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277
2
Call for Proposals for overseas Chinese Human Rights Defenders - preferably in Europe
(safeguarddefenders.com)
[...]
Funding parameters
- Project duration: 6 to 12 months
- Funding range: USD 5,000 to 25,000
- Target applicants: Civil society organisations, informal collectives, or Chinese HRD networks based outside China.
- Registration is not required, but applicants must be able to manage funds and activities in accordance with local tax and legal requirements.
- Location: Projects must be implemented outside China, preferably in Europe
- Strategic focus: Activities should contribute to international understanding and documentation of PRC human rights violations in- or outside of China, build community resilience against transnational repression, and/or increase local democratic engagement. Particular attention will be paid to the innovative nature or focus of proposed projects.
[...]
How to apply
Please submit a concept note (maximum 2 pages, Word format) including the following:
- Organizational/Network/Personal background (at this stage, do NOT include any sensitive personal information).
- Proposed program background, problem statement and target audience/location.
- Project goals and intended outcomes.
- Main activities and proposed timeline (max. duration 12 months).
- Estimated budget.
- Risk assessment and mitigation strategies
[...]
278
4
Rights groups call on China to release journalist and human rights defender Zhang Zhan, urge UN to support Chinese journalists, rights activists
(www.article19.org)
[...]
At the beginning of March 2025, non-governmental government (NGO) sources confirmed that Zhang will soon be tried on the charge of ‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble’, a charge often used by Chinese authorities to suppress journalists, writers and human rights defenders. The date of her trial is still unknown, as she remains detained in the Pudong Detention Center in Shanghai, facing an additional up to five years in prison if convicted.
Zhang Zhan was apprehended by the police on 28 August 2024, only three months after completion of an earlier four-year sentence under the same charge, while travelling to her hometown in the Shaanxi province in northwest China. In the weeks leading up to this incident, Zhang kept reporting on the harassment of activists in China on her social media accounts.
Her first detention was deemed arbitrary under international human rights law by the United Nation’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in a 2021 opinion. In a November 2024 letter to the Chinese government, nine UN Special Procedures mandates raised lengthy concerns about patterns of repression against Zhang Zhan, alongside 17 other human rights defenders, requesting the government take measures to prevent any irreparable damage to life and personal integrity, and halt the violations of her human rights. The government’s three-line response on Zhang Zhan’s status merely asserted that ‘her legitimate rights and interests have been fully protected’.
China remains one of the most repressive countries for freedom of speech and press, ranks 178th out of 180 in the 2025 Reporters without Borders (RSF)’s World Press Freedom Index, and is the world’s leading jailer of journalists and writers, according to data from the Committee to Protect Journalists, RSF, and PEN America.
[...]
279
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/34459495
The woman who appeared before the Munich Labor Court earlier this year was once considered a star of German scientific research. The researcher, whose name we are shortening to Z., was celebrated, honoured, and in high demand. She revolutionised an entire field; her lectures filled halls, she was showered with praise and prestigious awards. She was among the most frequently cited researchers in Germany and gained international attention as a top talent.
But her employment with the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Luft- und Raumfahrtzentrum, DLR) quietly came to an end almost unnoticed. No one spoke publicly about the reasons for her dismissal. In 2022, Z. lost her prestigious position there, and took legal action.
[...]
It was a suspicion of espionage that led to the DLR’s break with the brilliant researcher from China. A grave allegation that could destroy her career, should it be substantiated.
[...]
At this stage, it is neither possible to confirm nor deny whether Z. was in fact spying for China at the DLR.
[...]
[As an] investigation reveals, Z. maintains extensive connections to the Chinese defence apparatus. In Munich, she orchestrates a network of doctoral candidates and visiting researchers who previously worked at institutions linked to the military in China.
It cannot be ruled out that intelligence from Munich may have flowed into Chinese military technology. Several of the institutions with which Z. collaborated on research projects are involved in China’s notorious satellite programme. Experts suspect that the programme is intended, among other things, to monitor naval movements in the South China Sea – crucial to the territorial dispute over Taiwan.
[...]
At the TUM she is responsible for publicly funded multi-million-euro projects in the field of remote sensing combined with AI or social media data. She develops highly complex algorithms to extract geoinformation from satellite imagery – enabling, for example, the mapping of cities or the tracking of natural disasters.
[...]
According to the official project description, the research findings [of projects led by Z.] would be “invaluable for many scientific, governmental, and planning tasks.” This project supposedly puts Germany in “pole position” in the race for this technology.
In another publicly funded project, Z. explored the extent to which social media posts can be integrated into Earth observation, and delivered impressive findings. Her algorithms help determine, for instance, whether buildings are residential properties or offices. In her interview with the Helmholtz magazine, she says: “We know, for example, that in a residential building, many tweets are sent in the morning and evening, whereas in an office building, they are mainly sent during the day.”
[...]
For those at the TUM, where she remained a professor, the exact circumstances of her dismissal from the DLR were initially unknown. However, some of the roughly 40 members of staff at her department began to prick up their ears. Rumours started to circulate among employees in the department about supposed irregularities on the servers under Z.’s supervision.
It was the period shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Experts assumed that China could attack Taiwan in the near future. In light of global political threats, research collaborations with China were under greater scrutiny than ever before. Since 2022, CORRECTIV has published several investigations revealing how the Chinese state apparatus systematically uses research findings from international collaborations to advance its military technologies. This has been state doctrine in China for years and is referred to as the “military-civil fusion”.
Just over a year ago, a woman from Z.’s immediate professional circle contacted CORRECTIV with an initial tip-off. She wondered whether the research being carried out at the department might be falling into the hands of the Chinese military.
[...]
Z.’s biography is certainly impressive, but her official CV at on the TUM website does not disclose where she got her bachelor’s degree: namely, the National University of Defence Technology (NUDT) in Changsha – China’s most important military institution. It reports directly to the Central Military Commission, the highest military authority in the People’s Republic.
[...]
A “very large volume of data” from the satellite was reportedly transferred to a server under Z.’s supervision. Apparently, there was a “permanent streaming connection” between this server at the TUM and the DLR. While this was, in principle, permitted, the DLR’s counterintelligence team later determined that the server had not been adequately secured. According to their findings, it was not protected by the “TUM’s firewall” and was accessible from anywhere on the internet.
[...]
According to the DLR, a hacker attack on the server occurred in May 2022. The server was allegedly used for so-called Bitcoin mining – where cybercriminals illegally generate cryptocurrency using third-party servers or computers. The DLR concluded that “unauthorised third parties” thereby had access to all data stored on the server – including to the aforementioned sensitive satellite data.
[...]
She [Z.] hired individuals from institutions with military affiliations in China on many occasions, at times bypassing the DLR’s security clearance procedures. According to the DLR’s written statement to the works council, one such case was the original trigger for her dismissal in 2022: Z. is said to have made multiple attempts to continue funding a doctoral student with DLR funds, despite the institution’s rejection of him. Z. responded by saying that “there were never any specific or individual security concerns” about the researcher in questions. This, she argued, amounted to blanket suspicion.
[...]
280
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The new Pope, Leo XIV, should direct an urgent review of the Vatican’s 2018 agreement with the Chinese government that allows Beijing to appoint bishops for government-approved houses of worship, Human Rights Watch said today. He should also press the government to end the persecution of underground churches, clergy, and worshipers.
The Chinese government has continued to install Chinese Communist Party-compliant clergy. AsiaNews reported that during the mourning period for Pope Francis, who died on April 21, 2025, that the Chinese government had moved forward on the appointments of an auxiliary bishop in Shanghai and the bishop of Xinxiang, Henan province.
“Pope Leo XIV has an opportunity to make a fresh start with China to protect the religious freedom of China’s Catholics,” said Maya Wang, associate China director at Human Rights Watch. “The new Pope should press for negotiations that could help improve the right to religious practice for everyone in China.”
The Chinese government has long restricted the country’s estimated 12 million Catholics to worship in official churches under the leadership of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, and has persecuted Catholics who have attended underground “house churches” or pledged allegiance only to the pope. The government has conducted frequent raids on underground churches and arrested unapproved clergy and congregants.
Pope Leo should press the Chinese government to immediately free several Catholic clergy who in recent years have been imprisoned, forcibly disappeared, or subjected to house arrest and other harassment, Human Rights Watch said. They include James Su Zhimin, Augustine Cui Tai, Julius Jia Zhiguo, Joseph Zhang Weizhu, Peter Shao Zhumin, and Thaddeus Ma Daqin, as reported by the Hudson Institute.
The 2018 Provisional Agreement regarding the Appointment of Bishops, the full text of which has never been made public, ended a decades-long standoff over who had the authority to appoint bishops in China. Under the agreement, Beijing proposes future bishops, and the pope has veto power over those appointments.
Since the 2018 agreement, the two parties have agreed on the appointment of 10 bishops, covering about a third of the over 90 dioceses in China that remained without a bishop. The Vatican has never exercised its veto power, however, even when the Chinese government violated the agreement by unilaterally appointing bishops in 2022 and 2023, appointments that Pope Francis later accepted.
In a 2024 news statement renewing the 2018 agreement, the Vatican stated that it aimed to “benefit … the Catholic Church in China and the Chinese people as a whole.” The Holy See and the Chinese government have renewed the agreement three times.
The Chinese government, which restricts all religious practice in China to five officially recognized religions, regulates official church business and retains control over personnel appointments, publications, finances, and seminary applications.
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[This is an op-ed by Tenzin Dorjee, senior researcher and strategist at the Tibet Action Institute and lecturer in the discipline of political science at Columbia University, and James Leibold, professor of politics and Asian studies at La Trobe University in Melbourne, specializing in Chinese ethnic policy, nationalism, and authoritarian governance.]
In the more than seven decades since Chinese troops stormed into Tibet to claim authority over the Himalayan region, the Tibetan people have been forced to endure the dismantling of their religious institutions, the erasure of their cultural identity, and most recently, the displacement of their language. The few features of traditional Tibetan life to have escaped eradication, such as Tibetan architecture and Buddhist festivals, have been subjected to sinicization campaigns. The scale of the transformation has produced the common lament that not much is left of Tibet today except its name. Now Beijing plans to change that too.
Several years ago, China’s hawkish English-language Global Times tabloid began using the term “Xizang” instead of “Tibet.” Other Chinese media outlets and state agencies soon followed suit. Now the Xizang toponym — which is the pinyin romanization for the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) — is finding compliance from governments and institutions beyond the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Beijing is attempting to fundamentally alter the global public understanding of Tibet, and is doing so by adopting a well-honed strategy of linguistic imperialism, one that operates at three separate levels: the discursive, the territorial, and the civilizational. But why is Beijing intent on displacing a name with deep history and wide usage, and why is it unwilling to let Tibet stand as the name of the Tibetan people’s homeland?
[...]
