One week after announcing she was “cancer free”, the British pop star Jessie J did what any recovering patient would do and travelled thousands of miles around the world to perform for an audience of more than a billion people. On 29 May, the singer-songwriter, whose real name is Jessica Cornish, belted out a stage-rattling rendition of Frank Sinatra’s My Way on the stage of Singer, a hugely popular Chinese singing competition similar to The Voice. She also performed her new song, California, briefly adapting the lyrics to change California…
Category: Media Library
China Arrests U.S. Scholar on Spying Charge
Chinese security officers have arrested an American citizen who studies politics in Myanmar, an authoritarian nation on China’s southwest border, and accused him of endangering national security, according to people with knowledge of the arrest. The U.S. citizen, U Min Zin, was arrested in early June, the people said on the condition of anonymity because of sensitive diplomacy surrounding the previously unreported arrest. He disappeared on June 3 while in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, which borders Myanmar. American diplomats visited him on Friday. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman…
China arrests US academic at conference for ‘espionage activities’
China has arrested a US scholar who writes about Myanmar and Chinese foreign policy on suspicion of spying. Min Zin was suspected of “engaging in espionage activities that endanger China’s national security,” China’s ministry of foreign affairs spokesperson, Lin Jian, said on Friday. It is uncommon for Beijing to arrest a US citizen on national security allegations, and the case comes just a month after Donald Trump met the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, in Beijing as the two countries aim to reset their tumultuous relationship. A Burmese activist said Min…
Google Sues to Stop Chinese Cybercrime Group from Using Its A.I.
Google sued a Chinese cybercrime network on Friday, accusing it of using the company’s artificial intelligence to blast online financial scams to hundreds of thousands of Americans. The internet giant also said it was coordinating for the first time with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and wireless providers such as AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon to shut down the network, known as Outsider Enterprise. The Chinese group used Gemini, Google’s A.I. system, to create hundreds of fake websites mimicking companies like Google and YouTube and government operations like the Postal Service…
‘Spy turtles’ and ‘spy fish’ being used to monitor Chinese waters, Beijing claims
China’s ministry of state security has claimed that foreign espionage and intelligence agencies are using innovative new methods to monitor the country’s waters, including deploying “spy” animals fitted with sensors. In a post on the Chinese platform WeChat on Friday, the ministry warned that an “invisible secret war” was quietly playing out in the seas around China as foreign agencies were collecting sensitive data “through a variety of new spying devices” to produce underwater maps that pose a “serious threat to our national security”. Among the espionage techniques being used,…
China has long sought to control women’s bodies. Increasingly, they’re making their own choices
Ever since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, women’s bodies have been the business of the state. In the 1950s, labour for state-controlled work units was organised according to women’s menstrual cycles. Then for decades, there was the one-child policy. Across vast swathes of the country the policy was enforced with a brutal severity. As well as fines for additional children, women were forced to have abortions and subjected to forced sterilisations. Now, women in China are facing new forms of pressure from the government as…
Why It’s Nearly Impossible to Build a Robot Without China
Japan led the world in robotics for decades. More than 50 years ago, Japanese researchers captured imaginations with the first robot capable of grasping objects and walking on two legs. In 1984, a team in Japan built one that could read sheet music and play the piano. When Honda unveiled its first humanoid in 2000, it seemed to cement the country’s lead. But now, just as tech investors, start-up founders and government officials around the world are betting that artificial intelligence will spur growth for robots, that lead no longer…
Thai court sentences two Uyghur men to death for 2015 Bangkok bombing
A Thai court has handed out death sentences to two Uyghur men from the north-western Chinese region of Xinjiang for a 2015 bombing in the centre of Bangkok that killed 20 people. The explosion occurred at the Erawan Shrine in the centre of Bangkok, an area popular with foreign tourists. As well as the 20 people killed, another 120 were injured. Five of the dead were from mainland China and two from Hong Kong. “The actions of both defendants constitute multiple separate offences,” the court statement said, adding the sentence…
China’s Jingye seeks compensation from UK over British Steel takeover
The Chinese owner of British Steel has started a formal process under an international treaty to win compensation from the UK government over its decision to nationalise the Scunthorpe steelworks. Jingye Steel said it would seek to recover money via China’s bilateral investment treaty with the UK, after more than a year of negotiations over the size of any payout. The dispute could put pressure on the relationship between China and the UK. The decision to seek a resolution under the UK-China investment treaty is expected to give Jingye leverage…
Top Pentagon Official Worked Closely With C.I.A. Officer Later Found With Gold Bars
David J. Rush, the former C.I.A. officer found last month with $40 million in gold bars in his home and now under F.B.I. investigation, had powerful friends in government. It turns out that one of them, Stephen A. Feinberg, the deputy secretary of defense, even contacted the C.I.A. earlier this year asking to work more closely with him. Before the C.I.A. fired Mr. Rush, he and Mr. Feinberg worked together on a highly classified program focused on spying on China, according to the current and former officials. Mr. Feinberg reached…