SHANGHAI: It took less than 24 hours for all the Christmas trees, lights and bells to disappear from a 27-story shopping and office complex in the Chinese city of Nanyang.
Even the giant teddy bear at the mall entrance wasn’t spared, said Ma Jun, who works at a tutoring company in the building.
“Everything is gone and cleaned,” she said.
Christmas continues to be a shopping festival across most of China, with huge trees adorning shopping malls in Shanghai and Beijing, but a growing emphasis on traditional culture by the ruling Communist Party and the systematic suppression of religion under President Xi Jinping are imperiling Santa Claus’s position.
At least four Chinese cities and one county have ordered Christmas decorations banned this year, according to official notices and interviews. Students, teachers and parents from 10 schools around China told The Associated Press that Christmas celebrations have been curtailed.
“The ongoing local reaction against Christmas is part of the wider sentiment since Xi took power,” said Zi Yang, a China expert at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
Xi is trying to broaden the appeal of the Communist Party by casting it as a crusader for Chinese tradition in a fast-changing world, he said. “Therefore, foreign cultural elements such as Christmas are placed on the chopping block.”
The seasonal humbug follows similar outbreaks of anti-Christmas rhetoric in 2014 and 2017. It appears not to be centrally organized, but rather a spreading resistance to foreign festivals by local authorities seeking to align themselves with the growing tide of cultural nationalism.
The squeeze on Christmas is an example of how efforts to “normalize” thinking bleed into the everyday lives of many Chinese. That push exploded into view this year through re-education camps for Uighur Muslims and a crackdown on Christian churches that has continued with force in recent weeks.
In Nanyang, about 950 kilometers (600 miles) west of Shanghai, government officials stopped by the office and shopping complex on Dec. 16 to say that Christmas decorations would have to come down, said Ma, the tutoring company employee.
An official from the city’s urban management bureau hung up when asked for comment.
Nine hours by car south, Hengyang, a city in Hunan province, said in a Dec. 19 notice posted on an official government social media account that anyone caught holding Christmas sales or celebrations that blocked the streets would be punished. Communist Party members, the notice said, should avoid foreign festivals and instead be “models of adherence to Chinese traditional culture.” Hengyang police posted a video on their official social media account of locals discussing the importance of Chinese culture and plans to avoid ostentatious Christmas celebrations.
Langfang city, just south of Beijing, banned Christmas stage performances and merchandising promotions, according to a notice circulated on social media.
Shop windows were to be stripped of Christmas stickers and streets kept free of Christmas banners and lights. Law enforcement patrols were to be stepped up Dec. 23-25 to prevent illegal signs of celebration.
The Langfang urban management bureau declined comment. The state-run Global Times newspaper argued that Western media are exaggerating China’s crackdown on Christmas and reported that the restrictions in Langfang were aimed not at Christmas but at cleaning up roadside stalls and migrant vendors in hopes of winning a “National Civilized City” award from the Communist Party.
Some 270 kilometers (167 miles) west, Fuping county, also in Hebei province, issued a similar clean-up notice. Though the Dec. 21 announcement mentions Christmas eleven times, an official from the Fuping urban management bureau said the rules were aimed at street vendors generally, not Christmas.
Police in the Panlong district of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province in southern China, circulated a notice that hotels, karaoke parlors, Internet cafes, bars and other crowded places must prohibit Christmas-related decorations and activities.
“It is forbidden to hang Christmas stockings, wear Christmas hats, place Christmas trees, and so on,” the notice read.
It wasn’t clear if the notice applied to all of Kunming city, though a police officer told the AP that the order to circulate it came from city officials.
Reverend Jonathan Liu, founder of the Chinese Christian Fellowship of Righteousness, a California nonprofit, said the pushback against Christmas reflects Xi’s efforts to “Sinicize” religion.
Preachers are coached on how to convey Communist Party core values in their sermons and national flags and songs have been injected into some church services, he said.
Liu provided the AP with a notice sent to churches in Zhoukou, a city to the east of Nanyang in Henan province.
It tells churches to vet Christmas plans with the government, forbids minors from participating in Christmas events and caps expenses at 2000 yuan ($290). “I wish you all a happy Christmas! God bless you,” read the notice, which Liu received from a pastor in China.