In recent years, the term Tibet has become inextricably linked to the movement for Tibetan self-determination. The phenomenal success of the transnational Tibet movement in the nineties and the early aughts, when the cause captured the imagination of a generation of activists and students around the world, has rendered the name of the place inseparable from the slogan “Free Tibet.” By replacing Tibet with Xizang, Beijing aims to depoliticize the global discourse surrounding the Tibetan homeland and paper over the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s colonial occupation, religious persecution, and human-rights abuses in Tibet.
[...]
282
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Uyghur genocide committed by China brought up at the Ethical Trade Conference in Norway, experts call for more transparency in supply chains
(www.uygurnews.com)
Uyghur genocide committed by China was brought up at the Ethical Trade Conference in Norway
Concentration camp witness Sayragul Sauytbay detailed the Uyghur genocide, including forced labour, at the Ethical Trade Conference 2025. She called on the government to avoid complicity through trade with China in the ongoing genocide.
The Ethical Trade Conference 2025 was hosted by Ethical Trade Norway at Dansens Hus in Oslo on April 29, 2025, under the theme “Make Sustainability Great Again!” The conference marked the 25th anniversary of the organization and brought together over 300 attendees from business, labour unions, government, and civil society. Sayragul Sauytbay, Vice President of the East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE), spoke at the opening of the conference, Norway’s leading event for ethical and sustainable commerce.
Sauytbay, an ethnic Kazakh from East Turkistan and a prominent witness to the Chinese concentration camps, offered a pressing testimony regarding the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Chinese government against the Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic ethnic groups. Drawing from her experiences as an educator forced into Chinese concentration camps, she detailed instances of mass internment, torture, forced labour, and indoctrination.
She pointed out that almost one million children from the Uyghur, Kazakh, and other Turkic communities have been forcefully removed from their families and placed in Chinese state-operated boarding schools and orphanages, where they undergo political indoctrination intended to erase their cultural and religious identities.
Sauytbay cautioned that without full transparency and ethical due diligence, continued political and economic engagements with China could render the government of Norway and Norwegian businesses morally and legally complicit in the atrocities committed by the Chinese state.
She asserted that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) serves as a key tool in China’s strategy for global domination, enabling the Chinese Communist Party to extend its authoritarian influence under the pretext of development and trade.
[...]
283
Original Bloomberg link (paywalled).
One of China’s largest online recruitment platforms has quietly stopped providing wage data it’s compiled for at least a decade, making it more difficult to gauge the health of the world’s biggest labour market just as it comes under strain from US tariffs.
Zhaopin Ltd has yet to publish its reports on average wages companies offered to new hires in 38 key cities for the past two quarters. It’s previously released them regularly within the first month after each quarter ended.
Beijing-based Zhaopin didn’t reply to a request for comment.
The missing numbers extend a pattern in China of data providers discontinuing or pausing statistical releases. Alternative figures on employment have become especially sparse, depriving economists and investors of information about a subject that’s grown more sensitive due to soaring youth unemployment, widespread salary cuts and lay-offs.
Zhaopin’s last report, published in early October, showed a decline in salaries from a year ago in the three months ended September, in a resumption of a downward trend that started in mid-2023. The figures it provided were one of the few independent statistical sets that reflected broad-based wage changes across the country.
[...]
Such alternative data has become increasingly important in assessing China’s employment conditions in recent years. Many economists think the official measurements — including the jobless rate and income statistics — have failed to fully capture the extent of stress on the labour market from the economy’s slowdown.
China Institute for Employment Research, a think tank based in Beijing, stopped making its quarterly labour market reports and indexes publicly available since 2022. China Dissent Monitor, which documented protests including those triggered by labour disputes, suspended its work earlier this year after USAID funding was withdrawn by the Trump administration.
[...]
China’s ability to shield its labour market from the trade war is critical to the prospects of the world’s second-largest economy, which is counting on domestic consumers to offset the fallout from US tariffs of as much as 145%. Weak income growth and household expectations have been a major factor behind sluggish consumption in recent years.
While policymakers have pledged to lift wages, the immediate outlook for employment is actually changing for the worse. As many as 16 million jobs are exposed to China’s exports to the US, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc’s estimates.
A total of eight million jobs could be lost over the next two years, based on the last time both exports and the property sector contracted in 2015 and 2016, according to Capital Economics Ltd.
[...]
In an effort to better gauge the labour market situation, Capital Economics recently constructed an index based on data including those from purchasing managers’ index surveys and Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business’s poll on firms’ labour costs.
While the index largely used to move in sync with the official jobless rate, it’s been painting a much weaker picture since mid-2024.
“Chinese policymakers will probably find ways to keep the published unemployment rate close to their ‘around 5.5%’ target for this year,” said Julian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics. “But this may mask broader weakness in the labour market,” he said in a Wednesday report.
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Cross posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/34329849
Four suspects of Chinese nationality, three men and one woman aged between 25 and 40, were arrested during the recent operation. All four were living in Portugal. Three of the suspects have been remanded in custody. The fourth, a woman, has been released under strict conditions, including a ban on contact with the other defendants and mandatory weekly check-ins with authorities.
[...]
In total, 21 individuals and companies have been named defendants in the case. The arrests were made following a wide-reaching investigation, including 25 house and business searches across several northern municipalities.
[...]
Police seized over €1.5 million in cash, four luxury vehicles, 25 bank accounts, and many documents and computer equipment. Items linked to tax fraud and document forgery were also recovered during the raids. According to the PJ, the operation involved 110 officers and was supported by ASAE, Portugal’s Food and Economic Security Authority.
