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September
Hong Kong COVID cases hit 10,586 amid concerns over tighter restrictions
Written by Nur Yasmin
Hong Kong reported 10,586 new COVID-19 infections on Thursday as a rise in daily cases triggers concerns that authorities will tighten COVID-19 restrictions just as the government has gradually relaxed some of the world's most stringent measures.
Government advisers have said the recent rise in infections was expected and dismissed the need for tighter restrictions, according to local media. (reuters)
September
China has been simulating attacks on U.S. Navy ships, Taiwan says
Written by Nur Yasmin
China has been simulating attacks on U.S. Navy ships and is aiming to prevent foreign forces from coming to Taiwan's aid in the event of a war, Taiwan's defence ministry said in a strongly worded report raising the alarm on Beijing's military designs.
Tensions between Taiwan and China have soared following a visit to Taipei last month by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which infuriated Beijing, which viewed it as an interference in its affairs.
China, which claims democratically-governed Taiwan as its own despite the strong objections of the Taipei government, carried out war games after Pelosi's trip and is continuing its military activities near the island.
Taiwan's defence ministry, in a report to parliament that was reviewed by Reuters, said China was continuing to strengthen its combat preparedness for an attack on the island. It was focusing on the first island chain, which runs from Japan through Taiwan, the Philippines and on to Borneo, enclosing China's coastal seas.
There was no immediate response from Beijing to the report.
China has been "using combat drills to carry out simulated attacks on U.S. ships that enter into the first island chain", the report said, and aims to gain strategic control of that island chain by 2035.
The United States has been regularly sailing naval ships into the South China Sea, sometimes close to Chinese-held islands, and also through the Taiwan Strait on what it calls freedom of navigation missions that always anger China.
Starting this year, the ministry said China has increased its military intimidation including drills that aim to undermine Taiwan's morale and "force negotiations with a war" and "force a unification with arms".
China could use special forces or agents to "decapitate" Taiwan's command systems and damage infrastructure in an attack, and is capable of launching electronic attacks to disrupt communications and command systems, said the report which was dated Thursday.
LOGISTICS CONSTRAINTS
China could also blockade Taiwan and cut off its energy supplies and economy, it added, but noted Beijing still had transport and logistics constraints to launch a full invasion.
China has, however, been drafting civilian transport ships for annual amphibious drills to boost logistics support for any Taiwan attack, the ministry said, adding it expected China's newest aircraft carrier to enter service in 2025.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine is also being studied by China and has prompted them to "modify" their Taiwan attack plans, the ministry said, without elaborating.
China has "substantially threatened our nation's defence security and endangered peace, security and stability in the areas near the Taiwan Strait," the report said, pointing to Chinese drills that have expanded beyond the first island chain, a move the ministry said was meant to stop foreign countries from intervening in an attack on Taiwan.
China could also using "grey-zone tactics" to change the military status quo, the ministry said, including by sending drones, rubber boats into Taiwan's territory or deploying sea militia.
Taiwan has complained of repeated harassment by Chinese drones, and on Thursday shot one down that flew near a Taiwanese-controlled islet just off China's coast. (reuters)
September
Pakistan court extends Imran Khan's bail on terrorism charges
Written by Nur Yasmin
A Pakistani court on Thursday extended former Prime Minister Imran Khan's pre-arrest bail for two weeks on terrorism charges relating to a speech after Khan appeared in court amid tight security, his lawyer said.
"It is not at all a case of terrorism," Faisal Chaudhry, the lawyer told Reuters of the charges, which Khan and his aides have termed politically motivated.
The bail was approved until Sept. 12, he said. The pre-arrest bail expired on Aug. 31.
The charges against Khan are related to what police said was a threat to Islamabad police chief and a female judge after Khan spoke about police torture of an aide who faces sedition charges for inciting mutiny in the military.
Political tensions in Pakistan remain high as Khan rallies support for elections that are not due until October next year.
Khan has denied he threatened the officials, saying his words were taken out of context.
In his speech, Khan said he "would not spare" the Islamabad police chief and a female judge who remanded his aide to custody, adding he would take legal action against them. (reuters)
September
S.Korea says U.S. pledged to review impact of EV subsidy changes
Written by Nur Yasmin
South Korea's national security adviser said on Thursday the United States has promised to review the impact of its new rules on subsidies for electric vehicles following concern they could hurt South Korean automakers, Yonhap news agency reported.
Kim Sung-han made the comment after meeting U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan in Hawaii, where they gathered for three-way talks with Japan chiefly to coordinate their Indo Pacific policies in the light of tensions between China and Taiwan.
Concerns have mounted in South Korea over the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), signed into law by U.S. President Joe Biden last month.
Measures under the new law would include halting subsidies for EVs made outside North America, which could affect companies like Hyundai Motor Co (005380.KS) and its affiliate Kia Corp (000270.KS).
Kim said he raised the issue at a bilateral meeting with Sullivan, who in response pledged to look into the law's impact at the National Security Council, Yonhap said.
"He said the IRA is likely to bring more pluses than minuses to Korea, but he would take a closer look at how the electric vehicle subsidy issue will develop going forward and what impact it will have," Kim was quoted as telling reporters.
South Korea's parliament on Thursday passed a resolution expressing concern over the new rules, which have eliminated the federal tax credits for which South Korean automakers' EVs were previously eligible in the United States.
The resolution called for the South Korean government to respond, saying the law was discriminatory.
Lee Do-hoon, a South Korean vice foreign minister, said on Tuesday that Seoul has asked Washington to postpone the new rules until Hyundai completes building its Georgia factory in 2025. Seoul officials have also said the law may violate a bilateral free trade agreement. (reuters)
September
Sri Lanka gains IMF's provisional agreement for $2.9 bln loan
Written by Nur Yasmin
Sri Lanka has reached a preliminary agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a loan of about $2.9 billion, the global lender said on Thursday, as the country seeks a way out its worst economic crisis in decades.
The agreement, which Reuters first reported on Wednesday, is subject to approval by IMF management and its executive board, and is contingent on Sri Lankan authorities following through with previously agreed measures.
"This staff-level agreement is only the beginning of a long road ahead for Sri Lanka to emerge from the crisis," senior IMF official Peter Breuer told reporters in Colombo.
"The authorities have already begun the reform process and it will be important to continue on this path with determination."
IMF conditions for the loan also include receiving financing assurances from Sri Lanka's official creditors and efforts by the country to reach an agreement with private creditors.
Its programme, spread over four years, will aim to boost government revenue, encourage fiscal consolidation, introduce new pricing for fuel and electricity, hike social spending, bolster central bank autonomy and rebuild depleted foreign reserves.
The country's reserves stood at $1.82 billion as of July, according to central bank data.
"Starting from one of the lowest revenue levels in the world, the programme will implement major tax reforms. These reforms include making personal income tax more progressive and broadening the tax base for corporate income tax and VAT," the statement said.
"The programme aims to reach a primary surplus of 2.3 percent of GDP by 2024," it added.
Once the IMF package is approved, Sri Lanka is also likely receive further financial support from other multilateral creditors.
The country's CSE All-Share index (.CSE) finished 2% higher, building on a 17% gain last month.
AUSTERITY AND JOB CUTS
Sri Lanka's current financial turmoil, its worst since the country's independence from Britain in 1948, stems from economic mismanagement as well as the COVID-19 pandemic that has wiped out the country's key tourism industry.
Sri Lankans have faced acute shortages of fuel and other basic goods for months, stoking unprecedented protests that forced a change in government.
Ranil Wickremesinghe, a veteran lawmaker who took over as president in July, has faced an uphill battle to stabilise the economy, which has been buffeted by runaway inflation that is now at almost 65% year-on-year.
