64

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2007396

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2007127

...

Weidel admitted meeting Wu but said she met him once in months. As for their discussions, Weidel said that she sought an understanding of China’s position on Germany.

...

The damning findings come days ahead of German parliamentary elections in which AfD has rattled mainstream politicians. As per latest opinion polls, the party stands second in popularity and way ahead of incumbent SPD. While AfD’s links to the neo-Nazi movement have led to widespread concerns and contributed to its ostracisation by German parties, the links to China have led to fresh concerns whether a top contender for German chancellorship has been groomed by China.

The findings are all the more damning as European far-right has long been supported by Russia and China is Russia’s principal ally. The AfD is so extremist that even French far-right party, National Rally (RN), broke ties with it in the European Union (EU) elections last year. Moreover, AfD has previously been charged with spying for China and such allegations contributed to the RN-AfD split.

...

AfD leader Alice Weidel’s long relationship to China

In light of revealation of Weidel’s secret meetings with the top Chinese diplomat in Germany, fresh attention has come on her long relationship with China that goes back to decades. It is bound to be explored whether she has been groomed by China to do the Communist Party’s bidding in Germany and Europe.

...

As an economist, Weidel worked for the state-owned Bank of China and lived in China for six years. It has been reported that she was on scholarship during those years. Her doctoral thesis was also written on Chinese pension system.

...

In China, Weidel worked at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

While Weidel today leads a party linked to neo-Nazis, her grandparents were members of the Nazi Party. Her grandfather, Hans Weidel, was a prominent Nazi judge who persecuted political opponents of the Nazi regime. He was appointed by Adolf Hitler himself.

86

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2007127

...

Weidel admitted meeting Wu but said she met him once in months. As for their discussions, Weidel said that she sought an understanding of China’s position on Germany.

...

The damning findings come days ahead of German parliamentary elections in which AfD has rattled mainstream politicians. As per latest opinion polls, the party stands second in popularity and way ahead of incumbent SPD. While AfD’s links to the neo-Nazi movement have led to widespread concerns and contributed to its ostracisation by German parties, the links to China have led to fresh concerns whether a top contender for German chancellorship has been groomed by China.

The findings are all the more damning as European far-right has long been supported by Russia and China is Russia’s principal ally. The AfD is so extremist that even French far-right party, National Rally (RN), broke ties with it in the European Union (EU) elections last year. Moreover, AfD has previously been charged with spying for China and such allegations contributed to the RN-AfD split.

...

AfD leader Alice Weidel’s long relationship to China

In light of revealation of Weidel’s secret meetings with the top Chinese diplomat in Germany, fresh attention has come on her long relationship with China that goes back to decades. It is bound to be explored whether she has been groomed by China to do the Communist Party’s bidding in Germany and Europe.

...

As an economist, Weidel worked for the state-owned Bank of China and lived in China for six years. It has been reported that she was on scholarship during those years. Her doctoral thesis was also written on Chinese pension system.

...

In China, Weidel worked at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

While Weidel today leads a party linked to neo-Nazis, her grandparents were members of the Nazi Party. Her grandfather, Hans Weidel, was a prominent Nazi judge who persecuted political opponents of the Nazi regime. He was appointed by Adolf Hitler himself.

7

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2005766

**The EU is seeking improved screening of greenfield projects and a bigger say on which investments member states approve on national security grounds, as it expands its efforts to protect critical assets and know-how amid rising geopolitical tensions involving countries such as China. **

...

“What comes out throughout [the reforms] is the Commission trying to give itself a … greater role in foreign investment screening,” says Christoph Barth, a partner in law firm Linklaters’s antitrust and foreign investment practice.

Among the proposed changes to the inbound screening regulation, which must be approved by European parliament and council to take effect, is obliging member states to give ‘utmost consideration’ to the Commission’s input when assessing a transaction’s national security risks and an explanation when their views diverge. “The question is whether the Commission now makes its opinions more directive in the sense of achieving a particular outcome for a particular case,” says Mr Barth, adding that this could “result in a potential clash between the Commission and member states”.

...

“The push toward a FDI screening of greenfield investments is likely to build another hurdle for investments in the energy, battery or e-car sector … sectors where foreign competitors of EU companies have been gaining significant market share,” said Udo Herbert Olgemöller, partner at Allen & Overy. “Such screenings are time-consuming and create a certain level of legal uncertainty as their outcome may be affected by political considerations that are hardly predictable.”

...

The Commission has also progressed plans to screen outbound investments into critical technologies in countries such as China, where it fears sensitive technologies and know-how could be used to undermine national security. It is seeking industry feedback via a three-month public consultation, which will be followed by a year of monitoring outbound deals and a final decision on an outbound mechanism by August 2025.

One of the early questions is whether the challenging task of obtaining the buy-in of each member state, which is necessary to introduce an outbound mechanism, can be achieved. On January 17, the European parliament passed a resolution calling for the expansion of legislative initiatives to tackle risks emanating from Chinese investment in the bloc. But neither industrial policies nor views on China are fully aligned across EU countries.

...

18

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2005766

**The EU is seeking improved screening of greenfield projects and a bigger say on which investments member states approve on national security grounds, as it expands its efforts to protect critical assets and know-how amid rising geopolitical tensions involving countries such as China. **

...

“What comes out throughout [the reforms] is the Commission trying to give itself a … greater role in foreign investment screening,” says Christoph Barth, a partner in law firm Linklaters’s antitrust and foreign investment practice.

Among the proposed changes to the inbound screening regulation, which must be approved by European parliament and council to take effect, is obliging member states to give ‘utmost consideration’ to the Commission’s input when assessing a transaction’s national security risks and an explanation when their views diverge. “The question is whether the Commission now makes its opinions more directive in the sense of achieving a particular outcome for a particular case,” says Mr Barth, adding that this could “result in a potential clash between the Commission and member states”.

...

“The push toward a FDI screening of greenfield investments is likely to build another hurdle for investments in the energy, battery or e-car sector … sectors where foreign competitors of EU companies have been gaining significant market share,” said Udo Herbert Olgemöller, partner at Allen & Overy. “Such screenings are time-consuming and create a certain level of legal uncertainty as their outcome may be affected by political considerations that are hardly predictable.”

...

The Commission has also progressed plans to screen outbound investments into critical technologies in countries such as China, where it fears sensitive technologies and know-how could be used to undermine national security. It is seeking industry feedback via a three-month public consultation, which will be followed by a year of monitoring outbound deals and a final decision on an outbound mechanism by August 2025.

One of the early questions is whether the challenging task of obtaining the buy-in of each member state, which is necessary to introduce an outbound mechanism, can be achieved. On January 17, the European parliament passed a resolution calling for the expansion of legislative initiatives to tackle risks emanating from Chinese investment in the bloc. But neither industrial policies nor views on China are fully aligned across EU countries.

...

1

**The EU is seeking improved screening of greenfield projects and a bigger say on which investments member states approve on national security grounds, as it expands its efforts to protect critical assets and know-how amid rising geopolitical tensions involving countries such as China. **

...

“What comes out throughout [the reforms] is the Commission trying to give itself a … greater role in foreign investment screening,” says Christoph Barth, a partner in law firm Linklaters’s antitrust and foreign investment practice.

Among the proposed changes to the inbound screening regulation, which must be approved by European parliament and council to take effect, is obliging member states to give ‘utmost consideration’ to the Commission’s input when assessing a transaction’s national security risks and an explanation when their views diverge. “The question is whether the Commission now makes its opinions more directive in the sense of achieving a particular outcome for a particular case,” says Mr Barth, adding that this could “result in a potential clash between the Commission and member states”.

...

“The push toward a FDI screening of greenfield investments is likely to build another hurdle for investments in the energy, battery or e-car sector … sectors where foreign competitors of EU companies have been gaining significant market share,” said Udo Herbert Olgemöller, partner at Allen & Overy. “Such screenings are time-consuming and create a certain level of legal uncertainty as their outcome may be affected by political considerations that are hardly predictable.”

...

The Commission has also progressed plans to screen outbound investments into critical technologies in countries such as China, where it fears sensitive technologies and know-how could be used to undermine national security. It is seeking industry feedback via a three-month public consultation, which will be followed by a year of monitoring outbound deals and a final decision on an outbound mechanism by August 2025.

One of the early questions is whether the challenging task of obtaining the buy-in of each member state, which is necessary to introduce an outbound mechanism, can be achieved. On January 17, the European parliament passed a resolution calling for the expansion of legislative initiatives to tackle risks emanating from Chinese investment in the bloc. But neither industrial policies nor views on China are fully aligned across EU countries.

...

33

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2005369

British Foreign Minister David Lammy said on Thursday he saw no appetite from Russia for peace with Ukraine after listening to his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov talk at a closed-door meeting of the top G20 diplomats in South Africa.

Lammy was speaking to Reuters on the sidelines of a meeting of foreign ministers from the world's biggest economies, which has been overshadowed by dispute between members over the Ukraine war, among other disagreements.

...

12

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2005369

British Foreign Minister David Lammy said on Thursday he saw no appetite from Russia for peace with Ukraine after listening to his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov talk at a closed-door meeting of the top G20 diplomats in South Africa.

Lammy was speaking to Reuters on the sidelines of a meeting of foreign ministers from the world's biggest economies, which has been overshadowed by dispute between members over the Ukraine war, among other disagreements.

...

