India china lac standoff

Kontan.co.id India and China, the two largest suppliers of pharmaceutical raw materials to Indonesia, look likely to be the biggest winners from the government'€™s sixth economic package, which is aimed at simplifying permits for the importation of raw materials for drug manufacturers. '€œMost of our raw materials are imported from China and India,'€ said Food and Drug Monitoring Agency (BPOM) chairman Roy Alexander Sparringa in a text message to Tempo.co on Saturday, adding that the US and Europe were the largest and second-largest exporters of medicine to the Indonesian market. As previously announced, the government has eased drug-related imports by providing legal assurance of simpler permits issued by BPOM. The import license previously acquired through a transactional mechanism will be shifted to a periodical one, in a bid to trim the number of permits needed in the import sector. The business community gladly welcomed the new policy, saying the measures were '€œin ... » Learn More about India, China to benefit from latest economy package

BEIJING (Global Times): US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin kicked off his three-day visit to India on Friday (March 19), just a week after the first summit of the Quad, an informal security grouping consisting of the US, Japan, Australia, and India. Austin is the first US official from the Joe Biden administration to visit India Austin called the India-US relationship a "stronghold of free and open Indo-Pacific region." This displays the great importance the Biden administration has attached to India and its intent to reinforce bilateral ties with India. In contrast to the US-Japan joint press statement issued on March 16, the joint remarks between Austin and his Indian counterpart Rajnath Singh on Saturday did not mention China. Qian Feng, director of the research department at the National Strategy Institute at Tsinghua University, told the Global Times on Sunday that just as many major powers, India tries to avoid taking sides between China and the US, whose competition ... » Learn More about Difficult for India to fall for US pressure over China: Global Times

BEIJING (China Daily/ANN): US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin's visit to India last week, his first foreign visit after assuming office, was preceded by the first "Quad" summit. Austin's visit will be followed by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's visit to India to herald the United Kingdom's post-Brexit foreign policy to be centred around the Indo-Pacific. Together these events not just endorse but also reflect India's intensifying engagement with the United States-led Indo-Pacific strategy. Among other issues, China-India border tensions in 2020 are cited as the reason for the accelerating drift in India's worldview which otherwise remains woven around its twin doctrines of "multi-alignment" and "strategic autonomy" - new forms of its historic nonalignment policy. Understandably, these events have caused concerns among China's foreign policy analysts, especially among its India watchers. However, recent Sino-Indian military disengagements on the border have raised ... » Learn More about Putting Sino-Indian ties back on track: China Daily contributor

MUMBAI (REUTERS) - China's ByteDance has told an Indian court that a government freeze on its bank accounts in a probe of possible tax evasion amounts to harassment and was done illegally, according to a filing seen by Reuters. ByteDance in January reduced its Indian workforce after New Delhi maintained a ban on its popular video app TikTok, imposed last year after a border clash between India and China. Beijing has repeatedly criticised India over that ban and those of other Chinese apps. An Indian tax intelligence unit in mid-March ordered HSBC and Citibank in Mumbai to freeze bank accounts of ByteDance India as it probed some of the unit's financial dealings. ByteDance has challenged the freeze on the four accounts in a Mumbai court. None of ByteDance India's employees have been paid their March salaries due to the account freeze, said two people familiar with the matter. The company told the court it has a workforce of 1,335, including outsourced personnel. In the ... » Learn More about ByteDance says India’s freeze on bank accounts is harassment: Court filing

Biden comes out shooting at Russia, China and the Philippines all in the last two weeks.  We no longer need to speculate how Biden will act at least in the short term.  What is the US trying to do? A chess game’s first move sets the tone of the game, but there is no telling what the tactic really is — just as a movie’s first scene can either divert from or lead to a predictable outcome as circumstances and characters unfold. Openings are always studied by good players. What are these aggressive opening moves by the US in the Russian, Chinese and Philippine chess boards? Is Russia’s Putin a killer, as accused by Biden in an interview?  He followed it up with “Russia will soon pay a price.”  Some analysts attribute Biden’s hostility possibly to the suspicion that Russia had something to do with the expose that Biden’s son Hunter had been receiving payments from Ukraine’s oil company, and family business partners Bobulinski and Cooney coming out to show corporate communications to ... » Learn More about China to US: What ‘rule-based’ order?

