On Monday evening, president-elect Donald Trump announced that he would impose steep tariffs on the U.S.’s top three trading partners — fees that will invariably raise consumer prices, effectively amounting to a regressive sales tax for most Americans. Trump justified the tariffs by claiming they were meant to compel the three countries — Canada, Mexico and China — to address drug trafficking…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
We are experiencing times of global transition. Where we have been is self-evident. Where the world is headed remains obscure. Some states are implacably resisting that transition; others strive to foster a modified international system that conforms to emerging realities. The actions of governments in the two categories are reinforcing each other’s commitments to pursuing these incompatible tacks. There’s the rub.
This is the context for the major crises over Ukraine, in the Middle East, and over Taiwan. Ongoing war in the first two carries the potential for escalation with dire, far-reaching consequences. Each is at once symptomatic of the systemic changes occurring in world affairs and the cause for a raising of the stakes in how that transition is handled or mishandled.
Dilemma 1 USA
There is a lot of talk about how Donald Trump will move quickly to resolve the Ukraine conflict. Maybe not within the advertised 24 hours – but supposedly he sees the pointlessness of an open-ended war with Russia. So, he is expected to get in touch with Putin, personally and/or via a designated envoy, to make a deal. We have heard hints of what the ingredients could be: a ceasefire, the lure of reduced sanctions, some recognition of a special Russian association with the four oblasts Moscow has annexed, Crimea ceded, the remainder of Ukraine autonomous with links to the EU if not NATO. The sequencing, the specifics, ancillary trade-offs are cloudy. To the minds of the more optimistic commentators, an eventual agreement is likely since Trump wants to be unburdened of the Ukraine albatross, since he is not a fan of NATO expansion or NATO itself, since he wants to concentrate on dismantling the federal government while pressing ahead with the rest of the MAGA agenda. Relations with Russia, as with every other foreign power, will be treated in terms of bilateral dealing wherein the U.S, focuses on the trade-offs, i.e. how much it gains as opposed to how much it gives.
It is by no means clear that this approach could achieve the stated goal of ending the war in Ukraine and easing the tense confrontation with Russia. For the Kremlin has set stipulations for a peaceful resolution that could only be met by a broader accord than is visualized in the horse trading anticipated by the Trump entourage and like-minded think tankers. Russia will not stop the fighting until a firm agreement has been reached. That is one. It will not accept any ambiguity as to the future status of the Russophile territories in question. That’s two. It will not tolerate leaving in place a Kiev government controlled by the rabid anti-Russian nationalists who have run it since 2014. That’s three. It will demand a treaty that formally neutralizes Ukraine on the model of post-war Austria. That’s four. It will press hard for the constitution of a pan-European security architecture which accords Russia a legitimate place. That’s five.1
The implication is that the prospects are dim for a quick, short-term deal that leaves these sensitive issues indeterminate and open to the vagaries of politics in Washington and European capitals. It appears unrealistic that Trump will have the discretionary power, the political will or the strategic vision to design and to implement a multifaceted plan as required to weave together the varied strands of the European security fabric. It is one thing to intimidate the Europeans into taking on a fuller responsibility for their own security by threatening to leave them to their own devices. It is something far more demanding to recast the American relationship with its European allies, with Russia, with other interested, neighboring parties. For meeting that wider challenge has as its precondition a comprehensive redrawing by the United States of the imprinted mental map of the world system. For it is being transformed in basic ways which are at variance with the deep-seated American presumptions of dominance, control and privilege.
Trump is not the man to man to replace the prevailing strategic vision and America’s paramount position in the world with something more refined and in correspondence to the emerging multi-nodule system. Although instinctively he is more of an America firster than a hegemonic imperialist, his actions will be piecemeal and disjointed rather than pieces of an artful new pattern. Even in regard to specific matters like Ukraine or Taiwan it is impossible simply to snap one’s fingers and on impulse shift course. A carefully thought through design and the crafting of a subtle diplomacy is the prerequisite. Donald Trump, incontrovertibly, has no plan, no strategy, no design for any area of public policy. He is incapable of doing so; for he lacks the necessary mental concentration and organized knowledge. The same holds for dealing with China.
[The focal shift from Russia in Europe to China in Asia is less a mechanism for coping with defeat in Ukraine than the pathological reaction of a country that, feeling a gnawing sense of diminishing prowess, can manage to do nothing more than try one final throw of the dice in a vain attempt at proving to itself that it still has the right stuff – since living without that exalted sense of self is intolerable.]
Were Trump to take a series of purely tactical actions that have the net effect of lowering American presence globally, he would be running against the grain of fundamental national beliefs. Belief in the country’s birth under a Providential star to lead the world along the path of enlightenment, belief in American exceptionalism, belief in American superiority (the last jeopardized by signs of losing a battle with a superior armed Russia, by signs of losing an economic battle with a technologically superior China). Moreover, many Americans’ faith in these national myths is bound closely to their own individual sense of self-esteem that already is felt to be under threat in this age of anxiety. Trump is hardly the one to guide them to a mature appreciation of what America is and who they are.2
Dilemma 2 Russia & China
These two great powers, who are the principal obstacles to the United States’ retention of its dominant global position, face a quite different dilemma. Put simply, it is how to deal with an America that remains blind in vision and impervious in policy to the epochal changes reshaping the configuration of the world system. To the extent that Washington does feel the vibrations from this tectonic shift, political leaders are seen as reacting impulsively to deny its practical consequences in striving to assert an endangered supremacy. That compulsion leads American policymakers to set ever more arduous challenges to prove that nothing fundamental has changed. Hence, the drive to overturn a strategic commitment made half a century ago by pressing by every means for Taiwan’s autonomy. Hence, its strenuous efforts to prevent Russia from assuming a place in European (and Middle Eastern) affairs commensurate with its national interests, its strength and its geography.
[The minimalist aim has been to sever its ties to the Europe of the EU – thereby marginalizing it as a peripheral, inconsequential state. The maximalist aim has been to provoke regime change producing of a weaker, Western-friendly provider of cheap natural resources and open to predatory Western finance. A sharecropper on the West’s global plantation – as one Russian diplomatic bluntly put it. Project Ukraine was to be the spearhead].
From this perspective, Moscow and Beijing face a dilemma of a singular nature. They must devise elaborate strategies to stymie American plans to perpetuate its dominance by undermining the growing political, economic and – derivatively diplomatic – strength of these perceived rivals. Containment both in broadly security terms and in terms of their impressive national achievements – the latter that diminishes the American (Western) claim to representing to representing the one true path to political stability and economic sell-being. Resistance to those plans by the Russians and Chinese has become the overriding strategic imperative in both capitals as manifest in their intensifying collaboration in all spheres. As they see the situation, that momentous move is dictated by the reckless conduct of a fading, flailing superpower still in possession of an enormous strength to disrupt and to destroy.
Still, when it comes to direct confrontations with Washington over Ukraine or Taiwan, they are obliged to temper their actions so as to avoid provoking an unwanted crisis with an America they view as unpredictable and unstable. That concern applies to a Trump presidency as much as it does to the outgoing Biden presidency. Striking the correct balance is a daunting challenge.
The upshot is that Putin and Xi tread carefully in treating with their feckless Western counterparts who disregard the elementary precepts of diplomacy. We are fortunate in the temper of Chinese and Russian leadership. Xi and Putin are rare leaders. They are sober, rational, intelligent, very well informed, capable of broad vision, they do not harbor imperial ambitions, and while dedicated to securing their national interests are not bellicose. Moreover, they have long tenures as heads of state and are secure in power. They have the political capital to invest in projects of magnitude whose prospective payoffs will be well into the future.
Dilemma 3. THE EUROPEANS
European political and foreign policy elites are even less self-aware of their untenable circumstances than the Americans. The latter are as one in their blunt conviction that the United States could and should continue to play the dominant role in world affairs. The former have made no considered judgment of their own other than it is imperative to frame their conceptions and strategies to accord with what their superior partner thinks and does. Therein lies the heart of their dilemma.
For the past 75 years, the Europeans have lived in a state of near total strategic dependence on the United States. That has had profound lasting effects. They extend beyond practical calculations of security needs. Now, more than 30 years after European leaders were relieved from any meaningful military threat, they remain politically and psychologically unable to exercise the prerogatives and responsibility of sovereignty – individually or collectively. They are locked into a classic dominant-subordination relationship with America. So deeply rooted, is has become second nature to political elites.
[The extremity of the prerogatives granted the United States to act in disregard for European autonomy and interests was demonstrated in Washington’s destruction of the Baltic gas pipeline. That extraordinary episode punctuated the unqualified Europeans’ commitment to serve as an America satrap in its all-out campaign to prevent China as well Russia from challenging its hegemony. Securing the obedience of the European economic power bloc undeniability represents a major strategic success for the United States. So does cutting off Russia’s access to capital investment, technology and rich markets to the West. The heaviest costs are being paid, though, by the Europeans. In effect, they have mortgaged their economic future for the sake of participating in the ill-thought through severing all connection with what now is an implacably antagonist Russia whose abundant energy and agricultural resources have been a prime element in their prosperity and political stability.]
Under that unnatural condition, European governments have inflicted serious damage on themselves. Moreover, they have jeopardized their strategic and economic future. By following Washington’s lead in the campaign to neutralize Russia as a presence in continental affairs – dating from 2008, they have cut themselves off from their natural partner in natural resource trade, technological development and investment. They have institutionalized a hostile relationship with a neighbor who is a major world power. They have made themselves the residual custodians of a bankrupt, corrupt Ukrainian rump state which carries heavy financial cost. Furthermore, in the process they have undermined the legitimacy of their democratic institutions in ways that open the door to radical Far Right movements. These deleterious consequences are reinforced by the Europeans signing on to the no-holds-barred American economic cum political war against China. This latter misguided action reverses the EU’s eminently sensible prior policy of deepening economic ties with the world’s rising superpower.
The net effect of this unthinking relegation of European countries to becoming a de facto American vassals is a distancing themselves from the world beyond the trans-Atlantic community. When we add to the tilting scales the alienation of global opinion disgusted by Western enthusiastic support for the Palestinian genocide, we discern an historic retrenchment. The once proud rulers of the globe are circling-the-wagons in a defensive posture against forces they barely understand and have no plan for engaging.
Europe’s feeble response to this formidable challenge is a series of schematic plans that are little more than placebos mislabeled as potent medication. The EU’s proposed answer to its acute energy predicament is a vaguely sketched strategy whose central element is a diversification of suppliers alongside acceleration of green energy projects. Various initiatives in this direction taken over the past two years give reason for skepticism. The main substitute for Russian natural gas has been LNG from the United States; attempts to form preferential arrangements with other suppliers (like Qatar) have come up short. Relying on the U.S. has its drawbacks. American LNG is 3 to 4 times more costly than pipeline Russian gas. Trump’s declaration that limiting exports will dampen inflationary pressures raises doubts about that supposed reliability. Most telling is the disconcerting fact that European countries clandestinely have somewhat eased their energy penury by buying Russian oil and gas on the very large grey market. Indeed, there is statistical data indicating that the EU states, at one point this year, were importing more Russian sourced LNG than American LNG!
In the security realm, there is much talk in Brussels about building a purely European security apparatus – linked to NATO while capable of acting independently of the United States. This is an updated and upgraded revival of an idea from the late 1990s that birthed the now moribund Common Security and Defense Policy. This commotion could be taken as just play-acting given that there is no concrete threat to European security outside the fevered imaginations of a political class inflamed by loud American alarums that Putin is bent on restoring the Soviet Empire and dreams of washing his boots in the English channel – if not the Irish Sea. Moreover, there are the provocative Russian actions in relentlessly moving its border closer to NATO military installations.
The likelihood of the current blue-skying will produce anything substantial is slim. Europe lacks the money in its current stressed financial condition, it lacks the industrial base to equip modern armed forces, and it most certainly lacks the political will. Yes, we hear a lot of bombast issuing from Ursula von der Leyen, Emmanuel Macron, Mark Rutte and their fellow dreamers of a federal European Union. The truth is captured in a saying that we have here in Texas: “All hat and no cattle!”
The glaring omission is any cogent, realistic diplomatic strategy that corresponds to the present configuration of forces in the world. Instead, we see a heightening of anti-Russian rhetoric, solemn pledges to accompany Ukraine on its path to ultimate victory, and joining Washington in ever harsher measures against China cast as an economic predator and security threat.
ENDNOTES:
The post Dilemmas first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Michael Brenner.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
In what is yet another marker of China’s biotech dominance and global regulators’ embrace of precision fermentation, All G Foods is now allowed to sell its animal-free lactoferrin protein in the East Asian country.
The Australian firm becomes the first company to secure approval for the sale of precision-fermented bovine lactoferrin in the nation, and aims to launch its first products in the market in the second half of 2025, founder and CEO Jan Pacas tells Green Queen.
Lactoferrin, a whey protein found in human milk and bovine colostrum just after birth, is highly sought-after for its numerous functional benefits, including iron regulation. It’s an expensive ingredient in short supply, creating a major opportunity for alternative protein producers.
The development gives All G Foods access to one of the world’s largest consumers of lactoferrin. “With strong support from our local partners, we’ve been able to navigate the regulatory process effectively and are excited to bring our product to market,” says Pacas.
He adds that the company expects regulatory approval in another big market in the next couple of months. “Beyond China, priority markets for us include the US, Australia and New Zealand, and Japan,” he reveals. “Each of these markets represents an exciting opportunity to expand and showcase the potential of our lactoferrin on a global scale and enter untapped markets.”
All G Foods started off by selling plant-based meat products, but last year pivoted to solely focus on its ongoing R&D efforts for precision fermentation. The technology combines the process of traditional fermentation with the latest advances in biotechnology to efficiently produce a compound of interest, such as a protein, flavour molecule, vitamin, pigment, or fat.
Lactoferrin is a protein rich in iron – whose reddish hue has given it the ‘pink gold’ nickname – and is prized for its antiviral, antibacterial, anti-carcinogenic, immunity-boosting, and gut-strengthening properties. The ingredient is used to treat low iron levels during pregnancy, while lactoferrin supplements lower the risk of respiratory tract infections.
However, it’s present in small concentrations in cow’s milk, with at least 10,000 litres of milk needed to produce just 1kg of purified lactoferrin via industrial-scale, resource-intensive processes. This drives up costs, with the current market price reaching around $800 per kg.
To lower the environmental impact and cost, as well as improve yields, All G Foods inserts the gene for the target protein into microbes like yeast or bacteria, turning them into high-efficiency protein producers. The microbes feed on sugar and secrete the desired protein – lactoferrin, in this case – in a 10-day bioreactor process, doing away with the need for cows while ensuring consistency and scalability.
“We believe we have the world’s most efficient strain for bovine lactoferrin production,” Pacas says when asked about costs. “We already have yields at pilot scale that would result in COGS [cost of goods sold] much, much lower than today’s lactoferrin prices. And we are continuing to optimise. We have multiple global CMO [contract manufacturing] facilities for scalability, so we’re confident we can meet both current demand and future growth.”
Much of the global lactoferrin supply is reserved for infant formula and supplements, but the protein has multifunctional properties well-suited to applications across functional foods, sports nutrition, women’s health, adult and elderly nutrition, pharmaceuticals, and skincare.
