Melissa Chan
@melissakchan
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Emmy-nominated reporter. Russia Today called me “notorious,” China kicked me out. Formerly Asia, Doha, California, more 🌏.
Berlin or ✈️
Joined September 2008
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陳 A reminder there is a Melissa Chen who is a conservative commentator and writer, a Melissa Chan who is a text reporter for NBC News, a Melissa Chan-Green who anchors a morning news show in New Zealand, and me. Glad to see us all doing so well but we are different people.
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As someone who has had my press credentials denied by authoritarian China, I never thought I'd see this crap happen in the US. And this "most reporters are okay but
@Acosta
is aggressive" thing is the EXACT line Chinese propaganda printed about me. It's a tactic, people.
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News out of Asia is insane today. 🇵🇭 36 years after People Power in the Philippines, the son of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos is set to be the next president. Yet it's people power in 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka as PM Rajapaksa steps down and they've literally burned his house down. 🔥
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BY THE WAY WHITE HOUSE REPORTERS: Something foreign correspondents in places like Beijing and Moscow have learned: Hang together, or else you'll hang separately. My peers supported me when I got expelled from China. That stuff matters.
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Elon Musk has a Tesla factory in China and he wants to sell more cars there, as many China observers note. What happens if Beijing leans on him about say, a Uyghur or Hong Kong activist account? Or about Chinese disinformation bots leveraging this platform?
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The people of Hong Kong should be up for the Nobel Peace Prize. Two million protesters — orderly, recycling, giving way to ambulances as massive crowds part, giving safety hat and gear to visiting foreign correspondents — what better example of peaceful resistance in 2019?
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In my grandparents’ generation, Japan was a destroyer, not a defender. Now Kishida is in Ukraine, a strong democratic voice. As an ethnic Chinese, I then see Xi with Putin the same week and honestly, the contrast — it makes me sad.
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Notable how swiftly India’s Narendra Modi responded — he announced a national day of mourning two hours ago while many world leaders are still working on their statements of condolences.
Sharing a picture from my most recent meeting with my dear friend, Shinzo Abe in Tokyo. Always passionate about strengthening India-Japan ties, he had just taken over as the Chairman of the Japan-India Association.
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Beijing shot its own people 30 years ago. The world went ahead and did business with China. A million people are in concentration camps. Global trade continues apace. And now in Hong Kong — Beijing knows exactly what the world will do — so what incentive does it have to stop?
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Right now, they're singling out
@Acosta
. But tomorrow it'll be Journalist X. And later Journalist Y and Z. It can happen very quickly. And of course, there's always something wrong with the reporter. They'll go back ten years to find something you misreported if they have to.
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If you care about Ukraine 🇺🇦 and its fight for democracy, then it's worth learning about the election in the Philippines 🇵🇭 and what's at stake or what just happened in Sri Lanka 🇱🇰. In the latter protesters have been out in the streets for weeks.
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In both the Philippines 🇵🇭 and Sri Lanka 🇱🇰, you're talking about decades-long political dynasties, the battle for democracy against authoritarianism, the limits and power of the people — all set within the dumpster fire of misinformation on social media.
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🇹🇼 My Asia Twitter followers know this, but for those in Europe, Taiwan:
💲 21st largest economy in the world
🗳 elections and democracy
🛂 own passport
💪🏼 own military
✈️ if you fly from PEK, even Beijing acknowledges passengers must pass the international terminal
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I compared Pakistan's former prime minister, Imran Khan, to populist strongman Jair Bolsonaro. To his credit, he took it okay. In the full interview I also told him he was acting a bit like Sherlock Holmes so there was a lot going on! 📺 Watch!
@dwnews
:
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And you know what? This too will just be today's news, a blip. Because we're in the era of the exhausted majority. This too, I saw in China. Ordinary, decent people with busy lives who have no energy to be exhausted or outraged by politics.
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Hong Kong as we understood it has died. If you know anyone from Hong Kong, or whose family came from Hong Kong, understand today is a day like no other, and that a part of our hearts have died. If you're in a position to, send them your love, support, and courage.
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While you don't feel daily oppression in an authoritarian country, part of my job was to see what happened when the state DID cross paths with ordinary people. And when it does, law and justice are not there for you, and trust me, it's BAD.
