Tag: Local government

China’s Cities Are Cutting Health Insurance, and People Are Angry

Chin@Strategy

Local governments across China, facing a financial tipping point after three years of expensive Covid measures, are forcing abrupt changes on the country’s health care system, squeezing benefits and angering citizens. Thousands of seniors, who are most vulnerable to the cutbacks, converged on municipal parks and other public spaces in recent days to protest the changes. They gathered in the chilly northeastern city of Dalian, in semitropical Guangzhou nearly 1,500 miles away and in Wuhan in central China, where the Covid pandemic began at the end of 2019. One of…

London council rejects new Chinese embassy amid residents’ safety fears

Chin@Strategy

London councillors have rejected plans for a new Chinese embassy, which would have been the largest diplomatic base in the UK, after residents and advocacy groups raised safety concerns. In a tense meeting, the Tower Hamlets council voted unanimously against the proposed development to move the current embassy to a 2-hectare (5-acre) site opposite the Tower of London. Local residents and advocacy groups, who feared being swept into protests, called the plans into question, saying they would endanger people’s lives. Simon Cheng, the founder of Hongkongers in Britain and a…

No 10 staff will be able to give evidence confidentially to inquiry into whether PM lied over Partygate – UK politics live

Chin@Strategy

From 1h ago No 10 staff will be able to give evidence confidentially to inquiry into whether PM lied over Partygate, committee says The Commons privileges committee has issued a statement after its first meeting to consider its inquiry into whether Boris Johnson lied to MPs about Partygate. It has issued a wide-ranging call for evidence, and it is inviting whistleblowers to give evidence anonymously if they want. This provision seems intended to encourage civil servants working in No 10, who may have heard Boris Johnson reveal in private that…