But All G Foods isn’t just working on bovine lactoferrin – it’s also developing a bioidentical version of the whey protein found in breast milk, where it’s significantly more abundant. “Our human recombinant lactoferrin is also not far behind, and we can leverage learnings from our bovine work to expedite our productivity,” Pacas notes.
The Sydney-based startup first indicated its interest in the Chinese market in 2022, after closing a $25M Series A funding round (which took its total raised to $41M). “China is a massive market for lactoferrin and one of the most forward-thinking markets globally when it comes to functional ingredients,” says Pacas.
“The level of demand there and consumer recognition of the virtues of lactoferrin makes it the ideal starting point for us,” he adds. The country is home to the world’s largest infant formula market – although All G Foods’s approval doesn’t yet cover infant nutrition.
However, it will tap into the demand for functional foods in China, which has exploded amid a rise in health consciousness. “For our launch, we’ll focus on high-value formats and applications, ensuring the product fits into what customers and consumers are looking for.”
China’s citizens are already eating more protein per capita than the US now, most of which comes from animal-free sources. It comes as policymakers have been encouraging consumers to eat fewer animal products and more plant proteins, as part of a broader drive to connect public health with socioeconomic development, which began with the Healthy China 2030 policy.
The government’s latest five-year plan for agricultural and rural tech development, meanwhile, calls for research on future foods, including recombinant proteins. And with its 30-60 climate policy, China aims to hit peak emissions by 2030 and become carbon-neutral by 2060 – research shows this will only be possible if half of all proteins consumed in the country come from alternative sources by 2060.
All G Foods has previously teamed up with Australia’s Food and Beverage Accelerator to speed up development and create products with its animal-free lactoferrin. “We’re fortunate to have some excellent partnerships already in place, including a trusted partner in China who is ready to help us scale,” Pacas says now.
It is among a number of companies working with animal-free lactoferrin, seen as a way to accelerate investment returns amid the high costs and scale-up challenges of precision fermentation. These include fellow Australian player Noumi, US startups Helaina, De Novo Foodlabs and Triplebar Bio, New Zealand’s Daisy Lab, and Singapore-based TurtleTree – the latter has been cleared for sale in the US.
All G Foods is the latest in a growing list of precision fermentation companies obtaining the greenlight from regulators this year. In fact, its announcement came on the same day Israel’s Imagindairy was cleared to sell its cow-free beta-lactoglobulin (another whey protein) in its home country.
The post Australia’s All G Foods Gains Regulatory Approval for Animal-Free Lactoferrin in China appeared first on Green Queen.
This post was originally published on Green Queen.
TAIPEI, Taiwan – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said he will impose a 10% tariff on all products coming into the U.S. from China on his first day in office as penalties for deadly fentanyl and illegal immigrants, which he claimed were pouring across the borders.
Trump’s election victory sparked concern in China, where many expect the next president to take a tougher stand than his predecessor, particularly on trade and economic issues, with repercussions for an already struggling Chinese economy.
“This tariff will remain in effect until such time as drugs, in particular, fentanyl and all illegal aliens stop this invasion of our country,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social, vowing the additional tariff on all Chinese goods, many of which are already under import taxes imposed during the first Trump administration.
“I’ve had many talks about China about the massive amounts of drugs, in particular fentanyl, being sent into the United States – but to no avail,” Trump wrote on Monday.
“Representatives of China told me that they would institute their maximum penalty, that of death, for any drug dealers caught doing this, but unfortunately, they never followed through.”
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid, used in pain-relief drugs, that is 50% more powerful than heroin, leading to mass addiction and deaths through illegal drug use across the U.S.
China had not commented on Trump’s latest comment by time of the publication but Chinese officials earlier condemned Trump’s proposals for higher tariffs as economic “bullying” and warned of retaliation if implemented.
In a separate post, Trump said his first of “many” executive orders on Jan. 20 would impose tariffs of 25% on all products from Mexico and Canada.
Trump is set to be inaugurated as president on Jan. 20.
“Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long-simmering problem. We hereby demand that they use this power, and until such time that they do, it is time for them to pay a very big price!” he wrote.
Trump’s posts came just days after he announced he would nominate financier Scott Bessent as his Treasury secretary. Bessent is considered to be pro-tariff and critical to implementing the Trump administration’s trade agenda.
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Trump previously proposed an across-the-board 10-20% tariff on imports from all countries, and potentially “more than” 60% tariff on Chinese imports.
These tariffs aim to pressure China to change its trade practices, reduce the U.S. trade deficit, and boost American manufacturing. Trump believes tariffs protect U.S. industries by encouraging companies to relocate production to the U.S., restoring jobs lost to globalization.
He also suggested tariff revenue could fund his economic agenda, including making 2017 tax cuts permanent. His plan retains the US$80 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports imposed in 2018 and 2019, which the administration of President Joe Biden has not lifted.
Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi previously called the tariffs “hegemonism” bordering on “madness,” accusing the U.S. of pursuing unipolar dominance.
Beijing warned the tariffs could strain U.S.-China relations and hinted at restricting critical material exports, potentially harming U.S. industries.
After Trump’s win, Chinese President Xi Jinping told Biden that China was ready to cooperate with the incoming Trump administration to achieve a “smooth transition.”
Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Taejun Kang for RFA.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
A nationwide inspection tour by ruling Communist Party officials threatening fines of up to 50,000 yuan, or nearly US$7,000. for safety violations has prompted a wave of business closures in at least two southern Chinese cities, according to social media reports.
Inspectors from China’s State Council have been touring the country in recent weeks in a bid to bring the nation’s lagging fire and workplace safety standards up to scratch, carrying spot checks and under-cover investigations that could land business owners with a big fine.
But store owners and food stall-holders are fighting back by shutting up shop, in an apparent bid to evade an inspection that could wind up costing them dearly in fines.
Photos of shuttered stores in two cities in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong were circulating on social media over the weekend.
Some showed humorous notices that read: “Off today due to fear of ghosts.”
“The boss is in a bad mood,” read another, while one notice suggested life was getting too tough for business owners: “The fish are drowning in water.”
Business owners also took to social media to explain the closures.
“These closures have been forced on us; they’re not voluntary,” one business owner commented. “Nobody wants to take the risk of running afoul of the inspection team.”
Reports emerged from Guangdong’s Chaozhou and Shantou cities that night markets, barbecue stalls and street hawkers were shutting up shop ahead of the inspections, for fear of getting hit with a hefty fine.
The “New Hunan” news service reported that stalls that cook on an open flame had been ordered to shut down from Nov. 22-28 by authorities at Shantou’s Longyan South nightmarket.
Social media users from Chaozhou commented: “Never seen so many stores closed,” drawing parallels with the three years of lockdowns under the zero-COVID policy, which ended in December 2022 following nationwide protests.
A social media user from the area city described it as “a ghost town that is especially eerie at night.”
Another comment said the closures were understandable.
“If you close, you only lose a few hundred yuan, whereas you could lose tens of thousands if you open,” read one comment. “If you close, your turnover will be zero, but if you open, it could be negative.”
Official denials
Chaozhao officials responded to the online speculation, which saw the topic trending on Weibo on Saturday, by denying claims that the businesses were closing to avoid inspection, and saying that it was business as usual in the city, local media reported.
But local residents ridiculed the response.
“I would have believed this if I didn’t live locally,” commented one, while another added: “The whole street was shut down.”
Local authorities later issued warnings to businesses that closing down could result in their being targeted for more stringent inspections in future, according to a copy of an official notice sent to the X citizen media account “Mr Li is not your teacher.”
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A business owner from Guangdong who gave only the surname Liu for fear of reprisals said it was rare to see widespread store closures.
“It’s rare in our area to see such large-scale store closures,” he said. “It’s not a good idea to make it so that people are afraid to open for business.”
He said it was the sudden and nationwide nature of the inspections that had made many business owners particularly wary.
The Chaozhou government later issued a notice calling on businesses not to “intentionally close their doors to inspections without justifiable reason.”
A legal professional from Guangdong who gave only the surname Chen for fear of reprisal said many see safety inspections as the government trying to boost revenues when local coffers are empty.
“It’s another way for them to raise money,” Chen said. “Yes, they want to eliminate safety hazards and maintain stability, but they also want to help local governments raise revenues.”
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Qian Lang for RFA Mandarin.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Dozens of overseas activists gathered to light candles in London over the weekend to mark the second anniversary of a fatal lockdown apartment fire in Xinjiang’s regional capital Urumqi that sparked nationwide protests.
At least 30 activists from China and Hong Kong converged on St Mary-At-Hill church in Billingsgate to mark the anniversary of the Nov. 24, 2022, fire, which left at least 10 people dead, all of them Uyghurs.
According to media reports, the death toll was likely higher because the COVID-19 lockdown prevented fire and rescue teams from reaching the building in time.
The fire prompted a spontaneous protest and commemoration by mostly young people at Urumqi Road in Shanghai, many of whom held up blank sheets of paper to symbolize their desire to protest — and their awareness of Chinese censors who are quick to clamp down on any slogans or protests critical of the government.
The sheets of paper sent the message that people were upset, but that authorities gave them no voice.
Protests spread to other cities across China as the fire became a catalyst for a wider outpouring of public anger at the loss of freedom and the damage done by pandemic lockdowns to the economy.
At that time, many social media accounts showed footage of people in cities holding up white sheets of A4-sized printer paper, with some of them even chanting for the removal of President Xi Jinping.
In the wake of the demonstrations, which came to be known as the “white paper protests” and which subsided after a few days, the ruling Chinese Communist Party moved quickly to end the three-year zero-COVID restrictions.
But many demonstrators were still targeted in a subsequent crackdown on dissent.
‘Human awakening’
Singing and lighting candles for the victims, participants in Saturday’s event, organized by the overseas pro-democracy group China Deviants, also displayed a replica sign that read “Urumqi Road.”
They also read out anonymous messages of support from Chinese nationals who were unable to attend in person for fear of political reprisals.
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“Human awakening requires knowledge and information before it can form a personality capable of independent thought and action,” one message said. “Right now, the conditions for that don’t exist in mainland China.”
“Even if people are awakened, they still have no choice but to grow old in silence, lonely and desperate,” the message said. “Bless you, all of young people, for carrying on the struggle with such passion.”
A young man who gave only the pseudonym Youhan for fear of reprisals said he was “stunned” by the “white paper” protests when they broke out.
“I saw people in China daring to stand up, and shouting slogans that nobody had shouted since 1989,” Youhan said, in a reference to the weeks-long pro-democracy movement on Tiananmen Square and in other Chinese cities, that ended with the June 4 Tiananmen massacre.
“I came here today to commemorate my compatriots who died due to pandemic lockdowns,” he said. “Judging from recent developments, the kind of struggle we saw two years ago could break out again soon, because China’s economy hasn’t shown any sign of economic recovery [since restrictions were lifted].”
Similar vigils were held in Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam and Tokyo, the organizers told RFA Mandarin.
Imprisoned Hong Kong activists remembered
Some activists in London also displayed information about the recent sentences of up to 10 years handed down to democracy activists and politicians in Hong Kong, who were jailed for “subversion” under the 2020 National Security Law for organizing a democratic primary election.
A recently-arrived Hong Konger who gave only the nickname Wai for fear of reprisals said many activists in Hong Kong and China share the same beliefs.
“It was the anti-extradition protesters in Hong Kong who passed on the will to protest to young people in mainland China, who then took part in the white paper movement,” Wai said. “It was the desire to stand up and oppose injustice.”
“The saddest and most infuriating thing about the Urumqi fire was that the authorities actually locked people in their homes and didn’t let them out due to pandemic restrictions, and even locked the fire escapes, which is tantamount to murder,” Wai said.
Dozens of young Chinese — many of them women — were quietly detained across the country for taking part in November’s “white paper” protests.
Sources familiar with the crackdown in Beijing said at least 40 people are missing and believed detained following a protest at the city’s Liangmahe district on the night of Nov. 27.
A former “white paper” movement protester who gave only the pseudonym Dan Mu for fear of reprisals told RFA Mandarin in a recent interview that she had attended the Liangmahe protest after witnessing an online deluge of public anger, sadness and mourning in the wake of the Urumqi fire.
“I didn’t forward a single message to my friends, nor did I write anything,” she said. “What I was thinking at the time was, what’s the point? If you have the guts, you should take to the streets.”
“Just then, the people of Shanghai took to the streets, and Beijing was the following day,” Dan said.
“We walked to the south bank of Liangmahe [river], where a lot of people were shouting slogans, like ‘freedom not lockdowns!’,” she said.
“I was very scared when I left the house,” she said. “I didn’t know if I would make it back OK, but I still wanted to go.”
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Jasmine Man for RFA Mandarin.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Asia-Pacific’s agrifood tech sector is showing “remarkable” signs of recovery after two years of tumult, with VC investments increasing by 38% so far this year.
By the end of October, companies in the sector had raised $4.2B, reversing a 52% decline from 2023. It has also beefed up APAC’s share in the global agrifood tech funding landscape, which now makes up 31% of the total, up from an average of 26% over the last decade.
The figures come from a new report by AgFunder, in collaboration with Indian VC fund Omnivore and AgriFutures Australia, and signal some respite for businesses working to safeguard the future of food and agriculture.
While investment was still lower than 2020 levels in terms of dollar amounts, the number of deals in the first three quarters of 2024 (616) has already surpassed the full-year totals of each of the last three years, indicating that VCs remain interested in the category, but are more cautious in doling out larger amounts to single companies.
The Asia-Pacific AgriFoodTech Investment report found that India has leapfrogged China to the top spot, attracting $2B (or 48%) of the region’s funding this year – although $1B went to a single company, the three-year-old e-grocer Zepto, in two financing rounds.
The world’s most populous country’s agrifood tech industry recuperated significantly from the 73% drop in investments it suffered in 2023. Despite Zepto’s dominant rounds, the number of deals (158) is already 46% higher than the whole of 2023. Green energy specialist Sael’s $299M debt funding ensured that the top three deals belonged to India.
China isn’t too far behind, though, with companies securing $1.5B as of October 2024, 18% higher than this time last year. The country still leads the way in terms of deal count (230), dominating early-stage and Series A rounds. Pig breeding company Shiji Biotechnology Co ($232M) and alcohol producer Serata Moyun ($169M) raised the largest amounts.
The two countries were followed by Japan, which climbed three places to become the surprise success story of the year. Agrifood tech startups in the country brought in $280M (a 58% year-on-year rise) via a total of 93 deals, led by Brewed Protein maker Spiber‘s $65M round. There were signs of this last year, when Japan was the only top 10 APAC nation to see a hike in investments (by 95%).
Australia, however, wasn’t immune to the global downturn, registering a 78% decline in funding year-on-year, with deal count also down by 51%. This has halved its share in the overall APAC market to 1.2% – but in a positive trend, the majority of deals have been closed at the sees stage, indicating renewed activity.
Last year, upstream tech startups (which support farmers and primary production) overtook downstream players (which cover technologies closer to the consumers, like delivery and meal kits) in funding for the first time, but the latter bounced back this year, attracting $1.9B in VC investment.
That said, the gulf between the two has been erased, with upstream companies raising a similar amount ($1.8B) – they also still account for half of the total deal count. Those working with midstream technologies, which connect farmers and food producers to retailers, agro-processors and other clients, secured $525M.
