State of Asia

C. Raja Mohan is a Senior Fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute in Delhi, India who has published widely on India’s foreign and security policies, Asian geopolitics, and the global governance of advanced technologies. Last November, he delivered our annual State of Asia Address , which he kicked off by saying he wouldn't have minded talking about Europe, as he was 'deeply fascinate...

Simona Grano is an associate professor at the University of Zurich and a Senior Fellow at Asia Society's Center for China Analysis, where she focuses on Taiwan and its upcoming presidential election. In this episode she gives us a lay of the land ahead of Taiwan's January 2024 presidential election. Instead of the usual 2, this time 4 candidates are on the ballot. How will this split the...

Things are heating up in Solomon Islands. The South Pacific island nation of 700,000 people is gearing up to host its greatest event ever: the 2023 Pacific Games. China has built and financed most of the venues for the games, while Australia paid for dormitories for the 5,000 athletes from 24 countries, and Japan is improving the roads. All this, as the U.S.  reopened its embassy after 30 years, t...

Alexander Gabuev is the Director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, based in Berlin. In this episode, he talks about having to leave Moscow and how he now gauges what's happening in Russia from abroad. He explains how Russia is out of options and increasingly seems to become a vassal state of China, and he talks about how alienation between China and Russia on one side, and the West on th...

Bilahari Kausikan is an iconic veteran of diplomacy, with a career of 37 years under his belt at Singapore's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He served as Ambassador to Russia, to the UN in New York, and as the Ministry's Permanent Secretary. In this episode, he explains why he's not unhopeful about the state of the world, the fundamental dilemma facing China, and how, as a small countr...

State of Asia , the podcast from Asia Society Switzerland , is back with a new season of engaging conversations with leading minds on the issues that shape Asia and affect us all. The season premieres Tuesday, Sep 19, with a conversation with Bilahari Kausikan , former Ambassador and Permanent Secretary at Singapore's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. New episodes follow every other Tuesday. Bilah...

Asia Inside Out , a podcast from our friends at the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI), just relaunched. The first episode, which we're sharing here, features Rahm Emanuel , U.S. Ambassador to Japan, in conversation with Rorry Daniels , Managing Director at ASPI. Subscribe to Asia Inside Out in your favourite podcast app, or listen here . Get in the right starting position to fill the secon...

Evan Feigenbaum , Vice President at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has a career spanning the highest levels of government, academia, think tanks, and the private sector, covering Central, South, and East Asia. It makes him uniquely qualified to discuss the State of Asia writ large on this final episode of the season. He talks about how China and the US act as 'security narcis...

In this bonus episode of STATE OF ASIA, listen to four experts debate whether Europe should side with the U.S. on China, or carve out its own path in the relationship with Beijing. They participated in an Oxford Debate in front of a live audience in Zurich on June 26, 2023, organised by Asia Society Switzerland. Presenting clear-cut, time-constrained, well-thought-out arguments are: Noah Barkin ,...

Amrita Narlikar is President of the German Institute for Global and Area Studies and Professor of International Relations at the University of Hamburg. She is currently also serving as a co-chair of the T20's Task Force 3, which forms a part of the G20 process under India's Presidency. In this episode, she talks about why the West should engage and cooperate with India a lot more than it...

Brian Hioe 丘琦欣 is a Taipei-based editor and writer. He is one of the founding editors of New Bloom Magazine , an online magazine covering activism and youth politics in Taiwan and Asia Pacific. He is a non-resident fellow at the University of Nottingham’s Taiwan Studies Programme , as well as a freelance journalist and translator. He also writes regularly for The Diplomat   on Taiwan. He tweets...

Huong Le Thu is a non-resident fellow with the Southeast Asia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She's a prolific writer and influential voice on Southeast Asia and its role in the region. In this episode, she talks about Southeast Asia's positioning in the great power competition between China and the U.S., and what opportunities can arise from it for both th...

In this bonus episode of STATE OF ASIA, listen to four experts debate whether Japan's recently announced military build-up is a threat to regional stability, in an Oxford Debate organised on May 9, 2023, by Asia Society Switzerland . Presenting clear-cut, time-constrained arguments are: John Delury , professor of Chinese Studies at Yonsei University in Seoul Lionel Fetton , assistant professo...

