China

Tibetans have worked to protect the Tibetan language and resisted efforts to enforce Mandarin Chinese. Yet, Tibetan children are losing their language through enrolment in state boarding schools where they are being educated nearly exclusively in Mandarin Chinese. Tibetan is typically only taught a few times a week – not enough to sustain the language.

[...]

[Beijing's] Government policy forces all Tibetans to learn and use Mandarin Chinese. Those who speak only Tibetan have a harder time finding work and are faced with discrimination and even violence from the dominant Han ethnic group.

[...]

Meanwhile, support for Tibetan language education has slowly been whittled away: the government even recently banned students from having private Tibetan lessons or tutors on their school holidays.

Linguistic minorities in Tibet all need to learn and use Mandarin. But many also need to learn Tibetan to communicate with other Tibetans: classmates, teachers, doctors, bureaucrats or bosses.

[...]

The government refuses to provide any opportunities to use and learn minority languages like Manegacha. It also tolerates constant discrimination and violence against Manegacha speakers by other Tibetans.

These [Chinese] assimilationist state policies are causing linguistic diversity across Tibet to collapse. As these minority languages are lost, people’s mental and physical health suffers and their social connections and communal identities are destroyed.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/30226134

Pilots first heard about a Chinese live-fire naval exercise near Australia last week when already in the air, receiving messages that forced some to change paths through a busy air corridor, satellite text messages to and from pilots seen by Reuters show.

The incident highlights how airlines are increasingly having to react at short notice to geopolitical disruptions and military hazards, such as missile and drone barrages between Israel and Iran last year.

It also shows how China's military, in its first drills in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand, is raising tensions by being more assertive across the Indo-Pacific region, according to Western defence analysts, including near Taiwan.

[...]

Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said the forced return of the Uyghurs, who had been detained in Thailand for over 11 years, was deeply troubling.

“This violates the principle of non-refoulement for which there is a complete prohibition in cases where there is a real risk of torture, ill-treatment, or other irreparable harm upon their return,” he said.

Contained in Article 3 of the Convention against Torture, the principle prohibits returning individuals to a country where they face a risk of persecution, torture or ill-treatment. It is also referred to in Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The right to seek asylum and of non-refoulement are also enshrined in Article 13 of Thailand’s Prevention and Suppression of Torture and Enforced Disappearance Act, and Article 16 of the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2049441

Archived

Here is the study (pdf)

Most recently, the imposition of Chinese sanctions against individuals and institutions from the EU and the United Kingdom – including independent researchers that are members of the ETNC network [European Think-tank Network on China (ETNC)] – in retaliation for Western sanctions against Chinese individuals accused of grave human rights violations in Xinjiang have paved the way to an escalation in tensions between Europe and China. Even before these developments, however, it had become clear that Beijing’s efforts to developing soft power across the continent were increasingly ineffective.

Summary:

• Developing soft power has been a pillar of Chinese foreign policy since 2007 and remains a stated goal of China’s long-term policy orientation to 2035.
• We identify three prominent Chinese approaches to developing soft power in Europe: promoting Chinese language and culture; shaping China’s image through the media; and using the secondary soft-power effects of economic prowess.
• Recently, and over the last year in particular, China has become more assertive in attempting to shape its image by expanding its toolkit, particularly to enhance its political messaging. This includes the systematic use of social media.
• On the importance of China’s economy, the lines can often be blurred between the attractiveness of economic cooperation and the pressures of economic coercion. Withholding market access for European firms and products has long been an observed practice of reactive Chinese diplomacy, but an increasingly formalized development of sanctioning mechanisms, including “unreliable entity lists” and export control legislation, is a cause for growing concern.
• In other words, market access, trade and investment opportunities are perhaps the single largest factor determining China’s appeal in Europe, but also a major source of its coercive power.

Different patterns of Chinese soft power projections can be seen across four groups of countries analysed in this report:

• In the first group (Austria, Hungary, Poland, Portugal and Slovakia), China does not appear compelled to actively project its soft power, mostly because of the lack of public interest in these countries.
• In Italy and Greece, China’s soft power approach aims to arrest the trend of a deteriorating image and is geared towards damage containment.
• In Germany, Latvia, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain and the UK, perceptions of China are clearly becoming less favourable, and Beijing is struggling with growing vigilance.
• Finally, in Czechia, Denmark, France, and Sweden, China’s soft power is clearly in a state of free fall.

