Asia Progress Forum

17/10/2025

🌍 Sri Lanka: A Nation of Missed Opportunities — But Not Without Hope 🇱🇰

Sri Lanka’s economic collapse in 2022 didn’t happen overnight — it was decades in the making. Despite our immense potential, especially in our strategic location and human capital, poor planning and blind faith in neoliberal “mythematics” have kept us from realizing what’s truly possible.

📖 Read more: “Mismatch between Sri Lanka’s Potential and Performance”

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Sri Lanka’s unprecedented economic crisis in 2022 was not a sudden occurrence. It was in the making for decades and exploded when the contradictions could not be sustained any longer. The Governor of the Central Bank expects the economy to reach 2018/19 levels next year, meaning that we are slidin...

05/10/2025

🎙️ Dissanayake at the UNGA: Visionary Rhetoric, Structural Blindness?

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s UNGA speech sounded progressive — tackling poverty, drugs, corruption, war, and AI. But beneath the humanitarian tone lies a troubling absence of systemic critique.

🔎 Key takeaways:

⚠️ Poverty framed as timeless tragedy — ignoring its roots in capitalist exploitation and imperialist extraction.

⚠️ Drugs and corruption condemned — but without confronting their structural ties to global capitalism.

⚠️ On Gaza — he called for a ceasefire, but sidestepped naming Israel’s genocide or imperialism at large.

⚠️ Even his boldest idea — a neutral, sovereign AI zone — risks being a technocratic fantasy without industrialisation, reskilling, and democratic control.

From invoking Harry Truman (Cold War architect, Hiroshima bomber) to skipping the SCO summit in Tianjin, his speech suggests a drift towards US alignment — far from the transformative vision many hoped for.

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President Anura Kumara Dissanayaka’s recent speech at the UN General Assembly, while outwardly progressive in tone, reveals a troubling lack of structural analysis. His framing of global crises, identifying poverty, narcotics, corruption, war, and technological ethics, leans heavily on moral conde...

05/10/2025

🇱🇰 Dissanayake at the UNGA: Words Without Weight?

At the 80th UN General Assembly, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake finally addressed Palestine. But his remarks — calling for a ceasefire and recognition of a Palestinian state — did little more than echo the status quo.

📌 What was missing?

❌ No direct call on Israel to stop the genocide.
❌ No demand for its allies to halt arms sales.
❌ No push for boycott, divestment, or sanctions.

Meanwhile, leaders from the Global South — like Colombia’s Gustavo Petro — went further, urging bold actions against genocide and even questioning the IMF-led order. At the same UNGA, when Netanyahu spoke, dozens walked out in protest. But Sri Lanka? Its delegate stayed seated.

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The months of September and October mark the one-year anniversary of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s election to office and the two-year anniversary of the United States- and European-backed Israeli genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza, respectively. On 25 September, Dissanayake addresse...

29/09/2025

💸 Sri Lanka’s Austerity: One of the Harshest in Modern History

A new World Bank report reveals just how devastating the last few years have been for Sri Lanka:

📉 Public investment slashed – dragging growth into stagnation.

🏚️ Over a quarter of the population in poverty, another third on the brink.

💼 Real wages down up to 24%, fuelling a massive brain drain of skilled workers.

Across 330 episodes of austerity worldwide, Sri Lanka’s stands out as sharper and faster than almost any other. And yet, stability remains elusive – with GDP not expected to recover to 2018 levels until 2026.

👉 Dive into our full feature to see how austerity reshaped the economy, strained public services, and deepened inequality – and why the “debt bomb” and lack of industrial transformation remain unsolved.

Sri Lanka has undergone one of the sharpest and fastest episodes of austerity in history, driven by a massive retrenchment in public investment and a suppression of real wages, according to data from a report by the World Bank. On 9 September 2025, the World Bank published a report called Sri Lanka....

29/09/2025

🌍 Sri Lanka & the Global South: Missed Chances or a Strategic Silence?

Sri Lanka skipped two major summits this year – the SCO in Tianjin and China’s Victory Day celebrations – raising tough questions about its foreign policy direction.

Could this absence signal inertia at home and a lack of vision abroad? Or is it a cautious move to avoid upsetting the US-led order?

From energy security and new financing models to navigating the India-China dynamic, the opportunities are clear. Yet, as the world rebalances towards BRICS, SCO, and multipolar cooperation, Sri Lanka risks being left behind.

👉 Read our full feature to explore why this matters, and what’s at stake for Sri Lanka’s future in the Global South.

The lack of high-level representation from Sri Lanka at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Tianjin (31 August – 01 September) and the eightieth anniversary of China’s victory in the War Against Japanese Aggression and the World Antifascist War (03 September) was a missed oppor...

03/09/2025

🇨🇳 80 years since China's victory against fascism and Japanese aggression.

The Communist Party’s bold pivot in 1937—from hunted revolutionaries to architects of a national coalition—turned an existential crisis into opportunity.

This is the story of the Second United Front by Vinod Moonesinghe for Asia Progress Forum.

https://island.lk/the-communist-party-of-china-and-the-wartime-coalition-against-japan/

15/08/2025

🇱🇰 What AI can do for Sri Lanka

From leapfrogging in agriculture and industrial development to facilitating affordable learning and smarter governance – AI could be the game-changer our nation needs.

By Kasun Thilina Kariyawasam for the Asia Progress Forum.

https://island.lk/what-ai-can-do-for-sri-lanka/

05/08/2025

🇱🇰 Sri Lanka holds 4,000+ tonnes of thorium – a key to clean, sovereign energy. Modular molten salt reactors could cut imports, emissions, and costs, while boosting productivity. Will we leapfrog into innovation or fall behind yet again?

Vinod Moonesinghe writes for the Asia Progress Forum:

https://island.lk/a-thorium-based-path-to-sri-lankan-energy-sovereignty/

23/07/2025