September 1-7
China
A Chinese artist who has drawn international acclaim for works critiquing the Cultural Revolution, Gao Zhen, has been detained in China, his brother and artistic partner Gao Qiang told news media. The Gao brothers are best known for their statues depicting the late party Chairman Mao Zedong in provocative or irreverent ways. Gao Qiang said Gao Zhen was suspected of slandering China’s heroes and martyrs, a criminal offense. Gao Zhen had been living in New York but was visiting family in China.
The Foreign Ministry announced that China will no longer allow foreigners to adopt Chinese children unless they are related by blood. Since China officially began allowing international adoption in 1992, more than 160,000 children have been adopted by families in other countries. At that time, China was strictly restricting births in order to control population growth; now it is trying to boost births. International adoptions often take several years to process, and families with pending adoptions sought clarification about whether they could bring those children home.
The Supreme People’s Court released six typical cases in which Hong Kong arbitration awards were recognized and executed by Chinese courts. Chinese courts have accepted more than 1,000 arbitration award cases from Hong Kong in the past five years. More than 119 property attachment applications involving a total of 30 billion RMB were filed by the Hong Kong International Arbitration Center as of April 2024. The average time for Chinese courts to execute the applications is 28 days.
The Supreme People’s Procuratorate released seven typical cases illustrating prosecutorial support for civil lawsuits. Under China’s civil procedure law, prosecutors may support private parties in civil cases involving family and labor issues - one of a number of functions performed by China’s procuratorates in addition to criminal prosecution. In the first half of 2024, Chinese prosecutors supported 49,000 civil cases, about half of which were filed by migrant workers.
Hong Kong
Police were deployed in force and searched members of the public around Prince Edward MTR station on the fifth anniversary of a police clash there with protesters on August 31, 2019. A man who held a white flower and bowed outside the station was taken away.
Hong Kong journalist Allan Wu was placed on leave from his teaching position at the Chinese University of Hong Kong after four op-eds that he wrote for the now-closed outlet Stand News were deemed seditious. The op-eds were among 11 articles published in Stand News that were the basis for a district court decision last week convicting two former Stand News editors of sedition. Wu was arrested in April 2022 on suspicion of sedition for his writings about the National Security Law, but authorities did not press any charges.
Three Court of Appeal judges ruled that a satirical RTHK television program aired in 2020 did not insult the police. The ruling was the outcome of a judicial review of an administration decision by the government media regulator, the Communications Authority, that said an episode of the RTHK program Headliner denigrated police, failed to represent a broad range of views, and made no reasonable efforts to ensure factual accuracy. RTHK then took the show off the air.
Japan
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, in his final month in office, visited South Korea and reaffirmed sympathy for the suffering of Koreans during Japan’s colonial rule, although he stopped short of apologizing for colonization. One of the hallmarks of Kishida’s term has been warming relations with Seoul, but the Japanese government continues to support its companies in rejecting South Korean court verdicts ordering them to compensate the victims of forced labor during the colonial era.
Digital Transformation Minister Taro Kono, a candidate to succeed Kishida, said it would be inappropriate for the US government to block Nippon Steel Corp.’s $14.1 billion takeover of US Steel. President Biden has said that US Steel should remain domestically owned, and was reported to be preparing to take steps to block the sale. Kono, a former foreign and defense minister, said the companies should be allowed to make their own decision. Another contender, Yoshimasa Hayashi, who is currently the government spokesman, said he hopes the matter can be resolved in a mutually beneficial way.
Prosecutors indicted former Liberal Democratic lawmaker Megumi Hirose on charges of defrauding the state of a salary paid to a public secretary. In a statement issued on August 15, Hirose acknowledged that she received additional funds for her office by reporting the wife of her public secretary as her second secretary. In fact, the wife did not perform any work in that capacity. Hirose has resigned from the LDP and from the upper chamber of Japan’s parliament.
Japanese media reported that the government is close to reaching a settlement with about 20 plaintiffs who are seeking compensation for having been forcibly sterilized under the former eugenics law. The settlement talks follow a ruling by the Supreme Court in July 2024 that the former law was unconstitutional and the government must pay damages despite the passage of time.
Koreas
The social media platform Telegram apologized to South Korean authorities for allowing deepfake pornographic material to be shared via its messaging app. Police said they launched an investigation into the distribution of such images on Telegram. Local media earlier reported that police are investigating deepfake porn rings at two of the country’s major universities, including on Telegram, and one reporter uncovered additional rings targeting even younger students. Legislators from both the People Power Party (which holds the presidency) and Democratic Party (which controls the legislature) said they plan to revise the law to punish production, distribution and even viewing of pornographic deepfakes.
The Ministry of the Interior and Safety said public requests to access legal documents, especially criminal complaints, surged in 2023. Many of the requests were related to elated to lawsuit preparation and personal insurance claims. Experts said the increase reflects growing legal awareness.
The South Korean government announced plans to deploy military doctors to serve in civilian hospitals as a strike by junior doctors stretches into its seventh month. The government denied that emergency rooms are collapsing but said it will initially send 15 military doctors to particularly affected emergency rooms, then assign 235 military doctors and community doctors to troubled hospitals. The strikers oppose the government’s plan to significantly expand the size of medical school classes to address a doctor shortage; they say the shortage is caused by low pay and harsh working conditions.
Taiwan
The Taipei District Court ordered the chairman of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), to be detained incommunicado in connection with alleged corruption on a mall development project while he was Taipei mayor. The ruling reversed the same court’s decision earlier in the week that Ko should be released without bail. The prosecutors appealed that decision to the High Court, which overturned it and ordered the district court to hold another hearing. Several other suspects in the case, including former Taipei Deputy Mayor Pong Cheng-sheng (彭振聲), Taipei City Councilor Ying Hsiao-wei (應曉薇), and Core Pacific Group Chairman Sheen Ching-jing (沈慶京), also have been detained and held incommunicado.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) condemned the decision by a Chinese court to sentence Taiwanese activist Yang Chih-yuan (楊智淵) to a nine-year prison term for advocating Taiwanese independence. Yang has been vice chairman of the Taiwan National Party, a tiny political party that supports Taiwan independence, since 2019. He was detained in Zhejiang Province in 2022. The MAC disputed the charge and said that Yang was teaching the strategy game “go” in China before his arrest.