In turn, EU institutions appear to follow the trend described in the third group, of growing vigilance, as the risks posed by China’s geopolitical ambitions increasingly underlined.

A number of factors have driven these trends, from the fallout of COVID-19 to Chinese domestic developments (including in Xinjiang and Hong Kong) and the impact of growing US-China rivalry. These factors ultimately appear to be more substantive drivers of European perceptions and attitudes towards China today than the traditional sources of soft power.

In response, the Chinese government’s public messaging in Europe has become increasingly proactive, even aggressive, including through the imposition of sanctions.

These new methods, though deployed differently across the continent and aimed in part at a Chinese political audience, point to Beijing’s objective to increase its sway over Europe by influencing related discourse. They are presumably designed to prevent negative publicity and criticism, rather than achieve likeability.

[...]

At least 40 Uyghurs have been deported to China, the Thai authorities have confirmed, despite warnings from rights groups that they face possible torture and even death.

The group is thought to have been flown back to China's Xinjiang region on Thursday, after being held for 10 years in a Bangkok detention centre.

China has been accused of committing crimes against humanity and possibly genocide against the Uyghur population and other mostly Muslim ethnic groups in the north-western region of Xinjiang. Beijing denies all of the allegations.

It is the first time Thailand has deported Uyghurs since 2015.

The deportation has been shrouded in secrecy after serious concerns were raised by the United States and United Nations.

Thai media reported that several trucks, some with windows blocked with sheets of black plastic, left Bangkok's main immigration detention centre in the early hours of Thursday morning.

[...]

Taiwan on Wednesday dispatched naval, air and land forces in response to China's "live-fire" drills held off the coast of the self-ruled island, its Defense Ministry said, condemning the unexpected exercise.

China's People's Liberation Army "has blatantly violated international norms by unilaterally designating a drill zone 40 NM off the coast of Kaohsiung and Pingtung, claiming to conduct live-fire exercises without prior warning," Taipei said.

Detecting 32 aircraft around Taiwan as part of the Chinese drill, Taiwan's military said it responded by sending forces to "monitor, alert and respond appropriately."

"This move not only caused a high degree of danger to the safety of international flights and vessels at sea, but is also a blatant provocation to regional security and stability," the ministry said.

[...]

China has time and again threatened to use force to establish control over Taiwan.

The self-ruled island is a major point of contention between Washington and Beijing. While the US is legally required to provide arms to Taiwan for its defense, it has remained ambiguous about sending its own military if required.

Archived

East Turkestan — or Xinjiang, as it is known in Chinese — is a border region where ethnic minorities are subjected to the Chinese regime’s stifling repression.

Subjected to arbitrary arrests and forced labor, sterilizations to torture, more than one million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other minorities are estimated to have been locked up in so-called “re-education” camps and prisons in the region over the last decade, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

While China contends it is fighting ‘terrorists,’ to others it seems the objective is to annihilate any cultural and religious particularism which could be seen as an impediment to the ethnic purity component of the “Chinese dream.”

The United Nations has warned that what is happening in the region may amount to “crimes against humanity,” while others, including the US State Department, have gone further, labeling it a genocide in 2021, especially due to measures intended to reduce the number of children being born.

This repression is not confined to China, but takes on a transnational dimension: even beyond the country’s borders, Beijing persecutes those who have been designated as its political opponents. In Central Asia, the former Soviet republics, heavily economically dependent on their Eastern neighbor, are home to a pervasive interference that extends the repression.

China has built hundreds of detention centers along the border of its Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and the eastern frontiers of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, making those countries a common landing spot for refugees fleeing Chinese repression.

[...]

The region between China and Kazakhstan had become a border of tears, where many families mourn the loved ones who have never returned from the Chinese camps, and where the survivors of the camps who managed to make it across the border have carried with them the trauma of the experience.

[...]

Because the repression in Xinjiang is still ongoing, a single wrong word can lead to deportation, imprisonment, or death for witnesses and their relatives if they are identified by Chinese or Kazakh intelligence.

In those conditions, most survivors are terrified to be acknowledged as such, and not likely to speak to journalists. Building a network of contacts within persecuted communities therefore requires a great deal of time, caution, and trust.

