Day: June 26, 2023

Fukushima Nuclear Plant Operator Says Equipment to Release Treated Wastewater Into Sea Is Complete

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tokyo —  All equipment needed for the release into the sea of treated radioactive wastewater from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant has been completed and will be ready for a safety inspection by Japanese regulators this week, the plant operator said Monday, as opposition to the plan continues in and outside Japan over safety concerns. Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings said it installed the last piece of an undersea tunnel dug to release the water offshore, completing the construction of the necessary equipment that began last August. A mandatory safety…

World Economic Forum: Chinese Premier Li Qiang addressing 14th Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Tianjin

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This blog has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing. Premier Li Qiang will address the World Economic Forum’s 14th Annual Meeting of the New Champions, often called the Summer Davos, in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin at 10:10am Premier Li, who just returned from his first overseas trip to Germany and France, is expected to continue the campaign to lure foreign businesses and private investment, and to cement their confidence in China amid rising concerns that the…

Women’s World Cup Guide: How to Watch, Schedule and Betting Favorites

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The United States will be playing for an unprecedented three-peat at this year’s Women’s World Cup. It won’t be easy for the No. 1 team in the world. Co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand, the quadrennial tournament kicks off on July 20 and features an expanded field of 32 teams, up from 24. There are 64 matches during the tournament. That means more competition for the two-time defending World Cup champion U.S., which won the 2015 event in Canada and the 2019 tournament in France. The Americans have won four…

Hong Kong’s crypto push puts HSBC and StanChart in a bind

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Receive free Cryptocurrencies updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Cryptocurrencies news every morning. HSBC has had a history of money-laundering lapses. It was fined a decade ago in the US for its role in enabling Latin American drug cartels, and in the UK in 2021 for a string of failures including serving the leader of a criminal gang. So it is understandable that the bank and its peer Standard Chartered might not be keen to take crypto exchanges as clients in Hong Kong.…

Recent Russia turmoil challenging Vladimir Putin ‘unsettling’ for China leaders: senior US official

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“Let the PRC and President Xi speak for themselves,” Kirby said, adding that the US did not want “any country at all to help Mr. Putin and make it easier for him to kill more Ukrainians”. Russia is among China’s strongest allies, but Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2023 has put Beijing in a delicate position. Advertisement Even as China has supported its “no-limits” partnership with Russia diplomatically and economically, it has avoided providing significant military support, worried about alienating major European and North American trading partners and attracting…

Searching Tibetan monasteries, China requires monks to renounce ties to Dalai Lama

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Chinese authorities in Tibet are randomly searching monasteries and forcing monks to sign documents renouncing all ties to the “separatist” Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism’s foremost spiritual leader, Tibetan sources living in exile told Radio Free Asia. The Dalai Lama is widely regarded by Chinese leaders as a separatist intent on splitting Tibet, a formerly independent nation that was invaded and incorporated into China by force in 1950, from Beijing’s control. The Dalai Lama, who now lives in exile in India, says only that he seeks a greater autonomy for Tibet…

Former 1989 student leader kicked out of Beijing, told to live in rural birthplace

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A former student leader of the 1989 pro-democracy movement in China has been forced to leave his home in the capital and travel the country amid official pressure to relocate to the town of his birth in the southwestern province of Guizhou. Ji Feng was initially ordered to leave Beijing ahead of the 34th anniversary of the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen massacre, along with dozens of other critics of the ruling Communist Party and former participants in the pro-democracy movement. But unlike most of his peers, Ji hasn’t been allowed…

As China Throws Support Behind Russia, Analysts See Deeper Fissures

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Taipei, Taiwan —  China has thrown its support behind Russia after a brief mutiny posed the gravest challenge to the 23-year rule of President Vladimir Putin. However, analysts say the short-lived insurrection, has exposed “the irreconcilable conflict between Russia’s top political and military leadership,” as well as Putin’s flawed chain of command. This, they add, may not only foreshadow a Russian defeat in the Ukraine war but test the limits of ties between Beijing and Moscow. In statement late Sunday night, China’s foreign ministry brushed off Saturday’s coup by the…

As US aircraft carrier docks in Da Nang, Vietnamese premier visits Beijing

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A day after the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan began a port call in Da Nang, Vietnam’s prime minister, Pham Minh Chinh, met Monday with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People. In juggling two competing superpowers, Hanoi is demonstrating its flexible “bamboo foreign policy” of bending with the wind but never breaking, said Truong Nhan Tuan, a France-based observer of Vietnamese political affairs. Vietnam has been involved in military conflicts with both China and the United States. And while Hanoi remains close to Beijing, it has…

China’s Foreign PR Enablers

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Advertisement It has long been common for Chinese diplomats to publish op-eds in major foreign news outlets. Other familiar features of Beijing’s international propaganda efforts include articles that promote Huawei telecommunications technology while downplaying the firm’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), or invitations to journalists and university leaders for all-expenses-paid trips to China. But how do the relevant actors in the Chinese system identify and make contact with the appropriate individuals and institutions in each foreign society? Increasingly, this service is performed by local public relations (PR) firms…