Udeeshan Jonas, chief strategist at Sri Lankan investment bank CAL Group, said the IMF's comments were largely positive.
"They said the revenue measures that we've taken have been substantial (and) they're happy with what we've done from a fiscal perspective," he said.
Although welfare budgets for Sri Lanka's poorest would be protected, Jonas expects significant austerity measures and job cuts at loss-making state-owned enterprises.
"Privatisation is on the cards," he said, "and I think it will happen probably by next year."
Wickremesinghe, who also serves as the country's finance minister, on Tuesday presented an interim budget aimed at clinching the deal with the IMF.
The budget revised Sri Lanka's deficit projection for 2022 to 9.8% of the gross domestic product from 8.8% earlier, while outlining fiscal reforms, including a hike in value-added taxes.
CREDITOR COLLABORATION
IMF's Breuer said the preliminary agreement highlighted the commitment of Wickremesinghe's government to comprehensive and significant reforms.
"This is a credible device to show to creditors that Sri Lanka is serious about engaging in reforms," he said.
Sri Lanka needs to restructure nearly $30 billion of debt, and Japan has offered to lead talks with its other main creditors, including regional rivals India and China.
"If creditors are not willing to provide these assurances, that would indeed deepen the crisis here in Sri Lanka and would undermine its repayment capacity," Breuer said.
Sri Lanka will also need to strike a deal with international banks and asset managers that hold the majority of its $19 billion worth of sovereign bonds, which are now classified as in default.
Sri Lanka's debt had soared to unsustainable levels in the run up to the crisis. Years of populist tax cuts had depleted finances, which were further hammered by the pandemic.
The damage was compounded by a ban on chemical fertilisers that hit the farming industry, followed by soaring oil and food prices driven by the conflict in Ukraine.
"From our perspective, it is important to move expeditiously," Breuer said, referring to the need for creditors to work together.
"That really is the key here. Because we want to avoid the crisis becoming worse." (reuters)
September
UK will work to change China's actions after U.N. report on Xinjiang - Truss
Written by Nur Yasmin
Britain will keep working with international partners to try to change China's actions, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said on Thursday, responding to a U.N. report that China may have committed crimes against humanity in its Xinjiang region
"The report ... provides new evidence of the appalling extent of China's efforts to silence and repress Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang," said Truss, the frontrunner to become the next British prime minister in a leadership contest that ends next week.
"We will continue to act with international partners to bring about a change in China’s actions, and immediately end its appalling human rights violations in Xinjiang." (reuters)
September
Poland puts its WW2 losses at $1.3 trillion, demands German reparations
Written by Nur Yasmin
Poland estimates its World War Two losses caused by Germany at 6.2 trillion zlotys ($1.32 trillion), the leader of the country's ruling nationalists said on Thursday, and he said Warsaw would officially demand reparations.
Poland's biggest trade partner and a fellow member of the European Union and NATO, Germany has previously said all financial claims linked to World War Two have been settled.
Poland's new estimate tops the $850 billion estimate by a ruling party lawmaker from 2019. The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has repeated calls for compensation several times since it took power in 2015, but Poland hasn't officially demanded reparations.
"The sum that was presented was adopted using the most limited, conservative method, it would be possible to increase it," Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of Law and Justice (PiS), told a news conference.
The combative stance towards Germany, often used by PiS to mobilize its constituency, has strained relations with Berlin. It intensified after Russia invaded Ukraine amid criticism of Berlin's dependence on Russian gas and its slowness in helping Kyiv.
Some six million Poles, including three million Polish Jews, were killed during the war and Warsaw was razed to the ground following a 1944 uprising in which about 200,000 civilians died.
The German government and Foreign Office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In 1953 Poland's then-communist rulers relinquished all claims to war reparations under pressure from the Soviet Union, which wanted to free East Germany, also a Soviet satellite, from any liabilities. PiS says that agreement is invalid because Poland was unable to negotiate fair compensation.
