• Mon-02-2025
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.

  • Mon-02-2025
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.

  • Mon-02-2025
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.

  • Mon-02-2025
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.

  • Mon-02-2025
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.

  • Mon-02-2025
The Politics of ‘Ayuda’ in the Philippines (January 16, 2025, The Diplomat) (Subscription required)

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed the 2025 national budget with a provision for the “conditional implementation” of some items, including a controversial “ayuda” (aid) program for the poor. Government funds intended for the poor are often used by politicians as a form of political patronage.

  • Mon-02-2025
Experts encourage efforts to build museum infrastructure within low and middle-income countries (January 31, 2025, Phys.org)

The paper explores the issue in Mongolia where UNM's Museum of Southwestern Biology has been working for 3 decades to help develop science infrastructure that would increase understanding of how environmental change is impacting natural environments and cultural resources.

  • Mon-02-2025
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.

  • Mon-02-2025
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.

  • Mon-02-2025
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.