AID AGENCIES STRUGGLING

On Friday, a powerful 7.7-magnitude quake struck near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay. 

Shortly after, Myanmar’s military chief Min Aung Hlaing made a rare call for international assistance.

But observers said disaster response in hard-hit areas has been hampered by various factors. These include a lack of access to aid and proper equipment, damaged roads and communications infrastructure, and the ongoing conflict. 

“The earthquake has consequences in parts of the country that are not so easy to access, where control is disputed, and those areas are going to be harder to reach,” said Alexander Matheou, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies’ (IFRC) Asia Pacific director.  

“The epicentre is reachable, but not all the people affected, I would imagine at this point, are seeing assistance.”   

HONG KONG: China’s Xiaomi said on Tuesday (Apr 1) that it was actively cooperating with police after a fatal accident involving a SU7 electric vehicle on Mar 29 and that it had handed over driving and system data.

The incident marks the first major accident involving the SU7 sedan, which Xiaomi launched in March last year and since December has outsold Tesla’s Model 3 on a monthly basis.

Xiaomi’s shares, which had risen by 34.8 per cent year to date, closed down 5.5 per cent on Wednesday, underperforming a 0.2 per cent gain in the Hang Seng Tech index.

Xiaomi did not disclose the number of casualties but said initial information showed the car was in the Navigate on Autopilot intelligent-assisted driving mode before the accident and was moving at 116kmh.

A driver inside the car took over and tried to slow it down but then collided with a cement pole at a speed of 97 kph, Xiaomi said.

The accident in Tongling in the eastern Chinese province of Anhui killed the driver and two passengers, Chinese financial publication Caixin reported on Tuesday citing friends of the victims.

In a rundown of the data submitted to local police posted on a Weibo account of the company, Xiaomi said NOA issued a risk warning of obstacles ahead and its subsequent immediate takeover only happened seconds before the collision.

Local media reported that the car caught fire after the collision. Xiaomi did not mention the fire in the statement.

Xiaomi began manufacturing EVs last year with the launch of the SU7 sedan after selling smartphones, household appliances and smart gadgets for most of its 15-year history.

The company has two versions of smart driving systems on its SU7 EVs. The higher-end LiDAR-mounted version, as opposed to the pure vision version, enables urban navigation features such as collision avoidance and special vehicle recognition.

Xiaomi said the car involved in the accident was a so-called standard version of the SU7, which has the less-advanced smart driving technology without LiDAR. 

SEOUL: Matches across South Korean baseball were cancelled on Tuesday (Apr 1) after a fan died when a piece of metal at a stadium fell off and struck her.

The country’s most popular sport was plunged into mourning on Monday when police said that the woman in her 20s had died of head injuries.

The incident happened on Saturday during a KBO League game between home team NC Dinos and the LG Twins at Changwon NC Park in the country’s southeast.

A piece of aluminium installed outside the windows of a club office fell from about 18m, fatally injuring the fan and breaking the collarbone of her sister, reports and officials said.

“KBO has designated Apr 1 to Apr 3 as a mourning period,” the Korea Baseball Organization said in a statement.

All games in the KBO League and Minor League were cancelled on Tuesday, it said. It was not immediately clear whether they would be played at a later date.

Matches on Wednesday will be preceded by a moment’s silence, players will wear black ribbons, and fans will be told not to cheer.

“Furthermore, KBO and its 10 clubs will conduct thorough safety checks on stadium facilities and structures before games,” the statement said.

South Korean football clubs in the top two tiers have also been ordered to conduct safety inspections of their stadiums, the K League said.

Ishiba was tight-lipped Tuesday about imposing retaliatory tariffs on US imports but said he will discuss “details on responsive measures” with his ruling coalition.

For now, aside from opening the 1,000 consultation decks, he said “we will do everything we can” to help small and mid-sized businesses procure funds after the US tariffs are activated.

“Japan is the biggest investor for the United States. With this in mind, we will continue to strongly call for Japan’s exemption,” he told a news conference.

“If it’s deemed necessary for me to pay a visit to the (United States) myself, then I won’t hesitate to do so.”

On Friday, the prime minister said Trump’s views on tariffs were “difficult to understand” after the 25 percent duties on cars and parts were announced.

“What President Trump is saying is that there are both friends and foes and friends can be more difficult. This is very difficult to understand,” Ishiba said during a legislative committee session.

BANGKOK: Aid groups arriving in the worst-hit areas of Myanmar said there was an urgent need for shelter, food and water after last week’s devastating quake, while in Bangkok, rescuers pressed on searching for life under the rubble of a collapsed skyscraper.

More than 2,000 people died in the 7.7 magnitude quake, which hit around lunchtime on Friday (Mar 28), and as aid teams made it into areas near the epicentre, it became clear to them that a massive humanitarian effort was required for those who survived.

