Seoul, South Korea — Fragile South Korea-Japan ties are being strained yet again after South Korean politicians accused Tokyo of inappropriately pressuring a South Korean company to sell its stake in Line, the do-it-all social media app that has come to dominate digital life in Japan.

Line – which started as a messaging app but is now used for everything from bill-paying to video-sharing – is run by LY Corp., a Tokyo-based joint venture between South Korea’s tech giant Naver and Japan’s Softbank Group.

Japanese regulators have urged LY to reduce its dependence on Naver after the South Korean company experienced a cyberattack that resulted in a massive leak of data, including the personal information of Line users.

While the Japanese government’s recommendations to LY are not legally binding, analysts say such statements of “administrative guidance” carry significant weight in Japan’s business community. Naver itself has confirmed that it is considering “all possibilities,” including the sale of its stake in the company that controls LY.

Although Japanese officials say their actions are driven by information security concerns, South Korean politicians and commentators contend the moves are, at the very least, interference in a South Korean company’s foreign investment and, at worst, an infringement on South Korea’s digital sovereignty.

The dispute heightens political pressure on South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who has pursued closer ties with Japan, Korea’s former colonial ruler, but whose conservative party suffered a crushing defeat in legislative elections last month.

Yoon says closer cooperation with Japan is needed to deal with shared challenges, such as North Korea. But South Korea’s left-leaning opposition accuses Yoon of being too conciliatory, saying Japan should take further steps to make amends for its brutal 1910-1945 occupation of Korea.

Fierce backlash

Prominent South Korean politicians have pounced on the Line controversy to attack Yoon, framing it as another example of his “surrender diplomacy” and tying it to South Korea’s painful history with Japan.

In a Facebook post, Lee Jae-myung, head of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea, noted that the Japanese communication minister who issued the regulatory guidance is the descendant of a former top official who helped administer Japan’s colonial rule of Korea.

“While Ito Hirobumi [the ex-Japanese resident-general of Korea] plundered our national territory, his descendants are pillaging our cyber territory,” Lee said.

To protest what he says is Yoon’s weak response, Cho Kuk, a blunt-speaking former justice minister and head of the minor opposition Rebuilding Korea Party, last week visited a group of islands claimed by both South Korea and Japan.

During a fiery speech, Cho accused the Yoon administration of “worshiping Japan” and said the South Korean president had allowed the country to once again become a Japanese colony.

Cho’s visit to the islands, known as Dokdo in Korean and Takeshima in Japan, set off a tense exchange between Japanese and South Korean officials.

After Japan’s foreign ministry lodged a formal protest saying the visit was “totally unacceptable,” South Korea’s foreign ministry dismissed the complaint and criticized Tokyo’s “unjust” claim over the islands.

The South Korean presidential office has vowed to respond “firmly and strongly” to any unfair measures against Korean companies, but lamented that some politicians are using the dispute to stoke “anti-Japan sentiment that damages the national interest.”

The Japanese embassy in Seoul did not respond to a request for comment.

Trilateral meeting

The dispute comes just ahead of an expected meeting later this month between senior leaders of South Korea, Japan, and China – the first such trilateral summit since 2019.

The Korea-Japan tension may be well-timed for China, which has criticized the expanded cooperation between South Korea, Japan, and the United States.

Analysts have said that China may use the meeting to drive a wedge between South Korea and Japan. But Jeffrey Robertson, a professor of diplomatic studies at Seoul’s Yonsei University, said China may conclude it has much to gain simply by re-establishing dialogue with Japan and South Korea — a meeting that excludes the United States.

“I don’t think China has to do anything to find cracks in the Japan-Korea relationship. I think those cracks are already present and pretty much filling up with water right now,” Robertson said.

Muted reaction in Japan

In Japan, the Line/Naver dispute has received relatively little attention, says Jeffrey J. Hall, a Japanese politics specialist at the Kanda University of International Studies.

“A lot of news outlets probably wouldn’t have even given it much attention if it wasn’t for politicians visiting Takeshima/Dokdo,” Hall said.

“In contrast, last year’s massive leak of LINE users’ personal information was treated as big news in Japan,” he added in a written exchange with VOA.

Yoon has vowed to continue good relations with Japan, but analysts say anti-Japan forces are unlikely to disappear anytime soon.

“Japan is getting a small taste of things to come if the opposition wins the next presidential election,” Hall said.

Lee Juhyun contributed to this report.
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Islamabad — Authorities in Afghanistan said Monday that a bomb blast had killed at least one person and injured three others in the southern city of Kandahar, the political headquarters of the country’s hardline Taliban rulers.

The bomb was planted in a handcart on a road leading to the national capital, Kabul, and the victims were civilians, a Kandahar police statement said. It added that an investigation into the attack was underway to apprehend and bring to justice those responsible.

Multiple sources claimed that the bombing had targeted Taliban security forces, and the death toll was significantly higher than what was officially reported.

No group immediately took responsibility for the attack, but suspicion fell on a regional Islamic State affiliate, known as IS-Khorasan or IS-K, which routinely targets members of the Taliban and the country’s minority Shi’ite community.

Bamiyan attack

The bombing in Kandahar came a day after IS-K said it was behind a gun attack against foreign tourists in the central province of Bamiyan Friday. The shooting resulted in the deaths of three Spanish citizens and three Afghans, with four other tourists from Spain, Australia, Norway, and Lithuania sustaining injuries.

Bamiyan is a popular designation for foreign tourists because it is home to a UNESCO World Heritage site and the remains of two giant Buddha statues that were blown up by the Taliban during their previous rule in 2001.

Militant attacks are extremely rare in Kandahar, where the reclusive Taliban supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, lives and effectively governs Afghanistan from there through religious edicts stemming from his strict interpretation of Islam.

The most recent IS-K-claimed bombing in the city, known as the historical birthplace of the Taliban, occurred in late March when a suicide bomber targeted a crowd of government employees collecting salaries outside a bank, killing at least three of them.

The Taliban stormed back to power in Kabul in 2021 when the United States and NATO troops withdrew from the country after nearly 20 years of involvement in the Afghan war.
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BANGKOK — Thailand on Monday officially began the selection of new senators, a process that has become part of an ongoing war between progressive forces hoping for democratic political reforms and conservatives seeking to keep the status quo.

Hopeful candidates headed to district offices across the country on the first day of registration to compete for one of the 200 seats in Parliament’s upper house.

The power of the Senate — although limited compared to the House of Representatives, which is tasked with law-making responsibilities — was demonstrated dramatically when it blocked the progressive party that won the most seats in last year’s election from forming a new government.

The senators were able to do so because of the 2017 Constitution, passed under a military government, which requires the prime minister to be approved by a joint vote of the elected House and the Senate, which was appointed by the military regime.

The Move Forward Party was opposed by senators who disapproved of its vow to seek reforms of Thailand’s monarchy.

The process of selecting the new senators will include three rounds of voting: district, provincial and national.

