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China, Japan, and South Korea to push free trade talks
Deutsche Welle
27 May 2024, 14:24
Photo: Chung Sung-Jun/Pool/REUTERS
Chinese Premier Li Qiang described a trilateral summit in Seoul as a "new beginning." Along with steps towards a free trade agreement, the three countries also reaffirmed their goal of a denuclearised Korean peninsula.
Leaders from China, Japan, and South Korea said Monday they want to speed up negotiations to reach a free trade deal.
Chinese Premier Li Qiang, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol met in Seoul for the first three-way talks in more than four years.
"We will keep discussions for speeding up negotiations for a trilateral free trade agreement," they said after the rare trilateral summit, adding that they wanted the deal to be "free, fair, comprehensive, high-quality, and mutually beneficial."
US ties complicate economic talks
Negotiations between East Asia's economic powerhouses on a three-party trade agreement stalled in 2019, but Li said Monday's trilateral summit was "both a restart and a new beginning."
However, economic integration between China, Japan and South Korea comes as the US calls for its allies to shift supply chains for key products, such as semiconductors, away from China.
South Korea's Yoon said the leaders agreed to build a transparent and predictable trade and supply chain environment but did not elaborate.
Japan and South Korea are Washington's top regional security partners in northeast Asia.
Beijing views Japan and South Korea's efforts to enhance security partnerships with the US as an attempt to contain China.
"We need to have honest dialogues to better enhance trust and resolve doubts. We must uphold the spirit of strategic autonomy and maintain our bilateral relations," Li said.
Rising threat from North Korea
Hours before the meeting North Korea announced that it planned to put another spy satellite into orbit. The launch would use ballistic missile technology banned by United Nations Security Council resolutions.
The three leaders called for the "denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula."
"The stability of the Korean Peninsula are in the common interest of our three nations," Japan's Kishida said.
Yoon added that the issue was a "shared responsibility and interest" for the trio.
Li urged all parties to show restraint and prevent further escalation on the Korean peninsula.
China is North Korea's only military ally and its largest trade partner. Along with Russia, China has advocated for easing UN sanctions on North Korea.
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Ireland: Tensions over refugee crisis and Dublin tent cities
In Ireland's capital, Dublin, tent cities set up by migrants who lack temporary protected status are repeatedly cleared. The situation has been aggravated by Ireland's housing crisis and anti-migrant laws in Britain.
The center of Dublin glitters with architectural showpieces, the offices of global corporations. But there are increasingly tents at the base of the glass facades. Some of these belong to people excluded from housing, a scarcity across Ireland and simply unaffordable for many people in the booming capital. The housing crisis is the dominant topic in Ireland right now. When he took office as taoiseach, or Ireland's head of government, in April, Simon Harris promised to provide 250,000 new homes by the end of the decade.
The second group of people sleeping in tents constitute the second-hottest topic in the Irish republic. More and more migrants are arriving here, to this island in northwestern Europe, and its capacity to accommodate them is at its limits — not least because of the housing crisis. The situation has been aggravated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Since the beginning of the war, 100,000 Ukrainian refugees have registered in Ireland. An EU-wide agreement means they do not have to apply for asylum first.
Ireland's government openly admits that it is unable to provide all asylum-seekers with accommodation while their applications are processed. According to the government, as of May 14, 1,780 male applicants were as yet unhoused.
A veritable tent city sprang up around the International Protection Office in Dublin, which is responsible for processing asylum applications. Young men were sleeping here; they had to wash and cook on the street, and rely on bike hire docking bays to charge their phones with USB cables. On May 1, the Irish authorities cleared the camp, and divided 285 male asylum-seekers between two emergency shelters. Since then, new tent encampments have repeatedly appeared near the office, and have repeatedly been cleared.
Operation underway to find Raisi's helicopter
The shocking incident took place in Dizmar forest between the cities of Varzaqan and Jolfa in East Azarbaijan province as president Raisi was returning from an inaugurating event of a dam with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev on Sunday (May 19).
The local residents heard "sounds" in that region, IRNA says.