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And that, folks, is how a billion+ people in China live in an authoritarian state. Guess what? You don't feel daily oppression in an authoritarian country. You have Starbucks and the usual normal people stuff. But —
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Hi. American foreign correspondent here. Just, er, a reminder to my domestic media peers that we don't call them "protesters" when it goes down like this when we report on other countries. And today honestly, is kind of a test of your judgment about that.
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The world moves on without America.
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They'll start casting suspicion about not just your work, but your very character. All they need is a whiff of anything unsavory. And it'll be a talking point different people in the government will say, in public and private.
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I’m just so tired of the narrative that the Communist Party lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. I mean once you’ve run the country into the ground with the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution and 30+ million people died, there’s kinda nowhere else to go but up.
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Between LeBron and Kerr you’ve got some pretty well-known social justice sports guys whose social justice begins in America but ends at Communist China’s doorstep. Or put another way — willing to give Americans a hard time but not any Chinese.
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Not a Russia expert. But I’m a pretty good threat-to-democracy expert. ➡️ A peace settlement only suspends a war, not stops one, with no promise 🇷🇺 won’t hit 🇺🇦 in five, ten years. That’s bad for democracy; it paves the way for siege mentality candidates. We know where that goes.
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Pakistan Twitter! Ya’ll a lively bunch! But no, sorry — I never switch on replies for any posts because I get rape and death threats. Don’t need that in my life. There are no free speech issues! You have the freedom to tweet; I have the freedom to read or not. Tough cookies! 🍪😆
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🇯🇵🇹🇼🍍 Abe making one of his statements last year — after China's politically-motivated import ban of Taiwanese pineapples, the ex-PM posted this photo with a box of Taiwanese pineapples in support. It's the kind of thing people in Taiwan will remember him for.
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On Taiwan's gold: Posting because it's important for everyone to see when a flag but not 🇹🇼 is raised, and a song but not the anthem is played. This indignity is reserved for Russia, who doped, and Taiwan, whose crime is being a self-governing democracy.
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Wait I thought China was donating masks and medical supplies because they care about people. ... 🙃
China threatens to halt medical supplies after Netherlands changes Taiwan rep office name
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Confused about violence on both sides in Hong Kong? Everything you need to know is that police are besieging universities, attacking students and professors. Don’t know what other sledgehammer of a metaphor you need when it comes to ideas/freedom v. autocracy. Let there be light.
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The woman standing and holding a baby in the second photo is Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee, and she is one of those killed. On her Insta, she shares the same photo with the caption, “I love my job.”
U.S. military service members comfort infants at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan.
#HKIA
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🚨 To be very clear: Limiting replies had nothing to do with my interview with Imran Khan. This is how I always use Twitter, and I was simply explaining why to people confused they couldn't comment. Anyone saying otherwise is wrong.
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@MirMAKOfficial
@ImranKhanPTI
Hi. I am the journalist. Limiting replies had nothing to do with my interview with Imran Khan. This is how I always use Twitter, and I was simply explaining that to people confused why they couldn't comment.
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French and German companies, leaving Russia at the speed of Russian tanks stalled in a Ukrainian mud field.
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This is an amazing time lapse of the hundreds of thousands of protesters in Hong Kong.
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As mainland Chinese students and Hong Kong students protest and face off on university campuses around the world, it’s important to remember that mainland students are exercising a right they don’t actually possess back home. And most (none?) of them seem to recognize that irony.
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Wanna be a foreign correspondent? Sure, as long as you have no college loans and can freelance for $200/article for years. It’s not impossible to make it on your own but the secret is a lot of us come from at least an upper-middle class background and don’t like to talk about it.
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Talk about timing! Pakistan Foreign Minister
@BBhuttoZardari
is expected to tape with
@TheDailyShow
and guest host
@kalpenn
in hours. That's according to Zardari's Twitter account. Same day: Police try to arrest opposition party leader, Imran Khan with tear gas, water cannons.
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There is something extra perverse when authoritarians round up the sons and daughters of their target as well. Jimmy Lai has shown he's willing to give up his wealth, his freedom, for his convictions. So they go after the only thing that might break him: his children.
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Living in Europe, I get an earful about how America is involved too deeply in European affairs. Then the German chancellor says he won't make the tank delivery decision without the US. So maybe next time, people should stop giving me an earful. Demand more from your own leaders.