7

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2005305

This is an op-ed by Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, and a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

As Trump empowers Russia and the far right, he is laying the foundation for undermining democracies around the world.

Since the end of the second world war, liberal democracies have stuck together – led by the US. On the opposite side have been authoritarian states, led mainly by the Soviet Union, followed, after the demise of the Soviet Union, by Russia and China.

But all this is rapidly changing. Russia and China have morphed into oligarchies, run by small groups of extraordinarily wealthy people.

The US has been moving from a democracy to an oligarchy as well – and is doing so at lightning speed under Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

[...]

39

This is an op-ed by Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, and a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

As Trump empowers Russia and the far right, he is laying the foundation for undermining democracies around the world.

Since the end of the second world war, liberal democracies have stuck together – led by the US. On the opposite side have been authoritarian states, led mainly by the Soviet Union, followed, after the demise of the Soviet Union, by Russia and China.

But all this is rapidly changing. Russia and China have morphed into oligarchies, run by small groups of extraordinarily wealthy people.

The US has been moving from a democracy to an oligarchy as well – and is doing so at lightning speed under Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

[...]

24

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2001269

Mette Frederiksen admitted that Denmark and other countries made a mistake by cutting their defence spending as she announced a 50bn Danish kroner (£5.5bn) package, saying: “It must never happen again.”

The Danish prime minister increased defence spending to 3% of GDP in the next two years – up from 2.4% in 2024 – as she said Denmark needed a “massive rearmament” to avoid war.

...

“We have had to pay attention to a lot, both here in Denmark and in Greenland, and in general as Europeans,” Frederiksen said. “We are in the most dangerous situation in many, many years.”

...

The Danish defence minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, said: “Within two years, Russia could pose a credible threat to one or several Nato countries if Nato does not build up its own military power in the same rate as Russia. This calls for swift political action.”

...

57

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2001269

Mette Frederiksen admitted that Denmark and other countries made a mistake by cutting their defence spending as she announced a 50bn Danish kroner (£5.5bn) package, saying: “It must never happen again.”

The Danish prime minister increased defence spending to 3% of GDP in the next two years – up from 2.4% in 2024 – as she said Denmark needed a “massive rearmament” to avoid war.

...

“We have had to pay attention to a lot, both here in Denmark and in Greenland, and in general as Europeans,” Frederiksen said. “We are in the most dangerous situation in many, many years.”

...

The Danish defence minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, said: “Within two years, Russia could pose a credible threat to one or several Nato countries if Nato does not build up its own military power in the same rate as Russia. This calls for swift political action.”

...

11

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2001039

Archived version

China's ageing population threatens key Beijing policy goals for the coming decade of boosting domestic consumption and reining in ballooning debt, posing a severe challenge to the economy's long-term growth prospects.

[...]

"China's age structure change will slow down economic growth," said Xiujian Peng,  senior research fellow at the Centre of Policy Studies (CoPS) at Victoria University in Melbourne.

In the next 10 years, about 300 million people currently aged 50 to 60 - China's largest demographic group, equivalent to almost the entire US population - are set to leave the workforce at a time when pension budgets are already stretched.

The state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences sees the pension system running out of money by 2035, with about a third of the country's provincial-level jurisdictions running pension budget deficits, according to finance ministry data.

[...]

Chinese society has traditionally expected children to support their parents financially as they age and often by living together to care for them.

But as in many Western countries, rapid urbanisation has shifted young people to bigger cities and away from their parents, prompting a rising number of seniors to rely on self care or government payments.

[...]

INNOVATION WOES

China saw a rise in births after ditching the one-child policy but the recovery was far off pre-implementation levels and also short-lived. Fewer children were born in each of the past eight years, including 2023.

Demographers say the number of children in any economy is directly correlated with domestic consumption.

[-] randomname@scribe.disroot.org 4 points 1 week ago

Here you go: "Marriages and Divorces" (and the drivers behind them) by https://ourworldindata.org/marriages-and-divorces

TLDR: Marriages become less common across all countries, and people are marrying later in life. And there is a 'decoupling' of parenthood and marriage.

[-] randomname@scribe.disroot.org 6 points 1 week ago

Addition: Fertility rate appears to be lowest in China worldwide, EU and the U.S. are a bit higher. You can see these and other countries here (you can search for other countries using the search field at the top of the diagram in the link).

[-] randomname@scribe.disroot.org 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I'm not sure that an international comparison would be too useful when it comes to estimate future population growth or decline, because we see a trend in many countries that people don't marry, although they raise children. That's not necessarily the case in China, but supposedly in many European countries. For a population forecast I would guess the birth rate (fertility rate) is a more apt metric.

Addition: Fertility rate appears to be lowest in China worldwide, EU and the U.S. are a bit higher. You can see these and other countries here (you can search for other countries using the search field at the top of the diagram in the link).

