Category: China

  • Malaysia will press on with oil exploration in South China Sea waters that China also claims, its prime minister said on Thursday, adding that an investigation had been launched into the publication of what a media outlet said was a Chinese diplomatic note expressing “strong dissatisfaction” with Malaysia over the work.

    The Philippine Daily Inquirer, in a story published last week, cited what it said was a Chinese diplomatic note of Feb. 18, in which China accused Malaysia of infringing upon its sovereignty at the Luconia Shoals – an oil-rich area in the South China Sea that both countries claim.

    Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, while not confirming the veracity of the note, said an inquiry had been launched into its publication, and he defended Malaysian exploration in the waters.

    “We have made it clear that what we are doing with oil exploration is within our own waters,” Anwar said on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia. “We’ve informed Beijing, and they’ve sent a few protests, claiming those areas as theirs.”  

    “We’ve explained that we must proceed as it concerns our economic survival,” he said.

    The shoals are 100 kilometers (52 nautical miles) off the coast of Malaysia’s Sarawak state, on Borneo island, well within its exclusive economic zone, or EEZ, where Kuala Lumpur has jurisdiction over natural resources and the state company Petronas has been operating for years.

    But they also lie within the so-called nine-dash line that Beijing draws on its maps to claim “historical rights” over most of the South China Sea.

    The reported Chinese diplomatic note, apparently obtained by the Philippine news outlet from an unidentified Malaysian journalist, expressed “serious concern” and “strong dissatisfaction” over Malaysia’s oil and gas exploration projects in the area and asked that Malaysia immediately stop those activities.

    The newspaper said the note was a taste of the bullying that China’s neighbors including the Philippines are facing.

    ‘Open for discussion’

    Six parties – Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam – hold overlapping claims in the South China Sea.

    China has not commented on the reported diplomatic note but its foreign ministry and representatives overseas often send diplomatic notes to protest against other countries’ activities in maritime areas it claims.

    While the Philippines is pursuing a more assertive approach in dealing with China by publicizing what it says are Chinese acts of aggression against its vessels, Vietnam and Malaysia have adopted a more measured approach, rarely criticizing in public but preferring to use diplomatic channels and closed-door negotiation.

    Petronas Platform.jpg
    Petronas Sabah gas platform off the coast of Sabah, on northern Borneo island. ( AFP PHOTO / HO /Petronas Malaysia)

    Anwar insisted that “operations continue at one or two major wells within our territory.” 

    “We will respond to China and explain our position, that we never intended to be in any way provocative or unnecessarily hostile,” he said, adding that his government was “open to continuing discussions, whether bilaterally, multilaterally, or within the context of ASEAN” about the South China Sea.

     “China is a great friend,” he said. “This should not harm the bilateral relationship between the countries.”

    Malaysia’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Thursday that it had “consistently underscored the importance of maintaining the confidentiality of diplomatic communication” with other countries and considers the unauthorized dissemination of such documents “an irresponsible act.”

    This is the second time this year that the Malaysian foreign ministry has requested investigations into leaked diplomatic notes. 

    In February, a confidential diplomatic note on a consular issue dated Sept. 20, 2023, and reportedly from the Moroccan government to the Malaysian Embassy in Rabat, was leaked on social media.

    The ministry said it had expressed regret over that incident but the leak had not originated from internal sources.


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    Iman Muttaqin Yusof and Muzliza Mustafa in Kuala Lumpur contributed to the story

    Edited by Mike Firn.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.


  • This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Read RFA coverage of this story in Mandarin

    Chinese authorities are holding Gao Zhen, one of the Gao Brothers artistic duo, on suspicion of ‘insulting revolutionary heroes and martyrs,’ after seizing satirical artworks depicting Chairman Mao from his home studio, Radio Free Asia has learned.

    Gao Zhen, 68, who with his brother Gao Qiang has a global reputation for works of political satire, was detained by police in Sanhe city in the northern province of Hebei on Aug. 26, according to a detention notice sent to his family the following day, Gao’s lawyer and friends told RFA Mandarin.

    The Gao Brothers’ dissident artwork has been shown at many venues overseas, but not publicly displayed in China since they signed an open letter from dissident physicist Fang Lizhi to then supreme leader Deng Xiaoping during the pro-democracy movement of 1989.

    Police detained Gao Zhen at around 9.00 a.m. on Aug. 26, rushing into his apartment and taking him away in handcuffs, while searching his studio and questioning his wife for several hours, according to an Aug. 31 post on the Gao Brothers’ Facebook page.

    State security police confiscated books, computer hard drives, and sculptures and artwork relating to late supreme leader Mao Zedong, the post said.

    ENG_CHN_ARTIST DETAINED_09022024_002.JPG
    Chinese artists Gao Brothers perform during the award ceremony of the Kandinsky Prize in Moscow on Dec. 10, 2008. (Reuters/Sergei Karpukhin)

    All of the works taken by police were created more than a decade ago, before laws on protecting the reputation of “revolutionary heroes and martyrs” took effect, it said.

    China passed a law criminalizing “insults” to the ruling Communist Party’s canon of revolutionary heroes and martyrs in 2018.

    Gao is currently being held in the Sanhe Detention Center on suspicion of “infringing the reputation of revolutionary heroes and martyrs,” the Facebook post said.

    His lawyer Qu Zhenhong confirmed Gao’s detention to RFA Mandarin on Sunday, but declined to give further details.

    “His family has received a notice [of detention], but it’s inconvenient for me to say anything more because the case is still under investigation,” Qu said.

    ‘Miss Mao’

    U.K.-based writer Ma Jian said he had heard of Gao’s detention in a text message from his brother Gao Qiang, who lives in New York.

    “According to the detention notice, he has been detained for crimes against the reputation of heroes and martyrs,” Ma said in an open letter about Gao’s detention, a copy of which was shared with RFA Mandarin.

    The letter cited several sculptures from several years back including the “Miss Mao” series, depicting the late chairman with breasts, and “Mao Kneels in Repentance,” which are believed to have sparked the charges.

    ENG_CHN_ARTIST DETAINED_09022024_003.JPG
    Chinese artists the Gao Brothers walk past some of their “Miss Mao” pieces that feature life-sized, Pinocchio-nosed sculptures of Mao Zedong in their studio in Beijing Oct. 16, 2007. (Reuters/David Gray)

    Signed by Ma and several other creative artists, the letter called on the Chinese government to release Gao and to repeal the legislation banning “insults” to revolutionary heroes, because it infringes on the freedom of speech guaranteed — on paper, at least — in China’s constitution.

    It likened Gao’s detention to the political witch-hunts of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, in which the Gao brothers lost their father.

    “Today, the Sanhe police department seems to see Gao Zhen’s artistic works as evidence of crime, repeating the persecution of the Cultural Revolution,” the letter said, saying that controls on Chinese artists continue to tighten under Communist Party leader Xi Jinping. 

    About to depart for New York

    Thailand-based fellow artist Du Yinghong said Gao’s detention came as he and his family prepared to board a flight to New York, where his son was due to start school.

    “We’ve booked a flight to Tokyo, and then back to New York, because our son is about to start school,” Gao says in an Aug. 26 voice note to Du, a recording of which was shared with RFA Mandarin. “I hope I’ll get a chance to organize a trip [to visit you] next year, when we can discuss art-related matters.”

    Repeated calls to the Sanhe Detention Center rang unanswered on Sunday.

    The other Gao Brother — Gao Qiang — responded to written questions from RFA only with the message: “Thank you for your attention.”

    A person close to the case told RFA Mandarin that the detention notice included the phrase “infringing the reputation of heroes and martyrs.” It is likely that the charge relates to sculptures of late supreme leader Mao Zedong, including one of Mao “kneeling and repenting,” they said.

    If the authorities can’t make that stick retroactively, they may seek evidence to support other charges typically used to target critics of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, including “subversion” and “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,” the person said.

    Raid on warehouse

    Gao Zhen’s detention came alongside a police raid on his warehouse, apartment and studio in Sanhe’s Best Jingu Industrial Park, according to Ma Jian. Previous attempts by police to enter the premises in 2023 were unsuccessful as Gao Zhen was in New York for the whole of last year.

    In 2011, as the authorities released artist and social critic Ai Weiwei from 80 days’ detention over alleged tax evasion, officials raided the 798 Art Village in Beijing in reaction to a satirical sculpture the brothers made of Mao as a woman.

    The polished stainless steel sculpture titled “Miss Mao trying to poise herself at the top of Lenin’s head,” portrays the aging leader with signature receding hairline and facial mole, sporting a large pair of naked breasts. The Miss Mao element sits atop a large and grotesque head of Lenin, balancing with a tightrope walking pole.

    A super-sized version of the sculpture was shown at the Vancouver Biennale festival in 2010, and was widely seen as a dissident work, satirizing orthodox communism and the official Chinese view of history.

    Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Kitty Wang for RFA Mandarin.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Taipei, September 2, 2024—Hong Kong authorities are criminalizing normal journalistic work with the “openly political” conviction of two editors from the shuttered news portal Stand News for subversion, the Committee to Protect Journalists and four other rights groups said.

    By weaponizing the legal system against journalists, China has ruthlessly reneged on guarantees given to Hong Kong, which should enjoy a high degree of autonomy after the former British colony was handed back to Beijing in 1997, the groups said in a joint statement.

    Former Stand News editors Patrick Lam and Chung Pui-kuen are due to be sentenced on September 26 and could be jailed for two years.

    “We now await with trepidation the outcome of trials targeting senior staff from the defunct Apple Daily newspaper, especially its founder Jimmy Lai who faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life behind bars,” they added.

    Read the full statement here.

    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

  • The video obtained by GT shows how the Philippine side dangerously disrupted and intervened in China’s scientific research in waters off China’s Xianbin Jiao in the #SouthChinaSea. Similar actions occurred when China conducted marine ecosystem research in Ren’ai Jiao.

    The post The Philippines Disrupts China’s Scientific Research in Xianbin Jiao first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • China and the Philippines traded accusations of ramming each other’s vessels on Saturday at a disputed shoal in the South China Sea, marking an apparent escalation in an already tense situation in the area.

    Jay Tarriela, spokesperson for the Philippine National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea – part of South China Sea over which the Philippines claims jurisdiction – said that a Chinese coast guard vessel “deliberately rammed and collided” three times with a Philippine coast guard ship “despite no provocation” from the Philippine side.

    The Philippine vessel, BRP Teresa Magbanua, has been on deployment at Sabina Shoal, known in the Philippines as Escoda Shoal, since April to monitor what the Philippines fears is China’s plan to reclaim land at the shoal.

    Tarriela told a press briefing in Manila that the incident was the fifth case of harassment by China of Philippine ships operating in the area in August. He said there were no reports of any injuries to Philippine personnel.

    A Chinese coast guard spokesperson accused the Philippines of provocation at the shoal, which both sides claim but which lies entirely within the Philippine exclusive economic zone, or EEZ, where the Philippines holds rights to explore for natural resources.

    The Chinese coast guard ship 5205 “lawfully issued verbal warnings and conducted monitoring and control measures” against the Philippine ship which “continued its provocations at China’s Xianbin Jiao,” Chinese coast guard spokesperson Liu Dejun said, referring to the shoal by its Chinese name.

