India and Indonesia, the juggernaut democracies of South and Southeast Asia, both ended 2024 with new governments that hold new ambitions. How will this pan out in the year to come?

We talked about this with Dewi Fortuna Anwar, one of Indonesia’s foremost foreign policy experts; and Garima Mohan, Senior Fellow in the Indo-Pacific Program at the German Marshall Fund. The conversation is moderated by James Crabtree, 2024 TOY Senior Fellow at Asia Society Switzerland, and was recorded at the third edition of our STATE OF ASIA conference, held last November in Zurich.

More information on the conference, the speakers, plus videos and summaries, are available on our website.

Stay up-to-date on all events and activities at Asia Society Switzerland: subscribe to the newsletter and support our work by becoming a member.

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STATE OF ASIA is a podcast from Asia Society Switzerland.
Season 8, episode 4 - Published: January 28, 2025
Host/Editor: Remko Tanis, Programs and Editorial Manager, Asia Society Switzerland

We check in with Schoni Song in Seoul, to discuss this morning's unprecedented arrest of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who is accused of leading an insurrection. How have people in South Korea responded to the news, and what could come next?

Schoni is a former colleague at Asia Society and was a speaker in our 2023 webcast A Closer Look at South Korea.

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STATE OF ASIA is a podcast from Asia Society Switzerland.
Season 8, episode 3 - Published: January 15, 2025
Host/Editor: Remko Tanis, Programs and Editorial Manager, Asia Society Switzerland

China is undergoing unprecedented changes domestically, while also dealing with the challenges of a volatile world.

Listen to Qing Wang, host of the popular Chinese-language podcast The Weirdo; Zichen Wang, Research Fellow at the Center for China and Globalization; and Adam Tooze, economic historian and professor at Columbia University discuss the state of China.
The discussion is moderated by Finbarr Birmingham, Europe correspondent for the South China Morning Post, and was recorded at STATE OF ASIA, the flagship conference hosted by Asia Society Switzerland last November, in Zurich.

More information on the conference, the speakers, plus videos and summaries, are available on our website.

Stay up-to-date on all events and activities at Asia Society Switzerland: subscribe to the newsletter and support our work by becoming a member.

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STATE OF ASIA is a podcast from Asia Society Switzerland.
Season 8, episode 2 - Published: January 14, 2025
Host/Editor: Remko Tanis, Programs and Editorial Manager, Asia Society Switzerland

We're kicking off the year with two great minds discussing the State of the World as Asia's global importance continues to grow, Europe seems somewhat lost, and the U.S. is preparing for the return of Donald Trump to the White House.

Listen to Asia Society President & CEO Kyung-wha Kang and economic historian Adam Tooze, professor at Columbia University in New York. Their conversation was recorded at STATE OF ASIA, the flagship conference hosted by Asia Society Switzerland last November, in Zurich.

More information on the conference, the speakers, plus videos and summaries, are available on our website.

Stay up-to-date on all events and activities at Asia Society Switzerland: subscribe to the newsletter and support our work by becoming a member.

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STATE OF ASIA is a podcast from Asia Society Switzerland.
Season 8, episode 1 - Published: January 7, 2025
Host/Editor: Remko Tanis, Programs and Editorial Manager, Asia Society Switzerland

The Gen A Young Leadership Program is a key initiative of Asia Society Switzerland. It brings together a group of around 25 vetted young professionals and advance students to participate in a year of deepening their Asia knowledge and to provide them with the tools to interpret developments in Asia and identify opportunities for successful collaboration. Gen A enables the next generation of leaders to engage with Asia at eye level and builds a community of young Asia-curious people in Switzerland.

Recently, our 2024 cohort graduated from the Gen A program, joining a community that has now grown to well over a hundred alumni. At the graduation ceremony for the Gen A 2024 fellows, Bettina Schaller, Head of Group Public Affairs of The Adecco Group and President of the World Employment Confederation, spoke with the graduates about skills young professionals at the start of their careers need in a changing world.

A world, Bettina says, that with 2024 has gone through a huge number of disruptions on many different levels and with countries the world over now being led by new governments who will shape what the world will look like in the immediate future. What does this mean for the grads and the demand for their skills? Where does Asia and Asia Competence fit into this? And what’s the one thing still no one has found the full answer to?

We are now accepting applications for the 2025 iteration of Gen A. All information is on our website. Apply before January 12, 2025.

Asia Society Switzerland is deeply grateful for the generous support of the Gen A – Young Leadership Program by the Ernst Göhner Stiftung, the Hirschmann Stiftung, Nicolas Oltramare and IMP AG.

STATE OF ASIA brings you engaging conversations with leading minds on the issues that shape Asia and affect us all.

