Hong Kong will not welcome any visitors who are looking to “damage the solemnity of the Olympics,” the government said in a report, raising fresh concerns it was clamping down on free speech.
“As a cohost city of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Hong Kong has the obligation to ensure that the relevant Olympic activities will proceed in a safe, peaceful and smooth manner,” the department said in a report to legislators released on Tuesday.
“The government does not welcome it if any person seeks to damage the solemnity of the Olympics or disrupt the smooth proceeding of the relevant Olympic activities in Hong Kong,” the report said.
Hong Kong will host the equestrian events.
“Immigration control and public order must be strengthened especially when major events are taking place in the region,” the report said.
At least 13 people — including known members of activist groups — were prevented from entering Hong Kong ahead of the torch relay’s journey through the territory last Friday. However, US actress and activist Mia Farrow was allowed in despite her vehement criticism of China’s backing of the Sudan government, accused of prolonged rights abuses.
Legislator Cheung Man-kwong (張文光), a pro-democracy activist, said failure to explain the entry bans had damaged Hong Kong’s reputation.
“The government’s silence is a shield to hide the fact that such measures have damaged the ‘one country, two systems’ [arrangement],” he said, according to a report in the South China Morning Post yesterday.
ANTHROPOLOGISTS
Meanwhile, a major academic conference in Kunming in July has been postponed amid a slew of official measures to avoid possible disruptions ahead of the Olympics.
Conference organizers yesterday refused to give a precise reason for the rescheduling of the world congress of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, scheduled for mid-July.
They said they hoped it could be held in late November or early December instead.
”We have postponed the July conference, but I am not at liberty to tell you the reason why,” said Zhang Jijiao, one of the event’s organizers and a sociology professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing.
Zhang said 6,354 people had registered to attend the congress.
Union secretary-general Peter Nas said a postponement would be a major disruption and that he was trying to persuade organizers to keep the original dates.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
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