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Hong Kong’s flag carrier came under the spotlight last year after its staff were accused of breaching Covid protocol. South China Morning Post Two former Cathay Pacific flight attendants were on Thursday (Nov 17) convicted of breaching Covid-19 quarantine rules while infected with the coronavirus at the outset of Hong Kong's fifth wave late last year. Eastern Court remanded Wong Yoon Loong and Nilsson Lau Kok Wang in custody pending next month's sentencing, noting their offences were serious and warranted immediate imprisonment. "You two have abused the rights and privileges given by the government [to be subject to] less stringent...

China may soon start dictating the grounds of functioning in most countries in Africa because of the growing surveillance that it has created in the continent. An astounding number of government buildings have been constructed by the Chinese for over 35 African nations. In 2018, a French newspaper broke the news of Chinese entities stealing sensitive data from the African Union's building in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, according to a report in The Singapore Post. Computers in the building were found to have rigged clusters of servers that enabled the data transfer back to Shanghai in China. It was reported...

"An individual was arrested on 21 October 2022 pursuant to a request from the United States of America for their provisional arrest," a spokesman for the federal Attorney-General's Department said. The arrest came the same week Britain warned dozens of former military pilots to stop working in China or face prosecution on national security grounds under new laws. Australia is also investigating reports some of its former fighter pilots have been approached to work in China. An aviation source told Reuters that the FBI sought Duggan because of his work in China. His lawyer, Dennis Miralis of Nyman, Gibson and...

The possibility that policies such as zero-Covid, which has resulted in sweeping lockdowns to contain the virus, and “Common Prosperity” — Xi’s bid to redistribute wealth — could be escalated was causing concern, Cheung said. “With the Politburo Standing Committee composed of President Xi’s close allies, market participants read the implications as President Xi’s power consolidation and the policy continuation,” he added. Mitul Kotecha, head of emerging markets strategy at TD Securities, also pointed out that the disappearance of pro-reform officials from the new leadership bodes ill for the future of China’s private sector. Under the banner of the “Common...

For Japan, losing Taiwan to China could be a disaster as it would jeopardise key shipping lanes that supply nearly all of Japan’s oil and other materials it uses for manufacturing. Between China’s 20th Communist Party Congress, that began Sunday, and the next one in 2027, Japan will undertake its biggest arms buildup since World War Two in a race to deter Beijing from war in East Asia, according to Japanese government officials and security analysts. Japan identified China as its chief adversary in its 2019 defence white paper, worried that Beijing’s flouting of international norms, pressure on Taiwan and...

The Biden administration is giving so much military assistance to Ukraine to combat Russian forces that it's risking not having enough weapons to help defend Taiwan should China invade, according to experts and former top national security officials."Our weapons stockpiles are low, in large part because of the war in Ukraine, which means if there's another war, or if we need to provide weapons to Taiwan, those weapons aren't going to be there because these weapons are complicated to make — they're expensive," former National Security Council Chief of Staff Fred Fleitz told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Friday."My...

The supply chain for electric-vehicle batteries is uncomfortably dependent on China—for now, at least Competing with a much better-established Chinese industry isn’t an obvious proposition for investors, even with subsidies thrown in. That leaves U.S. car makers tentatively leading even the upstream supply-chain push, in alliance with the Energy Department. The future of EVs is often assumed to depend on solving consumer problems such as slow charging infrastructure and range anxiety. Instead, they could be slowed down more by the conundrum of building the foundations of a battery industry.

This is arguably the world's biggest rotten-tail project, a place called Xiong'an that was considered a partial replacement for Beijing. It’s located in Hebei province, a neighboring province to Beijing, and was a personal dream of the Chinese Communist Party Leader Xi Jinping. Unfortunately, the project, which was billed as a "millennium project and a major national event," fell apart after only five years, demonstrating a complete crash of Xi's dream.The world's biggest rotten-tail project:Xiongan's failure is destined under the CCP red systemChina Insights | Premiered October 15, 2022

Link only Bloomberg article that may explain why the chip embargo basically went into place overnight. It's very possible that Xi Jinping will move on Taiwan in the next two years. And that is presumably why Biden has given 3 warnings to China, and Xi is downplaying any new policy on Taiwan. The big game we've been waiting for in the Western Pacific? It's coming. Anyone invested in equities should prepare to assume the position. What position? BOHICA.

Some Chinese nationals still in Ukraine have signed up for evacuation from the country, with most registering for organized evacuations, while others are preparing to leave Ukraine on their own, the Global Times learned on Sunday, after the Chinese Foreign Ministry urged Chinese citizens to leave Ukraine, citing the grave security situation. The move, following the large-scale evacuation in March that safely returned some 6,000 Chinese nationals in Ukraine back to their motherland, represents the Chinese government's greatest efforts to protect its citizens, as the Russia-Ukraine conflict further escalated, experts noted. As of press time on Sunday, 161 people had...

