Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.

ASEAN leaders to meet in Jakarta for regional summit, amid tensions over new Chinese map

Summary: Representatives from the ASEAN group of Southeast Asian nations kicked-off their annual summit in Jakarta yesterday, the meeting focusing on a range of issues related to Myanmar’s ongoing civil crisis and general economic concerns, but much of the conversation so far has been focused on China’s new official national map which claims sovereignty over a bunch of territory that other nations also claim as their own.

Context: The offended parties are many are varied, ranging from India, which shares a border with China, both nations claiming territories along that border and at times fatally fighting over them, to the Philippines, which claims islands in the South China Sea that China also claims, to Chinese ally Russia, which is has expressed irritation over China claiming an island along their shared border that the Chinese and Russian governments agreed nearly 20 years ago to split; pretty much every country that shares a border with China has something to be upset about on this new map, though, which the Chinese government says it released in order to correct issues with other, existing regional maps; the degree to which this will further unify other Southeast Asian nations against China has yet to be seen, but it’s unlikely to help ease any of those tensions.

—The Straits Times

One Sentence News is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Kim Jong-un and Putin plan to meet in Russia to discuss weapons

Summary: The leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, is planning to visit with Russian President Putin in Russia sometime later this month, reportedly to discuss the former providing the latter with weapons for its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Context: This is notable in part because Kim Jong-un doesn’t leave North Korea very often, and in part because it reinforces suspicions that Russia is having trouble keeping its troops equipped for what’s become a fairly attritional, grinding sort of combat in Ukraine; the US and other Western nations have been trying to dissuade countries like North Korea and China from providing arms to Russia, but these attempts have gone about as well as you would expect, so far—though in a few cases the declassification of intelligence about the logistics of these transfers seems to have slowed these sorts of transactions.

—The New York Times

China’s Country Garden buys time to repay debt—but not long

Summary: The largest real estate company still standing following a wave of collapses and bankruptcies in China, Country Garden, has received approval from its investors to extend the maturity date on some of its bonds by three years, which will give it more time to pay off that particular debt (which was originally due Monday alongside a far smaller interest payment, which it paid), though it still has another big debt to pay later this week, which has been describe as “make or break.”

Context: The Chinese real estate sector has been responsible for about a third of the country’s economic growth over the past few decades, but real estate purchases have slumped and companies have gone under at a worrying pace, leaving buyers without finished homes and investors without their hoped-for profits; Evergrande was perhaps the largest and most well-known of the previously high-flying Chinese real estate companies to go under in the past year or so, but Country Garden is also being closely watched, as there’s a chance it can recalibrate its accounts and get back on its feet, but it’s also in a pretty bad spot monetarily, with a lot of debt to service, so these moves might help it stabilize, but might also represent the death throes of yet another Chinese real estate giant.

—The Wall Street Journal

Spotify spent more than $1 billion on podcasting industry acquisitions (shows by famous people, exclusive rights to Joe Rogan’s show, pod tech companies) over the past handful of years, but that investment doesn’t seem to have paid off, and in fact may represent a huge hole in the company’s profits; US podcasting revenue (overall) is expected to increase 25% from 2022 numbers in 2023, up to about $2.3 billion, and is looking like it will more than double by 2025, but the size of the market is still too small for a billion-dollar bet to make sense according to many analysts, which is why Spotify is now floundering in this regard, despite holding some of the industry’s most desirable properties.

—The Wall Street Journal

7nm

Scale of the semiconductor found in Huawei’s new Mate 60 Pro smartphone.

The chip—called the Kirin 9000s—was fabricated by SMIC, a Chinese company that was thought to be incapable of producing chips of this scale and sophistication, raising concerns that the US’s sanctions on chip-related technologies to China may not be working as intended (though some analysts have said this means the sanctions are porous, but not pointless).

—Bloomberg

Trust Click

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit onesentencenews.substack.com