Economics & Business Archive

Southeast Asia has always played a key role in Chinese foreign policy, but its strategic and economic importance has increased further in recent years, given the heightened economic and political tensions between Beijing and Washington. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations accounted for nearly 15 percent of China’s imports and exports during the first half of this year, more than the United States or the European Union. For Southeast Asia, too, China is a key commercial partner, second only to Japan as a source of foreign investment in the region. Yet, as Sebastian Strangio writes in his new book, “In […]

With every major religion in the world represented, and political systems that range from relatively open democracies to authoritarian one-party states, Southeast Asia is one of the most spectacularly diverse regions in the world. It stretches from the highlands of northern Myanmar to the beaches of southern Thailand and the Philippines, and includes low-income economies like Laos and Cambodia, as well as Singapore, one of the wealthiest places in the world on a per capita basis. Each of the 11 countries in this multifarious region, though, face a common foreign policy challenge: how to deal with the political and economic […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR contributor Lavender Au and Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curate the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. The world is in little danger of running out of rare earth minerals, despite their name. They are neither hard to find, nor difficult to mine. But they are in demand, since they are used in components of popular high-tech devices like smartphones, as well as electric cars, wind turbines and even military hardware. Although researchers found a huge trove of rare earth metals in Japanese waters two years ago—enough to supply the world on […]

For nearly 75 years, the United States and Mexico have transferred giant quantities of water to each other each year as part of a system set up to ensure the equitable sharing of water sheds that straddle their border. The terms and obligations are clearly laid out in a treaty the two sides signed in 1944: The U.S. sends 489 billion gallons of water southward via the Colorado River, and Mexico allocates 114 billion gallons northward, from the Rio Grande and the Rio Conchos. To deal with the technical aspects of this water exchange and settle any issues, the two […]

Latin America and Japan are often thought of as only loosely connected, through a patchwork of free trade agreements and people-to-people ties. But this summer, Chile finalized a deal that indicates a significant convergence of geostrategic interests between Japan and the Americas. After much deliberation, Chile chose an undersea route, backed by Japan, for the first direct fiber-optic cable link between South America and the Asia-Pacific. The Japanese proposal traverses 13,000 kilometers from Chile across the Pacific Ocean—more than 8,000 miles—eventually connecting with existing undersea cables between Japan and Oceania. The new trans-Pacific route would utilize a link between Japan […]

The historically close relationship between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia hit a snag recently over differences in how to address India’s decision last year to revoke the special autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir, a Muslim-majority state that is also claimed by Pakistan. Pakistani officials had repeatedly urged Saudi Arabia to convene a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, or OIC, to discuss Kashmir, to no avail. Finally, in early August, Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, took the unprecedented step of publicly criticizing Riyadh. Appearing on a TV talk show, he threatened to “call a meeting of the Islamic countries […]