Category Archives: Asia Pacific

China ‘barring thousands of citizens and foreigners from leaving country’

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Analysis of Chinese court records shows eightfold increase in cases mentioning exit bans between 2016 and 2022

China is increasingly barring people, including foreign executives, from leaving the country, according to a report and research.

Scores of Chinese nationals and foreigners have been ensnared by exit bans, according to the report from the rights group Safeguard Defenders, while a Reuters analysis has found an apparent surge in court cases involving such bans in recent years.

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Biden hails ‘deep friendship’ with Philippines and boosts military ties amid China tensions

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White House announces transfer of three C-130 aircraft and coastal patrol vessels during Washington visit of Ferdinand Marcos Jr

Joe Biden has said the US is “ironclad” in its commitment to defending the Philippines, including in the highly contested South China Sea where Philippine vessels have reported continued harassment by China.

The US president hailed the two countries’ “deep friendship” as he hosted Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos in the White House on Monday. “We are facing new challenges and I couldn’t think of a better partner to have than you,” Biden told Marcos before their meeting.

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US and Philippine presidents meet amid China’s ‘aggressive tactics’

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Ferdinand Marcos Jr and Joe Biden are expected to discuss the security situation in the South China Sea

The president of the Philippines is meeting his US counterpart in Washington as the two countries draw closer together against what they say is growing aggression and harassment by China.

Ferdinand Marcos Jr and Joe Biden will meet in the Oval Office on Monday during the Philippine president’s four-day US tour. They are expected to discuss the security situation, with the US hoping to strengthen longstanding ties between the two nations as it battles Beijing for influence in Asia.

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Māori punk band’s tour of Wales puts spotlight on indigenous languages

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New Zealand group Half/Time to perform alongside artists who sing in Cymraeg as part of musical cultural exchange

They will bring heavy riffs, pounding drums and lyrics delivered with a growl – but a punk band from New Zealand arriving in Wales this week is also hoping to spark important conversations about what it means to create pop songs in “minority” languages.

The band Half/Time, which perform in Māori as well as English, is to appear alongside artists and groups who sing in Cymraeg as part of a cultural exchange organised by the universities of Cardiff and Waikato in the south Island of New Zealand.

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Thai PM candidate Paetongtarn Shinawatra gives birth two weeks before election

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Paetongtarn, 36, is leading polls to become Thailand’s next prime minister, boosted by the popularity of the Shinawatra name

Paetongtarn Shinawatra, the frontrunner in the upcoming Thai election, has given birth to a baby boy two weeks before voters go to the polls.

Paetongtarn, the youngest daughter of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, posted a picture of her baby, named Prutthasin Sooksawas, nickname Thasin, on social media on Monday.

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Japan approves abortion pill for the first time

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Health ministry gives green light to two-step treatment made by British pharmaceutical firm Linepharma

The abortion pill will become available in Japan for the first time after the health ministry approved a drug used to terminate early-stage pregnancies.

Abortion is legal in Japan up to 22 weeks, but consent is usually required from a spouse or partner, and until now a surgical procedure had been the only option.

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Australian man arrested in Indonesia says he felt ‘almost possessed’ during naked rampage

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Bodhi Mani Risby-Jones faces up to five years in jail after he allegedly assaulted a fisherman who required 50 stitches for his injuries

Bodhi Mani Risby-Jones says he was not himself and felt “almost possessed” during an alleged drunken naked rampage that led to his arrest on an Indonesian island.

The 23-year-old Australian faces up to five years in jail if convicted over the alleged incident on Thursday on Simeulue, within the conservative Aceh province off the coast of Sumatra.

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North Korea: Kim Jong-un sister says Joe Biden is ‘in his dotage’ as she criticises nuclear pact

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Kim Yo-jong’s broadside came after US and South Korea enhance nuclear cooperation and Biden warns Pyongyang an attack would end the regime

The powerful sister of North Korea’s leader has said her country will stage more displays of military might in response to a new US-South Korean nuclear deterrence agreement and compared Joe Biden’s comments about it as a “nonsensical remark from the person in his dotage”.

Kim Yo-jong’s broadside came after Biden attended a summit with the South Korean president, Yoon Suk-yeol, on Wednesday. The US president said later that any North Korean nuclear attack on the US or its allies would “result in the end of whatever regime” took such action.

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Indian anger and Chinese indifference quash hopes of border resolution

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Starkly different approaches to 2,100-mile line of actual control on show as defence ministers meet in Delhi

India’s defence minister has accused China of border aggressions that have “eroded the entire basis” of their relationship, as negotiations over the line of actual control (LAC) remain deadlocked.

On Thursday, China’s defence minister, Li Shangfu, landed in Delhi for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit. It is the first visit to India by a Chinese minister since 2020, when 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers died in clashes along the Himalayan border in Ladakh and the two sides came the closest to war for almost 70 years.

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Japan pledges to have women in third of top boardroom roles by 2030

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Prime minister Fumio Kishida says diversity in listed companies is key to ‘achieving new capitalism and an inclusive society’

Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, has said he wants almost a third of executive positions at the country’s top companies to be occupied by women by the end of the decade.

In an apparent attempt to address Japan’s poor record on gender equality ahead of the G7 leaders’ summit in Hiroshima next month, Kishida said more boardroom diversity would boost the world’s third-biggest economy.

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Chinese TB-001 drone flies around Taiwan in rare encirclement, says island’s military

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‘Twin-tailed scorpion’ drone that entered air defence identification zone is touted as being capable of high-altitude, long-range missions

A Chinese combat drone that state media says can carry a heavy weapons payload has flown around Taiwan, according to the island’s defence ministry.

The ministry said a TB-001 drone was one of 19 military aircraft that had entered the island’s air defence identification zone in 24 hours.

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‘Endless record heat’ in Asia as highest April temperatures recorded

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Record figures for month recorded in Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, China and South Asia

Asia is experiencing weeks of “endless record heat”, with sweltering temperatures causing school closures and surges in energy use.

Record April temperatures have been recorded at monitoring stations across Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, as well as in China and South Asia.

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Xi-Zelenskiy call may have been prompted by ambassador’s undiplomatic comments

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The Chinese leader’s surprise contact with his Ukrainian counterpart is suspected to be a corrective move

A long-awaited phone call between Xi Jinping and Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been cautiously welcomed, but China analysts say the timing suggests it could be partly an act of damage control after controversial comments by China’s ambassador to France.

Ambassador Lu Shaye, one of China’s “wolf warrior” diplomats with a history of fiery remarks, caused outrage across Europe this week when he denied the sovereignty of former Soviet states, saying they “did not have effective status”. The comments were roundly condemned, with several European nations summoning Chinese envoys for rebuke, and politicians suggesting it demonstrated China’s untrustworthiness as a neutral party in the Ukraine war.

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UK and Europe are falling behind US and China in biotech, says AstraZeneca boss

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Pascal Soriot says decline in startups across Europe differs markedly from ‘explosion’ of firms and clinical trials in China

The boss of Britain’s biggest drugmaker has said that the UK and the rest of Europe are falling behind China and the US in the creation of biotech firms and clinical trials of new medicines.

Pascal Soriot, chief executive of AstraZeneca, said that while China had seen an “explosion of biotech companies”, and a “rapid expansion of clinical trials” that puts it ahead of the US, the UK and EU had posted declines.

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China widens ‘already breathtaking’ scope to arrest foreigners for espionage

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Authorities can swoop over anything they deem relevant to national security in toughening of law already used against expatriates or Chinese contacts

China has drastically broadened its anti-espionage laws in amendments that legal experts warn could further heighten risk to foreign individuals and organisations operating in the country.

The amendments were passed by Beijing’s rubber-stamp parliament on Wednesday afternoon. The long-foreshadowed changes broaden the law’s scope to encompass anything deemed by authorities to cover national security, and expand the search and seizure powers of authorities, as well as the implementation of entry and exit bans on individuals.

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Chinese vice-president’s coronation appearance would be ‘outrageous’, say Tories

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Senior MPs say attendance of Han Zheng, accused of breaching Sino-British treaty with Hong Kong crackdown, would be insult

Senior Conservative MPs have labelled the expected attendance of China’s vice-president at King Charles’s coronation as “outrageous”.

Han Zheng, who was recently appointed as president Xi Jinping’s deputy, is expected to represent China at the May event, Politico reported.

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US nuclear-armed submarines to resume visits to South Korea for first time in 30 years

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Yoon Suk-yeol meets Joe Biden in Washington amid concerns in South over North’s nuclear buildup

The US and South Korea have reaffirmed their alliance, agreeing that nuclear-armed submarines would resume port visits and threatening a “swift, overwhelming and decisive response” to any North Korean nuclear attack, including retaliation in kind by the US.

The South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, said that response would include US nuclear weapons, making explicit an element of the alliance that normally remains unspoken.

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Last images taken by Japanese journalist killed in Myanmar in 2007 released

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News outlet obtains camera of Kenji Nagai, who was reporting on Saffron Revolution when he was shot

The family of a Japanese journalist killed while reporting on Myanmar’s 2007 Saffron Revolution have released his last pictures, sharing footage from a recently obtained video camera missing since his fatal shooting 15 years ago.

The final pictures from 50-year-old Kenji Nagai during an anti-government protest were obtained by Myanmar-focused news outlet the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), which returned the camera on Wednesday to Nagai’s family in Bangkok.

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Chinese trend for using photo of film star to get better service sweeps social media

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Growing number of social media users find using Korean American actor Ma Dong-seok’s image as avatar gets better response

Chinese social media users are turning to a Korean American action star for help in their daily lives, with a growing trend of swapping out their online avatar for Ma Dong-seok’s photo to get better responses from landlords and customer service agents.

In recent weeks a growing number of Chinese people have changed their profile photos to shots of Ma, who also goes by the name Don Lee and has starred in horror-action film Train to Busan and Marvel’s The Eternals, saying “it makes life easier”.

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Thai conservatives vow to legalise sex toys in bid to shake up election

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Freedom to use devices could curb prostitution, divorce and sex-related crimes, says Democrat party politician

A conservative Thai political party has backed the legalisation of sex toys as it seeks to revive its appeal before a looming general election.

The Democrat party representative Ratchada Thanadirek said sex toys were being smuggled into Thailand regardless of laws that prohibit their sale, and that the government was missing out on collecting taxes and regulating such products.

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