Month: July 2021

Jul 31st 2021 EVEN A SHORT spell submerged in floodwaters is enough to transform a car into an eerie, unfamiliar object. A week after ferocious rains first battered the central province of Henan, the hulk of a white Toyota—fronds of waterweed wrapped round its buckled frame—lay on a muddy street in Mihe, a hard-hit riverside town, like a long-lost shipwreck. Just finding the car had taken several days, its owners explained. It had been carried two kilometres downstream by the Sishui river, storm-swollen into a murderous torrent many times its…

Jul 31st 2021 ON JULY 27TH a juryless court in Hong Kong convicted Tong Ying-kit, a 24-year-old waiter, of terrorism and inciting secession. He was the first to be found guilty under a sweeping national-security law, introduced last year. Just after the bill took effect, Mr Tong had ridden a motorcycle while displaying a flag saying “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of our Times”, and had crashed into several policemen. In effect, the ruling has criminalised the most popular slogan used by anti-government protesters in 2019. Listen to this story Your…

Jul 31st 2021 ON A HOT and sticky day in the northern city of Tianjin, America and China held their highest-level meeting on Chinese soil since Joe Biden was sworn in as America’s president in January. But the encounter on July 26th between Wendy Sherman, America’s deputy secretary of state, and counterparts from China’s foreign ministry failed to clear the air. Instead, it merely deepened the gloom that hangs over the world’s most critical great-power relationship. Listen to this story Your browser does not support the <audio> element. Listen on…

Advertisement Scholars studying international relations and rising powers are paying increasing attention to cultural studies. They ask, what can culture tell us about rising powers? How can cultural works drive a nation’s identity as a rising power? The Chinese reality show “Produce Camp 2021” – or Chuang 2021 is a prime example. Produce Camp 2021 is a boy band elimination show launched by Tencent Video which brought together a total of 90 contestants from the Chinese mainland and overseas for nearly four months of training and competition. In June 2021,…

Advertisement In the early morning of July 29, Beijing time, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying tweeted a video to wish “Ambassador Qin Gang” a “safe and smooth journey across the Pacific Ocean.” The official Twitter account of the Chinese Embassy in the United States had been updated with Qin’s name and profile picture. Later in the afternoon, Washington time, Qin tweeted a photo of himself walking alongside aides and deputies in JFK airport, with the message: “Arrived in USA. Looking forward to the coming time in the country!” As the…

Advertisement China has managed to chaperone its South Asian neighbors by launching the China-South Asia Emergency Supplies Reserve and Poverty Alleviation and Cooperative Development Center, the results of a virtual meeting convened by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and attended by the foreign ministers of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka (excluding India, Bhutan, and the Maldives) on April 27. The assistant foreign minister of China and the ambassadors of the above-mentioned South Asian countries got together in Chengdu on July 9 to set up these platforms, which aim…

Advertisement Over the weekend, Beijing announced new rules cracking down on the country’s booming education industry. A draft policy circulated by China’s top governing entity, the State Council, included steps to force after-school tutoring companies to register as nonprofits. No new licenses are to be issued. This move prevents tutoring firms from going public and raising capital, while already listed companies are banned from acquiring or investing in other services in the education sector. In addition, extracurricular tutoring is barred on weekends, public holidays, and school vacations. In March, Chinese…

Advertisement During the pandemic, Taiwan went about business as usual. Schools were open, concerts were playing, theaters were packed. Restaurants were bustling, the economy was booming, and expatriates and overseas Taiwanese flooded into the island. Taiwan was among a group of fortunate countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, and Singapore, whose citizens went about business as usual as tight borders, strict quarantine rules, and excellent contract tracing kept the virus at bay. That enviable routine came to an end in mid-May 2021 when an outbreak of COVID-19 transmission upended everyday…

Mr Wu has denied plying her with alcohol, and also rejected other allegations that he had enticed girls to have sex in return for benefits, raped girls while they were unconscious, and had sex with minors. Under Chinese law, under-18s are considered minors, while the age of sexual consent is 14. BBC

Advertisement Residents laid bouquet after bouquet, the neatly tied yellow and white flowers standing on end, on Tuesday outside an entrance to a subway station in central China where 14 people died last week after a record-breaking downpour flooded large swaths of Henan province. Torrents of water rushed into a subway line in the provincial capital, Zhengzhou, trapping a train with hundreds of passengers between two stations. The deluge drowned some and left others gasping for breath in chest-high water until emergency crews could reach them. “I’m filled with grief,”…