Category Archives: Asia Pacific

Jack Ma’s Ant set for world’s biggest share offering at £26bn

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Financial technology firm will list on Shanghai and Hong Kong stock markets in snub to US

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma’s financial technology firm is aiming to raise more than $34bn (£26.15bn) in the world’s biggest initial public offering, valuing the business at more than $313bn.

Ant Group, which on Monday set the price for its much anticipated flotation and is expected to start trading early next month, will beat the record $25.6bn sold by state-backed oil giant Saudi Aramco in its flotation last December.

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China: new coronavirus outbreak detected in Xinjiang city of Kashgar

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Authorities test 2.84 million people after 137 asymptomatic cases found - the first local infections in China since 14 October

China has detected 137 new asymptomatic coronavirus cases in Kashgar in the north-western region of Xinjiang after one person was found to have the virus the previous day – the first new local cases for 10 days in mainland China.

All the cases detected on Sunday were linked to a garment factory where the parents of a 17-year-old girl who was found on Saturday to have the virus – but showed no symptoms – worked, a Xinjiang health commission official told a press briefing.

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Australia is part of a Black region, it should recognise Kanaky ambition in New Caledonia | Hamish McDonald

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Australia’s un-nuanced support for French dominion is unhelpful in a region where decolonisation is unfinished business

Kicking the can down the road is a time-honoured solution to deadlocks over statehood and identity: hoping time, consultation and money can end up in agreement.

But in New Caledonia, the French territory of 290,000 people in the Melanesian island chain to Australia’s north-east, the road is running out after more than two decades of can-kicking.

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Why China’s dramatic economic recovery might not add up

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The country seems to have rebounded, but some analysts believe that at the very least, there is sleight of hand at work

Beijing prompted envy, admiration and not a little resentment when it released data last week confirming that it was the first major economy to start growing again after the devastation caused by Covid-19 in the first half of the year.

China appeared to have achieved the V-shaped recovery being chased by finance ministers around the world, after pioneering mass lockdowns to contain the virus that had taken hold in Wuhan, then shutting its borders to stop it filtering back in from abroad.

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Fighting tyranny with milk tea: the young rebels joining forces in Asia

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Activists in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Thailand have formed a novel international alliance to defy authoritarian rule

The language, the demands and the backdrop were different, but the protests across central Bangkok last week would have looked familiar to anyone who followed the mass demonstrations that roiled Hong Kong for a year from June 2019.

Crowds of young protesters, dressed in black and wearing hard hats, poured through the streets to locations announced at the last minute on social media. As the police closed in and the protesters prepared for confrontation, hand gestures and human chains ensured supplies including protective masks and water reached the front lines.

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Lee Kun-hee, Samsung Electronics chairman, dies aged 78

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Transformative leader who took over from father made Samsung a global name with turnover worth a fifth of South Korea’s GDP

The Samsung Electronics chairman, Lee Kun-hee, who made the South Korean company a global name, has died at the age of 78.

Under Lee’s leadership Samsung rose to become the world’s largest producer of smartphones and memory chips, with overall turnover equivalent to a fifth of South Korea’s GDP.

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Now that nuclear weapons are illegal, the Pacific demands truth on decades of testing | Dimity Hawkins

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With a 50th nation ratifying it, the treaty outlawing nuclear weapons for all countries will come into force in 90 days

Nuclear weapons will soon be illegal. Just over 75 years since their devastation was first unleashed on the world, the global community has rallied to bring into force a ban through the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Late on Saturday night in New York, the 50th country – the central American nation of Honduras – ratified the treaty.

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‘This song is the struggle’: Vanuatu’s treehouse troubadour on love, loss and language

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Singer-songwriter Tio Massing writes songs from a sprawling banyan tree, and says ‘I have to do something for this earth, and the next generation’

Vanuatu singer-songwriter Tio Bang Massing writes from a place that few still remember.

He tries to live there too, with an almost Buddha-like simplicity, in a makeshift home tucked among the roots of a sprawling banyan tree.

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Queensland investigates Covid-19 strain on cargo ship after New Zealand alert

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MV Sofrana Surville barred from docking after officials in New Zealand said crew members on departing cargo ship might have new strain

Queensland health officials are working to determine the strain of Covid-19 infecting the crew of a cargo ship anchored off the Australian state’s Sunshine Coast.

The MV Sofrana Surville was blocked from docking in Brisbane after New Zealand warned it could be carrying a new strain of the virus.

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Tova O’Brien: my ‘feral’ interview with Covid-19 denier Jami-Lee Ross

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Good journalists know balanced reporting is not as simple as providing both sides of the story. You have to squash falsehoods

Like the families of 1.14 million people worldwide, our family has lost people we love to Covid-19. They are people who would not have died were it not for this deadly, hyper-contagious virus. We are in a global pandemic that is at least 15 times more fatal than seasonal influenza.

When people argue otherwise it puts more lives at risk; more families will mourn. Covid-19 conspiracies are dangerous. In New Zealand those conspiracies were driven by arguments against lockdowns and misinformation about the seriousness of the virus.

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Yang Hengjun: friend says writer told him he was a Chinese spy for 10 years

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In private letter Yang reveals he spent a decade spying in countries including Hong Kong and the US, according to friend

An Australian writer detained in China on charges of espionage spent a decade working as a Chinese spy, including in Hong Kong and the United States, a close friend claims.

