East-West Center in the News

(2012-06-10) "Here in Malaysia, as well as in the US and Indonesia, people are thinking about identities and their connections -- politically, economically or globally.

"Encouraging this conversation around shared languages, arts and culture will help to foster empathy and increase one's sense of belonging to each other.

"It will also increase the possibilities for collaboration, whether in schools, universities, non-profit or governments," she said here yesterday.

... "One thing I really found delightful was the number of women represented in schools and universities. It's something that a lot of people and countries can take as an example (of a place) where women's voices are heard and their careers are supported.

"I was also impressed by the dialogue within the Islamic community, where there was an intellectual emphasis on using Islam not only to reach back to the past, but thinking forward to develop a role for strong civil Islam in regional and world events."

She said dialogue without violence was important as there would always exist conflict between ideas.

"You can transform conflict into productive understanding. Once we can openly talk about our own needs and identities as a group, that's the kind of empathy generated that is much more conducive to peace. "

(2012-06-10) Charles E. Morrison, president of the East-West Center based in Honolulu, takes a decidedly diplomatic tack on the situation.

“I think it depends a lot on (Asian) domestic forces in each area, and how they see it,” he said, “but the Chinese I come in contact with are not complaining vigorously about U.S. forces in Darwin, Australia.”

... “I think Hawaii’s role is absolutely central and I think that will be increasingly the case,” Morrison said. “It seems to me that coordination becomes all that more critical and Hawaii in some ways I think even more than before, as a central place.”

... Morrison acknowledged that analysts in both the U.S. and China may interpret the policy as a potential cold war, “but I don’t think that’s a necessary conclusion from it. It depends on what else is going on in U.S.-China relations, and the economic relationship is flourishing.”

He added that the recent handling of Chen Guangcheng, the blind legal advocate who was given refuge in the American Embassy in Beijing and approval to enter New York University, “showed maturity in the U.S.-China relationship.”

The U.S. had “a much more military presence” in the world during the Cold War period with the Soviet Union, especially during the Korean and Vietnam wars, Morrison said. “I think it’s shifting back, but that doesn’t necessarily equate to an aggressive posturing. It could also equate to maintaining a very traditional U.S. stabilizing posture for the region as a whole.”

(2012-06-15) “(From what) you saw in Haiti, in Japan (and) in the Philippines, social media are becoming more and more a critical component of influencing policy and causing action,” Allen Clark, a senior consultant at the Pacific Disaster Center in Hawaii, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Clark, a senior fellow at the East-West Center here, said the more people were involved on the ground, the quicker the response would be in times of disasters.

The use of the social network also allows for instant reporting of health issues, making immediate response absolutely critical, as in the cholera outbreak in Haiti and the dengue flareups in Thailand and Indonesia, he said.

... “One of the things we found out in getting aid into an area is understanding the accessibility of that area and only the people on the ground or the ‘citizen journalists’ have that information immediately,” Clark said. “That is a very particular component of disaster response.”

... Clark said that while political leaders should stay out of it by leaving it to the experts, having a Philippine President at the forefront of relief operations for people hit by disasters was a positive point.

“People in general are looking for some sort of assurance that there is a future and the only person who can provide that assurance is the president,” Clark said. “It gives them hope and it almost always lays out a plan, although very general, on how to move ahead.”

(2012-06-16) The policy also seems to have more exceptions than rules. Its “complexity has come to resemble that of the U.S. tax code,” said Wang Feng, a sociologist and demographer, who wrote about the one-child policy for the East-West Center.

... “Rapid aging,” Mr. Wang wrote, “in the absence of a standard of living and a social safety net comparable to other aging societies, has also earned China the distinction of a country that has become old before it has become rich.”

-- Also appears in: Sound of Hope