China will not succumb to the kind of unrest rocking authoritarian governments across the Middle East, a senior official said, though a rash of detentions and censorship suggest Beijing remains nervous.
The comments by Zhao Qizheng (趙啟正), former head of the government’s information office, were Beijing’s most senior public response so far to online messages urging “Jasmine Revolution” protests.
So far, protests in China have been small and overwhelmed by swarms of police.
“There won’t be any Jasmine Revolution in China,” Zhao said, according to a report yesterday in the Wen Wei Po, a Hong Kong-based newspaper under mainland Chinese control.
Protesters in Tunisia forced out long-time president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in the middle of last month in what supporters called a “Jasmine Revolution.” It was swiftly followed by the fall of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, with anti-government protests spreading to other countries in the region.
“The idea that a Jasmine Revolution could happen in China is extremely preposterous and unrealistic,” Zhao told a group of reporters on Wednesday, the paper said.
Relatively few people see the online calls for protests, which have circulated mostly on overseas Web sites that are blocked by the Chinese government.
Authorities have also hindered the spread of information in China and detained dissidents. The Chinese word for “jasmine” has been blocked in searches of popular Chinese Web sites.
Human Rights in China, an advocacy group based in New York, listed 29 rights lawyers and dissidents detained, confined, searched or questioned by police or government agents since Feb. 16, although it is unclear how many were targeted because of the Chinese Communist Party’s fears of the calls for gatherings.
Two people — a man in southwest China and a woman in the northeast — have been detained on charges of “inciting subversion of state power,” according to the man’s wife and the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy.
Zhao now heads the foreign affairs committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique