Category: News

Washington — Lionel Messi, arguably the world’s most popular soccer player, is the object of uncharacteristic hostility in Hong Kong, where he was roundly booed by frustrated fans after sitting out an exhibition match this week. China’s state-controlled media was quick to suggest a CIA hand in the debacle.

Messi later explained he had a hamstring strain that made him stay on the bench throughout the game on Sunday, but many fans don’t buy his excuse because Messi played about 30 minutes in Japan three days after his Hong Kong absence.

The near-capacity crowd of 38,323 in Hong Kong had paid upwards of 1,000 Hong Kong dollars ($125) to see their hero, and in many cases five times that amount. Some of them also caught sight of Messi walking away with his hands in his pockets when John Lee, Hong Kong’s chief executive, greeted Messi’s fellow Inter Miami players one by one and shook hands with them.

Regina Ip Lau Suk Yee, convenor of the Hong Kong Executive Council and a Legislative Council member, lashed out at the soccer hero: “Messi should never be allowed to return to Hong Kong. His lies and hypocrisy are disgusting.”

She further declared that “Hong Kong people hate Messi, Inter-Miami, and the black hand behind them, for the deliberate and calculated snub to Hong Kong.”

Kenneth Fok Kai-kong, a Hong Kong businessman and politician and brother of the Hong Kong Football Association chairman, published two long articles on Weibo, China’s most widely used but heavily censored social media platform.

Fok described how disappointed he was when he saw that Messi had played in Japan. “This is very upsetting, thinking how disappointed 40,000 Hong Kong soccer fans were, and how Messi had no facial expression and avoided a group photo-op.”

Fok said Messi’s performance in Japan was like “pouring salt to Hong Kong fans’ wounds.”

Not everyone is hurt

Global People, a magazine controlled by the Chinese Communist Party’s official mouthpiece People’s Daily, jumped into the fray with an article headlined “Background of Messi’s Boss Exposed: CIA involved?”

The article noted that Messi’s Florida-based team, Inter Miami, is co-owned and managed by two sons of Jorge Lincoln Mas Canosa, a Cuban immigrant and successful businessman who was trained in the 1960s by the CIA for the Bay of Pigs invasion and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army.

Within a day, on the Chinese news portal Netease where the Global People article was posted, readers left 43,488 comments. While a large number of fans still feel disappointed and disrespected, many scorned the tabloid’s conspiracy theory.

One user wrote: “I’m glad Hong Kong is not mainland China, otherwise a few ‘traitors’ are bound to be found … don’t always put on a political label, it may backfire on yourself one day.”

Another user called “TAEYEON” suggested that Messi may not have deliberately snubbed the Hong Kong chief executive: “Messi may not know those politicians at all. He didn’t play so he walked away, while only those who played shook hands with Lee, believe it or not.”

Global Times, a widely circulated Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece, suggested a more sinister explanation in a February 7 editorial. “Hong Kong intends to build a mega economy, and some external forces are deliberately using this as a means to embarrass Hong Kong,” it said.

Messi, who led his native Argentina to victory in the 2022 World Cup before joining the Miami team, has not responded to these accusations, but some Chinese human rights activists hailed his behavior on X and ridiculed China’s reactions.

“Toronto Square Face,” a commentator with 532,000 followers on X, wrote that “The Global Times has labeled Messi’s behavior as ’embarrassing Hong Kong.’ But if a country or a region’s heyday can be destroyed by a sport star, it can only mean this place is already in decline.”

Gao Yu, a former journalist in China, said on her social media X account: “The more Kenneth Fok criticizes Messi, the more isolated China and Hong Kong will become, and the more value will be lost by the pathetic Chinese soccer team.”

The sports administration in Hangzhou, a prosperous city in eastern China where e-commerce giant Alibaba is based, announced its official decision to cancel a friendly game with Argentina’s national soccer team in March due to “reasons known to all.”

Christoph Rehage, a German sinologist and China affair commentator, joked to his 173,000 followers on YouTube: “Is Xi Jinping ready to sever diplomatic relations with Argentina now?”

washington — A major Chinese bank for Russian importers, Chouzhou Commercial Bank, ceased operations with Russian and Belarusian companies, the Russian Vedomosti newspaper reported Wednesday.

In addition to Chouzhou Commercial Bank, Vedomosti reported that other Chinese and Hong Kong banks are tightening regulations around transactions with Russia to ensure they comply with Western sanctions. The Kremlin has acknowledged the instability of relations between Russian companies and Chinese banks.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia’s government is “working” with the Chinese government to resolve the commercial problems between the two nations.