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@mugheesali81
Hi. I am the journalist. Limiting replies had nothing to do with my interview with Imran Khan. This is how I always use Twitter, and I was simply explaining why to people confused they couldn't comment. Any news outlets saying otherwise are wrong.
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So far coronavirus is less lethal than the flu, which kills 10-25,000 Americans a year. Yet airlines suspend routes, countries bar people traveling from China. What they are responding to in part is the lack of trust, transparency, and accountability in China's system.
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It is late Saturday night at Berlin central train station and there are still tons of volunteers, food, water, tea, clothes bins, even a COVID testing desk for those arriving from Ukraine.
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If Elon Musk thinks because he's the world's richest man that he can tell China to piss off if Beijing ever starts leaning on him about Twitter, he'll find out how efficiently the Chinese state can gobble up that Tesla Shanghai factory, taking with it as much IP as it can.
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People quitting Russia Today now or companies pulling out of Russian partnerships because they’re shocked — shocked! — that Putin is bad are really testing the “better late than never” mantra. These aren’t acts of protests these are opportunists hoping we’ll forget they enabled.
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When the Berlin Wall fell, the people of Japan raised money and gifted the city thousands of cherry blossom trees. Every spring you can find rows of trees in bloom where walls once stood. This is my Sunday message to the world. You’re welcome.
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Pelosi: “They didn’t say anything when the men came.” A reference to the fact that in April, US senators Lindsey Graham, Bob Menendez, Richard Burr, Ben Sasse, Rob Portman, and Ronny Jackson visited Taiwan.
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This is an absolutely, cinematically insane move by Belarus even by the usual standards of authoritarian thuggery. To divert a plane with a bomb scare in order to detain a journalist is bonkers. Breaking news, so there are a lot of unknowns.
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This one time, as I was leaving the doctor’s office in Germany and they knew I was American the front desk quipped, “We’ll send you the bill.” I was like sure, okay — and then the staff burst out laughing. German joke! There’s no bill, not like in America. Ha ha! HA! 🙄😆
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Just in the last few days: Russia's oldest human rights org was forced to close. In Myanmar, the military burned to death 35 citizens, including two Save the Children aid workers. In Hong Kong, yet another entire newsroom has shuttered. This is a global authoritarian emergency.
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🇹🇼 More:
+886 its own country code
💰 its own currency
👩🏻⚕️ a universal healthcare system
🏳️🌈 the first place in Asia that legalized same sex marriage
⚖️ a court system
📜 independent government based on rule of law and checks and balances
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There are 7.7 billion people on this planet and ~1 billion of them in China do not know the facts about Tiananmen and do not recognize this photo, which the rest of the world does. As we commemorate 30 years since the Tiananmen killings, ponder the power of propaganda.
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Some Asian Americans may be surprised by this clip of a Malaysian comedian cracking jokes at China’s expense. A reminder of the ambivalence Southeast Asia feels about Beijing:
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I have bad news for the good-hearted people out there who don’t want Ukrainians to die, who don’t want the rest of Europe to get dragged into a bigger military conflict, and who don’t want sanctions because they hurt Russians. There is no world in which you can have all three.
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This roundup by Hong Kong authorities of pro-democracy activists is huge — it's a lot of people — from the older generation — who've been at it well before the 2014 Umbrella Movement. Governments are taking advantage of this window while the world is distracted by COVID.
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⬆️ By almost every measure, Taiwan is a country save diplomatic recognition. And we all know why it can't obtain diplomatic recognition in 2022. Beijing has everyone committing a global farce due to its own ahistorical nationalism.
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🇷🇺🇨🇳 Just in case you weren't sure which side China is on when it comes to the invasion of Ukraine. ➡️ BEIJING, Aug 17 (Reuters) - Chinese troops will travel to Russia to take part in a joint exercise with Russia.
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I've seen that look before — on the MAGA boy's face as he taunts a participant from the Indigenous Peoples March. Fueled by ideology and a desire to dehumanize, it frightens me and reminds me of other cruel youth groups from history.
(anyone know original source of video?)
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There are so many Chinese with the 🇨🇳 emoji on Twitter but Twitter is blocked in China. I really wonder about the mind pretzel required to enjoy the benefits of a democracy while advocating for techno-authoritarianism.
