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.
Myanmar junta chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing shakes hands with China’s Premier Li Qiang at the Greater Mekong Subregion Summit in Kunming in China’s Yunnan province, Nov. 6, 2024.
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 entry to the border town of Namtit is seen on Sept. 30, 2016.
“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.
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.”
Bach Long Vi qualifies as an island under the 1982 United Nations Law of the Sea Convention
‘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.”
KUALA LUMPUR – Malaysia said it is protesting two new Philippine maritime laws that it contends encroach on its South China Sea boundaries, in a move that comes amid heightened regional tension over Beijing’s increasing assertiveness about its expansive claims.
In October, Malaysia lodged a complaint against Vietnam, Reuters news agency reported last week.
One security analyst said that despite regional tension, there is little risk of confrontation between Malaysia and the Philippines, or Vietnam, while a regional observer said Manila and Hanoi were the transgressors in both cases.
Malaysian Deputy Foreign Minister Mohamad Alamin told his country’s parliament on Thursday that thenew Philippine laws encroach on Malaysia’s oil-rich state of Sabah, which borders the South China Sea.
“We’ve finalized and reviewed key issues in our protest note, which we’ll send today [Thursday] to affirm our commitment to protecting Sabah’s sovereignty and rights,” Alamin said, referring to the state that is claimed by both Malaysia and the Philippines.
Manila on Nov. 8 enacted the Philippine Maritime Zones Act and Archipelagic Sea Lanes Act, which Alamin said extend into Malaysia’s boundaries mapped out in 1979, which Kuala Lumpur regards as internationally recognized.
The Philippines had said the laws were intended to declare Manila’s maritime claims in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and restrict foreign ships and aircraft to designated lanes.
Philippine officials did not immediately respond to Alamin’s comments.
Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim (left) speaks with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as they attend the 27th ASEAN-China Summit at the National Convention Centre in Vientiane, Oct. 10, 2024.
Located off the southwestern region of the Philippines, Sabah has long been a thorny issue between the neighboring countries.
InSeptember 2020, the two countries took their dispute over who owns Sabah to the United Nations. The dispute remains unresolved.
Separately, in June 2023, a Paris court upheld Malaysia’s challenge to a U.S. $15 billion arbitration award to purported heirs of an erstwhile ruler of the Sultanate of Sulu. Part of the former sultanate is in Sabah.
An arbitration court in Paris had in February 2022ordered Malaysia to pay that amount to settle a colonial-era land deal.
The former Sultanate of Sulu was situated in a small archipelago in the far southern Philippines.
An analyst at the non-profit Yokosuka Council on Asia-Pacific Studies said Malaysia has had to deal with the Philippines’ expansion efforts in the South China Sea.
“From the point of view of Malaysia, the Philippines is the troublemaker-in-chief,” Benjamin Blandin, a network coordinator at the council, told BenarNews.
He said the Philippines destroyed Malaysian sovereignty markers in the Spratlys, a South China Sea island chain, in the 1970s and 1980s and later occupied Commodore Reef within the Malaysian exclusive economic zone.
A country’s EEZs extends up to 200 nautical miles from its coastline.
“So based on this bilateral ‘history,’ Malaysia can only interpret negatively any further move of the Philippines, at least as long as the Sabah case is not solved,” Blandin said.
He added that Vietnam had also destroyed markers at two maritime features in Malaysia’s EEZ before occupying them.
Broken ships are visible during the ASEAN Solidarity Exercise Natuna 2023 involving Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Laos on Natuna waters in Indonesia’s Riau Islands province, Sept. 21, 2023.
Another analyst, Shahriman Lockman at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies Malaysia, told BenarNews he blamed Vietnam’s actions.
“Recent reports of Malaysia’s protest note to Vietnam, if accurate, reflect a growing impatience with Vietnam’s recalcitrance in the South China Sea and reluctance to engage in constructive discussions – behavior that deserves as much attention as China’s,” Lockman, a senior analyst at the institute told RFA affiliate BenarNews.
“Even so, I don’t anticipate any major escalation as long as Vietnam tries to restrain its fishermen who have a tendency to intrude into foreign EEZs, not only in Southeast Asia but across the Asia Pacific.”
Similarly, “unless Manila actively pursues its legal claims, I don’t see a high risk of confrontation with Malaysia,” Lockman said.
“This [complaint] is just a routine aspect of diplomatic relations – a typical day at the office for our diplomats. …As countries build the legal foundations for their territorial and jurisdictional claims, it’s inevitable that overlaps are going to be reiterated.”
Overlapping claims
Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, China, Brunei and Indonesia, as well as Taiwan, hold overlapping claims in the South China Sea and its islands and reefs.
Beijing claims nearly all of the sea as its own based on so-called historic rights, which were invalidated in a 2016 arbitration ruling by the international court in The Hague,
Since the Philippines enacted its two new laws, Beijing andManila have launched protests against each other over contested South China Sea claims.
Following Beijing’s protest, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Thursday said his government would maintain its stance on its South China Sea territories, the state-run Philippine News Agency reported.
“[T]hey will continue to protect what they define as their sovereign territory,” he told journalists.
“Of course, we do not agree with their definition of sovereign territory.”
BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Iman Muttaqin Yusof for BenarNews.
Canberra-based Nourish Ingredients has partnered with Chinese fermentation specialist Cabio Biotech to produce and distribute its precision-fermented fat alternative.
Highlighting American fears of falling behind China in the biotech revolution, a new partnership looks to leverage the latter’s manufacturing might to produce future-friendly food ingredients.
Australia’s Nourish Ingredients, which makes alternatives to animal fats from precision fermentation, has joined forces with Wuhan-based fermentation and synbio firm Cabio Biotech to make and distribute its flagship Tastilux product for the Asia-Pacific market.
According to industry bodies the Precision Fermentation Alliance and Food Fermentation Europe, precision fermentation 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.
Nourish Ingredients’s Tastilux is a precision-fermented fat designed to improve the taste, aroma and cooking experience of meat analogues to more closely resemble their conventional counterparts.
Partnership will extend beyond Tastilux
Courtesy: Nourish Ingredients
A result of three years of work, Tastilux was first exhibited at the South by Southwest conference in Sydney last year, as part of vegan chicken wings with calcium-based edible bones. The “designer fat” relies on naturally occurring lipids scaled through precision fermentation to provide the distinct flavour and cooking properties of meat fats when used in plant-based chicken, beef, pork and other alternatives.
Through the partnership, Cabio Biotech will leverage its state-of-the-art facilities and expertise to manufacture Tastlux in an efficient manner with minimal waste. This will enable global-scale production, helping Nourish Ingredients make its market entry with high product consistency.
Cabio Biotech has been supplying functional ingredients for over two decades, and owns one of the world’s largest factories for long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, with capabilities ranging from bio-fermentation and non-solvent extraction to refining, winterisation and microencapsulation.
While the initial focus is on Tastilux, the two companies hinted at an expansion into categories beyond plant-based meat, including ready meals and prepared dishes, leisure snacks, and spices and condiments.
“This collaboration aligns perfectly with our commitment to advancing biotechnology and delivering cutting-edge products. Together, we’ll set new standards in the alternative protein industry,” said Cabio Biotech VP Jimmy Wang.
James Petrie, CEO of Nourish Ingredients, added: “By leveraging Cabio’s established expertise, we’re not only derisking our supply chain for expansion but also enhancing our ability to deliver high-quality, innovative food solutions at scale.”
China market a key focus for Nourish Ingredients
Courtesy: Nourish Ingredients
Teaming up with Cabio Biotch will open the China door for Nourish Ingredients. The startup points out how China’s annual meat consumption is approaching 100 million tonnes to show that even a 1% replacement with plant-based alternatives by 2026 would create a market of one million tonnes.
China’s government has been encouraging its citizens 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. Chinese consumers are already eating more protein per capita than Americans now, and most of this comes from animal-free sources.
Cabio Biotech will utilise its local knowledge and networks to spearhead Nourish Ingredients’s distribution and sales within the country’s market, while the latter will lead commercial engagement and sales globally, armed with the Wuhan-based company’s manufacturing support.
Crucially, Cabio Biotech’s extensive experience will help Nourish Ingredients navigate China’s regulatory landscape – since Tastilux is a novel food produced via precision fermentation, it needs to obtain approval from the country’s food safety regulators. The aim is to facilitate rapid market access for Tastilux and additional products both locally and in other Asian countries. Nourish Ingredients is already awaiting regulatory clearance in Singapore.
“This collaboration combines our cutting-edge product development with Cabio’s manufacturing excellence and market insights, positioning us to meet the surging global demand for superior food ingredients,” said Petrie. “Together, we’re set to efficiently produce top-tier products, opening doors to both the dynamic Chinese market and broader international opportunities.”
Nourish Ingredients has so far secured nearly $40M from investors, and has also developed Creamilux, a sister fat alternative for non-dairy applications. The startup has partnered with New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra to create both dairy and plant-based products with the ingredients.
The alt-fat space is seeing a flurry of activity. California’s Yali Bio, New York’s C16 Biosciences and Sweden’s Melt&Marble are others using precision fermentation to produce fats and lipids.
Recent mass night bike-rides across central and northern China weren’t an overt form of political protest, but rather a way to let off steam for the country’s struggling young people, who saw it as a brief taste of freedom from their restricted lives, observers and commentators said.
In a video widely circulated on social media, one young man who said he took part said many riders were looking for a way to make some memories with a temporary escape from the pressure and stresses of their lives.
He said the rides were originally conceived as a cheap way to have fun by college kids looking for a summer jaunt on a tight budget, using ubiquitous hired bikes from urban schemes.
“If we could afford to buy motorcycles or cars, there’s no way we would be riding hired bikes,” the man said in a social media video posted as the authorities began a nationwide clampdown on mass riding activities, apparently fearing a possible re-run of the 2022 “white paper” movement that triggered the end of COVID-19 restrictions.
“We’re too poor to go on vacations, to socialize or to go abroad, or to take part in sports activities at a high level,” he said. “We’re so poor that the best we dare to hope for is a bowl of dumpling soup after a midnight bike ride.”
He said young people are expected to show absolute obedience to those in authority, yet have no job opportunities to show for it.
“We’ve done as we were told for more than 20 years now, and we’ll likely have to go on doing as we’re told for the rest of our lives,” the man said. “And yet most of us will likely only make about 3,000 yuan (US$415) a month even after we graduate, and somehow get by on that for a lifetime.”
“I don’t want to grow old without a single thing worth remembering,” he said. “We’re not getting any younger, so that’s why we do stuff like this.”
Thousands of college students ride bicycles on the Zhengkai Road in Zhengzhou, in China’s Henan province, Nov. 9, 2024.
The night-cycling craze went viral after the first group of young women made the night trip on hired bikes to Kaifeng in June, was widely reported by official media as a boost to the “night-time economy.”
“These youthful adventures embody a vibrant spirit — full of curiosity, determination, and a zest for discovery — that adds new dimensions to the tourism industry,” the People’s Daily online edition gushed in a Nov. 7 article on the craze.
“Far from being just a passing fad, this movement reflects a generation that craves flexible and diverse lifestyles despite their busy schedules,” the article said. “It also highlights the resilience and adaptability of China’s economy, flourishing as it evolves alongside the aspirations of its young people.”
‘They find a way to vent‘
But shortly after hundreds of thousands of people turned out on a ride on Nov. 8, including politically sensitive groups like People’s Liberation Army veterans, the authorities clamped down on the gatherings, placing students across northern China under lockdown in their university campuses.
According to a post on the blogging platform Botanwang, students were hauled back to campuses and kept in their classrooms for several hours after the clampdown on the mass bike rides began, and given a movie to watch before being finally allowed to return to their dorms.
