Methodology
How an EAB briefing is built: which sources count, what gets checked, and what our confidence grades mean.
1. What a briefing is built on
Our subject is the documented record of East Asian industry: ministry and agency notices, regulatory and exchange filings, company IR releases and earnings decks, customs and statistics agency data, court dockets, tender and standards publications. That record is what our desks read and what our briefings describe.
Secondary reporting is used to find stories and to cross-check, never as the sole basis for a factual claim. Where another outlet's original reporting is the source of a fact, we attribute it by name.
2. When you see a sources list, and when you do not
A briefing shows a "Primary sources" block only when we can link to the documents behind it. Every entry in that block is a live URL you can open and check.
Where a briefing carries no sources block, it was written from our desks' working knowledge of the sector rather than from documents retrieved for that piece. We publish it without citations rather than with citations we cannot stand behind — a plausible-looking document title with no link is an invention, and we would rather show you nothing than that. The absence of a sources block is information, not an oversight: read that briefing as orientation, and check any number you intend to act on.
3. Facts are extracted, not paraphrased
Dates, currency amounts, capacities, percentages, company names, official titles and policy names are pulled from the source document and checked against it. Figures are given in their original unit with a US-dollar conversion where it helps, and the conversion basis is stated when the amount is material.
4. English text is written fresh
We do not machine-translate a source article and publish the result. The English is written from the verified facts. This is both an editorial standard and a legal one: translating and republishing someone else's article is copying it.
5. Analysis is labeled as analysis
Anything that is our inference — who is exposed, what a rule implies, how a decision compares across the three countries — is written as inference and appears under a Why It Matters or Asia Compare label. It is never mixed into a factual paragraph as though it were reported.
6. The impact map
Where a development propagates across the region, we publish an impact map: a small table showing the event and its effect in Korea, China, Japan and on global buyers. It is our reading of the transmission path, not a forecast, and it is deliberately short enough to be checkable.
7. Structured data on every briefing
Each briefing carries machine-readable fields: companies named, tickers, companies with secondary exposure, policy tags, impact tags, countries and sources. That is what builds our company watch and policy tracker pages, and it is available through our JSON endpoint.
8. Confidence grades
A confidence grade appears only on briefings that carry linked sources. It describes how well those linked documents support the piece.
- High — every material fact comes from a primary document linked in the sources block, or from an on-the-record statement.
- Medium — the core facts are documented, but some detail rests on a single credible secondary page, or figures are preliminary and subject to revision.
- Low — the development is documented but thinly. We say what is unconfirmed and why we are publishing anyway.
A briefing with no sources block carries no grade, for the same reason: there is nothing linked to grade.
9. What is never auto-published
Allegations, disputes, sanctions, investigations, accounting irregularities and anything naming an individual in a negative context do not publish without a human editor's explicit approval. See our AI and automation policy for where automation sits in this process and where it does not.
10. Corrections
When a fact is wrong, we correct it on the briefing with a dated note and list it on our corrections page. We do not silently edit or delete.