Over a third of Dutch people with East Asia and Southeast Asia roots have experienced discrimination in the past few year. Among Chinese Dutch it's even 52 percent. The reports are based on a study by the University of Amsterdam and the Fontys Hogeschool Tilburg on behalf of the Ministry of Social Affairs.
It is the first extensive study into discrimination against Dutch people with East- and Southeast Asian roots. The researchers surveyed a representative sample of 2,505 Dutch people of East Asian and Southeast Asian descent and extensively interviewed 36 respondents. They found countless examples of people being verbally abused, disadvantaged, or excluded because of their appearance or surname. Some reported having racial slurs yelled at them on the street or in class. Others reported “jokes” about eating dogs. Many noticed they had less chance of finding a job or a home. The discrimination mainly occurred in public places, education, and at work. When it comes to slurs shouted on the streets, the perpetrators are usually men, and the victims are generally women. Respondents also often noted being called “Chinese” regardless of their actual origin. These types of experiences have significant consequences, the researchers found. All surveyed groups reported psychological complaints, reduced involvement in society, and damaged trust in the authorities. Perceived discrimination also seems to have increased in all groups since the start of the coronavirus crisis, the researchers said. But they added: “It is not clear whether this increase is the result of an increase in actual discrimination, increasing awareness of discrimination, or the rising willingness to name and report it.” In recent years, there have been many studies in the Netherlands into perceived discrimination from minority groups. These studies typically ignored people with roots in East Asia and Southeast Asia. “That may have to do with the fact that they are often seen as a ‘model minority’ who experience few problems and pose few problems,” the researchers note. That can also be considered discrimination. These population groups have experienced discrimination since Chinese sailors started working in the Dutch ports at the start of the last century, especially during the economic crisis in the 1930s, the researchers said. The report cites a quote from an official in 1929. “If people are allowed in, if they are allowed to stay here for decades, it will be very difficult to get rid of them, and a Dutch colony of illegitimate children with Gypsy, Oriental, and Chinese blood will be bred.” The researchers noted that this idea still lingers in Dutch society, pointing to a broadcast of Holland’s Got Talent in which jury member Gordon said to a candidate of Chinese origin: “Which number are you singing? Number 39 with rice?” Minister Karien van Gennip of Social Affairs called the study results “unfortunately, no surprise.” She said: “It is now visible to everyone on what scale this discrimination takes place. It provides recognition, but above all, it gives us a job to do as a society.
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Why China’s frustrated Youth are Ready to ‘let it rot’Early this month China’s president Xi Jinping encouraged the country’s youth to establish “great ideals” and incorporate their personal goals into the “bigger picture” of the Chinese nation and people. “‘China’s hope lies in youth,” he said in a major speech.
But on China’s internet, some young people say their “ideals” simply cannot be achieved and many of them have given up on trying. Frustrated by the mounting uncertainties and lack of economic opportunities, they are resorting to a new buzzword – bai lan (摆烂, or let it rot in English) – to capture their attitude towards life. The phrase, bai lan, which has its origin in NBA games, means a voluntary retreat from pursuing certain goals because one realises they are simply too difficult to achieve. In American basketball, it often refers to a team’s deliberate loss of a game in order to get a better draft pick. On Weibo, the bai lan-related topics have generated hundreds of millions of reads and discussions since March. Netizens also created different variations of the bai lan attitude. “Properties in Shanghai too expensive? Fine, I’ll just rent all my life, as I can’t afford it if I only earn a monthly salary anyway,” one grumbled. In recent days, this phrase – and more previously ‘tang ping’ (lying flat, 躺平), which means rejecting gruelling competition for a low desire life – gained popularity as severe competition and high social expectations prompted many young Chinese to give up on hard work. But bai lan has a more worrying layer in the way it is being used by young people in China: to actively embrace a deteriorating situation, rather than trying to turn it around. It is close to other Chinese phrases, for example ‘to smash a cracked pot’ (破罐破摔) and ‘dead pigs are not afraid of boiling water’ (死猪不怕开水烫). State media have taken note of this trend. “Why modern young Chinese like to ‘bai lan’?” one recent article in official media outlet asked. “In fact, this is as a result of negative auto suggestion, repeatedly telling oneself I cannot make it… And this kind of mentality often leads people to adopt the ‘bai lan’ attitude.” But the reality is not quite as state media suggested, says Sal Hang, a 29-year-old creative industry professional in Beijing. He says that for his generation of young Chinese, this attitude of letting things rot is likely to be caused by a lack of social mobility and increased uncertainty in today’s China. “Unlike my parents’ generation, young Chinese today have much bigger expectations, but there are many more uncertainties for us, too. For example, we cannot make any long-term plans for our lives any more, because we do not know what is going to happen to us even five years down the road.” After working as a flight engineer in south-western China, Hang moved to Beijing three years ago to work in music, his passion. But the workplace reality changed his initial ambition. “My boss often sets unrealistic targets for me. But however hard I try to meet his KPIs, I always fail. So in the end, I lose my motivation and just do my bare minimum.” Prof Mary Gallagher, director of the Centre for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan, says ‘bai lan’ is not necessarily a sentiment unique to China. “It is a bit like the ‘slacker’ generation in America in the 1990s. And like ‘tang ping’ last year, it is also a rejection against the ultra-competitiveness of today’s Chinese society.” But in today’s China, the sense of hopelessness among the young is further exacerbated by shrinking economic opportunities, she says. In the past few months, while hundreds of millions of Chinese people were confined to their homes due to Covid lockdowns, the world’s second-largest economy also found itself struggling to boost growth. More than 18% of young Chinese people aged between 16 and 24 were jobless in April – the highest since the official record began. “Hard to find a job after graduation this year? Fine, I’ll just bai lan – stay at home and watch TV all day,” wrote one netizen who struggled to find work, despite China’s top leader urged young people to fight for the future. Kecheng Fang, a media professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, says young Chinese use ‘bai lan’ or ‘tang ping’ to show they are not cooperating with the official narrative. “All these popular phrases reflect a shared social emotion of the day. When people use them, they are not just expressing themselves, but looking for a connection with those who have the same feeling,” he says. “Despite the grand official narrative from the leaders, in real life, we are all in the same situation, after all.”
Last week, the US military news site Special Operations Forces Report (SOFREP) wrote that America’s “Green Berets” were planned to be deployed to Taiwan to act as permanent training observers and prepare the island’s special units. This represents a departure from past practice that saw frequent but non-permanent visits by US personnel to Taiwanese training facilities, the report said. The permanent US forces, according to the article, would be situated on the Kinmen Islands, just 10 kilometers from mainland China.
Beijing sees the self-governing isle as part of China’s sovereign territory, and has repeatedly warned it against formally declaring independence. Although Taiwan has governed itself since 1949, most of the international community, including the US, does not officially recognize it as a sovereign state. While the US does not officially support Taiwanese independence, it maintains security ties with the island. Under the ‘Taiwan Enhanced Resilience Act 2022,’ to “deter People’s Republic of China (PRC) aggression against Taiwan” the US is authorized to spend up to $2 billion a year in military grants to bolster the island’s security up until 2027. Mainland China has slammed the increased rotation of US military personnel to the island. The US always prioritizes its own interests, and Taiwan is merely a “pawn” it uses against mainland China, Beijing’s spokesman Chen Binhua stated on Wednesday. He claimed that by “closely aligning with the US to carry out so-called military training programs,” Taiwan’s political leadership is gradually “pushing the people of Taiwan into a crisis.” “Any attempt to seek ‘independence’ through military means or rely on external forces for ‘independence’ will only lead to danger and ultimately result in self-destruction for Taiwan,” he warned. China is using artificial intelligence in the operation of its 45,000km (28,000-mile) high-speed rail network, with the technology achieving several milestones, according to engineers involved in the project.
