A diminished Biden heads to APEC summit in Peru, overshadowed by China’s Xi

US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping walk at the Filoli estate on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Woodside, California, on Nov. 15, 2023. (REUTERS)
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Updated 14 November 2024
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A diminished Biden heads to APEC summit in Peru, overshadowed by China’s Xi

  • With the US seemingly headed back toward isolationism under Trump, “China will be seen as the alternative,” says analyst
  • President Xi’s first order of business in Peru is inaugurating a $1.3 billion megaport that will put China’s regional influence on stark display

LIMA, Peru: If things had gone differently last week, US President Joe Biden could have arrived at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Peru on Thursday projecting confidence and pledging his successor’s cooperation with eager Latin American partners. No longer.
Just as in 2016, the last time that Peru’s capital Lima hosted APEC, Donald Trump’s election victory has pulled the rug out from under a lame-duck Democrat at the high-profile summit attended by over a dozen world leaders.
The renewed prospect of Trump’s “America First” doctrine hampers Biden’s ability to reinforce the United States’ profile on his first presidential trip to South America, experts say, leaving China and its leader, Xi Jinping, to grab the limelight in America’s proverbial backyard.
President Xi’s first order of business in Peru is inaugurating a $1.3 billion megaport that will put China’s regional influence on stark display. Total investment is expected to top $3.5 billion over the next decade.
“This isn’t the way the US had hoped to participate in the summit,” said Margaret Myers, the director of the China and Latin America program at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington policy group. “All eyes are going to be on the port, what Xi says about it and how he articulates relations across the Pacific.”
With the US seemingly headed back toward isolationism under Trump, “China will be seen as the alternative,” Myers added.
Sitting 60 kilometers (37 miles) northeast of Lima, the Chancay megaport — once a serene fishing village — is perhaps the clearest sign of Latin America’s reorientation. The Chinese shipping and logistics giant Cosco holds a 60 percent stake in the project it developed with Peruvian partner, Volcan.
“With this port, we’re looking at the entire Pacific coast, from the United States and Canada all the way to Chile,” Peruvian Foreign Minister Elmer Schialer told The Associated Press in his office on Monday. “The shipping business is being transformed.”
Peruvian Economy Minister José Arista said in June during a visit to China that the country’s neighbors — Brazil, Colombia, Chile — are “making constant trips to and from to see how they can modify their supply chain to use this port,” which will cut shipping time to Beijing by 10 days.
China’s trade with the region ballooned 35-fold from 2000 to 2022, reaching nearly $500 billion, according to data from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Most of the region’s exports came from South America and were concentrated in five products: soybeans, copper and iron ore, oil and copper cathodes.
At the same time, China’s diplomatic engagement in the region has become more effective, with Xi visiting 11 Latin American countries since becoming president, according to Xinhua, China’s main state news agency. Brazil, host of the G20 summit, and Peru will bestow the rare honor of a full state visit to Xi this month, but not to Biden.
The misguided notion that Latin America must choose between its two largest trading partners is “a strategic defeat” for the US, said Eric Farnsworth, vice president at the Washington-based Council of the Americas.
“The idea that China is somehow a better partner is increasingly being heard around the region and I think Xi wants to solidify that and amplify that,” Farnsworth said.
Roughly a decade after China poured billions of dollars into building power plants, roads, airports and other infrastructure that saddled some developing countries with unserviceable debt, few expect Beijing to direct more massive loans to Latin America through its Belt and Road Initiative. But deeper cooperation on other infrastructure is possible, particularly renewable energy and telecommunications, said the Boston University Bulletin.
The US has appealed to Latin American governments to reject telecoms investment, particularly opposing Huawei, the Chinese tech giant that it argues could open the door to Chinese government spying. Similarly, US officials have raised concerns over the Chancay port’s possible dual-use by Beijing’s navy in the Pacific — a prospect dismissed by Chinese officials.
China “is working to exploit insecurity in our hemisphere,” said US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the Southern Command headquarters in Florida this week, adding that the Asian giant is leveraging the need for investment in the Americas to advance its “malign agenda.”
Despite its objections to Chinese influence, the US hasn’t shown the ability or willingness to build infrastructure like Chancay’s megaport, experts note.
Even when the US government has worked to ensure competitive bidding in Latin American massive public works projects, American companies have refrained from participating, said Benjamin Gedan, director of the Wilson Center’s Latin America Program.
A Kamala Harris administration wouldn’t have changed that, but a Democratic victory would have enabled Biden to speak in Lima with authority about US collaboration to come, such as building regional supply chains, Gedan said.
In sharp contrast to Biden’s alliance-building approach, Trump has vowed to protect American interests and promised more of the same unilateralist action the world saw in his first term when he staked out a combative stance against foreign competitors and deepened the US trade war with China.
In 2022, Biden launched the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework to help integrate the economies of the region and enable the US to counterbalance China. But last year, on the campaign trail, Trump said he would kill the trade pact if he were to win the 2024 election and return to the White House — in the same way, he pulled the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership immediately after taking office in 2017.
In the years since, US clout in South America has diminished while China’s has grown, said Farnsworth, recalling how the last time Lima hosted APEC in 2016, the shock of Trump’s victory sucked the energy out of then-President Barack Obama’s delegation.
Peru’s top diplomat insists that the US hasn’t ceded its dominant voice guiding discussions about trade at gatherings such as APEC — and doubted that it will, even under Trump.
“I’m not sure that Trump will go against these types of multilateral contexts just because he is worried about the American people,” Schialer said. “He knows that the US is too important for the world. We have to sit down and have a nice dialogue and see how we can face these challenges together.”
Biden will hold talks Saturday with Xi on the sidelines of APEC, according to the US president’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan. The White House has been working for months to arrange a final meeting between Xi and Biden before the Democrat leaves office in January.
Meantime, in the wake of Trump’s win and China’s port opening in Peru, analysts expect the hard-nosed competition between the US and China to overshadow APEC.
“The Chinese love the idea of outmaneuvering the US in its near-abroad,” Gedan said. “Xi will luxuriate in this dynamic of being able to arrive with a big delegation, (...) to inaugurate this transformational port and suck all the air out of the room when his American counterpart is very weak politically. That is significant to China.”
 


