Torbjørn Færøvik's Blog, page 169

From the bookshelf: ‘Zhou Enlai: A Life’

Zhou Enlai was a giant of twentieth century international relations. Serving as China’s premier from the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949 until his death in 1976 and also as China’s first foreign minister, Zhou set up China’s foreign service and skilfully guided China through the international events of the entire Mao Zedong era.Zhou was a key member of the Chinese Communist Party’s

Climate Change on the Third Pole Causes, Processes and Consequences

The Third Pole region, that is, the Tibetan Plateau and its surrounding mountain ranges, are the heart of Asia’s water cycle and supply almost all of the continent’s major rivers. Read more

In Retrospect: Nobel Peace Prize. The 14th Dalai Lama held his Acceptance Speech on 10 December 1989

Your Majesty, Members of the Nobel Committee, Brothers and Sisters:I am very happy to be here with you today to receive the Nobel Prize for Peace. I feel honoured, humbled and deeply moved that you should give this important prize to a simple monk from Tibet. I am no one special. But, I believe the prize is a recognition of the true values of altruism, love, compassion and nonviolence which I try

Once a safe haven, Hong Kong is now ‘exporting its own refugees’

The ongoing crackdown on political dissent in Hong Kong Party has turned the city, where millions once took refuge from Chinese Communist rule, into an “exporter of refugees,” according to exiled former pro-democracy lawmaker Nathan Law. Law, who had his passport revoked in June along with other “wanted” overseas activists, said his father was a refugee who settled in Hong Kong after fleeing

Uyghurs sentenced to cumulative 4.4 million years in prison: study

All told, Uyghurs imprisoned by China in Xinjiang have been sentenced to a cumulative 4.4 million years, a report by Yale University’s Genocide Studies Program says. And the true tally is probably far higher, researchers said. The figure highlights the scale and severity of the Chinese government’s crackdown on the mostly Muslim Uyghurs since 2017, when thousands of Uyghurs and other Turkic

China is borrowing Nazi’s ‘genocide tourism’ practices in Xinjiang: scholar,

China’s promotion of tourism in the far Western region of Xinjiang, where Beijing has sought to hide its persecution of the 11 million Uyghurs who live there, has parallels to the Nazis’ practice of “genocide tourism,” a Swedish anthropologist and former diplomat writes in the online current affairs magazine The Diplomat.After Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 and its herding of Jews into

A dangerous new flashpoint is fast emerging in the South China Sea

A stretch of uninhabited, low-lying reefs in the South China Sea is fast becoming a dangerous new flashpoint between China and the Philippines, dealing a blow to recent efforts to de-escalate tensions in one of the world’s most vital waterways.Over the past week, Chinese and Philippine vessels have engaged in multiple collisions and face-offs near Sabina Shoal, a disputed atoll lying

Japan claims Chinese military plane violated its territorial airspace for the first time

Japan says a Chinese military intelligence-gathering aircraft entered its territorial airspace off remote islands in the East China Sea on Monday, the first time Tokyo has accused the People’s Liberation Army Air Force of an airspace violation and a new irritant in frosty relations between China and Japan.A map released by the Japanese Defense Ministry showed the Chinese aircraft, a Y-9

In Retrospect: China’s 1979 War with Vietnam

This article attempts to reveal China’s own perceptions of the 1979 war with Vietnam. It includes China’s historical relations with Vietnam and their influence on Beijing’s approach towards the war, as well as the role of Deng Xiaoping, Chinese military strategy and preparations for the attack. It shows how Beijing’s approach to warfare has a distinctive set of Chinese characteristics:

China’s Politburo meeting stresses Chinese-ness, ethnic unity, border stability

The Political Bureau (Politburo) of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee has called for the forging of a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation to safeguard ethnic unity and stability in border areas during a meeting it held on Aug 23 to review policies and measures to open up a new vista in the large-scale development of the western region, according to China’s official