China’s state press gushed over Beijing’s hosting of the Olympic Games yesterday, calling it a watershed event that should make the world look on China with newfound respect.
“Through the Beijing Games’ flawless organization, brilliant sporting performances and friendly atmosphere, an image of an entirely new great country appeared before the world,” the popular Beijing Youth Daily said.
“Even though the Beijing Games have ended, China’s opening up and exchanges with the world will not cease and the Chinese people’s participation in the development and improvement of mankind will not change,” it said.
The English-language China Daily said the Games marked the pinnacle of China’s gradual re-engagement with the world that began 30 years ago under former leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平).
“The Games was a historic climax of three decades of China opening to the world. It was also a moment for the world to take a new look at China,” it said.
Meanwhile, the Hong Kong-based Human Rights in China (HRIC) said yesterday China had failed to win any medals in the human rights department during the Beijing Olympics, adding that the Chinese government had “blatantly and successfully” used the Games to realize its political goals.
“Yet the carefully orchestrated facade could not conceal a police state that tramples on human rights,” HRIC executive director Sharon Hom said.
UIGHURS
Uighur activists said yesterday that Chinese security forces had detained 500 members of the ethnic Uighur minority in the Xinjiang region over the past two weeks.
More than 100 people were arrested in the desert town of Kashgar alone, the exiled Uyghur World Congress said.
Families of arrested individuals were not informed about their relatives’ whereabouts, the congress said. “Vanishing” people were nothing unusual in Uighur territories, however, as arbitrary arrests by the Chinese army, police and intelligence services are common.
DEPORTED
A British woman and a German man who took part in a protest during the Olympic Games were deported yesterday, officials said, hours after eight American activists were sent home during the closing ceremony.
Mandie McKeown and Florien Norbu Gyanatshang were put on flights to Frankfurt in the morning, said officials from the British embassy in Beijing and the Foreign Ministry in Berlin.
Also See: London’s Olympic challenge remains huge
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
RSS