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Showing posts with label Taiwan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Taiwan. Show all posts

Monday, 1 September 2025

 China hosts a star-studded summit to showcase its glowing influence


In this photo provided by Indian Prime Minister's Office, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, left, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, hold a meeting on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin, China Sunday, Aug. 31, 2025. (Indian Prime Minister's Office via  AFP  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfDuPX3p9Y0

President Xi Jinping gathered the leaders of Russia and India among dignitaries from around 20 Eurasian countries for a showpiece summit aimed at putting China front and centre of regional relations.

Security was tight in the northern port city of Tianjin, where the Shanghai Cooperation Organi­sation (SCO) summit is being held until today, days before a massive military parade in the capital Beijing to mark 80 years since the end of World War II.

The SCO comprises China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus – with 16 more countries affiliated as observers or “dialogue partners”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin touched down in Tianjin yesterday with an entourage of senior politicians and business representatives. 

Meanwhile, Xi held a flurry of bilateral meetings with leaders from the Maldives, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan and one of Putin’s staunch allies, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

He also met India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Xinhua news agency reported.

China and Russia have sometimes touted the SCO as an alternative to the Nato military alliance. This year’s summit is the first since US President Donald Trump returned to the White House.

In an interview published by Xinhua on Saturday, Putin said the summit will “strengthen the SCO’s capacity to respond to contemporary challenges and threats, and consolidate solidarity across the shared Eurasian space”.

“All this will help shape a fairer multipolar world order,” Putin said.

As China’s claim over Taiwan and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have seen them clash with the United States and Europe, experts say that Beijing and Moscow are eager to use platforms such as the SCO to curry favour.

“China has long sought to present the SCO as a non-Western-led power bloc that promotes a new type of international relations, which, it claims, is more democratic,” said Dylan Loh, an assistant professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

More than 20 leaders including Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan are attending the bloc’s largest meeting since its founding in 2001.

“The large-scale participation indicates China’s growing influence and the SCO’s appeal as a platform for non-Western countries,” Loh added.

Beijing, through the SCO, will try to “project influence and signal that Eurasia has its own institutions and rules of the game”, said Lizzi Lee from the Asia Society Policy Institute.

“It is framed as something different, built around sovereignty, non-interference, and multipolarity, which the Chinese tout as a model,” Lee said.

Putin needs “all the benefits of SCO as a player on the world stage”, said Lim Tai Wei, a professor and East Asia expert at Japan’s Soka University. — AFP

Xi calls for forging ahead with solid steps as SCO convenes largest-ever summit

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday called on Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) members to forge ahead with solid steps for ...

Xi proposes Global Governance Initiative

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday proposed the Global Governance Initiative (GGI) at the "Shanghai Cooperation Organization Plus" Meeting in ...


SCO Tianjin Summit showcases the charm of genuine multilateralism: Global Times editorial

The SCO has not only inherited and advanced the multilateral framework represented by the UN but has also innovated and reshaped its concepts and pathways under new circumstances. The SCO has become both a staunch defender and a benchmark practitioner of multilateralism at a time when this principle of international engagement is under severe erosion worldwide.


14 hours ago — The aircraft carrying the Prime Minister and his wife Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail landed at the Tianjin Binhai International Airport.


Top stories


 professor and East Asia expert at Japan’s Soka University. — AFP

Monday, 25 December 2023

How Malaysia is finding its way out of the middle-income trap

It has taken the slow but steady route while addressing an ethnic incongruity


. Kuala Lumpur's new landmark, Merdeka 118, is a symbol of the country's growing affluence. (Nikkei montage/Source photos by Hiroki Endo and Reuters) 

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim vows to focus on achieving faster growth.

KUALA LUMPUR -- Asia's megacities often undergo surprising metamorphoses in short amounts of time. Kuala Lumpur is one such example. When I visited the city in late October, I was amazed at how much it had modernized since I visited nine years ago.

