When the U.S. financial system crashed in 2008, market watchers were increasingly romancing the idea of a “decoupling” that would separate emerging-market fortunes from those of the subprime-hobbled U.S. Such economies as Brazil’s and China’s, the thinking went, had the demographics and national balance sheets to keep growing and wowing as America foundered. Never happened. Read […]
Although there is currently no operational nuclear power plant in the ten countries comprising the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), regional governments have begun investing seriously in such programs. They have been motivated by several factors ranging from rising electricity demands to the perceived need to seek energy security, energy autonomy, and the diversification […]
Over the last few years, Jakarta has laid down legal infrastructure that discriminates against religious minorities, allowing Islamists to take the law into their own hands, says Pallavi Aiyer. Read Here – The Hindu
In Asia’s developing countries, the power and potential of remittances – the money that migrant workers send home to their families (many of whom live in poor and remote areas) – is immense. Currently, over 60 million migrant workers from the Asia/Pacific region account for more than half of all remittance flows to developing countries, […]
A new Pew Research Center survey of Muslims around the globe finds that most adherents of the world’s second-largest religion are deeply committed to their faith and want its teachings to shape not only their personal lives but also their societies and politics. In all but a handful of the 39 countries surveyed, a majority […]
Booming cities are driving global economic growth in many parts of the world. We live in an age of extraordinarily rapid urbanization: The number of people living in cities is predicted to grow by more than 2.5 billion over the next 40 years — mostly in emerging countries such as China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria, […]
In the eyes of the rest of the world, war-torn Afghanistan is a place with a beaten-down infrastructure, the minimum of modern amenities and certainly none of the services made possible by the latest technological advances powering the Internet, financial services and telecommunications. Surprisingly, however, Afghanistan is on the leading edge of the mobile-money and banking revolution sweeping […]
The old saying that a developing country is at a crossroads, whether it’s India or Indonesia, is especially tempting when it comes to India’s armed forces. Decades of underinvestment, corruption, bureaucratic ineptitude and hazy strategic thinking have left the country with a decidedly mixed bag of military capabilities. Read Here – The Diplomat
Singapore has often been cited as a success story, the envy of governments around the world. But simmering underneath the gloss and the shine lies a much more complex story of a nation slowly outgrowing a patriarchal government and restrictive system. Not long after losing a by-election, the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) launched a White […]
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 […]
looking beyond borders 