Wednesday, June 13, 2018

North Koreans in Canada outraged at Donald Trump's praise of Kim Jong-un

Canada’s small community of North Korean defectors are angered by Trump’s insults for Justin Trudeau and flattery for Kim

Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un walk to the summit at the Capella hotel on Sentosa island in Singapore on 12 June. Photograph: -/AFP/Getty Images

Bruce Livesey -Wed 13 Jun 2018

In an unprecedented week for international geopolitics – during which Donald Trump praised the North Korean leader shortly after disparaging Canada’s prime minister – one group of people has been particularly shocked by the US president’s upending of diplomatic norms.

Canada’s small community of North Korean defectors has been shocked and infuriated by Trump’s contrasting treatment of the two leaders: insults for Justin Trudeau after the G7 meeting in Quebec and flattery for Kim Jong-un at the summit in Singapore.

Julie and David – who both asked to use pseudonyms for fear of retaliation– are a married couple who escaped from North Korea in 2005 and now live in Toronto.

Speaking through a translator, Julie could not contain her anger at Trump’s behaviour. “Attacking Prime Minister Trudeau but then, 24 hours later, going to Singapore and praising a dictator who is a murderer – it was unbearable to watch,” she said.

She was particularly incensed by Trump’s failure to raise the subject of human rights abuses during his meetings with the Kim, who he described as a “very talented man” with a “great personality”.
Between 80,000 and 120,000 political prisoners are held in North Korean prisons, according to a UN commission of inquiry, which found that the regime’s crimes included “extermination, murder,
enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation”.

“They didn’t address what was happening to the people in North Korea – all he did was praise Kim Jong-un. Unbelievable.”

Julie, 44, worked in a fishery company but defected in 2005 after being imprisoned for her political beliefs. She escaped through China, but was forced to leave her 10-year-old son behind. (He was finally reunited with her four years later).

She met her husband David, 43, in a refugee settlement in South Korea, and the couple emigrated to Canadain 2008.

Their sentiments over Trump’s treatment of Kim were shared by many defectors and their supporters in Canada.

Jacqueline An, a Toronto lawyer, has represented many exiles over the years – and helped win the release last year of Hyeon Soo Lim, a Canadian pastor who was given a life sentence with hard labour for allegedly “meddling” in North Korean state affairs.

She described Trump’s actions as “a complete mockery of democracy and celebration and admiration of a dictatorship. It’s absolutely deplorable.”

An said many North Koreans see Canada as a safe haven far from the the reach of Kim’s regime.
Trump, in contrast, has grown increasingly impatient with Canada in a growing row over trade rules.
“Canada is the most compassionate country in the world,” said An. “Trump should apologize to Trudeau. He wants to get into a trade war with Canada and then fly off to be with this dictator, the worst in the world.”

Rocky Kim, 38, fled North Korea in his early 20s in 2003, and made his way to Canada, where he now runs a heating and ventilation company in Toronto.

In North Korea, he spent time in the labour camps, and recalls seeing people die of hunger. “It’s not a normal country,” he insists in a phone interview. “It’s a dynasty, with the people living in slavery.”
Kim said he thought the US president was blinded by his desire to land a historic deal with the Pyongyang regime, but came away empty-handed. “He got nothing. Kim did not promise to agree to denuclearisation.”

In Singapore, Kim Jong-un signed a joint statement committing to “denuclearisation”, but it was a vaguely worded commitment that the regime has made several times before, and Rocky Kim said he thought that North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons.

“For North Korea’s leaders, it’s very important to have nuclear weapons to protect themselves,” he explains. “I don’t think Kim Jong-un will give them up. Never, ever. Trump has fallen into a trap.”
North Korean refugee claim numbers to Canada have varied in recent years. There were 720 claims in 2012. The numbers then dropped to 150 claims in 2013, less than five in 2014 – and none at all in 2015.
Canada’s government has itself been criticised for its treatment of North Koreans after 150 defectors – some of whom have lived in the country for years – received letters last year saying that they could face deportation.

By Avi SelkJune 12 at 8:28 PM

Before the news conference President Trump held at the end of his June 12 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a propaganda-style film was played. (The Washington Post)

Reporters crowded into a Singapore auditorium Tuesday, expecting President Trump to walk out and announce the results of his historic meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Suddenly, two huge screens on either side of the empty podium came to life. Soaring music boomed over the speakers, and the reporters were bombarded with a montage portraying North Korea as some sort of paradise.

