Lunar New Year will be different for many Chinese families this time. PHOTO: HECTOR RETAMAL / AFP Lunar New Year is the most important holiday of the year in China, when hundreds of millions of people travel to their hometown for family reunion. The sheer number of travelers, often migrant workers, makes it the largest human […]
Read MoreTag: China
Beijing’s Latest Weapon in Its War on COVID-19: Anal Swabs
Nasal or throat swabs are still the norm. PHOTO: STRINGER / AFP Authorities in Beijing are ordering anal swabs for some people who may have contacted COVID-19 patients, in its latest effort to contain local outbreaks. Officials said last Wednesday that anal swabs had been administered for more than 1,000 students and teachers at a […]
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A Scientist Is Arrested, and Academics Push Back
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — It was Donald J. Trump’s last full week in office, so Andrew E. Lelling, the federal prosecutor in Boston, knew he had limited time left in his job. But there was one more important arrest to announce, one that would burnish his record on a key initiative for President Trump’s administration. Police […]
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Michael Hudson: Finance Capitalism vs. Industrial Capitalism – The Rentier Resurgence and Takeover
Yves here. This is another tour de force from Michael Hudson, derived from a paper he presented in early January at the UPRE session during the annual ASSA meeting. This time he turns from his recent focus on the economically destructive but oligarchy-advancing practice of sanctifying debt to another favorite topic, the evolution of capitalism. […]
Read MoreThis Perfectly Captures Chinese People’s Nostalgia for Life Before Overwork
Twelve-hour workday is common in big Chinese cities. PHOTO: Hector RETAMAL / AFP A cut-throat work culture is burning out the white-collar workers in China. Now some of them are wondering aloud: What would life be like if people work only eight hours a day? One answer, first posted on Quora-like platform Zhihu, went viral […]
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Dissidents First: A Foreign Policy Doctrine for the Biden Administration
Thirty years from now, what will historians consider the most consequential event of January 2021 — the storming of the U.S. Capitol by an insurrectionist mob, or Aleksei Navalny’s heroic return to Moscow, followed by his immediate arrest? In a broad sense, the two events are about the same thing: the future of freedom. In […]
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China Wanted to Show Off Its Vaccines. It’s Backfiring.
China’s coronavirus vaccines were supposed to deliver a geopolitical win that showcased the country’s scientific prowess and generosity. Instead, in some places, they have set off a backlash. Officials in Brazil and Turkey have complained that Chinese companies have been slow to ship the doses and ingredients. Disclosures about the Chinese vaccines have been slow […]
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Chinese and Indian Troops Clash at Their Disputed Border
NEW DELHI — Indian and Chinese troops have clashed along their disputed Himalayan border, according to media and military reports on Monday, as Beijing quietly intensifies pressure against its southern neighbor with new incursions into territory claimed by both sides. Details about the latest skirmish remain foggy, and Indian officials played down the events. Indian […]
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Five Takeaways From the Developing Space War Between China and the U.S.
The stars of the new space age include not only famous entrepreneurs but a rising generation of dreamers and doers. Small companies, developing states and even high schools now loft spacecraft into orbit. But Beijing is intent on dominating the democratized space age. It is building ground-based lasers that can zap spacecraft and rehearsing cyberattacks […]
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How Space Became the Next ‘Great Power’ Contest Between the U.S. and China
Beijing’s rush for antisatellite arms began 15 years ago. Now, it can threaten the orbital fleets that give the United States military its technological edge. Advanced weapons at China’s military bases can fire warheads that smash satellites and laser beams with a potential to blind arrays of delicate sensors. And its cyberattacks can, at least […]
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Has China Done Too Well Against Covid-19?
A columnist for The Paper, on online publication that takes on controversial subjects, recently argued that Chinese people’s intent to get vaccinated would only drop further as vaccination is rolled out, because they would feel even safer. Also remarkable: Only 16 percent of the Chinese respondents in the Ipsos-World Economic Forum survey who were vaccine-skeptics […]
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Hong Kong Crackdown Is an Early Test for Biden
If the Biden administration was aiming to improve relations with China, events in the past few weeks have shown the depth of the chasm that has grown between Washington and Beijing in recent years on the most fundamental matters. This month, a thousand police officers armed with China’s tough new national security law fanned out […]
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China Sends Warplanes to Taiwan Strait in a Show of Force to Biden
HONG KONG — China sent warplanes into the Taiwan Strait over the weekend, a show of force to the Biden administration that signals Beijing’s plans to maintain pressure on Taiwan even as it calls for a reset with the United States. Taiwan’s military said that four Chinese fighter jets, eight bombers and one anti-submarine aircraft […]
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Meet The Honor View40, The Company’s First Smartphone Since Splitting From Huawei
Huawei is a brand that many of us are familiar with when it comes to smartphones, and to a certain extent, Honor as well who used to be under Huawei’s banner. However, the company has since been split off from Huawei and it looks like they wasted no time in launching their first smartphone – […]
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Voices From China’s Covid Crisis, One Year After Wuhan Lockdown
They are survivors, essential workers and specialists still trying to understand the physical and emotional effects of the coronavirus. They make up a tapestry of people, offering a view of the first months of the pandemic, and of what China’s recovery means. A year after the Covid-19 lockdown in the Chinese city of Wuhan — […]
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How Beijing Turned China’s Covid-19 Tragedy to Its Advantage
No publisher is willing or able to publish her works in China. The social media posts and articles that support her are often censored. A few people who spoke up for her publicly were punished, including a literature professor in Wuhan who lost her Communist Party membership and her right to teach. “I think Fang […]
Read MoreNo, Biden Doesn’t Have a ‘Chinese Handler.’ He’s a US Secret Service Agent.
