Category Archives: Asia Pacific

No drones, drinking or dissent: China lays down law ahead of 70th anniversary

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As Beijing prepares to mark founding of PRC with a massive military parade, the Chinese leadership faces its most difficult chapter since 1989

Kites. Balloons. Pigeons. Drones. Alcohol. The list of things that have been banned in the run up to the 70th anniversary of the founding of China keeps growing.

As Beijing seeks to ensure the special day on 1 October goes off without a hint of a hitch, motorists have been told they must not refuel their cars or motorbikes on their own. There must be no use of walkie-talkies and other devices using radio waves. During rehearsals for a military parade to mark the day, those living near Tiananmen Square have been instructed “not to approach the windows” and to keep their curtains closed. In neighbouring Shanxi province, police and other public security staff have been forbidden from drinking spirits since 15 September.

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To Tokyo review – thrilling, chilling horror in the wilderness

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Caspar Seale Jones’s drama about a young woman afraid of her past is a masterclass in engrossing, show-don’t-tell film-making

Here’s one of those rare lowish-budget, entirely off-radar British debuts that feels like a discovery. Adventurous writer-director Caspar Seale Jones has relocated a stock horror starting point – fraught young woman fleeing something abominable in her past – to Japan, which instantly gifts his frames more distinctive vistas than all those potboilers pursuing teenagers through the streets of Peterborough or Stroud. More intriguingly, To Tokyo is in that Japanese folk-horror tradition that yielded Onibaba and Kwaidan, making merry-macabre use of a still relatively unfamiliar set of demons and ghouls.

To Tokyo scores high on dreamy-bordering-on-nightmarish atmosphere. On learning her mother is gravely ill, Alice (Florence Kosky) passes into either a fugue state or an actual wilderness that encompasses forests, deserts and a mountainside hut where she slaps on warpaint and receives offerings of fruit and entrails from whatever dragged her there. For half its running time, To Tokyo is just Kosky, some spectacular landscapes (cinematographer Ralph Messer apparently taking notes from that visual whizz Tarsem Singh) and a properly creepy spectre. Seale Jones makes the bold, rewarding decision not to explain a damn thing. The result is a masterclass in show-don’t-tell cinema.

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Zaha Hadid’s massive ‘starfish’ airport opens in Beijing

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Daxing international, said to be world’s largest single-building terminal, to handle 72m passengers

China has opened a vast, multibillion-dollar airport in the country’s capital, in the run-up to a major political anniversary.

Less than five years after construction began, the 450bn yuan (£50bn) Daxing international airport was officially opened on Wednesday in a ceremony attended by the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping.

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Lambasting China over their emissions might impress the US but it could be costly for Australia | Frank Jotzo

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In many regards, China’s climate action is stronger than that of Australia or America, at much lower levels of development

Visiting the United States, Australia’s prime minister demanded of China “participation in addressing important global environmental challenges” in light of its “new status and responsibilities”. As part of a broad call to expect more of China, the comments on environment caught attention as they were made at the time of the UN climate summit.

Pointing to China’s emissions growth as an excuse for lack of climate action in Australia was in vogue a decade and longer ago. Then, China’s energy use and carbon emissions rose sharply with its investments in factories, infrastructure and housing. But things have changed in China, and there no longer is a formal distinction between climate pledges from developed and developing countries. In many regards, China’s climate action is stronger than that of Australia or America, at much lower levels of development.

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Revealed: how TikTok censors videos that do not please Beijing

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Leak spells out how social media app advances China’s foreign policy aims

TikTok, the popular Chinese-owned social network, instructs its moderators to censor videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, or the banned religious group Falun Gong, according to leaked documents detailing the site’s moderation guidelines.

The documents, revealed by the Guardian for the first time, lay out how ByteDance, the Beijing-headquartered technology company that owns TikTok, is advancing Chinese foreign policy aims abroad through the app.

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New Zealand royal commission: victims in shock at paedophile’s access to inquiry

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Abuse victims shared meals and a motel with man convicted of historical crimes against children

New Zealand’s troubled royal commission into abuse in state care has been dealt another blow, with commissioners revealing survivors unwittingly spent time with a convicted child sex offender tangentially connected to the inquiry.

