case of Jimmy Lai<\/a>. Mr Lai, 77, was arrested in 2020 under a national security law imposed by Beijing following anti-government protests in 2019.<\/p>\nHe is being tried on charges of colluding with foreign forces to endanger national security and conspiring with others to issue seditious publications.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Lai founded Apple Daily, one of the local media outlets that was most critical of Hong Kong\u2019s government.<\/p>\n
Part of his legal team is Caoilfhinn Gallagher, the Irish human rights lawyer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ms Gallagher last week told Tommy Tiernan on RT\u00c9 One that her involvement with the Lai case had seen her targeted by the Chinese government, something Mr Martin said was “not satisfactory”.<\/p>\n
\n I discussed those issues last evening with Premier Li \u2014 the Jimmy Lai case, Xinjiang and Tibet, and, as I have before, with foreign minister Wang Yi. I mean, the Chinese have their perspective on this. They give robust defense of their position.\u00a0\n <\/p>\n
“I think these are issues that clearly we have raised consistently, as has the European Union with China, and it’s very clear that there are two perspectives.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Martin also said he had raised the issue of Xinjiang, where China\u2019s policies against Uyghurs and other Muslims have been called tantamount to crimes against humanity.<\/p>\n
A UN report, published in August 2022, accused China of \u201cserious human rights violations\u201d in the province.<\/p>\n
A 2024 report by Human Rights Watch said Beijing \u201ccontinues its massive abuses in Xinjiang\u201d, which the agency found does \u201cconstitute crimes against humanity\u201d.<\/p>\n
But in Shanghai, the focus is very much on the economy and what Ireland can gain from closer ties with China.<\/p>\n
The day began at the Kerry Group, which has grown from three staff in 1997 to thousands today.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the company\u2019s test area, impossibly cool baristas put together non-alcoholic cocktails made with cheese milk powder, and one of kale, coconut milk, and mango designed to look like an Irish flag.<\/p>\n
After a stop at his hotel, where he spoke to the press, Mr Martin went to the headquarters of Trip.com, a travel company which on Wednesday signed a memorandum of a strategic partnership with Tourism Ireland, which will see the website promote tourism to Ireland to 400m Chinese people.<\/p>\n
While this was, perhaps, the most concrete announcement of the week, the specifics were somewhat unclear, and the company declined to make a spokesperson available to elaborate.<\/p>\n
What was left was a photo opportunity with Mr Martin and the company\u2019s co-founder standing behind Tourism Ireland chief executive Alice Mansergh and company vice-president Edison Chen.<\/p>\n
As he departed for his hotel, Mr Martin\u2019s motorcade came close to leaving behind several members of his team, who had been facilitated in a boardroom and obviously did not get the message that the fleet of Chinese state cars and police was on the move.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The group managed to flag down the last of the vehicles and safely returned to the Peace Hotel, where Mr Martin would speak at a business dinner for the Shanghai and diaspora communities.<\/p>\n
Here, the pitch was much as it has been all week: Ireland is an open trading economy and a good entry point into the EU. Come and invest.<\/p>\n
Despite the change of scenery, there is no change of message. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shanghai stands in stark contrast to the Chinese capital Beijing. Whereas the latter feels like a capital \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48833,61,60,43,6306],"class_list":["post-233178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-farming-agribusiness","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-tourism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}