Asia Watch Archive

Independent candidates aligned with jailed former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan claimed victory in the country’s February 8 elections, stunning the powerful Pakistani military, which reportedly threw its support behind another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, and his centre-right Pakistan Muslim League Party.

China’s rocky relationship with Australia — buoyed by the October 2023 release of Chinese-born Australian journalist Cheng Lei — worsened this week following China’s issuing of a suspended death sentence to Yang Hengjun, a 57-year-old Australian writer and father of two. Yang was arrested in Guangzhou on espionage charges in 2019 and has languished in a Chinese jail ever since.

Last Friday, 70 delegations from across Europe and the Indo-Pacific flocked to Brussels for discussions on climate change, trade, and regional security at the third EU Indo-Pacific Ministerial Forum.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in Bangkok last weekend. The pair spoke for 12 hours over two days, building on talks between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden in November 2023.  

The opening session of Canada’s foreign interference inquiry — which will examine, among other topics, alleged interference in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections by China, Russia, and “other foreign states,” including India — kicked off Monday.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has abandoned his country’s longstanding goal of reconciling with South Korea, opting instead to frame the bilateral relationship as a conflict between two independent states and designate South Korea as the North’s “principal enemy.” Three state organizations dedicated to unification will also shutter, while Pyongyang’s nine-storey ‘Arch of Reunification,’ was reportedly destroyed o

The 54th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) unfolded from January 15–19 in Davos, Switzerland. India sent 100 delegates to Davos as part of a charm offensive designed to woo investors and build on momentum from last year, when the country hosted the G20, surpassed China as the world’s most populous nation, and completed a historic mission to the Moon.  

On Saturday, Taiwanese voters shrugged off dire warnings from China and elected Lai Ching-te — the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) candidate — as president. The 64-year-old, a seasoned politician who most recently served as the island’s vice-president under Tsai Ing-wen, won 40 per cent of the vote. Turnout was around 72 per cent, three percentage points lower than Taiwan’s 2020 presidential election.

It was a busy week on the diplomatic circuit for Mélanie Joly. Last Thursday, Joly spoke with Wang Yi, China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. In that meeting, Joly said that Canada would work towards deepening economic and people-to-people ties with China, according to a readout from Global Affairs Canada (GAC).

On January 7, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was re-elected for a fourth consecutive five-year term. Hasina’s Awami League won 222 out of 300 parliamentary seats in a vote that the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, alleged was a sham.

APF Canada has published a Dispatch on the main issues and potential outcomes of this weekend’s elections in Taiwan. 

With just over a month to go before Taiwan picks its next president, volatility in the polls has injected fresh uncertainty into the outcome of the January 13 election and is keeping the rest of the world on edge about its possible geopolitical ramifications.

India’s Union Cabinet recently approved a proposal to add 215 positions to the country’s “short-staffed” foreign service over the next five years. On paper, India’s foreign service numbers 1,011, but only 848 officers were active as of March 2023. Those officers are scattered across an estimated 193 diplomatic missions worldwide, including two consulates general and one high commission in Canada.

Hong Kong will roll out a new humanities course in primary schools that embraces “patriotic education,” according to a November 23 announcement from Hong Kong’s Education Bureau.

In a November 29 court filing, U.S. prosecutors alleged that a “senior field officer” for the Indian government ordered Nikhil Gupta, an Indian national, to assassinate a Sikh separatist in New York City in May.

After a brief honeymoon, Australia and China are again at odds. The row comes mere weeks after Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made his “very successful” visit to China — the first by an Australian leader since 2016.

Canada, along with Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the U.K., has submitted a request to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to join the case accusing Myanmar of committing genocide against the country’s Rohingya minority during the 2016-17 “clearance operations” in its western state of Rakhine.

As the Canadian federal and provincial governments, as well as Canadian companies and civil society organizations, prepare to attend the 2023 UN Climate Change Conference (COP 28) in the United Arab Emirates later this month, a new UN report will invariably be flagged as essential reading.

As Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the leaders of the other 20 economies that make up the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum meet in San Francisco this week for their annual summit, the biggest headline thus far was the much-anticipated meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping on November 15. It was only the second face-to-face meeting between the two leaders since Biden became president in January 2021.

Bangladesh’s capital city of Dhaka has been engulfed in political turmoil, with supporters of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) clashing with police. On October 30, authorities arrested a top BNP leader, and the party responded by calling for a three-day nationwide strike. The protests accompanying the strikes quickly turned violent, leaving at least three civilians and one police officer dead.