Authorities believe the group used a network of fake Chinese stores and companies to hide and move large sums of money obtained from illegal activities. These businesses were set up using false identities to open multiple bank accounts across Portugal. Once the money was deposited, it was transferred to other bank accounts based in countries outside the European Union.
[...]
285
Cross posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/34330409
[...]
This March, Stanford’s President, Dr. Jonathan Levin, received a letter from the Select Committee on the CCP detailing the security risks China poses to STEM research. For years, concerns about Chinese espionage have quietly persisted at Stanford. Throughout our investigation, professors, students, and researchers readily recounted their experiences of Chinese spying, yet they declined to speak publicly. One student who experienced espionage firsthand was too fearful to recount their story, even via encrypted messaging. “The risk is too high,” they explained. Transnational repression, $64 million in Chinese funding, and allegations of racial profiling have contributed to a pervasive culture of silence at Stanford and beyond.
[...]
After interviewing multiple anonymous Stanford faculty, students, and China experts, we can confirm that the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] is orchestrating a widespread intelligence-gathering campaign at Stanford. In short, “there are Chinese spies at Stanford.”
[...]
Speaking at a China Town Hall event, the former U.S. National Security Council’s Director for China, Matthew Turpin, characterized the threat of Chinese espionage at Stanford:
"The Chinese state incentivizes students to violate conflicts of commitment and interest, ensuring they bring back technology otherwise restricted by export controls.”
[...]
A China expert, familiar with Stanford, who wished to remain anonymous, confirmed that of the approximately 1,129 Chinese International students on campus, a select number are actively reporting to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law mandates that all Chinese citizens support and cooperate with state intelligence work regardless of location.
[...]
One Chinese national at Stanford spoke to us on this very issue under conditions of anonymity:
“Many Chinese [nationals] have handlers; they [CCP] want to know everything that's going on at Stanford. This is a very normal thing. They just relay the information they have.”
[...]
Another Stanford student shared an incident involving their professor's encounter with suspected Chinese espionage. According to the student, the professor recounted needing to schedule a meeting with a Chinese student. When the student declined, citing a mysterious reason, the Professor asked why. The student replied, “You know why.” The professor continued to inquire, only to receive the cryptic response, “I cannot tell you that.” Finally, the professor revealed that the student admitted to meeting a CCP handler.
This issue has been under discussion at Stanford since 2019, as highlighted by a Stanford Daily article that featured interviews with anonymous Chinese nationals. One Chinese student remarked, “Whether peer monitoring exists at Stanford is moot; it’s the possibility that keeps people cautious about what they say. If it exists, I’m not going to be surprised.”
[...]
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Industry association SolarPower Europe expels China's Huawei amid EU bribery probe
(www.pv-magazine.com)
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/34216295
SolarPower Europe has removed Chinese tech giant Huawei as a member, marking the first time the Brussels-based solar industry association has taken such action, an SPE spokesperson has told pv magazine. The board made the decision on April 28, 2025, and “the procedure is continuing as laid out in our statutes,” said the spokesperson.
[...]
The move follows the European Commission’s recent decision to cut off contact with trade associations representing Huawei’s interests, citing an ongoing corruption investigation.
“The decision comes in the context of the European Commission’s decision to restrict meetings with associations who have Huawei in their membership,” said the SPE spokesperson in an email.
[...]
Several other EU industry groups, including DigitalEurope and BusinessEurope, have also moved to suspend Huawei in recent weeks.
[...]
[Edit headline for clarity.]
287
As China continues to tighten information flows in and out of the country, how reliable are statistics from official Chinese sources? Recent media pieces have highlighted the deepening lack of government transparency and accuracy when it comes to important data, and its implications for research related to China. The latest example is from Rebecca Feng and Jason Douglas at The Wall Street Journal, who wrote this week about how “Beijing has stopped publishing hundreds of statistics, making it harder to know what’s going on in the country”:
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German right-wing politician faces probe over China bribery and money laundering
(www.devdiscourse.com)
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/34215174
German public prosecutors in Dresden have initiated a probe against an AfD politician over allegations of bribery and money laundering. The investigation is reportedly focused on Maximilian Krah, following the arrest of his former aide for spying for China. Krah has not publicly commented.
In a significant development, German prosecutors have commenced an investigation into a far-right politician, suspected of bribery and money laundering. This investigation strives to strip the member of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party of his immunity as a lawmaker, per local media reports on Friday.
The probe initiated in Dresden targets Maximilian Krah, a notable member of the German parliament following the recent federal election. Although prosecutors withheld names, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper disclosed that Krah is under scrutiny concerning allegations linked to Chinese monetary transactions.
Adding to the case's complexity, a former aide of Krah’s was previously arrested over accusations of facilitating espionage for China. Federal prosecutorial authorities revealed that this aide, Jian G., had covertly gathered and transmitted over 500 classified documents to Chinese entities.
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Danish politicians call for government inquiry into transnational repression following China Targets investigation
(www.icij.org)
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/34193572
Three Danish political parties have called for a government probe into China’s repression campaign against dissidents living in the Nordic country following the China Targets investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the Danish newspaper Politiken and 41 other media outlets.
Lawmakers from the Unity List, the Danish People’s Party and The Alternative said they want to know how widespread Beijing’s targeting of political dissidents and members of oppressed minorities is and what authorities intend to do about it, Politiken reported.
Morten Messerschmidt, the leader of the right-wing Danish People’s Party, told Politiken that China Targets had unmasked the true face of the Chinese regime and said that, for too long, European politicians have turned a blind eye to its transnational repression.
