In Other News ...

It’s difficult to think of another year so thoroughly marked by a single story. For months, the coronavirus seemed like the only topic in the news, and for good reason: The microscopic virus led directly to over a million deaths worldwide, cratered the global economy, and slowed public life to a crawl. But the virus was far from the only important thing to happen in 2020. Here are seven events with little or nothing to do with COVID-19 that also shaped the year in Asia. 

A U.S. Drone Strike Kills Iran’s Most Powerful General 

It did not take long for 2020’s first major crisis to occur. On January 3, a U.S. drone strike at Baghdad International Airport killed Qassem Soleimani, the long-time leader of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force and the country’s most powerful security commander. The killing — which the U.S. said was in response to a December 27 Iranian attack on an American base that had killed a U.S. contractor — triggered concern that tensions between the U.S. and Iran would quickly escalate. Days after Soleimani’s death, Iran fired more than a dozen rockets at two Iraqi military bases hosting U.S. troops, an attack that caused no fatalities. 

Soleimani’s influence had extended far beyond his home country. No other figure was more associated with Iran’s ambitions in the Middle East. Soleimani enjoyed a close relationship with Hassan Nasrallah, the supreme commander of Hezbollah, as well as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and successive prime ministers of Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein. He had a cult following throughout the region and within Iran, which instituted a 40-day period of mourning after his death. 

Any semblance of national unity in Iran following Soleimani’s death soon dissipated. On January 8, an Iranian missile accidentally struck a commercial Ukrainian jet, killing all 176 passengers and crew on board. The disaster — and Tehran’s initial denial of responsibility — sparked huge protests across the country and calls for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei to step down. 

Kim Jong Un Goes Missing — and the World Wonders Who Would Replace Him 

On April 11, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un appeared at a Politburo meeting for the ruling Workers Party of Korea in Pyongyang. The next day — and for nearly three weeks after that — he failed to appear in public at all, one of the longest unexplained absences in his eight years in power. When he missed the large state celebrations honoring his grandfather Kim Il Sung’s birthday on April 15, rumors of Kim’s mysterious absences abounded. Had he perished after botched plastic surgery? Died from COVID-19? Despite the 36-year-old Kim’s youth, his portly appearance and history of health woes led observers to speculate that he had passed away.  

But on May 1, Kim turned up, looking hale and hearty, at a factory in the city of Sunchon. False alarm aside, his disappearance over the previous weeks left an unsettling question: Who would replace him when the time comes? Tradition dictates that Kim’s successor be a member of his bloodline, but, as Asia Society Policy Institute Vice President Daniel Russel wrote in The Los Angeles Times, none of the available options comes without major red flags. And, as a nuclear-armed state with the world’s fourth-largest military, the question of North Korea’s succession is certainly not one global leaders can afford to take lightly. 

China Approves New National Security Law for Hong Kong 

On July 1, mainland China passed a sweeping National Security Law for Hong Kong designed to curb political opposition in the territory. The law grants mainland Chinese officials wide discretion in deterring “political crimes,” a clear response to the protest movement that had roiled Hong Kong over the past year. The measure also affords Beijing wide latitude to intervene in judicial matters it determines relevant to national security, marking the largest encroachment on Hong Kong’s judicial independence since the 1997 handover from British to Chinese rule. The law even grants China authority to arrest people from abroad for political crimes as soon as they step on Hong Kong soil. 

China’s leaders and supporters said the law was needed to deter foreign meddling in Hong Kong’s affairs, and would not ensnare the vast majority of residents. But the law’s passage elicited outrage from the United States and many of its allies: Twenty-seven countries, many of them European Union members, issued a joint condemnation of the law to the United Nations Human Rights Council.  

