GENEVA — Australia violated the rights of asylum-seekers arbitrarily detained on the island of Nauru, a U.N. watchdog ruled Thursday, in a warning to other countries intent on outsourcing asylum processing.

The U.N. Human Rights Committee published decisions in two cases involving 25 refugees and asylum-seekers who endured years of arbitrary detention in the island nation.

“A state party cannot escape its human rights responsibility when outsourcing asylum processing to another state,” committee member Mahjoub El Haiba said in a statement.

Under a hard-line policy introduced more than a decade ago, Australia has sent thousands of migrants attempting to reach the country by boat to detention centers on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island and the tiny Pacific nation of Nauru, which lies further to the northwest.

Victims in both cases filed complaints to the U.N. committee of 18 independent experts, charging that Australia had violated their rights under an international covenant, in particular regarding arbitrary detention.

Australia rejected the allegations, insisting that abuses that occurred in Nauru did not fall within its jurisdiction.

But the U.N. committee highlighted that Australia had arranged for the establishment of Nauru’s regional processing center and contributed to its operation and management.

El Haiba said Australia did have jurisdiction because it “had significant control and influence over the regional processing facility in Nauru.”

‘Not human rights-free zones’

A number of European countries have been examining the possibility of similar arrangements to outsource their migration policies.

Thursday’s decisions “send a clear message to all states: Where there is power or effective control, there is responsibility,” El Haiba said. “The outsourcing of operations does not absolve states of accountability. Offshore detention facilities are not human rights-free zones.”

The first case examined by the committee involved 24 unaccompanied minors from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar.

They were intercepted at sea by Australia and transferred in 2014 to Nauru’s overcrowded Regional Processing Center.

They were held there “with insufficient water supply and sanitation, high temperatures and humidity, as well as inadequate health care,” Thursday’s statement said. “Almost all of these minors have suffered from deterioration of physical and mental well-being, including self-harm, depression, kidney problems, insomnia, headaches, memory problems and weight loss.”

Compensation

Even though all but one of the minors were granted refugee status around September 2014, they remained detained in Nauru, the committee said.

It said Australia had failed to justify why the minors could not have been transferred to centers on the mainland more suitable for vulnerable individuals.

The committee separately evaluated the case of an Iranian asylum seeker who arrived by boat on Christmas Island with several family members in August 2013 and was transferred seven months later to Nauru.

The woman was recognized as a refugee by Nauru authorities in 2017 but was not released.

In November 2018, she was transferred to Australia in November 2018 for medical reasons but remained detained in various facilities there, the committee said.

It determined that Australia had failed to show that the woman’s prolonged and indefinite detention was justified.

The committee called on Australia to compensate the victims and take steps to ensure similar violations do not recur.

The committee has no power to compel states to follow its rulings, but its decisions carry reputational weight.
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Beijing — China said Thursday that an investigation had found the European Union imposed unfair “trade and investment barriers” on Beijing, marking the latest salvo in long-running commercial tensions between the two economic powers. 

Officials announced the probe in July after Brussels began looking into whether Chinese government subsidies were undermining European competition. 

Beijing has consistently denied its industrial policies are unfair and has threatened to take action against the EU to protect Chinese companies’ legal rights and interests. 

The commerce ministry said Thursday that the implementation of the EU’s Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR) discriminated against Chinese firms and “constitutes trade and investment barriers.” 

However, it did not mention whether Beijing planned to take action in response. 

The two are major trade partners but are locked in a wide-ranging standoff, notably over Beijing’s support for its renewables and electric-vehicle sectors. 

EU actions against Chinese firms have come as the 27-nation bloc seeks to expand renewable energy use to meet its target of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. 

But Brussels also wants to pivot away from what it views as an overreliance on Chinese technology at a time when many Western governments increasingly consider Beijing a potential national security threat. 

When announcing the probe, the ministry said its national chamber of commerce for importing and exporting machinery and electronics had filed a complaint over the FSR measures. 

The 20-page document detailing the ministry’s conclusions said their “selective enforcement” resulted in “Chinese products being treated more unfavorably during the process of export to the EU than products from third countries.” 

It added that the FSR had “vague” criteria for investigating foreign subsidies, placed a “severe burden” on the targeted companies and had opaque procedures that created “huge uncertainty.” 

EU measures such as surprise inspections “clearly exceeded the necessary limits,” while investigators were “subjective and arbitrary” on issues like market distortion, according to the ministry. 

Companies deemed not to have complied with probes also faced “severe penalties,” which placed “huge pressure” on Chinese firms, it said. 

The European Commission on Thursday defended the FSR, saying it was “fully compliant with all applicable EU and World Trade Organization rules.” 

“All companies, regardless of their seat or nationality, are subject to the rules,” a commission spokesperson said in a statement. 

“This is also the case when applying State aid or antitrust rules.”   

Projects curtailed 

The Chinese commerce ministry said FSR investigations had forced Chinese companies to abandon or curtail projects, causing losses of more than $2.05 billion. 