Luis Liang, a young graduate who recently graduated from a university in China and has since migrated to Germany, said he could relate to the students’ accounts of their bike rides.
“What he said is true,” Liang told RFA Mandarin in a recent interview, in a reference to the young man’s video. “Unless you come from a powerful family … all you have if you don’t go to college is the prospect of doing work that isn’t fit for human beings to try to earn a living. Even if you do, what can you learn from the suffocating education that you get in a Chinese university?”
“They’re desperate, and they can’t see any way to better themselves, so they find a way to vent,” he said.
He said the majority of young Chinese people aren’t generally thinking about challenging the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
“Freedom is a luxury that they daren’t even think about, so they try to do as they’re told and work hard,” Liang said. “If they could just improve their lives and those of their families just a little bit, they’d be happy, and wouldn’t dream of challenging the government.”
“But in today’s China, they can’t even fulfill those humble goals, so they’ve had enough,” he said.
“This kind of protest can fuel hope and encourage other young people, yet the authorities will suppress it and spend a lot of money on maintaining stability, even if they know that it doesn’t actually pose any kind of threat,” he said.
Wu Renhua, who was present at the student-led pro-democracy protests on Tiananmen Square in the spring and early summer of 1989, said the night rides to Kaifeng didn’t appear to have the same kind of focused agenda that was seen among young people around the country in the late 1980s.
“These cycle rides may not have amounted to a movement this time around, but there’s no guarantee that that won’t happen next time,” Wu said. “The college students of today aren’t like those of 1989, but you can still get demonstrations.”
He said the government is very nervous about any large gathering of people.
“If anything changes China, it’ll be a mass movement caused by something other than politics, or at least it won’t be political at the beginning,” Wu said.
“Everyone’s dissatisfaction with the system has been suppressed for so long that people will start out just connecting with each other via non-political gatherings,” he said.
“But once people start gathering, someone could suddenly start raising political demands.”
Recent mass night bike-rides across central and northern China weren’t an overt form of political protest, but rather a way to let off steam for the country’s struggling young people, who saw it as a brief taste of freedom from their restricted lives, observers and commentators said.
In a video widely circulated on social media, one young man who said he took part said many riders were looking for a way to make some memories with a temporary escape from the pressure and stresses of their lives.
He said the rides were originally conceived as a cheap way to have fun by college kids looking for a summer jaunt on a tight budget, using ubiquitous hired bikes from urban schemes.
“If we could afford to buy motorcycles or cars, there’s no way we would be riding hired bikes,” the man said in a social media video posted as the authorities began a nationwide clampdown on mass riding activities, apparently fearing a possible re-run of the 2022 “white paper” movement that triggered the end of COVID-19 restrictions.
“We’re too poor to go on vacations, to socialize or to go abroad, or to take part in sports activities at a high level,” he said. “We’re so poor that the best we dare to hope for is a bowl of dumpling soup after a midnight bike ride.”
He said young people are expected to show absolute obedience to those in authority, yet have no job opportunities to show for it.
“We’ve done as we were told for more than 20 years now, and we’ll likely have to go on doing as we’re told for the rest of our lives,” the man said. “And yet most of us will likely only make about 3,000 yuan (US$415) a month even after we graduate, and somehow get by on that for a lifetime.”
“I don’t want to grow old without a single thing worth remembering,” he said. “We’re not getting any younger, so that’s why we do stuff like this.”
Thousands of college students ride bicycles on the Zhengkai Road in Zhengzhou, in China’s Henan province, Nov. 9, 2024.
The night-cycling craze went viral after the first group of young women made the night trip on hired bikes to Kaifeng in June, was widely reported by official media as a boost to the “night-time economy.”
“These youthful adventures embody a vibrant spirit — full of curiosity, determination, and a zest for discovery — that adds new dimensions to the tourism industry,” the People’s Daily online edition gushed in a Nov. 7 article on the craze.
“Far from being just a passing fad, this movement reflects a generation that craves flexible and diverse lifestyles despite their busy schedules,” the article said. “It also highlights the resilience and adaptability of China’s economy, flourishing as it evolves alongside the aspirations of its young people.”
‘They find a way to vent‘
But shortly after hundreds of thousands of people turned out on a ride on Nov. 8, including politically sensitive groups like People’s Liberation Army veterans, the authorities clamped down on the gatherings, placing students across northern China under lockdown in their university campuses.
According to a post on the blogging platform Botanwang, students were hauled back to campuses and kept in their classrooms for several hours after the clampdown on the mass bike rides began, and given a movie to watch before being finally allowed to return to their dorms.
Luis Liang, a young graduate who recently graduated from a university in China and has since migrated to Germany, said he could relate to the students’ accounts of their bike rides.
“What he said is true,” Liang told RFA Mandarin in a recent interview, in a reference to the young man’s video. “Unless you come from a powerful family … all you have if you don’t go to college is the prospect of doing work that isn’t fit for human beings to try to earn a living. Even if you do, what can you learn from the suffocating education that you get in a Chinese university?”
“They’re desperate, and they can’t see any way to better themselves, so they find a way to vent,” he said.
He said the majority of young Chinese people aren’t generally thinking about challenging the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
“Freedom is a luxury that they daren’t even think about, so they try to do as they’re told and work hard,” Liang said. “If they could just improve their lives and those of their families just a little bit, they’d be happy, and wouldn’t dream of challenging the government.”
“But in today’s China, they can’t even fulfill those humble goals, so they’ve had enough,” he said.
“This kind of protest can fuel hope and encourage other young people, yet the authorities will suppress it and spend a lot of money on maintaining stability, even if they know that it doesn’t actually pose any kind of threat,” he said.
Wu Renhua, who was present at the student-led pro-democracy protests on Tiananmen Square in the spring and early summer of 1989, said the night rides to Kaifeng didn’t appear to have the same kind of focused agenda that was seen among young people around the country in the late 1980s.
“These cycle rides may not have amounted to a movement this time around, but there’s no guarantee that that won’t happen next time,” Wu said. “The college students of today aren’t like those of 1989, but you can still get demonstrations.”
He said the government is very nervous about any large gathering of people.
“If anything changes China, it’ll be a mass movement caused by something other than politics, or at least it won’t be political at the beginning,” Wu said.
“Everyone’s dissatisfaction with the system has been suppressed for so long that people will start out just connecting with each other via non-political gatherings,” he said.
“But once people start gathering, someone could suddenly start raising political demands.”
After mounting his comeback win against Kamala Harris, Donald Trump has already announced a slew of administration appointments. Compared to other presidents-elect, and to his own first term, Trump is ahead of the typical timeline in announcing these appointments, giving observers an earlier-than-usual view into how the second Trump administration could function, both in the domestic and foreign…
An ethnic minority insurgent group in Myanmar has closed crossings it controls on the border with China, cutting off exports of valuable rare earths in response to recent closures of the border by China, residents of the area said on Thursday.
The Kachin Independence Army, or KIA, which has been fighting on and off for decades for self-determination in Myanmar’s northernmost state, has made significant gains against junta forces over the past year, capturing territory, including some major rare-earth mines, and 10 border checkpoints.
Rare earths are used in the manufacture of numerous items, from electric cars to wind turbines and cell phones, in Chinese factories, but the mining of the minerals essential for the green transition causes significant pollution.
China, which the environmental group Global Witness said in a recent report had effectively outsourced its rare earth extraction to Myanmar, has also been trying to press insurgent groups battling the Myanmar junta to make peace by sealing the border to trade.
The KIA had responded by sealing the part of the border under its control, cutting off cross-border shipments of inputs needed for rare earth mining and the export of the minerals back to China, residents in the border region of Kachin state told Radio Free Asia.
“China keeps opening and closing the gates. Now, the KIA has closed them,” said a resident of Mai Ja Yang town, which is on the border with China, about 130 kilometers (80 miles) southeast of the state capital, Myitkyina.
The resident, who declined to be identified for security reasons, said the KIA had closed the border there and at crossings at Lai Zar and Pang War on Tuesday.
“As for rare earth mining, that’s all been closed because we don’t have the materials we need to extract them,” the resident said, referring to fuel and chemical inputs.
RFA tried to contact KIA spokesman Naw Bu for information about the situation but he did not respond by the time of publication.
RFA was not able to contact Chinese authorities or rare earth processors for comment and China’s embassy in Myanmar has not responded to inquiries from RFA.
Economic pressure
China has extensive economic interests in resource-rich Myanmar including energy pipelines that traverse the Southeast Asian nation, from the Indian Ocean to southern China’s Yunnan province, and several mining projects.
While China backs the Myanmar military it also has contacts with anti-junta insurgent groups, especially those in northern and northeastern Myanmar, including the KIA, and has called on the rival sides to negotiate.
In late October, China shut six border gates, causing shortages and price surges for fuel and household goods along Kachin state border towns, residents there said.
As well as closing border crossings to put economic pressure on the insurgents, China has also closed its border to civilians fleeing fighting.
At the Pang War border crossing, about 160 km (100 miles) northeast of Mai Ja Yang, China has sealed the border to traders and civilians but was allowing trucks hauling rare earths from the Kachin state mines to enter China.
So the KIA, which recently captured the border post, stopped the trucks, a person affiliated with the KIA said.
“As for the gate, China closed it so the KIA did too,” said the person, who also declined to be identified for security reasons.
“The KIA blocked the road with wood and barbed wire.”
Global Witness said in a report this year that there are more than 300 rare earth mines in Kachin state’s Chipwi and Pang War townships exporting to China, which the group said controls nearly 90% of global rare earth capacity.
WASHINGTON – Marco Rubio, a strident foreign policy “hawk” when it comes to relations with China, has been nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to serve as the next U.S. secretary of state.
The Republican senator from Trump’s adopted home state of Florida is almost certain to be confirmed as America’s top diplomat by his soon-to-be former colleagues, with the Republican Party now controlling the Senate with a 53-47 majority over the Democrats.
Rubio’s nomination Wednesday completes a trifecta of China “hawks” in the three most important foreign policy picks for a president.
He joins Rep. Mike Waltz of Florida, who will be appointed Trump’s national security adviser, and Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, who has been nominated to be ambassador to the United Nations.
In a statement released on his Truth Social platform, Trump called Rubio “a Highly Respected Leader” and “a very powerful Voice for Freedom” who would represent America well on the world stage.
“He will be a strong Advocate for our Nation, a true friend to our Allies, and a fearless Warrior who will never back down to our adversaries,” Trump said, adding that Rubio as a senator had “authored hundreds of new laws, including some that are truly transformational.”
In his own statement, Rubio called the role of secretary of state “a tremendous responsibility” and said that he was “honored by the trust President Trump has placed in me” in making the nomination.
“As Secretary of State, I will work every day to carry out his foreign policy agenda,” he added. “Under the leadership of President Trump, we will deliver peace through strength and always put the interests of Americans and America above all else.”
From foes to friends
It’s a remarkable turnaround in relations between the two Floridians, who along with Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas were the last three standing candidates for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.
Trump easily brushed aside Rubio to secure the nomination and then the presidency, referring to the senator derisively and repeatedly as “Little Marco” while accusing him of being in the pocket of lobbyists.
Rubio equally did not hold back, accusing Trump of using “illegal immigrant labor” to build Trump Tower in New York City and of only having found business success because of an inheritance from his father.
But the pair seemed to make peace during Trump’s most recent run for office, with Rubio even being vetted as a possible vice president pick.
Former President Donald Trump greets Sen. Marco Rubio during a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Nov. 4, 2024.
Rubio also has some support across the aisle, with Sen. John Fetterman, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, indicating that he plans to vote in favor of his nomination to the post.
