标签： Asia

A newly unearthed revelation from independent outlet Middle East Eye has thrown the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) into fresh controversy over government accountability, after confirmation that no official records were retained of a December meeting between Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper and former prime minister Tony Blair focused on Middle East affairs. The unminuted meeting occurred at a pivotal moment: Blair was actively lobbying on behalf of U.S. President Donald Trump’s controversial Gaza Board of Peace, a body that has sparked global backlash for its structure and mandate. Details of the 4 December gathering first emerged in FCDO documents published on the UK government’s official website in March, but the absence of any documentation of the discussion had not been previously reported. In response to a freedom of information (FOI) request from Middle East Eye, the FCDO confirmed that not only were no meeting minutes created, but there are also no surviving records of pre-meeting briefing materials prepared for Cooper, nor any internal or external correspondence related to scheduling the encounter. The controversy comes against a backdrop of longstanding scrutiny of Blair’s decades-long role in Middle East policy. Blair, who led the UK into the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, was appointed as a founding member of Trump’s Gaza Board of Peace in September 2025, with his role formally confirmed in January 2026. Internal EU meeting minutes obtained by investigative outlet Follow the Money in February show that just 11 days after the Cooper-Blair meeting, lobbyists from Blair’s own Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) pushed EU officials to formally join the board. The Trump-led body, which grants the U.S. president lifetime chairman status and sweeping authority over post-conflict Gaza, has no Palestinian representatives on its executive committee — a flaw that has drawn widespread condemnation from global rights groups. To date, 28 world leaders have joined the board, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who currently faces an International Criminal Court arrest warrant over alleged war crimes in Gaza. The UK has publicly rejected membership, with Cooper citing concerns over Trump’s decision to include Russian President Vladimir Putin on the board’s executive committee. “We won’t be one of the signatories today, because this is about a legal treaty that raises much broader issues, and we do also have concerns about President Putin being part of something which is talking about peace, when we have still not seen any signs from Putin that there will be a commitment to peace in Ukraine,” Cooper stated publicly on 22 January. Tensions between Cooper and Blair have already surfaced in public: in March, Blair publicly criticized the UK government for hesitating to back full U.S.-Israeli military action against Iran, and Cooper pushed back by referencing the lessons of the 2003 Iraq war. “I also think, having been a minister in the last Labour government, it is important to learn lessons for what went wrong in Iraq … and recognising that all of our decisions need to be about what is right for British citizens,” she told the BBC. Blair has already faced intense scrutiny over his institute’s past involvement in Middle East planning. TBI, which has received massive funding from billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison, previously drew widespread condemnation for its so-called “Gaza Riviera” development plan, which critics argued effectively condoned the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people from the territory. Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, argues that policymakers have long given Blair unearned credibility on Middle East issues despite a consistent track record of failure. “Among many policymakers there’s still this sense that he should be respected because he spent so much time working on the Middle East, rather than a sober assessment of his dire record when dealing with it,” Doyle said. “In terms of the Middle East, it has just been one failure after another for Blair. He is a man who is entrenched in the palace views of the uber-elites of the Middle East, with very little sense of the real trends going on there.” Transparency experts have echoed those concerns, warning that the absence of records for such a high-stakes meeting is unacceptable. Sam Raphael, professor of International Relations and Human Rights at the University of Westminster and director of government transparency research group Unredacted, called the missing documentation “deeply concerning.” “The lack of minutes and other official records in relation to the Foreign Secretary’s meeting – especially with an individual as controversial and consequential for the Middle East, and with such labyrinthine personal interests – is deeply concerning,” Raphael said. This is not the first time the FCDO has faced public criticism over poor record-keeping and lack of transparency. Just last week, Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) condemned the department for failing to maintain adequate meeting records during its review of the appointment of Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to the U.S. in December 2024. Raphael noted that the Cooper-Blair meeting perfectly exemplifies the systemic failure the ISC already flagged. “The ISC found that ‘the FCDO stands out as a department failing to produce a necessary audit trail for discussions and decisions,’” Raphael said. “The ISC found this to be ‘unacceptable’, and the Cooper-Blair case is a clear and flagrant example of this.” Adding a layer of historical irony to the controversy, the UK’s freedom of information laws — which enabled this revelation — were introduced by Blair’s own government in 2000. Blair later named the legislation one of his biggest political regrets in his 2010 memoir, and declassified government files released in 2024 revealed he encouraged cabinet ministers to use disposable Post-it notes for official business during his premiership to avoid mandatory public disclosures. Both the FCDO and the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change have been contacted for comment on the latest revelations, and have not yet issued a response.

