President Joe Biden plans to nominate veteran U.S. diplomat Nicholas Burns to serve as U.S. ambassador to China, the White House said Friday, signaling the administration may be looking for the envoy to play a more central role in the increasingly fractious relations between the two global rivals. The White House also announced Biden’s intent to nominate Rahm Emanuel, a former U.S. lawmaker who served as chief of staff to former President Barack Obama and as mayor of Chicago, to be ambassador to Japan, a U.S. ally increasingly at odds with Beijing. The choice of Burns, a retired career foreign service officer who served as undersecretary of state from 2005 to 2008, marks a shift for the role of the ambassador to Beijing, the ranks of which over the past decade have been filled by former politicians, not seasoned diplomats. If confirmed by the Senate, Burns would head to China as the two countries’ ties are at their lowest point in decades, and fill a post left vacant since October, after former President Donald Trump’s envoy to China, Terry Branstad, stepped down. The United States and China, the world’s No. 1 and No. 2 economies, are at odds over issues across the board, including trade, technology, the coronavirus, Taiwan, and Chinese military activities in the disputed South China Sea, with each accusing the other of deliberately provocative behavior. A new headache Burns would have to deal with is fallout from the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and the chaotic U.S. evacuation from Kabul, which has raised questions about the Biden administration’s ability to swiftly shift focus to the Indo-Pacific region and countering China. China has not officially recognized the Taliban as Afghanistan’s new rulers, but its foreign minister, Wang Yi, last month hosted Mullah Baradar, chief of the group’s political office, and has said the world should guide and support the country as it transitions to a new government instead of putting more pressure on it. ‘Intimate understanding’ Burns said he looked forward to returning to public service, if confirmed by the Senate, and working on “the strategic competition between the U.S. and the PRC [People’s Republic of China], as well as other difficult and complex challenges we face at this critical juncture in our relationship.” While Burns is not considered a China policy specialist, neither were the previous four U.S. ambassadors to Beijing. He does have close ties to Biden, though, having served as an adviser to his election campaign, and has worked closely over the years with some of the president’s most trusted advisers, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Former Republican President George W. Bush appointed Burns as undersecretary for political affairs, historically the State Department’s third-ranking official, with global responsibilities. Evan Medeiros, an Asia specialist in the Obama administration now at Georgetown University, said the choice of Burns indicated Biden sought a new model of communication with Beijing at a time when regular high-level dialogues have atrophied in the face of increasingly ideological competition. “What you’re saying is we need a work horse, not a show horse,” he said. “We want our ambassador to be among the key players in the relationship, and we need somebody who understands great power politics.” Trump had named Branstad, hoping the former Iowa governor could leverage ties with Chinese officials – including Xi Jinping before he became China’s top leader – to help navigate trade tensions. But the two sides plunged headlong into an unprecedented trade war anyway. More pivotal roleAs tensions between Beijing and Washington have escalated in recent years, the China-based role of the U.S. ambassador has been increasingly constrained, particularly as Beijing has sought to curtail the ambassador’s engagement with ordinary people. With the Biden administration indicating a reluctance to return to the regular, structured, high-level dialogue Beijing has sought, some analysts say it is possible the ambassador will take on a more pivotal role as a result. “The U.S. ambassador in Beijing could return to serving as both a messenger to and a sounding board for Chinese officials,” said James Green, a former U.S. official who served multiple tours at the Beijing embassy. He said the Biden administration would benefit from Burns’ “intimate understanding of the foreign policy bureaucracy” as well as a “clarity of message” to Beijing given his time as State Department spokesman in the mid-1990s. Burns has also served as U.S. ambassador to NATO and to Greece. After retiring from the Foreign Service, he worked with the Cohen Group, a Washington consulting firm, and became a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
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Malaysia’s king on Friday appointed Ismail Sabri Yaakob the country’s new prime minister, returning a member of the corruption-mired United Malays National Organization to the top job three years after Malaysians voted the party out of office.King Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah said Ismail Sabri had secured the support of 114 of the 220 sitting members of the House of Representatives. He replaces Muhyiddin Yassin, whom he served as deputy prime minister and who resigned Monday after conceding that he had lost majority support in parliament.FILE PHOTO: Malaysia’s Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin speaks during opening remarks for virtual APEC Economic Leaders Meeting 2020, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Nov. 20, 2020.Muhyiddin was appointed prime minister by the king in February 2020 after helping engineer the collapse of the coalition government that beat UMNO at the polls in 2018. But his Bersatu party’s own coalition with UMNO was fragile from the start, with some members of the larger UMNO bristling at playing a junior role in the alliance.“UMNO engineered the collapse of the previous government and now they are reaping the rewards of the position of the prime minister,” said Adib Zalkapli, Malaysia analyst for consulting firm Bower Group Asia.But as Malaysia’s third prime minister in as many years, analysts say Ismail Sabri’s coalition, comprising the same mix of parties as the last, will likely prove just as shaky.“In the Malaysian context, it’s basically the status quo,” Adib said.Wong Chin Huat, a political analyst and professor at Malaysia’s Sunway University, is also expecting a short run for the new prime minister.“Pressure will be mounted on him to have an election once the [pandemic] situation improves. But his power base may be challenged even before then because his coalition enjoys only 52% majority in the House and is very fragmented by parties as well as factions,” he said.Elections are due by 2023 but could be called sooner. The king ruled out elections to choose Muhyiddin’s immediate successor as a precautions against the spread of the coronavirus.Malaysians take part in a rare anti-government rally in Kuala Lumpur on July 31, 2021, despite a tough Covid-19 coronavirus lockdown in place restricting gatherings and public assemblies.The country of 32 million is suffering the highest rate of new daily COVID-19 cases per 1 million people in Southeast Asia. It recorded 178 deaths on Thursday and a record 22,948 new cases, pushing the country’s total number of cases since the start of the pandemic up to nearly 1.5 million.Public anger at the government’s pandemic response has been mounting with the rising caseload. But with the same parties running the government, Adib said Ismail Sabri’s Cabinet was also likely to bear some similarities to Muhyiddin’s, promising little change in policy.“Very likely we will see some of the similar faces — whether they did well or not so well — who will be back. So, I think there will be continuity as far as the management of the pandemic is concerned,” he said.Days before resigning, in a last-ditch effort to cling to power, Muhyiddin offered to push through a list of political and economic reforms opposition parties have been calling for in exchange for their support but failed.Wong said the offer came too late and seemed insincere, but added he would be looking to see if Ismail Sabri picks up on some of the proposals in order to woo opposition lawmakers and hedge against the threat of those in his own coalition who might pull out.He and Adib said having UMNO back in the prime minister’s seat was also raising concerns that the corruption cases opened against party heavyweights over the past three years may be dropped or stymied.A number of senior UMNO officials including former Prime Minister Najib Razak and party president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi are facing dozens of charges. Najib was convicted on seven charges and sentenced to 12 years in jail in July 2020 but remains out on bail and in Parliament while appealing the decision. He and the others deny any wrongdoing and claim the cases are politically motivated.The day he announced his resignation, Muhyiddin blamed his coalition’s collapse on his refusal to “compromise with kleptocrats.” He did not name anyone, but the remarks were seen as a dig at some UMNO members; some of them, Najib and Ahmed Zahid included, publicly pulled their support for Muhyiddin weeks earlier.“It’s definitely something that everyone is talking about, whether the cases will continue or not,” Adib said.“Partly people do not believe that the judiciary, while it has been improved, has become totally independent,” Wong added.The professor said reforming the Attorney General’s Chambers, which oversee prosecutions, could prove “low-lying fruit” for Ismail, a relatively easy way to both shore up support with power-players within his coalition who want to see the corruption cases through and voters who rejected UMNO at the polls.“For Ismail Sabri, to strike a delicate balance within his coalition and also to demonstrate to the public he can deliver something, embarking on the AGC reform is the most important thing,” he said. 
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The China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) says two of the three crew members on board the Chinese space station module Tianhe have conducted their second spacewalk since the crew arrived there in June.Chinese state television broadcast the six-hour spacewalk live, showing astronauts Nie Haisheng and Liu Boming hard at work fixing a robotic arm, installing thermal control equipment and adjusting a camera.The third astronaut, Tang Hongbo, carried out the team’s first spacewalk July 4, and he assisted Friday’s event from inside the module’s control room. The spacewalk was the third ever in China’s space program.  The crew members arrived June 17 for a three-month mission aboard the Tianhe module, which will make up the core of China’s third orbital station, scheduled to be fully operational and crewed by the end of next year. The module was launched April 29.Explainer: The Significance of China’s New Space Station While China concedes it arrived late at the space station game, it says its facility is cutting-edge and it could also outlast the International Space Station, which is nearing the end of its functional lifespanChina says two more modules are expected to be added to the space station and once it is completed, it will operate for at least 10 years. It is designed to be permanently occupied by astronauts on long-term stays.The space station is the third built by the Chinese, who have been excluded from the International Space Station due to U.S. political objections and legislative restrictions.  The country’s space program has become more ambitious in the past decade and in the past year alone has landed exploratory rovers on the moon and Mars.While astronauts from the European Space Agency (ESA) have flown on U.S. or Russian spacecraft to the ISS, China is only the third country to conduct its own manned missions into space.Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press, Reuters and the French news agency, AFP.
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China’s global ambitions may have taken a hit in the United States, Europe, Australia, Japan and India, but in Africa, its sustained power and influence are forcing Washington to recalibrate its strategy toward the continent, home to 54 nations. The United States recently committed $217 million to finance a power plant in Sierra Leone through the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation. When finished, this America-financed power plant will stand alongside eight key government structures China has built for Sierra Leone, including parliamentary offices, army and police headquarters, and the building that houses the West African country’s ministry of foreign affairs. “It’s overstating to say that the continent has largely been taken over by China, though my assessment is that Beijing is the most influential foreign actor on the continent,” says Joshua Meservey, senior analyst for Africa and the Middle East at the Heritage Foundation. “China does dominate certain important sectors,” Meservey told VOA, listing construction and telecoms among those sectors. But, he said, “the U.S. is still influential.” FILE – A train launched to operate on the Standard Gauge Railway line constructed by the China Road and Bridge Corporation and financed by Chinese government arrives at the Nairobi Terminus on the outskirts of Kenya’s capital Nairobi, May 31, 2017.In a study published in December 2020, FILE – Chinese People’s Liberation Army personnel attend the opening ceremony of China’s new military base in Djibouti, Aug. 1, 2017.To beef up the U.S. overseas presence in the face of competition from China, a growing number of American thought leaders are calling for the government to rethink its role in strengthening U.S. corporate and strategic interests abroad. “The genius, if you will, of the Chinese economic system is that they are working to align the company interest and the state interest together,” said Robert D. Atkinson, an economist who has served in both Democratic and Republican administrations. “What the Chinese have that we don’t is they have a strongly held view that certain industries are more important than others.” Given that the Chinese government pours “massive subsidies” into these strategic sectors to fund its global expansion, Atkinson believes Washington could fight back by increasing foreign aid and backing private companies’ strategic ventures abroad. “Does that mean we do everything China does? Of course not,” he said. The U.S. government should avoid “over-involvement,” he added, but “continuing what we have been doing is clearly not enough.”  Atkinson, who heads the Washington-based Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, believes there is a middle ground. “The whole notion that we shouldn’t have our own national industrial policy – that’s an idea that only works if you’re not facing a competitor like China; the reality is, we are facing a competitor like China,” he said. “We can either get China to change – that’s not going to happen, we tried and failed – or we can adapt our own policies.”  Scott Morris, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, told VOA the aggregate U.S. foreign aid budget directed toward Africa “is around 25 to 30 billion dollars a year,” a figure he said “certainly rivals Chinese lending.” But, he said, most of the U.S. aid goes to global health programs, disease eradication and humanitarian assistance. He also acknowledged that a significant portion of the U.S. foreign aid budget goes toward multilateral institutional lending and developmental agencies, such as the World Bank. “Where we clearly see a difference is that China is very concentrated in the very area the U.S. is largely absent, and that is [country-to-country] infrastructure financing,” Morris said. “Allowing China to finance and/or control much of the enabling infrastructure in key sectors could harm U.S. prospects in Africa going forward.” FILE – Chinese workers are seen at the construction site of the new Great Mosque, which is being built by the China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC), in Algiers, Algeria, Jan. 20, 2016.Nantulya thinks that America could benefit from a reevaluation of what the continent means for the United States.  “Do we view Africa as a partner? Do we view Africa as a place that generates security threats that must be met with military force? Or do we view Africa as a place that, yes, has its security problems, but where strategic opportunities outweigh security risks?” While questions linger on the American side, he said, Beijing made up its mind what Africa means for its strategic aims long ago. Nantulya said China’s official foreign policy doctrine casts big powers as the key, neighboring countries as the priority, developing countries as “the foundation” and “multilateral platforms as the stage.”  Cast in this light, Africa is a continent where China sees “tremendous opportunities in spite of risks” and has no doubt seized upon those opportunities in political, economic and military areas alike, Nantulya told VOA. Ultimately, the challenge that China represents is “first and foremost ideological,” he said, and that this is where the United States has an opening to compete with Beijing on a continent where China is now widely regarded the most influential foreign power. “Values matter; Africans are fighting for and championing the values that have also guided the American experiment and the American story,” said Nantulya, a native of Tanzania who studied in Kenya and South Africa and worked across the continent before moving to the United States. He hopes that Americans can understand that the two sides have a shared future and look at the relationship as an opportunity, rather than one where the United States is constantly coming in to put out fires. 
 
