Chinese banks have frozen the assets of all North Korean depositors, and they have halted all cash transfers to Kim Jung-Un’s regime.

The move is almost unprecedented as China has fed and powered the isolated nation even in times of strained relations.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, China accounts for 70 percent of North Korean trade and support.

“China is currently North Korea’s only economic backer of any importance,” writes Nicholas Eberstadt, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

However, Beijing’s move may indicate Xi Jinping’s government has finally had enough of Kim’s blatant disregard for sound foreign policy. China may no longer be willing to keep the regime on its feet at the risk of regional warfare – something North Korea often risks.

Among the financial institutions severing the cash flow to North Korea is a branch of China’s largest bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

“(The bank) had never told me why it was taking such measures, but it seems that they are related with the strained relations between North Korea and China,” said an anonymous ICBC employee to South Korean newspaper the Dong-A Ilbo.

The bank began suspending deposits and transfers of foreign currencies in and out of accounts with North Korean names in December.

Still, it’s unclear whether China is ready to charge at its ally with full-speed. Historically, it’s even been slow to back sanctions proposed by the international community against North Korea.

It’s also unclear whether China’s move would be enough to deter Kim Jung-Un’s ambitions.

“Until the sanctions and hard times begin to hit the leadership in Pyongyang personally, the madman may simply stick to his guns,” writes Hot Air’s Jazz Shaw.

Cutting its cash flow to the regime, however, may eventually lead to the rude awakening North Korea has feared.

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Harbin, in Heilongjiang’s capital, is the home of China’s International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival.

Here, visitors and competitors are greeted to life-seize ice sculptures of international landmarks. The Athens Acropolis, the Forbidden City? They’re all here.

You can even take a ride down an ice slide representing the Songhua River.

The scenery gets even more magical when the sun goes down. That’s when beams of crimson, sapphire, lime green and more shine through translucent ice sculptures illuminating the park.

“It’s quite surreal, due to both the scale and all the lighting—like being in a fantasy movie,” says Christian Stanley of the China Travel Company, in an interview with National Geographic. “You  feel very small and can’t help wondering how they manage to build all of this so quickly. It’s also hard to believe that within a matter of weeks it is all gone—melted away.”

The adventure continues at The Siberian Tiger Park a few miles northwest of Harbin.

This 355-acre reserve is home to Siberian Tigers, black pumas, leopards and lynx.

Visitors board buses surrounded by barbed-wire mesh to get close to these great creatures..

He argued that China had a right to choose how to develop and regulate the Internet within its borders.

China has come under intense scrutiny from cyber activists for keeping its roughly 650 million Internet users under some of the world’s strictest cyber controls. Through its use of a censoring system often referred to as the “Great Firewall of China,” Beijing has managed to block major websites and censor social media posts.

On Wednesday, Xi again urged countries to work together in pursuing Internet security – a topic of major concern for states combating terrorists’ recruitment efforts and communications online.

The state-run news agency Xinhua quoted Xi in saying that no leader should pursue “cyber hegemony” or engage in efforts that undermine another’s national security.

The Conference, which is in its second year, is being attended by leaders from Russia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

Reporters Without Borders, however, has been calling on government and company representatives to avoid attending the conference as it believes their attendance would make them stand with China, where almost 40 journalists have been jailed for their posts online.

According to the BBC, last year’s event ended in a “farce” when joint statements calling for attendees to support China’s “national cyber sovereignty” were pushed under delegates’ hotel doors.

Recently, the U.S. and China have accused each other of leading cyber attacks to steal commercial and governmental information. Both nations deny the other’s claims.

At the conference, Xi called for an international governance system to “curb the abuse of information technology, oppose network surveillance and hacking, and fight against a cyberspace arms race”.

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International-travel services spending totaled about $19 billion in October, according to services trade data released Monday. This reflects a dip from the $25 billion spent in September.

By October, middle and upper-income Chinese citizens were planning an average of 2.1trips abroad in the next year, according to a UBS survey. That number dropped from 2.6 last spring. UBS reports that total outbound- travel growth could reach about 15 percent growth, lower than the average 18 percent growth seen in the past few years.

October seemed to be the first month reflecting the after-effects of currency devaluation and stock market plunges that initiated in August. Because most vacations are booked in advance, the economic effect came after a delay.

This is not to say most Chinese citizens will cease exploring the world. Outbound travel growth is still relatively high. But it may soon not be as extravagant as it used to be..

