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In late January 2016, the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) held its 12th National Congress to select leaders and set policy guidelines for the next five years. Although every VCP congress is a time of intense power struggles, the 12th Congress...

Western and Asian governments and commentators have pilloried the Chinese government for its inscrutability on the so-called ‘nine-dash line’ in the South China Sea. Because the nine-dash line allegedly lacks a basis in international law as reflected in the United...

Martin Good / Shutterstock.com Martin Good / Shutterstock.com The recent announcement of the imminent opening of a rival stock exchange to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) caused considerable media excitement. It is indeed a historic development in South Africa’s economic...

China’s pattern of regional conduct has come increasingly into focus in recent times. Its behaviour is much less about maintaining the ‘status quo’, and much more about revising the established dynamics and contours in the region to its preferences. This...

In December 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping flew into South Africa for the Forum on China-Africa Co-operation with great fanfare. There were many announcements about prospective investments across Africa. Agriculture featured prominently. However, what is the real story of China...

The current scandal embroiling Prime Minister Najib Razak has led the Malaysian government to crack down on press freedoms. However, a restricted mainstream Malaysian media has not stopped the publishing online of information on the ongoing corruption scandal surrounding the...

Japan’s economy is stagnant and has been so for quite some time now. It looks as if Japan is now in the ‘upper income trap’. In comparison with its 10 percent real GDP growth rate between 1950 and 1960 and...

Since the turn of the 21st century, the Asia-Pacific region has become central to Indian strategic thinking. The Act East policy, unveiled by the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in late 2014, reinforced this objective. Moreover, during his visits to...

Australia’s 2016 Defence White Paper (DWP) directs Australia’s strategic attention towards maritime Southeast Asia. While the 2009 and 2013 Defence White Papers also focused on this region, the 2016 DWP bluntly expresses Australia’s concerns in the South China Sea. In...

As the Eurozone is amid secular stagnation, its old fiscal, monetary and banking challenges are escalating, along with new threats, including the Brexit, demise of Schengen, anti-EU opposition and geopolitical friction. According to Dan Steinbock, Brussels can no longer avoid...

Migration and the principle of free movement within the EU is one of the main issues in the debate over whether Britain should remain in the EU. Polls suggest that the public is very sympathetic to the idea that the...

After a rollercoaster week for Britain’s chancellor, his eighth budget has been approved. George Osborne will be breathing a sigh of relief. After proudly announcing his budget on March 16, things began to unravel just 48 hours later, thanks in...

South Korea is undergoing rapid demographic ageing. Only 551,000 Koreans or 2.9 percent of the population were aged 65 or above when the Korean War broke out in 1950. However, according to the United Nations World Population Prospects (UNWPP), 6.4...

Vietnam will hold its parliamentary election in May 2016. The three key positions of president, prime minister and chairperson of the National Assembly will all be elected. However, perhaps the most interesting aspect of this election is the emerging group...

The Hobbesian tones of Australia’s new Defence White Paper of 2016 (DWP16) have been noted already and most have come to see the concepts and capability proposals outlined in DWP16 as being reasonable and relatively balanced. There are those who...