Australia expands Pacific aid lead as China shifts strategy Riley Duke, Roland Rajah, Jack Xu ...

Beyond marking the UN’s 80th anniversary, the upcoming General Assembly high-level week, which will take place 23–29 September, promises to feature a crowded agenda – from the war in Ukraine and the ...

Loans from its mid-2010s lending boom are now entering acute repayment phases, leaving Tonga, Samoa, and Vanuatu with substantial debt obligations to Beijing. In 2024, Chinese aid spending in the ...

Riley Duke is a Research Fellow at the Lowy Institute and lead author of the Institute's Pacific Aid Map. Roland Rajah Roland ...

Official development finance to the Pacific increased in 2024, ending three years of decline. The rise came predominantly from concessional loans, which offset falling year-on-year grants. Total ...

Aid to the Pacific is increasingly concentrated among a few major partners, with Australia by far the largest. The United States has cemented a long-term commitment to the three Compact states, ...

Pacific Island economies are among the world’s most energy insecure. Recent fuel-market volatility has underscored continued dependence on imported fossil ...

“Australians are inclined to wonder whether there is real understanding in the United States … of the requirements imposed upon America by its world leadership,” wrote historian Gordon Greenwood in ...

Elbridge Colby’s recent dismissal (Opens in new window) of a collective “middle powers strategy” has reignited a live debate about the future of US alliances and partnerships. Colby, the US Under ...

For the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic subsided, North Korea has sent a delegation led by Kim Song-nam, director of the international department of the Workers’ Party of Korea, to Southeast ...

When Narendra Modi arrives in Australia this week, much of the focus will rightly be on how far the India–Australia relationship has travelled. This will be his third visit (Opens in new window) as ...

The Southeast Asia Influence Index maps the landscape of geopolitical influence in this crucial region. Building on an existing body of data-driven research by the Lowy Institute, this new project is ...