[...]

Archived

International Labour Organization (ILO) flags 'full extent of forced labour' in China's Xinjiang and Tibet

The ILO report 2025 states that forced labour extends beyond internment camps to include long-term imprisonment and large-scale labour transfers into industries such as solar panel production, agriculture, and textiles.

[...]

Information relating to forced labour of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in China [...] were raised as observations predominantly by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and UN bodies such as the UN Human Rights Council (OHCHR). The report specifically highlights that forced labour is not confined to internment camps but includes long-term imprisonment and large-scale labour transfers. It has been rejected by a spokesperson at the Chinese Embassy in Washington.

Summary:

Two major systems of coercive work placement coexist in Xinjiang.

• Firstly, a system of arbitrary detention for Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities suspected of endangering social stability and national security (the “Vocational Skills Training and Education Centers” or VSTEC system) which since 2020 has been replaced with institutionalized long-term detention in regular prisons following a formal legal process, notably of prominent intellectuals and continued forced placement of “released” detainees in labour-intensive industries such as textiles and electronics.
• Secondly, a system of transferring “surplus” rural workers from low-income traditional livelihoods pursuits into industries such as the processing of raw materials for the production of solar panels, batteries and other vehicle parts; seasonal agricultural work; and seafood processing. In recent years, based on an intensified campaign of investigating and monitoring the poverty status of millions of rural households, the authorities had raised targets leading to increased cross-provincial labour transfers.

At the same time, Chinese local authorities had “actively guided” ethnic smallholder farmers to transfer their agricultural plots to large state-led cooperatives, thus “liberating” “surplus” rural workers for transfer into manufacturing or the service sector.

[...] In the last decade, similar policies have been pursued in the Tibet Autonomous Region (Tibet). These policies would apply coercive methods such as military-style vocational training methods and the involvement of political cadres to have Tibetan nomads and farmers swap their traditional livelihoods for jobs providing measurable cash income in industries such as road construction, mining or food-processing, thereby diluting “the negative influence of religion.” Placement incentives to local labour brokers and companies had facilitated a gradual increase in the labour transfer of rural workers to reach 630,000 workers in 2024.

[...]

The United States has reiterated its opposition to any forced change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio stressing that Washington does not seek conflict while standing by its long-standing policies on Taiwan, a recent report carried by the island nation’s Central News Agency (CNA) said.

His comments come as Taiwan continues to face the persistent threat of a Chinese invasion. In an interview broadcast on the social media platform X, Rubio reaffirmed Washington’s stance, stating: "We are against any sort of compelled, forced change of status. That's been our policy; that remains our policy."

[...]

Meanwhile, in another demonstration of EU recognition of Taiwan, a delegation from the European Parliament (EP) arrived in Taiwan earlier in the week to mark the first visit by EP lawmakers in 2025.

The group, led by Ivars Ījabs, a vice-president of the Renew Europe political group from Latvia, was scheduled to meet Taiwan’s Vice-President Hsiao Bi-khim and other senior officials during their five-day trip.

The delegation also includes Hannes Heide of Austria, Arkadiusz Mularczyk from Poland, and Vladimir Prebilič from Slovenia, according to Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

During their visit, the EP members were scheduled to engage with government officials, lawmakers, as well as a number of local NGOs during which time they would be discussing Taiwan-EU relations in addition to regional geopolitics, and technological innovation a statement by the Ministry said.

[...]

Here is the article as pdf.

Drawing on the author’s own experience, this paper explores the rarely researched experience of sibling abortion under China’s One-Child Policy [1979 and 2015] through a psychodynamic lens.

The author uses writing as a method of inquiry to delve into the emotional impact of losing a younger brother to abortion due to the One-Child Policy and to dialogue with relevant psychodynamic literature on loss and grief.

The main body of this paper consists of three separate yet interrelated sections.

• In the first section, drawing on the concept of The Dead Mother, the author explores the possible impact of her mother’s bereavement of a second child on the author’s emotional life in her formative years.

• The second section draws on psychodynamic literature on melancholia to understand how the lost life of an aborted brother is kept alive in the author’s psyche and the ambivalence this brings to the author’s psychical world.

• The third section is an analysis of the first two sections, constructing an understanding of the missing psychosocial elements in the first two sections.