Yang Hengjun was detained in January 2019 and held in various forms of secretive and punitive detention until he was formally charged this month for alleged espionage on behalf of another country. The early stages of trial are under way.

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Calls for a Covid ‘kava bubble’ as supply from Pacific to Australia dries up

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With little of the homemade Pacific brew available in Australia, prices have skyrocketed, and there’s been a spike in seizures at the border

The questions are asked quietly, but urgently: “Kava, do you have any? Do you know where to get any? Have you heard what they are paying for it in Sydney?”

When Pasifika meet in Australia, it is often kava that dominates: now, it is the absence of it.

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Goldman Sachs reaches $2.9bn deal to settle US-led 1MDB inquiry

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Bank’s Malaysia division agrees to plead guilty to violating foreign bribery laws

Goldman Sachs has agreed to pay $2.9bn (£2.2bn) to settle a US-led investigation into its role in the 1MDB corruption scandal.

The settlement is expected to draw a line under a years-long saga that has cast a shadow over one of the most recognisable names on Wall Street. Goldman Sachs’ Malaysia division also agreed to plead guilty to violating foreign bribery laws linked to the alleged looting of the country’s sovereign wealth fund, 1MDB.

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China warns Canada to halt ‘blatant interference’ as feud continues

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Canada concluded China’s actions against ethnic Uighurs in the Xinjiang province constituted a genocide and called for sanctions

China has warned Canadian lawmakers to halt their “blatant interference” in its internal affairs, in the latest episode of a rumbling diplomatic feud between the two nations.

Earlier this week, a Canadian parliamentary committee concluded China’s actions against ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang province constituted a genocide and called for sanctions against officials complicit in the government’s policy.

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Doctors in South Korea call for flu vaccinations to be paused after 25 deaths

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Authorities say programme will continue after finding no direct links between the deaths and the vaccines

South Korean officials refused on Thursday to suspend a seasonal influenza inoculation effort, despite growing calls for a halt, including an appeal from a key group of doctors, after the deaths of at least 25 of those vaccinated. Health authorities said they found no direct links between the deaths and the vaccines.

At least 22 of the dead, including a 17-year-old boy, were part of a campaign to inoculate 19 million teenagers and senior citizens for free, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said.

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Hong Kong says Germany harbouring a criminal after granting asylum to protester

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Meeting called with Germany’s consul general to lodge objections in what Hong Kong regards as ‘internal matters’ to China

Hong Kong has accused Germany of “harbouring criminals” after it granted asylum to a student who fled charges over last year’s pro-democracy protest.

Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, Hong Kong’s chief secretary for administration, warned against foreign interference in affairs that were “internal matters of the People’s Republic of China”.

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Ardern urged to review New Zealand Covid measures after election landslide

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Veteran epidemiologist calls for review, and openness to adopting measures suggested by political rivals, now that voters have given PM a mandate

Jacinda Ardern won New Zealand’s election with a commanding majority, in part attributed to her handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in her country. But a veteran epidemiologist is exhorting the prime minister to use the political capital gained in her decisive victory to scrutinise the coronavirus response by her government and officials, and adopt strategies proposed by her opponents before Saturday’s vote.

“New Zealand has shown it can be quite smart and flexible, but we can see we’ve got these blind spots and we need to have no blind spots,” said Nick Wilson, a University of Otago epidemiologist. “This is such an unforgiving disease and very few countries are doing it right so we need to smarten up our act quite substantially.”

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Thailand’s prime minister may lift emergency measures

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Prayuth Chan-ocha seeks to end conflict but protesters give him deadline to resign

Thailand’s prime minister has said he may lift severe emergency measures that were imposed last week to halt months of pro-democracy protests but which have instead sparked even bigger, nationwide rallies against his government and the monarchy.

Prayuth Chan-ocha, a former army general who first came to power in the 2014 coup, said he was moving to de-escalate the situation, adding that the country “must now step back from the edge of the slippery slope that can easily slide to chaos”.

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Thailand protests: court orders news outlet to close as PM accuses it of ‘inciting unrest’

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Voice TV, which has links to former PM Thaksin Shinawatra, faces closure over coverage of youth-led protests against government and monarchy

A Thai news outlet connected to exiled former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra has been ordered to shut down over its coverage of anti-government protests in Bangkok as demonstrators prepared to take to the streets for a sixth consecutive day.

Voice TV, a website partly owned by Thaksin’s family, was one of four media organisations under fire for their reporting of the youth-led pro-democracy protest movement and has been critical of the government.

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The wait: Indonesia’s refugees describe life stuck in an interminable limbo

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Australia’s border policies continue to be felt in a country where almost 14,000 refugees and asylum seekers endure a ‘painful, hopeful wait’ to be resettled


From the ferry terminal in Batam, a city on Indonesia’s far north-western border, you can look across the narrow strait to Singapore. But only a short walk from the waterfront, more than 200 men are passing listless days and curfewed nights in cramped dorm rooms. Men sit in rows under the tropical sun, raising their arms in crosses above their heads and chanting, “Seven years in limbo! Enough, enough!”

They are bored, but buffed. Their DIY gym equipment offers some reprieve: old buckets filled with cement, stuck to the ends of metal poles. “They want to prepare themselves,” Shamsullah Husseini, a 21-year-old Hazara refugee, tells me when I visit. “They want to be ready for the country that accepts them.”

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