Hong Kong
CNN
 — 

Xi Jinping has appealed to Vietnam to join China in upholding multilateral trade, as he begins a high-stakes diplomatic tour of the region’s major export-reliant economies in a bid to position his country as a stable partner in contrast to the United States.

The Chinese leader arrived in communist-ruled Vietnam on Monday and is set to visit Malaysia and Cambodia from Tuesday to Friday – countries that have seen growing trade and investment ties with China in recent years.

The trip comes just days after US President Donald Trump paused his “reciprocal” tariffs on most countries for 90 days – narrowing the focus on his trade war squarely on China.

As Washington and Beijing exchange record-high levies, Southeast Asian nations – still catching their breath from the now-suspended US tariffs – are growing increasingly anxious about being caught in the crossfire between the world’s two largest economies.

Seeking to capitalize on the turmoil unleashed by Trump’s tariff whiplash, Xi is expected to cast China as a reliable partner and defender of global trade. Vietnam and Cambodia were among the highest hit by Trump’s tariffs, set at 46% and 49% respectively before the pause.

But while countries are rolling out the red carpet for Xi, they also need to tread carefully – and avoid the appearance they are siding with China, and potentially risk provoking Trump during their own negotiations over pending tariffs.

Some are wary of being flooded with cheap Chinese goods that are now shut out of the US markets due to the sky-high tariffs. China already runs a trade surplus with Vietnam, exporting 1.6 times the value it imports from its southern neighbor.

As a bloc, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has overtaken the US and the European Union as China’s largest export market since 2023, according to Chinese customs data.

In a signed article published Monday in Vietnam state media, Xi reiterated that there are no winners in a trade war or tariff war, and protectionism will lead nowhere.

“Our two countries should resolutely safeguard the multilateral trading system, stable global industrial and supply chains, and open and cooperative international environment,” Xi wrote, according to China’s official state news agency Xinhua.

Vietnam, a rising manufacturing powerhouse, has seen a surge in Chinese investments in recent years as manufactures move supply chains out of China to take advantage of lower labor costs and hedge against US levies. China’s trade with Vietnam nearly doubled between 2017 and 2024, making the communist state China’s biggest trade partner in Southeast Asia.

While in Hanoi, Xi is expected to further strengthen those ties. The two countries are set to sign about 40 agreements across multiple sectors – including cooperation on railways, agricultural trade and the digital and green economy, Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister Bui Thanh Son said on Saturday, according to Reuters.

Vietnam has approved plans to build a $8.3 billion railway linking its northern port city of Haiphong to China, which will be partially funded by Chinese loans. The country is also looking to purchase China’s homegrown mainline passenger aircraft made by Chinese state-owned planemaker COMAC.

Wen-ti Sung, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, said Xi’s high-profile visit is two pronged: economically, it’s about finding a way to diversify China’s economic footprint around the world; on the foreign policy front, it’s also aimed at pulling countries closer to China while they are unsettled by Trump’s on-and-off-again tariffs.

“What Xi is trying to do now is to go there in person. Instead of fear and pressure, Xi is going to show them love, maybe some ‘souvenirs’ along the way,” he said, referring to possible new trade deals and upgrades to their strategic partnerships.

“All these are ways for China to show that I’m on your side. It’s safe to hang out with China, especially if you’re concerned about the US.”

But relations between China and its neighbors have been strained in recent years, with tensions flaring over claims of disputed sovereignty in the South China Sea. In February, Chinese warships held live-fire drills in waters near Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin, known as the Beibu Gulf in China, after Hanoi published a map defining its territorial claims there.

In his signed article in Vietnam’s Nhan Dan Newspaper, Xi urged the two countries to “properly manage differences and safeguard peace and stability in our region.”

“The successful delimitation of our boundaries on land and in the Beibu Gulf demonstrates that with vision, we are fully capable of properly settling maritime issues through consultation and negotiation,” Xi was quoted as writing.

CNN’s Fred He contributed reporting.

