标签： Asia

On Sunday evening at the British Academy Television Awards, a hard-hitting documentary about Israeli attacks on Gaza’s healthcare system delivered a double blow: it took home one of the night’s most prestigious honors, and used its moment in the spotlight to publicly condemn the BBC for shelving the project. The film, *Gaza: Doctors Under Attack*, was originally commissioned and funded by the UK’s public broadcaster before being pulled from broadcast schedules just months before its planned release in June 2023. It went on to air on rival network Channel 4, which stepped in to back the project after the BBC’s decision to drop it, and ultimately won the BAFTA for Best Current Affairs Programme.

Accepting the award on the team’s behalf, journalist and documentary presenter Ramita Navai did not hold back in calling out the BBC’s choice to censor the work. “The BBC paid for this documentary but refused to show it,” Navai told the ceremony audience. “But we refused to be silenced and censored. We thank Channel 4 for stepping up and showing this film.”

The content of the award-winning film has made its censorship controversy understandable to many observers, as it pulls back the curtain on one of the most sensitive and widely debated aspects of Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza: the systematic targeting of the enclave’s crippled healthcare system. The documentary opens with graphic footage recovered from the mobile phone of a Palestinian medic killed by Israeli gunfire, immediately centering the narrative on the toll of attacks on medical workers and infrastructure. In the film, Navai argues that “Israel has been killing the very people trying to keep [Gaza’s] healthcare system alive.”

Throughout the documentary, the production team highlights repeated official claims from the Israeli military about its operations in Gaza, systematically noting that the military has failed to provide tangible evidence to back up many of its key assertions. This narrative framing directly challenges longstanding justifications for Israeli attacks on Gaza hospitals, strikes that have been repeatedly condemned by international human rights organizations as clear violations of international humanitarian law.

When the BBC first pulled the documentary weeks ahead of its planned broadcast, the public broadcaster cited concerns over the work’s compliance with its internal impartiality rules. Deborah Turness, who served as head of BBC News and Current Affairs at the time of the decision, pointed to alleged problematic social media activity from one of the journalists involved in the project, and criticized language Navai used in a radio interview as inconsistent with the BBC’s impartiality standards.

The BAFTA victory amplified the criticism of the BBC’s decision, with the documentary’s executive producer Ben de Pear doubling down on the rebuke during his acceptance remarks. De Pear directly referenced the BBC’s role as the official broadcaster of the BAFTA ceremony, asking in a pointed jab: “Given you dropped the film, will you drop us from the BAFTA screening?”

The confrontation has brought renewed attention to growing accusations that the BBC has systematically censored and sidelined Palestinian perspectives throughout the current war in Gaza, while giving disproportionate platform to Israeli official narratives. In a previous defense of its decision to drop *Gaza: Doctors Under Attack*, the BBC argued that it had worked closely with the documentary team to develop the project, but ultimately concluded that airing the film’s documentation of alleged Israeli crimes would risk creating a public perception of partiality. The broadcaster also acknowledged disappointment over the outcome, saying “We want to thank the doctors and contributors and we are sorry we could not tell their stories. The BBC will continue to cover events in Gaza impartially.”

The BAFTA win for the censored documentary has ignited fresh debate across the UK about media balance, press freedom, and the ethics of covering the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, with advocates for Palestinian rights pointing to the award as validation of the film’s urgent, unflinching reporting.

The decades-long dance of economic competition and cooperation between the world’s two largest economies is set to enter a critical new phase this week, as Beijing officially confirms U.S. President Donald Trump will travel to China for a high-stakes meeting with President Xi Jinping from May 13 to 15. This summit marks the first visit by a sitting U.S. president to China in nearly 10 years, arriving at a make-or-break moment for bilateral relations that ripple across global supply chains, financial markets, and international security. Trump will be accompanied by C-suite executives from top American corporations including Boeing, Citigroup, and Qualcomm, with many industry analysts expecting major new bilateral business deals to be announced during the trip. Beyond commercial agreements, the meeting stands as the most significant test yet of the fragile trade truce struck between Washington and Beijing last October.

The roots of the current trade standoff stretch back to Trump’s first 2016 presidential campaign, when he won office on a pledge to rewrite unfair trade terms for the United States and bring hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs back to American soil. In 2018, just a year into his first term, he followed through on that promise by imposing sweeping tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports, a move that most global trade analysts mark as the official start of the modern U.S.-China trade war. That same year, Trump extended tariffs to other major U.S. trading partners, including Mexico, Canada, and the European Union, arguing that all had exploited unfair trade practices to gain an edge over American workers.

