ASEAN is ever beset by existential angst. The ‘A’ in ASEAN stands for Angst as well as Association. Regard this as more description than criticism. The Angst-Association of South East Asian Nations always has lots to worry about. Angst and anxiety are rational responses. The questions are constant: can the association hold together? Can it actually […]
China’s transition is opening space for other countries to move into low-cost manufacturing, where China until recently dominated. Deloitte predicts that the economies of Malaysia, India, Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam, the “Mighty Five” or MITI-V, will inherit China’s crown for such products. The consensus among industry and regional experts interviewed for this article is that […]
The Kingdom has a new King after His Royal Highness Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn accepted an invitation to ascend the throne from the National Legislative Assembly president. The new King was formally named His Majesty King Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun, according to the Office of His Majesty’s Principal Private Secretary. Read Here – Bangkok Post
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’s been a long time coming. Aung San Suu Kyi has been waiting for this for more than a quarter of a century, the jubilant crowds in Yangon and across Myanmar have sensed it over the past weeks of campaigning, and now the electoral commission has confirmed it: Myanmar is returning to democracy. Read Here […]
In spring 2003 an unnamed official at CIA headquarters in Langley sat down to compose a memo. It was 18 months after George W Bush had declared war on terror. “We cannot have enough blacksite hosts,” the official wrote. The reference was to one of the most closely guarded secrets of that war – the countries […]
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 […]
ASEAN’s leaders are worried about what history tells them about the future of Southeast Asia. The fears about the lessons of history are a discordant note as ASEAN steps up to a great moment in its history—the creation of an economic, political-security and social Community in December 2015. Read Here – The National Interest
If I were to write about a new power rising in the East, one whose population of 633 million is the third largest in the world after China and India, and 100 million more than either the European Union or the whole of North America, you might expect to have heard quite a lot about […]
It’s true that economic growth through industrialization altered the social structure of societies and created demand for political representation. But it’s now clear that the process has also led to the opposite of liberal democracy. Read Here – Bloomberg
looking beyond borders 