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Every evening, as regular and obstreperous as a rooster, the People’s Liberation Army (P.L.A.) soldiers sing from the barracks outside my Beijing home, a chorus of teenage troops reminding the neighborhood when it’s dinner time:“Unity is strength, unity is strength, The strength is iron, the strength is steel, It’s harder than iron, stronger than steel. Open fire at Fascism
Hong Kong is ‘being eviscerated’01/02/2021|6min Sky News host Chris Kenny says Hong Kong is “being eviscerated” before the world’s eyes as China continues to take full control of the city. Hong Kong has been part of China’s ‘One Country, Two Systems’ policy since the British handed over control in 1997. The original handover of Hong Kong stipulated that under the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ policy, the island would not fully come under the rule of the People’s Republic of China until 2047. However, security laws passed in 2020 in Hong Kong have begun a premature takeover ...
In 2012, Australia's federal government led by Prime Minister Julia Gillard released a White Paper on "Australia in the Asian Century." This included a list of ambitious but worthwhile targets for Asia-engagement by 2025, none of which now appears attainable except for reaching national income of about A$73,000 per person. But this is not causing the concern that ordinarily it might, since it was also in 2012 that a ripple started in east Asia that has turned into a tsunami of tension and change in the region – over-riding the strategic planning not only of Australia but of every other sign...
Australia’s tourism and education exports to China would appear most in the firing line. So it proved, if not for the pandemic as much as politics. Wild speculation about the source of Covid-19 didn’t help, any more than Beijing’s brittle attitude to media criticism. China slapped tariffs on imports of Australian barley, beef and wine, banning seafood, timber and coal. “The moves follow a familiar playbook”, wrote Darren Lim and Victor Ferguson, “in which the Chinese government relies on technical regulatory measures to restrict exports, while denying any retaliation is taking pla...