cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50926825

• Western officials said China increased its support for Russia's war in Ukraine in 2025 and is likely to deepen cooperation with Moscow further this year.
• The officials described Beijing as the key facilitator of the war, saying Russia's war in Ukraine wouldn't be able to continue without ongoing Chinese support.

Archived

[...]

Russia’s war in Ukraine wouldn’t be able to continue without ongoing Chinese support, particularly the export of dual-use components and critical minerals used in Russian drone production, the officials said. They described Beijing as the key facilitator of the war.

“China could call Vladimir Putin and end this war tomorrow,” US Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker said during a panel late Friday at the Munich Security Conference. “This war is being completely enabled by China.”

[...]

Chinese officials may have initially been concerned by the economic impact of Russia’s war but they have since come to the view that it benefits Beijing because it means Europe is focused on Ukraine rather than Asia, and relations between Europe and the US have become strained, the people said.

“These frank reflections on China’s integral role in providing the materials that support Russia’s war machine beg the question of how sustainable it is to keep up the pretense that China can be a trusted or serious trading partner for the UK,” said Sam Goodman, a senior policy director at the China Strategic Risks Institute.

[...]

European leaders have argued that only by engaging with Xi can they hope to influence his position on security issues. Still, they have also used their visits to Beijing to pursue closer trade ties.

China has helped blunt the effects of Western sanctions since the earliest days of the war, buying Russian oil and selling dual-use goods to its neighbor. A Bloomberg News investigation last year reported how Moscow had capitalized on its friendly ties with Beijing to skirt Western sanctions and acquire the know-how and capability to build drones to attack Ukraine.

[...]

Trade between the two sides [China and Russia] has increased to $253 billion in 2024 from $152 billion in 2021. Over that period, Russia rose to China’s fifth-largest trading partner from its 10th.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50926825

• Western officials said China increased its support for Russia's war in Ukraine in 2025 and is likely to deepen cooperation with Moscow further this year.
• The officials described Beijing as the key facilitator of the war, saying Russia's war in Ukraine wouldn't be able to continue without ongoing Chinese support.

Archived

[...]

Russia’s war in Ukraine wouldn’t be able to continue without ongoing Chinese support, particularly the export of dual-use components and critical minerals used in Russian drone production, the officials said. They described Beijing as the key facilitator of the war.

“China could call Vladimir Putin and end this war tomorrow,” US Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker said during a panel late Friday at the Munich Security Conference. “This war is being completely enabled by China.”

[...]

Chinese officials may have initially been concerned by the economic impact of Russia’s war but they have since come to the view that it benefits Beijing because it means Europe is focused on Ukraine rather than Asia, and relations between Europe and the US have become strained, the people said.

“These frank reflections on China’s integral role in providing the materials that support Russia’s war machine beg the question of how sustainable it is to keep up the pretense that China can be a trusted or serious trading partner for the UK,” said Sam Goodman, a senior policy director at the China Strategic Risks Institute.

[...]

European leaders have argued that only by engaging with Xi can they hope to influence his position on security issues. Still, they have also used their visits to Beijing to pursue closer trade ties.

China has helped blunt the effects of Western sanctions since the earliest days of the war, buying Russian oil and selling dual-use goods to its neighbor. A Bloomberg News investigation last year reported how Moscow had capitalized on its friendly ties with Beijing to skirt Western sanctions and acquire the know-how and capability to build drones to attack Ukraine.

[...]

Trade between the two sides [China and Russia] has increased to $253 billion in 2024 from $152 billion in 2021. Over that period, Russia rose to China’s fifth-largest trading partner from its 10th.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50924425

The country’s online regulator aims to curb social media fuelling ‘marriage phobia’ and ‘fertility anxiety’ over the lunar new year.

Archived

[...]

No online jokes about useless husbands, bossy mothers-in-law, marriage being a trap or the joys of singledom will be allowed, all in the name of encouraging people to tie the knot.

[...]

A running joke of the season, when millions of Chinese people head from the cities to their childhood homes and villages, is that it is when the first duty of filial piety comes into effect: the requirement to tell parents and grandparents why you do not have a boyfriend or a girlfriend; if you have one, why you are not yet married; or, if you are married, why you do not have a child.

