Category Archives: China

Weather tracker: Heavy rain alerts in Queensland as floods cut off towns

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Wettest March day for 15 years in some parts of northern Australian state, while storms and hail hit Mediterranean

More heavy rain has hit Queensland, Australia, just weeks after the devastation of Cyclone Alfred. Much of north and central Queensland was put under severe weather alert for heavy rainfall earlier this week, as six-hourly rainfall totals of 30-60mm were anticipated, with the risk of seeing up to 120mm locally in this period.

In the north-west of the state, this rain caused the Haughton River to rise rapidly, with water levels reaching 2.68 metres on Wednesday night, exceeding the 2.5-metre major flood level.

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End of an era for Canada-US ties, says Carney, as allies worldwide decry Trump’s car tariffs

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Canadian PM says Donald Trump has permanently altered relations, as countries around the globe insist import taxes are harmful to all, including Washington

Canada’s prime minister has said the era of deep ties with the US “is over”, as governments from Tokyo to Berlin to Paris sharply criticised Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on car imports, with some threatening retaliatory action.

Mark Carney warned Canadians that Trump had permanently altered relations and that, regardless of any future trade deals, there would be “no turning back”.

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Taiwan jails four soldiers, including three who worked in presidential office, for spying for China

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Soldiers had worked for ‘extremely sensitive and important units’ and ‘their acts betrayed the country’, Taipei court says

A Taiwan court has sentenced four soldiers, including three who worked in the president’s security team, to jail for up to seven years on charges of spying for China.

The men were convicted of violating the national security law by passing “internal military information that should be kept confidential to Chinese intelligence agents for several months” between 2022 and 2024, the Taipei district court said on Wednesday.

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Allegations of Indian interference rock Canada election campaign

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Senior officials warn nations including China, Pakistan and Iran could attempt to subvert vote with sophisticated tools

The spectre of interference by India has already rocked the early days of Canada’s federal election, with officials warning that sophisticated efforts from other hostile nations are expected in the coming weeks.

As Canadians prepare to cast ballots on 28 April, senior officials say that India, China, Pakistan and Iran are all expected to make efforts to subvert the national vote through increasingly sophisticated disinformation campaigns.

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Wong calls ‘reprehensible’ letter targeting Hong Kong activist in Australia a ‘threat to national sovereignty’

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Ted Hui received letter offering reward for information about his family after China accused Australia of interfering with its internal affairs

The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has described another threatening letter sent to an exiled Hong Kong dissident in Australia as “reprehensible”, a “threat to our national sovereignty” and “the safety and security of Australians”.

The anonymous letter, mailed from Hong Kong and sent to Ted Hui’s Adelaide office, offered his colleagues $203,000 for information on his whereabouts and his family. It arrived just days after China’s foreign ministry accused the Albanese government of interfering with its internal affairs.

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China remains top military and cyber threat to US, intelligence report says

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Annual report says Beijing making ‘steady but uneven’ progress on capabilities to capture Taiwan

China remains the United States’ top military and cyber threat, according to a new report by US intelligence agencies that said Beijing was making “steady but uneven” progress on capabilities it could use to capture Taiwan.

China has the ability to hit the United States with conventional weapons, compromise US infrastructure through cyber-attacks, and target its assets in space, as well as seeking to displace the US as the top AI power by 2030, the Annual Threat Assessment by the intelligence community said.

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Trump’s shuttering of global media agency endangers reporters, staff say

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Employees who may have to return home risk death or imprisonment at hands of authoritarian governments

Foreign workers at US government-backed media outlets being cut by the Trump administration say they face deportation to their home countries, where some risk imprisonment or death at the hands of authoritarian governments.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration moved to defund the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), an independent federal agency that oversees the Voice of America (VoA), the US’s largest and oldest international broadcaster, and provides grants to Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe and other news agencies. The agency had around 3,500 employees with an annual budget of $886m in 2024.

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Weather tracker: Severe thunderstorms threaten flooding in northern Australia

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A broad trough has dragged in warm, moist air and offers perfect ingredients for heavy rainfall and even supercells

Northern parts of Australia have been under a flood warning this weekend, with further flooding set to bring havoc to south-eastern parts of the Northern Territory and western Queensland early this week. A broad trough – an area of locally lower pressure – has been moving across northern Australia, dragging in warm, moist air from the Gulf of Carpentaria and providing the perfect ingredients for the formation of severe thunderstorms, and even supercells.

More than 70mm (2.75in) of rain fell in an hour under the slow-moving storms over the weekend in what is usually an arid, low rainfall zone with a desert/grassland climate classification. Some parts of the region have sparse observation data, but some local stations have been able to record more than 100mm within 24 hours, with 132mm of rain at Marion Downs, Queensland.

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Chinese premier meets pro-Trump senator and calls for ‘dialogue over confrontation’

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Meeting comes as China hopes to reach a deal to avert further tariff pressure from Washington

Republican senator Steve Daines, a staunch supporter of Donald Trump, met Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Beijing on Sunday, as China hopes to reach a deal to avert further tariff pressure from Washington.

The meeting marks the first time a US politician has visited China since Trump took office in January. Earlier this month, China’s ministry of foreign affairs promised that China will “fight to the end” with the US in a “tariff war, trade war or any other war”.

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The obscure Jimmy Lai ruling that exposed the erosion of Hong Kong’s rule of law

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The moves that barred the media mogul’s choice of lawyer are immune from legal challenge, giving the national security committee what one expert called ‘the powers of a police state’

The dwindling freedom in Hong Kong over the past few years has been described as “death by a thousand cuts”. Critics have been jailed, elections have been transformed into “patriots only” affairs, journalists have been harassed and hundreds of thousands of people have left.

This week, an obscure legal development has, in the eyes of some legal experts, inflicted another cut on the city’s once revered legal system.