The measures had “damaged the competitiveness of Chinese enterprises and products in the EU market,” it said, adding that they also hindered the development of European national economies and undermined trade cooperation between Beijing and Brussels. 

The EU’s first probe under the FSR in February targeted a subsidiary of Chinese rail giant CRRC, but closed after the company withdrew from a tender in Bulgaria to supply electric trains. 

A second probe targets Chinese-owned solar panel manufacturers seeking to build and operate a photovoltaic park in Romania, partly financed by European funds. 

In October, Brussels imposed extra tariffs on Chinese-made electric cars after an anti-subsidy investigation under a different set of rules concluded Beijing’s state support was unfairly undercutting European automakers. 

Beijing in response announced provisional tariffs on brandy imported from the EU, and later imposed “temporary anti-dumping measures” on the liquor. 

Last month, China said it would extend the brandy investigation, citing the case’s “complexity.” 

Separately, a report by the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China warned that firms were being forced to drastically localize their operations to suit China’s regulations, driving up costs and reducing efficiency. 

Heightened trade tensions and Beijing’s “self-reliance policies” were causing many multinationals “to separate certain China-based functions, or even entire operations, from those in the rest of the world,” it said. 

It added that governance rules increasingly dominated by national security concerns had heightened uncertainties for local entities in engaging with European clients. 

Some customers are therefore choosing to “err on the side of caution and not take a risk by buying from a foreign service provider,” Chamber head Jens Eskelund said at a media event on Thursday.           
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TAIPEI, TAIWAN — Kweichow Moutai, the distiller of China’s most prestigious liquor, has seen three of its ex-chairmen face investigations for graft over the past five years, with a new probe into a former head of the maker of “firewater” announced earlier this month.

Over the past week, the topic has been trending on China’s social media and comes even as the company continues to see growth in sales, despite a weakening Chinese economy and lagging consumption.

Industry observers say that while the latest scandal is unlikely to hurt liquor sales, it highlights how corruption continues to ferment at Moutai – the drink of China’s state banquets since the 1970s.

Latest probe

Late last week on Jan. 2, authorities in China’s southwestern Guizhou province announced a probe into company official Ding Xiongjun on its website. Ding stepped down in April from the state-owned liquor giant, and, according to the announcement, is under investigation for “suspected serious disciplinary and legal violations.”

It is likely that Ding may follow in the footsteps of his two predecessors, Yuan Renguo and Gao Weidong, industry observers say. Yuan and Gao were jailed for life on charges of bribery in 2021 and 2024, respectively. Yuan died of a brain hemorrhage in late 2023.

While the charges against Ding remain unclear, the image of Moutai has long been tainted as businessmen in China mostly recognize it as a form of “hard currency” used for socializing with those in power.

One of the company’s most-cited quotes was from ex-U.S. diplomat Henry Kissinger to late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping at a 1974 state dinner, “if we drink enough Moutai, we can solve anything.”

Wang Shoufeng, the former head of a construction labor force service company in Anyang, a city in central China’s Henan province, said that China’s corrupt officials only drink the pricey liquor even if that means taking extra measures to stay under the radar of anti-graft investigators.

“When our [property developers] friends invited officials for a drink, they often poured Moutai into plastic bottles, faking it as water. The liquor in the one yuan-worth bottles was valued at tens of thousands of yuan. That’s how they drank,” Wang told VOA Mandarin in a phone interview. Wang fled China late last year to Germany.

Moutai as bribes

Wang said that some Chinese officials in Henan were so greedy that many of his peers in the property industry had to “buy their personal safety or get things done” by offering bribes, including gifts of aged Moutai.

One such example was Wang Xiaoguang, a former vice governor of Guizhou province, who was found pouring some of his 4,000 bottles of aged Moutai down the drain when he was worried about a probe against him in late 2018, according to Chinese media reports.

Many of China’s Communist elites, including Chinese President Xi Jinping himself, are also known to enjoy Moutai.

Xi has also made corruption a key focus of his rule in China, purging more than five million, mostly party officials, between 2014 and 2024. Earlier this week in an address, Xi said corruption remains the biggest threat to the Chinese Communist Party.

That said, officials and their love of the tipple has enabled the price to climb and peak at around 3,000 yuan, or $420, per 500ml bottle in February of last year, taking the flagship product “Flying Fairy Moutai” as an example, which has a 53% alcohol level.

Although its price has now dropped to around 2,200 yuan, or $300, the liquor’s fat margin compared to its factory price of 1,163 yuan, or $158, has created wiggle room for corruption, said Willy Lin, secretary-general of the Chinese White Spirits Research Association in Taipei.

“The [Moutai] liquor sells so well with a handsome profit that everyone wants a share of the pie. That makes it hard for those in the chairman’s seats to stay untangled with many interest groups,” Lin told VOA Mandarin in a phone interview.

