Japan

Despite the resumption of high-level Japan-South Korea ties with the holding of a “cold summit” in Seoul last month between South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, prospects for a breakthrough in Japan-South Korea relations remain distant on the fiftieth anniversary of diplomatic normalization between Seoul and Tokyo. If anything, the gap between Park and Abe on how to address the issue of comfort women has grown deeper, despite a realization on the part of both governments that the issue must be managed as one part of a broader relationship rather than be allowed to block all forms of cooperation between the two sides. The United States had a critical role in promoting a normalized relationship between Tokyo and Seoul in 1965 as the conflict in Vietnam was heating up. Likewise, the combination of China’s assertiveness and the U.S. rebalance has enhanced U.S. interest in a stable relationship between South Korea and Japan today. Two papers commissioned by the Council on Foreign Relations on these issues highlight the challenges and stakes involved in effective management of relations between Tokyo and Seoul. Seoul National University professor and prominent Japan specialist Park Cheol-hee traces past downturns in relations between Tokyo and Seoul that have coincided with past anniversaries of diplomatic normalization in his paper, “Still Distant Neighbors: South Korea-Japan Relations Fifty Years After Diplomatic Normalization.” Park sees domestic politics in both countries acting as a spoiler in efforts to improve Japan-South Korea relations. Nevertheless, Park sees stepped up U.S.-Japan-ROK trilateral cooperation and the need for stepped up mutual public-relations campaign efforts by both governments to promote positive attitudes among both publics toward each other. Finally, he urges accelerated negotiations to resolve the comfort women issue, which has emerged as the main obstacle dividing Prime Minister Abe and President Park. Asia expert Mark Manyin’s paper, “Managing Japan-South Korea Tensions,” evaluates the U.S. role and interest in promoting a stable relationship between South Korea and Japan, arguing that costs of poor Japan-ROK relations are rising, requiring a response. Manyin considers four distinct roles and approaches that might frame U.S. intervention: the United States as a role model in catalyzing examination of historical issues, the United States as a referee that serves to bound detrimental Japanese and South Korean actions, the United States as a mediator in promoting resolution of outstanding Japan-ROK differences, and the United States as a commissioner through generation of opportunities for trilateral U.S.-ROK-Japan interaction. At a moment of continued stalemate in Japan-South Korea relations despite the normalization of dialogue between the two countries, both papers are worthy of careful consideration by policymakers in all three countries that are concerned with promoting stable relations in East Asia.

Ashlyn Anderson, Rachel Brown, Ariella Rotenberg, Ayumi Teraoka, Gabriel Walker, and James West look at five stories from Asia this week. 1. Canadian pastor sentenced by North Korea to life in prison with hard labor. Hyeon Soo Lim, a Canadian pastor, was sentenced to a life term of hard labor by the highest court in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. After a ninety-minute trial, Lim was convicted of crimes against the state that included running a human rights campaign against North Korea in cooperation with the United States and South Korea, as well as assisting defectors who wished to leave North Korea. A video was circulated of Lim admitting his guilt in what is suspected to be a staged confession. The Canadian government is doing what it can to negotiate his release and repatriation, and has characterized his sentence as “unduly harsh” particularly given Lim’s “age and fragile health.” 2. Pakistan surprised by inclusion in “Islamic military alliance.” In a rare press conference on Tuesday, Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammad bin Salman announced the formation of an “Islamic military alliance,” with a permanent base in Riyadh that will coordinate the efforts of thirty-four Muslim countries to combat global terrorism, including providing assistance with military training and equipment and countering violent extremism messaging. Pakistan—along with several other countries, including Indonesia and Malaysia—was caught off guard by the announcement of a military alliance, with reports indicating that Saudi Arabia had reached out to states simply to establish a coordination center and that senior officials and lawmakers learned about it from news reports. On Thursday, the Foreign Office confirmed Pakistan’s support for the alliance, but cautioned that Pakistan “is awaiting further details to decide the extent of its participation in different activities in the alliance” and it is unlikely Pakistan will send combat troops abroad. Earlier this year, Pakistan declined a Saudi request for troops, naval, and aircraft support for its intervention in Yemen against Houthi rebels. 3. Xinjiang mine attack suspect spoke of jihad. Chinese state media released a video of one of the alleged perpetrators of a September knife attack at Sogan coal mine in northwestern Xinjiang. As many as fifty people are believed to have died in the attack, which sparked an eight-week manhunt for the attackers. In the video, the sole suspect to have surrendered, Turghun Emet, describes his motives in Uighur. “If we die when we do jihad, then we will go to heaven… At that time, they gave me a knife. There was a knife in everyone’s hands—if you cut someone, kill someone, then you will be a martyr and go to heaven.” Twenty-eight other terrorists died during the manhunt. Concerns about terrorism, and particularly the Islamic State group, have increased in China following the killing of a Chinese hostage held by the Islamic State in November and the release of a chant in Mandarin exhorting Chinese Muslims to “take up weapons to fight.” Chinese officials recently cited the Xinjiang mine attack and manhunt as evidence to compare their nation’s experiences with terrorism to other incidents such as the Paris attacks. 4. Japanese journalist found not guilty for defaming South Korean president. Tatsuya Kato, former Seoul bureau-chief of the Sankei Shimbun, was acquitted of a charge of defaming South Korean President Park Geun-hye. This decision came amidst the two governments’ efforts to improve relations, and led the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) to appeal to its Ministry of Justice for leniency in the case. In October 2014, Kato was indicted for his online article on Park’s whereabouts on the day of the Sewol ferry disaster, in particular regarding the mysterious seven hours during which she was missing. The article introduced a scandalous rumor that she may have been with her former secretary, quoting a column published by the Chosun Ilbo, a major Korean newspaper. Kato was barred from leaving the country until April 2015, and this fueled Japanese public anger towards South Korea for its lack of freedom of press, worsening an already deteriorated bilateral relations due to complicated issues of history. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took this incident so seriously that he met with Kato the day after he returned to Japan in April. Although both Abe and South Korean MOFA viewed the court’s decision positively, the Japanese public, as represented both in conservative and liberal newspapers, still remains unhappy about the prosecution itself. 5. To cut smog in New Delhi, India restricts vehicle use. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court of India passed a number of temporary restrictions on vehicle use in Delhi in order to address the capital’s dire air pollution problem. The move included a ban on some diesel vehicles and SUVs, old “transport vehicles,” and an increased tax on commercial vehicles. Additionally, all taxis operating in the city must switch from gasoline or diesel to compressed natural gas by March of 2016. Though international media frequently make Beijing out to be Asia’s most important battleground in the fight against air pollution, the World Health Organization reported in 2014 that Delhi’s mean annual concentration of PM2.5, the smallest and potentially most dangerous particles, was nearly three times that of Beijing. Beginning on January 1, Delhi will implement a Beijing-like, odd-even license-plate restriction system, and also has plans to close a coal-fired power plant and further upgrade vehicle emissions standards. But because vehicles in Delhi only produce about a quarter of PM2.5 pollution, and the majority comes from industry, road dust, and burning firewood, and other sources, the vehicle restrictions are just a first step to clearing the city’s smoggy skies. Bonus: South Koreans are living through the experience of death. In response to high suicide rates, “fake funerals” are now being offered to South Koreans as a way to reflect on their lives and contemplate the reality of death. Providers of the service offer coffins for clients to lay in as they mediate on death. High amounts of professional stress and social pressure have led to increased suicide rates, giving South Korea the nickname the “suicide capital of the developed world.” The near-death experience encourages clients to imagine their deaths by writing letters to their friends and family before walking out to the graveyard and entering their coffins. By offering a near-death experience, the goal of the service is to bring clients a new appreciation and relationship with life.