Since the West’s initial sanctions on Russia in February 2022 after its invasion of Ukraine, Chinese banks have become key commercial partners for Russian companies, facilitating increased Sino-Russian trade.

Vedomosti reported that Chouzhou’s decision was related to U.S. President Joe Biden’s December 22 executive order, which strengthened sanctions on financial institutions that aid the Russian military.

Ali Wyne, a senior research and advocacy adviser for U.S.-China at the nonprofit International Crisis group, said the move was a sign that sanctions are working.

“The United States is working harder to dissuade financial institutions from assisting Russia’s efforts to circumvent sanctions. Chinese lenders are taking note and maneuvering to avoid secondary sanctions,” Wyne told VOA in a statement.

Russian analysts said Chouzhou’s decisions, which coincide with the major Lunar New Year holiday season in China, would lead to short-term logistical delays.

“All the troubles are superimposed on the Chinese New Year, so the Russians will not be able to start solving this problem until the beginning of March,” Russian freelance economic journalist Maxim Blunt said to VOA Russian Service.

“This will not stop mutual trade, but it will certainly add to the problems on the railways and in the ports. Logistics chains between Russia and China are already overloaded, and now this is compounded by overstocking of warehouses and other problems.”

Blunt said Russian consumers would most likely face shortages or inflation as a result.

“Since China is Russia’s main trading partner, we should expect either a shortage or a rise in the price of a wide range of goods, from industrial equipment to wide ports,” Blunt said. “Another brick has been laid in the wall that separates Russia from the civilized market.”

Despite the increased costs, Chouzhou’s decision will not be paralyzing for Russia, according to Russian Sinologist Aleksei Chigadaev of Leipzig University.

“Of course, the Russian economy will not collapse from this,” Chigadaev told VOA Russian. “The main segment that the bank serves seems to be small and medium-sized businesses. There is no exact customer data in the public domain.

“But judging by where it is located and which Russian companies are served in it, these are most likely small enterprises that are engaged in wholesale purchases of consumer goods, clothing, souvenirs and so on. Therefore, they will now record losses and come up with new payment schemes.”

Chigadaev said these tensions show that China is prioritizing its relationship with the United States over Russia.

“The Chinese do not mind making money on supplies to Russia, but as soon as it comes to choosing between the Russian market and the American market — and now the question often arises in this way — then, of course, they will choose the latter,” Chigadaev said. “This will be the end of any partnership.”

Wyne said, however, that Chouzhou’s decision does not necessarily reflect a recalibration in the Sino-Russian relationship.

“Whether one considers the frequent interactions between their presidents and defense ministers, the deepening of their military cooperation or the record trade that they posted last year, Beijing and Moscow are drawing closer, not drifting apart,” Wyne wrote.

“China appears to have concluded that it can simultaneously strengthen its ties with Russia and sustain the current thaw in its ties with the United States.”

SHANGHAI — Yuwei Zhangzou represents a new type of Chinese tourist.

Last month, the Shanghai-based fashion influencer had close encounters with reindeer, visited Santa’s village and stayed in a glass-enclosed treehouse during a trip that she organized herself to Finland. Very little shopping was involved.

“I was hoping to get lucky and see the Northern Lights and I got it! I was happy,” she said.

As Chinese travelers gear up for the Lunar New Year holiday, which this year runs from February 10-17, more of the people who can afford to travel abroad are eschewing the group tours and shop-til-you-drop holidays that were popular before the pandemic and opting for more adventurous, experience-based trips like Zhangzou’s, industry experts say.

“Independent travelers might be spending a bit more on travel and accommodation and so on, but they may well offset it by not spending as much in the luxury goods shops,” said Steve Saxon, a Shenzhen-based partner at McKinsey & Co.

“There’s a trend to be more active and that is flowing through into the types of trips people want to take,” he added. “You don’t just go to Thailand, you go to Thailand to do a kayaking or diving trip. Or if you go to Europe, you’re going to ski.”

While a record high number of Chinese will be holidaying at home amid a lackluster economy, a smaller, wealthier but still significant number of people are opting for adventure, gourmet or cultural holidays abroad as flight schedules, and visa processing times, return to their pre-pandemic “normal.”

China’s international travel recovery remains a tick under 70% of 2019 levels, McKinsey’s Saxon said, and that percentage would be higher without the United States, where levels are at just 19% of pre-pandemic levels due to limited flight capacity and geopolitical tensions.

On flights between Europe and China, seat bookings are at 93% of pre-pandemic levels, according to the data, independent travelers, rather than tour groups, driving the increase.