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Dutton calling Albanese ‘limp-wristed’ over Chinese ships ‘unsurprising’, Wong says

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Opposition leader criticised for using historical slur against gay men, with a spokesperson for Dutton saying ‘no offence was intended’

Penny Wong says it’s “unsurprising” Peter Dutton would use an historical slur to attack the prime minister’s response to China, noting the opposition leader had opposed marriage equality.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Dutton said: “It was a phrase that shouldn’t have been used, and no offence was intended from Mr Dutton.”

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Sales of Vietnamese doll plunge over face marking like China’s ‘nine-dash line’

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One version of Baby Three doll appears to bear a mark resembling the shape of the ocean border on which China bases its illegitimate claim to most of the South China Sea

Regional tensions over the South China Sea have tanked the sales of a popular children’s doll in Vietnam after it was put under investigation and accused of being unpatriotic because a design marking appeared to resemble China’s “nine-dash line”.

The Baby Three doll is Chinese-made and had reportedly been hugely popular among children and Gen Z in Vietnam earlier this year. Between September, when it first gained popularity, and December the dolls reportedly generated US$1.6m in sales.

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Foreign minister ‘strongly condemns’ China’s executions of four Canadians

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Mélanie Joly says Ottawa would ask for leniency for other Canadians facing the same fate

Canada has strongly condemned the execution of four of its citizens who were put to death in China on drug-smuggling charges, amid lingering diplomatic tensions between the two countries.

The minister of foreign affairs, Mélanie Joly, said on Wednesday that all four were dual citizens and were executed earlier this year. She added that Ottawa would ask for leniency for other Canadians facing the same fate.

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‘Disgusting’ antisemitic tactics used to threaten exiled Hong Kong man in Adelaide, Jewish group says

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Exclusive: Ted Hui and Melbourne resident Kevin Yam are both subjects of anonymous letters and pamphlets mailed from Chinese-controlled territories

A prominent Jewish group has condemned a “disgusting” attempt to intimidate an exiled pro-democracy campaigner who fled to Adelaide from Hong Kong, with the federal opposition accusing a foreign actor of weaponising antisemitism.

Human Rights Watch said a separate attempt that encouraged people to inform on another dissident, Kevin Yam in Melbourne, was designed to make critics of the Hong Kong government feel “unsafe and hunted, no matter where they are in the world”.

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Chinese state media celebrates Trump’s cuts to Voice of America and Radio Free Asia

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Global Times hails US president’s order to strip back government funding to news organisations he deems ‘radical’

Chinese state media has reacted gleefully to the Trump administration’s decision to slash government funding to media organisations such as Radio Free Asia (RFA) and Voice of America (VOA).

The Global Times, a daily English-language tabloid and Chinese Communist party mouthpiece, celebrated the cuts to the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees broadcasters such as VOA and RFA.

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Chinese EV maker BYD says fast-charging system could be as quick as filling up a tank

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BYD unveils platform with charging power of 1,000 kW, which would be twice as fast as Tesla’s supercharging

The Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD has unveiled a new charging system that it said could make it possible for EVs to charge as quickly as it takes to refill with petrol.

BYD’s Hong Kong-listed shares gained 4.1% on Tuesday to hit a record high of 408.80 Hong Kong dollars, as investors bet that the company could strengthen its already commanding position as one of the world’s biggest electric carmakers.

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Melbourne residents receive letter offering $200k for information on Hong Kong pro-democracy activist

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Exclusive: The anonymous ‘wanted’ letter contained a photograph of Kevin Yam, a lawyer who has criticised the crackdown on dissent in the territory

A small number of Melbourne residents have received anonymous letters purporting to offer a police bounty of $203,000 if they inform on Kevin Yam, an Australian citizen and pro-democracy activist wanted for alleged national security crimes in Hong Kong, linking him to two nearby locations.

A spokesperson for the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, told Guardian Australia the letter was “deeply worrying” and that the matter would be raised directly with officials from China and Hong Kong.

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China plans to ‘vigorously boost consumption’ to shore up economy

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Communist party aims to ‘promote reasonable wage growth’ and to reduce financial burdens amid Trump tariffs

China’s government has announced ambitious plans to “vigorously boost consumption” by putting up pay and reducing financial burdens, in its latest attempt to increase consumer confidence and lift its struggling economy.

The plans, announced by the ruling Chinese Communist party’s (CCP) central committee and state council on Sunday, include aims to “promote reasonable wage growth” and to improve the mechanisms for adjusting the minimum wage.

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Japan to deploy long-range missiles able to hit North Korea and China

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Planned missiles on Kyushu said to be part of ‘counterstrike capabilities’, as fears grow over US security pact

Japan is planning to deploy long-range missiles on its southern island of Kyushu amid concerns around the Trump administration’s stance towards its security pacts and continuing regional tensions.

The missiles, with a range of about 1,000km, would be capable of hitting targets in North Korea and China’s coastal regions, and are due to be deployed next year in two bases with existing missile garrisons. They would bolster the defences of the strategically important Okinawa island chain and are part of Japan’s development of “counterstrike capabilities” in the event it is attacked, according to reports from Kyodo News agency, citing government sources.

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China criticises Hong Kong firm’s sale of majority stake in Panama ports

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Commentary urged CK Hutchison to ‘think twice’ about ‘what position and side they are on’ in sale to US investors

China has criticised the sale of the business that controls ports in Panama to US investors, saying the Hong Kong-based parent company should “think twice” and that the $22.8bn deal is “power politics” that is not in the country’s national interest.

Shares in the Hong Kong-based conglomerate CK Hutchison fell more than 6% on Friday after a critical commentary appeared in the Beijing-backed newspaper Ta Kung Pao in Hong Kong.

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