East Asia News & Politics Thread: China, South Korea, Japan...

China is recruiting Taiwanese students to attend educational camps as part of its attempts to promote unification, a source said.

China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, seemed indomitable when lawmakers abolished a term limit on his power early this year. But months later, China has been struck by economic headwinds, a vaccine scandal and trade battles with Washington, emboldening critics in Beijing who are questioning Mr. Xi’s sweeping control.

Censorship and punishment have muted dissent in China since Mr. Xi came to power. So Xu Zhangrun, a law professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, took a big risk last week when he delivered the fiercest denunciation yet from a Chinese academic of Mr. Xi’s hard-line policies, revival of Communist orthodoxies and adulatory propaganda image.

“People nationwide, including the entire bureaucratic elite, feel once more lost in uncertainty about the direction of the country and about their own personal security, and the rising anxiety has spread into a degree of panic throughout society,” Professor Xu wrote in an essay that appeared on the website of Unirule Institute of Economics, an independent think tank in Beijing that was recently forced out of its office.

“It’s very bold,” Jiang Hao, a researcher at the institute, said in an interview. “Many intellectuals might be thinking the same, but they don’t dare speak out.”

Professor Xu urged Chinese lawmakers to reverse the vote in March that abolished a two-term limit on Mr. Xi’s tenure as president. That near-unanimous vote of the party-dominated legislature opened the way for Mr. Xi, in office since late 2012, to retain power for another decade or longer as president, Communist Party leader and chairman of the military.

The essay appeared as a burst of troubles has given a focus for criticisms of Mr. Xi’s strongman ways, and it has spread through Chinese social media, despite censors.

Other less damning criticisms, petitions and gibes about Mr. Xi’s policies have also spread, often shared through We Chat, a popular social media service. But this long, erudite jeremiad from a prestigious professor has carried more weight.

“Xu has written a challenge from the cultural heart of China to the political heart of the Communist Party,” said Geremie R. Barmé, an Australian scholar of China who is translating Mr. Xu’s essay. “Its content and culturally powerful style will resonate deeply throughout the Chinese party-state system, as well as in the society more broadly.”

SEOUL: Police in Seoul requested an international arrest warrant for the founder of a Singapore-based firm Thursday (Aug 2) after launching an investigation into the company and a South Korean start-up over false claims of discovering a long-lost Russian "treasure ship".

Seoul-based Shinil Group announced last month that it had discovered the wreckage of imperial vessel Dmitri Donskoi off South Korea's east coast, saying the ship was believed to contain gold bullion and coins worth US$130 billion.

But since then, the firm has faced questions about whether the announcement was aimed at artificially boosting share prices, or luring investors into buying a virtual currency which a Singaporean company - also named Shinil Group - had recently started to issue. Financial regulators announced a probe into the South Korean firm, while police launched a criminal investigation last week, saying that the founder of the Singaporean Shinil Group, surnamed Ryu, was also wanted in connection with fraud allegations dating back to 2014.

"He is the key figure in the suspected treasure ship scam," a police official said Thursday, adding that the authorities had asked Interpol to issue a so-called red notice for Ryu.

A red notice is a request to locate and provisionally arrest a person with a view to extradition.

Police has been hunting for Ryu since 2014, when he fled the country during a separate investigation.

"We are asking police in any relevant country to help locate and repatriate him at the earliest possible date", the official said, adding that South Korean authorities believed Ryu was now living in Vietnam.

Following news of the financial probe, the CEO of the South Korean Shinil Group apologised last week, explaining that the firm may have gone overboard on the claims and saying that speculation on the value of treasure inside the ship was based on news reports and unverified documents.

Choi Yong-seok also insisted Shinil Group in Singapore had nothing to do with Shinil Group in South Korea, although the two companies' founders are siblings, and the Singapore firm has been selling virtual coins, reportedly with a promise of handsome returns in case treasure is salvaged from the ship.

The claims also caused share prices of Jeil Steel - a company in which the founder of the South Korean Shinil Group had acquired a large stake - to skyrocket initially. But Choi said the two firms were not associated with each other.

Observers say in 2003 another firm sparked a stock bubble by announcing the discovery of the Donskoi, which sank in a 1905 naval battle against Japan.

Experts have said imperial Russia would have no reason to load vast treasure on a ship that was going into battle and have also noted that there was a safer land route to Vladivostok, the treasure's supposed final destination.

Experts have said imperial Russia would have no reason to load vast treasure on a ship that was going into battle and have also noted that there was a safer land route to Vladivostok, the treasure's supposed final destination.