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Japan and Lithuania have decided to upgrade bilateral ties and start up security dialogue, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Wednesday, as the Baltic country faces diplomatic row with China over Taiwan.

Lithuania has come under sustained Chinese pressure to reverse a decision last year to allow Taiwan to open a de facto embassy in the Capital Vilnius under its own name.

"Japan and Lithuania are important partners that share basic values such as freedom, human rights and the rule of law," Kishida told a joint news conference in Tokyo with his Lithuanian counterpart Ingrida Simonyte.

"I'm glad we can upgrade our ties to strategic partnership at the time of Prime Minister Simonyte's Japan visit ... In valuing the fact that Lithuania is conducting its diplomacy in a resolute matter, we also decided to start up security dialogue."

China, which claims democratically ruled Taiwan as its own territory, has downgraded diplomatic relations with Lithuania and pressured multinational companies to sever ties with it.

Taiwan's government strongly objects to China's sovereignty claims and says only the island's 23 million people can decide its future.

"Recent geopolitical challenges from North Korea's reckless and dangerous missile launches and Chinese economic coercion and to the brutal, large-scale war that Russia has started in Europe show a need for like-minded nations to cooperate closer together," Simonyte said.

"This partnership serves the mutual interest of our nations and it is aimed at making the world a better and safer place for democracy and all the freedom-loving people," she said. (Reuters)

The three most glaring omissions from China's new Communist Party leadership share one common trait: all rose through its Youth League and were considered members of a once-powerful faction whose influence Xi Jinping has now effectively crushed.

Premier Li Keqiang and Vice Premier Wang Yang, both 67 and young enough to be re-appointed to the elite seven-member Politburo Standing Committee, were left off even the wider Central Committee, as Xi installed loyalists in top party posts during the recent twice-a-decade leadership reshuffle.

Fellow vice premier and one-time high-flyer Hu Chunhua, who, at 59, had been seen by some party watchers as a candidate for premier and once even a possible future president, did not make it to the 24-man Politburo.

The omissions show Xi has succeeded in a years-long effort to eradicate the faction, analysts said.

"On Hu Chunhua, I think this has been Xi Jinping's main tactic of shutting down the youth league faction," said Victor Shih, an expert on elite politics in China and a professor at the University of California, San Diego.

"He has stifled the careers of quite a few cadres in that faction."

In a dramatic incident widely viewed as symbolic of the faction's demise, Xi's predecessor, Hu Jintao, who is 79 and a Youth League veteran, was unexpectedly escorted from the stage at Saturday's closing ceremony of the party congress.

Exactly what happened remains unclear, but state news agency Xinhua said in two English posts on Twitter that it was related to Hu's health. The social network is blocked in China.

"They are completely defeated," said Cheng Li, a specialist on the transformation of political leaders in China, referring to the sidelining of the Youth League faction.

"It means Xi can do many things he wants to, and opposing forces have got weaker," added Li, who is with the Brookings Institution in Washington.

"It can be read as, he didn't want the Western-style balance of power and wanted to show more of the centralisation of his power."

As Xi kicks off his third leadership term with more power than any leader since Mao Zedong, he faces a mountain of problems, from a dismal economy to his own COVID-19 policy that has backed China into a corner, and souring ties with the West.

TRAINING GROUND

The "faction" refers to officials in leadership roles in the Youth League, which recruits and trains some of China's brightest, mainly high school and university students, traditionally acting as a feeder organisation for the party.

The Youth League's budget has been cut from nearly 700 million yuan ($96 million) in 2012, the year Xi assumed power, to about 260 million yuan in 2021, official data shows.

Membership has dropped to about 74 million over the same period from around 90 million.

China's Communist Party has about 97 million members.

"As a party-led organization, the CYL has lost its clout as the place for grooming leaders," said Dali Yang, a political scientist at the University of Chicago.

"But it has already been working hard to adapt to the changing political circumstances," he said, adding that the Youth League had built a social media presence, appealing to nationalistic pride, and engaged in civic functions.

The Youth League has been active in attacking foreign brands accused of misbehaviour in China, such as false advertising.

Last year, Western journalists said they received death threats after its branch in the central province of Henan asked social media followers to report the whereabouts of a BBC reporter covering major floods there.

The Youth League did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

Its political image lost some sheen in 2012, when Ling Jihua, a top aide to Hu Jintao, tried to cover up the circumstances around the death of his son, killed while driving a Ferrari that crashed in Beijing.

Ling was later charged with corruption and jailed for life.

XI'S 'ZHIJIANG NEW ARMY'

Factions, cliques and power bases have existed, with varying levels of influence, since the party's founding a century ago.

They famously included the so-called "Shanghai Gang" of former leader Jiang Zemin, who is now 96.