Ning Leng, a policy researcher at Georgetown University, notes that the 2018 tariffs came as a major shock to Chinese policymakers, who had not anticipated Trump would follow through on his campaign threats. At the time, China’s economy was far more dependent on export sales to the U.S. market, which served as a critical lifeline for millions of Chinese manufacturing jobs. The tariffs added additional strain to long-running structural challenges already weighing on China’s economy, including sluggish domestic consumer spending, elevated youth unemployment, and a years-long property sector crisis. Ning explained, “It’s harder for one country to withstand a trade war with another that it has a trade surplus with,” highlighting the particular vulnerability China faced in the early stages of the conflict.

When Joe Biden took office in 2021, he opted to maintain the pressure on Beijing, choosing not to roll back any of Trump’s existing China tariffs. The Biden administration shared the bipartisan Washington consensus that maintaining trade pressure was necessary to curb China’s technological and economic expansion, Ning said. Beyond keeping existing tariffs in place, Biden introduced sweeping new restrictions on Chinese firms: tech giant Huawei was effectively barred from the U.S. market over national security concerns, TikTok was forced to separate its U.S. operations from its Chinese parent company ByteDance, and heavy new tariffs effectively blocked Chinese electric vehicle imports from accessing the U.S. market.

Tang Heiwai, an economist at the University of Hong Kong, argues that contrary to popular perception, the Biden administration was actually more protectionist on China than Trump’s first term. “We often think that Trump is tough on China, but there is an argument to say that Biden was even more protectionist than Trump was,” Tang noted.

After winning re-election and returning to the White House in 2025, Trump doubled down on his hardline tariff policy against China. He first imposed a 20% tariff on Chinese goods, accusing Beijing of failing to crack down on the flow of fentanyl precursor chemicals into the United States. On what the Trump administration dubbed “Liberation Day,” he raised tariffs on Chinese imports to 34%, pushing total U.S. duties on Chinese goods to among the highest levels applied to any U.S. trading partner.

The sweeping new tariffs triggered immediate tit-for-tat retaliation from Beijing, which imposed new duties on U.S. agricultural goods, directly targeting the American farm sector that forms one of Trump’s core political voter bases. But Trump’s tariff push hit an unexpected hurdle: China’s near-global monopoly on rare earth mineral supplies, which are critical inputs for everything from consumer smartphones to military fighter jets. With hundreds of major American industries dependent on Chinese rare earth exports, the Trump administration was forced to open negotiations for a truce.

The breakthrough came during a face-to-face meeting between Trump and Xi at Gimhae Air Base in South Korea last October. In the deal struck at that meeting, Beijing agreed to suspend temporary rare earth export controls implemented in retaliation for the new U.S. tariffs, a win that the White House framed as a major diplomatic victory for Trump. The agreement also saw China commit to immediately resume large-scale purchases of U.S. agricultural products, a key priority for the Trump administration. In exchange, Washington rolled back a portion of the tariffs imposed on China over the fentanyl dispute, paused planned reciprocal tariff increases, and relaxed restrictions on sales of advanced semiconductors to China (though restrictions on the most cutting-edge chip technology remain in place).

While that meeting produced an indefinite truce, negotiators on both sides failed to reach a permanent, comprehensive resolution to the core trade disputes that sparked the war. Tang notes that China’s economic model, which relies on heavy investment in manufacturing production, leaves Chinese firms heavily dependent on export sales due to persistently weak domestic consumer spending. “There’s no single country as big as [the U.S.] as a consumer market,” Tang explained, meaning China cannot afford to walk away from access to the American market entirely.

That said, Beijing enters this week’s summit from a far stronger negotiating position than it held just a few years ago. As trade ties with the U.S. weakened over the past decade, China has aggressively expanded trade relationships with new partners across Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, pushing its total annual export volumes to record highs. Beijing has also poured billions of dollars into domestic research and development in advanced robotics and domestic semiconductor manufacturing, aiming to cut its long-term reliance on Western technology from firms like Nvidia.