An official at the United Front Work Department in Zhoukou referred queries to the religious affairs bureau, which could not be reached for comment.
Before becoming president, Xi went to Finland in 2010 and was photographed with Santa Claus. That kind of chumminess appears to be a thing of Christmas past, experts say.
The central government issued guidelines last year for a cultural revival project that calls for a marked boost in the international influence of Chinese traditional culture by 2025.
“You have a culturally conservative ethos in the country that has definitely been encouraged by the central party-state,” said Guo Yingjie, a professor of Chinese studies at the University of Sydney. “It’s not hard for university presidents or officials to say, ‘OK celebrating Christmas can easily be seen as de-Sinification or promoting Western culture.’“
Students have taken to social media to complain about restrictions on Christmas celebrations at their schools.
At a top Shanghai university, a student union had its Christmas plans canceled for the first time, an organizer told the AP on condition of anonymity, fearing rebuke.
The students came up with a solution: By replacing “Christmas” with “New Year’s” in their activity proposal and changing the date from Dec. 25, it sailed past school administrators.
Students in the city of Qingdao were reprimanded for hosting an event about gratitude on Thanksgiving Day and warned not to celebrate Christmas publicly, according to a student, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing retribution.
Liu Kaiming, president of the Institute of Contemporary Observation, a civil society group in the city of Shenzhen, said that despite the drumbeat of official discontent, Christmas cheer continues to spread in China.
“The sound of resistance is more powerful on the surface, but it has no practical effect,” he said. “Young people’s enthusiasm for the festival is ever-increasing.”
Santa not coming to towns across China
Santa not coming to towns across China
- Christmas remains a shopping festival across most of China
- At least four Chinese cities and one county have ordered Christmas decorations banned this year
Trump gets no-penalty sentence in his hush money case, while calling it ‘despicable’
With Trump appearing by video from his Florida estate, the sentence quietly capped an extraordinary trial rife with moments unthinkable in the US only a few years ago.
It was the first criminal prosecution and first conviction of a former US president and major presidential candidate. The New York case became the only one of Trump’s four criminal indictments that has gone to trial and possibly the only one that ever will. And the sentencing came 10 days before his inauguration for his second term.
In roughly six minutes of remarks to the court, a calm but insistent Trump called the case “a weaponization of government” and “an embarrassment to New York.” He maintained that he did not commit any crime.
“It’s been a political witch hunt. It was done to damage my reputation so that I would lose the election, and, obviously, that didn’t work,” the Republican president-elect said by video, with US flags in the background. Beside him at his Mar-a-Lago property was defense lawyer Todd Blanche, whom Trump has tapped to serve as the second-highest ranking Justice Department official in his incoming administration.
After the roughly half-hour proceeding, Trump said in a post on his social media network that the hearing had been a “despicable charade.” He reiterated that he would appeal his conviction.
Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan could have sentenced the 78-year-old to up to four years in prison. Instead, Merchan chose a sentence that sidestepped thorny constitutional issues by effectively ending the case but assured that Trump will become the first president to take office with a felony conviction on his record.
Trump’s no-penalty sentence, called an unconditional discharge, is rare for felony convictions. The judge said that he had to respect Trump’s upcoming legal protections as president, while also giving due consideration to the jury’s decision.
“Despite the extraordinary breadth of those protections, one power they do not provide is the power to erase a jury verdict,” said Merchan, who had indicated ahead of time that he planned the no-penalty sentence.
As Merchan pronounced the sentence, Trump sat upright, lips pursed, frowning slightly. He tilted his head to the side as the judge wished him “godspeed in your second term in office.”
Before the hearing, a handful of Trump supporters and critics gathered outside. One group held a banner that read, “Trump is guilty.” The other held one that said, “Stop partisan conspiracy” and “Stop political witch hunt.”
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office brought the charges, is a Democrat.
The norm-smashing case saw the former and incoming president charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, put on trial for almost two months and convicted by a jury on every count. Yet the legal detour — and sordid details aired in court of a plot to bury affair allegations — didn’t hurt him with voters, who elected him in November to a second term.
“The American voters got a chance to see and decide for themselves whether this was the kind of case that should’ve been brought. And they decided,” Blanche said Friday.
