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This week: An
icon for press freedom in the Philippines faces her biggest challenge
yet; how the “romance went bad” between the U.S. and China; and an
essential reading list about racial justice.
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CURRENT
AFFAIRS
Maria Ressa
on Press Freedom in the Philippines: 'Death By a Thousand Cuts'
The
Philippine journalist Maria
Ressa has long been accustomed to working under
difficult — if not impossible — conditions. As the CEO of Rappler, an
independent website frequently critical of President Rodrigo Duterte,
Ressa has resisted intense pressure — and even threats
to her physical safety — to halt reporting on (among other
subjects) the Philippines’ brutal crackdown on drug crimes. Her work
has made Ressa a widely admired icon of press freedom at a time when
such freedoms seem to be under severe threat in her country.
But the embattled journalist may be facing her greatest challenge yet.
Earlier this month, a Philippine court found
Ressa and another journalist guilty of “cyber-libel” for a
2012 Rappler
article alleging that a prominent Filipino businessman had links to
illegal drugs and human trafficking. Never mind that the law Ressa was
accused of having violated did not exist at the time of publication:
Prosecutors alleged that the correction of a typo in the piece two
years later gave them jurisdiction. Ressa, who was released on bail
pending appeal, could face up to six years in prison and an $8,000
fine.
In late May, Ressa spoke with NPR London correspondent Frank Langfitt
about her situation — and the state of press freedom in the Philippines
more generally — for a
program produced by Asia Society Northern California. “Every
day, I feel like Alice in Wonderland and the Mad Hatter are in charge,”
she said, in reference to her case. She described how the constant flow
of misinformation published on Facebook, a platform practically
synonymous with the internet in the Philippines, has proved especially
damaging. “Information is power,” she said. “But what happens if it’s
manipulated?”
Ressa said that the erosion of press freedom in the Philippines hasn’t
happened overnight, likening it to “death by a thousand cuts.”
“A free press is the foundation of every other right that we have,” she
said. “If we lose that, then we’re no longer a democracy.”
More:
You can listen to Ressa’s conversation in the
latest episode of Asia
In-Depth.
Image: Ezra
Acayan/Getty Images
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POLICY
A 'Romance
Gone Bad': The Battle Between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping
In
their new book Superpower Showdown, Wall Street Journal
reporters Bob
Davis and Lingling
Wei trace the U.S.-China relationship from the early
1990s to the present day, a period that encompasses China’s accession
to the World Trade Organization as well as the trade war launched by
the Trump administration.
In this
conversation with Asia Society Policy Institute Vice
President Wendy
Cutler, and Clete
Willems, former senior advisor to President Donald Trump,
Davis and Wei describe the U.S.-China relationship as a “romance gone
bad” — and assess what the present tensions might portend for the two
countries going forward.
More: The
Spring 2020 update from
The China Dashboard, a quarterly look at China’s progress
in implementing economic reforms, is live.
Asia Society Policy Institute President Kevin Rudd and Daniel Rosen,
founding partner of Rhodium Group, assess China’s economic trajectory in a
piece for Project
Syndicate. And Rudd, Rosen, and Bloomberg Chief Economist Tom Orlik
shed light on this subject in a recent ASPI conversation — you can
watch the complete
video here.
Image: Brendan
Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
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ASIASTORE
A Racial
Justice Reading List
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ETC.
The North
Korean Cyber Threat, Zoom’s Capitulation to China, Democracy vs.
Authoritarianism
- Asia
Society Policy Institute Vice President Daniel Russel
provided in-depth analysis of North
Korea’s cyber capabilities in a Q&A with Business Insider.
- The
latest ChinaFile
conversation reacted to the news that Zoom, the ubiquitous video
chat software, acceded
to China’s request that it block accounts belonging to
prominent survivors of the Tiananmen Square attack.
- Three
experts on China — Kevin
Rudd, Asia Society’s Orville Schell,
and UC San Diego’s Susan
Shirk — discussed the
implications of China’s recent high-level political
gathering in Beijing.
- Asia
Society and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology
convened a two-day panel discussion examining the impact of
COVID-19 on, respectively, the
scientific and business
communities.
- An
episode of the Asia
In-Depth podcast featured a conversation between
author and journalist Fareed
Zakaria and Rudd assessing whether democracies
or authoritarian countries have more skillfully managed
COVID-19.
- Asia
Society Australia convened a panel discussion about the impact of
COVID-19 on the international
education sector.
- Physician
and epidemiologist Dr. Larry
Brilliant engaged in a conversation about ethics,
science, and spirituality with the Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi,
president and CEO of The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and
Transformative Values at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.
- Asia
Society Korea evaluated the state of the U.S.-South
Korea relationship in a conversation featuring author
and Asia 21 Young Leader John
Delury and Marc
Knapper, deputy assistant secretary of state for
Japan and Korea.
- Delury
also joined Asia Society Korea contributor Mason Richey,
Georgetown University professor Oriana Skylar Mastro, and
Korea National Defense University professor Young-jun Kim
for a conversation about the 70th
anniversary of the start of the Korean War.
- Two prominent
voices of the food community — John Wang and Timothy Hsu
— joined Asia Society's Kelly
Ma to discuss how food
acts as a unifying force in times of crisis.
- Asia
Society Policy Institute Senior Fellow Richard Maude
and former Deputy Governor of Jakarta Sandiaga Uno
explored the impact of COVID-19 on Indonesia’s
economy and society.
- Renowned
Bangladeshi photographer and activist Shahidul Alam
shared his work and discussed the power
of the image to tell a story in a conversation with
photographer, artist, curator, and activist Ram Rahman.
Image: Getty
Images
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UPCOMING EVENTS
With
the suspension and cancellation of in-person programming due to the
outbreak of COVID-19, Asia Society is holding 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.
- Jul.
9: Asia Society Australia will convene
a private briefing with Andrew Goledzinowski,
Australian High Commissioner to Malaysia, about the Southeast
Asian country’s handling of the social, economic, and political
effects of COVID-19.
- Jul.
14: Asia Society Switzerland will present
a conversation about the future of supply chains in the
aftermath of COVID-19 with Rhodium Group Associate Director Agatha Kratz
and journalist and author Mark
Dittli.
- Jul.
14: Daniel
Markey, senior research professor at Johns Hopkins
University’s School of Advanced International Studies and the
author of China’s Western Horizon,
will participate in an
executive roundtable conversation on
Chinese foreign policy organized by Asia Society Northern
California.
Image:
Wikimedia Commons
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