Commentary | Annalise Chang, Carlineissa Jean Francois, Masaharu Kai, Tom Le, and Ellie Sun, China’s Liabilities and Revising the Rising Power Narrative — Critical Asian Studies

From June 24 to July 31, the US will be participating in RIMPAC 2026 , the 30th iteration of the world’s largest international maritime exercise designed to enhance interoperability, improve disaster...

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Notes from the Field | Aidan Huang, “It took me one and a half years to enter the field”: A field note on the gaps of China’s area studies — Critical Asian Studies

Power went out again in N’Djamena. The low hum of the air conditioner vanished, leaving only the faint scrape of windblown dust against the window frame. Before that brief silence could let me catch m...

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Commentary | Ka Hang Wong, Might as Knowledge: Curriculum Reform, Epistemic Authority, and the Politics of Legitimacy in Hong Kong — Critical Asian Studies

Introduction: When Power Becomes Common Sense “I have all the guns and all the money. I can withstand challenge from without and from within. Am I right, comrade?” The provocation in Elaine Brown’s ...

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Notes from the Field | Sia X. Yang, No Pain, No Exit – Endurance and the Limits of Critique in China — Critical Asian Studies

1. Pain in contemporary China is not merely endured. It is organized, moralized, redistributed, and ultimately naturalized as value. To suffer is not simply to live under constraint; it is to demon...

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Commentary | Muhammad Nawfal Saleemi, Decolonizing the Transgender Debate — A View From South Asia — Critical Asian Studies

Over the past few years, the “trans question” has become more central to the cultural politics of right-wing movements around the world. These convergences are emblematic of a globalized right-wing wh...

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Notes from the Field | Moira Moeliono, Tristam Moeliono, Maria Brockhaus, and Grace Wong, Indonesia Inc.: A brief history of entrepreneurship in the name of development — Critical Asian Studies

Introduction Resource extraction and the moulding of people into the workings of a global commodity market has a long history in Indonesia. The colonial government first enabled and legitimised reso...

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Commentary | Jiahao Zhao, When War Turns Women into Flags: The Trouble with Rescue Politics — Critical Asian Studies

Mourning as a Political Image In Tehran’s Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, women gathered around new graves as families buried those killed in the latest round of war. A Reuters photograph from March 16 ...

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Notes from the Field | Roshni Brahma, Between "field" and "home": Experiences of doing ethnography with one’s own community in Northeast India — Critical Asian Studies

“You should have described the rituals in detail and more accurately. This is about our community, and the future generations are going to read this,” a young Boro colleague said to me after I had pub...

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Commentary | Imran Ahmed and Roshni Kapur, Reform, Accountability, and Legitimacy in Post-Hasina Bangladesh — Critical Asian Studies

Introduction In late 2025, the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh found former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina guilty in absentia and sentenced her to death. The trial reflected broader dem...

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Photo Essay | Stephen Black, Children of Vietnam: Reflections on a 1979 Photo Exhibition in Melbourne — Critical Asian Studies

Introduction The war in Vietnam ended fifty years ago when the communist forces of North Vietnam overran Saigon, then the capital of South Vietnam. Just three years later, in August and September 19...

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Commentary | Kanokrat Lertchoosakul, The Unexpected Ascendancy of Royal Local Bossism in Thailand’s 2026 Election — Critical Asian Studies

For nearly three decades, Thailand’s electoral arena seemed increasingly dominated by parties aligned with democratic and liberal forces, from Thai Rak Thai’s landslides to the rise of Move Forward...

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Special Series: "The Politicization of Influencers: Influencer Propaganda in Asia" | Jian Xu and Florian Schneider, Introduction: The Politicization of Influencers: Influencer Propaganda in Asia — Cri...

Introduction Since the 2020s, the politicization of influencers has become a prominent global trend. Social media influencers have increasingly engaged with electoral politics, social advocacy, soft...

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Notes from the Field | Richard Kamei and Sonam Dorji, Memoirs, and Fieldwork in Bhutan: Cultivating Rice, Sustaining Bonds — Critical Asian Studies

In the Himalayan region, in Bhutan and Northeast of India, rice is present in every passage of life from birth to death, and beyond. Rice is regarded as an elixir of life for the nourishment it provid...

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Notes From the Field | Chonglong Gu, Capturing mundane everyday grass-roots multilingualism in Yiwu, China — Critical Asian Studies

China has traditionally been seen as a relatively homogenous country. For extended periods of time, China pursued a path of being self-sufficient and was relatively closed for foreign business and tra...