Rachel Brown, Lincoln Davidson, Ariella Rotenberg, and Gabriel Walker look at the top stories in Asia this week. 1. Human trafficking investigator flees Thailand. Maj. Gen. Paween Pongsirin, a senior Thai police officer leading an investigation on human trafficking in Thailand, has fled the country to seek asylum in Australia. After more than thirty graves, which are believed to contain the remains of trafficked Rohingyas, were discovered near the Malaysian border this summer, Paween had been tasked with investigating the site and the trafficking network responsible. His investigation resulted in more than 150 arrest warrants and other charges against individuals in Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Thailand, including a senior lieutenant general in the Thai Army. Paween reported that the inquiry had been shut down prematurely, and that he now feared retribution from traffickers and corrupt authorities implicated for the crimes. The Thai government is considering whether to bring a defamation case against Paween, as it did recently against two journalists for reporting the Thai navy’s involvement in human trafficking. In a report published earlier this year, the U.S. Department of State found that the Thai government “does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, and is not making significant efforts to do so.” 2. China merges state-owned enterprises.  Multiple mergers among Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were announced this week. On Tuesday it was revealed that the China Metallurgical Group will be incorporated into China Minmetals, although the timing to complete the merger is unknown. The State Council has also reportedly approved the merger of two shipping companies, China Shipping Group Co. and China Ocean Shipping Co., which will result in the fourth-largest shipping line in the world. Such mergers are hoped to reduce competition between firms and improve economies of scale. Metals and shipping SOEs were recently identified as among those with the worst financial-risk ratings, so it is not shocking that firms in these sectors would be targeted for early restructuring. Not all recent mergers have improved competitiveness, however. In June, two state-owned train makers, the CSR Corp. and CNR Corp., merged but thus far the year-on-year revenue for the new combined company has fallen. The mergers come in the wake of overall SOE reforms presented by the Chinese government in September that seek to promote private investment, establish investment mechanisms for state capital, and potentially restructure certain SOEs to create national champions. SOEs in the telecom and air transport sectors are now also allegedly being considered for mergers. 3. Anonymous hacks Abe’s site to retaliate for whaling. The hacking group Anonymous took credit for temporarily disabling Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s personal website yesterday, claiming the act was a retaliation for Japan’s decision to resume scientific whaling activities last week. Although an investigation as to whether Anonymous was indeed responsible for the cyberattack is still ongoing, Anonymous has hacked the government sites of other whaling countries before, like Iceland, and a Twitter account representing the group threatened to continue if Japan did not discontinue the program. Despite a 2014 International Court of Justice ruling that deemed one of Japan’s “scientific” whaling programs illegal, last week’s program, which sent a fleet to Antarctica’s Southern Ocean to kill 333 minke whales, is new. One scientist called the whaling campaign the same old story with a different name—like putting “lipstick on a pig.” In total, thirty-three countries, including the United States, have protested against Japan’s new whaling program, and Australia has considered taking legal action to put an end to it. 4. Afghan president visits Pakistan. On Wednesday, leaders from Pakistan and Afghanistan announced plans to resume peace talks between the two governments, although the Taliban has not yet agreed to the talks. The announcement was made at the annual Heart of Asia conference where Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani met. Ghani’s visit to Pakistan coincided with a two-day Taliban siege of the Kandahar airport, which left more than fifty people dead and signaled a growing Taliban resurgence. Ghani risked political criticism by engaging with Pakistan, an unpopular nation among many Afghans, to attempt to restart the peace talks. Tensions persist between the two countries over a variety of issues including whether Pakistan harbors terrorists and Pakistan’s desire to repatriate approximately two million Afghan refugees currently in the country. Rahmatullah Nabil, the head of the Afghan intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, resigned this week amidst disagreements surrounding Ghani’s policy toward Pakistan. In July, Pakistan hosted an initial round of peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government, but the second round was postponed after the announcement of Taliban leader Mullah Omar’s death. 5. Myanmar opens stock exchange. After two decades of delays, Myanmar finally launched its first stock exchange, the Yangon Stock Exchange, on Wednesday. Prior to this, Myanmar was the largest economy in Asia without a stock exchange. The move is an important step towards liberalization for a country that has languished in recent decades due to mismanagement by a military junta; officials hope the exchange will help spur investment and boost the economy. Progress will come slowly, however. Although six companies have already been approved to list on the market, they will not start trading until next spring, and foreign firms are still barred. Bonus: The Islamic State produces a new propaganda song, this time in Chinese. This week, the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, released a war chant in Mandarin calling for Chinese Muslim men to take up arms. Al-Hayat Media Center, the ISIS-run media group, released the four-minute acapella chant known in Islam as a “nasheed” that advocates death in service of Islam. By using Mandarin for the song might indicate that ISIS is aiming to attract a broader base of Chinese Muslims, whereas previous propaganda has been aimed at China’s Muslim Uighur minority in the Uyghur language. The spokeswoman for the Chinese foreign ministry said in response to the video that “in the face of terrorism, no country can stand alone.”

Sungtae “Jacky” Park is research associate for Korea studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This is a preview of his recently published Atlantic Council report, The Korean Pivot and the Return of Great Power Politics in Northeast Asia. The views expressed in the report are his own and his own only. Read the full report here. The element of unpredictability and unintended consequences surrounding North Korea’s future raises the possibility that the Korean peninsula might turn into a sudden flashpoint in Northeast Asia at any moment. If the U.S.-China relationship deteriorates further, a North Korean collapse scenario could become a dangerous source of conflict for the wider region. Moreover, a crumbling North Korea with far more developed nuclear and missile capabilities could become a serious problem if the Kim regime decides to militarily lash out at the United States and its allies while collapsing. To address these issues, this report recommends that the United States increase its defense budget to bolster the rebalance to Asia, covertly subvert North Korea to bring about regime change and eliminate the Kim regime as a long-term source of instability in the region, keep the alliances and security cooperation with Japan and South Korea strictly bilateral for now, and convince China to discuss Korean unification and its implications for the regional order. Read more on AtlanticCouncil.org...  

