The Johns Hopkins SAIS community of alumni and friends in Hong Kong gathered for a special forum featuring Kishore Mahbubani, who spoke about the return of Asia as a leader on the global stage. Mahbubani touched upon the need for populations of countries in the West to recognize the growing influence of populations in the East and to embrace globalization rather than reject it. A resurgent Asia, he said, is good for the United States and the West. He pointed to the success of ASEAN in brokering peace in Southeast Asia, a region historically fraught with wars and cultural tensions, as a beacon of hope and example of the potential of international cooperation. Finally, he cited the inevitable
Look up at the departures screens at any major Indian airport and you are likely to see a familiar pattern: Dubai and Abu Dhabi appear repeatedly on the flickering displays. Roughly one in three international passengers in India are either heading to or arriving from the United Arab Emirates. Many Indian passengers use Dubai, Abu Dhabi or, increasingly, Sharjah as hub airports, connecting in the UAE to flights bound for Europe, North America, or elsewhere in Asia. Now that the UAE has become India’s gateway to the world, the two countries are also developing a strategic alliance that could reshape geopolitics across South Asia and the Middle East. ... Continue reading at Reuters
Gregory Chin, a Professor at York University in Toronto, said central banks and finance ministries across the world now parse the PBOC’s statements and track changes in its monetary policy, inflation, the yuan, reserves and interest rates. "Central banks in Asia, and in Europe, the Americas, and Africa, are working to strengthen their understanding of how the PBOC shapes policy decisions," said Chin. ... Continue reading at Bloomberg
Last week, Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Zeljana Zovko appealed through the Atlantic Council’s New Atlanticist blog to the US administration for greater engagement on the politically contentious issue of electoral reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), as closed-door negotiations between political parties continue. As a former BiH diplomat and an elected MEP from the Croatian wing of a BiH party that is at the core of the negotiation process, Zovko has put forward this party’s political argument for the further ethnicization of the electoral system. ... Continue reading at Atlantic Council