South East Asia

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Japan on Tuesday to rally support from Washington’s closest allies in Asia, calling for deeper collaboration with Japan, India and Australia as a bulwark against China’s growing regional influence.

Japan and the United States will begin negotiations as early as this week on a cost-sharing agreement for hosting American troops in the Asian country, diplomatic sources said, with Washington expected to pressure Tokyo to significantly increase its contribution.

The historically close relationship between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia hit a snag recently over differences in how to address India’s decision last year to revoke the special autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir, a Muslim-majority state that is also claimed by Pakistan.

Top diplomats from the U.S., Australia and India plan to gather in Tokyo next week to discuss their common regional concerns, such as China’s increasingly assertive actions, in the first face-to-face ministerial meetings Japan will host since the coronavirus pandemic began.

After a series of setbacks, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a multibillion-dollar assortment of infrastructure projects that constitutes the Pakistani component of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, is poised for a resurgence.

Based on the current conditions in Afghanistan, the Defense Department expects there will be fewer than 5,000 U.S. military service members in that country by the end of November, said David F. Helvey, who is currently performing the duties of assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs.

China’s Ministry of Commerce has released long-awaited provisions on its “unreliable entity list,” in a move seen as a countermeasure to similar actions taken by Washington.

China’s latest military propaganda film appears to show, once again, that the People’s Liberation Army’s publicity team has a passion for Hollywood blockbuster action movies.

Japanese police have been using a system to find whether facial images from surveillance cameras and social media can be matched with database images of people who have been arrested in the past, police officials said, a move that could raise concerns about privacy violations.

Recent news that China and Iran are close to finalizing an economic and security partnership, initially proposed by Beijing in January 2016, has renewed anxieties among some U.S. observers that Washington is gradually ceding the Middle East to its principal strategic competitor. Commenters raised similar concerns after the January 2020 …