Category Archives: China

Chinese Uyghur policy causes ‘unprecedented’ fall in Xinjiang birthrates

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Research finds figure fell by almost half between 2017-2019, backing claims of coercive fertility policies

Birthrates in Xinjiang fell by almost half in the two years after the Chinese government implemented policies to reduce the number of babies born to Uyghur and other minority Muslim families, new research has claimed.

The figures show unprecedented declines which were more extreme than any global region at any time in the 71 years of UN fertility data collection, including during genocides in Rwanda and Cambodia, according to the authors of the report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (Aspi).

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The Lady in the Portrait review – painterly pageantry in a Chinese royal court

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Fan Bingbing stars as an emperor’s wife having her portrait painted in this artful yet inert period drama

This French-Chinese co-production about an earlier French-Chinese collaboration offers handsome pageantry amid its lavish recreation of 18th-century imperial court life, but it isn’t quite enough to compensate for a puttering narrative motor. Longtime Apichatpong Weerasethakul producer Charles de Meaux has turned director with a far eastern equivalent of Girl With a Pearl Earring – another decorous, ever so slightly sleepy matinee sit.

The film’s subject is Jean-Denis Attiret (played by Melvil Poupaud), a real-life French Jesuit missionary who spent half of his 60-odd years employed as the Chinese court painter. His trickiest commission, recalled here, came from the emperor’s bored wife (Fan Bingbing), thirsting to preserve an image that might turn her indifferent husband’s head.

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Why China and east Asia’s ageing population threatens global Covid recovery

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Analysis: Beijing’s census data confirms trend reflected across a region that is looked to as engine of post-pandemic growth

For many years China watchers have been concerned that its ageing population will slow economic growth, causing social as well as political problems. So today’s census data may be an alarm bell for leaders in Beijing.

But it is not just China that is witnessing this trajectory. Most countries in east Asia, even without fertility control policies such as China’s one-child or two-child policies, share the same predicament: how to continue economic growth while encouraging people to have more children?

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China tourist left clinging to 100m-high bridge after glass panels smash

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Man rescued after sudden gusts shattered panels on bridge in Longjing city

A man was left stranded on a glass-bottomed suspension bridge in north-eastern China after sudden gale-force winds shattered the transparent panels around him.

The man was on the 100-metre-high bridge at Piyan Mountain in Longjing city, when it was hit by sudden strong weather, the local tourism department said.

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Coronavirus live news: Johnson to announce timetable for lifting England restrictions

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People to mix indoors from next week ... China to set up ‘separation line’ on Everest peak to stop Nepal Covid spread ... calls grow for India national lockdown. Follow latest updates

Australia’s international travel ban is based on politics and not science, according to health experts who say there are a number of countries Australia could safely resume travel with this year.

On Sunday the treasurer Josh Frydenberg told SBS News that the budget expectation is that international travel will begin in 2022, with further detail expected when the budget is released on Tuesday. Meanwhile the prime minister Scott Morrison posted on Facebook that borders would only open “when it is safe to do so”, saying during media interviews over the weekend that Australians do not have an “appetite” for opening borders if it means further lockdowns and restrictions.

Related: ‘Politics rules’: Australia’s international travel ban not based on science, health experts say

The reopening of outdoor bars and restaurants in France will go ahead on 19 May 19, health minister Olivier Veran has said on Monday, as the number of Covid cases in intensive care eases.

“The prospects look rather good but we must not let down the guard,” Veran told LCI television.

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Anger as Chinese safari park kept leopard breakout from the public for nearly a week

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Three leopards from Hangzhou Safari Park were spotted by villagers on 1 May, but the park only reported the missing leopards on Saturday

A search for the last of three leopards that escaped from a safari park in eastern China was ongoing, authorities said Monday, as the park came under fire for concealing the breakout for nearly a week.

The three leopards from the Hangzhou Safari Park were spotted by villagers as early as 1 May, according to the state-owned Global Times newspaper. However, the safari park only reported the missing leopards and alerted the public on Saturday.

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Footage shows debris from China’s largest rocket falling to Earth – video

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The remnants of China’s largest rocket plummeted back to Earth, plunging into the Indian Ocean near the Maldives, according to Chinese state media and people in Oman and Jordan who captured footage of its light in the sky.

Most of the rocket debris burned up in the atmosphere, according to the China Manned Space Engineering Office

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‘Irresponsible’: Nasa chides China as rocket debris lands in Indian Ocean

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US agency accuses Beijing of failing to meet expected standards regarding its space debris

Remnants of China’s biggest rocket have landed in the Indian Ocean, ending days of speculation over where the debris would hit and drawing US criticism over a lack of transparency.

The coordinates given by Chinese state media, citing the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO), put the point of impact west of the Maldives archipelago.

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Refugees and the Armenian genocide: human rights this fortnight in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Colombia to China

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US military has ‘no plan’ to shoot down debris from Chinese rocket

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Defense secretary is hopeful the rocket will land in the ocean; Aerospace Corp said it expects the debris to hit the Pacific near the equator

The US military has no plan to shoot down the remnants of a large Chinese rocket expected to plunge back through the atmosphere this weekend, the defense secretary said on Thursday.

Speaking with reporters, Lloyd Austin said the hope was the rocket would land in the ocean and that the latest estimate was that it would come down between Saturday and Sunday.

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Where is New Zealand’s ‘values-based’ foreign policy when it comes to the Uyghurs? | Guled Mire

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Other small nations also feel vulnerable to Chinese aggression but it hasn’t stopped them speaking out over the Uyghur genocide

After the Christchurch terror attacks, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern donned a hijab as she comforted the relatives of the 51 Muslims who were killed simply for practising their faith. The image spread across the world and she was lavished with international praise.