“You [the chairmen] need their support to get to that position, but once you’re in, you need to help them make money. That’s when corruption sets in … it’s not an easy position to hold on to,” he added.

According to state media reports, both Yuan and Gao were found to have illegally awarded distribution rights to cronies or used the liquor to gain political clout before their arrest.

Sales still strong?

In 2018, China launched an anti-graft campaign against the liquor giant and has since arrested a dozen top executives, but the corruption at the brand’s top management remains hard to root out.

For now, the liquor giant’s sales performance appears to remain unaffected. In its latest financial report, released on Jan. 2 – the same day the probe into Ding was announced – Kweichow Moutai said it is expected to deliver 173.8 billion yuan, or $23.7 billion, in revenues for last year, seeing 15% year-on-year growth.

China’s weakened domestic consumption, however, is fueling concerns that the liquor giant’s future may not be bright.

One Shaanxi province-based vendor who sells a variety of spirits including Moutai on China’s short video platform Douyin told VOA Mandarin on Sunday that “now is not a good time” to buy or invest in bottles of Flying Fairy Moutai since its price may keep plunging to below 2,000 yuan.

A stock analyst in Beijing, who spoke with VOA Mandarin on the condition of anonymity, also expressed concern that Chinese consumers’ slashed spending on luxury goods may spell more bad news for the company’s share price as well, which too has been falling.

“Although Moutai’s sales performance remains relatively stable, the company’s falling stock price reflects concern over its future sales,” the analyst told VOA. The analyst did not want to use his full name citing the sensitivity of the topic.

On Wednesday, Kweichow Moutai closed at 1442.5 yuan per share, a 45% drop from its record high of 2,627.88 yuan per share in early 2021.
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BANGKOK — A former member of Cambodia’s opposition party was shot dead in Bangkok on Tuesday evening.

Lim Kimya, a former politician of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), died at the scene near Wat Bowonniwet Vihara Ratchaworawihan, a Buddhist temple near the tourist area of Khao San Road in Phra Nakhon district, The Bangkok Post reports.

Police say a man parked his motorbike and then shot dead Lim Kimya at about 4 p.m. before fleeing. The authorities say surveillance cameras near the scene show the man riding a red Honda motorbike, and that they are searching for the suspect.

The focus is on catching the assassin, but questions remain about the motive of the killing, according to police.

Phil Robertson of Asia Human Rights and Labor Advocates (AHRLA) told VOA the killing on Tuesday is an escalation of transnational repression and appears to be a political assassination.

“This brazen shooting of a former CNRP MP on the streets of Bangkok has all the hallmarks of a political assassination and looks to be a significant escalation in the use of transnational repression in Bangkok,” he said.

Lim Kimya, 73, also held French citizenship and had reportedly traveled to Bangkok in recent days with his wife and uncle. He was elected as a member of Cambodia’s opposition party in 2013.

Cambodian activists and politicians who have opposed the country’s regime have long been targeted at home and abroad. Those who have fled to other countries, such as Thailand, have been attacked, arrested and deported to Cambodia. Critics have coined the term “transnational repression” to describe the phenomenon.

VOA reached out to Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for comment but has not yet received a reply. 

Cambodia has been ruled by Cambodia’s People’s Party for 45 years. Critics say the regime has targeted dissidents, opposition parties and independent media who pose any threat to its rule.

Hun Manet took power in 2022, succeeding his father, Hun Sen, who led Cambodia for nearly four decades.

For a short time, the CNRP posed a legitimate challenge to Hun Sen’s rule after it was founded in 2012. But the opposition party was dissolved five years later after a Cambodian court ruled the party had attempted to overthrow the then-president.

Members of the party were banned from political activities, and its founders fled the country.  Kem Sokha, one of the party’s founders, was sentenced in 2023 to 27 years for treason.

Robertson said Lim Kimya’s killing will have ramifications for other Cambodians who have fled the country.

“The direct impact will be to severely intimidate the hundreds of Cambodian political opposition figures, NGO activists, and human rights defenders who have already fled to Thailand to escape PM Hun Manet’s campaign of political repression in Cambodia,” he added.

In August, Hay Vannith, the brother of Hay Vanna, a CNRP member, was arrested at the Cambodian border.

And in November, Thailand authorities deported Pen Chan Sangkream, Hong An, Mean Chanthon, Yin Chanthou, Soeung Khunthea and Vorn Chanratana back to their homeland for criticizing an economic trade pact Cambodia was part of.

Observers and rights groups say Thailand and Cambodia have unofficial agreements in place to return political dissidents should they flee to one another’s country.  

“This collaborative approach is not coincidental but strategically designed. Both countries share similar authoritarian impulses, with royal institutions and political elites working in concert to maintain their grip on power. By harmonizing their approach to dissent, Thailand and Cambodia create a more comprehensive mechanism of controlling political discourse,” Prem Singh Gill, a visiting fellow at Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta, told VOA in December.

