Australia would seek to be included in consultations about a trade dispute between the EU and China launched by the EU at the WYO, Australian Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment Dan Tehan said yesterday.
Thursday’s EU challenge accuses China of discriminatory trade practices against Lithuania, saying they threatened the integrity of the single market.
“Australia has a substantial interest in the issues raised in the dispute brought by the European Union against China ... and will request to join these consultations,” Tehan said in a statement.
China has downgraded ties with Lithuania and pushed firms to sever links with the Baltic nation of 2.8 million people after it allowed Taiwan to open a de facto embassy in Vilnius.
Its strictures include a refusal to clear Lithuanian goods through Chinese customs, rejection of import applications from Lithuania and pressure on EU firms to remove Lithuanian content from supply chains when exporting to China.
Relations between Australia and China, its top trade partner, soured after Canberra banned Huawei Technologies from its 5G broadband network in 2018, toughened laws against foreign political interference and urged an independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19.
Beijing responded by freezing ministerial contacts and imposing tariffs on several Australian commodities, such as coal, beef, barley and wine.
Australia has filed two WTO complaints in the past 18 months over China’s duties on imports of bottled wine and barley.
The Australian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a statement yesterday said that the Australian government “welcomes” an invitation from France to take part in a meeting of Indo-Pacific foreign ministers next month.
“Australia greatly values cooperation with France and with Europe, including in the Indo-Pacific,” it said in an e-mailed statement, without saying if Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs Marise Payne would attend.
Australia’s relations with France, which holds the rotating six-month presidency of the EU Council, have also soured after Canberra signed a security pact last year with the UK and the US, dubbed AUKUS, scrapping a multibillion-dollar submarine deal with France.
The pact, widely viewed as an attempt to shore up regional military muscle in the face of China’s growing presence, riled Beijing, but also caused fury in France.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant