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China is targeting citizens studying abroad for their political activism, rights group Amnesty International said Monday, with some students reporting harassment of family members back home.

China does not tolerate political dissent and has used sophisticated tech tools as well as intimidation to crack down on domestic protesters and activists.

And Beijing’s curbs on political activism are increasingly expanding abroad in the form of “transnational repression”, Amnesty International said in a report, citing interviews with dozens of students in eight European and North American countries.

Overseas students reported that family members in China received threats after they attended events abroad including commemorations of the bloody 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, according to the group.

“Threats made to family members in mainland China included to revoke their passports, get them fired from their jobs, prevent them from receiving promotions and retirement benefits, or even limiting their physical freedom,” it said.

Students also said they had been blocked from posting and surveilled on Chinese social apps -- often the only way to communicate with family members due to Beijing’s internet firewall.

One student told Amnesty International that police showed his parents “transcripts of his online WeChat conversations with family members”. ‘Climate of fear’

Students said they actively self-censored during classes and social interactions and complained of mental health problems caused by the feeling of pervasive surveillance, “ranging from stress and trauma to paranoia and depression”.

“I would really want to publish my thesis... but I’m worried, so I chose not to,” one student told Amnesty.

Beijing has not yet responded to Monday’s report.

But it has previously rejected claims that it targets citizens living abroad, insisting that it respects other countries’ sovereignty and that any policing operations are conducted in accordance with the law.

A report last year by US research group Freedom House found that China was responsible for hundreds of cases of “transnational repression” since 2014, including attempts to pressure other nations to forcibly return members of the Uyghur minority.

Amnesty International on Monday said Beijing’s targeting of students has “engendered a ‘climate of fear’ on university campuses across Western Europe and North America, negatively impacting upon students’ human rights.”

“The impact of China’s transnational repression poses a serious threat to the free exchange of ideas that is at the heart of academic freedom,” Sarah Brooks, Amnesty International’s China director, said.

The inner workings of China's notorious secret police unit and how it hunts down dissidents living overseas – including in Australia – have been exposed by a former spy in a Four Corners investigation, raising tough questions about Australia's national security.

It is the first time anyone from the secret police – one of the most feared and powerful arms of China's intelligence apparatus – has ever spoken publicly.

The investigation also found the existence of an espionage operation on Australian soil only last year and the secret return of an Australian resident to China in 2019. Spy speaks out

The spy — who goes by the name Eric — worked as an undercover agent for a unit within China's federal police and security agency, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) between 2008 and early 2023.

The unit is called the Political Security Protection Bureau, or the 1st Bureau. It is one of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) key tools of repression, operating across the globe to surveil, kidnap and silence critics of the party, particularly President Xi Jinping.

"It is the darkest department of the Chinese government," Eric said.

"When dealing with people who oppose the CCP, they can behave as if these people are not protected by the law. They can do whatever they want to them."

Four Corners has chosen not to publish Eric's full name or the identities of his secret police handlers due to concerns for the 39-year-old's safety.

Eric fled China and arrived in Australia last year where he revealed his history to ASIO, Australia's domestic spy agency.

ASIO declined to comment for this story.

Eric revealed to Four Corners how China collects intelligence on those it deems enemies of the state – and in some cases the tactics it uses to see them return to China to face prosecution.

He was tasked by his handlers with hunting down dissidents across the globe, sometimes by using elaborate cover stories — once as a property executive and another as an anti-CCP freedom fighter — to try to gain their confidence and lure them to countries where they could be abducted and returned to China.

Four Corners has seen hundreds of secret documents and correspondence that back up Eric's story about his assignments and targets which covered China, India, Cambodia, Thailand, Canada and Australia. 'Secret agents in Australia'

In 2023, AFP officers raided a Sydney location and uncovered a Chinese espionage operation targeting Australian residents.

One of them was Edwin Yin, a political activist whose online videos have targeted President Xi and his daughter.

The AFP spoke to Mr Yin after the raid.

"They told me ... they had disrupted an intelligence agency in Australia," he said.

"They acquired information and material that indicated the CCP was looking for me in Australia through this intelligence agency."

Four Corners understands the AFP's investigation is ongoing.

In 2021, Mr Yin was the victim of a physical attack in Melbourne that left him with a broken nose. Mr Yin thought the two men who attacked him, and a third who filmed it, were Chinese government agents.

"I don't feel safe in Australia," he said.

Eric was asked to target Mr Yin in 2018.

He told Four Corners he has no doubt Chinese secret agents currently operate in Australia, and that they rely on a network of support organisations and businesses.

"In an area where there are secret agents, a support system is required so when the agents are dispatched there, they can receive the necessary support," he said.

"They certainly have established a support system in Australia."

China says it is seeking Mr Yin's return over several financial fraud allegations. Four Corners spoke to one of his alleged victims who maintained the crimes happened.

Mr Yin says he was framed. China's global reach

Counter-intelligence experts said it was "political security" with which China's vast spying network was most concerned.

Holden Triplett previously led the FBI's office in Beijing where he regularly dealt with the Ministry of Public Security.

"The MPS portrays itself as a police service … but in my mind, they're anything but that," he said.

"Their job is to protect the party's status … and when I say status, I mean control … The party has to remain in control."

Under Mr Xi's rule, that control has become much tighter. Since becoming leader in 2012, Mr Xi has reordered the Chinese security and intelligence services and strengthened the party's grip on the Chinese population overseas.

"Now they're heavily engaged in the world, they need resources from all sorts of places," Mr Triplett said.

"So anyone within the Chinese population internally, or in the diaspora … that could threaten the party's control … that's what they would be investigating, opposing and disrupting if necessary."

MPS works with other elements of China's national state security including the country's foreign spy agency, the Ministry of State Security, and the CCP's main foreign influence arm, the United Front Work Department (UFWD).

The UFWD is tasked with increasing China's influence abroad and UFWD-associated community groups exist in virtually all countries where there is a significant Chinese population – including Australia.

"United Front work creates tall grass to hide the snakes," said former CIA analyst Peter Mattis.

"The MPS are some of those snakes." Citizens returned

Mr Xi has used his anti-corruption campaigns Fox Hunt and Sky Net to return more than 12,000 so-called fugitives to China since 2014. Many were returned in covert operations without the knowledge or permission of local authorities.

As part of Fox Hunt, in 2014 two Chinese police officers covertly entered Australia to pursue and return a Melbourne bus driver. When it was made public the following year, it caused a major diplomatic incident and the Chinese government promised it would never happen again.

In 2019, Chinese officers came to Australia again and returned with a 59-year-old Australian resident.

"The MPS sent officials … to Australia to have a so-called heart-to-heart with a female who was then persuaded to come back," said Laura Harth, campaigns director at human rights NGO, Safeguard Defenders.

"They used the [Australian] Chinese consulate-general and embassy to help them."

Four Corners has established that the AFP did approve the 2019 visit, but the Chinese officers didn't follow the agreed protocol and the woman was escorted back to China by them without the AFP's approval.

Do you know more about this story? Contact Four Corners here.

Last month, Safeguard Defenders released a report documenting more than 280 cases of foreign citizens and residents being repatriated to China. The individuals are accused of committing economic crimes.

