Authorities in the Chinese capital are stepping up security measures ahead of celebrations of the 75th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China on Tuesday, slapping restrictions on who may enter the city, rights lawyers and activists told RFA Mandarin.
Police have been following rights activists and lawyers, detaining their family members, or preventing them from entering Beijing, while the phones of outspoken journalist Gao Yu remain blocked ahead of the National Day holiday, they said.
The moves form part of China’s “stability maintenance” operations, which kick in ahead of politically sensitive dates or major events, in a bid to stave off potential threats to the ruling Chinese Communist Party before they can occur.
One of the first to be targeted was Li Wenzu, the activist wife of prominent rights attorney Wang Quanzhang, who was detained on entering Beijing in recent days, Wang told RFA in an interview on Monday.
“Li Wenzu got back to Beijing from out of town a few days ago, and was stopped by police at the railway station,” Wang said. “They detained her in the police station on the pretext of checking her ID.”
“This was because Oct. 1 is a major holiday,” said Wang, in a reference to China’s National Day, which marks the founding of the People’s Republic of China by late supreme leader Mao Zedong on Oct. 1, 1949.
“She was detained for a few hours, before being picked up by officials from the local government [where we live],” he said. “Li Wenzu has been to Beijing dozens of times in the past and has never been stopped or had her ID checked.”
“It shows that they’ve stepped up their so-called stability maintenance operations,” Wang said.
Wang said he was also followed by state security police for 50 kilometers while driving away from Beijing on Sunday.
Independent political commentator Ji Feng, a former student leader of 1989 pro-democracy movement on Tiananmen Square, said he has been barred from entering Beijing.
“I’m currently in Yanjiao,” Ji said, referring to a town just outside Beijing city limits in the northern province of Hebei. “Beijing is just across the river.”
But Ji, who once lived in Beijing but was exiled to his hometown in southwestern Guizhou province in June 2023, has been warned off trying to cross the bridge by state security police.
“They straight up told me I can’t enter Beijing, that no politically sensitive figures are allowed in during sensitive periods,” he said.
“This year is the 75th Anniversary, which is a medium-importance milestone compared with the major milestones every 10 years,” Ji said.
China’s President Xi Jinping speaks during a National Day reception on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on September 30, 2024.
While a person familiar with the situation of the Tiananmen Mothers, who campaign for the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, said they haven’t been forced to leave the city, the authorities have stepped up monitoring of key activists who already live in the city.
State security police are on high alert, and one activist told RFA Mandarin they have left the city of their own accord to avoid unwanted surveillance, and plan to return after the National Day celebrations are over.
Communication blocked
Meanwhile, a friend of independent political journalist Gao Yu, who has been incommunicado since last month, said police have succeeded in blocking all of her attempts at making phone calls or going online in recent weeks.
“A well-wisher recently gave Gao Yu a sim card, but when she inserted it into her phone and went to make the first call, the phone was blocked again,” Gao’s friend told Radio Free Asia on Monday. “Gao Yu can’t even make a phone call.”
“She needs to use the phone to make an appointment with her doctor,” they said.
Rights activists in Wuhan, Shanghai, Changsha and other parts of China have told RFA Mandarin that they have also been told by local authorities not to go anywhere during the National Day celebrations, and that they will be under close surveillance during the holiday period.
But a shortage of money means that fewer activists are being taken on supervised, out-of-town “vacations” than in previous years, one activist said.
Instead, the authorities are stepping up surveillance of people in their own homes to save time and money, they said.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Joshua Lipes.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Chen Zifei for RFA Mandarin.
China has conducted what it called “routine” naval and air exercises near the Scarborough Shoal in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea, China’s military said.
The weekend drills were aimed at boosting capabilities in reconnaissance, surveillance, alert patrol, combat readiness and joint strike operations in real combat environments, the People’s Liberation Army, or PLA, said.
“On Sept. 28, the Southern Theater Command of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army organized routine exercises such as reconnaissance and early warning, sea and air patrols in the sea and air near China’s Huangyan island,” the command that’s responsible for the South China Sea said in a statement, referring to the shoal by its Chinese name.
Scarborough Shoal, known as Bajo de Masinloc in the Philippines, is about 125 nautical miles (232 kilometers) from the main Philippine island of Luzon. China now effectively controls it, even though a landmark international arbitration case in 2016 rejected Beijing’s claims to most of the South China Sea.
Also on Saturday, the Philippine military, together with Australian, Japanese, New Zealand and US forces, held joint maritime drills in the disputed waterway, drawing criticism from the PLA’s Southern Command.
“Some countries outside the region are disrupting the South China Sea and creating regional instability,” the Chinese military said.
China has repeatedly said that the U.S., as an outsider, has no say in the South China Sea.
On Friday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in New York to discuss a variety of issues including ways to reduce tension and avoid conflict in the South China Sea.
Wang reportedly emphasized that “China insists on resolving differences with countries directly concerned through dialogue and consultation.”
Five-nation joint drills
The joint drills on Saturday, involving navies from the Philippines and the four other nations, also took place in the vicinity of Scarborough Shoal, Philippine officials said.
Six Philippine warships joined the so-called Multilateral Marine Cooperative Activity, or MMCA, alongside three destroyers from the U.S., Japan and Australia, and a New Zealand replenishment vessel.
The Philippine military said an anti-submarine helicopter and search and rescue assets from the Philippines also took part in the MMCA, as well as two helicopters from the U.S., and a P-8 Poseidon aircraft and a helicopter from Australia.
Two Chinese vessels monitored the joint exercise but there was no reported confrontation.
Naval vessels from the Philippines, U.S., Japan, Australia and New Zealand taking part in the Multilateral Marine Cooperative Activity in the South China Sea on Sept. 28, 2024. (Philippine Armed Forces)
The exercise was “a clear display of our resistance to China’s bullying,” said Philippine Senator Risa Hontiveros.
“These exercises demonstrate the commitment of the international community to uphold the rules-based order in the entire South China Sea,” she said in a statement, “It shows that we who believe in the rule of law will not tolerate any form of violence, threat, or intimidation.”
“It has always been clear that it is China who is provoking tensions in the West Philippine Sea — not us — so it is China who must stop her aggression,” Hontiveros said, referring to the part of the South China Sea within the Philippine Exclusive Economic Zone.
An EEZ is typically 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) from a country’s coast and the coastal country has jurisdiction over natural resources in the waters and the seabed.
Edited by Mike Firn.
Jason Gutierrez in Manila contributed to this story.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA and BenarNews Staff.
Leadership rivals Jenrick, Cleverly and Tugendhat reject her comments, as row over her ‘excessive’ claim escalates
Q: Do you agree with Kemi Badenoch that some cultures are less valid than others?
Jenrick says culture matters. But he says he disagres with Badenoch on immigration numbers. He says he thinks you have to have a cap on numbers. And he also says he believes the UK has to leave the European convention on human rights. He says Badenoch is just talking about developing a plan in a few years time, and that’s “a recipe for infighting and for losing the public’s trust”.
China has launched an investigation into PVH Corp., the U.S. parent company of fashion brands Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, for suspected discriminatory measures by refusing to purchase cotton and other products from its northwestern region of Xinjiang, home to 12 million Uyghurs.
Analysts said the measure appears to be a retaliatory response by Beijing against companies complying with U.S. laws that ban the import of materials and products from Xinjiang suspected of using Uyghur forced labor.
“China is attempting to retaliate against U.S. sanctions on Xinjiang region by imposing its own sanctions on companies that follow U.S. sanctions,” said Anders Corr, principal of the New York-based political risk firm Corr Analytics. “It’s a very bad idea.”
“Beijing is trying to tell Calvin Klein not to follow U.S. law but to follow Chinese law,” he said.
China’s Ministry of Commerce said Tuesday that PVH Corp. must provide documentation and evidence within 30 days to show it did not engage in discriminatory practices over the past three years.
“The U.S. PVH Group is suspected of violating normal market trading principles and unreasonably boycotting Xinjiang cotton and other products without factual basis, seriously damaging the legitimate rights and interests of relevant Chinese companies and endangering China’s sovereignty, security and development interests,” the ministry said in a statement.
In response to the measure, Alison Rappaport, PVH’s vice president of external communications, said the company maintains strict compliance with relevant laws and regulations in the countries and regions where it operates.
“We are in communication with the Chinese Ministry of Commerce and will respond in accordance with the relevant regulations,” she said, without further comment.
Genocide
In 2021, the U.S. government declared that China’s repression of Uyghurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang, including mass detentions, the sterilization of women, forced labor and cultural and religious erasure, amounted to genocide and crimes against humanity. Legislatures in several Western countries passed similar declarations.
To punish China and get it to change its policies, the United States and other countries have banned the import of products from Xinjiang produced by Uyghur labor. About 90% of China’s cotton is produced in Xinjiang, most of which is exported.
Since June 2022, the U.S. government has blacklisted companies in China that make products linked to forced labor in Xinjiang under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, or UFLPA.
The law also authorizes sanctions on foreign individuals and entities found responsible for human rights abuses in the northwestern region.
Henryk Szadziewski, research director at the Uyghur Human Rights Project, said China is using the measure to lash back over criticism of its policies in Xinjiang.
“This is very much a message to multinational corporations that they should not comply with sanctions and other kinds of bans placed on entities operating in Xinjiang,” he said. “It definitely is a countermeasure to what is being done outside of China.”
Nevertheless, multinational companies that adhere to U.S. sanctions and exclude forced labor products from their supply chains could face repercussions in China, Szadziewski said.
