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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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 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)
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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”.
Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam rounded off his three-day visit to China on Tuesday, his first foreign trip since being appointed to his country’s top job on Aug. 3.
Lam and Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged in a meeting on Monday to address territorial conflicts in the South China Sea to “maintain peace and stability,” and to work together to “continue bolstering collaboration in security and defense, boosting economic, trade and investment cooperation,” the Vietnamese government said in a statement.
The two witnessed the signing of 14 cooperation agreements, including one between the Vietnam News Agency and Xinhua News Agency and a memorandum of understanding between health ministries on cooperation.
Other agreements included protocols on phytosanitary requirements for fresh coconuts and frozen durian exports from Vietnam, as well as an agreement on quarantine and health requirements for Vietnam’s exports of farmed crocodiles.
A main focus was infrastructure development, including plans for three standard-gauge cross-border rail links; the 555 kilometer (345 mile) Vientiane-Vung Ang railway, linking the Lao capital with a Vietnamese port; and the Hanoi metro,building on agreements reached during Xi’s visit to Vietnam last December 2023.
Lam asked for China’s support through “high-quality investment” in key projects, bringing together Hanoi’s “Two Corridors One Belt” policy and Beijing’s “Belt and Road” initiative, to construct “major and symbolic works to match their political trust,” Vietnam said.
Xi told Lam that China was ready to “accelerate the ‘hard connectivity’ of railway, expressway and port infrastructure, enhance the ‘soft connectivity’ of smart customs, and jointly build a secure and stable industrial and supply chain,” according to China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
A spokesperson for the Chinese ministry, Mao Ning, told a regular media briefing on Monday that rail links between China and Vietnam, launched in November 2017 opened “a new channel for China-Vietnam logistics transportation,” cutting transport time, increasing the efficiency of customs clearance, optimizing hub functions and significantly increasing the range of goods traded across the border, “becoming a fast track to promote economic and trade exchanges.”
The two leaders are likely to meet next in Hanoi after Xi accepted an invitation from Lam to visit the Vietnamese capital.
Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.
China is working on major archaeological projects with its neighbors in Central Asia in a bid to dig up fresh finds to shore up its official historical narrative and extend its regional soft power, experts told RFA Mandarin in recent interviews.
Since President Xi Jinping launched his “Belt and Road” global influence and supply chain initiative in 2013, the country has invested heavily in high-profile excavations along the ancient Silk Road trading routes that once linked China to the Middle East via Central Asia.
The Chinese Communist Party relies on strongly stated historical narratives to boost China’s image at home and abroad, and Xi believes archaeology can help with that, experts said.
Last month, Chinese historians and archaeologists claimed that a 7th century Chinese empress ordered the construction of an ancient Buddhist temple in Xinjiang, home to 11 million mostly Muslim Uyghurs, emphasizing the idea of the region as a “melting pot” going back centuries.
Yet the whole idea of the Silk Road was invented in the 19th century as a colorful metaphor to describe ancient patterns of trade and communication between China, Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe, according to Sören Stark of the Center for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University.
“The whole notion of the Silk Road is … a construct, right, in which we are operating,” he told RFA Mandarin in an interview earlier this month. “There wasn’t such a thing like the Silk Road — there never was. It’s a 19th century construct.”
“There were corridors, there was a network of communication between China, Rome, India, the Near East, northeastern Europe, the Tigris,” he said.
“It’s just a little bit heightened right now because there’s obviously a lot of government funding from the Chinese side into the sphere of Central Asian archaeology.”
70 digs
China has carried out more than 70 archaeological collaborations in Central Asian countries in a bid to “study the ancient Silk Road exchanges between China and Central Asia,” the nationalistic Global Times newspaper reported in June.
One joint dig in Uzbekistan recently unearthed an ancient settlement dating back to the 8th century BC near the Surkhandarya river.
A researcher checks the ceramics discovered at the archaeological site of Shuomen ancient port in Wenzhou, east China’s Zhejiang Province, Oct. 11, 2022. The archaeological site of Shuomen ancient port was discovered at the end of 2021, with ruins of ancient buildings, shipwrecks, and porcelain pieces unearthed in the following archaeological excavations. According to the National Cultural Heritage Administration, the discovery is important to studies of the ancient Maritime Silk Road. (Weng Xinyang/Xinhua via Getty Images)
“Chinese and Uzbek experts have made a total of three discoveries in the Central Asian country from April to June,” the paper reported on June 23, citing an investigation into the ancient Kushan Empire, along with ruins and cliff paintings in the Fergana valley.
The projects are being touted as part of the Belt and Road initiative, with the paper quoting cultural scholar Fang Gang as saying that “the story of the ancient Silk Road is transforming into today’s Belt and Road Initiative to strengthen the ties between China and Central Asian countries.”
The point, according to archeologist Wang Jianxin at Xi’an’s Northwest University, is to “challenge Western-centered interpretations of ancient Silk Road culture while also enhancing the world’s understanding of China’s contribution to ancient Silk Road civilization,” the paper said.
But archaeologists said nationalistic agendas and archaeology make uneasy bedfellows, although China isn’t the only country to look to the past to boost its legitimacy in the present.
“My concern is that as with any country or any government that supports archaeological excavations (in contrast to excavations supported by academic institutions or private funds) that there is a nationalistic agenda,” Silk Road scholar Judith Lerner told RFA Mandarin in a written reply.
The aim is often “to prove that we were there first, that people speaking a particular language can be traced by that language back to the country supporting the excavations, that is, China,” she said.
‘Add Chinese voices’
For example, the idea of China as a historically peaceful influence in the region has been widely propagated by Northwest University’s Wang Jianxin, who has used findings from the Uzbekistan digs around the Kushan Empire and Yuezhi sites as evidence that the two peoples lived peacefully side by side near the Surkhandarya river.
Wang has said his mission is to “add Chinese voices” to the archaeological work currently being done in Central Asia.
“We just really don’t know,” Lerner said. “And I think we really have to look at things more culturally and sociologically.”
Stark said Chinese teams typically look for evidence from the point of view of the official history of China, to see if it supports it or disproves it.
“Essentially they come equipped with their national … Chinese-language, historical sources and what they tell about the history, what they tell about the history of the Western regions,” Stark told RFA Mandarin in an interview earlier this month. “That’s their guide in what they are doing … they always come from a Chinese perspective on things.”
Visitors look at a 3,000-year-old mummified body of a child found along the Silk Road in China’s far western region of Xinjiang at an exhibition in Beijing, Jan. 16, 2003. (China Photos via Getty Images)
“They’re not fundamentally questioning actually whether this whole narrative in these sources is problematic,” he said.