There were at least 16 successful individual extrajudicial returns from Australia between 2014 and 2023, according to the report, which relied on Chinese state media. Four of those returns took place last year.

"These successful operations — or even the attempts at operations that turn out not to be successful — are a clear violation of Australia's sovereignty," Ms Harth said.

A spokeswoman for the AFP said it "will never endorse or facilitate a foreign agency to come to Australia to intimidate or force foreign nationals to return home".

"Under Australian law, that is a crime," she said.

"It is an offence for foreign governments, or those acting on their behalf, to threaten culturally and linguistically diverse communities, or anyone else in Australia. This includes harassment, surveillance, intimidation and other coercive measures."

An Australian Government spokesperson said defending against malicious foreign interference was "a top priority".

"Australia's law enforcement and intelligence agencies assess, investigate, disrupt and where possible, prosecute acts of foreign interference."

"The ASIO and AFP-led Counter Foreign Interference Taskforce is actively investigating a range of foreign interference cases."

The Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Australia and China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a request for comment.

Excerpts of interest:

Mr Shoigu has close links with President Putin, often taking him on fishing trips in his native Siberia.

He was given the defence portfolio despite having no military background, which rankled with some of his top brass.

A civil engineer by profession, Mr Shoigu rose to prominence as the head of the emergencies and disaster relief ministry in the 1990s.

He often looked out of his depth as defence minister, especially after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago.

Prigozhin, who led a short-lived mutiny against Moscow, accused Mr Shoigu of being a "dirtbag" and "elderly clown" in audio messages that went viral.

Mr Shoigu's suggested replacement, Mr Belousov, is an economist with little military experience.

Here is the archived version.

If people are naturally drawn to human rights, democracy, and freedom, then those concepts have to be poisoned.

The American extreme right and (more rarely) the extreme left benefit from the spread of antidemocratic narratives, they have an interest in silencing or hobbling any group that wants to stop, or even identify, foreign campaigns.

Senator Mark Warner, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that “we are actually less prepared today than we were four years ago” for foreign attempts to influence the 2024 election. This is not only because authoritarian propaganda campaigns have become more sophisticated as they begin to use AI, or because “you obviously have a political environment here where there’s a lot more Americans who are more distrustful of all institutions.” It’s also because the lawsuits, threats, and smear tactics have chilled government, academic, and tech-company responses.

One could call this a secret authoritarian “plot” to preserve the ability to spread antidemocratic conspiracy theories, except that it’s not a secret. It’s all visible, right on the surface. Russia, China, and sometimes other state actors—Venezuela, Iran, Hungary—work with Americans to discredit democracy, to undermine the credibility of democratic leaders, to mock the rule of law. They do so with the goal of electing Trump, whose second presidency would damage the image of democracy around the world, as well as the stability of democracy in America, even further.

Three decades ago, Chinese dissidents were being smuggled out of the country in a secret operation called Yellow Bird - but as one of them tells the BBC, Beijing is still pursuing them.

June 1992: It was the middle of the night on the South China Sea, and a Chinese patrol vessel was approaching a boat en route from the Communist mainland to the then-British colony of Hong Kong.

As border troops came on board to talk to the crew, their voices could be heard by a group of people packed into a secret compartment below deck.

A few minutes earlier, when the patrol boat was spotted, these secret passengers had been given an urgent order.

“I was told to hide,” one of them, Yan Xiong, recalls. “Don’t make any noise!”

Most of those hiding were economic migrants, hoping to find work in Hong Kong – but not Yan.

He was a political dissident, and if he was discovered, he would be in serious trouble.

Yan was being smuggled out of China as part of a secret operation code-named Yellow Bird.

The patrol eventually sailed away, and in the early hours Yan - who had never travelled in a boat before that night - arrived in Hong Kong.

After a hearty breakfast, he was taken to a detention centre. This was, he was told, for his own safety. Walking the streets could be dangerous.

Being in detention was not new to Yan. He had already spent 19 months in a Chinese prison for his part in 1989’s Tiananmen Square protests. Students had called for greater democracy and freedom, but the Communist Party sent in tanks to crush them.

At the end of June 1989, the Chinese government said that 200 civilians and several dozen security personnel had died. Other estimates have ranged from hundreds to many thousands.

On his release, Yan had made his way to southern China where, in scenes that could have been taken from a spy film, he was sent from one public phone booth to another, to be put in touch with the people who could get him out.

He was not the only dissident to undertake this risky journey.

Speaking to the BBC for a new series, Shadow War: China and the West, Chaohua Wang recalls her escape.

Despite being number 14 on a list of the 21 most wanted people after the Tiananmen Square protests, she managed to evade capture, hiding in tiny rooms for months before heading south and becoming part of the Yellow Bird escape line.

“I was like a parcel moved from one [person] to another,” she says.

“I didn't even know the name Yellow Bird for quite some years.”

Yellow Bird may sound like a classic spy operation, and many believed that an intelligence service - MI6 or the CIA - had come up with the idea. But they had not.

In fact, it was a private enterprise undertaken by concerned groups of citizens in Hong Kong, motivated by a desire to help out those who were among the run. Among them were the local film and entertainment industry and (more usefully) organised crime, in the form of the triads.

"They [the triads] had a lot of Chinese police in their pockets,” says Nigel Inkster, who at that time was an intelligence officer based in Hong Kong. This was what enabled them to move people out of hiding in Beijing and smuggle them across the border.

The UK and US only became involved when those people who arrived in Hong Kong needed to work out where to go next.

Yan remembers being visited by what he described as an “English gentleman” who never gave his name but helped him with the paperwork.

“It is better for you to go to America, not England,” the man told him. Within days Yan was in Los Angeles.  Chaohua Wang also ended up in the US.

Why not England?

Former officials have told the BBC the UK was reluctant to take in Tiananmen protesters because it was desperate to avoid upsetting China in the run-up to the 1997 handover of Hong Kong.

An agreement had been signed by the UK in 1984, but the events of Tiananmen Square five years later raised difficult questions about Hong Kong’s future.

In 1992, a few weeks after Yan’s arrival in the colony, the former Conservative cabinet minister Chris Patten became the last governor of Hong Kong.

He says he was determined to embed greater democracy, in the hope it would endure after the handover, and he announced proposals for the democratic reform of Hong Kong's institutions, aimed at broadening the voting base in elections.

There was opposition to the reforms not just from China’s leadership but also from those in London who did not want to antagonise Beijing.

“My main responsibility was to try to give people in Hong Kong the best chance of continuing to live in freedom and prosperity, and to do so after 1997,” the former governor, now Lord Patten, tells me. He says he also was aware of - but not involved in - Yellow Bird.

The reluctance to allow dissidents to come to the UK - and the anger in some quarters about Patten’s reforms - speaks to a central question from the 1990s which still matters today: How far should the West go to avoid angering China and accommodate its rise, especially when it comes to values like human rights and democracy?

Yellow Bird ended on the rainy night in July 1997 when Hong Kong became sovereign Chinese territory. For a few years, the liberties that Patten had been trying to secure, held. But in the past decade, China - under Xi Jinping - has taken a more authoritarian turn and has tried to bring Hong Kong into line.

Yan took US citizenship and lived a model American life. He joined the US army and served in Iraq as a military chaplain.

He might have thought the hand of China’s Communist Party could not reach him in his new home, but he was wrong.

In 2021, he decided to run for public office. He stood as a candidate in the Democratic primary for New York's 1st Congressional District.

Yan started noticing some odd occurrences during his campaign. Strange cars followed him and lurked outside where he was staying at three in the morning. At campaign events, people would try to block him from speaking.

He learned why when the FBI came to talk to him. A US private investigator had told them he had been approached by an individual in China, who had asked him to carry out surveillance on Yan. It seems the idea of a former Tiananmen protester entering US Congress was unacceptable.

“He had specifically told our private investigator that they needed to undermine the victim’s candidacy,” says FBI agent Jason Moritz.

The FBI were able to monitor events as the Chinese-based individual proposed the investigator dig up dirt on Yan. If he could not find any, he was instructed to make some up. If that did not work, beating him up or even staging a car accident was suggested.

“They want to smother and kill my campaign,” Yan explains.

The person instructing the private investigator, the FBI assessed, was working on behalf of China’s Ministry of State Security. They were indicted but could not be arrested because they were outside the US.

China has consistently denied claims of political interference. But this is not the only case where it is alleged to have become more assertive in tracking down those it considers dissidents in other countries. There have been claims of “overseas police stations” in the UK and US and of individuals being pressured to return to China or be silent.

Yan’s story reveals that as China has become more confident and controlling at home, it has also sought to extend its reach abroad. And that is increasingly causing friction over issues of espionage, surveillance and human rights.

Meanwhile, Yan’s message to Western governments when dealing with China is simple: “They've got to be careful.”

Tens of thousands of Georgians have taken to the streets of the capital Tbilisi on Saturday evening to protest a controversial "foreign influence" bill backed by the government.

Protesters marched to the capital's Europe Square holding Georgian and EU flags, chanting “no to the Russian law”.

The law would target civil society organisations and independent media that receive foreign funding.

Massive rallies have gripped the Black Sea Caucasus country for nearly a month after the ruling Georgian Dream party reintroduced the bill.

Despite a campaign of intimidation ahead of Saturday's rally - in which dozens of NGO workers, activists and opposition politicians received threats or were physically assaulted - protesters turned up in their thousands undeterred by the pouring rain.

Opposition parties say the bill - coined "Russian law" after Russia's passing of similar legislation in 2012 - will be used by the government to clamp down on dissent.

The US has said the bill threatens free speech.

In neighbouring Russia, the law has since been used to marginalise voices challenging the Kremlin - including prominent cultural figures, media organisations and civil society groups.

Many Georgians in the rally do not want Russia's authoritarian-style leadership crossing into their country.

"We don't need to return to the Soviet Union," 38-year-old Georgian-language teacher Lela Tsiklauri, said.

"We are protecting our European future and our freedom," said another protester, Mariam Meunrgia, 39, who works for a German company.

The law, if passed, could harm Georgia's attempt to join the EU, which has given it candidate status.

On Friday, foreign ministers of Nordic and Baltic states issued a joint statement urging the government in Tbilisi to reconsider the bill

Last week, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the Georgian people want a "European future".

"Georgia is at a crossroads. It should stay the course on the road to Europe," she posted on X.

But the Georgian Dream government has defended the bill, saying it will "boost transparency" over NGOs' foreign funding. It aims to sign the measure into law by mid-May.

If adopted, the law would require that any independent NGO and media organisation receiving more than 20% of its funding from abroad to register as an "organisation pursuing the interests of a foreign power".

But the protesters fear it could be used to crush critical voices ahead of parliamentary elections later this year.

The bill cleared its second parliamentary stage by a margin of 83 votes to 23. After a third reading, it has to be signed by President Salome Zurabishvili, who has vowed to veto it - although Georgian Dream has sufficient numbers in parliament to overrule her.

In 2023, mass street protests forced Georgian Dream to drop plans for similar measures.

Archived link.

As Chinese President Xi Jinping toured Europe this week to discuss Ukraine and trade, China remains Russia's leading source of sanctioned dual-use goods, fueling the ongoing war.

"Around 90% of the goods deemed high priority products by the Western countries... (was) supplied by China" as Chinese-made products or re-exported goods in 2023, a sharp rise from 30% in 2021, Nathaniel Sher, a senior research analyst at Carnegie China, told the Kyiv Independent.

China-based companies pour a range of items – from drones to microchips and machine parts – into Russia, including products made in China and those that bypass Western export controls via Chinese entities.

Beijing has thus far refused to commit direct lethal weapons to Russia's war, and both Kyiv and the EU sought to engage it in peace efforts, hoping to leverage its influence over Moscow.

Bringing China to the Ukraine-led Peace Summit planned in Switzerland for mid-June is among Kyiv's top priorities, a source in the president's office told the Kyiv Independent.

The flow of dual-use goods indicates that China is not as neutral in the war as it wishes to appear.

"More effort is needed to curtail the delivery of dual-use goods to Russia that find their way to the battlefield," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on May 6 after meeting Xi in Paris.

Washington warned its partners in April that the level of this support is only increasing, extending also to geospatial intelligence and missile propellants.

While the West's options are limited regarding China selling its own products, there are avenues of action when it comes to re-selling Western goods and bypassing sanctions.

A coordinated action by Western partners could help drive up the costs for Russia and China, curtailing this critical lifeline, experts say.

What is Russia buying from China?

In 2023, China was responsible for roughly 90% of Russia's imports of approximately 50 items included in the G7 "high-priority" sanctioned goods list, such as microelectronics, navigation and communication equipment, optics, or Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machine tools.

China serves both as a producer of these items and as an intermediary for their re-export from other countries, helping to bypass sanctions.

The country's role as Moscow's lifeline for economic output and military production has risen sharply since the West imposed extensive trade restrictions on Russia.

While Chinese overall exports to the rest of the world have grown by 29% since 2021, exports to Russia have spiked by a whopping 121%, underscoring the role of their partnership.

When it comes to individual dual-use items, the sales of semi-conductors – vital for the manufacturing of communication systems, radars, missile guidance, or electronic warfare equipment – jumped from $200 million in 2021 to over $500 million in 2022, according to the Free Russia Foundation.

Several sectors of Russia's defense industry and military capabilities are boosted by Chinese trade.

"(Russia's) logistics machine is really important. So trucks, spare parts, forklift trucks, all those sorts of things that keep the war machine going," China can provide, said Edward Lucas, a senior advisor at the Center for the European Policy Analysis (CEPA), in a comment for the Kyiv Independent.

Other key components include drone parts and complete off-the-shelf drones, microchips, and other electronics, the expert added.

"When you look at what China is providing to Russia, it is less about (whole) systems, it is more about parts, specifically microelectronics, that China has been increasingly providing to Russia for the past few years… (which are then) integrated into weapon systems," Mathieu Boulègue, a senior fellow at CEPA, told the Kyiv Independent.

"The core of what China is providing Russia with right now are mostly spare parts, detached parts, microelectronics, components that are cannibalized by the Russian military industry."

Benjamin Hilgenstock, a senior economist at the KSE Institute focused on the sanctions regime against Russia, told the Kyiv Independent that we can see China playing three different roles when it comes to the dual-goods flow.

"So there are Chinese companies producing goods that Russia imports and needs for its military. The second role… is that there are foreign companies, including Western ones, that have production facilities in China," Hilgenstock said, adding: "These are not goods from Chinese producers, but they're made in China."

"And then the third role is Chinese entities as final sellers of these goods to Russia from Western companies."

Between January and October 2023, 41% of "battlefield goods" (the aforementioned ≈50 goods defined as "high priority" by the U.S., the EU, and other allies) supplied to Russia were produced by China-based firms, a report by the KSE Institute and the Yermak-McFaul International Working Group shows.

The percentage is almost the same for "critical components" (KSE's term for other dual-use goods that go beyond the definition set by the U.S. and other partners), making companies headquartered in China the leading source in both cases, followed by the U.S., Taiwan, and the EU.

Chinese tech giant Huawei was Russia's top provider of critical components for the first 10 months of 2023 ($530 million) and the second most significant source of battlefield goods ($286 million) after the American Intel. China's Lenovo and Hikvision also rank high in both indicators.

China's role as the global manufacturing leader comes into play as well. The KSE's research shows that 63.1% of battlefield goods and 58.7% of critical components sent to Russia during much of the last year were produced in China-based plants (including factories owned by foreign companies).

Similarly notable is the role of Chinese companies as final sellers. In terms of battlefield goods, 38% were sold to Russia from China and 30.9% from Hong Kong between January and October 2023. As for critical components, the percentages are 38.9% for China and 18.1% for Hong Kong.

The Chinese share in Russia's dual-use goods supply is not as high in the KSE Institute's report as the 90% figure presented by Carnegie Endowment, but the former examines the individual roles that China plays in this process, which do not always overlap. In the end, both organizations agree that China is Moscow's one source of these products.

Lucas stresses, however, that "it would be a mistake to say that China is the only lifeline of Russia's war machine."

Moscow showed dexterity in circumventing Western sanctions through other intermediaries, like the United Arab Emirates, Kazakhstan, and Turkey. It has obtained wholesale battlefield goods from Iran and North Korea, and its own economy is in war mode, producing more artillery shells than the U.S. or the EU can currently provide to Ukraine.

"If you remove China's help completely, tomorrow, it would indeed impact certain segments of the (Russian) military industry… (but) unfortunately, Russia is fully able to continue waging war by itself without China's support," Boulègue said.

One curious aspect is that even though customs data show extensive Chinese supplies flowing to Russia, they represent a disproportionately small portion of foreign-made components found in Russian weapon systems on Ukrainian battlefields.

Chinese products amounted to a mere 4% of the 2,800 foreign parts found in Russian missiles, drones, and armored vehicles and documented by Ukraine's National Agency on Corruption Prevention. This pales in comparison to nearly three-quarters of the sum being U.S.-made parts.

Hilgenstock offers two possible explanations for this discrepancy.

"One hypothesis is that (Russia) hasn't been able to substitute the Western goods" with Chinese products, he said. This would give the West powerful leverage to curb the supplies by its own efforts, but it also indicates that the current export controls are not as effective as hoped.

"The second hypothesis is that Russia does not have to substitute the (Western) parts because it still has access to them," the expert suggested.

What are China's goals?

Unlike other Moscow's partners like Iran or North Korea, Beijing has staved off from supplying direct lethal assistance. This has allowed China to continue supporting Russia under the veil of plausible deniability.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has dismissed criticism against China by the West, saying its exports to Russia fall within the confines of "normal cooperation."

Despite its apparent affinity toward the Kremlin and hostility toward Washington, China's rhetoric has been constrained regarding Ukraine, calling instead for a mutually satisfactory peaceful resolution.

Looking beneath the veneer of pacifist proclamations, Beijing's role in assisting Russia's war machine is hard to deny.

Given the Chinese government's sway over the domestic business sector, it is difficult to imagine that the dual-use goods supplies are happening without its tacit approval.

According to Sher, "Given the size and scope of these transactions, it does seem like it's more than just Chinese companies looking to turn a profit... the Chinese government is likely aware of these transactions."

"If you change the optics a little bit, I would argue that China is providing lethal aid to Russia. It's not direct lethal aid, but military components and parts that are used to kill Ukrainians," Boulègue said.

"Of course, there is a big difference between providing a missile system and electronics that go into a radar used inside that missile. But still… I think we could argue that China is indeed providing a form of indirect lethal aid to Russia," he added.

Chinese companies can capitalize on Russia's growing demand, while Beijing is also likely interested in curtailing Western influence, and its partnership with Moscow is a key piece in this puzzle.

Yet, there are clear limits that Beijing has to respect as a global geopolitical player. While it wishes to support Russia against the West, it does not want to get its hands too dirty, tarnish its international reputation, and attract further costly sanctions from the EU or the U.S., experts say.

"(China) needs to put a critical distance between what Russia is doing in Ukraine and what it hopes to accomplish in the international arena because it brings too much attention, too much heat," Boulègue commented.

"In that sort of… geopolitical battle between the United States and China, they definitely do not want to overreach."

During Xi's visit, EU officials acknowledged Beijing's past efforts to moderate Russia's nuclear saber-rattling or its refusal to provide lethal aid.

Many observers noted that China is playing a careful balancing game, seeking to woo the EU and drive a wedge between it and the U.S. Given Europe's support for Ukraine, this naturally means treading carefully on war-related issues.

"The Americans would love everyone close ranks against Russia and China. China doesn't want that," Lucas noted.

What can the West do?

Shortly after the outbreak of the full-scale war, Western countries imposed extensive sanctions against Russia, aimed at cutting off its crucial supply lanes.

While experiencing a sudden drop in microelectronics imports in 2022, Russia has rebounded to prewar levels since then, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said.

As China has played an increasingly important role in Russia's sanctions circumvention, Western efforts have recently zeroed in on Chinese companies.

Following repeated warnings issued toward Beijing, the U.S. announced on May 1 a package of sanctions against almost 300 entities and individuals, including Chinese companies accused of aiding Russia's war effort.

The EU's 13th sanctions package also included China-based entities helping Moscow dodge restrictive measures.

In a separate effort to pressure Beijing, the U.S. added 37 Chinese entities to the trade blacklist due to security reasons, including 11 of them accused of being connected to last year's espionage incident, the U.S. Commerce Department said on May 9.

Nevertheless, while China's monthly transactions with Russia dropped in early 2024 compared to their peak of $600 million last December, the country remains the leading supplier of high-priority goods, Carnegie Endowment said.

According to Lucas, sanctions can function as a deterrent and make it more difficult for Chinese companies to trade with Russia, but their "record of changing decisions is quite limited."

"The U.S. and Europe are not making China's life easier, but they still find many ways to bypass sanctions. So, honestly, we are several steps behind being efficient in the full sanctions regime," Boulègue said.

While there is little that Kyiv's allies can do regarding trade with Chinese-made products, there is certainly room for improvement in curtailing the re-exports of Western goods.

Under the so-called Foreign Direct Product Rule, the U.S. authorities can regulate re-exports not only of American-made products but also of foreign-produced items whose production involves U.S. software or technology.

"And then it becomes a question of enforcement," Hilgenstock noted.

While the EU does not have such a rule, its past sanctions included additional restrictions on further re-exports to Russia from third-party companies.

Sanctioning such entities also has its limits, however. A common practice in Russia's evasion schemes is foreign-based shell companies that can be dissolved and re-registered as formally new entities after being targeted by sanctions.

For this method to be effective, "you have to do it comprehensively. So not just one or two of these intermediaries, but rather all of them, you would have to do it consistently across all of the coalition's jurisdictions," Hilgenstock commented.

One positive impact that may not be apparent at first sight is the change in value of the products rather than their volumes.

Hilgenstock said that there is some evidence that "Russia is paying significantly more money simply because the Chinese know that Russia desperately needs" these supplies.

This mirrors the situation in Russia's oil exports. Sanctions forced Moscow to pivot from European markets to India and China while selling their product at a significant discount.

"We're not going to stop every single battlefield item from reaching Russia, but if we can make them significantly more expensive, that would be a very promising avenue," Hilgenstock concluded.

Archived unpaywalled link (in German)

Leading members of the German Bundestag from the CDU, FDP and Greens are considering the possibility of protecting parts of the airspace over Ukraine from NATO territory with Western air defense.

The example of Israel, where air defense units from the US, Great Britain, France and other countries repelled an Iranian air attack in April, shows that participating states do not necessarily have to become "the war party", they argue.

The idea have been put forward by military experts like Nico Lange from the Munich Security Conference. In Lange's view, this could create a "safe zone of up to 70 kilometres wide" on Ukraine's borders to Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania.

Roderich Kiesewetter German from the conservative party CDU told the German paper "Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung" that such a deployment at the eastern border of NATO could shoot down 'unmanned Russian missiles' over Ukraine", relieving the Ukrainian air defense and enable it to "protect the front", he says.

Marcus Faber of the ruling party FDP, who is supposed to be the future head of the defense committee, also noted that "the airspace over the Ukrainian border regions" could in principle be protected "by air defense systems on NATO territory".

"I think that this is possible," said Faber.

Agnieszka Brugger from the ruling Green party also supported the idea of "deploying air defense systems at the borders of the neighbouring states so that the western parts of Ukraine can also be protected". Anton Hofreiter from the Green party and chairman of the European Committee shares Brugger's view, according to the paper.

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Here is a video (1 min)

Chinese people not only turned up in strength to welcome their President Xi Jinping who arrived for a state visit to Budapest on May 8 evening but also harassed and bullied Tibet protesters and others as well while the country’s police joined force with them, according to various media reports.

Tímea Szabó, co-chairman of the opposition party Párbeszéd, hung a Tibetan flag from his window on May 8 and within minutes received threats from the Speaker of the Hungarian House of Representatives László Kövér and the secret service, reported dailynewshungary.com May 9.

Before the arrival of Xi for a ceremonial welcome on May 9, Tibor Hendrey, president of the Tibet Aid Society (Tibeti Segítő Társaság), stretched the Tibetan flag on the cross fence in Gellért Hill. However, within minutes Chinese activists covered it with the Chinese flag.

The report cited Hendrey as saying later that he was searched by police three times that day. The report also cited witnesses as saying the police only looked for Hungarians at the scene, and no Chinese at all.

Pro-China activists waved at least 16 Chinese flags to hide from view Tibetan flags the protesters were holding, reported the Tibetan service of rfa.org May 9.

Also, Tibetan protesters tried to hoist a “Free Tibet” banner along with the Tibetan flag on the Elizabeth Bridge, under which Xi’s motorcade would have had to pass on its way to the presidential palace in Budapest on May 9 morning. But the Chinese activists disrupted them again, the report said.

“These guys just came and ripped our banner, and they are still allowed to be here, pushing us further and further out,” Chime Lhamo, campaigns director of Students for Free Tibet, has told journalists on the street. “Is this a free country?”

Hungarian police standing nearby did not intervene, the report added.

After the street encounter, the protesters were followed by what appeared to be about eight undercover police officers on their way to the Budapest airport, one of them has said.

In fact, “over the last few days, we were followed, harassed and intimidated by undercover Hungarian police, as well as Chinese people and police everywhere in the city,” Tenzin Yangzom from the International Tibet Network has said. “Everywhere in the city is swarmed by them.”

"We had come here to peacefully protest Xi’s genocidal policies in Tibet, East Turkistan, Hong Kong and beyond and the treatment of Tibetans, Hong Kongers, Uyghurs and Chinese people,” she has added.

Márton Tompos, vice-president of the opposition party Momentum, wanted to place the EU flag at the Elisabeth Bridge in Budapest but was prevented by Chinese volunteers wearing red caps working for their embassy. He was even asked which flags he wanted to put up and why, said the dailynewshungary.com report.

It appears that no flags other than those of China will be displayed in Budapest while Xi is in town, the report added.

“Budapest is full of Chinese volunteer gendarmes wearing red caps to protect Xi Jinping, known as Winnie the Pooh, from the ‘unfriendly’ Tibetan and Taiwanese flags,” Tompos was stated to have written in a video post.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Hungary and the two countries have decided to elevate bilateral relations to an all-weather comprehensive strategic partnership for the new era during Xi’s meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Frequently at loggerheads with the EU, Orban has been advocating an “Eastern opening” foreign policy since his return to power in 2010, seeking closer economic ties with China, Russia and other Asian countries.

Beijing has invested billions in Hungary and sees the EU member as an important foothold inside the 27-member trading bloc. In December, Hungary announced that one of the world’s largest EV manufacturers, China’s BYD, will open its first European EV production factory in the south of the country — an inroad that could upend the competitiveness of the continent’s auto industry, noted the AP May 9.

The state visit to Hungary is the last leg of Xi’s current European tour after France and Serbia, his first since 2019.

His visit to France, marking 60th year of establishing diplomatic relations, was cordial but also highlighted tensions between Beijing and the EU over the war in Ukraine and global trade.

His visit to non-EU, non-NATO member Serbia, known for its stanch alliance with Russia, took place on the 25th anniversary of NATO’s accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy at Belgrade during the Yugoslavia conflict, which Xi said his country will never forget despite the issue being settled with payment of compensations.

The Hungarian government's invitation to Chinese police officers to patrol in Hungary poses a threat to European security and in particular the freedoms of Europe's Chinese diaspora.

The Commission must urgently assess whether the foreign police activity aligns with the EU's standards for the rule of law, security and protection of minorities, Renew Europe state ahead of today’s debate in the European Parliament, held upon the request of our group. As the Chinese Communist party has a track record of surveiling its citizens abroad, Renew Europe MEPs fear that the authorities in Beijing will use the occasion to keep tabs on their diaspora living in Europe in an attempt to silence dissidents. The Hungarian government must clarify what role they will have and which powers they will possess.

"While the EU has started to address the threat of authoritarian interference— it remains blind to interference originating from our very own authoritarian member states. The fact that Chinese police officers will soon begin patrolling in Hungary is foreign meddling in EU affairs, and a significant risk to EU security. The Commission must have a forceful answer", says Katalin Cseh, a member of the European Parliament from Hungary's Momentum, a centre-right party in Hungary.

The advisory, which also includes French, Canadian and British authorities, says that pro-Russia activists are “targeting and compromising” operational technology platforms that underpin wastewater and water treatment systems, at times posing physical threats to safety.