This paper gives voice to the longing and mourning brought by sibling abortion under China's One-Child Policy, presenting the author’s process of trying to understand such experiences and attempt to understand the personal and the psychical under the influence of the political.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2043982

[...]

Many people might wonder why a person living in a largely stable economy where the GDP per capita is roughly in line with the global average [such as in China] might choose to take so many risks to start a new life in a foreign country.

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Ling [a Chinese migrant who fled to Germany] started thinking about leaving China more than 20 years ago. But it wasn’t until the government’s harsh Covid-19 lockdown restrictions that he seriously considered taking action. During the pandemic he lost his job and saw his salary halve to 3,000 yuan (£326) a month as he picked up replacement work as a delivery driver. He grew increasingly uncomfortable with [his daughter] Feifei’s education, such as her being required to wear the red neckerchief of the Young Pioneers, the Chinese Communist party’s organisation for children aged six to 14. He was appalled when a teacher showed Feifei’s class videos portraying the US and western countries as “bullying China”.

“Education should be about teaching children how to love people around them and society, rather than promoting hatred and distorting the minds of children from an early age,” he says, adding that he felt discriminated against as a Christian.

[...]

Crossing rivers and mountains for a new life in the west is known on Chinese social media as zouxian, or “walking the line”.

Wealthier Chinese are also abandoning their homeland for a new start in Europe. In February this year, Mou* and his family landed in Frankfurt for a transfer to Serbia. In the transfer hall, Mou called an emergency family meeting. We’re not going to Serbia, he told his three children, and we’re not going back to China either. Mou, his wife, their children and Mou’s parents approached Frankfurt airport staff and said they wanted to claim asylum. The plane tickets for the family of seven had cost more than 45,500 yuan.

[...]

Pre-Covid, the 42-year-old businessman [Mou] enjoyed his life in China. He ran several food export companies, including a rougamo company that exported the popular Xi’an street food snack to the US. He owned several properties.

But the pandemic battered his business, and also his faith in the government. In 2022 he got into a fight with security officers because he refused to obey a lockdown order. He was detained for three days at the police station. Later, the police asked him to come back and “record some videos”. Mou refused to cooperate and was warned that his children’s future education would become “problematic”.

“My body was shaking when I got the call, full of fear and desperation … I immediately talked to my wife and said let’s leave,” Mou [said].

[...]

Most of all, the new migrants hope that anti-immigration sentiment doesn’t take aim at them. “Germany has taken care of me when I have no job and am making no contribution,” says Ling, who is living on a government handout of 700 euros (£581) a month as he awaits the outcome of his asylum application. “I hope to become a legal citizen, to work and to pay taxes. If the country needs me one day, I would contribute without hesitation”.

*All names in the article have been changed.

Lawyer Chow Hang-tung was charged in 2020 for participating in a peaceful vigil commemorating protesters killed in the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, and charged again in 2021 after she asked people on social media to light candles in memory of the victims. She was jailed for 22 months for daring to commemorate their lives.

Chow also faces a potential 10-year prison sentence for “inciting subversion” under the NSL [China's National Security Law] over her role as former leader of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, which organised the city’s annual Tiananmen candlelight vigil for 30 years.

Despite her imprisonment, Chow has continued to use her legal knowledge to defend rights, including in 2022 to secure the lifting of reporting restrictions on bail hearings. Most recently, Chow mounted a legal challenge to rules that require women – but not men – to wear long trousers year-round in Hong Kong prisons, where temperatures regularly exceed 30 degrees Celsius in summer. In the past, Chow has suffered retaliation for such advocacy, including repeated periods of solitary confinement.

[...]

Safeguard Defenders [a NGO focused on human rights in China] is releasing its new handbook ‘Missing in China’ today in response to the growing number of foreign citizens arbitrarily detained in the authoritarian country.

The handbook is a combination of the organization’s extensive research in China’s repressive judicial system and the first-hand experiences of former detainees and their families. It offers readers with crucial insights and practical advice to deal with the detention of a loved one in China and aims to help them become the best possible advocates for their family member.

‘Missing in China’ is available to download here in English, Chinese and Japanese.

It includes information on what to expect from China’s law enforcement and judicial processes, how to retain a lawyer, how your country and consular services can assist, ways to engage with media and other possible allies, as well as other practical information.

