Author: Ren Xiao, Fudan University
A reform-minded status-quo power sits somewhere between rigid and anti-status quo powers.
A status-quo state accepts the existing rules of the game and does not seek to change them because it is generally satisfied with the current situation. China has benefited from the existing international system, and has risen to become the world’s second-largest economy. Logically, it would not aspire to overthrow this system within which it is rising to new heights. In this sense, China is a status-quo power. Nevertheless, China is not simply looking to rigidly adhere to this existing system. Read more…
Authors: Brad Glosserman, CSIS, Peter Walkenhorst and Ting Xu, Bertelsmann Foundation
The most recent sign of the global order’s age and obsolescence was the BRICS summit held in New Delhi on 29 March 2012. Even though the group of countries that make up BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) will not reorder global politics, their determination to articulate the grievances of emerging states should not be ignored.
Take, for example, their call for a new development bank to complement the World Bank by placing greater emphasis on the needs and priorities of developing economies as those nations themselves see them. Read more…
Author: Andrew Sheng, Fung Global Institute
Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard was first attributed as likening his country to America’s deputy sheriff in Asia back in 1999.
This observation may have been true during the Cold War — when Australia was the Anglo-Saxon outpost near the Bamboo curtain — but with Australia’s trade and investment with Asia now outweighing that with America and Europe, the geopolitical landscape has changed profoundly. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum
China’s economy grew at its slowest pace in three years, with growth at an annual rate of 8.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2012, hit by slowing exports and a weak property market.
There are those that see the deceleration of GDP growth over the past year as a significant turning point in Chinese economic fortunes.
Read more…
Author: Ashima Goyal, IGIDR
Banks in emerging markets are normally considered high risk, while banks in developed countries are generally thought to be robust and well regulated — but the 2008 global financial crisis suggests the opposite.
Financial markets should have recalibrated their scales for measuring risk following the crisis, but this has not yet happened. Read more…
Author: Vikram Nehru, Carnegie Endowment
Some Chinese astrologers have pronounced that 2012, the year of the dragon, will be particularly volatile.
But you do not have to believe in the Chinese zodiac to know that Southeast Asia is likely to have a tumultuous year. Read more…
Author: M. Govinda Rao, NIPFP
India’s economy was one of the earliest to stage a turnaround after the global financial crisis.
The decisions taken in early 2008 to increase public-sector wages, forgive loans for farmers who had borrowed from the banks, and massively expand the rural-employment guarantee scheme assisted the economy before the global financial crisis unfolded in the last quarter of the year. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum
As Europe continues its desperate struggle to salvage the euro and monetary union, the spotlight of regional cooperation is shifting to Asia.
In December, European leaders retro-fitted the union with fiscal disciplines which impose binding limits on national budgets and borrowing. All but Britain opted in; the UK, Prime Minister David Cameron argued, was not prepared to yield such fiscal sovereignty. Read more…
Author: Arief Ramayandi, ADB
The slow resolution of the European debt crisis has evolved into a liquidity problem which threatens the global financial system.
And these long-drawn-out efforts to address the sovereign debt problems have heightened uncertainties about resolving the crisis and induced speculative activities, threatening the survival of many European banks. Read more…
Author: Joel Rathus, ANU
The global financial crisis forced East Asian nations to get serious about regional architecture.
As global trade entered a precarious decline during the height of the crisis in 2008–09, one of the obvious areas of focus for East Asia was trade regionalism, aimed at making East Asia a more efficient production network and, over time, a final market in its own right. Read more…
Author: Andrew Elek, ANU
The 2008 global financial crisis catalysed a long-overdue transformation in the oversight of global affairs, bringing large emerging Asian economies to the G20 table.
A transition in the role of Asian countries at the G20 — from cautious and sometimes defensive to visionary and exemplary — was expected to unfold slowly, possibly taking a decade or more. Read more…
Author: Stephen Howes, ANU
The founding institution within the World Bank Group is the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD).
The only part of the institution that was established by the 1944 Bretton Woods conference, the IBRD is the World Bank’s bank. Read more…
Author: Mohsin Khan, Peterson Institute for Economic Governance
Asia is in a strong position to assert itself in global financial governance.
The remarkable growth of the economies in the region and their integration in global trade and finance bestow upon Asian states considerable potential clout in international forums and institutions. Read more…
Author: Pravakar Sahoo, IEG
The Indian Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s remarks at the launch of the World Bank Development Committee meeting recently expressed the concerns of emerging economies about the European debt crisis.
If not managed with an iron hand, the crisis will have a contagion effect and lead to a double-dip recession in the world economy. Read more…
Author: Peter Warr, ANU
Since the Asian financial crisis of 1997–98, the countries of East Asia have, in aggregate, run huge annual current account surpluses.
The counterparts of these surpluses, including Europe and the US, have been correspondingly huge current account deficits. Read more…
