The Iriomote Eco project (head: Takafusa Morimoto) picked up the drifted wastes in Iriomote island in the 2003 business year to 2017 and checked them out. The result was that the fishing implements, the plastic bottles made in China and wracks of the driftwood were increasing in these 14 years.

In addition, according to Morimoto, wastes kill the tide‐water control forests including calophyllum inophyllum and the mangrove forests, and disturb the growth of the sprouts.

In late years except 2016, the collection gross weight of the drifted wastes exceeds 100 tons a year, and Styrofoam and plastic occupy approximately 90% when they looked by a classification.

They collect 10,000 drifted plastic bottles a year, and classify production countries by the label. The plastic bottles made in Taiwan and Korea were conspicuous in 2003, but 70% is made in China now. Made in Vietnam and Singapore are increasing.

Morimoto says that one of the causes that the roots of mangroves and umbrella trees decay is that the garbage including the fishing net, the rope and the toxic substance gets entangled in the roots. They confirm that the roots corroded and the forest Zone retreated up to 10 meters in the landside in comparison with more than 20 years before in the East Coast of the island.

They are going to work on the problem of the drifted wastes including cleaning activities and the environmental classroom for local parents and children.

(Global Times)

That was the dilemma facing a Chinese runner during the final phase of the Suzhou Marathon in eastern China on Sunday.

While running her final leg, athlete He Yinli was handed a Chinese national flag from a “volunteer” who rushed to her from the sideline.

He -- who was trying to overtake the front runner -- held on to the flag for a few seconds before dropping it to the ground. She ended up losing to an Ethiopian competitor and placed second in the race.

The live stream of the marathon showed another “volunteer” had made a similar attempt moments earlier but the 30-year-old runner didn’t take that flag.

The episode, caught live on television, has stirred a heated debate across the country.

A commentator on state broadcaster CCTV, which aired the race, voiced his disapproval.

“Right now racing for the championship is the most important thing,” he said. “At this moment, she is gritting her teeth and this off-track factor has affected her performance.”

When the Chinese athlete’s Ethiopian rival steadily moved further away from her and crossed the finish line, the commentator lamented: “It’s such a pity at the end.”

Lack of patriotism?

While most Chinese internet users have condemned the interference in He’s race and bemoaned her missed opportunity for the championship, others have questioned her patriotism for dropping the flag.

“The video shows that He Yinli crumpled the flag and tossed it away -- is the race result more important than the national flag?” wrote Wei Jing, another Chinese marathon runner, on Weibo, the Chinese equivalence of Twitter.

The athlete responded by posting on her Weibo page that she didn’t throw the flag away on purpose and asked for understanding from the public.

“The national flag was drenched and my arm was stiff -- the flag just slipped away as I swung my arms,” He said.

The accusation of “tossing away” the national flag is a serious charge in China. Any act deemed disrespectful of the national flag in public can result in up to three years in prison, according to China’s criminal code.

Official turnaround

Despite the debate over He’s treatment of the national flag, many people have directed their criticisms at the organizers, amid reports that Chinese runners are required to drape themselves in the national flag before reaching the finish line.

Faced with criticism on social media, Suzhou officials -- after initially claiming the “volunteer’s actions were entirely individual decisions” -- turned around and apologized to He on Monday.

“Flag-draping is a good thing and it awes the onlookers at the scene,” said one unnamed organizer to the state-run Beijing Youth Daily newspaper. “But the cold and rainy weather, which caused the road to be slippery, contributed to the accident.”

CCTV, a media partner for a series of marathon races in China, has also weighed in, coming to He’s defense.

“How does one express patriotism? It’s certainly not holding it up high and walking around with it every day,” the state broadcaster said in a commentary posted on its Weibo page. “It’s a sense of identity from the bottom of one’s heart.”

“To athletes, winning is patriotism.”

無印良品 (Muji)		无(＝無)印良品 (Muji)
tag		tag
cotton swab		cotton swab
stationery		stationery

As for “Muji” the simple design is popular. It has approximately 450 stores in Japan. More than 240 stores in China. An emergency situation happened in “Muji”.

The store on the right side written as “无印良品” by Chinese notation is the shop irrelevant to the Japanese “無印良品”, but “無印良品” is written on the tag of the product, not “无印良品”. Furthermore, the indication of the cotton swab resembles the product of “Muji” very much.

This Chinese shop that looks just like “Muji” has 30 stores in China. But there are many evaluations to point out lower quality of the products.

The Chinese shop appealed for the Japanese “Muji” by “rights abuse”. With that alone it is a surprise, but more surprisingly, the Japanese side lost the case. The Chinese court handed down decision that ordered “Muji” to pay approximately 10 million yen and apologize for 30 days in the stores and the online site.

The person concerned with the Chinese shop: “Japanese ‘Muji‘ plagiarized us later”.

The Japanese “Muji” established the first shop in China in 2005.

But a different company acquired the trademark of “無印良品” with a bedcover and a towel in China in 2001.

The Chinese company had filed a suit for the compensation for damages against a Japanese “Muji”, saying that the right was infringed.