“If you do want to operate in China, you really have to operate by their rules and not by the rules of elsewhere,” he said.
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcom Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Uyghar for RFA Uyghur.
A US circuit court panel appears ready to uphold a federal law that would effectively ban the popular social media network TikTok because it’s owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. The legal attacks on the video platform—which FAIR (8/5/20, 5/25/23, 11/13/23, 3/14/24) has written about before—are entering a new phase, in which judicial interpreters of the Constitution are acting as Cold War partisans, threatening to throw out civil liberties in favor of national security alarmism.
Earlier this year, despite widespread protest (Guardian, 3/7/24), President Joe Biden signed legislation forcing TikTok’s owner “to sell it or face a nationwide prohibition in the United States” (NBC, 4/24/24). Advocates for the ban charge that data collection—which is a function of most social media networks—poses a national security threat because of the platform’s Chinese ownership (Axios, 3/15/24).
Given that TikTok is a global platform, with 2 billion users worldwide, demands that ByteDance sell it off are in effect another name for a ban; an analogy would be Beijing allowing Facebook to operate in China only if Meta sold the platform to a non-US company.
‘Foreign adversary controlled’
The Wall Street Journal (9/18/24) stood up for the government’s right to ban speech it doesn’t like, i.e. that of “foreign adversaries.”
Now TikTok is fighting for its right to remain unbanned in the US court system, taking its case straight to the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals. All three of the judges, two of whom were Republican appointees, questioned TikTok’s plea that free speech was at stake. The discussion suggested that the ban will survive the appeal, and ultimately be decided by the right-wing-stacked Supreme Court.
The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial (9/18/24) praising the TikTok ban and the judges who appear ready to validate it, said:
But Congress didn’t restrict speakers on TikTok. What’s really at issue is Chinese control of the app, and TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company. TikTok is welcome to keep operating and its users to keep posting. The law merely says TikTok cannot do so while remaining what Congress calls a “foreign adversary controlled application.”
The DC Circuit’s panel grasped this distinction. Judge Douglas Ginsburg wanted to know “why this is any different, from a constitutional point of view, than the statute precluding foreign ownership of a broadcasting license?” Good question.
Ginsburg’s question isn’t as “good” as the Journal thinks it is. Broadcast licenses are finite, as there are only so many FM radio slots in a given geographical location, which requires government management of that limited space. That just isn’t the case with global internet-based media, which have heretofore been accorded the same strong First Amendment protections that pertain to print publications, not the lesser shield granted to broadcast media.
The editorial went on to quote TikTok’s lawyer saying “‘lots of US speakers,’ including Politico, are owned by foreign entities” prompting Rao to reply, “But not foreign adversaries.” Sri Srinivasan, a third judge on the panel—appointed by Barack Obama, and well-known for his bipartisan appeal (NPR, 5/23/13)—also followed the logic of the “China exception” to free speech, asking whether a Chinese-owned entity should be banned if the US were to go to war with China (Reuters, 9/17/24).
‘Skeptical’ of free-speech argument
“When you have speech in the United States, our history and tradition is we do not suppress that speech because we don’t like those ideas,” a lawyer for TikTok argued (Roll Call, 9/16/24).
Few other outlets outright agreed with the judges, but many reported that the judges were “skeptical” or showed “skepticism” of the free-speech argument (NBC, 9/16/24; Washington Post, 9/16/24; Roll Call, 9/16/24), while Politico (9/16/24) and the New York Post (9/16/24) said the judges “grilled” the app’s lawyer.
The leaders of the ominously titled House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party filed an amicus brief (8/2/24) with the appeals court, saying the law does “not regulate speech or require any social media company to stop operating in the United States,” because it is “focused entirely on the regulation of foreign adversary control.”
This, right here, is key. China is officially designated as an “adversary,” along with Iran and Cuba, despite the fact that China and the US have formal diplomatic relations and do billions of dollars in trade. The suggestion is that US citizens can and should be denied access to news and views that are tied to so-called adversary countries.
Iran’s Press TV is no objective media outlet by any measure, but would be important viewing for anyone who wants to further understand the Middle East, the same way one might explore Israel’s Haaretz or Qatar-based Al Jazeera. Its website is currently operational, but in 2021 the US government seized “33 Iranian government-affiliated media websites,” including that of Press TV (Al Jazeera, 6/23/21).
FAIR (8/5/20) has raised the concern that if TikTok is banned because of its Chinese affiliation, then Chinese newspapers and broadcasters, which many people rely on to inform themselves of the Chinese government perspective, could also be censored. These outlets have been feeling federal heat ever since the US State Department, in a move reminiscent of the Cold War against the Soviet Union, forced Chinese state media outlets to register as foreign agents (ABC, 2/18/20; FAIR.org, 2/28/22).
Unpopular censorship
Support for banning TikTok has fallen from 50% in March 2023 to 32% in July/August 2024 (Pew, 9/5/24).
Unsurprisingly, the potential ban of the fourth-most popular social media platform in the US is unpopular with the public. Pew Research (9/5/24) reported: “The share of Americans who support the US government banning TikTok now stands at 32%. That’s down from 38% in fall 2023 and 50% in March 2023.”
That’s not surprising given that users say a ban “would hurt countless people and businesses that rely on TikTok for a significant portion of their income,” according to AP (3/16/24). “TikTok has become an unrivaled platform for dialogue and community.”
Many Americans are turning to the network for news (Bloomberg, 9/17/24). And TikTok has also been cited for being an important communications tool for labor unions (Vice, 5/7/21; Wired, 4/20/22; Fortune, 9/1/22) and other progressive causes (Politico, 3/27/22; Nation, 1/25/23). It is easy for some people to disregard the platform as a space for silly videos and memes made purely for entertainment, but clearly it has much more social utility than the scoffers realize.
TikTok (3/21/23) claims 150 million users in the United States; its users are disproportionately young, female, Black and Latine (Pew, 1/31/24). Pulling the plug on such an operation would be as disruptive as suspending postal operations—which, of course, is also on the conservative agenda (New Yorker, 5/2/20).
‘Demanding legal scrutiny’
“Millions of Americans use TikTok every day to share and receive ideas, information, opinions and entertainment from other users around the world, and that’s squarely within the protections of the First Amendment,” noted EFF (6/27/24).
The Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a press release (6/27/24) that its amicus brief, which was joined by other media freedom groups, addressed the First Amendment concerns of the law:
The amicus brief says the Court must review the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act—passed by Congress and signed by President Biden in April—with the most demanding legal scrutiny, because it imposes a prior restraint that would make it impossible for users to speak, access information and associate through TikTok. It also directly restricts protected speech and association, and deliberately singles out a particular medium for a blanket prohibition. This demanding First Amendment test must be used even when the government asserts national security concerns.
The argument in favor of this law boils down to McCarthyite anti-China xenophobia: America’s most sacred liberty must be abandoned out of fear of the Red Menace. The paranoia manifests in other ways, too: State governments, mostly those controlled by Republicans, are enacting laws against land ownership by Chinese citizens (Politico, 4/3/24).
The House of Representatives has passed legislation that would authorize “more than $1.6 billion for the State Department and USAID over the next five years,” part of which would “subsidize media and civil society sources around the world that counter Chinese ‘malign influence’ globally,” reported Responsible Statecraft (9/11/24). The outlet added, “It’s possible that the program could in some cases be used to subsidize covert anti-Chinese messaging,” reminiscent of “the way Russia is accused of covertly funding anti-Ukrainian messaging by US media influencers.”
Spies don’t need TikTok
TikTok is directly owned by TikTok Inc., a US-based company that is ultimately owned by ByteDance, a company incorporated by Chinese investors in the Cayman Islands. As Chicago Policy Review (7/26/24) noted, “If the CCP wanted TikTok to steal Americans’ data, it would not have chosen this corporate structure that is designed to insulate TikTok from Chinese influence.”
Even Washington Post columnist George Will (5/15/24), one of the loudest conservative voices in US media, framed the “national security” issue with TikTok as a weak and vague excuse to subvert free speech. “Respect for the First Amendment has collapsed, and government has a propensity for claiming that every novel exercise of power legitimates the next extension of its pretensions,” he said. “TikTok will not be the last target of government’s desire to control the internet and the rest of society’s information and opinion ecosystem.”
And the “national security” concerns of the US government (Bloomberg, 7/27/24) don’t hold water. The Citizen Lab, published by the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, issued a report (3/22/21) on both TikTok and another ByteDance app, Douyin. The report found that both apps “do not appear to exhibit overtly malicious behavior similar to those exhibited by malware.” Researchers did not “observe either app collecting contact lists, recording and sending photos, audio, videos or geolocation coordinates without user permission.”
More recently, the Chicago Policy Review (7/26/24), published by the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, found that the corporate structure of ByteDance does not indicate that China’s Communist Party has firm control on day-to-day operations as the US government contends. Further, it argued that party or government control of TikTok would have little value for Beijing:
First, China has little incentive to spy on ordinary Americans, since most data has no national security relevance. Second, the Chinese Communist Party does not need to subjugate TikTok to spy on the social media of powerful Americans. Chinese state intelligence can obtain valuable information by monitoring users’ behavior and posts on TikTok and other social media applications. Banning TikTok would not solve the problem of foreign intelligence agencies gathering social media data.
At the same time, Republicans pretend to care about free speech in social media when it comes to claims that Facebook is icing out conservative voices (New York Post, 9/16/24), decrying fact-checking and content moderation by a private entity as censorship. Those sanctimonious appeals to constitutional liberty ring hollow when all the branches of government are working to destroy an entire network.