Since 2014, more than 150 individuals in Thailand have been victims of transnational repression, according to a 2022 report from Freedom House. 

 
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Mutare, Zimbabwe — Government officials in Zimbabwe have been scrutinizing a Chinese mining company that has been operating a gold mine in the country’s east since at least 2021. The scrutiny comes as residents voice concern about the impact on health and the environment.

The company in question is Sino Africa Huijin Holdings, which faces accusations of severe environmental destruction and community harm. Its gold prospecting operations have been taking place in an area known as Premier Estate in the Mutasa District of Manicaland.

Villagers and community groups have complained about the blasting that has taken place at the mine. Nearby residents have reported widespread ecological damage, including the decimation of a mountain and the displacement of wildlife. They also say tremors from the blasts have caused structural damage to homes.

Residents further complain of dust pollution and the potential contamination of water sources due to alleged leaching of cyanide. Cyanide leaching is a method of extracting gold from ore that can pollute water resources. 

Adding to these concerns, Sino Africa is accused of forging community signatures on their Environmental Impact Assessment document, raising questions about the transparency and legitimacy of their operations.

The complaints prompted the government to shut down the mine’s operations twice in 2024. In the past two months, however, mining has resumed. 

“We are between a rock and a hard place. If it’s possible, let them compensate us and relocate us because it’s no longer appealing,” Ishewedenga Moyo, one of 30 residents living within some 300 meters of the Sino Africa Huijin mine, told VOA in December.

“The vibrations and noise generated by mining blasting are disrupting wildlife habitats and ecosystems, damaging biodiversity, and causing cracks in our homes,” Moyo added.

Government-ordered suspensions 

A Manicaland Joint Command Task Force, composed of a number of government entities, ordered the temporary closure of Sino Africa Huijin’s gold mining operations twice. Officials say the shutdowns were enforced to ensure the mine met all necessary requirements. 

The first suspension occurred in October and lasted two weeks. Sino Africa Huijin made pledges to improve the situation and was allowed to resume operations. Then, the task force ordered the mine to close a second time in mid-November.

Traditional Chief James Kurauone of the Mutasa district told VOA on Dec. 11 that officials forced Sino Africa Huijing’s operations to stop each time because the company “failed to address critical concerns raised by the local community.”

“These concerns that led to the temporary closure included severe air pollution, destructive blasting activities impacting local homes, and the company’s failure to fulfill its corporate social responsibility obligations,” said Mutasa in recent comments. Mutasa added that he plans to convene a meeting with mining officials and members from the community to discuss a path forward in a couple of weeks.  

Mining compliance  

Mining operations resumed on November 25 at the conclusion of discussions among government officials, community leaders and company representatives.

Daniel Panganai, the current HR manager of Sino Africa Huijin, was involved in the discussions. He told VOA in mid-December that the company “complied with all the requirements outlined in writing, but I cannot divulge much information at this time.”

Misheck Mugadza, the Manicaland minister of state, also said in December that Sino Africa Huijin committed to adhering to all mining and environmental regulations. He said the Chinese company had acted on its social responsibility obligations by donating to the local hospital and drilling a well to provide water to the local school.

The government is closely monitoring the company’s operations, Mugadza said, and some households have already received full compensation for damages. He further stated that the company is obligated to compensate all affected residents.  

Chinese investments in Zimbabwean mines

The controversy surrounding the Sino Africa Huijin mine is not isolated, according to a September report by the Center for Natural Resource Governance, or CNRG, a Harare-based community rights organization.

The report, which assessed the impact of Chinese investment on Zimbabwe’s mining industry, found that “Chinese mining ventures have led to widespread environmental degradation, disregard for the cultural rights of host communities, and, in many cases, the violation of the country’s labor laws, often with apparent impunity.”

Chinese investors control an estimated 90% of the of Zimbabwe’s mining industry, according to the report.  

“In 2023 alone, Sino investments in Zimbabwe’s mining sector saw 121 investors contributing a staggering $2.79 billion,” said CNRG Executive Director Farai Maguwu, who was quoted in a post on the organization’s website.

Separately, another area resident voiced criticism of the government’s response to the mining.

“There are times when the mine uses explosives of higher magnitude, and there will be tremors,” said area resident Thobekile Mhenziwamukuru. 

“When we call the government officials about the crisis, they always go directly alone to the Sino mine offices without any community leaders, then they will come and address us, just saying they will use explosives of low magnitude next time and we now know that it’s now their cash cow.

“Even in terms of closing and reopening of the mine, instead of solving our grievances, there is no fairness in everything because money is being exchanged to slow the progress and we hope higher offices in government will come to rescue us,” she concluded.

Maguwu accused local lawmakers of corruption, saying, “Instead of enforcing the law, they are cashing in on this illegality by forcing them to close down, demanding bribes for reopening, and then returning to close them down again and demand another bribe.”