Ashlyn Anderson, Rachel Brown, Lincoln Davidson, Ariella Rotenberg, Ayumi Teraoka, and Gabriel Walker look at the top stories in Asia this week. 1. Antigovernment protests erupt in Seoul. This week, tens of thousands of people filled City Hall plaza in downtown Seoul to protest President Park Geun-hye, demanding her resignation. The protestors wore plastic raincoats to guard against the cannons of water and liquid tear gas fired at them by the police. The grievances against President Park include the replacement of history textbooks in the country with a specific government-issued one. Student protestors argue that the government textbook would whitewash the legacy of Ms. Park’s father, former President Park Chung-hee. Unionized workers also protested against changing labor laws that they believe favor the chaebols, powerful family-run Korean conglomerates, making it easier for them to fire workers. The exact number of gathered protestors was somewhere between 68,000, according to the government, and 130,000, according to the protest organizers; no matter which is the more accurate number, it is unquestionably the largest protest under Ms. Park’s government. 2. Thailand deports two Chinese refugees. Two Chinese dissidents, Jiang Yefei and Dong Guangping, were deported from Thailand after being arrested on October 28, 2015, for lacking valid visas. Canada had already accepted both men as refugees and they possessed “protection letters” from the United Nations. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said that the exact rationale for the deportations remained unknown and that many officials from international organizations had tried to prevent it. Jiang Yefei had lived in Thailand since 2008 after being detained in China earlier that year for critiquing the government’s handling of the Sichuan earthquake. Dong Guangping was detained in China between May 2014 and February 2015 following his involvement in a commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. Both men are believed to be at risk of torture in China. The deportations from Thailand to China fit into a recent pattern of behavior between the two nations: In July, the Thai government, which has not signed the 1951 Refugee Convention, deported over one hundred Uighurs back to China. Thailand’s relations with China improved after the Thai military coup in May 2014, which weakened ties with Western nations and led the government to begin seeking out new partners. 3. Tourism in Japan booms thanks to Chinese visitors. The Japanese government will raise its annual target for the number of foreign visitors to Japan to thirty million, as the current target of twenty million by 2020 is likely to be attained this year, five years ahead of schedule. This is largely due to a weaker yen brought about by “Abenomics,” Prime Minister Abe’s economic policies, as well as his policies to encourage tourism such as the relaxation of visa requirements and welcoming low-cost airline carriers. This year, 16.3 million foreign tourists have already visited Japan, beating last year’s record of 13.4 million over the entire year. The number of visitors to Japan was on a constant increase until 2008, before the trend took a hit from the financial crisis in 2009 and the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Abe reversed this trend again when he came back to the office in 2012, as he saw tourism as a central component to his overall economic program. The dramatic uptick in the number of Chinese visitors has played an important role in this about-face: between January and October of this year, 4,283,700 Chinese tourists visited Japan, and accounted for nearly half of the 1 trillion yen (8.1 billion USD) that foreign visitors spent in the country. 4. India sells off 10 percent more of Coal India. This Wednesday, the Indian government approved a 10 percent sell-off of Coal India, the state-owned mining company that is the biggest coal-producing enterprise in the world. The move, which should provide the government with around $3.2 billion, was part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s broader push to privatize state-owned enterprises, and followed up a similar sale last fiscal year that netted $3.6 billion. Although some say that the Coal India divestment will play a part in easing pressure on government finances, Modi may not be able to reach his budget deficit target by the end of this fiscal year by selling other state assets. And while the company’s stock has fallen about 13 percent this year, it may be in a position to benefit as the country attempts to double its coal production by 2020. 5. Come buy from me, Argentina. China and Argentina announced this week that China would provide funding for $15 billion nuclear power plant projects in Argentina. The two plants, one of which will utilize the Chinese-designed Hualong One reactor, will roughly double Argentina’s nuclear power output. The loans, coupled with a nuclear plant project in the UK that China announced last month it would be funding as well, demonstrate the country’s commitment to flaunting its wealth abroad, even as the economy slows back home. And as Chinese investment in Africa declines, the nuclear projects may signal further interest among the Chinese leadership in partnerships with Latin America, which already accounts for 13 percent of Chinese outward foreign direct investment. Bonus: Mobile app enables a collective approach to clearing garbage in Delhi. Following the launch of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Swachh Bharat” campaign to clean up India, a new app was introduced in New Delhi that allows citizens to snap photos of trash piles and send them to the Public Works Department along with corresponding GPS coordinates. All three municipal corporations involved in garbage collection have pledged support for the initiative. The launch of the app comes just in time for a focused cleanliness drive in Delhi from November 22 to 30. The app is also an example of how the Indian government’s “Digital India” mission can be effective in empowering citizens to come up with solutions to societal issues.

Rachel Brown, Lincoln Davidson, Sungtae “Jacky” Park, Ariella Rotenberg, Ayumi Teraoka, and Gabriel Walker look at the top stories in Asia this week. 1. Afghans protest beheadings. Thousands of protesters gathered outside the presidential palace in Kabul on Wednesday following the beheading of seven Afghans in the southern state of Zabul. The individuals were taken hostage in the central city of Ghazni and relocated as many as fifty-six times before being killed with razor wire. An affiliate of the Islamic State group in Afghanistan is believed to have conducted the beheadings, although it has not yet taken responsibility. The demonstrators carried with them the coffins of the slain civilians who were all Hazaras, a predominately Shia ethnic minority that makes up approximately 15 percent of the Afghan population and had previously been persecuted by the Taliban. Now the group appears to be targeted by other Sunni fundamentalists as well. While the Islamic State group in Afghanistan is only loosely affiliated with the group of the same name in Iraq and Syria, it is estimated to have between one thousand and three thousand fighters now in Afghanistan. The largely peaceful protesters criticized Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s ability to handle the current security situation, and some called for his resignation. The president responded to the protests in a national address in which he pledged to find and punish the responsible parties. 2. Myanmar takes a step towards “democracy.” On November 8, Myanmar held the first national elections for its legislature since the country began its transition from military to civilian rule in 2011. Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) has won approximately 80 percent of the contested seats, more or less handing her party a safe majority in parliament and the ability to choose the country’s next president. Both Myanmar’s president, Thein Sein, and army chief, Min Aung Hlaing, have endorsed the results. The military, however, still appoints 25 percent of the seats in both the upper and lower houses of Myanmar’s parliament, effectively giving the military power to block any constitutional amendment, which requires at least 75 percent of the votes. Based on the 2008 constitution, the military also controls Myanmar’s defense, home affairs, and border affairs ministries and could seize power at any moment by declaring “a state of emergency.” Meanwhile, Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD will be left dealing with high expectations and numerous difficult problems, which include social, economic, and ethnic issues, and the question of how Myanmar should scale back its ties with China and build more constructive relations with the West. Overall, the election was a positive development for the country, but the world may find Aung San Suu Kyi far less inspiring over time as she now has to govern and not simply inspire. 3. Nepal’s border blockade results in shortages of food and medicine. Nepal is quickly running low on medicine, fuel, and other essential goods due to a blockade caused by protestors on its border with India. Nepal, a landlocked country, relies heavily on imports from India to sustain its core functions. The leadership at Nepal’s largest public medical facility in Kathmandu predicted that the current supply of medicine will run out within a week. Nepalese leadership blames India for encouraging the protests by Nepal’s ethnic minorities, the Madhesi and Tharu, in the country’s southern plains of Terai. These groups are protesting against the new Nepalese constitution, demanding they retain significant control over the regions in which they live. India denies playing an active role in the behavior of Nepal’s southern ethnic minority groups but has expressed concern over their treatment at the hands of the Nepalese government. Meanwhile, the situation threatens to become a major humanitarian disaster and has provoked commentary by human rights activists as well as United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. 