The ruling Chinese Communist Party has called on Hong Kong’s leader to mobilize the city’s wealthiest families into kick-starting economic growth, although signs that any are answering the call have been thin on the ground.
Xia Baolong, who heads the ruling party’s Hong Kong and Macao Work Office, “expressed the hope that all sectors of Hong Kong society, especially the business community and entrepreneurs, will unite as one and seize the opportunity to strive for economic development,” the city’s Chief Executive John Lee told reporters following a Sept. 20 meeting with Xia, as he attended an investment cooperation conference in Beijing.
Hong Kong’s business community should “transform their love for their country and for Hong Kong into concrete and practical action, and work together to promote Hong Kong’s … prosperity,” Xia told Lee during the meeting.
Xia’s call to action echoes recent policy moves from Beijing to find a role for the private sector in boosting flagging economic growth, under Chinese President Xi Jinping’s concept of “public-private partnerships,” which analysts have warned could be a disguised asset grab by the government.
It also comes after Xi wrote to the descendants of the “Ningbo Gang” – wealthy Hong Kong families with roots in the eastern port city of Ningbo – in July, calling on them to “contribute to the dream of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” state media reported.
Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee (L) meets with Yin Li (R), secretary of the Communist Party of China Beijing Municipal Committee, in Beijing, China , Sept. 20, 2024. (info.gov.hk)
They included Anna Pao, eldest daughter of the late shipping magnate Sir Pao Yue-kong, and Ronald Chao, eldest son of the late industrialist Chao Kuang-piu, families whose business operations formed the backbone of much of Hong Kong’s growth under British colonial rule.
Lee said the private sector in Hong Kong “are not bystanders, but participants, contributors and beneficiaries” of the city’s economic rewards.
‘Serve the country’
But commentators said there hasn’t exactly been a big rush to respond to Beijing’s call for investments on the part of Hong Kong’s entrepreneurs.
The city’s richest man, Li Ka-shing, has instead been stepping up his investments in the United Kingdom, with his CK Infrastructure Holdings acquiring a wind farm portfolio in from Aviva Investors for £350 million (US$450 million) in August, renewable power generator UU Solar for £90.8 million (US$122 million) in May, and natural gas distributor Phoenix Energy in April.
Exiled Hong Kong businessman Elmer Yuen, whose family hails from Ningbo, said Beijing has repeatedly called on Hong Kong’s tycoons to “serve the country.”
But he said there is unlikely to be much response, given that few business families from Ningbo and Shanghai trust the Chinese Communist Party.
“You can lump all of us together, us Shanghainese, most of whom are from Ningbo, and say that we have absolutely zero trust in the Chinese Communist Party,” Yuen said.
“Maybe a small number of people will invest, but the rest already know who they’re dealing with.”
Kevin Yeung, Hong Kong’s secretary for culture, sports and tourism, gives a speech at a ceremony in Dujiangyan, southwest China’s Sichuan province, to see off two giant pandas, An An and Ke Ke, headed to Honk Kong, Sept. 25, 2024. (info.gov.hk)
According to Xia Ming, professor of political science at the City University of New York, Lee is being tasked by Beijing to step up integration with neighboring Guangdong province and Macau, and provide a much-needed shot in the arm for the sluggish Chinese economy.
“Policy in today’s Hong Kong is clearly about how to perfectly integrate Hong Kong into what Xi Jinping calls the China rejuvenation strategy, which is basically about controlling the economy,” Xia told RFA Cantonese in a recent interview. “[Lee’s aim] is to more perfectly integrate Hong Kong into China’s accelerated regression.”
Xia said the overall aim is to integrate Hong Kong into the mainland Chinese economy and “ultimately sell Hong Kong off to Beijing and to Xi Jinping.”
“The goal of Xi Jinping’s reforms is not that mainland China will become more like Hong Kong, but that Hong Kong will become more like Yan’an,” he said in a reference to the revolutionary wartime base of Mao Zedong’s communists.
Stimulus measures
The call for investments came as Chinese leaders announced a slew of stimulus measures to boost demand for real estate, including lower mortgage rates, fewer restrictions on buyers and tax cuts as part of “a new model” for real estate development.
On Tuesday, China’s central bank, top securities regulator and financial regulator announced a raft of monetary stimulus, property market support and capital market strengthening measures to boost “high-quality economic development,” state news agency Xinhua reported.
The top economic meeting, attended by Xi, also called on officials to “foster a favorable environment for the development of the non-public sector,” with efforts made to boost consumption among low- and middle-income groups.
The pair of giant pandas gifted by the Chinese government to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in celebration of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China arrive safely in Hong Kong, Sept. 25, 2024. (info.gov.hk)
China has also extended a helping hand to Hong Kong in the form of pandas, with a ceremony at the Hong Kong International Airport on Thursday to welcome An An and Ke Ke, described by Lee as “just entering adulthood and full of energy” and likely to be a successful draw for tourists.
The giant pandas will live in a newly refurbished suite at the Ocean Park theme park complete with climbing frames and more plants.
“Citizens will join in welcoming the two giant pandas to Hong Kong, and the whole city is looking forward to it,” Lee told reporters on Tuesday, adding that images of the pandas will be added to the Oct. 1 National Day drone and light show over Victoria Harbour.
Hong Kong is expecting an influx of up to 1.2 million mainland Chinese tourists to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Lee said.
“We hope that everyone can celebrate the 75th anniversary of National Day together, and also bring in many business activities to increase business and tourism revenues,” he said.
Translated with additional reporting by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Roseanne Gerin.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Ng Chi Ping for RFA Cantonese.
Original Image China Daily – Info Additions @tibettruth
The Chinese regime invests a lot of effort and resources on its propaganda and disinformation campaigns, especially in regard to Tibet!It wants you to believe that Tibetans are happy and prosperous; that as a consequence of China, life in Tibet is a marvel of economic growth, its people contented and culture flourishing.
However the world is very aware of China’s record in Tibet, the denial of basic freedoms, human rights violations, mass-surveillance and eradication of Tibetan culture. As a consequence there’s understandable cynicism regarding claims made by the Chinese authorities.
This is why China places vital importance on the concept of the ‘independent’ observer, a non-Chinese visitor to endorse, affirm and bear witness that all is well in Tibet and its people. In its latest deception a number of Gen Z guests were invited by various Chinese Embassies to take part in a visit to Lhasa and Nyingtri, in U-Tsang and Kongpo regions respectively.
The four day trip, which took place September 24 to 27, was a staged and cynical illusion which involved a visit to an empty Potala Palace, attendance at an opera; the story of which is a Chinese political re-write of Tibetan history and a trip to a local school. No doubt the children were all super happy to inform their guests what a splendid ‘education’ they were receiving!
Among those who took part in this clear disinformation exercise was Ms Mimi Templar-Gay an English television producer and director. She is reported, by no less than the China Daily, as regarding the trip as ‘amazing’.
What ‘s truly is extraordinary however is that people can be so gullible, or wish to actively collaborate in a clear propaganda exercise, designed to conceal the oppression and suffering of Tibetans!
The Japan Ministry of Defense (JMOD) intends to revamp the space domain capabilities of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) by constructing a new 323.2 billion-yen (approx. 2.2 billion USD) ‘satellite constellation’ capable of tracking multiple suspicious targets in real time, according to local news reports citing insiders familiar with the matter. JMOD is also expected […]
The Japan Ministry of Defense (JMOD) intends to revamp the space domain capabilities of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) by constructing a new 323.2 billion-yen (approx. 2.2 billion USD) ‘satellite constellation’ capable of tracking multiple suspicious targets in real time, according to local news reports citing insiders familiar with the matter. JMOD is also expected […]
The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Council called on China on Tuesday to implement recommendations made by the U.N.’s human rights office in a two-year-old report issued and to release Uyghurs and others unjustly detained in Xinjiang.
American diplomat Michèle Taylor also demanded that China clarify the fate and whereabouts of missing family members and facilitate safe contact and reunion during a speech at the current Human Rights Council session in Geneva, which runs from Sept. 9 to Oct. 11.
Taylor read the joint statement on behalf of Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States – all members of the Core Group on Xinjiang.
The 46-page report by then-U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said “serious human rights violations” had been committed in Xinjiang in the context of the Chinese government’s application of counter-terrorism and counter-extremism strategies, and that repression of the Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities there “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”
Earlier this year during China’s Universal Periodic Review – a human rights record review by U.N. member states that occurs every five years – “China rejected many legitimate concerns and dismissively labeled the OHCHR’s assessment ‘completely illegal and void,’” Taylor said.
EU’s statement
Rushan Abbas, executive director of Campaign for Uyghurs, praised the Core Group’s statement because it highlighted “the undeniable atrocities” of arbitrary detention, forced labor and cultural erasure occurring in Xinjiang, as documented by the OHCHR.
“The way the CCP exerts influence in the U.N. is to bury the ongoing genocide, and these findings are deeply troubling,” she told Radio Free Asia, referring to the Chinese Communist Party. “Every day of inaction only prolongs the suffering of Uyghur families.”
“It is essential that the U.N. strengthens its efforts to hold China accountable,” Abbas said.
Rushan Abbas, executive director of Campaign for Uyghurs, holds a photo of her sister, Gulshan Abbas, who is imprisoned in Xinjiang, during a rally in New York, March 22, 2021. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP)
The U.S.’s statement, along with another by the European Union, coincided with this week’s U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York.
“Numerous reports by U.N. treaty bodies and special rapporteurs, and in particular OHCHR’s assessment report on human rights in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, confirm that the human rights situation requires the urgent attention of the government of China, U.N. bodies and the human rights system,” the delegation said.
