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Climate change and post-pandemic recovery were among Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen's top priorities as his country hosted the 55th ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting and related meetings last week.

Regional experts said the initiatives Cambodia proposed as the current chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are important to the bloc, which faces huge environmental and economic challenges.

"Climate change is the biggest long-term issue that the world is facing, and its effects are increasingly being felt here and now," said Stephen Higgins, managing partner of the investment management firm Mekong Strategic Partners in Cambodia.

Commenting on Hun Sen's suggestion of establishing an overarching framework labeled an ASEAN Green Deal, Higgins said ASEAN member states, like most countries, need to undertake very significant investment to decarbonize their economies and start adaptation works.

"An ASEAN Green Deal will help with regional coordination of these efforts, while also assisting in the funding of them."

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the foreign ministers' meeting and related meetings on Wednesday, Hun Sen said ASEAN has put forward various policy solutions to tackle climate change challenges, but the responses remain sector-specific and uncoordinated. Meetings were held from July 29 to Aug 5.

"ASEAN needs to go further by leveraging different national conditions to provide a platform for cooperation among member states as well as with our external partners," he said, noting that the ASEAN Green Deal would cover a wide range of areas, from infrastructure, energy and manufacturing to consumption and agriculture.

Climate change could result in a loss of more than 35 percent of ASEAN's GDP by 2050 as it can severely affect key sectors such as agriculture, tourism and fishing, along with human health and labor productivity, according to joint research by Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the University of Glasgow in Scotland.

Nisit Panthamit, director of the Center for ASEAN Studies at Chiang Mai University in Thailand, said it is important to consider the differences between Southeast Asian countries, since places such as Singapore are more developed and have more resources, while countries such as Thailand and Vietnam may be in the middle.

ASEAN's value chain cannot be cut off from the global economy, and a Green Deal could be a good move for the region in terms of showing that it can deal with decarbonization, Nisit told China Daily.

Though ASEAN countries such as Thailand have set carbon neutrality goals for the middle of this century, Nisit said progress has been slow due to disruptions such as the pandemic, economic slowdown and political instability.

It is possible a Green Deal can be achieved but he hopes to see more concrete plans of how it can be implemented, he said.

In his speech, Hun Sen also offered to host a secretariat in Phnom Penh for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement, which came into force this year, to coordinate the effective implementation of the world's largest free trade pact.

In line with ASEAN's strategy under the comprehensive recovery framework, which aims to maximize the potential of the intra-ASEAN market and broader economic integration, Hun Sen said a stand-alone secretariat is needed as soon as possible.

"I hope Cambodia can win the support of fellow ASEAN member states as well as all RCEP participating countries when we submit our proposal officially."

The RCEP comprises 15 Asia-Pacific economies including the 10 ASEAN member states and five key trading partners, namely Australia, China, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand.

RCEP countries account for about 30 percent of the world's GDP and population.

To establish an RCEP secretariat, Nisit said, ASEAN should ask for cooperation not only from other signatories of the trade pact, but also from observer countries that may also like to play a role, as well as international organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The RCEP has served as a driving force for regional and global economic growth, said the economist Ky Sereyvath, director-general of the Institute of China Studies at the Royal Academy of Cambodia.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Monday for international inspectors to be given access to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant after Ukraine and Russia traded accusations over the shelling of Europe's largest atomic plant at the weekend.

"Any attack (on) a nuclear plant is a suicidal thing," Guterres told a news conference in Japan, where he attended the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony on Saturday to commemorate the 77th anniversary of the world's first atomic bombing.

Russian forces captured the Zaporizhzhia nuclear reactor complex in southeastern Ukraine in early March, shortly after Moscow's invasion of its neighbour, but it is still run by Ukrainian technicians.

Ukraine accused Russia of responsibility for renewed shelling on Saturday that had damaged three radiation sensors and injured a worker at the plant in what was the second hit in consecutive days on the site.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a televised address on Sunday, said Russia was waging "nuclear terror" that warranted more international sanctions, this time on Moscow's nuclear sector.

The region's Russian-installed authority said Ukrainian forces hit the site with a multiple rocket launcher, damaging administrative buildings and an area near a storage facility.

The Russian Embassy in Washington also itemised the damage, saying artillery fire from "Ukrainian nationalists" damaged two high-voltage power lines and a water pipeline, but critical infrastructure was not affected.

Reuters could not verify either side's version of what happened.

Events at the Zaporizhzhia site - where Kyiv alleged that Russia hit a power line on Friday - have alarmed the world.

Guterres said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) needed access to the plant. "We fully support the IAEA in all their efforts in relation to creat(ing) the conditions for stabilisation of the plant," he said.

IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi warned on Saturday that the latest attack "underlines the very real risk of a nuclear disaster".

Elsewhere, a deal to unblock Ukraine's food exports and ease global shortages gathered pace as two grain ships sailed out of Ukrainian Black Sea ports on Monday, raising the total to 12 since the first vessel left a week ago.

Four ships that left Ukraine on Sunday are expected to anchor near Istanbul on Monday evening, Turkey's defence ministry said, and would be inspected on Tuesday, while the first vessel to sail since Russia's Feb. 24 invasion docked.

The two latest outgoing ships were carrying almost 59,000 tonnes of corn and soybeans and were bound for Italy and southeastern Turkey following inspections. The four that left on Sunday bore almost 170,000 tonnes of corn and other food.

The July 22 grain export pact brokered by Turkey and the United Nations represents a rare diplomatic triumph as fighting churns on in Ukraine and aims to help ease soaring global food prices arising from the war.

Before Moscow's invasion, Russia and Ukraine together accounted for nearly a third of global wheat exports. The disruption since then has raised the spectre of famine in parts of the world.

A key reason for Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, to visit Taiwan last week (and before that Ukraine) is her determination to expand the contours of her legacy to include dealing with America's major foreign policy rivals, Russia and China. Her primary motivation, however, is linked to her loyalty to the governing Democratic Party and her determination to prop up Joe Biden's presidency.

We may, thus, soon see Ms Pelosi land in Tehran to pave the way for a grand deal between her country and Iran. But in that case, she will need to avoid boasting about "democracy standing up to autocracy". After all, an agreement with Tehran would be a deal with the ultimate autocratic regime.

Ms Pelosi's incentive isn't just challenging what the US deems to be autocracies running Russia and China. Sure, landing in Taiwan angered Beijing and raised concerns of military escalation. And sure, American strategic interests were key considerations for the Speaker. But was her trip really to pre-empt China's feared invasion of the island, or to draw Beijing into a trap?

Neither reason seems compelling. Rather, the visit had the flavour of political manoeuvring.

The obsessive media and public attention given to the trip had caused a stir in the financial markets, but the fundamental misreading of the situation may have been the main reason for this. From the outset, there have been no indications of a strategic US decision to begin a standoff with China. Logic also suggests the visit would not have taken place had there not been a minimum level of understanding about it between Mr Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, with the two leaders having spoken on the phone for nearly two hours on July 28 – less than a week before Ms Pelosi's trip.

So far, the visit appears to have served both leaders' agendas, for it has allowed them to reassert their traditional positions in an expedient political dress rehearsal. It can be seen as a step to shore up Mr Biden's credibility as well as that of the Democratic Party on foreign policy issues, without paying a high cost in the short term. It certainly enabled Mr Xi to reassert Beijing's "red lines" on Taiwan, including its categorical rejection of the island's independence as part of its One China principle, yet without being dragged into a military confrontation that Beijing wants to avoid. Certain sections of China's elite are pushing for a confrontation with the US, and they see Ms Pelosi's visit as a provocation requiring a response beyond military exercises. But Mr Xi is resisting these voices, opting for a restrained approach.

That doesn't mean accidents or missteps can be ruled out. The cross-Strait issue is now bigger than both countries' leaderships. In the Chinese political system, moreover, the Communist Party collectively makes decisions.

So far, the co-existence between democracies and autocracies – as subjective as both terms are – has trumped the ideological struggle between them.