Unlike the elected lower house legislators, the senators will be chosen by their fellow applicants, competing in 20 categories such as occupation or social position, including women, the elderly and the disabled.

The final results are expected to be announced in July.

The selection process in the Constitution is so complicated and unclear that critics say it was deliberately designed to discourage public participation. Critics say the Constitution also allows the state bureaucracy to hold more power than directly elected political officeholders.

The new senators will no longer be able to take part in selecting a prime minister but will retain the power to approve legislation passed by the House.

They also have the power to select members of nominally independent regulatory bodies such as the Election Commission and the Constitutional Court, whose work has been widely seen as impeding efforts at political reform and crippling proponents with legal penalties, including prison.

The Senate’s votes are also required to amend the Constitution. The governing Pheu Thai party is pushing for a new charter to replace the 2017 one to facilitate certain reform efforts promised during the campaign.

Civil society groups have campaigned to raise public awareness and encourage those favoring democratic reforms to enter the Senate selection process.

Law reform advocate Yingcheep Atchanont of the group iLaw has been organizing public discussions on the importance of the Senate and workshops to help would-be applicants understand how the selection process works.

“We are telling people what to do if they want change. There have been calls in recent years to reduce the power of the Senate, to get rid of the Senate,” he said. “All of this can only happen if we can amend the Constitution, and we need enough votes from the senators for that.”

Candidates must be more than 40 years old and have more than 10 years of experience in their chosen occupational group, the latter provision not applying for those competing in one of the social identity groups. They also cannot campaign or do anything that can be interpreted as campaigning.

Even the Election Commission has acknowledged how complicated the process is but says it will be able to carry it out smoothly and transparently.

Purawich Watanasukh, a political science lecturer at Bangkok’s Thammasat University, said he thinks the complicated rules were intentionally designed to reduce public participation.

“This is the contest of the people to debug not just the Senate itself, but the Constitution, which would lead to a new political landscape in Thailand,” he said, ““It will be the next battleground between the progressive movement and the establishment.”
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SYDNEY — Researchers in Australia and the United States say that a new artificial intelligence tool has allowed them to classify brain tumors more quickly and accurately.  

The current method for identifying different kinds of brain tumors, while accurate, can take several weeks to produce results.  The method, called DNA methylation-based profiling, is not available at many hospitals around the world.

To address these challenges, a research team from the Australian National University, in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute in the United States, has developed a way to predict DNA methylation, which acts like a switch to control gene activity.  

This allows them to classify brain tumors into 10 major categories using a deep learning model.

This is a branch of artificial intelligence that teaches computers to process data in a way that is inspired by a human brain.

The joint U.S.-Australian system is called DEPLOY and uses microscopic pictures of a patient’s tissue called histopathology images.

The researchers see the DEPLOY technology as complementary to an initial diagnosis by a pathologist or physician.

Danh-Tai Hoang, a research fellow at the Australian National University, told VOA that AI will enhance current diagnostic methods that can often be slow.

“The technique is very time consuming,” Hoang said. “It is often around two to three weeks to obtain a result from the test, whereas patients with high-grade brain tumors often require treatment as soon as possible because time is the goal for brain tumor(s), so they need to get treatment as soon as possible.”

The research team said its AI model was validated on large datasets of approximately 4,000 patients from across the United States and Europe and an accuracy rate of 95 percent.

Their study has been published in the journal Nature Medicine.
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Cairo — Islamic State on Sunday claimed responsibility for an attack by gunmen on tourists in Afghanistan’s central Bamiyan province, the group said on its Telegram channel.

Three Spanish tourists were killed and at least one Spaniard was injured in the attack, Spain’s foreign ministry said on Friday.

Taliban interior ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qaniee four people had been arrested over the attack in which gunmen opened fire. In addition to the three foreign tourists, one Afghan citizen had been killed in the attack. Four foreigners and three Afghans were also injured, he added.

Mountainous Bamiyan is home to a UNESCO world heritage site and the remains of two giant Buddha statues that were blown up by the Taliban during their previous rule in 2001.

Since taking over Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban have pledged to restore security and encourage a small but growing number of tourists trickling back into the country. They have sold tickets to see the site of the destroyed Buddha statues.

Friday’s attack was among the most serious targeting foreign citizens since foreign forces left and the Taliban took over in 2021.

The Islamic State claimed an attack that injured Chinese citizens at a hotel popular with Chinese businessmen in Kabul in 2022.
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Beijing — China’s commerce ministry on Sunday launched an anti-dumping probe into POM copolymers, a type of engineering plastic, imported from the European Union, United States, Japan and Taiwan.

The plastics can partially replace metals such as copper and zinc and have various applications including in auto parts, electronics, and medical equipment, the ministry said in a statement.

The investigation should be completed in a year but could be extended for six months, it said.

The European Commission, which oversees EU trade policy, said it would carefully study the contents of the investigation before deciding on any next steps.

“We expect China to ensure that this investigation is fully in line with all relevant WTO (World Trade Organization) rules and obligations,” a spokesperson said.

China’s plastics probe comes amid a broader trade row with the United States and Europe.

The United States on Tuesday unveiled steep tariff increases on Chinese electric vehicles, or EVs, computer chips, medical products and other imports.

On Friday, the European Union launched a trade investigation into Chinese tinplate steel, the latest in a string of EU trade and subsidy probes into Chinese exports.

Most notably, the European Commission launched a probe last September to decide whether to impose punitive tariffs on cheaper Chinese EVs that it suspects of benefiting from state subsidies.

Beijing argues the recent focus by the United States and Europe on the risks to other economies from China’s excess capacity is misguided.

Chinese officials say the criticism understates innovation by Chinese companies in key industries and overstates the importance of state support in driving their growth.
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Taipei, Taiwan — In a campaign ad for Taiwan’s President-elect Lai Ching-te, incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen was shown driving with Lai in the passenger seat, exchanging reflections on their years governing together. Tsai later turned over the driving to Lai, who was joined by running mate Bi-khim Hsiao.

The message was clear: Lai would steer the island in the direction set by Tsai, who after eight years in power was barred from running again.

Lai, 64, will take office Monday. Continuing Tsai’s legacy means aiming to strike a balance between cultivating Taiwan’s unofficial alliance with the United States and maintaining peace with China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory, to be retaken by force if necessary.

Lai is also expected to build on some of Tsai’s domestic reforms, despite political gridlock. Lai and Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party has lost the majority in the legislature, making it hard for Lai to push through legislation, including the approval of crucial national defense budgets.

Tsai, 67, has been Taiwan’s first female president and one of Asia’s few female leaders who didn’t hail from a political dynasty. Her legacy will be tied to defending the island’s sovereignty from China while refashioning it as a credible partner for the U.S. and other democracies. She will also be remembered for overseeing the legalization of same sex-marriage, steering Taiwan through the COVID years and kickstarting the island’s military modernization.

She leaves office with high approval ratings. A recent poll by broadcaster TVBS showed 42% of respondents were satisfied with her eight-year performance. Her predecessor, Ma Ying-jeou, left office with approval ratings of around 23%.

