Category Archives: China

China preparing fresh pretext to practise future attacks, says Taiwan foreign minister

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Joseph Wu says that communication with China has become more difficult after a purge of some factions within the Communist party

Taiwan’s government believes China is preparing to find another “pretext for practising their future attack” on the island, its foreign minister has said, after a record-breaking year of military threats and incursions.

Joseph Wu also suggested cross-strait communications may diminish even further now that Xi Jinping has secured his third term, with last month’s extraordinary political purges of rival Communist party members severing the few unofficial ties remaining.

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Economists hail end to zero Covid in China but huge human toll is feared

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Low rate of vaccination of elderly and a lack of natural immunity mean country may be in for a bumpy ride

Beijing’s abrupt dismantling of zero-Covid controls has been welcomed by economists, even as the country braces itself for the human impact of letting the disease spread through a vulnerable population.

The leadership’s abrupt U-turn on how it handles the pandemic appears to have been triggered by protests against controls that began last month, a nationwide show of discontent on a scale China had not seen in decades.

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‘The authorities will step up control’: where next for China after protests?

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After mass demonstrations against Covid lockdowns, experts say Xi Jinping’s response will be a further gradual crackdown

Since Xi Jinping came to power a decade ago, China’s Communist party has enacted a sweeping crackdown on civil society. Independent NGOs have been shut down, journalists and human rights lawyers arrested and outspoken media tamed. Meanwhile, the government has invested heavily in a massive surveillance system to keep track of citizens’ movements and activities.

Given their emphasis on national security and stability, party leaders would have been shocked therefore by the nationwide protests that broke out on 26 November in opposition to Xi’s “zero-Covid” policy. Demonstrators demanded an end to lockdowns and mass testing and some even called for the removal of the party and Xi himself.

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Excitement and apprehension as China loosens zero-Covid measures

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Some people are keen to enjoy their new freedoms, but others are fearful of a major wave of infections

China’s scaling back of its zero-Covid regime has left its population reeling. Some are embracing their new freedoms, while others are struggling to overcome their fears of being infected after three years of tough restrictions.

Frustration at protracted lockdowns and mass testing boiled over in late November into widespread protests, the biggest show of public discontent in decades.

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Without effective vaccines, China’s economy may not heal

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Changes to zero-Covid policy could prove insufficient if lockdowns are expected to continue

China’s nearly three-year policy of enacting strict lockdowns to contain outbreaks of Covid-19 came with a heavy price for the world’s second largest economy.

The question for its president, Xi Jinping, and his inner court of advisers is whether a sudden relaxation of lockdown rules brought in this week will both prevent a recurrence of the shockwave of protests across the country and turn the economy around.

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Markets optimistic as China eases Covid rules, but experts warn of danger ahead

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Amid signs that supply chain woes are improving, economists remain uncertain that China is ready to live with Covid

Global shares and the price of some key commodities have risen on hopes that the easing of China’s strict zero-Covid measures would help to bring down inflation, even as some experts warned that the country was not prepared to live with the disease.

China’s government on Wednesday announced a significant shift towards living with the virus. People with Covid-19 who have mild or no symptoms can quarantine at home, while officials have been instructed to stop launching temporary lockdowns. Testing will no longer be required for “cross-regional migrants”.

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Chinese students in UK told to ‘resist distorting’ China’s Covid policies

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Exclusive: comments by diplomat involved in recent Manchester clash appeared threatening, student says

A senior Chinese diplomat involved in the recent violence against pro-democracy protesters in Manchester has suggested Chinese students in Britain should “resist distorting and discrediting” China’s Covid policies.

The comments by China’s consul general in Manchester, Zheng Xiyuan, at a symposium to discuss the work of international students were said by Lyndon Lee, 23, a second-year law student at the University of York, to appear threatening.

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Is China finally about to relax its zero-Covid policy?

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People with Covid who have mild or no symptoms can now quarantine at home, but PCR tests are still required to enter many places

In the strongest sign so far that China is rolling back on its long-running zero-Covid policy, the national health commission said that people with Covid-19 who have mild or no symptoms can quarantine at home. The directive also instructed officials to halt temporary lockdowns and ended testing and health code requirements for people entering Beijing.

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Penny Wong issues emphatic plea to US and China to ‘prevent catastrophe’ of war

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Australia’s foreign affairs minister to give speech in hope ‘nationalistic domestic posturing won’t sink efforts to build safeguards’

Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has urged China to take up a US offer to put in place “guardrails” to prevent growing tensions from spiralling into war.

Wong will use a speech in Washington DC on Thursday to hit back at claims that Australia’s plan to acquire nuclear-powered submarines under Aukus is driving a regional arms race.

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Saudi Arabia readies full state pageantry for Xi Jinping visit

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Chinese president’s three-day trip to Riyadh will lead to a ‘strategic agreement’ between the authoritarian powers

Xi Jinping will arrive in Riyadh on Wednesday on a long awaited visit to a regional ally that has readied full state pageantry and a round of agreements likely to cement ties between China and Saudi Arabia – and deepen alarm in Washington.

China’s president will meet more than 30 heads of state and business leaders during his three-day visit to the Saudi capital, which is set to lead to a “strategic agreement” between the authoritarian powers. The trip is the culmination of decades of cooperation once based on oil sales, which has grown into bilateral trade of close to $90bn a year.

