“Companies are just really tired after three years of Covid,” he adds, also highlighting a number of other issues. These include travel becoming more difficult, rising labour costs, executives who are “just not willing” to take up assignments in China, political pressure, and China becoming a less predictable place in which to do business. BBC
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, made a rare and defiant trip near the front line on Wednesday, personally thanking soldiers who have been fighting in the devastated eastern city of Bakhmut, which has become a potent symbol of Ukrainian resistance. The trip to the Bakhmut area came on a day when air- and seaborne drones attacked the Russian-occupied peninsula of Crimea and a Russian missile ripped into a nine-story apartment complex in Zaporizhzhia, in the south, killing at least one person and injuring more than 30 others. At…
WASHINGTON — China is very carefully watching how Washington and the world respond to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but has not yet crossed the line of providing lethal aid to Moscow, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday. Speaking on the heels of a visit to Moscow by Chinese President Xi Jinping, Blinken told a Senate hearing that if Russia was allowed to attack its neighbor with impunity, it would “open a Pandora’s box” for would-be aggressors and lead to a “world of conflict.” “The stakes in Ukraine…
As she had done several times before, Gonpo Kyi went to the prison in Tibet’s capital of Lhasa on Monday to appeal for the release of her brother, former businessman Dorjee Tashi, who is serving a life sentence. When police told Kyi to stop, she refused. So they grabbed her and detained her overnight, during which she was beaten and tortured, two Tibetans with knowledge of the situation said. Kyi was released on Tuesday, and her other brother, Dorjee Tseten – who has also repeatedly campaigned on his brother’s behalf…
A court in Shanghai has handed a seven-year jail term to the author of a programming and politics blog who evaded government detection for around 12 years after finding him guilty of “incitement to subvert state power,” Radio Free Asia has learned. Ruan Xiaohuan, the 46-year-old author of the formerly anonymous blog ProgramThink on the Blogger.com platform, was detained by the authorities in May 2021 after publishing several posts on evading the Communist Party’s internet censorship and tracking protocols. The move comes after Apple removed a Twitter-like social media app…
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken pushed the Senate on Wednesday to approve $2 billion in spending for infrastructure projects worldwide, but appeared to be rebuffed with a key Republican senator questioning the chances such money could be found. Amid a Republican-led push to cut spending and bring the U.S. federal budget into the black for the first time since 2001, it marked the latest roadblock in long-running U.S. government efforts to establish even a modest alternative to Beijing’s $1-trillion Belt and Road Initiative. Blinken said the State Department was…
salem, oregon — More than 119,000 people have been injured by tear gas and other chemical irritants around the world since 2015 and about 2,000 suffered injuries from less lethal impact projectiles, according to a report released Wednesday. The study by Physicians for Human Rights and the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations, in collaboration with the Omega Research Foundation, took 2½ years to research. It provides a rare, partial count of casualties, compiled from medical literature, from these devices used by police around the world, including in Colombia, Chile,…
Vietnam told the United Nations that it has no information regarding the whereabouts of Chinese activist Dong Guangping, who was arrested in Hanoi in August 2022. “After the verification process, the authorities in Viet Nam have had no information regarding Dong Guangping in Viet Nam,” Hanoi said in a diplomatic note dated March 15. It was in response to a Dec. 15 letter from three U.N. special rapporteurs on human rights that raised questions about the Chinese activist’s situation. They said they were informed about the Vietnamese police’s arbitrary arrest…
Vietnamese police have released four flight attendants detained for transporting cocaine and other illegal drugs in their luggage on a flight from Paris because of a lack of evidence, state media reported Wednesday. The female flight attendants said they agreed to transport the toothpaste tubes for an individual who approached them in Paris and paid them more than 10 million dong, or about U.S.$424, to take the tubes on the flight to Ho Chi Minh City. The women said they were unaware of the narcotics, and that they did not…
Prime Minister Hun Sen defended the recent promotions of his two eldest sons to senior military posts, revealing that he secretly worked with the Minister of National Defense to elevate the pair ahead of general elections later this year. The eldest son, Hun Manet, has been tapped to be Hun Sen’s political successor. He is expected to resign from the military in the coming months to compete in the election, which is scheduled for July. The prime minister said he and Minister of National Defense Tea Banh agreed to promote…