Urban rail lines now crisscross the city, with new shopping malls sprouting everywhere. Particularly eye-catching was Merdeka 118, a 118-story skyscraper completed earlier this year. The 678-meter tower -- the world's second-tallest after the Burj Khalifa in Dubai -- is a symbol of the country's growing affluence. Its spire was designed to evoke the image of Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia's first prime minister, raising his hand as he proclaimed national independence in 1957.

Malaysia over the past few years has experienced a rapid turnover of prime ministers, though the political situation seems to have stabilized. On Dec. 5, about a year after the launch of his government, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim stressed his intention to push for faster economic growth. "It's time to focus on developing the economy," he said in an interview with a local broadcaster.

Anwar's government in July unveiled its 10-year Madani Economy plan and the National Energy Transition Roadmap. These were followed in September by the midterm review of the 12th Malaysia Plan and the New Industrial Master Plan 2030. In October, Anwar's government launched its Hydrogen Economy and Technology Roadmap.

"It is not clear how these relate to one another," a Japanese businessperson said. Still, it seems clear that the government's main goal is to achieve annual growth of over 5.5%, a target specified in the Madani plan.

A view of Kuala Lumpur's skyline. Given Malaysia's relatively young population, domestic demand is expected to keep expanding. © Reuters 

Malaysia's gross domestic product grew 8.7% last year, the highest in 22 years, and growth for this year is estimated at 4%, despite the global slowdown. Given its relatively young population, domestic demand is expected to further expand. The country's semiconductor and other sectors are also attracting foreign direct investment as alternative supply chain bases amid mounting U.S.-China tensions.

The country's per capita gross national income was $11,780 in 2022. If the economy grows 5.5% per year and there is no sharp depreciation of the ringgit against the dollar, it could shed its middle-income status, as defined by the World Bank, in two or three years, joining the ranks of high-income nations.

Graduation has been a long time coming.

Malaysia became an upper-middle-income country in 1996, according to a working paper that Jesus Felipe, a professor at De La Salle University in the Philippines, wrote in 2012, when he was with the Asian Development Bank. Felipe reasons that upper-middle-income nations become ensnared in the middle-income trap if they are unable to move up for more than 15 years. Once trapped, countries suffer stagnant growth, sandwiched between technologically advanced developed nations and developing countries abundant in cheap labor. The description fits Malaysia's situation.

To see why Malaysia could not extricate itself from the trap for so long, one needs to look at its history.

Twelve years after the country gained its independence in 1957, a racial riot engulfed the capital. Malays accounted for nearly 70% of the population, but ethnic Chinese, who made up less than 30%, controlled the economy. The strain of this incongruity led to the clash, resulting in about 200 deaths.

To prevent a recurrence of the tragedy, the government began to address the economic disparity and in 1971 adopted a policy called Bumiputera (sons of the soil) -- a type of affirmative action for ethnic Malays. The policy treats Malays favorably in all aspects of life, including school admissions, employment and even stockholding.

The country's ethnic Chinese are traditionally considered to be strong in commerce and industrial activities. "If we recruit people by ability alone, many could be Chinese," an executive at a Japanese company said.

By trying to fix the racial imbalance artificially, Bumiputera is often cited as a source of inefficiency, but it has its merits.

"If the government had not provided elementary and secondary education to Malay villagers and helped them migrate to cities and find jobs in the commercial and industrial sectors, the country would have suffered a serious labor shortage in the early stage of economic development," said Satoru Kumagai, director of the economic geography studies group at the Institute of Developing Economies of the Japan External Trade Organization. It can be said that Bumiputera's goal is to strike an optimal balance between distribution and growth.

A shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia's Bumiputera policy has helped educate young Malay villagers and bring them to cities hungry for workers. (Photo by Toru Takahashi)

Mahathir Mohamad, who in 1981 became Malaysia's fourth prime minister, shifted the national focus to growth by adopting the Look East policy, which sought to emulate Japan's economic success. The country also began to actively attract more foreign capital. In 1991, Mahathir launched Vision 2020, the goal of which was to become a high-income country in 30 years.

