The coronavirus outbreak has proven to be a global phenomenom.  From its centre point in the city of Wuhan, China, where it was identified only a month ago, the COVID-19 pathogen has spread across borders into all five continents. The horrific and tragic health and mortality-related consequences of this virus are all too obvious as...Read More

The large influx of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh from neighbouring Myanmar in the wake of the August 2017 ‘clearance operation’ conducted by the Myanmar security forces against the Rohingya in northern Rakhine state is only the most recent chapter in the long story of oppression faced by the Rohingya minority. Over the past four decades,...Read More

The focus of this article is to explore ongoing developments in European perceptions of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and how BRI has been gradually influencing Europe in thinking more strategically about its own continental scale and common interests across Eurasia. The New Silk Roads are neither a formal policy nor a clearly defined...Read More

In moves that signify their strong desire to strengthen bilateral cooperation, the European Union and Vietnam have reached milestone agreements in recent months. On 30 June 2019, they signed a free trade agreement (FTA) and an investment protection agreement (IPA). Over a month later, on August 5, they inked a new defence agreement. In many...Read More

“Almost the single worst abuser of everybody.” This was how US President Donald Trump described Vietnam’s approach to trade in an interview in June. His damning verdict was followed a few days later by an announcement from the US Department of Commerce that it would be imposing duties of up to 456 per cent on Vietnamese...Read More

On July 24, the Chinese government released “China’s National Defense in the New Era.” The Defense White Paper, Beijing’s first major military policy document in four years, basically summarized or expanded the main ideas and slogans that China’s paramount leader, Xi Jinping, previously said in his key domestic and international speeches in recent years. READ THE...Read More

While a visiting senior politician from Vietnam and her Chinese hosts talked in Beijing about the friendship and comradeship between the two communist neighbors, it was reported that their coast-guard vessels had been involved in a confrontation over a reef in the South China Sea. READ THE FULL ARTICLE ON ASIA TIMES.Read More

Preaching is one of the things that Chinese leaders and officials do –and do brilliantly – on the international stage. Wherever they go, they always preach about how international relations should be conducted and paint their country as a responsible, benign and altruistic power. READ THE FULL ARTICLE ON ASIA TIMES.Read More

The ‘America First’ Endgame argues that we are currently witnessing the ‘endgame’ of the international system established by the USA in the immediate post-WWII period. It is against this background that the US has enacted a new monetary, fiscal, trade and foreign policy mix, ‘America First’, which amounts to a coherent and comprehensive financial war...Read More

On and in the lead-up to June 4, many people in Hong Kong, Taiwan and elsewhere commemorated the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Yet in mainland China, any mention or coverage of the Chinese army’s violent crackdown on the peaceful student-led protests was totally forbidden. READ THE FULL ARTICLE ON ASIA TIMES.Read More