Linda Lew

Despite arrests and censorship campaigns, China’s #MeToo movement has succeeded in shedding light on problems of sexual harassment in the country, particularly in universities.  In once such recent case, a former vice-president of a top Chinese university was fired over allegations of sexual harassment after a six-month-long investigation.  Cai Xiang also faces charges of corruption and has been stripped of his Communist Party membership.  China’s education disciplinary commission and the party’s disciplinary watchdog for Beijing municipality found that Cai Xiang had maintained “inappropriate sexual relationships with several women, accepted bribes and misused public funds.” In July 2018, a

Health authorities in central China say a mysterious form of pneumonia that has infected dozens of people is not Severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) or Mers (Middle East respiratory syndrome). As of Sunday, officials in the city of Wuhan were still in the process of identifying the virus. A total of 59 people had been hospitalized with the as-yet unidentified form of pneumonia. In Hong Kong, which is connected with the mainland Chinese city via high-speed rail, there were a total of 17 suspected cases of the illness found in people who had returned from Wuhan. In Singapore, the Ministry of Health earlier said it had been informed of a suspected case, involving a three-year-old girl from

A founding pastor of China’s Early Rain Covenant Church has been sentenced to nine years in jail by a Chinese court for inciting subversion of state power and other crimes. Wang Yi was detained in December 2018 along with other senior figures in the prominent underground Christian church during overnight raids across various districts of Chengdu, the southwestern city where the church was founded. On Monday, the Chengdu Intermediate People’s Court released its judgment, which said the pastor was also convicted of illegal business operations. In addition to the jail term, Wang would be stripped of his political rights for three years. Personal assets valuing $7,000 would also be confiscated.

China’s extrajudicial detention of sex workers or their customers, known as “custody and education (C&E),” is set to be abolished in what experts called a long-overdue move. The detention system has been used to crack down on prostitution, which is illegal on the mainland, since the 1980s. Sex workers and their clients could be detained for up to two years without trial in centers overseen by the police. More than 300,000 people were detained using C&E between 1987 and 2000, according to a report by Asia Catalyst, an advocacy group focused on health issues. Although the government does not publish regular numbers of detainees, mainland Chinese media have reported a steady decrease in detenti

China has added the largest ever batch of new products to its list of subsidized drugs, in a move that will cut the costs of many drugs in half.  Seventy drugs were added to the national reimbursement list at the end of November, many of them cancer and anti-infection treatments, after extensive negotiations with pharmaceutical companies. “The number of new drugs and the total amount of medications negotiated have reached a new record. Many imported drugs will have the lowest price in the world,” the National Healthcare Security Administration said. High drug prices, especially for cancer drugs, have long been a problem in China. The issue was highlighted by the hit film Dying to Survive, re

Publishers from Australia and New Zealand are looking for printers outside China after falling foul of censorship laws that require maps to be vetted. A number of businesses have been hit by delays or cancellations – even if the books in question are not intended for local distribution or do not contain China-related content. Awa Press, a New Zealand publisher, suffered a one-month production delay in October last year when printing the fourth edition of a travel book called Antarctica Cruising Guide because the book contained a map of Antarctica and the Chinese printers needed the extra time to have the map vetted. “We would have to think about whether we will continue printing in China or

The Canadian consulate in Hong Kong has suspended all work travel for local staff, days after China’s detention of a British consulate employee became a rallying call for critics of mainland China’s legal system. The employee, Simon Cheng, 28, works as a trade and investment officer for the British consulate in Hong Kong. He was detained on August 8 at the city’s border with mainland China while returning from neighboring Shenzhen. The case came amid unrest in Hong Kong stemming from popular opposition to a government plan to allow extraditions to mainland China from the former British colony, which was promised considerable autonomy and a separate legal system when it returned to Chinese ru

Online clothing vendors in China have pledged better protection for child models after footage emerged of a mother kicking her three-year-old model daughter at a photo shoot. In a video circulating online, the little girl, identified by her nickname Niu Niu, is seen getting kicked on the rear by her mother, who loudly orders her to pick up a bag on the floor. Corporal punishment is commonplace in many parts of China, but the practice of beating discipline into children is facing increasing criticism from younger parents. And the video of Niu Niu triggered a wave of condemnation on China’s Twitter-like Weibo. Internet users have questioned if the country’s booming child modeling industry has

A 12-year-old girl was caught at a customs checkpoint in southern China smuggling a backpack full of blood samples from pregnant women into Hong Kong, most likely for gender testing, officials said. Prenatal sex testing is banned in China but legal in Hong Kong, and a cross-border business has flourished since China began enforcing a “one-child” policy in the late 1970s and has persisted since the policy’s recent reversal. The girl was caught on February 23 after her heavy-looking bag raised suspicion at the border crossing between the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen and Hong Kong, a semi-autonomous Chinese city which operates under a different legal framework. “This little kid’s bag was v

A homeless man in Shanghai has become a celebrity overnight thanks to his eloquent commentary on the classics of Chinese literature. But since then he’s been inundated by media attention that he doesn’t want, saying that he would rather be left alone. He said that if people really care about him, they should read more books. Videos of the 52-year-old Shen Wei have been gaining momentum on Chinese social media since Wednesday, earning at least 14 million views on microblogging site Weibo. Since I was young, everything I’ve done has always been about reading Shen Wei, homeless man In one of these videos, the scavenger was filmed discussing the merits of the 16th-century work Liao Fan’s Four Le