China

Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/10380911

Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Loughton and Stewart McDonald said it's time for a "new era" in UK-China relations at a press conference in London, with Sir Iain adding they cannot be "bullied" by Beijing.

The former Tory party leader said: "We have been subjected to harassment, impersonation and attempted hacking from China for some time."

While that was "extremely unwelcome", Sir Iain said "our discomfort pales in comparison to Chinese dissidents who risk their lives to oppose the Chinese Communist Party".

Sanctions against Chinese officials are expected to be announced later.

Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/10380737

Seven Chinese nationals have been charged with enacting a widespread "malicious" cyber-attack campaign.

The justice department said hackers had targeted US and foreign critics of China, businesses, and politicians.

Hongkongers who repost, and agree with, overseas criticism of the city’s new, domestic national security law could breach the legislation if they are found to have been inciting hatred against the authorities, justice minister Paul Lam has said.

The Article 23 legislation, which came into force on Saturday, includes penalties of up to life imprisonment for five categories of crime including treason, insurrection, espionage, sabotage and external interference.

It also expands the British colonial-era offence of “sedition” to include inciting hatred against China’s Communist party leadership.

Hong Kong security chief Chris Tang said that additional evidence such as “what you keep at home and what other acts you have done” would have to be collected to facilitate prosecution.

“As I often said, if you breached the law, I will definitely find evidence against you,” Tang said.

Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/10346015

Academics designed dozens of courses over three years for the benefit of hundreds of medics, despite warnings that there is no safe way to collaborate with the Chinese transplant sector because the killing of political prisoners for their organs is so widespread.

The alleged role of one “honoured guest” at the most recent New Horizons programme, Prof Zheng Shusen, was said in a submission to a 2018 tribunal to need explanation over a “clear and convincing evidence pattern” of being “directly or indirectly complicit in the commission of crimes against humanity… against unknown individuals who were killed in the process of having their organs extracted”.

It comes amid increasing concern about the influence of the Chinese Communist Party on Britain’s top universities.

The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off Second Thomas Shoal in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannon and collided with Filipino vessels in similar stand-offs in recent months.

China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous manoeuvres” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to the shoal Saturday morning, the National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea said.

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Three decades of casino money have made this city rich, fast, but dive beneath the shimmering surface and you will find a centuries-old culture battling to survive.

The challenge is part identity, part political. The “good boy” to Hong Kong’s “bad boy”, Beijing’s golden goose kept locals happy with annual cash handouts from casino revenue. China got little political turmoil in return.

Now some residents fear Macau has been plucked so much that it is in danger of losing the characteristics that made it different from the mainland.

Beijing claims democratic Taiwan as part of its territory and has never renounced the use of force to bring it under China’s control.

Friday’s incursion, an uptick from the previous day’s tally, follows a pattern of what experts dub “grey zone” actions—tactics that fall short of outright acts of war—which have ramped up since the 2016 election of President Tsai Ing-wen.

Political tensions have also risen since January after Tsai’s deputy Lai Ching-te—who Beijing regards as a “dangerous separatist”—was elected as president, and amid an ongoing row between China and Taiwan over a fatal boat incident.

In the 24 hours leading up to 6:00 am Friday (2200 GMT Thursday), the Ministry of National Defence said it had detected 36 Chinese military aircraft and six naval ships operating around Taiwan.

Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/10302481

The head of the African Development Bank is calling for an end to loans given in exchange for the continent’s rich supplies of oil or critical minerals used in smartphones and electric car batteries.

“They are just bad, first and foremost, because you can’t price the assets properly,” Akinwumi Adesina said in an interview with The Associated Press in Lagos, Nigeria, last week. “If you have minerals or oil under the ground, how do you come up with a price for a long-term contract? It’s a challenge.”

Linking future revenue from natural resource exports to loan paydowns is often touted as a way for recipients to get financing for infrastructure projects and for lenders to reduce the risk of not getting their money back.

In the telling of China’s story, Xi has recently highlighted the role that “Chinese sons and daughters at home and abroad” must play in “uniting all Chinese people to achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”.

According to Associate Professor Ian Chong Ja, who teaches Chinese foreign policy at the National University of Singapore, Xi’s language suggests that the CCP sees ethnic Chinese across the world as a vehicle to mobilise support and advance Beijing’s interests, even if those people are not nationals of China and have no allegiance to the country.

That has created a dangerous situation for some people, according to analysts.

“The Chinese diaspora is very diverse and reactions to the CCP’s mission abroad have been quite mixed across different Chinese communities,” Chong told Al Jazeera.

While some people have become willing participants, others have become targets.”

