Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Decline in exports from Taiwan combines with port closures in China and Japan to hinder growth
A recovery in global trade during the summer is beginning to wane, according to some early warning signs pointing to the negative effects of widespread Covid-19 outbreaks in the manufacturing centres of east Asia.
A dramatic decline in exports from Taiwan, which makes many of the computer chips used in cars and mobile phones, has combined with temporary port closures and lockdowns in Australia, China and Japan to cut the level of global trade.
Taiwanese company TiSPACE is planning three launches from South Australia in 2021, amid hopes the event will provide a boost to Australia’s space industry
The pet-mad population reacted with fury after the animals were put down due to biosecurity concerns
A decision by Taiwan authorities to euthanise 154 cats found in an attempted smuggling operation has sparked outcry and calls to change laws and increase penalties.
Coast guards intercepted a fishing vessel from China on Thursday about 40 nautical miles off the coast of Kaohsiung, on Taiwan’s southern tip. After Covid screening, officials boarded the fishing boat the following day and discovered 62 cages containing the cats, including Russian Blue, Ragdoll, Persian American Shorthair, and British Shorthair breeds.
A familiar face at pro-democracy rallies in the city, Wong felt forced to flee after being named in a hit list of cultural undesirables
For much of the last year Kacey Wong was waking up in Hong Kong and checking social media to see if friends had been arrested overnight. On a good morning Wong might see a photo of an oval plane window looking out over clouds or a foreign airport, a pictorial sign they had fled to safety.
Army says warships, anti-submarine aircraft and fighter planes sent to the south-west and south-east of island
China has launched live-fire air and sea exercises near Taiwan in response to what it called “external interference and provocations by Taiwan independence forces”.
According to a statement from Col Shi Yi, the spokesperson of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Eastern Theatre Command, warships, anti-submarine aircraft and fighter planes were dispatched to the south-west and south-east of Taiwan on Tuesday.
Broadcaster says relations with China and Russia are fraught as its correspondent Sarah Rainsford is forced out of Moscow
BBC news executives vowed on Saturday night to continue to report from Russia and China despite growing fears that both countries are becoming increasingly difficult to cover.
After a surprise Russian move last week that will force correspondent Sarah Rainsford permanently out of Moscow at the end of the month, a senior figure in BBC news said that Russia’s decision not to renew her visa marks a new low in relations. “Efforts are being made to keep communications open but the feeling is that Sarah is sadly right when she says she doesn’t see Russia changing its mind,” he said.
Victory in Tokyo has reignited debate over a decades-old compromise with the island’s goliath neighbour
In the hours between Taiwan winning gold and silver in Olympic badminton on the weekend, local courts in Taipei were packed with enthusiastic young players. The nail-biting matches had lit a fire of sporting patriotism – not least because both were against China, Taiwan’s goliath neighbour, which claims Taiwan as a province it must retake.
The doubles win by Lee Yang and Wang Chi-lin was Taiwan’s second gold medal, after Kuo Hsing-Chun won in weightlifting, and added to its biggest medal haul in Olympic history. Taiwan sits 18th in the table. China is first. Nevertheless, social media was awash with celebrations.
We should be suspicious of the role of the Chinese Communist party in the harvesting of genetic data from unborn babies, argues William Matthews
In her column (What does the Chinese military want with your unborn baby’s genetic data?, 10 July), Arwa Mahdawi suggested that the alleged involvement of the People’s Liberation Army (which is directly answerable to the Chinese Communist party) with BGI’s data-gathering (likewise answerable as a China-based company) is essentially equivalent to data-gathering by western companies. To suggest that the former case is worse, she argued, “smacks of Sinophobia”.
As a scholar of China, I cannot agree. While the harvesting of genetic data by any company is frightening and fraught with ethical issues, it should be obvious that this is a false equivalence. It is undoubtedly worse if genetic data is gathered by a company which must also comply with the rule of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) and its military-industrial complex, a regime which harvests and aggregates data on its citizens on a massive scale and uses it directly to implement the most repressive system of social control on earth in Xinjiang.
Major Taiwanese tech companies have inked a deal to buy 10m vaccine doses for Taiwan, sidestepping months of complicated geopolitical wrangling between Beijing and Taipei.
The US$350m purchase from German manufacturer BioNTech, is split between TSMC, the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturer, and Foxconn, one of the world’s largest contract electronics makers, and its charity foundation. The two companies will donate the vaccines to Taiwan’s central epidemic command centre for distribution.
For much of this year, I’ve lived a mostly Covid-free life. Taiwan wasn’t just lucky. It had been traumatised by Sars, which it didn’t handle well, and established comprehensive epidemic plans for the next time. There was no talk of herd immunity or accepting mass deaths as inevitable. As far as Taiwan was concerned, Covid-19 wasn’t getting in, and if it tried they were ready.