The Japanese “Muji” appealed against a higher court and is disputing now.

China’s embassy in Stockholm has lashed out at Sweden’s national television broadcaster, demanding an apology for “insulting China” in a comedy show referring to a controversial case involving three Chinese tourists.

The embassy said on Saturday that the Sveriges Television (SVT) programme, which was aired on Friday night, and presenter Jesper Ronndahl “spread and advocate racism and xenophobia outright”.

“SVT argued that this is an entertainment programme, an argument which is totally unacceptable and we firmly reject. We urge SVT and the programme to immediately give an apology,” the embassy said.

A couple and their adult son surnamed Zeng ? who arrived at a hostel in the Swedish capital just after midnight on September 2, about 14 hours before check-in time.

The family asked if they could wait in the lobby and refused to leave the premises when they were not allowed to stay. Hostel staff called the police and officers escorted them outside.

China said the tourists were mistreated and accused Sweden of violating diplomatic protocol by not responding to its request for a thorough investigation.

Gui Congyou, China’s ambassador in Sweden, said it was “inhumane” for the Swedish police to take the family to an outdoor area at midnight.

Three female Chinese university students have been shamed into apology after leaving their Airbnb apartment in Japan in a state of complete and total disarray.

Earlier this week, the owner of the apartment posted photos onto Weibo showing how the place looked after the trio of students had checked out. The images show piles of trash on the floor and on the dresser, as well as a mountain of toilet paper heaped alongside the toilet, which, for some reason, has a stool on top of it.

Along with the stench of rotten food, the students, all 19 years old, also left behind scribbles in every page of the guestbook that the owner had laid out, even sketching a picture of a pile of poop on one page.

They were there for only five days.

The owner messaged one of the women, demanding that they compensate him double the cost of cleaning (3,000 yen, $26), however, the students were completely unrepentant. “We spent money for a place to live, not to clean. This isn’t my home, I don’t have to tidy up for you,” the woman wrote back.

However, the students quickly changed their tune when photos of the mess they left went viral, leading to Chinese netizens digging up their identities and harassing them on social media and over the phone. Soon, one of the women wrote on Weibo that they wanted to “seek forgiveness,” apologizing to the apartment owner and saying that they were willing to pay compensation.

However, the owner has said that he cannot accept their apology, calling it fake. It’s not clear if the women actually will compensate the owner.

A Chinese national identified as Liu Jiaqi has been deported by Kenyan authorities after a racially abusive video went viral on social media in the East African country.

Jiaqi, who trades in motorbikes in a chat with a Kenyan employee is heard describing Kenyans even the president Uhuru Kenyatta as “monkeys.” His rant was recorded by the employee who he was about to fire.

“I don’t like here, like a monkey people. I don’t like [to] talk with them. Smells bad and poor… and black. Who like them? Why not the bright people like the Americans?,” he said.

The immigration department confirmed that he had been apprehended, his residency revoked and subsequently deported as at Thursday afternoon.

AFP quotes an embassy official, Zhang Gang, as saying that the video was recorded in June and that the man had been “punished by his company for his wrongdoing and apologised to his Kenyan colleague.

“The personal talk and personal feeling of this young man does not represent the views of the vast majority of Chinese people,” he added.

It comes days after the end of Forum on China-Africa relations in the Chinese capital, Beijing. Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta joined over fifty of his counterparts for the summit.

Martin Kimani, a top government official praised the authorities for their decisive action on what he said was a “the most lethal idea in human history: racial categories and hierarchies.

“It has led to mass murder, genocide, has been used to justify and spread slavery, and it was at the root of the colonial brutality and thievery here,” he added.

Nauru's president has demanded China apologise for a senior envoy’s "crazy" behaviour at the Pacific Islands Forum, and lashed out at Beijing's "arrogant" presence in the region.

They're not our friends. They just need us for their own purposes, President Baron Waqa said. "Sorry, but I have to be strong on this because no one is to come and dictate things to us."

We're seeing a lot of big countries coming in and sometimes buying their way through the Pacific, some are extremely aggressive, even to the point that they tread all over us, Waqa said. "From this forum, all leaders [now] know how arrogant some of these people are."

Waqa said such behaviour merited an apology from Beijing. “We won't just seek an apology, we'll even take it up to the UN,” he said. “Not only that, I will mention it at the UN and every international meeting.”

This year's annual Pacific summit, which wraps up in Nauru this week, has been one of the most contentious in the event's 49-year history.

The animosity ? fuelled by Nauru’s continued recognisance of Taiwan over China ? erupted spectacularly on Tuesday when the head of China's delegation Du Qiwen attempted to address a meeting but Waqa refused to let him speak until island leaders had finished. Leaked video shows Waqa telling Du: “Show some respect.”

The diplomatic spat pits Nauru ? with a population of 11,000 and a landmass of just 21 square kilometres ? against an Asian superpower that is the most populous country on Earth, with 1.4 billion citizens.

Nauru has remained close to Taiwan largely through Taipei’s financial largesse, including direct monthly payments to members of parliament (described as “project funding that requires minimal accounting”) and grants and aid funding.

