IN the first half of 2021, Asean-5 countries, comprising Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines experienced strong, export-driven growth. However, renewed lockdowns amid significant outbreaks of Covid-19 Delta variant cases have dampened business sentiment and consumer spending in this region.
According to the Institute of International Finance (IIF), recovery will likely slow markedly in the second half of 2021 for Asean5.
“Given the rising number of Covid-19 infections, renewed pandemic containment measures, and the slow pace of vaccinations, authorities in Asean-5 countries have been revising down official growth forecasts,” IIF said.
The IIF said it would likely cut its gross domestic product (GDP) growth forecast for region.
In May, it forecast a GDP growth of 5.2% for 2021 and 5.4% for 2022.
Against the backdrop of current economic challenges, the IIF said it expected Asean-5 central banks to maintain their accommodative monetary policy stances well into 2022.
“Most of the countries are still experiencing inflation within the respective target ranges, except for the Philippines,” the IIF said.
“Fiscal policy will also continue to be supportive. While Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam have announced fiscal consolidation plans, the pace of adjustment will be modest,” it added.
The IIF noted that due to their economic structure, Asean-5 countries benefitted strongly from the global demand recovery, with exports up sharply in the first half of 2021, particularly in the area of electronic appliances (Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand) and commodities (Indonesia and Vietnam).
“Looking ahead, the next stage of the global recovery will likely benefit services rather than goods and, thus, provide less of a boost to Asean-5 economies,” it said.
“Furthermore, the recovery in tourism in the five countries has been slower than our already-cautious forecast in the spring, with the Delta variant posing a new challenge to the sector,” it added
Singapore on Wednesday reported 347 new Covid-19 cases, the highest since August 2020, as the first vaccinated German tourists arrivedSingapore’s health ministry reported 347 new local Covid-19 cases, higher than the 328 cases reported the previous day.
Wednesday’s number was the highest since early August 2020.
This came as the first planeload of Germans allowed into Singapore as part of a tentative reopening for coronavirus-vaccinated tourists arrived at Changi Airport on Wednesday afternoon.
Singapore last month said it would accept double-jabbed visitors from Brunei and Germany, starting in September. While the travellers must test negative for the virus, they do not have to quarantine.
Among the passengers on Wednesday’s maiden flight were Germany-based journalists invited by Singapore Airlines (SIA) and the Singapore Tourism Board.
The flight took longer than usual due to it having to avoid Afghan airspace, according to German reporter Andreas Spaeth, who was on board.
After closing its border during the first pandemic wave last year, Singapore began readmitting tourists, with strict quarantine rules, from a handful of countries, including New Zealand, Vietnam and regions in Australia and China, after it ended its sole pandemic lockdown in June 2020. The list has been amended several times in response to fluctuating coronavirus case numbers in countries of origin.
So-called “reciprocal green lanes” for business or official travel between Singapore and several countries were also set up last year, but most have since been suspended, including one for Germany. Singaporeans were again permitted to enter Germany in October last year, after Berlin eased pandemic border curbs.
People sit at the Cheonggye Stream in Seoul. About 42.6 per cent of South Koreans are fully vaccinated. Photo: AP
Elsewhere,
South Korea plans to open up once it reaches its 80 per cent
vaccination milestone, and Japan is expected to ease curbs in November
Meanwhile, South Korea is drawing up a plan on how to live more normally with Covid-19, expecting 80 per cent of adults to be fully vaccinated by late October, health authorities said on Wednesday.
The country is in the middle of its worst wave of infections, but it has kept the number of severely ill cases under control through steadily rising vaccination rates.
“We’ll review measures that will allow us to live more normally, but any such switch will be implemented only when we achieve high vaccination rates and overall (Covid-19) situations stabilise,” Son Young-rae, a senior health ministry official, told a briefing.
The strategy will be implemented in phases to gradually ease restrictions, authorities said. Masks will still be required at least in the initial stage.
The government expects to implement the plan sometime after late October, when 80 per cent of the adult population is likely to have been vaccinated. As of Tuesday, South Korea had given at least one vaccine dose to 70.9 per cent of its adult population, while 42.6 per cent are fully vaccinated.
South Korea extended national social distancing curbs to October 3 this week as the country boosts its vaccination campaign ahead of a thanksgiving holiday that falls later this month. Restrictions in place include limited operating hours for cafes and restaurants and on the number of people allowed at social gatherings.
It reported 2,050 new Covid-19 cases for Tuesday, with 2,014 of those locally acquired. The country has registered 265,423 infections since the pandemic started, with 2,334 deaths.
The country has not seen a significant increase in coronavirus deaths, with a mortality rate of 0.88 per cent, largely due to high vaccination rates among the elderly and vulnerable. Severe or critical cases stood at 387 as of Tuesday.
