Socialism

The complex’s residents went on a rent strike during the pandemic, withholding their rent until their landlord, Jason Korn, fixed the significant issues aggravating residents. They knew the road ahead was difficult. They were going against Korn, who had been named New York City’s worst landlord in 2019 and 2020 by the public advocate’s office. Korn’s 55 apartment buildings were cited by the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development with thousands of building code violations each year, accumulating fines in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

At the end of 2024, after more than four years of the rent strike, residents defeated eviction efforts by their new landlords, Gillman Management, who took over the building in 2022. Members of the tenant association and their legal representation used a defense of “rent-impairing violations” to ask for rent deferment for as long as the building continues to have severe breaches of the building conservation code.

A judge on Dec. 13 sided with the renters, finding that repairs in the building were necessary and waiving rental arrears from January 2020 to May 2022, which added up to $250,000. The period coincided with Korn’s tenure as the owner of the building.

[Here is the archived link to the original report by the South China Morning Post (the SCMP is based in Hong Kong and owned by Chinese technology company Alibaba)]

China’s ideology tsar Cai Qi has asked the nation’s propaganda officials to step up promotion of China’s economic achievements – just weeks after a number of analysts criticised the country’s performance.

“[Officials] should adhere to the correct orientation of public opinion, strengthen economic promotion and management of expectations, improve the ability to respond to public opinion, and create a united and progressive mainstream public opinion,” Cai Qi told a conference attended by the country’s propaganda chiefs on Friday and Saturday.

Cai, who ranks fifth in the ruling Communist Party hierarchy, is a member of the powerful Politburo Standing Committee and director of the party’s general office, making him President Xi Jinping’s chief of staff.

Cai is responsible for China’s ideology, culture and internet regulation.

According to a report by state news agency Xinhua on Saturday night, Cai also reminded officials of their general mission to “consolidate and strengthen mainstream ideological opinion, promote socialist core values, deepen reform of the cultural system and mechanisms, and build a more effective international communication system”.

Xinhua added that Li Shulei, head of the party’s central propaganda department, had given work orders to his subordinates based on Cai’s instructions.

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/17878638

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/17878510

Archived link

As the world watches China’s increasingly aggressive moves at sea, its quiet expansion across land borders in the Himalayas serves as a reminder that its ambitions extend far beyond the South China Sea or Taiwan. China is methodically expanding its reach, targeting small, vulnerable neighbors like Nepal and Bhutan.

Across from Nepal’s Humla District, a small, seemingly insignificant border marker near the village of Hilsa has become a powerful symbol of the region’s shifting geopolitical tides. This remote area, nestled high in the Himalayas, is now a quiet battleground where China is advancing its territorial claims in incremental, persistent ways. Fortifications have sprung up, guarded by high-tech surveillance and armed patrols, forming a stark divide between the barren Nepali side and newly robust Chinese infrastructure just across the border.

Glass-walled buildings, flood-lit roads, and modern facilities contrast sharply with Nepal’s underdeveloped and rugged terrain, signaling China’s increasing dominance in this remote region.

A 2021 fact-finding mission led by Nepali officials revealed the extent of China’s incursion, yet the report was buried—kept from public view and even high-ranking Nepali politicians.

The stark infrastructure imbalance underscores not only the widening gap between the two nations but also China’s deeper motives: to cement its hold on disputed territories and slowly push its influence beyond its borders.

For decades, Nepal provided a haven for Tibetans fleeing Chinese repression. Today, however, the stream of refugees has nearly dried up, with China’s expansion in Tibet and Xinjiang cutting off traditional escape routes and leaving Tibetans more isolated and controlled than ever. The network of surveillance and barriers erected across Tibet serves as a wall, both literally and figuratively, against those seeking refuge in Nepal. This shift is part of a broader trend under Xi Jinping, where hard-line policies in border areas seek to secure and extend China’s reach and control.

While Nepal contends with creeping encroachment, the stakes are even higher for Bhutan. In recent years, China has constructed 22 villages within Bhutan’s traditional borders, claiming about 2% of the small country’s territory. These settlements come complete with roads, military posts, and administrative centers, essentially creating new facts on the ground that are difficult to reverse.

