China has stopped renewing passports and issuing new ones to Chinese citizens since July 30, 2021. However, that’s not enough for the government to crack down on people escaping the country. Today China just announced it will strict limit unnecessary overseas travel for Chinese citizens to prevent the virus being brought into the country.
“Don’t go out unless necessary, don’t leave the country unless necessary, don’t be born unless necessary,” one popular comment in reaction to the news on Weibo, a Chinese social media like Twitter.
While witnessing the chaos and dysfunction in the lockdown of Shanghai, fears rise over new government-enforced lockdowns — especially in the capital Beijing, where Covid cases are rising.
Today’s announcement of travel ban extinguished the hope to escape for those who still hold valid passports.
China is watching all those international sanctions on Russia, and opposition and protests against Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Putin’s power is being challenged like never before. Will China have a second thought about force unification of Taiwan?
As Russia-Ukraine war escalates, China is on pins and needles, as Xi and Putin just issued a joint statement saying that the relationship between China and Russia has “no forbidden zones”.
As China’s Winter Olympics presents a picture of peace and prosperity, a TikTok video revealed a woman chained around her neck, secured with a lock and affixed to the wall in a shack that opens up to the exterior. She wears a light sweater despite the January cold and looks haggard and her hair hangs lankly.
“This world doesn’t want me,” the woman can be heard saying.
Netizens has been calling for justice: Who really is she? Who and why chained her? Had she been abused or trafficked, like being sold as a bride under fraud or coercion? How had she managed to birth eight children under strict national birth policies that until 2016 had restricted families to only one child?
While all the tech stocks plummeting since the beginning of this new year, Omicron keeps spiraling. Life is already harder when we expect it to get better this year.
Peng Shuai, a 35-year-old Chinese tennis player and former world doubles No.1, published a long post on Weibo on Nov 2, 2021, accused Zhang Gaoli, now 75, a former high-ranking Chinese government official, of sexual assault. Zhang Gaoli is a former vice premier who served on China’s Politburo Standing Committee and was one of the country’s most powerful officials behind President Xi Jinping.
In the post, Peng Shuai wrote that Zhang had forced her to have sex despite repeated refusals, giving the timeline of her on-and-off affairs with Zhang during the past 10 years. The post was removed within 20 minutes from her verified account on Weibo, and even her name became a censored word. Since then, Peng hasn’t posted again on the site or been seen in public for 3 weeks.
Now, her safety and whereabouts have become a growing concern among her peers, the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) and the White House. And a campaign #whereispengshuai intitiated by Chinese feminists to located the disappeared tennis star has gone global. Many of the world’s biggest tennis stars, including Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka, and Andy Murray, have posted messages on Twitter with the hashtag.
The outcry prompted Chinese state media to release a series of photographs and videos that appeared to show all was well.
Over the weekend, Peng had a video call with the head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), after which a statement from the group said she had appeared safe and well.
But concerns over her safety and well-being remain.
Human Rights Watch criticized the IOC over the video call, saying its “collaboration” with Chinese authorities on Ms. Peng’s reappearance “undermines its expressed commitment to human rights, including the rights and safety of athletes”.
The resolution on the party’s “achievements and historical experiences” since its founding 100 years ago was passed at the end of a four-day, closed-door meeting of more than 300 top leaders on its Central Committee, state media reported.
It puts Xi on the same pedestal as Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, two previous leaders who cemented their position as per-eminent leader with the only other two such resolutions passed, in 1945 and 1981 respectively.
Back in 2018, Xi made a bold power play by eliminating a term limit on the presidency, opening the way for him to lead China indefinitely. That move overturned widespread expectations that the party had been settling into a 10-year cap on leaders’ time in power.
Today’s pass of this resolution sets the stage for next year’s sweeping leadership reshuffle and paves the way for a legacy-defining third term for the president.
For China’s internet regulators, even a censored US-based social network was too much.
Microsoft said on Oct 14 that it would cease operating its work-oriented social network LinkedIn within China by the end of the year because of “significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China.”
The announcement is a symbolic moment for US-China tech relations, and for China’s new hard-line approach to regulating its tech industry. Microsoft’s withdrawal is the most high-profile departure since Google left the country in 2010 in protest over censorship and alleged espionage.
Microsoft’s censorship has been well documented. Earlier this year, a number of academics and journalists saw their LinkedIn accounts censored. Bing, another Microsoft product, stoked censorship concerns with its image search results for “tank man” on this year’s 32nd anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown. The company even censored its own farewell message. LinkedIn’s English language statement claimed the company “strongly [supports] freedom of expression,” but the phrase was conspicuously absent from the company’s Chinese language statement.
Throughout China, as the school year starts on September 1, all elementary and secondary school students face a new mandatory class — Xi Jinping’s Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.
The new curriculum highlights how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Xi are focusing on ideological control of the population as the course, referred to as “Xi Thought,” trickles down from Chinese universities, where it was introduced in 2020.
According to China’s Ministry of Education, there are four versions of the textbook, each geared to different levels of students. The new curriculum will be taught throughout the country to make sure the content will “get into the brains of students.”
On July 23, China announced the new rules that require China’s tutoring companies to become nonprofit entities. They were banned from offering tutoring services during weekends and school breaks, and from making profits, raising capital or going public.
China is tightening curbs over US-listed Chinese companies. Look at what happened to DIDI, the ride-share company that was listed a few days ago, this crackdown on tutoring firms is Deja Vu all over again.
Two years ago, Chinese tech workers protested on GitHub, the worlds’s largest code host, against grueling overtime hours at some companies, aiming at the industry’s “996” work culture, which referred to the 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. workday, six days a week.
Ironically, earlier this month, ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company has announced that it will cancel its overtime policy, effective August 1st. An internal survey about whether to abolish its infamous overtime policy was sent out before the announcement. Surprisingly, about one-third of the surveyed employees opposed that abolishment and complained that they would be subject to the same amount of workload but less pay.
Tang Ping, meaning “giving up and lying flat” became a rage among young Chinese, as a stand against the pressures of modern life. It started with a post saying “lying flat is justice”, by a social media user called Kind-Hearted Traveller. Soon it went viral and became an online movement.
The movement of “Tang Ping” is meant to reject the culture of overwork that forces Chinese youngsters to work for longer hours with little reward. Many are frustrated with the low prospects of their jobs and their inability in the face of rising prices to afford a house ever in their lifetimes.
However, this trend was soon be repressed by censorship, and related merchandise like T shirts with “Tang Ping” designs were deleted from Taobao, the biggest e-commerce platform in China.
Despite the nationwide celebrations to mark the 100-year anniversary of CCP, most people in Hong Kong did not celebrate. For them, this day marked the loss of their freedoms and democratic institutions.
China’s sweeping ban on cryptocurrency mining has paralyzed an industry that accounts for over half of global bitcoin production, as miners dump machines in despair.
The debate over the origin of COVID-19 is now burning hot, with increasing demand for an international investigation into the possibility of a lab leak. However, a top scientist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology denied and told the New York Times there is no evidence, “I don’t know how the world has come to this, constantly pouring filth on an innocent scientist”.
The Truth Of China 