Seoul, South Korea
CNN
 — 

New satellite images show what could be North Korea’s biggest warship ever – possibly more than double the size of anything in leader Kim Jong Un’s naval fleet.

Images taken by independent satellite providers Maxar Technologies and Planet Labs on April 6 show the ship under construction in the water at the Nampo shipyard on North Korea’s west coast, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) southwest of the capital Pyongyang.

Analysts say the pictures show ongoing construction of weapons and other internal systems of the ship, which is likely a guided-missile frigate (FFG) designed to carry missiles in vertical launch tubes for use against targets on land and sea.

“The FFG is approximately 140 meters (459 feet) long, making it the largest warship manufactured in North Korea,” an analysis by Joseph Bermudez Jr. and Jennifer Jun at the Center for Strategic and International Studies said.

For comparison, the US Navy’s Arleigh Burke-class destroyers are about 505 feet long and its under-construction Constellation-class frigates will be 496 feet long.

The existence of the warship is not a surprise.

The Kim regime has been engaged in a rapid modernization of its armed forces, developing a range of new weapons and testing intercontinental ballistic missiles that can reach almost anywhere in the United States.

It’s done that despite United Nations sanctions that have puts strict limits on its access to the materials and technology to develop those weapons.

But the closer ties with Russia since the beginning of the Ukraine war could be helping North Korea overcome that sanctions, analysts say.

Kim Duk-ki, a retired South Korean admiral, said he thinks Moscow may be providing the technology for the frigate’s missile systems.

Pictures of the vessel appeared in a report by state-run Korean Central Television released late last year on the ruling Workers’ Party’s end-of-year plenary session. The images showed leader Kim inspecting the ship’s construction.

The images shown in the KCTV video show the warship could have the kind of weaponry possessed by modern navies, including vertical launch cells that could be used to fire a variety of missiles.

Analysts also noted the ship seems to be set up to have phased-array radar, which can track threats and targets more quickly and accurately than previously displayed North Korean capabilities.

Despite those indications of advanced warfighting abilities, analysts urged caution in making assumptions.

Almost any shipbuilder can get the hull and propulsion systems right, said Carl Schuster, a former US Navy captain and Hawaii-based analyst.

“However, modern warships represent an integration challenge of communications, electronics, weapons, and both electronic and acoustic sensor technologies” that is not so easily achieved, he said.

In an interview with CNN in March, South Korean lawmaker Kim Byung-kee, a member of the National Assembly’s Intelligence Committee, questioned whether Pyongyang has the technical ability to build an advanced warship, or the infrastructure to support it.

“Operating such a big military warship takes significant amount of budget. They not only have to build a warship, but make a team that would operate it, and it costs to operate it including the equipment and fuel. Also, one huge warship cannot go out on its own. So the question is, can North Korea afford the cost?” he said.

Kim, the retired South Korean admiral, was cautious on not underestimating what the final product may look like, especially its lethality.

“If North Korea equips the new frigate with the hypersonic ballistic missile it claimed to have successfully tested in January, that will cause a game changing impact in the regional security,” the former naval officer said.

After reviewing the satellite images for CNN, Schuster said it’s likely a year or more of work remains before the new North Korean warship can begin sea trials.

“This ship’s construction is being delayed by the lack of the superstructure, sensor and weapons systems intended for installation,” he said.

North Korea’s navy has about 400 patrol combatants and 70 submarines, according to the most recent estimate from the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in a 2021 report.

Though that’s a large number of vessels, most of them are old and small.

Joseph Dempsey, an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, wrote in a January blog post that Pyongyang has only two principal surface combatants. Those Najin-class frigates – 1,600-ton warships dating to the early 1970s – are obsolete, he wrote.

The DIA report said the North Korean navy would largely be reduced to coastal defense in any conflict with South Korea or the United States, both of which have vastly superior naval forces.

But North Korean leader Kim has been pushing to modernize his naval fleet. It is also developing submarine-launched missiles and the subs to carry them.

In September, Kim inspected the site for a new naval port.

