Asian Affairs Policy Forum

Georgetown Journal of ASIAN AFFAIRS POLICY FORUM Beyond the Great Power Competition Narrative: Creating Jobs with Renewable Energy in Rural India Exploring Labor Politics & Resistance Behind AI Bharath Jairaj and Pamli Deka Innovation in China Yujia He and Hong Shen The Reeducation Labor Regime in Northwest India’s Emerging Gig Economy: Shaping the China Future of Work for Women Darren Byler Ruchika Chaudhary South Korea’s Dilemma: Foreign Workers in a Artificial Intelligence in South East Asia: “Homogenous Society” Upskilling & Reskilling to Narrow Emerging Timothy C. Lim Digital Divides in the Post-Pandemic Recovery Giulia Ajmone Marsan Reproduction-Driven Labor Migration from China Biao Xiang The Future of Work Published by the Asian Studies Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service Georgetown Journal of ASIAN AFFAIRS Volume 7 | 2021 The Georgetown Journal of Asian Affairs is the flagship scholarly publication of the Asian Studies Program housed within the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Established in 2014, the Journal aims to provide a forum for schol- ars and practitioners in the field of Asian affairs to exchange ideas and publish research that further the understanding of the world’s largest and most populous continent. The views expressed in this issue do not necessarily reflect those of the Journal ’s editors and advisors, the Asian Studies Program, the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, or Georgetown University. The EditorialBoard of Volume 7 of the Georgetown Journal of Asian Affairs has made the collective decision to remain anonymous. In light of recent political developments, we believe that this decision allows all parties involved to maintain their individual freedom of expression. As a student- run journal, we stand behind the academic integrity and rigor of each piece. [ii] Georgetown Journal of Asian Affairs Contents Volume 7 | 2021 1 Editor's Note Policy Forum The Future of Work 5 Beyond the Great Power Competition Narrative: Exploring Labor Politics and Resistance Behind AI Innovation in China Yujia He and Hong Shen 16 The Reeducation Labor Regime in Northwest China Darren Byler 26 South Korea's Dilemma: Foreign Workers in a "Homogenous Society" Timothy C. Lim 34 Reproduction-Driven Labor Migration from China Biao Xiang 44 Creating Jobs with Renewable Energy in Rural India Bharath Jairaj and Pamli Deka 50 India's Emerging Gig Economy: Shaping the Future of Work for Women Ruchika Chaudhary 58 Artificial Intelligence in South East Asia: Upskilling & Reskilling to Narrow Emerging Digital Divides in the Post-Pandemic Recovery Giulia Ajmone Marsan Volume 7 | 2021 [iii] Research 65 Chasing the Conservative Dream: Why Shinzo Abe Failed to Revise the Constitution of Japan Rintaro Nishimura Interviews 100 West Papuan Nationalism and #Papuanlivesmatter An Interview with Veronika Kusumaryati 108 Ethnic Politics in Indonesia An Interview with Jessica Soedirgo Send inquiries to: SFS Asian Studies Program, Georgetown University Box 571040, 37th and O Streets, NW Washington, DC 20057 Email: [email protected] [iv] Georgetown Journal of Asian Affairs Editor's Note Editor’s Note The Future of Work? A great transformation of nineteenth-century industrial capitalism was the conceptual and spatial separation of “work” and “life.” In practice, however, this division between wage work and leisure has always existed alongside evolving forms of unfree, “informal,” and household labor. Nevertheless, in recent decades, with the digital revolution and the global rise of gig work, freelancing, and temp contracts—the so-called “precarious economy”—the labor regimes developed under industrialization appear increasingly anachronistic. Governments and publics anticipate a new era of work, reigniting debates over the ethics of technology, the organization of labor, and the nature of work itself. The Covid-19 pandemic has lent new urgency to these debates. An uneven patchwork of government responses has reshaped global and local movements of goods, services, and people, with profound consequences for everyday life and work. Here at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., we shifted to virtual learning on March 16, 2020, trig- gering a chaotic rush to empty the campus and create an infrastructure online. Dispersed around the world, we experienced social relations mediated by images on a screen. Life felt arrhythmic in its homogeneity; school blended into work blended into leisure. In reality, the pandemic created a bifurcation of workers and work, one which grew out of existing hierarchies of race, gender, class, and citizenship. As students and white-col- lar workers sheltered at home, “essential workers,” gig workers, and domestic workers upheld the material infrastructure that