Editor’s Picks: 2016 Must Reads

Season’s Greetings! On behalf of In Asia‘s editorial board and bloggers, we thank you for your continued engagement and readership throughout the year. We’ll be taking a short break next week, but will return on January 4 with a special post featuring 2017 predictions from our country representatives across Asia. In the meantime, catch up below on some of our most popular blog pieces from 2016, covering the most pressing events and issues in Asia throughout the year.

Sincerely,
Alma Freeman
Editor, In Asia

• In the lead-up to the heated 2016 presidential elections in the Philippines, our experts covered the game-changing role of social media, the first disability-inclusive elections, and what a Duterte win could mean for the country.
• Despite the fact that female literacy and education enrollment rates have been rising, India today has lower levels of women’s workforce participation than many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. So, where are India’s working women? Read on.
• Kim McQuay blogs on the second anniversary of the coup that ousted Thailand’s elected Pheu Thai government and the challenges surrounding the country’s contentious constitutional process.
• On November 15—less than one week after U.S. Election Day—The Asia Foundation released Asian Views on America’s Role in Asia: The Future of the Rebalance—a set of strategic recommendations for the new administration on foreign policy toward Asia.
  To accompany the launch, Asia Foundation experts blogged from Asia on some of these most pressing issues that will greet incoming President Donald Trump: in Manila, Steven Rood writes on the Philippines, China, the U.S., and ASEAN in 2017; from New Delhi, Sagar Prasai takes a sobering look at the fate of South Asian regionalism and SAARC; Jongbeom Choi writes from our Korea office on the debate over constitutional reform and the presidency; and from Beijing, Ji Hongbo examines how China’s NGOs are responding to the world’s natural disasters.
• Blog contributions on efforts to combat violence against women and human trafficking landed among the most-read pieces this year, including analysis of China’s first national law against domestic violence that came into effect in March, India’s first-ever anti-trafficking law, new research that reveals Cambodian television is rife with depictions of violence against women, and a new charter in Timor-Leste that outlines 10 actions to preventing violence against women and children.
• From Hanoi, Michael R. DiGregorio blogs on reimagining public space in Vietnam’s crowded city and the newly opened Hoan Kiem Lake pedestrian mall, a decade in the making, that brings city residents a welcome respite from city congestion.
• And finally, experts in Afghanistan examine findings from the new 2016 Survey of the Afghan People. Highlights include “The Evolving Role of Women in a Politically Uncertain Afghanistan” and “Education a ‘Beacon of Hope’ in Afghanistan.”