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View all search resultsWorst year in Asia? Not Obama, or airlines, but an entire people
As 2015 unfolds with Southeast Asia reeling from yet another airlines tragedy, we take one last look at the year we left behind
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s 2015 unfolds with Southeast Asia reeling from yet another airlines tragedy, we take one last look at the year we left behind. A year ago, taking a page from Washington Post columnist Chris Cillizza's awarding US President Barack Obama the dubious distinction of 'Worst year in Washington,' we took to the digital pages of Fortune Magazine.
The challenge ' naming who had the 'Worst year in Asia' ' and the 'winner' then of that least desired of 2013 prizes: Obama also, for his lost year in Asia, marked by canceled trips and persistent questions of substance to a much ballyhooed pivot to Asia amidst China's rise.
For 2014 Cillizza's prize of 'Worst year in Washington' went again to the US president ' this time 'for losses at home and crises abroad'. But Obama fails to appear on our 'Worst year in Asia 2014 edition'. Read who took the 'honor' ' along with our take on the people who had a really bad year, a not-so-good-or-bad year, a good year and the best year in Asia. Congrats, of a sort, to all.
Worst year in Asia: the Rohingya.
Stateless. Marginalized. Persecuted. These are the words used to describe the plight of Myanmar's Muslim minority the Rohingya ' a people whose very identity Myanmar's leaders and would-be leaders including Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi decline to recognize.
Those who stay in Myanmar face restrictions on movement, marriage and education. The year 2015 is unlikely to bring any respite as the nation's primarily Buddhist and majority Burman ethnicity electorate and all too many foreign investors, enamored of a new Myanmar, look the other way.
Really bad year: The once anonymous Asian business executive.
Can it get it much worse for Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya or Sony CEO Kaz Hirai? In a region all too often stereotyped as the realm of crony capitalism and secretive CEOs ' shareholder accountability, what's that? ' 2014 saw tragedy and a cyberattack bring to Asian executives the sort of scrutiny that Western business executives have grown accustomed to in a world dominated by social media and a 24-hour news cycle.
India's Narendra Modi and Indonesia's Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo are seen as pro-business and reform minded.
In Kuala Lumpur, CEO Yahya continues for now as head of an airlines still struggling in the wake of one missing airliner and another shot down over the Ukraine.
In Tokyo, CEO Hirai has had a lot of explaining to do, first over the struggling conglomerate's billions of dollars in losses in five of the last six years. Now comes the 'mother of all email leaks,' deriving from a cyber-attack suspected to be of North Korean origin and detailing tension between Hirai and its Hollywood subsidiary Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Not everyone can be a Jack Ma, the founder of China e-commerce pioneer Alibaba who saw a 2014 IPO turn him into China's richest man, or AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes whose performance in the midst of the latest air tragedy has so far been hitting the right notes.
Not-so-good-year: Umbrella Man.
In late September, thousands took to Hong Kong's central business district demanding fully free elections only to be met by police using pepper spray and tear gas to disperse them.
Thus was born the 'Umbrella Revolution,' and an image of 'Umbrella Man' ' that of a defiant protester clutching an umbrella amid tear gas ' was beamed across the globe to became the movement's symbol. Much more than a symbol of Hong Kong's struggle to find a way forward under Beijing's heavy hand, the Umbrella Man though speaks to the plight of democracy in the region.
The parallels to images of a lone man staring down tanks near Tiananmen Square in June 1989 were obvious.
Whether the jailing of pro-democracy bloggers in Vietnam and anti-coup activists in Thailand, or stalled reforms in Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, 2014 was clearly a not-so-good year for democracy in Asia.
Not-so-bad year: Kim Jong-un.
There's no such thing as 'bad press' and perhaps this whole blow-up behind Sony Films' political comedy The Interview, which depicts the assassination of North Korea's supreme leader Kim Jong-un, may have been exactly what Kim wanted to announce his return, and relevance, after disappearing from public view earlier this year.
Joining the likes of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie on the pages of popular magazines, Kim is now a household name to people who had no idea who he is or what's going on in the Korean peninsula.
His nation's economy may be falling fast and his conventional arms rusting away, but there's no questioning that Kim had made headlines from Hollywood to Washington to Tokyo at year's end.
Good year: India's space program.
Many Asian nations talk about moving up the knowledge and value chains, but no one did it in such a dramatic fashion as India with its first interplanetary mission, officially called M-O-M, for Mars Orbiter Mission.
Launched by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), in November 2013, its Mars craft or Manglyaan in Sanskrit, after a 298 day journey, successfully entered Mars' orbit on Sept. 24.
In doing so, India became the world's fourth nation to embark successfully on an interplanetary journey, and did so in its first attempt an in a triumph of low-cost engineering, at a US$74-million price tag. That's less than the cost of the Hollywood movie Gravity.
Meanwhile, China's Chang-e moon-lander and Yutu rover faded from the headlines due in part to technical difficulties with the crafts after their 2013 soft landing on the lunar surface.
Best year: Asia's new management.
Best year in Asia goes to leaders of countries representing the vast majority of Asia's populace. 'Under New Management,' a sign often signaling changes to come, would also be appropriate across a map of Asia as China, India and Indonesia, home to a third of the planet's population, have undergone a change in leadership these past two years.
India's Narendra Modi and Indonesia's Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo are seen as pro-business and reform minded and whose agenda have the potential to kick into high gear their respective countries' economies.
They will face a tough, uphill battle to root out corruption and improve each country's business environment, as will Xi Jinping in China and Japan's Shinzo Abe, but if successful, together will assure the region's critical role in growing the global economy and accelerate the rise of the 'Asian Century.'
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Curtis S. Chin, a former US ambassador to the Asian Development Bank, is managing director of advisory firm RiverPeak Group, LLC. Jose B. Collazo is a Southeast Asia analyst and an associate at RiverPeak Group.