"His greatest achievement was to set a goal of becoming a high-income country," said Abdul Razak Ahmad, founding director of Bait Al Amanah, a private think tank. He "thus changed the people's mindset, encouraging them to have a can-do attitude."

Malaysia enjoyed annual growth of nearly 10% for 10 years before the Asian financial crisis hit it hard in 1997. Afterward, its growth slowed to around 5% to 6%. Anwar, then the deputy prime minister and finance minister, clashed with Mahathir over how to cope with the crisis and was dismissed.

When Anwar this year announced the Madani plan, he said the country had been "caught in a vicious cycle of high costs, low wages, low profits and a lack of competitiveness" since the 1997 crisis. Anwar clearly sees the plan as a roadmap to push the country into the high-income category during his tenure -- something his old enemy could not achieve.

The reason for Malaysia's inability to pull itself out of the middle-income trap becomes clear when looking at the economic development of Taiwan and South Korea.

In terms of population, Taiwan and South Korea are not much different from Malaysia. Taiwan is home to 23 million, South Korea to 51 million and Malaysia to 33 million.

In 1981, when Mahathir became prime minister, the three were not far apart in per capita GDP. Taiwan's was at $2,691, South Korea's at $1,883 and Malaysia's at $1,920.

Taiwan became an upper-middle-income economy in 1986, followed by South Korea two years later, according to Felipe. Taiwan stepped up to high-income status in 1993, with South Korea following in 1995. It took just seven years for the two to move from upper-middle-income to high-income status.



Unlike Malaysia, they did not fall into the trap. Last year, Malaysia's per capita GDP was $12,465, far below Taiwan's $32,687 and South Korea's $32,418. Several factors were at play here.

First, Taiwan and South Korea do not have complex ethnic problems that cause them to pursue difficult socioeconomic policies. Second, the two had no choice but to industrialize as they are not blessed with natural resources like Malaysia, which is rich in petroleum, natural gas and palm oil.

Third, democratization in Taiwan and South Korea began shortly before the end of the Cold War in 1989, allowing them to catch the waves of globalization and information technology. Taiwan democratized in 1986 and South Korea in 1987.

Malaysia has held democratic elections since it gained independence, but the country was under a "developmental dictatorship" that prioritized economic development while restricting political freedom. Malaysians had to wait until 2018 for their government to hand power to another party for the first time.

Fourth, internationally competitive businesses like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Hyundai Motor and Samsung Electronics have driven growth in Taiwan and South Korea. Malaysia, meanwhile, has failed to nurture such companies with an economy that instead has been led by government-affiliated entities. Its automobile, electrical and electronics industries have depended on foreign businesses.

Grab Holdings, whose ride-hailing superapp is now ubiquitous across Southeast Asia, was founded in Malaysia but quickly relocated its head office to Singapore to facilitate fund-raising and other benefits.

On the whole, Malaysia's lack of economic dynamism was to blame for its lower growth curve.

Still, it should be noted that Malaysia has avoided the so-called resource trap, in which the presence of abundant resources holds back a country's industrialization. Malaysia's leading exports are electrical and electronic products, which account for 40% of its total exports. It tops the U.S. and Japan in terms of exports of semiconductor-related products by value.

A worker inspects chips at Unisem's semiconductor packaging plant in Ipoh, Malaysia, in October 2021. It is becoming imperative for Malaysia to boost investments in higher value-added upstream industries. © Reuters 

This trap can be seen in Saudi Arabia, which in 2016 drafted its Vision 2030 strategy to reduce its dependence on natural resources. Malaysia achieved 40 years ago the industrialization Saudi Arabia is now pursuing.

