Club Lunch: Struggling Tigers Confront the Rising Dragon: Power and Conflict in Southeast Asia

The gun is never far removed from the political arena in Southeast Asia. For a part of the world that has made so much social and material progress, that regularly tops charts of economic growth and investment, why do so many countries of the region plumb the bottom of international indices measuring freedom and good government? Why does the region continue to struggle with democratic transition? Meanwhile, efforts by Western powers, principally the US, to balance and moderate China’s burgeoning influence are generating geopolitical friction and turning Southeast Asia into a cauldron of superpower rivalry. The speaker considered the authoritarian and geo-political challenges to freedom in the ten countries of Southeast Asia.

Michael Vatikiotis has worked as a writer and journalist in Southeast Asia for the past thirty-five years. After training as a journalist with the BBC in London, he moved to Southeast Asia and was a correspondent and then editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review. In the course of his reporting career he was based in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.  He has written three books on the politics of Southeast Asia, the latest of which is ‘Blood and Silk: Power and Conflict in Modern Southeast Asia.’ He currently works as a mediator in armed conflict as the Asia Regional Director of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue and lives in Singapore.