Sidebar
China
::: spoiler Description This chart shows the share of Chinese respondents who ordered from the following online shops in the past 12 months. ::: [Source.](https://www.statista.com/chart/33031/share-of-chinese-respondents-who-ordered-from-the-following-online-shops-in-the-past-12-months/)
[Source.](https://www.statista.com/chart/33036/top-8-most-valuable-chinese-brands/)
[Media Bias/ Fact Check:](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/radio-free-asia/) Bias Rating: LEFT-CENTER Factual Reporting: HIGH Country: USA MBFC’s Country Freedom Rating: MOSTLY FREE Media Type: Organization/Foundation Traffic/Popularity: Medium Traffic MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY
www.abc.net.au
China's state media has denounced guandan, a popular poker-style card game, over fears it is addictive and distracting people from their work. The game's popularity has surged in recent years and it has become well-loved by Chinese businesspeople and Communist Party officials. Now, state-owned newspaper Beijing Youth Daily has slammed the game as "decadent", amid reports state employees have been urged to stop playing the game.
www.ibtimes.co.uk
Thousands of small business owners stormed the Guangzhou offices of Temu, an online retail giant, earlier this month. They protested the platform's financial penalties and return policies, arguing that these measures are crippling small businesses.
www.nytimes.com
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/39189043 > https://archive.is/bSCnV
www.newsweek.com
China has turned down an International Monetary Fund (IMF) recommendation aimed at ending the country's yearslong property market crisis, a move estimated to cost about $1 trillion. In a report on the Chinese economy, the IMF called for the central government to speed up "completion of unfinished, presold housing, which would help restore homebuyer confidence." The IMF recommended a comprehensive policy package, partially funded by the central government, to tackle the issue of unfinished presold projects. This approach should be paired with the "timely resolution," or liquidation of insolvent developers, to ensure market stability, the document said. China's property market, which once accounted for one-fifth of the nation's economic activity, entered a full-blown crisis in 2020 when the government introduced policies targeting speculation and excessive borrowing. Overleveraged real estate giants, including Evergrande and Country Garden, plunged into insolvency. Evergrande was ordered earlier this year to liquidate, while Country Garden faces a similar fate unless it can finalize a debt-restructuring plan by January.
www.economist.com
https://archive.is/nVZTB
slashdot.org
JD.com founder Richard Liu warned employees against prioritizing work-life balance during a recent video conference, stating those who "put life first and work second" were not welcome at the company. This stance reflects a broader trend in China's tech sector as executives face slowing growth and increased competition. Major tech firms, including Alibaba and Tencent, have cut tens of thousands of jobs since 2021. Companies are now seeking younger, cheaper workers and demanding longer hours from existing staff. Pinduoduo, an e-commerce group known for its high productivity and grueling work culture, is seen as a model by some in the industry. In 2021, two Pinduoduo employees died in incidents linked to overwork by colleagues. Older tech professionals, typically over 35, face the greatest risk of redundancy and struggle to find new positions. Employers often view them as expensive and less flexible due to family responsibilities. A 2023 survey of 2,200 professionals in China's largest cities revealed widespread anxiety about career prospects and work-life balance. Many in the industry report experiencing depression and high stress levels.
youtu.be
What is China's GDP really?
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China’s latest working conditions report “Masks Off, Barriers Remain” describes another challenging year for international media in 2023. Difficulties persisted in spite of an improved reporting environment due to the end of China’s tough “COVID Zero” policy and related restrictions on movement, restoring reporters’ ability to move around the country relatively freely. No respondents said reporting conditions surpassed pre-pandemic conditions. Almost all respondents (99%) said reporting conditions in China rarely or never met international reporting standards. Four out of five (81%) respondents said they had experienced interference, harassment, or violence. 54% of respondents were obstructed at least once by police or other officials (2022: 56%), 45% encountered obstruction at least once by persons unknown (2022: 36%). Correspondents are accustomed to receiving such treatment in areas the Chinese authorities consider “politically sensitive”: 85% of journalists who tried to report from Xinjiang in 2023 experienced problems. However, the definition of “sensitive” areas appears to be expanding: An increasing number of journalists encountered issues in regions bordering Russia (79%), Southeast Asian nations (43%) or in ethnically diverse regions like Inner Mongolia (68%). Technology plays an increasingly important role in the surveillance toolkit deployed by the Chinese authorities to monitor and interfere in the work of the foreign journalist community. For the first time, respondents told the FCCC of authorities using drones to monitor them in the field. A majority of respondents had reason to believe the authorities had possibly or definitely compromised their WeChat (81%), their phone (72%), and/or placed audio recording bugs in their office or home (55%). 82% of respondents reported they had interviews declined by sources who stated they were not permitted to speak to foreign media or required prior permission. More than a third (37%) of respondents said reporting trips or interviews already confirmed were canceled last minute because of official pressure (2022: 31%).
www.aljazeera.com
Beijing often states that there are about 60 million people of Chinese origin living abroad in nearly 200 countries and regions, presumably excluding those living in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, the self-ruled island that the CCP claims as its own. People of Chinese ethnicity can trace their roots back centuries in countries like Malaysia, where they make up some 23 percent of the population, and Thailand and Indonesia. 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.
www.aljazeera.com
Under President Xi Jinping, the Chinese government has called for “telling China’s story well” and spreading “positive energy”. Since Xi came to power in 2013, the media environment has tightened. Internet freedom has also declined. In Freedom House’s 2023 report on internet freedom around the world, China was rated “not free: with a score of only nine points out of 100, one point less than the year before. In RSF’s World Press Freedom Index, meanwhile, China fell four spots compared with 2022, ranking second to bottom and just above North Korea. More journalists are currently in jail in China than anywhere else in the world. “There has been a very clear development towards greater state control over the media in China in recent years leaving very little space for media,” Alfred Wu, a scholar of public governance in China at the National University of Singapore, told Al Jazeera. This development has also affected state media, according to Yuan at Rutger’s University. “Under the rule of President Xi Jinping, state media in China have been consolidated and aligned closer with the ideology of the CCP,” he said. "This involves regular ideological education and training, aiming to make sure that reporting reinforces Xi Jinping Thought [Xi’s ideology] and the objectives of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and this is why we are witnessing foreign staff members resigning from media outlets like [formerly more independent media company] Sixth Tone.”
www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au
Freely accessible [archived version](https://web.archive.org/web/20240406111847/https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/comment/topic/2024/04/06/how-it-feels-live-under-surveillance-china#mtr). "The actions of mine that were deemed treasonous [by China] involved writing about China’s concentration camps, which hold up to a million Uighurs, and forced Uighur labour that implicated global supply chains," says Vicky Xu, an Australian journalist and researcher, previously with The New York Times and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. "In the visit of Chinese Foreign Affairs Minister Wang Yi last month, there was positive talk of trade and bilateral relations between Australia and China but nothing about me or the many other Australian citizens and residents targeted by the Chinese state on Australian soil. I thought I’d remind people of our existence and present my point of view." "It has grown tiresome for me to recount how my life has been ruined by the Chinese state, how my family and friends were taken away as a result of my journalistic work on China. In Australia I’ve been followed around. Strange East Asian men stood in front of my apartment complex like voluntary doormen. I changed my number, got new email addresses, installed home security systems, moved again and again. Counter-surveillance has been a full-time job. As I write this, I do not have a stable home address because my current solution to the problem is leading a nomadic lifestyle to stay a step ahead of Chinese Communist Party goons. I don’t know what their plans are if and when they catch up with me again. I’m not the only China scholar who lives in fear of abduction or assassination."
rhg.com
Capacity utilization rates in China have declined over the past couple of years in every surveyed manufacturing sector except non-ferrous metals. Products linked to the property sector, such as plastics and non-metal minerals, are experiencing severe overcapacity because of weak demand in their downstream markets. But many other sectors are seeing declining capacity utilization, too, from machinery to food, textiles, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals. But the drop in capacity utilization rates observed in the past few years is only one aspect of a more profound phenomenon that should draw equal concern for policymakers in Brussels and other economies—China’s growing domestic production surplus. Chinese companies, across a wide range of sectors, now produce far more than domestic consumption can absorb. This domestic surplus can produce low factory utilization rates. But it can also find its way into foreign markets, creating a growing trade surplus and, at times, global redundancies that threaten industrial ecosystems in other countries. Those imbalances are not new, but they have reached unprecedented levels since the pandemic.
www.bbc.com
It defaulted on its overseas debt last year and faces a winding-up petition. In January, rival real estate giant China Evergrande was ordered to liquidate by a Hong Kong court. Country Garden said "due to the continuous volatility of the industry, the operating environment the Group confronting is becoming increasingly complex", when it announced its earnings report would be delayed.
www.theguardian.com
A team of researchers at Chinese, German and Canadian universities have tracked the impacts of deteriorating air at that time. They found that particle pollution deaths in China were increasing at about 213,000 a year and peaked at 2.6mn people in 2005. More positively, the impact of rapid improvements in China’s air pollution were also seen, with decreases of 59,000 deaths a year from 2013 to 2019. Air pollution in China is still far worse than in many developed countries. In 2019, about half of China’s cities failed to meet their own national standards, let alone those from the World Health Organization. [Edit typo.]
