Chinese authorities have formally charged outspoken Uighur scholar and human rights activist Ilham Tohti (Uyghur: ئىلھام توختى, Chinese: 伊力哈木土赫提) with inciting separatism. Arrested in Beijing in January, Tohti is currently being held in China’s far western Xinjiang region and has been denied access to a lawyer on the grounds that his case involves “state secrets.” […]
President Obama met informally with exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama at the White House on February 21. The meeting took place in defiance of warnings from Beijing that it would “grossly interfere in the internal affairs of China, seriously violate norms governing international relations and severely impair China-U.S. relations.” As expected, the meeting […]
An estimated 6000 journalists and free speech advocates marched in Hong Kong on February 23 in protest against the erosion of press freedom and free expression in the Chinese territory. Organized by the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) and other media groups, the demonstration included a rally outside Hong Kong chief executive C.Y. Leung’s office […]
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Chinese leaders in Beijing on February 14 and 15 as part of a six-day Asian trip that also included visits to South Korea and Indonesia. Kerry then headed to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates for talks on Middle East issues before returning to Washington. Among […]
China has escalated its war on international news media with stepped-up harassment of foreign journalists and blocking of foreign news websites. This has sparked renewed discord between the United States and China on issues of press freedom and media access but no concrete action as yet from the United States. China’s record on press freedom […]
In mid-January, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) announced that its foreign exchange reserves had grown by a breathtaking $157 billion in the fourth quarter of 2013. That influx of reserves brought annual growth for 2013 to $508 billion (the largest calendar-year increase ever) and pushed the total amount of China’s reserves toward the $4 […]
Over the weekend of January 25-26, the Chinese government sentenced human rights activist Xu Zhiyong (许志永) to four years in prison and announced its charges against detained Uighur scholar Ilham Tohti (Uighur: ئىلھام توختى, Chinese: 伊力哈木土赫提). Xu was sentenced following a one-day show trial in which in which he wasn’t allowed to call defense witnesses […]
China has been on its very worst behavior this week. As prominent human rights activist Xu Zhiyong (许志永) went on trial January 22, Chinese police dragged protestors away from the scene and harassed foreign journalists attempting to report on the trial. Xu’s trial is the first in a series of trials for activists associated with […]
Police detained this supporter of Xu Zhiyong who had gathered with other activists outside the court Human Rights Watch accused China on Tuesday of failing to meet its people’s demands for political reform and for its pursuit of anti-corruption activists — despite its declared crackdown on graft. The New York based organization accused the Chinese […]
China is engaged in a soft-power war with America and the West. America may not have noticed this, but China has. While America takes its soft power around the world for granted, China struggles to win even the “hearts and minds” of its own citizens. “Soft power” is defined by Harvard political scientist Joseph Nye […]
Relationship managers across Asia have a potently difficult year ahead as news reports continue to highlight actions and words that are anything but conducive to cooperation and understanding between regional states. When a former British ambassador to North Korea writes an op-ed in the Daily Telegraph titled “Are China, Japan and South Korea fanning the […]
Prominent Chinese legal scholar and human rights activist Xu Zhiyong (许志永) will go on trial January 22 on charges of disrupting public order. A founder of the pro-democracy New Citizens’ Movement (中国新公民运动) and an outspoken advocate of greater transparency in Chinese government, Xu has been detained since July 2013. Xu and his lawyers believe that […]
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