Administrators at Langara College have decided to cut the entire Chinese language program as of the fall 2025 term.  For decades, Langara’s Chinese program has upheld high academic standards, enriching the College and Vancouver’s multicultural society. Let’s stand together to reverse this decision and protect Chinese language and cultural education in British Columbia!

 Diversity and Inclusion: Cutting the Chinese program contradicts Langara’s equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) principles and disregards Vancouver’s multicultural community. The Chinese program plays a crucial role in the College’s commitment to EDI.

Community Ties: The Chinese program strengthens Langara’s connections with Vancouver’s large Chinese-Canadian community.

Cutting the Chinese program would weaken Langara’s community connection and undermine our EDI objectives.

We support the continuation of the Chinese language program and advocate for a diverse, inclusive, and globally-oriented academic environment and respectfully request that the Langara administration:

• Suspend the plan to eliminate the Chinese language program.
• Engage in transparent discussions with students, faculty, and communities to explore sustainable solutions.
• Recognize the growing importance of Chinese language skills in today's globalized world and commit to preserving this essential program.
• Develop a long-term strategy for language education that aligns with Langara's mission for global engagement and equity, diversity, and inclusion.

The CCF Team wishes to highlight and celebrate the upcoming International Women's Day on March 8, 2025.

For information on the many women who have greatly impacted Canada, readers may want to explore "Women of Impact in Canada" by the Government of Canada.

Phil Smith is going to buy more Canadian grain and Chinese cans as he, like millions of Canadians, responds to the U.S. tariffs imposed on his country.

The Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, brewer said he can't get the cans he needs from Canada, because even though it is an aluminum mining powerhouse, it doesn't make finished aluminum products like rolled aluminum or finished cans, but he doesn't want to buy American cans right now.

"In this case, we'll just shift to the Chinese market," said Smith as he showed his facilities, where his Tinhouse Brewing Company makes Higher Knoll Double Hazy, Handyman Pale Ale and other beer.

That won't cost him, since Chinese cans cost about a penny less each, but it's one of many small losses to U.S. companies as Canadians react with upset and anger to the tariffs and some of the statements coming out of the White House.

United States President Donald Trump’s new 25 percent tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada have taken effect, along with a doubling of duties on Chinese goods to 20 percent, launching new trade conflicts with the top three US trading partners.

The tariff actions, which could upend nearly $2.2 trillion in two-way annual US trade, went live at 00:01 EST (05:01 GMT) on Tuesday, hours after Trump declared that all three countries had failed to do enough to stem the flow of the deadly opioid fentanyl and its precursor chemicals into the US.

China responded immediately after the deadline, announcing additional tariffs of 10 percent and 15 percent on certain US imports from March 10 and a series of new export restrictions for designated US entities.

Published: March 5, 2025
Written by: Simone McCarthy & Nectar Gan

 China has set an ambitious target of “around 5%” growth for 2025, in a defiant show of confidence as it braces for the fallout from escalating American tariffs on its export-driven economy.

The target “underscores our resolve to meet difficulties head-on and strive hard to deliver,” Premier Li Qiang, China’s No. 2 official, said on Wednesday as he delivered the government work report at the opening session of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the country’s rubber-stamp legislature.

Beijing’s ambitious growth target reflects an effort to project confidence in its ability to stay the course, despite mounting trade pressure from the world’s largest economy and its mercurial president.

Published: February 20, 2025
Written by: Didi Tang Associated Press

 President Donald Trump's restrictions on foreign aid and targeting of a key agency funding programs around the world may be offering an opening to America's biggest adversary — China.

From the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development to quitting international groups, Trump’s drastic “America First” moves have raised concerns among some lawmakers and experts about whether the U.S. is ceding global influence to its rivals, especially at a time when Washington is fretting over Beijing’s growing clout at the cost to American interests.

Foreign assistance offered the U.S. a source of “soft power” — allowing it to cultivate goodwill, build alliances and counter adversaries in a bid to shore up national security without having to dispatch troops, weapons or other more coercive measures.

In Cambodia, the contrast could not be sharper than China sending $4.4 million to support demining operations, as Trump halted a $6.3 million grant from the State Department’s Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement partly meant to clear “U.S.-origin unexploded ordnances as the remnants of war.”

Published: March 5, 2025

The BBC's Stephen McDonell explains what to look out for at China's annual National People's Congress (NPC), which began on Wednesday.

The week-long meeting is attended by nearly 3,000 delegates from provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities and the armed forces. They usher through decisions that have already been made behind closed doors by party leaders.

Still, the meeting signals the priorities of the Chinese Communist Party for the coming year.

China's slowing economy, its investment in high-end tech and the fallout from US President Donald Trump's tariffs are all expected to be high on the agenda.

 
Based on a review of the engagement of labour process theory (LPT) in China labour studies, this article suggests that the LTP has provided important insights and a theoretical framework for scholars to understand the empirical reality of the changing nature of work and employment in China in the reform era. The LPT’s capacity to connect the workplace to a broader political economy has allowed it to continue to expand its scope of analysis and engage with new developments and emerging issues in the Chinese workplace, such as the rise of digital platform labour, informal and precarious work, and workplace regimes in global value chains. Meanwhile, China labour scholars have made important contributions to the LPT by adapting it to the Chinese context and theorising the Chinese experience.

Through a workplace-based approach, China labour scholars have theorised the role of the Chinese central and local states in shaping various factory regimes, expanded on Chinese workers’ diverse subjectivities in research on labour process, and developed new concepts such as the ‘dormitory labour regime’ that connects productive and social reproductive spheres.

The annual Pritzker Architecture Prize has been awarded to Liu Jiakun of China, who earned the field’s highest honor for “affirming architecture that celebrates the lives of ordinary citizens,” organizers announced Tuesday.

Liu, 68, becomes the 54th laureate of the prize, considered akin to a Nobel in the field of architecture. In an interview with The Associated Press in his office in Chengdu in China’s southwestern Sichuan region, the architect said he had a simple definition of his profession:

“To simplify, the task of architects is to provide a better living environment for human beings,” he said, speaking in Mandarin. “First of all, you do something that is functional. But if it is just like that, it cannot be called architecture. (So) you have to provide poetry.”

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