Today Trends

After expanding by 2.6 per cent in 2022, South Korea’s economy cooled in 2023. Waning global demand for South Korean exports, continuing geopolitical challenges and weakening domestic demand saw growth decelerate to an estimated 1.4 per cent . While economic growth is expected to pick up in 2024, over the long term South Korean economic growth will be weighed down by structural challenges from the country’s changing demographics. Heavily dependent on trade for economic growth , South Korea saw exports and imports decline in 2023. Exports finished down 7.4 per cent with only exports of automotives and ships seeing growth among major export items. Critically, exports of memory chips were down 30.6 per cent for the year, though they began to recover in October. Despite imports decreasing by 12.1 per cent, South Korea recorded a trade deficit for the second straight year for the first time since the late 1990s . Continuing high energy costs and trade with China were among the primar...

ASEAN is the world’s economic dark horse and is on its way to becoming a global centre of growth. As ASEAN member states are generally dependent on trade, it is worth examining how its trade developed in 2023. Despite efforts by member economies to promote intra-regional trade, most ASEAN trade was with extra-regional countries in 2023. The percentage of intra-ASEAN trade in relation to member states’ total trade experienced a decline from 22.5 per cent in the first three quarters of 2022 to 21.8 per cent in the corresponding period in 2023. This trend may be attributed to the relocation of production and the shifting of supply chains to Southeast Asia. This development may benefit member states’ economic development but also make them more vulnerable to an increasingly turbulent global market. Despite endeavours to diversify their trading partners, ASEAN member states’ trade has become increasingly focussed on China. According to a recent study, trade between China and ASEAN wi...

Under mounting security pressure caused by China’s muscle flexing in the South China Sea and the possibility of Beijing’s economic coercion, Vietnam has adopted a cautious approach to the Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS). The 2019 IPS Report under former president Donald Trump mentioned Vietnam 24 times and regarded it as one of three ‘key players’ in Southeast Asia. In the 2022 IPS Report, current President Joe Biden described Vietnam as one of the ‘ leading regional partners ’ with which the United States aimed to strengthen its relationship with to create ‘collective capacity’ and ‘common action’ in the pursuit of a free and open Indo-Pacific. Vietnam has not yet issued an official statement announcing its support for the US-initiated strategy. In June 2018, the Shangri-La Dialogue’s focus was on ‘shaping the changing security order in Asia’. Vietnam’s Defence Minister General Ngo Xuan Lich made no reference to the term ‘Indo-Pacific’ in his remarks at the summit. Hanoi still shows i...

Historically, South Korea has been more of an importer of transnational higher education than an exporter. This is exemplified by the array of international university branch campuses at the Incheon Global Campus. South Korea’s foray into establishing a global higher education presence commenced in earnest only after 1995, when the concept of ‘education as a service’ was formalised following the General Agreement on Trade in Services. Since 2006, the South Korean government has pursued policies to elevate the global standing of its higher education sector. Initial efforts were centred around exporting higher education services and supporting the establishment of overseas branch campuses, coupled with regulatory adjustments. These policies have since evolved and South Korean universities have been encouraged to establish campuses and research institutes overseas. Digital education has become increasingly prevalent in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Post-pandemic initiatives emphas...

In Maldives, domestic politics is often significant enough to supersede foreign influence and privilege independent approaches to development cooperation. President Dr Mohamed Muizzu aims to maintain internal support as he strengthens relationships with foreign nations. Since it attained independence from Britain in 1965, the Maldives’ foreign policy has been based on principles of sovereign equality of states, the rules-based international order, non-interference in other states’ internal affairs, diplomacy in problem-solving and friendly relationships with other states. Maldives has made significant progress in democratic governance, making the transition to a multi-party democracy in 2008, and economic development, the country’s rich tourism industry now generating 80 per cent of national revenue. In 2021, Maldives was put in the high human development category in the Human Development Index. But Maldives has continued to encounter economic challenges due to global market c...

