Asia - South China Morning Post

When the late Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe gave his landmark speech in the Indian parliament in August 2007 referring to the “confluence of the two seas”, he gave birth to the concept of the Indo-Pacific as a strategic space connecting East and South Asia. But the latest conflict in the Middle East illustrates how South Asia’s interconnectedness increasingly lies to its west.

Some of these connections are deeply rooted in history: South Asia is home to the world’s largest Muslim population...

As the Iran war fuels global fears of stagflation, a debate is intensifying over whether the crisis poses an immediate risk to China’s sources of external demand or a strategic opening for its exporters.

Mirroring the supply chain upheavals of the pandemic era, the crisis has prompted new questions about whether China will be able to leverage its industrial base and supply-side resilience if a prolonged conflict further fractures global supply chains.

“China’s economy looks strong on the surface...

Daniel Gech looks at prices on a board at a Sokimex petrol station in Phnom Penh and winces. Four weeks into the war in the Middle East, the ripple effects of a faraway conflict are beginning to threaten the Cambodian teenager’s ability to earn and learn.

The 16-year-old uses his moped to travel between his home and school, and for his work in the evening.

It now costs him an extra US$2 a day to fill up his tank – or US$14 a week – and the price is rising, a significant surge in a country where...

The world faces an energy crisis worse than both 1970s oil shocks combined if the Middle East war drags on, the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned on Monday, as Israel launched fresh strikes on Tehran and threatened weeks more fighting.

In a stark warning over what lies ahead unless the fighting ends soon, Fatih Birol said the world was losing more oil each day than the combined impact of the two 1970s oil shocks and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“This crisis as things stand is...

In a quiet suburb of the Malaysian city of Klang, Farouk* scrolls through his phone, replaying videos of a toddler learning to walk, laugh and reach out to steady himself – milestone moments of a son whom he is forced to love through a screen.

“He is now two years old, but I have never held him,” the 26-year-old Rohingya man said. “I have only seen him twice from afar at the gate.”

Farouk’s wife gave birth in a Malaysian immigration detention centre a day after the family were arrested in early...

Japan’s top government spokesperson said on Monday that one of two Japanese nationals detained in Iran has safely returned home in good health.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara’s confirmation came one day after Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi announced the person’s release.

Motegi, speaking on a Fuji Television talk show on Sunday, said the person had been detained since last year and was released on Wednesday.

He said the person took a flight from Azerbaijan.

Kihara, at a regular press...

Last week, the energy shock caused by the war in Iran showed signs of becoming a full-blown financial and economic crisis. The attacks on energy infrastructure across the Middle East, coupled with soaring prices of crucial refined petroleum products such as diesel and jet fuel, forced investors to start pricing in a prolonged disruption to supply and a contraction in demand.

Even if the Strait of Hormuz reopens sooner than anticipated, the scale of the damage to energy assets in the Persian Gulf...

Washington and its allies are drawing up plans to establish an ammunition production facility in the Philippines, a move critics warn would turn the Southeast Asian nation into a logistics arm of US “warmongering”.

The proposal emerged last week from the Partnership for Indo-Pacific Industrial Resilience (PIPIR), a US-led initiative founded in 2024 to reduce supply chain vulnerabilities and help allies produce and sustain military equipment closer to potential flashpoints.

Members agreed to...

China has cut exports of two metals used in military technology to Japan while increasing shipments of rare earth magnets, in what could signal a muted warning after geopolitical tensions between the two Asian economies flared last year.

Exports of gallium to Japan registered zero volume in the first two months of the year, compared with 8,007kg (17,652 pounds) in the same period of 2025, customs data showed. Germanium exports were also at zero in January and February, compared with 400kg (882...

Indonesia’s president, under fire at home for signing up to US counterpart Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace”, has insisted his country will not pay the US$1 billion joining fee for permanent membership.

Jakarta had only committed peacekeeping troops for the initiative, Prabowo Subianto said in a statement published on the presidential YouTube channel Sunday.

The “Board of Peace” came together after the Trump administration, teaming up with Qatar and Egypt, negotiated a ceasefire in October to halt...