Sanctioned secretary
If confirmed, Rubio would be the first sitting U.S. secretary of state to have been sanctioned by Beijing, having been blacklisted in retaliation for U.S. sanctions on Chinese officials for the genocide against the Uyghur ethnic minority and for the crackdown in Hong Kong.
But there is already some skepticism of the influence he will have in the Trump administration, even if it is set to be dominated by China hawks.
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who was one of the few Republicans in the House of Representatives to vote to impeach Trump during his last term in office, said he thought Rubio might be kept on a tight leash.
“Marco has shown his ability to kind of change for whatever Donald Trump demands, so it really comes down to, ‘What does Donald Trump demand?’” Kinzinger said in an interview with CNN on Monday.
Edited by Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Alex Willemyns.
JAKARTA – Indonesia is seeking to contain the fallout from a maritime cooperation agreement with China that analysts say appears to indicate a softening of Jakarta’s stance on Beijing’s expansive claims in the South China Sea.
A joint statement released after a meeting between Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Saturday said the two countries had reached an “important common understanding on joint development in areas of overlapping claims.”
This “understanding” or agreement compromised Indonesia’s territorial and maritime rights, most regional experts said.
One security analyst. though, noted on X that a clause stating that the cooperation would proceed only under the laws of both countries may mean the agreement will end up dead in the water.
Jakarta had consistently rejected the Beijing-set boundary, which encompasses most of the South China Sea and encroaches into Jakarta’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) north of the Natuna islands, noted Eddy Pratomo, an ex-member of the Indonesian government’s law of the sea negotiation team.
“[But] with this Indonesia-China joint statement, it appears Indonesia is now acknowledging overlapping claims,” Eddy, an international law professor at Diponegoro University, told RFA affiliate BenarNews.
“This could be seen as tacit recognition of China’s dashed-line claim over the South China Sea, particularly around the North Natuna Sea,” he said.
Indonesian Coast Guard ships force Chinese Coast Guard ship 5402 out of Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone in the North Natuna Sea, Oct. 25, 2024.
Beijing uses the nine-dash line on maps to demarcate its extensive claims in the South China Sea, where it is embroiled in territorial disputes with Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam in regional bloc Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), as well as Taiwan.
Eddy warned that China could use the agreement with Indonesia to pressure these claimant states to accept the nine-dash line.
This China-drawn boundary infringes on the claimant states’ EEZs that give these countries exclusive rights to up to 200 nautical miles from their coastlines to regulate fishing and exploit natural resources, he said.
The Indonesia-China joint statement did not specifically say the two countries would cooperate on projects for oil and gas discovery or extraction, although that is the activity that Jakarta mainly carries out in its South China Sea EEZ, which it has named North Natuna Sea.
The Indonesian Foreign Ministry attempted damage control and issued a statement Monday, saying the agreement did not amount to a recognition of Beijing’s line.
“Nothing in the cooperation may be construed in any way as a recognition of the ‘9-Dash Line’ claim. Indonesia maintains its well-known position that the claim lacks an international legal basis and is tantamount to undermining the UNCLOS 1982,” the statement said.
“Therefore, the cooperation shall, under no circumstances, affect Indonesia’s sovereignty, sovereign rights, or jurisdiction in the North Natuna Sea.” UNCLOS is the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The Indonesian Foreign Ministry said the cooperation would mainly be in the fields of fisheries and fisheries conservation in the region.
BenarNews reached out to foreign ministry spokesman Roy Soemirat for details on how the agreement came about and whether Jakarta had vetted the text, but did not hear back from the official.
The agreement comes amidst a backdrop of escalating tensions in the South China Sea, a crucial maritime route for global commerce.
Just last month, during the first week of Prabowo’s presidency, Indonesian naval and coast guard vessels confronted and expelled a Chinese coast guard ship from Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone in the North Natuna Sea on three occasions
‘China’s nine-dash line trap’
Backlash to news about the agreement was swift, both at home and abroad, despite the foreign ministry’s statement on Monday.
Aristyo Rizka Darmawan, a lecturer in International law at Universitas Indonesia, slammed as “vague” the Indonesian foreign ministry’s statement that it still did not recognize the nine-dash line.
The ministry’s statement “contradicts the joint statement and was released unilaterally, while the joint statement was made by Indonesia and China together,” he wrote in an analysis published Tuesday for The Lowy Institute, an Australian think-tank.
That means it’s possible that China may continue to hold the interpretation presented in the join statement, he further wrote.
“Indonesia appears to be the first ASEAN member-state to implicitly recognize Beijing’s ‘nine-dash line’ … and therefore the first ASEAN country to fall into China’s nine-dash line trap,” Aristyo added.
He further said that the agreement had betrayed Indonesia’s national interest.
“It is consequential for Indonesia’s sovereign rights to use resources in its EEZ and continental shelf, and [the agreement] has significantly changed the political constellation and solidarity of ASEAN claimant states in the South China Sea,” he wrote.
Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr (L) walks with Indonesia�s President-elect Prabowo Subianto during a courtesy call at Malacanang Palace in Manila on September 20, 2024.
Opposition lawmaker Tubagus Hasanuddin, a member of the defense and foreign affairs committee in Indonesia’s House of Representatives, questioned the government’s approach to handling sensitive regional issues, particularly concerning the South China Sea.
“The Foreign Ministry needs to exercise greater caution and responsiveness in handling official statements,” he said in a press release.
“They shouldn’t act as a ‘firefighter’ only when problems arise.”
He also raised concerns about the potential consequences of such an agreement for Indonesian fishermen, citing past instances of Chinese vessels entering Indonesian waters and engaging in illegal fishing.
“Will this economic cooperation benefit us? Will Chinese fishing vessels then be free to roam in the Natuna area to catch our fish?”
One clause in the joint cooperation agreement, however, could mean it would not go through, said Euan Graham, senior analyst at The Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
“[T]he reference to “prevailing laws” means [the] agreement may be difficult for Prabowo to push through,” he noted on X.
The part of the joint statement Graham is referring to says that the joint development would be “based on the principles of ‘mutual respect, equality, mutual benefit, flexibility, pragmatism, and consensus-building,’ pursuant to their respective prevailing laws and regulations.”
Several analysts noted that Prabowo or Foreign Minister Sugiono needed to soon clarify what exactly the joint development was referring to and how the wording got into the joint statement.
‘Potential slippery slope’
The Indonesia-China joint development agreement has consequences not just for Indonesia but could potentially reshape geopolitical dynamics in Southeast Asia and draw responses from the United States and Japan, said international law expert Hikmahanto Juwana.
“Countries in dispute with China will question Indonesia’s position,” Hikmahanto, a University of Indonesia professor, told BenarNews.
The Indonesian government’s agreement with China might reflect a pragmatic alignment with a major political power, but it could potentially destabilize the region, said Muhammad Waffaa Kharisma, an international relations researcher at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
“In the short term, this statement may benefit Indonesia by easing tensions with China, particularly by reducing the likelihood of coast guard confrontations in the South China Sea,” he said.
“However, in the long term, it could harm Indonesia’s standing with Southeast Asian neighbors. This is a potential slippery slope.”
Pizaro Gozali Idrus in Jakarta contributed to this report.
BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Arie Firdaus for BenarNews.
Michael Waltz, a Republican congressman from Florida, will be President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for national security advisor– a position in which he is likely to play an outsized role in shaping China policy.
Waltz, 50, has long been hawkish on Beijing.
A former Green Beret who served in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa, he won several Bronze Stars, including two for valor, for his service. Waltz then worked in policy at the Pentagon and served as an advisor to former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney.
In 2018, he was elected to Congress and became known as one of its most hardline members on China. He serves on the House Foreign Affairs, Armed Services and Intelligence Committees. Waltz has also been on the House China Task Force, which examines how the U.S. can best compete with China.
He has called for additional support for Taiwan, saying on X in May 2023 that the U.S. should start “arming Taiwan NOW before it’s too late.” In addition, he’s demanded that China put an end to human rights abuses in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and called for the U.S. to boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
Waltz used to feel frustrated by the deferential manner shown by another Republican president, George W. Bush, in the White House Situation Room.
In his 2014 book, Warrior Diplomat: A Green Beret’s Battles from Washington to Afghanistan, he wrote of sitting in during a tense videoconference with then-President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and lamenting Bush’s failure to be firmer.
“Unfortunately, really sticking it to Karzai was not Bush’s style,” Waltz wrote.
The atmosphere in the second Trump White House will be dramatically different. Waltz will move to the front of the Situation Room. And Trump, known for “sticking it to” any number of people, will have his own style.
Yet Waltz‘s uncompromising views could also create tension with Trump, despite the President-elect signalling that he will be tough on China says June Teufel Dreyer of the University of Miami Coral’ and author of China’s Political System: Modernization and Tradition.
Waltz “is distrustful of the People’s Republic of China and its motives,” she says. “He does not believe in the hype that we can work together in peace and friendship.”
Trump has threatened to slap tariffs on Chinese goods and sought confrontation with Beijing over intellectual property, technology and other economic issues. Those efforts are likely to continue when he takes office.
But at the same time, he has expressed admiration for the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping. He has called Xi a “brilliant guy” and praised him for his success at becoming “president for life.”
Teufel Dreyer says that Trump may decide at some point to take a more deferential approach to Xi, and this could cause a rift between Trump and his advisor. “Waltz is not a shrinking violet. He’s willing to speak his mind,” she says. “He’s not going to back down.”
The unpredictable nature of the White House has far-reaching implications. So does the track record of the incoming national security advisor and his hawkish views.
“There will be efforts to crack down on the bad behavior of China – how they are ripping off American goods, as well as the spying—that’s going to be top of mind for Waltz,” predicts Brett Bruen, a former director of global engagement on the National Security Council in the Obama White House.
“If I’m sitting in the Chinese foreign ministry office, these are worrying signs.”
Edited by Boer Deng and Abby Seiff
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Tara McKelvey for RFA Investigative.
At least 35 people were killed and 43 injured when a driver rammed his car into a crowd at a stadium in southern China’s Zhuhai city, prompting a rare call from President Xi Jinping on Tuesday for an investigation and for the perpetrator to be punished.
The attack, believed to be the deadliest in modern Chinese history, occurred on Monday night as the city hosted the People‘s Liberation Army’s annual airshow, where it debuted a new fighter jet.
Police detained a 62-year-old man surnamed Fan in connection with the attack, who they said was hospitalized with allegedly self-inflicted knife wounds.
They said Fan had been angered over a divorce settlement.
Local police reported that a small off-road vehicle drove into a crowd outside a sports center.
Images of the incident, which appeared to show dozens of people lying on the ground as a car fled the scene, circulated widely on social media but were quickly censored and removed, as were comments expressing frustration over a nearly 24-hour delay in official reporting.
RFA Mandarin spoke with a resident of Zhuhai surnamed Chen who said that the driver of the car “hit the crowd and then came back to hit them again.”
“This is definitely revenge against society, not an ordinary traffic accident,” he said.
Wounded people lie on the ground after a car plowed into a crowd at a sports center in Zhuhai, China, Nov. 11, 2024.
State media cited Xi issuing a statement on Tuesday in which he said the incident was under investigation and called for the perpetrator’s severe punishment. It is unusual for Xi to comment about specific crimes or incidents.
A team from the central government was sent to the city of 2.5 million to provide guidance to authorities, it said.
By Tuesday evening, candles and flowers could be seen laid outside the sports center, where people had gathered to exercise when the attack occurred, Reuters reported.
Monday’s attack marked the second such to occur during the Zhuhai airshow, after a man drove a truck into a crowded schoolyard in 2008, killing four and injuring 20.
Violent attacks are rare in China, where gun laws are strict and the population is subject to strict monitoring by authorities.
