Category Archives: Asia Pacific

Rare copy of Mao’s Little Red Book expected to fetch more than £30,000

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Early editions of the book of quotations will be sold at an auction of Cultural Revolution artefacts

The Little Red Book, a talisman of 20th-century Maoism, may have fallen out of favour in China after the Cultural Revolution, but its popularity with collectors shows no sign of abating.

The book, officially entitled Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, was given its popular name due to the bright red cover of mass-produced editions. A rare prototype version is about to resurface in a sale by a west London auction house of hundreds of artefacts from the Cultural Revolution, where it is expected to fetch more than £30,000.

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Vogue China’s Margaret Zhang, youngest person appointed as an editor at magazine group, to step down

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Australian Chinese former fashion blogger, whose appointment in 2021 was met with controversy, announces she is leaving the magazine

Three years after becoming the youngest person to hold an editor title at Vogue, Margaret Zhang is leaving her position as editorial director of Vogue China.

The Australian Chinese creative director announced her exit on Instagram on Monday, writing: “As we kick off a transformative Year of the Dragon, I’m excited to announce that I have decided to wrap up with Vogue and jump into the next chapter of my career.”

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Japan’s moon lander survives two-week lunar night after wonky landing

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Unmanned Slim spacecraft responds to signal from Earth after touching down at awkward angle in January

Japan’s moon lander has responded to a signal from Earth, suggesting it survived the two-week lunar night, the country’s space agency has said.

The unmanned Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (Slim) touched down last month at a wonky angle that left its solar panels facing the wrong way. But as the sun’s angle shifted, it powered up for two days and carried out scientific observations of a crater with a hi-spec camera.

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Tuvalu names Feleti Teo prime minister after pro-Taiwan leader Kausea Natano ousted

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Taiwan ambassador says ties remain ‘rock solid’ amid rumours island nation could switch allegiance to Beijing

Lawmakers in Tuvalu have selected Feleti Teo as the Pacific island nation’s new prime minister, weeks after an election that put ties with Taiwan in focus.

Former attorney general Teo secured the support of lawmakers who were elected last month, government secretary Tufoua Panapa told Agence France-Presse on Monday.

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‘Reality remains tough as ever’, says Japan PM as extra $660m pledged for Noto earthquake rebuild

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The earthquake hit parts of the Ishikawa region on New Year’s Day killing 241 people and sparking a major fire, water remains cut off to some areas

Japan will spend an additional $660m rebuilding areas ravaged by a devastating New Year’s Day earthquake, prime minister Fumio Kishida said, taking the total amount of relief to $1.7bn.

The new financial aid was announced by the prime minister on Saturday as he visited the quake-hit areas.

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Apartment block fire in China’s Nanjing city kills at least 15, officials say

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The blaze started on the first floor where electric bikes had been placed, according to officials, but the cause is still unknown

At least 15 people were killed and 44 injured in a fire at a residential building in eastern China’s Nanjing city, local authorities said.

The fire broke out early Friday morning, officials said at a press conference, with a preliminary investigation suggesting the blaze started on the building’s first floor, where electric bikes had been placed.

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Weather tracker: Contrasts in cold and heat break records in China

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Xinjiang in north-west recorded minus 52.3C, while Badu in south recorded 38C – the largest temperature contrast recorded in a single country

China’s Xinjiang region, in the far west of the country, experienced record-breaking low temperatures of -52.3C on 18 February, surpassing a 64-year-old record for the region. The figure was just shy of the lowest national temperature of -53C, which was recorded in the Heilongjiang region in January last year.

The extreme weather has caused big disruption after the lunar new year celebrations, with blizzards and ice leaving people stranded on roads and railways. On the same day, Badu in the south of China recorded a maximum temperature of 38C, meaning there was a staggering temperature difference of 90.3C across the country. This is the largest temperature contrast ever recorded for a single country, surpassing the US in January 1954 by a whole degree Celsius.

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Huge cybersecurity leak lifts lid on world of China’s hackers for hire

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Leaked files shows range of services offered and bought, with data harvested from targets worldwide

A big leak of data from a Chinese cybersecurity firm has revealed state security agents paying tens of thousands of pounds to harvest data on targets, including foreign governments, while hackers hoover up huge amounts of information on any person or institution who might be of interest to their prospective clients.

The cache of more than 500 leaked files from the Chinese firm I-Soon was posted on the developer website Github and is thought by cybersecurity experts to be genuine. Some of the targets discussed include Nato and the UK Foreign Office.

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Expensive toilets cause a stink at Japan’s world expo

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Row over £1.05m amenities block comes amid growing concern over the cost of the event, which is taking place in Osaka in 2025

Visitors to next year’s world exposition in Japan could find themselves spending a penny in toilets that cost more than £1m to build, with recent construction estimates for restrooms sparking a row over the event’s spiralling costs.

Japanese media reported this week that some of the 40-plus bathrooms being built at the site in Osaka, a port city in the west of the country, will cost as much as ¥200m (£1.05m).

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Boss of Japan crime syndicate conspired to traffic nuclear material, say US prosecutors

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Takeshi Ebisawa is being charged over a conspiracy to traffic uranium and plutonium from Myanmar, believing Iran would use it to make weapons

The head of a Japanese crime syndicate conspired to traffic uranium and plutonium in the belief that Iran would use it to make nuclear weapons, US prosecutors have alleged.

Federal officials said Takeshi Ebisawa, 60, and others showed samples of nuclear materials that had been transported from Myanmar to Thailand to an undercover Drug Enforcement Administration [DEA] agent.

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‘I hope he got the extended warranty’: US jokes about Russian car Putin gave to Kim Jong-un

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State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters in Washington he ‘didn’t know there was such a thing as a Russian luxury car’

A US spokesperson has mocked president Vladimir Putin’s gift of a Russian car to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, as he accused Moscow of violating UN resolutions.

North Korean state media said on Tuesday that Kim was “presented with a car made in Russia for his personal use by Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, president of the Russian Federation.”

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Growth in CO2 emissions leaves China likely to miss climate targets

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Carbon intensity of the country’s economy remains high, despite rapid improvements in clean energy output

China is off track on all of its core 2025 climate targets, despite the fact that clean energy is now the biggest driver of the country’s economic growth, analysis has found.

After years of extraordinarily rapid growth, China is now grappling with a slowdown that is causing ripples internally and internationally. The government has supercharged the growth of the renewable energy industry but it has simultaneously poured stimulus funds into construction and manufacturing, and continues to approve coal power.

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Cost of raising children in China second-highest in world, thinktank reveals

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Expense and challenge of balancing work and family life key factors in declining birthrate and shrinking population

China is one of the most expensive places in the world to raise a child, outstripping the US and Japan in relative terms, a prominent Chinese thinktank has said.

A report released on Wednesday by the Beijing-based YuWa Population Research Institute found that the average cost of raising a child in China until the age of 18 is 538,000 yuan (£59,275) – more than 6.3 times as high as its GDP per capita, compared with 4.11 times in the US or 4.26 times in Japan.

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China needs to do more on ‘silent crisis’ of debt, says World Bank official

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Beijing must be more ready to support countries facing distress, says deputy chief economist

China holds the key to speeding up debt relief and ending the “silent crisis” that is holding back attempts to tackle poverty in the world’s poorest countries, a senior World Bank official has said.

Ayhan Kose, the Bank’s deputy chief economist, said Beijing needed to be more active in negotiations to provide financial support for those countries already in, or close to, debt distress.

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Taiwan chases Chinese coastguard boat from frontline islands as tensions rise

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Taiwan’s coastguard said it will continue to use surveillance and patrols amid escalating dispute after fatal capsizing last week

Taiwan has driven away a Chinese coastguard boat that entered waters near its sensitive frontline islands, one day after China’s coastguard boarded a Taiwanese tourist boat amid an escalating dispute sparked by a fatal capsizing last week.

A Chinese coastguard boat, numbered 8029, entered Taiwan’s waters near Kinmen on Tuesday morning, Taiwan’s coastguard said, adding that it dispatched a boat and used radio and broadcast to drive away the Chinese craft, which left the area an hour later.

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Shock in New Zealand as Green party MP Efeso Collins dies after charity run

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Devastated colleagues and friends pay tribute to Collins as a ‘passionate advocate’ and a champion of fairness and equality

New Zealanders, including leaders from across the political spectrum, have expressed shock and devastation at the sudden death of Green MP Efeso Collins, who collapsed after a charity run in Auckland on Wednesday.

“It is with profound shock and sadness that we can confirm that Green Party MP Efeso Collins has died,” said a statement from the Green party.

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Papua New Guinea massacre: fears violence could spiral over tribal conflict

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Prime minister James Marape to seek help from Australia to support police after the deadly killings in Enga province

Authorities in Papua New Guinea are bracing for an escalation of violence after dozens of men were killed in a tribal massacre on Sunday.

In the wake of the killings, the prime minister, James Marape, is facing calls to declare a state of emergency to address the ongoing fighting.

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Singapore sought exclusivity deal over Taylor Swift concerts in south-east Asia, Thai PM alleges

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Srettha Thavisin claims promoter told him Singaporean government offered ‘subsidies’ of $2m-$3m a show

Thailand’s prime minister has claimed that Singapore sought a deal with Taylor Swift to prevent her from playing elsewhere in south-east Asia on her Eras tour.

Srettha Thavisin said the concert promoter AEG had informed him that the Singaporean government offered subsidies of US $2m-$3m (£1.6m-£24m) a show as part of an exclusivity agreement.

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China offers to deepen security ties with Hungary

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Beijing’s move comes at a time when Budapest’s relationship with its EU and Nato allies is at a low point

China has offered to deepen security cooperation with Hungary, underscoring Budapest’s warming ties with Beijing just as Hungarian officials snubbed a visiting delegation from Washington.

Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, met China’s minister of public security, Wang Xiaohong, on Friday.

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On a roll: bullet train food carts become Japan’s latest must-have

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Rail company inundated with requests after putting up for sale 50 of the disused trolleys from the Tokyo-Osaka shinkansen route

They are simple, practical items that have rolled seamlessly along bullet train aisles for decades, carrying snacks to millions of hungry travellers as they are whisked along at speeds of around 300km/h (186mph).

But now the humble food and beverage trolleys of one of Japan’s shinkansen routes have become an unlikely must-have item in canteens and household kitchens across the country.

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