Play The Diplomat’s Quiz: August 16, 2015 Edition

India’s order of 36 off-the-shelf Dassault Rafale fighters, announced in March during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s summit with French President Francois Hollande, is reportedly hitting more than a few roadblocks. Reuters reports that Indian government officials have been struggling to come to a set of final sale terms with the fighter’s manufacturer, Dassault Aviation. These new problems threaten to delay the delivery date of these fighters and their incorporation into the Indian Air Force (IAF).

News of the delay comes shortly after the Indian defense ministry formally announced that the country’s original request for proposal (RFP) for 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) had been scrapped. The March announcement between Modi and Hollande was seen as a stopgap agreement that would satisfy both Dassault, which wanted to close a sale on the Rafale without acquiescing to Indian demands to manufacture a number of fighters in India, and the IAF, which needed modern multi-role fighters to bolster its existing fleet of mostly aging aircraft.

North Korea’s decision to create its own time zone by setting its clocks back 30 minutes, returning to the time zone before Imperial Japan changed it in 1912, is significant not so much for its statement about Japan but for what it says of Pyongyang’s view of a reunified Korean peninsula. For years, the North has gone to great lengths to cement its independence, driving home its “us against the world” message to its own people.

Changing the clocks back is yet another example of this, one that creates another division with the South to add to the many that already exist. For all the small reunification projects underway, reunification cannot occur while the Kim regime holds power. And the Kim family have shown if nothing else a ruthless ability to survive, its number one aim. For it, anything else, including talk of reunification, are just a political front.

At least two major explosions tore through Tianjin in eastern China on Wednesday night. According toXinhua, the shockwaves from the blasts “were felt kilometers away” and shattered windows.

Chinese media reports indicated that the blasts occurred around 11:30 p.m. local time. People’s Dailytweeted that the “quake” from the blast was “felt 10 km away.” In a separate tweet, Peoples Daily cited the China Earthquake Network Center as saying that two explosions had occurred within 30 seconds, one magnitude 2.3 ML (or Richter magnitude) and other magnitude 2.9 ML.

The number of casualties is still unknown; Xinhua’s official report (issued at around 3 a.m. local time) noted “at least 50” people injured, while the official Twitter account of People’s Daily said a local hospital “has received 300-400 injured.” No deaths have been confirmed as of this writing, but two firefighters have been reported missing.

August 15 is a day of enormous significance in Asia. In Northeast and Southeast Asia, August 15, 1945 is widely regarded as Victory over Japan (V-J) Day, when Japan announced its decision to surrender, ending years of brutal warfare.

On August 5, Japan handed over a patrol vessel to Vietnam to use for maritime patrols.

The Japan International Cooperation System handed the ship over to the Vietnam Fisheries Resources Surveillance force at a delivery ceremony in Hong Ha Shipyard in the northern port city Hai Phong.

The vessel is part of a deal involving six used vessels that Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida pledged to donate to Vietnam during an August 2014 visit to Hanoi to help strengthen maritime safety. As I have noted previously, Japan has intensified its engagement with Southeast Asian countries under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, particularly in the defense realm (See for instance: “The Future of US-Japan-Vietnam Trilateral Cooperation”).

The deal is financed through an official development assistance package worth 500 million yen ($4 million). Two of the six vessels are patrol boats of the Japanese Fisheries Agency, while the other four are commercial fishing boats.

The ship handed over last week, named Hayato, is more than 56 meters long and nine meters wide, with a gross tonnage of 1,079 metric tons and the ability to accommodate 49 crew members. Built in 1993, it has a maximum speed of 12.5 nautical miles per hour and can operate for two consecutive months without refueling. Luu Van Huy, head of the Vietnam Fisheries Resources Surveillance, told Thanh Nien News that the ship is the most advanced vessel it has ever had.

The removal of parliamentary speaker Shwe Mann as leader of the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) aims to smooth rising ructions inside Myanmar’s military establishment ahead of pivotal parliamentary elections scheduled for November 8.

