China criticized U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Sunday for his “vilified” remarks “filled with provocations” in which he said the Asian country poses a legitimate threat in the Indo-Pacific.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Hegseth touted a “Cold War mentality” when he delivered his speech on Saturday at the Shangri-La Dialogue security conference in Singapore.

“Hegseth deliberately ignored the call for peace and development by countries in the region, and instead touted the Cold War mentality for bloc confrontation, vilified China with defamatory allegations, and falsely called China a ‘threat,’” a spokesperson for the ministry said in a statement.

“The remarks were filled with provocations and intended to sow discord,” the statement continued. “China deplores and firmly opposes them and has protested strongly to the U.S. No country in the world deserves to be called a hegemonic power other than the US itself, which is also the primary factor undermining the peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific.”

HEGSETH SAYS US WILL BOLSTER DEFENSES OVERSEAS TO SUPPORT INDO-PACIFIC ALLIES AGAINST CHINA

On Saturday, Hegseth said the U.S. will bolster its defenses overseas to counter what the Pentagon views as rapidly developing threats by China, particularly toward Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own.

The Chinese army “is rehearsing for the real deal,” Hegseth said. “We are not going to sugarcoat it — the threat China poses is real. And it could be imminent.”

The Pentagon chief said China is no longer building up its military forces to take Taiwan, but it is “actively training for it, every day.”

Addressing the dispute over Taiwan, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in its statement that the matter is China’s internal affair and that the U.S. should “never play with fire.”

“No country is in a position to interfere,” the statement said. “The US should never imagine it could use the Taiwan question as leverage against China. The US must never play with fire on this question. China urges the US to fully abide by the one-China principle and the three China-US joint communiqués, and stop supporting and emboldening the ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces.”

HEGSETH DENIES CLAIM THAT GOLDEN DOME IS ‘OFFENSIVE’: ‘PROTECTING THE HOMELAND’

Hegseth said the U.S. will bolster its defenses overseas to counter what the Pentagon views as rapidly developing threats by China. (AP)

The statement also accused the U.S. of deploying offensive weaponry in the South China Sea and “stoking flames and creating tensions” in the Asia-Pacific, which it said was “turning the region into a powder keg and making countries in the region deeply concerned.”

In the South China Sea, the statement said there “has never been any problem with regard to freedom of navigation and overflight there.”

“China has always been committed to working with countries concerned to properly handle differences through dialogue and consultation, while safeguarding China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in accordance with laws and regulations,” the spokesperson said. “It is the U.S. that is the primary factor hurting the peace and stability in the South China Sea.”

The statement concluded: “China urges the U.S. to fully respect the efforts of countries in the region to maintain peace and stability, stop deliberately destroying the peaceful and stable environment cherished by the region, and stop inciting conflict and confrontation and escalating tensions in the region.”

Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson Zhang Xiaogang also called Hegseth’s comments a provocation that distorted China’s policy positions.

Hegseth said the Chinese army “is rehearsing for the real deal” and the threat it poses could be imminent. (AP)

While Hegseth vowed to boost U.S. defenses overseas to counter any possible threat from China, the defense secretary insisted that allies in the Indo-Pacific also contribute more to their own defense.

“We ask, and indeed we insist, that our allies and partners do their part on defense,” he said on Saturday. “Sometimes that means having uncomfortable and tough conversations.”

The U.S. and China reached a deal last month to cut tariffs on each down to 115% for 90 days to allow time for negotiators from both sides to come to a more substantive agreement — U.S. tariffs on China were reduced from 145% to 30% and China’s taxes on the U.S. were slashed from 125% to 10%.

But Trump said in a social media post on Friday that he would no longer be “nice” with China when it comes to trade and accused Beijing of breaking an unspecified agreement with the U.S.

Seoul, South Korea – After six hours of emergency martial law, hundreds of days of protests, violence at a Seoul court and the eventual impeachment of President Yoon Suk-yeol, South Korea is now hours away from choosing a new leader in the hope of restoring stability to an unsettled nation.

From 6am to 8pm on Tuesday (21:00 to 11:00 GMT), South Koreans will vote for one of five presidential candidates in a race led largely by the opposition Democratic Party’s Lee Jae-myung. He is followed in the polls by the governing People Power Party candidate Kim Moon-soo.

The election – involving 44.39 million eligible voters – is expected to see either of these two top contenders replace Yoon. The expelled former president last week attended his fifth court hearing where he faces charges of leading an insurrection and abusing power due to his failed imposition of martial law on December 3.

