Chinese President Xi Jinping begins a two-day state visit to Pyongyang today amid concerns North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is drifting ever closer to Moscow while continuing to expand his nuclear arsenal, which South Korean officials say can now produce five or six atomic bombs a year.

In a note of defiance clearly aimed at Beijing before Xi’s arrival, the Kim regime announced that a new underground nuclear fusion plant has been put into operation, which it hopes will produce an “exponential” amount of nuclear fusion material. While on the surface neither China nor Russia is directly responsible for Kim’s expanding nuclear program, his growing nuclear capability is clearly becoming a global concern, especially for East Asia where Japan and South Korea must feel the horror of Pyongyang’s capability.

On the surface, Xi’s state visit marks the 65^th anniversary of the signing of the China-North Korea Treaty of Amity and Mutual Assistance, under which Beijing is obliged to come to the assistance of North Korea in time of war. The treaty’s importance was affirmed by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his April visit to Pyongyang. He described the Sino-North Korean relations as that “forged in blood” and “indestructible.” The emphasis placed on bilateral ties has waned in recent years, with the Kim regime steadily drifting towards Russia. North Korea, in the last two years, has sent millions of artillery shells to Russia’s war against Ukraine, with 14,000 North Korean troops fighting in the Kursk region at the cost of 5,000 to 6,000 casualties.

But the Pyongyang regime doesn’t mind participating in the war in Europe so long as it gets hefty military aid programs, including the latest continental ballistic missiles and warships.

While China remains a major source of commercial trade and food aid, Russia provides precious foreign exchange and the latest weapon technology at a time of utter isolation in North Korea.

Kim is in no mood to worry about international censure stemming from its relations with Russia. Its soldiers paraded proudly among Russian troops marching to celebrate the last World War II Victory Day ceremony in Moscow.

But Beijing remains clearly concerned by Pyongyang’s expanding military ties with Russia with which both China and North Korea share border. In exchange for the contribution of combat troops to the Ukrainian theater, Moscow has reopened a significant flow of economic aid to North Korea, on top of space-age weapon systems including satellite-level technology, advanced missiles, and even talks on the provision of nuclear-fueled submarines.

Indeed, the day after the announcement of Xi’s visit, Kim struck a note of defiance by announcing his plan to build a 10,000-ton destroyer and unspecified undersea weapons, without giving details. That will be in addition to the 5,000-ton warship Kim said the regime is launching as part of an overall expansion of the North’s naval power.

China remains clearly concerned over such a dramatic modernization of North Korea’s already significant military arsenal just across its 1,300-km border. According to South Korean Minister of Unification Chung Dong Young, North Korea today is capable of producing five to six nuclear bombs a year. Washington today believes the Kim regime is already holding a stock of about 50 atomic bombs. Kim himself has already presided over four of six underground nuclear tests Pyongyang has so far conducted.

The regime’s main objective today is to develop a full range of continental ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear bombs to the US mainland, with China coming under growing US-South Korean pressure to keep a leash on its neighbor.

For China’s geopolitical concern, Pyongyang’s belligerence comes against the backdrop of Moscow’s expanding ties with a rogue regime. North Korea today not only supplies millions of artillery shells to Moscow’s long war with Ukraine; some 14,000 to 15,000 North Korean troops are said to be fighting in Ukraine on behalf of Russia. Those returning home on rotations bring with them new, technology-oriented warfare training using drones and other sophisticated Russian weapons. In exchange for combat troops, Russia has agreed to provide satellite and submarine technology, reports say.

Another concern on Xi’s mind, according to recent reports, is the completion of a land bridge linking the North Korean city of Hyesan with the Russian border town of Hassan on the entryway to the Vladivostok region. While this facilitates Russia’s supply lines to North Korea in time of war, it can also provide China with an entry to the Sea of Japan, according to analysts here. Reports here say one of Xi’s topics of discussion with Kim will be China’s hope of using this passageway for trade. North Korea shares a 17-km border with Russia.

What concession Kim will ask China for opening this sensitive port borders with Russia is unknown. But Xi, according to China watchers here, is likely to accept more North Korean workers for its manufacturing sector employment, who can send US dollar wages back home. Some of China’s factories in the northeastern region around the Yalu River border areas around Dandong already have a significant number of North Korean “guest workers” running Chinese factories. Xi is also likely to agree to send more Chinese tourists to help Kim generate US dollar income, reports here say.

In Seoul, however, the Lee Jae Myung government is seeking to promote China’s expanding relations with the Kim regime, hoping that wider economic contacts with China will help to promote détente with Seoul. At the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in South Korea last summer, Lee specifically welcomed any Chinese initiative to relax tensions with North Korea. At the last Trump-Xi summit in Beijing, the US is also known to have asked Xi to help reopen talks with Kim, following up on the three summit-level talks President Trump held with Kim Jong Un in Singapore, Hanoi, and DMZ during his first term in office. In a similar effort to persuade Kim to restart the dialogue process with Washington, Seoul has asked Singapore recently to approach Pyongyang for the resumption of summit-level talks with President Trump.

With Kim’s priority now resting on driving up his nuclear capability in complete isolation, even from China, the likelihood of Kim holding another round of summit with Trump is considered almost nil. Seoul is thus pinning its hope on President Xi’s trip to Pyongyang for another round of persuasion.

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Through plans to centralize exports of strategic commodities, expand the authority of state-owned enterprises and place the state back at the commanding heights of development, President Prabowo Subianto is attempting the most ambitious reassertion of economic nationalism Indonesia has seen since the fall of the New Order. Supporters see overdue corrections. Critics see the early architecture of a new state capitalism vulnerable to the same patronage, opacity and rent-seeking that once defined the country’s monopolistic past.

When the president addressed Parliament on May 20, his speech was presented as a roadmap for growth. He spoke of manageable deficits, inflation control, currency stability and ambitions of reaching 8 percent economic growth by the end of the decade. But the speech’s deeper message was not about macroeconomics. It was about power. .In modern Indonesia, economic nationalism has always arrived wrapped in the language of rescue. It promises sovereignty over natural resources, protection from foreign exploitation and a stronger state capable of defending the national interest. But it also awakens an older anxiety — that when economic power becomes too centralized, wealth stops flowing outward to foreign actors and begins concentrating inward among domestic elites.

Throughout the address, the state appeared simultaneously as regulator, financier, trader, industrial planner, welfare provider and guardian of national sovereignty. State-owned enterprises were no longer merely commercial actors but instruments of geopolitical and developmental strategy. Cooperatives were envisioned not simply as rural businesses but as tools for restructuring the national economy itself.

Economists in Jakarta have begun quietly describing Prabowo’s new plan as a signal toward “state capitalism” — a system in which the government becomes the dominant player in strategic sectors. The problem is that state control does not automatically eliminate leakages. If corruption remains embedded in the system, the leakages merely change location. Indonesian history suggests that monopolies without transparency almost inevitably produce new centers of rent extraction.

Prabowo’s belief has deep historical roots. It echoes the economic nationalism associated with Sumitro Djojohadikusumo, Prabowo’s father, who long argued that newly independent nations could not rely entirely on market forces to achieve development.

But history also suggests that state capitalism succeeds only under specific conditions: competent institutions, disciplined bureaucracy, legal predictability and credible accountability. Without those foundations, interventionism risks sliding into patronage politics, opaque decision-making and concentrated economic privilege. Moreover, replicating that old approach ignores the fact that the world has fundamentally changed — globalization, supply chains, capital markets, geopolitics and the demands of foreign investment are vastly different from what they were in earlier eras.

The Return of Commodity Nationalism

Indonesia, Prabowo argued, had spent decades growing statistically while becoming structurally weaker. Export revenues increased, yet prosperity failed to spread evenly. The country remained dependent on foreign capital, vulnerable to currency shocks and unable to retain enough value from its own natural resources. Repeatedly, Prabowo returned to the same argument: Indonesia had surrendered too much control over its national wealth. That diagnosis became the moral justification for a more interventionist state.

For that reason, Prabowo offered a plan to centralize exports of strategic commodities through a state-linked intermediary tied to Danantara. Under the proposal, exports of palm oil, coal and ferro-alloys would gradually move through a “single-gate” system beginning this year before fuller consolidation by late 2026. The government argued that the policy was necessary to stop leakages caused by transfer pricing, under-invoicing and export earnings parked overseas. Prabowo claimed Indonesia had lost as much as $908 billion over the past 34 years through such practices.

In emotional and political terms, the argument resonates strongly. Many Indonesians believe the country has spent too long exporting raw materials cheaply while importing expensive finished goods. Economic nationalism offers a seductive promise: that Indonesia’s immense resource wealth should finally benefit Indonesians themselves.

Yet the idea of centralized commodity control also carries historical memory — and not all of it is reassuring. For older Indonesians, the phrase “single gate” immediately recalls one of the most controversial monopolies of the Soeharto era: the Clove Support and Trading Board, or BPPC.

Officially, BPPC was established in the early 1990s to stabilize clove prices and protect farmers from market volatility. In practice, it became one of the defining symbols of centralized rent-seeking under the New Order. Farmers were forced to sell cloves through the system. Cigarette manufacturers were forced to buy through it. Prices were dictated from above. Competition disappeared. And because the institution was closely associated with Tommy Soeharto, Soeharto’s son, the arrangement quickly became synonymous with political favoritism masquerading as economic management.

The system’s logic was brutally simple. Cloves were purchased cheaply from farmers and resold at higher prices downstream. Profits accumulated at the center while producers absorbed the losses. Families that had relied on cloves for generations saw incomes collapse under a system supposedly designed to protect them. Indonesia Corruption Watch estimated state losses linked to corruption within BPPC at Rp3 trillion — and that was only what investigators could prove.

The damage extended beyond economics. BPPC permanently altered how many Indonesians viewed state intervention itself. It left behind a lingering suspicion that monopolies justified in the name of nationalism often become mechanisms for elite enrichment once transparency disappears. That historical memory now shadows Prabowo’s proposal.

The Problem of Trust

There are, of course, important differences between BPPC and the current policy. BPPC controlled the domestic clove trade, while the new system focused on exports. The operator is not a semi-political body from the authoritarian era, but a state-owned enterprise with a formally modern oversight structure. The government has also yet to implement the policy fully and continues to speak of phased execution.

Those distinctions matter. But they do not erase the central concern. Whenever a single entity gains authority over strategic exports, it also gains immense influence over margins, contracts, market access and pricing mechanisms. Even if the intention is to reduce leakages abroad, centralized control can easily create new leakages at home.

That concern surfaced almost immediately in financial markets. Even before Prabowo formally unveiled the policy, investors had already begun reacting nervously. Indonesia’s benchmark stock index fell sharply on May 19, while coal and energy-related shares slid in tandem.

