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GLOBALISATION AND LIBERALISATION: THE EVOLUTION OF SHARIA LAW IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

A parallel legal system applying mostly to Muslims and full of unique jargon, sharia law is difficult to understand and remains shrouded in mystery to outsiders. Consequently, many mistakenly associate sharia law as stuck in the past, upholding outdated and oppressive norms such as the subjugation of women as second-class citizens. In reality, the dynamic nature of Southeast Asian sharia law means that it is constantly shaped by external forces, particularly the surge of globalisation that threatens to upend long-standing traditions embedded in its code. In this study, we analyse the impact of globalisation on Southeast Asian sharia law, focusing on the Muslim-majority countries of Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia. Through identifying changes in laws relating to gender and sexuality, religion and finance, as well as examining the public reactions to landmark sharia law cases, we posit that rather than liberalising sharia law as expected, globalisation instead results in conservative pushback that strengthened the conservative tenets of sharia law.

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Globalisation and Liberalisation

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LITTLE GREEN DOT: THE EFFICACY OF AUTHORITARIAN ENVIRONMENTALISM IN SINGAPORE

Despite its poor natural resource endowment, Singapore has climbed the global ranks in terms of social and economic development, and the city state’s sustainability is no exception. As illustrated by the extensive Singapore Green Plan 2030, Singapore has made vast efforts in the sustainability scene globally—charting ambitious targets to achieve UN’s 17 SGD’s and to achieve long-term net zero emissions by the second half of the century. Singapore’s substantial sustainability efforts have been attributed to the top-down approach the country has taken towards environmental policy known as Authoritarian Environmentalism (AE). In our research, we evaluate the aptness of this top down approach in achieving the goal of sustainability. Although AE has its benefits of swift implementation of environmental policy, we postulate that AE might not be the best model to follow due to the government’s economic pragmatism that has suffocated the participation of non-state actors and has led to the deterioration of local biodiversity. Finally, we highlight some elements of Democratic Environmentalism (DE) that have proven to be successful in Nordic countries, which ought to be adopted alongside AE to develop a more holistic and efficacious approach towards environmentalism.

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Little Green Dot

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LIVE, LAUGH, CENSOR: THE BENIGN VIOLATIONS IN 21ST CENTURY CHINESE POLITICAL HUMOUR

What do 草泥马 (cǎo ní mǎ, Grass Mud Horse) and 法克鱿 (fǎ kè yóu, French-Croatian Squid) have in common? Created by netizens, these mythical creatures utilise the rich variety of homophones in the Chinese language to circumvent censorship algorithms.  


The advent of social media platforms has given rise to 恶搞 (Egao), a phenomenon that has rapidly proliferated within the Chinese cybersphere, exploiting the variety of available homophones in Chinese to ridicule political figures of power and the government. At the turn of the century, popularly accessible and inherently anti-government movements like the 空椅子 (kōng yǐ zi, Empty Chair) and 我爸是李刚 (wo ba shi li gang, My Father is Li Gang) directly criticised the government’s incompetencies due to Egao’s ability to challenge the common narrative of absolute control and efficiency. Yet, when societal discourse is bounded by stringent degrees of political control, what really can mere humour achieve? Though it is a spontaneous demonstration of defiance against authority, the significance of its impact on governmental authority is debatable.


Through the analysis of specific instances of Chinese political humour and the governmental responses it triggers, our paper aims to investigate the role of online Egao, and through the analysis of case studies, reach a conclusion on the significance of political humour in China.

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Live, Laugh, Censor

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HU-XI (胡习): AN EXAMINATION OF SHIFTS IN CHINESE FOREIGN POLICY FROM 2002 TO THE PRESENT DAY

Traditionally, Chinese foreign policy has strived to “conceal strengths and bide time” (韬光养晦 taoguang yanghui), from Deng Xiaoping’s (1978-1987) focus on domestic reforms rather than attempting to carve out a sphere of influence. This matched China’s gradual reintegration into the global order under Hu Jintao’s leadership (2002-2012) as Western interests were increasingly accommodated in international relations. On age-old questions, such as the position of Taiwan or China’s role as a regional power, the government worked with other powers towards a peaceable solution. Since the ascension of Xi Jinping in 2012, however, Chinese foreign policy has seen a shift towards active policies leaning towards the assertion of political power through his formulation of a “new form of international relations” (新型 xinxing). It has renewed grievances with regional foes, raising the stakes in conflicts that were once thought resolved. Internationally, it has attempted to establish an independent source of power from the West, building an alliance of authoritarian states, such as Venezuela, Russia and Iran, to counter Western hegemony. This study explores the manifestations of this shift in foreign policy from the presidency of Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping and evaluates the potential reasons that may explain its development.

