Punk IPA maker says it wants to sell more of its craft beer in world’s biggest market
BrewDog has said it plans to brew in China as part of a deal with Budweiser China to expand sales in the world’s biggest market for beer.
Budweiser China would start brewing BrewDog’s Punk IPA, Hazy Jane and Elvis Juice beers by the end of March at its Putian craft brewery near the south-east coast, the companies announced on Monday.
Continue reading...Visit to Taipei by Shanghai officials was arranged by mayor from opposition Kuomintang party, attracting accusations of secrecy
A Chinese government delegation has visited Taiwan for the first time since the start of the pandemic, sparking some partisan tension on the island over cross-strait interactions as Beijing reiterated its intentions to annex it.
The delegation of six officials, including the deputy head of the Shanghai office of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, Li Xiaodong, arrived in Taipei with plans to visit the Lantern festival and hold talks with local officials. They were invited by the city government, led by mayor Chiang Wan-an, of the opposition Kuomintang party (KMT).
Continue reading...US secretary of state meets with top Chinese diplomat, Wang Yi, and warns of ‘serious problem for us’ if Beijing supplies weaponry to Vladimir Putin
The US has said it believes China may be about to provide lethal aid to help Russia in the war in Ukraine, prompting a direct warning against doing so from the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, to China’s top diplomat.
Blinken made the warning to the Chinese state councillor Wang Yi on Saturday evening at a meeting on the sidelines of the Munich security conference during which he also rebuked China over the use of an alleged spy balloon over US soil.
Continue reading...Secretary of state says he condemned surveillance in first high-level contact between countries since incident
Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, met with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, on Saturday in Munich in the first senior-level contact between the two countries since the American military shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina on 4 February.
In a tweet on Saturday, Blinken said, “Just met with the PRC’s top diplomat, Wang Yi. I condemned the incursion of the PRC surveillance balloon and stressed it must never happen again.”
Continue reading...Wang Yi also says China is preparing to outline position on Russian war against Ukraine
China’s most senior diplomat has described the shooting down of a balloon by the US as “absurd and hysterical”, as well as an abuse of the use of force.
Speaking on stage at the Munich security conference on Saturday, Wang Yi said: “It does not show the US is strong; on the contrary it shows it is weak”. The foreign affairs director said he believed the shooting down was part of an attempt to divert attention from the domestic problems of the Biden administration.
Continue reading...Ding Jiaxi tells his lawyer he is also worried about his own health after being held for more than three years
The detained human rights activist Ding Jiaxi has expressed concern for the young protesters who have disappeared since participating in the “blank paper” protests against zero-Covid that stunned China last year.
At least 16 of them are still in police detention, according to names gathered by activists, while Ding himself has been detained for more than three years.
Continue reading...‘Electronics and optics’ among wreckage of suspected surveillance craft shot down off South Carolina after recovery efforts end
The US has finished work to recover sunken remnants of the Chinese balloon shot down off the coast of South Carolina and the debris reinforces that it was for spying, officials have said.
The White House national security spokesman, John Kirby, said the wreckage included “electronics and optics” but declined to say what the US had learned from it so far.
Continue reading...Footage seems to show 10 officers training to neutralise one man using fabric banners
How many police officers does it take to neutralise a single unarmed protester? According to a video purported to be from China, it takes at least 10 highly disciplined members of law enforcement, as well as some bespoke blue banners.
In footage that emerged on Thursday, black-clad officers are shown practising a drill to surround a single person holding up a white piece of paper – an item that became the symbol of the anti-lockdown protests that rocked several major Chinese cities at the end of last year, and the demonstrations against the security laws imposed on Hong Kong in 2020.
Continue reading...Disappearance of China Renaissance chair raises fears of fresh crackdown on China’s finance industry
A billionaire Chinese dealmaker has gone missing, plunging one of the country’s top investment banks into turmoil.
Bao Fan, the founder and executive director of China Renaissance, is a major figure in the Chinese tech industry and has played an important role in the emergence of a string of large domestic internet startups.
Continue reading...More than 200m people treated for virus and death rate now ‘lowest in the world’, says government
The Chinese government has declared a “decisive victory” in the battle against Covid-19, claiming it had created “a miracle in the history of human civilisation” in successfully steering China through the global pandemic.
The comments were made at a meeting presided over by President Xi Jinping on Thursday. The government said more than 200 million people had been treated for Covid and that China’s death rate from coronavirus was “the lowest level in the world”.
Continue reading...In Tokyo speech to conservative lawmakers, former British PM issues warning about Chinese aggression
Liz Truss has used her first overseas speech since resigning as British prime minister to call on the west to safeguard Taiwan’s security and economy in the face of Chinese aggression “before it is too late”.
Speaking in Tokyo at a meeting of mainly conservative lawmakers that included the former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison, Truss said Britain had been naive to court the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, in 2015, adding that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine should serve as a warning of what happens when democracies fail to stand up to authoritarian regimes.
