Category: Asia
South Korea’s influence in Asia: This year’s model
GIVING on to one of the Cambodian capital’s grand, crumbling boulevards is an unusually modern, unfeasibly clean building: the home of the South Korean embassy’s commercial section. It is also noticeably big, indicative of South…
India and its near-abroad: Your friendly big brother
INDIA’S foreign minister, S.M. Krishna, gushes about the close “civilisational, cultural” ties his country shares with Sri Lanka. He notes how India is the biggest trading partner and source of tourists for the island nation, …
Indonesia: The Komodo economy
Thick-skinned, buoyant and quick?
IN THEIR presentations to foreign investors, Indonesian officials often like to begin with a montage of images from their fascinating country: the elegant mast of Jakarta’s Wisma 46 skyscraper, for…
Economic planning in India: Tales of the unexpected
IN 1985, the year Mikhail Gorbachev took over as head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, India published its seventh economic plan. Its preface said planning was a “precious gift” from Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first …
Myanmar’s startling changes: Pragmatic virtues
ANOTHER day, another milestone: there appears to be no let-up in the frenetic pace of Myanmar’s political transformation. In early February, for the first time in memory, the finance minister revealed details of the government bud…
India’s last hangman: An executioner’s tale
One hand, one speciality
IN THE crumbling Muslim quarter of Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, a man with white beard and lilac kurta pyjamas weaves briskly through the alleys. Ahmadullah does not w…
Japan’s electricity industry: Power politics
State employees?
IN MORE ways than one, things are hotting up at Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), which runs the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant crippled by an earthquake and tsunami last March 11th. In recent days temperatures i…
The Maldives: Reverting to type
Anni returns to his old job
“IN POLITICS in this country,” Mohamed Nasheed told The Economist in 2006, “you’re either in government or in jail.” Under house arrest at the time, he seemed more at ease than later, when, bizar…
Banyan: My brothers’ keepers
THE president of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, may well feel pleased with himself. On the face of it, more than six years after his first election, his prospects are still remarkably rosy. The economy clips along at about 7% a year….
Mobile phones in North Korea: Also available to earthlings
Thumbs at work
A NORTH KOREAN professor apparently posted footage on YouTube last year boasting that his country was developing applications for the Android mobile-phone operating system. Ordinary North Koreans are more likely to be …
