Tag: Australia

China Releases Australian Journalist Cheng Lei

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Cheng Lei, an Australian journalist who was held in Beijing for more than three years, has returned to Australia, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Wednesday. Mr. Albanese said Ms. Cheng had been reunited with her two young children in Melbourne. “Her return brings an end to a very difficult few years for Cheng and her family,” Mr. Albanese said at a news conference on Wednesday. Ms. Cheng, who worked for China’s global television network, was detained in Beijing in August 2020 and formally arrested later on suspicion of sharing…

How Aligning With China Changed Life in the Solomon Islands

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In Honiara, they’ve just finished this brand-new stadium, and there’s not enough medicine in the main hospital in the country. There’s medicine shortages, so they’re turning people away from the hospital. You couldn’t ask for a more clear contrast in terms of the misallocation of priorities from the Chinese approach. And that really angers people. There is a really quite sad cynicism among many rural Solomon Islanders that nothing will ever change. They saw billions of dollars getting pumped into Honiara previously from Australia in terms of its peacekeeping efforts…

China Is Suffering a Brain Drain. The U.S. Isn’t Exploiting It.

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They went to the best universities in China and in the West. They lived middle-class lives in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen and worked for technology companies at the center of China’s tech rivalry with the United States. Now they are living and working in North America, Europe, Japan, Australia — and just about any developed country. Chinese — from young people to entrepreneurs — are voting with their feet to escape political oppression, bleak economic prospects and often grueling work cultures. Increasingly, the exodus includes tech professionals and other well-educated…

Vanuatu Prime Minister Is Ousted Amid Criticism of Being Pro-West

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With 1,200 miles of almost empty ocean to its west and more than 7,000 miles of the same to its east, the tiny Pacific archipelago nation of Vanuatu has long sought a position of neutrality toward its faraway would-be foreign partners. Now, as the United States and China jockey for more influence in the South Pacific, that balancing act has become fraught. Take the case of Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau, who in recent months signed a security pact with Australia, met with President Emmanuel Macron of France, welcomed American plans…

Thursday Briefing: China’s stock market slump

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China’s stocks slump amid economic gloom A recent stream of worrying economic data released by China is taking the fizz out of its stock market. An index of Chinese stocks traded in Hong Kong has fallen more than 9 percent this month, and the Hang Seng Index is down a similar amount. The CSI 300, which tracks the biggest companies listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen, has dropped about 5 percent. “The Chinese economy is faced with an imminent downward spiral with the worst yet to come,” analysts at the investment…

Quantum Tech Intended for National Security Is Testing U.S. Alliances

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The Australian physicist shook the heavy metal box that resembled a beer cooler but held a quantum sensor. A computer screen showed that the cutting-edge device — with lasers manipulating atoms into a sensitive state — continued functioning despite the rattling. He and his team had built a hard-to-detect, super-accurate navigation system for when satellite GPS networks are jammed or do not work that was robust and portable enough to be used outside a lab. It could potentially guide military equipment, from submarines to spacecraft, for months with a minuscule…

Australia Tries to Break Its Dependence on China for Lithium Mining

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Deep in rural Western Australia, Pilbara Minerals’ vast processing plant looms above the red dirt, quivering as tons of a lithium ore slurry move through its pipes. The plant turns the ore from a nearby quarry into spodumene, a greenish crystalline powder that is about 6 percent lithium and sells for about $5,700 a ton. From there, the spodumene is shipped to China, where it is further refined so it can be used in the batteries that power goods like cellphones and electric cars. Australia mines about 53 percent of…

Your Wednesday Briefing: A Deep Look at Korean Comfort Women

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South Korea’s brutal sex trade The euphemism “comfort women” typically describes South Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese during World War II. But long after Japan’s colonial rule ended, the sexual exploitation continued with Korean and American soldiers. After South Korea’s Supreme Court last year ordered the government to compensate 100 of the comfort women, the victims now aim to take their case to the U.S. Their legal strategy is unclear, as is what recourse they may find. Park Geun-ae, who was sold to a pimp…

Wreck of Japanese Ship That Sank Carrying Australian POWs is Found

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The wreck of a Japanese ship that sank in 1942 after it was torpedoed by an American submarine has been found, the Australian government said on Saturday. The ship was carrying hundreds of prisoners of war, most of them Australian, who all died, and the discovery resolves a painful episode in that country’s wartime history. A U.S. Navy submarine attacked the ship, the Montevideo Maru, in July 1942 as it traveled unescorted from Rabaul, a port in the Australian territory of New Guinea that had been captured by Japan earlier…

Submarine Deal With U.S. and U.K. Sparks Debate in Australia

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The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by email. When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese formally unveiled plans with the U.S. and U.K. on Monday to develop and deploy nuclear-powered attack submarines, it set off a chain reaction of questions and criticism at home, and notably within his own party. The plan, in which Australia initially will buy up to five U.S.-made submarines before building a new version with British and American help, is aimed at reinforcing American-led military dominance in the…