“Now that we are soon to possess large surface warships and submarines which cannot be anchored at the existing facilities for mooring warships, the construction of a naval base for running the latest large warships has become a pressing task,” he said at the time.

Yu Yong-won, a South Korean lawmaker, said the ship under construction at the Nampo yard is only one example of Kim trying to modernize his navy.

A nuclear-powered submarine is under construction at a shipyard in the North Korean port of Sinpo and another frigate or destroyer is in the works in Chongjin, Yu said.

Editor’s Note: This article contains graphic images and descriptions.

CNN
 — 

Christine Pascual’s phone started buzzing while she was at work in a hair salon with messages saying former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was about to be arrested.

“I started crying, both out of relief and sorrow, the entire day and all through the night,” Pascual told CNN. The news brought memories of her late son Joshua Pascual Laxamana flooding back.

Laxamana, a 17-year-old with dreams of becoming an online gamer, went missing in August 2018 on his way home from a gaming tournament in the northern Philippines.

“His friends who went with him said they were short on money, so they split ways,” his mother recalled. With no word from him in days, she started her own search for her son. “I started looking for him at every computer shop around our area, thinking he was close to home.”

A week later, a letter from the police arrived. It said her son was dead.

She was taken to the morgue and greeted by a sight she had never imagined; her son’s body pierced by six gunshots and covered in bruises.

“When he was young, I’d worried about him being bitten by flies,” she said.

There is another image she will never forget; a photograph the police showed her of Laxamana’s lifeless body on the street where he was gunned down. She remembers his eyes were still wide open.

Pascual said the officers told her he was killed because “he tried to fight back.”

According to a Philippine Inquirer report, Rosales Municipal Police claimed Laxamana was on a motorbike, ignored a police checkpoint, then fired at officers.

“They accused him of horrible, unimaginable things,” said Pascual – who denies her son was a drug dealer and said he didn’t know how to ride a motorbike.

Pascual is determined to seek justice.

With the help of NGOs, she requested a second autopsy and raised money for his funeral. She has also recounted her testimony at senate hearings and public investigations and continues to work with human rights groups to gather evidence for her son.

She even took a case to the Philippines Supreme Court, but it was dismissed.

“We will fight wherever justice takes us…,” she said, “It’s been hard for me to accept my son died without any explanation. He was accused of something and was killed just like that…I hope that can change in this country,” she said.

Pascual is not alone.

Duterte’s court appearance in the International Criminal Court (ICC) last month is “a sight families of the thousands of victims of the ‘war on drugs’ in the Philippines feared they would never see,” said Amnesty International’s Southeast Asia Researcher Rachel Chhoa-Howard.

“The very institution that former President Duterte mocked will now try him for murder…is a symbolic moment and a day of hope for families of victims and human rights defenders who have for years fought tirelessly for justice despite grave risks to their lives and safety.”

It shows that those accused of committing the worst crimes “may one day face their day in court, regardless of their position,” Chhoa-Howard added.

Duterte ran the Philippines for six turbulent years, during which he oversaw a brutal crackdown on drugs and openly threatened critics with death.

In his inaugural address in 2016, he claimed there were 3.7 million “drug addicts” in the Philippines and said he would “have to slaughter these idiots for destroying my country.”

The figure was more than twice the number of active drug users reported in a 2015 Philippines Dangerous Drug board (DDB) study, which said 1.8 million people – just under 2% of the population – were using drugs.

By 2019, three years into the ‘war of drugs’, the DDB survey estimated 1.6 million people were taking dangerous drugs in the Philippines – an 11% decrease from 2015.

Among many Filipinos, Duterte’s drug war – and his bombastic disregard for the country’s political elites – remained popular for much of his time in office. But the collateral damage caused by so many extrajudicial deaths also mounted.

Many of the victims were young men from impoverished shanty towns, shot by police and rogue gunmen as part of a campaign to target alleged dealers.

According to police data, 6,000 people were killed – but rights groups say the death toll could be as high as 30,000, with innocents and bystanders often caught in the crossfire.

