Oceania

Attempts by the United States and Japan to intercept North Korean ballistic missiles headed toward Guam could fail and undermine the credibility of missile defense.

Now that the reverie aboard the USS Intrepid has receded into memory, it is time to ask just what, precisely, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull achieved on his recent visit to New York and meeting with U.S. President Donald J. Trump. First of all, there is no doubting the importance that the meeting took place. Ignore the criticism of President Trump for keeping Prime Minister Turnbull waiting and for cutting their exchange short. It would not have mattered which world leader was standing by in New York—nothing could have prevented the U.S. president from celebrating the passage of the healthcare bill through the House. But if that criticism was unwarranted, so too was the feverish anticipation, among Australian commentators, for this first face-to-face encounter between the two leaders. Much of that anticipation is attributable to the panic among a number of senior Australian opinion leaders following a rocky January call between Trump and Turnbull. In the wake of that conversation, the White House only reluctantly committed to honoring a controversial refugee settlement deal—signed by President Obama—whereby asylum seekers held by Australians in offshore detention camps will be resettled in the United States. That the call provoked the hysteria it did among Australian opinion leaders reflects something of a paradox in how debate over the alliance is conducted in Australia. Critics of the relationship were quick to argue that Trump’s brusque tone was reason enough for Australia to distance itself from this administration. Equally, the alliance’s strongest and loudest advocates in the Australian media also cried foul, believing that Washington was not treating Canberra with the respect they feel it deserves. Australian journalist Peter Hartcher, for example, a powerful advocate of the alliance, labeled the call “a case of alliance shock for Australia.” Turnbull’s visit to New York did not feature prominently in U.S. reporting. Then again, Australia rarely does. Its contribution to wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan are not often mentioned in the United States, and U.S. presidents in memoirs of their time in office rarely allocate much, if any, space to dealings with Australian counterparts or to the alliance itself. The pageantry aboard the USS Intrepid centered around perhaps the most powerful historical theme in the bilateral relationship: the United States’s pivotal role in saving Australia from a Japanese attack in the Second World War. The two leaders were there to mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea. In recent years, this heroic narrative of fighting together shoulder-to-shoulder has been broadened to include the two countries’ record in fighting alongside each other in every major conflict since World War I.  Judging from the euphoric reporting in Australia in recent days, however, you could be forgiven for thinking that, prior to the New York visit, the alliance was on the brink of collapse. According to The Australian’s Foreign Editor, Greg Sheridan, and that newspaper’s editor-at-large, Paul Kelly, the commemoration of the Coral Sea battle offered the idyllic setting in which President Trump could be inducted into the historic rites and rituals of the bilateral relationship. But the alliance was never in crisis, despite one difficult phone call. It is deep and broad enough to prosper even if the leaders in the respective capitals do not have a strong personal relationship. In any case, the “testy” phone call in January between Turnbull and Trump was nowhere near as contentious as U.S.-Australian discord over the Suez crisis in 1956—when Australia supported the British and French military action against Cairo, ignoring President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s call for restraint. It is nothing like the divergence of approaches between President John F. Kennedy and Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies over how to handle Indonesian President Sukarno’s claims on West New Guinea in the early 1960s, and Sukarno’s policy of confrontation with Malaysia. Canberra supported the Dutch retaining control of West New Guinea, and wanted U.S. guarantees of military assistance in the event of Australian forces coming into conflict with the Indonesian military during Sukarno’s confrontation policy. On both counts, Canberra was disappointed by the response from the White House.  In the case of West New Guinea, Kennedy argued that it was better to assuage Sukarno’s nationalism rather than push him into the arms of the Indonesian communist party. In addition, in the event of trouble over Malaysia, Kennedy only promised logistical assistance to Canberra. Any tension today is also nothing remotely like the frustration felt by Australian Prime Minister John Howard in 1999. Then, U.S. President Bill Clinton refused to commit U.S. ground troops under the banner of the United Nations to stop the bloodshed in East Timor, triggered by the fall of the Suharto regime and Timor’s process of separating from Indonesia. In New York, Prime Minister Turnbull sounded rather more confident than most allies in the region about the future of the U.S. administration’s Asia policy, which remains in flux. Far from watching how that policy begins to settle, the Australian leader argued that the “commitment to the peace, stability [and] the rule of law” in Asia had been ”renewed by President Trump, for which we thank you.”   But as history shows, Turnbull should not assume that the pomp and pageantry on display aboard the USS Intrepid means that the president will treat Australia differently from other US allies in the region. The cold, hard facts for Canberra—proven time and again since the signing of the ANZUS treaty in 1951—is that the United States will—quite properly—act in a way that maximizes its own interests. No U.S. president in the past has allowed the bilateral history to cloud their assessment of U.S. priorities in the Asia-Pacific, especially those related to China, Indonesia or the structure of regional strategic and economic architecture.  Is there any reason to believe that this would change with Trump? The proposition is highly doubtful. The event in New York thus perpetuates a grand Australian delusion. It assumes that the United States will elevate this kind of sentiment above its own self-interest when it comes to the conduct of its foreign affairs. It allows hope to dictate to judgment about where Australia might sit in U.S. priorities.  Australia may well be more important to the US now than at any time during the Cold War: a point of reassurance for Canberra.  But that doesn’t mean that Australian and U.S. interests will always align. The mooring of the relationship to memory means that the harder conversations that Washington and Canberra need to have may become more difficult to initiate. But these conversations must be had—about China’s rise, Beijing’s progressive militarization of the South China Sea and, above all, renewing the public arguments for the importance of the U.S.-Australia alliance. The conversations are all too easily lost amidst a sea of complacency and nostalgia. James Curran is professor of History at Sydney University and a non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy.

