Here are Asia’s best and worst of 2023
Curtis S. Chin, left, a former U.S. ambassador to the Asian Development Bank, is managing director of advisory firm RiverPeak Group. Jose B. Collazo is an analyst focusing on the Indo-Pacific region. Follow them on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, at @CurtisSChin and @JoseBCollazo.Curtis S. Chin, a former U.S. ambassador to the Asian Development Bank, is managing director of advisory firm RiverPeak Group. Jose B. Collazo is an analyst focusing on the Indo-Pacific region. Follow them on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, at @CurtisSChin and @JoseBCollazo.
When we took to CNBC to announce our choices from “best” to “worst” and “good” to “bad” in Asia’s 2023, our selections from Korea may well have stolen the show — at least on social media, and in the eyes and ears of music fans.
In 2022, we gave “best year” to Southeast Asia’s comeback kids, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who won elections to lead their countries forward. This year, we looked skyward.
Here’s our look at the year that was.
Best year: India’s space agency — lifting spirits, to the moon & beyond
The region was far from all doom and gloom this August 2023 as ISRO — the Indian Space Research Organization — dazzled the citizens of what is now the world’s most populous country and space exploration fans everywhere with its latest lunar mission.
The Indian space agency’s Chandrayaan-3 (“moon craft”-3 in Sanskrit) spacecraft entered lunar orbit on Aug. 5. Just over two weeks later, on Aug. 24, its lander named Vikram touched down near the lunar south pole, making India the fourth country to successfully land on the Moon. A lunar rover named Pragyan would soon be literally making tracks on the Moon.
As with India’s landmark Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) — the nation’s first interplanetary mission to planet Mars in November 2013, which made ISRO the fourth space agency to successfully send a spacecraft to Mars orbit — the relatively low-cost $74.6 million Chandrayaan mission demonstrated the power of India’s “frugal engineering” model. “India’s successful moon mission is not just India’s alone,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared. “This success belongs to all of humanity.” And for that reason and for uplifting spirits and bringing a bit of hope and joy in a tough year, ISRO wins “Best Year in Asia 2023.”
Good year: Blackpink — going global and winning over the world
2023 might have ended with K-pop global sensation BTS’s members in military service in Korea and with Taylor Swift named Time Magazine’s 2023 “Person of the Year,” but the four superstar women from Asia who make up the all-female K-pop group Blackpink still had an excellent 2023.
Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé and Lisa ended the year by receiving honorary Members of the British Empire from King Charles at Buckingham Palace for their role in “bringing the message of environmental sustainability to a global audience as Ambassadors for the UK’s Presidency of COP 26, and later as advocates for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.” And yes, President Yoon Suk Yeol was there too.
Earlier in April, Blackpink became the first Asian and all-female band to headline Coachella, and its album “Born Pink” became the first album from an all-female group to hit No. 1 since 2008. The year also ended with the news that Blackpink’s members had finally renewed their contracts with YG Entertainment, causing that company’s Kosdaq-listed shares to leap by 26 percent.
Like Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh, who made history in March 2023 by becoming the first Asian to win the Academy Award for Best Actress, the members of Blackpink — from Korea, New Zealand and Thailand — have also gone global, adding another dimension to the phrase “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”
Mixed year: U.S.-China relations — taking a small step forward
U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in person at long last this November at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation’s leaders summit in San Francisco, California — the highlight of a mixed year for U.S-China relations.
That the two leaders met at all was an accomplishment. 2023 was, after all, a year marked by the shooting down of what the United States termed a “Chinese spy balloon” and continuing tensions on issues ranging from trade, opioids and semiconductors to Taiwan and the South China Sea. Xi did, to many an American’s delight, indicate that additional pandas might be loaned to the United States in an extension of panda-plomacy.
2024 may prove to be an even more of a mixed year, as both leaders focus on domestic issues including the upcoming U.S. presidential election and the slowing Chinese economy.
Bad year: China’s property market — fearing the worst is yet to come
With millions of Chinese citizens still waiting for homes they put down payments on but which might never be built, 2023 was a particularly bad year for China’s property market.
By some accounts, the nation’s ongoing, protracted real estate crisis and debt levels in general may pose the biggest credit risk to the global economy. For many a member of China’s middle class, however, the crisis is also a very real threat to their “China Dream” and hopes for a better life.
In 2021, Chinese real estate giant Evergrande Group defaulted on its debt. In 2023, concerns grew over the financial state of Country Garden, which until last year was China’s biggest developer, specializing in residential property.
With China’s economy still growing yet slowing and Chinese property prices continuing to fall, the International Monetary Fund has expressed concern, and Moody’s Investors Service has cut its outlook on China’s housing sector to negative. State-owned financial institutions are reportedly being called upon to prop up developers who are struggling to avoid default and finish the construction of stalled apartment projects.
Still, some Chinese citizens are refusing to pay their mortgages en masse in a rare form of domestic protest. Chinese families and individuals, who once saw homes not only as somewhere to live but also as investments, have reason to fear that 2023 won’t be the last bad year they face.
Worst year: Asia’s forgotten — still suffering as headlines move on
In 2023, the region’s most vulnerable — often displaced by armed conflict — remain, for the most part, all too forgotten. Priorities shifted, and the world’s headlines turned away from “yesterday’s news” — moving on to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. But crises in Asia go on, in countries like Myanmar and Afghanistan, without the attention of the front pages.
The most significant escalation of hostilities in Myanmar since the 2021 coup, for example, worsened an ongoing humanitarian crisis in 2023. More than 578,000 people were newly displaced in Myanmar between Oct. 26 and Dec. 8, on top of nearly 2 million who were already displaced before the surge in fighting, according to the United Nations.
Humanitarian needs also continue to grow in the country’s Rakhine State, where some 200,000 people, mostly Rohingya, are living in camps and have been denied freedom of movement since 2012. UNHCR reports that Bangladesh hosts close to one million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, making it one of the largest protracted refugee situations in the world.
In and outside of Afghanistan, the plight of Afghan women and children remains dire. Few are likely to know that Afghan refugees are the third-largest displaced population in the world after those from Syria and Ukraine. There were at least 8.2 million Afghans hosted across 103 different countries in 2023, according to UNHCR, with some in Pakistan now being forced to return to Afghanistan. More than 70 percent of those in need of support are women and children.
And so, the “worst year” sadly goes to Asia’s forgotten men, women and children — whether in Myanmar, Afghanistan or elsewhere. Give a thought to how you might learn more and do more to ease their plight in 2024 and beyond.
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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