Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Politician known abroad for his role in crushing 1989 Tiananmen Square protests
The former Chinese premier Li Peng, reviled by rights activists and many in the Chinese capital as the “Butcher of Beijing” for his role in the crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests, has died, according to state media.
Li, who was 90, died on Monday in Beijing, Xinhua reported, more than three decades after his government authorised a bloody suppression of student-led pro-democracy protests in the early hours of 4 June 1989.
Anger growing against police and authorities after masked men left 45 people in hospital
Protesters in Hong Kong have pledged to stand up to thugs who attacked demonstrators at the weekend as public anger grows towards the government and police.
Demonstrators have filed for a permit to hold a rally on Saturday in Yuen Long, the district on the outskirts of Hong Kong where dozens of masked men chased and beat commuters and protesters with wooden poles and metal rods, leaving at least 45 people in hospital. Police arrived after the assailants left.
Police accused of doing nothing to stop suspected triads storming train station and beating people including women and children
Pro-democracy activists and lawmakers in Hong Kong have accused the police of standing by as men dressed in white attacked commuters and protesters late on Sunday, leaving 45 hospitalised, including one who is critically injured.
Video footage showed dozens of men, most in masks, storming a mass transit station in Yuen Long, chasing passengers and beating them with rods. Among those hurt in the attack were demonstrators returning from a large anti-government rally, as well as a pregnant woman and a woman holding an infant, according to witnesses.
Star listing of domestic tech firms is seen as an attempt to bypass US markets in trade war
China’s tech scene was handed a fresh vote of confidence as investors piled into Shanghai’s new Nasdaq-style stock exchange and sent shares skyrocketing up to 500%.
The launch of the Star listing of domestic tech firms is seen as China’s answer to the US’s Nasdaq, and an attempt to sidestep American markets in its long-running trade war with Washington.
The Apollo 11 mission inspired the world. What has happened in the ensuing half-century?
When Neil Armstrong stepped on to the moon 50 years ago, it was down to a giant leap of political and scientific imagination. His footprints on the powdery lunar surface changed the way we saw ourselves, confirming that humanity could escape its earthly coils. The mission unleashed a dream of what we as a species might do. Yet only a dozen people have walked on the moon, all between the summer of 1969 and the end of 1972.
Did we lose our primordial urge to explore? Almost certainly not – though Buzz Aldrin this week decried “50 years of non-progress”, probes have travelled to Pluto and beyond. But times have changed. The cold war rivalry that catalysed the space race vanished. The Soviet Union was first with a satellite, dog and astronaut in space. Today Washington and Moscow play the great game in the Middle East, not the heavens, although both are now contemplating a return to the moon: Donald Trump wants to make America great again by putting astronauts there by 2024, though some think China may get there first; Russia talks of landing cosmonauts by 2030.
Brendt Christensen has never revealed the whereabouts of Yingying Zhang, whom he raped and then decapitated in Illinois
A former doctoral student has been spared the death penalty and sentenced to life in prison in Illinois for kidnapping and killing of a 26-year-old scholar from China.
Jurors deliberated for eight hours over two days at the court in Peoria before announcing they were deadlocked on whether 30-year-old Brendt Christensen should be put to death for killing Yingying Zhang.
If you’re just tuning in, here’s our news story on the Chinese growth figures.... and president Trump’s response.
Donald Trump has claimed that his tariff battle with China is working after official data from Beijing showed growth in the world’s second biggest economy dropping to its slowest pace since 1992.
The US president said the impact of his protectionist measures had been to cause an exodus of companies from China, as Beijing announced that its annual rate of expansion had slowed from 6.4% to 6.2% in the second quarter of 2019.
In tweets that were immediately challenged by economists, Trump said his tough action had forced China’s leaders to the negotiating table.
European stock markets ended the day higher, blown upwards by hopes of fresh Chinese stimulus measure to prop up growth.
After a brief stint in the red the FTSE has powered higher on Monday as risk on dominated. Better than expected results from Citigroup boosting Wall Street and the prospect of stimulus for China lifted the FTSE at the start of the week.
Chinese GDP data showed that the economy grew by 6.2% its lowest level of growth in almost a decade. However, rather than depressing the market, hopes of stimulus for the world’s second largest economy have boosted risk appetite, lifting demand for riskier assets such as stocks. Just as we are seeing with the US, the prospect of easing financial conditions is not being interpreted as bad news for stocks. Instead the prospect of cheaper borrowing in the case of the Fed and support from the PBOC is giving investors plenty of confidence to buy in.
Beijing arrests Canadian citizen on drug-related charges amid diplomatic crisis, following detention of Meng Wanzhou
A Canadian citizen detained in China is being held on drug-related offences, Beijing said Monday, at a time of tense relations between the two countries.
News of the latest arrest comes amid a diplomatic crisis sparked by the detention of Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer for Chinese tech giant Huawei, in Vancouver on a US extradition bid.
Officers dressed in riot gear have fought with demonstrators inside a shopping centre in the residential district of Sha Tin, as they tried to disperse tens of thousands of people rallying against an extradition bill that would allow suspects to be sent to mainland China to face trial. Millions have taken to the streets in the past month in some of the largest and most violent protests for decades
The cost of keeping China out of the region is too great, we must build forces that could counter its operations instead
Let’s be honest: Australians have never had much time for our South Pacific neighbours.
