Month: November 2022

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: ‘I’m just reporting what’s going on’

Chin@Strategy

During a spate of spontaneous protests across China last weekend following a fatal lockdown fire in Xinjiang’s regional capital Urumqi, a Twitter user with the handle “Mr. Li is not your teacher” was thrust into the international limelight as he uploaded clip after clip of demonstrations and candlelight vigils around the country, filling a void left by the mainstream media, which largely ignored the protests. Retaining his online pseudonym for fear of reprisals, the overseas-based “Mr. Li” told Radio Free Asia’s Mandarin Service how he wound up tweeting about the…

Xi Jinping Faces Another Dilemma: How to Mourn Jiang Zemin

Chin@Strategy

The deaths of Chinese Communist leaders are always fraught moments of political theater, and especially so now with the passing of Jiang Zemin soon after a wave of public defiance on a scale unseen since Mr. Jiang came to power in 1989. China’s sternly autocratic current leader, Xi Jinping, must preside over the mourning for Mr. Jiang, who died on Wednesday at 96, while he also grapples with widespread protests against China’s exceptionally stringent Covid-19 restrictions. The demonstrations have at times also boldly called for China to return to the…

Former Chinese president Jiang Zemin dies at 96

Chin@Strategy

China’s former leader Jiang Zemin, who was elevated to the head of the Communist party as a loyalist during the Tiananmen protests and then presided over years of economic expansion, has died aged 96. The cause of death was leukaemia and multiple organ failure, state media said. His life ended in a hospital in Shanghai, the city that was his power base, and has been the scene of recent protests against the government and its Covid controls. Jiang’s death could hardly have come at a worse time for China’s current…

Hong Kong Rags-to-riches Publisher Jimmy Lai Facing Security Law Trial

Chin@Strategy

Advertisement Jimmy Lai broke into Hong Kong’s rambunctious media world 30 years ago armed with the belief that delivering information equates with protecting freedom. Lai’s own freedom is at stake as he fights charges of endangering national security as former publisher of his now-defunct pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily. Already serving a 20-month term for other offenses, the 74-year-old Lai could face up to life in prison if he is convicted under a sweeping National Security Law that Beijing has imposed on the former British colony, silencing or jailing many pro-democracy…

Former Chinese top leader Jiang Zemin dies at age 96

Chin@Strategy

Former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who led the country during its emergence from isolation after the 1989 Tiananmen massacre to a decade of rapid economic growth, died on Wednesday at the age of 96, Chinese state media reported. Jiang died in his home city of Shanghai just after noon on Wednesday of leukemia and multiple organ failure, Xinhua news agency said, publishing a letter to the nation from the Communist Party, the military and other top organs, expressing “profound grief.” “Our beloved Comrade Jiang Zemin died of leukemia and multiple…

Jiang Zemin, China’s Leader After Tiananmen Square Protests, Dies at 96

Chin@Strategy

The feral capitalism that Mr. Jiang and Mr. Zhu fostered created a wide rich-poor divide even as it lifted vast numbers from poverty, and it nurtured a culture of official corruption and cronyism. “In some ways, that was the start of this live-and-let-live attitude toward corruption that Xi Jinping now finds himself attacking,” said Joseph Fewsmith, a professor at Boston University who studies Chinese leadership politics. Wielding Influence By the time Mr. Jiang retired from the party leadership in 2002 and from the presidency in 2003, his influence and self-regard…

Zero Covid can’t continue in China. Reopening is the only way to quell public anger | Yu Jie

Chin@Strategy

When President Xi Jinping was seen unmasked at the G20 summit in Indonesia, he maintained a largely positive tone with President Joe Biden and other world leaders. This left an impression that China was on the verge of withdrawing its zero-Covid strategy. A set of loosening policy measures introduced by Beijing seemed to further suggest that China was on track to reopen. As outlined in the 20th party congress, Xi wants to forge a pathway towards economic modernisation and this means building economic resilience and a further increase in household…

Shanghai Protests, But Not Too Far

Chin@Strategy

Advertisement The protest scenes playing out over the last few days in Shanghai are the most notable that the city has experienced since the late 1980s. Thirty-five years ago, most Shanghai residents lived on the edge of a barely tolerable poverty, in Jing’An District as well as throughout the city. Sizable but ultimately manageable protests, mostly led by university students, took place in 1986 and 1989. Those protests focused not on overthrowing the Chinese Communist Party, but on asking it to allow press and other freedoms, within the construct of…

China’s Xi eyes ‘closer energy partnership’ with Russia as Putin praises their ‘evolving’ economic cooperation

Chin@Strategy

Russian President Vladimir Putin also sent a message to the forum participants on Tuesday, saying that despite the complicated international situation, the comprehensive partnership and strategic interactions between Russia and China continue to develop. “The energy industry remains one of the key and most rapidly evolving areas of our economic cooperation,” Putin said, according to Russian state news agency Tass. Advertisement Russia-Chinese trade turnover in the energy sector this year has grown by 64 per cent, year on year, with physical deliveries increasing by around 10 per cent, Russian Deputy…

Report: Authoritarianism on the Rise as Democracy Weakens

Chin@Strategy

Democracy is being degraded around the world because people are losing faith in the legitimacy of elections and see freedom of expression being stymied, among a range of other problems, according to a global body founded to promote democracy worldwide. The 34 member-country International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, or International IDEA, said in a report that the decline in democratic rule is being fueled by efforts to undermine credible election results, widespread disillusionment among youth over political parties and their out-of-touch leaders as well as the rise of…