Middle powers can help sustain the trading system by doubling down on non-discrimination and openness, preventing a drift towards fragmented economic blocs. In a world of deep interdependence and ...

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 ...

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 ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute’s 2026 survey shows that Southeast Asian policy elites are increasingly anxious about the United States’ unreliability. While regional states remain wary of China, ...

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 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 ...

Indonesia is experiencing record job creation, adding nearly 5 million positions in 2024 alone. Yet most of these are informal, low-wage roles rather than secure corporate or public sector employment.

In Myanmar, state oppression and armed conflict have threatened human security and disrupted livelihoods in the aftermath of the February 2021 military coup. How these changes undermine the country’s ...

itself with a veneer of credibility. In the post-Cold War era, ASEAN shifted its focus to economic cooperation, its most successful area of cooperation. ASEAN centrality is a de facto outcome of US ...

In March 2025, Mongolia and the Eurasian Economic Union agreed to a draft three-year trade deal. The agreement is part of a broader push by Mongolia to reduce its economic reliance on China and the ...

Given the entrenched gender inequality in Japan, the country ranks low in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index and exhibits a lacking advancement rate compared to other nations with a ...

Trump’s abrupt 2025 tariff hikes have shaken Southeast Asia’s confidence in the United States, threatening regional supply chains and investment plans built on US market access. Countries like Vietnam ...