James Curran is Professor of History at Sydney University and a non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy. He was recently in India as a guest of the Australian High Commission. Since Donald J. Trump’s election the very word “transactional” has sent a shiver up many an allied spine in Europe and Asia. But not in New Delhi. The Indian reaction to Trump’s rise has been somewhat different. Instead of alarm, there has been calm; instead of panic, patience. Amongst the foreign policy elite in New Delhi, there is much to like in Trump’s positions on China, his search for a more cooperative relationship with Russia and his revival of a more hard line, “war on terror,” rhetoric. There is hope that he will adopt a tougher stance on Pakistan. And defense cooperation with Washington is unlikely to lose steam in the years ahead. For Australian analysts and commentators, this more sanguine reaction is striking. Many in Canberra are still reeling from the controversy over the leaking of a private phone conversation between President Trump and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, in which the new U.S. leader strongly criticized a refugee deal with Australia that had been struck by the Barack Obama administration. India certainly has its own issues with Trump on immigration—in particular, his intention to reform H-1B visas—but many in New Delhi counsel the need to avoid allowing the issue to hamstring the relationship so early in Trump’s term of office. Here, Turnbull’s judgment in raising a contentious issue in his first conversation with Trump is seen as a salutary lesson. This newly transactional approach suits India just fine for the moment, but it’s probably more a case of keeping one’s head down as the Trump administration continues to search for a settling point. As such, enduring questions remain in Canberra, and elsewhere in the region, about New Delhi’s willingness to adopt more of a strategic role commensurate with its growing economic weight. Indeed, with President Trump’s continuing pressure on allies and partners to do more, repeated in his recent address to Congress, India too will find that the United States and others will look to see whether India starts to spread its strategic wings. An abiding question remains: just how readily will India seek to play more of a geopolitical role outside its own neighborhood? Indian confidence abroad is growing. Along with developing what former Australian Foreign Affairs Secretary Peter Varghese calls “the institutional horsepower of a great power,” Prime Minister Modi has been pursuing an active foreign policy, particularly with other regional powers. Some Indian think tanks now even talk of India “punching above its weight.” This is good news for New Delhi’s partners in Washington, Tokyo, and Canberra as they look to Modi to keep growing his country’s Indian Ocean capabilities and to India more generally to help shore up the liberal world order. And it is clearly backed up by policy momentum. As Japan and India look to further harmonize their respective strategic visions—witness the coming together last November of Modi’s “Act East” policy and Abe’s “Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy”—Australia-India cooperation has also been expanding. Following the elevation of the relationship to a “strategic partnership” in 2009, bilateral maritime dialogues and exercises have followed, and a civil nuclear cooperation agreement has now entered into force. The two countries have also agreed to hold a “2+2” meeting with their defense and foreign secretaries. Continuing uncertainty over Trump’s Asia policy has only prompted a renewed call for further, deeper cooperation between Australia, India, and Japan, and it should be noted that there is already an annual trilateral meeting of these countries’ foreign secretaries. As Australian High Commissioner Harinder Sidhu stresses, “small group diplomacy will matter more over time in the Indo-Pacific. Small groups, overlapping groups, and so-called ‘minilateralism’ are important because every strategic issue we face is different and will engage different countries in different combinations.” Others are now reviving middle power coalitions as a means of overcoming the constraints imposed by a zero-sum view of U.S.-China regional dynamics. Thus C. Raja Mohan and Rory Medcalf have recently argued that such coalitions can not only answer Trump’s call for allies and partners to do more, they can help “shape the regional order and not simply accept the results of U.S.-China competition, collision or collusion.” Sometimes the premise for more middle power coalitions, however, is based on the assumption of rapid U.S. retrenchment from the region. This view sees in Trump’s abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and his conflicting statements on the need for U.S. allies to stump up more for their own self-defense the seeds of an Asia without the United States. One Indian analyst even put forward the view that the current American strategic predicament in Asia is akin to that facing UK policymakers in the late 1960s, when the decision was taken to withdraw British military forces from “East of Suez.” “One blink,” said this analyst, and “the U.S. will be gone.” It is a dubious assessment based on a flawed interpretation of history. The proponents of middle power coalitions can be somewhat defensive, too, on the question of whether these arrangements will be seen as yet another means of containing China. They stress that so long as ministers and officials watch their language carefully, Beijing will come to respect such gatherings, acknowledging that the enlargement of its sphere of interest cannot come at the expense of its neighbors’ interests. Skeptics are not convinced, asking how a middle power coalition that holds security dialogues, shares intelligence, exchanges data on maritime surveillance, and seeks to build military and maritime capabilities throughout the region can avoid being viewed by Beijing as some kind of willful act of containment or encirclement. However suave and smooth the rhetoric, there remains a significant problem of presentation here. There is also the problem of recent history: namely the fate of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. Conceived by Japanese Prime Minister Abe as an “Asian Arc of Democracy” and formed in 2007, it brought together the United States, Japan, Australia, and India and was accompanied by the collective military exercise entitled “Malabar.” In recent weeks the former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating has caustically dismissed the revival of the quadrilateral proposal as, “recklessness on an international scale,” pointing precisely to the problem of its likely reception in China. The criticism is overblown, but it is not entirely inaccurate. After all, it was former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s apparent deference to Chinese sensitivities that lay behind his unilateral abandonment of quadrilateral activities in early 2008. It is an Australian walkout that Indian officials remember only too well. There is, however, a momentum towards greater cooperation among India, Japan, and Australia—particularly at the official level—that seems difficult to stop, especially in the age of President Trump.

Professor James Laurenceson is Deputy Director of the Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI) at the University of Technology Sydney. News last month that a U.S. Navy carrier strike group had moved into the South China Sea raised expectations that under President Donald J. Trump the United States might dramatically step up freedom of navigation patrols (FONOPs) in the South China Sea. This in turn raises questions about how U.S. allies such as Australia, which has refused to join these patrols in the past, might respond to a shift in policy. The Trump administration has yet to formally designate China a currency manipulator as promised during the election campaign, although the president himself has not shied away from labelling it as such in interviews.  Nor has the administration moved beyond strong rhetoric to slapping tariffs on Chinese imports. But the South China Sea could provide the theater for President Trump’s tough words on China to become tough actions. The president has vowed to boost military spending, including on the navy. Several members of his administration, such as chief strategist Steve Bannon, have suggested that the United States and China could go to war over the South China Sea in coming years. Secretary of Defense James Mattis also has struck a hawkish tone on the South China Sea in the past, albeit this has been tempered more recently. If the administration decides to dramatically increase the number of FONOP patrols in the South China Sea, Washington will almost certainly be going at it alone, despite significant concerns about China’s militarization of parts of the South China Sea among U.S. partners like Singapore, India, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Australia. Over the last two years, U.S. admirals have regularly hinted that Australia and other countries should also be running freedom of navigation patrols that penetrate the twelve-nautical-mile zones around Chinese-claimed features in the South China Sea. To date, no U.S. partners in the region have taken up the invitation from Washington. Australia has been seen widely in Washington to be the most likely candidate to join a new wave of stepped-up FONOPs. But the Australian position does not appear to be changing, even with the change in administration in Washington and a potentially tougher U.S. policy on the South China Sea. Canberra supports the right of the United States to run such patrols in accordance with both countries’ understanding of international law. At the same time, as Foreign Minister Julie Bishop explained to the Australian parliament last October, Australia has resisted joining FONOPs because it is the government’s view that doing so would only escalate tensions in the South China Sea. There is another factor that possibly helps to explain the limited Australian and regional response to Chinese assertiveness in recent years, even if it is rarely stated officially. A claim made repeatedly is that more than $5 trillion of global commerce passes through the South China Sea annually. However, the bulk of this trade is to or from China, which Australian officials believe Beijing does not want to impede. Foreign Minister Bishop was reported to have delivered the message that Australia would not join FONOPs to President Trump’s foreign policy team in a visit to Washington last week. That the Australian media, after reports of a tense phone call between the Australian prime minister and President Trump, is alert to signs of Prime Minister Turnbull buckling to any pressure from President Trump, including on FONOPs, actually makes it less likely that Turnbull will commit to joining U.S.