Golden sunrises, gleaming skylines and high-speed trains. Children skipping through Kim Il Sung square in Pyongyang. North Korean flags fluttering between images of Egyptian pyramids, the Taj Mahal and the Lincoln Memorial.

In a split-screen shot, Kim Jong Un waved to an adoring crowd while President Trump stood beside him with his thumb in the air. The pair appeared over and over again, like running mates in a campaign video.

The film went on like this for more than four minutes, with brief interludes of missiles, soldiers and warships interrupting the pageantry. Some journalists, unable to understand the Korean-language narration, assumed they were watching one of Pyongyang’s infamous propaganda films. “What country are we in?” asked a reporter from the filing center.

Andrew Beatty

✔@AndrewBeatty

They are playing a propaganda video before Trump presser. Not kidding. What is happening??!!

4:10 AM - Jun 12, 2018

But then the video looped, playing this time in English. And then Trump walked onto the stage and confirmed what some had already realized.

The film was not North Korean propaganda. It had been made in America, by or on the orders of his White House, for the benefit of Kim.

“I hope you liked it,” Trump told the reporters. “I thought it was good. I thought it was interesting enough to show. ... And I think he loved it.”

The crowd sounded skeptical. Some wondered if Trump had not, in fact, just provided U.S.-sanctioned propaganda to one of the country’s oldest adversaries.

But as the president explained it, the video was more like an elevator pitch. It was the type of glitzy production that Trump might have once used to persuade investors to finance his hotels, and now hoped could persuade one of the most repressive regimes in the world to disarm its nuclear weapons and end nearly 70 years of international isolation and militant hostility to the United States.

On Tuesday evening, Trump tweeted a link to the video, for all to see.

The nearly five-minute movie even has its own Hollywood-style vanity logo: “A Destiny Pictures Production,” though a film company by the same name in Los Angeles denied any involvement in making it, and the White House has not yet responded to questions about it.

[‘Pretty historical’: Dennis Rodman reminds us of his effort to broker peace with North Korea]

“Of those alive today, only a small number will leave a lasting impact,” the narrator said near the beginning, as alternating shots of Trump, Kim and North Korean pageantry flashed on the screen. “And only a very few will make decisions or take actions to renew their homeland, or change the course of history.”

The message was clear: Kim had a decision to make. Then the film progressed from grim black-and-white shots of the United States’s 1950s-era war with North Korea into a montage of rose-colored parades and gold-tinted clouds.

“The past doesn’t have to be the future,” the narrator said. “What if a people that share a common and rich heritage can find a common future?”

The same technique repeated even more dramatically a minute later in the film, when the footage seemed to melt into a horror montage of war planes and missiles bearing down on North Korean cities — much like the apocalyptic propaganda videos Pyongyang had produced just a few months ago, when Kim and Trump sounded as if they were on the brink of nuclear war.

[A North Korean propaganda film foretold proposed talks between Trump and Kim Jong Un]

But in Trump’s film, the destruction rewound itself. The missiles flew back into to their launchers, and a science fiction-like version of North Korea took its place — one of crane-dotted skylines, crowded highways, computerized factories and drones, all presided over by a waving, grinning Kim, accompanied always by Trump. “Two men; two leaders; one destiny.”

“You can have medical breakthroughs, an abundance of resources, innovative technology and new discoveries,” the narrator said, the footage more and more resembling a Hollywood movie trailer as it built to its finale:

“Featuring President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un in a meeting to remake history,” the narrator concluded, as Korean words flashed on a black background: “It is going to become a reality?”

Zeke Miller

✔@ZekeJMiller

Haven't seen this before: Before POTUS comes out for press conference, WH shows a Michael Bay-esque video showing Trump and Kim, military weapons, bombs

4:08 AM - Jun 12, 2018

The reporters had many questions.

“Do you now see Kim Jong Un as an equal?” asked a Time magazine correspondent.

“In what way?” Trump asked.

“You just showed a video that showed you and Kim Jong Un on equal footing, and discussing the future of the country.

”President Trump spoke to reporters in Singapore after meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on June 12. Here are key moments. (Sarah Parnass /The Washington Post)

The president may have misunderstood the question, as he referred in his answer to his closed-door talks and a few carefully negotiated photo ops with Kim — not the U.S.-made video that presented the totalitarian autocrat as a hero.

“If I have to say I’m sitting on a stage with Chairman Kim and that gets us to save 30 million lives — it could be more than that — I’m willing to sit on a stage, I’m willing to travel to Singapore, very proudly,” Trump said.

“Are you concerned the video you just showed could be used by Kim as propaganda, to show him as ... ”

Trump cut the question off. “No, I’m not concerned at all. We can use that video for other countries.”

The president was more talkative when discussing how Kim had reacted to the video, which Trump had presumably played for him during a brief, private meeting hours earlier.

“We didn’t have a big screen like you have the luxury of having,” Trump said. “We didn’t need it, because we had it on cassette, uh, an iPad.

“And they played it. About eight of their representatives were watching it, and I thought they were fascinated by it. I thought it was well done. I showed it to you because that’s the future. I mean, that could very well be the future. And the other alternative is just not a very good alternative. It’s just not good.”

International reviews of the video were decidedly mixed.

“Schlocky” — Vanity Fair.

“Odd.” — The Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

“One observer dismissed it as ‘a word salad topped with gratuitous appeasement of a monstrous regime,’ " the South China Morning Post reported.

The Daily Mail noted that as the narrator described North Korea’s glorious future of technology and international investment, the video showed stock footage of the Miami Beach shoreline, not far from a Trump-owned hotel. The Spectator called the whole sequence “real estate politik” — which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

“The text reads like some godawful martial-arts movie trailer crossed with a corporate advertisement for an ambitious construction project,” Freddy Gray wrote for the British newspaper. “But clearly, in some peculiar way, it works.”

The president acknowledged that some of the film’s imagery may seem far-fetched. North Korea is mired in poverty, internationally isolated, and has been mismanaged for decades by a family of dictators — Kim, his father and grandfather.

“That was done at the highest level of future development,” Trump told the reporters in Singapore, as if he had just offered Kim a multitiered vacation package. “I told him, you may not want this. You may want to do a much smaller version. ... You may not want that, with the trains and everything.”

He waved his hands. “You know, with super everything, to the top. It’s going to be up to them."

And then, in his usual style, Trump was thinking out loud about the “great condos” that might one day be built on the “great beaches” of North Korea.

“I explained it,” he said. “You could have the best hotels in the world. Think of it from the real estate perspective.”

As the screens above Trump emphasized, he certainly had.

Anne Gearan, Min Joo Kim and Philip Rucker contributed to this report.

The Slow Rise and Sudden Fall of the G-7

The history of the Group of Seven shows how the West went from a geographic category to a geopolitical group — and back again.

US President Ronald Reagan talks to Japanese Premier Yasuhiro Nakasone on May 5, 1986. (MIKE SARGENT/AFP/Getty Images)

BY DANIEL SARGENT-

JUNE 13, 2018, 2:00 AM
The end times have come and gone for the West over 70-odd years, but it is difficult these days, to escape the sensation that the dusk really is falling. A changing light casts long shadows — and generates harsh contrasts. Seldom have the West’s defenders marshaled the solemn dignity that U.S. Sen. John McCain personifies in this last phase of his public life, as he speaks in eloquent defense of commitments that have animated U.S. foreign policy during his lifetime.

Dignity, meanwhile, may be the quality that the U.S. president’s diplomacy most lacks, with the G-7 summit of industrial democracies this weekend serving as the clearest example yet. After showing up late and interrupting a forum on gender equality, President Donald Trump scowled his way through sessions before departing early for Singapore. And as he headed out, Trump insulted his host and neighbor, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, and retracted his signature from the G-7’s communique, ending a 42-year run of choreographed collegiality. Then, over the past 24 hours, Trump has showcased his preference for the company of a callow despot, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, over engagement with what used to be considered America’s closest allies and peers.
What now for the G-7? History offers no clues to the future, for the strange developments of the present mostly defy analogies and comparisons. Yet reflecting on the G-7’s origins and early development may help explain both how we got where we are and the real stakes of Trump’s irascibility.

The story begins in the rubble of World War II, with American elites uncertain as to what responsibilities, if any, the United States should assume for war-torn foreign societies. The Cold War’s escalation soon prompted the acceptance of novel burdens. Marshall Plan aid opened the dollar spigots, and NATO enshrined security guarantees. By the early 1950s, Washington had built an international order centered upon the dissemination of U.S. economic resources, security guarantees, and public goods.

Formerly a cultural category, the West became a geopolitical group: a league of nation-states beholden to common institutions, bound to U.S. leadership, and counterposed to the East. Serious dilemmas vexed the West in the 1950s, especially the question of whether Europeans could trust the United States to use nuclear weapons to defend Western Europe when the actual use of nuclear weapons would invite a response in kind, putting U.S. lives at risk.

