Former Australian prime minister John Howard has criticized “clumsy” Chinese diplomatic efforts to gag exiled dissidents and linked recent strains between Canberra and Beijing to a failed mining deal.
Howard said China’s attempts to prevent exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer visiting Australia last month were “ridiculous” and left Canberra with no choice but to grant her a visa.
Conservative leader of Australia for 11 years, Howard said Beijing had adopted similar tactics when Tibet’s spiritual leader visited the country, failing to appreciate that efforts to dictate diplomatic policy were destined to backfire.
“They can be very clumsy diplomatically,” Howard told a business function in Sydney on Wednesday. “They’ve got this silly habit, if they don’t want you to see someone, they say so — which means that you must see them.
‘RIDICULOUS’
“It’s just ridiculous, they’ve done that with the Dalai Lama [and] the way they carried on about that lady with the visa [Kadeer].
“Of course we had to give that lady a visa. Heavens above, you don’t allow the Chinese, or any government — whether it’s China or Britain or America — to tell us who we should give visas to,” he said.
Australia revealed last month that China had canceled a senior minister’s visit over Canberra’s decision to grant a visa to Kadeer, whom Beijing accuses of being a separatist and inciting deadly unrest in northwest China’s Xinjiang region in July.
MINING AT ROOT
Howard said recent tensions between China and Australia could be traced back to mining giant Rio Tinto’s rejection of a US$19.5 billion cash injection from China’s state-owned aluminum giant Chinalco.
“I think they got their noses out of joint over the Chinalco thing and some of the things they have done in response have been conditioned by that reaction,” he said.
China arrested an Australian Rio Tinto executive in the weeks after the Chinalco deal collapsed, but says his detention is linked to allegations of industrial espionage and bribery during fraught iron ore negotiations.
‘HYANGDO’: A South Korean lawmaker said there was no credible evidence to support rumors that Kim Jong-un has a son with a disability or who is studying abroad South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, who last week accompanied him on a high-profile visit to Beijing, is understood to be his recognized successor. The teenager drew global attention when she made her first official overseas trip with her father, as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have long seen her as Kim’s likely successor, although some have suggested she has an older brother who is being secretly groomed as the next leader. The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) “assesses that she [Kim Ju-ae]
In the week before his fatal shooting, right-wing US political activist Charlie Kirk cheered the boom of conservative young men in South Korea and warned about a “globalist menace” in Tokyo on his first speaking tour of Asia. Kirk, 31, who helped amplify US President Donald Trump’s agenda to young voters with often inflammatory rhetoric focused on issues such as gender and immigration, was shot in the neck on Wednesday at a speaking event at a Utah university. In Seoul on Friday last week, he spoke about how he “brought Trump to victory,” while addressing Build Up Korea 2025, a conservative conference
China has approved the creation of a national nature reserve at the disputed Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島), claimed by Taiwan and the Philippines, the government said yesterday, as Beijing moves to reinforce its territorial claims in the contested region. A notice posted online by the Chinese State Council said that details about the area and size of the project would be released separately by the Chinese National Forestry and Grassland Administration. “The building of the Huangyan Island National Nature Reserve is an important guarantee for maintaining the diversity, stability and sustainability of the natural ecosystem of Huangyan Island,” the notice said. Scarborough
DEADLOCK: Putin has vowed to continue fighting unless Ukraine cedes more land, while talks have been paused with no immediate results expected, the Kremlin said Russia on Friday said that peace talks with Kyiv were on “pause” as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin still wanted to capture the whole of Ukraine. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said that he was running out of patience with Putin, and the NATO alliance said it would bolster its eastern front after Russian drones were shot down in Polish airspace this week. The latest blow to faltering diplomacy came as Russia’s army staged major military drills with its key ally Belarus. Despite Trump forcing the warring sides to hold direct talks and hosting Putin in Alaska, there
RSS