Xi warns Trump: Don’t test our red lines – Asian media report

Xi Jinping has issued a forthright warning to Donald Trump not to challenge China’s red lines, including Taiwan’s status as part of China and China’s political system.

Xi’s warning was delivered in talks with US President Joe Biden during the recent APEC conference in Lima, Peru.

But Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post said the stern message was widely perceived as intended for Trump's incoming administration.

“The underlying message was loud and clear,” SCMP said. “Do not try to seek regime change in China.”

Beijing’s official Global Times newspaper carried an extended report of the Chinese president’s remarks.

Xi made seven main points in his statement, including saying the Thucydides Trap (the idea that war was likely if a rising power challenged an existing power) was not inevitable.

“A new Cold War should not be fought,” Xi said. “Containing China is unwise, unacceptable and bound to fail.’

He listed the red lines as Taiwan, democracy and human rights, China’s path and system and China’s development. “They must not be challenged,” he said.

“Contradictions and differences between two major countries like China and the United States are unavoidable. But one side should not undermine the core interests of the other, let alone seek conflict or confrontation.”

Xi was blunt in talking about the need to match words and actions. “If the US side always says one thing but does another, it will be detrimental to its own image and undermine trust between China and the United States,” he said.

China Daily, also an official English-language paper, adopted a biblical reference, referring in an editorial to Xi’s “seven pillars of wisdom” for good China-US relations.

The editorial quoted Xi as saying China’s goal of a stable, healthy and sustainable relationship remained unchanged. Also unchanged was China’s position of resolutely safeguarding its sovereignty, security and development interests.

“It is to be hoped the new administration will engage in dialogue with China,” the editorial said.

“It should not overstretch the national security concept, still less use it as a pretext for malicious moves to constrain the Chinese people’s right to development… sovereignty and maritime rights and interests.”

Liberalisation leads to elite development model

India is ruled by a super-elite – a small sliver of the population but a decisive voice in setting policy priorities. 

And that voice advocates lower taxation, lighter regulation and labour and land “reform”. The super-elite have no concern for the country’s education system or other public goods.

A damning critique of India’s version of trickle-down economics has been published in what Australians would call the mainstream media – Frontline, the magazine of The Hindu newspaper.

It is a 6000-word essay written by Ashoka Mody, an Indian-American economist who retired recently from Princeton University. Mody is the author of a 2023 book, India Is Broken: A People Betrayed, Independence to Today. The title of his Frontline essay is “The great inequality myth that rules India.”

Mody says that internationally India’s approach is known as “neoliberalism”, although in India its twin sibling “liberalisation” is the preferred term. The ideology, however, is more accurately described as the elite model of development - a model that uses state power to generate and sustain economic inequalities. 

“The message is that the rich deserve all the help they can get because the inequality so generated helps trigger a ‘trickle-down’ prosperity,” he says. “But because this ‘inequality-is-good-for-growth’ thesis finds little support in historical experience, the selfishness-is-good ideology comes packaged with the invocation of the private morality of hard work and self-reliance: if you are poor, you are not only lazy but you are also immoral.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi implemented what is called the Gujarat model of development when he was chief minister of Gujarat state more than 20 years ago. “Stripped of its hype, [it] was tantamount to looting the state for rich corporates,” Mody writes.

Indian intellectuals came to form a consensus in favour of Modi’s approach. 

After his election as prime minister in 2014, Modi transformed the elite model into an approach that was more closely linked to his name.

“For now, India’s unequal development is set to continue,” Mody says. “Politicians pay lip service to inclusiveness and equality but on key issues that matter – such as education, health, functioning cities, a fair and responsive judiciary, and environmental protection and adaption to climate change – they have few ideas and little commitment to substantive goals.”

Defence chiefs move ahead of Trump’s return

Richard Marles is trying to lock in stronger and closer US-Japan-Australia defence ties before Donald Trump returns to the White House.

The Australian Defence Minister has announced that Japan’s Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade, which The Japan Times described as an elite marine unit  of the Ground Self-Defence Force, would be deployed regularly through Darwin, alongside US marines and Australian forces.

They would take part in annual amphibious training drills, starting with next year’s Talisman Sabre exercise.

The enhanced trilateral co-operation was intended to send a strong signal of deterrence to China and North Korea.

The paper said, in a second story, the announcement was aimed at synchronising bilateral ties with trilateral efforts. 

Washington, Tokyo and Canberra wanted to institutionalise a broader defence co-operation before the return of Trump, who took a transactional approach to defence alliances in his first term.

The closer link – interoperability, as Marles terms it – would allow for a potential allied crisis response, the paper said.

Marles hosted a meeting in Darwin with outgoing US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and new Japanese Defence Minister Gen Nakatani. 

The Japan Times said they decided to launch trilateral defence consultations, to align policy and operational objectives “from peacetime to contingency”.

