A Chinese court yesterday sentenced a veteran dissident to seven years in jail, his son said, in the latest blow to challengers of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) rule.
This came just a day after US Vice President Joe Biden called for China to address a “deterioration” of its human rights record as he met activists ahead of a key visit by his Chinese counterpart.
Biden — the host for next week’s visit by Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (習近平), who is widely tipped to be China’s next president — met on Wednesday with four advocates for human rights.
In the meeting, Biden and the activists “discussed the deterioration of China’s human rights situation, prospects for reform and recommendations for US policy,” a White House statement said.
“The vice president underscored the administration’s belief in the universality of human rights and its commitment to human rights as a fundamental part of our foreign policy,” it said.
“He reiterated his view that greater openness and protection of universal rights is the best way to promote innovation, prosperity and stability in all countries, including China,” it said.
The White House said Biden met Li Xiaorong (李曉蓉), a founding member of the group Human Rights in China; Benjamin Liebman, a Columbia University expert on China’s legal system; Zha Jianying, an expert on Chinese media and pop culture, and Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.
In China, Zhu Yufu (朱虞夫) was jailed for “inciting subversion of state power” by a court in Hangzhou, a city in eastern China, after a trial hearing on Jan. 31 when prosecutors cited a poem and messages he sent on the Internet, his son Zhu Ang (朱昂) said by telephone.
“The court verdict said this was a serious crime that deserved stern punishment,” said Zhu Ang, 31, who was allowed to attend the hearing with his mother.
“Now my mother is terribly upset, even if we saw this coming,” Zhu Ang said.
He said the verdict cited his father’s online calls for mobilization in the name of democracy.
“Basically, the only chance that my father had to say anything was when he was being taken out after the hearing, and he stopped and said: ‘I want to appeal.’”
Xi, who is nearly certain to succeed Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) as CCP leader later this year and as state president early next year, leaves for Washington on Monday.
Xi is likely to face US criticism over China’s clampdown in restive Tibetan areas after a series of self-immolation protests.
At a briefing about Xi’s trip, Chinese Vice Deputy Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai (崔天凱) indicated his government would not welcome being publicly criticized by the administration of US President Barack Obama over rights.
“The problem now is that internationally there are some people who always grab hold of the human-rights banner when they want to speak ill of China,” Cui said. “I think that this is abusing the notion of human rights.”
The sentencing of Zhu, who turns 59 this month, followed the jailing of two other Chinese dissidents in December on subversion charges.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
RSS