Category Archives: Asia Pacific

Syrian economy lies in ruins and China sniffs opportunity

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Analysis: War may be winding down, but with Assad in charge for seven more seven years the country remains splintered

Standing on a podium on Saturday to take an oath of office, Bashar al-Assad declared himself the only man who could rebuild Syria.

His first foreign guest, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, seemed to enhance his claim, endorsing the president’s win in a May poll described by Britain and Europe as “neither free nor fair” and laying a marker to help get the job started.

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Death toll rises and thousands flee homes as floods hit China

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Torrential rainfall and burst rivers swamp Henan cities, with commuters trapped on subway trains

Days of torrential rain and massive flooding have hit China’s Henan province, bursting the banks of rivers, overwhelming dams and the public transport system and forcing thousands of people to evacuate their homes.

At least 25 people have been killed and seven are missing in the provincial capital, Zhengzhou. The provincial authorities issued its highest level of weather warning. A year’s worth of rain – 640mm – fell in just three days. The city’s weather bureau said more than 552mm of rain had fallen between 7pm on Monday and 7pm on Tuesday, including 202mm between 4pm and 5pm on Tuesday.

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Even as Ardern signals alignment with US, New Zealand still seeks to maintain distance | Pete McKenzie

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As the prime minister treads the delicate path between China and the US we shouldn’t overstate the significance of her latest moves

New Zealand has long prided itself on having an “independent” foreign policy that charts a middle path between great powers. It’s an approach for which the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, and her new foreign minister, Nanaia Mahuta, have voiced strong support. Over the past week, however, Ardern has moved towards a much closer alignment with America.

It’s the latest sign that for small countries caught amid great power competition, independence is increasingly difficult. It also raises the question: is this the end of New Zealand’s “independent” foreign policy, and if so, what comes next?

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US father and son jailed in Tokyo for helping Carlos Ghosn flee Japan

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US army special forces veteran Michael Taylor was sentenced to two years and his son Peter for one year and eight months

A Tokyo court has handed down the first sentences related to Carlos Ghosn’s arrest and escape from Japan, imprisoning US army special forces veteran Michael Taylor for two years and his son Peter for one year and eight months for helping the former Nissan chairman flee to Lebanon.

“This case enabled Ghosn, a defendant of serious crime, to escape overseas,” Hideo Nirei, the chief judge, said while explaining the judgment. “One year and a half has passed, but there is no prospect of the trial being held.”

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New Zealand farmers’ demands are unrealistic – but they are suffering and deserve support | Philip McKibbin

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Our society is changing and farmers are dealing with the most difficult aspects of it

On Friday, tractors crawled through cities and towns across New Zealand, in a planned demonstration against environmental regulations. The “Howl of a Protest”, organised by the rural grassroots organisation Groundswell, involved thousands of people.

I live in central Auckland – the most urban of urban centres – and I sympathise with farmers. They are clearly in pain, and understandably so. The changes they are being forced to make will affect not only their businesses, but also their lifestyles and traditions.

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Young North Koreans told to shun slang and ‘cultural penetration’ from South

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Editorial in official newspaper calls on youth to follow ‘traditional lifestyles’ and stick to ‘superior’ language

Young North Koreans have been warned to adhere to the country’s standard language and follow “traditional lifestyles” as part of the regime’s campaign to stamp out cultural influences from neighbouring South Korea.

In an editorial published on Sunday, the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the ruling Workers’ party, railed against the creeping influence of the South on everything from hairstyles to the spoken word.

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Chinese Unesco official defends plan to list Great Barrier Reef as ‘in danger’

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Tian Xuejun rejects Australia’s ‘groundless accusations’ that China influenced the finding to score political points

The Chinese host of a United Nations world heritage committee has defended a proposal to label the Great Barrier Reef as “in danger”, and rejected Australian government suspicion that China influenced the finding for political reasons.

It came as the Morrison government sought to use a new report by Australia’s marine science agency to argue there had been widespread coral recovery on the reef.

