Beyond the Mekong

Marcus Tantau is a senior associate at Templeton Research with a focus on Indonesia, which is beset by El Nino-fueled wildfires, political ructions amid a cabinet reshuffle, and confusing signals over the economy. This month's reshuffle was the biggest since President Prabowo Subianto took power two years ago and Tantau says the Indonesian leader is clearly focused on shoring-up support ahead...

Kim Aris has conducted a concerted campaign for the release of his mother, Aung San Suu Kyi, ever since she was detained in early 2021, when Myanmar’s military ousted her elected government and tipped the country into a bloody civil war. Her meeting last month with an official from the International Committee for the Red Cross, following Kim’s Proof of Life campaign, did little to calm fears for t...

Eunice Barbara Novio is a Thailand-based journalist and an English lecturer at Vongchavalitkul University who has has written extensively on human trafficking in Southeast Asia, particularly focusing on Filipino victims trafficked to Myanmar. A veteran writer for Inquirer.net, she has reported about how trafficking networks lure Filipinos with false job offers, only to exploit them in scam hubs or...

Singapore-based Bertha Chan heads Trust and Safety Global Engagements across the Asia-Pacific for Google, focusing on the safeguards and considerations needed to prevent AI misuse while keeping pace with the technology. Her remit covers jurisdictions and partnerships with governments and civil society, as well as combating the ever-evolving online scam industry, which is already adopting the lates...

Pablo Berrutti is founder and managing director of Altiorem, a sustainable finance library, and a strategic advisor with a background in the integration of artificial intelligence measuring the impact of climate change and its impact on business. This includes banks and insurance companies and their awkward relationships with factoring in the challenges of climate change and confronting their resp...

Mohan Malik is a veteran China-Asia analyst and military strategist who has advised senior brass on geopolitics at the U.S. Defense Department’s Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, and he is a former director of Defence Studies at Deakin University in Australia. Malik spoke with The Diplomat’s Luke Hunt, his former student, about how China, Asia, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nation...

Governments across Southeast Asia are struggling with the arrival of artificial intelligence, its endless possibilities that can improve everyday life and the threats posed by organized crime and the scam industries which have taken hold in the region. Singapore-based, David Tan, co-director of the Centre for Technology, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence & the Law, says the predominant issues...

As the people of Myanmar recently commemorated the 8888 uprising that demanded political freedom but was brutally put down in August 1988, Thailand was playing host to Min Aung Hlaing, the former general who seized power through a coup in early 2021. This was Min Aung Hlaing's second official visit to an ASEAN member state since military-staged elections in December and January ensured his tra...

The military-backed government in Myanmar this week released four photos of the country's jailed former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who met with Arnaud de Baecque, the resident representative for the International Committee of the Red Cross to Myanmar, on August 3. “This may be a first step, but it must not be the last,” her son, Kim Aris, said in a statement. Sean Turnell, an Australian economis...

Last week the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released its latest report on transnational scam networks, which found that victims from East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand had been defrauded of up to $114.1 billion in 2025. The report draws on official data, case records, financial intelligence, and field research in describing an increasingly sophisticated crimin...

Chinese dissident Zhang Xinyan was detained by authorities in Thailand last week while boarding her scheduled flight from Bangkok to Canada for resettlement, despite holding a refugee visa from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and all required approvals from Ottawa. Human rights groups immediately leapt to her defense, adding there are three more Chinese dissidents – Bai Zhaodong,...

Scotsman Nathan Paul Southern is the Operations Director of the Eyewitness Project and an investigative reporter specializing in global conflict, transnational crime, and corruption, primarily in Southeast Asia. Based in Cambodia, he investigates the intersection of war and criminality, uncovering the networks and power structures that drive conflict and illicit activity around the world. Southern...

Su Mon is a senior analyst with Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) specializing in conflict dynamics and democracy in the Asia-Pacific. Her focus is on Myanmar, where her independent, non-profit organization collects real time data and analysis. According to Su Mon and ACLED, the death toll from all sides since the civil war erupted with a coup d’etat in February 2021 is about to hit...

Scott Johnson is an Australian lawyer, journalist, and human rights advocate with more than 25 years experience, focusing on indigenous groups and geopolitical issues in Southeast Asia. He also runs Tribal Action Group and its popular YouTube channel . His work began in the 1990s with human rights campaigns and lobbying on behalf of the Montagnard Foundation, representing the interests of the indi...

Lorcan Lovett is a Welsh journalist based in Southeast Asia who has reported across the region with a focus on Myanmar since 2017. He has just returned from a trip to the war-torn country and to Bangladesh, where he toured the refugee camps housing the Rohingya. He says life remains tough in the camps but those with access to the internet are following the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in T...

Few political meetings have been anticipated as much as U.S. President Donald Trump’s summit with Chinese Premier Xi Jinping, held in Beijing late last week. It was the first bilateral engagement of its type in a decade and delivered with all the pomp and ceremony that the Chinese could muster. For the rest of the world, however, it was a two-man show based on their interests. Xi left no doubt in...

The European Union is ASEAN’s third largest trading partner after China and the United States and its third largest source of direct foreign investment, with last year’s total merchandise trade reaching about $320 billion. It’s a formidable number, which both sides would like to improve upon and the EU is negotiating free trade agreements (FTAs) with Thailand, Malaysia, The Philippines after succe...

Marcus Tantau, a senior associate at Templeton Research, returns to Beyond the Mekong for an update on the outlook for ASEAN economies as the crisis in the Middle East persists with the costs of the Israel-U.S. war on Iran hitting government expenditure across the region. Tantau spoke with The Diplomat’s Luke Hunt about ASEAN’s outlook for 2026 in January. For this update he has revised his number...

Chris Catto-Smith is a logistics specialist, a career that began with the Royal Australian Air Force in the 1970s. He then moved into the private sector and used his experiences in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, helping farmers and small businesses in getting their goods to market. It’s a difficult job made harder by the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran that has upended oil deliveries through the...

Joseph Lo Bianco is president of the Australia Myanmar Institute and a professor emeritus from the University of Melbourne in linguistics, with a sharp focus on the ever evolving civil war in Myanmar, the politics behind it and the prospect of a future federal government. While the junta has deployed a new propaganda unit to tell the good news about a war that has cost about 93,000 lives, oppositi...

Michael Martin returns to Beyond the Mekong following the outbreak of the Israeli-U.S. war on Iran, which is having a profound impact across the world and on ASEAN, where oil prices have surged, supply chains are being severely disrupted, and the costs are being borne by ordinary people. Martin, who has retired as a specialist in Asian affairs for the Congressional Research Service of the Library...

Canadian archeologist Dougald O’Reilly and his team were widely credited with solving the mysteries surround the Plain of Jars in northeast Laos, a vast megalithic landscape of massive stone jars scattered in clusters, dating to the Iron Age, around 500 BCE to 500 CE. O’Reilly, a professor at the Australian National University in Canberra, has also released his latest book "Empires of the Sou...

Marcus Tantau is a Senior Associate at Templeton Research, where he leads the firm’s Southeast Asia practice from Singapore. He specializes in corporate investigations and strategic intelligence and advises financial institutions on how to navigate complex risks. He spoke with The Diplomat’s Luke Hunt on a broad range of topics, including  the election  of To Lam as Vietnam’s president and Communi...