https://englishkyoto-seas.org/<Book Review>
Muhammad Asad Latif

Anoma P. van der Veere, Florian Schneider, and Catherine Yuk-ping Lo,eds. Public Health in Asia during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Global Health
Governance, Migrant Labour, and International Health Crises. Amsterdam:Amsterdam University Press, 2022.
Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2, August 2024, pp. 398-402.
How to Cite: Latif, Muhammad Asad. Review of Public Health in Asia during theCOVID-19 Pandemic: Global Health Governance, Migrant Labour, and International
Health Crises edited by Anoma P. van der Veere, Florian Schneider, and Catherine
Yuk-ping Lo, Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2, August 2024, pp. 398-402.
DOI: 10.20495/seas.13.2_398.
Link to this book review:https://englishkyoto-seas.org/2024/08/vol-13-no-2-book-reviews-muhammad-asad-latif/

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Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University398Book Reviews

Tania Murray Li
University of Toronto
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3360-8146
References
Chain Reaction Research. 2019. 28 Percent of Indonesia’s Palm Oil Landbank Is Stranded. ChainReaction Research - Sustainability Risk Analysis. https://chainreactionresearch.com/report/28percent-of-indonesias-palm-oil-landbank-is-stranded/, accessed April 22, 2024.
Colchester, Marcus and Chao, Sophie, eds. 2011. Oil Palm Expansion in South East Asia: Trends andImplications for Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples. Moreton-in-Marsh: Forest Peoples
Programme and Sawit Watch.
Geertz, Clifford. 1963. Agricultural Involution: The Processes of Ecological Change in Indonesia. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Li, Tania Murray and Semedi, Pujo. 2021. Plantation Life: Corporate Occupation in Indonesia’s Oil
Palm Zone. Durham: Duke University Press.
Nusantara Atlas. 2022. Atlas of Deforestation and Industrial Plantations in Indonesia. Nusantara Atlas.
https://map.nusantara-atlas.org/?s=c3bd3baead6b67739d0a1a3e882e7d87, accessed April 22, 2024.
Transformasi untuk Keadilan Indonesia(TuK). 2018. Tycoons in the Indonesian Palm Oil. TuK Indonesia.
https://www.tuk.or.id/2019/03/tycoon-in-the-indonesian-palm-oil/?lang=en, accessed April 22,2024.
Varkkey, Helena. 2012. Patronage Politics as a Driver of Economic Regionalisation: The IndonesianOil Palm Sector and Transboundary Haze. Asia Pacific Viewpoint 53(3): 314–329. https://doi.
org/10.1111/j.1467-8373.2012.01493.x.

Public Health in Asia during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Global Health
Governance, Migrant Labour, and International Health Crises
Anoma P. van der Veere, Florian Schneider, and Catherine Yuk-ping Lo, eds.
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022.
Global Health and South Asia in a Time of Crisis: A Short Review
Introduction
Even though the Covid-19 pandemic may soon be behind us, researchers will be occupied foryears trying to better understand its causes and how to handle the complex issues it brought up(Ali et al. 2024). Choosing the right actions required to address public health concerns in an effective
manner while preserving confidence in public authority will be one of the challenges facing
policymakers going forward (Aslam and Gunaratna 2022). In that regard Public Health in Asia during
the COVID-19 Pandemic is relevant and provides some guidance, though it leaves certain significant
holes unfilled. The chapters in this edited volume provide an extensive study of the worldwide

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public health crisis that has plagued the world since January 2020, as well as how labor migration—a crucial component of the global political economy—complicated the virus’s spread. However,the selection of case studies feature examples that are too distinct from one another to produce
workable policy recommendations. And some of the important players have been left out of thedebate on migrant labor despite its being recognized as a crucial aspect of global health governance.