Zhou Weihong, deputy general manager at Shanghai-headquartered Spring Tour, the tour agency arm of budget airline Spring Airlines 601021.SS, said its Lunar New Year offers for Europe sold out weeks before the festival, even though prices remain above pre-pandemic levels.

Trips that involve a chance to see the Northern Lights have been particularly popular, Zhou added.

Shifting priorities

Globally, more younger travelers have embraced the trend towards more bespoke, “special interest” holidays since the pandemic ended, and Trip.com, China’s largest online travel agency, has taken note.

Chief Executive Jane Sun told Reuters the agency was changing its approach to group tour offers to accommodate travelers’ desire for more independence and flexibility.

“Consumer behavior is changing. So we have new products… private tours where the family will hire a driver, a tour guide, and design their own tour. For young families, these are very popular,” Sun said, adding that such trips were growing in the “triple digits.”

Younger travelers were gravitating to trips focused on meditation, cooking or photography, Sun said. Trip.com data shows popular outbound destinations for this year’s Lunar New Year holiday include Southeast Asia, Japan and Australia.

European luxury brands that relied on big-spending Chinese tourists for growth before the pandemic have resigned themselves to making fewer sales to Chinese travelers. Last month, Louis Vuitton owner LVMH LVMH.PA CFO Jean-Jacques Guiony told analysts sales to Chinese consumers in France were at about 70% of 2019 levels.

“It’s not the same customers, fewer groups, much more independent travelers with a higher worth,” he said. “We don’t see the big busloads of Chinese customers coming in groups.”

For fashion influencer Zhangzou, the less packaged and more off the beaten track the holiday, the better.

This year, she is planning a safari trip to Kenya over the summer, and maybe a trip to Mexico or Cuba before Christmas.” In 2023 I went to places I was familiar with, 2024 for me is about going somewhere different, I want to do some new things,” she said.

washington — President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign Monday defended its new TikTok account as a vital way to boost its appeal with young voters, even as his administration continued to raise security concerns about whether the popular social media app might be sharing user data with China’s communist government.

The campaign’s inaugural post featured the president being quizzed on Sunday’s Super Bowl — and included a reference to the latest political conspiracy theory centering on pop superstar Taylor Swift.

“The president’s TikTok debut last night — with more than 5 million views and counting — is proof positive of both our commitment and success in finding new, innovative ways to reach voters in an evolving, fragmented and increasingly personalized media environment,” Biden reelection deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty said in a statement.

At the White House, though, national security communications adviser John Kirby said that “there are still national security concerns about the use of TikTok on government devices, and there’s been no change to our policy not to allow that.”

Kirby referred most questions about TikTok to the Biden campaign and ducked a more general query about whether it was wise to use the app at all. He said the potential security issues “have to do with concerns about the preservation of data and potential misuse of that data and privacy information by foreign actors.”

Both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission have warned that TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, could share user data — such as browsing history, location and biometric identifiers — with that country’s authoritarian government. Biden in 2022 signed legislation banning the use of TikTok by the federal government’s nearly 4 million employees on devices owned by its agencies, with limited exceptions for law enforcement, national security and security research purposes.

Separately, the secretive and powerful Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has been reviewing the app for years while trying unsuccessfully to force TikTok ownership to divest from its parent company. The White House said Monday the review was continuing.

With 150 million U.S. users, TikTok is best known for quick snippets of viral dance routines. But Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, posted on X that Biden’s campaign is “bragging about using a Chinese spy app even though Biden signed a law banning it on all federal devices.”

The Biden campaign said it had been mulling establishing a TikTok account for months and had ultimately done so at the urging of youth activists and organizations, who argued that the app was key to reaching young voters.

The campaign said it was using a separate cellphone to engage on TikTok to isolate the app from other work streams and communications, including emails. The campaign said it was taking additional steps but declined to name them, citing security concerns.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said she wasn’t in contact with the campaign and had no advance warning that its TikTok account was going live.

washington — Since the Taliban seized control in August 2021, China, Iran and Russia have been steadily courting Afghanistan’s de facto government for influence. The three countries have kept their embassies open in Kabul and were among the first to hand over Afghan embassies to the Taliban at home.

Last month, Moscow, Beijing and Tehran were the most high-profile participants at the Taliban’s first conference on regional cooperation in Kabul.

But what are the real prospects of China, Russia, Iran and the Taliban cooperating in the region?

Analysts tell VOA that while Beijing, Moscow and Tehran may be united in a common goal to oppose the U.S. in the region, that is perhaps the only area where their interests align, analysts say.