sustained them. The cleavage between virtual and “in-person” work maps onto what appears to be an increasing polarization between intellectual and manual labor. And yet, shortages of masks, medical equipment, and vaccines returned good old-fashioned production to the forefront of attention. Are we really on the brink of a radical transformation of work? This issue of theGeorgetown Journal of Asian Affairs, produced entirely online, is animated by questions that arose from the editorial board’s own experiences of living/working/ studying during a global pandemic. In our Policy Forum, “The Future of Work," we explore how technological innovation and demographic shifts will impact labor regimes in Asia. We ask how new technologies can generate opportunities for marginalized populations, but also how they can intensify labor discipline, surveillance, and exploitation. Volume 7 | 2021 [1] Editor's Note We are also interested in mobility and migration, how government policies and socioeco- nomic pressures create or reconfigure flows of workers in an increasingly interconnected world. In the following pages, our contributors offer fresh and insightful analyses of these urgent topics. In the first Policy Forum article, Yujia He and Hong Shen move beyond the dominant narrative of U.S.-China technological competition to emphasize how both superpow- ers must confront the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on labor relations. In doing so, He and Shen draw our attention to the materiality of the labor behind AI, which requires massive inputs of human labor for creating datasets and evaluating algorithms. Crowdworkers in China who perform these more menial tasks suffer from poor working conditions, low pay, and limited opportunities for career advancement. While enjoying higher pay and prestige, more elite tech workers have organized against the 9-9-6 culture of overwork. Finally, He and Shen highlight the ways in which AI technologies threaten workers’ rights to privacy by extending surveillance and discipline within and outside the workplace. They conclude by calling for international cooperation in studying and regulating AI’s effects on workers’ rights. Surveillance capitalism also pervades Darren Byler’s article on the reeducation labor regime in Xinjiang. Byler describes how the Chinese state’s ethnic policies intersected with the interests of capital to create a system of unfree labor that draws many of its Uyghur and Kazakh workers from internment camps. In his case study of Dina Nurdybai, a Kazakh woman who had been detained in a reeducation camp and then transferred to work in a nearby industrial park, Byler shows that the camps and the factories are conceptually linked and homologous in spatial configuration and organizational structure. They are part of a singular carceral system that aims to transform Muslim populations into “a deeply-controlled unfree working class.” The next two articles turn our attention to the mobility of labor. Timothy Lim’s article examines the tension between South Korea’s demand for foreign workers and its self-identity as a culturally and racially homogenous nation. In his concise overview of South Korea’s transition from a labor exporter to a labor importer, Lim discusses how the country attempted to reconcile that tension through the creation of a two-track immigration regime that favors ethnic Koreans from China and elsewhere. However, Lim argues that recent institutional developments and public opinion polls indicate increasing support for immigration, suggesting a nascent ethic of multiculturalism. Shifting the analytical lens to the drivers of migration, Biao Xiang examines an apparent contradiction in unskilled labor out-migration trends in China: why has out-migration remained steady even as incomes rise at home? Based on original research conducted in Northeast China, Xiang argues that labor migration is driven by the time-sensitive requirements of social reproduction. He locates his analysis within post-Reform socio- economic transformations, particularly the creation of markets in education, health care, and property. Out-migration is not determined by demand for labor, but by the ever-rising costs of marriage, education, housing, and medical treatment. [2] Georgetown Journal of Asian Affairs Editor's Note Migration from rural areas sustains urban life in many parts of Asia. The Covid-19 pandemic cruelly exposed the importance and the vulnerability of migrant workers. In India, the abrupt imposition of a nation-wide lockdown on March 25, 2020 left over forty million migrants unemployed and homeless, driving a mass exodus to the countryside. Our next authors Bharath Jairaj and Pamli Deka ask how India can create jobs and achieve sustainable rural development

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