The reaction highlights the broader challenge facing Prabowo’s economic project. Nationalism can mobilize political support, but long-term growth still depends on investor confidence, institutional credibility and legal predictability. Without those foundations, aggressive intervention risks undermining the very growth it seeks to accelerate.

Questionable Pattern

The concern surrounding the export proposal does not emerge in isolation. It is reinforced by broader patterns already visible within the administration. Several flagship programs introduced under Prabowo have faced scrutiny almost immediately after launch. The free meals initiative raised questions surrounding procurement oversight and budget management. The Merah Putih Village Cooperatives program drew criticism over expensive procurement plans and operational efficiency. The People’s School initiative has also encountered suspicions regarding inflated budgets.

Indonesia’s own experience offers repeated warnings. The country’s state enterprises have often struggled under the combined weight of corruption, political interference and inefficiency. Massive public projects routinely encounter procurement scandals. Regulatory systems remain vulnerable to elite capture. And perhaps most importantly, implementation frequently lags far behind political ambition.

Controversy has also begun to surround Danantara, the institution expected to become the backbone of Prabowo’s industrial and investment strategy. Critics have questioned its transparency and oversight, particularly given the enormous assets and authority it is set to manage. Concerns have grown further because Danantara has yet to publish a comprehensive public report on its investments, asset management or internal governance. In Indonesia, where state enterprises have long been vulnerable to corruption and elite capture, such opacity inevitably raises suspicion.

The issue is not the state’s ambition to play a larger role. The issue is what happens when the state expands its power faster than it strengthens accountability. In Indonesia, policies rarely fail because their stated goals are inherently wrong. They fail because too much darkness exists between noble intentions and actual implementation. And history suggests that rent-seeking flourishes most easily in the dark.

Japan and South Korea have agreed to set aside their frequent diplomatic frissons over past history and launch a wide-ranging energy cooperation deal under which they will share information regarding their respective crude oil and LNG capacity in order to help the two nations tide over energy supply chain threats stemming from the Hormuz Strait crisis. This follows an agreement signed earlier in March under which the two countries have pledged to cooperate in stockpiling and swapping petroleum information and products in times of crisis.

Under the terms of the agreement, the two are to share crude oil, liquefied natural gas (LNG), and petroleum products from national stockpiles in the event of an emergency supply disruption and will cooperate under Tokyo’s newly introduced “Partnership on Wide Energy and Resources Resilience” framework, coordinating to back a US$10 billion financial mechanism aimed at helping other Asian countries secure crude supplies.

While details remain mostly undisclosed, the fact that Tokyo and Seoul come to share information regarding the energy supply chain amounts to a significant cooperative deal, as it comes against the backdrop of never-ending diplomatic tensions impeding bilateral economic cooperation. Next to China, Japan and South Korea, two of the world’s most powerful economies, constitute a major exporting power in the global marketplace. This bilateral energy swap deal is especially significant given the periodic diplomatic tensions erupting between the two countries over multiple issues dating back to the period of Japan’s colonial conquest of the Korean peninsula.

Arriving at the city of Andong, south of Seoul, on 19 April, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi was all smiles as the occasion marked the 60th anniversary of the normalization of relations between the two countries. Along with South Korean President Lee Jae Myong, she watched the local town’s night-time fire displays, while dining against the backdrop of a piano concert. In a display of growing warmth in the bilateral relationship, Takaichi proposed inviting Lee back to a thermal hot-spring town in Japan for the next round of bilateral summitry.

For Lee and Takaichi, it was their fourth round of high-level meetings. But other than the energy swap deal, little substance has so far emerged. Beneath the surface of diplomatic warmth and banters, neither Lee nor Takaichi could shake off the shadows of new regional tensions lurking over their countries.

For one, their talks followed US President Donald Trump’s summit talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. Their talks were high on symbolism and low on substance, with Xi almost wholly preoccupied with the issue of Taiwan. Xi confronted Trump bluntly over whether the US would come to the aid of Taiwan in the event of China’s attack on Taiwan. The festering issue of global trade, in which the US has retaliated with a series of controversial tariffs, was almost overshadowed by the issue of Taiwan.

Prime Minister Takaichi is directly affected by the worsening atmosphere prevailing over the Taiwan issue. Her suggestion earlier that China’s use of force to retake Taiwan could mean Japan’s considering it a direct security threat has provoked fiery responses from Beijing. China’s bristling attacks on Takaichi’s comment have provoked widespread concern in Tokyo and Washington, prompting Tokyo to strengthen its defense posture while Beijing has begun economic pressure, cutting back on Chinese tourists visiting Japan.

President Lee, on the other hand, has carefully detached himself from the Taiwan issue, preferring to stay away from any comment on its future status. Lee, in fact, caused a diplomatic storm shortly after his inauguration by suggesting that his Taiwan policy would be largely noncommittal. During Takaichi’s visit to Korea, Lee stayed away from commenting on China, refusing to get involved in the issue.

It is clear Lee is attempting a delicate regional balancing between the US-South Korea-Japan trilateral partnership and China. Perhaps indicating his diplomatic priorities, Lee traveled to Beijing in January before meeting Takaichi in Nara this year. Seeking “full-scale restoration of South Korea-China relations,” Lee’s efforts produced mixed results. The leaders made some progress, particularly in free trade negotiations, yet Xi failed to give explicit support for the denuclearization of North Korea.

Furthermore, Lee was unable to secure the resumption of Korean cultural exports into China which had been informally banned since China’s loud protests over the deployment of the THAAD missile battery in South Korea, which Beijing claimed was aimed at China.

As far as Beijing’s relations with Seoul are concerned, another security flashpoint appears in the making with the Lee government’s decision to push for the acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines. While Tokyo has not publicly objected to the program, both North Korea and China have objected to the plan, with Pyongyang stating that the acquisition of nuclear subs would cause “a nuclear domino phenomenon” in the region. Ultimately, the program carries implications for broader regional security which Japan must also manage.

Apart from the energy cooperation deal, their statements indicated no change in their respective views on the current international situation. According to a press statement given by the two sides, Lee mostly evaded the issue of China’s tough stance on Taiwan. Takaichi, however, stated that Japan’s abiding commitment to bring back a dozen Japanese citizens abducted by North Korean agents over four decades ago remains unchanged. How President Lee responded to this statement remains unknown.

Another delicate issue for the two sides was North Korea’s nuclear threats. Lee holds the position that the Kim Jong Un regime should be denuclearized, in principle. Takaichi, however, strongly advocates the policy of Kim’s denuclearization, pointing to the regime’s frequent missile firings over the Sea of Japan. Takaichi’s position is that both Japan and South Korea should get more actively involved in dealing with the regional crisis involving North Korea and China’s saber-rattling over Taiwan. Their differing accent on China as well as on North Korea appeared clear in their respective statements. While Lee stressed peace and stability, Takaichi stuck to a more nuanced position of realizing a “free and open Indo-Pacific region promoting peace and stability.”

Daniel Mitchum is a PhD at the University of Lancashire, now researching in Seoul.

A Singapore High Court is due to rule shortly on a landmark defamation suit with implications for the island state’s relationship with international media. On May 22, the Court heard concluding arguments in the suit, in which Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam and Manpower Minister Tan See Leng are suing Bloomberg, the world’s premier business reporting service, for a December 2024 article about the increasingly secretive nature of Singapore’s ultra-luxury Good Class Bungalow (GCB) property market. The presiding High Court Justice Audrey Lim has reserved her verdict for an as-yet undetermined date.

The case also bears watching because Singapore officials, and particularly the Lee family dynasty, have used the courts in defamation and contempt cases to pursue journalists, including many international news organizations and opposition politicians, to tamp down dissenting voices. No official has ever lost a defamation case in the Singapore courts. If in this case Justice Lim were to rule against Shanmugam and Tan, observers say, it could be the harbinger of a new direction for the government and the courts under Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, who took power almost exactly a year ago, succeeding Lee Hsien Loong, who stepped down after two decades in office.

The ire of the two cabinet ministers was triggered by a story citing their lucrative property transactions by Bloomberg journalist Dexter Low De Wei, titled “Singapore Mansion Deals Are Increasingly Shrouded in Secrecy.” Tan in 2023 purchased a S$27.3 million (US$21.3 million) GCB located within the Brizay Park enclave, while Shanmugam had sold his Astrid Hill GCB in August 2023 for a whopping S$88 million (US$68.7 million).

The property transactions were cited as examples to illustrate the booming yet increasingly secretive nature of Singapore’s GCB property market, which saw half of its 2024 transactions, including those of both government ministers, without publicly declared and accessible caveats. The Bloomberg article noted Singapore’s attractiveness to rich foreigners as a politically stable tax and wealth haven to purchase and own luxury properties as part of their asset portfolios. However, this is tempered by concerns about the increasing usage of shell companies and anonymous trusts to purchase multimillion-dollar GCBs, with potential negative ramifications for Singapore’s global reputation for clean and accountable financial management.

Singapore analysts say this is very much Shanmugam’s personal vendetta against Bloomberg, with Tan See Leng strung along as cover. Shanmugam’s Astrid Hill ownership status was a major sore point for him in 2023 when he, along with Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan, faced intense public and political scrutiny for their renting of state-owned colonial bungalows at allegedly below market rates and maintained on taxpayer dollars.

Shanmugam’s Astrid Hill GCB sale in August 2024 came almost three years after it was first put on sale in November 2021, and one month after his parliamentary grilling which ultimately saw no wrongdoing declared on both ministers’ part although somewhat embarassingly it emerged that Shanmugam acknowledged in testimony that he had sold his house for S$88 million at 10 times profit to a buyer who did not use a bank loan and that he didn’t know the buyer’s identity, generating much comments on social media.

The Online Citizen’s Terry Xu first broke the news of Shanmugam’s secretive offloading of the home in September 2024, with subsequently-leaked property sale documents confirming the S$88 million price tag footed by the anonymous buyer, acting via a trust managed by UBS Trustees (Singapore) Ltd.

In its legal defense, Bloomberg argued that its reporting concerned matters of public interest, including rising GCB prices, the use of trust structures in property purchases, and transparency in property ownership increasingly held by newly naturalized Singapore citizens. Invoking the principle of “responsible journalism”, Senior Counsel Sreenivasan Narayanan maintained that Bloomberg’s article did not accuse the ministers of wrongdoing, money laundering, or dishonesty.

