Asia

As Imran Khan’s government in Pakistan approaches the end of its first year, the country is rapidly drifting towards civil dictatorship. The arrest of opposition politicians, a crackdown on the media, and the imposition of a draconian economic policy has been the hallmark of the Pakistan

When I was a correspondent for the Financial Times in Jakarta, I often commiserated with my Australian media peers. While they worked hard to carve out time to shed light on the complexities, depth and wonder of Indonesia, they would inevitably be sucked into covering the latest high-pitched row

Other than the Chinese government in Beijing, the authorities in Taiwan are closely watching the latest developments in Hong Kong. After a series of protests in the Chinese special administrative region, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam has since abandoned a proposed extradition bill that

Rumours of a Chinese military presence in Cambodia have again resurfaced following claims from a senior Pentagon official that Cambodia intends to host Chinese military assets. This week it was reported that Cambodia’s Defence Ministry declined a US offer to refurbish a training facility and

Own goals It is hard to find a more remarkable recent example of decades old unresolved nationalist tensions suddenly jumping the fence to the new world than Japan’s decision this week to impose trade sanctions on one of South Korea’s key industries. The spectre of Asia’s second and fourth

Just 40 kilometres southeast of Chennai in the south of India lies Sriperumbudur, a part of the Kanchipuram district of Tamil Nadu. While Kanchipuram is a town, famous for its silk saris and Hindu temples, the village of Sriperumbudur has mostly been famous for the assassination of the country’s

This week on the Rules Based Audio podcast: power in Asia. Who’s got it, who’s losing it, and who’s using what they’ve got in the smartest way? The world’s geopolitical centre of gravity is shifting to Asia; and tensions between the region's great powers threaten to shape this

The recent collapse and restructuring of Baoshang Bank ­– a smaller but still large bank based in Inner Mongolia in China ­– has once again raise the issue of the likelihood of a financial crisis in China. I argued last year (China’s looming financial crisis) that a financial crisis has been

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s latest promise that he “will not go more than three years” in the premiership is the latest in an ongoing saga of leadership succession within the Pakatan Harapan coalition government. While the coalition has insisted that there exists a “signed

Australian Prime Minster Scott Morrison delivered his first major foreign policy speech since his surprise win in the May election, to an invited audience in Sydney on Wednesday. Two days ahead of his attendance with other world leaders at the G20 in Osaka Japan, in a historical moment defined by

In a recent column in Foreign Policy, a slightly bewildered Stephen Walt asked two related questions: (1) Why do we not have better answers to major, overarching questions about international affairs? (2) What are five of “those very important things about the world nobody knows?” Walt rattles

Bangladesh is in the process of transforming itself from the global poster-child of poverty into a middle-income country with one of the strongest economies in Asia. This creates opportunities for Australia that should be pursued as part of a more comprehensive engagement with the country.

Rare earth minerals have emerged as the latest front in the escalating US-China trade war. Nearly a decade after the Chinese government controversially suspended rare earth exports to Japan during the 2010 Senkaku dispute, similar threats are now being made if the bilateral trade dispute with the US

On Saturday, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced that she would suspend consideration of the Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation (Amendment) Bill (“the Bill”). The Bill would have, among other things, allowed mainland Chinese authorities

On Wednesday, the Hong Kong police opened fire at tens of thousands of young protesters who had gathered outside the Legislative Council in the city centre of Admiralty hoping to stop the second reading of the controversial extradition bill with China from taking place. Young people equipped

On 2 June, two days before the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown, I was in Singapore covering the Shangri-La dialogue, the Asia Pacific region’s biggest security forum, at which Beijing upgraded its representation this year with a delegation led by Defence Minister General Wei Fenghe

This year’s Eid-al-Fitr festival has been a bleak affair for Sri Lanka’s Muslims in the aftermath of the Easter Sunday bombings. The steep increase in retaliatory Islamophobic attacks has struck fear into the hearts of the Sri Lankan Muslim community. As if that was not enough, 11 Sri Lankan

In the months leading up to his dramatic return last year as Malaysia’s Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad had positioned himself as a strident critic of his predecessor’s approach to China. Mahathir went so far as to accuse former prime minister Najib Razak of selling Malaysia’s sovereignty to

Last month in The Interpreter, I argued that inter-Korean status quo is deeply persistent. US President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in have tried all sorts of tactics in the last 28 months to change things, yet nothing seems to work. In 2017, Trump reached to the limits of

This article is based on this month’s episode of the Little Red Podcast, Tiananmen’s Final Secret. In the final moments of this week’s episode of ABC Four Corners recounting the pro-democracy movement in China that came to an abrupt halt 30 years ago, former student leader Wang Dan observes

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, the day when Chinese authorities brutally crushed pro-democracy demonstrations, killing anywhere between one and ten thousand people in the process. Today, the Chinese authorities are anxious that we forget the terrible events of 30

Whether high-profile concessional loans for a Sri Lankan port, large-scale Belt and Road deals with Islamabad, or an international push for its newly rebranded China Global Television Network, China’s efforts to boost its place in Asia haven’t gone unnoticed, particularly in Australia. And

In the battle for diplomatic recognition between China and Taiwan, China clearly has the upper hand. Taiwan maintains formal diplomatic recognition with only 17 countries, as China refuses to allow dual recognition. While an informal truce existed for much of the Ma Ying-jeou presidency in Taiwan (