Day: December 8, 2022

Taiwan calls TikTok ‘harmful to national security’

Chin@Strategy

Taiwan has joined several U.S. states in banning TikTok from communication devices in the public sector on security concerns over the world’s most downloaded app. Taiwanese media reported earlier this week that the video-hosting service and its Chinese version Douyin, both owned by Chinese firm ByteDance, have been restricted from being installed and used in government offices and on public devices. An unnamed official from the Taiwanese Ministry of Digital Affairs (MODA) was quoted as saying that the government deems the apps “harmful against national information security.” Another Chinese-run social…

Crypto trading firm Amber Group fends off rumours amid lay-offs and delayed severance payments after FTX collapse

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Dozens of Amber Group employees in Shenzhen were promised severance payments on December 5, but few if any have received the money, one of the laid off workers told the Post. Chinese labour law typically requires one month of severance for each year employed. When some former employees attempted to inquire about their compensation on Tencent Holdings’ WeChat, their messages either went unanswered or resulted in them being blocked by human resources and CEO Michael Wu, according to screenshots seen by the Post. Advertisement Wu, who co-founded the company, did…

Markets optimistic as China eases Covid rules, but experts warn of danger ahead

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Global shares and the price of some key commodities have risen on hopes that the easing of China’s strict zero-Covid measures would help to bring down inflation, even as some experts warned that the country was not prepared to live with the disease. China’s government on Wednesday announced a significant shift towards living with the virus. People with Covid-19 who have mild or no symptoms can quarantine at home, while officials have been instructed to stop launching temporary lockdowns. Testing will no longer be required for “cross-regional migrants”. China’s economic…

Myanmar Families Hope to Overturn Death Sentences

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WASHINGTON —  The parents of seven university students sentenced to death by a military tribunal in Myanmar are appealing their sentences, the father of one of the students told VOA. Thein Shwe, father of Hein Htet, said that his son was one of the seven students from Dagon University who were given death sentences Nov. 30 by a closed military court inside Yangon’s Insein prison. “We wouldn’t mind if they changed their sentences to life imprisonment because the main thing is to keep our children alive. We are consulting with…

Uyghur groups urge leaders of Muslim states to condemn genocide in China’s Xinjiang

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More than 50 Uyghur groups on Thursday urged heads of states and leaders of international organizations meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week in Saudi Arabia to condemn China’s atrocity crimes against the Uyghurs and end the genocide in its far-western Xinjiang region. Xi, who is paying a three-day state visit to Saudi Arabia, signed a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement with King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, agreeing to hold a meeting between the two heads of state by turns every two years. During the start of the visit,…

In nighttime raid, Myanmar forces kill 4 opposition party members and 2 civilians

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In a nighttime raid on a village in central Myanmar, junta forces killed six civilians, including four members of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party, residents said, in what appeared to be a targeted killing of political opponents. Nearly 30 soldiers and pro-junta militiamen drove into Min Ywar village in Natogyi township, just south of the city of Mandalay, in two vehicles about 9 p.m. Tuesday, and arrested the four party members before shooting them at point-blank range, said a resident who declined to be named for…

Cambodia shuts down maternity clinic after botched operation to remove dead fetus

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The Cambodian government on Thursday shut down and revoked the permit of a private maternity clinic after an unlicensed midwife there removed part of a woman’s intestines during a procedure to remove a dead fetus. The case has received widespread attention in the country on social media and the news. On Nov. 2, Chheang Srey Oun, a 22-year-old factory worker, underwent an operation at the Doeum Angkorng Maternity Clinic to remove a 5-month-old fetus that had died in her womb.  A preliminary investigation found that she had been operated on…

Thai soldiers kill suspected drug traffickers along Myanmar border

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Thai soldiers killed at least 15 men suspected of smuggling drugs along the Thailand-Myanmar border in northern Chiang Mai province, military officials and local residents said Thursday. Other armed men escaped during the incident late Wednesday night but authorities seized backpacks filled with drugs including crystal methamphetamine, officials said. The frontier with Myanmar is a notorious transit route for trafficking drugs to Malaysia for shipment to Western markets. “At the moment, the bodies of these 15 smugglers are under forensic process. Initially it was assumed they were all of Myanmar…

Decoding Xi Jinping’s ‘Asia Pacific Community With a Shared Future’

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Advertisement Addressing APEC business leaders in Bangkok, Thailand last month, China’s President Xi Jinping commented on the East Asia miracle – the export-oriented growth model centered on Japan 40 years ago, and proposed building an “Asia-Pacific Community with a shared future.” The conception of an East Asian Community is hardly new. It was first raised by Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro in the early 2000s, and became the guiding ideology of Japan’s Asian diplomatic and economic policy during Hatoyama Yukio’s administration, at a time when Japan was the largest economy in…

U.S. official: China wants to stabilize relations

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Beijing and Washington both have a genuine desire to stabilize relations and establish “guardrails” after months of intensifying tensions, a top Biden administration official said on Thursday. Speaking to former Clinton administration official Joseph Nye at the Aspen Security Forum in Washington, Kurt Campbell, the Indo-Pacific coordinator on the National Security Council, said last month’s meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden had produced tangible successes. “What I saw in Bali, Joe, was a China that, at least in the short and perhaps the initial-medium term,…