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Thai police fire rubber bullets at protesters as Covid failures fuel anti-government anger

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Long-running rallies against Thailand’s prime minister have morphed into wider anger at coronavirus vaccine failures amid a surge in cases

Thai police have used teargas, rubber bullets and water cannon to disperse hundreds of anti-government protesters who held a rally in Bangkok despite coronavirus restrictions banning gatherings of more than five people.

In an effort to avoid the spread of infection, many of the protesters drove cars or rode motorbikes, instead of marching as they had in previous protests. About 1,500 riot police were deployed, along with water cannon trucks.

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The Guardian view on Covid and the world: the pandemic’s impact is growing | Editorial

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Cases are soaring in many countries, and the social and political effects are becoming clearer

“At the root of every pandemic is an encounter between a disease-causing microorganism and a human being … It is a social phenomenon as much as it is a biological one,” writes Laura Spinney in her book Pale Rider, arguing that Spanish flu “pushed India closer to independence, South Africa closer to apartheid, and Switzerland to the brink of civil war”.

It will be a long time before we, or our descendants, can fully assess Covid’s impact. But its social and political effects are emerging more clearly. It has played a role in extraordinary turmoil in places from Colombia to Cuba to South Africa, exacerbating poverty and frustration. The unrest is rooted in longstanding social and economic problems. In South Africa, where 10,000 troops have now been deployed, it is the furious response to the jailing of the divisive former president Jacob Zuma, who faces a slew of corruption charges; authorities suspect his followers of orchestrating the violence. But Covid’s erosion of social and economic wellbeing and trust in leaders has surely contributed.

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Indonesia’s daily Covid infections higher than India and Brazil

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Health systems overwhelmed as Delta variant sweeps across south-east Asia

Indonesia has reported more daily Covid-19 infections than India and Brazil as the Delta strain sweeps across south-east Asia, placing intense pressure on health systems.

Most countries in the region are experiencing their worst outbreaks since the pandemic began, fuelled by the emergence of more aggressive variants and a lack of vaccines.

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Tensions remain high as hopes dashed for breakthrough in China and India stalemate

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Military build-up continues ‘like never before’ on both sides of 2,100-mile border despite high-level talks

It was described as a dialogue, the first high-level meeting in months between the Indian and Chinese foreign ministers to address the ongoing border aggressions that have pushed the two nuclear-armed countries to the brink of war.

But those hoping Wednesday’s meeting would help break a year-long stalemate during which 200,000 troops have built up on both sides of the Himalayan frontier were to be left unsatisfied.

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Reasons to be fearful of China’s data-gathering | Letters

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We should be suspicious of the role of the Chinese Communist party in the harvesting of genetic data from unborn babies, argues William Matthews

In her column (What does the Chinese military want with your unborn baby’s genetic data?, 10 July), Arwa Mahdawi suggested that the alleged involvement of the People’s Liberation Army (which is directly answerable to the Chinese Communist party) with BGI’s data-gathering (likewise answerable as a China-based company) is essentially equivalent to data-gathering by western companies. To suggest that the former case is worse, she argued, “smacks of Sinophobia”.

As a scholar of China, I cannot agree. While the harvesting of genetic data by any company is frightening and fraught with ethical issues, it should be obvious that this is a false equivalence. It is undoubtedly worse if genetic data is gathered by a company which must also comply with the rule of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) and its military-industrial complex, a regime which harvests and aggregates data on its citizens on a massive scale and uses it directly to implement the most repressive system of social control on earth in Xinjiang.

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Thailand bans public gatherings as Covid cases hit record high

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More restrictions are being considered as the country battles its worst outbreak yet

Thailand has imposed a nationwide ban on public gatherings and was considering more restrictions on movement as authorities reported record numbers of new cases and deaths on Saturday.

Despite partial lockdowns in Bangkok and nine other provinces this week, the country’s Covid-19 task force reported 10,082 new coronavirus cases and 141 new deaths, bringing the total number of infections to 391,989 cases and 3,240 fatalities since the pandemic started.

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No ‘return to normal’ expected in post-pandemic New Zealand – and locals say that’s fine

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Polls show New Zealanders accept that life will be different in future and they still feel their country is headed in the right direction

As countries look for a post-pandemic pathway back to “normal”, New Zealand is making no promises – and its population seems startlingly happy with that.

