In the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was common to divide countries and their responses according to their political systems, with many attributing China’s success in controlling the virus to its authoritarianism.

The number of coronavirus cases in the Chinese city where the pathogen was first detected may have been 10 times higher than official figures suggest, according to a study by health authorities in Wuhan.About 4.4 percent of the city's 11 million residents had developed antibodies against the virus causing COVID-19 by April, the report by the Chinese Centre for Disease Control (CDC) said.That correlates to around 480,000 infections in Wuhan by April, nearly 10 times the official tally to

COVID-19 stormed across the planet in 2020, striking first in Asia and then surging throughout Europe and the Americas in what seemed like an endless tidal wave of grief. With each passing milestone – the first 100 deaths in January, followed by the first 1,000 in February, 10,000 in March, 100,000 in April, and one million as of September – the question always has been when it will it end. Despite its virulence, many simply assume that the pandemic will end sometime in 2021.

Around this time four years ago, the climate community was in shock. Just when the world seemed to be on the cusp of pursuing serious measures to fight climate change, voters in the United States (US) elected a president who would try to reverse all of the country’s previous climate achievements, causing immeasurable damage. We are now finally approaching the end of that bleak era.

A Chinese citizen journalist was jailed for four years Monday for her reporting from Wuhan as the COVID-19 outbreak began, her lawyer said, almost a year after details of an "unknown viral pneumonia" surfaced in the central China city.Zhang Zhan, a former lawyer who arrived at court in a wheelchair, was sentenced at a brief hearing in a Shanghai court for allegedly "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" during her reporting in the chaotic initial stages of the outbreak.H

Most readers will remember the widespread enthusiasm with which we met the arrival of the 21st century. It was a time of high hopes, grandiloquent editorials, and unfeigned daring on the part of the West. Yet in the blink of an eye (historically speaking), the spirit of the times shifted radically – even before the COVID-19 pandemic struck. For much of the world, this century has been a period of frustration and disillusion.

China's ruling Communist Party leaders have congratulated themselves on their "extremely extraordinary" success in handling the COVID-19 outbreak domestically, ahead of a World Health Organization (WHO) probe into the disease's origins.China faced a barrage of criticism at home and abroad over its initial handling of the virus, which emerged in the central city of Wuhan last December.China's Politburo, the top decision-making body of the Communist Party, said late Fri

In his fifth State of the Nation Address (SONA) on 27 July, President Rodrigo Duterte stated that, “Within ASEAN and beyond, the Philippines will continue to work with partners to address global perils and ramp up cooperation to secure for our peoples, greater peace, progress, and prosperity. The Filipino nation claims its rightful place in the community of sovereign states.

Even after Asia’s economies climb out of the COVID-19 recession, China’s strategy of frenetically building dams and reservoirs on transnational rivers will confront them with a more permanent barrier to long-term economic prosperity: water scarcity.

Asia is a technological force to be reckoned with.