Asia

Sri Lanka just held a parliamentary election and the results were unsurprising. The Sri Lanka People’s Front (SLPP) dominated, winning 145 seats and nearly 60% of the vote. The SLPP and its allies even obtained a two-thirds majority, meaning they can easily rework Sri Lanka’s constitution and

Going out or staying in With Australia experiencing its first recession in a generation, potential differences are emerging over whether future prosperity will come from more business integration with high-growth Asia or from preserving capital for economic sovereignty at home. These, of course,

The most striking thing about the top Covid-19 treatment facility in Afghanistan is the lack of basic measures preventing the spread of Covid-19. At the Afghan Japan Communicable Disease Hospital in Kabul last week, security guards at the gate were maskless. So too a taxi driver delivering an

Speaking last month at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that while the late president did what he thought best for the American people in his historic rapprochement with China in 1972, a line has to be drawn in the sand between “freedom and tyranny

The latest reports from the Lower Mekong Basin are cause for growing concern that another period of drought will succeed that of 2019, affecting Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Expected rainfall from late May through June and July has not arrived, and the level of water flowing in the river is

Judging by recent satellite imagery, it appears that significant progress is being made on an expansion and upgrade project at Momote Airport, the nearest airfield to Lombrum Naval Base on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. The runway’s usable length has been extended by about 200 metres, precision

Last week saw Najib Razak become Malaysia’s first former premier to be convicted in court – an unenviable title in anyone’s book. Facing seven charges of money laundering, abuse of power and criminal breach of trust, Najib has been sentenced to jail for 12 years, and given an extraordinary

On 20 July, after a long period silence on the issue, the Brunei Darussalam Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement declaring that it “maintains its two-step approach in addressing the South China Sea”. As bland as this statement sounds, it represents a critical development in the tiny

Book Review: Bob Davis and Lingling Wei, Superpower Showdown: How the Battle Between Trump and Xi Threatens a New Cold War (HarperCollins, 2020). Global relations are undergoing a dramatic shift. China is increasingly assertive internationally and repressive domestically. Examples of its brashness

The recent military standoff between India and China in the Galwan Valley raises a fascinating question about the attitudes of the American public towards Asia’s great powers. We know from extensive polling that the American people are increasingly sour about China. A March 2020 survey by the

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has busily tried to smooth out what has been a fairly ragged Asia policy. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s speech at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library last week was the culmination of a number of set-piece acts intended to emphasise a yet

Book review: Thongchai Winichakul, Moments of Silence: The Unforgetting of the October 6, 1976, Massacre in Bangkok (University of Hawaii Press, 2020) In the early hours of 6 October 1976, Thai police and right-wing thugs laid siege to Thammasat University in Bangkok, where thousands of