When innovation is almost synonymous with digitalization, the global financial system (GFS) has become the cornerstone of digital developments. From continuous regulatory mapping to central bank digital currencies, the prevalence of technological advancements in the GFS is closely linked to efforts in preserving trust through real-time updating systems in databases accessible worldwide.

In daily transactions, these breakthroughs manifest through mobile banking and interoperable quick-response (QR) payments. While these are mainly viewed as a tool of convenience, their ubiquity is a vital indicator of financial connectivity. These integrated digital ecosystems serve as the structural pipelines for modern capital, trade, and tourism. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic accelerating the adoption of these advancements, gaps are continuously present in their implementation across different regions.

While Southeast Asia is in a regional race of introducing breakthroughs in digital finance, cash remains dominant in the Pacific Islands. With the scarcity of QR payment rails at the local level, the region’s fidelity to traditional finance approaches endangers its interoperability, as evidenced by declining correspondent banking connections at the consumer level. If this compounding disconnect persists, a systemic risk of exclusion from the GFS arises, as regional supply chains lose scaling capacity and high compliance costs continue to repel foreign direct investments.

Diagnosing the Pacific regional financial system

An analysis by the IMF underscores geopolitical tensions as a primary driver of global economic fragmentation. However, the geographic configuration of the Pacific Island countries (PICs) alone is enough to instigate fragmentation. Instead of operating as a unified, seamless economic zone, the region’s financial architecture is reduced to thin, isolated markets. At present, fragmentation is materializing at the regional level along three lines: currency zones, financial access, and institutional coverage.

While 42% of the PICs utilize domestic currencies, some utilize other foreign currencies, such as the United States dollar (USD), the Australian dollar (AUD), and the New Zealand dollar (NZD) (Graph 1). As part of the Compacts of Free Association (COFA) agreements with the United States, Palau, Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia transact in USD. Meanwhile, due to their small economic sizes, lack of monetary infrastructure, and Australia being a major trade partner, the legal tender of Kiribati, Nauru, and Tuvalu is the AUD. Conversely, the Cook Islands and Niue, being self-governing territories in free association with New Zealand, use the NZD. These disparities in currency zones indicate varying economic and geopolitical alignments with a major power and middle powers, creating a complex landscape of competing donor influences and fragmented regulatory standards, triggering fractures in the region’s financial system. Such inconsistencies establish an unfavorable climate for correspondent banking in the Pacific.

Graph 1: Currencies utilized in Pacific Island countries

Drawing from graph 2, the overall percentage of decline in correspondent banking relationships (CBR) in the Pacific region is the lowest at 60%, among its neighboring region, Southeast Asia (Δ = 32.4%), the transitioning economy, Central Asia (Δ = 32.1%), and the world average (Δ = 30%). In contrast, the Pacific sub-region of Melanesia has a marginally higher percentage than the main region with a 2.6% difference, while another sub-region, Polynesia’s proportion is slightly lower with a 6% difference.

As illustrated, CBR withdrawal is not a phenomenon that is unique to the region as de-risking became a global trend since the 2008-2009 financial crisis tightened the Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) compliance requirements. However, with regional transaction volumes and profits unable to compensate for high compliance costs, the Pacific is cutting ties with major banks at roughly double the rate of the rest of the world. This positions the Pacific as an outlier in the global trend, further supported by World Bank findings flagging the region as highly impacted by bank de-risking. More than a macroeconomic indicator, the decline in CBR shows up at the consumer level through (1) remittance costs getting more expensive, (2) unsustainable trade finance for local businesses, and (3) additional costs and risks for local banks forced into “nested” relationships.

Graph 2: Comparison of percentages of the decline in the correspondent banking relationships among the Pacific and comparable regions

Data scarcity as a significant bottleneck

As much as the region is at risk, it is even more difficult for correspondent banks, investors, and negotiators to price the risk accurately or extend credit fairly. Macroeconomic data in the Pacific Islands has become sparse, with the heat map (Graph 3) indicating that the latest actual data available on World Bank’s World Development Index and the Pacific Community’s Pacific Data Hub is dated 2024. Despite GDP being the most reported quarterly indicator globally, reported data across all countries regionally has lagged behind. Operating with paucity in statistics leaves little area for external partners to analyze the current state of the regional economy, affecting decisions on foreign direct investments (FDI) and credit ratings.

Furthermore, when PICs negotiate trade agreements, it is difficult to compare domestic figures due to unavailable aggregating data, creating a structural disadvantage that goes beyond political weakness. Moreover, as supply chain links require trade and logistics data to plan around, inconsistent data reporting, which is visible in Graph 3, weakens the credibility of a region and discourages multinational companies to route any pathway through there, regardless of whether the underlying fundamentals are operating normally. These interconnected issues produce a bottleneck that further reduces the economic activity and institutional capacity needed for efficient data infrastructures.

Graph 3: Heat map of macroeconomic data availability in the Pacific Island Countries (2000-2026)

To address this issue, the Statistics for Development Division of the Pacific Community formulated the Strategic Framework for Pacific Statistics 2022-2030, a long-term plan that “sets the vision, outcome, pathways, and key focus areas” to improve the region’s statistics system. On September 24-25 2026, the Pacific Statistics Standing Committee, a sub-group that plays a central role in implementing the framework, convened in a sixth meeting to review its mid-term progress. While officials mark that regional coordination has strengthened, there remains to be gaps in institutionalization, strengthening data use, and expanding current systems, which they identified as the focus for the second phase of implementation.

Beyond these initiatives, the current statistical scene of the Pacific region is heavily tied with the World Bank. To meet the Committee’s goal of institutionalizing the developments, it is important to ensure the regional ownership of methodology and infrastructure, and the external assistance remains transitional and as technical support. Additionally, strict adherence to the 2025/2027 review timelines may amplify headways toward effective Pacific data governance.

Where is the Pacific Island region in the global supply chain?

Transcending financing and data, the position of the Pacific Islands in the global supply chain is one of the best indicators of regional fragmentation and its exclusion from the GFS. While global maritime superpowers such as China, Singapore, and the Republic of Korea score far above the world average score of 100 in the Liner Shipping Connectivity Index (LSCI), the best-connected Pacific nation, Papua New Guinea, reaches only 10.63 (Graph 4), approximately 10% of the basic global baseline. Notwithstanding, the individual LSCI of PICs exhibit high dispersion, with Niue having the lowest index, whose LSCI sits roughly at one-tenth of Papua New Guinea’s.

Graph 4: Comparison of liner shipping connectivity index, as of 2024, among Pacific Island Countries

This dispersion is not incidental, but the physical layer of the trade finance and connectivity constraints explicitly drawn from the diagnosis. Weak liner connectivity is directly proportional to longer turnaround times and higher freight costs, which compound the non-tariff barriers already facing Pacific exporters. For firms deciding where to locate processing or assembly within a global value chain (GVC), connectivity of this magnitude is disqualifying before cost or labor considerations are even weighed. The consequence is a regional supply chain integrated on unfavorable terms: micro-states such as Niue and Tuvalu are structurally excluded from most GVC participation, while better-connected economies like Papua New Guinea and Fiji remain tethered to a global baseline they cannot realistically approach. Read alongside the region’s financial and data bottlenecks, this physical constraint completes a taxonomy of exclusion spanning data and infrastructural dimensions, reinforcing each other while demanding distinct policy responses.

Diversification, not in regional direction, but in revenue streams

With the Pacific currently enroute to rewrite their financial system, putting diversification at the core of its strategy might rectify their current situation. They may be able to turn their geographic distance from weakness into an opportunity for growth. Diversification, in this context, must operate on different levels simultaneously. At the national level, individual PICs may move beyond their present concentration in a narrow band of commodities toward export portfolios less exposed to single-commodity price shocks and better positioned within regional value chains. At the regional level, this same logic applies to infrastructure: improving port and maritime connectivity collectively, rather than individually, would narrow the wide LSCI dispersion diagnosed above and give even micro-states a viable path into global shipping networks they cannot pave alone. This strategy can potentially extend to alignment as well, both regionally and bilaterally. Rather than concentrating trade relationships and financial dependencies around a handful of partners, PICs stand to gain from deepening ties across a wider set of blocs and nations, reducing the risk that any single relationship’s withdrawal can destabilize the entire system.

Most of these reforms are achievable if the region pursues them en masse. The Pacific Islands Forum offers the clearest existing vehicle for pursuing these goals as a region, and the present moment may be more favorable than it is presented: as global attention increasingly turns toward Pacific geopolitics, PICs have a rare window to leverage that heightened interest into genuine negotiating power.

The absence of a QR code at a Pacific border crossing, then, is not a footnote to be overlooked. Beyond signaling exclusion, a deeper analysis reveals it can also be an early signal of a financial system still being written. Whether that system excludes the region or is rebuilt to include it on its own terms will depend less on any single reform than on whether diversification, in trade, in infrastructure, and in alignment, becomes the doctrine guiding every choice the region makes from here.

Methodological Note

All visualizations in this article were produced in RStudio (version 4.6.1) using the ggplot2, tidyverse, and WDI packages. Graphs utilizing World Bank data were generated by querying the World Bank’s World Development Indicators (WDI) API directly to ensure the underlying data could be verified or reproduced. Charts drawing on other sources were built from data exported directly from the originating institution’s own database.

This article reflects reporting and analysis made by The Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier. If you have additional context, a different take, or a perspective we’ve missed — whether you’re a researcher, a policy practitioner, or someone living with these realities on the ground — this is an evolving story and we’d like to hear from you. Drop a comment below or get in touch.

About Maria Sofia Castro

Maria Sofia Castro is a Political Economy scholar who specializes in international relations and development. Their work focuses on analyzing how regionalization impacts economic policy and institutional bureaucracy. They currently engage with regional and multilateral organizations to conduct policy research and moderate high-level stakeholder consultations.

Geographic concentration: Domain composition by region and country

Energy & Resources emerged as the leading policy priority across both the Pacific and Southeast Asia in Q2 2026, although the concentration was substantially stronger in the Pacific. This is shift from the Q1 picture, when the Pacific recorded only 9% of its policy actions in the Energy & Resources domain. By Q2, this had risen to 27%, making Energy & Resources the Pacific's largest recorded policy domain, followed by Climate & Environment at 17%. Southeast Asia showed a broader distribution of priorities: Energy & Resources accounted for 16% of recorded actions, followed by Governance & Public Administration (13%), Industry & Technology (12%), and Finance & Fiscal Policy (11%).

The shift coincides with heightened regional attention to energy security following disruptions associated with the Strait of Hormuz. Codex's Q1 2026 briefing had already identified an early Southeast Asian policy response to the crisis, while the Pacific's recorded actions at the end of Q1 remained more concentrated in Social Protection & Welfare. By Q2, however, energy-related measures had become substantially more prominent in the Pacific's policy record. A Fisher's exact test (p = 0.0041) indicates a statistically significant association between region and the distribution of recorded policy actions across domains, suggesting that the two regions did not exhibit the same pattern of policy prioritization in Q2.

At the country level, a Fisher exact test finds no significant association between individual countries and their dominant policy domains (p = 0.588). This null result is partly driven by data sparsity: the Marshall Islands, Palau, Micronesia, Tonga, and Nauru each contributed only one or two curated actions, leaving insufficient power to detect country-specific clustering. Consequently, while the regional portfolio shows clear thematic structure, disaggregating by country yields no statistically robust domain “signatures.”

That said, Energy & Resources is the most widely represented domain across the sample. It appears in the portfolios of ten of the fourteen countries shown—including Cook Islands, Fiji, Niue, Micronesia, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, and Tonga—and in several cases constitutes the sole or largest category (e.g., Micronesia and Tonga at 100 %, Niue at 50%, Vanuatu at 43%). This breadth suggests that energy security and fuel-price management were a near-universal priority in Q2 2026, even if the test cannot isolate a single country as an outlier. Notable examples from the underlying actions include fuel-stabilization measures in Papua New Guinea and Micronesia, and Tuvalu’s declaration of a state of public emergency in April.

Climate & Environment, rather than dominating individual country portfolios, appears consistently as a secondary or shared priority. It is the leading domain only in Kiribati and Tuvalu, yet it registers across a wide geographic spread.

The same pattern holds in Southeast Asia: a Fisher exact test finds no significant association between individual countries and their dominant policy domains (p = 0.106). However, unlike the Pacific the absence of association is driven less by small samples than by thematic diffusion: Malaysia, Cambodia, and Indonesia all show tied or flat leadership across four to nine domains, while even concentrated cases like Vietnam still spread their remaining actions across six sectors. Energy & Resources is the most widely represented domain but it is the unambiguous leader in only three (Laos, Thailand, and Brunei). The one constant across the region is Governance & Public Administration, which appears in ten of eleven countries, suggesting that institutional and administrative reforms provided a baseline layer beneath the noisier sectoral agendas of Q2.

Regionally, Energy & Resources is the most frequently recorded domain, yet it accounts for only 16% of all curated actions—a diffuse footprint rather than a dominant theme. The domain leads or co-leads the portfolio in five countries—Brunei (25%), Cambodia (20%, tied), Laos (33%), Malaysia (17%, tied), and Thailand (67%)—but it is marginal in Singapore (6%) and entirely absent from Vietnam’s Q2 record. This distribution suggests that, by Q2 2026, emergency responses to the Strait of Hormuz crisis had given way to more normalized, diverse policy agendas across the region.

Vietnam and Singapore sit at the low-energy end of the spectrum. Vietnam recorded no Energy & Resources actions at all, maintaining its Q1 emphasis on industrial policy (Industry & Technology, 36%; Governance & Public Administration, 29%). Singapore devoted just a single action to energy (6%), instead weighting its portfolio toward Climate & Environment (25%), Industry & Technology (19%), and Finance & Fiscal Policy (19%).

The Philippines is the clearest sectoral outlier: Agriculture & Food Security occupies a 31% of its curated actions. Two of these initiatives are partnership-driven, including the Philippines–Laos Agricultural Cooperation Agreement and the Sustainable Agriculture Transformation Program backed by US$1 billion in UK and World Bank financing.

Policy instruments: Variation by region and country

Unlike in Q1, when the Pacific’s dominant instrument was Government Programme/Scheme and Southeast Asia’s was Regulation, both regions have drawn slightly closer together in Q2. Government Programme/Scheme now leads Southeast Asia at 22% of actions, while National Strategy/Plan tops the Pacific at 30%. A Fisher exact test (p = 0.002) confirms this regional association remains significant.

The Pacific’s instrument use has remained largely unchanged. National Strategy/Plan overtook Government Programme/Scheme this quarter (30% vs. 17%), but most others have stayed put: Executive Order/Decree (14%), Budget/Fiscal Measure (12%), and Regulation and Legislation (8% each) all were in similar positions in Q1 2026. Southeast Asia on the other hand had a total flip. Given the end of regular year-start legislative events, policy actions have skewed toward Government programmes, though Regulation/Regulatory Change remains in the top two at 18%. However, the gap between first and second is narrow, at 4%, reflecting a more evenly distributed mix than the Pacific’s.

For the Pacific, the top two instruments—Government Programme/Scheme and National Strategy/Plan—have concentrated on three major domains: Climate & Environment, Agriculture & Food Security, and Education & Skills. Climate & Environment is the only domain to achieve double-digit presence in both leading instruments (27% of Government Programmes, 21% of National Strategies), making it a clear regional priority. Agriculture & Food Security dominates National Strategies (26%), while Education & Skills holds a 16% share.

This stands in contrast to Energy & Resources, which registers only a single action in each of the Pacific’s top two instruments despite being the region’s top domain overall. The Pacific’s energy agenda was handled through faster, more flexible tools like Executive Orders and Budget Measures. For example, Papua New Guinea K1 Billion Fuel Stabilization Package implemented in April 2026. The region also holds a diverse number of domains within these top instruments: Government Programs alone touch nine distinct areas, and Social Protection & Welfare recurs consistently across both (9% and 11%), maintaining its place as a steady priority domain.

Southeast Asia has a less diverse domain focus in its top two instruments, but consistent with the region’s broader priorities, Industry & Technology tops Government Programs at 19%, while Energy & Resources dominates Regulation/Regulatory Change at 27%. Trade & Investment and Governance & Public Administration follow closely at 18% each within Regulation. Governance & Public Administration is the only domain to appear strongly in both of Southeast Asia’s top instruments (11% and 18%), suggesting institutional reform runs parallel to sectoral policy. This is a defining feature of the region’s Q2 cycle that has no parallel in the Pacific’s top two instruments.

Editorial pillars: Distribution by region and country

Much like Q1, Economics remains the dominant thematic pillar for both regions in Q2, accounting for roughly 55–60% of all actions. Southeast Asia skews slightly more heavily toward Economics—around 60% versus the Pacific’s mid-50s—with the remainder in Southeast Asia tilting toward Society & Identity (roughly 25%) rather than Power & Geopolitics. The Pacific, by contrast, distributes its non-economic weight more toward Power & Geopolitics. However, a chi-squared test (X² = 4.0023, df = 2, p = 0.135) confirms that this divergence is not statistically significant; the two regions are moving within the same broad thematic space.

At the country level, Southeast Asia shows Economics as a consistent center. Thailand sits at 100% Economics (with the caveat that Thailand has the least amount of recorded actions), while Indonesia, Myanmar, Singapore, and Timor-Leste all cluster in the high 60s to low 70s. Vietnam is a notable outlier, recording the region’s strongest Society & Identity share which creates a more balanced split with Economics at around 50%. Malaysia and Cambodia also carry meaningful Society & Identity weights. Yet despite these visible variations, a Fisher exact test (p = 0.823) indicates no significant association between country and pillar distribution within the region; the outliers are too few and too scattered to form a coherent sub-pattern.

In the Pacific, while Economics dominates regionally, individual countries range from pure Economics—Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Tonga all record 100% in this pillar—to near-total absence of it. Palau is an outlier across both regions, with no Economic actions and nearly its entire portfolio concentrated in Power & Geopolitics. This specifically is the April 2026 executive order creating the Palau Office of Applied Technology and Strategy. Nauru and Tuvalu also show substantial Power & Geopolitics shares, while Niue leans heavily toward Society & Identity. Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu display more balanced three-way splits. Nevertheless, a Fisher exact test (p = 0.983) confirms that this country-level diversity does not amount to a significant association; the variation is wide but essentially random rather than clustering into identifiable sub-regional blocs. This may also be due to the low recorded actions within that fit Codex’s strategic methodology.

Methodological Note

The findings in this briefing are based on the Codex Strategic Actions Monitor, a curated dataset of strategically significant policy actions recorded across Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Codex is not an exhaustive record of all government activity. Actions are included only when they meet a defined set of strategic significance criteria—such as major legal or constitutional reform, substantial resource allocation, institutional creation or abolition, or cross-border implications. Routine administrative actions, minor legislative amendments, draft proposals, and other below-threshold events are excluded by design.

This approach reflects a deliberate trade-off. A curated dataset enables consistent cross-country comparison and longitudinal analysis, but it does not capture the full volume of policy activity in any given country. Country and domain counts should therefore be read as indicators of recorded strategic action, not as a ranking of government output. Coverage may also vary across jurisdictions due to differences in government transparency, language accessibility, and source availability.

This briefing reflects analysis by The Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier’s Codex team, based on curated policy actions from Q1 2026. Codex is an evolving project, and we welcome corrections, additional context, or alternative interpretations from researchers, policy practitioners, and those working on the ground. Drop a comment below or get in touch.

The Philippines is an emerging middle power in the Indo-Pacific, lying at the fault lines of both the Indo-side and the Pacific-side of the region. Recent developments in the South China Sea show that the country has been leading the voice of maritime governance, international law, and reinforcing the rules-based order; contributing to Philippines as a middle-power based on its ability to build partnerships, participate in regional institutions, and highlighting maritime norms by its archipelagic position. That being said, to realize this potential requires Manila to look beyond Southeast Asia.

Palau offers an important starting point. Geographically proximate to the Philippines, the Pacific Island State shares an extensive history of maritime connectivity, Filipino migration, and colonial ties. Today, both states face the challenge of safeguarding maritime sovereignty amidst intensifying great-power competition while confronting shared concerns over fisheries, climate change, and maritime governance. By strengthening relations with Palau, the Philippines will be able to bridge its missing piece in the Indo-Pacific as an emerging middle power: diversifying its alliance networks beyond its traditional partners. Diversification gives the Philippines credibility and resilience, by utilizing its experience in maritime affairs, climate change, and reinforcing international law, serves as a diplomatic capital in engaging with the Pacific states with a common language. As stated, the geographical paradox of the Philippines lies at the intersection of the Indo and Pacific sides, yet the latter remains at the periphery of diplomatic engagement vis-à-vis the former. This article will provide three (3) arguments as to why Palau matters: History, Middle-Power moment, and the wider Indo-Pacific context.

History

The foundation for a stronger Philippine-Palau relationship lies in their shared history of cultural affinity, colonial ties, and Filipino migration that predates their contemporary diplomatic relations. To illustrate, Palau and the Philippines share broader Austronesian cultural and maritime traditions, with the ocean serving as a historical medium of navigation and interaction between Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Furthermore, during the Spanish colonial era, Palau formed part of the Caroline Islands (Las Islas Carolinas), which were administered through the Spanish colonial government in Manila. In the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, the Philippines was ceded to the United States, whereas the Caribbean islands, along with the Mariana and Palau islands, were ceded to Germany, creating a political separation between the territories until both were administered by the United States at the end of world war 2. In 1946, the Philippines gained its independence from US colonial rule, whereas Palau became part of the US-administered Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands.

Both Palau and the Philippines are part of the US’s island chain strategies, where the former is part of the second island chain, and the latter is part of the first island chain. The second island chain starts from Japan to Guam and to Palau, whereas the first island chain refers to Taiwan, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Palau’s location is desirable for great powers, notably the US, in containing any emerging threats from the eastern Pacific, highlighting the current US strategy of containing China through said island chains. Under the trust territory administration, the US is responsible for protecting Palau’s sovereignty; the US would respond to any attack on Palau, no different from the Mutual Defense Treaty between the Philippines and the US. Furthermore, during its reconstruction in the 1960’s, Palau’s limited labor force had to import Filipino contractual workers from Guam or from the Philippines directly, establishing the first wave of Filipino migration to Palau. Coinciding with the first wave, Filipino teachers and priests migrated to Palau for missionary purposes, with many integrating with Palauan culture.

Post-reconstruction, Palau inherited US defense ties and Filipino culture and institutions, which Palau used in developing their economy, highlighting that Filipinos as a primary focus in tourism. This historical continuity matters, illustrating that people-to-people engagement is normalized between Filipinos and Palauans, giving the Philippines an advantage over most emerging middle powers in the Indo-Pacific to engage with the small Pacific state. Despite this advantage, in 2012, the Department of Foreign Affairs will close or shut down 10 embassies and consulates due to budgetary constraints; Palau is one of them. The former Palau President Toribiong wrote a letter to the former President Aquino, saying he was disheartened by the news.

“On behalf of the government of the Republic of Palau I write to implore and formally request that your government reconsider its decision and plans in this regard and not close the Philippine Embassy in Palau.”

The Filipino Community in Palau (TFCP) petitioned for the reconsideration of its closure and requested that it at least maintain a consulate to serve the 5,000 Overseas Filipino Workers in Palau. Furthermore, former House Assistant Majority Leader and Davao City Rep. Karlo Alexei Nograles opposed the closing of the embassy, stating the closure would give the Philippines a “bad light”, and that budgetary constraints can be reconsidered by Congress. Nograles and TFCP shared the concern that the closure of the embassy would leave the OFWs in Palau governmentless.

That being said, the event that transpired reflects both Palauans and Filipinos interest in maintaining a diplomatic relationship; Palau’s need for contracted labor and the concern of the OFWs. However, PH-PALAU relations should go beyond the OFW question; history has shown the continuous labor migration between the two states and has been a solid foundation, but both should engage with other dimensions, such as food security, climate change, maintaining international law, investments, and cultural exchanges.

Middle-Power moment

As mentioned previously, the Philippines is an emerging middle power in the Indo-Pacific yet a geopolitical paradox remains; despite lying at the intersection of the Indo and Pacific space, it has maintained limited diplomatic engagement with Pacific States. If the Philippines seeks to realize its middle power potential, it must proactively engage with the Pacific. The Philippine middle-power diplomacy has increasingly emphasized maritime governance, the rules-based international order, and minilateralism, allowing Manila to build coalitions around common causes, particularly in the South China Sea. However, these efforts remain largely concentrated within Southeast Asia.

Palau provides the Philippines with an opportunity to demonstrate middle-power agency beyond its traditional diplomatic sphere. Both states face overlapping traditional and nontraditional security concerns such as maritime sovereignty, dependence on alliance networks, US security partnerships, Chinese maritime activity, and vulnerability to climate change. These shared concerns create diplomatic value where both states can pool their experiences, capabilities, and political voice in advancing maritime governance. This convergence is increasingly evident in Palau’s maritime domain, where Chinese research vessels have entered its exclusive economic zone without invitation, raising concerns over Palau’s maritime sovereignty and security. This potential is already becoming evident in the two countries’ growing maritime-security cooperation.

In November 2025, Palau’s National Security Coordinator Jennifer Anson emphasized the country’s shared maritime boundary with the Philippines and its need for deeper regional partnerships. This subsequent strengthening of Philippine-Palau maritime ties demonstrates that Manila’s engagement with the Pacific need not remain aspirational; it can build upon existing areas of cooperation to extend Philippine maritime diplomacy beyond Southeast Asia. This creates a mutual benefit between Palau and the Philippines, the former expanding its regional partnership amidst geopolitical pressure, whereas the latter is translating its maritime experiences into diplomatic influence beyond its traditional sphere.

The wider Indo-Pacific

Beyond their bilateral interests, stronger Philippine-Palau relations can contribute to a broader rethinking of how maritime states exercise agency within the Indo-Pacific. The region is increasingly characterized by competition among great powers, dialogue with middle powers, and engagement with smaller maritime states, yet these dynamics often overlook the concerns of the smaller maritime states and the space in which they exercise agency. Middle and smaller powers find themselves vulnerable in an international environment between competing great powers. Solanki and Levesques examined that smaller powers are economically exploited by great powers in exchange for military protection, creating an asymmetrical relationship with the smaller powers in greater disadvantage.

An alternative engagement is peer-to-peer cooperation, sharing the same grievances, and relying on international laws and institutions for protection and economic resilience. For Middle and small powers, such as the Philippines and Palau, respectively, security extends beyond military competition; it has to include climate change, economic resilience, mass migration, and regional stability. The Philippines is a member of ASEAN and other regional organizations that address security concerns across different threats, whereas smaller Pacific states such as Palau have to navigate nontraditional security threats by relying on major powers for security guarantees.

Middle-Small power dialogue can provide a platform for advancing the interests of these states whose experiences are often overshadowed by great-power narratives. Under this dialogue, ASEAN, through the Philippines, and Palau, a member of the Pacific Island Forum (PIFS), can integrate the two regions in actively shaping political, economic, and maritime discourse across the Indo-Pacific and to platform the agency of middle and smaller powers.

Limitations and future applications

Inversely, a parallel question emerges: Why the Philippines? Of all the emerging middle powers lying at the fault lines of the Indo-Pacific, why should Palau choose the Philippines? As a sovereign state, Palau has the right not to engage with the Philippines, as there are better alternatives such as Indonesia and Australia, whose economic and middle power legitimacy are tested. In addition, the Philippines resources are limited, notably sustaining the diplomatic mission in the Indo-Pacific, as we have seen the previous DFA announcement of the Embassy to Palau’s foreclosure; while also Manila’s many commitments in Southeast Asia draw significant resources, opening another diplomatic front stretches these resources.

The promise of deepened PH-Palau relations shows an interesting diplomatic calibration, but sustaining said engagement is a major challenge for the Philippines with its finite economic resources, likewise for Palau with a smaller economy. For a small Pacific state, Palau has to manage its resources, and investing in this engagement is either a boon or a bust, as the Philippines has a history of shifting policies.

To also address the American elephant in the room, the US is a major security partner for both Palau and the Philippines. The security umbrella, access to American markets, and ease of migrating to the US outweigh the need for deeper engagement with the Philippines. However, this article notes that PH-Palau relations will not replace the aforementioned US-Palau relations but instead views it as a complementary asymmetrical relation where both states pool their maritime governance experience, investments, security cooperation, and shared history in a mutually beneficial exchange.

This article reflects reporting and analysis made by The Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier. If you have additional context, a different take, or a perspective we’ve missed — whether you’re a researcher, a policy practitioner, or someone living with these realities on the ground — this is an evolving story, and we’d like to hear from you. Drop a comment below or get in touch.

About John Ezra Noble

John Ezra Noble is a senior undergraduate student currently taking a BA in Foreign Service from New Era University. He is the First Junior Secretary at the Junior Diplomats’ Circle and a Volunteer at the NEU ASEAN Studies Center. His works examine Development studies, Indo-Pacific security, EU-ASEAN Affairs, and Maritime Governance.

Geographic concentration: Domain composition by region and country

At the onset of 2026, policy activity had only begun to pick up as legislative calendars reset. Implemented measures skewed toward short-term, reactive solutions, but a clear structural divergence separated the regions. A Fisher’s Exact Test (Monte Carlo simulation) confirmed that the divergence in domain composition was statistically significant (p- value = 0.0007999): Energy & Resources concentrated in Southeast Asia (17 actions vs. 8), while Social Protection & Welfare was major Pacific concern (15 actions vs. 5).

This regional “status quo” was disrupted in March 2026. The closing of the Strait of Hormuz triggered a major reordering of Southeast Asian priorities, sharpening the quarter’s reactive character. Energy & Resources vaulted past Industry & Technology and Governance & Public Administration, the early front-runners reflecting regular start-of-year activity, to become the region’s leading domain at 15%.

The shift, however, was not uniform across Southeast Asia. A country-level Fisher’s Exact Test (Monte Carlo simulation) returned a non-significant result (p = 0.2035), meaning that the curated dataset does not provide sufficient statistical evidence to establish a systematic relationship between country and policy-domain composition in Southeast Asian countries. Policy activity remained distributed across a diverse range of domains, even though some countries showed strong concentrations in Energy & Resources.

Four countries drove that reordering: Cambodia, Laos, the Philippines, and Thailand each returned Energy & Resources as their largest domain, and by a wide margin - 30%, 29 %, 38%, and 43 % of curated actions respectively. The response in most cases was immediate and executive. Cambodia and the Philippines issued energy-saving measures by decree in the days following the closure; the Philippines and Laos cut office and school weeks at the end of March; fuel tax cuts and suspensions followed across the group. The Philippines went furthest, declaring a state of national emergency. Industry & Technology was the dominant early-quarter focus, consistent with the region-wide ranking above.

Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam show no dominant domain at all. Indonesia's curated actions split evenly across ten domains at 10% each; Malaysia ties Industry & Technology, Governance, and Education & Skills at 18%; Vietnam's Industry & Technology lead (27%) sits atop a flat distribution of 7% shares across nine other domains. None of the three shows the concentrated Energy spike seen in the Hormuz-responder group, which suggests policy activity in these countries ran on pre-existing legislative tracks through Q1.

Myanmar and Timor-Leste are the region's clearest outliers, each driven by a domestic political calendar. Myanmar returned the highest number of curated actions of any country in the dataset, concentrated in Defense & Security (24%) on the back of the extension of both martial law and the state of emergency at the start of the year, with Governance & Public Administration (18%), largely legislative amendments, trailing behind. Timor-Leste, as ASEAN's newest acceded member, concentrated instead on Foreign Policy & Regional Integration (33%), with the signing of the ASEAN Extradition Treaty among its first acts; Social Protection & Welfare followed at 22%, a profile that has more in common with the Pacific region's priorities than with its Southeast Asian neighbors. It is important to note, however, that the Fisher test found no statistically significant association between country and policy-domain composition across Southeast Asia. These profiles therefore stand out descriptively from the rest of the region, but should not be interpreted as evidence of distinct or specialized national policy regimes.

The Pacific bears that comparison out: Social Protection & Welfare is the region's leading domain at 13% of curated actions, ahead of Finance & Fiscal Policy (12%) and Climate & Environment (11%). The data points to a specific focus on child and senior welfare, gender sensitivity, and education. Samoa approved 32.25 million Samoan Tālā (approximately USD 11.91 million) in back-to-school assistance payments in March 2026; Palau opened applications for its Child Raising Subsidy in January. Unlike Southeast Asia, the Pacific's policy response to the Hormuz closure had not yet gathered pace by the end of Q1 — Kiribati and Fiji are the two countries carrying Energy & Resources as a leading domain, but both reflect routine energy activity rather than crisis response, exemplified by Kiribati's Renewable Energy Regulation of 2026.

The Pacific nevertheless exhibits stronger detectable country-level differentiation. A country-level Fisher’s Exact Test returned a statistically significant result (p-value = 0.0332), indicating an association between country and policy-domain composition within the Pacific.

Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau cluster tightly around Healthcare, Education, and Social Protection—an alignment driven by an external donor-architecture effect rather than organic domestic prioritization. Running a country-level Fisher's Exact Test specifically within this geography yielded a statistically significant result (p-value = 0.0332), ), the significant p-value in the Pacific indicates that its internal variations follow an orderly, predictable pattern. The test confirms that despite small sample sizes for certain islands, Pacific nations are moving along clear, structurally distinct tracks—mathematically separating the baseline, welfare-driven nations from those whose agendas are heavily structured by international donor architectures.

Policy instruments: Variation by region and country

The policy instruments used across the two regions reveal a significant divergence in how priorities were translated into action. A Fisher’s Exact Test with Monte Carlo simulation found a statistically significant association between region and policy-instrument type (p = 0.0002), indicating that the distribution of instruments differed substantially between Southeast Asia and the Pacific within the curated dataset.

The difference is particularly visible in the balance between programmatic and formal regulatory instruments. In the Pacific, Government Programs/Schemes and National Strategies/Plans together accounted for 48% of recorded actions, making program-based and strategic interventions the dominant mode of policy activity. The Pacific also recorded a higher share of Investment Approvals/Major Projects (8%, compared with 3% in Southeast Asia). Southeast Asia on the other hand had Regulation/Regulatory Change, Legislation, and Executive Orders/Decrees represent 67% of curated actions. Policy activity in the region was therefore much more frequently expressed through formal regulatory, legislative, and executive mechanisms.

This divergence suggests two distinct modes of policy implementation. Pacific governments more frequently articulated interventions through programmes, plans, and major projects, while Southeast Asian governments more often translated policy priorities into formal changes to the regulatory or legal framework. The difference is not simply one of overall policy activity as the four leading instruments account for 76% of Pacific actions and 82% of Southeast Asian actions.

Editorial pillars: Distribution by region and country

Economics was the dominant pillar in both Southeast Asia and the Pacific this quarter. In Southeast Asia, it accounted for roughly more than 50% of curated actions; in the Pacific, roughly half. Power & Geopolitics and Society & Identity made up the rest in similar proportions across both regions. Visually, the distributions skew heavily toward Economics, with a moderate presence of Society & Identity and a smaller share of Power & Geopolitics. A chi-squared test of independence (X² = 2.0531, df = 2, p-value = 0.358) and a Fisher’s exact test (p-value = 0.376) both show no significant difference in pillar composition between the two regions.

