Karishma Vaswani, Columnist

Buckle Up for a Volatile Year of Trump-Xi, Taiwan and Kim

December 30, 2025 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.

They’ll be back.
Photographer: Sergey Bobylev/AFP/Getty

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This is the season when columnists turn to prophecy, and then congratulate themselves a year later for getting some of it right. I’m afraid I’m about to join the club.

As I predicted at the end of last year, Asia in 2025 revolved around three main forces: the blossoming bromance between President Donald Trump and China’s Xi Jinping, rising pressure on Taiwan, and a newly emboldened Kim Jong Un drawing closer to both Moscow and Beijing.