As populist opposition to immigration sweeps across the West, Asia faces an analogous concern over the influx of Chinese.

"They wreck corals and throw their rubbish in the sea," a Palau taxi driver named Norman told the South China Morning Post in March 2015. The following month, the Palau government cut the number of inbound flights from China by half.

This is a bridge too far for most Asian nations, although many are already in the final countdown of what British journalist Adrian Michaels has called "a demographic time bomb," referring to an influx of migration altering the cultural make-up of Europe. Something similar could be said to be underway in Asia, as Chinese now constitute one-third of the foreigners in Japan, two-fifths of those in Mongolia and about half the foreigners in South Korea.