At the country level in Southeast Asia, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Timor-Leste had a relatively lower concentration on Economics, with Brunei leaning more toward Society & Identity and Myanmar toward Power & Geopolitics. Despite these variations, Economics remained the dominant pillar region-wide. A Fisher’s exact test (p = 0.062) found no statistically significant association between country and pillar composition. The dominance of Economics is a region-wide fact, not driven by a few outlier countries. The differences between countries are suggestive but not strong enough to say that one country is exceptionally focused on one pillar compared to the others.

The same pattern holds in the Pacific. Palau specifically has no Economics actions in the dataset, while the Cook Islands and Samoa have the smallest numbers. A Fisher’s exact test (p = 0.347) confirms no significant association between country and pillar composition. Here too, Economics leads regionally, but no individual country stands out as exceptionally focused on one pillar.

Both regions show a similar pillar distribution dominated by Economics, with no statistically significant difference between them. Within each region, no individual country stands out as exceptionally focused on one pillar, though Southeast Asia shows borderline variation that may warrant further monitoring with more data.

Methodological Note

The findings in this briefing are based on the Codex Strategic Actions Monitor, a curated dataset of strategically significant policy actions recorded across Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Codex is not an exhaustive record of all government activity. Actions are included only when they meet a defined set of strategic significance criteria—such as major legal or constitutional reform, substantial resource allocation, institutional creation or abolition, or cross-border implications. Routine administrative actions, minor legislative amendments, draft proposals, and other below-threshold events are excluded by design.

This approach reflects a deliberate trade-off. A curated dataset enables consistent cross-country comparison and longitudinal analysis, but it does not capture the full volume of policy activity in any given country. Country and domain counts should therefore be read as indicators of recorded strategic action, not as a ranking of government output. Coverage may also vary across jurisdictions due to differences in government transparency, language accessibility, and source availability.

This briefing reflects analysis by The Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier's Codex team, based on curated policy actions from Q1 2026. Codex is an evolving project, and we welcome corrections, additional context, or alternative interpretations from researchers, policy practitioners, and those working on the ground. Drop a comment below or get in touch.

Overview

The roundtable brought together SEAPF members, Rohingya Youth Unit in the Phillipines, and guest participants for an open conversation on how young Southeast Asians define and pursue success amid economic pressure, displacement, and political instability. Discussion moved through four guiding questions.

How would you define success, and has your generation’s definition been shaped by its challenges?

Participants agreed that success looks very different from their parents’ generation, when a job was often secured within weeks of graduation. Today, AI disruption in the job market, intense competition (with hiring skewing toward honor students and those with strong extracurricular records), and a difficult post-graduation job search were cited as new realities. One speaker described losing freelance writing work to AI-generated content despite warning that it would produce lower-quality output. For SEAPF members, simply sustaining regular publications and growing partnerships counted as success given the organization’s lack of external funding.

For the Rohingya and Myanmar participants, success carried an added layer: since they could not rely on family for financial support and had faced barriers to education in Malaysia (public school was inaccessible and private school unaffordable), reaching university in the Philippines was itself framed as a success already achieved, apart from career goals still ahead. Some also described success in communal or national terms, such as being able to return safely to Myanmar one day, a country still affected by civil war, military rule, and internal conflict.

Do regional or national issues affect how you pursue personal or academic goals?

Participants pointed to a shared regional vulnerability, noting that unrest anywhere in Southeast Asia (the Thailand-Cambodia conflict, political violence in the Philippines, forest fires in Indonesia causing haze) tends to have ripple effects across the region. Peso depreciation against the dollar was raised as a specific concern, particularly for those paid in foreign currency. Refugee participants described how shifts in foreign policy (citing changes in US immigration policy) and local hostility in Malaysia, where Rohingya refugees have faced accusations of being “illegal,” directly affect their security and options. Election-cycle vote-buying and short-term aid distribution were also raised as a shared Southeast Asian experience.

What is the hardest part of being young today?

Several answers centered on feeling pressure to “do more” against a backdrop of visible social and political problems, without always having the time or resources to act on that drive. One participant described being expected to prioritize supporting their family financially right after graduation over pursuing personal advocacy work, given a lack of family wealth and reliance on a local scholarship. The Rohingya participants pointed to extremely limited access to education in their communities and to feeling treated as a financial investment for their family rather than as individuals. Climate anxiety also came up, including concern over declining birth rates in East Asia, distrust in future pension systems, and worsening typhoons and flooding in the Philippines, which several participants had experienced firsthand (including being stranded during flooding near UST).

How do you balance ambition, family expectations, financial reality, and a desire to contribute to society?

The dominant view was that true balance is not possible, and that some part of one’s life inevitably has to be sacrificed for another. One participant gave up a childhood dream of becoming a doctor for financial reasons and has worked as a scholar since first year. Another described having to prioritize personal goals over family expectations after a personal financial setback tied to family debt. A Rohingya participant recounted giving up a chance at professional football because of pressure to prioritize education, while another shared having falsified their own age years ago in order to work as a translator for UNICEF, and described experiencing severe barriers to basic documentation (birth certificates, IDs) due to their community’s displacement history and Myanmar’s denial of civil registration to Rohingya people. For refugee participants, success in this context extended beyond personal achievement toward family reunification across countries and access to citizenship, since their families are currently separated across Malaysia, Bangladesh, and Canada.

What does a successful future look like, and what will it take to get there?

Closing reflections described this generation as more willing to push back and ask for fair treatment at work, even at personal risk, though some noted that nepotism and exploitative behavior persist among youth as well, not just older generations. Filipino participants noted a relative disconnection from the rest of Southeast Asia given the lack of land borders, unlike neighboring countries where regional travel is easier. Structural change, not individual effort, was repeatedly named as the real lever needed, citing the gap between Philippine minimum wage and cost of living compared to countries like Malaysia. For Rohingya participants, a successful future centered on citizenship, stable work, reuniting scattered family members, and eventually being able to give back education and opportunity to their home community.

Beyond Frontiers is a monthly cafe-style roundtable hosted by Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier, bringing together regional leaders and innovators for candid, forward-looking conversations.

Every six years, the Philippines seems to reinvent itself. One administration may prosecute officials that the next administration protects, or a president elevates an international arbitration victory as the centerpiece of their foreign policy, then the next sets it aside.

Government priorities change so dramatically that every election feels less like choosing a government than replacing one entirely. This is strange. In a constitutional democracy, elections are expected to change policies, not how institutions function. Courts are supposed to continue checking those in power regardless of who wins. Political parties are supposed to retain coherent identities beyond a single administration. Bureaucracies are supposed to preserve continuity long after presidents leave office.

But in the Philippines, continuity often appears to depend on whoever holds political power rather than on the institutions themselves.

The bad emperor problem

China’s Tang dynasty is characterized today as the golden age of Chinese civilization: 289 years of classical Chinese poetry, painting, and major technological advancements like woodblock printing. In the Chinese context, that flourishing depended on who sat on the throne.

Emperor Taizong, in particular, is regarded as the greatest Tang Dynasty emperor, celebrated alongside Xuanzong and Wu Zetian for establishing a period of strong governance, military expansion, and legal reform. Taizong instituted stable bureaucratic administration, drastically reduced government spending, and streamlined the penal code. He did this by appointing officials by merit rather than birth, cutting down redundant bureaucratic offices at the capital, and reducing local administrative subdivisions. Decades later, Xuanzong’s Kaiyun era followed a similar mechanism as officials were rotated between the capital and rural posts to improve local administration and testing.

But this mechanism was not resilient. For 2000 years, Chinese governance had no independent judiciary, legislature, or checks on the emperor; authority was entirely held by him. Instead of the checks and balances we see today, a highly centralized and sophisticated bureaucracy, bounded by tradition and Confucian education, meant to orient rulers towards public interest.

This is the anchor of Francis Fukuyama’s “Bad Emperor Problem.” Fukuyama notes that while the unchecked and unrivaled power under someone capable and benevolent can produce a golden age like the Tang. But no political system can guarantee a stable and continuous supply of good leaders. Sooner or later, the same unchecked power will fall into the hands of someone who is bad.

And by the 870’s the Tang dynasty had. Famine and floods struck a peasantry already carrying most of the tax burden, while wealthy landowners evaded it. External pressure and internal rebellion compounded the damage, but they compounded it — they didn’t cause it on their own. Three centuries of Tang governance came apart within a few decades.

The Philippine parallel

If we were to strictly follow Fukuyama’s framing of the Bad Emperor Problem, the only point in Philippine history where there could be such a problem would be the pre-colonial era.

The Philippines has never had anything similar to the dynastic systems that extended the entire landmass of the country, unlike China. But, before the Spanish conquistadors came to the Philippines, the unit of government was the barangay - a settlement of around 30 - 100 people. These settlements were independent from each other, governed by a “Datu” who gained their position by inheritance, physical prowess, or wealth. The Datus are similar to the Chinese emperors, as he was the executive, legislative, and judicial authority in the community, albeit not on the scale of Taizong. Moreover, instead of Confucian morals, barangays were more influenced by local animist traditions, trade with neighboring Southeast Asian polities, and some Hindu-Buddhist elements.

The barangay system was upended by the Spanish until in 1899, the Malolos Constitution formally separated government power into three distinct branches for the first Philippine Republic: the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. The Malolos Constitution was short-lived due to the war, but in 1935, the Commonwealth Constitution re-established the presidential system with three coequal branches under American guidance. This was also upended by the Marcos dictatorship when martial law was enacted in 1972, but in 1987, the current constitution restored the modern democratic three-branch system.

Now, the three branches of the Philippine government are coequal because they have separate, independent powers, and no single branch is legally superior or controlled by the others. Under the constitution, they operate as distinct entities that use a system of checks and balances to prevent any one branch from abusing its authority.

Looking at it plainly, you can deduce that by no means can there be a Bad Emperor Problem in the Philippines. Fukuyama specifically notes two things about the Chinese political system that facilitate this problem: A highly sophisticated centralized bureaucracy and a substitution of formal checks (rule of law and independent legal institutions) on power to a bureaucracy bound by rules and customs.

The Philippines has no centralized bureaucracy to speak of, not with three coequal branches of government designed to prevent power from pooling in one office. Nor does it rely on custom alone to restrain authority. Unlike imperial China, the Philippine Constitution distributes power across separate institutions and equips them with formal checks and balances. On paper, it is the opposite of the system Fukuyama describes.

Yet constitutional design and political reality are not always the same thing, not in the Philippines. I argue that the Philippines does not suffer from the Bad Emperor Problem because the Constitution concentrates power in the presidency. It suffers from it because the political incentives surrounding the Constitution gradually reconnect powers that were deliberately separated.

Patronage is the first mechanism. The Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), the discretionary lump-sum allocation given to legislators for local development projects, operated for decades until the Napoles scandal erupted in 2013. The scandal exposed billions of pesos that had allegedly been diverted through fictitious non-government organizations in exchange for kickbacks. Later that year, the Supreme Court unanimously declared the PDAF unconstitutional, describing it as an impermissible transfer of legislative authority over public funds.

The decision was widely viewed as a major victory against patronage politics. But the same incentive still exists today. Instead of receiving individualized lump-sum allocations, legislators now influence spending through budget insertions negotiated during the bicameral conference committee after both chambers have approved their respective appropriations bills. In the 2025 national budget alone, these insertions reportedly amounted to approximately ₱142.7 billion, much of it directed toward flood control projects. Separate Senate inquiries have suggested that over ₱1 trillion in climate-tagged public works appropriations since 2023 may have been vulnerable to misuse.

Political dynasties also reinforce this dependence. A study by Ronald Mendoza found that approximately three-quarters of district representatives, eighty-five percent of governors, and nearly two-thirds of mayors elected in 2013 belonged to political dynasties. Other estimates suggest that dynastic families exercise influence in almost every Philippine province.

The problem extends beyond electoral competition as many of the country’s largest political parties are themselves dominated by dynastic politicians, meaning that parties increasingly function as vehicles for established families rather than independent institutions capable of disciplining their members or constraining executive authority. Competition ends up happening between rival family networks seeking control of the same institutions - the Marcos-Duterte rivalry is the obvious current example - which means Congress, the courts, and other constitutional mechanisms become arenas for dynastic advantage.

Party switching, or balimbing, further weakens institutional independence from the party side. Political scientist Julio Teehankee documented one of the highest rates of legislative party switching recorded in comparative politics, with almost one-third of members of Congress changing party affiliation. The pattern became even more pronounced after Rodrigo Duterte’s election in 2016. PDP-Laban entered office holding only a handful of congressional seats but quickly expanded into one of the House’s largest blocs as politicians abandoned their previous parties to align themselves with the new administration. The Constitution discourages political turncoatism in principle, yet no effective statutory mechanism penalizes legislators for changing parties after elections. Consequently, electoral mandates become secondary to presidential influence. Rather than checking executive power, legislative coalitions often reorganize themselves around whoever occupies Malacañang.

Finally, selective enforcement demonstrates how constitutional accountability itself can become politically contingent. We saw this in the initial impeachment proceedings against Vice President Sara Duterte. The first Articles of Impeachment, transmitted by the House in February 2025, were eventually declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on procedural grounds, specifically the constitutional prohibition against multiple impeachment complaints within a single year. After the constitutional bar expired, new complaints were filed, approved by the House, and transmitted to the Senate, leading to impeachment proceedings in 2026.

Now, whether those allegations ultimately succeed is less important than the institutional lesson they reveal. The Constitution provides impeachment as a legal mechanism for accountability; however, we’ve seen that its operation depends heavily upon shifting political coalitions, strategic timing, and the willingness of institutions to act.

These are just a few familiar problems that appear in the Philippine political system. But what we can see here is that the Constitution still separates powers on paper, but political incentives disrupt it. Congress becomes less independent through patronage, parties become less autonomous through turncoatism, political competition is increasingly concentrated within dynastic networks, and accountability becomes vulnerable to selective enforcement.

None of these formally abolishes the rule of law or constitutional government, of course. But they make those institutions progressively more dependent on the judgment and self-restraint of those who temporarily control them. This is far from the institution of imperial China, but it is still a system whose success depends less on the strength of its rules than on the quality of the leaders.

Coalition politics as an intervening variable

If patronage, dynasties, party switching, and selective enforcement explain why the constitutional branches become less independent, coalition politics explains how they begin acting together.

Coalitions are not unique to the Philippines, nor are they inherently undemocratic. Every presidential democracy requires a governing majority capable of passing legislation, approving appointments, and implementing policy. The danger here is when winning an election means not just controlling the executive, but the institutions designed by the Constitution to restrain it.

The Philippine constitution designates the three branches to answer different constitutional obligations. For example, Congress legislates and scrutinizes the executive, courts interpret the law, and executive departments implement policy. Their legitimacy then comes from exercising their own judgment rather than following the political interests of the administration.

But coalition politics changes those incentives. Because political parties are weak, legislators frequently change affiliation after every presidential election, and appointments throughout government remain concentrated in the hands of the executive, electoral victory often produces something larger than a new administration. It produces a governing coalition that extends across Congress, cabinet departments, political parties, and much of the bureaucracy.

This is what political scientists describe as agency capture. The term is commonly used to describe regulators who coddle and favor the industries they oversee.

In the Philippine political context, the capture is broader: Institutions are not necessarily captured by private interests alone, but they can also become captured by political coalitions. Their formal powers remain intact, but the purposes behind the decisions they make increasingly shift toward preserving their own alliances, protecting coalition partners, and weakening political rivals. Nothing disappears from the original architecture in the constitution. The Congress still convenes, and the courts continue to issue decisions. But these institutions act as part of one or two rivaling coalitions.

For Imperial China, concentrated authority was openly exercised. The emperor stood above every institution because no competing constitutional authority existed. The Philippines, rather than abolishing independent institutions, the existing politics gradually aligns them behind whoever commands the governing coalition.

An important note here is that in this context, the governing coalition does not necessarily have to be behind the elected president or be an inherently bad actor. The same structure and incentives exist beyond the executive branch, either good or bad as characterized by Fukuyama’s dilemma. But the consequence is the same. The quality and performance of the government become dependent on the people exercising power rather than the institutions constraining them.

Again, a president committed to restraint may govern responsibly despite possessing these political advantages. A president willing to exploit them may find that many of the constitutional safeguards intended to limit executive authority have already been weakened by the incentives of coalition politics. In both cases, the system depends less on the resilience of its institutions than on the character of those who temporarily control them.

That is the modern Philippine version of the Bad Emperor Problem. The emperor has disappeared. The dependence on the emperor has not.

Why a good president is not enough

If the Philippines has recreated the Bad Emperor Problem, then it follows that the solution cannot simply be to elect a better emperor.

Every election produces the familiar hope that the next president will govern differently - this was the exact hope during the electoral race between then Vice President Leni Robredo and Bong Bong Marcos. We can’t blame the people for having such hope since some administrations are undeniably more competent than others. Some pursue reforms with greater seriousness, appoint more qualified officials, or exhibit greater respect for constitutional norms.

Leadership matters. Good presidents can improve governance, just as poor presidents can drive the country to a wall. But that is precisely Fukuyama’s point. No political system should depend upon the continuous election of exceptionally capable, ethical, or restrained leaders. If institutions only function when occupied by unusually good people, then the institutions themselves are not doing enough of the work.

The Philippine Constitution does anticipate this problem. It fragmented power across three branches, established independent constitutional commissions, protected judicial independence, and embedded mechanisms of accountability ranging from legislative oversight to impeachment. Its writers understood that presidents, like all public officials, can eventually disappoint.