Worldwide total, from the most infected countries: #1 USA,
Washington's dangerous habit of always seeking an outside enemy needs to change, analysts say
It has been 20 years after the world was shocked to see two planes struck the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001. It was a chaotic scene featuring fire and heavy smoke, the screaming and scattered crowds and people who were dumfounded by the fact that the US - a superpower - was attacked by terrorists on its ground.
This year's commemoration of September 11 is different as the US just ended the war in Afghanistan and the Afghan Taliban - after being overturned by the US three months after 9/11 in 2001 - has taken over Afghanistan, again.
The past few weeks have seen the Western media making rolling reports to mourn victims of the terror attacks and some reflecting on the failures of the US domestic and diplomatic policies in the past two decades.
However, the fierce criticism and the apparent failures of the past two decades have not awakened the US political elites. They refused to learn. And soon they will be looking for a new enemy in a new region, but even bigger failures await them, observers said.
Photo:IC
Seeking truth
The US President Joe Biden, heavily criticized for his hasty and disorganized withdrawal from Afghanistan from all fronts, may attempt to use the 20th anniversary of the September 11 to shift the public attention. According to the schedule released by the White House, Biden and his wife are scheduled to visit all three 9/11 memorial sites -- ground zero in New York City, the Pentagon and the memorial outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where United Flight 93 was forced down -- on Saturday.
But nearly 1,800 people, including survivors of 9/11 and family members of the victims, are signing a joint letter asking Biden to not attend the memorial activities if he does not declassify documents related to the terror attacks.
Brett Eagleson was among them. His father Bruce Eagleson, who was on the 17th floor of the South Tower of the WTC, died in the collapse of the building, leaving his family unable to recover his remains even through DNA analysis. After luckily surviving when the planes hit the building, he chose to stay and assist more people to evacuate and was last seen going upstairs to retrieve a walkie-talkie to assist in communication between firefighters and the police.
Sorrow and bitterness have engulfed the better part of the last two decades of Brett's life, but it's mostly anger that stands out. The US government's investigation into the 9/11 attacks has been shrouded in secrecy with detailed reports on one of the most shocking terrorist attacks having never been disclosed.
"We have been fighting for 20 years about the information that our government has always been keeping this information from us," Brett Eagleson told the Global Times. "We have been fighting for so long; every family is tired and frustrated."
Brett Eagleson said those 20 years have changed his perception of the US government. "We have seen our government block its own citizens from truth and justice for its own selfish interests and to grow its relationship with Saudi Arabia, and as time goes on, we get further and further away from the truth."
Finally gathering up the courage to visit Ground Zero, the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan to see the changes in the place 20 years after it was hit by two planes, Mrs Tsou, a 50-year-old Chinese-American living in New York, remained calm but after seeing the smiling Muslim girls with headscarves painted on the fence not far from the square, she sighed with emotion.
"For the past 20 years, the American people have not seen much of the US counter-terrorism measures in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the fear of and discrimination against Muslims and people of color has grown within the US," she told the Global Times.
Tsou was a software engineer who worked in the north Tower of the WTC. The vacation on September 11 two decades ago saved her life, but more than 30 of her colleagues were wounded or killed in the attack. Tsou quit her job after the 9/11 attacks and has been doing odd jobs at home since then. Rarely has she left the house or have any contact with her former colleagues.
"War is always intertwined with too much self-interest, and 20 years later, the truth about the attacks remains unanswered, and the American people have not been given the answer for 'why do they hate us,' but our government has created more conflict and hate in America and all around the world," Tsou said.
Infographic: Wu Tiantong/Global Times
War on terror
Like Tsou, a lot of Americans are wondering why the US failed and whether the money and the American lives sacrificed in the war on terror in Afghanistan were worth it. But for many outside the US, the question remains how the world and the US were changed by 9/11.
Harvard University scholar Joseph S. Nye Jr. told the Global Times that "future historians will regard September 11, 2001 as important as Pearl Harbor was on December 7,1941."
In the 2000 presidential election, George W. Bush advocated a humble foreign policy and warned against the temptations of nation-building, but after the shock of 9/11, he declared a "Global War on Terror" and invaded both Afghanistan and Iraq, the professor said.
"While the 9/11 attacks killed several thousand Americans, the 'endless wars' that the US launched as part of the global war on terror cost much more," he said.
According to data from the Brown University Costs of War project, over 929,000 people have died in the post-9/11 wars due to direct war violence, and several times as many due to the reverberating effects of war. 38 million people became war refugees and displaced persons. The US is also conducting counterterror activities in 85 countries and the federal price tag for the post-9/11 wars is over 8 trillion.
All this money and lives invested in the post 9/11 wars under the banner of countering terrorism have not stopped terrorism from spreading globally. It has only caused more confrontations between different civilizations.
The rhetoric of the war on terror generated a geopolitical binary that divided the world into the uncivilized and civilized. Islam was posited as the enemy and the symbol of "the uncivilized world." Many Muslim populations -- including innocent civilians -- were viewed as "suspect communities" targeted under the rubric of counterterrorism, Stefanie Kam, associate research fellow from the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR) S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, told the Global Times via an email.
