East Asia Explorer

The East Asia Explorer tracks evolving geopolitical trends, emerging security challenges, and progress towards regional integration in East Asia. It focuses on the ASEAN grouping, domestic and foreign policy developments in countries of East Asia and Oceania, great power contestation in the region, and India’s relations with ASEAN and its member countries. 

In this issue, Jayantika Rao dissects Myanmar’s December 28 elections—the first phase of a three-stage process that the junta is calling ‘democratic’. She argues that these polls are not about representation but about manufacturing legitimacy for military rule. With opposition parties barred, vast regions disenfranchised, and laws weaponised to silence dissent, the electoral machinery appears carefully designed to guarantee victory for the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).

In her piece, Divya Rai examines the advancing defence and military ties between Vietnam and the Philippines, along with then deepening collaboration on maritime security. She argues that China’s aggressive manoeuvres and intensifying pressure in the South China Sea have spurred a growing strategic convergence between Manila and Hanoi—a convergence that has long been inhibited by their own unresolved territorial disputes.

Amb. Biren Nanda examines the global economic shocks of 2025 and their far-reaching consequences for Southeast Asia. He points to escalating US-China trade tensions, tariff wars, Chinese manufacturing output, volatile capital flows, and the disruptive “China Shock 2.0” in high-tech exports as key stress tests for the region’s resilience. These forces, he argues, are reshaping supply chains, hollowing out local industries, and eroding ASEAN’s confidence in the US as a dependable trade partner. Nonetheless, he strikes a cautiously optimistic tone—suggesting that Southeast Asia can still chart a path to prosperity if it pivots toward stronger domestic consumption, builds resilience, and adapts to the realities of a post-globalization world.

To read East Asia Explorer, Vol. III, Issue 12, please see the PDF attached.