Bloomberg also argued that the article’s language was qualified and that readers would not interpret it as defamatory, given the factual truth of both ministers’ GCB property transactions, lacking publicly-declared and accessible caveats. Shanmugam had also confirmed under cross-examination that he, along with his lawyers and bankers, had no idea as to the identity of the anonymous buyer who had netted him ten times’ profit on his GCB’s original value.

That was immediately countered by Tan and Shanmugam’s lawyer, senior counsel Davinder Singh, who argued that Bloomberg’s article had implied inadequate anti-money laundering safeguards in Singapore’s property market and portrayed the ministers negatively. Singh charged that Bloomberg had selectively framed facts, with Dexter Low inserting “political fodder” into the narrative and deliberately linking the ministers to suspicious property dealings with a pen “dipped in gall”.

Citing internal Bloomberg communications which suggested the ministers’ intentional targeting in the offending article, Singh also claimed that Bloomberg had attempted to suppress communications from being used as evidence on top of demonstrating “unprecedented” malice and determination to harm the two government ministers.

The attribution of “unprecedented malice and determination to hurt” supposedly stemmed from Bloomberg’s refusal to comply with a POFMA “Fake News” Correction Notice issued by Shanmugam’s then-second in command Edwin Tong at the Ministry of Law in December 2024 over Low’s article. Bloomberg chose to publish the demanded correction notice in the spirit of “right to reply,” but robustly stood by it. In an ironic demonstration of the Barbara Streisand effect, the Correction Notice publication requirements, as well as Shanmugam’s excoriations on social media resulted in Bloomberg making an originally-paywalled article free to read for a global audience.

Critics note that none of the facts in the article are in dispute. They say the entire premise of the suit hinges in large part on the plaintiffs’ selective reading and interpretation of the Bloomberg article as offensive. In effect, Singapore’s High Court is being asked to pass judgment on whether the subjective reading of factual circumstances as a cited example should be given “beyond reasonable doubt” legal weight in defamation claims. Yet one can only take offence and not give it, as crystallized in the idiom of “seeing a bow reflected as a snake in a water cup (杯弓蛇影)” invoked by Dexter Low in court to illustrate his having no hidden agenda of malice against Shanmugam.

If the court rules in favour of the ministers, it could set a significant precedent affecting how media organizations report on high-profile individuals in Singapore, particularly where financial transparency and political figures intersect. It may also influence how future disputes between public officials and the press are interpreted under defamation law in a tightening regulatory environment.

This is exemplified by Singapore’s recently enacted Online Safety (Relief and Accountability) Act, with the newly formed Online Safety Commission and its commissioner being directly subjugated under the Ministry of Law. Among the 13 categories of “online harms” under its oversight and enforcement is a particular one defined as “publication of statement harmful to reputation”. It enables, with trivial ease, the ability of government ministers in Singapore to wield the full weight of the state against any critical media reportage or even anonymous online criticisms they deem as harmful to their reputation.

Recently, Canadian intelligence and a Canadian think tank warned of Chinese interference and transnational repression in Canada. Alleging an example of Chinese influence in Canada, in September 2024, a Canadian media, The Bureau, reported a meeting between Tse Chi Lop, a triad boss currently imprisoned in Australia, and William Majcher, a former Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officer.

The Bureau report claimed the meeting between Tse, whom it alleged had prior connections to the Chinese Communist Party, and “Majcher, a former RCMP officer now accused of aiding Chinese intelligence, raises intriguing questions about the nexus between Triads and Chinese state operations.”

The supposed scoop turned out to be fictitious, as the story contained a photograph of a scene from a 2015 Hong Kong movie, “From Vegas to Macau II”, where it was not Tse, but Hong Kong movie star Chow Yun-fat who shook hands with Majcher, who acted in that movie.

“This incident really serves as a great metaphor for how catastrophic is the failure of Canadian Intelligence and Law Enforcement. Most national security investigations in Canada are driven by media and internal political considerations, thus making Canada completely defenceless for dealing with genuine national security threats,” Majcher told Asia Sentinel.

This supposed scoop was reported by a journalist whom the RCMP relied upon in their investigation, and the Canadian Intelligence Security Service (CSIS) regularly leaks information to him, Majcher disclosed.

In a statement on September 26, 2024, The Bureau admitted, “The story contained a photograph and information provided by a source, said to show Mr. Majcher, as well as notorious individuals of interest to law enforcement, at a Macau casino. In fact, the photograph was from a fictional movie in which Mr. Majcher appeared, and there is no indication he has met with the people named in the story. The story was taken down as soon as this was discovered,” The Bureau added.

“We were misled by sources that manipulated our trust. Investigations into this matter are progressing…. The Bureau was the target and victim of a deliberate and sustained effort to mislead the public. While we regret that we did not identify this infiltration sooner, we have shared technical evidence with the appropriate government authorities to further the investigation,” The Bureau revealed.

On May 13, Martha Devlin, a British Columbia supreme court judge, acquitted Majcher of a charge under Canada’s Security of Information Act. In 2023, Majcher was charged for the act of allegedly helping Chinese police coerce Kevin Hongwei Sun, a property investor accused of fraud, to return from Canada to China.

“I conclude that the Crown has failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Majcher committed any of these acts (in violation of the Security of Information Act)”, Justice Devlin said in her judgment on May 13.

“I believe the hysteria of China as the “Yellow Peril” (a racist metaphor against Oriental people) is alive and well in Canada and that played a significant part in all this. I am angry about my arrest and all that went with it,” Majcher said.

“I plan to return to Hong Kong where there is rule of law and a transparent legal system, and a medical system that works. From Hong Kong, I plan to hold the Canadian government accountable and spend time with my children and work on rebuilding my business,” he added.

“There needs to be a full public inquiry as Canada did to me exactly what they accuse other countries of doing in violation of human rights and evidentiary standards,” Majcher alleged.

Majcher retired from the RCMP in August 2007 and later that year moved from Canada to Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, he worked for various financial institutions, then ran a company, EMIDR, which investigated financial crimes.

“The verdict speaks for itself. This case is an example of police and prosecutorial malpractice stemming from hysteria over foreign interference from China,” Canadian Senator Yuen Pau Woo told Asia Sentinel.

“It is the second recent example of national security overreach that has harmed innocent Canadians,” Woo pointed out.

In 2023, the RCMP alleged that a Chinese Community Services Organization in Montreal was the site of a Chinese police station.

“They provided no evidence and were not even able to describe the nature of illegal activities said to be taking place at the Centre. Two years later, they quietly ended the investigation with no charges laid. In the meantime, the Community Centre suffered reputation and material damage, as did the clients of the Centre, who are typically lower-income immigrants,” Woo said.

Majcher was first arrested on July 18, 2023 when he arrived with his family in Vancouver from Hong Kong. He was released on July 19, 2023, then rearrested and charged the next day.

The Canadian government (the Crown) alleged that between May 1 and June 15, 2017, Majcher prepared to coercively induce Sun, a Chinese citizen who became a Canadian permanent resident in 2001, to accede to the demands of the Chinese government, at the direction of, for the benefit of, or in association with Chinese police.

The Canadian government used the following email as evidence against Majcher, Justice Devlin noted.

In an email to Ross Gaffney, then an EMIDR executive and a former FBI agent, on June 12, 2017, Majcher said, “I have spent the last few weeks going back and forth between the lawyer in Vancouver and Chinese officials to negotiate the terms of the engagement so we can attempt to negotiate and recover part of a RMB 2.9 Billion (US$426 million) fraud committed against ICBC (a large Chinese state-owned bank) in Jilin Province over ten years ago. (Sun) is now a major real estate mogul in Vancouver and we have located over US$100M of assets. The Chinese Police have opened a Task Force and standing by to issue a global arrest warrant. I hope to have a copy of the warrant before it is issued so we can impress upon (Sun) that we hold the keys to his future. I am meeting an associate of the target tomorrow in (Hong Kong) to see if he can help negotiate a settlement, as the Chinese want to use this as a precedent case to settle economic crimes quietly and expeditiously.”

The email did not prove Majcher took actual steps to coerce Sun, Justive Devlin ruled. “The Crown’s case substantially rests on evidence that is circumstantial in nature.”

Sun appears to have political connections in China. In 2001, he was a representative for the National People’s Congress, China’s parliament, for Jilin City, public documents in China show.

Although Sun was a target of the Chinese police’s attempt to nab overseas suspects, nicknamed “Fox Hunt”, he has not been convicted of any crime in Canada. He is living in Richmond on the outskirts of Vancouver, said Majcher.

Warnings of Chinese influence in Canada

In 2025, the main perpetrators of foreign interference and espionage against Canada remained China, India, Russia, Iran, and Pakistan, said a CSIS report released on May 1.

Chinese interference and transnational repression are likely to intensify, given that Beijing views the flow into Hong Kong of overseas activists as a significant risk to China’s national security, said a report of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, a Canadian think tank, on April 2.

Common interference tactics used by Chinese agents and their affiliates in Canada include unauthorized activities of police and intelligence officers to conduct surveillance, intimidation, or other forms of coercion of individuals and communities, said a report of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, a Canadian think tank, on April 2.

“Most Canadians view FI (foreign interference) as a serious threat to democratic health, and a large segment of Chinese, Hong Kong, Tibetan, Taiwanese, and Uyghur respondents reported experiencing transnational repression (TNR) — frequently through online harassment and threatening phone calls,” said the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada report.

As part of the Canadian government’s attempt to fight foreign influence, on March 13, following approval of both Canadian houses of parliament, Canada’s Minister of Public Safety, Gary Anandasangaree, announced Anton Boegman as Canada’s first Foreign Influence Transparency Commissioner.

Woo, a past president of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, admitted foreign interference is real and must be taken seriously, especially transnational repression.

“But Canada’s national intelligence and security agencies are using such a broad definition of foreign interference that anyone “in association with” a foreign entity can be labelled as a foreign agent. National security overreach, combined with old-fashioned prejudice and discrimination against Chinese people, has resulted in what I call “modern exclusion”, Woo argued.

Toh Han Shih is a Singaporean writer in Hong Kong and a regular contributor to Asia Sentinel.

During US President Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing from May 13 to 15, he gained Chinese President Xi Jinping’s agreement on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and Iran not being allowed to have nuclear weapons. To Beijing’s approval, Trump spoke more strongly against Taiwanese independence than the mainstream Washingto…

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As U.S. President Donald Trump headed home after completing his flamboyant 2-day state visit to Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, the Taiwanese woke up to the notion that although in the runup to the event there was a lot of pundit speculation about Xi pressing Trump on arms sales and changing the diplomatic language surrounding Taiwan, none of it came to pass.