Still, the West’s first existential crisis did not arrive until the late 1960s, when three factors combined to deluge the postwar international order in uncertainty. First, Europe’s postwar economic recovery prompted Americans to ask whether they should continue to exercise singular responsibilities for the wellbeing of their allies. Second, the descent into Vietnam prompted Europeans to question whether American good judgment could really be trusted. Third, the gradual relaxation of Cold War rivalries after the 1962 missile crisis loosened the inter-bloc hostilities that had bound the West (and East) together.

Amid adverse structural trends, a shift toward unilateralism and nationalist bravado in U.S. foreign policy pushed the West into its severest crisis (so far) of the postwar era. Unfair trade was a fixation for President Richard Nixon, who entered the White House in 1969 convinced that his country was bearing an unreasonable share of the West’s common burdens. “We have done everything for them and they have done nothing for us,” Nixon complained.
Nixon’s grievances focused not on tariffs so much as the Bretton Woods international monetary arrangements established in the last years of the Second World War. A quarter century of fixed exchange rates had locked in an overvalued U.S. dollar, Nixon believed, with consequences that disadvantaged U.S. manufacturers, favored foreign imports, and left the United States exposed to severe balance of payments crises. The concerns were valid, but Nixon’s solution was brutal.

On Aug. 15, 1971, Nixon announced without forewarning that the United States would abandon the gold-dollar exchange standard. Nixon also imposed a 10 percent surcharge on imports to the United States, invoking the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917 as a source of presidential authority.
Nixon’s move plunged the West into a prolonged crisis that the quality of his personal relationships only exacerbated. Aloof, dour, and hubristic, Nixon had mostly difficult relations with foreign peers. The rare exceptions were those occasions when a foreign lickspittle presented himself with sufficient deference, much as Nixon himself accomplished when he visited the court of Mao Zedong.

TRENDING

While Nixon shocked, it fell to National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger — still an arriviste in high-level diplomacy — to hammer out the basis for a solution. In a plan that Nixon ratified with French President Georges Pompidou in late 1971, the dollar was devalued and fixed exchange rates were restored. When that compromise faltered, the Europeans and the Americans conceded in early 1973 to let foreign exchange markets set the values of their currencies — a solution that endures to the present.

Kissinger radiated the charm Nixon lacked, but even he could not resolve the forces pulling at the West’s seams. After the monetary turmoil of 1971 to 1973, the aftershocks of the Arab-Israeli War of 1973 were even worse. European and Japanese diplomats lamented that Washington’s pro-Israel bias had invited an Arab oil embargo, risking the West’s energy security. Kissinger, who commanded U.S. foreign policy as Nixon drenched his sorrows in booze, was no less aggrieved. The failure of the Europeans to stand by the United States during the ensuing oil crisis was treacherous, Kissinger exclaimed: the Europeans were “jackals” and the Western alliance had turned into a “cancer.”
From this nadir, leaders sought renewal. Consultations among the British, French, German, and U.S. finance ministers began in March 1973 at the behest of U.S. Treasury Secretary George Shultz. In 1974, U.S. diplomats worked, on a parallel track, to build a Western front on energy. The campaign led to the creation of the International Energy Agency in late 1974.

A series of leadership changes was also crucial. Over the course of 1974, Helmut Schmidt replaced Willy Brandt as chancellor of Germany, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing succeeded Georges Pompidou as president of France, and Harold Wilson dispatched Edward Heath to become prime minister of the United Kingdom. Most important, the gregarious and collaborative Gerald Ford replaced the imperious Nixon. The pieces were in place for a revival of a Western dialogue, even of a common purpose.

Early proposals for a heads-of-state-and-government conference to explore common economic dilemmas originated with Giscard d’Estaing and Schmidt. Ford and Wilson endorsed the proposal in a Western meeting that occurred on the sidelines of the Helsinki summit of 1975, a grand East-West conference. Giscard offered to host an economic conclave at Rambouillet Castle, a damp and drafty venue just outside of Paris. The addition of Japan and Italy made the G-6, which convened from November 15 to 17, 1975.

The cramped confines at Rambouillet suggested Giscard’s preference for an intimate gathering of apex leaders, an “intensive seminar,” as diplomats described it. Over three sessions, the assembled leaders traversed diverse topics, including monetary relations, energy, and development. The imperative of international cooperation amid conditions of accelerating interdependence, or globalization, was a pervasive theme. No major decision-making occurred, although an offstage meeting among mid-ranking U.S. and French officials did establish a basis for amending the International Monetary Fund Articles of Agreement in early 1976.