For Bhutan, this encroachment has presented a grim dilemma: either concede these strategic lands or face the risk of escalating tensions.

**Bhutan’s situation mirrors China's gray-zone occupation strategy in the South China Sea, where it has transformed reefs and islands into fortified bases, altering the status quo and asserting control without risking direct conflict. **

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Part 2

It’s not that everything was rosy at the end of last year, far from it. But there were signs that millions and millions of people are tired of the ever-widening gap between rich and poor, that millions of people think the pendulum has swung too far toward oligarchy, and most importantly that people are willing to take action and organize and devote themselves to pushing that pendulum back. In other words, we’re catapulting ourselves into this New Year on a wave of class warfare. We enter 2025 with the working class finally fighting back in this war that the owning class has lop-sidedly waged relentlessly for decades against a near-dormant population. But now, slowly, the working class is waking up and learning to fight back – not just that, we’re coming to realize this is the fight of our lives.

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/17854291

Archived link

Videos circulating on social media show Chinese men from mainland provinces quickly obtaining marriage certificates with Uyghur women through government-supported matchmaking agencies. This represents a new wave of state-encouraged intermarriage.

Chinese men openly promote "marrying beautiful Uyghur girls" on platforms like Douyin and WeChat, causing serious concern among Uyghurs abroad.

Zumrat Dawut, a camp survivor, confirms such matchmaking companies now operate in most East Turkistan cities. Recent months have seen a marked increase in Uyghur-Chinese marriages, with some previously married Uyghur women recruiting others.

[...]

A Mekit-based company called "Hot Love," the only government-approved matchmaking service there, revealed they receive state support and financial incentives (40,000 yuan) for arranging Uyghur-Chinese marriages. They exclusively match Uyghur women with mainland Chinese men.

The Uyghur Human Rights Project's 2022 report identified this as systematic government policy promoting forced intermarriage as part of cultural genocide.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/17854033

Here is the original YT link

Part 1

Archived link

Over the past year, analysts and writers in the mainstream press as well as in some left-wing media have argued that China has upended its relationship with Israel in its defense of Palestine in the wake of October 7. But China’s relationship with Palestine is not so clear-cut: While it has offered moderate rhetorical criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, China has maintained investments in Israel and cooperation with Israeli companies, and has attempted to increase its influence as a world power in the Middle East region at the expense of Palestinians.

Throughout the past year of Israel’s war on Gaza, China has repeatedly called for a return to the peace process and the implementation of the long-discussed two-state solution. But this rhetoric is far from signaling opposition to and defiance of Israel. Such calls are hardly very radical: They seek a return to a U.S.-led peace process and a two-state solution traditionally championed by the U.S. Both the peace process and the two-state solution have been sharply criticized by Palestinians and the Palestine solidarity movement globally as mechanisms that preclude the Palestinian right to return and take as their starting point the theft of the majority of Palestinian land. Nonetheless, China’s moderated criticism of Israel has not been matched by any efforts to advance such a flawed process.

[...]

Indeed, the Chinese state has prohibited basic demonstrations of solidarity with Palestine, confiscating Palestinian flags displayed publicly and preventing mobilizations in support of Gaza.

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Archived link

North Korea's Kim Jong-Un said ending a marriage demonstrates anti-socialist sympathies and should be punished.

It signifies a toughening of existing laws, which previously only punished the party seeking the divorce - even in cases of physical abuse.

Under new rules, both spouses will be imprisoned once the divorce is finalised, according to Radio Free Asia (RFA).

A resident of the northern Ryanggang province said: “I went to the Kimjongsuk County People’s Court ... where 12 people received divorce decrees.

“Immediately after the verdict, they were transferred to the county labour training camp.

“Until last year, when a couple divorced, only the person who first filed for divorce was sent to a labor training camp.

“Starting this month, all divorced couples will be sent to labour training camps.”

[...]

Another woman who had stayed in the correction facility said the majority of divorcees are in their late 30s.

She said: "There are about 80 women, and 40 men imprisoned in the county labor training camp.

“About 30 men and women were imprisoned due to divorce decrees, and the women’s sentences were longer.”