While the majority of detentions of foreigners in China go unreported, some of the names that have made the news since 2018 include American Jeff Harper (2020); Australians Yang Hengjun (2019 to present) and Cheng Lei (2020 to 2023); Briton Ian Stones (likely 2018 to 2024); Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor (2018 to 2021); and Japanese Iwatani Nobu (2019).

In recent years, China has amended its counter-espionage and state secrets laws, markedly expanding both the scope of activities considered illegal and the ambiguity surrounding their interpretation. China has used these laws to target more than a dozen Japanese nationals and, for the first time last year, a South Korean worker in the country.

The authoritarian practice of using foreign citizens as bargaining chips in international relations became of such concern that Canada launched the Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention in State-to-State Relations on 15 February 2021. As of February 2025, 80 countries have signed on to the Declaration.

Yet, at the same time, those same nations often fail to provide adequate warnings to their citizens. While China was clearly on their minds when the Declaration against Arbitrary Detention in State-to-State Relations was drafted, most of the signatory country’s travel advisories do not reflect such a risk assessment.

Archived

[...]

A new analysis of data on scanners drawn from AidData’s Global Chinese Development Finance Dataset reveals that China’s provision of aid and credit for the dissemination of customs inspection equipment abroad—from providers like Nuctech, a Chinese partially state-owned company—is extensive. Despite increasing scrutiny of Chinese equipment used in critical infrastructure like ports, scanners provided by Chinese companies and financed by Chinese donors and lenders are still being widely distributed around the globe. China’s global scanner distribution poses potential national security risks at global seaports, airports, and border crossings.

[...]

China’s provision of customs inspection equipment is far-reaching: at least 65 low- and middle-income countries received this equipment financed via grants and loans from China between 2000 and 2022. The scanners can be found in locations ranging from Serbia and Albania in Eastern Europe, to Cambodia and Laos in Southeast Asia, to countries in Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and the Pacific. Over the past two decades, China provided at least $1.67 billion (constant 2021 USD) of aid and credit for customs inspection activities in recipient countries.

[...]

Donations and zero-interest loans appear to be a deliberate business strategy of Chinese government entities to facilitate the acquisition, installation, and use of customs inspection equipment produced by Chinese companies. Of the 108 customs inspection equipment-related activities tracked, 89 (or 82.4%) constituted donations, with the remainder provided through loans from Chinese agencies for recipients to purchase scanners from China. 44 of these donations were financed directly by China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM).

[...]

Nuctech Company Ltd. (同方威视技术股份有限公司) is one of the key companies involved in the provision of global inspection equipment, ranging from cargo and vehicle inspection to personnel screening. Its competitors include U.S.-based companies such as Rapiscan Systems, L3Harris Technologies, and Leidos, as well as European-based companies like Smiths Detection and Thales Group, among others.

Nuctech is a partially state-owned company that emerged from Tsinghua University in the 1990s. Its parent company is Tsinghua Tongfang (清华同方股份有限公司), a state-owned enterprise. China National Nuclear Corporation (中国核工业集团公司), an energy and defense conglomerate controlled by China’s State Council, is the controlling stakeholder of Tsinghua Tongfang and holds a 21 percent ownership stake in Nuctech. Nuctech is further connected to the state, as the company’s former chairman in the early 2000s now serves in the central government.

[...]

Archived version

• Housing was more than 1/3 of China’s GDP at its peak in 2015; today it is just 20%. This is having a major impact on local government finances, as land sales are their major source of revenue.

Caixin, China’s main business paper, summed up the crisis:

“Chinese local governments are desperately seeking new revenue streams by leveraging government-owned assets to address mounting debt pressures and dwindling coffers. A document from Bishan District in Chongqing, southwest China, went viral online, outlining the formation of a “Sell Everything to Save the Day” task force aimed at monetizing state-owned assets."

[...]

China’s property bubble was based on borrowed money, mainly financed through its ‘shadow banking’ system. Essentially, it was ‘subprime on steroids’:

• House price/earnings ratios reached an eye-popping 50x in Tier 1 cities like Shanghai.
• By comparison, in the US, New York prices were ‘only’ 14x when the US subprime bubble burst in 2008.

[...]

The reason is that the state owned all land in China till 1998. So people have never been through the normal peaks and troughs of a property cycle.