Tsai’s popularity partly reflects a shift in Taiwan’s identity. A vast majority of residents now identify as Taiwanese as opposed to Chinese and want to be governed separately from Beijing. Taiwan and China have had different governments since a civil war in 1949 saw the Nationalists flee to the island while China’s Communist Party took control of the mainland.

Tsai veered from the more China-friendly policies of the previous ruling party, the Kuomintang. By the end of Ma’s tenure, the frequent exchanges with Beijing were making many Taiwanese nervous, said Shelley Rigger, a Taiwan expert at Davidson College.

Beijing called Tsai a separatist after she refused to acknowledge the 1992 Consensus, an agreement which says Taiwan is part of “One China.” While pulling away from Beijing, however, Tsai left a door open for communication.

“President Tsai has always said that Taiwan, under her leadership, is happy, willing and eager to have dialogue with Beijing, just not on terms unilaterally imposed by Beijing,” said Wen-Ti Sung, a fellow with Washington-based research group Atlantic Council.

China has not only declined to speak to Tsai but also ramped up military and economic pressure on the island, sending warships and military jets near it daily.

Beijing prevents countries it has diplomatic relations with from having formal ties with Taipei. During Tsai’s tenure, it intensified a campaign to lure away the island’s few diplomatic partners. During Tsai’s years in office, China poached almost half of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies, bringing the remaining number to 12.

Tsai pushed back by diversifying trade relationships and increasing military spending including submarine development. She also elevated Taiwan’s standing on the international stage, said outgoing Foreign Minister Joseph Wu.

“Her leadership style is very moderate, but at the same time very firm in dealing with any kind of international pressure,” he said.

“She strengthened awareness of Taiwan around the world and its ties with the international community,” said Bonnie Glaser, the director of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

‘Tsai 2.0’

Lai, who served as vice president during Tsai’s second term, came across as more of a firebrand earlier in his career. In 2017, he described himself as a “pragmatic worker for Taiwan’s independence,” drawing Beijing’s rebuke. He has since softened his stance and now supports maintaining the status quo across the Taiwan Strait and the possibility of talks with Beijing.

“Lai has spent the last two-plus years trying to convince the world that he is Tsai Ing-wen 2.0,” said Lev Nachman, an assistant professor at National Chengchi University.

Lai will build on Tsai’s efforts to strengthen ties with the United States, which doesn’t formally recognize Taiwan as a country but is bound by its own laws to provide the island with the means to defend itself.

By some measures, Lai’s greatest uncertainty on the foreign policy front might come from Washington. A new Donald Trump administration could throw off whatever balance Tsai has achieved in Taipei’s relations with Washington and Beijing, Nachman said.

What’s next at home

During Tsai’s tenure, Taiwan became the first society in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage, although critics say she skirted political responsibility by leaving the decision up to the Supreme Court and a series of referendums.

She oversaw a controversial pension and labor reform and extended the military conscription length to one year. She also kickstarted a military modernization drive, including a program for building indigenous submarines at more than $16 billion each.

Tsai’s leadership during the COVID pandemic split public opinion, with most admiring Taiwan’s initial ability to keep the virus largely outside its borders but criticizing the lack of investment in rapid testing as the pandemic progressed.

Tsai’s mixed success on the domestic policy front contributed to historically poor results for the DPP in local elections, said Sung with the Atlantic Council. The party’s poor performance in the 2022 elections led to Tsai resigning as party chairwoman. And while Lai won the presidential election, DPP lost its majority in the legislature.

“Much of President Tsai’s government’s success comes from the foreign policy and related international outreach fronts, and in terms of making inroads on the much more grassroots party machinery level, for example, those still have room for improvement,” Sung said.
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Islamabad, Pakistan — More heavy rains in Afghanistan have triggered flash floods, raising the death toll to 84 in the country’s north following weeks of devastating torrents that had already left hundreds dead and missing, a Taliban spokesperson said Sunday.

The new round of heavy rains and floods hit four districts in Faryab province Saturday night, leaving 66 dead, five injured and eight missing. Another 18 people had died in floods on Friday, said Esmatullah Moradi, spokesperson for the provincial governor in Faryab. 

Moradi said that around 1,500 houses were either completely or partially destroyed while hundreds of hectares (acres) of farmlands were washed away and more than 300 animals killed.

Afghanistan has been witnessing unusually heavy seasonal rains.

In the hard-hit western province of Ghor, 50 people were reported dead from Friday’s floods, according to Abdul Wahid Hamas, spokesperson for the provincial governor.

The U.N. food agency said Ghor was the most affected by the floods. Last week, the World Food Program said the exceptionally heavy rains in Afghanistan had killed more than 300 people and destroyed thousands of houses, mostly in the northern province of Baghlan.

Survivors have been left with no home, no land, and no source of livelihood, WFP said, adding that most of Baghlan was inaccessible by trucks.

The latest disaster came on the heels of devastating floods that killed at least 70 people in April. The waters also destroyed about 2,000 homes, three mosques and four schools in western Farah and Herat, and southern Zabul and Kandahar provinces. 
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DENPASAR, BALI, INDONESIA — Elon Musk and Indonesian Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin launched SpaceX’s satellite internet service for the nation’s health sector on Sunday, aiming to improve access in remote parts of the sprawling archipelago.   

Musk, the billionaire head of SpaceX and Tesla TSLA.O, arrived on the Indonesian resort island of Bali by private jet before attending the launch ceremony at a community health centre in the provincial capital, Denpasar.   

Musk, wearing a green batik shirt, said the availability of the Starlink service in Indonesia would help millions in far-flung parts of the country to access the internet. The country is home to more than 270 million people and three different time zones.

“I’m very excited to bring connectivity to places that have low connectivity,” Musk said, “If you have access to the internet you can learn anything.”   

Starlink was launched at three Indonesian health centers on Sunday, including two in Bali and one on the remote island of Aru in Maluku.   

A video presentation screened at the launch showed how high internet speeds enabled the real-time input of data to better tackle health challenges such as stunting and malnutrition.   

Asked about whether he planned to also invest in Indonesia’s electric vehicle industry, Musk said he was focused on Starlink first.   

“We are focusing this event on Starlink and the benefits that connectivity brings to remote islands,” he said, “I think it’s really to emphasize the importance of internet connectivity, how much of that can be a lifesaver.”   

Indonesia’s government has been trying for years to lure Musk’s auto firm Tesla to build manufacturing plants related to electric vehicles as the government wants to develop its EV sector using the country’s rich nickel resources.   

The tech tycoon is scheduled to meet Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Monday, where he will also address the World Water Forum taking place on the island.   

Communications Minister Budi Arie Setiadi, who also attended the Bali launch, said Starlink was now available commercially, but the government would focus its services first for outer and underdeveloped regions.   

Prior to Sunday’s launch, Starlink obtained a permit to operate as an internet service provider for retail consumers and had been given the go-ahead to provide networks, having received a very small aperture terminal (VSAT) permit, Budi Setiadi told Reuters.   

