China will speed up the development of transport connections with Southeast Asia, building roads, telecommunication and power links as it seeks to boost trade, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) said yesterday.
Wen, speaking in Jakarta during a two-day visit to Indonesia, said China would give financial support through credit aid and investment, to provide for the better exchange of commodities, capital and people.
“In the next 10 years we will speed up the inauguration of land transport routes between China and ASEAN,” Wen said in a speech in Jakarta, adding that China will also provide funds for air and sea transport. “Today we witness the rise of Asia.”
He said China would unconditionally help underdeveloped countries in ASEAN, which groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
ASEAN has sought to highlight the potential for greater connections between its frontier markets and Asia’s biggest economic power, with the group’s foreign ministers heading on an unconventional road trip in January from Thailand to China.
Indonesia is seeking US$100 billion of private investment to develop its own dilapidated infrastructure, seen as a hurdle to attracting foreign firms and to gaining a sovereign investment grade rating that would cut government borrowing costs and put it on a par with BRIC nations such as China and Brazil.
Wen’s schedule in Jakarta looked ambitious for a capital hit by tropical downpours yesterday that flooded roads and jammed traffic. Bad roads in the archipelago cause delays adding to costs and exacerbating inflation, while air and boat accidents are all too common.
Wen promised Indonesia US$9 billion worth of loans for infrastructure on Friday, after meeting Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
ASEAN’s plan to link new and existing rail, road and sea routes together with China and allow better travel within a free trade area of 1.9 billion people is ambitious.
However, analysts say there is huge trade potential between ASEAN and China and better links could encourage Japan and South Korea to forge a closer relationship with ASEAN. Japan has already pledged more than US$50 billion in infrastructure investment.
China, ASEAN’s biggest trading partner, is seeking to double trade with Indonesia and get access to resources from a country that is a leading exporter of natural gas, palm oil and coal.
However, many Indonesian businesses are worried about a flood of cheap Chinese goods and a widening trade deficit with the Asian powerhouse. Yudhoyono asked for trade between the two countries to be balanced.
“China’s development will not disturb any countries and will not be a threat to other countries,” Wen said, according to a translation of his speech, adding that Beijing’s foreign policy was free, independent and peaceful.
Southeast Asian countries have clashed with China over rival claims to potentially oil and gas-rich islands in the South China Sea which is considered by China to be its backyard, while many see the US as a buffer against a dominant China.
Earlier in his two-day visit, which followed a trip to Malaysia, Wen sought to build trust and cultural links between the two countries which historically have been suspicious of each other, telling students at a Muslim university he had read the Koran.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
INSTABILITY: If Hezbollah do not respond to Israel’s killing of their leader then it must be assumed that they simply can not, an Middle Eastern analyst said Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah leaves the group under huge pressure to deliver a resounding response to silence suspicions that the once seemingly invincible movement is a spent force, analysts said. Widely seen as the most powerful man in Lebanon before his death on Friday, Nasrallah was the face of Hezbollah and Israel’s arch-nemesis for more than 30 years. His group had gained an aura of invincibility for its part in forcing Israel to withdraw troops from southern Lebanon in 2000, waging a devastating 33-day-long war in 2006 against Israel and opening a “support front” in solidarity with Gaza since
RSS