Japanese ODA stimulates Indian infrastructure development

Passengers travel in a New Delhi metro train. The New Delhi metro system was built with funding from the Japanese Official Development Assistance program. (Photo: AAP)

Authors: Rohit Sinha and Geethanjali Nataraj, ORF

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recent visit to Japan will do as much to invigorate the Indian growth story as it will to strengthen diplomatic relations in the Asia Pacific.

With India investing heavily in infrastructure, Japanese assistance — both technical and financial — has been of great benefit. Read more…

Promoting standards harmonisation in the fight against climate change

Visitors look at a Toyota Prius Hybrid car during the Northeast Asia Investment and Trade Expo in Changchun city, Jilin province, China, 8 September 2012. (Photo: AAP).

Author: Llewelyn Hughes, GWU

Last year the US and Japanese governments affirmed their joint commitment to fight climate change by cooperating in developing clean energy. Both countries are also pursuing green innovation independently. These efforts are crucial in responding to climate change.

The emerging battle between auto manufacturers in Japan, the United States and Europe over standards for electric vehicles shows, however, that green innovation is as much about competitiveness Read more…

Convergent currencies: challenges to the Asian financial markets

Ready money: Chinese efforts to internationalise the renminbi are gaining momentum. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Takatoshi Ito, University of Tokyo

It is almost certain that the 21st century is the Asian century in terms of real side of the economy — growth, trade, consumption, and investment. What is not certain is how Asia will integrate financially and what will happen to Asian currencies.

When the West feared the rise of the Japanese economy in the 1980s, some predicted that the yen would become an international reserve currency. Read more…

Asia’s territorial disputes and the law

The survey ship Koyo Maru, left, chartered by Tokyo city officials, sails around Minamikojima, foreground, Kitakojima, middle right, and Uotsuri, background, the tiny islands in the East China Sea, called Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese on 2 September 2012. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum

Almost anyone, looking from the outside on the excitement about the various territorial disputes in the East China and South China Seas, is inclined to wonder what all the fuss is about: an inclination no doubt that is deeply offensive to almost all the protagonists involved. Read more…

South China Sea dispute dynamics

A Fililipino protester holds a slogan beside a Philippine flag during a rally outside the Chinese Consulate in suburban Makati, south of Manila, Philippines on 11 June 2013. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Donald R. Rothwell, ANU

The decision handed down by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 19 November 2012 in the Nicaragua v Columbia case has several implications for the South China Sea disputes, particularly with respect to the status of the disputed maritime features under the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOSC). Read more…

Abe’s campaign to revise Japan’s Constitution

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe raises a glass for a toast during the official dinner with African leaders hosted by Abe at the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) in Yokohama, near Tokyo (Photo: AAP).

Author: Toshiya Takahashi, ANU

Constitutional revision will be a key issue in Japanese politics in the coming years.

Prime Minister Abe, who is rather popular because of his new economic policy, clearly states that his government and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) will seek to revise the Constitution of Japan after this year’s Upper House elections.

Read more…

Taiwan: fishing for a fishery agreement with the Philippines

Filipino protesters wearing fish masks march with placards in front of the Philippine flag during a rally outside the Chinese Consular office in Makati City, south of Manila, Philippines, 11 June 2013 (Photo: AAP).

Author: Lucio Blanco Pitlo III, University of the Philippines Asian Center

Manila and Taipei are presently locked in a maritime row after an incident on 9 May in which Philippine maritime authorities shot and killed a Taiwanese fisherman in waters belonging to northern Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone.

Responding to intense public pressure, Taipei has demanded an official apology, compensation for the victim’s family, a speedy inquiry on the incident and talks on a fishery agreement. Read more…

Why can’t India and the EU sign an FTA?

President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso,  President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy, and Indian PM Manmohan Singh at the EU-India Summit 2012. (Photo: Flickr, President of the European Council).

Author: Geethanjali Nataraj, ORF

The India–EU FTA has been on the anvil for a long time, with no major breakthroughs in sight. A week-long intergovernmental meeting in Delhi from 13–15 May failed to iron out differences and ensure progress towards striking a deal.

India has a lot to gain from an FTA with the EU, particularly in regard to preferential and duty-free access to the European market. Read more…

Development, natural resources and conflict in Myanmar

A soldier walks past a fire in Lashio , Northern Shan state of Myanmar on May 29, 2013. The Myanmar government has called for calm after mobs burned down a Muslim orphanage, a mosque and shops during a new eruption of religious violence in the east of the country. (Photo: AAP).

Authors: Anders Engvall, SSE and Soe Nandar Linn, MDRI-CESD

Under the transition process led by President U Thein Sein, the Myanmar government is seeking to simultaneously pursue complex economic and political reforms as well as resolve ethnic conflicts and achieve national reconciliation. These challenges are intrinsically related — reforms will pave the way for reconciliation but increased violent conflict has emerged as a key threat to continued reform. Read more…

Global value chains, trade policy and Asia

Employees at a factory of LG Electronics in Gumi, South Korea, are busy working to meet the continuing demand for new products, undeterred by the summer holiday season. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Razeen Sally, NUS

The defining feature of early 21st-century international trade is global value chains (GVCs).

Trade in GVCs is the fastest growing part of international trade, and a critical driver of productivity, growth and employment in both developed and developing countries. Read more…

Japan–India strategic ties: still stuck in ‘feel good’ mode

Indian Manmohan Singh and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe shake hands during  a signing ceremony at the Prime Minister's Office in Chiyoda Warr, Tokyo on 29 May 2013. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Sourabh Gupta, Samuels International

During the last week of May, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh paid a return visit to Tokyo, in keeping with a tradition inaugurated by him and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2007, to exchange summit-level visits on an annual basis.

Modest progress was reached on resuming negotiations towards a bilateral civil nuclear cooperation accord.
Read more…

China the key in shaping the Asian century

Skyline of Huangpu River, Pudong and the Lujiazui Financial District in Shanghai, China, 11 October 2012. (Photo: AAP).

Author: Yiping Huang, Peking University and ANU

The advent of the Asian century inevitably implies a greater global role for the Chinese economy. While the shift of global economic gravity towards East Asia started almost half a century ago, it was the emergence of China as a global economic power that finally became the cornerstone of the Asian century. Read more…

The changing face of Thai populism

A Thai driver loads consumer goods onto a three wheeled motorized auto rickshaw taxi or Tuk Tuk in Bangkok, Thailand, 3 June 2013. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Peter Warr, ANU

In Thailand, the term ‘populism’ does not yet have the negative connotations it has earned in Latin America and Europe, but the trend is in that direction.

This was the message of a seminar entitled ‘Rethinking Populist Policy: From Thaksin to Yingluck’, held on 30 May at the Thailand Development Research Institute in Bangkok. Read more…

Global supply chains and trade agreements: beyond business as usual

Laotian textile factory workers at work sewing clothes for export to Germany and other European markets, at a textile garment factory near Vientiane, Lao PDR, 03 November 2012. (Photo: AAP).

Author: Bernard Hoekman, EUI

Over the last 30 years, governments have greatly reduced tariffs and removed many quantitative restrictions on imports. Today the international flow of goods, services and knowledge is mainly constrained by domestic policies of a regulatory nature that act to segment markets — so-called nontariff measures (NTMs).

International trade costs remain very high. Read more…