Donald Tusk, leader of Poland's biggest opposition party Civic Platform, said on Thursday that Kaczynski's announcement was "not about reparations".
"It's about an internal political campaign to rebuild support for the ruling party," he said.
PiS is still leading in most opinion polls but its edge over Civic Platform has narrowed in recent months amid criticism of its handling of surging inflation and an economic slowdown.
September
Putin denies Gorbachev a state funeral and will stay away
Written by Nur Yasmin
Russian President Vladimir Putin is to miss the funeral of the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, denying the man who failed to prevent the collapse of the Soviet empire the full state honours granted to Boris Yeltsin.
Gorbachev, idolised in the West for allowing eastern Europe to escape Soviet communist control but unloved at home for the chaos that his "perestroika" reforms unleashed, will be buried on Saturday after a public ceremony in Moscow's Hall of Columns.
The grand hall, within sight of the Kremlin, hosted the funerals of Soviet leaders Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin and Leonid Brezhnev. Gorbachev will be given a military guard of honour - but his funeral will not be a state one.
State television on Thursday showed Putin solemnly placing red roses beside Gorbachev's coffin - left open as is traditional in Russia - in Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital, where he died on Tuesday aged 91.
Putin made a sign of the cross in Russian Orthodox fashion before briefly touching the edge of the coffin.
"Unfortunately, the president's work schedule will not allow him to do this on Sept. 3, so he decided to do it today," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
He said Gorbachev's ceremony would have "elements" of a state funeral, and that the state was helping to organise it.
Nevertheless, it will be a marked contrast to the funeral of Yeltsin, who was instrumental in sidelining Gorbachev as the Soviet Union fell apart and hand-picked Putin, a career KGB intelligence officer, as the man most suited to succeed him.
When Yeltsin died in 2007, Putin declared a national day of mourning and, alongside world leaders, attended a grand state funeral in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.
Russia's intervention in Ukraine appears aimed at reversing at least in part the collapse of the Soviet Union that Gorbachev failed to prevent in 1991.
Gorbachev's decision to let the countries of the post-war Soviet communist bloc go their own way, and East and West Germany to reunify, helped to trigger nationalist movements within the 15 Soviet republics that he was powerless to quell.
Five years after taking power in 2000, Putin called the breakup of the Soviet Union "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century".
It took Putin more than 15 hours after Gorbachev's death to publish a restrained message of condolence that said Gorbachev had had a "huge impact on the course of world history" and "deeply understood that reforms were necessary" to tackle the problems of the Soviet Union in the 1980s. (reuters)
August
Papua New Guinea wants security treaty with Australia -defence minister Marles
Written by Nur Yasmin
Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles said on Wednesday Papua New Guinea had proposed a security treaty between both countries amid increasing tensions in the Pacific islands after China struck a security pact with neighbouring Solomon Islands.
PNG Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko also told ABC Television he had discussed a security treaty with his Australian counterpart Penny Wong during her visit to Port Moresby on Tuesday, while Wong told ABC the discussions were in a "very early stage."
The Solomon Islands has had a tense relationship with the United States and its Pacific allies since striking a security pact with China in April. Australia, New Zealand and other Pacific island countries have said security needs should be met within the region.
"This is an idea that has been put forward by PNG," Marles told ABC radio on Wednesday.
"We have been making it really clear we want to be as close to PNG as we can be. We want to build on the already close military to military relationship that we have with Papua New Guinea, which we see as one of the most important military to military relationships that we have," he added.
Papua New Guinea is Australia's closest northern neighbour, separated by only a few kilometres, and a former colony, but has increasing trade and investment ties with China.
China failed to reach a sweeping trade and security pact with 10 Pacific nations including PNG in June.
Australia and the United States are funding the upgrade of a naval base on PNG's Manus Island, after a failed Chinese offer to redevelop a naval base in 2018.