“Having lived through the terror of the earthquake, people now fear aftershocks and are sleeping outside on roads or in open fields,” an International Rescue Committee worker in Mandalay said.

“However, in towns and cities, safe spaces are scarce. There is an urgent need for tents, as even those whose homes remain intact are too afraid to sleep indoors.”

The IRC said its teams found people also urgently needed medical care, drinking water and food.

Civil war in Myanmar, where the junta seized power in a coup in 2021, has complicated efforts to reach those injured and made homeless by the Southeast Asian nation’s biggest quake in a century.

In Mandalay, a resident told Reuters that people were desperately trying to organise their own efforts to dig bodies out of rubble as there was not enough equipment or rescue teams, and locals were wary of aftershocks.

“People went back inside the building in the daytime but still not dare to sleep at night,” the resident said

“People are still sleeping outside and started getting sick … as the ground has been hit by sun the whole day and so it’s hot.”

Around the city, apartment complexes have been flattened, a Buddhist religious complex eviscerated and hotels crumpled and twisted into ruins.

At some disaster sites, the smell of rotting bodies was unmistakable.

On the outskirts of Mandalay, a crematorium has received hundreds of bodies for disposal, with many more to come as victims are dug out of the rubble.

Fear of aftershocks has forced the city’s 1,000-bed general hospital to move its patients into the car park, where they lie on gurneys with only a thin tarpaulin rigged overhead to shield them from the fierce tropical sun.

State media has reported Myanmar’s death toll at 2,065, with more than 3,900 injured and at least 270 missing. The military government declared a week-long mourning period from Monday, with flags to fly at half-mast on official buildings until Apr 6 “in sympathy for the loss of life and damages”.

A minute of silence in tribute to the victims will be held on Tuesday.

The country will come to a standstill at 12.51pm local time – the precise time the quake struck on Friday – to remember those lost.

The ruling junta has asked the population to pause at that time, and said media should halt broadcasting and display mourning symbols, while prayers will be offered at temples and pagodas.

The junta’s tight control over communication networks and the damage to roads, bridges and other infrastructure caused by the quakes have intensified the challenges for aid workers.

In Bangkok, rescuers were still scouring the ruins of an unfinished skyscraper that collapsed for signs of life, but aware that as nearly four days had passed since the quake, the odds of finding survivors lengthened.

Search and rescue teams said they planned to bring in emotional support dogs for the relatives of the dead and missing.

Thirteen deaths have been confirmed at the building site, with 74 people still missing.

Thailand’s national death toll from the quake stands at 20.

Initial tests showed that some steel samples collected from the site of the collapsed building were substandard, Thai industry ministry officials said. The government has launched an investigation into the cause of the collapse.

TRUMP’S HISTORY WITH TARIFFS 

Trump has hyped up his impending announcement on reciprocal tariffs as Liberation Day because his policies aim to free the US economy from dependence on foreign goods.

“We’re going to charge countries for doing business in our country and taking our jobs, taking our wealth, taking a lot of things that they’ve been taking over the years,” Trump said last week when he announced 25 per cent auto tariffs.

“They’ve taken so much out of our country, friend and foe. And, frankly, friend has been oftentimes much worse than foe.”

Trump’s displeasure with trade ties between the US and the global economy can be traced back to the 1980s. 

In an interview with CNN’s Larry King in 1987, when he discussed getting into politics, Trump said: “A lot of people are tired of watching other countries ripping off the US.”

He added: “Behind our backs, they laugh at us because of our own stupidity.”

While the main target of his ire at the time was Japan, China entered his crosshairs by the 1990s and early 2000s, and Beijing remains one of his top tariff targets, along with Canada, Mexico and the EU.

In his successful 2016 election campaign, Trump stepped up the rhetoric, saying: “We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country.”

In 2018, he declared in a social media post that he was a “Tariff Man”.

During his second term, Trump also started citing a historical precedent going back more than a century – President William McKinley.

McKinley’s passion for both territorial expansion and economic protectionism during his time in office from 1897 to 1901 could have been the model for Trump’s “Make America Great Again” policies.

“President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent – he was a natural businessman,” Trump said in his inauguration speech in January.

America’s tariffs are generally lower than those of its trading partners. After World War II, the US pushed for other countries to lower trade barriers and tariffs, seeing free trade as a way to promote peace, prosperity and American exports around the world.

And it mostly practised what it preached, generally keeping its own tariffs low and giving American consumers access to inexpensive foreign goods.

Trump has broken with that free trade consensus, saying unfair foreign competition has hurt American manufacturers and devastated factory towns in the American heartland.

Most economists say nothing good would come out of scrambling the tariff code.

They say the tariffs would get passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices for autos, groceries, housing and other goods. Corporate profits could be lower and growth more sluggish.

Trump maintains that more companies would open factories to avoid the taxes, although that process could take three years or more.

