Economics, Politics and Public Policy in East Asia and the Pacific
Author: Geethanjali Nataraj, NCAER
As developed countries struggle to recover after the global recession and try to confront the looming sovereign debt crisis in Europe, big emerging markets are now driving global growth.
Given the slow down in developed countries, emerging economies are trying to boost domestic demand to sustain growth — and this is particularly the case in China. Read more…
Author: Zhang Yunling, CASS
Since China’s reform and opening-up policies began in the 1970s, the country’s average annual economic growth rate has hovered around 10 per cent.
Currently, China’s gross domestic product is second only to the United States; it is the world’s largest exporter and importer and the largest holder of foreign exchange reserves. Along with China’s remarkable economic rise comes an increase in China’s role in both regional and global development and governance. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum
China’s vice president, Xi Jinping, is set to make a hugely important visit to the US next week, prior to succeeding President Hu Jintao as China’s next president later this year.
The visit will set the stage for interaction between the next generation of Chinese leaders and American political leadership and help to shape how the most important bilateral relationship in the world will be managed over the medium-term future. Read more…
Author: Sheryn Lee, ANU
On 14 January, Taiwan’s incumbent president, Ma Ying-jeou, won a second term in office, obtaining 51.6 per cent of the popular vote while Tsai Ing-wen, his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) opponent, managed 45.6 per cent.
Ma’s party, the Kuomintang (KMT), thus retained control of the Legislative Yuan, securing 64 of the 113 seats. Read more…
Author: Le Hong Hiep, Vietnam National University
Vietnam is arguably the most ‘sinicised’ country in Southeast Asia, a distinctive result of more than 2000 years of intense interaction between Vietnam and China.
But the Vietnamese absorption of Chinese culture is neither a straightforward process nor an inescapable outcome of geographical proximity; it is much more nuanced. 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…
Author: Scott A. Snyder, CFR
North Korea’s leadership succession from Kim Jong-il to Kim Jong-un has gone according to script.
The Korean Workers’ Party and the Korean People’s Army are supporting Kim Jong-un as North Korea’s new leader and North Korea’s propaganda machine has not missed a beat in announcing new titles, manufacturing accomplishments and portraying Kim Jong-un as a Great Successor worthy of the name. Read more…
Authors: John Delury and Chung-in Moon, Yonsei University
Kim Jong-il’s sudden death spurred yet another round of fevered speculation over the DPRK’s imminent demise.
Some analysts gave the North Korean state only a matter of months to live, and renewed calls on Beijing to engage in ‘contingency planning’ with Washington and Seoul to pre-empt catastrophe when collapse finally comes. Read more…
Author: Aidan Foster-Carter, Leeds University
The sudden death of Kim Jong-il changes North Korea, in Donald Rumsfeld’s useful phrase, from a known unknown to an unknown unknown.
With Kim senior we knew where we were — to some extent: the old trickster liked to keep us guessing. But his son is a blank — so far. Read more…
Authors: Jonas Parello-Plesner and Parag Khanna, ECFR
Last year proved a tipping point for China’s approach to the world. The confluence of Europe’s debt crisis and America’s contracting defence budget has created rising expectations that China will shoulder ever greater power burdens for international stability.
No longer can it keep a low profile in international strategic and economic affairs. Could it join America as a world policeman sooner than expected? Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum
A great deal in the international economy is riding on what happens to the Chinese economy in the new year.
China’s 9 per cent plus growth since the global financial crisis has been a central element in Asia’s bucking the global recessionary trend. With Europe still in trouble and the United States struggling to keep recovery on track, is China too now destined for a hard economic landing?
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.
Author: Bradley O. Babson
At the moment of his accession to power, Kim Jong-il inherited the devastating impact of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the subsequent trade shock to North Korea’s economic output, the onset of the worst famine in modern history, and a humanitarian crisis that required a direct appeal to the outside world for help.
By the late 1990’s, he was forced to accept the realities of dependence on international aid, the rise of farmers markets as a grassroots response to the famine, and the introduction of capitalist notions such as ‘profits’ in the Constitution itself. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum
The dramatic increase in recent years of trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) in sub-Saharan Africa by firms from Asia — notably China and India — has become an emotionally charged and controversial issue.
For China, as Luke Hurst has written, Africa would seem an excellent complement to its resource- and market-seeking global agenda. Read more…
Author: Vikas Kumar, Azim Premji University
China’s aggressive posturing in recent boundary disputes is causing widespread concern in the Asia Pacific.
But sensing growing opposition, China is renewing cooperation with its neighbours to calm tensions. Read more…