The difficulty is that constitutional design cannot, by itself, overcome political incentives. This explains why reform in the Philippines has often been cyclical. A reform-minded administration can strengthen transparency, improve bureaucratic performance, prosecute corruption, or appoint credible public officials. Yet unless the incentives that produced institutional dependence are also changed, many of those gains remain vulnerable to reversal by the next administration.

The implication is not that leadership is unimportant. On the contrary, leadership matters enormously. But leadership should complement strong institutions, not compensate for weak ones.

The Philippines has spent much of its democratic history searching for better presidents. It may need to spend far more effort building institutions that require less from them.

This article reflects reporting and analysis made by The Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier. If you have additional context, a different take, or a perspective we’ve missed — whether you’re a researcher, a policy practitioner, or someone living with these realities on the ground — this is an evolving story and we’d like to hear from you. Drop a comment below or get in touch.

About Matthew Parra

Matthew Parra is a student at the University of Santo Tomas and the founder and Executive Director of The Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier — an independent analytical platform dedicated to rigorous, evidence-grounded analysis of Southeast Asia and the Pacific across economics, society, and geopolitics.

For geopolitical reasons, Papua New Guinea, or PNG, was made an observer in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) one year after independence, even as it was considered geographically and culturally Oceanic. Nonetheless, security interests and the economic potential of the deal made it necessary for the two to cooperate.

According to Indonesia and PNG, their membership could expand the region’s market, increase the organization’s prestige, and become a bridge for closer cooperation with Oceania. However, there are many challenges to this, so much so that upgrading their membership might not even be possible within this lifetime. Perhaps there could be an alternative?

A forum for dialogue

As a former colony exploited primarily for its timber, valuable metals, and agricultural products, Papua New Guinea inherited an underdeveloped infrastructure designed strictly for resource extraction rather than public utility. Struggling post-independence, the young nation found in ASEAN a cost-effective diplomatic shield to voice bilateral concerns and manage its fragile relationship with Indonesia. Beyond immediate border management, this observer status offered an invaluable diplomatic bonus, allowing PNG to expand its international rapport by mingling with Southeast Asian members and global partners during informal sessions.

Allies by necessity

Sensing this immense strategic potential, then Prime Minister Paias Wingti announced in early 1986 that PNG was seriously considering a bid for full ASEAN membership. Indonesia formally supported the idea in 2012 and enthusiastically reaffirmed its stance in 2025 under President Prabowo Subianto, driven largely by urgent security anxieties. Jakarta’s primary internal concern is the Free Papua Movement (OPM)—a decentralized West Papuan separatist group that routinely exploits the porous border to evade capture.

Full membership would have the potential to allow PNG to better integrate itself into ASEAN’s institutions. Diplomatically, it would allow them to use the summit to align with and influence the regional consensus, while serving as a bilateral corridor on the sidelines. PNG could also have access to the security mechanisms, having the potential for: more coordinated joint military operations, intelligence sharing, and defense technology transfers to finally stabilize the frontier, within the bounds of ASEAN cooperation and non-interference.

Membership would not only increase bilateral security operations between the two states but could also encourage other states to participate in these initiatives and even share technology and resources. They could comprehensively participate in ASEAN security mechanisms. More significantly, much of PNG’s untapped resources, like oil, gas, and rare earths, could find a common regional market that has virtually eliminated its tariffs between ASEAN members, as they “upgrade”- from extracting raw materials to refining them for more complex technologies.

Untapped potential

Beyond security, integration promises to unlock massive, tariff-free economic synergies. PNG’s vast, untapped reserves of oil, gas, and rare earths would gain direct access to a unified regional market, eliminating the need for tedious, piecemeal bilateral trade deals. PNG could securely funnel raw materials and fuel into Southeast Asia’s burgeoning manufacturing hub. In return, industrial leaders like Thailand and Indonesia could actively develop PNG’s domestic manufacturing and agricultural sectors.

Geopolitically, this alignment positions PNG as a unique institutional bridge between ASEAN and the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF). Aside from existing frameworks like the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Area (AANZFTA), interactions between Southeast Asia and the wider Pacific have historically been sparse. By leveraging its dual identity, PNG can seamlessly connect Oceania and Southeast Asia, elevating both organizations on the global stage. Nonetheless, translating this untapped potential into reality faces deep structural obstacles.

A lifetime of obstacles

PNG has always been seen geographically in Oceania and never considered part of Southeast Asia (unlike Sri Lanka, for example). Located at the periphery of Southeast Asia, while tied to Oceania, Papua New Guinea has always marketed itself as a nexus point between 2 cultures. Though their culture and DNA have roots connecting them to maritime Southeast Asia, they are culturally Melanesian, having more similarities with Fiji and Vanuatu.

Politically, they are more vocally rooted in their national position, making it difficult for them to adopt the “ASEAN Way” concerned with “consensus, informality and non-interference”. Instead, in their Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG), they follow the “Melanesian Way” emphasizing “communal solidarity, reciprocity, and traditional authority structure”. One could argue that Indonesia could pave the way by lobbying to change the geographic definition of the region, but that itself opens a new can of worms.

Bringing PNG into the fold is already unpopular among ASEAN members, not only for its geography but also for its lack of development. Even in the best-case scenario, where all members accept a change of geographic definition and a lack of PNG economic development, it could bring ASEAN into question. The organization might come into question as it would change its rules willy-nilly, and it could be seen as a geopolitical tool of Indonesia (considered by many as an emerging regional power). However, there could be a compromise.

The middle path

By framing Papua New Guinea as a bridge, we can project its unique identity not as a geographic misfit, but as a vital diplomatic gateway. Rather than forcing a contentious bid for full ASEAN membership that risks paralyzing the bloc’s internal consensus, this intermediate status should be leveraged into an actionable Strategic Partnership.

This framework translates cultural theory into concrete geopolitical action by establishing a tailored border-security alignment to address regional separatism, a tariff-free resource corridor to fuel Southeast Asian manufacturing, and a permanent institutional bridge to the Pacific Islands Forum. Ultimately, the true test for a “New ASEAN” will not be how rigidly it guards its traditional boundaries, but how dynamically it can extend its reach through them. Whether the bloc possesses the strategic imagination to seize this unique Pacific gateway—or leave it as a historic missed opportunity—remains the defining climax and question for the region’s future.

This article reflects reporting and analysis made by The Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier. If you have additional context, a different take, or a perspective we’ve missed — whether you’re a researcher, a policy practitioner, or someone living with these realities on the ground — this is an evolving story and we’d like to hear from you. Drop a comment below or get in touch.

About Rocco Carmine B. Paragas Jr.

Rocco Carmine B. Paragas Jr. is a graduating Asian Studies student at UST, specializing in history and geopolitics. A versatile generalist with internship experience spanning HR to Knowledge Management across corporate and NGO sectors, he is currently writing his thesis on intergenerational gaps in Thailand.

At SEAPF, we not only put emphasis on independent analysis, but also on having opportunities to discuss conversations that matter. With this mission, we are launching Beyond Frontiers, a small, intentionally curated roundtable series that gathers diverse voices and discusses the forces and issues that currently shape the region.

This Friday, we are holding our first roundtable discussion titled “Beyond Frontiers: Dreams, Reality, and Everything In Between Southeast Asian Youth and the Pursuit of Success.” This week, the focus is centered on “success” and what it means for the youth especially when navigating Southeast Asia today. Expect an intimate exchange of perspectives, the kind of dialogue that rarely happens in larger, more formal settings.

🗓️: August 28, 2026 | 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM

📍: La Augem Cafe, 1221 Gelinos St., Sampaloc, Manila

Thank you for continuing to support the endeavors of the platform and we hope to see and hear your voice during the iterations of Beyond Frontiers.

Warm regards,

The Engagement Desk

The Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier

While foreign entities discuss the geopolitics of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), media buzz invariably focuses on the geopolitical contest between Washington and Beijing. Regardless of whether one speaks about security ties between Solomon Islands and China or telecommunications investments by Australia, small island states are commonly viewed as passive battlegrounds of outside influences. This approach fails to account for the main change in modern diplomacy of the Pacific Islands, namely, that of the PIF as a strategic bargaining forum.

Instead of serving merely as an instrument for consensus-building among the islands or participating in a Cold War on behalf of either superpower, the Pacific countries are now leveraging PIF to impose conditions of engagement for competing major powers.

From hedging to institutional leverage

Small states’ “hedging” or the art of maintaining good relations with several big powers to obtain aid, is not always a novel idea. The problem is that small islands encounter different power inequalities when interacting with Washington or Beijing separately. Using the PIF as a bargaining forum allows overcoming this challenge.

The basic premise behind such leverage is the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent, officially adopted by PIF leaders. Through this document, the forum set the terms in which the external players should conduct themselves: their foreign policies need to correspond to the region’s agenda, including climate change, economic development, and sovereignty at sea, rather than trying to export their own security agenda.

This unified position requires the competing countries to rethink their involvement tactics in both security and development domains. Under the Boe Declaration on Regional Security, adopted on September 5, 2018, the PIF members have officially extended the security definition to include climate change as the biggest threat to the region, noting that “leaders reaffirm that climate change remains the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and well-being of the Peoples of the Pacific.”

Concessions extracted from the PIF

The strength of the PIF as a bargaining entity is derived from the way in which it is able to impose on the external powers a formal, competitive dialogue through mechanisms such as the Post-Forum Dialogue framework of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat.

The Forum does not accept an offer of one-sided aid packages but rather imposes concessions from the rival external powers in the form of engagement strategies. On September 29, 2022, the United States promised to give an increased assistance package worth $810 million with a recommitment of the Compact of Free Associations funding, as well as the reopening of the diplomatic missions in the region. On the other hand, China has been obliged to concentrate its Comprehensive Strategic Partnership on bilateral development assistance, infrastructure loans, and targeted contributions to the economic initiatives in the region. In addition, Australia formulated its regional strategy in the form of the Pacific Engagement Strategy, signed on November 10, 2023, hatched by the Falepili Union of Tuvalu with foreign aid worth A$1.9 billion in the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme.

The attempt by China to sidestep this existing regional arrangement in May 2022 through a wide-ranging multilateral security and economic agreement, the China-Pacific Island Countries Common Development Vision, failed after being rejected by PIF members in favor of the regional organization’s top-down approach in which Pacific leaders play both sides when China divides the Forum, indicating that individual states will not forgo their bargaining power in favor of unilateral foreign direction.

The limits of collective bargaining & strategic autonomy

Bargaining strategically as a unit does present structural weaknesses in the form of the divergence of individual states’ interests, which represents the main limitation of the PIF’s current arrangement. Diplomatic recognition divisions mean that member countries of the PIF are divided between those who have diplomatic relations with Beijing and those whose official diplomatic ties are with Taipei (for example, Palau, Tuvalu, and the Marshall Islands). According to analyses across several publications, such as analysis from the Lowy Institute’s The Indicator, billed as Geopolitics in the Pacific Islands: Playing for advantage, this division causes tension every time there is a PIF summit, especially concerning protocols of partner participation. In addition to the political fault lines, the region has divergent economic dynamics. Developing economies struggling with debt problems have very different fiscal pressures compared to their bigger counterparts, making them more susceptible to debt traps or rapid infrastructural financing solutions that can transcend regional norms.

Nevertheless, these internal divergences cannot undermine the strength of the organization. By embracing multi-directional diplomacy, PIF countries have illustrated that strategic autonomy does not have to be tied to ideological conformity. Rather, it necessitates a consistent strategy of using global rivalry to finance regional ambitions.

Beyond geopolitical imperialism

The key issue at hand is not whether Washington or Beijing will “win” the Pacific. Power in a complex interdependent maritime space is neither static nor exclusive.

The ultimate measure of success is whether Pacific institutions are capable of preserving and enhancing their capacity to function as a collective bargaining platform. As long as the Pacific Islands Forum sets the conditions for engagement, compelling great powers to compete in areas of climate policy, infrastructure development, and economic connectivity, small island nations will continue to be the architects of their regional order in their own right.

This is an externally contributed piece. If you have additional context, a different take, or a perspective we’ve missed — whether you’re a researcher, policymaker, or practitioner — this is an evolving story and we’d like to hear from you. Drop a comment below or get in touch.

About the author

Paul Angelo Fabia is a Filipino political researcher and foreign affairs writer specializing in diplomacy, international relations, and Indo-Pacific affairs. His work explores the political, economic, and strategic developments shaping the Philippines, Southeast Asia, and the wider Indo-Pacific.

The Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier has grown rapidly over the last six months, building a regular readership of over 4,000 and a social media following of more than 200 across platforms. Since March 2026, the platform has published consistent analytical articles, participated in stakeholder engagements, and entered partnership agreements with like-minded organizations across Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

Through this work, we realized that good analysis requires good data. However, we have observed that consolidated, reliable data on policy movements and development outcomes in this part of the world is sparse and fragmented. Information is scattered across government websites, international databases, and news reports that is rarely comparable and hardly structured for long-term use.

That is why we are launching the Codex: Southeast Asia & the Pacific as a core component of our long-term strategy. Codex is a structured, curated knowledge base built on two complementary datasets. The first, the Strategic Actions Monitor, is an expanding archive of significant policy decisions made. It records legislation, national strategies, trade agreements, regulatory reforms, investment programs, and other substantive policy actions. The second, the Development Indicators, is a standardized statistical portrait of the region, drawing on authoritative sources such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations Development Program, and national statistics offices.

Together, these two datasets form a foundation for evidence-based research, comparative analysis, trend identification, and informed policy recommendations.

Methodology

Part 1: Strategic Actions Monitor

The Strategic Actions Monitor records formal, strategically significant policy decisions made by national governments across Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Each record will represent a single, discrete policy action. We define this as a formal decision issued by a competent governmental authority that meets the inclusion criteria below.

The dataset is maintained as a flat‑file table with a predefined schema, using controlled vocabularies for all classification fields. It is designed to support regular analytical briefings, cross‑country comparisons, and longitudinal studies of policy evolution.

Temporal Scope

The Monitor captures policy actions whose implementation date (or, where immediate, adoption date) falls on or after 1 January 2026. Where a policy was formally adopted before 2026 but its implementation or entry into force occurs in 2026 or later, it is included and the original adoption date is recorded. Actions already in force before 1 January 2026 are not included, unless a specific, documented analytical need requires a backfill.

Strategic Significance Criteria

A candidate event is admitted if it satisfied at least one of the following:

1. National direction change: a new national strategy, major legal or constitutional reform, or fundamental shift in policy direction.

2. Substantial resource allocation: creation of new funds, large-scale investment programs, or sovereign wealth fund restructuring.

3. Institutional creation or abolition: establishment or closure of a ministry, regulatory agency, state-owned enterprise, or any other equivalent body.

4. Cross-border or regional implications: affects ASEAN or the PIF commitments, trade agreements, defense pacts, migration frameworks, or regional cooperation mechanisms.

5. Rights, obligations, or market access alteration: introduction of new taxes, subsidies, investment screening, or labor law reforms.

6. Novelty: the first instance of a particular policy type in the country or region, signaling a new policy frontier.

An action that would normally fall below the threshold may be included if an extraordinary external event (armed conflict, natural disaster, pandemic, sudden economic crisis, major geopolitical rupture) elevates its strategic importance.

Explicit Exclusions

The following are never valid entries:

• Political speeches, election promises, party manifestos

• Opinion articles, editorials, analyst commentary

• Routine diplomatic meetings, courtesy calls

• Administrative circulars with no policy content change

• Local/provincial regulations unless of demonstrable national or regional significance

• Annual budget bills without major structural tax or spending reform

• Minor legislative amendments (schedule updates, deadline extensions, technical corrections)

• Judicial rulings that affect only individual litigants, not legal or policy frameworks

• Breaking news reports unaccompanied by an official decision document

• Draft bills, proposals, or policies that have not been formally adopted

• Legally mandated, periodic obligations with no discretionary component (e.g., routine annual budget speech without structural reform, automatic renewal of a state of emergency without new measures).

Source hierarchy and data acquisition

The Monitor relies on a tiered sourcing model. Tier 1 comprises official national instruments: government gazettes, legislation portals, presidential/prime ministerial decrees, ministerial regulations, parliamentary records, and central bank issuances. Tier 2 includes official regional and international bodies (ASEAN, Pacific Islands Forum, ADB, UN agencies) that aggregate or confirm national actions. Tier 3 covers reputable local and international media and research institutions.

Data is collected through a structured, country-by-country sweep of official portals, using country-specific search domains, local-language terms, and date filters. AI-assisted deep search is used to surface candidate instruments across all editorial pillars, with explicit instruction to search non-English government sources and document repositories. All AI-generated candidates are manually verified against the original official document before entry.

Part 2: Development Indicators

The Development Indicators dataset is a longitudinal, cross-national statistical database organized according to tidy data principles wherein each row is a single observation and each column is a variable. This dataset is deliberately curated rather than exhaustive for it is designed to complement the Strategic Actions monitor by providing the contextual, quantitative data for comparative policy analysis.

Indicator Selection and Scope

The indicator categories and examples:

• Economy: GDP growth (annual %), GDP per capita (current USD), Inflation (CPI annual %), FDI net inflows (USD), Trade balance (USD), Government debt (% GDP)

• Society: Population, Poverty headcount ratio, Gini coefficient, Human Development Index, Literacy rate, Mean years of schooling, Life expectancy, Internet penetration (%)

• Governance: Control of Corruption (WGI percentile), Government Effectiveness (WGI), Rule of Law (WGI), Regulatory Quality (WGI)

• Infrastructure: Electricity access (%), Renewable energy share (%), Logistics Performance Index

• Environment: CO₂ emissions (metric tons per capita), Forest area (% of land), Renewable energy consumption (%)

The indicator set will expand as SEAPF’s research agenda develops. New indicators are added only when they meet the relevance threshold and can be sourced reliably.