For example, the people known in China as the Yuezhi who allegedly lived in harmony with the proto-Chinese Kunshan Empire may not have been called that when they were alive, Stark said, adding that they could have been a tribe of Central Asian nomads, giving them more links to the Turkic peoples of Xinjiang than to modern Han Chinese.
“The tombs that the Chinese team has excavated are very consistent with the burial traditions of nomadic groups in Central Asia, and not just in Bactria [an ancient kingdom spanning parts of Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan] … but also in southwestern Central Asia and Xinjiang,” Stark said.
It is precisely links and conclusions like those about the “Yuezhi” that can be used to shore up a nationalistic and ultimately colonialist agenda, according to critics of China’s forays into regional archaeology.
“They are not taking into account what has been done before. They come as if there was a plain slate,” Stark said, adding there are plenty of similarities between the colonial attitudes of the Western expeditions that poured into the region following the collapse of the Soviet Union and those of Chinese archaeology under Xi Jinping.
“This is a very colonial approach I think in both ways,” Stark said. “And that is the problem I have with it, this idea that people from the outside have come to teach or discover things that were not discovered before.”
Much of the previous archeological work in the region was published in Russian, which some Chinese experts don’t seem to have read, he said.
Countering ‘untrue narratives’
Meanwhile, Beijing is pouring money into the field on a large scale to counter “untrue narratives” about the northwestern region of Xinjiang, according to comments from Chinese Communist Party United Front Work Department deputy director Pan Yue on June 12.
“There is an untrue narrative in the international community that separates Xinjiang culture from Chinese culture and even sets it up in opposition,” Pan said. “But a large amount of archaeological evidence tells us that Xinjiang has been an important part of the Chinese cultural circle since ancient times.”
A collection of terracotta sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, Oct. 1, 2016, in Xian, China. It is a form of funerary art buried with the emperor in 210–209 BC and whose purpose was to protect the emperor in his afterlife. The figures were discovered in 1974 in Lintong District, Xian, capital of Shaanxi Province, one of the oldest cities in Xian. (Frédéric Soltan/Corbis via Getty Images)
His comments are straight out of Beijing’s propaganda playbook on “self-confidence” and “exploring the origins of Chinese civilization,” with Xi claiming in May 2022 that cultural relics and cultural heritage “carry the genes and blood of the Chinese nation,” describing them as its “inexhaustible resource.”
In July, the State Administration of Chinese Cultural Heritage said it would focus on cultural relics as a matter of national priority under the current five-year plan.
But using material findings dug up from burial sites to prop up theories about ethnic groups and their historical interactions is highly problematic in the absence of written clues, Stark said, adding that questions of ethnicity aren’t generally very productive for archaeologists.
“Today, in the 21st century, we think everybody has and always had an ethnic identity, but that’s just not the case,” he said. “It’s a very modern phenomenon that in the premodern past was mostly tied up with the elites.”
“The Chinese teams excavating in Central Asia are very much obsessed about this kind of ethnic identity, [with] finding the tribes that are mentioned in the Chinese texts,” Stark said.
“[But] archaeology is not very well equipped to answer that with precision and certainty.”
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Lucie Lo for RFA Mandarin.
China has stepped up emergency pandemic drills across the country and announced tighter surveillance of incoming travelers amid warnings that a more lethal and transmissible strain of the mpox virus is spreading internationally.
From Aug. 15, anyone arriving in China from countries and regions where mpox cases have been confirmed, or with symptoms like fever, headache, back or muscle pain, swollen lymph nodes or a rash is now required to declare their condition to customs authorities on entry, state news agency Xinhua reported on Friday.
sThe move comes after the World Health Organization on Wednesday declared mpox a public health emergency of international concern, sounding the alarm over its potential for further international transmission, with several African countries, Sweden and Pakistan all reporting confirmed cases of the deadly virus.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mpox is spread through “close contact,” including sexual contact, and by touching contaminated surfaces. But The Lancet medical journal cited animal studies in March 2023 as showing that transmission through the air is also possible with some variants of the virus.
Data from the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cited by Xinhua showed that during the past week alone, more than 2,000 new mpox cases have been reported in African countries, with 38,465 mpox cases and 1,456 deaths across the continent since January 2022.
Local authorities rolled out emergency drills to prepare for “pneumonia of unknown cause” in Henan’s Zhengzhou city, Zhangye in the western province of Gansu, southwestern Sichuan and the megacities of Beijing and Chongqing.
Workers take part in an emergency pandemic drill in Beijing’s Shijingshan district, Aug. 7, 2024. (Beijing Municipal Health Commission)
Similar drills happened ahead of the World Military Games in Wuhan in 2019, while COVID-19 was also initially described as “atypical pneumonia” when it tore through the central city of Wuhan in December 2019 before being named by the WHO as a global pandemic.
According to a post on X by citizen journalist “Mr. Li is not your teacher,” the drills form part of a nationwide disease control and prevention action plan. The financial news service Yicai.com said the drills will be rolled out across 10 provinces by the end of August.
Photos from emergency infectious disease drills in Chongqing on July 4 included a photo of two people in full-body PPE collecting samples from two chickens, although there was no mention of avian influenza in the official report.
Some online comments referred to “post-traumatic stress syndrome” caused by the three years of lockdowns, compulsory quarantine and mass-testing of ruling Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping’s zero-COVID policy, which ended amid nationwide protests in late 2022.
“This is so we can be on a war footing again, right? I think if this happens again, the Chinese Communist Party will bring about its own downfall,” said one comment, while another said: “We don’t want to go through that again.”
The first comment also alluded to a renewed wave of COVID-19 infections in China, adding: “It’s still out there, and it’s peaked again recently, but it’s too hot to mention.”
More behind the scenes?
Lin Xiaoxu, a former virology researcher at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center said there could be more going on in China currently than meets the eye, citing the government’s track record in trying to cover up public health emergencies.
“Generally speaking, the government still conceals a lot of health information, especially during public health crises,” Lin said. “I don’t think they’re doing these so-called emergency drills for no reason.”
Chinese social media users seem to be thinking along similar lines.
A recent wave of COVID-19 infections in the southern province of Guangdong was listed among “hot topics” on Weibo on Thursday, claiming that the latest strain of the coronavirus was causing more severe symptoms in younger people.
Clicking on the search term refers readers to a video on the official account of the Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper and N Video, in which reporters visit Guangzhou Xinshi Hospital to investigate the recent spike in COVID-19 cases, quoting an expert as saying that the latest wave of the disease is hitting younger people with more pain and fever than previous variants.
