China’s Minister of Agriculture, Tang Renjian, is no longer in office. The Communist Party’s Central Discipline Inspection Commission (CCDI) and the National Supervisory Commission have accused the 61-year-old of “serious violations of discipline and law.” This wording is the CCDI’s typical formulation for corruption. Tang last appeared in public on Wednesday in the northwestern province […]
China threatens to flood the global market with excessively cheap EV batteries. Couldn’t the EU Commission have seen this coming much earlier? Batteries are a key technology – just like solar energy. A few years ago, Europe learned the hard way when Chinese industrial policy destroyed German solar manufacturers.Did anyone believe that Beijing would change […]
Ben Lim, long-time China correspondent, died following a severe acute pancreatitis on Tuesday morning. He was 65 years. The journalist, whose full name was Benjamin Kang Lim, worked for Reuters for 27 years, including as bureau chief in Beijing and Taipei. He joined The Straits Times in 2019. One of his biggest scoops was the […]
Art exhibition at the Chinese cultural center in Suva, the capital of the Fiji Islands: oil paintings in the style of Romanticism depict natural scenes in Xinjiang, home to the country’s Uyghur minority. Such exhibitions are part of a large-scale framing concept of Chinese propaganda. It is intended to evoke positive connotations of Xinjiang instead […]
The human rights organization Hong Kong Watch has called on the British government to sanction six Hong Kong officials. The reason for this is the adoption of a separate Security Law for the city and the increasing cross-border repression by the Chinese Communist Party in the UK. To this end, the organization has submitted a […]
Unexpected deaths of high-ranking politicians in strategic partner states are the unpleasant side effects of life. Forrest Gump once said that life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get. That’s also the case with relations between Iran and China.Beijing probably regrets President Ebrahim Raisi’s death. Foreign policy is generally […]
Chinese and Hong Kong students studying overseas live in fear of intimidation, harassment and surveillance. This is the conclusion of the human rights organization Amnesty International (AI) in its report “On my campus, I’m afraid,” which was published on Monday. The report is based on 32 interviews conducted by Amnesty with students from China and […]
The Haikui No. 1 is China’s first floating production, storage and loading facility in cylindrical form. It left the port of Qingdao over the weekend and made its way to the Pearl River Delta, where it will be deployed in the Liuhua 11-1 oil field at a water depth of 324 meters. The Haikui No. […]
Knowing about the practices of Chinese distant-water fishing can ruin one’s appetite for seafood. Apparently, hunting protected species, animal cruelty, violence against crew members and slave-like labor are commonplace on Chinese ships – long before the goods end up on European tables. A recent investigation by the British Environmental Justice Foundation (EFJ) has further deepened […]
Sikyong Penpa Tsering, as the political leader of the Tibetans, you met personally with France’s President Emmanuel Macron just days before Xi Jinping’s arrival in Paris. What were you able to discuss with him?Since my election three years ago, I have visited 24 countries in hopes of improving the situation for my people. As always, […]
