Asia News

The Daily Signal delivers Asia-Pacific news with reporting and conservative commentary on regional security challenges, U.S. military alliances, China containment strategy, Taiwan defense, North Korea threats, economic competition, and America’s vital interests in the Indo-Pacific region.
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    • News

    Debt Colonization in Japan

    Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of the accompanying video from professor Peter St. Onge. Japan just fired its stunningly unpopular prime minister, Fumio Kishida, replacing him with a new guy who, in just a few short months, will be just as stunningly unpopular. Why? Because Japan has gone so far down the…
    Peter St. Onge
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    • Opinion

    Time to Forge Greater Private Sector Partnerships to Strengthen US-Japan-South Korea Cooperation

    The U.S. hosted a summit at Camp David with Japan and South Korea just over a year ago, so this is a timely opportunity to reflect on the strategic significance and imperative of making trilateral cooperation more pragmatic, especially in enhancing economic security and freedom partnerships. The summit on Aug. 18, 2023, paved a path…
    Anthony B. Kim
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    • News

    W.Va. Lawmaker Aims to Ban Euthanasia in State Constitution: ‘We Want to Send a Message’

    In the summer of 2016, Canada legalized euthanasia, also known as a “medical assistance in dying” (MAID) law. The current policy states only those with “a serious and incurable illness, disease, or disability” are eligible to die by assisted suicide. However, by 2027, the country plans to allow people with mental illness to choose death as well….
    Sarah Holliday
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    • Opinion

    Japan’s ‘Carry Trade’: Tokyo Breaks the World

    Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of the accompanying video from professor Peter St. Onge. Did Japan just break the world? The central bank clowns who make a living torturing Japan’s economy have spent three decades stepping on every banana peel in the zoo. It looks like they just hit a big one….
    Peter St. Onge
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    • Opinion

    Japan’s Population Implosion Is an Economic Time Bomb

    Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of the accompanying video from professor Peter St. Onge. Japan is running out of people. It will get worse—and we’re next. Last week, Japan’s government announced the country lost 861,000 people last year as the country’s fertility rate—the average number of babies a woman is expected to…
    Peter St. Onge
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    • Opinion

    Impending Japanese Sale of US Dollars Could Trigger Major US Economic Turmoil

    Editor’s note: The following is a lightly edited transcript of the accompanying video from professor Peter St. Onge. Japan is on the verge of a fire sale of hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. debt that could crash Treasury markets already teetering on the edge. Just another exciting day for de-dollarization as Japan’s collapse…
    Peter St. Onge
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    • Opinion

    As an Asian American, I Say DEI Must Go

    As someone who was involuntarily used as a poster child for Asian American and Pacific Islander month by my university, yet listened to some classmates rant that Asian Americans “would be nowhere without black people,” take it from me: Diversity, equity, and inclusion offices make racism worse, not better. Nobody should wonder whether circling their…
    Stephanie Samsel
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    • Opinion

    China’s Maritime Gamble: A Departure From Gray-Zone Coercion in East Asia

    Surges in military aggression near Taiwan since President Lai Ching-te’s inauguration last month are defining a provocative new Chinese military posture. At the same time, violent skirmishes with the Philippines are breaking out in the South China Sea, around Second Thomas Shoal. Beijing’s new commitment to escalation is a marked departure from its signature gray-zone…
    Brent Sadler
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    • Opinion

    North Korea’s Bizarre Balloon Stratagem: Sending Trash, Feces to South Korea

    Just when longtime North Korea watchers thought they had seen it all, Pyongyang managed to surprise them. The world has seemingly become inured to North Korea’s steadily escalating nuclear and missile threats and extensive human rights atrocities. Launches of new, more deadly ICBMs no longer merit coverage in U.S. media. But Pyongyang has come up with a new way…
    Bruce Klingner
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    • Opinion

    Election Loss for South Korea’s Ruling Party Unlikely to Affect Pro-US Security Policies