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Hu-Xi (胡习)

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QUESTIONS

Asked during the Live Symposium

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EVOLUTION OF SHARIA LAW IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

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What got your group interested in this topic?

Sharia law plays an important role. Wanted to see how this changes with context, felt it was relevant with regard to various global developments etc. globalization and eurocentric ideas

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Why did it lead to a conservative backlash?

In terms of social perceptions, within the Islamic world, two ends of scale. On one hand, people staunchly hold on to their conservative beliefs as a more fundamentalist group due to perceived western imposition of western values (globalisation being essentially a Western concept, involving cross-cultural exchanges which inevitably subjugate traditional values to ‘modern’ ones evidenced by UDHR, etc. On the other hand, some see how interpretations of the text can be more in accordance with values associated with western liberalization, as sharia law is always evolving to suit the needs of the times. Hence there will always be two camps — one which holds on to their perceptions of the Qur’an and how Sharia Law should be fundamentally applied, and one which views Western influence as an inevitable mark of globalization (just depending on how Westernization is viewed)

Politically, leaders see how fanning the flames of conservative backlash can win them points (just as how right-wing leaders appeal to the xenophobic/anti-globalisation sentiments of their base, Southeast Asian leaders are also quite savvy in riling their base up) -- for instance the Bruneian sultan portrays himself as a final defender of Islamic values in implementing harsher sharia penalties, which also has an effect of legitimising his authoritarian rule (any opposition is deemed ‘anti-Islamic’. So religion here is politicised for gain.

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THE EFFICACY OF AUTHORITARIAN ENVIRONMENTALISM IN SINGAPORE

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Did you guys do any sort of literature review at the socio-political climate that allows environmentalism to thrive in Nordic countries?

Actually that was our original approach! However, when you go down to it and look at the different models, the connection between the overall governmental stance and the specific environmental stance is quite clear. E.g. Norway is an advanced democracy and is big on advocacy, adn you see that translate into environmental policy, versus Singapore which is more authoritarian and goes with top-down policies. When we looked at the applicability of comparing policies, we saw that the feasilbility of using Norway’s policies in Singapore is very difficult due to Singapore’s authoritarian government. However, in our project, we didn’t want to focus too much on that because the government styles can’t be reconciled. We wanted to look at the effectiveness of the policies themselves instead of whether governments would accept them.

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How far do you think the government should be involved?

Bottom-up approach is required but right now the government is largely focused on a ground-up approach via Authoritative Environmentalism. One proposed solution is to utilise the grassroots system for environmental discussion and engagement with different stakeholders (NGOs). So in terms of setting up grassroots and promoting proper education, government involvement is important and DE will fail without this basic involvement from the state. However, after a system is established with proper channels for discussion and education, other local stakeholders from the public should be more involved in decisions made regarding environmental conservation and promotion of sustainable practices - providing the government more viewpoints to consider when formulating environmental policies that ultimately serve to benefit the environment.

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THE BENIGN VIOLATIONS IN 21ST CENTURY CHINESE POLITICAL HUMOUR

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Is the humour ineffective due to the political climate or is it also effective in other countries?

It’s only effective in countries where the government is receptive to the changes. China’s responses are mostly for show — one where they allowed a comedy show during national day celebration, created a committee for investigating corruption. These are very demonstrative. The second factor is the purpose of the humour. Oftentimes, the attitude accompanying the ideas in each joke is one of humour rather than a desire for actual change.

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What specific qualities of humour do you think are helpful in subverting power?

The qualities of humour really differs from context to context, country to country. In some cases, as concluded in our research paper, the functions of humour (in the form of political satire) may not be effective at all in subverting power if the intentions are just for collective catharsis or even a mischievous statement under the Benign Violation Theory (which as the name suggests is benign and does not purport to subvert authority of any kind) . Nonetheless, in the context of China, there are unique qualities to Egao/spoof utilized by dissidents or even just netizens that we have observed, most notably the use of homophones to evade censure and strictly enforced censors in the cybersphere. Such a technique not only evades identification and thus state reprisal, but also prolongs the ‘lifespan’ of a particular image/iconography, for instance, the grass mud horse representation of censorship itself! 

In general however, the main quality of humour useful in subverting authority are those that directly point out the absurdity of policies or actions taken by the government. For instance, in the Yunnan incident that prompted Government concession to cover-ups, the justification that the cause of death of a prisoner was due to him playing “hide and seek” was ridiculed and satirized, which not only underscores the absurdity, but by extension undermines the legitimacy of governmental claim.

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How did you find censored material like chinese memes?

