UPDATED at 9:24 A.M. EDT on 04-05-2023 When Louise Xin, the award-winning Chinese-Swedish fashion designer and human rights activist, visited the European Parliament last June, she received an unusual request from the body: Would she host a fashion show in the conference hall to draw attention to forced labor in the fashion industry? Xin, 28, happily obliged, and held the show on March 28 – the first ever inside the parliament – featuring her eponymous rental only, non-sale couture brand. Nine models of different ethnicities, including two Uyghur women who…
Author: Chin@Strategy
Activists find illegal logging evidence in protected area in northern Cambodia
Forest protection activists found more than 200 fallen trees that had been illegally cut down in a vast protected area of northern Cambodia that showed signs of around-the-clock operations, transport trucks, motorcycles and armed security. Activists with the Prey Lang Community Network for Preah Vihear province traveled through the area for four days and three nights in late March. Prime Minister Hun Sen has promised publicly that he would take action to prevent illegal logging in Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary, which covers land in Preah Vihear, Stung Treng, Kampong Thom…
Probe proposes bribery charges for 54 tied to Vietnam repatriation scheme
Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security has recommended prosecuting 54 mostly senior officials, including the former vice minister of foreign affairs, over a pay-to-play scheme connected to the repatriation of Vietnamese nationals during the COVID-19 pandemic. The ministry’s Investigation Security Agency said Tuesday that it had completed its probe of the scheme and submitted its findings to the Supreme People’s Court, calling for the 54 people to be charged with giving bribes, receiving bribes, brokering bribes, abusing one’s position as a public servant and appropriating assets by fraud, according to state…
China’s Panda Diplomacy is Not Breeding Conservation
Advertisement This year has already offered a series of unfortunate events for panda enthusiasts in the West. In January, Edinburgh Zoo in the U.K. announced they would send their pandas back to China after they failed to produce cubs. Later that month, Finland said it is considering returning a pair of pandas due to mounting costs. These events have called into question China’s so-called panda diplomacy, an instrument of soft power cloaked as conservation. Although zoos hosting pandas continue to send China millions a year in conservation fees, the population…
Will Xi Jinping outsmart Emmanuel Macron?
Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, had hoped that his visit to China this week would demonstrate European unity and support for his efforts to re-engage with the world’s second-largest economy. To underline the point, he invited Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, to join him on the visit from April 5th to 7th. The pair would speak with “a unified voice”, Mr Macron said. Listen to this story.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. Your browser does not support the <audio> element. The joint visit…
What China’s Global Security Initiative Tells Us About Its Strategic Engagement with Latin America
Advertisement Chinese engagement with Latin America may be mostly about commerce, but it is nonetheless strategic in its character. Its new Global Security Initiative (GSI) openly highlights the explicitly military and other strategic dimensions of its approach toward Latin America and other parts of the world. The GSI, introduced in 2022 and outlined in February 2023 through a Ministry of Foreign Affairs concept paper compliments the 2013 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the PRC’s Global Development Initiative (GDI) in its evolving and increasingly ambitious narrative about how China seeks…
Hun Sen’s eldest son tops Cambodian ruling party’s candidate list ahead of July vote
Long tapped as his father’s successor to lead Cambodia, Hun Manet has been put at the top of the list of 12 parliamentary candidates for the Phnom Penh constituency in the July 23 general elections. Before he runs, Hun Manet, 45, the eldest son of Hun Sen, who has ruled since 1985, is expected to resign from the military – per election rules – where he is deputy commander-in-chief of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces. Hun Manet posted a short video clip to his Facebook page on Monday, saying that…
Chinese-funded project would build industrial city near Laos mine
A project funded by Chinese investors to build an industrial city near a potash mine has local villagers in Khammouane province concerned about negative impacts to their communities and their forest-based livelihood. Developer Sino Agri International Potash Co. signed a memorandum of understanding with the Laos government on March 24 to build a “smart-eco industrial city” on 20 square kilometers of land in Nong Bok and Tha Khek districts. The industrial city will be divided into three zones: An industry zone for production of fertilizer feedstock, a city zone with…
The other Chinese apps taking the US and UK by storm
“The tech companies from China have had such an intense period of competition at home that has made them as good or better, in some ways, than American apps,” said Zeyi Yang, a journalist and researcher for the MIT Review who specialises in Chinese technology. BBC
China-Russia Cooperation in Africa and the Middle East
Advertisement Beijing aspires to restore China’s centrality in the global system. Moscow aims to achieve Russia’s revanchist agenda at all costs. In attempting to reconfigure the international rules-based order, China’s paramount leader Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are positioning China as a rule-maker, system-shaper, and standard-setter. As disrupter, spoiler, and saboteur in upending global order, Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin seek to revive Russia’s relevance as a great imperial power. Together, China and Russia are undermining U.S. leadership and challenging NATO. Beijing and Moscow understand that exploiting…