AUCKLAND, New Zealand – New Zealand’s incumbent center-right National Party government has announced a far-reaching plan to downsize the country’s public sector, slashing nearly 9,000 positions — equivalent to 14% of the current public workforce — by mid-2029 in a push to cut billions in government spending, Finance Minister Nicola Willis revealed Tuesday during a speech to a business audience in Auckland, the nation’s largest city.

Under the proposal, the cuts will bring the total public service workforce in Wellington, the country’s capital where most public servants are based, down to 55,000 from the projected 63,700 headcount in December 2025. This adjustment will reduce the share of public servants in New Zealand’s overall population from 1.2% to 1%, matching Willis’ stated goal of aligning the country’s public sector size with global benchmarks. “That’s unsustainable, it’s unaffordable and it’s out of step with international trends,” Willis told the gathering, adding that critical front-line roles including military personnel, primary and secondary school teachers, and hospital doctors will be fully exempt from the layoffs.

Beyond workforce reductions, the plan includes a multi-year program of budget cuts for most public agencies, starting with an initial 2% funding trimming in the national budget set to be released at the end of May. If the National Party government secures re-election in the upcoming November general election, it will follow the initial cut with two additional 5% annual funding reductions for most departments. The government also intends to consolidate the public sector by significantly shrinking the current 39 government departments and agencies, though no final target number has been released. Additionally, Willis mandated that public services speed up adoption of artificial intelligence and digital tools, arguing the sector has fallen behind on modern technological integration.

In total, the package of cutbacks is projected to save 2.4 billion New Zealand dollars ($1.4 billion USD) over the course of the restructuring period. The National Party, which has held power since 2023, campaigned in the last election on a platform of public sector downsizing, and has blamed the previous center-left Labour administration for the growth in public service headcount. During Labour’s time in office, the number of public servants grew from 48,000 to 63,000 after the party reversed a public sector job cap implemented by the prior National government. At the time, Labour argued the cap had forced agencies to overspend on external contractors and consultants to avoid hiring full-time employees, creating more costs than it saved.

Notably, the layoffs will be phased gradually over multiple years, and Willis has not yet released details on how positions will be selected for elimination. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who has positioned his administration as a more responsible fiscal steward than its predecessor amid ongoing sluggish national economic growth, framed the plan as a step toward a more efficient, effective public sector. “The public service is not a make-work function,” Luxon said Tuesday, adding he found the prospect of a streamlined public sector “exciting.”

The announcement has already drawn fierce pushback from opposition groups and public sector unions. Chris Hipkins, leader of the opposition Labour Party, warned that cutting such a large share of the public workforce would inevitably erode the quality of public services delivered to New Zealanders. Duane Leo, a spokesperson for the union representing tens of thousands of public servants, called the restructuring plan “an act of willful destruction.” Political analysts note the cuts come as the government works to demonstrate tangible progress on economic recovery ahead of the upcoming national election in November, when voters will decide whether to return the National Party administration to power.

A cross-border industrial acquisition that began as a strategic expansion move has erupted into a full-blown political dispute between China and the United Kingdom, after the British government tabled a formal nationalization bill to take permanent public control of the formerly Chinese-owned British Steel, based in eastern England.

The story traces back to 2020, when Hebei-based private Chinese steel manufacturer Jingye Group stepped in to acquire the insolvent British steelmaker for £70 million (approximately $91 million). At the time, the deal was framed as a win-win: it rescued a failing historic British industrial asset, saved thousands of local jobs, and gave Jingye a much-needed production foothold in Europe. A core strategic motivation for the acquisition was to bypass steep 25% U.S. tariffs on Chinese steel that the Trump administration first imposed in 2018 under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, citing national security grounds.

