Prek Takeo, Kandal Province, Cambodia — Sok Srey is prepared for the Mekong River to rise in June, when its water spills into the Takeo, a small river or prek in Khmer, abutting the land she’s occupied with her family for almost a quarter of a century.

She is not prepared for what might happen to her family if a proposed China-funded canal connecting the Gulf of Thailand with inland tributaries of the Mekong River like the Takeo.

“I don’t have any clear information yet. I just heard that they are going to build here,” Sok Srey, 60, told VOA Khmer in March during an interview at her house, around 35 kilometers from Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital.

She and her fisherfolk neighbors have yet to hear from Cambodian authorities about what will happen to families impacted by the project.

Cambodia’s government approved the 180-kilometer-long Funan Techo Canal in May. The $1.7 billion project, part of the Chinese government’s Belt and Road Initiative, would connect the coastal province of Kep with Kandal and Takeo provinces inland. The proposed design is 100 meters wide upstream and 80 meters wide downstream, with a consistent depth of 5.4 meters. It is the latest China-financed infrastructure project in Cambodia.

The proposed canal has alarmed neighboring Vietnam about how the project would affect its use of the flow of water downstream.

Brian Eyler, senior fellow and director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Stimson Center, said the costs and benefits of this project “are mostly unknown due to a lack of information.”

He added, “This project will likely have severe impacts on rice production in two of Vietnam’s top rice-producing provinces and thus, the Vietnamese are justly worried.”

In December, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet reassured Hanoi, saying the project “will not incur any negative impacts on the flow of the Mekong or other rivers while maintaining a stable environment, ecology and natural habitat for biodiversity.”

So far, there is no official reaction to the canal from the Vietnamese government, and the Vietnamese Embassy in Phnom Penh did not respond to VOA Khmer’s questions via email.

But such discord and diplomacy is far from Sok Srey’s workday life. In the months when she is not casting her nets in the Takeo, she picks chilies and clears grass, earning around $7.50 a day when she finds work. Her husband, Mov Sarin, 62, is a former soldier without a pension. Her daughter, Rin Sreyvy, is a 16-year-old ninth-grader.

Although Sok Srey is not the registered owner of the riverside land, she

feels that if the government wants the plot, it should compensate her and find her a place to live.

“I am worried, I couldn’t even sleep,” she said. “I don’t oppose the state, but if the state gives me a piece of land, I would appreciate that.”

Neighbors like Year Savun, a 58-year-old widow and mother of six who has lived on her mortgaged plot since 1984, and Tong Eng, 74, who owns a plot he has occupied since 1982, also don’t oppose the canal.

“The canal is good for the whole country, but where will people go to live?” asked Uot Kim Eng, 57, a roadside sugar cane and grocery seller who lives near Tong Eng.

Phan Rim, spokesperson of the Ministry of Public Works and Transport, told VOA Khmer on March 18 the project’s impact has been “primarily studied,” but “we’re still studying it more thoroughly.”

The Ministry of Economy and Finance, he added, will study the compensation issue to ensure the government follows proper procedures and the villagers will be consulted.

The China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC), one of China’s giant state-owned companies, is backing the project via a build-operate-transfer (BOT) contract, according to Cambodia’s Ministry of Public Works and Transport. If completed, it would reduce the transit time between the ports in Sihanoukville and Phnom Penh, according to the ministry.

Under the BOT, the Chinese company would build the canal, maintain and manage it and profit from charging for passage through the canal for some 50 years before it would revert to Cambodia.

On March 12, Hun Manet said the canal will create jobs for the 1.6 million people who live along the proposed route, and Cambodia’s government says construction will begin later this year.

Rim Sokvy, an independent researcher in Cambodia, wrote in an analysis published on ThinkChina, a Singapore-based website, that the canal “could steer Cambodia away from Vietnam and towards China.”

He said Cambodia now relies heavily on the Vietnamese waterways for importing raw materials from China and exporting finished products to the U.S. and Western countries.

“Vietnam will lose significant income … as Cambodia starts to depend on its own waterway transportation. The construction of the Funan Techo Canal is showing a decrease of Vietnam’s influence on Cambodia. This will be Hun Manet’s legacy,” Rim Sokvy said.

