China to hold Belt and Road celebration with Putin expected

Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a signing ceremony following their talks at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia March 21, 2023. (Sputnik/Mikhail Tereshchenko/Pool via REUTERS)
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Updated 12 October 2023
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China to hold Belt and Road celebration with Putin expected

  • Belt and Road is a landmark project in President Xi Jinping’s bid to expand China’s clout overseas
  • Beijing said this week the initiative had now inked over two trillion dollars in contracts globally

China announced Wednesday it will host a gathering of foreign leaders next week to celebrate a decade of its Belt and Road infrastructure project, with Russian President Vladimir Putin expected to attend. 

The Belt and Road is a landmark project in President Xi Jinping’s bid to expand China’s clout overseas, with Beijing saying this week it had now inked over two trillion dollars in contracts around the world.

Critics have long accused China of luring lower-income countries into debt traps by offering huge, unaffordable loans through the initiative, however. 

Representatives from over 130 countries are due to take part in the event, with Xi set to deliver an opening speech and hold a welcoming banquet for foreign leaders. 

It is the third forum of its kind since China launched the vast investment initiative, with events previously held in 2017 and 2019. 

Russian President Putin has said he will attend the event, in what will be his first visit to China since his war in Ukraine threw him into international isolation. 

Top Russian diplomat Sergei Lavrov will also attend and hold talks with Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, Moscow said. 

China and Russia describe each other as strategic allies, frequently touting their “no limits” partnership and economic and military cooperation. 

They came even closer following the invasion of Ukraine, with the Kremlin seeking to deepen ties with Beijing after finding itself increasingly ostracized by the West. 

China has refused to condemn the war and has tried to position itself as a neutral party, while at the same time offering Moscow a vital diplomatic and financial lifeline. 

“We welcome countries and partners actively participating in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to come to Beijing to discuss cooperation plans and seek common development,” foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said last month. 

- ‘Significant debt distress’ — 

Beijing hailed the BRI on Tuesday as having “delivered real gains to participating countries.” 

It also said the balance of loans for BRI projects from the Export-Import Bank of China (Eximbank) — a key BRI creditor — now totalled 2.2 trillion yuan ($307.4 billion). 

Eximbank has financed major transport and energy projects across the BRI and has been linked to foreign loan plans everywhere from Africa to Central Asia. 

But some of Beijing’s partners are increasingly wary about the cost involved. 

Italy, the only one of the group of leading developed democracies to sign up to the investment scheme, said last month it was considering opting out of the deal. 

A report by experts at Boston University’s Global Development Policy noted the BRI’s role in providing “additional resources for the Global South” and fostering “significant economic growth.” 

But it also said that “many of the recipients of Chinese finance are subject to significant debt distress, with several countries owing China a significant share of their external debt.” 

It also pointed to the “increased carbon dioxide emissions and air pollution” caused by the project’s support for fossil fuel emitting infrastructure. 


’Thrown out like trash’; Afghans return to land they hardly know

Updated 2 sec ago
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’Thrown out like trash’; Afghans return to land they hardly know

