Economics, Politics and Public Policy in East Asia and the Pacific
Author: Hideo Hayakawa, Fujitsu Research Institute
More than three years have passed since the Bank of Japan (BoJ), led by new Governor Haruhiko Kuroda, introduced the surprisingly aggressive monetary policy of quantitative and qualitative monetary easing or QQE. Read more…
Author: Editors, East Asia Forum
The tension between good policy and political expediency is part of the scene in contemporary Southeast Asia as it is elsewhere around the world. Indonesia is no exception. Read more…
Author: Eve Warburton, ANU
This time last year, most analysts saw Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) as weak and overwhelmed by the challenges of national politics. Now, after two years in the job, he is viewed as the undisputed ‘boss’ of his administration. Read more…
Author: Sarosh Bana, Business India
The wide-ranging data leak on India’s French-origin Scorpene submarines uncovered by The Australian in August 2016 has undermined New Delhi’s sensitive submarine construction program. Read more…
Author: Tristan Kenderdine, Dalian Maritime University
China’s agricultural sector is undertaking risk remodelling. A widely republished Economic Daily editorial in late 2015 refined China’s domestic policy arithmetic in the agriculture sector from ‘banks, futures and insurance’ to simply ‘futures and insurance’. Read more…
Author: Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Chulalongkorn University
The passing of King Bhumibol Adulyadej brings Thailand as we know it to a close. Over a seven-decade reign, the late monarch presided over Thailand’s climb from a village backwater to a modern nation. Read more…
Author: Amitav Acharya, Tsinghua University
The real question about the United States’ role in the world today, as I have argued previously, is not whether the United States itself is declining, but whether the international order it built and dominated will be enduring. Read more…
Authors: Jonathan Goodhand, SOAS and Oliver Walton, University of Bath
Sri Lanka and Nepal may have turned their backs on protracted and bloody conflicts but the fault lines that fuelled these wars have not gone away. One key challenge now facing political elites is that of constitutional reform. Read more…
Author: Mark Greeven, Zhejiang University
In August 2016 Chinese taxi hailing platform Didi Chuxing acquired Uber China after closing several investments with Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent (BAT), Apple, Foxconn and China Investment Corp. These impressive investments totalled US$1 billion, with the market valuation reaching US$35 billion. Read more…
Authors: Kai He and Huiyun Feng, Griffith University
North Korea’s fifth nuclear test in early September 2016 has intensified the security predicament in Northeast Asia. China faces a strategic dilemma: deal with North Korea’s repeated nuclear provocations while responding to South Korea’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) deployment. Read more…
Authors: Asit K. Biswas and Cecilia Tortajada, NUS
Water is a hot topic in India. The most recent boil-over sparked protests that left two dead and masses of vehicles torched. But this is hardly a new phenomenon. Read more…
Author: Yixiao Zhou, Curtin University
The Chinese property market is surging. In the year to August 2016, house prices in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, four first-tier cities, all rose by over 20 per cent. House prices in Xiamen, a second-tier city, grew by 44.3 per cent Read more…
Author: David Dapice, Harvard University
Myanmar is transitioning from military rule to democracy — a difficult project considering that the country has never been united. The difficulties of this transition date back to 1947 when the Panglong Agreement was reached, which formalised Myanmar’s independence from Britain. Read more…
Author: Sagiri Kitao, Keio University
The demographics of ageing are not all doom and gloom. They also open up economic opportunities. In Japan, where retirees have high average wealth and life expectancy, there is an opportunity to develop new products targeted to the elderly and to expand ‘silver’ markets. Read more…
Author: Editors, East Asia Forum
The housing market in China has been behaving wildly. Housing prices in China’s major cities are up by 30 per cent on a year ago. The frenzy to purchase property has come to dominate media reporting around the country, with the People’s Daily capturing a riot at the opening of a new housing development late last month in Hangzhou, where the G20 summit was held just weeks before.
