Category Archives: China

‘I’ll talk, but then I have to call Putin’: steakhouse at centre of EU spy alert

Posted on by

Flabbergasted owner says EU must have been referring to his place when warning diplomats to avoid a Brussels restaurant

Eleven years since opening his restaurant in the shadow of the European commission’s vast Berlaymont headquarters in Brussels, Philippe Weiner can safely boast that the Meet Meat Steak and Wine House is a firm favourite of the better-fed Eurocrat.

Sharp-suited diplomats and officials flock to its minimalist dining room for lunch and dinner. The president of the European council, Donald Tusk, and his team have been known to enjoy the kitchen’s meat offerings, best served à point or saignant.

Continue reading...

China gets its first blockbuster sci-fi film

Posted on by

Wandering Earth on track to be one of highest-grossing films in country’s history

China has entered the cinematic space race. Wandering Earth, the country’s first blockbuster sci-fi film, is on track to be one of the highest-grossing films in China’s history.

The film has brought in more than 2bn yuan (£232m) in the six days since its release on 5 February, lunar new year. So far, it is the highest-grossing film released over the holiday season, a peak time for the Chinese box office.

Continue reading...

China releases video of Uighur poet said to have died in custody

Posted on by

Beijing releases footage of poet Abdurehim Heyit after Turkey said treatment of Uighurs was an ‘embarrassment’

China has hit back against claims by Turkey that a famous Uighur poet and musician has died while imprisoned in Xinjiang, where Beijing’s severe policies toward the Muslim minority group have prompted international outcry.

Turkey’s foreign ministry said on Saturday it had learned that poet and musician Abdurehim Heyit had died while serving an eight-year prison sentence. In a rare rebuke of China, the ministry said Beijing’s treatment of Uighurs was “a great embarrassment for humanity”.

Continue reading...

Revealed: 17 Australian residents believed detained in China’s Uighur crackdown

Posted on by

Exclusive: Activists urge embassy to ‘tell us if they’re alive or dead’ amid claims of inaction by Canberra

Seventeen Australian residents are believed to be under house arrest, in prison or detained in China’s secretive “re-education” centres in Xinjiang, the Guardian can reveal.

The 17 cases – 15 Australian permanent residents and two on spouse visas – have been collected by Nurgul Sawut, an advocate for Uighurs in Australia, through interviews with their family members.

Continue reading...

China’s treatment of Uighurs is ’embarrassment for humanity’, says Turkey

Posted on by

Ankara calls for UN to act on ‘human tragedy’ of re-education of the Turkic-speaking minority in Xinjiang province

Turkey has condemned China’s treatment of its Muslim ethnic Uighur people as “a great embarrassment for humanity”, adding to rights groups’ recent criticism over mass detentions of the Turkic-speaking minority.

“The systematic assimilation policy of Chinese authorities towards Uighur Turks is a great embarrassment for humanity,” Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy said in a statement.

Continue reading...

Risk of global recession may be low but we are heading for slowdown

Posted on by

Although there is a cloud over economy, the silver lining is central banks are more dovish

After the synchronised global economic expansion of 2017 came the asynchronous growth of 2018, when most countries other than the US started to experience slowdowns. Worries about US inflation, the US Federal Reserve’s policy trajectory, trade wars, Italian budget and debt woes, China’s slowdown and emerging-market fragilities led to a sharp fall in global equity markets toward the end of the year.

The good news at the start of 2019 is that the risk of an outright global recession is low. The bad news is that we are heading into a year of synchronised global deceleration; growth will fall toward – and, in some cases, below – potential in most regions.

Continue reading...

Record numbers from China and Hong Kong applying to study in UK

Posted on by

Chinese and Hongkonger university applicants now outnumber those from Wales

Record numbers of students from China and Hong Kong are applying for places at British universities, overtaking the number of applicants from Wales, according to official figures.

Data from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) shows a spike in demand for undergraduate places from mainland China and a small rise in applications from the EU, despite fears over Brexit.

Continue reading...

A third of Himalayan ice cap doomed, finds report

Posted on by

Even radical climate change action won’t save glaciers, endangering 2 billion people

At least a third of the huge ice fields in Asia’s towering mountain chain are doomed to melt due to climate change, according to a landmark report, with serious consequences for almost 2 billion people.

Even if carbon emissions are dramatically and rapidly cut and succeed in limiting global warming to 1.5C, 36% of the glaciers along in the Hindu Kush and Himalaya range will have gone by 2100. If emissions are not cut, the loss soars to two-thirds, the report found.

Continue reading...

Inside Chengdu: can China’s megacity version of the garden city work?

Posted on by

The next 15 megacities #13: It may be China’s most liveable burgeoning megacity, but Chengdu’s park city plans bear a price tag of forced evictions and relocations

Read the rest of our megacities series here

“The goal is that every 300 metres you see green,” says Chen Lan, an expert in urban design and planning at Sichuan University in the emerging Chinese megacity of Chengdu. “You open a window, you see green, you see a park …”

With its mild weather, teahouses, quiet leafy streets and internationally known food, Chengdu in south-west China has long been rated one of the country’s most liveable cities.

Continue reading...

The Guardian view on the pope in the Gulf: an important signal | Editorial

Posted on by
As the first leader of the Catholic church to visit the Arabian peninsula, Francis knows his contact with Muslims will be as important as the mass he hosts for the Christian minority

Pope Francis’s visit to the United Arab Emirates this week will be greeted enthusiastically. Some 120,000 people are expected to turn out for his mass in a sports stadium in Abu Dhabi – as many as turned out in Dublin when he travelled to historically Catholic Ireland last year. The first visit by a pontiff to the Arabian peninsula, the birthplace of Islam, highlights the complications of the religious situation in the Middle East, and more widely the issues of Christian-Muslim relations.

