Japan will continue seeking responsible actions from China, says new foreign minister - CNA

TOKYO: Japan's new foreign minister, Yoko Kamikawa, said at her inaugural press conference on Thursday (Sep 14) that Japan would continue seeking China to act responsibly, while maintaining dialogue to resolve common issues together.

Appointed on Wednesday as part of a cabinet reshuffle, Kamikawa is Japan's first female foreign minister in 20 years.

"We will continue to say what must be said and seek China to act responsibly, but will continue to hold dialogues on issues, and work together with them on common issues," she said, acknowledging there were many contentious matters that need to be resolved.

"I believe we must both put in the effort to build a constructive and stable relationship," she said, adding that Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's stance toward China had not changed.

Most recently, relations between Japan and China cooled after Japan started releasing treated radioactive water from the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean last month.

The move angered China, which in retaliation imposed a blanket ban on Japanese seafood and aquatic products.

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2023-09-14 05:51:43Z
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Foxconn founder Terry Gou picks Netflix hit show actress as presidential running mate - The Straits Times

TAIPEI - Mr Terry Gou, the founder of major Apple supplier Foxconn, on Thursday said his running mate in Taiwan’s presidential election next year would be Ms Tammy Lai Pei-hsia, an actress who starred in a high-profile Netflix drama.

After months of speculation, the billionaire Gou announced his run as an independent candidate last month, though he has continued to run at the bottom of most opinion polls and well behind the favourite, the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) William Lai, currently Taiwan’s vice-president.

At a news conference in Taipei, Mr Gou introduced the veteran actress, author and singer Ms Lai as his running mate.

She played a presidential candidate in the hit Taiwanese Netflix show “Wave Makers” earlier this year. At the end of the show, she wins the election.

That series, about the members of an election campaign team, including a supportive manager who convinces a young staffer who was groped that the issue is too important to be swept under the rug, kicked off a renewed #MeToo movement in Taiwan.

“I’m quite open-minded. I told myself that last year I would set no ceiling for myself, and I didn’t expect I’d actually be raised up this far,” Ms Lai told reporters.

“After meeting Chairman Gou two or three times, I was very sure he’s someone I could cooperate with. Because he’s fascinating,” she added. “I told him, ‘We’re going to have fun.’“

Mr Gou has been tying to unite the anti-DPP vote, but has so far not managed to reach agreement with either the main opposition party, the Kuomintang, nor the small Taiwan People’s Party on how that might work.

The other parties have yet to announce running mates for their presidential candidates.

Mr Gou must gather close to 300,000 voter signatures by Nov 2 to qualify as an independent candidate, according to election regulations, and needed to decide his running mate before he could collect signatures.

The Central Election Commission will review the signatures and announce the results by Nov 14.

Mr Gou stepped down as Foxconn chief in 2019 and this month resigned as a company board member. REUTERS

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2023-09-14 04:45:00Z
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Taiwan blasts Elon Musk over latest China comments - CNA

TAIPEI: Taiwan is "not for sale", the island's foreign minister said in a stern rebuke to Elon Musk who asserted that Taiwan was an integral part of China, as the billionaire again waded into the thorny issue of relations between Beijing and Taipei.

Musk, the owner of the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, as well as the Tesla electric car company and Starlink satellite network, made the comments to the All-In Summit in Los Angeles uploaded to YouTube this week.

"(Beijing's) policy has been to reunite Taiwan with China. From their standpoint, maybe it is analogous to Hawaii or something like that, like an integral part of China that is arbitrarily not part of China mostly because ... the US Pacific Fleet has stopped any sort of reunification effort by force," he said.

Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu, in a post on X late on Wednesday, responded that he hoped Musk could ask China to "open X to its people". China blocks X, along with other major Western social media platforms like Facebook.

"Perhaps he thinks banning it is a good policy, like turning off Starlink to thwart Ukraine's counterstrike against Russia," Wu added, referring to Musk's refusing a Ukrainian request to activate his Starlink satellite network in Crimea's port city of Sevastopol last year to aid an attack on Russia's fleet there.

"Listen up, Taiwan is not part of the PRC & certainly not for sale!" Wu said, using the acronym for the People's Republic of China.

Taiwan's democratically elected government strongly rejects China's sovereignty claims, and says that only Taiwan's people can decide their future.

This is not the first time Musk, whose Tesla had a large factory in Shanghai, has riled Taiwan.

Last October, he suggested that tensions between China and Taiwan could be resolved by handing over some control of Taiwan to Beijing, drawing a similarly strong reprimand from Taiwan.

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2023-09-14 06:16:14Z
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Commentary: What's going on with China's surprise military shake-up? - CNA

LATEST PURGES WILL NOT HAMPER THE ROCKET FORCE’S DEVELOPMENT

Given that Mr Xi had presided over the formation of the PLA Rocket Force and Strategic Support Force, the wisdom of his earlier personnel appointments has inevitably come under the spotlight.