Source hierarchy and data acquisition

Data are acquired from authoritative international and national sources, ranked by methodological rigour and regional coverage:

1. National statistics offices and central banks.

2. World Bank (World Development Indicators), IMF (International Financial Statistics).

3. UNDP (Human Development Data), ITU, FAO, and other UN specialised agencies.

4. Asian Development Bank.

5. Pacific Data Hub (Pacific Community), especially for Pacific Island states where international databases may have gaps or imputed values.

Data rules and quality control

The following rules are enforced without exception:

• No estimation: Missing values are left blank. However, we faithfully record and flag the method used by the original source, including values that are imputed or modeled by the source agency.

• Source fidelity: Values are recorded exactly as published by the source. Units, definitions, and base years are preserved.

• No undocumented blending: Series from different sources are never merged into a single indicator row without a clear methodological note and a flag.

• Append‑only revision handling: When a source revises a historical value, a new row is appended with the revised figure and a note in the methodology notes field. Previous values remain in the dataset, preserving a full audit trail.

• Metadata completeness: Every observation includes: Indicator ID, Country, Year, Indicator Name, Value, Unit, Definition, Original Source URL, Source Agency, Frequency, Methodology Notes, Last Updated.
  

Update frequency

Updates follow source release calendars. Annual indicators are refreshed within four weeks of a major release cycle (e.g., World Bank WDI updates). Quarterly and monthly indicators are updated on a rolling basis. The dataset is version‑controlled; major releases are snapshotted for reproducibility.

Principles and Limitations

Editorial judgement and consistency

Applying the strategic significance criteria requires contextual judgment that no controlled vocabulary can fully automate. SEAPF will make the final classification decision for every candidate event. We acknowledge that perfect consistency across over twenty jurisdictions is an aspiration that improves over time. The dataset is curated, not exhaustive; country and domain counts reflect editorial selection and discovery capacity, not a ranking of government activity.

Missing data and coverage gaps

Implementation dates are not always available at the time of entry. Missing dates are left blank. Charts and analyses produced from Codex data always disclose the number and percentage of missing values. Language limitations, differences in government transparency, and the expertise of researchers may result in uneven coverage across countries.

Maintenance and community contribution

Maintaining controlled vocabularies, version‑controlled manuals, and consistent classifications is resource‑intensive. We manage this by expanding the taxonomy only when essential and by prioritising depth in a subset of countries and themes over shallow coverage of everything. As the team grows, the infrastructure will grow with it.

What this infrastructure makes possible

With a growing, well-structured policy and development dataset, SEAPF will be able to move from asking “what happened this month?” to ask “what has been happening over the last three years, and what patterns are beginning to emerge?” We will be able to identify which policy themes are gaining traction across countries, which sectors are receiving sustained regulatory attention, and which development indicators are moving in directions that require explanation.

The dataset will allow us to produce longitudinal studies, to ground our analysis in comparative benchmarks, and to answer questions from partners with precision rather than anecdote. It will also make SEAPF a natural collaborator for researchers, institutions, and media outlets looking for regional data that is clean, citable, and methodologically transparent.

This community is still young, but it is exactly the kind of engaged, curious readership we set out to build when we started this platform.

Thank you for being part of it.

- The Engagement Desk

The recent controversies surrounding the release of an AI-generated video by China Daily with a monkey dressed in a barong have triggered a diplomatic protest from the Philippines’ Department of Foreign Affairs. While this specific incident of public correspondence triggered an official response, this is not the first time that officials of the Republic of the Philippines and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have taken diplomacy from traditional channels to social media.

The first manifestations of social media correspondence between the two entities sparked in 2023, shortly after Jay Tarriela was appointed as the Spokesperson of the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) for the West Philippine Sea (WPS). Their approach of posting high-definition footage and official statements on X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook to expose Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) gray-zone tactics opened the doors to a more confrontational approach on the issue. Since then, the Chinese Embassy in Manila began regularly posting on Facebook directly accusing Tarriela and certain Philippine government figures of ‘defaming’ and ‘smearing’ the PRC’s image.

In December 2025, the pattern peaked as Tarriela and Chinese Embassy Deputy Spokesperson Guo Wei were involved in an unmediated Facebook exchange by candidly re-sharing posts and counterarguing each other’s claims. For instance, a major example of this is the incident wherein the Chinese Embassy in Manila posted about the humanitarian assistance that was extended by the Chinese Navy ship (PLAN) to a ‘distressed’ Philippine fishing vessel in the South China Sea. This was followed by a statement from Tarriela highlighting the inaccuracies in the facts presented by the post, and emphasized the unreasonable presence of the PLAN within the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone. Far from an isolated spat, this event was immediately followed by similar exchanges, establishing a recurring pattern of what analysts identify as ‘assertive transparency.’

While the Philippines is used to seeing social media mudslinging between their local politicians, deploying this approach in foreign policy carries risks that extend far beyond domestic borders. In the lens of international relations, these can never be instances of a ‘casual’ social media exchange because the statements that the parties release carry the weight of their nation’s sovereignty and are representative of their strategic interests. By subjecting the correspondence to the public eye in real time, this is a major shift by Manila from traditional diplomatic channels to digital assertive transparency in addressing the South China Sea tensions. Beyond domestic statecraft, its friction point broadens to a clash with the ASEAN Way of quiet diplomacy.

Within ASEAN, the Philippines’ approach in bringing diplomatic matters with China into a real-time public mudslinging on social media is distinct in comparison with other ASEAN claimants. In an analysis by the Pacific Forum, they underscored the contrast of Manila’s high-visibility digital strategy with the ‘subdued approaches of other ASEAN claimants like Vietnam and Malaysia.’ As Manila transitions to assertive transparency, it introduces an approach that subjects bilateral statecraft to real-time domestic and international “audience costs.” Through exposing gray-zone encounters to public scrutiny, this strategy reshapes the ASEAN Way with effects extending to the region’s geopolitical landscape, disrupting the quiet and closed-door back channels that the Association has historically relied on to manage complex relations with major external powers like China.

Digital assertive transparency vs. the ASEAN Way

As years pass since its establishment, ASEAN has strictly adhered to quiet diplomacy in resolving tensions with respect to the ASEAN Way of conflict resolution. Although numerous critics on the framework have emerged as it shows its vulnerabilities to the volatile world order, preceding cases where it successfully managed complex bilateral dynamics have established a high level of credibility. Built on the principles of non-interference, consensus-based decision-making, and quiet diplomacy, this framework protects regional stability by allowing governments to negotiate away from public scrutiny. It is not without merit that multiple think tanks have claimed the Association to be one of the most successful of its kind, with one even going as far as claiming it as a ‘living, breathing modern miracle. When an individual ASEAN member state (AMS) unilaterally alters its approach to conflict management with external partners, it creates systemic friction that risks fragmenting the bloc’s collective cohesion and compromising its standing as the primary diplomatic anchor of the Indo-Pacific.

Pitting the current social media campaign of the Marcos Jr. administration against traditional quiet diplomacy reveals a fundamental operational clash in three major areas. First, in negotiations. ASEAN’s quiet diplomacy functions by relying on behind-the-scenes negotiations, while assertive transparency is fueled by public discourse. Second, in consultation and consensus. ASEAN’s quiet diplomacy ensures that no single member state can force the bloc into external rivalries, while assertive transparency involves candid, unilateral statements from public officials that suggest uncalculated correspondence. Third, in engagement processes. ASEAN’s quiet diplomacy favors confidential communication channels and closed sessions over public ultimatums while assertive transparency broadcasts real-time tensions in social media. Drawing from these distinctions, Manila’s current approach generates more audience costs than what the ASEAN Way would warrant. This contrast not only challenges the ASEAN etiquette but also structurally degrades the non-confrontational climate required for back-channel statecraft to function.

The code of conduct gridlock and the Chairship paradox

On the 10th Anniversary of the 2016 Arbitral Award, ASEAN, as a collective body, has not participated, and rightfully so, as they have positioned the organization to strictly enforce consensus-based decision-making. This is not an alarming isolation because AMS has historically managed security issues through official ASEAN proceedings, such as defense and maritime cooperation agreements. In fact, ASEAN has facilitated developments on the negotiations for its South China Sea (SCS) Code of Conduct (COC). With the SCS workshop series being launched by Indonesia in the late 1980s, it has established the groundwork for ASEAN and China to manage the tensions in the maritime area through formal channels, as concretized by the 2002 ASEAN-China Declaration on Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea. As the Philippines chairs ASEAN this year, the foundational groundwork set by precedent documents is expected to be leveraged into a more concrete ASEAN South China Sea Code of Conduct by the end of its term. Regardless of the major strides, the current progress may be impeded as assertive transparency poses questions to the role of the Philippines as an impartial consensus-builder, being the ASEAN Chair.

Beyond putting its chairship into a paradox, Manila’s assertive transparency is inadvertently subverting Southeast Asian security. This is exhibited in three key mechanisms that shift the geopolitical landscape of the organization: minilateralism outside ASEAN, strategic ambiguity, and forced narrative warfare. On the first mechanism, by laying bare the limits of the ASEAN Way, it accelerates a regional pivot toward overlapping, case-specific mini-laterals, forcing regional maritime security measures to evolve outside ASEAN-centric platforms. On the second mechanism, by converting real-time maritime tensions into undeniable public evidence, Manila removes the space for regional capitals to maintain passive strategic hedging, exposing a stark rift within ASEAN between frontline maritime claimants and quiet mainland states. On the third mechanism, the main impact of Manila’s digital campaign is that it has altered Beijing’s operational behavior. With forced audience costs as their actions are subjected to global public opinion, China has had to expand its posture from physical enforcement at sea to an asymmetric narrative warfare and state-sponsored legal critiques that transform the South China Sea from a localized maritime dispute into a multi-tiered domain of international lawfare.

Beyond the feed and China’s legal counter-offensive

At the peak of the public mudslinging ahead of the 10th Anniversary of the 2016 Arbitral Award, China Institute for Maritime Affairs released a report titled ‘Historical and Legal Critique of the Philippines’ Territorial Claims in the South China Sea.’ The document critically analyzed the claims of the Philippines on its ‘grounds to support its territorial sovereignty over the Scarborough Shoal and the Spratly Islands,’ by invoking the principle of estoppel and alleging contradictions in historical Philippine maps. CIMA concluded that the Philippines lacks the valid historical and legal grounds relative to the acquisition of territories to assert its ownership over these maritime features.

To counter the challenges posed by Beijing’s legal counter-offensive, one reality becomes clear: with ASEAN prioritizing reverence for the principle of non-interference, the Philippines must move beyond relying on social media correspondence and moral appeals alone. While assertive transparency immediately exposes gray-zone aggression, it must seek alternative ways to assert its legitimacy as a claimant state in the South China Sea dispute. However, lawfare itself is not a panacea. Shifting the correspondence from social media to legal treatises does not guarantee compliance from a major power, nor does it automatically yield enforceable resolutions on the dispute. In this regard, the ASEAN-backed South China Sea Code of Conduct becomes one of the most valuable armor of the Philippines. Rather than engaging in informal bilateral exchanges on social media, Manila must shift its focus to leveraging its chairship and amplify its diplomatic efforts to ensure that ASEAN operates as a unified entity when negotiating the COC with external powers.

Preserving the rules-based order, the ASEAN Way, and the South China Sea COC

Manila’s digital campaign has evoked unprecedented changes that yielded effects beyond its bilateral relationship with Beijing, extending as far as introducing new layers to South China Sea diplomacy for ASEAN. However, as Beijing expands its counters from social media narratives to institutional legal white papers, assertive transparency cannot rely on real-time Facebook drops alone. To sustain its credibility beyond the 2026 ASEAN Chairship, the Philippines must leverage its strategy to effectively engage in symmetrical counter-lawfare with China.

After the Philippines, Singapore is set to chair ASEAN in 2027. With consistent bilateral meetings between PM Lawrence Wong and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., both parties have committed to a smooth transition of the chairship. In line with this, Singapore offers the crucial institutional bridge to absorb Manila’s public momentum and redirect it toward a binding South China Sea Code of Conduct. While this offers leverage, Manila remains at risk of geopolitical entrapment if it sustains its current approach. However, by pairing public transparency with closed-door statecraft, Manila can effectively advance its claims on maritime rights without fracturing the ASEAN Way or eroding ASEAN Centrality in the broader Indo-Pacific order.

This article reflects reporting and analysis made by The Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier. If you have additional context, a different take, or a perspective we’ve missed — whether you’re a researcher, a policy practitioner, or someone living with these realities on the ground — this is an evolving story and we’d like to hear from you. Drop a comment below or get in touch.

About Maria Sofia Castro

Maria Sofia Castro is a Political Economy scholar who specializes in international relations and development. Their work focuses on analyzing how regionalization impacts economic policy and institutional bureaucracy. They currently engage with regional and multilateral organizations to conduct policy research and moderate high-level stakeholder consultations.

The portrayal of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a dominant force has historically relied on images of massive machines and futuristic supercomputers. However, the current trajectory of AI has changed significantly. AI is now within everyday communication, entertainment, and business, often becoming indistinguishable from the human activities it imitates.

In July 2026, the South China Morning Post reported an incident in which an individual joined a private Zoom meeting with Singapore’s Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, cabinet minister Indranee Rajah, and several foreign dignitaries to discuss funding related to the Strait of Hormuz.

The individual had received a WhatsApp invitation, purportedly from the cabinet secretary, requesting financial assistance. In reality, every person in that meeting, including Lawrence Wong, was generated by AI. During the call, the AI-generated version of Wong expressed gratitude before a fraudulent lawyer continued the conversation, ultimately convincing the victim to transfer 4.9 million SGD (approximately USD 3.8 million) to a fictitious account. According to the Singapore Police Force, the incident was one of several sophisticated scams targeting business professionals who had previously interacted with government officials.

While this represents an extreme case, the underlying capability—AI producing output indistinguishable from human work—is now widespread across the internet. This trend is evident in the rapid growth of AI-generated media. Research by video editing company, Kapwing, published in December 2025 found that between 21% and 33% of YouTube Shorts were AI-generated. Similarly, Kapwing reported that approximately one-third of the first 500 Shorts viewed by a new user were AI-generated.

A similar pattern is observed in written content. The SEO firm Graphite reported a sharp increase in AI-generated articles following the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022. In that year, approximately 10% of a random sample of 65,000 articles appeared to be AI-generated. Within two years, this figure had risen to more than 40%. Separate research by Amazon Web Services reached an even broader conclusion, estimating that roughly 57% of all text on the web is either AI-generated or translated using AI algorithms.

These figures, however, require important context. A high proportion of AI-generated content does not necessarily imply malicious intent or low-quality information. As AWS notes, this estimate also includes software code, automated translations, graphic design workflows, text-to-speech systems, and countless routine organizational processes, where AI primarily functions as a productivity tool rather than a replacement for human authorship.

Moreover, Graphite used Surfer’s AI detector to analyze Common Crawl, the world’s largest publicly available web archive containing billions of webpages used by researchers and AI developers. Examining text in 500-word segments, the detector estimated that more than half of the sampled content was generated by AI. Yet the approach itself is an inherent limitation: AI was being used to classify AI-generated text, while failing to account for the increasingly common practice of using AI to edit, translate, or refine content originally written by humans.

What the numbers do establish, however, is scale, and a growing public awareness that has not caught up to it. This is because, I argue, AI generation today falls into two categories: content that is virtually indistinguishable from human work, and content that is overtly synthetic, mass-produced, and created with minimal effort.

The first category shows AI’s ability to imitate human communication. Francesco Agnelli, a lecturer in digital and data studies, argues that “the line between human and machine authorship is blurring, particularly as it’s become increasingly difficult to tell whether something was written by a person or AI.” The 2026 International AI Safety Report reinforces this observation. In one study, participants incorrectly identified GPT-4o-generated text as human-written 77% of the time after only a five-minute conversation.

This difficulty also exists well beyond text. The same report summarizes multiple studies showing that people consistently struggle to identify AI-generated deepfakes. For audio, one study found that participants mistook AI-generated voice clones for the real speaker in 80% of cases. Video presents similar difficulties. A 2026 Malwarebytes survey found that participants correctly identified high-quality deepfake videos only 24.5% of the time, with detection accuracy falling to just 29% for content generated by the newest models. The survey also noted that by 2022, nearly nine in ten adults reported that they could no longer reliably distinguish real content from AI-generated media, compared with roughly two-thirds only a year earlier.

The second category is commonly referred to as “AI slop”—AI-generated content characterized by minimal effort, low production quality, and mass replication. Early examples, such as the viral “Will Smith eating spaghetti” video and the “tung tung tung sahur” meme, were often dismissed as internet curiosities. However, Jessica Davies, managing editor of Digiday, argues that the scale of AI slop has expanded dramatically. Today it is an increasingly common feature on platforms such as Facebook and YouTube.

The phenomenon is particularly visible on YouTube. For example, searching for philosophy or history often produces nearly identical videos featuring calm AI narration, stock footage, and generalized scripts that summarize complex subjects without citing sources. Fliki, a text-to-video AI platform, openly encourages aspiring creators to capitalize on this formula. Among its recommendations are choosing enduring topics such as Stoicism, Buddhism, or Taoism; condensing their central ideas into a 10- to 15-minute script; generating narration with a “calm, authoritative AI voice”; and pairing it with royalty-free footage of nature or ancient landmarks. It even recommends titles such as 10 Stoic Rules for a Better Life because of their consistent popularity.

