Month: June 2022

Falling out of Favor: How China Lost the Nordic Countries

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Advertisement Five years ago, the Nordic countries (this article will focus on Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden) were still eagerly pushing for closer ties with China. Each of the Nordic countries held frequent high-level meetings with Beijing, signed new Memorandums of Understanding to expand bilateral cooperation, competed with each other to attract Chinese investments, and welcomed Chinese-led multilateral initiatives such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) as well as China’s growing involvement in the Arctic. In the past few years, however, perceptions of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)…

Chinese premier calls for more coal production as electricity demand soars

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China’s premier has called for increased production of coal to stave off mass blackouts, as early summer heatwaves have prompted record electricity usage. On Friday authorities again issued high temperature warnings for about a dozen provinces across the central and northern provinces, after consecutive days in the high 30s. As people sought to escape the heat this week, state media reported that electricity demand was up 8.8% in north-west China compared with last year, and 3.2% in northern China, citing the State Grid Corp of China. Records for maximum electricity…

Two killed after Chinese electric car falls from third floor of company’s offices

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A leading Chinese electric car company has said two people were killed when one of its vehicles fell from the third floor of its Shanghai headquarters. Nio, a homegrown brand sometimes seen as a potential rival to Tesla, said the incident happened at about 5.20pm on Wednesday. One of the victims was its employee and the other from a partner company. They were both inside the vehicle when it fell. “After the incident we immediately began to work with the public security department to find the cause of the accident,”…

China ambassador tells Australian protesters ‘no such thing as absolute freedom’

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China’s ambassador to Australia has declared there is “no such thing as absolute freedom” as he defended his country’s human rights record during a speech in Sydney. Facing repeated interruptions from protesters, Xiao Qian said on Friday there was no reason the two countries should be enemies but they should respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity – phrasing that indicates Australia should moderate its comments about Taiwan and Hong Kong. He described the meeting between China and Australia’s defence ministers in Singapore earlier this month as “very significant”, after…

‘Considerable strain’: how Australian officials saw the China rift

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Australian officials stayed in “regular contact” with the Chinese embassy in Canberra to “explain our decisions” even when Australian ministers were subjected to a two-year diplomatic freeze, newly released documents show. The former Morrison government had been “willing to engage with China in dialogue at any time”, according to Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade briefing notes, which also described the relationship as being under “considerable strain”. Australian government ministers were blocked from meetings or calls with their direct Chinese counterparts for more than two years, although lower-level diplomats and…

Hong Kong’s most famous floating restaurant sinks

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The iconic Jumbo Floating Restaurant had sat in Hong Kong’s Aberdeen harbour for 46 years. Built in the style of an imperial palace, it attracted locals, tourists and celebrities. But it was losing money when it closed in 2020. On June 14th it was towed away. Wherever it was heading, it never made it: the vessel sank on June 18th. Some saw a metaphor in its demise. China’s Communist Party has undermined Hong Kong’s democratic institutions in recent years. Jumbo represented a more hopeful era, now gone. Listen to this…

America and China spar over the Taiwan Strait

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To chinese nationalists, keen to see America pushed from their country’s backyard, the words of a foreign-ministry official have brought hope. Describing the Taiwan Strait as international waters is a “false claim”, the spokesman said on June 13th. China, he insisted, has “sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction” over the waterway. His words were aimed at America, which calls it international waters and often angers China by sailing warships through it. Soon “the dragon will fight the tiger” in the strait, a Chinese academic warned in an online article. The strait…

What to make of China’s new aircraft-carrier

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The aircraft-carrier has long been a symbol of military might. Admiral William Halsey, who commanded an early American one and led Allied forces in the South Pacific during the second world war, described it in 1942 as the best way to “get to the other fellow with everything you have, as fast as you can, and to dump it on him.” That has held true for most of the eight decades since, during which carriers played a key role in conflicts from Korea to Libya. They remain critical to ensuring…

China’s Political Surveillance System Keeps Growing

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Advertisement While countries in North America and Europe are gradually lifting pandemic restrictions, vaccine passports, and COVID testing requirements, China continues to implement relatively strict measures to eliminate COVID-19 cases within its borders, despite the World Health Organization warning that such an approach is unsustainable. Through harsh lockdowns and stringent testing requirements in multiple regions of the country, China racked up high economic costs and severe impacts on its residents’ livelihoods in the first half of 2022. The COVID-zero strategy that China implements relies on a digital identification: the health…

What ‘Zhong Sheng’ Says About China’s Perceptions of the Ukraine Conflict

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Advertisement Pundits have gone to great lengths to project their interpretations of Chinese perceptions of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Sadly, few examine exactly what China communicates about the conflict. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) focuses mainly on placing the blame for the conflict squarely on the West while also offering tepid support for Russia. These views represent an evolution of cooperation between Russia and China, with a recent communique vowing that the “friendship between the two States has no limits.”  But of course, there are limits. In analyzing the…