But a spate of knife-related incidents have highlighted lapses in security at public spaces.
In June, a man surnamed Cai stabbed four U.S. college instructors and a Chinese citizen who tried to intervene in the northeastern city of Jilin. The same month, a 10-year-old Japanese boy was stabbed to death as he walked to school in southeastern Shenzhen city.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Josh Lipes.
Gold prices are at historic highs, buoyed by India and China central bank buying in OTC markets. Further, all-time high levels of gold repatriation are underway, to vaults in Asia. Industry insiders and market experts are puzzled at the intensity and the timing of the gold buys, which seem divorced from economic fundamentals.
But these moves are an essential aspect of the BRICS countries’ de-risking from Western banking systems. Following the sanctions on Russia, whereby billions of dollars of Russian reserves in US and European banks were seized, China and India were strongly motivated to reduce their exposure to Western regulators. China sold off huge portfolios of US Treasury bonds, and both China and India demanded physical deliveries of gold previously held by European custodians.
A Hong Kong journalist fired by the Wall Street Journal after she was elected leader of a local journalists’ union lodged a legal challenge with the city’s labor tribunal on Tuesday.
Selina Cheng, who says she was let go as part of “restructuring” in July after being warned against seeking election as chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, is filing a case with the tribunal after her request for reinstatement was unsuccessful.
“I was fired by the Wall Street Journal because of my position as chairman of the Journalists Association,” Cheng told reporters, accompanied by her lawyer, on Tuesday. “I have tried to communicate with and seek mediation with the company’s U.S. representatives via my lawyer but this was ineffective.”
“The other party continues to insist that my dismissal was part of layoffs, and reject my request for reinstatement,” she said.
Cheng won the election to replace Ronson Chan, who stepped down from the union leadership citing threats and pressure from pro-China sources.
Officials in China and Hong Kong have repeatedly claimed that journalists are safe to carry out “legitimate” reporting activities under both the 2020 National Security Law and the Article 23 Safeguarding National Security Law, which was passed on March 23.
But pro-democracy media magnate Jimmy Lai is currently on trial for “collusion with foreign forces” for printing articles in his now-shuttered Apple Daily newspaper.
Ready to testify
Cheng said she had already filed some evidence for her claim to the Labor Department, and would be filing a formal complaint on Tuesday, under Section 21b of the city‘s Employment Ordinance, which protects employees’ right to join a labor union.
“Any employer, or any person acting on behalf of an employer, who prevents or deters … an employee from exercising that right shall be guilty of an offense,” and could be fined up to HK$100,000 (US$12,855), according to the law.
“I have told the staff at the Labor Department that I am very willing to testify in court, and provide all the necessary information,” she said. “Since there is more than enough evidence to show they are in violation of the law, I think the government should actively prosecute them.”
Selina Cheng, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and chairperson of the Hong Kong Journalists Association shows reporters her claim form against her former employer for what she called unreasonable dismissal in Hong Kong on Nov.12, 2024.
Cheng, a Hong Kong correspondent for the Journal who had survived earlier rounds of layoffs, was approached by senior editors in June after they heard she was running in elections for the chair of the union, warned off running for the top job and told to leave the board, despite approving her position at the union when she was hired in 2021.
Cheng has quoted her editor as saying that Journal employees shouldn’t be seen as advocates for press freedom in a place like Hong Kong, although there was no problem with similar behaviors in Western countries where press freedom is greater. She has said she was fired in person by U.K.-based Foreign Editor Gordon Fairclough, who was on a visit to Hong Kong, with “restructuring” given as the reason for her sacking.
She said none of her colleagues believed that this was the real reason for her dismissal.
“I learned from former colleagues at Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal that they were all very disappointed, mainly because of the claim I was laid off,” Cheng said. “Everyone knows that this wasn’t the the truth, but the company continues to insist that this was the reason they fired me.”
Cheng said the incident had damaged her professional reputation, but that she was still open to discussions about her reinstatement.
State of press freedom
Journalists and media watchdog groups say press freedom has gone sharply downhill in Hong Kong in recent years, as Beijing ramps up its mission to protect “national security” with a constant expansion of forbidden topics and “red lines” in recent years.
Foreign journalists have also been targeted, with the city refusing to renew a work visa for the Financial Times‘ Victor Mallet in 2018 after he hosted pro-independence politician Andy Chan as a speaker at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club where he was an official at the time.
The Independent Association of Publishers’ Employees, a union run by and for the employees of Dow Jones, has previously said that if Cheng was fired as what she claimed, the behavior was “unconscionable,” the Associated Press reported on Tuesday, adding that the association has called on the publication to restore her job and provide a full explanation of their decision to dismiss her.
Hong Kong ranked 135th out of 180 countries and territories in Reporters Without Borders’ latest World Press Freedom Index, down from 80 in 2021.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Wei Sze and Edward Li for RFA Cantonese.
Authorities across China are cracking down on thousands of college students who took part in mass night-cycling events that commentators said could be seen as a new form of protest against the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
The police department in Henan’s Zhengzhou city issued a warning to students on Nov. 9, following a mass “night ride to Kaifeng” by thousands of young people a day earlier, as a social media video about riding to the city in search of dumplings spawned dozens of copycat outings, eventually expanding to a mass cycle ride that some observers said left the authorities rattled, concerned that it could turn into a political protest like the “white paper” movement two years ago, or Halloween in Shanghai.
Video footage of the rides uploaded to social media of the Nov. 8 event showed phalanxes of cyclists riding abreast across several lanes of a highway, flying the Chinese national flag and singing the Chinese national anthem, many of whom were riding bikes from urban sharing schemes.
Bike-riding college students pack the Zhengkai Road, top, in Zhengzhou, in China’s Henan province, Nov. 9, 2024.
Police didn’t take action at the time, but they announced a ban on cycles from downtown Zhengzhou on Nov. 9 and Nov. 10, reserving main roads for motorized traffic only, according to Jimu News.
Cycle-hire companies Hello, Qingjue and Meituan responded by banning the riding of their bikes between city jurisdictions, saying anyone who defied the ban would have their hired bike locked remotely.
A retired teacher from Zhengzhou who gave only the surname Jia for fear of reprisals said she saw the road from Zhengzhou to Kaifeng “packed” with cyclists on Nov. 8.
“I would say there were more than 200,000 people,” Jia said. “Zhengzhou to Kaifeng Boulevard was so crowded that … there were no shared bikes left and a lot of people had to walk instead.”
“[The authorities] are very nervous,” she said.
The cycling bans came after the Nov. 8 ride was joined by more than 600 students who traveled down by train from Beijing to take part, and also by military veterans, a group regarded as highly politically sensitive by the government, who carried flags and shouted slogans calling for “freedom,” according to social media reports.
“Eight years in the Rocket Force, night ride to Kaifeng — charge!” a person shouts in one video clip. “Five years in the Air Force, retired but still got it, night ride to Kaifeng, let’s go!” shouts someone else.
Thousands of students participate in a bike ride to Kaifeng, in search of soup dumplings, causing a highway to be clogged in Zhengzhou, Henan, China, Nov. 9, 2024.
One Douyin user from Shandong posted a video saying the authorities in Henan were now cracking down on “night rides” by students in universities across the province, as well as in the northern provinces of Shanxi and Shaanxi.
“One video I saw showed students from Shandong and Tianjin also took action, with some waving national flags,” the user said.
According to other social media posts, some students who tried to form a mass ride to Beijing’s Tiananmen Square were stopped and turned away at a police checkpoint, so they rode the 138 kilometers (86 miles) to the northern port city of Tianjin.
In the eastern city of Nanjing, tens of thousands of college students rode to Chaohu Lake 140 kilometers (87 miles) away or Ma’anshan, 59 kilometers (37 miles) away, while students in Sichuan’s provincial capital Chengdu role to Dujiangyan 70 kilometers (43 miles) away and students from Xi’an rode 28 kilometers (17 miles) by night to Xianyang.
According to Jia, authorities in Zhengzhou also locked down college campuses across the city and wouldn’t let students leave.
“All students were told to return to campus, and then not allowed out again for a certain period of time,” she said. “The universities sent out a lot of internal notices to counselors and other staff, which you can seen online.”
Jimu News reported that students at the Henan Institute of Science and Technology in Zhengzhou were required to get a special pass to leave campus, citing campus officials.
Zhengzhou-based teacher Li Na said she was amazed at the students’ actions.
“Let’s not impute a political stance to this, but at the very least it shows that young people in mainland China are very eager to take part in public life,” Li said. “Secondly, they are very organized.”
“I don’t know how they are communicating with each other given how tight the controls are, and yet it’s gotten so big that students all over the country have responded,” she said.
Li cited local media reports as saying that universities in Shanxi and other places had gone as far as to label the bike rides a “political movement,” and warn students not to take part on pain of having a black mark on their record.
University staff were also working “ideologically” with students to persuade them not to take part, she said.
“This isn’t the first time we have seen the capacity of young people to organize,” Li said. “The first time was the white paper movement, and the second was Halloween.”
Li Meiyao, a psychologist from Shanxi, said the initial bike ride in June was described as a way to alleviate mental health problems by the young woman who posted about it first.
“I rode a bike to Kaifeng to eat dumplings, because I haven’t found any other way to release the depression caused by the three-years of pandemic restrictions,” she paraphrased the original post as saying.
University students endured months of lockdown on campus during the three years of zero-COVID restrictions, which ended in December 2022, and were sent home en masse when they gathered to protest, with the authorities blaming instigation by “hostile foreign forces” for the protests.
A Henan-based commentator who gave only the surname Gong for fear of reprisals said the rides likely started out as a way for young people to let off steam.
“At the outset, this was about having fun, with a few young students going to Kaifeng, but why did they get such an instant response?” Gong said. “Because college students have been isolated and shut off from society for such a long time, and rarely had the opportunity to take part in any public events.”
“It was an important opportunity for them to let off steam, express themselves, and affirm their values in a public setting,” he said.
Hong Kong’s main opposition Democratic Party held its 30th anniversary dinner on the weekend but only after a last-minute scramble to book a venue, reflecting what one senior party loyalist said was the shrinking political space in the city.
The party, one of the last pro-democracy political organizations operating in the former British colony after a sweeping crackdown on dissent by pro-Beijing authorities, celebrated the anniversary of its founding in 1994 on Saturday evening.
The restaurant in the Tsim Sha Tsui district where party members gathered was their third choice.
The first restaurant the party booked canceled the reservation on Nov. 1, saying a deposit had not been paid.
But a former chairwoman of the party, Emily Lau, said the establishment had not asked for a payment to secure the booking, the South China Morning Post reported.
A second venue canceled the booking the night before the banquet saying two of its chefs got into a fight.
Then during the dinner, which party members said was smaller than previous such dinners, several policemen arrived at the restaurant saying they were responding to a complaint but they made no arrests and left.
Lau said it was a pity so many hurdles had been encountered “for various reasons” in trying to organize a simple party dinner.
Lau added the party used to hold annual banquets on a much larger scale and the obstacles it now faced reflected the shrinking political space in the city.
The party has run into similar problems in the past with events being canceled, due to what members have attributed to the fears that many people have of being associated with it.
Political activity has been severely curtailed since Beijing imposed a national security law in the Asian financial hub in 2020 in response to huge pro-democracy protests the previous year.
Hundreds of pro-democracy politicians and activists have been jailed or have gone into exile, and many media outlets and civil society groups have been shut down.
Critics say China has broken a promise made when Britain handed the city back in 1997, that it would retain its autonomy under a “one country, two systems” formula.
Hong Kong’s Beijing-backed government rejects accusations from its domestic critics and Western countries, including the United States and Britain, that it has smothered freedoms in the once-vibrant society.