There may be as many as 2 million Christians in the Middle East today. Despite nearly 16 years of war and sometimes brutal persecution in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, many remain in the lands that were the cradle of Christianity. In part this is because it is still made as hard as possible for them to leave the region. The Christians of Iraq have largely been driven from their homes by persecution, as have some of the Christians of Syria, where a number have taken the side of the Assad dictatorship. But they have ended up in refugee camps rather than reaching notionally Christian Europe.

Continue reading...

Venezuelan opposition leader urges China to abandon Maduro

Posted on by

Call from Juan Guaidó comes after Beijing hints support may not be everlasting

Juan Guaidó, the opposition politician leading the push to topple Nicolás Maduro, has urged one of the Venezuelan president’s key international backers, China, to abandon him.

His remark comes after Beijing said it hoped to continue working with Caracas “no matter how the situation evolves”, suggesting China was now preparing for a future without Maduro.

Continue reading...

Yang Hengjun: lawyers denied access to Australian held in China

Posted on by

Authorities say Chinese-born writer refused to see legal team but secretive process means claim can not be verified

Two lawyers hired by the wife of an Australian detained in Beijing for suspected espionage have said they were denied access to him by Chinese authorities, who said the detainee had not agreed to their appointment.

Yang Hengjun, a 53-year-old Chinese-born writer, was detained in the southern city of Guangzhou while waiting for a transfer to Shanghai in January. He had flown in from New York.

Continue reading...

‘Divide and conquer’: China puts the pressure on US allies

Posted on by

Criticism of Canada’s case against Meng Wanzhou seen as part of attempt to isolate US

As tensions between China and the US mount over trade and the extradition of a senior Huawei executive, Beijing has reserved its most colourful language for America’s allies.

On Tuesday, China’s ministry of foreign affairs called on Canada to “stop pulling chestnuts out of the fire for the US” after the unsealing of a 13-count indictment against the Huawei chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, who was arrested in Canada in December. An editorial in the state-run Global Times put it more bluntly: “You cannot live the life of a whore and expect a monument to your chastity … If Canada insists on wrong practice, it must pay for it.”

Continue reading...

Chinese city seeks young blood: how ageing Nanjing lures new talent

Posted on by

The next 15 megacities #12: The ancient capital of China is pulling out all the stops in a bid to defuse its ticking demographic timebomb

Tan Jingquan is exactly the kind of person the ancient Chinese city of Nanjing wants to attract. The 38-year-old had been searching rival cities for possible sites for his biotech startup for years – until the Nanjing government finally made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

“I visited and explored opportunities in nearly a dozen cities,” recalls Tan, a native of Wuhan in central China. “It turned out Nanjing has the best combination of policy incentives and market potential for small startups.”

Continue reading...

Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou appears in court on eve of US China trade talks

Posted on by

Extradition case in Canada drags on as Donald Trump prepares to meet Beijing’s top trade envoy in Washington

The chief financial officer of Huawei, Meng Wanzhou, has made her first appearance in a Canadian court in more than a month, part of a high-stakes dispute that threatens to cast a pall over this week’s US-China trade talks.

Meng, the daughter of the Chinese telecoms company’s founder, attended the hearing in British Columbia supreme court on Tuesday, just two days before Donald Trump and Chinese vice premier Liu He are scheduled to meet in Washington.

Continue reading...

Huawei indictments: sanctions busting, industrial espionage and a stolen robot

Posted on by

Indictments packed with emails and transactions allegedly showing how technology giant carried out criminal conspiracies

The twin criminal indictments against Huawei unveiled by US authorities on Monday are packed with emails and financial transactions allegedly showing how the Chinese technology giant carried out criminal conspiracies.

But the finer points of the 23 charges are less important than the overall shot they deliver across China’s bows. The US considers Huawei to be an arm of the Chinese state – and their devices to be potential spying equipment for Beijing.

Continue reading...

Wang Quanzhang: China sentences human rights lawyer to four years in prison

Posted on by

Lawyer who defended activists, victims of land seizures, and members of Falun Gong found guilty of ‘subversion of state power’

The prominent Chinese rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang has been sentenced to four and a half years in prison for subversion.

A court in Tianjin heard on Monday that Wang had been found “guilty of subversion of state power”.

Continue reading...

Justin Trudeau fires ambassador to China after remarks on Huawei case

Posted on by

John McCallum had said Meng Wanzhou could make a strong argument against being sent to the US

In an unprecedented move, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau on Saturday said he had fired his ambassador to China, who had prompted a political furor with comments about Huawei’s high-profile extradition case.

Related: 'I misspoke': Canada ambassador to China regrets saying Huawei chief had 'strong case'

Continue reading...

Trump’s remarks could stymie US extradition of Huawei CFO from Canada

Posted on by

Canada’s ambassador to China said Meng Wanzhou had ‘good arguments on her side’, in part because of Trump’s remarks

US efforts to extradite a Chinese telecoms executive from Canada may have been stymied by remarks on the case made by Donald trump, according to Canada’s top diplomat in Beijing.

Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, was detained at the request of the US on 1 December in Vancouver, over alleged violations of US sanctions on Iran. She is currently under house arrest and the US justice department has until 30 January to file a formal extradition request.

Continue reading...