Through lexicons provided on the internet (check out the Grass Mud Horse lexicon), some of the censored material has fortunately made it past the Great Firewall and onto Western Media, which has unsurprisingly garnered attention in the liberalised international cyberspace. However, alot of such “censored material” is easily circulated on Chinese social media platforms, though in closed group chats etc. In fact, netizens themselves have even come up with a whole new language (martian language) to evade censors in discussion of ‘prohibited’ materials.

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What were the uses of humor in the Chinese media?

We identified two points of humor in Chinese media. One, there are many profanities targeted towards censorship. Second, another form of humor is directly and blatantly pointed towards the government. In our essay, these are the two main categories that we framed our research on. Generally speaking, these two categories have different degrees of effectiveness in achieving the conventional function of subverting authority. 

In fact, with regards to the specific functions of humour, we identified that in Chinese media most politcal satire is not meant to be overtly subversive, especially since there is an absolute absence of formal channels of political humour in China, unlike Western Late night talk shows etc. Thereby, humour in chinese media are mostly reactive and uncoordinated efforts, and serve more as a collective catharsis for the population against the relatively more suppressive atmosphere in China. 


Nonetheless, with regard to topics that are more keenly attuned to their personal rights, humour is much more directed, for instance, with regards to corruption, we have the Li Gang Incident where humour is aimed at correcting injustice and the Empty Chair Movement for Nobel Prize Winner Liu Xiaobo making a human rights statement to the domestic and  global community.

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Given these political humour as a response to the CCP. What do you think is the future development in CCP’s response?

Ironically, the CCP has already been constantly resisting and pushing back against such unregulated political humour in the cyberspace, which has not only encouraged further retaliation from Citizens, but crystallized satirical iconographies such as the prominent Grass Mud Horse symbol - which was born as a response to a tightening of state censors in 2008. Thereby, with respect to political humour on censorship specificially, any response by CCP is self-perpetuating. Moreover, since the Government has less control on the cybersphere as compared to other platforms where they can enact punitive measures due to the anonymity of users. Therefore, the only tangible course of action is to clamp down and restrict further, which as mentioned will only prompt a further proliferation of political humour on censorship.

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Significance of humour to China that differs from political satire in other countries

[Ref. to 2nd Question] In Western countries, political satire is often more formal, whereas in China, it is much more discrete (for obv reasons). Another observation through our research and interview was that such restrictions on political satire in China is more normalised, where the citizens accept the suppression of even tangentially subversive content as part and parcel of life in China, hence it is also in some sense imbued in the culture itself.

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AN EXAMINATION OF SHIFTS IN CHINESE FOREIGN POLICY

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Has China’s increased focus on their foreign diplomacy destabilised the current global order?

Since XJP’s rise, China has been a lot more assertive. The effects on this on the global order is that China has been challenging many traditional institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank through BRICKs and the AIIB in the Asia-Pacific region. Instead of turning to these regions for investment, fund and growth, you see countries turning to China for their growth .The effect of this hasn’t fully played out yet — we don't know if China will still be as assertive when XJP stands down since this aggression seems to be a result of XJP’s leadership. For now, there has been a lot of talk about whether China is representing a global hegemon, while China has been trying to deny that it is attempting to create a global hegemony.

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Is chinese nationalism a cause or effect of foreign policy?

We saw Chinese nationalism as primarily an effect of this new foreign policy rather than a cause. The renewal of nationalism in China is very much a modern phenomenon which coincides with deliberate efforts to strengthen it, both on the part of Xi Jinping (cf. 中国梦, etc.), as well as grassroots efforts by Bo Xilai and others. The dormancy of Chinese nationalism prior to this seems to indicate that it is an effect. Obviously, these interact, in the sense that nationalism can be an effect of Chinese foreign policy that feeds back into itself and strengthens the government’s mandate. But the primary instigator probably was the government and not public sentiment, especially because the role of public sentiment in China is not as significant as in other states (although it is not meaningless).

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What exactly inspired you to choose this topic?

China is a major world player both economically and politically, and that in itself is largely due to its approach in foreign policy where we have already seen a dramatic shift towards the establishment of politico-economic ties with the Western world lasting from Deng Xiaoping’s leadership to that of Hu Jintao’s. But we noticed a more recent shift from Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping’s policy direction which had potential for study, where Xi’s policy portrays a return towards a more traditional assertiveness of power and the protection of territorial sovereignty that was the status quo before Deng.

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How do you foresee China’s foreign policies playing out in its current conflicts in future

Inclusive and exclusive mechanisms. 

Inclusive = UN and international cooperation but exclusive independent to the West. 

Trying to distance itself and establish independent spheres of influence. Etc. Asian economic spheres 

 China is looking to expand its sphere of influence, but hegemony. China’s competition with US, sees their acknowledgement of their limitations, and they do believe in a future where they work with the US, not against.

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