2021-06-23
Hong Kong's outspoken Apple Daily newspaper says it expects to fold in the next few days after a national security raid last week that saw five executives arrested for "colluding with a foreign power." The 26-year-old tabloid's assets were frozen, leaving it with no money to pay its staff. Known for a mix of lurid stories of traffic accidents and sex scandals, as well as painstaking investigative journalism and incisive political analysis, Apple Daily fell victim to an ever-broadening crackdown on public criticism of the government under a draconian national security law imposed on Hong Kong by the ruling Chinese Communist Party from July 1, 2020.
2021-06-11
Ungok Ranch, the meat and poultry farm that has served Kim Jong Un and the previous two generations of North Korea’s ruling family, is hawking chicken embryos as “nutritional supplements” and diverting beef raised for elite officials to the black market to stay in operation in the face of coronavirus-related budget cuts. Despite warnings of food shortages, the ranch is expected to provide meat to the elites, the only North Koreans who regularly eat meat, so it has turned to creative ways to stay afloat without government support.
2021-06-03
Five years after the Chinese Communist Party scrapped its controversial one-child policy, the CCP unveiled new plans to boost flagging birth rates and reverse population aging by raising the official limit on the number of children per couple from two to three. The move raised complaints about government interference in people's lives and doubts that couples can afford more children when many struggle to put even one child through school.
2021-05-31
North Korea has distributed a year's worth of food supplies up front to law enforcement and other security agencies in order to solidify loyalty to the regime at a time of shortages across the country, made worse by a shutdown of trade with China for coronavirus prevention. The handouts of corn and unpolished rice caused grumbling among local officials who must face hungry civilians in the knowledge that much of the grain will be sold off by the privileged recipients.
2021-05-27
Actor and former professional wrestling champion John Cena posted a video message on social media in which he apologized in Chinese for his "mistake" in describing the self-governing democratic island of Taiwan, over which China claims sovereignty, as a country while promoting the latest "Fast and Furious" film. The 17-time WWE professional wrestling champion was the latest Westerner to trigger China's nationalistic population and prickly government, which uses the lure of its huge market as a weapon to get its way on unrelated political issues.
2021-05-26
The people of Myanmar have been hit this year by a double whammy of a deadly new wave of the coronavirus and a military coup, which added political turmoil and military violence to their already difficult lives and poverty as result of decades of war in border regions and mismanagement by the same army that seized power on Feb. 1.
2021-05-21
The factories that drive China's dominant share of global production of polysilicon, a key component of the photovoltaic cells in solar panels that convert sunlight into energy, are nearly all based in Xinjiang. Recent studies have linked Xinjiang’s booming solar energy sector to job-training programs accused of using Uyghur involuntary labor, forcing the world to weigh the environmental benefits of clean energy against the cost in human suffering.
2021-05-07
China, a relative latecomer in space exploration, derives great national pride from its hard-charging program, including plans to build a space station by late 2022. But a 21-ton stage of the Long March 5B rocket that launched the “Heavenly Harmony” core module into low Earth orbit on April 29 is now tumbling through space and is set to make an uncontrolled re-entry between May 8-12.
2021-04-29
China's Communist Party, with a long history of revising and whitewashing history to serve contemporary political needs, is sparing no effort to glorify its past and cover up tragic periods in the run up to its 100th anniversary on July 1, 2021. People who present a less-than-rosy view of the CCP's past can face legal punishment for distorting party history or defaming Communist heroes. The Cyberspace Administration of China recently launched a website and hotline for citizens to report “historical nihilism,” defined as any departure from the party line.
2021-04-26
Chinese-born director Chloe Zhao won an Oscar for best director for her movie Nomadland, but her pathbreaking achievement went largely unreported in China's state media, while government censors deleted references to her win from social media. Beijing, which often seeks to take credit for the achievements of Chinese people around the world, took umbrage at Zhao, 39, for an interview she gave with Filmmaker magazine in 2013, where she called her native country "a place where there are lies everywhere."