Despite injecting a total of £1.2 billion into British Steel over the following years, Jingye failed to reverse the company’s persistent annual losses, which were estimated to hit roughly £250 million per year. Industry analysts cite two key structural headwinds: the UK’s sky-high industrial energy costs, and persistent market pressure from the flood of low-cost Chinese steel already flowing into European markets. The final blow came in March 2025, when the Trump administration expanded its tariff regime to impose 25% levies on all global steel and aluminum imports — including those from the UK — after detecting that Chinese steel producers were using foreign acquisitions to evade U.S. trade barriers.

Shortly after the new tariffs took effect, Jingye announced that its flagship Scunthorpe steelworks was losing £700,000 per day and was no longer financially viable. The firm rejected a proposed £500 million UK government rescue package, prompting Parliament to rush through emergency legislation on April 12 that allowed the government to seize temporary control of the plant’s blast furnaces to prevent an immediate shutdown and protect 2,700 local jobs. On May 14, the government took the next step by introducing the formal Steel Industry (Nationalization) Bill, which grants ministers the authority to nationalize steel assets like British Steel if they meet a public interest test. The bill held its first parliamentary reading the same day, establishing a legal pathway for permanent public ownership when deemed necessary.

“Revitalizing our steel sector is a top priority for this country, and this is an important first step to safeguard our steelmaking capability,” said UK Industry Minister Chris McDonald. “It will allow us to secure the future of British Steel and explore possible options to modernize the industry.” McDonald added that the fast tracking of the bill through Parliament demonstrates the current government’s unwavering commitment to protecting Britain’s domestic steel production capacity.

The nationalization plan has drawn sharp pushback from China. “The British government should uphold fairness, impartiality and non-discrimination, act cautiously in its decisions, and safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises,” a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Commerce said in an official statement. The spokesperson noted that the UK government has already controlled British Steel for more than a year since taking over from Jingye, and any permanent action must fully account for the substantial investment the Chinese firm has made in the UK’s steel industry, as well as its broader contributions to the British economy and local communities. Beijing has called on London to respect both Jingye’s position and fundamental market principles to negotiate “a fair, just solution acceptable to both sides,” and warned that China will take all necessary firm measures to protect the legal rights of Chinese firms.

The dispute has also sparked debate among industry analysts in China about the risks of Chinese corporate expansion in strategic Western sectors. A Jiangxi-based industrial columnist, writing under the pen name Ganjiang Top List, noted that the British acquisition fit into a broader strategy Chinese steel firms adopted after 2018 to build “non-dollar channels” for global exports, positioning European steel assets as natural springboards for Chinese industrial chains going global, given the region’s advanced manufacturing expertise and lack of domestic capital for industrial upgrades. “British Steel was not acquired by Jingye for production alone, but for connection,” he explained, noting the acquisition created a local export hub for Chinese parts and engineering services serving Europe’s automotive, rail, and energy equipment sectors. While Jingye attempted to cut costs by transferring its digital production management platform to British Steel, those efforts ultimately could not overcome the sector’s headwinds. The columnist argued that Chinese firms must adjust their overseas expansion strategies: instead of pursuing controlling stakes in strategically sensitive key sectors, they should rely on technical service partnerships, short-term leasing, and non-controlling cooperation models to maintain market access while reducing political exposure. He added that beyond the direct capital loss, the failed acquisition has damaged the broader reputation of Chinese firms investing in Western markets.

To understand the significance of British Steel to British national identity, one must look back at its long and turbulent history. As the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, Britain built its 19th-century global empire on the back of its iron and steel industry, which powered the construction of railways, ships, bridges, machinery and military hardware, making the sector a core symbol of British industrial power. By the 1980s and 1990s, China’s rapid industrial expansion began to challenge Britain’s position, and after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, it pulled far ahead to become the world’s largest steel producer. Decades of rapid domestic infrastructure and manufacturing growth left China with massive chronic overcapacity, flooding global markets with low-cost steel that added intense pressure to already struggling British producers, which already grappled with high labor costs, expensive energy, aging production facilities, and repeated cycles of nationalization and privatization.