“China successfully keeps its own population in a totalitarian iron grip, and they have a fundamental ambition to do the same with the rest of the world,” Messerschmidt said.
He described China as a “bully” state that Western countries had emboldened economically and militarily “through an extreme degree of naivety.”
China Targets uncovered the pressure tactics the Chinese government uses to silence and intimidate its critics abroad, including through proxies and professional hackers.
[...]
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/34193215
[...]
Björn Alexander Düben, an expert in Russia-China relations at China's Jilin University, thinks Xi's visit has a "highly symbolic element," noting that, apart from Brazil's President Lula da Silva, Xi was the only major world leader to attend the parade.
Düben noted a "personal rapport" between the two leaders and described how Xi "devotes more time to his interaction with Putin than practically any other international leader."
Russia needs China more than ever
As Western sanctions choke Russia's economy over the Ukraine war, Moscow increasingly counts on Beijing as a lifeline for energy and raw material exports.
China has risen to become Russia's top economic partner, with bilateral trade soaring to $244 billion (€216 billion) last year. In February 2022, the two countries signed a "no limits" economic, military, and diplomatic partnership to counter Western influence.
Since the war's onset, Russia's exports to China have skyrocketed by 63% to $129.3 billion, while Chinese imports have helped bolster Moscow's wartime economy, binding the two nations closer than ever.
[...]
Russia is now China's top source of crude oil imports, supplying around a fifth of imports.
The two powers have also tightened military bonds, ramping up joint war games and sharing cutting-edge defense technologies.
While Russia’s economy has proven more resilient to Western sanctions than most experts had expected, without China's economic support, Moscow would be in a "deep mess," Düben [said].
[...]
China's support props up war effort
As well as the expanded energy trade, Düben said China has given Russia access to manufactured goods and technologies that it cannot produce and that Western states no longer export to Russia.
The Yilin University associate professor said that without China's dual-use goods (civilian and military), "Russia’s armed forces would probably not be able to continue their military campaign against Ukraine."
[...]
291
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"Message of history is clear:" Taiwan’s president compares his nation to Europe heading for conflict with Nazi Germany in the 1930s
(www.theguardian.com)
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/34188137
Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, has compared his nation to the European countries heading for conflict with Nazi Germany in the 1930s, in a punchy speech commemorating the end of the second world war in Europe.
“Eighty years after the end of the European war, the message of history is clear. Today, 80 years later, we share the same values and face similar challenges as many of the democracies that participated in the European war,” Lai said to a group of foreign dignitaries gathered in Taipei.
Lai’s speech comes at a time when Taiwan is facing increasing military pressure from China. It is the first time Taiwan has officially commemorated the end of the second world war in Europe.
[...]
292
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/34152234
[...]
The United Front is a unit of the Chinese Communist Party tasked with controlling key members of the overseas Chinese diaspora and suppressing voices critical of China, thereby expanding China’s influence. As part of these efforts, the United Front maintains contact with representatives and associations of the overseas Chinese diaspora worldwide. Direkt36 has identified 26 Chinese associations and 56 individuals linked to this network in Hungary, including [the Chinese citizen] Ma Wenjun and the Chinese-European Cultural, Art, and Sports Association he founded.
Ma, originally from [the Chinese city of] Nanjing, said he moved to Hungary in 2013 through a residency bond program and currently owns a wholesale and retail company. Alongside his influential Chinese political connections, Ma, as president of his association, also appears alongside Hungarian government politicians. In 2017, his association helped organize the Hungarian Chinese Film Festival, which was attended by Hong Kong film star Jackie Chan, a known supporter of the Chinese Communist Party. Zoltán Balog, a former Hungarian minister, also gave a speech at the event. That same year, Ma shook hands with [Hungarian] Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó at an economic conference.
[...]
Journalists [...] interviewed more than 100 people worldwide who have been targets of Chinese state intimidation.
[They] also examined confidential Chinese documents—a 2004 Chinese police textbook and a 2013 guideline for domestic security officers—that revealed the techniques used by Chinese authorities. These included digging up possible past offenses by the targets and harassing their Chinese relatives.
“The principle and general playbook hasn’t changed, but they are operating at a very different level today,” [said] Katja Drinhausen, a researcher at the Mercator Institute for Chinese Studies in Berlin.
[...]
Half of those interviewed who had been targeted by Chinese authorities reported that the harassment extended to family members living in China, who were regularly visited and interrogated by police or state security officials. Several victims also told the ICIJ that their relatives in China or Hong Kong were contacted by police shortly after the targeted individuals participated in protests or public events abroad.
[...]
“Only when they see my dead body will they act,” said Nuria Zyden, a Dublin, [Ireland]-based Uyghur, referring to the police response after she reported being followed by three Chinese men.
Experts say repression against perceived enemies of the party-state has intensified since the start of Xi Jinping’s presidency in 2012. In internal statements, Xi has urged security officials to stay vigilant against “Western anti-China forces,” including dissidents.
“Xi is committed to deepening Communist Party control over China and the diaspora,” said Emile Dirks, who researches authoritarianism at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab. “No opposition to this goal, however small or weak, is tolerated.”
[...]
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Hong Kong authorities’ unjust arrests of the father and brother of the prominent US-based activist Anna Kwok is an escalation of the Chinese government’s use of cross-border repression, 87 international and diaspora rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, said today in two joint statements.
Anna Kwok’s father, Kwok Yin-sang, 68, was arrested and formally charged under a national security law that carries a punishment of up to seven years in prison. Her brother was also arrested and later released on bail.