Giscard had intended a one-off event, but the group reconvened seven months later in Puerto Rico. The addition of Canada transformed the G-6 into the G-7, but the agenda remained unchanged. The economic summit sought dialogue on common problems, not collective decision-making. Indeed, the Puerto Rico meeting showcased sharp policy divergences: Schmidt and Ford favored disciplinary solutions to counter inflation, while Wilson favored Keynesian reflation to ease a persistent recession. But the debate nonetheless showcased the unity of the West’s leading countries. The affirmation of common purpose, not the formulation of policy, Kissinger argued, was the “moral foundation for these meetings.”

The heyday of summitry came under Ford’s successor. Impressed by his experience with the Trilateral Commission, Jimmy Carter hoped to turn the G-7 into a forum for collaborative governance. Carter achieved little at the 1977 London summit of the G-7, but he managed to strike a historic deal at the next summit. In Bonn, West Germany, Carter — who still favored Keynesian solutions — persuaded Germany and Japan to implement fiscal stimulus efforts in return for a pledge to decontrol domestic U.S. oil prices. Inconsequential in essence, the 1978 deal marked a striking bid to internationalize macroeconomic policy.

Carter, at this point, was ebullient about what summitry might accomplish. “We feel like members of a fraternity,” the president wrote in his diary. “We share problems and political analyses, try to understand different national perspectives, and cooperate.” Yet the results could underwhelm.
Carter’s Keynesian advisors hoped that a coordinated stimulus would cure the West’s persistent malaise. The effort failed, and U.S. policymakers soon made an abrupt U-turn. With the dollar beset by a new crisis in late 1978, Carter adopted an austerity policy. The U.S. Federal Reserve soon followed suit, opting under Chairman Paul Volcker’s new leadership to adopt a modified monetarist policy in September 1979. Adaptation to globalization was, in effect, supplanting Carter’s initial bid to manage globalization via annual economic summits.

The experiments of the Carter years put an end to the notion that the G-7 could function as a framework for governance. Instead, the 1970s diminished the West’s rules-based international economic order: There would be fewer rules and less order in a post-Bretton Woods era than had existed under the classic pre-1971 international monetary order. What emerged from the 1970s was a new configuration of (dis)order, in which markets set the terms, and governments acted mainly to manage intermittent crises.

The Plaza Accord of 1985, the U.S.-led bailout of Mexico during the peso crisis of 1994 to 1995, the IMF-led response to the Asian financial crisis of 1997 to 1998, and the coordination of stimulus initiatives within the G-20 in 2009 all showcased that crisis management, not collaborative governance, was the most that could be expected from sovereign nation-states acting in concert under conditions of advanced globalization.

On the most urgent dilemmas of our times — economic inequality, sustainable development, and the looming peril of ecological catastrophe — the G-7 has been irrelevant. The G-7 has not evolved into a directorate capable of offsetting a historic slippage in U.S. hegemonic capabilities, as political scientists like Robert Keohane once hoped it might. To call Donald Trump’s Canadian temper tantrum an assault on the West’s governing framework is to overstate, by a mile, the G-7’s institutional significance.

Trump’s assault is no death knell; as a project in global leadership, the G-7 was already dead. Its supersession by the G-20 during the global financial crisis confirmed its obsolescence as a framework for governance. The G20, not the G7, functioned as the forum for the coordination of fiscal stimulus efforts in the nadir of 2009. The same goes for the current GDP data. In 1980, the G-7 countries constituted about 51 percent of global production on a purchasing power parity basis; today, the G-7 claims just over 30 percent. The G-7 can no longer maintain a plausible pretension to run the world — it has become a niche organization.

And herein lies the real significance — and the real tragedy — of Trump’s petulant behavior. The point of the G-7, as Schmidt, Pompidou, and Ford all grasped, was to foster unity in a historical phase when geopolitical trends were corroding the West. Dialogue on common economic problems, all hoped, would offer an alternative source of cohesion. Or, as Kissinger explained in 1975: “The trick in the world now is to use economics to build a world political structure.”

For almost 40 years, the G-7 served this vital function. Through turmoil and triumph, the annual conclaves engendered unity — and papered over the cracks. Here again, Carter’s experience is illustrative. Ebullient at Bonn in 1978, Carter had difficult final summits at Tokyo in 1979 and Venice in 1980. Conflicts over energy, fiscal policy, and the end of detente roiled the two summits, producing blazing rows. Yet the G-7 members were, in the end, able to negotiate communiques that affirmed the basic unity of the Western countries. “The free democratic nations,” Japanese Foreign Minister Saburo Okita declared, “were traveling in the same gondola.”

