Category Archives: China

Tiananmen massacre museum opens in New York despite fear of Beijing backlash

Posted on by

Communist party has campaigned for decades to eradicate remembrance events for the 4 June clashes in Beijing

When Zhou Fengsuo was looking for a space in New York to display his art collection, he couldn’t believe his luck when he stumbled across 894 6th Avenue in the heart of midtown Manhattan. The numbers of the address – 8946 – were the same as the date he wanted to commemorate: 4 June 1989. It was “unbelievable”, the former student leader marvelled.

That Zhou’s collection, which opened to the public on Friday as part of the June 4th Memorial Museum, ended up in such an uncanny location is the result of a concerted, decades-long campaign by the Chinese Communist party (CCP) to eradicate any remembrance of the 1989 massacre around Tiananmen Square anywhere in the world.

Continue reading...

Washington won’t stand for China ‘bullying’ US allies, Lloyd Austin tells summit

Posted on by

Defence secretary also criticises Beijing’s unwillingness to engage with US on military crisis management

The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, has vowed that Washington will not stand for any “coercion and bullying” of its allies and partners by China, while assuring Beijing that the US remains committed to maintaining the status quo on Taiwan and would prefer dialogue over conflict.

Speaking in Singapore at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s top security summit, Austin lobbied for support for Washington’s vision of a “free, open and secure Indo-Pacific within a world of rules and rights” as the best course to counter increasing Chinese assertiveness in the region.

Continue reading...

US-China war not inevitable, Albanese says, urging countries to ‘prevent a worst-case scenario’

Posted on by

Prime minister also seeks to reassure regional nations wary about Australia’s reasons for acquiring nuclear submarines under Aukus pact

Anthony Albanese has warned against “harmful” assumptions that the US and China are heading towards an inevitable war, and called for “practical structures to prevent a worst-case scenario”.

The Australian prime minister said a war in the Indo-Pacific would be “devastating for the world” and used a keynote speech to a regional security summit in Singapore to urge all countries to uphold peace and stability.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Continue reading...

Chinese censors remove protest site Sitong Bridge from online maps

Posted on by

Amid usual scrubbing for Tiananmen Square anniversary, searches for bridge where protest was held in 2022 return no results

Chinese censors scrubbing the internet of any words or symbols that could be used to reference the Tiananmen Square massacre in the run-up to Sunday’s anniversary have a new target in their sights: a bridge in Beijing where a rare protest was staged last year.

As the 34th anniversary of the 1989 massacre approaches, anyone searching in Chinese for Sitong Bridge on Baidu maps will draw a blank.

Continue reading...

Weather tracker: Shanghai reports record high May temperature of 36.7C

Posted on by

Heatwave continues in southern and eastern Asia as temperatures exceed 40C in vast swathes of region

Shanghai in China has reported a record high May temperature of 36.7C, breaking the previous record by 1C. The new high temperature on 29 May comes amid the heatwave affecting southern and eastern Asia since mid-April. Vast swathes of the region have had temperatures exceeding 40C, with parts of Pakistan reaching almost 50C in mid-May.

South-east Asia has been affected particularly badly, with record high national temperatures in Laos (43.5C), Vietnam (44.2C), and Thailand (45.4C). This is due to low amounts of rainfall over the previous winter resulting in drier soils, which can heat up more quickly than moist soils, thus exacerbating the effect.

Continue reading...

China swelters through record temperatures, putting pressure on power grids

Posted on by

Record heat in May across parts of the country comes amid a year of rising temperatures and erratic weather in China

Temperatures across China reached or exceeded their records for the month of May, the country’s National Climate Centre has said.

Weather stations at 446 sites registered temperatures that were the same as, or greater than, the highest ever recorded for the month of May, deputy director of the National Climate Centre Gao Rong said at a press briefing on Friday.

Continue reading...

Twitter and Tesla’s interests at odds in Elon Musk’s quiet China visit

Posted on by

The world’s richest person lapsed into an unusual silence on social media during his trip to the electric carmaker’s second largest market

Followers of Elon Musk didn’t know what to expect from his trip to China. Would he speak about Tesla, a company with a large market and manufacturing footprint there? Or SpaceX, with its symbiotic relationship with the American state? Or even Twitter, the social network he bought because “free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy”?

The one thing no one expected: silence.

Continue reading...

China’s Xi Jinping calls for greater state control of AI to counter ‘dangerous storms’

Posted on by

President says national security threats are increasing and urged greater oversight of artificial intelligence and data security

Chinese leader Xi Jinping and top officials have called for greater state oversight of artificial intelligence as part of work to counter “dangerous storms” facing the country, state media reported.

The president and other ruling Communist party officials agreed at a meeting of the National Security Commission to “improve security governance of network data and artificial intelligence”.

Continue reading...

UN experts express ‘grave concern’ over detention of Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong

Posted on by

Communication sent to Beijing government says media mogul’s prosecutions relate to his criticism of China

A group of UN experts have expressed “grave concern” over the arrest and detention of Jimmy Lai, a former media mogul in Hong Kong who has been charged with violating the territory’s national security law.

In a joint communication sent to the Chinese government, the experts from the UN working group on arbitrary detention and several special rapporteurs focused on human rights said Lai’s arrest and multiple prosecutions related to “his criticism of the Chinese government and his support for democracy in Hong Kong”.

Continue reading...

Erin O’Toole: China targeted me in election, says 2021 rival to Canada’s Trudeau

Posted on by

Ex-leader of Conservatives says Canadian Security Intelligence briefed him on a ‘Chinese-orchestrated campaign’ to manipulate the vote

Canada’s spy agency told former Conservative party leader Erin O’Toole that China campaigned to discredit him and suppress votes ahead of the 2021 election he lost to Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, O’Toole has said.