Shwe Mann was poised to run for president on the military-backed party’s ticket and was tipped by many analysts to lead a potential coalition “unity” government with the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) if, as likely, neither wins an outright majority at the polls.

Instead, his fall will open the way for incumbent President Thein Sein to seek another term as nominal national leader and diminish the chances of any political union with the Aung San Suu Kyi-led NLD. Ahead of the purge, Thein Sein was coy about his political intentions in a July 29 Nikkei Asian Review interview, where the ex-general stated his intention to continue reforms but would not confirm if he planned to contest the presidency. He said he would decide based on “the country’s situation, the prevailing circumstances, and wishes of the people.”

During Australia’s 1999 referendum on becoming a republic one of the more asinine arguments against was that the flag would have to be changed. New Zealand, usually more independent minded than its larger neighbor, hasn’t needed the option of withdrawing from the Commonwealth to get rid of the Union Jack. Neither did Canada, back in 1963 and 1964, during its flag debate which led to the Union Jack being replaced by the Maple Leaf in 1965.

New Zealand has decided that it needs a new flag that better represents the country today and that will not again be confused with Australia’s (even Foreign Policy magazine has trouble telling the two apart) and earlier this year it crowd-sourced options from the public. Not much from New Zealand makes it into the international press but this story has, not because asking the public to design its own flag is an interesting barometer of the current national temperament, but because some of the 10,000-plus options were, and statistically this must be predictable, pretty odd. Terminator Kiwi (a kiwi bird with laser beam eyes), or a uni-horned Kiwi below a snapper decorated with the flag being replaced were a couple of the options, as was a deranged cat.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has presented his statement on the seventieth anniversary of the end of World War II (WWII). Much anticipated and debated, this Abe Statement included the language of statements made on the fiftieth and sixtieth anniversaries by former prime ministers Murayama Tomiichi and Koizumi Junichiro. But Abe took a different tack from his predecessors, identifying the lessons of that war and defeat, and articulating their link to Japan’s current and future ambitions.

Words matter. Four words in particular were seen as evidence of Abe’s attitude toward the past: “aggression (shinryaku),” “colonial domination (shokuminchi shihai),” “deep remorse (tsusetsu na hansei),” and “apology (owabi)”—Abe included all four phrases from the Murayama and Koizumi statements defined as markers of Abe’s intent. For those who saw the semantics as the key to success, Abe left little room for criticism. Yet opposition leaders in the Diet still found room for complaint, arguing that Abe simply quoted past statements rather than repeating them with conviction.

Ever since the People’s Bank of China announced on August 11 that it was going to depreciate the renminbi (RMB) in a “one-off” move, the global financial community has been scrambling to figure out how to interpret the decision. China’s state media released a wave of commentaries trying to reassure financial analysts that all is well in the country’s economy. That didn’t work – especially as the RMB’s value continued to drop, dipping to a four-year low on Wednesday. In two days, the RMB had dropped 3.5 percent against the dollar.

To stem growing anxiety, China’s central bank made the unusual move of hosting a press conference in Beijing to explain the decision. Speaking to journalists, Zhang Xiaohui, assistant governor of the PBOC, said that the RMB should stay strong in the long run, according to Xinhua. She said that the currency devaluation was not designed to prop up China’s economy, but rather a move to bring the RMB’s value in line with market forces.

Because the RMB’s value is anchored to the U.S. dollar (though its value relative to the dollar is allowed to ‘float’ by up to 2 percent each day), its value had been artificially inflated as the dollar gained strength. In February 2015, Barclay’s listed the RMB as the world’s second-most overvalued currency, and predicted a drop in its value.

Only one of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s first class battleships survived to see the end of the Pacific War.

HIJMS Nagato entered service in November 1920. She displaced 33000 tons, carried 8 16” guns, and could make 26.5 knots, a combination that made her the world’s most powerful and versatile warship. Nagato and her sister Mutsu were the first two ships of Japan’s “eight and eight” program, designed to provide the IJN with eight modern battleships and battlecruisers, and ensure Japan’s regional dominance. The Washington Naval Treaty entered into force shortly after Nagato’s commissioning, freezing battleship development and extending her reign at the top.