Yet her apparent turning away from the active erasure of China’s Uyghur Muslim minority population may undo that reputation. On Wednesday, New Zealand’s parliament backed away from calling what is happening in Xinjiang a “genocide,” opting instead for the watered-down language of “human rights breaches”.

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Beijing accuses G7 ministers of interfering in China’s affairs

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Foreign ministry responds to west’s human rights claims, saying countries should ‘face up to their own problems’

China has rejected accusations of human rights abuse and economic coercion, made by G7 foreign ministers, accusing them of “blatantly meddling” in China’s internal affairs, calling their remarks groundless.

“Attempts to disregard the basic norms of international relations and to create various excuses to interfere in China’s internal affairs, undermine China’s sovereignty and smear China’s image will never succeed,” said the foreign ministry spokesperson, Wang Wenbin. “They should not criticise and interfere with other countries with a superior mentality, and undermine the current top priority of international anti-epidemic cooperation.”

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Hotlines ‘ring out’: China’s military crisis strategy needs rethink, says Biden Asia chief

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Kurt Campbell says Beijing has been increasing military activities without taking measures to reduce the chance of miscalculation

The Biden administration’s top Asia official has warned about the absence of a crisis-communications channel between the US and China at a time of rising military tensions over Taiwan and the South China Sea.

Military and leadership hotlines have been established at various points in the fraught history of the relationship, but Kurt Campbell, the White House Asia “tsar” responsible for coordinating policy across the administration, said Beijing had shown no interest in using them, out of a preference for uncertainty. The hotline simply rings out in “empty rooms”, he said.

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Falling Chinese rocket to crash to Earth on weekend as US calls for ‘responsible space behaviours’

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Communist party newspaper claims Long March 5B should easily burn up in atmosphere but expert warns pieces will reach Earth

The White House has called for “responsible space behaviours” as a Chinese rocket, thought to be out of control, looks set to crash back to Earth on Saturday, US time.

The US Space Command is tracking debris from the Long March 5B, which last week launched the main module of China’s first permanent space station into orbit. The roughly 30-metre (100ft) long stage would be among the biggest space debris to fall to Earth.

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EU ‘suspends’ ratification of China investment deal after sanctions

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Massive trade agreement stalls after tit-for-tat sanctions prompted by Chinese policy in Xinjiang

The European Commission has said that efforts to ratify a massive investment deal with China have been in effect suspended after tit-for-tat sanctions were imposed over China’s treatment of its Uyghur population in March.

“We now in a sense have suspended … political outreach activities from the European Commission side,” said the commission’s executive vice-president, Valdis Dombrovskis, on Tuesday. He said that the current state of relations between Brussels and Beijing was “not conducive” for the ratification of the deal, which is known as EU-China comprehensive agreement on investment.

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New Zealand draws back from calling Chinese abuses of Uyghurs genocide

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Parliament will not debate motion and will instead discuss rights abuses in more general terms

New Zealand’s parliament will not debate a motion that would label the abuses of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang, China, as acts of genocide.

Parliament opted instead on Tuesday to water down the language, and discuss concerns about human rights abuses in the region in more general terms.

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New Zealand’s differences with China becoming ‘harder to reconcile’, Jacinda Ardern says

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Prime minister has been coming under pressure from allies to take a tougher approach towards country’s largest trading partner

New Zealand’s differences with China are becoming “harder to reconcile,” the prime minister Jacinda Ardern has said, as she called on China “to act in the world in ways that are consistent with its responsibilities as a growing power”.

Ardern’s comments were made as New Zealand’s government comes under increasing pressure, both internally and from international allies, to take a firmer stance on concerns over human rights abuses of Uyghur people in China’s Xinjiang province. Last week, the Act party presented a motion for New Zealand’s parliament to debate whether the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang constitutes genocide – a motion that Labour will discuss this week.

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Biden and Xi talk of a clash of civilisations. But the real shared goal is dominance | Richard McGregor

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The US president has challenged the idea that the ‘east is rising, the west declining’. Instead, he insists that America’s day is far from done

Finally, we have arrived, not at a clash of civilisations, but at the clash of civilisations. Or so President Joe Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress would have you believe. The US versus China. The west versus the east. Democracy versus autocracy. Biden’s speech last week was rich in laying down markers for Washington in the contest of the century.

“They’re going to write about this point in history,” Biden told a gathering of US television news anchors before his speech, in remarks later released by the White House. “Not about any of us in here, but about whether or not democracy can function in the 21st century.”

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US-China doomsday threat ramped up by hi-tech advances, says Kissinger

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Former US secretary of state says strained relationship is world’s ‘biggest problem’, as he warns of Beijing’s economic and military might

Former US diplomat Henry Kissinger has said that US-China tensions threaten to engulf the entire world and could lead to an Armageddon-like clash between the two military and technology giants.

The 97-year-old former US secretary of state, who as an adviser to president Richard Nixon crafted the 1971 unfreezing of relations between Washington and Beijing, said the mix of economic, military and technological strengths of the two superpowers carried more risks than the cold war with the Soviet Union.

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China begins construction of laboratory in space – video

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China has sent into space the core module of its space station at the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in the southern province of Hainan, kicking off a series of key launch missions with one of the goals to create a national space laboratory.

This will enable scientists from around the world to conduct multi-domain space science and technical experiments. The space station should be completed by the end of next year

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