Authorities in China’s Guizhou and Jiangsu provinces have jailed two journalists and one family member after they were critical of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). On Jan. 8, the Nanming District People’s Court in Guizhou’s provincial capital, Guiyang, jailed… Read More ›

Human Rights & Social Issues
Taiwan population has fallen, 1st time in memory
Taiwan’s population shrank for the first time ever in 2020, government data showed Friday, as the island faces a burgeoning demographic crisis similar to those affecting South Korea and Japan. Births last year plunged to 165,000, down seven percent from… Read More ›
What do Chinese people think about developed countries?
In October 2020, a Pew Research Center survey found that a median of 61 percent of citizens in 14 major economies hold unfavorable views of China. In countries such as the United States and Canada, negative views have reached historic… Read More ›
China has more than 100 journalists behind bars amid ‘total control’ of media
China was among the world’s biggest jailers of journalists in 2020, continuing a pattern of total state control over the media begun under ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “core” leader Xi Jinping. “China, which arrested several journalists for their coverage… Read More ›
U.S. imposes sanctions on Chinese officials over Hong Kong crackdown
The United States imposed travel bans and other sanctions on 14 high-level Chinese officials over the continuing crackdown on the opposition in Hong Kong, as the police in the Chinese territory arrested more pro-democracy figures on Tuesday. The U.S. State… Read More ›
China: No sustainable development goals (SDGs) without elimination of violence against women and girls
During the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence from the 25th of November to the 10th of December, the Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens contributes to the Orange the World Campaign globally and in Austria, calling for the… Read More ›
An occasion for the European Union to reaffirm its standing on security policies and human rights
Vice-President of the EU Commission Margaritis Shinas was a keynote speaker at this summer’s Diplomatic Conference in Vienna organised by the International Institute IFIMES, Media Platform Modern Diplomacy and their partners. High dignitary of the Commission seized the occasion to… Read More ›
Privacy, European Union and human rights 75 years after WWII
Early summer days of 2020 in Vienna sow marking the anniversary of Nuremberg Trials with the conference “From the Victory Day to Corona Disarray: 75 years of Europe’s Collective Security and Human Rights System – Legacy of Antifascism for the… Read More ›
China’s 260 concentration camps are proof of pure evil
It turns out the Chinese Communist Party is bent on permanently locking up much of the Uighur Muslim population of the far-west region of Xinjiang: Satellite images show that Beijing has secretly built 260 high-security concentration camps to hold them…. Read More ›
75 years of the triumph of antifascism
Early summer days of 2020 in Vienna sow marking the anniversary of Nuremberg Trials with the conference “From the Victory Day to Corona Disarray: 75 years of Europe’s Collective Security and Human Rights System – Legacy of Antifascism for the… Read More ›
China reportedly secretly built hundreds of prison camps to hold minority Muslims
China has secretly constructed new prisons and internment camps over the past several years as the Communist Party-ruled country ramps up its mass detention campaign against Muslim minorities, according to a report on Thursday. Since 2017, China has built 260… Read More ›
Dystopian Deeds: How China’s top-notch mass surveillance system threatens global freedoms
Every millimeter of Beijing is monitored by state-of-the-art surveillance cameras, according to the Beijing Public Safety Bureau. Facial recognition algorithms matched with images filed away in a secret database could see you in legal trouble for something you did near your… Read More ›
Claims China is forcibly harvesting organs of Uighur population
Human rights activists are collecting evidence that people are killed for their organs For decades, the Chinese Communist Party depended on executed prisoners to bolster its organ transplant trade. Then it emerged that government leaders were relying on persecuted minorities to… Read More ›
Cultural genocide? What China is doing in Tibet today
While much of the international community has focused on abuses against the Uighur Muslims in the Chinese province of Xingang, the human rights horrors against Buddhists in Tibet – a decades-long conflict — have dropped from the limelight. “Tibet is one… Read More ›
China is what Orwell feared
Northwest of Beijing’s Forbidden City, outside the Third Ring Road, the Chinese Academy of Sciences has spent seven decades building a campus of national laboratories. Near its center is the Institute of Automation, a sleek silvery-blue building surrounded by camera-studded… Read More ›
Trump is a bigot and a hypocrite, but he’s right to condemn China
Donald Trump taints everything he touches. If he supports a cause, he damages it. If he takes a stance, the instinct of most self-respecting liberals is to rush to the opposing side. So when Trump rails against China, a favourite… Read More ›
President Trump has tools to pressure China. Will he use them?
Much of the focus on China in recent months has been over the coronavirus that originated there late last year. But that has hardly slowed Beijing’s assault on fundamental freedoms and human rights, from the brutal repression of the Uighurs… Read More ›
Hong Kong leader says opponents of security law are ‘enemy of the people’
Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam on Tuesday urged opponents of Beijing’s plan to impose national security legislation in the financial hub to stop “smearing” the effort, saying those who did were “the enemy of the people.” Beijing last month announced… Read More ›
Taiwan Black Lives Matter protest gets indigenous twist
Hundreds packed into a park in central Taipei on Saturday for a Black Lives Matter protest, with a group of indigenous Taiwanese given prominent billing to draw attention to discrimination against the island’s original inhabitants. The rally, attended by more… Read More ›
Two-husband strategy may be a remedy for China’s one-child policy, Shanghai professor says
Chinese authorities have been trying for three years to reverse the devastating imbalances of their one-child policy and coax couples to have more children. They’ve told couples that it’s their patriotic duty to have two babies. They’ve dangled tax breaks… Read More ›
China faces an unemployment time bomb
Strip away the veneer of President Xi Jinping’s “China Dream” policy and you will find 600 million people earning just 1,000 yuan a month. Depending on the conversion rate, that works out at US$140, or $4.6 a day. It was… Read More ›
China approves restrictive national security laws for Hong Kong
China on Thursday approved a controversial national security law that would allow Beijing to wield expanded power over Hong Kong. The vote by the National People’s Congress was close to unanimous: 2,878 delegates voted in favor of the proposal while… Read More ›
Chinese man abducted as toddler 32 years ago reunited with parents
A Chinese man who was stolen from his family as a toddler has been reunited with his parents after 32 years. Mao Yin was snatched in 1988 when he was walking home from nursery with his father, aged just two… Read More ›
In Singapore, a search for a Chinese identity with a little less China
In Singapore, traditional coffee shops are known as kopitiam. The colloquial term is a combination of the word kopi, which means coffee in Malay, and tiam, which translates to shop in Hokkien. This is just one example of how a… Read More ›
Coronavirus has unleashed a ‘tsunami of hate’ across world, says UN chief
United Nations chief António Guterres has said the coronavirus pandemic has unleashed a “tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scare-mongering”, and appealed for an all-out effort “to end hate speech globally.” The UN secretary-general said anti-foreigner sentiment has surged… Read More ›
The coronavirus is the monstrous product of the present nefarious global system
The whole world now is once again in a middle of an international humanitarian crisis whose extent and magnitude are utterly pervasive. This is brought about by a virus which is now pandemic and threatens the whole existence of humanity…. Read More ›
World governments are condemning the arrest of Hong Kong protesters
Foreign governments criticized the arrest of 15 Hong Kong democracy activists in a police sweep on charges of organizing and participating in anti-government protests last year. The arrests on Saturday were the biggest crackdown on the city’s pro-democracy movement since… Read More ›
African nations, US decry racism against blacks in China
African officials are confronting China publicly and in private over racist mistreatment of Africans in the Chinese city of Guangzhou, and the U.S. says African-Americans have been targeted too. Some Africans in the commercial hub have reported being evicted or… Read More ›
China reclassifies dogs as pets, not livestock, in post-coronavirus regulatory push
China has drawn up new guidelines to reclassify dogs as pets rather than livestock, the agriculture ministry said, part of a response to the coronavirus outbreak that the Humane Society called a potential “game changer” in animal welfare. Though dog… Read More ›
Can China return to normalcy while keeping the coronavirus in check?
Life is almost back to normal in much of China. Shops, restaurants, bars, and offices are open for business. Manufacturing activity is picking up. Traffic once again jams the highways of major cities. Three-quarters of China’s workforce was back on… Read More ›
China credibly accused of organ-harvesting atrocity
Last week, the Independent Tribunal into Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience in China issued its final report concluding that China engages in the systematic human-rights atrocity of killing political and other prisoners and harvesting their organs. (I wrote… Read More ›
China’s government is like something out of ‘1984’
The Chinese communist government increasingly poses an existential threat not just to its own 1.4 billion citizens but to the world at large. China is currently in a dangerously chaotic state. And why not, when a premodern authoritarian society leaps… Read More ›
More evidence of China’s horrific abuses in Xinjiang
“His wife wore veils.” “He has one more child than allowed by the family planning policy.” “He prayed after each meal.” These are some of the reasons people in Karakax County in Xinjiang, northwestern China, are being detained in “political… Read More ›
Virus storytellers challenge China’s official narrative
After nearly a week of roaming China’s epidemic-struck city, filming the dead and the sickened in overwhelmed hospitals, the strain of being hounded by both the new virus and the country’s dissent-quelling police started to tell. Chen Qiushi looked haggard… Read More ›
China bars Human Rights Watch director from entering Hong Kong
Hong Kong authorities barred the head of Human Rights Watch from entering the Chinese territory on Sunday, the advocacy group said. Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch’s executive director, had planned to launch the organization’s annual world report in Hong Kong… Read More ›
China’s most populous province to loosen grip on internal migration
China’s southern province of Guangdong will relax the household registration system that restrains internal migration in all its cities except the powerhouses of Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the provincial governor Ma Xingrui announced on Tuesday. The move is part of the… Read More ›
How Taiwan’s elections remind the world – and Hong Kong – that Chinese culture and democracy can co-exist
When the islanders on the windswept Taiwanese archipelago of Matsu go to the polls this Saturday, Lii Wen, the enthusiastic young candidate for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, knows he has little chance of winning a seat. But he still… Read More ›
Carrie Lam vows to work with Chinese envoy, bring Hong Kong back on the ‘right path’
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam said on Tuesday she would work closely with Beijing’s top official in the Asian financial hub to get it back on “the right path” after more than six months of pro-democracy protests. The appointment… Read More ›
Police accuse Hong Kong protesters of inciting minors to commit crimes
Hong Kong police on Monday accused activists in the long-running pro-democracy movement of inciting minors to commit crimes. The claim Monday comes two days before a planned New Year’s Day march that is expected to attract tens of thousands of… Read More ›
Hong Kong protesters tell mainland Chinese traders to leave
Police fought with protesters who marched through a Hong Kong shopping mall Saturday demanding mainland Chinese traders leave the territory in a fresh weekend of anti-government tension. The protest in Sheung Shui, near Hong Kong’s boundary with the mainland, was… Read More ›
The 235 days that rattled China and shook the world
They were 235 days that shook the world, rattled China’s regime and refuted the most pernicious wishful thinking since the appeasement of dictators collapsed eight decades ago. Nothing more momentous happened in 2019 than Hong Kong’s heroic insurrection. It began… Read More ›
For China’s underground churches, this was no easy Christmas
Li Chengju glared at her prison interrogator as he pressed her to renounce her Christian church and condemn her pastor. Her captor warned she would not be so lucky as the pastor, who was locked in secret detention but at… Read More ›
Hong Kong protesters rally in support of Uighurs
Hong Kong riot police pepper sprayed protesters to disperse crowds in the heart of the city’s financial district on Sunday after a largely peaceful rally in support of China‘s ethnic Uighurs turned chaotic. Dozens of police marched across a public… Read More ›
How murder, kidnappings and miscalculation set off Hong Kong’s revolt
Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam says the plan that ignited the revolt in her city was born of a straightforward quest for justice. While on a trip to Taiwan, a Hong Kong man strangled his Hong Kong girlfriend, then returned… Read More ›
China must answer for Xinjiang cultural genocide in court
International law is a vital part of fighting for the Uighur people. The substantial leaks to the New York Times and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists of internal policy documents of the Chinese Communist Party regarding the crackdown on… Read More ›
629 Pakistani girls sold as brides to China
Page after page, the names stack up: 629 girls and women from across Pakistan who were sold as brides to Chinese men and taken to China. The list, obtained by The Associated Press, was compiled by Pakistani investigators determined to… Read More ›
US House approves bill that calls for sanctioning Chinese officials over Muslim detainment camps
The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a bill that would require the Trump administration to toughen its response to China’s crackdown on its Muslim minority, demanding sanctions on senior Chinese officials and export bans. The Uighur Act… Read More ›
Zhu Hailun: The man who was key in China’s detention of 1 million Uighur Muslims
After bloody race riots rocked China’s far west a decade ago, the ruling Communist Party turned to a rare figure in their ranks to restore order: a Han Chinese official fluent in Uighur, the language of the local Turkic Muslim… Read More ›
In defence of the student protesters: Carrie Lam’s stupid mask ban, the repudiation of the Hong Kong court and the continuous necessity of the people’s struggle
On Monday, while the police were trying to dislodge several hundred hard-core protesters who had occupied the Hong Kong Polytechnic University since last week, a Hong Kong Court “found that the government’s controversial mask ban is unconstitutional.” Said ruling indeed,… Read More ›