-led FONOPs. There are, to be sure, voices in Australia that advocate joining the United States in conducting FONOPs in the South China Sea. Last November, Peter Jennings, the Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a Canberra-based think tank, said that if President Trump pressed on the issue: “I think the only sensible answer is we too, like the Americans, should be undertaking freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea.” In contrast, just last week, a respected former Australian defence chief, Angus Houston, expressed his support for the government’s view that joining U.S.-led FONOPs in the South China Sea would be unwise. Last week also saw a visit to Australia by Indonesian President Joko Widodo. Shortly before his arrival there was some excited commentary that Australia and Indonesia might do joint South China Sea patrols themselves. But such talk is not new and the final joint statement issued by the two countries made no mention of such plans; President Widodo has, overall, focused Indonesians on domestic issues rather than trying to stake out a role on major regional challenges. If any Australia-Indonesia joint patrols ever do materialize, they will likely focus on disaster preparedness and environmental management, not testing China’s territorial claims. There is one possible development that could cause Australia to change its current approach and embrace U.S.-led FONOPs. That would be if China began dredging at Scarborough Shoal. Last July, an international panel in The Hague found the shoal to be a high-tide elevation. This means that it could be a feature upon which China could attempt to base a territorial claim and claim a twelve-nautical-mile territorial sea. Still, following the tribunal’s other findings that China had violated international law by building on low-tide elevations and causing environmental damage within the Philippines exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea, dredging at Scarborough and then using it to base a territorial claim would be highly provocative, and could cause Canberra to reconsider its approach to FONOPs. For now, however, even if Washington increases the frequency of its freedom of navigation patrols, the Australian strategy is likely to remain unchanged. Canberra will continue focusing on de-escalating tensions and prioritizing diplomacy in dealing with the South China Sea.

Professor James Laurenceson is Deputy Director of the Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI) at the University of Technology Sydney. A common assessment among Australian opinion leaders is that the start of the new U.S. administration has pushed Australia closer to China. Hugh White, a Professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University, said last week that the now infamous phone call between President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had shown Australians that they can no longer trust the United States. During the presidential transition period before Trump took office, Peter Hartcher, a prominent international affairs commentator with no fondness for China---he once described China as a fascist state comparable to ISIS---declared that the United States had walked away from global leadership while China was stepping up. He added that for relatively small open economies like Australia, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent stand against rising protectionism is “tremendously appealing.” The U.S. withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is seen as pivotal in Australia. Without it, Australia will gravitate towards other trade deals. These will, potentially, be deals in which China plays a prominent role such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Late last month, Director of the U.S. National Trade Council Peter Navarro said that those who had reached the conclusion that countries like Australia would now seek out deals involving China were wrong. “They’d be right if we [the new U.S. administration] weren’t going to go right to Japan and Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Thailand and negotiate bilateral deals.” In other words, he was suggesting that the new U.S. administration would be replacing TPP with a series of bilateral deals across the Asia-Pacific. Yet responding to news of Donald Trump’s electoral victory, Australia’s Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, contradicted this assessment that Canberra would not try to push RCEP. “Should the TPP not go ahead, then the vacuum that would be created is most likely to be filled by RCEP, the free trade agreement that comprises the ASEAN countries, China, Australia and others, at its core,” Bishop said. Perhaps of even greater concern to Australia is that a straightforward reading of the president’s chief trade advisor’s comments indicated he was unaware the United States and Australia already have a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA), enacted more than a decade ago. Another interpretation is that Navarro knew about the existing agreement but the Trump administration plans to seek to negotiate a better deal with Australia. But as Foreign Minister Bishop told her visiting Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, last week, this suggestion of a renegotiated U.S.-Australia deal simply is not credible. The United States already runs a massive trade surplus with Australia, $U.S. 18.5 billion in 2015-2016. Under the FTA between the two countries this surplus has doubled since 2005 when the deal was inaugurated. Navarro also claimed that “nobody in Asia wants to deal with China ... They are afraid of China.” This is decidedly not true of Australia. A poll by the Sydney-based Lowy Institute last year found that more Australians regard China as its “best friend” in Asia than Japan. Another poll by the U.S. Studies Centre at the University of Sydney found that 48 percent of Australians thought the relationship with China should be stronger, compared with 32 percent who said the same about the United States. While the United States is responsible for Australia largest bilateral trade deficit, China delivers its largest trade surplus, $U.S. 15.9 billion last year. This surplus was invigorated by an FTA struck at the end of 2015. There are plenty of other instances of cooperation between the two countries. In June 2015 Australia joined the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank after satisfying itself that the new institution’s governance would reflect best practice. This was despite a reported phone call by President Obama asking for Australia to stay out of the bank. In October of that year, the Australian government did not consult Washington before approving the sale of the Port of Darwin in Northern Australia to a Chinese company. Right next door is a facility that hosts rotations of U.S. marines. Australia’s Department of Defense and intelligence agencies concluded the port deal presented no security concerns. Australia also has resisted suggestions by at least two visiting U.S. admirals that it should run freedom of navigation patrols within twelve nautical miles of Chinese-claimed features in the South China Sea. Foreign Minister Bishop said that such a move would only add to tensions. But Australia maintains a balanced policy and is not shy of criticizing China. This choice not to join freedom of navigation patrols did not stop Australia from describing China’s decision to declare an Air Defense Identification Zone in the East China Sea in 2013 as “unhelpful” and not conducive to promoting regional stability. Nor did Australia mince words in calling for China to respect the decision of the arbitration panel that ruled heavily in favor of the Philippines last July on disputed matters in the South China Sea. Australia has also continued to run its long-standing “Operation Gateway” maritime surveillance patrols in the South China Sea without fanfare, even as these patrols faced more frequent Chinese challenges. The point is that Australia doesn’t hesitate to engage with China, despite the differences that sometimes arise. It uses a pragmatic China policy based on a clear-headed assessment of Australia’s own national interests. And if U.S.-Australia relations deteriorate, Australia will probably expand, pragmatically, upon its ties to China. At a joint press conference between the Australian and Chinese foreign ministers last week, numerous opportunities to deepen relations were outlined. Foreign Minister Bishop said that Australia would seek to link its Developing Northern Australia scheme with China’s One Belt One Road mega-project. Australia welcomed further RCEP negotiations with China, and other member countries. Simplified visa procedures will make it easier for Chinese tourists to visit Australia while more Australian students will receive government financial support to study in China. China’s Foreign Minister Wang enthusiastically endorsed all of these initiatives. Nonetheless, Foreign Minister Bishop has also continued to urge greater U.S. engagement in Asia. In Los Angeles last month she said: “Most nations wish to see more U.S. leadership, not less, and have no desire to see powers other than the U.S. calling the shots.” This call presumes that U.S involvement in the region will bolster core Australian interests like upholding a rules-based international order. If the Trump administration decides to tear up the rulebook by, for example, imposing a blanket tariff on Chinese imports, it should expect Australia to join with China in issuing a rebuke of U.S. trade policies. If, on the other hand, it is China that breaks the rules---perhaps breaking from diplomacy and dredging at Scarborough Shoal in the Exclusive Economic Zone of the Philippines---President Trump can count on a sympathetic ear in Canberra.

