Torbjørn Færøvik's Blog, page 117

Hong Kong court overturns Tiananmen vigil group convictions

Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal on Thursday overturned the convictions of jailed human rights lawyer Chow Hang-tung and two fellow organizers of a candlelit vigil for victims of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, although the three have already served their sentences. The ruling was a rare legal upset for the government’s ongoing crackdown on dissent.The court ruled unanimously that Chow, a former

Chinese warships under close watch near Australian waters

The Australian navy deployed three vessels and surveillance aircraft to “keep a close eye” on a Chinese task group that has been operating “in the vicinity of Australia” since mid-February, the Australian defense minister said.  Richard Marles, who is also a deputy prime minister, said in an interviewon Thursday that three Anzac-class frigates - HMAS Stuart, HMAS Warramunga and HMAS

Behind the Exodus of U.S. Law Firms from China

In early December, U.S. law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison announced plans to close its office in Beijing. In 1981, Paul Weiss became one of the earliest foreign law firms to open an office in Beijing, but it is one of the latest of a growing number of American and global firms to leave China or shrink China operations. In early December, Mayer Brown spun off its Hong Kong

China’s crackdown on dissent: over 1,500 convicted in six years, report finds

Chinese authorities have arbitrarily detained thousands of people for peacefully defending or exercising their rights over the past six years and convicted 1,545 prisoners of conscience, a rights group said on Wednesday. Chinese Human Rights Defenders, or CHRD, a non-government organization of domestic and overseas Chinese rights activists, said the scope and scale of wrongful detention by

Letters call on UK residents to hand Hong Kongers over to China for reward

Calls are growing for the British government to take action to protect Hong Kongers in the country from the China’s “long-arm” law enforcement after the neighbors of two wanted pro-democracy activists received anonymous letters urging them to bring the activists to the Chinese Embassy in London. The letters repeat the exact wording of Hong Kong police wanted notices offering bounties of HK$1

DeepSeek hasn’t just disrupted OpenAI. Chinese tech giants are being upended too

DeepSeek’s advances have roiled global stock markets and AI players. Now, its influence is spreading quickly at home, with some of China’s biggest tech companies, many of which had been developing their own chatbots, racing to incorporate the open-source model into their own services. In early February telecoms giant Huawei said it would run DeepSeek on its own computing hardware composed of its

China’s warships are turning up in unexpected places and alarming US allies. Is this the new normal?

Chinese warships have been circumnavigating Australia’s coastline for more than three weeks, passing within 200 miles of Sydney, and staging unprecedented live-fire drills on its doorstep with New Zealand. The exercises, which came without formal notice, have deep caused consternation in both nations. Suddenly, the specter of China’s military power was suddenly no longer confined to the distant

Whistleblowing citizen journalist Zhang Zhan ‘to stand trial again soon’

COVID-19 whistleblowing citizen journalist Zhang Zhan will soon undergo a second trial in Shanghai on public order charges amid reports she is once more refusing food in detention, people familiar with the case told RFA Mandarin. Zhang, 40, was one of a group of citizen journalists detained, jailed or “disappeared” after they went to the central city of Wuhan to report on the emerging COVID-19

US charges 12 Chinese hackers and officials, offers $10M in rewards

The United States on Wednesday charged 12 alleged state-backed Chinese hackers and state officials with offenses related to accessing the email accounts of Chinese dissidents and foreign governments agencies, including the U.S. Department of the Treasury. It also announced rewards totaling US$10 million for information leading to their capture, with all of the accused remaining at-large.A

China targets 5% growth as it reels from Trump tariffs

China has set an economic growth target for this year of "around 5%" and pledged to pump billions of dollars into its ailing economy, which is now facing a trade war with the US. Its leaders unveiled the plan as thousands of delegates attend the National People's Congress, a rubber-stamp parliament, which passes decisions already made behind closed doors. But the week-long gathering is closely