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Taiwan foreign minister: China may scapegoat us over Covid protests

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Joseph Wu backs Chinese protesters but says Beijing ‘might try to create external crisis to divert domestic attention’

Taiwan’s foreign minister has backed China’s anti-Covid protesters but also expressed concerns that Beijing could seek to scapegoat Taiwan if demonstrations restarted.

Joseph Wu said Taiwan stood alongside other democracies in calling for China to “respect basic human rights” regarding the extraordinary protests that spread across China last week and the swift police response to close in on those involved.

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Humanity has become ‘weapon of mass extinction’, UN head tells Cop15 launch

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António Guterres calls for end to destruction of nature as Canada pushes proposal to protect 30% of Earth

Humanity has become a weapon of mass extinction and governments must end the “orgy of destruction”, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, has said at the beginning of the biodiversity Cop15.

“We are out of harmony with nature. In fact, we are playing an entirely different song. Around the world, for hundreds of years, we have conducted a cacophony of chaos, played with instruments of destruction. Deforestation and desertification are creating wastelands of once-thriving ecosystems,” he said.

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Chinese students protest as university locks down over one Covid case

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Footage shows large protest at Nanjing Tech University, as rules persist despite steps to ease zero-Covid policy

Students at a university in eastern China have staged a protest against a Covid lockdown as many in the country remain under some form of restrictions despite government steps to ease its zero-Covid policy.

Videos posted on Twitter on Tuesday show large numbers of students protesting at Nanjing Tech University on Monday night, as they were placed under lockdown after one positive case was found. The Guardian phoned the university for confirmation but calls went unanswered. The posts had been geolocated by AFP and Reuters.

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Hu Jintao reappears as China comes to standstill for late leader Jiang Zemin

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Former leader who was removed from a key meeting in October attended the memorial where Xi Jinping urged country to ‘turn grief into strength’

China has paused to remember the late former leader, Jiang Zemin, with a rollcall of Beijing’s political elite attending memorial services including the former leader Hu Jintao in his first public appearances since his shocking removal from a top Communist party meeting in October.

Sirens wailed across the country on Tuesday as the Communist party eulogised Jiang on a national day of mourning, hailing him as a patriot who “dedicated his life” to the country and weathered “political storms”.

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Papua New Guinea can’t afford Australia and US standoff with China, James Marape warns

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PNG prime minister tells west ‘your enemy is not our enemy’ as he tries to steer clear of geopolitical struggle gripping the Pacific

The prime minister of Papua New Guinea has warned that his country will not be caught in a “standoff” between the US, Australia and China, as geopolitical tensions in the Pacific increase, warning the global powers to “keep your fights to yourselves”.

“Our nation is still an emerging economy, we cannot afford the standoff between our trading partners,” James Marape told the Guardian while on a visit to Sydney for a petroleum and mining conference.

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Shein admits working hour breaches and pledges £12m to improve sites

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Chinese fashion retailer responds after Channel 4 documentary alleged 18-hour days with one day off a month

The Chinese fashion retailer Shein has vowed to invest $15m (£12.2m) in improving standards at its supplier factories as it admitted working hours at two sites breached local regulations.

The online brand said an independent investigation, launched after allegations over labour abuse made in a recent UK documentary, had uncovered that employees at two of its Chinese sites were working hours that were longer than allowed.

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Chinese security firm advertises ethnicity recognition technology while facing UK ban

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Campaigners concerned that ‘same racist technology used to repress Uyghurs is being marketed in Britain’

A Chinese security camera company has been advertising ethnicity recognition features to British and other European customers, even while it faces a ban on UK operations over allegations of involvement in ethnic cleansing in Xinjiang.

In a brochure published on its website, Hikvision advertised a range of features that it said it could provide in collaboration with the UK startup FaiceTech.

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Chinese cities ease Covid curbs in wake of protests

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Shanghai and Urumqi to reopen markets and restaurants and loosen public transport restrictions

Chinese cities, including the financial hub of Shanghai and Urumqi in the far west, have announced an easing of coronavirus curbs after unprecedented protests against zero-Covid restrictions last weekend.

Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region and centre of the first protests, will reopen malls, markets, restaurants and other venues from Monday, authorities said, ending months-long strict lockdowns.

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China accused of flooding social media with spam to cover up Covid protests

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US firm says network of bot accounts also hijacking hashtags in large-scale attempt to obscure coverage

An attempt to flood social media platforms with spam in order to drown out coverage of the lockdown protests in China was probably backed by the Chinese government, according to analysis by a US cybersecurity firm.

Recorded Future found that networks of coordinated bot accounts were targeting non-Chinese social media platforms to crowd out genuine posts about the demonstrations with spam content and by hijacking hashtags of names of Chinese cities. It said China’s government was most likely to be behind the tactic.

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Canada and China prepare to open Cop15 biodiversity summit despite rifts

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Ministers and experts say disputes between co-hosts unlikely to disrupt efforts to reach deal on protecting natural world

More than 10,000 scientists, government officials and activists will gather in Montreal this week for the world’s most important biodiversity conference, eager to hammer out a deal to stem habitat loss around the world and preserve sensitive ecosystems.

The UN Cop15 biodiversity summit opens on Tuesday, and will see countries negotiate this decade’s targets for protecting nature after more than two years of pandemic-related delays and just over two weeks since the end of the Cop27 climate meeting in Egypt.

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