Economics, Politics and Public Policy in East Asia and the PacificAuthor: Yukon Huang, Carnegie Endowment
That China’s growth is unbalanced is a fact. Consumption as a share of GDP has declined steadily over the past decade to 35 per cent, while investment as a share of GDP has risen to above 45 per cent — the lowest and the highest rates of any major economy respectively. But are these imbalances a vulnerability — as most observers believe — or a consequence of China’s economic rise, and therefore not inherently problematic? Read more…
Author: Shiro Armstrong, ANU
Increased economic exchange and integration of markets in North America and Europe were institution-led through NAFTA and the European Union. The diversity — in levels of development, political systems, political closeness and by many other measures — and the geography saw no such institutional arrangements emerge to promote integration in Asia. Yet East Asia has managed to achieve economic integration on par with North America or Europe through market-led efforts. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, ANU
From Japan to China across ASEAN to India, Asia is collectively in need of a new round of economic and trade reform to fulfil its expectations of development. Australia’s Asian strategies need to be now carefully tuned and calibrated to that reality. Read more…
Author: Alison Singer, Appalachian State University
As the global leader in hydropower, China must adopt environmental policies that account for methane and carbon emissions as well as ecosystem disruptions and erosion potential. Read more…
Author: Christopher Johnston, Georgetown University
When Xi Jinping became leader of the Chinese Communist Party he chose the location of his first official visit carefully. He did not pay tribute at Mao’s tomb, or tour the rural heartland of Hu Jintao. Read more…
Author: Bakhytzhan Kurmanov, ANU
It is no coincidence that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first visit to Kazakhstan accorded with the start of commercial output from the Kashagan field, arguably the biggest oil and gas field in Kazakhstan and the Central Asian region. Read more…
Author: Maria Monica Wihardja
Central bankers in every emerging-market economy want to know one thing: how exactly does the US Federal Reserve plan to ‘exit’ from its unconventional monetary policy, known as ‘quantitative easing 3’ (QE3)?
The Fed’s recent decision not to taper QE3 may give emerging-market economies some space to breathe but deferring tapering QE3 is not a positive signal. Read more…
Author: Juan J. Palacios, University of Guadalajara
On 30 August 2013, nine containers filled with 52,000 litres of 100 per cent-agave tequila were shipped to China by five Mexican distilling companies.
This is the first time Mexico has shipped top-quality tequila to China for it was previously banned by Chinese authorities because its methanol content exceeded the level permitted for spirits consumed in China. Read more…
Author: Sanchita Bhattacharya, New Delhi
The Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child recently published a report noting that Pakistan has the world’s second-largest number of children out of school, while in April 2012 UNICEF indicated that some 20 million Pakistani children, including an estimated 7.3 million of primary school age, are not in school.
This phenomenon is one of the by-products of terrorism and insurgency in Pakistan today. Yet the full explanation is even more complex, given that both the state and society of Pakistan have descended into utter chaos. Read more…
Author: Andy Yee, Hong Kong
As George Orwell put it in Nineteen Eighty-Four, ‘[w]ho controls the past controls the future’.
In contemporary Japan, national memory is an ideological battleground. The future of Japan’s nationalism, its post-war pacifist regime, and the international relations of the Asia Pacific depend on whose history prevails. Read more…
Author: Hitoshi Tanaka, JCIE
The sheer scale of China’s rise leaves no doubt about its importance to shared regional stability and prosperity.
While stories of China’s burgeoning economy abound, so do concerns regarding risks with the potential to derail its growth story. China faces five highly intertwined domestic and external risk factors. Read more…
Author: Ruediger Frank, University of Vienna
While missiles and nuclear weapons have dominated the headlines, North Korea’s economy under Kim Jong-un has been developing in promising ways on the domestic front. Read more…
Authors: Fakhmiddin Fazilov and Xiangming Chen, Trinity College, Connecticut
China has become the world’s largest energy consumer in less than 20 years, at present accounting for almost 20 per cent of the world’s total energy consumption.
Its rising demand for oil and gas has spun a new web of regional energy ties, with Central Asia caught right in the middle. Read more…
Author: Adam P MacDonald, Halifax
John Blaxland recently acknowledged that return to military rule in Myanmar is becoming an increasingly marginal (but not impossible) prospect. The expected international and domestic retaliatory actions to a return to military rule in Myanmar are a major deterrent, as they could potentially derail Myanmar’s political stability, economic development and threaten important cease-fires. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum
All the commentary suggests that there has been a substantial crackdown on free political expression in China since the new political leadership took over. Read more…