Despite repeated phone calls and visits to the offices of government stakeholders to address these accusations, including the Ministry of Mines and the Environmental Management Agency, VOA received no response.

“This cycle goes on and on while the environment is being sacrificed,” Maguwu said.
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BEIJING — A strong earthquake killed at least 53 people in Tibet on Tuesday and left many others trapped as dozens of aftershocks shook the region of western China and across the border in Nepal.

The official Xinhua News Agency said 62 other people were injured, citing the regional disaster relief headquarters.

About 1,500 fire and rescue workers were deployed to search for people in the rubble, the Ministry of Emergency Management said.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake measured magnitude 7.1 and was relatively shallow at a depth of about 10 kilometers (6 miles). China recorded the magnitude as 6.8.

The epicenter was about 75 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of Mount Everest, which straddles the border. The area is seismically active and is where the India and Eurasia plates clash and cause uplifts in the Himalayan mountains strong enough to change the heights of some of the world’s tallest peaks.

The average altitude in the area around the epicenter is about 4,200 meters (13,800 feet), the China Earthquake Networks Center said in a social media post.

State broadcaster CCTV said there are a handful of communities within 5 kilometers (3 miles) of the epicenter, which was 380 kilometers (240 miles) from Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, and about 23 kilometers (14 miles) from the region’s second-largest city of Shigatse, known as Xigaze in Chinese.

About 230 kilometers (140 miles) away in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, the earthquake woke up residents and sent them running out of their homes into the streets. No information was immediately available from the remote, mountainous areas of Nepal closer to the epicenter.

There have been 10 earthquakes of at least magnitude 6 in the area where Tuesday’s quake hit over the past century, the USGS said.
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Beijing — Corruption is the biggest threat to China’s Communist Party, President Xi Jinping said on Monday, in a clear warning that the ruling party is resolved to tackle a long-running problem that is now entrenched in many strata of Chinese society.  

China was rocked last year by corruption probes into high-profile individuals ranging from a deputy central bank governor to a former chairman of its biggest oil and gas company, adding to unease in an economy struggling to secure a firm footing and a society grappling with a fading sense of wealth.  

The list also included a top Chinese admiral, Miao Hua, whose fall from grace comes at a time when Beijing is trying to modernize its armed forces and boost its battle readiness.  

Not only is corruption still pervading China, it is actually on the rise, Xi said at the start of a three-day congress of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, CCDI, the country’s top anti-graft watchdog.

“Corruption is the biggest threat to our party,” he warned.

To underline the scale of the problem, the CCDI said in recent days that a record 58 “tigers,” or senior officials, were probed last year.

Of those investigated, 47 were at the vice-ministerial level or above, including Tang Renjian, former minister of agriculture and rural affairs, and Gou Zhongwen, former head of the General Administration of Sport.  

Even former high-ranking officials were not spared, such as Wang Yilin, who stepped down as chairman of state-owned China National Petroleum Corp in 2020 on reaching retirement age.  

The crackdown will continue, said Andrew Wedeman, a professor at Georgia State University.

“I don’t see how Xi could afford to back off at this point,” Wedeman said. “A dozen years after he set out to cleanse the senior ranks, Xi is still finding widespread corruption at the top of the party-state and the PLA.”

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has also been swept by a wave of purges since 2023. Li Shangfu was removed as defense minister after seven months and his predecessor Wei Fenghe was expelled from the party for “serious violations of discipline,” a euphemism for corruption.

Challenges

Wedeman said it appeared that the pool that Xi is drawing on as replacements also included corrupt officials.  

“If Xi is promoting corrupt officials, this suggests the party’s internal vetting apparatus is not functioning effectively or, more seriously, is itself corrupted.”

China admits its anti-corruption efforts face new challenges, with traditional forms of corruption such as accepting cash becoming more insidious.

“A businessman might offer me money directly, and I’d refuse,” said Fan Yifei, a former deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve.

“But if he gives it in the form of stocks or other assets, not directly to me but to my family, that’s a whole different matter,” state media quoted Fan as saying.

Even the lowly “flies” and “ants” in China’s vast bureaucracy will not be spared, a program aired on Sunday by the national television broadcaster showed.  

The first of four episodes of “Fighting Corruption for the People” that ran ahead of the CCDI meeting focused on grassroots corruption, including a case of how a primary school director profited from kickbacks from on-campus meals and another on how a rural official took bribes from farm project contractors.  

“Compared to the ‘tigers’ far away, the public feels more strongly about the corruption around them,” said Sun Laibin, a professor at Peking University’s School of Marxism.

The anti-corruption fight must reach the “hearts” of the masses, he said on the program, so that they can “deeply feel” the care of the party.
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Seoul — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday opened a visit to crisis-riven South Korea where he will seek delicately to encourage continuity with the policies, but not tactics, of the impeached president.

Blinken arrived in the snow-covered capital on what will likely be his final trip as the top U.S. diplomat before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.

