The United States has charged seven Chinese nationals it accuses of waging a surveillance and harassment campaign against a US resident and his family as part of a bid by Beijing to forcibly repatriate one of them back to China. The eight-count indictment, unsealed on Thursday in a US district court in Brooklyn, New York, is the latest case by the justice department targeting China’s global overseas campaign, known as “Operation Fox Hunt”. “As alleged, the defendants engaged in a unilateral and uncoordinated law enforcement action on US soil on…
Day: October 20, 2022
China Covid: The politics driving the hellish lockdowns
The year began with the tourist hub of Xi’an, home to 13 million, being shut down for a month. Then in March, a lockdown was announced in Shanghai. It was meant to last less than a week, but its 25 million residents stayed home for two months. In September, residents in locked down Chengdu found themselves trapped in their apartments during an earthquake. Elsewhere, rescue workers were required to do a Covid test before they could save anyone. BBC
Biden Just Clobbered China’s Chip Industry
Semiconductors are among the most intricate tools that human beings have ever invented. They are also among the most expensive to make. The latest chips — the sort that power supercomputers and high-end smartphones — are densely packed with transistors so small they’re measured in nanometers. Perhaps the only things more ingenious than the chips themselves are the machines that are used to build them. These devices are capable of working on almost unimaginably tiny scales, a fraction of the size of most viruses. Some of the chip-building machines take…
How Long Can Beijing Avoid Accountability for Its Abuses in Xinjiang?
Advertisement The Chinese government won an important victory at the U.N. Human Rights Council on October 6, using its political and economic influence to defeat a motion that called for debate on the human rights situation in Xinjiang. The motion failed by a margin of two votes, paving the way for a smooth opening for the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th National Congress on October 16. While the result ensured that the council would not examine a damning report by the former U.N. high commissioner for human rights, it did little…
A protester in Britain is beaten up by Chinese diplomats
Chinese diplomats scuffled with pro-democracy protesters from Hong Kong outside the Chinese consulate in Manchester on October 16th. One protester was pulled onto consular grounds and beaten, until a British policeman rescued him. British MPs have called for Zheng Xiyuan, the consul-general, to be declared persona non grata for his alleged role in the fracas. China has blamed the protesters and the British authorities.■ Listen to this story.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. Your browser does not support the <audio> element. Listen to this story Save time…
Xi Jinping has no interest in succession planning
The Emperor Qin Shi Huang is celebrated for unifying China, starting its Great Wall and building himself a vast mausoleum, guarded by an army of terracotta warriors. Less widely known is what happened after he died in 210BC on a tour of eastern China. According to the historian Sima Qian, aides concealed the death until the imperial entourage reached the capital, in order to stop his eldest son and heir from taking power. They had food sent to the royal carriage and handled business from there as before. Carts of…
How Asia’s Digital Governance Beacon Balances Data Privacy and the ‘Public Good’
Advertisement Healthcare in Taiwan is extremely good. It is not hard to find claims that the country’s national health insurance system is one of the best in the world, whether it be in international ranking tables or Taiwan’s inclusion in Ezekial Emanual’s recent book “Which Country Has the World’s Best Health Care?” The COVID-19 pandemic also demonstrated the strength of healthcare in Taiwan. The island nation of 23.5 million avoided lockdown for all of 2020, and, despite facing outbreaks in 2021 and 2022, has maintained a death per million people,…
How Taiwan’s Ambitious Diplomacy Aims to Keep the Island Safe From China
TAIPEI, Taiwan — To maintain diplomatic ties with Guatemala, Taiwan pays the country’s lobbyists in Washington. With its allies in the Pacific, Taiwan has promised to help preserve indigenous cultures, and to thank Lithuania, Taiwan’s newest unofficial ally, the government and local shoppers have embraced its imports, from lasers to bacon-flavored schnapps. The fear of being swallowed by China — increasingly adamant in its authoritarian claims over the self-ruled democracy — focuses the diplomatic mind. Few places in the world can claim to be as scrappy with statecraft or as…
No, Capitalism and the Internet Will Not Free China’s People
When I ran afoul of authorities in 2011 after criticizing the government, the police threatened me with an “ugly death” and said they would tell all of China about the absurd allegations they leveled, like tax evasion, to discredit me. I asked if China’s people would believe their lies. Ninety percent will, an officer told me. In China, where all “truth” comes from the party, he may have been right. Three years later, at an art exhibition in Shanghai, pressure from local government officials led to the abrupt removal of…
China using influencers to whitewash human rights abuses, report finds
The Chinese Communist party is using social media influencers from troubled regions like Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia to whitewash human rights abuses through an increasingly sophisticated propaganda campaign, a report has claimed. The report published on Thursday by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), described the videos by “frontier influencers” as a growing part of Beijing’s “propaganda arsenal”. Under the increasingly authoritarian rule of Xi Jinping, the CCP’s oppression of ethnic minorities has worsened, with major crackdowns in Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia. Global condemnation has mounted, with a…