Guangzhou’s Yangcheng Evening News and the Luzhong Morning News both reported a sharp spike in the number of COVID-19 cases in July, with “more obvious symptoms” in young people.
Workers take part in an emergency pandemic drill in Beijing’s Shijingshan district, Aug. 7, 2024. (Beijing Municipal Health Commission)
Huang Yanzhong, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Japan, Europe and the United States are all currently seeing a wave of COVID-19 infections, and that cases in China appear to be following the same pattern.
“China is getting this too, but I don’t see any pattern suggesting any essential mutations that would make it different from what is happening overseas,” Huang told RFA Mandarin in an interview on Thursday.
Young people hit
He said the latest strains of COVID-19 have hit younger people harder everywhere, not just in China, likely due to impaired immunity caused by repeated infections.
“The number of young people infected is increasing, so I think that a large proportion of Chinese population has impaired immunity, with a lot of people who’ve been repeatedly infected, but the Chinese government basically doesn’t report it much,” Huang said.
He said a return to citywide lockdowns could happen if the Chinese authorities find the current wave is getting out of control.
“Given that the whole economy and the unemployment situation are very bad right now, the government could use a public health crisis as an excuse to impose more stringent social controls, as a way of clamping down on social unrest,” Lin said.
But he said the current emergency drills may not relate to COVID-19 at all, citing anthrax as another possible target.
Officials reported on Aug. 2 that anthrax had been found at a beef cattle farm in Liaocheng city in the eastern province of Shandong, while an unconfirmed Weibo post reported anthrax near Shijiazhuang city in northern Hebei province.
Lin said the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang had warned local residents on July 3 to take precautions against the spread of anthrax during the flood season, adding that such warnings were “very unusual.”
“My greatest suspicion is that there was a serious outbreak in Heilongjiang, but they didn’t make it public,” Lin said.
Translated with additional reporting 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.
Since early August, Chinese authorities have dramatically boosted surveillance of Tibetans in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa by putting more police on the streets, cracking down on social media users and – in a new wrinkle – hiring food delivery workers to serve as auxiliary police officers, sources inside Tibet say.
The increased monitoring activities coincided with the start of a major annual festival, the Shoton Festival, on Aug. 4. Also known as a yogurt festival, it is observed when monks complete their annual religious retreats and involves the unveiling of a 500-square-meter thangka painting, performances of Tibetan opera and huge picnics.
“The government has been taking various measures to tighten its vigilance in response to sensitive situations in Tibet, but this August, it has suddenly taken even more drastic measures,” said one source from inside Tibet.
Authorities are calling it a “summer public security crackdown and rectification operation,” the sources said.
The precise reasons behind the stricter measures – which continue – are not known, but Beijing has steadily tightened surveillance in Tibet over many years. One source said the measures were to ensure stability for the government’s commercial activities to stimulate economic growth.
That may be true on the surface, but comments from a senior security official point to a deeper motive. Zhang Hongbo, vice chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region and director of the Public Security Department told state media that security forces would focus on national unity and fight separatism or secession.
Tibet was once an independent country, but Chinese forces invaded in 1950 and have controlled the territory ever since. The Dalai Lama fled into exile in India amid a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule. Since then, Beijing has sought to legitimize Chinese rule through the suppression of dissent and policies undermining Tibetan culture and language.
Authorities are hyper-sensitive to any hints of protest against Chinese rule or resistance to those efforts.
Here are three ways that authorities are boosting surveillance in Lhasa:
One: Greater police presence on the streets.
This includes plainclothes officers, and an increase in the number of traffic and police inspection points.
Lhasa’s Public Security Bureau deployed more than 1,200 police officers, set up 65 inspection and traffic checkpoints and conducted inspections of more than 2,000 venues and 24,000 vehicles, according to a Chinese state media report on Aug. 5.
Two: Authorities have deployed civilians – mostly food delivery drivers – as auxiliary police officers.
Lhasa authorities launched a pilot program hiring delivery drivers from food delivery company Meituan to perform “voluntary patrol and prevention work,” Chinese state media reported on Aug. 8 – although sources say the workers are essentially forced to do the work.
They are helping police to keep an eye on ordinary residents, including serving at night watchmen in certain areas.
The measure suggests China is using Tibet as a testing ground for its surveillance tactics because they are similar to civilian-police integration efforts China employs in border areas, said Sriparna Pathak, associate professor of China studies at the O.P. Jindal Global University in Haryana, India.
China has set up civilian-police integrated units in sensitive border areas of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and the Tibet Autonomous Region, both in the far western part of the country. The units comprise civilians, policemen, militiamen and government officials working with People’s Liberation Army soldiers to ensure security.
“China’s efforts to rope in delivery riders for surveillance is in line with the effort to further consolidate its grip in Tibet,” said Kalpit Mankikar, an expert at the New Delhi-based think tank Observer Research Foundation.
Hiring Meituan delivery workers for surveillance also signals a link between the Chinese government and private enterprises, showing how the government drafts companies to fulfill certain national objectives, Mankikar said.
Three: Crackdown on social media use among Tibetans.
In the past, Tibetans could sign up for social media with only a phone number.
But at the end of July, the government announced that social media users had to re-open their accounts and provide personal details, the sources said.
Re-registering involves providing a password connected to one’s personal cell phone or identity card that is accessible to the government, one of the Tibetans said.
“If you do not have proper social media account registration, you will receive a summons from the government to re-register, and your phone will be examined,” one of the sources said.
Authorities also began stopping individual Tibetans in Lhasa to check for use of virtual private networks, or VPNs, that allow users to get around China’s internet restrictions, often dubbed “China’s Great Firewall,” two sources from inside Tibet said.
In early August, authorities in Lhasa arrested three people for using a VPN but released them with an administrative punishment, the Municipal Public Security Bureau said on its website.
The government said the latest measure was meant to protect personal data information, properly manage internet society and prevent telecommunication network fraud.
Lhasa police said Tuesday that it was inspecting the entire internet network and city streets for two days and nights to ensure public safety and security.
This comes on top of authorities’ strict monitoring of Tibetans’ use of social media, including Douyin, China’s version of TikTok.
Authorities have banned Tibetans from using the Tibetan language on social media sites – part of an effort to undermine their language and assimilate into Chinese culture.
Additional reporting by Dickey Kundol, Tenzin Dickyi and Yangdon for RFA Tibetan. Written and edited by Tenzin Pema for RFA Tibetan. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Tibetan.
China opened fire across the border into Myanmar apparently as a warning to Myanmar military aircraft that attacked an ethnic minority insurgent base, an insurgent force spokesman and residents told Radio Free Asia.
Myanmar junta forces attacked the headquarters of the Kachin Independence Army, or KIA, at Lai Zar, close to Myanmar’s northern border with China on Thursday after Kachin fighters captured two junta force positions in Hpakant township earlier in the day.
Chinese forces on their side of the border then opend fire across the border, said Col. Naw Bu, a KIA Information Officer.
“We assume the Chinese fired shots because of their security concerns,” Naw Bu said.
“I don’t know what they fired but the sound was quite loud. There were explosions in the sky. They fired more than 10 times from the Chinese side. They weren’t firing flares.”
Naw Bu did not say whether the earlier junta airstrikes on the KIA headquarters caused any casualties or damage.
The Chinese embassy in Myanmar did not respond to a request from Radio Free Asia for comment on the incident. The junta’s spokesman for Kachin state, Moe Min Thein, did not answer telephone calls seeking comment.
The KIA, one of Myanmar’s most powerful insurgent groups, has made significant gains against junta forces this year, as have allied rebel groups in other parts of Myanmar.
The KIA and its allies have captured more than 200 junta camps in Kachin state since the beginning of the year, Naw Bu said.
China has been alarmed by the fighting on its border, in Myanmar’s Kachin state and Shan state in northeast Myanmar, and the threat the turmoil poses to its economic interests in Myanmar, which include energy pipelines, ports and natural resources.
China maintains close relations with the junta but also has links with ethnic minority forces, especially those that operate along its border.
China has repeatedly called for Myanmar’s rivals to settle their differences through dialogue and even managed to broker two short-lived ceasefires in Shan state this year.
A Lai Zar resident who did not want to be identified for safety reasons said Chinese planes had also been in the sky on Thursday, after the junta planes bombed the Kachin rebel base.
“I don’t know which side of the border the bombs fell. It was a bit far from Lai Zar,” the resident said of the junta attack that triggered the Chinese response.
“There were also Chinese planes and the Chinese side fired more than 10 warning shots,” the resident said.
Earlier on Thursday, the KIA seized control of La Mawng Kone, a strategic hill held by junta troops, along with a military camp in Taw Hmaw village, both in Hpakant, Naw Bu said.
Hpakant is famous for its jade mines, and since the beginning of the year Kachin fighters have been closing in on the town and the junta forces stationed there.
The Chinese fire into Myanmar came a day after its foreign minister, Wang Yi, was in Myanmar for talks with junta leaders.
Wang raised China’s concerns with junta leader Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing at a meeting in the capital Naypyidaw, according to China’s foreign ministry.
“Wang Yi expressed his hope that Myanmar will earnestly safeguard the safety of Chinese personnel and projects in Myanmar, maintain peace and stability along the China-Myanmar border, step up joint efforts to crack down on cross-border crimes and create a safe environment for bilateral exchanges and cooperation,” the ministry said.
Analysts say China is also keen to limit the influence of Western countries and India in Myanmar and is becoming increasingly frustrated with Min Aung Hlaing and the junta’s failure to end the conflict. It is pressing for an “all-inclusive” election as a way to resolve the crisis, they say.
Wang also had talks this week with a former Myanmar military leader, Than Shwe, who called on China to help Myanmar restore stability, the Chinese ministry said.
Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.
Vietnam’s top leader To Lam will visit China for three days from Sunday, the 67-year-old’s first foreign trip since he was elected general secretary of the Communist Party on Aug. 3.
He will meet President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Qiang, Chairman Zhao Leji of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, and Chairman Wang Huning of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference National Committee, China’s foreign ministry said on Thursday.
He will also meet representatives of leading Chinese corporations in Beijing, according to Vietnamese media.
Lam became general secretary two weeks after the death of his 80-year-old predecessor Nguyen Phu Trong. Lam has been serving as president since May.
Xi, who sent Lam a congratulatory message on his appointment, last visited Vietnam in December 2023, 14 months after Trong’s final trip to China.
The neighbors, who fought a brief but bloody border war in 1979, normalized relations in 1991. In 2008, Vietnam elevated their relationship to a “comprehensive strategic partnership,” the highest level of engagement.
Speaking ahead of Lam’s visit, Vietnam’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son emphasized the economic benefits of warm relations.
“We have been impressed by the figures such as two-way trade in the first half of 2024 rising 24.1% year-on-year to US$94.5 billion; the number of FDI projects in the six-month span remaining at the top with 447 new ones worth nearly $1.3 billion,” he said in an interview with Vietnamese media, referring to foreign direct investment.
Son also highlighted what he called a positive tourism recovery, adding: “Vietnam hosted 2.1 million Chinese tourist arrivals during January-July, higher than that of the whole 2023.”
The two sides have clashed over competing territorial claims in the South China Sea, which have earned diplomatic rebukes from Hanoi and sparked widespread public protests in Vietnam.
Son said Lam and Xi were likely to have “frank, sincere, and substantive,” discussions on territorial issues, while claiming that the situation was “basically well controlled; and exchange and negotiation mechanisms between the two sides on the sea issues regularly maintained.”
Vietnam has adopted a flexible approach to foreign policy, known as “bamboo diplomacy,” under which it has established six other comprehensive strategic partnerships with Russia, India, South Korea, the United States, Japan and Australia.
As president Lam met Russia’s President Vladimir Putin while he was on a visit to Vietnam in June and spoke to him by telephone after being named general secretary.
The U.S. became a comprehensive strategic partner during a visit to Hanoi by President Joe Biden in September 2023, during which the U.S. president courted Vietnamese tech executives in a push to develop new semiconductor supply chains.
Vietnam’s National Assembly Chairman Tran Thanh Man was keen to stress the economic benefits of having the U.S. as a “partner of strategic importance,” during a reception for Ambassador Marc Evans Knapper in Hanoi on Thursday, pointing out that bilateral trade topped US$66.1 billion in the first seven months of this year, after approaching $111 billion in 2023.
Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.
A former military leader of Myanmar, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, has called on China to help Myanmar end internal conflict and stabilize the country, according to China’s foreign ministry.
The 91-year-old ruled during a period of strict military rule, from 1992 to 2011, when Myanmar was facing the condemnation of Western governments for suppressing democracy and locking up Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. He is rarely seen in public these days.
Than Shwe, during a meeting on Wednesday with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, praised Beijing’s long-term support and said he hoped it would continue “to provide valuable support to help Myanmar prevent external interference and maintain domestic stability,” Wang’s ministry said.