    At around midday, the Philippine ship “deliberately rammed into the Chinese ship 5205 in an unprofessional and dangerous manner, causing a collision for which the Philippines bears full responsibility,” Liu said.

    Sabina Shoal has in recent days become the latest flashpoint between the Philippines, a close U.S. ally, and China in the South China Sea, raising concerns about conflict between the neighbors.

    The U.S. has spoken in support of Manila, with Ambassador MaryKay Carlson saying in a statement that Washington “condemns the multiple dangerous violations of international law” by China, including Saturday’s incident.

    “We stand with the Philippines in upholding international law,” she added.

    Less than a week ago, Philippine officials said another ship – the BRP Datu Sanday – “encountered aggressive and dangerous maneuvers from eight Chinese maritime forces” while attempting to deliver diesel, food and medical supplies to Filipino fishermen operating near the shoal.

    China has repeatedly accused the Philippines of “illegally grounding” the BRP Teresa Magbanua in order to “forcibly occupy” the shoal. China on Friday released an ecological report to back its claim to the feature that officials said is a Chinese island.


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    Jason Gutierrez in Manila contributed to this story. Edited by RFA staff.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Read related stories in Mandarin: 10年来857名台湾人在中国被失踪或任意逮捕 and 强迫失踪在中国:纪念日背后的无尽悲痛与抗争 

    More than 800 nationals of democratic Taiwan have “disappeared” over the past 10 years in China, which has long used forced disappearances to silence and control its own dissidents and rights activists, rights groups said on Friday.

    Figures compiled by the Taiwan Association for Human Rights and several other non-government groups showed that 857 Taiwan nationals have been “forcibly disappeared or arbitrarily arrested” in China, activists told a joint news conference in Taipei.

    They include publisher Li Yanhe (pen name Fu Cha), detained in Shanghai since April 2023, democracy activist Lee Ming-cheh, who served a five-year jail term in Hunan province for “attempting to subvert state power,” and businessman Lee Meng-Chu, jailed for nearly two years for “espionage” after he snapped photos of People’s Armed Police personnel at a Shenzhen hotel at the height of the 2019 Hong Kong protests.

    Speaking on the United Nations’ International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, Taiwan Association for Human Rights chief Eeling Chiu called on China to fulfill its obligations under international human rights law.

    “China should … immediately release those who have been forcibly disappeared or arbitrarily detained,” Chiu told journalists, calling on the Taiwan authorities to ratify United Nations conventions against torture and enforced disappearances as soon as possible.

    “[They should also] actively assist the families of those who have been arbitrarily arrested and detained in China and set up assistance mechanisms for them,” she said.

    Members of a support group for disappeared Taiwanese publisher Fu Cha hold up signs calling for his release to mark the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, Aug. 30, 2024. (Huang Chun-mei/RFA)
    Members of a support group for disappeared Taiwanese publisher Fu Cha hold up signs calling for his release to mark the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, Aug. 30, 2024. (Huang Chun-mei/RFA)

    Activist Wang Chia-hsuan of a petition group in support of Li Yanhe, or Fu Cha, said Li was born in China but had permanent residency in Taiwan at the time of his disappearance, having lived in Taipei for more than a decade.

    He has been incommunicado for 527 days, and has been detained on suspicion of “incitement to secession,” Wang said.

    He called on Taipei municipal authorities to step up efforts to communicate with the Chinese authorities regarding Li’s case.

    Lee Ming-cheh told the news conference that his disappearance and subsequent jailing put huge pressure on his family back home.

    “Collaborators with the Chinese government in Taiwan warned my wife off talking to Taiwanese NGOs or speaking out publicly about my case, saying they would allow her to travel to China to visit me [if she complied],” he said.

    “If she spoke publicly about my case, she wouldn’t be allowed to go to China,” Lee said, accusing the Chinese government of abusing current crime cooperation agreements with Taiwan to persecute its residents.

    Negotiating is key

    Ruling Democratic Progressive Party lawmaker Puma Shen said the Taiwanese authorities could do a better job of negotiating in the early stages of such cases.

    “Government officials … should call on China for more appropriate handling of [such] cases,” Shen said. “If that doesn’t happen, then we should cut off communication [with China].”

    “If we continue to communicate past that point, there will be no deterrence at all … and it will send the message that it’s OK if our people keep disappearing,” he said.

    Taiwanese publisher Li Yanhe in an undated photo. (Fu Cha via Facebook)
    Taiwanese publisher Li Yanhe in an undated photo. (Fu Cha via Facebook)

    Meanwhile, Taiwanese lawmaker Hung Shen-han warned that it’s not only Taiwanese who are at risk of arbitrary arrest and “disappearance” in China.

    “The risk to individuals of being disappeared and prosecuted in China don’t just apply to Taiwanese,” Hung said, adding that some democratic countries have issued travel advisories to their citizens on the matter.

    “The Chinese government uses its laws, along with various undemocratic and unsupervised practices, to threaten the personal safety of people from all countries who go to China,” he said.

    “Chinese citizens themselves face the same problem.”

    Geng He, the U.S.-based wife of human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng said it has been seven years since he “disappeared” on Aug. 13, 2017.

    “Gao Zhisheng has been missing for seven years and 17 days, with no news or explanation, neither verbal nor written,” she told RFA Mandarin in a recent interview.

    “They deploy the whole state apparatus in its entirety to target people like Gao Zhisheng who speak the truth and work on behalf of the people,” Geng said.

    The couple’s entire family has also been affected, she said.

    “My entire family’s ID cards have been confiscated for the past 15 years now,” Geng said. “This has caused great inconvenience to my family in terms of their ability to work, go about their lives, access medical treatment and travel.”

    “They’re being controlled to death,” Geng said. “Basically, they can’t leave their homes.”

    Gao’s sister died by suicide in May 2020, while his brother-in-law also took his own life after being forced to beg the authorities to “borrow” his own ID card so he can access his cancer medication.

    Disappeared Chinese rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng in an undated photo. (Weiquanwang)
    Disappeared Chinese rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng in an undated photo. (Weiquanwang)

    Veteran rights lawyer Bao Longjun said the authorities have also “disappeared” his wife Wang Yu, also a prominent rights attorney, on several occasions in recent years. She was incommunicado for several hours on Wednesday during the trial of rights lawyer Yu Wensheng and activist Xu Yan in Suzhou.

    “I feel like it’s about ruling the country through terror,” Bao told RFA Mandarin. “There is no legal basis for [enforced disappearances].”

    “If you are even slightly disobedient, they will immediately bring state power to bear, forcibly restricting your freedom, and controlling you to achieve what they think is stability,” he said.

    Uyghurs and Tibetans

    Chinese authorities have also forcibly disappeared Uyghurs and Tibetans in the far-western part of mainland China.

    An estimated 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims have been detained in Xinjiang under flimsy pretexts during mass incarcerations that began more than seven years ago in an effort by Chinese authorities to prevent religious extremism, separatism and terrorism.

    Former Xinjiang University President Tashpolat Teyip, who himself vanished in 2017 amid rumors he had run afoul of China’s increasingly hardline policies in Xinjiang, told RFA that he has had no news about his brother, Nury, who also fell victim to an enforced disappearance.

    Teyip, who now lives in the U.S. state of Virginia, said he has lost faith in the United Nations and international human rights organizations which did little to help except release a statement.

    “I haven’t received any information from them regarding my brother — whether he’s alive or not, whether he was executed or not,” he said. 

    Former Xinjiang University President Tashpolat Teyip (L) at the University of Paris in France in an undated photo. (Nury Teyip)
    Former Xinjiang University President Tashpolat Teyip (L) at the University of Paris in France in an undated photo. (Nury Teyip)

    Rights groups and the Tibetan government-in-exile expressed “serious concern” on Friday over the enforced disappearances of Tibetans in Tibet and called on the Chinese government to release credible information on the whereabouts and well-being of those who have been arbitrarily detained.

    The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy highlighted a “disturbing trend” of underreporting of the number of Tibetans who are victims of enforced disappearances as China cracks down more heavily with restrictions and heightened surveillance in Tibet. 

    The rights group has documented more than 63 known cases of Tibetans subjected to enforced disappearance in Tibet over the past four years, but said the underreporting likely had to do with fear of reprisals. 

    In February 2024, Tibetan performer  Gyegjom Dorjee, who sang publicly about the exiled Dalai Lama’s return to Tibet and blasted Chinese leaders as “false,” was arrested in China’s Sichuan province.  

    In March, Chinese police arrested Pema, a Tibetan monk from Kirti Monastery, for staging a solo protest while holding a portrait of the Dalai Lama on the streets of Ngaba county in Sichuan province.  

    And on May 28, the Chinese authorities arrested Rabgang Tenzin who hoisted the Tibetan national flag on the rooftop of his home in Tibet’s Chamdo prefecture as part of a consecration ceremony.  

    On Friday, the U.S. Congressional Executive Commission on China and the Tibetan government in exile urged Beijing to reveal the whereabouts of one of the highest Tibetan Buddhist leaders, the 11th Panchen Lama, or Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, as one of the “most prominent enforced disappearance cases.” 

    He was abducted by Chinese authorities in May 1995, just days after the Dalai Lama recognized the then six-year-old as the 11th reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, the second-highest spiritual leader in the largest sect of Tibetan Buddhism. 

    ‘An egregious human rights violation’

    The whereabouts and well-being of disappeared Tibetans remain unknown, despite repeated attempts by family members to get information about them, causing them, government officials and rights groups said.

    Tibetan singer Gyegjom Dorjee performs ‘Tearful Deluge of a Sorrowful Song’ at a concert in Khyungchu county, Ngaba Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, in southwest China's Sichuan Province, Jan. 15, 2024. (Screenshot via citizen)
    Tibetan singer Gyegjom Dorjee performs ‘Tearful Deluge of a Sorrowful Song’ at a concert in Khyungchu county, Ngaba Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, in southwest China’s Sichuan Province, Jan. 15, 2024. (Screenshot via citizen)

    “Enforced disappearance is an egregious human rights violation that inflicts the trauma of indeterminate detention or disappearance on its victims, whom all too often are targeted for their dissent or advocacy for human rights and democracy,” said U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a statement on Friday.

    “Families of those forcibly disappeared also suffer immensely, not knowing where their loved ones are, or whether they are alive or dead,” he said. “The agony that enforced disappearance inflicts on the victims and their families is unimaginable.”

    According to the U.N.’s official website, enforced disappearances are “frequently” used by authorities around the world as a way of spreading terror.

    Hundreds of thousands of people have vanished during conflicts or periods of repression in at least 85 countries around the world, plunging their families into “mental anguish” and dire economic hardship, it said.

    The disappeared are particularly vulnerable to torture, while women are at risk of sexual violence, a U.N. page explaining the concept said.

    The practice violates a slew of fundamental human rights, including the right liberty and security, the right not to be subjected to torture or inhumane treatment, and the right to a fair trial, it said.

