Asia Watch Archive

Defence chiefs from India and Japan met in New Delhi on Monday, committing to increase joint exercises, set up a senior officer-level dialogue, and protect major sea lanes in the Indo-Pacific as the region becomes “more complex and uncertain.”

Anthony Albanese and his centre-left Labor Party stormed to a majority win in Australia’s federal election on Saturday, receiving a strengthened mandate from voters in an election shaped by cost-of-living concerns, housing, health and child care, the environment, and the long shadow of U.S. President Donald Trump.

A terrorist attack that killed 26 people, most of them tourists, in Kashmir on April 22 has ignited a dangerous set of reprisals between India and Pakistan, which India blames for the attack.

Mark Carney’s Liberal Party secured a minority mandate in Canada’s federal election on Monday, a dramatic reversal of fortune for a party that was on the ropes a mere four months ago.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance commended India’s “laser-like focus on the future,” and called Indians “a people who will not be held back,” in a laudatory speech to business leaders, politicians, and students in Jaipur on Tuesday.

Some targets of the U.S.’s ‘shock-and-awe’ tariff strategy are moving from denial and anger to acceptance and even resistance, chafing at Washington’s demands and pitching new trade blocs of Asian and European economies.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte travelled to Japan for a two-day trip last week, meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru and agreeing to deepen co-operation in the fields of maritime security, cyber, strategic communications, and interoperability.

This week, in his first overseas trip of 2025, Chinese President Xi Jinping toured Southeast Asia, marketing China as a dependable partner to Vietnam, Malaysia, and Cambodia — three countries hit hard by fitful U.S.

Australia’s election campaign has so far focused on issues familiar to most Canadians: inflation, cost of living, housing, immigration, and tariffs.

The flames of a global trade war flickered, roared, and receded this week, as Asian markets felt the heat (and relief) of U.S. President Donald Trump’s ever-changing tariff plans, an escalating U.S.-China trade spat, and an uncertain outlook for global growth.

Last Friday's 7.7-magnitude earthquake in Myanmar has killed at least 2,700 people, turned buildings and bridges to rubble, and reshaped the civil war that has raged in the country since 2021.

U.S.

Beijing has developed a device capable of “severing the world’s most fortified underwater communication lines,” according to The South China Morning Post.

Foreign ministers from China, Japan, and South Korea convened in Tokyo last week for a day of meetings revolving around trade, foreign policy, regional and global ‘hotspots,’ and the airing of grievances new and old.

Radio Free Asia, a U.S.-funded news outlet delivering uncensored information to audiences in China, North Korea, and elsewhere across Asia, will be hollowed out following a probe by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly hosted her G7 counterparts last week for a three-day meeting in Charlevoix, Quebec, where top diplomats managed to agree on a joint statement that was as noteworthy for its insertions as it was for its omissions.

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization labelled the spread of COVID-19 a “pandemic,” one headline in a drawn-out day marking the start of a surreal era of quarantines and containment, ‘distancing’ and 'doomscrolling,’ and variants and vaccines.

March has come in like a lion for Canada, with its two biggest trading partners threatening wide-ranging (and ever-changing) tariffs, plunging the export-dependent economy into uncertainty right as a new prime minister takes the reins and a spring election beckons.

As Washington targets long-time allies and formalizes its ‘shoot first, aim later' trade policy, Vietnam — the U.S.’s tenth-largest trading partner — has so far emerged unscathed.

U.S. President Donald Trump rained on Beijing’s parade this week, hiking across-the-board tariffs on Chinese goods a further 10 per cent (to a total of 20 per cent) as China’s most important political gathering kicked off, and imposing a punishing 25 per cent tariff on Canadian goods, with a lower rate for Canadian energy.

In response, Beijing applied 15 per cent counter-tariffs on American chicken, corn, cotton, and wheat, and 10 per cent tariffs on beef, dairy, pork, and other agricultural products.