The royal commission is investigating historic abuse of children and adults by state-run institutions between 1950 and 1999. It is the largest and most complex royal commission ever undertaken in New Zealand, and has been plagued by issues since its inception, including the resignation of its chair, Sir Anand Satyanand, last month.

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Indonesian forest fires putting 10 million children at risk, says Unicef

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Millions aged under five are particularly at risk from the slash and burn fires due to undeveloped immune systems

Indonesian forest fires are putting nearly 10 million children at risk due to air pollution, the United Nations has warned.

The fires have been spewing toxic haze over south-east Asia in recent weeks, closing schools and airports, with people rushing to buy face masks and seek medical treatment for respiratory ailments.

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Uighur children are being separated from their families. Guterres must denounce China | Tahir Imin Uighurian

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Eleven children from my family have been taken from their parents in Xinjiang – the UN chief must not remain silent

It has already been a year since the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination said it had credible evidence that more than 1 million ethnic Uighurs and minorities in China were being held in internment camps and forced into “political camps for indoctrination”, turning the Uighur autonomous region into a “no rights zone”.

As the United Nations General Assembly meets this week, UN chief António Guterres should denounce China’s crimes against Uighurs. On Tuesday, the US led more than 30 countries in condemning what it called China’s “horrific campaign of repression” against Muslims in Xinjiang. Assistant secretary of state John Sullivan said the UN and its member states had “a singular responsibility to speak up when survivor after survivor recounts the horrors of state repression”.

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Family demands answers after British resident shot dead by police in Malaysia

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During holiday, Janarthanan Vijayaratnam was killed with two other men and his wife is now missing

Relatives have demanded answers after a British resident was shot dead by police while on holiday in Malaysia, and his wife went missing at the same time.

Janarthanan Vijayaratnam, a 40-year-old Sri Lankan national and UK resident was fatally shot by police in an apparent car chase and shootout in the early hours of 14 September, alongside his Malaysian brother-in-law and a second Malaysian man. He was on holiday with his wife and three children, aged five, 10 and 17, at the time.

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Thousands protest against new criminal code in Indonesia

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At least 40 injured in student protests over plans that include outlawing extramarital sex

Thousands of students have taken to the streets in Indonesia to protest against a “disastrous” draft criminal code that would include outlawing extramarital sex and a controversial new law that could weaken the nation’s anti-corruption body.

On Tuesday, the second consecutive day of protests, thousands of students gathered outside the parliament building in Jakarta, calling for the government to suspend its plans to ratify the draft code. Police fired teargas and water cannon to disperse the demonstrators.

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Cloud Gate avengers: the band of elastic superheroes who transformed Taiwan

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Lin Hwai-min has spent 46 years tackling revolt, repression and rice in his fast-changing homeland. Now he is handing over his dance-theatre juggernaut to a former slipper seller

It’s a hot, humid evening and I’m sitting on the ground with around 50,000 other people, all about to watch Cloud Gate Dance Theatre give its annual outdoor performance in Taipei. The atmosphere in Liberty Plaza is extraordinary. I can’t think of another dance company in the world that could draw so large and so festive a crowd. Most of the audience have brought picnics, many enduring a day of rainstorms to bag a position close to the stage. Yet, although this is a special performance – one of the last before Cloud Gate’s founding director Lin Hwai-min steps down – such devotion has been normal for the company almost since it was formed.

Cloud Gate was named as the outstanding company at the British National Dance awards last year and is a headline attraction of the new Sadler’s Wells season. Lin’s success in turning a small experimental dance company into a national icon and international brand is a remarkable story. Now 71, with a fierce energy and a huge crinkled smile, Lin acknowledges that he had almost no experience of professional dance when he staged his first programme back in 1973, and discovered that he’d sold 3,000 tickets for just two shows. “I almost had a nervous breakdown,” he says. “I thought, ‘My god, now I have to learn how to choreograph.’”