     Additional reporting by and Gulchehra Hoja for RFA Uyghur, and Dickey Kundol and Tenzin Dickyi for RFA Tibetan. Edited by Tenzin Pema for RFA Tibetan. Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Roseanne Gerin.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Huang Chun-mei and Jing Wei for RFA Mandarin.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.


  • This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Read this story in Burmese

    UPDATED Aug. 30, 2024, 13:03 ET.

    Chinese authorities warned an ethnic minority insurgent group on  Myanmar’s northeastern border to stop fighting the Myanmar military or be “responsible for the consequences,” according to a spokesperson for the group. 

    China has extensive economic interests in neighboring Myanmar, including oil and gas pipelines and mines, and it has been increasingly concerned about the impact of a surge of fighting this year between various insurgent forces and the military

    A spokesman for the insurgent group, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, or TNLA, told Radio Free Asia that the security committee in the Chinese border town of Ruili told the TNLA in a letter to stop fighting.

    “Fighting must stop immediately in order to maintain stability and peace on the China-Myanmar border and protect the lives of Chinese citizens,” the Chinese security committee said in the letter, copies of which were posted online.

    If the TNLA did not comply, China would  “teach them a lesson,” and the group would be “responsible for the consequences,” the security committee said.

    Radio Free Asia was not able to contact the security committee in Ruili and the Chinese Embassy in Yangon did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication. However, during a regular press briefing in Beijing on Friday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told reporters that China is “highly concerned about … the conflict in northern Myanmar” and “will continue to … promote the easing and cooling of the situation” in the region.

    A spokesperson for the TNLA, Lway Yay Oo, confirmed that the letter was from Chinese authorities but declined further comment except to say the group’s top leaders were meeting to discuss it.

    China is known to maintain contacts with Myanmar rebel groups operating along its border, some of which have promised to protect Chinese business interests.

    China-brokered two short-lived ceasefires between a three-party insurgent alliance, which includes the TNLA, and the junta this year but the truces collapsed and the insurgents stepped up pressure on the military, capturing numerous outposts, several major towns and a regional military headquarters. RFA was unable to independently confirm whether the warning was also sent to the other armies that make up the alliance — the Arakan Army and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army.

    China also maintains close ties with the junta that seized power in a 2021 coup, and is keen to limit the influence in Myanmar of Western countries and Myanmar’s other big neighbor, India.


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    Exercises

    China is hoping an election the junta has promised to hold next year can help restore peace and stability, analysts say, while at the same time it is pressing anti-junta forces to agree to peace.

    Media reported this week that China had closed the border between Ruili and the Myanmar town of Muse, cutting off trade including fuel supplies apparently to pressure the TNLA to silence its guns.

    In a show of force, China’s People’s Liberation Army began military exercises, including live-fire drills, in the Ruili area on Tuesday. China’s defense ministry said the drills would strengthen border security and stability.

    In mid-August, China fired warning shots into Kachin state to the north apparently in a bid to warn off junta aircraft bombing an insurgent base on the border.

    Myanmar political and military analyst Than Soe Naing said there was little China could do to stop the war apart from making threats and imposing border restrictions on the insurgent groups and their leaders.

    “These restrictions can’t actually limit the battles that are being fought from Nawnghkio township in Shan state to Pyinoolwin township in Mandalay,” Than Soe Naing said, referring to a broad swathe of central-northeast Myanmar where rebel forces have been making advances.

    Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn. 

    This story has been updated to include a statement by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said he reaffirmed a US commitment to the “complete” denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in  talks with top Chinese officials this week.

    During his visit to Beijing, Sullivan held talks with President Xi Jinping, Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia.

    “In all of my meetings, I stressed the importance of maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait; emphasized the United States’ commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” Sullivan said on Thursday in the press briefing.

    His remarks came amid the absence of references to the goal of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in the policy platforms of both the U.S. Democratic and Republican parties as they prepare for November’s US presidential election.

    That omission has raised concern in South Korea that rival North Korea might see an opportunity to secure a long-cherished goal, U.S. recognition that it is a de facto nuclear power.

    U.S. recognition of that would shift the focus of negotiations from denuclearization to arms control.

    Amid the concerns, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said on Thursday that he believed the U.S. would stick to its long-standing goal of North Korea’s denuclearization. 

    Yoon also said South Korea’s security cooperation with the U.S. and Japan would continue regardless of any leadership changes.

    Yoon reaffirmed the commitment to the trilateral cooperation established during a Camp David summit a year ago, which was designed to strengthen the joint responses of the three allies to North Korea’s threats and other security challenges.

    2024-08-29T034446Z_776059415_RC2FP9ACUM1T_RTRMADP_3_SOUTHKOREA-POLITICS.JPG
    South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol delivers a speech during his briefing on state affairs at a press conference at the presidential office in Seoul, South Korea, Aug. 29, 2024. (Chung Sung-Jun/Pool via Reuters)

    In Japan, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida recently made a surprise  announcement that he will step down when his party picks a new leader next month.

    His decision means his governing Liberal Democratic Party will choose a new standard bearer in its leadership election next month. The winner will replace Kishida as both party chief and prime minister.

    Yoon said cooperation between his country, the U.S. and Japan would endure no matter what.

    “The South Korea-U.S.-Japan cooperation framework is very important not only to the Indo-Pacific but also the global economy and security, benefiting all three nations,” Yoon said in a televised press conference. “A change in the leadership will not change this framework, and it will be upheld through the official diplomatic agreements.”

    Separately, Yoon also expressed confidence in the U.S.’ “extended deterrence” commitment to defending South Korea with both conventional and nuclear capabilities, as outlined in the Washington Declaration, adopted during his summit with Biden in May 2023.

    “The integrated extended deterrence between South Korea and the U.S. is becoming increasingly effective as the alliance is strengthened,” said Yoon. 

    Edited by RFA Staff.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Taejun Kang for RFA.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Read this story in Uyghur: خىتاي پاكىستاندىكى بىر قىسىم ئۇيغۇرلارنى «ئىرقى قىرغىنچىلىق ساياھىتى» گە ئاپارغان

    A group of 10 Pakistan-based businessmen who praised China’s policies during a trip to Xinjiang this month have been blasted by Uyghur activists for parroting Beijing’s propaganda and turning a blind eye to China’s oppression of the roughly 12 million Uyghurs living there.

    The businessmen, most of whom were ethnic Uyghurs, came on the eight-day trip funded by the Chinese government from the Ex-Chinese Association Pakistan, established in 2007 with China’s support to promote the welfare of the Uyghur community in the country.

    In social media posts, the delegation said they saw Uyghurs and other Muslims living happily and peacefully in the far-western region, and that China was actively developing the region. They also dismissed Western reports of Chinese atrocities. 

    Photos and videos from the trip, which began on Aug. 20 and included stops in Urumqi, Korla and Kashgar, show members of the delegation — two of whom wore doppas, or Uyghur skullcaps — raising Chinese flags, attending special banquets and participating in events organized by officials. 

    The posts showed them watching musical performances and proclaiming that “Muslims of all ethnicities are living happily in Xinjiang.”

    The trip is the latest by officials from mostly Muslim countries organized by Beijing in an effort to dispel allegations of genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs in the region, activists say. 

    An estimated 1.8 million Uyghurs have been put into concentration camps scattered around Xinjiang, although Beijing has described them as job training facilities that are now mostly closed.


    RELATED STORIES

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    But this was the first time that a foreign delegation with ethnic Uyghurs from a Muslim-majority country was invited to the far-western region, Uyghur activists said. 

    “Despite having relatives in prison, they remain silent about East Turkestan because they benefit from the Chinese consulate” in Pakistan, said Omer Khan, founder of the Pakistan-based Omer Uyghur Trust, which assists Uyghurs living in the country, using Uyghurs’ preferred name for Xinjiang. 

    “Their actions bring shame not only to Uyghurs in their homeland, but also to Uyghurs worldwide,” he said.

    RFA could not reach the Ex-Chinese Association Pakistan for comment.

    Helping cover up?

    Activists and Uyghurs abroad said they found the photos and videos disturbing, mainly because most Uyghurs living outside China cannot communicate with their relatives in Xinjiang or obtain information about those who have been detained there.

    Uyghurs in Pakistan are outraged by the delegation members, seeing them as aiding and abetting China’s efforts to cover up the Uyghur genocide, Khan said.

    Nearly 1,000 Uyghur families live in Gilgit and Rawalpindi, Pakistan, where their ancestors migrated from Xinjiang 50 to 60 years ago. However, they are stateless and do not have Pakistani citizenship. 

    In Rawalpindi, nearly 100 Uyghurs who fled to Pakistan through Afghanistan years ago are still at risk of being deported to China or Afghanistan because of Pakistan’s failure to grant them citizenship — something activists say is due to Chinese pressure.

    Members of the delegation — which included association chairman Muhammad Nasir Khan and Nasir Khan Sahib, former chairman of the Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry — began posting on social media in Urdu and English as soon as they arrived in Xinjiang, Khan said. 

    In Korla, the second-largest city by population in Xinjiang, they participated in the city’s “Intangible Cultural Heritage Week” as part of China’s “Xinjiang is a wonderful place” propaganda campaign designed to counter criticism of its policies in the restive, heavily Muslim region, he said.

    The Chinese press covered the delegation’s visit, claiming that they witnessed peace, stability, economic development, religious harmony and cultural prosperity in the region. 

    State-controlled media reports publicized the delegation’s statement: “We can see people dancing happily all the time. We really feel that the life of the people in Xinjiang is sweeter than honey.” 

    Abdul Aziz, a Uyghur businessman from Gilgit who participated in the Xinjiang trip, posted short videos on Facebook titled “Xinjiang trip diaries,” showing the delegation visiting exhibitions on counter-terrorism and anti-extremism, the International Grand Bazaar and the Islamic Institute of Xinjiang in Urumqi and tourist sites in other places.

    RFA’s attempts to contact Abdul Aziz via his social media platforms were unsuccessful.

    Pakistan under pressure

    Hena Zuberi, director of the human rights group Justice for All, described the situation as deeply saddening, saying Beijing is using such visits to justify its genocidal policies under the guise of China-Pakistan friendship. 

    Pakistan has come under pressure from Beijing because of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a 3,000-kilometer (1,800-mile) Chinese infrastructure network project under the Belt and Road Initiative to foster better trade with China, and secure and reduce travel time for China’s Middle East energy imports.

    “If they took a stance and they said and asked the hard questions and demanded to know what was happening to those Muslim people in the Uyghur region, I think the situation would be different,” Zuberi said of the visiting delegates. 

    “But Pakistan is so economically imprisoned by China, they can’t,” she said.

    Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Gulchehra Hoja for RFA Uyghur.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • A Chinese military leader and U.S. President Joe Biden’s security adviser agreed on Thursday to theater-level contact between their militaries, the U.S. said, even as China warned that Taiwan independence “is incompatible with peace” and an “insurmountable red line” in relations.

    White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, on the third and final day of a visit to China, told Gen. Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, that their countries had a responsibility to “prevent competition from veering into conflict,” the White House said.

    “The two sides reaffirmed the importance of regular military-to-military communications as part of efforts to maintain high-level diplomacy and open lines of communication,” it said.

