Tag: China

“It’s the beginnings of a mass movement and that is what the government doesn’t want,” said a social studies professor at a Chinese university who did not wish to be named. 

Multiple crackdowns have swept the tech, education and showbiz sectors in recent months, as authorities increasingly target the rich and powerful in a push for greater socioeconomic equality.

But it is also partly to instill “healthy,” government-sanctioned societal values in young people, so they are less influenced by wayward celebrities.

“Chinese youth lack other types of idols,” said Fang Kecheng, a communications professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “It’s very hard for them to have other means of civic participation (such as activism).”

China’s broadcast regulator last month banned performers with “lapsed morals” and “incorrect political views,” as well as what it termed “sissy men” ― an androgynous aesthetic popularized by Korean boybands, and imitated by male Chinese idols like Xiao. 

Experts read the latter as a sign of Beijing’s increasing discomfort with alternative forms of masculinity at a time of falling birthrates and rising nationalism, as films with macho, military heroes are promoted by the state. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Anti-China sentiment continues to grow in South Korea, but with how intertwined the ROK’s economy is with China will their government be willing to do anything significant to counter China’s attempted hegemony over the Peninsula?:

However, a recent poll highlighted a major paradigm shift in the trend of South Korean public perception toward surrounding states, which may affect the presidential candidates’ foreign policy pledges. According to the poll by Hankook Research and South Korean online newspaper SisaIn, the South Korean public was least favorable toward of China; even North Korea and Japan were viewed more positively.

The participants were asked to give a favorability score to four countries – China, Japan, North Korea, and the United States – on a scale between 0 and 100. South Koreans gave the most negative rating to China with an average of 26.4, lower than North Korea at 28.6 and Japan at 28.8. The United States had the most favorable rating at 57.3. Furthermore, to the question of whether participants thought a particular country is “good” or “evil,” 58.1 percent labeled China as evil, whereas only 4.5 percent said it was good.

The increasing anti-China sentiment in South Korea is a remarkable trend for Seoul’s foreign policy. Previously, South Korean public opinion focused on North Korea and Japan as the country’s top potential threats. The same poll in late 2019 showed that Japan was the least favorably viewed country among South Koreans, with 21.0 favorability, while China rated 35.6. Although there were issues such as historical disputes centered on the former Korean kingdom Goguryeo and illegal Chinese fishing in South Korean waters, the hatred for China was relatively weak compared to concerns over the North Korean nuclear program and the rise of the far-right movement in Japan.

The Diplomat

You can read more at the link, but I will believe the significance of these polls when Koreans come out and protest against China like they did against the U.S. in the early 2000’s. The fact they don’t despite China’s wide unpopularity shows how intimidated Koreans are by the CCP.

If anything comes out of this prisoner swap, I hope it is the world takes notice that the Chinese government is willing to take foreign nationals hostage to free their criminals:

 China, the U.S. and Canada completed a high-stakes prisoner swap with joyous homecomings for two Canadians held by China and for an executive of Chinese global communications giant Huawei Technologies charged with fraud, potentially bringing closure to a 3-year feud that embroiled the three countries.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hugged diplomat Michael Kovrig and entrepreneur Michael Spavor on the tarmac after they landed in Calgary, Alberta early Saturday. The men were detained in China in Dec. 2018, shortly after Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou, Huawei Technologies’ chief financial officer and the daughter of the company’s founder, on a U.S. extradition request.

Many countries labeled China’s action “hostage politics,” while China accused Ottawa of arbitrary detention. The two Canadians were jailed for more than 1,000 days.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but ROK Heads may remember that one of the exchanged hostages Michael Spavor was a Kim regime favorite for his North Korean travel operation. I would be surprised if he will try do any North Korean travel trips ever again after this.

It is amazing that anyone would have thought this type of research was a good idea:

Wuhan scientists were planning to release enhanced airborne coronaviruses into Chinese bat populations to inoculate them against diseases that could jump to humans, leaked grant proposals dating from 2018 show.

New documents show that just 18 months before the first Covid-19 cases appeared, researchers had submitted plans to release skin-penetrating nanoparticles containing “novel chimeric spike proteins” of bat coronaviruses into cave bats in Yunnan, China.

They also planned to create chimeric viruses, genetically enhanced to infect humans more easily, and requested $14million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) to fund the work.

Papers, confirmed as genuine by a former member of the Trump administration, show they were hoping to introduce “human-specific cleavage sites” to bat coronaviruses which would make it easier for the virus to enter human cells.

When Covid-19 was first genetically sequenced, scientists were puzzled about how the virus had evolved such a human-specific adaptation at the cleavage site on the spike protein, which is the reason it is so infectious.

The Telegraph

You can read more at the link, but this can be added to the mountain of circumstantial evidence of how COVID likely leaked from a Chinese lab.

The fact that China did not make a big deal out of this 60 year treaty anniversary with North Korea shows they maybe relations are not as tight as they may want people to think:

The leaders of North Korea and China pledged greater mutual assistance and cooperation on the 60th anniversary of their treaty of friendship through a letter exchange, according to the North’s state news agency on Sunday.  
   
The North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) released on Sunday the full texts of the letters exchanged by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and Chinese President Xi Jinping marking the 60th anniversary of the Sino-North Korean Mutual Aid and Cooperation Friendship Treaty, which was signed on July 11, 1961.  
   
In his letter to Xi, Kim described the friendship between the two countries as growing in vitality, especially in the face of what he called “hostile forces” around the world.  
   
“Despite the unprecedentedly complicated international situation in recent years, comradely trust and militant friendship between the DPRK and China grow stronger day by day,” Kim wrote, according to the KCNA.  
   
Xi wrote back that he looked forward to strengthening “strategic communication” between the two countries and called the 1961 treaty as laying “important political and legal foundations for consolidating the militant friendship” between China and the North. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

That is what think tankers are advocating for:

If the Army is serious about countering the Chinese military in the Pacific, it needs to permanently stationan Armored Brigade Combat Team on Taiwan, according to some think tankers.

That type of basing decision would likely abandon the current policy of strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan, which intentionally leaves it unclear as to whether Americans would defend the island in a cross-strait conflict. Uncertain about their superpower backers, Taiwanese leaders are less likely to unilaterally declare independence and China is less inclined to hurry to war.

Army Times

You can read more at the link.