James Curran is Professor of History at the University of Sydney and the author of the recent Lowy Institute Paper Fighting With America: Why Saying No to the United States Wouldn’t Rupture the Alliance. Now that much of the tumult over the recent phone call between Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and U.S. President Donald Trump has abated, there remain some uncomfortable conclusions to be drawn from this drama in U.S.-Australia relations. And the conclusions are relevant not only for these two longstanding allies. The first is that the episode provides more evidence—if more was in fact needed—that the president has brought into the Oval Office the volatility that characterized much of his election campaign. He now seems ready to honor the refugee deal with Australia negotiated with the Obama administration, under which around 1,200 asylum seekers currently in Australian detention camps on Manus Island and Nauru are to be resettled in the United States. But he did so apparently through gritted teeth. And to have such a tone in the first substantive exchange between Canberra and the new administration in Washington does not augur well for the alliance relationship in the short term—particularly if a serious international crisis erupts that requires substantial cooperation between the two countries in the next four years. The U.S. president then chose to use Twitter to air his contempt for the deal. The treatment from the White House sends a clear message to Canberra—Trump’s approach will seemingly take little to no account of past ties and historical legacies, including Australia’s participation, alongside U.S. forces, in conflicts dating back more than seventy years. One likely effect is that Australian leaders will lower their expectations of what can be achieved with this administration. The view of the long term, however, may be different. The second, perhaps more important lesson to be drawn from the tension of the past few days, however, is that the U.S.-Australia alliance is strong enough to endure these headwinds. In the past, there have been far more serious instances of disagreement and divergence in policy goals than the current spat. Indeed, Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush all had moments of substantial tension with Australian leaders. Nixon in particular had very tense relations with Australian leaders. In reaction to strident Australian government criticism of the Christmas bombings of North Vietnam in December 1972—Labor government ministers in Canberra publicly denounced the White House as “maniacs” and “thugs”—President Nixon put the alliance into a deep freeze, refusing to invite Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam to Washington for an official visit. That impasse was broken six months later, but Nixon continued to be so enraged by Whitlam that U.S. national security agencies were instructed to explore options for ending intelligence sharing with Canberra, stopping military exercises and, most crucially, withdrawing U.S. intelligence facilities from Australian soil. Cooler heads ultimately prevailed, but had Nixon’s directives been put into action, the U.S.-Australia alliance would have been left far weaker. Then, in the 1980s, it was Australia that reneged on a bilateral deal entered into by a previous government in Canberra. When Robert Hawke became prime minister in 1983, he inherited a promise to the Reagan administration from his predecessor Malcolm Fraser to allow Australian airfields to be used by the United States in monitoring tests of the MX missile. Hawke agreed to honor the deal, but internal Labor Party criticism subsequently caused him to ask Secretary of State George Schultz that Australia be excused from involvement in the testing. Schultz agreed, minimizing Hawke’s embarrassment at having to withdraw Australian assistance. In this latest fracas, Turnbull refused to return fire, trying to downplay any bilateral disagreements. But though he has been able to keep the U.S. president to the deal thus far, the Australian government may also need this shock to recognize that some of the assumptions that underpinned the relationship in the past—that the two countries’ history of military alliance will necessarily foster close ties for the future—will cut no ice with the Trump White House. Some harder thinking is required. The new U.S. administration may still ask for something in return for honoring the refugee deal. This transaction might take the form of Canberra dispatching an Australian special forces unit to Iraq or authorizing an Australian freedom of navigation patrol through the South China Sea. But to date Turnbull has steadfastly refused to sanction such patrols, and another Australian deployment to the Middle East might well generate a strong public backlash. Turnbull and subsequent Australian leaders may have to say no to Washington more often in future, and rediscover a rhetoric that emphasizes a greater degree of Australian self-reliance while maintaining the military alliance with the United States. Canberra’s deepening engagement with Japan, India and Southeast Asian nations is likely to continue—perhaps with a greater urgency as Australia, like other allies in the region, waits to see what kind of Asia policy this administration embraces. A shifting Australian approach may also mean having to disabuse senior U. S. policymakers of the view that Australia’s support for Washington’s objectives is simply automatic. And it means too that Australia commits further to hedging between Washington and Beijing. Canberra has already begun hedging by granting a ninety-nine year lease on the port of Darwin to a Chinese company and showing circumspection as to whether the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty applies in the case of any U.S./China conflict in the East China Sea.

In October 2016, the New Zealand government withdrew the visa waiver arrangements for South African passport holders. It said the decision resulted from the number of South African visitors who used the visa waiver to visit family and friends in Zealand, rather than traveling to New Zealand for business or tourism. It also said that some South African visitors were overstaying the three month visa waiver limit or did not return to South Africa. The New Zealand government also cited the number of visitors who presented counterfeit South African passports and were denied entry by the New Zealand authorities. In December 2016, the South African government announced that it was in turn withdrawing the visa exemption for New Zealand passport holders. The home affairs minister said that South Africa’s visa waiver policy was based on reciprocity. South Africa and New Zealand are both members of the Commonwealth; white South Africans have long looked at New Zealand as a possible immigration destination. According to the 2013 New Zealand census, 54,279 or 1.36 percent of the country’s population had been born in South Africa. South Africa was the fifth largest source of New Zealand immigrants: ahead of it was the United Kingdom, China, India, and Australia. Over 90 percent of South African immigrants have arrived in New Zealand after the end of apartheid. The majority of whom are white. Contrary to conventional wisdom, in absolute numbers the white population of South Africa is larger now than it was at the end of apartheid. Though, whites at about 8.3 percent of the population are a smaller proportion of the total population than in 1991 (according to the last census prior to the end of apartheid whites represented 11.7 percent of the population ). Whites continue to immigrate to South Africa, notably from the U.K. The tit for tat withdrawal of the visa exemption by the two governments does not appear to have larger significance beyond New Zealand’s effort to eliminate visa abuse. South Africa’s action appears to be purely reciprocal.