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Japanese actor Sonny Chiba, who wowed the world with his martial arts skills in more than 100 films, including “Kill Bill,” has died. He was 82.Chiba, known in Japan as Shinichi Chiba, died late Thursday in a hospital near Tokyo where he had been treated for COVID-19 since Aug. 8, Tokyo-based Astraia, his management office, said in a statement Friday. It said he had not been vaccinated. Chiba rose to stardom in Japan in the 1960s, portraying samurai, fighters and police detectives, the anguished so-called “anti-heroes” trying to survive in a violent world. He did many of the stunt scenes himself. His overseas career took off after his 1970s Japanese film “The Street Fighter” proved popular in the U.S. American director Quentin Tarantino listed the work as among his “grindhouse,” or low-budget kitsch cinema, favorites. Tarantino cast Chiba in the role of Hattori Hanzo, a master swordsmith in “Kill Bill.”Chiba appeared in the 1991 Hollywood film “Aces,” directed by John Glen, as well as in Hong Kong movies. Chiba’s career also got a boost from the global boom in kung fu films, set off by Chinese legend Bruce Lee, although critics say Chiba tended to exhibit a dirtier, thug-like fighting style than Lee.“A true action legend. Your films are eternal and your energy an inspiration. #SonnyChiba #RIP,” American actor Lewis Tan said on Twitter. New York-based writer and director Ted Geoghegan called him “the great Sonny Chiba.” “Watch one of his films today,” Geoghegan tweeted, followed by images of a fist and a broken heart. Other fans mournfully filled Twitter threads with clips of his movies and photos.  Born in Fukuoka, southwestern Japan, Chiba studied at Nippon Sport Science University trained in various martials arts, earning a fourth-degree black belt in karate. Chiba set up Japan Action Club in 1980, to develop a younger generation of actors, including protege Hiroyuki Sanada, who is among Hollywood’s most coveted Japanese actors, landing roles in “The Last Samurai” and “Rush Hour 3.”Chiba is survived by his three children, Juri Manase, Mackenyu Arata and Gordon Maeda, all actors. A wake was canceled as a pandemic measure, and funeral arrangements were still undecided, his office said.
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U.S. President Joe Biden this week was asked what the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan means for Washington’s other global military commitments. In response, Biden stressed the “fundamental difference” between Afghanistan and places like South Korea, where the U.S. also has a major troop presence. It would be hard, if not impossible, to find a South Korean who disagrees with that assessment. There are obvious differences between Afghanistan, one of the world’s poorest and least-developed countries, and South Korea, a stable democracy and U.S. treaty ally that has the world’s 10th largest economy and US Lt. Col. Douglas Hayes and Republic of Korea Army Col. Seong Ik Sung discuss the progress of a coordinated, joint artillery exercise May 10, 2016. (US Army photo)Sovereignty debateAnother point of alliance tension is whether and at what speed South Korea should regain more control of its forces during a hypothetical war.In 1950, South Korea handed command authority of its troops to the U.S. in order to fend off a North Korean attack during the early stages of the Korean War. The U.S. retained that authority until 1994, when South Korea assumed peacetime “operational control” of its forces.Under the current arrangement, the U.S. would still control certain aspects of South Korea’s military if war broke out. Some left-leaning South Korean politicians object to that prospect and want the arrangement to be changed as soon as possible. Song Young-gil, who heads South Korea’s ruling Democratic Party, said the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is the latest evidence Seoul should speed up the so-called “OPCON transition.” “If you have no experience in planning and executing your own operations, you do not know what kind of trouble you will face as a nation,” Song said in a Facebook post.Chun, the former lieutenant-general, disagreed. Such a transition, he said, could jeopardize the U.S.-South Korea alliance, ultimately making South Korea less safe.“South Koreans need to realize that if we have OPCON transition there’ll be a possibility of a disconnect between the two allied forces who are right now attached at the hip,” Chun said. The issue already causes friction in the U.S.-South Korea relationship, though mostly beneath the surface. The U.S. and South Korea agreed in 2018 to begin a three-stage process for assessing whether Seoul is ready to regain wartime control. South Korean President Moon Jae-in says he would like to complete the transfer by the end of his term in May 2022. U.S. officials, however, warn against imposing a time limit, saying the transition should instead be conditions-based.Any attempt to rush the issue will “do damage to the relationship we have right now,” Chun said. “And the relationship we have right now is pretty good,” he added. Ties growingIn fact, the U.S.-South Korea alliance has recently expanded to focus on other regional and global issues, such as the coronavirus pandemic, climate change, and China’s growing assertiveness.Many South Korean analysts believe the Korean peninsula is a core national interest for the United States. Opinion polls suggest broad public support in both countries for the U.S. troop presence. There are no signs that will change, especially as the U.S.-China rivalry intensifies.“It’s pretty clear that the U.S. has tried to move from the Middle East to focus on the so-called Indo-Pacific area,” Park said, adding that “South Korea is one of the, if not the most, important allies in this region.”
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Myanmar’s coup leader, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, is aiming for 50% of country’s population to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by the end of this year, but there are difficulties and obstacles on the ground to achieving that goal.Since July 28, the State Administration Council, which overthrew democratically elected government led by the National League for Democracy, has been administering vaccinations, using the Chinese-made Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines, across the country.From July to August 8, Beijing sent 4.5 million doses to Myanmar, including 2.5 million donated Sinopharm doses and 2 million Sinovac vaccines purchased by the military. Two million more doses will be arriving this month, as the military purchased a total of 4 million Sinovac doses.The Health and Sports Ministry started its vaccination program in the last week of July. Medical workers, volunteers, prisoners and those above 65 years old are in the priority group to be vaccinated. The state newspaper The New Light of Myanmar reported August 6 that more than 1.8 million people, 6.08% of the targeted population, had been vaccinated.Myanmar has more than 30 million people over the age of 18 to be vaccinated, 50% of whom, 17 million people, are targeted to be vaccinated at the end of this year, Health and Sports Ministry spokesman Dr. Than Naing Soe told VOA.“To vaccinate 50% of the total population at the end of this year, we need to vaccinate 5 million people a month,” Min Aung Hlaing said at an August 2 meeting.  Amid this uncertain situation, Than Naing Soe recently told VOA that the government is confident it will meet the target. The SAC is planning to receive vaccines from China, India, Russia, and international and regional organizations. Two million doses purchased from Russia will arrive in coming months and efforts are being made to obtain the remaining vaccines from India. Under the previous NLD government, Myanmar purchased 30 million doses from India and has already paid $75 million, half of the initial order value. It had received 2 million Indian Covishield doses in January. “Now we are giving about 150,000 injections per day. There is no issue with receiving vaccine yet. If the situation is better than this, at the end of this year, we can reach 70% of the targeted population,” Than Naing Soe told VOA August 9.According to the ministry, 1.8 million people were vaccinated between January 27 and July 21, using 3.5 million vaccines from India — 1.5 million donated and 2 million purchased — and 300,000 Sinovac doses from China.FILE – People work in a laboratory of Chinese vaccine maker Sinovac Biotech, developing an experimental COVID-19 vaccine, during a government-organized media tour in Beijing, China, September 24, 2020.Lack of trustPublic opinions on the military’s vaccination program and Chinese vaccine differ. Some see getting Chinese vaccination is better than nothing. Some say they would not be vaccinated to boycott military council’s immunization program.In addition, anti-Chinese sentiment has been high in Myanmar since the coup, as China has shown support for the military council.A 78-year-old retired military officer, Myint Lwin, had the chance to be vaccinated in March. He did not take it, though, because of distrust of the Chinese vaccine.“Now the death toll is much higher. I feel it is safer to be vaccinated than nothing,” Myint Lwin said. He got the Sinovac vaccine on August 4. Many others feel the same way – they distrusted the vaccine before but are now willing to take it, with Myanmar’s death toll having hit 12,234 as of August 10. The death toll does not list those who died at home and it is expected that the actual death rate would be three times that announced by the military. Thirty-eight-year-old Mo Mo, who asked to be identified by only part of her name and who runs a restaurant in Yangon, told VOA she would not be vaccinated with Chinese vaccines under the military council’s immunization program.“My family does not recognize the military regime. So, we have no reason to deal with them,” she said. The second reason, she said, is that they do not believe in the effectiveness of the Chinese vaccine.“I have heard we will be able to get the Indian vaccine at the private hospitals very soon. Until we get that vaccine, we have to take care of ourselves by wearing double masks, taking antibiotics, washing our hands and staying at home,” Mo Mo said. It appears that the military regime has not been able to convince the public to participate in its immunization plan. Some do not trust the military, some reportedly fear the military will try to kill them with the injections, directly or through later side effects.  The situation is made worse by a shortage of health workers.To fill the gap, the junta has asked health staff on strike in opposition to the coup to join the fight against the pandemic, although the military keeps targeting and arresting heath workers who are members of the opposition Civil Disobedience Movement.”No one will return to the hospitals under such horrifying conditions,” a CDM physician who used to work for the general hospital in the Mandalay region and who requested anonymity told VOA recently. He refused to comment on whether public should take vaccines, which he said is an individual matter. “It would be best if 50% of population were vaccinated at the end of the year. But it will not succeed without public cooperation” he added. 
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As the U.S. leaves a vacuum in Afghanistan, people worldwide are watching China’s response. The two countries share a border and have on-and-off ties that predate the 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details on the risks and benefits of the China-Afghan relationship.
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Experts are split on how the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan could affect North Korea. Some argue that the collapse of Kabul, triggered by the withdrawal of U.S. forces, could encourage North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, while others suggest the fall of Kabul may work against Pyongyang because getting Washington’s attention would be harder given the complex aftermath of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. After maintaining a military presence in Afghanistan for 20 years, the U.S. fully vacated its largest military base, Bagram Airfield, on July 2 and transferred control to Afghan forces.  Then, in early August, Taliban forces swept across Afghanistan and began taking control of major provincial capitals. On Sunday, the Taliban claimed the capital city of Kabul, and Afghanistan came under its control. FILE – An Afghan army soldier walks past Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, MRAP, that were left after the American military left Bagram air base, in Parwan province north of Kabul, Afghanistan, July 5, 2021.In the past, North Korea has often used major crises to ramp up anti-U.S. rhetoric. Demanding the troop removal was a recurring theme. And as the Taliban pushed from provincial capitals to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, North Korea resumed its rhetoric against the presence of U.S. troops in South Korea as the allied nations engaged in annual joint military exercises.  “For peace to settle on the peninsula, it is imperative for the U.S. to withdraw its aggression troops and war hardware deployed in South Korea,” FILE – South Korean army K-9 self-propelled howitzers park in Paju, near the border with North Korea, March 24, 2021, after North Korea fired short-range missiles just days after the sister of Kim Jong Un threatened the U.S. and South Korea for holding joint military exercises.Propaganda fodder Harry Kazianis, senior director of Korean studies at the Center for the National Interest, a think tank in Washington, D.C., said the U.S. troop withdrawal and the subsequent fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban could embolden North Korea to direct their “propaganda efforts to say the U.S. should leave (South) Korea as well.” He added: “North Korea clearly does not hope to win some sort of war against the U.S., but it clearly hopes that if it waits Washington out, (the U.S.) will eventually accept it as a nuclear weapons state or at least unofficially accept it.”  FILE – U.S. and South Korean jets fly over South Korea during a joint military drill called Vigilant Ace, in this handout photo released by the South Korean Defense Ministry, Dec. 6, 2017.Evans Revere, a former State Department official who has extensive experience negotiating with North Korea, said Pyongyang has ratcheted up efforts to weaken the U.S.-South Korea alliance. He warned that North Korea should not miscalculate the situation in Afghanistan.  “The North Koreans would be wise not to draw wrong conclusions about what they are witnessing here, because America is still a very strong, very powerful, and a very capable country, and the North Koreans should not allow this unfortunate sequence of events that we’ve seen in recent days to give them a wrong message,” Revere said.  Revere said North Korea has two key aims in its relations with the U.S. “The North Koreans have long wanted to see the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Korean Peninsula,” said Revere, who is now affiliated with the Brookings Institution, a think tank based in Washington.  “North Korea’s goal is to undermine the alliance and bring it to an end. That has not changed over the years. And what we’ve seen in recent years is that the North Koreans have become much more active in trying to bring about this situation” than in previous years, added Revere. Targeting the alliance Ken Gause, director of the Adversary Analytics Program at the CNA research center in Arlington, Virginia, said the recent developments in Kabul could bolster Pyongyang’s efforts to break the alliance between Washington and Seoul.  “North Korea may see the U.S. as wounded right now, and maybe there are some benefits to North Korea in terms of adding pressure and driving a wedge between the U.S. and South Korea,” said Gause. Gause thinks it will become more difficult for Pyongyang to get sanctions relief from the Biden administration — something it has hoped to obtain since the Trump administration — now that Washington must handle the aftermath of Afghanistan.  “What does this do in terms of the Biden administration’s willingness to engage with North Korea and put sanctions on the table, I would say, is probably much weaker now than it would have been before Afghanistan,” said Gause.  FILE – This picture taken on Jan. 14, 2021, and released by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency shows what appears to be submarine-launched ballistic missiles during a military parade.Gause said he expects the Biden administration will be in “lockdown mode, trying to figure out how to move forward on its various foreign policy fronts.” He added, ”They’ve got other issues that are higher up on that agenda than North Korea right now.” Retired U.S. Army General James Thurman, the commander of U.S. forces in South Korea from 2011 to 2013, said what happened in Kabul testifies to the importance of military readiness against North Korean aggression. “I’m confident in the South Korean military, very confident, having spent nearly three years over there training with them,” Thurman said.  “It’s a completely different set of circumstances. But I think our adversaries are emboldened when they see something like this take place,” Thurman added, referring to the fall of Kabul. South Koreans weigh in The sudden collapse of Kabul sparked some concern among residents of Seoul, South Korea’s capital, triggering debates over national security. Kim Yo-whan told VOA’s Korean service on Tuesday that she is concerned the chaos of Kabul could be repeated in South Korea, where groups are advocating for the departure of U.S. forces. “The Taliban took control of major regions soon after the U.S. military withdrew, and that could easily happen in South Korea,” said Kim, who owns a small business. “The U.S. forces in South Korea are the last line of defense toward free democracy” in the region, she added. Yoon Sae-jung, a schoolteacher, thinks otherwise. She told VOA, “The U.S. will not decide easily that it will withdraw from South Korea” because “South Korea is geopolitically important” to counter China. Lee Kwon-yeol, an office worker, also thinks the U.S. will not withdraw because “South Korea and Afghanistan are different strategically.” On Tuesday, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said President Joe Biden “has no intention of drawing down our forces from South Korea.” The U.S. military presence in South Korea has lasted about 70 years, from the time it entered the Korean Peninsula to fight against North Korea, which invaded the South in 1950. Approximately 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed there to defend against any potential aggression from the North.South Korea to Boost Funding for US Troops Under New Accord, US SaysThe proposed six-year ‘Special Measures Agreement’ will replace the previous arrangement that expired at the end of 2019Its military alliance with South Korea was solidified by a mutual defense treaty signed after the war ended, in 1953.Taeksung Oh contributed to this report.
 