Enforcement of that duty is being taken over by the Cyberspace Administration of China, the chief censorship body for the internet and social media, which has issued its instructions for the holiday season, which starts on Tuesday.

“Regulators will crack down on content that promotes ‘anti-marriage’ or ‘anti-childbirth’ narratives, fuels gender antagonism or exaggerates so-called ‘marriage phobia’ and ‘fertility anxiety’,” according to a stern article in the People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party.

[...]

This is not just about online joshing. It covers influencers and particularly artificial intelligence-generated content, and seems acutely focused on what happens in families everywhere when they are forced to spend time together.

[...]

Last year the number of babies born [in China] was the lowest since records began in 1949 and the rate of decline is accelerating. Cities and provinces have attempted a variety of “interventions”, ranging from childcare subsidies to the more direct practice of phoning young women and asking them why they are not pregnant — an extreme form of grandmother behaviour, as some have noted.

[...]

David Stern, a confidant of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, was in email contact with the paedophile financier during the taxpayer-funded visit.

Archived

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor had dinner with a model on an official taxpayer-funded trip to China, while his aide sent photos of the pair to Jeffrey Epstein.

[...]

To Jeffrey Epstein, David Stern was “my China contact”. To Stern, 48, Epstein was “my boss”. And to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Stern was a trusted aide and close confidant.

[...]

Little appears in the public domain about Stern, a German citizen who studied in the UK before going into business in China. But the files shed light on his background. Asked by Epstein to provide a CV, Stern summed up his own career in a few sentences.

He studied law and Chinese law at SOAS, University of London, before moving to China in 1996 to study Chinese. He then joined Deutsche Bank in Shanghai and Siemens in Beijing, before returning to London to work for Ermgassen & Co, where he worked on mergers and acquisitions in the Chinese market.

In 2002 he set out on his own, founding Asia Gateway, which he described to Epstein as a China-focused strategy advisory firm. He went on to set up Asia Gateway China, which focused on healthcare and IT, and also explored turning his companies into a boutique wealth-management firm focused on high-net-worth individuals in China.

[...]

As a director of Pitch@Palace, which was based within Buckingham Palace, Stern attended regular events with the royal family, including an event where he sat next to Queen Elizabeth at St James’s Palace. The same year, Stern was appointed to the board of the St George’s House Trust. Founded by Prince Philip in 1966, the charity’s purpose is to provide a private space “where people of influence from right across society could come together to debate and discuss issues of national and international importance”, its website says. “The values of the House are openness, honesty, trust and respect.”

[...]

The country’s online regulator aims to curb social media fuelling ‘marriage phobia’ and ‘fertility anxiety’ over the lunar new year.

Archived

[...]

No online jokes about useless husbands, bossy mothers-in-law, marriage being a trap or the joys of singledom will be allowed, all in the name of encouraging people to tie the knot.

[...]

A running joke of the season, when millions of Chinese people head from the cities to their childhood homes and villages, is that it is when the first duty of filial piety comes into effect: the requirement to tell parents and grandparents why you do not have a boyfriend or a girlfriend; if you have one, why you are not yet married; or, if you are married, why you do not have a child.

Enforcement of that duty is being taken over by the Cyberspace Administration of China, the chief censorship body for the internet and social media, which has issued its instructions for the holiday season, which starts on Tuesday.

“Regulators will crack down on content that promotes ‘anti-marriage’ or ‘anti-childbirth’ narratives, fuels gender antagonism or exaggerates so-called ‘marriage phobia’ and ‘fertility anxiety’,” according to a stern article in the People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party.

[...]

This is not just about online joshing. It covers influencers and particularly artificial intelligence-generated content, and seems acutely focused on what happens in families everywhere when they are forced to spend time together.

[...]

Last year the number of babies born [in China] was the lowest since records began in 1949 and the rate of decline is accelerating. Cities and provinces have attempted a variety of “interventions”, ranging from childcare subsidies to the more direct practice of phoning young women and asking them why they are not pregnant — an extreme form of grandmother behaviour, as some have noted.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50885692

The number of Chinese who believe that “hard work is rewarded” has collapsed among those born in the 1980s and 1990s.

