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What anger over top influencer says about China today
One of China's most popular influencers has come under fire for dismissing a young follower's complaint over high makeup prices as "nonsense".
Livestreamer Li Jiaqi's retort - that those who couldn't afford the 79 yuan ($11; £9) eyebrow pencil did not work "hard enough" - struck a raw nerve as China's youth struggle to find jobs in a sputtering post-pandemic economy. The 31-year-old has apologised but his remarks continue to fuel debate.
"What stung people was not the 79 yuan price tag, but your attitude and opinions on us," reads a comment on Weibo, which has been liked thousands of times.
"You don't know about the current economic climate. Many people are still working hard and struggling, just to keep their jobs," it read.
The past six months has brought a stream of bad news for China's economy. Youth unemployment has hit a record high. As of July, more than one in five 16-to-24-year-olds were jobless. The following month, officials said they would temporarily stop publishing unemployment data.
The property sector, which until recently accounted for a third of China's entire wealth, has long been teetering on the brink of a full-blown crisis. Economists have downgraded their forecasts for China's economic growth, many to below the government's target of about 5%.
Li - who first rose to fame in 2017 when he started hosting online sales sessions on shopping platform Taobao - is one of China's most successful salesmen. He hawks a a range of products from food to cosmetics and homeware, and reportedly sells millions of dollars' worth of items every night. He earned the moniker Lipstick King by once selling 150,000 lipsticks within five minutes. Over the years, Li has garnered some 150 million followers across multiple platforms - that number has shrunk since his controversial comments.
Given the bleak prospects millions of young Chinese face, Li's comments are proof that his celebrity status has desensitised him to their struggles, critics said. But the anger has also provided a window to the disillusionment rampant among the country's youth - one tweet read: "In social media comments responding to the Li Jiaqi incident, I saw a China that's collapsing."
Hoo boy, Canada. Politico: Canada expels diplomat amid allegations India involved in killing Canadian.
Canada is expelling a top Indian diplomat in the wake of bombshell allegations that agents from India may have been involved in the killing of a Canadian citizen, Foreign Minister Melanie Joly announced Monday.If the allegations are proven true, Joly said, it would be a “grave violation of our sovereignty and the most basic rule of how countries deal with each other.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivered an urgent address to lawmakers in Parliament Monday afternoon informing them Canada’s security agencies have been pursuing for weeks “credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the Government of India” and the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar earlier this summer on Canadian soil.
“Canada has declared its deep concerns to the top intelligence and security officials of the Indian government,” Trudeau said when he delivered the news in an urgent statement to Canadian lawmakers in Parliament. “Last week at the G-20, I brought them personally and directly to Prime Minister Modi in no uncertain terms.”
The news comes on the heels of a report by the Globe and Mail newspaper the same day that broke the news.
Nijjar, a British Columbia Sikh leader part of a separatist movement and designated a terrorist by New Delhi, was fatally shot inside of his car in the parking lot of a Sikh temple in Surrey, B.C., on June 18.
“We’ve been clear we will not tolerate any form of foreign interference,” Joly told reporters.
The news landed the same day that Canada’s recently announced commissioner overseeing an independent public inquiry into foreign interference started in her new role. She has until end of next year to produce a final report, according to the terms of the inquiry.
Canada abruptly suspended a trade mission with India Friday amid strained relations between the two countries.
Canada’s Liberal government has tried to deepen its relations with India, a key partner in its Indo-Pacific trade and diplomacy strategy.
Canada's probably on its own with this one as the US likely won't do anything that'll upset Modi.
Hoo boy, Canada. Politico: Canada expels diplomat amid allegations India involved in killing Canadian.
Canada is expelling a top Indian diplomat in the wake of bombshell allegations that agents from India may have been involved in the killing of a Canadian citizen, Foreign Minister Melanie Joly announced Monday.If the allegations are proven true, Joly said, it would be a “grave violation of our sovereignty and the most basic rule of how countries deal with each other.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivered an urgent address to lawmakers in Parliament Monday afternoon informing them Canada’s security agencies have been pursuing for weeks “credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the Government of India” and the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar earlier this summer on Canadian soil.
