Japan

We’ve added coastal vessel transportation statistics from the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport & Tourism. While Japan is often aggregated as four main islands connected with bridges and bullet trains, official statistics report that the archipelago consists of over 14,000 islands. Coastal transportation is therefore a key element for domestic trade, especially when considering the environmental impact.

The chart below tracks the 12-month rolling aggregated vessel tonnage for coastal transportation, as well as its year-over-year change in the second pane. While the trend level was fairly stable in the 2010s, the pandemic significantly impacted coastal vessel transportation with an average 50,000-ton drop on a 12-month cumulative basis.

World

We’ve added the “Asia Power Index” created by the Lowy Institute. Its aim is to measure the ability of countries to shape and respond to their external environment. Eight underlying indicators divided between resource-based and influence-based determinants of power are used to compile the overall index with specific weights. The methodology can be consulted {{nofollow}}here.

In the bar chart below, we ranked each country based on their latest index value for 2023 and added the 5-year change for relative comparison. The results show that the United States maintained a narrow edge over China as the leading power in the region. The gap is then significant between these two countries and the next most important powers in the region, Japan and India, indicating that Asia is far from moving towards a multipolar power distribution system.