Pakistan locks down capital ahead of a planned rally by Imran Khan supporters

Updated 3 sec ago
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Pakistan locks down capital ahead of a planned rally by Imran Khan supporters

  • Interior Ministry is considering a suspension of mobile phone services in parts of Pakistan in the coming days
  • Pakistan has banned gatherings of five or more people in Islamabad for two months to deter Khan’s supporters
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is sealing off its capital, Islamabad, ahead of a planned rally by supporters of imprisoned former premier Imran Khan.
It’s the second time in as many months that authorities have imposed such measures to thwart tens of thousands of people from gathering in the city to demand Khan’s release.
The latest lockdown coincides with the visit of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who arrives in Islamabad on Monday.
Local media reported that the Interior Ministry is considering a suspension of mobile phone services in parts of Pakistan in the coming days. On Friday, the National Highways and Motorway Police announced that key routes would close for maintenance.
It advised people to avoid unnecessary travel and said the decision was taken following intelligence reports that “angry protesters” are planning to create a law and order situation and damage public and private property on Sunday, the day of the planned rally.
“There are reports that protesters are coming with sticks and slingshots,” the statement added.
Multicolored shipping containers, a familiar sight to people living and working in Islamabad, reappeared on key roads Saturday to throttle traffic.
Pakistan has already banned gatherings of five or more people in Islamabad for two months to deter Khan’s supporters and activists from his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, or PTI.
Khan has been in prison for more than a year in connection and has over 150 criminal cases against him. But he remains popular and the PTI says the cases are politically motivated.
A three-day shutdown was imposed in Islamabad for a security summit last month.

Indian man awakes on funeral pyre

Updated 30 min 29 sec ago
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Indian man awakes on funeral pyre

  • Doctors sent Rohitash Kumar, 25, to mortuary instead of conducting postmortem after he fell ill
  • Kumar was rushed to hospital on Friday for treatment but was confirmed dead later

JAIPUR: An Indian man awoke on a funeral pyre moments before it was to be set on fire after a doctor skipped a postmortem, medical officials said Saturday.
Rohitash Kumar, 25, who had speaking and hearing difficulties, had fallen sick and was taken to a hospital in Jhunjhunu in the western state of Rajasthan on Thursday.
Indian media reported he had had an epileptic seizure, and a doctor declared him dead on arrival at the hospital.
But instead of the required postmortem to ascertain the cause of death, doctors sent him to the mortuary, and then to be burned according to Hindu rites.
D. Singh, chief medical officer of the hospital, told AFP that a doctor had “prepared the postmortem report without actually doing the postmortem, and the body was then sent for cremation.”
Singh said that “shortly before the pyre was to be lit, Rohitash’s body started movements,” adding that “he was alive and was breathing.”
Kumar was rushed to hospital for a second time, but was confirmed dead on Friday during treatment.
Authorities have suspended the services of three doctors and the police have launched an investigation.