An AI system in Beijing is processing vast amounts of real-time data from across the country and can alert maintenance teams of abnormal situations within 40 minutes, with an accuracy as high as 95 per cent, they said in a peer-reviewed paper. “This helps on-site teams conduct reinspections and repairs as quickly as possible,” wrote Niu Daoan, a senior engineer at the China State Railway Group’s infrastructure inspection centre, in the paper published by the academic journal China Railway. In the past year, none of China’s operational high-speed railway lines received a single warning that required speed reduction due to major track irregularity issues, while the number of minor track faults decreased by 80 per cent compared to the previous year. According to the paper, the amplitude of rail movement caused by strong winds also decreased – even on massive valley-spanning bridges – with the application of AI technology. Machine intelligence can predict and issue warnings before problems arise, enabling precise and timely maintenance that keeps the infrastructure of high-speed rail lines in better condition than when it was first built, according to the researchers. Niu and his team said the significant amount of data generated by the sensors embedded in high-speed rail infrastructure was “forcing China to adopt new technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence”. The adoption of these technologies allowed for “more precise and timely assessments and scientific evaluations of infrastructure service status”, they said. According to the paper, after years of effort Chinese railway scientists and engineers have “solved challenges” in comprehensive risk perception, equipment evaluation, and precise trend predictions in engineering, power supply and telecommunications. The result was “scientific support for achieving proactive safety prevention and precise infrastructure maintenance for high-speed railways”, the engineers said. Before construction began on China’s first high-speed rail line 15 years ago, critics argued that maintenance would become an unbearable burden as wires and rails inevitably aged. By the end of last year, the network surpassed the length of the equator, posing an engineering and technological challenge to maintain its safe operation. Across the Pacific, the ageing US railway network is facing the same issue, with lack of maintenance leading to frequent safety incidents. In the past 50 years, the average number of derailments has exceeded 2,800 per year, peaking at nearly 10,000 in 1978. China’s high-speed rail is the fastest in the world, operating at 350km/h (217mph), with plans for an increase next year to 400km/hr (249mph). The network is expected to continue its rapid expansion until it connects all cities with populations over 500,000. But Niu’s team identified a looming problem for the rail network, in the combination of rising incomes, a declining birth rate and the overall ageing of the population – the number of maintenance workers will gradually decrease compared to present levels. Asia’s bountiful rice fields have fed the world for centuries, but the industry now faces a threat from a weedy “cousin” of the staple that has proliferated due in part to poor farming practices.
Mealy in texture with dark pigmentation and unfit for consumption, weedy rice can grow rapidly and taller than the regular crop varieties, depriving the latter of soil nutrients and sunlight. As a result of the invasive weedy rice, harvest quality, yields and in turn market value of regular rice have declined significantly in recent years. “They have become feral through a sort of accidental selection. They will eventually stick out over a crop field, but the problem is that by the time they are visible, there can often be quite an infestation,” Kenneth Olsen, Professor of Biology at Washington University, told This Week in Asia. “A major weedy rice infestation can reduce crop harvests in a given field by over 80 per cent,” he said. According to the World Economic Forum, Asian rice producers account for more than 80 per cent of global supply. Olsen was part of an international team including biologists in the United States, Thailand, Malaysia and China who have analysed the menace in a new study. The origins of weedy rice are unclear, although farmers first reported its presence about two decades ago. A high proportion of its varieties in East Asia appears to be directly descended from hybrid rice varieties introduced in the 1980s, Olsen said. Other varieties of weedy rice have also crossbred with wild rice varieties in Asia. “These very aggressive weedy forms can outcompete other rice crops [in terms of growth],” he said. According to several studies, weedy rice appears to be linked to certain cultivated rice varieties in Japan, South Korea and China. It only requires a small amount of weedy rice plants per square metre to cause huge damage to the harvest of cultivated rice, Olsen said. For instance, the US saw crop losses equivalent to an amount that was sufficient to feed 12 million people due to the damage caused by weedy rice in the last few years, he added. Some of the weedy varieties are highly effective at dispersing their seeds in rice fields because of a certain genetic mutation. “These seeds can lie dormant and be perfectly viable for 20 years,” Olsen said. Major rice producer Thailand had reported losses of about 10 per cent of its output as a result of the weedy rice problem in recent years, said Tonapha Pusadee, one of the study’s co-authors. Some studies show that weedy rice varieties found in Southeast Asia have branched off into different evolutionary pathways, including several that originated from cultivated rice. Thai farmers have resorted to several