Archived

They call themselves “rat people,” Chinese slang for young graduates who have given up on conventional success. They join the “lying-flat generation,” who reject the “996” grind (9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week), refuse to date or marry, and scrape by on minimal consumption. It’s a dark, sobering self-portrait of a generation that was supposed to be China’s future.

The economic numbers explain much of the despair. China’s unemployment rate sits at 5.1 percent overall, but 16.5 percent for those aged 16 to 24. Youth unemployment peaked at 18.9 percent in August 2024 and remains elevated. And roughly 70 percent of unemployed 20-to-24-year-olds hold university degrees, as China’s skyrocketing higher education sector now churns out more degrees than there are jobs. Over 12 million graduates flooded the job market in 2025 alone – and even more will graduate this year.

China built the world’s largest higher education system. Enrollment jumped from 17 percent to 60 percent in two decades, and the number of university graduates rose from 7.5 million in 2018 to an expected 12.7 million in 2026. But the economy can’t absorb what the universities produce.

[...]

The result is a generation opting out. Some take temporary work while searching for something better. Others flee into graduate school to delay the reckoning. But a growing number have simply quit trying.

Survey evidence in the World Values Survey and China Family Panel Studies confirms the generational rupture. Chinese born after 1990 are far less likely to view work as “a duty to society” than their parents’ generation. The number of Chinese who believe that “hard work is rewarded” has collapsed among those born in the 1980s and 1990s.

[...]

The growing share of youth “lying flat” is especially alarming given how few young people China has. The demographics are working against Beijing. China’s fertility rate fell from above seven births per woman in the early 1960s to about 1.0 in 2024 – well below the replacement level. Births dropped to 7.9 million in 2025, the lowest since 1949. The total population fell by 3.4 million to 1.4 billion. The number of women aged 20 to 34, who account for about 85 percent of births, is predicted to shrink from 105 million in 2025 to just 58 million by 2050.

Beijing’s attempted fixes verge on parody. A 13 percent value-added tax on condoms and birth control, ending a three-decade exemption, took effect in January 2026. A $12.7 billion child-care subsidy offers families a lump-sum payment of about $500 per child under three. Neither policy addresses why young people aren’t having children: they can’t afford homes, can’t find decent jobs, and don’t see a future worth bringing children into.

[...]

China’s economic model emphasizes state direction and strategic control, and that’s increasingly out of step with a younger generation whose values around work, family, and personal fulfillment are rapidly changing. China can censor pessimism but it can’t manufacture hope.

[...]

The question is whether a state-led model can deliver the flexibility young workers need – or whether a generation of “rat people” represents the new normal.

The number of Chinese who believe that “hard work is rewarded” has collapsed among those born in the 1980s and 1990s.

Archived

They call themselves “rat people,” Chinese slang for young graduates who have given up on conventional success. They join the “lying-flat generation,” who reject the “996” grind (9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week), refuse to date or marry, and scrape by on minimal consumption. It’s a dark, sobering self-portrait of a generation that was supposed to be China’s future.

The economic numbers explain much of the despair. China’s unemployment rate sits at 5.1 percent overall, but 16.5 percent for those aged 16 to 24. Youth unemployment peaked at 18.9 percent in August 2024 and remains elevated. And roughly 70 percent of unemployed 20-to-24-year-olds hold university degrees, as China’s skyrocketing higher education sector now churns out more degrees than there are jobs. Over 12 million graduates flooded the job market in 2025 alone – and even more will graduate this year.

China built the world’s largest higher education system. Enrollment jumped from 17 percent to 60 percent in two decades, and the number of university graduates rose from 7.5 million in 2018 to an expected 12.7 million in 2026. But the economy can’t absorb what the universities produce.

[...]

The result is a generation opting out. Some take temporary work while searching for something better. Others flee into graduate school to delay the reckoning. But a growing number have simply quit trying.

Survey evidence in the World Values Survey and China Family Panel Studies confirms the generational rupture. Chinese born after 1990 are far less likely to view work as “a duty to society” than their parents’ generation. The number of Chinese who believe that “hard work is rewarded” has collapsed among those born in the 1980s and 1990s.

[...]

