South East Asia

Ruling Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping’s next five years will likely see more hard-line policies out of Beijing on the economy, foreign relations, human rights and public dissent, analysts told RFA. Germany-based ethnic Mongolian rights activist Xi Haiming said the fact that Xi had packed the Politburo Standing Committee …

A quarter-century ago, China conducted what it called “missile tests” bracketing the island of Taiwan to deter it from a move toward independence by demonstrating that China could cut Taiwan’s ocean lifelines. In response, in a show of superiority that forced China to back down, the United States deployed two …

What is happening? The Communist Party of China (CPC) is nearly through its twentieth Party Congress, a key event held twice per decade that signals the direction of Beijing’s domestic and foreign policies. The Congress opened on 16 October with a two-hour speech by President Xi Jinping and will run …

China’s Xi Jinping secured a precedent-breaking third leadership term on Sunday and introduced a new Politburo Standing Committee stacked with loyalists, cementing his place as the country’s most powerful ruler since Mao Zedong. Shanghai Communist Party chief Li Qiang, 63, followed Xi onto the stage at the Great Hall of …

China’s ruling Communist Party reaffirmed President Xi Jinping’s continued dominance in running the nation Saturday, one day ahead of giving him a widely expected third five-year term as leader. A party congress effectively removed Premier Li Keqiang from senior leadership. Li, the nation’s No. 2 official, is a proponent of …

With Xi casting himself as a 21st-century Mao, China risks ‘arbitrary rule’. Vastness is a defining feature of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It has more than 96 million members, and the party’s official list of heroes and martyrs counts two million names of those remembered for their storied lives …

President Xi Jinping kicked off the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) National Congress, which charts its policy trajectory for the next five years and finalises its future leadership, with an address to the Party faithful for nearly 1 hour and 45 minutes. This year, the CCP’s leadership conclave comes amidst a …

The Return of Beijing’s Dubious Economic Growth Targets For most of the past four decades, economic development has been the Chinese government’s lodestar. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has implicitly justified its rule by pointing to expansive growth. Indeed, since the Chinese leadership first unveiled an annual growth target, in …

The following are major takeaways from Xi Jinping’s report to the ongoing 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC). — Our Party has dedicated itself to achieving lasting greatness for the Chinese nation and committed itself to the noble cause of peace and development for humanity. Our …

On 13 September, during the European Parliament Plenary Session, the High Representative Josep Borrell said that the EU seeks ‘to broaden our cooperation with Taiwan, [and] to modernise our dialogue with Taiwan. But all of it in the framework of the One China Policy, which recognises the People’s Republic as …