Soldiers only just started digging through the rubble on this street in the hard-hit city of Dujiangyan on May 14. Debris from at least five apartment blocks is piled four stories high. Shops and a wholesale market have been crushed. Overall, more than 25,000 people are believed to be still trapped in the rubble left by the 7.9 quake. Here, eight bodies are pulled out in less than an hour....
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chinying said her government stood “strongly indignant at and firmly opposed to” the Uighur Human Rights Policy Act of 2019. The proposed law accuses Beijing of “gross violations of universally recognized human rights, including the mass internment of over 1,000,000 Uighurs”—a predominantly Muslim group mostly located in the northwestern Xinjiang province. China has repeatedly denied U.S. charges of wrongdoing in its Uighur policy, and Hua said these policies were “not about human rights, ethnicity or religion, but about fighting violence, terrorism and separatism....
The pandemic put added strain on an already precarious relationship between China and the United States, and when criticized, Beijing regularly shifts the conversation back to America’s actions. Having been accused of using the pandemic to conduct information warfare, China championed its own response and pointed to the high death toll in the United States. “As the world’s No.1 superpower, the U.S. has done much damage to the international anti-epidemic cooperation, which has made the American people and many more in the world pay a heavy price,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Friday....
Relations between China and Taiwan have long been strained over the island’s push for independence, but have grown even more tense amid increasingly aggressive Chinese leadership. Although Taiwan considers itself independent of China—and is recognized as a semi-autonomous state—China has claimed it as its own and views control of the island as essential to its policy of reunification. Amid growing tensions, McMaster said he believes China could be gearing up for military action to take control of the island nation during an appearance on CBS News’ Face the Nation on Sunday—adding that Chinese President Xi Jinping, who secured a historic third term last year, has made it clear he plans to retake Taiwan....
The virus has since spread worldwide, infecting more than 4.4 million people and killing more than 303,000, according to Johns Hopkins University. The issue was quickly politicized, and the pandemic has colored China’s relations with its most prominent rivals and partners. Having contained its own initial outbreak, China pivoted to assist worse-hit nations in Europe and North America. Millions of pieces of equipment and groups of medical personnel were sent abroad to support other nations, in what at first seemed like a significant PR coup for Beijing....
Leaders of Asian Pacific nations agreed to step up on COVID-19 vaccination sharing efforts upon hearing this. A virtual retreat for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders—including U.S. President Joe Biden, Chinese Prime Minister Xi Jinping, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and Russian President Vladimir Putin—gathered in a moment when the Delta variant has spiked infections around the world. “There were two things that came through very strongly from the leaders. One was that this pandemic has a while to run and that there is significant work by all of us to be done, and it needs to look beyond our domestic borders....
But we were being naive. Beijing’s goals are far more sweeping than the chicken-and-monkey metaphor could encompass. Today’s targets are not just domestic media and foreign correspondents, not just our Chinese sources and local assistants. Less than two years before Beijing hosts the 2008 Summer Olympics, authorities are in the midst of a concerted—and disturbing—effort to slam stricter controls on what Chinese know and how they know it. The aim of the recent crackdown is not only to silence individual “troublemakers,” but also to beef up institutional controls over the free flow of information....
Demonstrations initially against a proposed bill that could see Hong Kongers extradited to other parts of China, including the mainland, have since expanded rapidly, with some instances of violence that has been blamed both on rioters and security forces. While Beijing has so far only offered political support for the special administrative region’s government, Chinese Defense Ministry Wu Qian spokesperson warned last week that the military could legally mobilize to “maintain social order,” if needed....
Amid reports Friday that President Donald Trump approved an $8 billion sale of F-16V fighter jets to Taiwan, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying argued that such moves “severely violate” the one-China policy—through which Washington only officially recognizes Beijing over Taipei. She also criticized three joint communiqués that bolstered bilateral ties and saw the U.S. promise to decrease military support for Taiwan. Hua warned the latest actions “constitute interference in China’s internal affairs and undermine China’s sovereignty and core interests....
The new assault vehicles were officially seen for the first time on screen Wednesday, when a report by China’s state broadcaster CCTV showed them being tested during a live-fire exercise somewhere in east China. The footage shows the 122-millimeter guns mounted on the back of modified six-wheeled Dongfeng Mengshi armored vehicles. The Mengshi is China’s answer to the U.S. military’s Humvee. The howitzers were fired during a combined arms exercise conducted by the PLA’s 72nd Group Army, which is part of its Eastern Theater Command, CCTV said....
