Southeast Asia Archive

Southeast Asian countries, already struggling to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus, are bracing for a new surge of COVID-19 cases. Most countries in the region, with the exception of Singapore and Vietnam, had sluggish initial responses to the virus. Most also are poor or middle-income states, which lack public health systems that can effectively track and trace coronavirus patients. Malaysia now has more than 5,000 known COVID-19 cases, although the true number is probably much higher, while the Philippines and Indonesia also have more than 5,000 known cases. With minimal testing in Indonesia, the region’s most populous country, […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Vietnam lodged an official protest with China after a Chinese coast guard ship collided with a Vietnamese fishing boat near the disputed Paracel Islands in the South China Sea on Thursday. Hanoi accused the Chinese ship of ramming and sinking the Vietnamese boat before capturing and detaining its crew of eight fishermen on a nearby island. Vietnamese state media reported that two other Vietnamese fishing boats attempted to rescue them, but were also detained. China, however, claimed that the […]

In early March, Thai government negotiators convened in Kuala Lumpur for a second round of direct talks with the Barisan Revolusi Nasional, or BRN, a secretive separatist group that is thought to control the vast majority of rebels operating in Thailand’s restive “deep south.” Until an earlier round of talks in January, the BRN had been excluded from dialogue with the government in Bangkok, which was controlled from 2014 until last summer by a military junta. Now, a nominally democratic government led by Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, the former army chief, is cautiously reviving a long-stalled peace process. The Thai […]