Karishma Vaswani

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"Nobody is safe".

That was the stark assessment a long-time China watcher gave me while discussing what's happening to one of the country's richest men, Wang Jianlin.

Mr Wang, once considered a Beijing favourite, seems to have fallen foul of the establishment.

His business, Dalian Wanda, grew into one of the country's most prominent property developers.

And overseas it has invested heavily too, most noticeably in Hollywood - controlling the AMC cinema chain as well as Legendary Entertainment, co-producer of hit films including Godzilla and The Dark Knight Rises.

'Unpredictable'

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The phone call came in the middle of the night. It was my mother, frantic but trying to inject calmness into her voice.

There were riots in Jakarta, she said. The supermarket down our road had been set on fire, and people were out on the streets looting stores and ransacking homes.

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Have you heard of Wuilangye Yibin? Or Kweichou Moutai? What about Shanghai Pudong Development Bank?

Chances are soon you will, especially if you're a foreign investor looking at China's markets.

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Last week was meant to be Pakistan's moment in the sun.

On 1 June it was upgraded from the MSCI Frontier Markets Index and moved into the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, which was a "huge boost to its ego" as one analyst told me and a "reputational boost" for the whole country.

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On 2 May 2011, Barack Obama announced that al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden had been killed by US forces in Pakistan.

He was shot dead at a compound near the capital, Islamabad. And once again, Pakistan was in the headlines for all the wrong reasons.

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A funny thing happened in the US on Thursday night. Steve Mnuchin, the US Treasury Secretary, testifying in a senate banking committee hearing, said something positive about China.

In response to a question from the floor about why the US has yet to name China a currency manipulator - an often repeated vow made by President Trump on the campaign trail - Mr Mnuchin responded that recently, "China has used its currency reserves to go in the other direction which is actually good for American workers".

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For all the talk of North Korea and the controversial THAAD anti-missile system, my recent trip to South Korea left me in no doubt that for most voters, top of their minds going into the country's presidential elections is something far less headline-grabbing: the economy.

In the 1960s, South Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world. Today it's Asia's fourth largest economy and one of the world's most advanced.

Investing in property is a mainstay of most Asian portfolios and the UK has typically been among the most desirable of destinations.

Recent data suggests that despite the uncertainty created by Brexit and the upcoming general election, Asian investors are flocking to the UK's shores more than ever before.

You just have to walk down the streets of Seoul to see how pervasive is the influence of South Korea's massive family-run business empires - or chaebols as they're known.

Samsung, Lotte, LG, Hyundai: they are unavoidable, selling everything from mobiles to laptops, cars to washing machines as well as food, drink and even health insurance.

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Samsung Electronics is on track to report record annual earnings, despite its de-facto boss going on trial in a political corruption scandal.

It is forecasting a 48% rise in profits in the January-to-March period, thanks to strong memory chip sales.