mh-magazine domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home/customer/www/chinacheatsheets.com/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6260The UN resolution, which had been drafted by the United States, The United Kingdom, and France, would have “banned the sale of helicopters to Syria and would have led to sanctions against 11 Syrian commanders or officials, and 10 groups linked to the chemical attacks,” a BBC News report wrote.
The resolution comes after many years of devastating civil unrest and political instability in Syria, along with an investigation into President Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons against its own people. A grim and harrowing accusation, though one it vehemently denies.
The investigation, spearheaded by the UN and international chemical weapons watchdog, found that Assad’s regime carried out three chemical weapons attacks 2014 and 2015.
The investigation revealed that the Syrian government used air force helicopters to drop chlorine gas on areas held by rebels, once in April 2014 and twice in March 2015.
Under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, the use of chlorine as a weapon is strictly prohibited.
ISIS militants had also used sulphur mustard gas in a separate attack, the reports said.
With these serious findings in mind, the UN council set to impose sanctions on Syria, understandably. Nine security council member countries voted in favor of the resolution, while Bolivia, Russia, and China voted ‘nay’. Egypt Kazakhstan, and Ethiopia abstained.
A Security Council resolution requires nine votes to pass, and no vetoes from the five permanent member nations (the US, the UK, France, Russia, and China). Both China and Russia did veto the resolution, rendering it invalid. Thus this vital and pertinent resolution did not pass.
So why did Russia and China block the resolution?
Russia has long-standing ties to Syria; in fact, many Syrian military officers are trained using and equipped by Russia, the BBC reports. Russian President Vladimir Putin said that sanctions against Syria would be “totally inappropriate”, commenting further that “it would only hurt or undermine confidence” in peace talks.
As for China, another gargantuan military force in the world, has said in the past that it has a long-standing policy for non-intervention in other nations’ affairs – even those as grim as the Syrian War and its gruesome attacks on its own people.
According to BBC, China’s UN ambassador, Liu Jieyi, said the Chinese government does oppose the use of chemical weapons, but Beijing believes it is too soon to impose sanctions due to ongoing investigations.
Many country-heads – and rightfully so – are upset and deeply concerned with China and Russia’s veto votes during the meeting. Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, said: “It is a sad day on the Security Council when members start making excuses for other member states killing their own people.
“They put their friends in the Assad regime ahead of our global security… the world is definitely a more dangerous place.”
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The same, however, cannot be said of the second-highest figure in Tibetan Buddhism, the 11th Panchen Lama. Rather than be a voice of wisdom, he has become yet another face of Chinese Communist propaganda.
China, officially, is an atheist nation. However the Party, ignoring the religious and cultural significance of Tibetan Buddhism, decided it was best to select a new Penchant Lama. And so it did just that: in 1995 in an effort to win the support of Tibetans – a failed quest, I might add – the CCP named Gyaltsen Norbu as the 11th Panchen Lama.
The Panchen Lama, who is believed to spend most of his time in Beijing rather than in Tibet, met with head of the United Front Work Department Sun Chunlan Friday where he vowed to uphold the “glorious tradition” of patriotism, state-run news agency Xinhua News reported.
Xinhua paraphrased him as saying, “[he will] resolutely endorse comrade Xi Jinping as the core of the Communist Party, endorse socialism with Chinese characteristics and continue the glorious tradition of Panchen Lamas in the history of loving the country and loving religion.”
The irony, as you can see, is incredible. But unfortunately this statement is no Alec Baldwin-plays-Trump-on-SNL scenario; it’s not a joke story. No, this young man actually is the second-highest figure in Tibetan Buddhism, his young mind warped by China’s overbearing authoritarian government.
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The Trump administration’s streak of outlandish maneuvers continued on Tuesday when the administration published a proposal in the Federal Register that would have Chinese citizens who hold long-term US business and tourism visas be asked to disclose their social media handles before entering the United States.
The targeted group would be asked to answer this question online as part of the Electronic Visa Update System, of which all Chinese holders of 10-year visas to the US are a part of. The information disclosed could then be used by the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to “evaluate” an individual via his or her social media accounts before allowing entrance into the country.
Jennifer Evanitsky, a spokeswoman for the CBP gave Politico an adamant assurance that “The collection of social media identifiers will not be used to prevent travel based on an applicant’s race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation.”
“The social media provider will not be asked to violate any privacy settings or policies,” she said.
A 60-day open-comment period will occur on the Federal Register following the proposal in which the government is encouraging people to voice their honest opinions and concerns. Also meaning that our country’s new Trump-nation bigots will have a platform on which to post their hateful, nonsensical, ignorant, and racist remarks.
