Play The Diplomat’s Quiz: September 6, 2015 Edition

Chinese President Xi Jinping announced last week that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will reduce its forces by 300,000 troops. Xi made the announcement during a speech just before a massive military parade in Beijing, held to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.

On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Department of Defense, for the first time, had detected five Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) ships in the Bering Sea, close to the Aleutian Islands. Though the Pentagon didn’t quite say what the ships were doing in the Bering Sea, the development is another notch in the Chinese navy’s “blue water” credentials. As the PLAN modernizes and expands, it is looking to operate in waters far away from the Chinese coastline, beyond the second island chain.

So, why Missouri, a ship that had a respectable but not particularly distinguished war record? The quickest, and perhaps the most accurate, answer is that she was the flagship of the 3rd fleet, and that it made the most sense to have the surrender ceremony on the flagship. Over the years, some have suggested that the answer lies with President Harry S. Truman. Truman had a personal connection with the ship; his daughter had christened the hull at its launching, and Truman hailed from Missouri.

On August 31, the Japan Ministry of Defense (JMOD)released its defense budget request for Fiscal Year 2016. Having been submitted to the Ministry of Finance, the budget will be finalized by December.

Immediately after the announcement, some media reports emphasized that Japan’s FY2016 budget was at a record high since the end of World War II.

True, Japan’s defense budget proposal for FY2016 would see defense spending at its highest level since the end of World War II: the total request amounts to 5.09 trillion yen ($42.8 billion). It is also true that Japan’s defense spending has continued to rise since FY2013.  However, to interpret this trend as a sign of “Japan remilitarizing” is too simplistic and even misleading.

Fed up with years of alleged corruption, Malaysian activists escalated their protests, demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Najib Razak and the overhaul of a political system its critics argue is racist and favors the few who are political connected.

Police estimated that 25,000 people took to the streets of Kuala Lumpur for the weekend Bersih 4.0 rally, which unlike previous demonstrations passed off peacefully. Organizers said the numbers were much higher, at around 200,000.

Protests were also held around the country where many defied a government ban on yellow T-shirts, the color of Bersih, which means clean in Malay and represents the Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections in Malaysia, coordinated through a group of like-minded NGOs.

“Today, the people of Malaysia created history and we want clean elections and a clean government,” Bersih spokeswoman and organizer Maria Chin Abdullah told thousands of yellow-clad supporters.

“We hope all these will help save our economy. Today, we reiterate our demands. We not only want the prime minister to step down but we want a reformation of the institutions.”

Sri Lanka’s new cabinet was officially sworn in last week. Most members are from the United National Party (UNP). With the formal establishment of a “national government,” the country’s two main political parties, the UNP and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) are now working together (although there had been some disagreement between the two parties over the allocation of ministerial portfolios.)

The results of Sri Lanka’s recent parliamentary election mean that President Maithripala Sirisena (of the SLFP) and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe (of the UNP) will need to collaborate to implement further reforms.

The Obama White House is considering imposing sanctions on Chinese companies and individuals who have benefited from Chinese state-sponsored cyber espionage activities and the theft of U.S. trade secrets or who have engaged in destructive cyberattacks, theWashington Post reports.

Sanctions–including the freezing of financial assets and barring commercial transactions with–could be imposed within the next two weeks but no final decision has been taken so far, according to administration officials interviewed by the Washington Post.

Thailand’s National Reform Council (NRC) on Sunday voted down a draft constitution that critics claimed aimed to create a “state within a state” by giving the military overarching powers to suspend democratic rule during times of crisis. The “no” vote will restart the charter-drafting process, extend the junta’s already delayed roadmap to new elections and likely extend coup-installed Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha’s stay in unelected power well into 2017.

Appointed by the ruling National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) junta, the 247-member NRC voted narrowly against the draft, with 135 opposed, 105 in support, and seven abstentions. Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) chairman Borwornsak Uwanno hinted in news reports that senior generals had discreetly leaned on NRC members to scrap the draft, despite former army commander Prayut’s strong public lobbying for its passage, including a combative appeal during his nationally televised weekly address on Friday.

Next month, the Indian Navy and Royal Australian Navy will hold their first-ever joint maritime exercise.

The exercise, called AUSINDEX, will he held off India’s Visakhapatnam Port in the Bay of Bengal in mid-September. According to defense sources, Australia is sending Lockheed Martin’s P-3 anti-submarine reconnaissance aircraft, a Collins-class submarine, a tanker, and frigates, while India will deploy assets including Boeing’s P-8 long-range anti-submarine aircraft and a locally manufactured corvette. The exercise will have both sea and shore phases and include table-top exercises, scenario planning, and at sea, surface and anti-submarine warfare.

On August 15, The Economist published an article titled “Mapping the invisible scourge” on air pollution issues in China. The article claimed that spending one day in Beijing is equivalent to smoking 40 cigarettes.

This staggering figure garnered heaps of attention and, unsurprisingly, the article went viral. Then, on August 22, Michael Wester of The Beijinger responded with a brief essay. Wester writes “[N]owhere in China is the air pollution anywhere near the equivalent of smoking even one cigarette per day – a fact that Beijing’s own Dr. Richard [Saint] Cyr pointed out in 2011 in this pioneering blog post.”

Cyr’s blog post states that “a day in Beijing is like smoking one sixth of a cigarette. More specifically, on an average day in Beijing an average adult inhales a total of 1.8mg of PM2.5 particles from air pollution, which is 1/6 of the average 12mg of PM2.5 particles inhaled from an average cigarette” (original emphasis).