The best of Asia Society every week. View this email in your browser June 9, 2020 Editor's Note: Some eNews subscribers received an earlier version of today's edition that had a typographic mistake in the subject line. We are resending the newsletter now with the corrected subject line. We sincerely apologize for the editorial error and any confusion it may have caused. Education’s role in eliminating racism: We believe that George Floyd and all those victimized before him died in vain if we do not do more than emote, declare, and despair. Read a statement from Asia Society's Center for Global Education at Asia Society on how they are re-committing to transforming education to build a more just and equal society. A quick programming note: As those of us in the northern hemisphere transition into summer, we’ll be sending out this newsletter every other Tuesday — so the next edition after this will drop on June 23. Did someone forward this to you? Subscribe here. This week: Author and journalist Fareed Zakaria and Kevin Rudd discuss whether democratic or authoritarian governments handled COVID-19 better, Orville Schell writes about the end of an era in U.S.-China relations, and a new book considers the global consequences of Indonesia’s anti-Communist killings. Plus, our usual roundup of coronavirus content as well as a look at upcoming events across the Asia Society network. POLICY Democracy vs. Authoritarianism Under COVID-19 The spread of the coronavirus from China to the rest of the world has presented political observers with a provocative question. Have the world’s democracies handled the outbreak better? Or have authoritarian regimes? Asia Society Policy Institute President Kevin Rudd and author and journalist Fareed Zakaria considered this question during a wide-ranging conversation last week on the response to COVID-19 from different systems of government. Zakaria cited examples of both democratic and authoritarian governments that have handled the coronavirus outbreak well, praising Singapore and Hong Kong in particular for establishing effective contact tracing mechanisms without misappropriating vast amounts of human data. But China’s record, Zakaria said, was more mixed: Although Beijing succeeded in suppressing the virus, it did so by imposing a severe lockdown, creating a template for managing COVID-19 from which countries like Italy and the United States borrowed. Zakaria argued that the examples of South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, democracies that smothered the virus without resorting to shutdowns, revealed the flaws of China’s approach. “Yes, COVID cases are down to almost nothing in China,” he said. “But they’re down to almost nothing in a lot of other places that didn’t do what the Chinese did.” Zakaria and Rudd also discussed the recent protests in the United States and elsewhere following the death of George Floyd. “They’re the most serious set of racially motivated protests since 1968,” said Zakaria, who attributed them to “deep inequities built into the [American] system that have never been addressed.” Image: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images Watch CURRENT AFFAIRS Orville Schell on U.S.-China Relations: The Death of Engagement In the near half-century since President Richard Nixon made his famous visit to Beijing, American policy toward China has, with remarkable consistency, followed the logic of engagement. Bolstering economic ties, the theory went, would fold China into the U.S.-led international order and facilitate the country’s eventual transition to democracy. In a sweeping essay reviewing the past four-and-a-half decades of Sino-American history, Arthur Ross Director of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations Orville Schell makes a convincing case that engagement is on life support. Drawing on his reflections from visits to China dating back to 1975, Schell reveals American policymakers consistently underestimated the resilience of the Chinese Communist Party, believing that its evolution into a U.S.-friendly democracy was inevitable. Now, under the leadership of Xi Jinping, China’s government is as entrenched as ever — and relations with Washington are under considerable strain. Schell’s essay appears in The Wire China, a recently launched digital weekly, and includes photographs and notes from his lifetime of observing China. More: In The Diplomat, Asia Society Policy Institute Vice President for International Security and Diplomacy Daniel Russel cites three flashpoints that could turn a “cold war” between China and the United States hot. Image: AFP/Getty Images Read BOOKS How Indonesia's Anti-Communist Killings Shaped the Modern World In 1965, the Indonesian military leader Suharto launched a brutal extermination campaign against Indonesians either affiliated with the Communist Party or harboring leftist sympathies. The killings claimed up to one million lives and cemented Suharto’s grip on power for the next 33 years. In his new book The Jakarta Method, author Vincent Bevins documents how the United States government, then escalating its involvement in the Vietnam War, was complicit in Suharto’s rise, which established a pro-U.S. government in the world’s fourth-largest country. In this conversation with Asia Blog, Bevins discusses how events in Indonesia became a template for anti-communist actions throughout South and Central America, forever shaping the historical trajectory of developing countries caught in the Cold War. Read ETC. COVID-19 Update: A Pulmonary Physician on What It's Like To Treat COVID-19 Asia 21 Young Leader Avinesh Bhar, a pulmonary physician, has spent the last three months treating COVID-19 patients in Macon, Georgia. In this conversation with Asia Blog, Bhar shares what he’s taken from the experience as well as how he thinks it will change the future of American health care. Asia Society Southern California presented a conversation with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and journalist Sheryl WuDunn on the human cost of COVID-19. Shen Lu, a Chinese journalist living in the United States, writes in ChinaFile about how her immersion into traditional Chinese cooking has alleviated her homesickness and helped her cope with the isolation caused by COVID-19. Best-selling author Parag Khanna discusses how COVID-19 will reshape the global economy and supply chain in a conversation presented by Asia Society Northern California. The latest episode of the Asia In-Depth podcast features a conversation with Washington Post correspondent Gerry Shih, one of the journalists forced to leave China this year, on the increasing difficulty in covering the country. UPCOMING EVENTS With the suspension and cancellation of in-person programming due to the outbreak of COVID-19, Asia Society is planning to hold virtual programs on the virus as well as other subjects — please follow us on Facebook and Twitter for updates, and subscribe to our YouTube channel. June 9: Kevin Rudd, Orville Schell, and fellow China expert Susan Shirk make sense of the country’s just-concluded major political gatherings in a conversation presented by the Asia Society Policy Institute.  June 11: Caitlin Welsh, director of the Global Food Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, assesses the impact of COVID-19 on food security in an event presented by Asia Society Texas. June 12: Bob Davis and Lingling Wei, authors of the new book Superpower Showdown, speak with Asia Society Policy Institute Vice President Wendy Cutler and former Trump administration official Clete Willems about the economic dimensions of the U.S.-China relationship. June 22-23: The Asia Society Business Council presents a two-day webinar series on COVID-19 from a scientific and a business perspective. Click here for information about day one, and here for information about day two. June 24-25: Asia Society’s 2020 Global Talent, Diversity & Inclusion Virtual Symposium will feature engaging speakers on building unity and providing leadership in the new normal. More information is available here. JOIN & SUPPORT Asia Society relies on the generosity of its friends and members to support its mission of strengthening relationships and promoting understanding among the people, leaders, and institutions of Asia and the United States. Become a Member Donate