Activist sentenced to four months in prison for insulting Chinese flag

Activist sentenced to four months in prison for insulting Chinese flag

activist arrest Asia China prison sentence

Hong Kong: Activist sentenced to four months in prison for insulting Chinese flag

He is accused of throwing a Chinese flag during clashes in May 2019 in front of the local parliament

Prosecutions against figures of the pro-democracy movement are on the rise in Hong Kong. A young Hong Kong activist was sentenced to four months in prison on Tuesday for insulting the Chinese flag and illegally gathering.

Tony Chung, the leader of a now-disbanded group calling for Hong Kong independence, was found guilty in early December of throwing a Chinese flag during clashes in May 2019 in front of the local parliament (Legco).

Money laundering and conspiracy

Tony Chung, 19, will await another trial for "secession" while in custody, punishable by life imprisonment under the national security law imposed by Beijing on the semi-autonomous territory atthe end of June. He is the first political figure to be prosecuted for violating new legislation designed to restore "order and stability" after seven months of monster, and often violent, protests in 2019. On Wednesday, he was sentenced to three months in prison for each of the two acts for which he had been convicted: contempt of the national flag and unlawful assembly. He will have to serve four months in detention.

He is also charged with money laundering and conspiracy to publish seditious content. The young man was arrested in late October by plainclothes police officers a few metres from the US consulate and has been in pre-trial detention ever since. According to a group calling himself "Friends of Hong Kong", the young activist was arrested by the police that day because he wanted to seek asylum at the US consulate in Hong Kong.

Extraditions to China

Many pro-democracy activists have left the city to seek refuge abroad since Beijing stepped up a crackdown on movements that denounce China's takeover of the country. Under the controversial law, which gives way to broad interpretation, activists who express their opinions can be accused of "subversion" and "collusion with foreign forces".

It also put an end to the legal safeguard that had previously separated Hong Kong's theoretically independent and widely recognized judicial system from that of mainland China, which is highly opaque and controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. The change paved the way for the extradition of suspects to China. On Sunday, China's CGTN television station reported that Hong Kong police have placed 30 people, who are not currently in the city, on a list of people wanted for violating the national security law.

Source:- Flash News and News Agencies

Farrukh Shah

China, the world's largest economy by 2028

China, the world's largest economy by 2028

Asia China economy world

 China, the world's largest economy by 2028

According to a British think tank, the United States will be dethroned five years earlier than previous forecasts. In these times of recession, the Chinese economy has rebounded more rapidly.

That is not his habit. But by the end of 2020, the Centre for Economics and Business Research(CEBR)in London is not listing the strongest growth. It merely highlights the savings that have best limited the damage. And in this competition, China is the one that fares best, according to the annual ranking that the British think tank publishes this Saturday, December 26 and which The Guardian reports on its website. To the point, he announces, that the Asian economy will dethrone its American rival before the end of the decade, in 2028 precisely.

"China has rebounded rapidly after the first effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and will grow by 2% in 2020," reports The Guardian. "While the U.S. economy will contract by 5%, China will close the gap with its great rival." Global growth is expected to decline by 4.4%, the worst contraction since world War II.

In Asia, China is no exception. According to Douglas McWilliams, vice-president of CEBR, "Other Asian economies are also climbing the rankings. Western political leaders, whose results during the pandemic are rather bad, should learn from it and be more attentive to what is happening in Asia rather than just watching each other."

Source:- Flash News and News Agencies

Farrukh Shah

Alibaba under investigation by competition authorities

Alibaba under investigation by competition authorities

alibaba China digital economy Tech

Alibaba under investigation by competition authorities

Beijing worries about the power of technology groups and their forays into the online lending sector

Alibaba is in Beijing'scrosshairs. Chinese competition authorities announced on Thursday that it was opening an investigation against the e-commerce giant on "suspicion of monopolistic practices." The State Administration for Market Regulation also announced that it had contacted Ant Group, the world's leading online payment company, for "supervision" issues, less than two months after Beijing cancelled at the last minute the IPO of thisAlibabasubsidiary.

Stock falls in Hong Kong

The announcements caused Alibaba shares to fall sharply on the Hong KongStock Exchange, with the stock falling more than 3 percent at the opening on Thursday. It must be said that this investigation is a thunderbolt in the Chinese business world, where Alibaba and its charismatic boss Jack Ma are symbols of the technological success of the Middle Kingdom.

The suspension in extremis of Ant Group's IPO at the beginning of November had already caused amazement. It came days after a speech in Shanghai by Jack Ma, in which the multi-billionaire criticised the actions of financial regulators. They are concerned about the power of technology groups and in particular their forays into the online lending sector, where they are breaking the prudential rules imposed on state-owned banks.

Strengthening anti-monopoly supervision

Chinese media have relayed these concerns by warning of the risks of financial turbulence. The investigation against Alibaba "is an important step for our country to strengthen anti-monopoly supervision in the Internet sector and promote a healthy long-term development of the digital economy," the People's Daily,an organ of the ruling Communist Party, wrote on Thursday. In a sign of the government's impatience with Alibaba, the group was fined 500,000 yuan (62,000 euros) last week for failing to report an acquisition.