SpaceX’s Starlink, which owns around 60% of the roughly 7,500 satellites orbiting earth, is dominant in the satellite internet sphere.   

Indonesia is the third country in Southeast Asia where Starlink will operate. Malaysia issued the firm a license to provide internet services last year and a Philippine-based firm signed a deal with SpaceX in 2022.   

Starlink is also used extensively in Ukraine, where it is employed by the military, hospitals, businesses and aid organizations. 
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TOKYO — Japanese authorities have warned residents Saturday to be aware of wild bears in the country’s northeast after several people were attacked, including police officers.

The bears, measuring about 50 centimeters in height, were seen in the area, including Akita and Fukushima Prefectures.

Two police officers were attacked Saturday in the city of Kazuno in Akita while recovering the body of a missing man, according to Japanese media reports. The man had gone hunting for bamboo shoots in the mountains a few days earlier where he was found dead in the area with gash wounds. It remains unclear if he died due to a bear attack.

The officers are in serious condition, though not life-threatening, reports said.

In response, some wooded areas have been closed off in Kazuno “for an indefinite time,” officials said in a statement.

News footage showed police officers putting up signs warning people to stay out of mountainous areas where the bears were sighted.

Over the weekend, patrol cars were dispatched together with a helicopter search to locate the bears.

Akita Prefectural Police have urged people to keep bells and other noise-producing devices on hand to scare the bears away in case of an encounter, and not to go out at night.

Thousands of Asiatic black bears live in the wild throughout Japan. Attacks have risen as the borders blur between the bears’ habitats and people’s dwellings. The scarcity of acorns, berries and other food, possibly connected to climate change, is also blamed for the surge in bear encounters.
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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s minister for planning and development, Ahsan Iqbal, says his country is not opposed to Afghanistan’s inclusion in a Chinese-funded mega-development project, but would like Beijing to persuade Kabul to crack down on terrorist groups operating on its soil against Islamabad.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s new government, which took office in March, is anxious to revive the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor or CPEC – a roughly $62 billion flagship project that is part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative – which has suffered a slump in recent years due to political, economic, and security problems in Pakistan.

Iqbal recently met officials in China to prepare for Sharif’s upcoming visit aimed at quickening the pace and broadening the scope of CPEC.

Securing CPEC

Threats against Chinese nationals have emerged as a major impediment to CPEC’s progress in recent years. Since 2021, at least 17 Chinese nationals have died in targeted attacks in Pakistan.

In late March, five Chinese workers and their Pakistani driver were killed when a suicide bomber rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into their bus. Pakistani authorities identified the attacker as an Afghan national and claimed the attack was planned in Afghanistan.

“I think this is a cause for concern,” Iqbal said about the alleged use of Afghan territory for attacks on Chinese citizens in Pakistan.

Speaking exclusively to VOA, Iqbal said his government would like Beijing to use its influence to push Kabul to take action against cross-border terrorists.

“We also hope that China would also persuade Afghanistan because Afghanis [Afghans] also listen to the Chinese government in the region,” he said. 

The Afghan Taliban deny giving space to terrorists, but research suggests terrorist groups have a presence there.

When asked if Islamabad had formally requested Beijing to push the Afghan Taliban to curb anti-Pakistan terrorist groups, Iqbal referred VOA to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The minister rejected the idea that attacks on Chinese nationals were a failure on Pakistan’s part, where a special military unit as well as local law enforcement are tasked with ensuring their safety.

“When you’re fighting a war against terrorism, terrorists always find a way,” Iqbal said, adding that major powers like the United States and Russia were also victims.

Chinese officials are pressing Pakistan publicly to ensure better safety of their workers and to hold those responsible for the killings accountable.

Iqbal said Beijing was right to demand better security for its nationals and that it knows Pakistan is doing more.

“But the Chinese government has said it very clearly that such cowardly incidents will not deter them from pursuing CPEC,” he added.

Washington vs. Beijing

Chinese funding, while welcome, comes largely in the form of expensive loans. According to research by AidData, a research organization based at the College of William and Mary in the U.S. state of Virginia, between 2000 to 2021, Pakistan’s cumulative debt to China stood at $67.2 billion.

Iqbal dismissed Washington’s concerns about Pakistan’s mounting Chinese debt. The United States also accuses China of predatory lending practices, an allegation Beijing denies.

“I think China has shown [a] great amount of understanding,” he said. “I wish just as China understands Pakistan’s difficulties, [the] IMF [International Monetary Fund] and other friends also would give Pakistan that margin of understanding.”

When CPEC was starting in 2013, Iqbal said he told officials in Washington that “right now China is giving us $46 billion of hard investment in infrastructure and I doubt very much that you can even get $4 million approved from Congress for Pakistan.”

Despite being allies in the 20-year U.S.-led Afghan war, Washington and Islamabad share a long history of mistrust.

Walking a tightrope between Washington and Beijing while the two battle for geopolitical influence, Iqbal said Islamabad would like to harness the “soft power” of the U.S and send Pakistani scholars and researchers there to earn doctorate degrees.

“So, if China is helping us build our infrastructure or hardware, we look forward to the U.S., that it should help us build our software that will run that hardware,” Iqbal said. “I think that way Pakistan can really benefit from both its friends, United States and China.”

CPEC Phase-2

Launched in 2013, CPEC has given nearly 2,000 kilometers of roads to Pakistan, added 8,000 megawatts of electricity to the national grid, and created close to 200,000 jobs, according to Pakistani and Chinese officials.

In the much-delayed and much-talked-about Phase 2 of CPEC, Pakistan hopes some of the pending projects from the first phase will be completed. Moving away from government-to-government initiatives, Pakistan wants private Chinese businesses to collaborate with companies in Pakistan in the second phase. It is also eyeing jobs leaving China due to increasing labor costs to come to Pakistan, where manpower is abundant and cheap.

“China considers Pakistan as a strategic friend and has confidence in Pakistan,” Iqbal said, when pressed why more Chinese companies would come to Pakistan while their counterparts are struggling to get their dues.

Pakistan owes almost $2 million to Chinese power producers that set up shop under CPEC. It has an economy of roughly $350 billion but according to the State Bank of Pakistan, the country’s central bank, Pakistan’s total debt and liabilities are hovering near $290 billion.

After escaping default last year, Islamabad is seeking a new bailout from the IMF, which expects Pakistan’s economy to grow 2% in 2024.

Iqbal said China invested in Pakistan when the country was having difficult times.

“When China decided to invest $25 billion in Pakistan, this is [in] 2013, when we had 18 hours of power shortages” and frequent suicide bombings, he said. “At that time they decided to come to Pakistan and support Pakistan,” the minister said. “That shows they have trust and confidence in Pakistan.”

