The United States and China have apparently reached a tacit agreement to disagree and maintain a leaky status quo in the South China Sea. Not coincidentally, relations on this issue between Asean claimants and between Asean […]
Observing the Parliament of Malaysia or indeed any of Malaysia’s 13 state legislative assemblies and it is noticeable that the corridors of power are packed with the elderly. There are no elected politicians between the ages […]
In spite of the United States’ renewed focus on great power competition in the 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS), the war against terrorism will remain salient to US strategy. In few places is this clearer than in the […]
Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security (MoPS) thinks that it is killing two birds with one stone by passing new laws regulating data storage. But it could soon find out it has no use for two […]
The leadership of the Indonesian military is in flux. In the last three months of 2017, then commander General Gatot Nurmantyo executed two reshuffles of senior officers: one on October 27 and the other on […]
Things got off to a bad start for the Vietnam economy in 2017 with the shock withdrawal of the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Subsequent uncertainties about Canada’s participation in a potential TPP-11 […]
The first year of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration was marked by sustained GDP growth of 6.7 per cent — the second highest in the region. This growth was supported by higher government spending in […]
Following its graduation from least developed country (LCD) to lower-middle income status in July 2016 the Cambodia economy has remained healthy. In 2017 Cambodia GDP growth came in at 6.9 per cent, driven by the […]
Lao PDR is among the fastest growing economies in Southeast Asia: economic growth has averaged 7.8 per cent over the past decade. Despite the slow recovery of the global economy, the country’s growth rate was […]
Product innovations such as Apple’s iPhoneX, the Fitbit watch, and Bitcoin are contributing to the mainstreaming of innovation in the development policy landscape. Innovation is now viewed as key to finding enduring solutions to challenges […]
Malaysia’s fourteenth general elections are looming. This time, almost unprecedentedly, they will see the two great Malay political parties — the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) and the Malaysian Islamic Party (Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS)) — […]
On 16 September, police broke up an academic discussion at the offices of renowned activist NGO the Jakarta Legal Aid Foundation (LBH). The topic was the killings of alleged leftists in 1965 and 1966 in […]