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“Whoever introduces external forces to get involved is a complete traitor!” 

“I understand the rally organised this time was by… the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of America.”

“Don’t be led astray by external forces. No matter what, you must love your country!”

These comments are far from unusual on the Chinese social media site Weibo.

A range of users – from those with a handful of followers (known as “fans” on the platform) to ones boasting millions of subscribers – have been repeating claims that “external forces” are responsible for the protests that have taken place across the country in recent days.

Rallies against China’s unusually strict zero-COVID measures spread to several cities over the weekend in the biggest show of opposition to the ruling Communist Party in decades.

The numbers of protesters have now dipped, likely in part because of low temperatures and a heavy police presence at key locations.

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While the Chinese authorities have not directly commented on these rallies, they have repeatedly warned that “foreign forces” are a threat to national security and have interfered in the Hong Kong democracy protests.

This warning has been repeated by figures associated with the Chinese Communist Party, such as Ren Yi, the grandson of a Communist Party leader, Ren Zhongyi.

Image:
Ren Yi supports the idea ‘foreign forces’ are involved in the protests

Ren Yi has almost two million fans on Weibo, where he writes under the username Chairman Rabbit.

In a recent post, he asks “what do overseas anti-China forces most want” from the protests and why did “foreign forces… come out to make a fuss and then withdraw”.

Popular TV pundit and commentator Yu Li, whose Weibo username is Sima Nan and boasts 3.16 million fans, jokes in one post that he wants to thank foreign forces for interfering in the protests.

He writes: “If the CIA or the National Endowment for Democracy has an office in Beijing, please tell me the address and contact information, and I plan to send them a gift.”

The idea that America’s Central Intelligence Agency has been involved in the protests appears in a number of posts from Weibo users.

In particular, a screenshot of a news article reporting that the CIA is looking to hire more Chinese speakers is being widely shared.

Another image being widely posted is a snapshot of the moment a BBC cameraman was detained by Chinese police while covering the protests.

According to officials, Ed Lawrence was arrested “for his own good” in case he caught COVID from the crowd. He was released after being beaten and held for several hours.

One of the users who posted a photo of Mr Lawrence called him a “little idiot” and commented “we must not allow external forces to intervene in our internal conflicts”.

Another Weibo user made an unfounded accusation against Mr Lawrence, claiming he was a “British agent who was caught pretending to be a BBC reporter”. The account provided no evidence to back up the claim.

The BBC confirmed Mr Lawrence was a staff member and was working as an “accredited journalist”.

Accusations of foreign forces meddling in the protests are also appearing on other social media sites.

Two Chinese Twitter users with a combined follower count of 53,400 posted what they claim is evidence that Westerners are using an encrypted messaging app to plan the protest.

Image:
One of the posts, written in English, accused this Telegram group of ‘planning’ the protest in Shanghai

The message on Telegram provided a time, meeting place and instructions to bring a white piece of paper, a symbol borrowed by those protesting in China from the demonstrators in Hong Kong.

Sky News found the Telegram chat but the messages were not in it. They could have been deleted.

As this wave of jingoistic social media messages spread across Weibo and other platforms, signs of China’s notorious internet censorship rules could also be seen.

Posts mentioning Shanghai, a Chinese city which saw large protests, appear to have been deleted en masse from Weibo.

This screenshot shows a search for 上海 (Shanghai) brought up fewer than 1,000 results.

While this screenshot for 北京 (Beijing), a comparable city in terms of prominence and population, resulted in almost 40 million hits.

Weibo openly states on its platform that content is monitored and may be removed.

As well as posts being deleted, those looking for information on the protests must contend with swathes of spam messages flooding social media.

Benjamin Strick, investigations director of Centre for Information Resilience, has identified more than 3,000 posts on Twitter that include hashtags for some of the cities in China where protests are taking place.

He says these posts are being used to “spam the tags with dating ads”.

Many of the accounts were made recently and have zero or few followers. Some 2,000 of the tweets use the text “I’m single, can I get a husband on Twitter.”