Prosecutors said that they supported a no-penalty sentence, but they chided Trump’s attacks on the legal system throughout the case.
“The once and future president of the United States has engaged in a coordinated campaign to undermine its legitimacy,” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said.
Afterward, Trump was expected to return to the business of planning for his new administration. He was set later Friday to host conservative House Republicans as they gathered to discuss GOP priorities.
The specific charges in the hush money case were about checks and ledgers. But the underlying accusations were seamy and deeply entangled with Trump’s political rise.
Trump was charged with fudging his business’ records to veil a $130,000 payoff to porn actor Stormy Daniels. She was paid, late in Trump’s 2016 campaign, not to tell the public about a sexual encounter she maintains the two had a decade earlier. He says nothing sexual happened between them and that he did nothing wrong.
Prosecutors said Daniels was paid off — through Trump’s personal attorney at the time, Michael Cohen — as part of a wider effort to keep voters from hearing about Trump’s alleged extramarital escapades.
Trump denies the alleged encounters occurred. His lawyers said he wanted to squelch the stories to protect his family, not his campaign. And while prosecutors said Cohen’s reimbursements for paying Daniels were deceptively logged as legal expenses, Trump says that’s simply what they were.
Trump’s lawyers tried unsuccessfully to forestall a trial, and later to get the conviction overturned, the case dismissed or at least the sentencing postponed.
Trump attorneys have leaned heavily into assertions of presidential immunity from prosecution, and they got a boost in July from a Supreme Court decision that affords former commanders-in-chief considerable immunity.
Trump was a private citizen and presidential candidate when Daniels was paid in 2016. He was president when the reimbursements to Cohen were made and recorded the following year.
Merchan, a Democrat, repeatedly postponed the sentencing, initially set for July. But last week, he set Friday’s date, citing a need for “finality.”
Trump’s lawyers then launched a flurry of last-minute efforts to block the sentencing. Their last hope vanished Thursday night with a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that declined to delay the sentencing.
Meanwhile, the other criminal cases that once loomed over Trump have ended or stalled ahead of trial.
After Trump’s election, special counsel Jack Smith closed out the federal prosecutions over Trump’s handling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. A state-level Georgia election interference case is locked in uncertainty after prosecutorFaniWillis was removed from it.
Serbia to talk with Putin after US sanctions target energy company
- Petroleum Industry of Serbia (NIS), majority-owned by Russia’s Gazprom Neft and its parent company, Gazprom, is the only supplier of gas to Serbia
- NIS was among the raft of companies hit by the latest round of US sanctions targeting the Kremlin on Friday
BELGRADE: Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said Friday he would hold talks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin after Washington announced sweeping sanctions against a range of energy companies, including a Serbian firm.
Petroleum Industry of Serbia (NIS), majority-owned by Russia’s Gazprom Neft and its parent company, Gazprom, is the only supplier of gas to Serbia and the majority owner of both gas pipelines that transport gas from Russia to households and industries in Serbia.
NIS was among the raft of companies hit by the latest round of US sanctions targeting the Kremlin on Friday.
Following the announcement, Vucic told a news conference he would speak with Putin “first over the phone, and then explore other ways of communication.”
Vucic said he would also be holding talks with US and Chinese representatives soon.
“We will respond responsibly, seriously, and diligently, and although we will act carefully, we will not rush into making wrong decisions,” Vucic added.
“We will ask the incoming administration to reconsider this decision once more and see if we can obtain some allowances regarding the decisions that have already been made.”
Serbia has maintained a close relationship with Moscow since the invasion of Ukraine and refuses to impose sanctions, unlike the EU which it hopes to join.
Vucic had stated earlier that if sanctions were implemented, it would be a severe blow to Serbia, which heavily relies on Russian gas and is currently negotiating a new contract, as the current one expires in March 2025.
Gazprom Neft owns 50 percent of NIS, Gazprom 6.15 percent and 29.9 percent is owned by the Republic of Serbia, according to NIS’s website.
Friday’s announcement comes just 10 days before US President Biden is due to step down, and puts President-elect Donald Trump in an awkward position, given his stated desire to end the Ukraine war on day one of his presidency.