Xi's faction, the so-called "Zhijiang New Army", was forged during his years as party chief of the eastern province of Zhejiang between 2002 and 2007.

John Delury, a professor of Chinese studies at Seoul's Yonsei University, said the new leadership reflects Xi's predominance.

"But history would remind us that no political system on earth has eradicated the existence of internal disagreement, rivalry, and power struggles," he said.

"It can take time, but after one particular faction is eliminated, another faction eventually emerges." (Reuters)

Russian President Vladimir Putin is likely to use the possible extension of the U.N.-brokered Black Sea grain deal as a way to gain leverage and dominate next month's G20 summit in Indonesia, a European diplomat briefed on the grain talks told Reuters.

Ahead of the Nov. 19 expiry of the grain deal, which allows Ukrainian Black Sea grain exports, Russian officials have repeatedly said that there are serious problems with it.

But a European diplomat who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the discussions said that Putin will attend the G20 summit on the resort island of Bali that begins on Nov. 15.

The Kremlin, which has not yet confirmed that Putin will attend, declined immediate comment. Putin said on Oct. 14 that he had not yet made a final decision about whether or not he would go.

If he does, it will be the first major global summit the Kremlin chief has attended alongside major Western leaders including U.S. President Joe Biden since the war began on Feb. 24.

"The grain deal will be the centrepiece of this G20 summit and everyone will be trying to convince Putin to extend it, essentially to allow it to roll over or to extend it for longer," the European diplomat said.

"It is a way for the Russians to hold the cards at the G20 summit but a rollover or a longer term extension to the grain deal doesn’t cost them anything."

The United Nations-brokered grain deal is crucial for food markets: it allows the export of grain from Ukraine, one of the world’s largest grain exporters, that the Russian invasion had halted.

Since the deal was clinched on July 22, several millions of tonnes of corn, wheat, sunflower products, barley, rapeseed and soya have been exported from Ukraine's Black Sea ports.

Leaders at the G20 will push Putin to extend the deal, the diplomat said. Ultimately, the diplomat said, Russia will allow the deal to rollover for four months - or even go for a longer extension.

"Russia will take it to the brink but they will extend because they won’t want to face the international opprobrium of ending the grain deal," the diplomat said.

"This is the first big event since the war began and every head of state who wants to be a mediator – beginning with President Macron – will make a beeline for Putin’s hotel room to be the mediator who convinced Putin to extend the grain deal – so Putin will be the kingmaker at this summit." (Reuters)

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is gravely concerned about escalating violence in Myanmar, the bloc's chair Cambodia said, in remarks ahead of a special meeting of its foreign ministers on Thursday to discuss the crisis.

"We are deeply saddened by the growing casualties, and the immense suffering that ordinary people in Myanmar have endured," the chair's statement said, calling for restraint, an immediate cessation of fighting, and for all parties to pursue dialogue.

Myanmar's generals have been barred from high-level ASEAN meetings since last year, when the army ousted Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's elected government, detaining her and thousands of activists and launching a deadly crackdown that has given rise to armed resistance movements.

A spokesperson for the Cambodian foreign ministry said Myanmar would not be participating in Thursday's meeting at the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta.

The gathering aims to come up with recommendations on how to push forward the peace process ahead of an ASEAN summit next month.

The ASEAN chair cited the bombing of Myanmar's largest prison, conflict in Karen State and an air strike in Kachin State on Sunday, which local media said killed at least 50 people, as examples of the recent increase in violence.

The conflict was not only exacerbating the humanitarian situation but undermining efforts to implement a peace plan agreed between ASEAN and the junta last year, said the statement.

ASEAN is leading the international peace effort but the junta has done little to honour its commitments in an ASEAN "consensus", which include an immediate halt to violence and starting dialogue towards a peace agreement.

The junta says it is trying to restore order by combating "terrorists" with which it will not engage in dialogue.

ASEAN had invited non-political Myanmar representatives to Thursday's meeting, but the military government had not taken up the offer so far, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said.

She also told The Jakarta Post the meeting was not a form of interference, but "a reflection of ASEAN's care toward one of its own members".

ASEAN has a longstanding policy of non-interference in members' sovereign affairs, but some nations have called for the bloc to be bolder in taking action against the junta.

Malaysia's foreign minister has said ASEAN must "seriously review" the plan and "if it should be replaced with something better". Saifuddin Abdullah has also met his counterpart from Myanmar's National Unity Government, a shadow administration outlawed by the junta.

"The ministers will have to decide what to do with the five-point consensus – whether to leave it as it is and hope for the best, or to add stronger measures," said Khin Zaw Win of Tampadipa Institute, an independent Myanmar think tank. (Reuters)