The NSA, FBI, Department of Energy and Department of Agriculture were also included in the notice.

According to the advisory, this malicious activity "has been observed since 2022 and as recently as April 2024.”

The alert says that water operators are employing poor security standards that have allowed the hackers to breach their networks, including the use of default passwords that are included when the water system management tools are first installed.

The hackers have “manipulated [human-machine interfaces], causing water pumps and blower equipment to exceed their normal operating parameters. In each case, the hacktivists maxed out set points, altered other settings, turned off alarm mechanisms, and changed administrative passwords” to lock real users out of their wastewater treatment systems, it later adds.

Private sector research from mid-April linked a breach of a water facility near the Texas-New Mexico border and marked the first known case where Russian hackers targeted U.S. water facilities.

The research, conducted by Google-owned Mandiant, said the hackers were a possible activist unit of Sandworm, an operation tied to Russia’s military intelligence directorate.

CISA executive director of cybersecurity Eric Goldstein said the U.S. was not linking activity outlined in the advisory to Sandworm or affiliated operatives, though later said that the groups are acting in support of the Kremlin. He declined to name any specific groups.

Russia’s state-centered economy allows Moscow to easily steamroll contracts for military and intelligence operations. A leak last year revealed the intricacies of this relationship, showing a vast network of military consultants working on behalf of the Kremlin, including Sandworm.

The Environmental Protection Agency and National Security Council in March urged states to stay alert for Iranian and Chinese cyber threats targeting water sector infrastructure. “Drinking water and wastewater systems are an attractive target for cyberattacks because they are a lifeline critical infrastructure sector but often lack the resources and technical capacity to adopt rigorous cybersecurity practices,” their missive to states said.

Jenny Mathers, a specialist in Russian intelligence services at Aberystwyth University in Wales, said there has been a notable increase in the number and intensity of Russia-linked incidents for the past year, adding that “we are likely to see an acceleration of this trend".

Larger infrastructure networks have been targeted too. Last month, Czech authorities accused Russia of having made “thousands” of hacking attempts to sabotage European railway systems and their ability to transport Western arms and material to Ukraine. According to the country’s transport minister, the campaign began shortly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and has included attacks on signalling and ticketing systems.

Kevin Riehle, an intelligence and security expert at Brunel University in London, said that one of the reasons for the presumed Russian sabotage is that Moscow already sees itself as being at war with the West.

Daniel Lomas, an expert in intelligence services at the University of Nottingham, said the timing for Russia to put pressure on the West in this manner is opportune too, especially as a certain war fatigue – evident in the US's long-delayed aid package for Ukraine earlier this year – has begun to set in. On top of that, Russian attacks on European soil are “an opportunity to sow more divisions” in the West, he said.

The attacks also serve a strategic purpose in Ukraine, in the sense that Russia is trying to coordinate the wider sabotage campaign with its push on the ground in a bid to create a greater military advantage, Mathers said.

“There is a psychological impact [on the West], but also a material one [for Ukraine],” she said, referring to the fact that most of the targets are either ammunition depots intended for the Ukrainian army or infrastructures in the supply and delivery chain, such as rail networks or airports.

Lomas agreed. "One of their key priorities is to stop the flow of weapons to Ukraine."

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Russia’s jamming of GPS signals marks a shift in its non-conventional attacks against the Baltic states, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said on Friday.

“They [Russia] are moving from the cyber domain, disinformation domain, towards a more physical one which affects airplanes, daily lives of people in our region,” he said in a joint news conference with his new Latvian counterpart Baiba Braže in Vilnius.

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania warned last month that Russia’s jamming of GPS signal was increasing the threat of aviation incidents.

Estonia on Wednesday summoned Russia’s chargé d’affaires to protest the jamming of GPS signals which led to disruptions in Tartu Airport.

The Estonian Foreign Ministry said in a press release that it “has caused serious damage to air traffic in our region, the clearest example of which is the suspension of flights between Helsinki and Tartu”.

Braže told the news conference in Vilnius that “it’s not a new phenomenon but it leaves a certain sort of consequence that is worrying”.

Landsbergis called for sanctions on those responsible for these actions, adding that “it is also very important to send a message to Moscow that they are not operating in a grey zone”.

“If they expect us to be silent, if they expect us to be quiet about the things that are happening, they are definitely not going to get that. We see, we know, and we act against it,” Lithuania’s foreign minister said.

This week, several European countries summoned Russia’s diplomats over hybrid and cyber-attacks orchestrated by Moscow or groups linked to it.

At a military base that now doubles as a detention center in Israel’s Negev desert, an Israeli working at the facility snapped two photographs of a scene that he says continues to haunt him.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/20917977

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/15236948

Last week one was sentenced to 11 years, another had to flee the country, a third could be arrested at any moment. And what were Manahel, Maryam and Fawzia al-Otaibi’s ‘crimes’? A few social media posts that outraged Saudi Arabia’s conservatives

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In September 2022, Fawzia al-Otaibi was a week into a trip to her home country of Saudi Arabia, staying with a friend near the Bahrain border, when her phone rang. As soon as she heard the male voice on the other end of the line, she realised that returning had been a terrible mistake.

It was a police officer who, in 2019, had tracked her down and fined her for public indecency after she had posted a video on her Snapchat account, showing her dancing in jeans and a baseball cap at a concert in Riyadh. She and her two sisters, Maryam and Manahel, had become targets in a campaign of arrests, threats and intimidation by the Saudi authorities after they had used their popular social media channels to post about women’s rights. For her, the dancing clip wasn’t a political statement; it was just about sharing a happy moment with her followers.

After the fine, Fawzia left Saudi Arabia for Dubai and hadn’t been back to her home country in three years. She thought the authorities had forgotten about her. She was wrong.

The United States overtook China as Germany's most important trading partner in the first quarter of this year, according to Reuters' calculations based on official data from the German statistics office.

Germany's trade with the United States - exports and imports combined - totalled 63 billion euros ($68 billion) from January to March, while the figure for China was just under 60 billion euros, the data showed.

In 2023, China was Germany's top trading partner for the eighth year in a row, with volumes reaching 253 billion euros, although that was only a few hundred million ahead of the U.S.

"German exports to the U.S. have now risen further due to the robust economy there, while both exports to and imports from China have fallen," said Commerzbank economist Vincent Stamer, explaining the first quarter shift.

Structural reasons are also a factor, he said.

"China has moved up the value chain ladder and is increasingly producing more complex goods itself, which it used to import from Germany," said Stamer. "In addition, German companies are increasingly producing locally instead of exporting goods from Germany to China."

Germany has said it wants to reduce its exposure to China, citing political differences and accusing Beijing in its first China strategy announcement last year of "unfair practises". But Berlin has been vague on policy steps to reduce dependencies.

German imports of goods from China fell almost 12% year-on-year in the first quarter, while exports of goods to China fell just over 1%, said Juergen Matthes, from German economic institute IW.

"The fact that the Chinese economy is performing worse than many had hoped, while the U.S. economy is exceeding expectations, is presumably contributing to this," said Matthes.

The U.S. now accounts for around 10% of German goods exports. China's share has fallen to less than 6%, Matthes said.

"With a clear global economic headwind for the German economic model, a reorientation - also geopolitically motivated - seems to be taking place: away from system rival China and towards transatlantic partner U.S.," he added. It is unclear, however, whether this will continue.

"If the White House administration changes after the U.S. elections in November and moves more in the direction of closing off markets, this process could come to a standstill," said Dirk Jandura, president of the BGA trade association.

In a series of videos posted on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, Qu Jing, said she had no responsibility for employees' well-being "as I'm not your mother".

She also threatened retaliation against subordinates who complained about her management. "I can make it impossible for you to find a job in this industry with just a short essay," she wrote.

On Wednesday, Ms Qu acknowledged that her posts - which have since been taken down - drew "very pertinent" criticism.

"I deeply reflect on and humbly accept them,” she wrote on WeChat.

The furore stirred by Ms Qu highlights the notoriously poor work-life balance in China's tech workplaces.

Alibaba founder Jack Ma had famously called it a "blessing" for anyone to be part of the "996 work culture", where people work 9am to 9pm, six days a week.

In one of her earlier videos, Ms Qu claimed to be so caught up in her work that she does not know which grade her son is in.

In another video, she said: "If you work in public relations, don't expect weekends off".

"Keep your phone on 24 hours a day, always ready to respond," she said.

Baidu has not commented on the matter.

In her apology, Ms Qu said her videos did not represent Baidu's stance and that she had not sought the company's consent before posting them.

"I apologise that the inappropriate videos led to the public's misunderstanding of my company's values and corporate culture.

"I will learn from my mistakes and improve the way I communicate, and care more for my colleagues," she wrote.

Chinese social media platform Weibo has seen heated discussion over the incident in the past few days.

"As the company's vice-president, [Ms Qu] should have known that her comments and attitude would disgust her subordinates, yet she went ahead to make them public. This speaks of how out-of-touch she is," one user wrote.

"She is supposed to lead Baidu's public relations department, yet she herself is deeply involved in a public relations crisis. Talk about a lack of professionalism," wrote another.

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The European Chamber of Commerce in China said in the latest edition of its Business Confidence Survey that the outlook for doing business in China was also at its lowest in the report’s 20-year history, with over a quarter of respondents pessimistic about their current growth potential and 44% downbeat over future prospects.

With China’s economy facing headwinds and President Xi Jinping urging self-reliance and for officials to push on with a production-focused, debt driven development model despite pushback from the West, foreign firms are feeling less welcome than before.

EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and French President Emmanuel Macron urged Xi on Monday to ensure more balanced trade with Europe, but the Chinese leader showed little sign of being ready to offer major concessions while in Paris.

BASF, Maersk, Siemens and Volkswagen are among the members of the chamber.

Just 13% of firms said they currently see China as a top investment destination, the chamber said, down from 16% in 2023 and far lower than during the pandemic, when Beijing’s strict zero-COVID regime saw that figure fall from one-fifth to 17% in 2019, 19% in 2020, 27% in 2021 and 21% during 2022, the year the curbs were finally lifted.

"The lifting of pandemic-related control measures initially provided companies with a sense of optimism,” the chamber said. “However, it soon become evident there would be no rapid recovery.”

“China’s deeper structural issues – including sluggish demand, high levels of government debt and the continued challenges in the real estate sector – were going to continue affecting the prospects of both domestic and foreign companies,” the chamber added.

The pandemic and a property crisis have laid bare the limits of China’s development model, analysts say. And as China’s investment-consumption imbalance is deeper than that of Japan in the 1980s – before its infamous “lost decades” – the economy risks slowing to such an extent that it feels like it is in recession.

European firms are feeling the pinch, the chamber said, with the number of companies reporting revenue increases also at its lowest on record. In tandem, close to 40% of respondents said China’s ailing economy was their biggest business challenge, with a slowing global economy coming in a distant second at 15%.

“Companies are continuing to shift investments that were originally planned for China to alternative markets that are perceived to be more predictable, reliable and transparent,” the chamber said.

“As investment decisions are made in cycles and are not taken lightly, reversing them will not be possible overnight.”

Link to the archived version.

You robbed Hong Kongers of the most fundamental freedom and devastated their democracy. Now in my country Taiwan, you sought to do the same." A yell from the audience disrupts the Chinese Ambassador to the United States Xie Feng's (謝鋒) speech at Harvard University that marked the opening of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024 on April 20.

The person shouting was Taiwanese American Harvard student Cosette Wu (吳亭樺), a co-director of the organization "Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP," who was then forcibly removed from the scene by a man.

The man was subsequently identified as a fellow Harvard student who helped organize Xie's visit.

Wu said she was prepared to be removed but "did not expect to be treated so violently."

"We definitely understand that there's the right for Harvard event security to remove disruptive protesters, but I didn't expect somebody who was just another student to charge at me in that way."

Three fellow Harvard students -- one Taiwanese American and two Tibetans -- joined Wu at the protest in the conference hall. Similar protests organized by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP and "Students for a Free Tibet," were also staged outside.

"We wanted to emphasize that we will not allow somebody who is representing and advocating for a genocidal government and someone who personally oversaw the destruction of Hong Kong's free society and has done all of these things to all of our communities, to have this platform at a university that has members that are affected by what he's done," Wu said.

A turning point

Wu originally dreamt of being a doctor and it was not until she started learning more about her family history that she felt the desire to "do something for Taiwan."

Growing up, Wu's parents taught her about Taiwanese history. She said she always sort of knew that her great-grandfather was a victim of the 228 Incident, an anti-government uprising in 1947 that was violently suppressed by the then-ruling Kuomintang and led to the death and imprisonment of thousands of civilians. Photo courtesy of Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP

Born in 1902, Wu's great-grandfather Shih Jiang-nan (施江南) was the second Taiwanese to receive a doctorate in medicine during the Japanese colonial period. He promoted public health education and founded the now-demolished Sifang Hospital in Taipei. A well-respected man, he was taken from his home in the hospital on March 11, 1947 and never seen again.

In her sophomore year of high school, Wu started researching Shih, talking to several family members to learn more about her great-grandfather. Her efforts led to her biography of his life, "The Story of Shih Jiangnan" being published in her senior year of high school.

Wu said she "didn't want his story to be lost," and because there are "a lot of 228 victims" whose stories "unfortunately faded away," she thought it was important to have her great-grandfather's story told in English so it would "be accessible to people like me who are Taiwanese American."

"It was a really powerful learning experience for me to not only learn about my great grandpa but also to learn about Taiwanese history as a whole," Wu said, adding that "understanding Taiwan's authoritarian past is what sparked my realization that we can't take democracy for granted."

Wanting to do something for Taiwan

Researching the life of her great-grandfather opened the door to Wu learning more about Taiwan's history and democracy, which led to her interning with a range of organizations that focused on matters such as security in the Asia Pacific and Taiwan's history and democracy.

Her internship experience spanned from writing educational pieces on the 1990 Wild Lily student movement to deepening her understanding of foreign policy and cross-strait relations. The more she learned, the more she felt the "imperative to protect Taiwan's hard-earned freedom."

At the end of her freshman year, she decided to switch her major from molecular and cellular biology to economics and government, hoping to "pursue a career" where she could "do something to help Taiwan."

It was not an easy decision, but a chat with her dad helped confirm it was the right one.

