Asia - South China Morning Post

Amid a heated diplomatic row between Beijing and Tokyo which has shown no signs of cooling off, several employees of China’s state-owned enterprises have been advised to scrap their immediate travel plans to Japan, they told the Post on condition of anonymity.

One of them, an engineer at a state-owned firm in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, received an unexpected phone call on Tuesday. It was his company’s administrative office, urging him to cancel his coming holiday.

Like employees at many...

Indonesia’s free meals programme has come under fresh scrutiny following reports that Chinese-made food trays used in the scheme may have carried falsified safety and halal labels.

The tray controversy is the latest in a series of challenges to confront President Prabowo Subianto’s ambitious flagship policy, which aims to provide nutritious meals to more than 82 million Indonesian children, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers.

Observers say the programme’s rapid scale-up has revealed...

Eleven survivors of a deadly boat capsize two weeks ago appeared in a Malaysian court on Wednesday, charged with illegally being in the Southeast Asian country, officials said.

The accused – nine Myanmar nationals and two Bangladeshi citizens – were among 14 people rescued after the November 6 shipwreck off a Thai island near the Malaysian maritime border.

They are said to be from a group of around 70 undocumented migrants, mostly from Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya community, who were trying to...

Singapore’s acting sports minister has conceded he “should have been more respectful” after calling Hong Kong football fans and players “idiots” in a locker room pep talk to his side, following the city state’s historic win on Tuesday night in Hong Kong.

Singapore came back from a goal down to beat Hong Kong 2-1 in the Asian Cup qualifier match in front of a record 47,762-strong crowd in Kai Tak Stadium, sealing their qualification for a major football tournament on merit for the first time. The...

An Australian journalist is set to face trial next month in Thailand after Malaysia’s internet regulator filed a criminal defamation complaint over his critical writing, a rare cross-border case in Southeast Asia that rights groups say could open the door to prosecutions of reporters across the region.

Murray Hunter, a blogger and former academic based in southern Thailand, was indicted in Bangkok on November 17 over four Substack articles that accused Malaysia’s Communications and Multimedia...

Former US commerce secretary Gina Raimondo said US President Donald Trump’s tariffs are likely to outlive his administration, sustained by political fears that removing protectionist barriers will alienate workers who fear losing their jobs to offshoring and AI.

Speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore, Raimondo argued that the political cost of unwinding tariffs is too high for any future administration, regardless of party.

“Tariffs, once they’re put on, are hard to take off,”...

A fire ripped through more than 170 buildings and killed one person in a southern Japanese coastal city on Wednesday, with military and firefighting helicopters scrambling to extinguish the country’s largest urban blaze in almost half a century.

Aerial footage from broadcasters showed houses reduced to rubble and thick plumes of smoke rising from the hilly Saganoseki district of Oita city, which overlooks a fishing harbour renowned for its premium Seki-brand mackerel.

The flames had also spread...

A South Korean high school student died in an ambulance after eight hospitals refused to treat him over the space of an hour, in a case that has reignited concerns over a growing shortage of doctors and specialists in the country.

The 18-year-old was found convulsing near a high school by a teacher at about 6.20am on October 20, The Chosun Daily reported, quoting the Busan Fire and Disaster Headquarters on Tuesday. The teacher called for an ambulance, which arrived about 15 minutes later.

The...

Indonesian police have dismantled an Islamic State-linked network that used online video games and social media to radicalise more than 100 children, arresting five suspects including a convicted terrorist.

The elite counterterrorism unit Densus 88 revealed on Tuesday that the cell had targeted 110 minors aged between 10 and 18 across 23 provinces this year alone – a figure authorities described as a “massive” spike compared with previous decades.

“In the years 2011 to 2017, we secured about 17...

Family offices in Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai are redrawing the global map of private capital. Each hub combines favourable tax and regulatory regimes with strong local networks of banks, advisers and deal makers. Together, they now rival Western centres in deploying private equity across the Global South.

Drawing inspiration from family offices in the United States – where private equity has represented a major share of assets – these Asian hubs are scaling rapidly, positioning themselves as...