In November 2011, just days after Mr Heywood’s body was discovered inside a Chongqing hotel room, Mr Wang allegedly disguised himself as an “old man” and “snuck” into the British Consulate-General in the city of Guangzhou.

[...] A spokesperson for the British Embassy in Beijing said: “We don’t have any record of any such meeting. We have no record of Wang Lijun visiting the consulate at that time.”

[...] Before fleeing to the US consulate in Chengdu on February 6 2012, Mr Wang “contacted officials at the consulates of the United Kingdom and Germany in Chongqing”.

British officials have confirmed that Mr Wang did set up a meeting at the UK consulate in Chongqing but say he failed to show up.

See more on Wang Lijun and Bo Xilai via CDT.

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: asylum, Bo Xilai, Britain, Chengdu, Chongqing, defection, Guangzhou, United Kingdom, Wang Lijun
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Congee and dumplings are on the breakfast menu at enterprising hotels, major London stores have installed Chinese bank card terminals, and Mandarin-speaking staff are on hand to help out with the Christmas shopping.

Britain is courting Chinese travellers not only because they are a rapidly growing market — they made an estimated 70 million overseas trips in 2011, up 20 percent in just a year — but because they are serious shoppers.

The renowned Harrods department store, in London’s exclusive Knightsbridge district, now has 70 Mandarin-speaking staff and more than 100 China Union Pay terminals allowing direct payment from Chinese bank accounts.

But Britain’s share of the coveted Chinese market is poor compared to several competitors in mainland Europe including France, which welcomed nearly a million tourists from China last year.

Despite this attempt to lure Chinese tourists to the United Kingdom, economic tensions due to Chinese telecom giant, Huawei, between China and the UK may spark a trade war, from The Independent:

Britain could face a damaging multibillion-pound trade war with China and see the roll-out of economically vital 4G mobile internet services derailed if an intelligence report, due to land on David Cameron’s desk within the next two weeks, finds that the UK operations of the Chinese communications giant Huawei represents a threat to the UK’s cyber-security.

Downing Street, according to intelligence sources, is prepared to face a costly trade backlash by Beijing if it opts to blacklist the multinational over allegations that the company has links to the Chinese army and concerns that its equipment could be used for cyber-espionage by the Chinese government. Huawei, though not a high-profile consumer brand in the UK, controls a quarter of the EU’s telecom-equipment market, winning over half of all the contracts for 4G infrastructure technology awarded throughout Europe. The Chinese multinational is also supplying the 4G technology for EE, the company that controls Orange and T-Mobile, and has signed similar deals with O2 and 3UK.

Concerns over the potential for state cyber-espionage involving Huawei has recently seen the US House of Representatives’ intelligence committee recommend that the Shenzhen-based company be restricted from operating on US soil. In Australia it has been excluded from bidding to supply the lucrative national fibre network. A similar move is under consideration by Canada.

Mr Cameron’s pledge in late 2010 to double UK trade to China to £62bn by 2015 means the report’s findings could be a game-changer for Britain’s trade ambitions with the new Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, if Huawei is blacklisted. But if Downing Street were to dismiss publicly US, Canadian and EU concerns as unsubstantiated conspiracy theory, Mr Cameron would leave himself open to the charge of keeping Beijing happy at the expense of UK cyber-security.

Read more about China’s relationship with the United Kingdom, via CDT.

© Melissa M. Chan for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Britain, Chinese tourists, cybersecurity, holidays, huawei, tourism, United Kingdom
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By its peak in the 1990s, the 6.5 acre Kowloon Walled City was home to at least 33,000 people (with estimates of up to 50,000). That’s a population density of at least 3.2 million per square mile. For New York City to get that dense, every man, woman, and child living in Texas would have to move to Manhattan.

[…] Kowloon Walled City began as a military fort in Kowloon, a region in mainland China. In 1898, China signed a land lease with Great Britain, giving the British control of Hong Kong, Kowloon, and other nearby territories. But the lease stipulated that the fort in Kowloon would remain under Chinese jurisdiction.

Over time, the fort became abandoned, leaving the area subject to neither Chinese nor British authority. This legal gray zone was attractive to displaced and marginalized people. Thousands of people moved there after the war with Japan broke out in 1937. Even more people moved there after the Communist Revolution. It attracted gangsters, drug addicts, sex workers, and refugees. And it also drew a lot of normal people from all over China who saw opportunity there.

Click through to 99percentinvisible.org for photos and video of the Walled City. Host Roman Mars also tweeted a link to a Reddit ‘Ask Me Anything’ session with user Crypt0n1te, who claims to have lived there as a child.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: architecture, Britain, Hong Kong, podcasts, radio
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Chinese tourists are much in demand these days – not least among Britain’s government. The reasons for this are obvious: Chinese visitors tend to spend on average three times more than other overseas visitors, yet at the moment France receives 25-30% more visitors than Britain. This is why a division appears to be emerging within the government, with culture secretary Jeremy Hunt trying to make it easier for Chinese tourists to obtain visas, while home secretary Theresa May has been blocking such changes.

The main problem for Chinese tourists is a matter of logistics – the UK is not included in the Schengen visa, which allows access to a host of European countries such as France and Germany. What this means is that an entirely separate process is required to gain entry into the UK. Although an overhaul earlier this year means that visa applications are now completed online, visitors are still required to visit one of 12 UK centres across the country for a face-to-face interview and fingerprinting. If you don’t live near one of these centres already, you’d have to travel some distance to get there.

Another problem is that Chinese people want to visit more than one country if they are going to make it all the way out to Europe – travel abroad for leisure is still a relatively new concept, so many want to cover as much ground as possible. Going to the extra trouble of seeing a country the size of a large province in China (of which there are 33), when the Schengen visa will get you into 26 countries, makes the former seem a less worth it.

There is also the issue of cost: £47 for a Schengen visa, £82 for the UK. On top of this, the UK is viewed as stricter in its handling of visas compared with the rest of Europe, fed by urban legends of rejected applications. In the end, the decision comes down to one question: is Britain worth the hassle?

While some are trying to boost tourism to the UK, Theresa May, the Secretary of State for the Home Department and Minister for Women and Equality, warns of the security threat from the impending Chinese visa plan in a letter. The letter written by Katherine Hammond, May’s private secretary, can be read in its entirety on The Telegraph. From the BBC:

There are already 400 Chinese criminals awaiting deportation and 1,000 asylum applications from Chinese citizens last year, it said.

“The proposal… is not acceptable to the home secretary for national security reasons,” the letter said.

“We also face significant challenges with foreign national offenders and organised crime, including drugs, money laundering, fraud, criminal finances, intellectual property, immigration and cyber crime.”

But Mark Tanzer, chief executive of the Association of British Travel Agents (Abta), said: “In the absence of concrete data about visa abuse, it is impossible to determine whether the right balance is being struck between the UK’s commercial interests and its security needs.”

As Chinese tourists are being courted by the UK, tourists going to China may run into some additional red tape. This change to the visa rules comes amid concerns about foreign journalists’ safety in China. The Los Angeles Times reports:

On Aug. 1, the Chinese government started requiring that travelers seeking tourist visas, officially known as L visas, submit a letter of invitation and photocopies of the traveler’s round-trip ticket and hotel reservations.

To obtain a business, or F Visa, applicants must now have an invitation letter or “confirmation letter of invitation” issued by an authorized Chinese agency. This is in addition to an invitation letter issued by a Chinese local government, company, corporation or institution.

For tourists, the invitation letter can come from a “duly authorized tourism unit” or it can be issued by a company, corporation, institution or individual in China. If the letter comes from an individual, a photocopy of her or his identification must also be provided.

The new, more complicated rules, unfortunately, don’t completely spell out what is considered a “duly authorized tourism unit” or what constitutes a “letter of invitation.” Consulate officials did not respond to our request for additional clarification.

All of the new requirements for the visa can be found on the English website for Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Washington, DC.

© Melissa M. Chan for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Britain, London Olympics, Olympics, Olympics business, tourism, tourists, United Kingdom
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This has been an era of protest in China. The government stopped releasing figures a few years ago, but academics with access to internal documents say there are tens of thousands of demonstrations each year. The reasons are manifold – land grabs, ethnic unrest, factory layoffs, corruption cases and territorial disputes. But I have come to believe the fundamental cause is ecological stress: foul air, filthy water, growing pressure on the soil and an ever more desperate quest for resources that is pushing development into remote mountains, deserts and forests that were a last hold-out for bio and ethnic diversity.

