Author: Nectar Gan

On a bilateral visit beginning on Wednesday, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly will bring up Beijing's human rights commitments, particularly as they pertain to the people of Xinjiang and Tibet.According to a statement released by the UK government, Cleverly will meet with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Vice President Han Zheng to address climate change and other topics in separate bilateral sessions. The last time a British foreign secretary visited China was nearly five years ago. To paraphrase the statement: "the choices that China makes are critical to our collective ability to tackle this global problem" since China is the greatest investor in renewable energy and the largest emitter of carbon. The Foreign Minister will argue that China's rising power means it m...

Analysts have said that Jakarta's decision to "level up" support for Southeast Asian claimants does not indicate a "nascent alliance" with Washington, but that the country's recent joint statement with the United States expressing concern over China's claims in the South China Sea indicates it sees Beijing as a security threat.While meeting last Thursday in Washington, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto discussed plans to increase defense capabilities, specifically in the areas of "fighter aircraft upgrades, new multi-role fighter aircraft, and additional fixed and rotary wing transport aircraft," as reported by the Pentagon. Additionally, the two nations said that Beijing's claims in the South China Sea were "inconsistent with internatio...

Human rights concerns are brought to the forefront of the news cycle by international sports championships like the Olympics and the World Cup, either via increased media attention or examples of athlete activism. Human rights advocates and the general public have long demanded that the International Olympic Committee and the Fédération Internationale de Football Association address the human rights abuses that have been made worse by their respective sports events. Nations with extensive histories of abusive and discriminatory conduct have been given hosting rights for recent games including the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar and the Beijing Winter Olympics. Given that the International Olympic Committee and the Federation of International Football Association both chose countries with que

materials promoting the identity or self-determination of the Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim minority in far western Xinjiang, is included on the list of "violent and terrorist" materials alongside violent audio, video, and photos generated by armed organizations like ISIL (ISIS).Among these groups are the exiled World Uyghur Congress, the separatist East Turkestan independence movement, and the United States government-funded news organization Radio Free Asia. The papers also include details regarding the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square, which are strictly off-limits in China. Metadata examination of the list revealed that some material designated for review is not political, such as a Chinese travel program recorded in Syria called "On the Road," readings from the Quran, and Is...

Despite repeated efforts, the Biden administration has been unable to convince Beijing to cooperate on issues that seem like obvious fits for the two countries. Joe Biden, the Vice President of the United States, has made combating climate change a priority since his first year in office. However, the United States' requests have been ignored for the last two years. The Chinese government has made it clear that the climate change problem is intertwined with the wider U.S.-China relationship, despite repeated trips and pronouncements by U.S. climate envoy John Kerry. Washington has lately made it plain that it hopes Beijing would help it fight narcotics, especially fentanyl, which has become an expanding societal concern in the United States. Biden's "compartmentalization" approach, exp...

Afghanistan's staunch opposition The Taliban government has outlawed all political parties on the grounds that they have "no justification" under Sharia law. "Political parties are banned completely, we will not permit any political party to operate in the country," Abdul Hakim Sharaee, the Taliban's de facto justice minister, said during a news conference on August 16, one day after the Taliban marked two years of rule since international troops withdrew from the country. To that, he said, "Political parties have no justification in Islamic Shari'a law and they are not in the best interest of our nation," suggesting that political parties have been the primary cause of instability in Afghanistan for decades. After dozens of political parties were established after the Taliban's ...

On Wednesday, the Congress criticized the Modi administration for its handling of the border crisis with China, asking when the government would move "beyond the rhetoric" to defend "Bharat Mata" and when the status quo ante would be restored at the frontier. Randeep Surjewala, general secretary of the Congress, stated, "19 round of talks with China fail, talks fail every time for last 3 Years," referring to articles published in the media. Following two days of military discussions, India and China released a joint statement on Tuesday saying they had agreed to preserve peace and tranquility along the border regions and work together to settle the outstanding concerns along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh. There was no quick breakthrough in the withdrawal of s...

Former legislator Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar became Pakistan's seventh caretaker prime minister on August 14, less than three months before the planned general elections. Kakar, 52, is set to select his caretaker government in the coming days as he assumes control of the nation of 240 million people at a pivotal moment. What is the name of Pakistan's acting prime minister? Kakar, who is relatively new to Pakistani politics, is the youngest temporary prime minister in the country's history. He is a Pashtun and a member of the Kakar clan; his home area of Balochistan is the poorest in Pakistan and has been the site of a nationalist uprising for decades.Born in the provincial capital of Quetta around the turn of the century, he quickly rose to political prominence. In 2013, he worked ...

A local police official said that an elderly Uyghur who had been arrested in 2017 for studying religion as a youngster and for other religious "offenses" had died in prison from hypertension. Abdurusul Memet, 71, from a hamlet in Kashgar county, said he was imprisoned because he had a beard, prayed, and learned the Quran from his father when he was 12 years old. The Xinjiang Victims Database tweeted last week that Memet had been given a 13-year and 11-month prison term between November 1964 and March 1965 for acquiring knowledge of the Quran. Uyghurs and other members of Turkic minority groups jailed in Xinjiang, in northwest China, have their records compiled on this site. The tweet, which was seen by 67,000 people in less than a week, claimed that Memet had been arrested and wa...