Zepto’s funding success made eGrocery the most well-funded category (raising $1.5B), though deal count also nearly tripled. If you discount Zepto, the upstream categories of Bioenergy & Biomaterials ($475M) and Ag Biotechnology ($459M) were highly attractive to investors this year. The latter’s 30% year-on-year increase was driven by Chinese activity.
Categories labelled Innovative Food (which includes alternative proteins like plant-based foods and cultivated meat) and Novel Farming Systems (covering indoor farms, aquaculture, and insect and algae production) have been the hardest hit on the global stage, but in APAC, they’re rebounding.
Nover Farming Systems posted a small increase from last year with $75M raised over 25 deals. Innovative Food, meanwhile, attracted $204M by the end of October, an 85% increase from the same period in 2023, with deal count also growing from 49 to 59. Singaporean oat milk giant Oatside’s $35M round was the largest in this category.
“APAC is seen as a leader in both of these categories, particularly in Singapore where the government has supported them in search of improved national food security,” the report notes.
In bleaker news, leadership in the agrifood tech sector is still dominated by men, with male-only founding teams making up 92% of the total (from the companies where gender data is available). All-female founders only exist in 3% of businesses, and attract just 0.5% of VC investments (the same as last year). Meanwhile, firms with mixed founding teams saw a dip from 9.3% in 2023 to 8.2% this year.
The post APAC Agrifood Tech Funding Up by 38%, With India Reclaiming the Top Spot appeared first on Green Queen.
This post was originally published on Green Queen.
Sok Suosdey had always worked hard to help support her family in Cambodia’s Oddar Meanchey province, on the border with Thailand, but no matter what she did, they remained poor.
In 2016, things became even more dire when her family was saddled with repayment of a loan to a local bank.
So when a neighbor approached her that year with the opportunity to make a higher salary in China, Sok Suosdey – who asked to use a pseudonym for this report to protect her privacy – leapt at the chance.
After making the necessary preparations, she departed to the bustling city of Shanghai, excited with the prospect of becoming financially independent in China and helping her family get free from debt back home.
But around a month after her arrival, the woman who had promised her a job told her she would have to marry a deaf Chinese man and if she refused, she would be on the hook for the costs associated with her relocation to China – a sum far beyond her ability to pay.
Sok Suosdey agreed, but said that after her marriage, she was reduced to “a slave” in her husband’s home.
She was made to take a job to earn money for the family, but her mother-in-law also forced her to do household chores whenever she had a break, and subjected her to relentless physical and mental abuse, she said.
“Every day, my mother-in-law chased me to work from 10 am-11 pm, sometimes until 2 am,” she told RFA Khmer. “I only slept three hours a night, and I worked very hard. When I was at home, I also worked as a seamstress, sometimes as a laborer, or putting springs into children’s water guns.”
Sok Suosdey said that if she needed new clothes, she was made to buy them with her own money.
Her mother-in-law also refused to let her communicate with Cambodian friends she made or with family members back home, as “she was afraid I would run away from home.”
“My Chinese mother-in-law insulted me and made me hurtful and fed up,” she said.
Things were no different after having a child with her husband.
“The most painful thing was that after I gave birth to a son, my mother-in-law kept me away from him and didn’t let him know who I was,” she said. “She wouldn’t let me take care of him and would even call the police when I tried to take him to school.”
Trafficking to China
According to a report by the human rights group Adhoc, in the first nine months of 2024, at least 29 Cambodian women were trafficked to China. Of the trafficked women, 28 were forced to marry Chinese men.
According to the same source, in 2023, 28 Cambodian women were rescued from human trafficking in China.
The NGO said that some of the women who married Chinese men were beaten, abused and forced to work as slaves by their husbands and families. In addition to physically and mentally abusing the women, some families also forced them into sex work, leaving them traumatized, it said.
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‘He told me that if I ran away he would report me to the Chinese police’
Sok Suosdey told RFA that, because she could no longer endure the abuse, she saved enough money to buy a mobile phone and started to seek help via social media.
She started a group on Facebook for Cambodians in China and spent time searching for people she knew lived close to her parents back home. It was through these sources that she was able to contact her mother and get authorities at the Cambodian Consulate to intervene on her behalf.
On July 16, 2024 – seven years after being trafficked to China – Sok Suosdey finally returned home to her family in Cambodia.
Now 35, things have not been easy for Sok Suosdey back home, according to Sun Maly, the head of Adhoc’s Women’s Unit. She is the sole breadwinner of a household with an elderly mother, a father who was blinded during Cambodia’s civil war, and a younger brother with a mental disorder.
But despite the challenges, Sok Suosdey is thankful for her rescue and overjoyed to be reunited with her loved ones, she said.
Assisting victims
When victims of human trafficking return to Cambodia, they receive assistance from the Ministry of Social Affairs’ Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation agency, which provides them with mental health treatment and rehabilitation.
However, the assistance is only temporary, and many victims face a long road to recovery.
Once a victim is released from the Ministry of Social Affairs, humanitarian groups such as Adhoc step in to provide additional help.
Adhoc’s Sun Maly said that her NGO now provides victims with sewing machines to help them achieve financial stability by starting their own business following their rescue.
“My case manager has helped to find skilled trainers who can help women victims in tailoring,” she said. “Most villages have tailors, but as they age out, a victim with the ability to sew can replace them by setting up their own garment business.”
Some victims told RFA that the Cambodian government needs to do more to pressure Chinese authorities to investigate claims of trafficking inside China.
Chou Bun Eng, the permanent deputy chair of the Ministry of Interior’s Anti-Trafficking Committee, told RFA that she has met with Chinese authorities in the past to highlight the need to investigate such claims.
However, she said that her Chinese counterparts regularly deny that there are any cases of Cambodian women being trafficked and forced into marriage in China – only consensual marriages. Domestic violence they classify as a “family dispute,” she said.
“I’m not saying that all cases involve trafficking – some Cambodian women pay money to be smuggled into China,” she acknowledged.
“But in general, most Cambodian women who go to China already have relatives in China who promise to help them find a husband with a good family. So, if they sign a marriage certificate and then domestic violence occurs, the authorities say it is a family dispute.”
The U.S. State Department’s Trafficking in Persons report ranked Cambodia as a “tier 3″ nation – the worst possible ranking – in 2023 and 2024.
In July, the State Department released a report which found that the Cambodian government did not meet international standards in its efforts to eradicate human trafficking, largely due to corruption amongst senior government officials.
Translated by Sum Sok Ry. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Khmer.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
It now appears to be a question of “when, not if” Chinese security personnel will arrive in Myanmar, with Beijing looking to secure its strategic interests in the war-torn country and those of its ally, the military junta that has lost large chunks of the country since the 2021 coup.
The Irrawaddy online news outlet reported that the junta formed a 13-member working committee on October 22 to prepare the groundwork to establish a “joint security company” with China.
According to the report, the committee, chaired by Major-General Toe Yi, the junta’s deputy home affairs minister, is currently tasked with “scrutinizing the importing and regulating of weapons and special equipment” until Beijing signs a drafted MOU on forming a “security company.”
After that, according to the narrative from Beijing and Naypyidaw, Chinese personnel would join a “company” — more like a militia — alongside junta troops, which would be tasked with defending Chinese strategic and economic interests in the country.
I’m told that China will send troops from the military and police in a “private” capacity, giving the fiction of detachment.
Yet this would not be a joint venture in anything but name.
Does one seriously think that Chinese troops or police are going to listen to the Myanmar generals who have lost battle after battle to ethnic armies and ill-trained civilian militias over the past four years?
Moreover, there is no reason to think that the China-junta “militia” will stick to merely protecting Chinese nationals and Chinese-owned businesses in Myanmar.
Chinese projects delayed
It is true that Chinese assets have come under increased levels of attack from anti-junta forces in recent months.
There is some logic, if you’re sitting in Beijing and Naypyidaw, in wanting to allow Chinese forces to help command most of northern Myanmar, giving junta forces a better chance of mopping up rebel forces elsewhere.
The civil war has delayed key Chinese projects in the country, such as the long-planned China-Myanmar Economic Corridor between China’s Yunnan province and Myanmar’s Indian Ocean coast.
Strategically key for Beijing is a port it wants to build in Rakhine state, allowing China to import oil and gas from the Middle East without ships needing to pass through the Malacca Strait, a potential chokepoint.
This would be essential in the event of a conflict in the South China Sea, during which the Philippines or Taiwan could try to blockade Chinese trade, including oil and gas imports on which China’s economy depends.
My sources say that the majority of the PLA contingent will be deployed to Rakhine state.
According to statements released by Beijing, almost certainly intended to construct a peace narrative ahead of the deployment, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told junta leader Min Aung Hlaing in August that he hoped “Myanmar will earnestly safeguard the safety of Chinese personnel and projects.”
When Min Aung Hlaing visited China earlier this month, his first visit since the coup, Chinese Premier Li Qiang instructed him to “take effective measures to ensure the safety of Chinese nationals, institutions, and projects in the country.”
The reality, as Beijing knows well, is that the junta cannot ensure these things.
That’s the entire reason why the “security companies” are deemed necessary by the Chinese government.
Offensive operations
Once Chinese security personnel are on the ground in Myanmar, the fiction that they’re just standing guard outside a few industrial compounds or pipelines will become difficult to maintain.
Indeed, they’re likely to have no choice but to mount offensive operations.
The most obvious reason to expect this is that many Chinese-run enterprises are in territory currently controlled by resistance groups that will presumably need to be taken by Chinese forces.
If not, why would Beijing make a u-turn on its existing policy, which had been to cajole and pay the ethnic militias to leave Chinese entities out of their fight with the junta?
Secondly, after years of dallying, Beijing now clearly thinks that it cannot trust the anti-junta National Unity Government (NUG), presumably because it’s too pro-Western, nor most of the anti-junta ethnic militias – even those who have taken money from Beijing.
Chinese authorities reportedly detained Peng Daxun, the leader of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), a militia that has inflicted heavy casualties on the junta, after he was summoned to Yunnan for a parlay last month.
This may be a temporary detention pour encourager les autres, or it may be Beijing trying to dismantle disloyal militias more permanently.
Yet, in essence, Beijing has now thrown its weight behind the junta because it presumably believes China’s interests would be best served by an outright junta victory.
So if Beijing thinks the ultimate way of protecting Chinese business interests in Myanmar, for now and in the long term, is for the civil war to be ended and for junta forces to win the conflict decisively, the difference between Chinese security personnel conducting defensive and offensive operations is paper thin.
Why wouldn’t Beijing use its troops to bring about its overarching goal? Why would Beijing overlook the opportunity to end a civil war that it wants over?
Anti-China sentiment
Why would Beijing merely send personnel to defend Chinese factories and pipelines for a few months or years if it thinks there is the possibility that forces hostile to Chinese interests could eventually take power nationally?
Under these circumstances, Chinese personnel would think it justified, under the narrative of “safeguarding the safety of Chinese nationals, institutions and projects in the country,” to wage offensive assaults against anti-junta forces across Myanmar.
Granted, the junta is touchy about being seen as a lackey of Beijing — or about Myanmar becoming a protectorate of China.
That is why Beijing has offered platitudes of a joint “security company,” a fiction to get around Myanmar’s constitution that forbids the deployment of foreign troops.
But what position will the junta be in to dictate what Chinese personnel can do or where they can go once they are in Myanmar?
Lastly, does one imagine that anti-junta forces won’t retaliate against Chinese intervention, especially when that intervention is so clearly on behalf of the regime?
Anti-China sentiment is running high in Myanmar and will boil over once Chinese troops and police step foot in the country.
One can very easily imagine an escalating campaign of attacks by anti-junta forces on Chinese interests – increasing the incentives for Chinese security personnel to launch offensive operations.
Once Chinese boots are on the ground in Myanmar, this means direct intervention by China – not merely an economic peacekeeping effort by joint “security companies.”
And Chinese personnel will have to conduct offensive operations – not just stand guard at Chinese-run factories and pipelines.
David Hutt is a research fellow at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS) and the Southeast Asia Columnist at the Diplomat. He writes the Watching Europe In Southeast Asia newsletter. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of RFA.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by David Hutt.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Read a version of this story in Korean
A rare video clip that shows North Korean women — dispatched to China as workers — dancing with Chinese men to loud disco music, indicates that they are picking up elements of capitalist culture that would be forbidden in their restrictive home country.
The video, shot in the city of Dandong, which lies just across the border from North Korea’s Sinuiju, was provided to RFA Korean by a resident of Dandong who requested anonymity for security reasons.
The women shake their hips and twist their bodies to the upbeat music, and this is referred to as “disco dancing” in North Korea and is listed as part of “decadent capitalist culture.”
Since North Korea passed the Rejection of Reactionary Thought and Culture Act in 2020, the government has been cracking down on people for embracing culture from the outside, including by punishing those caught dancing like a capitalist, watching smuggled South Korean and Western movies and TV shows, or even using South Korean vocabulary when they speak.
But Pyongyang still needs to send workers to other countries to earn foreign currency for the cash-strapped regime.
According to a UN report published earlier this year, about 100,000 North Korean workers are currently abroad in over 40 countries, including China and Russia, a violation of sanctions over Pyongyang’s nuclear program.
But nevertheless, the workers are there, and the young women who were sent to Dandong are enjoying their life in the outside world. In years past they would have had to keep this a secret, but these days, even the North Korean companies are aware that their employees are dancing and partying.
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“Foreign style culture is spreading in some North Korean companies dispatched to China,” the Dandong resident told RFA Korean. “In the video, a foreign-style dance party is taking place under strict supervision of the North Korean company authorities.”
Laugh and have fun
He said it was more and more common these days for North Koreans and Chinese to mingle during these kinds of disco parties, to the point that it’s now just a common occurrence.
“These North Korean women are people too, so it’s only natural that they would want to dance closely with men,” the resident said. “This is only possible because the president of the North Korean company they work for approved it.”
He said that many of the women are selected to participate in these parties because of their skill at dancing or singing.
“North Korean workers do not shy away from the opportunity to laugh and have fun while eating well-prepared Chinese food,” the resident said.
In other cities where North Koreans are sent to work, Chinese people will pay a North Korean company to hold a party and supply the young ladies, a resident of Shenyang told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely.
“I know that Chinese people pay a certain amount of money to the president of a North Korean company and the head of the company’s security and hold parties,” he said. “On the occasion of Chinese national holidays or personal birthdays, parties are held in quiet areas of the factory with selected North Korean female workers.”
The company president and the security personnel, who have connections with North Korea’s state security department, sometimes join the party themselves, he said.
“The workers are made to promise that they will never reveal that they danced with Chinese people when they return home and are debriefed,” the Shenyang resident said.
Translated by Claire S. Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Kim Jieun for RFA Korean.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Hundreds of workers at an automotive trim company in Shanghai blocked a major highway in the city amid a protest over plans for mass layoffs on Wednesday, RFA Mandarin’s Labor Bulletin reported.
The workers from the state-owned Shanghai Guoli Automotive Leather Decoration Co. scuffled with police as traffic backed up on the Husong Highway, according to video clips of the standoff posted to social media.
Police detained at least one worker, prompting others to shout and join in the scuffle.
Employees have been protesting since receiving a notice on Oct. 9 offering a payout of three months’ minimum wage to anyone who volunteered to resign, amounting to a total of payment 8070 yuan (US$1,113).
Social media posts from people identifying themselves as workers from the company said the “voluntary resignations” weren’t actually voluntary, and that the company had described the layoff terms as “generous,” according to posts to X by citizen journalist “Mr Li is not your teacher.”