The city government and Beijing say stability must be ensured and what they see as foreign interference must be stopped to protect the city’s economic success.
The party’s current chairman, Lo Kin-hei, and vice chairman Bonnie Ng attended the dinner but there were several notable no-shows including former party chairman Martin Lee and former legislative councilor James To.
The Democratic Party was formed in 1990 with a platform of supporting China’s sovereignty over Hong Kong while calling for the protection of the rule of law, personal freedom, and human rights.
Following the 2019 protests, candidates representing a coalition of pro-democracy parties won the largest percentage of votes in that year’s city election.
However, subsequent measures taken by Beijing effectively curbed pro-democracy parties’ ability to run in regular elections.
Legislation in 2023 reduced the number of directly elected seats in the city’s legislature and local elections, while also requiring candidates to pass national security background checks and get nominations from committees that support the government.
The Democratic Party did not contest the city’s 2021 Legislative Council elections or district council elections last year and holds no seats in either.
Translated by Shen Ke. Edited by Taejun Kang.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Wei Sze for RFA Cantonese.
Authorities in Hong Kong have been going to extraordinary lengths to avoid shining a light on some of the more negative aspects of recent Chinese history, and thereby angering Beijing.
Officials have changed the name of a lamppost whose official number contained an inadvertent reference to the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.
The move suggests local officials are keen to avoid getting into trouble with the ruling Chinese Communist Party, which bans public references to the bloodshed that ended weeks of pro-democracy demonstrations on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, and would prefer to keep the public in the dark.
The lamppost is located next to a footbridge between Yu Wing Path and Ma Tin Road in Hong Kong’s Yuen Long district, close to the internal border with mainland China, and was once labeled “FA8964,” which could be read as code for “June 4, 1989,” a politically sensitive keyword that is banned on the Chinese internet.
The old number was clearly visible on Google Streetview on Nov. 8, but RFA Cantonese found that the actual number had been changed to “DG8332” in an on-the-ground investigation on the same day, while the lamppost had been repainted with a sign warning of “wet paint.”
A lamppost in Yuen Long marked “FA8964″—a reference to the June 4 incident—recently had its number changed, sparking criticism.
A government database of lamppost locations that is used to help residents report the precise location of crimes showed that lampposts numbered “FA8963” and “FA8966” were still listed, but a query on Nov. 8 for lamppost “FA8964” resulted in the message “data not found.”
The city’s Highways Department told Radio Free Asia in response to a query about the disappeared number that lampposts are sometimes given new numbers when new streetlights are installed, their position changed, or the equipment renovated.
While Hong Kong isn’t yet subject to China’s Great Firewall of blanket internet censorship, some websites linked to the pro-democracy movement are blocked by internet service providers in the city. The website of the London-based rights group Hong Kong Watch is also blocked.
The city has used a High Court injunction to force YouTube and other providers to remove references to the banned protest anthem “Glory to Hong Kong,” and arrested local residents for “seditious” posts on Facebook.
While the city’s 7 million residents are able to search Google and other sites for information on the People’s Liberation Army’s 1989 killing of civilians in Beijing, authorities have removed hundreds of books from public libraries in recent years, including those referencing the massacre.
The Hong Kong lamppost is seen after it was repainted and the problematic FA8964 designation changed to an innocuous number.
Local residents said they thought the lamppost’s “upgrade” was pretty pointless.
“Changing the number is just going to draw more attention to it,” former Yuen Long district councilor Kisslan Chan told RFA Cantonese in a recent interview. “But there are always people who want to get promoted.”
He said he didn’t think the order had come from higher up, but suggested that local officials were trying to demonstrate zeal amid an ongoing crackdown on public dissent in the city.
Former district councilor Leslie Chan said the move showed just how sensitive the authorities were, however, citing the High Court injunction on “Glory to Hong Kong.”
“It’s the same reason … that such a powerful ruling party is afraid of a song,” Leslie Chan said. “Beijing fears the number 8964 more than anything.”
A local resident who gave only the surname Chan for fear of reprisals said the move was a waste of public funds.
“They could have used that money to help people,” she said.
ATLANTA – The leaves were turning red and orange at Georgia Institute of Technology on a recent afternoon, and students were studying for midterms. Yet within this quiet haven, a global conflict has raged.
Georgia Tech, as the university is known, has been pulled into the geopolitical strife between the United States and China. A group of U.S. lawmakers say that Chinese officials have been trying to pilfer research from Georgia Tech and other American universities and use their resources to strengthen China’s military.
In a September report, Republican members of two separate committees in the House of Representatives said that Beijing has been benefiting from the U.S.-funded research done at Georgia Tech and other universities in this country.
The report claimed that research intended to help the U.S. military has inadvertently given a boost to the Chinese armed forces by allowing Chinese researchers access to knowledge and technology that could ultimately have militaristic ends.
Chinese scientists have managed to obtain such resources through joint U.S.-China educational initiatives and similar programs, the report said. American research is being used to develop Chinese semiconductors, artificial intelligence and military technology, it warned.
The new Trump administration could mean that the U.S.-China university partnerships and exchange programs will be placed under even more scrutiny, say academics and experts in the field. David Zweig, the author of a new book, “The War for Chinese Talent in America,” told RFA that university administrators may face now increased pressure.
“It puts those exchanges at greater risk,” Zweig said, referring to the U.S.-China university partnerships. It may be “that the new administration will investigate the exchange programs or will stop them, or they will broaden what is seen as threats to national security.”
He and others worry the claims of the Republican lawmakers are too far-reaching and are unnecessarily shuttering much-needed research programs. At least one American scientist who worked on such projects denied allegations made in the recent congressional report, telling Reuters the research was both early-stage and all in the public domain.
The discussion around these tensions is the latest in long running disputes over the role of U.S. higher education in competition with China. Amid shifting dynamics in U.S-China relations, students are often paying the price.
Chinese students wait outside the U.S. Embassy for their visa application interviews on May 2, 2012, in Beijing.
Ripple effects
Those dynamics today are testy. The mood in the U.S. now is one that, regardless of party, politicians agree that China poses a danger to this country.
“Anything having to do with China right now—you’re able to score political points by being the most hawkish,” said Margaret Kosal, an associate professor of international affairs at Georgia Tech.
A defense policy bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, expected to pass this year, will likely include provisions against China and warnings to U.S. universities in particular; universities could even be blocked from receiving U.S. Defense Department funds for some research.
Chinese officials say that academic exchanges promote better understanding between the two cultures and do not pose a threat to the United States. Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, told RFA in an email that the accusations from the U.S. lawmakers are unwarranted. Liu criticized lawmakers for “blocking normal scientific research exchanges and cooperation between the two sides in the name of ‘national security.’”
Chinese influence at universities has been a long-running issue, especially regarding the study of technology. In 2018, Congress restricted federal funding to schools with the Chinese cultural programs known as the Confucius Institutes because of concerns about influence operations. Since then, nearly all these programs have been shut down.
Besides Georgia Tech, the September government report also scrutinized University of California, Berkeley, and its relationship with a non-profit, Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, in Shenzhen.
In a statement, Dan Mogulof, an assistant vice chancellor at Berkeley, said they “take concerns about research security very seriously” and have “implemented new processes to foster and monitor foreign collaborations.”
They are currently bringing their relationship with the Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute to an end, he added.
They would not be the first. In 2023, a law was passed in Florida that imposes restrictions on public universities and their ability to receive grants from educational institutes in China. Afterwards, the Marriott Tianjin China Program, a prominent hospitality management program affiliated with Florida International University, was closed down.
Abbigail Tumpey, a vice president at Georgia Tech, told RFA that their program in China, the Georgia Tech Shenzhen Institute, was established decades ago for educational purposes and had nothing to do with military research. Nevertheless, she and her colleagues at Georgia Tech all agreed that it was best to wind down their program in China.
The wind-down has impacted students. Several hundred are currently enrolled in the program in China. They will be able to complete their degrees, but they will be the last to do so. More broadly, the number of Chinese students in the U.S. has fallen from over 370,000 in 2019-2020 to fewer than 290,000 in 2022-2023. About 800 US students studied in China this year compared to 11,000 before the pandemic.
Zoë Altizer, a neuroscience major born in China who is studying at Georgia Tech’s main campus in Atlanta, said she believes that the university’s decision to pull back from China has been a consequence of “the ever-strange relationship between the two countries.”
Students and graduates of Florida universities have also been talking about the new restrictions on the schools and programs.
Annie Dong, 22, a native Floridian who spent part of her childhood in Fuzhou, China, was thrilled to find a “home,” as she put it, in the Chinese Language and Culture department at a progressive state university, New College of Florida, in Sarasota. She studied art and painted a mural on the wall of a campus gallery in the fall of 2022. The mural showed images of red-crowned cranes, birds with “strong symbolism in Chinese culture,” she said. “It means longevity and luck. It means you’re able to take on a long journey.”
A mural by student Annie Dong at New College of Florida, in Sarasota, was painted over.
Several other students also painted murals. Then, the atmosphere on campus changed amid tightening restrictions on university affiliations with institutes in China.
Around that time, the murals on the New College campus were painted over. But some, including Dong, felt that it was a symptom of a culture less welcoming to diverse students. “They said it was a way to beautify the campus,” Dong said. (A university spokesman declined to comment on the matter.)
“I felt like, really, where is home now, if they’re not welcoming color and diversity. How does that make sense?” she said.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Tara McKelvey.
Japan’s new prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, is stirring the pot – notably on regional security matters. He has proposed something that has done more than raise a few eyebrows in the foreign and defence ministries of several countries. An Asian version of NATO, he has suggested, was an idea worth considering, notably given China’s ambitions in the region. “The creation of an Asian version of NATO is essential to deter China by its Western allies,” he revealed to the Washington-based Hudson Institute in September.
During his campaign for office, Ishiba had mooted changes to the deployment arrangements of the Japan Self-Defence Forces and the need to move beyond the purely bilateral approach to regional security anchored by US agreements with various countries, be it with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and others.
Ishiba’s suggested changes to Japan’s self-defence posture builds on a cabinet decision made during the Abe administration to reinterpret the country’s constitution to permit exercising the right of collective self-defence. It was a problematic move, given the pacifist nature of a text that renounces the use of force in the resolution of international disputes.
In September 2015, then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe convinced the Diet to pass a package of security bills known as the Legislation for Peace and Security, thereby allowing Japan to participate in limited forms of collective self-defence. Opponents warned, understandably, that the legislation paved the way for Japan to attack a country in concert with another on the premise of collective self-defence, despite not itself being directly attacked. They have every reason to be even more worried given Ishiba’s recent meditations.
The intention to broaden the remit of how Japan’s armed forces are deployed is also a reminder to the United States that Tokyo is no longer interested in playing a subordinate role in its alliance with Washington. “The current Japan-US security treaty,” complains Ishiba, “is structured so that the US is obligated to ‘defend’ Japan, and Japan is obligated to ‘provide bases’ to the US.” He suggests “expanding the scope of joint management of US bases in Japan”, a move that would reduce Washington’s burden, and revising the Japan-US Security Treaty and Status of Forces Agreement to permit the stationing of Japanese forces on Guam.
What makes his suggestions disconcerting is not merely the establishment of a power bloc bound by the glue of collective self-defence – an arrangement that has much to do with defence as a growling provocation. Ishiba is intent on being even more provocative in suggesting that any such “Asian version of NATO must also specifically consider America’s sharing of nuclear weapons or the introduction of nuclear weapons into the region.”
Were such a move taken, it would, at least from a Japanese perspective, fly in the face of a doctrine in place since December 1967, when Prime Minister Eisaku Sato articulated the three non-nuclear principles of “not possessing, not producing and not permitting the introduction of nuclear weapons, in line with Japan’s Peace Constitution.”
