A Cambodian court has charged two Chinese nationals with the torture and murder of a South Korean social media influencer whose body was found on the outskirts of Phnom Penh earlier this month. Byun Ah-yeong, also known as BJ Ahyeong, was an influencer for popular South Korean streaming service AfreecaTV, and that she had more than 250,000 Instagram followers, Agence France-Presse reported. Media reports say she was 33. Two Chinese, Lai Wenshao, 30, and Cai Huijuan, 39 were charged with murder, court spokesman Plang Sophal told local media. Lai and…
Day: June 16, 2023
Antony Blinken’s visit to China could be a success even without breakthrough agreements: analysts
Blinken is slated to hold meetings with senior Chinese officials on Sunday and Monday. He will be the first US cabinet-level official to visit China since 2019, the first secretary of state since 2018, and the highest-ranking US government official since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021. Experts anticipate that Blinken will be granted, per custom, a visit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, though no official announcement has yet been made. Blinken was also expected to meet Xi in February. Advertisement Part of the reason for Xi’s taking…
Italy set to limit shareholder rights of Chinese owner in Pirelli
Italy has approved measures to limit the shareholder rights of the Chinese chemical group Sinochem in Pirelli, the Milan-listed tyremaker and set out a wider range of sectors that the government judges to be of national security importance. The decision is a rare intervention in an eight-year-old Chinese investment that had, so far, not been considered a strategic national asset. In 2015, a previous Chinese state-owned chemicals group had bought a majority stake in Pirelli, considered a crown jewel of Italian industry, for $7.7bn. Prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s office said…
China’s culture police spark fears of overkill as Communist Party steps up ideological drive
But the drive has raised concerns about the already limited space for artistic impression, faced with the party’s aims to bring China’s online, celebrity and media into line with government policy and “Xi Jinping Thought”. Lynette Ong, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto, said the cultural law enforcement appeared to be aimed at “cleaning up people’s minds”. Advertisement “It’s like ideological domination directing people, telling them what they can or cannot believe or practise or utter in public,” she said. Some of Li Haoshi’s jokes have…
Italy’s Government Acts to Curb Chinese Influence on Tiremaker Pirelli
ROME — Italy’s government said on Friday it had taken steps to limit the influence of Chinese investor Sinochem on tiremaker Pirelli, including a mandatory qualified majority for strategic decisions made by the company’s board. Rome’s decision comes after Sinochem, Pirelli’s largest shareholder with a 37% stake, notified the Italian government in March of plans to update an existing shareholder pact with Camfin, the holding company of Pirelli CEO Marco Tronchetti Provera. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s administration scrutinized the pact under “Golden Power” rules aimed at protecting assets deemed strategic…
Vietnamese police arrest more than 50 in attacks on commune offices
Vietnamese security forces have arrested more than 50 people accused of being involved in last weekend’s deadly attacks on two commune offices in central Dak Lak province, a Ministry of Public Security spokesman told state media on Friday. The June 11 attack left nine people dead. Those involved in the attacks were young people who harbored delusions and extremist attitudes and had been incited and abetted by the ringleaders via the internet, according to the ministry. But officials didn’t say who or which organizations had incited or assisted the attackers.…
Need cash? Go block a road! China’s rural elderly demand money from passing truck
Faced with rising living costs and a tanking economy, residents of China’s rural areas turn to unofficial toll booths to supplement their incomes, according to a recent video clip uploaded to social media. In a video clip filmed from a truck driving from the northern city of Tangshan to Malanzhuang township in the northern province of Hebei and posted by several Twitter users, the truck slows as a tall figure blocks a road, before an older man with a cell phone gestures briefly indicating the price to pass through the…
Republicans Attack Blinken for China Trip, Threatening Subpoena
The News Leading congressional Republicans excoriated Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken on Friday for traveling to China this weekend, accusing him of undermining national security by attempting to normalize diplomatic relations with Beijing as they press for a more hard-line approach. Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas and the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, threatened to subpoena Mr. Blinken if he failed to produce documents by Friday evening detailing the list of retaliatory actions the U.S. government has considered against China, and when they were applied. “The Biden…
Digger plows into grasslands protesters in China, injuring ethnic Mongolian herder
An ethnic Mongolian herder has been sent to hospital after being hit by heavy machinery amid clashes over the sale of collectively owned grazing land in China’s northern region of Inner Mongolia. A video clip shared to Twitter showed a mechanical digger plowing into a group of people on grassland near Ar-Hundelen (in Chinese, Arikunduleng) township in Inner Mongolia’s Zaruud banner, a county-like administrative division, as onlookers shout. The incident comes amid ongoing migration of majority Han Chinese to the region, as well as repeated land grabs by government-backed corporations,…
University shutting its Confucius Institute after US House panel raises concerns with Pentagon
Gallagher drew Austin’s attention to the “looming deadline” under a section of the 2021 National Defence Authorisation Act that prohibits the Pentagon from “providing funds to institutions of higher education that host a Confucius Institute” after October 1, 2023. Confucius Institutes are Beijing-backed language and cultural centres that China says are a bridge of friendship to the rest of the world. In recent years, though, critics in Washington have accused these schools of partnering with American universities to gain access to crucial intellectual property and promote propaganda. Advertisement A bipartisan…