Most of the buildings and infrastructure used to host the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) were built or upgraded with Taiwanese money.

Tensions between Nauru and China were first exposed before the forum even started, when Nauru immigration officials refused to stamp the diplomatic passports of the Chinese delegation.

Tuesday’s treatment of the Chinese delegate was seen as a deliberate and public humiliation, the source inside the closed-door meeting said, and a reflection of Pacific suspicions about Chinese intent in the region.

Waqa told a media conference late on Wednesday Du was a “nobody” and “crazy”.

"Would he behave like that in front of his own president? I doubt it. He disrespected the Pacific, the forum island leaders and other ministers who have come to join us in our territory. Are you kidding? Look at him, he's a nobody."

He's not even a minister and he's demanding to be recognised and to speak before the prime minister of Tuvalu. Is he crazy?

Waqa’s exchange with Du highlighted sensitivities over Beijing's rising influence in the Pacific. China is set to overtake Australia as the largest donor to the region, after pledging US$4bn in aid to the region last year.

There are concerns loans from China, if not serviced by small Pacific economies, could be called in by Beijing in debt for equity swaps on disadvantageous terms, giving China increased military access and strategic influence in the region.

China has shown no sign of backing down, with a foreign ministry spokeswoman saying on Wednesday that Nauru violated forum regulations "and staged a bad farce".

On April 28, 2018, the Chinese court accepted the copyright infringement by the company in Fujian Province. The company had applied for the trademark registration of “Robot cat”.

The company of “Robot cat” claimed “This is not Japanese ‘Doraemon’, but Chinese ‘Doraemon’”.

I stayed at a guest‐house in Kyoto city. It was a traditional wooden house. The old married couple of the host lives on the first floor and opens three rooms on the second floor for a hotel guests. Small ornaments are put in many places. Maybe the collection of folk crafts is their hobby. It is one of the charms only in the guest‐house that you can feel breathing of the life of the host.

With the increase of tourists visiting Japan, the rise of the guest‐house is remarkable recently. But the foreign tourists appear in such an old-fashioned guest‐house too. Particularly Chinese tourists turn interest in them.

“Do Chinese tourists stay here?”, I asked the proprietress. She answered with a gloomy expression.

“We accepted the tourists from China before, but ...”

In principle, this guest‐house gives priority to the introduction of the acquaintance or a tourist referring to directly and receives their reservations.

The proprietress talks about the reason in this way.

“Chinese tourists bring big trunks, you know? That damages our wooden house. Besides, they pack things put at our house into their trunks and take them home. There’s no help for it.”

The guest-house is the host’s house as well as the tourist’s accommodation. Naturally you cannot take out the equipments and the interior articles of the guest-house. However, such a common sense does not work to them.

I heard a story in a long-established inn in Kyoto. A Chinese tourist repeatedly requested a yukata. The tourist said, “There is no yukata in my room”. When an employee went to the room to spread futon while thinking questioningly, the employee found the yukata that showed a part in a suitcase. It was the request for “take-out”.

In addition, at a certain accommodation, it became the problem that shampoo bottles often disappeared from the bathroom. They removed the covers of shampoo and the lotion for prevention of “take-out”. But it was in vain. “I thought anybody didn’t take shampoo without the cap, but Chinese did not think so”.

In the Japanese inns and the hotels, there is no end to the screams, “Chinese tourists take equipments home with them”. A dryer, an ashtray and a table clock put in the room are the beginning. An inn in Gifu said, “Chinese took the electric bulb of the ceiling”. A hotel in Shizuoka said, “Chinese took home a vacuum cleaner”. It became a news that Chinese took the toilet seat of the restroom home.

There is another act of the Chinese tourists that worry Japanese accommodations except taking equipments home with them. It is to dirty the room. According to Mr. A, “Chinese tourists have the peculiar idea that ‘It is natural to dirty the room’.”

“If Japanese, they keep it in their mind to use the room neatly. This is because they do not want the hotel thinks that they are tourists of such a level. However, most of Chinese tourists don’t think so. They think that to dirty the room is included in the price.”

The Chinese tourists visiting Japan have been steadily increasing. The problem that “equipments disappear” will continue for the time being after this.

I am sorry that “the act without much thought” of some Chinese tourists harms an overall image. I want Japanese and Chinese travel agencies to do the enlightenment activity to the Chinese tourists by all means, at the same time expect their behavior as the nation of the large country.

The scandal of unjust marking by the Chinese judge occurred in figure skating men's singles at Pyeongchang Olympics 2018. The investigation is going to be carried out.

The suspicion that Chen Weiguang who was the seventh judge at men's figure skating operated marking occurred.

It was brought into question that he gave high score to Boyang Jin (China) who was in the fourth place with 297.77 points. and the other judges expressly gave the lower points to the program of the Chinese skater than Yuzuru Hanyu, Shoma Uno (Japan) and Javier Fernandez (Spain).

The marking for the Chinese skater by the Chinese judge got a question mark. The Chinese judge gave the nine points level to the Chinese player, though the other judges gave the seven points level to him.

On the other hand, the Chinese judge in nine judges gave the lowest evaluation for Fernandez, Uno who became the rival of the fight for medal.