Phan Rim said the Mekong option will be unchanged.
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seoul, south korea — North Korea fired a ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea, the South Korean military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Tuesday.

The launch comes less than two weeks after Pyongyang’s state media said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had overseen a successful test of a solid-fuel engine for a “new-type intermediate-range hypersonic missile.”

Japan also said it “appeared” North Korea had fired the missile, Kyodo news agency reported, adding that the country’s coast guard believed the missile had fallen.

Tuesday’s launch is the third ballistic missile test so far this year, after the solid fuel one overseen by Kim in March, and another tipped with a maneuverable hypersonic warhead in January.

The North claimed last year it had successfully tested its first solid-fuel ICBM — the largest, longest-range category of ballistic missile — hailing it as a key breakthrough for the country’s nuclear counterattack capabilities.

Solid-fuel missiles do not need to be fueled before launch, making them harder to find and destroy, as well as quicker to use.

So far this year, the nuclear-armed North has declared South Korea its “principal enemy,” jettisoned agencies dedicated to reunification and outreach, and threatened war over “even 0.001 mm” of territorial infringement.
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SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s president vowed Monday not to back down in the face of vehement protests by doctors seeking to derail his plan to drastically increase medical school admissions, as he called their walkouts “an illegal collective action” that poses “a grave threat to our society.” 

About 12,000 medical interns and residents in South Korea have been on strike for six weeks, causing hundreds of canceled surgeries and other treatments at university hospitals. In support of their action, many senior doctors at their teaching schools have also submitted resignations, though they haven’t stopped treating patients. 

Officials say they want to raise the yearly medical school cap by 2,000 from the current 3,058 to create more doctors to deal with the country’s rapidly aging population. Doctors counter that schools can’t handle such an abrupt increase in students and that it would eventually hurt the country’s medical services. But critics say doctors, whose profession is one of the best paid in South Korea, are simply worried that the supply of more doctors would result in lower future incomes. 

Public surveys show that a majority of ordinary South Koreans support the government plan. But observers say many people are increasingly fed up with the protracted confrontation between the government and doctors, which threatens to deal a blow to governing party candidates ahead of next week’s parliamentary elections. 

In a nationally televised address, President Yoon Suk Yeol said an additional 2,000 medical students would be the minimum increase needed to address a shortage of physicians in rural areas, the military and essential but low-paying professions like pediatrics and emergency departments. Yoon said South Korea’s doctor-to-patient ratio — 2.1 physicians per 1,000 people — is far below the average of 3.7 in the developed world. 

“Increasing the number of doctors is a state project that we can’t further delay,” he said. 

Yoon urged the striking doctors to return to work, saying they have a responsibility to protect people’s lives in line with the local medical law. He also said the government remains open to talks if doctors come up with a unified proposal that adequately explains their calls for a much smaller increase in the medical school enrollment quota. 

“I can’t tolerate an attempt to carry through their thoughts by force without due logic and grounds,” Yoon said. “The illegal collective action by some doctors has become a grave threat to our society.” 

Yoon said the recruitment plan wouldn’t lead to lower earnings for doctors, citing what he called expected increases in national income and demand for medical services in the fast-aging society. He said the average income of South Korean doctors was the highest in the developed world. 

Later Monday, the Korean Medical Association, or KMA, which represents doctors in South Korea, criticized Yoon for repeating what his government has already argued to support the recruitment plan. 

“It was an address that brought us greater disappointment, because we had high hopes” for some changes in the government’s position, Kim Sung-geun, a spokesperson for KMA’s emergency committee, told reporters. 

Yoon said the government was taking final administrative steps to suspend the licenses of the strikers but added that he didn’t want to punish the young doctors. This implied that his government would be willing to soften punitive measures on the strikers if they returned to work soon. 

Yoon recently ordered officials to pursue “a flexible measure” to resolve the dispute and seek constructive consultations with doctors at the request of ruling party leader Han Dong-hoon. 

It’s unclear if the government and doctors can find a breakthrough to settle their standoff anytime soon. Last week, KMA elected Lim Hyun-taek, a hardliner who has called for a decrease in the medical school admission cap, as its new chief. 

After his election Tuesday, Lim said doctors could sit down for talks with the government if Yoon apologized and dismissed top health officials involved in the recruitment plan. Lim also threatened to launch an all-out fight if any doctors received punitive steps for their recent protests. 

The striking junior doctors represent a small fraction of the total doctors in South Korea — estimated at 115,000 by Yoon and 140,000 by a doctors association. But in some major hospitals, they account for about 30% to 40% of doctors, assisting qualified doctors and department chiefs during surgeries and other treatments while training. 

Doctors say the government enrollment plan lacks measures to resolve key medical issues such as how to increase the number of physicians in some key but unpopular professions. They say newly recruited students would also try to work in the capital region and in high-paying fields like plastic surgery and dermatology. They say the government plan would also likely result in doctors performing unnecessary treatments because of increased competition.
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washington — Vietnam is crying foul over a Chinese bid to redefine its coastal waters in the Gulf of Tonkin, a waterway at the northern end of the South China Sea lying between China’s Hainan Island and Vietnam.

Beijing’s delineation of a new baseline in the gulf was declared earlier this month. Under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), a country’s baseline is essentially its shoreline at low tide and is used to determine the extent of coastal waters and exclusive economic zones.

The convention makes exceptions in the case of close-in coastal islands, inlets and other unusual features, in which case a straight-line baseline may be applied. But experts say China has taken this provision to extremes by drawing a series of straight lines between islands far off its coast.

While the immediate implications of China’s latest sea grab are limited, the experts say it could have implications for freedom of navigation in the region, and in an extreme case, Beijing could seek to apply the principle to declare the Taiwan Strait as Chinese coastal waters.

It also follows a pattern of aggressive Chinese behavior in the South China Sea, where since 2013 the country has been building artificial islands in waters claimed by Taiwan, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

China says its delineation of the baseline in the Gulf of Tonkin, known as the Beibu Gulf in China, “strictly complies with domestic laws, international laws and bilateral agreements” and “will not impact Vietnam’s interests or those of any other nation,” according to a March 4 statement by the Chinese Foreign Ministry quoted by the official Global Times.

Hanoi disputes this assertion. When asked about the baseline more than a week later, its Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Pham Thu Hang, stressed that “coastal countries need to abide by the UNCLOS 1982 when determining the baseline for measuring their territorial waters” and urged Beijing to honor a previously negotiated bilateral demarcation agreement in the gulf. UNCLOS was ratified in 1982.

Free of disputes

Unlike other parts of the South China Sea, the Gulf of Tonkin has been largely free of disputes since Hanoi and Beijing signed the delineation agreement in 2000 that went into effect four years later.

The Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman declined to comment on whether China’s new baseline could jeopardize that agreement, according to Reuters.

Hoang Viet, a lecturer at Ho Chi Minh City’s University of Law who follows regional maritime issues closely, told VOA Vietnamese over the phone, “The gulf was already demarcated. China cannot claim more than what it agreed on in the deal, no matter what baseline it draws in the gulf.”

He stressed that “it’s almost impossible” for Beijing to amend the agreement already ratified by the two nations.

Raymond Powell, a team leader at Stanford University’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation, told VOA Vietnamese in an email that China’s baseline delineation varies from the standard UNCLOS practice, which says the baseline “must not depart to any appreciable extent from the general direction of the coast.”

“China has drawn a straight baseline from its coast to a couple of offshore islands to illegally expand its territorial sea,” Powell said. “UNCLOS does not allow drawing straight baselines except in extreme circumstances, such as the complex fjords of Norway. This is not one of those special cases.”

According to UNCLOS, any waters inside the baseline are considered internal waters of a coastal state and unapproved passage of foreign vessels or aircraft is not allowed.

“The new baseline turns a significant area into China’s closed waters. Qiongzhou Strait [the strait between Hainan island and the Chinese mainland] is now wholly China’s internal waters,” said Viet. “It affects the freedom of navigation of foreign vessels.”

He added that China could cite this as a precedent to claim the Taiwan Strait as internal waters.