The latest decision to parachute in General Wang, a naval officer, to take charge of the country’s strategic missile forces is unprecedented in the Rocket Force’s recent history and has likewise met with derision. Indeed, previous commanders were promoted from within the service.

As it is, the redeployment of officers across the different service branches has been a recurring theme in the PLA.

Famously, the father of the modern Chinese navy, Admiral Liu Huaqing, had in fact been an army officer for much of his career. More recently, the retired commander of the People’s Armed Police, Wang Ning, neither had any prior experience in the paramilitary outfit before his appointment.

To be sure, had generals from the ground forces instead been appointed to lead the Rocket Force, some critics would have seized on that as a sign of the PLA remaining stuck with its traditional “Big Army’ mentality.

It is likely that Wang Houbin and Xu Xisheng do in fact have some familiarity with Rocket Force operations. Since Mr Xi’s major shake-up of the military, Rocket Force assets have become more integrated under the revamped joint Theatre Command system to enable joint operations with their army, navy, and air force counterparts in each respective Theatre Command.

As the biggest winner among the conventional services amid the reforms - both in terms of retaining its control over its operations bases and missile brigades and seeing their numbers expand - the determination shown by Beijing to boost the effectiveness and lethality of the Rocket Force is obvious.

As the trump card in the PLA’s arsenal, the ongoing purges in the Rocket Force are more a symptom of the party army’s internal clean-up, rather than a sign of China’s incumbent leader losing his grip on the military.  

James Char is a Research Fellow with the China Programme at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.

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2023-09-13 22:00:00Z
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India's Kerala state closes schools, banks in seven villages due to Nipah deaths - CNA

Strict isolation rules were adopted, with medical staff being quarantined after direct contact with the infected.

The first victim was a small landholder in the district's village of Marutonkara, a government official said. The victim's daughter and brother-in-law, both infected, are in an isolation ward, with other family members and neighbours being tested.

The second death followed contact in hospital with the first victim, doctors' initial investigation has shown, but the two were not related, added the official, who sought anonymity as he was not authorised to talk to the media.

Three federal teams, including experts from the National Virology Institute, were set to arrive on Wednesday for more tests, the official said.

The Nipah virus was first identified in 1999 during an outbreak of illness among pig farmers and others in close contact with the animals in Malaysia and Singapore.

In Kerala's first Nipah outbreak, 21 of the 23 infected died, while outbreaks in 2019 and 2021 claimed two more lives.

A Reuters investigation in May identified parts of Kerala as among the places most at risk globally for outbreaks of bat viruses. Extensive deforestation and urbanisation have brought people and wildlife into close contact.

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2023-09-13 08:22:41Z
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Japan replaces foreign, defence ministers in major reshuffle - CNA

A majority of voters are not satisfied with the government's policy to address inflation, according to a Yomiuri poll published last month.

Kishida's cabinet has also been hit by scandals including "inappropriate behaviour" by his son, who was removed from the position of his secretary earlier this year.

A magazine reported that Shotaro Kishida had invited relatives to the official residence for a party last year, with photos of some pretending to hold a press conference and one lying down on red-carpeted stairs.

Five women, up from two in the previous cabinet, is the joint highest record in Japanese politics.

In June, Kishida's government set numerical targets of female executives for companies listed on the prestigious Prime section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

By 2025, companies should appoint at least one woman director, and by 2030, they should increase the ratio of female directors to at least 30 per cent, it said.

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2023-09-13 07:50:59Z
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North Korea's Kim meets Putin as missiles launched from Pyongyang - CNA

"SENSITIVE AREAS"

Asked whether the leaders would discuss weapons, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the two countries cooperate in "sensitive" areas, which would not be made public, according to the Interfax news agency.

On Tuesday, Peskov said that Kim's visit would be a "fully fledged" one and that the two sides would conduct "negotiations". Humanitarian aid to North Korea and UN Security Council resolutions imposed on Pyongyang may also be discussed, Russian officials have said.

Russia's foreign ministry said the talks are important considering geopolitical changes in the world.

"Bilateral contacts are very important. And the situation on the Korean Peninsula is, of course, of utmost importance for security and stability in the region," state news agency RIA quoted ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying.

Kim arrived in Russia by private train on Tuesday with top defence industry and military aides and said his visit highlighted the "strategic importance" of the two countries' ties, the North's state news agency KCNA reported on Wednesday.

The make-up of Kim's delegation, with the notable presence of Munitions Industry Department Director Jo Chun Ryong, suggested an agenda heavy on defence industry cooperation, analysts said.

Kim could offer artillery rounds from North Korea's large stockpile, which could replenish Russia's capabilities in the short term, but questions about the ammunition's quality may limit the overall impact, military analysts said.

South Korea and the United States have warned such a deal would violate UN Security Council resolutions, which Russia as a permanent member of the council voted to approve.

North Korea is one of the few countries to have openly supported Russia over the Ukraine conflict, and Putin pledged last week to "expand bilateral ties in all respects in a planned way by pooling efforts".

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2023-09-13 05:45:57Z
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