British Steel itself was originally founded as a nationalized entity in 1967, when the UK government consolidated the country’s major steel producers into public ownership. It grew to become one of Europe’s largest steelmakers, but by the late 20th century it was struggling with falling demand, labor unrest, aging infrastructure and rising foreign competition. It was privatized in 1988, changed hands multiple times, and collapsed into insolvency in 2019 before Jingye’s rescue a year later. Even under Chinese ownership, losses continued: the firm posted a £227 million post-tax loss in 2023, down from £367 million in 2022, and losses deepened through 2024.

The nationalization move has been supported by hardline British political figures, who have raised suspicions about Chinese influence in the strategically critical sector. Gary Smith, general secretary of the UK’s GMB trade union, raised concerns last April about what he called “industrial vandalism” at the site, while senior Conservative Party figure Iain Duncan Smith has openly accused Beijing of inappropriate interference. Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds has gone as far as to argue that Chinese firms should be entirely excluded from “very sensitive” UK industries.

In response, the Chinese Embassy in the UK has pushed back against what it calls the politicization of a purely commercial transaction. “At a time when the United States is using tariffs against countries including Britain and pursuing unilateralist and protectionist trade bullying, some British politicians are attacking China’s government and Chinese companies instead of criticizing Washington,” the embassy’s spokesperson said. “What exactly are they trying to achieve?” The spokesperson emphasized that British Steel was already insolvent and facing years of losses before Jingye’s 2020 acquisition, and that the Chinese firm’s investment kept the plant operational and protected thousands of British jobs. “Any words or actions that politicize commercial issues and engage in malicious hype will damage Chinese enterprises’ confidence in investing in the UK and harm China-UK economic and trade cooperation,” the spokesperson warned.

A major sticking point in ongoing tensions is the question of compensation. Earlier this year, reports indicate Jingye is seeking roughly £1 billion in compensation from the UK government, matching its claimed £1.2 billion total investment since 2020. British local media, however, reports that the UK government has proposed a settlement valued at less than £100 million. The scale of Jingye’s investment itself is also disputed: public filings show that as of 2023, Jingye and its affiliates had provided £735.7 million in loans to British Steel, and charged tens of millions of pounds in interest on those loans. A Jingye spokesperson has defended the £1.2 billion figure, explaining that it includes both equity investment and low- or zero-interest loans issued to support ongoing operations.

One Chinese industrial columnist based in Henan has argued that the UK’s move risks long-term damage to bilateral trade for short-term domestic political gain, noting that seizing foreign assets via legislation will erode Britain’s reputation as a safe destination for foreign direct investment. She warned that “Today’s China is not the China of 1840,” referencing the First Opium War when Britain defeated Qing China and forced it to pay heavy reparations, adding that modern Chinese firms hold strong legal, financial and moral leverage in the dispute.

In a significant reinforcement of its long-standing security alliance with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan has deployed 8,000 troops, a full fighter jet squadron, and a advanced Chinese-built air defense system to the Gulf nation, according to a exclusive Reuters report published on Monday. This incremental buildup of Pakistani military personnel and hardware in the kingdom began in early April, marking one of the most tangible commitments to the bilateral mutual defense accord signed just months prior.

TOKYO/SEOUL – Six months after launching their unprecedented series of personal diplomatic engagements, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi prepared to convene their fourth bilateral summit on Tuesday, this time on South Korean soil. The meeting, held in Lee’s hometown of Andong, marks a groundbreaking milestone: the first time incumbent leaders of the two neighboring nations have exchanged reciprocal visits to their personal hometowns, a gesture crafted to build personal rapport and accelerate the gradual warming of a relationship long overshadowed by historical tension.

Andong, a quiet southeastern South Korean city, draws global cultural attention for its 500-year-old traditional folk village, a protected UNESCO World Heritage Site that preserves centuries of Korean Confucian culture and folk tradition. This choice of venue follows a similar precedent set in January, when Takaichi hosted Lee in her own hometown of Nara, Japan’s ancient imperial capital centuries before modern political divisions shaped the two nations’ relationship.

