Philippines: China and the Philippines signed two major agreements last week. The first agreement, the Joint Action Plan for Strategic Cooperation, is a bilateral relations road map for the next five years. The second, the Philippines-China Consular Agreement, is the first consular agreement that the Philippines has negotiated with another nation. This agreement includes notification […]
SE Asia: The NY Times has an article discussing East and Southeast Asian economic integration. Thai prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, believes that the regions should be looking for a new growth model, one that is less reliant on the consumption of Western nations. This would mean increasing domestic demand and increasing aid between Asian nations. […]
[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/gFc0zFUA9r0″ width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /] This Al-Jazeera video examines the strong trade relationship that exist between China and Iran. As the report shows, oil exports, which account for nearly half of Iran’s revenues , are being cut off from the West, they are being increasingly exported to Asian countries – and a big percentage […]
On Thursday, China marked its 60th anniversary of communist rule. The expected parades took place in Tiananmen Square as communist party officials cheered China’s growing position as an economic powerhouse its military might. But while the world watched the celebrations more closely than they have in the past, the publicity that the anniversary has garnered […]
Yesterday was a very historical day as the Iranian delegation met with the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, China and Russia in Geneva. It is a little too soon to judge the efficacy of these talks, but there has been some positive news. As the New York Times reported, Iran has agreed to […]
The president of the World Bank said that America’s days as an unchallenged economic superpower might be numbered and that the dollar was likely to lose its favored position as the euro and the Chinese renminbi assume bigger roles.
Asia Times Online has several great articles out this week on Southeast Asia: – Vietnam could be facing another currency crisis. The Vietnamese Dong may crash due to the governments unsustainable trade and spending deficits. Apparently, things got out of hand as early as late 2007, when Vietnam started printing Dong based off of the […]
–UPDATE (9-20-2009) – DNA test results confirm Top’s death. Indonesian authorities have officially declared Noordin Muhammed Top, suspected terror mastermind of the July Jakarta Hotel Bombings, dead. He was killed in last month’s Indonesian police raid of a house in the central Java town of Solo. The identification was based on fingerprints stored on the […]
Shawn W Crispin has an interesting article in Asian Times concerning the Vietnamese government’s latest freedom of speech crackdown that has specifically targeted bloggers who had publicly expressed anti-Chinese sentiment. Hanoi fears it cannot control the more than two million Vietnamese based blogs, a common source of uncensored news. While a general fear of the […]
I wrote a letter to the “NY Times” in response to Tom Friedman’s column last week, Our One-Party Democracy, in which he says, essentially, that because the Chinese have an autocracy they are better at promoting renewable energy. The “International Herald Tribune” had my letter forwarded from the “NYT” and I had hoped they would […]
I know China’s economic philosophy is different than America’s but was it ever so glaring as a week ago, when it was reported that China “loaned” China National Petroleum Corp. $30 billion for yet more overseas projects? Can you imagine Uncle Sam doing this for Exxon? (Okay, maybe GM, but the terms were a lot […]
– The Philippines will begin a type of visa waiver program to attract Chinese nationals, enabling them to obtain visa’s upon arrival at the airport. These rules were adopted on the recommendation of the Filipino Tourism Department to increase revenue. The visas will allow Chinese nationals on vacation or business to stay in the Philippines for up […]
Indonesia’s military has been busy lately, and not just perusing terror suspects, but in activities one might consider a serious misallocation of resources. The Indonesian Navy has deployed Marines to the barren island of Jemur, one of nine islands in the Riau (Arwah) Archipelago, in response to both the Travel Journal and Osvaja.net listing it as part of the Malaysian […]
While I am not a specialist in green technology, I could not help but be depressed by an article in the New York Times Tuesday about China’s rare earth minerals and metals. The Times and many other papers announced Tuesday that China which “currently accounts for 93 percent of production of so-called rare earth elements” […]
– Malaysia is often sited as an example for the wider Muslim world of how a moderate pluralistic democracy can be compatible with Islam. An article in Forbes explores how moderate Malaysia actually is. First, the article recants the common outsiders view of Malaysia: …the Southeast Asian nation boasted the world’s tallest building, the iconic […]