Theme and Goals of the Book
The editors’ main contention is that because Asia is a diverse continent, its nations responded tothe pandemic in a variety of ways. However, the inclusion of Malaysia and Indonesia raises
concerns about the exclusion of other significant nations such as Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and
the Philippines, all of which rank among the top ten sending countries in the world for migrantarrivals. The book would have benefited from these nations’ perspectives since it claims to be adiscussion on transnational labor migration in connection with public health in Asia. These additions would undoubtedly have resulted in a longer book, though simply one chapter per nation
would not have provided enough room for all crucial concerns. The briefness of the book’s chapters,
which provides limited opportunity for policy prescription and analysis, is another drawback.
Despite its drawbacks, the book clarifies that East Asian nations were prompt in their pandemic
response. Thankfully, none of the writers have adopted the clumsy defense that the success of
East Asian regimes may be explained by a common Confucian history and the presumed greater
willingness of inhabitants to submit to rulers. Instead, the chapters emphasize the various aspectsof state capacity that are either enabled or hindered by a small number of crucial policy decisions.
As is sometimes the case with edited volumes with several contributors, the writings in thiscollection offer a range of viewpoints on the same subject. With the notable exception of the threecoeditors, who are qualified to conduct research on global health, public policy, and politicalcommunication in East Asia, the majority of the contributors are experts on migration studies inthe region. They have produced concise, factual chapters that include a surprising number ofcurrent online references. The editors’ lack of expertise in migration studies may account for why
only two of the four essays in the section on transnational migration truly address the issue.

Covid-19 and Global South Challenges
The volume’s best chapters are the first three, which provide a global background for the initiatives
by Asian governments. In the first chapter, Satoh Haruko points out that China has not been able
to establish itself as a serious competitor to the United States for global leadership in spite of its
economic expansion in the early stages of the pandemic. According to Koga Kei, the competition
between China and the United States has shown both countries that they would be better off

400Book Reviews

learning from each other than depending on outside superpowers. This has given the nations ofthe Association of Southeast Asian Nations a valuable chance. In their examination of the long-term
effects of SARS’s unexpected spread across Asia two decades ago, Ishikawa Yumi and Kohara Mikidiscover that scientific collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) lessened thepublic’s mistrust of governments in the wake of the pandemic. Significant details are added to thestory in the next four chapters. I wish there had been a chapter on the ways in which South Asiansocieties handled Covid-19 under the most challenging conditions, including widespread poverty
and constrained state capacity. Surprisingly, these societies fared better than many much wealthiernations.
In response to the argument that China had an excessive influence on the WHO’s decision
making during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, Gong Xue and Li Xirui contend that
China’s contribution to the organization was insufficient for it to have undue influence. They goon to say that China’s health diplomacy backfired and that its fragmented and illiberal governancehindered it from responding to the pandemic in a timely and effective manner. In his chapter,
Brendan Howe contends that despite the major powers’ challenges in managing the pandemic,
middle-sized nations like South Korea took advantage of the opportunity to excel internationallyby closely following the WHO’s guidelines, and they did so rather well. Catherine Yuk-ping Lo’scase study of Taiwan reveals an even more startling paradox: despite being shut out from the global
community due to pressure from China, Taiwan managed to limit the impact of the pandemic.
Taiwan made the case for its involvement in the WHO by taking required actions prior to theglobal organization declaring the outbreak as a public health emergency of international concern(PHEIC). Anoma van der Veere argues in his chapter that Japan’s suspicion of the WHO stemmed
from the organization’s perceived over-deference to China, a perception that was reinforced by
the WHO’s delay in issuing the declaration of a PHEIC. The main lesson to be learned from thesefour chapters is that even if the WHO’s reputation was severely damaged by mistrust stemmingfrom the acts of major powers, it could still support global governance through cooperative efforts
amongst smaller nations.
The volume’s third section discusses domestic Covid-19 reaction strategies. In their chapter,
Nurliana Kamaruddin and Zokhri Idris note the value of a competent civil service in maintaining
national unity in Malaysia in times of political unrest. They also observe that the pandemic madepolitical authorities aware of the need to consider migrant workers’ rights in order to balance thegoals of economic expansion, political stability, and health security. The Korean government’s
acceptance of multilateralism and collaboration with the WHO in response to Covid-19 is discussed
by Kim Eun Mee and Song Jisun, with the important caveat that the public lacks faith in the WHO.
Nguyen Anh Tuyet observes that prior to the WHO issuing its Covid-19 warning, Vietnam, likeTaiwan, took early steps to restrict movements across its border with China. The nation’s relative
success in containing the spread of the disease may be attributed to this early intervention,

