Business

The Politics of Steel in Southeast Asia

Last week, Japanese steel giant Nippon Steel announced it would be buying a pair of Thai steel companies for a combined $783 million. As reported by Reuters, the combined annual output of the two Thai steelmakers is 3 million tons, which will bring N..

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France’s Total Backs Sanctions on Myanmar Oil and Gas Revenues

The French energy giant TotalEnergies has signaled its support for targeted sanctions on Myanmar’s oil and gas industry, the largest single source of income for the country’s military administration. In a letter to Human Rights Watch (HRW) that was m..

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ILO Report Says Afghan Crisis Causing Massive Job Losses

More than a half million people in Afghanistan have lost their jobs since the Taliban takeover in mid-August, the International Labor Organization said in a report released Wednesday. The ILO said the crisis has paralyzed the economy and slammed the ..

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Indonesia’s Railway Renaissance

PT Kereta Api Indonesia (Indonesian Railways Company, or KAI) is the country’s state-owned rail operator and they have been, if you will excuse the pun, on something of a roll lately. Like any company in the travel industry, KAI has been battered by ..

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Betel Nut Smuggling From Myanmar to India Booming: Report

Yesterday, The Irrawaddy magazine published a short article detailing a sudden boom in the smuggling of areca nut from Myanmar into India. According to the report, the illicit trade in the stimulant, which is often known as betel nut, is currently su..

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Myanmar Teak Exports to US Continuing Despite Sanctions: Watchdog

American companies continue to import teakwood from military-ruled Myanmar in apparent violation of U.S. sanctions, an advocacy group said in a report released yesterday. Justice for Myanmar (JFM), a Myanmar-based human rights group, found that U.S. ..

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Environmental Issues Take Precedence in ASEAN’s Sustainable Finance Taxonomy

In November, a group of ASEAN sectoral bodies known as the ASEAN Taxonomy Board (ATB) released its first version of the ASEAN Taxonomy for Sustainable Finance, an initial proposal for a sustainability classification system intended to apply across th..

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China’s Core Economic Issues in 2022

China’s economy has faced major disruptions through 2021 due to the ongoing China-U.S. trade war, COVID-19 restrictions, and power shortages. While the economy may continue to suffer from the ongoing trade war and possible COVID-19 resurgences, new i..

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Power is Power: What’s India’s Problem with Chinese Equipment in its Power Plants?

In my favorite dialogue from George R.R. Martin’s saga, A Song of Ice and Fire, two characters known for their cunning, Varys and Tyrion, consider the nature of power. They do so through a riddle: If a king, a priest and a wealthy man sit in a room w..

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2021 in Asian Geopolitics: A Retrospective

Podcast hosts Ankit Panda (@nktpnd) and Katie Putz (@LadyPutz) discuss the most significant geopolitical developments in Asia in 2021. Click the play button to the right to listen. If you’re an iOS or Mac user, you can also subscribe to The Diplomat’..

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Will China’s Regulatory ‘Great Wall’ Hamper AI Ambitions?

In September the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) announced a three-year plan to regulate predictive algorithms, and Chinese companies scrambled to comply with new regulations. News of the plan came on the heels of two other stringent policie..

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Kishida’s New Japan in the COVID-19 Era

Last month Japan’s new Prime Minister Kishida Fumio unveiled a record-breaking economic stimulus package to rebuild Japan’s COVID-19 battered economy. But shortly after, Japan once again closed its borders to new arrivals in response to the spread of..

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