Month: August 2021

New Chinese Law Tightens Requirements for Data Privacy

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Advertisement China is tightening control over information gathered by companies about the public under a law approved Friday by its ceremonial legislature, expanding the ruling Communist Party’s crackdown on internet industries. The law would impose some of the world’s strictest controls on private sector handling of information about individuals but appears not to affect the ruling party’s pervasive surveillance or access to those corporate data. Its passage follows anti-monopoly and other enforcement actions against companies including e-commerce giant Alibaba and games and social media operator Tencent that caused their share…

Does the Belt and Road Have a Future in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan?

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Advertisement When the United States and its allies began evacuating from Kabul on August 15, as the Taliban entered the Afghan capital, China decided to keep its embassy open and claimed it was ready for friendly relations with the Taliban. State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi had already met with Taliban representatives in late July in Tianjin to discuss the reconciliation and reconstruction process in Afghanistan. During that meeting, the Taliban also agreed not to support Uyghur separatists who might threaten stability in Xinjiang. China has a principle of…

Why China’s rise is a ‘wildcard’ for how things could play out in Afghanistan

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While several countries are evacuating their embassies in Kabul and scrambling to get their citizens out of Afghanistan, there are three notable exceptions.  Australia closed its embassy back in May, but China, Russia and Pakistan are staying put for now. Afghanistan has geographical significance, positioned as a bridge between Asia and Europe, and all three countries have an interest in regional stability and want to avoid the country becoming a hotbed of extremism. Afghanistan is also sitting on to $US1 trillion ($1.3 trillion) worth of mineral deposits, including rare earths and…

South Koreans Now Dislike China More Than They Dislike Japan

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SEOUL — The list of election issues set to define South Korea’s presidential race next year is long. The runaway housing prices, the pandemic, North Korea and gender inequality are a start. But an unlikely addition has also emerged in recent weeks: China. South Korea’s decision ​​to let the American military deploy a powerful antimissile radar system on its soil​ in 2017 has been the subject of frequent criticism from China. And last month, a presidential hopeful, Yoon Seok-youl, told the country to stop complaining, unless it wanted to remove…

China’s Vaccine Diplomacy Stumbles in Southeast Asia

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China, eager to build good will, stepped in, promising to provide more than 255 million doses, according to Bridge Consulting, a Beijing-based research company. Half a year in, however, that campaign has lost some of its luster. Officials in several countries have raised doubts about the efficacy of Chinese vaccines, especially against the more transmissible Delta variant. Indonesia, which was early to accept Chinese shots, was recently the epicenter of the virus. Others have complained about the conditions that accompanied Chinese donations or sales. The setback to China’s vaccine campaign…

The new US Air Force secretary wants to ‘scare China’

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WASHINGTON — After being sworn in as the U.S. Air Force’s top civilian, Frank Kendall went straight to the budget books. Kendall, a former Pentagon acquisition chief who is well-acquainted with the world of military technology, immediately immersed himself in the Air Force’s fiscal 2023 budget and directed a number of last-minute adjustments to the plan. The goal, Kendall told Defense News in an exclusive Aug. 13 interview, should be to field the kinds of leap-ahead technologies that “scare China.” But whether the Air Force can do that depends on…

China state media issues war warning after GOP senator tweets about troops in Taiwan

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The Global Times, a Chinese state-run media outlet, warned the United States that an “all-out war” would break out if it sent American troops to Taiwan after Senator John Cornyn mistakenly tweeted that there were 30,000 troops stationed on the island. On Monday, Cornyn compared how many troops were in Afghanistan in recent months to those stationed elsewhere, including 30,000 he said were in Taiwan. People were quick to point out that the number was incorrect and Cornyn deleted the tweet, but Chinese state media accused him of “testing” China…

China’s 47-mile-long problem with the Taliban

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Press play to listen to this article Afghanistan looms larger in the mindset of China’s leadership than you’d imagine from the countries’ mere 47-mile stretch of shared border — a curly line that you’ll easily miss if Google Maps is not sufficiently zoomed in. While China has enjoyed poking its archrival the U.S. in the eye over its humiliation in Afghanistan — with state media even gleefully warning Taiwan that America will similarly desert its friends in Taipei — Beijing also has deep fears about the security risks posed by…

China’s propaganda firehose is going after the BBC

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Chinese trolls and fake news websites have been attacking the BBC in a bid to undermine its credibility, new research published today claims. The online influence operation, which is being linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is seemingly a response to the BBC’s reporting on human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims and state-backed misinformation campaigns. The new research from analysts at cybersecurity company Recorded Future claims that the “likely state-sponsored” operation used hundreds of websites and social media accounts to attack the BBC’s reporting. In particular the network has…