“Canada has declared its deep concerns to the top intelligence and security officials of the Indian government,” Trudeau said when he delivered the news in an urgent statement to Canadian lawmakers in Parliament. “Last week at the G-20, I brought them personally and directly to Prime Minister Modi in no uncertain terms.”
The news comes on the heels of a report by the Globe and Mail newspaper the same day that broke the news.
Nijjar, a British Columbia Sikh leader part of a separatist movement and designated a terrorist by New Delhi, was fatally shot inside of his car in the parking lot of a Sikh temple in Surrey, B.C., on June 18.
“We’ve been clear we will not tolerate any form of foreign interference,” Joly told reporters.
The news landed the same day that Canada’s recently announced commissioner overseeing an independent public inquiry into foreign interference started in her new role. She has until end of next year to produce a final report, according to the terms of the inquiry.
Canada abruptly suspended a trade mission with India Friday amid strained relations between the two countries.
Canada’s Liberal government has tried to deepen its relations with India, a key partner in its Indo-Pacific trade and diplomacy strategy.
Canada's probably on its own with this one as the US likely won't do anything that'll upset Modi.
Not sure if Canada wanted to upset Modi either but ya it boiled down to this.
Not sure the UK will do much either.
BBC: How India-Canada ties descended into a public feud
The issue received wider global attention after three pro-Khalistan activists died in quick succession in different countries earlier this year.Paramjit Singh Panjwar, chief of the Khalistan Commando Force who was designated a terrorist by India, was shot dead in May in Pakistan - his killers haven't been identified yet.
In the UK, Avtar Singh Khanda, said to be the head of the Khalistan Liberation Force, died on 15 June in hospital. Khanda had been arrested in March after a demonstration in London where protesters pulled down the Indian flag at the country's embassy. But a UK police spokesperson said the death "was not deemed to be suspicious".
Three days after his death, Nijjar, also designated a terrorist by India, was shot dead outside a Sikh temple in British Columbia - it's this murder that has now led Canada to take a strong public stand against a powerful ally.
Also not sure you have many options when you try to resolve things before it goes public and the aggressor blows you off.
But Avinash Paliwal, who teaches politics and international studies at SOAS University of London, says the sudden escalation may not be due to just domestic compulsions."If your intelligence agencies have gathered credible information that another country, even if it is an ally, was involved in a covert operation on your soil, you're bound to act on that," he says, adding that it's likely that Mr Trudeau tried to raise the issue through other channels first.
According to India's statement, Mr Trudeau did bring up the allegation with Mr Modi but received short shrift.
Mexican cartels are fifth-largest employers in the country, study finds
Organised crime groups in Mexico have about 175,000 members – making them the fifth-biggest employer in the country, according to new research published in the journal Science.
Using a decade of data on homicides, missing persons and incarcerations, as well as information about interactions between rival factions, the paper published on Thursday mathematically modeled overall cartel membership, and how levels of violence would respond to a range of policies.
The authors argue that the best way to reduce the bloodshed would be to cut cartel recruitment – whereas locking up more members would actually increase the murder rate.
“More than 1.7 million people in Latin America are incarcerated, and adding more people to saturated jails will not solve the insecurity problem,” wrote the authors.
The number of homicides in Mexico more than tripled between 2007 and 2021 – when the government reported 34,000 victims, or nearly 27 victims for every 100,000 inhabitants – making it one of the deadliest countries in Latin America.
At a national level, two organised crime groups – the Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco New Generation cartel – battle for domination. But analysts have identified 198 armed groups in Mexico, many of which are subcontractors to bigger players but also undertake local turf disputes.
The paper, titled Reducing cartel recruitment is the only way to lower violence in Mexico, was cautiously welcomed by security analysts in the field. “It is a first of its kind,” said Victoria Dittmar, a researcher for the Insight Crime thinktank, who did not take part in the study. “I haven’t seen any other estimates of how many people we believe are somehow related to criminal groups.”
But Dittmar said the figure would depend on the definition of a cartel and what constitutes membership, since working for a crime faction is very different to being formally employed.
“It can be very difficult to say who is a member of a criminal organisation, and who isn’t,” said Dittmar. “What about a politician that receives money? Or someone who cooperates with the group just once?”
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