Rachel Brown, Lincoln Davidson, Gabriella Meltzer, Gabriel Walker, and Pei-Yu Wei look at five stories from Asia this week. 1. Afghan female athletes forced to the sidelines. Despite annual donations to the tune of $1.5 million from the American government and other Western donors to women’s sports in Afghanistan, these programs have proven to be an abject failure in the promotion of women’s empowerment and equal participation. The efforts have been riddled by corruption; the cricket program “consist[s] of little more than a young woman with a business card and a desk” and the women’s soccer team has not played an international match in years. The most corruption has been in women’s cycling. The cycling program was originally hailed as a model for women’s sports in the Middle East defying prevailing gender norms. However, the National Olympic Committee terminated its coach and manager, Haji Abdul Sediq, once it was revealed that he had married and divorced three young athletes during his tenure. Another rampant problem is growing violence against women in a conservative, patriarchal culture where many women do not feel safe to publicly train and instead often leave the country to pursue their athletic ambitions. Shamila Kohestani, an Afghan soccer star who aspired to return to Kabul to coach, commented that Afghan officials’ support for women’s sports programs was motivated more by their popularity with donors than a belief in female athletes. 2. U.S. Justice Department asserts its oversight over espionage cases. In a private letter to federal prosecutors around the country, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates wrote that all cases relating to U.S. national security would require “coordination and oversight in Washington.” Although that procedure had always been intended, the explicitness of Yates’ letter was likely due to a growing number of botched espionage cases against Chinese-Americans over the past two years. Among the most prominent were cases—all of which were later dismissed—against two pharmaceutical scientists accused of leaking proprietary information to a Chinese drug manufacturer, a hydrologist accused of stealing national dam data, and a physics professor accused of sharing U.S. superconductor technology with China. But at the same time, there have also been real cases of recent espionage against the United States by Chinese nationals, including Su Bin, who tried to steal information on the F-22 and F-35 jets, and Mo Hailong, who conspired to steal corn seeds engineered by DuPont Pioneer and Monsanto from an Iowa field. Just yesterday, a Chinese businesswoman was indicted for procuring underwater drone equipment for the People’s Liberation Army Navy. Hopefully, increased Washington oversight means fewer legal mistakes for cases that may be driven more by suspicion than actual facts. 3. China reasserts control over web. As China’s National People’s Congress passed a law restricting the activities of non-governmental organizations in China, the Chinese government also reasserted its control of the Internet. On April 19, Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping convened a meeting with top officials and heads of technology companies, where he said that “the fact that core technology is controlled by others is our greatest hidden danger.” Chinese leaders have long expressed fears that the United States uses technology companies to spy on the rest of the world. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the country’s chief Internet regulator, put forward a proposal this week that the government take a financial stake in major domestic technology companies and be given a seat on the companies’ governing boards. Meanwhile, CAC Director Lu Wei met with his Russian counterpart at the first China-Russia Cyberspace Development and Security Forum in Moscow. At the meeting, Igor Shchegolev, Russia’s top Internet regulator, echoed the Chinese position on technology, reportedly saying that to protect national interests, Russia “can’t rely on transnational IT firms.” As the two governments come together to promote a norm of “cyber sovereignty” in opposition to the norm of openness online promoted by the United States, it remains to be seen if other countries will join them. 4. Papua New Guinea shuts down asylum detention center. Australia’s asylum processing system faced new challenges this week following a ruling by Papua New Guinea’s Supreme Court to close the Manus Island detention center hosted for Australia. Papua New Guinea’s prime minister confirmed the decision, creating a dilemma for Australia over whether to relocate the approximately eight hundred and fifty asylum seekers held on the island. Australia operates a much-criticized policy of “offshore processing” for refugees in which prospective asylum seekers are sent to small Pacific islands. The government argues that this deters migrants from embarking on perilous ocean journeys to Australia.  The Australian and Papua New Guinean governments are currently debating who has responsibility in the case. One option would be for Australia to relocate asylum seekers to other detention sites at Christmas Island or Nauru. Troubles also exist on the latter island, however, which hosts over four hundred and fifty asylum seekers in an open camp. A twenty-three year-old Iranian man detained on Nauru died today after setting himself on fire in protest of camp conditions. These two incidents may force Australia to rethink its immigration policies. 5. Party organizers receive jail time in Taiwan.  The organizer of a “Color Play Party” that caused a fire at a Taiwanese water park last June was sentenced to four years and ten months in prison. The party, which took place at Formosa Water Park in New Taipei City, featured colored powders  sprayed into an audience of roughly one thousand guests. A subsequent explosion killed fifteen and injured more than four hundred party goers. Some victims sustained burns to over 80 percent of their bodies. Lu Chung-Chi, owner of Color Play Asia, which organized the party, was found guilty on April 26 of negligence causing death. The families of the victims and many members of the public thought that the sentence was too light, but prosecutors said that under Taiwanese law the maximum prison sentence for workplace negligence is five years and so four years and ten months is comparatively harsh. Relatives of the deceased were also angry that Lu was the only person indicted over the fire and eight other park executives were not charged due to lack of evidence. Some family members protested outside the courthouse on Tuesday. Taiwan’s high prosecutor’s office has ordered the case to be reopened and for the district prosecutors to reexamine the culpability of other suspects in the tragedy. Bonus: Movie studios “whitewash” Asian characters. Upcoming movie adaptations of books have drawn ire in recent weeks following announcements that characters who are Asian in the books will be played by white actresses. Major Motoko Kusanagi, the main character of the Japanese manga, TV show, and animated movie series Ghost in the Shell, will be played by Scarlett Johansson in the show’s live-action adaptation. Marvel Studios’ movie adaptation of the Doctor Strange comics will likewise feature a character who is a Tibetan man in the original being played by Tilda Swinton, a white woman. Critics have accused the studios of continuing the Hollywood tradition of reducing the role of Asian characters in film. Producers of both films argue the casting decision is a business imperative. Ghost in the Shell screenwriter Max Landis defended Johansson’s casting with the argument that “there are no A-list female Asian celebrities right now on an international level.” And Doctor Strange writer Robert Cargill suggested that casting a Tibetan would be too sensitive for the Chinese market.

