Author : East Asia Forum

Barack Obama began his presidency with a dramatic gesture, which captured the world’s imagination and won him the Nobel Peace Prize. Speaking in Prague in 2009, he declared that...

In December 2015, China announced that its priorities for the upcoming G20 Hangzhou summit were to make the global economy more innovative, invigorated, interconnected and inclusive. However, China is...

Once again, President Joko Widodo has reshuffled his cabinet. One pleasant surprise is the return of Sri Mulyani Indrawati, who until recently was Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer...

This year began with international media attention drawn to the weakness of China’s economy. This prediction was validated on 9 May 2016 when the People’s Daily ran on its...

Duterte is gaining in the war on drugs, but at a terrifying cost to Filipino society.  The Philippines is drowning in a wave of killings as the government of...

In July, Indonesian President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo courted controversy by appointing a former New Order general who has been accused of human rights abuses, Wiranto, as Coordinating Minister for...

In 2015, the government of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe spearheaded a series of unprecedented amendments to the 1947 Agricultural Cooperative Law. These changes will loosen the stifling controls...

ASEAN member states do not count for much in the global economy on their own. Indonesia, the biggest economy in Southeast Asia, has a GDP of US$861 billion, but...

Despite the old adage that ‘good fences make good neighbours’, sometimes it is impossible, for a variety of reasons, to build good ‘fences’ in the sea. This is certainly...

China’s steelmaking capacity has expanded rapidly since the beginning of the 21st century. The scale of this expansion is unprecedented in the history of industrialisation in Europe, North America...