There are few reasons to expect substantial change to Asia policy under a Biden administration, writes long-term US foreign policy analyst Brad Nelson. This makes it all the more important that he appoint a national security and foreign policy team capable of crafting new, imaginative approaches to managing the region’s challenges.

Australia should learn from 19th century statecraft, says former ambassador John McCarthy, and practice some artful diplomacy in the coming months that balances our interests in securing a strong US, a stable region, and if possible a cooperatively engaged China.

Two events happened in August that went largely unnoticed by most of the mainstream media in Southeast Asia. One was the third Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) Leaders' Meeting between China and the five Mekong members of ASEAN – Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. The other was the inaugural Mekong-US Partnership Ministerial Meeting between America and the same ASEAN countries. As Asialink Diplomacy Adviser Chen Chen Lee writes, the Mekong deserves timely and decisive attention from ASEAN, lest the region's stability and growth be challenged.

The Quad, a loose strategic coalition of the Indo-Pacific region’s four leading democracies, is rapidly solidifying this year in response to China’s aggressive foreign policy. Following a recent meeting of their top foreign-policy officials in Tokyo, Australia, India, Japan, and the United States are now actively working toward establishing a new multilateral security structure for the region, writes Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research.

The harassment and expulsion of foreign journalists in China threatens to turn back the clock to the old days of artful China watching from abroad. But former China correspondent and journalism professor Keith B. Richburg argues the explosion of new media and the determination of many Chinese to tell their own stories means China can no longer be isolated or escape critical coverage.

The rise of an assertive China, the absence of American leadership, and the coronavirus pandemic have combined to pose unprecedented challenges to the countries of the Indo-Pacific. Former Japanese ambassador Sumio Kusaka argues they also provide the rationale for a new era in Australia-Japan relations and the consolidation of a ‘natural’ partnership.

Japan’s new prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, has arrived with a suite of ambitious policy ideas, including plans to digitize government services and revive the country’s regional banks. But he has yet to come up with an overarching theme that strikes a chord with the public. Bill Emmott, former editor-in-chief of The Economist, writes that Suga should declare that by 2030, Japan will be positioned to make the best possible use of its one and only natural resource – its people.