Rapid Expansion of China’s ‘Air Silk Road’
Cargo companies have opened dozens of routes connecting European cities and China since June 2024, according to new analysis of flight history data by Washington advocacy group Uyghur Human Rights Project.
As of May 2025 more than 40 freight routes connected Europe to Urumqi and Kashgar international airports, according to the report. The flights carry goods including electronics, e-commerce goods and agricultural products, which are at high risk of being produced with Uyghur forced labor.
“These cargo routes … represent a dangerous normalization of trade with a region where atrocity crimes are ongoing and forced labor is widespread,” said report co-author Peter Irwin, Associate Director for Research and Advocacy at the Uyghur Human Rights Project.
Bullying Incident Trends on Weibo
Police used batons and pepper spray to control a protest against bullying in Sichuan earlier this month, social media videos showed, in a rare example of public dissent briefly trending on the Chinese internet.
More than 1,000 people gathered on August 4 to protest the beating of a young girl by three teenagers in the city of Jiangyou, according to reports and video of the incident.
“People just wanted justice,” an unidentified witness told the BBC. “People were upset about the [lack of] punishment.”
Jiangyou was the second-highest trending topic on Chinese social media platform Weibo before keywords around the incident were censored.
Such protests are usually quickly scrubbed from the internet in China, where the ruling Communist Party suppresses opposition and perceived threats to social stability.
CCP Harassment of China Scholars
U.K. academics and students studying China studies face harassment by the Chinese Communist Party, according to a survey by the UK-China Transparency think tank.
The report, based on evidence compiled from 50 responses, found widespread self-censorship among U.K. scholars in China studies, with 58 percent agreeing that “a history of researching, teaching or speaking publicly on highly sensitive issues” makes “it difficult for China studies practitioners to get a visa to visit China.”
Various forms of serious harassment towards academics in the U.K. were noted, including a “severe campaign of digital harassment” against one academic, and a visiting scholar from China whispering to another, “We’re watching you.”
University administrators, apparently motivated by “serious financial dependency on Chinese student fees,” often pressured scholars to alter teaching and research content.
One scholar, who faced pressure to remove teaching elements that could offend nationalist Chinese students, was questioned by funders about offending China and received threats from the Chinese government, with international student recruitment teams kept informed about the scholar’s funding applications.
Three respondents singled out Chinese Student and Scholar Associations as surveillance vectors, with one saying, “Chinese Students and Scholars Associations are probably the primary source of student spies on campus, with observable and constant connections with local consulates.”
A report released earlier this month by the U.K. Joint Committee on Human Rights found that the Chinese government used a “broad range of tactics” to go after critics in other countries, “including surveillance, online harassment and threats to family members abroad.”
Feared Chinese Influence in Telegraph Sale
A group of nine human rights and freedom of expression groups on Wednesday called on the U.K. government to investigate The Telegraph newspaper’s GBP 500 million ($671 million) sale to RedBird Capital Partners, a U.S. private equity firm with links to China through its chairman.
The NGOs, which include ARTICLE 19 and Hong Kong Watch, wrote to U.K. culture secretary Lisa Nandy that “RedBird Capital’s ties to China … threaten media pluralism, transparency and information integrity in the U.K.”
They pointed out that RedBird Capital Chairman John Thornton sits on the advisory council of China’s sovereign wealth fund and chaired the Silk Road Finance Corporation.
The letter noted how, in a talk on U.S.-China relations in 2023, Thornton relayed having advised senior Chinese officials to insert themselves into English-language media to better shape international narratives.
RedBird Capital has rejected the accusations.
Mass Detentions During Dalai Lama’s Birthday
Beijing implemented stringent security measures and mass detentions in Tibet during the Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday celebrations last month, restricting religious activities and gatherings, intensifying surveillance and detaining Tibetans to suppress expressions of devotion, the Central Tibetan Administration said in a news release on Thursday.
Macao Ex-Lawmaker Held
Human Rights Watch called on Macao authorities to release former lawmaker and pro-democracy activist Au Kam San (區錦新).
Au, a member of Macau’s Legislative Assembly until 2021, was arrested on July 30 for violating article 13 of the Law on Safeguarding National Security.
The 68-year-old Portuguese citizen is accused of “having long-term contacts” with “overseas anti-China entities,” spreading “false and inflammatory information” and “causing foreign countries to take hostile actions against Macao.”
Global South Not Worried About Chinese Human Rights Policies
China’s human rights policies were an area of least concern in middle-income countries compared to other bilateral issues, according to a Pew Research Center report published on July 15, with a median of 28% saying they were a very serious problem.
More people in Mexico, South Africa and Turkey said U.S. human rights policies were a very serious problem for their country than those of China. In Indonesia, Kenya, Brazil, Argentina and Nigeria, people viewed both similarly.
The exception was India, where 35% viewed China’s human rights policies as a very serious problem, compared to 20% for the U.S.
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