Vietnam’s communist regime is being accused of limiting coverage of widespread protests in China because of fears of a knock-on effect in a country which has a track record of jailing activists and cracking down on dissent. Protests broke out in Chinese cities last week, with locals demonstrating against the country’s strict zero-COVID policies. They were triggered by widespread social media coverage of the deaths of 10 people in a Xinjiang region fire, trapped in a building that had been sealed off to prevent a pandemic. Protesters called for an…
Day: November 29, 2022
China’s Deliberate Neglect Cause of Death of My Aunt and Her Four Children: Uyghur Relative
WASHINGTON — Heyrinsahan Abdurahman is a 48-year-old Uyghur mother of seven children. As a single mother for the past five years, she lived with her four of her children at her flat on the 19th floor of a high-rise apartment building in the downtown Tianshan District in Urumqi, the capital city of Xinjiang in northwest China. When a fire broke out on the 15th floor on November 24, Abdurahman and her children, 13-year-old Shahide, 11-year-old Imran, 9-year-old Abdurahman and 5-year-old Nahdiye, were not able to escape and died, according to…
How far could China’s ‘zero Covid’ protests go?
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Anti-Government Protests Grow in China and Elsewhere While Technology Tries to Keep Up
washington — As protests continue in cities across China over the government’s harsh “zero-COVID” policy, a separate battle is taking place on social media sites within China and around the world; a fight that is testing the strength of China’s online censorship apparatus, known as the Great Firewall. Human Rights Watch China Director Sophie Richardson said Chinese officials appear to be resorting to “low-tech approaches” to tamp down online speech even as the protesters have become more adept at getting their messages past government censors. “Literally police stopping people on…
Top US envoy to China says zero-Covid restrictions block access to Americans, possibly violating agreement
Burns, who has served under six US presidents and nine secretaries of state, added that protests by Chinese people over the weekend speak to their frustration with the restrictions even as security has tightened over the past 48 hours in many Chinese cities. The Buffalo, New York native, said the US and China have many differences, whether over trade, technology, state controlled markets, defense and human rights, adding that the administration of President Joe Biden believes that the Chinese people have a right to protest peacefully and to be heard.…
INTERVIEW: ‘There have been many years of build-up to this moment’
Young women are prominent in the “white paper” protest movement in cities and college campuses across China that was sparked by a fire in a locked-down apartment building in Xinjiang’s regional capital, Urumqi, but swelled to calls to end ruling Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping’s zero-COVID policies. To explain factors beyond frustrations over COVID restrictions that have driven so many women to the front lines of China’s largest mass protests since Tiananmen in 1989, Radio Free Asia spoke to Leta Hong Fincher, a journalist and scholar who has written…
INTERVIEW: ‘If they had let my family out, they would still be alive’
On Nov. 24, a fire tore through a residential building in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region’s capital Urumqi, killing at least 10 people. Citizen videos that circulated on the Internet showed screaming residents of the burning apartment demanding authorities open exits they said were closed under strict COVID-19 restrictions that have been in place for more than 100 days and have caused widespread hardship. The fire prompted angry protests in Xinjiang that spread to other cities in China over the following days, with many people expressing condolences for the victims…
Vaccinating China’s Elderly Is Key to Lifting Zero-COVID
The Chinese government has repeatedly locked down tens of millions of people at a time over the past three years under its zero-COVID policy. It is now deploying its considerable powers of state control to suppress protests against that policy. But it has not managed to do what experts say would render the policy largely unnecessary: vaccinate and boost a greater share of its elderly population. “That’s what’s been most puzzling about China’s approach to this virus,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of…
South Dakota bans TikTok access on state-owned devices citing ties to China
Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota, on Tuesday issued an executive order banning state employees and contractors from accessing the video platform TikTok on state-owned devices, citing its ties to China. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company that moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2020. It has been targeted by Republicans who say the Chinese government could access user data such as browsing history and location. US armed forces also have prohibited the app on military devices. TikTok, which has exploded in popularity with a nearly addictive scroll…
With China a mutual concern, investment accelerates between Australia and Taiwan
But overall, Taiwanese capital flows into the mainland are shrinking, falling 3.2 per cent in the year to October compared to the same period in 2021. Beijing’s draconian coronavirus controls have hurt export supply chains and lowered expectations for China’s growth this year. Many of the 4,200 Taiwanese companies in the mainland make goods for export. Advertisement “China’s zero-Covid policy has led to a significant reduction in economic and trade activities, so the trade relationship between Taiwan and Australia has increased,” said Darson Chiu, research fellow with the Apec Study…