About twenty fully-equipped of search and rescue teams,with drones and sniffer dogs, have been dispatched to the area.
However, commando units and Special Forces of Iranian Armed Forces have also deployed to assist in that search operation.
According to the IRNA's reporter, the search and rescue operation could take some time, due to difficult weather conditions and particularly thick fog in that area.
Iran's Emergency Services spokesperson told the news agency that eight ambulances have been dispatched to the region, adding that heavy fog has made air rescue efforts very difficult.
Dead body of Ebrahim Raisi has been recovered
The Iranian Red Crescent said Monday that the bodies of president Ebrahim Raisi, foreign minister Hossein Amir abdollahian and others who died in a helicopter crash had been recovered, and search operations had ended.
'We are in the process of transferring the bodies of the martyrs to Tabriz' in Iran's northwest, Red Crescent chief Pirhossein Koolivand told state TV, adding that 'the search operations have come to an end.'
Kolivand also said that although the rescue workers were at the spot since yesterday, the rescue operations were disrupted due to hostile weather and thick fog.
Apart from this, as this region is full of hills and mountains, rescue officials found Raisi's helicopter after a long 16-hour operation.
President and PM of Bangladesh mourn the death of Raisi
President Md Sahabuddin and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina mourned the death of the helicopter passengers including Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Amir Abdollahian in the helicopter accident.
In a condolence message, President Sahabuddin expressed deep grief over the death of the Iranian president. He expressed deep condolences to the citizens of the country and the relatives of the President.
In a separate condolence message, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina described Raisi as a great leader and said he had worked for his country all his life. The citizens of the country are enjoying the benefits of his work.
She also expressed deep condolences on behalf of Bangladesh over the death of Iranian President and Foreign Minister.
Earlier, on Sunday (May 19), President Raisi visited Azerbaijan with a few associates.
The accident happened on the way back after a ceremony with the Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev. All died including President Raisi and Foreign Minister Amir Abdollahian. Several other senior Iranian officials were also died.
Besides, the helicopter's pilot, co-pilot and crew also died in this incident.
US bans 26 textile firms over alleged links to forced labour in China
The US administration on Thursday added 26 textile entities like traders and warehouses to the forced labour entity list, for having an alleged link with Uyghur labour camps from China's Xinjiang, Nikkei Asia reported.
This latest decision will now ban, products associated with these entities from entering the US market, the same report also claimed that this step will also increase pressure on the supply chains of the US market.
the US Department of Homeland Security's report stated that Companies in provinces across China, including Henan, Jiangsu, Hubei, and Fujian, have been added to the forced-labour Entity List, which now increases the count to 76 entities.
The US has repeatedly taken steps against the use of forced labour for production in China's Xinjiang region, home to the predominantly Muslim Turkic Uyghurs and other minorities.
Locals of this region have been facing human rights abuses at the hands of China however, the country denies all such claims and states that all those alleged labour programs are to alleviate poverty in the region.
The Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act (UFLPA) generally bars imports sourced "wholly or in part" in Xinjiang, a major cotton-supplying region. Enforcement has led to around USD 3 billion in shipments being flagged at the border since the act took effect in June 2022. Hence all the products coming from that region are considered to be a product of forced labour until there is clear evidence that proves otherwise.
The Entity List designates specific companies whose products, or components of other companies' finished products, are to be blocked from entering the country.
Authorities have flagged extra scrutiny for certain sectors, such as cotton, tomatoes, and polysilicon, a key raw material for solar panels, the report by Nikkei Asia claimed.
In the same reference the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in January this year, urging stronger enforcement of the UFLPA through such steps as adding entities outside China to the list.
A researcher on the matter Adrian Zenz has highlighted that one key issue faced by the US government is a lack of transparency in domestic supply chains within China. According to his statement given to Nikkei Asia "The UFLPA contains a provision to monitor and keep an eye on intra-Chinese supply chains because of the risk of labour transfers to other provinces. As Xinjiang itself doesn't export so much of what is produced in Xinjiang. The greatest risk comes through intermediaries, and the Entity List is very much suited to counter or to address that problem."Nikkei Asia further quotes the research accomplished by Zenz which stated that there was a 38 per cent increase from 2022 to 2023 in the number of labourers moved as part the "pairing assistance" program but said any future understanding of labour transfer programs could diminish now that the Chinese government has stopped publishing statistics.
