Play The Diplomat‘s Quiz: June 28, 2015 Edition

After attending the Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Washington, D.C., Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang arrived at his second stop – Cuba. This September marks the 55th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between Beijing and Havana, and China wants to make sure the occasion doesn’t pass unnoticed.

While the two countries have had diplomatic ties since 1960, by China’s own admission “there were little substantive contacts between China and Cuba during the period of Cold War.” China and Cuba began increasing their interactions, particularly high-level visits, in the 1990s. Then-Chinese President Jiang Zemin went to Cuba in 1993 and 2001; his successor, Hu Jintao, visited in 2004. Fidel Castro, who served as Cuba’s president from 1976-2008 (and as prime minister from 1959-1976) visited China in 1995 and 2003. His brother Raul, who succeeded Fidel as president, made his own trip to China in 2012. Current Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Cuba in July 2014, part of a broader tour of Latin America.

The Sindhukirti‘s original upgrade process was scheduled for three years, but was eventually delayed for years beyond its original deadline. Reporting on the matter last fall, India’s Business Standard found that the cause of the delay wasn’t logistical inefficiency or bureaucratic mishandling—two common afflictions for Indian defense endeavors—but rather due to a series of incremental extensions of the upgrade process by Russians working with India’s Hindustan Shipyard Limited (HSL), the shipyard in charge of the upgrades.

The audacious attack on the well-protected Afghan parliamentary building on June 23 demonstrates the Taliban’s continued ability to strike dead in the heart of Kabul, but more importantly also suggests that the battle in Afghanistan is just as much about politics as it is about military forces. While the causalities from the attack were not as great as in other high profile attacks in Kabul, the widely broadcast footage of the well attended session being interrupted by the initial explosion and the highly symbolic nature of the target was meant to send a clear political message.

A Japanese surveillance plane flew over disputed waters in the South China Sea on Tuesday, as part of joint drills with the Philippines. As The Diplomatreported previously, the Philippines is holding separate drills with the United States and Japan this week, with both exercises held near the South China Sea. The Japan-Philippine drill, only the second ever between the two countries, simulated maritime search and rescue operations, part of the drill’s larger focus on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.

As part of the drill, a Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force (MSDF) P3-C Orion surveillance plane flew past Reed Bank, an area claimed by both China and the Philippines. The Japanese plane carried three Philippine crew members on board as guests, and was accompanied by a Philippine patrol aircraft, Reuters reported.

Chinese companies continue to be a force to be reckoned with in the global market for corporate control. Chinese acquirers completed cross-border deals with a total volume of $53 billion in 2014 and China’s outbound mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deal flow is likely to remain strong for the foreseeable future.

The constitution for the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is set to be signed on June 29, Xinhua reports. Representatives from all 57 founding member states will gather in Beijing for the signing ceremony. AIIB members finalized negotiations on the constitution in May; after the document is formally signed, each country will still have to ratify it according to their own domestic processes.

Thailand’s navy has elected to buy three submarines from China, moving the country one step closer to acquiring a capability it has lacked for more than six decades, media sources reported June 26. According to The Bangkok Post, a source on the 17-member submarine procurement committee appointed by the Royal Thai Navy (RTN) revealed that a majority of its members had voted to buy three Chinese submarines costing 12 billion baht ($355 million) each because they were the “best value for money.” The rest of the committee members were apparently split between submarines from South Korea and Germany. As I have written previously, Thailand has lacked a submarine capability since 1951 and has tried but failed since the 1990s to ink submarine deals with several suppliers, including Seoul and Berlin.

After three days of parliamentary debate, two key amendments failed to be adopted because they fell short of the voted required. The first was one to trim the share of votes needed to amend the constitution from 75 percent to 70 percent, which would have ended the effective veto that unelected members of the military have by holding a quarter of the seats.

The second was amending a clause that bars anyone whose spouse or children are loyal to foreign countries from becoming president or vice-president – a clause believed to be directed at Suu Kyi whose late husband and two sons are British citizens. The amendment would not have stricken the clause entirely; it would have just dropped the reference to foreign spouses. Suu Kyi, who heads the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), would still have been ineligible to run for president.

Reports began emerging in the Vietnamese media on Thursday that China’s Haiyang Shiyou 981 (HD-981) oil rig—the centerpiece of last summer’s clashes between Vietnam and China—was being redeployed off the coast of China’s Hainan Island, in waters where the disputed exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of Vietnam and China overlap and west of the disputed Paracel Islands (known as the Xisha Islands in China). Vietnamese reports, citing a China Maritime Safety Administration (MSA) announcement, noted that the rig was deployed to the coordinates of 17°03’75’’ North and 109°59’05’’ East, approximately 120 nm from Vietnam’s coast, 63 nm from China’s Hainan Island coast, and 87 nm from the nearest Island in the Paracels.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe traded messages on Monday, marking the 50th anniversary of the normalization of their countries’ diplomatic relations with optimism. Park and Abe attended separate functions, Park at a reception at the Japanese Embassy in South Korea and Abe at the South Korean embassy in Japan. South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se also travelled to Tokyo to mark the occasion, making hisfirst trip to Japan since assuming office in 2013. A South Korean official, speaking to South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency, noted the slow progress: “Spring has come to South Korea-Japan relations, though the ice of the river has not melted yet.”