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Video of police beating protester sparks outrage in Hong Kong

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‘Protect the children’ group contradicts police claims officers were only kicking a ‘yellow object’

A video showing Hong Kong police officers beating a man who had been attempting to protect young protesters has given rise to another wave of outrage at police.

Two widely shared videos filmed over the weekend show a man in a yellow high-vis vest laying on the ground while being repeatedly kicked and hit by a group of officers.

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Indonesian forest fires burn causing toxic haze across south-east Asia – in pictures

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Forest fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan have been spewing toxic haze across south-east Asia, forcing the closure of schools and airports, and prompting Indonesian authorities to deploy thousands of firefighters to tackle them. There has been an increase in reports of respiratory illnesses

• Red skies cover parts of Indonesia as rainforest fire haze crisis worsens – video

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Scott Morrison ducks questions on Australia’s emissions strategy for 2050

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UN climate summit focus is on net zero by 2050 but Australian PM says challenge ‘not just about climate change’

Scott Morrison has ducked questions about when his government will develop an emissions reduction strategy for 2050, despite signing on at the Pacific Islands Forum to a communique pledging to develop one next year.

The Australian prime minister is also copping flak at home for his decision to signal in a speech in Chicago that China needed to be treated like a developed economy both in global trade and climate change negotiations – meaning Beijing would need to make a significant commitment towards emissions reduction.

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Teargas, flames and barricades: Hong Kong’s weekend of protest – in pictures

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Protests in Hong Kong show no signs of abating as demonstrators took to the streets in the 16th consecutive weekend of unrest. Tensions are escalating in the run-up to a significant political anniversary for Beijing, and riot police fired teargas, pepper spray and bean bag rounds on protesters who vandalised metro stations and set improvised barricades ablaze.

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Footage shows hundreds of blindfolded and shackled prisoners in China – video

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Drone footage has emerged showing police leading hundreds of blindfolded and shackled men from a train in what is believed to be a transfer of inmates in Xinjiang. The video, posted anonymously on YouTube last week, shows what appear to be Uighur Muslims or people from other minorities wearing blue and yellow uniforms, with shaven heads, their eyes covered, sitting in rows on the ground and later being led away by police. Prisoners in China are often transferred with handcuffs and masks covering their faces

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Hong Kong protesters trample Chinese flag as protests continue – video

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Protesters in Hong Kong trampled on a Chinese flag in a shopping mall and lit a fire on a main street as pro-democracy demonstrations took a violent turn  again. The day’s action began peacefully as protesters filled a mall in the Sha Tin district but police ended up firing teargas at protesters who used umbrellas to protect themselves

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Hong Kong police and demonstrators clash as tensions escalate

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Confrontations come in run-up to 70th anniversary of People’s Republic of China

Protesters and police have clashed in Hong Kong in another weekend of unrest as tensions escalate in the run-up to a significant political anniversary for Beijing.

Riot police fired teargas, pepper spray and bean bag rounds on protesters who vandalised metro stations and set improvised barricades ablaze in several flashpoints across the city.

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‘Never surrender’: Hong Kong’s protest graffiti – in pictures

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It has been more than 100 days since anti-government protesters took to the streets of Hong Kong, calling for the complete withdrawal of a controversial extradition bill, an independent inquiry into police brutality, the retraction of the word ‘riot’ to describe the rallies, and genuine universal suffrage. Even though the Hong Kong government formally withdrew the controversial bill this month, many protesters have vowed to continue the fight until all their demands are met. Expressing their opinions on the streets, many young protesters have left their imprints on the roads, walls and buildings by spray-painting slogans and symbols that resonate with their discontent against the government

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Pro-China supporters tear down Hong Kong’s ‘Lennon Walls’

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Action against symbol of democracy protests could lead to renewed trouble on city’s streets

Groups of pro-China supporters have pulled down “Lennon Walls” of anti-government protest messages in Hong Kong, raising the possibility of clashes with democracy supporters and another weekend of trouble.

By mid-morning on Saturday, dozens of demonstrators vowing support for Beijing had started to tear down the large mosaics of colourful posted notes calling for democracy and denouncing perceived Chinese meddling in the former British colony.

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