Author: News Desk

Beijing, China:   In 2009, People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops ‘crossed over into [an] undefended district and constructed a veterinary centre for livestock’. In a similar instance of encroachment by the Chinese side, in 2017, a survey document issued by the Ministry of Agriculture ‘shows that China had encroached 36 hectares of Nepal’s territory at 10 places along the northern border,’ according to the Nepali daily Himalayan Times. According to the same report in 2016, China was also found involved in infrastructure inside Nepal. Though such reports often come to light, China has always rejected such claims of encroachments into Nepalese territories. Beijing calls them ‘smear campaigns’ based on ‘completely unfounded rumours.’ Nepali officials have often been seen as reje

Under a rail bridge that cuts across his languid northern Laos town, Boonxay takes a beat to weigh up what connection means to a country isolated for decades. “When I look at the railway, I see prosperity,” the father of five eventually says. “Do you know, some of the older people here have never even been to the capital in their whole life? Now for the first time they are travelling.” The US$6 billion track hooks the fate of Laos, one of Asia’s poorest countries, onto China, the world’s second-biggest economy. It is integral to the plans of Laos’ communist leadership to plug Southeast Asia’s only landlocked country into the global economy and to fast-track its seven million people away from poverty. For China, the 422km line through Laos’ rugged neck of land is the first step

In the days and weeks after the visit by the highest-ranking US official to travel to Taiwan in a quarter century, the People’s Republic of China sent warships and military aircraft to all sides of the self-governing island. It fired missiles into nearby waters, repeatedly violated Taiwan’s air defence zone and suspended or cancelled eight official military dialogues and channels with Washington. “That’s not the way that countries that want to be leaders within the world should behave,” said Vice-Admiral Karl Thomas, Commander of the US 7th Fleet, based in Japan. China has claimed it seeks a peaceful resolution to the cross-strait differences, he added. “But when you see them fire ballistic missiles over Taiwan and have them land in the maritime commons and into shipping lines,

The arrest of 66 year old Troung My Lan, Chairwoman of Van Thinh Phat Holding Group Corporation (a Vietnamese diversified investment group) by Ministry of Public Security (MPS) in Ho Chi Minh city has again brought the Chinese connections with business tycoons in Vietnam, especially in the real estate sector, to limelight. Lan established the Van Thinh Phat Co. in 1992 operating in the fields of commerce and hospitality, which then expanded to the real estate sector. Van Thinh Phat group owns plots and building in prime locations dubbed as ‘golden land’ in Ho Chi Minh city including the Thuan Kien Plaza; plots in Times square and some buildings along the Nguyen Hue road. Lan, a businesswoman, is a Chinese Vietnamese. She is the second richest woman in Vietnam. Her husband is a Cantones

The Chinese state media repeatedly goes on about the blessing that the country’s foreign policy is to all of humanity and the great contributions that the former is making towards ‘building a community with a shared future for mankind’. The Chinese, for the past several years, have tried to peg their model of development and large-scale modernization against that offered by the West, claiming that they are better, especially as opposed to the US. Their foreign policy is one domain where they particularly claim to be progressive and benign despite being a global superpower, in a manner never before witnessed by the world. It is therefore worth our time to closely examine the foreign policy of China to understand the extent to which the tall claims made by the government are met with in

Beijing, China: Claimed that the Chinese Communist Party is attempting to influence public discourse in the Solomon Islands through coordinated information operations that seek to spread false narratives and suppress information on a range of topics. Moreover, the Chinese Embassy has strong connections to media outlets in the Solomon Islands and the Chinese diplomats exert pressure to influence local publications and control press releases in support of the CCP’s narratives, the Singapore Post reported. This authoritarian regime plays a crucial role in the CCP’s information operations. CCP has also used its propaganda and disinformation capabilities to push false narratives in an effort to carve the public’s perception of the Solomon Islands and their security issues. Accor

Dhaka, Bangladesh: Addressing the press conference on Sunday, minister Quader said despite the fact that the company is responsible for the BRT accident, still firm was allowed to complete project work to save resources and time, The Daily Star reported. The minister further added that the incident took place on August 15 and at that time 79 per cent of the project had been already completed. "The decision was taken considering the asset and money of the country in mind because it would take several years if any new contractor is appointed for the work," The Daily Star quoted the minister as saying. "They [the Chinese contractor will complete the remaining 20 per cent work. After that the contractor will not be allowed to work in Bangladesh anymore," he said. On Saturday, f...

Beijing, China: Valerio Fabbri, writing in Portal Plus, a Slovenian publication, said the demographers have predicted that the shrinking may begin in 2022 itself, a turning point that will weaken the government's economic tools which in turn could impact manufacturing, China's main economic weapon spearheading its economic supremacy in the last couple of decades. China is already struggling to meet the rising cost of health and social care and their expenditure on draconian zero-Covid infrastructure has ballooned. In contrast, tax receipts from the battered property sector have plummeted and now the population is shrinking, according to Portal Plus. Portal Plus citing Global Times reported that in several provinces of China, the number of new births in 2021 was the lowest in deca...

Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto’s Two Nation Theory-centred views on Kashmir seem to be an Indiaphobic outlook accepted almost wholly by the Foreign Ministers of Germany and its biggest trading partner, China. The ideology of the Green Party is not usually associated with measures that promote conflict, but Minister Annalena Baerbock seems not to be concerned about the past. She is as set on flooding Ukraine with weapons and prolonging the war between that country and the Russian Federation as the most hawkish in NATO are. GHQ Rawalpindi is eager to present the facade of being a partner of NATO even while (since the Musharraf era) serving the interests of the PLA. Which is why Imran Khan, who in the past had (and still has) several admirers in the UK and India in particular, w

TAIPEI: China again rejected her latest overture, saying the island was an inseparable part of its territory. Democratic Taiwan, which China claims as its own, has come under increasing military and political pressure from Beijing, especially after Chinese war games in early August following a Taipei visit by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Any conflict over Taiwan could drag in the United States, Japan and perhaps much of the world, as well as shatter the global economy, especially given Taiwan's dominant position as a maker of semiconductors used in everything from smartphones and tablets to fighter jets. Tsai, in her national day speech outside the presidential office under a grey sky, said it was "regrettable" that China had escalated its intimidation and threatened peace an...