ways to deal with weedy rice, such as cutting the panicles, or the top portions, of their rice crops, using a chemical in a bid to eliminate the problem and planting rice for only one season, Pusadee said. China Road and Bridge Corporation has not yet repaired the damage done by highway construction to the UNESCO-protected Tara River, Montenegro's environmental agency confirms. Montenegro’s Agency for Environmental Protection reported recently that China Road and Bridge Corporation, CRBC, has not yet corrected the damage done to the Tara River, part of which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which occurred during construction of the Bar-Boljare highway. A BIRN investigation showed that the Chinese company was obliged to correct the damage by July 2022. “Projected remediation measures have not yet been completed … We expect that, in the coming period, CRBC will fully realize all the obligations, otherwise we will do it ]ourselves] at the expense of the Chinese company,” the agency told BIRN. “CRBC has so far corrected the left bank of the river, rehabilitated the local macadam road, and remedied the bed of the Tara River to a length of about 500 meters,” the Agency specified. The Bar-Boljare highway represents the Montenegrin leg of a larger highway running from the Adriatic coast to the Serbian capital, Belgrade. CRBC is building the Montenegrin leg and 85 per cent of the first section is being covered by a $944 million loan from China’s Exim Bank. On July 13, 2023, the first section of the highway was officially opened, seven years after the Chinese-financed project started, driving up Montenegro’s public debt to 90.85 per cent of GDP. In June 2019, the local watchdog NGO MANS warned that the highway’s construction was devastating the Tara River, including its UNESCO-protected area, stressing that the construction of bridges and the exploitation and disposal of gravel and sand had damaged the riverbed. After the Environmental Protection Agency determined the damage, a remediation plan with CRBC was determined on August 2, 2021. But civic organisations criticized the remediation measures approved by the Agency, stating that the rehabilitation of only 500 meters of river bed was not enough because more than six kilometres of the river course has been damaged. Lazar Grdinic, from MANS, said there have been no serious efforts to rehabilitate the devastated part of the Tara riverbed and even partially restore it. “So far, there are no serious scientific studies that would give a definitive answer to the question of the extent of the devastation,” Grdinic told BIRN. The head of the local Sports Fishing Club, Momir Zivkovic, also said highway construction had destroyed both the river and its fish stock. In April 2018, the club received a concession to manage fish stocks on part of the Tara, but, due to the devastation of the river, it had demanded compensation from the Chinese company.
“In the past, dozens of fish could be caught on Tara in one day. Today, the situation with the fish stock is a catastrophic, and you can hardly meet a fisherman here, ” Zivkovic told BIRN. BIRN was not able to contact CRBC. Nicknamed the “tear of Europe”, the Tara is considered one of the most beautiful rivers on the continent, and its deep canyons are popular among river rafters. In its 2019 progress report on the country, the European Commission urged Montenegro to prevent possible environmental damage being done to the Tara in the context of the highway. Chinese migrants are flocking to the southern border of the USA and some have Chinese TikTok guides on how to enter the USA.
Over four days, journalists observed nearly 600 migrants, some of whom were Chinese, crossing the border through a gap at the end of a border fence near San Diego. Chinese migrants who spoke to 60 Minutes said they learned about the gap via the video application Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. The Chinesehad reviewed several Douyin posts, which gave detailed instructions on how migrants could hire smugglers to get to the border. And the journey is no walk in the park either. Chinese migrants hoping to start a new life in the US have to trek through multiple countries before they arrive stateside. Some have had to crisscross through Turkey, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama and then Mexico, per CNN. There has been a surge in the number of Chinese migrants entering the US through its borders. According to data from the US Customs and Border Protection, the number of encounters the agency has had with Chinese nationals at the Southwest land border has increased more than 50-fold, from 450 people in 2021 to 24,314 in 2023. Chinese social media platforms have been a boon for migrants hoping to enter the US. In April, Reuters interviewed more than two dozen Chinese migrants entering the US via southeastern Texas. All the migrants that Reuters spoke to said that social media had helped them to plan their journey. It's not just China. Content creators from Venezuela and India have been producing similar videos as well. "Migration sells. My public is a public that wants a dream," Venezuelan Manuel Monterrosa, 35, told The New York Times in a story published in December. A representative for the Department of Homeland Security told BI that the department was "experiencing historical global migration." "DHS is working with our partners throughout the hemisphere and around the world to disrupt the criminal networks who take advantage of and profit from vulnerable migrants," the representative said. Last week, a Hong Kong court ruled that the largest indebted property developer in the world, Evergrande, would be liquidated, two years after the company defaulted on its debt in late 2021.