“The Hong Kong authorities took an unprecedented action by charging the family member of an exiled activist with a national security crime to try to silence her,” said Yalkun Uluyol, China researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Foreign governments should respond to this assault on basic liberties by speaking up about the case and taking concrete actions to protect their citizens and residents from the Chinese government’s long arm.”
The groups said that foreign governments should put in place effective measures to protect exiled activists and other critics of the Chinese government from Beijing’s transnational repression.
[...]
294
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Chinese President Xi Jinping heads to Moscow to beef up 'no limits' Putin partnership as EU says China is key enabler of Russia's war in Ukraine
(www.france24.com)
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/34079865
[...]
Putin will address the "grandest" ever annual Victory Day parade in Moscow on Friday for the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II to rally support for his troops fighting in Ukraine.
[...]
China has sent 102 soldiers –- the largest foreign military contingent among the 13 participating nations –- for the event.
Ukraine warned Tuesday against any foreign troops participating in the parade, calling it "unacceptable" and helping Moscow "whitewash its war crimes".
[...]
China has portrayed itself as a neutral party in the more than three-year conflict, although Western governments say its close ties to Russia have given Moscow crucial economic and diplomatic support.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky in April accused China of supplying arms to Russia and alleged Beijing knew of at least 155 Chinese nationals fighting alongside Russian forces.
[...]
A European Commission spokesperson said on Wednesday that China continues to be the key enabler of Russia's war in Ukraine and that without China's support, Russia would not be able to wage the war to the same extent.
295
5
cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2684489
Solar panels with suspected links to Chinese slave labour have been installed by dozens of organisations including Manchester City, Cheltenham Racecourse and David Lloyd gyms, The i Paper can reveal.
The scale of Britain’s use of solar panels made by firms alleged to have used components made from the forced labour of minorities in China can be disclosed for the first time.
As well as commercial premises, the locations include schools, hospitals and universities across the country. There is no suggestion that any of the organisations installed solar panels with knowledge of links to Chinese slave labour.
...
[The investigation] has mapped 84 non-residential locations where solar panels have been installed with links to alleged slave labour. The data is based on evidence provided by Sheffield Hallam University’s Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice, the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) and open source analysis.
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Last week, growing concerns over Britain’s use of Chinese panels with links to Uyghur oppression forced [UK] Energy Secretary Ed Miliband into banning them from being used by the state-funded Great British Energy company unless it can “ensure that slavery and human trafficking is not taking place” in its business or supply chains.
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IPAC’s senior analyst Chung Ching Kwong believes [the] disclosures are a conservative estimate of the UK’s use of such tainted technology, because of the lack of transparency about the original source of materials used in many panels.
“UK consumers are unknowingly complicit in Uyghur forced labour,” said Ms Kwong. “Our work shows how big a mountain the government has to climb to root out slave-made renewables.”
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Professor Laura Murphy at the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University has led the way in tracing the original source of polysilicon in these panels. Her latest report in 2023 detailed how a number of Chinese firms had “high” exposure to production in Xinjiang. As well as Jinko, these included: JA Solar, Qcells, Canadian Solar, Trina Solar, and LONGi Solar.
Her report stated: “None of the companies that were engaged in state-sponsored labour transfers in 2021 has announced any changes to its recruitment methods or shown any resistance to participation in the PRC (Peoples Republic of China) Government’s programmes. Indeed, since that time, the PRC Government’s labour transfer programme has only increased in scale and the pressure on companies to absorb the workers the state deemed to be surplus remains high.”
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The UK formed the Solar Stewardship Initiative (SSI) with trade organisations in a bid to tackle human rights challenges within the global solar supply chain including “rigorously” auditing some Chinese sites. Trini Solar and JA Solar are members. The latter firm was suspended in January after the US banned panels made by one of its subsidiaries but was reinstated after the SSI concluded its supply practices had changed.
SSI’s chief executive Rachel Owens said: “We are acutely aware of the complexities involved in verifying supply chain links that may be several tiers removed from the end-product. That is precisely why the SSI, together with a large range of stakeholders including civil society, human rights experts, international financial institutions and industry, developed the SSI Supply Chain Traceability Standard. It will be implemented in 2025.”
...
Some Chinese firms have criticised Sheffield Hallam’s report, claiming it disregards corporate due diligence policies.
But Prof Murphy who strongly defended her research, warned against companies taking the words of Chinese firms as evidence that supply chains are clean.
She said: “A simple attestation that forced labor has been excluded simply isn’t enough to ensure that modules are in fact free and clear of forced labor.”
Chloe Cranston at Anti-Slavery International, claimed a lack of extensive testing of Chinese manufacturers has made the UK a “dumping ground” for panels linked to slave labour.
She said: “What we were seeing is many of the big solar companies… essentially creating one clean supply chain for the US to meet the requirements there but then they were not having to take those same steps in other markets globally meaning that the UK market was opening itself up as a dumping ground.”
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/34046277
[...]
Since the beginning of the war, China has carefully balanced its support for Russia with formal neutrality and peace proposals. However, over more than three years of fighting, it has become clear that Beijing is a crucial pillar in Moscow’s war of attrition. This support is not limited to diplomacy, information, and economic backing; China is also a major supplier of dual-use goods to Russia.
[...]
Kaja Kallas, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, called China “the main sponsor of Russian aggression,” adding that: “It is clear that China is the key enabler of Russia’s war. Without Chinese support, Russia wouldn’t be able to wage the war to the extent that they are. We know that 80 percent of dual-use goods are routed to Russia through China.”
[...]