11月21日，上海七宝。因长期拖欠工资，逼迫工人辞职。国利公司的工人们走上沪淞公路堵路维权。
— 李老师不是你老师 (@whyyoutouzhele) November 21, 2024
之后警察开始对部分堵路工人进行驱散和抓捕。 pic.twitter.com/LyNyVaHTQo
They said they are entitled to three months’ compensation based on their average wage over the previous 12 months.
The dispute was the latest in a string of increasingly visible labor disputes amid a flagging, post-lockdown economy in China.
A quarterly report from Washington DC-based Freedom House said that China saw “a 27 percent year-on-year increase in dissent events” between July 1 and Sept. 30.
The organization’s China Dissent Monitor noted that it has “documented a rise in protests over recent months by consumers and investors amidst a sluggish economy.”
“Despite the grievances originating with the conduct of private companies, nearly 40 percent of these protests demand government intervention,” the report said.
Long hours, low pay
An official who answered the phone at the complaints division of the local Qibao township government on Wednesday confirmed that workers at the Shanghai plant had been in dispute with their employer since October.
An officer who answered the phone at the Qibao township police department said police wouldn’t intervene in a labor dispute, other than to prevent people from blocking a highway.
Song Baowei, who heads the factory’s chapter of the official Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions, told Radio Free Asia that the union is currently investigating the reasons for Wednesday’s protest.
Long working hours, low pay and no way to stand up for their rights were the most frequently cited complaints by workers who spoke to RFA in recent interviews.
Labor activists say part of the problem is that corporate China has never had a strong sense of contractual obligation, nor a reliable mechanism for negotiating labor disputes.
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All official trade unions are controlled by the government, while the authorities frequently crack down with force on workers who organize via unofficial labor unions.
According to the Hong Kong-based non-profit China Labour Bulletin, China has seen hundreds of protests across the country during the past month, mostly by workers protesting wage arrears.
Non-payments
On Tuesday, dozens of construction workers protested wage arrears in the central city of Wuhan, with a similar protest on Monday by dozens of apparel factory workers in the eastern city of Hangzhou, according to the Bulletin’s Strike Map, which collates online reports of labor disputes around the country.
Video footage uploaded to the video-sharing platform Douyin showed delivery workers in the southern province of Guangdong protesting unpaid wages on Nov. 16.
China saw a rebound in strikes and protests in the first half of 2024, with more than 719 collective actions recorded by the Bulletin’s Strike Map in the six months through June 30.
But a search for disputes in the past month turned up more than 800 results on Friday, suggesting that the number of industrial disputes has continued to climb.
In the automotive sector, workers have been increasingly protesting reductions in working hours and non-payment of economic compensation, the Bulletin said in a report dated Sept. 19.
Many factories in the sector are laying off workers who don’t wish to relocate, and trying to find ways around honoring their contracts, the report said.
“To evade paying compensation, some companies shut down operations without closing the factory and forced workers to resign voluntarily,” it said.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Han Dongfang for RFA Mandarin.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
There is something enormously satisfying about seeing those in the war racket worry that their assumptions on conflict have been upended. There they were, happily funding, planning and preparing to battle against threats imagined or otherwise, and there comes Donald Trump, malice and petulance combined, to pull the rug from under them again.
What is fascinating about the return of Trump to the White House is that critics think his next round of potentially rowdy occupancy is going to encourage, rather than discourage war. Conflict may be the inadvertent consequence of any number of unilateral policies Trump might pursue, but they do not tally with his anti-war platform. Whatever can be said about his adolescent demagogic tendencies, a love of war is curiously absent from the complement. A tendency to predictable unpredictability, however, is.
The whole assessment also utterly misunderstands the premise that the foolishly menacing trilateral alliance of AUKUS is, by its nature, a pact for the making of war. This agreement between Australia, the UK and the US can hardly be dignified as some peaceful, unprovocative enterprise fashioned to preserve security. To that end, President Joe Biden should shoulder a considerable amount of the blame for destabilising the region. But instead, we are getting some rather streaky commentary from the security wonks in Australia. Trump spells, in the pessimistic words of Nick Bisley from La Trobe University, “uncertainty about just what direction the US will go”. His policies might, for instance, “badly destabilise Asia” and imperil the AUKUS, specifically on the provision of nuclear-powered submarines to the Royal Australian Navy. On the last point, we can only hope.
The Australians, being willing and unquestioning satellites of US power, have tried to pretend that a change of the guard in the White House will not doom the pact. Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong expressed a “great deal of confidence” that things would not change under the new administration, seeing as AUKUS enjoyed bipartisan support.
Australia’s ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, is also of the view that AUKUS will survive into the Trump administration as it “strengthens all three countries’ ability to deter threats, and it grows the defence industrial base and creates jobs in all three countries”.
Another former ambassador to Washington, Arthur Sinodinos, who also occupies the role of AUKUS forum co-chair, has pitched the viability of the trilateral pact in such a way as to make it more appealing to Trump. Without any trace of humour, he suggests that tech oligarch Elon Musk oversee matters if needed. “If Musk can deliver AUKUS, we should put Musk in charge of AUKUS, and I’m not joking, if new thinking is needed to get this done,” advises the deluded Sinodinos.
The reasoning offered on this is, to put it mildly, peculiar. As co-head of the proposed Department of Government Efficiency, Musk, it is hoped, will apply “business principles” and “new thinking”. If the Pentagon can “reform supply chains, logistics, procurement rules, in a way that means there’s speed to market, we get minimum viable capability sooner, rather than later”.
These doltish assessments from Sinodinos are blatantly ignorant of the fact the defence industry is never efficient. Nor do they detract from the key premise of the arrangements. Certainly, if an anti-China focus is what you are focusing on – and AUKUS, centrally and evidently, is an anti-China agreement pure and simple – there would be little reason for Trump to tinker with its central tenets. For one, he is hankering for an even deeper trade war with Beijing. Why not also harry the Chinese with a provocative instrument, daft as it is, that entails militarising Australia and garrisoning it for any future conflict that might arise?
Whatever the case, AUKUS has always been contingent on the interests of one power. Congress has long signalled that US defence interests come first, including whether Australia should receive any Virginian class submarines to begin with. Trump would hardly disagree here. “Trump’s decisions at each phase of AUKUS cooperation will be shaped by zero-sum balance sheets of US interest,” suggests Alice Nason of the University of Sydney’s US Studies Centre rather tritely.
If Trump be so transactional, he has an excellent example of a country utterly willing to give everything to US security, thereby improving the deal from the side of Washington’s military-industrial complex. If there was one lingering, pathological complaint he had about Washington’s NATO allies, it was always that they were not doing enough to ease the burdens of US defence. They stalled on defence budgets; they quibbled on various targets on recruitment.
This can hardly be said of Canberra. Australia’s government has abandoned all pretence of resistance, measure or judgment, outrageously willing to underwrite the US imperium in any of its needs in countering China, raiding the treasury of taxpayer funds to the tune of a figure that will, eventually, exceed A$368 billion. Rudd openly acknowledges that Australian money is directly “investing into the US submarine industrial base to expand the capacity of their shipyards.” It would be silly to prevent this continuing windfall. It may well be that aspect that ends up convincing Trump that AUKUS is worth keeping. Why get rid of willing servitors of such dim tendency when they are so willing to please you with cash and compliments?
The post Trump, AUKUS, and Australia’s Dim Servitors first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
KUALA LUMPUR – Malaysia and Vietnam have agreed to elevate ties and cooperate closely to maintain peace in the South China Sea, following a rare protest by Kuala Lumpur over Hanoi’s island-building program in the disputed waterway.
The two Southeast Asian countries are among six parties that have overlapping territorial claims in the sea, alongside China, Brunei, the Philippines as well as Taiwan.
Malaysia and Vietnam pledged to “continue working closely together to maintain peace, security, stability, safety and freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea and to promote peaceful settlement of disputes,” To Lam, general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, said during a joint press briefing with Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia’s administrative capital, Putrajaya, on Thursday.
The ties between the two countries will be elevated to a “comprehensive strategic partnership” that will help the two sides boost their cooperation in various areas, such as defense and security, according to Lam.
Malaysia is the first, and only, ASEAN country to establish a comprehensive strategic partnership with Vietnam. The eight other comprehensive strategic partners of Vietnam are China, Russia, India, South Korea, the United States, Japan, Australia and France. Singapore and Vietnam are also expected to upgrade their partnership to the highest level early next year, when Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong makes a planned visit to Hanoi.
Last month, Malaysia filed a protest over Vietnam’s island-building program in the disputed waters, the Reuters news agency reported. The report said Malaysia had complained about Vietnam’s development of an airstrip on Barque Canada reef, a feature in the Spratly Islands chain that Kuala Lumpur also claims.
The “comprehensive strategic partnership” is the highest level in Vietnam’s diplomatic hierarchy of official engagements with other nations. Other countries that have similar partnerships with Vietnam include the United States, China, Russia, and Japan.
“We will continue to work closely to expand and deepen our friendship and political trust between the two countries based on respect for each other’s national law and respect for its political system, sovereignty and territorial integrity in line with law and regulation based on the principle of non-interference,” Lam said.
Kuala Lumpur and Hanoi also “agreed to explore the possibility of having joint efforts in the fishing industry so that we can really work on the basis of trust and friendship,” Anwar said in his speech.
Over the years, there have been frictions between the two countries tied to fishing. For example, Malaysian fishermen have accused their Vietnamese counterparts of encroaching on catches of squid through illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing in Malaysian waters.
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Both Malaysia and Vietnam are member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Malaysia is Vietnam’s second-biggest trade partner and the third-largest foreign investor in ASEAN, according to Hanoi.
“Vietnam will support Malaysia in its ASEAN chairmanship next year and will continue working closely with Malaysia and other ASEAN member states to realize the ASEAN Blueprint of 2025,” Lam said.
The two leaders also witnessed the signing of memorandums to enhance cooperation in various areas such as trade promotion and renewable energy.
“Vietnam has been very supportive of our business ventures in their country, which now exceed U.S. $13 billion with 700 projects,” Anwar said.
It was Lam’s first official visit to Malaysia since becoming Vietnam’s general secretary in August.
Lam’s three-day trip was also the first time a Communist Party of Vietnam chief had visited Kuala Lumpur since 1994, a year before Hanoi formally joined ASEAN.
BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by BenarNews staff.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
He has not been heard from for over 10 years, but the news of his engagement this month has made a splash from Taipei to (probably) Tiananmen.
Bo Guagua, a once high-profile son of the Chinese political elite whose notorious family drama both shocked and shaped the country’s politics today, touched down in Taiwan last week to make a pilgrimage familiar to many young people: to visit his future in-laws.
Yet the public attention on what should have been a normal rite of passage reveals just how much interest there is in this Communist Party scion once tipped for power.
Taiwanese media quoted a nurse who laid eyes on him (“he is handsome!”), while the office of the former Taiwanese president declared that he had not been invited to the wedding, which is due to take place on Nov. 23.
So who is Bo Guagua – and why is there interest in his marriage?
A princeling ‘hongsandai’
Bo Kuangyi, better known as “Guagua,” is the son of Bo Xilai, once one of the most powerful politicians in China, and his businesswoman wife, Gu Kailai.
His grandfather, Bo Yibo, was one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party. Guagua was one of a generation of high-profile princelings whose family wealth – gained owing to a connection to the ruling party amid China’s rapid economic growth in the 1990s and 2000s – made them known as the “hongsandai” or “third generation reds.”
From that privileged position, he led a visibly gilded lifestyle that included prime seats at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, a private education at Harrow, the English boarding school, and an enviable network of contacts collected from stints at Oxford and Harvard Universities.
Unlike peers of similar backgrounds – top leader Xi Jinping’s daughter, for example, also attended Harvard but under a pseudonym – Guagua was not shy. He became known as a playboy, hosting parties with guests like Jackie Chan and allegedly driving a Ferrari to pick up the daughter of a diplomat (a story he later denied).
All this came to a sudden, stunning end when the Bo family became the subjects of one of the most consequential scandals in modern Chinese politics— one that has shaped the contours of power in the country today.
Who is Bo Xilai and why was he important?
Before his dramatic downfall, Bo Xilai, Guagua’s father, held some of the most important positions in the CCP, putting him on a collision course with President Xi Jinping, who rose to the position in 2012, the year of Bo Xilai’s ousting.
At the time, the elder Bo had been the CCP party secretary of Chongqing, the capital of Sichuan province. In that capacity, Bo amassed enormous influence as well as personal wealth.
As secretary, he developed a political system that came to be known as the “Chongqing model,” which featured sweeping crackdowns and an emphasis on promoting Maoist, “red” culture.
In early 2012, Bo and his wife Gu Kailai were implicated in a corruption scandal and, shockingly, the death of a British businessman and family friend, Neil Heywood, who Gu was later convicted of murdering. Bo and Gu are now both serving life sentences in prison in China.
What happened to Bo Guagua after his parents went to jail?
When his parents were facing criminal allegations in China, Bo Guagua was in graduate school at Harvard. He was reported to have been smuggled into hiding by U.S. officials in April 2012 as it was unknown whether he would also be swept up by authorities.
Months later, in September, he posted a social media post defending his father shortly after the elder Bo was accused of major offenses, including bribery and shared responsibility for the Haywood murder.
The elder Bo was found guilty of corruption in 2013 and stripped of his party membership the following year.
His son then kept a low profile in the U.S., his whereabouts largely unknown except that he attended Columbia Law School after he finished at Harvard.
Only last week did he re-emerge in public, when he arrived in Taiwan.
Who is Bo Guagua’s fiancée?
The bride-to-be has been named as Hsu Hui Yu, a Taiwanese woman who Guagua is said to have known for years after meeting as students.
One of the details of what has caught the attention of China watchers is the political ties of the bride’s family. Hsu’s grandfather was a prominent political donor and member of the Kuomintang (KMT), while her uncle most recently ran as a party candidate for the legislature in 1992, before turning to run the family real estate and healthcare business.
The family were close to the ex-KMT president Ma Yinjeou, whose government was once accused of helping them improperly secure business contracts.
What does interest in the nuptials tell us?
What might seem like a baroque scandal about a Chinese political insider is still capable of igniting the public imagination..
Slews of news stories have been written about the marriage already, with everything from commentary on whether the marriage of a CCP heir into Taiwan is a good thing to how the Mainland Affairs Council, the Taiwan agency that deals with China, is handling the situation.
It also speaks to the mystery that surrounds the children of senior Chinese leaders, many of whom went abroad, have access to unknown deposits of wealth and influence, and will shape important relationships in the future.
As for the couple, they have not publicly commented. They are expected to make their residence in Canada, where, according to a LinkedIn profile, Bo Guagua is now based. The wedding this weekend itself is supposed to be “low key.”
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Staff.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Read RFA coverage of this topic in Burmese.
The most powerful insurgent group in northern Myanmar had captured the last crossing in its region on the border with China in defiance of Chinese efforts to press it and other Myanmar rebel forces to make peace with the junta that seized power in 2021.
The Kachin Independence Army, or KIA, has been fighting for self-determination in Myanmar’s northernmost Kachin state on and off for decades and has made significant advances against the military over the past year.
KIA and allied fighters launched a final push for Kan Paik Ti town, 75 kilometers (46 miles) east of the state capital, Myitkyina, early on Wednesday and captured it by around 7 p.m., a resident and a source close to the KIA said.
