Asia

On Tuesday, Mauritius made good on a long-standing threat to Britain and sent a boatload of officials to visit the Chagos Archipelago without permission. This action has placed Britain, which administers the disputed island territory, in a very difficult position. Touted by Mauritian Prime

Paul Kelly’s recently published book, Morrison’s Mission: How a Beginner Reshaped Australian Foreign Policy, provides the most detailed account yet of the formation of the country’s foreign policy since Scott Morrison became prime minister in 2018 and is full of useful insights. The Forever

In 1971, two table tennis players – American Glenn Cowan and Zhuang Zedong from China – met on the tournament bus on the way to the world championships in Nagoya, Japan. The chance meeting between two athletes at a time when their respective countries were enduring a distant and icy

Covid-19 has been particularly disastrous for the United States, the United Kingdom and Southeast Asian nations such as Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. These countries have experienced extraordinarily high case numbers and deaths, hospitals full and turning away patients, government

Last week, Western officials held closed-door discussions with a Taliban delegation hosted by Norway in Oslo, making clear that humanitarian aid to Afghanistan would be conditional on an improvement in human rights in the war-torn country. The need for assistance is urgent, with the United

The events of the latter half of 2021 show that Beijing is willing to tolerate significant economic pain to deleverage its property sector. For the Chinese Communist Party, the financial and social risks posed by the current state of the real estate sector are existential. At the end of the second

On 16 September 2021 China lodged an application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). This immediately kicked-off a debate among trade watchers on the merits, as well as the benefits and risks of China joining the trade pact. In addition, the

The pre-Christmas announcement that Solomon Islands’ government was going to accept China’s offer of six police advisers and a swag of emergency riot equipment generated consternation in Canberra. The ABC’s Andrew Greene reported discomfit from his “defence and diplomatic” sources. The

After two years marked by Covid-19 and floods, Timor-Leste is now gearing up for presidential elections on 19 March. A runoff round for the top two candidates will be held on 19 April if no candidate receives a majority. Presidential candidates run formally as independents, but commonly receive

Tensions with China over the South China Sea have prompted Indonesia to invite maritime security officials from five ASEAN member states – Brunei, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam – to meet in February to discuss a possible joint response to Beijing’s growing assertiveness.

Japan is a high-tech country, right? It is, after all, the home of bullet trains, robots, computer games and all sorts of gadgets. But there is another side of the story: low-tech Japan. Most of the world now communicates by email, but our Japanese friends are still hooked on fax machines. While

Indonesia suffers from some of the highest food prices in Southeast Asia. Over the past decade, government policies focussed on food self-sufficiency have contributed to this problem. As its economic policies are thrust into the spotlight upon its first-time leadership of the G20 grouping, Indonesia

Having a deep interest in power politics is still not the norm in Australia. Yet, an increasing number of its population appears genuinely concerned about what a more aggressive and autocratic China means for Australia and for themselves. Intensifying media coverage of the friction in bilateral

The world has turned a blind eye to the sheer human misery surrounding Afghanistan ever since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021. While several regional countries and institutions have held conferences to discuss ways to avert the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, these talks are

Over the course of barely a week, the normally placid Kazakhstan, best known in the West for being the unwilling object of humour in the Borat films (and perhaps also for being home to approximately 15 per cent of all Bitcoin mining), has endured a maelstrom. Events began on 2 January with

The presidency of South Korea’s Moon Jae-in will be bookended by Winter Olympics – one defined by hope, the other despair. North Korea has confirmed it will not participate in the Beijing Winter Olympics because of the coronavirus and what it calls the “hostile policies” of the United States

Like Australia in the Pacific, India has been pursuing its own Indian Ocean island step-up, largely driven by concerns about China’s growing influence in the region. This has included increased bilateral aid, investment, and security assistance to the island states. India is also trying to develop

Shared power grated with the generals. A little over a decade ago, Myanmar’s military, known as the Tatmadaw, introduced a quasi-democratic constitution, which eventually saw the National League for Democracy form government. But on 1 February this year the military imprisoned State Counsellor

Thirty-six hours before Filipino journalist Maria Ressa was presented with her Nobel Peace Prize in Norway, another journalist in the Philippines was murdered. On 8 December, Jess Malabanan was shot in the head in his home while watching TV with his wife in Samar province. Malabanan was hiding

A couple of months back, 70-year-old housewife Masi Zainab asked a charismatic local political leader, Maulana Hidayat-ur-Rehman Baloch, to help mount a protest for the rights of the citizens of Gwadar, a port city in southwestern Pakistan. Within weeks, Masi Zainab was marching with thousands of

It has been a tumultuous 2021 for India: floods, fires, plague and pollution, but also healthy economic growth figures, a successful vaccination campaign, a UN Security Council non-permanent seat, and more visibility on the world stage in non-political ways. India also had an eleventh-hour soft

The world is being transformed by the Internet of Things (the IoT) as ever more devices and activities are linked through the internet and endowed with computing power. This transformation brings an exponential rise in the security challenges inherent in digital connections, especially connections