References to ‘separation of power’ removed in some books, as well as illustrations of protesters holding placards
Hong Kong publishers have been told to remove references to the separation of powers and protest slogans from school textbooks, in a move decried as censorship by the authorities.
Six publishers voluntarily submitted eight textbooks to the education regulator for vetting and were asked to make revisions, reports in Hong Kong and mainland media said on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Image criticised as emblematic of China’s rising influence in Pacific, but i-Kiribati say practice is part of traditional welcoming ceremony
A photo reportedly showing the Chinese ambassador to Kiribati walking on peoples’ backs as part of an island welcoming ceremony has ignited debate about outsider interpretation of local custom, as well as geopolitical argument about China’s rising influence across the Pacific.
The Chinese ambassador Tang Songgen visited the island of Marakei earlier this month.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Cai Xia, who has been expelled from the elite Central Party School, says president’s ‘unchecked power’ has made China ‘the enemy of the world’
A former professor at China’s elite Central Party School has issued an unprecedented rebuke of the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, accusing him of “killing a country” and claiming that many more want out of the ruling Chinese Communist party.
Cai Xia, a prominent professor who taught at the school for top officials, was expelled from the party on Monday after an audio recording of remarks she made that were critical of Xi was leaked online in June. The school said in a notice that Cai, a professor at the party school since 1992, had made comments that “damaged the country’s reputation” and were full of “serious political problems”.
Continue reading...The 500kg missile system was revealed days after the highest-level US visit to Taiwan in four decades
A new Chinese weapons system has been unveiled on state media amid growing tensions with Taiwan and the US.
Chinese state TV ran reports over the weekend about the Tianlei 500, which translates as Sky Thunder, a 500kg precision-guided munitions dispenser and air-to surface missile. The Tianlei can carry six types of submunitions and attack different targets, a senior engineer said in the report.
Continue reading...Publisher Jimmy Lai’s arrest shocked Hongkongers, but since the anti-sedition law they’ve entered uncharted waters
On Monday, 10 August, Hong Kong woke up to the startling news of the arrest of Jimmy Lai, the 71-year-old publisher of Apple Daily, the only pro-democracy high-circulation newspaper in the territory. As the day progressed, more arrests linked to Lai and his businesses were carried out (including that of his two sons), and hundreds of police officers entered the paper’s headquarters. Much as Hong Kong has had to get used to shocking news, such an open move against a major media outlet was unexpected, as was the arrest of pro-democracy activist Agnes Chow, 23, also escorted from her home handcuffed by police. It all seems to be too much and too fast, but ever since the national security law against secession, sedition and terrorism was imposed on Hong Kong by the central government in Beijing on 30 June, the city has entered uncharted waters.
And while Hong Kong has been relatively spared from the worst disasters of the pandemic, for months now there have been serious limitations on how much people can gather – to discuss what is happening or protest against it. The draconian law has been imposed from above, hastily approved and supported by the local government without any space for public debate.
Continue reading...Apple Daily founder and pro democracy activist says his case will likely be a ‘litmus test’ of Hong Kong’s legal system
Wary but defiant, Jimmy Lai is determined to keep fighting for a democratic Hong Kong, even as he acknowledges that China’s goal is to take full control of the region.
Speaking to the Guardian five days after his arrest on foreign collusion allegations – he is currently out on bail - media tycoon Lai argues the press must keep going. But he also believes that Monday’s round up was a warning from Beijing.
Continue reading...Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai has told the Guardian he believes that how authorities handle his case will likely be a 'litmus test' for the future. The 71-year-old this week became the highest-profile pro-democracy figure so far to have been arrested under Beijing’s national security law, which makes even the mildest forms of activism a crime against China.
Lai was taken into custody for more than 40 hours for on suspicion of committing foreign collusion crimes, and conspiracy to defraud. Speaking after being released on bail, he said that 'without fighting, we don’t have hope [of democracy in Hong Kong]. We don’t know when we’ll win, but we’re so sure we’re on the right side of history, and time is on our side'
Continue reading...Retail sales dropped 1.1% in July while industrial production remains subdued
Fears over the strength of China’s economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic have been raised after retail sales slumped in July and industrial production remained subdued.
Fuelling concerns for the world economy, retail sales in China dropped in July by 1.1% compared with the same month a year ago, missing predictions for a small increase in consumer spending.
Continue reading...Chinese investment in Argentina’s hog industry would boost exports, but environmentalists fear risk of pandemic
A government-sponsored plan to turbocharge Argentina’s hog industry with Chinese capital is generating unprecedented resistance among its supposed beneficiaries – the Argentinian general public.
Nearly 400,000 people have signed petitions opposing the move. “We never had such a huge response before,” said environmental lawyer Enrique Viale, one of the group who banded together last month to challenge the government’s initiative. His petition currently has 200,000 signatures; another on change.org has almost 120,000 additional signatures, and three separate petitions on the same platform have clocked up another 55,000 between them.
Continue reading...Too much is being read into the greenback’s recent weakening against the euro
The dollar is in freefall! The global greenback is doomed! screamed recent headlines. Actually, such sensational headlines are “too sensational”, to echo that noted authority on currencies, Miss Prism, in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.