Source: Beijing News
China’s housing crash could set back millions of promising careers
Ms Ivy Zhang figured she had it made. Fresh out of school after studying chemistry, she joined one of China’s biggest property companies in 2016, as the country’s real estate market was taking off.
She worked until 11pm every day and was transferred to a bigger city after being designated a “sales champion”.
She pampered herself in her limited time off by regularly buying US$550 (S$740) spa packages. Money was so plentiful that she did not have to think about it much.
“The bank account was just a series of numbers,” Ms Zhang said.
Everybody wanted what Ms Zhang and her colleagues were selling.
Owning property was so essential it was often a prerequisite for marriage. Prices never seemed to fall, so condominium units served the combined functions of wealth storage, insurance and retirement savings.
Real estate at one point accounted for about a quarter of gross domestic product (GDP), according to Bloomberg Economics. Some estimates were even higher.
But those heady days did not last. Even though Chinese President Xi Jinping warned that “houses are for living in, not speculation”, by 2021 developers were selling homes faster than they could build them and piling on debt in search of expansion.
When the government suddenly cracked down on borrowing, it all fell apart. Many home buyers were left waiting on stalled construction, sparking angry protests across the country.
Developers including Country Garden Holdings and the collapsed giant China Evergrande Group defaulted on bond debts.
Government revenue plunged. Images of tracts of empty buildings and uncompleted public works became global symbols of the nation’s waning confidence and disgruntlement over Mr Xi’s handling of the world’s second-largest economy.
And a cohort of young professionals who thought they had found an escalator to China’s affluent middle class had their lives upended.
What seemed like a lifelong career turned out to be a moment in a bubble. The slump has tossed some 500,000 people out of the property sector in the three years through 2023, according to Ke Yan Zhi Ku, a real estate research group.
That is not counting workers in related industries such as construction and marketing.
They are all facing setbacks in the middle of their careers, forced to make skill adjustments “on an epic scale”, said Mr Alex Capri, senior fellow at the National University of Singapore.
He added: “The property meltdown is feeding a wider sense of sombre reflection.”
The days when some real estate companies doled out Mercedes-Benzes as year-end bonuses are a distant memory, but many analysts say this is not rock bottom yet.
The housing sector’s economic heft may shrink to about 16 per cent of China’s GDP by 2026, according to Bloomberg Economics. That possibility threatens to put about five million people – equal to the population of Ireland – at risk of unemployment or reduced incomes, the analysts wrote.
Even young workers in their prime are struggling to find jobs, with the youth unemployment rate reaching 15.3 per cent after China revised its data methodology.
“People are very depressed and scared,” said Ms Anne Stevenson-Yang, co-founder of J Capital Research. “The situation is very severe.”
Ms Zhang, 30, who said she helped sell almost 1 billion yuan (S$187.3 million) worth of apartments for Country Garden, has resorted to peddling health supplements on social media to pay the bills.
So far she is earning nowhere near enough, selling three items a month.
It is a far cry from the days when she earned as much as the equivalent of US$83,000 a year.
She and her husband have postponed having a baby, and she scours the web for discounted offers, cooks her own meals to avoid takeaways and minimises socialising to cut expenses.
“If you still want to live like before, you’re basically dreaming,” Ms Zhang said. “If I spent 3,000 yuan in the past, now I’m looking to see if I can cut it down to 2,000. Then I’ll see if I can cut it to a thousand. As long as I can survive.”
The pain is not limited to salespeople.
Mr Ivan Li, 28, lost his position as an investor relations manager in Hong Kong twice.
Most developers stopped issuing dollar bonds in the US$203 billion market, among the biggest in the world for high-yield debt when times were good. Investors ceased buying the asset class as prices cratered, and communication between debt holders and companies petered out.
“Gradually, as the crisis grew, you could feel that engaging with the likes of overseas investors and analysts became the least of management’s concerns,” Mr Li said.
