Tag: News and News Media

Radio Free Asia Leaves Hong Kong, Citing Security Law

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The United States-funded news service Radio Free Asia said on Friday that it has closed its office in Hong Kong because of concerns about the city’s recently enacted national security law that targets so-called foreign interference. Hong Kong’s new national security law, which was passed with unusual speed earlier this month, raised “serious questions about our ability to operate in safety,” the broadcaster’s president and chief executive, Bay Fang, said in a statement. Radio Free Asia said that it had relocated some employees from Hong Kong to Taiwan, the United…

China Cancels a News Conference, Shutting a Window for Its People

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For more than 30 years, the Chinese premier’s annual news conference was the only time that a top leader took questions from journalists about the state of the country. It was the only occasion for members of the public to size up for themselves China’s No. 2 official. It was the only moment when some Chinese might feel a faint sense of political participation in a country without elections. On Monday, China announced that the premier’s news conference, marking the end of the country’s annual rubber-stamp legislature, will no longer…

China’s Big Political Show Is Back to Normal. Sort of.

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Finally, it appeared, things were back to normal. As nearly 3,000 delegates filed into Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Tuesday for the opening of China’s annual legislative meeting, none wore face masks. Officials pressed together to shake hands and pose for photos. Around them, reporters and diplomats from around the world milled about the cavernous lobby, many invited back for the first time since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic four years earlier. It was one of China’s highest-profile political stages, and the message being sent was clear:…

China Scraps Premier’s Annual News Conference in Surprise Move

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China’s premier will no longer hold a news conference after the country’s annual legislative meeting, Beijing announced on Monday, ending a three-decades-long practice that had been an exceedingly rare opportunity for journalists to interact with top Chinese leaders. The decision, announced a day before the opening of this year’s legislative conclave, was to many observers a sign of the country’s increasing information opacity, even as the government has declared its commitment to transparency and fostering a friendly business environment. It also reinforced how China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has consolidated…

Biden Ponders Asylum Plan, and the Secret World of China’s Hackers

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The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about five minutes. NYT

‘Total Trust’ Review: Under Surveillance

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Partway through the documentary “Total Trust,” the Chinese journalist Sophia Xueqin Huang diagnoses the readiness of Chinese civilians to comply with expanding surveillance measures. “It’s just like the story of the boiling frog,” she says; the ceding of small privacies gives way to the surrender of larger freedoms until — before you know it — every facet of life is monitored and controlled. “Total Trust,” directed by the Chinese filmmaker Jialing Zhang (“One Child Nation”), offers a persuasive picture of this Big Brother system in action. Filmed largely during the…

Can Taiwan Continue to Fight Off Chinese Disinformation?

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Suspicious videos that began circulating in Taiwan this month seemed to show the country’s leader advertising cryptocurrency investments. President Tsai Ing-wen, who has repeatedly risked Beijing’s ire by asserting her island’s autonomy, appeared to claim in the clips that the government helped develop investment software for digital currencies, using a term that is common in China but rarely used in Taiwan. Her mouth appeared blurry and her voice unfamiliar, leading Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau to deem the video to be almost certainly a deepfake — an artificially generated spoof —…

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…

China Uses ‘Deceptive’ Methods to Sow Disinformation, U.S. Says

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The State Department accused China on Thursday of using “deceptive and coercive methods” to shape the global information environment, by acquiring stakes in foreign newspapers and television networks, using major social media platforms to promote its views and exerting pressure on international organizations and media outlets to silence critics of Beijing. The accusations, detailed in a report by the department’s Global Engagement Center, reflect worry in Washington that China’s information operations pose a growing security challenge to the United States and to democratic principles around the world by promoting “digital…

How a U.S. Tech Mogul Used Nonprofits to Sow Chinese Propaganda

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The protest in London’s bustling Chinatown brought together a variety of activist groups to oppose a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes. So it was peculiar when a street brawl broke out among mostly ethnic Chinese demonstrators. Witnesses said the fight, in November 2021, started when men aligned with the event’s organizers, including a group called No Cold War, attacked activists supporting the democracy movement in Hong Kong. On the surface, No Cold War is a loose collective run mostly by American and British activists who say the West’s rhetoric against…