Kenny Chiu, once a member of the Canadian parliament, is one of those who has been targeted.

Chiu has spoken out about Beijing’s involvement in Hong Kong, and foreign interference in Canada.

He told Al Jazeera that Xi Jinping’s call for ethnic Chinese across the world to join the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation was “insane”.

“Imagine if the UK suddenly demanded that everyone with an English last name had to swear allegiance to the English crown,” he said.

In the video posted March 18 to the official account of the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force on the video-sharing platform Bilibili, a woman clad in a camouflage uniform holds up a medal she said was presented to her father after he was among the troops that entered Beijing in early June 1989 to put down weeks of peaceful, student-led protests in Tiananmen Square.

“My father is a retired soldier," she says, according to subtitles on screenshots published by several media outlets including Taiwan's Liberty Times newspaper, Radio Taiwan International, and the citizen journalist X account "Mr Li is not your teacher."

The "Defender of the Capital" honor was handed out to soldiers and other enforcers of martial law in Beijing, which was ordered by late supreme leader Deng Xiaoping on May 20 and defied by protesters and hunger strikers, who remained on Tiananmen Square.

The video soon started to garner comments referencing the killing of civilians by the People's Liberation Army on the night of June 3-4, 1989.

"You're bragging about how the People's Liberation Army killed our compatriots?" said one comment, while another said the medal was fit for a "butcher," according to screenshots of the now-deleted video.

"A 'medal of honor' won for massacring unarmed students on behalf of a dictator," wrote another.

During two trips to the U.S. state of Oklahoma, Consul General Zhu Di of the Chinese embassy visited a cultural association that has been a target of investigations into Chinese mafias that dominate the state’s billion-dollar marijuana industry, posing for photos with people who pleaded guilty or been prosecuted or investigated for drug-related crimes, according to court documents, public records, photos and social media posts.

“He’s meeting with known criminals,” said Donnie Anderson, the director of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control, in an interview.

There is no indication of wrongdoing by the consul general, who is one of China’s top diplomats in the United States. Still, the encounters in Oklahoma reflect a pattern of contacts around the world between China’s authoritarian government and diaspora leaders linked to criminal activity — a subject of increasing concern among Western national security officials, human rights groups and Chinese dissidents.

U.S. and foreign national security officials have alleged that the Chinese state maintains a tacit alliance with Chinese organized crime in the U.S. and across the world. Mobsters overtly support pro-Beijing causes and covertly provide services overseas: engaging in political influence work, moving illicit funds offshore for the Chinese elite and helping persecute dissidents, according to Western officials, court cases and human rights groups. Chinese officials reciprocate by tolerating and sometimes supporting their illicit activities, according to those sources.

And this alleged state-mafia partnership has used influential Chinese cultural organizations in foreign countries to project power, according to Western officials. As ProPublica has reported, the leaders of diaspora associations who interact with Chinese and local governments in Europe and elsewhere include accused organized crime figures.

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According to Chinese journalists, Kazakhstan has recently been demonstrating suspicious activity that are worrying Russia, as reported by the Baijiahao publication.

"Putin's fears are coming true," said the authors of the Chinese publication according to AB News.

Kazakhstan is an extremely important country for Russia. The Russian Federation shares not only historical and cultural roots with it but also numerous economic projects.

Given the limited freedom of local media on criticizing local governments, provincial leaders linked to strong national leaders, such as Politburo Standing Committee members, encouraged local media to cover negative political incidents such as corruption investigation in other provinces.

More importantly, when reporting on others, provincial leaders are more likely to target provinces connected to weaker national political leaders. The bigger the power gap between the national leaders, the more frequent the negative reporting is.

"This suggests that factional competition encourages strong factions to attack weaker factions more frequently than the reverse," Ji Yeon (Jean) Hong, associate professor of political science at the University of Michigan, said. "This often leads to power consolidation, strengthening strong factions and weakening weaker factions."

Addition for the link to the study: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S2049847022000358/type/journal_article

Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/10244050

The Australian foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has told her visiting Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, that Australians are “shocked” at the suspended death sentence imposed on the writer Dr Yang Hengjun.

Wong raised the Australian citizen’s case – along with human rights more broadly – during a meeting that was largely aimed at stabilising the previously turbulent relationship with Australia’s largest trading partner.

Chow Hang-tung, Tang Ngok-kwan and Tsui Hon-kwong were core members of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, before it disbanded under the shadow of the Beijing-imposed law in 2021.

They received a sentence of four and a half months last year — widely seen as part of a crackdown on dissidents following massive pro-democracy protests in 2019.

