Beijing doesn’t need excuses to do as it pleases, even when violating its own laws — and it certainly is not concerned about the world knowing. The carefully watched case of Huang Qi (黃琦), a man labeled a dangerous dissident simply for trying to help victims of last year’s Sichuan Earthquake, came to a close on Monday when Huang was sentenced to three years in jail.
The court did not even bother to give his family a copy of the verdict, as his lawyer says is required by law. But Huang, long active on social issues, seems to have been targeted because of his calls for a transparent probe into schools that collapsed during the quake. Thousands of children died or are still listed as missing after their schools collapsed, yet China’s investigation into the matter was a whitewash that denied the role of corruption and substandard construction in the tragedy.
Huang is no stranger to China’s prisons. He had already spent five years in jail and had only been free for three years when he was arrested again following the Sichuan quake.
Yet none of his activities, which portray him as a caring and determined citizen concerned about the injustice and tragedy he sees around him, merit this treatment. In the late 1990s, Huang ran a Web site that aimed to help families find loved ones who had fallen victim to human trafficking, often being kidnapped and taken to other parts of China.
The suspicion that charges against him are trumped up is strengthened by the court’s failure on Monday to detail its case against him. That is typical conduct in China, where even the courts, instruments of upholding the law in name alone, do not feel obligated to follow it themselves.
Huang’s case is just a microcosm of the Chinese Communist Party’s decades of abuse and flouting of its own rules and promises.
Another example is Hong Kong’s struggle under “one country, two systems.” The Chinese territory is moving no closer to democratic reforms originally promised for 2007. Pro-democracy legislators could soon resign over a Hong Kong government proposal last week for “reform” that failed yet again to offer even a semblance of progress.
Unfortunately, a mass walkout by legislators might have little effect in the face of Beijing’s opposition to democracy. The territory’s residents, it seems, cannot hope for universal suffrage for several more years, if at all.
Over the past few years, the plight of the Chinese people has drawn regular media coverage and pressure from Western governments. Beijing, however, is not very concerned about all the bad press. On the contrary, it ploughs forward with the same old tactics at home. There are few signs of progress; in some cases, there is every indication that it is tightening controls on parts of the population, such as minorities in Tibet and Xinjiang.
A country that cares little about the interests of its own people — whether they are the victims of state corruption, those who challenge it, or the 7 million residents of Hong Kong — is even less likely to show concern for the interests of others.
As a “renegade province” in negotiations with Beijing, that is a lesson for Taiwan’s government to keep in mind.
The US Senate’s passage of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which urges Taiwan’s inclusion in the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise and allocates US$1 billion in military aid, marks yet another milestone in Washington’s growing support for Taipei. On paper, it reflects the steadiness of US commitment, but beneath this show of solidarity lies contradiction. While the US Congress builds a stable, bipartisan architecture of deterrence, US President Donald Trump repeatedly undercuts it through erratic decisions and transactional diplomacy. This dissonance not only weakens the US’ credibility abroad — it also fractures public trust within Taiwan. For decades,
The government and local industries breathed a sigh of relief after Shin Kong Life Insurance Co last week said it would relinquish surface rights for two plots in Taipei’s Beitou District (北投) to Nvidia Corp. The US chip-design giant’s plan to expand its local presence will be crucial for Taiwan to safeguard its core role in the global artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem and to advance the nation’s AI development. The land in dispute is owned by the Taipei City Government, which in 2021 sold the rights to develop and use the two plots of land, codenamed T17 and T18, to the
The ceasefire in the Middle East is a rare cause for celebration in that war-torn region. Hamas has released all of the living hostages it captured on Oct. 7, 2023, regular combat operations have ceased, and Israel has drawn closer to its Arab neighbors. Israel, with crucial support from the United States, has achieved all of this despite concerted efforts from the forces of darkness to prevent it. Hamas, of course, is a longtime client of Iran, which in turn is a client of China. Two years ago, when Hamas invaded Israel — killing 1,200, kidnapping 251, and brutalizing countless others
Taiwan’s first case of African swine fever (ASF) was confirmed on Tuesday evening at a hog farm in Taichung’s Wuci District (梧棲), trigging nationwide emergency measures and stripping Taiwan of its status as the only Asian country free of classical swine fever, ASF and foot-and-mouth disease, a certification it received on May 29. The government on Wednesday set up a Central Emergency Operations Center in Taichung and instituted an immediate five-day ban on transporting and slaughtering hogs, and on feeding pigs kitchen waste. The ban was later extended to 15 days, to account for the incubation period of the virus
RSS