Chen Siming posts video from Taoyuan airport saying he is seeking asylum from political persecution
A Chinese dissident known for regularly commemorating the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square has fled to Taiwan where he pleaded for help in seeking asylum in the US or Canada.
In a video posted online on Friday, Chen Siming said he was in the transit area at Taoyuan international airport to escape Chinese political persecution.
Continue reading...Huang Xueqin, a feminist who was due to move to UK, and Wang Jianbing charged with ‘inciting subversion of state power’
The trial of two prominent activists detained since 2021 has begun in secret in the Chinese city of Guangzhou, in a case that has attracted widespread attention to Beijing’s repression of civil society.
Huang Xueqin, a feminist activist and journalist who covered China’s #MeToo movement, and Wang Jianbing, a labour rights activist, were detained in Guangzhou in September 2021, shortly before Huang was due to move to the UK to study at the University of Sussex. The pair were charged with “inciting subversion of state power” the following month. The charge normally carries a sentence of up to five years, although terms can be longer in cases deemed severe.
Continue reading...Meet Cute on company’s intranet allows employees to advertise family and acquaintances to colleagues
TikTok has an internal matchmaking service for employees to introduce their colleagues to friends and family members, it has been revealed.
The channel, called Meet Cute, sits on the workplace tool used by thousands of TikTok employees around the world for document hosting, video conferencing. It also helps people find a potential romantic partner from among their colleagues.
Continue reading...WHO says China facing ‘sustained community transmission’ of virus first detected as imported case last year
China is fuelling a global surge in mpox cases, accounting for the majority of new cases reported in September, according to the World Health Organization.
The number of weekly cases reported globally increased by 328% in the week to 10 September, data shows. Most of that rise came from China, where more than 500 new cases were reported in August. The WHO said China was experiencing “sustained community transmission” of the virus, which was first detected as an imported case in September last year.
Continue reading...Series with 370m views echoes Chinese state media calls for return of cultural relics
A viral series on the Chinese version of TikTok about a jade teapot that turns into a woman and escapes from the British Museum is to be adapted into an animated film.
The plot of Escape from the British Museum, a series made by two social media influencers, echoes Chinese state media calls for the British government to make amends for “historical sins” and return Chinese cultural relics.
Continue reading...Forms have been sent out requiring names, positions, residential addresses and identity document numbers of locally employed staff
China has given foreign consulates in Hong Kong a month to submit the names, home addresses and job descriptions of their local staff, according to diplomatic sources and documents seen by several media outlets on Tuesday.
The documents include a letter in English and Chinese bearing Monday’s date from Beijing’s Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (OCMFA), as well as two forms for consulates to fill in with their local staff details.
Continue reading...China’s latest missing minister underscores the move to centralised rule, and how questioning Xi’s judgement has become increasingly dangerous
Three weeks after he was last seen in public, there is still no official confirmation about what has happened to Gen Li Shangfu, China’s defence minister and the latest senior official to be seemingly swept up in China’s political purges.
Last week, Reuters reported that Li, along with eight other senior officials, was under investigation for the corrupt procurement of military equipment relating to his time at the helm of the equipment division of the Central Military Commission, the military’s ruling body, between September 2017 and October 2022. US intelligence has also made similar conclusions.
Continue reading...Taiwan’s defence ministry said that since Sunday it had spotted 103 Chinese military aircraft over the sea, a number it called a ‘recent high’
Taiwan’s defence ministry has urged China to stop “destructive, unilateral action” after reporting a sharp rise in Chinese military activities near the island, warning such behaviour could lead to an increase in tensions.
China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, has in recent years regularly carried out military drills around the island as it seeks to assert its sovereignty claims and pressure Taipei.
Continue reading...Police do not list charges against arrested workers but urge public to report any suspected fraud
Police in China have arrested several employees at a subsidiary of Evergrande, the troubled property giant that is struggling under debts running into the hundreds of billions of dollars.
Employees at Evergrande’s financial subsidiary, Evergrande Wealth Management, were arrested, police in the southern city of Shenzhen said in a statement, without specifying the number of employees or the charges against them.
Continue reading...‘Candid, substantive and constructive’ talks were held as a possible prelude to a Joe Biden-Xi Jinping meeting in November
Top US and Chinese diplomats met in Malta over the weekend as the world’s two largest economies attempted to smooth strained relations and clear a path for their respective presidents – Joe Biden and Xi Jinping – to meet in November.
According to both Beijing and Washington, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan met multiple times with China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, in Malta, where – according to separate statements – “candid, substantive and constructive” talks were held.