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Commentary | Peter Chai and Charles Crabtree, Why did the Japanese public appear to vote against their own concerns? — Critical Asian Studies

In February’s lower house election, voters in Japan delivered the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) the most decisive single-party victory of the postwar era. Prime Minister Sanae Tak...

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Commentary | Bikash K. Bhattacharya & Soe Sandar Win, Everyday Pluralism and Practical Religion in Java — Critical Asian Studies

Indonesia’s religious diversity often conceals the complexity of faith on the ground. In Java, belief is less a matter of rigid categories than of everyday negotiation—unfolding in courtyards, coffee ...

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Commentary | Ka Hang Wong, Jimmy Lai’s Conviction Signals the End of Free Political Speech in Hong Kong — Critical Asian Studies

On 15 December 2025, Hong Kong’s High Court found media tycoon Jimmy Lai guilty of two counts of conspiring to collude with foreign forces under the Beijing-imposed national security law, along with...

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Commentary | Qudsia Kalsoom, Systemic Corruption and Elite Capture: Can Education Transform Pakistan? — Critical Asian Studies

IMF’s Governance and Corruption Diagnostic (2025) report published on 19th November 2025 has identified systemic corruption, elite capture, and politicised decision-making as structural features of P...

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Special Series: “New Directions in Africa-China Studies” | Jason Woerner, Ralph Litzinger, Charlie Piot, “Introduction: New Directions in Africa-China Studies” — Critical Asian Studies

The impetus to publish these essays in Critical Asian Studies emerged from a workshop at Duke University (US) in February 2025, entitled “New Directions in China-Africa Studies.” The workshop aimed ...

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Notes from the Field | Kymberley Chu, Diasporic Drifting: Experiencing Cultural Outsider/Ethnographic Insider Dynamics in Malaysia — Critical Asian Studies

“I don’t like this kind of weather; it looks ominous with the dark clouds, and it feels stuffy with no chance of a gentle breeze. I was going to say yi loh-hor [it’s raining] tapi [but] it’s not exact...

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Notes from the Field | Kymberley Chu, Diasporic Drifting: Experiencing Cultural Outsider/Ethnographic Insider Dynamics in Malaysia — Critical Asian Studies

“I don’t like this kind of weather; it looks ominous with the dark clouds, and it feels stuffy with no chance of a gentle breeze. I was going to say yi loh-hor [it’s raining] tapi [but] it’s not exact...

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Commentary | Levi McLaughlin, Sanae Takaichi and Japan’s Uncertain Politics/Religion Future — Critical Asian Studies

Local-Level Religious Activists Recently Upended Japan’s Political Order Japan ranks among the least religious countries in the world—according to recent survey data, as many as 80% or 90% of respon...

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Commentary | Levi McLaughlin, Sanae Takaichi and Japan’s Uncertain Politics/Religion Future — Critical Asian Studies

Local-Level Religious Activists Recently Upended Japan’s Political Order Japan ranks among the least religious countries in the world—according to recent survey data, as many as 80% or 90% of respon...

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Notes from the Field | Kamil Tilyabaev, Uzbek and Karakalpak Poetry in Translation — Critical Asian Studies

As a citizen of Uzbekistan, a post-Soviet Central Asian country, I am very pleased to share some pieces from Uzbek and Karakalpak literature translated into English for the CAS readers. Both literatur...

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Commentary | Ed Pulford and Trần Mai Hương, Socialist State Subjectivity: The Changing Stakes of Vietnam’s Ethnic Classification Policy — Critical Asian Studies

On August 16, 2024, the online newspaper of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Báo điện tử - Đảng Cộng sản Việt Nam , published a story covering the ongoing rollout of a new generation of biometric nati...

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Commentary | Annalise Chang, Tom Le, and Sebastian Maslow, A Historic Win, Familiar Politics: The Paradox of Takaichi’s LDP Leadership — Critical Asian Studies

On October 4, Sanae Takaichi secured a historic victory against four competitors to become the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)’s first female president since its founding in 1955. Two weeks later, sh...

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Commentary | Ka Hang Wong, Five Years On, the National Security Law Exposes the Joint Declaration’s Deception — Critical Asian Studies

It has been five years since China imposed the National Security Law (NSL) on Hong Kong. This imposition has sharply curtailed the freedoms and autonomy promised under the Sino-British Joint Declarat...

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