It is said that the Disciplinary Commission of the International Skating Union (ISU) decided to investigate this marking. Furthermore, the possibility for the judge to receive one-year qualification suspension of the license is raised.

China built and paid for the African Union’s computer network – but inserted a backdoor allowing it access to the continental organisation’s confidential information.

In January 2017, the information technology unit at the African Union’s headquarters in Addis Ababa noticed something strange, according to a stunning investigation in French newspaper Le Monde.

Every night, between midnight and 2am, there was a strange peak in data usage - even though the building was almost entirely empty. Upon further investigation, the technicians noticed something even stranger. That data - which included confidential information - was being sent to servers based in Shanghai.

The African Union’s shiny new headquarters was built and paid for by the Chinese government, as a gift to its “African friends”. But when the building was officially opened in 2012, China left a backdoor into the African Union’s computer network, allowing it to access the institution’s secrets at will.

“According to several sources within the institution, all sensitive content could be spied on by China,” wrote Le Monde. “It’s a spectacular leak of data, spread from January 2012 to January 2017.”

The Chinese mission to the AU did not respond to Le Monde’s request for comment.

Once the problem was discovered, African Union officials acted quickly to fix it. The organisation acquired its own servers, and began encrypting its communications. In July 2017, a team of experts from Algeria - a country with a notoriously efficient intelligence community - along with cybersecurity experts from Ethiopia combed the building from top to bottom, looking for hidden microphones and other potential weaknesses.

China would not be the first supposedly friendly superpower to spy on the African Union. A separate investigation in December 2016, conducted by Le Monde and The Intercept, revealed that African Union officials were targeted for surveillance by British intelligence.

British songstress Jesse J who has high popularity in China placed a video with the comment "It's too noisy" on her instagram on January 19th.

In her video, two Chinese men who are sitting on a seat in front of her and on a neighboring seat across the passage are watching videos with their smartphones.

They do not use the earphones and so megavolume flows from their speakers. Jesse felt this a noise and she complained “Why”.

For the first time in their histories, Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi are both in the middle of desperately needed major metro-system projects that aim to transform their cities. Both are facing delays, but a series of high-profile accidents has already cast a larger shadow over the Chinese-led effort in the capital.

In contrast, the metro project led by Japanese conglomerates in Ho Chi Minh City has been accident-free. This feeds into longstanding assumptions in Vietnam about the perceived superiority of Japanese workmanship and engineering.

Hanoi's controversial line

The first metro line in Hanoi broke ground in October 2011 and is called Line 2A. A series of accidents has damaged its public image.

On November 6, 2014, several reels of steel fell from the construction site of a flyover on the line, killing a motorbike driver and injuring two more passers-by. The following month, a 10-metre-high section of scaffolding fell from the same flyover, trapping three people in a taxi that was travelling beneath it.

In 2015, the line drew criticism when people noticed that the track, which runs above major thoroughfares and intersections, looked wavy, raising concerns over its safety. That August a steel bar fell from another construction site onto a car, nearly killing the driver.

This May, a government inspection team detected rust on sections of the train track that hadn’t been covered in protective paint. A number of loose joints were found as well.

Vietnam’s Ministry of Transport has responded swiftly to these incidents by calling for improved safety measures, and while there hasn’t been an accident in roughly two years, the project’s reputation is poor.

Ho Chi Minh City’s safe, slow-moving first line

Down south, Jica has been involved in Ho Chi Minh City’s Line 1 since 2006, when the organisation conducted a feasibility study for the project. Takahashi Akito, a senior representative with Jica Vietnam, said they are now monitoring the construction process and environmental and social issues, in addition to resolving bottlenecks in order to ensure smooth implementation.

While both of the metro lines are behind schedule and over budget, there is a clear difference in their safety records. Ho Chi Minh City’s Line 1 hasn’t suffered any reported accidents

The string of accidents in Hanoi from 2014 to 2015 has, in the eyes of some, hurt the image of the city's vital first metro line. “The line in Ho Chi Minh City is much better perceived,” Michael Waibel, an expert at the University of Hamburg's Department of Human Geography, said. “Apparently, there is a higher trust in Japanese technology.”

Chinese consumers will soon be drinking water from an old wool scour in industrial Christchurch, but they may be confused about where it comes from.

“Cloud Ocean Estate” spring water will be drawn from the city’s aquifers in a factory where sheep wool was once chemically cleansed of contaminants ? but, as it’s described in its packaging, it comes from a “200m deep underground aquifer from renowned Caterbury [sic]”.

Boxes featuring the misspelling were unloaded from trucks in large numbers at the plant, which is gearing up to pump water. The site has a rail siding, allowing large volumes of water to be moved en masse.

The plant’s China-based owners, Cloud Ocean Water, received official permission from Environment Canterbury (ECan) on Thursday to bottle the water it is already allowed to extract, amounting to around 1.5 billion litres per year.

It inherited the take from the former wool scour and applied for a variation allowing it to bottle the water. Use of the water will likely cost the company several hundred dollars per year.