Duterte’s tough approach on drugs prompted strong criticism from opposition lawmakers who launched a probe into the killings. Duterte in turn jailed his fiercest opponent and accused some news media and rights activists as traitors and conspirators.

His blood-soaked presidency ended in 2022 but, three years on, hundreds, if not thousands, of extrajudicial killings have not been accounted for. Victims’ families are often spooked or threatened not to pursue their case in local courts, leaving hundreds in limbo with little to no due process in the Philippines.

To date, only eight policemen had been convicted for five drug war deaths, according to court documents.

The threat of being held to account in the ICC has been hanging over Duterte’s for almost a decade. Prosecutors first said they were watching what was happening in the Philippines in 2016, but it wasn’t until 2021 that a formal investigation was launched.

For years, Duterte – along with his loyal allies and fierce supporters – argued that allegations of wrongdoing should be dealt with by the Philippine justice system, saying the involvement of foreign courts would impede the country’s judicial independence and sovereignty.

As president, he even withdrew the Philippines from the ICC – which took effect in March 2019. That, however, proved to be no protection; the ICC still has jurisdiction for crimes alleged during the years the nation was a member.

Last week, Duterte went from boasting about killing drug dealers to being arrested for crimes against humanity as the ICC finally caught up with him.

In a dramatic arrest, the 80-year-old was outnumbered by local police when he returned to Manila from Hong Kong. After being detained for hours at an airbase, he was put on a plane bound for the Netherlands to face the ICC on charges of crimes against humanity – alleged to have been committed between 2011 and 2019.

On Thursday (March 14), Duterte made his first appearance via video link at The Hague where he appeared tired and slightly uneasy.

His defense lawyer, Salvador Medialdea, called the arrest a “pure and simple kidnapping.”

During the hearing, Presiding Judge Iulia Motoc read Duterte his rights and set September 23 as the date for a hearing to determine whether the evidence presented by the prosecution would be sufficient to take the case to trial.

Thousands of lives have been upended by the drug war killings. They not only left devastated parents to bury their children but also left dozens of children as orphans.

Eya was just 9-years-old when both her parents were shot by hooded, uniformed policemen at around three in the morning in August 2016.

Now 18, she and her sister work at a coffee shop in Manila run by families of victims.

Eya, who requested to go by a pseudonym for safety, told CNN she was shocked when Duterte was finally arrested.

”I hope justice will be given to us. And others responsible for the thousands of those who died will also get arrested.”

Eya told CNN she hopes other police officials and officers involved in the bloody crackdown would one day also be held accountable.

Cresalie Agosto was at work when her 16-year-old daughter called her in on December 1, 2016 with shocking news.

”Ma, dad has been shot. Please come back,” she heard her daughter say.

Agosto rushed home. Nearby, police had cordoned off an area surrounding her husband’s body.

“It was true. I saw my husband with gunshot wounds on his head, stomach and foot,” she told CNN. Matches and a small sachet containing a white power were found on the ground near him, items Agosto says she’d never seen her husband carry around.

Witnesses told her they saw two motorbikes each carrying two masked men carrying big, long guns, looking for a man named “Roy”. They asked her husband, Richie Reyes, if he was “Roy”.

She was told that he said he was not the man they were looking for, but they shot him anyway.

“There’s nothing more that we want other than justice and accountability,” Agosto said. “When Duterte was arrested upon arrival his rights were still read aloud to him. For us, our loved ones were greeted with bullets with no explanation.”

Luzviminda Siapo was away from home as migrant worker in Kuwait when tragic news that her 19-year-old son, Raymart, was killed by police in 2017.

Her son was born with clubfoot deformities – a condition which can affect mobility.

A witness who was sleeping in a parked jeepney in an alley told Siapo they heard police yell at Raymart to run away.

“No, I cannot run. I don’t want to run,” Raymart cried out, according to the witness. A gunshot was then heard.

Luzviminda said she wants to see Duterte “rot in jail” for her son’s death.

“He may be in jail, but he is alive unlike my son who died and is no longer with us. I cannot hug him anymore nor talk to him.”