Wang told Than Shwe that China was willing to “support Myanmar in safeguarding its independence, sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity, and support Myanmar in its efforts to achieve domestic political reconciliation within the constitutional framework, smoothly hold national elections, and restart the process of democratic transformation.”
The two met as Wang visited Myanmar’s capital Naypyidaw for talks with the junta leader, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing.
Myanmar’s state-controlled Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported that China had offered to help Myanmar organize an election next year but it did not report Than Shwe’s request for help in restoring stability.
The Myanmar military, shunned and sanctioned again by Western nations after ousting a government led by Suu Kyi in early 2021, has been able to rely on China for diplomatic, economic and military support.
But China has also maintained links with some of the ethnic minority insurgent forces battling the junta, particularly groups operating along its border in northeastern Myanmar’s Shan state and it calls on all sides to resolve differences peacefully.
This year, China brokered two short-lived ceasefires between the junta insurgent forces as battles affected trade and stability along the border. This month, insurgents in Shan state called on China to press the junta to stop attacks on civilians.
China is one of Myanmar’s main foreign investors, in minerals and energy in particular, and some insurgents have promised to protect China’s interests. Fighting in central Myanmar’s Mandalay region has in recent days come near to oil and natural gas pipelines that run from Myanmar’s coast into China.
Wang stressed China’s displeasure at renewed fighting along the border, and also his opposition to “interference of foreign forces in Myanmar” and actions that “destroy peace and development,” his ministry said.
He did not specify which foreign interference he referred to but analysts say China is keen to limit the influence in Myanmar of Western countries like the United States, as well as that of India.
Wang promised technical support and aid for the junta’s promised election, which could be held next year, and a census late this year, the Global New Light of Myanmar reported.
“Necessary technological assistance will be provided for Myanmar to conduct the census-taking process,” the newspaper reported. “Moreover, essential aid will be given for the election.”
He also stressed the need for all parties to be represented in the vote, calling in his talks with Min Aung Hlaing for an “all-inclusive election.”
Political analyst Than Soe Naing told RFA that Than Shwe’s request to China for help might be an indication of how desperate the junta was in the face of major battlefield setbacks in recent weeks.
“He’s asking China to put pressure on the fighting in northern Shan state to maintain the junta leader’s power,” the analyst said.
On Friday, Wang Yi will attend a regional foreign ministers’ meeting in Thailand.
Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.
Of the international intelligence information that comes to Australian agencies from the Five Eyes, 90 percent comes from the CIA and related US intelligence agencies. So in effect we have the colonisation of our intelligence agencies These agencies dominate the advice to ministers, writes John Menadue.
Michael Lester:Hello again listeners to Community Radio Northern Beaches Community Voices and also the Pearls and Irritations podcast. I’m Michael Lester.
Our guest today is the publisher and founder of the Pearls and Irritations Public Policy online journal, the celebrated John Menadue, with whom we’ll be so pleased to have a discussion today. John has a long and high profile experience in both the public service, for which he’s been awarded the Order of Australia and also in business.
As a public servant, he was secretary of a number of departments over the years, prime minister and cabinet under a couple of different prime ministers, immigration and ethnic affairs, special minister of state and the Department of Trade and also Ambassador to Japan.
And in his private sector career, he was a general manager at News Corp and the chief executive of Qantas. These are just among many of his considerable activities.
These days, as I say, he’s a publisher, public commentator, writer, and we’re absolutely delighted to welcome you here to Radio Northern Beaches and the P&I podcast, John.
John Menadue: Thank you, Michael. Thanks for the welcome and for what you’ve had to say about Pearls and Irritations. My wife says that she’s the Pearl and I’m the Irritation.
ML:You launched, I think, P&I, what, 2013 or 2011; anyway, you’ve been going a long while. And I noticed the other day you observed that you’d published some 20,000 items on Pearls and Irritations to do with public policy. That’s an amazing achievement itself as an independent media outlet in Australia, isn’t it?
JM: I’m quite pleased with it and so is Susie, my wife. We started 13 years ago and we did everything. I used to write all the stories and Susie handled the technical, admin, financial matters, but it’s grown dramatically since then. We now contract some of the work to people that can help us in editorial, in production and IT. It’s achieving quite a lot of influence among ministers, politicians, journalists and other opinion leaders in the community.
We’re looking now at what the future holds. I’m 89 and Susie, my wife, is not in good health. So we’re looking at new governance arrangements, a public company with outside directors so that we can continue Pearls and Irritations well into the future.
Pearls and Irritations publisher John Menadue . . . “I’m afraid some of [the mainstream media] are just incorrigible. They in fact act as stenographers to powerful interests.” Image: Independent AustralianML: So you made a real contribution through this and you’ve given the opportunity for so many expert, experienced, independent voices to commentate on public policy issues of great importance, not least vis-a-vis, might I say, mainstream media treatment of a lot of these issues.
This is one of your themes and motivations with Pearls and Irritations as a public policy journal, isn’t it? That our mainstream media perhaps don’t do the job they might do in covering significant issues of public policy?
JM: That’s our hope and intention, but I’m afraid some of them are just incorrigible. They in fact act as stenographers to powerful interests.
It’s quite a shame what mainstream media is serving up today, propaganda for the United States, so focused on America.Occasionally we get nonsense about the British royal family or some irrelevant feature like that.
But we’re very badly served. Our media shows very little interest in our own region. It is ignorant and prejudiced against China. It is not concerned about our relations with Indonesia, with the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam.
It’s all focused on the United States.We’re seeing it on an enormous scale now with the US elections. Even the ABC has a Planet America programme.
It’s so much focused on America as if we’re an island parked off New York. We are being Americanised in so many areas and particularly in our media.
ML: What has led to this state of affairs in the way that mainstream media treats major public policy issues these days? It hasn’t always been like that or has it?
JM: We’ve been a country that’s been frightened of our region, the countries where we have to make our future. And we’ve turned first to the United Kingdom as a protector. That ended in tears in Singapore.
And now we turn to the United States to look after us in this dangerous world, rather than making our own way as an independent country in our own region. That fear of our region, racism, white Australia, yellow peril all feature in Australia and in our media.
But when we had good, strong leaders, for example, Malcolm Fraser on refugees, he gave leadership and our role in the region.
Gough Whitlam did it also. If we have strong leadership, we can break from our focus on the United States at the expense of our own region. In the end, we’ve got to decide that as we live in this region, we’ve got to prosper in this region.
Security in our region, not from our region. We can do it, but I’m afraid that we’ve been retreating from Asia dreadfully over the last two or three decades. I thought when we had a Labor government, things would be different, but they’re not.
