All posts tagged: Guangzhou

What to know about Jimmy Lai’s Hong Kong journey from media mogul and activist to convict | World News

What to know about Jimmy Lai’s Hong Kong journey from media mogul and activist to convict | World News

Published by Parlour News

The 78-year-old outspoken critic of China’s ruling Communist Party awaits sentencing Monday after being convicted in December of conspiring to commit sedition and collude with foreign forces. Observers say his landmark trial came to symbolise a crackdown that began in 2020 on press and other freedoms that has changed Hong Kong, the former British colony that returned to China’s control in 1997. The Hong Kong government insists Lai’s case has nothing to do with press freedom, but instead is an example of righteousness upheld by the law. A migrant from mainland China, he made a fortune in the garment industry in Hong Kong and later founded the Apple Daily newspaper, where he wrote articles criticising the Chinese and Hong Kong governments for limiting freedoms. The publication eventually was shuttered and his words became trial evidence. Here is what to know about his unusual journey to political activism that has ended, at least for the moment, in prison. Story continues below this ad Lai was born in 1947 in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, once …

Book Box : Reading China – Part 1

Book Box : Reading China – Part 1

Published by Parlour News

Dear Reader, Entrance to the Canton Fair I feel grateful for my travel reading, for stories on politics, history and culture that help me seek truths in the spaces between texts and landscapes. And for all the fiction – family sagas, historical novels and murder mysteries that teach me even deeper truths about a country I visit. This week I travel from Hong Kong to Mainland China with my husband to attend the Canton Fair. We board the China Ferry in Hong Kong, sailing up the South China Sea into the delta of the Pearl River and further upriver to Canton. The skies are grey and it’s overcast. Two hundred years ago, on this very Pearl River, I picture British ships loaded with opium on their way to Canton (now Guangzhou). Soon after come the British warships from the South China Sea, fighting for their right to sell opium to the Chinese people. I read these waterway scenes from Amitav Ghosh’s fantastic historical novel River of Smoke set during this time : “…the greatest of …

Guangzhou FC, China’s Most Successful Club, Kicked Out Of Professional Football

Guangzhou FC, China’s Most Successful Club, Kicked Out Of Professional Football

Published by Webster

Guangzhou FC, China’s most successful football team and former Asian champions, have been thrown out of the country’s professional leagues because of “heavy historical debt”, the club say. The effective demise of the eight-time Chinese Super League (CSL) winners, once managed by Marcello Lippi and also Fabio Cannavaro, signals the end of an era in the domestic game in China. Dozens of Chinese clubs, including fellow former CSL champions Jiangsu Suning, have folded in recent years in debt. “The club tried various means to gain access to the professional league,” Guangzhou FC, formerly known as Guangzhou Evergrande, said. “However, because of the heavy historical debt burden, the funds we raised were insufficient to clear them.” The Chinese Football Association (CFA) excluded Guangzhou from a list of 49 teams included in China’s professional leagues for 2025. Guangzhou once dominated Chinese football, winning seven consecutive CSL titles from 2011 to 2017 and two Asian Champions League crowns. But they were relegated to China’s second tier in 2022 after their majority owner, property developers Evergrande Real …