Yingluck Shinawatra’s prime ministership abruptly ended on Wednesday when Thailand’s Constitutional Court ordered her and several of her cabinet ministers to step down. The court ruled that it had been unconstitutional for her to replace her national-security chief three years ago.
The decision has the potential to spark more violence witnessed over the last several months as deep economic and political divisions roil Thailand resulting in paralysis in government. (more…)
China’s state media and Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry traded harsh words this week. The exchange came after the Vietnamese issued a strong protest over Chinese plans to search for oil in a disputed area of the South China Sea.
It would be the first time that China has moved its massive and mobile deepwater drilling rig into the disputed area.
Both nations have claims over the islands in questions, which Vietnam calls the Paracel and China the Xisha Islands. They waters around them are believed to contain vast quantities of oil and natural gas deposits. (more…)
The United States and the Philippines signed a security agreement on Monday allowing for more American troops to be stationed in the country on a rotational basis. The deal gives the Americans greater access to many of the bases they used to maintain, including the Subic Bay Naval Base, for the next ten years.
The agreement marks a turnabout for American-Filipino relations after the United States withdrew most of their troops in 1992 in the face of local protests. It also reflects the new security environment in Asia.
On the final stop of his Asia trip, President Barak Obama appeared with his Filipino counterpart, Benigno S. Aquino III, at a news conference in Manila. Obama took pains to say the deal is not intended to contain China but to “make sure that international rules and norms are protected.” (more…)
When President Barack Obama departed Japan last week, on the first leg of a four country Asian tour that will also take him to Malaysia, the Philippines and South Korea, the headlines were that he had failed to reach a trade accord with Tokyo. The sticking point of agricultural subsidies, which have always been the major stumbling block, halted progress on the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership. But American and Japanese negotiators are actually said to be making real progress on this issue with the outlines of a compromise taking shape.
If Japan and the United states come to a bilateral agreement as a prelude to broader negotiations among the participants in the Trans Pacific Partnership, it would constitute a significant development for the region and global trade. It would also give Japan’s prime minister, Shinzō Abe, his third economic reform “arrow” to stimulate the island nation’s economy and Obama a diplomatic victory as well as renewed momentum for his Asia pivot.
In addition, the United States will have provided an alternative to the supposed “Beijing Consensus,” the state centered economic model championed by China’s rise that many observers in Asia predicted would gain in popularity at the expense of free markets. (more…)
When the Crimea was voting to secede from Ukraine and join Russia, President Vladimir Putin was said to be on his proverbial hands and knees offering cheap gas and other inducements to China for its support. But China decided in no uncertain terms that it would stay out of this dispute when it abstained from a resolution condemning the Crimean vote in the United Nations Security Council. China is walking a diplomatic tightrope. It wants to avoid antagonizing a key ally in Russia without siding with the West and causing repercussions in East Asia.
What is certain is that East Asians are watching China’s actions closely for indications of its future policy in regards to the disputes it has in the East and South China Seas with its smaller neighbors. (more…)
Despite snap elections on Sunday, Thailand’s two largest political forces remain at a stalemate and with class and ethnic divisions deepening, tensions remain high across the country.
Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s ruling Pheu Thai party was almost guaranteed to win a majority with the opposition Democrats boycotting the vote. They insist on constitutional reforms before participating in any more elections, knowing that otherwise Pheu Thai, which is most popular in the rural north of the country, will stay in power.
Opposition protesters have occupied large parts of Bangkok, the capital, surrounding key government buildings and virtually shutting down the government. Last week, thousands of police forces were deployed in and around Bangkok and a state of emergency was declared after violence had prevented some early voting. (more…)
The international community is keeping a close watch on Vietnam’s National Assembly as it is convening a month-long session to decide the extent to which it will amend the Constitution. The session is expected to end next week with lawmakers believed ready to give the go ahead on loosening the communist country’s economy, finance and investment laws.
The big question is: will the government take on its vested interests and reform the heavily indebted state-owned enterprises? (more…)
Thailand’s benchmark equity index fell for a third day in a row this week, closing down 2.06 percent to 1,375.86 on Thursday and reaching an eleven week low. The country is tense with thousands of protesters in Bangkok, the capital, and elsewhere around the country, demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra following the introduction of an amnesty bill.
In addition, an ancient land dispute has relations with Cambodia simmering again. With parliament in gridlock, Thailand’s internal and external political conflicts are at risk of overheating and threatening the stability of Shinawatra’s government only two years after she was elected. (more…)
China’s ruling Communist Party last week outlined a series of reforms not seen in the country in decades. The changes are as deep and significant as many analysts expected beforehand as China is forced to change its economic model in order to keep growing while maintaining stability and single party rule.
The third plenary session of the party’s Eighteenth Central Committee in Beijing decided, among other things, to further liberalize trade, investment and price controls, extend land rights to farmers, give migrant workers access to education and health care, improve food and environment regulations, end the labor camp system and relax China’s one-child policy.