The summit comes at a moment of heightened global geopolitical volatility, with rising tensions across the Middle East, shifting power dynamics in the Indo-Pacific, and evolving security threats that have pushed both Seoul and Tokyo to prioritize cooperative engagement over historical disputes. Ahead of the meeting, South Korea’s presidential office emphasized that the gathering would center on deepening personal trust between the two leaders, while Takaichi told reporters Tuesday morning that the talks would focus on expanding cooperation “under the severe geopolitical conditions such as situations in the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific.”

Official agenda items for the one-day summit span a range of shared priorities: expanded economic and energy collaboration, coordinated responses to the ongoing conflict in Iran, and further progress in bilateral relationship-building. Observers and regional policy experts note there are no immediate contentious issues blocking progress, leading to widespread expectations that the meeting will proceed smoothly and keep the bilateral relationship on its current positive trajectory.

Choi Eunmi, a leading Japan specialist at the Seoul-based Asan Institute for Policy Studies, explained the shifting approach driving the current warming of ties: “The two countries put more emphasis on agenda for cooperation than contentious issues. They would now think scenes of constantly fluctuating relationship or eventually negative bilateral ties won’t be helpful to anyone now.”

The current progress in Seoul-Tokyo relations represents a dramatic shift from decades of friction. Both countries are major liberal democracies and key U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific, but relations were repeatedly strained for generations by unresolved grievances rooted in Japan’s 35-year colonial occupation of the Korean Peninsula, which ended with Japan’s defeat in World War II. A sustained turn toward cooperation began in 2023, when the predecessors of Lee and Takaichi took deliberate steps to set aside intractable history disputes, framing closer alignment as a necessary response to shared regional challenges: growing U.S.-China strategic competition, global supply chain fragility, and North Korea’s accelerating nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

When Lee and Takaichi assumed office last year, many regional analysts predicted cooperation would stall. Takaichi carried a long public reputation as a right-wing security hawk, while Lee, a political liberal, was widely expected to shift South Korea’s foreign policy toward engagement with North Korea and China, moving away from alignment with the U.S. and Japan. Instead, the two leaders have doubled down on cooperation, even adopting unprecedented, informal diplomatic gestures to build personal chemistry.

Two months before Takaichi took office, Lee made a landmark move by choosing Japan as the first destination for his inaugural bilateral overseas summit. In January, at the close of their Nara meeting, the pair shared an informal jam session: Takaichi, a lifelong heavy metal fan who played drums in college, led the pair in drumming along to global K-pop hits including BTS’s chart-topping track “Dynamite.”

Lee has publicly noted that he and Takaichi share a core belief that sitting national leaders must prioritize pragmatic problem-solving over partisan or nationalist posturing common among ordinary politicians. But many observers argue the impetus for deeper cooperation also stems from new global pressures that were less acute for previous administrations, including the return of Donald Trump to U.S. leadership with his signature “America First” policy, and widespread global economic disruption stemming from the ongoing Iran war.

Both South Korea and Japan hold hundreds of billions of dollars in commercial and investment commitments to the U.S. economy. Yet Trump’s aggressive tariff policies and transactional approach to security alliances have eroded long-standing trust in U.S. commitment among political and business elites in both Seoul and Tokyo, pushing the two neighbors to build more robust bilateral coordination of their own.

Despite the current positive momentum, experts caution that the bilateral relationship remains fragile, and unresolved historical issues could trigger sudden setbacks. Disputes over Japan’s colonial-era forced mobilization of Korean laborers and sexual enslavement of Korean “comfort women” have not been permanently resolved, the two governments have simply agreed to set aside public debate on the issues to avoid derailing cooperation.

As Choi noted: “Both countries aren’t talking about how to resolve and prevent recurrences of conflicts over those issues and we don’t know when they could occur again.”

Associated Press reporter Mari Yamaguchi contributed reporting from Tokyo.