As with so many in the business of preaching about international security, false paradigms and analysis are offered from the pulpit. The Japanese PM, much like neoconservative hawks in Washington and Canberra, prove incapable of seeing conflict in generic, transferrable terms. “Ukraine today is Asia tomorrow,” he falsely reasons. “Replacing Russia with China and Ukraine and Taiwan, the absence of a collective self-defense system like NATO in Asia means that wars are likely to break out because there is no obligation for mutual defense.” Ergo, he reasons, the need for an Asian version of NATO.
Ishiba’s suggestions have yet to gather momentum. Daniel Kritenbrink, US assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, told a forum on Indo-Pacific security at the Stimson Center in September that he preferred the current “latticework” approach to US regional alliances featuring, for instance, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue involving Japan, India and Australia, and AUKUS, featuring Australia and the UK. “It’s too early to talk about collective security in that context, and [the creation of] more formal institutions.” It was far better to focus on “investing in the region’s existing formal architecture and continuing to build this network of formal and information relationships.”
Kritenbrink’s analysis hardly gets away from the suspicion that the “latticework” theory of US security in the Indo-Pacific is but a form of NATO in embryo. As Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said with tartness in 2022, “The real goal for the [US] Indo-Pacific strategy is to establish an Indo-Pacific version of NATO. These perverse actions run counter to common aspirations of the region and are doomed to fail.”
From New Delhi, the view towards such an alliance is not a glowing one. On October 1, at an event held by Washington’s Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar proved dismissive of any NATO replication in Asia. “We don’t have that kind of strategic architecture in mind.” India had “a different history and different way of approaching” its security considerations.
With the return of Donald Trump to the White House, the collective defence hawks so keen on adding kindling to conflict will have their teeth chattering. Ishiba’s ideas may well have to be put back into cold storage – at least in the interim. And as luck would have it, his own prime ministerial tenure already looks threatened.
China has announced the baselines of its territorial sea around the Scarborough Shoal to strengthen its claim over the South China Sea feature that lies within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.
China has also formally named 64 islands and reefs, many of which are claimed by several countries, risking escalating tensions with its neighbors.
A baseline under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, orUNCLOS, is a line that runs along the coast of a country or an island, from which the extent of the territorial sea and other maritime zones such as the exclusive economic zone and extended continental shelf are measured.
A foreign ministry’s spokesperson in Beijing said in a statement on Sunday that the Chinese government delimited and announced the baselines of the territorial sea adjacent to Huangyan Dao “in accordance with international law,” referring to the shoal by its Chinese name.
“This is a natural step by the Chinese government to lawfully strengthen marine management and is consistent with international law and common practices,” the ministry said, adding: “Huangyan Dao has always been China’s territory.”
Radio Free Asia contacted the Philippine foreign department for comment but did not receive a reply by the time of publication.
Scarborough Shoal, known in the Philippines as Bajo de Masinloc, is a triangular chain of reefs about 125 nautical miles (232 kilometers) from Luzon, the main Philippine island. Claimed by China, the Philippines and Taiwan, the shoal has been under Beijing’s de-facto control since 2012.
In 2016, an U.N. arbitration tribunal ruled against all of China’s claims to the reefs in the South China Sea, including to the Scarborough Shoal. It also ruled that Scarborough Shoal is a rock, not an island, which means that even if the shoal is entitled to a 12-nautical-mile territorial sea, it cannot generate an exclusive economic zone but instead is recognized as part of the exclusive economic zone and continental shelf of the Philippines.
‘Cornering the Philippines’
Beijing’s announcement came right after Manila passed the Maritime Zones Act and the Archipelagic Sea Lanes Law, which China “strongly condemns and firmly rejects,” according to the Chinese foreign ministry. The ministry also reiterated that China had neither accepted nor participated in the 2016 arbitration, nor did China accept or recognize the ruling.
Also on Sunday, the Chinese ministries of natural resources and of civil affairs announced Chinese standard geographical names for 64 islands and reefs in the South China Sea, including several features within the Second Thomas Shoal and Sabina Shoal, both also claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan.
The naming is seen by analysts as to assert China’s sovereignty over the features.
“China is really pushing the Philippines to the corner, now Manila has no choice but to respond,” said a regional South China Sea expert who declined to be identified because they are not authorized to speak to the media.
“As the formalization of names is also related to Vietnam’s claims over some South China Sea features, I expect the Vietnamese government to react in the near future,” added the expert, “This is an escalation of tension on China’s part.”
Image from handout video footage taken on April 30, 2024 by the Philippine Coast Guard shows its ship BRP Bagacay (C) being hit by water cannon from Chinese coast guard vessels near Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea.
Separately, Jay Batongbacal, a maritime expert from the University of the Philippines College of Law, told RFA that “China’s reaction and statements are not unexpected, given their increasingly aggressive posture and belligerence toward the Philippines in the past decade.”
“They are naturally opposed to the Philippines’ official actions that implement international law, UNCLOS, and the 2016 South China Sea Arbitration Award,” Batongbacal said.
Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning, while commenting on Manila’s Maritime Zones Act, said China urged the Philippines to “immediately end any unilateral move that may escalate the dispute and complicate the situation, and keep the South China Sea peaceful and stable.”
“China reserves the right of taking all measures necessary,” Mao added.
Batongbacal referred to a June clash between a Philippine resupply mission to an outpost in the Second Thomas Shoal and Chinese vessels as he warned of the possibility of China escalating risks in disputed waters.
“Given the array of military and paramilitary forces that China has been employing against the Philippines, including private fishing vessels and civilian government ships, and the illegal use of force against the Philippines on 17 June 2024, any further escalation that increases the risk of armed conflict can only come from China,” he told RFA.
China’s state broadcaster has launched a historical TV show with an all-star cast dramatizing the role of President Xi Jinping’s father Xi Zhongxun in the communist revolution, although social media reaction and commentators suggest that young people in China would rather watch “Stranger Things.”
“When the wind blew from the northwest, the revolutionaries … watered their faith with their own blood and lived their lives in hope,” state broadcaster CCTV said in a Weibo post announcing the launch of the 39-episode TV series with a short trailer on Nov. 5.
“I’m Xi Zhongxun,” whispers a youthful version of the revolutionary veteran over footage of idealistic young men saluting the communist flag and charging into battle.
“I will forever fight for the struggling masses with all my might,” he pledges over full-costume footage of historic battles amid the yellow dust of northwest China, with red flags appearing in nearly every shot.
“I make revolution with the Communist Party because it’s through them that I saw the light of truth, and was given something to fight for,” the character says.
Later, the narrator intones: “Xi Zhongxun, a leader of the people who came from the people,” followed by a shot in which the elder Xi plays with his young son, Xi Jinping, driving home a political point about the current Chinese leader’s lineage.
Personality cult
The show comes amid growing signs of a Mao-style personality cult around Xi, as institutions and political figures compete to show the utmost loyalty to Xi and his personal brand of political ideology, including via propaganda movies and TV shows.
The latest show, titled “The Northwest Years,” tells the story of the elder Xi’s role as a young man in the war against the Japanese in the country’s northwest, defending China’s borders and promoting land reforms to free farming communities from the yoke of local landlords.
A scene from the historical TV drama “The Northwest Years.”
With a star-studded cast playing young and good-looking versions of revolutionary cadres and military commanders like Xi Zhongxun, Liu Zhidan and Xie Zichang, the show’s action focuses on the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Revolutionary Base. Leaders Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, and generals Zhu De and Peng Dehuai also make an appearance.
Directed by Dong Yachun and starring actors Jin Dong, Yu Hewei, Ding Yongdai, Wu Lei, and Ni Ni, the show is clearly a big-budget production that’s hoping to reach a wide audience across China.
Yet comments on the show were largely very similar and repeated the slogans in the original post, with users repeatedly commenting “keep the faith” and “live in hope” under the Weibo post.
By contrast, Weibo users got into a somewhat livelier discussion under a newly released trailer for Season 5 of Netflix retro supernatural drama Stranger Things, which is scheduled for release next year.
“Is it finally coming?” user @ARTISTVW commented from the northern province of Shaanxi, while @Macabre-Chi thought it “looks good.”
“It is good,” wrote @Nutwo-1-1, adding: “Stick with it and you’ll soon be hooked.”
“Haven’t you seen it?” commented @-Freedom-to-go-crazy from the southwestern province of Sichuan. “It’s very good.”
“The plotting is very tight, and there are no boring moments,” @blue2w added from neighboring Yunnan province. “It’s full of intelligence and doesn’t treat the audience like fools.”
While Netflix isn‘t officially available in China, viewers behind the Great Firewall can still find ways to binge the Duffer Brothers’ 1980s nostalgia-fest, including using circumvention tools like VPNs or BitTorrent, according to media reports from 2019, when Season 3 was released.
Preference for US shows
A Chinese journalist and critic who gave only the surname Gao for fear of reprisals said many young people in China prefer to watch American TV shows, which can still be accessed via circumvention tools.
“U.S. TV series like ‘Perry Mason,’ ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Stranger Things’ are hugely popular in China,” he said. “They are downloaded hundreds of thousands or even millions of times, according to my knowledge.”
He said most people wouldn’t bother with revolutionary period dramas like “The Northwest Years” unless forced to watch them by their bosses or local party committee as part of a political study task at work or in school.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, on screen, delivers a speech during the celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on July 1, 2021.
“Nobody’s going to watch this kind of show unless they have to,” Gao said, adding that the role played by Xi Zhongxun in the 1969 Ninth Party Congress headed by late supreme leader Mao Zedong had been hugely inflated.
“Xi Zhongxun was very low-ranking at the time of the Ninth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, and played a very small role only,” he said. “I saw a scene showing him raising the curtain for Mao Zedong … which I think is a bit over the top.”
But he said audiences were still unlikely to be impressed, despite the lavish costume and set design.
“People are no longer interested in these dramas, which have nothing to do with the lives of ordinary people,” he told RFA Mandarin in a recent interview.
He said such shows no longer have the captive audiences via free-to-air state broadcasters that they used to enjoy, as people can now go online for their entertainment.
A resident of the northern province of Shaanxi who gave only the surname Li for fear of reprisals said Xi Zhongxun was more of a political than a military leader.
“Xi Zhongxun’s most important political achievement was to instigate the Hengshan Uprising, which was a rebellion of two divisions of the National Revolutionary Army stationed in Yulin, in all about 5,000 to 6,000 people,” Li said.
“This uprising cleared the obstacles for the Yan’an troops to move northward and ensured the safety of Mao Zedong’s troops based in Yan’an,” he said.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Qian Lang for RFA Mandarin.
When Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory message to Donald Trump on his election victory this week, he warned that both countries stand to “lose from confrontation,” amid growing concerns that a Trump administration could be further bad news for China’s flagging economy.
“Xi Jinping noted that history tells us that both countries stand to gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation,” China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on its website, citing Xi.
“A China-U.S. relationship with stable, healthy and sustainable development serves the common interests of the two countries and meets the expectations of the international community,” it paraphrased Xi as saying.
“It is hoped that the two sides will, in the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation, enhance dialogue and communication, properly manage differences, expand mutually beneficial cooperation, and find the right way for China and the United States to get along with each other in the new era to the benefit of the two countries and the world,” the statement said.
It said China’s Vice President Han Zheng sent a congratulatory message to J.D. Vance on his election as U.S. vice president on the same day.
Trump’s victory has sparked concern in China, where many expect the next president to be tougher on China than his predecessor, particularly on trade and economic issues, with repercussions for an already struggling economy.
