Day: January 23, 2023

New US Envoy for North Korea Rights an ‘Ideal’ Fit, Activists Say

Chin@Strategy

Seoul, South Korea —  Human rights activists are welcoming the United States’ appointment of an envoy for North Korean human rights, a position that had been vacant for six years. The White House late Monday announced it would appoint Julie Turner, a veteran State Department foreign affairs officer, who has long focused on North Korea human rights issues. Turner, who must be confirmed by the Senate, is currently the director of the East Asia and Pacific office of the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. She has…

Vietnamese journalist may be released in July

Chin@Strategy

Vietnamese blogger Le Anh Hung, serving a five-year sentence for allegedly “abusing democratic freedoms,” may soon be released from prison, his mother told RFA. When Tran Thi Niem visited her son in mid-December he told her he expected to be freed in July. Niem said her son has been moved from a Hanoi police detention center to a prison in Ha Nam province, south of the capital, to serve out his term and was in good spirits. “Le Anh Hung is still healthy, but thin,” she said. “He is mentally…

China’s shrinking population: what it means for the rest of the world – expert panel

Chin@Strategy

China has entered a period of “negative population growth”, an important moment in the history of the country. As recently as 2019, the UN projected the population would peak in 2031-32, but despite major government efforts to reverse the trend, China has now begun what is expected to be a long period of population decline. The ongoing shift in demographics could have a profound effect on everything from how the economy operates to Xi Jinping’s legitimacy. The Guardian spoke to experts about the implications for everything from climate change to…

Myanmar’s junta leader and shadow gov’t both praise China at Lunar New Year Festival

Chin@Strategy

In a reflection of the influential role that China plays in the region, leaders from both Myanmar’s ruling military and the anti-junta National Unity Government – essentially enemies – praised China over the Lunar New Year weekend, competing for their neighbor’s blessing. Junta chief Sr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing said that China had been an important and good neighbor, while the shadow Unity government sent a message through diplomatic channels saying that it could “guarantee that the fruits of their revolution’s success will not harm the interests of regional countries,…

Lao business owners decry the shuttering of money-changing shops

Chin@Strategy

A move by the Lao government to shut down money-changing shops in an effort to rein in rampant inflation has upset business owners, who say the move is crimping their businesses by making it more difficult to buy construction materials and consumer goods from neighboring Thailand. Lao is a rather poor, landlocked country whose economy relies on such imports that aren’t produced domestically, and businesses typically need to exchange the Lao kip for Thai baht or U.S. dollars to transact business. Others keep the foreign currencies on hand as the…

China surpassing US in key innovation metric and evolving from ‘imitator’, Washington report says

Chin@Strategy

[embedded content] “Its innovation capabilities now threaten the global market share of firms from the United States and allied nations in most high-value-added, advanced industries that are important to US prosperity and security,” Atkinson added. Advertisement History abounds with developing countries hitting a roadblock, sometimes dubbed the “middle-income trap”, in their bid to join the world’s wealthiest and most technologically advanced economies. If China with its vast size and population can join that elite club, it would upend global geopolitics, supply chains and power balances for decades, according to the…

Where now 3 years after Wuhan?

Chin@Strategy

About 10 million residents of Wuhan, where Covid-19 was first reported, endured a 76-day lockdown from January 2020 to contain the virus that causes the disease. Such responses became a key pillar of China’s zero-Covid policy, but another wave of infection hit the city three years later when the authorities pivoted to living with the virus. In a three-part series on the anniversary of the lockdown, the Post looks at why Wuhan residents now have a more critical view of the zero-Covid policy, and more. South China Morning Post

Why residents of Wuhan, the city where pandemic started, began to question China’s Covid-19 strategy

Chin@Strategy

Her doubts about government priorities only deepened after infections spiked in Wuhan, the capital of central China’s Hubei province, when the country pivoted to living with the virus and her husband, a doctor, told her about the strains on the healthcare system. She said she had seen more deaths recently than three years ago, when the city was the first to witness the emergence of the disease. 02:09 Small businesses still struggling in Wuhan despite easing of Covid restrictions in China “Why would we suffer for three years if we…

Reported spyware deal implicates Israeli firm in Myanmar junta’s crimes, critics say

Chin@Strategy

Human rights groups are criticizing a reported deal between Myanmar’s military and an Israeli tech firm for intercept spyware, accusing the company of aiding and abetting the junta in crimes against humanity. Israel’s Cognyte Software won a tender to sell the intercept spyware to Myanmar shortly before the February 2021 coup, when the military ousted the democratically elected government, documents obtained by activist group Justice for Myanmar showed. Intercept spyware allows governments to listen to telephone calls, read text messages and emails, and determine the whereabouts of internet users without…

Junta jets dropped bombs on the home of a Karen ethnic army commander

Chin@Strategy

Myanmar’s junta jets dropped bombs over the weekend on the home of the leader of an ethnic Karen group that has not been fighting the military, appearing to violate an 8-year-old ceasefire, local residents told Radio Free Asia. The strike destroyed the home of Major Saw A Wan, commander of  the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army’s, or DKBA, Tactical Operation Command, but he and his family were away at the time. It also destroyed a nearby guest house, high school and two employee quarters, the residents added. No one was killed…