In a briefing on Friday, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (Csis) informed O’Toole about intelligence saying Beijing had targeted him in 2021, when he was Conservative leader and running to defeat Trudeau.

Continue reading...

Chinese pilot performed ‘aggressive maneuver’ near US plane, military says

Posted on by

The incident is the latest in a season of heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing this year

A Chinese fighter pilot performed an “unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” near an American surveillance aircraft operating over the South China Sea last week, according to US military.

The incident – which the Pentagon says is part of a pattern of behavior by China – comes at a time of already heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing over issues including Taiwan and an alleged Chinese spy balloon that was shot down after traversing the United States earlier this year.

Continue reading...

Hong Kong court rebuffs effort to dismiss Jimmy Lai national security trial

Posted on by

Lawyers acting for pro-democracy activist argued that proceedings could be biased due to judge selection

Hong Kong’s high court has rejected an attempt by lawyers acting for the jailed pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai to have his national security trial dismissed.

The court ruled on Monday that the argument the trial may appear to be biased had “no merits”, and gave the proceedings, which are scheduled to start in September, the green light.

Continue reading...

Hong Kong: 13 go on trial over 2019 storming of legislature by pro-democracy protesters

Posted on by

Seven admit rioting, while another six face additional charges carrying a maximum sentence of life in prison

A Hong Kong court has began the trial of 13 people over the storming and ransacking of the city’s legislature in 2019, which was an unprecedented challenge to the Beijing-backed government.

It was the most violent episode in the initial phase of the huge pro-democracy protests that shook Hong Kong that year, with millions marching and staging sit-ins for weeks.

Continue reading...

Number of people prosecuted in China’s courts up 12% in five years, report shows

Posted on by

Experts point to crackdown on national security and legal system that encourages guilty pleas

Chinese courts prosecuted 8.3 million people in the five years to 2022, a 12% increase on the previous period. There was also a nearly 20% increase in the number of protests against court rulings.

The figures released by the supreme people’s procuratorate (SPP) in March give a glimpse of how China’s notoriously opaque justice system has operated in recent years, amid a tightening domestic security environment.

Continue reading...

Hong Kong’s prominent pro-democracy Civic party votes to disband

Posted on by

Group was among the last opposition parties, as political dissent has been banned since 2020’s security law

The Civic party, one of Hong Kong’s most prominent pro-democracy groups, has voted to disband because of a leadership vacuum, after its members were squeezed out of local councils and charged under Beijing’s national security law.

Nicknamed “the barristers’ party”, it was founded in 2006 by professional elites – mostly from the legal sector – who wanted to promote democratisation and civil society in Hong Kong.

Continue reading...

Joe Biden’s advisers say he doesn’t want to drag Pacific allies into ‘headlong clash’ between US and China

Posted on by

Senior White House official says president hears region’s concerns and ‘does not want conflict’ with China

Joe Biden’s senior advisers have acknowledged countries in the Indo-Pacific don’t want to be “trampled by a headlong clash” between the US and China.

In a webinar with an Australian audience on Friday, senior White House national security council (NSC) officials said the US president wanted to give allies and other close partners “breathing space” to engage with China constructively.

Continue reading...

GCHQ warns of fresh threat from Chinese state-sponsored hackers

Posted on by

National Cyber Security Centre urges operators of critical national infrastructure to prevent hacks

The UK’s cybersecurity agency has urged operators of critical national infrastructure, including energy and telecommunications networks, to prevent Chinese state-sponsored hackers from hiding on their systems.

The National Cyber Security Centre, part of GCHQ, issued the warning after it emerged that a Chinese hacking group known as Volt Typhoon had targeted a US military outpost in the Pacific Ocean.

Continue reading...

China-backed hackers spying on US critical infrastructure, says Five Eyes

Posted on by

Targets include US military facilities on Guam that would be key in an Asia-Pacific conflict, say Microsoft and western spy agencies

A state-sponsored Chinese hacking group has been spying on a wide range of US critical infrastructure organisations and similar activities could be occurring globally, western intelligence agencies and Microsoft have warned.

“The United States and international cybersecurity authorities are issuing this joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) to highlight a recently discovered cluster of activity of interest associated with a People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-sponsored cyber actor, also known as Volt Typhoon,” said a statement released by authorities in the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK – countries that make up the Five Eyes intelligence network.

Continue reading...

China overtakes US in contributions to nature and science journals

Posted on by

Citations of Chinese research have risen because of sequencing of Covid-19 genome

China has overtaken the US to become the biggest contributor to nature-science journals, in a sign of the country’s growing influence in the world of academic research.

The Nature Index, which tracks data on author affiliations in 82 high quality journals, found that authors affiliated with Chinese institutions are more prolific than their US counterparts in physical sciences, chemistry, Earth and environmental sciences. The only category in which the US is still in the lead is life sciences.

Continue reading...

Russia and China deepen economic ties amid surge in trade since Ukraine invasion

Posted on by

Russian PM holds talks with Xi Jinping and signs bilateral pacts to further investment, exports and sports cooperation

Russia and China have agreed to deepen investment in trade services, promote agricultural exports and boost sports cooperation, as Mikhail Mishustin, Russia’s prime minister, signed a set of bilateral agreements on a visit to Beijing.

Mishustin is the highest-ranking Russian official to visit Beijing since the start of the war in Ukraine. In March, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, visited Vladimir Putin in Moscow in a show of support for his “dear friend”.

Continue reading...