    China froze top-level military talks and other dialogue with the U.S. in 2022 after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi became the highest-ranking U.S. official in 25 years to visit Taiwan.

    The island has been self-governing since it effectively separated from the mainland in 1949 after the Chinese civil war.

    China, which regards Taiwan as a renegade province and has not ruled out an invasion to force reunification, was infuriated by the Pelosi visit and canceled military-to-military talks, including contacts between theater-level commanders. 

    President Joe Biden persuaded his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, to resume contacts in November 2023, when they met on the sidelines of an APEC summit in Woodside, California.

    In December, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff met his People’s Liberation Army counterpart and the following month, military officials from both sides resumed U.S.-China Defense Policy Coordination Talks at the Pentagon, after a break of more than two years.

    Sullivan and Zhang “recognized the progress in sustained, regular military-military communications over the past 10 months and planned to hold a theater commander telephone call in the near future,” the White House said.

    But, Taiwan remains a highly sensitive issue for the two sides, which Zhang stressed to Sullivan.

    “China demands that the United States stop military collusion between the United States and Taiwan, stop arming Taiwan, and stop spreading false narratives involving Taiwan,” according to China’s defense ministry.

    For his part, Sullivan “raised the importance of cross-Strait peace and stability.”


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    000_36ET68M.jpg
    China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi (R) gestures near US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan before talks at Yanqi Lake in Beijing on August 27, 2024. (Ng Han Guan/POOL/AFP)

    Sullivan earlier met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, securing an agreement for a phone call between Biden and Xi “in the coming weeks.”

    Sullivan and Wang discussed trade disagreements, ways to stop the illegal flow of synthetic drugs such as fentanyl to the U.S., territorial disputes in the South China Sea and the two countries’ concerns about the situation in North Korea, Myanmar and the Middle East, according to the White House.

    Wang told Sullivan that “the security of all countries must be common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable, and the security of one country cannot be built on the basis of the insecurity of other countries,” China’s foreign ministry said.

    Edited by Mike Firn.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Illustration: Chen Xia/GT

    Illustration: Chen Xia/GT

    On the political stage, Canada often seems to trail behind the US. After the US government’s announcement in May of imposing high tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EV) and steel, the Canadian government has now decided to follow suit.

    On Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Ottawa would impose a 100 percent tariff on imports of Chinese EVs and announced a 25 percent tariff on imported steel and aluminum from China. These measures align with the tariffs set by the US.

    Zhou Rongyao, director of the Canadian Studies Center at the Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times that the recent imposition of tariffs is simply a way for Canada to demonstrate loyalty to the US, as it follows in the footsteps of the US, cheering on American decisions along the way.

    Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University, believes that Canada lacks independence in its foreign and security policies, particularly when it comes to its policies toward China, as Canada almost blindly follows the US. However, Canadian political elites are not sensitive to this issue; instead, they hold onto their inherent alliance mind-set and a sense of arrogant self-righteousness, willingly acting as followers of the US.

    Canada’s imposition of tariffs on China has drawn a response from the spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy in Canada. The spokesperson stated this move is typical trade protectionism and a politically motivated decision, which violates WTO rules.

    Canada should take a look at what the US has gained by repeatedly wielding the tariff stick against China. In an op-ed entitled “The US protectionist craze hasn’t done its economy any favors,” David Dodwell, CEO of the trade policy and international relations consultancy Strategic Access, pointed out that the US tariffs on China have not only cost the US economy dearly, but have failed in its overall objective to reduce the US trade deficit with China. Currently, the US Trade Representative’s office has received over 1,100 public comments, with many US manufacturers expressing opposition to imposing tariffs on Chinese imports, indicating that the US tariff measures are not popular.

    Canada’s lack of rationality is also evident in its disregard for the voices of its own people. Liu Dan, a researcher at the Center for Regional Country Studies at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, said that there were already voices of doubt within Canada when discussions began on whether to impose tariffs on China. This move is also inconsistent with Canada’s long-standing advocacy for proactive climate governance. Undoubtedly, this will increase burdens for Canadian businesses and consumers.

    Clean Energy Canada, a Canadian clean energy think tank, criticized Ottawa’s decision, stating that Canada’s tariffs on Chinese EVs undermine affordability and the country’s climate goals. It can be said that Canada’s blind increase in tariffs will disrupt normal economic and trade cooperation between China and Canada, harm the interests of Canadian consumers and businesses, hinder Canada’s green transition, and impede global efforts to combat climate change, ultimately shooting itself in the foot.

    China is Canada’s second-largest trading partner, and the two economies are interconnected. Any disruption to this vital economic relationship through political means would be regrettable and detrimental to the Canadian economy. The US has seen the consequences of its trade protectionism as “cure-all,” and it has backfired. If Canada continues to be “held hostage” by US’ unhealthy policies, it will only create more barriers to free market circulation, leading to deeper negative impacts and unforeseen shocks on the domestic economy. When considering its own interests, Canada should maintain strategic clarity and prioritize the development of its own economy, rather than succumbing to pressure from the US.

    Illustration: Chen Xia/GT

    On the political stage, Canada often seems to trail behind the US. After the US government’s announcement in May of imposing high tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EV) and steel, the Canadian government has now decided to follow suit.

    On Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Ottawa would impose a 100 percent tariff on imports of Chinese EVs and announced a 25 percent tariff on imported steel and aluminum from China. These measures align with the tariffs set by the US.

    Zhou Rongyao, director of the Canadian Studies Center at the Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times that the recent imposition of tariffs is simply a way for Canada to demonstrate loyalty to the US, as it follows in the footsteps of the US, cheering on American decisions along the way.

    Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University, believes that Canada lacks independence in its foreign and security policies, particularly when it comes to its policies toward China, as Canada almost blindly follows the US. However, Canadian political elites are not sensitive to this issue; instead, they hold onto their inherent alliance mind-set and a sense of arrogant self-righteousness, willingly acting as followers of the US.

    Canada’s imposition of tariffs on China has drawn a response from the spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy in Canada. The spokesperson stated this move is typical trade protectionism and a politically motivated decision, which violates WTO rules.

    Canada should take a look at what the US has gained by repeatedly wielding the tariff stick against China. In an op-ed entitled “The US protectionist craze hasn’t done its economy any favors,” David Dodwell, CEO of the trade policy and international relations consultancy Strategic Access, pointed out that the US tariffs on China have not only cost the US economy dearly, but have failed in its overall objective to reduce the US trade deficit with China. Currently, the US Trade Representative’s office has received over 1,100 public comments, with many US manufacturers expressing opposition to imposing tariffs on Chinese imports, indicating that the US tariff measures are not popular.

    Canada’s lack of rationality is also evident in its disregard for the voices of its own people. Liu Dan, a researcher at the Center for Regional Country Studies at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, said that there were already voices of doubt within Canada when discussions began on whether to impose tariffs on China. This move is also inconsistent with Canada’s long-standing advocacy for proactive climate governance. Undoubtedly, this will increase burdens for Canadian businesses and consumers.

    Clean Energy Canada, a Canadian clean energy think tank, criticized Ottawa’s decision, stating that Canada’s tariffs on Chinese EVs undermine affordability and the country’s climate goals. It can be said that Canada’s blind increase in tariffs will disrupt normal economic and trade cooperation between China and Canada, harm the interests of Canadian consumers and businesses, hinder Canada’s green transition, and impede global efforts to combat climate change, ultimately shooting itself in the foot.

    China is Canada’s second-largest trading partner, and the two economies are interconnected. Any disruption to this vital economic relationship through political means would be regrettable and detrimental to the Canadian economy. The US has seen the consequences of its trade protectionism as “cure-all,” and it has backfired. If Canada continues to be “held hostage” by US’ unhealthy policies, it will only create more barriers to free market circulation, leading to deeper negative impacts and unforeseen shocks on the domestic economy. When considering its own interests, Canada should maintain strategic clarity and prioritize the development of its own economy, rather than succumbing to pressure from the US.

    The post Following US’ Protectionist Policies, Canada is Shooting Itself in the Foot first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Taipei, August 28, 2024—Beijing authorities shut down independent journalist Gao Yu’s internet, landline, and cellular connection on Monday, August 26, after she published a Sunday article analyzing an Al Jazeera interview with Victor Gao, vice president of the Chinese think tank Center for China and Globalization.

    “Chinese authorities must restore journalist Gao Yu’s internet connection and phone services and stop harassing her with physical and digital surveillance,” said Iris Hsu, CPJ’s China representative. “Beijing’s excessive need to control dissent is a reflection of its cowardice and fear of critical reporting.”

    Authorities have asked Gao to shut down her account on the social platform X for years, she told CPJ, adding that she believes that her posts, including ones sharing her articles, are the reason for turning off her internet and phone access. Gao told CPJ that she must go to a friend’s house or a restaurant to access the internet.

    Beijing police also asked Gao to leave the capital from August 29 to September 9 while the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, a state-level economic conference between African countries and China, took place. Gao said that after she refused, the police told her that they would take turns guarding her house to ensure she wouldn’t leave. This is a common practice against dissidents in China.

    CPJ’s email requesting comment from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a message sent via the webpage after office hours to the Government of Beijing Municipality did not immediately receive any responses.

    Authorities sentenced Gao to six years in 1994 for “leaking state secrets;” she was released in 1999 on medical parole after serving part of the sentence. Gao was sentenced to seven years in 2015 on the same charge. The sentence was later reduced to five years, which Gao served outside of prison due to her deteriorating health.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Pacific leaders on Wednesday endorsed a sweeping regional policing initiative despite a warning from a bloc of Melanesian countries that it should not be used for geostrategic advantage by Australia and New Zealand. 

    The Australian-backed Pacific Policing Initiative, or PPI, is seen as a counterweight to growing Chinese influence in the region that in recent years has become a focal point for competition between major powers. 

    Leaders from Australia, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Tonga and Palau fronted the media in the Tongan capital Nuku’alofa to announce the police initiative had received backing from the Pacific Islands Forum.

    The announcement came just a day after the five-member Melanesian Spearhead Group, or MSG, issued a statement saying parts of the PPI were “cryptic” and needed to be calibrated for Pacific needs. 

    On Wednesday, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said endorsement of the law enforcement program was a major objective for this year’s forum.

    “By working together, the security of the region will be much stronger and will be looked after by ourselves,” Albanese said.

    “Of course sovereign nation states will determine how they participate in this.”

    Australia has proposed pouring about $400 million (US$272 million) into training facilities to improve regional policing capabilities under the PPI, including for the establishment of a regional hub in Brisbane. 

    Though the Australian government is adamant the initiative is Pacific-led, some analysts say it is also a way for Canberra to retain its position as the Pacific island’s preeminent security partner as China looks to strike bilateral policing agreements.

    China signed a secretive security pact with the Solomon Islands in 2022 and unsuccessfully sought to strike a region-wide security deal with nearly a dozen Pacific countries that same year. 

    Fiji earlier this year amended a police cooperation agreement with Beijing, scrapping a provision that allowed Chinese officers to be deployed in Fiji.

    On Tuesday, the MSG – which includes Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and the pro-independence Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front, or FLNKS – said the PPI must fit the needs of Pacific nations. 