The CBP also added in a separate, written notice regarding the proposal, that revealing one’s social media information would be optional. Furthermore, refusing to give up that personal information would not negatively affect that person’s chances at getting into the US.
With this addition to the online registry being optional for the applicant, many are incredulous as to the actual usefulness of the sanction. Hiding information from the CBP would be as simple as omitting it from the form, deleting parts of profiles, changing privacy settings, or simply making an “oops, I forgot to include that one” moment.
However, others view this move not as innocuous, but rather as another way for Trump to incite hate in America.
“The Chinese community in the US appears certain to make a few ‘suggestions,’ as the proposal has left many spooked that the only thing it will do is contribute to a rise in anti-Chinese sentiment around the country,” online news source Shanghaiist wrote in an article Monday.
One advocacy group has already spoken out against the proposal. The Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Los Angeles (AAAJ-LA) told The Huffington Post earlier this week, “As a civil rights organization, we fear that proposals such as the proposed social media check will be largely ineffective as a national security screen and will serve primarily to allow the discriminatory targeting of Chinese immigrants and visitors at border checkpoints.”
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According to China’s state-run news agency, Xinhua, the statue’s head was first sighted a month ago in east China’s Jiangxi Province by a local villager when the water levels fell by more than 10 meters (32 feet) during the renovation.
The Buddha, which stands roughly 12.5 feet (3.8 meters) and carved into a cliff, is an archeological dream. Experts said that the regal statue could date back to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).
“A preliminary study of the statue suggests it was probably built during early Ming Dynasty, maybe even earlier as the Yuan Dynasty,” Xu Changqing, director of the Research Institute of Archaeology of Jiangxi province, told CNN via phone interview.
The Buddha is not only a wonder for archaeologists; tourists and villagers alike have flocked to marvel at the site, believing the statue to be a good omen.
Mr. Xu commented that being submerged in the water could have helped preserve the Buddha, which he explained has surprisingly intricate carvings. “If the statue wasn’t preserved in the water, it could have suffered weathering, oxidation or other risks, we reckon,” he said. An underwater archaeology team is investigating and coming up with a preservation plan, Mr. Xu added.
This incredible Buddha was covered by water in 1960 when the Hongmen reservoir was built. Local authorities at the time were unaware of what ‘heritage protection’ is, Mr. Xu told CNN.
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Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen is making a four-country tour of Taiwan’s allies in central America, visiting Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador. But first, a pit stop in the United States. President Tsai stayed overnight in Houston, Texas Saturday, exchanging gifts with Governor Abbott Sunday.
President Tsai presented the governor with a lovely vase from her home island, and Governor Abbott? Well, he presented something not so lovely.
Abbott gave president Tsai a clock bearing the Texas state seal, according to the governor’s office. This may seem like an innocuous or even nice gift, but if Abbott had bothered to do his homework on his guest he would have known that giving a clock as a gift to a person from Chinese-speaking nations, especially Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong, is a huge n0-no.
This is because in both Mandarin and Cantonese the word for “clock” 鐘 is pronounced the same as the word for “end”, 終. So, “giving [the gift of] a clock” 送鐘 sounds the same as sending someone off to their end 送終. Clocks also signify that time is running out, as if you are blatantly pointing out to the receiver that his/her time is running out. If these are not reasons to abandon your clock gift, then I don’t know what is.
While President Tsai may have handled the gift-exchange with diplomacy and poise, Governor Abbott should have understood the cultural implications of such a gift, saving himself the embarrassment of this massive blunder.
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Kathy Chen, who was brought in by Twitter Inc. to run Greater China back in April 2016, resigned from the popular social media company over the weekend.
While Twitter has been blocked by the Chinese Communist Party since 2009, many still find access to the site using VPNs (virtual private networks). And stranger still, even with the Chinese government’s extensive internet censorship, state-run entities like Xinhua News use Twitter to reach audiences abroad.
This is where Kathy Chen comes into play. Ms. Chen, who previously worked at tech giants Microsoft and Cisco, was hired to usher in more Chinese advertisers to Twitter.
And she explains that she did just that. In one of her 12-part tweets over the weekend Chen claimed that Twitter grew its Greater China advertiser base by nearly 400 percent, making it “one of the firm’s fastest growing revenue markets in Asia Pacific (APAC)”, Reuters reported.
The tweet Ms Chen sent announcing her resignation read: “Now that the Twitter APAC [Asia Pacific] team is working directly with Chinese advertisers, this is the right time for me to leave the company.”
Ms. Chen added that the rumored-to-be-closed Hong Kong office, in which she is based, would remain open “for now”.