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Put another way, China is not the SEC. Elon Musk can't give Beijing the middle finger as easily as he does a US federal agency.
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Mearsheimer’s argument is basically the “she wore a short skirt” justification.
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It's hard to explain to those who've never lived in Hong Kong just what a fixture Cardinal Zen is in the city. Even for those who are not Catholics, he symbolized for decades moral fortitude, goodness, and so much of what was great about Hong Kong. Now he's arrested.
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First they came for the Tibetans, and I did not speak out because I was not Tibetan. Then they came for the Uighurs, and I did not speak out because I was not Uighur. Then they came for Han Chinese with coronavirus—and there was no one left to speak for us.
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I cannot bear being on Twitter with these updates as the world just watches Putin slowly kill Navalny, and we are all helpless.
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Western travelers huffing and annoyed by the inconvenience of canceled flights in Hong Kong because protesters want democracy says everything about the resolve of democracies against the rise of authoritarian China. It's inevitable everybody just roll over. Helluva attitude.
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Just a reminder that TikTok parent company ByteDance literally pulled information and spied on reporters from The Financial Times and BuzzFeed, so anyone who paints TikTok as this blameless pawn that got caught up in US-China great power competition is gaslighting you.
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Actually kind of on brand for an institution that has spent years blaming the victims.
Profoundly saddened by the immense suffering of the Ukrainian people as a result of the aggression they have suffered, I address an equally confident appeal to the President of
#Ukraine
to be open to serious proposals for peace.
@ZelenskyyUa
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Twitter labeling NPR "state-affiliated media" is terrible false equivalence to propaganda outlets like China's Xinhua or Russia Today. NPR gets ~1-2% funding f/ the federal government and has editorial independence. Xinhua denies a war in Ukraine and detention camps in Xinjiang.
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Good morning from Europe, where China Radio International (Chinese state media) — in Poland — in Polish — has a frontpage with no refugees, no war, but a headline reading: "If America really cares about Ukrainians, it should provide peace, not weapons."
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Few countries are as effective with linkage diplomacy as China is.
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WARSAW, April 4 (Reuters) - Germany is the main roadblock to imposing tougher sanctions on Russia, Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said.
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The inability for PRC nationalists, at least many on Twitter, to understand that I can recognize I'm ethnic Han Chinese AND that my parents are Hong Konger and Taiwanese AND that I'm American, reveals a crude grasp of identity, citizenship, and just being in the 21st century.
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Putin and Xi meet and declare a "no limits" friendship. Putin follows by invading Ukraine. Putin and Xi meet in September. Days later, Putin mobilizes reserves and threatens the use of tactical nuclear weapons. I have no idea why folks think China is some mitigating influence.
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Good morning America. I know all the talk is about impeachment, but given that chatter has included China, pay attention to what is happening to Hong Kong right now in real time. Middle schoolers and ordinary citizens are fighting the Communist Party on the front lines.
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This is very brave, considering what is happening in Hong Kong. Just put yourself in their shoes for a second. I do not doubt they feel scared. True courage is not the absence of fear, but doing what you believe is right despite the presence of it.
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On the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, I honor the resilience of four generations of Chans who have had to migrate, pick up our lives, plan exit strategies to escape authoritarianism. From a tiny village in Guangdong we’ve dispersed across the planet.
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We are going to see a lot of Chinese propaganda the next few weeks implying (politely) that Russia is a thug state but that China is different. A top concern is to make sure people in countries like Germany and the US don’t get any new ideas when it comes to China policy.
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This video from four years ago has stayed with me, of Rep. John Lewis as he started crying as he accepted The National Book Award, when he had been denied entry to libraries as a child. “This is too much,” he said, overwhelmed.
WATCH: Accepting National Book Award, Rep. John Lewis emotionally recounts being denied a library card as a black child who loved to read.
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I'm in a Taiwanese-run room in Clubhouse where 4,000 Mandarin speakers — including Uyghurs and Han Chinese IN CHINA, and outside are talking about... everything. From surveillance, to friends who've left re-educations camps, to normal stuff.
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An immigrant from Taiwan who came to the US to get his PhD is the inventor of the N95 mask and he has come out of retirement to help US companies produce more. Saw this on Twitter earlier and apologize for not crediting a HT; can't recall whose post I saw.
