Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the country, the Philippines was perceived as the next Asian Tiger economy and one of the most robust and dynamic economies in ASEAN and the wider East Asian region. Based on the World Bank's (WB) data and statistics, the country's average annual growth rate increased from 4.5 percent between 2000-2009 to 6.4 percent between 2010-2019.

The Indo-Pacific, which has multiple meanings from a country’s international strategic outlook to a wide area stretched from Indian to the Pacific Ocean, still retains its popularity among foreign policy practitioners and analysts to this date. Countries, such as the United States, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, as well as a regional institution like European Union (EU), have declared the Indo-Pacific as one of their primary priorities in foreign policy.

An Omicron case has been detected in Beijing, officials in the Chinese capital said Saturday, as the country battles multiple outbreaks of the highly transmissible coronavirus variant ahead of the Winter Olympics.The announcement comes a day after the southern city of Zhuhai imposed travel restrictions on residents as a mass testing drive uncovered seven infections.Millions of people across the country have been ordered to stay home in recent weeks, with scores of domestic flights cancelled a

As the pandemic enters its third year, questions about COVID-19’s origins appear increasingly distant. But if we are to forestall another coronavirus pandemic in the 21st century, understanding the causes of the current one is imperative.

On 1 January 2022, the world's largest trade deal, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), came into force. RCEP is a trade agreement involving the 10- member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and their largest free trade agreement (FTA) partners, namely China, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.

In the past year, two of Hong Kong's biggest pro-democracy media outlets were toppled after enormous government pressure, a series of arrests and police raids on their newsrooms.A third organization - the five-year-old Citizen News - announced last week that it would shut down, too.

After the turmoil of the past two years, the consensus among economic pundits is that 2022 will be calmer. But in late 2019, when the first reports of a new coronavirus started to filter out from Wuhan in China, few imagined within months that the world economy would be flattened by a pandemic.

My book, A World in Disarray, was published five years ago this month. The book’s thesis was that the Cold War’s end did not usher in an era of greater stability, security, and peace, as many expected. Instead, what emerged was a world in which conflict was much more prevalent than cooperation. Some criticised the book at the time as being unduly negative and pessimistic. In retrospect, the book could have been criticised for its relative optimism.

China has faced criticism for its lending practices to poorer countries, accused of leaving them struggling to repay debts and therefore vulnerable to pressure from Beijing.But that is rejected by China, which accuses some in the West of promoting this narrative to tarnish its image.It says: "There is not a single country that has fallen into [a] so-called 'debt trap' as a result of borrowing from China."What Do We Know About China's Lending?China is one of the world&

China could retain its tight border restrictions for the whole of the year as it prepares to host the Winter Olympics and a series of political events in 2022, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said.Reports that vaccines made by domestic firm Sinovac Biotech Ltd.