The island nations that lie to our north and north-east, stretching from Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands to Vanuatu, Fiji and beyond, may be close to us geographically, but we have not found them especially interesting, important or profitable.
Standoff in Sha Tin over extradition bill came one day after unrest in Sheung Shui
Violent clashes have erupted between Hong Kong police and protesters at the end of a peaceful demonstration against the controversial extradition bill. The incidents took place late on Sunday in a bustling town between Hong Kong island and the border with China.
The scene descended into chaos shortly before 10pm local time (1400 GMT), after riot police chased protesters into a shopping centre in Sha Tin. Police used truncheons and pepper spray against protesters, who threw objects such as umbrellas and plastic water bottles at them. Some protesters were also seen beating a police officer. Several arrests were made.
The successful protests against the extradition law are unleasing popular anger on a range of issues
An old Chinese idiom has become the key catchphrase of Hong Kong’s social discourse in recent days. Pien Dei Hoi Fa – flowers blooming everywhere – is the term being used to describe the emergence of local protests and so-called Lennon walls, colourful collages of sticky labels with political messages, that are popping up in local communities all over Hong Kong.
Millions in this former British colony have flocked to the streets in several mass protests over the past month to fight against a proposed law that would allow individuals to be extradited to stand trial in China’s opaque courts. Now, feeling emboldened by the solidarity and big turnout at recent protests, which have made headlines across the world, Hong Kong people are now riding on the wave of their success to speak up on a range of issues, which are generally related to their discontent with the encroachment of China into Hong Kong.
Police use pepper spray and truncheons after protest about cross-border traders
Clashes broke out between police and protesters in Hong Kong on Saturday after thousands took part in a peaceful march in an out-of-town district in Hong Kong.
After the end of the Reclaim Sheung Shui protest against parallel traders who snap up goods such as foreign-made formula milk, medicines and soy sauce for reselling in China in the town near the mainland border, hundreds of protesters put on goggles, face masks and hard hats and occupied the streets around the train station, which had been cordoned off for the police-sanctioned demonstration earlier.
US approved sale of tanks and missiles to Taiwan this week
Beijing calls sales ‘a serious violation of international law’
China has said it will impose sanctions on US firms involved in a deal to sell $2.2bn worth of tanks, missiles and related equipment to Taiwan, saying it harmed China’s sovereignty and national security.
The Pentagon said on Monday the US state department had approved the sale of the weapons requested by Taiwan, including 108 General Dynamics Corp M1A2T Abrams tanks and 250 Stinger missiles, which are manufactured by Raytheon.
Police in eastern city of Xuzhou have detained seven foreign teachers and nine students but gave no further details
Four Britons have been arrested in China, the British embassy said, two days after Chinese police announced a drug bust there involving 16 foreigners.
Police in the city of Xuzhou in the eastern province of Jiangsu said on Wednesday that a total of 19 people were arrested in a drugs case centring on a local branch of a language school.
Steep fines and social credit penalties face people violating complex waste sorting rules – but some say the answer is all about pigs
For the last two weeks, Shanghai residents have grappled with a singular question: “What kind of trash are you?”
The question is aimed at the city’s daily 22,000 tonnes of household waste that, according to new rules implemented on 1 July, must be sorted into one of four colour-coded bins: dry, wet, recyclable and hazardous.
People have been building new cities from scratch for millennia. From the foundation myths surrounding Athens and Rome, to the clearance of virgin forests in western New York state to create the “garden city” of Buffalo, to scores of purpose-built capitals – Brasília, Canberra, Astana, Washington DC – building new cities is just something that humans do.
When countries rise up, when markets emerge, people build new cities. Today, though, we are taking it to unheard-of levels. We have never before built so many new cities in so many places at such great expense as we are right now.
Experts say level of distrust in the city’s leader is so deep that protests will continue
On Tuesday, Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, attempted to end what has been the territory’s worst political crisis in decades by declaring a controversial extradition bill that set off weeks of protests “dead”.
Yet the operative word protesters were looking for was “withdraw”, or chit wui, a key demand of the demonstrators to formally withdraw the bill from parliament. Lam has said the bill, already suspended last month in response to protests, would expire at the end of the legislative session that finishes next July. Instead she used a Cantonese idiom to describe “reaching the end of one’s life”.
Mulan has been transformed from life-affirming epic to patriotic saga, showing Hollywood is prioritising box office success
Disney have just released their hotly anticipated teaser trailer for their live-action remake of Mulan. The 1998 animated musical action film, following the triumphant story of an awkward young woman who takes her father’s place in a war by disguising herself as a boy,resonated globally. I was seven years old when it was released, and as a half-Chinese girl born and raised in pre-handover Hong Kong, the film had special importance to me, with its combination of east-west values, musical numbers (Honour to Us All, I’ll Make a Man Out of You and Reflection have aged extremely well), and female protagonist who kicks some serious butt while retaining her moral integrity and reinforcing family values. To this day, my Mulan sword, Mushu soft toy and Mulan dolls are somewhere safe in storage at home in Hong Kong.
To say I was excited by the prospect of a live action remake of Mulan is an understatement. The film joins the plethora of live-action remakes of Disney’s 90s renaissance hits, including Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King. All of these retain their musical numbers. Why then has Disney decided to make Mulan a gritty realist film? Particularly considering there are already Chinese versions of the legend: General Hua Mu-lan (1964) and Mulan: Rise of a Warrior (2009).