“The junta soldiers fled to the border fence or to the Chinese side,” said a town resident who declined to be identified for safety reasons. “Employees of the junta administration have also been fleeing from the border gate to China.”
Junta forces initially sent an aircraft to fire at insurgent positions but the town was quiet on Thursday, the resident said. The source close to the KIA said junta forces had launched attacks in other areas after the fall of Kan Paik Ti.
Residents had no information about casualties in the latest fighting.
RFA tried to reach Kachin state’s junta spokesperson, Moe Min Thein, and the KIA’s information officer, Naw Bu, for information but neither responded by time of the publication.
The KIA and allied forces in northeastern, western and eastern Myanmar have made stunning gains over the past year, putting the army under the most severe pressure it has faced since shortly after independence from Britain in 1948.
But the insurgents’ success has alarmed giant neighbor China, which has extensive economic interests in Myanmar, including energy pipelines running up from the Indian Ocean and mining projects.
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China has thrown its support behind the junta, promising to back an election next year that the junta hopes will bolster its legitimacy, and putting pressure on the KIA and other insurgent groups to respond positively to junta offers of talks.
The junta leader, Sen. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, renewed a call to insurgent forces to talk peace while on a visit to China on Nov. 6, telling Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang that stability was crucial for economic development and trade.
But the insurgents have dismissed the junta’s offer as a trick and reject the planned election as a sham when Myanmar’s most popular politician, Aung San Suu Kyi, and hundreds of other opponents of military rule are in prison.
Over the past year, the KIA has captured jade and rare earth mines that export to China, and both sides have at different times sealed the border, partly to put economic pressure on the other side.
China recently closed the border to civilians seeking shelter from fighting and has also shut off supplies reaching KIA-controlled areas leading to shortages of fuel and medicine.
The KIA responded by suspending exports of rare earths to China, and the group now controls every border crossing through which the minerals vital to a range of Chinese manufacturing pass.
Translated by Kiana Duncan. Edited by RFA Burmese.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
China is reeling in the wake of a number of attacks on members of the public in recent weeks, including a fatal car attack at a stadium in the southern port city of Zhuhai this month that left 35 people dead and dozens more injured.
Since then, further violence has been making the headlines, including stabbings on two college campuses at the weekend and a car attack on students at a primary school in Hunan province.
Several schoolchildren were injured on Tuesday after being struck by a car as they arrived to start their day at the Yong’an Primary School in Hunan’s Changde city, state media reported.
A video clip uploaded to social media showed people lying on the ground in the immediate aftermath of the attack, as media reports said a man had been arrested in connection with the incident.
The attack came after police arrested a 21-year-old man in connection with a stabbing attack at the Wuxi Yixing Arts and Crafts Vocational and Technical College on Nov. 16 that left eight people dead and 17 injured, while a stabbing incident was also reported at the Guangdong Institute of Technology on Nov. 17, according to social media posts with photos from the scene.
Analysts who spoke to RFA Mandarin in recent interviews pointed to a “pressure-cooker” effect on ordinary people of a flagging economy and growing social inequality, prompting attacks that are widely seen as a form of “revenge” on society.
An online commentator from the eastern province of Shandong who gave only the surname Lu for fear of reprisals said people in China are struggling, and the cracks are beginning to show.
“Some people are starting to feel that life is meaningless,” Lu said. “This is a very unjust society, and people are starting to hate the system, leading to a string of tragedies.”
“The domestic economy is doing badly, and it’s getting harder and harder to get by, what with growing pressure from unemployment and the cost of housing,” Lu said, adding that ruling Chinese Communist Party policies don’t appear to be alleviating the burden on ordinary people.
“The party is creating that pressure rather than solving the problem and relieving it,” he said.
‘Pressure-cooker with no release valve’
Economic pressures are leading to strained family relationships and break-ups, while a culture of extreme overwork for those who do have a job often leads to mental health problems and sudden deaths, commentators said.
The intersection of economic pressures and institutional problems is gradually tearing apart the fabric of Chinese society, according to writer Ye Fu.
“These are troubled times,” Ye said. “Livelihoods are under pressure, and the middle and lower classes are getting desperate, so there’s bound to be a rise in violence.”
“The whole of society is like a pressure-cooker, which will eventually explode if it is suppressed with no release valve,” he said.
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A commentator from the central province of Hunan who gave only the surname Yu for fear of reprisals said that violent attacks are likely to continue until the government takes action to alleviate the pressures on ordinary people.
“If the government refuses to address such social conflicts at their source, and from the perspective of social justice, and keeps repressing them, then people will continue to take such retaliatory action against society as a whole,” Yu said.
“They can’t get fair treatment … the authorities won’t accept petitions, so they retaliate in some other way against society,” he said, adding that the suppression is largely the result of China’s nationwide system of “stability maintenance,” which aims to suppress and silence government critics before they can take action, including through legal channels.
A resident of Shandong who gave only the surname Zhang for fear of reprisals said such attacks are also likely to spawn copycat incidents in future.
“Some people feel stressed or angry, but have nowhere to express that,” Zhang said. “So when they see that someone drove a car into some people, they imitate those actions.”
“The main issue is that it’s getting too hard to survive, and a lot of people switch into an alternative kind of survival mode,” he said.
Prioritizing the economy
Scholar Wang Qun blamed the government’s insistence on the economy as the main solution to inequality.
“Prioritizing economic growth over social equity leads to the neglect of individual happiness, and the uneven distribution of public resources like education, medical care and housing,” Wang said. “It means that it’s very hard for ordinary people to enjoy equal opportunities.”
And the economic pressures are taking place in a political climate of extreme censorship and restriction, he said.
“Critical voices on social issues are often suppressed, and the fact that many of their channels of expression have been closed off has exacerbated young people’s sense of powerlessness,” Wang said.
Public health scholar Lu Jun agreed with the “pressure-cooker” metaphor.
“In a normal society, people have some kind of outlet for their emotions, and some kind of chance at justice, or at the very least a channel through which to speak out, via the judicial system,” Lu said.
“But it’s becoming increasingly unlikely that anyone will get justice in China through legal means.”
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Joshua Lipes.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Qian Lang for RFA Mandarin.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Authorities in the western Chinese province of Gansu have started offering cash payouts of up to 100,000 yuan (US$13,800) to families who have another baby in a bid to boost flagging birth rates.
“Subei county will be offering birth and maternity leave, medical assistance and other rewards to families with two or three children who are permanently resident in the county,” ruling Chinese Communist Party county health official Shi Wanjun told the state-run China News Service on Nov. 18.
Shi said the government would cover medical expenses for childbirth, including a hospital stay.
Eligible families could receive cash support up to a maximum of 100,000 yuan, the report said.
The move is part of local government plans to “steadily implement the three-child policy, boost birth rates … and deal with the aging population,” it quoted Shi as saying.
Faced with plummeting birth rates, nationwide kindergarten closures and young people who are increasingly choosing to stay single, authorities in China last month started rolling out incentives to encourage more people to have kids, calling for “a new marriage and childbearing culture.”
Communist Party leader Xi Jinping has called on women to focus on raising families, and the National People’s Congress has been looking at ways to kick-start the shrinking population, including flexible working policies, coverage for fertility treatment and extended maternity leave.
In Subei county, the authorities are planning to hand out cash subsidies of up to 2,000 yuan (US$275) a month in the first year of a new baby’s life, and up to 3,000 yuan (US$413) a month in its second year, the China News Service said.
One-off bonus payouts of up to 10,000 yuan (US$1,380) per baby will be offered to families who have left the county, but who return to register a newborn child there, rather than seeking registration in a city with better education, public services and economic opportunities, according to the report.
Remote and rural areas
Remote Subei county is facing particular challenges, with a registered population of just 12,657 at the end of 2023, and less than five new births a month.
A Gansu-based scholar who gave only the surname Yue for fear of reprisals said many local people have left the area to seek economic opportunities in cities, leaving behind a rapidly aging population.
“Subei is a pastoral area that is home to the Yugur people, typical of an ethnic minority border region,” Yue said. “Birth rates are at much more normal levels in central, eastern, northern and southern China.”
Yue said the turnaround from the strictly enforced “one-child” policy that ended in 2016 to the current drive to encourage births has been startling.
“The birth rate stabilized for a few years in the wake of the [1966-1976] Cultural Revolution, but then the family planning controls started, which meant we couldn’t have lots of children,” he said.
“They started out saying the policy would likely continue for 100 years, and we all had to fill out application forms before we could have kid,” he said. “They promised us then that the state would take care of us in retirement.”
“Now, they’re talking about birth subsidies. Can you believe it?” Yue said.
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A resident of a rural region in the eastern province of Shandong who gave only the surname Lu for fear of reprisals said birth rates are also falling where she lives.
But she doesn’t think the subsidies will do much to improve the birth rate.
“If people can’t even get by when it’s just them, how is a child going to help them?” Lu said. “A lot of the land has gone, now that young people are moving to cities.”
“Their way of life is different from the older generation, and they can’t get by just on what they make from farming,” she said.
‘Just gimmicks’
Authorities in the Hunan provincial capital Changsha announced in July that they would be offering childcare subsidies worth up to 10,000 yuan per child for families who have three or more children.
China’s population grew by just 480,000 in 2021, while the number of couples getting married fell rapidly in the first nine months of 2024 by nearly 1 million registrations compared to last year, amid an economic slump and changing attitudes.
China registered 4.747 million marriages in the three quarters ending Sept. 30, a drop of 943,000 year-on-year.
First marriages have plummeted by nearly 56% over the past nine years, according to the 2023 China Statistical Yearbook. The trend is contributing to a sharp decline in birth-rates amid a shrinking, aging population.
Young people are increasingly avoiding marriage, having children and buying a home amid a tanking economy and rampant youth unemployment, they told RFA Mandarin in recent interviews.
Lu said there is also a lack of public trust in the government’s ability to pay out on its promises that could mean few take up the offer of subsidies and other benefits.
“The subsidies they talk about are just gimmicks,” Lu said. “Nobody takes them seriously.”
Translated by Luisetta Mudie.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Qian Lang for RFA Mandarin.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Detained Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai testified on Wednesday for the first time in his trial on charges of “conspiracy to collude with foreign forces”, telling a court he and his now-defunct newspaper had always stood for freedom.
Lai, 76, is facing charges under the 2020 National Security Law that Beijing imposed on the former British colony a year after it was rocked by anti-government protests. He faces life imprisonment.
“We were always in support of movements for freedom,” Lai, wearing a gray blazer and glasses, told the West Kowloon Magistrates Court, the Reuters news agency reported.
Scores of Lai’s supporters lined up outside the court in the rain early on Wednesday, hoping to get in to show their support, media reported.
The founder of the now-closed Apple Daily, a Chinese-language tabloid renowned for its pro-democracy views and criticism of Beijing, pleaded not guilty on Jan. 2 to “sedition” and “collusion” under the security law.
The United States, Britain and other Western countries have denounced Lai’s prosecution and called for his release.
Human rights groups say Lai’s trial is a “sham” and part of a broad crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong that has all but destroyed its reputation as the only place in Greater China where the rule of law and freedoms of speech and assembly were preserved.
The hearing comes a day after a Hong Kong court jailed 45 democracy supporters for up to 10 years for subversion at the end of the city’s biggest national security trial.
Those sentences drew international condemnation and calls for further sanctions on Hong Kong and the expansion of lifeboat visa schemes for those fleeing the political crackdown in the city.
Trump vow
Lai is a British citizen who, despite being born in the southern province of Guangdong, has never held Chinese citizenship. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer raised concerns about Lai’s health when he met Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday at a G20 meeting in Brazil.
Beijing said the 2020 security law was necessary to safeguard the Asian financial hub’s economic success.
But critics say crackdowns on dissent and press freedom that followed its introduction sounded the death knell for the “one country, two systems” formula under which Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997, that was meant to safeguard freedoms not enjoyed elsewhere in China for 50 years.
Lai has been in prison for nearly four years. He was jailed for nearly six years in 2022 on a fraud conviction linked to his media business.
Lai has long advocated for the U.S. government, especially during the first term of President Donald Trump, to take a strong stance in supporting Hong Kong’s civil liberties, which he viewed as essential to the city’s role as a gateway between China and global markets.
Prosecutors, however, allege that Lai’s activities and his newspaper’s articles constituted lobbying for sanctions against Beijing and Hong Kong, a violation of the national security law. Lai’s lawyers argue that he ceased such actions after the law took effect on June 30, 2020.
Trump has vowed to secure Lai’s release, media reported.
During Trump’s first term, the U.S. revoked Hong Kong’s special trade status and enacted legislation allowing sanctions on the city’s officials in response to China’s crackdown on the city.
During the peak of the 2019 protests, Lai visited Washington and met then-Vice President Mike Pence and other U.S. politicians to discuss Hong Kong’s political crisis.
“Mr President, you’re the only one who can save us,” Lai said in an interview with CNN in 2020 weeks before his arrest.
“If you save us, you can stop China’s aggressions. You can also save the world.”
Edited by Taejun Kang and Mike Firn.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Staff.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Five years after riot police besieged Hong Kong’s Polytechnic University and trapped protesters fought back with catapults and Molotov cocktails, four people who were there say they were trying to stand up for their promised rights and freedoms in the face of ongoing political encroachment from Beijing.
The 10-day siege of PolyU began on Nov. 18, 2019, after around 1,000 protesters occupied the university as part of an ongoing series of actions to achieve the movement’s key demands: fully democratic elections; the withdrawal of plans to allow extradition to mainland China; greater official and police accountability; and an amnesty for detained protesters.
The protesters were then trapped on campus as riot police encircled the area, prompting nearly 100,000 people to turn out to battle riot police across Tsim Sha Tsui, Jordan, Yau Ma Tei, Mong Kok and other parts of the Kowloon peninsula.
Four young people who were among the besieged protesters spoke to RFA Cantonese on the fifth anniversary of the siege, which ended Nov. 19, 2019, and proved to be one of the last major standoffs between black-clad protesters and riot police after months of clashes sparked by plans to allow extradition to mainland China.
A former protester now living in democratic Taiwan, who gave only the nickname Kai for fear of reprisals said he had been in the siege of the Chinese University of Hong Kong from Nov. 13-15, 2019 before responding to a call for help defending PolyU against riot police just a few days later.
He never expected the police to prevent the protesters from leaving, or that the siege would last 10 days.
“I never thought the police would adopt a siege approach,” Kai said. “They cut off our supply lines, and even cut off the water, which was inhumane.”
“Any supplies we had were brought in by older helpers from outside,” he said.
When the protesters did try to leave, they were outflanked by police on both sides, he said.
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“Soon after we ran out, we were intercepted by police in front of us, who forced us to run in another direction before we could move forward, but then after we’d run for a bit, we realized we were outflanked on both sides,” he said.
“All the police in front of us had their guns ready, and were waiting for us, so we had to go back to PolyU and plan our next move,” Kai said.
Kai managed to avoid arrest at the time, but left Hong Kong soon after learning he was on a police blacklist.
He said the political crackdown that followed the 2019 protest movement has shown that the protesters were right to fear Beijing’s encroachment on their city’s promised autonomy.
He said many young protesters were motivated by a desire to burn their home city to the ground rather than acquiesce in its transformation into another Chinese city under Communist Party rule.