The West's battle with Russia, for instance, is not a confrontation between two political systems, despite Ms Pelosi and others framing it as such. It is essentially a battle between the Nato military alliance and Moscow. Likewise, in its supposed ideological battle with China, the US is actually more worried about the Asian power's rise, which Washington sees as a threat to its global primacy. Successive US administrations have, thus, resolved to contain this rise. No doubt, the ideological battle is hugely influential, but it is not the basis of their rivalry.

Iran is another example of the duplicity in America's "democracy versus autocracy" articulation.

Even though it is run by an autocratic regime (and an ideologically expansionist one), neither Mr Biden nor Ms Pelosi would have any problem securing a nuclear agreement with Iran without challenging the regime on its regional record or ideology. Indeed, there is little room for Ms Pelosi to raise the "defence of democracy against autocracy" banner in this context, for the Democratic administration would be doing the opposite: empowering an autocratic regime.

The party will insist that a deal with Tehran serves US interests, defuses a potential nuclear standoff, and avoids military confrontation that the American people do not want. However, it is just as duty-bound to acknowledge that lifting economic sanctions – a condition set by the Iranian regime in the nuclear negotiations – would provide Tehran with the resources it needs to spread its autocratic ideology across the Middle East.

The Iranian regime recently indicated that it is willing to give up its demand that the US remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from its terror list. This suggests it is seeking a formula to conclude a nuclear deal. It has determined that there are creative ways to untie the knot around the IRGC, which is indispensable to the regime's domestic and foreign policies, for it has no qualms about outsmarting western democracies while benefiting from their capitalist features.

Immaterial of how the talks pan out, the time has probably come for US administrations to stop claiming that the wars they have waged in their recent history have been primarily to serve their ideological purposes. Such duplicity has and will continue to cost America, no matter the benefits to its military-industrial complex.

This week, inflation numbers for July will be published in most of the CEE countries.

In Czechia, Hungary and Serbia, we expect headline CPI to increase further, while in Romania, we believe that the peak was reached in June and inflation should ease in July. Other CEE countries should see the peak of inflation in the course of the third quarter.

The Serbian central bank is to hold a rate setting meeting and we expect another 25bp hike so that the policy rate should reach 3%. Finally, industrial output growth and trade data for June will be published across the region. It will be interesting to see whether export activity was already affected in light of the slowing German economy.

The forint and the zloty strengthened further over the course of last week, with the former firming by 2.4% to just below 395 vs. EUR and the latter marking a milder move to 4.70 vs. EUR. Forint's recent gains made it easier for the Hungarian central bank to keep its one-week deposit rate unchanged at 10.75%, as expected. In Poland, flash inflation for July remained at the 25-year high of 15.5% y/y, possibly raising chances the central bank may be nearing the peak of its tightening cycle. However, it is too early to tell yet and differences in opinions within the MPC remain. Last week's meeting of the Romanian central bank brought a 75bp hike to 5.50%, with the credit facility rate, as the relevant operational policy instrument under tight liquidity management policy, reaching 6.50%. On the other hand, the Czech National Bank (under its new MPC composition) left its key rate unchanged at 7%. The CNB also decided it will continue to actively prevent significant fluctuations in the koruna via its FX interventions and temporarily moved the monetary policy horizon by 6 months to 18-24 months, which implies lower pressure on policy tightening. The koruna stands at 24.60 vs. EUR. Thursday brings the Serbian central bank meeting – we expect a 25bp hike to 3%, as global price pressures are still evident, and the peak of inflation remains ahead of us.

Whereas the development at the short-end of the curve differed across CEE, yields at the long-end moved down by 3-19bp everywhere apart from Romania by early Friday. However, many later reversed the moves and only the Czech 10Y yield was down compared to the preceding week on Monday morning. The 10Y ROMGB yield remained the highest in the region, at 8.22%. Even though the Romanian yield curve was briefly inverted in late July, the 10Y-3Y spread is back to small, but positive figures. On the other hand, Czech, Hungarian and Polish yield curves remain inverted under the 10Y-2Y comparison. According to official ECB data, the central bank has used the flexibility in its first line of defence – reinvestment of the pandemic PEPP programme redemptions – to help peripheral countries. Net purchases of debt from Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece totalled EUR 17.3bn through June to July, whereas holdings of German, French and Dutch bonds were reduced by EUR 18.9bn in the same time frame. Romania plans several auctions this week – from T-bills to bond auctions (with the maturities ranging from 2025 to 2032). T-bills will also be issued in Hungary and Czechia, and Czech 2031 bonds should also be offered this week.