The growing share of youth “lying flat” is especially alarming given how few young people China has. The demographics are working against Beijing. China’s fertility rate fell from above seven births per woman in the early 1960s to about 1.0 in 2024 – well below the replacement level. Births dropped to 7.9 million in 2025, the lowest since 1949. The total population fell by 3.4 million to 1.4 billion. The number of women aged 20 to 34, who account for about 85 percent of births, is predicted to shrink from 105 million in 2025 to just 58 million by 2050.

Beijing’s attempted fixes verge on parody. A 13 percent value-added tax on condoms and birth control, ending a three-decade exemption, took effect in January 2026. A $12.7 billion child-care subsidy offers families a lump-sum payment of about $500 per child under three. Neither policy addresses why young people aren’t having children: they can’t afford homes, can’t find decent jobs, and don’t see a future worth bringing children into.

[...]

China’s economic model emphasizes state direction and strategic control, and that’s increasingly out of step with a younger generation whose values around work, family, and personal fulfillment are rapidly changing. China can censor pessimism but it can’t manufacture hope.

[...]

The question is whether a state-led model can deliver the flexibility young workers need – or whether a generation of “rat people” represents the new normal.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50787608

Archived

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The 55-year-old nomad and community leader returned to his family home in Kyangche Township, Gade County, in Tibet’s traditional province of Amdo—now forcibly incorporated into Qinghai Province—on 7 February 2026.

[...]

A-nya Sengdra has suffered devastating health complications as a direct result of his brutal imprisonment. Sources confirm that he has developed vision loss, kidney disease, and severe blood pressure problems during detention. Following his arrest in September 2018, he was subjected to systematic torture and denied access to legal counsel for 48 days, during which authorities repeatedly beat him.

Family members, finally permitted a brief visit in August 2025 after years of being systematically denied access, described his profoundly frail and deteriorated condition. Reports confirm he suffered dangerously high blood pressure throughout his imprisonment while Chinese authorities deliberately withheld adequate medical care.

[...]

In a blatant attempt to silence A-nya Sengdra and suppress information about his systematic mistreatment, Chinese authorities have imposed severe restrictions and surveillance despite his nominal release. Both he and his family members are prohibited from discussing his case or sharing any photographs or videos on social media platforms. Furthermore, authorities have barred him from travelling to seek urgently needed medical treatment for his serious health conditions, effectively maintaining him under house surveillance in his hometown. This continued persecution demonstrates China’s contempt for basic human dignity and international human rights norms.

[...]

Sengdra’s original seven-year sentence was scheduled to end on 3 September 2025. However, Chinese authorities arbitrarily extended his detention by more than five months, ultimately releasing him on 7 February 2026. Sources indicate the extension was allegedly based on fabricated accusations of “prison rule violations” or theft, yet no official announcement or transparent judicial procedure was ever provided. The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) rightfully characterised this extension as arbitrary detention in flagrant violation of international fair trial standards.

[...]

Archived

[...]

The 55-year-old nomad and community leader returned to his family home in Kyangche Township, Gade County, in Tibet’s traditional province of Amdo—now forcibly incorporated into Qinghai Province—on 7 February 2026.

[...]

A-nya Sengdra has suffered devastating health complications as a direct result of his brutal imprisonment. Sources confirm that he has developed vision loss, kidney disease, and severe blood pressure problems during detention. Following his arrest in September 2018, he was subjected to systematic torture and denied access to legal counsel for 48 days, during which authorities repeatedly beat him.

Family members, finally permitted a brief visit in August 2025 after years of being systematically denied access, described his profoundly frail and deteriorated condition. Reports confirm he suffered dangerously high blood pressure throughout his imprisonment while Chinese authorities deliberately withheld adequate medical care.

[...]

In a blatant attempt to silence A-nya Sengdra and suppress information about his systematic mistreatment, Chinese authorities have imposed severe restrictions and surveillance despite his nominal release. Both he and his family members are prohibited from discussing his case or sharing any photographs or videos on social media platforms. Furthermore, authorities have barred him from travelling to seek urgently needed medical treatment for his serious health conditions, effectively maintaining him under house surveillance in his hometown. This continued persecution demonstrates China’s contempt for basic human dignity and international human rights norms.