  • Forced back to a changed land that offers little
  • Refugees say they struggle to make ends meet
ISLAMABAD: Ghulam Ali begins his days in pain, his muscles aching from hauling grain on a rickety cart through the streets of Kabul, homesick for the country he called home for nearly four decades.
Ali is among more than 1.2 million Afghans deported from neighboring Iran since March 2024, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), after Tehran pledged mass deportations to counter mounting local discontent over refugees.
Thousands have also fled this month after Israeli and US airstrikes hit Iranian military targets.
For Ali, 51, whose family left Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion in the 1980s when he was just 10, Iran was home.
“I grew up there, worked there, buried my parents there,” he said during a midday break from work in Kabul, sipping green tea with a simple lunch of naan bread.
“But in the end, they threw us out like trash. I lost everything — my home, my little savings in cash, my dignity,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by video link.
Like many others, he has returned to a homeland he barely knew and one that has changed drastically.
Outsiders in their own country, many men struggle to support their family while women face severe restrictions on their daily life under the ruling Taliban.
Since late 2023, an estimated 3 million Afghans have been forced out of Iran and Pakistan, where they had sought safety from decades of war and, since the Taliban’s return to Kabul in 2021, from extremist rule.
Unwelcome abroad, they have returned to a homeland facing economic collapse and international indifference.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in his latest report on Afghanistan, called on countries hosting Afghan refugees to protect those in need and abide by international obligations to ensure any returns to Afghanistan are voluntary.
“Returnees face immense challenges... in particular securing housing, employment and access to basic services,” he said.
Up to 10,000 Afghan women, men and children are taking the Islam Qala border crossing from Iran on a daily basis, according to the Taliban authorities. Inside Afghanistan, humanitarian aid agencies say conditions are dire, with inadequate shelter, food shortages and no road map for reintegration.
“They return to a homeland that is dramatically unprepared to receive them,” warned Arafat Jamal, the UNHCR representative in Afghanistan in a statement last month.
The Taliban’s deputy minister for border and refugees affairs, Abdul Zahir Rahmani, also told local media this week that Afghanistan had seen a sharp increase in refugee returns since this month’s 12-day air war in Iran.
Many said they had no say in the matter.
Ali said he was arrested at a construction site in Mashhad, Iran’s second-biggest city, lacking documentation during a crackdown on refugees by the Iranian police.
He and his wife, six children, two daughters-in-law and five grandchildren were deported in March.
“We were treated like criminals,” he said. “They didn’t care how law-abiding or in need we were. They just wanted all Afghans out.”
The extended family — 15 people aged 5 to 51 — is now packed into a two-room, mud-brick house on Kabul’s western fringes.
Ali said his Persian-accented Dari draws sneers from fellow laborers – another reminder he doesn’t fit in. But he brushes off their mockery, saying his focus is on feeding his family.
“We can barely afford to eat properly,” his wife Shahla said by video as she sat cross-legged on a worn rug.
“Rent is 4,000 afghanis ($56) a month — but even that is a burden. One of my sons is visually impaired; the other returns home every day empty-handed.”
For women and girls, their return can feel like a double displacement. They are subject to many of the Taliban’s most repressive laws, including restrictions on their movement without a “mahram,” or male companion, and curbs on education and employment.
On Kabul’s western edge, 38-year-old Safiya and her three daughters spend their days in a rented house packing candies for shops, earning just 50 afghanis for a day’s work, below Afghanistan’s poverty level of $1 a day.
Safiya said they were deported from Iran in February.
“In Tehran, I stitched clothes. My girls worked at a sweet shop,” said Safiya, who declined to give her last name.
“Life was tough, but we had our freedom, as well as hope … Here, there’s no work, no school, no dignity. It’s like we’ve come home only to be exiled again.”
During their deportation, Safiya was separated from her youngest daughter for a week while the family was detained, a spat over documents that still gives the 16-year-old nightmares.
In Iran, said Safiya, “my daughters had inspiring dreams. Now they sit at home all day, waiting.”
Afghans are also being forcibly deported from next-door Pakistan – more than 800,000 people have been expelled since October 2023, according to Amnesty International.
Born in Pakistan to Afghan refugee parents, Nemat Ullah Rahimi had never lived in Afghanistan until last winter, when police barely gave him time to close his Peshawar grocery store before sending him over the Torkham border crossing.
“I wasn’t allowed to sell anything. My wife and kids — all born in Pakistan — had no legal documents there so we had to leave,” said the 34-year-old.
Rahimi now works long hours at a tire repair shop at a dusty intersection on the edge of Kabul as he tries to rebuild a life.
“I can’t say it’s easy. But I have no choice. We’re restarting from zero,” he said.

China hosts Iranian, Russian defense ministers against backdrop of ‘momentous change’

Updated 36 min 55 sec ago
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China hosts Iranian, Russian defense ministers against backdrop of ‘momentous change’

  • Beijing has long sought to present the 10-member Shanghai Cooperation Organization as a counterweight to Western-led power blocs
  • The Qingdao meeting of the organization’s top defense officials comes as a fledgling ceasefire between Israel and Iran holds

QINGDAO, China: China hosted defense ministers from Iran and Russia for a meeting in its eastern seaside city of Qingdao on Thursday against the backdrop of war in the Middle East and a summit of NATO countries in Europe that agreed to boost military spending.

Beijing has long sought to present the 10-member Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as a counterweight to Western-led power blocs and has pushed to strengthen collaboration between its member countries in politics, security, trade and science.

The Qingdao meeting of the organization’s top defense officials comes as a fledgling ceasefire between Israel and Iran holds after 12 days of fighting between the arch-foes.

It is also being held the day after a summit of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) leaders in The Hague, where members agreed to ramp up their defense spending to satisfy US President Donald Trump.

Beijing’s ties with Moscow are also in the spotlight.