They agreed to increase Japan’s contribution to an existing drill called Exercise Southern Jackaroo and to boost Australia’s activity in US-Japan drills, such as Yama Sakura, Keen Edge and Keen Sword.

The enhanced co-operation signalled a dangerous shift in Japan towards further militarisation, Global Times, a Beijing official newspaper, said. 

It said the trilateral defence meeting had a clear agenda: to enhance military co-operation in the Asia-Pacific in line with the US Indo-Pacific strategy.

Rich countries or Global South – Prabowo wants both

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s first trip after taking office was to China, for talks with Xi Jinping. He then immediately visited Washington, for a meeting with Joe Biden and a telephone conversation with Donald Trump.

He made it clear, said an editorial in The Jakarta Post, that he did not favour one over the other. This was the challenge for Prabowo: to strike the right balance that serves Indonesia’s economic, political and security interests.

“Getting the right balance is always a challenge for any Indonesian president, considering the clear mandate to uphold a non-alignment foreign policy,” the editorial said.

The paper said there was no need to take seriously the joint statement issued after Prabowo’s meeting with Biden (a statement littered with diplomatic platitudes) but it was a useful counterweight to a statement issued after he met Xi. 

Global Times reported Xi as saying that Prabowo chose China for his first overseas trip after being elected in March and for first trip after assuming office. This spoke volumes about the great importance he attached to developing relations with China.

Prabowo’s predecessor Joko “Jokowi” Widodo had moved Indonesia closer to China – perhaps a little too close, the editorial said. Prabowo, as defence minister, has tilted the balance a little by forging closer security ties with the US.

Prabowo’s other balancing act lies in wanting to join the OECD, a grouping of developed economies often called the “rich countries’ club”, and to move from partner-member to full member of BRICS, the organisation representing the Global South.

The Post reported Prabowo as saying there was no problem in belonging to both.

He said he wants to maximise the benefits Indonesia can gain from membership of multilateral organisations.

“For our economy, we want to look for the best opportunities,” he said. “We have to think about the welfare of our people, right.”

President’s party wins record victory in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka has a new government. The Cabinet was sworn in this week, following the stunning victory by the National People’s Power coalition in last week’s general election.

NPP won a record 159 seats in the 225-seat parliament.

A commentary in Sri Lanka’s Daily Mirror newspaper called the result a tsunami of political change.

“President Dissanayake asked voters to drive corrupt politicians out of parliament,” the OpEd said. “Well, the public has done just that.

“It is now up to Dissanayake and his team of brand-new MPs to help Lanka’s people out of the misery their ‘experienced politicians’ led them into.”

Anura Kumara Dissanayake (popularly known as AKD), a leftist, was elected president two months ago, defeating the candidates of the established parties. He called the general election almost immediately, as he had only three seats in parliament.

Sunday Island website reported the new government would press ahead with sweeping constitutional reforms. It quoted Tilvin Silva, general secretary of Dissanayake’s JVP party, as saying the government would work on returning the country to a Westminster-style democracy, giving more power to the legislature.

India’s The Hindu newspaper noted the NPP’s general election vote increased considerably throughout the country but the results in the north and the east, home to Tamils and Muslims, were especially remarkable.

The call for change that dominated the Sinhala-majority south ahead of the presidential election had found an island-wide resonance.

‘Is anyone available?’ People pay for online chats

Loneliness is one of the saddest human experiences and the vast number of isolated people in China has generated a lonely-hearts industry. 

People pay online for human connections – not for online sex but for simple conversation.

A story in the South China Morning Post says people on a social platform called Xiaohongshu use the hashtag #companionchat to find others willing to sell, or buy, a few minutes of human conversation.

“Is anyone available to chat? I’ll pay whatever it takes,” said one recent post.

The hashtag has scored millions of views over the past couple of years, the story says, reflecting people’s willingness to pay money to stave off loneliness. It is part of a trend called emotional consumption and a phenomenon called the companionship economy.

This reflects China’s changing demographics, says Wang Pan, a Chinese and Asian studies academic at UNSW Sydney.

The number of unmarried people in China between the ages of 20 and 49 stands at 134 million – more than the population of Japan, the story says. The number of marriage registrations is falling, down to 4.75 million in the first nine months of this year – a historic low.

“China has become increasingly lonely, so people have a strong desire for love, intimacy and closeness,” says Wang, author of Love and Marriage in Globalizing China.

“This has created a space for the growth of the [companionship] business. Plus, it’s a profitable business.”

David Armstrong has worked in Asia for more than 20 years. He is a former chief editor of The Bulletin, the Canberra Times, The Australian and the South China Morning Post. He is a former president of the Bangkok Post company and lives in Bangkok.

This article first appeared in Pearls and Irritations.