Here is a quick round-up of this week’s technology headlines and related stories you may have missed: 1. Australian PM Turnbull and President Obama talk cyber. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull brought up cyber during a visit to Washington, DC, this week, saying that states should stop supporting the cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property and that Internet governance should be led by “the communities that use” the Internet, not governments. Turnbull announced a new annual dialogue on cybersecurity between the United States and Australia, to be led by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Both sides will work together to define norms for state behavior in cyberspace and create cooperative measures for responding to cyber incidents. Turnbull also said that Australia is working to counter the online narrative of the Islamic State group and noted approvingly cooperation between the U.S. government and private sector in this area. 2. We have an intractable problem? Let’s study it! Rep. Mike McCaul (R-TX) and Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) are planning to introduce a bill in Congress that would create a national commission to examine how law enforcement officials can gain access to the encrypted data of criminal suspects without weakening the privacy or security of Americans. While law enforcement has repeatedly asked tech companies to find a technical solution to the problem, security experts have said that’s impossible without severely weakening encryption. McCaul and Warner’s proposed commission intends to get around that impasse by convening tech industry executives, privacy advocates, academics, and law enforcement and intelligence officials to discuss the issue. They would make joint recommendations on both legislative and technological measures around the encryption problem. The congressmen haven’t set a date for when they’ll introduce their bill. However, others may supersede them with a less conciliatory approach. Senators Richard Burr (R-NC) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) are working on legislation requiring tech companies to put backdoors in their encryption, and state legislators in New York and California have already taken steps toward banning encrypted devices at the urging of law enforcement officials. Meanwhile, NSA director Adm. Mike Rogers appeared to announce his support for strong encryption this week. 3. A tiny ray of additional sunlight on the U.S. government’s zero-day policy. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was able to obtain more information about the U.S. policy on zero-days. Regular readers of Net Politics will remember that last September, the U.S. government, for the first time, published a heavily redacted version of the policy that outlines how the it handles zero-day vulnerabilities. We analyzed the issue here. This week, the EFF able to obtain a new copy of the policy with slightly less redactions. The document now reveals that the United States engages in offensive cyber activities and that the zero-days the government discovers it acquires can be used for both offensive and defensive purposes. Quelle surprise!

After an intraparty leadership contest on Monday, Australia has a new prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, the former environmental minister, communications minister, and leader of the Liberal Party. Turnbull’s ascension to the prime minister’s job was not unexpected, as this was the second intraparty leadership challenge this year in the governing coalition. The Wall Street Journal reported that, before the intraparty leadership contest, surveys of Australian voters “pointed to defeat for the ruling Liberal-National coalition at federal elections due next year.” Leadership contests between elections have become common for both major parties, adding to instability in Australian politics. In the weeks following the leadership contest, Turnbull likely will seek to emphasize continuity with many of former Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s policies, even though he had dissented in the past on a range of issues including same-sex marriage, climate change, and others. But before Australia’s next election in 2016, Turnbull may indeed move his coalition slightly closer to the center of Australian politics, a shift that will be necessary to win in 2016. For one, Turnbull does seem committed to addressing climate change through emissions trading, investing in renewable energy, and, potentially, larger cuts in carbon emissions that the Liberal-National government has announced. (Turnbull once openly mocked the former prime minister’s climate change strategy.) Turnbull previously had to renounce his relatively centrist position on climate change in order to mollify supporters within his coalition, but in the run-up to a general election, he could push the coalition to adopt a more aggressive climate change policy. On regional diplomacy, Turnbull is likely to push forward closer ties with Indonesia; Australia-Indonesia relations are just now recovering from the diplomatic break following the execution of Australian drug traffickers in Indonesia in April. Australia also is highly likely to rejoin the naval exercises led by the United States and India known as Exercise MALABAR. Australia originally joined the exercises but pulled out nearly a decade ago after China expressed anger at what Beijing perceived a growing containment strategy by the United States and its partners in Asia. On immigration, Turnbull is unlikely to prove much different than Abbott, whose hard line on refugees was relatively popular with the Australian public. Australia’s tough refugee strategies---which include processing refugees offshore including on islands in the Pacific and turning back boats of refugees---have been described as a “failure to respect rights of asylum seekers and refugees” by Human Rights Watch. Some of the strategies also do not appear to have worked; a plan to pay Cambodia to take refugees already appears to be stumbling, as the first group of refugees transferred to Cambodia is already trying to leave that country. Yet Turnbull, who in the past has argued for taking in more Syrian minorities and other endangered refugee groups, is unlikely to abandon a policy that polls well with the public before an election. (Australia has agreed to a small increase in the number of Syrian refugees it is willing to take in.)