If convicted, Yoon could face a maximum penalty of life in prison or even the death sentence.

Participation in the election is predicted to be at an all-time high amid the political turmoil resulting from the brief imposition of military rule, which still resonates in every corner of society and has sharply divided the country along political lines. There are those who still support Yoon and those who vehemently oppose his martial law decision.

The Democratic Party’s Lee is currently the clear frontrunner, with Gallup Korea’s latest poll on May 28 placing his support at 49 percent, compared with People Power Party Kim’s 36 percent, as the favourite to win.

Early voting, which ended on Friday, had the second-highest voter turnout in the country’s history, at 34.74 percent, while overseas voting from 118 countries reached a record high of 79.5 percent.

Lee Jae-myung’s second chance

In the last presidential election in 2022, Yoon narrowly edged out Lee in the closest presidential contest in South Korea’s history.

After his crushing defeat in 2022 to a voting margin of just 0.73 percentage points, Lee now has another chance at the top office, and to redeem his political reputation.

About a month ago, South Korea’s Supreme Court determined that Lee had spread falsehoods during his 2022 presidential bid in violation of election law.

In addition to surviving a series of bribery charges during his tenure as mayor of Seongnam and governor of Gyeonggi Province, which he claimed were politically motivated, Lee also survived a stabbing attack to his neck during a news conference in Busan last year.

Fortunately for Lee, the courts have agreed to postpone further hearings of his ongoing trials until after the election.

On the campaign trail this time around, Lee addressed his supporters from behind bulletproof glass, with snipers positioned on rooftops, scanning the crowds for potential threats, as counterterrorism units patrolled on foot.

Lee has also been joined on his campaign by conservative lawmakers, his former opponents, who have publicly supported his run for office numerous times during the past month, seeing him as a path back to political stability.

People Power Party candidate Kim was served an especially hard blow when his parliamentary colleague, Kim Sang-wook, defected from the party in early May to join Lee’s Democratic Party.

According to polling data from South Korea’s leading media outlet Hankyoreh, only 55 percent of conservative voters who supported Yoon in the 2022 election said they would back the People Power Party’s Kim this time around.

While such shifts represent the crisis that the mainstream conservative party is facing after the political fallout from Yoon’s botched martial law plan and removal from office, it also testifies to Lee’s appeal to both moderate and conservative voters.

Future president faces ‘heavy burden’

“The events of the martial law, insurrection attempt and impeachment process have dealt a heavy blow to our democracy,” said Lim Woon-taek, a sociology professor at Keimyung University and a former member of the Presidential Commission on Policy Planning.

“So, the new president will receive a heavy burden when assuming the president’s seat,” Lim told Al Jazeera.

Youth unemployment, social inequality and climate change have also become pressing issues that Yoon’s administration failed to tackle.

According to recent research, South Korea’s non-regular workers, including contract employees and part-timers, accounted for 38 percent of all wage and salary workers last year.

Lee has promised to champion business-friendly policies, and concentrate on investment in research and development and artificial intelligence, while refraining from focusing on divisive social issues such as the gender wars.

His stance has shifted considerably from his time moving up the political ranks when he promoted left-wing ideas, such as a universal basic income.

Events on the night of the declaration of martial law on December 3, also helped cement Lee’s image as a political freedom fighter. A former human rights lawyer, Lee was livestreamed scaling the walls of the National Assembly as the military surrounded the compound, where he rallied fellow legislators to vote and strike down Yoon’s decision to mobilise the military.

Among Lee’s most central campaign pledges has been his promise to bring to justice those involved in Yoon’s martial law scheme and tighten controls on a future president’s ability to do the same. Lee also wants to see a constitutional amendment that would allow presidents to serve two four-year terms, a change from the current single-term five years.

While Lee’s closest challenger, Kim, has agreed on such policies and made sure to distance himself from Yoon, the former labour-activist-turned-hardline-conservative has also said the former president’s impeachment went too far.

Trump, tariffs and South Korea’s new direction

The election also unfolds as United States President Donald Trump has proposed a series of tariffs on key South Korean exports such as steel, semiconductors and automobiles.

In the face of those threats, Lee has promised to stimulate demand and growth, while Kim has promised to ease business regulations. Kim also emphasised his plan to hold an immediate summit meeting with Trump to discuss the tariffs.

