging to the East Asia Summit (EAS). At the ASEAN Summit with the United States held in Manila in November 2017, President Donald Trump had first broached the concept of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy (FOIPS). Soon after, the so-called Quad (the United States, India, Japan and Australia) also expounded on the strategy, but downplaying any adversarial implications that might be associated with it in view of the impression that it was an isolationist strategy to exclude or contain an emerging China in the regional political and security architecture. From then on, much speculation and discussion have been generated on the so-called Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) and Indonesia, projecting herself as a leader in ASEAN and always zealous to surface ASEAN Centrality in the emerging regional security architecture, took pains to host this event. High level delegations from the eighteen EAS members attended the event. At that meeting which was the first ministerial-level forum to explore ideas on this emerging area of cooperation, almost all delegates stressed the importance of and support for ASEAN Centrality in the evolving political/security and economic architecture of the region which straddles the Indian and Pacific oceans, including the Member States of ASEAN. Yet, while prefacing their interventions with support for ASEAN Centrality, non-ASEAN countries expounded on their own particular initiatives on how they understood the Indo-Pacific approach, strategy or concept, including the FOIPS of the United States, the Belt and Road Initiative of China, the Quality Infrastructure Program of Japan, the Indo-Pacific Foreign Policy of Australia, and others, giving the impression that the participants did not have the same views as myself on what ASEAN Centrality meant and how it should be implemented. The implication, of course, is that their respective Indo-Pacific strategy or concept is the norm to be followed to ensure the political stability and economic prosperity of the region. After all the participants had spoken, as the Russian Ambassador and I were the most junior in the group in terms of rank, we were the last in the speaking order, but he spoke first before I did.

Finally, the litmus test that should test the relevance and continuity of ASEAN as a regional organization is the disposition of its people to identify themselves as citizens of ASEAN. Therefore, the last dimension of my definition of ASEAN Centrality is my ardent aspiration for the peoples of ASEAN and those around the world, to increase their level of awareness about ASEAN, and concomitant to this is the need to raise their sense of identity or belongingness to ASEAN. ASEAN is an important regional organization; it should be known to those living within it and those outside. Unfortunately, this has not been the case. I have frequently lamented the lack of awareness and sense of identity by the people of ASEAN about their own regional organization despite its fifty years of existence. In a Philippine Star article I wrote for the 52nd anniversary of ASEAN (2019), I cited the following:

My advocacy has been to make people become aware of ASEAN. ASEAN is not a perfect regional organization. Indeed, the many criticisms against it have factual foundations. Its member states are not the best exemplars of what the West would consider models of human rights promotion and protection.

Analytical Framework

Before I undertook writing this book, I had never heard of the term “autoethnography”. I have, of course, read a number of memoirs and autobiographies of diplomats recounting their experiences. In fact, during a seminar on the same topic where I presented the results of my study, many in the audience, including professors, had mistaken my work as an autobiography. I took pains then, as I do now, to make a differentiation between autoethnography and other genres of reflective writing.

Auto-what? was my initial response when a professor from the University of the Philippines Open University, Dr Jean Saludadez, suggested it to me. As I read up on the research method, I came to realize that this analytical framework was the perfect way to guide me in writing this book. I also came to the conclusion that many people were like me, either ignorant of the existence of such a beautiful research method or knowing about it but dismissing it as a second-rate framework that does not merit being placed side-by-side more formal, more “academic-sounding” approaches.

Autoethnography is a valid research method. I take inspiration from Ellis, Adams, and Bochner (2011) who define autoethnography as a type of research that seeks to describe and systematically analyse the researcher’s personal experiences in order to understand cultural phenomena. They rationalize that autoethnography goes beyond data, but attempts to combine personal experiences with methodological tools. They popularized autoethnography as an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyse personal experience as a valid method of research. There should be no shame nor guilt in using personal narratives and perspectives in the quest for truth and knowledge, they say, and instead, regard the result of such a method as one that best approximates the truth, being based on personal experiences.