Much of the media reporting on the decision focused on whether foreign creditors would ever recoup their losses from Evergrande, as the Chinese government has already said it will prioritize completing the group’s existing projects, though how this will happen is less clear. But beyond the question of who will get repaid, Evergrande’s liquidation opens up a slew of larger and more profound questions about the future of the Chinese economy, especially the relationships between the central government, local governments, the private sector and households. The liquidation of Evergrande is not an accident. It is part of a larger crackdown on the private sector and government collusion that President Xi Jinping launched at the very start of his term, beginning in 2013 with the Anti-Corruption Campaign, which has become one of the most consequential and longest-running campaigns in the history of the People’s Republic of China. Taken as a whole, this crackdown has fundamentally changed the relationship between the Communist Party and the business community, creating deep distrust and fear, while leading to capital flight and a deep downturn in confidence. The Anti-Corruption Campaign was followed by other policies that put the private sector on notice that old patterns of behavior would no longer be tolerated. Xi’s “new normal” would include more discipline and oversight. Xi’s confidence in the ability of his government to implement this crackdown expanded enormously in late 2020 and early 2021, coinciding with the regime’s successful management of the COVID-19 pandemic before the arrival of the incredibly infectious omicron variant. Xi made numerous speeches and statements at the time about the importance of “common prosperity” and the need to crack down on “disorderly capital,” while also emphasizing his dislike of real estate development as investment, epitomized by his oft-quoted mantra that “houses are for living in.” The “three red lines” policy, which reined in debt-fueled property development and directly targeted firms like Evergrande that were enormously leveraged, dates back to this period. In addition to launching the attack on the over-leveraged property sector, Chinese authorities canceled the IPO of Ant Financial, forced the rewinding of Didi’s listing on the N.Y. Stock Exchange, banned private tutoring and nationalized gray rhinos, as large firms that create systemic risk, such as Anbang Insurance and HNA, are known. At the same time, in his speeches on “common prosperity,” Xi vaguely alluded to new forms of taxation and redistribution so that China would eventually become an “olive-shaped society” with a large middle class and relatively few rich and poor. But crackdowns alone cannot substitute for the deep structural reform that the Chinese economy desperately needs. Any viable solution to the property crisis and to local government’s fiscal health requires that China’s central government take on more responsibility and more accountability. Xi must shift from being a disciplinarian to accepting that these problems are not only rooted in the bad behavior of corrupt officials, greedy capitalists or overextended households. All of these actors were responding to incentives set up by China’s development model, which grew increasingly dependent on real estate and land development for growth. So while Xi talks frequently about high-quality development as the “hard truth” of his administration, this is unlikely to be achieved without a fundamental shift in responsibility upward toward the central government. In other words, it’s not just local governments and private entrepreneurs who must change their behavior—the central government must as well. Given the scale of the current crisis—over 1.5 million home purchasers are still waiting for residences that they have already paid Evergrande for—it’s possible that local governments will still be held responsible for finding other viable real estate developers to take over the unfinished projects in their regions. But local governments are themselves deeply in debt for both related and unrelated reasons. Local governments were caught up in the same frenzy of real estate development and land sales for years. But they are also reeling from debt related to COVID-19 management and testing, as well as from the basic structure of their fiscal relations with the central government, which leaves them with many mandates to fund social security and public goods like education, but without enough resources to do so. This fiscal imbalance is one of the primary reasons that local governments became so reliant on land speculation and real estate development in the first place, because in a period of ever-rising property prices, it provided much-needed revenue. It was also, not coincidentally, an excellent mechanism for local officials to collude with real estate developers to become personally wealthy. As a result, local governments are implicated in the accumulated problems of overinvestment and corruption. But any long-term solution will require changes to the tax system, so that they have sufficient tax revenue to pay for the disproportionate amount of governance they are tasked with. This will by necessity include more directly taxing both the wealthy and property, and directing more tax revenue to localities instead of the central government. Requiring local governments to find “viable developers” to take over Evergrande’s unfinished homes also ignores how Evergrande’s problems are only the tip of the iceberg of real estate development debt. It is not even clear which developers are viable enough to take on the burden of finishing the homes Evergrande has already been paid for, while also attempting to make money on new development, given China’s significant overbuilding and declining property values. A new International Monetary Fund report on the Chinese economy estimates that China’s fundamental demand for housing will decrease by 50 percent over the next decade, even as media reports indicate a current oversupply in excess of 50 million homes. The real estate sector cannot deal with