Day: January 20, 2022

Observer Now, Beneficiary Later: China and the Unrest in Kazakhstan

Chin@Strategy

Advertisement After a tumultuous week across Kazakhstan in early January, the situation has stabilized. Kazakhstani security forces, with the help of troops from Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) allies, put an end to both the peaceful protests and the violent riots that followed them. The political elite around President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev strengthened its hand in an accelerated intra-elite struggle that was intertwined with the unrest, forcing several loyalists around former president Nursultan Nazarbayev out of their posts. While events were confined to Kazakhstan and stemmed from domestic issues, they also…

U.S. Drops Its Case Against M.I.T. Scientist Accused of Hiding China Links

Chin@Strategy

BOSTON — Federal prosecutors on Thursday dropped the government’s charges against Gang Chen, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a high-profile setback to the China Initiative, a nearly three-year-old government effort intended to stop scientists from passing sensitive technology to China. Dr. Chen was arrested on Jan. 14, 2021, during President Donald J. Trump’s last full week in office, and charged with a form of grant fraud, hiding his affiliations with Chinese government institutions in applications for $2.7 million in grants from the U.S.…

Sport is indifferent to the Uyghur genocide: the Warriors investor said the quiet part out loud

Chin@Strategy

The US state department has described the Uyghur human rights issue as a genocide and the largest-scale detention of an ethno-religious community since the second world war. And yet to hear one leading professional sports owner tell it, “nobody cares”. Chamath Palihapitiya, a billionaire investor in the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, used the most recent episode of his All-In podcast to weigh in, dismissing the Uyghur crisis as “a very hard, ugly truth” that’s “below my line”. When his co-host David Sacks countered that the Uyghurs were a great, if…

Lockdown Made Their Second Date Last Weeks. Would Romance Bloom?

Chin@Strategy

When Zhao Xiaoqing first met Zhao Fei on a blind date, the sparks didn’t really fly. When they met for a second time at his home in northwest China in December, it lasted longer than they both expected. Facing a new outbreak of coronavirus cases, the health authorities announced a lockdown so sudden and severe that she didn’t have time to scurry home. So for nearly four weeks, Zhao Xiaoqing has lived in the city of Xianyang, in Shaanxi Province, with the family of Zhao Fei, a man she had…