Myanmar’s junta authorities have arrested 10 workers from Yangon region for incitement to riot, state-controlled newspapers reported Thursday. Reports said two members of the outlawed Action Labor Rights group were arrested along with workers from two garment factories between June 14 and 17. The Action Labor Rights members were identified as Thandar Soe Lin and Pyoe Myat Thin. The workers came from Shwepyitha township’s Hosheng Myanmar garment factory and Sun Apparel Myanmar in Hlaingtharya township. The factory workers were fired and arrested for taking the lead in demanding a 17%…
Month: June 2023
China’s military set-up is designed to foil any would-be Prigozhin
Receive free Chinese military updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Chinese military news every morning. The writer is a former British diplomat who specialised in China. He is now a fellow of the Council on Geostrategy, the Royal United Services Institute and the Mercator Institute for China Studies Whatever Yevgeny Prigozhin was plotting in Russia last week — mutiny, insurrection, civil war — this level of military insurrection would never have been possible in China. The Chinese Communist party exerts tight control over…
Doreen Gibbons obituary
My mother, Doreen Gibbons, who has died aged 96, was a civil internee in Shanghai, China, during the second world war. In 1942, soon after Japanese soldiers took over Shanghai, her father, Frank Cook, who worked for the city’s municipal council, was taken to Haiphong Road camp as a “political prisoner”. Doreen described furiously pedalling her bicycle through Shanghai behind the lorry, tears streaming down her face. Doreen, who was then 16, her younger sister Joan and their mother, Dorothy, were given a date to report to the Civil Internee…
‘Sanctions deterrent’: China frames new Foreign Relations Law as essential to national sovereignty
It stipulates that Beijing has the right to take measures to counter and restrict actions that endanger the country’s sovereignty, security and development interests, violate international law or “fundamental norms of international relations”. It also authorises the State Council – the country’s cabinet – and the executive branches of government to come up with regulations and systems to apply the countermeasures. Advertisement Washington has blacklisted more than 1,300 – and counting – Chinese entities on a range of alleged grounds, from ties to the military, to aiding Russia, human rights…
China-US quiet war of words escalates
Chinese-language state media was silent on Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s meeting with a bipartisan U.S. congress visit this week, but the English-language tabloid Global Times described the delegation as representing “hostile forces.” The state media outlet said that straight after the U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s fence-mending visit to Beijing “hostile forces and politicians within the U.S. are trying to damage the China-U.S. relationship … rather than stabilizing and managing the tense situation.” At a regular press conference on Thursday, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Mao Ning was unwavering…
China passes foreign relations law to strengthen Xi’s response to sanctions
Receive free Chinese politics & policy updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Chinese politics & policy news every morning. China has passed a new foreign relations law that deepens President Xi Jinping’s control over the country’s external relations and strengthens the government’s legal basis for “countermeasures” against western threats to national and economic security. The official Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday that the National People’s Congress, China’s rubber-stamp parliament, had approved the law. The legislation is likely to provide firmer legal backing…
TSMC’s Arizona headache and a surprise chip deal in Japan
Hello, this is Kenji from Hong Kong. This Friday marks the third anniversary of Beijing’s imposition of the national security law on Hong Kong. The vaguely worded legislation criminalises acts of secession, subversion, foreign collusion and terrorism. So far, the national security force established by the law has arrested 260 people. Most of those arrested are opposition politicians, activists, students and members of civic organisations that failed to meet the ambiguously defined “patriotism” criterion set by the Chinese Communist party. Beijing has continued to tighten its grip, recently warning all…
Analysts: China’s Plans for Cuba May Go Beyond Spy Base
washington — WASHINGTON — Top U.S. lawmakers are calling on the Biden administration to brief Congress on the spy station China is allegedly building in Cuba, but American analysts fear that China’s plans for America’s backyard may go beyond intelligence gathering. If a war over Taiwan were to break out, these analysts warn, the Chinese military could operate in Latin America and the Caribbean to disrupt U.S. military operations or even strike the continental U.S. In a June 22 letter to CIA chief William Burns and Secretary of State Antony…
The Chinese carmakers planning to shake up the European market
Visitors to the Nio House in Frankfurt can do more than just admire the sleek new electric vehicles on display. Half the showroom, a stone’s throw from the city’s 15th-century Eschenheimer Gate, is a free-to-use co-working space, equipped with meeting rooms, a café and a crèche. When Qin Lihong, co-founder and president of the Chinese carmaker, attended its opening in late March, he told the freshly hired sales team not to bother with sales targets and to instead “give to the community”. The charm offensive is a prelude to an…
How the US and Europe can beat China’s Belt and Road
Receive free Belt and Road Initiative updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Belt and Road Initiative news every morning. One of the pithier remarks about America’s geopolitical rivalry with China came recently from Larry Summers, who served in Barack Obama and Bill Clinton’s administrations in a different, more optimistic era of globalisation. He quoted a developing country figure thus: “When we’re engaged with the Chinese, we get an airport. And when we’re engaged with you guys, we get a lecture.” With developing countries’…