Author: Jennifer Chen, Georgetown University
Taiwan will hold its fifth direct presidential election on 14 January. But many Taiwanese will go to the ballot box without understanding the specific differences between the two leading presidential candidates.
In Taiwan, people tend to vote for the colour — blue for the Kuomintang (KMT) and green for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) — rather than the strengths and qualities associated with each candidate. Read more…
Author: Jacqueline Menager, ANU
Contradiction is a mainstay in Burmese life. In downtown Rangoon, a giant new Toshiba TV screen hangs over the street, while rickety cars and taxis from the 1970s whir past below. Crumbling colonial-era buildings are mixed with shiny new Chinese-funded monoliths.
But nowhere is the country’s inherent contradiction more apparent than in the developments of 2011. Primarily, the new parliament’s formation must be juxtaposed against resumed violence in border regions. And we must decide which of the two dynamics to take as the year’s prevailing reality. Read more…
Author: John West, MrGlobalization
How does a Cold War organisation like the OECD respond to the end of the Cold War? Does it try to hang on to its former identity? Or does it embrace the new ‘age of globalisation’?
The end of the Cold War in 1989 represented a victory of values and ideology — the triumph of pluralistic democracy, respect for human rights and the market economy — for the OECD and its member countries. Read more…
Author: Wendy Dobson, University of Toronto
The euro crisis hijacked the G20 Summit in Cannes — even by late December Europe’s leaders still had not fully diagnosed the problem, but without an accurate diagnosis how can there be an effective prescription?
This missing link accentuates two challenges that Asian integration will face in 2012: the consolidation of regional architecture and the need for deeper structural adjustments. Read more…
Author: Shaun Breslin, University of Warwick and RIIA
The idea that there is a coherent and distinct ‘Chinese model’ of political economy has gained attention in recent years — especially as financial crisis elsewhere has undermined confidence in the (neo)liberal models often associated with Western interests and objectives.
To be sure, there are many in China and elsewhere who argue the crisis has actually highlighted key defects in China’s development model.
Read more…
Author: Gavin Jones, ANU
Thailand went through its fertility transition more quickly than almost any other country, with the average number of children born to the average woman declining from about six to two in little more than two decades, between about 1970 and 1990.
Fertility rates have since gone still lower, now standing at around 30 per cent below replacement level (the level that would lead to long-run population stability). This does not mean that Thailand’s population has stopped increasing. Read more…
Author: Purnendra Jain, Adelaide University and Tokyo University
A Japanese prefectural governor does not usually resign to run for office as city mayor — with significantly less authority, power and prestige.
But these are not usual times in Osaka and flamboyant, media-savvy, highly popular Osaka Governor, Toru Hashimoto, has taken this unusual move. Read more…
Authors: Malcolm Bosworth and Greg Cutbush, ANU Enterprise
Like all good fairytales, APEC was formed ‘once upon a time’ to promote trade and investment in the Asia Pacific.
Members like Australia, New Zealand and Japan fought hard to ensure it would not become a myopic trade bloc that discriminated against and sought to divert economic activity away from others. Read more…
Author: Joseph Bosco, Washington DC
In his new book, Ezra Vogel gives Deng Xiaoping all the credit he rightly deserves for transforming China’s economic system and bringing higher living standards to hundreds of millions of ordinary Chinese.
But he fails to note that Deng could never have succeeded without the willing and generous support from the West, especially from the US. Read more…
Author: Vikas Kumar, Bangalore
In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, commentators on East Asia Forum have highlighted the moderate character of Southeast Asian Islam.
Bahrawi argues that contested interpretations of Islam are democratising Islam in Southeast Asia — but similar contests seem to be ineffective in countries like Pakistan. And van Bruinessen argues that large, resilient Islamic organisations are stabilising Indonesian democracy — but comparable organisations are failing to play such a role in other Islamic countries. So are local factors playing a bigger role in Southeast Asia than is usually suspected? Read more…
Author: Andrew Fragomeli, University of Western Australia
Barack Obama championed high-quality growth as a key focus of this year’s APEC Summit in Hawaii.
But this goal can only be realised if APEC members choose to jump the hurdle of behind-the-border barriers. Read more…
Author: Christopher Findlay, University of Adelaide
The way ahead in the European debt crisis appears to lie in refinancing the debt held by those countries whose sovereign bond spreads are widening and who are at risk of default: but who will pay?
Read more…
Author: Sun Xuegong, NDRC
Integration in the regional and global economies is an important aspect of China’s rapid rise.
China’s interests now lie well beyond its border and extend around the globe. This reality has prompted China to actively engage in regional and global architecture to assure that its rise continues peacefully. Read more…
Authors: Maria Monica Wihardja and Josef Kristiadi, CSIS, Jakarta
The Indonesian cabinet reshuffle of 18 October has ended in an anti-climax.
The Indonesian people — and even their ministers — were hoping for a more effective cabinet to support Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s administration: they were instead left shocked and clueless about the criteria on which he based his decisions. Read more…
Author: Ding Dou, Peking University
Longstanding tensions over the value of the Chinese currency now seem on the verge of breaking out into action.
The US Senate recently voted three consecutive times on a bill designed to take punitive action against China over its alleged ‘under-valued’ currency. Read more…