“For journalists or researchers looking up what’s happening in China at specific locations. This is what they’re wading through,” Mr Strick tweeted.

It is not possible to know if the spam messages are burying protest posts by design or coincidence, nor can we measure how many posts are being taken down from sites like Weibo.

But there are some groups fighting back.

Greatfire.org is a China-based group challenging Chinese censorship. It runs sites such as freeweibo.com which captures posts before they are deleted from the official Weibo platform and publishes them so they remain visible online.

Searching for terms like “protest” or “white paper” bring up a large number of banned comments. A link to the deleted post (which now displays as an error message) on Weibo is also provided.

Despite the levels of censorship facing Chinese citizens, protesters have been finding a way to get information out into the world, such as this video showing a man being dragged into a police car.

One of the co-founders of Greatfire.org, Charlie Smith (not his real name), told Sky News the events over the last week shows the censors are “fallible”.

He said: “These protests really highlight how the online censorship apparatus in China is fallible… [and] what has happened over the weekend shows that many Chinese are well aware of what is happening in the country.

“Yes, there is widespread censorship on social media in China, but this weekend’s protests illustrate that history cannot be erased.”


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What we learn from video of captured Chinese national in Ukraine – and the serious questions it raises

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What we learn from video of captured Chinese national in Ukraine - and the serious questions it raises

In a carefully written post on social media platform Telegram, Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused the Russian army of deploying Chinese citizens on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine.

What about the proof? Well, the Ukrainian president says his security services captured two people from China in the Donetsk region – along with identity documents, personal data and their bank cards.

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A video of a man in military fatigues who had been captured by Ukraine was pinned to the bottom of the statement.

We get snippets of a conversation where the alleged combatant seems to be talking about the events that led to his capture.

“When we arrived at the place… and then my commander.” The man gestures at the floor and ceiling, making shooting noises. “I was also injured.”

Volodymyr Zelenskyy uploaded  a video appearing to show a Chinese prisoner in Ukrainian custody.
Image:
Volodymyr Zelenskyy uploaded a video appearing to show a Chinese citizen in military uniform in Ukrainian custody

These details will make it difficult for the Chinese government to deny the incident out of hand, although they are highly unlikely to supply additional information.

Important details like, who are they? What function(s) do they fulfil in Ukraine’s occupied territories?

Were they volunteers – or mercenaries – who had signed up to fight in the Russian army on their own?

Alternatively, does the Chinese government sanction their involvement – or even encourage it?

That would make the situation far more serious.

Read more:
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What China could do next as Trump’s tariff war ramps up

The capture of these Chinese nationals in Donetsk begs another question – how many Chinese are actually fighting for Russia? In his post, Mr Zelenskyy said “there are many more Chinese citizens” other than these two.

Still, the Ukrainian president works hard to suggest the Chinese, officially at least, are blameless.

“Russia’s involvement of China in this war… is a clear signal that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is going to do anything but end the war,” he writes on Telegram.

This is a generous interpretation of China’s approach to the conflict, which is quite openly contradictory.

On one hand, Chinese President Xi Jinping describes China as a neutral party to the conflict, while simultaneously offering Mr Putin long-term political and economic support.

In fact, he described their partnership as a “no limits” one in a phone call with Mr Putin on the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Mr Zelenskyy then, is making a point with this post – but he does not want to make the situation any worse.

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What China could do next as Trump’s tariff war ramps up

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What China could do next as Trump's tariff war ramps up

The severity cannot be overstated, if an additional 50% tariffs are levied on all Chinese goods it will decimate trade between the world’s two biggest economies.

Remember, 50% would sit on top of what is already on the table: 34% announced last week, 20% announced at the start of US President Donald Trump’s term, and some additional tariffs left over from his first term in office.

In total, it means all Chinese goods would face tariffs of over 100%, some as high as 120%.

It’s a price that makes any trade almost impossible.

China is really the only nation in the world at the moment that is choosing to take a stand.

While others are publicly making concessions and sending delegations to negotiate, China has clearly calculated that not being seen to be bullied is worth the cost that retaliation will bring.