    “We need to make sure that this PPI is framed to fit our purposes and not developed to suit the geo-strategic interests and geo-strategic denial security postures of our big partners,” said Vanuatu Prime Minister Charlot Salwai, the current chair of the MSG in his opening remarks to a caucus meeting in Tonga. 

    At the same meeting, MSG Director General Leonard Louma said the police deal was a “worthy initiative” but many aspects were still “cryptic.”

    000_9TE4AQ.jpg
    A handout photo taken on Nov. 25, 2021 shows Australian Federal Police Special Operations preparing their equipment prior to their departure from Canberra to the Solomon Islands capital of Honiara. (AFP)

    Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and the FLNKS were absent from Wednesday’s announcement but two MSG leaders were on hand to praise the deal. 

    PNG Prime Minister James Marape said the Pacific needed to build up its security apparatus so it could lend a hand from within the region. He also thanked “big partners” Australia and New Zealand for their contributions to the Pacific’s needs, adding that one police training center would be in PNG.

    Fijian leader Sitiveni Rabuka said his country’s police force had benefited from regional cooperation and training in the past.

    “Most of the problems we face are regional problems … so it’s our responsibility to develop our own policing initiative,” the prime minister said. 

    The PPI contains three pillars, according to Albanese, the first of which was the establishment of up to four regional police training centers to be located in Pacific countries. It will also include a pool of officers ready to be deployed during regional crises and a development and coordination hub to be based in Brisbane. 

    Tongan Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni said a central tenet of this initiative was that forum members would have the discretion to choose how they would contribute to and benefit from the three pillars. 

    “Tonga, like many other countries, is facing a number of transnational security challenges, including an increase in drug trafficking within the Pacific in recent years,” he said. 

    “Therefore I think it is really important to have a Pacific-led, Pacific-owned initiative that reinforces the existing regional security architecture.”

    After the deal was announced, the leaders left without taking questions from the media.

    Mihai Sora, director of the Pacific islands program at the Lowy Institute, said the deal was a massive achievement for Pacific countries, at a time when regional unity was under pressure and when Pacific countries were facing mounting threats.

    “Pacific countries are still free to pursue individual policing activities with other partners, of course. Sovereignty is paramount,” he told RFA affiliate BenarNews. “But this initiative aims to fill those gaps in policing to which China purports to be responding.”

    Pacific civil society groups, speaking on the sidelines of the forum, said engagement with community organizations about the policing initiative had been disappointing.

    “There’s a lot of reaction taking place rather than deep thinking and analysis and actually listening,” said Sharon Bagwan Rolls of the Pacific Women Mediators Network.

    “Traditional security measures are still connected to people, so it does need to come back through the forum process, back into civil society to have those conversations.”

    BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Harry Pearl and Stefan Armbruster for BenarNews.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Under cover of darkness, the 15 North Koreans – 13 women and two children – approached the river, where they expected to catch a speedboat out of China to Laos, bringing them one step closer to freedom.

    They had traveled more than 2,500 kilometers (1,500 miles) across China to get to that point, hoping eventually to fly from Southeast Asia to Seoul. 

    Suddenly, Chinese police appeared and arrested all of them.

    Instead, they will likely be repatriated – a fate that awaits nearly all North Korean escapees in Chinese police custody – and will likely be punished for fleeing.

    The incident occurred on the night of Aug. 21, according to a South Korean human rights group, Korea Unification Solidarity, that had been helping the escapees.

    The Chinese guide leading the group had sent a video clip to update their status to some of their family members who had already made the journey to South Korea. They were arrested moments later.

    According to Korea Unification Solidarity, the escapees were on their way to South Korea – in a roundabout route. 

    After first fleeing North Korea to China, they were divided into two groups to avoid detection. Each group took a different route across China to the southern city of Kunming, and once reunited they planned to cross the border to a Southeast Asian country. 

    “The two groups arrived safely in Kunming and merged, but when they sent a video of their arrival at the riverside, the police raid started,” Jang Se-yul, a representative of Korea Unification Solidarity, told RFA Korean. “When I asked another guide, he said that they were all caught at the riverside.”

    An escapee living in Seoul identified by the pseudonym Lee for safety reasons told Jang that his younger sister was among the group of 15 arrested escapees.

    “Ten days ago, my younger sister and her group of 15 people left Yanji, Jilin Province, to go to Kunming and they were arrested by the Chinese police.” Lee said, according to Jang. “Their whereabouts became unknown after the video clip was sent by the Chinese guide.”

    The three-second-long video clip provided to RFA by Lee via Jang shows several women, presumed to be among the 15 escapees, moving toward a river in pitch darkness to board a boat.

    RFA has not been able to independently confirm which river is shown in the video or any of Jang’s statements about the incident.

    According to Jang, the group consists of 13 North Korean women and two children who had lived temporarily in the northeastern Chinese provinces of Heilongjiang and Jilin.

    Illegal migrants?

    Although many in the international community are critical of China for forcibly repatriating North Korean escapees, Beijing maintains that they are not refugees, but illegal economic migrants, and that it must repatriate them because it is bound by two diplomatic agreements with Pyongyang.

    The arrests come about a month after South Korea celebrated its first-ever North Korean Defectors’ Day, a new holiday that will henceforth fall on July 14 and celebrate the stories and struggles of North Koreans who have resettled in South Korea.

    During the holiday events, South Korean President Yoon Seok-yeol pledged to make “every diplomatic effort to prevent our compatriots who escaped North Korea and are living overseas from being forcibly repatriated.”

    During the COVID-19 pandemic, repatriations temporarily halted as the border between China and North Korea were closed down, but now that the border is open again, repatriations have resumed.

    When RFA contacted South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for comment on the arrests, the ministry’s spokesperson Lee Jae-woong said that there was nothing that could be confirmed.

    But he said that South Korea maintains that North Koreans residing overseas should not be forcibly repatriated under any circumstances.

    South Korea’s Ministry of Unification told RFA that it reiterated that position and that it is currently verifying the facts. 

    Translated by Jay Park. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Jung Young for RFA Korean.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • China’s promotion of tourism in the far-western region of Xinjiang, where Beijing has sought to hide its persecution of the 11 million Uyghurs who live there, has parallels to the Nazis’ practice of “genocide tourism,” a Swedish anthropologist and former diplomat writes in the online current affairs magazine The Diplomat.

    After Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 and its herding of Jews into concentration camps, a popular German travel guide in 1943 offered tours of the Wilder Osten, or the Wild East, the article by Magnus Fiskesjö recounts.

    It spelled out a vision of Lebensraum, or living space, and new resources for Germans after forcing out Jews, Slavs and other undesirables from Central and Eastern Europe.

    And even as the Nazis set up death camps to murder Jews, the Warsaw Ghetto became an attraction on orchestrated tours, writes Fiskesjö, who teaches anthropology and Asian studies at Cornell University in New York state.

    Likewise, in China’s efforts to promote Xinjiang as a tourist destination, it has sought to cover up its human rights abuses against the Uyghurs by sprucing up buildings, installing new infrastructure and constructing fake historical sites, Fiskesjö writes.

    It’s all meant to promote China’s narrative that Uyghurs are living happy, prosperous lives and and benefiting from China’s development, when in fact about 1.8 million of them have been detained in concentration camps and thousands have been sent to prison, often on flimsy charges — behavior that United States and some Western parliaments have labeled a genocide.

    China denies those accusations and claims the camps were training facilities and are now mostly closed.

    Tourists are flocking to Xinjiang — mostly from within China — and tend to see a sanitized version of life there. Last year, 265 million tourists visited the region, the state-run Xinhua news agency said. 

    Beijing has arranged for dozens of diplomats and journalists, mainly from Muslim countries, to visit Xinjiang to take orchestrated tours of the region — without letting them freely roam around or talk with local residents.


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    Chinese officials have adopted similar practices embraced by the Nazis, who allowed tourists to go to an “occupied zone … under the military and police control so they can channel tourists to safe places where they only see what the government wants them to see,” Fiskesjö told Radio Free Asia.

    “It was their attempt to present the situation as normal,” he said. “The Nazi government would say, ‘We have everything under control. There is nothing to worry about, and you can be a tourist.’”

    Resettlement strategies

    There are other similarities, Fiskesjö says.

    Beijing’s strategy of settling Han Chinese in Xinjiang and the forced assimilation of Uyghur children into Chinese culture also mirrors the Nazis’ relocation of people from Germany to occupied territories and their forcible assimilation policies for children taken from their parents to be raised as German, he said.

    “Both of these aspects are equally happening in Xinjiang today,” he said.

    Fiskesjö and Rukia Turdush, an independent Uyghur researcher from Canada, published a report in July titled “Mass Detention and Forced Assimilation of Uyghur Children in China,” which provides evidence of Beijing separating children from their families, preventing them from being reunited with their parents, and restricting their use of the Uyghur language.

    Fiskesjö also pointed to the ongoing arrests and detentions of Uyghurs, and Chinese settlers taking over farms and homes of those held in camps or prisons.

    Most tourists on government-sponsored or designed trips to Xinjiang will stick to designated areas and stay in the same hotels, he said.

    “It’s about inviting people and tricking and fooling them into [seeing] this as a normal area, controlled and safe,” Fiskesjö said. 

    Visitors pose for photos with a giant plastic sculpture of a piece of Uyghur naan bread at the International Grand Bazaar in Urumqi in northwestern China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, during a government organized visit, April 22, 2021. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP)
    Visitors pose for photos with a giant plastic sculpture of a piece of Uyghur naan bread at the International Grand Bazaar in Urumqi in northwestern China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, during a government organized visit, April 22, 2021. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP)

    Tourists who go to Xinjiang are convinced that the criticism of China’s mistreatment of the Uyghurs isn’t true, he added.

    “This is what is encapsulated in the slogan ‘seeing is believing,’ which the Chinese government has been recycling again and again” with regard to Xinjiang, Fiskesjö said. 

    ‘False narrative’

    Experts on Xinjiang concurred with Fiskesjö’s assessment.

    “By shaping the tourist experience either through what people see, what people read [and] who they can speak to, China believes that it can use individuals who come to the region to amplify its own narratives,” said Henryk Szadziewski, director of research at the Uyghur Human Rights Project.

    When visitors go to Xinjiang, they feel safe and see Uyghurs dancing or participating in other performances; then, after they leave, they will tell others about their experiences, which are meant to counter the arguments of genocide, he said.

    The Uyghur Human Rights Project, based in Washington, issued reports in August 2023 and a January 2024 about Western travel companies offering tours to sites in Xinjiang connected to the repression of religious beliefs, the destruction of Uyghur cultural heritage, surveillance, imprisonment, torture, sexual assault and deaths in custody.

    U.S. columnist, author and lawyer Gordon Chang said some visitors are willing to whitewash the persecution of the Uyghurs and spread the Chinese government’s narrative that there is no genocide.

    “They see what the Communist Party wants them to see, and they know what is occurring,” he told RFA. “Some foreign tourists are just naïve, but many are propagating a narrative that is false. We know that because there is evidence that shows that China is engaging in these crimes against humanity.”

