Tag: china
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The Real August Story: the Dominoes are falling soon
Hormuz stalled while oil reserves at a historic low, Washington rescued the yen, and ASEAN squeezed between the US and China. Aurora’s CEO unpacks August’s cascading geopolitical risks, and what comes next.
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Resource Nationalism: A Driving Force Reshaping Southeast Asia
Indonesia’s plan to channel key commodity exports through the state entity PT Danantara Sumberdaya Indonesia reflects a broader regional trend of increased government control in Southeast Asia. Businesses must now treat this shift as a structural priority and adapt to evolving policies across the region.
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Taiwan Talks: ASEAN Caught between Washington and Beijing
In conjunction with the 59th ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting held in Manila from 21-24 July 2026, our Founder & CEO Ivy Kwek sat down with Taiwan Talks‘ host Wen-Ti Sung and Chiew Ping Hoo of East Asia International Relations (EAIR) Caucus to discuss the progress of the Code of Conduct on the South China Sea…
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Chinese Bodies, American Brains: The Next US-China Battleground
By Yen-Sin Khu, Analyst Physical Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the next frontier of US-China technological competition. China is currently in the lead for the hardware race, but the building of the robot’s “bodies“ isn’t the only battleground. The real battleground includes the “brain;” the controlling software for the robots. Last month, Unitree, a Chinese startup…
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2026 at Midpoint: Turning Point, or Collision Course?
The first six months of 2026 have not been a slow build. They have been a rupture. The defining event of H1 2026 is the Iran war. The conflict that began on 28 February has triggered a chain of consequences with reverberating effects across the region and the globe. Three months on, there is no…
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The Trump-Xi Summit in Beijing: A Choreographed Détente
The most consequential bilateral meeting of the year has concluded. Just as we noted in our May newsletter, there were no major announcements, no substantive agreements, no structural breakthroughs. As the dust settles from President Trump’s 48-hour whirlwind Beijing tour that was wrapped in diplomatic pomp and pageantry, three of our Aurora Insights analysts break…
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Beyond the Deal: What China’s block of Meta’s Manus acquisition tells us about the new rules of AI
By Yen Sin Khu, Analyst Last month, China blocked Meta’s $2 billion acquisition of Manus, a Chinese-founded, Singapore-based AI startup. The timing is not incidental. At the peak of US-China AI competition, breakthrough technologies are no longer just commercial assets; they are instruments of national strategy. There is no longer a purely commercial decision for…
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Q1 2026: The Quarter That Rewrote the Risk Map
Q1 2026 did not ease in gently. The first three months of the year delivered a sequence of shocks that would have been considered unthinkable in any previous year, but increasingly looks like the new normal. On 3 January, US forces arrested Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro following airstrikes on military sites in Caracas, upending the…
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Southeast Asia is in the Crossfire of a War It Didn’t Start. Here’s What Companies Must Do Now.
The U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran have sent oil to near $120 a barrel early this week, paralysed Gulf air freight, and exposed the region’s dangerous dependency on a single chokepoint. Waiting for clarity is not a strategy. 14 days ago, the Middle East changed irrevocably. On February 28, U.S. and Israeli forces launched nearly 900 strikes…
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The 21st century resources war: Energy, Critical Minerals & Chips
Historically, wars were fought over natural resources. Today, a new, 21st-century iteration has emerged: a competition for the resources essential to the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI). The future positioning of world powers hinges on their securing and controlling the critical minerals sources, semiconductors and energy required for AI. In the past few years the…