Weekly Update: Asia

China – In its latest of its series of biweekly policy discussion sessions, the Unirule Institute of Economics led a discussion on potential lessons that can be applied to China from “Western experiences and civil society.” The keynote speaker was Prof. Zhi Zhenfeng from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). In his presentation, he posited that the Chinese government justifies its aversion to pluralistic democracy by claiming that traditional Chinese culture is incompatible with such political systems. His presentation engendered an intense discussion among the forum’s participants, many of whom were university students.

Philippines – The Hills Center on Corporate Governance at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) conducted another public-private dialogue session to discuss corruption issues with the government. Over the past two years, AIM has conducted more than a dozen anti-corruption training programs for small and medium-sized enterprises across the country. In addition to presenting information and anti-corruption strategies for small businesses at these workshops, AIM also gathered and documented the businesses’ experiences with and opinions about corruption in the Philippine marketplace. As part of AIM’s ongoing project with CIPE, AIM is presenting the views of the Philippine small business community to the government. This latest public private dialogue session, the third of this project, was with the Customs Bureau. Some 16 Customs officials attended, including Customs Commissioner Rufy Biazon. Numerous suggestions for reform were discussed, including the idea of making the participants of this meeting (which included AIM staff) a permanent body to help guide reform efforts of the Customs Bureau. Shortly after this meeting, AIM was visited by Ms. Sam Chanthavong, Asia Program Officer at the National Endowment for Democracy.

Thailand – The Thai affiliate of Daimler-Benz recently became the 70th Thai company to sign the Collective Action Against Corruption pledge of the Thai Institute of Directors (IOD).