[-] randomname@scribe.disroot.org 4 points 2 weeks ago

There is another source related to the topic:

With US funding freeze, China nonprofits are facing extinction. They need emergency assistance. -- (Archived version)

An entire ecosystem of vital China-related work is now in crisis. When the Trump administration froze foreign funding and USAID programs last week, dozens of scrappy nonprofits in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the US were immediately affected. Staff are losing their jobs; some organizations face imminent closure due to lack of funding; others are paring back their programming.

In many cases, these organisations provide our last window into what is actually happening in China. They do the painstaking and often personally risky work of tracking Chinese media censorship, tallying local protests, uncovering human rights violations, documenting the Uyghur genocide, and supporting what remains of civil society in China. They provide platforms for Chinese people to speak freely; they help keep the dream of democracy in China alive. I’m not listing the names of any specific organisations at this time, because some prefer not to disclose that they receive foreign funding. Beijing believes funding that supports free speech and human rights is interference by ‘hostile foreign forces’.

As China’s President Xi Jinping has squeezed Chinese civil society and expelled journalists, information from inside China has got harder and harder to access. The 2017 Chinese foreign NGO law crushed US and other foreign nonprofits based in China. Some moved to Hong Kong or elsewhere. The spending freeze may deal them a death blow.

...

[-] randomname@scribe.disroot.org 3 points 2 weeks ago

This is not whataboutism as forced labour is not limited to cotton and the fashion industry. There is much evidence for this.

[-] randomname@scribe.disroot.org 2 points 2 weeks ago

Yes, the Vatican is also silent on China's supression of religious groups, including catholics.

'There is no longer a safe place to be a Christian in China' - report

The Chinese government is increasingly cracking down on state-sanctioned churches as well as underground churches, leaving no "safe place" for Christians, according to International Christian Concern.

A new report by ICC tracks persecution of Christians in China since July 2021 and records 32 cases of arrests and detainments, five raids on Christian schools, and 20 cases of the Sinicization of churches - where churches are forced to align their faith with the social and political messaging of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The ICC said that exact numbers were likely to be far higher because of the challenges of receiving information from China.

[-] randomname@scribe.disroot.org 8 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

@jet@hackertacks.com

I personally believe this is some sort of political rhetoric. Marcos knows well that China won't stop its aggression.

@NutinButNet

@Scheisser

[-] randomname@scribe.disroot.org 3 points 3 weeks ago

‘So what?’: Privacy warnings about DeepSeek fall on deaf ears

Privacy activists are warning about the invasive nature of DeepSeek, which collects a trove of personal user information that could be handed over to the Chinese government

People, however, just don’t care.

Luke de Pulford, co-founder of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), shared screenshots from the Chinese AI chatbot’s privacy policy, which stated data it collects is stored in “secure servers located in the People’s Republic of China.”

...

“Just fyi, @deepseek_ai collects your IP, keystroke patterns, device info, etc etc, and stores it in China, where all that data is vulnerable to arbitrary requisition from the [Chinese] State,” said de Pulford, leader of IPAC, a global group of lawmakers who seek to hold China accountable for democratic abuses.

“Anticipating tedious whataboutery: the difference between this and free-world social media apps is that you can enforce your data rights in rule of law countries. This is not the case in China,” said de Pulford. >

[-] randomname@scribe.disroot.org 6 points 3 weeks ago

Is Deepseek Open Source?

Hugging Face researchers are trying to build a more open version of DeepSeek’s AI ‘reasoning’ model

Hugging Face head of research Leandro von Werra and several company engineers have launched Open-R1, a project that seeks to build a duplicate of R1 and open source all of its components, including the data used to train it.

The engineers said they were compelled to act by DeepSeek’s “black box” release philosophy. Technically, R1 is “open” in that the model is permissively licensed, which means it can be deployed largely without restrictions. However, R1 isn’t “open source” by the widely accepted definition because some of the tools used to build it are shrouded in mystery. Like many high-flying AI companies, DeepSeek is loathe to reveal its secret sauce.

[-] randomname@scribe.disroot.org 4 points 3 weeks ago

Is Deepseek Open Source?

Hugging Face researchers are trying to build a more open version of DeepSeek’s AI ‘reasoning’ model

Hugging Face head of research Leandro von Werra and several company engineers have launched Open-R1, a project that seeks to build a duplicate of R1 and open source all of its components, including the data used to train it.

The engineers said they were compelled to act by DeepSeek’s “black box” release philosophy. Technically, R1 is “open” in that the model is permissively licensed, which means it can be deployed largely without restrictions. However, R1 isn’t “open source” by the widely accepted definition because some of the tools used to build it are shrouded in mystery. Like many high-flying AI companies, DeepSeek is loathe to reveal its secret sauce.

view more: next ›

randomname

joined 3 weeks ago