Sandy Phan-Gillis, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Chinese ethnicity, visited China in March along with a trade delegation that included Houston’s mayor pro-tem Ed Gonzalez and local developer Vincent Chau.

She was detained when the group passed through an immigration-control checkpoint connecting the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai with Macau, a self-administered peninsula beyond the jurisdiction of mainland law enforcement.

“We respectfully request that you personally call on the Chinese government to immediately release Ms. Phan-Gillis and update us on what specific actions the United States government has taken to seek consistent consular access and secure her release,” the chairs of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, said in a letter.

The committee includes Rep. Christopher Smith, (R-N.J.); and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), said in their letter this week.

Days passed before China’s state security agency notified the U.S consulate in Guangzhou that Phan-Gillis was being investigated on suspicion of stealing state secrets and spying. Her detention was kept secret until it was publically revealed in September when she was moved from a form of house arrest to a higher-security detention center in Nanning, Guangxi, and a province along the Vietnam border.

Under Chinese law, Chinese authorities can hold a person for six months while they investigate allegations. The government then has up to 37 days to issue charges or present its case in court. The government can also prolong the delay for another six months if they obtain up to three extensions.  Although the 37-day deadline has passed, it’s currently not clear whether Phan-Gillis has been issued charges, or whether the government has pursued an extension to hold her.

“It seems advisable for the State Department to consider issuing a travel advisory for China, so that Americans, including untold numbers who routinely conduct business in the mainland, are aware of the potential risks,” the commission said in its letter.

In its response to a commission inquiry made in December, the State Department said that 110 American citizens have been detained, imprisoned, or released on bail or probation in China this month. About 40 of those were reportedly held on charges related to their commercial activity. Another 15 are being held in China until business disputes can be resolved..

In case closely being watched by legal experts, Kering SA’s Gucci and its other luxury brands have issued subpoenas demanding information about transactions made by a few Bank of China account holders, whom the company claims are some of their biggest counterfeiters. Bank of China is fighting that request arguing that releasing such information would violate Chinese law.

U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan in Manhattan has ordered Bank of China to comply with court orders, but the bank has released only portions of the information sought.

On Tuesday, the two parties will meet in court to determine whether the lender should be held in contempt of court and ordered to pay a multi-million dollar fine.

Bank of China maintains its records at home are unrelated to its business in the U.S. and suggests Gucci should litigate the case in China. Gucci argues that U.S. courts should have jurisdiction in the case due to Bank of China’s New York branch and wire transfers from Bank of China’s own accounts, known as correspondent bank accounts, at Chase Bank in the U.S.

China’s top banks have sought overseas expansion as a means to offset slowing profit growth and smaller lending margins at home. Overseas assets at China’s top-four banks are up almost 10% from the end of last year, totaling $1.3 trillion.

This expansion is bringing Chinese banks into conflict with laws in the U.S.

In recent years, U.S. lawmakers have accused China of failing to comply with legal proceedings.

In a May report, a congressional commission that monitors U.S.-China economic issues wrote that Chinese businesses in the U.S. use “the shroud of Chinese law, including official secrecy laws” to keep themselves “largely immune from the jurisdiction of U.S. courts.”

The Gucci case spans back to 2010, when the SA Kering brands sued a group of people it accused of counterfeiting products including Gucci handbags and selling them to U.S customers online. Gucci claimed these counterfeiters wired the illegal proceeds to Bank of China accounts, making bank records vital for figuring out how much money the counterfeiters made and whether anyone else was involved.

Gucci has asked Judge Sullivan to demand the bank pay $12 million in cash as compensation for what the counterfeiters would have owed the brands in damages.

Bank of China has called the $12 million request baseless.

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Over the weekend, a commuter boarded a train on Line 3 in Chonqing and brought his own bean bag. A fellow commuter snapped a photo of the man, who was gently sleeping on his orange-colored bean bag in the middle of the carriage as if he had no care in the world.

The delightful scene has triggered the funny bone of netizens since. But, authorities were quick to remind people that Metro staff does not offer soft seats and riders must abide by all rules. They were unable to explain, however, how the man managed to get a giant, brightly-colored bean bag through security.

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“The Freedom on the Net 2015” report published by Freedom House explored ways in which China regulates use of the Internet from strengthening its website censorship capabilities to jailing citizens for making certain kinds of Internet speech.

“The aim of establishing control was particularly evident in the government’s attitude toward foreign Internet companies, its undermining of digital security protocols, and its ongoing erosion of user rights, including through extralegal detentions and the imposition of prison sentences for online speech,” reads the report released this week.

