EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

• • While Thailand's health system has fared relatively well through the COVID-19 pandemic, the country's economy faced significant strains and likely a harsher downturn than other economies in Southeast Asia. In particular, the services sector—heavily reliant on international tourism—suffered, and debt levels worsened substantially during the pandemic.

• • Thailand's economy has steadily recovered following the peak of the pandemic in 2020, with greater optimism coming from the growing trade in goods and growing investments from China and Japan. The tourism sector has also steadily regained strength since the worst points of the pandemic.

• • Despite these recent positive turns, Thailand still faces daunting long-term economic and societal challenges, many of which were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Household finances appear increasingly stressed and debt levels have risen sharply across the economy. It is unlikely that Thailand will be able to return its tourism industry to 2019 conditions for the next several years.

• • Meanwhile, deteriorating demographics and education enrolments pose serious threats to long-term macroeconomic prospects. Thailand's population of young people is falling, but the country appears to lack momentum in elevating enrolment rates and improving the quality in secondary and tertiary education.

• • The agriculture sector remains large, with some crop diversification but with limited gains in productivity, in the face of rising competition—for instance, from India and Vietnam.

• • Policymakers may aim to revitalize Thailand's economic prospects with policies aimed, for instance, at enhancing agricultural productivity, combining and internationalizing higher education institutions, easing restrictions on foreign investments, and promoting greater competition by smaller enterprises against large conglomerates, in addition to efforts to improve on transparency and stability, and reduce corruption, within Thailand's political system.

INTRODUCTION

Thailand combines many recent economic trends facing Southeast Asia, while being immersed in the geopolitics of Northeast Asia and facing demographic conditions resembling those of Northeast Asian countries. Thailand continues to economically and politically manoeuvre around the tensions in intra-Asian relations. Over the past decade, Thailand has managed to balance many disparate competitors—attracting investments from China and Japan, welcoming military cooperation with both China and the United States, and hosting travellers from Russia, Ukraine, China, the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Iran—with a goal of receiving benefits from engagement with many different sides and actors.

Thailand's economy suffered greatly during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, the Thai economy appears to be on a better footing than it was on two years ago, but with substantial long-term challenges that remain unresolved.

How will Thailand's economy fare as the world leaves behind the restrictions of the pandemic era?

Thailand holds a historic reputation as a powerhouse of Southeast Asia. It retained a large degree of political independence in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but quickly aligned with the United States during the Cold War, which facilitated Thailand's military upgrading and greater regional political influence. By the end of the Cold War and into the twenty-first century, Thailand was home to US military exercises, substantial Japanese foreign investments, and growing trade with China. However, in the last fifteen years, an unstable political system with few bold efforts at reform, coupled with rapidly growing competition from other Asian economies, has greatly diminished Thailand's economic lustre. Thus far, COVID-19 has only exacerbated the challenges to Thailand's future regional prominence, and has not yet generated sufficient political or social momentum for fundamental reforms to Thailand's governance and economy.

The following sections review the economic challenges that Thailand faces, centred around the enduring economic disruptions of the COVID-19 period. After weathering the 2020–21 peaks of the pandemic with relatively minor health costs but substantial financial costs, Thailand could celebrate a partial return to pre-pandemic levels of economic vitality, with particular optimism around foreign investments and trade in goods. Still, Thailand must confront daunting challenges in rising debt, poor demographics, an uncertain upgrading in labour force skills, and unmet needs for structural transformations in education, tourism, and agriculture.

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 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 Ass ociation 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.

ROOTS (根) AND PATTERNS OF CHINESE MIGRATION

When dealing with Chinese migration, we often encounter terms such as guigen (归根), shenggen (生根), shigen (失根), wugen (无根), and duogen (多根). The key term, gen (根—translated as “roots”), carries multiple meanings. It can be understood as home, citizenship (as in nationality), ethnicity, local language and culture, or local traditions and society. Each of the terms indicates the varying degrees to which these migrants relate to their roots, and can be used to describe the different phases of Chinese migration in Southeast Asia.

