Ten-year travel ban imposed on one of China’s ‘Feminist Five’
A summary of the top news in Chinese politics and current affairs for September 13, 2017. Part of the daily The China Project newsletter, a convenient package of China’s business, political, and cultural news delivered to your inbox for free. Subscribe here.
Chinese gender equality activist Wu Rongrong 武嵘嵘, one of the five feminists who were arrested in 2015 for distributing anti-sexual-harassment materials in public, is bound to miss her first semester at the University of Hong Kong’s (HKU) law school because she is banned from leaving mainland China for 10 years, the South China Morning Post reports.
Granted admission to a full-time master’s program with a scholarship at HKU, Wu successfully obtained a visa from Hong Kong’s Immigration Department in July. However, two months later, Wu was handed an unexpected notice from the public security bureau of Luliang in Shanxi Province that her application for a new travel permit to Hong Kong had been denied, and that police had “clear facts, irrefutable evidence and proper basis” to reject her request because she was “barred from leaving China by law.” According to documents presented to Wu, she is denied permission to travel overseas for 10 years because she was involved in “other illegal cases yet to be handled.”
Wu said she decided to fight the decision and plans to file a lawsuit against the public security bureaus. A HK government source told SCMP that the Hong Kong’s immigration office could do nothing and only mainland authorities could give her permission to leave.
- 19th Party Congress
After toiling in rural China, protégé of Xi Jinping joins party’s top tiers / NYT (paywall)
Opinion: Xi Jinping projects a false sense of economic calm ahead of his coronation / WSJ (paywall) - Territorial claims
China sent a ship to the Arctic for science. Then state media announced a new trade route. / Washington Post (paywall)
Indonesia, long on sidelines, starts to confront China’s territorial claims / NYT (paywall) - U.S.-China relations
Steve Bannon: China and U.S. can avoid trade war — if Beijing stops ‘appropriating our technology’ / SCMP
Trade investigation pours ‘cold water’ on U.S.-China relationship, Chinese official says / CNBC
Bannon: U.S. to flag trade probe findings before Xi-Trump summit / SCMP
Why Ivanka Trump’s visit to China was canceled / SCMP
“John Kelly, the chief of staff of the White House, did not think Kushner would be an appropriate channel.”