The dollar’s fall in July to a two-year low against the euro was the immediate impetus for these stories. In fact, the dollar’s recent slide is one in a series of readily explicable fluctuations. When the Covid-19 pandemic went global in March, the dollar strengthened on the back of safe-haven flows into US Treasuries, as it does at the start of every crisis. By May, the Federal Reserve, acting as global lender of last resort, had accommodated this mad scramble for dollars by pouring buckets of liquidity into financial markets and the greenback gave back its early gains.
Continue reading...Pro-democracy activist says he did not expect to be arrested so soon given the global outcry, and that it suggested chaos in the ranks
Jimmy Lai has said he was surprised to be arrested so quickly, and suggested there was “great disorder” among Chinese and Hong Kong authorities about how to handle the territory’s national security law.
The 71-year-old media tycoon and prominent pro-democracy figure was arrested on Monday, on suspicion of committing foreign collusion crimes in breach of Beijing’s national security law, and conspiracy to defraud.
Continue reading...Restaurant diners told to order one dish less than number of people under new system criticised as overly controlling
The Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, has launched a campaign targeting a new enemy of the country: food waste.
“Waste is shameful and thriftiness is honourable,” Xi said in a speech published on Tuesday, describing the amount of food that goes to waste in the country as “shocking and distressing”, according to the state news agency Xinhua.
Continue reading...Apple Daily founder and pro-democracy activist returns to office following arrest under national security law
The Hong Kong pro-democracy figure and media mogul Jimmy Lai received a hero’s welcome as he returned to his newspaper after being arrested on allegations of foreign collusion, while Chinese state media labelled him a “genuine traitor”.
Lai, his sons, senior executives from his Next Digital media company and others including the activist Agnes Chow were detained under Beijing’s national security law on Monday. Hundreds of police officers also raided the offices and newsroom of Apple Daily, the popular tabloid Lai founded, in a move decried as an assault on press freedom.
Continue reading...S&P edges towards all-time record with oil prices and hospitality stocks rising as investor optimism rebounds
US stock markets moved closer to record highs on Tuesday after investors bet on a fresh round of government spending to lift the economy and counter the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The S&P 500, seen as the broadest measure of US investor sentiment, raced to a 10-point gain by mid afternoon to leave it just 16 points short of the all-time high reached in February.
Continue reading...Joseph Wu tells visiting US health secretary Taiwan lives under constant threat of its freedoms being quashed by Beijing
China is trying to turn Taiwan into another Hong Kong, the island’s foreign minister warned on Tuesday as he met with a senior US official making a historic diplomatic trip.
A crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong has gathered pace since China imposed a sweeping security law on the financial hub in June, with opposition politicians disqualified and activists arrested.
Continue reading...Jury is out on whether video-sharing site could make Microsoft a social media giant
As the clock ticks on Microsoft’s fast-track talks to buy TikTok the jury is out on whether it marks a unique opportunity to become a global social media giant overnight, or a $50bn (£38bn) geopolitically fuelled business blunder.
Donald Trump’s trade war with China has forced ByteDance, the privately owned Beijing-based parent of the video-sharing site TikTok, to pursue a sale of its US business after the president signed an executive order last week that could shut it down on 15 September.
Continue reading...Statement signed by Rowan Williams, bishops, imams and rabbis says Chinese Muslim minority faces ‘human tragedy’
Rowan Williams, the former archbishop of Canterbury, is among more than 70 faith leaders publicly declaring that the Uighurs are facing “one of the most egregious human tragedies since the Holocaust”, and that those responsible for the persecution of the Chinese Muslim minority must be held accountable.
The incarceration of at least a million Uighurs and other Muslims in prison camps, where they are reported to face starvation, torture, murder, sexual violence, slave labour and forced organ extraction, is a potential genocide, say the clerics.
Continue reading...Statement says China is opposed to Trump but offers more concrete evidence of Russia’s efforts to undermine Biden
Russia is backing Donald Trump, China is supporting Joe Biden and Iran is seeking to sow chaos in the US presidential election, a top intelligence official has warned in a sobering assessment of foreign meddling.
The statement on Friday by William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, raises fears of a repeat of the 2016 election, when Russia manipulated social media to help Trump and hurt his opponent Hillary Clinton.
Continue reading...There could be a renewed focus on international cooperation – but Biden would not be great news for Boris Johnson’s Britain
European leaders, desperate for an end to the Trump presidency, are being warned that four years of Joe Biden may present them with new challenges and not a simple restoration of the benign status quo in transatlantic relations prior to 2016.
An evolving Biden doctrine about ending “forever wars” and protecting American workers from Chinese competition would require collective military and economic commitments from the EU that it is still ill-equipped to meet, foreign policy specialists have suggested.
Continue reading...In contrast, letter in English on same issue said university had ‘unequivocal commitment to freedom of expression’
The University of New South Wales has been criticised for issuing a letter in Chinese that differs from a letter in English explaining its deletion of a tweet that was critical of China’s human rights abuses.
On Wednesday, the vice-chancellor of the university, Prof Ian Jacobs, apologised for the university’s deletion of a tweet that quoted Elaine Pearson, the Australian director of Human Rights Watch and an adjunct academic at the university.
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