Letter From the Editors

Welcome to the October issue of The Diplomat Magazine.

Power, in its simplest form, is the ability to get others to do what you want. For governments, the exercise of power is an existential question; for citizens, it can be a matter of life or death. Some states struggle to control what is theirs; in the South China Sea, open waters mean a game of cat and mouse between fishing boats and maritime agencies. Other states have the power to exercise control beyond their borders, even reaching those who have claimed asylum abroad.

Whether on the open ocean or in a prison cell, a Soviet gulag or a Swedish apartment, the influence of state authority – or the lack thereof – shapes actions and reactions.

In our cover story this month, we head to the South China Sea, where what looks like an old fishing ship waits for unlicensed fishing boats to cross the invisible border into Thailand’s exclusive economic zone. As journalist James X. Morris recounts, the boat’s mission is part of Thailand’s efforts to tackle illegal fishing. In a true tragedy of the commons, Southeast Asia’s fishing stocks have fallen as fishermen race to follow the fish that remain, traveling ever farther for fewer fish. Thailand and other governments are trying to regulate the industry while fishermen grow increasingly desperate.

Next, Swedish journalist Jojje Olsson explores how Chinese authority reaches across borders to target refugees abroad. Based on interviews with the Uyghur diaspora, Olsson describes how Uyghurs in Sweden are being coerced to provide personal information, or even spy on their fellow refugees – or else see their relatives detained in Xinjiang’s infamous “re-education camps.” Even leaving China is not enough for Uyghurs to escape the grasp of the government.

Taipei-based writer James Baron takes us back in time to the Soviet Union prior to World War II, where Chiang Kai-shek’s son and eventual successor spent a curious sojourn. Chiang Ching-kuo espoused communist ideals while studying and working in Russia, and even married a Russian. But Chiang also had to navigate the paranoia-inducing politics of the USSR under Stalin. The hard lessons he learned may have inspired the tactics Chiang himself brought to bear on the people of Taiwan decades later.

Finally, from Bangladesh, we hear the story of Mozammel Chowdhary, a long-time public transportation rights advocate who was arrested last month in a pre-dawn raid. He stands accused of extorting money from a member of the Mirpur Road Workers’ Committee. But, as our South Asia correspondent Siddarthya Roy writes, there is no Mirpur Road Workers’ Committee. The man whom Chowdhary was accused of extorting doesn’t exist at all. Chowdhary’s case is an illustration of how the Bangladesh government, nervous about the possibility of the recent student protests sparking greater unrest, is willing to distort reality to exert its will.

We hope you enjoy these stories and the many more in the following pages.