    Anders Corr, principal of the New York-based political risk firm Corr Analytics, compared the Xinjiang visits to Soviet propaganda “Potemkin villages” — selected sites designed to demonstrate a façade of success of the Soviet system to outsiders.

    Beijing wants to promote ideological beliefs that there is no genocide, that everything is fine, and that the locals are happy and allowed to practice their religion and cultural traditions, he said.

    “They’ll try out some Uyghur actors to act happy, and they will try out Uyghur dancers to look happy and tell them to smile, but if [they] don’t smile wide enough, [they] are sent to concentration camps.”

    Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Uyghar for RFA Uyghur.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.


  • This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.


  • This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • On 17 August 2024, Indonesia’s president, Joko Widodo, travelled to the still-under-construction new capital, Nusantara, to celebrate Independence Day. The presence of both the president and his successor, Prabowo Subianto, however, has not been enough to quell the ongoing controversies and discontent. Five years after Jokowi’s announcement of the Nusantara Capital City (Ibu Kota Nusantara, or IKN) project, widespread scepticism has emerged, often from drastically opposing perspectives.

    Some question whether Jakarta-based public servants will be willing to relocate to Nusantara’s location in East Kalimantan, a region perceived as backward and isolated. Others express concern for the land and the local residents who are soon to be displaced. The president had once proudly announced his intention to personally move from Jakarta to the new presidential palace by the time of Independence Day this year. Three days before the date, he declared that the plan would be postponed due to incomplete infrastructure. This leaves critics in a difficult position: should they rejoice over the project’s slow progress, or worry about the prolonged uncertainty over its prospects?

    Standing in front of the unfinished presidential palace, the Istana Garuda, Widodo would be picturing a finished building that looks surprisingly comparable to something like in the image below, which shows the business service centre of China’s Xiong’an New Area, a planned city in the hinterland of Beijing that has been dubbed Xi Jinping’s “pet project”. Surprisingly, few have discussed the ideological and practical similarities between these two projects. Indeed, Indonesia has its own history of planning to relocate its capital from Jakarta that is almost as long as the history of the republic itself. When international comparisons are given, the examples are usually Canberra and Brasilia (Putrajaya and Naypyidaw come next). Xiong’an, situated in north China, is rarely talked about—perhaps precisely because Xiong’an’s own controversies are too similar to those of the IKN.

    Business and Service Convention Center, Xiong’an (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

    Dubbed a “millennium plan”, Xiong’an New Area is the crown jewel of Xi Jinping’s era of mega-projects. It aims to gradually shift much of Beijing’s population and activities to a previously desolate area 180 kilometres to its south, in order to alleviate the capital’s perceived worsening overpopulation. With billions of Chinese yuan invested in its preliminary construction, the project emphasises sustainability and quality rather than the rapid pace of development that characterised China’s previous four decades of urbanisation. By “millennium”, Xi’s administration shows its determination to bring about permanent changes to the nation that are beyond the limits of presidential terms—or in the Chinese historical consciousness, dynastic rotations.

    Many legitimately speculate that pushing through this costly project was a major motivation behind Xi’s pursuit of a third term—a scenario not unfamiliar to Indonesians after witnessing Jokowi’s political manoeuvring in the recent election. After years of intensive construction, local villages have been razed, new buildings have sprung up, but few newcomers have moved in. Xiong’an’s experience over the past decade shows us both the best and worst-case scenarios Jokowi could imagine: speedy, high-quality construction, but with lacklustre economic returns.

    Xi Jinping visits the Xiong’an New Area, January 2019. (Photo: Xiong’an New Area on Facebook)

    Deindustrialisation

    A common pitfall for both defenders and sceptics of the infant IKN was to wishfully imagine a place of purity—of pristine nature and undisturbed natives. Similarly, observations on the Chinese equivalent often emphasise the tabula rasa state of the Baiyangdian wetland chosen for Xiong’an’s development. The media tend to be preoccupied with events within the specific administrative boundaries of Penajam Paser Utara district, the site of IKN, and Xiong’an, which are indeed rural. Once we zoom out to the larger economic structures of East Kalimantan and eastern Hebei province, the pictures will look very different.

    In East Kalimantan, mining, oil and gas refining, and timber processing have been traditionally the dominating economic sectors. The society of East Kalimantan came under as much, if not more, influence of exploitative industrialisation, demographic displacement, and settlement from outsiders than any the other major island of Southeast Asia. Coal mines and oil wells had begun invading the Balikpapan area for more than 130 years, bringing in large numbers of labourers from Java and China. Even before these industrial developments, the towns of Samarinda and Paser were urbanised by generations of migrants from the south coast of Borneo as well as Sulawesi.

    The psychological shock, or “kaget”, of building modern industrial cities amidst the jungle is already relegated to the past tense. Expecting environment-oriented criticism of IKN, the Indonesian government had been gradually shifting its narratives about the new capital from that of “building a green city in the primary forest” to that of “reclaiming a green city from misused and depleted wastelands.” The effort could be seen in the gestural closing of several illegal mining concessions on land reserved for IKN. Observers doubt the substance of this move, as many mines and drills, including those owned by the very individuals pushing for the project, continue to operate unhindered.

    The experience of Hebei, the province where Xiong’an is located, in the past decades offer some lessons for the potential future of East Kalimantan. Once a predominantly agricultural region, the province rapidly industrialised in the 20th century thanks to the discovery of mineral reserves. As nearby Tianjin and Beijing shifted towards service and technological sectors, Hebei received most of the heavy industries moving out from these large cities in the 1990s and early 2000s, worsening the already severe pollution of its environment. Degradation of the land’s arability made the populace even more dependent on the industrial jobs in a vicious cycle. Even though it is located right next to the capital, Hebei has ironically long been considered a peripheral “backwater” amidst China’s extremely uneven economic development.

    Xiong’an New Area photographed from a drone, March 2024 (Photo: Xinhua)

    After Xi assumed power in 2012, he had been determined to curtail the worsening air pollution in Beijing and to return “clear water and green mountains” to China’s heavily industrialised north, pushing for Hebei’s deindustrialisation. A large number of cottage industries were shut down every year since then, and air quality in Beijing had been largely restored. Baoding, the prefecture-level city (equivalent to an Indonesian district or kabupaten) where Xiong’an is located, proudly broadcasts itself in 2018 as the first one of the province achieving “steel-free” status, meaning that every steel mill has closed down.

    In this sense, IKN and Xiong’an are ideologically motivated projects imposed by political elites in the centre to transform a periphery perceived as backward, dirty, and inefficient. The catch lies in the obvious economic dependence of both China and Indonesia on the very sectors they ostensibly seek to eliminate. Local governments in Hebei struggle financially without the tax revenues from smaller industries, not to mention the livelihoods lost by ordinary citizens. Fearing a similar outcome, Jokowi and Prabowo Subianto have yet to commit to removing dirty industries from East Kalimantan. IKN’s initiative to install solar panels pales in comparison to the province’s colossal coal-producing capacity, which sustains hundreds of thousands of families. Jokowi has also repeatedly promised to build, expand, or retain oil and gas facilities in East Kalimantan, likely to maintain morale in one of the few regions of Indonesia where hilirisasi, or industrial down-streaming, has yielded tangible economic benefits.

    Deglobalisation

    At first glance, the two projects receive markedly different treatment in their respective countries. While Xi’s team showers Xiong’an with grandiose terms such as “millennium plan” and “ecological civilisation” in official rhetoric, it is not an attempt to create a new political centre from scratch. Critics have noted certain political symbolism in Xi’s vision for Xiong’an, but these pale in comparison to the heaps of nationalistic narratives surrounding IKN. In this year’s Independence Day celebrations, the participating grandees dressed colourfully in traditional ethnic fashions (pakaian adat) from across the archipelago. A real-life version of Tien Soeharto’s nationalistic playground, Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, was broadcasted in front of the whole country, matching the actual installation of a miniature IKN in Taman Mini itself in 2023. Xiong’an has had its moments like this, but after seven years it has largely faded from the Chinese public attention.

    If we look beneath the surface of nationalism, however, IKN and Xiong’an projects share another layer of shared ideology. By deemphasising metropolises such as Beijing and Jakarta, IKN and Xiong’an represent the two governments’ disengagement from global capitalism as source of legitimacy. Asia’s political elites are seeking new paradigms in a deglobalising world, and this introspective turn is a part of it. As seen in the landmark structures of IKN and Xiong’an, there is a clear effort to create aesthetically distinctive images and icons that diverge from the typical modern Asian city. Yet, an uncanny similarity emerges: an architectural style reminiscent of Stalin-era Soviet bloc and the imperial Japanese Teikan Yoshiki of Manchukuo. Both were attempts to deliver nationalistic bearings for architectural aesthetics in an industrialising and globalising world, comparable to those promised by IKN and Xiong’an. At their core is the symbolic purification of the self from Western pollution. The pool of alternative artistic inspiration, however, appears limited.

    Indonesian President Joko Widodo delivering a presentation on the then-unnamed new capital city, October 2022 (Photo: Joko Widodo on Facebook)

    In the case of IKN, various Indonesian officials have already emphasised its aesthetic mission to represent an Indonesia free of Dutch colonial influences . The Indonesian government does not shy from admitting Jakarta’s myriad problems, but seems to blame many of them on the colonial origins of the city. Ridwan Kamil, a potential contender for the governorship of Jakarta who also holds the office of IKN’s “curator”, repeatedly made promises about purging IKN from colonial “concepts” and “nuances” of Jakarta. Such was also the reason why cities with deep colonial histories, such as Bandung and Bogor, were dropped as candidates. Balikpapan’s colonial origins, meanwhile, could be conveniently ignored, as IKN comfortably sits outside its administrative boundaries. Superficial as it sounds, Jokowi is indeed bringing into reality an ideological ambition that had been dreamt of by generations of Indonesia’s nationalists. By way of the trans-Kalimantan highway, one can reach IKN from Palangkaraya, Soekarno’s own attempt to create a purely Indonesian city unpolluted by colonialism.

    The growing contradictions of Singapore’s HDB scheme

    A notionally egalitarian public housing program has come to fuel class and intergenerational inequalities

    Similarly, Xiong’an is designed to be flat, low, and sparse. It is a deliberate move to divorce from the previous “new areas” such as Shenzhen, Pudong (Shanghai), and Binhai (Tianjin), where development was more vertical, and oriented toward speed and connectivity. Some observers argue that for Xi, Xiong’an symbolises China’s return to a distinctively Chinese mode of development, rejecting the previous decades of “reform and opening Up” as compromises to a world order dominated by the west. Anticipating criticisms of Xiong’an’s immediate economic utility and attractiveness, Xi gave it the unusual official designation of a “millennium plan”, creatively situating it within an imagined continuum of Chinese history and detaching it from the logic of global capitalism.

    Both projects thus encompass some degree of deterrence or resistance against the West-dominated world order. Unfortunately, to a large degree, the common people who actually live in these countries still have to abide by the rules of global capitalism. Jakarta and Beijing will continue to attract migrants from the provinces, while Nusantara and Xiong’an’s current desolation might persist for a while. Slow return of investment is far from the worst case scenario, though: thanks to the late James C. Scott we know how bad and costly it can get if governments indeed turn to draconian measures to force particular demographic patterns or to force mostly any grand designs. With Beijing’s violent eviction of migrant workers from its suburbs in 2017 still looming in the residents’ memory, would the two governments actually wait for a thousand years?

