Sticky rice cake stuck to North Korean colleges sparks crackdown on superstition

In North Korea, it’s college entrance exam season, and aspiring students are sticking chalttok, or sticky rice cakes, on signs and walls of universities in hopes that they will be admitted – or “attached or stuck” in Korean – after taking the grueling tests. But authorities are upset about the superstition, especially after finding a glob of sticky rice cake stuck to the word “great” on a large patriotic billboard on Sinuiju University of Education campus declaring, “Long live the great revolutionary idea,” a resident from the northwestern province of…

Macron and von der Leyen: Europe’s good cop and bad cop meet Xi Jinping

Increasingly, he noted, the only route Beijing could take is to be more co-operative in working out, such as lifting trade sanctions. A recent Chinese move to block imports to Lithuania, over its decision to allow Taiwan to open a de facto embassy, did not go down well with the Europeans, who in response developed their own tools to block what they see as economic coercion. BBC

China’s Xi Calls for Ukraine Peace Talks to Resume

Advertisement Chinese leader Xi Jinping called Thursday for peace talks over Ukraine after French President Emmanuel Macron appealed to him to “bring Russia to its senses,” but Xi gave no indication Beijing would use its leverage as Vladimir Putin’s diplomatic partner to press for a settlement. Xi gave no sign China, which declared it had a “no limits friendship” with Moscow before last year’s attack, had changed its stance since calling for peace talks in February. But he added his personal authority by repeating the appeal at a joint event…

Former Brazilian President Named As Head of China-Based New Development Bank

Advertisement On March 24, the New Development Bank, headquartered in Shanghai and created to support multilateral economic development in the BRICS nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – announced Dilma Rousseff as its new president. Effective immediately, Rousseff will be working directly from Shanghai, where she was inaugurated. As NDB President, Rousseff will earn about $57,000 per month, equivalent to approximately 113 times Brazil’s average monthly wage of $504. She will preside over the NDB until July 2025, when Brazil’s term as the chair of the NDB…

Demolition of Kashgar’s Khan Bazaar creates uncertain future for Uyghur shop owners

Kashgar’s centuries-old Khan Bazaar, seen at left in a Dec. 21, 2022, image, is being demolished by Chinese authorities. The results of the destruction can be seen in the photo at right, taken on March 22, 2023. Authorities in China’s Xinjiang region say they want to upgrade the area and replace dilapidated structures. Credit: Maxar Technologies (L); Planet (R) Qasimjan Abdurehim remembers Kashgar’s centuries-old Khan Bazaar as a thriving marketplace where Uyghur merchants traded fabrics and modern-day tourists strolled along the pedestrian street that ran down the middle of it.…

Influx of Chinese nationals means tough competition for merchants in Laos

An influx of Chinese investors and business owners to Laos in recent years is crowding out Lao entrepreneurs, who say the visitors have an unfair advantage in capital and are taking away their clientele. Some 7,500 Chinese nationals have settled in Laos within the last 4-5 years, according to official estimates – most following the opening of a U.S.$6 billion high-speed railway connecting the two Communist neighbors in December 2021. While the railway promises to offer land-locked Laos closer integration with the world’s second largest economy, most of the trade…

Chinese authorities in Tibet go after relatives of self-immolating protestors

Chinese authorities are harassing and discriminating against relatives of Tibetans who protested against Chinese rule by setting their bodies alight going back to 2008, two sources in Tibet told Radio Free Asia. For example, students related to such protesters have been denied authorization to take university entrance exams, while others have been denied job opportunities, they say.  “There is a student here who is related to someone who self-immolated in 2013,” a source from Labrang (in Chinese Labuleng) told Radio Free Asia’s Tibetan Service. ”It is for that reason that…

Class sizes in North Korea are shrinking as more women become breadwinners

As students filed into their elementary classrooms this week across North Korea for the start of the school year, entering class sizes in cities were noticeably smaller, a reflection of the declining birthrate in the country as more women become breadwinners to support their families, sources in the country said. The trend appears to be making authorities nervous, a person who works in education in South Pyongan province, north of the capital Pyongyang, told Radio Free Asia on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “Yesterday we welcomed the newly enrolled…

Why Xi Jinping is not another Chairman Mao

EACH time President Xi Jinping grabs more powers, critics compare China’s leader to Chairman Mao Zedong, whose one-man rule led the country to disaster. Those grumblers may underestimate Mr Xi’s ambitions. Rather often, the charge that Mr Xi is emulating Mao—a despot whose campaigns of political terror and deranged economic policies left tens of millions dead—is a prediction that China’s leader is storing up trouble for himself, by weakening norms and institutions that might helpfully check and balance his authority. Such doomsayers are drawing lessons from Mao’s unhappy end. Over…