Author : East Asia Forum

Southeast Asia has descended into a maritime insecurity spiral since the April–June 2012 standoff at Scarborough Shoal between Chinese maritime security forces and the Philippine Navy, which motivated Manila...

On 25 June 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin met his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing to discuss expanding the China–Russia strategic partnership. Much of their efforts in this...

South Korea’s economic rise since the 1960s could be attributed to many factors: its geographic position, a homogenous and hard-working population, sound economic governance exercised by authoritarian governments, and...

Taiwan’s new president Tsai Ing-wen faces a dilemma. If she continues her Kuomintang (KMT) predecessor Ma Ying-jeou’s rapprochement with Beijing, she risks enraging independence-minded members of her Democratic Progressive...

Compared with its Asian near neighbours, Indonesia has long been tolerant of same-sex sexuality and transgenderism. Unlike Singapore and Malaysia, Indonesia never criminalised homosexuality and has been accommodating of...

Beneath its surface-level bluster, China’s authoritative response to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) arbitration this week contained welcome hints that China may be...

Important changes are taking place inside North Korea. The collapse of the command economy, and the emergence of capitalism in its place, is ongoing. A burgeoning moneyed elite and...

Donald Trump has defied all expectations about the US presidential election by emerging as the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party. For Japan, his extreme rhetoric brings to the...

Most of us have never known a world where the United States was not the preeminent power. Now things are starting to look rather different. Not only is much...

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party and its junior coalition partner, Komeito, have won 70 of the 121 seats up for grabs in the upper house triennial...