China’s lowered 2026 growth target of 4.5–5.0 per cent reflects a structural shift away from construction-led expansion towards innovation-driven, high-quality development. Headline growth is slowing ...

On May 13–15 2026, over eight years after his first ‘state visit-plus’ to Beijing, US President Donald Trump paid a lower key, yet higher stakes state visit to China. Trump’s meeting with Chinese ...

A thaw in the China–India relationship has been underway since October 2024 when the two governments announced a border agreement. This followed clashes in 2020, which marked the worst period of ...

The most productive firms in developing East Asia are falling behind their global peers. Despite the spread of advanced technologies, especially in digital-intensive sectors, the region’s frontier ...

For decades, palm oil expansion followed a simple logic — more production requires more land. Malaysia challenges that assumption, having increased production without significantly expanding into ...

The Japanese upper house election last week offered voters an opportunity to embrace stability or deliver change. The results landed somewhere in between, and the indecisive result will pose a ...

The Philippines has lost an estimated 42.3–118.5 billion Philippine pesos (US$713 million–2 billion) a year from flood control corruption since 2023. The scale of illegal wealth accrued by contractors ...

The stridently progressive Move Forward Party’s victory at the 2023 Thai general election precipitated a ‘grand compromise’ between the Pheu Thai Party and allies in the conservative establishment.

Japan is seeking to find balance in its foreign policy in the shadow of China's rise, aiming for equality and autonomy within the Japan–US alliance while seeking to improve China-Japan relations ...

The Middle East conflict is straining Indonesia’s economy through higher oil, gas and fertiliser prices, widening fiscal and external vulnerabilities. Limited policy space and heavy energy import ...

In the past two decades, crime rates in Japan have steadily reduced, largely due to increased residential time during the COVID-19 pandemic. But recent high-profile cases, including the murder of ...

ASEAN’s responses to major regional security challenges like the Myanmar crisis illustrate weakening ASEAN centrality — ASEAN’s key principle and aspiration. The question of whether and how ASEAN can ...