After Trump had, prior to his trip, signaled his intention to review the US’s Taiwan arms sales policy, Xi described Taiwan as “the most important issue” in U.S.-China relations and warned that mishandling it could lead to “clashes and even conflicts.” But the White House readout then omitted Taiwan entirely, suggesting that Trump refrained from making any concessions to Xi at Taiwan’s expense.

Consulting Beijing in advance regarding arms sales to Taiwan would have directly violated the core diplomatic pledges the U.S. gave to Taiwan during the 1980s. Taiwan’s Foreign Minister, Lin Chia-lung, noted that Taipei monitored the Trump-Xi summit intently. Lin expressed gratitude to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio for reassuring Taiwan that the U.S.’s strategic stance remains steadfast.

Asia Sentinel made a small survey among Taiwanese non-pundit people on Saturday, gathering some expressions of relief. People acknowledged that Taiwan received no mention whatsoever in the White House’s official summary of the meeting and that the U.S. administration did not address the unilateral claims made by Chinese state media regarding Xi’s stance on Taiwan.

“For the majority of the population in Taiwan, this is a reassuring outcome, as it signals that the U.S. has no intention of altering its current policy of support for Taiwan,” said Yeh Jing-yue, a retired translator from Taipei.

“However, I share the concern felt by many in Taiwan that the Chinese Communist Party has already succeeded in effectively infiltrating political parties and media outlets within the country. When I observe how the pro-communist rhetoric from politicians within the Blue-and-White camp [the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP)], as well as from many influencers, has become increasingly brazen over the past two years, I find it deeply unsettling.”

Yeh referred to a high degree of policy gridlock resulting from China-friendly opposition lawmakers paralysing the Constitutional Court, escalating into a budget standoff freezing government functions, including defense spending and arms procurement.

In terms of China infiltrating local media outlets, more than 100 Taiwanese media executives and journalists travelled to a cross-strait media summit in Beijing in early May, being explicitly urged by Chinese officials to “expose Taiwan independence activities.”

Wang Bao Hsiang, a patent engineer from Taipei, said that the Trump-Xi meeting didn’t bring any major surprises for Taiwan because Taiwan’s importance is fundamentally tied to U.S. strategic interests. He referred to the “Silicon Shield”, the geopolitical concept that Taiwan’s dominance in the global semiconductor industry via Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC acts as an unsurmountable deterrent against a Chinese invasion.

“In the future, whoever controls advanced semiconductors will have enormous influence over the global economy and technology sector, and I believe Washington understands this very clearly,” Wang said.

“Making a deal with China at Taiwan’s expense would not really benefit the United States. It would effectively hand critical semiconductor leverage to China, while also weakening America’s strategic position in the Pacific.”

However, also Wang went on to warn that Taiwan is facing internal challenges with parts of the legislature being pro-China.

“This is ultimately an issue Taiwanese society itself has to confront,” he said. “Many people in Taiwan do not vote very seriously and sometimes oppose policies simply for the sake of opposition, without thinking about the broader long-term consequences.”

On the other end of the political spectrum stands Cindy Chen, a Chinese language teacher from Taipei, who sees the Trump-Xi meeting as evidence that the “G2” framework, in which the U.S. and China jointly dominate global military, economic, and other structures, is gradually taking shape.

This assessment, in turn, makes her feel that the main dangers are associated with the possibility of Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) recklessly provoking China.

“Although it was officially claimed that the Taiwan issue was not discussed during the meeting, in reality, it was undoubtedly addressed in a manner detrimental to Taiwan,” Chen said.

“Being misled by that, the DPP and other proponents of Taiwan independence will inevitably take more assertive actions, thereby escalating cross-strait tensions. We will be left with no choice but to remain bystanders or dutiful subjects in order to ensure our own self-preservation.”

Xi received an invitation from Trump to visit the White House this coming September, and there is a possibility the two leaders will also cross paths at the subsequent G20 and APEC summits toward the end of the year.

Attention will turn in the coming weeks to whether Trump will approve another arms deal, coming on the heels of a roughly US$11 billion package last year. Doubts were raised by Trump in his gaggle with the press on Air Force One, revealing that he, in fact, did discuss arms sales with Xi in great detail and indicating that he feels that the old assurances that the U.S. would not consult with China on arms sales to Taiwan are outdated.

An observer told Asia Sentinel that whether the U.S. will actually reduce or postpone arms sales to Taiwan remains uncertain and will depend on Taiwan’s handling of future arms packages.

“As no details regarding the discussion on arms sales to Taiwan have been released, it remains possible, as Trump indicated, that a final decision would only be made after further consultations with Taiwanese leadership,” said Hung Tzu-Chieh, an associate research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a public think tank in Taipei.

“However, Taiwan’s previous domestic political disputes over certain arms procurement packages and defense budgets, as well as opposition from some political actors to related spending, have already raised concerns in Washington regarding Taiwan’s commitment to self-defense. The Trump administration could indeed choose to delay, adjust, or even reduce certain arms sales to Taiwan in exchange for broader economic and trade arrangements with China.”

The Philippine Senate, long considered the last bastion of democracy, turned into a combat zone Wednesday night when gunfire erupted through its halls amid the unsealed International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant against Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa and the looming impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte.

The chaos marked the climax of a slow-burning constitutional crisis between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., 68, and Duterte, 47, whose once-dominant 2022 UniTeam alliance has fully collapsed, triggering two seismic legal battles.

The week’s political drama began with a surgical strike on Senate leadership. On May 11, senators ousted Senate President Vicente “Tito” Sotto III, 77, and installed Alan Peter Cayetano, 55, a staunch ally of former president Rodrigo Duterte.

Dela Rosa, 64, has been named an indirect co-perpetrator and co-conspirator in the ICC case against Rodrigo Duterte, 81, who has been detained at Scheveningen Prison in The Hague since March 12, 2025, while awaiting trial for crimes against humanity linked to killings during his bloody war on drugs. Dela Rosa went into hiding in November 2025 after reports surfaced that the ICC had issued a warrant for his arrest. He resurfaced Monday after six months in hiding to help Cayetano secure the Senate presidency with 13 votes.

Monday’s leadership shake-up was merely the prelude. Forty-eight hours later, what began as a legislative standoff transformed the Senate into both fortress and stage. The line between parliamentary immunity and institutional sanctuary appeared to vanish, exposing a raw struggle for political survival that has reshaped the road to the 2028 presidential election.

Amid the May 13 turmoil, the House of Representatives formally transmitted the Articles of Impeachment against Sara Duterte to the Senate. The House had voted 257-25, with nine abstentions, to impeach her on May 11 — the same day Duterte allies secured Cayetano’s election as Senate president. Duterte thus became the first Philippine official impeached twice within 15 months, although the Supreme Court voided the first impeachment in February 2025 on technical grounds.

Despite allegations of incompetence, corruption, and erratic public behavior, Sara Duterte has long been viewed as a formidable contender for the 2028 presidency. But that aura of inevitability now appears to be fading, with recent surveys suggesting her numbers have plateaued while rivals gain ground.

The Senate leadership change was widely viewed as a tactical maneuver by Duterte allies to control the impeachment trial and potentially derail proceedings that could expose allegations of corruption, misuse of confidential funds, unexplained wealth, and threats against President Marcos, First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, and former House speaker Martin Romualdez. Evidence presented during House justice committee hearings included bank transactions involving P6.7 billion allegedly tied to questionable sources, including suspected drug lords. A conviction by the impeachment court would permanently disqualify Duterte from public office.

Gunfire in the chamber

The crisis turned violent when Dela Rosa, seeking protective custody inside the six-story Senate building to avoid arrest, became the center of a murky armed confrontation. Television footage and social media videos showed unusual movements by Senate security personnel from the Office of the Sergeant-at-Arms (OSAA), alongside police officers and Marines stationed inside the complex.

OSAA acting head, retired police major general Mao Aplasca, told reporters some personnel were armed because “they were going to arrest somebody,” though he did not elaborate amid confusion over the possible serving of the arrest warrant against Dela Rosa. Earlier reports claimed unidentified armed men were attempting to breach the premises.

The confusion stemmed from a jurisdictional clash near the second-floor plywood barrier separating the Senate’s rented wing from the GSIS main building.

Tensions exploded at 7:46 p.m. when gunshots rang out, sending journalists and employees scrambling for cover. Duterte-allied senators, including Senator Imee Marcos, were reportedly meeting elsewhere in the building while awaiting the formal transmittal of the impeachment articles. For hours, reporters and staff were trapped inside offices as armed security personnel patrolled the hallways.

Cayetano later went on Facebook Live, claiming the Senate was “allegedly under attack” and saying four senators had been warned in advance of possible violence. Some lawmakers accused the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) of mounting an assault.

President Marcos later clarified that no NBI agents had been sent to arrest Dela Rosa and denied any government operation targeting the senator.

Initial investigations indicated that OSAA chief Aplasca fired the first shots at NBI agents stationed on the GSIS side for “peace and order,” prompting return fire from an NBI “volunteer.” NBI Director Melvin Matibag later identified the gunman as Mel Oragon, a civilian volunteer and driver accompanying NBI agents that night.

Matibag said the NBI deployment had been requested by GSIS President and General Manager Jose Arnulfo Veloso. He also addressed viral footage showing NBI personnel drilling through a door, clarifying that the operation was meant to seal access points between the Senate and GSIS buildings after concerns about unauthorized entry through a connecting bridge. The Senate-side key to the door was reportedly controlled by the OSAA.

The “Great Escape”

The most surreal development came before dawn on May 14. Despite the heavily secured Senate compound, Dela Rosa vanished. Cayetano later confirmed the senator had “chosen to leave” Senate protective custody.

According to Senate secretariat officials, Dela Rosa slipped out around 2:30 a.m. alongside Senator Robinhood Padilla. His whereabouts remain unknown. Padilla was later spotted at the airport around 4 a.m., reportedly without Dela Rosa.

Many observers see the May 13 chaos as a calculated delaying tactic. By shielding Dela Rosa, Duterte-allied senators signaled a willingness to use institutional and procedural tools to stall Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial. As long as the Senate remains consumed by security disputes and jurisdictional conflict, the impeachment calendar remains frozen.

What unfolded was more than a security breach. It was a physical manifestation of constitutional breakdown. The crisis is no longer only about accountability for the drug war or the impeachment of a vice president. It is about whether the Philippines can uphold the rule of law when its most powerful figures choose barricades over courtrooms.

The Senate’s decision to shelter a member facing crimes against humanity charges — only to allow him to disappear during a security lapse — reinforced the growing perception that in the Philippines, the law has become a matter of geography.

Former Senate president Franklin Drilon said the gunfire inside the Senate exposed a broader collapse of leadership and respect for the rule of law.

