Play The Diplomat’s Quiz: July 26, 2015 Edition

India’s second indigenous aircraft carrier (IAC-2), the INS Vishal, the second Vikrant-class carrier, is slowly taking shape. Recently, the Indian Navy outlined the specifications of this carrier in a letter of request issued to shipbuilders worldwide. Many of the details, including the tonnage and the physical dimensions of the carrier, are in line with older expectations. For example, the Vishal will displace 65,000 tonnes—25,000 tonnes more than the first indigenous carrier, the INS Vikrant.

Russia plans to massively invest in military and civilian infrastructure projects on the Kuril islands,TASS reports quoting Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

“We’re restoring both the civilian and defense infrastructure of the Kurils,” he said this Thursday at a news conference where he also announced a visit to the islands located in the Sea of Okhotsk in the Northwest Pacific.

“I am planning to go there and have a look how matters stand there. And I invite the others,” Medvedev told members of his cabinet. He already visited the disputed islands –  known in Japanese as the Shikotan, Kunashiri, Etorofu and the Habomai islets – once before in 2010 becoming the first incumbent Russian president to do so.

Dozens of Taiwanese students briefly occupied the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Taipei last night to protest a series of “minor” adjustments (課綱微調) to school textbooks which activists and academics claim are Sino-centric and whitewash the authoritarian period in Taiwan’s history.

Scaling ladders, the activists slipped by police and stormed the ministry building late on Thursday evening. According to the police, 18 activists subsequently barricaded themselves inside Minister of Education Wu Se-hwa’s office, using furniture to block the door. By about 1 a.m., police had succeeded in expelling the students, some of whom had their hands tied behind their backs with plastic restraints.

The Maldives’ recent constitutional amendment was perhaps the fastest to clear the parliament in recent history. With no debate, no consultation, and no time for legislators to study the draft, the Majlis, the Maldivian parliament, passed a landmark amendment authorizing foreign ownership of land thereby raising questions regarding the intents of the ruling Progressive Party of the Maldives (PPM). It took the parliament under 24 hours to effect a major change in the constitution, allowing foreigners to acquire land on a freehold basis on any of the 1,200 islands that comprise the Maldives.

“There has been no public debate, no consultation and the amendment passed so quickly that everyone is still in shock. It was an unprecedented move and people are still confused,” says Zaheena Rasheed, editor of Minivan News, a prominent news portal in the Maldives.

The amendment, in a radical departure from the past, allows foreign nationals to buy land on a freehold basis. Many legislators critical of the amendment says that it is aimed at giving China a foothold in the Indian ocean, disturbing the balance of power between New Delhi and Beijing in the region.

Kyrgyzstan, it appears, wasn’t bluffing when it warned last week that it might denounce a 1993 treaty with the United States after the State Department decided to give Azimjan Askarov the 2014 Human Rights Defender Award.

At the ceremony last week, Askarov’s son Sherzod accepted the award on behalf of his father, who is currently serving a life-sentence in a Kyrgyz prison. Sherzod called his father “a tireless defender of human rights” who has “sacrificed his freedom and well-being in the cause of truth and justice.”

The Kyrgyz say Askarov is a “criminal who publicly incited ethnic hatred” during the violence that flashed through southern Kyrgyzstan in 2010. The Kyrgyz Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in condemning the award, refers to Askarov as “a symbol of disruption” and says the award is evidence of an attempt to undermine Kyrgyzstan’s unity.

In his remarks during the award ceremony, Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken, paints a very different picture of Askarov than the Kyrgyz (and the Russians, I might add) do. Blinken says that during the 2010 violence, “Askarov made it a priority to publicly report on the crisis and document violations of human rights.” At “a time when his nation needed him most,” Blinken continued, speaking of Askarov, “he was arrested, subjected to harsh mistreatment, judged in a trial rife with procedural irregularities, and sentenced to life imprisonment, where he remains to this day.”

On Thursday, Pakistan and China agreed to what may well become China’s largest-ever foreign defense deal. Pakistan, China’s long-term ally and “all weather” partner in Asia, will purchase eight submarines from China. The Diplomat‘s Franz-Stefan Gady discussed the deal earlier, but the new agreement makes it likelier that this deal will pan out. The financial magnitude of the deal (certainly in the billions of dollars range) remains indeterminate, and officials haven’t disclosed which specific models the Pakistanis are eying, but it’s likely that the deal will be for the S20 export version of China’s Type 039A submarine (the Yuan-class). The Yuan (and S20) is an evolution of China’s Song-class submarine and borrows the design philosophy of Russia’s Kilo-class diesel-electric attack submarines. A notable feature of the S20 export variant is that the air-independent propulsion system isn’t included, but can be added on separately, thanks to a modular design.

The cabinet of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe approved the 2015 defense white paper compiled by the Ministry of Defense entitled “Defense of Japan 2015.” The approval came after a week-long delay due the Liberal Democratic Party’s demand for the document to name additional examples of China’s “one-sided” maritime actions, such as the construction of an offshore gas platform in the East China Sea.

China’s naval ambitions and its overall maritime activities remain Japan’s top national security concern. Beijing’s activities take up a third of a section in the 429-page white paper discussing Tokyo’s security concerns and trends. ”China, particularly over maritime issues, continues to act in an assertive manner, including coercive attempts at changing the status quo, and is poised to fulfill its unilateral demands without compromise,” the report states.

A former aide to Chinese President Hu Jintao has been officially expelled from the Communist Party,Xinhua reported on Monday. Ling Jihua, who served as head of the Central Committee’s General Office during Hu’s tenure, was announced to be under an internal Party graft investigation last December. Now his case will be turned over to the courts for prosecution.

“Ling Jihua’s actions completely deviated from the characteristics and goals of the Party,” Xinhua said, citing an official report from the Politburo. “He seriously violated Party discipline, did enormous damage to the Party’s image, and had an extremely negative influence on society.”

That announcement followed two years of rumors that Ling was in the Party’s cross-hairs. In March 2012, Ling’s son was killed in a car crash, the lurid details of which (Ling was driving a Ferrari whose passengers included two half-naked women) served to embarrass the Party as it prepared for its delicate, once-in-a-decade leadership transition. In addition to that incident, which led to Ling being suspected of corruption, the Chinese rumor mill has since linked Ling with former high-ranking officials Bo Xilai, Xu Caihou, and Zhou Yongkang aspart of a plot to at best undermine – and at worst overthrow – current President Xi Jinping.

Recently, Rizal Sukma, a noted Indonesian expert and foreign policy advisor to the current government led by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, proposed the idea of an Asian Fulcrum of Four. According to Rizal, four Asian powers – China, India, Indonesia and Japan – would seek to build and shape a pan Indo-Pacific (or Pacindo).

This is very similar to the idea of an Asian coalition of five put forth fifteen years ago by Indonesia’s then-president, Abdurrahman Wahid. Wahid had suggested a coalition comprised of China, India, Indonesia, Japan and Singapore. The group would not be a security pact, but an arrangement to facilitate political, economic and cultural cooperation that would allow three big countries to rise with the assistance of Japan and Singapore.

On Wednesday, a court in Myanmar sentenced 153 Chinese nationals to life in prison on charges of illegal logging in Kachin state. Two minors received 10-year sentences.

China’s Foreign Ministry was not pleased by the decision. According to a statement from spokesperson Lu Kang, ever since the Chinese nationals were arrested in Myanmar earlier this year, China has “lodged multiple representations on different levels and through various channels” about the case.