Posts
Mainland China has been waging “cognitive warfare” against Taiwan, using weapons such as misinformation and an army of online trolls in an attempt to sway public opinion in Beijing’s favour, a local think tank has warned.
The report said that so far the effect had limited due to relatively strong anti-Beijing sentiment, but it urged the government to remain on guard in case it started to influence public sentiment to the extent that it influenced policy decisions.
It said it was trying to use both official and unofficial channels, including mainland, Taiwanese and international media organisations and social media, to feed the public misinformation in an attempt to stoke resentment towards President Tsai Ing-wen’s government.
Business in Hong Kong take notice: The city’s government has taken off its flimsy mask of moderation and arrested over 50 opposition candidates and an American lawyer in dawn raids. Banks and brokerage firms, the lucrative redoubt for financial professional expats, can mostly shrug it off. But for media and technology companies that host or transmit ideas it’s the dawn of a riskier era.
Hong Kong police say that opposition legislators, by holding an unauthorised primary last year and planning to stymie the policy agenda, were effectively trying to overthrow the government, violating a National Security Law that Beijing rammed into force in July. They have detained nearly all the candidates who stood for election in the primary, plus pollsters and organisers like U.S. lawyer John Clancey, chairman of the Asian Human Rights Commission, the first foreigner to be arrested under the new law.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-security-breakingviews-idUSKBN29B1D9
The WHO's emergencies director Michael Ryan said Tuesday that the problem was a lack of visa clearances, adding that he hoped it was a 'logistic and bureaucratic issue that can be resolved very quickly.'
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in a rare critique of Beijing, says members of the international scientific team have begun over the last 24 hours to leave from their home countries to China as part of an arrangement between WHO and the Chinese government.
'Today, we learned that Chinese officials have not yet finalised the necessary permissions for the team's arrival in China,' he said at a news conference Tuesday in Geneva.
'I am very disappointed with this news, given that two members had already begun their journeys and others were not able to travel at the last minute,' Tedros told reporters in Geneva, in a rare rebuke of Beijing from the UN body.
World Health Organisation (WHO) investigators have been denied access to Wuhan – the province largely thought to be where the coronavirus originated in late 2019 – by Chinese authorities, as another province goes into “wartime” mode over a new outbreak.
According to reports, Beijing is avoiding the independent WHO probe – expected to take between four and five weeks – in a bid to evade being held accountable for the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed more than 1.8 million people worldwide.
Despite a member of the 10-person team telling the BBC the inquiry isn’t about finding a “guilty country” but to understand how similar pandemics could be avoided, Chinese officials are yet to finalise permission for their arrivals.
“Today, we learned that Chinese officials have not yet finalised the necessary permissions for the team’s arrival in China,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters yesterday at a press conference in Geneva.
“I’m very disappointed with this news, given that two members had already begun their journeys and others were not able to travel at the last minute.
“I have been in contact with senior Chinese officials and I have once again made it clear the mission is a priority for WHO and the international team.”
ANOTHER OUTBREAK
The investigation comes as the Chinese province of Hebei plunged into “wartime” mode to combat an outbreak of 59 cases in the last three days, thought to be linked to gatherings.
Officials have launched mass testing for the city’s 11 million residents and schools have shuttered, with the infections thought to be traced to social events like funerals and weddings in the village of Xiaguozhuang.
The village has now been sealed off, with any gatherings or visits between relatives now banned. Police have also reportedly set up roadblocks on routes out of the county.
Respiratory expert at Peking University First Hospital, Wang Guangfu, told the Global Times that the possibility of an asymptomatic spreader “could not be ruled out”.
Feng Zijian, an expert from the China CDC, told the publication the source of the infection is likely from Europe.