Young people in China are increasingly turning to the Selected Works of Mao Zedong for strategic guidance and psychological resilience to navigate a highly competitive job market and shifting global ...

US President Donald Trump’s transactional foreign policy has changed how Washington’s Asian allies think about strategic alignment. While alliances and institutions remain intact on paper, repeated ...

The May 2026 Trump–Xi summit in Beijing produced little of substance because the Trump administration's lack of preparation and hollowed out diplomatic expertise allowed a better-organised Beijing to ...

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 ...

Japan’s restaurant sector has been forced to suspended new recruitment under the Specified Skilled Worker visa program after exhausting its allotted quota, exposing a widening gap between labour ...

Ongoing instability in the Middle East is exposing structural vulnerabilities in energy-dependent economies. South Korea, whose economic engine relies heavily on Persian Gulf hydrocarbons, has ...

The Beijing summit between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump offered a modest reprieve in a relationship strained by trade tensions and geopolitical crises, with renewed dialogue emerging as one of the most ...

The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) consensus-based model is struggling to keep pace with geopolitical disruption and emerging trade challenges, as demonstrated by the failure of the 14th Ministerial ...

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, ...

For Asia Pacific governments, the US–Israeli war against Iran is a reminder that conflicts in the Middle East do not stay in the Middle East. Since February 2026, oil has surged past US$120 a barrel, ...