The new measure had immediate impact. Nathan Law, a prominent pro-democracy lawmaker in the territory’s legislative council, fled Hong Kong soon after its passage. And Jimmy Lai, the prominent head of the news giant Apple Daily, was arrested for violating the law, arousing intense opposition from human rights advocates. Many have argued that the National Security Law threatens Hong Kong’s singular identity as a Chinese territory with a separate economic and legal system, a place that has long positioned itself as Asia’s world city as well as a haven for business and finance. (For more on Hong Kong, see May James’ photo essay and this Orville Schell story) 

Japan’s Longest-Serving Prime Minister Steps Down 

In a country where prime ministers are often on their way out as soon as they take office, Shinzo Abe’s recent eight-year tenure as Japan’s leader was a rare exception. That’s why his announcement in August that he would resign due to health concerns shocked his country. When Abe assumed office in 2012, his second stint as prime minister, Japan was still recovering from the previous year’s tsunami and nuclear disaster. He guided the country through a complex relationship with an increasingly assertive China, Japan’s historic adversary, and maintained Tokyo’s alliance with the United States even during the unconventional presidency of Donald Trump. A right-of-center nationalist, Abe risked political capital to push through new security legislation that permitted Japanese troops to participate in overseas combat missions. 

But as was the case in many parts of the world, the events of 2020 were not kind to Abe. A coronavirus-caused recession led the prime minister’s approval ratings to dip into the 30s. The virus also forced the postponement of Tokyo’s Summer Olympic Games to 2021, denying the long-serving leader a shining moment on the international stage. But in spite of these setbacks, Abe’s second turn as Japan’s leader may well go down as one of the most consequential in postwar Japanese history. 

Military Forces Clash at the China-India Border 

It was like a scene out of an old war movie: Chinese and Indian soldiers, stationed 14,000 feet above sea level at the Line of Actual Control in the Himalayas, engaged in a violent clash under the cover of darkness, using fence posts and clubs wrapped with barbed wire as weapons. But the battle between two nuclear-armed states was all too real. When the fighting stopped, on June 15, more than 20 Indian soldiers — and an unknown number of Chinese troops — were dead. 

The skirmish marked the first fatalities along the China-India border in 45 years. But clashes at the Line of Actual Control have become a regular occurrence in recent years. China and India are the two largest countries in the world by population; one in three people worldwide is a citizen of one or the other. The two countries enjoy a robust economic relationship and have established deep diplomatic ties. In September, following another skirmish, the Indian and Chinese foreign ministers met on the sidelines of a conference in Moscow in an attempt to cool tensions. But the long border shared by the two countries, long a point of contention, is poised to remain a sticking point — one that the increasingly nationalist governments led by Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi may find impossible to ignore. 

Israel Makes a Deal With Former Adversaries 

For more than seven decades, enmity between Israel and its surrounding states has been axiomatic in the Middle East, ordered by Arab solidarity with Palestinians residing in Israel’s Occupied Territories. Until recently, this was broken only by the 1978 and 1993 accords with Egypt and Jordan, respectively. But a flurry of diplomacy in late summer 2020 has upended the status quo. In mid-September, in a White House ceremony presided over by President Donald Trump, Israel signed historic pacts with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, two resource-rich Persian Gulf states with whom Israel shares a common enemy: Iran. The deals marked the most significant diplomacy between Israel and the Arab world since the deal with Jordan. And in late October, Israel secured a diplomatic breakthrough with Sudan — though the region’s biggest prize, Saudi Arabia, remains elusive. 

Israel’s diplomatic activity elicited praise from both Republicans and Democrats in Washington — an especially rare feat in 2020. But the deals were also criticized as having been born primarily of economic interests, and for leaving the fate of the Palestinian people in the balance. “We definitely feel betrayed,” Saeb Erekat, the veteran Palestinian negotiator, said. How Israel resolves this perennial conflict remains to be seen — but in 2020, at least, the paradigm governing the region as a whole has irrevocably changed. 

A Political Giant Falls in Malaysia 

When longtime former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad reassumed power in Malaysia in 2018, becoming, at 92, the world’s oldest leader, journalists dubbed him “the comeback kid.” Two years later, the comeback came to an ignominious end. In February, Mohamad resigned his post following a power struggle within his Alliance of Hope coalition, which had ousted the long-dominant United Malays National Organization. A subsequent attempt to push through a vote of no confidence against his successor, Muhyiddin Yassin, failed, and in May the 94-year-old Mohamad was kicked out of his own political party. 

While the intrigue may signal the end of Mohamad’s lengthy political career, only a fool would count the “comeback kid” out for good. Meanwhile, Malaysia’s turbulent 2020 also included the sentencing of former Prime Minister Rajib Nazak to 12 years in prison for his role in the massive 1MBD corruption scandal.