Wang Jen-shu, the first ambassador to Indonesia of the People’s Republic of China, spent a troubled couple of years as Beijing’s man in Jakarta in the early 1950s. He clashed repeatedly with a prime minister, …
Articles by: "Donald Greenlees"
The Hong Kong protests have Xi Jinping in a bind. For all the talk of China’s power and the power of the president-for-life within China, he has faced no good choices in the Hong Kong …
The Hong Kong government has scrapped the extradition bill that’s been at the heart of mass public protests. The backdown on plans to allow criminal suspects to be turned over to Chinese courts might dissipate …
For months, the biggest subject of cable traffic back home from the Indonesian embassy in Washington was a US law placing sanctions on any country that breached comprehensive US sanctions on Russia. Then either late …
It wasn’t quite up to the standard of the gilets jaunes of Paris. To suggest that it was the ‘worst’ rioting since May 1998, as some have, risks gross exaggeration. It only serves as a …
When Joko Widodo came to power in 2014, he promised as Indonesia’s seventh president to usher in a different style of politics to anything the country had seen before. He exuded humility. The son of …
Just over 20 years ago, a letter from Australian prime minister John Howard to the president of Indonesia, B.J. Habibie, set in motion a chain of events that would lead to East Timor’s passage to …
In September 2014, as revelations from the Edward Snowden affair roiled Australia–Indonesia relations, the late Sabam Siagian, Jakarta’s ambassador to Canberra between 1991 and 1995, offered the kind of frank appraisal of the bilateral relationship …
Out went the old guard, and in came the old guard, in Malaysia’s elections on 9 May. Locals and foreigners celebrated this event as a new political awakening. It’s a sign of how far things are …
As the Association of Southeast Asian Nations marks its 50th anniversary today, its 10 leaders should pause from the inevitable self-congratulation to reflect on the organisation’s failings as well as its successes. ASEAN has notched …
In the court of domestic and international public opinion, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak is guilty of a level of corruption and abuse of office not seen in Southeast Asia since the days of the …