BEIJING, 4 April, 2021 (TON): At least 11 people were killed after a truck collided with a passenger bus in eastern China over a busy holiday weekend, media reported on Sunday.

The truck drove through a barrier on a highway north of Shanghai in Jiangsu province and crashed into the bus around 1 a.m. local time Sunday (1700 GMT), sources said.

As traffic piled up at the site of the crash, two other trucks were involved in a rear-end collision. Nineteen people were injured and sent to the hospital.

Footage broadcast by local media showed the passenger bus overturned amid the debris from the barrier. Other early morning videos showed rescue vehicles and two cranes in action.

Road accidents are still common in China, due to poor compliance with the highway code.

TEHRAN, 4 April, 2021 (TON): Iranian Parliament (Majlis) Speaker Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf said on Sunday that the roadmap for the Iranian 25- Year Corporation with China was a serious warning to the US.

He said that the document made the US learn that international relations are changing rapidly to the detriment of the country so that it is no longer in a position to impose a model, program, or agreement unilaterally on independent states.

Noting that the world is not limited to the West, and the next century is the century of Asia, the Iranian speaker said, highlighting the roadmap as strategic.  

He proposed that the same models can also be pursued for the improvement of strategic relations with other countries, the neighboring countries in particular.  

Ghalibaf said that the roadmap only draws general outlines for relations between the two countries and future plans are needed to turn the document into tangible economic cooperation and cooperation in many other areas.

BEIJING, 30 March, 2021, (TON): Beijing affirmed a general update of Hong Kong's electing framework on Tuesday, a senior legislator who works with China's parliament on matters relating to the former British colony’s mini-constitution, said.

The actions are important for Beijing's endeavors to solidify its increasingly authoritarian grasp over the worldwide monetary center point following the burden of public safety law in June, which critics see as an instrument to pound contradict.

Maria Tam said Hong Kong’s election committee, in charge of selecting the city’s chief executive, will pick 40 representatives of the city’s legislature as part of the reforms approved by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee.

Beijing will also increase the size of the electoral committee from 1,200 to 1,500, as part of the restructuring. Chinese authorities have said the shake-up is aimed at getting rid of “loopholes and deficiencies” that threatened national security during anti-government unrest in 2019 and to ensure only “patriots” run the city.

The measures are the most significant overhaul of Hong Kong’s political structure since it returned to Chinese rule in 1997 and alter the size and composition of the legislature and electoral committee in favor of pro-Beijing figures.

BEIJING, 28 March, 2021, (TON): There was and is no constrained work in cotton creation in Xinjiang, said Li Xuejun, a senior territorial administrator on Friday.

Li, deputy director of the Standing Committee of the People's Congress of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, said this at a joint video promotion event for Xinjiang with the Chinese embassy in Britain.

He said that cotton production in Xinjiang has already achieved a high degree of mechanization. There is not a large number of cotton-picking workers even in the busy picking season.

Li noticed that cotton endeavors in Xinjiang are lawfully enrolled and work as indicated by-laws and guidelines. Laborers' privileges to installment, rest, culture, government assistance, and others are completely ensured, he said.

BEIJING, 28 March, 2021, (TON):  China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has released a plan to expand the coverage of the country's gigabit network to benefit more people.

The gigabit optical network is expected to cover 200 million Chinese households by the end of this year, which should be doubled to 400 million by the end of 2023, according to the plan.

China also aims to increase its gigabit broadband users to exceed 10 million by the end of 2021, the plan added.

5G internet should be made available in all areas above the county level and some key townships by the end of this year, the plan noted. 

BEIJING, 28 March, 2021, (TON): Iran and China on Saturday signed a 25-year key collaboration understanding tending to monetary issues in the midst of devastating US sanctions on Iran.

The agreement dubbed the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, covers a variety of economic activity from oil and mining to promoting industrial activity in Iran, as well as transportation and agricultural collaborations, according to the report. No additional details of the agreement were revealed as Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Chinese counterpart Wang Yi took part in a ceremony marking the event.

Before the ceremony Saturday, Yi met Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and a special Iranian envoy in charge of the deal Ali Larijani.

Saeed Khatibzadeh, spokesman for Iran's Foreign Ministry, on Friday called the agreement “deep, multi-layer and full-fledged.” 

The deal, which had been discussed since 2016, also supports tourism and cultural exchanges. It comes on the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Iran.

The two nations have had warm relations and both participated in a joint maritime exercise in 2019 with Russia in the northern Indian Ocean.

BEIJING, 26 March, 2021, (TON): China authorized associations and people in the UK on Friday over what it called “lies and disinformation” about Xinjiang, days after Britain forced approvals for denials of basic freedoms in the western Chinese locale.

