Category Archives: Asia Pacific

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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‘Path of error and danger’: China angry and confused over Aukus deal

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Deal is designed to counter perceived threat from Beijing but analysts in China say it could push region closer to conflict

When the UK, the US and Australia announced the details of their multibillion-dollar deal to provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines on Monday, the reaction in China was both outrage and confusion.

The allies were “walking further and further down the path of error and danger”, said Wang Wenbin, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, on Tuesday. The Chinese mission to the UN accused the three countries of fuelling an arms race.

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Tokyo citizens hand in record ¥3.99bn of lost cash

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Police department says it has returned almost ¥3bn to owners, while ¥480m has gone to finders

The honest citizens of Tokyo handed in a record ¥3.99bn (£24.5m) in lost cash to police last year – an average of more than £67,000 a day.

Japan’s national police agency said the amount was up ¥600m from the previous year, and beat the previous high of ¥3.84bn declared at police stations across the capital in 2019.

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Chinese ChatGPT rival from search engine firm Baidu fails to impress

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Shares plummet after Ernie Bot AI chatbot software falls short of expectations at unveiling in Beijing

The Chinese search engine company Baidu’s shares have fallen by as much as 10% after it presented its ChatGPT-like artificial intelligence software, with investors unimpressed by the bot’s display of linguistic and maths skills.

The AI-powered ChatGPT, created by the San Francisco company OpenAI, has caused a sensation for its ability to write essays, poems and programming code on demand within seconds, prompting widespread fears over cheating or of professions becoming obsolete.

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Chinese official asks if Australia’s Aukus nuclear submarines intended for ‘sightseeing’

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Multiple sources present confirm the remark was made, but it is unclear if it was made sarcastically

A Chinese embassy official asked Australian officials during an Aukus briefing whether the nuclear-powered submarines were intended for “sightseeing”, according to multiple sources.

Guardian Australia understands several others in the room found the intervention curious, because the Australian government has made no secret of the fact the nuclear-powered submarines are to be used by the Royal Australian Navy.

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Don’t ‘quench your thirst with poison’, Taiwan tells Honduras after switch to China

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Taiwan foreign ministry warns of China debt trap, as US says Beijing ‘makes many promises that are unfulfilled’

Taiwan has urged Honduras not to “quench your thirst with poison and fall into China’s debt trap”, adding it would not compete monetarily with China to keep its formal allies after its decision to switch diplomatic ties from Taipei to Beijing this week.

Honduran president Xiomara Castro announced on Tuesday that her country would begin to establish an official relationship with Beijing, in effect severing its ties with Taipei.

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