Iqbal said the recent bullish performance of the country’s stock exchange showed, ” … local investors have full confidence in the direction the government is following and I think it is the same sense of confidence that Chinese investors and Chinese government has in this government.”
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Pakistan’s new government is trying to ramp up work on the multi-billion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. VOA Pakistan bureau chief Sarah Zaman speaks with Pakistan’s Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal about why Chinese companies should invest in Pakistan given the country’s poor economic and security conditions. Camera: Wajid Asad, Malik Waqar Ahmed
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TBILISI, Georgia — Georgia’s president on Saturday vetoed the so-called “Russian law” targeting media that has sparked weeks of mass protests.

The law would require media and nongovernmental organizations to register as “pursuing the interests of a foreign power” if they receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad. Critics of the bill say that it closely resembles legislation used by the Kremlin to silence opponents and that it will obstruct Georgia’s bid to join the EU.

President Salome Zourabichvili, who is increasingly at odds with Georgia’s ruling party, said Saturday that the law contradicts Georgia’s constitution and “all European standards” and added that it “must be abolished.”

The ruling party, Georgian Dream, has a majority sufficient to override Zourabichvili’s veto and is widely expected to do so in the coming days. The Georgian government insists that the law is intended to promote transparency and curb what it deems harmful foreign influence in the country of 3.7 million. 
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Kinmen, Taiwan — Standing on the shore of Taiwan’s Kinmen island, Taiwanese tourists snap photos of the skyline of China’s Xiamen city that is clearly visible across the sliver of water separating them. 

For the best view of Xiamen’s skyscrapers, visitors stand on a beach where anti-landing spikes jut out — a reminder of when the island was a battlefield front line after Chinese nationalists fled to Taiwan in 1949. 

More than 70 years later, China’s communist leaders still vow to seize democratic Taiwan, which Beijing views as part of its territory.  

Taipei-administered Kinmen is only 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the Chinese mainland, compared with 200 kilometers (124 miles) from Taiwan island. 

As Taiwanese President-elect Lai Ching-te, a staunch defender of Taiwan’s sovereignty, prepares to take office Monday, Taiwanese visitors to Kinmen hope he can avoid a conflict.

“We don’t ask for much, but we hope we can have a peaceful relationship,” said Huang Yueh-yi, 78, on Saturday as she visited a market on the tiny island famed for its temples and traditional brick houses.

“You live your life, and we’ll live ours, it’s good for both sides, and don’t go towards war,” she said.

As the rift between China and Taiwan deepens, Beijing has been increasing military pressure on Taipei by regularly deploying fighter jets, naval ships and drones around the self-ruled island. 

In recent months, Chinese coast guard ships have also started making frequent appearances in the waters near Kinmen. 

Lai — who has previously described himself as a “pragmatic worker for independence,” enraging Beijing — has more recently toned down his rhetoric. 

In the run-up to his inauguration, he has made overtures to China for a resumption of high-level communications, which Beijing severed after current President Tsai Ing-wen came to office in 2016. 

Chuang Cheng-tin, a construction worker from the central Taiwan city of Taichung, said it would be better for Taipei to “keep some distance” from Beijing. 

“We have different systems so there would be conflicts if we were too close,” Chuang told AFP as he wandered Kinmen’s historic streets. 

“We can’t yield … otherwise we will be taken by them. We should keep a distance, be armed, so we can have a counterbalance against them.”

On the Chinese side

On the verdant island of Pingtan, in the eastern Chinese province of Fujian, hundreds of tourists gather at a seaside site that is the closest place in mainland China to Taiwan. 

Pingtan is about 125 kilometers (78 miles) from Taiwan island — too far for visitors to see the other side with the naked eye.  

Instead, they pose with sculptures representing the two shores and celebrating the nostalgia of the time when they were part of the same political system.  

The site is intended to symbolize the historical links between the two sides, with the vast majority of Taiwan’s 23 million people being of Chinese culture and having ancestors from mainland China.  

“Chinese from the mainland need a permit to go to Taiwan, and it’s difficult to get one,” Wang Lei, a 25-year-old student, told AFP as he took a photo of himself in front of a large granite frame sculpture of a postcard with the blue sea in the background.  

“So coming here is a way of getting a glimpse of the island and its history.”  

While the tourists standing at the rocky site can only imagine Taiwan in the distance, some had clear views of its incoming president.  

“Lai Ching-te is the scum of the Chinese nation” because he “promotes separation between Taiwan and mainland China,” Jack Wang, 30, who works in international trade, told AFP.  

“We aspire to peaceful reunification. But as the former Chinese leader Mao Zedong said, we can’t renounce the use of force if it becomes necessary,” he said. “Of course, the Taiwanese also aspire to reunification with the mainland.” 

In fact, nearly 90% of Taiwanese wished to maintain the status quo, according to a 2023 poll by National Chengchi University in Taipei. 

Less than 2% said they supported unification as soon as possible. 

Some Chinese tourists who spoke to AFP were dismissive of the political developments across the strait, preferring to enjoy the sights of Pingtan. 

“Lai Ching-te? We don’t really care about Taiwanese politics, to be honest,” Zhou Yongping, a 54-year-old tourist, told AFP.  

“We just come here to visit, drink and eat.” 
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GENEVA — A report by the U.N. human rights office criticizes the Sri Lankan government’s failure to acknowledge and hold accountable the perpetrators of tens of thousands of enforced disappearances during the country’s decadeslong civil war. 

The report notes that nearly 15 years have passed since the end of the armed conflict and yet “Sri Lankan authorities are still failing to ensure accountability” for the violations that occurred then as well as during “the earliest waves of enforced disappearances.” 

In a statement issued Friday to coincide with the publication of the report, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said, “Accountability must be addressed. We need to see institutional reform for reconciliation to have a chance to succeed.” 

While the civil war between the Sinhalese-dominated government and the Tamil Tigers was fought between 1983 and 2009, the report notes that from the 1970s through to the end of the war in 2009, “widespread enforced disappearances were carried out primarily by Sri Lankan security forces and affiliated paramilitary groups,” which used them “as a tool to intimidate and oppress perceived opponents.” 

Authors of the report also accuse the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam of “engaging in abductions,” which were described as “tantamount to enforced disappearances” by the U.N. Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. 

Human rights officials conducted dozens of individual and group interviews with victims, mainly women. They found that the forcible disappearance of a relative continues to have profound psychological effects, including feelings of shock, fear, anger, helplessness and guilt. 

“Decades later, victims reported the inability to find closure. Most cling to the hope that their relative will return,” they said. 

The report describes the enduring social and economic impact on the families of those forcibly disappeared, especially on women. 

It observed that “as most disappeared individuals have been male, women have often become the sole income earner for a family, in a labor environment that poses many obstacles to women’s participation, including risks of sexual harassment and exploitation.” 

It adds that many women who have actively sought to find out what happened to their loved ones “have themselves been subjected to violations, including harassment, intimidation, surveillance, arbitrary detention, beatings and torture at the hands of army and police.” 

On the government’s response to the report, the high commissioner’s spokesperson, Ravina Shamdasani, told journalists in Geneva Friday that “generally, there appears to be a lack of political will to provide accountability to these cases.” 