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On Saturday, China made its response. And spun its own version, too. A statement was made by China’s Defense Ministry spokesperson Yang Yujun, who said, “In order to prevent the device from causing harm to the safety of navigation and personnel of passing vessels, the Chinese naval lifeboat verified and examined the device in a professional and responsible manner,” according to a translation from state-run media Xinhua News.
The statement took a bitter turn, accusing the US of choosing to “dramatize” the situation:
“The Chinese side has decided to hand over it to the US in an appropriate manner. Both sides have been maintaining communication on the issue. The US side’s unilateral move to dramatize the issue in the process is inappropriate, and not conductive to its settlement. We regret that,” it read.
In a sort of international game of “he-says-she-says”, China is claiming the above, being that they confiscated the American drone to ‘prevent harm’ for passing boats in the area and to examine the device. Washington, however, says that the Chinese vessel was following the American ship, and that the origin of the UUV was not in question.
An NPR article published Friday explained the Pentagon’s version:
“The Bowditch was retrieving one vehicle when a Chinese warship pulled up, put a small boat in the water and retrieved the second UUV, officials told reporters.
“The U.S. sent radio messages requesting that the drone be returned, the Pentagon statement said, but the Chinese ship merely acknowledged the messages and ignored the request.
“No shots were fired by either vehicle, officials said, and the Chinese ship left with a final message that it was returning to normal operations — and with the drone.”
The drone-snatching incident occurred shortly after an American think tank released detailed satellite photos showing China’s increase in military presence on artificial islands the meganation built in the disputed maritime region.
The revealing images were brought to light by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative.
AMTI’s director Greg Poling sat down for an interview with NPR’s Scott Simon Saturday. Responding to a question regarding any military or strategic interest the drone may have, Poling said, “The real interest, I suppose, would be if there was some advanced technology on this drone — and we’re not going to know that, of course. The Pentagon won’t tell you exactly what sensors were on it, whatnot — and the Chinese wanted to reverse-engineer it.”
“But even by Beijing’s own maps, this was [in] international waters,” Poling told NPR.
Washington says that USNS Bowditch – which according to the US Navy’s Military Sealift Command is a twenty-year-old ship that has “an all-civilian crew of civil service mariners and scientific support personnel” – was conducting ocean research when the Chinese warship overtook it.
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In a whirl of controversy, Trump answered a call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen earlier this month. This did not fare well with Chinese leadership. The relationship between China and Taiwan is one filled with tension: when the Communist Party took over China in 1949, the Chinese Nationalists were forced to flee to the island (now Taiwan) and establish their own government.
In the 67 years since, the CCP has viewed Taiwan (officially named the Republic of China) as a “renegade province”. Despite the hostility, a mutual arrangement was agreed upon, called the ‘One-China’ principle. The principle refers to the “consensus” that both governments agree there is only one China, but each of the governments may have its own interpretation of what that means. In international relations regards, the policy of ‘One-China’ means that nations seeking diplomatic ties with the People’s Republic of China (mainland) must first break off any relations with Taiwan, and vice versa.
By answering a phone call from a Taiwanese president, Trump went against decades of US-China diplomacy.
The United States, having diplomatic ties with China (PRC), has the long-standing stance that Taiwan is part of “one China”. Long-standing, well, until now. Maybe, if Trump has his way.
On Sunday, Trump gave an interview with Fox News, where he made ridiculous comments about the ‘One-China’ policy. “I fully understand the ‘one China’ policy, but I don’t know why we have to be bound by a ‘one China’ policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade,” he said.
He even went so far as to suggest that the policy could be used as a bargaining chip over North Korea.”I mean, look, we’re being hurt very badly by China with devaluation, with taxing us heavy at the borders when we don’t tax them, with building a massive fortress in the middle of the South China Sea, which they shouldn’t be doing, and frankly with not helping us at all with North Korea. You have North Korea. You have nuclear weapons, and China could solve that problem, and they’re not helping us at all,” he added.
China’s response was deliberately tame: “co-operation with the US ‘would be out of the question’ if Trump doesn’t adhere to the ‘one China’ policy — a cornerstone of bilateral relations since the establishment of diplomatic ties in the 1970s,” CNN reported Monday.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said, “I want to stress that the Taiwan question has a bearing on China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
“Adhering to the ‘one China’ principle is the political bedrock for the development US-China relations. If it is compromised or disrupted, the sound and steady growth of the bilateral relationship, as well as bilateral cooperation in major fields would be out of question,” he went on.
While China’s official response was calculated, state-sanctioned tabloid Global Times did not hide its contempt. The provocative paper published an editorial on Monday, writing that Trump “is ignorant as a child in terms of foreign policy.”