It also noted that the human rights situation in neighboring Tibet “continues to be dire” with compulsory boarding schools for Tibetan children and DNA sampling, and said the EU would closely monitor the safeguarding of the fundamental freedoms, cultural heritage and identity of Tibetans.
The delegation called on China to provide bilingual education in Tibetan and Chinese at all levels of instruction.
“The EU continues to urge China to abide by its obligations under national law, including its own Constitution, and international law, to respect, protect and fulfill the rule of law and human rights for all, including Uyghurs, Tibetans and other persons belonging to national or ethnic, linguistic, religious or other groups and minorities across China,” the delegation said.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian speaks during a press conference in Beijing, China, March 20, 2024. (Tingshu Wang/Reuters)
“They stressed that issues related to Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Xizang are China’s internal affairs,” he said, using the Chinese government’s word for Tibet.
“They spoke against the politicization of human rights issues, the application of double standards and interference in other countries’ internal affairs in the name of human rights,” Lin said.
Edited by Matt Reed.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Alim Seytoff for RFA Uyghur and Roseanne Gerin for RFA English.
The Chinese military said that it successfully launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) into the Pacific Ocean on Wednesday, its first such test in more than 40 years.
ICBMs are primarily designed to carry nuclear warheads and China’s latest generation ICBM – Dongfeng-41 (DF-41) – has an operational range of between 12,000 kilometers and 15,000 kilometers (7,500- 9,300 miles), which means it can reach the U.S. mainland.
China’s defense ministry said in a statement that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Rocket Force successfully launched an ICBM carrying a training simulated warhead into the high seas of the Pacific Ocean early on Wednesday.
“It accurately landed in the designated sea area,” the ministry said.
It was not clear what type of ICBM was tested.
The ministry said that the launch was a routine arrangement of the force’s annual military training, “in line with international law and international practice, and is not aimed at any specific country or target.”
China’s first publicly known ICBM test launch was in May 1980 when it fired at least two missiles into the South Pacific as a gesture of deterrence to the Soviet Union but since then the PLA has not announced any further test.
In its 2023 China Military Power report, the Pentagon said that China had completed construction on at least 300 ICBM silos in 2022. It also said that as of May 2023, it had more than 500 operational nuclear warheads, and that number would likely grow to more than 1,000 by 2030.
China’s Xinhua News Agency said relevant countries had been notified about Wednesday’s test launch in advance but it did not elaborate.
Taiwan’s ministry of national defense said it had recorded “intensive” Chinese missile firing activities but did not provide further details.
This month, China’s neighbor North Korea has also conducted several short-range ballistic missiles.
Meanwhile, Beijing has protested against the deployment of U.S. Mid-Range Capability missile system Typhon in the Philippines since April, saying it undermined peace and stability in the region.
Edited by RFA Staff.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.
China has responded angrily to comments by U.S. President Joe Biden, at a weekend summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, about Chinese aggression, saying the grouping was a U.S. tool to ensure its hegemony.
Leaders of the so-called Quad, which groups the United States, Australia, India and Japan, met on Saturday in Delaware, Biden’s home state on Saturday.
During their talks the U.S. president made comments that were transmitted by a microphone he did not realize was on, a so-called hot mic incident, saying: “China continues to behave aggressively, testing us all across the region. It’s true in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, South China, South Asia and the Taiwan Straits.”
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, asked about the comments at a media briefing in Beijing on Monday, said the grouping was “a tool the U.S. uses to contain China and perpetuate U.S. hegemony.”
Spokesman Lin Jian said the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy was essentially an attempt “to patch up forces to exclude and contain China.”
“Though the U.S. claims that it does not target China, the first topic of the summit is about China and China was made an issue throughout the event,” Lin said, adding: “the U.S. is lying through its teeth” and Washington needed to “get rid of its obsession with perpetuating its supremacy and containing China.”
The Quad was established in 2007 but Australia withdrew in 2008. It was re-established in 2017 and was immediately denounced by Beijing as a U.S. effort to gang up to create “an Asian NATO.”
U.S. and other Quad officials have repeatedly denied that they are attempting to form a defense alliance in the region to counter China.
‘Lack of significant decisions’
The Quad summit’s 5,600-word final statement did not mention China by name but said that Quad members “are seriously concerned about the situation in the East and South China Seas.”
“We continue to express our serious concern about the militarization of disputed features, and coercive and intimidating maneuvers in the South China Sea,” the group said.
“We condemn the dangerous use of coast guard and maritime militia vessels, including increasing use of dangerous maneuvers,” it said, without mentioning any other countries.
Chinese Coast Guard vessels fire water cannons towards a Philippine resupply vessel Unaizah May 4 on its way to a resupply mission at Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea, March 5, 2024. (Reuters/Adrian Portugal)
The statement underscored that the 2016 Arbitral Award, which rejected all China’s claims in the South China Sea, should be the basis for peacefully resolving maritime disputes.
Yet on the issue of maritime security, Quad members only agreed to launch a first Quad-at-Sea Ship Observer Mission between coast guards in 2025 “to improve interoperability and advance maritime safety,” without releasing further details.
“There weren’t any really significant decisions made,” said Malcolm Davis, a senior defense analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, or ASPI.
“I suspect given that this is the last ones for Joe Biden and Kishida Fumio – with a U.S. presidential election fast approaching – and with an Australian election occurring by May next year – they decided to ‘mark time’ for this one.”
“So, a missed opportunity to set a firm stance going into 2025, with a potential return of Trump, and an uncertain situation in Japan in terms of likely replacement for Kishida,” the analyst added.
‘Quad has to step up’
Stephen Nagy, a Tokyo-based professor of politics and international studies agreed that the group had likely avoided making commitments that new leaders might question.
“With President Biden and Prime Minister Kishida departing soon, I suspect the Quad statement was focused on presenting a broad vision rather than concrete initiatives that incoming leaders may not agree to,” said Nagy.
The Quad‘s function had “evolved significantly away from being a security provider to a public good provider and regional problem solver, and this explains the lack of concrete details as to how to deal with China’s assertive behavior in the South and East China Seas,” added Nagy.
The summit’s final statement reaffirmed that “the Quad is here to stay” and that the U.S. would host the next Quad foreign ministers’ meeting in 2025 while the next Quad Leaders’ Summit would take place in India, also in 2025.
“I definitely think that the Quad has to step up and become a more powerful and visible group – and that means it needs to start dealing more decisively on defense and security matters, rather than avoiding them,” said ASPI’s Davis.
“It shouldn’t be an ‘Asian NATO’ per se, but it does need to do more than low-level diplomatic decisions,” he said.
“China will continue to treat the Quad with contempt if the group doesn’t take on a more visible role, and the group will lose influence.”
There have reportedly been some proposals to expand the grouping’s dialogue mechanism to Quad Plus to attract wider support but Nagy said the Quad was “designed as a foursome to maximize the decision making process.”
“Adding more members would slow down decisions and potentially lead it down the road of the tyranny of multilateralism,” he argued, “But ad hoc, functional cooperation with other nations in a Quad Plus format may be possible.”
Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.
Aircraft upgrades are a more economical way of sharpening the combat edge of existing fighter fleets around Asia Pacific. With geopolitical tensions continuing to grow in Asia Pacific, regional air forces are striving to keep their in-service combat aircraft mission-ready and relevant through upgrades while acquiring next-generation platforms. For the less-resourced countries, upgrading existing aircraft […]
Sabina Shoal, located over 75 nautical miles west of the Philippines and 600 miles from China, has become the latest flashpoint between the two rival claimants in the South China Sea.
A months-long standoff began in April when Manila sent one of its largest and most modern ships, BRP Teresa Magbanua, to the shoal amid reports that Beijing could be trying to reclaim land there.
In response, China accused the Philippines of planning to ground the ship there to occupy it.
In August, Manila accused a Beijing ship of ramming BRP Teresa Magbanua several times, the fifth case of alleged harassment by China of Philippine ships operating near the shoal that month. Chinese officials said the Philippine ship acted dangerously and rammed into a Chinese vessel.
On Sunday, the Philippine Coast Guard pulled BRP Teresa Magbuana from the shoal’s waters and sent it back to port after a five-month deployment, citing needed repairs and medical care for crew members. But Filipino officials said they had not surrendered Manila’s claim to the area.
What is Sabina Shoal and why is it important for the Philippines?
This map highlights Mischief Reef, Second Thomas Shoal and Sabina Shoal in the disputed Spratly Islands region of the South China Sea. [AFP]
Sabina Shoal – which the Philippines calls Escoda Shoal and China refers to as Xianbin Jiao – serves as a rendezvous point for resupply missions to nearby Second Thomas Shoal, where the Philippines maintains a World War II-era ship to serve as a military outpost and territorial marker.
Analysts have said that if China takes control of Sabina Shoal, it could prevent the Philippines from conducting resupply missions to the Second Thomas Shoal or reaching the Manila-occupied Thitu island, home to about 400 Filipinos.
Part of a crucial maritime trade route for Manila, the reef is also “a good staging ground for vessels that [could] interfere with Philippine maritime activities extending from Palawan to the West Philippine Sea and the Kalayaan Islands,” said Jay Batongbacal, a Filipino maritime analyst and director of the Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea.
Manila calls territories and waters in the South China Sea within its 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) the West Philippine Sea.
This map shows occupied or administered islands in the disputed South China Sea. [AFP]
“A hostile China would be able to strangle our maritime trade with the rest of Asia and most of the world from Escoda Shoal,” Batongbacal told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news organization, on Sept. 3.
The South China Sea is a critical world trade route accounting for 21% of global trade (U.S. $3.4 trillion) in 2016, the most recent year these data are available, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in a report earlier this year.
Sabina Shoal is important to Manila because of its proximity to Reed Bank, another South China Sea feature that is a traditional fishing ground for Filipinos, and has a potential role in the country’s energy security because of its rich oil and gas deposits.
Territorial presence
Philippine officials said a new ship will be sent to the Sabina Shoal to replace the BRP Teresa Magbanua, which returned to port.
Two Philippine Navy sources told BenarNews that the country could not send a ship to the shoal anytime soon because of extreme weather conditions.
For its part, China could send dozens of ships to block a Philippine ship if it is stationed at the shoal, according to the sources who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue.
Blocking a Philippine ship “en route to Sabina Shoal is a possible prospect,” especially since Chinese ships appear to be capable of tracking movements at sea, said Collin Koh, a maritime security analyst with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
Another scenario is that Beijing “might tolerate” Manila’s stance on putting a “strategic presence” in the shoal but it “would actively block the [Philippine] ship from entering the lagoon of the feature,” Koh said.
Some military officials, diplomats and analysts – a majority of whom did not want to be identified – have expressed concerns that the Philippines has no cohesive strategy on its South China Sea claim.
In March, the Philippine government created the National Maritime Council to have overall jurisdiction and “direction on policy-formation, implementation and coordination” on all issues affecting the country’s maritime security and domain awareness.
But the country also has the National Task Force on the West Philippine Sea, created in 2016 for similar objectives.
Under the latest order, the task force would be placed under the council. But confusion abounds as several officials are discussing Manila’s claim coming from different agencies including the Philippine Coast Guard, Armed Forces of the Philippines and National Security Council, which are members of the council and the task force.
Jonathan Malaya, assistant director general of the National Security Council and task force spokesman, said the task force is not mandated to provide overall strategy or policy.
“Here in the [task force], we’re more strategic and operational,” he told BenarNews.
Meanwhile, the Philippines needs to step up with its South China Sea strategy, analysts told BenarNews.
“At this point, it’s not clear if the government has a specific game plan to deal with Chinese actions in the West Philippine Sea,” said Rommel Jude Ong, a retired Navy rear admiral and a professor at the Ateneo de Manila University.
“From a naval standpoint, the entire West Philippine Sea is a single theater of operations. Our crisis response should always be looking at the big picture and not to disaggregate incidents in Sabina from whatever is happening elsewhere.”
Another analyst expressed similar concerns.
“It is now wait and see for the Philippines in terms of its plans for Escoda Shoal,” said Julio Amador, a Manila-based analyst with the Amador Research Services, using the Philippine name for Sabina Shoal. “[China] has numbers on its side so the Philippine approach needs to be strategic and not tactical at this point.”
“Whatever path of action the Philippines will take, the whole government must be behind it and the plan should be approved at the highest levels.”
BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Camille Elemia – Manila.
Sabina Shoal, located over 75 nautical miles west of the Philippines and 600 miles from China, has become the latest flashpoint between the two rival claimants in the South China Sea.
A months-long standoff began in April when Manila sent one of its largest and most modern ships, BRP Teresa Magbanua, to the shoal amid reports that Beijing could be trying to reclaim land there.
In response, China accused the Philippines of planning to ground the ship there to occupy it.
In August, Manila accused a Beijing ship of ramming BRP Teresa Magbanua several times, the fifth case of alleged harassment by China of Philippine ships operating near the shoal that month. Chinese officials said the Philippine ship acted dangerously and rammed into a Chinese vessel.
On Sunday, the Philippine Coast Guard pulled BRP Teresa Magbuana from the shoal’s waters and sent it back to port after a five-month deployment, citing needed repairs and medical care for crew members. But Filipino officials said they had not surrendered Manila’s claim to the area.
What is Sabina Shoal and why is it important for the Philippines?
This map highlights Mischief Reef, Second Thomas Shoal and Sabina Shoal in the disputed Spratly Islands region of the South China Sea. [AFP]
Sabina Shoal – which the Philippines calls Escoda Shoal and China refers to as Xianbin Jiao – serves as a rendezvous point for resupply missions to nearby Second Thomas Shoal, where the Philippines maintains a World War II-era ship to serve as a military outpost and territorial marker.
Analysts have said that if China takes control of Sabina Shoal, it could prevent the Philippines from conducting resupply missions to the Second Thomas Shoal or reaching the Manila-occupied Thitu island, home to about 400 Filipinos.
Part of a crucial maritime trade route for Manila, the reef is also “a good staging ground for vessels that [could] interfere with Philippine maritime activities extending from Palawan to the West Philippine Sea and the Kalayaan Islands,” said Jay Batongbacal, a Filipino maritime analyst and director of the Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea.
Manila calls territories and waters in the South China Sea within its 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) the West Philippine Sea.
This map shows occupied or administered islands in the disputed South China Sea. [AFP]
“A hostile China would be able to strangle our maritime trade with the rest of Asia and most of the world from Escoda Shoal,” Batongbacal told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news organization, on Sept. 3.
The South China Sea is a critical world trade route accounting for 21% of global trade (U.S. $3.4 trillion) in 2016, the most recent year these data are available, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in a report earlier this year.
Sabina Shoal is important to Manila because of its proximity to Reed Bank, another South China Sea feature that is a traditional fishing ground for Filipinos, and has a potential role in the country’s energy security because of its rich oil and gas deposits.
Territorial presence
Philippine officials said a new ship will be sent to the Sabina Shoal to replace the BRP Teresa Magbanua, which returned to port.
Two Philippine Navy sources told BenarNews that the country could not send a ship to the shoal anytime soon because of extreme weather conditions.
For its part, China could send dozens of ships to block a Philippine ship if it is stationed at the shoal, according to the sources who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue.
Blocking a Philippine ship “en route to Sabina Shoal is a possible prospect,” especially since Chinese ships appear to be capable of tracking movements at sea, said Collin Koh, a maritime security analyst with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
Another scenario is that Beijing “might tolerate” Manila’s stance on putting a “strategic presence” in the shoal but it “would actively block the [Philippine] ship from entering the lagoon of the feature,” Koh said.
Some military officials, diplomats and analysts – a majority of whom did not want to be identified – have expressed concerns that the Philippines has no cohesive strategy on its South China Sea claim.
In March, the Philippine government created the National Maritime Council to have overall jurisdiction and “direction on policy-formation, implementation and coordination” on all issues affecting the country’s maritime security and domain awareness.
But the country also has the National Task Force on the West Philippine Sea, created in 2016 for similar objectives.
Under the latest order, the task force would be placed under the council. But confusion abounds as several officials are discussing Manila’s claim coming from different agencies including the Philippine Coast Guard, Armed Forces of the Philippines and National Security Council, which are members of the council and the task force.
Jonathan Malaya, assistant director general of the National Security Council and task force spokesman, said the task force is not mandated to provide overall strategy or policy.
“Here in the [task force], we’re more strategic and operational,” he told BenarNews.
Meanwhile, the Philippines needs to step up with its South China Sea strategy, analysts told BenarNews.
“At this point, it’s not clear if the government has a specific game plan to deal with Chinese actions in the West Philippine Sea,” said Rommel Jude Ong, a retired Navy rear admiral and a professor at the Ateneo de Manila University.
“From a naval standpoint, the entire West Philippine Sea is a single theater of operations. Our crisis response should always be looking at the big picture and not to disaggregate incidents in Sabina from whatever is happening elsewhere.”
Another analyst expressed similar concerns.
“It is now wait and see for the Philippines in terms of its plans for Escoda Shoal,” said Julio Amador, a Manila-based analyst with the Amador Research Services, using the Philippine name for Sabina Shoal. “[China] has numbers on its side so the Philippine approach needs to be strategic and not tactical at this point.”
“Whatever path of action the Philippines will take, the whole government must be behind it and the plan should be approved at the highest levels.”
BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Camille Elemia – Manila.
China’s Communist Party is clamping down on the secret hobby of some high-ranking officials: reading banned books, a series of state media reports suggest.
Officials from glitzy Shanghai to poverty-stricken Guizhou have been accused in recent months of “privately possessing and reading banned books and periodicals,” according to state media reports, which typically surface when the officials are probed by the party’s disciplinary arm.
Senior officials have traditionally enjoyed privileged access to materials banned as potentially subversive for the wider population, via the “neibu,” or internal, publishing system, former Communist Party officials told RFA Mandarin in recent interviews.
Now it appears that President Xi Jinping is coming for their personal libraries and private browsing habits in a bid to instill the same ideas in all party members regardless of rank.
A man walks past posters about Chinese political books displayed at the Hong Kong Book Fair in Hong Kong, July 18, 2012. (Philippe Lopez/AFP)
During the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, any foreign book could be considered a “poisonous weed that promotes the bourgeois lifestyle.”
Overseas publications are often banned or tightly controlled in China, either online, or via a complex process of political vetting by the authorities, including a 2017 requirement that anyone selling foreign publications in China must have a special license.
Wider knowledge makes better leaders
Former Party School professor Cai Xia said officials were generally allowed to read whatever they liked until the turn of the century. The arrangement encouraged officials to broaden their perspective, making them better leaders.
“Politics, like art, requires imagination,” Cai said.
“Because experience shows that the more single-minded and closed-off the thinking of the Communist Party, especially the senior cadres, the narrower their vision and the poorer their thinking, and the harder it is for them to grasp the complex phenomena and situations that have emerged in China’s rapid development,” she told Radio Free Asia.
