Category Archives: China

Rishi Sunak seeks to build stronger defence with Japan at Tokyo G7

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PM expected to unveil Hiroshima accord at meeting with Japan’s Fumio Kishida amid fears of China’s rising militarisation

Rishi Sunak will seek to build a stronger defence with Japan amid fears of China’s rising militarisation as he travels to Tokyo and Hiroshima for the G7 summit.

The prime minister will be accompanied by his wife, Akshata Murty, on their first official visit since he entered No 10 for the meeting of leaders from the US, France, Germany, Canada, Japan, Italy and the EU.

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China fines comedy firm £1.68m over standup’s stray dog joke

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Comedian apologises after some critics said gag about dogs chasing a squirrel drew parallels with country’s army

One of China’s leading comedy show companies has been fined £1.68m after a joke by one of its comedians at a standup show in Beijing about stray dogs went viral over the weekend.

In his routine, Li Haoshi, known by the stage name House, told of watching two stray dogs he had adopted chase a squirrel. The phrase that came to mind, he said, was: “Fight well, win the battle” – a punchline based on an eight-character slogan that is associated with China’s People’s Liberation Army.

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Beijing tells foreign embassies to remove ‘politicised propaganda’

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Request is apparently a reference to Ukrainian flags missions have put on display since Russia’s invasion

Foreign embassies in Beijing have been asked to remove “politicised propaganda” from their buildings, apparently a reference to the Ukrainian flags that many missions have displayed on their exterior since the Russian invasion.

The notice from China’s foreign ministry, sent earlier this month, said: “Do not use the building facilities’ exterior walls to display politicised propaganda to avoid inciting disputes between countries,” according to Reuters.

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The cancelled Quad summit is a win for China and a self-inflicted blow to the US’s Pacific standing

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Joe Biden’s decision to pull out of visits to Australia and PNG will reflect poorly on the US amid growing competition for influence in the region

The Chinese government is probably the biggest winner from Joe Biden’s decision to pull out of his trip to Australia and Papua New Guinea, forcing the cancellation of the Quad summit in Sydney.

Chinese state media outlets won’t need to muster much creative energy to weave together some of Beijing’s preferred narratives: that the US is racked by increasingly severe domestic upheaval and is an unreliable partner, quick to leave allies high and dry.

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Liz Truss in Taiwan calls for ‘economic Nato’ to challenge China

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Former British PM says Taiwan is ‘on the front line of the global battle for freedom’ during trip that China has called a ‘dangerous political show’

Free nations must commit themselves to a free Taiwan and must be prepared to back it up with concrete measures, Liz Truss has said in a keynote speech in Taipei, in which she called for an “economic Nato” to tackle Beijing’s growing authoritarianism.

The former British prime minister said she had come to show support for Taiwan, which was “on the frontline of the global battle for freedom”, under threat from a totalitarian regime in China. Truss arrived in Taiwan on Monday for a five-day visit, and is expected to meet senior government officials.

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Tiananmen Square books removed from Hong Kong libraries in run-up to anniversary

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Publications targeted include those about protest and subjects Beijing deems politically sensitive

Books about the Tiananmen Square massacre, Hong Kong protest movements, and other subjects deemed politically sensitive by Beijing have been removed from the former British colony’s public libraries in the lead-up to the 34th anniversary of the killings.

Hong Kong media have reported a marked increase in the number of book and documentary removals, which have been growing since the authoritarian clampdown on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement and the introduction of the national security law in 2020. It has resulted in a significant curtailing of political freedoms in the city and multiple arrests.

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China jails US citizen for life on espionage charges

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Hong Kong resident John Shing Wan Leung was chair of Texas branch of Chinese ‘reunification’ association

A Chinese court has sentenced a 78-year-old US citizen to life in prison on espionage charges.

John Shing Wan Leung, a Hong Kong permanent resident, was detained in April 2021 by Chinese security services. His sentence was announced on Monday by the Suzhou intermediate people’s court on its public WeChat account. No further information about his trial or charges were listed.

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Don Farrell invites Chinese commerce minister to visit SA family vineyard after Beijing meeting

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The pair agreed to ‘step up’ dialogue to resolve outstanding trade issues and confirmed the review of China’s tariffs on Australian barley was ‘on track’

The Australian trade minister, Don Farrell, has invited the Chinese commerce minister to visit his family’s vineyard in South Australia after the pair met in Beijing on Friday night.

Speaking after the talks with Wang Wentao in Beijing, Farrell said he was “very pleased to confirm that we agreed to step up dialogue under our free trade agreement and other platforms to resolve our outstanding issues”.

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EU tells ministers they must ‘recalibrate’ China policy over support for Russia

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Josep Borrell says relations will worsen if Xi Jinping does not push Putin to withdraw from Ukraine

A Russian defeat in Ukraine will not derail China’s rise, while relations between Beijing and the EU will be “critically affected” if Xi Jinping does not push Vladimir Putin to withdraw his forces, European ministers have been told.

The message comes in a paper drawn up by the EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, who is meeting the EU’s 27 foreign ministers on Friday in Stockholm to discuss how the bloc should “recalibrate” its policy towards Beijing.

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Chinese activist sentenced to eight years on subversion charges

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Yang Maodong called it a ‘score-settling’ punishment for his two decades of rights advocacy

A Chinese court has sentenced a prominent rights activist to eight years in jail on subversion charges in what he said was a “score-settling” punishment for his two decades of rights advocacy.

