Category Archives: China

China wants to subordinate west, US politician claims on UK visit

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Republican Mike Gallagher, leading delegation to London, says world is in ‘window of maximum danger’

Beijing wants to “subordinate and humiliate” the west, according to the Republican chair of a newly created China committee in Congress who is leading a delegation of hawkish US politicians on a two-day trip to the UK.

Mike Gallagher argued that China, under President Xi Jinping, believed in “the inevitable demise of capitalism”, and said he hoped to better understand how far British politicians of all parties shared his committee’s concerns.

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Chinese police detain woman for supporting comedian who joked about military

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Comic Li Haoshi made joke about soldiers that Beijing authorities deemed insulting

Chinese police detained a woman for posting online in support of the comedian who was punished for making a joke that authorities said insulted the Chinese military.

According to state media, the 34-year-old woman, reportedly surnamed Shi, admitted to police that she had posted “inappropriate” comments about Chinese soldiers.

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US China hawks to press UK minister for tougher line on Beijing

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Republican-led group expected to lobby Ben Wallace at informal lunch meeting during Westminster visit

A Republican-led group of China hawks from the US Congress will visit Westminster on Friday where they are expected to meet the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, for lunch and press for the UK to take a tougher line on Beijing.

The 11-strong delegation is led by the Republican congressman Mike Gallagher, who chairs a high-profile, newly created China committee. Some fear a strident anti-Beijing tone will alienate centrist and left-leaning politicians in the UK.

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As G7 leaders start to arrive, Japan PM prepares push in Hiroshima for nuclear weapons pledge

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Ukraine and China’s Taiwan ambitions are expected to dominate summit discussions, but Fumio Kishida will have a powerful backdrop

The war in Ukraine and Chinese aggression towards Taiwan will dominate G7 discussions this week, but host Fumio Kishida is expected to carve out time to push for a pledge on nuclear weapons when leaders meet in Hiroshima, the first place on Earth targeted by an atomic bomb.

The leaders began to arrive on Thursday, ahead of an expected visit on Saturday to the city’s Peace Memorial Museum, which contains exhibits showing the scale of the tragedy that unfolded after the US dropped a nuclear bomb on the morning of 6 August 1945, killing 140,000 people by the end of the year.

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China’s ambassador to Australia says Aukus an ‘unnecessary’ use of taxpayer money and ‘not a good idea’

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Xiao Qian suggests improvement in Australian relationship with Beijing possible but would take ‘mutual respect’

China’s ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, has denounced the Aukus nuclear-powered submarine plan as an “unnecessary consumption of the hardworking Australian taxpayers’ money”.

Xiao said the multi-decade defence plan would consume “tremendous” amounts of money “which could be used for other purposes like infrastructure, like reducing the cost of living, and giving the Australian people a better future”.

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Ukraine tells China envoy it will not give up territory to Russia as price of peace

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Li Hui, the highest-ranking Chinese diplomat to visit Ukraine since the Russian invasion, is on a European tour to promote Beijing’s peace plan

Ukraine’s foreign minister has met China’s special envoy to Kyiv and insisted that the war-torn country would not accept a peace plan that relied on giving up territory after Russia’s invasion.

In the Ukrainian capital, China’s envoy Li Hui is seeking to promote Beijing-led negotiations to resolve the conflict. He is the most senior Chinese diplomat to visit Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022.

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English universities warned not to over-rely on fees of students from China

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Higher education regulator asks 23 institutions for contingency plans in case of sudden interruption of income

England’s higher education regulator has warned universities against over-reliance on tuition fees of students from China, as Rishi Sunak backtracked on his earlier pledge to close UK branches of the Beijing-sponsored Confucius Institute.

The Office for Students (OfS) wrote to 23 universities with high numbers of Chinese students on Thursday, asking to see their contingency planning in case of a sudden interruption to overseas recruitment.

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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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