Kevin McCarthy, the speaker of the United States House of Representatives, is expected to meet Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen in California later on Wednesday.
McCarthy has confirmed he will meet Tsai at a “bipartisan” event at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, about 64km (40 miles) north of the centre of Los Angeles.
Taiwan now has only 13 formal allies with Beijing stepping up efforts to isolate the island on the international stage [Taiwan Presidential Office/Handout via Reuters]Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen travelled to Guatemala, one of Taiwan’s two remaining formal allies in Central America [Guatemala Presidency/Handout via Reuters]
“I think the majority of Chinese people don’t notice it because they either don’t pay attention to the war or they only get their news about it from Chinese media,” she told Al Jazeera.
“But if you are able to look beyond the firewall [a term used to describe China’s draconian censoring of the internet], you see that the war is talked about very differently and reported on very differently in international and Western media,” she told Al Jazeera.
Early on in the invasion, China’s state broadcaster CCTV ran claims that the United States had funded the development of biological weapons in Ukrainian labs. It was also reported that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had fled Kyiv in the wake of the first wave of Russian attacks.
Chinese media then dutifully relayed the Russian assertions that reports of torture and killings of Ukrainian civilians in the town of Bucha, near Kyiv, were ”fake news”.
All the while, the invasion was, and still is, being referred to as a “special military operation”, just as in Russian media.
Despite the censorship and the information bubble, however, both Lin and Tang have noticed a change in the way the Russian invasion is being addressed on Chinese social media.
Lin saw some anti-war remarks on Chinese social media when the war first broke out but the vast majority of posts she read were pro-Russia and anti-Western.
“Now, I think that there is a lot more posts and comments that are critical of Russia compared to before, and they also stay up longer before they are removed by censors,” Lin said.
In its annual report last year, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom said the Chinese Communist Party requires religious groups to support its rule and political objectives, including by altering their religious teachings to conform with the party’s ideology and policy. “Both registered and unregistered religious groups and individuals who run afoul of the CCP face harassment, detention, arrest, imprisonment, and other abuses,” the commission said.
Members of the Shenzhen Holy Reformed Church, also known as the Mayflower Church, leave from the Nongprue police station on their way to Pattaya Provincial Court in Pattaya, Thailand, Friday, March 31, 2023 [Sakchai Lalit/AP Photo]
尽管各国领导人对私营部门表示”坚定不移的支持”，但该国最著名的企业家之一还是选择在海外呆上几个月 Even as leaders voiced “unwavering support” for the private sector, one of the country’s best-known entrepreneurs chose to spend months overseas.
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Ant Group Co. Ltd. co-founder Jack Ma may be one of Beijing’s best chances at repairing its reputation with the private sector in China and beyond. But so far, the billionaire isn’t jumping on invitations from authorities. Lulu Chen reports on Bloomberg Television.
China Protests U.S. South China Sea Freedom of Navigation Operation A United States warship conducted a freedom of navigation operation in the South China Sea, near the Parcel Islands, the day after China claimed it chased away the ship from its territorial waters, the US 7th Fleet announced. USS Milius (DDG-69) sailed near the Parcel Islands and then into the South China Sea, according to the release.
The similarities are very, very striking between the Chinese Communist way of persecution and the American leftist way of restriction and even discrimination,” Fu told Fox News Digital.
Fu said he has observed with concern how the left in the U.S. is increasingly exhibiting “dictatorial” attitudes both culturally and politically by censoring speech, enforcing “woke” culture and not tolerating dissent. He pinpointed the alleged political weaponizing of federal law enforcement agencies as a worrisome escalation of such trends.
— Read on www.foxnews.com/world/christian-escaped-china-persecution-warns-us-descending-communist-style-governance
The interruptions occurred at the Council’s interactive dialogue with Alexandra Xanthaki, the U.N.’s special rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, on her report on migration and cultural rights. The report identified gaps that exist in the protection of the cultural rights of no less than 280 million around the world.
The three were arrested in 2021 during a crackdown on the city’s pro-democracy movement following massive protests more than three years ago. They were leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China and were found guilty last week. The alliance was best known for organising candlelight vigils in Hong Kong on the anniversary of the Chinese military’s crushing of Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests in 1989, but it voted to disband in 2021 under the shadow of the Beijing-imposed national security law. Supporters say its closure has shown freedoms and autonomy that were promised when Hong Kong returned to China from the UK in 1997 are diminishing.Before its disbandment, police sought details about its operations and finances in connection with alleged links to democracy groups overseas, accusing it of being a foreign agent. 这三人是在3年前大规模示威后,在2021年镇压城市民主化运动时被逮捕的。 他们是香港支持中国爱国民主运动联盟的领导人，上周被判有罪。1989年中国军队镇压天安门民主抗议活动周年纪念日，该联盟在香港组织烛光集会最为著名，但在2021年北京颁布的国家安全法的阴影下投票解散。支持者说，关闭该机场表明，1997年香港从英国返回中国时所承诺的自由和自治正在减少。在解散前，警方要求提供与据称与海外民主团体有联系的有关其业务和财政方面的细节，指控它是一个外国特工。
Among the 56 countries listed as “Not Free” around the world, North Korea, China and Myanmar were listed as among “the worst of the worst.” Additionally, out of 39 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, nine were listed as “not free” and 13 were deemed only “partly free.”
“In China, one of the world’s most restrictive media environments, journalists faced heightened scrutiny and rigorous political indoctrination when attempting to renew their press licenses, and even individuals who engaged in solitary forms of protest were punished with prison sentences,” it said.
Chinese authorities should immediately release and drop all charges against everyone detained for participating in the “white paper” protests against the government, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities should also cease harassment of lawyers and friends of protesters and the censorship of protest-related information on social media.
— Read on www.hrw.org/news/2023/01/26/china-free-white-paper-protesters
In the weeks following anti-zero Covid protests in Beijing, a protester made a video warning she could vanish. Soon after filming the video, she was arrested. CNN’s Selina Wang reports.
Such Chinese outposts represent China’s efforts to police its diaspora far beyond its borders which has caused a dispute. the FBI raid is the first known example of the authorities seizing materials from one of the outposts, reported ANI citing the US daily. ‘110 Overseas – China’s Transnational Policing Gone Wild’ was released by Madrid-based Safeguard Defenders in September 2022. This was later followed by case studies of how such stations had been used in persuasion operations in Spain and Serbia.
— Read on m.republicworld.com/world-news/us-news/us-steps-up-fight-against-chinese-overseas-police-service-centers-articleshow.html