History content has followed a similar trajectory, albeit with greater emphasis on entertainment. The Guardian highlighted this trend in June 2026 through the success of Chloe VS History, an AI-generated “time traveler” persona with more than 610,000 Instagram followers and over 15 million YouTube views. Its popularity has since inspired numerous copycat accounts, including Janella Through Time, Nova VS History, and Esmetimetravels.

Yet AI slop extends well beyond video platforms. Davies identifies a parallel ecosystem of AI-generated websites that rely on plagiarized articles, fabricated authors, and fictitious bylines, and generate advertising revenue within months of launch. Citing data from Deepsee.io, she notes that the number of identified AI slop websites increased by 717% in a single year. Deepsee’s blocklist of MFA (Made-for-Advertising) and AI slop domains grew from 17,124 websites in June 2024 to 108,270 by May 2025, of which 96,791 were classified specifically as AI slop.

This trend shows no signs of slowing, and increased awareness alone is insufficient to address it. AI-generated content is inexpensive to produce at scale, and content creators are capitalizing on this aggressively. For example, in advertising, 83% of executives now report that their company has deployed AI in the creative process, up from 60% two years earlier. Cost efficiency, which ranked fifth among AI’s benefits in 2024, is now the most frequently cited reason for adoption, surpassing creative innovation.

Pockets of humanity

The scale at which AI has enabled individuals and corporations to produce content is substantial. However, emerging evidence suggests that people are often resistant to AI-generated content, particularly when its origin is not disclosed. A study conducted by YouGov in Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Singapore found that 80% of participants wanted AI-generated content to be explicitly identified as such. Additionally, research by the Nuremberg Institute for Market Decisions saw that knowing something was made with AI led to decreased trust and reduced engagement, even when the content was technically polished. This phenomenon was called a ‘trust penalty,’ which reflects a bias in which people respond negatively to content they know to be or suspect to be machine-generated, regardless of its quality.

This trust penalty indicates that people continue to value human involvement and are cautious in its absence. This sentiment is influencing how creators present their work. For example, director Vince Gilligan concluded his 2025 series Pluribus with an explicit message stating ‘was made by humans’ as a protest against AI-generated content. Similarly, the audio company iHeartMedia, after research revealed that 100% of listeners preferred media created by people, instructed its DJs to announce their shows as ‘Guaranteed Human.’

The same goes with readers, who are increasingly drawn to long-form writing produced by identifiable individuals. Substack, for example, hosts 50 million active subscriptions, of which 5 million are paid. By April 2026, nearly 100,000 publications were generating revenue on the platform, double the number from the previous year, with approximately 30,000 based outside the United States. This is despite the Substack model operating differently from those of similar platforms, as it features no advertisements or algorithmic feeds optimized by AI.

Across Southeast Asia, the desire for human connection is also manifesting in physical gatherings. These movements do not explicitly identify themselves as responses to AI, however participants seek the experience of being present with another person. In Jakarta, Indonesia, the Baca Bareng Silent Book Club draws hundreds of people to a South Jakarta park for a single uninterrupted hour of public reading, with no fees, sponsors, or advertisements. Its founder, Hestia Istiviani, describes reading together in a public park as a political act, a means of reclaiming shared space and asserting the right to use it.

Similar initiatives have emerged in Tuguegarao, Philippines, where InBetweenChapters, a local book club, has grown from one founder to nearly 40 regular participants. Their premise is to read a book independently and engage in discussion afterward.

Where do we go from here?

AI is not slowing down. Investment, policy, and demand are all climbing, and the technology will keep moving into work that people once did by hand.

However, the core issue does not lie with the tool itself, but with its impact on an internet ecosystem designed to reward engagement and optimized content. When content is nearly free to produce, almost indistinguishable from human work, or easy to scale, the difference between human and AI-made content blurs.

This creates a loop: inexpensive content supply meets engagement-driven distribution systems (i.e Facebook and Youtube), and the two perpetuate each other without direct oversight. However, public responses such as the trust penalty, disclosure demands, and “made by humans” labels all reflect a common concern that the presence of a human creator is important in establishing trust.

You cannot argue out of this loop. Instead, it requires building communities and connections that the dynamic cannot reach.

This article reflects reporting and analysis made by The Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier. If you have additional context, a different take, or a perspective we’ve missed — whether you’re a researcher, a policy practitioner, or someone living with these realities on the ground — this is an evolving story and we’d like to hear from you. Drop a comment below or get in touch.

About Matthew Parra

Matthew Parra is a student at the University of Santo Tomas and the founder and Executive Director of The Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier — an independent analytical platform dedicated to rigorous, evidence-grounded analysis of Southeast Asia and the Pacific across economics, society, and geopolitics.

The most iconic moment in the history of Shark Tank is when Aaron Krause, the inventor of Scrub Daddy, waltzed into the tank to pitch a highly engineered polymer foam sponge with a smiley-face design. The male investors dismissed it. Lori Greiner, the sole woman on the panel, did not. She understood the household economy in a way the men at that table simply did not, invested $200,000 for a 20% equity stake, and secured the show’s most successful deal in history. Scrub Daddy has since crossed $1.4 billion in lifetime sales. Lori made over $100 million dollars.

When women are absent from the pitching room, entire economies get written off. For Southeast Asia’s booming startup ecosystem, keeping the investors’ pool a boys’ club means the region is blindfolding itself to its next economic giants.

Southeast Asia does not need more women to pitch. It needs more women to write the checks.

The status quo: Funding is going down, not up

Southeast Asia’s startup ecosystem raised over $13 billion in venture capital in 2025, yet women-led ventures are receiving the thinnest slivers of that pie. All-women founding teams secured just 21 equity funding rounds in 2025, accounting for only 4.6% of total deal volume and a mere 3.2% of total capital raised, while all-male teams captured 83.7% of deal value. There is an obvious ceiling, and it is calcifying.

The popular rebuttal is that there are simply not enough women founders in the pipeline. Women own approximately a quarter of small and medium enterprises across the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, which puts that argument to rest immediately. The sharper question to ask is who sits on the other side of the table deciding whether they are worth funding. Only 17.9% of investment decision-makers at Southeast Asia-headquartered venture firms are women, and that figure has barely moved since 2023. A pipeline cannot fix itself when the gatekeepers are almost uniformly male.

I. Women investors invest more in women founders

A 2023 study by INSEAD Knowledge found that women venture capitalists are twice as likely to fund female-led startups compared to their male counterparts. That statistic is worth sitting with. Doubling the probability of investment is a structural advantage. For a female founder navigating a funding environment where all-women teams secured only 3.2% of total capital in 2025, having a woman on the other side of the table is almost a lifeline.

The reason for this gap in investment behavior goes beyond individual sympathy or shared experience. Investors evaluate founders through a process called pattern-matching: they fund what looks like what they have funded before. Historically, the archetype of a “successful founder” is a young male technologist who dropped out of an elite university, and male investors have been replicating that archetype for decades. The result is a self-reinforcing loop. Male investors fund male founders, male founders build the reference cases, and the reference cases tell male investors what success looks like. Women never enter the pattern, so they never enter the portfolio.

Women investors break that loop. They carry a different set of reference points, different market intuitions, and crucially, a different ability to recognize value in sectors that male investors have historically dismissed. Lori Greiner did not invest in Scrub Daddy because of its smiley-face appearance. She invested because she understood the household economy at a level of granularity that no one else in the room possessed. The same logic applies to every women-led healthtech, femtech, consumer wellness, and financial inclusion startup in Southeast Asia that gets passed over at pitch day because the men around the table cannot map it onto a prior win. Women investors often offer a market intelligence upgrade.

The argument that female founders simply need to perform better collapses under the data. Female-founded ventures perform as well as male-founded ones when controlling for sector, market, experience, and hours worked. The performance record is established. The funding gap persists anyway, which means the variable that requires correction is not founder quality but investor composition. In venture capital, recognition is determined entirely by who holds the pen. That’s why women investors need to be at the forefront of the pitching room.

II. SEA’s venture capital’s “bro culture” is economically costly

Southeast Asia’s VC ecosystem has a cultural problem it has not yet been honest enough to name. Among firms based in the region, the average women-to-men ratio in senior investment roles stands at 0.25, or one woman for every four men. That ratio means the person deciding which startups get funded, which founders get a second meeting, and which sectors get labeled “too niche” is almost always male. While that is a fact, it also has economic consequences.

Harvard Kennedy School research describes a hypermasculine “bro” culture in venture capital whose symptoms include extreme competitiveness, low psychological safety, a reliance on tight, insular networks, and a near-total absence of accountability around gender bias. For female founders, this culture functions like an invisible tax. Before they even deliver a pitch, they are already navigating an environment designed around the comfort of men. Research shows that female founders are evaluated through a gendered lens, assessed as higher-risk than equivalent male founders, and required to prove themselves to a standard their male counterparts are not held to. Due to this, female-founded teams have secured alarmingly low late-stage deals in the past two years across Southeast Asia^.. This is because no one with the power to fund them chose to champion them.

The cost of this culture extends beyond the individual founders it chooses to sideline. When an ecosystem systematically defunds women-led companies, it is eliminating a category of economic actors that has proven its value. Globally, female-led businesses generate higher revenue per dollar invested and reinvest more in their communities. In Southeast Asia, where the household economy is vast and underserved by formal finance, defunding women-led ventures is a category error that the data has been flagging for years

The counterpoint that sometimes surfaces is that gender-lens investing will eventually correct the problem on its own, without requiring women to occupy the actual seats of power. That misunderstands how investment cultures change. A male-dominated firm that adds a gender-lens policy without adding women to its investment committee is hanging a sign on a door while keeping the door locked. Culture in venture capital flows from who is in the room. If bro culture is the disease, male monoculture in the partnership is the condition that allows it to thrive. Dismantling it requires presence, not just intention.

III. Gender-lens investing needs women investors to survive

Gender-lens investing has built a compelling business case. Private equity firms with at least one woman in a senior investment role have raised $29.36 billion across 72 funds since 2020, capturing 67.8% of PE capital raised in the region. All-male teams, by comparison, captured just 32.2%. Gender-diverse investment teams have built a track record that outperforms. The financial argument for including women in investment decision-making has already been written by the data.

But here is what that track record cannot do on its own: it cannot survive without women in the rooms where decisions are made. Gender-lens investing is a strategy that requires its practitioners to see what others miss, to identify the market opportunity in a women-led healthcare platform or a femtech startup that male pattern-matching writes off as niche. That kind of sight is not guaranteed by policy. It is cultivated by experience, by having operated in markets that male investors have never had to navigate, and by understanding the consumer behaviors that women-led businesses are built around.

Consider what happens when a fund adopts gender-lens principles without diversifying its investment team. The deal sourcing still runs through male networks. The due diligence still applies male-centric benchmarks of what traction looks like. The board seats still go to candidates who fit a profile the male partners recognize. Gender-lens investing without women investors is a framework without a practitioner. The strategy exists on paper, yes, but the judgment required to execute it faithfully is missing. Research on investor behavior shows that women VCs are twice as likely to fund female-led startups, precisely because they possess that judgment organically. To want the outcomes of gender-lens investing while refusing to build the investor base that makes those outcomes likely is a contradiction the data refuses to sustain.

Every check written by an investor is a vote for what the economy prioritizes next. The sectors that women build, such as consumer health, financial inclusion, caregiving technology, and education, form the infrastructure of Southeast Asia’s economic future, even when they are treated as peripheral by the investors who should be competing for them. Women will own 75% of global discretionary spend by 2028. The companies serving that market will be worth trillions. The investors who recognize that value early will have outsized returns. The investors who do not will be funding the equivalent of a room full of men who passed on Scrub Daddy.

IV. Economic empowerment requires women to control capital

Entrepreneurship alone cannot close the gender wealth gap. A woman can build the company, assemble the team, grow the revenue, and still find herself structurally excluded from the networks that decide who gets funded at scale. The ceiling in women’s economic participation sits at the capital table, where the decisions about who gets to grow are made by people who were never taught to see her potential.

Capital is power in the most literal sense available to an economy. It determines which ideas survive, which markets get served, and which founders build the companies that define the next decade. When women control a proportionate share of that capital, the decisions that flow from it shift. The sectors that get funded expand. The founders who get championed diversify. The reference cases that investors use to pattern-match begin to include women. The loop, finally, runs in a different direction.

This is why increasing the number of women investors is as urgent as increasing the number of women entrepreneurs. A female founder who clears every hurdle and builds a successful company without a single female investor in her cap table has proven that individual excellence can survive a hostile system. But she has not changed the system. Changing the system requires women on the investment side, women who can redirect capital, build new reference cases, and make the next generation of female founders marginally less likely to spend their best years pitching in rooms that do not believe in them.

V. Limits: Women investors cannot do it alone

The case for more women investors is compelling, and the data that supports it is unambiguous. Intellectual honesty requires asking what this article does not resolve, because the structural barriers facing women in venture capital are not limited to the question of who writes the checks. They extend to who gets to build the career that eventually leads to writing them. Among Southeast Asia-based firms, 67.2% of regional venture investors still have no women in an investment decision-making role, a figure that has barely moved in three years despite mounting evidence that gender-diverse teams outperform. The persistence of that number points to a problem that sits upstream of the partner level: women are not entering the investment profession in sufficient numbers, and those who do are concentrated at junior levels with limited authority over final investment decisions. In many cases, women are the only female voice in predominantly male teams, with limited sway over investment decisions. Being present in a room and having the power to change its outcomes are two very different conditions, and conflating them flatters the progress that has been made.

The deeper problem is one of scale. Even where women investors exist and are actively championing female founders, female VCs do not yet control sufficient assets to continue investing in female-led firms as they scale. The concentration of women investors in early-stage and impact-focused funds means that female founders who clear the seed hurdle often encounter an all-male wall at Series A and beyond. That is precisely why all-women founding teams secured no late-stage deals across Southeast Asia in 2024 and 2025. The women investors who back them at the start do not have the fund size to follow through, and the male investors who do have that capacity remain unconvinced. According to a CrossBoundary analysis, Southeast Asia lags behind Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America in adopting gender-lens investing at scale, despite having a larger and more developed startup ecosystem than either region. That gap is not explained by a lack of female founders or a shortage of financial instruments. It is explained by the absence of women at the senior levels of the funds, large enough to move the needle at the growth stage.

This matters for the article’s core argument because it means that calling for more women investors, without simultaneously addressing the structures that exclude women from investment careers in the first place, risks treating a systemic problem as though it has a compositional solution. More women at the table is necessary but not sufficient if those women remain outvoted, underfunded, or siloed in roles without full investment authority. Closing the gender finance gap requires a syndicated effort from investors, ecosystem builders, and policymakers working in parallel, not sequentially. The argument for more women investors is an argument for the transformation of the venture capital profession itself: in how investment careers are built, how fund managers are selected by LPs, how networks are accessed, and how the definition of a credible investor gets written and rewritten over time. Southeast Asia does not just need more women to enter the investment profession. It also needs the profession to change in ways that make women’s presence within it durable, powerful, and capable of compounding.

The way forward: The Philippines is already moving

The Philippines, long regarded as one of Southeast Asia’s more gender-progressive economies, is beginning to translate that reputation into infrastructure. Backed by Investing in Women, an initiative of the Australian Government that catalyzes inclusive economic growth through women’s economic empowerment across Indonesia, Vietnam, Myanmar, and the Philippines, two Philippine-based initiatives are doing the structural work that the market has consistently failed to do on its own.

Kerubin Capital, founded in 2021 with the support of Investing in Women and the Manila Angel Investors Network, is building the Gender-Smart Investing Map of the Philippines, which is the first and only initiative of its kind in Southeast Asia. At the helm is Tina di Cicco, whose work as a gender-lens investor and leader exemplifies exactly what the data prescribes: a practitioner who can read a market that male pattern-matching has systematically undervalued. Under her stewardship, Kerubin operates as a living ecosystem tool designed to make visible, in granular detail, exactly where capital flows and which women-led businesses are positioned to absorb it. The map aggregates founders, investors, accelerators, intermediaries, and policy bodies into a single intelligence layer, which turns what is an invisible market into a legible one. That matters because the gender financing gap in the Philippines persists partly as an information problem: capital that would move toward women-led businesses cannot find them, and businesses that deserve capital cannot find the investors equipped to evaluate them. In a region where gender-lens investing has lagged behind the rhetoric supporting it, Kerubin is building the connective tissue the ecosystem has always needed.

Meanwhile, ARQ SME BDC has launched SheSecure, a private debt fund developed under the leadership of female investor Abigail Tan, that does more than lend to women-led businesses. It financially rewards them for deepening their gender equity practices, offering financing of up to PHP 30 million per enterprise with interest incentives tied to measurable improvements in workplace gender equality. The instrument is designed for the most neglected segment of the Philippine economy: businesses with assets between PHP 35 million and PHP 100 million, the range where women’s ownership drops sharply from a majority to just 16%. SheSecure is proving that gender-smart capital structures are commercially viable. The “missing middle” of women-led businesses has gone unfunded because the right financial instruments were never built for it, which is a design failure, not a market one, and one that Abigail Tan’s work at ARQ is now actively correcting.

Investing in Women is the common thread behind both initiatives, and that is precisely a point to note. Without catalytic public funding willing to absorb first-loss risk and underwrite the cost of building new models, neither Kerubin Capital nor SheSecure would exist. The market did not produce these tools on its own. They required a female investor and an organization with a vision broad enough to see the structural problem and patient enough to fund the solution before it was profitable. That is what Investing in Women provides, and why its role in the Southeast Asian gender-investing ecosystem is foundational rather than supplementary.

Southeast Asia has enough women building extraordinary things. What it lacks is enough women and enough men who see and understand the data in the rooms where those things get funded. The billionaire girls’ club is not a fantasy. The only question is whether Southeast Asia is willing to build the investment ecosystem that gets us there.

