Story Archive
2021-08-18
The official Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece, the People's Daily, among others in China, have suggested that the Taliban have seized power in Afghanistan using the military tactics of PRC founder Mao Zedong, who recommended "surrounding the cities from the countryside." But some netizens discussing the dramatic scenes in Kabul focused on the fear, repression and destruction wrought on their societies by the Taliban in the 1990s and Mao's Communists some four decades earlier.
2021-08-11
The Chinese-funded Lower Sesan 2 Dam in northeastern Cambodia has displaced thousands of indigenous and ethnic minority people and destroyed the livelihoods of many others, according to an Aug. 10 report by Human Rights Watch. HRW faulted Beijing and Cambodia for failing to provide adequate compensation to villagers for widespread harm done in building the dam, a project under Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) of investment in infrastructure. The environmental damage and the troubles of the displaced villagers also showed that BRI funding comes with "no oversight," the New York-based rights group said. Cambodia accused HRW of trying to "subvert Cambodia's development to nurture conflict to serve a real political agenda.”
2021-08-04
The International Olympic Committee is investigating why Chinese cyclists Bao Shanju and Zhong Tianshi wore lapel pins featuring China's late supreme leader Mao Zedong (1893-1976) when they appeared on the podium for their gold medal ceremony at the Tokyo Olympics. The images of Mao badges on Bao and Zhong, who won gold in the women's cycling team sprint, were swiftly censored by Chinese state media, but the incident highlighted the contrast between residual reverence in China for the Communist PRC's founder and his record of death and destruction. "Imagine a German athlete wearing a Hitler badge or a Russian athlete with a Stalin badge," quipped one exiled Chinese commentator.