NATO chief discusses ‘global security’ with Trump

Updated 39 min 8 sec ago
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NATO chief discusses ‘global security’ with Trump

  • NATO allies say keeping Kyiv in the fight against Moscow is key to both European and American security

Brussels: NATO chief Mark Rutte held talks with US President-elect Donald Trump in Florida on the “global security issues facing the alliance,” a spokeswoman said Saturday.
The meeting took place on Friday in Palm Beach, NATO’s Farah Dakhlallah said in a statement.
In his first term Trump aggressively pushed Europe to step up defense spending and questioned the fairness of the NATO transatlantic alliance.
The former Dutch prime minister had said he wanted to meet Trump two days after Trump was elected on November 5, and discuss the threat of increasingly warming ties between North Korea and Russia.
Trump’s thumping victory to return to the US presidency has set nerves jangling in Europe that he could pull the plug on vital Washington military aid for Ukraine.
NATO allies say keeping Kyiv in the fight against Moscow is key to both European and American security.
“What we see more and more is that North Korea, Iran, China and of course Russia are working together, working together against Ukraine,” Rutte said recently at a European leaders’ meeting in Budapest.
“At the same time, Russia has to pay for this, and one of the things they are doing is delivering technology to North Korea,” which he warned was threatening to the “mainland of the US (and) continental Europe.”
“I look forward to sitting down with Donald Trump to discuss how we can face these threats collectively,” Rutte said.


Indian man awakes on funeral pyre

Updated 51 min 14 sec ago
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Indian man awakes on funeral pyre

JAIPUR, India: An Indian man awoke on a funeral pyre moments before it was to be set on fire after a doctor skipped a postmortem, medical officials said Saturday.
Rohitash Kumar, 25, who had speaking and hearing difficulties, had fallen sick and was taken to a hospital in Jhunjhunu in the western state of Rajasthan on Thursday.
Indian media reported he had had an epileptic seizure, and a doctor declared him dead on arrival at the hospital.
But instead of the required postmortem to ascertain the cause of death, doctors sent him to the mortuary, and then to be burned according to Hindu rites.
D. Singh, chief medical officer of the hospital, told AFP that a doctor had “prepared the postmortem report without actually doing the postmortem, and the body was then sent for cremation.”
Singh said that “shortly before the pyre was to be lit, Rohitash’s body started movements,” adding that “he was alive and was breathing.”
Kumar was rushed to hospital for a second time, but was confirmed dead on Friday during treatment.
Authorities have suspended the services of three doctors and the police have launched an investigation.


Fighting between armed sectarian groups in restive northwestern Pakistan kills at least 33 people

Updated 23 November 2024
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Fighting between armed sectarian groups in restive northwestern Pakistan kills at least 33 people

  • Senior police officer said Saturday armed men torched shops, houses and government property overnight
  • Although the two groups generally live together peacefully, tensions remain, especially in Kurram

PESHAWAR: Fighting between armed Sunni and Shiite groups in northwestern Pakistan killed at least 33 people and injured 25 others, a senior police officer from the region said Saturday.
The overnight violence was the latest to rock Kurram, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and comes days after a deadly gun ambush killed 42 people.
Shiite Muslims make up about 15 percent of the 240 million people in Sunni-majority Pakistan, which has a history of sectarian animosity between the communities.
Although the two groups generally live together peacefully, tensions remain, especially in Kurram.
The senior police officer said armed men in Bagan and Bacha Kot torched shops, houses and government property.
Intense gunfire was ongoing between the Alizai and Bagan tribes in the Lower Kurram area.
“Educational institutions in Kurram are closed due to the severe tension. Both sides are targeting each other with heavy and automatic weapons,” said the officer, who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Videos shared with The Associated Press showed a market engulfed by fire and orange flames piercing the night sky. Gunfire can also be heard.
The location of Thursday’s attack was also targeted by armed men, who marched on the area.
Survivors of the gun ambush said assailants emerged from a vehicle and sprayed buses and cars with bullets. Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attack and police have not identified a motive.
Dozens of people from the district’s Sunni and Shiite communities have been killed since July, when a land dispute erupted in Kurram that later turned into general sectarian violence.