Asia
Pakistan: The dangerous reality of working on China’s megaprojects
The killing of five Chinese engineers in a 26 March suicide attack in Pakistan’s northwest has renewed concerns about the safety and security of Chinese personnel and projects in…
What should Australia be doing about the South China Sea?
It’s a mark of our turbulent times that China’s dangerous and illegal actions against the Philippines at the Second Thomas Shoal currently only sit in the second tier of…
How the Myanmar regime is surviving
Myanmar’s gruelling civil war grinds on as euphoria over the stunning surprise offensive launched by opposition forces in October 2023 (Operation 1027) gives way to alarm at the…
Australia’s Southeast Asia trade stumbling block
Australia recently announced the creation of a $2 billion Southeast Asian Financing Facility to increase trade and investment in the region. While this is a good start, to get the…
A wave of US trilaterals sends a clear message to China
After months of speculation, the White House has confirmed the inaugural Trilateral Leaders’ Summit between Japan, the Philippines and the United States. On 11 April, US President…
Myanmar: The junta’s forced conscription of Rohingyas
Six years ago, a calculated “cleansing operation” conducted by the Myanmar Armed Forces and aided by local militias resulted in the expulsion of more than 750,000 Rohingyas from…
Replenishing the Asian Development Bank in the Pacific
In early May, donor governments are expected to unveil new funding commitments for the grant-financing window of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) – the Asian Development Fund…
India: What a Modi win means for relations with Malaysia
With India going to the polls in April, the buzz is that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to win a third term. The question that remains is how decisive the victory will be…
Are Beijing and Washington testing the dark forest hypothesis?
Last week, Netflix released Three-Body Problem, its widely anticipated TV adaptation of the acclaimed novels by science fiction author Liu Cixin. While met with broadly positive…
Mind the gap: China’s megaproject promises fall short of reality in Southeast Asia
In Bangkok in 2010, Chinese and Thai authorities were discussing a dream: the possibility of working together on a high-speed rail project, which would be Southeast Asia’s first…