Asia

Some exporters at the Canton Fair in Guangzhou report a modest return of orders to China from Southeast Asia, as energy-market volatility linked to the US-Israeli war in Iran prompts some Western buyers to prioritise supply chain stability. The shift is visible in buyer patterns on the exhibition floor, where the number from Europe and the United States appears to have recovered from last year’s levels, according to Chinese exporters, with more inquiries for home appliances, new energy products...

The arrest of fugitive former congressman Zaldy Co has revived a long-stalled Philippine corruption investigation and sharpened political pressure on President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr, whom the wanted lawmaker has accused of personally benefiting from a multibillion-peso kickback scheme tied to flood control projects. Observers called Co’s arrest a “notable step towards accountability” in a case that had stalled after the collapse of the commission set up to investigate it. Co resigned from the...

Even before Donald Trump returned to the White House, Vietnam’s military planners were already busy preparing for a possible second invasion by the United States and its allies. In the “Second US Invasion Plan”, secretly issued in August 2024, the Vietnamese military rejected playing any part in America’s China containment strategy in the Asia-Pacific. Rather, it sees the US promotion of “freedom and democracy” as a cynical ploy to maintain hegemony in the region. The document, released in...

Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said on Friday that the war in Iran had laid bare the urgency of long-delayed UN reforms, arguing that the world body must be strengthened if multilateral diplomacy is to help restore global peace and security. “We have been talking about that for a long time, but only talking happens,” Tokayev told the fifth Antalya Diplomacy Forum in Turkey. “Everybody is feeling the impact of the Iran war and everybody is suffering.” At the three-day summit ending...

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is usually seen in carefully choreographed meetings with presidents, kings and regional leaders in Putrajaya. So it was striking to see him instead riding through the city on a casual live stream with Sneako, the controversial 27-year-old American streamer and Muslim convert whose appeal to mainly young male audiences has made him an unlikely cultural figure. For more than an hour on Friday, the live stream gave Anwar a rare chance to sell Malaysia, his...

Asian airlines are cutting flights, raising fares and reshuffling networks as the Iran war sends jet fuel prices soaring, leaving carriers across the region scrambling to protect their margins and preserve key routes. The shock has hit Asia especially hard because many economies depend heavily on fuel flows from the Middle East, according to aviation analysts, and some regional carriers are less protected from sudden price spikes than their counterparts in Europe or the US. “The impact has been...

A Pakistan-flagged tanker that entered the Persian Gulf over the weekend has become the first carrier to exit through the Strait of Hormuz with a crude cargo since a US blockade began on Monday, underscoring just how limited traffic through the vital chokepoint remains. The Shalamar sailed just south of Iran’s Larak Island and out into the Gulf of Oman late Thursday with around 450,000 barrels of crude loaded at Das Island in the United Arab Emirates, according to ship-tracking data. The Aframax...

As divorce rates continue to rise in Indonesia, more single mothers are bearing the brunt of financial hardship and struggling to collect court-ordered child support from former spouses. For some women, help comes from an initiative unique in the country: the East Java city of Surabaya bars men from accessing public services if they fail to pay court-ordered child support. First introduced in 2023, the scheme has been used to block administrative access to more than 8,000 men, according to Irvan...

Vietnamese budget carrier VietJet Air has agreed to lease as many as 10 Chinese-made C909 regional passenger jets, giving a lift to their manufacturer’s goal of vying with Airbus and Boeing in overseas civil aviation. VietJet said in a statement on Thursday night it had agreed with SPDB Financial Leasing, a subsidiary of Shanghai Pudong Development Bank in China, to finance the aircraft through operating leases. Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac) makes the jets that are the subject...

Two crew members and six passengers were killed when a private helicopter crashed in dense forest on Indonesia’s Borneo island, the transport ministry said on Friday. The Airbus H130 helicopter, owned by local firm Matthew Air Nusantara, lost contact with air traffic control about five minutes after take-off from an oil plantation in the West Kalimantan province on Thursday morning. It was on its way to another plantation in Kubu Raya district. All eight on board were men and one was a Malaysian...