Today, it is the sense of unity the G-7 has cultivated that is imperiled. Configurations of power and interest are an insufficient basis for durable order among nations, as diplomatic historians well understand. The West cohered after 1945 not only because of shared enmities but also because its elites cultivated sociability and common values. From the Bilderberg Group to the Trilateral Commission, sociability proved both a source of cohesion and a salve for disagreements.

Functioning at the most elite level of all, the G-7 nurtured unity among the world’s liberal democracies through economic crises and geopolitical transition. Its debasing by a feckless U.S. president will serve only to tear the West’s fraying bonds of commonality still further asunder. In Beijing and in Moscow, the West’s rivals are cheering.

Putin’s visit to China bears witness of a high level of Chinese-Russian relations

The most powerful Russian and Chinese leaders in decades, Xi and Putin have built closer alliances, while US President Donald Trump has labelled both countries as economic rivals that challenge US interests and values.

by Anwar A. Khan-Jun 12, 2018

( June 12, 2018, Dhaka, Sri Lanka Guardian) Russian news agency TASS has carried a report that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to China would show the world a high level of Chinese-Russian relations and would be an important impetus for further strengthening partnership between the two countries, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying told reporters at a press briefing on Friday. It has further said, “This is a comprehensive visit. Thanks to it, the two countries will outline all areas for the further development of Russian-Chinese relations. Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Ms. Hua said, “We believe that Putin’s current visit will fully demonstrate a special nature and high level of our bilateral comprehensive partnership. It will be marked by numerous positive results and will proceed in a warm friendly atmosphere and will be a new impetus to developing relations between the two countries.”

The Russian President arrived in the People’s Republic of China on a state visit at the invitation of President of China Xi Jinping on 8 June 2018. Chinese President treated his Russian counterpart to this visit as the neighbouring giant forge closer ties in the face of US diplomatic and economic challenges. Putin, re-elected to his fourth Kremlin term in March, arrived at the grandiose Great Hall of the People in Beijing for talks with Xi.

The two heads of state reviewed a military honour guard and greeted flag-waving children during the welcome ceremony before receding into the vast building. The most powerful Russian and Chinese leaders in decades, Xi and Putin have built closer alliances, while US President Donald Trump has labelled both countries as economic rivals that challenge US interests and values. But the sorry history lesson is that the American establishment has tremendous interests of its own only and to meddle into internal affairs of other sovereign and independent nations of the world, but the truth is that it does not possess any values that it boastfully says.

Xi and Putin have become soul mates who want to make their countries great again. Both share skepticism towards American hegemony and correctly distrust US intentions. Xi Jinping is the man for Vladimir Putin and Putin highlights birthday party with good friend from China as sign of growing closeness. During the visit, it is planned to discuss the entire range of issues related to comprehensive Russian-Chinese partnership and strategic cooperation, including the implementation of large-scale joint energy, transport and industrial cooperation projects. The two sides are also expected to discuss global issues, including the situation on the Korean Peninsula and the state of affairs around the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran’s nuclear program. Particular attention will be paid to bilateral cooperation as part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the BRICS group, the RIC format (Russia, India and China – TASS) and the G20.

China is mired in tough negotiations with America to avoid a trade war, while Moscow has deep differences with Washington on multiple diplomatic fronts, including Syria and Ukraine. Putin played up his bond with his good friend Xi in an interview with China’s state international broadcaster CGTN this week. He also said the Chinese president was the only state leader to celebrate his birthday with him. According to Putin, “Xi is approachable and sincere. He is also a very dependable man to work with.” Many say China makes Russia look stronger and more relevant on the global stage.

The relationship of China with America is volatile. Russia allows China to show the US that it has other options in international negotiations. It is a relationship with Russia more dependent on China than vice versa, especially in the economic sphere. As of 2016, almost one in five imports to Russia came from China, far above any other country, while its southern neighbour also bought almost 10% of Russia’s exports, worth about $28 billion. In comparison, China is currently locked in lengthy negotiations with the United States over the trade deficit while Washington increases pressure on its South China Sea claims, cooling previously cordial relations.

Despite their shared communist history, there was a huge amount of mistrust between China and Russia from the 1950s until recent years, but now ties have grown stronger under Putin and Xi. There is also a strategic nature to the Russia-China partnership joining together to push back against the US and Europe in their respective spheres of influence. The Chinese side also went to Moscow to show Americans the close ties between the armed forces of China and Russia.