“There are a lot of recurring obstacles to accountability,” she said. “There is frequent unwillingness on the part of the police to receive complaints, delays in the justice system, conflicts of interest in the attorney general’s office and reparation programs have not been developed with sufficient consultation with the victims.” 

The report acknowledges that in recent years, successive Sri Lankan governments have taken some positive steps to address the issue of the missing. Those include the ratification of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, the establishment of the Office on Missing Persons and the Office for Reparations and criminalizing enforced disappearances. 

However, the report finds that “tangible progress on the ground towards comprehensively resolving individual cases has remained limited.” 

For example, the report notes that criminal proceedings in Sri Lanka generally are “beset by prolonged delays,” but that in cases involving enforced disappearances or other serious violations involving state officials, “the delays are even more pronounced … and are a strategy to avoid accountability.” 

The report cites the case of “one of the few enforced disappearance-related cases” in which an individual was convicted and “in 2020, the then Sri Lankan president pardoned that individual.” 

According to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, under international law, the state has a clear obligation to resolve cases of enforced disappearances “until the fate and whereabouts of those disappeared are clarified.” 

“The government owes it to all those who have been forcibly disappeared … for these crimes to be investigated fully,” said Türk. “These crimes haunt not only their loved ones, but entire communities and Sri Lankan society as a whole. 

“This report is yet another reminder that all Sri Lankans who have been subjected to enforced disappearance must never be forgotten,” he said, adding that “their families and those who care about them have been waiting for so long. They are entitled to know the truth.” 
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Beijing — A Chinese official responsible for agricultural affairs is under investigation for corruption, state media reported Saturday, as President Xi Jinping’s extensive anti-graft campaign continues to bring down high-level figures.

Tang Renjian, the head of China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, is “suspected of serious violations of discipline and law,” state broadcaster CCTV said.

The report did not include details on the specific violations Tang is suspected of committing.

Xi has overseen a sweeping drive to abolish deep-rooted official corruption since coming to power a decade ago.

Supporters say the campaign promotes clean governance, but critics say it also provides Xi with the power to purge political rivals.

Tang previously served as governor of the northwestern province of Gansu, as well as the vice chairman of southern autonomous region Guangxi.

In 2022, then-Minister of Industry and Information Technology Xiao Yaqing was placed under investigation for corruption.

Recent months have seen a slew of crackdowns — particularly in the country’s financial and banking sectors.

Last month, Liu Liange, chairman of the Bank of China from 2019 to 2023, admitted to “accepting bribes and illegally providing loans.”

Earlier in April, former head of Chinese state-owned banking giant Everbright Group Li Xiaopeng came under investigation for “severe violations” of the law.
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KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — The young man who attacked a Malaysian police station and killed two officers was a recluse and believed to have acted on his own, despite suspected links to the Jemaah Islamiyah terror group, the country’s home minister said Saturday.

The man stormed a police station in southern Johor state near Singapore in the early hours of Friday with a machete. He hacked a police constable to death and then used the dead officer’s weapon to kill another. He injured a third officer before being shot dead. Police initially said the man could have been attempting to take firearms from the station.

Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution called it a “lone wolf attack,” based on the initial investigation, and said there was no threat to the wider public.

“We have established that the attacker acted on his own … a lone wolf driven by certain motivation and his own understanding,” Saifuddin said. “His action is not linked to any larger mission.”

Police have said the man’s father was a known member of the Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian terror network linked to al-Qaida, and that they found materials linked to the group in their home. Seven people including the man’s parents and three siblings were detained and police were searching for some 20 Jemaah Islamiyah members in the state.

The incident sparked concerns over a possible wider terror threat, prompting Singapore to issue a warning to its citizens to be vigilant when traveling to Johor.

Police initially said the attacker was 34, but Saifudin said he was 21 years old, with no criminal record. He said the man did not interact much with his neighbors, and nor does his family. Investigations are ongoing to determine what the man’s motive was, he added.

Jemaah Islamiyah, designated a terror group by the U.S and banned in Indonesia, is widely blamed for attacks in the Philippines and Indonesia including the 2002 bombings in the Indonesian resort island of Bali that killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists. The group has been considerably weakened by security crackdowns in the region.
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islamabad — Taliban authorities in Afghanistan said Friday that unknown assailants fatally shot three Western tourists and their local translator in the central city of Bamiyan. 

The late-afternoon shooting in a busy central market also injured four people, including a foreigner, a spokesman for the Taliban-led Afghan Interior Ministry said.

Abdul Mateen Qani shared the details on his official account on the social media platform X, but he did not disclose the foreigners’ nationalities.  

He said Taliban security forces’ efforts to apprehend the attackers led to the arrests of four suspects linked to the assault. 

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the deadly shooting. 

“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan strongly condemns this incident, expresses its sympathy to the families of the victims, and assures them that all the criminals involved will be found and brought to justice,” Qani said, using the official title of the Taliban government.  

Area officials and residents were reported as saying that the foreign tourists came from Spain, Norway and Turkey, among other countries. However, the reports could not be verified from independent sources. 

A spokesperson for foreign affairs and security policy of the European Union condemned the armed attack against the tourists visiting Bamiyan.

“Our thoughts are with the families and loved ones of the victims who lost their lives and those injured in the attack,” Nabila Massrali said in a statement.

“The United States is deeply saddened to hear about the shooting attack in Bamiyan, which killed and wounded Afghan civilians and foreign nationals,” Thomas West, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan, said on X. “Our thoughts are with those who lost their loved ones. Violence is not the answer.”

Friday’s attack on foreign tourists was the first since the Taliban stormed back to power in Afghanistan in August 2021.

Bamiyan, one of the poorest regions in impoverished Afghanistan, is a popular destination for foreign tourists because it contains Buddhist monastic ensembles and sanctuaries, according to the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

The scenic city was also the spot where the Taliban destroyed two large Buddha statues in March 2001 during their previous rule in Afghanistan. The group said the statues were blasphemous under Islam.   
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The effects of recent extreme weather in Southeast Asian countries are far-reaching, from school closures to drought and health advisories. While climate change is part of the problem, this year it was made worse by the cyclical weather pattern called El Nino. VOA’s Chris Casquejo explains.
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TAIPEI, TAIWAN — Russian President Vladimir Putin concluded his two-day trip to China Friday after Beijing and Moscow reaffirmed their “strategic relationship” by signing a joint statement and vowing to cooperate against “destructive and hostile” pressure from Washington.

During meetings between Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, the Russian president said Moscow is willing to work with Beijing and other global south countries toward “a multipolar world,” while Xi said the two countries are committed to steering global governance “in the right direction.”

Some analysts say Putin and Xi are trying to emphasize that Beijing and Moscow’s close partnership “is a force for good in the global system.”

“Both leaders want to emphasize that they are creating a more equal environment and inclusive global economic and political system,” said Philipp Ivanov, a China-Russia analyst and the founder of consultancy Geopolitical Risks + Strategy Practice.

