In their 2022 book Sinostan, Raffaello Pantucci and Alexandros Petersen saw Central Asia as China’s “inadvertent empire”. If that is true – and the five-country region embracing Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan (informally called the C5) certainly sits at the heart of China’s Belt and Road Initiative – then Beijing could not have chosen…
They included Chan Po-ying, former chairwoman of the now-defunct League of Social Democrats opposition group, and activist Virginia Fung King-man. Police said they stopped and searched five men and two women, aged between 17 and 79, for allegedly disrupting order in the area around Great George Street and East Point Road. They were removed from…
The 1989 crackdown saw the Chinese Communist Party deploy troops against peaceful demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. (Wiki pic) WASHINGTON: Beijing’s censorship cannot erase memories of its 1989 military assault on peaceful demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, US secretary of state Marco Rubio said on Wednesday, ahead of the anniversary of China’s violent suppression there. Rubio’s statement…
A permanent exhibition showcasing Hong Kong’s history reopened on Wednesday after a major revamp that emphasised the city’s roots in Chinese culture, with visitors expressing mixed reactions to the changes. The “Hong Kong Story” exhibition – which opened in 2001 and closed for renovation in late 2020 – has been reduced from two storeys to…
Two former leaders of a now-disbanded alliance behind Hong Kong’s annual Tiananmen Square vigil have a case to answer in a high-profile trial after judges ruled the evidence supported prosecutors’ allegations that the activists incited others to overthrow the Communist Party leadership. Three High Court judges on Friday found that the evidence appeared to suggest…
A disbanded alliance behind Hong Kong’s Tiananmen Square vigil had only intended to promote democracy and greater political freedom when it advocated the abolition of the mainland’s one-party rule, a defence lawyer has said in a high-profile national security trial. He said the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China did…
Hong Kong prosecutors have argued that the national security trial of a now-disbanded alliance behind the Tiananmen Square vigil is neither politically motivated nor intended to punish dissidents, stressing that they will not ask the court to determine the merits of any campaign or criticism against Beijing. In his opening speech on Monday at West…
A jailed activist has lost a judicial review against a Hong Kong Correctional Services Department rule that prohibits female inmates from wearing shorts in summer, with the court ruling that the women’s standard prison uniform was carefully designed and did not constitute discrimination. High Court judge Russell Coleman said on Tuesday that there was “little…
As protests sweep Iran, a powerful image likened to Tiananmen’s ‘Tank Man’ surfaces, echoing the bazaari class’s historic defiance amid economic collapse and rising calls for regime change. As theprotests spreading across Iran stretch into their third day, one image from the demonstrations has gone viral across social media. It shows a brave protester sitting…
Former Hong Kong media boss Jimmy Lai Chee-ying’s “rabid hatred” of the Communist Party of China has led him down a “thorny path”, according to the judges who found him guilty on three counts of national security offences. The 855-page full judgment released on Monday started with the “rags-to-riches” success story of Lai, but was…