Global Issues

The experience of crossing national borders has always been defined by inequality. A hierarchy of mobility determined those who were free and facilitated to move and those who faced many hurdles and restrictions to prevent them leaving home. But Covid-19 has challenged this mobility hierarchy.

Biden’s jab First it was new carbon emission cuts, and then a global minimum corporate tax. But it is hard to beat the Biden administration’s move to shaft the pharmaceutical industry lobby over vaccine patents for putting the US back at the heart of global public policy. The devil will be in

As India grapples with an apocalyptic Covid-19 crisis at home, the Modi government put a temporary halt on its “Vaccine Maitri” (vaccine friendship) program shipping millions of vaccine doses abroad. India had set itself an ambition to become a regional and, indeed, a global

India was proud to boast about being the “world’s pharmacy” as the coronavirus pandemic unfolded, particularly after other members in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue asked India to mass-produce Covid-19 vaccines for export across the world. Indeed, high-minded government decrees about

The Australian public are rightly proud of their efforts to combat the Covid-19 pandemic. Almost all Australians – 95% – believe Australia has handled the pandemic well, according to new Lowy Institute polling released today. This is for good reason. Despite the slow vaccine rollout, Australia

For all the talk of cross-Strait military tensions – which are real – in the economic realm, Taiwan’s fortunes have been bound to those of China. Recognising the need to diversify, when Tsai Ing-wen was elected in 2016, she initiated what was dubbed a “New Southbound Policy”, with the

China has launched a new space station, the most ambitious project it has ever undertaken in spaceflight. Right now, the station is just a cylindrical module without a crew, but it will grow over time as more components are added. Although some media reports will cite this as China’s first space

Amid a very bad week for news about Covid-19, there was a long-awaited ray of hope about climate. Within an hour of US President Joe Biden’s opening to the Virtual Leaders’ Summit on Climate, there was new optimism – but no certainty – that catastrophic global climate change might be

Bhutan, the tiny kingdom situated high in the Himalayas between India and China, has emerged as an unlikely Covid-19 vaccination success story. In the fortnight between late March and mid-April, its government vaccinated 93% of its adult population, or 63% of its population of just over 750,000. By

Two worlds When the US and Japan kicked off a bid to take control of the next generation of mobile technology during a summit of their leaders last week, they also pushed the global debate over supply chains into a new orbit. A key part of US President Joe Biden’s and Japan’s Prime

On his first day in office, President Joe Biden signed an executive order for the US to rejoin the Paris Agreement. A new US Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), containing its emission reductions pledge, will be announced as Biden hosts a virtual Climate Leaders’ Summit on Earth Day, 22

For decades, Thailand has served as the primary regional hub for UN agencies and programs, international humanitarian organisations and advocacy groups. In comparison to their neighbors in mainland Southeast Asia, Thai people have enjoyed a relatively open civic environment. Thailand has long been a

Heavy rains from 29 March to 4 April caused floods and landslides in many parts of Timor-Leste, claiming more than 40 lives, displacing thousands of people and destroying critical infrastructure such as roads and bridges. Dili, the capital, has been the worst affected, as more than 12 hours of

Beginning last May, China has hit Australia with a barrage of trade sanctions in a fairly overt attempt at economic coercion. It’s still early days, but it’s worth taking stock of what the economic impact has been so far. The fact that China’s trade sanctions have taken place

When China’s nationalist outrage machine took aim at Swedish fashion giant H&M in late March, one could be forgiven for feeling a sense of déjà vu. Campaigns to boycott foreign products in China are nothing new: it has been barely a year since the country went after the National Basketball

A couple of months after the inauguration of the new Biden administration, the 18 March Alaska summit provided the first big test of US-China relations. While most of the talks between senior officials were in private, tense exchanges during opening remarks suggest bilateral ties won’t fast

Earlier this month, the Lowy Institute released Being Chinese in Australia, one of the largest surveys of the Chinese Australian community. Around the same time, the Scanlon Foundation published its annual Mapping Social Cohesion report, which also includes a survey on the Chinese population in

The recent stoush between the Australian government and social media giant Facebook, with its eight-day-long ban of local news from its platform, had results that were not confined to Australia. Facebook’s block of Australian news also highlighted the vulnerability of information security in the

A recent ban on girls’ public singing has demonstrated the continuing struggle between modernising and conservative forces in Afghanistan. Speculation on social media suggested it might also be a sign of the government testing the public mood of what rights it is prepared to sacrifice in order to

In the late 1980s, while I was a reporter covering one of the mega-cyclones to hit Bangladesh, a government official in Dhaka confided in me that he was fed up with seeing his nation only make the global headlines as a result of the disasters that befell it. Australia is fast catching up in that

Australia likes to see itself as punching above its weight as a middle power, but this boast does not hold true when it comes to the representation of cultural diversity in politics. The contrast with near neighbour New Zealand, which last year elected its most diverse parliament ever, has only