China has portrayed itself as a neutral party in Russia’s war with Ukraine, although Western governments say its close ties have given Moscow crucial economic and diplomatic support.

Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov painted a bleak picture of a world seeing “worsening geopolitical tensions” when he addressed his counterparts at the meeting.

“The current military and political situation in the world remains difficult and shows signs of further deterioration,” he said, according to a statement by the Russian defense ministry.

His Chinese counterpart Dong Jun also framed Thursday’s meeting in Qingdao, home to a major Chinese naval base, as a counterweight to a world in “chaos and instability.”

“As momentous changes of the century accelerate, unilateralism and protectionism are on the rise,” Dong said as he welcomed defense chiefs from Russia, Iran, Pakistan, Belarus and elsewhere on Wednesday, according to state news agency Xinhua.

“Hegemonic, domineering and bullying acts severely undermine the international order,” he warned.

He urged his counterparts to “take more robust actions to jointly safeguard the environment for peaceful development.”

Recent fighting between Israel, Iran and the United States will likely also be discussed in Qingdao.

Beijing refrained from offering anything more than diplomatic support to its close partner Tehran throughout that conflict, reflecting its limited leverage in the region and reluctance to worsen relations with the United States.

“Public backing for Iran will come in the form of words, rather than deeds,” James Char, an expert on the Chinese army at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, told AFP.

“Other than condemning the US strikes on Iran, Beijing can be expected to continue treading cautiously in the Middle East’s security issues and would not want to be dragged into the region’s security challenges,” he said.

Iran’s defense minister will likely “discuss with China the supply of weapons but I doubt China would agree,” said Andrea Ghiselli, an expert in China foreign policy and a lecturer at Exeter University.

“It would be seen as provocative by both Israel... and, even more important for China, the US, with which Beijing is trying to stabilize relations,” Ghiselli said.

India’s Defense Minister Rajnath Singh, also in attendance in Qingdao, said SCO members should “collectively aspire to fulfil the aspirations and expectations of our people as well as tackle today’s challenges.”

“The world we live in is undergoing a drastic transformation. Globalization, which once brought us closer together, has been losing momentum,” he said in comments his office posted on social media platform X.


NGOs: Environment fears over $6 billion Indonesia EV battery project

Updated 38 min 49 sec ago
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NGOs: Environment fears over $6 billion Indonesia EV battery project

  • A CRI report this month warned the Indonesian government was allowing environmental damage to go unchecked around Weda Bay

JAKARTA: Environmental groups raised concerns Thursday over a $6 billion Indonesian EV battery megaproject backed by Chinese giant CATL which is set to open on a once-pristine island, as Jakarta exploits its huge supply of nickel.

Indonesia is both the world’s largest nickel producer and home to the biggest-known reserves, and a 2020 export ban has spurred a domestic industrial boom.

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto will inaugurate the project — also backed by China’s Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt and Indonesia’s state-owned Antam — in the east of Halmahera in Indonesia’s Maluku islands on Sunday.

The complex will encompass a process from nickel mining to production of cathodes, state news agency Antara reported.

But NGOs say Indonesia and the Chinese firms involved have not given assurances about environmental protections at the site, located just kilometers from a huge industrial park where spikes in pollution and deforestation have been reported.

“CATL, Huayou Cobalt, PT Antam... must commit to respecting the rights of local communities and the environment before breaking ground,” said Brad Adams, executive director at Climate Rights International, in a statement.

“Communities are repressed, forests are cleared, and pollution goes unaddressed with impunity. This is a chance for the Prabowo government to show that it has learned from those failures.”

The presidential office did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.

Halmahera hosts the world’s largest nickel mine by production Weda Bay, where operations have grown and sparked reports of widespread environmental damage.

Greenpeace Indonesia said the new project carried “great responsibilities” and the environment and locals “must not take a back seat” to powering electric vehicles.

“If the environment and the rights of our most vulnerable people are not prioritized now... we will all pay a high price through worsening biodiversity and climate crises,” Arie Rompas, forest campaign team leader at Greenpeace, told AFP.

A CRI report this month warned the Indonesian government was allowing environmental damage to go unchecked around Weda Bay.

An AFP report last month detailed how the home of the nomadic Hongana Manyawa tribe was being eaten away by the mine.


