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Chinese Companies Buy up UK Private Schools, Sparking Fears of CCP Influence

Chinese companies have bought up 17 U.K. private schools in the United Kingdom in recent years, sparking fears of expanding Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influence in the country as the schools struggle financially in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, British media reported.

“Hundreds of independent schools left in dire financial straits by the coronavirus pandemic are being targeted by Chinese investors,” the Mail on Sunday newspaper reported at the weekend.

Some of the companies are run by high-ranking members of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, and “seek to expand their influence over Britain’s education system,” the report said.

According to an investigation by the paper, nine of the 17 schools under Chinese control are owned by companies controlled by Chinese entrepreneurs who are also members of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), a body which maintains close ties between private sector wealth and the ruling party.

Private schools have been hard-hit by the pandemic, with plummeting enrollments and falling fees as students are sent home for distance-learning, the report said.

Before the pandemic, Bright Scholar — a company owned by the daughter of Chinese property magnate Yang Guoqiang — had already invested in several schools, including Bournemouth Collegiate School and St Michael’s School in Llanelli, Carmarthanshire, the paper said.

Bedstone College in Shropshire and Ipswich High School are owned by London-based asset manager London & Oxford Group, which in turn is backed by China’s Wanda Group conglomerate.

Riddlesworth Hall Preparatory School in Norfolk, attended by Princess Diana, was acquired by the Confucius International Education Group in 2015.

Ray Global Education, which owns two U.K.-based private schools, says the acquisitions were a part of its “Global Campus” project that seeks to promote the CCP’s Belt & Road infrastructure and global influence initiative in the global education sector.

The company’s president Hu Jing told Chinese state-run media in 2019 that he runs the business in accordance with “political laws, educational laws, and economic laws.”

“No matter how international the school is, it is still fundamentally a Chinese school, and it must pay close heed to the political environment,” Hu told journalists.

When his company set up a school in Shanghai, the first thing it did was to set up a CCP committee and choose a party secretary, he said.

British schools a weak link

Wang Jianhong, spokesman for the U.S.-based rights group Humanitarian China, said she was surprised at the sheer scale of Chinese acquisitions in the U.K. private education sector.

“British private schools are a weak link, because there is a need for investment, and the CCP is taking advantage of that,” Wang told RFA.

“There is little awareness of CCP infiltration,” said Wang, who lived in the U.K. for more than a decade.

Wang said any Chinese company investing in the sector would definitely need the backing of the CCP.

“The CCP’s investment in British private education has been on the increase … and there is definitely a CCP background to these companies: how would ordinary Chinese companies manage to buy up U.K. private schools?” she said.

“Compulsory education providers in the U.K. are now owned by enterprises controlled by the CCP, and the worry now is that its ideology will affect what is being taught there,” Wang said.

She said a current review of Confucius Institutes in the U.K. wouldn’t be enough to curb Beijing’s influence.

“Even if you shut down the Confucius Institute, the CCP has other ways in, including the acquisition of private schools,” Wang said. “I don’t think Western countries have yet realized the extent of the CCP’s involvement here.”

‘No idea how to resist’

U.K.-based author Ma Jian said the U.K. government was failing to perceive the risk in allowing such takeovers.

“These British politicians really are idiots,” Ma told RFA. “China is using their economy to gain a political voice, but they have no idea how to resist them.”

He said U.K. educational institutions also have a huge portfolio of investments in China.

“The U.K. has turned itself into a trading outpost of China, not just in terms of business, economy and trade, but also in terms of culture,” Ma said. “[U.K.] universities, research institutes, secondary and primary schools have invested a lot of money in China.”

He said the acquisition of U.K. private schools in entirely in keeping with China’s bid to expand CCP influence around the world under general secretary Xi Jinping.

“This is all about targeting the next generation, educationally speaking,” Ma said.

An employee of a Shanghai-based education-sector investment company, who gave only a nickname An, said there are also strong economic reasons for Chinese companies to be interested in the private education sector in the U.K.

The Hurun Research Institute reported in 2018 that more than 80 percent of China’s wealthiest families plan to send their children to overseas schools, with nearly one third saying they would choose schools in the U.K.

“British brands are also particularly attractive to Chinese parents, who think about the aristocratic British accent and lifestyle,” An told RFA.

According to a 2020 report from the Independent Schools Council (ISC), China has sent more students to private U.K. schools than any other country, a total of 10,864 at the time of the survey.

According to An, a weaker, post-Brexit pound and strong government support are also attractive to Chinese investors and parents alike.

ISC chair Barnaby Lenon told the Times Educational Supplement in 2019 that people should be “jolly pleased” that Chinese investors were buying up U.K. private schools.

“This obviously is the salvation of a small number of these schools. It’s a good thing for those schools because it means they can remain viable,” Lenon said.

Reported by Jane Tang for RFA’s Mandarin Service, and by Yitong Wu and Singman for the Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

FCC Approves $50 Monthly Internet Subsidies for Low-Income Households During Pandemic

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The Federal Communications Commission has approved final rules for a new broadband subsidy program that could help struggling families pay for internet service during the pandemic. From a report: The agency’s $3.2 billion Emergency Broadband Benefit Program provides eligible low-income households with up to a $50 per month credit on their internet bills through their provider until the end of the pandemic. In tribal areas, eligible households may receive up to $75 per month. The program also provides eligible households up to $100 off of one computer or tablet The congressionally created program is aimed at closing the digital divide, which has become painfully apparent over the past year as millions of Americans have been forced to work and learn remotely. Some have also raised concerns that the digital divide could affect access to the vaccine as signups typically happen online.

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Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Coronavirus tracker: California reported 5, 525 new cases, 394 new deaths and 368 fewer hospitalizations as of Feb. 25

The end-of-day totals from California public health websites for Thursday, Feb. 25, registered 5,525 new cases of the coronavirus, bringing the total number of cases there have been in the state to 3,530,703.

The 14-day total of new cases, 6,423, is down 84.8% from the Jan. 1 high of 42,268.

There were 394 new deaths reported Thursday, for a total of 51,384 people in California who have died from the virus.

Hospitalizations continue to decline, averaging a 1% drop daily. There were 6,152 hospitalizations of people with coronavirus-related infections reported on Thursday. That’s a 73% drop since the Jan. 1 high of 22,853 people who needed hospital care.

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Sources: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Johns Hopkins University, the World Health Organization, the California Department of Public Health, The Associated Press, reporting counties and news sources

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The Real Threat to Women’s Sports Isn’t Trans Athletes. It’s Sexually Predatory Coaches.

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On February 26, 2021 the passage of the Equality Act in the US House of Representatives piqued conservatives into a moral panic.

The bill, which would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, had a terrifying potential for Republicans: the presence of trans girls in high school sports.

There was House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s statement that, “This really seems like an onslaught against freedom of religion [and] for girls’ sports as well.” There was Rep. Tom McClintock’s (R-Calif.) assertion that the legislation “destroys women’s sports and renders parents powerless to protect their own children.” And there was Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) tweet—in response to Rep. Marie Newman (D-Ill.), who has a transgender daughter—saying, “Your biological son does NOT belong in my daughters’ bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports teams.”

All this language of the need to “protect,” the need to root out other children from “bathrooms” and “locker rooms,” is hard to square with reality. As with the introduction of “bathroom bills,” the anti-trans argument is a red herring. It is another example of conservatives standing athwart progressive social change in the name of protecting children—long a hallmark of right-wing reactionary politics.

But it is also particularly infuriating because all this effort has been summoned on a day when actual women in sports were in the news for being harmed.

While legislators on the House floor were pontificating about the demise of women’s sports, another story was unfolding. Yesterday, John Geddert, head coach of the 2012 gold-medal women’s Olympic gymnastics team, committed suicide in Michigan. He had just been charged with human trafficking and sex crimes against girls as young as 13. (None of the members of Congress have commented on that, from what I’ve seen.)

Geddert was a longtime friend of Larry Nassar, the convicted rapist who was accused of assaulting 265 girls as young as six. His victims included Olympic gold-medal gymnasts McKayla Maroney, Aly Raisman, and Simone Biles. Nassar admitted to sexually abusing girls at the Twistars Gymnastics Club owned by Geddert.