He will meet his counterpart Cho Tae-yul on Monday, the same day a warrant expires to arrest suspended President Yoon Suk Yeol who unsuccessfully tried to impose martial law on December 3.

Blinken is highlighting President Joe Biden’s efforts to build alliances and will head afterwards to Tokyo, making it crucial in the eyes of his advisors not to snub South Korea, which has a fraught and often competitive relationship with Japan, also home to thousands of American troops.

Yoon had once been a darling of the Biden administration with his bold moves to turn the page on friction with Japan and his eye on a greater role for South Korea on global issues.

Yoon joined Biden for a landmark three-way summit with Japan’s prime minister and — months before declaring martial law — was picked to lead a global democracy summit, a signature initiative for the outgoing U.S. administration.

Yoon also memorably charmed his hosts on a state visit by belting out “American Pie” at a White House dinner.

Blinken may face some criticism from the South Korean left for the visit but should be able to navigate the political crisis, said Sydney Seiler, a former US intelligence officer focused on Korea now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Blinken has a high enough profile to be above the fray, and can keep the focus on challenges such as China and North Korea, he said.

“Blinken can dodge a lot of these domestic South Korean landmines relatively easily and contextualize it not as trying to help the ruling party or artificially create a sense of normalcy where it otherwise isn’t,” Seiler said.

In a statement, the State Department did not directly mention the political crisis but said Blinken would seek to preserve trilateral cooperation with Japan, which has included enhanced intelligence sharing on North Korea.

Blinken’s visit comes at a time of change for both countries, with Trump returning to the White House on January 20.

Paradoxically, while Biden worked closely with the conservative Yoon, Trump in his first term enjoyed a warm relationship with then progressive president Moon Jae-in, who encouraged the U.S. president’s groundbreaking personal diplomacy with North Korea.

The Biden administration has stressed since the crisis that it is reaching out to South Korean politicians across the divide, amid the uncertainties on who will lead Asia’s fourth-largest economy.

Progressive opposition leader Lee Jae-myung — who himself faces election disqualification in a court case — supports diplomacy with North Korea.

But the former labor activist has also taken stances that differ from those of both Biden and Trump.

Lee has criticized deployment of U.S.-made THAAD missile defenses, which Washington says are meant to protect against North Korea but which China sees as a provocation. 

South Korea’s left has long championed a harder stance on Japan over its brutal 1910-1945 occupation of the Korean peninsula.

U.S. officials said they had no warning of Yoon’s imposition of martial law, which brought masses of protesters to the streets.

Blinken, addressing reporters last month, said the crisis showed the strength of South Korea’s institutions built in the three decades since it embraced democracy. 

“I think Korea is one of the most powerful stories in the world about the emergence of democracy and democratic resilience, and we’ll continue to look to Korea to set that example,” Blinken said.
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Her greatest fear, dormant for decades, came rushing back in an instant: had she adopted and raised a kidnapped child?

Peg Reif’s daughter, adopted from South Korea in the 1980s, had sent her a link to a documentary detailing how the system that made their family was rife with fraud: documents falsified, babies switched, children snatched off the street and sent abroad.

Reif wept.

She was among more than 120 who contacted The Associated Press this fall, after a series of stories and a documentary made with Frontline exposed how Korea created a baby pipeline, designed to ship children abroad as quickly as possible to meet Western demand. The reporting shook adoption communities around the world with details about how agencies competed for babies — pressuring mothers, bribing hospitals, fabricating documents. Most who wrote were adoptees, but some were adoptive parents like Reif, horrified to learn they had supported this system.

“I can’t stand the thought that somebody lost their child,” Reif said. “I can’t stop thinking about it. I don’t know how to make it right. I don’t know if I can.”

Forty years ago, she was struggling with infertility. She and her husband pinned their dreams for a family on adopting a baby from Mexico, paid an agency thousands of dollars and waited for months. Then the agency’s directors were arrested, and they learned that those Mexican babies had been taken from their families against their will. Reif was heartbroken but recalls even now looking at her husband and saying, “Thank God we don’t have a child who was stolen.”

But now she isn’t sure of that. Because then they adopted two Korean children, and brought them to their home in rural Wisconsin, first a son and then a daughter. The two were not biological siblings, but both arrived with strangely similar stories in their files: their young unmarried mothers worked in factories with fathers who disappeared after they got pregnant.

Back then, Reif still believed the common narrative about foreign adoption: it saved children who might otherwise live the rest of their lives in an orphanage, die or be damned to poverty.

“I don’t believe that anymore,” Reif said. “I don’t know what to believe.”

Cameron Lee Small, a therapist in Minneapolis whose practice caters to adoptees and their families, said many are feeling an intense sense of betrayal. Individual adoptees had long shared stories of falsified identities. But the revelations this year pointed to systemwide practices that routinely changed babies’ origin stories to process adoptions quickly, including listing them as “abandoned” even when they had known parents.