Instead, as they began buying property for the first time, they assumed the government would never let prices fall. But today, this wishful thinking has been exposed.

Now, the shadow banking system is disappearing. And as the chart shows, local government debt is rising rapidly. Essentially, China risks falling into a debt trap, where new loans have to be taken out to service old loans.

Even worse [...] total debt is now >350% of GDP. The issue, as Prof Michael Pettis of Peking University noted in the summer, is that China’s stimulus programme has financed vast amounts of “non-productive investment.“

AND ITS POPULATION IS NOT ONLY AGEING, BUT FALLING

[...]

It is highly unlikely that [China's current debt] could have been repaid even if the population was young and growing quickly. But China is at the other end of the spectrum, as the chart shows. Its population is now falling, and birth rates are half what they were before 1980.

The rise in China’s median age is therefore accelerating. This is now 40 years, double the level in 1980 before the One Child Policy was introduced.

[...]

China is now inevitably going to get old before it gets rich. Its export-oriented economy is facing the prospect of major trade barriers, as the US and Europe look to preserve jobs for their own populations.

And so China’s overcapacity problem is getting worse rather than better, even in areas where it has global market leadership:

• [China's] solar industry has 80% of global demand, but is operating at just 45% of capacity.
• Its auto industry is operating at <50% of capacity. NIO’s boss says it is entering “the most fierce and brutal phase of competition.

[...]

Archived

A proposed dam in China’s Medog county would be the world’s largest hydroelectric project, surpassing even China’s Three Gorges Dam, which is currently the largest dam in the world. The Yarlung Tsangpo, originating from the Tibetan Plateau, flows into India as the Brahmaputra River and continues into Bangladesh as the Jamuna. And not surprisingly, China’s ambition has alarmed downstream countries.

Reports suggest that this dam could significantly alter water flow patterns, affecting millions of people who depend on the river for agriculture, fisheries, and daily consumption.

...

India, which relies heavily on the Brahmaputra River, is likely to face serious hydrological challenges. The river provides water to Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, and other northeastern states, supporting nearly 130 million people and six million hectares of farmland. If China diverts or controls the river’s flow, India could experience unpredictable floods during monsoon seasons and severe droughts in dry months. A 2024 study published in the Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs warned that China could manipulate water releases, potentially affecting India’s economic and strategic interests. Indian hydrologists have expressed concerns that sediment flow, crucial for agriculture, may be blocked by the dam, reducing soil fertility in the northeastern plains.

...

China’s unilateral decision to build the Medog dam, without consulting downstream nations, raises geopolitical tensions in South Asia. The lack of a water-sharing treaty between China, India, and Bangladesh further exacerbates the situation. While China has provided hydrological data to India since 2006 and to Bangladesh since 2008, experts argue that such data-sharing agreements are insufficient in preventing potential water conflicts. India has expressed concerns about China’s control over transboundary rivers, with policymakers advocating for stronger diplomatic and strategic countermeasures.

...

[Edit title for clarity.]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/29872454

Planes flying between Australia and New Zealand have been diverted as China conducts a closely-scrutinised military exercise in nearby waters that may involve live fire.

The rare presence of three Chinese naval ships in the Tasman Sea has put both antipodean countries on alert in recent days, with Australia calling it "unusual".

Australian airline Qantas told the BBC it "temporarily adjusted" the routes of its planes and other carriers have reportedly done the same.

...

Australia and New Zealand have been closely monitoring the Chinese fleet - a frigate, a cruiser and a supply tanker - since last week, and have dispatched their own ships to observe them.

Earlier this week, New Zealand's Defence Minister Judith Collins said China had not informed them they would be sending warships to their region and "have not deigned to advise us on what they are doing in the Tasman Sea", according to the New Zealand Herald.

Meanwhile, Australia's Defence Minister Richard Marles said that the ships' presence was "not unprecedented, but it is an unusual event".

...

The drill comes just days after Australia and China held a defence dialogue in Beijing where they had discussed military transparency and communication, among other things.

The two countries have seen several recent tense maritime encounters.

Earlier this month, Canberra said a Chinese fighter jet had released flares in front of an Australian military aircraft while flying over the South China Sea. Beijing said the aircraft had "intentionally intruded" into its airspace.