The list of Chinese companies facing delisting risks in New York in a long-running dispute over Chinese audits of their accounts continues to expand with the addition of three more on Friday after e-commerce giant Alibaba's July inclusion.

As talks between Beijing and Washington in search of a resolution drag on, U.S. regulators and politicians have been ratcheting up calls for a resolution, hammering out a message to China that time is running out for both sides to strike a deal.

Here's what you need to know about the deal talks so far, and what to watch out for in the coming months.

U.S. regulators have been demanding complete access to the audit working papers of New York-listed Chinese companies, essentially documents put together during the auditing of financial statements. Authorities in China have long been reluctant to let overseas regulators inspect domestic accounting firms, citing security concerns.

The spat came to a head in December when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) finalised rules that enable the prohibition of trading in Chinese companies' shares.

Goldman Sachs estimated in March that U.S. institutional investors held around $200 billion of American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) in Chinese firms.

Regulators from the United States and China have been in negotiations for a deal since last year. While Beijing has in recent months said both sides are committed to reaching a deal, Washington has been more cautious on the outlook.

By Aug. 7, the SEC identified 162 Chinese firms listed in New York as facing delisting risks. Trading prohibition will be imposed on a company if it fails to comply with audit working papers requests for three consecutive years, starting from spring, 2024.

Last week the chair of the U.S. corporate auditing watchdog said it would not accept any restrictions on its access to the audit papers for New York-listed Chinese companies.

In March, China's Vice Premier Liu He said talks between Chinese and U.S. regulators had made progress, and both sides were working on specific cooperation plans. A vice chairman of China's securities watchdog in April said he expected a deal "soon".

But on the U.S. side, SEC Chair Gary Gensler said last week he would not send public accounting inspectors to China or Hong Kong unless Washington and Beijing can agree on complete audit access.

The U.S. Senate passed a narrow bill aimed at boosting the country's ability to compete with China last week. Some analysts and investors have interpreted the legislation as giving both sides another year to resolve the audit impasse: The finalised bill removed a provision that would have accelerated the deadline for China to meet audit requirements from early 2024 to early 2023.

The SEC earlier said the U.S. accounting regulator will have to complete on-site inspections and investigations in China by early November. The watchdog needs to do that in order to draw a conclusion on whether it is able to inspect or investigate accounting firms headquartered in mainland China and in Hong Kong registered with the U.S. regulator.

It is not immediately clear what the SEC will do after receiving the watchdog's annual assessment for 2022. It was after the 2021 annual assessment that the SEC started identifying public companies facing trading suspension risks.

Meanwhile, there is still a chance that in the coming months the U.S. Congress may choose another legislative vehicle to move up the deadline for China to comply on access to audit papers to the spring of 2023.

If there is a cliché that every observer of India strives — and usually fails — to avoid, it is Jawarhalal Nehru's famous 'tryst with destiny'. The phrase hints at the idea that India is too large and too populous to be a second-rank player in global affairs. India is entitled, as Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar put it recently, 'to weigh [its] own side'.

But the harsh reality is that since independence India has never really played in the top geopolitical leagues. Battered first by the bloodshed of partition, then weakened by decades of sub-par growth, its ambitions have always outstripped its means. The elevation of the Quad to leader-level talks holds the promise of a meatier leadership role in world affairs, but the events of this year, and in particular the dramatic deterioration in Western relations with Russia, a longstanding Indian ally, raise question marks over the exact role India might play.

India's dream of joining the ranks of the major powers will depend crucially on its economic trajectory, which has always been the major constraint on its attaining great power status. Large poor countries can still make their presence felt, of course, but rapid and sustained economic growth is non-negotiable if India wants to upgrade its hard and soft power. For the welfare of its own population, too, India needs several decades of high, preferably double-digit, growth rates.