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Russia, once a thorn in China’s side, is backing Beijing in its disputes with third countries, including a maritime sovereignty flap in Southeast Asia, to counter Washington’s influence in Asia, scholars believe.With the world’s second strongest military, after the United States, Russia holds occasional military exercises with China – with at least four events publicized to date — sells arms to its giant neighbor to the south and joins it in criticizing the West.Officials in Moscow are trying now to boost Beijing’s claim to the contested South China Sea without overtly taking its side over five other Asian governments that vie with Chinese sovereignty in the same waterway, said Alexander Vuving, professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii.China and Russia need each other to show the United States – former Cold War foe of both – along with its allies that neither is “alone,” he said.U.S. Navy ships regularly sail the South China Sea to keep Beijing in check. At least eight other Western-allied countries have indicated since late July plans to send navy vessels into the resource-rich South China Sea, which stretches from Hong Kong to Borneo Island, in support of keeping it open internationally rather than ceding it to Chinese control.“Basically, it’s more about a challenge to global U.S. power rather than Russia siding with China in the territorial disputes in the South China Sea,” Vuving said.FILE – A view shows a new S-400 “Triumph” surface-to-air missile system after its deployment at a military base outside the town of Gvardeysk near Kaliningrad, Russia, March 11, 2019.“The fact that they would actually share a joint portal for command and control actually means something,” Koh said. “They actually wanted to promote further interoperability.”In March, as both powers faced pressure from the West, they panned the United States in a joint statement after talks between their foreign ministers. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a March news conference that U.S. intentions had a “destructive nature” that were “relying on the military-political alliances of the Cold War era.”Scholars say Sino-Russian cooperation has its limits, however. As major powers, neither side wants the other to grow too powerful, said Wang Wei-chieh, South Korea-based politics analyst and co-founder of the FBC2E International Affairs Facebook page.“Russia and China, they are also worried about each other,” Wang said. “They don’t want any side to be the superior country.”Previously strong Sino-Russian relations faded in the 1960s when the two Communist parties split over ideology and border conflicts ensued. They call their military events today “interaction” rather than any kind of alliance, Koh noted.Russia maintains crucial political and economic ties with Vietnam, a rival to Beijing in the South China Sea dispute, and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute called Russia the top arms supplier to Southeast Asia between 2010 and 2017 with combined sales of $6.6 billion. China fumed in 2013 when Russian oil company Rosneft was drilling, on behalf of Vietnam, in waters claimed by Beijing. Russia officially advocates neutrality in Southeast Asia, Vuving said.Russia could tell Vietnam today, if pressed, that its ties with China are just “symbolic,” Koh said.Russia does not claim any part of the sea, which is prized for fisheries and undersea fossil fuel reserves. China disputes maritime sovereignty instead with Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines. China has irked the other claimants by landfilling islets for military installations and sending vessels into the exclusive economic zones of its rivals.China hopes Russia avoids sailing through the sea, where it Russia held a stronghold on the coast of Vietnam during the Cold War, at the risk of violating China’s claim to 90% of the waterway, Koh said.The latest joint military exercises may be aimed at deterring any threat from nearby Central Asia, Wang said. China has sought to clarify borders with Central Asian nations since the fall of the Soviet Union to promote peace in its own restive Xinjiang region, the Indian policy formulation group Observer Research Foundation said.Troops disembark from a Chinese military helicopter during joint war games held by Russia and China held in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in northwestern China, Aug. 13, 2021. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service/Handout)Exercises last week, called Zapad/Interaction 2021, targeted terrorists by “seizing the high ground and trench[es] followed by “penetrating the enemy in depth,” the official Chinese Military Online website said August 5.The 2018 exercises sent “a message to the rest of the world and, in particular the United States” that the two countries were growing closer, the Swedish research and policy organization Institute for Security and Development wrote at the time.Future Sino-Russian military exercises will occur in places aimed at warning specific third countries with which China has disputes, Wang forecast. 
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Australia’s delta variant outbreak is spreading into Outback areas, where the vast majority of new infections are among aboriginal people.  In western New South Wales, 60% of cases are in Indigenous communities, where vaccination rates are low and vaccine hesitancy is high.There are COVID-19 health campaigns in various Australian aboriginal languages, but in western New South Wales state, fewer than 10% of First Nation people are fully vaccinated, well below the national average.Health officials have said that vaccine hesitancy has been promoted by misinformation online and concerns about possible side-effects of the AstraZeneca drug.Indigenous elder Frank Doolan told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that he has watched as the virus has spread through Dubbo, a New South Wales city 400 kilometers northwest of Sydney.“I can’t even contemplate catching COVID, really. I kind of think if that happens in that regard, then I’m dead,” he said.The community’s fears about the spread of the virus are shared by Dubbo Mayor Stephen Lawrence.“We always knew that our aboriginal community was going to be especially vulnerable to COVID-19 and especially hard to reach, in terms of vaccination, and look, that has certainly turned out to be the case,” he said.The Australian government says Indigenous people in remote areas remain a priority for vaccines, and that the military will be deployed to help in the inoculation program. However, this outbreak of the delta variant is now threatening communities already hit by chronic illnesses, including diabetes, as well as lung and heart disease.Indigenous Australians make up 3.3% of the national population, according to official figures.Australia has recorded about 40,000 coronavirus cases and 970 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.Authorities said Thursday that more than half of Australians aged over 16 have now had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Twenty-eight percent are fully inoculated.Millions of Australians are in lockdown, including residents in the nation’s two biggest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, as well as the national capital, Canberra. 
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Malaysia’s longest-governing political party appeared set to reclaim the premiership it lost in a shock 2018 election result, with its lawmakers summoned to the palace Thursday to verify their candidate has enough support to take office. The choice of former Deputy Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob would essentially restore the ruling alliance of Muhyiddin Yassin, who resigned as prime minister on Monday after infighting in the coalition cost him majority support. Ismail’s appointment would also see the return of the United Malays National Organization, which ruled Malaysia since independence from Britain in 1957 before it was ousted in 2018 over a multibillion-dollar financial scandal. Ismail, 61, who is an UMNO vice president, appeared to have majority support. UMNO Secretary-General Ahmad Maslan tweeted that all lawmakers from UMNO and other parties in the former ruling alliance who support Ismail have been summoned to meet Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah. “With Ismail Sabri poised to become Malaysia’s next prime minister under the same alliance, many Malaysians will view it as nothing more than a game of musical chairs” with the baton passed from Muhyiddin’s Bersatu party to UMNO, said Ei Sun Oh, a senior fellow at the Singapore Institute of International Affairs. Muhyiddin departed after less than 18 months in office amid internal squabbling and mounting public anger over what was widely perceived as his government’s poor handling of the pandemic. Malaysia has one of the world’s highest infection rates and deaths per capita, despite a seven-month state of emergency and a lockdown since June. The king’s role is largely ceremonial in Malaysia, but he appoints the person he believes has majority support in Parliament as prime minister. Local media said Ismail is believed to have obtained 114 votes, surpassing the 111 needed for a simple majority. It is similar to the support Muhyiddin has before 15 UMNO lawmakers withdrew support for him, causing his government to collapse. A lawyer before he joined politics, Ismail held several ministerial posts in UMNO governments. In 2015 as trade minister, Ismail courted controversy when he urged Malay consumers to boycott profiteering Chinese businesses. He was also slammed for supporting the vaping industry, which is dominated by Malays, despite health warnings from the health ministry. In 2018 polls, Ismail waved the racial card, warning that every vote for the opposition was akin to eliminating special privileges given to Malays under a decades-old affirmative action program. Ismail was named defense minister when Muhyiddin took power in March 2020, and became the government’s public face through daily briefings on security issues related to the pandemic. He was promoted as deputy prime minister in July as Muhyiddin sought to woo support from UMNO, which was unhappy at playing second fiddle to Muhyiddin’s smaller party. Since Muhyiddin resigned, his party has voiced support for Ismail. The other contender in the race, Anwar Ibrahim, leads a three-party alliance that is the biggest opposition bloc with 88 votes. Even if all opposition parties support him, he would still fall short with only 105 votes. Anwar was due to succeed then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad before their reformist alliance collapsed in February 2020, sparked by the withdrawal of Muhyiddin’s party. Muhyiddin then formed a new government with corruption-tainted UMNO and several other parties. Some analysts said Ismail would be a poor choice as he is associated with the failings of Muhyiddin’s government and that his government is likely to remain shaky. “His cabinet appointees are likely to be familiar faces and it is more than likely that similar policies that failed to arrest the pandemic advances or spur economic growth will be continued with minor tweaks,” Oh said. Other analysts warned it may also set the stage for increased politicking in UMNO as Ismail may later mount a challenge against the party president, who is fighting multiple criminal charges. 
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North Korea declared a no-sail zone for ships off its east coast earlier this week, suggesting it may have been planning a missile launch or other weapons test that apparently never occurred, according to South Korean reports.  The warning was issued for Sunday through Monday in the northeastern regions of the sea off North Korea’s east coast, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported Thursday, quoting unnamed military sources. “Such an advisory is usually issued ahead of missile launches or other weapons tests to warn vessels to stay clear of certain areas expected to be affected,” the news agency reported. “But no actual ballistic missile launches or artillery firings took place during the period, according to officials at Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff,” it added. South Korea’s Joongang Ilbo newspaper also reported North Korea issued the navigational warning, adding Pyongyang may have attempted missile launches Sunday. It offered no other details.  VOA has not obtained confirmation of any warning or possible launch attempt. A spokesperson for South Korea’s National Defense Ministry provided a written statement to VOA that North Korea is conducting summer military training. “South Korean and U.S. intelligence are closely monitoring the situation,” the statement read.  Tensions, drills Senior North Korean military general Kim Yong Chol last week warned of a “huge security crisis” after the U.S. and South Korea announced they would move ahead with annual summer military drills.  Pyongyang sees the exercises as a provocation and often uses them as an occasion to conduct its own weapons tests or issue verbal threats. This year, North Korea appeared to use the exercises to increase pressure on South Korea.People watch a TV showing an image of North Korea’s new guided missile during a news program at the Suseo Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Friday. March 26, 2021.Weeks before the U.S.-South Korea drills, North Korea announced it was reopening several inter-Korean hotlines, in what both sides called the first step toward improved relations. Around the time the drills began, though, North Korea stopped answering the hotlines. South Korea’s left-leaning president, Moon Jae-in, frequently speaks of his desire to leave a legacy of peace with North Korea. Moon is running out of time to do so; his single, five-year term ends in May.  Provocations coming? South Korea’s National Intelligence Service recently said it expects North Korea could soon test a submarine-launched ballistic missile. Others speculate Pyongyang may prefer a less provocative launch, possibly involving a short-range missile or artillery. This week’s navigational warning may suggest the North is preparing a major test, according to some observers.  “I recall [North Korea] issuing similar notices ahead of satellite launch attempts in years gone by, but not ahead of regular ballistic missile testing,” tweeted Chad O’Carroll, founder of NK News website. Pyongyang’s warning could also be a false alarm, warned Martyn Williams, a North Korea-focused fellow at the U.S.-based Stimson Center. “It could also be that the warning was just intended to stir the pot. The U.S. and South Korea are running an exercise now and [North Korea] is not happy about it,” he tweeted. 
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A major cybersecurity firm says it believes Beijing-backed hackers carried out cyberattacks on Israel while pretending to be operating from Israel’s archrival, Iran. U.S. cybersecurity firm FireEye said on August 10 that a study it conducted in cooperation with the Israeli military found that “UNC215,” described by FireEye as a spy group suspected of being from China, had hacked into Israeli government networks after using remote desktop protocols (RDPs) to steal credentials from trusted third parties. RDPs enable a hacker to connect to a computer from afar and see the “desktop” of the remote device. FireEye data, along with information shared by Israel’s defense agency, show that starting in January 2019, UNC215 carried out a number of concurrent attacks “against Israeli government institutions, IT providers, and telecommunications entities,” according to the report.   Mandiant: Chinese hackers masquerading as Iranians   FireEye’s report comes shortly after a July 19 joint statement by the U.S., the European Union and NATO accusing China of “a pattern of malicious cyber activity” aimed at entities ranging from foreign governments to private companies globally.    In 2019 and 2020, when hackers allegedly broke into the computers of the Israeli government and technology companies, investigators looked for clues to find those responsible for the cyberattacks. The initial evidence pointed directly to Iran, Israel’s geopolitical rival. Hackers used tools commonly associated with Iranians and wrote in Farsi.   But after further scrutiny of the evidence and the information gathered from other cyberespionage cases in the Middle East, the investigators realized that it was not an Iranian operation. Instead, the evidence suggested the attacks were carried out by Chinese agents posing as Iranian hackers.  John Holtquist, vice president of threat intelligence at FireEye, told VOA that Mandiant, a cybersecurity operation owned by FireEye, “attributes this campaign to Chinese espionage operators, which operate on behalf of the Chinese government.”   The tactics used by hackers include using a file path that contains the word “Iran,” according to the study. At the same time, the attackers made every effort to protect their true identity, minimizing the forensic evidence they had left on compromised computers and hiding the infrastructure they used to break into Israeli computers.  According to Holtquist, the deception efforts may appear to be effective; however, even if a single attack may be successfully misattributed, it becomes increasingly difficult to hide the hackers’ identities if multiple attacks are carried out.   Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, challenged the FireEye findings in an interview with the website Cyberscoop. “Given the virtual nature of cyberspace and the fact that there are all kinds of online actors who are difficult to trace, it’s important to have enough evidence when investigating and identifying cyber-related incidents,” he said. Chris Kubecka, chair of the cyber program at the Middle East Institute (MEI), a Washington-based research institute, suggested that FireEye’s conclusion that Beijing-backed hackers were responsible may have been too hasty.   “FireEye is not really in a position to prove attribution. That position is for governments after a proper investigation,” she said.   Kubecka, however, also pointed out that all too often, nation-state incidents make their attacks look like other countries or regimes through “code comment” language, appearing as a different country or using code from another piece of malware to divert blame. A “comment,” a term used in computer programming, is programmer-readable and makes the source code easier to understand for humans.  If confirmed, what are Beijing’s intentions?   Kubecka told VOA that if the Chinese government was responsible for the cyberattacks, it could be part of a long game of splitting the Middle East politically through infrastructure and trade deals. She said the Chinese government has shown an appetite for acquiring and copying technology, with the goal of benefiting Chinese businesses and ultimately the Chinese economy by reducing development costs. During the administration of President Donald Trump, the U.S. accused Chinese companies and workers of stealing American technology and trade secrets. In 2019, the Chinese tech giant Huawei was charged by U.S. federal prosecutors with stealing trade secrets from U.S. company T-Mobile. 
 