4. Democratic Party of Japan begins to dissolve. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), Japan’s largest opposition party that ruled the country from 2009 to 2012, appears to be falling apart. On Wednesday, core members of the DPJ, current Policy Chief Goshi Hosono and former President Seiji Maehara held a talk with Kenji Eda, former president of the Japan Innovation Party (JIP), and agreed to work for the dissolution of the two parties by the end of 2015. The move is to form a new opposition force powerful enough to challenge the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) coalition and Komeito in next summer’s Upper House election. The DPJ has been suffering from low support ever since it lost office, and the most recent polls by Japan’s major newspapers show that while support for the LDP hovers between 34 and 40 percent, that for the DPJ only remains between 7 and 8 percent. The conservative force within DPJ has been critical of the current leadership’s pursuit to align with the Japanese Communist Party and its failure to deepen the Diet debate over security legislation bills that passed in September. 5. Congressional delegation visits Tibet. During a legislative exchange trip to China last week, seven members of the U.S. Congress, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, visited Tibet. In the past, Pelosi has been an outspoken critic of rights abuses by the Chinese government in the province, saying that ignoring the plight of Tibetans would mean losing “all moral authority” on human rights. The Congressional trip was significant because Tibet has been largely closed to journalists since anti-government protests in 2008 in which hundreds of Tibetans were imprisoned or shot dead by the government. Pelosi and friends weren’t the only U.S. officials in China this week: Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas was in Beijing meeting with Chinese Minister of Public Security Guo Shengkun to plan a December 1–2 meeting between officials from the two countries to discuss cybersecurity. Bonus: Former Chinese taxi driver buys $170 million painting. On Monday, billionaire Liu Yiqian won a heated auction at Christie’s in New York City for an oil painting by Amedeo Modigliani for a whopping $170.4 million—the second-highest price ever paid for a work of art at auction. Growing up in Shanghai, Liu dropped out of middle school and drove a taxi before striking it rich through stock trading, real estate, and pharmaceutical sales during the 1980s and 1990s. Now worth an estimated $1.5 billion, Liu and his wife are avid art collectors and in the past few years have opened two art museums in Shanghai filled with pieces from their collection. One art-world figure gibed Liu for just buying “the most expensive things,” and last year Liu was criticized for sipping tea from a $36 million Ming dynasty cup soon after winning it at auction. Although forgeries abound in the Chinese art market, in recent years fine art has been seen as a relatively safe investment compared to real estate or stocks.

Rachel Brown, Ariella Rotenberg, Ayumi Teraoka, and Gabriel Walker look at the top stories in Asia this week. 1. Chinese and Taiwanese leaders meet for the first time in decades. Tomorrow, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou will hold a historic summit in Singapore, the first meeting of its kind since the Chinese Communist revolution of 1949. The leaders will exchange views on “some important issues” under delicate circumstances, referring to each other as “mister” to avoid the issue of Taiwanese sovereignty and splitting the dinner bill to avoid the appearance that one country is hosting the other. Many believe that the meeting is scheduled to give Ma’s ruling Kuomintang (KMT), which supports closer ties with China, leverage in the upcoming presidential election against the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), whose candidate has been dominating opinion polls in recent months. Ma, however, stated that the meeting had “nothing to do” with boosting his party’s position. And some argue that the meeting will actually cause a backlash against the KMT, promoting even more Taiwanese voters to support the DPP in the January vote. 2. The Maldives declares a state of emergency. On Wednesday, the government of the Maldives declared a state of emergency, suspending basic civil liberties and giving the government broad arrest powers for the next thirty days. Maldivian President Abdulla Yameen imposed the state of emergency after weeks of political turmoil and intrigue. Vice President Ahmed Adeeb has been imprisoned for allegedly planning an attempted assassination of the president after an explosion took place on a speedboat carrying the president. President Yameen was unharmed, but his wife and two others were hurt. The United States, Amnesty International, and other human rights organizations have criticized the state of emergency and urged the Maldivian government to restore full rights to its citizens. 3. Vietnam agrees to new labor provisions. Among the notable aspects of the full text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, released on Thursday, were the compromises the Vietnamese government made on labor rights in a supplementary bilateral agreement with the United States. These include the right for workers to strike and establish independent labor unions. The bilateral agreement supplements the provisions in the labor chapter of TPP on topics such as discrimination, forced labor, and child labor. While Vietnam’s constitution nominally protects the right to protest, this has not been enshrined in other laws and wildcat strikes were tolerated just to allow workers to vent their concerns. The new rules are seen as a major concession on the part of the Vietnamese government. Vietnam is expected to gain significantly from the TPP, perhaps adding 8 percent of gross domestic product by 2030. However, the new labor provisions may add to manufacturing costs in Vietnam, which are already three times higher than a decade ago. In addition to the bilateral deal with Vietnam, the United States also signed bilateral deals with Brunei and Malaysia. The deal with Malaysia focuses specifically on addressing human trafficking. 4. Japan recognizes same-sex couples. On Thursday, the two Tokyo districts of Shibuya and Setagaya issued Japan’s first certificates recognizing same-sex couples. The certificate provides a same-sex couple with recognition equivalent to that of a married couple, lifting everyday barriers that same-sex couples in Japan used to face such as renting an apartment together, visiting each other in the hospital, and benefiting from family discounts for insurance or cell phone plans. This is a significant step for a country where being openly gay still remains largely taboo. Although public awareness for gay rights is still nascent, there have been initiatives at both the local and central government levels on this issue. In March 2015, a bipartisan caucus on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) issues was established in the Diet, and a public survey conducted by the Mainichi Shimbun also indicated that 44 percent of the Japanese public support same-sex marriages, while 39 percent do not. Education Minister Hiroshi Hase also vowed in an interview to promote LGBT rights ahead of the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. 5. Kerry tours Central Asia. Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to five Central Asian nations this week to shore up ties as the United States slowly withdraws from Afghanistan and tensions worsen between the United States and Russia. Kerry presented the United States as a partner to Central Asia at a point when many regional leaders worry about both the return of the Taliban and the rise of the group known as the Islamic State. During his trip, Kerry met jointly with five Central Asian foreign ministers in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Many of the nations Kerry visited are notorious for human rights violations such as the suppression of opposition political parties, imprisonment of dissidents, and forced labor in the cotton industry. Thus, during the trip Kerry had to balance between pressing leaders on human rights considerations and pursuing economic and security issues. American ties to Central Asia are often overshadowed by the active involvement of China and Russia in the region. Indeed, the circuit to the five nations has become popular among Asian presidents over the past few years, with the presidents of China, India, and Japan all making trips similar to Kerry’s. Bonus: Scientists attempt to explain mass Saiga die-off in Central Asia. At a meeting in Uzbekistan last week, scientists gathered to discuss a mysterious die-off of over 200,000 saigas, a critically endangered type of antelope, throughout Central Asia this summer. The deaths occurring this May amounted to 88 percent of the largest population of saigas in Kazakhstan, and comprised more than half of the total remaining population of the species. The strangely nosed animal once had a widespread range throughout the steppes of Central Asia and numbered more than one million in the early 1990s, but since then poachers and hunters have decimated the species for horns, used in traditional Chinese medicine, and meat. A number of scientists believe that rough weather indirectly caused the die-off by weakening the saigas’ immune systems and enabling normally harmless bacteria to cause devastating infections. After last week’s meeting, government and conservation group representatives from Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Russia, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan agreed on a five-year plan to protect the saigas, hopefully boosting populations so future die-offs cannot send the species into extinction.

