Tag: Communist Party of China

As Blinken Heads to China, Suspicion Awaits Him

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Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken makes his long-delayed visit to China beginning Sunday in the hope of slowing the downward spiral of relations between Beijing and Washington. But China’s increasingly assertive, at times outright hostile, stance suggests that the visit will be as much about confrontation as détente. In China’s telling, the United States is a declining, hegemonic power that is seeking to cling to its dominance in China’s backyard and provoke Beijing over its claim on Taiwan, the self-governed island democracy. The country’s leader, Xi Jinping, accuses the…

China’s Crackdown on Mosque Domes is Drawing Rare Resistance

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Walking through Nagu, a small town in the mountains of southwestern China, the signs of a vibrant Muslim community are ubiquitous. Loudspeakers broadcast passages from a Chinese translation of the Quran. Women in head scarves shuttle rowdy children home from school. Arabic script decorates the outside of homes. Towering over it all is the Najiaying Mosque, a white building topped with an emerald dome and four minarets that reach 230 feet into the air. For decades, the mosque has been the pride of the Muslim Hui ethnic minority that lives…

China’s Young People Can’t Find Jobs. Xi Jinping Says to ‘Eat Bitterness.’

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Gloria Li is desperate to find a job. Graduating in June with a master’s degree in graphic design, she started looking last fall, hoping to find an entry-level position that pays about $1,000 a month in a big city in central China. The few offers she has gotten are internships that pay $200 to $300 a month, with no benefits. Over two days in May she messaged more than 200 recruiters and sent her résumé to 32 companies — and lined up exactly two interviews. She said she would take…

Comedy, Music and Uncle Roger Are China’s Latest Crackdown Targets

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The cancellations rippled across the country: A Japanese choral band touring China, stand-up comedy shows in several cities, jazz shows in Beijing. In the span of a few days, the performances were among more than a dozen that were abruptly called off — some just minutes before they were supposed to begin — with virtually no explanation. Just before the performances were scrapped, the authorities in Beijing had fined a Chinese comedy studio around $2 million, after one of its stand-up performers was accused of insulting the Chinese military in…

China and Russia, Targets of a Contentious G7 Summit, Draw Closer

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When Russian troops poured into Ukraine over a year ago, many experts foresaw a strategic windfall for China, with the United States distracted again by a war far from Asia. Now, Beijing is increasingly alarmed that the Western bloc backing Ukraine is entrenching itself in China’s neighborhood. The leaders of the Group of 7 nations last weekend pledged more support for Kyiv and angered Beijing by challenging its claims to the South China Sea, vowing to resist economic coercion, and pressing China on human rights abuses in Xinjiang, Tibet and…

Liz Truss, Britain’s Briefest Prime Minister, Meets Taiwan’s Leader

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The last former British prime minister to visit Taiwan was Ms. Truss’s political idol, Margaret Thatcher, in 1992. Taiwan was willing to look past contention in Britain over Ms. Truss, said Chen Fang-yu, an assistant politics professor at Soochow University in Taipei. “Taiwan really needs more of this kind of attention from every country, because only if more people visit Taiwan and more speak up for Taiwan, will the Chinese Communist Party realize that many people are paying attention to Taiwan, and so they should not act rashly,” he said…

What Americans Don’t Understand About China

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Keyu Jin is in the West but not entirely of it. She’s fluent in English and French, studied at Harvard and teaches at the London School of Economics. She knows her way around Goldman Sachs and the World Bank. But she is still a proud Chinese. She lived with her parents in Beijing during two recent maternity leaves. And she has just written a book about what she calls “reading China in the original.” Unfiltered, that is, by a Western perspective. It sometimes comes as a surprise to Europeans and…

Mysterious Killing of Chinese Gold Miners Puts New Pressure on Beijing

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The Chinese embassy in the Central African Republic had a stark warning for its compatriots in the landlocked nation: Do not leave the capital city of Bangui. Kidnappings of foreigners were on the rise, and any Chinese person outside of Bangui was to leave those areas immediately. Less than a week later, on March 19, a group of gunmen stormed a remote gold mine far away from Bangui and killed nine Chinese workers. The Central African government has said that it investigated the massacre and concluded that a leading rebel group had…

China’s Economic Needs May Take a Back Seat to Security

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To revive its sluggish economy, China set out this year to woo foreign investors and stabilize its ties with the West. But these goals are colliding with what China’s leader, Xi Jinping, considers the paramount priority: bolstering national security in a world he sees as full of threats. Mr. Xi has warned that China must fight back against a campaign by the United States to contain and suppress the country’s rise. In this worldview, foreign rivals are using spies to weaken China’s economy; Russia is not treated as a pariah…

Chinese Dissident Sentenced to 8 Years After He Tried to Fly to His Dying Wife

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A court in southern China has sentenced one of the country’s most unyielding human rights activists to eight years in prison for essays he wrote and a website he created, in the ruling Communist Party’s latest warning blow against political dissent. The activist, Yang Maodong, was detained in 2021 when he tried to catch a flight to the United States to be with his wife, who was gravely ill. Mr. Yang — who is better known by his pen name, Guo Feixiong — was sentenced at the end of a…