Generation Rebellion

Asia's Gen Z runs out of patience for their corrupt politicians

I have a confession for all of you. Going back through my catalogue of essays, I realize that most of my interest, with a few notable exceptions, has been directed at one of three areas: US domestic politics, Europe, and the Middle east. After all, these regions consume the vast majority of American media attention and are thus easiest to analyze. For the majority of Americans, the region with by far the strongest cultural accessibility is Europe, a place where people keep traditions and speak languages proximate to our own. It is also the overseas (non-North American) destination where Americans most often vacation. While the same cannot be said for the Middle East, this region has such a long history of war and US military intervention that its politics and conflicts have unfortunately bled into our own. However, I realized in the last week that there is one region I have conspicuously left out.

And it’s a big one: Asia.

Unlike Europe, Asia remains a geographic and cultural mystery to most Americans. The continent is a kaleidoscope of thousands of languages, dozens of writing systems, every major world religion, and cultures largely too exotic for our comprehension. And don’t forget about the raw numbers. Not including the Middle East and Russia (which are often excluded from such measurements), Asia accounts for 54% of global population and 31% of global GDP. Four of the top five countries by population and three of the top five countries by GDP are in Asia. As the two largest nations in the former category, China and India alone combine for 35% of global population and 21% of global GDP. With some notable exceptions, Asia’s population is young, growing, and eager to work hard and succeed. However, recent events have shown us in the Western World that these young Asians, as with young people here in the West, are growing impatient.

Nowhere is this trend more evident than in the remote Himalayan nation of Nepal. Few Americans have ventured to this rugged place known as much for its widespread poverty and corruption, crude medical infrastructure, and frequent political upheaval as it is for being the home of Mt. Everest. However, in recent months, Nepal’s political upheaval has been turned up to 11. It all started on September 4^th when the Nepalese government made the ill-advised decision to crack down on the most popular social media and communication apps. This brazenly authoritarian act lit the fuse for a social explosion years in the making. Nepalese youths, largely excluded from the nation’s economic growth by its deeply corrupt elites, took their outrage to the streets and transformed the capital of Kathmandu and cities across the nation into de facto war zones.

What began as a peaceful protest on September 8 escalated into something far more chaotic when Nepalese security forces responded with live ammunition, leaving 19 protestors dead and hundreds hospitalized. This unfortunate and unnecessary escalation proved explosive. Suddenly, Nepal’s aging political elite were thrust directly into the bullseye of a nation with a median age of 25. Adding fuel to the fire were videos, lingering across social media for weeks, of the children of these elites wining and dining while enjoying a jet-setting, lavish lifestyle juxtaposed with the dire poverty endured by most of Nepal’s population. On a more personal note, there is little that annoys me more than people who are rich, spoiled, and completely out of touch with reality. As someone who was raised with the principles of humility and public service, such spoiled behavior, especially when your own nation is suffering, is inexcusable.

With such a volatile mix, the protestors were no longer interested in reform— Nepal’s Gen Z wanted revolution. In the words of one protestor, “we need to topple this government, we demand mass resignation and we want them out.” And that government is now in ruins. The headquarters of Nepal’s major political parties, various government ministries, the home of Prime Minister Sharma Oli, the Supreme Court, along with the homes several other ministers and dozens of government offices across the nation were all set alight. This deluge of arson reached its fiery conclusion when angry Nepalese youth violently stormed the Nepalese parliament, leading to the complete collapse of Oli’s government and the nation’s entire political system. After the globally unprecedented act of electing an interim Prime Minister, Sushila Karki through the messaging and gaming app Discord, Nepal faces a long and challenging road towards establishing more inclusive, merit-based governance that rejects the old ways of patronage and corruption once and for all.

And Nepal is not alone in this trend of chaos.

The Philippines and Indonesia are two fast-growing archipelago nations with a combined population of 400 million people. While the predominantly Catholic Philippines is home to an English-speaking population with a large global diaspora (including in the United States) the predominantly Islamic Indonesia remains culturally alien to most Americans. The Philippines is also relatable for its status as a home to a business we all encounter with dread: call centers. But they do share some similarities. They are both dominated politically and economically by networks of powerful clans, political dynasties, and oligarchic conglomerates. While neither nation’s protests have come anywhere close to toppling their governments, both Indonesian and Filipino Gen Zers have made clear that they will no longer tolerate the sort of corruption generations before them have accepted as simply part of life. And with median ages of 32 and 26, respectively, both countries share Nepal’s youthful… and restless… population.

Indonesia was the first domino to fall, even before Nepal. Current President and former general Prabowo Subianto, a man with a dark past, has been accused of consolidating power around the presidency, strengthening the power of the military, and essentially dismantling Indonesia’s democratic structures, which, albeit, were never anything to brag about. The spark for the chaos was a vote by the Indonesian House of Representatives to appropriate to themselves an extra 50 million Indonesian Rupiah ($3,000) each for housing and utility expenses, a tone-deaf act only intensified by the death of an Indonesian Gen Zer run over by a police van. Suddenly, Indonesia’s youth, in defiance of the traditionally consensus-and-stability-minded culture of generations past, burned government and police buildings across the archipelago, ransacked the home of the finance minister, and ground the world’s fourth most-populated nation to a halt. The youths’ 25 demands were a long list of far-reaching reforms, which, if enacted, would trigger the existential collapse of Indonesia’s ruling clan system.

When the dust cleared by early September, two protestors were killed, hundreds injured, and Jakarta suffered more than $3 million in economic damage. Unlike Nepal, Indonesia’s Gen Z revolution fizzled out as security forces reclaimed control of the streets and Prabowo agreed to limited concessions that stopped short of the fundamental reforms demanded by Indonesian students. However, the situation in the republic remains precarious as Prabowo continues to mismanage the economy and consolidate power over all levels of Indonesia’s complex society. On top of it all, Indonesian politicians just this week quietly inserted an allowance for themselves of 90 million Rupiah even larger than the original attempt. The normally bustling and chaotic streets of Jakarta remain peaceful and free of unrest… for now.

Meanwhile, in the other Southeast Asian archipelago, the Philippines, a country where my late grandfather was stationed shortly after World War II, the saga rhymes with these disturbing trends across the region. It is undoubtedly true that the Philippines has long suffered from chronic flooding and natural disasters. However, government projects to intended mitigate these floods have a bad habit of disappearing into a maze of fraud and nonexistent “ghost” projects. In other words, Filipino politicians merely pocket the money while their children, the heirs to the political dynasties, can’t help but enjoy the same luxury lifestyle of the Nepalese elite. However, of all three countries I have featured, the reaction in the Philippines has largely been confined to social media, and the street action that has occurred has been almost entirely peaceful without the revolutionary demands that derailed Nepal’s political elite. Thus, contrary to media claims of Gen Z unrest proliferating across the world, current discontent in the Philippines is little more than business as usual.

Context, in turn, is key.

So why have I chosen to highlight these instances of political unrest across Asia for this latest publication? Simply, none of these stories had been given as much coverage in Western media that the conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine have. And I realized that while Nepal, Indonesia, and the Philippines may be too far for most Americans to travel, these stories of Asia’s Gen Z in revolt deserve our attention. After all, as I mentioned earlier, Asia is rising quickly in the global economic order. And unfortunately, America’s youth are far from immune from this troubling 21^st- century trend. While Asia may seem culturally unreachable to us Westerners, comprehending this vast continent, including its angry youth, critical for the daunting 21^st century ahead.