Is it the deadly combination of a failed economics and politics that’s tarnishing Shining Asia’s rise to the top?

Coups, protests and resignations have been the flavor of the past month in Asia, which has seen uprisings spread across the region, from Pakistan to Japan. The potent combination of a rudderless society crippled with inflation woes, and plummeting stock markets has suddenly left Asia in limbo.

Stocks fell around the world Monday, led by Asian exchanges as concerns about a slowing global economy weighed heavily on the markets, AP reported. Adding to the crisis, were analysts who expect further near-term volatility and are warning foreign investors to stay away until the year-end.

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After forming a free trade regional clique last week, Asian nations united  in Dhaka, Bangladesh  for a cleaner greener future.  The group decided to jointly fight climate change, reduce greenhouse gases and help each other during a natural calamity. The group also stood together against developed nations urging them to spend 0.5-1 percent of their GDP to help the developing world face the challenge posed by climate change and make good their unfulfilled commitments towards cutting back on greenhouse emissions. The move seeks to pressure these nations to part with funds committed under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The region — which includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives — is prone to incessant monsoon rains, drought, heat waves, frost freezes, desertification and salinization, all of which experts attribute to climate change.

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As oil prices show no signs of declining and transportation of goods becomes costlier, Asia is looking ahead. The region is strategically strengthening trade ties with its neighbors in order to improve the Asian economy. Boosting trade and tourism ties, the bloc of South East Asian countries also plans on raising funds to build missing links to a railway system from Singapore to Kunming in Southern China, connecting eight Asian countries by 2010

On Thursday, ASEAN also finalized free trade agreements with India and its Pacific neighbors Australia and New Zealand, creating a common market of 1.7 billion consumers, cutting across some of the world’s fastest growing economies. The deal will be formalized by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Bangkok this December and will be effective from January 2009. It will allow seamless and duty-free movement of goods across territories. India and China are also expected to sign trade agreements with each other that will boost economic synergies between them in December.

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Violence has erupted in almost every part of Asia, overthrowing the old order and squashing out the opposition. Countries ranging from Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and North Korea are all up in arms, fighting for justice and equality, at a time when inflation in the region has reached astronomical heights.

In Thailand, thousands of demonstrators besieged government offices on Tuesday and briefly shut down a television station in some of the most aggressive actions in months of street protests. While rebel fighting in the southern Philippines between government troops and Islamic separatists intensified with the number of the displaced now reaching 300,000, officials and aid workers the New York Times reported on Tuesday. Further, asserting their stance in world politics, North Korea said Tuesday that it had stopped disabling its main nuclear complex and threatened to restore facilities there that the North had used to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons unless the United States removed it from a terrorist list. (more…)

Foreign ministers of 20 Member countries of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) met in AlmaAta, Kazakhstan on Monday to strengthen pan Asian cooperation on security issues plaguing the region. The CICA includes Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, China, Egypt, Iran, India, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Palestine, Russia, Tajikistan, Thailand, South Korea, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Jordan and the United Emirates. Indonesia, Japan, the United States, Vietnam, the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Arab League are observer countries /organizations to the CICA.

Spearheaded by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, the CICA plans to unify Asia through an effective mechanism for safeguarding security in Asia and promoting cooperation in the region, Xinhua News Agency reported. Speaking in the city closely associated with Silk Road, “No other regional organization covers so much of territory. We see CICA as contributing to the struggle against terrorism through building of CBMs. These would reduce tensions and misgivings, thus providing less ground for terrorism, he said. (more…)

We all know that we live in a global world and are familiar with the saying - when the U.S sneezes the whole world catches a cold - incidentally this still hold true.

Lets focus on Asia, and the impact on the regions economies due to the deceleration in the United States. According to Deutsche Bank’s Chief Economist Prof. Walter, Asian economies servicing the U.S. have been impacted significantly, much more than Asian giants India and China. At a breakfast seminar organized by the European Chamber this morning, Prof. Walter said that while China and India’s economies will be affected by the U.S. slowdown, the service economies of Asia such as Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong will be more severely impacted.

I did some digging in to find facts to back the claims, and sure enough, there were plenty. The World Bank’s latest six-monthly review of the East Asia and Pacific region’s economies said that East Asia’s economic growth is estimated at 7.3 percent this year, down from 8.7 percent last year.

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In a move thats uncharacteristically Pakistan, President Parvez Musharraf resigned as head of state, bowing to massive domestic and international public pressure against him. While the move probably marks Pakistan’s first chance for a stable political future since 1977, it is also a measure of the Bush administration’s broken foreign policy.

“If I was doing this just for myself, I might have chosen a different course but I put Pakistan first, as always,” said the president, during an hour long impassioned defense of his record on live television. Wearing a western suit and tie but speaking in the national language, Urdu, Musharraf, according to the Guardian, kept the news of his resignation until the final moment, ending his almost nine years in power with “God bless Pakistan”. His own fate now however lies in exile or a criminal trial. (more…)

Developed and developing nations are playing the blame game over trade talks which fell apart on Tuesday. While Japan, China and India pointed fingers at each other, the EU and U.S also faced off.

Japan blamed China and India for not shouldering greater responsibilities in the WTO as emerging nations, the dragon and tiger said talks collapsed ultimately because the United States and the European Union ( also Japan’s allies) were unwilling to scrap huge subsidies they pay their farmers.

“Frankly, I’d have to wonder whether China and India weighed their words and actions commensurate with their responsibility and how much they considered the overall global economy as they focused too much on their own interests,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura told the Guardian.

The criticism may sting, but the two Asian giants aren’t likely to succumb to overseas pressure. In retaliation, China’s Commerce Minister and head of its delegation to the Doha Round, Chen Deming, said major developed countries were the biggest beneficiaries of the talks as they set aside a large space for farm subsidies. Developed countries need to fully understand the core concerns of developing nations and should not hinder the settlement of these problems, he told Xinhua.

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The BRIC’s are crumbling the house of international trade. After nine days of tough negotiations, which would have resolved the Doha round of free trade talks, prominent BRIC countries India and China failed to reach an agreement with the United States who refused to compromise over measures to protect farmers in developing countries from greater liberalization of trade.

The failure of the talks underscores what is s likely to be the biggest challenge in coming years to expanding world trade: the reluctance of emerging juggernauts such as India and China to risk their newfound success by offering rich nations greater access to the hundreds of millions of consumers rising out of poverty in the developing world, the Washington Post posted.

While it might be a good sign to see the developing powers stand against the might of the developed world, the failure of the talks on the whole, might not work well for the developing nations as the issue of farm subsidies still rests in favor of the developed nations.

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China will enforce Antitrust laws (anti monopoly laws or competition laws) from Friday, August 1st, while India will put the same laws into place by the end of this year. Antitrust laws are expected to delay or thwart high-profile cross-border mergers and acquisitions, in the burgeoning economies, lawyers and business executives warned the Financial Times.

China and India both will implement Antitrust laws based on the European Union model, which will essentially prohibit agreements or practices that restrict free trade and competition between business entities. The law will help control monopoly practices by firms which might use predatory pricing, price gouging, refusal to deal etc. The aim of the law which is to promote fair competition by supervising mergers and acquisitions of large corporations, including some joint ventures, is a cause for concern of many multinationals in the region.

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