Powell predicted that Beijing’s new claim “may someday” draw a U.S. Freedom of Navigation Operation (FONOP), in which a warship will enter an unrecognized claim and either transit without notification or conduct military activity. The United States “challenges excessive maritime claims around the world regardless of the identity of the claimant,” according to the U.S. Navy press office.  

Most FONOPs in the region have been confined to the South China Sea to challenge Beijing’s territorial claims.
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NEW DELHI — The Indian government said it was rescuing its citizens who were lured into employment in Cambodia and were being forced to participate in cyber fraud schemes.

The Indian Embassy in Cambodia is working with Cambodian authorities and has rescued and repatriated about 250 Indians, including 75 in the last three months, India’s Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said in a statement Saturday.

Jaiswal was responding to Indian news reports that stated more than 5,000 Indians are trapped in Cambodia and being forced to carry out cyber frauds on people back home.

“We are also working with Cambodian authorities and with agencies in India to crack down on those responsible for these fraudulent schemes,” Jaiswal said.

The Indian government and its embassy in Cambodia have issued several advisories informing them about such scams, the spokesperson said.

The Cambodian Embassy in India did not respond immediately to a request for comment Sunday. 
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Taipei, Taiwan — China’s Ministry of State Security issued a fresh warning this week about overseas spy agencies and what it says are their efforts in recent years to obtain state secrets under the disguise of consulting agencies.

The six-minute video released Thursday on the ministry’s official WeChat social media account reenacts what it says was a real case where overseas spy agencies instructed a consulting firm to steal classified information from a Chinese company seeking to invest abroad.

The release of the video comes as Chinese leader Xi Jinping met this week with American CEOs in a bid reassure them that China remains open for business, despite concerns about its economy and worrying signals from the authoritarian government.

Over the past year, foreign investment in China has shrunk as supply chains shift to other countries while Chinese authorities have rolled out a new anti-espionage law and used exit bans to keep business executives and others from leaving the country. It has also carried out raids on consulting and due diligence firms.

During the same period, the Ministry of State Security has ramped up its use of social media to raise the alarm about foreign spies.

Its latest video — the fourth since it launched its social media account last year — has the feel of a spy thriller with dramatic music and fast-paced video elements and graphics.

It tells the story of an executive at a Chinese company who is pressed by a consulting firm representative on a string of questions, including the company’s total profit, the technical parameters of its products, and how its products are used by the Air Force.

In a WeChat post released with the video, the ministry warned about the national security risks that consultancy agencies pose.

“The seemingly normal investigation conducted by consulting firms are in fact attempts to illegally acquire our commercial secrets and efforts to suppress our advantageous industries,” the ministry wrote, adding that these consulting firms are accomplices to foreign spy agencies aiming to infiltrate key sectors in China.

Intimidation campaign against Chinese citizens

Some experts say the video is tailored to the Chinese audience rather than foreign investors since the video is purely in Mandarin and features the arrest of a Chinese national working for a foreign consulting firm.

The purpose of the video is “to inform and intimidate Chinese citizens by telling them that the government is watching them,” said Dennis Wilder, a former U.S. national security official. He added that the campaign will likely create a chilling effect among Chinese citizens, especially those working for foreign companies.

Over the last year, Chinese authorities have raided several American companies’ offices in China and detained some of their Chinese employees. Companies affected include due diligence firm Mintz Group, business consulting firm Capvision, and management consultancy Bain & Company.

Chilling effect for new foreign businesses

While the campaign focuses on Chinese citizens, Wilder said Beijing’s efforts to safeguard national security will also create a chilling effect for foreign businesses trying to enter the Chinese market.

Unlike big foreign companies with an established presence in China, such as Apple or Qualcomm, he said companies that have no presence in China need to conduct due diligence. “They have to understand what their counterparts in China are all about, but if they can’t conduct due diligence, they won’t invest in China,” he told VOA in a video interview.

A survey conducted by foreign business groups in 2023 suggests foreign companies are increasingly pulling investments and operations out of China. Survey data show that only 45% of American companies view China as their primary or among their top three investment destinations while 66% of the companies surveyed by the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China said they found operating in China has become increasingly difficult.