In addition to challenging the existing world order led by the United States, Putin and Xi criticized the U.S. and NATO for creating negative effects on regional peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region by creating “closed and exclusive groupings” and expanding military presence.

“In the current geopolitical context, it is necessary to explore the establishment of a sustainable security system in the Eurasian space based on the principle of equal and indivisible security,” read the joint statement signed by Xi and Putin.

Some experts say Putin and Xi view Washington and NATO’s expanding military presence in Asia “as a zero-sum game.” “The logic of military balance is very central to their view of the international order and their target is the web of military alliances of the United States,” said Mathieu Duchatel, director of international studies at the French policy group Institut Montaigne.

He told VOA that one of Xi and Putin’s goals to uphold their partnership is to “undermine” Washington’s alliance networks in Asia.

Beijing’s limits

As Switzerland prepares to host a peace summit dedicated to the Ukraine war next month, Xi and Putin also exchanged views on that ongoing conflict during their meeting Thursday.

They believe that the war should be resolved through a political settlement. In a readout published by China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency, Xi said the fundamental solution to the war is establishing “a new, balanced, effective, and sustainable security architecture.”

He added that China supports an international peace conference “recognized by Russia and Ukraine at an appropriate time with equal participation and fair discussion of all options.”

Putin said Moscow “appreciates” Beijing’s “objective, just and balanced position on the Ukraine issue” and claimed that Russia is “committed to resolving the Ukraine issue through political negotiations.”

Ivanov said China’s current efforts to help resolve the Ukraine War, including a 12-point peace plan released last February, suggest Beijing is trying to avoid making any commitment. The peace plan “is a diplomatic document rather than any substantive strategy for China’s participation in resolving this war,” he told VOA.

Since neither Russia nor Ukraine is ready to negotiate, Ivanov thinks there is not much China can do to help end the war. “I haven’t seen any concrete steps from China in trying to resolve the war. I’m skeptical about Switzerland’s peace conference and China’s peace plan,” he said.

Lack of effective pressure on China

The meeting between Xi and Putin took place after Xi’s five-day trip to Europe, during which some analysts say Beijing was trying to exploit the disunity within the European Union.

It also follows repeated warnings from the United States about the potential consequences of Beijing’s ongoing support for Russia’s war against Ukraine.

During a news conference Thursday, U.S. State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel told journalists that China can’t support the Russian war efforts while simultaneously trying to improve relations with the West.

“It can’t have it both ways and want to have [better] relationships with Europe and other countries while simultaneously continuing to fuel the biggest threat to European security in a long time,” he said.

Some experts say China’s decision to uphold its partnership with Russia reflects Beijing’s belief that the West’s warnings about potential sanctions against Chinese entities supporting Russia’s war efforts may not materialize.

“I think Beijing believes that there is nothing that Europe can do so they are asking Europe to show its hand,” Ja Ian Chong, a political scientist at the National University of Singapore, told VOA by phone.

In his view, the U.S. seems more serious about imposing potential secondary sanctions against Chinese entities while the European Union struggles to determine their responses to Beijing’s support for Moscow.

An upward trajectory of the partnership

Considering Washington’s repeated warnings of sanctioning Chinese entities for supporting Russia’s war efforts, Ivanov said Putin would try to safeguard Russia’s economic relationship with China through his visit.

“I’m pretty confident that there is an active discussion on how to circumvent sanctions, and we will probably see more transactions and import-export activities flowing through third countries, such as those in Central Asia,” he told VOA, adding that one of China and Russia’s goals is to build a geoeconomic system “that is immune from Western sanctions and export controls.”

Despite Western countries’ attempts to pressure or persuade China to stop support for Russia, Ivanov and Duchatel say Beijing will continue to uphold its partnership with Moscow.

“There is no sign that Russia’s access to Chinese dual-use technology has been seriously reduced, and no actions from China suggest a reduced commitment to supporting Russia,” Duchatel told VOA.

Ivanov said while there might be some disagreements between China and Russia, the overall direction of their partnership is “trending upward.” “I don’t think the U.S. or Europe can substantively influence the course of the China-Russia partnership at the moment,” he said.
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Seoul, South Korea — North Korea fired multiple suspected short-range ballistic missiles Friday, Seoul said, hours after leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister denied widespread allegations that Pyongyang is shipping weapons to Russia.

The launches are the latest in a string of ever more sophisticated tests by North Korea, which has fired off cruise missiles, tactical rockets and hypersonic weapons in recent months, in what the nuclear-armed country says is a drive to upgrade its defenses.

Seoul and Washington have accused North Korea of sending arms to Russia, which would violate rafts of U.N. sanctions on both countries, with experts saying the recent spate of testing may be of weapons destined for use on battlefields in Ukraine.

Seoul’s military said Friday it had detected the launch of what it described as “several flying objects presumed to be short-range ballistic missiles” from North Korea’s eastern Wonsan area into waters off its coast.

The missiles traveled around 300 kilometers, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, adding that the military had “strengthened vigilance and surveillance in preparation for additional launches” and was sharing information with allies Washington and Tokyo.

The launches came just hours after Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, accused Seoul and Washington of “misleading the public opinion” on the issue with their repeated accusations that Pyongyang is sending weapons to Moscow for use in Ukraine.

They also come as Russian leader Vladimir Putin was in China on Friday, the final day of a visit aiming to promote crucial trade with Beijing — North Korea’s most important ally — and win greater support for his war effort in Ukraine.

The tests also came a day after advanced South Korean and U.S. stealth fighters, including Washington’s F-22 Raptors, staged joint air combat drills.

Such exercises typically infuriate Pyongyang, which views them as rehearsals for invasion.

Warning message 

The North has appeared especially sensitive to air drills in the past, with experts noting its air force is the weakest link in its military.

“It appears that this is a counter-military demonstration in response to recent South Korea-U.S. air exercises,” Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, told AFP.

“It also appears to contain a warning message regarding the large-scale South Korea-U.S. joint exercises scheduled for August,” Yang said.

Inter-Korean relations are at one of their lowest points in years, with Pyongyang declaring South Korea its “principal enemy.”  

It has jettisoned agencies dedicated to reunification and threatened war over “even 0.001 mm” of territorial infringement.

The Friday launches are the latest since the North fired a volley of what Seoul said were short-range ballistic missiles off its east coast on April 22.

North Korea is barred by rafts of United Nations sanctions from any tests using ballistic technology, but its key ally Russia used its U.N. Security Council veto in March to effectively end U.N. monitoring of violations, for which Pyongyang has specifically thanked Moscow.

Kim Jong Un inspected a new tactical missile weapons system on Tuesday and called for an “epochal change” in war preparations by achieving arsenal production targets.

Likely a hypersonic missile  

The unusual wording of the South Korean military’s statement implies the Friday test was “likely a hypersonic missile,” said Hong Min, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.

“Hypersonic missiles are not yet stabilized weapons in North Korea,” he told AFP, adding this tallied with the launch site in coastal Wonsan.