“Nowadays, the Chinese Communist Party is no longer hiding its authoritarian tendencies, and has been sanctioned by the international community, while the Hong Kong economy declines by the day,” Kai said.
“This shows that our idea that we would all burn together was right on the money,” he said.
Around 1,300 people were arrested, with around 300 sent to hospital for injuries related to water cannon blast, tear gas, and rubber bullets, as protesters wielding Molotov cocktails, catapults and other makeshift weapons from behind barricades beat back repeated attempts by riot police to advance into the university campus.
Small groups of protesters continued to make desperate bids for freedom throughout the siege, many of them only to end up being arrested and beaten bloody by police.
Police also deployed tear gas, water cannon, and rubber bullets against a crowd of thousands trying to push through towards Poly U from Jordan district, with hundreds forming human chains to pass bricks, umbrellas, and other supplies to front-line fighters.
“I took part in a lot of protest-related activities from June [of that year] onwards, although I never considered myself a front-line fighter,” a former protester living in the United Kingdom who gave only the pseudonym Kit for fear of reprisals, told RFA Cantonese in a recent interview. “But I felt that if I wasn’t prepared to take it further, then we really would lose the rule of law in Hong Kong.”
The 2019 protests started out as a wave of mass public resistance to a legal amendment that would have allowed the extradition of criminal suspects to face trial in mainland Chinese courts, a move that was generally seen as undermining the city’s status as a separate legal jurisdiction with an independent judiciary.
The movement later broadened to include the “five demands,” that included fully democratic elections, an amnesty for arrested protesters and greater official accountability.
The young protesters, hundreds of whom were minors, soon found themselves running out of food, and faced with a growing hygiene problem, and many tried to leave, only to be tear gassed, fired on with water cannon, or beaten up and taken away by police.
“We made three attempts to break out, but they all failed, so we went back to PolyU,” Kit said. “Everyone was scared, but we couldn’t come to any conclusion.”
“I later tried to get out by myself … but I was arrested by the police,” he said, adding that the movement had soon fizzled under the impact of coronavirus measures introduced by the government in early 2020.
“The government used people’s fear of the virus to make the protests disappear,” Kit Jai said. “The outlook is pretty grim right now, but I still hope that the people of Hong Kong … will keep its culture alive.”
A former protester living in Japan who gave only the nickname Tin for fear of reprisals said he also remembers the three failed attempts at breaking out, and the desperate mood that descended on those inside PolyU after those inside realized they were trapped.
“What impressed me most was that some of the protesters used a homemade catapult to launch Molotov cocktails, which set fire to the police armored vehicle, forcing it to retreat,” he said. “Everyone cheered when that happened.”
“Actually, the situation inside PolyU was total chaos, with a lot of misinformation coming in, and nobody really knew what to do,” he said.
Tin said he had fled Hong Kong and wound up in Japan after traveling to several other countries first.
“I’ve had good and bad experiences over the last five years, but I’ve survived,” he said.
A former protester now living in Germany who gave only the nickname Hei for fear of reprisals said he went to PolyU on Nov. 17 to try to persuade his fellow protesters to leave while they still could.
Before he knew it, he was trapped inside.
“I wanted to persuade them to leave, because the situation was critical, with helicopters flying overhead,” Hei said. “But they refused to leave.”
Hei never thought he’d be stuck there for as long as he was.
“When it became clear at around 9.30 that evening that those of us left inside weren’t going to be able to leave, things got pretty dark,” he said. “One guy told us to make a written statement pledging not to commit suicide.”
So he stayed behind to resist the advance of the riot police.
“The police offensive was really intense,” he said. “I was on the platform of A Core for the entire night.”
“Just below us were the frontline fighters, and the police water cannon truck, which sprayed us on the platform with blue water from time to time,” Hei said. “Then at about 6.00 p.m. on the 18th, the police suddenly launched an offensive and fired large numbers of tear gas rounds and rubber bullets from a high altitude at the Core A platform.”
“I opened my umbrella and squatted down next to a tree, and the bullets kept cracking on the umbrella,” he said. “We lost the position pretty quickly, but I was able to make it back to PolyU luckily.”
Inside, rumors were swirling that the police would burst in to arrest everyone, so Hei managed to escape by following a lawyer who had come in to try to help the young people inside.
He had a lucky escape. Anyone arrested during the siege was eventually charged with “rioting,” with some receiving jail terms of up to 10 years.
“They only took my ID details,” said Hei, who wasn’t arrested, and who later left Hong Kong for Germany.
He said the siege taught him how hard it is to stand up to an authoritarian regime.
“But I have no regrets, because anyone with a conscience or any sense of justice would have chosen to stand up,” he said.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Yitong Wu and Kit Sung for RFA Cantonese.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Read coverage of this story in Chinese
Rights activists, relatives and Hong Kong’s former colonial governor on Tuesday slammed the sentencing of 45 democracy activists and former lawmakers for up to 10 years for “subversion,” amid growing calls for further sanctions on Hong Kong and the expansion of lifeboat visa schemes for those fleeing the ongoing political crackdown in the city.
Britain’s last colonial governor of Hong Kong, Lord Patten of Barnes, said the sentences, handed down to pro-democracy activists for organising a primary in July 2020, were “an affront to the people of Hong Kong.”
“I absolutely condemn these sham sentences, which resulted from a non-jury trial and point to the destruction of freedoms of assembly, expression, and the press in Hong Kong,” Patten said in a statement.
“The U.K. government must not allow the results of this case to go unnoticed or uncondemned,” he said.
British Foreign Office minister Catherine West said the sentencing was a clear demonstration of Hong Kong authorities‘ use of the 2020 National Security Law to criminalize political dissent.
“Those sentenced today were exercising their right to freedom of speech, of assembly and of political participation,” West said in a statement.
Canadian Senator Leo Housakos, Member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, described the sentences as a “grave injustice.”
“The National Security Law and the prosecution of these freedom fighters undermine the principles of freedom, human rights, and rule of law,” Housakos said in a statement posted by the London-based rights group Hong Kong Watch.
Call for sanctions
Former politics lecturer Chan Kin-man, who founded the 2014 Occupy Central pro-democracy movement along with key defendant Benny Tai, said none of those jailed, many of whom have been behind bars for more than three years, should have spent a single day in prison.
“Benny worked hard as a constitutional scholar to expand the scope of the pro-democracy movement through peaceful means,” Chan said of Tai, who was handed a 10-year jail term by the Hong Kong High Court on Tuesday.
He said all of those who took part in the 2020 democratic primary – which the prosecution argued was an attempt to subvert the government – had been exercising their rights under the city’s constitution, the Basic Law.
“This makes me both sad and angry,” Chan said in a written reaction to RFA Cantonese.
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U.S.-based activist Anna Kwok, who heads the Hong Kong Democracy Council, condemned the Hong Kong government for “launching an all-out assault” against the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.
“The international community must respond to the intensifying political repression with proportionate actions,” Kwok said via her X account. “We continue to call on the U.S. government to impose targeted sanctions on Hong Kong and [Chinese] officials responsible for the crackdown on these pro-democracy leaders.”
She also called for the status of Hong Kong’s Economic and Trade Offices to be revoked by Congress, saying there are now around 1,900 political prisoners in the city.
‘Distortion of the facts’
Journalist-turned-activist Gwyneth Ho, who was handed a seven-year jail term on Tuesday, said the prosecution’s claim that the democratic primary was an attempt to undermine the government was a “distortion of the facts.”
“They forced the accused to deny their own lived experience, to see genuine solidarity as just a delusion,” Ho wrote in a post to her Facebook page. “That the bonds, the togetherness, the honest conversations among people so different yet so connected … were just a utopian dream.”
Ho warned that what happened in Hong Kong could happen in any democracy.
“Today, no democracy is immune to the crisis of legitimacy that results from a deficit of public trust,” she said. “Defend and repair your own democracy. Push back against the corruption of power, restore faith in democratic values through action.”
But she said she had no regrets about her involvement in the pro-democracy movement, and the 2019 protests that many saw as a last-ditch attempt to defend the city’s vanishing freedoms.
“Even if what happened today was always inevitable for Hong Kong, then at least back in 2019 we chose to face up to it, rather than … dumping the problem onto the next generation,” Ho wrote.
League of Social Democrats leader Chan Po-ying, said the sentencing of her husband and fellow activist Leung Kwok-hung to six years and nine months’ imprisonment for taking part in the primary was “unjust.”
“My only thought is that this is an unjust sentence; he shouldn’t have to spend a day in prison,” Chan told RFA Cantonese. She said she would be focusing on how best to support Leung during his weekly prison visits.
Maya Wang, senior China researcher for the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said: “Running in an election and trying to win it is now a crime that can lead to a decade in prison in Hong Kong.”
A promise broken
In Taiwan, presidential spokesperson Karen Kuo said democracy isn’t a crime.
“This was a serious violation of the Hong Kong people’s pursuit of freedom and democracy,” Kuo said. “It shows us that the promise that Hong Kong would remain unchanged for 50 years has been broken.”
She said China’s promise to allow the city to run under different principles from the rest of China – the “one country, two systems” formula that Beijing also wants to use in Taiwan – wasn’t viable.
“Taiwan will continue to work with the international community to jointly resist the expansion of authoritarian power,” Kuo said.
Hong Kong Watch called on the British government to expand the British National Overseas visa scheme to include those born before the 1997 handover to Chinese rule, if they had one parent who was eligible for the scheme.
It also called on Washington to renew Deferred Enforced Departure, or DED, status for Hong Kongers in the United States, “to prevent them from being forced to return to Hong Kong where the human rights environment continues to worsen.”
Hong Kong Watch said Ottawa, meanwhile, should “clear the backlog of Hong Kong Pathway applications to prevent the expiration of temporary status for Hong Kongers in Canada.”
Group Patron Ambassador Derek Mitchell said the sentences were “another dark milestone” for Hong Kong.
“The international community must strongly condemn this crime and stand with these brave former legislators, activists, journalists, and trade unionists who fought resolutely for democracy, rights and freedom against the tyranny of the Chinese Communist Party,” Mitchell said.
Translated with additional reporting by Luisetta Mudie.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Cantonese.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
TAIPEI, Taiwan – Taiwan plans to spend NT$70.6 billion (US$2.2 billion) on U.S. weapons next year, confirming recent speculation that it would make big new purchases to signal its commitment to President-elect Donald Trump’s suggestion that it pay more for U.S. “protection”.
Democratically governed Taiwan, which China claims to have sovereignty over, heavily relies on U.S. support to counter Beijing’s growing military pressure, although it lacks formal diplomatic ties with the United States, which adheres to a “one China” policy.
“Taipei has signed contracts with the U.S. for 21 procurement projects, totalling NT$716.6 billion, with final payments scheduled to be made in 2031,” said the island’s defense ministry on Monday.
“Of this total, approximately NT$373.1 billion has already been paid, while NT$343.5 billion remains unpaid and will be disbursed according to the payment schedule,” the ministry added.
Next year’s NT$70.6 billion budget will be spent on weapons including portable short-range air defense missiles and radar system upgrades, according to the ministry.
A partnership between Washington and Taipei grew significantly during Trump’s first term and further deepened under President Joe Biden amid intensifying U.S.-China rivalry.
Former Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen made history with a landmark phone call to Trump following his 2016 election victory, sparking a strong backlash from Beijing.
Trump also bolstered ties by ramping up arms sales and increasing diplomatic engagement, with Taiwan purchasing US$18 billion in U.S. weapons during his first term – US$4 billion more than the two terms of the Obama administration.
However, during this year’s campaign, Trump adopted what media called “bluntly transactional diplomacy” and criticized Taiwan’s insufficient military spending and its semiconductor dominance, arguing it was “stupid” for the U.S. to provide free protection.
The president-elect also signaled doubt as to how quickly and effectively the U.S. could help defend the island against a Chinese invasion.
This sparked speculation in Taiwan that it may make significant new arms deals early under the next U.S. administration to demonstrate its commitment to addressing Trump’s concerns, with media reporting that Taiwan had approached Trump’s team regarding a possible US$15 billion weapons package.
The island’s defense minister, Wellington Koo, dismissed the report last week but said: “Communication and proposals for necessary weaponry would continue under the existing military exchange mechanisms with the future Trump administration.”
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His ministry said on Monday that Taiwan’s arms purchases from the U.S. were based on assessments of enemy threats and informed by experience from recent global conflicts, such as the war in Ukraine.
“Budget allocations are determined based on annual defense funding availability, the progress of individual projects, and delivery schedules,” the ministry added.
In response to criticism from lawmakers about delayed deliveries of U.S. arms, the ministry said there had been disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, but noted manufacturing had gradually resumed post-pandemic, with delivery timelines accelerating.
A report by the Cato Institute, a Washington-based think tank, shows that as of August 2024, the cumulative value of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan that have yet to be delivered had reached $20.53 billion.
Shu Hsiao-Huang, an associate research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said some items requested by U.S. allies might not align with the current needs of the American army, which led to delays in production.
“Some new equipment faced integration issues, which requires system adjustments to meet customer demands,” said Shu, adding that certain weapons, such as Stinger missiles, had also become difficult to obtain due to high demand globally.
A recent proposal submitted to Taiwan’s legislature for review shows Taiwan’s weapon purchases from the U.S. included 108 M1A2T Abrams tanks, 66 F-16V fighter jets, 29 HIMARS rocket systems, and 100 Harpoon land-based missile systems.
Edited by Taejun Kang.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Alan Lu for RFA.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
A Hong Kong court jailed 45 democracy supporters for up to 10 years on Tuesday at the end of the city’s biggest national security trial that has damaged its reputation as an outpost of freedom in Greater China and drawn criticism from the United States and other Western countries.
In all, 47 Hong Kong opposition politicians and pro-democracy activists were charged with “conspiracy to commit subversion” under the city’s 2020 National Security Law for taking part in a democratic primary in the summer of 2020. Two were acquitted
China imposed the law on the former British colony a year after it was rocked by anti-government riots.
Beijing said the law was necessary to safeguard the Asian financial hub’s economic success but critics denounced it as meaning the end of a “one country, two systems” formula under which Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997, that was meant to safeguard freedoms not enjoyed elsewhere in China for 50 years.
Prominent democracy activist Benny Tai, who was accused of being the organizer of the 2020 primary election, was jailed for 10 years, while Joshua Wong, another leading activist, was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison.
Activist Owen Chow was sentenced to seven years and nine months and former journalist-turned-activist Gwyneth Ho, was jailed for seven years.
The charge of “conspiracy to commit subversion” carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
Security was tight outside the West Kowloon Magistrates Court where the sentences were handed down, with a heavy police presence on the streets.
The embassies of many countries, including the U.S., Britain, Germany and Australia, sent representatives to the hearing.
Repeated delays to the 118-day trial have meant that the majority of the defendants have been behind bars for more than three-and-a-half years, something that would have been previously unheard of in the Hong Kong judicial system.
Thirty-one of the defendants pleaded guilty and 16 denied the charges.
The 47 former pro-democracy lawmakers and opposition activists helped to organize a primary election in July 2020, in a bid to find the best candidates for a pan-democratic slate in the city’s September 2020 Legislative Council elections.
The prosecution argued that their bid to win a majority was “a conspiracy” to undermine the city government and take control of the Legislative Council.
