“Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow,” Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida recently told an international security gathering in Singapore, a catchphrase that speaks to the harsh lessons learnt over the past few months. Better deterrence and response capabilities, he told a room packed with defense officials and diplomats, will be “absolutely essential if Japan
BEIJING/SINGAPORE – Ant Group and Alibaba are untangling their operations from each other and independently seeking new business as the Jack Ma-founded companies navigate China’s devastating regulatory crackdown, four sources familiar with the matter said. E-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding created what would become payments and financial services provider Ant and spun it off in
China is launching an investigation into a group of police officials over their handling of an attack on female diners at a restaurant, an incident that prompted an outpouring of stories from women around the Asian nation who said they’d been badly mistreated in the past. Ma Aijun, the police chief of the district in
Biden administration officials have decided to reject a vague new assertion by China that the Taiwan Strait is not “international waters” and are increasingly concerned the stance could result in more frequent challenges at sea for the democratically governed island, according to people familiar with the matter. Chinese officials have made such remarks repeatedly in
Washington – A duo of U.S. senators have introduced a bill to significantly enhance support for Taiwan, including provisions for billions of dollars in U.S. security assistance and changes to the decades old law undergirding Washington’s unofficial ties with the Chinese-claimed democratic island. The United States, which accuses China of ramping up military coercion toward
China’s largest freshwater lake has become the center of controversy after the local government revived a plan to build a dam across it, a project shelved six years ago after environmental protests. Now the developers say they have a new reason to build the barrier — helping the environment. Three times the size of London,
China on Friday launched its third and most modern aircraft carrier, a watershed moment for President Xi Jinping’s efforts to modernize the armed forces and narrow his country’s military gap with the U.S. The new carrier, christened the Fujian, was launched from Jiangnan Shipyard near Shanghai at ceremony attended by military and civilian leaders, state
Military commanders from Japan, the United States, South Korea, the Philippines and fourteen other countries met in Tokyo this week for a gathering that Washington hopes will help forge cooperation between nations that can help it contain China. The Pacific Amphibious Leaders Symposium (PALS) was started by the United States in Hawaii in 2015 as
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida delivered the keynote speech at last weekend’s Shangri-La Dialogue — and that’s a big deal. The annual meeting, convening in-person for the first time in two years, is the opportunity for officials and experts to discuss and assess regional security, to get the lay of the land and lay down markers.
China’s assertions that the Taiwan Strait doesn’t qualify as international waters raises tensions over the nautical flash point, through which U.S. warships transit in a symbolic challenge to Beijing’s territorial claims over the democratically governed island. While it’s unclear what Beijing means by “international waters,” the language may be intended to deter the U.S. from
