South East Asia

The Chinese military has been holding more live-fire drills in the contested South China Sea this week, state media reported, while accusing the United States of “saber-rattling and making provocations.” The military exercises come as Washington has amplified its concerns about China’s “aggressive actions.” This week the top U.S. diplomat …

India’s regional strategic planning was thrown into disarray by the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan. China has been a growing focus of India’s planning, but the Taliban takeover returns India’s attention to the historic rivalry with Islamabad. Pakistan’s close relations with the Taliban give Pakistan long sought “strategic depth” against New …

The alleged mastermind of the Bali bombings put Southeast Asia’s violent extremists on a collision course with the US and its allies Two decades on, his actions continue to reverberate – not least in the Jemaah Islamiah-linked schools that are the ‘Ivy League’ of Indonesia’s jihadi universe Two decades after …

China’s geo-economic influence is empowering the expansion of its security force posture in the Lower Mekong region, which should be of concern to both maritime Southeast Asia and the United States. While Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia—the geographic core of mainland Southeast Asia—are demonstrating resilience and sustaining some strategic autonomy, several …

While China has tried to rebalance its relations between India and Pakistan before, recent developments in Afghanistan give it fresh impetus to do so. Any future Cold War between the US and China would be entirely different to the previous version for several reasons, the most obvious of which is …

Recently, I attended a book launch. The book is about China (I am withholding the name of the book). I did not read the book, but like most official book launches, a flyer capturing the core messages of the book was circulated at the Launch event. The core messages of …

Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping agreed in a video call on Wednesday: Russia and China should stand firm in rejecting Western interference and defending each other’s security interests. The two presidents’ conversation, eight days after Putin spoke to U.S. President Joe Biden in a similar format, underscored how U.S.-Europe …

It started in 2009; the financial crisis that hit the world a year earlier was storming through the Balkans, and the region was scraping the bottom of the barrel to make ends meet. Enter China. Greece opened its door through the Port of Piraeus, while Serbia declared China the ‘fourth …

BIRN’s new interactive map pinpoints China’s growing business presence in the region – which experts say media and civil society need to focus on more. Experts and journalists have warned that Chinese loans and investments in the Balkans lack a desirable level of transparency and say more of a focus …

China is exploring the possibility of building its first military base on the Atlantic ocean, according to classified intelligence reports viewed by the Wall Street Journal. The proposed host for the military base is Equatorial Guinea, a small central African country of approximately 1.4 million people. Politically, Equatorial Guinea is …