The national identity of Australians in Hong Kong has evolved since the city’s 19th century urban beginnings The cover of An Australian in China, by George Morrison. Photo: Handout
Hong Kong has accommodated Australians since its mid-19th century urban beginnings. Whatever their ultimate ethnic origins, Australians in this part of the world are - for the most part - immediately recognisable, as soon as they open their mouths. That distinctive twangy nasal accent remains a dead giveaway. But what was the resident Australian community like in the past?
Australian women were readily recognisable - enterprising business types were, and remain, a perennial local feature. In early times, many came as performers with travelling theatre companies, got beached by unkind fate, then worked precariously on the fringes of the hospitality industry. Others ended up working in brothels to stay afloat.
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Fighting on disputed Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan border leaves 13 dead The two former Soviet republics blamed each other for escalating the conflict that has simmered for decades. File photo: AFP
Kyrgyzstan said Friday that its death toll in armed clashes with Central Asian rival Tajikistan had reached 13, after the pair agreed a ceasefire following the worst fighting along their disputed border in years.
Kyrgyzstan s health ministry said that it had suffered 134 casualties including 13 fatalities , with two of the injured in a serious condition. A girl born in 2008 was among the casualties, it said.
Over 10,000 citizens had been evacuated from two districts bordering Tajikistan where the fighting had been most intense, Kyrgyzstan also said.
All foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong will have to be vaccinated before their contracts can be renewed, the government announced on Friday as it ordered them to undergo mandatory Covid-19 testing by May 9. The tough new policy in response to the worrying emergence of coronavirus variants in the city means domestic helpers applying for work visas from overseas will have to be vaccinated first, with details to be announced later by labour and.
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Global supply chain continues to shift away from China, but it remains the top sourcing location Workers in Vietnam perform quality checks on smartphones. The country was recently named a top-three sourcing market by a quarter of respondents in a global poll. Photo: Bloomberg
Although China has rebounded relatively strongly from the pandemic, having brought it under control much faster than the West, long-term diversification trends in the global supply chain are continuing to shift away from the world s second-largest economy, according to a survey of more than 700 firms across the world in March.
In 2019, 96 per cent of US-based companies and 100 per cent of Europe-based companies listed China as one of their top-three sourcing countries, but those proportions respectively dropped to 77 and 80 per cent in the first quarter of this year, according to Qima, a provider of supply-chain-compliance solutions that conducted the survey.
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Chinese embassy in Tokyo deletes anti-Semitic, anti-US tweet after backlash from Japanese Twitter users The online spat came at a time of heightened tensions between China and Japan. Photo: Shutterstock Images
China s embassy in Tokyo has deleted anti-Semitic tweet that portrayed the US as death knocking on the door of Muslim countries after it triggered a war of words with Japanese Twitter users.
The cartoon, posted late on Thursday afternoon, features the Grim Reaper, dressed in the Stars and Stripes, knocking on Egypt s door, while the doors behind, namely Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, are open with blood pouring from the doorway.