BYD Decided to Build Where It Sells. Southeast Asia Said Yes.
A Thai plant that hit its ten-thousandth car in four months, and an Indonesian one now expected to employ 18,000. BYD's answer to Western tariffs was to export the factory, not the car.
Landlocked Kazakhstan Found Its Ocean on China's East Coast
The first physical project of the Belt and Road was a container yard in a Chinese port. It has become one of the busiest overland gateways between Asia and Europe.
Ninety-Two New Ways Out: Read the Map of China's Air-Freight Push
China opened 92 new international air cargo routes in six months. Their geography is a near-perfect map of where Chinese exports are actually going.
Stranded at the Border: How a Himalayan Flood Exposed Nepal's Chinese EV Boom
BYD and China's other automakers have turned Nepal into the world's No. 2 EV adoption market. A washed-out mountain bridge shows how fragile that success still is, and what it means for Chinese EV expansion elsewhere.
Where Is the World's Football Really Made?
Forward Sports has made the official ball for four straight World Cups from a single city in Pakistan. Robots have taken over less of the job than the "hand-stitched" reputation suggests.
The Asian Factory Behind Every Goal
Vietnam makes 51 percent of Nike's footwear worldwide, Indonesia 28 percent. A tariff regime aimed at China is landing on the countries that moved production out of it.
The $100 Billion Road Across Asia
The Asian Highway Network is more than 92 percent up to minimum standard, with $43.8 billion still needed for priority sections and Myanmar and Afghanistan the hardest gaps to close.
A Decade After Its Launch, Has China's AIIB Changed Development Finance?
Ten years in, AIIB has become the World Bank's largest co-financing partner rather than the rival Washington feared.
The New Great Game of Development Finance
ADB, AIIB, the World Bank, JICA and Chinese state banks increasingly co-finance the same projects they compete over.
From BTS to Semiconductors: How South Korea Turned Pop Culture into Economic Strategy
K-content exports reached $14.9 billion in 2025. Seoul has built beauty, food and gaming into the same export strategy as music and film.
Beyond Silicon Valley: Asia's Quiet AI Revolution
TSMC and SK Hynix supply the chips and memory behind nearly every major AI accelerator, regardless of which country's model runs on top.
The Shipping Routes That Built Modern Asia
Singapore's port set a container record in 2025 while Red Sea diversions added two weeks to Asia-Europe transit times.
162 and Falling: Japan's Weakest Yen in Forty Years Meets a Prime Minister Who Doesn't Want Higher Rates
Tokyo has spent a record $73.6 billion defending the yen this year. The currency fell through the defense anyway, with the prime minister's own policy document leaning against further rate hikes.
The $576 Billion Bet on a Rice-Farming Province: Inside Korea's Gwangju Chip Gambit
Samsung and SK Hynix are committing $518 billion to four new fabs in a region with the country's weakest chip-supplier base, according to government data.
Twenty-Eight Nanometers, Eleven Billion Dollars: India's Bet on Chips Nobody Else Wants to Make
Tata and ASML's $11 billion Dholera fab targets chip nodes a decade behind the frontier—a deliberate bet on automotive and 5G demand, not a consolation prize.
Hong Kong Wants to Be Asia's Fort Knox: Can 250 Tonnes of Gold Get It There?
A government-owned clearing company is racing toward 2,000 tonnes of vault capacity, courting Belt and Road-aligned central banks. Two earlier attempts at this already failed.
Twenty Olympic Pools a Day: Malaysia's AI Boom Runs Into Johor's Water Table
Data centers now draw nearly 200 times more water than ordinary industrial users. Johor has told the largest ones to wait.