Asia
Indonesia’s LGBT crackdown
Last month, Indonesia’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community was buoyed by a decision to remove the phrase “same-sex” from the article on fornication in…
Time for reason, not emotion, in the “China influence” debate
What’s at stake in the “China influence” debate? According to one view, China’s rise, if unchecked, will leave Australia a mere vassal state, while the United Front…
Economic diplomacy brief: G7 after Trump, avoiding a China bust, and ASEAN integration
After the G6
The last time the world’s rich club lost a member was when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 – although the former Soviet Union was always a difficult fit.
But the…
Name shame: China’s trouble with Taiwan
Beijing’s campaign to isolate Taiwan may be having unintended consequences that work in Taipei’s favour. Rather than weakening Taiwan’s ties with the world, China’s actions seem…
Kashmir: walking the line
Perhaps the biggest casualty of the current state of India–Pakistan relations has been Kashmir, where issues regarding territory, autonomy, and cross-border…
North Korea: beyond an all-or-nothing ultimatum
Unsurprisingly, North Korea played a major role at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore over the weekend, as the focus of the event’s second main panel, and cropped up in…
In conversation: Indonesian sectarianism
What are we to make of the relationship between religion and politics in Indonesia? Is Indonesia becoming more intolerant, or is intolerance becoming a more politically mainstream…
Redesigning a nation: Guo Pei
Vain trifles as they seem, clothes have, they say, more important offices than merely to keep us warm. They change our view of the world, and the world’s view of us.Virginia Woolf…
China eyes its next prize – the Mekong
Beijing’s islands-building in the South China Sea and their militarisation, replete with surface-to-air missiles, is near complete. With guile, threat, and coercion, China…
Japan-Russia: Abe’s brutal truth
On 26 May, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in Moscow for what was their 21st bilateral meeting. For the most part, the outcomes of…