Armed police in Jingxi, in southern China, have paraded four alleged violators of Covid rules through the streets, state media reported, a practice that was banned but which has resurfaced in the struggle to enforce a zero-Covid policy. The four men were accused of smuggling people across China’s closed borders, and on Tuesday they were led through the streets wearing hazmat suits and bearing placards showing their name and photos. The state-run Guangxi daily reported the action was designed to deter “border-related crimes”. A common practice during the Cultural Revolution,…
Day: December 29, 2021
Hong Kong: The last day of the Stand News pro-democracy website
On Wednesday morning more than 200 Hong Kong police officers swooped into the office of Stand News to conduct a raid. By the end of the day, one of the few remaining pro-democracy websites in Hong Kong announced it was closing down immediately. Seven people have been arrested and accused of a “conspiracy to publish seditious publications”, while all staff have been dismissed. Authorities claim some of the news website’s articles incited secession, subversion of state power and called for foreign governments to impose sanctions. But critics say it has…
A Real String of Pearls: The Hidden Bellwether of the State of the Chinese Economy
Advertisement The indicators of the real state of the Chinese economy aren’t only found in the debt, growth, and production output statistics released by the Chinese government. Indeed, a defining indicator of China’s economic condition can be found in an unlikely product sector: pearl jewelry. Well-to-do Chinese women have significantly reduced their purchases of expensive saltwater pearl jewelry, imported by small Chinese businesses that cater to this niche market. Many small jewelers are on the verge of going under, if they haven’t already. This trend seems to fly in the…
Even in secret, China’s leaders speak in code
Dec 29th 2021 NEW YORK IN NOVEMBER 2022 Xi Jinping will have served for ten years as China’s leader. In the coming months, state media will be filled with fawning tributes to his decade in power. Yet they will give little inkling of how he makes decisions or interacts with colleagues. Even more than his predecessors, Mr Xi operates in the shadows. China has published many volumes of excerpts from his speeches. Only recently, however, has a rare leak of secret versions offered a glimpse of how Mr Xi communicates…
More Visibility for Xi Jinping’s Point Man on Ideology: Jiang Jinquan
Advertisement For nearly two decades, the chief wordsmith in Beijing was Wang Huning. A law professor turned government official, from 2002 Wang led the Central Policy Research Office (CPRO), the Chinese Communist Party’s top think tank, and became a Politburo Standing Committee member in 2017. The extent of Wang’s input into the slogans and policies of the three successive administrations of Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping prompted political scientists Haig Patapan and Wang Yi to write of him as a “Hidden Ruler” in a 2017 article in The…
Hong Kong Police Raid Pro-Democracy News Outlet, Arrest 6
Advertisement Hong Kong police raided the office of an online pro-democracy news outlet on Wednesday after arresting six people for conspiracy to publish a seditious publication, the latest moves in a crackdown on dissent in the city. Those arrested were affiliated with Stand News, one of the most vocal pro-democracy news outlets in the city after the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily ceased operations earlier this year. More than 200 officers were involved in the search, police said. They had a warrant to seize relevant journalistic materials under a national security…
Mind Games: how China’s confidence soared between two Olympics
Spectacular fireworks lit up the summer sky and the air filled with the smell of sulphur as trails of smoke descended on the crowds in Tiananmen Square. The throng cheered enthusiastically. “Go Beijing, go China, go Olympics,” they chanted. The collective pride was palpable. It was shortly after the opening ceremony of the Beijing Summer Olympics, which began at 8.08pm local time on 8 August 2008; the Chinese believe eight is an auspicious number. That evening, Chinese-American Kaiser Kuo was watching from the balcony of his apartment in eastern Beijing.…