Southeast Asia
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Vietnam’s Semiconductor Strategy: Between Opportunity and Strategic Constraint
Guest Article by Léane Noirot Vietnam is pushing to move up the semiconductor value chain from assembly into chip design and fabrication, backed by national strategy and rising foreign investment. Its success will depend on managing infrastructure, capital, and geopolitical pressures amid intensifying US–China competition. Vietnam has entered a decisive phase…
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Reprioritising Education for Effective Poverty Reduction in Lao PDR
While Laos has made progress in reducing poverty, a deeper problem remains hidden beneath the numbers. Today, poverty is no longer determined by where people live, but rather by whether children finish school. Education deprivation has become the bottleneck in solving Laos’s poverty issue, yet current developmental policies continue to…
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From Haven to Hub: Thailand’s New Trade of Transnational Repression
For decades, dissidents and activists in Southeast Asia have found reprieve and refuge within Thailand’s borders, which once served as a shield against persecution and unlawful silencing. Yet a single coup in 2014 enabled Thai General Prayuth Chan-ocha’s rise and consolidation of power, who tore this veil down with the…
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Plugging Timor-Leste Into ASEAN: Could China Power the Region’s Next Great Integration?
Timor-Leste’s entry into ASEAN exposes a structural weakness in the region’s energy integration. The ASEAN Power Grid promises resilience through connectivity but remains vulnerable if new and weaker members stay outside its core infrastructure. With Timor-Leste reliant on costly diesel and lacking interconnections, external support is unavoidable. China’s deep experience…
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The World’s Factory is Producing Less, and Southeast Asia Stands to Benefit
China’s economy, after dominating global manufacturing for almost three decades, is beginning to mature away from low-cost manufacturing in favour of innovation and high-value sectors. This, combined with higher labour costs and geopolitics, has increasingly pushed mass manufacturers—foreign and Chinese—toward Southeast Asia as an industrial hub. While presenting immense benefits,…
Sino-Southeast Initiative 