February 11-17
China
The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress will convene from February 26 to 27 to prepare for the once-a-year meeting of the full NPC beginning March 5. The Standing Committee will also hold its second and likely final discussion of draft revisions to the Law on Guarding State Secrets (中华人民共和国保守国家秘密法), which was last revised in 2010.
Domestic news reports said the State Council has recently revived discussions about updating the 2006 Anti-Money-Laundering Law, and plans to submit draft revisions soon to the National People’s Congress. Revising the law to address risks related to cryptocurrencies and other virtual assets has been under consideration for several years and is included in the NPC’s legislative work plan; the NPC published a draft amendment for public comment in 2021.
Chinese universities conducted a nationwide audit of retracted research papers as part of a government-led effort to restore China’s academic reputation. According to an analysis by the publication Nature, English-language journals have issued more than 17,000 retraction notices for papers published by Chinese authors or co-authors since January 1, 2021. A genetics journal from a leading scientific publisher retracted 18 papers from China in the past week due to concerns about human subject consent. The Ministry of Education set February 15 as the deadline for universities to submit lists of all academic articles retracted from English- or Chinese-language journals in the past three years, along with the reasons.
Hong Kong
A man who tried to flee to Taiwan to escape charges stemming from the 2019 protests, only to be intercepted by China’s marine police and held three years in a mainland prison, pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice. Tang Kai-yin, 34, also pleaded guilty in January to possessing materials that could be used to make petrol bombs in 2019. Tang is scheduled to be sentenced in April.
The Kowloon City Magistrates Court sentenced a man to four months in prison after convicting him of false imprisonment of a plainclothes police officer. The case arose from a 2019 incident in which police stormed into subway cars at the Prince Edward MTR Station and used pepper spray and batons against commuters dressed in black, who were presumed to be traveling from protests. The court found that Wat Kwan-pang dragged a plainclothes officer to prevent him from leaving.
The West Kowloon Magistrates Court convicted 78-year-old activist Koo Sze-yiu of sedition and sentenced him to nine months in jail for planning a peaceful protest against the 2023 “patriots only” district council election. Koo had planned to take a coffin and underworld bank notes to the Registration and Electoral Office two days before the election, where he would chant slogans. Koo has been convicted 15 times for staging protests in the past, including against the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
Japan
LGBTQ activists distributed bags of candy and handouts to commuters on Valentine’s Day as they marked the fifth anniversary of a litigation strategy intended to achieve marriage equality for same-sex couples. Beginning on February 14, 2019, more than a dozen same-sex couples filed lawsuits at five courts across Japan, asking courts to rule that denying same-sex couples the right to marry is unconstitutional. So far, two courts have said that not granting the right is unconstitutional, one said it was in line with the constitution, and two took an intermediate position. A sixth decision is due next month.
Former five-term lawmaker Mito Kakizawa of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party pleaded guilty to illegal campaign financing. He was charged with making or offering 2.8 million yen ($19,000) in bribes and participating in a paid online advertisement during a ward leadership election in April 2023. Kakizawa’s four secretaries and Yayoi Kimura, the candidate they backed and winner of the election, have also been charged.
Koreas
A South Korean court found three former police officers guilty of destroying evidence indicating that the police were aware of safety risks at Halloween festivities in Seoul before a deadly crowd crush that killed nearly 160 people in 2022. The court found them responsible for deleting documents out of concern that the records would implicate the police for failing to prevent and respond to the disaster. The officers were the first officials convicted of crimes related to the event. Last month, President Yoon Suk Yeol vetoed a bill, passed by the National Assembly, that would have appointed a special prosecutor to independently investigate the disaster.
The Seoul Central District Court gave a five-year prison sentence to a former campaign aide to Lee Jae-myung, leader of the opposition Democratic Party. It is the first court decision in a development corruption scandal that also implicates Lee. Lee is accused of giving special favors to a private developer while he was mayor of Seongnam city from 2014 to 2017. The former aide, Kim In-seob, was convicted of accepting payments from the developer in return for lobbying then-Mayor Lee on its behalf.
The Cheongju District Court convicted three people of organizing an anti-state group and collecting intelligence on behalf of a North Korean agent over a four-year period in return for $20,000. A fourth person accused of involvement in the group will be tried separately.
Taiwan
Poland extradited a Taiwanese criminal suspect to Taiwan to face trial on cross-border telecoms fraud charges in the first case under a 2021 Poland-Taiwan legal cooperation agreement. The suspect, surnamed Liu, was arrested in Poland in 2017 under an Interpol Red Notice. The Polish courts originally ordered Liu be sent to China, but Liu appealed and the European Court of Human Rights ruled against the decision. Thousands of telecoms fraud suspects from both China and Taiwan have been arrested in third countries in recent years, and China has increasingly insisted that Taiwanese citizens be handed to it for trial.
The National Development Council (NDC), a policy-planning agency of the Executive Yuan, opened a Public Policy Online Participation Platform to solicit citizens’ suggestions regarding open government. Taiwan initiated an Open Government National Action Plan in 2021, which runs through May 2024. Proposals for drafting the next phase of the plan may be posted on the platform until March 8, 2024.