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Tariffs: Xi hits back at Trump

The real question, though, is if the US does indeed impose this extra 50% tomorrow, what could or would China do next?

It has said it will “fight to the end”, but what does that mean?

In reality, there are few good options.

There are some obvious measures that China will almost certainly enact.

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Further export controls on rare earth minerals (crucial for the development of high-tech products) are one example. China controls a huge proportion of the world’s supply, but the US would likely find workarounds in time.

Hiking tariffs on high-impact US products such as agricultural goods is another option, but there is only so far this could go.

The potentially more impactful options have significant drawbacks for Beijing.

It could, for instance, target high-profile American companies such as Apple and Tesla, but this isn’t ideal at a time when China is trying to attract more foreign investment, and some devaluation of the currency is possible, but it would also come with adverse effects.

Other options are more political and come with the risk of escalation beyond the economic arena.

In an opinion piece this morning, the editor of Xinhua, China’s state news agency, speculated that China could cease all cooperation with the US on the war against fentanyl.

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This has been a major political issue for Mr Trump, and it’s hard to see it would not constitute some sort of red line for him.

Other options touted include banning the import of American films, or perhaps calling for the Chinese public to boycott all American products.

Anything like this comes with a sense that the world’s two most powerful superpowers might be teetering on the edge of not just a total economic decoupling, but cultural separation too.

There is understandably serious nervousness about how that could spiral and the precedent it sets.

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South Korean military fire at North Korean soldiers ‘crossing demarcation line’

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South Korean military fire at North Korean soldiers 'crossing demarcation line'

South Korea’s military said its soldiers fired warning shots at North Korean troops who crossed the demarcation line between the two countries.

Around 10 North Korean soldiers violated the military line on Tuesday, but returned after it made warning broadcasts and fired warning shots, South Korea’s military said.

In a text sent to reporters, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), said “North Korean soldiers crossed the military demarcation line (MDL) in the eastern area of the demilitarised zone (DMZ) around 5:00 pm local time.

In this photo provided Thursday, March 27, 2025, by the North Korean government, its leader Kim Jong Un, center left in a black jacket, stands by what appeared to be a large reconnaissance drone at an undisclosed location in North Korea, earlier this week. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: "KCNA" which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)
Image:
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, centre left in a black jacket, stands by what appeared to be a large reconnaissance drone at an undisclosed North Korean location. File pic: AP

“Our military is closely monitoring the North Korean military’s activity and taking necessary measures according to the operational procedures.”

Some of the North Korean soldiers were armed, according to the South Korean military.

There is no clear motive for the crossing, but tensions between the two countries have been running high as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un continues to order missile tests and align with Russia over President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine.

North Korean special operations units are among the thousands of troops that Pyongyang has sent to Russia to fight in the Ukraine war, according to South Korea.

In January, Pyongyang tested a hypersonic missile of intermediate range, in a sign of its determination to continue its weapons development programme.

Since re-entering the White House, US President Donald Trump has said he would reach out to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un again to revive diplomatic efforts begun during his first term.

The secretive regime has not responded to Mr Trump’s remarks, but recently claimed US hostilities against it had deepened since the inauguration.

Last month, Mr Kim’s sister threatened the Trump administration with retaliatory action for stepping up “provocations” with the deployment of a US aircraft carrier to South Korea.

Bloodshed and violent confrontations have occasionally occurred at the Koreas’ heavily fortified border, called the Demilitarised Zone, or DMZ.

But when North Korean troops briefly violated the border in June last year, it didn’t escalate as South Korean officials realised they were carrying construction tools and decided the incursion was accidental.

The 155-mile (249km)-long, 2.5-mile (4km)-wide DMZ is the world’s most heavily armed border.

Read more on Sky News:
US is a tariff bully, China says
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Around two million mines are inside and near the border, which is also guarded by barbed wire fences, tank traps and combat troops on both sides.

It’s a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

The incursion comes as South Korea copes with a leadership vacuum after the ousting of President Yoon Suk Yeol last week over his ill-fated imposition of martial law.

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