It is unclear if the water will be taken from 200 metres deep, as advertised on the packaging. The company only has permission to bottle water from its existing bore, which is about 30m deep.

It has consent to drill a 200m deep bore, but the Christchurch City Council has raised concerns about interference with its own bores if water was drawn from that depth. The company has not yet applied to take water from the deeper bore.

There was community opposition to granting the bottling consent, primarily through a petition with about 70,000 signatures. Lawyer Peter Richardson also challenged it, citing the effect of the cumulative impact on water levels.

In its decision, however, ECan said there was no reason under the Resource Management Act not to grant the consent, as the water take had been consented long ago and it cannot discriminate based on the planned usage of water.

The packaging, which features both English and Chinese script, also claims the water is more than 1000 years old, and features a heavily-processed image of Aoraki/Mt Cook.

Research has found that some of the deeper aquifer water may be over one thousand years old, but the average age is much lower. The water’s primary source is the Waimakariri River, about 100 kilometres away from Aoraki/Mt Cook.

As concerns were raised about the plant’s water use, a parallel issue arose with what appeared to be routinely unsafe work practices, described by contractors who had been inside.

They included workers precariously balancing on heavy machinery while welding, people sleeping in boxes, and workers unable to operate equipment.

It is understood five separate agencies have raised issues at the site, ranging from waste disposal to workers trespassing on the nearby train yard. WorkSafe had issued eight notices for a range of breaches.

A WorkSafe spokesperson said an inspector had visited again and found five of the eight notices had been addressed.

The company had until the end of January to comply with the other three.

On December 14, “The Genron NPO (Japan)” and “China International Publishing Group” announced the result of the 13th Japan-China Joint Opinion Poll Analysis Report.

88.3% of the Japanese respondents had “Unfavorable” impression of China (including those who answered “Relatively unfavorable,” same definition applies below). The impression of China improved back in 2017 with the percentage going down to 88.3% from 91.6% of 2016.

11.5% of the Japanese respondents had “Favorable” impression of China (including those who answered “Relatively favorable”). It improved with the percentage going up to 11.5% from 8.0% of 2016.

On the other hand, the impression of Japan has steadily improved for 5 years in a row among the Chinese.

66.8% of the Chinese had “Unfavorable” impression of Japan, which was slightly less than the result of 76.7% the year before.

31.5% of the Chinese had “Favorable” impression of Japan. It improved with the percentage going up to 31.5% from 21.7% of 2016.

44.9% of the Japanese consider that Japan-China Relations are currently in a bad place. It has largely decreased from 71.9% of the last year.

64.2% (14% less than last year) of the Chinese also consider the current Japan-China relations to be bad.

On December 5, 2017, Shiming Zou's complaints were rejected.

On July Shiming Zou, the former champion had been defeated by Japanese Sho Kimura and had lost the WBO world flyweight title by TKO. He had appealed to WBO twice as dissatisfaction, but all were rejected.

Zou side stated five complaints including “He slipped and got injured because water was sprinkled in the ring and the result was influenced” and “The referee gave TKO judgment before 8 counts”.

WBO announced the statement to reject Zou's two appeals in September 18 and November 21.

It says, “Water was sprinkled by Zou side and the referee cautioned about that.” , “We confirmed the count with the VCR”, and it rejected the complaints after having added explanations in detail.

Zou whose complaints were rejected announced a comment. It says, “I am very disappointed and my heart aches. I came under invisible pressure by someone before the game. I cannot understand why Chinese interfered during and before the game.” He said that it is not Japanese but Chinese to have performed interference.

Australia, concerned about rising Chinese influence, will ban foreign political donations as part of a crackdown aimed at preventing external interference in domestic politics, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Tuesday.

Turnbull told reporters in Canberra that foreign powers were making “unprecedented and increasingly sophisticated attempts to influence the political process” in Australia and the world. He cited “disturbing reports about Chinese influence”.

Australia and neighbouring New Zealand are among roughly a third of countries worldwide that allow foreign donations to political parties. Such donations are prohibited in the United States, Britain and several European countries.

Australia’s new laws, modelled in part on the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act, would criminalise foreign interference and require the registration of lobbyists working for nation states, Turnbull said.

The announcement came as concern grows that Beijing may be extending its influence and as relationships between Australian politicians and Chinese government interests have become increasingly contentious.

Fairfax Media and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported in June on a concerted campaign by China to “infiltrate” Australian politics to promote Chinese interests.

China denies the claims.

In Beijing, foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said China had no intention of interfering with Australia’s internal affairs or using political funding to influence them.

“At the same time, we want to again urge Australia to remove their biases and take an objective and positive attitude to assess China and its relations with Australia,” he added.

However, leading opposition Senator Sam Dastyari quit some senior Labor Party positions last week after a tape surfaced of him appearing to endorse China’s contentious expansion in disputed areas of the South China Sea, against his party’s platform.

The tape, which showed him standing next to property developer Huang Xiangmo, a major Chinese political donor, was leaked to the media.

“I take those reports, as do my colleagues, very seriously,” Turnbull said. However, the new laws “are not about any one country”, he said.

