Kashgar’s centuries-old Khan Bazaar, seen at left in a Dec. 21, 2022, image, is being demolished by Chinese authorities. The results of the destruction can be seen in the photo at right, taken on March 22, 2023. Authorities in China’s Xinjiang region say they want to upgrade the area and replace dilapidated structures. Credit: Maxar Technologies (L); Planet (R) Qasimjan Abdurehim remembers Kashgar’s centuries-old Khan Bazaar as a thriving marketplace where Uyghur merchants traded fabrics and modern-day tourists strolled along the pedestrian street that ran down the middle of it.…
Day: April 5, 2023
Influx of Chinese nationals means tough competition for merchants in Laos
An influx of Chinese investors and business owners to Laos in recent years is crowding out Lao entrepreneurs, who say the visitors have an unfair advantage in capital and are taking away their clientele. Some 7,500 Chinese nationals have settled in Laos within the last 4-5 years, according to official estimates – most following the opening of a U.S.$6 billion high-speed railway connecting the two Communist neighbors in December 2021. While the railway promises to offer land-locked Laos closer integration with the world’s second largest economy, most of the trade…
Chinese authorities in Tibet go after relatives of self-immolating protestors
Chinese authorities are harassing and discriminating against relatives of Tibetans who protested against Chinese rule by setting their bodies alight going back to 2008, two sources in Tibet told Radio Free Asia. For example, students related to such protesters have been denied authorization to take university entrance exams, while others have been denied job opportunities, they say. “There is a student here who is related to someone who self-immolated in 2013,” a source from Labrang (in Chinese Labuleng) told Radio Free Asia’s Tibetan Service. ”It is for that reason that…
Class sizes in North Korea are shrinking as more women become breadwinners
As students filed into their elementary classrooms this week across North Korea for the start of the school year, entering class sizes in cities were noticeably smaller, a reflection of the declining birthrate in the country as more women become breadwinners to support their families, sources in the country said. The trend appears to be making authorities nervous, a person who works in education in South Pyongan province, north of the capital Pyongyang, told Radio Free Asia on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “Yesterday we welcomed the newly enrolled…
Why Xi Jinping is not another Chairman Mao
EACH time President Xi Jinping grabs more powers, critics compare China’s leader to Chairman Mao Zedong, whose one-man rule led the country to disaster. Those grumblers may underestimate Mr Xi’s ambitions. Rather often, the charge that Mr Xi is emulating Mao—a despot whose campaigns of political terror and deranged economic policies left tens of millions dead—is a prediction that China’s leader is storing up trouble for himself, by weakening norms and institutions that might helpfully check and balance his authority. Such doomsayers are drawing lessons from Mao’s unhappy end. Over…
It is getting even harder for Western scholars to do research in China
For much of the past century, foreign academics have had a tough time learning about China. Few could visit the country when it was ruled by Mao Zedong. Some instead tracked newspapers like the People’s Daily, a Communist Party mouthpiece. These offered plenty of ideological hectoring but few believable details about people’s lives. Reading dry party documents, an art known as Pekingology, was like “swallowing sawdust by the bucketful”, as one renowned China-watcher put it. Listen to this story.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. Your browser does…
Ethnic terminology bedevils Taiwan-China relations
On both sides of the Taiwan Strait this week, people have been observing the Qingming festival by sweeping the tombs of their ancestors. Many Taiwanese think it only natural that Ma Ying-jeou, their former president, used a trip to the mainland to visit his grandfather’s tomb in Hunan province for such a ceremony. But many object to the way that Mr Ma has also been waxing lyrical about the shared ancestry of Taiwanese and mainlanders. In Taiwan, supporters of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (his own party is the Kuomintang…
Cambodia sells research monkeys to the world. It’s not all legal, US says.
UPDATED at 1:20 p.m. EDT on 04-05-2023 Visitors are not welcome at the monkey farm co-owned by the sister of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen. The farm is ringed by moat-like canals, 6-foot-6-inch-high (2 meters) earthworks and a brick wall topped with razor wire. A former employee told RFA that guards with Kalashnikov assault rifles patrol the grounds inside the farm in rural Kampong Speu province, which is two hours’ drive from the capital Phnom Penh. So, what’s there to secure behind the walls? The answer is the captive animals…