Day: January 29, 2022

The case against zero-Covid excesses: Chinese lawyers speak out

Chin@Strategy

Advertisement Now a professor at one of the country’s leading universities has called on authorities to stop excessive law enforcement and acknowledge the sacrifice made by people under strict preventive measures. In an article in China Newsweek magazine, Shen Kui, a professor at Peking University’s law school, said governments at all levels should compensate people for the material and psychological toll that the strict preventive measures brought. Shen said the zero-Covid strategy had a “surprise attack effect”, causing upheavals in the lives of people who suddenly are designated as confirmed…

Is It OK to Watch the Winter Games? A Former Olympian Weighs In.

Chin@Strategy

By this time next week, the Winter Olympics will be well underway in Beijing. Like the Summer Olympics in Tokyo last year, the global gathering of athletes will occur during a global pandemic. But China’s first experience hosting the Winter Games comes when Canada’s relationship with the country is at a low amid an array of troubling human rights issues. My colleagues Steven Lee Myers, Keith Bradsher and Tariq Panja have provided an extensive and provocative look at how China was selected as the host of the Games despite its…

Beijing Winter Olympics reports jump in daily Covid cases

Chin@Strategy

China has reported a jump in Covid cases among athletes and team officials at the Beijing Winter Olympics. The number of daily Covid infections rose to 19 on Friday from two a day earlier, and Games organisers said more cases could be expected in the coming days. Thirty-six Games-related personnel, including the athletes and officials, have been found to be infected, 29 when they arrived at the airport in Beijing and seven already in the “closed loop” bubble that separates event personnel from the public, the organising committee said in…

Why China has ‘drifted away’ from its African allies on military coups

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Shinn said China had been critical of the military takeover in Guinea but quiet on Mali, and Beijing’s opposition to the UN Security Council action against coup leaders raised questions about its policy. Advertisement He noted that Moscow, which also blocked the move, had sent mercenaries from the Russian private company Wagner Group to support Mali’s military. “Military coups in Guinea, Mali and Burkina Faso complicate both China’s economic interests and foreign policy in the region, especially when Beijing’s policy is contrary to the prevailing African view,” Shinn said. [embedded…

American muckrakers: Peter Schweizer, James O’Keefe and a rightwing full court press

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The official investigation of Hunter Biden’s dealings in China and elsewhere rests in the hands of David Weiss, a Trump-appointed federal prosecutor in Delaware, and the US justice department under Joe Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland. Politically speaking, we now have Red-Handed by Peter Schweizer, who would very much like to help us digest the business past of the 46th president’s troublesome son. Schweizer’s works include Clinton Cash, a compendium of opposition research that helped shape the presidential election in 2016. These days, he is president of the Government Accountability…