[...]

Sengdra’s original seven-year sentence was scheduled to end on 3 September 2025. However, Chinese authorities arbitrarily extended his detention by more than five months, ultimately releasing him on 7 February 2026. Sources indicate the extension was allegedly based on fabricated accusations of “prison rule violations” or theft, yet no official announcement or transparent judicial procedure was ever provided. The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) rightfully characterised this extension as arbitrary detention in flagrant violation of international fair trial standards.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50779967

[...]

Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te said if China were to take Taiwan, Beijing would become "more aggressive, undermining peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific and the rules-based international order."

"If Taiwan were annexed by China, China's expansionist ambitions would not stop there," Lai told AFP during an exclusive interview on Tuesday at the Presidential Office Building in Taipei.

"The next countries under threat would be Japan, the Philippines, and others in the Indo-Pacific region, with repercussions eventually reaching the Americas and Europe," he said.

[...]

China has competing territorial claims with Japan and the Philippines, while the Taiwan Strait is a major artery for global shipping.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, whose country hosts several US bases and around 60,000 American troops, suggested in November that Tokyo could intervene militarily if China attacked Taiwan, drawing a furious response from Beijing.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos has also warned the archipelago nation, where US troops have access to nine military bases, would "inevitably" be dragged into a war over Taiwan.

"In this changing world, nations belong to a global community -- a situation in any one country would inevitably impact another," Lai said.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50778341

Their chances of settling in the United States increasingly bleak, a growing number of Chinese nationals are travelling visa-free to Serbia or Bosnia and Herzegovina and crossing into the European Union.

Archived

Driven by economic hardship and political discontent, a growing number of Chinese nationals are trying to reach the EU via the Balkans, their route to the United States made more difficult by the loss of a visa-free regime with Ecuador and growing hostility under Donald Trump’s second term in the White House.

[...]

In 2024, more than 620 illegal border crossings by Chinese nationals were recorded on the Western Balkan route, according to statistics from the European Union border agency, Frontex, plus a further 30 travelling via Greece and Albania.

In 2022, the figure for the Western Balkan route was just 88. In 2025, it hit 706.

[...]

In China, youth unemployment remains high. The unemployment rate among 16 to 24-year-olds was 18.9 per cent last August. In 2023, the figure hit a record high of 21.3 per cent, amid signs of an economic slowdown.

Some Chinese migrants on the Balkan route said that they decided to leave China after their small businesses suffered during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

The country’s shrinking economic opportunities and intensified social controls in recent years have also fuelled dissent; some Chinese are losing hope of a better life, especially for their children.

[...]

For more than a decade, the Balkan route has been a major pathway for refugees and irregular migrants mainly from the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia trying to reach the EU.

Given China has visa-free arrangements with both Serbia and Bosnia, Chinese nationals have an advantage – they are able to travel directly to Belgrade and cross without visas into Bosnia.

This is a double-edged sword, however, said Milica Svabic, a lawyer affiliated with the Serbian NGO Klikaktiv, which provides legal and social support for migrants and refugees on the Balkan route.

Able to slip into Serbia and rent private accommodation, Chinese nationals are “completely invisible”, said Svabic. “They’re invisible to state institutions [and] NGOs, and this can open the door to labour exploitation, sexual exploitation.”

Many also turn to smugglers to cross into the EU.

[...]

In then years under its current leader Xi Jinping, China experienced a mass exodus as asylum seekers surpassed one million, according to the China-focused NGO Safeguard Defenders.

The number is even more staggering considering the increasing exit controls (including exit bans) placed on determinate categories of Chinese citizens by Chinese authorities. The continuing upward trend also serves as a stark reminder that China’s domestic human rights abuse is not the mere “internal affair” as it so often likes to claim.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50715911

Archived

A 25-year-old man and 31-year-old woman will face the ACT Magistrates Court on Wednesday on charges of reckless foreign interference, which carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.

[...]

The case underscores longstanding concerns among Australian security agencies that Beijing has shown little hesitation in pursuing domestic political objectives beyond its borders, including through efforts to monitor, influence or pressure members of the Chinese diaspora.

[...]