The task is hard, but maybe it's within grasp. Just as the pro-business changes in the 1980s and the liberalising reforms of the 1990s showed that the so-called 'Hindu rate of growth' was by no means an Indian inevitability, the recent success of the country's eastern neighbour Bangladesh shows that the export-led, labour-intensive road to prosperity pioneered by East Asia is available to South Asia, too, given the right policy settings. This kind of growth will enable India to join the ranks of the major powers — and become a valuable strategic counterweight to China as the influence of the United States in Asia wanes.

Governing democratic India is no easy task, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a highly skilled politician. Under his leadership, his party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has expanded its appeal outside of its historic North Indian core of support, winning government in the Northeast states and taking seats in West Bengal. Though gains in the historically less favourable territory in the South have been less spectacular, the BJP is concertedly campaigning there too.

Modi's re-election in 2024 seems for the moment likely — the other major party, the Indian National Congress, remains in a state of acute political and intellectual disarray — but not assured.

Recent state elections have shown generally good but mixed results for Modi's coalition: in West Bengal, where the BJP was hoping to score an upset against longstanding Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of the All-India Trinamool Congress, it made only limited gains; in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP-led government was seeking re-election and won, but with a reduced majority. There is still plenty of time before the next federal elections are due in May 2024 for Modi to make good on his reform promises before he faces the voters.

Modi's defeat of a moribund Congress government in 2014 promised to move India past its reform lethargy. Eight years later, the scorecard of his government is still a work in progress. The first term of Modi's government saw important liberalisation in foreign investment as well as the introduction of a streamlined value-added tax that helped simplify India's archaic fiscal system. His second term has also seen liberalisation in investment and a corporate tax cut, but the labour, land and trade reforms that India needs to underwrite the next decade of rapid growth are incomplete.

A major blight on Modi's record as prime minister has been his unwillingness to rein in his more extreme supporters on the Indian right, and his willingness to fan the flames of sectarianism when politically convenient. This may be politically expedient in the short term, but in addition to the humanitarian toll, pursuing it will damage India's reputation in the eyes of its Muslim neighbours and the Western world. An India that cannot build effective strategic relationships in its own neighbourhood is unlikely to cut much strategic mustard elsewhere.

Another major blockage in India's path to geopolitical pre-eminence is its lack of progress on regional trade integration. India's refusal at the last minute to join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the world's most consequential free trade and economic cooperation zone, was a strategic blunder and a missed economic opportunity. Giving RCEP the thumbs down may have cheered the nationalist, protectionist lobby within India, but the intellectual justifications for standing back from integration with the East Asian economy do not stack up.

Too many Indian policymakers are trapped within the mercantilist logic — though there is really no logic in it at all — of fretting about bilateral trade balances, an obsession which may have intuitive appeal to those who see trade as a zero-sum game but which makes no economic sense. It may be politically infeasible for New Delhi to reverse course on its RCEP disaster quickly, but India could show good faith by engaging wherever possible in RCEP's cooperation agenda.

As decades of slow Indian growth in the 20th century demonstrate, there is no path to prosperity without openness. Signing shallow bilateral agreements with some western economies may seem like progress but won't make India internationally competitive in the way that introducing East Asian and Chinese competition would.

Complicated though the politics are, the economics of India's reform agenda are relatively simple. There is no need to fundamentally reinvent for South Asia a wheel that has been turning in East Asia for decades.

As Peter Drysdale and Charlie Barnes put it in this week's lead article: 'To entrench the global competitiveness of its manufacturing and service industries, India needs to cut its trade barriers and open itself to international competition. Increasing competitiveness and allowing cheaper imports of inputs will enable India to exploit its comparative advantage and develop a manufacturing sector capable of absorbing its growing labour force. Export-oriented manufacturing and services will draw migration from rural to urban areas, increasing productivity and gender equality and allowing for larger, more efficient provision of government services'.

India must get rich before it can become powerful, and — given the country's current demographic make-up — there is an open window of opportunity in which the country can get rich before it gets old. The protectionist drift of policy in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic — reflected in Modi's new-found interest in Indian economic 'self-reliance', a phrase that harkens back to the bad old days of import substitution, must be reversed.

Perhaps for no other country in the world are the economic opportunities as large as they are in India, but the political will must measure up to the ambition.