U.S. Secret Service agent David Cho (left) seen at the inauguration of President Joe Biden. PHOTO: Mark Makela / Getty Images / AFP Conspiracy theorists were quite active during U.S. President Joe Biden’s inauguration, trading spurious claims that senior Secret Service agent David Cho was a “Chinese handler.” Far-right Facebook and Twitter users became obsessed with […]
Read MoreLet’s Start Over, Beijing Tells Biden After Sanctioning Trump Officials
China wants to start over with the U.S., but analysts have said that’s unlikely. PHOTO: WANG Zhao / AFP Beijing wasted no time in slapping sanctions on 28 former officials of the Trump administration before expressing hope for a reset in its relationship with Biden’s America. The Chinese government announced the measures shortly after President […]
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Will Biden’s China Hawks Destroy His Climate Ambitions?
Like Blinken, Yellen hoped to rally other countries “to take on China’s abusive, unfair and illegal practices,” in contrast to Trump’s unilateral actions. Austin struck a confrontational tone, too: “Clearly the strategy will be arrayed against the threat, and China presents the most significant threat because China is ascending.” Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines […]
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Trump’s Last-Minute Moves Against China Complicate Biden’s Agenda
The Trump administration cast its barrage of moves against Beijing, in its waning days, as necessary to stand up to China’s authoritarian leadership. Among its final acts, the administration declared that Beijing was committing genocide against Uighurs and other Muslims in a far western region. It held a video conference between a senior United States […]
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Tesla Sues Chinese Media Outlet Over Negative Report About Shanghai Gigafactory
Tesla has taken legal action against a Chinese media outlet after it published an article criticizing its Shanghai Gigafactory on December 25, 2020. The article in question, titled ‘Giga-Sweatshop Meets Corporate Overloards: An Exclusive Look Into How Tesla China Runs Its Shanghai Gigactory 3’, was published by PingWest and makes damning claims about working conditions […]
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A Chinese Celebrity Scandal Puts Surrogate Births on Trial
The scandal already seemed tailor-made for celebrity websites and online gossips: A glamorous Chinese actress stood accused by her estranged partner of abandoning two surrogate babies they had decided to have together, stranding him in the United States to take care of them. When his allegations hit the Chinese internet on Monday, the outrage couldn’t […]
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Geely And Tencent Will Co-Develop Smart Interiors And Autonomous Tech
Geely has been hard at work lately teaming up with various tech powerhouses in order to better position themselves in the automotive sector going forward. Just this month they joined forces with Chinese search giant Baidu in order to build electric vehicles, before forming a joint venture with Foxconn that will allow them to build […]
Read MoreJack Ma Resurfaces, And Gets $2 Billion Richer in the Process
Jack Ma has reentered the chat. PHOTO: STRINGER / AFP Jack Ma has resurfaced in public for the first time since Chinese regulators halted a massive initial public offering of Alibaba affiliate Ant Group, prompting a stock market rally that added $2 billion to his personal wealth. The billionaire on Wednesday gave an online speech […]
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Here’s What the U.S. Declaration That China Is Committing ‘Genocide’ Could Mean
On the final full day of the Trump presidency, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared that China was carrying out a genocide against Uighurs and other Muslim peoples, the toughest condemnation yet of Beijing’s crackdown in its far western region of Xinjiang. The announcement was welcomed by exiled Uighurs as a long desired recognition of […]
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10 Challenges Biden Faces in Righting the Economy
All presidents come into office vowing to rapidly put into effect an ambitious agenda. But for Joseph R. Biden Jr., the raging coronavirus pandemic and the economic pain it is causing mean many things must get done quickly if he wants to get the economy going. In a speech Thursday on his $1.9 trillion spending […]
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Trump Bequeaths Biden an Upended World
This global cultural battle will continue because the conditions of its eruption — insecurity, disappearing jobs, resentment in societies made still more unequal by the impact of Covid-19 — persist from France to Latin America. The Trump phenomenon also persists. His tens of millions of supporters are not about to vanish. “Were the events at […]
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U.S. Says China’s Repression of Uighurs Is ‘Genocide’
Tensions sharply worsened from 2009, when Uighurs taking part in ethnic riots killed about 200 Han in Urumqi, the regional capital, after earlier tensions and violence. Chinese security forces began a sweeping crackdown. Attacks and more crackdowns occurred across Uighur towns in the years afterward, as well as in some cities outside Xinjiang. Since 2017, […]
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A Child of China’s Gilded Elite Strikes a Nerve Over Wealth and Privilege
Singer? Dancer? Model? The documentary doesn’t really make it clear. “I don’t think she will influence society,” Ms. Hung said in a telephone interview. “I think she’s way more influenced by Chinese society, especially the internet world. She just confirmed what the Chinese public expects out of rich kids in China.” Ms. Yao is the […]
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Will North Korea Explode After Biden Becomes President?
Yves here. The sensationalistic headline is based on what the author Barkley Rosser presents as a sensationalistic account about North Korea at the Washington Post, but Rosser then points out that the underlying information looks to be accurate. The short version is that North Korea tried to loosen China’s choke chain by developing other markets […]
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Audi To Build EVs Based On Its PPE Architecture In China
Audi has confirmed plans to deepen its partnership with First Automobile Works (FAW) in China and will build electric vehicles in the country using its Premium Platform Electric (PPE) architecture. The strengthened relationship between the automakers has led to the creation of a new Audi-FAW company that is majority-owned by Audi and Volkswagen Group China. […]
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