Category Archives: China

‘Bad faith’ US prosecutors misled Canada in Huawei case, court hears in final arguments

Posted on by

Lawyers for Meng Wanzhou, whose detention has thrown US-China feud into focus, urge judge to throw out extradition request

Lawyers for Meng Wanzhou say American prosecutors acted in “bad faith” and abused the Canadian justice system when they pursued the Huawei chief financial officer, in final arguments of the telecoms executive’s closely watched extradition proceedings.

In a Vancouver courtroom on Wednesday, Meng’s legal team argued that American prosecutors misled the Canadian justice system in their legal summary of the allegations against Meng. Her team says this abuse of process obliges the judge overseeing the case to toss out the extradition request against Meng and set her free.

Continue reading...

With Delta variant spreading is China ‘zero tolerance’ approach over?

Posted on by

Now it’s clear the virus is not going away debate about what approach the country should adopt next is emerging

As the highly transmissible Delta variant continues to spread across at least 17 provinces, China is facing a new dilemma: is its once-successful “zero tolerance” approach to containing the spread of the virus over, and what comes next?

Unlike Britain and Singapore, where officials have explicitly encouraged people to “learn to live with the virus”, China has yet to officially shift its messaging.

Continue reading...

Coronavirus live news: research shows extent of mental health impact in Europe

Posted on by

Pan-European research shows psychiatric services across the continent reduced level of care

UK Government announces changes to travel rules

Millions of Britons have been given the green light to travel to Europe’s holiday hotspots, avoiding quarantine on return from France and Spain where concerns have been raised about Covid variants.

Related: Fully vaccinated Britons returning from France and Spain will not need to quarantine

Australian authorities warn Covid cases will rise despite lockdowns

Coronavirus cases in Australia, while still low, are rising in some areas despite weeks of lockdown, with authorities warning that infections will rise further because of the more contagious Delta variant.

Continue reading...

China shuts down transport routes as it battles worst Covid outbreak in months

Posted on by

Every province has advised residents not to leave as flights are cancelled and Beijing suspends more than a dozen rail lines

China has dramatically tightened travel restrictions as it seeks to control the country’s worst outbreak in months, with hundreds of Delta variant cases linked to airport employees.

The latest outbreak has so far infected more than 400 people in 25 cities, including the capital city Beijing, and in Wuhan for the first time since it contained the first Covid-19 outbreak last year. Cases have been reported in 17 of the 31 provinces.

Continue reading...

China’s crackdown on tutoring leaves parents with new problems

Posted on by

Public largely sceptical about effectiveness of move last month aimed at reducing pressure in hyper-competitive education field

In 2018, Ms Hu spent a third of her annual income sending her child to summer school in Shanghai. In the following year, the cost went up. Still, she and her partner paid the fees, such is the competitiveness in Chinese children’s education.

“My son started to learn English at age five. I feared he would be left behind if we don’t do so,” she said.

Continue reading...

Will Taiwan’s Olympic win over China herald the end of ‘Chinese Taipei’?

Posted on by

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.

Continue reading...

Tunisia shows that democracy will struggle if it can’t deliver prosperity

Posted on by

Political liberty has been overturned – with majority support. That will delight authoritarians everywhere

Implicit in US and western support for pro-democracy movements and transitions around the world is an assumption that, given a free choice, a system of elected, representative government is what people will always naturally prefer. But what if this assumption is wrong? What if a majority believes democracy doesn’t work for them?

Emerging testimony from Tunisia, the latest country to face a crisis over how it is run, suggests many citizens welcomed the forceful suspension of a democratically elected parliament that had failed to address people’s problems and was widely reviled as a self-serving oligarchy.
Mohammed Ali, 33, from Ben Guerdane, seems to typify this view. “I think what happened is good. I think that’s what all the people want,” he told the Guardian after last week’s surprise move by Kais Saied, Tunisia’s president, to seize power and impose a state of emergency. Local politicians and western critics called it a coup.

Continue reading...

Pop star Kris Wu detained on suspicion of rape

Posted on by

Beijing police detain the ex-boy band member after social media allegations of date rape

Chinese-Canadian pop star Kris Wu has been detained by Beijing police on suspicion of rape.

The 30-year-old former member of the Korean boyband EXO had previously been accused by a teenager of having sex with her while she was drunk. Wu denied the accusation.

Continue reading...

Tibet and China clash over next reincarnation of the Dalai Lama

Posted on by

The spiritual leader has mused that he may return as a woman. But his succession has turned into a political battle

A couple of years ago, during a meeting of Tibetan leaders in Dharamshala in India, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, was asked about his reincarnation. Addressing the room of monks, religious teachers and Tibetan politicians, the Dalai Lama asked them to look into his eyes. “Do you think it’s time now?” he asked.

It was a meeting that would end with the Tibetan leaders agreeing that the issue of reincarnation was one that would be decided only by the Dalai Lama himself. But China, which annexed Tibet in 1951 and has retained tight control over the region ever since, has other ideas. It insists that the choice of the next Dalai Lama lies only with China, and have even enshrined this right into Chinese law.

Continue reading...

Hong Kong man arrested for allegedly booing Chinese anthem while watching Olympics

Posted on by

Man allegedly also waved colonial-era flags while watching fencer Edgar Cheung’s medal ceremony at a mall

Hong Kong police have arrested a man on suspicion of insulting the national anthem, after he allegedly booed the Chinese national anthem while watching an Olympic event at a mall.

