Laura Harth
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lauraharth.bsky.social
Laura Harth
@lauraharth.bsky.social
China in the World Director @safeguarddefenders.bsky.social | External Relations Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC)
Admitting the obvious: “Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the European Union’s top diplomat on Wednesday that Beijing does not want to see a Russian loss in Ukraine.”
www.scmp.com/news/china/d...
Exclusive | China tells EU it does not want to see Russia lose its war in Ukraine: sources
Wang Yi speaks of concern that US could shift whole focus in China’s direction in talks with top EU diplomat Beijing.
www.scmp.com
July 4, 2025 at 5:04 AM
Reposted by Laura Harth
#HongKong: 4 years after #AppleDaily was shut down, its spirit lives on. RSF and exiled staff have published a special edition honouring media in Hong Kong that continue to resist repression. 7 staff remain jailed and face life imprisonment, including founder #JimmyLai.

🔗 rsf.org/en/four-year...
June 23, 2025 at 12:15 PM
Reposted by Laura Harth
RSF is alarmed by reports that the parents of a UK-based journalist working for Iran International have been detained in Tehran and coerced into urging their daughter to resign. This marks a further escalation in #Iran's efforts to silence Persian-language media overseas.
rsf.org/en/rsf-conde...
RSF condemns rise in attacks on UK-based Iranian journalists and their families in Iran
Persian-language broadcasters based in London have reported an alarming escalation in threats against their journalists, including intimidation of their families in Iran. Reporters Without Borders (RS...
rsf.org
June 23, 2025 at 7:11 PM
Reposted by Laura Harth
What better sign of Apple Daily's enduring power than to see our revival edition being read in the #UK houses of parliament today, by MPs and peers of all political parties. The spirit of Apple Daily lives on! #HongKong #AppleDailyLivesOn #FreeJimmyLai
June 24, 2025 at 5:46 PM
From Canada’s CSIS 2024 public report: “With one of the world’s largest & most active security intelligence systems, PRC poses the greatest counter-intelligence threat. […] PRC Intelligence Services actively and clandestinely target democratic states around the world.”
www.canada.ca/en/security-...
Intelligence operations - Canada.ca
www.canada.ca
June 24, 2025 at 2:52 PM
‼️G7 Leaders commit to counter Transnational Repression, “an aggressive form of foreign interference that undermines national security, state sovereignty, the safety and human rights of victims, and principles of international law.”

Full Statement: www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/stat...
June 18, 2025 at 5:18 AM
Reposted by Laura Harth
📍8964: New Safeguard Defenders report coming June 4.

📍8964: 保护卫士 新的报告将于6月4日发布。

(Media can request an embargoed copy at - 媒体可通过以下邮箱申请获取禁运版报告: media [at] safeguarddefenders [dot] com)
May 27, 2025 at 7:04 AM
Reposted by Laura Harth
COMING SOON: #ChinaTargets.

ICIJ’s latest investigation uncovers the sprawling scope and terrifying tactics of Beijing’s campaign to target dissident members of its diaspora.

Stay tuned! Sign up to get the stories delivered to your inbox: bit.ly/3SCsH8c
April 25, 2025 at 1:02 PM
Reposted by Laura Harth
China is still developing its capacity to invade Taiwan, but analysts say it is now able to carry out a blockade or quarantine. @joyuwang.bsky.social and I take a look at how that might unfold

Gift link: www.wsj.com/world/china/...
China Is Ready to Blockade Taiwan. Here’s How.
China’s military, in increasingly complex exercises, have encircled Taiwan and simulated blockades.
www.wsj.com
March 24, 2025 at 3:33 AM
Reposted by Laura Harth
Quote of the Day: “Food Is Unsafe, Students' Lives Are Unsafe, Our Data Is Unsafe, but MoFA Says China Is One of the 'Safest' Countries in the World!"
Quote of the Day: “Food Is Unsafe, Students' Lives Are Unsafe, Our Data Is Unsafe, but MoFA Says China Is One of the 'Safest' Countries in the World!"
This year, the theme of World Consumer Rights Day on March 15 was “a just transition to sustainable lifestyles.” As it has every year since 1991, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV marked the occasion wit...
chinadigitaltimes.net
March 24, 2025 at 5:09 AM
Reposted by Laura Harth
Reposted by Laura Harth
🇵🇼 China is using transnational criminal organisations to advance its political objectives in Palau and weaken Taiwan’s diplomatic ties with the Pacific island nation. www.taiwannews.com.tw/news/6049334
US think tank says China using criminal organizations to sabotage Taiwan-Palau ties | Taiwan News | Mar. 2, 2025 10:49
Pacific Economics urges Palau to bolster economic resilience and deepen democratic cooperation | Mar. 2, 2025 10:49
www.taiwannews.com.tw
March 2, 2025 at 4:48 AM
Reposted by Laura Harth
Surveillance and missing children: a rare glimpse inside forgotten Tibet

A documentary shows the depths Beijing will plunge to subsume the people whose land it annexed 75 years ago. One of its producers reveals what the team found. (ITV1, 10:20pm tonight) www.thetimes.com/world/asia/a...
Surveillance and missing children: a rare glimpse inside forgotten Tibet
A documentary shows the depths Beijing will plunge to subsume the people whose land it annexed 75 years ago. One of its producers reveals what the team found
www.thetimes.com
February 16, 2025 at 12:16 PM
Reposted by Laura Harth
A new report by @weberv.bsky.social reviews 4 key data-centric technologies whose development could fortify Beijing’s tech-enabled authoritarian governance model and offers 7 critical steps democracies & civil society must take to ensure a more democratic digital future. www.ned.org/data-centric...
Data-Centric Authoritarianism: How China’s Development of Frontier Technologies Could Globalize Repression - NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY
A new report authored by Valentin Weber review four key data-centric technologies whose development could fortify Beijing’s tech-enabled authoritarian governance model and offers seven critical steps ...
www.ned.org
February 16, 2025 at 5:39 PM
Reposted by Laura Harth
Italy's data protection authority said on Thursday it had blocked Chinese artificial intelligence model DeepSeek over a lack of information on its use of personal data.