    A future for the locals?

    By 2024, the Xiong’an New Area has moved most of its original villagers into newly completed apartment buildings. A video on Bilibili shows us an honest conversation between the content creator and a villager-turned-taxidriver in Xiong’an. As expected, being uprooted from one’s community and dropped into cell-like units makes a shocking experience. Driving through empty streets, the middle-aged man complained about a few things. Costs for utilities and groceries used to be negligible in a rural economy, but suddenly has to be dealt with. Isolation in gated communities makes life tedious and boring. He is still hopeful about the future. He feels that it will be worth it as long as his children and grandchildren may one day benefit by way of having access to good education in a country with extremely unevenly distributed education resources.

    Such is one of the few lessons IKN might learn from Xi’s gamble. While East Kalimantan boasts cities with some of the best quality of life throughout Indonesia, its rural population rarely reap the benefits— especially in terms of access to education. Indigenous and rural communities in Penajam Paser Utara have already made an explicit petition that some of the educational resources that might show up as the Indonesian capital moves should be reserved for them. Amidst all the grand narratives of nation, colonialism, and environment, education remains perhaps the only substantial asset that urbanisation could potentially hope to bring to the displaced locals. As IKN moves forward at a speed that starts to far outpace Xiong’an, we cannot be sure of anything just yet.

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    The post Ideological (mega)projects: Xiong’an and Nusantara appeared first on New Mandala.

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  • The problem with satellite states and subject powers is that their representatives are rarely to be trusted, especially on matters regarding security. Their idea of safety and assurance is tied up in the interests of some other power, one who supposedly guarantees it through a promised force of arms come the place and come the time.  The guarantee is often a sham one, variable in accordance with the self-interest of the guardian.  In the case of the United States, the island continent of Australia is only useful as an annexure of Washington’s goal: maintaining less the illusion of a Pax Americana than a state of threatened military aggression against any upstart daring to vex an empire.

    In an interview with the Weekend Australian published on August 16, Republican Representative Michael McCaul, chair of the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs, did something few Australian politicians or think tankers dare do: offer a bracingly frank assessment about the military intentions of the AUKUS security pact.  Forget the peaceful dimension here.  A militarised, garrisoned Australia is essential to maintaining US military supremacy – on the pretext of maintaining the peace, naturally.

    Australia’s vastness and geography has always mesmerised explorers, writers and planners of the military inclination.  In the case of McCaul, Australia was to be praised as offering “key advantages” in deterring China.  “It is the central base of operations in the Indo-Pacific to counter the threat.”

    In the scheme of things, the northern city of Darwin was vital.  “If you really look at the concentric circles emanating from Darwin – that is the base of operations, and the rotating (US) forces there are providing the projection of power and force that we’re seeing in the region.”  On Sky News, the congressman went so far as to call Darwin “the epicentre of the organisation projecting power through the South China Sea to China.”

    McCaul’s reasons for this state of affairs are given the usual dressing, the gingered sauce we have come to expect from the standard bearers of empire: the entire effort was a collaborative, cooperative one between two equal states with the same interests, an effort to “provide more deterrence in the region and project power and strength so we don’t have a war.”  It sounded much like a shabby confection by one superior power to a vastly inferior one: manufacture the security threat – in this case, unchecked, possibly mad Chinese ambitions – and then gather military forces to battle it.  Make it a joint affair, much like a married couple menaced by a nightmare.

    The monster, once conjured, can only grow more dangerous, and must be fought as a matter of urgency.  Their creators demand it.  “Time is really of the essence right now, as Chairman Xi has announced his 2027 project,” warned McCaul, taking that all too familiar position on China’s leader as a barking mad despot keen on world war over a small piece of real estate.  That year is only of significance to US planners since the Chinese president has promised Beijing’s readiness to invade Taiwan by that time.  But such visions have no meaning in a vacuum, and the other power essential to that talk of toughness is Washington’s own provocative role.  Australia has no reason to play in such playgrounds of nonsense, but AUKUS has been shown to be an open license for Canberra to commit personnel to any futile conflict over that island.

    The integration, which has become synonymous with absorption, of Australia’s defence into the US military industrial complex, is also a matter of interest to McCaul.   “I envision there being co-production in Australia … helping to build up our defence industrial base, which is really stressed right now with war in the Middle East and Ukraine and the eastern Europe threat.”  Australia, servant to US global power.

    This latest visit affirms the content of the recent AUSMIN meeting held in Annapolis, Maryland, where Australia’s Defence Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong confirmed that the US war machine would find itself operating in every sphere of Australian defence in what is clumsily described as “Enhanced Force Posture Cooperation”.

    The occasion also gave McCaul a chance to announce that defence trade exemptions had been granted to Australia and the UK under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation.  He still expressed regret over “big government regulation” as a barrier to “this crucial alliance’s ability to truly deter a conflict in the Indo-Pacific.”

    The removal of some defence licensing restrictions has thrilled Marles, who continues to labour under the assumption that this will somehow favour Australia’s barely existing sovereign capability.  “This is really important in terms of our ability to build our future submarines, but also to pursue that AUKUS Pillar II agenda of those new innovative technologies.”  The embarrassingly naïve Marles ignores the vital feature of any such agreements: that the US maintains control over all intellectual property, including any relevant classified material associated with those technologies.

    The comments from Rep. McCaul square with those made by previous officials who see Australia as a vital staging ground for war.  US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, during his April 3 visit to Washington’s Center for a New American Security (CNAS), was also candid in the promise offered by nuclear powered submarines.

    In a discussion with CNAS Chief Executive Officer, Richard Fontaine, Campbell foresaw “a number of areas of conflict and in a number of scenarios that countries acting together,” including Japan, Australia, South Korea and India, when it came to the Indo-Pacific.  “I think that balance, the additional capacity will help strengthen deterrence more general [sic].”  The nuclear-powered submarines intended for the Royal Australian Navy, along with the boats of likeminded states “could deliver conventional ordinance from long distances.  Those have enormous implications in a variety of scenarios, including in cross-strait circumstances”.

    Even with such open admissions on the reasons why AUKUS is important to Washington, the timid, the bought, and the bribed, hold the reins in Canberra.  For them, the march to war amidst the false sounding notes of peace is not only inevitable but desirable.

    The post Warmonger Confessions: More Frankness on AUKUS first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election will be on the agenda but “not the point” of a three-day visit to China next week by President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, for talks with Foreign Minister Wang Yi, a senior White House official told reporters on Friday.

    The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the Aug. 27-29 trip, said the pair would discuss a range of topics including areas of disagreement, such as Taiwan, Ukraine and the Middle East.

    “I wouldn’t tie this trip or associate it too closely with the election – that’s not the point,” the official said, adding that Sullivan and Wang had aimed to meet earlier in the year and were behind schedule.

    ENG_CHN_SULLIVAN_08232024.2.jpg
    Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, second right, attends a bilateral meeting with U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, second left, in Malta on Sept. 16, 2023. (Lian Yi/Xinhua via AP)

    Still, the official acknowledged the high-stakes election was “always in the background in any engagement we have with foreign officials concerned about what comes next” in terms of U.S. foreign policy.

    “But this meeting will be focused on the topics and the issues that we are dealing with now,” they said. “There is a lot we can get done.” 

    It will be the fifth in-person meeting between Sullivan and Wang in 18 months, when tense ties began to thaw, and their first in Beijing. The previous talks were held in Vienna in May 2023, Malta in September 2023, Washington in October 2023 and Bangkok in January.

    The last U.S. national security adviser to travel to the Chinese capital was Susan Rice under President Barack Obama in 2016.

    Harris or Trump?

    The White House official declined to comment on Sullivan’s likely response to what they called “the continuity question” – whether the winner of the Nov. 5 election would change their policy in regards to China – even as they acknowledged it would likely be discussed.

    “It’s up to the next administration to determine China policy and how they intend to use some of these channels of communication,” the official said. “What we can speak to is how we intend to manage the balance of this administration … [and] manage the transition.” 

    However, the official did say it “bears repeating that U.S. diplomacy and channels of communication do not indicate a change in approach” to China from the the White House, or a softening of relations.

    “It really is about clearing up misperceptions and avoiding this competition from veering into conflict,” the official said. “Even amidst competition, we can find constructive ways to work with each other.”

    Edited by Malcolm Foster


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Alex Willemyns for RFA.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin accused Western countries of “containing” the potential of Russia and China, saying that the duo should jointly defend their shared interests and uphold the principles of a multipolar world order amidst increasing pressure from the West, state-run media reported.

    Mishustin made the remarks when co-chairing the 29th regular meeting between Chinese and Russian heads of government with Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Wednesday in Moscow. 

    “Western countries are trying to maintain their global dominance and contain the economic and technological potential of Russia and China,” Mishustin said, cited by the TASS news agency. 

    “That is why it is important to concentrate efforts on protecting our common interests, building a multipolar world order and strengthening coordination on international platforms,” he added. 

    Mishustin said Russia will join China in strengthening communication and coordination in international affairs, better safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of the two sides, without elaborating. 

    Li said China was ready to work with Russia to strengthen “all-round practical cooperation” between the two countries.

    As the divide between Russia and the West grows, the Kremlin is increasingly focusing its attention on China, with ties between the two states growing ever stronger. In particular, strategic cooperation between Moscow and Beijing has visibly intensified in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

    On May 29, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell spoke to NATO representatives in Brussels on the seriousness of Chinese-Russian relations. 

    In July, 32 NATO members also stated during the NATO summit in Washington that China played a crucial role in enabling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by supporting its defense industry. 

    In the same week of the summit, the Chinese and Russian militaries conducted joint exercises in western Belarus near the border with NATO member Poland, though Beijing publicly denied that the exercises were aimed at the summit.

    In a joint statement, the 32 NATO member states urged Beijing to cease its support for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, which has provided Russia with the resources needed to produce weapons and military hardware despite strict U.S.-led trade sanctions.

    While China has repeatedly denied sending weapons or military equipment to aid Russia’s war effort, Ukrainian forces on the ground have reported finding a growing number of components from China in Russian weapons.


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    After his meeting with Mishustin, the Chinese Premier met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin where Li reiterated China’s willingness to work with Russia on a global stage. 

    “Against the backdrop of accelerating changes in the world unseen in a century, China is ready to work with Russia to further strengthen multilateral coordination, deepen mutual trust and cooperation with developing countries, firmly promote a multi-polar world and economic globalization, and better safeguard its legitimate rights and interests and basic norms governing international relations,” Li said as cited by China’s Xinhua News Agency. 

    Li added that the steady development of China-Russia relations not only served the fundamental interests of the two countries and two peoples, but also contributed to regional and world peace, stability and prosperity.

    Li also stressed that China was willing to work with Russia in “emerging areas” such as scientific, technological and industrial innovation as well as cultural, tourism, education, youth and sub-national exchanges and cooperation to promote mutual understanding between the two peoples. 

