Torbjørn Færøvik's Blog, page 362

Opinion: China has a massive credibility problem

The latest interview with the Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai, who in November accused former Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli of sexually assaulting her, has done little to shed further light on the matter. She appears unfocused and distracted in the video. The case is just one example that shows how bad the credibility of the People's Republic of China (PRC) is. For the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),

In 2021, Extreme Weather Woke China Up to Climate Change

With a low-lying, typhoon-battered coastline and inland regions faced with desertification, melting glaciers, and sweltering summer heat, China would seem like it has plenty to fear from climate change. Nevertheless, researchers in 2019 looking into how the Chinese public viewed the issue found that they were relatively unconcerned.But the past year has brought big shifts. Climate change is

Haunting photos show the deserted streets of Xi'an, a city of 13 million that's been under strict lockdown for a week

The city of Xi'an in China's Shaanxi province entered its seventh day of lockdown on Wednesday, as the government imposed some of the country's strictest pandemic curbs since the initial COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan. With the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics just weeks away, China has doubled down on its COVID-zero policy of shutting down entire cities to snuff out even a single coronavirus case.Xi'an,

Three detained in Beijing for ‘spreading rumours’ about famous actress Tong Liya and senior Chinese official

Beijing police announced on Wednesday that three people had been detained for allegedly spreading a rumour that famous Chinese actress Tong Liya, 38, and a senior mainland official had recently married. The rumour, which started weeks ago in a post seen by several South China Morning Post reporters, was heavily censored on the mainland, and nearly all written or screen-captured versions have been

China ‘renames’ 15 places in Arunachal Pradesh before its land border law is enforced on 1 Jan

China Thursday ‘renamed’ 15 places — including residential areas, mountains, rivers and a mountain pass — situated in the state of Arunachal Pradesh, which it claims as its own territory called ‘South Tibet’. The move comes two days before Beijing’s new border law, initially passed earlier this year and titled the ‘Land Border Law of the People’s Republic of China’, is to come into effect on 1

China Is Running Out of Water and That’s Scary for Asia

Nature and geopolitics can interact in nasty ways. The historian Geoffrey Parker has argued that changing weather patterns drove war, revolution and upheaval during a long global crisis in the 17th century. More recently, climate change has opened new trade routes, resources and rivalries in the Arctic. And now China, a great power that often appears bent on reordering the international system,

‘Atmosphere of fear’: Hong Kong students lament loss of Tiananmen statues

Sophie Mak, a recent graduate of law and literature, had walked past the fiery orange monument between classes for five years. A month after her graduation ceremony at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), two nights before Christmas, workers erected barricades around the statue. Under the cover of darkness, they cut it down. “It’s an absolute disgrace that HKU removed the Pillar of Shame so

Rana Mitter and Elsbeth Johnson: What the West Gets Wrong About China

When we first traveled to China, in the early 1990s, it was very different from what we see today. Even in Beijing many people wore Mao suits and cycled everywhere; only senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials used cars. In the countryside life retained many of its traditional elements. But over the next 30 years, thanks to policies aimed at developing the economy and increasing capital

In China’s new age of imperialism, Xi Jinping gives thumbs down to democracy

The US describes its newly announced diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics, backed by Britain and other western countries, as a protest against China’s “egregious human rights abuses and atrocities in Xinjiang”, where the Chinese Communist party (CCP) is accused of genocide, as well as its evisceration of Hong Kong’s democracy.Yet a separate, lurking worry informs Washington’s action:

Jonathan D. Spence, popular China scholar, dead at age 85

Jonathan D. Spence, a British-born historian who became a longtime Yale University professor and prominent sinologist and attracted a wide following with his 1990 best-seller “The Search for Modern China,” has died at age 85.Spence, who retired from Yale in 2008, died Saturday at his home in West Haven, Connecticut. His wife and fellow Yale professor, Annping Chin, said the cause was