Around the world, some governments are hitting full throttle with rhetoric about a “return to normal” and the freedoms of a pre-pandemic world. New Zealand’s approach has been cautious by contrast. The government has made no assurances of a return to normal anytime soon, announced no multi-step “pathway out”, and put forward no timeline for re-opening borders even to vaccinated travellers.

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WHO chief says push to discount Covid-19 lab leak theory was ‘premature’

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Tedros says ‘accidents happen’ in labs and calls on China to be more transparent

The head of the World Health Organization has acknowledged it was premature to rule out a potential link between the Covid-19 pandemic and a laboratory leak, and said he was asking China to be more transparent as scientists search for the origins of the coronavirus.

In a rare departure from his usual deference to powerful member countries, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said getting access to raw data had been a challenge for the international team that travelled to China earlier this year to investigate the source of Covid-19. The first human cases were identified in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

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Making coffins, giving shelter: volunteers step in as Covid overwhelms Indonesia

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As the country becomes the epicentre of the pandemic, a growing number of volunteer groups have assembled to fill in gaps in the government response

Every day, before 7am, volunteers gather in front of a house in Yogyakarta. Wearing masks and maintaining distance, they measure and cut panels of wood, smoothing the edges with sandpaper. For the past 11 days, the front yard has been turned into an emergency casket-making workshop. The coffins are painted white, and lined inside with plastic.

The volunteers are lecturers, security guards, artists and police officers who set aside their time to help the community, which is being ravaged by Covid. They work until nightfall.

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Self-censorship hits Hong Kong book fair in wake of national security law

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Far fewer politically sensitive titles are on display in the first such event since Beijing imposed sweeping new regulations

Booksellers at Hong Kong’s annual book fair are offering a reduced selection of books deemed politically sensitive, as they try to avoid violating a sweeping national security law imposed on the city last year.

The fair was postponed twice last year because of the coronavirus pandemic. It usually draws hundreds of thousands of people looking for everything from the latest bestsellers to works by political figures.

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Citizenship for sale: fugitives, politicians and disgraced businesspeople buying Vanuatu passports

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Revealed: more than 2,000 people, including individuals sought by police, have purchased passports, and with them visa-free access to the EU and UK

A controversial “golden passports” scheme run by the Pacific nation of Vanuatu saw more than 2,000 people, including a slew of disgraced businesspeople and individuals sought by police in countries all over the world, purchase citizenship in 2020 – and with it visa-free access to the EU and UK, the Guardian can reveal.

Among those granted citizenship through the country’s development support program were a Syrian businessman with US sanctions against his businesses, a suspected North Korean politician, an Italian businessman accused of extorting the Vatican, a former member of a notorious Australian motorcycle gang, and South African brothers accused of a $3.6bn cryptocurrency heist.

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Drive My Car review – mysterious Murakami tale of erotic and creative secrets

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Ryûsuke Hamaguchi reaches a new grandeur with this engrossing adaptation about a theatre director grappling with Chekhov and his wife’s infidelity

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s mysterious and beautiful new film is inspired by Haruki Murakami’s short story of the same name – and that title, like Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, is designed to tease us with the shiny wistfulness of a Beatles lyric. Hamaguchi’s previous pictures Asako I and II and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy were about the enigma of identity, the theatrical role play involved in all social interaction and erotic rapture of intimacy. Drive My Car is about all this and more; where once Hamaguchi’s film-making language had seemed to me at the level of jeu d’esprit, now it ascends to something with passion and even a kind of grandeur. It is a film about the link between confession, creativity and sexuality and the unending mystery of other people’s lives and secrets.

Yûsuke (Hidetoshi Nishijima) is a successful actor and theatre director who specialises in experimental multilingual productions with surtitles – he is currently working in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and is preparing to play the lead in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. He has a complex relationship with his wife Oto (Reika Kirishima), a successful writer and TV dramatist who has a habit of murmuring aloud ideas for erotic short stories, trance-like, while she is astride Yûsuke having sex, including a potent vignette about a teenage girl who breaks into the house of the boy with whom she is obsessed.

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