We are still frightened of our own region and embracing at every opportunity, the United States.
ML: Another theme of the many years of publishing Pearls and Irritations is that you are concerned to rebuild some degree of public confidence and trust that has been lost in the political system and that you seek to provide a platform for good policy discussion with the emphasis being on public policy. How has the public policy process been undermined or become so narrow minded if that’s one way of describing it?
JM: Contracting out work to private contractors, the big four accounting firms, getting advice, and not trusting the public service has meant that the quality of our public service has declined considerably. That has to be rebuilt so we get better policy development.
Ministers have been responsible, particularly Scott Morrison, for downgrading the public service and believing somehow or other that better advice can be obtained in the private sector.
Another factor has been the enormous growth in the power of lobbyists for corporate Australia and for foreign companies as well. Ministers have become beholden to pressure from powerful lobby groups.
One particular example, with which I’m quite familiar is in the health field. We are never likely to have real improvements in Medicare, for example, unless the government is prepared to take on the power of lobbyists — the providers, the doctors, the pharmaceutical companies and pharmacies in Australia.
But it’s not just in health where lobbyists are causing so much damage. The power of lobbyists has discredited the role of governments that are seduced by powerful interests rather than serving the community.
The media have just entrenched this problem. Governments are criticised at every opportunity. Australia can be served by the media taking a more positive view about the importance of good policy development and not getting sidetracked all the time about some trivial personal political issue.
The media publish the handouts of the lobbyists, whether it’s the health industry or whether it’s in the fossil fuel industries. These are the main factors that have contributed to the lack of confidence and the lack of trust in good government in Australia.
ML: A particular editorial focus that’s evident in Pearls and Irritations is promoting, I think in your words, a peaceful dialogue and engagement with China. Why is this required and why do you put it forward as a particularly important part of what you see as the mission of your Pearls and Irritations public policy journal?
JM; China, is our largest market and will continue to be so. There is a very jaundiced view, particularly from the United States, which we then copy, that China is a great threat. It’s not a threat to Australia and it’s not a threat to the United States homeland.
But it is to a degree a threat, a competitive threat to the United States in economy and trade. America didn’t worry about China when it was poor, but now that it’s strong militarily, economically and in technology, America is very concerned and feels that its future, its own leadership, its hegemony in the world is being contested.
Unfortunately, Australia has allowed itself to be drawn into the American contest with China. It’s one provocation after another. If it’s not within China itself, it’s on Taiwan, human rights in Hong Kong. Every opportunity is found by the United States to provoke China, if possible, and lead it into war.
I think, frankly, China will be more careful than that.
China’s problem is that it’s successful. And that’s what America cannot accept. By comparison, China does not make the military threat to other countries that the United States presents.
America is the most violent, aggressive country in the world. The greatest threat to peace in the world is the United States and we’re seeing that particularly now expressed in Israel and in Gaza.
But there’s a history. America’s almost always at war and has been since its independence in 1776. By contrast, China doesn’t have that sort of record and history. It is certainly concerned about security on its borders, and it has borders with 14 countries.
But it doesn’t project its power like the US. It doesn’t bomb other countries like the United States. It doesn’t have military bases surrounding the United States.
The United States has about 800 bases around the world. It’s not surprising that China feels threatened by what the United States is doing. And until the United States comes to a sensible, realistic view about China and deals with it politically, I think they’re going to make continual problems for us.
We have this dichotomy that China is our major trading partner but it’s seen by many as a strategic threat. I think that is a mistake.
ML: But what about your views about the public policy process underlying Australia’s policy in reaching the positions that we’re taking vis-a-vis China?
JM: There are several reasons for it, but I think the major one is that Australian governments, the previous government and now this one, takes the advice of intelligence agencies rather than the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Our intelligence agencies are part of Five Eyes. Of the international intelligence which comes to Australian agencies, 90 percent comes from the CIA and related US intelligence agencies. So in effect we’ve had the colonisation of our intelligence agencies and they’re the ones that the Australian government listens to.
Very senior people in those agencies have direct access to the Prime Minister. He listens to them rather than to Penny Wong or the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. On most public issues involving China, the Department of Foreign Affairs has become a wallflower.
It’s a great tragedy because so much of our future in the region depends on good diplomacy with China, with the ASEAN, with the countries of our region.
Those intelligence agencies in Australia, together with American funded, military funded organisations such as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute have the ear of governments. They’ve also got the ear of the media.
Stories are leaked to the media all the time from those agencies in order to heighten our fear of the region. The Americanisation of Australia is widespread. But our intelligence agencies have been Americanised as well, and they’re leading us down a very dangerous path.
ML: I’m speaking with our guest today on Reno Northern Beaches Community Voices and on the Pearls and Irritations podcast with the publisher of Pearls and Irritations Public Policy Journal, John Menadue, distinguished Australian public servant and businessman.
John, again, it’s one thing to talk about that, but governments, when they change, and we’ve had a change of government recently, very often, as I’m sure you know from personal experience, have the opportunity and do indeed change their advisors and adopt different policies, and one might have expected this to happen.
Why didn’t we see a change of the guard like we saw a change of government?
JM: I think this government is timid on almost everything. It was timid from day one on administrative arrangements, departmental arrangements, heads of departments.
For example, there was no change made to dismantle the Department of Home Affairs with Michael Pezzullo. That should have happened on day one, but it didn’t happen.
Concerns we’ve had in migration, the role of foreign affairs and intelligence with all those intelligence agencies gathered together in one department has been very bad for Australia.
Very few changes were made in the leadership of our intelligence agencies, the Office of National Assessments, in ASIO. The same advice has been continued. In almost every area you can look at, the government has been timid, unprepared to take on vested interests, lobbyists, and change departments to make them more attuned to what the government wants to do.
But the government doesn’t want to upset anyone. And as a result, we’re having a continuation of badly informed ministers and departments that have really not been effectively changed to meet the requirements and needs of, what I thought was a reforming government.
ML: In that context, AUKUS and the nuclear submarine deal might be perhaps a case in point of the broader issues and points you’re making. How would you characterise the nature of the public policy process and decision behind AUKUS? How were the decisions made and in what manner?
JM: By political appointees and confidants of Morrison. There’s been no public discussion. There’s been no public statement by Morrison or by Albanese about AUKUS — its history, why we’re doing it.
It’s been left to briefings of journalists and others. I think it’s disgraceful what’s happened in that area. It’s time the Australian government spelled out to us what it all means, but it’s not going to do it. Because I believe the case is so threadbare that it’s not game to put it to the public test.
