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View all search resultsA look at Asia’s 2025 winners and losers
From cybercrime and disasters to an elfin plush toy trend, here are some of the worst and best to happen in the Indo-Pacific throughout the year.
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A woman steps onto a concrete slab on Dec. 9, 2025, past the flooded yard of a house damaged by flooding in Bundar village, Karang Baru, the capital of Aceh Tamiang regency in Aceh. (Antara/Erlangga Bregas Prakoso)
What a year this has been across the Indo-Pacific. Understandably for many, it could not be over soon enough.
From the impacts of United States President Donald Trump’s tariffs and natural and man-made disasters across Asia to new leaders breaking glass ceilings (Japan) and old leaders whisked off to the International Criminal Court at The Hague (Philippines) or sentenced to death in absentia [Bangladesh]; to missiles fired across borders (Cambodia-Thailand) and terrorist attacks in South Asia (India, Pakistan) and the Pacific (Australia), enduring corruption challenges (Philippines) and real estate woes (China) to people scammed and enslaved; surely 2025 was not a year full of good news.
We look back and see who had it bad and who had it good. Here’s one last look at Asia’s worst to best in 2025.
Worst year: Cyber scam victims
The victims are both the scammers and the scammed in the still growing tsunami of cybercrime sweeping across the globe from Southeast Asia.
Under the dateline “Scambodia”, criminal gangs largely operating out of Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia have defrauded billions of dollars from victims worldwide. “Pig butchering”, a euphemism for fattening up a victim before they are slaughtered, is one nickname for these cybercrimes.
The perpetrators? Hundreds of thousands of individuals are enticed with fake job offers to these nations, many transiting via Thailand then held against their will, enslaved to work in these scam centers.