Abusive coaches are nothing new, and it’s not only sexual abuse. In 2019, Mary Cain, the youngest American runner to make a World Championships team, accused Nike coach Alberto Salazar of physical and psychological abuse that ruined her career. A Business Insider story from last year details the psychological abuse female college athletes from a variety of sports say they experienced at the hands of their coaches. And last August, Texas Tech fired two of its women basketball coaches after accusations surfaced of physical, mental, and verbal abuse.

This abuse, of course, is not limited to women either. Among the most notorious abusers in the sports world is Jerry Sandusky, the Penn State assistant football coach who in 2012 was found guilty of sexually assaulting 10 boys. Joe Paterno, the head coach who ignored reports of Sandusky’s abuse, was fired and died of cancer months later.

As scandal after scandal emerges about the pervasive abuse of young athletes, it’s time we reevaluate our priorities. Trans athletes aren’t the problem.

UPDATE 1-World Bank halts payment requests on Myanmar projects made after Feb 1 coup | Reuters

The World Bank has halted payments to projects in Myanmar on withdrawal requests that were made after a Feb. 1 coup by the country’s military, the bank said in a letter to Myanmar’s finance ministry seen by Reuters on Thursday.

A World Bank spokesman verified the letter, from World Bank Myanmar country director Mariam Sherman to the Myanmar Ministry of Planning, Finance and Industry. It said the bank would make payments to Myanmar project suppliers, contractors and consultants for withdrawal applications made prior to that date.

Source: UPDATE 1-World Bank halts payment requests on Myanmar projects made after Feb 1 coup | Reuters

Myanmar: police open fire on protesters in Yangon as law students march to denounce judiciary in Mandalay – JURIST – News – Legal News & Commentary

Police in a district of Yangon, the old capital of Myanmar, opened fire on peaceful protesters Thursday in the second instance of armed violence by agents of the ruling military junta against unarmed protesters in less than a week. Last Saturday, police and soldiers opened fire on a crowd in Mandalay, killing several. Video from Yangon showed riot police moving on protesters in formation down a street, repeatedly discharging their weapons as the crowd fled. The crowd had gathered to oppose a newly appointed ward administrator. Local reports circulating on the Internet before connectivity was cut off by the military early in the morning Myanmar time for the twelfth night in a row claimed that multiple people were injured in the attack. Other reports indicated that house raids and multiple arrests followed the shootings.  Earlier in the evening in Yangon, protesters had faced massed police in a temporary standoff as one protester kneeled in front of the police line. Source: Myanmar: police open fire on protesters in Yangon as law students march to denounce judiciary in Mandalay – JURIST – News – Legal News & Commentary

Containers pile up at Myanmar ports as coup protests slow trade, Transport – THE BUSINESS TIMES

THOUSANDS of striking truck drivers in Myanmar protesting the military coup have slowed the delivery of imports, trapping cargo containers at ports and prompting at least one international shipping line to halt new orders. About 100 containers a day are moving out of Yangon’s four main ports, said Myo Htut Aung, joint secretary of the Myanmar Container Trucking Association, down from an average of 800 boxes before the coup. About 90 per cent of the city’s 4,000 container-truck drivers have halted work, he said.

Source: Containers pile up at Myanmar ports as coup protests slow trade, Transport – THE BUSINESS TIMES

Thailand PM denies endorsing coup d’etat in Myanmar

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said on Thursday his meeting with Myanmar’s foreign minister on Wednesday was not an endorsement of the military coup in the neighbouring country.

He did not use the term military coup, but was apparently responding to criticism about the meeting.

Source: PM denies endorsing coup d’etat in Myanmar

Made In India COVID 19 Vaccines Dispatched To Cote d Ivoire-ANI – BW Businessworld

More than twenty-five nations across the world have already received Made-in-India vaccines and Forty-nine more countries will be supplied in the coming days, ranging from Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean to Africa, South-East Asia and the Pacific Islands.  Source: Made In India COVID 19 Vaccines Dispatched To Cote d Ivoire-ANI – BW Businessworld