One last look at Asia’s 2024 winners and losers

January 3, 2025

BANGKOK – The year 2024 certainly proved to be a winning year for President Prabowo Subianto. In February, the retired Army general received a majority of the vote in the first round of elections, eliminating the need for runoffs and paving the way for his becoming Indonesia’s eighth president starting in October

In this third run for the presidency, Prabowo received 96.2 million votes, the highest received by any candidate in a democratic election in Indonesia. The vote tally exceeded the 85.6 million votes that former president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo received in the 2019 election.

Now, as 2025 begins, we take one last look at the winners and losers in the Indo-Pacific region in 2024, who had it good and who had it bad. Here is our Asia Year-in-Review 2024.

Worst year: Asia’s climate casualties

On Dec. 26, 2004, the devastating Indian Ocean earthquake centered west of northern Sumatra and the ensuing tsunami killed more than 200,000 people in a single day, with Indonesia suffering by far the most casualties. In contrast, 2024 was a year of mounting casualties from typhoons, floods, heat waves and droughts all across Asia.

These included Super Typhoon Yagi, one of the strongest storms to hit Southeast Asia in years. Yagi left a path of death and devastation in November. From the Philippines through southern China and Vietnam and onto Laos, Thailand and Myanmar, the storm killed hundreds and devastated communities and livelihoods.

Floods from the yearly monsoon rains also left millions displaced and hundreds dead in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Nepal, making this year one of the deadliest in recent memory. And if it was not record-breaking rainfall, it was drought accompanied by scorching