South East Asia

The top decision-making body of China’s rubber-stamp parliament voted Tuesday to oust foreign minister Qin Gang and reappoint his predecessor Wang Yi to the role. Analysts say the surprising personnel reshuffle weeks after Qin disappeared from public view reflects turmoil in China’s diplomatic system and expect it will have a …

Chinese leader Xi Jinping clearly aspires to establish a new global economic order centered around Beijing, not Washington. However, a new global economic order cannot be built in a day. The immensity of this challenge has forced Xi to set his sights on a set of interim goals. These include …

The leaders of the five Central Asian states — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, known collectively as the C5 — met their Gulf Cooperation Council counterparts in Jeddah last week for a GCC-C5 summit. This gathering built on the success of a ministerial meeting between the C5 and GCC …

While the United States, along with its allies, left Afghanistan in August 2021 in spectacularly humiliating circumstances, the departure was never entirely complete, nor bound to be permanent. Since then, Washington has led the charge in handicapping those who, with a fraction of the resources, defeated a superpower and prevailed …

How China and Russia Use Intelligence Agencies to Undermine America The Cold War never ended. That, at least, is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s view. The clearest indication that the Kremlin continued its titanic struggle against the West even after the Soviet Union collapsed can be seen in the activities of …

With millions more internally displaced as well as an estimated 2.3 million residing in neighboring Pakistan and Iran, Afghan refugees are among the biggest and longest-lasting refugee communities in the world. After the Soviet invasion in 1979, the civil war in the 1990s, and the invasion of Afghanistan by the …

Oppression still continues in Kashmir. Many images of torture are not coming out due to lack of access to impartial media. The Hindu government of India does not stop at suppressing the Muslims of Kashmir. In the name of NRC, millions of Muslims from every state have been expelled from …

Viruses worm their way into living cells, change the structure of the host cells from within, take over the cells’ reproductive process, use the cells’ own machinery to make copies of themselves, and conquer and kill the host. Routine antibiotics do not work while fighting viruses. You need a molecule …

The International North-South Transport Corridor project has become a matter of urgency for Russia, India and Iran, as it would help Moscow and Tehran develop new markets and evade sanctions. This month, even as Tehran took one step further toward Beijing with the formalization of its membership of the China-led …

On 16 March 2023, Beijing released an official plan to reform Party and state institutions. This document lays out plans to address deficiencies in the ability of the Chinese government’s own institutions to lead the nation’s development. Part of the 2023 plan is to reform and restructure the financial regulatory …