globalnews.ca
Cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/12948582 CSIS director David Vigneault says his agency had intelligence ahead of the 2019 federal election that the government of China attempted to funnel — through a network of “threat actors” — approximately $250,000, possibly to interfere in Canadian elections. The document was shown Thursday at Canada’s inquiry into foreign election interference, which is examining attempts to meddle in Canadian democracy during the 2019 and 2021 elections. Global News first reported on these allegations in 2022, citing national security sources. The CSIS summary says, “11 political candidates and 13 political staff members were assessed to be either implicated in or impacted by this group of threat actors.”
dominotheory.com
Cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/12938714 A strong statement emerged from Volker Turk, the current United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, who, during a global update to the U.N. human rights council a few weeks ago, directly challenged the Chinese government to accompany poverty alleviation with “reforms to align relevant laws and policies with international human rights standards.” The U.N. has been roundly criticized in recent years for its failure to achieve much in China other than more effective methods of smothering dissent, in part because it seems institutionally compromised by the Chinese Communist Party regime. Turk’s comments do at least acknowledge that crimes are happening, but more than just words are required for change to be expected.
Taiwan on Thursday condemned China as “shameless” after Beijing’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations thanked the world for its concern about a strong earthquake on the island. China claims democratically-governed Taiwan as its own territory and also claims the right to speak for it on the international stage, to the fury of Taipei given Beijing’s communist government has never ruled the island and has no say in how it chooses its leaders. On Wednesday, after the 7.2 earthquake hit eastern Taiwan, killing 10 people, China’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the U.N., Geng Shuang, mentioned at a meeting about children’s rights that another speaker had brought up the quake in “China’s Taiwan”. China is concerned about the damage and has expressed condolences to Taiwan and offered aid, he said, according to a transcript of his remarks carried on the Chinese mission to the U.N.’s website. “We thank the international community for its expressions of sympathy and concern,” he added. Taiwan’s foreign ministry expressed anger at the remarks. The ministry “solemnly condemns China’s shameless use of the Taiwan earthquake to conduct cognitive operations internationally”, it said, using Taiwan’s normal term for what it views as Chinese psychological warfare. This shows China has no goodwill towards Taiwan, the ministry added. Taiwan’s government has already thanked governments and leaders around the world for their messages of concern and offers of support, including from the United States, the island’s most important international supporter despite the lack of diplomatic ties.
citizenlab.ca
Cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/12913117 In its submission to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab gives recomnendations to hold Chinese and U.S. firms accountable for their involvement in online censorship and assisting victims of digital abuse and intimidation.
www.bbc.com
A slowing economy, shrinking government benefits and a decades-long one-child policy have created a creeping demographic crisis in in Xi Jinping's China. The pension pot is running dry and the country is running out of time to build enough of a fund to care for the growing number of elderly. Over the next decade, about 300 million people, who are currently aged 50 to 60, are set to leave the Chinese workforce. This is the country's largest age group, nearly equivalent to the size of the US population. Who will look after them? The answer depends on where you go and who you ask.
dominotheory.com
China repays states for co-alignment variously. Its “no limits” partnership with Moscow was this week bolstered by Beijing’s propaganda outlet Global Times serving Russia’s narrative that the recent terrorist attack in its capital city may be connected to the United States of America and Ukraine, against the latter of which it is attempting to justify a war of invasion. Making no reference to obvious use of torture, the Global Times’ English-language service tweeted that the Russia’s “investigation and interrogation” of terrorism suspects reveals a “complicated” situation and implied possible involvement from Washington and Kyiv. Beijing also sought to keep the Maldives, one of its more recent allies, happy with the March delivery of one million bottles of glacial meltwater from colonially occupied Tibet. For years, civil society organizations have highlighted how Tibetan pastoralists are being removed from their traditional lands to facilitate resource exploitation by Chinese companies, including for bottled water. Extraction of water is reportedly exacerbating environmental degradation and conflict in tandem with a flurry of dam construction that saw major protests earlier this year in Dege County, currently part of China’s Sichuan province. The hundreds of protesters arrested during that incident have been released, but not before suffering deprivation of water, overcrowding and sometimes severe beatings in custody. Moreover, the wider picture suggests that not all of the detainees have been set free; some remain unaccounted for; several younger monks have been sent to government schools since the demonstrations; and restrictions on movement in Dege are still in place. Meanwhile, far from gifts of water, other countries that are not regarded on quite such friendly terms by Beijing like New Zealand, the U.S., U.K. and members of the European Union have instead been the victims of widespread cyber-attacks. Attributed to two entities known as APT 31 and APT 40, which are considered to be affiliated with the Chinese state, the attacks focused on targets such as the British Electoral Commission, companies of strategic importance, dissidents, journalists, parliamentarians and other politicians critical of China.