After the Beijing visit, Putin has joined Xi at a weekend summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation(SCO) in the eastern Chinese city of Qingdao. China and Russia lead the regional security group, which includes former Soviet states and other new members India…Putin said, “ The SCO had small objectives when it was founded two decades ago, but that it is now evolving into a larger global force.” Iranian President Hassan Rowhani, whose country is an observer member of the organisation, will also attend the summit at a time when China and Russia are seeking to save the Iran nuclear deal following Trump’s withdrawal from the pact.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has given opening remarks of the large scale talks of SCO Summit. During the meeting, over 10 documents signed covering security, economy and culture… He said, “We have agreed to abide by the goals and principles of the SCO Charter, promoting good-neighborliness and friendship and deepening practical cooperation,” Chinese President Xi Jinping made the remarks at the joint press conference of the 18th Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit on Sunday, the 10 June 2018. According to Xi, “ Broad consensus reached during the 2018 SCO Summit.” Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev delivered a speech at the large-scale meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit Sunday morning. He said the SCO should focus on fighting extremism among youth, step up business cooperation, and work together on programs of innovation. SCO has made progress in resolving border, trade, water and other issues.

Kyrgyz President Sooronbay Jeenbekov delivered a speech at the SCO summit and he has called for financial mechanisms and greater business cooperation among SCO member states, including the setting up of a bank at SCO 2018 summit in Qingdao. He has maintained that SCO should play a bigger role in maintaining peace, stability…

What if the US escalates confrontation and China does not bend or back off? A grand psychological struggle is under way, in which China’s supreme confidence and unity under Xi Jinping is forcing the West to re-examine its assumption that self-criticism is a virtue. Trump’s trade war threats and curbs on Chinese investments have only strengthened Xi Jinping’s hi-tech ambitions.

As part of the state visit, the President of Russia had talks with the Chinese leadership to discuss the entire scope of Russia-China comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation, as well as the most pressing issues on the international agenda. A number of bilateral documents will be signed following the talks. Beijing and Moscow also look to promote their special relationship.

Warmer ties between the two countries have been highly-publicised in Russian and Chinese state media in recent months, including an interview on Chinese state TV last week when Putin spoke glowingly of President Xi Jinping. While the two countries are undoubtedly growing closer, there is also an element of unwarranted global propaganda at play.

Both countries really use their relationship to showcase … there is an alternative to the American hegemony and they have been doing that for a while even before Trump. This closeness is aimed towards a global audience, not just Russian or Chinese viewers. Putin told the state broadcaster CCTV that he had never had such a relationship with another foreign leader. The two leaders are expected to further cement their bond in the stands of an ice hockey match when they watch junior teams compete in Tianjin on 8 June.

As of 2016, almost one in five imports to Russia came from China, far above any other country, while its southern neighbour also bought almost 10% of Russia’s exports, worth about $28 billion. In comparison, China is currently locked in lengthy negotiations with the United States over the trade deficit while Washington increases pressure on its South China Sea claims, cooling previously cordial relations.

Despite their shared communist history, there was a huge amount of mistrust between the two countries from the 1950s until recent years, but now ties have grown stronger under Putin and Xi. There is also a strategic nature to the Russia-China partnership joining together to push back against the US and Europe in their respective spheres of influence. The Chinese side also went to Moscow to show Americans the close ties between the armed forces of China and Russia.

Concisely, Russian president Vladimir Putin’s visit to China reflects strengthening of Sino-Russia ties amid US blackjack. He has been awarded with the Order Friendship by the Chinese leader. It is a history-making summit for a new positive world-order. Many believe it will persist as an un-decomposed bespeak for the American establishment to come out from the wrong path which they have been pursuing unremittingly since the World War II. Both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin hail all-time high in ties between them. So, the two countries relations are now at the best level in history. They also have been keen to highlight their new close relationship in the days to come. Putin’s visit is a mark of tight-knit ties between China and Russia.

-The End –

Analysis: India airlines spread their wings to escape airfare war at home

FILE PHOTO: An IndiGo Airlines Airbus A320 aircraft takes off in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File photo

JUNE 13, 2018

NEW DELHI/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Indian airlines are turning to the international market in search of better returns as the intensifying fight for a bigger share of the world’s fastest growing domestic market - where price is king - drives down profits.

While global airlines’ profits have been strong since 2015 - though with wide regional variations - Indian carriers are struggling to remain profitable, despite filling nearly 90 percent of their seats and benefiting from a more than doubling of domestic passenger numbers over the last four years.

