The Asia Pacific's Economies

Australia plans to spend a lot more on defence to confront what Prime Minister Scott Morrison says will be “a post-COVID world that is poorer, that is more dangerous, and that is more disorderly”. A chorus of voices have responded that Australian foreign policy risks becoming unbalanced, with

After 47 years of a chaotic marriage, and more than three years of debates and negotiations that have cost two prime ministers, the United Kingdom has finally separated from the European Union. The current conversations on the global consequences of this rupture have largely ignored the Pacific,

Barry Sterland’s new Lowy Analysis explores the possibility of a future economic crisis in our region – this is not today’s problem, but something we should be prepared for. The paper benefits from his years of experience in the Australian Treasury and the International Monetary Fund. It sets

Spooky business The 1980s Hope inquiry first put economics on the agenda of Australian intelligence analysis but the latest Intelligence Review has taken this connection much further. Follow the money and three trends emerge from this Review, important developments that have been lost in all the

Out of the trap It is a subtle change of language, but the Asian Development Bank has just made one of the biggest question marks over the Asian century a little less scary. The latest Asian Development Outlook has dropped the long-established idea that a middle-income trap can keep countries

It is easy to forget that Asia still hosts most of the world’s poor people given the region's remarkable economic success in recent years. Yet almost half of the world’s extremely poor people (326 million out of a global total of 766 million) still live in South and East Asia, according to the

Even though it is the region’s second oldest multilateral mechanism, APEC continues to find relevance hard to come by. Best known for the photo taken at the annual leaders’ summit at which said leaders bond over the humiliation of donning often garish 'national attire', this grouping has never

By Alastair Davis, an intern in the Lowy Institute's Melanesia Program. The shipment of Russian arms received by Fiji continues to intrigue analysts. This piece by Anna Powles and Jose Sousa-Santos explains the implications for Fiji-Russia relations and Russia's growing interest in the region. The

Matthew Dornan takes a look  at Fiji’s 2016 budget. He notes that while the overall economic situation in Fiji is sound, the major policy reversals and long list of ad hoc revenue decisions in the budget 'undermine the government’s economic management credibility'. Remittances costs from

Pacific Island leaders are in Paris in force for the COP 21 United Nations conference on climate change. Leaders from Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Fiji, Nauru, Palau, Cook Islands, Papua New Guinea and Samoa all addressed the conference in the opening days

By Cheng Lim and Jack Maher. Cheng Lim leads the cyber security initiative at King & Wood Mallesons. Last year Jack Maher completed a Master of Chinese Law at Tsinghua University while working in the firm's Bejing office. China's internet czar Lu Wei, President Xi Jinping and Facebook Chief

Scott Morrison, widely expected to be appointed Australia's new treasurer early next week, can't change the world. Or at least not over the next year or so. But he can reinterpret it, and that's sometimes as much as a treasurer can do. He should and probably will promptly cancel whatever

Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Treaties (JSCOT) presented its report on the Australia India nuclear cooperation Agreement on 8 September after ten of months deliberation. JSCOT's advice must be 'taken into account' though not necessarily acted upon. The Kudankulam nuclear power plant in

In terms of the world's financial markets, China is the centre of attention. Last week I argued that concerns about stock markets and exchange rate devaluations were minor and ephemeral issues. Attention should instead be on the longer-term challenges that China faces in keeping its growth rate

By Jenny Hayward-Jones, Director of the Lowy Institute's Melanesia Program, and Jonathan Pryke, Research Fellow. Papua New Guinea has been in the international spotlight a lot in the last month and it has been almost all bad news. Revelations of a record budget deficit, the emerging worrying impact

I started my job at the Federal Reserve three weeks before Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy. I wish I had kept a diary of my initial months at the Fed, so I could recall clearly what we thought was happening each day. I do remember there was a discrete point where suddenly everything felt like

Last month Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific airline began to cancel some routes to mainland destinations – a surprising decision given the huge potential in China, where air journeys have doubled since 2008. But Cathay's reason is not demand. It's because flights in China have become so unreliable that

A Suharto family foundation was ordered to repay millions in embezzled state funds, Jokowi's cabinet ministers underwent a long-awaited reshuffle and the central bank chief put a hip hop spin on Indonesia's economic situation in Jakarta this week.   On Monday, Indonesia's Supreme Court ordered

Ken Ward is to be congratulated for a straight forward and sober analysis of the Australia-Indonesia relationship. In his own matter of fact style, Ken takes us through a complex relationship and provides unique understanding and insight. His core point is that the Australia-Indonesia

Now that Congress has provided President Obama with Trade Promotion Authority as we enter the last phase of the TPP negotiations, the treaty seems likely to go ahead. What is left for Australian authorities to think about? While the TPP draft will come before the Australian parliament for

Is China ready for a larger global role and should the outside world, in particular a regional partner like Australia, embrace this possibility? Evidently not, judging by remarks made by the Secretary of the Prime Minister's Department, Michael Thawley. 'China wasn't ready to take on the

In his recent conversation with Sam Roggeveen, Lord Michael Williams made some insightful comments on Aung San Suu Kyi's recent visit to China, suggesting it showed that Beijing was prepared to publicly recognise the importance of other political figures and parties in Myanmar while also sending a

China's long-anticipated formal pledge to international climate change negotiations, it's 'intended nationally determined contribution' or INDC, has arrived. China's target is a 60% to 65% reduction in the emissions-intensity of the economy by 2030 pegged at 2005 levels, with carbon dioxide

With the signing of the AIIB's Articles of Agreement in Beijing yesterday, how is the Bank shaping up? Here are some key things that struck me reading the Agreement: Membership The Bank's members are split into two groups: regional and non-regional. Regional members include those countries