“This is a collective failure of leadership. I do not know where we have gone wrong,” Drilon said. “Why are we facing this situation where we do not respect anything, we do not respect the law? … It’s a shame already, it’s embarrassing for all of us.”

Some political pundits blamed Marcos for weak leadership, arguing he should have ordered Dela Rosa’s immediate arrest and surrender to the ICC, as the government did with Rodrigo Duterte in March 2025.

If Duterte’s allies succeed in derailing Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial through these “sanctuary” tactics, she could enter 2028 as a political martyr. Conversely, the Marcos administration risks appearing incapable of enforcing the law even within the nation’s capital.

As the country looks toward 2028, the defining question may no longer be who has the strongest platform, but who controls the strongest fortress — and the best escape route. The chaos of May 13 did not merely delay a trial; it shattered public faith in the scales of Philippine justice.

The next great Middle Eastern rivalry is not only between Iran and the Arab Gulf states. It is unfolding inside the Gulf itself with the United Arab Emirates’ April 28 decision to ditch the old geopolitical model.

For decades, the UAE and Saudi Arabia projected the image of a unified strategic axis: anti-Iran, anti-Islamist, pro-status quo, and closely aligned with Washington. That consensus is now fraying. Quietly but unmistakably, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh are drifting into aggressive competition over money, ports, trade routes, militias, diplomacy, and regional leadership. The old Gulf order, once built around Saudi primacy and Emirati economic support, is giving way to something far more unstable. The UAE is no longer behaving like Saudi Arabia’s junior partner. It is behaving like a rival, revisionist power, which Riyadh must tackle to maintain the status quo.

Abu Dhabi’s New Regional Ambition

More importantly, the UAE can afford to defy Saudi Arabia in ways few regional actors can. Riyadh needs high oil prices to sustain its economy and bankroll Mohammed bin Salman’s transformation agenda. According to IMF estimates, Saudi Arabia’s fiscal breakeven oil price is around US$90 per barrel. The UAE’s is below US$50. That difference changes everything. For Saudi Arabia, OPEC is both a geopolitical weapon and a fiscal necessity. For the UAE, it is increasingly a constraint. Abu Dhabi’s willingness to challenge Riyadh inside OPEC was never just about production quotas. It was a declaration that the UAE no longer sees Saudi Arabia as the unquestioned manager of Gulf economic order. The Emiratis believe they can survive lower oil prices far better than the Saudis can. Once the Iran war formally ends and energy markets stabilize, the UAE’s independent production strategy could fundamentally weaken Saudi leverage over global oil pricing.

Still, the UAE’s defiance is no longer limited to oil politics. Abu Dhabi is also losing patience with Saudi-dominated regional forums like the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Arab League. In unusually blunt remarks at a conference in late April, senior Emirati official Anwar Gargash openly mocked the weakness of Arab and Gulf states during the recent regional crisis. While the GCC provided logistical coordination, Gargash said its political and military position was “the weakest in history.” He added that he expected weakness from the Arab League but was “surprised” by the GCC’s paralysis. Ten years ago, such remarks would have been unthinkable. Today, they reveal something much bigger: the UAE no longer believes in the old Saudi-led Arab order. Abu Dhabi increasingly sees institutions built around Arab and Islamic solidarity as liabilities, not assets. Its future lies elsewhere — in ports, finance, artificial intelligence, and transactional alliances with global powers. Most importantly, it values its security ties with Israel more than with the Gulf states. It was Israeli air-defence systems that helped defend Dubai, not Saudis’. The UAE, therefore, is far keener to invest its money in Israeli defence firms than in any other regional defence networks (which do not exist as such).

Israel, Iran, and the Fragmentation of the Gulf

The Abraham Accords transformed the UAE-Israel relationship from quiet security coordination into an overt geopolitical partnership. Since then, economic, technological, intelligence, and defense cooperation between the two states has expanded rapidly. The recent Iran war accelerated this process.

For the UAE, the conflict was economically devastating. Regional instability disrupted aviation, shipping, tourism, and investment flows that are central to Dubai’s global business model. Emirati leaders concluded that survival in an increasingly volatile Middle East required stronger security integration with Israel and closer strategic coordination with Western powers. Saudi Arabia, however, appears more cautious.

Riyadh has certainly moved closer to Israel behind the scenes, particularly on intelligence and security matters related to Iran. But Saudi leaders remain constrained by domestic legitimacy, Islamic symbolism, and broader Arab political considerations. The Kingdom still seeks to preserve its position as the leader of the Muslim world. Openly embracing Israel at the Emirati pace would complicate that claim. The UAE does not appear equally constrained.

Abu Dhabi’s regional strategy increasingly prioritizes strategic flexibility over ideological consistency. It is building influence simultaneously through sovereign wealth, ports, military access agreements, logistics infrastructure, artificial intelligence partnerships, and normalization with Israel. In effect, the UAE is attempting to create geopolitical space outside the traditional Saudi-centered order. This explains why Abu Dhabi has become more willing to pressure states that remain closely tied to Riyadh. Its support for anti-Riyadh groups in Yemen and Sudan explains this policy. Adu Dhabi’s strangulation of Pakistan last month reflects this strategy much more clearly.

Pakistan and the Emerging Gulf Divide

For decades, Islamabad carefully balanced relations between Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Both Gulf states provided financial assistance, energy support, remittances, and diplomatic backing. But balancing becomes difficult when allies begin competing with one another. The UAE’s decision to demand repayment of more than US$3 billion from Pakistan, ending a long-standing rollover arrangement, was officially explained in financial terms. Yet the political timing was striking.

The move came amid rising regional tensions involving Iran and amid growing Emirati frustration with countries unwilling to adopt a more confrontational regional posture. Pakistan, despite its close ties with Saudi Arabia, has consistently attempted to avoid direct hostility toward Iran. Geography leaves Islamabad with little choice. Iran is a neighbor sharing a sensitive border with Pakistan’s already unstable Balochistan region. For Abu Dhabi, however, neutrality increasingly appears unacceptable.

The most revealing part of the episode was Saudi Arabia’s response. Riyadh quickly stepped in with fresh financial support and expanded economic assistance to Pakistan. This was not merely economic stabilization. It was geopolitical signaling. Saudi Arabia was effectively telling the UAE that Pakistan remained inside Riyadh’s strategic orbit. The broader implications are significant.

A loose counter-alignment is beginning to emerge across parts of the Muslim world. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkey, and Egypt do not form a formal bloc, nor do they agree on everything. Ankara and Cairo only recently repaired ties. Pakistan prefers strategic ambiguity. Saudi Arabia remains cautious about Turkish ambitions. Yet all four states share growing unease about the UAE’s increasingly disruptive regional activism and its rapidly expanding partnership with Israel.

The End of Gulf Unity

Western policymakers still talk about “the Gulf states” as though they form a coherent strategic bloc. That illusion is collapsing. The Gulf still exists as a geography. It no longer exists as a political unit. One of the unintended consequences of the US war on Iran is that it accelerated the fragmentation of the Gulf order itself. The divide is now unmistakable.

Saudi Arabia wants a hierarchy with Riyadh at the center. The United Arab Emirates wants strategic autonomy and global influence. Saudi power rests on religion, size, and political centrality. Emirati power rests on money, ports, intelligence networks, technology, and transactional diplomacy. These are not merely different models of power. They are increasingly incompatible ones.

The old Gulf order was built on the assumption that monarchies with similar political systems ultimately shared the same geopolitical interests. They no longer do. Beneath the public language of partnership lies a fierce struggle over who will dominate the post-American Middle East. Iran may remain the Gulf’s main external threat. But the defining fracture of the next decade is likely to come from within the Gulf itself. This is the region’s new cold war. It will be fought not through ideology or revolutionary slogans, but through sovereign wealth funds, ports, trade routes, proxy wars, financial coercion, and normalization with Israel.

Dr Salman Rafi Sheikh is an Assistant Professor of Politics at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Pakistan. He is a long-time contributor on diplomatic affairs to Asia Sentinel.

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It is more in sorrow than anger that much of East and Southeast Asia perceives the US under Donald Trump to be drifting all too rapidly away. By default, the primary beneficiary is China, though there are some signs that disappointment with the US is strengthening other ties which are not necessarily to China’s advantage.

Trump arrives in China against a backdrop of a war he started but cannot yet finish. Most obviously, he started it without the support of any of the US’s allies and in conjunction with a state, Israel, recently accused of genocide in Gaza and currently engaged in illegal Jewish land grabs in the occupied West Bank. A war waged not only in the face of European opposition but the advice of allies in the Gulf States who immediately became the obvious target for Iranian retaliation. All this, and recent actions in and around Venezuela, have confirmed on a larger scale the contempt for previously agreed rules, procedures, and laws relating to international trade which Trump had shown last year with an ever-changing array of tariffs, sanctions, and other punitive measures as often as not aimed more at supposed allies than rivals. Indeed, he presented the US as a victim of Asian friends’ trade success while quickly succumbing to the rare-minerals counterpunches of the US’s main rival, China.

Instead of looking for support to address China’s massive overcapacity-driven trade surpluses which are hurting much of Asia more than the US, he took aim at weaker supposed friends bullied into signing trade agreements – some such as that forced on Malaysia but now disowned – heavily weighted to US commercial and mineral resource interests.

Given the massive news coverage that the US, and Trump in particular, receives overseas, foreigners had no trouble identifying the trends in the US towards illiberal democracy and the weakening of the balance of power concept between executive, legislature, and judiciary which had long been held up as an example to the world. Add in Trump’s narcissism reminiscent of caricature dictators, and the US presented an image entirely at odds with deeply embedded perceptions of America.

Even in the realm of technology. China’s achievements have rivaled and in some areas exceeded those of the US. While US names such as Google and Meta dominate communication and social media throughout non-Chinese Asia, their dominance has created resentments which have been further fueled by the arrogance of some of their Trump-supporting multi-billionaires.

For many, China is now a more reliable partner. Certainly, only by a slim majority, according to opinion surveys in Southeast Asia. This is not particularly because it is liked but because it is more predictable. The South China Sea remains high up on the list of regional concerns about China, but even on that, the US has lost some of its appeal. Trump’s rejection of international norms makes the rejection of China’s sea claims by the Permanent Court of Arbitration seem less exceptional. And Trump’s unwillingness to give full support to Ukraine’s defence creates doubts about his willingness to face anyone other than relatively weak targets, Venezuela, and, initially, Iran. Doubts about its Taiwan commitment have risen, giving an opening to China to talk more sweetly and persuade the Kuomintang leader to visit the mainland.

Trump also now goes to Beijing knowing that Chinese help is now needed if he is to get out of the Iran mess he has created, without plunging deeper into an unpopular war against an enemy with a high pain threshold.