Taiwan took full advantage of being an island to quarantine itself from the world. It funnelled entrants through a tightly controlled system defined by extreme caution.
More than four in 10 Australians think Chinese are coming and analysts say that’s due to government’s ‘drums of war’ rhetoric
More than four in 10 Australians are worried China may attack Australia, according to new polling, expressing a level of fear that is nearly as high as among Taiwan’s population.
The Australia Institute, a progressive thinktank that commissioned polling in both Australia and Taiwan, said the “astounding” findings may be partly explained by some government figures in Canberra “beating the drums of war”.
Kurt Campbell says Beijing assessing world’s response to Hong Kong crackdown to understand potential reaction on Taiwan
A senior US official has warned China not to seek emboldenment from its Hong Kong crackdown to move against Taiwan, as Japan’s deputy leader said it would defend Taiwan against an attack.
Kurt Campbell, coordinator for Indo-Pacific affairs on the US national security council, told a forum on Tuesday the US had tried to send a “clear message of deterrence across the Taiwan Strait” and any attempt by China to move on Taiwan would be “catastrophic”.
Beijing lodges diplomatic protest with Japan after defence minister calls island a ‘democratic country’
China and Japan are once again embroiled in a diplomatic row over Taiwan, in the latest example of Beijing’s extreme sensitivity over the status of the self-ruled island and Tokyo’s changing attitude towards Beijing.
Speaking to the US conservative thinktank Hudson Institute on Monday, Japan’s state minister of defence, Yasuhide Nakayama, spoke of a growing threat posed by Chinese and Russian collaboration, and said it was necessary to “wake up” to Beijing’s pressure on Taiwan and protect the island “as a democratic country”.
Hong Kong demanded Taiwanese staff sign commitment to Beijing’s one-China principle in visa renewals
Taiwan says it has pulled back all but one staff member from its Hong Kong trade office after they refused to sign a commitment to the one-China principle required for visa renewals.
The officials returned from Hong Kong on Sunday, leaving just one colleague at the office, which acts as Taiwan’s diplomatic presence.
Taiwan has reacted with an outpouring of thanks to the United States for shipping 2.5m Covid-19 vaccine doses to the island, more than doubling its arsenal as it deals with a rise in domestic infections.
Washington, competing with Beijing to deepen geopolitical clout through “vaccine diplomacy”, initially had promised to donate 750,000 doses but increased that number as President Joe Biden’s administration advances its pledge to send 80m US-made shots around the world.
The island’s Indigenous people are in a race against time to save their native tongues before they are lost forever
In a modest conference room near the edge of Taiwan’s Sun Moon Lake, Panu Kapamumu holds up an unwieldy A3 booklet. The home-printed document contains every known word of Thao, the language of his Indigenous tribe. Kapamumu runs his finger down the list, reading out a selection of Thao words, meanings and translations. He reads slowly and purposefully, a man in his sixties but still just a student of his mother tongue.
While most of the world suffered through hundreds of millions of cases and millions of deaths from Covid-19, the 23.5 million people in Taiwan largely lived a normal life, thanks to a well-documented strong and early response that saw it go 250 days without a single local case. It lobbied for inclusion in the World Health Organization’s decision-making body off the back of its undeniable success and expertise under the slogan “Taiwan can help”.
But now the tables have turned and the island itself is in need of assistance, after an outbreak that started among airline staff in April spread across the island. The government appears to have been caught short by something it thought would never happen: the poster child for outbreak prevention had apparently failed to fully prepare an outbreak response.
Brazil’s health ministry has reported 37,156 new cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours, and 1,010 deaths, according to Reuters:
The South American country has now registered 16,984,218 cases since the pandemic began, while the death toll has risen to 474,414, according to ministry data, in the world’s third worst outbreak outside the United States and India and its second-deadliest.
Portugal’s foreign minister has said that Spain’s decision to require a negative coronavirus test for people crossing the border must be “a mistake”, Reuters reported Lusa news agency saying on Monday:
Portugal had asked Spanish authorities for clarification on “what could only have been a mistake”, Portugal’s foreign minister Augusto Santos Silva said.
“We have asked Spanish authorities for clarification and await it being granted as quickly as possible, because if not we will need to adopt equivalent reciprocal measures,” Santos Silva said, adding that “the epidemiological situation in Spain is, at the moment, worse than what we are living in Portugal.”
The United States will donate 750,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses to Taiwan as part of the country’s plan to share shots globally, offering a much-needed boost to the island’s fight against the pandemic.
Taiwan is dealing with a spike in domestic cases but has been affected, like many places, by global vaccines shortages. It has also claimed that China is hindering its attempts to secure doses internationally.