And so we’re continuing in this ludicrous arrangement, this fiscal calamity, which Morrison inflicted on the Albanese government which it hasn’t been game to contest.
My own view is that frankly, AUKUS will never happen. It is so absurd — the delay, the cost, the failure of submarine construction or the delays in the United States, the problems of the submarine construction and maintenance in the United Kingdom.
For all those sorts of reasons, I don’t think it’ll really happen. Unfortunately, we’re going to waste a lot of money and a lot of time. I don’t think the Department of Defence could run any major project, certainly not a project like this.
Defence has been unsuccessful in the frigate and numerous other programmes. Our Department of Defence really is not up to the job and that among other reasons gives me reason to believe, and hope frankly, that AUKUS will collapse under its own stupidity.
But what I think is of more concern is the real estate, which we are freely leasing to the Americans. We had it first with the Marines in Darwin. We have it also coming now with US B-52 aircraft based out of Tindal in the Northern Territory and the submarine base in Perth, Western Australia.
These bases are being made available to the United States with very little control by Australia. The government carries on with nonsense about how our sovereignty will be protected.
In fact, it won’t be protected. If there’s any difficulties, for example, over a war with China over Taiwan, and the Americans are involved, there is no way Americans will consult with us about whether they can use nuclear armed vessels out of Tindal, for example.
The Americans will insist that Pine Gap continues to operate. So we are locked in through ceding so much of our real estate and the sovereignty that goes with it.
Penny Wong has been asked about American aircraft out of Tindal, carrying nuclear weapons and she says to us, sorry but the Americans won’t confirm or deny what they do.
Good heavens, this is our territory. This is our sovereignty. And we won’t even ask the Americans operating out of Tindal, whether they’re carrying nuclear weapons.
Back in the days of Malcolm Fraser, he made a statement to the Parliament insisting that no vessels or aircraft carrying nuclear weapons or ships carrying nuclear weapons could access Australian ports or operate over Australia without the permission of the Australian government.
And now Penny Wong says, we won’t ask. You can do what you like. We know the US won’t confirm or deny.
When it came to the Solomon Islands, a treaty that the Solomons negotiated with China on strategic and defence matters, Penny Wong was very upset about this secret agreement. There should be transparency, she warned.
But that’s small fry, compared with the fact that the Australian government will allow United States aircraft to operate out of Tindal without the Australian government knowing whether they are carrying nuclear weapons. I think that’s outrageous.
ML: Notwithstanding many of the very technical and economic and other discussions around the nuclear submarine’s acquisition, it does seem that politically, at least, and not least from the media presentation of our policy position that we’re very clearly signing up with our US allies against contingency attacks on Taiwan that we would be committed to take a part in and we’re also moving very closely, to well the phrase is interoperability, with the US forces and equipment but also personnel too.
You mentioned earlier, intelligence personnel and I believe there’s a lot of US personnel in the Department of Defence too?
JM: That’s right. It’s just another example of Americanisation which is reflected in our intelligence agencies, Department of Defence, interchangeability of our military forces, the fusion of our military or particularly our Navy with the United States. It’s all becoming one fused enterprise with the United States.
And in any difficulties, we would not be able, as far as I can see, to disengage from what the United States is doing. And we would be particularly vulnerable because of the AUKUS submarines. That’s if they ever come to anything. Because the AUKUS submarines, we are told, would operate off the Chinese coast to attack Chinese submarines or somehow provide intelligence for the Americans and for us.
These submarines will not be nuclear armed, which means that in the event of a conflict, we would have no bargaining or no counter to China. We’d be the weak link in the alliance with the United States.
China will not be prepared to strike the mainland United States for fear of massive retaliation. We are the weak link with Pine Gap and other real estate that I mentioned. We would be making ourselves much more vulnerable by this association with the United States.
Those AUKUS submarines will provide no deterrence for us, but make us more vulnerable if a conflict arises in which we are effectively part of the US military operation.
ML: How would you characterise the mainstream media’s presentation and treatment of these issues?
JM: The mainstream media is very largely a mouthpiece for Washington propaganda. And that American propaganda is pushed out through the legacy media, The Washington Post, The New York Times, the news agencies, Fox News which in turn are influenced by the military/ business complex which Eisenhower warned us about years ago.
The power of those groups with the CIA and the influence that they have, means that they overwhelm our media. That’s reflected particularly in The Australian and News Corporation publications.
I don’t know how some of those journalists can hold their heads. They’ve been on the drip feed of America for so long. They cannot see a world that is not dominated and led by the United States.
I’m hoping that over time, Pearls and Irritations and other independent media will grow and provide a more balanced view about Australia’s role in our region and in our own development.
We need to keep good relations with the United States. They’re an important player, but I think that we are unnecessarily risking our future by throwing our lot almost entirely in with the United States.
Minister for Defence, Richard Marles is leading the Americanisation of our military. I think Penny Wong is to some extent trying to pull him back. But unfortunately so much of the leadership of Australia in defence, in the media, is part and parcel of the mistaken United States view of the world.
ML: What sort of voices are we not hearing in the media or in Australia on this question?
JM: It’s not going to change, Michael. I can’t see it changing with Lachlan Murdoch in charge. I think it’s getting worse, if possible, within News Corporation. It’s a very, very difficult and desperate situation where we’re being served so poorly.
ML: Is there a strong independent media and potential for voices through independent media in Australia?
JM: No, we haven’t got one. The best hope at the side, of course, is the ABC and SBS public broadcasters, but they’ve been seduced as well by all things American.
We’ve seen that particularly in recent months over the conflict in Gaza. The ABC and SBS heavily favour Israel. It is shameful.
They’re still the best hope of the side, but they need more money. They’re getting a little bit more from the government, but I think they are sadly lacking in leadership and proper understanding of what the role of a public broadcaster should be.
I don’t think there’s a quick answer to any of this. And I hope that we can extricate ourselves without too much damage in the future. Our media has a great responsibility and must be held responsible for the damage that it is causing in Australia.
ML: Well, look, thank you very much, John Menadue, for joining us on Radio Northern Beaches and on the Pearls and Irritations podcast. John Menadue, publisher, founder, editor-in-chief of, for the last 13 years, the public policy journal Pearls and Irritations. We’ve been discussing the role of the mainstream media, independent media, in the public policy processes too in Australia, and particularly in the context of international relations and in this case our relationships with the US and China.
Thank you so much John for taking the time and for sharing your thoughts with us here today. Thanks for joining us John.
JM: Thank you. Let’s hope for better days.
