Category Archives: Asia Pacific

Xi invites Putin to China in show of support as Moscow talks continue

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Chinese and Russian leaders to discuss Ukraine in formal talks after friendly dinner, while Fumio Kishida meets Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv

Xi Jinping has invited Vladimir Putin to visit China this year in a symbolic show of support after the international criminal court issued an arrest warrant for Russia’s president over accusations of unlawfully deporting Ukrainian children.

The Chinese leader extended the invitation during a meeting on Tuesday morning with the Russian prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, as part of his state visit to Moscow.

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Hong Kong police put bailed pro-democracy leader Albert Ho back under arrest

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Solicitor, 71, had been charged under national security law and was released to be treated for lung cancer

Hong Kong police have arrested a veteran pro-democracy politician who was out on bail for medical treatment after spending more than a year in detention on a subversion charge.

Albert Ho, 71, once led the city’s largest opposition group, the Democratic party, and runs his own law firm. Police handcuffed Ho and took him away from his home in a vehicle on Tuesday, a Reuters witness said.

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Biden orders release of intelligence on potential links between Covid and Wuhan lab

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Move poses political risk for US president, who has a difficult relationship with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping

A bill requiring the release of intelligence materials on potential links between the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan has been signed into law by US president Joe Biden.

“We need to get to the bottom of Covid-19’s origins … including potential links to the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Biden said in a statement. “In implementing this legislation, my administration will declassify and share as much of that information as possible.

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Armed men kill nine Chinese nationals in Central African Republic

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Rebel alliance Coalition of Patriots for Change denies responsibility after mayor accuses them of attack

China’s embassy in the Central African Republic has urged its citizens to avoid travelling outside the capital Bangui after nine Chinese nationals were killed in an attack by militants at a gold mine outside the city.

The embassy said in a statement on Sunday there had been many “vicious” security incidents against workers of foreign mining enterprises in the area, and Chinese citizens still outside Bangui were requested to evacuate immediately.

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Xi Jinping says China ready to ‘stand guard over world order’ on Moscow visit

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Chinese leader expected to position himself as peacemaker but US condemns Xi for providing ‘diplomatic cover’ for atrocities in Ukraine

Xi Jinping said China was ready with Russia “to stand guard over the world order based on international law” as he arrived for a state visit to Moscow that comes days after Vladimir Putin was made the subject of an arrest warrant by the international criminal court.

The Chinese leader is expected to position himself as a potential peacemaker in the Ukraine war during his two-day visit to Russia – his first state visit since Putin’s invasion. For his part, the Russian president will be hoping to project unity in the face of western isolation, as the US condemned Xi for providing “diplomatic cover” for Moscow to continue to commit further crimes in Ukraine.

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Former Taiwan president to visit China in unprecedented trip

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Ma Ying-jeou’s tour is first since end of civil war and comes amid intensifying efforts by China to subsume Taiwan

Taiwan’s former president Ma Ying-jeou will visit China this month in the first visit by a current or former leader since the defeated Nationalist Chinese government fled to the island at the end of the civil war in 1949.

The high-profile visit has been presented by Ma and his party, the opposition Kuomintang (KMT), as a chance to boost friendly cross-strait exchanges at a time of extreme disconnection, which has been driven by Beijing’s plans to annex Taiwan and exacerbated by the pandemic. However, it is also likely to fuel domestic political division between the KMT and ruling Democratic Progressive party (DPP) over relations with China.

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State-sponsored matchmaking app launched in China

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Service in Jiangxi uses data on single residents to build platform amid drive to boost marriage rate

For single people, dating fatigue is a universal phenomenon. Hours of swiping left can lead to despair at the potential matches in your area. One city in Jiangxi, a province in eastern China, reckons that it has come up with a solution for the lovelorn or love-weary: a state-sponsored matchmaking service.

Guixi, a city of about 640,000 people, has launched an app that uses data on single residents to build a matchmaking platform. The app is known as “Palm Guixi” and includes a platform for organising blind dates, according to China Youth Daily, a state-run newspaper.

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Thailand: Paetongtarn Shinawatra leads polls as country heads towards election

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As parliament dissolves, party of Paetongtarn, whose father was deposed in 2006, has best chance of forming majority

Thailand’s parliament has been dissolved, paving the way for an election in May that will pit military-linked candidates against the daughter of the former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

King Maha Vajiralongkorn has endorsed a decree to dissolve parliament, according to an announcement in the Royal Gazette on Monday. An election must be held between 45 and 60 days after the house’s dissolution.

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New Zealand foreign minister to visit counterpart in China

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Nanaia Mahuta says she will raise concerns over Ukraine and human rights issues as well as ways the two countries can cooperate

New Zealand’s foreign minister, Nanaia Mahuta, will leave for China on Tuesday in the first visit to Beijing by a New Zealand minister since 2019.

Mahuta, who will meet her counterpart Qin Gang, said she would raise New Zealand’s concerns about key security challenges at the meeting, such as the “illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine”, and advocate for outcomes reflecting New Zealand’s values on human rights issues.