Despite foreign companies’ lack of confidence in the Chinese market, some analysts say the Chinese government thinks efforts to safeguard national security and enhance foreign investors’ confidence in the Chinese market are not mutually contradictory.

“Beijing believes that while they try to attract more foreign businesses to invest in China, they also should ensure key national interests, such as core data or key infrastructure won’t be easily obtained by foreign businesses,” said Hung Chin-fu, a political scientist at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan.

He said Beijing’s approach will be met with deep suspicion among foreign businesses. “At a time when the Chinese government has laid out many red lines in the name of national security, investing in China will be like walking on thin ice for foreign companies,” he told VOA by phone.

As foreign businesses will likely remain hesitant to increase their investment volumes in China, Wilder thinks Chinese leaders may have different views on whether to prioritize efforts to attract more foreign investment or the need to safeguard national security.

“For Xi Jinping, I think if he has to choose between foreign investment and economic growth and what he perceives as national security, he will always come out on the national security side,” he told VOA.

But for other Communist Party leaders who must consider economic growth, such as Chinese Premier Li Qiang, Wilder thinks their consideration will be different from Xi’s. 
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MACAO — After more than 40 years, Macao’s horse track hosted its final races Saturday, bringing an end to the sport in the city famous for its massive casinos.

In January, the city’s government said it would terminate its contract with the Macao Jockey Club in April. The decision came at the request of the Macao Horse Race Company, which cited operational challenges as part of the reasons for the closure.

On Saturday, gamblers congregated in the half-full stands and placed their final bets. Some tourists also visited the track.

Mai Wan-zun, a student from mainland China in Macao, said she wanted to get a taste of the atmosphere. “We could come to see horse racing here in Macao, but not in mainland China,” she said.

Helena Chong, a Macao resident, decided to visit the race course for the first and last time to see what it’s all about.

“It’s a pity to see the end of all this gambling and entertainment,” she said.

Horse racing in the former Portuguese colony has struggled with economic challenges in recent years and has yet to rebound from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Its jockey club had accumulated operating losses of over $311 million, the Macau News Agency earlier reported.

Under the termination arrangement, the horse racing firm had pledged to arrange for transportation of owners’ horses to other locations by March 2025 and handle the company’s employees according to the law, the government said.

In neighboring Hong Kong, horse racing remains popular and profitable. Its jockey club runs various gambling activities and is the city’s major donor for many charities.
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Seoul, South Korea — The future of international efforts to restrain Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program is in question after Russia voted on Thursday to dismantle a body meant to monitor the implementation of United Nations sanctions against North Korea. 

Since its creation in 2009, the so-called “Panel of Experts” has played a key role in attempts to enforce U.N. Security Council resolutions against North Korea. Most notably, the eight-member panel produced regular reports outlining alleged violations of U.N. sanctions, keeping the issue in the public eye and prompting follow-up reporting by independent news outlets. 

Though Security Council cooperation on North Korea had already eroded, and North Korea has steadily found ways to evade existing sanctions, the dismantling of the expert panel could remove remaining barriers to North Korea’s weapons program and undermine global non-proliferation efforts. 

How did we get to this point? 

The Security Council first imposed sanctions on North Korea following its initial nuclear test in 2006. It expanded the measures as North Korea ramped up illicit weapons development in subsequent years. 

As permanent, veto-wielding members of the Security Council, Russia and China voted for the North Korea sanctions. But as their respective ties with the United States deteriorate, both countries are calling for sanctions to be eased or lifted, leading to questions about whether the expert panel will survive. 

During recent negotiations, Russia and China pushed to add “sunset” clauses to at least some of the North Korea sanctions, which would allow them to expire after a fixed amount of time if a consensus is not reached on their extension, according to several media reports. 

With those efforts having apparently failed, Russia on Thursday voted against renewing the annual mandate of the expert panel, while China abstained from the vote. Without unanimous support, the panel’s mandate will expire on April 30. 

Why did Russia kill the UN sanctions panel?  