these problems alone, but most local governments are in no position to help. An effective solution will require that the central government allow for substantial restructuring of existing firms and perhaps direct bailouts to households currently left holding the bag. The IMF estimates that such measures will cost about 5 percent of GDP but will be offset by avoiding longer-term losses. For households, the real estate sector’s unraveling is hitting their pocketbooks directly. Because of China’s presale model of development, households have already paid for the promised properties, so they cannot be expected to pay more, especially when the value of these future properties are going down. Meanwhile, investments in existing property are the most important source of wealth for China’s urbanites, representing about 70 percent of household wealth. So the contraction in the real estate sector, while necessary, will make many Chinese poorer. Employment opportunities have also worsened, as the real estate decline affects not just construction, but everything else tied to property, from landscaping to interior design. All of these impacts will exacerbate the problem of consumer confidence, inducing households to save rather than spend, an incentive structure that is already reinforced by China’s weak social safety net. This in turn means that China will be forced to look to external markets to absorb excess capacity in everything from building materials to electric vehicles, further exacerbating imbalances that are complicating China’s relations with trade partners. Once again, any effective policy to address the problem of consumer confidence will similarly require more support from the central government and improvements to China’s underfunded and shallow welfare state. The risk of social unrest is still low due to strong state capacity to repress street protests. But Chinese households have already shown ingenious ways to express their displeasure through inaction, such as not paying mortgages and not seeking employment—the practice known as lying flat. Beijing has accomplished much with Xi’s dramatic crackdowns as he seeks to shift China’s development in a new and more sustainable direction. But the crackdowns are only the first step. They need to be followed by increased support for local governments from the central government. So far, Xi has deftly yielded sticks. Much will depend on whether he can now do the same with carrots. Chinese sporting authorities have cancelled next month's friendly international between Argentina and Nigeria amid a growing backlash against Lionel Messi's failure to play in an Inter Miami match in Hong Kong last week.
Argentina were scheduled to play Nigeria in the Chinese city of Hangzhou next month before facing the Ivory Coast in Beijing, but Messi's failure to take the field for Inter Miami in Hong Kong on Sunday caused widespread anger among fans. The organiser of the Hong Kong match said they would give fans a 50 percent refund for tickets after the Argentine did not take the field due to injury, but played in Japan days later. The backlash grew on Friday, with Hangzhou sports authorities saying that Argentina's friendly against Nigeria would no longer take place. "As a commercial event, a company and the Argentinean soccer team negotiated that the team would play a friendly match in March this year in the city of Hangzhou," the Hangzhou authorities said in a statement. "In view of the current well-known reasons, according to the competent authorities, conditions to hold the friendly match are not mature, therefore (we) have decided to cancel it." It was not immediately clear if Argentina's other friendly against Ivory Coast in Beijing would also be cancelled. The Chinese FA did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment sent outside normal business hours. The Argentine FA also did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. Tatler Asian, a privately owned publishing and lifestyle company, said in a statement on its Instagram page that it was "deeply sorry" and "heartbroken" that fans were let down after Messi stayed on the bench during Sunday's match. The match in Hong Kong drew 40,000 fans, with some spectators paying up to $1000 per ticket. The cost of all match tickets bought from official channels can be 50 percent refunded, Tatler said, adding that it had been in discussions with the Hong Kong government to resolve the issue. Inter Miami head coach Gerardo "Tata" Martino said Messi was deemed unfit to play in the friendly in Hong Kong, but he came on as a 60th minute substitute against Vissel Kobe on Wednesday. "When we learned that Messi would not be playing, we pleaded with Inter Miami CF ownership and management to urge him to stand up, engage with the spectators and explain why he couldn't play," Tatler said. "He didn't. The fact that Messi and (team mate Luis) Suarez played in Japan on Feb. 7 feels like another slap in the face." In the match in Tokyo, entire blocks of seats at the Japan National Stadium were unoccupied, with just 28,614 tickets sold. Chinese state media, Hong Kong politicians and some fans swiftly condemned Messi's participation in the Japan match, with state-controlled Global Times writing that his absence posed many questions on the differential treatment for Hong Kong. In a statement, Hong Kong's government said Tatler Asia had made its best effort to arrange a refund, adding that many people had questions about the incident. "The government hopes that the Inter Miami team will eventually provide a reasonable explanation to Hong Kong citizens and fans who came to Hong Kong to watch the game." Tatler Asia said Inter Miami had committed to ensuring that their top players, including Messi and Uruguay's Suarez, would play for 45 minutes unless injured. It said it had hoped to create an iconic moment in support of the government's efforts to remind the world how relevant and exciting Hong Kong is. "That dream is broken today for us and all those who bought tickets to see Messi on the pitch." |
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