“Currently, most Middle East and especially GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries don’t want to be pulled into the political game that has affected the USA and China. Posing as a well-known destabilizing country via cyberattacks could achieve long-term goals for the Chinese government in the region,” she said.    Denny Roy, a senior fellow at the Washington-based East-West Center research organization, told VOA that this is an indication of the depth of China’s commitment to cybertheft as part of China’s national development strategy: The top leadership blesses it despite the possibility of offending important trade or political partners, in this case, Israel.    “It suggests Chinese hubris — that Beijing thinks China’s economic importance to the world allows China to get away with almost anything. The more China aspires to be a global great power, the more it will encounter contradictory pressures in its foreign policy, such as trying to simultaneously portray itself as a friend to both Israel and Iran,” Roy added.    FireEye’s Holtquist argued that this cyber espionage activity is happening against the backdrop of China’s multibillion-dollar investment related to the Belt and Road Initiative and its interest in Israel’s technology sector.   According to FireEye’s report, “Chinese companies have invested billions of dollars into Israeli technology startups, partnering or acquiring companies in strategic industries like semi-conductors and artificial intelligence.” The report continued: “As China’s BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) moves westward, its most important construction projects in Israel are the railway between Eilat and Ashdod, a private port at Ashdod, and the port of Haifa.”   Richard Weitz, director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis with the Hudson Institute, a U.S.-based research group, told VOA that China is one of the few countries in the world that enjoys good relations with Israel, Iran and Saudi Arabia.     “These good relations should be able to survive intermittent incidents like the recent cyber hacking, but one variable beyond China’s control is the position of the United States. If Washington presses its partners like Israel to make choices, then China’s balance act may no longer prove viable,” he said.    
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Four University of Hong Kong students were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of promoting terrorism after they publicly mourned a man who stabbed a police officer and then killed himself in July.  
 
