Australia’s universities are embroiled in a growing geopolitical storm.
In recent months, pro and anti-Beijing groups have clashed on campuses amid rising concerns over the Chinese government’s expanding power abroad.
Universities earn billions of dollars a year from student fees and research collaborations with China, but there are growing fears these lucrative arrangements may be putting academic institutions, and even national security, at risk.
As government ministers warn that the country faces an “unprecedented level of threat” from foreign interference, 101 East investigates the infiltration of Australia’s universities by Beijing.
By Adnan Aamir, Marwaan Macan-Markar, Shaun Turton and Cissy Zhou – AUGUST 10, 2022
The drive to Pakistan’s port of Gwadar takes seven and a half hours from Karachi via the Makran coastal highway. Much of the 600-km route is deserted, with no restaurants, restrooms or even fuel stations. On a recent journey, around 200 vehicles in total could be counted during the entire drive.
Arriving in the city on Pakistan’s Indian Ocean coast, Chinese and Pakistani flags are ubiquitous, and Chinese-financed construction projects loom, but the city is spookily devoid of economic activity. Near the seafront, broad avenues are curiously empty of vehicles. Inside the city center, the roads are narrow, congested and covered with foul smelling drain water, with few multistory buildings aside from the Chinese-built port compound.
It is hard to visualize Gwadar as the launch pad of a new global paradigm, but that is what Beijing would have the world believe.
Nine years ago it was plucked out of obscurity — a backwater in Pakistan’s restive Balochistan region — and presented as China’s commercial window onto the Indian Ocean, a hub for regional integration under the Belt and Road Initiative, which was to harness the juggernaut of the Chinese economy to the goal of Asian economic development.
The BRI is an audacious program of lending, aid and infrastructure contracts totaling over $880 billion, according to the American Enterprise Institute.
The initiative, which includes pledges to 149 countries, aims to promote Chinese-led regional integration — and sow economic dependence on Beijing.
First announced in a speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013 as the “Silk Road,” the BRI was fleshed out in April 2015 with the announcement of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), stretching from Gwadar to the Chinese city of Kashgar, in Xinjiang. The CPEC showcased the China-Pakistan “all-weather friendship” with $46 billion in pledged funds that has since grown to $50 billion. It was to be the backbone of the now renamed Belt and Road Initiative.
Will Pacific tensions define a new global struggle? | Project Force
Al Jazeera English – 18-4-2022
Tensions are rising in the South China Sea with Beijing accusing the US of breaking a promise by staging military drills. Will the battle over the Pacific region define the struggle for global dominance? Watch Project Force with @ Alex Gatopoulos.
NEW YORK — Welcome to Nikkei Asia’s podcast: Asia Stream.
Every other week, Asia Stream tracks and analyzes the Indo-Pacific with a mix of expert interviews and original reporting by our correspondents from across the globe.
This episode, we take measure of the economic impact of China’s stringent laws in Hong Kong and then take a deep dive into the social and political costs of Beijing’s crackdown on the special administrative region.
TTCT – Hồi năm 2019, khi tổng thống Mỹ lúc đó là Donald Trump hỏi mua hòn đảo khổng lồ ở Bắc Cực Greenland từ Đan Mạch, ông đã bị chê là vô duyên và lố bịch. Nhưng giờ, khi cuộc bầu cử sớm sắp diễn ra ở đấy – chính quyền Greenland sụp đổ vì tranh cãi liên quan tới tài nguyên đất hiếm – xem chừng ông Trump đã nhìn xa trông rộng.
Cuộc bầu cử ở Greenland, với tổng dân số chỉ hơn 56.000 người, dự kiến diễn ra vào ngày 6-4, và chỉ hơn một tháng sau sẽ là cột mốc trọng đại khác – 300 năm ngày vùng đất này trở thành lãnh thổ của Đan Mạch. Đầu cua tai nheo cũng là từ đó: ở đây có một phe đang đòi độc lập.
Dân Greenland biểu tình phản đối một dự án khai khoáng. Ảnh: ejatlas.org
NYT – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has civilians in Taiwan taking China’s aggression more seriously.