Article 22 of China’s National Security Law for Hong Kong bans anyone from “seriously interfering in, disrupting or undermining the performance of duties and functions in accordance with the law by the body of central power of the People’s Republic of China or the body of power of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region by force or threat of force or other unlawful means.”
More than 600,000 voters took part in the primary, which was part of a bid to win enough votes for pro-democracy candidates to veto the government’s budget, which would have offered the opposition camp valuable political leverage when negotiating with the government.
‘Devastating blow’
As Beijing-backed media claimed the primary was a bid to overthrow the city government, the administration of then-Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced an investigation into it.
Lam also postponed the September 2020 election, citing the COVID-19 pandemic, while the government rewrote the electoral rulebook to prevent pro-democracy candidates from running, eventually holding an election in December 2021 in which only “patriots” approved by a Beijing-backed committee were allowed to stand.
On Jan. 6, 2021, newly formed national security police dispatched more than 1,000 officers to 72 locations across Hong Kong, arresting 55 people on suspicion of subversion under the National Security Law in a crackdown that pro-democracy activists said struck a “devastating blow” to the city’s political life.
They brought formal charges against 47 of them, then denied bail to the majority following a grueling arraignment hearing lasting more than four days, including a first-day session of 15 hours, during which defendants were unable to eat, shower or get a change of clothes.
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The charges were the first clear indication that the ruling Chinese Communist Party and Hong Kong officials would be using the National Security Law to crack down on peaceful opposition and public dissent, rather than to restore public order in the wake of the 2019 protests, and sparked an international outcry.
The last British colonial governor of Hong Kong, Lord Patten of Barnes, said the trial was part of a political “purge” by the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
Washington condemned the detention and charging of democrats, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken calling for their immediate release.
Then-British foreign secretary Dominic Raab called the charges “deeply disturbing” and said it showed how the security law was being used to eliminate political dissent rather than restoring order following the 2019 protest movement, as the government had claimed.
Then-Australian foreign minister Marise Payne said the 47 defendants “were peacefully exercising their rights,” while the German foreign ministry called on the Hong Kong authorities to release the defendants and schedule postponed elections to the Legislative Council “in a fair and democratic manner.”
Edited by Taejun Kang and Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Staff.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Read coverage of this story in Chinese
Sentencing is expected on Tuesday following the trial of 47 Hong Kong opposition politicians and pro-democracy activists charged with subversion under the city’s 2020 National Security Law for taking part in a democratic primary in the summer of 2020.
Police on Monday cordoned off the area outside the city’s High Court with traffic barriers and high fences, with armored vehicles standing by.
The charge of “conspiracy to commit subversion” carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment, but a range of custodial sentences looks likely following three months of mitigation hearings that concluded on Sept. 3.
Exiled former pro-democracy lawmaker Ted Hui said the security measures were “a symbol of iron curtain suppression.”
“The use of high fencing to enclose the court … sends the message that the government is in total control, and that people had better not even dream of putting up any resistance,” Hui said. “The aim is to make the people of Hong Kong give up.”
The Hong Kong High Court found 14 democrats guilty of “conspiracy to commit subversion,” more than three years after their initial arrests in January 2021, including former pro-democracy lawmaker and veteran social activist Leung Kwok-hung and union leader Carol Ng.
Two defendants were acquitted.
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Jailed pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong, Occupy Central founder Benny Tai and journalist-turned-lawmaker Claudia Mo were among 31 defendants who pleaded guilty in a political climate where acquittals have become rare, but where a guilty plea could mean a much lighter sentence.
Former journalist Gwyneth Ho, a 2019 protest movement activist, former nursing student Owen Chow and labor unionist Winnie Yu were among those who pleaded not guilty, and stood trial between Feb. 6 and Dec. 4, 2023 before a panel of three government-picked national security judges and no jury.
Repeated delays to the 118-day trial have meant that the majority have been behind bars for more than three-and-a-half years already, something that would have been previously unheard of in the Hong Kong judicial system.
What did the activists do?
The 47 former pro-democracy lawmakers and opposition activists had helped to organize a primary election in July 2020, in a bid to find the best candidates for a pan-democratic slate in the September 2020 Legislative Council elections.
The prosecution argued that their bid to win a majority was “a conspiracy” to undermine the city’s government and take control of the Legislative Council.
Article 22 of China’s National Security Law for Hong Kong bans anyone from “seriously interfering in, disrupting or undermining the performance of duties and functions in accordance with the law by the body of central power of the People’s Republic of China or the body of power of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region by force or threat of force or other unlawful means.”
More than 600,000 voters took part in the primary, which was part of a bid to win enough votes for pro-democracy candidates to veto the government’s budget, which would have offered the opposition camp valuable political leverage when negotiating with the government.
How did the authorities react?
As Beijing-backed media claimed the primary was a bid to overthrow the city government, the administration of then-Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced an investigation into the event.
Lam also postponed the September 2020 election, while the government rewrote the electoral rulebook to prevent pro-democracy candidates from running, eventually holding a fresh election in December 2021 in which only “patriots” approved by a Beijing-backed committee were allowed to stand.
On Jan. 6, 2021, the newly formed national security police dispatched more than 1,000 officers to 72 locations across Hong Kong, arresting 55 people on suspicion of subversion under the National Security Law in a move that pro-democracy activists said struck a “devastating blow” to the city’s political life.
They brought formal charges against 47 of them, then denied bail to the majority following a grueling arraignment hearing lasting more than four days, including a first-day session of 15 hours, during which defendants were unable to eat, shower or get a change of clothes.
How did the rest of the world react?
The charges were the first clear indication that the ruling Chinese Communist Party and Hong Kong officials would be using the National Security Law to crack down on peaceful opposition and public dissent, rather than to restore public order in the wake of the 2019 protests, and sparked an international outcry.
The last British colonial governor of Hong Kong, Lord Patten of Barnes, said the trial was part of a political “purge” by the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
Washington condemned the detention and charging of democrats, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken calling for their immediate release.
Then-British foreign secretary Dominic Raab called the charges “deeply disturbing” and said it showed how the National Security Law was being used to eliminate political dissent rather than restoring order following the 2019 protest movement, as the government had claimed.
Then-Australian foreign minister Marise Payne said the 47 defendants “were peacefully exercising their rights,” while the German foreign ministry called on the Hong Kong authorities to release the defendants and schedule postponed elections to the Legislative Council “in a fair and democratic manner.”
What are the implications for Hong Kong?
Exiled Hong Kong democracy activist Fu Tong, who now lives in democratic Taiwan, said it wasn’t just the 47 defendants who had been criminalized by the process.
“It wasn’t just them on trial, but all 600,000 of us who voted [in the primary],” Fu told RFA on Nov. 18. “We have become criminals too.”
The case normalized the use of a three-judge panel and no jury, as well as restrictions on meetings with lawyers for defendants in national security trials, observers said.
Described by the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee as a “sham trial,” the case was an early indicator that political trials would likely become far more common in Hong Kong following the imposition of the 2020 National Security Law.
In December 2023, Hong Kong plummeted in Cato Institute’s Human Freedom Index, with the annual rights report describing China’s crackdown in the city as a “descent into tyranny.”
The city – once ranked in the top 10 freest territories in the world – dropped from 3rd place in 2010 to 46th place in 2021 out of 165 countries, the Cato Institute said in its 2023 report. It fell 17 spots from 2020.
The report found “notable deterioration” in nearly every kind of freedom, but particularly in its rule of law, freedom of expression, and freedom of association and assembly ratings.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Luisetta Mudie and Joshua Lipes.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Ha Syut for RFA Cantonese, Chen Zifei for RFA Mandarin.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Rubio and Trump during a break in the 2016 presidential debate. AP photo.
Of all Trump’s choices for his foreign policy team, Marco Rubio is the least controversial to the neoconservative foreign policy establishment in Washington, and the most certain to provide continuity with all that is wrong with U.S. foreign policy, from Cuba to the Middle East to China.
The only area where there might be some hope for ending a war is Ukraine, where Rubio has come close to Donald Trump’s position, praising Ukraine for standing up to Russia, but recognizing that the U.S. is funding a deadly “stalemate war” that needs to be “brought to a conclusion.”
But in all the other hot spots around the world, Rubio is likely to make conflicts even hotter, or start new ones.
1. His obsession with regime change in Cuba will sink any chance of better relations with the island.
Like other Cuban-American politicians, Marco Rubio has built his career on vilifying the Cuban Revolution and trying to economically strangle and starve into submission the people of his parents’ homeland.
It is ironic, therefore, that his parents left Cuba before the Revolution, during the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, whose executioners, secret police and death squads killed an estimated 20,000 people, according to the CIA, leading to a wildly popular revolution in 1959.
When President Obama began to restore relations with Cuba in 2014, Rubio swore to do “everything possible” to obstruct and reverse that policy. In May 2024, Rubio reiterated his zero tolerance for any kind of social or economic contacts between the U.S. and Cuba, claiming that any easing of the U.S. blockade will only “strengthen the oppressive regime and undermine the opposition… Until there is freedom in Cuba, the United States must maintain a firm stance.”
In 2024 Rubio also introduced legislation to ensure that Cuba would remain on the U.S. “State Sponsor of Terrorism List,” imposing sanctions that cut Cuba off from the U.S.-dominated Western banking system.
These measures to destroy the Cuban economy have led to a massive wave of migration in the past two years. But when the U.S. Coast Guard tried to coordinate with their Cuban counterparts, Rubio introduced legislation to prohibit such interaction. While Trump has vowed to stem immigration, his Secretary of State wants to crush Cuba’s economy, forcing people to abandon the island and set sail for the United States.
2. Applying his anti-Cuba template to the rest of Latin America will make enemies of more of our neighbors.
Rubio’s disdain for his ancestral home in Cuba has served him so well as an American politician that he has extended it to the rest of Latin America. He has sided with extreme right-wing politicians like Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Javier Milei in Argentina, and rails against progressive ones, from Brazil’s Ignacio Lula da Silva to Mexico’s popular former President Lopez Obrador, whom he called “an apologist for tyranny” for supporting other leftist governments.
In Venezuela, he has promoted brutal sanctions and regime change plots to topple the government of Nicolas Maduro. In 2019 he was one of the architects of Trump’s failed policy of recognizing opposition figure Juan Guaido as president. He has also advocated for sanctions and regime change in Nicaragua.
In March 2023, Rubio urged President Biden to impose sanctions on Bolivia for prosecuting leaders of a 2019 U.S.-backed coup that led to massacres that killed at least 21 people.
Rubio also condemned the government of Honduras for withdrawing from an extradition treaty with the United States this past August, in response to decades of U.S. interference that had turned Honduras into a narco-state riven by poverty, gang violence and mass emigration, until the election of democratic socialist President Xiomara Castro in 2022.
Rubio’s major concern about Latin America now seems to be the influence of China, which has become the leading trade partner of most Latin American countries. Unlike the U.S., China focuses on economic benefits and not internal politics, while American politicians like Marco Rubio still see Latin America as the U.S. “backyard.”
While Rubio’s virulent anti-leftist stands have served him well in climbing to senior positions in the U.S. government, and now into Trump’s inner circle, his disdain for Latin American sovereignty bodes ill for U.S. relations with the region.
3. He believes the US and Israel can do no wrong, and that God has given Palestine to Israel.
Despite the massive death toll in Gaza and global condemnation of Israel’s genocide, Rubio still perpetuates the myth that “Israel takes extraordinary steps to avoid civilian losses” and that innocent people die in Gaza because Hamas has deliberated placed them in the way and used them as human shields. The problem, he says, is “an enemy that doesn’t value human life.”
When asked by CODEPINK in November 2024 if he would support a ceasefire, Rubio replied, “On the contrary. I want them to destroy every element of Hamas they can get their hands on. These people are vicious animals.”
There are few times in this past year that the Biden administration has tried to restrain Israel, but when Biden begged Israel not to send troops into the southern city of Rafah, Rubio said that was like telling the Allied forces in World War II not to attack Berlin to get Hitler.
In a letter to Secretary of State Blinken in August 2024, Rubio criticized the Biden administration’s decision to sanction Israeli settlers linked to anti-Palestinian violence in the occupied West Bank.
“Israel has consistently sought peace with the Palestinians. It is unfortunate that the Palestinians, whether it be the Palestinian Authority or FTOs [Foreign Terrorist Organisations] such as Hamas, have rejected such overtures,” Rubio wrote. “Israelis rightfully living in their historic homeland are not the impediment to peace; the Palestinians are,” he added.
No country besides Israel subscribes to the idea that its borders should be based on 2,000-year-old religious scriptures, and that it has a God-given right to displace or exterminate people who have lived there since then to reconquer its ancient homeland. The United States will find itself extraordinarily isolated from the rest of the world if Rubio tries to assert that as a matter of U.S. policy.
4. His deep-seated enmity toward Iran will fuel Israel’s war on its neighbors, and may lead to a U.S. war with Iran.
Rubio is obsessed with Iran. He claims that the central cause of violence and suffering in the Middle East is not Israeli policy but “Iran’s ambition to be a regional hegemonic power.” He says that Iran’s goal in the Middle East is to “seek to drive America out of the region and then destroy Israel.”
He has been a proponent of maximum pressure on Iran, including a call for more and more sanctions. He believes the U.S. should not re-enter the Iran nuclear deal, saying: “We must not trade away U.S. and Israeli security for vague commitments from a terrorist-sponsoring regime that has killed Americans and threatens to annihilate Israel.”
Rubio calls Lebanon’s Hezbollah a “full blown agent of Iran right on Israel’s border” and that wiping out Hezbollah’s leadership, along with entire neighborhoods full of civilians, is a “service to humanity.” He alleges that Iran has control over Iraq, Syria, the Houthis in Yemen and is a threat to Jordan. He claims that “Iran has put a noose around Israel,” and says that the goal of U.S. policy should be regime change in Iran, which would set the stage for war.
While there will hopefully be leaders in the Pentagon who will caution Donald Trump about the perils of a war with Iran, Rubio will not be a voice of reason.
5. He is beholden to big money, from the weapons industry to the Israel lobby.
Open Secrets reports that Rubio has received over a million dollars in campaign contributions from pro-Israel groups during his career. The Pro-Israel America PAC was his single largest campaign contributor over the last 5 years. When he last ran for reelection in 2022, he was the third largest recipient of funding by pro-Israel groups in the Senate, taking in $367,000 from them for that campaign.
Rubio was also the fourth largest recipient of funding from the “defense” industry in the Senate for the 2022 cycle, receiving $196,000. Altogether, the weapons industry has invested $663,000 in his Congressional career.
Rubio is clearly beholden to the US arms industry, and even more so to the Israel lobby, which has been one of his largest sources of campaign funding. This has placed him in the vanguard of Congress’s blind, unconditional support for Israel and subservience to Israeli narratives and propaganda, making it unlikely that he will ever challenge the ongoing extermination of the Palestinian people or their expulsion from their homeland.
6. He’s so antagonistic towards China that China has sanctioned him–twice!
Speaking at the Heritage Foundation in 2022, Rubio said: “The gravest threat facing America today, the challenge that will define this century and every generation represented here, is not climate change, the pandemic, or the left’s version of social justice. The threat that will define this century is China.”
It will be hard for our nation’s “top diplomat” to ease tensions with a country he has so maligned. He antagonized China by co-sponsoring the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which allows the U.S. to bar Chinese imports over alleged Uyghur rights abuses, abuses that China denies and independent researchers
On Taiwan, he has not only introduced legislation to increase military aid to the island, but actually supports Taiwanese independence — a dangerous deviation from the US government’s long-standing One China approach.