The Chinese foreign ministry (FM) said in a statement it sanctioned four entities and nine individuals, including lawmakers such as former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith and the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission that “maliciously spread lies and disinformation.”

Directed people and their close relatives are restricted from entering the Chinese region, the service said, adding that Chinese residents and establishments will be disallowed from working with them.

The move is a retaliation to a coordinated set of sanctions imposed by the United States, European Union, Britain and Canada against Beijing over what they say are human rights violations against the Uighur Muslim minorities in Xinjiang. Beijing has already applied retaliatory sanctions against the EU that were in line with Friday’s announcement.

“China is firmly determined to safeguard its national sovereignty, security and development interests, and warns the UK side not to go further down the wrong path,” the Chinese ministry said. “Otherwise, China will resolutely make further reactions.”

Activists and U.N. rights experts say at least 1 million Muslims have been detained in camps in Xinjiang. The activists and some Western politicians accuse China of using torture, forced labor and sterilizations. China has repeatedly denied all accusations of abuse and says its camps offer vocational training and are needed to fight extremism.

BEIJING, 24 March, 2021, (TON): China on Tuesday said it called unfamiliar ambassadors in a fight after the United States, the European Union, Canada and Britain mutually forced approvals on senior Chinese authorities over supposed denials of basic liberties in China's far western Xinjiang locale.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying on Tuesday called the new sanctions a “slander and an affront to the reputation and dignity of the Chinese people.” 

“I admonish them that they should not underestimate the firm determination of the Chinese people to defend their national interests and dignity, and they will pay the price for their folly and arrogance,” Hua told the reporters in a briefing.

That came hours after the Chinese and Russian foreign ministers censured new wave analysis and authorizations against the two nations over common liberties. At a news gathering in the southern Chinese city of Nanning, China's Wang Yi and Russia's Sergei Lavrov dismissed external scrutinizes of their tyrant political frameworks and said they were working to additional worldwide advancement on issues from environmental change to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Countries should stand together to oppose all forms of unilateral sanctions,” Wang said. “These measures will not be embraced by the international community.”

Russia is additionally under Western assents over denials of basic freedoms and military animosity against Ukraine. Lavrov said Russia's binds with China developed further as Moscow's relations with the EU endured harm, while blaming the West for “imposing their own rules on everyone else, which they believe should underpin the world order.”

 “If Europe broke these relations, simply destroying all the mechanisms that have been created for many years ... Then, probably, objectively, this leads to the fact that our relations with China are developing faster than what’s left of relations with European countries,” Lavrov said.

In a joint statement issued after the meeting, the two ministers said no country should seek to impose its form of democracy on others.

The statement said, “Interference in a sovereign nation’s internal affairs under the excuse of advancing democracy’ is unacceptable,”

NEW DEHLI, 18 March, 2021, (TON):  Indian National security advisor Ajit Doval and American Defence Secretary General Lloyd Austin are likely to discuss China and important regional security issues including Afghanistan during the first visit by a top Biden administration official to India starting this Friday.

Austin is visiting India from March 19 to 21 in which he will be meeting the top political and military leadership of the country.

"The American Defence Secretary and national security advisor Ajit Doval are likely to meet on Friday itself during which they are expected to set the stage for the visit by discussing all important security issues including China," government sources told.

India and America have been working closely with each other after the Chinese attempts to change the status quo in the eastern Ladakh area in April May time frame last year.

The American side also helped by providing timely defense hardware supplies during the conflict apart from sharing important satellite feed and inputs.

BEIJING, 18 March, 2021, (TON): Chinese regulators recently summoned 11 domestic technology companies including Alibaba Group, Tencent and ByteDance for talks on use of ‘deepfake’ technologies on their content platforms, stepping up scrutiny of the sector.

China’s cyberspace administrator said in a statement on Thursday that it and the public security ministry met with the companies to talk about “security assessments” and potential problems with deepfakes and audio social apps. Kuaishou Technology and Xiaomi Corp also attended the meeting, it said.

Deepfakes use artificial intelligence to create hyper-realistic but fake videos or audios where a person appears to say or do something they did not.

China has increased scrutiny of its internet giants in recent months, citing concerns over monopolistic behavior and potential infringement of consumer rights. “Conduct security assessments on their own” and submit reports to the government when they plan to add new functions or new information services that “have the ability to mobilize society”, the statement said.

The clubhouse was briefly accessible in China, attracting many users who participated in discussions on sensitive topics such as Xinjiang detention camps and Hong Kong independence, before it was shut down by authorities.