The detainees, between 18 and 20 years old, were members of a student union that live-streamed one of their meetings last month, during which 30 union members passed a motion “appreciating the sacrifice” of the man who died and held a moment of silence in his honor.  
 
The livestream was met with backlash from the university and the Hong Kong government, prompting the union to recant the motion and several of its leaders to apologize and step down.
 
Speaking at a press briefing on Wednesday, Steve Li, the senior superintendent in the police national security department, said the motion sought to rationalize and glorify terrorism.  
 
Li added that police plan to interrogate the other union members who voted in favor of the motion, which he said encourages suicide.   
 
The attacker celebrated by the union stabbed a police officer in the back on July 1, the one-year anniversary since Beijing imposed a strict national security law on Hong Kong. The officer suffered a punctured lung but survived, while the assailant fatally stabbed himself in the chest.
 
Chris Tang, secretary for security, described the assault as a domestic terrorist attack, and police warned people not to mourn the attacker in a statement.  
 
“Advocating members of the public to mourn for the attacker is no different from supporting terrorism,” police said. “It will incite further hatred, divide the society and eventually breach social order and endanger public safety, threatening everyone in Hong Kong.”
 
The Hong Kong National Security Law was introduced last year in response to massive pro-democracy protests in 2019. China has been slowly tightening freedoms in the semi-autonomous territory in recent years, despite promising in 1997 to give the region 50 years of political freedom.  
 
The law has enabled the government to crack down on pro-democracy activists, leading to the closure of a large newspaper, arrests of over 100 activists and the stifling of large public protests.  
 
Individuals who are convicted of promoting terrorism in Hong King face a five- to 10-year prison sentence, according to Article 27 of the security law.   
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The race to become Malaysia’s next prime minister intensified Wednesday ahead of a deadline the king set for lawmakers to name their preferred candidate. King Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah has ruled out a new general election because many parts of the country are COVID-19 red zones and health facilities are inadequate. Muhyiddin Yassin, who resigned as prime minister on Monday, has been appointed caretaker leader until a successor is found. Muhyiddin departed after less than 18 months in office amid infighting in his alliance and mounting public anger over what was widely perceived as his government’s poor handling of the pandemic. Malaysia has one of the world’s highest infection rates and deaths per capita, despite a seven-month state of emergency and a lockdown since June. The king’s role is largely ceremonial in Malaysia, but he appoints the person he believes has majority support in Parliament as prime minister. Sultan Abdullah met political party chiefs Tuesday, and decreed that all lawmakers must individually submit the names of their preferred candidate for the top job to the palace by 4 p.m. (0800 GMT) Wednesday. Local media said the country’s Malay Rulers will meet Friday at the palace, where the king is likely to discuss the lawmakers’ choice. The race appeared to have been whittled to two main candidates: former Deputy Prime Minister Ismail Sabri and opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim. Muhyiddin appointed Ismail, 61, as his deputy in July in a bid to ease tensions with the United Malays National Organization, the biggest party in his alliance. Ismail then led a faction in UMNO that defied a party order to pull support for the government. In the end, 15 UMNO lawmakers withdrew, causing the government which has a razor-thin majority to collapse. Ismail has started to lobby for support even before Muhyiddin stepped down. He appeared to be the frontrunner for the job after UMNO’s 38 lawmakers reportedly agreed to set aside differences at a meeting late Tuesday and back him as their candidate. UMNO secretary-general Ahmad Maslan tweeted that “only one name will be sent as Prime Minister nominee” that is Ismail. Another lawmaker Azalina Othman told local media that Ismail is believed to be able to muster the backing of at least 111 lawmakers for a simple majority. For Anwar, 74, it appears tough for him to reach the 111 vote needed. His three-party alliance has 88 lawmakers and if all smaller opposition parties back him, he would still only have 105 votes. Anwar was due to succeed then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad before their reformist alliance collapsed in February 2018 sparked by the withdrawal of Muhyiddin’s party. Muhyiddin then formed a new government with corruption-tainted UMNO, that was ousted in 2018, and several others. While the king is constitutionally obliged to pick the candidate with the majority votes, analysts said Ismail would be a poor choice as he is associated with the failings of Muhyiddin’s government. “He carries the baggage of a ‘failed government.’ What Malaysians want is a clean break from unpopular policies of the past government. There is more a hint of continuity than a sharp departure if the premiership were to pass on to Ismail,” said Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid, political science professor at Malaysia’s University of Science. It will also set the stage for increased politicking in UMNO as Ismail, who is now a vice-president, may later mount a challenge against the party president, he said. 
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U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’s planned visit next week to Southeast Asia, following other diplomatic overtures from Washington, will help President Joe Biden compete with China for influence in a crucial yet wary region of 660 million people, experts say. Harris will travel to regional financial center Singapore, and former U.S. war enemy Vietnam, a White House spokesperson said. Harris will speak with both governments about security, climate change, the pandemic and “joint efforts to promote a rules-based international order”, spokesperson Symone Sanders said. Harris Will Be First US Vice President to Visit HanoiWhite House confirms trip, says Harris ‘will engage the leaders of both governments on issues of mutual interest, including regional security, the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and our joint efforts to promote a rules-based international order’ Her visit would follow Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s late July trip to the same two countries plus the Philippines and Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s virtual meetings August 4 with counterparts from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations at an annual summit.US Seen Bolstering Military Links in Southeast Asia to Counter China US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited Hanoi and Manila this week to advocate ‘integrated deterrence’ among Southeast Asian statesEvents of this type have an “essential role” in “the U.S. vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific,” the U.S. Mission to ASEAN said in a statement.  U.S. officials normally use the terms “rules-based international order” and “free and open Indo-Pacific” to advocate unblocked international access to the disputed South China Sea. China claims about 90% of the waterway, overlapping the maritime economic zones of Southeast Asian states Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. Beijing has alarmed the other claimants by building up artificial islands for military use and passing ships through disputed tracts of the sea. Biden’s diplomacy is “meant to coordinate policies in a way, like make sure they are aligned with the U.S. agenda in the region, the free and open Indo Pacific, things like that, rules based international order, and the exploration of further areas of cooperation,” said Aaron Rabena, research fellow at the Asia-Pacific Pathways to Progress Foundation in Metro Manila. Washington is “basically coming to its senses” by understanding why it should shadow Chinese diplomacy “tit for tat,” Rabena said.   Although a world court arbitration court rejected China’s nine-dash line claim to the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea in 2016, Beijing has offered its Southeast Asian maritime rivals aid for economically crucial new infrastructure and COVID-19 relief including early-stage vaccines. China maintains the largest military and economy in Asia and has expanded its navy over the past decade.Growing Chinese Navy Adds to Risk of Clashes in Asia’s Major Maritime Dispute