Venezuela’s Maduro sworn in for third term as US raises reward for his capture
- Venezuela’s opposition says ballot box-level tallies show a landslide win for its former candidate Edmundo Gonzalez
- The outgoing Biden administration increased its reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Maduro on drug trafficking charges to $25m
CARACAS: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whose nearly 12 years in office have been marked by deep economic and social crisis, was sworn in for a third term on Friday, despite a six-month-long election dispute, international calls for him to stand aside and an increase in the US reward offered for his capture.
Maduro, president since 2013, was declared the winner of July’s election by both Venezuela’s electoral authority and top court, though detailed tallies confirming his victory have never been published.
Venezuela’s opposition says ballot box-level tallies show a landslide win for its former candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, who is recognized as president-elect by several countries including the United States. International election observers said the vote was not democratic.
The months since the election have seen Gonzalez’s flight to Spain in September, his ally Maria Corina Machado going into hiding in Venezuela, and the detentions of high-profile opposition figures and protesters.
In the latest in a series of punitive steps, the outgoing Biden administration increased its reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Maduro on drug trafficking charges to $25 million, from a previous $15 million.
It also issued a $25 million reward for Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and a $15 million reward for Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, as well as new sanctions against eight other officials including the head of state oil company PDVSA Hector Obregon.
The US indicted Maduro and others on narcotics and corruption charges, among others, in 2020. Maduro has rejected the accusations.
The US move coincided with sanctions by Britain and the European Union each targeting 15 officials, including members of the National Electoral Council and the security forces, and Canadian sanctions targeting 14 current and former officials.
The Maduro government has always rejected all sanctions, saying they are illegitimate measures that amount to an “economic war” designed to cripple Venezuela.
“The outgoing government of the United States doesn’t know how to take revenge on us,” Maduro said during his inauguration speech, without directly mentioning sanctions.
The Venezuelan communications ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the sanctions.
Maduro and his allies have cheered what they say is the country’s resilience despite the measures, though they have historically blamed some economic hardships and shortages on sanctions.
OPPOSITION TO SPEAK
Gonzalez, who has been on a whistle-stop tour of the Americas this week, has said he will return to Venezuela to take up the mantle of president, but has given no details.
The government, which has accused the opposition of fomenting fascist plots against it, has said Gonzalez will be arrested if he returns and offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to his capture.
Opposition leaders Gonzalez and Machado are each expected to speak later on Friday.
Both are being investigated by the attorney general’s office for alleged conspiracy, but only Gonzalez has a public warrant out for his arrest.
Machado’s first public appearance since August at an anti-government march in Caracas on Thursday was marred by a brief detention.
Her Vente Venezuela political movement said guns were fired and Machado was knocked off the motorcycle on which she was leaving the event. She was then held and forced to film several videos, it said.
One video shared on social media and by government officials showed her sitting on a curb and recounting losing her wallet.
The government scoffed at the incident and denied any involvement.
Some 42 people have been detained for political reasons since Tuesday, judicial NGO Foro Penal said.
Maduro was sworn in at the national assembly in Caracas and said he was taking his oath in the name of sixteenth-century Indigenous leader Guaicaipuro and late President Hugo Chavez, his mentor, among others.
“May this new presidential term be a period of peace, of prosperity, of equality and the new democracy,” Maduro said, adding he would convene a commission dedicated to constitutional reform.
“This act is possible because Venezuela is peaceful, in full exercise of its national sovereignty, of its popular sovereignty, of its national independence,” Maduro said.
Some 2,000 invitees from 125 countries attended the inauguration, according to the government.
Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel and Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega, staunch allies of Maduro, attended as did Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament.
ECONOMIC TROUBLES
Venezuela closed its borders and airspace to Colombia for 72 hours starting at 0500 local time (1000 GMT), the foreign ministry in Bogota said in a statement, adding the border on the Colombian side would remain open.
The opposition, non-governmental organizations and international bodies such as the United Nations have for years decried increasing repression of opposition political parties, activists and independent media in Venezuela.
US President-elect Donald Trump has said the country is being run by a dictator.
Meanwhile the government has repeatedly accused the opposition of plotting with foreign governments and agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency to commit acts of sabotage and terrorism.
The government said this week it had detained seven “mercenaries,” including a high-ranking FBI official and a US military official.
