China flexes naval muscles; holds live-fire drill in Taiwan strait

China held live-fire drills in the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday but Taipei dismissed the exercises as "routine" after expected large-scale naval manoeuvres failed to materialise.

Beijing had announced the drills last week, further ramping up tensions following stark warnings against any independence moves by the self-ruled island which China sees as its sovereign territory.

Vessels had been told to avoid a certain area off the Chinese mainland's coast, triggering speculation that a flotilla spearheaded by China's sole aircraft carrier would take part in the exercise.

But Taiwan's defence ministry said Wednesday that the drills only involved land-based artillery conducting "routine" shooting practice.

Beijing has yet to release any information about the drill, which Chinese authorities had said would run until midnight, without giving any details about which military equipment or personnel would be involved.

"China deliberately released fake information to exaggerate it, to make it sound huge when in fact it's small," Taiwanese defence ministry spokesman Chen Chung-chi said.

China holds biggest ever military drill in SCS amid Xi's presence

The Chinese military on Thursday held its largest ever maritime drill in the disputed South China Sea during which it displayed for the first time the country's aircraft carrier strike group and the most advanced weaponry of the People's Liberation Army (PLA).

President Xi Jinping, also the general secretary of the ruling Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), reviewed the drill and addressed the sailors, PLA Daily reported.

CMC is the overall high command of the 2-million strong Chinese military.

Forty-eight warships, 76 aircraft and more than 10,000 sailors and soldiers took part in the drill which was hailed as "the biggest maritime military parade since the foundation of the new China and a heroic display of the PLA Navy in the new era," the PLA Daily reported today.

The drill was held amid frequent forays made by US naval and aircraft into the South China Sea to assert the freedom of navigation especially around the artificial islands built by China, where it has also established garrisons.

Fake news twists Hong Kong Airline crew's refusal to wear Chinese tags

News concerning changes to the outfits worn by airline cabin crews has stirred real debate among Chinese-speaking online communities in recent times.

In May, Emirates faced a furious backlash after demanding its Taiwan crew wear mainland China's national flag pin rather than the Taiwan island pin on their uniforms, following apparent pressure from Beijing. Emirates walked back the order after a number of people vowed to boycott the airline.

This month, Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific airline suspended its new policy of adding Chinese names onto Hong Kong and Taiwan cabin crews’ name tags after the airline's union spoke out against the decision on privacy grounds.

Name tag politicisation

While the political underpinnings of Emirates’ outfit policy were plain for all to see, the controversy over Cathay Pacific's name tag policy has mostly been stoked by ‘fake news’ originating in the mainland Chinese press.

The name tag furore was reported in Hong Kong as early as June 1. The union's arguments that it pushed back against the move in order to protect staff privacy would seem legitimate, since Chinese names are very specific and thus easy to track.

Nor is this a just a hypothetical danger. In fact, a number of air hostesses from Cathay Dragon, Cathay Pacific's sister airline, which adopted the Chinese name tag outfit last year, have filed complaints to the company after stalkers managed to find their names via social media platforms and send them disturbing messages.

Hong Kong versus China, but not quite

However, the news of the union's protest was twisted in mainland China on June 11 under an antagonistic headline: “Hong Kong Cathay Pacific Air Hostesses Refuse to Wear Chinese Name Tags Because They Don't Want to Please Mainland Chinese Passengers”.

The headline deliberately inverted one air hostess’ comment that the company originally adopted the new tags in order to “please mainland Chinese Passengers”. The report went on to suggest that the air hostesses now instead wanted to “please foreigners” with their English name tags.
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Google, Amazon eye Toshiba's lucrative memory chip business

Google and Amazon joined a list of potential buyers eyeing Toshiba's lucrative memory chip business as the Japanese conglomerate seeks bidders to cover huge losses, a newspaper said on Saturday.

Toshiba has reportedly completed the first round of bidding for its prized memory chip business, seen as key for the cash-strapped company to turn itself around.

Some 10 foreign companies and funds, including Google and Amazon, tendered bids, the mass-circulation Yomiuri Shimbun said, quoting unnamed sources.

The two US tech giants are expected to use Toshiba's memory chips for their cloud services, the daily said.

Taiwan's Hon Hai, which acquired Japanese electronics maker Sharp last year, has apparently bid more than 2 trillion yen ($18 billion), the daily said.

Immediate confirmation of the report was not available.

Toshiba shares jumped more than five percent on Friday after local media reported that bidders included Apple, US private-equity firm Silver Lake Partners and American chipmaker Broadcom.

Toshiba is expected to negotiate with individual candidates this month.

Local media said any foreign buyer would need to pass a Japanese government review, given concerns about security around systems already using Toshiba's memory chips.

Toshiba is the world's number two supplier of memory chips for smartphones and computers, behind South Korea's Samsung, and the business accounted for about a quarter of its 5.67 trillion yen in revenue last fiscal year.

The news report came after angry investors lambasted Toshiba executives at a shareholders meeting over its warning that annual losses could balloon to more than $9.0 billion.

The red ink is largely tied to huge cost overruns and construction delays at its US nuclear power unit Westinghouse Electric, which filed for bankruptcy protection late March. (read more)