Stay up-to-date on all events and activities at Asia Society Switzerland: subscribe to the newsletter and support our work by becoming a member.

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STATE OF ASIA is a podcast from Asia Society Switzerland.
Season 7, Bonus Episode 3 - Published: December 16, 2024
Host, Editor/producer: Remko Tanis, Programs and Editorial Manager, Asia Society Switzerland

Deepti Kapoor's Age of Vice, published in 2023, is a story of power, corruption, and complicity, set in modern India. In the early 2000s, the lives of Ajay, Neda, and Sunny – the novel's three main characters – cross in New Delhi. There is idealism, optimism even; but also crime, drugs, and violence, as Sunny Wadia follows in the footsteps of his powerful father. Age of Vice, which became a New York Times bestseller and will be adapted into a tv series, is not a didactic novel, but a deeply researched portrait of a changing country, with a fast-growing economy, and ever greater inequality.

Deepti visited Zurich in October 2024 to talk about the book at Asia Society Switzerland's Big Picture event. The conversation was moderated by James Crabtree, 2024 TOY Senior Fellow at Asia Society Switzerland and himself author of The Billionaire Raj, a well-received book on crony capitalism and the rise of India's billionaire class. Listen to their conversation in this episode of the STATE OF ASIA podcast, or watch them at the event in this video.

STATE OF ASIA brings you engaging conversations with leading minds on the issues that shape Asia and affect us all.

Stay up-to-date on all events and activities at Asia Society Switzerland: subscribe to the newsletter and support our work by becoming a member.

—
STATE OF ASIA is a podcast from Asia Society Switzerland.
Season 7, Bonus Episode 2 - Published: December 9, 2024
Host, Editor/producer: Remko Tanis, Programs and Editorial Manager, Asia Society Switzerland

On November 6, 2024, leading global thinker Adam Tooze delivered Asia Society Switzerland's third annual State of Asia Address in front of a full house in the prestigious aula of the University of Zurich, our partner for this event.

Adam holds the Shelby Cullom Davis chair of History at Columbia University in New York City. In 2019, Foreign Policy Magazine named him one of the top Global Thinkers of the decade.

Chartbook, his newsletter on economics, geopolitics and history, has over 120,000 subscribers. He is a columnist for Foreign Policy, where he also hosts a weekly economics podcast, Ones & Tooze.

The full text of Adam's 2024 State of Asia Address 'Asia in the Age of Polycrisis' is available on our website. A video of the address is here.

STATE OF ASIA brings you engaging conversations with leading minds on the issues that shape Asia and affect us all.

Stay up-to-date on all events and activities at Asia Society Switzerland: subscribe to the newsletter and support our work by becoming a member.

-
STATE OF ASIA is a podcast from Asia Society Switzerland.
Season 7, episode 6 - Published: November 12, 2024
Host/Editor: Remko Tanis, Programs and Editorial Manager, Asia Society Switzerland

China and India seem to be en route to a better, or less bad, relationship for the first time in years. Germany published its first 'Focus on India' policy paper, immediately followed by a visit of Chancellor Scholz to New Delhi.
The new EU Commission has specifically named India as an important part of its strategies.
Russia, just like India a founding member of BRICS and host of that forum's 2024 summit, has its own pressing reasons to maintain the historical ties with India.
And then there's the Quad, in which India cooperates ever closer with fellow democracies the United States, Australia, and Japan.

What is India making of this momentum? Will it stick to its policy of non-alignment, or is, despite all the approaches from all sides, nonetheless a tilt to the West visible?

On this episode, we discuss all this with Garima Mohan, Senior Fellow in the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund, where she leads the work on India and heads the India Trilateral Forum. Her research focuses on Europe-India ties, EU foreign policy in Asia, and security in the Indo-Pacific.

Garima is one of the speakers at our flagship STATE OF ASIA conference on November 7 in Zurich. Have a look at the full line-up and find information on how to get tickets on our website.

The evening before, on November 6, renowned historian and global thinker Adam Tooze delivers our State of Asia Address in Zurich. This is a public event, though registration to attend is crucial. More info here.

STATE OF ASIA brings you engaging conversations with leading minds on the issues that shape Asia and affect us all.

Stay up-to-date on all events and activities at Asia Society Switzerland: subscribe to the newsletter and support our work by becoming a member.

—
STATE OF ASIA is a podcast from Asia Society Switzerland.
Season 7, episode 5 - Published: October 29, 2024
Host: Serena Jung, Program and Communications Director, Asia Society Switzerland
Editor/producer: Remko Tanis, Programs and Editorial Manager, Asia Society Switzerland