East Asia Archive

Extreme volatility in China’s financial markets has forced emergency interventions by financial regulators and thrown up major new challenges to Chinese policymakers. Following what amounted to a complete suspension of both onshore stock exchanges three weeks ago, market operations have begun to normalize, but confidence remains fragile. With emergency policies still in place, the broader institutional fallout is unclear, but potentially huge. The seeds of the stock market collapse were sown almost exactly a year ago. Following an 8-year bear market, a major slowdown in the real economy and increasing corporate debt-repayment obligations, it suited policymakers both politically and economically […]

Ties between Russia and Japan are slowly picking up steam again after a 16-month chill following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014. Earlier this month, Shotaro Yachi, Japan’s national security adviser, traveled to Moscow and met with his Russian counterpart to discuss President Vladimir Putin’s plans to visit Japan later this year. And despite ongoing tensions over Ukraine, there are also signs that Japan’s foreign minister, Fumio Kishida, may travel to Russia in the coming months to prepare for a potential Putin visit. Japan-Russia cooperation is also continuing on the security front with bilateral maritime security drills, focused primarily […]

Cambodia’s July 2013 national elections were a watershed moment in the country’s recent political history. Amid charges of electoral fraud, long-ruling Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) was declared the winner of the polls by the National Election Committee. Despite the irregularities, the opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) still saw its support surge, winning 55 out of the 123 seats in parliament. The result represented an unprecedented loss of 22 seats for the CPP and prevented it from wielding the two-thirds majority necessary to amend Cambodia’s constitution. Following the announcement of the results, anti-government demonstrations in the […]

On Friday, South Korea announced the 36th death from the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), though no new cases have been reported in five days. In an email interview, Myoungsoon You, an assistant professor of public health at Seoul National University, discussed South Korea’s public health system and its response to the MERS outbreak. WPR: How robust is South Korea’s public health system, and what measures are in place to contain outbreaks such as MERS? Myoungsoon You: The MERS outbreak has exposed great weaknesses in South Korea’s public health system. Lack of necessary services such as negative room pressure systems […]

When it comes to the power of arcane financial matters to capture global attention, nothing in recent weeks compares to the drama surrounding Greece’s debt. But there is another simmering crisis with potential to do far more damage to the world economy. Consider that as depositors in Greece lined up at ATMs to withdraw pocket change from their bank accounts, investors in China were bleeding assets at an unprecedented rate. And these days, even a small financial tremor in China can be felt around the world. The Chinese stock market has endured its sharpest drop in more than 20 years. […]

In late May, at a high-level Community Party meeting, Chinese President Xi Jinping cautioned that religions in China must be free from foreign influence and incorporated into socialist Chinese society. Xi’s warning appears to have its limits: It has not deterred the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, from reiterating his hopes that the embryonic dialogue between Beijing and the Holy See will continue to move forward. But the prospects of warmer ties between Beijing and the Vatican doesn’t play well in Hong Kong, where the city’s Catholic leadership has been a vocal supporter of the democracy movement in […]