The old conventional "war on terror" approaches to terrorism - militarized counterterrorism response -- focused on short-term gains, rather than long-term gains attuned to the political realities and the social and historical forces on the ground, which was what largely defined the failure of US' approach to terrorism, Kam said.
Kam thought that the political vacuum engendered in a post-US Afghanistan has the potential to complicate the security landscape by creating breathing space for terrorist groups to consolidate in Afghanistan, and to inspire a wave of foreign fighters -- seeking militant training -- into Afghanistan. Apart from Islamic extremism, the rise of right-wing extremism is an emerging area of concern for governments in Asia.
"In particular, the Southeast Asian region has seen a recent growth in terrorist attacks by ISIS-inspired, self-radicalized individuals, and the involvement of women, youth and family networks in militancy," Kam said.
Echoing Kam, global experts have expressed concerns over the spread of terrorism over the past two decades. The fact that the number of terrorist groups in Afghanistan had grown from less than 10 to more than 20 during the US military occupation also indicates the irony of Bush's words when starting the war.
"Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there," former US President George W Bush told Congress days after the attacks, on September 20, 2001. "It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated."
US remains unchanged
For Adnan Akfirat, China Representative of the Patriotic Party (Turkey),it is the US that made an obscure concept of "international terrorism" to justify its occupations and military actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria and "cover up its imperialist aggression."
The US is not fighting against terrorism but using terrorist groups in different regions to play its geopolitical tactics, Akfirat noted.
"With the liberation of Afghanistan, the US had to admit that the 'Crusade' it launched since 2001 ended in disappointment and disgrace only 20 years later," Akfirat said, noting that all these failures could not wake up "the US ruling clique" who still thinks US "will subdue the peoples of the world with its terrible military power. Their class interests compel them to continue this madness."
Yasir Habib Khan, founder and president of the Institute of International Relations and Media Research in Pakistan, thought that lop-sided war on terror architected by America "is the epitome of complete failure" and it is ironic to see the war under the banner of peace and stability prompted more wars and gave rise to "white supremacy" to which Americans' lives are subjected to be more insecure and vulnerable.
In the eyes of some Chinese experts, the US debacles for the past 20 years also resulted in wrong policies and miscalculations as the US political elites failed to solve domestic problems on social polarization, rising economic disparities and other issues. Instead, the country focused on scrambling for power and playing geopolitical tactics in suppressing other countries.
The US' strength and international reputation have been damaged for the past 20 years. Putting huge resources into military actions or "rebuilding" other countries has worsened the overall crisis domestically, including deteriorating political polarization and struggles, the flooding of popularism and racism, confrontations of different classes and people's losing of recognition of national identity, Li Haidong, a professor at the Institute of International Relations of the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times.
However, despite all these problems awaiting to be solved, the US hasn't changed its tactic of seeking enemies to ensure its global status and define its international policies. The US should have coordinated the international community to counter terrorism and extremism after 9/11, but it took unilateral military actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria for geopolitical purposes, causing ever-lasting regional chaos, experts said.
After all these years, one would think the US has learned its lesson and can now embark on a journey of solving domestic issues and shifting the focus of its policies. Unfortunately, that's not the case, the country has its eyes on a new "enemy" - China.
Khan said that 20 years after the September 11, the US should have built a broad-based global mechanism to promote counter-terrorism modalities and it should have snubbed impulsive of protectionism but unfortunately it did nothing. "It did not learn from the past. This makes the future of the world remain volatile."
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks. The
attacks, which killed at least 2,996 people on that very day, convulsed
the US. "America Attacked" was the headline on the front page of a major
American newspaper. An angry US launched the war in Afghanistan within a
month and the war in Iraq a year and a half later. Before the
Afghanistan War, the American public discussed the idea of using nuclear
weapons in retaliation.
Though it is a major event, 9/11cannot change the logic of
globalization and cannot affect China's national system and the Chinese
people's dream and diligence.
Like a vulture, the AMIC has devoured the last bits of flesh from the crippled body of Afghanistan. ...
Washington started its counterterrorism campaign because its homeland was attacked. Yet the irony is that after four presidents and 20 years, the United States is still grappling with terror threats on its own soil
Read Xinhua Commentary: http://xhtxs.cn/kfN
In short, historically it was the Church that gave the moral blessing
for colonisation, slavery and genocide during the Age of Globalisation.
The tragedy is that the Doctrine of Discovery is now embodied in US
laws.
"Globalisation
is interpreted as universalisation of American or European values and
standards. But the fact remains that these standards and rules were
imposed historically by conquest, colonisation and force".
China Does Not Recognize The Rule-Based International Order imposed historically by Conquest, Colonisation and Force !
Photo:IC