Aspects of American “soft’ power have also taken a hit. The wholesale attack on immigrants hurts Asian pride as well as opportunities for advancement. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) teams have caused more than 2 million people to leave the US, voluntarily or not. Although ICE activities have been mainly focused on Latinos, the arrest of many from Vietnam, Cambodia, and the Philippines has not gone unnoticed in those countries. Meanwhile, student and regular work visas have become harder to acquire. More generally, interest in the region by US academia appears to have withered, and suspicion of Muslims even from such secular countries as Indonesia and Bangladesh has risen, helped along by the self-proclaimed Christian zealots such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, sometimes in alliance with advocates of a “white” America. It might be called the Icing of the melting pot.

That said, the erosion of faith in the reliability of the US does not necessarily mean an easy ride for China. South Korea and Japan have clearly come closer together. Japan’s new willingness under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to widen its defensive posture by taking part in exercises in the Philippines and an effort to sell defensive weapons to the region. China has responded with near hysterical commentaries about the “threat of revived Japanese militarism.” The energy crisis promoted by the Iran invasion has seen efforts by Korea, Australia, and Japan to cooperate in securing energy and rare mineral supplies, albeit from weak positions compared to China long committed to self-reliance. Generally, there has been a coming together of middle powers anxious to retain some freedom of political movement. Indonesia has even deviated a little from its historical non-alignment by enabling US overflights of its territory. Whatever they may say publicly, no ASEAN country is happy with the thought of China controlling Taiwan and its adjacent strait. While the US is politically and diplomatically obsessed with the Middle East, its military in the region remains focused on the seas and straits over which China seeks dominance.

Nor have America’s erstwhile friends and admirers given up on the hope that Trumpism is a passing phase, already meeting growing resistance by the courts and the voters. For sure, it will leave a permanent mark, but that could take the form of greater cohesion among the middle powers fearing Chinese domination. The Iran war will have exposed US weaknesses, but by the same token. As in Europe, raised regional consciousness of the need for cooperation to enhance self-reliance. Nor does a China ruled by an all-powerful leader backed by a Communist Party with tentacles everywhere and self-consciously mono-ethnic really have much appeal to countries, at least in Southeast Asia, with more plural histories and social arrangements.

For sure, Trump and his war of choice may be the mark of an America in decline. But equally, it may mark the peak of Chinese power as its many enemies search for common ground to blunt its trade power and expansionist goals.

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, already heading a weakened coalition partly due to an opposition Perikatan Nasional coalition, particularly the Islamist party PAS, capitalizing on Malay-Muslim identity politics, is now faced with a head-on confrontation with one of the country’s most influential and powerful Sultans over pig farming.

The 80-year-old Sultan of Selangor, Sharafuddin Idris Shah, decreed last month that no more pig farms should be allowed in his state, which is the country’s richest industrial and commercial center, to avoid environmental pollution and to respect the state’s majority Muslim population. Despite some rumblings from Anwar’s party, which draws support mainly from non-Muslims, Anwar agreed to the ban. The government then said pork would be brought in from other states to meet Selangor’s needs.

But the non-Muslim ground has rebelled and rumblings have grown louder. The consumption of pork has long been a volatile issue in Malaysia, where Muslims find the consumption of pork to be against religious laws and the Chinese, who make up approximately 23 percent of the population, consider it a mainstay of their diet. They constitute the second-largest ethnic group in the country, with a population close to 7 million. Selangor has a marginally higher number of Chinese residents, often numbering over 1.7 million and 28 percent of the state’s makeup, one of the largest concentrations in the country. The industry is mainly operated by ethnic Chinese, with significant commercial farms using modern, closed-house systems.

Anwar’s Pakatan Harapan coalition, whose backbone is the Chinese-majority Democratic Action Party, has suffered continually eroding support since it came to power at the end of 2022. This has largely been due to lack of promised reforms, corruption, internal strife and Anwar’s leadership, described by critics in Malaysia as lackadaisical. Although the World Bank had forecast resilient growth of 4.0 percent to 5.0 percent in 2026, driven by strong domestic demand, tourism, and a tech-upcycle boost in electrical and electronics exports, the war on Iran and the resulting oil and energy crisis has put further strain on the country’s finances with economists predicting the situation will get worse over the next two years even if the war ends soon.

Faced with this, Anwar was preparing for a general election at the end of this year ahead of an even worsened economy in 2027. Elections need not be called until early 2028 under Malaysia’s Westminster parliamentary system.

Anwar’s cabinet decided to reverse the ban on pig farming at its weekly cabinet meeting two days ago and he sought an audience with the Sultan to inform him of the decision the same afternoon. The Sultan does not have executive powers and is a constitutional monarch. However, the royalty is largely revered amongst the Malays and hold the trump card of appointing chief ministers and the prime minister, particularly when there is no single party with a simple majority.

The 80 -year-old Sultan immediately struck back, posting a quotation from the late US President Harry Truman on his official Facebook, saying “no man can get rich through politics unless he is a crook.” On May 7, the Sultan doubled down, saying there would no pig farming in his state, “Full Stop.” He posted an image of himself attesting to this.

Anwar and his government are thus in a conundrum – open confrontation with the monarch at the cost of Malay votes or accede to his decree and lose crucial non-Muslim votes.

Anwar has, in the past 42 months as prime minister, always backed off from openly opposing the country’s King and nine hereditary monarchs. This has allowed the monarchs, who had their powers curtailed through two bruising constitutional crises during the rule of strongman Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in 1983 and 1992, to flex their muscles of late.

In the pig farming impasse, Anwar will have to decide – capitulate and lose a major portion of his support base or confront the Sultan and lose any hope of coming to power in what will again be a fractious general election as in 2022, which resulted in the country’s first-ever hung parliament after no single coalition secured the 112 seats required for a simple majority. The then king forced Anwar into an unwieldy coalition with the corruption-ridden United Malays National Organization, which has continued to frustrate his efforts to govern effectively ever since.

When President Prabowo Subianto stood before thousands of workers at Jakarta’s National Monument to mark May Day and asked whether his signature free nutritious meals program was beneficial, he likely didn‘t expect the united roar that came back: no. The response, blunt and unambiguous, appeared to catch him off guard. For a brief moment, he fell silent before attempting to reassure the crowd, insisting that the initiative—known as Makan Bergizi Gratis, or MBG—was “very important for many Indonesian children who are malnourished, whose bodies are small, whose cells are not developing.”

The exchange captured growing unease surrounding one of Prabowo’s most ambitious and expensive policy undertakings. For months, he has invoked the program in speeches at home and abroad, presenting it as a cornerstone of his vision to improve public health and human capital. Just two days before the May Day incident, speaking at a groundbreaking ceremony for an industrial downstreaming project, he reiterated his commitment to see it through. Acknowledging its shortcomings, he pledged to fix them. Critics, he suggested, opposed the initiative not on its merits but out of fear that it might succeed.

Yet beyond the rhetoric, scrutiny has intensified. In Indonesia’s digital public sphere, a vigilant online community has begun to perform what some have called a “citizen audit,” combing through procurement data and budget allocations tied to the program. Their findings, drawn largely from publicly accessible government databases, have raised questions not only about inefficiency but also about the possibility of systemic corruption.

Red Flags

An examination of procurement data from Inaproc, the government’s official platform managed by the National Public Procurement Agency, reveals that in 2025 the National Nutrition Agency (BGN), tasked with implementing MBG, oversaw spending totaling approximately Rp6.2 trillion (about US$3.571 million). This figure encompassed 1,089 procurement packages executed through various mechanisms, including tenders, direct procurement and electronic catalog purchases.

But a closer look at how that money was allocated has fueled concern. The largest expenditures weren’t directed toward food—the program’s central promise—but toward supporting infrastructure and logistics. Vehicle procurement and leasing accounted for roughly Rp1.39 trillion, followed by the construction of kitchens at Rp1.26 trillion, and hardware and computer equipment at Rp830 billion. By contrast, the budget allocated specifically for food amounted to just Rp242.8 billion, significantly lower than spending on items such as clothing (Rp622.3 billion) and training programs (Rp464.6 billion).

Among the most contentious purchases was the acquisition of 21,801 electric motorcycles intended for operational use, each priced between Rp41 million and Rp43 million. The contract was awarded to a private firm, Yasa Artha Trimanunggal, with interests spanning logistics, medical equipment and international trade. Public attention quickly turned to the firm’s background, including reports that one of its senior executives had previously been questioned as a witness in a high-profile corruption case involving the distribution of social assistance funds in 2020.

The clothing budget has also drawn scrutiny. With expenditures reaching over Rp600 billion, the allocation covered uniforms, official footwear and accessories. Even seemingly minor items, such as socks, came under question: Rp6.9 billion was spent on socks priced at around Rp100,000 per pair, with no clear branding or adherence to national quality standards. Critics argue that such pricing far exceeds typical market rates.

Technology procurement is another flashpoint. The government allocated Rp508.4 billion for tablet computers to be used in a development initiative involving university graduates. Each unit was priced at Rp17.9 million—nearly double the estimated market value for comparable specifications, which hover around Rp8 million. Analysts say this discrepancy suggests a potential markup that could amount to hundreds of billions of in inflated costs.

Further controversy has surrounded the procurement of items deemed tangential to the program’s core objective of improving nutrition. These include expenditures on shoe polish and brushes totaling Rp1.5 billion, undershirts costing Rp 4.5 billion, belts at Rp 5 billion and towels reaching Rp 3.7 billion. For many observers, such spending appears disconnected from the stated mission.

Accountability and Oversight

Concerns have also emerged about how funds are distributed within the program’s operational framework. The head of the National Nutrition Agency, Dadan Hindayana, acknowledged that 1,720 nutrition service units had been temporarily suspended. Despite this, the kitchens associated with these units reportedly continued to receive daily incentives of Rp6 million. The agency has argued that certain activities remain ongoing during the suspension period, justifying the payments.

Charles Honoris, deputy chairman of a parliamentary commission overseeing health and employment affairs, questioned the logic of providing such incentives, particularly in cases where negligence may have contributed to food poisoning. He also cited discrepancies in the reported number of suspended units, noting that some accounts place the figure as high as 3,778. “How is it possible,” he asked, “that those responsible for failures resulting in public harm continue to receive substantial daily payments?”

Legal experts and anti-corruption advocates have pointed to broader structural issues. Wana Alamsyah, a researcher with Indonesia Corruption Watch, has argued that the procurement patterns suggest potential violations of law, including inflated pricing and weak budget planning. He estimates that the markup on tablet procurement alone could reach Rp7.95 million per unit, translating into a total potential overpayment of approximately Rp238.5 billion.

