In Asia: Weekly Insight and Features from Asia

On Tuesday, October 28th, the Asia Foundation released findings from its most recent public opinion poll in Afghanistan, which covers the largest population sample ever surveyed at one time in all 34 of Afghanistan’s provinces. “Afghanistan in 2008: A Survey of the Afghan People” is the fourth poll conducted by the Foundation, which released previous [...]

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Afghanistan has been through increasingly difficult times in the 12 months since The Asia Foundation conducted its last survey of Afghan public opinion in the summer of 2007. Amidst slow but steady gains in vital basic amenities and services and some successes in reconstruction efforts across the country, the conflict resulted in significantly higher civilian [...]

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Despite rapid economic progress over the past thirty years, many of Asia’s most critical development challenges persist.  More than 600 million Asian people earn less than $1 per day, and hundreds of millions more live in poverty. Institutional, economic, and social incentives inadvertently support polluting and environmentally destructive practices while inconsistent policies and widespread corruption [...]

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From 1985 to 1989 I was a Senior Fulbright Scholar and a law consultant to The Asia Foundation’s office in Colombo, Sri Lanka.  During that time, I also taught in Sri Lanka’s law schools. Last December, I was back in Sri Lanka and learned that a book I wrote during my days there, An Introduction [...]

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The XXIX Beijing Olympiad, an event that had preoccupied Chinese leaders for almost a decade as they sought to utilize the games to project to domestic and international audiences China’s accomplishments on an international stage, has framed many issues in Sino-Korean relations, especially given the many resonances between the 1988 Olympics in Seoul and the [...]

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On October 20th, The Asia Foundation Ambassador Karl “Rick” Inderfurth, Asia Foundation trustee and former Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs, spoke at  Stanford University, along with other Asia Foundation trustees, Ted Eliot, Jr., former Ambassador to Afghanistan, and Teresita Schaffer, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs, in a [...]

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For more information, please contact Amy Ovalle in San Francisco at aovalle@asiafound.org or 415.743.3340; or Katherine Brown in New York & Washington at kbrown@asiafound.org or 202.271.1751. At 12a.m. Eastern Standard Time (8:30am Kabul Time) on Tuesday, October 28th, The Asia Foundation will release findings from its most recent public opinion poll in Afghanistan, which covers [...]

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Earlier this week Thailand’s Supreme Court found former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra guilty on charges of abuse of power.  Although one protester occupying Government House proclaimed “we won!” upon hearing the Supreme Court’s ruling, the fact is the country’s political paralysis remains.  Tensions are indeed mounting.  Last week Thai army chief, General Anupong Paochinda, [...]

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The Asia Foundation’s Country Representative in Vietnam, Kim Ninh, is featured in PBS’s Frontline World’s, “Forgive and Forget?: America Inside the Vietnamese Soul” in which she offers her insight as a returned expat to Hanoi. She tells reporter Nguyen Qui Duc, “Vietnam is a place that has tremendous affection for America, and I find myself [...]

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The below was originally posted this week by the Sierra Club of California. Sierra Club California got a rare opportunity to take part in a landmark international effort today. Representatives of China’s Hunan Province came to Sacramento with The Asia Foundation to learn about how California makes information available to the public. They wanted to [...]

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