HONG KONG: Hundreds waited outside a Hong Kong court on Tuesday ( Nov 19 ) as a result of the landmark national security trial that had damaged the city’s once fervent pro-democracy movement and drawn international criticism. 47 pro-democracy protesters were detained and charged with conspiracy to defame in violationContinue Reading
Authorities have worked hard to lessen the impact of the tourist traffic on Japan’s most popular rock, which has increased recently. Crowd control measures and an entry fee of ¥2, 000 ( US$ 13 ) succeeded in limiting the number of people climbing up Fuji this summer to around 178,Continue Reading
SINGAPORE: A week after the close of China’s largest website shopping windfall, one issue is starting to rear its mind: The fall of product results, with some womenswear shopowners seeing profit rates of up to 90 per cent.
Singles ‘ Day, or” shuang shi yi,” a 24-hour online shopping event that means “double eleven in Mandarin,” has grown into an annual blockbuster retail season. This time, deals were dangled from Oct 14, three-and-a-half days before the meeting.
According to regional media reports, product results have increased significantly this year, compared to previous trends. On social media, angry e-commerce shops also voiced their grievances, which drew attention to the issue.
Buyers have reacted at the same time, saying they did so because their payments were not of the highest caliber and fit.
No official data is available for the number of returned items during the Singles ‘ Day browsing time. But, checks by CNA found several online content complaining about this trend.
Xiao Feng,  , a person on the Taiwanese social media platform Xiaohongshu, posted a picture on Oct 29 showing a large pile of returned items containing children’s clothing.
” Choose stop returning your products! There were so many people in this first Singles ‘ Day return, the person grumbled. ” I sent out 20, 000 plans and 10, 000 were returned, among them were also items that were unjustly sent again.  ,
” This is so terrible, who would even try to sell women’s clothes? ”  ,
A blog by another person Tian Tian on Nov 1 claimed that during the initial wave of profits for Singles ‘ Day, out of the 2, 000 items sent out, 1, 500 were returned.  ,
A, a different retailer, displayed the large collection of clothing that had been returned to her Xiaohongshu account.  ,
” Results on the left, items that are supposed to get shipped out, and this is definitely only 50 per cent of it,” she wrote”. Fellow retailers, what are your profit rates? ”  ,
Qu Weiguo, a Fudan University professor, said the new cases of “indiscriminate retaliation against society” in China had some popular features: Impoverished suspects, some with mental health issues, who believed that they had been treated unfairly and who felt they had no other way to get heard. The most effectiveContinue Reading
Taiwan’s coast guard announced on Saturday ( Nov. 16 ) that a fishing boat captain who had been imprisoned in China for more than four months has been released after having paid a fine. Five team members were aboard the ship, Da Jin Man 88, when it was seized byContinue Reading
In recent years, China has increased military repression against Taiwan, which the region’s state rejects. Beijing has even intensified its extensive geographical states in the East and South China Seas in recent months. The Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, a network of uninhabited islands that Beijing claims butContinue Reading
Despite China being North Korea’s key diplomatic and economic supporter and the South being physically allied with the US, Beijing and Seoul are significant buying lovers.  , China has called in the past for a “political negotiation” to resolve tensions on the Korean peninsula, reiterating that place after the NorthContinue Reading
Weeks later, the CAC announced a follow-up plan that would target “illegal and dangerous content” be circulated on popular online discourse programs.  ,
According to the state-owned Global Times newspaper,” It will target those who spread rumors and false information about public policies and social issues,” adding that some internet users would resort to creating” sentational conspiracy theories.”  ,
” They create dreadful personalities, build troubling stories, and level videos of horrible experience to abuse public sympathy”, the statement read.  ,
To avoid state censors, millions of Chinese internet users have found it necessary to use Mandarin puns, homophones, memes, and another cleverly deceived internet jargon to continue conversations about contentious topics.  ,
Banana fruit for instance, translates to” jin jiao pi” in Mandarin, which shares the exact word as President Xi’s title. But to avoid being detected by censors, netizens may speak to Mr Xi as” xiang jiao pis” online, in place of his proper name.  ,
Shrimp moss, or” xia tai” in Mandarin, sounds similar to saying” step down”.
The online yell for President Xi to resign is known as” Xiang jiao pi xia tai,” which can also be said using emojis.  ,
When Weibo users discuss censorship on the site,” He xie,” the terms for unity and river crab good related in Mandarin.  ,
Weibo people have substituted another seafood like fish because the characters for river crab are now banned and have had dead-end results.  ,
Some observers worry that as repression expands, especially as the Chinese government tries to become a world leader in conceptual AI.  ,
According to Maya Wang, Associate China Director at Human Rights Watch,” What you see in recent years is that the government has tightened such censorship.”
But” fully eradicating” the use of jokes and puns from the internet is very unlikely, said Ms Yew. Given the decentralized and fragmented nature of the internet, she said,” The relationship between Taiwanese citizens and state censors is a cat-and-mouse activity.”  ,
” Chinese users, 1.09 billion of them as of Dec 2023, may continue to create new emotions to escape the editors”, she added. ” The cat-and-mouse sport may just become more powerful”.
After some social media platforms and platforms announced they were complying with the condition and repressing negative information that promoted consumerism and flaunted money, a wave of suspensions hit China’s very wealthy elite online earlier in May.  ,
Google, Douyin and Xiaohongshu, China’s biggest social programs, were only a handful of companies that took a walk against “negative value-oriented information”.  ,
Weibo administrators announced it had taken behavior on users and glad that” showed of wealth and income devotion” as well as “extravagance and waste” –” cleaning up” more than 1, 000 posts of “bad value” behaviour. According to authorities, the site’s 27 records were suspended or prohibited altogether.  ,
Google Holdings, which runs the famous instant messaging program Sq, announced it had targeted records “promoting consumerism” and extravagant lifestyles – deleting more than 6, 000 pieces of content and “dealt with 36 improper accounts”.  ,
TOKYO:  , Princess Mikasa, the oldest member of Japan’s royal family and great aunt to the emperor, died aged 101 on Friday ( Nov 15 ) in a Tokyo hospital, the Imperial Household Agency said. She had been recovering that after receiving treatment in intensive care after being hospitalized sinceContinue Reading
A wooden walkway leading to a well-known suspension bridge collapsed on Wednesday ( Nov 13 ) in Taiwan, killing an elderly tourist and injuring four others. The 3 m-high beachfront reportedly collapsed as the subjects of the popular tourist attraction in Chiayi’s Alishan Township, Fumei Suspension Bridge, gathered for aContinue Reading