President Xi Jinping hailed China as the pivot point for global free trade Thursday, vowing to keep its "super-sized" economy open for business and warning against protectionism as the world battles the COVID-19 pandemic.Buoyed by the signing of the world's largest trade pact over the weekend, Xi said the Asia-Pacific is the "forerunner driving global growth" in a world hit by "multiple challenges."He vowed "openness" to trade and rejected any poss

In 2016, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) reported that women made up half of all documented migrant workers in ASEAN. These women are normally employed in the care industry and most often are underpaid and certainly undervalued. The World Economic Forum (WEF) reported that one of the significant reasons why the gender gap remains large is because care in most countries almost always fall on the woman. It does not however, mention the perceived i

Even with the positive growth observed in various sectors for ASEAN, it is not without controversy. Leaders in ASEAN have been grabbing headlines on a range of topics that go from publicly turning down president Trump to a genocide trial. The Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, has been rippling diplomatic tensions by criticising India’s treatment in Kashmir and its new citizenship law as well as upsetting Saudi Arabia by hosting the KL summit for Islamic leaders.

With Chile withdrawing from its role as this year’s host of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), attention is now shifted towards the 2020 Summit which will be hosted by Malaysia. Whilst APEC has been an integral part of Malaysia’s regional and international credential and status, there are other smaller groupings which deserve attention. One of these is the Group of Developing Eight (D-8).Even though the D-8 has been in existence for some 20 years, the “output gap”, i.e.