Eastern Asia

1 January 2019 marked the third day since the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) came into force. Irrespective of what will happen during this whole, still new year, the aforementioned event will remain among the most significant ones not only for the Indo-Pacific region but for the entire world.

On 18 December the Xinhua news agency publicized the state China’s Policy Paper on the European Union. We would like to highlight straightaway that this is not a unique document in the history of their official bilateral ties, established in 1975.

Once the story criticizing a report on mass-rape in DPRK was published, its author has faced with a fierce backlash. Many people were unwilling to believe that by “presenting notorious stories not as exceptions but as examples of daily tactics, and by then employing a similar approach, it is possible to put together quite a fascinating report, with a far less dramatic title, but dedicated not to North but South Korea”.

There used to be a pair of beautiful swings for children, not far from an old rural temple in Mie Prefecture, where I used to frequently powerwalk, when searching for inspiration for my novels. Two years ago, I noticed that the swings had gotten rusty, abandoned, and unkempt. Yesterday, I spotted a yellow ribbon, encircling and therefore closing the structure down. It appears that the decision had already been made to get rid of the playground, irreversibly.

In recent months, Japan has borne witness to a series of various important events occurring with a greater frequency. And as they become increasingly staggered, processes within the nation’s political life begin to speed up as a result.

The ties between South and North Koreas are becoming closer and there are fewer tensions in the relationship between DPRK and the USA. That often makes us forget that, though it was rather the Democrats’ strategy to pick on North Korea for violating human rights, the pressure on Pyongyang for this reason has merely become less blatant.

On 30 August, South Korea’s President replaced several ministers including the Minister of National Defense. Jeong Kyeong-do, who was a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was appointed as the new minister. He is the first appointee to have come from the Air Force in the past 24 years.

The arrest of the CFO of the China’s largest telecoms equipment company, Huawei, carries hallmarks of deep state or behind-the-scenes sabotage designed to rupture recent progress between US President Trump and China President Xi Jinping on strategic issues. Here are some elements of the case that smack of insider sabotage from the US side, with complicity of Five Eyes member Canada.

The numbers speak for themselves. 746,000 New Energy passenger cars were sold in China between January and October. By the end of 2018, all buses and taxis in the vital tech hub city of Shenzen will be electric. The central borough of the city of Dalian is expected to reach this benchmark by 2020. Chinese manufacturers created 358,000 non-fossil fuel buses from 2014 to 2017.