    2024-08-21T130129Z_2139733153_RC2DK9A87ZDM_RTRMADP_3_RUSSIA-CHINA.JPG
    Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and China’s Premier Li Qiang shake hands during a meeting in Moscow, Russia, Aug. 21, 2024. (Sputnik/Alexei Filippov/Pool via Reuters)

    An important part of bilateral cooperation has been seen in skyrocketing Chinese exports to Russia, with a recent analysis of Chinese customs data by Nathaniel Sher, a senior research analyst at Carnegie China, revealing that in 2023, some 90% of “”high priority” dual-use use goods used to produce Russian weapons were imported from China.

    In May Putin visited China for the first time since beginning a new term, and he and Chinese President Xi Jinping underlined their “long and strong” friendship, and a strategic partnership that has been described as having “no upper limits.”

    At that time Xi described the China-Russia relationship today as “hard-earned,” saying “the two sides need to cherish and nurture it” in a joint statement. 

    “China is willing to … jointly achieve the development and rejuvenation of our respective countries, and work together to uphold fairness and justice in the world,” Xi said in May. 

    Edited by Mike Firn.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Taejun Kang for RFA.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.


  • This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.


  • This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to deepen development ties with Fiji and support Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s plan for an “ocean of peace,” as the Pacific leader finished a 10-day visit to the Asian superpower before attending a major regional forum next week. 

    Fiji’s relations with China have cooled under Rabuka, who reset a police cooperation agreement with Beijing earlier this year in what was a significant blow to Chinese security interests in the South Pacific. 

    Beijing has hosted several Pacific island leaders in recent months, including Vanuatu Prime Minister Charlot Salwai, Nauruan President David Adeang and Solomon Islands leader Jeremiah Manele.

    AP24233326974360.jpg
    Fiji’s Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, second left and Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, attend a meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (Photo via AP)

    Rabuka met with Xi in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People after touring the economic hubs of Zhejiang and Fujian and observing poverty alleviation efforts in Yunnan province. 

    “China is ready to help Fiji and other Pacific island countries cope with climate change, and strengthen development cooperation with them to make the Pacific Ocean an ocean of peace, friendship and cooperation,” Xi said, according to a report Tuesday by state news agency Xinhua.

    Rabuka, who led two coups in Fiji in the late 1980s, has called for Pacific island nations to declare their ocean territories a “zone of peace” as the United States and China jostle for influence in the region. A formal declaration will be considered at the upcoming Pacific Island Forum (PIF) leaders meeting in Tonga next week.

    Rabuka said that Fiji was ready to learn from China’s experience and keen to increase collaboration in poverty reduction, infrastructure and connectivity, Xinhua said.

    On Sunday, Rabuka held talks with China’s No. 2 official Premier Li Qiang. The two leaders said they were committed to deepening cooperation in trade, infrastructure, agriculture, fisheries and tourism, according to a statement from the Chinese government.

    China said it was ready to import more goods from Fiji and boost foreign investment in the country. Rabuka and Li witnessed the signing of cooperation documents on trade and infrastructure construction, though no details were provided. 

    A statement released by the Fijian foreign ministry said that Rabuka had highlighted Suva’s desire for China to help “transform the country’s infrastructure in the years ahead.”

    Earlier this week, the Fijian government announced it would develop a Chinese language program to teach Mandarin, Chinese culture and values in Fijian schools.

    Rabuka had been due to take part in a PIF fact-finding mission to New Caledonia after leaving China, but the trip was deferred amid reports of disagreement between the territory’s pro-independence governing coalition and Paris. Finding a long-lasting solution to unrest in New Caledonia will be high on the agenda at the 53rd PIF leaders forum. 

    The world’s second biggest economy has become an increasingly important trade, investment and aid partner to Fiji.

    Fiji was the first Pacific island country to establish diplomatic ties with the People’s Republic of China and its strategic location at the center of the South Pacific has made it a focus for Beijing’s diplomatic efforts in the region. 

    Beijing’s relations with Fiji burgeoned in particular after Australia, New Zealand and other countries sought to punish it for Frank Bainimarama’s 2006 coup that ousted the elected government. 

    In 2011 under Bainimarama, the two countries struck a police cooperation agreement that allowed Chinese officers to be deployed in Fiji and China donated equipment and surveillance technology such as drones. 

    But the agreement was put under review by Rabuka in 2023 and a decision was made this year to scap short-term deployments of Chinese officers and curtail intelligence sharing. 

    BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Harry Pearl for BenarNews.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The death of a 33-year-old woman alone in a rented apartment after repeated rejections from the civil service recruitment program has sent shockwaves through Chinese social media.

    The woman from the northwestern province of Ningxia died in an apartment she rented outside the northern city of Xi’an, according to WeChat user @12Oaks, who published their account to the WeChat account @Zhenguan on Aug. 16.

    “I have been wanting to write about this, but I feel so heavy-hearted that I don’t know where to begin,” the user wrote. “I got a phone call in early June that threw me into an emotional black hole for a long time.”

    “My tenant died in my apartment, and their body was so badly decomposed that it made facial recognition difficult,” they said. “There are so many deep-rooted points of pain in Chinese society and in rural China that are difficult to talk about.”

    According to the post, the family had reported their daughter missing a week before the June phone call after losing contact with her on April 20, when she asked her family for help making rent that month.

    But when her mother sent her some money, the daughter blocked her entire family and went incommunicado, according to @10oaks. One report quoted police as saying that she had been spending around 5 yuan (US$0.70) a day in the run-up to her death.

    ENG_CHN_JOBSEEKER DIES_08192024_002.jpg
    A man checks job postings at a recruitment fair in Qingdao, in eastern China’s Shandong province, Feb. 27, 2024. (AFP)

    While the cause of the woman’s death wasn’t reported, many on social media seemed to believe she had starved to death, too ashamed to ask her family for further help.

    According to multiple media reports following up on the story, the woman had become estranged from her family after a conversation about her repeated attempts to enter the civil service.

    Despite scoring highly in the written test and having graduated from a prestigious university in Beijing, the woman had been repeatedly rejected at the interview stage, the reports said.

    The woman’s father told the landlord that the rejections were likely because his daughter hailed from a poor, rural family with no political connections, they said.

    Furious reaction

    The claims, which were confirmed by further reports but later deleted, prompted a slew of angry comments on social media about the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s claim to have eradicated extreme poverty under Xi Jinping.

    As many people in China struggle to find work amid the post-lockdown economic downturn, the case has shone a horrific spotlight on widespread unemployment among even highly qualified young people.

    In a harsh economic climate, China’s young people have coined the terms “political depression” and “lying flat” to refer to their sense of hopelessness, and who are increasingly rejecting traditional milestones like finding a job, marriage and children.

    One comment under a report by the X citizen media account @xinwendiaocha, or “news investigation,” read: “Prosperity under Xi Jinping is a big joke and a lie.”

    “Heartbroken after reading this,” said another. “She must have been extremely desperate.”

    ENG_CHN_JOBSEEKER DIES_08192024_003.jpg
    An aerial photo shows people attending a job fair in Zhengzhou, in central China’s Henan province, on Feb. 25, 2024 . (AFP)

    Some, not unlike a People’s Daily article that prompted widespread ire in March 2023, accused the woman of being too “picky” about her career prospects.

    Zhenguan and Phoenix news services later followed up with statements confirming that the story was true, but declined to make any evidence public due to the social media furor around the report.

    Zhenguan later deleted the original post about the woman’s death, “to show respect to the deceased, protect the post’s author and avoid distorted interpretations and excessive speculation.”

    Social media comments appeared to assume that the account had deleted the article due to official pressure.

    “Even if you kill all the roosters, the day still dawns,” commented one.

    Translated by Luisetta Mudie.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Hsia Hsiao-hwa for RFA Mandarin.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • One of Myanmar’s most powerful insurgent armies has taken full control of a strategically important township in Kachin state on the border with China, its information officer told Radio Free Asia.

    The Kachin Independence Army, or KIA, together with People’s Defense Forces loyal to the shadow National Unity Government, defeated junta forces to capture their last remaining battalion base in Momauk township in northern Myanmar on Monday, Col. Naw Bu said.

    “We were able to completely seize Infantry Battalion 437,” he said. “The military council launched airstrikes but now we can say we have taken control of the whole of Momauk township.”

    There were casualties on both sides, Naw Bu said, but he declined to give details.

    RFA telephoned the junta’s Kachin state spokesman and social affairs minister Moe Min Thei to ask about Momauk but he did not answer.

    The KIA, fighting for self-determination against the forces of the junta that toppled a democratically elected government in 2021, launched an initial attack on Momauk on May 7, then began their final push, along with their allies, on July 24.

    Momauk is about 130 kilometers (81 miles) south of the Kachin state capital of Myitkyina, and only about 14 kilometers (9 miles) east of the town of Bhamo where the junta’s Operations and Command Headquarters 21 is based,  Naw Bu said.

    Junta forces had withdrawn towards Bhamo, which is on the east bank of the Irrawaddy River, he said.

    The KIA and its allies have captured more than 20 junta camps in the township since late July and about 200 junta camps in the whole of Kachin state since the beginning of the year, he said.


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    Residents flee fighting

    Junta airstrikes, artillery attacks and arson led to the destruction of more than 100 homes in Momauk and more than 3,000 people had fled, many to the safety of areas under KIA control, residents said.

    One displaced resident sheltering near the Chinese border said he was afraid of more fighting.

    “The town is being cleared up but I haven’t gone back,” said the man, who wished to remain anonymous for safety reasons. 

    “I would like to check my home if I could but I’m still worried that there will be more fighting,” he said, referring to Bhamo and Mansi towns where junta forces are based.

    “There are so many difficulties when we flee and shelter with relatives”.

    The KIA is one of several insurgent forces to make significant gains against junta forces since late last year.

    An alliance of three rebel factions has pushed junta forces out of major towns in Shan state, to the southeast of Kachin state, while the military has lost ground to ethnic minority insurgents in Rakhine state in the west, and in Kayah and Kayin states in the east, as well as in parts of the deep south.

    The junta has responded with airstrikes including on the KIA headquarters at Lai Zar on Aug. 15. That attack unsettled neighboring China, which fired warning shots at junta jets, according to the KIA.

    The United Nations says about 3 million people have been forced from their homes by the fighting in Myanmar, many since clashes surged at the beginning of the year. 

    Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Anthony Albanese and Prabowo Subianto announce conclusion of treaty negotiations but reporters weren’t able to ask questions about new deal

    Australia and Indonesia have struck a new security pact that will lead to more joint military exercises and visits, prompting human rights advocates to call for safeguards.

    The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, told the Indonesian defence minister and president-elect, Prabowo Subianto, in Canberra on Tuesday that there was “no more important relationship than the one between our two great nations”.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Anthony Albanese and Prabowo Subianto announce conclusion of treaty negotiations but reporters weren’t able to ask questions about new deal

    Australia and Indonesia have struck a new security pact that will lead to more joint military exercises and visits, prompting human rights advocates to call for safeguards.

    The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, told the Indonesian defence minister and president-elect, Prabowo Subianto, in Canberra on Tuesday that there was “no more important relationship than the one between our two great nations”.

    Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.