Day: May 10, 2023

Why China Doesn’t Have a Property Tax

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Across China, many local governments are on the brink of insolvency. Some cities have reduced pay for civil servants. Cuts to municipal health insurance have triggered street protests. Central government bailouts are a possibility to rescue cities from their deep budget problems, but China hasn’t turned to a source of revenue that would be an obvious option in other countries: property taxes. In China, where the government owns the land, localities almost never tax homeowners to support services like schools. Cities rely instead on selling long-term leases to real estate…

Collapsing buildings, incoming missiles: Taiwan rehearses a Chinese assault on its cities

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On a Thursday afternoon in Taipei, it was 26 August 2025 and China’s military had just fired a missile into the city, hitting an apartment block. Chinese navy ships had massed in the Taiwan Strait and war was expected. It was all hands on deck. Rescue squads and paramedics raced around blocked off sites in the city’s business district. Cherrypickers and cranes plucked rookie firefighters – dressed as injured civilians – from the rooftop of a fake demolished building and half-crushed buses. The first responders hailed from the Red Cross,…

Protesters disrupt Volkswagen shareholder meeting over alleged Uyghur forced labor

Chin@Strategy

Throwing cake and impersonating Chinese President Xi Jinping, activists staged protests inside and outside Volkswagen’s shareholder meeting on Wednesday over the German carmaker’s alleged use of Uyghur forced labor in Xinjiang, where it has a joint venture plant. Outside the hall, activists wore a big-headed mask of Xi and a flat paper mask of Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume, who stood arm-in-arm. The Xi figure held a metal ring attached to a chain leading to two handcuffed people representing Uyghur workers in blue laborer uniforms. Standing behind them, activists with the…

The true price of a Japanese cinema ticket

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From June, the price of watching a film at Japan’s biggest cinema chain, Toho, will rise by ¥100 ($0.75): an increase of 5 to 8 per cent depending on the type of ticket. Not wallet-shredding or even audience-deterring, perhaps, but critical for the new world it symbolises. For the school of thought that believes Japan is now crossing (or has already crossed) its most important inflection point in decades, that seemingly trivial ¥100 has distinctly non-trivial implications. It may not take many more of these increases before ordinary Japanese start…

China pours cold water on bilateral meeting with US defence secretary

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China has told the US there is little chance of a meeting between the countries’ defence ministers at a security forum in Singapore due to a dispute over sanctions, the latest obstacle to top-level dialogue between the two powers. US defence secretary Lloyd Austin wants to meet Li Shangfu, China’s new defence minister, at the Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore in June. However, arranging such a meeting is fraught with difficulty because Li was placed under sanctions by the US in 2018 in relation to Chinese imports of Russian…

China pours cold water on bilateral meeting with US defence minister

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China has told the US there is little chance of a meeting between the countries’ defence ministers at a security forum in Singapore due to a dispute over sanctions, the latest obstacle to top-level dialogue between the two powers. US defence secretary Lloyd Austin wants to meet Li Shangfu, China’s new defence minister, at the Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore in June. However, arranging such a meeting is fraught with difficulty because Li was sanctioned by the US in 2018 in relation to Chinese imports of Russian arms when…

Cash for carbines: Myanmar’s junta offers reward to fighters who turn in weapons

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Myanmar’s military is taking out its pocketbook to try to persuade rebels to stop fighting. The generals in Naypyidaw want to give members of the anti-junta People’s Defense Force and other “terrorist groups” who surrender their weapons and renounce their loyalty to resistance forces as much as 7.5 million kyats (U.S.$3,570) – a princely sum for most people in Myanmar. That’s according to an offer made Tuesday to those willing to “return to the legal fold,” as well as anyone “illegally armed for reasons of personal security” who agrees to…

Son of jailed Hong Kong media tycoon condemns UK government ‘weakness’

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The British son of the jailed Hong Kong media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai has criticised Britain and the Vatican for failing to speak out strongly against the crackdown on dissent in the Chinese territory. At a Washington event about the human rights situation in Hong Kong, Sebastien Lai said self-censorship in the former British colony was the anticipated result of the national security crackdown there, but the “hypocrisy” of some governments trying to trade with China was unexpected. “We are incredibly grateful that the Americans have been a lot stronger on…

Beijing asks rights group to withdraw award to jailed Hong Kong barrister

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A South Korean human rights group has said it will stand by its decision to honor jailed Hong Kong rights activist and barrister Chow Hang-tung with the 2023 Gwangju Human Rights Award despite heavy political pressure from Beijing. A spokeswoman for the Seoul-based 5.18 Memorial Foundation said it had received a visit from three Chinese consular officials, who were hoping to persuade the organizers to withdraw the award, following its announcement on May 2. “The Chinese government … thinks that Chow Hang-tung is one of the persons who has broken…

A year after slaughter, Myanmar villagers mourn 29 deaths, still live in fear

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One year ago, horror visited the village of Mon Taing Pin.  Burmese junta troops killed 29 of the village’s menfolk, maiming and burning the bodies in a 44-hour orgy of violence that was recorded on a soldier’s cell phone. Today, the villagers of this forsaken community in Myanmar’s northern war-torn Sagaing region still mourn their losses and live in perpetual fear of another military assault as the junta attempts to squelch resistance to its two-year-old military takeover. “If the military comes from the south, we have to run to the…