Circling the square: Will China’s youth rebel again?

     

China’s freedom-seeking youths last rose up in 1989. Might they again? the Economist asks. 

The country’s youth merit attention for the simple reason that they will one day be the people in charge, it adds. Over the next decade they will gain influential positions in China’s booming private-sector firms—or set up their own. More than half of Chinese in their 20s express a desire to start their own business. Others will climb up the ranks of the ruling Communist Party. How they understand their country’s past and what they ask of its future are essential to understand how they might one day lead China.

Prominent Chinese lawyer Yu Wensheng, jailed for his advocacy for human rights and the rule of law, has been named a finalist for a prominent human rights award, the same week that reports emerged of his poor health, John Chan writes for China Digital Times. The news on Yu’s health, who is serving a four year sentence for ‘inciting subversion,’ came after his wife was unexpectedly granted permission to briefly speak to him via video call for the first time in three years.

In one of his last acts as president, Donald Trump issued an executive order banning eight Chinese software applications, note National Endowment for Democracy board member Nadia Schadlow and Richard Kang in Foreign Affairs. China’s emerging dominance in financial technology, also known as “fintech,” poses a fundamental problem for the United States. Beijing will likely use fintech to occupy the high ground in global commerce, bolster its surveillance state, and lay the groundwork to challenge the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

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