Wider reading encourages deeper thought, which helps China “to move forward,” she said.
Masks, goggles and books collected from the Occupy zone are seen on the table at guesthouse in Hong Kong Dec. 30, 2014. (Tyrone Siu/Reuters)
Du Wen, former executive director of the Legal Advisory Office of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region government, said the purge of readers of banned publications is worrying.
“This phenomenon is so scary, because it sends the message that there is no independence in the ranks of the Chinese Communist Party,” Du said. “Even dialectical materialism and critical thinking have become evidence of guilt.”
Nearly 20 officials have been accused of similar infractions, Du said, basing the number on his observation of media reports.
Officials have been tight-lipped about the names of the books and periodicals these officials were reading, yet the accusations keep coming.
Those targeted
In November 2023, the party launched a probe into former Zhejiang provincial Vice Gov. Zhu Congjiu, accusing him of losing his way ideologically.
In addition to making off-message comments in public, Zhu had “privately brought banned books into the country and read them over a long period of time,” according to media reports at the time.
In June 2023, the Beijing branch of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection expelled former state assets supervisory official Zhang Guilin for “possessing and reading books and periodicals with serious political issues,” alongside a slew of other alleged offenses including “engaging in power-for-sex and money-for-sex transactions.”
Many of those targeted have been in the state-controlled financial system, while some have been concentrated in the central province of Hunan and the southwestern megacity of Chongqing, according to political commentator Yu Jie.
A vendor attends to a customer next to images and statues depicting late Chinese chairman Mao Zedong, at the secondhand books section of Panjiayuan antique market in Beijing, China, Aug. 3, 2024. (Florence Lo/Reuters)
“Interestingly, a lot of officials in the political and legal system, national security and prison systems, which are responsible for maintaining stability and persecuting dissidents, are also keen on reading banned books,” Yu wrote in a recent commentary for RFA Mandarin, citing the case of former state security police political commissar Li Bin.
In Hubei province, the commission went after one of their own in party secretary Wang Baoping, accusing him of “buying and reading books that distorted and attacked the 18th Party Congress.”
“Monitoring what people are reading shows the authoritarian system’s determination and ability to maintain its power and to destroy any resources that could be subversive and any doubts about the legitimacy of the authorities’ rule,” Yu wrote in a Chinese-language commentary on May 28.
“Xi Jinping’s … goal is to turn more than 80 million party members into marionettes or zombies, and follow him, like the Pied Piper, in a mighty procession that leads to hell,” he said.
Categories
Zhang Huiqing, a former editor at the People’s Publishing House, told RFA Mandarin that “gray” books were allowed to be published under the watchful eye of the party’s Central Propaganda Department, which also reviewed and vetted foreign-published books for translation into Chinese, for distribution as “neibu” reading material.
Divided into categories A, B and C, where A was restricted to the smallest number of officials, “reactionary” books were those that could potentially cause people to challenge the party leadership, and they were once distributed in a highly controlled manner, Zhang said.
Du Wen said that while he was an official in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region government, he had access to a slew of foreign news outlets not usually sold on the streets of Chinese cities, including Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Washington Post and newspapers published in democratic Taiwan.
“These were all allowed because if you want to do research, you have to understand what’s going on overseas,” Du said. “How can you research something if you don’t understand the situation?”
A visitor walks past an exhibit featuring a large portrait of Chinese President Xi Jinping at the newly-completed Museum of the Communist Party of China in Beijing, June 25, 2021. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP)
Yet recent changes to party disciplinary regulations have brought more publications into the danger zone.
Nowadays, any publication not entirely in line with orthodox Marxism-Leninism or the official view of Communist Party history is likely to be seen as “reactionary,” as is any information about China’s highest-ranking leaders, both past and present, according to a senior figure in the Chinese publishing industry who spoke to RFA Mandarin on condition of anonymity.
“There’s a lot of randomness and contingency that affects whether something winds up being labeled as reactionary,” the person said. “It also depends on the level of understanding and personal ambition of the person in charge of an investigation.”
And times change, making it hard for officials to stay on the right side of the rules.
“A book that was reactionary yesterday may not be reactionary today, and vice versa,” the person said.
Public hotline
Typically, Chinese publishing houses take direct instructions from the General Administration of Press and Publication and its provincial branches about what they can and can’t publish.
But a public hotline and a highly cautious attitude in recent years has meant that a book can be banned on the basis of a single phone call from a concerned individual.
A class in the China Executive Leadership Academy in Yan’an, the headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party from 1936 to 1947, in Shaanxi province, May 10, 2021. (Hector Retamal/AFP)
The senior publishing industry figure said one work of non-fiction was canned on the say-so of the widow of a senior cadre because she didn’t like the way her late husband was portrayed. The man had only played a minor role in the book.
“All of our editing, proofreading, binding, design, printing, marketing and distribution work was wasted,” the person said. “We had already printed several thousand copies of the book, but we had to send them to be pulped.”
The Chinese Communist Party’s internal rule-book entry on what constitutes a banned book offense has been amended three times since 2015, with categories being added each time.
Article 47 of the original regulations issued in 2003 warn: “Anyone who brings reactionary books, audio-visual products, electronic reading materials and so on into the country from abroad shall be criticized and educated; if the circumstances are serious, they will be given a warning or a serious warning; more serious offenses will be disciplined by removal from party post, probation or expulsion from the party.”
Since 2015, the rules have been updated three times to include anyone “reading privately, browsing or listening” to banned material, which now includes “online text, images and audiovisual material.”
Another senior media figure who requested anonymity said the key factor that makes a book reactionary these days is whether or not it tells the truth, especially about the Chinese government.
“Actually, the most reactionary thing is the truth,” the person said, “because the truth could shake the foundations of party rule.”
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Luisetta Mudie and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Zhu Liye for RFA Mandarin.
A claim emerged in Chinese-language social media posts that China has not launched a war since 1949.
But the claim is misleading as it is a one-sided historical interpretation. A review of events shows that China has been involved in several major conflicts since 1949, and there are different views about how much of a role it played in starting them.
The claim was shared on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Aug. 24, 2024.
“While the U.S. has launched 469 conflicts since 1789, China has launched none since 1949,” the claim reads in part.
Multiple Chinese accounts on X have reposted an infographic comparing the number of wars initiated by the U.S. and China. (Screenshots/X)
Even Chinese President Xi Jinping said during a telephone call with U.S. President Joe Biden in 2021 that his country had not started a conflict since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
Several Chinese diplomats also reposted the image and further spread on the narrative of the U.S. as a warhawk (Screenshots/X)
But the claim is misleading as it is a one-sided historical interpretation.
A review of historical events shows that China has been involved in several major conflicts since 1949 and there are different views about how much of a role Beijing played in starting them.
Below is what AFCL found.
The Sino-Indian War
The month-long Sino-Indian War of 1962 was a conflict rooted in disputes with India over China’s attempts to build a military road linking its Xinjiang region with Tibet after China occupied the Tibet area in 1950, according to Encyclopædia Britannica, the world’s oldest continuously published encyclopedia.
The road was scheduled to pass through Aksai Chin, an area that overlaps parts of Tibet and Xinjiang but is also claimed by India as part of its northern Ladakh region.
The war was preceded by intermittent skirmishes beginning in 1959, which culminated in an attack by Chinese forces against the region on Oct. 20, 1962.
But some scholars, including Wang Hongwei, a Chinese academic expert on South Asia, said that the campaign originated from an arbitrary border demarcation by India’s government in 1961.
Wang listed the advance of India’s army into territory that China claimed, attacks on Chinese posts, the killing of Chinese border guards and a 1962 Indian order for its forces to expel the Chinese from the North-East Border Special Region as evidence that the war was imposed on China.
China has officially described the conflict as a war of self-defense ever since.
The Sino-Vietnamese War
Internationally known as the Sino-Vietnamese War, the conflict that broke out when 220,000 Chinese soldiers struck along the 800-mile border with Vietnam early on Feb. 17, 1979.
While at the time both neighbors had communist political systems, Vietnam’s decision to sign a mutual defense pact with the Soviet Union in 1978 provoked the ire of many Chinese leaders, given that at the time Beijing and Moscow were struggling for leadership of the global communist movement.
This tension was later exacerbated by Vietnam’s invasion of neighboring Cambodia at the end of 1978 and the overthrow of the Beijing-backed Khmer Rouge government, an event that served as the catalyst for the conflict between Beijing and Hanoi.
The conflict has been called an aggressive war launched by China by scholars such as Miles Yu, the director of the Hudson Institute’s China Center, who emphasized that the conflict is portrayed completely differently in Vietnam and in China.
Vietnam portrays the conflict as a struggle against Chinese expansion, while China frames it as a war of self-defense.
In line with this interpretation, a Chinese government webpage commemorating soldiers killed in the conflict, lists several actions by Vietnam in the mid-1970s – implementing discriminatory policies against Chinese minorities in Vietnam and conducting provocative border raids in which several Chinese citizens were wounded – as evidence that Vietnam came to view China as an enemy and gradually adopted a warlike posture towards it.
However, Hsiao-Huang Shu, a scholar of Chinese military tactics at Taiwan’s Tamkang University, told AFCL that while the official Chinese government position paints the war as a punitive conflict rather than as an “invasion,” the war was clearly initiated by China.
Sino-Soviet border clashes
In March 1969, Chinese and Soviet forces engaged in a series of clashes on an island called Zhenbao on a border river.
Subsequent border skirmishes in the months following the conflict resulted in an unknown number of casualties. In order to end the dispute, Moscow adopted a carrot-and-stick approach, proposing negotiations on the border dispute while at the same time threatening military action if Beijing did not cooperate.
The Soviet Union said that an initial ambush by Chinese army units of Soviet border guards on March 2 was followed by a larger clash on March 15.
However, an article published by China’s state-run CCP Review said that the initial skirmish broke out when a Chinese patrol was obstructed and later shot at by Soviet troops.
But according to the noted historian of Sino-Soviet relations, Li Danhui, Chinese soldiers initially stabbed and fired upon a Soviet patrol on the day fighting broke out.
He cited statements by Chen Xilian, the Chinese commander at Zhenbao, as evidence.
Michael S. Gerson, a former analyst at the U.S. Center for Naval Analyses, published a study of the incident, saying that territorial disputes over the strategically unimportant island largely arose as a byproduct of the larger Sino-Soviet ideological split in the 1960s.
As part of the split, China said that the Soviet Union’s control of the island was a direct result of unequal treaties China had been coerced to sign, while the Soviet Union argued that China had no legal claim to the island.
‘Illogical comparison’
Michael Szonyi, a professor of Chinese history at Harvard University, told AFCL that while the U.S. has been involved in several wars around the world, the notion that China had “never started a war” was “absurd,” mentioning the conflicts involving Vietnam, Tibet, and fighting over the Kinmen Islands in the Taiwan Strait as evidence.
Szonyi pointed out that counting conflicts involving the U.S. from 1798 and conflicts involving China from 1949 – over 150 years later – is an illogical baseline for making such a comparison.
He added that many of the wars the U.S. has been involved in – such as the Korean War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq – did not involve territorial seizure.
China also characterizes several other conflicts it has been involved in since 1949 as either extensions of the Chinese Civil War or as incidents of large-scale civil unrest.
But Szonyi said it was still incorrect to say that China never initiated any of these wars.
Translated by Shen Ke. Edited by Shen Ke and Taejun Kang.
Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) was established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. We publish fact-checks, media-watches and in-depth reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of current affairs and public issues. If you like our content, you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Alan Lu for Asia Fact Check Lab.
China has agreed to “gradually resume” imports of Japanese seafood products a year after it banned them in response to the release of treated waste water from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant.
The decision was made after “rounds of talks” between Beijing and Tokyo over the impact of discharging the waste water into the Pacific Ocean, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday.
“Following the implementation of monitoring activities, including participation in long-term international monitoring within the framework of the International Atomic Energy Agency and independent sampling by participating countries, we will begin to adjust relevant measures based on scientific evidence and gradually resume imports of Japanese seafood that meet the standards,” the ministry said.
“Japan has made it clear that it will continue to conduct ongoing marine environment and marine ecological impact assessments in order to substantially fulfill its obligations under international law and to use its utmost efforts to avoid adverse impacts on human health and the environment,” it added.
China has imposed a blanket ban on imports of Japanese seafood since the beginning of the treated water discharge in August last year, calling the water “nuclear-contaminated.” Japan has insisted the water is safe.
Chinese trade statistics show that no fishery products, except aquarium fish, have been imported from Japan since September last year, forcing restaurants in China to get their ingredients elsewhere.
Some other countries also restricted seafood imports from Japan after it began releasing the treated water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, badly damaged by a 2011 earthquake and tsunami, but most have since lifted those curbs.
Japan started the gradual release of treated radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean despite regional and domestic concerns, with plans to eventually pump more than a million metric tons of it into the sea.
The release came 12 years after a nuclear meltdown at the plant following its battering by the earthquake and subsequent tsunami. According to authorities, the water used to cool the nuclear reactors and additional groundwater and rainwater seeping into the reactor buildings has reached near-full storage capacity.
The water was processed through an advanced liquid processing system to remove most contaminants, except for relatively nontoxic tritium, before being released into the Pacific.
At that time, the International Atomic Energy Agency said the planned discharge of wastewater met international safety standards and would have a “negligible” radiological impact on people and the environment.
The Japanese government said no abnormalities had been detected in the monitoring of seawater around the plant, including the concentration levels of tritium, since the discharge began.
Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Taejun Kang for RFA.
A 10-year-old Japanese boy stabbed on his way to school in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen has died of his injuries, signaling likely further strain on Sino-Japanese ties, Japanese media reported on Thursday.
The boy, who has a Japanese father and a Chinese mother, was attacked while with his mother near a Japanese school in Shenzhen on Wednesday morning, and was taken to hospital, where he died Thursday.
Police are holding a 44-year-old man surnamed Zhong on suspicion of carrying out the attack. Some 3,600 Japanese nationals reside in Shenzhen, an industrial city near the border with Hong Kong.
Eyewitnesses said the boy was bleeding from the stab wounds and was given a heart massage at the scene, according to Japan’s Kyodo News.
Nationalist rhetoric
Commentators blamed the attack on a steady output of nationalistic rhetoric under the government of Xi Jinping in recent years.
“It’s caused by the Chinese authorities’ incitement of so-called nationalism,” said Khubis, a Japan-based Chinese national and ethnic Mongolian.
The ruling Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda arm has been churning out anti-Japanese rhetoric for years, current affairs commentator Lu Jun said.
“The authorities have launched wave after wave of xenophobia in recent years, anti-American, anti-Japanese and anti-Western in nature,” Lu said. “A lot of people have been encouraged by this propaganda and have gradually lost their common sense and even their humanity, turning into the thugs and minions of the authorities.”
Stepped up security
Tokyo on Thursday said the government was “deeply saddened,” and called on China to ensure the safety of more than 100,000 Japanese citizens who live in the country.
The Japanese flag was flown at half-mast at the Japanese Embassy in Beijing on Thursday in mourning. Ambassador Kenji Kanasugi was en route to Shenzhen, Japanese media reported.
Meanwhile, the Japanese government “has been and will continue to strongly urge China to share information related to the attack and ensure the safety of Japanese nationals in China,” government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters.
Describing the attack on the boy as “a despicable act,” Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa ordered Japanese officials to craft measures to prevent a similar incident from happening again.
Japan’s Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroshi Moriya announced on Wednesday that the government will allocate 350 million yen (US$2.45 million) from April 2025 to step up security measures linked around Japanese schools in China.
The attack came on the 93rd anniversary of the 1931 Japanese bombing of a railroad track in northeastern China that Japan used as an excuse to invade Manchuria. Tokyo had asked Beijing to step up safety measures around Japanese schools ahead of the sensitive anniversary, Kamikawa said in comments reported by Kyodo.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said the boy was a student at the Shenzhen Japanese School.
“[He] was stabbed by a man at a spot about 200 meters from the school gate,” Lin told reporters on Wednesday, adding that “all-out efforts” were being made to save the boy.
“The perpetrator was caught at the scene,” Lin said. “The case is under investigation and relevant authorities of China will handle the case in accordance with the law.”
Shockwaves
Yang Haiying, a professor at Shizuoka University in Japan, said the incident has sent shockwaves through political circles in Japan.
“Both the left and the right, the conservatives and the liberals, the government and the opposition are very angry about this incident,” Yang told RFA Mandarin in an interview after the boy’s death.
The attack comes ahead of Japanese general elections on Oct. 31, and will likely stoke anti-China sentiment during the campaign period, he said.
He said Japanese companies are likely to step up their withdrawal from China.
“I believe that this incident will have an even bigger impact on economic, cultural and interpersonal exchanges between the two countries,” Yang said.
“Politically, Japan may come up with some tougher slogans, but whether it will take a tougher stance in its foreign policy is still hard to predict,” he said.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Qian Lang for RFA Mandarin, Lee Heung Yeung for RFA Cantonese.
China will suspend tariff exemptions on 34 agricultural items imported from Taiwan, including fresh fruits, vegetables and aquatic products, effective from Sept. 25, China’s finance ministry said, a decision Taipei called “economic coercion.”
“Taiwan’s unilateral adoption of discriminatory measures such as bans and restrictions on the export of mainland products has seriously impeded cross-Strait economic and trade cooperation,” the ministry said on Wednesday, adding that tariffs on these items would be implemented in line with existing regulations.
Citing 2023 statistics, Taiwan’s Minister of Agriculture Chen Junne-jih said the annual tariff exemptions on these agricultural and aquacultural goods was nearly US$1.08 million.
Chen Binhua, a spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said that since 2005, the tariff exemptions had helped Taiwanese farmers and fishermen expand their access to the Chinese market, bringing them “tangible benefits.”
But he blamed the administration led by President Lai Ching-te in Taiwan, for its “stubborn adherence” to a pro-independence stance.
Lai is a member of Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, which Beijing accuses of harboring separatist aspirations.
He came to power after winning a January election despite Beijing’s fierce opposition to his bid. He ran on a platform of promoting peace in the Taiwan Strait while not compromising on claims of Taiwanese sovereignty.
In response to China’s decision to suspend tariff exemptions, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, or MAC, said the cutting of the tariff exemptions represented a “weaponization” of trade and would harm the interests of farmers and fishermen on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
Calling it “economic coercion,” the MAC added: “This only leads to resentment among Taiwan’s farmers, fishermen and the general public, and does not contribute to the long-term development of cross-strait relations.”
The council said it was clear China was weaponizing trade and using preferential measures as tools of coercion, and it warned that the Chinese Communist Party’s “goodwill” had political motives and could be revoked at any time.
China’s decision came after it announced sanctions on nine U.S. military-linked firms for their sale of equipment to Taiwan and denounced what it called the “dangerous trend” of U.S. military support for the democratic island.
