Vague laws, tensions with Washington over technology, geopolitics, and a slowing economy are key impediments for U.S. firms in China, according to an annual poll conducted by the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Shanghai. “2023 was supposed to be the year investor confidence and optimism bounced back after years of Covid disruptions and restrictions. According to our 2023 survey of U.S. businesses in China, however, the rebound has not materialized and business sentiment has continued to deteriorate,” said a report released by AmCham on Tuesday. AmCham added that these concerns—such as China’s worsening business environment and doubts about the country’s economic recovery—dampen optimism and shape how companies operate in China....Read more https://www.theepochtimes.com/china/us-firms-china-outlook-worst-in-decades-report-5494417
Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu has been missing for over two weeks. Experts told The Epoch Times that whatever may be the reason, the increasing trend of unexplained disappearances of top officials puts the leadership under heightened scrutiny and raises serious doubts about its credibility, and increases security threats for neighboring countries. “The disappearance of China’s defense minister, the latest in a string of upheavals in the country’s top ranks, is stoking uncertainty about President Xi Jinping’s rule as an internal security clampdown trumps international engagement,” Nishakant Ojha, a New Delhi-based defense analyst who has formerly served in various Indian foreign missions, told The Epoch Times in an email....
Nongovernmental groups called on the United Nations to urge the South Korean government to end its complicity in forced organ harvesting in China. “South Korea, known as a major consumer of transplant tourism to China, has not taken sufficient steps to monitor and discourage this practice, despite being aware of the circumstances surrounding forced organ harvesting—a grievous and arbitrary deprivation of human lives,” two nonprofits said in a statement on Sept. 13. The two groups—the Korea Association for Ethical Organ Transplants (KAEOT) and Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH)—raised concerns over the Korean government’s involvement in the Chinese regime’s organ transplant abuse in a report submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Committee (UNHRC). A session of the global body is scheduled to take place in Geneva next month....
China’s stringent censorship of speech, including online, targets not just ordinary citizens, but also lawyers, who find it difficult to protect themselves—even with the advantage of their legal knowledge. A young Chinese lawyer was punished and has been persecuted for the past three years for posting online what she saw in Wuhan, the capital city of China’s central Hubei Province, where the COVID pandemic broke out three years ago. Liu Yingying, a lawyer in her thirties from China’s central Henan Province, wrote a short article on Mar. 26, 2020, about what she saw in Wuhan after the pandemic broke out....