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I am disappointed at some of the pieces written about
@Acosta
. From Poynter to the BBC, they have focused more on the exchange and how he ought to have conducted himself rather than the revocation of his credentials. My thoughts here:
I was an out-of-line reporter in China,
@melissakchan
writes. Like Jim Acosta, I paid a price for it.
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My piece: Is it time to consider a word other than "authoritarian" to describe China? "Fascism: a surveillance state with a strongman invoking racism, nationalism and traditional family values at home, while building up a military for expansion abroad."
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What
@ACLU
is up against: it has 300 lawyers v. 11,000 at Jeff Sessions’ Justice Department.
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One of my frustrations the past year is how many people have been shocked that enough Russians buy Putin's propaganda and believe in the war. We want so badly to imagine every citizen in an autocracy is a dissident struggling to break free. But autocracy requires complicity.
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🇹🇼 I found the Ministry of Winnie Affairs! Although I’d like to call it the 外交Pooh! 😆 Brought to you by the Taiwanese comedy group EyeCTV — take a look 👀 at the seal at the bottom, and what they replaced with the usual stars… 😮🫣
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With the Tokyo Games starting soon, here's the "Chinese Taipei" Olympic team. Taiwan, with 24 million people, cannot compete under its own flag 🇹🇼. Palestine, by the way, can and does. Any gold winners would not hear the national anthem, but a "flag" anthem. Why? Because Beijing.
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IT BEGINS.
Two protesters wear masks depicting Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Photo: HKFP.
#hongkong
#hongkongprotests
#antiELAB
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As a journalist, I’m supposed to be dispassionate. But I think it’s important and helpful to share personal histories, especially when looking at an event in a multi-generational context going back to WWII to where things stand today.
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Can’t even give Taiwan’s silver medalist this 🇹🇼 in a tweet:
24 July -
#Judo
/ Men's -60kg
🥇TAKATO Naohisa🇯🇵
🥈YANG Yung Wei
🥉Yeldos Smetov🇰🇿
🥉Luka Mkheidze🇫🇷
Congratulations
#Tokyo2020
#UnitedByEmotion
|
#StrongerTogether
|
@Judo
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Given how carefully choreographed this stuff is in China, this is very unusual and high drama as far as Chinese politics is concerned. It is too early to speculate what the hell just happened. Best case scenario is Hu was not feeling well.
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Anyone who tells me to go back “home” to China on Twitter — 1) Home was Hong Kong, well-known for freedom fighters, 2) I won’t block you, because I don’t block anyone because that’s how much I value free expression, 3) I get to scold you for being a racist ass. 🙃
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Everybody is sharing that one essay from one Chinese dude, clinging on to it with hope it is some harbinger of shifting Chinese policy. There is no shift in Chinese policy until they stop copy/pasting Russian propaganda and feeding it into their domestic media pipeline.
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I am just in shock. Shinzo Abe was the longest-serving PM in Japan’s history. Massive legacy, one of the most critical political figures in Asia and the world for a decade. He should not have gone like this.
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Morey “wasn’t educated on the situation.” Wow LeBron, time to educate yourself on the situation in Hong Kong.
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German reporters in America, explaining to hostile cops that there’s freedom of the press in the US and they have a right to report. The cops threaten them with arrest. Bullies on a power high.
A DW reporter and his camera operator have been shot at with projectiles by Minneapolis police and threatened with arrest while covering the protests sparked by the death of George Floyd.
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“You are so biased against China,” someone said to me the other day. Okay. The subjugation of Tibetans, the destruction of Uyghur life, messing with my hometown (Hong Kong) — if that is “bias,” I’m glad to live my life as a human who cares about humans and not as a sociopath?
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Welcome
@holmeschan_
to the program! We talked about press freedom in Hong Kong and the latest from this weekend. "Police have even stepped up their law enforcement tactics," he says. "For example, targeting rallies before they even begin." CC:
@dwnews
@HongKongFP
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Did Belarus just commit international kidnapping + air piracy + state terrorism? Does this mean all commercial flights will avoid Belarusian airspace? How about the airspace of other authoritarian regimes? An international norm even autocracies have abided by has been broken.
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