Synopsis China has managed to bring its public health crisis under control since it became the epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. The country’s economy has taken a hit. It shrunk by 6.8% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2020 as a result of...
Sypnopsis Indonesian President Joko Widodo “Jokowi” began his second term in office with lofty ambitions. Adding human capital development to his previous focus on infrastructure, Jokowi also pushed for the passage of numerous omnibus laws to make Indonesia more attractive to investors. However, the COVID-19 pandemic...
Sypnopsis The Malaysian parliament convened on 18 May 2020 for its first sitting since the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government came to power in early March 2020. Political developments, previously sedate due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, came back to the fore along with it. A no-confidence...
Sypnopsis The rapid worldwide spread of COVID-19 has highlighted one downside of greater global connectivity - the potential for not merely goods and people, but also viruses, to travel across borders. The pandemic has also drawn attention to how deeply integrated supply chains are. Cities around...
Sypnopsis (Please note that the synopsis may be subjected to changes.) The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has had significant implications for global health, but its impact on the US-China relationship has been equally important. Driven by domestic imperatives, Beijing and Washington have engaged in a war of...
For ASEAN, 2020 is shaping up to be just as eventful as it has been for 2019. On the one hand, the Indonesian and Thai elections progressed relatively smoothly, while Singapore and Myanmar can look forward to polls of their own within the year. Even...
China's economy is slowing. While the slowdown has been influenced by the trade war, there are other drivers at work - including modest consumer spending and industrial productivity, as well as efforts to rein in debt. Currently, China's full-year growth forecast stands at 6% to...
ASEAN is facing political and economic uncertainty as Sino-American tensions intensify. The conflict has affected supply chains and business sentiments, and there is increasing concern that the standoff is about more than trade and technology. Unless China and the United States can resolve their differences,...
Amidst the Sino-American trade war and other factors like the Chinese slowdown, market watchers are expecting correspondingly slower growth in Singapore. Policymakers have warned about the risk of a technical recession in the fourth quarter of 2019, potentially continuing into next year. In this climate,...
The spread of fake news is an online fixture with real implications, as Indonesia has recently experienced. Stories that pandered to nationalism and religious conservatism had simmered in the country for years, bubbling over in instances such as the 2017 Jakarta Gubernatorial election. During the...