The 40-year-old man was detained on Friday after allegedly waving colonial-era Hong Kong flags and booing, while urging others to join him in insulting the song, according to a police statement posted on Facebook.

Continue reading...

UK says it has no plans for South China Sea confrontation after Beijing warning

Posted on by

Naval strike group is sailing through waters heavily contested between China and neighbouring countries

Britain has said it has no plans to stage a naval confrontation with China in the South China Sea and that it aims to send its carrier strike group in the most direct route across the contested body of water from Singapore to the Philippine Sea.

The cooling message emerged hours after China’s military and state media warned the UK against provocation as the group, led by Royal Navy aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth, undertakes what had been expected to be a more assertive deployment.

Continue reading...

China’s talks with Taliban could be a positive thing, US says

Posted on by

Delegation from militants meets Chinese foreign minister as Beijing seeks to extend influence in Afghanistan

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has said that Beijing’s interest in Afghanistan could be a “positive thing”, after China gave a warm and very public welcome to a senior Taliban delegation.

Nine officials from the militant group, which is eager for political recognition to bolster the impact of its military victories across much of Afghanistan, met China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, in the coastal city of Tianjin on Wednesday.

Continue reading...

China’s US ambassador pick shines light on debate over ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy

Posted on by

Analysis: Xi Jinping wants his country to appear more lovable, but critics say Beijing’s efforts are too superficial

China’s appointment of a new ambassador to the US has shone a light on the ongoing debate among analysts about how Beijing communicates with its biggest competitor, the future of its “wolf warrior” diplomacy and how Xi Jinping’s call to “tell a good China story” might work in practice.

The debate over the “wolf warrior” style – under which, as the Chinese ambassador to Sweden said on Swedish public radio in 2019, “we treat our friends with fine wine, but for our enemies we have shotguns” – comes amid a burst of positive publicity that delighted Beijing’s propaganda officials: the foreign coverage of the herd of 15 wandering Asian elephants in southern China that captured the country’s imagination and led Chinese vloggers to travel hundreds of miles to take selfies with them.

Continue reading...

City of Nanjing isolated as China fights worst Covid outbreak in months

Posted on by

Flights have reportedly been cancelled and checkpoints set up to verify travellers’ health status amid Delta

Health authorities in China have set up checkpoints and reportedly suspended flights in the eastern city of Nanjing in the country’s worst coronavirus emergency in months.

More than 170 people have been diagnosed with the Delta variant in the past 10 days. The main outbreak is centred on Nanjing, in Jiangsu province, but connected cases have reportedly been identified in Beijing and other provinces including Anhui, Liaoning, Sichuan and Guangdong.

Continue reading...

Chinese billionaire pig farmer jailed for ‘provoking trouble’

Posted on by

Agricultural mogul Sun Dawu given 18-year sentence in case observers believe was politically motivated

Sun Dawu, a Chinese billionaire pig farmer and agricultural mogul, has been sentenced after weeks of hearings in secret to 18 years in prison and fined 3.11m yuan (£345,000) for a catalogue of crimes including “provoking trouble”, in a case observers believe was politically motivated.

The court in Gaobeidian, near Beijing, said Sun was guilty of crimes including “gathering a crowd to attack state organs”, “obstructing government administration” and “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, a catch-all term often used against human rights figures and dissidents.

Continue reading...

Morocco authorities arrest Uyghur activist at China’s request

Posted on by

Supporters fear Yidiresi Aishan will be extradited and say arrest is politically driven

Moroccan authorities have arrested a Uyghur activist in exile because of a Chinese terrorism warrant distributed by Interpol, according to information from Moroccan police and a rights group that tracks people detained by China.

Activists fear Yidiresi Aishan will be extradited to China and say the arrest is politically driven as part of a broader Chinese campaign to hunt down perceived dissidents outside its borders.

Continue reading...

Press groups raise alarm over threats to foreign media in China

Posted on by

Reporters from international outlets have suffered worsening intimidation while covering Henan floods

Press groups have expressed alarm at the worsening intimidation of foreign media in China, often driven by government officials and organisations.

As recovery and rescue efforts continue in Henan province after last week’s deadly floods, groups including Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC) have condemned recent harassment and threats towards journalists covering the disaster.

Continue reading...

‘What can we do?’ Chinese discuss role of climate crisis in deadly floods

Posted on by

Media and citizens have begun asking if China has properly prepared for climate emergency

At about 5pm last Tuesday, as heavy rainfall continued to pound her apartment building in Zhengzhou, the climate policy researcher Zhang Jin headed out to her local supermarket. But the buns and vegetables were almost all gone, and the queue in the supermarket was “over a hundred metres’ long”, she later recalled.

Related: China floods: thousands trapped without fresh water as rain moves north

Continue reading...

US accused of ‘demonising’ China as high-level talks begin in Tianjin

Posted on by

Vice foreign minister Xie Feng described relations between the superpowers as a ‘stalemate’ in discussions with US deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman

China has blamed the US for what it called a “stalemate” in bilateral relations and accused Washington of “demonising” Beijing as high-level face-to-face talks began in the Chinese city of Tianjin.

Vice foreign minister Xie Feng urged the US “to change its highly misguided mindset and dangerous policy,” the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Continue reading...