Beijing gambles on plan to boost people’s spending – Asian Media Report

China has issued a 30-point plan to boost consumption spending but expects it to do a lot of work – help the country meet its 5 per cent growth target, mitigate the effects of America’s trade war and shift the economy away from its investment-driven growth model.

Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post quoted Shanghai economics professor Shi Lei as saying the plan was the most comprehensive spending stimulus since China began opening up in the late 1970s.

The policy aims to give people more spending power by raising wages (including the minimum wage), boosting employment, enforcing paid annual leave and easing the cost of childcare and care of the elderly.

“Consumers don’t need your encouragement to spend if they have money and such encouragement won’t work if they don’t,” Shi said.

The strategy also includes measures aimed at developing new types of consumption, especially the digital economy and AI-related technologies, such as autonomous vehicles, smart wearables and robotics. It aims to promote such service sectors as online gambling, e-sports and animation, SCMP said.

Global Times, an official newspaper, said the plan put people's livelihoods first. As an example, the initiative to increase incomes had been placed in a prominent position and targeted wage and property incomes, farmers’ earnings and overdue payments.

The plan, issued by the Communist Party’s Central Committee and the State Council, China’s Cabinet, would help the transition to a more consumption-led economy, China Daily, another official newspaper, said. Consumption was critical to moving away from the old model driven by investment and infrastructure. 

A commentary in SCMP pointed out that China historically relied on key items to boost consumption. In the 1970s and ‘80s, the “three big items” were sewing machines, bicycles and radio receivers. Later, the items were colour TVs, refrigerators and washing machines. One candidate now was upgrading home appliances and vehicles to “smart” and “green” models. AI was a key focus.

Singapore’s The Straits Times said the plan to boost incomes and strengthen the social safety net came as joblessness was creeping up and the property recovery was fizzling out.

China’s consumption took a hit during the COVID pandemic and was yet to fully recover, the paper said. Economists estimated consumption would have to increase by 3 trillion yuan (more than $A650 billion) for the country to reach its growth target.

It would need to be even more than that if exports slowed down because of the Trump Administration’s tariffs, the paper said.

‘School of fish, flock of geese’ – junta cannot crush rebels

Myanmar’s military junta is losing the fight against rebel forces because the resistance is rewriting the rules of insurgency, in the optimistic assessment of one leading scholar.

“The future of Myanmar is no longer in the hands of the military,” says Burmese-American scholar and retired US Army officer Miemie Winn Byrd. “It is being shaped by those who refuse to live under it.”

Writing in The Diplomat, the Asian online newsmagazine, Byrd says the military crushed uprisings in 1988 and 2007 and initial protests following the 2021 military coup. But four years later the resistance has defied expectations, forcing the military into a losing battle.

The resistance seems fragmented, she writes. It is made up of a mix of people’s defence forces, ethnic armed organisations, local militias and the National Unity Government. It lacks a single leader or headquarters.

Using analogies with animal life, she says the resistance is like a school of fish – decentralised, adaptive and impossible to crush with a single blow – and like a flock of geese – rotating leadership to keep up momentum.

The lack of a single leader is a strength rather than a weakness, Byrd writes. “Different groups operate semi-independently,” she says, “but share intelligence, resources and a common goal: overthrowing the junta and establishing a federal democracy.” 

The junta’s weakness, and its desperate need for international support, were on display during military leader Min Aung Hlaing’s recent meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

An article in The Straits Times says: “Some countries seem happy to bow even before the whip is cracked.” It quotes the junta chief as telling Putin Russia has become the No. 1 country in the world. Putin, he said, was not merely the leader of Russia but of the world.

However, the article notes the visit underscores a deepening realignment with Russia that could alter the country’s grinding conflict. 

“While the spotlight often falls on China’s growing sway with Myanmar…Russia wields plenty of clout a well, especially as an arms supplier,” the analysis says.

US media shutdown creates void for China, Russia

The Trump Administration last week shut down US Government media outlets Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia, strangely viewing them as agents of radical propaganda.

Elon Musk called the outlets radical-left, crazy people talking to themselves and wasting $US 1billion a year.

Yet the move has been applauded by Asia’s most authoritarian countries – Cambodia, Myanmar and China.

The Diplomat said former Cambodian leader Hun Sen expressed support and appreciation for the decision. “This is a major contribution to eliminating fake news, disinformation, lies, distortions incitement and chaos,” he said.

The Myanmar regime said it would end years of divisive foreign propaganda.

But the magazine noted VOA and RFA for years had reported in depth on corruption and human rights issues in Cambodia and did voluminous reporting on Chinese human rights abuses, particularly against the Uyghurs of the Xinjiang region.

China’s Global Times newspaper said in an editorial VOA was widely recognised as Washington's carefully crafted propaganda machine. Almost every malicious falsehood about China – on human rights in Xinjiang, on Taiwan, Hong Kong, the South China Sea and the China-virus narrative – had VOA’s fingerprints all over it.

“VOA has now been discarded by its own government like a dirty rag,” the editorial said.

But The Indian Express said in its report the decision raised serious questions about press freedom, US diplomacy and America’s role in countering misinformation about authoritarian regimes.

Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia had played pivotal roles in disseminating unbiased news to regions under authoritarian rule, the paper said.

China and Russia were eager to fill the void created by the decision, the Hong Kong Free Press news site said. It said a 2022 study by the US think-tank Freedom House had found China had ramped up its international media footprint by offering free or low-cost content. Russia aggressively challenged the West through the government-run outlets Sputnik and RT.

HKPA said: “The targeting of VOA, [RFE and RFA] not only freezes some of the most dogged reporting on countries with heavily restricted media but it comes after years of concerted efforts by Beijing and Moscow to promote their own worldview.”

Indonesia’s planned ‘super party’ a family affair

Joko Widowo finished his time as president of Indonesia five months ago. He was later dismissed from his former political party after a long struggle with its leader, Megawati Soekarnoputri. Yet he remains strongly influential and has plans to extend his influence into the future.

Jokowi, as he is called, has been hosting meetings with government officials and political figures, The Jakarta Post reports. This raises questions about his impact on the administration of his successor, Prabowo Subianto, the paper says in an opinion piece. Among his guests was Hashim Djojohadikusumo, Prabowo’s brother and top adviser.

The meetings have been held in Jokowi’s home in Central Java.

The paper quotes political analyst Adi Prayitno as saying the meetings show Jokowi still has power. “His advice is sought after and deemed important,” Adi says. 

The Straits Times says Jokowi is preparing to use his popularity with Indonesians, earned over 10 years in power, to form a super party – Partai Super Terbuka. This would be a public limited company with shares owned by the public. The stakeholders would be involved in decision-making.

Jokowi has reached the constitutional limit of two terms and cannot again run for president. But having a political “home” would boost his influence and could help his son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, Indonesia’s vice-president, and his son-in-law, Bobby Nasution, governor of North Sumatra province.

The story quotes political scientist Cecep Hidayat of the University of Indonesia as saying the super party might boost Jokowi’s influence.

“This Super Party can be his strategy to have a political vehicle,” Cecep says.

Financial shenanigans bedevil another PM

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has suffered a dramatic drop in support, after only six months in the job. His Cabinet’s approval rating has plunged from 40 per cent to 26 per cent, a new low point. Disapproval jumped from 44 per cent to 59 per cent.

The cause? An apparently minor financial scandal that voters are judging harshly. Ishiba’s office recently distributed gift certificates worth about $A1000 each to 15 new MPs from his Liberal Democratic Party. 

Japanese voters are sensitive to financial wrongdoing. Ishiba took over last September following the resignation of Fumio Kishida, who had been mired in a party slush-fund scandal. 

A poll conducted by The Asahi Shimbun newspaper found 75 per cent of voters considered Ishiba’s gifts to be a problem. The paper said this week that even among LDP supporters the gifts were seen as a problem.

In another story, the paper said Ishiba had apologised for handing out the gift vouchers. But the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party had demanded that Ishiba appear before a Diet (parliamentary) ethics committee to explain the gifts.

CDP leader Yoshihiko Noda argued that the gifts might have breached a law that bans donations related to political activities.

The paper said in an editorial that Ishiba’s claim that there was no legal issue would not resonate with the public. His actions signalled, at the very least, a troubling lack of political sensitivity.

“As a prime minister with a tenuous grip on his own party, Ishiba relies heavily on public support to keep his administration stable,” the editorial said. “If his ‘reflection’ fails to resonate with the people, his hold on power will become increasingly difficult.”

A feature article in The Japan Times gives a broader context for Ishiba’s woes: the Liberal Democratic Party has lost more than 60,000 members over the past year.

An ageing, and declining, population and growing differences between urban and rural voters presented challenges to the LDP (and other parties) in recruiting and maintaining a solid membership base.

“The [LDP] turns 70 years old on Nov. 15 but … the birthday celebration is likely to be muted,” the article said.

New church may become Cambodian cathedral

The human cost, through mass murder and starvation, of Pol Pot’s merciless Khmer Rouge regime is barely calculable yet they destroyed only one building in Phnom Penh – the Roman Catholic cathedral. They tore it down brick-by-brick, leaving a wasteland.

Now, 50 years later, workers are putting the finishing touches to a new church, the first to be built in Cambodia since the Khmer Rouge terror. It is expected to be consecrated in November and might be designated the city’s new cathedral.

“The cathedral was the most beautiful building in Phnom Penh and they tore it right down to the foundations,” historian Thierry de Roland Peel told ucanews.com, the Asian Catholic news site. “[T]his was an expression of hate, right down to the last block in the foundations. They, the Khmer Rouge, hated so much.”

The $US 3million new church, featuring a blend of Khmer and traditional Catholic architecture, will be finished in July.

Parish priest Father Paul Chatsirey said there were about 100,000 Catholics in Cambodia before 1975 and as many as 40,000 were killed by the Khmer Rouge. Catholics began returning to the country after the arrival of UN peacekeepers in 1992 and the population is now about 25,000.

The old cathedral held 10,000 people. The new church will seat 700.

“We are a very young church,” Chatsirey said. “Here, we are like a small village. We are proud that we can see the church rise again.”