ASIA TODAY Trump: extra 10% tariffs on Chinese products. Beijing: war without winners

Today’s news: The Iraqi population is 45 million. A Vietnamese “wandering monk” apparently renounces the vow of poverty by his supporters after threats from Hanoi. After boycotting the Tokyo ceremony, South Korea yesterday paid tribute to fellow citizens “enslaved” in Japanese mines during World War II.

CHINA – UNITED STATES

Donald Trump announced additional 10% tariffs on imports of Chinese products (and an additional 25% from Canada and Mexico). It will be one of the first executive orders after his inauguration, the president-elect threatens, in response to “drug trafficking, particularly fentanyl, and the entry of undocumented immigrants.” The United States and China have a trade volume of about $600 billion; Beijing’s immediate response is that “no one will win a trade war or a tariff war.”

IRAQ

The population has increased to 45.4 million inhabitants. This is what emerges from the preliminary results announced yesterday by Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, related to the census held last week. It is the first nationwide recount in almost 30 years and represents a crucial step for future policy. Before the survey, the population was estimated at 43 million inhabitants.

VIETNAM

Recently reappeared after four months of silence, Thich Minh Tue, whose real name is Le Anh Tu but has become famous by the nickname “wandering monk”apparently wrote one letter in which he declared that he was renouncing his vow of poverty. However, acquaintances and supporters question its authenticity and accuse the authorities of wanting to isolate it from the public. His ascetic life and his pilgrimages on foot had made him famous, attracting the attention of Hanoi, which blocked him.

BANGLADESH

The police arrested a prominent hindu monk who had led protests calling for protection for the minority in the Muslim-majority country. Chinmoy Krishna Das Brahmachari, spokesperson for a newly created group that has demonstrated to condemn the “atrocities” committed against his brothers, was arrested in Dhaka amid rising sectarian tensions since the fall of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

SOUTH KOREA – JAPAN

After boycotting one organized by Tokyo, Seoul yesterday held a memorial service of compatriots forced to work in a Japanese mine during World War II, an issue that remains delicate despite improved relations. The South Korean decision is related to expectations that the Japanese government was represented by an official who had visited a “symbolic” shrine of the Rising Sun’s militaristic past.

RUSSIA – UKRAINE

The Russians also persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses in the occupied cross-border areas of Ukraine. They also do it with demonstrative actions such as in the Luhansk region, where the cards placed “in an action of patriotic education” were torn from the wall of one of its rooms and then displayed in a “museum of glory” in Solnečnogorsk as ” war trophies for traditional values.

PAKISTAN – TAJIKISTAN – CHINA

Chinese citizens have been attacked or even killed in recent months in Pakistan and Tajikistan, two countries in which China invests billions of dollars for social and economic development projects. Hence the growing fear that Beijing, in retaliation, will reduce or block this financing, as Frud Bežan writes on Radio Azattyk.