• Editorial
Three processes drive modernisation: a structural transformation of the economy with agriculture playing a lesser role as the country gets richer; an agricultural transformation that raises the sector’s productivity and produces a more diversified output; […]
• Editorial
Controversy has surrounded revision of Indonesia’s foreign worker regulations ever since a presidential regulation (PP20) on the subject was issued on March 26. This is hardly surprising considering 2019 is an election year. Parties and […]
• Editorial
In January 2018 Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visited Cambodia and oversaw the signing of 19 new development deals. The deals were announced just a few weeks after Chinese firms pledged to invest an additional US$7 […]
• Editorial
China-Asean and China-US relations in the South China Sea have trended in opposite directions since July 12, 2016. On that day the Philippines and Asean set aside the near-term implementation of the South China Sea […]
The arrest of members of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), an organisation linked to al-Qaeda, in Singapore in 2001 sent shock waves across the national security landscape. This portentous incident signalled both the need for Singapore to […]
• Editorial
In June 2018, a leaked environmental impact assessment report on the proposed Sambor Hydropower Dam project in Cambodia revealed that constructing a dam at the proposed site could “literally kill the [Mekong] river”. The Cambodian […]
• Editorial
Southeast Asia is experiencing rapid urbanisation, and with it comes more and more people who are absorbed into the unregulated, informal sectors of the economy. In Cambodia, more than 95 per cent of the aggregate […]
• Editorial
China has long been infamous for incorporating maritime militias into its fishing industry to assert its sovereignty claims. With the world’s largest fishing fleet, comprising 370,000 non-powered and 762,000 motor-powered vessels, China has the capacity […]
• Editorial
The Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI), a new participant in Indonesia’s electoral landscape set to contest the 2019 national election, is grabbing the attention of Indonesian political watchers. Labelled the ‘millennials’ party’, PSI sees itself as […]
• Editorial
The stunning victory of Malaysia’s opposition on May 9, 2018 in the country’s 14th general election and the equally impressive peaceful turnover of power — as the federal government changed hands for the first time […]
Southeast Asian countries’ historically high defence budgets are the sum of various national considerations: financial self-sufficiency, territorial control, expansion of capabilities, peacetime missions and the development of the local defence industry. The threat of China […]
• Editorial
The United States and China have apparently reached a tacit agreement to disagree and maintain a leaky status quo in the South China Sea. Not coincidentally, relations on this issue between Asean claimants and between Asean […]