In May last year, Australia accused a Chinese fighter plane of dropping flares close to an Australian navy helicopter that was part of a UN Security Council mission on the Yellow Sea.

And in November 2023, Canberra accused Beijing's navy of using sonar pulses in international waters off Japan, resulting in Australian divers suffering injuries.

Archived

China has revised its policy on the administration of Tibetan Buddhist temples, focusing especially on Sinicization of Tibetan Buddhism with “a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation”, according to a Dharamshala-based Tibetan rights group.

China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs issued a revised version of its “Measures for the Administration of Tibetan Buddhist Temples” on Dec 1, 2024 – after being adopted on Sep 1 – and it came into force at the beginning of last month, said the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy Feb 14.

It said a major revision made in Article 4, which outlines the ideological framework within which the Communist Party of China (CPC) requires Tibetan monasteries to function, states:

“Temples and clergy should love the motherland, support the leadership of the Communist Party of China, support the socialist system, abide by the Constitution, laws, regulations, rules, and relevant provisions on the management of religious affairs, practice core socialist values, forge a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation, adhere to the direction of the Sinicization of religion, uphold the principle of independence and self-management, safeguard national unity, ethnic unity, religious harmony, and social stability, and promote the adaptation of Tibetan Buddhism to socialist society.”

Archived version

China's ageing population threatens key Beijing policy goals for the coming decade of boosting domestic consumption and reining in ballooning debt, posing a severe challenge to the economy's long-term growth prospects.

[...]

"China's age structure change will slow down economic growth," said Xiujian Peng,  senior research fellow at the Centre of Policy Studies (CoPS) at Victoria University in Melbourne.

In the next 10 years, about 300 million people currently aged 50 to 60 - China's largest demographic group, equivalent to almost the entire US population - are set to leave the workforce at a time when pension budgets are already stretched.

The state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences sees the pension system running out of money by 2035, with about a third of the country's provincial-level jurisdictions running pension budget deficits, according to finance ministry data.

[...]

Chinese society has traditionally expected children to support their parents financially as they age and often by living together to care for them.

But as in many Western countries, rapid urbanisation has shifted young people to bigger cities and away from their parents, prompting a rising number of seniors to rely on self care or government payments.

[...]

INNOVATION WOES

China saw a rise in births after ditching the one-child policy but the recovery was far off pre-implementation levels and also short-lived. Fewer children were born in each of the past eight years, including 2023.

Demographers say the number of children in any economy is directly correlated with domestic consumption.

Archived

An Australian man says an extortion attempt at an electronics repair store landed him in a Beijing jail, where he was forced to confess to stealing his own phone.

Australian Matthew Radalj was running a clothing business out of Beijing in January 2020 when he left his apartment one morning to collect his phone from an electronics market, where he had dropped it off days earlier for repairs.

What happened next would land him in jail for nearly the next five years, the victim, in his retelling of events, of an extortion attempt and a justice system that convicts 99 per cent of those who come before it.

Under what he says were torturous conditions, he would be forced to confess to robbery charges for stealing his own phone and cash and to violently resisting arrest.

[...]

Each morning, the inmates would be forced to march into the factory to the tune of Chinese Communist Party propaganda “red” songs. The lyrics are burnt into his brain: Wo ai ni zhongguo.

“It means ‘I love you, China’,” says Radalj. “The Chinese system is designed to extract as much suffering from you as possible. At a certain point, you’re not even human any more.”

[...]

Radalj says when he arrived at the electronics market on January 3, 2020, the shop owner, a man called Wei, had more than doubled the agreed price to fix his smashed yellow iPhone 11 and put a new deal on the table. It was now going to cost him 3500 yuan ($767), but Wei’s friend would buy the phone for 1000 yuan and settle his debt. Radalj rejected the deal, paid the original price, took his phone and left.

But as he was exiting the market, he was set upon by security guards carrying pepper spray and electric batons. He fought back, he says, grabbing the pepper spray and using it on one of the security officers and stunning another with a baton he seized in the brawl before being chased into the street, where he was subdued by a mob.

“I had to basically fight for my life,” he says.

[...]