Chinese navy vessels transit through the narrow Torres Strait separating Australia and PNG, with the activity becoming a point of friction in February when a Chinese ship directed a laser at an Australian military surveillance aircraft in flight over Australia's northern approaches.
The Solomon Islands, which has maritime borders with PNG and Australia, on Tuesday said it was suspending port visits by foreign navies until it puts in place a new approval process.
Marles declined to comment directly on whether Australia had been notified of the moratorium on port visits, after the United States government received notice a week after a U.S. coast guard vessel was unable to make a port call in Honiara.
"We want to see Australia be the natural partner of choice for the countries of the Pacific, that is not something that we take for granted," he said. (Reuters)
August
Singapore sees the rise of million-dollar public housing
Written by Nur Yasmin
Hundreds of public housing apartments in Singapore, one of the world's most expensive cities, are being sold for over one million Singapore dollars ($716,000) as COVID-related construction delays create a shortage of new units.
At least two units have surpassed the million-dollar mark in U.S. dollars, and the high prices are fuelling talk of new government measures to try to cool thriving property markets.
The Southeast Asian city-state's public housing system – which sells government-built apartment units directly to citizens on a 99-year lease - has led to over 80% of Singaporeans owning their homes, one of the world's highest rates.
Many units - known as Housing & Development Board (HDB) flats - are conveniently located near train stations and malls and cater to various socioeconomic groups.
As ownership is transferable to both citizens and permanent residents after five years, a resale market has emerged. Some apartments originally purchased for around S$500,000 are now fetching double that, depending on size and location.
The most expensive resale public flat - a spacious 122-square metre unit close to train stations and schools and with 92 years' lease left - sold this year for S$1.418 million.
For decades, Singaporeans have used their HDB flats for extra cash by renting them out or reselling at a profit.
"Million-dollar HDB flats are here to stay, as there will always be people who like to live in central locations or larger spaces," said Clarence Long, who brokered a 113-sqm public flat sale for S$1.4 million in May.
"If you're looking at private condo of similar size in the same location, the price could easily be S$2.5 million," Long said.
Unlike HDB flats, private condos in Singapore typically have security guards and facilities including swimming pools and gyms.
Most first-time public flat buyers can apply for government housing grants and loans, making them less affected by rising bank interest rates, and keen to exit the rental market that has also soared amid the pandemic.
"The monthly mortgage for my HDB flat is about S$3,400, this is much cheaper as the rental for a similar flat now will be about S$5,000," said Rajiv Malhotra, 45, who bought a 94-sqm public flat for S$1.08 million last year.
The proportion of monthly income used for mortgage payments has for three years remained at about 23% on average for public flat buyers with government loans, the government said late last year.
RISING PRICES
Singapore's construction sector, heavily reliant on foreign labour, has experienced major disruptions amid the COVID-19 pandemic, with tight supplies of materials also leading to delays.
Analysts expect tight supply to ease in early 2023.
While million-dollar flats are still less than 2% of total transactions, a record 259 public flats have been sold for S$1 million or more last year, official data shows, and there have already been about 230 by August this year.
Those finding the resale market unaffordable can seek to buy off-plan public flats directly from the government, known as HDB Built-To-Order (BTO) public flats, typically selling for about S$300,000 to S$700,000.
However, most popular BTO projects are overly subscribed and take around five years to complete construction, pushing many to the resale market.
When contacted by Reuters about any new cooling measures in the pipeline, HDB did not comment but referred to earlier government statements.
The Ministry of National Development said last month the government planned to ramp up supply of new BTO flats to meet demand.
Singapore announced cooling measures on property markets last December, including raising stamp duties and tightening loan limits and transaction volumes have seen some softening.
"There is a possibility that the government may consider another round of cooling measures given the rising prices in both public and private residential markets," said Christine Sun, the senior vice president of research & analytics at OrangeTee & Tie.
"But it won't be easy...because it's willing seller, willing buyer," Sun added. (Reuters)