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401

though worries about the sustainability of this achievement will persist given the underfunding forthe care of vulnerable groups such as the elderly. Studying the relationship between the state andsociety in Vietnam during the pandemic, Mirjam Le and Franziska Nicolaisen note that mobilizing
the populace through nationalist appeals guaranteed adherence to public measures to contain thepandemic and strengthened the regime’s legitimacy. However, they come to the same conclusion
as Nguyen, noting that these gains were undermined by a lack of transparency and inadequate
care for economically vulnerable populations. This section’s value is diminished by the choice ofcase studies: two chapters focus on the same nation (Vietnam), and the other nations (Malaysiaand South Korea) are so dissimilar that it is hard to draw any meaningful conclusions about thebest ways to handle a health emergency like Covid-19.
The book’s fourth section is even less successful: just two of the four chapters fulfill thepromise made to explore how the pandemic affected international migration and the world economy.
Lo emphasizes the degree to which China’s Covid-19 containment measures compromised theChinese Communist Party’s (CCP) performative legitimacy and the extent to which the nation’sconfinement threatened to undermine Li Keqiang’s proposed “dual circulation strategy” for economic
growth. The strategy called for a greater reliance on domestic consumption and a decreased
reliance on exports. The Covid-19 pandemic caused significant losses in international migration,a subject that is not addressed in this chapter. The problem of international migration is tackled
head on in the second and fourth chapters. Liu Mei-Chun draws attention to the vulnerability of
Taiwan’s public health system stemming from a lack of health coverage for migrant live-in caregiversof senior patients. She advises that the gap needs to be closed in order to limit the outbreak andprotect the general public’s health. Shibata Saori notes that the WHO’s and national governments’attempts to offer guidance on public health were impacted by the socioeconomic structures invarious nations. The different versions of capitalism that exist in many nations affected thesenations’ ability to manage public health during the Covid-19 epidemic. Sylvia Yazid examines
sending nations on the other side of the labor migration spectrum. She notes that Indonesia needs
to address both the danger of transmission posed by workers returning home and the domestic
pandemic situation at the same time.

Concluding Thoughts
In summary, though this is a valuable collection of writings, the imbalance in case studies is oneof its shortcomings. One chapter per country would have been plenty. An additional chapter on
any of the nations discussed would have been insufficient to make up for the knowledge that
could have been gleaned from the experiences of other significant Asian nations that surprised
everyone by much being less affected by the pandemic than could have been anticipated given
their circumstances.

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Book Reviews

It would have been good to hear about the policies of Thailand, the Philippines, Bangladesh,
India, and Pakistan. These five nations, each in their own unique manner, produced outstanding
outcomes (Ryan 2020). When it comes to the number of fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, Taiwan,
South Korea, and the three heavily populated South Asian nations performed better than Japan,
and the Philippines’ death toll was almost identical to Japan’s. These nations did not see the same
death rates as wealthier Western European nations despite their comparatively low public investment in healthcare.
Muhammad Asad Latif
Department of Islamic Studies, Islamia University Bahawalpur
http://orcid.org/0009-0006-9378-9953
References
Ali, Manhal; Akhtar, Rakib; and Islam, Mohammad Tarikul, eds. 2024. COVID-19 in South Asia: Society,Economics and Politics. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003477563.
Aslam, Mohd Mizan and Gunaratna, Rohan, eds. 2022. COVID-19 in South, West, and Southeast Asia:
Risk and Response in the Early Phase. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003291909.
Ryan, J. Michael, ed. 2020. COVID-19, Volume 1: Global Pandemic, Societal Responses, IdeologicalSolutions. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003142089.

Just Another Crisis? The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Southeast
Asia’s Rice Sector
Jamie S. Davidson, ed.
Singapore: ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute, 2023.
Nearly all fields of social science have analyzed the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Just Another Crisis? focuses on the pandemic’s impact on the agricultural sector in Southeast
Asia. This edited volume is based on the academic products of an online seminar held during
the pandemic, in December 2021, by the National University of Singapore. The editor and thecontributors, who attended the seminar, are experts on food, agricultural policy, and economics
from research institutes in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Singapore. Asindicated by its subtitle—The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Southeast Asia’s Rice Sector—
the book sets out to evaluate the pandemic’s impact on the rice sector in Southeast Asia. The
significant worldwide negative impacts of the pandemic on the industry and service sectors can beeasily imagined. However, a novel conclusion of this book is that the pandemic did not cause aserious rice crisis in Southeast Asia, although it did have other negative effects, such as a widening