Asia’s year in review: Who had it good — and who had it bad — in 2022

Curtis S. Chin, a former U.S. ambassador to the Asian Development Bank, is managing director of advisory firm RiverPeak Group. Jose B. Collazo is an analyst focusing on the Indo-Pacific region. Follow them on Twitter at @CurtisSChin and @JoseBCollazo.

As the new year approaches, we turn again to our annual look at Asia’s winners and losers. Government and business leaders in every major economy — China now included — may well hope 2023 is the year when draconian pandemic-related lockdowns become a matter of history.

In our 2021 annual review, we awarded “worst year in Asia” to Afghan women and girls — a consequence of the U.S. and its allies’ chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and the return of Taliban rule. “Best year” went to Asia’s Cold War warriors, as social media, “wolf warriors” and politicians helped spark a return to Cold War rhetoric amid worsening U.S.-China relations.

Now, with hopes that Covid is in retreat and that inflation will moderate in the year ahead, we take a last look at who had it good and who had it bad in 2022.

Semiconductor chips lie at the heart of everything from computers to cars to smartphones. Underscoring the Taiwanese tech industry’s critical role, a Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA)/Boston Consulting Group 2021 study found that 92% of the world’s most advanced semiconductor manufacturing capacity is located in Taiwan. The other 8% was in South Korea. 

A rare bipartisan U.S. Congress has taken notice, passing in July 2022 the CHIPS and Science Act, which allocates $52 billion in federal funding to spur further domestic production of semiconductor chips. In December, the world’s dominant chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), announced plans for a second semiconductor chip plant in Arizona, raising to $40 billion what is already one of the largest foreign investments in U.S. history. 

With numbers like those, Taiwan’s semiconductor industry ends the year on the move, still building ties and winning growing support from business and government in the United States and elsewhere.

As in much of the world, investors in Asia — once bedazzled if not bewitched by the crypto industry — end the year in a mixed mood. Industry meltdowns have left many, including in government, wondering if the message of caveat emptor — buyer beware — is sufficient, and new regulations loom. 

The crypto exchange FTX’s billions-dollar implosion set off alarm bells throughout the region. Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, which has written off its entire $275 million investment in the now-collapsed FTX cryptocurrency business, has suffered “reputational damage,” Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said.

Sri Lanka continues to face a multidimensional crisis. A broken economy, depleted foreign currency reserves, high inflation — at one point reaching more than 70% — and power, fuel and food shortages made worse by the impact of the war in Ukraine, a growing “brain drain” and meager tourism numbers characterize this south Asian nation today.

By September, nearly 200,000 Sri Lankans had left the island nation, and thousands of would-be emigrants were planning to do the same in search of a brighter future elsewhere. 

An IMF deal to restructure Sri Lanka’s debt could provide much needed cash and economic stability, but negotiations remain complicated by large amounts of Sri Lankan debt held so by China, India and Japan.

“We want freedom, not Covid tests,” became a common chant of some protesters, according to Reuters, as individuals “pushed the boundaries by speaking for change in a country where space for dissent has narrowed dramatically.”

The spark that set off the rare protests was news of the deaths of 10 people, including several children, in an apartment building fire in Urumqi in China’s Xinjiang province — in an area that had been locked down for several months. A storyline on social media that resonated across the country focused on the role that Covid controls might have played in those deaths.

Chinese citizens can take heart that those protests may well have had an impact. The Chinese government has begun to relax zero-Covid restrictions. Still, the nation continues to lag the world in opening and moving forward, and worries continue about the nation’s rate of vaccination among the elderly.

And so, even as hope has returned for a better year ahead, China’s beleaguered, locked-down citizens take the dubious honors of worst year in Asia 2022.