Small, who was also adopted from Korea in the 1980s, summarized what he’s been hearing from adoptees: “I’m kind of back to nothing. What do I believe now? Who can I believe?”

Reif’s daughter, Jenn Hamilton, spent her life thinking she was unwanted, often quipping, “That’s what happens when you’re found in a dumpster as a baby.”

It has taken a toll on her all her life: She’s been happily married for nine years, she said, but she has this insatiable insecurity: “I constantly find myself asking my husband, ‘Are you mad at me? Did I do something wrong?’ Do you want to leave me?'”

She has no idea anymore if abandonment was ever really her story, with revelations of abuses so systemic that even the Korean government likened it to “trafficking.”

“You can’t make that many mistakes. It has to be intentional. It was this huge tree of deception,” she said. “I feel disgusted.”

Holt International, the U.S.-based agency that pioneered adoptions from Korea, did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story.

Reform is sweeping across Europe — countries have launched investigations, halted foreign adoptions and apologized to adoptees for failing to protect them. But the United States, which has taken in the most adopted children by far, has not done a review of its own history or culpability.

The U.S. State Department told AP this summer that it would work with its historian to piece together its history, and detailed initial findings that some documents might have been falsified. But it said there was no evidence that U.S. officials were aware of it. The State Department has since said that it has “been unable to identify any records that could provide insight into the U.S. government role in adoptions from South Korea in the 1970s and 1980s.”

Korea’s National Police Agency confirmed an increase in adoptees registering their DNA for family searches — both at domestic police stations and diplomatic offices across North America and Europe — in the weeks following the release of the AP stories and documentary in September. More than 120 adoptees registered their DNA in October and November, compared to an average of fewer than 30 a month from January to August.

Korea’s government has maintained that adoptions were a necessary tool to care for needy children, including babies of unwed mothers or other children deemed as abandoned. However, Korea’s Ministry of Health and Welfare acknowledged to AP that the adoption boom in the 1970s and 80s was possibly fueled by a desire to reduce welfare costs.

Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been investigating government accountability over foreign adoption problems since 2022, prompted by complaints filed by hundreds of adoptees, and is expected to release an interim report in February. The Commission has posted the AP stories on its website.

A law passed in 2023 mandates that all adoption records be transferred from private agencies to a government department called the National Center for the Rights of the Child by July, to centralize the handling of family search requests. The center has confirmed that private agencies hold about 170,000 adoption files, but director Chung Ick-Joong doubts it will acquire a space to store and manage all these records in time, due to financial constraints and other challenges. The agency expects family search requests to increase dramatically – “possibly by tenfold,” according to Chung — yet has funding to add only five staff members to its team of six searchers.

Chung acknowledged that flaws in adoption laws had persisted for decades, and Korea only required adoptions to go through courts and birth records to be preserved after 2012.

“It’s difficult to determine who was responsible for the inaccuracies in records before then,” he said. “The adoption agency might have been at fault, the biological parents may have lied, or something might have gone wrong at the orphanage … no one truly knows what the truth is.”

Korean adoption agencies have mostly declined AP’s requests for comment in recent months, often citing privacy concerns.

Advocates insist that most adoptive families thrive, with both the parents and children happily living their lives without questioning the industry as Reif and Hamilton have.

Hamilton grew up in a rural, almost exclusively white community in Wisconsin, and back then all she wanted was to be accepted. But having children of her own changed that. When her first child was born, she looked at him, and it took her breath away.

“It can’t explain it, like this is the first person I know in my life that I’m biologically related to,” she said.

She wanted to learn her own history, so her children could know theirs. She wrote a letter to her adoption agency, which within weeks connected her with a woman they said was her mother. It was emotional, shocking.

But soon she felt like she had more questions than answers. The woman’s name didn’t match the one listed on paperwork, and the name she gave for the father was also different. Birthdates didn’t match, the birthplace didn’t either. They had not met in a factory, she said, they had been pen pals.

Hamilton asked the woman to take a DNA test, but she said she didn’t know how to access one. Hamilton came to believe this woman was not her birth mother.

The AP’s reporting found numerous cases where agencies connected adoptees with supposed birth families, only for them to later discover after emotional meetings that they weren’t related at all.

Hamilton has been trying to untangle the DNA results on her father’s side, contacting people distantly related, cousins once removed, half great aunts.

“It becomes an obsession,” Hamilton said. “It’s like a puzzle that you start, and you have to find the missing pieces.”

Lynelle Long, the founder of InterCountry Adoptee Voices, the largest organization of adoptees in the world, said governments at the very least need to legally mandate that agencies provide adoptees with their full and redacted documents, without the payment now often required.

Long said parents like Reif have an important role, because in Western countries, laws always favored the desires of adoptive parents — designed to make adoptions quicker and easier. Many clung to the narrative that they saved needy orphans who should be grateful, she said, especially in the U.S., where the reckoning rocking Europe has not taken hold.

