Russia’s experience in Ukraine is affecting China’s calculations on how and when it may decide to invade Taiwan, the head of the CIA said on Wednesday. Appearing at the Aspen Security Forum, Central Intelligence Agency director Bill Burns played down speculation that Chinese president Xi Jinping could move on Taiwan after a key Communist party meeting later this year. “The risks of that become higher, it seems to us, the further into this decade that you get,” Burns said, adding: “I wouldn’t underestimate President Xi’s determination to assert China’s control”…
Day: July 20, 2022
China’s top Covid official denies authorities are easing controls and calls for swift response to new outbreaks
The province, which surrounds Beijing and has been described as “the moat of the capital”, faced criticism – and even protests – from some residents last month when it imposed strict Covid-19 controls measures in four major cities: Baoding, Handan, Shijiazhuang and Zhangjiakou. But Sun visited two of the cities and urged officials to take decisive action and allocate resources to put down outbreaks as soon as they start. “All departments should overcome weariness and fatigue and the emergency response command mechanism must maintain an efficient state of operation ……
European Parliament VP Urges Renewed China-Taiwan Dialogue
Advertisement European Parliament Vice President Nicola Beer met with Taiwan’s leader Tsai Ing-wen on Wednesday and called for China to open a “mutual and respectful dialogue” with the self-governing island democracy, which Beijing claims as its own territory. Beer emphasized Taiwan’s importance “on a global scale” and called for the island to be allowed to participate in the World Health Assembly and for the European Union to upgrade its representation in Taipei. She reaffirmed support for Taiwan’s right to determine its own future amid Chinese threats to annex the island…
Strict Government Censorship Requirements Leave Chinese Tech Companies Struggling Overseas
Advertisement When using a word processing software, users look for reliability and privacy protections. Users of China-based Kingsoft’s WPS Office have reasons to be concerned on both fronts after the latest public relations turmoil. Earlier last month, a Chinese novelist raised a privacy breach concern about WPS Office, a word processing software that stores files on the cloud. The author accused the China-based company of “spying” and removing locally saved content, reporting that she was locked out of a draft of her novel over supposedly illegal content. After initially denying…
TechScape: suspicious of TikTok? You’re not alone
What’s the problem with TikTok? It’s a harder question to answer than it seems. The social video app, which has joined Facebook/Instagram, YouTube and Twitter in the list of societally important social networks, is frequently spoken about with an air of suspicion, and it’s not hard to guess why: the app’s Chinese roots loom large in the conversation. (ByteDance, which owns TikTok, insists that it is headquartered in the Cayman Islands, one of the only instances I’ve seen of a company deciding that loudly proclaiming its paper HQ is located…
‘Run philosophy’: the Chinese citizens seeking to leave amid Covid uncertainty
When Wendy Luo*, a 29-year-old Chinese woman, handed over her passport to a border control officer in Shanghai airport last month, her heart began to beat fast. “I felt like my fate would be determined at that moment. Leave or stay, all at the officer’s mercy.” After enduring months of lockdowns and weeks of food shortages, Luo had begun to look for an exit strategy from China. She was lucky, she said, because she quickly managed to find a job in Paris, having spent six years studying and working in…