Myanmar ⁠has freed former president Win Myint and reduced the sentence of imprisoned former leader Aung San Suu ‌Kyi as part of an ‌amnesty that saw the release of 4,335 prisoners, according to state media. “The president has pardoned Win Myint,” said a statement on Friday from the office of newly elected president Min Aung Hlaing. Win Myint, an ally ‌of ⁠Suu Kyi, served as president ⁠from 2018 and 2021 but ‌was ousted ‌by a military coup and had been detained since. Suu Kyi’s 27-year sentence...

A South Korean woman in her thirties is facing child abuse charges after allegedly feeding her two-month-old infant tteokguk, or rice cake soup, with the case coming to light through photos she posted online. The dish, commonly eaten to mark the new year in South Korea, is considered inappropriate for infants, whose digestive systems are not yet developed enough to process semi-solid foods. According to the Incheon Metropolitan Police Agency on Friday, the unidentified woman is being...

Asian refiners have grown increasingly reliant on US crude as oil-starved fuel makers scour the globe to replace Middle Eastern supply and stave off shortages that could ripple through the broader economy. Buyers in Japan led the charge to purchase May-loading cargoes from the US early in the month, with South Korean, Singaporean and Thai processors also among customers, said traders familiar with the matter. At least 60 million barrels of grades from the US Gulf were bought for loading next...

An Australian company will import 250,000 tonnes of urea fertiliser from Indonesia in the coming months, easing fears of a shortage that would crimp food production, Canberra said on Friday. Australia is one of the world’s biggest exporters of crops including wheat, barley and canola but relies on fertiliser imports that are threatened by ‌the war on Iran, which has cut supply from the Middle East, a major urea producer. The price of urea, a source of nitrogen that fuels plant growth, has risen...

As the war on Iran continues to command global attention, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has stepped up his appearances at military events, using drills and missile tests to project confidence at home and defiance abroad. His heightened visibility suggests that Kim feels more secure in his country’s nuclear deterrence as Washington’s focus is pulled in several directions, analysts say. Kim has cast himself as increasingly assertive and is distancing himself from the symbolic rituals observed by...

The decades-long negotiations on a code of conduct in the South China Sea may finally come to an end this year. Several parties involved, including China and the Philippines, have expressed confidence in reaching a final conclusion to the proposed set of rules in the contested waterways in the coming months. In March, Beijing signalled its hope of concluding negotiations with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations by the end of the year while Manila has repeatedly expressed its intention to...

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr said on Thursday night that a key suspect in a corruption scandal that has sparked public outrage in the Philippines has been arrested in the Czech Republic and that efforts were under way to repatriate the former lawmaker. Zaldy Co, who resigned from the House of Representatives in September after being implicated in financial anomalies involving flood control projects, was detained by authorities in Prague after crossing into the Central European...

Trade tensions between the US and China have made companies around the world less keen to invest in either country, with the United States almost twice as unpopular, according to a new report from Allianz Trade. The report, based on an annual survey by the Paris-based international insurance company, said US-China decoupling had not materialised, but investment intention towards China had dropped “significantly” to 24 per cent of survey respondents, down from 53 per cent a year ago. The survey...

The quiet conclusion of US and Iranian backchannel engagements in Islamabad left more than diplomatic ambiguity. It crystallised a striking image: a financially strained, politically volatile Pakistan briefly positioning itself as a facilitator in one of the world’s most combustible rivalries. Substantive or symbolic, the episode underscores a deeper churn in West Asian geopolitics – one in which agility trumps credibility. Pakistan’s role was not incidental. Islamabad offered itself as a...

Malaysia and Australia pledged on Thursday to keep oil and gas flowing between them as the Iran war’s continuous squeeze on global fuel supplies compels regional countries to deepen energy trade cooperation. Across Asia, governments have been scrambling for alternatives after crude oil and gas shipments from the Middle East were disrupted following Tehran’s move to choke access to the Strait of Hormuz in response to US-Israeli strikes against Iran that began on February 28. The disruption has...

