ASIANOMICS

🇺🇸🇹🇼 US, Taiwan seek to expand island’s participation’ in international community US and Taiwanese officials held talks in Taipei on expanding the island’s role in international affairs, the US State Department said. “The consultations focused on expanding Taiwan’s meaningful participation in the United Nations system and other international fora,” the US agency said in a statement. China has for decades blocked Taiwan’s participation in UN agencies and other international organizations, in which only states may participate. The policy has been expanded to prohibit Taiwanese visitors from entering or touring the UN building in New York. #USA #Taiwan @asianomics

🇯🇵 Just 10.4% of respondents want PM Kishida to continue to serve Only 10.4% of respondents to a Kyodo News poll said they want Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to win the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's leadership race slated for September and continue serving as premier. The survey, conducted on Saturday and Sunday, also showed the approval rating for Kishida's Cabinet was at 22.2%, 2.0 percentage points down from a previous 24.2%. Previosly, the Mainichi newspaper found Kishida to be the least popular leader in its 76 years of conducting monthly surveys on political sentiment. #Japan @asianomics

🇺🇸🇨🇳🇵🇭 US East Asia envoy says South China Sea situation deeply concerning US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink on Saturday said the situation in the South China Sea is deeply concerning, and said China's recent actions in the disputed waterway were "deeply destabilising". Kritenbrink made the comments during a visit to Hanoi, amid rising tension between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea, where Vietnam is also a claimant. "We think that China's actions, particularly its recent actions, around the Second Thomas Shoal, vis-à-vis the Philippines have been irresponsible, aggressive, dangerous, deeply destabilising," Kritenbrink said at a briefing. #USA #China #ThePhilippines @asianomics

🇻🇳🇨🇳 Vietnam govt says PM to pay working visit to China June 24-27 Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh will pay a working visit to China from June 24 to 27, and will attend a meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) during his trip, the government said. The WEF meeting will be held in China's Dalian City, Liaoning Province, the government said in a statement. This is the example of Vietnam balancing relations of the key world players. Right after Vladimir Putin left Hanoi, US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink visited Vietnam. Now one of the highest representatives of the Vietnamese leadership is going to China. This also means that Vietnam doesn't pick sides in its foreign policy. However, China is still slightly more important to Hanoi among other priorities. #Vietnam #China @asianomics

🇵🇭🇨🇳 Philippines not in business of instigating wars, says President Marcos Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr said on Sunday his country is not in the business of instigating wars and will always aim to settle disputes peacefully, amid escalating maritime confrontations with China. "In defending the nation, we stay true to our Filipino nature that we would like to settle all these issues peacefully," Marcos said in a speech to troops of the Western Command unit in charge of overseeing the South China Sea. Marcos, who did not name China in his speech, commended the troops for exercising restraint "amidst intense provocation", and said his country would always exercise its freedoms and rights in line with international law. #ThePhilippines #China @asianomics

🇨🇳🇫🇷 China-France satellite will monitor most powerful explosions in space An observatory built by Chinese and French researchers will hunt for the universe’s most powerful explosions after being launched into a low-Earth orbit in another landmark space mission between the two countries. The Space-based multi-band astronomical Variable Objects Monitor, or SVOM, blasted off on top of a Long March 2C rocket from western China’s Xichang Satellite Launch Centre on Saturday. The 930kg probe, which took hundreds of scientists and engineers nearly two decades to develop, will orbit Earth at 625km above the ground to accurately measure the location and energy of distant, violent explosions known as gamma-ray bursts. #China #France @asianomics

🇺🇸🇨🇳 US Marine commandant says littoral regiment to be set up on Guam The US Marines will deploy to Guam a littoral regiment capable of a flexible and rapid response in a "few years" as part of efforts to deal with China's growing assertiveness. Gen. Eric Smith, the commandant of the Marine Corps, told a press conference in Washington that the Marine Littoral Regiment is "designed as a counter to PRC aggression," to protect Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. Smith said the regiment, due to be based on the US island territory of Guam, "will have responsibility to rapidly deploy inside the first island chain into the Philippines in order to spread the battlespace out and to protect those strategic lines of communication that emanate from Japan, back to the Philippines, back to Hawaii." #USA #China @asianomics

🇵🇭🇨🇳 Philippines says it did not consider invoking US pact over South China Sea clash The Philippines did not consider invoking a mutual defence treaty with the United States after accusing China of disrupting a resupply mission in the disputed South China Sea, officials said. Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, who also chairs the national maritime council, said the confrontation between Philippine navy sailors and the Chinese coast guard "was probably a misunderstanding or an accident". "We are not yet ready to classify this as an armed attack," Bersamin told a briefing. "I think this is a matter that can easily be resolved by us and if China wants to work with us, we can work with China." #ThePhilippines #China @asianomics

🇨🇳🇩🇪 EU tariffs on China not a 'punishment', says German economy minister Proposed European Union tariffs on Chinese goods are not a "punishment", Germany's Economy Minister Robert Habeck told Chinese officials in Beijing on Saturday. Habeck's visit to China is the first by a senior European official since Brussels proposed hefty duties on imports of Chinese-made electric vehicles to combat what the EU considers excessive subsidies. Any countervailing duty measure that results from the EU review "is not a punishment", he said, adding that such measures were meant to compensate for the advantages granted to Chinese companies by Beijing. #China #Germany @asianomics

🇺🇸🇰🇷🇯🇵 US aircraft carrier arrives in South Korea for military drills A nuclear-powered US aircraft carrier, the Theodore Roosevelt, arrived in South Korea's port city of Busan on Saturday for joint military exercises this month with the host nation and Japan. The arrival came as the three countries are expected to hold their first-ever trilateral multidomain exercise, dubbed the Freedom Edge, later this month amid joint efforts to bolster security cooperation against North Korean threats. The three sides agreed to launch the exercise during their three-way talks held on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue security conference earlier this month. It takes its name from key bilateral exercises the US holds with the Asian neighbors — Freedom Shield with South Korea and Keen Edge with Japan. #USA #SouthKorea #Japan @asianomics