September 15-21
China
A 10-year-old Japanese boy was fatally stabbed in Shenzhen while walking to school on the anniversary of the outbreak of war between Japan and China in 1931. It was the second stabbing attack on a Japanese citizen in four months. Japan’s foreign ministry “strongly requested” China to ensure the safety of Japanese nationals. Some Japanese companies offered to send their staff and families back to Japan.
An intermediate court in Guangdong Province found a man guilty in China’s first prosecution for introducing an invasive foreign species into the country. The crime was added to the code in 2021. The defendant was caught transporting 1,760 red-eared slider turtles on a border highway and was sentenced to nine months in prison.
The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) released for public comment a draft “Regulations on Labeling AI-Generated Synthesized Content” (人工智能生成合成内容标识办法）. The regulation would require companies to display prominent labels on AI-generated products and services that might cause confusion or misunderstanding to the public.
A court in Shandong Province declared bankrupt three refineries owned by subsidiaries of Sinochem, a state-owned oil and gas conglomerate. Two of the refineries had been closed since July due to high crude oil prices and weakness in the refined fuel market.
Hong Kong
A court sentenced one man to 14 months in prison for wearing a T-shirt with a protest slogan, and another man to 10 months in prison for writing pro-independence slogans on the back of bus seats. Both Chu Kai-pong, 27, and Chung Man-kit, 29, pleaded guilty to sedition. Chu wore a shirt on June 12 with the words “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times,” while Chung wrote the same slogan and others on bus seats.
Two former directors of Next Digital, the parent company of Apple Daily newspaper, disclosed the contents of a complaint that they filed with the UK government in December 2023 against the accounting firm BDO for its role in helping the Hong Kong government liquidate the company. The directors, Mark Clifford and Gordon Crovitz, accused the firm’s Hong Kong office of acting as “a quasi-government agency” without judicial oversight in violation of international rules.
An appellate court reduced the sentences of four former students who, as members of the University of Hong Kong Students’ Union Council, passed a motion to mourn the death of a man who wounded a police officer and then killed himself in 2021. Prosecutors originally charged them with advocating terrorism, but later reached a plea agreement by which the four pleaded guilty to inciting to wound the police. Their original two-year prison sentence has now been reduced to 15 months.
A Hong Kong court gave sentences of up to four and a half years to the last eight protestors charged with rioting near the Polytechnic University in 2019. Clashes between police and protesters inside and around the university were among the most intense of the months-long protests, and resulted in the prosecution of more than 200 persons.
Japan
Coast guard authorities arrested the head of a tour boat company for alleged professional negligence in connection with the sinking of a vessel in Hokkaido in 2022. Twenty persons were confirmed dead and six remain missing.
A lawyer for former Nissan Motor Corp. executive vice president Greg Kelly asked an appeals court to declare Kelly innocent of any wrongdoing in reporting the compensation of his boss, Carlos Ghosn. Kelly was arrested in 2018 and cleared at trial in 2022 of most charges, but was convicted of under-reporting Ghosn’s salary in one year. Ghosn fled Japan in 2019 while awaiting trial.
Koreas
A South Korean appellate court upheld the conviction of the former head of Deutsch Motors, a BMW car dealer, for using insider information to induce purchases of the company’s stocks. It also convicted as an accomplice a man whose bank account was used in the market manipulation attempts between December 2009 and December 2012. The verdict may increase calls to bring criminal charges against the first lady, Kim Keon Hee, because three of her bank accounts were allegedly used in the same manipulation. Kim married Yoon Suk Yeol in 2012, and he became president in 2022.
An investigation by The Associated Press and Frontline (PBS) into South Korea’s overseas adoptions program found massive fraud that separated thousands of children from their families. According to their report: “Children were kidnapped off the streets and sent abroad. Parents claim they were told their newborns were dead or too sick to survive, only to have them shipped away. Documents were fabricated to give children identities that belonged to somebody else, leading adoptees to anguished reunions with supposed parents — to later discover they were not related at all.” This latest investigation uncovered new details of a scandal that has been emerging over the past decade.
Taiwan
The Constitutional Court upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty, but said it can be used only for the most serious crimes. Twelve justices heard a challenge that was filed by 37 death row inmates after three colleagues recused themselves for having represented inmates on death row. It was the fourth time the court declined to overturn the death penalty, which has strong public support.
The Tainan branch of the High Prosecutors’ Office indicted 23 persons on charges of spying for China. Among them were eight active servicemen from three branches of the armed forces and the Coast Guard Administration. The highest-ranked officer was an army captain.
The legislative caucuses of Taiwan’s three leading parties each proposed motions on UN Resolution 2758 at the start of a new legislative session. The 1971 General Assembly resolution recognized the People’s Republic of China in Beijing as the government of China and rightful holder of China’s seat at the UN, expelling the Republic of China on Taiwan. In recent years, the PRC has represented the resolution as affirming its sovereignty over Taiwan, an issue on which the resolution is actually silent.