As China and Japan fight over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, Yeap Swee Chuan is benefiting. Yeap is president and chief executive officer of Aapico Hitech, a Thai auto parts maker that supplies Toyota and Honda as well as small and midsize Japanese companies. The company’s stock price has more than doubled in the […]
The sequel seldom improves on the original. Yet Shinzo Abe, Japan’s newly re-elected prime minister, has already displayed more conviction during his second spell at the Kantei than in the entire year of his first, unhappy premiership. Political energy is a plus only when it’s wisely deployed however, and some fear that Abe is picking a […]
NOT long ago North Korea-watchers were speculating that the new leader, Kim Jong Un, might prove a moderniser. The path-breaking boy-dictator let himself be seen with his fashionable wife. He actually spoke in public, whereas his late father’s speeches were as rare as a well-stocked Pyongyang supermarket. Lately, though, Mr Kim has reverted to type […]
Befitting an individual who will be turning 90 this year, Lee Kuan Yew is increasingly reflective these days—about his life, the memories that he shared with his wife of 60 years, and the lives that their three children have led. Unlike most his age, however, he is also preoccupied with the challenges that his country […]
Two years ago this month, Burma’s current government took office amid broad international condemnation for the rigged election — replete with fraud and intimidation — that put it there. Despite this inauspicious start, Burma politics have opened in the last year and a half, and the country’s economy has liberalized more quickly than any other […]
An inconvenient fact is that Indonesia’s economic growth is mainly driven by a commodity boom fuelled by China’s appetite for raw materials and global demand for biofuels. China’s enterprises are building bullet trains while Indian car– and IT-companies compete around the world. Indonesia, all the while, manufactures…essentially nothing. Most international manufacturing companies have moved on to greener […]
While India’s relationship with its western neighbor Pakistan has been faltering despite concerted efforts, on the eastern front a new bonhomie is forming with Bangladesh. The recent signing of a new extradition treaty and visa regime between India and Bangladesh, signed by Indian home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde and his Bangladeshi counterpart Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir, […]
Say what you want about Benigno Aquino, but the Philippine president has some brass. First he arrested predecessor Gloria Arroyo on corruption charges and ousted her Supreme Court chief justice. Then he took on the powerful Catholic Church, shepherding free-contraception laws that enraged the Vatican. Next he ran afoul of the local tycoons by backing […]
Whether East Asia’s politicians and pundits like it or not, the region’s current international relations are more akin to nineteenth-century European balance-of-power politics than to the stable Europe of today. Witness East Asia’s rising nationalism, territorial disputes, and lack of effective institutional mechanisms for security cooperation. While economic interdependence among China, Japan, South Korea, and […]
Cambodia has never enjoyed the kind of political clout its neighbors Thailand and Vietnam have been able to assert on the international stage. This issue does not sit well with Prime Minister Hun Sen, who wants to see his country’s standing improve significantly. But the key to raising Cambodia’s stature is Hun Sen’s own success. […]
looking beyond borders 