China

Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) unveiled on Monday its presidential ticket for the upcoming January election, with current Vice President Lai Ching-te accompanied by running mate Hsiao Bi-khim, two prominent China skeptics.

In a statement, Hsiao criticized China's assertive military activities in the Taiwan Strait and accused Beijing of interfering in Taiwan's democratic processes.

"Whether Taiwan can defend its democratic values and determine its own future will have a profound impact not only on Taiwan itself, but on the entire world," she said.

Mrs Van Hoof, President of the Foreign Relations Committee of Belgian Chamber of Representatives, issued a statement on November 16, 2023, concerning the one million Tibetan children forcibly placed in Chinese state-run boarding schools and separated from their families and homes. The President also calls on the Chinese government to put an end the state-run boarding schools for Tibetan children, which aims to eradicate Tibetan language, culture, religion and identity.

The statement wrote, "The forced assimilation of nearly one million Tibetan children in Chinese state-run boarding schools, separated from their families, is a violation of international human rights. The United Nations has confirmed this figure. The boarding schools are just the latest act perpetrated by Beijing on Tibetans with the aim to eradicate Tibetan language, culture, religion and identity. These policies are not acceptable."

"Unfortunately, the issue is getting too little attention in Europe. Action is needed in order to prevent a whole generation of Tibetan children to be lost inside the Chinese system. Tibetans remains subjected to a highly sophisticated surveillance and monitoring system, even collecting their DNA including from children without proper consent from their parents evidenced by reports from Citizen’s lab, Human Rights Watch etc," President Van Hoof said.

"I, therefore, condemn this action in the strongest possible terms and call on the PRC authorities to end the coercion of Tibetan children into state-run boarding schools, to cease repressive assimilation policies and to comply with the PRC’s obligations under international law," the President of the Foreign Relations Committee of Belgian Chamber of Representatives said.

The President of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said on Monday that the country has engaged in discussions with neighbouring nations, including Malaysia and Vietnam to discuss a distinct code of conduct concerning the South China Sea.

President Marcos emphasized the limited advancements in reaching a comprehensive regional agreement with China, noting the escalating challenges in the South China Sea due to China’s increasing presence and the overlapping territorial claims of multiple nations.

In the past few years, ASEAN and China have worked towards creating a framework to negotiate a code of conduct, a plan dating as far back as 2002. However, progress has been slow despite commitments by all parties to advance and speed up the process.

China has shown interest in atolls and shoals that are “closer and closer” to the coast of the Philippines, with the nearest atoll about 60 nautical miles (111 kilometres) away, Marcos said.

In late November 2022, thousands of people in Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Wuhan, and other cities across China took to the streets to protest the government’s strict Covid-19 measures and some also denounced the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian rule.

Demonstrators held blank papers to symbolize censorship—hence “White Paper” protests—and chanted slogans such as “End zero-Covid,” “We want human rights,” and “Down with the Communist Party!” The authorities harassed or detained dozens of students, journalists, and others—notably many women—who participated in the protests.

"One year on from the White Paper protests that were key to ending three years of abusive ‘zero-Covid’ lockdowns, the Chinese government needs to allow safe public space for people to freely express themselves,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/5852820

Original link: https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/national/anthony-albanese-slams-china-after-dangerous-act-injured-navy-divers/news-story/79833429762d82cdb610afb13f269c61

Roughly one-quarter of the world’s people and Internet users live under governments that engage in heavy censorship. A large portion live behind “The Great Firewall” of China, which places strategic importance on Internet control. The Internet can serve counterhegemonic purposes, as numerous groups in civil society use it to connect isolated populations, unite women’s movements, and enable human rights and political minority activists. However, China sees Internet censorship as crucial for national security and social stability.

Through legal research, translating Chinese sources, and drawing on personal experiences in China, this paper argues that Chinese domestic censorship poses an international threat.

The Coalition is pressing Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to reveal if he personally challenged China’s President Xi Jinping about injuries inflicted on Australian seamen by a People’s Liberation Army warship last week.

The run-in, which occurred in international waters off Japan on Tuesday, prompted Australian officials to raise concerns with China’s embassy in Canberra and with the government in Beijing, but opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham said it demanded higher-level engagement.

"In isolation, it may be reasonable to address at officials level but, as part of broader conduct that risks military escalation in our region, it warrants high-level representations,” Senator Birmingham said.

“Australians would think it appropriate for our prime minister to seize an opportunity to raise those concerns with his Chinese counterparts when seeing them within days of this incident.”

Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/5819167

Original link: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/nov/19/david-camerons-links-to-china-could-weaken-his-role-on-world-stage-as-uk-foreign-secretary

With the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, in San Francisco last week for the Apec summit, where he met the US president, Joe Biden, such military activity around Taiwan had decreased.

