Jacinda Ardern has spoken with Xi Jinping about cooperation between New Zealand and China, while also raising areas of tension and warning that international norms that had benefited the two countries were “being tested”. The New Zealand prime minister and the Chinese president met for about 50 minutes – running over the scheduled half hour – on the sidelines of the Apec summit in Bangkok. It was their first in-person meeting since 2019. A New Zealand government statement said Ardern had spoken of “significant areas of bilateral cooperation including trade,…
Day: November 18, 2022
China uses carrots and sticks to boost Uyghur-Han intermarriage: report
China mixes financial, education and career incentives with coercive measures such as threats to families under state policies to promote intermarriage between majority Han Chinese and ethnic minority Uyghurs in the restive Xinjiang region, a new report by a Uyghur rights group has found. The Uyghur Human Rights Project analyzed Chinese state media, policy documents, government sanctioned marriage testimonials, as well as accounts from women in the Uyghur diaspora, that government incentivizes and coercion to boost interethnic marriages has increased since 2014. “The Chinese Party-State is actively involved in carrying…
Leaked documents reveal Myanmar junta’s plans to strike in Chin state
The Myanmar junta is preparing to launch airstrikes against the Chin National Front in the country’s western Chin state, a spokesperson for the ethnic armed organization told Radio Free Asia, citing leaked internal military documents. According to the documents, which the Chin National Front, or CNF, acquired earlier this month, the airstrike is intended to target the organization’s headquarters on Mt. Victoria, in Thantlang township. “We cannot reveal where we got this intelligence information, but we are preparing the best we can for the defense against this airstrike,” CNF spokesperson…
Oil Prices Slide as Investors Worry Energy Demand Is Slowing
HOUSTON — Saudi Arabia is slashing oil exports. U.S. crude oil in storage is dropping. Members of the European Union will soon sharply reduce how much fuel they buy from Russia. Those developments would normally send oil prices sharply higher. Yet oil prices have been sliding. The U.S. benchmark, West Texas Intermediate, fell to about $80 a barrel on Friday from more than $90 at the start of the month. The global supply of oil appears to be falling, but many oil traders think that demand is heading down even…
China sees ‘daily protests’ despite widespread state surveillance, controls: report
People in China frequently challenge those in power, despite a nationwide ‘stability maintenance’ program aimed at nipping popular protest in the bud, according to the U.S.-based think tank Freedom House. Despite pervasive surveillance, a “grid” system of law enforcement at the neighborhood level and targeted “stability maintenance” system aimed at controlling critics of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, the group has identified hundreds of incidents of public protest between June and September alone. Ever-widening controls on freedom of speech, including recent moves to censor comments on online news stories, coupled…
China hits back at FBI claim of unauthorized ‘police stations’ in US
China has contested claims it was operating unauthorized “police stations” on US soil, calling the sites volunteer-run, after the FBI director said he was “very concerned” about unauthorized stations that have been linked to Beijing’s influence operations. Safeguard Defenders, a Europe-based human rights organization, published a report in September revealing the presence of dozens of Chinese police “service stations” in large cities around the world, including New York. The FBI director, Christopher Wray, told a Senate hearing on Thursday that it was “outrageous” that the Chinese government would attempt to…
Cambodian students are skeptical of studying Chinese
Meng Sophay, an 11th grader at Hun Sen Chamkar Dong High School in Cambodia’s coastal province of Kep, doesn’t think much of a plan announced last week to require students like him to learn Chinese. “To me, it is not very satisfying because we already have our Khmer language and other languages,” Meng Sophay told Radio Free Asia. “I think it’s a lot.” Earlier this month, Chinese and Cambodian officials signed an agreement to include Chinese instruction in grades 7 to 12, a reflection of the close economic and geopolitical…
Loss of freshwater dolphins kills tourism industry in southern Lao province
The disappearance of critically endangered freshwater Irrawaddy dolphins along a stretch of the Mekong River in southern Laos has dealt a blow to the local tourism industry, putting hotels, restaurants and tour guides out of business, said villagers living near the border with Cambodia. The population of the dolphins, which have a high rounded forehead and no beak, living in the area had dwindled to just four in 2020, the regional conservation agency said, and two died last year. The last one died in February after it was caught in…
Chinese Government Steps In to Help an Apple iPhone Factory
Apple’s largest iPhone factory, in the city of Zhengzhou, has been beset with production problems caused first by a Covid lockdown and then by a shortage of workers. Now, that plant is getting help from an unlikely source: the Chinese government. Officials in central China have tapped the government’s vast network of party members, civil servants and military veterans to help Foxconn, the Taiwanese-based assembler of Apple’s iPhones, with its recruitment drive. They called on them to “respond to the government’s call” and “aid in the resumption of production” at…
Vietnamese Facebook user given 8 years for posts criticizing the government
A Vietnamese court on Friday sentenced Facebook user Bui Van Thuan to eight years in prison–under vague rules that are often used by authorities to stifle criticism–for a series of posts in which he criticized the power struggle among local officials, whom he nicknamed “the dog fighting ring.” In his final statement during the trial, Thuan, 41, gave up his right to appeal because he said he cannot trust the judicial system in Vietnam. “The sentence for my husband may have met the authorities’ expectations, but it is utterly unconvincing…