Southeast Asia Archive

Thailand and France are reportedly set to sign an agreement next month on joint development of high-speed rail in Thailand. In an email interview, Lieven Jacquemyn, founder and managing director of the Singapore-based infrastructure investment and development firm Plektics, explained Southeast Asia’s infrastructure needs and infrastructure’s impact on regional integration. WPR: What are some of Southeast Asia’s most pressing unmet infrastructure needs, and what are the primary obstacles to infrastructure development? Lieven Jacquemyn: The emerging economies in Southeast Asia have seen impressive growth, and in order to sustain this growth, the general consensus is that energy and transportation infrastructure needs […]

U.S. President Barack Obama welcomed President Thein Sein of Myanmar to the White House on Monday, praising Thein Sein’s leadership in moving his country “down a path of both political and economic reform.” That progress, Obama said, has allowed for the recent “shift in relations” between the U.S. and Myanmar. Vikram Nehru, a senior associate in the Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Trend Lines the visit underlines how far the Southeast Asian country has come. Nehru said the progress in Myanmar is real, but that the country’s leaders have so far delivered more political than […]

The Philippine Coast Guard opened fire on a Taiwanese fishing vessel two weeks ago, killing a Taiwanese fisherman and provoking a diplomatic deadlock between the Philippines and Taiwan in a period of growing tensions over disputed waters in the region. “This proves again that accidents happen and so all the more reason to have mechanisms in place to address accidents before they spin out of control,” Richard Bush, director of Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, told Trend Lines. Bush explained that because Taiwan found the apology offered by the Philippines for the incident inadequate, the […]

Taiwan and Japan recently signed an important East China Sea fishing rights agreement after 17 years of negotiations. More than anything, the deal represents a striking concession from Japan. Since 1996, Japan had attempted to prevent Taiwanese fishing boats from entering its claimed exclusive economic zone (EEZ) extending 200 nautical miles from the uninhabited Senkaku Islands, which are known as the Diaoyutai in Taiwan. Taiwanese fisherman have a long history of working the waters surrounding the Senkakus. The Taiwan government also claims that sovereignty of the islands reverted to the Republic of China (ROC), as the Taipei-based government is formally […]

In elections over the weekend, the ruling coalition in Malaysia, which has been in power for 56 years, won 133 out of 222 seats in parliament, despite apparently having lost the popular vote by a thin margin. Anwar Ibrahim, who leads the opposition coalition, claimed the election outcome—which kept Prime Minister Najib Razak in office and his National Front coalition in the parliamentary majority—was the result of electoral fraud. “We are in uncharted waters for Malaysian politics,” said Jason Paul Abbott, director of the Center for Asian Democracy at the University of Louisville. “We just need to hope what we […]

In mid-April, Japan and Vietnam vowed to expand their defense cooperation during an official visit by Vietnam’s army chief to Tokyo. In an email interview, Corey Wallace, a teaching fellow at the University of Auckland who studies international security and Japan’s regional relations, explained the development of the Japan-Vietnam defense relationship and what it means for each country’s tensions with China. WPR: What has been the recent history of Japan-Vietnam defense cooperation? Corey Wallace: While official defense connections began developing when Vietnam joined the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a key turning point for the defense relationship came in 2010. […]