The Diplomat
A Bright Future in Cambodia’s Energy Sector?
Rather than ecologically harmful dams, Cambodia should explore solar power to fill its energy gap.[] One such project is the proposed Sambor Dam, to be located on the Mekong River’s mainstream at Sambor town, Kratie province, Cambodia. This would be one of eleven large hydropower dams ...
Sabrina Gyorvary
Is sustainable development along the Mekong possible?
[] Sustainable development of the Mekong basin is too important to be persistently ignored. Approximately 284 million people, including around 400 ethno-linguistic groupings, live on the Mekong River. A majority of Mekong communities are considered “primary producers,” as they rely on the river’s ecosystems for their survival through ...
Linh Tong
China’s cooling economy is a warning for ASEAN
As China heads into its Party Congress next week, concerns have been surfacing over the past few months about the state of the world’s second-largest economy, which has implications not just for Beijing but also neighboring Southeast Asian states. The recent downgrading by Standard & Poor’s (S&P) ...
Luke Hunt
Asia and the fall of coal
The sudden shift, years ahead of schedule, from coal toward renewables is remaking Asia’s energy economy – with repercussions to be felt across the world. The present – and future – does not look good for what, only a few years ago, seemed like a ...
After TPP: The Future of US-Japan Trade Relations
When Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met with U.S. President Donald Trump in February, they agreed to convene a bilateral economic dialogue – led by U.S. Vice President Michael Pence and Japanese Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Taro Aso – to “[explore] cooperation across ...
What’s on the agenda for the Trump-Xi meeting?
Tomorrow, U.S. President Donald Trump will begin his first face-to-face meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The meet-and-greet, to be held at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, will be the first direct engagement between the two leaders since a phone call on February ...
China and India’s shared pathway to great power
With both countries displaying world-leading economic prowess, along with mounting military expenditures, as well as their increasingly heard – and sought after – diplomatic voices, China and India are determinedly on the rise within international affairs. Their collective ascent is a fundamental element within contemporary ...
Will the environment be the Vietnam government’s downfall?
For years, Tran Thi Nga was subjected to harassment and brutalization by the Vietnamese authorities, the details of which emerged in a fresh Human Rights Watch report published earlier this year. She was finally arrested in January for using the using “the Internet to post ...
Saving Vietnam's floating markets
Amid mighty rivers and dense mangroves, the busy floating markets in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta have long shaped the delta’s well-known “water civilization.” As many as a dozen floating markets still remain along major waterways around the delta, where boats, houses, and markets float upon the ...
The key to successful elections in Timor-Leste: professional security forces
The big day has finally arrived for voters all across Timor-Leste and, for the first time since the restoration of independence in 2002, for Timorese also living in Australia and Portugal. According to the electoral administration body STAE, there are 747,583 Timorese voters registered to ...