Asia Pacific 2020: Asia Pacific Today

China's economy continued with its impressive growth into the late-2010s but in 2017 international tensions in the Asia Pacific region briefly escalated when North Korea demonstrated that its nuclear weapons capabilities were far more sophisticated than previously suspected.

Main Events

8 Apr 2017–12 Jun 2018 North Korea missile crisis

In 2017 North Korea conducted a series of missile and nuclear tests demonstrating that it was able to fire ballistic missiles at least as far as northeast Japan and threatening to strike US islands in the Pacific. At the same time North Korea warned China that it would not back down on its nuclear program, while North Korean leader Kim Jong-un engaged in an escalating war of words with US President Donald Trump (who nicknamed Kim “Rocket Man”). The high state of tensions even led to false missile alerts in Hawaii and Japan, but was defused in negotiations beginning in early 2018.in wikipedia

12 Jun 2018 Singapore Summit

Following the collapse of North Korea’s Punggyre-ri Nuclear Test Site in late 2017, North Korea and South Korea entered into talks, resulting in an invitation from North Korean President Kim Jong-un to meet with US President Donald Trump. In a first-ever meeting between the leaders of the United States and North Korea, Trump met Kim in Singapore in June 2018 and together they issued a joint statement agreeing to new peaceful relations and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. However, in December North Korea announced it would not denuclearize until the US reduced troop numbers in South Korea, accusing the US of misrepresenting the deal.in wikipedia

15 Mar 2019–pres. 2019–20 Hong Kong protests

In 2019 the Hong Kong government introduced the Fugitive Offenders extradition bill, which critics accused of undermining Hong Kong’s legal system by effectively allowing the People’s Republic of China to arrest political dissidents in Hong Kong. Beginning in March, increasingly large demonstrations within Hong Kong protested the bill, reaching a peak size of several hundred thousand in June–July. Eventually the government withdrew the bill in October in the face of growing violence, but as of early 2020 has been unable to assuage the suspicions of the activists.in wikipedia