“Foreign interference is a global issue ... for example, we’re all familiar with very credible reports that Russia sought to actively undermine the United States’ election ... the threat is real,” Turnbull said.

The new laws, should they pass parliament, would ban foreign donations to political parties or any political group that has spent more than A$100,000 ($76,350) campaigning in the past four years - a rule that could also likely affect environmental and other campaign groups.

Australia expressed deep concern last month over a crackdown on pro-democracy groups in Cambodia. Despite that, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said foreign donations to activist group GetUp!, a non-partisan but vocal critic of the centre-right government, would be banned under Australia’s new laws.

GetUp! said in a statement only 0.5 percent of its donations come from overseas. It criticised the proposed laws as an attempt to avoid scrutiny of government policies and for failing to curtail donations from multinational corporations.

The definitions of treason and espionage would also be broadened under the new laws to include possessing or receiving sensitive information, rather than just transmitting it.

Since the controversial sale of the port of Darwin to a Chinese company in 2015, the government has been at pains to demonstrate limits to its ties to China, its biggest export partner, blocking sales of Australia’s biggest cattle station and biggest power grid to Chinese interests.

One of the world’s oldest and most respected publishing houses, Cambridge University Press, has bowed to pressure from Beijing and removed sensitive content on its site in China.

The content is published in China Quarterly, an academic journal run by the press. In a letter made public on social media on Friday, the editor of the journal, Tim Pringle, said Cambridge University Press had informed him that the authorities had ordered it to censor more than 300 articles related to issues like the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong and the Cultural Revolution. The publishing house’s site risked being shut down if it did not comply with the request, the letter said.

In response to the government’s actions, the journal issued a statement expressing its “deep concern and disappointment.”

“We note, too, that this restriction of academic freedom is not an isolated move but a further reflection of policies that have narrowed the space for public engagement and discussion across Chinese society,” the statement said.

Dr. Pringle said in a telephone interview that Chinese academics, who had been publishing in the journal in increasing numbers, would suffer the most. “It’s not only a retrograde step in principle, but it affects Chinese scholars in particular” he said, because they will not have access to global scholarship on the country.

Chinese students		Japanese students

Chinese students act freely as they like, but Japanese students sit down and line up to one line notwithstanding their big suitcases.

Japanese students choose the place with a few people and sit down calmly at a public place not to be a nuisance to other airport users.

Chinese must think about the comparison of these students' acts seriously.

A median of 47% across the 38 countries surveyed have a favorable opinion of China, while 37% express an unfavorable view. Majorities or pluralities in 24 countries give China a positive rating.

■Countries that have the most favorable views of China

1　Nigeria　72 points

2　Russia　70 points

3　Australia、Senegal　64 points

■Countries that have the least favorable views of China

1　Vietnam　10 points

2　Japan　13 points

3　India　26 points

■Europe's Unfavorability ratings on China

1　Italy　59 points

2　Germany　53 points

3　France　52 points

The most favorable views of China are found in sub-Saharan Africa ? a region where China has invested heavily in infrastructure and development. Positive opinions surpass negative ones by a more than four-to-one margin in Nigeria, Senegal and Tanzania. In Ghana, 49% have a positive image of China, down 31 percentage points since spring 2015. This may be due, at least in part, to recent frictions between the two countries over mining practices in Ghana.

In the Asia/Pacific region, opinion is mixed. Favorable opinion of China ranges from a high of 64% in Australia to a low of 10% in Vietnam. In Australia, positive views of China have increased 12 percentage points in just the past year (as favorable views of the U.S. have declined 12 points). But favorable opinions of China have also fallen over the past two years in Vietnam (-9 points) and Indonesia (-8).

The decline is particularly notable in South Korea, where favorability of China has fallen 27 points since spring 2015 and now hovers near historic lows.

Chinese bike-sharing service provider 3Vbike declared bankruptcy due to a large number of stolen bikes. The bike-sharing service recently announced that operations have been suspended since June 21.

It is the second bike-sharing provider in China that has gone bust, following the fall of Wukong Bike, the country’s first bike-sharing provider to go bankrupt.

“We have refunded nearly 95% of our users’ deposit, but about one or two hundred customers still haven’t applied for the refund,” said Wu Shenghua, the founder of 3Vbike.

Investing nearly one million RMB and building 1,000 bikes, Wu only has a small number of bikes available on the market. The company’s loss rate in some regions even reached 100%.

According to public data, 3Vbike was established in December 2015 with a registered capital of 100,000 RMB. The first batch of shared bikes was released in Baoding, northern China’s Hebei province, on February 26.

Wu planned to make profits by renting the bikes and using them for advertising. He said the business would have been profitable if the loss rate stayed under 30%. “My investment could have been recovered within a year if each bike had been ridden once a day,” Wu said, adding that any advertisements would be pure profit.

“Though our company was registered in Beijing, our target customers were in second- and third-tier cities,” Wu explained. He believes it was better for the company to avoid competition with the big players.

However, the company’s development did not go according to plan, as some cities’ urban management departments forbid his bikes.

But what really astonished Wu was the large number of bikes that were stolen. “We placed more than 1,000 bikes on the market, but only less than 10 were in operation before we declared the suspension,” Wu said.