“Anti-Americanism is the one idea” that brings China, Iran and Russia together, said Alex Vatanka, founding director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute in Washington.

He told VOA that Tehran, Moscow and Beijing “want to push the United States out of Eurasia and Central Asia … [but] how much can they on the operational level cooperate? That’s a big question.”

He added that “anti-Americanism” alone cannot keep the partnership together as there “is nothing ideological to bring them together.”

According to a newly released U.S. State Department’s strategy document, China, Iran and Russia seek “strategic and economic advantage, or at a minimum, to put the U.S. at a disadvantage.”

“China, Iran and Russia have cultivated very close ties with the Taliban,” said Nilofar Sakhi, a lecturer at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, adding that they are trying to “have political and economic influence in the region.”

Despite close ties, none of the three countries has formally recognized the Taliban’s government and their interests in the region all differ.

Pragmatic approach

Late last month, China was the first country to formally accept the credentials of the Taliban’s ambassador.

Some former diplomats and analysts say the move was akin to formal recognition. Sun Yun, the director of the China Program at the Stimson Center in Washington does not agree.

China still has to “formally extended political recognition to the Taliban’s government,” Sun told VOA. Even so, compared to Western countries, China has established “very close” relations with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

“China adopts a pragmatic approach in Afghanistan,” said Sun, adding that early on Beijing realized that the U.S.-backed former Afghan government did not have “the popular support to continue” governing Afghanistan.

Beijing had been cultivating ties with the Taliban for years before the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul.

Sun said that “what has happened in the past two and a half years substantiated that assessment that the Taliban regime is not going anywhere.”

She added that security, economic and political factors are “all part of a broader consideration that comes to the foundation of China’s policy toward Afghanistan.”

For China, one key concern is about any breach of militancy from Afghanistan into its western region of Xinjiang.

Beijing also has economic interests in Afghanistan, including extending the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a flagship of the Belt and Road Initiative, to Afghanistan and investing in minerals in Afghanistan.

China has also been vocal in criticizing the U.S. and NATO for freezing Afghanistan’s assets and “leaving the Afghan people in a serious humanitarian crisis” in the country.

Complicated past

Though Iran has not formally recognized the Taliban, it handed over the Afghan embassy in Tehran to the Taliban in February 2023.

The Middle East Institute’s Vatanka said that the Iranian regime has not recognized the Taliban because of some bilateral issues, including border security and water distribution.

Last year, tensions between Iran and the Taliban over the Helmand River’s flow of water escalated to a deadly clash, which killed two Iranian security guards and one Taliban border guard.

Iran and the Taliban have had complicated relations in the past.

During the civil war in Afghanistan in the 1990s, Iran was supporting the forces fighting against the Taliban, particularly after the Taliban killed nine Iranian diplomats in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif in 1998.

“It is still too early for the Iranians to forget what the Taliban was” when it was in power in the 1990s, said Vatanka.

Full of contradiction

Like Iran, Russia was another country that supported forces fighting the Taliban during the civil war in the 1990s.

Ghaus Janbaz, a former Afghan diplomat to Moscow, told VOA that Moscow’s policy toward Afghanistan has been “full of contradictions” in recent years.

Janbaz added that Russia is politically supporting the Taliban, but at the same time, its “military and security officials criticize the Taliban and cite an uptick in terrorist activities in Afghanistan.”

He said that before the Taliban’s takeover, Moscow had diplomatic relations with the former Afghan government, but it also supported “the Taliban at all the levels.”

“It is similar now. Russia has ties with the Taliban, but an anti-Taliban leader was invited to Moscow,” Janbaz said. “They say it was not an invitation by the government, but nothing happens without the approval of the government in Russia.”

An Afghan anti-Taliban leader, Ahmad Masoud, participated in a conference on Afghanistan in Russia in November 2023.

Janbaz says that despite Moscow’s close ties with the Taliban, “I do not think that in the near future, Moscow will extend recognition to the Taliban’s regime.”

He said that similar to China and Iran, Russia’s policy toward the Taliban is driven by regional geopolitics.

“Tactically they might have an alliance against the West, but there are strategic differences” between these countries, Janbaz said.

This story originated in VOA’s Afghan Service.

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — A court in Kyrgyzstan has ruled to dissolve a nongovernmental organization that ran a popular news website often critical of the government. 

The court order late Friday to shut down Kloop.kg follows raids on several other media outlets and arrests of their reporters, steps that Western governments have criticized as a crackdown on independent media. 

