Word: southeast
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...West for China to use economic leverage over Burma, it's not clear how much influence Beijing really has. "China will urge Myanmar to use peaceful means to solve the problem, [because] China would like to see a stable environment in Myanmar," says Zhai Kun, an expert on Southeast Asia at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations in Beijing. "But because Myanmar is a closed society, I don't think they listen to advice from the outside, including China...
Carmakers aren't just targeting India. Tata Motors has plans to export its econobox to Southeast Asia and Africa. Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Motors' parent company, Tata Group, believes his company can eventually sell as many as 1 million cheap cars a year worldwide. That may be a realistic assessment. Globally, up to 3.7 million such vehicles could be sold annually within the next few years, mostly in fast-growing markets like Brazil, China, India and Russia, says Abdul Majeed, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Chennai (formerly Madras). "It's all about affordability and fuel efficiency," says Majeed...
...lobbed missiles near Taiwan in 1995 and '96, the White House sent aircraft carriers to the Taiwan Strait. But Beijing apparently recognized its mistakes and shifted course. Over the past decade, it has signed ASEAN's Treaty of Amity and Cooperation and pushed a collective free-trade deal with Southeast Asia. Focused together on terrorism, Washington and Beijing have built closer military links. Just as important, nations across Asia have created a web of new economic and diplomatic links, from currency swaps to trade agreements to the new annual East Asian Summit...
...shadow of these giant alliance shifts, Southeast Asian nations, too, are scrambling. Vietnam, for one, is fortifying its outposts in the Spratly Islands and wooing its old enemy, the Pentagon. Singapore has become a de facto base for the U.S., and the Philippines has welcomed back American forces after booting them out in the early 1990s - mainly to fight local terror groups, but also possibly as a bulwark against China. Nations from Singapore to Malaysia have upgraded their submarine fleets, and Indonesia just signed a $1 billion weapons deal with Russia...
...Unfortunately, Asia lacks any real security forum to hammer out problems. In Northeast Asia, the six-party talks on North Korea have not developed into a permanent institution. In Southeast Asia, diplomats have invested sweat on a free-trade zone, but pay little attention to the ASEAN Regional Forum, Southeast Asia's security-talk shop. Washington doesn't help, either: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice simply skipped the Forum in August. Singaporean Foreign Minister George Yeo put the best face on her absence, saying, "Provided the U.S. stays engaged, this can be a new golden age for Asia...