The first, guigen (归根), describes migrants who retain their original language and culture during their overseas stay. These migrants and/or their immediate descendants do not sink roots in their host countries and instead look forward to their return to China. This is also commonly known as luoye guigen (落叶归根) or yeluo guigen (叶落归根), which translates to “falling leaves return to their roots.”

Those migrants who end up adopting local nationality and considering the host country as their homeland can be described as shenggen (生根) or luodi shenggen (落地生根), which means “to settle down and take local roots”.

Some learn the local language and culture and intermarry with local women, often losing their original language and traditions along the way. These migrants and their immediate descendants gain local roots (shenggen) and lose their China-oriented roots, a process we may call shigen. This process may take over two generations, as argued by G. William Skinner in his study of Chinese migrants in Thailand.

The last two terms—wugen (无根, without roots) and duogen (多根, many roots)—can be used to characterize xinyimin (新移民) or new Chinese migrants at the end of the twentieth century and the turn of the twenty-first century. With easy transportation and means of communication, migrants in recent decades have had a tendency not to stay in their host countries permanently. They neither sink their roots into local society nor fall into the earlier patterns of luoye guigen.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

• • Like many countries, Indonesia’s armed forces (TNI) have been engaging in health security activities since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. The pandemic has made TNI popular in society owing to its visible dedication to crisis response at the grassroots level. It is important to clarify how this became possible and the impact it has had from the perspective of civil-military relations.

• • TNI’s widening and deepening involvement in health security is the product of the normalization of “military operations other than war” (MOOTW). The 2004 TNI law restricted non-defence missions and required that ad hoc arrangements to undertake such non-war emergency missions gain parliamentary approval. TNI has skilfully used patriotic propaganda to justify its COVID-19-linked activities by invoking the spirit of the war of independence. In doing so, military elites have stoked nationalist sentiments to blunt military reform measures and normalize their role expansion. This is a new development in the history of TNI’s MOOTW; operations related to counter-terrorism and disaster relief in the past—for example, the 2018 natural disasters in Lombok and Palu—were limited in time and space. In this sense, the COVID-19 crisis should be understood as an important game changer in the country’s post-authoritarian civil-military relations.

• • The most significant implication has been the evaporation of political pressure for military reform. The skyrocketing popularity of TNI in society has incentivized political elites to ignore reform demands. Under such circumstances, the TNI leadership has advanced various institutional agendas, including the “healthification” and revitalization of babinsa and the territorial command system, creation of new jobs related to the COVID-19 pandemic, promotion of politically connected generals, and consolidation of intra-military power under the new TNI commander.

• • However, after two and a half years of the pandemic, whether TNI’s role expansion really signals expanded political ambitions remains unclear. It should be noted that Indonesia’s military leadership has not made any effort to hijack civilian politics or support a populist dictator’s killing of citizens and the gutting of democratic institutions as seen in neighbouring countries. Instead, Indonesia’s military elites cultivated Jokowi by providing institutional support, and carefully manoeuvred the pandemic crisis to gain greater autonomy and extend the scope of TNI’s role beyond the conventional MOOTW paradigm. It appears that intra-military political dynamics, rather than institutional political ambitions, drive this agenda.

INTRODUCTION

Military engagement in non-military affairs in response to global health threats has become prominent since the outbreaks of poliovirus (2014–17), Ebola, and Zika (Carlin et al. 2021). However, military activism in non-defence arenas may have a negative impact on democratic governance, especially when soldiers are mobilized for domestic policing. But what is it that motivates leaders to mobilize military forces to deal with health crises? Likewise, what is it that motivates the armed forces to engage in public health control?

