Karishma Vaswani, Columnist

Asia’s 2025 Will Be a Year of Upheaval and Uncertainty

Things could get very heated, very quickly.

December 23, 2024 at 8:00 PM UTC

Karishma Vaswani is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia politics with a special focus on China. Previously, she was the BBC's lead Asia presenter and worked for the BBC across Asia and South Asia for two decades.

President Xi Jinping and then-President Donald Trump in Beijing in 2017.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

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An impending trade war between the world’s two superpowers, tensions in Taiwan and the South China Sea, and a volatile North Korea are likely to dominate the Asian political agenda in 2025. Much will depend on the region’s relationship with US president-elect Donald Trump. During his first term, the America First policy he pursued isolated allies and antagonized Beijing and Pyongyang.

Here are five things that I’ll be paying attention to in what is shaping up to be a tumultuous year in Asian politics: