Yi-Zheng Lian

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The Chinese Communist Party Is 100. It’s Not Going Anywhere.

MundoAsia,

On July 1, the Chinese Communist Party celebrates its centenary. For those in the West banking on its demise, they’re sorely mistaken. Because while the party may have committed some significant missteps throughout its rule, it is still a formidable force that will remain a threat to the United States and Western allies for years to come.

The party has fared exceptionally well compared with other totalitarian parties and the states they built. Those who look to Russia for a historical parallel for China’s Communist Party mistake its staying power. Lenin’s party and the Soviet Union were in death throes at a comparable point in their life cycle.…  Seguir leyendo »

Pro-democracy candidates and their supporters during primaries in Hong Kong in July ahead of planned legislative elections. On Sunday, scores of organizers and participants in the primaries were charged with conspiring to subvert the Hong Kong and mainland authorities. Credit Lam Yik/Reuters

MundoAsia,

On Sunday, the Hong Kong authorities charged 47 pro-democracy activists with “conspiracy to commit subversion” against the Chinese government under the national security law it imposed on the city last summer. Beijing must be happy with the catch, which elegantly nets under a single accusation both advocates of outright independence for Hong Kong and the city’s old-school loyal opposition. The People’s Republic of China is safe now. Glory to its leader.

But what exactly was these criminals’ crime? Organizing or taking part in primaries in July ahead of legislative elections initially scheduled for September, and for daring to strategize. Were the pro-democracy camp to win a majority, some participants said at the time, it could vote down the government’s budget, possibly forcing it to resign.…  Seguir leyendo »

Claudia Mo, one of the pro-democracy members of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council who resigned in protest earlier this month. With China now firmly in control of LegCo, the body will soon become another rubber-stamping organ of the Chinese Communist Party. Credit Jerome Favre/EPA, via Shutterstock

MundoAsia,

As of a couple of weeks ago, Hong Kong no longer has a formal political opposition. The entire pro-democracy camp resigned from Hong Kong’s Legislative Council in protest over a resolution by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress in Beijing that legalized the removal of four opposition legislators — a decision Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, had essentially requested.

Is that what Mrs. Lam had in mind on Wednesday when in her latest annual policy address, she claimed that she “seeks to restore Hong Kong’s constitutional order”? Or when she reaffirmed a “steadfast determination to implement ‘one country, two systems’” — the governance system that is supposed to protect the city’s semi-autonomy from Beijing — only then to chide that “some people’s awareness of the ‘one country’ principle has yet to be enhanced”?…  Seguir leyendo »

Trump Is Wrong About TikTok. China’s Plans Are Much More Sinister

MundoAméricaMundoAsia, ,

The Trump administration announced on Friday that starting on Sunday, it will ban the popular short-video app TikTok from app stores in the United States. The issue, the administration says, is that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is Chinese, and Washington is worried that the personal data of the many millions of Americans using the app could be siphoned off to China and misused.

To some, that concern may seem excessive or its timing politically opportunistic, but the danger posed by TikTok is real: In fact, it is only a stand-in for far greater risks.

The problem isn’t just TikTok. The tech giant Huawei — which the U.S.…  Seguir leyendo »

A police officer in Hong Kong on Tuesday standing guard near protesters opposing Beijing’s new national security legislation for the city. The law criminalizes, among other things, threats to China’s national unity, including calls for Hong Kong to become independent from the mainland. Credit Vincent Yu/Associated Press

MundoAsia,

After many years of rejecting the people of Hong Kong’s persistent demands for genuine universal suffrage and other rights, China made its position clear again on Tuesday with the legislative equivalent of a cracking head bash.

It chose the eve of July 1, a triple anniversary — of the birth of the Chinese Communist Party (1921), the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China (1997) and a break-in of the city’s legislature by pro-democracy activists (2019) — to pass a draconian national security law that will forever harm Hong Kong’s political freedoms and hobble its economic relations with the rest of the world.…  Seguir leyendo »

Chinese police with items seized from a store suspected of trafficking exotic meats in Guangde, central China, last month. Credit Anti-Poaching Special Squad, via Associated Press

MundoAsia, , , , ,

The new coronavirus disease has a name now: COVID-19. That took a while. The virus’s genome was sequenced within two weeks or so of its appearance, but for many weeks more, we didn’t know what to call it or the disease it causes.

For a time, in some quarters, the disease went by “Wuhan pneumonia,” after the city in central China where the first human infections were detected. But guidelines from the World Health Organization, which christened COVID-19 recently, discourage naming diseases after locations or people, among other things, to avoid “unintended negative impacts by stigmatizing certain communities.”

Indeed. On Jan.…  Seguir leyendo »

President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan and her running mate William Lai Ching-Te, second from left, at a rally in Taoyuan on Wednesday. Credit Tyrone Siu/Reuters

MundoAsia,

This Saturday, voters in Taiwan will choose their next president and the national Legislature. Tsai Ing-wen, the incumbent president who is detested by the Chinese government because of her tough — if, until recently, low-key — anti-China stance, has chosen as her running mate William Lai Ching-Te, who openly promotes independence for Taiwan. That was a risky move, and it may well help her chances.