There are also indications that procurement rules may have been circumvented. Regulations require high-value contracts—those exceeding Rp100 billion —to be approved at the highest level of budget authority. However, data suggests that some contracts may have been artificially divided into smaller packages to avoid this requirement, a practice explicitly prohibited under existing regulations.

While electronic purchasing systems are designed to streamline procurement, critics argue that they can also obscure accountability. Items listed in official catalogs are often priced higher than those available in the open market, and the system allows for direct appointment of suppliers without competitive bidding under certain conditions.

A Program That Draws from Education Funds

Prabowo has remained steadfast, framing the program as a moral and economic imperative, arguing that state resources must be directed toward the welfare of the people. He has also claimed that the funds used to finance such initiatives come from savings achieved by curbing corruption.

Yet budget documents tell a more complicated story. In the 2026 state budget, a significant portion of the funding for MBG—amounting to Rp 223 trillion —has been drawn from the education sector. This represents a reduction of nearly 29 percent from the total education allocation of Rp769.1 trillion, leaving approximately Rp 546 trillion, or just 14.2 percent of total government spending, for education.

The National Nutrition Agency’s total budget has surged to Rp 335 trillion in 2026, a fivefold increase from the previous year. Of this, more than 83 percent is sourced from education funds, with the remainder coming from health and economic allocations.

The reallocation has prompted legal challenges. Critics argue that diverting such a large share of education funding violates constitutional mandates to prioritize education spending. They warn that the cuts could undermine efforts to improve teacher quality, expand access to schooling and upgrade educational infrastructure.

Government officials have defended the move by classifying the MBG program as part of educational spending, asserting that improved nutrition enhances students’ ability to learn. Critics, however, dismiss this as an overly broad interpretation that stretches the definition of education beyond reasonable limits.

Warnings of Systemic Risk

Independent watchdogs have issued stark warnings. In its 2025 annual report, the national anti-corruption commission highlighted the risks associated with large-scale programs lacking robust regulatory frameworks and oversight mechanisms. It pointed to vulnerabilities including conflicts of interest, weak accountability and the potential for criminal misconduct.

A separate study by Transparency International Indonesia, titled “Corruption Risks Behind the Free Nutritious Meals Program,” using a corruption risk assessment framework, concluded that the program’s design and implementation create fertile ground for systemic corruption.

Among the key findings were the absence of a strong legal foundation at the program’s inception, opaque processes for selecting implementing partners and procurement practices that fall short of transparency standards. The report also noted that some implementing organizations have ties to political, military or law enforcement figures, raising questions about conflicts of interest.

The scale of the program—targeting nearly 83 million beneficiaries with a projected budget of up to Rp400 trillion —further amplifies these risks. Without clear prioritization of recipients, analysts warn, the initiative could strain public finances while failing to deliver meaningful improvements in nutrition.

“The program appears promising on paper,” said Agus Sarwono, a researcher involved in the study, “but it does not meet the prerequisites of sound governance. The high vulnerability to corruption suggests that it should be suspended to prevent further losses to the state.”

The strength of India’s representative democracy, where voters produce surprise results that throw out long-established governments, has been demonstrated by results in the country’s recent state assembly elections, notably in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu.

In Bengal, the Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) is launching a new political era by defeating the incumbent Mamata Banerjee’s regional All India Trinamool Congress (TMC). Banerjee has ruled for almost 15 years, following 23 years of continuous Communist (CPI-M) governments, and she seemed almost unstoppable.

Banerjee, who lost her own seat, has alleged that the BJP “looted” more than 100 seats to give it around 206 out of a total 294. The TMC has only 81.

There are likely to be more allegations of election fixing and controversy, partly involving a recent election commission that removed about 9 million names from the voting lists to eliminate alleged illegal migrants from Bangladesh and duplicate entries.

The state suffers from slow industrial growth and serious unemployment so expectations will be high that the BJP will bring in a new era of job creation with investment infrastructure development and welfare schemes.

The result is a blow for the country’s opposition parties and a victory for Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister. He had set Bengal as his next major target to build on the party’s established strength across east, west, and much of north India – when these results are confirmed, it will be in power in 20 out of 28 states.

In the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, a new party, the Tamizhaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) or Tamil Nadu Victory Federation, founded just two years ago by Joseph Vijay, a top film star has won control with 108 seats out of a total 234. The TVK will need to find allies to form a government. Vijay, who is a big earner with a charismatic presence and is known for his charity work with education, disaster relief and other social initiatives, has said he is retiring from films.

The result confirms the power of the cinema in the state’s politics because the two long-running regional parties, the DMK and AIADMK, which the TVK is ousting, were also originally founded by film stars. Between them, they have governed since 1967.

Vijay has promised a break from decades of corrupt dynastic rule and a focus on development and jobs for youth, emphasizing Tamil regional pride and opposition to Hindu nationalism. It was expected that he would make a mark, but his victory seemed unlikely and was suggested by only one of half a dozen exit polls. Sometimes called kaattin singam, which is Tamil for “lion of the jungle”, Vijay, 51, has a big image and a charismatic presence. He said he was retiring from films when he founded his political party and is now known for his charity work with education, disaster relief and other social initiatives.

Also in southern India, a coalition headed by the Gandhi family’s Indian National Congress has won in Kerala, providing the party with a rare and much-needed victory. Priyanka Gandhi, whose brother Rahul is the ineffectual leader of the party, holds a parliamentary seat in the state.

Significantly, the BJP has won only three seats in Kerala and one in Tamil Nadu, demonstrating Modi’s failure to win over the south apart from the tiny southern enclave of Puducherry where it is playing a small role in a victory of its National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The NDA is also holding onto power in the eastern state of Assam.

The West Bengal victory, which was far from certain, is a major boost for Modi’s image, though substantial credit will go to the BJP’s chief election strategist, Amit Shah, who is Modi’s main ally and tough home minister.

Modi has largely recovered from the BJP doing far less well than had been expected in the 2024 general election, but he has had recent setbacks, and India is facing economic problems from the US-Iran war, including rising energy prices.

The government was defeated last month in parliament for the first time in more than a decade over legislation that would have reserved 33% seats for women in parliament’s Lok Sabha and state assemblies. It would, however, have also changed parliament’s seat allocation, reducing representation from areas that include southern India.

Internationally, problems have escalated with US President Donald Trump, who has been developing a close relationship with Pakistan’s army chief, Asam Munir. That led to Pakistan achieving a level of international recognition that it has craved for decades when Trump picked Munir and Shehbaz Sharif, the prime minister, as mediators in the US-Iran war, with talks being held in the capital, Islamabad.

This shocked Modii’s government, which has painted Pakistan for many years as a virtually untouchable terrorist state. Foreign minister S. Jaishankar had been pursuing a policy of multi-alignment that straddled relations with the US, Russia and China as well as Israel and Iran, but had not envisaged Pakistan slipping through the network as a major player.

Modi said yesterday in a statement that the West Bengal victory “will be remembered forever. People’s power has prevailed, and BJP’s politics of good governance has triumphed. I bow to each and every person of West Bengal”.

He may, however, not find it easy to clamp the BJP’s nationalism onto the state. He dreams of replacing regional identities with country-wide Hindu nationalism and the Hindi language, but he will encounter strong resistance because of strong Bengali loyalties, not least to the Bengali language.

The BJP victory possibly reflects voter apathy for incumbent Banerjee and her TMC government more than it does desire for the BJP and all it stands for. The TMC has a strong grassroots network and continuing representation in local politics, so politically charged opposition and demonstrations, sometimes violent, are likely.

Shah managed to organize a victory, but ruling the Bengalis may not be so easy.

John Elliott is Asa Sentinel’s South Asia correspondent. He blogs at Riding the Elephant.

At a moment when Washington is urging Beijing to step up as a global crisis manager, China is doing something far more unsettling: nothing. With the United States grappling with overlapping conflicts and strained alliances, Beijing’s refusal to intervene isn’t hesitation; it is by design. China is allowing American power to dissipate under the weight of its own commitments. In today’s geopolitical contest, influence is no longer seized through action alone; it can be accumulated, quietly and deliberately, including through strategic absence.

The Logic of Strategic Absence

For much of the post-Cold War era, global leadership has been equated with visibility: diplomatic activism, military deployments, and crisis mediation. The United States has embodied this model, positioning itself as the indispensable power in regions ranging from the Middle East to East Asia. Yet this approach has come at mounting cost. Prolonged engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled with ongoing commitments across Europe and the Indo-Pacific, have stretched American resources and political will.

China, by contrast, has opted for a different path, rejecting the assumption that great power status requires constant intervention. Despite its growing economic stakes in volatile regions, Beijing has shown little appetite for direct involvement in conflict resolution. This is particularly evident in the Middle East, where China remains heavily dependent on energy imports. According to the International Energy Agency, China is the world’s largest crude oil importer, with a significant share of its supplies passing through critical chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz

Conventional strategic thinking would suggest that such dependence should compel China to play a more active security role. Instead, Beijing has largely relied on a combination of diplomatic neutrality (and disastrous American bumbling) to navigate the complexity of its ties with most warring Middle Eastern states and economic engagement. Even in moments of heightened tension—whether involving Iran, Saudi Arabia, or broader regional instability—China has avoided entanglement in security commitments that could draw it into protracted conflicts.

This posture is not merely defensive. It reflects a calculated understanding of the risks associated with intervention. Military involvement can generate unintended consequences, erode domestic support, and expose vulnerabilities. By staying on the sidelines, China preserves flexibility while allowing others—primarily the United States—to bear the costs of maintaining order.

Benefiting from American Overextension

China’s strategic restraint becomes more consequential when viewed alongside the US’s evolving position. Washington’s global commitments haven’t diminished; if anything, they have expanded in response to new challenges. The war in Ukraine, tensions in the South China Sea, and instability in the Middle East have all demanded sustained attention and resources. This pattern of engagement has prompted growing debate within the United States about the limits of its global role. The most visible limit overextension imposes is the accumulation of commitments that can undermine strategic coherence. The US security posture vis-à-vis the Middle East amidst an ongoing war on Iran is different from its changing commitments with Europe in the middle of a similar military conflict involving Russia and Ukraine.

China appears to be capitalizing on this dynamic. By refraining from direct involvement, Beijing avoids the reputational and material costs associated with failed interventions while benefiting from the relative decline of American influence in regions where U.S. policies have generated fatigue or skepticism.