Ashlyn Anderson, Lincoln Davidson, Lauren Dickey, Darcie Draudt, William Piekos, and Ariella Rotenberg look at the top stories in Asia today. 1. Hong Kong legislators reject a proposed framework for electing the next chief executive. The plan would have allowed the people of Hong Kong to elect a chief executive from a slate of three candidates chosen by a pro-Beijing nominating committee. While the measure was expected to fail—it needed to pass by a two-thirds majority—a botched attempt to boycott the vote by pro-Beijing lawmakers resulted in an embarrassing defeat of 28-8 that left one legislator in tears. When the election guidelines were announced in August 2014, they led to massive demonstrations, known as the Umbrella Movement, that occupied Hong Kong’s busiest thoroughfares for weeks; now that the proposal has failed, it’s not clear what’s next. Beijing has already expressed its disapproval, and some members of the opposition say this is the best offer Hong Kong was going to get from Beijing. 2. The Islamic State group makes inroads into South Asia. Amid heightened tension in Kashmir, the flag of the Islamic State was sighted waving in the area this week—a sign of the group’s growing South Asia presence. India’s Intelligence Bureau recently alerted police forces across India to the possibility of Islamic State terrorist attacks, and police reportedly busted the first Islamic State terror cell in India last month. Recent social media trends also prompted the Afghan Taliban to send a letter to the leader of the Islamic State this week warning of the consequences of fomenting dissent between jihadi groups in the region. Through its online campaigns, the Islamic State threatens to overshadow al Qaeda’s subsidiary branch in South Asia. The group has gained new recruits who were previously members of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, the Afghan Taliban, and Kashmiri militant groups. 3. Australia accused of bribing human traffickers. Relations between Indonesia and Australia continue to worsen, as Jakarta displayed tens of thousands of U.S. dollars that a smuggler captain claims was used by Australian officials to bribe his ship to turn back. If proven true, these officials would have violated Australian, Indonesian, and international law. In response, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott refused to confirm or deny the allegations, and declined to give Indonesia an answer; Foreign Minister Julie Bishop rejected the bribery claims and indicated that Indonesia was at fault for failing to secure its borders in the first place. A recently released Lowy Institute poll shows that Australians’ feelings toward Indonesia have fallen to their lowest point in a decade. 4. North Korea facing the worst drought in one hundred years. The United Nations food agency reported that North Korea faces further food shortages as production in the country’s main agricultural region is expected to be cut in half. Potato, wheat, and barley harvests found in the countries breadbasket are said to be on track for a 50 percent reduction. Additionally, reservoir levels are sinking and wells are drying up as a result of low rain- and snowfall this past winter. Low water levels are having a devastating effect on rice crops, a staple for the North Korean diet. Due to limited information access, international organizations are unable to say whether or not people are starving, but the situation is certainly a serious one. The country suffered a devastating famine in the 1990s and has relied on international food aid since, but support has fallen sharply in recent years because of North Korea’s human rights abuses as well as its refusal to allow monitoring of food distribution. 5. Philippine Muslim rebels take step in process toward peace. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front handed in dozens of weapons at a ceremony this week, signaling the organization’s willingness to work with the government of President Benigno Aquino. In exchange for their weapons, the government provided a cash handout of 25,000 pesos (or $555) for each combatant to use toward education, training, and livelihood. With more than 10,000 fighters and an extensive arsenal of heavy weapons, the largely symbolic handover is a successful step in a tentative peace deal, with complete disarmament scheduled to take place when the Filipino legislature passes final accords on the Bangsamoro Basic Law. If the law receives a congressional seal of approval, an autonomous region will be established in Muslim-dominated areas of the southern Philippines, marking an end to more than four decades of fighting with the rebel group. BONUS: North Korea touts cure for MERS. As Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) cases appear in Thailand and level off in South Korea, North Korea is claiming it has developed a vaccine for the disease that also cures SARS, ebola, and AIDS. The state-owned KCNA reported Thursday that scientists developed the “Kumdang-2 Injection” by extracting compounds from ginseng that has been injected with the “micro-elementary fertilizers” of rare earth elements. North Korea has been praising the benefits of the drug, which is currently available for purchase online at “koreabud.com.”

An article this week in the Financial Times effectively summarizes the situation for Australia’s foreign aid agencies, noting that Canberra has “earmarked $8.4 billion in foreign aid cuts” for the years up until 2018. The reductions in Australia’s aid budget will reduce Australia’s overseas aid by about one third, as compared to aid figures in 2012, according to research by Australian National University. The cuts are being made as Canberra is struggling to maintain budget discipline, and as the Australian economy is buffeted by a global fall in commodity prices and the slowdown in the Australian real estate market. Some budget cuts thus are probably necessary, and would have been implemented by any Australian leader in office at this time. The cuts are substantial. As The Guardian reports, “according to the "generosity index” compiled by Stephen Howes, a development economist at the Australian National University, by 2017-18 Australia’s budget would be the least generous in the history of the country’s formal aid program, with a ratio of 0.21. The generosity index measures aid relative to gross national income (GNI).” As the FT notes, Australia is one of the most generous donors among wealthy countries, and these cuts come at a time when many other rich countries also are slashing their overseas assistance. In a recent report, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warned that, while development aid figures were stable in 2014, aid to the poorest nations fell last year, and aid to these least developing countries is likely to continue falling for several years. In addition, in many countries in Asia Australian aid and expertise is even more valuable than actual figures can reveal. Australian aid programs rely on Australian expertise in Southeast Asia and the Pacific as well as Australian volunteers, and the country, naturally so close to Southeast Asia and once the colonial power in many Pacific states, produces far more experts in these regions than other big OECD donors. (China is not an OECD member, but it also now turns out vast numbers of experts on Southeast Asia and the Pacific.) Australia also has been willing to take the lead in new areas for aid in the region, being one of the first rich democracies to attempt to have a human rights dialogue with the Myanmar government and to consider new aid disbursements to Myanmar, well before Naypyidaw’s reform process began in earnest. Australia also dominates the total pool of aid in some of the most vulnerable countries in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, meaning any cuts will have a disproportionate impact on these nations. In Papua New Guinea, where Australia plans to cut its assistance by five percent, Australian aid accounts for as much as seventy percent of all overseas development aid. (The exact figure is not known, as it is difficult to completely assess China’s aid to Papua New Guinea.) Similarly, in Indonesia, where Australia is either the third or fourth largest aid donor, Canberra plans to cut assistance drastically, by around forty percent, between fiscal year 2015 and fiscal year 2016. How will Australia’s cuts impact its influence in Asia, where it has long used it expertise and its aid to punch above its weight on regional affairs? Aid cuts will likely have a follow-on effect, reducing the number of Australians going abroad to work on aid projects in the region, and thus diminishing Australia’s soft power. At a time when no one is stepping forward in the region to lead on critical issues like migration, democracy and rights in changing nations like Myanmar, or regional economic integration, will Australia’s retreat make addressing these challenges even more difficult?

