Labor has lashed the Coalition in the wake of the newly signed security agreement between China and Solomon Islands, branding it “the worst Australian foreign policy blunder in the Pacific” in decades. The Coalition government sounded the alarm over the deal, arguing the pact has been negotiated in secret and could “undermine stability in our region”. The foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, and the minister for the Pacific, Zed Seselja, said they were “deeply disappointed” by the deal, and would “seek further clarity on the terms of the agreement, and…
Day: April 19, 2022
Star Ferry, ‘Emblem of Hong Kong,’ May Sail Into History After 142 Years
HONG KONG — On a damp Monday morning in Hong Kong, Freeman Ng looked out from the upper deck of the Star Ferry as it approached land. A sailor tossed a heavy rope to a colleague on the pier, who looped it around a bollard as the swoosh of the waves crashed against the green and white vessel pulling in from Victoria Harbor. Mr. Ng, 43, commutes from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island on the ferry most weekdays. The subway would be much faster, but Mr. Ng prefers to cross…
China doubles down on coal
3. No one likes power cuts, least of all authoritarian governments. Many Chinese provinces ran critically short of electricity last fall. Factories suddenly went silent. High-rise office buildings had to be evacuated before their elevators stopped. Chemical factories lost power and, with it, their ability to control the heat and pressure in potentially hazardous operations. In March, President Xi Jinping underlined that he would not let his country turn away from coal without making sure that reliable replacements were in place. “You can’t throw away the eating utensils in your…
Political Tensions Simmer Over Shanghai’s COVID-19 Crisis
Advertisement Shanghai remains under a citywide lockdown aimed at containing China’s largest COVID-19 outbreak since the start of the pandemic. This has resulted in massive disruption, widespread food shortages and the tragic deaths of non-COVID patients deprived of timely care. The situation is putting a strain on state-society relations in China, which has enjoyed a high degree of political stability since Xi Jinping became president in 2013. First and foremost, the outbreak in China’s financial hub is straining the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party government and the masses it…
China and Russia Are Giving Authoritarianism a Bad Name
How many Russian military officers watching that humiliation were ready to tell Putin the truth about Ukraine once the war started going badly? When the Russian military was up against foes in Georgia, Syria, Crimea and Chechnya, Russia could just indiscriminately bomb its way out of any problem. But now that Putin’s military has found itself in a war with Ukraine’s highly motivated army and its homegrown weapons industry, backed with some of NATO’s best precision weapons and training, the rot has really started to show. Russia’s tank and logistic…
Fear, paranoia, anger – this is life under China’s zero-Covid strategy | Anonymous
When cases grew in Shanghai, I was hopeful. I thought there would be no way Shanghai would be like Jilin and Changshun, smaller cities that had recently locked down millions of people to contain Covid outbreaks. I assumed that the government would finally have to relax its kneejerk “zero Covid” approach. I could not have been more wrong. Restrictions throughout China have become more draconian. We call this the Shanghai effect. After 24 million people became locked down here, everything was amped up elsewhere too. I live in a smaller…
TikTok owner ByteDance enters market for large-screen operating systems through new collaboration with TV maker Konka
The Smartisan unit hoped to “bring a new experience upgrade to the smart TV ecosystem”, while showing consumers and the broader market “the team’s innovation in the smart TV field”, Zou said during the live-streamed product launch on Monday. Shenzhen-based Konka Group Co is offering MEyou OS-powered television models under its Aphea smart TV series. Photo: Shutterstock Konka, which also uses Android and webOS on its other TV models, has opened for pre-orders its MEyou OS-powered Aphea A6 Pro TVs in 65, 75, 86 and 98-inch screen sizes, which were…
China’s Covid Shutdowns Go Far Beyond Shanghai
All it took was one confirmed Covid case among the 2.4 million residents of Wuhu, a city in the farmland of eastern China, for the government there to lock down residents without warning. After watching Shanghai — China’s richest, most sophisticated metropolis — humbled and traumatized by the spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus and a resulting weekslong shutdown, officials across the country have every incentive to jump early, even if residents have no time to prepare. Inhabitants of the urban districts of Wuhu in Anhui Province awoke…