James Pach

The Asia-Pacific has changed noticeably since 2002, when the first issue of The Diplomat launched. So has the media industry generally, and the landscape for media freedom across the region. The Diplomat itself has evolved too, from a print magazine to a website, and then the addition, in December 2014, of a digital magazine. 

In the following interview, Managing Editor Catherine Putz poses several questions to Publisher James Pach about The Diplomat’s past, present, and future, and how covering Asia has and will continue to evolve into the future.

The Diplomat was originally founded in 2001, with its first print issue published in 2002. In the two decades since, much has changed – for the magazine itself, the media industry, and in the regions we cover. What initially drew you to The Diplomat?

I had the opportunity to meet the then-owners of The Diplomat in 2006. Their original aim was to make The Diplomat a foreign affairs magazine for Australia, and as an Australian who had always had a strong non-expert interest in foreign affairs, I was very drawn to what they were trying to achieve. 

Ultimately, the market was never going to be there for a dedicated Australian foreign policy publication, especially with the general downturn in print media. However, after I took over, which was around the time of the demise of the esteemed Far Eastern Economic Review, I felt that there was scope for a digital publication focused on Asia and the Pacific, and found the idea of that challenge very appealing.

How would you describe The Diplomat’s current mission? How has it evolved over the years?

In fact, since that 2009 decision to switch The Diplomat’s focus, our mission has remained fairly consistent: to provide balanced coverage of Asia and the Pacific from within the region. We can unpack that a little. 

First, too much media these days is pitched to one side or the other of the political spectrum, and ends up preaching to the choir, never challenging their readers by presenting alternative viewpoints. Although The Diplomat has a general position – in favor of diplomacy (not surprisingly, given our name), human rights, and environmental protections, for instance – given the variety of political systems and ideologies within the region, we try to present a range of perspectives. That can sometimes infuriate our readers with pieces they disagree with, but I think that’s a good thing! I think as readers we should all be challenged with alternative perspectives; suppressing ideas is never productive.

And second, I read somewhere once that the difference between an expert on Europe and an expert on Asia is that you can call yourself an expert on Asia without speaking any of the languages. Given some of the misguided Western writings I’ve read on Japan – my home for the last 30-odd years – that resonated. So at The Diplomat we make sure that our articles are written by people living in the region or who have real expertise on the region.

In the meantime, we have successfully positioned ourselves right on the border between a general interest and specialist publication. That, our two guiding principles, and our regional focus (which means that we often provide extensive coverage of issues that receive scant attention in other media), make us a fairly unique publication, and we want to preserve that.

We’re doing this interview to mark The Diplomat Magazine’s 100th issue. The digital magazine was launched in late 2014 as a companion to the website; the two are intricately related but different. How does the magazine fit into The Diplomat’s mission?

With the concept of browsing, the internet really introduced an element of serendipity into our reading. That can be highly rewarding, especially when we stumble across a gem of an article. However, many readers still find real value in a curated collection of articles. The magazine represents the best of what we’ve published over the past month, as selected by the people who are best placed to make that choice. Many readers see that as a service.

The magazine also leads with four long-form pieces each month. In an age of listicles and summaries of other articles, I remain a big fan of original long form, and the deep dive into issues they allow. I think they remain the best way to really make use of the expertise of the writers we are lucky enough to have contributing to us.

Although it is not in print, the magazine changes the character of The Diplomat. The act of curation in itself makes it something more than a website, and it has become an integral part of brand and user experience, and is tremendously popular with our readers. It will remain central to the way we present our work to our audience.

How has the media environment in Asia shifted during The Diplomat’s lifetime? We’ve been blocked in China for a few years now, for example, though that was not always the case.

Yes, we were unsurprisingly blocked in China as part of the general rise in repression under President Xi Jinping. More bafflingly, we’ve also been blocked in Vietnam. 

In the two decades since The Diplomat was founded, the media environment has deteriorated in two significant ways. 

First, from India to Hong Kong, the environment for reporting has become much more oppressive, with disturbing instances of repression that go well beyond blocking websites. There are disconcertingly few countries within the region from which The Diplomat would be able to operate freely, and I remain in awe at the courage and resourcefulness of the many contributors we have who report from countries where freedoms cannot be taken for granted.

Second, the model for a successful media business has become much more elusive. Thanks to its brilliant team, The Diplomat has been able to do a lot with relatively limited resources, but as with many similar publications the operating environment remains challenging.

When you look at Asia going forward into the magazine’s next 100 issues, what areas or trends are you watching most closely?

I’m interested in four issues in particular.

First, demographics, and specifically the aging populations of East Asia. I wrote about the economic implications of this for Japan more than a decade ago, and the country has since been experiencing a graceful swan dive into middle power status. Now it’s China’s turn, and as Hal Brands and Michael Beckley point out, China is on course to lose more than 200 million working-age adults by 2050. Absent some major shift in the technological paradigm, that is simply incompatible with continued economic rise, and the consequences for the region will be profound.

In the shorter term, though, there are likely to be some significant repercussions from the decline in Russia’s regional presence if, as seems likely, its war in Ukraine continues to be an unmitigated disaster. We’re already seeing some early indications of this in the Caucasus, but I’m interested in the potential for decline in Russia’s presence in Central Asia. This opens the door for China to dominate this resource-rich region and I wonder if that might prompt a shift in Beijing’s priorities.

Third, an issue that doesn’t get nearly as much attention as it should, the melting Himalayan glaciers and the threat that poses to water security for a billion South Asians.

Finally, the future of democracy in the region. We have in the last decade seen coups in Southeast Asia, an attempted autogolpe in the U.S., an assassination in Japan, arrests of news editors as part of the trampling of rights in Hong Kong, and rising repression across the region. It has been a long time since the peace and freedoms many of us take for granted have been as fragile as they are today.

I look forward to The Diplomat’s magazine continuing to cover these and many other topics over the next 100 issues.