The Chinese responded to Rubio by sanctioning him, not once but twice–once regarding the Uyghurs and once for his support of Hong Kong protests. Unless China lifts the sanctions, he would be the first U.S. secretary of state to be banned from even visiting China.
Analysts expect China to try to sidestep Rubio and engage directly with Trump and other senior officials. Steve Tsang, the director of the China Institute at the U.K.’s School of Oriental and African Studies, told Reuters, “If that doesn’t work, then I think we’re going to get into a much more regular escalation of a bad relationship.”
7. Rubio knows sanctions are a trap, but he doesn’t know how to escape.
Rubio is a leading advocate of unilateral economic sanctions, which are illegal under international law, and which the UN and other countries refer to as “unilateral economic coercive measures.”
The United States has used these measures so widely and wildly that they now impact a third of the world’s population. U.S. officials, from Treasury Secretary Yellen to Rubio himself, have warned that using the U.S. financial system and the dollar’s reserve currency status as weapons against other countries is driving the rest of the world to conduct trade in other currencies and develop alternative financial systems.
In March 2023, Rubio complained on Fox News, “We won’t have to talk sanctions in five years, because there will be so many countries transacting in currencies other than the dollar, that we won’t have the ability to sanction them.”
And yet Rubio has continued to be a leading sponsor of sanctions bills in the Senate, including new sanctions on Iran in January 2024 and a bill in July to sanction foreign banks that participate in alternative financial systems.
So, while other countries develop new financial and trading systems to escape abusive, illegal U.S. sanctions, the nominee for Secretary of State remains caught in the same sanctions trap that he complained about on Fox.
8. He wants to crack down on U.S. free speech.
Rubio wants to curtail the right to free speech enshrined in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In May, he described campus protests against Israel as a “complete breakdown of law and order.”
Rubio claimed to be speaking up for other students at American universities. “[They] paid a lot of money to go to these schools, [but are being disrupted by] a few thousand antisemitic zombies who have been brainwashed by two decades of indoctrination in the belief that the world is divided between victimizers and victims, and that the victimizers in this particular case, the ones that are oppressing people, are Jews in Israel,” said Rubio.
The Florida senator has said he supports Trump’s plan to deport foreign students who engage in pro-Palestinian campus protests. In April, he called for punishing supporters of the Israel boycott movement as part of efforts to counter antisemitism, falsely equating any attempt to respond to Israel’s international crimes with antisemitism.
And what about those crimes, which the students are protesting? After visiting Israel in May, Rubio wrote an article for National Review, in which he never mentioned the thousands of civilians Israel has killed, and instead blamed Iran, Biden and “morally corrupt international institutions” for the crisis.
Marco Rubio expects Americans to believe that it is not genocide itself, but protests against genocide, that are a complete breakdown of law and order. He couldn’t be more wrong if he tried.
Students are not Rubio’s only target. In August 2023, he alleged that certain “far-left and antisemitic entities” may have violated the Foreign Assistance Registration Act by their ties to China. He called for a Justice Department investigation into 18 groups, starting with CODEPINK. These unfounded claims of China connections are only meant to intimidate legitimate groups that are exercising their free speech rights.
Conclusion
On each of these issues, Rubio has shown no sign of understanding the difference between domestic politics and diplomacy. Whether he’s talking about Cuba, Palestine, Iran or China, or even about CODEPINK, all his supposedly tough positions are based on cynically mischaracterizing the actions and motivations of his enemies and then attacking the “straw man” he has falsely set up.
Unscrupulous politicians often get away with that, and Rubio has made it his signature tactic because it works so well for him in American politics. But that will not work if and when he sits down to negotiate with other world leaders as U.S. secretary of state.
His underlying attitude to foreign relations is, like Trump’s, that the United States must get its way or else, and that other countries who won’t submit must be coerced, threatened, couped, bombed or invaded. This makes Rubio just as ill-equipped as Antony Blinken to conduct diplomacy, improve U.S. relations with other countries or resolve disputes and conflicts peacefully, as the UN Charter requires.
The post Eight Reasons Why Marco Rubio Would Be a Disastrous Secretary of State first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
India is poised to further expand its defense budget over the next decade to sustain readiness for a potential two-front conflict with regional adversaries China and Pakistan, while enhancing its regional and global stature. Total defense spending, inclusive of pensions, is projected to reach $415.9 billion from 2025 to 2029, marking a compound annual growth […]
The post India to spend $415.9 billion on defense between 2025 and 2029, forecasts GlobalData appeared first on Asian Military Review.
This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.
Read RFA coverage of this topic in Chinese.
Rampant youth unemployment in China has left millions of young people floundering, living at home, relying on delivery jobs or, in a growing trend, “pretending to go to work.”
In posts on the video-sharing platform Douyin, young people are creating a routine where none exists out of sessions spent studying or applying for jobs in libraries and internet cafes.
Some are even paying for “study rooms” to get them out of the house and give structure to their days, sometimes while they study for highly competitive civil service entrance exams, according to state media reports.
The situation has spawned a hashtag on social media, #IPretendedToGoToWorkToday, with young people posting short videos to Douyin about what they do all day.
In one video under the hashtag, one young woman offers a tour of her local county town, including the railway station, local shopping streets and scenic spots, but conceals her identity with a computer-generated animation where her head should be.
In another, a young woman hangs out on the stairwell and roof of her apartment building, apparently hiding from relatives and neighbors who think she’s at work.
Living at home
A Nov. 5 feature in Banyuetan magazine, under the aegis of state news agency Xinhua, found that it’s extremely common for people aged up to 40 in rural areas to still be living back home with their parents, who sometimes hand over money from their pensions to support them.
The situation is at odds with the Communist Party’s pledge to “comprehensively revitalize rural areas,” the report said.
“This phenomenon of relying on one’s parents is ultimately an employment or job security issue,” YouTube commentator Lying Uncle Ping said in a response to the article. “The key is to provide employment, and better quality jobs.”
He said at least rural families who still have land have a way to feed themselves, should they fall on hard times.
A former rural resident of the northern province of Hebei who gave only the surname Wang for fear of reprisals said not everyone in rural areas still has access to land, however.
“In developed areas in the south, people can go back home to work in local factories,” Wang said. “In the north, where I live, there are basically no factories in rural areas, so farming is the only option.”
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Yet some areas have seen most of their agricultural land repurposed for development in recent decades, he said.
“Especially in the central regions, where people have less than one mu of land [per household],” Wang said. “They have no way to support even a basic level of existence from the land.”
A young man from a rural village in the southern province of Guangdong who used the pseudonym Marginal Person told Radio Free Asia in writing that many young people are living off their parents where he lives, because the economy is so bad.
Asked what they’re doing, he replied: “Working as food delivery riders, growing vegetables and playing the lottery.”
“There are several ways to play, and the odds range from 1:9500 to 1:950 to 1:95,” he said. “Some people here have won hundreds of thousands of yuan, bought apartments and gotten married, but there are also people who have lost everything.”
He said many feel embarrassment and shame about their situation, however.
“Takeout deliveries in my town are all being done by young people from other towns, because they’re afraid of running into people they know and being laughed at,” he said.
Renting study space
In a separate article, Banyuetan also interviewed young people in urban areas who are renting out desks in shared study spaces rather than stay home all day doing nothing.
Rented study space is particularly popular among young people preparing for civil service or postgraduate entrance exams, the article said, adding that the market will expand to more than 10 million spaces by next year.
But unemployed young people are also picking up on the trend, and renting spaces just to look busy, and to give themselves a place outside of the family home, away from parental criticism or constant inquiries about how the job hunt is going, it said.
Desks can be rented by the hour, day, month or year, costing around 500 yuan (US$70) a month, and come equipped with chair, lamp, charging sockets and a locker for belongings.
They’re so popular that vacant desks are getting very hard to find, especially in more popular areas, the report said.
The jobless rate for 16-to-24-year-olds in China, excluding students, fell to 17.6% in September, compared with 18.8% in the previous month.
Ruling Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping published an article in the ideological magazine Qiushi on Oct. 31 calling for “full, high-quality employment” to “promote the sense of gain, happiness and security of the majority of workers,” but without offering detailed measures.
But it did highlight youth unemployment as a priority.
“We should insist on the employment of young people like college graduates as a top priority, take multiple measures to promote the employment of migrant workers … and help groups in difficulty such as the long-term unemployed,” Xi wrote, calling for an end to employment discrimination and unpaid wages.
Worried about unrest
Political commentator Ji Feng said the government is clearly worried that high employment could lead to social unrest.
“Ordinary people were left with a sense of grievance after the economy collapsed,” Ji said. “The Communist Party is worried about that sense of grievance, and about social unrest.”
“But if they don’t make radical changes, they’re going to scare off private and foreign companies,” he said. “If they don’t make a U-turn, they’ll be sunk.”
Financial commentator He Jiangbing also blamed the economic direction taken by China under Xi.
“Private companies are the main employers, and they’re overwhelmed, because state-owned enterprises can’t solve the employment problem,” He said, calling for a return to better trade relations and a return to the export-driven economic growth of the pre-pandemic era.
“If it can’t export, then a company won’t create new job opportunities; it’ll be laying off staff,” he said. “In such a situation, all this talk of employment is just that — talk.”
Germany-based social media influencer Great Firewall Frog said Xi’s policies have drained vitality from the Chinese economy.
“It’s Xi Jinping himself who’s the problem, the reason the Chinese economy is ruined and the labor market is depressed,” he said. “There’s no freedom or vitality these days … when a single official document can destroy an entire industry, a wrong word on WeChat can get a person fired or imprisoned.”
“How can he say stuff like ‘promoting high quality, full employment’? It’s hilarious,” he said. “Dude, the guy should do stand-up.”
Translated with additional reporting by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by .
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Residents in northern Myanmar are facing shortages of food and other supplies as China imposes restrictions on small-scale, informal trade, Radio Free Asia has learned.
The restrictions are centered on three border crossings, two of which have been recently shut down, in the northeastern town of Muse, which lies across the border from China’s Ruili,
Video posted on social media showed fresh fruit sellers in China giving their product away because they could not get it across the border before it spoils.
More than 2 million residents in northern Shan state rely on Chinese foodstuffs and goods. The closures have resulted in price hikes.
At the Muse border, the price of one liter (.26 gallons) of gasoline has risen to more than 10 thousand kyats ($4.76), while a bag of low-quality rice has almost doubled, a resident there told RFA.
“Every item has been expensive due to the closure of border gates. Business is not good,” he said. “People are facing various challenges in their daily lives.”
The restrictions have increased in the wake of junta leader Min Aung Hlaing’s recent visit to China, but it isn’t immediately clear if the two are linked.
During his visit, he met with Premier Li Qiang and discussed control of border trade between the two countries, according to junta reports.
Junta spokesperson Major Gen. Zaw Min Tun stated during a press conference following the military chief’s return from China that both sides discussed border stability and agreed not to allow opponents of the junta regime to operate on Chinese territory, and vice versa.
Vehicles stuck
The government announced closure of one of Muse’s three border gates last week, but now there are two gates closed.
The closures have blocked the crossing of more than 300 vehicles, including grocery trucks headed for Myanmar, and these vehicles are now stranded, a border trade merchant said.
Additionally, private vehicles hoping to cross the border with goods have become stranded, a Chinese driver told RFA.
“The traffic-police from the Chinese side have recorded the number plates of vehicles stranded at Mang Wein gate,” he said.
“We do not see any significant development until now. Frozen seafood has been unloaded from the cars into garages. About 60 percent of trucks are loaded with potatoes. While Chinese officials allowed the use of Mang Wein gate, the junta officials do not allow the use of this gate on their side”
RFA attempted to contact the junta’s spokesperson for the Ministry of Commerce but he was not available.
RFA emailed the Chinese Embassy in Myanmar on Thursday seeking comments on the further restrictions on small-scale informal cross-border trade. However, no response was recieved.
Translated by Aung Naing. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Vietnam’s top leader To Lam has made a widely publicized visit to an island north of the South China Sea, seen by an analyst as underscoring its strategic importance in the waters shared with China.
Lam became the first general secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party to visit Bach Long Vi island in the Gulf of Tonkin since 2000, when Hanoi and Beijing finally signed an agreement to clearly demarcate their boundary there after nine years of negotiations
Last March, China unilaterally announced a new baseline that defines its territory in the northern part of the gulf called Beibu in Chinese, drawing concern from the Vietnamese government. Some analysts said that Beijing may use it as a pretext to push Hanoi to renegotiate the boundary agreement.
During the visit on Thursday, To Lam called on local government officials to develop Bach Long Vi island, “ensuring that it becomes a fortress for defending Vietnam’s maritime sovereignty,” according to media reports.
“The Party chief praised the island’s strategic importance, pointing out that Bach Long Vi serves as a key maritime gateway, controlling vital shipping lanes in the Gulf of Tonkin and providing logistics services for military activities at sea,” the Vietnam News Agency reported.
“General Secretary To Lam’s visit to Bach Long Vi was billed as a trip to learn about the living and working conditions of local residents,” said Carlyle Thayer, emeritus professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra.
“However, the sub-text of his visit was to underscore the importance of the island’s infrastructure to national security and defense of Vietnam’s sovereignty over islands and sea.”
‘Normal practice’
“Media coverage highlighted that Bach Long Vi was located 15 nautical miles from the boundary line delimiting the Gulf of Tonkin,” noted Thayer. The distance means the island sits entirely inside Vietnam’s waters.
Bach Long Vi is Vietnam’s furthest island from its mainland and the largest habitable island in the South China Sea, with an area of more than 3 square kilometers (1.2 square miles). It is about 110 km (68 miles) from Haiphong in Vietnam and 120 km (75 miles) from China’s Hainan Island.
Bach Long Vi was transferred to Vietnam in March 1957 by a friendly China, which occupied it at the time, allowing Hanoi to establish a radar station there for early warning against U.S. air attacks.
Vietnamese historians said Beijing “returned” the island to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, but some Chinese sources criticized the government of then-premier Zhou Enlai for “ceding” it.
In December 1992, it became an island district under the municipal government of Haiphong City.
“The Vietnam-China Maritime Boundary Delimitation Agreement for the Gulf of Tonkin signed in 2000 recognized that Bach Long Vi was a Vietnam’s island,” said Vu Thanh Ca, former director of the Vietnam Institute for Sea and Island Research, “There’s absolutely no dispute over its sovereignty.”
“Given the importance of Bach Long Vi as one of Vietnam’s frontier islands, Party chief To Lam’s visit is a normal practice,” he added.
Before the general secretary, Vietnam’s presidents Nguyen Minh Triet and Truong Tan Sang visited the island in 2010 and 2014 respectively, where they made strongly worded statements about “defending every inch of our country’s sea and islands.”
The year 2014 saw heightened tensions between Vietnam and China after the latter moved a deep-water oil drilling platform to near the Paracel archipelago that both countries claim. Beijing, however, did not officially react to the visits.
“China’s government does not and cannot dispute Vietnam’s sovereignty over it,” said Huy Duong, a Vietnamese South China Sea researcher. “But this does not stop some overly nationalistic Chinese regretting that China ‘gave away’ Bach Long Vi to Vietnam.”
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Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Staff.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
