The Asia Cable

18/12/2025

Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed a mutual defense pact that echoes NATO-style language, but it is more a political signal than a binding guarantee. Sapna Suresh explains the strategic constraints that dampen the likelihood that either country will meaningfully come to the other's defense.

Read more below:

A symbolic move against Washington without genuine mutual defense.

16/12/2025

After 21 years of on-and-off negotiations, China and the Gulf Cooperation Council still have not reached a free trade agreement.

Officials have suggested the deal is more than 90% complete. So what is the remaining 10%, and why has it proven so difficult to close?

Read more below:

✍️ Alex Gintz

https://www.theasiacable.com/p/where-is-china-gcc-free-trade-agreement

07/11/2025

On the ground at : shade is scarce, seats are fewer, and lines at major pavilions stretch for 45–60 minutes. Still, attendees keep coming drawn by the chance to glimpse something better.

Nattan Plewissara captures both the strain and the spark of the months-long event.

Read the full report here:

With outages, infestations, and language gaps, Expo 25 wavers between mismanagement and marvel, its promise kept alive by people who still show up.

25/10/2025

India’s colonial past didn’t end with the British.

Sapna Suresh examines France’s forgotten empire in India and how echoes of that past persist in today’s strategic friendship between New Delhi and Paris.

India’s overlooked colonizer wasn’t as gentle as remembered.

11/08/2025

China and Qatar are calling their ties a “golden era,” but this gold is polished LNG contracts, not grand strategy.

Alex Gintz examines the decades-long gas deals, a modest stake in China’s asset sector, and careful political distance, which keep the relationship steady, predictable, and useful — exactly how both sides want it.

Qatar's peculiar position in Gulf affairs keeps China ties practical rather than strategic.

06/08/2025

ICYMI: North Korea has sent 12 million munitions and thousands of troops to Russia, becoming an indispensable part of Moscow’s war effort. Drake Tien writes that this growing dependence could reshape U.S. and allied strategy.

Read more: https://www.theasiacable.com/p/the-changing-dynamic-of-russo-dprk

01/08/2025

Despite perpetually tense relations, outright hostility between Iran and Pakistan has been rare. Sapna Suresh examines the state of relations between the two Islamic Republics and the "cold peace" that has constrained the deep mistrust between them.

Bound by geography and divided by history, the two Islamic Republics remain uneasy neighbors.

30/07/2025

China has confirmed its Fourth Plenum for October — but the agenda breaks with tradition.

Instead of focusing on Party reform or governance, this plenum will center on the 15th Five-Year Plan. That shift sends a clear message: the CPC now views economic stabilization as its top domestic priority. Alex Gintz examines what this change in focus signals about the Party’s internal calculus and how renewed attention to growth planning reflects deep economic concern among CPC leadership.

With weak household demand and strained local finances, China’s long-term growth strategy faces mounting structural pressure ahead of the 15th Five-Year Plan.

30/07/2025

Thaksin’s house of cards is collapsing, and his dynasty might go with it.

Nattan Plewissara breaks down the unraveling of Thailand’s 🇹🇭 most controversial political comeback. From exile to influence, and now to legal trouble, the Shinawatra family may be facing its most precarious moment yet.

His house of cards is trembling and his dynasty may not survive the fall.

26/07/2025

After tensions between Thailand and Cambodia boiled over along their shared border, both countries have adopted increasingly assertive postures as small-scale conflict broke out on July 24.

Nattan Plewissara runs through the conflict's course so far ⬇️

Both countries have blamed the other for the conflict's escalation as tensions continue to rise along their shared border.

16/07/2025

Resistance in Afghanistan persists, but barely.
As James Calderon writes, groups like the NRF and AFF are active, but fragmented and unsupported.

The Taliban’s biggest threat? Collapse from within.

Armed resistance to the Taliban continues, but its impact remains limited.

09/07/2025

Beijing says it wants more consumer-led growth. But the system still rewards overcapacity, investment, and control.

Until China shifts power and capital toward households, talk of a consumption pivot is just that: talk.

✍️ Nick Ayrton

When Premier Li Qiang told the “Summer Davos” crowd in Tianjin on June 25 that China can keep “relatively rapid” growth while moving from investment toward consumer spending, the applause drowned out a harsher ledger.