Lee, on the other hand, has promised a more pragmatic foreign policy agenda which would maintain relations with the US administration but also prioritise “national interests”, such as bridging closer relations with neighbouring China and Russia.

On North Korea, Lee is determined to ease tensions that have risen to unprecedented heights in recent years, while Kim has pledged to build up the country’s military capability to counter Pyongyang, and wants stronger security support from the US.

Lee has also promised to relocate the National Assembly and the presidential office from Seoul to Sejong City, which would be designated as the country’s new administrative capital, continuing a process of city-planning rebalancing that has met a series of setbacks in recent years.

Another major issue that Keimyung University’s Lim hopes the future leader will focus more on is the climate situation.

“Our country is considered a climate villain, and we will face future restrictions in our exports if we don’t address the immediate effects of not keeping limits on the amount of our hazardous outputs,” Lim said.

“The future of our country will really rest on this one question: whether the next president will draw out such issues like the previous administration or face the public sphere and head straight into the main issues that are deteriorating our society.”

The results of Tuesday’s vote are expected to emerge either late on Tuesday or in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

In the 2022 election, Yoon was proclaimed the winner at 4:40am the morning after election day.

With Lee the clear frontrunner in this election, the outcome could be evident as early as Tuesday night.

But enhanced surveillance at polling stations this year due to concerns raised about counting errors may be a factor in slowing down any early announcement of the country’s next president.

The plan is simple. Mexicans will vote on Sunday to elect judges across the country, in a vast overhaul that reaches from the Supreme Court to every level of the justice system.

The execution, however, can boggle the mind.

Voters are expected to choose nearly 2,700 judicial positions out of 7,800 candidates across federal and state elections, a huge undertaking whose complexity can be seen in the dizzying variety of color codings, candidate groupings and types of ballots that will be handed out.

In one state, 155 candidates are on a single page, reflecting the ambitions of Mexico’s governing Morena party to democratize the system. In another state, there is essentially no choice at all — what critics call a sign of the overhaul’s deep flaws.

The national election agency features a ballot simulator on its website, where citizens can practice voting and click on each candidate’s name to learn about that person.

But if a voter took five minutes to study each candidate, that would amount to over five hours for this ballot alone.

Voters will also elect 464 circuit court and 386 district court positions across Mexico. But these ballots vary by circuit and district.

Not everyone in the country will see the same specialties or vote for the same number of judges.

In some densely populated areas, there are so many positions that the national election authorities used a lottery to split up which candidates appear on which ballots.

“We are only going to elect a small number of judges who are going to hear our cases,” said Javier Martín Reyes, a law professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

State ballots vary widely

All Mexican voters can cast ballots for federal candidates, but in 19 states, voters will have to choose local judges, as well, in some cases doubling the number of ballots that voters will have to sift through. (The remaining judicial positions will be elected in 2027.)

In Chihuahua state, voters will have to elect 305 local judges from nearly 900 candidates, the most officials on the ballot in any state. Voters in this district of Chihuahua, Morelos, have to go through 13 ballots — six federal and seven local — to get to all the candidates.

On this ballot for a low-level court, voters must choose five women and five men from 155 names.

At the other end of the spectrum is Durango state, where there are 49 positions up for grabs in the local court system on Sunday and 49 candidates.

All three branches of state government agreed on the same candidates — drawing criticism from local residents and legal experts who say this will be a simulation of an election, not a real one.

Those critics argue that the overhaul of the courts could give the governing party more power and open the door to underqualified or easily influenced candidates.

Supporters of the overhaul, including Mexico’s president, have downplayed those risks, saying that the vote will help root out corruption and nepotism by giving citizens the chance to pick their own judges, in contrast to the previous appointment-based system.

But in Durango, at least, each candidate needs only one vote to win. The number of votes still matters, though, because it will determine term limits and who will be the presiding judge in some courts, according to state officials.

On this page of the Durango ballot, eight women are vying for eight positions, and seven men are up for seven positions.

For this juvenile court in Durango, the ballot has one candidate for one position.

In the states of Coahuila and Quintana Roo, the ballot looks completely different.

Instead of choosing individual candidates, voters in those states will choose one of three columns, each representing the group of candidates put forth by the state’s executive, legislative and judicial branches.

The format is far simpler than the sprawling ballots that voters will receive in other states, but critics have argued that it gives voters fewer options and puts more power in the hands of those branches of government.