This article reflects reporting and analysis made by The Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier. If you have additional context, a different take, or a perspective we’ve missed — whether you’re a researcher, a policy practitioner, or someone living with these realities on the ground — this is an evolving story and we’d like to hear from you. Drop a comment below or get in touch.

About Author

Samantha Reese Han is an undergraduate Political Science student of Adamson University whose advocacy work spans youth civic engagement, legal literacy, and women’s empowerment in entrepreneurship. Professionally, she is a builder operating in the intersection of policy, capital, and advocacy. She serves as an Events and Partnerships Intern for the Senate of the Philippines, a Venture Capital Intern for Kerubin Capital, and a Deputy Director for Justitia Lab currently. She loves seeing ideas transform into social impact.

Across Southeast Asia, there is a kind of theft that does not appear in any ledger. It is committed daily, in the currency of hours, and on the very roads meant to bring order.

The mathematical understanding of time is its divisibility into units, such as years, months, days, and so on. Scientifically speaking, time is relative, depending on the speed of the subject or the strength of the gravitational pull it is moving in. But while these are all generally accepted truths, a less-examined reality of time is its dependence on the conditions through which it is lived. And in nations with poor transport infrastructures, the universal twenty-four hours are not felt uniformly.

Improvisation as infrastructure

Southeast Asia is characterized by close proximities, not only on the map but also on the clock, running on time zones that barely differ across borders. It also runs, quite literally, on similar wheels. Across the region, the same categories of informal, small-capacity vehicles operate, only under different names. There are shared minibusses like the Philippines’ jeepney, Timor-Leste’s mikrolet, and Thailand’s songthaew; motorcycle-based carriers like Thailand and Cambodia’s tuk-tuk, Cambodia’s remorque, Indonesia’s bajaj, the Philippines’ tricycle, and Vietnam’s xích lô; and bicycle-powered variants like Indonesia’s *becak* and **Malaysia’s beca, among others. Their similarities stretch even further in their cultural significance, each synonymous with the country that made it.

Though products of different circumstances, these vehicles also find common ground in the conditions they stemmed from: domestic instability caused by post-war destruction, colonial rule, or political upheaval that left formal infrastructure underdeveloped or in ruin. They were improvisations, evidence of each country’s capacity to adapt, and though they have outlasted the circumstances that created them and were not meant to be permanent fixtures, most continue to be in mass usage today.

Nevertheless, the persistence of these vehicles is not, in itself, the problem. They are tangible proofs of each country’s resilience, and have since become fixtures of cultural identity and tourism. Rather, the issue lies in the continued dependence on them to meet transportation demands for Southeast Asia’s rapidly growing urban populations. Instead of meeting those demands through the expansion of formal infrastructure, many cities have instead multiplied the vehicles themselves. And where even these informal carriers fall short, private vehicle ownership fills the gap, a response to the absence of reliable alternatives. Inadequate formal transit pushes commuters toward both small-capacity carriers and personal motorcycles and cars; volume, then, becomes the substitute for infrastructure, and volume, on roads inherited from an era that did not anticipate this scale of population, becomes congestion. While the degree of dependence varies across the region, the nations that do continue to heavily rely on small-capacity carriers and private vehicles, such as Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, rank among the most congested countries globally.

This reliance is less a matter of preference than of absence. Singapore, once dependent on the trishaw during the Japanese occupation, has since built a Mass Rapid Transit system dense enough that many residents live within walking distance of a station, complemented by bus networks that run on fixed schedules. For most of Southeast Asia, meanwhile, this level of efficiency remains out of reach. In many cities, trains and buses cover only so much ground, and everything beyond their reach falls to the informal carriers and the private vehicles that have quietly become the default.

The problem, then, is at a gridlock. The urban road networks across much of the region were largely shaped during an era of significant foreign influence, whether through direct colonial rule or the external political pressures that touched even those nations that retained formal independence, and naturally, the layouts that emerged from that reflected the needs and logics of their time. When that era ended, the physical skeleton of the city remained, but the sustained investment needed to evolve it did not follow. Cities grew around their inherited frameworks rather than beyond them, and those frameworks are now costly and complicated to restructure. Reform is not impossible, but congestion and the political and logistical weight it carries make it perpetually difficult to act on, and this inaction carries consequences that reach beyond inefficiency alone.

Time as a dimension of poverty

Poverty is most often described as a scarcity of resources. A resource far less discussed in that context, however, is time. Unlike food or shelter, problems that money can, at least in principle, solve, time cannot be bought or fully controlled, and in countries where transportation systems are not adeptly built for convenience, it cannot even be reliably managed. And this inefficiency is a paradox: on one hand, it is a symptom of bad governance, a consequence of poor economic handling and misplaced priorities. On the other hand, it is precisely what sustains the stagnancy it exemplifies. The hours spent by workers in transit are time spent not working, resting, or pursuing personal growth, which are all equally prerequisites for productivity.

Yana van der Meulen Rodgers, a labor economist at Rutgers University who has consulted for the World Bank, the United Nations, and the Asian Development Bank, writes that individuals may be “living above the official income-poverty line, but they do not have enough time to fulfill their unpaid work demands” — these are the “hidden poor,” whose deprivation only becomes visible once their time deficits are accounted for. A key determinant of this, she argues, is poor physical infrastructure.

While this dynamic can be observed across Southeast Asia, Metro Manila stands as one of its clearest illustrations. It is where the nation’s economic output is heavily centralized, and as the capital, the government’s ambitions are most visibly on display. Thus, there is the assumption that it would be the Philippines’ most developed city in every measurable sense, infrastructure included. Manila is no exception to that logic, but it does remain an exception to the result. The country’s best attempts at transportation development can be found here, yet they do not quite reflect the image of the robust economy that the Philippines projects on the global stage.

The existing rail network — the LRT-1, LRT-2, and MRT-3 — covers the city’s main arteries, but does not sufficiently absorb the volume of people moving through them daily. Operations cut off at around ten in the evening, which means the bulk of the city’s commuters are funneled into the same morning and afternoon windows. Breakdowns are also frequent, and the number of trains in service has consistently lagged behind ridership. When the rail system cannot be counted on, commuters spill into jeepneys, shuttle services, point-to-point buses, and ride-hailing platforms like Grab and Angkas, all of which compete for the same lanes as private vehicles and feed the traffic all the same. All forms of transit, therefore, exist in a sort of symbiosis, each compensating for the others’ inadequacies, while the commuters bear the cost of losing time.

The arithmetic of an ordinary commute

The lived reality of Manila’s commute cuts across economic lines. The inefficiency of public transit does not simply stay contained within the jeepney or the cars of the LRT or MRT, spilling onto the roads and causing traffic that burdens everyone who uses them, including those with the luxury of a private vehicle.

One such reality is my own. I reside in the heart of Manila, only an eight-minute walk from the nearest train station and three minutes from a jeepney terminal, so in theory, commuting should not pose much of a problem. Moreover, the university I attend is only around two kilometers away. If I take the train, the ride itself is only three to five minutes, but the interval between trains can stretch to ten, and with no fixed schedule, it all becomes a matter of luck. From the station, I would still need to board a tricycle to reach the university, adding another five to ten minutes. So, what should be a ten-minute commute ends up taking thirty.

The calculus worsens with distance. Getting to other, busier districts such as Makati, which is around eight kilometers away, takes roughly an hour: the walk to the station, twenty minutes to Cubao, ten minutes on foot to transfer lines, then another twenty to Ayala. All this, from someone who lives close to the city’s main transport systems. For those who must first take a jeepney or tricycle just to reach a station, or those who forgo the rail entirely, the time lost is worse still.

The collective cost of lost hours

Manila, of course, is only one city. And for all of the Philippines’ shortcomings, it is not the most underdeveloped country in Southeast Asia, yet the time consumed by such a system is already detrimental. So in countries where infrastructure lags further behind, where roads are fewer, and railways are less extensive, the hours lost to transit compound into something far more corrosive than inconvenience.

And the consequences of that are not felt by the individual alone. What is lost in transit is not only personal time, but collective capacity, the culmination of hours that, if redirected, could have compounded into skill, into output, and into the kind of sustained participation in economic life that development actually requires. Poverty, in this sense, feeds itself: the less time people have, the less they can do to escape the conditions that took it from them.

This is not to say that infrastructure reform alone resolves the broader conditions that produce poverty across the region — income inequality, wage stagnation, urban sprawl, and land use policy all determine whether development actually reaches the people it is meant to. But infrastructure remains the precondition that makes the rest of those efforts legible.

This is the contradiction at the heart of Southeast Asia’s “time race,” where nations spend decades positioning themselves as the next frontier of global growth while the very infrastructure meant to support that pursuit continues to erode the hours available for it. Development is not only a matter of output, but a matter of the conditions under which output is produced, and time poverty quietly undermines both. It does not appear in GDP figures, nor does it register as a policy emergency; it accumulates in the body and in the hours, its weight carried by even those least equipped to bear it.

Infrastructure, then, is not something to be sorted out once growth has arrived, but rather what growth arrives on. The road to development is, in a very literal sense, the road itself, and a nation cannot run a time race when its own systems are the ones setting the pace. Until that changes, the cycle does not.

This article reflects reporting and analysis made by The Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier. If you have additional context, a different take, or a perspective we’ve missed — whether you’re a researcher, a policy practitioner, or someone living with these realities on the ground — this is an evolving story and we’d like to hear from you. Drop a comment below or get in touch.

About Author

Jodi Chrystelle Robiños is an Asian Studies student whose interests lie in society, identity, and the forces that shape communities across Asia. Through research and writing, she explores diverse perspectives and seeks to contribute to informed and meaningful discussions on contemporary social issues. She currently serves as the Society and Identity pillar lead for the Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier.

When people call the Philippines a goldmine, they often think of its natural resources, 7,641 islands, vast coastlines, and rich biodiversity. That is true, but it is not the full picture. The more important goldmine for builders is the gap between what Filipinos need every day and the systems that still have not been built well enough to support them.

Those gaps are visible everywhere: uneven roads, flood-prone streets, unreliable infrastructure, slow public services, manual processes, and rising heat that makes daily life harder. These are not just inconveniences. They are signals of weak systems, poor data flow, and outdated infrastructure. From a developer’s perspective, that makes the Philippines a difficult but meaningful place to build. The opportunity is not to romanticize the country’s problems, but to recognize where technology is urgently needed and where better systems can create real public value.

As a computer science student learning artificial intelligence and machine learning, I see this clearly. Algorithms, data pipelines, and machine learning models are not just academic topics. At their core, they help make sense of messy information and support better decisions. In the Philippine context, that matters because many of the country’s hardest problems are also information and systems problems.

Digital access is one example. A PIDS broadband review notes that mobile network performance in the Philippines still lags behind ASEAN counterparts, with rural areas facing sharper drops in access and speed. In BARMM, the average mobile download speed is barely 10 Mbps. A World Bank-cited report also found that fixed broadband household penetration in the Philippines was only 33 percent in 2022, below Malaysia’s 50 percent, Thailand’s 58 percent, and Vietnam’s 76 percent. UNESCO’s Philippines AI readiness profile points to the same structural issue, citing poor digital infrastructure, siloed policymaking, bureaucratic inertia, and outdated frameworks as barriers to digital transformation.

Agriculture shows another gap. Farmers play a major role in the rural economy, but many still lack integrated weather, soil, advisory, and market tools that could help them make better decisions. PIDS notes that some digital agriculture tools are already widespread, but decision-support systems and data harmonization remain areas for expansion. In practical terms, this means the data exists in pieces, but it is not always connected in a way that helps farmers act with confidence.

Disaster response makes the need even clearer. PAGASA says an average of 20 tropical cyclones enter the Philippine Area of Responsibility each year, with around 8 or 9 crossing the country. The lesson from disasters like Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda is blunt: when roads, power, communication lines, and local coordination break down, aid and information move more slowly than people need. Predictive models, flood-risk mapping, localized warning systems, and better logistics platforms cannot stop typhoons, but they can help communities prepare and respond faster.

But infrastructure is only part of the picture. The people who would benefit most from these systems are often the least equipped to use them. PSA’s 2024 FLEMMS, as reported by GMA News Online, found that 93.1 percent of Filipinos aged 10 to 64 have basic literacy, but only 70.8 percent are functionally literate. The divide is sharper in some areas: Tawi-Tawi recorded a 33.2 percent functional literacy rate, while BARMM had the highest illiteracy rate at 14.4 percent. Digital readiness is also weak. UNESCO’s Philippines AI readiness profile cites a UNESCAP study stating that almost 90 percent of Filipinos lack basic ICT skills such as word-processing, internet, and email skills.

This is why AI and machine learning in the Philippines cannot be treated as tools only for the privileged. A technically impressive system is useless if the people it is meant to serve cannot access, understand, or trust it. Good solutions here must be designed around real conditions: uneven connectivity, multilingual users, underfunded institutions, and communities that are often left behind by technology.

The government has started moving in this direction. The National AI Strategy Roadmap 2.0, launched in July 2024, builds on the 2021 AI roadmap and focuses on Innovation and Implementation across research and development, digitization and infrastructure, workforce development, and AI governance and ethics. It also calls for data literacy, upskilling, support for AI startups, the Center for AI Research, and adaptive governance involving agencies such as the National Privacy Commission, Intellectual Property Office, and Philippine Competition Commission. Recent DICT planning around the Philippines AI+ Infrastructure Masterplan 2033 also points to AI-ready data centers, high-performance computing, digital connectivity, renewable energy, talent development, and regulatory reforms.

Still, roadmaps are not enough. The real test is whether builders can turn strategy into usable systems. Predictive flood tools, crop advisory platforms, public-service automation, traffic models, and decision-support systems for local governments are not distant possibilities. They are practical needs waiting for developers with the right skills, empathy, and patience.

This is why the Philippines can be seen as a developer’s goldmine. Its value is not only in natural resources, but in the space between what exists and what can still be improved. For developers willing to understand local problems deeply, there is no shortage of meaningful work to do.

This is an externally contributed piece. If you have additional context, a different take, or a perspective we’ve missed — whether you’re a researcher, policymaker, or practitioner — this is an evolving story and we’d like to hear from you. Drop a comment below or get in touch.

About Antonio Axellance H. Paco III

Antonio Axellance H. III Paco is a Computer Science student at the University of Santo Tomas and a DOST-SEI Merit Scholar. He is currently an ML Engineering Intern at FlyRank AI and serves as Director for Sponsorships at AWS Learning Club–UST. His interests include artificial intelligence, machine learning, and building technology solutions that create real-world impact.

On 2 April 2026, the French National Assembly voted to reject the government’s proposal to reform New Caledonia’s status within the French state. This decision followed the signing of the Bougival Accords in July 2025 and represents the latest development in the protracted contest over New Caledonia’s right to self-determination, led by its indigenous Kanak population. The vote heightened tensions throughout the archipelago and highlighted persistent questions regarding sovereignty and identity.

The French Parliament voted 190 to 107 against proposed changes intended to replace the Nouméa Accord, which has governed New Caledonia for over 25 years. The Bougival Accords sought to establish a “State of New Caledonia” within France and introduce a “new Caledonian nationality” for French citizens. The proposal further included provisions to grant New Caledonia certain diplomatic powers previously reserved for the French state. This development marks another chapter of New Caledonia’s struggle for independence, following multiple referenda and peace agreements between the pro-independence camp and the French government.

New Caledonia’s Troubling Unrest

The Bougival Accords were signed after six months of unrest involving pro-independence Kanak protesters and French security forces. This period of instability occurred amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the aftermath of the 2021 New Caledonian independence referendum. The 2021 referendum was the last of three scheduled referendums under the 20-year transition period established by the May 1998 Nouméa Accords between the Kanak people and the French government. Referendums took place in 2018, 2020, and 2021. French loyalists narrowly prevailed in the first two referenda. In 2021, following a boycott led by Kanak leaders, 96.50% of voters opposed independence, with a turnout of 43.87%. The defeat intensified grievances regarding self-determination, culminating in six months of unrest in 2024.

The political deadlock resulting from the unrest has complicated negotiations between French loyalists and pro-independence factions. Some parties have refused to recognize the Bougival Accords, arguing that they fail to address longstanding grievances related to independence and concerns about voting rights for non-Kanak residents. The recent unrest signals the fragility of the political settlements established by the Nouméa Accord. Although peace mechanisms exist to de-escalate hostilities, the island’s political leadership cannot dismiss the possibility of future violent unrest.

New Caledonia’s Legislative Election

New Caledonia is scheduled to hold legislative elections before the end of June 2026. The Bougival Accords and the 2024 riots led to the postponement of these elections, which were originally planned for 2024. Authorities delayed the elections due to concerns about further unrest and societal division. This caused significant damage to businesses and perpetuated an atmosphere of fear among residents. The unrest contracted New Caledonia’s GDP by 13.5%, compounded by a drastic decline in Nickel prices and uncertainties caused by the unrest. The forthcoming elections represent a critical juncture between pro-independence and French loyalist factions, reflecting tensions inherent in New Caledonia’s distinctive voting system established by the Nouméa Accords.

The French government has proposed reforms to New Caledonia’s voting system under the Nouméa Accord. The proposal would extend voting rights to non-Kanak residents born in New Caledonia after 1998 who currently hold French citizenship, potentially enfranchising 10,000 individuals, as supported by the French Senate. This is contrary to the past voting system that favored Kanak people, who make up around 41% of the island’s population, as part of the Nouméa Accord’s agreement to preserve the political weight of the Kanak people and restrict voting rights for residents born after the accords. Kanak leaders have consistently opposed such reforms, arguing that they would diminish Kanak representation in the legislative body. Pro-independence Senator Robert Xowie (FLNKS) has stated that these changes could further radicalize provincial elections.

