Development policy and administration

If you are the world’s second-largest power, what do you dream about? How do you go about making this dream come true? Put bluntly, the Mekong River region represents a crucial testing ground for Beijing’s mid- to long-term ambitions — not acknowledged officially — to become ...

In June 2018, the Ayeyawady-Chao Phraya-Mekong Economic Cooperation Strategy (ACMECS) held its eighth summit in Bangkok. ACMECS countries include Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand. Initially an initiative of former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in 2003, there were few indications that the Thai government ...

Thailand and the smaller states in its neighbourhood will miss the Asia-Pacific era. It is not as if the Asia-Pacific has gone away or disappeared in any sense. But its role as a cradle of prosperity linking larger and small economies around the Pacific Rim ...

At the moment, China and Japan are planning to work together on at least 52 business projects in third countries in the region, encompassing both the Indian and Pacific oceans. Certainly, these projects provide tangible ways for Asia’s two largest economies to foster mutual trust ...

The European Union (EU) and Laos held their third round of face-to-face negotiations on a Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) on Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT). The talks took place in Brussels, Belgium from 17-21 June 2019. The Agreement aims to establish a system ...

On Sunday 23 June, the Rohingya Community in Thailand planned to hand a statement to Myanmar, Thailand as ASEAN’s chair, and the leaders of the ASEAN countries, but the police blocked them. They therefore decided not to go to the ASEAN Summit and Thai Ministry ...

China’s massive infrastructure spending in Southeast Asian nations under the Belt and Road Initiative has run into a series of problems including substandard work and money wasted on unprofitable projects, a new report has warned. The Belt and Road Initiative, launched by Chinese President Xi Jinping ...

Across the river from Myanmar’s colonial-era old capital of Yangon, low-slung shanties dot rice fields that extend into a bucolic rural distance. But that could soon change if local property developers and their deep-pocketed Chinese backers build the Yangon New City Project, an ultra-modern design with ...

Citizens of countries participating in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI, strongly prefer clean energy over the coal projects that have become Beijing’s calling card, a new survey shows. The findings, from a multi-country survey, commissioned by environmental group E3G, were published ahead of an international forum hosted in ...

The 7th Mekong River Commission (MRC) Regional Stakeholder Forum was held in Lao capital Vientiane over Monday and Tuesday, with participants discussing urgent issues facing the Mekong region, the Secretariat of the MRC has said. Attending the two-day event were 180 representatives from Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, ...