Foreseeable: A Podcast Series by Global-is-Asian

There was a lot of media attention when a Pew Research Center study came out in late 2020 saying that 61 percent of citizens in 14 major economies hold unfavourable views of China. And especially that public opinion of China in the United States was historically negative.

But what about public opinion inside China? How did Chinese citizens view these same 14 countries?  That’s exactly what our guests found out. Their survey revealed that the negative feelings are largely mutual, particularly Chinese views of the US, which 77 percent responded was “very unfavourable" or "somewhat unfavourable"

The survey was authored by Songying Fang, Associate Professor of Political Science at Rice University, Adam Liu, Assistant Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy who are with us now, and Xiaojun Li, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia, who was unfortunately unable to join us.

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After a tense and controversial election period, Joe Biden is now set to become the next president of the United States. We asked Assistant Professor Yongwook Ryu to give us his perspective on the past four years under the Trump administration, as well as on what the Biden administration has in store for China and the rest of Asia.

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Prior to the US elections, the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy held an instalment of their Asia Thinker Series titled “Asia’s Takeaways from the US Elections” featuring Visiting Senior Research Fellow Drew Thompson. Now the elections have come and gone and Joe Biden is set to become the 46th President. So we asked Drew to give us a more detailed look at what's in store for a Biden administration.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the nature of education in ways that few other events could. Adopting technology to work, live and learn from home while staying distant from others has affected millions. A recent instalment of the Asia Thinker Series (After the Pandemic) moderated by Associate Professor Suzaina Kadir, Vice Dean of Academic Affairs at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, discussed what is in store for education in the post-COVID-19 era. After the session, Global-is-Asian caught up with Associate Professor Suzaina Kadir as well as Associate Professor in Practice Francesco Mancini, Associate Dean of Executive Education programmes at the school.

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Razeen Sally is Associate Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and Chairman of the Institute of Policy Studies, the main economic-policy think tank in his native Sri Lanka. His research and teaching focuses on global trade policy and Asia in the world economy. He has also written on the history of economic ideas, especially the theory of commercial policy.

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James Crabtree has been the Mumbai bureau chief for the Financial Times, a senior policy advisor in the UK Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit and was a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Today, the journalist and author is an Associate Professor in Practice at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

His latest book, The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India's New Gilded Age takes an in-depth look at the “…billionaire class in a radically unequal society” where the country’s top 1% now own nearly 60% of its wealth.

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Thirsty Cities: Social Contracts and Public Goods Provision in China and India is a book written with one overarching, broad question in mind: Why does authoritarian China produce more public goods than democratic India? The book’s author is Selina Ho, Assistant Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. She specialises in Chinese politics and foreign policy, with a focus on the politics of water and infrastructure. I asked her why she decided to write this book.

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The third instalment of Asia Thinker Series: Talkback discussed state capacity, trust, and privacy in the post-COVID-19 era. The episode featured Singapore’s Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, John Micklethwait of Bloomberg and Ms Rana Foroohar from the Financial Times and was moderated by Associate Professor in Practice James Crabtree from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

To follow up with some of the topics raised during the episode, we caught up with Anubhav Gupta, Assistant Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

Having joined the school in January this year, Professor Gupta is one of the school’s newer faculty. He says “it's been quite a start”. His research focuses on the charitable or nonprofit sector of the economy and the governance issues surrounding them.

He was able to add an interesting perspective to the conversation of governments and their response to COVID-19.

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The second episode of the Asia Thinker Series Talkback was titled: After the Pandemic "A Test of Resilience: Workplace Innovation and Strategies"

It featured Jane Lim of Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority, Shirin Hamid of the Asian Development Bank and was moderated by Assistant Professor Taha Hameduddin from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and can be viewed on the school’s Facebook page.

After the panel, there were still some unanswered questions from several viewers, so we caught up with Professor Hameduddin to give him a chance to respond.

I started by asking him what were his key takeaways from the panel?

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In his recent book, Climate Change and Natural Disasters:, Vinod Thomas, Visiting Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy writes about “The knowledge - action gap,” when it comes to solving the climate crisis.

And he should know.

In his career, Professor Thomas has been at the forefront of evaluating and making policy recommendations for green growth and action on climate change at institutions like the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank Group.

What does he mean by the knowledge - action gap, and what are some of the causes?

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