        A Chinese missile frigate returned last week from a five-day, friendly visit to the Philippines -- days after a Chinese fleet had visited Cambodia and half a year after a Chinese state firm started taking bids to build a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, a sign of Beijing’s growing power at sea. 

Multiple media outlets last week cited a Chinese Xinhua News Agency report saying the People’s Liberation Army ground forces had dwindled to less than half China’s total 2.26 million troops as the number at…
Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration avoided multi-country trade arrangements in Southeast Asia, brought the region shocks from the Sino-U.S. trade dispute and left “uncertainty” due to a “break from longstanding U.S. trade policy,” according to 2019 analysis of U.S.-Southeast Asia trade relations issued by the Center for Strategic International Studies in Washington.  However, U.S. officials still look to Southeast Asia for allies in checking Chinese expansion, part of a two-way superpower rivalry.   Biden’s administration is trying now to expand “engagement” on climate, energy and health issues, Melissa Brown, chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Mission to ASEAN, told an August 9 media teleconference. “These are issues of priority for ASEAN, and they appreciate the fact that we are approaching this as a strategic partnership working shoulder to shoulder to figure out where we want the future to take this cooperation,” Brown said. Southeast Asian nations have long valued the U.S. role in their “security,” according to a Foreign Policy Research Institute research organization analysis released in June. Washington periodically sends warships, sells arms and helps train troops. The 10-member Southeast Asian bloc opposes overtly siding with any outside power, though, the analysis says.   Southeast Asian states will eventually want more “concrete commitments” from Washington than what Biden’s government has offered so far, said Oh Ei Sun, senior fellow with the Singapore Institute of International Affairs.   “There will be statements about the South China Sea, but this part of the world is a very pragmatic one,” Oh said. “You have to be concrete on what you can offer, essentially.” This week, U.S. permanent United Nations representative Linda Thomas-Greenfield traveled to Thailand where she pointed to $55 million in new U.S. assistance for humanitarian and pandemic responses in Southeast Asia. The string of visits from Washington show that the United States will care about Southeast Asia over the long term, said Stephen Nagy, senior associate professor of politics and international studies at International Christian University in Tokyo. “This just demonstrates again the United States’ real commitment to the region, and I expect more of this kind of top-level diplomacy,” Nagy said. 
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New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern put the nation on a three-day lockdown Tuesday after a single case of community-spread COVID-19 was confirmed in Auckland, the country’s largest city.The new case — New Zealand’s first in six months — was diagnosed in a 58-year-old man who had visited the nearby Coromandel area, though it is not known how he contracted the virus that causes COVID-19.At a news briefing, Ardern said it will not be known for certain if the case was caused by the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus until genetic testing is completed. She said Auckland and Coromandel will be locked down for seven days while the rest of the country is on a three-day lockdown.  “Delta has been called a game-changer, and it is,” Ardern told reporters. “It means we need to again go hard and early to stop this spread. We have seen what can happen elsewhere if we fail to get on top of it. We only get one chance.” If it is confirmed, New Zealand would be among the last nations in the world in which the variant has appeared.Under New Zealand’s Level 4 lockdown rules, schools, offices and all businesses will be shut down, and only essential services will be operational. The nation’s last stay-at- home orders were lifted in March.The nation of 5 million people has been among the best in the world at containing the virus that causes COVID-19. The country has seen just 2,914 cases and 26 deaths, according to U.S.-based Johns Hopkins University, which is tracking the global outbreak. A large part of that success is due to New Zealand closing its borders for the past 18 months to nonresidents.(Some information in this report was provided by The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse.)  
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With the U.S. military drawdown in Afghanistan, China says it is ready to move ahead in its relations with the Taliban, but foreign policy experts say Beijing remains apprehensive about what comes next and may not devote a vast security and economic commitment to Afghanistan in the near future.U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke Monday with Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi about developments in Afghanistan. Taliban fighters are seen in Afghanistan’s presidential palace after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 15, 2021.While Beijing welcomes the Taliban’s gestures, it is also worried about the potential negative security and economic impact after the U.S. pullout, according to Small.“This is an outcome that China had been fearing for some time,” Small told VOA via Skype on Monday. “They still have difficult and tentative and often quite tense relations with the Taliban, and this is not going to transform into some vast level of Chinese influence [or] Chinese economic commitments in the near future. They’re going to proceed quite cautiously, quite apprehensive about what comes next.”The U.S. along with China, Russia and Pakistan, have said jointly they do not support the establishment in Afghanistan of any government “imposed by force.”Taliban fighters stand guard at a checkpoint near the U.S. Embassy that was previously manned by American troops, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 17, 2021.The four countries are members of the so-called Extended Troika on Peaceful Settlement in Afghanistan.Some regional observers said it is in both Washington’s and Beijing’s interest to have a peaceful political settlement in Afghanistan. However, Small said it is rare that the U.S. and China have been able to “work relatively closely together over the last decade” as they continue to head into a rival relationship.Other analysts, including Seth Jones, director of the International Security Program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, are skeptical about substantial U.S.-China cooperation on Afghanistan as it “sits right in the middle of” Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.“I think it’s going to be very hard for the U.S. to cooperate closely with the Chinese in Afghanistan. Perhaps in a few areas, like on the humanitarian front — there can be collaboration and minimizing civilian impact, including humanitarian atrocities,” Jones told VOA via Skype on Monday.“But the reality is that the Chinese are trying to move into a vacuum that the U.S. is leaving in Afghanistan,” Jones said. 
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Maki Kaji, the creator of the popular numbers puzzle Sudoku whose life’s work was spreading the joy of puzzles, has died, his Japanese company said Tuesday. He was 69 and had bile duct cancer.   Known as the “Godfather of Sudoku,” Kaji created the puzzle to be easy for children and others who didn’t want to think too hard. Its name is made up of the Japanese characters for “number” and “single,” and players place the numbers 1 through 9 in rows, columns and blocks without repeating them.   Ironically, it wasn’t until 2004 when Sudoku became a global hit, after a fan from New Zealand pitched it and got it published in the British newspaper The Times. Two years later, Japan rediscovered its own puzzle as a “gyakuyunyu,” or “reimport.”   Kaji was chief executive at his puzzle company, Nikoli Co., until July and died Aug. 10 at his home in Mitaka, a city in the Tokyo metro area.   Maki traveled to more than 30 countries spreading his enjoyment of puzzles. Sudoku championships have drawn some 200 million people in 100 countries over the years, according to Tokyo-based Nikoli.   Sudoku was also never trademarked except within Japan, driving its overseas craze, Nikoli said.   “Kaji-san came up with the name Sudoku and was loved by puzzle fans from all over the world. We are grateful from the bottom of our hearts for the patronage you have shown throughout his life,” the company said in a statement.   Originally, Sudoku was called “Suji-wa-Dokushin-ni-Kagiru,” which translates to, “Numbers should be single, a bachelor.” In recent years, Sudoku, believed to be the world’s most popular pencil puzzle, has come out in digital versions.   Born in the main northern island of Hokkaido, Maki started Japan’s first puzzle magazine after dropping out of Keio University in Tokyo. He founded Nikoli in 1983, and came up with Sudoku about the same time.  Yoshinao Anpuku, who succeeded Kaji as Nikoli’s chief executive, said Kaji made friends easily and had a “unique and playful approach toward life.”   “Our mission is to pursue Maki’s vision and possibilities,” Anpuku said.   Nikoli has provided original puzzles to more than 100 media companies, 10 of them foreign ones.   Major Japanese newspaper Mainichi in its obituary credited Kaji for starting the puzzle sections at bookstores, as well as introducing the word “Sudoku” into the Oxford English dictionary.   Kaji is survived by his wife Naomi and two daughters. Funeral services have been held among close family. A separate memorial service is being arranged by Nikoli, but details were still undecided. 
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A young Chinese woman says she was held for eight days at a Chinese-run secret detention facility in Dubai along with at least two Uyghurs, in what may be the first evidence that China is operating a so-called “black site” beyond its borders.The woman, 26-year-old Wu Huan, was on the run to avoid extradition back to China because her fiancé was considered a Chinese dissident. Wu told The Associated Press she was abducted from a hotel in Dubai and detained by Chinese officials at a villa converted into a jail, where she saw or heard two other prisoners, both Uyghurs.She was questioned and threatened in Chinese and forced to sign legal documents incriminating her fiancé for harassing her, she said. She was finally released on June 8 and is now seeking asylum in the Netherlands.While “black sites” are common in China, Wu’s account is the only testimony known to experts that Beijing has set one up in another country. Such a site would reflect how China is increasingly using its international clout to detain or bring back citizens it wants from overseas, whether they are dissidents, corruption suspects or ethnic minorities like the Uyghurs.The AP was unable to confirm or disprove Wu’s account independently, and she could not pinpoint the exact location of the black site. However, reporters have seen and heard corroborating evidence including stamps in her passport, a phone recording of a Chinese official asking her questions and text messages that she sent from jail to a pastor helping the couple.China’s Foreign Ministry denied her story. “What I can tell you is that the situation the person talked about is not true,” ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said Monday.Dubai Police stated Monday that any claims of a Chinese woman detained by local authorities on behalf of a foreign country are false, and that Wu freely exited the country with her friend three months ago.“Dubai does not detain any foreign nationals without following internationally accepted procedures and local law enforcement processes, nor does it allow foreign governments to run any detention centers within its borders,” said a statement from the Dubai government media office.“Dubai also follows all recognized global norms and procedures set by international organizations like Interpol in the detainment, interrogation and transfer of fugitives sought by foreign governments.”Black sites are clandestine jails where prisoners generally are not charged with a crime and have no legal recourse, with no bail or court order. Many in China are used to stop petitioners with grievances against local governments, and they often take the form of rooms in hotels or guesthouses.Yu-Jie Chen, an assistant professor at Taiwan’s Academia Sinica, said she had not heard of a Chinese secret jail in Dubai, and such a facility in another country would be unusual. However, she also noted that it would be in keeping with China’s attempts to do all it can to bring select citizens back, both through official means such as signing extradition treaties and unofficial means such as revoking visas or putting pressure on family back home.“(China) really wasn’t interested in reaching out until recent years,” said Chen, who has tracked China’s international legal actions. “This trend is increasingly robust.”Chen said Uyghurs in particular were being extradited or returned to China, which has been detaining the mostly Muslim minority on suspicion of terrorism even for relatively harmless acts like praying. The Uyghur Human Rights Project tracked 89 Uyghurs detained or deported from nine countries from 1997 to 2007 through public reports. That number steadily increased to reach 1,327 from 20 countries from 2014 until now, the group found.Wu and her fiancé, 19-year-old Wang Jingyu, are not Uyghur but rather Han Chinese, the majority ethnicity in China. Wang is wanted by China because he posted messages questioning Chinese media coverage of the Hong Kong protests in 2019 and China’s actions in a border clash with India.Along with Uyghurs, China has been cracking down on perceived dissidents and human rights activists, and has launched a massive effort to get back suspect officials as part of a national anti-corruption campaign. Under President Xi Jinping, China’s most authoritarian leader in decades, Beijing brought back 1,421 people in 2020 alone for alleged corruption and financial crime under Operation Skynet. However, the AP could not find comprehensive numbers for how many Chinese citizens overall have been detained or deported from overseas in recent years.Dubai also has a history as a place where Uyghurs are interrogated and deported back to China. And activists say Dubai itself has been linked to secret interrogations involving other countries. Radha Stirling, a legal advocate who founded the advocacy group Detained in Dubai, said she has worked with about a dozen people who have reported being held in villas in the UAE, including citizens of Canada, India and Jordan but not China.“There is no doubt that the UAE has detained people on behalf of foreign governments with whom they are allied,” Stirling said. “I don’t think they would at all shrug their shoulders to a request from such a powerful ally.”However, Patrick Theros, a former U.S. ambassador to Qatar who is now strategic advisor to the Gulf International Forum, called the allegations “totally out of character” for the Emiratis.“They don’t allow allies freedom of movement,” he said. “The idea that the Chinese would have a clandestine center, it makes no sense.”The U.S. State Department had no comment on Wu’s specific case or on whether there is a Chinese-run black site in Dubai.“We will continue to coordinate with allies and partners to stand against transnational repression everywhere,” it said in a statement to the AP.Held in a villa Wu, a Chinese millennial with cropped hair dyed blonde, never cared about politics before. But after her fiancé was arrested in Dubai on April 5 on unclear charges, she started giving interviews to media and getting in touch with overseas-based Chinese dissidents for help.On May 27, Wu said, she was questioned by Chinese officials at her hotel, the Element al-Jaddaf, and then taken by Dubai police to the Bur Dubai police station. Staff for the hotel declined in a phone interview to confirm her stay or her departure, saying it was against company policy to disclose information about guests.She was held for three days at the police station, she said, with her phone and personal belongings confiscated. On the third day, she said, a Chinese man who introduced himself as Li Xuhang came to visit her. He told her he was working for the Chinese consulate in Dubai, and asked her whether she had taken money from foreign groups to act against China.