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…

Coming to terms with the Asian century

Asian economies are bound to have a central role in the global economy this century. The Asian century is here. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum

No matter how one looks at the numbers, the Asian economies are bound to have a central role in the global economy this century.

This fact has many implications. First, it suggests where the opportunities for growth are going to be in the world economy over the coming decades. Read more…

Asia’s political problems and land

A group of Chinese residents hold a banner outside the Beijing municipal bureau of land and resources as they protest against a land auction in Beijing on 6 July 2011.  The banner says: no compensation, not allowed to auction land. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum

Wherever there is successful industrial and economic transformation in Asia, the tussle over possession of land is at the centre of the politics of development.

There are two main reasons for this. Economic growth in land and resource-deficient economies depends crucially on the shift away from agriculture and other activities that use land intensively, towards manufacturing and urban services that use labour, capital, technology and human skills intensively. Read more…

India’s and China’s deft diplomacy reflects strategic common ground

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang waves as he is received by Indian junior minister for external affairs E. Ahamed after he arrived in New Delhi, India, on 19 May 2013. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum

Li Keqiang is today in New Delhi on his first visit to India as China’s new premier, an unprecedentedly early high-level exchange between the two great emerging Asian powers. The visit comes only a week or two after resolution of what seemed to be a stand-off between the two in the Ladakh Himalayas on the Sino–Indian border. Read more…

Is Japan’s economy at risk?

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe speaks during a news conference on Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP at his official residence in Tokyo on 15 March 2013. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum.

The Abe administration in Japan swung quickly into action with policies aimed at lifting the economy out of its long lasting doldrums. Prime Minister Abe appointed Haruhiko Kuroda, after eight years distinguished service at the Asia Development Bank, to implement a strong reflationary program through the Bank of Japan (BOJ): the first arrow of his three arrow revival strategy. Read more…

Asia and the proper governance of international institutions

Takehiko Nakao, a former Japan vice minister for finance, has been elected president of Asian Development Bank. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum

Improving the governance of international institutions is now a core objective in reform of the global order, following the global financial crisis.The G20 group — its own formation a powerful testament to the need for inclusion of the emerging economic powers and more representative participation in managing the world economy — committed to more open and merit-based selection of top jobs in international institutions, such as the World Bank and the IMF, at its Pittsburgh summit. Read more…

Myanmar’s golden promise

People walk across a market in Rangoon, Myanmar on 30 April 2012. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum

The political and economic reforms under way in Myanmar have encouraged optimism around the world about the promise of its future and the central role it might play in the next round of Asian development. Read more…

Understanding the way China’s economy works

Construction workers walk past high-rise commercial buildings in Beijing 9 March 2008. If the economy is to continue to grow, even at a more moderate rate, it has to graduate from simple manufacturing production, relying on the mobilisation of labour, to growth led by industrial upgrading, driven by high rates of human capital formation and research and innovation. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum

There are many views about which model provides the best understanding of Chinese economic growth and, more immediately, what the prospects are for maintaining a high growth rate in the face of the palpable structural, environmental and social challenges that China confronts today. Read more…

Beyond Vietnam’s banking crisis

A girl rides her bike through the old quarter in Hanoi. There are questions about whether its system is sufficiently responsive to pressures for change to avoid major economic and social crisis. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum

Vietnam, though a one-party state, has perhaps been rather more responsive to, and successful in, reforming the economic, social and political conditions of its citizens than might have been presumed from the nature of its political system. Read more…

What sort of partnership across the Pacific brings benefit?

Protesters stage a sit-in in front of a Diet building in Tokyo on 15 March 2013, demonstrating against Japanese participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade liberalisation talks. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum

The grand vision for a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) outlined by President Obama at the APEC Summit in 2011 has moved a little closer to realisation, in scope at least, with announcement by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that Japan would join in the negotiations. Read more…

China’s reach in the Indian Ocean

A Chinese flag flutters in the wind as an oil tanker is anchored offshore in the distance near Zhoushan, China. Chinas push into the Indian Ocean is an inevitable part of its need to develop efficient supply routes across the back of Asia for energy and resource supplies out of the Middle East and Africa. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum

China’s longstanding relationship with Pakistan and the challenge of China’s remarkable economic rise have encouraged many in the West to see India as a natural Chinese competitor and a useful pawn for the United States in Sino-American strategic play. Read more…

Asia’s demographic transition over the next 30 years

Great-grandmother, grandparents and parents in Yichang city with a new baby. The one-child policy in China is increasingly being seen as an impediment to growth. Some projections have the labour force declining by around 10 million people a year from 2025. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum

By 2050 Asia will add another billion to its already huge population of 4.3 billion. Demographers reckon that this will be a very good result, not because Asia’s population will become so large but because the population projection for 2050 is several billion lower than it would have been without the spread of control over human fertility that has occurred over the past four decades. Read more…

Prime Minister Abe and Japan’s foreign policy choice

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe waves before his departure for Washington at Haneda International Airport in Tokyo on 21 February 2013. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum

Increased uncertainty and risk in the political and security environment in Northeast Asia are threatening the stability on which Asia’s rise and growing prosperity have depended over the past few decades and are a challenge to global system stability. Read more…