Vietnam – Well it finally happened. Vietnam devalued its currency, again, this time by 5% and increased its interest rates by 1% (moving it to 8%). This is the 3rd devaluation of the Vietnamese Dong since June of 2008. This blog reported that Vietnam was having some currency liquidity issues for awhile, but they were […]
Patricia Kushlis has a post in WhirledView on President Obama’s commitment to increase the number of U.S. students going to China from the current number of 20,000 to 100,000. Her excellent post is here. As she notes, this represents an enormous increase – in the number of US students in China and in the overall number of U.S. […]
Focusing mostly on the one-year anniversary of the Mumbai attacks (Nov. 26-29): 1) Interview with Fareed Zakaria in the Hindustan Times. 2) This headline in the Wall Street Journal says it all, doesn’t it? 3) The last thing South Asia needs is a war of words between India and China. India defense minister A.K. Antony: […]
Returning from two weeks in India – with my mind full of thoughts, I came across Hans Rosling’s video from Ted India. I adore how excited Rosling is about statistics (b/c I’m not), and think GapMinder is quite clever (b/c helps people like me to “get it”). Since my mind tends probe the non-Western experience, […]
China’s industrial production and trade surplus posted robust double-digit gains in October, indicating a strengthening recovery in the world’s third-largest economy. China, unlike the U.S. and other western industrial nations, has managed well in the advance of the global economic crisis.
Cambodia and Thailand – Thailand recalled its ambassador from Cambodia on November 5th over former Thai PM and wanted fugitive, Thaksin Shinawatra’s appointment as economic adviser to Cambodian PM Hun Sen. A few weeks back there were rumors that Shinawatra would be allowed to move to Cambodia, but the Cambodian government denied this after […]
A state news agency in China confirmed today that nine people have been executed for their role in the rioting that overtook the northern city of Urumqi in July. As reported earlier on this blog, the rioting had a long simmering ethnic component to it that pitted the majority Muslim Uighur population against the growing […]
A virtual wall created for Twitter users to express their thoughts and hopes on the 20 year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall has been blocked in China. The “Berlin Twitter Wall,” as it’s called, is an initiative of KulturProjekte Berli, a not-for-profit organization that promotes networking and mediation of art and culture. […]
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 […]