Mr Charlie Zeng, a former worker at developers including China Vanke, who in a good year earned the equivalent of more than US$250,000, spent a year looking for work.
In his most desperate moment, he volunteered to take a 90 per cent pay cut.
After 70 interviews, he received a few offers, only to have them all rescinded.
Although he eventually found a job, he remains pessimistic about real estate. “There’s no future in this industry,” Mr Zeng said. “The sector’s been abandoned.”
Apartment and commercial property sales in 2024 are expected to tank 45 per cent from 2021, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and estimates from Fitch Ratings.
The value of new home sales from the 100 biggest real estate companies was down about 45 per cent in April from a year earlier.
Even China Vanke – once seen as a sure-fire survivor given its state backing – is coming under pressure, with its credit rating cut to junk status.
Another way to measure the bleak market is to look at rental yield, or the annual return from renting out an investment property.
The rate is only 1.5 per cent in the biggest cities in China, about half that of Hong Kong and well below the almost 5 per cent in New York, according to a report from ANZ Group Holdings. This low rate gives investors little motivation to buy a condo.
There are strands of optimism. Some local governments have relented on measures to cool speculation, scrapping buying curbs in some of the bigger cities including Hangzhou, the home base of Alibaba Group Holding.
Another hope may lie with government-backed companies such as Poly Property Group, as the Communist Party asserts its dominance over all aspects of the economy.
Nine of the top 10 land buyers in the first two months of 2024 were state-owned developers, with China Resources Land being the biggest purchaser, according to a research note by Mr Andrew Chan and Mr Daniel Fan at Bloomberg Intelligence.
The Chinese government has identified two pillars of its renewed housing policy: building affordable homes and renovating run-down inner-city districts.
The central bank is providing cheap funding for these efforts via the so-called pledged supplemental lending programme, with about 3.4 trillion yuan available as at the end of January.
The downward pressure on home prices may ease as early as 2025 if these renovation programmes go well, according to UBS Group analyst John Lam, an early Wall Street bear on Evergrande who is now one of the few analysts to have turned positive on Chinese real estate.
Shares of Chinese developers jumped sharply on May 16 on news that China is considering a plan for local governments to buy unsold homes.
“Shifts in the growth model of the real estate sector can help facilitate its recovery and mitigate the severity of job losses,” said Assistant Professor Maggie Hu at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Yet “there’s potential for the situation to worsen in the short term”.
Chances of a rebound provide little solace for workers such as Mr Li, who is still hunting for a job.
“In the good old days, success was a lot easier to achieve,” he said. “In wintertimes, one needs to work much harder and be mindful of every step and decision they make.”
Source: BLOOMBERG
Mexico: Heat wave kills several people, hotter days ahead
The so-called "heat dome" weather phenomenon has trapped hot air over the country, causing temperatures to soar to 45 degrees Celsius in some areas.
Extreme heat in Mexico has killed dozens of people, according to the Health Ministry, with temperatures forecasted to rise further.
Meteorologists say a weather phenomenon known as a "heat dome" has trapped hot air over the southern Gulf of Mexico and northern Central America, causing temperatures to soar to 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas.
Between May 12 and May 21, authorities said 22 people died from heat-related causes, adding to a total of 48 deaths since March 17.
In comparison, during the same period in 2022 and 2023, heat waves claimed the lives of two and three people, respectively.
The ongoing third heat wave in Mexico is part of five predicted from March to July.
Temperatures rise in south US, Central America
In Mexico, the heat has caused nationwide droughts, strained the power grid and affected wildlife, including the death of 130 howler monkeys due to suspected dehydration.
Some areas saw protests as water supplies dwindled due to below-average rainfall.
The National Autonomous University of Mexico predicts even hotter temperatures in the next 10-15 days.
Some parts of Central America and southern United States, including Texas and Florida, are also experiencing extreme heat.
Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Dominican Republic and Haiti are also reeling from unusual heat due to the same meteorological phenomenon.
Experts warn that this heat wave could impact ocean temperatures and the upcoming Atlantic hurricane season.