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‘Good old friend’: Putin offers praise for Xi ahead of first trip to Russia since Ukraine invasion

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Russian president lauds Xi ahead of meeting, while Beijing calls for a ‘rational way’ out of the crisis

Vladimir Putin has praised “good old friend” Xi Jinping in a newspaper article published in China on the eve of a state visit by the Chinese president that will reaffirm the leaders’ strong ties and provide Moscow with an opportunity to emphasise that it has not been isolated by the global community.

The two leaders, who are believed to share a strong personal relationship, will meet one-on-one on Monday, followed by an informal lunch, Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said.

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Samoa PM urges world to save Pacific people from climate crisis obliteration

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Fiame Naomi Mata’afa pleads for action before landmark IPCC report is expected to issue ‘final warning’

The world must step back from the brink of climate disaster to save the people of the Pacific from obliteration, the prime minister of Samoa has urged.

On the eve of a landmark report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is expected to deliver a scientific “final warning” on the climate emergency, Fiame Naomi Mata’afa, Samoa’s prime minister, issued a desperate plea for action.

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North Korea continues run of weapons tests with ballistic missile launch

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Firing of short-range weapon comes as the US and South Korea stage major military drills

North Korea fired a short-range ballistic missile, Seoul’s military has said, in the fourth such weapons test in a week, which comes as South Korea and the United States stage major military drills.

“Our military detected one short-range ballistic missile fired from around the Tongchang-ri area in North Pyongan province at 11.05 am towards the East Sea,” South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said on Sunday, referring to the body of water also known as the Sea of Japan.

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Australia has ‘absolutely not’ committed to join US in event of war over Taiwan, Marles says

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Defence minister says Aukus deal does not include arrangement to join US in a potential future conflict with China

Australia has “absolutely not” given the US any commitment as part of the Aukus negotiations that it would join its top security ally in a potential future war over the status of Taiwan, the deputy prime minister has said.

Richard Marles made the comment as he continued to defend Australia’s multi-decade plan to acquire nuclear-powered submarines, with help from the US and the UK, at a total cost of up to $368bn between now and the mid-2050s.

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New data links Covid-19’s origins to raccoon dogs at Wuhan market

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Analysis of gene sequences by international team finds Covid-positive samples rich in raccoon dog DNA

Newly released genetic data gathered from a live food market in Wuhan has linked Covid-19 with raccoon dogs, adding weight to the theory that infected animals sold at the site started the coronavirus pandemic, researchers involved in the work say.

Swabs collected from stalls at the Huanan seafood market in the two months after it was shut down on 1 January 2020 were previously found to contain both Covid and human DNA. When the findings were published last year, Chinese researchers stated that the samples contained no animal DNA.

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Xi Jinping to visit Russia in show of support for Vladimir Putin

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China says president will meet Russian leader next week with aim of deepening partnership

China’s president is to visit Russia next week in an apparent show of support for Vladimir Putin, the Chinese foreign ministry has said.

The Kremlin also announced the visit, scheduled for 20-22 March, saying it would take place “at the invitation of Vladimir Putin”.

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Families dismayed as Indonesia court acquits two police over stadium crush that left 135 dead

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Another officer jailed but sentence too light, say victims’ relatives, after police blamed for triggering crush last October

An Indonesian court has acquitted two senior police officers charged with negligence over a stadium crowd crush last year that killed 135 people, angering relatives of those who died in one of football’s worst tragedies.

Another officer was jailed for 18 months but families of the victims said he had been treated too leniently.

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New Zealand to ban TikTok from government devices

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MPs were informed of the decision, which comes after similar moves by western allies, by parliamentary service on Friday

New Zealand’s parliament will ban TikTok from all parliamentary devices, amid mounting international security concerns surrounding the app.

The country’s MPs were informed by parliamentary service on Friday that the Chinese-owned video-sharing app would be blocked from all parliamentary devices at the end of the month, and were told via email that “the Service has determined that the risks are not acceptable in the current New Zealand parliament environment”.

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Hong Kong: two arrested for possessing ‘seditious’ children’s book

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Arrests believed to be first time police have detained citizens for possessing literature deemed seditious by authorities

Hong Kong’s national security police have arrested two men for possessing children’s books deemed seditious by the authorities, in the latest of a series of moves that underline the state of civil freedoms in the city.

The two men, aged 38 and 50, were arrested and detained after police and customs officers searched their homes and offices and found copies of “seditious publications” that allegedly “incited hatred or contempt” against the Chinese and Hong Kong governments and the judiciary, according to a police press release cited in the local media.

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MPs and peers ask information commissioner to investigate TikTok

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Letter argues that Chinese-owned video-sharing app could be in breach of UK law

A cross-party group of MPs and peers have asked the information commissioner to investigate whether the Chinese-owned TikTok’s handling of personal information is in breach of UK law.

The letter from the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) argues that TikTok cannot be compliant with data protection rules – and comes just hours after the UK announced a ban on the popular video-sharing app appearing on ministers’ and officials’ government-owned phones.

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Will UK follow US in demanding TikTok be sold by its Chinese owner?

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TikTok will be concerned Rishi Sunak will match each upward ratchet in pressure from his allies

When asked this week whether the UK would ban TikTok on government phones, Rishi Sunak’s response signalled a change in stance: “We look at what our allies are doing.”

Previously ministers had seemed sanguine, even saying that whether or not the app stayed on someone’s phone should be a matter of “personal choice”.

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