AsiaCast

Asia Cast for Tuesday 28th October

Democratic elections have been held in the Maldives. (By Ahmed Zahid/Flickr)

In this Bulletin…

- China condemns citizens’ deaths as terrorist crime;
- North Korea’s “Dear Leader” suspected ill; and
- the Maldives faces its first democratic presidential election.

But first, here’s our SOH focus on China
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Chinese Radio news reported that a quarter of all Beijing children have consumed milk powder containing melamine, a recent survey shows.

The Beijing Municipal Health Bureau led an investigation which revealed out of more than 307,000 Beijing families with children under the age of three, over 75,000 infants and young children consumed toxic milk between September 20 and October 24, 2008.

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Nearly one thousand teachers from ten primary and middle schools in Sichuan province have been on strike for more than a week.

The teachers say local government have not implemented legal provisions regulated in the ‘Compulsory Education Laws’ and ‘Teaching Laws’ which dictate a teacher’s income should not be less than the income of civil servants.

Furthermore they accuse the local government of deceiving their superiors and subordinates by falsifying salary data. As a result teachers are receiving extremely low wages which they say they are barely able to live on.

Some have gathered in the school playgrounds refusing to enter classrooms, others have left the students to study on their own.

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And now for the rest of Asia Cast
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The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) has condemned the killing of five of its workers in Sudan as a terrorist crime on Tuesday but said it would continue investing in the volatile, oil-producing African country.

On Monday five of the nine kidnapped oil workers were killed in a failed rescue attempt the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman told a news conference in Sudan. No details were given on the backgrounds of the kidnapped or killed men.

The Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said she had no details of the rescue attempt or whether Chinese officials were directly involved.

She said the CCP would not be deterred from continued investment I n Sudan, where its oil stake and arms sales have drawn condemnation from critics of Khartoum’s policies in Darfur, where bloody ethnic strife has raged since 2003.

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Despite recent protests in Taiwan against moving too fast in improving ties with Beijing, China confirmed yesterday that it will send a top envoy to Taiwan next week.

The Chairman of China’s semi-official Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS), will represent Beijing in the second round of cross-strait talks during which several agreements are expected to be inked, including air cargo services and expanding direct air and sea links.

The first round of talks were held in Beijing in June after a 10-year hiatus. A highlight of the trip would be a likely meeting between the Chinese envoy and Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou.

China and Taiwan split ties after the civil war in 1949, but Beijing still claims the island as part of its territory. The ARATS chairman will be the highest ranking Chinese official to set foot in Taiwan since 1949.

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Japan’s prime minister Taro Aso told parliament today that North Korea’s “Dear Leader,” Kim Jong Il, may be severely ill in hospital but probably remains in charge of decision-making within the reclusive Stalinist state.

Pyongyang has responded fiercely to the international speculation, warning that it would unleash an attack which would reduce Seoul “to rubble” if the rumour-mongering did not cease.

Mr Aso’s comments come after a month of speculation that North Korea’s leader may have suffered a stroke or otherwise lost his grip on power. Pyongyang threatened a war on the South and issued its now traditional threat to re-unify the two Koreas as a single communist state.

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The Maldives’ first democratic presidential election was held on Tuesday, Asia’s longest serving leader faced a democracy activist he once held as a political prisoner in a run-off vote.

President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom led the Indian Ocean archipelago through three decades of economic expansion but is accused of suppressing human rights, and is hoping to win a seventh term in office.

The election is seen as a referendum on Gayoom’s policies and a test of the country’s desire for change. It is the first multi-party poll since the small Muslim state gained independence from Britain in 1965.

Maldivian Democratic Party leader Mohamed Nasheed is the challenger representing change. Mr Masheed finished second in the first round of voting earlier this month in which no candidate received the required majority.

Under Gayoom, the Maldives’ breathtaking beaches, crystal-clear waters and coral reefs have been turned into highly profitable luxury resorts, but around a fifth of the population still lives in poverty. Around 209,000 eligible voters are expected to head to polling stations spread across 1,190 islands, about 200 of them inhabited.

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“Asia Cast… keeping you across the top headlines from Asia and the World.”