Civilians participating in a battle simulation during a combat medic training workshop near Taipei in May. Since the war in Ukraine began, a growing number of Taiwanese have been making their own preparations for war.Credit…Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times
Taiwan has spent more than seven decades under the threat of an invasion: China sees the island as a breakaway part of its territory. In the months since Russia invaded Ukraine, Taiwanese citizens have come to view a Chinese incursion as a more serious possibility than ever. My colleague Amy Qin, who’s based in Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, recently reported on how the island is preparing. I called her to learn more.
Armed conflict between the world’s two superpowers, while not yet inevitable, has become a real possibility. The 2020s will be the decade of living dangerously. By Kevin Rudd
Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing Photo Credit: Aly Song/Reuters.
China is challenging the West. What is the West? It is not only nations in Europe or North America. It is countries that practice democracy.
India, Japan, South Korea, and Australia are Western nations that surround China. They worry about China’s size and ambitions. They view China with suspicion. Also, in the West, the United States and most of Europe see China as an adversary.
Every week, Asia Stream tracks and analyzes the Indo-Pacific with a mix of expert interviews and original reporting by our correspondents from across the globe.
Hong Kong (CNN)In a year when all Xi Jinping craved was for things to be stable, 2022 is shaping up to be anything but.
After years of careful preparation, the Chinese leader is expected to step into an almost unprecedented third term at the helm of the country and its Communist Party this fall.
But instead of a smooth ride, dual crises are threatening to upend the status-quo, with China’s largest outbreak of Covid-19 in two years emerging at home while overseas, Russia embarks on a brutal, widely denounced invasion of Ukraine.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Russian President Vladirmir Putin during the summit in New Delhi, India on December 6, 2021.Credit: Facebook/ Ministry of External Affairs, India
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24 has put India in a particularly difficult spot. Since the conflict between Moscow and the U.S. over Ukraine began escalating late last year, India has avoided taking sides. But with Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, that cautious approach will become increasingly untenable for New Delhi. It could hurt India’s interests in the long-run.
TTCT – Nhà chức trách Trung Quốc đã chỉnh sửa và loại bỏ hàng loạt cảnh của một nhân vật đồng tính nữ trong bộ phim truyền hình dài tập hài (sitcom) Friends (Những người bạn) của Mỹ, vốn là hiện tượng văn hóa ở đất nước tỉ dân, gây ra không ít bất bình trong giới hâm mộ.
Về cơ bản, việc nhân vật Carol Willick là người đồng tính nữ đã bị xóa sổ trong phần 1 của loạt phim, bắt đầu được phát lại trên các nền tảng xem phim phổ biến của Trung Quốc như iQiyi, Tencent Video, Youku và Bilibili từ tuần trước. Một cảnh khác có hai nhân vật nam chính hôn nhau vào tối giao thừa ở phần 10 cũng bị xóa.
Ảnh: imdb.com
Những cảnh và cuộc nói chuyện khác về tình dục, vốn đầy rẫy trong bộ phim gồm 24 phần nổi tiếng thế giới Friends, phát sóng tập đầu ở Mỹ năm 1994, cũng bị biên tập mạnh tay. Báo Hong Kong SCMP dẫn một ví dụ là cụm từ “cực khoái nhiều lần” (tiếng Anh: “multiple orgasms”) được dịch thành “phụ nữ ai cũng thích nói chuyện thị phi” trong phần phụ đề tiếng Trung.
Mức độ ô nhiễm bom mìn tại Việt Nam rất nghiêm trọng, bởi đã trải qua nhiều cuộc chiến tranh, hứng chịu hàng triệu tấn bom đạn.
Quang cảnh họp báo
Theo báo cáo công bố hiện trạng tồn lưu ô nhiễm bom mìn, vật nổ sau chiến tranh, diện tích đất đai Việt Nam bị ô nhiễm bom mìn, vật nổ là trên 6,1 triệu ha, chiếm 18,71 % diện tích đất cả nước.
China’s Digital Silk Road is an ambitious vision to catalyze global digitalization. What will it mean for digital governance?
By Richard Ghiasy and Rajeshwari Krishnamurthy – April 13, 2021
China’s Digital Silk Road (DSR) was launched in 2015 as a component of Beijing’s vast vision for global connectivity, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Like the BRI, the DSR is not monolithic and involves many actors at all levels across the Chinese public and private sectors. It is amorphous and the line between official and unofficial DSR projects is often blurry. Comprehensive data on DSR investments is difficult to come by. According to one estimate, by 2018, DSR-related investments in digital infrastructure projects outside of China had reached $79 billion.
CVD 