For the first time in over three years, leaders of China, Japan, and South Korea converged on Seoul for a trilateral summit. As host, South Korean Park Geun-hye also held bilateral meetings with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. The reestablishment of the China-Japan-South Korea trilateral summit along with commitments by the leaders to once again regularize the summit process was a reward for months of South Korean diplomatic effort to restore the talks as one antidote to rising regional rivalries and conflict over historical issues in Northeast Asia. Nevertheless, the first bilateral meeting between Park and Abe failed to yield anything tangible beyond the appearance of improving relations between the two sides. The China-Japan-South Korea trilateral summit generated an impressive list of areas (from trade and investment to environment, disaster management, and nuclear safety) where the three countries are working together. Much of this work has been supported by the Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat, which has kept the ball rolling on inter-governmental cooperation on many functional issues such as joint environmental cooperation despite regional political tensions. The summit document also sought to use trilateral cooperation to create momentum for the institutionalization of the Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative (NAPCI), a Blue House priority. The summit also generated a procedural, but not substantive breakthrough in Japan-South Korea relations by enabling the first bilateral meeting between Park and Abe. Nevertheless, pledges to achieve a “swift agreement” on how to effectively address the “comfort women” issue belied the ongoing failure of the two governments to achieve closure. A “cold summit” result, including no joint press conference, no joint statement, and no Park-hosted lunch for Abe, reflected the ongoing political gap between South Korea and Japan, despite the re-establishment of normalized communication channels in every area of the relationship. Despite few results, many commentators were relieved that the meeting took place at all. The run-up to the summit had made clear that there were gaps between the two sides. Having dropped resolution of the comfort woman issue as a precondition for a bilateral summit, the Park administration tried to pressure its Japanese counterparts to compromise so as to generate a positive summit result, but Japan was not ready to move forward. This was unsurprising; Abe had signaled that Japan’s past statements should be regarded as sufficient to achieve closure in his statement marking the seventieth anniversary of the end of World War II. Park responded at the time that while his statement “did not live up to [Korean] expectations,” Korea would “take note” of Japan’s position that past statements “will remain unshakable into the future.” This exchange opened the door to improvement in Japan-South Korea relations, even as gaps continued to exist between the two sides. Park pressured Abe on the issue in her public interview with the Mainichi Shimbun in advance of the summit in which she expressed a desire for the issue to be resolved by the end of the year. However, Park’s efforts to generate public pressure on Abe to compromise were destined to backfire, further diminishing prospects for an early resolution of the issue. South Korea’s Senior Secretary for Foreign Affairs Kim Kyou-hyun reported Park’s position that “the comfort woman issue is becoming a stumbling block for improving bilateral relations and that it must be resolved swiftly in a way that will be both acceptable to the surviving comfort women and satisfactory to the Korean public.” Prime Minister Abe stated following the meeting that “regarding the comfort women issue, [Japanese] need to construct a future-oriented cooperative relationship without leaving obstacles for future generations,” and agreed that his administration would “accelerate talks” on the issue. However, it is not clear that renewed talks will move the two countries closer to a resolution if the issue is simply referred back to director-general level officials in the two foreign ministries, and it is doubtful that such accelerated talks will conclude by the end of the year. Those officials have already held periodic talks for over eighteen months, with no results. In the absence of political will to close remaining gaps between the two sides, the South Korea-Japan relationship will remain hobbled by history for the foreseeable future, severely limiting the potential for mutually beneficial strategic cooperation between the two countries. Scott Snyder is coauthor with Brad Glosserman of The Japan-South Korea Identity Clash: East Asian Security and the United States.

Ashlyn Anderson, Rachel Brown, Lincoln Davidson, Sungtae “Jacky” Park, Ariella Rotenberg, and Gabriel Walker look at the top stories in Asia this week. 1. Earthquake survivors in Afghanistan and Pakistan appeal for shelter and supplies. Just six months after a devastating earthquake in Nepal, a 7.5-magnitude earthquake shook geographically vulnerable regions in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The epicenter was reported 196 kilometers below the Hindu Kush Mountains in Afghanistan. Although the earthquake occurred much deeper than the Nepal earthquake, close to four hundred people have been reported dead, thousands suffered injuries, and many homes were destroyed by the quake and its aftermath. Three days on, many survivors remain without shelter in freezing conditions. Much of the affected area is mountainous and remote, and with communications disrupted in some places, rescue efforts have been severely hampered. To make matters worse, citizens in the area endured floods earlier this year so relief supplies typically on hand had not yet been replenished when the quake hit. In Afghanistan, the Taliban announced a ceasefire in the earthquake-affected regions and directed its members to provide support. Google launched its “Person Finder” service to assist in the search efforts—the same service that aided rescue operations in Nepal six months back. 2. China ends one-child policy. The Chinese Communist Party announced Thursday that it would allow couples to have two children, overturning a thirty-five-year-old policy limiting births to one child per couple. In 2013, facing an aging population, the government loosened the restriction by allowing couples to have two children if at least one parent was an only child. However, public response has been muted due to the high cost of raising a child, which may have led to the decision to eliminate the rule. Implementation of the one-child policy has long been a source of tension between citizens and the state in China, with the emphasis placed on hitting birth-rate targets often causing local government officials to resort to extreme measures like forcing women to have abortions or undergo sterilization. Eliminating the one-birth rule will not prevent such actions by local leaders, however; a change in the way the performance of local officials is assessed is necessary to remove incentives to restrict births. And even with the new rules, it may take years to overcome the negative effects of thirty years of family-planning policy, such as a severely skewed gender ratio. 3. Indonesian president plans to join TPP. During his visit to the United States this week, Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo announced his nation’s intentions to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Indonesia is the sixteenth-largest economy in the world with a gross domestic product of nearly one trillion dollars, so if Indonesia joins the TPP it would be a major success for proponents of the trade deal. Although Jokowi entered office as an economic reformer, recently Indonesia’s economy dipped to a five-year low with youth unemployment above 20 percent. Joining the TPP, however, could bring considerable benefits. A 2012 study found that under the agreement the nation might increase exports by up to 20 percent by 2025. A fear that neighboring countries who have already signed on to TPP, such as Malaysia and Vietnam, may now attract a greater share of business could have also motivated Indonesia’s decision to join the trade pact. Jokowi’s push to join the TPP has sparked resistance in certain protectionist sectors of the government, and critics have questioned whether Indonesia possesses adequate infrastructure to compete if its markets become more open. Concerns may also arise over Indonesia’s environmental situation, especially given that Jokowi was forced to cut his U.S. trip short due to the ongoing forest fires that are causing a haze crisis across Southeast Asia and significantly increasing Indonesia’s carbon dioxide emissions. 4. Northeast Asian trilateralism puts South Korea at the center. On November 1, South Korean President Park Geun-hye will host Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Seoul for the first trilateral summit in three years. President Park will then hold a separate bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Abe on November 2—the first between the two leaders. The two meetings come at a time of increasing regional tensions, particularly between China and Japan and between China and the United States. South Korea has an interest in ensuring that it does not get dragged into regional conflicts, becoming a “shrimp crushed between two whales,” as an old Korean adage goes. Hence, Park is seeking to improve South Korea’s relations with both China and Japan while reducing the overall tension level in Northeast Asia. She has built friendly relations with Xi and has signaled for a move toward a “two-track” approach to Japan, decoupling the inflammatory history and territorial issues from more concrete security and economic issues. At the same time, South Korea seeks to maintain a robust U.S.