Tag: World

This article was originally published by Radio Free Asia and is reprinted with permission.

As Japan releases the second batch of treated radioactive water from Fukushima, Chinese state media and social media users have lashed out at the Japanese press for inflating Chinese tourist numbers during the Golden Week holidays, a move seen as Beijing’s way to exert political pressure on Japan. 

Japanese media outlets, including The Japan Times, reported on Oct. 5 that Japanese airlines’ flights from China to Japan are almost fully booked during an eight-day holiday that began Friday, highlighting that Japan tops the list of popular overseas destinations for Chinese travelers during the holiday period. On the same day, Tokyo began releasing a second batch of treated radioactive water from the wrecked Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

In response, the nationalistic Global Times and Chinese self-media – bloggers and citizen journalists – not only deplored Chinese tourists visiting Japan, but they also blasted the Japanese media for deliberately hyping up the travel trend and, in their view, tarnishing the image of Chinese people.

“They also forcefully connected this with the attitude of the Chinese people toward Japan’s dumping of nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the sea, deliberately creating misleading arguments such as that Chinese people are ‘forgetful or do not care about Japan’s dumping,’” reads a Global Times commentary on Wednesday.

The commentary also named and shamed Japan’s Fuji TV and the Mainichi Shimbun in a bid to expose the propaganda war [with inflation of Japan-bound Chinese tourists figures], as well as the Japanese government’s irresponsibility. Chinese tourist arrivals reached 364,100 in August this year, or more than a third of the 1 million arrivals recorded before the COVID-19 pandemic in August 2019, according to the latest available official data from Japan.  

Blogger Xuanji Shijie, or mystic horizon, lamented: “Japan will immediately start its second round of nuclear sewage discharge on October 5. Don’t these tourists know our country’s attitude towards Japan’s discharge of radioactive water? Can you have some backbone?”

To be sure, the U.N.’s atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency has said that the planned discharge of wastewater meets relevant international safety standards and would have a “negligible” radiological impact on people and the environment.

Experts warned that leveraging on issues ranging from nuclear wastewater to criticism of Japanese tourism, is one of Beijing’s tactics to politically oppress Japan. However, this means that China could have cornered itself should it want to change its foreign policy towards Japan.

China’s independent political scholar Chen Daoyin pointed out that the Chinese people’s grievances against Japan have been used to rationalize China’s economic pressures exerted on the country. Since Japan started releasing the treated Fukushima water into the Pacific Ocean in August, Beijing has banned imports of Japanese seafood. 

“The nuclear wastewater incident should not be viewed in isolation, but is part of a system of economic coercion by China, using it to force Japan to bow to Beijing’s demands, mainly in its Indo-Pacific strategy,” Chen said. “Japan can play a leading role and moderate its stance towards China, which will continue to exert pressure as long as there are opportunities.”

Separately, Sung Kuo-chen, a researcher at the Institute of International Relations at Taiwan’s National Chengchi University, said Chinese people’s anti-Japanese sentiments were fanned by the official Chinese position. Such a negative atmosphere would increase the difficulty to turn relations around when Beijing should have a change of heart.

“The Chinese government is facing two very contradictory situations. If it wants to ease relations with Japan, will the public agree? The Chinese Communist Party also refuses to restrain itself on the military front, even though it claims to want to improve Sino-Japanese relations diplomatically. It cannot have its cake and eat it too; it is a self-contradictory foreign policy.”

With the United States, South Korea and Japan allying strongly, Sung said the conflicting Sino-Japanese relationship will be hard to turn around.

This article was originally published by Radio Free Asia and is reprinted with permission.

A 60-year old Vietnamese activist was sentenced to six years in prison for making a short drunken tirade video that cursed the Communist Party and revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh, the country’s first leader, his lawyer told Radio Free Asia.

The Hanoi People’s Court handed down the punishment Friday to Nguyen Minh Son, saying that the video he made on Dec. 31, 2021, was “anti-state propaganda.”

In the live-streamed video, Son stood outside the same court, reacting the trial of activist and citizen journalist Le Trong Hung, who that day had gotten five years for violating Article 117, a vaguely-written law that is frequently used by authorities to stifle peaceful critics of the country’s one-party communist government. 

Almost 10 months later, Son found himself under arrest under the same charge. 

His lawyer, Ngo Anh Tuan, said that Son was drunk at the time and admitted that he had acknowledged making mistakes.

“Mr. Son admitted all his acts, saying that he had made mistakes,” Tuan told RFA Vietnamese. “He was accused of making a video clip, only one clip, which he live-streamed and disseminated online.”

Tuan said the jail term was too harsh considering that his client had only made one video. 

He said that he had tried to help lower the penalty for his client by requesting the judging panel to look at his case from another angle, but his request was rejected.

“I presented my analysis and judgment, recommending that his act be handled in a more appropriate way, and it could be an administrative penalty,” Tuan said. 

Pleading for mercy

Son had been an active participant in many demonstrations in Hanoi between 2011 and 2018 over issues ranging from China’s claims to territories in the South China Sea, to the Hanoi city government cutting down ancient trees located downtown. He also frequently expressed his views on Vietnam’s social issues using his Facebook account.

According to Son’s friend, his arrest on Sept. 28, 2022, was surprising because so much time had passed since he had been involved in any protests.

When Son was allowed to say a few words at the end of the trial, he apologized, expressing his regret and requesting for a penalty mitigation, Tuan said, adding that he was not sure whether Son would make an appeal or not.

Son’s wife Nguyen Thi Phuoc told RFA that she was prevented from attending the trial. Security guards would not allow her to enter the courtroom until nearly noon after the trial had ended, she said. She only saw her husband the moment the police were escorting him to leave the courtroom.

No freedom of speech

Vietnam is a one-party Communist state that clamps down harshly on those who criticize the government.

In another similar case, police on Friday in the southern province of Binh Duong detained Tran Dac Than on charges of using his social media accounts to create posts and share articles that “abused democratic freedoms to violate the state’s interests or the legitimate rights and interests of organizations and individuals,” in violation of Article 331 of Vietnam’s penal code.

Rights groups have said that Article 331, like Article 117, is often employed by the government  to silence dissenting voices and repress the people. 

According to state media reports that cited the police, the government had summoned Than to warn him about similar acts in 2013.

Vietnam has arrested at least 18 people and convicted nine for violating Article 331 since January this year, according to RFA’s statistics.