The trial for one of two Canadians detained in China took place behind closed doors, lasted just two hours and ended without a verdict, according to multiple local reports Friday.
Canadian officials were barred from attending the trial of Michael Spavor, who was being tried in the Chinese city of Dandong on espionage charges after over two years in detention.
The ongoing food-safety problem has never been more important, nor more human-centered.
A nexus can be formed among seemingly unrelated things during unusual times. Such is the case with dogs, COVID-19, mental health, politicians, and China’s history of peddling toxic products.
Americans of all ages have experienced a harmful lack of social interaction in the last year, with no definitive end in sight. For millions, the best therapy is a dog.
Some prominent activists say they’ve been tracked down several times
It has been more than two years since Ziba Murat has heard the voice of her ailing mother, Gulshan Abbas, a retired physician who was abruptly ‘disappeared’ in September 2018 in Xinjiang province, China.
While exact facts and figures are hard to come by, it is widely reported that at least three million Uighurs in China have been forced into concentration camps, which Beijing calls ‘reeducation’ facilities for stamping out ‘Islamic extremism’. The scale of the ongoing atrocities is bone-chilling: from forced sterilizations and sexual violence to beatings and indoctrination.
Canada’s embassy in Beijing has been notified that court hearings for Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig have been scheduled for March 19 and 22 respectively, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau said in a statement on March 17.
Garneau said that Canadian officials are “seeking continued consular access” to the two Canadians and that no further information can be provided due to privacy concerns.
So far President 10% hasn’t been much help to his BFF Justin, our China class must be getting antsy.
“We see Xi’s new demands in his intransigent position going into Thursday’s meeting in Anchorage. China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, and his subordinate, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, look as if they are going to Alaska not to engage in meaningful discussion, but to lecture Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and to dictate the terms of the relationship going forward.”
Canadian group echoes China’s party line on Uyghurs after getting $160,000 in public funds
A Toronto-based community group that has received more than $160,000 in federal funding has again issued a statement echoing China’s official line on a contentious issue, this time condemning Parliament’s recent Uyghur-genocide motion.
A prominent Canadian advocate for the Uyghur people noted that his own group has sought for years to obtain Ottawa’s financial help, with no success.
Canada’s China class at work.
A poll by the Angus-Reid Institute of 5,004 Canadians from Feb. 26 to March 3 has found that opinions of China sit at record lows and that there can be no moving forward until two detained Canadians are released from prison.
Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were arrested by Chinese authorities on Dec. 10, 2018, shortly after the detention in Canada of Chinese Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. extradition warrant. Here are the results from the poll.
With the threat of a third wave looming, and governments reluctant to relinquish power, Sheila wondered if the actions first taken by the Chinese Communist Party was all something of a psy-op — an act of 3D chess — put forward by the Chinese government to drive western economies to a standstill.
“There’s no question China has been trying to crack down on the internet,” he said. “Good luck. That’s sort of like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.”
There were 22.5 million internet users in China in early 2001. By last year, that figure had ballooned to 989 million – more than three times the entire population of the United States and exceeding the 639 million internet users in India, according to the state-run China Internet Network Information Centre.
The National Basketball Association has climbed into bed with the Chinese Communist Party because the nation it rules is a huge market that seems to be in love with basketball. So eager to please the ruling communists is the NBA that fans with protest signs supporting Hong Kong democracy protestors were kicked out of games.
The NBA does, however, love protests against the United States, especially Black Lives Matter protests, even though those have led to death and destruction in this country.
David Asher, the former lead investigator into the state department’s investigation into the origins of the coronavirus, believes the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and was the result of an accident by the Chinese military, which was researching a bioweapon at the time.
A United States government regulator overseeing the communications industry labelled five Chinese telecommunications companies a “threat to national security” on Friday, including Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corp.
Announcing the designation, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said that telecommunications products and services provided by the companies posed “an unacceptable risk to US national security or the security and safety of US persons.”
Included alongside Huawei and ZTE in the list were Hytera Communications Corp, Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology, and Dahua Technology Co.
Good news, not for the hostages, not for Trudeau but then who cares about Trudeau.
China’s military buildup threatens its neighbors and regional stability in the Far East. Beijing’s aggressive military expansion has made its navy the largest in the world, and it has been flexing its maritime muscle in the South China Sea and Indo-Pacific region. It continues to build its ballistic missile capacities as well.
Further, China’s expertise in cyber-warfare is both well-established and feared. It has allowed the PRC to hack into computers and steal intellectual property, as well as other cyber crimes.
Former prime minister Stephen Harper says the world order has returned to a kind of Cold War between two superpowers, this time between the United States and China.
And while middle-power countries like Canada are part of the rivalry, Harper told a defence conference on Friday they lack the economic and security clout to do much on their own to shape the outcome.
Remember when we had an adult as PM?
The Chinese embassy in London has criticised the BBC following a documentary about Chinese disinformation campaigns.
There have also recently been a series of denials from Beijing over reports into forced imprisonment of its minority Uighur population – these have included baseless accusations against media and human rights organisations.
In the latest attack, an official falsely claimed a Uighur interviewee on a BBC programme was an actress.