-ROK alliance as a hedge against China’s rise. Although the outcome of Park’s efforts will not depend on the upcoming trilateral summit alone, results from the summit should give a preview of South Korea’s ability (or inability, historically speaking) to influence the country’s strategic environment. 5. Zuckerberg defends Facebook’s free Internet plan in India. On Wednesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg held a town-hall-style meeting at the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi to answer questions about Facebook’s plan to bring the Internet to millions of unconnected Indians. The project, Free Basics (known previously as Internet.org), provides a number of simple internet services, including a stripped-down version of Facebook, through a local cell phone carrier free of charge. But even with the attractive price tag the plan is a tough sell: many complain about the carrier’s signal strength and the lack of included services. More widely, some have criticized the project for violating net neutrality, the principle of providing equal access to all web content and applications, while others have argued that such “zero rating” products can be a good thing if enough competition between providers exists. Nevertheless, Zuckerberg reiterated Facebook’s commitment to net neutrality on Wednesday, and emphasized the “moral responsibility” he felt for bringing more people online in India. Bonus: Chinese government encourages green burials. Due to the ageing population in China generally, and specifically in large cities, the Chinese government has embarked on a campaign to encourage green burials—burial practices that do not take up space—such as spreading ashes over an ocean. But so far the effort has been mostly unsuccessful. The government’s main concern is the scarcity of space for burying the dead, and some estimates show China’s current burial grounds reaching capacity in just six years. However, Chinese traditions dictate that people should show respect to their buried ancestors through offering gifts and making frequent visits to grave sites. Such traditions have proven to be a major hurdle to convincing the masses to opt for cremation and burial gardens. When faced with these options, many wonder how they will pay their respects to ancestors whose ashes have been scattered in a body of water or in a garden. In Beijing, the government set a goal to ensure half of its deceased citizens opt for a green burial by 2020. As for the program’s projected success? It doesn’t look too promising.  

Ashlyn Anderson, Rachel Brown, Lincoln Davidson, Sungtae “Jacky” Park, Ayumi Teraoka, and Gabriel Walker look at the top stories in Asia this week. 1. Hard-line Buddhist monks sway politics in Myanmar. One of the most influential groups in Myanmar’s upcoming election may not be a political party, but a nationalist Buddhist group called the Committee for the Protection of Nationality and Religion. The group, better known by the acronym Ma Ba Tha, does not officially back any party. However, the controversial monk and Ma Ba Tha member Ashin Wirathu, who was imprisoned for stoking anti-Muslim attacks in 2003, has expressed support for the Union Solidarity and Development Party rather than Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy. Ma Ba Tha has already demonstrated its political clout and wide popular support, playing an important role in the recent passage of four “race and religion” laws that regulate interfaith marriages, ban polygamy, require government permission for religious conversion, and institute strict family planning policies. These laws were deemed discriminatory toward Muslim and minority groups by human rights organizations. Nonetheless, on October 4, 2015, Ma Ba Tha supporters filled a 30,000-seat stadium in Yangon to celebrate their passage, and similar celebrations were held across the country. If Ma Ba Tha continues to push its politics during the election, Myanmar’s already controversial contest may become even more fraught. 2. China announces regulations for ride-sharing services. On Saturday, the Ministry of Transport released draft regulations that will require online car-hailing services to only use drivers with special government licenses and keep customer data within China. While the rules say that prices for ride-shares should be driven by the market, they also allow local governments to set prices according to local conditions, a measure that officials said will “maintain the stability of the industry and promote fair competition between new and old industries.” Local governments across China have opposed online ride-sharing services like Uber because they are cheaper and more convenient, and thus more popular with customers, than traditional taxi services, which are often owned by the municipal government. While the new regulations may prove onerous for all ride-sharing services, local implementation may favor incumbent firms like Didi Kuaidi over relative newcomers such as Uber. Last week, Didi Kuaidi has was issued an official operating license by the Shanghai city government, a move that heightened concerns that recent innovations in Chinese tech policy are aimed at stifling foreign competition. 3. A new Nepal PM faces pressing challenges. Following the passage of a new constitution, members of Nepal’s parliament held an election for prime minister on October 11 according to the plan laid out in the new document. Khadga Prasad Oli, the leader of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist), won 338 votes out of a total of 587 that lawmakers cast, beating the incumbent prime minister Sushil Koirala. Nepal’s thirty-eighth prime minister will face immediate challenges, including defusing protests among Nepal’s Madhesi community over the new constitution and grappling with the reconstruction of Nepal after the devastating earthquakes this year. In a positive first step, Oli reached an eight-point agreement with the leaders of a Madhesi party and the Maoist party to address grievances over the constitution. Nepal is also dealing with fuel shortages due to an unofficial blockade between India and Nepal that has aggravated relations between the two countries. The new deputy prime minister of Nepal is set to visit India next week to discuss mutual concerns. 4. Okinawa and Tokyo battle over Marine Corps base relocation. On Tuesday, Governor of Okinawa Takeshi Onaga revoked permission for the construction of a new U.S. Marine Corps base in Henoko Bay, a relatively less-populated area of the island. The U.S. and Japanese governments have been trying to relocate the Futenma Air Station, another base located in a more densely populated spot, for two decades; in 1996 the local and central governments agreed that the land the base currently occupies would be returned on condition that a replacement facility were built elsewhere within Okinawa. Onaga’s predecessor, Hirozaku Nakaima, granted permission for land reclamation in Henoko Bay in December 2013,  but Onaga was elected on a promise to halt the project and relocate the base outside of Okinawa. Responding to Onaga’s announcement, the Ministry of Defense (MOD) made an administrative appeal to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport (MLIT), which has ultimate jurisdiction over the type of construction permit revoked by the governor. If the MLIT rejects the governor’s order, the construction may restart as early as November after being halted by the central government, and the local government is likely to bring this case to court to prevent it. On Thursday, Masahisa Sato, the head of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s Committee on National Defense, said the MOD needs to be ready for a legal dispute with the Okinawa government. 5. South Korea rewrites its history books. On Monday, South Korea announced that in 2017 all secondary schools will be required to teach history from government-issued textbooks. President Park Geun-hye, whose conservative government backed the measure, defended the move and stated that the books will inculcate students with “historical convictions and pride.” Other supporters said that the eight history books currently in use, which are privately published, have “historical errors” or contain anti-state views. Critics accuse President Park of using the books to sanitize the history of South Korean conservative elites like her father, the former military dictator Park Chung-hee, and others who collaborated with the colonial Japanese government during the early twentieth century. Other civic groups and educators argued that the revised books would be a global embarrassment, and would establish a system of textbooks resembling North Korea’s. In recent years, South Korea has accused Japan of sterilizing its own history books, and the two countries have long engaged in a battle over textbooks. Bonus: Kim Jong-un fires sister over “security lapse.” Kim Jong-un reportedly fired his sister Kim Yo-jong from her position overseeing the North Korean leader’s personal protection. According to the report, she repeatedly failed to shield the dictator from a series of unfortunate incidents, such as almost being hit in the face by a guitar and being surrounded and overwhelmed by a crowd of admirers. As the sister of the supreme leader, Kim Yo-jong rapidly rose through the ranks despite being only twenty-six, but organizing the leader’s personal protection was apparently above her level of experience.