Continue reading...Australia’s former PM urges new government to apply sanctions amid questions why he stopped short of taking such action when in power
The former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison has defended his failure to introduce sanctions against Chinese officials over human rights abuses, saying he ran out of time before his election loss.
His comments to a conference in Tokyo on Friday prompted the Australian foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, to declare: “I’m not sure how much advice it would be sensible to take from Mr Morrison on foreign policy.”
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Continue reading...Relations between Beijing and Washington have soured since the US accused China of sending a spy balloon into its airspace
A top Pentagon official will visit Taiwan in coming days, according to reports, as attempts between the US and China to repair relations continue to backslide after the US shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon in its airspace.
Michael Chase, deputy assistant secretary of defence for China, is expected to visit Taiwan in coming days, according to the Financial Times, after he leaves Mongolia where he is meeting its military.
Continue reading...Special legislation passed by the Albanese government with Coalition support. This blog is now closed
Marles says Australia able to track balloons
The defence minister, Richard Marles, says government would have capability to track a balloon if one was to appear over Australia as it did in the US a couple weeks ago.
Well, I think it’s important that this statement’s been made by the president to clarify the circumstances. There’s obviously been a particular fascination about balloons over the last month given the original spy balloon that we saw over the United States. I think from an Australian point of view, what’s important to say is that we’ve had no advice of any balloon of that kind being over Australia but we very much do have the capability to track such an object if there was one-to-and to deal with it.
Look, human rights matter and need to be central in the way we engage with the world. For this government, we will always call out human rights concerns where we have them and we’ve done that in respect of Xinjiang and the Uyghur population. I’ve done it publicly in China.
It forms part of the way in which we speak with China in our relationship. I think it’s also important, though, that in doing that, you know, be we raise those issues in a respectful way with China and in the context of the broader relationship and in the context of seeking to take steps which actually make a difference and it is important that we are stabilising our relationship with China.
There is no room for any harmful practices in NSW, particularly if they affect our young and vulnerable.
When the parliament returns, my government will provide in principle support for legislation that brings an end to any harmful practices. This is a complex matter and in working through it with parliamentary colleagues we will carefully consider the legal expression and effect of such laws.
Continue reading...Former PM will warn in Tokyo ‘free world is in danger’ in apparent attempt to put pressure on Rishi Sunak
Britain and the rest of the G7 should urgently agree a tough package of sanctions to impose on China if it escalates military tensions with Taiwan, Liz Truss will argue, as she uses her first public overseas speech to pile pressure on Rishi Sunak.
Speaking in Tokyo on Friday, the former prime minister will urge her successor to be more hawkish in standing up to Beijing, warning coordinated action is needed to block “the rise of a totalitarian China” given “the free world is in danger”.
Continue reading...The special grand jury empaneled in the Georgia’s Fulton county worried that at least one of the 75 witnesses it heard from may have lied under oath, according to portions of their report released today.
They also determined “by a unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election,” the jurors wrote in the report’s introduction, which was released along with its conclusion and a brief chapter outlining the perjury concerns.
Continue reading...Speech in Tokyo draws parallel with pre-second world war agreement, and claims credit for urging others to stand up to Beijing ‘bullying’
The former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison has accused the west of “appeasing” Beijing and has claimed credit for rallying other countries to “call out the bullying of the Chinese government”.
In a speech to be delivered at a conference in Tokyo on Friday, Morrison is also expected to urge the Albanese government to consider using Magnitsky-style targeted human rights sanctions laws to hold Chinese government officials accountable.
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Continue reading...Advocates of Huang Xueqin accuse authorities of ‘trying to exert mental pressure and physical torture’
Advocates for a Chinese journalist and activist who has been held in detention without trial for almost 18 months have said she needs urgent medical attention.
Huang Xueqin and Wang Jianbing, a labour rights activist, were detained in September 2021 and formally arrested a month later. They have been accused of inciting subversion of state power, and held in Guangzhou without access to family or lawyers.
Continue reading...Crowds of retirees gather in cities of Wuhan and Dalian to protest against cuts as local government coffers feel strain of years of Covid policies
Crowds of hundreds of older people took to the streets in the Chinese cities of Wuhan and Dalian on Wednesday in escalating protests against changes to the public health insurance system.
The protests were sparked by cuts to monthly allowances paid to retirees under China’s vast public health insurance system. The changes, gradually introduced since 2021, come as local government finances are strained following years of strict and costly zero-Covid policies.
Continue reading...US deputy secretary of state says Beijing is claiming ‘a gazillion balloons by the US over China … That is absolutely not true’
Diplomatic friction has worsened between the United States and China after Beijing claimed, without evidence, that US high-altitude balloons flew over its Xinjiang and Tibet regions, and threatened unspecified measures against US entities for undermining Chinese sovereignty.
Washington and Beijing are locked in a tussle over flying objects after the US military this month shot down what it called a Chinese spy balloon over the coast of South Carolina. Beijing said it was a civilian research vehicle mistakenly blown off course, and that Washington overreacted.
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