There are two views in discussing these questions. Some analysts argue that it is a matter of utility in a country where state capacity is limited. They argue that leaders, in order to effectively deal with the complex challenges of a health security crisis, must mobilize all available resources, civilian or military, to maximize the government’s performance (Chretien et al. 2007; Downie 2012; WHO 2021). According to this argument, the military obeys a call-out order as its professional commitment. Others, meanwhile, argue that military mobilization under the pretext of a health emergency is a shady form of health securitization, which largely reflects a political leader’s ambition to extend emergency powers and consolidate populist/autocratic legitimacy in the country (De Waal 2014; Pinheiro de Oliveira 2016). Here, the military is understood to be an active agent of authoritarian ambition. Today there is a growing literature that recounts the military-backed autocratization under the COVID-19 pandemic and which advances this argument (Passos and Acácio 2021; Grzebalska and Maďarová 2021).

The two models mentioned above are of course not mutually exclusive. What we need is a more nuanced approach that allows us to analyse cases where military involvement in health security cannot be easily explained with the help of these models. Indonesia is obviously such a case. Beyond the models, I am interested in investigating the civil-military dynamics of what Wenham (2019) refers to as “securitizing health” and “healthifying security”. Through the investigation, I provide an alternative explanation for Indonesia’s case. In doing so, I examine how military engagement in health security during the COVID-19 pandemic has been exercised by President Joko Widodo (2014–), popularly called Jokowi. I discuss how it has been used as a political instrument by the president to gain the loyalty of military elites.

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.

INTRODUCTION

The eastward spread of Esoteric Buddhist Tantra, of which architectural and sculptural maṇḍalas were a constitutive part, from the Indian subcontinent to other regions of Maritime Asia was a defining feature of the Indic Middle Ages. Starting from the 7th century CE, Esoteric Buddhism began to develop iconographic programmes based on maṇḍalic themes in which the Pañcatathāgata system, with Vairocana or Akṣobhya at the centre, as well as bodhisattvas and other divinities, were arranged in particular alignments. This chapter explores the development of maṇḍalas based on Caryā- and Yoga-tantras in the architectural and iconographic programmes of Buddhist sites in Ratnagiri, Udayagiri, and Lalitagiri, situated in what is now the eastern littoral state of Odisha in India. In the first part, it argues that Odisha emerged as an early centre of Esoteric Buddhism, presenting epigraphic, sculptural, and architectural evidence of maṇḍalas that Buddhist monks transmitted to Southeast and East Asia. In the second part, it highlights similarities between the Odishan architectural and art historical remains and analogous monuments and objects from the Buddhist sites of Central Java, which were also based on the Caryā- and Yoga-tantras.

PART I:

ODISHA AS AN EARLY CENTRE OF ESOTERIC BUDDHISM

The Identification of Odisha as Uḍḍiyāna/ Oḍḍiyāna

Before starting my exploration of Esoteric Buddhism in Maritime Asia with special reference to Odisha, a discussion of the issue of the identification of Uḍḍiyāna/Oḍḍiyāna is in order. Uḍḍiyāna/ Oḍḍiyāna, which the Tibetan accounts regard as an important centre of Esoteric Buddhism, has variously been associated with the Swat Valley in Northwestern India or Southeastern India (Odisha, Tamil Nadu). The Gaṇeśa image inscription found in Gadrez (near Swat) and its reading by scholars, such as Ronald Davidson (2002: 209), led many to assert in unequivocal terms that Oḍḍiyāna is the Swat valley, and Sanderson (2007: 265–67) has gathered further evidence from Sanskrit texts supporting this identification. However, as argued by Sahu (1958: 147), the words Oḍa, Oḍra, Uḍra, Oḍiviśa and Oḍiyāna are all used as variants of Uḍḍiyāna in both Tibetan and Sanskrit texts: for instance, in the Sādhanamālā (12th century CE), Uḍḍiyāna is also spelled as Oḍrayāna (Odisha), while in the Kālikā Purāṇa (c. 11th–12th century) it is spelled either Uḍḍiyāna or Oḍra (van Kooij 1972: 170–171).