South Korea finds itself at the epicenter of a geostrategic danger zone that is all the more fragile today as a result of frictions resulting from China’s rise. More than ever, a volatile and self-isolated North Korean leadership is perceived as the trigger that could set off the regional powderkeg. Hence, South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s discussion with U.S. President Barack Obama regarding the North Korean issue will be an important and timely one. She will need strong support from the United States in her efforts to maintain South Korea’s delicate position between China and Japan and to stabilize the Korean peninsula. The immediate challenge facing both presidents is about finding a way to disrupt North Korea’s pattern of missile and nuclear tests that have occurred every three years since 2006. Existing UN Security Council sanctions have slowed but not stopped North Korea’s pursuit of a capability to deliver a nuclear strike on the U.S. mainland. Both leaders have called upon Chinese President Xi Jinping to pressure North Korea to stop violating UN resolutions halting these tests. Rather than negotiating North Korea’s denuclearization, however, North Korea’s impulsive leader, Kim Jong-un, has doubled down on a self-contradictory policy (byungjin) of parallel nuclear and economic development. At the same time, the August inter-Korean mini-crisis at the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), ultimately defused through marathon negotiations, underscores North Korea’s fragility and weak hand despite Kim’s efforts to strengthen political control at home. The United States and South Korea seek to reverse North Korea’s destabilizing pursuit of nuclear weapons, which prevent the Kim regime from achieving greater economic development. As part of her strategy to deal with the North, Park Geun-hye has strengthened her relationship with Xi Jinping, most recently through her participation last month in bilateral talks alongside Beijing’s commemoration of the seventieth anniversary of the end of World War II. Park’s controversial presence on the rostrum with Xi and Putin at the parade has elicited criticism from Western observers but has drawn domestic support from Koreans, who see a symbolic victory in Park’s replacement of North Korea’s Kim on the rostrum. Yet, China sent its highest-ranking leader in years, Chinese Communist Party Politburo member Liu Yunshan, to stand on the rostrum at Kim Jong-un’s own military parade commemorating the seventieth anniversary of the Korean Worker’s Party’s founding. Therefore, it remains unclear for now how closely the United States and South Korea will be able to work with China to deter North Korea from conducting further nuclear and missile tests. From a broader regional perspective, the South Korean strategy of avoiding choices between the United States and China is under increasing strain. The Park administration walked a tightrope between the two countries by joining the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) as a charter member despite the Obama administration’s objections based on South Korea’s own economic interests, especially given the competitiveness of many South Korean companies in the construction sector. Beijing has also pressed Seoul to reject the deployment of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, which, if deployed, could do much to assist South Korea counter North Korean advances in missile technology. Japanese observers have criticized Park’s diplomacy toward Beijing, as the move has been accompanied by a deterioration in Japan-South Korea relations. From Japan’s perspective, Seoul is a point on a line between Beijing and Tokyo on a two-dimensional plane; Seoul moving toward Beijing is moving away from Tokyo. The United States too remains concerned about frictions between the two pivotal allies in the region as the U.S. rebalance to Asia could benefit greatly from a better relationship between Seoul and Tokyo. U.S. officials, however, are not alarmed by South Korea’s diplomacy toward China as many Japanese observers are. Washington recognizes that the two-dimensional view of South Korean diplomacy is inaccurate because the U.S.-South Korea alliance is an anchor that prevents Seoul from moving into Beijing’s strategic embrace. Even so, the United States does hope to see Japan and South Korea fully stabilize their relationship by addressing differences over history forthrightly on the foundation of past understandings in order to expand bilateral and trilateral cooperation. Park Geun-hye understands that a comprehensive U.S.-ROK alliance is vital to lessen South Korea’s vulnerability to North Korea and rising Asian rivalries and to bolster the application of international norms in Northeast Asia. Although China’s economic relationship with South Korea is vibrant, it is premature for the foreseeable future to expect that China can offer South Korea a viable security alternative to the alliance with the United States.

Rachel Brown, Lincoln Davidson, Sungtae “Jacky” Park, Ayumi Teraoka, and Gabriel Walker look at the top stories in Asia this week. 1. Raging flames in Indonesia. Intense forest fires have been burning for the past few months on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo, blanketing vast areas of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and southern Thailand with smoke. Annual but illegal slash-and-burn agricultural practices that spiraled out of control caused the blazes, now amounting to more than 1,000 fire clusters on the islands. Until this Wednesday, Indonesian President Joko Widodo refused international assistance with battling the flames, but this week six countries offered aid in the form of firefighting aircraft. The fires will result in immense financial, climate, and health costs throughout the region: In 1997, another severe blaze cost the Indonesian government more than $20 billion; carbon emissions from the fires may surpass those from the entire United Kingdom this year; and 110,000 per year may die from respiratory and other illnesses caused by the fires. 2. Pacific trade deal reached. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a wide-ranging trade agreement between twelve nations that comprise nearly 40 percent of the global economy, was completed this week. The deal will eliminate 18,000 tariffs for American export firms and provide similar benefits to other nations. The most notable achievements of the deal include provisions to address agricultural trade barriers, to require all parties to adhere to basic standards of the International Labour Organization, and to address the illegal wildlife trade. The final negotiations also involved an intense debate over legal protections for manufacturers of biologic drugs. Whether the deal will be passed by Congress remains in question, and recently presidential candidate Hillary Clinton came out against the agreement. The deal will also face political opposition in a number of other nations including Canada and Japan, where agricultural provisions may cause controversy, and Malaysia, where the required reforms to the state-owned enterprise sector may provoke resistance. 3. Chaos in the KMT. Taiwan’s ruling party, the Kuomintang (KMT), announced Thursday that it would be holding an impromptu party congress to remove Hung Hsiu-chu as the party’s presidential candidate and nominate party chairman Eric Chu instead. Discontent with Hung has grown as her numbers in the polls have slipped; things came to a head this week after Hung said that the constitution of the Republic of China—the de facto government of Taiwan—calls for unification with mainland China (which the majority of Taiwan’s citizens oppose). In response, KMT members expressed concerns that Hung’s presence on the ballot would hurt their chances in legislative elections, which will be held at the same time as the presidential election in January 2016. Hung has said that she will continue to seek the presidency even if it causes her “death on the battlefield,” and some of her supporters have rallied to her call, protesting outside KMT headquarters. The internecine fight does not bode well for the KMT, which is up against second-time Democratic Progressive Party candidate Tsai Ing-wen. 4. Abe reshuffles cabinet and adds demography minister. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has reshuffled his cabinet for the third time since reassuming office in December 2012. This time, Abe retained nine and added ten new ministers, including Katsunobu Kato, who was previously the deputy chief cabinet secretary. Kato was appointed to a newly created ministerial post in charge of demography that Abe hopes will create “a society in which all one hundred million people can play an active role.” By creating this ministerial position, Abe seeks to prevent Japan’s current population of one hundred and twenty-seven million from sliding below one hundred million over the next half-century.  Recent polls showed that the new cabinet maintains a forty to forty-five percent approval rating, slightly higher than the forty percent approval that the second cabinet reshuffle last September garnered. 5. Tu Youyou wins Nobel. This Monday, eighty-four-year-old Tu Youyou became the first Chinese citizen to win a Nobel Prize in the sciences for her discovery of artemisinin, a major antimalarial drug that has saved millions of lives. Besides her distinction as the first winner in the sciences, an honor that China has sought for years, Tu is unusual in other ways. Her prize-winning research, for example, took place under a secret military project established by Mao Zedong in 1967, and drew upon an ancient Chinese medical text written over 1,500 years ago. Tu also lacks the three characteristics—a doctorate, foreign experience, and a position in the Chinese Academy of Sciences—with which many accomplished Chinese scientists distinguish themselves, so is in many ways an outlier of China’s scientific and technological system. Tu stated that she was “a little bit surprised, but not very surprised” at receiving the prize. Bonus: Indigenous South Americans consider adopting Korean alphabet. The Aymara people of Bolivia, Peru, and Chile, are considering the use of the Korean alphabet, Hangeul (or Hangul), as their primary writing system. Korean researchers have already created a system for transcribing the Aymaran language into Hangeul, and the Aymaran and Korean languages reportedly share similarities in terms of word order and grammar. If the Aymaras adopt Hangeul, they would be the second to use the writing system after a town in Indonesia adopted the script in 2009 to preserve its spoken language, Cia-Cia. Hangeul was created in 1443 CE by the Korean royal court under the instruction and supervision of King Sejong, who wanted to create a simple script to spread literacy among ordinary Koreans who, unlike the upper classes, did not have the time or resources to learn complex Chinese characters.

Ashlyn Anderson, Rachel Brown, Lincoln Davidson, Sungtae “Jacky” Park, Ariella Rotenberg, and Gabriel Walker look at the top stories in Asia this week. 1. China commits billions to international development. Addressing a United Nations conference on the UN sustainable development goals late last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that China would pledge $2 billion in aid to the United Nations to help developing countries. He followed that commitment with a further promise of $1 billion to the United Nations for a “peace and development fund” as well as a permanent UN peacekeeping unit of eight thousand troops during his first speech to the UN General Assembly on Monday. In his joint statement with President Obama last week, Xi promised $3.1 billion to the South-South Climate Cooperation Fund to aid developing countries in implementing climate change policies. Is Xi vindicating the Bush administration’s “responsible stakeholder” policy? While China continues to pursue provocative actions in the South China Sea, the country’s leadership seems to have gotten the message that being a “new type of great power” involves responsibility, and not just shows of strength—or at least that this is what the rest of the world would like to see. 2. Abe triples aid to Middle East refugees but keeps Japan’s doors closed. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe used his speech at the United Nations on Tuesday to announce a sizable increase in aid that Japan will give to help those who have fled violence in the Middle East. Abe committed to $810 million, triple the amount Japan committed last year, to assist both refugees and internally displaced persons. Additionally, he committed to $750 million for peace-building and stabilization efforts in the Middle East and North Africa. Notably, Abe did not offer to take in any of those displaced persons. In the same address, Abe continued to demand reforms that would allow Japan to become a permanent member of the Security Council. 3. Bombing in southern China kills ten. On Wednesday, a series of seventeen bombs hidden in packages successively exploded throughout the southern Chinese city of Liuzhou, killing ten and injuring more than fifty. The thirty three year old suspect behind the explosions, Wei Yinyong, who was reportedly involved in a dispute with neighbors, was killed in one of the blasts. Wei hired street vendors to deliver some of the packages to shopping malls, hospitals, and government buildings around the city, and others were placed in advance and detonated remotely. Authorities were quick to respond with instructions for media censorship, which prohibited the gathering of independent information. Bombings as a result of civil disputes, such as events in Shijiazhuang and Fuzhou, occur sporadically in China, where explosive materials for mining, construction, and farming are relatively easy to acquire. Bombings related to terrorist activity, which officials say this was not, are less common. On Thursday morning another explosion occurred in Liuzhou, although it was unclear whether it was directly linked to Wednesday’s attack. 4. India and Nepal spar following the passage of Nepal’s constitution. Following the adoption of a new constitution in Nepal, protesters from the country’s Madhesi community have continuously assembled near the Nepalese-Indian border. The protesters have congregated at border crossings, leading to a disruption in trade between the two countries. Indian officials have pointed to the security risks of sending cargo across the border; more than forty people have died in Nepal as a result of violent protests during the past month. Nepal, however, landlocked between India and China, depends on India for its entire oil supply. Fears of fuel shortages have led Nepalese authorities to announce restrictions on vehicle use. Many in Nepal believe that India imposed the blockade as a show of its disapproval of Nepal’s new constitution, leading to widespread anti-India protests. India maintains that the unrest and obstructions on Nepal’s side of the border are the causes for the halt in trade, and that the blockade is not linked to India’s position on Nepal’s constitution. 5. Child gold miners in the Philippines. According to a Human Rights Watch report released this week, children employed in the Filipino gold mining industry face numerous dangers ranging from mercury poisoning to death from the collapse of underwater compressor mines. As many as eighteen thousand children are involved in gold mining in the nation, some as young as nine years old. An estimated 3.2 million child laborers were employed across the Philippines as of 2011. While underground and underwater mining is banned in the Philippines for those under eighteen, the laws remain largely unenforced. The Philippines is currently the twentieth-largest gold producer worldwide, with eighteen tons of gold worth $700 million mined in 2014. The country has the potential to boost production substantially, however, as it has the world’s second largest gold reserves. While the report offers a number of recommendations, such as the creation of child labor-free zones, reforms may be difficult to implement if the Filipino mining sector expands rapidly. Bonus: North Korea’s big boss. According to a South Korean government analysis, North Korean’s supreme leader, Kim Jong-un, now weighs close to one hundred thirty kilograms, or nearly three hundred pounds. Kim reportedly began to gain weight rapidly after the execution of his uncle-in-law, Jang Song-thaek, in December 2013. The tendency to gain weight is a notable Kim family trait, along with the habit of looking at things and carrying out executions. Some analysts consider Kim’s ballooning weight to be a serious concern (for better or for worse) because of the possibility of his sudden demise. Unlike his father and grandfather, the third Kim does not currently have an heir-apparent.