A recent analysis of Russian Shahed and Geran-2 drones launched at Ukrainian territory showed an increase in the number of Chinese components replacing American ones (apparently due to efforts to circumvent sanctions), compared to 2023. According to the Ukrainian military intelligence, the new CRP antennas for the Geran-2 drones contained only two American-made chips, with the majority of parts, including transceivers, generators, and microchips, manufactured in China. The main chip of the CRP antenna was made by the Chinese company Beijing Microelectronics Technology Institute (BMTI).
[...]
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In new reports sent to United Nations treaty monitoring bodies, the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) responds to the Chinese government’s rejection of key human rights recommendations made by UN experts. CHRD highlights Beijing’s resistance to genuine cooperation with the UN to improve human rights, and its ongoing threats to human rights defenders trying to engage UN human rights mechanisms.
“The Chinese government refuses to fulfill basic obligations set out under the international human rights treaties it voluntarily joined,” said Sophie Richardson, Co-Executive Director at CHRD. “At the same time, it harasses, intimidates, and detains human rights defenders from China when they try to work with these bodies.”
Beijing has used the treaty body review process to deflect international scrutiny of its human rights violations. It has obstructed the committees’ engagement with civil society, and failed to implement these experts’ constructive recommendations on improving implementation of the international treaties.
[...]
CHRD’s analysis shows that the Chinese government has made no progress toward implementing CESCR’s recommendations. Chinese authorities have not adopted comprehensive anti-discrimination measures in law and practice. Instead, the government permits and exacerbates discrimination against women, rural migrants, persons with disabilities, and LGBTIQ+ individuals. The authorities have not acknowledged human rights violations in the Uyghur region, and they have not abolished the coerced residential (boarding) school system imposed on Tibetan children.
[...]
“While ignoring UN reviews, Beijing is whitewashing its record by hosting high-profile international gatherings on women’s and socio-economic rights,” Richardson said. “Will states attending Beijing’s 2025 Global Summit of Women repeat state propaganda, or will they stand with activists challenging abuses and discrimination?”
[...]
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China has found its assassin’s mace: high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons
(www.taipeitimes.com)
cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2673818
[This is an op-ed by Tin Pak, visiting academic at the National Defense University and a researcher at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taiwan, and Chen Yu-cheng, an associate professor at the National Defense University.
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics.
An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency. HEMP weapons fit both criteria. In nanoseconds, a single HEMP detonation at an altitude between 20km and 50km can disable electronic infrastructure across large swathes of Taiwan. There would be little warning, as the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) fields DF-17 hypersonic missiles, capable of delivering a HEMP warhead above Taiwan in a matter of minutes.
HEMPs strike at the foundation of modern society, its electronic systems. Every critical infrastructure uses electronics, from telecommunications, hospitals, energy production and distribution facilities, and even water purification systems.
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/33977743
Chinese exporters ‘wash’ products in third countries to avoid Donald Trump’s tariffs: Asian neighbours wary of becoming staging posts for trade actually destined for US
[...]
Chinese social media platforms are awash with adverts offering “place-of-origin washing”, while an inflow of goods from China has raised alarm in neighbouring countries wary of becoming staging posts for trade actually destined for the US.
The growing use of the tactic underlines exporters’ fears that new tariffs of up to 145 per cent imposed by Trump on Chinese goods will deprive them of access to one of their most important markets.
“The tariff is too high,” said Sarah Ou, a salesperson at Baitai Lighting, an exporter based in the southern Chinese city of Zhongshan. “[But] we can sell the goods to neighbouring countries, and then the neighbouring countries sell them on to the United States, and it will reduce.”
US trade laws require goods to undergo “substantial transformation” in a country, usually including processing or manufacturing that adds significant value, to qualify as originating there for tariff purposes.
But adverts on social media platforms such as Xiaohongshu offer to help exporters ship goods to countries such as Malaysia, where they will be issued with a new certificate of origin and then sent to the US.
“The US has imposed tariffs on Chinese products? Transit through Malaysia to ‘transform’ into Southeast Asian goods!” said one advert posted this week on Xiaohongshu by an account under the name of “Ruby — Third Country Transshipment”.
“The US has set limits on Chinese wooden flooring and tableware? ‘Wash the origin’ in Malaysia for smooth customs clearance!” it added. A person contacted through the details supplied in the advert declined to comment further.
South Korea’s customs agency said last month it had found foreign products worth Won29.5bn ($21mn) with falsified countries of origin in the first quarter of this year, most of them coming from China and almost all destined for the US.
“We are seeing a sharp increase in recent cases where our country is used as a bypass for products to avoid different tariffs and restrictions because of the US government’s trade policy changes,” the agency said in a statement. “We have found numerous cases where the origins of Chinese products were falsified as Korean.”
Vietnam’s industry and trade ministry last month called on local trade associations, exporters and manufacturers to strengthen checks on origins of raw materials and input goods and to prevent the issuing of counterfeit certificates.
Thailand’s foreign trade department also last month unveiled measures to tighten origin checks on products bound for the US in order to prevent tariff evasion.
Ou of Baitai said that, like many Chinese manufacturers, the company shipped goods as “free on board”, under which buyers took liability for products once they left their departure port, reducing the legal risk for the exporter.
“Customers only need to find ports in Guangzhou or Shenzhen, and as long as [the goods] go there, we have completed our mission . . . [after that] It’s none of our business,” she said.
Salespeople at two logistics companies said they could ship goods to Port Klang in Malaysia, from where they would move items into local containers and change their tags and packaging. The companies had connections with factories in Malaysia that could help issue certificates of origin, said the salespeople, who declined to be named.