Ashlyn Anderson, Lauren Dickey, Darcie Draudt, William Piekos, and Ariella Rotenberg look at the top stories in Asia today. 1. Thailand lifts martial law and puts in place a “new security order.” Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej approved a request from the country’s junta to lift martial law on Wednesday and trade it for a so-called new security order. Most experts agree this choice was a cosmetic one, not substantive, that was an attempt to improve the appearance of Thailand to the outside world while maintaining absolute power for the junta. In the place of martial law, the new security order invokes Article Forty-Four of the military-imposed interim constitution, which grants General Prayuth Chan-ocha, head of the junta, expansive powers in over the Thai government. Human Rights Watch described the change as an indication of “Thailand’s deepening descent into dictatorship.” The article effectively grants General Prayuth the power of all three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial. 2. South Korea issues settlement to Sewol Ferry students’ families. The South Korean government on Wednesday announced it would pay about US$380,000 to each family of students who died when the local tour ferry Sewol capsized nearly a year ago, on April 16, 2014. The official death toll was 295. In November, the Sewol’s captain was sentenced to thirty-six years in prison for gross negligence, after a judge acquitted him for homicide (for which prosecutors sought the death penalty). Victims’ relatives have sought an independent inquiry into the cause of and response to the sinking; several of them have shaved their heads in protest (a symbolic act common in protests in Korea) over the decision to forgo investigation for the monetary compensation. The incident has called into question not only national safety standards and practices, but also the government’s ability and choices made during the rescue operations. Civil society groups continue to lead protests throughout the country, including in Seoul’s central Gwanghwamun Square near the president’s house. 3. Cyberattack targets anti-censorship forum. Github, a coding site that also hosts tools to bypass China’s Great Firewall, experienced a large distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that started last Thursday. DDoS attacks flood a site with traffic in an attempt to take it offline. A number of security researchers have alleged that international web traffic to sites that use analytics tools from Baidu, China’s largest search engine, was hijacked and redirected toward Github’s site; some analysts have suggested that the Chinese government was behind the attack. A Baidu spokesman said the firm found no security breaches and was working find the source of the issue; meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry stated that “it is quite odd” that whenever a website is attacked elsewhere in the world, Chinese hackers are to blame. Github provides access within China to a mirror of GreatFire.org, a website that monitors blocked websites and keywords, and the Chinese-language version of the New York Times, both of which are censored in China. 4. Vietnamese factory workers on strike over new pension law. Thousands of workers occupied the factory compound of Taiwanese-owned Pou Yuen, a supplier for Nike and Adidas, in Ho Chi Minh City this week. New pension rules slated to come into effect next year will stop many workers from being eligible for lump-sum social insurance payments when they leave a company, delaying payouts until retirement. The strikes—a rare challenge in a country where large, unsanctioned gatherings are prohibited—ended peacefully after the Vietnamese government agreed to amend the law, allowing laborers to choose when they receive retirement payouts. 5. Deadline to join AIIB passes, with forty-six founding members, including some surprises. Beijing had set March 31 as the deadline to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) as a founding member; committed countries include Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, India, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Norway also applied to join, considered a surprise since in 2010 it awarded a Nobel Peace prize to a dissident Chinese writer, causing a rift in Sino-Norwegian relations. Taiwan’s announcement that it would seek to join also comes as a surprise; Beijing responded it would include Taiwan should they join “under an appropriate name.” Protests over the prospect of submitting to the name change have ignited protests in Taipei. Noticeably absent was regional economic powerhouse and U.S. ally Japan, which—along with the United States—dominates international financial institutions such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank. Other strong U.S. allies in the region, including Australia and South Korea, have pledged to join. The United States has viewed the AIIB with wariness, raising questions about its transparency and governance. Bonus: Australia triumphs over New Zealand in the cricket World Cup final. In what was considered a one-sided and anticlimactic match, Australia dominated to bring home their fifth World Cup title. New Zealand came into the match on a wave of eight successive wins, but couldn’t pull off a first World Cup victory. Despite their win, the Australian team was met with some disapproving eyes for its poor sportsmanship and how it chose to celebrate the victory.

Ashlyn Anderson, Lauren Dickey, Darcie Draudt, William Piekos, and Ariella Rotenberg look at the top stories in Asia today. 1. Australian prime minister announces new strategy to confront terrorism threat. Following the release of an official report on the terrorist attack in Sydney in December, Prime Minister Tony Abbott delivered an address at the Australian Federal Police headquarters announcing a new national counterterrorism strategy. A senior official will be appointed to oversee the new measures, which include tightening immigration, curbing the rights of Australians involved in terrorism, strengthening policing powers, and cracking down on hate speech. Abbott asserted that, “on all metrics, the threat to Australia is worsening,” pointing to recent arrests and ongoing serious investigations of terrorist suspects. His remarks provoked criticism from Muslim advocates and leaders who felt that Abbott was stigmatizing the entire Muslim community. 2. Hong Kong woman sentenced for abusing maid. Law Wan-tung, who was convicted of beating, starving, and threatening her Indonesian maid, was sentenced to six years in prison (as well as a small fine of less than US$2,000) for her crimes. The maximum sentence was seven years. In a statement, Erwiana Sulistyaningsih, the abuse victim, stated that she thought the sentence was too light and sends “the wrong signal to employers who mistreat or violate the rights of their domestic workers.” The case has brought to light the difficult conditions for domestic helpers in Hong Kong. As many as 300,000 women, mostly from Indonesia and the Philippines, work in Hong Kong, and are, by law, treated as second-class citizens. 3. Xi unveils his “Four Comprehensives.” Chinese President Xi Jinping revealed his new political theory to the world this week in front-page commentary and headline broadcast throughout state news outlets. The People’s Daily enumerated the Four Comprehensives as such: comprehensively build a moderately prosperous society; comprehensively deepen reform; comprehensively govern the nation according to law; and comprehensively strictly govern the Party. The last comprehensive, on Communist Party discipline, is seen as a reference to Xi’s antigraft efforts, which have been a hallmark of his first years in power. Xi’s slogan follows a long line of political slogans from China’s leaders, from Deng Xiaoping’s “Reform and Opening Up” to Jiang Zemin’s “Three Represents” to Hu Jintao’s “Scientific Outlook on Development.” 4. Anti-corruption court in Bangladesh issues arrest warrants for former prime minister. Begum Khaleda Zia, former prime minister and leader of the Bangladesh National Party (BNP), stands accused of embezzling $650,000 while serving as Bangladesh’s prime minister from 2001 to 2006. Zia has denied the charges, claiming they are politically motivated. The rivalry between Zia and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has characterized politics in Bangladesh for the past two decades. In January 2014, Zia called for her supporters to boycott the national elections; Hasina’s Awami League swept to power with more than half of the seats uncontested. Since January, on the one-year anniversary of the national elections described by the BNP as a farce, political protests by BNP supporters have led to more than one hundred deaths. Amid the ongoing violence, a Bangladesh-born American known for his blog about secularism in politics was hacked to death in Dhaka on Thursday. 5. Family of jailed Malaysian opposition leader files for royal pardon. After Malaysia’s highest court upheld a five-year prison sentence for opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim on charges of sodomy earlier this month, the leader is now back in jail. Anwar has maintained the charge against him was politically motivated; his family claims he has been “tyrannized” and his health is at risk the longer he remains behind bars. Despite an initial denial from Anwar’s lawyers, family members are seeking a royal pardon that would allow him to retain his parliamentary seat. The petition for his pardon, however, will carry no weight in the Malaysian government if not signed by Anwar himself. Bonus: Mummy found inside of a Chinese Buddha statue. CT scans done by researchers at the Netherlands’ Meander Medical Center reveal a detailed view of the preserved remains of a Buddhist monk, estimated to have died in the twelfth century. The mummy is the only one of its kind ever found. The process of self-mummification was considered by some Buddhists to be a form of enlightenment and involves embalming prior to death, rather than posthumously as was done in Egypt. Correction: The Meander Medical Center is located in the Netherlands, not Norway as originally stated.