HANOI: Vietnam said it cut import duties on a range of goods, including cars, liquefied gas and some agricultural products, with concerns escalating ahead of US President Donald Trump’s planned unveiling of sweeping tariffs on “all countries”.

The announcement came after Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh said last month that Hanoi was reviewing levies in order to encourage increased imports from the United States.

Washington’s trade deficit with Vietnam is the third highest of any country, after China and Mexico, and there are increasing fears it could be a key target of the White House’s tariff drive, which has sent shockwaves through global markets.

“From Mar 31, 2025, certain items such as cars, wood, ethanol, frozen chicken legs, pistachios, almonds, fresh apples, cherries, raisins, etc, will be subject to a new preferential import duty rate,” a statement said late Monday (Mar 31) on the government’s official news portal.

It added that import duties on some cars will be halved and the tax rate for liquefied natural gas will drop from 5 per cent to 2 per cent.

Tariffs on frozen chicken legs will be reduced from 20 per cent to 15 per cent, the rates on unshelled pistachios will be slashed from 15 per cent to 5 per cent, and for almonds, it will drop from 10 per cent to 5 per cent.

“I believe that Vietnam is doing everything they can to soften the blow,” said Bruno Jaspaert, CEO at DEEP C Industrial Zones in Vietnam and chairman of the country’s European chamber of commerce.

“Rather than retaliate, they give, and hope to be treated in a better way than most. But the overall expectation is that there will still be tariffs,” he told AFP.

BEIJING: China’s military on Tuesday (Apr 1) said it had begun joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to “serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence”, calling Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-Te a “parasite”.

The exercises around the democratically governed island, which China views as its own territory and has never renounced the use of force to bring under its control, come after Lai called Beijing a “foreign hostile force” last month.

China detests Lai as a “separatist”, and in a video accompanying the Eastern Theater Command’s announcement, depicted him as cartoon bug held by a pair of chopsticks above a burning Taiwan.

“The focus is on exercises such as combat readiness patrols at sea and in the air, seizing comprehensive control, striking maritime and land targets and imposing blockade controls on key areas and routes,” the Eastern Theater Command said on its official WeChat social media account.

Taiwan’s Defence Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday that China’s Shandong aircraft carrier group had entered its response area on Monday, adding the group had dispatched military aircraft and ships and activated land-based missile systems in response.

“The Chinese Communist Party has continued to increase its military activities around Taiwan and in the Indo-Pacific region … and has become the biggest ‘troublemaker’ in the international community,” the statement added.

Taiwan has the confidence and the ability to defend national sovereignty and protect people’s safety, presidential office spokesperson Karen Kuo said in a statement.

BEIJING: China’s military on Tuesday (Apr 1) said it had sent its army, navy, air and rocket force to surround Taiwan, in drills it said were aimed at practising a blockade of the island.

Beijing’s military said the exercises were aimed at sending a “stern warning and forceful deterrence” to alleged separatists in Taiwan.

The drills “focus on sea-air combat-readiness patrols, joint seizure of comprehensive superiority, assault on maritime and ground targets, and blockade on key areas and sea lanes”, said Senior Colonel Shi Yi, spokesperson of the Chinese military’s Eastern Theater Command.

China’s armed forces “close in on the Taiwan Island from multiple directions”, he said, describing the move as “a legitimate and necessary action to safeguard China’s sovereignty and national unity”.

China claims Taiwan as part of its territory, and has increased the deployment of fighter jets and naval vessels around the island in recent years to press its claim of sovereignty, which Taipei rejects.

NO ONE ELSE CAN MAKE UP THE SHORTFALL

Expecting multilateral organisations and large foundations to fill funding gaps left by USAID is similarly fraught. The Trump administration’s cuts to foreign aid contracts have severely impacted the ability of disaster-response teams run by the United Nations and organisations like International Rescue Committee to provide vital food, medicine and supplies to impacted parts of Myanmar. 

Meanwhile, US allies in the Indo-Pacific are feeling pressure to fill the gaps the US has left behind. South Korea has already pledged US$2 million in humanitarian aid via international organisations supporting earthquake rescue efforts, and the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has promised to provide all possible support.

Today, Japan and South Korea provide 13 per cent and 9 per cent of the annual aid directed to Southeast Asia, respectively. But, like the US, Japan and South Korea are dealing with their own economic woes and turmoil at home, and they are not in the position to backfill the millions provided by USAID to the region each year. In Japan, public support for expanding economic development assistance has fallen to the weakest level in the past decade.

While China won’t step in to replace America’s aid profile, its swift response to the Myanmar earthquake provides us with a glance into a future where it plays an expanded role in Southeast Asia’s development landscape on its own terms. 

The Trump administration promised an “America First” approach to foreign policy, but by gutting USAID, it has significantly weakened American soft power and opened the door for expanded Chinese influence and leverage in Southeast Asia.

Bryanna Entwistle is a Press and Program Officer at Asia Society Policy Institute in New York.