"My dad told me the next 50 years are going to be the most important for Taiwan and if you don't fight for your own freedom, nobody's going to do it for you," she said.

Therefore, despite the "scary uncertainties" ahead, Wu said she still feels "very confident" with her decision. Cosette Wu. CNA photo April 23, 2024

In the summer of her freshman year, she interned at Forward Alliance, a Taiwanese national security and civil defense think tank. "It was the first time that I was able to feel like I was doing something for Taiwan really on the ground," she said.

While interning, she taught civil defense courses and learned how to talk about Taiwan to an international audience, as she helped founder Enoch Wu (吳怡農), a Taiwanese policy advocate, prepare for interviews.

Wu said she found working with people in person "really exciting," especially as she was able to revisit Taiwan due to the COVID-19 situation becoming less acute. She added that she enjoyed the blend of conducting research and preparing for interviews while learning more about national security issues.

Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP

Wu also spoke with CNA about the coalition's work and goals, which members have been working towards since its establishment in December 2023.

The coalition began following discussions between herself, Tibetan, and Uyghur students at Harvard, who connected through cross-movement protests in Boston, Wu explained.

Now comprising Tibetan, Taiwanese, Uyghur and Hong Kong students, the coalition focuses on collective liberation and elevating cross-movement solidarity through its three main pillars: "Research, Restore, Resist."

The Research pillar refers to fostering scholarly research about the intersections of different movements to help strategize how we can work together better, Wu said.

The Restore pillar refers to restoring the truth about our histories and movements in classrooms and on campuses, Wu added.

The third, Resist, means focusing on mobilizing students to take action against the CCP and stand with all our cross-movement communities.

Understanding Taiwanese history has also significantly influenced the way she views cross-movement work and its importance, Wu said, adding that she often thinks about what different groups can learn from each other and about how "our Taiwanese ancestors and elders who fought so hard for the freedoms we have today."

She also spoke about her exchanges with fellow coalition members, who include a Chinese student who is very interested in "what the Taiwanese diaspora did (to fight for Taiwan's freedom and democracy) back when we were not yet democratized." Photo courtesy of Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP

Furthermore, she said learning about the experiences of the Tibetan members of the coalition has profoundly altered how she views the potential of the Taiwanese American activist community and the broader Taiwanese diaspora.

"Seeing the immense level of youth activism and engagement that they have" enables her to work with not only other individuals but also more Taiwanese Americans, on that same level.

Wu said she also recognizes the privilege that comes with being Taiwanese American due to her having "a lot more freedom and security than many of her cross-movement friends," and that she thinks it is important that she "utilizes that privilege to do what I can do and support and further their freedom movements."

Col Rabih Alenezi says he was ordered to evict villagers from a tribe in the Gulf state to make way for The Line, part of the Neom eco-project.

One of them was subsequently shot and killed for protesting against eviction.

The Saudi government and Neom management refused to comment.

The area where Neom is being built has been described as the perfect "blank canvas" by Saudi leader Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman. But more than 6,000 people have been moved for the project according to his government - and UK-based human rights group ALQST estimates the figure to be higher.

Col Alenezi, who went into exile in the UK last year, says the clearance order he was asked to enact was for al-Khuraybah, an area with villages that were mostly populated by the Huwaitat tribe, who have inhabited the Tabuk region in the country's north-west for generations.

He said the April 2020 order stated the Huwaitat was made up of "many rebels" and "whoever continues to resist [eviction] should be killed, so it licensed the use of lethal force against whoever stayed in their home".

Experts say the recent increase in arrests and investigations reflects a changing mood in Europe towards Chinese threats.

“A lot of this activity has been around a while,” said Martin Thorley, a senior analyst at the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime. “Countries have now been forced confront it, despite the unpalatable nature of dealing with this at the same time as having market dependencies, supply-chain links etc in China. This has been present for a while and has been left too long.”

Roderich Kiesewetter, a German MP and former army officer, said the German secret services had been warning for “several years” about the threat from China but “the warning was … on purpose not heard”.

He noted that the recent arrests in Germany would have sent a “stronger signal” if they had been announced before the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, went to Beijing in April. Instead, they were made public days after Scholz’s return to Germany.

Italy’s president told the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine can’t be solved by rewarding its aggression and peace can only come when Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are restored.

Sergio Mattarella said Italy, which now heads the G7 meetings, and many international partners have come to Ukraine’s defense to support the principle that solidarity must be given to nations attacked by acts that violate international law and the U.N. Charter.

“No state, no matter how powerful or how equipped it is with a menacing nuclear arsenal can think of violating principles, including the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence of another country without facing sanctions,” he said.

Mattarella said the end of two world wars and the collapse of the Soviet Union had brought new hope to Europe, and that “Russia has taken on the great historic responsibility of having brought war back to the heart of the European continent.”

The Italian president stressed that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine isn’t merely a regional conflict since Moscow wants to exercise global influence. Russia is a veto-wielding permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, which is charged with ensuring international peace and security.

The Philippines' military chief accused China of a "malign influence effort" on Wednesday, after a local newspaper reported a Filipino vice admiral had made a deal with Beijing to de-escalate tensions in the South China Sea.

The Manila Times published what it said was a transcript of a phone conversation during which it said a Philippine admiral had agreed to China's proposal of a "new model", where the Philippines would use fewer vessels in resupply missions to troops at the disputed Second Thomas Shoal, and notify Beijing about missions in advance.

Reuters has not heard the reported phone conversation and could not verify the contents of the published transcript. The Manila Times said the conversation had taken place in January and the transcript was provided by a "ranking Chinese official", which it did not name.

The shoal has been a flashpoint for a series of heated confrontations between China's coast guard and Philippine vessels in the past year, straining ties between the two neighbours. The Philippines has refused to heed China's calls to steer clear of the area.

"China's claim of an audio recording ... does not merit significant concern as it appears to be a malign influence effort from the Chinese Communist Party," military chief Romeo Brawner said in a statement.

"Transcripts can easily be fabricated, and audio recordings can be manufactured by using deep fakes. These reports only aims to serve as a distraction from the China coast guard's ongoing aggressive behaviour."

China's embassy in Manila did not respond to requests for comment on the transcript carried by the Manila Times. It had no immediate response to Brawner's statement.

'FACTS ARE CLEAR'

China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian on Wednesday said the embassy in Manila had released details about "relevant communications" between the two countries on managing the situation at the Second Thomas Shoal. Lin did not elaborate.

"The facts are clear and backed by hard evidence that cannot be denied," Lin said in comments from a regular briefing shared by the embassy. "The Philippines has insisted on denying these objective facts and seeks to mislead the international community."

The two countries have been embroiled in a series of standoffs in disputed areas of the South China Sea as the Philippines, emboldened by support from the United States and other allies, steps up its activities in waters policed by China's coast guard.

China has accused the Philippines of trespassing and of treachery. The Philippines has scolded Beijing for what it says is a policy of aggression and dangerous manoeuvring inside Manila's 200-mile exclusive economic zone.

China has long been vexed by the Philippines' stationing of a small group of marines at the Second Thomas Shoal aboard a warship that it intentionally grounded 25 years ago.

Beijing has repeatedly said the Philippines had agreed to tow that ship away, which Manila has rejected.