Torbjørn Færøvik's Blog, page 1345

As Visit Ends, Obama Presses India on Human Rights and Climate Change

Mr. Obama spoke forcefully about India’s responsibility to stop treating women as second-class citizens. “Every girl’s life matters,” he said, as his wife, Michelle Obama, watched from the audience. “Every daughter deserves the same chance as our sons." Read more

U.S. and India Share Sense of Unease Over China

When President Obama landed here for a three-day visit, he brought a long list of issues to discuss, like energy and trade. But when he and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India sat down to talk, the first 45 minutes were dominated by just one: China. Read more

Despite a Crackdown, Use of Illegal Drugs in China Continues Unabated

Last week, the Ministry of Public Security announced that the Chinese police had arrested 60,500 suspects on drug offenses and seized more than 11 metric tons of narcotics since the latest operation, called “Ban drugs in hundreds of cities,” began in October, according to the Xinhua state news agency. Read more

China to Force Authors to Provide Real Names When Publishing Online

In new guidelines on online literature made public this month by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, the government called for a system that would require all authors to register their real names with publishing platforms on the Internet. 

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China’s slowdown means vigilance is key for UK firms trading in far east

Last week, London-listed brewer SABMiller was the latest company tobemoan “difficult trading conditions” in China. The company behind Peroni and Grolsch said poor summer weather was to blame, but analysts also pointed to the economic slowdown, as sales volumes in China fell 9% in the latest quarter and by double digits in some parts of the country. Read more

Hard times return as China bids to bring its economic miracle to an end

China’s president, Xi Jinping, calls it the “new normal” – but strikes are increasing, wages going unpaid and businesses are struggling to survive as the vast economy adjusts to a more sedate pace of growth after more than a decade of explosive expansion. Read more

Beijing's Xinjiang Policy: Striking Too Hard?

The Chinese government’s security apparatus is striking hard in Xinjiang, with increasingly frequent kinetic police actions and nearly weekly announcements of long prison sentences and death sentences being handed down to suspected “separatists.” The frequency of violent incidents has risen sharply in the past 18 months. Read more

The Sinocism China Newsletter January 26, 2014

Get smarter about China. Read more

China Leads the World in Media Corruption, says expert

As much discussion of media corruption inside China centers on rotten journalists, as though the only relevant dimension is moral, Zhan Jiang’s interview is refreshingly frank. He explains why media corruption is endemic and, you might say, institutionalized. Read more

What will this crackdown on activists do to China’s nascent civil society?

China’s civil society has little cause for optimism in 2015. The country is now seeing the worst crackdown on lawyers, activists and scholars in decades. Since Xi Jinping became China’s leader in 2012, at least 500 human rights activists and dissidents have been arrested and sentenced to prison. Rights defenders, minorities, NGOs, the internet, underground churches, universities, journalists