For years, Russia has argued that the North Korea sanctions are outdated and counterproductive. In Moscow’s view, not only did the sanctions fail to persuade Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons, they instead created a humanitarian crisis in the country.  

U.S. officials disagree, saying North Korea is to blame for spending vast sums of money on weapons rather than food for its people. 

In recent years, Russia has grown bolder about conducting activities that may explicitly violate U.N. sanctions. Most notably, U.S. officials say Russia has imported at least 10,000 containers filled with North Korean munitions, including ballistic missiles, for use in its war in Ukraine. 

Both Russia and North Korea deny the weapons transfers, despite mounting evidence in the form of commercial satellite photos appearing to show repeated deliveries of North Korean weapons. 

Britain’s Financial Times newspaper this week reported that Russia also started supplying oil directly to North Korea in defiance of U.N. sanctions. In 2017, the Security Council imposed a strict limit on the amount of oil products North Korea can import. 

By effectively killing the panel, Russia may be trying to make it easier to hide its sanctions-violating activities with North Korea, suggested U.S., South Korean and other Western diplomats who made public statements after Russia’s Thursday vote. 

“This is almost comparable to destroying a CCTV (closed circuit television) to avoid being caught red-handed,” said Hwang Joon-kook, South Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations. 

Russia itself has hinted at selfish motives. Asked Friday whether the vote means Russia has changed its policy regarding enforcement of U.N. sanctions, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “Such a position is more in line with our interests. The talk was about a group of experts. The issue is that we do not agree with the practical aspects of this project.” 

Will this move make it easier for North Korea to evade sanctions?  

Possibly, according to many Western diplomats and analysts. One reason: The effort to gather and disseminate information about sanctions evasion could become more complicated. 

Expert panel reports included “vast amounts of exclusive information from member states … as well as correspondence, photos and data obtained through panel communication with relevant parties,” Chad O’Carroll wrote on NK News, a North Korea-focused website he founded. “In many cases, journalists, private companies and individual governments lack the authority or clout to secure such materials.” 

In the absence of the expert panel, Washington and its allies are vowing to find workarounds. At a briefing Thursday, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the United States will continue to work to secure information about North Korea’s “pursuit of illegal weapons.” 

“And we will continue to work to make that information public and make it available to other members of the Security Council,” Miller added. 

Earlier this week, the United States and South Korea announced the formation of a task force meant to prevent North Korea from obtaining oil in violation of U.N. sanctions, which are imposed indefinitely. 

Trilateral cooperation among the United States, Japan and South Korea may also increase, according to Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul. 

“And more evidence of sanctions violations could be released to the public since the restraining influence Russia and China had over headline-generating reports will be gone with the U.N. panel of experts,” he added. 

However, it is not clear if those smaller initiatives can replace the pressure created by a unified Security Council. If they cannot, many fear North Korea will more easily find the financial means to accelerate its nuclear buildup — perhaps even emboldening other countries to follow its example. 

Hwang, the South Korean ambassador, said Russia’s vote represents a setback to the international non-proliferation regime. 

“A permanent member of the Security Council and depository of the non-proliferation treaty completely abandoned its responsibility,” he said.
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washington — Washington and Tokyo are gearing up to unveil plans to restructure the U.S. military command in Japan in what would be the biggest upgrade to their security alliance in decades.

China has already objected, saying it does not want to be a target of the defense plans that Washington and Tokyo are expected to announce at a summit in April.

“China always believes that military cooperation between states should be conducive to regional peace and stability, instead of targeting any third party or harming the interests of a third party,” Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said Tuesday via email to VOA.

A U.S. State Department spokesperson pushed back in an email to VOA’s Korean Service on Wednesday. “The U.S.-Japan alliance has served as the cornerstone of peace, security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific and across the world for over seven decades and has never been stronger,” the spokesperson said.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan and his Japanese counterpart, Akiba Takeo, met at the White House on Tuesday to discuss “next steps to finalize key deliverables” that President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will announce when they meet April 10 in Washington.

During a news briefing Monday in Tokyo, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said his country was in discussion with Washington about strengthening the command and control of their militaries to enhance readiness.

The discussion comes as Indo-Pacific Command chief Admiral John Aquilino told the U.S. House Armed Services Committee on March 20 that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army is preparing to invade Taiwan by 2027.

‘Long overdue’

Ralph Cossa, president emeritus and WSD-Handa chair in peace studies at the Pacific Forum, told VOA via email on Wednesday, “The time is long overdue to upgrade the command structure in Japan so that the U.S. and Japanese militaries can operate together more seamlessly” in the region.

The plan to restructure the command is meant to “strengthen operational planning and exercises” between the two and is seen as “a move to counter China,” according to the Financial Times, which first reported about the plan on March 24.

James Schoff, senior director of the U.S.-Japan NEXT Alliance Initiative at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA, said, “This is probably the single most important step that the allies can take to enhance deterrence against regional threats and respond to any sort of major crisis.”

“This is especially true at this moment as Japan prepares to stand up its first joint operational command and introduces longer-range counterstrike capabilities,” he said via email to VOA on Wednesday.

Japan plans to set up a joint operations command by March 2025 to improve coordination among its air, ground and maritime Self-Defense Forces (JSDF).

The updated command structure within U.S. Forces Japan (USFJ) is expected to complement Japan’s establishment of its joint operations command.  

Ryo Hinata-Yamaguchi, senior nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Indo-Pacific Security Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, said, “Although the details are yet to be determined, the plan is to enhance the USFJ’s authority within INDOPACOM [U.S. Indo-Pacific Command].”

He continued via email to VOA on Tuesday that the revised U.S. military command “will also have greater institutional ability to communicate and coordinate with the JSDF.”

Currently, USFJ has limited authority to conduct joint operations with Japan. The commander of USFJ needs to coordinate its operation with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, located in Hawaii.

On Tuesday, Biden nominated Air Force Major General Stephen F. Jost as the new commander of USFJ and promoted him to lieutenant general.

Schoff said that “the existing parallel chain of command would remain” in the U.S. and Japanese militaries rather than “a single allied chain of command for both U.S. and Japanese forces.”

This will be unlike the South Korean-U.S. Combined Forces Command led by a U.S. general during wartime.

James Przystup, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and its Japan chair specializing in alliance management in the Indo-Pacific, said the upgrades in U.S. military command in Japan “would serve to enhance U.S.-Japan defense cooperation and deterrence in Northeast Asia, both with respect to North Korea and China.”

He continued via email to VOA on Wednesday, “As for what this might look like in practice, the U.S.-ROK Combined Forces Command could be one model, but not necessarily the one [into which it] eventually evolves.” 
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TOKYO — Japan’s unmanned moon lander woke up after surviving a second frigid, two-week lunar night and transmitted new images back to Earth, the country’s space agency said Thursday.

“We received a response from SLIM last night and confirmed that SLIM had successfully completed its second overnight,” the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said in a post on the official X account for its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) probe.

“Since the sun was still high in the sky last night and the equipment was still hot, we recorded images of the usual scenery with the navigational camera, among other activities, for a short period of time,” it added.

A black-and-white photo of the rocky surface of a crater accompanied the post on X, formerly Twitter.

The SLIM lander touched down in January at a wonky angle that left its solar panels facing the wrong way.

Around three hours after the landing — which made Japan only the fifth nation to touch down on the moon — JAXA decided to switch SLIM off with 12% power remaining to allow for a possible resumption later on.

As the sun’s angle shifted, the probe came back to life in late January for two days and carried out scientific observations of a crater with a high-spec camera.

But the spacecraft was not designed for the freezing, fortnight-long lunar nights, when the temperature plunges to minus 133 degrees Celsius.

So space agency scientists had cause for celebration when it was successfully revived in late February after its first lunar night.

JAXA has dubbed SLIM the “Moon Sniper” for its precision landing technology.

The aim of the mission is to examine a part of the moon’s mantle — the usually deep inner layer beneath its crust — that is believed to be accessible.

Thursday’s news came after an uncrewed American lander called Odysseus — the first private spaceship to successfully land on the moon — was unable to wake up, its manufacturer said on Saturday, even after its solar panels were projected to receive enough sunlight to turn on its radio. 
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