Asia-Pacific Archive

HONG KONG — Mum rang the other day. It was only unusual because we had already spoken between Melbourne and Hong Kong twice that week, for her 70th birthday, and this conversation was stilted, though she assured me everything was fine. Then she blurted out: “You might think me silly but it rained last night. Oh it rained and rained from midnight until eleven in the morning and it was heavy. It’s just that,” she hesitated. “It hasn’t rained for so long.” Such is the drought afflicting Australia — the worst in living memory — that it warranted a call […]

CARACAS, Venezuela — Fond of mocking George W. Bush and railing at the U.S, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has called his country’s number one oil customer, otherwise known as “the empire,” the greatest threat to human existence today. On the verge of reelection, Chavez has said that his geopolitical mission is nothing less than “saving the world” from the evils of U.S-style capitalism. As part of this plan, say analysts, Chavez has reached out to China. Eager for oil to fuel its economy, China has agreed to form a “strategic alliance” with Venezuela, strengthening bilateral ties through oil agreements and […]

Five years ago this month, Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, was liberated from the tyranny of the Taliban regime and its “guests,” al-Qaida. Five years later, Afghanistan, and indeed the world, lives under the threat of another brutal tyrant: the narcotics trade and the terrorism it funds. Despite this threat, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who once so passionately announced that counter-narcotics was a top concern, appears to have wilted on the anti-drug message while the opium poppy, from which heroin is derived, flourishes to record levels – the area cultivated increased an astonishing 60 percent over last year, according to the United […]

Just a single sentence among the many tens of thousands uttered in Hanoi this past week by 14,000 delegates and their retinues sums up the futility of APEC, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum: “One of the major outcomes that is anticipated from the leaders’ meeting will be the Hanoi Action Plan to implement the Busan roadmap to achieve the Bogor goals,” said Vietnam’s Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, Le Cong Phung, at the start of the week-long jamboree. Busan was the South Koreans’ turn at staging the event last year. Bogor was Indonesia’s contribution back in 1994. The political and business […]

The U.S. military has recently acknowledged that the U.S. and Chinese navies nearly engaged in a direct military clash at the end of last month near the Japanese island of Okinawa. Although the Chinese government has denied knowledge of the incident, U.S. government sources have provided some details of the encounter, which occurred in the international waters of the East China Sea. On Oct. 26, a Song-class diesel-powered attack submarine unexpectedly surfaced within five miles of the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk. The submarine was apparently rehearsing how to sink the carrier with its torpedoes and cruise missiles — a […]

JAKARTA, Indonesia — When in May 1998 thousands of Indonesian students converged in the streets of the capital, Jakarta, demanding a democratic country and a law system equal for all, the air was filled with tension. Then, when their Reformasi (renovation) movement managed to end the 32-year rule of Dictator Suharto, tension gave way to expectation. Yet, the winds of change have lately turned into just a light breeze, and recent events have shown that in this archipelago nation the law remains lopsided, with the Suhartos and the armed forces still largely outside the reach of justice. The latest slap […]

The Bush administration recently published an unclassified version of its new National Space Policy. Like the 2005 National Defense Strategy and the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, the new policy stresses the vital interest of the United States in remaining a major space power. Although it acknowledges the value of international cooperation in space and the right of “free passage” for all countries’ satellites and other space-based objects, the policy reaffirms the intent to protect U.S. space capabilities by all available means. The new policy will likely intensify Chinese and Russian fears that the United States intends to deploy weapons in […]

BANGKOK, Thailand — Gambling is illegal in China, but Macau, the special administrative enclave on the coast of Guangdong province, is this year expected to outstrip the United States’ Las Vegas Strip with casino revenue turnover of about $7 billion. The explosive growth of casino gambling in the tiny former Portuguese colony is yet another staggering statistic that illustrates the story of China’s breakneck development. Macau has been transformed in a few short years from a relatively sleepy, rather quaint oddity on the South China Sea into a brash waterfront of ugly, modern casino “resorts” that smother the old colonial […]

Diplomatic activities and discourse in Southeast Asia are popularly described as the “ASEAN Way.” What this amounts to is an informal, loose, and non-legalistic process of conducting regional relations among the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. That the bilateral conflicts among ASEAN members have not spilled over and affected regional relations serves as a significant testament to the diplomatic maturity of member states in ASEAN. In the words of former Deputy Secretary General of ASEAN, Mokhtar Selat: “What is bilateral should be kept bilateral. What is regional should be regional. ASEAN works on this basis. And […]

NANNING, China — A huge sign strung across the entrance to a trade exhibition center in the southwest Chinese city of Nanning blandly says “10+1=11.” But behind this uninspiring piece of sloganeering, and in and around this provincial capital, more exciting things have been happening. The Philippines’ President Gloria Arroyo went for a cruise on the Li River, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong popped up to Sichuan and received a bottled gourd for happiness and prosperity, and deals worth $600 million were signed between Chinese companies and several Southeast Asian countries. There have also been some amusing asides in […]

In a surprising — but typically unexpected — move, North Korea has agreed to return to the Six-Party Talks. Both the United States and North Korea have made concessions, brokered by China, to achieve this long-hoped-for diplomatic reengagement. The United States is not insisting on tangible demonstrations of nuclear rollback as a prerequisite to talks and, to achieve the reengagement, it met in a secret diplomatic forum in Beijing that included only representatives from China and North Korea. North Korea has dropped its insistence that the United States removes its financial restrictions on its overseas monies, being satisfied with U.S. […]