Curtis ChinandJose B. Collazo

Opinion | Asia’s year in review: who came out on top in 2021?

Cold War rhetoric was the real winner in 2021 amid shifting US-China relations, Olympic highs and lows and the rise of Southeast Asia’s fintech sector

The year, however, brought hardship to many of Afghanistan’s women and girls, and proved challenging for Myanmar’s ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi

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Fireworks are seen during the opening ceremony of the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, on July 23. Despite concerns over budgets and Covid-19, the delayed Olympics provided a much needed distraction from the pandemic. Photo: AP

Curtis ChinandJose B. Collazo

Published: 2:30pm, 28 Dec 2021

The arrival of 2022 and the Year of the Tiger cannot come fast enough for Hong Kong, Asia, and no doubt the rest of the world. But who was up and who was down in a year in which the health and economic impacts of Covid-19 once again dominated the headlines? In our annual review of Asia’s winners and losers, we find even the good news was bad.

Worst year: Afghan women and girls

The chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August brought an era of liberalisation to an end, and one of Asia’s poorest nations now faces growing restrictions and a severe hunger crisis. Sadly, even amid the “worse-off” are the even worse-off: Afghanistan’s beleaguered and increasingly-at-risk women and girls.

The US intervention in Afghanistan – the “graveyard of empires” – was doomed from the start by hubris and denial. Still, a bright spot of the past 20 years was the significant improvement in opportunities for the country’s women and girls.

05:29

100 days since Taliban return to power in Afghanistan: What has changed since US withdrawal?

A record number of Afghan girls went to school. Women ascended in public life, taking on roles as ambassadors, parliamentarians and civil society leaders. The “Afghan Dreamers” – an all-female, high school robotics team – won acclaim internationally.

Now, under a back-in-power Taliban, the worst may yet be to come for women and girls in the country as the world looks away.

Bad year: Aung San Suu Kyi

The one-time de facto leader of Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi found herself, at the end of 2021, back where she has spent so many years – under detention by a military government.

After a military coup, the Nobel laureate was detained, tried and found guilty on charges of incitement and breaking Covid-19 rules. Stalled democratic reforms and the persecution of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority, which she did little to stop, had already dimmed Suu Kyi’s prospects of instituting lasting change in her country.