Michelle Bachelet, the U.N.’s high commissioner for human rights, has sought access to inspect conditions in northwest China for the past year. Last month, her office announced it had secured a trip for May. An advance team arrived in Guangzhou in south China on April 25 to prepare for Bachelet’s visit. The group is quarantined in line with the country’s strict COVID-19 regulations, U.N. Human Rights Office spokesperson Liz Throssell told Newsweek....
The latest saga in the decades-long standoff over Second Thomas Shoal—known as Ayungin in the Philippines and Ren’ai Jiao in China—happened as Philippine boats attempted to resupply a contingent of marines in the Spratly Islands in June, the Philippine Daily Inquirer said in a July 4 report. During a June 21 rotation and resupply mission, China Coast Guard ships No. 4302 and No. 5304 tailed wooden boats headed for BRP Sierra Madre, a former U....
The U.S. government notified Congress Wednesday of the planned sale of advanced torpedoes worth $180 million, prompting protests from Beijing—which does not recognize Taiwan as an independent nation. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told reporters at a briefing Thursday that Beijing had lodged “solemn representations” with the U.S. to complain about the planned sale. Zhao said Beijing firmly opposes arms sales to Taiwan, and warned that the deal could undermine both U....
That is how he became a Sprint Cup champion crew chief. It was 17 years ago when the father of current Late Model driver and part-time NASCAR driver Clay Rogers gave Childers a car to race. Childers said he was horrible, but he rebuilt the car in the offseason and led all the laps in his first race out. He then had a new job in addition to racing himself....
HONG KONG (Reuters) - When the Chinese Super League summer transfer window closed at midnight on Friday, the country’s authorities could feel quietly satisfied and declare their mission to cool the hyper-inflated player market a success. Previous windows had seen the Asian transfer record shattered three times in 18 months and while Anthony Modeste’s move from Cologne to Tianjin Quanjian was the most expensive, it was for a fee far short of the highest paid in China....
China is experiencing a heatwave and drought this year unlike anything seen in decades, with temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius in various regions across the country, according to the state-run news outlet the Global Times. This, coupled with a lack of rain in some provincial capitals, has led to such dry conditions that China’s largest freshwater lake, Poyang Lake, appears to hardly be a body of water at all in some locations....
The Chinese military announced Sunday that the People’s Liberation Army 73rd Group Army recently conducted a live-fire exercise involving multiple models of aircraft and firepower mobilized off of the country’s southeast coast, where Beijing has increasingly asserted its claims to internationally-contested islets in the South China Sea. The drills involved mock targeting of islands and reefs and a senior officer lauded the maneuvers in a statement. “In the exercise, we conducted the training through day and night, set multiple kinds of targets on land, at sea and in the air, and stressed on the tactical coordination in continuous strikes by multiple projectiles,” Zhou Zhirong, a flight commander of the army aviation brigade involved in the training, was quoted as saying....
The system was described in a report that was published online on July 1 and deleted shortly afterwards. However, details were collected by Didi Tang, a Beijing-based reporter for The Times newspaper. The system was reportedly designed by Hefei Comprehensive National Science Centre and involved at least two methods of collecting people’s thought data: facial recognition and brain wave scans. In a study, 43 members of China’s ruling Communist Party (CCP) were told to participate in party lessons while they were monitored, according to The Times report....
Global Times—owned by the People’s Daily newspaper, which is the official publication of the Chinese Communist Party—published an article about Bannon’s arrest on Friday, asking whether the ultimate goal of the administration is “politics or business?” Chinese state media has been at the forefront of Beijing’s confrontation with the U.S., which has been supercharged by the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. Trump and his Republican allies are now pushing for a broad decoupling with China, while even his Democratic opponents are also expressing their desire to contain Beijing....
With just one week to go until the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, “any extreme actions at this stage won’t benefit China,” said Hung Tzu-chieh, a military researcher with Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research (INDSR). “Any actions now would only further complicate Joe Biden’s task and lower the chances of a rapprochement,” Hung told Newsweek on Wednesday. China’s foreign ministry threatened “countermeasures” this week, and the chief of the Communist Party-owned tabloid Global Times said Beijing needed to “strike back firmly and hard” after Mike Pompeo’s recent policy pronouncements in favor of Taipei....