Wu believes that a lack of anti-theft measures was the main reasons for the loss. According to him, the absence of smart locks on the bikes was out of consideration for cost control.

Often they are seeking out happy Australian lifestyles away from their overcrowded homes with houses close to good schools for their children.

But so many others are just looking to own property that 20 per cent of homes bought by Chinese investors are left empty.

'They're looking at buying a property this year and another one the year after and another one, and they just want to continue doing it,' Yellow Brick Road chairman Mark Bouris said.

'Even if they themselves as individuals don't benefit from it, it goes to their children and their broader family.'

Mr Bouris claimed eye-watering prices at the top end didn't have much of an effect on the average Australian family struggling to compete in the suburbs.

Wealthy young Shanghai businesswoman Monica Zhao got a special investor visa for spending more than $5 million in Australia.

As she checked out a $6.5 million house overlooking the ocean in Dover Heights, she said she was looking for a 'comfortable and lovely' suburb for her second Sydney home.

She's one of many who not only want to buy Australian property but hope to eventually live there - she already sent her son to school at an elite private school.

Real estate agent Monica Tu said she was selling the 'Chinese Australian lifestyle', which was the biggest appeal for any wealthy investor.

'It's not a Chinese invasion. Chinese love to buy properties so if they don't buy Australian properties they will buy Canadian properties, English properties, it's just in their blood, they love to buy properties.'

1 Titanic Replica　…　 The Titanic II is being created by billionaire Clive Palmer. The design and decor of Titanic II will match the era of its predecessor. It will be set to open at the end of 2017. It will travel from Jiangsu, China, to Dubai.

2 Fred Flintstone’s House　…　 Who would have known that it's such a popular idea to live in a house that's modeled after the Flintstones' home? A theme park spanning six acres is dedicated to Fred and his lifestyle. It sits 48 kilometers (30 mi) outside of the Grand Canyon's south rim.

3 Falconcity Of Wonders In Dubai　…　 The Seven Wonders of the World are set to be recreated in Falconcity of Wonders in Dubai. The city is host to replicas of the pyramids, Taj Arabia, Tower of Pisa, Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Eiffel Tower, and the Great Wall of China.

4 Statue Of Liberty In Japan　…　 There are three replicas of this well-known monument in Japan?one each in Odaiba, Shimoda, and Osaka.

5 The Leaning Tower Of Niles In Niles, Illinois　…　 Robert Ilg got an idea to hide the water tanks with a replica of the “Leaning Tower of Pisa”. This replica is half the size of the original in Pisa, Italy.

6 The Greek Parthenon In Nashville, Tennessee　…　 Even though this historic building is fake and completely out of place, the original casts for the marble sculptures are authentic and date back to 438 BC.

7 The Giza Pyramids In 3-D　…　 Great minds at Harvard University, Dassault Systemes, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston have collaborated to make an impressive replica of an Egyptian 3-D world.

8 Florence, Italy, In Tianjin, China　…　 Florentia Village is a great place to visit if you have a taste for pricey Italian dining and shopping in Tianjin. This shopping center is definitely an Italian knockoff.

9 London’s Tower Bridge In Suzhou, China　…　 A Chinese publication stated that the Chinese structure was more magnificent than the original.

10 Paris In Tianducheng, China　…　 The area impressively replicates Paris?from the buildings surrounding the 108-meter (354 ft) replica of the Eiffel Tower to the Champs-Elysees' fountain. The area is largely abandoned.

The domestic administration authorities of Land Hessen in Germany sent the following warning email to the local companies, government offices and the universities.

"Chinese spies are active on SNS including LinkedIn and Facebook.

The spies impersonate scientists, government officials and the managers of the recruiting consulting company. And they target German bureaucrats, diplomats, officers, scientists and university students.

The spies request target persons to submit their careers and results of their work. Afterwards the spies invite them to China and they are made to submit the reports and inside information."

This warning email reveals that the local government do not trust Chinese yet.

Tokyo police have put 2 Chinese women on a nationwide wanted list on suspicion of vandalizing a shrine in the city with an oil-like liquid substance.

Investigators at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department suspect that the 2 women applied a liquid, which appeared to be oil, a total of 15 times on 4 structures, including a gate and a gateway, at Meiji Shrine in the morning of April 3rd.

The investigators have obtained arrest warrants for the women. They say the 2 are identified as Piao Shanai and Piao Jinyu, after analyzing video footage from nearby security cameras. Both are believed to be 49 years old.

The investigators say the 2 entered Japan on March 27th, and stayed in Tokyo from April 1st to April 4th when they flew from Tokyo's Haneda Airport on an early morning flight. The police say the suspects may come back to Japan.

Earlier this month, similar stains were found at Tokyo's Zojoji Buddhist temple which is known as the family temple of the Tokugawa shogunate that governed Japan for about 260 years until 1867.

Two UNESCO World Heritage sites in Japan were also found to have been vandalized. The sites are Shimogamo Shrine in the ancient capital of Kyoto and Shuri Castle, which was the palace of the Ryukyu Kingdom, in Japan's Okinawa Prefecture.