For the Trump administration, key priorities for the summit are expected to include pushing Beijing to increase purchases of U.S. goods from strategically important sectors, including soybeans and commercial aircraft parts. But Trump enters the meeting facing major domestic political and legal headwinds for his trade agenda: just weeks before the summit, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs as unconstitutional. Trump has since imposed a temporary 10% across-the-board tariff on all global imports using an alternate trade law, and launched a new investigation into alleged unfair trade practices by China and other major trading partners. Just last week, a U.S. trade court ruled that this new temporary global tariff was also unjustified, opening the door to additional legal challenges that could undermine Trump’s trade policy agenda.

Beyond trade, the ongoing war in Iran is expected to be a major topic of discussion during the Beijing summit. So far, China has weathered the economic fallout of the conflict far better than many of its regional neighbors, thanks to its own domestic oil production and its long-term reliance on Russian crude imports, which insulate it from global energy price volatility. Even though China is Iran’s largest single purchaser of crude oil, those factors have softened the blow of the war on China’s economy. However, as the conflict drags on, it has begun to put increasing pressure on Chinese growth, prompting senior Beijing officials to pledge new measures to protect the country’s energy security and global supply chain links, according to global security analysts.

Both Washington and Beijing share a core incentive to bring the Iran war to a swift end, but the two countries hold starkly differing policy positions on Iran’s future and regional security more broadly. The entire world will be watching closely this week to see if the two global powers can bridge their divides and move past years of escalating trade and geopolitical tension.

Weeks after the outbreak of the Iran war, the emergency short-term energy mitigation measures that Asian governments rolled out to counter sudden supply shocks are already running out of steam, and a far more damaging second wave of economic fallout is now spreading across the region, according to analysts and official data.

When the conflict first disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most critical energy chokepoint that carries roughly a third of global seaborne oil to Asian markets, regional capitals moved quickly to contain the damage. Emergency policies included mandatory energy conservation, reallocating limited natural gas supplies away from industrial uses to prioritize household needs, and drawing down strategic petroleum reserves to temporarily bridge supply gaps. But all these interventions were designed under the core assumption that the conflict would be short-lived, allowing energy shipments through the strait to quickly resume. That optimistic scenario has yet to materialize.

With no diplomatic or military resolution in sight, the fuel crisis is now rippling through every corner of regional economies. Airfares, maritime shipping costs and household utility bills are climbing sharply, eroding consumer purchasing power and putting already fragile post-pandemic growth at risk. The United Nations Development Programme estimates that as many as 8.8 million people across the Asia-Pacific could be pushed into extreme poverty by the conflict, which could cause a total of $299 billion in cumulative economic losses across the region.

“The countries with the weakest capacity to respond, and the low-income consumers who can least absorb extra costs, are the first to bear the brunt of this crisis,” explained Samantha Gross, a energy security expert at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.

Most Asian nations drafted their 202X national budgets based on a forecast that Brent crude would average roughly $70 per barrel, with widespread fuel subsidies put in place to keep consumer prices stable. The conflict has sent benchmark crude soaring to peaks near $120 per barrel, creating an intractable fiscal dilemma for governments across the region.

As Ahmad Rafdi Endut, an independent energy analyst based in Kuala Lumpur, puts it: Governments are forced to choose between two unappealing options. Either maintain expensive subsidies that will rapidly drain public finances, or roll back those support measures and pass steep price increases on to households, which carries major risk of public unrest.

Case studies across the region illustrate how deep the crisis has become. In India, the world’s top rice exporter, early policy decisions to redirect fuel supplies to prioritize cooking gas access for 330 million low-income households have left fertilizer manufacturers with insufficient feedstock. Combined with already sky-high fertilizer prices and forecasts for weak monsoon rains amid an El Niño event, the disruption poses a major threat to the nation’s agricultural sector and food security. To date, New Delhi has relied on broad energy subsidies to shield its 1.4 billion people from price hikes, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently called on citizens to cut back on international travel, work from home where possible, shift to public transport, and reduce fertilizer use to conserve energy and preserve foreign currency reserves.

The Philippines introduced a four-day workweek to cut national fuel consumption and rolled out targeted subsidies for low-income households, but credit rating agency Fitch Ratings notes that most consumers still face far higher energy costs, which has already slowed business activity in major urban centers like Manila. Thailand was forced to scrap its diesel price cap less than a month after the conflict began when its subsidy budget ran out, and is now cutting spending on other public programs to offset higher oil costs while trying to keep its deficit under control. Vietnam extended a suspension of fuel taxes to cap domestic prices, but jet fuel shortages have forced airlines to cut the number of flights, hitting a tourism sector that makes up nearly 8% of the nation’s gross domestic product. “Business is not good right now. There are already fewer tourists,” said Nguyen Manh Thang, a tour guide based in Hanoi.