But Taiwan’s defence ministry reported that starting on Sunday morning it had detected nine Chinese aircraft crossing the Taiwan Strait’s median line, which had previously served as an unofficial barrier between the two and which Chinese planes regularly fly over.

Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/5790477

Original link: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/17/tibets-government-in-exile-urges-australia-not-to-compromise-on-chinas-human-rights-record

Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/5786226

Original link: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/18/australian-naval-divers-injured-after-being-subjected-to-chinese-warships-sonar-pulses

The Hong Kong government’s resistance to granting LGBTQ+ people equal rights is in line with Beijing but increasingly at odds with public opinion in Hong Kong. A survey published in May found that 60% of people supported the idea of same-sex marriage, up from 38% a decade ago. More than 70% said that Hong Kong should have a law to protect against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

A desperate cry for help written in Chinese was discovered in a pregnancy test sold in France and made in a Chinese factory. It revealed a hidden world of Chinese prison-companies where prisoners are forced to work for 15 hour days manufacturing products for export. This documentary tries to find out who wrote the letter.

Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/5747333

Original link: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/11/17/hls-advocates-china/

While retaining its independence, Mercator Institute of Chinese Studies (MERICS), a think tank, will assume an exclusive role within Germany’s China policy and will receive a significant financial boost of €500,000 as part of a first round of funding from the German Foreign Office in 2024, according to the draft.

The EU and its allies have become increasingly concerned over China's continuing threats towards Taiwan and in the South China Sea, as well as over EU countries’ economic dependence on Chinese markets, production and resources, which they fear could be weaponised by China.

In 2021, MERICS was placed under Chinese sanctions in retaliation for the EU’s sanctions against Chinese officials, preventing MERICS staff from entering China.

Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/5728953

Original link: https://www.euractiv.com/section/economy-jobs/news/chinese-businesses-criticise-eus-de-risking-approach/

The US State Department says the tactics are part of a broader multi-billion-dollar effort to shape the world’s information environment and silence critics of Beijing that has expanded under President Xi Jinping.

Victims face a barrage of tens of thousands of social media posts that call them traitors, dogs, and racist and homophobic slurs. They say it’s all part of an effort to drive them into a state of constant fear and paranoia.

Often, these victims don’t know where to turn. Some have spoken to law enforcement, including the FBI – but little has been done. While tech and social media companies have shut down thousands of accounts targeting these victims, they’re outpaced by a slew of new accounts emerging virtually every day.

"The Hong Kong Journalists Association deeply regrets the media arrangements for the International Financial Leaders Investment Summit hosted by the authority on November 7, 2023,” the Chinese statement read.

The statement came after local media reported that journalists at the Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit, held last Tuesday, complained they were not allowed on the conference floor. They were reportedly kept in a separate function room where a livestream of the speeches was played, meaning they were unable to speak to the C-suite banking executives attending the summit.

Chinas president Xi Jinping was shielded from the skirmishes and human rights chants by a heavy police presence as he was greeted on the airport tarmac by a high-level welcoming party including State Governor Gavin Newsom, the city mayor and US ambassador to Beijing.

The colonial boarding schools in Tibet will have enormous psychological impact and emotional trauma on Tibetan children, has implications for whole generations of Tibetans and the long-term survival of the Tibetan identity, a new report grimly predicts.

It makes the following points:

• Tibet’s education system has become primarily residential according to official Chinese data, and approximately 800,000 Tibetan students aged 6-18 (78%) are living in such schools;

• Tibetan parents are compelled to send their children to such schools for lack of alternatives, and also due to threats and intimidation from the authorities;

• Students are at risk of losing their mother tongue since classes are primarily in Chinese, they live apart from their communities, are unable to practice their religion and are subjected to a highly politicized curriculum to make them identify as Chinese;

• Tibetan students speak of physical and sexual abuse in the boarding schools, long hours designed to exhaust and make children succumb and break them from their parents.

The hope is international pressure generated could force China to clean up its act and Tibetan activists say there is some evidence of that. But in the end Beijing’s gestures may only be cosmetic. The overall intent and goal of its Tibet policy is clear and can be summed up in two words: Sinicization and assimilation.

The propaganda department of China's State Council, its central government, last week released a white paper on "Governance of Xizang in the New Era." Though the term "Tibetan" is used to refer to the region's people and geographical features like the Tibetan Plateau, Xizang is used exclusively when referring to the southwestern region's official name.

"The Chinese government was desperate enough to propagate Xizang to create a Tibet of Chinese characteristics which is unknown to the world," Tenzin Lekshay, a spokesperson for the Central Tibetan Administration, the Tibetan government-in-exile, said of Beijing's report.

Lekshay said the Sino-Tibet conflict was long-running and that changing the name would complicate rather than improve the situation.