The Handbook of Autoethnography by Jones, Adams and Ellis (2016) distinguishes autoethnography from ordinary emotive writing by citing four of its characteristics, namely: (i) purposefully commenting on/ critiquing culture and cultural practices; (ii) making contributions to existing research; (iii) embracing vulnerability and purpose; and (iv) creating a reciprocal relation with the audience.

Careful not to be dismissed as another boring memoir of a retired diplomat, I take pains to incorporate the above-mentioned characteristics and goals into my book.

Introduction

The Chinese have been in the Malay world, namely Indonesia and Malaya/Malaysia for centuries. Nevertheless, the translation of Chinese works into the local languages, particularly the Malay language, only took place in the late 1880s. The existence of such translations is related to three important developments:

• 1. There was a rise of Chinese nationalism, or at least cultural nationalism, among the Chinese in the Malay region;

• 2. There was an emergence of Western-educated Chinese writers and journalists who undertook the translation of Chinese works;

• 3. With the development of the printing press, often known as print capitalism, the Chinese began to get involved in such a business.

Prior to the 1880s, the above developments were absent in the Malay world, and as a result, no Chinese works were translated into the Malay language.

In fact, towards the end of the nineteenth century, printing presses and newspapers in Malay/Indonesian had begun to emerge, but none was in the Chinese language. The Peranakan and Baba who were no longer fluent in Chinese but equally inadequate in their command of the Western languages needed to read newspapers, magazines and books in the language that they understood. They were also interested in reading more about Chinese culture, and some enterprising Chinese started translating Chinese stories into Malay. In Java, for instance, these Chinese stories were initially published by Dutch printing houses such as H.M. van Dorp and W. Bruining & Co., but one year later the Peranakan Chinese themselves set up their own printing houses (e.g. Ijap Goan Ho) and published these stories by themselves. In the Straits Settlements of British Malaya, the publishers were Chinese (e.g. Kim Sek Chye Press, Poh Wah Hean Press) from the beginning.

It is imperative to note that the demand for Malay translations of Chinese works did not come from the Malay community but the Chinese themselves, as many Chinese in the Malay world had lost their command of the Chinese language. They were Peranakan Chinese who were well versed in Malay, which was the lingua franca of different ethnic groups in the Malay Archipelago. Among the Peranakan Chinese in colonial Indonesia and British Malaya, Malay, not Chinese, was the medium of communication.

In the recent past, there were quite a few studies on the Peranakan Chinese in the Malay Archipelago, particularly in the three countries: Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore (IMS). I have conducted some bibliographical research and published one article entitled “Selected Publications on Partially Assimilated Chinese in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, 1980–2006” (see Leo Suryadinata, Understanding the Ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2007), pp. 173–92). In this article, I have included four categories of the publications: (1) General Studies; (2) Politics, History, Education and Society; (3) Religion; and (4) Memoirs and Biographies.

As the article only covered the publications up to 2006, that means that it did not include publications in the last fourteen years (2007–21). As a matter of fact, after 2006 there were many studies on the Peranakan Chinese in IMS. The Chinese Heritage Centre (NTU) and the Baba House (NUS) had jointly conducted two international conferences on the Peranakan Chinese in the globalizing world. These conference proceedings have also been published in 2010 and 2015 respectively. Apart from the two conference proceedings, there are also many books published, including two books on the Peranakan Chinese in Indonesia during the above period (see Appendix 2).

Peranakan Chinese communities and their “hybrid” culture have fascinated many observers. Some argue that these communities and their culture are still alive while others maintain that they have demised as they have become a museum culture. Apparently, observers are using different perspectives in putting forward their arguments. Who are the Peranakan Chinese? Should they be narrowly or broadly defined? Where are they to be found? What are the Peranakan identity and culture? Do they share identical characteristics throughout the Malay Archipelago? How do the Peranakan communities evolve in the colonial, post-colonial and globalization eras? What is the current status of the Peranakan communities and their culture? How is the future of the Peranakan community being envisioned? These are some of the questions that this book attempts to answer.

In the past, I have edited at least two books on the Peranakan Chinese, published one book on Peranakan politics in Java and many papers on the subject. However, I did not have the opportunity to publish my own studies on the Peranakan Chinese in the Malay Archipelago as a book.

