• Editorial
Six years in the making, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is slated to transform the region into an Asean-centric, comprehensive free trade area, poised to make a large contribution to Asian and global economic […]
• Editorial
The rumblings of a currency crisis in emerging markets is only getting louder. Argentina’s Central Bank raised interest rates to 40 per cent to protect its peso in May 2018. When this did little to help, Argentina […]
• Editorial
Since mid-June 2018, numerous anti-China protests have been reported in Vietnam. Demonstrations of this kind have not been seen since the widespread anti-China protests in the country in 2008 and 2014. Protesters rallied to express […]
• Editorial
The 51st Asean Foreign Ministers’ Meeting (AMM) and related meetings held in Singapore from July 30 to August 4 were hailed as a success. Most notably, there were no delays in the issuance of a […]
• Editorial
More than four years after it seized power in May 2014, Thailand’s military government appears intent on holding onto it indefinitely. Led by General Prayut Chan-o-cha, the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) has […]
• Editorial
In January 2018 Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visited Cambodia and oversaw the signing of 19 new development deals. The deals were announced just a few weeks after Chinese firms pledged to invest an additional US$7 […]
• Editorial
China-Asean and China-US relations in the South China Sea have trended in opposite directions since July 12, 2016. On that day the Philippines and Asean set aside the near-term implementation of the South China Sea […]
• Editorial
In June 2018, a leaked environmental impact assessment report on the proposed Sambor Hydropower Dam project in Cambodia revealed that constructing a dam at the proposed site could “literally kill the [Mekong] river”. The Cambodian […]
• Editorial
Southeast Asia is experiencing rapid urbanisation, and with it comes more and more people who are absorbed into the unregulated, informal sectors of the economy. In Cambodia, more than 95 per cent of the aggregate […]
• Editorial
The Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI), a new participant in Indonesia’s electoral landscape set to contest the 2019 national election, is grabbing the attention of Indonesian political watchers. Labelled the ‘millennials’ party’, PSI sees itself as […]
• Editorial
The stunning victory of Malaysia’s opposition on May 9, 2018 in the country’s 14th general election and the equally impressive peaceful turnover of power — as the federal government changed hands for the first time […]
Southeast Asian countries’ historically high defence budgets are the sum of various national considerations: financial self-sufficiency, territorial control, expansion of capabilities, peacetime missions and the development of the local defence industry. The threat of China […]