This is not primarily China’s fault. It is a historical, global trend. China is merely roaring along the same unsustainable path set by the developed world, but on a bigger scale, a faster speed and at a period in human history when there is much less ecological room for manoeuvre. The wealthy portion of the world has been exporting environmental stress for centuries. Outsourcing energy-intensive industries and resource extraction have put many problems out of sight and out of mind for western consumers. But they cannot be ignored in China.

[…] As I have noted at greater length elsewhere, I had come to fear that China may be where the 200-odd-year-old carbon-fuelled capital-driven model of economic development runs into an ecological wall. Britain, where it started, and China may be bookends on a period of global expansion that has never been seen before and may never be repeated again.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, air pollution, Britain, economic development, economic growth, environmental protests, guardian, jonathan watts, Latin America, water pollution
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China criticized British Prime Minister David Cameron on Tuesday for meeting with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, saying it amounts to support for Tibet’s independence from Chinese rule.

The British government ignored Beijing’s objections in going ahead with Monday’s meeting in London, and doing so “hurts the feelings of the Chinese people,” meddles in China’s affairs and harms Chinese-British relations, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said. He said Britain now needs to take actions to repair the damage.

“We are strongly discontented and firmly opposed to it,” Hong told reporters at a daily briefing. “We call on the British side to earnestly respond to China’s solemn demand, stop conniving at and supporting separatist attempts to achieve Tibetan independence, take practical measures to eliminate the terrible impact and take actions to preserve Chinese-British relations.”

Hong said his ministry lodged a protest with the British Embassy in Beijing and the Chinese Embassy in London delivered the same message to the British government.

According to Reuters, China has responded similarly in the past to political leaders meeting with the Dalai Lama:

China’s response echoed many previous statements about the Dalai Lama’s meetings with foreign political leaders, suggesting that China will confine its reaction to angry words.

British ministers believe that who they see is a matter for them,” said a British Foreign Office spokeswoman in London. “If they choose to see someone, it does not necessarily indicate they support that individual’s viewpoint.”

The Dalai Lama told reporters on Monday that China is beset by a moral crisis, widespread corruption and lawlessness, leading millions of Chinese to seek solace in Buddhism.

He was in London to receive the $1.7 million Templeton prize for his work affirming the spiritual dimension of life.

This recent source of tension comes after China dismissed claims of plots to assassinate the Dalai Lama. AFP adds:

China has accused the Dalai Lama of “deceiving the world” and “spreading false information” after Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader said he was warned of a plot by Chinese agents to assassinate him.

The Buddhist monk made the allegation in an interview with Britain’s Sunday Telegraph, saying he had been told that agents were planning to poison him using Tibetan women posing as devotees seeking his blessing.

“The Dalai Lama always engages in anti-China splittist activities globally wearing his religious cloak, spreading false information, deceiving the world and confusing the public,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said.

“His most recent statement is not even worth refuting,” he told reporters Monday.

Read more about the Dalai Lama and Tibet Protests via CDT.

© Melissa M. Chan for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Britain, Dalai Lama, tibet politics, tibet protest
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The centrepiece on the three-day visit is the annual UK-China Summit, which takes place in London Monday and will be attended by Prime Minister David Cameron, Foreign Secretary William Hague and finance minister George Osborne.

Business deals across a range of sectors are expected to be announced at the event.

Wen will also hold talks with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and business leaders focused on green growth. The premier leaves Britain for Germany on Monday.

London sees Beijing as a key strategic partner and will be keen to use the visit to boost economic and political ties.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Britain, Europe, U.K.
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The move comes amid growing worries in the West at the scale and breadth of Chinese intelligence-gathering, with MI5 saying that the Chinese government “represents one of the most significant espionage threats to the UK”.

In February, China allegedly managed to penetrate the Foreign Office’s internal communications network.

Until now, however, the bulk of Chinese foreign espionage is thought to have been conducted primarily by academics and students who are sent to the host countries only for a short period of time.

The new schools aim to transform and modernise the Chinese intelligence services, producing spies who are trained in the latest methods of data collection and analysis. Each school will recruit around 30 to 50 carefully-selected existing undergraduates each year.

The Telegraph has a separate report on the cyberwar currently being waged between China and Britain, on the eve of Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to meet with Prime Minister David Cameron:

Jonathan Evans, the director general of MI5, has singled out China for their “unreconstructed attempts” to spy on Britain saying they “continue to devote considerable time and energy trying to steal our sensitive technology on civilian and military projects and trying to obtain political and economic intelligence at our expense.”

MI5 believes that the Chinese government “represents one of the most significant espionage threats to the UK.”

A 14-page “restricted” report from MI5′s Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) last year, described how China has attacked British defence, energy, communications and manufacturing companies in a concerted hacking campaign.

One of the main focuses of Britain’s Office of Cyber Security and the Cyber Security Operations Centre based at GCHQ is the constant attempts to break into government departments and private sector companies by Chinese hackers.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Britain, espionage, national intelligence college, U.K.
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“I call on the Chinese government to urgently clarify Ai’s situation and wellbeing, and hope he will be released immediately,” British Foreign Secretary William Hague said in a statement.

Hague added that human rights applied under the rule of law were “essential prerequisites” to China’s long-term prosperity and stability.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said he had learned of Ai’s detention “with great concern” and urged China to free him at once and provide an explanation of the incident.

Apparently the German Foreign Minister so concerned that he summoned the Chinese ambassador for a meeting regarding Ai Weiwei’s arrest:

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle summoned Chinese ambassador Wu Hongbo to discuss the detention of Ai Weiwei, an artist who has close links with Germany and planned to open a studio in the capital.

“We are very worried about the continuing detention of the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei,” Westerwelle, who is also vice chancellor, said today in a statement on the Foreign Ministry’s website. The ambassador was called in “to ensure that our clear and unambiguous message reaches the Chinese government.”

In a similar move, foreign editorials around the world have also urged Ai Weiwei to be released.

© cdtstaff for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, Britain, Germany, human rights diplomacy
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When a number of countries in the Middle East experienced signs of instability due to inflation and other problems, Google immediately went on the offensive, even allowing a senior company manager to directly establish the online general headquarters of the anti-government movement, fostering successive protest movements and nakedly interfering with the internal politics of other nations. These actions of Google’s are astonishing, and they lead people naturally to recall the British East India Company.

In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, the British East India Company, through the monopolization of trade, the sale of opium and open plunder, accomplished great works for England in its development of an “empire on which the sun never sets.” Marx once said concerning the British East India Company that there was a 200-year history of the British government carrying out wars in the name of this company, until this reached the natural boundaries of India.

In the colonial era, the British East India Company used the monopolization of trade in the colonies to traffic opium and assist Britain in building its hegemony. In the Internet era, Google uses its monopoly of Internet information search to traffic American values and assist American in building its hegemony.

Historian Jeremiah Jenne takes issue with this interpretation:

Few events from the 19th century have such a grip on Chinese indignation as the Opium Wars of 1840-1842. In PRC historiography, the unequal treaties forced upon the Qing government at the end of the war mark both the start of the modern era and a “century of humiliation.” Patriotic education, media, and movies reinforce this emotionally charged linkage of drugs, violence, and forced submission in the collective consciousness ….

Obviously though, the piece is a rather clumsy attempt to reinforce the image of Google as a de facto arm of the US government. Never mind that Google doesn’t operate under royal charter, the key is for the author to say the words “opium” and “Google” as many times as possible and then have his essay posted to as many sites as the People’s Daily editors can manage.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Britain, Google, middle east, Opium War, United States
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The 1950s in Britain was a decade of post-war reconstruction, growing prosperity and conscription, when some 2.5 million young men had to do their “national service” in the name of queen and country.

For most it meant endless square-bashing and a fairly mindless submission to authority, but for a lucky few it involved discipline of the mind rather than the body. For over 5,000 conscripts this meant learning Russian, and their little known story was vividly told in Secret Classrooms by Geoffrey Elliott and Harold Shukman (2002). A much smaller number, under 300, spent their national service studying Chinese, and this is the topic of this fascinating study by three men who were drafted into the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the 1950s.

The decision to teach a select group of servicemen Russian or Chinese was closely linked to the Cold War, for clearly it was necessary to know the enemy’s language if we were to have any idea of what Moscow and Peking (Beijing) were thinking and planning. Not that most of the recruits gave grand strategy a great deal of thought.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Britain, Cold War, Royal Air Force
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The UK-China Human Rights Dialogue is jointly organised by the Foreign Office and the Chinese Foreign Affairs ministry and has been running since 1997.

The meetings, which take place twice a year, are a key part of Britain’s “comprehensive approach” to human rights in China, according to the Foreign Office.

They offer a rare chance for British and Chinese academics, lawyers, judges and non-governmental organisations to meet and “increase understanding of human rights issues”.

The latest summit was scheduled to begin in Beijing on Monday.

