Letter From the Editors

Welcome to the January issue of The Diplomat Magazine, and welcome to 2020! Across Asia, the new year will bring fresh challenges rooted in the same old issues.

We start the year off with our traditional New Year’s preview: What to expect in the Asia-Pacific in 2020. Diplomat authors from around the globe chime in with three events or trends to watch for in the next year. Organized by country and region, this multi-author article will let you mark your calendar for the key dates of 2020 from the Korean Peninsula to Central Asia. We’ve placed our bets for the big stories of the next year.

In our next lead article, we project the potential impact of one of the major events that closed out 2019: the finalization of negotiations on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) mega trade deal. Blake Berger, a senior program officer at the Asia Society Policy Institute, argues that RCEP, while often framed by the media as a “China-led” agreement, was in actuality driven forward by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Thus RCEP is a major victory not only for free trade but for the very notion of ASEAN Centrality – if the grouping can follow through on implementation, that is.

Then, Sudha Ramachandran, an independent journalist and researcher, examines the biggest story that wasn’t in 2019: The Belt and Road in South Asia. While the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) drew in new partners around the world last year, in South Asia its momentum noticeably slowed. Pakistani enthusiasm cooled, Nepali projects stalled, and the Maldives tried to re-negotiate terms with Beijing. While Sri Lanka was something of a bright spot, surprisingly, for the BRI, the South Asian region is proving a bumpy road, indeed, especially given India’s continued cold shoulder.

Finally, Andrew Nachemson, a journalist covering politics and human rights in Southeast Asia, delves into the prospects for Cambodia’s harried political opposition. Rumors of a split between the Cambodian National Rescue Party’s two main leaders are overblown, Nachemson finds, and the party still enjoys public support. But a ban on its formal participation in the political process, coupled with legal charges against its top leaders, have the CNRP’s future very much up in the air.

We hope you enjoy these stories and the many more in the following pages. 

Best wishes for the new year from all of us here at The Diplomat.