Taiwan now has formal relations with just 17 countries worldwide, many of them poor nations in Central America and the Pacific like Belize and Nauru. “We are not willing to continue with the money competition with China,” Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said at a press conference. He said El Salvador had been continuously asking for “massive funding support” since last year for… Read more »
Police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets while allegedly pro-government mobs attacked demonstrators, photographers and even the US ambassador’s car. Students said on Tuesday that many went back to school as they fear further government repression if the protests continued. “We are panicked. We hear that some of the students who took part in yesterday’s protests have been arrested,” a private university student… Read more »
The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination cited estimates that up to one million Uighurs may be held involuntarily in extra-legal detention in China‘s far western Xinjiang province. Its findings were issued after a two-day review this month of China’s record, the first since 2009. China’s foreign ministry rejected the allegations at the time, and said anti-China forces were behind the criticism… Read more »
Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, who have been held in Yangon’s Insein prison since their arrest in December, were charged with violating the Official Secrets Act, a draconian British colonial-era law which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years. The case has sparked an outcry among the international community as an attempt to muzzle reporting on last… Read more »
BEIJING, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) — China will further push reforms that aim to streamline the approval process for companies, a State Council executive meeting presided over by Premier Li Keqiang decided on Wednesday. China will expand a pilot reform that separates business operation permits from business licenses nationwide, according to the meeting.
In Cambodia Hun Sen has served as Prime Minister since 1985, making him one of the longest-serving leaders in the world. He has been known by his own people as a dictator who has assumed authoritarian power in Cambodia using violence, intimidation and corruption to maintain his power base. Last year the Cambodian National Rescue Party was dissolved and its… Read more »
Japan’s trade minister has said President Donald Trump’s tariff policies towards his country and others show the American does not have a clear understanding of how trade works. That minister said in interview with the Associated Press, that the US president did not appear to understand the importance of free trade or the contributions that Japanese companies made to the US economy…. Read more »
Cambodian opposition party leader Kem Sokha has been released from prison on bail, almost a year after he was detained on charges of treason, according state news agency Agence Kampuchea Press Monday. Sokha, head of the outlawed opposition party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), had been held in solitary confinement since arrest in September last year, following a sweeping government crackdown… Read more »
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said countries outside Indochina are too critical of politics in the region and Southeast Asian nations should be left to solve their own problems. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Vietnam, Hun Sen pointed to the international condemnation of his country’s recent election, which was seen by many as a farce after the main… Read more »
Japanese and Russian leaders agreed to study joint rule of a group of contested islands, offering a road map to re-establishing full diplomatic relations after more than seven decades. Economic and political ties between the two countries have been limited by Russia’s occupation of the islands, which lie to the northeast of Japan’s main islands, in the closing days of… Read more »