Some insiders have told Liberation Times that new UAP whistleblower language could be signed into law “in weeks” and after upcoming midterm elections. Corbell comments: “The Silver Bullet is coming.” Once National Defense Authorization Act 2023 becomes law, it is expected that public Congressional hearings will take place, and whistleblowers have already been requested to testify. It has also been confirmed by multiple sources that information relating to alleged secretive UAP retrieval and reverse-engineering programs has now been verified by Congress. There is now some urgency from Congress to provide transparency and some insiders hope that any released information can...

he U.S. Navy has released 35 brief reports regarding various incidents involving its ships and facilities and unidentified small uncrewed aircraft systems, or sUASs, across the entire span of the Pacific between 2016 and 2021. Not all of the reports appear to be notable, and some are clearly innocuous, but others absolutely provide additional evidence of concerning trends that The War Zone has been actively reporting on in recent years. Among the newly released reports, for instance, is one that covers a worrying encounter that the Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Paul Hamilton had with four drones in the Pacific...

China has bombarded US warships with drones at least 151 times over the last five years: One LANDED on deck of destroyer near Hong Kong, Chinese national was arrested in Pearl Harbor flying one over fleet - and drones of unknown origin snooped nuclear stockpile US warships have been bombarded by suspected Chinese espionage via drones over the past five years, according to newly released Navy records. Following a Freedom of Information Act request from The War Zone, the unsealed documents show US fleets were plagued by unidentified drones that appeared to be documenting America's forces in the Pacific. Among...

A Hong Kong pro-democracy protester was apparently beaten inside the grounds of the Chinese consulate in Manchester on Sunday, according to footage circulating on social media. Video footage appeared to show a man being assaulted as police officers tried to break up the chaotic scenes on Sunday afternoon. Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, told The Telegraph that the Chinese embassy must issue a "full apology" over the incident and said the individuals involved should be expelled from the UK.

The United States has a history of putting rivals on the world stage in a corner economically, obligating them to make the first moves to war.One of the most famous examples of this strategy came on July 26, 1941.On that date, President Franklin Roosevelt introduced sweeping economic sanctions and asset seizures against Japan.Advertisement - story continues belowAs a result of those sanctions, “Japan lost access to three-fourths of its overseas trade and 88 percent of its imported oil,” according to History.Needing oil to maintain its military might, Japan had little choice but to declare war on the West and mobilize...

One of Hong Kong’s last remaining pro-democracy activist groups has had its account with online payments processor PayPal terminated. The League of Social Democrats says that PayPal, a multinational financial technology company headquartered in California and Nebraska, sent an email stating it can no longer provide its services to the activist group. The text of PayPal's email sent to the League of Social Democrats in September has been seen by VOA. It outlines the termination and says the decision is “final.”

“It’s the end of the world (and I feel fine)” is a great song from the band REM. I was reminded of the song today as, contrary to the media narrative, Evergrande made a $83.5 million bond payment. While the common narrative is that international/non-Chinese investors will get the short end of the stick versus Mainland bondholders, the payment was to international investors. That being said, Evergrande is by no means out of the woods yet as this issue will keep rearing its head in the near term. However, it is abundantly clear that Chinese regulators and policymakers are aware...

Hong Kong attracted around 56 million visitors a year before the pandemic, and now the popular destination is taking significant steps to win tourists back after over two years of some of the world's toughest travel restrictions. Just days after dropping its longstanding mandatory hotel quarantine requirement, Hong Kong has confirmed plans to give away half a million airline tickets in a bid to boost tourism. The move, first announced two years ago, was confirmed to CNN by a spokesperson from the Airport Authority Hong Kong (AAHK), which said that the 500,000 tickets, worth around $254.8 million, would go to...

When Russian President Vladimir Putin granted citizenship to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden on Monday, the news revived a long-simmering debate about the propriety of his revelations of U.S. government secrets. At the same time, it prompted reiterations of a widely-embraced falsehood: that Snowden “fled to Russia.”The disinformation-trafficking wasn’t limited to random people on social media. Among others, The New York Times, The Guardian, ABC, Christian Science Monitor and Canada’s CBC all asserted in the past week that Snowden “fled to Russia” in 2013 after revealing that the United States government had created a mass surveillance regime targeting its own citizens,...

At 105, Song Ping is the Chinese Communist Party's oldest retired official. Famous for once pressing former President Jiang Zemin to fully retire, Song has recently appeared in public for the first time in years. Due to his advanced age, it was only a video message. But it has caused a stir in Chinese political circles ahead of the party's once-every-five-years national congress that begins on Oct. 16. In a congratulatory message for an event on Sept. 12, the centenarian said that the policy of reform and opening-up "has been the only path to the development and progress of contemporary...