Asia-Pacific Archive

Senior U.S. officials recently met face-to-face with counterparts from the Taliban for the first time since the hard-line Islamist group took control of Afghanistan in August. The talks, which the State Department described as “candid and professional,” took place in Qatar, which has played an important role as a diplomatic mediator between the U.S. and the Taliban in recent years.  On the Trend Lines podcast this week, Annelle Sheline, a research fellow in the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, joined WPR’s Elliot Waldman to discuss Qatar’s history as a facilitator of sensitive negotiations, and what […]

In 1997, a group of lawmakers from the youth division of Japan’s long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party paid a visit to Taiwan. The evening reception got boozy, as the hosts repeatedly raised their cups and called upon their guests to join them in draining the contents in one gulp, accompanied by the customary toast of kan pei, which literally means “dry glass.” The head of the LDP delegation was none other than Abe Shinzo, who had just been elected to Japan’s legislature, the Diet, four years earlier and would go on to become the country’s longest-serving prime minister. Abe is known to imbibe […]

The anger directed by Americans at Pakistan in the wake of the disorderly end of the U.S. war in Afghanistan is understandable. After all, Pakistan really did give shelter to the Afghan Taliban, something that played a vital role in the Taliban’s eventual victory. However, the reaction in Washington is also a way of avoiding an honest analysis of the comprehensive failures of U.S. policy in Afghanistan. Moreover, it misses key aspects of what motivated Pakistan’s behavior, with very important implications for how the United States itself understands and acts in the world. To begin with, Islamabad’s support for the […]

With its rich natural gas reserves and strategic location, the Gulf monarchy of Qatar has long played an important role in regional and global diplomacy that belies its small size. It has mediated or facilitated a number of sensitive negotiations, including the talks that led to the peace agreement the United States signed in February 2020 with the Taliban. Since then, and even after the Taliban overthrew the internationally backed government in Kabul this summer, officials in Doha have continued to exercise influence in Afghanistan. Qatar’s diplomatic efforts have not always been smooth sailing, however. For more than three years, […]

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, China Note, which includes a look at the week’s top stories and best reads from and about China. Subscribe to receive it by email every Wedenesday. If you’re already a subscriber,  adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your email inbox. Speaking Sunday at the celebrations of Taiwan’s National Day, President Tsai Ing-wen vowed to resist annexation by China. “We hope for an easing of cross-strait relations and will not act rashly, but there should be absolutely no illusions that the Taiwanese people will bow to pressure,” said […]

Near the outset of my time as a correspondent for The New York Times in China in the early 2000s, during one of my regular conversations with my research assistants, I had an idea for a story that I thought was promising. Beijing was just then cracking down on both video game parlors and internet access, with authorities saying that age limits needed to be imposed and real-name identification required in order to do many things online. At the time, the state used pornography as the rationale for the moves, arguing that online smut would poison the minds of the […]

COVID-19 has walloped the world’s women. As the virus spread, women—who are overrepresented in hard-hit industries like food service, hospitality, education and, crucially, health care—found themselves vulnerable, unemployed and without a social safety net, and often neglected by government crisis responses. Closures of businesses and schools, necessitated by social distancing, have pushed millions of women from the global workforce: Worldwide, women lost 64 million jobs—$800 billion in earnings—in 2020. At the same time, women’s retreat to the home widened gendered inequities in household labor, as women shouldered ever-greater child care responsibilities and more domestic chores. More time at home also […]

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only Weekly Wrap-Up newsletter, which gives a rundown of the week’s top stories on WPR. Subscribe to receive it by email every Saturday. If you’re already a subscriber,  adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your email inbox. This week, Frances Haugen, a former Facebook data scientist, went public as the whistleblower behind the leaked cache of internal company documents known as the “Facebook Files.” Initially published in The Wall Street Journal, the documents allegedly prove that the company’s internal research had demonstrated the negative effects of Facebook and Instagram on […]

While the Biden administration tries to navigate the domestic political obstacles to implementing the president’s so-called Build Back Better plan, it has quietly started laying the groundwork for a parallel program with major geopolitical implications. Just getting off the ground, Build Back Better World, or B3W, is a plan to improve global infrastructure, widely defined, with an eye to not only raise living standards but, just as importantly, to counter China’s growing influence. The idea was formally announced by the Group of Seven leaders during the G-7 summit last June. It aims to take on China’s high-profile Belt and Road Initiative, or […]

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, China Note, which includes a look at the week’s top stories and best reads from and about China. Subscribe to receive it by email every Wednesday. If you’re already a subscriber, adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your email inbox.  Households and factories across 20 provinces in China are reeling from the worst power crunch in a decade. In Shenyang, the capital city of Liaoning province and one of the most severely affected areas, schools have turned off the lights and sent children outside to […]

With Myanmar’s junta laying waste to the country’s economy and bungling its COVID-19 response, the country stands on the verge of becoming a failed state. The economy may shrink by around 18 percent this year, according to the World Bank, and over 200,000 people have been internally displaced since the February coup. The United Nations estimates that nearly half the country could fall below the poverty line by 2022. At the same time, the country’s COVID-19 tests are coming back positive at a rate of over 7 percent. This mismanagement creates an opportunity for the parallel National Unity Government, formed to […]

In early September, Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, a port city on the Pacific coast, to issue a call to action. Russia, he said, needed a new generation of pioneers to revive the country’s eastern frontier. “The development of the Far Eastern region is of huge importance to Russia,” Putin said, urging the assembled businesspeople to invest in the region. No less than “the development of our country not [just] for decades, but for centuries to come” depended on it, he added.  Nearly 30 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia’s […]

China’s Central Bank and 10 other government bodies announced on Sept. 24 that all transactions involving cryptocurrencies are now illegal, effectively banning the use of Bitcoin in the country. The move is the latest in a series of measures aimed at curbing the use of cryptocurrencies that goes back years. Trading in cryptocurrencies has been banned in China since 2019, but it has continued online through foreign exchanges. In May 2021, financial institutions and payment companies were prohibited from providing services related to cryptocurrencies, bolstering similar bans issued in 2013 and 2017. On one level, it is unsurprising that an authoritarian government […]

The military coup that deposed Myanmar’s civilian government in February has created an escalating humanitarian crisis and left the country teetering on the brink of civil war. As the junta continues to target the population with violence, including torture and sexual assault, the opposition movement has also begun to question the effectiveness of its largely peaceful protests, especially in the absence of international support for the pro-democracy struggle. In a WPR article earlier this week, Prachi Vidwans noted that this is precisely the kind of situation where the United Nations can do the most good if it were to act […]

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only Weekly Wrap-Up newsletter, which gives a rundown of the week’s top stories on WPR. Subscribe to receive it by email every Saturday. If you’re already a subscriber,  adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your email inbox. Germany’s elections are of global significance under normal circumstances. As the European Union’s biggest economy and political powerhouse, Germany plays a huge role in shaping the bloc’s policy, which in turn has major implications for global trade and geopolitics. But several factors made the circumstances surrounding Sunday’s elections exceptional. To begin with, after 16 […]