The most consequential changes in a democracy do not always arrive with a constitutional crisis. Rather, they come through appointments, legal amendments and seemingly ordinary political bargains, accumulating one after another until the political system begins to look different from the one that came before. That is the real value of the “boiling frog” metaphor. […]

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When Australia’s Lowy Institute think tank released the 2025 edition of its Southeast Asia Aid Map in July last year, it projected that Western aid cuts would shift the region’s development finance toward Asian partners. Specifically, the report expected the center of gravity to “drift East, notably to Beijing but also Tokyo and Seoul.” Lowy’s […]

The post No, China is not filling the Western aid gap in Southeast Asia appeared first on Asia Times.

Last week, eight Chinese-made light attack jets sat on a half-finished runway at Ban Keun, flanked by more than two dozen military support vehicles, offering the first aerial glimpse of a new Chinese-Lao military facility north of the Lao capital, Vientiane. The speed of the buildup and the earthmoving visible around the airstrip in the […]

The post Belt and Road paving way for China’s military presence in SE Asia appeared first on Asia Times.

Beyond all the pageantry, the Chinese leader Xi Jinping had a strategic goal for his Washington visit – to undermine the American relationship with Japan. Xi succeeded, perhaps beyond his expectations. Japanese policy makers saw this coming. They arranged a brief meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly between Prime Minister Takaichi […]

The post How China deploys wartime history against Japan appeared first on Asia Times.

The 2026 Asian Games in Japan drew to a close on October 4 following two weeks of competition between 45 countries and territories across 43 sports. Despite the official slogan “Imagine One Asia,” fragmented regional politics came to the fore as the event unfolded. Just days before the games officially began, tensions between Japan and […]

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Southeast Asia’s growth next year will be decided at meetings its finance ministers won’t attend. A few executives in California will soon settle next year’s spending on data centers. Their decisions will do more to shape growth in Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines than any budget those governments pass. The World Bank has just […]

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Originally published by Pacific Forum, this article is republished with permission. While operational planners in the United States, the Republic of Korea and Japan have made historic strides institutionalizing trilateral security cooperation, the credibility of deterrence ultimately hinges on a more punishing variable: wartime sustainment. Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo have expanded joint exercises, real-time missile […]

The post Logistics test: sustaining Northeast Asia trilateral deterrence appeared first on Asia Times.

Hydrogen-powered passenger cars have been left far behind by electric vehicles and hybrids, but the hydrogen truck market is growing and new technology developed for auto racing is keeping hopes for hydrogen cars alive. Toyota and its European partners are in the vanguard of these developments. On September 26 and 27, at the FIA World […]

The post Behind in EVs, Toyota powering ahead with hydrogen vehicles appeared first on Asia Times.

It is fitting that DreamWorks’ “Forgotten Island” carries a title that evokes memory and loss. The film, released globally in September, is on the surface a coming-of-age adventure about friendship. Look a little closer and it is a poignant meditation on separation – a theme that speaks deeply to the Philippines and its diaspora, whose […]

The post ‘Forgotten Island’: joyous, painful love note to Filipino diaspora appeared first on Asia Times.

When a South Korean soldier stepped on a land mine in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) on September 21, it might have been taken as a grim reminder of a war that never formally ended. Instead, the explosion has revealed something more unsettling: the Korean Peninsula’s old security order is shifting, even as Seoul tries to […]

The post To keep the peace, South Korea’s Lee must prepare for war appeared first on Asia Times.

Two races were held at Fuji Speedway last weekend: the six-hour FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) and the Race Against Dementia led by champion driver Sir Jackie Stewart OBE, who returned to Japan 60 years after winning the Fuji 200 race to campaign for his charitable foundation and wave the green flag at the start […]

The post Sir Jackie Stewart brings his race against dementia to Japan appeared first on Asia Times.

Thousands gathered at Baiturrahman Grand Mosque in Banda Aceh on August 15, 2026, to commemorate 21 years of peace between Indonesia and the separatist Free Aceh Movement, or GAM. Some participants raised GAM’s red, black and white crescent-star flag and chanted “Free Aceh,” while others lowered Indonesia’s national flag and replaced it with the former […]

The post Floods, fury and new calls for independence in Aceh appeared first on Asia Times.

Adam Castillo, a former president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Myanmar who had lobbied for sanctions relief in exchange for US, was released in recent days after spending over three months in detention. In the same week, Time magazine’s Charlie Campbell sat down with Senior General Min Aung Hlaing in Naypyitaw. The coup […]

The post Are the Americans returning to Myanmar? They never really left appeared first on Asia Times.

If the wars of 2026 have demonstrated anything, it is that drones have become a key element of modern warfare. In Eastern Europe, both Moscow and Kyiv deploy drones at an unprecedented scale across the theater’s so-called “kill zone.” For Ukraine, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have shown incredible tactical value, allowing its forces to strike […]

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