Sharone Tobias and Will Piekos look at the top five stories in Asia this week. There will be no Friday Asia Update next week, June 21st. 

1. Leaked NSA information could hurt U.S.-China ties; Snowden makes it to Hong Kong. Edward Snowden, a twenty-nine year-old Booz Allen Hamilton employee and contractor with the National Security Agency (NSA), fled to Hong Kong shortly before leaking information about a secretive NSA program called Prism. From Hong Kong, Snowden told Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post that the U.S. government has been hacking into computers in Hong Kong and mainland China for years. Read more »

Sharone Tobias and Will Piekos look at the top five stories in Asia this week.

1. Obama and Xi convene in Sunnylands. The much-touted two-day summit between U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping began on Friday. Cybersecurity and North Korea are expected to be topics raised by the U.S. side, while China would like to hear more about the U.S. pivot to Asia. Experts are generally hopeful that the summit will increase familiarity, though most are quick to temper any hopes of real deliverables coming from the meeting. Read more »

Sharone Tobias and Will Piekos look at the top five stories in Asia this week.

1. Chinese buy into America’s pork market. Chinese meat giant Shuanghui Group announced that it plans to acquire Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer, for $4.7 billion. Both companies would benefit from the deal: Shuanghui would gain a steady and safe supply of pork while Smithfield would gain entry into the expansive Chinese market. If approved—the deal still needs to face the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) process, which assesses national security risks—it would be the largest Chinese acquisition of an American company to date. Read more »

Sharone Tobias and Will Piekos look at the top five stories in Asia this week.

1. Li wraps up first foreign trip to India and Pakistan. Li Keqiang finished his first foreign trip as Chinese premier, where he visited India and Pakistan. The trip came only weeks after tensions had mounted between China and India over a Chinese military incursion into an Indian-controlled disputed border region in the Himalayas. Li was eager to focus on economic talks, but the governments continue to be wary of each other. Read more »

Sharone Tobias and Will Piekos look at the top five stories in Asia this week.

1. Tensions between Taiwan, Philippines escalate. The Philippine navy opened fire on a Taiwanese fishing vessel last week in disputed waters, killing one man on board and igniting a new round of tensions in the South China Sea. Though Philippine officials (including the president) have expressed their sympathies, Taiwan has rejected these apologies as lacking “sincerity.”  In response, Taipei recalled its envoy to the Philippines, announced a hiring freeze of Filipino workers, and held military drills. Yesterday, the Philippine envoy to Taiwan advised thousands of Filipino workers not to leave their homes. Read more »

Sharone Tobias and Will Piekos look at the top five stories in Asia this week.

1. China offers to play peacemaker, but Bibi and Abbas don’t bite. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas both visited China this week. The Chinese media enthusiastically reported on the possibility that the country could serve as neutral territory for the two leaders to negotiate a peace settlement. However, the Chinese government made sure the leaders stayed far apart throughout the trip and were never in the same city at the same time. Read more »

Sharone Tobias and Will Piekos look at the top five stories in Asia this week.

1. Shanghai diners fed rat, mink, and fox instead of lamb. Despite many jokes that restaurants in China replace expensive cuts of meat with cat and dog, it turns out that fox, mink, rat, and other small creatures are the counterfeiters’ animals of choice. A recent raid in Shanghai alone netted ten tons of counterfeit meats and sixty-three suspects, who are accused of earning about $1.6 million in illicit sales of fake mutton. The raid was part of a crackdown by the Ministry of Public Security that started in January, and the police have since arrested 904 suspects and raided 1,721 butcheries and workshops across the country. “In fake lamb, it is easy to pull apart the fat from the red meat. In real lamb, the fat is difficult to separate,” explained a police tweet on Weibo that was forwarded more than 10,000 times. Read more »

Sharone Tobias and Will Piekos look at the top five stories in Asia this week.

1. Earthquake kills scores, injures thousands in China. A massive earthquake in Ya’an, Sichuan, on Saturday left at least 193 dead, 25 missing, and 12,300 injured. Beijing poured one billion RMB into earthquake relief, but hundreds of victims still protested, claiming they had no shelter or food. Though devastating, the earthquake pales in comparison to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake that killed 70,000. Read more »

Sharone Tobias and Will Piekos look at the top five stories in Asia this week.

1. China released a white paper on defense on Tuesday. The 2013 National Defense White Paper blamed Japan and the United States for the rise in tensions in the region (in so many words). It complained about neighboring countries for “making trouble over the Diaoyu islands,” referring to Japan. It also referenced the United States, saying, “some country has strengthened its Asia-Pacific military alliances, expanded its military presence in the region, and frequently makes the situation tenser.”
Read more »

Sharone Tobias and Will Piekos look at the top five stories in Asia this week.

1. China’s economy seems a little shakier. A surge in bad-credit loans within the country has China trying to clean up liquidity without slowing growth. China’s plethora of bad loans and unsustainable levels of debt has led Fitch to downgrade China’s yuan-dominated debt from AA- to A+. It is the first time since 1999 that China’s sovereign credit rating was cut. Part of the reasoning for the downgrade was low average incomes, poor standards of governance, and a rapid expansion of credit. Read more »