UK urged to tackle transnational repression, as dissidents say Beijing has targeted them with tax letters and other threats “I didn’t feel safe, even though I’m not based in Hong Kong any more,” said Christopher Mung Siu-tat after getting tax bills from Hong Kong authorities. “The regime can reach me by their long arms wherever I am.” Siu-tat, the executive director at the Hong Kong Labour Rights Monitor, a UK-based NGO, fled Beijing’s sweeping national security laws years ago. The letters are the latest example of a series of transnational…
Tag: World news
‘It smells like a rancid fish and chip shop’: at sea with the Antarctic’s krill supertrawlers
It is bitterly cold on the deck of the Allankay and the bosun, Luca Massari, is checking that none of us are wearing contact lenses before we descend into Antarctic waters. There is a risk, he warns, that lenses will freeze solid over the eyes. Massari himself is prepared for his surroundings. He is wearing thick goggles that make him look like an Olympic ski jumper. Massari is a burly, heavily tattooed veteran of the environmental organisation Sea Shepherd, which campaigns against exploitating the oceans. His deck team are preparing…
Tuesday briefing: With the horror of conflict throughout the globe, how likely is world war three?
Good morning. The world is at war. From the trenches of eastern Ukraine to the missile-streaked skies of the Gulf, a growing proportion of humanity is living under the horror of conflict. For some observers, there are gnawing fears that the worst is yet to come. The apparent collapse of the rules-based international order, the irrelevance of institutions designed to uphold it, and the interconnectedness of the fighting have sparked warnings that we could be at the beginning of a third world war. Indeed, half of Britons polled in a…
Clash of the Superpowers: America vs China review – Trump vomits all over Norma Percy’s film
It’s not normal to view documentaries about international trade negotiations as light relief, but we are where we are. Clash of the Superpowers: America vs China is a two-parter produced by film-maker Norma Percy, whose signature style – on series including The Iraq War, Putin vs the West and Inside Europe: Ten Years of Turmoil – is to use first-hand testimonies to revisit diplomatic flashpoints from a decade or so ago: sufficiently soon after the events for everyone who was there to still be alive, but late enough for them…
China has been preparing for a global energy crisis for years. It is paying off now
Xi Jinping has been preparing for a crisis like this for years. China must secure its energy supply “in its own hands”, its president was reported to have said during a visit to one of its vast oilfields in 2021. The US-Israel war on Iran plunged the Middle East into a deep conflict, with the strait of Hormuz – one of the most important waterways in global trade – all but closed and key energy facilities across the region under attack. Oil exports from the Middle East have tumbled 61%…
Inside China’s robotics revolution
Chen Liang, the founder of Guchi Robotics, an automation company headquartered in Shanghai, is a tall, heavy-set man in his mid-40s with square-rimmed glasses. His everyday manner is calm and understated, but when he is in his element – up close with the technology he builds, or in business meetings discussing the imminent replacement of human workers by robots – he wears an exuberant smile that brings to mind an intern on his first day at his dream job. Guchi makes the machines that install wheels, dashboards and windows for…
Looking for leverage: China keeps close eye on US politics after summit delay
The White House said on Wednesday that China had agreed to postpone Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing, as war in the Middle East rages on, complicating the US president’s position at home and abroad. China has not yet commented on the delay to the highly anticipated trip, in which Trump and the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, will meet in person for the first time since October. Trump previously said he hoped to delay the trip, originally scheduled to run from 31 March to 2 April, for “five or six weeks”.…
Trump is being schooled on the limits of US power – but he is a slow learner | Rafael Behr
Donald Trump is teaching the world a lesson, but not the one he thinks. The attack on Iran was meant to be a dazzling display of military supremacy. It has instead illuminated chinks in the US’s armour. The US president’s formidable arsenal cannot summon up an insurrection from Iran’s tyrannised and leaderless opposition. It cannot force merchant ships to run a gauntlet of missile and drone attacks in the strait of Hormuz. The government in Tehran and the facts of geography that give it leverage over global trade are unchanged.…
Rise and fall of Prince Group raises awkward questions for Cambodia
A giant golden clam shell, illuminated by lurid neon lights and filled with playing cards and red dice, once glowed nightly on the facade of Sihanoukville’s Jin Bei casino. Today, the casino’s gaudy signage is covered by sheets, and its doorway blocked by a Chinese sign that reads “under renovation”. The casino in the Cambodian resort city was once emblazoned with the name Jin Bei, a company US prosecutors have accused of running scam compounds on behalf Prince Group, which an October indictment alleged was one of Asia’s largest transnational…
Trump seeks to delay China summit as Vance denies ‘wedge’ over Iran war
Donald Trump revealed that he had asked China to delay his forthcoming visit to Beijing while the war with Iran was continuing, as he attempted to strike a united front on Monday with his vice-president JD Vance, who is believed to have been skeptical over attacking Tehran’s regime. Appearing together with Vance for the first time in two weeks, Trump said he did not think the conflict – which started on 28 February after the US and Israel opened hostilities – would be over this week but predicted victory would…