In Asia: Weekly Insight and Features from Asia

Last week, China launched the fourth census of its environmental protection industry. This census will gather detailed demographic information on businesses that manufacture environmentally-friendly products, such as energy-saving technologies…

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Earlier this month, I attended the 2012 IMF-World Bank annual meeting in Tokyo for the first time and, as expected, talks about the eurozone crisis dominated discussions. However, some very compelling conversations revolving around Asia’s role in this environment and beyond…

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Dr. Scott Rozelle posed a difficult question during his presentation at Give2Asia’s 10th Anniversary Forum: What caused wages to rise in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea such that these once-booming manufacturing centers relinquished their first-place manufacturing titles in the 1970s and 1980s to China?

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On October 11, Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment” and prominent grassroots leader in China, Zhao Zhong, will speak at The Asia Foundation’s headquarters in San Francisco on working with governments and corporations to increase accountability in order to protect China’s rivers. Zhong is the Pacific Environment’s new China Program Coordinator based in Beijing. The [...]

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The Foreign Ministers of the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) were reluctant history-makers last month. The 45th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM), which took place in July in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh…

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On July 2 in Sendai, Japan, nearly a year and a half after the tragic earthquake and tsunami devastated the region, The Asia Foundation will participate with Google on a conference to examine using open data in disaster relief. As the world is seeing stronger effects of climate change and other factors, floods, rising sea levels, tsunamis, and monsoons threaten the lives of millions, this is a timely moment to call attention to natural disaster management across both developed and developing countries.

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Tens of thousands are gathering in Brazil this week for the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), which is expected to be the largest event in the history of the United Nations. World leaders will discuss the advances that have been made over the past two decades…

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The first Rio Convention on Sustainable Development in 1992 called for businesses to adopt a new blueprint for economic development – to incorporate social, environmental, and economic considerations into business operations. Over the last two decades, some international corporations…

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In January, I took a break from research for the just-released Malaysia Business Environment Index (BEI), which measures perceptions of district-level firms on their business environments, to get a broader perspective…

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North Korea’s failed rocket launch accomplished the rarest of feats. The regime managed to simultaneously outrage the world and embarrass itself at the same time. Unfortunately, this increases the likelihood that Pyongyang will undertake a nuclear test…

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