Category Archives: Asia Pacific

Thin blue square: video shows apparent Chinese police drill against protester

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Footage seems to show 10 officers training to neutralise one man using fabric banners

How many police officers does it take to neutralise a single unarmed protester? According to a video purported to be from China, it takes at least 10 highly disciplined members of law enforcement, as well as some bespoke blue banners.

In footage that emerged on Thursday, black-clad officers are shown practising a drill to surround a single person holding up a white piece of paper – an item that became the symbol of the anti-lockdown protests that rocked several major Chinese cities at the end of last year, and the demonstrations against the security laws imposed on Hong Kong in 2020.

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Chinese billionaire tech banker Bao Fan goes missing

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Disappearance of China Renaissance chair raises fears of fresh crackdown on China’s finance industry

A billionaire Chinese dealmaker has gone missing, plunging one of the country’s top investment banks into turmoil.

Bao Fan, the founder and executive director of China Renaissance, is a major figure in the Chinese tech industry and has played an important role in the emergence of a string of large domestic internet startups.

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Fiji opposition leader suspended from parliament for sedition

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Frank Bainimarama, who launched a blistering attack on the president on Monday, was suspended for three years

Fiji’s opposition leader and its long-serving former prime minister, Frank Bainimarama, has been suspended from parliament for three years for sedition and insulting the president.

The suspension came days after he launched an extraordinary verbal attack on the country’s president, Ratu Wiliame Katonivere.

Lavenia Lativerata-Vuadreu works for Mai TV in Fiji

Reuters contributed to this report

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China claims ‘decisive victory’ over Covid amid doubt over figures

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More than 200m people treated for virus and death rate now ‘lowest in the world’, says government

The Chinese government has declared a “decisive victory” in the battle against Covid-19, claiming it had created “a miracle in the history of human civilisation” in successfully steering China through the global pandemic.

The comments were made at a meeting presided over by President Xi Jinping on Thursday. The government said more than 200 million people had been treated for Covid and that China’s death rate from coronavirus was “the lowest level in the world”.

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Truss urges west to safeguard Taiwan security ‘before it’s too late’

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In Tokyo speech to conservative lawmakers, former British PM issues warning about Chinese aggression

Liz Truss has used her first overseas speech since resigning as British prime minister to call on the west to safeguard Taiwan’s security and economy in the face of Chinese aggression “before it is too late”.

Speaking in Tokyo at a meeting of mainly conservative lawmakers that included the former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison, Truss said Britain had been naive to court the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, in 2015, adding that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine should serve as a warning of what happens when democracies fail to stand up to authoritarian regimes.

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Top Pentagon official to visit Taiwan, report says, amid US-China tensions

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Relations between Beijing and Washington have soured since the US accused China of sending a spy balloon into its airspace

A top Pentagon official will visit Taiwan in coming days, according to reports, as attempts between the US and China to repair relations continue to backslide after the US shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon in its airspace.

Michael Chase, deputy assistant secretary of defence for China, is expected to visit Taiwan in coming days, according to the Financial Times, after he leaves Mongolia where he is meeting its military.

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Japan’s new whaling ‘mother ship’ being built to travel as far as Antarctica

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Company says vessel’s construction will help ‘pass on our whaling culture to the next generation’

A Japanese company is building a new whaling ship designed to travel as far as Antarctica, sparking fears commercial operations could resume in the Southern Ocean.

Australia’s environment minister, Tanya Plibsersek, reaffirmed the Albanese government’s commitment to a global moratorium on commercial whaling, while Greenpeace condemned the practice as “brutal and unnecessary”.

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Former Australian PM Scott Morrison likens west’s ‘appeasement’ of China to Munich agreement with Hitler

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Speech in Tokyo draws parallel with pre-second world war agreement, and claims credit for urging others to stand up to Beijing ‘bullying’

The former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison has accused the west of “appeasing” Beijing and has claimed credit for rallying other countries to “call out the bullying of the Chinese ­government”.

In a speech to be delivered at a conference in Tokyo on Friday, Morrison is also expected to urge the Albanese government to consider using Magnitsky-style targeted human rights sanctions laws to hold Chinese government officials accountable.

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Journalist held without trial in China said to need urgent medical attention

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Advocates of Huang Xueqin accuse authorities of ‘trying to exert mental pressure and physical torture’

Advocates for a Chinese journalist and activist who has been held in detention without trial for almost 18 months have said she needs urgent medical attention.

Huang Xueqin and Wang Jianbing, a labour rights activist, were detained in September 2021 and formally arrested a month later. They have been accused of inciting subversion of state power, and held in Guangzhou without access to family or lawyers.

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‘Playing football in heaven’: tributes pour in after boy rescued in Thai cave dies in UK

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Friends of Duangpetch Promthep share emotional messages after the talented player was found dead in his dorm at a football academy

Tributes have been paid to Duangpetch Promthep, one of the 12 boys rescued from a flooded Thai cave in 2018, who died in the UK on Tuesday.

Kiatisuk Senamuang, the founder of the Zico Foundation and a mentor to Duangpetch, known also as Dom, wrote in a message: “Have fun playing football in heaven, be what Dom wanted to be, just go for it, go to watch every match you want to.”