“It is an incredibly tough domestic market, very price sensitive,” said Stephen Barnes, chief financial officer of Singapore Airlines, which operates an Indian carrier, Vistara, in a joint venture with the Tata Group.

“Commanding a premium for a premium product is hard to do. From our perspective we invested in order to see the business grow internationally. If you look at the results of Indian airlines their performance is better internationally.”

Promotions such as $50 one-way tickets on the two-hour flight from Mumbai to Delhi are easy to find and, with airlines expected to take delivery of more than 500 aircraft over the next five years, pressure on fares and profits is increasing.

India is one of the cheapest domestic airline markets in the world, with an average fare of 13 cents per kilometre flown, according to data from travel firm Rome2Rio, less than half the 27 cents per km average in China and the United States.

Airlines including Vistara, SpiceJet Ltd and InterGlobe Aviation Ltd’s IndiGo are in talks to buy or lease widebody aircraft as they firm up international growth plans to boost profitability.

INTERNATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES

There is huge potential for international travel from India, where the domestic aviation market has grown about 20 percent annually in recent years.

Only 0.3 percent of the 1.3 billion population currently travel abroad for a holiday every year, a fraction of the estimated 100 million Indians who could potentially afford to do so, according to an analysis of household income by aviation consultancy, CAPA.

The international market is dominated by foreign carriers but the market share of Indian airlines including Air India and Jet Airways has been climbing, helped by policies that limit access by foreign carriers, and reached about 38 percent in 2017, up from 31 percent a decade earlier.

Foreign airlines such as Emirates and Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airways have reached the limit of flights into India allowed under bilateral agreements and New Delhi has not extended additional rights, creating an opening for domestic carriers to grow, said Binit Somaia, director for South Asia at CAPA.

“Demand is there, income levels are rising and people want to travel internationally,” he said.

Jet Airways is considering launching new flights from Mumbai to Sydney, two sources with knowledge of the matter said, while Vistara is planning to order six Boeing Co 787 aircraft and will expand its narrowbody fleet of Airbus A320neos as it starts international flights, sources have said.

A Jet Airways spokesman said the airline “continuously reviews its fleet and network plan ... to realise greater synergy with its business strategy.”

DOMESTIC COMPETITION

In the domestic market, which provides crucial connections for international flights, airlines have been jockeying for position at a time when one-time leader Air India has been losing market share to rivals with far lower costs, such as IndiGo.

The Indian government last month failed to attract a single bidder by the deadline for its 76 percent stake sale in the loss-making national carrier.

Revenue per available seat kilometre, a measure combining airfares and seats filled, has been falling at Indian airlines due to stiff competition at a time when the oil price has risen nearly 50 percent in the last year.

IndiGo last month reported a steep fall in quarterly profit due to higher fuel prices and continued pressure on yields, a proxy for airfares.

IndiGo has lifted the proportion of its capacity dedicated to international flights to 15 percent, from 11 percent, in the last year and is seeking regulatory approvals needed to operate long-haul flights, Rahul Bhatia, the company’s chairman, said during an analyst call.

SpiceJet is the only listed Indian airline to post a profit for the last 13 quarters consecutively.

Analysts say it has achieved this by maximising its aircraft utilisation and also flying less competitive routes where it can have a better control over fares, helping protect yields.

Â© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: An IndiGo Airlines Airbust A320 aircraft and JetKonnect Boeing 737 aircraft taxi past an Air India Airbus A321 aircraft at Mumbai's Chhatrapathi Shivaji International Airport

Â© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: An IndiGo Airlines Airbust A320 aircraft and JetKonnect Boeing 737 aircraft taxi past an Air India Airbus A321 aircraft at Mumbai's Chhatrapathi Shivaji International Airport

ILE PHOTO: An IndiGo Airlines Airbust A320 aircraft and JetKonnect Boeing 737 aircraft taxi past an Air India Airbus A321 aircraft at Mumbai's Chhatrapathi Shivaji International Airport February 3, 2013. REUTERS/Vivek Prakash/File photo

Even so, it plans to expand its international flights as it starts taking delivery of its Boeing 737 MAX aircraft from August. The planes, which have a range of six hours and can reach destinations such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Bangkok, will mainly be deployed on international routes.

Infrastructure constraints at major Indian airports like Mumbai and Delhi, where daytime slots are hard to get, also make going international a better option as airlines can utilise night-time slots, a SpiceJet official told Reuters.

“International is the only way out,” the official said.