Indonesia, home to the world’s largest nickel reserves, struggles to achieve its EV dreams (February 3, 2025, Rest of World)
Indonesia has set a target to become one of the world leaders in EV battery production by 2027. It opened Southeast Asia’s first EV battery facility last July, a joint venture between Hyundai, LG, and the Indonesia Battery Corporation. Last year, Elon Musk declined Indonesia’s proposal to set up a battery factory in the country due to logistical challenges.
MENA is open to work: Tackling the jobs deficit (January 30, 2025, World Bank)
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has a large reservoir of untapped human resources, with the world’s highest unemployment rate among youth and the lowest participation of females in the labor force. Desirable jobs, defined as high-paying or formal jobs, are few, and private employment is overwhelmingly of low added value.
Timor-Leste’s financial cliff draws closer in 2025 (January 27, 2025, East Asia Forum)
Despite recognising a potential financial disaster, Timor-Leste's government passed a 2025 budget that accelerates the country’s rush towards a fiscal cliff instead of mitigating it. The economy relies heavily on an unsustainable withdrawal rate from the Petroleum Fund which is on track for depletion. Economic salvation hangs on the development of the Greater Sunrise natural gas field, yet the project remains stagnant through 2024 amid disputes over processing location and other concerns including high rates of absolute poverty and food insecurity.
Tokyo drift: what happens when a city stops being the future? (January 14, 2025, The Guardian)
Tokyo remains, in the world’s imagination, a place of sophistication and wealth. But with economic revival forever distant, ‘tourism pollution’ seems the only viable plan.
Economic Inequality Seen as Major Challenge Around the World (January 9, 2025, Pew Research Center)
A new Pew Research Center survey of 36 nations finds widespread public concern about economic inequality. And when asked what leads to this inequality, most people across the countries surveyed point to the intersection of wealth and politics.
The fate of a ranting driver raises doubts about the “new” Uzbekistan (January 23, 2025, The Economist) (Subscription required)
The jailing of dissenters is nothing new in Uzbekistan, Central Asia’s most populous country, where faulting the president can land you in trouble. What is unusual is the recent public outcry after the imprisonment of an ordinary motorist, who found himself behind bars after his tirade over fuel shortages went viral.
The United Arab Emirates’ AI Ambitions (January 24, 2025, Center for Strategic & International Studies)
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is placing enormous bets on artificial intelligence (AI) to diversify its economy and become the world’s next technological hub. As the United States develops its strategy for global AI leadership, the UAE presents a critical test case for engaging with technologically ambitious countries seeking to balance relations with both the United States and China—a challenge that will shape the United States’ broader approach to technological partnerships and export control policies.
The Maldives: The Future of Climate Change (January 7, 2025, Foreign Policy in Focus)
A prime example of the existential risks posed by climate change is the Maldives, a republic of 1,192 coral islands dispersed around the Indian Ocean. The Maldives, which have an average height of only 1.5 meters above sea level, are particularly susceptible to catastrophic weather events and increasing sea levels.
Inside Russia, A Snapshot Into Hopes, Fears, And Gripes Of A Society At War (January 23, 2025, Radio Free Europe - Radio Liberty)
President Vladimir Putin's increasingly autocratic rule has stifled dissent, choked off political opposition, and criminalized criticism of the armed forces -- or even open debate about the conduct or wisdom of the war. The repression has made it difficult for sociologists, opinion pollsters, and journalists to understand the sentiments of average Russians, particularly in provinces outside of big cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Atheists say Indonesia denies right to live religion-free (February 6, 2025, Deutsche Welle)
A rare legal effort to secure rights for atheists and nonbelievers was quashed last month by Indonesia's Constitutional Court, which ruled that a citizen must profess a faith, even a minority one, on official documents, and that marriage must conform to religion.
DeepSeek hints that China has mastered the art of ‘kaizen’ — the west should be worried (January 30, 2025, Financial Times)
Did the “Space Pen” meme return this week as investors and governments gawped at China’s supposedly low-cost DeepSeek AI model, wondered whether US export controls had backfired, then lost their nerve around the billions invested in the more costly American approach to the same problem? Of course it did.
A tale of two Spring Festival destinations (February 8, 2025, Jing Daily)
Despite strong visitor growth during the 2025 Spring Festival, Hong Kong and Macau face diverging tourism trends and lingering economic challenges.
The Hong Kong Company at the Center of Panama’s China Problem (February 9, 2025, The Wire China)
Does China control the Panama Canal? It’s a question that has unexpectedly come to the fore in the early days of President Donald Trump’s new administration. At the heart of the answer lies CK Hutchison, a company with a history dating back some two centuries that is owned by Hong Kong’s richest man, and which operates infrastructure assets around the world — including port terminals at the Atlantic and Pacific ends of the canal, through which 40 percent of U.S. container traffic transits annually.
We tried out DeepSeek. It worked well, until we asked it about Tiananmen Square and Taiwan (January 28, 2025, The Guardian)
The AI app soared up the Apple charts and rocked US stocks, but the Chinese chatbot was reluctant to discuss sensitive questions about China and its government.
China installs deep-sea detector to hunt mysterious ‘ghost particles’ (February 8, 2025, Indian Express)
Chinese scientists have placed special detectors deep in the South China Sea to explore the possibility of building a huge underwater observatory, reported SCMP. Their goal is to find neutrinos—tiny, nearly invisible particles that come from outer space and may hold clues about the origins of the universe.
Why many Hong Kong youth feel like failures – and how to build resilience instead (February 10, 2025, South China Morning Post - Young Post)
According to a recent survey conducted by the Hong Kong Christian Service, 48.3 per cent of participants – aged 12 to 24 – rated themselves at least a six out of 10 on a failure index. Many of them pointed to academics as the reason for their rating.
Seeking the Good in DeepSeek (February 3, 2025, ChinaSource)
I had always thought that AI couldn’t replace artistic creations—those AI-generated texts, music, drawings and videos tend to repulse people after being watched a few times. But this time, honestly speaking, after reading the wuxia novels (Chinese stories about knights doing kung fu) and a few modern poems generated by DeepSeek, as a die-hard literature fan I was in a trance, shocked by its “creativity.”
How Global Believers Can Pray for China (February 3, 2025, China Partnership)
We want to pray for China in 2025 — but how? Today, a Chinese believer follows up last week’s post on why it is important for global believers to pray for China and shares how we can concretely do so. Pan Xihong uses China Partnership’s prayer guides on various Chinese cities to help his church pray for the needs in those cities. As he prays for specific needs and learns more about the history of these cities, he sees God move.
More than Conquerors (January 31, 2025, ChinaSource)
Focusing only on “what China is doing to Christians,” as seen in its draconian laws, or on individual cases, which concern only a tiny fraction of China’s sizable Christian population, obscures the more complex picture of Christian life in China’s current environment.
Why Global Believers Should Pray for China (January 30, 2025, China Partnership)
A Chinese Christian shares how he has seen God use the prayers of the church around the world to bless China — and why he longs for those prayers to continue. There are many needs in Chinese society right now. As some Chinese acknowledge the futility of life apart from God, Pan Xihong believes this is a crucial time for the church to step in and show people God’s love. But Chinese believers cannot do this alone! Revival is built on prayer, and the prayers of other Christians around the world are a crucial part of what God is doing in China now.