The broad array of proposed reforms signals that President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang, who came to power during a leadership transition earlier this year, are serious about jolting the party into changing course. The challenge, which their predecessors also faced, will be implementing them. Vested interests have benefited much from the current system and are resistant to change. (more…)
In an historic meeting at the White House in Washington DC on Thursday, President Barak Obama announced with Vietnam’s president Trương Tấn Sang by his side that bilateral relations between the former rivals will be upgraded to a comprehensive partnership.
In his remarks, President Obama called it “the steady progression in US-Vietnam relations.” Indeed, the progress since 2005, when a slew of business contracts was signed, has been profound with the United States now Vietnam’s largest export market. With unprecedented cooperation, in a wide array of sectors, it appears that a new era in American-Vietnamese relations has begun.
The agreement stops short of a mutual defense treaty, similar to the one America has in place with Japan and the Philippines, but the breadth of sectors now open for cooperation will touch about every area of society. They include political and diplomatic relations, defense, trade, science and technology, education, the environment, health, tourism and war legacy issues. (more…)
As Japanese go to the polls Sunday to vote in elections for the upper house of parliament, all eyes will really be on the margin of victory for Prime Minister Shinzō Abe’s ruling coalition. Judging from the latest polls, and from the results of municipal elections in Tokyo last month where Abe’s Liberal Democrats won handily, the premier can expect to gain control of the upper chamber and claim a mandate for his policies that could fundamentally change the world’s third largest economy and its role in the region.
After the elections, the real drama will start. Abe will be expected to move forward and provide greater details about his plans to restructure the Japanese economy, the so-called third arrow of “Abenomics.”
In addition, Abe could change Japan’s national-security strategy which would transform the role of the military for the first time since the end of World War II. (more…)
Shinzō Abe received a vote of confidence on Sunday when his party came out the big victor in local assembly elections in Tokyo. The victory could bode well for his Liberal Democratic Party’s chances in key national elections for the upper house of parliament next month.
Sunday’s election to the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly is viewed as an endorsement for Abe and his reform plan. His party gained twenty seats after the vote. In alliance with the conservative New Komeito, it now holds a comfortable majority. Both parties had all of their candidates elected.
The outcome is especially important in light of Abe’s legislative goals and the Liberal Democrats’ control of the lower house of parliament. If the party takes control of the upper house, the prime minister will be given a freer hand to pass structural economic reforms he believes are necessary to spur economic growth. He has also said he wants to revise Japan’s pacifist constitution to allow the military to participate in more overseas missions. (more…)
Since Shinzō Abe was an archery player in college, it is apt that his plan for turning the Japanese economy around is described as encompassing three arrows. Last December, when it became clear that the Liberal Democratic Party would emerge victorious in lower house elections and return Abe as prime minister, “Abenomics” sparked confidence in a public hungering for reforms.
Indeed by spring, there was growing belief that the economic reforms might just beat deflation and lift Japan out of its doldrums. The Nikkei 225 stock average had climbed some 80 percent by May from its November lows and the yen‘s value had greatly depreciated, encouraging exporters. In addition, there was evidence that inflation was starting to creep back into the economy.
But after five months in office, the market began to get nervous about the lack of details in a key part of Abe’s plans: the restructuring of the economy, the “third arrow.” This nervousness soon translated into volatility in the Japanese market, creating further uncertainty. The third arrow would always be the hardest to push through because it encroaches upon Japan’s vested interests. (more…)
Prime Minister Shinzō Abe of Japan, accompanied by more than one hundred business executives, is in the middle of a four nation trip intended to secure much needed energy resources and to bolster trade. His itinerary underlines the quandary Japan faces as it grapples with finding alternative energy sources while its nuclear plants remain idle since the 2011 Fukushima power plant disaster.
Abe’s first stop was Russia. The two countries acknowledged in a joint statement that relations remained “abnormal” in the face of an unsigned bilateral peace treaty officially ending World War II. Abe and Russian president Vladimir Putin instructed their foreign ministries to revisit the issue and also find ways to improve Japanese-Russian relations in general.
The major impediment preventing a treaty from being signed has been the status of the four islands situated north of Japan’s Hokkaido and south of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula that the Soviet Union took in 1945 during the final days of the war. Japan refers to these islands as its Northern Territories while they are known in Russia as the Southern Kurils. The islands are surrounded by rich fishing grounds and believed to posses oil and natural gas deposits offshore.
The issue was left unresolved in the 1956 Japan-Soviet joint declaration which restored relations. At the time, Japan rejected an offer to return two of the four southernmost islands closest to it as inadequate by the Soviets. (more…)
With American and South Korean intelligence predicting a missile launch by North Korea in the coming days, Japan announced a series of measures to protect its territory and calm nerves among its population. This comes as South Korea raised its military watch alert level to “vital threat” and its president vowed to respond to any provocations.
As the stream of bellicose statements from North Korea continued and reports indicated that it has prepared missiles on its east coast ready for launch, Japan’s defense minister Itsunori Onodera on Sunday directed the island nation’s military to be ready to shoot down a North Korean rocket should it threaten Japan. The navy sent anti-missile ships to the Sea of Japan and Patriot batteries were deployed in and around the capital Tokyo as well as elsewhere in the country. (more…)
