Asia News fra SCMP

Nearly one in three candidates contesting Japan’s upper house election next month is a woman, a record number in a country with one of the world’s worst rates of female political representation. Of the 273 candidates running in the July 21 election, where 124 seats across the country are being contested, 82 are women – accounting for 30 per cent of candidates and surpassing the previous record of 27.6 per cent seen in the 2001 upper house election. Japan has one of the widest gender gaps in […]

Demonstrators in Manila on Tuesday burned Chinese flags in protest over what they said was a “weak” response by President Rodrigo Duterte to the sinking of a Philippine fishing boat in the South China Sea.Holding placards with messages such as “End China Aggression” and “China hands off Filipino fishermen” around 50 protesters joined the Justice for Philippines rally at Rizal Park, denouncing what they said was an effort by the president to belittle the incident, in which 22 Filipino fishermen […]

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un may have returned empty-handed from the much-touted second summit with United States President Donald Trump, but analysts say the visit of China’s President Xi Jinping to Pyongyang may provide Kim with a much needed political boost – in the form of tonnes of food. As is customary with visits to the impoverished state by top Chinese leaders, Xi is widely expected to provide massive humanitarian aid to the North as a gift, with news reports in Seoul speculating […]

Half a million refugee Rohingya children are shut out of local schools in Bangladesh, leaving many in religious madrasas where critics say educational standards are low and students are vulnerable to indoctrination.About 740,000 Muslim Rohingya fled into the country during a 2017 crackdown by Myanmar’s military, swelling the numbers of the minority in Bangladesh to about 1 million.But while their language and culture are similar to people in southeastern Bangladesh, authorities regard t […]

On a grey stone column in Pyongyang, a mural shows Chinese and North Korean soldiers rushing into battle against US-led forces in the Korean war. Decades later, the monument is a regular stop for new waves of Chinese going to the North, this time as tourists.Hundreds of soldiers and workers have been sprucing up the obelisk and its grounds in recent days ahead of a state visit to Pyongyang by Chinese President Xi Jinping this week.An inscription on it lauds “the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army, […]

Tourists snap selfies by a bronze statue of the diver who died trying to save the Wild Boars football team from a flooded cave, while mementos from their rescue fly off the shelves – scooped up by the 1.3 million people who have descended on a once serene mountainside in northern Thailand.“It’s amazing what happened here. I followed everything from Australia,” tourist John McGowan said after taking photos at the visitor centre around 100 metres from the Tham Luang cave entrance.“I wanted to s […]

Thai cybersex traffickers are targeting teenage boys from wealthy backgrounds, often luring them by posing as young girls, according to the deputy head of a child sex abuse task force.Kornchai Klayklueng, a senior police officer, said victims were persuaded to film or photograph themselves masturbating, then told the images would be leaked to their friends and families unless they continued to provide them.Some victims have been identified by their uniforms as they attend well-known privat […]

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s maiden state visit to Pyongyang this week may signal an economic re-engagement with the isolated neighbour, according to Chinese state media.Ahead of the visit, Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily suggested, via its social media account, that restoring bilateral economic relations would be on the agenda.“Bilateral economic and trade issues will be highlighted,” Zheng Jiyong, director of the Korean Studies Centre at Fudan University in Shanghai, was quoted as […]

This year, India, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia all held elections. About 1 billion voters were involved, all within a few weeks of one another.On the ground, the elections provided a study in contrasts. For example, in the southeast of India in April, we discovered a city pulsating with people as crowds in Eluru, Andhra Pradesh state, waited for candidates to arrive in the baking heat, with music blaring from loudspeakers.It was a long way removed from the city of Phitsanulok in […]

Malaysian police expect to complete investigations into a series of sex videos involving a young politician and an older man resembling a cabinet minister “next week or the week after”, the country’s police chief said.Last week, the country was rocked by the release of several sex videos, followed by a bold confession by a 27-year-old politician, Muhammad Haziq Abdul Aziz, who admitted to being the younger man in the video.Haziq, a member of the ruling People’s Justice Party (PKR), named […]