By Fan Lulu and Boy Luethje HONOLULU (July 31, 2019)—With more than 800 million Internet users, China has become the global leader in e-commerce—the buying and selling of products and services online. Taobao (roughly “treasure hunt” in English) is the leading Chinese online shopping and e-commerce website, founded by the Alibaba Group. As of 2018, more than 580 million active users visited Taobao and its sister website Tmall every month.

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By Marcus Noland HONOLULU (August 23, 2019)—For three generations, the United States championed a rules-based multilateral trading system. That stance was overturned by the election of an avowed protectionist, Donald Trump, as president. It would be understandable for Asians to wonder if this shift amounts to a permanent change in U.S. trade policy, and if so, how to proceed. Trump’s presidential campaign was notable in that it emphasized two issues—immigration and trade—that had seldom been in the forefront of U.S. presidential campaigns. But public opinion polls revealed that these issues were of growing importance to a sizeable number of voters whose preferences mirrored Trump’s protectionist positions.

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By East-West Center HONOLULU (October 4, 2019)—President Donald Trump first laid out a vision for a “free and open Indo-Pacific” at the November 2017 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Vietnam. From the start, statements describing the emerging US Indo-Pacific strategy have recognized the central role of Southeast Asia. The US approach to the Indo-Pacific focuses on three vital areas: enhancing shared prosperity, championing good governance and civil society, and ensuring a peaceful and secure regional order. Two recent visitors to the East-West Center described the potential role of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the US Indo-Pacific strategy and spelled out several steps that the United States needs to take to strengthen US-ASEAN...

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A close look at the evidence suggests that China has not been engaged in “debt-trap diplomacy” in the Pacific, at least not so far. Nonetheless, if future Chinese lending continues on a business-as-usual basis, serious problems of debt sustainability will arise, and concerns about quality and corruption are valid. By Jonathan Pryke HONOLULU (March 2, 2020)—In an atmosphere of heightened geostrategic competition, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has raised questions about the risk of debt problems in less-developed countries. Such risks are especially worrying for the small and fragile economies of the Pacific.

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By East-West Center HONOLULU (March 27, 2020)—Population aging is affecting countries all across Asia. This ongoing demographic transition will leave many of the region’s economies increasingly dependent on an aging, and eventually a shrinking, workforce. Economists disagree, however, on whether population aging will necessarily lead to a slowdown in economic growth.

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By James H. Spencer, Sumeet Saksena, and Jefferson Fox HONOLULU (1 April 2020)—The current COVID-19 pandemic, which started in Wuhan, China, underscores what the public health community has warned about for more than two decades—the risk of viral diseases capable of spreading from animal to human hosts. The first outbreaks of “bird flu” (highly pathogenic avian influenza―HPAI, subtype H5N1) raised similar concerns 20 years ago―concerns that have persisted with the outbreak of SARS in 2002–2004 and COVID-19 today. New outbreaks of avian influenza are also still occurring in poultry and humans, primarily in Asia but also in other parts of the world.

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By Andrew Mason, Sang-Hyop Lee, and Donghyun Park HONOLULU (8 May 2020)—Elderly populations in Asia are expanding more quickly than other age groups. Low fertility rates result in fewer children and eventually fewer working-age adults, while elderly populations are living longer.

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Introduction

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