The political vision of the Communist Party chief is built on a bedrock of Victorian moralism. Outside my window, as I write, snow is falling in clods, scattering powder on the ground I fear won’t last until the 25th. Christmastime is upon us and, naturally, a worn-down copy of “A Christmas Carol” is being thumbed… Continue reading Nguyen Phu Trong Would Find An Ally In Dickens
China, Laos and Vietnam have set aside norms on power transfer and kept elders in charge. A few years after embracing a market economy – with Deng Xioping’s reforms in the early 1980s, the Vietnamese Communist Party’s Doi Moi and the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party’s New Economic Policy in 1986 – the three communist party-states set about… Continue reading Asia’s communist regimes are breaking their intergenerational social contracts
There are signs of growing tensions between the country’s private sector and its rentier political elite. It’s unclear what reform Prime Minister Hun Manet announced – or whether there was an announcement at all. He’s adamant on what hasn’t happened: his government isn’t about to start selling land to foreigners. But it sounds a lot… Continue reading In Cambodia, Foreigners Cannot Own Land. Or Can They?
Private debt, much of it concentrated in the rapidly deflating real estate sector, has already emerged as a political problem for Prime Minister Hun Manet. Not all is well in the Kingdom of Hun. Hun Manet, Cambodia’s new prime minister, who inherited the role from his father in August, prepares to meet with the business community on… Continue reading Will Cambodia’s Private Debt Become National Debt?
Some 100,000 Laotians will have left in 2023, removing the disaffected and the unemployed, a boon for the regime. In a rare moment in the international spotlight, Laos was the topic of two articles published by major world media outlets in early October, although not with the sort of headlines the ruling communist party wanted… Continue reading Migration throws Laos’ communist government a lifeline