www.aljazeera.com
Long before eye doctor Li Wenliang sounded the alarm on COVID-19 and succumbed to the virus in early 2020, Dr Gao Yaojie was China’s best-known whistleblower. Her decision to expose the source of China’s AIDS epidemic made her an exile for the last 14 years of her life. At 81, Gao was the oldest dissident ever to have fled China. Barely one month after her death, prominent economist Mao Yushi set a new record. Mao, whose liberal think tank known for advocating market reforms was shut down by officials, shared pictures on social media of his 95th birthday celebrations in Vancouver, Canada, not long after he fled China. Gao kept writing books into her last days, and she never took her final years in exile for granted. “The US is no paradise,” wrote Gao, but she added: “Had I never left [China], I wouldn’t have lived past 90.” She died last December at the age of 95 in New York.
uyghurtimes.com
Chinese propaganda outlet Xinjiang Daily reported from the Autonomous Region Market Supervision Administration that “there are currently 2.476 million registered business entities in Xinjiang, including 266,700 in the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, representing a 7.75% increase compared to the previous year. Among them, there are 548,300 enterprises, showing a 10.41% year-on-year increase, and 1.8816 million individual businesses, reflecting a 7.25% year-on-year rise. “ However, the Chinese government’s report on “Xinjiang”‘s thriving business sector did not mention the ethnicity of the registered business owners. It has been widely reported that Uyghur business leaders in the region have encountered significant challenges, with many being arrested and their properties seized by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Prominent Uyghur business leaders were reportedly detained in the region starting early in 2015. In a detailed report by Uyghur Hjelp citing the detention of nearly 5000 Uyghur businessmen, a figure also reported by the Wall Street Journal. Of particular importance is the fact that while the Chinese government arrested Uyghur business leaders and seized their properties, they also sent and forced those Uyghur millionaires, among millions of other Uyghurs, to Chinese factories to work under harsh labor conditions without any freedom, effectively as slaves.
scandasia.com
Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/10581641 21 countries, including Denmark, Finland, Sweden and the European Union, have expressed concern about dangerous maneuvers and the use of water cannons against Filipino ships by the China Coast Guard. They refer to the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (UCLOS) and they call for upholding the rules, when managing the dispute in the South China Sea. The statements follows weeks of tension between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea, with both countries accusing each other of initiating aggressions. The Embassy of Sweden in Manila wrote on social media, that damaging the Philippine vessels is “needlessly endangering lives”, and that the “disputes must be resolved peacefully in accordance with UNCLOS and the international rule of law.”
www.france24.com
Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/10580624 Despite the trauma of war between the two nations, the United States and Vietnam have sharply expanded cooperation since the reestablishment of relations 30 years ago. Vietnam has historic tensions with China including disputes in the South China Sea, where Beijing has increasingly exerted claims against Hanoi, the Philippines and others.
Under President Xi Jinping, China has put forward a somewhat vague project known as the Global Security Initiative — a set of broad-brush principles that, as the Financial Times summed up, “advocates for resolving conflicts through dialogue". Many countries in China’s neighborhood are not likely to be convinced. Recently the government of the Philippines lodged a protest with Chinese counterparts after a dangerous escalation in the South China Sea, where China’s maritime expansionism is butting against the parallel territorial claims of its weaker neighbors. Authorities in Manila furnished video evidence of a Chinese coast guard vessel attacking a Philippines naval resupply ship with water cannon on March 23, injuring Filipino crew members and damaging their vessel. This follows a pattern of coercive Chinese measures, including water cannon attacks, deployed around the disputed Second Thomas Shoal, which Manila is defending from constant Chinese encroachment and provocations. The South China Sea is an artery that sees the passage of a third of global trade and its reefs and uninhabited archipelagoes have taken on deeper strategic significance in the shadow of China’s geopolitical rise. “The systematic and consistent manner in which the People’s Republic of China carries out these illegal and irresponsible actions puts into question and significant doubt the sincerity of its calls for peaceful dialogue,” the Philippines coast guard said in a statement after another incident in December. “We demand that China demonstrate that it is a responsible and trustworthy member of the international community.”
apnews.com
As China’s population ages, so are its migrant workers. About 85 million were over 50 in 2022, the latest year for which data is available, accounting for 29% of all migrant workers and up from 15% a decade earlier. With limited or no pensions and health insurance, they need to keep working. Migrant workers can get subsidized health care in their hometowns, but they have little or no coverage elsewhere. If they need to go to hospital in Beijing, they have to pay out of pocket. Older workers are being hit by a double whammy. Jobs have dried up in construction due to a downturn in the real estate market and in factories because of automation and the slowing economy. Age discrimination is common, so jobs tend to go to younger people.