INTRODUCTION

Trailokyavijaya, the ‘Conqueror of the Three Worlds’, also called Vajrahūṃkāra (‘Adamantine Hūṃ Producing’), is a wrathful manifestation of Vajrapāṇi, sometimes described as a transformation of Vajrasattva (and thus identical in essence with the Buddha Mahāvairocana), or as an emanation of the Buddha Akṣobhya. He belongs to a category of beings whom Linrothe defined as ‘wrathful destroyers of obstacles’ (krodha- vighnāntaka), a class of esoteric deities whose task is not merely the protection of the devotees or the intimidation of recalcitrant beings, but also, and most importantly, the removal of external and internal hindrances and the transmutation of ignorance into wisdom. While the cult of Trailokyavijaya spanned almost the entire Asian continent over many centuries, it appears to have achieved considerable prominence in Java in the 8th–11th centuries. As it will become apparent from several elements analysed below, the communities of South Sea States, and in particular those of Sri Lanka, might have exerted a major influence on the transmission to East Asia of textual, artistic and ritual aspects related to this deity.

The aim of this chapter is to cast some light upon the diffusion and nature of the cult of Trailokyavijaya in Java between the 8th and the 11th century, through the analysis of epigraphical and sculptural remains. These two types of artefacts have different characteristics, and thus different analytical methods will be employed. Inscriptions are often dated, have a more or less explicit content, can include formulas charged with multiple esoteric meanings, and in many cases come from a very precise location, possibly from a meaningful context: as such, they can often be put in relation with specific figures, communities, buildings, texts, and ritual practices. The statuettes from Java, on the other hand, are undated, and their precise provenance is unknown; however, their approximate period of manufacture and their connection with specific texts, traditions, and regions of the Buddhist world could be reconstructed by means of their style and iconography.

The main body of this chapter will discuss the relevant epigraphic and artistic production from Java by making use of both primary and secondary sources. Other kinds of local and foreign sources, such as Indo-Tibetan and Sino-Japanese texts and artefacts, or Old Javanese literature preserved in Bali, will be referred to throughout the chapter, as a means of contextualization.

INTRODUCTION

Measuring 26 by 26 metres and situated on the northwestern side of the Ratu Boko complex, a square, two-terraced platform with a deep hole at the centre can be found just steps away from the entrance to the second enclosure. The structure is known locally as Candi Pembakaran, which literally means ‘Temple of Ash’ due to the fact that it was believed to be a crematorium or a sacrificial fire pit as ashes were said to have been found on the structure. However, its actual purpose remains unclear.

The fragment of an inscription unearthed near the entrance to the second enclosure reveals that the complex was modelled after the Abhayagirivihāra in Anurādhapura, Sri Lanka. The renowned Dutch epigraphist Johannes G. de Casparis (1961: 245) observed that it is ‘either a more or less exact replica of the Ceylonese monastery or, more probably, a building which had enough in common with it—in form or spirit or both—to deserve the same name.’ If the inscription and de Casparis’ observations are indeed reliable, a square pit or similar structure must also have existed in Anurādhapura. Faxian, a travelling Buddhist monk who lived in the 5th century CE, talks about a square Bodhi shrine at Abhayagirivihāra in his chronicle. In the light of the brief description of the Abhayagirivihāra's shrine given by the monk and of its location near a water source, one may surmise that the square structure at Ratu Boko might have had the same function, given that the Bodhi shrine is one part of a threefold Buddhist monastery consisting of a stūpa, a pratimāghara (temple for a Buddha image), and a bodhighara (outdoor shrine for the Bodhi tree). On the other hand, this structure could simply have been a part of a stūpa and the large square pit at the centre would then have been the dhātugarbha (relic chamber). Through the survey of inscriptions, chronicles, archaeological data as well as the comparison of the structure with a variety of existing monuments, this chapter aims to identify the function of Candi Pembakaran at Ratu Boko. The result suggests that the Candi may have had a function different from what archaeologists have imagined thus far.