Category: Asia-Pacific

Viewpoint by Dr Asoka Bandarage The writer, a scholar and practitioner, has taught at Yale, Brandeis, Mount Holyoke (where she received tenure), Georgetown, American and other universities and colleges in the U.S. and abroad COLOMBO (IDN) — The recent UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolution A/HRC/46/L.1/Rev.1 of March 16 has brought extensive charges against Sri […]

Please click here for Part One of this article. By Ye Ruolin and Yuan Ye * SHANGHAI (IDN | China Dialogue) — The Hunanese experience and other cases demonstrate how this vision may prove difficult to realise. The Baihetan dam, currently under construction on the Jinsha River straddling the border of Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, […]

By Ye Ruolin and Yuan Ye * SHANGHAI (IDN | China Dialogue) — With few coal reserves to call its own and winter rains too erratic to rely on hydropower, central China’s Hunan province had long faced frequent electricity blackouts, an annoyance to residents and a hindrance to economic growth. So, when an ultra-high voltage […]

Viewpoint by Alexander Kallweit Last year, President Xi Jinping announced ambitious climate targets. But China’s reluctant state apparatus struggles to reconcile high growth and climate policy, writes Dr Alexander Kallweit, who heads the office of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Beijing. Previously, he led the foundation’s International Dialogue Department in Berlin. This article first appeared in the […]

By Kalinga Seneviratne* SYDNEY (IDN) — “The Core Group chaired by the UK tabled a shoddy motion based on a hostile UNHRC Report riddled with factual errors and unproven allegations going back to 2009; none of which qualifies as robust evidence,” said Lord Naseby. Conservative party member and the President of the All-Party Parliamentary UK-Sri […]

By Jutta Wolf BERLIN (IDN) — Germany is one of the most important countries for Chinese investors and ranks tenth in terms of Chinese foreign direct investments (FDI). Particularly the transport sector and the technology sector in Germany received a great number of investments from Chinese investors in recent years. Although China has recently focused […]

By Krishan Dutta BANGKOK (IDN) — A group of Buddhist economists and communication scholars from Asia are embarking on a mission to redefine the development communication paradigm using concepts from the Buddhist philosophy. A webinar held earlier this month organized by Lotus Communication Network (LCN) in association with the Institute of Asian Studies (IAS) at […]

By Press Trust of India (PTI) BEIJING (IDN) — China, which was the first to be hit by COVID-19 and the earliest to recover from the lockdown effects, has fixed a GDP (Gross Domestic Product) target of over 6% in 2021, optimistic of an economic recovery after last year’s 2.3% growth, its weakest in decades. […]

By Krishan Dutta BANGKOK (IDN) — A new report released by the Sydney-based Lotus Communication Network (LCN) on February 26 warns that Buddhism is under threat across Asia, both from within and outside, and calls for concerted action by Buddhists across the region to empower themselves. The 238-page report produced as an eBook identifies six […]

By Kalinga Seneviratne SYDNEY (IDN) — The tech juggernaut Facebook’s shock decision to block all news feeds from Australian media outlets from February 18 in response to a proposed new Media Bargaining law, that will force social media giants to pay for news content that is posted on their platforms, has created fury among Australians […]