The Tokyo police are working with police in those areas for further investigation.

Russian NTV released a story about the pollution of the shores of Lake Baikal.

It is about what harm to the lake's ecology is caused by tourists who leave behind a heap of rubbish, and local hotels merging the waste directly on the ice.

Thus, some grottos that have become a visiting card of the lake, visitors from China literally have turned into a toilet, says the author of the story Anton Artemyev.

- It's already unpleasant to come to the island of Olkhon. I do not understand when there are ten UAZs and no toilet, ten UAZs and there are no people who would accompany with garbage bags, - says the organizer of Baikal tours Veronika Yaskina.

The number of visitors to Lake Baikal exceeded one million a year. In neighboring China, residents quickly estimated the depreciated ruble exchange rate and only a three-hour flight from Beijing to Irkutsk.

On the island of Olkhon invasion of tourists is from the south-east.

It's amazing here, the air in Beijing is really very bad. This is a serious problem for us. And here it is fresh and clean, and even the sky is always blue and pure, the Chinese tourist Shao Huo shares his impressions.

On the opposite shore of Lake Baikal, in Listvyanka, on the contrary, it is very crowded, the hotels are full and the same problems as on Olkhon. So, workers of one and the hotels brought the sewer to Baikal and left the feces directly on the ice.

Flyers targeting Chinese students have been seen on the University of Texas at Austin.

The fliers, which claim to promote a "special class" to teach Chinese students "ethics," went viral two days ago.

The flier sarcastically notes that plagiarism "isn't bad in [Chinese] culture."

Did you know burping and farting are unethical? We know they aren't bad in your culture, it continues, adding: "We will teach you what you need to know."

Photos of the fliers went up on Facebook, and were quickly condemned.

UT Austin president, Gregory L. Fenves, released a statement shortly after, denouncing the fliers, and saying they're being taken down:

A report, published in the international journal "Nature" on Thursday, said that every year some 30-thousand people in South Korea and Japan die prematurely due to fine dust from China.

Jointly written by researchers in China's Tsinghua and Peking universities and the University of California, Irvine, analyzed the path of the fine dust particle PM2.5 produced in industrial plants around the world in 2007. An examination of early deaths in polluted regions due to heart, lung and blood vessel problems found that 410-thousand people died prematurely due to fine dust.

The researchers also found that China is the single largest producer of fine dust particles and that South Korea and Japan, where the dust blows, suffered high rates of pollution-related deaths.

They said some 30-thousand-900 people in the two countries died prematurely due to air pollution in 2007.

It is the first time that scientists have calculated the number of pollution-induced early deaths by region.

At the height of summer, when the conditions are right, more than 2,500 predominately Chinese people can be found digging up the coastline of Venus Bay, 175 kilometres south-east of Melbourne, in search of pipis to eat.

Ever since the 1960s when the area around Venus Bay was first developed, the inconspicuous shellfish found under the sand at low tide has been harvested both commercially and recreationally for bait.

But over the past eight years, the town, home to a mere 500 permanent residents, has become a hotspot for pipi harvesting among Melbourne's Chinese community.

Locals have become frustrated with the stress visiting pipi harvesters place on the town's amenities ? the car parks, rubbish bins, public toilets ? even claiming it restricts emergency service access to the beach.

Tyre slashing, vandalism and racially charged incidents are all part of the storm that has been brewing in the otherwise quaint Victorian coastal town of Venus Bay.　

Anthropologist Lisa Hatfield is a PhD candidate at Latrobe University in Melbourne who has spent the past three years investigating the social impacts of pipi harvesting at Venus Bay.

When visiting Venus Bay's main beach, Beach One, on an overcast Sunday in March, it was difficult not to encounter that he-said, she-said attitude.

Cheers of joy came from a group of young Chinese tourists when one of them harvested their first pipi of the day.

It was the daytrippers' first time to Venus Bay ? "it's famous for people to visit," they remarked.

A little further down the beach, the group's excited energy deeply contrasted that of two locals harvesting for bait.

The two fishermen weren't having much luck and they blamed it on the Chinese harvesters.

The pair explained that this was the first time they had harvested at Beach One in three years.

There's nothing left, there's no big ones left.

There's usually too many Asians.

The last time I came it was Christmas Day and there was probably 3,000 ethnics down here.

"They fill the carpark right back to the shops and they're just everywhere, the whole beach is full."

"The issues the locals had with the pipi harvesters were that they were coming for just one purpose; they were coming in organised groups to collect pipis in commercial quantities," she said.

"They said it was their culture to take everything."

"There were also complaints they weren't actually contributing to the local economy in any way."

After inspecting the beach herself, Ms Hatfield found these ideas were "often the exception rather than the rule".

"Locals were drawing on longstanding ingrained stereotypes we have about Asian people in Australia," she said.

Despite this, Ms Hatfield said there were still valid concerns about the pipi harvesting at Venus Bay.

"The locals felt they were being dismissed and being called racist, when in a way they are coming to grips with the changes that are going on at Venus Bay.

"They're concerned that they're losing their sense of place and their sense of belonging."