Bangladesh hopes to build a smart economy which will allow it to become a developed and prosperous country by 2041. While digitalisation has a lot to offer, there are certain areas such as digital financial crime, cyberattacks and data breaches that seriously concern the government. Criminals are conducting financial crimes through illegal e-commerce sites. Financial schemes that rely on multi-level marketing tactics , and e-commerce sites operated by financial criminals, affect millions of people and have led to millions of dollars in losses. Multiple digital financial scammers operate in Bangladesh and rely on apps to interact with targets. Cybercriminals also take advantage of young people and their presence on social media platforms and messaging apps such as Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp, as well as mobile financial services to extract assets from victims. Scammers convince victims to reveal their national identification numbers in exchange for future financial returns. T...

Over the last 25 years, Canberra has preferred a strategy of ‘riding two horses’ rather than choosing between its biggest customer, Beijing, and its strongest ally, Washington. Yet Australia has recently changed tack and favoured the US horse to address China’s growing power. Several prime ministers have explicitly tried to balance Australia’s relationship between the two powers. Kevin Rudd sought ‘ true friendship ’ with China while also promising to ‘deploy force if everything goes wrong’. His successor, Tony Abbott, quipped that Australia’s engagement with the Indo-Pacific superpowers was driven by ‘ fear and greed ’. Even John Howard, who invoked the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty (ANZUS) in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks and supported the war on terror, noted Australia can enjoy the benefits of having a relationship with both countries. But Canberra’s approach has diverged significantly from the previous two decades. While v...

The Indo-Pacific is being transformed by a resurgence of so-called ‘minilateral’ forms of regional cooperation. Whereas state-to-state cooperation was once generally either bilateral or multilateral, minilateral arrangements, typically involving small groups of three to six members, have increasingly come to occupy an in between layer in the region’s security architecture. The Indo-Pacific region has many examples of minilateralism designed to address joint economic or security issues. While some are confined to narrow objectives, others are broader in their remit, covering diplomatic, security, defence, economic and other types of cooperation. Even then, some minilateral cooperation efforts stand out from the crowd for the strategic critical mass they generate and their potential impact upon the regional order. Such examples can be distinguished as ‘ strategic minilaterals ’. Minilaterals are increasingly viewed as the ‘way to get things done’ in the region. Japan and Australia h...

When the Papua New Guinean (PNG) parliament convened on 13 February 2024, the opposition submitted a notice for vote of no confidence against Prime Minister James Marape, naming East Sepik Governor Allan Bird as an alternate prime minister. The government is seeking a Supreme Court interpretation of the Constitution on whether the prime minister candidate is restricted to party leaders or Members of Parliament (MPs) affiliated to a political party. Allan Bird is an independent MP. Bird, who has been with the Marape-led coalition since 2019, resigned from the coalition after criticising the government over the mass looting and carnage on 10 January 2024 in Port Moresby which left 22 dead . The looting followed a policing vacuum when police left their posts, protesting the reduction in their salaries — an episode which the government blamed on a technical glitch in its payroll system. Several Pangu Pati coalition politicians stood down as well, demanding that Prime Minister James ...

The most striking aspect of Pakistan’s economy in 2023 was that it was bifurcated into two very distinct halves. As the 2022–23 financial year was coming to a close in June 2023, Pakistan’s economy was on the verge of a default. Pakistan was desperate for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to step in and avoid a serious financial crisis.  Before the new financial year began, the IMF had granted Pakistan’s 23rd agreement with the Fund — a nine-month US$3 billion Stand-By Arrangement. Beyond finances, a critical aspect of 2023 was that the government — which had ruled Pakistan since April 2022 — was replaced by a caretaker government in August 2023, with the mandate to hold elections. Both the economic and political environment in Pakistan changed radically in the middle of 2023. But the true story of  Pakistan’s tumultuous 2023  is located in 2022. In early 2022, it became clear that then prime minister Imran Khan was facing a hostile parliamentary opposition...