Venezuela’s economy has experienced a prolonged crisis marked by triple-digit inflation and the exodus of more than 7 million migrants seeking better opportunities abroad.
Many of Machado’s supporters, among them retired Venezuelans who would like to see their children and grandchildren return to the country, say jobs, inflation and unreliable public services are among their top concerns.
The government, meanwhile, has employed orthodox methods to try to tamp down inflation, to some success. Maduro said this month that the economy grew 9 percent last year.
About 2,000 people were arrested at protests following the election. The government said this week it has released 1,515 of them. Gonzalez, 75, said his son-in-law was kidnapped on Tuesday while taking his children to school.
Sweden grants lowest ever number of residence permits to asylum seekers in 2024
- “I think it will need to continue to decrease,” Migration Minister Johan Forssell told a news conference
- The number of people in Sweden, who were born abroad has doubled in the past two decades to about a fifth of its 10.5-milion population
STOCKHOLM: Sweden granted the lowest number of residence permits to asylum seekers and their relatives on record in 2024, a boost for the right-wing government which pledged on Friday to keep bringing the number down further.
Sweden’s minority government and its backers, the far-right and anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, won the 2022 election on a promise to keep reducing immigration and gang crime, which they say are linked.
Since then it has introduced and proposed several measures to make Sweden less attractive to immigrants, such as making it harder to become a citizen and gain residence permits, less generous rules for bringing family members to Sweden and slashed the number of UNHCR quota immigrants accepted.
According to Swedish Migration Agency data 6,250 asylum seekers and their relatives were given residency permits in 2024, down 42 percent compared to when the government came into power and the lowest number since comparable records began in 1985.
“I think it will need to continue to decrease,” Migration Minister Johan Forssell told a news conference. “We now have a historically low asylum rate, but that should be put in relation to a number of years when it has been at very high levels.”
The number of people in Sweden, who were born abroad has doubled in the past two decades to about a fifth of its 10.5-milion population.
The country recorded a peak of just over 86,000 granted asylum related residency permits in 2016, the year after the migration crisis when 163,000 people sought asylum in Sweden, the highest number per capita in the EU.
Since then Sweden has reversed generous immigration policies, fueled by the rise of the Sweden Democrats, which first made it in to parliament in 2010 but in the last election won 20.5 percent of the vote to become the second-biggest party.
The policies have drawn harsh criticism from human rights groups, which say that the government is falsely making immigrants responsible for Sweden’s problems and risking eroding civil rights and protections.
The government is actively encouraging immigrants to return to their home countries and has earmarked 3 billion Swedish crowns ($269.18 million) for repatriation grants. Starting next year immigrants to Sweden can get 350,000 Swedish crowns to return, up from the current 10,000 crowns.
Special UK unit to track down soldiers over deaths of Afghan civilians
- Ministry of Defence team tasked with finding ex-personnel wanted in connection with alleged killings between 2010, 2013
- Afghan Inquiry established in 2022 following Times, BBC investigations
LONDON: The UK Ministry of Defence has instructed a special unit to find former elite soldiers wanted in connection with alleged killings of Afghan civilians, The Times reported on Friday.
The Afghan Inquiry Response Unit will locate people named by sources in relation to the alleged war crimes covered by the Afghan Inquiry.
It will use information including the addresses of people drawing military pensions to track down those wanted for questioning.
The AIRU, which was set up in 2023, includes military personnel, civil servants, former police detectives and a specialist Metropolitan Police counterterrorist officer.
The Afghan Inquiry is looking into claims that UK special forces members killed unarmed Afghans during night raids across a three-year period of operations, and attempted to hide evidence of wrongdoing.
The Afghan Inquiry was established in 2022 after investigations by The Times and the BBC uncovered claims that UK Special Air Force units killed numerous Afghan civilians between 2010 and 2013, including an incident where three boys aged 12, 14 and 16 were killed while drinking tea in their home.
The inquiry has the power to compel witness testimony under threat of imprisonment, but has had to contend with issues including former serving personnel not keeping contact with their regiments and some witnesses refusing to give evidence.
Former Veterans Minister Johnny Mercer was threatened with jail last year after he refused to give up the names of soldiers who had told him about alleged war crimes.