Source:- Flash News and News Agencies

Farrukh Shah

Justice: International Criminal Court refuses to investigate Uighurs in China

Justice: International Criminal Court refuses to investigate Uighurs in China

China human rights International UN

Justice: International Criminal Court refuses to investigate Uighurs in China

Prosecutors argue China is not a member of the ICC

On the Uighurcase, the International Criminal Court (ICC) cannot do anything legally. The Hague-based prosecutors refused to investigate the situation of the Muslim minority in China's Xinjiang region, as China is not a member of the ICC. According to a report published on Monday by the office of the Attorney General, Fatou Bensouda, an investigation is therefore impossible.

More than a million people, mostly Muslim, have been interned there in "camps," human rights groups say. China, for its part, claims that these are "professional training centres" designed to help people find jobs and thus distance them from religious extremism.

With regard to forced deportations of Uighur populations to China from Tajikistan and Cambodia,the prosecutor's office said that "there is not enough evidence at this stage" to launch investigations. Members of the exiled Uighur community believed that Tajikistan and Cambodia had parties to the Treaty of Rome that was the origin of the Court in 2002 and the events had taken place in their territories, and the ICC could launch investigations into these denounced deportations.

"Camps" vs. "Professional Training Centres"

Uighurs are the main ethnic group in Xinjiang, a huge region of China that has common borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan. Regularly hit by deadly attacks, attributed by Beijing to separatists or Uighur Islamists, the region is under heavy police surveillance.

Source:- Flash News and News Agencies

Farrukh Shah

Global arms race escalates with China becoming the second biggest exporter

Global arms race escalates with China becoming the second biggest exporter

Army Asia China International Security War weapons

Global arms race escalates with China becoming the second biggest exporter

In the past five years, the Chinese military industry has become the world's second-largest arms manufacturer after the United States, according to recent data.

While science and rational thinking have become dominant themes in the modern world, warlike human nature and concerns for global security across all religions and backgrounds are progressing at a faster rate, new data suggests.

According to a Swedish peace institute, last year the world's arms manufacturing sector saw an increase of 8.5 percent, reaching $ 361 billion in sales compared to 2018.The institute's analysis is based on data collected  of the top 25 arms sales companies in the world.

Some of the information, which has been prepared by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), says that China, which remained isolated for several centuries until gradually opening up to the world in the 1950s onwards, has become  the second largest arms exporter in the world.  It now surpasses some powerful European nations and Russia, with a 16 percent share of the top 25 companies.

The United States, the world's largest democracy, remains by far the world's leading arms manufacturer, "accounting for 61% of the combined arms sales of the top 25," according to the report.

China has overtaken some of the major European countries such as the United Kingdom, France and Russia, the successor state to the former communist Soviet Union, which competed with the United States in the arms race during the Cold War.

Among the top 25 arms companies that were reviewed, China is represented by four companies, with sales of $ 56.7 billion in 2019, while Russia has two companies with a net worth of $ 13.9 billion in the same year.

The United States tops all others with combined sales of $ 221.2 billion last year.

 The rise of Chinese weapons

Experts think that China's share of the global arms sector could be much higher than that of various research groups such as SIPRI's estimate, because the country's authoritarian regime led by the communist party makes exact sales figures in  missile manufacturing and shipbuilding are inaccessible.

"Those with access to additional data are likely to see even higher arms sales activity [in the People's Republic of China]," said Andrew Erickson, a professor at the China Institute for Maritime Studies at the US Naval War College.

"After all, China already enjoys the second largest defense spending in the world by any measure and is pursuing rapid military development and expansion of influence," the professor added.

Three Chinese arms companies were able to reserve a place on the list of the world's top ten arms manufacturers, which shows how adept the communist party-led country's political and financial system has been in competing fiercely with powerful capitalist countries in  global markets.

The China Aviation Industry Corporation (AVIC) ranked sixth and the China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC) ranked eighth.  China North Industries Group Corporation (NORINCO) ranked ninth.

"The combined revenues of the four Chinese companies in the top 25, which also include China South Industries Group Corporation (CSGC; ranked 24th), grew 4.8 percent between 2018 and 2019," the SIPRI report noted.

China can export its military technology to a diverse geography, ranging from its immediate Asian neighbors like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar, to Africa and the Americas.

The large Asian continent accounts for 75 percent of China's total military exports, while Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar account for 61.3 percent of that sum according to the data, spanning a time period from 2008.

In Africa, Chinese arms also appear to have particular appeal, covering 20 percent of the country's total exports.  North Africa accounts for almost half of the country's sales to the continent, while East Africa accounts for 21 percent.

Although Chinese arms companies are not doing so well in America, Venezuela, with a government of socialist tendencies, is by far the largest customer of the Asian power, accounting for 87 percent of all sales in  the whole continent.

Beijing may even find customers in Europe, which has been a rare event for a long time.

At the end of 2019, Serbia showed its interest in Chinese-made UAVs and said it will buy 9 Wing Loong drones from Beijing.

Russia, which has invested heavily in developing its military technologies under the steadfast leadership of President Vladimir Putin, showing off its high-tech supersonic cruise missiles in places like Syria, is finding that its arms sales to the rest of the world are on the decline.  .  , according to the report.

“The revenues of the two Russian companies in the top 25, Almaz-Antey and United Shipbuilding, decreased between 2018 and 2019, by a combined $ 634 million.  A third Russian company, United Aircraft, lost $ 1.3 billion in sales and pulled out of the top 25 in 2019, ”the report highlights.

Source:- Flash News and News Agencies

Farrukh Shah