Views from Down Underer

Up north, Qin Gang has gone from a missing Foreign Affairs Minister of the PRC to a missing ex-Foreign Affairs Minister.  Down south, leaders and top diplomats of the West are here on a charm offensive all singing that famous Backstreet Boys line: "Don't care who you are, where you're from...as long as you love me."

New Zealand PM Chris Hipkins delivered three foreign policy speeches in a short span of 10 days -- from July 7 to July 17.  Like any small state, NZ is caught in between the intensification of the US-China strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific region.  As a Five Eyes member and IP4 partner of NATO, NZ is trying to balance its relations between the two great powers of US and the PRC.  Did the PM's speech work? Is NZ's independent foreign policy a case of a foreign policy that has not been tested in the post Cold War era? 

This episode is on NATO's recent summit discussing Ukraine membership and its likely role in the Asia-Pacific.  How do we make sense of what happened in Vilnius and the implications to the Asia-Pacific region?  With talk of diversification of supply chain and de-risking, India has become the 'favourite' to take the title of factory of the world from China.  Yet, Foxconn pulling out of a $19 billion semiconductor manufacturing in India may signal that the bet is at best a long-shot?