Authors: Malcolm Bosworth and Greg Cutbush, ANU Enterprise
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and her Government’s ‘Trading Our Way to Prosperity’ statement (in response to the Productivity Commission’s Report on Bilateral and Regional Trade Arrangements) is commendable.
It rejected Australia’s regrettable preoccupation with preferential trade agreements (PTAs), and heeded the Productivity Commission’s advice that trade policy should be reviewed against the ‘principles of unilateralism, non-discrimination, transparency’, and ‘the grand unifying principle of trade policy as an indivisible part of overall economic reform’. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, EAF, ANU
China’s economic growth brings with it fundamental change to the global economic and political system.
The surge in Chinese direct investment abroad is the latest element, beyond trade, in China’s integration into the global economic and political system. Read more…
Author: Xueli Huang, RMIT University
Chinese outward foreign direct investment (FDI) has surged since 2003.
In 2010, China’s FDI reached US$57.9 billion, nearly 20 times 2003 levels, and accounted for over 5 per cent of global FDI. Since 2007, Australia has become one of the world’s largest destinations for Chinese FDI. Read more…
Author: Eddie Walsh, The Johns Hopkins University
Asian diplomats are confronting new issues that challenge the very concept of what constitutes a security issue.
Non-traditional security (NTS) issues — such as transnational crime, terrorism, disaster relief, information security, climate change, and public health epidemics — are now considered core national security issues. Read more…
Author: Li Mingjiang, RSIS
Many pundits argue that China has jettisoned its ‘low profile’ international strategy to become more aggressive, pushing its own narrowly defined national interests.
Critics frequently cite China’s behaviour at the Copenhagen climate change negotiations, its heavy-handed response to American arms sales to Taiwan, and its tough stance on security issues in the Korean Peninsula, the East China Sea and the South China Sea in 2010. Read more…
Author: Pravakar Sahoo, IEG
The Indian economy showed remarkable resilience in the 2010-11 financial year.
It bounced back from crisis to the 9 per cent average growth rate of recent years. Read more…
Author: Andrew Herd, ANU
The issue of asylum seekers is one of the most controversial and difficult political issues Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and her Labor government faces.
The difficulty does not arise from the actual number of asylum seekers attempting to get to Australia by boat — the numbers approaching Italy demonstrate that comparatively few are attempting to come to Australia — but from the perception, perpetuated by politicians of both sides, that such actions represent a government failure and the need to restore sovereignty. Read more…
Author: Aurelia George Mulgan, UNSW@ADFA
Given that Prime Minister Kan has survived the vote of no confidence in his government on Thursday, he may be in a position to make good on the commitment he made at the recent G8 summit to decide Japan’s possible participation in the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (TPP) at an early date.
The subject came up in the conversation between Prime Minister Kan and President Obama. Read more…
Author: Amy King, Oxford University
On 21–22 May, Japan hosted the Fourth China-Japan-South Korea Trilateral Summit.
As the first such meeting since the triple (earthquake-tsunami-nuclear) disaster in Japan, it was largely focused on disaster recovery efforts. Read more…
Author: Maria Monica Wihardja, CSIS, Jakarta
In mid-November 2011, Indonesia will host the Sixth East Asia Summit (EAS).
Based on the Kuala Lumpur Declaration 2005, this year’s Summit will continue to be a forum for dialogue on broad strategic, political and economic issues to promote ‘common security, common prosperity, and common stability.’ Read more…
Author: Mari Pangestu, Indonesian Minister of Trade
The importance of completing the Doha Development Agenda sooner rather than later goes beyond bringing gains of US$360 billion of additional trade with substantial benefits for industrialised and developing economies.
As a developing country policymaker — and I believe I speak for many other developing countries — I am greatly worried about the costs and opportunity lost of not completing Doha. Read more…
