Sri Lanka, Oct. 30 -- The Association of South East Asia Nations, comprising 11 states with a population of over 700 million mainly middle-income people, is now China's biggest trading partner while China is now the same for ASEAN. The FTA must be seen as directly arising from the major economic pressures both sides are incurring from the US's discarding of existing international trade regimes and the wholly arbitrary trade tariffs imposed worldwide by Washington after Trump took office earlier this year.

The pause in Israeli genocide operations in Palestine allows focus on the latest Afghan-Pakistani clashes that disturb our own region of South Asia. Why is the Taleban regime in Kabul persisting in its hostile posture with Islamabad whe...