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Akmal Shaikh, Britain
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From the New York Times, read about Britain’s condemnation of the execution, and China’s defense of its actions:

British officials had pressed the Chinese courts to consider Mr. Shaikh’s history of mental disturbance and to allow an independent evaluation of his mental state. But China’s highest court, the Supreme People’s Court, rejected a last-minute appeal from the family and British officials and allowed the execution to go ahead as scheduled.

Two of Mr. Shaikh’s cousins, Soohail and Nasir Shaikh, who travelled to China to visit him in prison and make a last-minute plea for clemency, said they were “astonished at suggestions that Akmal himself should have provided evidence of his own fragile state of mind,” according to the BBC.

China defended its handling of the case at a regularly scheduled press conference at the Foreign Ministry in Beijing, The Associated Press reported. “We express our strong dissatisfaction and opposition to the British accusation,” said Jiang Yu, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry.

In a statement released after the execution Tuesday, the court called drug crimes “serious criminal offences” that deserved severe punishment.

Xinhua has published the opinions of Chinese law professors who also defend the execution decision:

“According to China’s Criminal Law, the death sentence given to him is legitimate and it has nothing to do with human rights concerns,” said Wang Mingliang, professor of criminal law at Shanghai-based Fudan University.

“Some Western countries also retain capital punishment, and its existence does not equate to a lack of human rights,” Wang said.

Xue Jinzhan, professor of criminal law at the East China University of Political Science and Law, also in Shanghai, said the administration of the death penalty related to a country’s history, culture and other conditions.

China strictly enforced the law without discrimination in handling the case, Chinese legal experts told Xinhua.

“It’s human nature to plead for a criminal who is from the same country or the same family, but judicial independence should be fully respected and everyone should be equal before the law,” Xue said.

Roland Soong of ESWN has a collection of articles pertaining to the controversial case. Read also coverage from the BBC.

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Akmal Shaikh, Britain, drug trafficking, execution
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Akmal Shaikh is due to be executed on 29 December after being convicted of heroin smuggling. His family claim a drugs gang exploited his mental illness to trick him into smuggling 4kg of heroin into China.

Efforts to save the life of Shaikh, 53, from north London, have intensified after the Chinese supreme court rejected his plea for clemency and upheld the death sentence yesterday.

Gordon Brown has written to the Chinese authorities pleading for the sentence to be set aside and today, in his first interview since a date for the execution was set, Shaikh’s brother told the Guardian of the family’s trauma.

Akbar Shaikh, 60, said: “We are begging the Chinese authorities to show compassion … and mercy. Basically I’m here begging for his life to be spared.”

Shaikh was convicted in November 2008 of drug smuggling and sentenced to death. He was originally arrested in September 2007 in Urumqi, north-west China, as he arrived in the country.

Jerome Cohen, professor of law at New York University School of Law, has commented on the trial’s proceedings and its lack of transparency. In the South China Morning Post:

Chinese legislation exempts from criminal responsibility someone unable to recognise or control his misconduct, and provides for reduction of punishment in cases of partial mental capacity. But Shaikh’s 30-minute first instance trial ignored this major aspect of justice.

By the time of Shaikh’s second instance trial, on May 26, the London-based rights organisation, Reprieve, had sent British forensic psychiatrist, Dr Peter Schaapveld, to Urumqi in the hope of conducting an examination that would confirm Shaikh’s condition and inform the court’s review. Unfortunately, without explanation, Schaapveld was denied an interview with Shaikh. He was also not permitted to attend the judicial hearing.

Moreover, the authorities, which had initially indicated that they would allow a local doctor to evaluate Shaikh, changed their mind. The reviewing court thus had the benefit of no expert opinion on this crucial issue. It did, however, apparently allow the defendant the opportunity, against the advice of his lawyers, to deliver a rambling, often incoherent, statement that caused the judges to openly laugh at him.

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Britain, drug trafficking, execution, mental illness, Urumqi
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The confirmation from Brown’s Downing Street office means he is the second major world leader after German Chancellor Angela Merkel to do so.

The White House left open the possibility Wednesday that U.S. President George W. Bush might also skip the opening ceremonies, which some world leaders have suggested would serve as a signal of displeasure over China’s crackdown in Tibet.

However, Brown’s Downing Street office said he was not boycotting the Olympics and would attend the closing ceremony.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Britain, Gordon Brown, Olympics boycott
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