In Asian media this week: India turns its attention to Japan and China. Plus: Trump wants US to own land used for bases in Korea; Despair turning young refugees to armed insurrection; Beijing pushing AI as next growth-engine; Manila ramps up its anti-China stance; The wounds that time cannot heal.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is shunning the US and Donald Trump after the imposition of 50% tariffs on Indian exports to America. This weekend, Modi will work on his ties with Japan and China.

Modi reacted to Trump’s tariffs with fury, Nikkei Asia, the Tokyo-based news magazine, reported. Citing Indian diplomatic sources, it said Trump had tried many times to speak to Modi, but that he had consistently refused to take the president’s calls.

Modi is turning his attention to East Asia. On Friday, he was due to meet Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and on Sunday he will attend a meeting in Tianjin, near Beijing, of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, a show of Global South solidarity.

It will be Modi’s first visit to China in seven years. He will meet China’s President Xi Jinping at the conference.

The two visits offer the chance to give fresh momentum to India’s partnership with Japan, while cautiously advancing the normalisation of links with China, said an opinion article in The Indian Express newspaper.

The piece, by senior commentator C. Raja Mohan, said India had deep problems with China and it was sceptical about the SCO (of which Pakistan is a senior member). Its relations with Moscow had limits.

China and Russia would not solve India’s trade problems, Mohan said. India’s exports to the US last year amounted to US$88 billion (A$134 billion). By contrast, exports to Russia were worth just US$5 billion (A$7.6 billion) and to China only US$15 billion (A$22.9 billion).

But Modi’s Tokyo trip would give him a first-hand sense of how Trump’s extortionist pressures had disrupted such allies as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. These countries were exploring ways to achieve greater self-reliance and India would want to enhance its independent role in Asia.

Mohan said: “Expect soaring rhetoric from Tianjin on rebooting the regional and global order, but look out for tangible progress in the strategic partnership with Japan.”

As if to underscore Mohan’s basic point, Nikkei Asia said Japan’s Ishiba would announce plans for investing 10 trillion yen (more than A$100 billion) in India over the next 10 years, to deepen bilateral business ties.

The two leaders also planned to revise their countries’ declaration on security co-operation – for the first time in 17 years.

Bully-boy tactics work: Korea adds to US investment

Donald Trump has told South Korean President Lee Jae-myung the US might seek to own the land used for US bases in South Korea.

“You lease us the land,” Trump said. “There’s a big difference between giving and leasing. Maybe one of the things I’d like to ask… is to give us ownership of the land where we have the big fort.” (US Army Garrison Humphreys, in South Korea, is America’s biggest overseas military base).

Trump’s suggestion caused a stir, The Korea Times said, as it marked a sharp break from the leasing agreement the two countries had had for decades.

Trump and Lee met in the White House on Monday for their first summit. The Korea Herald said Lee praised Trump’s past diplomacy with North Korea, describing him as a peacemaker who had forged an unusual rapport with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and commended the “bright and beautiful” new design of the Oval Office.

Trump raised the prospect of meeting Kim at the APEC meeting in South Korea in October, The Korea Times said. “I look forward to meeting Kim Jong-un at the appropriate future,” he said.

Lee said relations with North Korea had deteriorated during Trump’s absence from office.

While Lee was stroking Trump’s ego, announcements outside the summit highlighted the extent to which Trump has bullied South Korea into accepting his economic demands.

Korean companies were prepared to invest US$150 billion (about A$230 billion) in the US to start a manufacturing renaissance, Federation of Korean Industries chairman Ryu Jin told a Korea-US business conference.

The Korea Times said this was a new pledge of foreign direct investment, separate from the US$350 billion (A$535 billion) promised under the recent Trump tariff deal that had helped win a cut in the prospective tariff rate.

And The Korea Herald said Korean Air, the country’s flagship carrier, had signed a deal to buy 103 Boeing aircraft, spare engines and a long-term engine maintenance contract with GE Aerospace.

The total value of the deal was US$50 billion (more than A$75 billion).

Rohingya refugee crisis a ‘global responsibility’

Eight years ago, a vicious crackdown by the Myanmar military forced more than 700,000 Rohingya people to flee their homes in Rakhine state for a life of unending struggle in refugee camps in Bangladesh.

Despair is now pushing a growing number of young refugees to join armed resistance groups, hoping to return home by force.

Now, 1.3 million refugees live in some 33 camps in Cox’s Bazar. An article in The Diplomat, the Asian online news magazine, says young people are reaching adulthood unable to work legally, reliant on dwindling aid and, in some cases, drawn to militant groups.

The article, written by Margarite Clarey of the International Crisis Group, reports on a group visit to a Cox’s Bazar camp early this year.

Clarey says many young people had stories of a sibling, cousin or neighbour being lured or coerced into an armed group.

If they do return to fight, the main enemy would not be the military junta’s forces but the Arakan Army, a Buddhist insurgent group that has seized control of most of Rakhine state, in part of the civil war against Myanmar’s dictatorship. As Clarey says, the Muslim and Buddhist Rakhine communities have long had a troubled relationship.

Muhammad Yunus, the interim leader of Bangladesh, told an aid conference in Cox’s Bazar this week that Rohingya people continued to leave Myanmar, because of continued persecution. The meeting was held ahead of a UN conference in New York on 30 September.

The Irrawaddy, a Burmese exile news site, reported Yunus as saying Cox’s Bazar was the largest refugee camp in the world.

“It is our moral responsibility to take the right side of history and stop the armed actors from carrying out their horrible design of ethnic cleansing of the entire Rohingya populace,” Yunus said.

“It is not only the responsibility of Bangladesh, but also of the international community, to share the burden of the Rohingya crisis.”

Intelligent economy, intelligent society: China’s AI plan

Beijing has opened another front in the economic and technology battle with the US, issuing a road map for pushing artificial intelligence as China’s new growth engine.

The State Council, China’s Cabinet, this week published guidelines for implementing a policy called “AI Plus”.

China Daily, an official newspaper, said the government would promote the use of AI in six areas: science and technology; industrial development; consumption; people’s well-being; governance capability and global co-operation.

“By 2035, China will enter a new stage of intelligent economy and intelligent society,” the paper said.

Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post said Beijing had set targets for the adoption of AI-powered devices of 70% by 2027 and more than 90% by 2030.

SCMP said the State Council’s strategy document called for a strong push to develop AI-powered smartphones, computers, robots, home appliances and cars.

To support the use of AI, China would try to drive breakthroughs in chips and software, as well as accelerating the rollout of large-scale, intelligent computing clusters.

The AI industry was projected to add more than 11 trillion yuan (almost A$2.4 trillion) to the country’s GDP by 2035, Rao Shaoyang, of the China Telecom Research Institute, told a computing power conference last weekend.

In a separate story, SCMP said China in recent years had been pouring money into data centres and chips in a push for self-reliance. Overall computer capacity was expanding by about 30% a year.

It said last month the White House unveiled its comprehensive AI strategy, detailing plans to tighten export controls on US chipmaking tools and curb the global spread of Chinese AI models.

“AI has become a crucial battleground in the rivalry between China and the United States,” the story said.

Marcos shifts US focus back to South China Sea

Manila is stiffening its anti-China defence stance, eyeing the acquisition of used Japanese warships, expanding defence and security contacts with Taiwan, and nudging the US to focus more on the South China Sea.

A team of Philippine Navy experts has just finished an inspection of Japanese Abukuma-class guided missile frigates, The Japan Times reported.

Japan sees the transfer as part of wider efforts to boost the defence capabilities of like-minded neighbours amid Chinese military assertiveness in the region.

The 2500-ton warships are each armed with torpedoes, anti-surface missiles, a naval gun and a close-in weapons system. Japan has six such ships. They are more than 30 years old and the first of the frigates is due to be retired in 2027.

“The move would not only substantially deepen military and defence-industrial ties with Manila, it would also open the door to similar transfers of used Self-Defence Forces equipment across the region, as Tokyo works to create a ‘more desirable security environment’,” the paper said.

In a separate story, the Times said Manila was settling into the view that alliances, geography and economic interests would inevitably draw the Philippines into any US-China conflict over Taiwan.

Security co-operation between Manila and Taipei is not new, the paper said, as their forces had taken part in coast guard drills with Japan.

But bilateral engagement had grown more than Manila had publicly disclosed. The paper quoted a senior Philippine Government official as saying there was a stronger push, a more deliberate effort, to work with Taiwan.

Manila has also been active in securing greater US support for its anti-China stand. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr met Donald Trump last month and came away with a personal promise to deepen military co-operation between Manila and Washington, The Diplomat online news magazine said.

The South China Sea had all but disappeared from America’s strategic radar, it said. But since the Marcos visit the White House had taken a noticeably sharper — and more confrontational — stance on Manila’s disputes with Beijing.

After 80 years, wartime forgiveness remains elusive

A Chinese war film called Dead to Rights, set during the horrific Nanjing massacre of 1937, when the invading Japanese army killed an estimated 200,000 people, tells the story of ordinary people who have two aims: to survive and to protect photographic evidence of the savagery.

It has sparked discussion on Chinese social media, with some asking whether the topic is suitable for children and others suggesting it amounts to hatred education.

Yet the movie has been a hit, leading the summer box office takings. In the five weeks since its release, it has brought in well over A$500 million.

A feature article in Singapore’s The Straits Times asks the question: Can China ever forgive Japan?

Westerners think of the war against Japan as the Pacific War, 1941-1945. For China, the war began in 1931 with Japan’s invasion of Manchuria, followed by the invasion of the rest of China in 1937. The death toll can never be known but estimates seem to start at about 15 million people. China says the toll was 35 million.

China will mark the 80th anniversary of end of the war on Wednesday, as 3 September is the date of Japan’s formal surrender in China. It will hold a huge Victory Day military parade, a display of modern China’s military might, in Tiananmen Square.

Kyodo, the Japanese news agency, reported that the Japanese Government had asked Asian and European countries not to attend the parade or other “victory” events. Japan wanted to stop the spread of China’s interpretation of history, the story said.

Global Times, an official newspaper, said China had lodged a protest with Japan and asked for clarification of the reported negative remarks. Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun had said Japan should reflect on its history of aggression.

Forgiveness is not readily apparent.

The article in The Straits Times quoted Swedish academic Karl Gustafsson, an expert on Sino-Japanese relations, as saying he was pessimistic about forgiveness.

“The idea that it becomes easier with the passage of time, that time heals wounds, does not seem to apply in this case,” he said.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.