On August 4, Kazakhstani Minister for Trade and Integration Arman Shakkaliyev announced that the Russian e-commerce platform Wildberries would expand its warehouse capacity in the country. According to the minister, Wildberries plans to build 260,000 square meters of storage, split between Astana and Almaty, expanding its capacity more than eightfold from its current 46,000 square…
Vietnam’s President To Lam will next week embark on state visits to Australia and New Zealand, the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. In a statement, it announced that Lam, who also serves as general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), would travel to the two nations from August 9 to 14,…
Japan’s relationship with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) began before formal diplomatic relations were established. Although diplomatic relations were not normalized until 1972, the two countries had already created an unofficial trade mechanism in 1962 that enabled bilateral trade despite the absence of mutual diplomatic recognition. In a famous article published in Foreign Affairs…
The Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM)’s first parliamentary elections, scheduled for September 14 after years of postponement, will complete one of the central political commitments under the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB): the transition from an appointed government to an elected one. This milestone, however, will not mark the end of the…
In April 2026, a Murakami-class Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) destroyer transited the Taiwan Strait. Such passages have become more frequent amid rising tensions over Taiwan since 2025. Yet this instance triggered an unusually strong reaction from China. The reason was not the transit itself, but its timing. It occurred on April 17, the anniversary…
Within the past several weeks, China has announced a series of initiatives related to planetary defense. At the end of June, it unveiled plans to establish an asteroid early-warning network for planetary defense. A few days ago, China also released further details about its asteroid deflection mission, which has been under development for several years….
After launching its 15th Five-Year Plan (FYP) in March, the Chinese government has been publishing sectoral plans, including the 15th Five-Year Plan for Building a Beautiful China and the 15th Five-Year Plan for a New-type Energy System by the end of June. Apart from the domestic build-out of nuclear energy, both plans demonstrate China’s ambition…
The historic mass uprising of July-August 2024 brought an unprecedented political change to Bangladesh. The youth, known as Generation Z, played the most crucial role in this transformation. Following the fall of the autocratic regime, these young people expected their aspirations to be fulfilled. Nearly two years have passed, and a gap remains between their…
Despite the May meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump in Beijing, where the United States and China agreed to pursue a “constructive relationship of strategic stability,” strategic competition between the two countries continues to deepen beneath the surface. The expansion of national security-related measures targeting Chinese firms remains a central…
Foreign Minister Penny Wong has said she wants Australia to be an active, “architect” middle power – a stabilizer, mediator, and constructive partner in the Indo-Pacific. For anyone concerned about peace in Australia’s neighborhood, that is good to hear, because a number of factors are conspiring to make future conflict more likely: the return of…
