Vietnam between developmental state and neoliberalism: the case of the industrial sector

Since the mid 1980s Vietnam has launched a thorough programme of economic reforms, with a transition from central planning to a market-based economy. The gradual and pragmatic reform process achieved remarkable results in terms of sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction. With entrance into the WTO (in 2007), the country has become an important manufacturing hub and is attracting huge FDI flows, but with a risk of increased dependency from foreign capital and technology and vulnerability to exogenous shocks. This paper suggests that national authorities have so far (and rather successfully) relied on a large state sector to manage economic development but the government has not been able to design and implement coherent industrial strategies.Vietnam, economic reform, industrial development, Washington Consensus.

Thailand 2018: A country suspended between an illiberal regime and the hope of a democratic transition

In May 2014 the Thai army seized power from the elected government led by Yingluck Shinawatra. The military coup promised to restore peace and harmony in the country and to allow political elections within one or two years. However, in 2018 Thailand was still under military rule and elections were expected only for early 2019. Before returning the power to a civilian government, the army tried to complete a compre- hensive reform of Thai politics and the economy, thus enforcing a new constitution, creating new parties and promoting a long-term economic strategy. These reforms had the objective of allowing pro-junta political forces to win elections or, in any case, to constrain the action of future governments. Two initiatives in the economic sphere were expected to create consensus for the junta-sponsored political party: the launch of the Eastern Economic Corridor, promoting infrastructural development in the na- tional key industrial area to increase FDI attraction; and the adhesion of Thailand to the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (the trade agreement that replaced the TPP after the US withdrawal)

The CMCC-INGV Global Ocean Data Assimilation System (CIGODAS)

This report summarizes the technical structure and main characteristics of the CMCCINGV Global Ocean Data Assimilation System (CIGODAS) based on a Reduced Order Optimal Interpolation scheme and a coarse resolution Global Ocean Model for the assimilation of temperature and salinity observations. It is intended to be a reference guide for new users who are interested in setting up and running an experiment using this approach and producing estimates of the timevarying, threedimensional state of the global ocean

Challenging the belt and road initiative : the American and European alternatives

At the 47th G7 summit held in Cornwall in June 2021, President Biden announced a US-led multilateral plan to counter the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This plan was named “Build Back Better World” (B3W), mimicking the Build Back Better initiative adopted at home by the Biden Administration to revive the post-Covid American economy. A few months later on 1 December 2021 the European Union launched its own response to the Chinese BRI with a 300-billion-euro project called Global Gateway, seemingly coordinated with the American B3W. This paper locates the two Western initiatives in the context of a global quest for hegemony in which China has successfully challenged the existing geopolitical frameworks in Africa, Latin America and – even more importantly – in East and Southeast Asia. The Belt and Road Initiative was announced by President Xi Jinping in 2013 as a modern Silk Road, making clear China’s ambition to return to its historical role as a world superpower. To improve infrastructure to facilitate world trade (and obviously trade with China) was the official aim of the ambitious plan. After almost a decade since its launch, however, it is evident that the project was not only about infrastructure. It responded to the needs of a rapidly expanding economy in transition from a global manufacturing hub to an industrially advanced country. The BRI simultaneously addressed three major challenges: finding profitable investment opportunities for the immense Chinese financial reserves of foreign currencies; securing strategic commodities; and opening new markets for Chinese exports. The BRI also was (and still is) a major international foreign policy initiative aimed at projecting China into a leadership role in a context of declining American hegemonic power. The American Build Back Better World (B3W) and the European Global Gateway will not only need to compete with China in terms of trade and infrastructure, but also with China’s quest for hegemony that sees its main leverage in her regional prominence in East Asia

Global ocean re-analyses for climate applications

One of the main objectives of the global ocean modelling activities at Centro Euro-Mediterraneo per i Cambiamenti Climatici (CMCC) is the production of global ocean re-analyses over multidecadal periods to reconstruct the state of the ocean and the large scale cir- culation over the recent past. The re-analyses are used for climate applications and for the assessment of the benefits of assimilating ocean observations on seasonal and longer predictions. Here we present the main characteristics of an optimal interpola- tion based assimilation system used to produce a set of global ocean re-analyses validated against a set of high quality in situ observa- tions and independent data. Differences among the experiments of the set are analyzed in terms of improvements in the method used to assimilate the data and the quality of observations them- selves. For example, the integrated ocean heat content, which can be taken as an indicator of climate changes, is examined to detect possible sources of uncertainty of its long-term changes. Global and basin scale upper ocean heat content exhibits warming trends over the last few decades that still depend in a significant way on the assimilated observations and the formulation of the background covariances. However, all the re-analyses show a global warming trend of the oceanic uppermost 700 m over the last five decades that falls within the range of the most recent observation-based estimates. The largest discrepancies between our estimates and observational based ones are confined in the upwelling regions of the PacificandAtlanticOceans.Finally,theresultsshow that the climatological heat and salt transports as a function of latitude also fall within the range of the estimates based on observations and atmospheric re-analyses

The INGV-CMCC Seasonal Prediction System: improved ocean initial conditions

The development of the INGV (Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia)-CMCC (Centro Euro-Mediterraneo per i Cambiamenti Climatici) Seasonal Prediction System (SPS) is documented. In this SPS the ocean initial conditions estimation includes a Reduced Order Optimal Interpolation procedure for the assimilation of temperature and salinity profiles at the global scale. Nine member ensemble forecasts have been produced for the period 1991-2003 for two starting dates per year in order to assess the impact of the subsurface assimilation in the ocean for initialization. Comparing the results with control simulations (i.e.: without assimilation of subsurface profiles during ocean initialization), we showed that the improved ocean initialization increases the skill in the prediction of tropical Pacific SSTs in our system for boreal winter forecasts. Considering the forecast of the El Ni˜no 1997-1998, the data assimilation in the ocean initial conditions leads to a considerable improvement in the representation of its onset and development. Our results indicate a better prediction of global scale surface climate anomalies for the forecasts started in November, probably due to the improvement in the tropical Pacific. For boreal winter, in both tropics and extra tropics, we show significant increases in the capability of the system to discriminate above normal and below normal temperature anomalies