In Asia: Weekly Insight and Features from Asia

On September 8-9, the heads of 21 Asia-Pacific economies will gather in Vladivostok, Russia, for the 2012 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders’ Meeting to adopt a final declaration outlining prospects for the development of the region. Among the topics that will be integrated into the discussion is how women can more fully participate in APEC economies to foster innovative growth. Earlier this year, APEC held the second Women and the Economy Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia, and released a follow-up statement urging government officials and business leaders to “recognize the crucial role that women play in innovative economic development…

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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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Nearly two decades of market-based development has dramatically changed the way Vietnamese live and work, transforming patterns of personal and commercial saving, borrowing, and lending. By 2011 there were 93 banks…

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In late March, Ho Chi Minh City’s residents braced for heavy windfall and flooding as tropical storm Pakhar – the first storm of the season – headed for the nation’s economic hub. Many residents were caught off guard, as experts declared the storm “abnormally early.”

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Giang has lived his whole life in the village of Phu Lang, a traditional ceramic handicraft village about 30km north of Hanoi. Giang’s entire family has been producing the same jars and pots that they and many other family businesses in the village have for decades. However, when we last met with Giang, he told [...]

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“Just because they are poor and isolated doesn’t mean they don’t have the potential to be the next Bill Gates,” said Shahed Keyes, the founder of Subornogram Foundation in Bangladesh, while introducing me to lively students at a school he started on the remote island of Mayadip.

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From January 25-29, the world’s most powerful leaders from the public and private sectors gather in the Swiss town of Davos to try to agree on measures that will eventually impact billions of people across the world. The event is being held against an unprecedentedly gloomy global economic picture. The World Bank
recently reported that the world economy will grow by only 2.5 percent in 2012, far below initial estimates of 3.6 percent. In Europe, leaders have yet to come up with a comprehensive solution to the eurozone crisis.

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For much of the past two decades, many Southeast Asians have expressed frustration that U.S. policy treated their region with benign neglect or indifference, and that the United States’ attention was episodic rather than consistent. In 2011, the Obama administration announced that the U.S. needed to make “a strategic pivot” in its foreign policy…

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In 2011, Asia grappled with a host of devastating shocks, both natural and man-made. As challenging and economically harsh as they have been, they have provided an opportunity for Asia’s emerging economies to dramatically assert their economic resilience and regional influence.

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My colleagues in The Asia Foundation’s Environment Program recently returned from Bangkok, where the Asia-Pacific Climate Change Adaptation Forum they were scheduled to attend was canceled due to the worst flooding in Thailand in 60 years. The disaster resulted in over 600 deaths, approximately 10 million lives affected, $21 billion in lost revenues from major industries, and an estimated $24 billion dollars in damage to property…

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