Southeast Asia Archive

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]