Continue reading...Li Shangfu, who has not been seen for nearly three weeks, is under house arrest, claims US ambassador to Japan
China’s defence minister has not been seen in almost three weeks, amid reports that he is under investigation, in the latest case of a senior Communist party official to disappear from public view.
Gen Li Shangfu was last seen on 29 August when he gave a speech to the China-Africa peace and security forum. His last overseas trip was to Moscow and Minsk in mid-August, where he met Russian officials on the sidelines of a security conference, and with the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko.
Continue reading...Fallout from revelations has dominated news in UK but in China it has caused barely a ripple
The fallout from revelations that two people were arrested in the UK for allegedly spying for China has dominated British news since the story broke. In the heavily state-controlled media in China, however, it has caused barely a ripple.
It took more than a day for state-controlled press to run the story, reporting a short statement from its embassy in London and then comments from the foreign affairs ministry.
Continue reading...Measures include making it easier for Taiwanese people to live and work in China, but the plan comes amid major military exercises
China’s government has unveiled a “new path towards integrated development” with Taiwan, including proposals to make it easier for Taiwanese people to live, study and work in China.
At the same time, it sent the largest number of warships to gather in years to the waters on Taiwan’s east, in what analysts said signalled a choice between peaceful “reunification” and military violence, just months out from Taiwan’s presidential election.
Continue reading...Activists call for reassurances to be given to those who gave information to parliamentarians
Finn Lau’s meeting with a Westminster researcher who was later arrested on suspicion of spying for China lasted just 20 minutes. Nearly a year later he is mulling the potential consequences.
Lau, an exiled Hong Kong pro-democracy activist with a £100,000 bounty on his head, has a lingering suspicion that some of his ideas for putting more pressure on China appear not to have made it beyond their meeting.
Continue reading...Extreme weather in the city of Maoming in Guangdong province caused lake to flood, allowing dozens of crocodiles to escape
A Chinese city has launched an operation to find a large number of crocodiles that escaped when floods hit the region in recent days, authorities have said.
A typhoon brought sustained heavy rains to southern China last week, triggering inundations in Hong Kong and other areas.
Continue reading...Calls for further security measures including vetting of staffers after UK parliamentary aide arrested on suspicion of spying for China
An espionage scandal in the UK should serve as a “major wake-up call” for Australia, a senior opposition member has said.
Australia’s shadow home affairs minister, James Paterson, called on both countries to “harden” their political systems to reduce the risk of alleged compromise, including wider use of vetting of staff members.
Continue reading...Prime minister says he told Li Qiang, the Chinese prime minister, at G20 that Chinese interference with the work of parliament will ‘never be tolerated’
Simon Clarke, who was the levelling up secretary during the Liz Truss premiership, has defended the government’s decision not to explicitly label China as a threat. In posts on X, or Twitter as many of us still call it, he said:
There are legitimate reasons why it is difficult for ministers to say China is a threat – that’s the nature of international relations. What matters more than words is that our policy choices change to reflect the undoubted danger of China’s actions.
Here I think the Government’s record stands up pretty well. You have the soft power of our new Pacific trade bloc membership in the CPTPP (which notably does not include China) and you have the hard power of the new AUKUS alliance - itself a response to Chinese aggression.
Continue reading...Investigation into parliamentary aide comes as two main groups on China have descended into rivalry
Many of the debates inside the Conservative party about how western democracies should handle China are entirely common across Europe and the US, but somehow they have been conducted in a more heated and personalised way.
One reason may be the confused and slow leadership on China shown by the government, symbolised by the refusal to follow Germany in publishing a China strategy. Others blame the entrenched factionalist political culture created by Brexit, and the narcissism of small differences. But the revelations that someone under investigation for allegedly being a Chinese spy was operating at the centre of Tory debates will only make the atmosphere worse. The person in question has insisted he is completely innocent.
Continue reading...Man is known to have had unescorted access to large parts of the Westminster estate
MPs have reacted with alarm after it emerged that a parliamentary researcher with links to senior Conservatives and potential access to sensitive information had been arrested over allegations of spying for China.
The man, who is in his 20s and was arrested in March along with another person, is known to have held a parliamentary pass, allowing him unescorted access to large parts of the Westminster estate.
Continue reading...The US president’s remarks came after after meeting in Vietnam with Communist party official to secure global supply chain
Joe Biden’s national security tour of south-east Asia reached Hanoi, Vietnam, on Sunday, where the president called for stability in the US-China relationship against an increasingly complex diplomatic picture in the region for his country.
“I don’t want to contain China,” Biden said. “I just want to make sure that we have a relationship with China that is on the up and up, squared away, everybody knows what it’s all about.”
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