“Trump’s re-election as U.S. president won’t improve relations with China, but will continue sanctions and the trade war by increasing tariffs,” veteran political journalist Gao Yu said, citing a sharp fall in Chinese stock markets on the news of Trump’s victory.
“The sharp fall in Chinese markets were part of a psychological reaction from the people,” Gao said. “China may talk a good fight, but actually it’s very worried about a Trump presidency.”
Tariffs
Rana Mitter, director of the University of Oxford China Centre, said the Sino-U.S. relationship will likely go through a turbulent period if Trump follows through on his pledge to impose 60% tariffs on Chinese imports.
“This is obviously a very, very high level of tariff or import tax to place on goods,” Mitter told Radio Free Asia a recent interview. “And since it’s coming at a moment when China’s economy is vulnerable, it’s likely to be regarded as the first stage in an extremely detailed and probably quite rigorous negotiation between the two sides about resetting the trade relationship.”
A man walks past a screen showing Chinese stock market movements in Beijing, Nov. 7, 2024.
“China … is also keen to try and make sure that its currently rather sluggish economy which is not currently operating at full strength, is not further made vulnerable,” he said.
But he said negotiations with China would likely come as part of the Trump administration’s attempt to rework its trade relations with much of the rest of the world, including the European Union and other economies.
Mitter dismissed recent speculation that the Chinese government would alter its expected fiscal stimulus package in response to the U.S. election result, however.
“The primary motivation I think for the fiscal stimulus within China is domestic,” he said. “The fear that consumer demand simply isn’t picking up enough to actually play the role that it needs to in revitalizing the economy.”
But he added: “Policies which create economic uncertainty within China, for instance tariffs, might make that situation more delicate and vulnerable.”
‘Anti-Chinese Communist Party flavor’
A Chinese researcher who gave only the surname Jia for fear of reprisals said Trump’s re-election will definitely have a negative impact on the Chinese economy.
“Trump’s China policy has a clear anti-Chinese Communist Party flavor, which will exacerbate economic and political chaos in China,” Jia said. “The Chinese economy is already sluggish, and the re-intensification of the trade war will further hit exporters, and could lead to more bankruptcies and unemployment.”
People walk through a quiet shopping mall in Beijing, Nov. 3, 2024.
A retired Chinese official who gave only the surname Tang for fear of reprisals said Trump is seen by many Chinese people as different from traditional politicians, and acts more like a “trader.”
“The ultimate goal is to see who will bring the most benefits to the country, and to the world,” Tang said. “That’s what the American people expect.”
He said Trump’s victory was unlikely to make the Sino-U.S. relationship any worse, however.
“Sino-U.S. relations have never really eased,” Tang said. “The conflict is rooted in the different ideologies of the two countries, which won’t change with the arrival of a new president.”
He said the less confrontational approach taken in the era of late supreme leader Deng Xiaoping wasn’t genuine detente, only a matter of the Chinese Communist Party biding its time.
“It’s impossible for there to be detente, because the problems are bone-deep,” he said.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Roseanne Gerin.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Qian Lang and Lucie Lo for RFA Mandarin.
Ōriwa Tahupōtiki Haddon (Ngāti Ruanui), Reconstruction of the Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, c. 1940.
For the past few weeks I have been on the road in Aotearoa (New Zealand) and Australia at the invitation of groups such as Te Kuaka, Red Ant, and the Communist Party of Australia. Both countries were shaped by British colonialism, marked by the violent displacement of native communities and theft of their lands. Today, as they become part of the US-led militarisation of the Pacific, their native populations have fought to defend their lands and way of life.
On 6 February 1840, Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi) was signed by representatives of the British Crown and the Māori groups of Aotearoa. The treaty (which has no point of comparison in Australia) claimed that it would ‘actively protect Māori in the use of their lands, fisheries, forests, and other treasured possessions’ and ‘ensure that both parties to [the treaty] would live together peacefully and develop New Zealand together in partnership’. While I was in Aotearoa, I learned that the new coalition government seeks to ‘reinterpret’ the Treaty of Waitangi in order to roll back protections for Māori families. This includes shrinking initiatives such as the Māori Health Authority (Te Aka Whai Ora) and programmes that promote the use of the Māori language (Te Reo Maori) in public institutions. The fight against these cutbacks has galvanised not only the Māori communities, but large sections of the population who do not want to live in a society that violates its treaties. When Aboriginal Australian Senator Lidia Thorpe disrupted the British monarch Charles’s visit to the country’s parliament last month, she echoed a sentiment that spreads across the Pacific, yelling, as she was dragged out by security: ‘You committed genocide against our people. Give us our land back! Give us what you stole from us – our bones, our skulls, our babies, our people. … We want a treaty in this country. … You are not my king. You are not our king’.
Walangkura Napanangka (Pintupi), Johnny Yungut’s Wife, Tjintjintjin, 2007.
With or without a treaty, both Aotearoa and Australia have seen a groundswell of sentiment for increased sovereignty across the islands of the Pacific, building on a centuries-long legacy. This wave of sovereignty has now begun to turn towards the shores of the massive US military build-up in the Pacific Ocean, which has its sights set on an illusionary threat from China. US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, speaking at a September 2024 Air & Space Forces Association convention on China and the Indo-Pacific, represented this position well when he said ‘China is not a future threat. China is a threat today’. The evidence for this, Kendall said, is that China is building up its operational capacities to prevent the United States from projecting its power into the western Pacific Ocean region. For Kendall, the problem is not that China was a threat to other countries in East Asia and the South Pacific, but that it is preventing the US from playing a leading role in the region and surrounding waters – including those just outside of China’s territorial limits, where the US has conducted joint ‘freedom of navigation’ exercises with its allies. ‘I am not saying war in the Pacific is imminent or inevitable’, Kendall continued. ‘It is not. But I am saying that the likelihood is increasing and will continue to do so’.
George Parata Kiwara (Ngāti Porou and Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki), Jacinda’s Plan, 2021.
In 1951, in the midst of the Chinese Revolution (1949) and the US war on Korea (1950–1953), senior US foreign policy advisor and later Secretary of State John Foster Dulles helped formulate several key treaties, such as the 1951 Australia, New Zealand, and United States Security (ANZUS) Treaty, which brought Australia and New Zealand firmly out of British influence and into the US’s war plans, and the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, which ended the formal US occupation of Japan. These deals – part of the US’s aggressive strategy in the region – came alongside the US occupation of several island nations in the Pacific where the US had already established military facilities, including ports and airfields: Hawaii (since 1898), Guam (since 1898), and Samoa (since 1900). Out of this reality, which swept from Japan to Aotearoa, Dulles developed the ‘island chain strategy’, a so-called containment strategy that would establish a military presence on three ‘island chains’ extending outward from China to act as an aggressive perimeter and prevent any power other than the US from commanding the Pacific Ocean.
Over time, these three island chains became hardened strongholds for the projection of US power, with about four hundred bases in the region established to maintain US military assets from Alaska to southern Australia. Despite signing various treaties to demilitarise the region (such as the South Pacific Nuclear Free Treaty, also known as the Treaty of Rarotonga in 1986), the US has moved lethal military assets, including nuclear weapons, through the region for threat projection against China, North Korea, Russia, and Vietnam (at different times and with different intensity). This ‘island chain strategy’ includes military installations in French colonial outposts such as Wallis and Futuna, New Caledonia, and French Polynesia. The US also has military arrangements with the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau.
While some of these Pacific Island nations are used as bases for US and French power projection against China, others have been used as nuclear test sites. Between 1946 and 1958, the US conducted sixty-seven nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands. One of them, conducted in Bikini Atoll, detonated a thermonuclear weapon a thousand times more powerful than the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Darlene Keju Johnson, who was only three years old at the time of the Bikini Atoll detonation and was one of the first Marshallese women to speak publicly about the nuclear testing in the islands, encapsulated the sentiment of the islanders in one of her speeches: ‘We don’t want our islands to be used to kill people. The bottom line is we want to live in peace’.
Jef Cablog (Cordillera), Stern II, 2021.
Yet, despite the resistance of people like Keju Johnson (who went on to become a director in the Marshall Islands Ministry of Health), the US has been ramping up its military activity in the Pacific over the past fifteen years, such as by refusing to close bases, opening new ones, and expanding others to increase their military capacity. In Australia – without any real public debate – the government decided to supplement US funding to expand the runway on Tindal Air Base in Darwin so that it could house US B-52 and B-1 bombers with nuclear capacity. It also decided to expand submarine facilities from Garden Island to Rockingham and build a new high-tech radar facility for deep-space communications in Exmouth. These expansions came on the heels of the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) partnership in 2021, which has allowed the US and the UK to fully coordinate their strategies. The partnership also sidelined the French manufacturers that until then had supplied Australia with diesel-powered submarines and ensured that it would instead buy nuclear-powered submarines from the UK and US. Eventually, Australia will provide its own submarines for the missions the US and UK are conducting in the waters around China.
Over the past few years, the US has also sought to draw Canada, France, and Germany into the US Pacific project through the US Pacific Partnership Strategy for the Pacific Islands (2022) and the Partnership for the Blue Pacific (2022). In 2021, at the France-Oceania Summit, there was a commitment to reengage with the Pacific, with France bringing new military assets into New Caledonia and French Polynesia. The US and France have also opened a dialogue about coordinating their military activities against China in the Pacific.
Yvette Bouquet (Kanak), Profil art, 1996.
Yet these partnerships are only part of the US ambitions in the region. The US is also opening new bases in the northern islands of the Philippines – the first such expansion in the country since the early 1990s – while intensifying its arm sales with Taiwan, to whom it is providing lethal military technology (including missile defence and tank systems intended to deter a Chinese military assault). Meanwhile the US has improved its coordination with Japan’s military by deciding to establish joint force headquarters, which means that the command structure for US troops in Japan and South Korea will be autonomously controlled by the US command structure in these two Asian countries (not by orders from Washington).
However, the US-European war project is not going as smoothly as anticipated. Protest movements in the Solomon Islands (2021) and New Caledonia (2024), led by communities who are no longer willing to be subjected to neocolonialism, have come as a shock to the US and its allies. It will not be easy for them to build their island chain in the Pacific.
This story was reported with the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. Read their story here
On an early morning in late July, a luxury expedition cruise ship, boasting the latest in high-end Arctic travel, made a slow approach to the docks of Ny-Ålesund, a remote settlement in Norway’s Svalbard Islands.
At 79 degrees north latitude, Ny-Ålesund is the northernmost inhabited outpost on Earth. Isolated in the Arctic’s desolate winter, it hosts just 30 year-round residents.
Newayer, a Chinese travel agency, chartered the vessel for 183 tourists from Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing. Each passenger paid at least $13,000 for a two-week “Three Arctic Islands” tour, marketed as an exclusive opportunity to reach the “top of the Earth,” complete with “the luxury of Chinese hospitality.”
Clad in matching red jackets bearing a polar bear logo, the travelers disembarked at their first stop: China’s Yellow River Research Station in Ny-Ålesund.
There they marked the 20th anniversary of the station – one of several research facilities established on Svalbard by different nations. More than 100 Chinese tourists waved national flags beneath a Chinese Communist Party-style banner hung on the research station’s door. The travel agency’s blog likened the celebration to “raising the Chinese national flag during the Olympics.”
Among the participants, a woman in a People’s Liberation Army, or PLA, uniform was seen saluting and posing for photos. A PLA Ground Force patch is visible on her right arm, two professional cameras are slung over her shoulders.
This photo from an internal Norwegian government document seen by RFA and NRK shows a woman in a People’s Liberation Army uniform saluting during ceremonies to mark the 20th anniversary of China’s Yellow River Research Station in Svalbard, Norway.
