The USA’s long-awaited ‘Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity’ (IPEF)[1] was released on 23 May at the Tokyo meeting of the Quadrilateral Dialogue (Quad). The IPEF complements the ‘The Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States’ (Executive Office of the President 2022) launched on 11 February and the two documents have much in common, which reflects the...Read More

The USA’s long-awaited strategy for the Indo-Pacific (I-P) was released on the 11th of February (Executive Office of the President 2022), it contains few surprises.  The stated goal is to work toward a free, open, connected, secure, and resilient region by anchoring the United States’ interests and values more firmly within it.  This is set...Read More

The UK’s successful rolling out of its vaccination programme, the attendant government and media hype, not least with respect to how our ‘world beating’ science, technology and enterprise culture ‘beat the virus’, should not be allowed to gloss over the UK’s extremely high Covid death rate and the extent to which this reflects the government’s...Read More

The AUKUS (Australia-UK-US) alliance announced on 14 September 2021 will facilitate Australia building at least eight nuclear powered, but not nuclear armed submarines, collaboration and technology sharing on AI, cyber warfare,. With overall closer alignment of regional security policies. While there was no mention of China in the announcement, AUKUS is without doubt the latest...Read More

The recent upsurge in Covid 19 deaths and cases in East Asian economies that had previously had remarkably good records of dealing with the pandemic (Tables 1a and 1b), has been driven by the rapid spread of the Delta variant, facilitated by cross border movements, relaxation of domestic restrictions and seasonal population movements. A situation...Read More

The Successful Front-line States Official date continues to suggest that while China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam to have imposed significant control over Covid 19, they are far from eliminating it and continue to take measures to deal with generally highly localised spikes in cases.[i] These include: The closure of Da Nang to...Read More

Since late March, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam have imposed further Covid-19 related restriction in responses to renewed concerns over case levels. This has attracted considerable attention and raised fears of a second wave of the virus sweeping through these countries. However, other than for Japan and Singapore, the increases have been...Read More

The escalating USA trade war must be seen as part of a much wider US push-back against a rising China, and indeed much of the global system that is considered not to be acting in the American interest. For China, this raises concerns over the impact on its economy and highly integrated domestic and international...Read More

China’s massive, continent spanning OBOR project is attracting increasing support from Asian governments, including many that have long had poor relations with China.  This development has to be understood in terms of the regions’ enormous infrastructure deficit, the lack of alternative funding, and the changing reality of Asian geopolitics and economic relations.   China has become the principal...Read More

US President Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing, China, on November 8th and 9th, as part of his 12 day-tour of Asia-Pacific ending Monday, November 13th , went much as expected, focusing on reducing America’s trade deficit while playing on the region’s North Korean nuclear threat – save for an unexpected remark to China’s President Xi...Read More