After his arrest, Radalj says he endured cruel treatment at a detention centre until he agreed to sign a “leniency document” confessing to the robbery charges. He was left in rooms for long stretches with static playing through speakers, and he was forced to strip naked and go outside in Beijing’s sub-zero winter. For 10 months, he had no access to money, meaning he couldn’t buy a toothbrush, toilet paper or underwear, nor could he call his family or friends, who were becoming increasingly worried.

[...]

Radalj says he was held in Beijing Number 3 Detention Centre for 504 days before being transferred to Beijing Number 2 Prison, where he spent 1230 days.

[...]

Radalj’s story is an apparent example of how a confluence of circumstance, harsh laws and policing, and geopolitical jostling can conspire in a devastating way to leave foreigners at the mercy of China’s unflinching legal system.

His situation was worsened by the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, during which the prison was sealed off. It also made consular access difficult and soured the Australia-China relationship during the Morrison government era.

“Even in the police station, they were saying, ‘You’re Australian. This is China. Australia is not our friend’,” Radalj says.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/18637737

Archived

TLDR:

• China’s military has once again escalated tensions near Australia. A Chinese J-16 fighter dangerously engaged an Australian P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft, releasing flares just 30 meters away—the fifth such incident since 2022.

• Meanwhile, a Chinese naval flotilla, including a Type 055 Renhai cruiser, sailed near Australia’s northeastern maritime approaches, marking Beijing’s growing naval presence beyond the First Island Chain.

• While Canberra insists on respecting international law, China’s continued provocations raise serious concerns about regional stability. With China targeting smaller nations like Australia, how should Defence and the Albanese government respond to these growing threats?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/29809501

The Australian government revealed a week ago that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea and were approaching northeast Australia.

Defense Minister Richard Marles said Thursday that the Chinese ships — the naval frigate Hengyang, cruiser Zunyi and replenishment vessel Weishanhu — were “off the east coast of Australia.”

Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from China's military, the People's Liberation Army, was 150 nautical miles (278 kilometers) east of Sydney.

“There is no doubt that this is, not unprecedented, but an unusual event,” Marles [said].

Marles said Australian navy ships and air force planes were monitoring the Chinese ships’ movements through international waters that are in Australia's exclusive economic zone, the area beyond its territorial waters where a nation has exclusive economic rights.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/29808568

Archived

[...]

[Tesla owner Elon Musk’s close involvement in the new U.S. administration could have a] potentially adverse side effect as China considers using Tesla as a pawn in trade negotiations.

Tesla car sales were flat in 2024, and to maintain its astronomic valuation, Musk has bet the automaker’s entire future on autonomy, both in the form of self-driving cars and humanoid robots, seeing them as a much more lucrative opportunity than the low-margin traditional business of selling cars. He now spends most of Tesla’s earnings calls talking up a future in which autonomous fleets of “Cybercabs” will roam the streets and replace human drivers. The company has slowly been rolling out its Full-Self Driving (FSD) tech through an optional add-on for current Tesla owners, with plans to begin testing a fully autonomous taxi service in Austin sometime this year.

[...]

China is Tesla’s second biggest market, however, and the country has heretofore not allowed it to begin rolling out autonomous technology there. President Trump’s recent move to place 10% tariffs on goods exported from China has created an opportunity for the country to use the president’s confidant as leverage. From the Financial Times:

Chinese authorities are contemplating using the approval of Tesla’s autonomous-driving licence as a bargaining chip in trade negotiations with Trump, said two of the people with knowledge of the delay, adding that this was the main reason for the hold-up in granting the permit.

The approval could still come soon, depending on how trade negotiations developed, one of the people added. But another said that some people at the company believed a speedy consent was unlikely unless there was “a major breakthrough or concession” in trade talks.

[...]

Archived

Here is the study (pdf).

TLDR:

• Recent suspicious activities conducted by the merchant vessels Shunxing-39 and Vasili Shukshin in the vicinity of Taiwan in early 2025 suggest possible collaboration between Chinese and Russian merchant ships related to the reconnaissance and sabotage of undersea communications cables that connect Taiwan to the outside world.
• Such activities follow from suspected undersea infrastructure sabotage operations conducted by Chinese merchant vessels in the Baltic Sea in 2023–2024, with strong indications of Russian assistance and coordination.
• Taken as a whole, this string of incidents suggests an increasing willingness by Moscow and Beijing to collaborate on maritime sabotage operations—include on attacks on third-party targets.