On Wednesday, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported that a new law would allow officials to jail citizens convicted of creating or spreading “false information” online for up to seven years.

The new law goes into effect Sunday and targets people who “fabricate false information about hazards, diseases, disasters or crimes and spread it on information networks or other media, or deliberately spread it on information networks or other media while knowing it is false information, seriously disrupting social orders, will be sentenced to a prison term up to three years, placed under detention or face enforcement measures.”

“In cases where serious consequences are caused, one will be sentenced to a prison term ranging from three to seven years.”

Since 2013, a charge of “Picking quarrels and provoking trouble” has also been particularly used against Internet users.

Last year, civil rights defense lawyer Pu Zhiqiang was given the charge after writing micro blogs criticizing the Chinese government’s policies against the Uihgurs, an ethnic minority.  He’s facing up to 8 years in prison.

This summer, China released a draft law on cyber security. If passed, the law could further legitimize overreaching actions it’s already taken such as shutting down the Internet in large regions as it did in 2009, when riots broke out involving Uighurs in the Xinjijang region.

China is also championing the idea of “Cyber Sovereignty,” a notion which Chinese Cyberspace Administration leader Lu Wei has brought up during meetings with executives of foreign Internet and media companies. Popular American websites such as Google, Facebook and Twitter are blocked in the communist nation.

In the Freedom House report, China came behind Iran, Cuba and Myanmar. North Korea was not part of the study.

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Chinese President Xi Jinping and Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou will meet Saturday at Singapore and will address each other as “Mister” rather than their honorific titles, then have dinner after a meeting, according China’s state-run news agency Xinhua.

The Central News Agency in Taiwan reported the leaders will sign no agreements but will discuss ways to “cement peace.”

Since taking office in 2008, Ma has played a major role in softening relations with Beijing.

China and Taiwan officially are the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China, respectively. The two separated in 1949 following the communist victory in the civil war. However, China considers Taiwan a breakaway province of China and has threatened military action in response to a formal declaration of independence by Taiwan.

In Taiwan, news of the meeting sparked protests. On Wednesday, protestors gathered outside Taiwan’s parliament holding placards reading “Don’t come back if you go” and “Stop the China-Taiwan relationship.”

Opposition to the meeting is also being seen in China.

“There were apprehensions in Beijing that a meeting with the Taiwanese president might legitimize Taiwan as a sovereign state,” said Michael J. Cole, a fellow of the China Policy Institute, during an interview with CNN.

Despite tensions, however, China remains Taiwan’s biggest trading partner.

Chinese banks now operate on the island and several Taiwanese companies have factories in China. Hundreds of flights go to and from each country each week.

The meeting comes ahead of Taiwan’s general election in January. Last month, leaders of the Kuomintang (KMT) Party overwhelmingly voted to replace Ma with another candidate after polls indicated it was falling behind the main opposition Democratic Progressive Party, which traditionally has represented Taiwan’s political independence from Beijing. Term limits also hinder Ma from running.

Zhang Baohui, professor of political science at Lingnan University in Hong Kong, told CNN that the KMT is using the meeting to reshape the vote’s dynamics

“Nobody predicted this,” Baohui said. “It refocuses the voters on cross-strait relations, which always benefits KMT candidates.”

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The state-run Xinhua news agency broadcasted the announcement made by the party’s Central Committee on Thursday.

“I have looked forward to this for so many years — even had dreams about it! I cried every time when I woke up and realized it wasn’t yet true. I thought it was so unfair,” said 36-year-old Su Weihu in an interview with CBC news.

The committee made its decision “to improve the balanced development of population” and to deal with an aging population.

The one-child policy was implemented in 1979 to solve issues brought on by a rapidly-growing population including the diminishing of essential resources.

Since then, China has gradually eased this policy. For example, rural couples eventually got the right to have a second child if the first born was a girl.

Traditionally, Chinese couples prefer boys over girls sometimes resorting to forced abortions. This has upset the population ratio between men and women making it hard for men to find wives. Some officials link this trend to the increase in human trafficking of women into China.

Amendments to the one-child policy haven’t resulted in a balanced sex ratio. Couples generally still prefer boys and the younger generation typically sees a smaller family size as ideal.

The birthrate dip also spiked the average age of the population raising concerns that the young labor pool, sparked by the one-child policy, won’t be able to support the baby boom generation as it retires.

“The good news is, it is here. The bad news is, it is too little too late,” said Cai Yong, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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