Considering the asymmetric relationship Southeast Asian countries have with China in the economic and security realms, and the challenges this reality poses for them in terms of making progress in their territorial disputes with China, many see Japan-Southeast Asian strategic partnerships and Japan’s multifaceted relationship with the U.S. as interrelated, synergistic and a boon to […]
Leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations unveiled with fanfare another road map to a common community for the next decade even as the bloc missed targets for economic integration this year. Read Here – Bloomberg
It was the 80 seconds China and Taiwan had waited almost 70 years for. Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Taiwanese counterpart, Ma Ying-jeou, smiled in dark suits –Xi wearing a Communist red tie, Ma, a Nationalist blue one — as they shook hands for more than a minute before hundreds of reporters in Singapore. The […]
A rare occasion on which Xi Jinping, Barack Obama and Ma Ying-Jeou agree is about to take place in Singapore, as the meeting between Xi and Ma is intended to balance the growing “independence” sentiment in Taiwan, something that is bothering all three political leaders; for different reasons. Read Here – China Daily
The leaders of China and Taiwan plan to meet Saturday for the first time since their civil war seven decades ago, shaking up the island’s politics two months before an election that could lift the opposition to power. The coming encounter between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Taiwanese counterpart, Ma Ying-jeou, in Singapore would cap […]
Is the TPP really targeting China? US President Barack Obama said on Monday, “we can’t let countries like China write the rules of the global economy. We should write those rules, opening new markets to American products while setting high standards for protecting workers and preserving our environment.” This is not the first time that […]
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is the biggest trade agreement in history, reducing tariffs and other forms of protectionism in a dozen countries making up about 40 percent of the global economy with economic output of almost $30 trillion. The White House estimates it will eliminate 18,000 tariffs on U.S.-manufactured goods, while giving everyone from Vietnamese shrimpers to […]
A dozen Pacific-rim nations agreed to an historic pact that would cut trade barriers on items ranging from cars to rice, setting up a potentially contentious ratification vote before a skeptical U.S. Congress. After a week of final talks in Atlanta, an agreement was announced on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a pact more than five years in […]
The British Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm once called the epoch stretching from the French Revolution of 1789 to World War I’s outbreak in 1914 as the “long 19th century.” A little over a decade ago, people began to speculate about an emerging “Asian century,” driven by an unstoppable China and enabled by America’s supposed inevitable […]
Singapore is throwing itself a grand 50th-anniversary party this weekend, and it has plenty to celebrate. Its income per capita has grown from roughly $540 in 1965 to more than $55,000 in 2014. That’s about the same as the U.S. and on par with the richest countries in Europe. If ever there was an economic miracle, […]
looking beyond borders 