Yang Maodong, who goes by the pen name Guo Feixiong, was sentenced on Thursday by the Guangzhou intermediate people’s court for “inciting subversion of state power,” his brother Yang Maoquan wrote on social media. Repeated phone calls to the court went unanswered on Friday.

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US and China hold ‘constructive’ talks in effort to move beyond spy balloon incident

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High-level meeting in Vienna was ‘candid’, says White House, amid signs tensions could be easing

The White House national security adviser met with China’s top diplomat in Vienna as both sides recognised the need to move beyond the spy balloon incident that caused a rupture in relations between the superpowers, a senior US official has said.

The meeting between Jake Sullivan and Wang Yi was not publicised by Washington or Beijing ahead of the talks on Wednesday and Thursday in the Austrian capital. The White House described the wide-ranging discussions, in which the two leaders spent more than eight hours together, as “candid” and “constructive”.

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Hong Kong passes law to limit work of foreign lawyers amid ongoing Jimmy Lai case

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Amended legislation gives chief executive power to veto any foreign lawyer working on cases brought under national security law

Hong Kong has passed a law that allows authorities to ban foreign lawyers from working on national security cases, completing a months-long effort to block a UK practitioner from defending the media mogul and activist Jimmy Lai.

The amendment, which was passed unanimously by the Legislative Council on Thursday, gives the chief executive the power to veto any foreign lawyer from working on cases brought under the 2020 National Security Law (NSL).

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Liz Truss’s plan to visit Taiwan called ‘worst kind of Instagram diplomacy’

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Alicia Kearns, foreign affairs select committee chair, launches blistering attack on former prime minister

The Conservative chair of the foreign affairs select committee has launched a blistering attack on Liz Truss over the former prime minister’s planned trip to Taiwan, calling it “the worst kind of Instagram diplomacy”.

Alicia Kearns said she thought Truss’s trip planned for next week was little more than a vanity project aimed at keeping her profile high after her brief spell as prime minister last year.

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Son of jailed Hong Kong media tycoon condemns UK government ‘weakness’

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Sebastien Lai, son of Jimmy, also criticises Vatican over failure to hold China to account over human rights abuses

The British son of the jailed Hong Kong media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai has criticised Britain and the Vatican for failing to speak out strongly against the crackdown on dissent in the Chinese territory.

At a Washington event about the human rights situation in Hong Kong, Sebastien Lai said self-censorship in the former British colony was the anticipated result of the national security crackdown there, but the “hypocrisy” of some governments trying to trade with China was unexpected.

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Australia’s trade minister says ‘de-escalation of rhetoric’ bearing fruit in trade spat ahead of China trip

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‘We want everything back to the way it was’, says Don Farrell but cautions that problems won’t be fixed overnight

Australian exporters are starting to see benefits from the “de-escalation” of tensions with China, the trade minister, Don Farrell, said on the eve of crucial talks in Beijing.

Farrell will arrive on Thursday to press for an end to restrictions on a range of Australian exports – including lobster, red meat and wine – in the latest step to “stabilise” the relationship with Australia’s biggest trading partner.

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UK MPs urge minister to do more to free Hongkongers’ trapped savings

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First British ministerial visit to Hong Kong since Chinese crackdown focused on attracting investment

The first British ministerial visit to Hong Kong since the introduction of draconian Chinese security laws five years ago was a chance to demand that China unlock more than £2bn in pensions belonging to British overseas passport holders who fled for the UK, former cabinet ministers have told the Foreign Office.

A letter signed by more than 90 MPs, including 10 former ministers, urges the trade minister Dominic Johnson to do more to release frozen savings belonging to thousands of Hongkongers.

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Some of the first humans in the Americas came from China, study finds

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New genetics study finds some of the first arrivals came during the last ice age, and shortly after, in two distinct migrations

Some of the first humans to arrive in the Americas included people from what is now China, who arrived in two distinct migrations during and after the last ice age, a new genetics study has found.

“Our findings indicate that besides the previously indicated ancestral sources of Native Americans in Siberia, the northern coastal China also served as a genetic reservoir contributing to the gene pool,” said Yu-Chun Li, one of the report authors.

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Chinese woman appeals in battle for right to freeze her eggs

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Xu Zaozao’s case is widely followed in a country where women’s rights have become increasingly prominent

A single Chinese woman has begun an appeal in her legal battle for the right to freeze her eggs, a procedure only available in China to married couples.

Xu Zaozao took legal action in 2019 after a Beijing hospital refused to freeze her eggs but a Beijing court dismissed her case in July 2022.

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Liz Truss to visit Taiwan and give speech that could upset UK’s China strategy

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Ex-PM, who is trying to revive career, says she will ‘show solidarity’ with Taiwan after Nancy Pelosi visit sparked furore

Liz Truss is to visit Taiwan next week, where she will deliver a speech likely to anger Beijing and potentially upset the UK government’s careful approach to China relations.

The former prime minister said on Tuesday: “Taiwan is a beacon of freedom and democracy. I’m looking forward to showing solidarity with the Taiwanese people in person in the face of increasingly aggressive behaviour and rhetoric from the regime in Beijing.”

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China accuses Australia of trying to sabotage its relationships in Pacific region

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Beijing says US, Australia and New Zealand have ‘a cold war mentality’ and are driving up geopolitical tensions

China has accused Australia of attempting to sabotage its relationships in the Pacific, saying Australia has a “cold war mentality” and is blinded by “ideological prejudice”.

Senior Chinese diplomats said Australia has undermined Beijing’s security and law enforcement cooperation with Fiji, alleging its relations with Fiji are being “targeted” by Australia, the US and New Zealand.

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