The Middle East offers a telling example. While the United States remains a central security actor, its role has become increasingly contested. Public opinion in several regional states reflects ambivalence toward American policies, particularly in the wake of military interventions and shifting strategic priorities. China, meanwhile, has expanded its economic footprint through initiatives such as the Belt and Road Initiative, positioning itself as a partner focused on development rather than security dominance

Quiet Gains in Southeast Asia

Nowhere is China’s strategy of strategic absence more consequential than in Southeast Asia. The region sits at the intersection of great power competition, yet its states have consistently resisted binary alignments. China’s approach—combining economic integration with selective restraint—has proven well suited to this environment.

Empirical evidence supports this trend. The ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute’s State of Southeast Asia 2024 Survey found that while trust in major powers fluctuates, China remains the most influential economic actor in the region, with 59.5 percent of respondents identifying it as the leading economic power.

While China does have territorial disputes with several states in the region, importantly, Beijing has still achieved this position without assuming a dominant security role. In disputes such as those in the South China Sea, Beijing has pursued incremental gains while avoiding large-scale confrontation. This calibrated assertiveness allows China to advance its interests without provoking the kind of unified regional backlash that might follow more aggressive actions.

The US, meanwhile, continues to emphasize security partnerships and deterrence, particularly with countries like the Philippines. While these ties remain significant, they don’t automatically translate into broader regional alignment. Southeast Asian states have consistently signaled a preference for hedging—engaging both Washington and Beijing to maximize their strategic autonomy.

China’s relative restraint reinforces this dynamic. By not forcing a stark choice between alignment and opposition, Beijing enables regional actors to maintain flexible foreign policies. Over time, this has contributed to a gradual normalization of China’s influence, even in the face of lingering distrust.

The Future of Power Without Presence

China’s strategy raises a deeper question about the evolving nature of global power: can influence be sustained without the burdens of leadership? Thus far, Beijing’s approach suggests that it can—at least under certain conditions. By allowing the United States to remain the primary provider of security while expanding its own economic and diplomatic reach, China has found a way to reshape the balance of influence at relatively low cost.

Yet this model may not be indefinitely sustainable. As China’s overseas interests grow, so too will the pressures to protect them. The expansion of Chinese investments, citizens, and supply chains across volatile regions could eventually necessitate a more active security role. The challenge for Beijing will be to manage this transition without replicating the very patterns of overextension it has thus far avoided.

For the United States, the implications are equally significant. Competing with China may require not only strengthening alliances and capabilities but also reconsidering the scope of its global commitments. If strategic absence proves to be a viable form of power, then constant engagement may no longer be the default path to influence.

The emerging contest between Washington and Beijing is therefore not simply about who acts more decisively, but about who acts more wisely and when. In that contest, China’s refusal to move may turn out to be one of its most consequential moves of all.

Dr Salman Rafi Sheikh is an assistant professor of politics at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Pakistan. He is a long-time contributor on international affairs to Asia Sentinel.

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The United States may well have decided that cultivating ties with Cambodia, whose top leaders have been connected to massive cybercrime operations mostly run by Chinese gangsters, may not have been worth it because of the cost to US and other citizens of the world from the scam centers, online investment fraud rings in which victims are cultivated like fattened pigs for slaughter, then deceived into depositing funds into fraudulent investment platforms.

The US blitz may well have dented attempts earlier this year by officials including US War Secretary Pete Hegseth to cozy up to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, a son of longtime strongman Hun Sen amid a flailing Cambodian economy, renewed Thai border tensions and a prolonged downturn in real estate. Washington has responded to a move for friendly ties by Hun Manet, reported Asia Sentinel on January 19, in a bid to blunt Chinese interests in Southeast Asia. Cambodia is perhaps China’s closest friend in ASEAN.

“Geopolitical consideration, especially vis-a-vis China, which has a larger-than-life presence in Cambodia, was certainly at the back of the American authorities’ minds, but ultimately they must have felt that the sheer gravity of the harms – ranging from financial frauds to modern slavery – outweighed coddling Hun Sen’s cronies to pry him and them away from China’s sphere of influence,” said a Malaysian analyst who asked to remain nameless.

At the same time, however, the US offensive against scam operations in Myanmar and Cambodia, may not be extensive enough to stem the growth of the scam centers, analysts say.

“The US is using standard law enforcement procedures for criminal activities that require a much more creative approach. Taking out top leaders won’t solve this problem, more junior members step in to take control,” Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, told Asia Sentinel. “Scam centers proliferate in areas controlled by armed groups that have traditionally been allied with the Myanmar military. More support should be given to ethnic administrations in border areas which are trying to stamp out these centers.”

Myanmar is blacklisted by the FATF, the Paris-based financial action task force, because of the risk of money laundering and lack of financial controls, he added. “More should be done to investigate if it how the banking sector in Myanmar is being used to launder scam center money.”

On April 23, the US Department of Justice announced a series of actions by the Scam Center Strike Force against the compounds, which have defrauded Americans of billions of US dollars. The actions include criminal charges against two Chinese nationals who managed a Myanmar cryptocurrency investment fraud compound and attempted to open another in Cambodia, the seizure of a Telegram messaging app channel used to recruit human trafficking in Cambodia to impersonate as US cops, and restrictions on over US$700 million in cryptocurrency alleged to be tied to money laundering from cryptocurrency scams. Huang Xingshan, also known as “Ah Zhe” and “Huang Xing Saan,” and Jiang Wen Jie, also known as “Jiang Nan,” managed cryptocurrency investment fraud operations at the Shunda compound in Min Let Pan, Myanmar.

“Despite ongoing efforts to combat them, scam centers remain highly profitable, leading to the emergence of alternative centers that continue these illegal activities. This shift complicates efforts to apprehend these criminals. It resembles the game Whack-A-Mole; these centers pop up, get shut down, and then reappear elsewhere,” said Matthew Friedman, chief executive officer (CEO) of the Mekong Club.

“That is very likely as this sort of scam centers and will pop up ubiquitously across those parts of Southeast Asia and perhaps even some other parts of the world where local law enforcement is at best cursory and at worst in collusion with the scam perpetrators,” said the Malaysian analyst. He pointed out that scam centers alternated between Myanmar and Cambodia.

The Shunda compound operated from at least January to November 2025, when it was seized by the Karen National Liberation Army of Burma, according to the US Justice Department’s announcement. After it was seized, Huang and Jiang relocated to another scam compound in Cambodia where they attempted to continue their operations, the US Justice Department announcement said. In early 2026, Huang and Jiang decided to return to Burma via Thailand, the US Justice Department added, and were arrested on immigration charges by Thai law enforcement in early 2026.

There is also evidence, recently reported by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, that the notorious scam company Prince Group, shut down in Cambodia earlier this year, may be moving some operations to East Timor.

Geopolitical contest in Cambodia

On April 23, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned a well-connected Cambodian Senator, Kok An, who allegedly controls scam compounds throughout the country, as well as 28 individuals and companies in his network.

“US sanctions against Cambodian Senator Kok An, a close ally of former Prime Minister Hun Sen, go beyond just addressing cybercrime,” said Friedman. “They directly challenge the involvement of the ruling elite in transnational illicit activities. By targeting this inner circle, the US aims to reduce the influence of Chinese-linked criminal networks in Southeast Asia, support regional human rights efforts, and safeguard US national security.”

The sanctioned companies include two of Kok An’s Cambodian companies, Crown Resorts and Anco Brothers. Kok An’s hospitality company, Crown Resorts, owns casinos, resorts and other buildings in Poipet, Sihanoukville, Bavet, and other Cambodian cities been converted into compounds from which criminal organizations conduct digital asset investment fraud and other scams, alleged the US Treasury. Kok An also allegedly provides services and employees including uniformed security guards through his other company, Anco Brothers, which also holds the license for the casinos operating on the properties, nearly all of which are connected to casinos which serve to launder the proceeds of scams.

In July 2025, Thai police raided at least 26 properties in Bangkok and other Thai provinces – most registered under Sok An’s children’s names – seizing assets worth over Bt1.1 billion (US$30 million), which may well have played a role in the brief but bloody border war between Cambodia and Thailand in the middle of 2025. The raids came after the Thai Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant accusing Kok An of involvement in a transnational criminal organization. Thai investigators sought the warrant after discovering that his casinos in Poipet, just across the border from Thailand’s Sa Kaeo province, were hosting scam operations targeting Thai nationals. Thai arrest warrants for Kok An’s three children were issued a week later, namely Juree, Phu Cherin, and Kittisak, according to media reports.

On July 8, 2025, Hun Sen, now president of the Cambodian Senate, said in a social media post, “Regarding recent commentary, several Thai authorities, media outlets, and members of the public have stated that the investigation and crackdown on Kok An is due to his close ties with Hun Sen. Therefore, the Thai court should also launch an investigation into Thaksin, since it is widely known that Thaksin is extremely close to me—so close, in fact, that he even has a reserved room at my home.”

On June 15, 2025, Hun Sen held a telephone call with Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, a daughter of former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, in a bid to defuse tensions along the Thai-Cambodian border. Later that day, Hun Sen confirmed he had posted a recording of the phone call on his Facebook page, which sparked a furor in Thailand and caused Paetongtarn’s resignation.

On April 24, Wang held talks with Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul in Bangkok, where China and Thailand agreed to strengthen collaboration in fighting online scams. During Wang’s visit to Cambodia on April 22, he called for the complete eradication of scam centers in Cambodia, which has enslaved many Chinese citizens. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet replied that Cambodia is willing to strengthen cooperation with China on cracking down on scam centers, reported Xinhua, a Chinese state news agency.

However, Amnesty International is sceptical. Analysis of licensing documents issued by Cambodia’s Commercial Gambling Management Commission (CGMC) shows that casino owners are in control of buildings and sites where human rights abuses have been documented in at least 12 locations in the Southeast Asian nation, said an Amnesty International report on April 2. “The casinos’ plans were recognized by the CGMC in December and January – during the country’s supposed nationwide crackdown on scamming compounds. The approved businesses include three Crown casinos owned by Anco Brothers Co. Ltd., one of the most powerful companies in Cambodia,” the report added.

“At a time when the government says it is dismantling the scamming industry, the evidence shows it is simultaneously recognizing the plans for casino properties where abusive scamming compounds are run,” Amnesty International’s Co-Regional Director Montse Ferrer said. This contradiction raises urgent questions about whether Cambodian regulators are legitimizing companies linked to grave abuses,” said Ferrer.

Toh Han Shih is a Singaporean writer in Hong Kong and a regular contributor to Asia Sentinel.

Alex Vatanka is a leading expert on Iranian politics and US-Iran relations. Vatanka is a Senior Fellow and founding Director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C. Born in Tehran, he specializes in Iran’s domestic power struggles, foreign policy, and regional security dynamics, including tensions with the U…

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