Economics, Politics and Public Policy in East Asia and the Pacific
Author: John Blaxland, ANU
With Aung San Suu Kyi now in parliament and Myanmar’s ongoing reform, it is time for Australia to increase the pace and level of engagement with this long-isolated state.
Numerous institutions within Myanmar require assistance to build capacity and implement reform (education is one key shortfall), but the military in particular must become the subject of increased and well-considered engagement. Read more…
Author: James Laurenceson, UQ
The challenges wrought by burgeoning Asian demand for Australia’s natural resources have already begun to receive policy attention from the Australian federal government.
The Minerals Resource Rent Tax is just one example. But the challenges arising from trade flows are only part of the story that will confront Australian economic policy makers during the Asian Century. Read more…
Author: Frank Jotzo, ANU
The economic rise of Asia brings with it an unprecedented growth in energy use.
How that growth in energy demand will be met depends on technology development and policy for climate change and energy security. These choices will profoundly affect the prospects of energy exporters such as Australia. Read more…
Author: James Laurenceson, UQ
Five years on, the US economy remains sluggish after the bursting of a house-price bubble.
More recently, the focus has been on China — the world’s second-largest economy — and whether it too might be overwhelmed by a similar event. Read more…
Author: Justin Li, ICE
Australia has a new foreign minister, Bob Carr, a former premier of New South Wales and a senior figure in Australian Labor politics, after the resignation of former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd from the post in his spectacularly unsuccessful bid to challenge the current prime minister, Julia Gillard.
In an unusual route to the post, Mr Carr is coming from outside federal Australian Parliament to take up a Senate seat by appointment after the resignation of one of Gillard’s supporters, as is the convention for filling mid-term vacancies in the Australian Senate. Read more…
Author: Anthony J. McMichael, ANU
Over the next half a century and beyond, two major, contrasting shifts in population health will affect the social and economic burdens of disease and the causes of premature death in the Asian region.
Pervasive and disruptive population-health developments could also affect the movement of people, social stability and geopolitical security. These projected shifts will have major implications for Australia. Read more…
Author: Hugh White, ANU
Four months ago, as Australia’s parliamentarians rose to give President Barack Obama a standing ovation, it seemed they had already decided how best to navigate the profound strategic changes that must inevitably flow from the shift in relative economic weight from West to East.
Obama laid out in the starkest terms yet his determination that America will resist China’s challenge to US leadership in Asia, using all the elements of its power — including military force — to perpetuate a future for Asia framed by American values and interests. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum
The whirlwind visit of President Barack Obama to Australia on the way to the East Asia Summit in Indonesia last November, many believe, forever changed the Asia Pacific strategic landscape with a re-assertion of American primacy and power in Asia.
What was the thinking behind the moves that Obama announced in Canberra and how will it shape Southeast Asia’s strategic future? 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: John Warhurst, ANU
The debate as to whether Australia should become a republic or remain a constitutional monarchy is at a paradoxical stage.
A majority of leading Australians in the private and public sectors support the change from a constitutional monarchy under the British crown to an Australian head of state. But many citizens remain undecided, after rejecting this constitutional change by 55 per cent to 45 per cent at a national referendum in 1999. Read more…
Author: Amritha Thiyagarajan, UNSW
Australia has been involved for a number of years in helping developing countries adapt to the devastating effects of climate change.
But while Australia’s recently passed carbon tax has stimulated much debate, there is little to no scrutiny of how Australian money is being allocated throughout adaptation projects at a grassroots level. Read more…
Author: Ding Dou, Peking University
Resources and energy are vital to the ongoing China–Australia economic relationship.
China is now Australia’s largest trading partner and Canberra has repeatedly emphasised the importance of Australian resources to the relationship, while also noting the broader significance of such ties for both countries. But there will be mixed implications for the two sides going into the future. Read more…
Author: Christopher Findlay, University of Adelaide
Australia benefits substantially from the growth of the Chinese economy at this stage of China’s development.
China is now Australia’s most important trading partner and is an important driver of the growth of Australian resources exports. Read more…
Author: Brad Glosserman, CSIS, Washington DC
‘No, thanks’.
That, in summary, is Hugh White’s response to the recent announcement that the US would be sending marines on permanent rotation to Darwin.
White is Professor of Strategic Studies at the ANU, one of Asia’s most distinguished strategists, and a former Australian deputy secretary of defence. And he has been making the case for strategic reorientation in Canberra for a couple of years now. Read more…
Author: Ralf Emmers, RSIS
The US recently participated in the East Asia Summit (EAS) for the first time — a decision that has wider implications for US–ASEAN relations.
The decision to join the EAS is part of a recalibration of US foreign policy vis-à-vis ASEAN-led multilateral institutions. This shift in policy reflects a broader attempt by the US to re-engage with Southeast Asia — after years of perceived indifference — and is equally related to China’s growing influence in the Asia Pacific region. Read more…