How you get your frozen, peeled prawns
I had no idea that India was the biggest supplier of prawns to the United States.
I also did not realise that this market share grew after modern slavery was exposed in pre-existing supply lines in Thailand, triggering the growth of the Indian shrimp processing and export industry.
I must also confess that I had not spent much time wondering how peeled prawns arrive in ready-to-cook condition. I suppose I had vaguely figured they were processed in machines or by robots.
The truth is horrifying.
A joint and multi-year investigation by the Associated Press and the Corporate Accountability Lab lays bare the human rights abuses, environmental degradation and plain squalor that goes into farming and processing cheap prawns for export around the world.
This report makes for truly depressing reading but one sign of optimism, right at the end, is what the future of prawn production might look like - lab-grown.
China got everything it wanted out of Australia visit
It has been a busy week for Australian diplomacy with the visit by the UK’s former prime minister and latest Foreign Secretary David Cameron as well as Defence Secretary Grant Shapps.
They were in town for the annual meeting of Australian and British foreign and defence ministers known as AUKMIN.
But another consequential visit took place earlier in the week. It was made by China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
Wang called upon, not just Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese but also former prime minister Paul Keating.
So what’s the problem?
Keating is a prominent critic of Australia’s overall security, defence and foreign policy posture, ie. a harder line on China and resisting its interference in our democracy, systems and processes.
This matters because it is part of China’s strategy to identify, create and exploit divisions to weaken any positions Australia takes that it does not like.
Michael Shoebridge, a former deputy of two Australian intelligence agencies, writes that the entire visit was fit for purpose — China’s, with accommodations made for Wang Yi not to speak to the media in a joint press conference as is customary when foreign counterparts visit.
By contrast, the Australian and British defence and foreign ministers held a press conference for media in Adelaide on Friday.
But Wong was a solo act at hers after meeting Wang.
Shoebridge writes:
“Accommodating Wang Yi’s preferences to have no engagement with the open press in Australia has enabled this surreal situation to occur and the visit to be yet another signpost on the path to a yet more triumphant visit by a Chinese Communist Party luminary to Australia in the form of Premier Li later this year.”
China’s real estate collapse extends to Malaysia
This is a fascinating read by journalist Joseph Rachman who examines the collapse of China’s real estate market and its effects in Malaysia.
He visits what should have been a swanky precinct called Forest City which was once the trophy project of China’s property-developer darling Country Garden.
The project was planned for 700,000 residents — it currently houses around 9000 and was part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative. It was always targetted at wealthy Chinese investors wanting to park wealth offshore, as opposed to Malaysians.
But it’s all gone belly up. Not just because of the illness of China’s real-estate sector but also because of controls Xi put on the amount of money Chinese citizens can spend on housing overseas.
Forest City is now a ghost town. Its future is uncertain but could involve a Chinese bailout - meaning a slab of Malaysian land would be owned by the CCP.
India, unhappy with rankings, plans own democracy index
Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government which is accused of cracking down on religious freedom, targetting political opponents and closing down NGOs, has long disliked how India fares on independent and foreign measures of democracy.
This was a subject of discussion at the recent Raisina Dialogue that I attended in New Delhi, hosted by the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), which has a strong relationship with the government and its Foreign Minister S. Jaishanker. Indeed, the Dialogue is held in conjunction with the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Now it is reported that the Indian government wants the ORF to draw up its own democracy index, to counter those Western rankings that show it sliding.
It is an insight into India’s split personality on the world stage. On one hand, Jaishankar tells everyone India doesn’t need lectures from anyone but privately, is worried enough by the external perceptions, that it feels the need to try and counter them.
Why? Foreign investment of course.
The other side of airport lounges
As someone who has spent what feels like an awful lot of my life in airport lounges recently, I loved this interview with two Virgin Clubhouse staff about what we passengers are like from the other side.
I’m also intrigued that someone can order 50 glasses of champagne in a Virgin lounge and that the order is seemingly accepted…
IMHO, there’s no better lounge in the world that I have found than Qantas’ First in Sydney.
From the view to the champagne to the deconstructed pavlovas and the sneaky spa appointment, if you’re lucky enough to snare one, it is one of the few things I look forward when approaching the long haul to London.
That speccie view is the cover photo for my long-haul Spotify playlist which you can follow here.
And that’s my list for this week.
This week, I joined Times Radio to discuss the week’s big topics in the UK and spoke to The Project about AUKUS.
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