Said Kumagai: "Malaysia is different from East Asia's elite economies like Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, and from countries with unique strengths such as Singapore, Hong Kong and oil-producing Gulf states. If it achieves high-income status, it will be the first 'normal' country to do so."

Still, challenges abound. In chip manufacturing, Vietnam and India are catching up fast, making it imperative for Malaysia to boost investments in higher value-added upstream industries. Given the accelerating trend toward carbon neutrality, demand for its fossil fuels will likely decline.

Yet, while balancing growth and stability, the multiethnic country with an average age of 30 has succeeded in making slow but steady progress toward overcoming the middle-income trap. Its industrial success will certainly serve as a beacon for other emerging and developing countries in the Global South.


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Malaysia's education policy must champion Meritocracy instead of Mediocrity system



Sunday, 29 January 2023

U.S. wants others to fight war with China, says ex-diplomat

THE U.S. WANTS WAR WITH CHINA – but with other people doing the fighting, a whistleblowing Australian diplomat revealed this week.

“The United States is NOT preparing to go to war against China: the United States is preparing Australia to go to war against China,” said John Lander, a former senior ambassador.

He believes China has no intention of invading the southern continent. But a different narrative was foremost in people’s minds because the Americans have a tight grip on Australian government and media, he argued.

BUT AUSTRALIA IS BEING INVADED

Yet there was a hidden irony that people weren’t seeing. 

These IS a country making a massive push into Australia: that country was the United States, not China. Australia’s citizens were “unaware or uncaring that almost every major Australian company across resources, food, retail, mass media, entertainment, banking and finance sectors, has majority American ownership,” Lander said. 

 John Lander 

“Australians fret about China buying up the country but American investment is ten times the size,” he added.

Comments by Lander, one of the country’s top China experts, received wide attention from citizens in Asia and Australia – but virtually no coverage from the media. The ambassador is retired and unafraid to speak openly.

TRAINED BY CIA

Citizens of his country, Lander said, were continually warned about China through reports in the media from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, or ASPI. But it was really “the American Subversive Propaganda Institute”, Lander said. “It has lobbyists from American arms manufacturers on the board, which is headed by an operative trained by the CIA.” ASPI has taken a leading role in spreading the Chinese “concentration camps” story, along with Radio Free Asia, which presents itself as an Asian journalism group, but is actually a CIA-founded operation based in Washington DC.

MASSIVE ARMS SPENDING

The former ambassador’s comments, made in an Salon interview on Sunday, January 22, 2023, are in line with those of other whistleblowers who note that the United States has been working to militarize Australia, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, while western media demonizes China. These two processes together are triggering massive spending on arms in the region, and creating the conditions for war—which would further boost the arms industries in the west.

Lander said that the eight nuclear-powered submarines Australia had been prodded to buy from America for defence were actually for “hunter killer operations in the Taiwan strait”.

LOSS OF SOVEREIGNTY

John Lander was Australia’s Director of the China Section of the Department of Foreign Affairs on three separate occasions, and personally negotiated Consular relations between Australia and China, having worked as a bridge between the two nations for the best part of 30 years.

Lander said he had become increasingly alarmed at the spreading of the notion that war against China is “inevitable”.

While mainstream commentators in Australia took an anti-China stance and pushed the line that that militarization “enhances Australian sovereignty”, the truth was that “these arrangements arguably accede Australian sovereignty to America”, he said. 

Source link

 

 Related:

 British Public chanting "SHAME ON YOU"  to the BBC at a demonstration outside BBC Broadcasting House in London. Hated in their own country & spreading FAKE PROPAGANDA in other countries. #BBCdocumentry

 


 From conspiracy theories about the origins of the COVID-19 to the claims of "genocide" in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, many external forces are spreading outright lies in an attempt to smear and ultimately contain China. This section aims to dig into hot-button issues and dissect lies and conspiracy theories with GT's own investigation and objective reporting. 


 

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