“I said no, I love China so much. My passport is Chinese. I’m a Chinese person. I speak Chinese,” she said. “I said, how could I do that?”Li Xuhang is listed as consul general on the website of the Chinese consulate in Dubai. The consulate did not return multiple calls asking for comment and to speak with Li directly.Wu said Li took her out of the police station along with another Chinese man who handcuffed her, and they put her in a black Toyota. There were multiple Chinese people in the car, but Wu was too scared to get a clear look at their faces.Her heart thumping, they drove past an area where many Chinese lived and owned businesses in Dubai called International City, which Wu recognized from an earlier trip to Dubai.After driving for half an hour, they stopped on a deserted street with rows of identical compounds. She was brought inside a white-colored villa with three stories, where a series of rooms had been converted into individual cells, she said.The house was quiet and cold in contrast with the desert heat. Wu was taken to her own cell, a room which had been renovated to have a heavy metal door.There was a bed in her room, a chair and a white fluorescent light that was on all day and night. The metal door remained closed except when they fed her.“Firstly, there’s no sense of time,” Wu said. “And second, there’s no window, and I couldn’t see if it was day or night.”Wu said a guard took her to a room several times where they questioned her in Chinese and threatened that she would never be allowed to leave. The guards wore face masks all the time.She saw another prisoner, a Uyghur woman, while waiting to use the bathroom once, she said. A second time, she heard a Uyghur woman shouting in Chinese, “I don’t want to go back to China, I want to go back to Turkey.” Wu identified the women as Uyghurs based on what she said was their distinctive appearance and accent.Wu said she was fed twice a day, with the second meal a stack of plain flatbread. She had to ask the guards for permission to drink water or go to the bathroom. She was supposed to be allowed to go the bathroom a maximum of five times a day, Wu said, but that depended on the mood of the guards.The guards also gave her a phone and a SIM card and instructed her to call her fiancé and pastor Bob Fu, the head of ChinaAid, a Christian non-profit, who was helping the couple.Wang confirmed to the AP that Wu called and asked him for his location. Fu said he received at least four or five calls from her during this time, a few on an unknown Dubai phone number, including one where she was crying and almost incoherent. She again blamed Wang and said Fu should not help him.The AP also reviewed text messages Wu sent to Fu at the time, which are disjointed and erratic.“I could tell she was hiding from telling me her whereabouts,” said Fu. “At that point we concluded that something has happened to her that prevented her from even talking.”Wu said towards the end of her stay, she refused meals, screamed and cried in an effort to be released. The last thing her captors demanded of her, she said, was to sign documents in Arabic and English testifying that Wang was harassing her.“I was really scared and was forced to sign the documents,” she told the AP. “I didn’t want to sign them.”Hub for Chinese intelligence  Reports have emerged in recent years of Emiratis and foreigners being taken to villas, sometimes indefinitely.Perhaps the best-known case involves Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the daughter of the ruler of Dubai. Sheikha Latifa tried to flee in 2018 by boat, but was intercepted by the Indian coast guard in the Arabian Sea and handed back to the UAE.In videos published by the BBC in February, she claims she was held against her will in a villa in Dubai.“I’m a hostage,” she says in one of the videos. “This villa has been converted into jail.” A statement since issued on behalf of Sheikha Latifa said she is now free to travel.China and the UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula, have deep economic and political ties and also work together on counterintelligence. China ratified an extradition treaty with the UAE in 2002 and a judicial cooperation treaty in 2008. The UAE was an experimental site for China’s COVID vaccines and cooperated with China on making tests.Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and de facto ruler of the UAE, has said he was willing to work with China to “jointly strike against terrorist extremist forces,” including the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a militant group Beijing has accused of fostering Uyghur separatism. In late 2017 and early 2018, local authorities arrested and deported at least five Uyghurs to China, according to four friends and relatives who spoke by phone with the AP.In one case, a long-time UAE resident, Ahmad Talip, was called in for questioning at a local police station and detained, according to his wife, Amannisa Abdullah, who is now in Turkey. In another case, eight plainclothes officers broke into a hotel room and arrested a 17-year-old boy who had just fled a police raid in Egypt.The detentions were carried out by Arabs who appeared to be UAE police, not Chinese agents, the Uyghurs said. However, one of the detainees, Huseyin Imintohti, was sought by three Chinese agents at a Uyghur restaurant in Dubai before his deportation, according to his wife, Nigare Yusup.Another Uyghur detainee, Yasinjan Memtimin, was interrogated twice by people in the UAE who appeared to be Chinese police, said his wife, who declined to be named out of fear of retribution. She said she had heard from a Uyghur who fled overseas of a detention facility in the UAE where Uyghurs were detained and interrogated, but she could not offer more details.The UAE appears to be a hub for Chinese intelligence on Uyghurs in the Middle East, former Uyghur residents told The AP. A Uyghur linguist, Abduweli Ayup, said he had spoken with three Uyghurs coerced into working as spies in Turkey who passed through Dubai to pick up SIM cards and cash and meet Chinese agents.Jasur Abibula, a former Xinjiang government worker, also told the AP that Chinese state security lured him from the Netherlands to the UAE in 2019 after his ex-wife, Asiye Abdulaheb, obtained confidential documents on internment camps in Xinjiang.  He was greeted by a dozen or so people working for the Chinese government in Dubai, he said, including at least two who introduced themselves as working for China’s Ministry of State Security.One, a Uyghur man in his fifties who gave his name as Dolet, said he was stationed in Dubai. The other, a Han Chinese man who spoke fluent Uyghur, said he was on a mission to uncover the source of the leaks, according to Abibula.The agents presented Abibula with a USB and asked him to insert it in his ex-wife’s computer. They offered him money, put him up in a Hilton resort and bought toys for his kids. They also threatened him, showing him a video of his mother back in China. On a drive through dunes of sand, one said it reminded him of the deserts back in Xinjiang.“If we kill and bury you here, nobody will able to find your body,” he recalled them telling him. Abibula is now back in the Netherlands, where the AP spoke to him by phone, and he sent photos of some of the agents, his hotel and his plane ticket to support his claims.Besides the UAE, many other countries have cooperated with China in sending Uyghurs back. In 2015, Thailand repatriated over 100 Uyghurs to China. In 2017, Egyptian police detained hundreds of Uyghur students and residents and sent them back as well.Rodney Dixon, a London-based rights lawyer representing Uyghur groups, said his team has filed a case against Tajikistan in the International Criminal Court, accusing local authorities of aiding China in deporting Uyghurs.China isn’t the first country to hunt people deemed terror suspects outside its borders. After 9/11, the U.S. government also operated and controlled a network of CIA clandestine detention facilities overseas in countries including Thailand, Lithuania and Romania. The CIA’s detention and interrogation program ended in 2009.’I’m afraid to call you’After Wu was released, she was taken back to the same hotel she had stayed at and given her personal belongings. She immediately reached out to Fu, apologized for her past calls and asked for help, in text messages seen by the AP.“I’m afraid to call you,” she told Fu in one message. “I’m afraid I will be overheard.”On June 11, she flew out of Dubai to Ukraine, where she was reunited with Wang.After threats from Chinese police that Wang could face extradition from Ukraine, the couple fled again to the Netherlands. Wu said she misses her homeland.“I’ve discovered that the people deceiving us are Chinese, that it’s our countrymen hurting our own countrymen,” she said. “That is the situation.”
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Thailand’s boisterous youth movement is linking up with the kingdom’s most enduring pro-democracy force — the “Red Shirt” protest veterans — posing the most serious threat yet from the street to Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha’s grip on power.But experts say as long as the former army chief retains the support of Thailand’s core interest groups, the monarchy, the military and big business, he is unlikely to fall, no matter how many push for his removal from office.Almost daily protests, spurred by the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and an unprecedented economic crunch, are swelling. By dusk parts of Bangkok are covered in choking swirls of tear gas while fires rage, set by a hard core of young protesters clashing with police.Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha attends a family photo session at the Government House in Bangkok, Thailand, March 30, 2021.The violence, experts warn, could lead to the army coming out and a deepening of the political crisis engulfing the turbulent nation.Tens of thousands of people joined loud, colorful convoys of “car mobs” across the country Sunday, calling on Prayuth to resign. The convoys rode through Bangkok and the “Red Shirt” rural heartlands of north and northeastern Thailand.At the helm in the capital was Nattawut Saikuar, a former Red Shirt hero, who pulled out his old followers as leader of the new “Oust Prayuth Network” alongside thousands of young “Gen Z” protesters.“This is a synergy between two generations fighting a common enemy,” Nattawut told VOA.The Red Shirt movement began in 2008 in outrage at an appointed government which followed a coup that ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.A few years later, their protests were put down with a bloody army crackdown led by Prayuth.In 2014 as army chief, Prayuth led another coup against another elected government, this time led by Yingluck Shinawatra, Thaksin’s younger sister. The Reds were forced into retreat.“These young people have taken up the baton,” Nattawut added.Police use a water cannon and tear gas to disperse protesters taking part in a demonstration calling for the resignation of Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha.New political wisdomThailand’s Gen Z, angry, articulate and armed with social media, have challenged Thailand’s power pyramid like never before, calling for Prayuth to resign and a new constitution to unplug the army from politics for good and, crucially, reform of the all-powerful monarchy.“Frankly, before Prayuth’s coup I was just a normal school kid,” a 25-year-old protester who gave her name as Pop said, as she daubed “Prayuth Get Out” on a road in spray paint.“But as time goes by you realize politics affects us all. That’s when I took to the street and joined the movement demanding this government fall.”Experts say Thailand’s arch-royalist establishment sees Prayuth as an integral part of the hierarchy that has been carefully constructed to keep populist civilian leaders like the Shinawatras out, while leaving the monarchy above reproach and tycoons to dominate the economy.“Prayuth is now not only protecting his position, but also protecting the advantages of an establishment that has benefited from the past few years,” political scientist Kanokrat Lertchoosakul told VOA News.And that means, no matter how bad things get on the street — with a coronavirus pandemic claiming scores of lives each day, low vaccination rates and the economic growth forecast to be rubbed out for the year — Prayuth is unlikely to budge.“The elite need to keep him in power,” prominent historian Nidhi Eoseewong said during Sunday’s car mob.“Prayuth knows all too well that it’s not up to him to step down or not, it’s up to the powers behind him who will decide.”Undeterred, the young protesters have gone after him for more than a year.This picture taken on March 25, 2019, shows exiled former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra being interviewed by Agence France-presse in Hong Kong.They are also filling up rooms on the Clubhouse app, for chats hosted by the 72-year-old Thaksin from his self-exile abroad, even though most are too young to remember the enigmatic billionaire.His youth appeal has raised prospects of a remarkable comeback of sorts, especially as the economy sinks further and the government runs out of cash and ideas.But unlike the loyalties of the past, “Gen Z” has a “new political wisdom,” warns Kanokrat, explaining they will not back leaders who play old power games at the expense of their demands.“If we don’t listen and turn them into a very high potential human resource for the future, we are turning them into the state enemy,” Kanokrat said. 
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Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said the COVID-19 state of emergency for Tokyo and several surrounding regions will continue through September 12 rather than expiring at the end of this month after a surge in new cases over the past three days.Tokyo announced 2,962 new daily cases on Monday, after a record 5,773 on Friday. All of Japan saw a record 20,400 cases that day.Suga told reporters the surge in infections is reaching alarming levels. He said the state of emergency currently in effect for Tokyo, Osaka and Okinawa will include three other areas – Kyoto, Hyogo and Fukuoka, which are currently under a less severe COVID-19 status.The state of emergency began in July, just before the start of the Tokyo Olympics. With the latest extension, the emergency will remain in force during the Paralympics Games August 24 through September 5.Suga said the measures will become official Tuesday, following further consultations with experts. He also said hospital care was “a priority,” and people waiting at home to be hospitalized were getting checkups by phone. Critics say the government has not done enough to respond to the crisis in organizing the hospital system overall to accommodate those with COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.Japan’s state of emergency restricts commercial activity, with bars and restaurants told to close or stop serving alcohol, and movie theaters and karaoke parlors closed. Japanese laws limit how much the government can mandate, making the state of emergency declarations little more than requests for cooperation.Just over one-third of the nation’s population has been fully vaccinated, even while the highly infectious delta variant of the coronavirus is reportedly spreading. Japan’s vaccine rollout got off to a relatively late start and is proceeding at a pace that is one of the slowest among industrialized nations. Japan has had more than 15,000 COVID-19-related deaths, and worries have been growing about the health care system becoming increasingly stretched thin. Some of the information in this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters. 
 