    South Korea’s liberal opposition parties scored a decisive victory in the recent National Assembly elections, routing the ruling conservative party of President Yoon Suk Yeol. The election earlier this month was seen as a referendum on Yoon’s first two years in office and the results risk turning him into a lame duck for the rest…
    Bruce Klingner
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    • News

    Biden Says Enhanced Military Alliance With Japan ‘Not Aimed’ at China

    Amid increasing suspicion of China’s aggression, the leaders of the United States and Japan are touting an “enhanced” security agreement.  “Our alliance we have with Japan is purely defensive in nature,” President Joe Biden said during a Rose Garden press conference Wednesday with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. “It’s not aimed at any one nation…
    Fred Lucas
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    • Opinion

    Xi, Putin ‘Want to Create Their Own New Rules,’ Asian Studies Expert Says

    Two world leaders, Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, did not attend the Group of 20 summit held in New Delhi, which concluded on Sunday. Erin Walsh, senior research fellow for international affairs in The Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center, says that “clearly, the two of them made a decision that they…
    Samantha Aschieris
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    • News

    High Court’s Ruling Against Racial Preferences Hailed by Asian Americans

    Asian Americans gathered outside the Supreme Court on Thursday to celebrate the court’s landmark ruling against affirmative action in college admissions. The decisions in Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and a companion case, Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. University of North Carolina, held that race-based admissions at…
    Elise McCue
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    • Opinion

    A Not-So-Secret US-South Korea Action Plan

    Policymakers in Washington and Seoul rightly suspect that by the 70th  anniversary of Korean-American relations, the agenda for the two nations is way more than just wrapping up the aftermath of the Korean War. No two countries have benefited more from the world’s free and open spaces than South Korea and the United States. This…
    James Carafano
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    • Opinion

    Time for US, Japan to Make Case for Adding South Korea to Group of 7 Nations

    As the global economy faces growing, complex challenges on multiple fronts, the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations needs to be reinvigorated to remain credible and relevant. South Korea is a fitting pivot for the much-needed regeneration of the G-7. Recognizing that necessity, jointly advocating the expansion of the G-7 to the Group of Eight…
    Anthony B. Kim
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    • Opinion

    Asian Studies Expert Suggests Ways to Diminish China’s Threat to Taiwan

    A leading Asian studies expert is weighing in on how the U.S. can diminish the threat China poses to Taiwan, even as tensions between the two countries remain high. “I think the first thing we need to do is clear a backlog of arms sales to Taiwan. We sell Taiwan advanced military hardware, and a…
    Samantha Aschieris
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    • Opinion

    Why US Should Roll Out Red Carpet for South Korean President

    South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s visit to Washington in late April will provide an opportunity for the U.S. to affirm and strengthen its bilateral relationship with an important ally. The Biden administration should receive Yoon with all the trappings of a state visit, the highest-level visit by a head of state, and Congress should…
    Bruce Klingner
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    • Opinion

    China’s Growing Naval, Air Operations in East Asia Represent Dangerous ‘New Normal’

    With the completion of China’s 20th Communist Party Congress, which included President Xi Jinping’s renewed vow to reunify the country with Taiwan, the future of a peaceful Asia is at greater risk. That danger is made all the more real by an increased Chinese military presence surrounding Taiwan and Japan’s southwestern islands. Earlier this year, when…
    Julianna Lee
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    • News

    ‘Horrendous Racial Discrimination’: Asian Activists Explain What’s at Stake in Supreme Court Cases

    The United States Supreme Court heard two affirmative action cases Monday related to allegations of discrimination at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The organization Students for Fair Admissions has sued both universities over their policies favoring race as a factor in deciding admissions, otherwise known as affirmative action, which…
    Mary Margaret Olohan
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    • Opinion

    A Victory for Life Over Euthanasia in Europe’s Human Rights Court

    Euthanasia was on the docket Tuesday at the European Court of Human Rights, and the right to life won. Although the human rights court didn’t rule against Belgium’s euthanasia law, it held that the country violated the right to life enshrined in Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights in the euthanasia of…
    Elyssa Koren
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