Despite the short flight trajectory, the launch could have been of “mid-range or longer-class missiles that were fired with an adjusted range for experimental purposes,” Hong said.

“There is practically no weapon other than a hypersonic missile that can be described as both ballistic and a ‘flying object’,” he said.

The military typically describes missiles as “projectiles.”

North Korea has long sought to master more advanced hypersonic and solid-fuel technologies, to make its missiles more capable of neutralizing South Korean-US missile defense systems and threaten the United States’ regional military bases. 

Hypersonic missiles are faster and can maneuver mid-flight, making them harder to track and intercept, while solid-fuel missiles do not need to be fueled before launch, making them harder to find and destroy, as well as quicker to use.
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Washington — Aleksander Dugin, a Russian nationalist ideologue and strong supporter of President Vladimir Putin, has been bombarded with attacks on Chinese social media, where netizens criticized and mocked his Russian expansionist views that had once included the dismembering of China.

Two years after Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine, pro-Russia sentiment has been prevalent on Chinese internet.

But the backlash against Dugin has revealed a less mentioned side of what has so far appeared to be a cozy alliance between Beijing and Moscow — hostility between Chinese nationalists and their Russian counterparts, the result of centuries of territorial disputes and political confrontations that Beijing has been reticent about displaying publicly in recent decades.

On May 6, Dugin opened an account on two of the most popular Chinese social media apps Weibo, China’s X, formerly known as Twitter, and Bilibili, a YouTube-like video site.

In the first video posted on both Weibo and Bilibili, Dugin greeted the Chinese audience and praised Beijing’s economic and political achievements in recent decades.

In the same video, he also criticized an article published in April in The Economist by Feng Yujun, director of Russian and Central Asian studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. Feng said in the article that Russia will inevitably lose the Ukraine war.

Dugin countered that Feng and some Chinese people underestimated Russia’s “tenacity and perseverance.”

The video was quickly condemned by Chinese citizens, who posted comments such as “Russia must lose,” which received thousands of likes.

“This is an extremist who is extremely unfriendly to China and has made plans to dismember China,” another message posted by a Weibo user named “Zhixingbenyiti” said.

Dugin, 62, was born in Moscow. In the 1980s, he became an anti-communist dissident.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he began to promote Russian expansionism. He believes that Moscow’s territorial expansion in Eurasia will allow it to counter Western forces led by the United States.

In his 1997 book, Foundations of Geopolitics, Dugin wrote that dismembering China was a necessary step for Russia to become strong. People within Putin’s inner circle have reportedly shown interest in Dugin’s writing, which gave rise to his nickname “Putin’s brain.”

However, Dugin’s attitude toward China has changed significantly in recent years. In 2018, he visited China for the first time. In a speech at Fudan University, he praised China’s economy, culture and leadership in the fight against colonialism.

He also changed his previous support for containing China and said in a speech that China and Russia could work together to “form a very important and non-negligible containment/pull effect” on Western powers.

Dugin is now a senior fellow at Fudan University’s China Institute and one of the columnists for China’s nationalist news organization, Guancha.

Before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Dugin said in a column that the alliance between China and Russia would “mean the irreversible end of Western hegemony.”

Philipp Ivanov, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, told VOA that “Dugin is an opportunist. As the Ukraine war dramatically accelerated the alignment between China and Russia, his position started to change, resulting in his current attempt to engage with China’s intellectual and broader community.”

Ivanov also thinks Dugin’s influence on the Kremlin has been exaggerated.

Since joining Chinese social media, Dugin has gained more than 100,000 followers on Weibo and 25,000 followers on BiliBili. He has published fewer than five posts on Weibo, but nearly every one of them has more than 1,000 comments, most of which criticized him.

Under a post in which Dugin supported Putin on his fifth presidential term, people responded with comments such as “Russia is about to lose the war” and “The gates of hell are waiting for you.”

Wang Xiaodong, China’s most influential nationalist scholar, shared a Weibo post he made two years ago criticizing Dugin and Chinese pro-Russian groups.

“Introducing Dugin’s ideas is not because I worry that the Kremlin will implement his ideas; He has the intention but not the strength! I just want to tell the Chinese people how some Russians, including elites in the powerful departments, view China. Do we Chinese need to risk our lives for them?” the post read.

Ivanov was not surprised by the attacks on Dugin on the Chinese internet.

“While Chinese netizens may support Putin’s anti-Western/anti-US agenda, they are skeptical or outright negative about Russia’s assault on an independent country’s sovereignty and Russian expansionism, nationalism and chauvinism (which Dugin represents),” he told VOA in an email.

He said the history of China-Russia relations is predominantly about confrontation, competition and mistrust.

Among the attacks on Dugin, many netizens also brought up former Chinese territories that Russia occupied in the past 200 years.

“For the sake of ever-lasting friendship between China and Russia, please return Sakhalin and Vladivostok,” one Weibo comment posted by “lovejxcecil” read.

Although China has not been involved in the war, the Russia-Ukraine war has been a hot topic on the Chinese internet.

According to Eric Liu, a former Weibo censor, Dugin’s joining the platform undoubtedly brought more traffic to Weibo. However, it also means that Weibo needs to invest more resources in censorship to prevent him from making remarks that Beijing considers sensitive.

“He is a foreigner. He has no idea about China’s ‘political correctness’ or where the boundaries are,” Liu said. “This risk will have to be taken care of by Weibo, which brought him in.”

On Thursday, Dugin posted on Weibo that China and Russia could achieve “anything” together. His comment section has been turned off. 
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seoul — Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, again denied arms exchanges with Russia, the state’s Korean Central News Agency reported Friday. 

The U.S. and South Korea accused North Korea of transferring weapons to Russia for use against Ukraine, which it invaded in February 2022. Both Moscow and Pyongyang have denied the accusations, but vowed last year to deepen military relations. 

Ties between the two countries have strengthened dramatically following Kim Jong Un’s visit to Russia’s far east in September and a summit with President Vladimir Putin. 

But Kim Yo Jong said reports of a North Korea-Russia arms deal were false and constituted a “most absurd theory” that does not deserve anyone’s evaluation or interpretation, according to KCNA’s report on her press statement.

Kim Yo Jong added that North Korea’s developing weapons were not meant for exports but for defense against South Korea. 

North and South Korea remain technically at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a treaty. 

Meanwhile, the United States announced fresh sanctions Thursday on two Russian individuals and three Russian companies for facilitating arms transfers between Russia and North Korea, including ballistic missiles for use in Ukraine. 

The debris from a missile that landed in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on January 2 was from a North Korean Hwasong-11 series ballistic missile, U.N. sanctions monitors told a Security Council committee in a report seen by Reuters. 

The leaders of North Korea’s major partners, China and Russia, met Thursday and criticized Washington and its allies for their “intimidation in the military sphere” against North Korea, according to a joint statement from Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. 

Amid a growing partnership between Moscow and Pyongyang, North Korea’s ambassador to Russia on Thursday called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a U.S. puppet and said Russia would emerge victorious in its conflict with Kyiv, KCNA reported.
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