Kloop.kg’s troubles began last August when state prosecutors filed a lawsuit to have it shut down on the grounds that Kloop Media, its nongovernmental organization (NGO) publisher, was not registered as a media organization. 

Prosecutors also pointed out that many of the outlet’s publications were critical of the government, saying they discredited the authorities of the Central Asian nation. 

The court said that Kloop Media was carrying out activities outside of its charter. 

“The court ruling on Kloop is another nail in the coffin of media freedom in Kyrgyzstan,” Anna Kapushenko, the editor-in-chief of Kloop.kg’s Russian-language version, told Reuters. 

The group said it would appeal the ruling. 

Media in Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic, have long enjoyed greater freedoms than those in other Central Asian countries with more autocratic governments. 

However, under President Sadyr Japarov, who came to power in 2020, the country adopted a law making it illegal for media and individuals to “discredit” the authorities, giving the government a tool to go after its critics. 

Kyrgyzstan is closely allied with Russia and hosts a Russian military airbase. 

New Delhi — India’s foreign ministry said Monday that Qatar had freed eight ex-navy personnel it had previously arrested and sentenced to death, reportedly for spying for Israel.

The foreign ministry never gave details on the eight Indian nationals or their alleged crimes, and Qatar has not commented on the case or made the charges public.

But Indian media have reported that the men,  among them former high-ranking and decorated officers, including captains who once commanded warships, were arrested in Doha in August 2022.

In October, India said it was “shocked” after a Qatari court had sentenced them to death, but the sentence was reduced in December.

The eight men were employees of Al Dahra, a Gulf-based company that offers “complete support solutions” to the aerospace, security and defense sectors, according to its website.

The Hindu newspaper reported the men were spying for a “third country,” while the Times of India has said that “various reports claimed they were accused of spying for Israel.”

On Monday, New Delhi said the men had all been released.

“The Government of India welcomes the release of eight Indian nationals working for the Dahra Global company who were detained in Qatar,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

“Seven out of the eight of them have returned to India,” it added, thanking Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani for the decision “to enable the release and homecoming” of the detainees.

islamabad — Pakistan confirmed Monday that separate counterterrorism raids near the Afghan border within the past week had killed two senior leaders of a regional Islamic State affiliate known as Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K).

Military officials identified the slain militant commanders as Surat Gul and Abdul Shakoor, also known as Abu Hamza. Both were targeted in intelligence-driven security operations in northwestern Khyber and southwestern Qila Saifullah districts.

Interim Pakistani Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar told reporters in Islamabad that Abu Hamza had plotted two back-to-back bomb attacks against campaign gatherings in Qila Saifullah and the nearby Pishin border districts on the eve of national elections held last Thursday.

“On the second day of the elections, February 9, an operation was conducted, and a prominent leader of Daesh was neutralized and eliminated in the same Qila Saifullah district,” Kakar said, referring to the killing of Abu Hamza.

Daesh is an Arabic acronym for IS-K, which the United States and the United Nations say is operating out of bases in Afghanistan.

The bombings in Pishin and Qila Saifullah collectively killed nearly 30 people. Both districts are part of the southwestern Baluchistan province, which shares nearly half of the country’s 2,600-kilometer-long (1616 miles) border with Afghanistan.

Gul was killed Sunday in a shootout with Pakistani security forces during a raid against his hideout in the northwestern Khyber border district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, according to a military statement.

The statement said the “terrorist ringleader” was involved in “numerous terrorist activities including [the] target killing of innocent civilians” and “was highly wanted by the law enforcement agencies.”

IS-K has confirmed the death of Gul in a gunfight with Pakistani security forces, but it has not commented on the fate of Abu Hamza.

The United Nations said in a report last month that while a “high concentration of terrorist groups in Afghanistan” was a cause of concern for member states, the “greatest threat within Afghanistan still comes from ISIL-K, with its ability to project into the region and beyond.”

ISIL-K is another acronym for IS-K.

The ruling Taliban in Afghanistan claim their security forces have eliminated IS-K bases nationwide and degraded the group’s ability to threaten national security and that of the region.

“Member States assessed that, despite the recent loss of territory, casualties, and high attrition among senior and mid-tier leadership figures, ISIL-K continued to pose a major threat in Afghanistan and the region,” the U.N. report noted.

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Experts say the Israel-Hamas war is the most dangerous conflict for media in recent history. Journalists in Gaza say the high death toll makes every report they do vital, but as more die among their ranks and the war expands, their ability to deliver the news is rapidly decreasing. VOA’s Heather Murdock reports with Nedal Hamdouna and Amjed Tantesh in Rafah, Gaza. Camera: Ihab Abu Riyash