Marina Rudyak is a sinologist at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, working on the intersections of China Studies and International Development. Her research focuses on China as a global development actor, the implications of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and China in Central Asia and Africa. She also frequently comments on China's relationships with Russia and Europe. In this epi...

Sherry Rehman is Pakistan's Federal Minister for Climate Change. She was just named one of 2023's 100 most influential people in the world by TIME magazine. At the most recent U.N. climate talks, in November 2022, she led a delegation of 77 developing nations plus China. She sits down with Asia Society Switzerland to talk about the apocalyptic effect climate change is already having on h...

State of Asia , the podcast from Asia Society Switzerland , is back with a new season of engaging conversations with leading minds on the issues that shape Asia and affect us all. The season premieres this Tuesday with a conversation with Sherry Rehman , Pakistan's Federal Minister for Climate Change. New episodes follow every other Tuesday. Over the coming months, special episodes of State o...

A bonus episode, fully dedicated to India, before we kick-off an all new season of the State of Asia podcast. Nico Luchsinger , Executive Director of Asia Society Switzerland, recently spent nine days in India to take the pulse of the subcontinent that is certainly having its moment. He spoke with a wide range of experts in New Delhi on India's development, domestic and foreign politics, econ...

A nice extra in the State of Asia feed: an episode of Bergos Now, the podcast from Bergos Private Bank, hosted by Aurelia Rauch . In this episode, Aurelia speaks with Nico Luchsinger , Executive Director of Asia Society Switzerland, on the State of Asia. Together they ask themselves: Is this the Asian Century? And where is Asia, really? The episode was recorded in October 2022. Thanks to Bergos, a...

In this bonus episode of State of Asia, listen to four stellar experts debating whether China has reached the peak of its global power, in a recent Oxford Debate organised by Asia Society Switzerland. Presenting clear-cut, time-constrained, well-thought-out arguments are: Simona Grano , Senior Lecturer and Director of the Taiwan Studies Project at the University of Zurich Bates Gill , Executive Di...

In this episode, listen to the inaugural State of Asia Address, given by C. Raja Mohan , one of India's foremost foreign policy thinkers and a Senior Fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute in New Delhi. Raja talks about new pessimism surrounding the rise of Asia with the return of great power rivalry. He pleads for much deeper connections between Asia and Europe to build security, stabil...

Agatha Kratz heads Rhodium Group’s China corporate advisory team, as well as its research on European Union-China relations and China’s economic statecraft. She contributes to Rhodium's work on China’s global investment, industrial policy and technology aspirations. Agatha is also a non-resident Adjunct Fellow of the Reconnecting Asia Project at the Center for Strategic and International Stud...

James Crabtree leads the growing research team of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore, focused on the Asia-Pacific. Prior to joining the IISS, James was a Singapore-based author and journalist, and an Associate Professor of Practice at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. His best-selling 2018 book, The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India’s New Gilded Age was s...

Leni Robredo was the 14th Vice President of the Philippines, serving from 2016 to 2022. During her term, she reinvented the Office of the Vice President from a purely ceremonial one into an advocacy centered office, instituting poverty alleviation programs all over the country. This May, she lost in the presidential elections to Ferdinand 'Bong Bong' Marcos, Jr., who spoke at Asia Societ...

C. Raja Mohan is one if India's foremost foreign policy thinkers and a Senior Fellow with the Asia Society Policy Institute in New Delhi, India. He has published widely on India's foreign and security policies and Asian geopolitics. He also is a columnist for Foreign Policy and a contributing editor on international affairs at the Indian Express . In this episode, he talks about the chal...

Tomohiko Taniguchi was Special Advisor to Japan's longest-serving Prime Minister, the late Shinzo Abe. He was the primary writer on Abe's foreign policy speeches, having joined the ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2005 after a 20-year career in journalism at Nikkei Business. He is currently a professor at Keio University specializing in international political economy and Japanese diplomac...