Vietnamese tycoon’s jail term reduced in $146 million stock fraud

Updated 26 June 2025
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Vietnamese tycoon’s jail term reduced in $146 million stock fraud

  • Trinh Van Quyet, who owned the FLC empire of luxury resorts, golf courses and budget carrier Bamboo Airways, was given the lengthy jail term in August after a trial

HANOI: A Vietnamese appeal court on Thursday slashed a former property and aviation tycoon’s jail sentence in a $146 million fraud and stock market manipulation case from 21 years to seven.

Trinh Van Quyet, who owned the FLC empire of luxury resorts, golf courses and budget carrier Bamboo Airways, was given the lengthy jail term in August after a trial.

Quyet and 49 others including his two sisters and four stock exchange officials were punished for fraud, stock market manipulation, abuse of power and publishing incorrect stock market information.

After a 10-day hearing in Hanoi, the appeal court dropped Quyet’s three-year term for market manipulation and cut his 18-year sentence for fraud to seven years.

The appeal court gave several other defendants reduced jail terms on Thursday.

Its ruling comes after the tycoon’s family paid nearly $96 million in compensation for the losses.

According to the indictment in August, Quyet set up several stock market brokerages and registered dozens of family members, ostensibly to trade shares.

Police said while orders to buy shares were placed in hundreds of trading sessions — pushing up the value of the stock – they were canceled before being matched.

The court said there were 25,000 victims of the fraud as Quyet illegally pocketed more than $146 million between 2017 and 2022.

The appeal court said it had received 5,000 letters asking for a reduction of punishment for Quyet “from the victims, FLC staff, some associations and local authorities.”

The case is part of a national corruption crackdown that has swept up numerous officials and members of Vietnam’s business elite in recent years.


Ecuador’s most-wanted gang leader ‘Fito’ captured

Updated 26 June 2025
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Ecuador’s most-wanted gang leader ‘Fito’ captured

  • Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, known as Fito, escaped custody in Ecuador in early 2024
  • American prosecutors charged him, in absentia, with seven counts of cocaine distribution, conspiracy and firearms-related crimes

QUITO: Ecuador’s president announced Wednesday that the country’s most-wanted fugitive, Los Choneros gang leader “Fito,” had been recaptured over a year after his escape from prison triggered a wave of violence.

“We have done our part to proceed with Fito’s extradition to the United States, we are awaiting their response,” Daniel Noboa wrote on X.

Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, known as Fito, escaped custody in Ecuador in early 2024 and American prosecutors charged him, in absentia, with seven counts of cocaine distribution, conspiracy and firearms-related crimes, including weapons smuggling.

Macias Villamar’s January 2024 escape resulted in a surge of gang-related violence in Ecuador that lasted days and left about 20 people dead.

Noboa declared a 60-day state of emergency in nearly a third of its provinces to quell the violence, but the drug lord was at-large until Wednesday’s announcement.

The months-long manhunt ended with the president stating Fito was in the custody of special military forces fighting narcotics trafficking.

The army and police reported that he was captured during a 10-hour operation in Manta, a fishing port in western Ecuador considered a stronghold for his gang.

Fito’s hideout evoked scenes from a movie thriller — local media reported that officers lifted a trap door in floor tiles of a luxury home to discover the outlaw hiding in a bunker.

The US Embassy congratulated Quito on the arrest, posting in Spanish on its X account that Washington “supports Ecuador in its efforts to combat transnational crime for the security of the region.”

Ecuador, once a peaceful haven between the world’s two top cocaine exporters Colombia and Peru, has seen violence erupt in recent years as enemy gangs vie for control and establish ties to Mexican and Colombian cartels.

Macias Villamar is the leader of Los Choneros, the leading criminal gang in a country plagued by organized crime.

Gang wars largely played out inside the country’s prisons, where Macias Villamar wielded immense control.

He had been held since 2011, serving a 34-year sentence for organized crime, drug trafficking and murder.

When he escaped, Macias Villamar was also considered a suspect in ordering the assassination of presidential candidate and anti-corruption crusader Fernando Villavicencio.

In the hours after the drug lord’s escape, prison riots broke out and four police officers were taken hostage, where one was forced to read a threatening message to Noboa.

Armed men wearing balaclavas also took over a television station during a live broadcast, forcing the terrified crew to the ground and firing shots.

Soon after, Noboa announced the country was in a state of “internal armed conflict” and ordered the military and tanks into the streets to “neutralize” the gangs.

US prosecutors allege his gang worked with Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel to control key drug trafficking routes between South America and the United States.

Ecuador’s government had offered a $1 million reward for information leading to his capture.

If convicted, Fito faces life in prison.