Author : East Asia Forum

The issue of liberalising Japan’s agricultural market presented a major, if not the major hurdle to the Abe administration’s agreement with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal struck in Atlanta...

The last of the 2015 Myanmar election results have yet to be confirmed by the Union Election Commission.  However, it is clear that the National League for Democracy (NLD)...

Since President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) took office, he has been clear and consistent in explaining his foreign policy priorities, enunciating the principle of putting ‘national interest’ first. Putting national...

Chinese financial diplomacy has reached its coming of age. This new era started when China first announced the introduction of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in 2013. The...

The IMF gave G20 leaders some bad news in Turkey: they are not doing enough to lift growth. The G20 has not implemented enough of their previous commitments and...

There has been a lot made about Russia’s ‘sudden’ pivot to the Asia Pacific, but is it all much ado about nothing? In the context of the US rebalance...

Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the first ever meeting between the leaders of the two countries on 7 November 2015 in Singapore. The...

On 29 October 2015, a United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) Tribunal issued the highly awaited Award on Jurisdiction and Admissibility in the Philippines–China arbitration...

Federalism is a buzzword in the Philippines these days. A former chief justice of the Supreme Court, Reynato Puno, recently launched a highly publicised national renewal movement, Bagong Sistema,...

Anyone who follows the politics of Northeast Asia must be wondering whether things may finally be about to change for the better. Not only have the leaders of the...