“The ‘one-China’ policy cannot be bought and sold, Trump, it seems, only understands business and believes that everything has a price and that if he is strong enough he can buy and sell by force,” it said.
The piece also warned that if Trump were to throw away the ‘one-China’ policy, it could become “a real crisis”.
And what about the US?
CNN wrote that “the diplomatic balance over Taiwan is so delicate that some analysts fear Trump could be starting a confrontation that could easily spin out of control, endanger other crucial areas of the US-China relationship and even risk a military clash in the Pacific.”
One US expert offered his thoughts. Michael Auslin, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, it would be ludicrous to think the CCP will idly stand by, waiting to see how Trump decides to reform US policy toward Taiwan.
“The reality is that Taiwan is the one, non-negotiable red line in US-China relations,” he said.
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China was in the news again this week for its inhumane crimes. The non-profit global human rights organization Human Rights Watch published a new report Tuesday saying that China is “using torture” in its war on corruption. Irony at its best (or worst, rather). The report said that government officials caught up in President Xi’s corruption crackdown are beaten, forced into stress positions for hours on end, and deprived of sleep, food, and water. The report also stated that these torture tactics are commonplace in China’s parallel extrajudicial justice system.
Extrajudicial punishment oftentimes goes hand-in-hand with politically authoritarian regimes, sadly. In China, this system has punished more than one million officials in the four years since President Xi took office, British news source The Telegraph reported. Chinese state media said at least eleven people have died since 2010 in this horrific parallel system.
President Xi’s massive campaign to “break corruption” makes all 88 members of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) vulnerable to his conniving parallel system and its disturbing acts of torture. Many experts criticize the lack of transparency of Xi’s campaign, and also claim he uses it as a front so he may remove rivals from key government positions.
Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, said, “President Xi has built his anti-corruption campaign on an abusive and illegal detention system.”
“Torturing suspects to confess won’t bring an end to corruption, but will end any confidence in China’s judicial system,” she added.
HRW’s report on the matter, titled “‘Special Measures’: Detention and Torture in Chinese Communist Party’s Shuanggui System,” stated that officials often detain people without notifying their family or friends, forcing them into padded cells without windows.
A former detainee spoke to Human Rights Watch, detailing the hellish experience: “If you sit, you have to sit for 12 hours straight, if you stand then you have to stand for 12 hours as well. My legs became swollen, and my buttocks were raw and started oozing puss,” the detainee said.
Another prisoner spoke to a Beijing-based lawyer, telling him that he was forced to stand for 23 hours a day for more than a week with a book on his head until he confessed.
“After he said it, he was allowed two hours of sleep every day,” the lawyer said.
“At that point his feet were swollen like an elephant’s, and he could no longer urinate.”
This parallel justice system – which is anything but just – is called “shuanggui”, which translates in Mandarin to having to report to authorities at a “designated time” and “designated location”.
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This, however, may soon change. Facebook has created a special software to potentially accommodate China’s harsh censorship demands, according to a report in the New York Times.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is infamous for its severe internet-control; so much so that even typing ‘June 4’ will give you zilch (because it insinuates the Tiananmen Square Massacre that occurred on June 4, 1989). Apparently there is no other reason to search ‘June 4’. Except there is! Did you know that on June 4, 781 BC the oldest Chinese recording of a solar eclipse took place? No one in China will – thanks to their intense censorship. Anything perceived to be “anti-Party” is effectively “erased” from the internet. Even cool facts like the solar eclipse recording.
As far as Facebook goes, in order to access the social network from China, users have been forced to use a VPN (virtual private network), a software designed to fool the location of the device. Facebook’s new special software would make using a VPN unnecessary, and avoid potential ramifications of using one.
However, if Facebook were to appear in China by using this new software tool, it would have to “make concessions” to the CCP’s strict laws. The software “would enable a third-party, likely a Chinese company working with Facebook, to prevent messages from appearing in the first place,” BBC News writes.
Facebook, a $350 billion dollar enterprise with an astounding 1.8 billion active users, is still aggressively seeking to get hold of the world’s unchartered territories – including China. The software would enable the company to do so. But some believe implementing it would be selling out.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group which campaigns for better privacy online, is one such example. The foundation told the BBC that the project sounded “extremely disturbing”.
“Kudos to the Facebook employees who brought this to the attention of the New York Times,” said Eva Galperin, the EFF’s global policy analyst.
“It’s very nice to know there are some principled people still working there.”
NYT journalist Mike Isaac reported that Facebook employees – both past and present – did stress that “like many pieces of software worked on internally, it may never be implemented.”
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