“We really need adoptive parents in the United States, if they have any inkling of guilt or shame or loss, to step up, take responsibility and demand that legislation be put in place to criminalize these practices and prevent it from ever happening again,” Long said.

Hamilton is close to her parents; she just renovated the basement to accommodate their visits. She’s sad for herself, she said, but she’s sadder for her mother, who is desperate to learn if her children actually had parents somewhere, searching for them.

“And I’m like, ‘Why, so you can send us back?” Hamilton said. “I don’t want to be a victim.”

She said she’s glad she was adopted, and does not long for that different, alternative life in Korea.

Reif loves her children profoundly, she said. But she doesn’t think she would adopt from abroad again, if she’d known then what she knows now.

“I’d rather be childless than think I have somebody else’s child that didn’t want to give them up,” she said. “I think of somebody taking my child. Those poor families, I just can’t imagine it.”
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BEIJING — A fire at a food market Saturday in northern China killed at least eight people and injured 15 others, state media said.

The fire at the Liguang market in the city of Zhangjiakou, northwest of Beijing, broke out midday Saturday and was mostly extinguished by 2 p.m., Xinhua News Agency reported, citing a government official in the Qiaoxi District, where the market is located.

“The injured have been sent to hospital for treatment and are currently not in life-threatening danger,” the government official said. The cause of the fire is under investigation.

Such traditional markets are often tightly packed with shoppers seeking prices lower than at supermarket chains.

Fire sources can range from gas bottles to charcoal used to roast meat and discarded cigarettes while aging infrastructure, such as underground gas lines, has also been blamed for fires and explosions.

Footage shared online and geolocated by Agence France-Presse showed people outside the market fleeing the blaze while thick smoke billowed skyward.

Other videos showed firefighters battling the flames and carrying victims away from the scene.

Deadly fires are relatively common in China due to lax building codes and an often-slipshod approach to workplace safety.

A blaze in the major city of Chengdu in October left 24 people hospitalized with breathing difficulties, state media reported.

In July, a fire at a shopping center in the southwestern city of Zigong killed 16 people.

Zhangjiakou, located in Hebei province bordering Beijing, hosted events during the 2022 Winter Olympic Games.

Some information in this report is from Agence France-Presse.
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Prosecutors in China pressed charges this week against a Myanmar-based telecom scam ring, which was busted last year. The group is accused of using armed forces to abduct and force Chinese nationals to work for the fraudsters. Despite of China’s crackdown efforts, such fraud operations remain rampant.

Click here for the full story in Mandarin.
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Washington — President Joe Biden has made good on his months of public opposition to the proposed purchase of American company U.S. Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel, announcing Friday he is blocking the $14.9 billion takeover.  

The acquisition would “place one of America’s largest steel producers under foreign control and create risk for our national security and our critical supply chains,” he said in a statement. He did not elaborate on how the deal would jeopardize national security.

The collapse of the proposed acquisition represents a victory for workers of the company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, an electorally crucial swing state. In March, the powerful United Steelworkers union endorsed Biden, who at that time was still running for reelection in the November election. 

“This was clearly a political decision that President Biden had been chewing over for a long time. He is determined to demonstrate that he’s going to protect American workers, and particularly in the steel sector,” said Matthew Goodman, director of the RealEcon Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations. 

“It is an important sector, and it is subject to unfair trade practices, but it’s hard to really understand the national security logic of blocking this transaction,” he told VOA. 

Federal law gives the president power to block a transaction based on the recommendation of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, chaired by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and made up of other Cabinet members. Last month, CFIUS failed to reach consensus on the possible national security risks of the deal. 

Biden made the announcement in his remaining days in office, despite some analysts and advisers warning that his rejection of the deal could damage relations with Japan, a key U.S. ally and trade partner. Especially with a looming trade war under the incoming Trump administration who has vowed to slap high tariffs on trading partners. 

“We need allies especially in the war — a potential war against China,” said John Ferrari, nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.  

“Japan is a staunch ally in the Pacific. They have prowess in ship building and in manufacturing, and so we need them,” Ferrari told VOA. “Allowing them to invest in the United States would make us stronger.” 

President-elect Donald Trump, who is set to come to power on Jan. 20, also opposes the acquisition. In a November social media post, he vowed to block the deal and to use tax incentives and tariffs to grow U.S. Steel. 

Both Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel have vowed to pursue legal action, citing that the U.S. government failed to follow proper procedures in considering the acquisition. 

“The President’s statement and Order do not present any credible evidence of a national security issue, making clear that this was a political decision,” the companies said in a statement. “Following President Biden’s decision, we are left with no choice but to take all appropriate action to protect our legal rights.” 

The announcement followed other protectionist moves by the administration. Last year, Biden tripled tariffs on steel imports from China. 

“For too long, U.S. steel companies have faced unfair trade practices as foreign companies have dumped steel on global markets at artificially low prices, leading to job losses and factory closures in America,” the president said in his statement Friday. 
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