[...]
A consultant who advises companies on cross-border trade said origin-washing was one of the two main methods being employed to avoid Trump’s new levies. The other was mixing high cost items with cheaper goods, so exporters could falsely claim a lower overall cost of shipments, the consultant said.
The owner of a consumer goods manufacturer based in the southern Chinese city of Dongguan said two domestic industry associations had introduced it to intermediaries who offered “grey area” tariff workarounds.
“Basically I only ship to a Chinese port and they take it from there,” the owner said, adding that the intermediaries had offered to arrange the workaround for just Rmb5 ($0.70) per kilogramme shipped.
“These agencies said small- and medium-sized enterprises like us can weather the tariff hit better because there’s always grey areas,” she said. “I hope it’s true. The US is a big market — I don’t want to lose it.”
[...]
One senior executive at a top 10 independent seller on Amazon said they had observed instances where shipments’ origins had been altered, risking confiscation by US customs authorities.
The executive said they were reluctant to accept offers of assistance from their Chinese suppliers, such as having them act as the “importer of record” into the US and paying tariffs based on the cost of manufacturing rather than the retailer’s higher cost of purchase.
The executive said they worried that a supplier might report a false value. “You’re putting a lot of trust in a Chinese supplier,” they said.
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China’s Influence Campaigns Target Influencers in Europe: examples from the Czech Republic and Greece
(chinaobservers.eu)
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/33936574
While attention in Central Europe has often centered on Russian propaganda, China has been quietly cultivating its own influence operations through unexpected channels – from Czech radio stations to TikTok influencers and all-expenses-paid trips to China. These efforts reveal a growing sophistication in Beijing’s strategy to shape perceptions abroad, leveraging entertainment, travel, and digital culture to mask deeper political objectives. What appears at first glance to be harmless cultural exchange may, in fact, form part of a broader, state-driven influence campaign with far-reaching implications for public discourse and (social) media integrity in the Czech Republic and beyond.
[...]
Beyond [social media] influencers, China’s covert propaganda has infiltrated traditional Czech media. Between 2019 and 2023, the show “Barevný svět” aired up to six times a week on Radio HEY. While it appeared to be a travel program, analysis by China analyst Ivana Karásková revealed it was produced in partnership with China Radio International (CRI), a state outlet under the Chinese Communist Party’s control. The program portrayed China exclusively in a positive light, referred to Taiwan as “the largest island belonging to China,” and promoted Tibet’s inclusion as a rightful part of the country. The broadcast was discontinued only after Karásková’s findings were published.
Print and television media have not been immune either. After Chinese conglomerate CEFC entered Empresa Media, negative or even neutral reporting on China disappeared from the media group’s major outlets such as Týden and TV Barrandov. In 2019, the Czech daily Právo published an eight-page insert celebrating 70 years of Czech-China relations. Although marked as commercial content in fine print, the pages were authored by Czech journalists – blurring the lines between editorial and advertorial.
TikTok campaigns have also been rolled out in the Czech Republic with increasing subtlety. In late 2022, Czech influencers Dominique Alagia and Lukáš Tůma participated in a sponsored trend featuring a cartoon lion – referencing the Czech national symbol – created by CRI.
[...]
Although not all Czech influencers explicitly disclosed the paid nature of the collaboration, parallel campaigns were launched in Poland and Greece, adapting national symbols to better resonate with local audiences – a young bull (ciołek) in Poland and an owl, a classical symbol of wisdom, in Greece. In both cases, European influencers were contacted to collaborate with TikTok accounts run by Chinese individuals fluent in local languages, who produce content targeted at European audiences. The goal was to boost the engagement of these Chinese influencers operating in Europe.
In Poland, a Chinese woman fluent in Polish, Oliwia Waskocha, coordinated the campaign in November 2022, involving a large number of influencers; collectively, these Polish influencers currently amass nearly 7 million followers on TikTok alone. In Greece, a Chinese woman operating under the handle @mariannalee_ (with 81,400 TikTok followers) spearheaded a comparable campaign, using dance performances featuring an owl to symbolically connect with Greek cultural heritage.
[...]
One of these influencers – Jan Michálek – even travelled to China, a trip fully funded by Chinese entities, which he confirmed in a 2024 podcast. A promotional video published by Pepa Zhang’s official Facebook account shows Michálek enjoying Xinjiang’s landscapes and cultural festivals, portraying a region better known internationally for its human rights controversies as an idyllic travel destination. Both Pepa and Lada are featured singing with their Czech guest, suggesting not just casual exchange but orchestrated cultural diplomacy.
[...]
The term “white monkey,” often used pejoratively in some Asian contexts, refers to Westerners hired to lend prestige to events or promotional content. Though problematic, it may describe the underlying logic of these Chinese-sponsored influencer trips: showcasing foreign admiration to boost China’s image among its own citizens. By omitting political issues, these campaigns present China as modern, friendly, and culturally rich – ideal for soft power projection.
TikTok represents an ideal platform for Chinese state-linked actors to disseminate promotional content. Influencers on the app are not only accustomed to paid collaborations, but they also command the attention of vast, often young, audiences who place a high degree of trust in their recommendations. These creators offer a ready-made channel for subtle messaging that bypasses traditional media scrutiny. Crucially, TikTok remains largely unmonitored by governmental or civil society institutions that might otherwise flag, contextualize, or push back against such content. This vacuum creates fertile ground for influence operations to take root and spread, often unnoticed, in the feeds of millions.