Letter From the Editors
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Dear Readers,
Welcome to the June 2018 issue of The Diplomat magazine.
As the increasingly rapid news cycle reminds us, things are changing in Asia. Yet there’s some truth to the old cliche: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” In this issue, we take a fresh look at how some long-standing regional realities are adapting to today’s world, without being lost to history altogether.
2018 marks 40 years since Deng Xiaoping inaugurated China’s economic “reform and open up” program. Seung-Youn Oh, an assistant professor of Political Science at Bryn Mawr College, explores the massive changes that ensued in China’s economy and society – as well as the lingering challenges from Deng’s purposefully unbalanced model of development. The key question facing China today, Oh writes, is how China can fulfill its need to continue reforming and opening its economy even while President Xi Jinping seeks to retrench Chinese Communist Party control over all facets of life.
Next, Alexander Cooley, director of Columbia University’s Harriman Institute and the Claire Tow Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, walks through the evolution of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) ahead of its 18th summit, to be held in June in Qingdao, China. The so-called Shanghai Spirit still lives, Cooley writes, but the world in which it lives has changed and with it, so goes the SCO.
Against the backdrop of Myanmar’s decades-long ethnic conflicts, Daniel Combs, an author and researcher investigating the civil war in Kachin state, examines the precious stone that now funds both the Kachin rebels and the government: jade. Increasingly, elites on the two warring sides are even cooperating to ensure they each get a cut of the lucrative jade industry, while average residents are left hoping to strike it lucky in the mines.
Finally, Nithin Coca, a freelance journalist based in Southeast Asia, asks whether Indonesia can be the hero the world’s oceans so desperately need. The island country has long been uniquely reliant on its maritime resources, but to date has shown little interest in spearheading global efforts at ocean protection. Now Susi Pudjiastuti, Indonesia’s minister of maritime affairs and fisheries, is changing that.
We hope you enjoy these stories, and the many others in the following pages.