SRINAGAR: The machine guns peeking over parapets of small, sandbagged concrete bunkers and the heavy artillery cannons dug deep into Himalayan Kashmir’s rugged terrain have fallen silent. At least for now. The Line of Control, a highly militarized de facto border that divides the disputed region between the two nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan, and a site of hundreds of deaths, is unusually quiet after the two South Asian neighbors last month agreed to reaffirm their 2003 ceasefire accord. The somewhat surprising decision prompted a thaw in the otherwise turbulent relations between the countries but also raised questions about the longevity of the fragile peace, in part due to earlier failures. The crackdown by Indian forces and attacks by rebels have continued inside Indian-held Kashmir. The ceasefire, experts say, could stabilize the lingering conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives. Kashmiris say the rare move should lead to resolution of the dispute. ... » Learn More about India, Pakistan sign historic Kashmir peace deal

MANILA: The Philippines on Sunday (Mar 21) accused China of "incursion" after more than 200 militia boats were spotted near a disputed reef in the South China Sea, in a rare rebuke of its superpower neighbour. The Philippine coast guard detected the boats "in line formation" at the boomerang-shaped Whitsun Reef about 320km west of Palawan Island on Mar 7. "We call on the Chinese to stop this incursion and immediately recall these boats violating our maritime rights and encroaching into our sovereign territory," Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said in a statement. "This is a clear provocative action of militarizing the area. These are territories well within Philippine Exclusive Economic Zone." READ: South China Sea: Philippines protests new China law as 'verbal threat of war' Lorenzana said the government was considering "appropriate action" to take to protect Filipino fishermen, the country's marine resources and maintain peace and stability in the area. Foreign ... » Learn More about Philippines accuses China of ‘incursion’ in disputed sea

BEIJING: Bad weather prompted more than 200 Chinese fishing vessels to anchor at a reef claimed by the Philippines , Beijing said on Monday (Mar 22), sidestepping accusations from Manila of a move by China's vast South China Sea maritime militia to assert control in the area. However, China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying pointedly told reporters at a briefing Monday that Whitsun Reef was part of the Spratly Islands, one of the main archipelagoes in the South China Sea, which China claims virtually in its entirety. “Recently, due to the sea conditions, some Chinese fishing boats have taken shelter from the wind near the Whitsun Reef. I think it is very normal and hope all parties can look at it rationally," Hua said at the daily briefing. Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana called on Sunday for China to "stop this incursion and immediately recall these boats violating our maritime rights and encroaching into our sovereign territory". The presence of ... » Learn More about China denies incursion as more than 200 ships dock at Philippine reef

MANILA: The United States said on Tuesday (Mar 23) it is backing the Philippines in a new stand-off with Beijing in the disputed South China Sea, where Manila has asked a Chinese fishing flotilla to leave a reef. China ignored the call , insisting it owns the offshore territory. The US Embassy said it shared the concerns of the Philippines and accused China of using “maritime militia to intimidate, provoke, and threaten other nations, which undermines peace and security in the region”. “We stand with the Philippines, our oldest treaty ally in Asia,” the US Embassy in Manila said in a statement. READ: Philippines accuses China of 'incursion' in disputed sea Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana on Sunday demanded about 200 Chinese vessels he said were militia boats leave the Whitsun Reef, a shallow coral region about 175 nautical miles (324km) west of Bataraza town in the western Philippine province of Palawan. Philippine officials said the reef, which they ... » Learn More about US backs Philippines in stand-off over South China Sea reef

NEW DELHI (THE STATESMAN/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, terms the Quad as four great liberal democracies in the Indo-Pacific region. The Quad of course comprises India, the US, Australia and Japan. The first question to be asked is how the US is a democracy in the Indo-Pacific region. The US is a Pacific power and an Atlantic power, but it is certainly not an Indo-Pacific power even though it projects and pretends itself to be one. The second of course is how liberal a democracy Japan is when it is still a vassal state of the US, with its defence and foreign policies being determined by the Americans. The Quad is going after China. China now is the number one power in the world. Twenty years of mindless and pitiless war has left America enfeebled. No American now claims victory in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Sure the US is still a military power to be reckoned with, but the world has lost fear of it. Witness Iran. Iran ... » Learn More about The Quad goes after China: Statesman contributor