The episode has raised serious alarm in Norway, according to experts and government discussions reviewed by RFA and NRK. Military function and symbolism on Svalbard is highly restricted, and a treaty that governs foreign presence on the island forbids military activity.
Yet Chinese interests have blatantly disregarded these prohibitions, in what experts say is a prime example of China’s increasing willingness to push the bounds of legal acceptability to exert its influence and power.
Indeed, RFA and NRK can reveal that at least eight tourists on the cruise were PLA veterans, with at least one still appearing to hold an on-going (though not active duty) role with the Chinese armed forces. The PLA-linked tourists participated in a co-ordinated display of nationalism in the Arctic while on board their cruise ship and on Svalbard.
The jingoistic displays align with what experts regard as “gray zone” tactics employed by Beijing, in which blurry lines between civilian and military actions are exploited to exert influence.
It comes as China-watchers warn that the West is ill-prepared to address the geopolitical consequences of this flexing of power.
“The big picture of China’s ambitions in the Arctic is that it reflects a clear, long-term strategic goal: China wants to be a significant presence in the Arctic,” says Isaac Kardon, a senior fellow for China Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington D.C. think tank.
Since declaring itself a “near-Arctic state” in 2018—despite lacking territorial claims—China has steadily built its presence through legal, military, commercial, and individual channels.
Svalbard has become the latest frontline.
An Arctic Battleground for Great Powers
A remote Norwegian archipelago roughly twice the size of Hawaii, Svalbard lies less than 1,000 kilometers from the North Pole, some 650 kilometers north of mainland Norway.
Svalbard, Norway, April 5, 2023.
A land of dramatic peaks and glaciers, its location is of strategic as well as scientific importance. Its proximity to Russia’s Kola Peninsula—home to the Russian Northern Fleet and nuclear submarines—positions it as a critical focal point for military and resource interests.
Radar data collected from Svalbard can aid in missile trajectory calculations and satellite calibration. Experts caution that, in the event of a war, missile routes could increasingly traverse the Arctic skies—covering the shortest distance from Beijing to Washington.
“The role Svalbard might play in a large-scale conflict involving the Arctic cannot be ignored,” warns a recentreport from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“If tensions with the United States continue to worsen, the Arctic becomes the only other viable route (for China) to Europe for significant volumes of energy,” says Kardon.
As melting ice opens up new shipping lanes, the waters around Svalbard are set to become even more pivotal in global trade and shifting geopolitical dynamics.
In the face of these changes, governance of Svalbard– until now a sleepy affair– has come into focus.
A 1920 treaty granted Norway sovereignty over the archipelago while allowing signatory nations to engage in peaceful scientific and economic activities. The treaty prohibits any “warlike purposes,” and gives Norway authority to enforce these restrictions on the islands.
Russia has had a decades-long presence, first with mining operations during the Cold War. Today, there is still an active mining town, Barentsburg, and a Russian research station.
Lion statues adorn the entrance of China’s Yellow River Research Station in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, Norway, April 6, 2023.
China joined the Svalbard Treaty in 1925 but didn’t establish a scientific presence until 2004; the founding of the Yellow River Research Station marked a significant step forward in its Arctic ambitions.
According to China’s official website, the station supports scientific observation, monitoring, and research in glaciology, and conducts research in ecology, space physics, atmospheric studies, and geographic information. Its goal is to “contribute to global efforts in addressing climate change and other challenges,” the website says.
Not everyone is convinced that it is all benign.
“The fact is, when we’re talking about Russia and China, we are talking about authoritarian states. There’s no such thing really as a completely civilian, independent agency, especially one with very strong strategic implications,” says Marc Lanteigne, a Political Science professor at The Arctic University of Norway.
“Any activity, regardless of how civilian in nature it is, will produce information which will get back to the Chinese military.”
Last year, Russia held what Norwegian officials described as a militaristic parade in Barentsburg—something never before seen on Svalbard—in support of Moscow’s troops in Ukraine. Dozens of trucks, tractors, and snowmobiles moved through the town waving Russian flags. A Russian company was fined for unauthorized use of a Mi-8 helicopter that flew overhead.
Norway is concerned about the rise of Russian—and now Chinese—nationalist displays on the island, says Lanteigne.
An internal report from the Norwegian Polar Institute raised the alarm over the celebration in front of the Chinese research station.
An internal report from the Norwegian Polar Institute, the governing authority on Svalbard Island, sounded alarm over the high-profile July celebration staged by the cruise ship tourists in front of the Chinese research station.
The report, seen by RFA and NRK, found the activities “particularly problematic” as they showed a clear disregard for regulations. A month before the event, Norwegian authorities had explicitly denied the station permission to hang a celebratory banner given its nationalistic nature– but the station displayed it anyway, with Chinese scientists photographed posing in front of it.
The Institute noted that tourists appeared “well-prepared” with Chinese flags and stickers, and that photographs were organized in such a way that “it is likely that the photos will be used by the Chinese authorities.”
A woman at the Svalbard celebration wore a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Type 21 uniform and cap, center photo, and arm patches signifying the PLA and PLA ground forces, right photo.
It made specific mention of the woman in the military fatigues, which they identified as PLA garb. The report noted that the authority was unsure what to do.
Camilla Brekke, Director of the Norwegian Polar Institute later told RFA and NRK: “New Ålesund is a Norwegian research station, and we do not see it as useful for the various institutions that rent premises there to hang banners, as we want a unified research nation.”
“It would not be a successful practice if various research institutions in Ny-Ålesund start hanging such banners on the houses they rent.”
Some experts fear the government has been caught on the back foot.
“I get the feeling that the Norwegian government is still playing catch-up on this,” says Lanteigne.
This photo from an internal Norwegian government document seen by RFA and NRK shows Chinese tourists holding a banner by the entrance to the Yellow River Research Station in Svalbard, Norway, July 2024.
The government’s overall silence about its geopolitics has consequencesaccording to Andreas Østhagen, a Senior Fellow at The Arctic Institute think tank. “When it comes to Svalbard and foreign and security policy, Norway’s strategy has been to sit quietly and do nothing,” he wrote.
“The less frank and transparent Norway is about issues pertaining to Svalbard, the more misunderstandings and conspiracy theories are likely to emerge, even among close allies.”
Following its internal report, the Norwegian government said its representatives had met with the Chinese embassy in Oslo and reiterated the expectations for international guests, emphasizing that “all activities in Ny-Ålesund must be civil.”
They requested an explanation of the person in military dress and were told that the person “was a private citizen or cruise tourist wearing military-style clothing deemed appropriate for the Arctic wilderness,” they told RFA and NRK.
The Chinese embassy in Norway said that the cruise passengers were private tourists visiting Svalbard independently. “The Chinese scientific team in Ny-Ålesund did not invite any tourists to participate in the relevant celebration activities,” the embassy told RFA and NRK.
“China has always actively participated in Arctic affairs in accordance with international law,” it said.
It did not directly address the questions of why banners and flags were displayed despite prior warnings and why military dress was allowed.
Chinese tourists celebrate for a drone-style video at China’s Yellow River Research Station in Svalbard, Norway, July 2024
Entering the ‘gray zone’
Fan Li, the CEO of Newayer, the tour agency, told RFA and NRK that their tour group informed the research station of its plans to stage a celebration at Yellow River, and to hang banners and wave Chinese flags outside the station. The station never objected or even raised it as an issue.
“The staff at the Yellow River Station came out to engage with us, and everyone was quite happy about that,” Li told RFA and NRK.
A video of the tour group’s celebration was posted to Newayer’s social media account. It further features eight guests telling the camera that they are PLA veterans and perform coordinated military salutes to China while a patriotic song plays as a soundtrack. Afterward, passengers gathered to share their stories of service in the PLA.
Li said that the presence of veterans on board was merely a “coincidence” and that when Newayer realized the connection, the company organized a ceremony and incorporated the clip into its video.
According to Li, all of those featured were retired, as it’s difficult for active military members in China to travel abroad.
However, one cruise participant, who identifies herself in the video as Yin Liu, was photographed wearing military garb bearing the insignia of the PLA on Svalbard. On camera, Liu says she enlisted in 1976 and fought in Vietnam in 1984 and gave the name of her unit.
Ying Yu Lin, an expert on the PLA at Tamkang University in Taiwan, identified Liu’s fatigues as a “Type 21” training uniform issued by China’s Ministry of Defense in 2023. It is restricted to military personnel and would not be accessible to civilians, Lin said. The “Type 21” uniform can be seen on the Chinese Defense Department website.
This photo from an internal Norwegian government document seen by RFA and NRK shows a woman in a People’s Liberation Army uniform walking during ceremonies marking the 20th anniversary of China’s Yellow River Research Station in Svalbard, Norway.
Lin added that based on her age, the uniform, and other descriptions, it was likely that Liu was a member of a local militia unit. Militia units are one of three branches of the Chinese armed forces, the other two being the PLA and the People’s Armed Police, or PAP.
Attempts to reach Liu were unanswered by press time.
But regardless of her status or those of other PLA-linked tourists, “the sight of Chinese veterans waving national flags and performing salutes in the Arctic serves as an effective piece of internal propaganda,” says Lin. “While foreign observers may overlook it, within China, it symbolizes the assertion of influence in a geopolitically significant region.”
He added: “It’s about operating within legal ambiguities—pushing boundaries without directly violating laws. This time, we see veterans in PLA uniform; next time, it could be active-duty soldiers without the uniform, gradually testing international responses and how far they can go.”
These displays represent “classic ‘gray zone’ activity—conduct that doesn’t overtly breach regulations but pushes boundaries,” according to Kardon. “On one hand, it may appear as patriotic tourists expressing national pride; on the other, it subtly normalizes a more visible Chinese presence, legitimizing scientific activities that can serve dual purposes, like gathering environmental data and military intelligence.”
Such incidents can serve to gauge reactions, particularly from Norway and other Arctic nations, helping China understand which behaviors are tolerated, he said. “Given the strategic importance of the Arctic to the U.S., Russia, and increasingly China, there is little doubt that this expanding presence is deliberate.”
Members of China’s Arctic expedition team, based at the Yellow River Research Station, take a boat out for sampling on the Austre Lovenbreen glacier in Svalbard, Norway, June 22, 2024.
Questions of diplomacy
But sources familiar with diplomatic discussions say that Norway is unlikely to take a leading role in pushing back against China.
“Like many countries, Norway just doesn’t have a lot of equities in its dealings with China,” says Kardon. Overt criticism or perceived slights can cause notable damage, like in 2010, when Beijing banned imports of Norwegian salmon after its Nobel committee awarded the Peace Prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.
But as long as that’s the case, room for more muscular tactics in the Arctic will grow. Last month as China celebrated the 75th anniversary of the People’s Republic, the Chinese Coast Guard engaged in joint operations with Russian forces in the Arctic. This was preceded in September by a meeting of Russian and Chinese officials in Beijing to discuss economic development and resource extraction in the region, and earlier, a Chinese and Russian meeting in Svalbard to explore opening a joint research center in Pyramiden, a former Soviet mining hub on the islands.
“So if you’re looking for a pattern here, I would say this is the latest version of what China and Russia are trying to do—find a way to get to the red line without crossing it,” says Lanteigne, referring to the Yellow River celebration incident. “It is a very subtle signal, one that really demonstrates that China is now starting to deviate more directly from Norway regarding what is and is not proper activity on Svalbard.”
Lanteigne views this as a pressing challenge that the Norwegian government must confront head-on.
“I think there needs to be the understanding that with the Arctic beginning to militarize as a whole, Svalbard is caught in it, whether it likes it or not.”
Edited by Boer Deng
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Jane Tang for RFA Investigative.
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