State and “Chinese Minority Religions”

For political scientists and political sociologists, “state” is an important actor to be considered in dealing with communities and societies in developing societies. This is also the case when one deals with religions in developing countries. Of course, there are strong states and weak states, and their role differs. A strong state tends to determine the form and contents of minority religions. A question can be posed here: is there strong evidence to substantiate this argument? If so, to what extent a strong state determines the form and contents of minority religions? I would like to use Suharto’s Indonesia and post-Suharto’s Indonesia as an example to illustrate the role of a strong state and its impact on “Chinese minority religions”.

A few words about the Chinese in Indonesia are in order. Indonesia is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society. It has a population of around 238 million, consisting of more than one hundred ethnic groups and six major religions, namely Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism (Hindu-Bali), Buddhism and Confucianism. About 87 per cent of the Indonesian population are Muslim. Ethnic Chinese is one of the Indonesian ethnic groups and constitutes only approximately two per cent of the total population. However, Chinese Indonesians are also multi-religious; the majority are Buddhists, followed by Christians (Protestants and Catholics), Confucians, and Muslims. Economically, the majority of Chinese Indonesians belong to the middle class. Culturally, they are also divided into Indonesian-speaking and Chinese-speaking subgroups, but the former forms the majority.

When Suharto came to power after crushing the so-called 30th September 1965 movement, he introduced a total assimilation policy towards the Chinese minority group, urging them to integrate with and assimilate into the “indigenous society” (masyarakat Indonesia asli) without any delay. He believed that the Chinese minority was a security risk and had a tendency to be oriented toward mainland China. But most importantly he had strong prejudice against things Chinese. He believed in establishing an indigenous-based nation, seeing Chinese culture as “foreign” and hence had to be eradicated. In order to achieve this goal, his newly established regime decided to eliminate four pillars of Chinese culture, namely ethnic Chinese organizations, Chinese schools, Chinese mass media (especially newspapers) and Chinese religions.

The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policymakers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

THE EDITORS

Series Chairman:

Choi Shing Kwok

Series Editor:

Ooi Kee Beng

Editorial Committee:

Daljit Singh

Francis E. Hutchinson

Norshahril Saat

Economy Rebounded

The year started on an optimistic note. The inauguration of Joe Biden to be the forty-sixth President of the United States of America in January brought some predictability to US foreign policy in the Asia Pacific region. The arrival of COVID-19 vaccines augmented the economic buoyancy as movement restrictions were gradually lifted, which gave a boost to the business sectors. Manufacturing and exports rebounded strongly, and Singapore’s recovery seemed well on track albeit below expectations. By the end of Q1 2021, small and mediumsize enterprises (SMEs) were looking beyond survival to explore emerging opportunities. Construction and built environment sectors were expected to grow between some S$23 billion and S$28 billion in 2021, up from S$21.3 billion in the year before. Economic growth was led by the digital revolution in information and communications and by sectors immune to COVID-19 disruptions like finance, insurance and professional services. In all, Singapore’s GDP grew by 5.9 per cent in the fourth quarter, resulting in an overall annual growth of 7.2 per cent in 2021.

Still, notwithstanding the improvement in business sentiment, Singapore’s economy was not out of the woods. For two years in a row, the city-state relied on its past savings to fund its pandemic measures, drawing S$1.7 billion from its fiscal reserves and setting aside over $9 billion in 2020 to fund the “COVID-19 Resilience Package” to support local businesses, according to the 2021 annual budget debate in Parliament. The air transport sector, one of the badly affected industries, received financial relief of S$870 million, a lifeline to maintain Singapore’s status as a regional transportation hub. The International Air Transport Association estimated that Singapore’s aviation sector provided 375,000 jobs before the pandemic. If tourism were considered, the spending would support another 152,000 jobs.

The financial assistance did not end there. Singapore entered a “heightened alert” phase in mid-May 2021 when the number of community cases rose exponentially. On 5 July 2021, Finance Minister Lawrence Wong announced in Parliament that an additional S$1.2 billion support package would be handed out to help SMEs pull through the difficult period. These included the Jobs Support Scheme that subsidizes the salaries of Singaporeans and other forms of tax rebates and special loans.