Global Asia

When news started filtering out of China in January 2020 of a coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, alarm spread initially in Asia where cases — all linked to travelers from the city — began to crop up and then spread. The looming healthcare crisis didn’t take long to explode in country after country. Images of overwhelmed hospitals and morgues or desperate medical workers and relatives of the ill pleading for ventilators and other supplies amplified the global sense of panic. Just how bad could this get and when would it end, many asked.

Few would have thought that in this third year of the Covid-19 pandemic, the world would still be struggling to come to terms with it and mitigate its effects. To be sure, effective vaccines were developed in record time. But issues such as distribution, supply and equitable access soon emerged. So too did widespread and sometimes acrimonious debates about the most appropriate and effective national and international policy responses. Those debates continue.

In Global Asia’s September 2020 cover package, we highlighted what seemed then to be the relative successes of Asian countries, at a time when Covid-19 hospitalizations and death rates in Western countries appeared to be headed off the charts. But much has changed with the highly contagious Omicron variant of the virus. Western countries, with relatively high vaccination rates and declining hospitalizations and deaths, are increasingly embracing the idea of “living with the virus,” in part to enable their economies to abandon measures that have stymied growth.

Asia, meanwhile, seems in some respects to be behind the curve, with governments still struggling with the idea of living with the virus. Moreover, led by China, there are still strong proponents of a “zero-Covid” strategy and the need to take strong measures to wipe it out. In the cover package of this issue, we examine where the region stands now, including different policy approaches taken. The paradox of South Korea illustrates the challenge. It was previously a leader in the Covid fight, but has recently faced a surge in cases — topping 600,000 a day recently. Yet the government decided to move toward a “living with the virus” approach amid low hospitalizations and deaths. The package includes several essays organized by the Pacific Century Institute that look at the pandemic’s lessons for the global health regime.

Elsewhere in this issue, our Features section provides a look at the difficult situation in which China now finds itself in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; the implications for the rest of Asia in the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan and what it means, especially for neighboring countries; India’s decades-long struggle with how best to engage the rest of the region; and the ongoing conflict in Myanmar, where, one year after the coup that overthrew its democratic government, the military appears determined to pursue its bloody repression.

Our In Focus section takes a deep look at Indonesia’s efforts at economic and political reform and why they have been fraught with obstacles.

Our Book Review section, as always, highlights notable recent works on Asia.

Sincerely yours,

Chung-in Moon

Editor-in-Chief

David Plott

Managing Editor