For lower-income, cash-strapped economies like Pakistan and Bangladesh, the crisis is even more severe. Both nations have been forced to purchase spot market oil and gas at current inflated, volatile prices instead of locking in lower rates through long-term supply contracts, sending import costs soaring and putting massive additional pressure on their already depleted foreign exchange reserves.

Endut warns that once existing subsidy budgets are exhausted and inflation begins to accelerate, many regional economies could face what he calls a “fiscal time bomb” that threatens both fiscal stability and social order.

Experts emphasize that even when the conflict eventually ends, Asian economies will not see immediate relief. Samantha Gross of Brookings notes that global oil and gas trade will not bounce back overnight. Restarting idled production capacity, repairing any damaged energy infrastructure, and organizing new shipments from the Middle East to Asian end markets will take weeks, if not months, to complete.

While Europe will face a similar wave of disruption, analysts say it will arrive roughly four weeks behind the impact hitting Asia. U.S. consumers are also feeling the strain of spiking gasoline prices, but Henning Gloystein, a senior analyst at the Eurasia Group consultancy, says Southeast Asia is currently the “biggest pain point” of the global energy crisis. “This fuel shortage situation is going to get worse before it gets better,” he warned.

The spillover extends far beyond Asia: higher energy and import costs are straining government budgets, widening fiscal deficits and driving up inflation across Africa, while growth projections have already been downgraded for Latin America and the Caribbean due to the ongoing disruptions. Ted Krantz, CEO of global supply chain risk management firm Interos.ai, warns that the complex overlapping disruptions to global supply chains will continue to create broader economic headwinds for months to come.

The crisis has also laid bare the fragility of Asia’s fast-growing middle class, according to Maria Monica Wihardja, a fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute based in Singapore. Millions of people who recently moved out of poverty now face the risk of sliding back into lower income brackets, and the energy shock will reshape Southeast Asian economies for years to come, altering labor market dynamics and long-term energy planning.

In response to the crisis, regional governments have already begun debating and implementing long-term structural adjustments, including diversifying fossil fuel supply sources, scaling up nuclear energy development, and accelerating the deployment of renewable energy sources like solar power.

Albert Park, chief economist at the Asian Development Bank, notes that the conflict has pushed geopolitical risk to the center of Southeast Asia’s economic outlook, and is already directly slowing regional growth. “The longer it lasts, the larger those negative effects would be,” he said.

On a Monday morning in Kathmandu, Nepal, an unexpected emergency disrupted operations at the country’s busiest air hub: a Turkish Airlines passenger jet erupted in flames while touching down at Tribhuvan International Airport. Though the incident caused significant disruption to regional air travel, no casualties or injuries have been confirmed by local aviation authorities.

According to airport officials, the Istanbul-originating flight landed with visible fire and thick smoke billowing from the aircraft’s right landing gear. Emergency response teams were activated immediately after the incident, and first responders successfully brought the blaze under control in a timely manner. All 277 passengers on board the Airbus A330 were safely evacuated from the aircraft without harm.

The single active runway at Tribhuvan — Nepal’s only international gateway — was closed shortly after the emergency to allow for official investigations and clearance work. With the runway out of service, multiple incoming commercial flights bound for Kathmandu were forced to hold over alternative airspace or divert to alternate airports, leaving hundreds of passengers affected by delays across the region.

This incident adds to Nepal’s long-running history of aviation challenges, rooted in its unique geographic and meteorological conditions. The country’s mountainous landscape creates unpredictable flying conditions, and civil aviation records show Nepal experiences a higher-than-average rate of aircraft accidents and incidents compared to global averages.

Notably, this is not the first time a Turkish Airlines aircraft has faced an emergency during landing at Kathmandu airport. Back in 2015, another jet from the carrier skidded off a rain-slicked runway amid heavy dense fog, forcing a multi-day shutdown of the airport. Miraculously, that incident also resulted in zero reported injuries. After the aircraft was recovered from the runway, it was towed out of the airport and eventually converted into a public aviation museum.