Ms. Tsai’s popularity rating was languishing in the midteens as recently as last summer, but all recent polls place her safely ahead of her main opponent, the pro-China, populist maverick Han Kuo-yu.

A third candidate, the veteran — and stale — politician James Soong Chu-yu, is largely irrelevant.…  Seguir leyendo »

Protesters amid tear gas near China’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong last month. Credit Tyrone Siu/Reuters

MundoAsia, ,

The effects of the Hong Kong protests are spreading — to bakeries, bandits and Beijing.

As messages supporting the demonstrations began appearing on the pastry skin of seasonal mooncakes, opposition to the protests suddenly took the form of muscle from the local mafia. The protesters, for their part, have recently taken to pointedly marching toward mainland China’s formal representation in the city — and to accusing both the Hong Kong police and the Chinese authorities in Beijing of enlisting criminals to do their dirty work.

On Monday, the spokesman of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, China’s top outpost in the city, finally broke its studied silence about the massive, monthslong revolts.…  Seguir leyendo »

US Trade in Goods with China

MundoAsia

The endgame in the trade war between China and the United States seems near. President Trump, betting with real currency — American strength — apparently has the upper hand, and the concessions President Xi Jinping is likely to make won’t be mere tokens. When — if? — an agreement is finally announced, Mr. Trump will surely fire off bragging tweets, partly to shore up his credentials for a second term, amid personal and policy troubles. For Mr. Xi, almost any deal could mean a very serious loss of face.

Mr. Xi assumed power when China was still riding high on its so-called economic miracle (and the United States remained mired in the aftereffects of the 2008-9 recession).…  Seguir leyendo »

Supporters of the opposition party Kuomintang in Taipei, Taiwan, on Sunday. The ruling Democratic Progressive Party suffered a setback in local elections on Saturday. Credit Ann Wang/Reuters

MundoAsia,

Democratic countries that worry about the Chinese government’s attempts to influence their politics should study its success in this weekend’s elections in Taiwan.

The many races — for some 11,000 positions in villages, towns and counties across the island — were something like midterms and widely seen as a prelude to the next presidential election, scheduled for early 2020. By my count, candidates friendly to Beijing will now occupy 16 of the 24 top posts that were contested, up from the current six.

China has denied any meddling. But in the last several years, it has intensified its efforts to destabilize the Taiwanese government led by the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (D.P.P.).…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia

Last month, the international law enforcement agency Interpol lost its chief, Meng Hongwei, and set out looking for him. It turns out that Mr. Meng, also a vice minister of public security in China, was arrested by Chinese security personnel upon returning to China (Interpol is headquartered in France). It took nearly two weeks to find out why: Partly in response to Interpol’s demands for information, the internal oversight organ of the Chinese Communist Party announced that Mr. Meng was under investigation for being “possibly involved in illegal activities.” Interpol then received Mr. Meng’s resignation.

Mr. Meng’s trial may not take place for months, but the C.C.P.…  Seguir leyendo »

President Xi Jinping of China at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing this month. Credit Andy Wong/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

MundoAsia

All summer there have been uncommon signs that opposition to President Xi Jinping may be growing in China, even Beijing itself. He featured less prominently than usual in official headlines. Important members of the Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.) criticized his straitjacketed response to the trade war with the United States. A national scandal over several hundred thousand faulty vaccines broke while Mr. Xi was on a tour in Africa to sell his pet project, the One Belt, One Road initiative.

It was such an extraordinary series of mishaps and policy errors and then complaints that one wondered whether they were a concerted, if veiled, attack on Mr.…  Seguir leyendo »

Edward Leung, center, shown in 2016, is a leading independence activist now serving a six-year prison sentence for “rioting.”CreditAnthony Wallace/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

MundoAsia

More than two dozen of Hong Kong’s young pro-democracy activists have been convicted of minor offenses in recent weeks, and some have received lengthy jail terms. Most are being put away for their involvement in the so-called Fishball Revolution, a spontaneous protest that turned violent on the first night of Chinese New Year in 2016 in the popular shopping district of Mong Kok.

On Monday, Edward Leung, the charismatic former spokesman of a young party that has called for Hong Kong’s independence from mainland China, was given a six-year jail sentence for mere skirmishes with the police. He is one of the leading figures among those known here as “localists”: activists, many of them separatists, who cut their political teeth during the 2014 Umbrella Movement.…  Seguir leyendo »

Catholics praying in Beijing on Jan. 30, two days before new repressive regulations of religion went into force in China. Credit Roman Pilipey/European Pressphoto Agency

MundoAsiaInternacionalIglesia Católica

On Feb. 1, the same day that new repressive regulations of religion went into force in China, the Vatican took a deep bow before Beijing. After long resisting, it finally agreed to recognize several hack bishops designated by the Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.), even sidelining two of its own long-serving appointees for the occasion.

Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, the outspoken, blogging, 86-year-old retired archbishop of Hong Kong, had recently flown to Vatican City to personally plead the case of the two bishops to the pope himself. How nettlesome. He was shoved off, and has since been called an “obstacle” to a deal between the Vatican and Beijing.…  Seguir leyendo »

A lone yellow umbrella, the symbol of the Umbrella Movement in 2014, among placards last May marking the 20th anniversary of the return of Hong Kong to China. Credit Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

MundoAsia,

One could say that long before 1997, the year that Britain handed Hong Kong back to China, the leaders of the city’s major pro-democracy parties had come to a tacit understanding with the Chinese government. The pan-dems, as these politicians are known here, would support the absorption of Hong Kong into a greater, unified Chinese state on the understanding that in time Beijing would grant Hong Kong genuine electoral democracy. That, at least, seemed to be the intention driving Hong Kong’s foundational legal text, the Basic Law.

Twenty years later, the Chinese government, apparently bolstered by its newfound wealth and might, seems to have reneged on these terms.…  Seguir leyendo »

Construction on the West Kowloon railway terminus station in Hong Kong, slated to open in late 2018. Plans are underway to place an immigration and customs checkpoint inside that would be operated by mainland China security personnel and enforce Chinese law. Credit Bobby Yip/Reuters

MundoAsia,

Not that slowly and very steadily, the Chinese government is making political inroads in Hong Kong.

Over the past year or so, it maneuvered to expel pro-democracy legislators from Hong Kong’s lawmaking body, sidelined a popular candidate for the city’s top post to give the job to a proven hard-liner and got local high schools to beam to their students an ideologue’s speech about the Chinese Communist Party’s latest national congress. Now it is demanding that the Hong Kong legislature, known as LegCo, pass a law, modeled after one in force on the mainland, to enforce respect for the Chinese national anthem.…  Seguir leyendo »

A student union member makes more space on the so-called Democracy Wall at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, in September. The posted signs advocate for the territory’s independence. Credit Anthony Wallace/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

MundoAsia,

Hong Kong’s universities reopened in September to a small on-campus fracas that soon ignited into a virulent controversy about the future of the most basic freedoms in the territory.

It started when a student from mainland China at Chinese University of Hong Kong tore down posters calling for the city’s independence from the so-called Democracy Wall, a space for free expression under the management of a student union. The university’s president, previously thought to be liberal-leaning, asked for the signs’ removal, suggesting that the very notion of independence was illegal under Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, known as the Basic Law.

Yet, Article 27 of the Basic Law stipulates, among other things, that “Hong Kong residents shall have freedom of speech, of the press and of publication.”…  Seguir leyendo »

Hong Kong's three leadership candidates, from left: John Tsang, Carrie Lam-Cheng Yuet-Ngor and Woo Kok-hing before facing off in their first televised debate in Hong Kong this month.

MundoAsia, ,

The more formidable challenger is John Tsang Chun-wah, Mr. Leung’s former finance secretary, whose folksy style and smooth P.R. skills contrast with Ms. Lam’s stern and strait-jacketed ways. Mr. Tsang has jokingly called the chief executive position a “thankless, rotten job.” His tickling likeness to the mustachioed Pringles character has earned him the endearing nickname Uncle Chips. Mr. Tsang’s platform promotes conciliation between the government and the various opposition forces, a popular view. He leads Ms. Lam by some 20 percentage points in many recent polls.

The pro-democracy camp, which has no credible candidate of its own but is eager to see Ms.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalEconomía

There, they said it: China is not a market economy.

In December, 15 years after China’s accession to the World Trade Organization, the European Union, the United States and Japan formally refused to grant Beijing the coveted label, denying it important concessions on tariffs and other trade restrictions.

This is partly a response to economic distortions caused by government intervention, including an excess supply of steel, which China exports and dumps in advanced industrialized countries, harming local producers and workers. China’s many high-profile moves to open up its markets in recent years turn out to have been half-hearted, if not intentional hoodwinking.…  Seguir leyendo »

A pro-democracy demonstrator standing on a banner depicting Leung Chun-ying during a rally outside his residence in Hong Kong this month. Credit Anthony Wallace/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

MundoAsia,

In the quiet of a recent Friday afternoon, Hong Kong’s hard-line leader, Leung Chun-ying, announced in a subdued, sometimes hesitant, voice that he would not seek a second term as chief executive. He cited the need for more time with his family: One of Mr. Leung’s daughters has long been afflicted with mental-health issues.

Within minutes, the news had inundated local media, and the political opposition — which won nearly 55 percent of the open seats in recent legislative elections — was cheering. Even a good part of the pro-government camp seemed to give a collective sigh of relief.

For a leader with persistently low approval ratings, Mr.…  Seguir leyendo »