www.reuters.com/technology/a...
Italy's regulator blocks Chinese AI app DeepSeek on data protection
Italy's data protection authority said on Thursday it had blocked Chinese artificial intelligence model DeepSeek over a lack of information on its use of personal data.
www.reuters.com
January 31, 2025 at 6:41 AM
Posing as @safeguarddefenders.bsky.social, for the first time a Chinese social media operation that aims to whip up political anger in the West has explicitly called for the overthrow of a foreign government (in Spain), @graphika.com reports.
www.reuters.com/world/chines...
January 29, 2025 at 4:53 PM
Reposted by Laura Harth
Taiwan has drawn up a blacklist of 52 Chinese-owned ships that use flags of convenience, which it will track and proactively inspect in an effort to regulate part of a rapidly growing “shadow fleet” that is causing global security concerns. www.ft.com/content/bb6b...
Taiwan blacklists Chinese-owned ‘shadow fleet’ ships
Taipei’s move reflects concern Beijing could use vessels that evade international oversight against it
www.ft.com
January 27, 2025 at 8:08 AM
Reposted by Laura Harth
For the Chinese Communist Party sovereignty is not limited to safeguarding territory. It is also about protecting the regime at home and abroad (“active defense”, 积极防御). This is why it struggles against democracies using the united front, economic coercion and propaganda.
January 26, 2025 at 8:13 AM
Reposted by Laura Harth
In China's military..."When one leader is purged, another is on deck. Politicized corruption investigations and their imposition of costs are fundamentally a speed-bump rather than a showstopper" digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-maritim...
China Maritime Report No. 44: Dirty But Preparing to Fight: VADM Li Pengcheng's Downfall Amid Increasing PLAN Readiness
Main Findings Although corruption runs deep in the PLA Navy (PLAN) and across China’s armed forces, disciplinary-related removals appear not to have a major impact on naval capabilities or operation...
digital-commons.usnwc.edu
January 26, 2025 at 8:00 PM
Reposted by Laura Harth
An Australian businessman has accused the local embassy in China of ignoring his pleas for help as he languished in filthy, overcrowded Beijing jails for four years. www.skynews.com.au/insights-and...
Australian jailed in Beijing for four years shares his harrowing ordeal
It was just after Christmas in 2019,  and Australian Matthew Radalj was 34 and running a streetwear business in Beijing when he went to get his phone repaired at a popular electronics market.
www.skynews.com.au
January 19, 2025 at 1:24 AM
Black jails and angry wails: anger is growing over forms of detention linked to torture and deaths that have become increasingly common under Xi Jinping.

It often involves holding people incommunicado for weeks on end in brutal conditions without charge.
www.economist.com/china/2025/0...
An outrage that even China’s supine media has called out
Anger is growing over a form of detention linked to torture and deaths
www.economist.com
January 19, 2025 at 12:34 PM
Reposted by Laura Harth
China crisis looms as Europe’s gravy train stalls: ‘nobody is making money’

A long read from me on Germany, trillion-dollar deficits, and the China shock 2.0

Feat. @sandertordoir.bsky.social @cfr.org @adamtooze.bsky.social, @ceias-eu.bsky.social, @niclaskv.bsky.social

www.scmp.com/news/china/d...
Europe’s ‘China crisis’ looms as continent’s export gravy train stalls
As the EU’s auto industry reels from a slowing Chinese economy and cutthroat competition, analysts caution the worst is yet to come.
www.scmp.com
January 18, 2025 at 9:11 AM
Reposted by Laura Harth
A Chinese national was arrested Thursday on charges of acting as an illegal agent for #Beijing when serving as the campaign manager for an unnamed politician elected to a city council in Southern California two years ago.

apnews.com/article/chin...
Chinese national charged with acting as Beijing's agent in local California election
A Chinese national has been charged with acting as an illegal agent for Beijing when serving as the campaign manager for an unnamed local California politician.
apnews.com
December 20, 2024 at 1:48 AM
New York Resident Pleads Guilty to Operating Secret Police Station of the Chinese Government in Lower Manhattan

Defendant Admitted That He Conspired to Act as an Illegal Agent of the Chinese Government
www.justice.gov/opa/pr/new-y...
New York Resident Pleads Guilty to Operating Secret Police Station of the Chinese Government in Lower Manhattan
Chen Jinping, 60, of New York, New York, pleaded guilty today to conspiring to act as an illegal agent of the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), in connection with opening and operati...
www.justice.gov
December 18, 2024 at 8:33 PM
“A guilty plea is expected today in the case of a secret Chinese police station operating in lower Manhattan.

Prosecutors said the secret police station was set up by PRC counterintelligence operatives to harass and intimidate dissidents living in US.”
abcnews.go.com/US/guilty-pl...
Guilty plea expected in secret Chinese police station case
Lu Jianwang and Chen Jinping were accused of working on behalf of China's Ministry of Public Security in violation of the Espionage Act.
abcnews.go.com
December 18, 2024 at 4:53 PM