The Kanaks have maintained that the current voting system upholds the Noumea accords and remains a fundamental pillar of decolonization in New Caledonia. They argued that protection is still an important component because the French settlement and migration have altered New Caledonia’s demographic composition, reducing the relative political weight of the indigenous Kanak population. On 26 May 2026, the French Parliament approved voting rights for 10,500 “native” voters from all ethnic groups for the upcoming elections. French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu stated that the voting reforms were made to rectify “growing distortions” in New Caledonia’s electoral roll.

However, the reform excludes spouses of native voters and French citizens who do not meet the criteria. At present, unilateral voting rights for recently arrived French citizens remain unattainable. This compromise may help ease political tensions between French loyalists and the pro-independence camp. It could reduce hostile rhetoric ahead of the provincial elections, which some view as a confidence vote for the pro-independence factions and their mandate for independence.

During French parliamentary debates, pro-independence FLNKS MP Emannuel Tjibaou voiced his party’s opposition to the Bougival accords and electoral reforms. He stated that “a sovereign state cannot exist within another. This is a model of internal autonomy, not external decolonization.” Tjibaou added his concerns over the risks of New Caledonia’s partition that would devolve further into growing divisions among the three provinces of New Caledonia.

What’s Next for New Caledonia?

New Caledonia’s independence movement remains stalled following a series of referendum defeats, violence associated with the 2024 unrest, and the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the upcoming elections may alter mandates for independence, entrenched divisions over voting rights and representation persist. Loyalists argue that the current system marginalizes key stakeholders and risks deepening divides between Kanaks and non-Kanaks, casting doubt on the viability of such arrangements in a prospective independent state. In contrast, Kanak leaders maintain that the existing voting system safeguards decolonization efforts by preserving their political influence amid demographic shifts driven by French migration. These unresolved disputes over sovereignty and representation continue to impede progress toward independence or substantive devolution, leaving New Caledonia in a state of political uncertainty.

New Caledonia’s distinctive political status provides a model for other independence movements in the Pacific and informs global decolonization efforts. The archipelago’s trajectory is closely monitored by regional actors and major powers, particularly given the Indo-Pacific’s increasing significance in global geopolitics. The responses of France, Australia, and other stakeholders to New Caledonia’s demands will influence not only the territory’s future but also broader debates concerning sovereignty, resource management, and strategic influence in the region. Thus, New Caledonia’s ongoing struggle constitutes both a local and international issue, with far-reaching implications for self-determination movements throughout the Pacific and beyond.

This article reflects reporting and analysis made by The Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier. If you have additional context, a different take, or a perspective we’ve missed — whether you’re a researcher, a policy practitioner, or someone living with these realities on the ground — this is an evolving story and we’d like to hear from you. Drop a comment below or get in touch.

About Joshua Adrian Gumasing

Joshua Adrian Gumasing is a graduate of AB Asian Studies at the University of Santo Tomas. He previously worked at a security consultancy firm doing due diligence and Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) research in Iraq and Syria. His special interests include field conflict resolution and peacemaking studies, geopolitics, and comparative politics.

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The Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier

When global companies started looking for alternatives to China, Southeast Asia seemed like the obvious answer. It was close, cost-competitive, and ready. The region is now producing more, exporting more, and hosting more of the world’s supply chains than ever. But producing more and capturing value from what you produce are different things — and that gap defines SEA’s real challenge

This is the tension at the center of the so-called “China Plus One” strategy, the practice among multinational corporations of maintaining operations in China while establishing a presence elsewhere to reduce geopolitical exposure. SEA has become the “elsewhere”. But becoming the “elsewhere” is not the same as transformation.

The uneven windfall

Southeast Asia did not suddenly become a prime destination. The region had spent years building conditions that made it an attractive alternative to China. So when MNCs started looking for alternatives, the infrastructure, trade agreements, and geography were already in place. In a 2025 investment report by the Association of Southeast-Asian Nations (ASEAN), it was noted that investments have surged $226 billion annually.

In 2022, ASEAN created the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a free trade agreement among all member states and dialogue partners, including mainland China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. RCEP reduced costs for companies to establish production in the region by standardizing rules of origin, eliminating tariffs on most products, and liberalizing trade rules.

Moreover, RCEP deepened the integration between Chinese manufacturing and Southeast Asian production in ways that made the region more complementary to China than competitive with it. Much of the investment that followed arrived with Chinese inputs, Chinese capital, and Chinese supply chain logic embedded in it. SEA became a more efficient node in a China-centered network rather than an independent one. This matters for the value capture question because the terms of participation were largely set elsewhere.

Vietnam, in particular, has emerged as a major beneficiary in this expansion as it has captured investments amid economic transitions and disruptions in China. In 2025, the country recorded 8.2 percent GDP growth, the highest quarterly performance since 2011, excluding the post-pandemic rebound. According to investment consulting firm Dezan Shira & Associates, manufacturing drove the expansion, attracting over US$72.83 billion in newly registered foreign investment across 6,783 projects between 2019 and 2025.

“We are witnessing a clear strategic shift as global companies increasingly view Vietnam as a regional hub. We see more businesses relocating their supply chain focal points to Vietnam from other markets to handle export manufacturing and regional distribution services,” says Remco Enders, managing director of logistics company DSV Solutions.

Much of Vietnam’s expansion has concentrated on export-oriented assembly such as electronics, garments, and footwear. This is where the margins are thin, and the value flows back to the brand owners, the chip designers, and the IP holders elsewhere. Vietnam’s growth is also heavily tied to a handful of large anchor investors; Samsung alone accounts for a substantial share of Vietnamese exports, over 13% - 25%, which means the headline numbers may be masking concentration risk as much as they are reflecting broad industrial development.

Malaysia’s economy, on the other hand, accelerated to 5.2 percent growth in the third quarter of 2025 due to a strong performance in electronics. Investments, however, increased with data centers, advanced manufacturing, and semiconductors attracting more MNCs. Combined with Thailand, the two countries recorded approximately US$43.9 billion in reported investments, though Thailand’s economic picture was considerably less encouraging, growing at just 1.2 percent in the third quarter, its slowest rate in four years, as manufacturing contracted and export growth decelerated despite investments.

The Philippines is a stark contrast. In the same quarter, the Philippine economy expanded by just 4 percent, its slowest growth since the COVID-19 lockdowns. Foreign investment approvals fell by 48.7 percent year on year, extending a sharp decline that had run through all three quarters of 2025.

This was not for lack of trying. Philippine Economic Zone Authority Director General Tereso Panga reported fruitful investment meetings in Xiamen, Chongqing, Shenzhen, and Dongguan, pointing to concrete wins

”The Aoxing group, based in Dongguan, an OEM for projector equipment, projector screen, and audio-visual products for global brands like HP, Epson, and Skyworth, has chosen the Philippines for its redundant manufacturing facility intended for the US export market,” Panga said.

The causes were compounding as corruption scandals involving public infrastructure projects damaged investor confidence at precisely the moment the country needed to project stability, while a succession of typhoons disrupted harvests, consumer spending, and economic activity more broadly.

The limits of relocation

When a factory moves from Shenzhen to Ho Chi Minh City, the production moves. The next question is what follows after?

The honest answer, so far, is not much of the value. Much of the investment redirected into Southeast Asia remains concentrated in mid-level segments of global value chains such as assembly, component manufacturing, and testing. These are not trivial roles as they employ millions of people and generate real economic activity. But they are also the segments where the margins are thinnest. The segments where the highest returns are, such as research and development, remain elsewhere.

For example, Malaysia has carved out a genuinely significant position in the global chip industry, commanding 13% of the global market share and ranking as the 6th largest exporter. Yet the founder market, where chips are actually designed and fabricated at the highest levels of precision, remains dominated by the United States, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, with over 63% of global market share. This is because semiconductor manufacturing has a distinct value hierarchy: design and IP at the top, fabrication in the middle, and assembly, testing, and packaging at the bottom. The firms that own chip designs, such as Nvidia, Qualcomm, and AMD, capture the largest margins because intellectual property is infinitely replicable at near-zero marginal cost.

Moreover, when it comes to who captures the revenue from semiconductor sales, the United States accounts for 46 percent of the global market, South Korea 21 percent, Japan 9 percent, Taiwan 8 percent, and China 7 percent. The rest of the world, Southeast Asia included, shares the remaining 9 percent.

This middle layer position offers opportunity but also limits, as it attracts capital, creates employment, and capacity that can serve as a base for upgrading. Economies that stabilize as assembly and intermediate manufacturing hubs without developing deeper technological capabilities can find themselves locked into roles that are difficult to escape.

Infrastructure has also compounded this constraint. Research on Vietnam and Malaysia’s seaports has noted that while there has been increased demand even during the pandemic, bottlenecks have stalled recovery due to inadequate infrastructure, equipment, and low loading/unloading productivity. Cat Lai in Ho Chi Minh City has faced severe congestion due to a 30% surge in cargo volumes.

According to research from the Universiti Teknologi in Malaysia, identified port congestion, hinterland connectivity, and uneven FDI distribution as systemic threats to the region’s competitiveness. The ASEAN secretariat separately noted that the member states have varying customs procedures and standards for warehousing, making cross-border logistics difficult.

Infrastructure matters because these constraints act as a ceiling on how much value the region can capture from the investment flowing in. A factory can relocate, but if goods cannot move efficiently, cost competitiveness can prove to be difficult. More critically, moving up the value chain requires attracting more sophisticated industries, and those industries are more sensitive to logistics reliability than low-cost assembly is.

Then there are the tariffs. Despite producing more, Southeast Asia has not been exempt from the US reciprocal tariffs. Major trading partners such as Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand have had tariffs set at 19 percent, and Singapore has 10 percent. Other products from the region, such as coffee and bananas, have been exempted because the US does not grow them.

“Southeast Asia’s tariff advantage over China persists for now, but depends on shifting US–China dynamics. Pending US Supreme Court rulings on tariff authority may further entrench uncertainty, leaving businesses to brace for continued trade volatility in 2026,” says John Goyer, Vice President for Southeast Asia and Oceania, at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

What would a real benefit look like?

The middle position is not a permanent sentence. One could argue that it is a starting position, and a few states in the region have already decided they do not intend to stay there.

For example, Indonesia, being the world’s largest producer of nickel, had for years exported raw ore at low prices while the value-added processing happened outside the country. In 2020, the government made a deliberate and costly decision to ban the export of unprocessed nickel ore entirely, forcing companies to process domestically if they wanted access to Indonesian nickel.

Vietnam is taking a different path towards the same destination. Hanoi has aggressively been investing in workforce development to transition its electronics industry from low-cost assembly to higher-value-added activities, targeting a significant role in the global semiconductor and tech supply chain by 2030. In 2024, the Vietnamese government issued Decision No. 1017/QĐ-TTg, which outlines the Program on Semiconductor Industry Workforce Development to 2030, with a vision to 2050 to train between 30,000 and 50,000 engineers by 2030.

These are not guarantees. Indonesia’s downstream strategy depends on sustained political will and global commodity demand that can shift. Vietnam’s engineering pipeline will take years to produce results, and the gap between training engineers and building a domestic semiconductor design industry is significant.

Both countries are making bets. But the bets matter, because they mean that Indonesia and Vietnam are making active choices about what kind of economy they want to be on the other side of this disruption, rather than simply receiving whatever the disruption sends their way.

The rest of the region faces the same choice, with less time than it might appear. The tariff environment is volatile, and infrastructure gaps are becoming wider. And the window in which Southeast Asia can leverage its current strategic relevance to move up the value chain, rather than simply consolidate its position within it, will not stay open indefinitely.

This article reflects reporting and analysis made by The Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier. If you have additional context, a different take, or a perspective we’ve missed — whether you’re a researcher, a policy practitioner, or someone living with these realities on the ground — this is an evolving story and we’d like to hear from you. Drop a comment below or get in touch.

About Matthew Parra

Matthew is a student at the University of Santo Tomas and the founder and Executive Director of The Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier — an independent analytical platform dedicated to rigorous, evidence-grounded analysis of Southeast Asia and the Pacific across economics, society, and geopolitics.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), nine of the ten most obese nations globally are in Oceania. Once a symbol of wealth, obesity here now starkly indicates the opposite: severe food insecurity and systemic poverty. This health crisis is the product of historical colonialism and modern economic structures failing island nations. The Pacific, once home to self-sufficient navigators, is now the epicenter of a metabolic crisis tied to structural dependency, reflecting a profound failure to respect Oceania’s fragile ecological and social balances.

A forced transition: From subsistence to dependency

Historically, Micronesians and Polynesians utilized advanced navigation techniques, subsisting on highly preserved, nutrient-dense foods like breadfruit and taro to survive arduous voyages. Their traditional diet and extreme physical demands favored a strong phenotype capable of efficiently storing nutrients—a survival mechanism for islands susceptible to food shortages. Islanders historically displayed high adaptability; in Tikopia, sustainable practices like rudimentary reforestation were utilized to maintain agricultural harmony, while strict social controls, such as Hawaii’s kapu system, regulated resource consumption.

However, colonial eras dismantled these sustainable systems. Colonizers repurposed islands for extractive industries—phosphate mining in Nauru, sugar in Fiji, and various cash crops—displacing local agriculture and turning fertile grounds into export-driven monocultures. This forced transition from subsistence to a cash-based economy stripped locals of their means of production. Furthermore, modern overfishing by international fleets has put 11% of indigenous fish species at risk, eroding traditional protein sources.

Lacking healthy staples, islanders are forced to rely on global markets for basic needs. Obesity in this context is a survival strategy of the poor, who must consume the cheapest, lowest-nutrient calories to stave off hunger, resulting in a population that is overfed but tragically malnourished.

Structural traps: Spatial poverty and food dumping

The root causes of this crisis are deeply embedded in modern Pacific infrastructure. Decades of resource extraction have left many islands agriculturally unviable. In Nauru, strip mining for phosphate has turned the island’s interior into a wasteland of jagged limestone, forcing the population into crowded coastal strips where traditional farming is impossible and automobile-centric infrastructure discourages walking. Similar spatial constraints in Tuvalu and American Samoa leave little room for agriculture or exercise facilities.

Compounding this spatial poverty is the systemic “dumping” of low-quality food imports. Countries like Australia and New Zealand export mutton flaps—sheep bellies that are nearly 50% fat and deemed unfit for Western markets—to Pacific nations at extremely low prices. These cheap, high-fat meats, alongside refined sugars and white flour, become the primary food sources for impoverished families. Even humanitarian aid often arrives as processed canned goods, reinforcing an obesogenic environment that traps the Polynesian build in a cycle of severe obesity and compounding poverty.

Cultural nuance and the limits of the colonial narrative

While the colonial and economic narrative is powerful, viewing Pacific Islanders solely as victims erases local agency and cultural nuance. Historically, many Pacific cultures associated larger body sizes with high social status and health—a standard predating colonial contact. Though modern food marketing weaponizes this preference, it remains a distinct internal factor complicating a purely economic analysis. Additionally, local governments have sometimes failed to prioritize public health during economic booms.

The crisis is also shaped by internal migration and the challenges of small-scale island governance. Severe obesity and limited local opportunities have forced many to migrate to the US mainland, Australia, and New Zealand, where they face discrimination and high rates of depression and alcoholism, straining already fragile medical infrastructures. Acknowledging these complexities provides a holistic view. Solutions require synthesizing traditional wisdom with modern public health, rather than blindly adopting Western medical models or simply romanticizing a pre-colonial past.

Charting a path forward: Sovereignty and sustainable health

Combating this crisis requires systemic change and localized empowerment. Countries that historically extracted wealth from these islands bear a responsibility to fund infrastructure, nutritional education, and healthcare initiatives. Simultaneously, there is a positive grassroots trend toward fitness and community sports, such as youth basketball leagues in the Marshall Islands, which must be expanded.

To reduce reliance on foreign aid and imported food, islands must develop sustainable, non-extractive revenue streams. Tuvalu’s successful leasing of its .tv internet domain stands as a prime example of innovative economic development. Furthermore, governance must involve the wider populace through deliberative democratic processes, allowing communities to collaboratively design culturally appropriate health solutions. While geopolitical tensions complicate these efforts, the global shift toward green and healthy initiatives positions the Pacific as a natural focal point for progressive change.

Reclaiming health in Oceania

The obesity epidemic in the Pacific is far more than a public health failure; it is a profound symptom of historical and economic poverty. By dismantling self-sufficiency and forcing a dependency on low-quality global markets, colonial and modern governance structures created a crisis that the islands were unequipped to handle. Until underlying economic structures—trade imbalances, extractive land use, and food dumping—are addressed, health initiatives will remain temporary fixes. Obesity is a visible marker of a region struggling to reclaim its sovereignty.

Critical questions remain: Can Pacific nations achieve food sovereignty while integrated into the global economy? How can Western powers support sustainable development without imposing paternalism? Ultimately, can Pacific Islanders leverage their adaptive heritage to redefine “wealth” and “health” on their own terms? The answers will determine the viability of their nations in the decades to come.

This article reflects reporting and analysis made by The Southeast Asia Pacific Frontier. If you have additional context, a different take, or a perspective we’ve missed — whether you’re a researcher, a policy practitioner, or someone living with these realities on the ground — this is an evolving story and we’d like to hear from you. Drop a comment below or get in touch.

About Rocco Carmine B. Paragas Jr.

Rocco Carmine B. Paragas Jr. is a graduating Asian Studies student at UST, specializing in history and geopolitics. A versatile generalist with internship experience spanning HR to Knowledge Management across corporate and NGO sectors, he is currently writing his thesis on intergenerational gaps in Thailand.