Vietnamese police on Tuesday arrested a Buddhist abbot and two followers – all members of the Khmer Krom ethnic minority – for their alleged roles in two separate incidents involving a pagoda in the country’s south. The nearly 1.3-million strong Khmer Krom ethnic group live in a part of Vietnam that was once southeastern Cambodia. They face discrimination in Vietnam and suspicion in Cambodia, where they are often perceived not as Cambodians but as Vietnamese. The arrested abbot, Thach Chanh Da Ra, born in 1990, is head of the Dai…
Month: March 2024
Invest in Tibet and give your child a leg up on college exams
Updated on March 27 at 7:22 p.m. ET. To lure more investment to Tibet, Chinese authorities have announced a sweetener to would-be investors: Move your family to the region, spend three years there and invest 3 million yuan (US$415,000) – and your teenage children will have a better chance of gaining entry to a good university. Every June, millions of Chinese high school students take the grueling “gaokao” college entrance exams, but the admissions scores to the country’s 1,200 universities vary among the provinces according to the number of their…
Xi Jinping to China’s central bank: restart treasury-bond trade, after 2-decade hiatus
“It is necessary to enrich the monetary policy toolbox,” the snippet reads in Excerpts of Xi Jinping’s Speeches on Finance Work. “The People’s Bank of China must gradually increase the trading of treasury bonds in its open market operations.” Former Chinese trade official who backed Donald Trump slams US for ‘dismantling’ global trade Instructing the central bank to buy more treasury bonds is a rare and unexpected move in China. Sources say this last occurred around the start of the 21st century. After that, when the central bank sought to…
Killings of junta military recruiters rise to 17, tripling in last week
At least 17 local officials carrying out the junta’s conscription efforts have been killed since a draft law was enacted early last month, according to rebel officials and residents. The number of killings has more than tripled in the last week, ahead of the official start of conscription, which the junta has said will take place in April. On March 23, RFA reported a total of six such killings. The junta enacted the “People’s Military Service Law” on Feb. 10 to replenish its military ranks after months of mounting losses…
Report: Despite its displeasure, China maintains sway with Myanmar junta
China’s apparent unhappiness with Myanmar’s military junta has created an opportunity for an international consensus on how to address the country’s post-coup political crisis, a Brussels-based think tank said in a report on Wednesday. The report from the International Crisis Group, or ICG, pointed to China’s tacit support for the “Operation 1027” offensive against military strongholds in northern Myanmar that began last October and “dealt the junta a resounding defeat in a strategic enclave on the Chinese border.” The ICG also noted Beijing’s annoyance with the junta’s failure to act…
Alibaba cancels unit’s Hong Kong IPO, citing sluggish market
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has pulled a planned initial public offering in Hong Kong of its logistics subsidiary Cainiao, sparking fears that the city is losing its shine as a financial center amid a crackdown on dissent. Chairman Joseph Tsai told an extraordinary meeting of shareholders on Tuesday that the company had halted plans for the Cainiao IPO because “the market in Asia is sluggish and lacks liquidity, so there is no point in pushing forward.” The announcement came as a second national security law, called “Article 23,” took effect…
Uyghur refugees in Pakistan face deportation in April
About 100 Uyghur refugees in Pakistan face deportation in April, after the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan is over, based on a new government directive, a copy of which was obtained by Radio Free Asia. The 18 refugee families, who have been living in Pakistan for several years, fear they will be deported to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan or China, where they may face persecution. The Uyghurs are a tiny part of a much larger group of 1.7 million Afghan refugees in the country that the Pakistani government announced last October it…
US and China feud over subsidies for green tech
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday accused China of manipulating global markets for green energy by exporting a “flood” of subsidized products, which she said suppresses the development of competing industries in other countries around the world. The remarks came a day after China filed a complaint against the United States at the World Trade Organization accusing it of improperly subsidizing only electric vehicles without Chinese-made batteries. Speaking at the Suniva solar-cell manufacturing plant in Norcross, Georgia, as part of the American-owned firm’s reopening of a shuttered factory, Yellen…
Janet Yellen warns China against clean energy dumping
Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the US-China relations myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen has warned China not to flood the world with cheap clean energy exports, saying they would distort global markets and harm workers. Yellen delivered her message to Beijing from a solar energy manufacturer in Georgia on Wednesday, just days before her second trip to China as Treasury secretary. The comments reflect continued concern in the Biden administration about China’s trade practices, which are likely to…
Xi tries to restore investor confidence in China
This article is an on-site version of our Disrupted Times newsletter. Sign up here to get the newsletter sent straight to your inbox three times a week Today’s top stories Former UBS and Citigroup trader Tom Hayes failed in his attempt to overturn his conviction for rigging an interest rate benchmark in a London appeals court. Hayes became the first person in the world to be found guilty by a jury over the Libor scandal and served five-and-a-half years in prison. Piero Cipollone, the European Central Bank’s newest board member,…