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Malaysia’s king will keep Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin on as caretaker prime minister after Muhyiddin and his entire cabinet formally resigned Monday following months of political turmoil. Muhyiddin submitted his resignation and that of his ministers to King Al-Sultan Abdullah when he visited the royal palace shortly after holding an emergency cabinet meeting.  He later said during a nationally televised address that he was stepping down because he had lost support of the majority of lawmakers.   Muhyiddin also reassured Malaysians that he would not join with lawmakers he called “kleptocrats” or interfere with the judiciary’s independence to stay in power. The royal palace issued a statement explaining that King Al-Sultan is keeping Muhyiddin on in a caretaker role because it is not a good time to hold elections as Malaysia continues to struggle with rising COVID-19 infections. Muhyiddin’s tenure as prime minister is the shortest in Malaysian history. The king selected Muhyiddin as prime minister last March after then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s ruling coalition had collapsed a month earlier. But he has been beset by constant challenges to his leadership within his fragile coalition and rising anger over his government’s poor response to pandemic. Malaysia has one of the world’s highest COVID-19 infection rates and deaths per million, with 1.4 million total infections and 12,510 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Muhyiddin’s tenuous grip on power began unraveling when a group of lawmakers with the United Malays National Organization, the largest party in the coalition, withdrew their support. UMNO, once Malaysia’s long-serving ruling party dating back to the country’s independence in 1957, has a handful of politicians facing corruption charges, including former Prime Minister Najib Razak. Muhyiddin’s 17-month tenure as prime minister is the shortest in Malaysia’s history. Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters.  
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