On Monday, the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced the sale of aircraft spare parts and related logistics and support worth about US$228 million to Taiwan, adding that the spare parts would boost the island’s “ability to meet current and future threats.”
Washington’s arms sales to Taipei “seriously interfered in China’s internal affairs, and seriously damaged China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” said China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday.
China regards Taiwan as a renegade province that should be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary. The democratic island has been self-governing since it effectively separated from mainland China in 1949 after the Chinese civil war.
Despite their lack of formal diplomatic ties, the U.S. has long been a key supplier of arms to Taiwan. Washington is bound by U.S. legislation, the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, to provide the island with arms for its defense.
Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Taejun Kang for RFA.
U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday urged the Biden administration to do more to bring home Americans unjustly imprisoned in China, as family members of the prisoners begged for help to secure their release.
The appeals were made at a hearing of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which came just three days after China’s government released one American prisoner who had been imprisoned for almost two decades – the 68-year-old pastor David Lin.
“We’re overjoyed for the Lin family,” said the chair of the commission, Rep. Chris Smith, who is a Republican from New Jersey, before noting estimates there are some 300 more Americans in Chinese prisons.
“This is absolutely unacceptable,” he said. “If the Chinese government wants to improve relations with the United States, they should release Americans who are wrongfully imprisoned without condition, and end the use of exit bans, a form of de facto hostage taking.”
The commission heard from family members of those still imprisoned in China, each of whom said they felt “joy” upon hearing of the release of Lin on Sunday, even if it ultimately left them with a bittersweet feeling.
“Each time we get this news, it’s a really complex mix of emotions,” said Harrison Li, the son of Kai Li, a Chinese-born naturalized U.S. citizen from Long Island, New York, who was arrested in Shanghai in 2016 for “espionage” on a trip to mark his mother’s death.
Li pointed to the recent release of Britney Griner and Paul Whelan from Russian prisons – as well as lower-profile cases of U.S. citizens being brought home from prisons in Afghanistan, Iran, Niger and Venezuela
“Of course, we’re just so thrilled for these families,” he said. “We know, of course, what it’s like to have a loved one unjustly missing for so long, and to know that the family is finally being made whole.”
“But at the same time,” Li told the hearing, “it begs the question for us, ‘What about my dad? When will it be his turn?’”
Lin’s release ‘not a coincidence’
Others told the hearing they believed American officials were not always doing enough to secure the release of their loved ones.
Peter Humphrey, a British former journalist and private investigator imprisoned in China from 2013 to 2015 for obtaining the private data of elite business people in China, said it was clear Beijing cared about its reputation and could be persuaded to release unjustly held Americans.
Lin was released by China on Sunday, he explained, “probably because of this imminent hearing on the calendar, which China was very well aware of,” calling the timing “not a coincidence at all.”
If U.S. officials more forcefully called out Beijing for arresting Americans for political, business or other illegitimate reasons, he said, Beijing could be forced to release more people.
“The U.S. government must end its policy of non-intervention in these judicial cases in China, and should intervene in them all,” Humphrey said, adding Washington alone could hold such sway over Beijing.
“It has a duty of care to protect its citizens against abusive dictatorships, and their so-called judicial systems,” he said. “It can lead the world in this pushback like no other country can.”
Fake contest
The commission also heard from Tim Hunt, the brother of Dawn Michelle Hunt, who said his 53-year-old sister was tricked both into thinking she won a contest to visit China and then into agreeing to take luggage out of the country that was lined with methamphetamine.
Dawn Hunt. (Courtesy of the Hunt Family)
The scam started, he said, when she received an email that said she had won an “all-expenses paid trip to Hong Kong.” After traveling to Hong Kong and enjoying the trip, she was invited to mainland China. There, she was asked if she wanted to extend her trip to Australia.
“She was told that she had also won some designer purses,” he said, noting the purses were lined with drugs. “It was at the airport, waiting to board her Australian flight, that she was called by airport security.”
“This could happen to a lot of people,” said Hunt, a retired Chicago police officer. “She was duped, she was scammed. She trusted the wrong people, but she doesn’t deserve this. My sister is trusting and believes people are good.”
Through tears, Hunt, whose father last week told The New York Times that he believed his daughter had been mistreated and raped in the prison, said the case “isn’t political.”
“I’m just asking, as a brother, just bring my sister home,” he said.
A similar case was detailed by Nelson Wells Sr., the father of Nelson Wells Jr., who was sentenced to 22 years in prison after being caught trying to leave China in 2014 with baked goods containing drugs.
Nelson Wells, Jr. (Friends & Family of Nelson Wells, Jr. via Facebook)
Wells Sr. said his son agreed to take the baked goods out of China as a favor for a friend, who asked him to relay them to another friend.
“For that one mistake – that one betrayal – none of our lives will ever be the same,” Wells Sr. said, adding he had not seen his son since.
“We are asking, we are pleading, with this commission, with Congress, with the administration and with the Chinese government, to work together on behalf of our son to create a pathway for outright release, or prisoner transfer to a home prison,” he said.
High priority
Smith, the chair of the commission, said the cases of the prisoners should be made a priority for the Biden administration in its dealings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and other officials in Beijing.
“The release of American citizens should be the first thing President Biden says to … Xi Jinping whenever they talk,” Smith said. “Their names should be said so often that Xi Jinping memorizes them.”
Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Massachusetts Democrat who co-chairs the commision, said he hoped for more good news in the near future.
“We’re joyful that David Lin has been released,” Merkley told the hearing, “but we want a celebration for each of your families.”
Edited by Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Alex Willemyns for RFA.
A Japanese lawmaker of Uyghur descent has called on Tokyo to take a stronger stand against China’s human rights abuses against the 12 million mostly Muslim ethnic group living in northwestern China.
“Egregious human rights violations occurring in the Uyghur region is one of the greatest, and certainly a generation-defining, human rights crises of our time,” Arfiya Eri, a 35-year-old member of Japan’s more powerful lower house of parliament, told Radio Free Asia.
“The international community, including Japan, must do its part to ensure that we do not set a precedent where such violations go unaccounted for under our watch,” she said, echoing comments she made earlier this month at the Sydney Dialogue, hosted by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. The annual summit in Sydney focuses on critical, emerging and cyber technologies.
In 2023, Eri was elected to Japan’s Diet, or parliament, as a member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party representing a district just east of Tokyo. Raised in Japan, she is the first Japanese of Uyghur background to be elected to the Diet.
Eri’s perspective carries personal and symbolic weight, highlighting the experiences of those directly affected by human rights abuses in Xinjiang and underscoring a moral imperative for Japan to act, Uyghur activists say.
For the past decade, China has severely repressed the 12 million mostly Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities who live in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, subjecting them to heavy surveillance, restricting their religious practices and detaining them in internment camps and prisons.
Eri’s call comes amid greater demands by Uyghur activists for the international community to take concrete steps to punish China for its rights abuses against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
In February 2022, Japan’s Lower House adopted a resolution expressing concern over the human rights situation in China, including the plight of the Uyghurs, and called on Beijing to take measures to address the situation.
But Eri said nothing has really changed in Tokyo’s stance toward Beijing on this issue.
She said that Japan, “as the strongest democratic economy in Asia, and as a country that holds the values of democracy, human rights, and rule of law as fundamental to its identity, can and must do more for peace, democracy, and human rights worldwide.”
As a board member of a multiparty alliance on human rights diplomacy in Japan, she is engaging her colleagues to “do more in resolving human rights and humanitarian crises worldwide,” Eri said.
Fluent in English, Japanese and Uyghur, Eri previously worked for the Bank of Japan and the United Nations.
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Mamatjan Juma for RFA Uyghur.
China imposed sanctions on Wednesday on nine U.S. military-linked firms for their sale of equipment to Taiwan and it denounced what it called the “dangerous trend” of U.S. military support for the democratic island.
On Monday, the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced the sale of aircraft spare parts and related logistics and support worth about US$228 million to Taiwan, adding that the spare parts would boost the island’s “ability to meet current and future threats.”
The sale included both classified and unclassified components for the aircraft, as well as related engineering, technical and logistics support services.
Washington’s arms sales to Taipei “seriously interfered in China’s internal affairs, and seriously damaged China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” said China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday.
China regards Taiwan as a renegade province that should be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary. The democratic island has been self-governing since it effectively separated from mainland China in 1949 after the Chinese civil war.
A spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry on Wednesday also urged the U.S. to immediately stop the “dangerous trend” of arming Taiwan.
“Stop conniving and supporting Taiwan independence, and stop undermining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” said Lin Jian at a regular press briefing.
The steps taken against the firms, including Sierra Nevada Corporation and Stick Rudder Enterprises LLC, come into effect on Wednesday and will freeze their property within China, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
It described the sanctions as countermeasures and said they also applied to Cubic Corporation, S3 Aerospace, TCOM Ltd Partnership, TextOre, Planate Management Group, ACT1 Federal and Exovera.
Organizations and individuals within China are prohibited from engaging in transactions with the firms, the ministry added.
China previously sanctioned and banned firms, including units of Lockheed Martin, for selling arms to Taiwan.
The latest sales were the 16th military sale to Taiwan authorized by the administration of President Joe Biden.
Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry expressed its appreciation for the U.S.support for Taiwan’s security while its Ministry of National Defense highlighted the strategic importance of the sale, noting that China’s gray zone tactics – a tactic using the threat of force to create fear and intimidation – had affected Taiwan’s training and operational readiness.
The aviation-related equipment would enhance the combat readiness and security of Taiwan’s air force, the ministry said.
Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Taejun Kang for RFA.