The recent discovery of a Chinese underwater drone in Indonesia’s waters serves as a wake-up call for Jakarta to strengthen its undersea defence capabilities, analysts have said. Indonesia, however, is likely to remain silent on the find and resolve the issue through “quiet diplomacy”, according to observers. Last week, an Indonesian fisherman found a Chinese unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) in the Lombok Strait, a key waterway leading to Australia. Marked with the letters “CSIC”, the drone is...

Indonesia’s push to bring thousands of unlicensed tourist stays into the legal fold is running into a familiar administrative obstacle in Bali, with operators saying the government wants faster compliance than the bureaucracy could allow. In December, the Ministry of Tourism said unlicensed accommodation providers in Bali, Yogyakarta, West Nusa Tenggara and West Java had until March 31 to register their hotels, guest houses, villas and homestays, in a move meant to improve service quality,...

A man was charged in Australia on Tuesday with sexually assaulting a female passenger on board a Scoot flight from Singapore to Perth on Monday. The 52-year-old Indian national committed “non-consensual sexual acts” on a woman he was seated next to during the flight, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Western Australia Police Force said in a joint statement on Monday. The woman sought help from airline staff members and was later moved to another seat, the police said in the...

At first glance, the rupee is staging a recovery. India’s battered currency has gained around 1.5 per cent since March 27, making it the best-performing currency in Asia, according to Bloomberg data. However, the recent bounce belies vulnerabilities in India’s economy that have been exacerbated by the energy shock emanating from the war in Iran. India is one of the most exposed among Asia’s leading economies, importing 90 per cent of its oil and more than half its liquefied petroleum gas....

South Korea welcomed a record 2.06 million foreign visitors in March, led by Chinese arrivals, government data showed on Thursday, with tourism spending lifted ‌by the comeback tour of K-pop supergroup BTS after a years-long hiatus. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said the monthly record helped lift first-quarter arrivals by 23 per cent from a year ago to 4.76 million, also a record for a first quarter. It attributed the trend to the “worldwide popularity of [Korean] culture”,...

Thai police arrested seven French tourists after a viral Songkran confrontation in Phuket in which revellers surrounded a van, sprayed its driver with water and later ignored police orders to disperse. The incident came during Thailand’s annual new year festival, whose street water fights draw huge crowds across the country but have also sparked complaints this year about more aggressive behaviour in some tourist hotspots. Video shared on social media showed a crowd in Patong, a beach town on...

With the rise of social media and generative AI, how much of what we see online is true? In this series, SCMP Fact-Check, the South China Morning Post investigates claims circulating online and debunks viral misinformation impacting the daily lives of Hongkongers. A video circulating online amid the US-Israel war on Iran falsely claims to show a downed American pilot captured alive by Iranians. “Iranians Captured F35 Pilot alive,” read the caption of a Facebook reel. The video appeared to show a...

Japan is expected to remain the most trusted power among Southeast Asian countries, even as it seeks to amend its pacifist constitution and continues its military build-up. However, Tokyo will need to be transparent about its motives and reassure others that its military-related actions contribute to regional security, according to analysts. In the latest annual survey conducted by the Singapore-based ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, Japan retained its ranking as the region’s most trusted power,...

A leading Indonesian university suspended 16 law students on Thursday after a sexually explicit group chat about their female peers went viral, sparking a debate about gender violence in the Muslim-majority country. Screenshots of a conversation among 16 male students at the University of Indonesia were posted on social media this week, eliciting shock and anger from female peers and a wider societal discussion. The university said in a statement on Thursday it had suspended the young men for...

A Japanese man arrested for abandoning the body of his stepson who had been missing for weeks has admitted to killing the boy and allegedly hiding the corpse in different locations amid an extensive search by police in Kyoto prefecture. The arrest on Thursday morning marked a dramatic turn of events in the investigation, which was launched when 11-year-old Yuki Adachi went missing on March 23 after the stepfather claimed to have driven him to school. The 37-year-old, also called Yuki Adachi, is...