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Wuhan welfare protests escalate as hundreds voice anger over health insurance cuts

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Crowds of retirees gather in cities of Wuhan and Dalian to protest against cuts as local government coffers feel strain of years of Covid policies

Crowds of hundreds of older people took to the streets in the Chinese cities of Wuhan and Dalian on Wednesday in escalating protests against changes to the public health insurance system.

The protests were sparked by cuts to monthly allowances paid to retirees under China’s vast public health insurance system. The changes, gradually introduced since 2021, come as local government finances are strained following years of strict and costly zero-Covid policies.

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China claims US balloons flew over Tibet and Xinjiang as spying row rumbles on

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US deputy secretary of state says Beijing is claiming ‘a gazillion balloons by the US over China … That is absolutely not true’

Diplomatic friction has worsened between the United States and China after Beijing claimed, without evidence, that US high-altitude balloons flew over its Xinjiang and Tibet regions, and threatened unspecified measures against US entities for undermining Chinese sovereignty.

Washington and Beijing are locked in a tussle over flying objects after the US military this month shot down what it called a Chinese spy balloon over the coast of South Carolina. Beijing said it was a civilian research vehicle mistakenly blown off course, and that Washington overreacted.

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Japan sees its number of islands double after recount

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Digital mapping leads to around 7,000 new islands being discovered though it’s unlikely to expand Japan’s territory, media reports say

It can’t be easy keeping count of the number of islands scattered around an area of more than 370,000 square kilometres, in a country that is regularly subjected to volcanic activity and extreme weather.

While Japan has seen the formation of new islands, and the quiet disappearance of another, geographers have said official statistics showing it is made up of around 6,000 islands are way off the mark.

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China’s provinces spent almost £43bn on Covid measures in 2022

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Third of provinces yet to publish data as country looks to revive economy after zero-Covid policy ends

Chinese provinces spent more than £42.8bn on tackling Covid-19 in 2022, according to data released by local governments, with the figure expected to rise as the huge cost of the pandemic hits the world’s second-largest economy.

Although national statistics are not yet available, at least 20 of China’s 31 provinces have published figures on how much money they spent on measures to control the pandemic.

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Captain of football team rescued from Thai cave in 2018 dies in UK

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Cause of death of Duangpetch Promthep, who moved to Leicester to attend a football academy, has not been confirmed

Duangpetch Promthep, one of the 12 boys from the Wild Boars football club who were rescued from a flooded Thai cave in 2018, has died in the UK.

Duangpetch, who had moved to the UK to attend a college’s football academy, died on Tuesday, the Zico Foundation, which had supported his scholarship abroad, said. His death was also confirmed by Brooke House college in Leicester.

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Thai activists call for stop to punishment haircuts in schools

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One teacher accused of cutting hair of at least 100 students after relaxing of regulations last month

Activists in Thailand have called for clearer guidance and enforcement to stop the use of humiliating punishment haircuts in schools, after a teacher was accused of cutting the hair of at least 100 students as they sat in rows on the floor.

For decades, students in Thailand have had to comply with strict rules regarding the length and style of their hair. Last month, however, in response to growing protests from young people, the ministry of education revoked its hair regulations, saying schools could instead develop their own policies.

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Kevin Rudd: Australia’s incoming ambassador to US says balloon saga threatens push to ease tensions with China

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Former Labor prime minister says incident has created ‘diplomatic clouds’ that may overshadow efforts to stabilise relationship

The incoming Australian ambassador to the United States, Kevin Rudd, has warned the Chinese balloon saga has created new “diplomatic clouds” that put at risk recent efforts to ease tensions between Beijing and Washington.

In a speech in Brisbane on Wednesday, Rudd also warned against expecting any “softening in China’s ideological cleavage with the west”.

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UK rehearsing economic fallout scenarios if China invades Taiwan

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Exclusive: Whitehall officials planning strategy to tackle disruption to global supply chains in the aftermath of an attack

Whitehall officials have strategised a series of scenarios about the economic fallout that could follow if China were to invade Taiwan, sources have told the Guardian.

Concerns about the major disruption to global supply chains and consequences of any coordinated western response have been examined by civil servants as part of what is said to be routine “forward-scanning” exercises.

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Philippines president summons Chinese ambassador over laser incident

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The Philippines accused a Chinese coastguard ship of directing a ‘military-grade laser light’ at one of its vessels, temporarily blinding a crew member

Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos has summoned the Chinese ambassador to express serious concern over the “increasing frequency and intensity of actions” by China against Philippine vessels.

The meeting came a day after the Philippines accused a Chinese coastguard ship of directing a “military-grade laser light” at one of its vessels, temporarily blinding a crew member and disrupting a mission in the South China Sea.

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Japan says aerial objects spotted in recent years were likely Chinese spy balloons

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Defence ministry demands China’s government ‘confirm the facts’ after analysis of incidents since 2019 find objects were likely used for surveillance

A new analysis of unidentified aerial objects that flew over Japan’s airspace in recent years “strongly” suggests they were Chinese spy balloons, according to Tokyo’s defence ministry.

“After further analysis of specific balloon-shaped flying objects previously identified in Japanese airspace, including those in November 2019, June 2020 and September 2021, we have concluded that the balloons are strongly presumed to be unmanned reconnaissance balloons flown by China,” the defence ministry said in a statement late on Tuesday.

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