The alliance was long known for organising candlelight vigils in the city on the anniversary of the Chinese military's crushing of the 1989 protests in Beijing.

Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/10231515

Depicting a heap of contorted bodies and screaming faces, the statue was unveiled Tuesday as part of an exhibition of “forbidden art” that organizers said had been censored or “deemed subversive” by Hong Kong and mainland China.

The exhibition was hosted by Jens Galschiøt, the Danish artist behind the famous sculpture, and Kira Marie Peter-Hansen, a member of the European Parliament (MEP). A further six MEPs, including representatives from each of the parliament’s five largest political coalitions, were listed as co-hosts.

Taiwan's foreign minister said on Wednesday that China has built "enormous" military bases on three islands surrounding Taiwan's main holding in the South China Sea, but Taipei is not looking to further escalate tensions in the strategic waterway.

Both Taiwan and China claim most of the South China Sea as their own territory, but Taiwan only controls one islet in the contested Spratly Islands deep in the southern part of the sea called Itu Aba, which Taiwan refers to as Taiping.

Western businesses in Hong Kong face growing uncertainty after politicians passed draconian new national security laws that will align the city-state even more closely with Beijing.

Hong Kong’s Legislative Assembly passed a major piece of legislation known as Article 23 on Tuesday, marking the latest stage of a widespread political crackdown triggered by pro-democracy protests in 2019.

Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/10195162

The European Chamber of Commerce said in its de-risking report that companies were "skewed disproportionately towards risk management and building resilience" because of the COVID pandemic, global economic slowdown, Ukraine war and U.S.-China geopolitical competition.

"China has a rational self-interest in ensuring that there is a workable commercial relationship with Europe going forward. And that, frankly, is put at risk right now," Jens Eskelund, president of the European Chamber of Commerce in China, said.

"I think there is a risk that Europe feels compelled to react in more protective ways."

It was fast-tracked through its final stage by the city's pro-Beijing parliament in less than two weeks.

That law already criminalises secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces in Hong Kong.

But Hong Kong's leader John Lee has said Article 23 is also necessary to guard against "potential sabotage and undercurrents that try to create troubles", particularly "ideas of an independent Hong Kong". He hailed its passing as "a historic moment Hong Kong people have been waiting for over 26 years".

Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/10175581

The cognitive and emotional weight of surveillance is a heavy burden to Chinese citizens, says Ariane Ollier-Malaterre, Canada Research Chair in Digital Regulation at Work and in Life at the University of Québec in Montréal.

"The way the Chinese citizens I spoke to experience digital surveillance is characterized by strong psychic tensions," she says.

"The same persons who support surveillance as being indispensable in the Chinese context are also and nevertheless expressing the heavy burden that coping with such exposure places on them."

This weight is both cognitive, as evidenced by the range of self-protective mental tactics to dissociate oneself from surveillance, and emotional, as conveyed in participants’ strong emotions and particularly telling body language, Ollier-Malaterre adds.

As a member of the US House of Representatives’ Committee on Appropriations, Mario Diaz-Balart said that the committee is negotiating a bill on foreign military financing for Taiwan — the first of its kind — which would allow the nation to purchase more weapons.

Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/10141357

On Wednesday (9March 20), China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi will travel to Australia to take part in the Australia-China Foreign and Strategic Dialogue, a longstanding format where they will discuss trade, security, and other bilateral and international issues. During the visit, the Australian government should move beyond statements of concern and make clear their intention to seek accountability for China’s ongoing human rights violations.

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Overt and implicit limits on artistic expression are becoming increasingly clear. In 2020, after months of pro-democracy protests, Beijing introduced a national security law, which criminalised in broad terms secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces.

Chinese authorities say it was necessary to restore stability; critics say the vague wording crushes dissent. More recently, authorities have been talking with increasing frequency about the need to tackle “soft resistance”, a vague term that appears to refer to the use of “media, culture and art” to defy the authorities.

Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/10066439

The official letters to U.S. travel agencies Abercrombie & Kent, Geographic Expeditions, and Wild Frontiers raise concerns about advertised tours in the region and asks that the agencies cancel any planned tours to the XUAR or respond to questions about company policies and the tours advertised on their website.

"Tourism whitewashes the atrocities committed against Uyghurs and other minorities and puts a happy face on genocide" in Xinjiang, the lettrr reads, urging companies to "not be complicit in this effort, marketing PRC-controlled tours to U.S. citizens and other foreigners."

"Instead, the U.S. and its allies should be demanding unfettered access for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials, and long-banned experts on the region to conduct investigations of past and ongoing atrocities and other gross violations of human rights, such as forced labor.”