John Menadue, founder and publisher of Pearls and Irritations public policy journal has had a senior professional career in the media, public service and airlines. In 1985, he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for public service. In 2009, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Adelaide in recognition of his significant and lifelong contribution to Australian society. This transcript of the Pearls and Irritations podcast on 10 August 2024 is republished with permission.
Of the international intelligence information that comes to Australian agencies from the Five Eyes, 90 percent comes from the CIA and related US intelligence agencies. So in effect we have the colonisation of our intelligence agencies These agencies dominate the advice to ministers, writes John Menadue.
Michael Lester:Hello again listeners to Community Radio Northern Beaches Community Voices and also the Pearls and Irritations podcast. I’m Michael Lester.
Our guest today is the publisher and founder of the Pearls and Irritations Public Policy online journal, the celebrated John Menadue, with whom we’ll be so pleased to have a discussion today. John has a long and high profile experience in both the public service, for which he’s been awarded the Order of Australia and also in business.
As a public servant, he was secretary of a number of departments over the years, prime minister and cabinet under a couple of different prime ministers, immigration and ethnic affairs, special minister of state and the Department of Trade and also Ambassador to Japan.
And in his private sector career, he was a general manager at News Corp and the chief executive of Qantas. These are just among many of his considerable activities.
These days, as I say, he’s a publisher, public commentator, writer, and we’re absolutely delighted to welcome you here to Radio Northern Beaches and the P&I podcast, John.
John Menadue: Thank you, Michael. Thanks for the welcome and for what you’ve had to say about Pearls and Irritations. My wife says that she’s the Pearl and I’m the Irritation.
ML:You launched, I think, P&I, what, 2013 or 2011; anyway, you’ve been going a long while. And I noticed the other day you observed that you’d published some 20,000 items on Pearls and Irritations to do with public policy. That’s an amazing achievement itself as an independent media outlet in Australia, isn’t it?
JM: I’m quite pleased with it and so is Susie, my wife. We started 13 years ago and we did everything. I used to write all the stories and Susie handled the technical, admin, financial matters, but it’s grown dramatically since then. We now contract some of the work to people that can help us in editorial, in production and IT. It’s achieving quite a lot of influence among ministers, politicians, journalists and other opinion leaders in the community.
We’re looking now at what the future holds. I’m 89 and Susie, my wife, is not in good health. So we’re looking at new governance arrangements, a public company with outside directors so that we can continue Pearls and Irritations well into the future.
Pearls and Irritations publisher John Menadue . . . “I’m afraid some of [the mainstream media] are just incorrigible. They in fact act as stenographers to powerful interests.” Image: Independent AustralianML: So you made a real contribution through this and you’ve given the opportunity for so many expert, experienced, independent voices to commentate on public policy issues of great importance, not least vis-a-vis, might I say, mainstream media treatment of a lot of these issues.
This is one of your themes and motivations with Pearls and Irritations as a public policy journal, isn’t it? That our mainstream media perhaps don’t do the job they might do in covering significant issues of public policy?
JM: That’s our hope and intention, but I’m afraid some of them are just incorrigible. They in fact act as stenographers to powerful interests.
It’s quite a shame what mainstream media is serving up today, propaganda for the United States, so focused on America.Occasionally we get nonsense about the British royal family or some irrelevant feature like that.
But we’re very badly served. Our media shows very little interest in our own region. It is ignorant and prejudiced against China. It is not concerned about our relations with Indonesia, with the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam.
It’s all focused on the United States.We’re seeing it on an enormous scale now with the US elections. Even the ABC has a Planet America programme.
It’s so much focused on America as if we’re an island parked off New York. We are being Americanised in so many areas and particularly in our media.
ML: What has led to this state of affairs in the way that mainstream media treats major public policy issues these days? It hasn’t always been like that or has it?
JM: We’ve been a country that’s been frightened of our region, the countries where we have to make our future. And we’ve turned first to the United Kingdom as a protector. That ended in tears in Singapore.
And now we turn to the United States to look after us in this dangerous world, rather than making our own way as an independent country in our own region. That fear of our region, racism, white Australia, yellow peril all feature in Australia and in our media.
But when we had good, strong leaders, for example, Malcolm Fraser on refugees, he gave leadership and our role in the region.
Gough Whitlam did it also. If we have strong leadership, we can break from our focus on the United States at the expense of our own region. In the end, we’ve got to decide that as we live in this region, we’ve got to prosper in this region.
Security in our region, not from our region. We can do it, but I’m afraid that we’ve been retreating from Asia dreadfully over the last two or three decades. I thought when we had a Labor government, things would be different, but they’re not.
We are still frightened of our own region and embracing at every opportunity, the United States.
ML: Another theme of the many years of publishing Pearls and Irritations is that you are concerned to rebuild some degree of public confidence and trust that has been lost in the political system and that you seek to provide a platform for good policy discussion with the emphasis being on public policy. How has the public policy process been undermined or become so narrow minded if that’s one way of describing it?
JM: Contracting out work to private contractors, the big four accounting firms, getting advice, and not trusting the public service has meant that the quality of our public service has declined considerably. That has to be rebuilt so we get better policy development.
Ministers have been responsible, particularly Scott Morrison, for downgrading the public service and believing somehow or other that better advice can be obtained in the private sector.
Another factor has been the enormous growth in the power of lobbyists for corporate Australia and for foreign companies as well. Ministers have become beholden to pressure from powerful lobby groups.
One particular example, with which I’m quite familiar is in the health field. We are never likely to have real improvements in Medicare, for example, unless the government is prepared to take on the power of lobbyists — the providers, the doctors, the pharmaceutical companies and pharmacies in Australia.
But it’s not just in health where lobbyists are causing so much damage. The power of lobbyists has discredited the role of governments that are seduced by powerful interests rather than serving the community.
The media have just entrenched this problem. Governments are criticised at every opportunity. Australia can be served by the media taking a more positive view about the importance of good policy development and not getting sidetracked all the time about some trivial personal political issue.
The media publish the handouts of the lobbyists, whether it’s the health industry or whether it’s in the fossil fuel industries. These are the main factors that have contributed to the lack of confidence and the lack of trust in good government in Australia.
ML: A particular editorial focus that’s evident in Pearls and Irritations is promoting, I think in your words, a peaceful dialogue and engagement with China. Why is this required and why do you put it forward as a particularly important part of what you see as the mission of your Pearls and Irritations public policy journal?
JM; China, is our largest market and will continue to be so. There is a very jaundiced view, particularly from the United States, which we then copy, that China is a great threat. It’s not a threat to Australia and it’s not a threat to the United States homeland.
But it is to a degree a threat, a competitive threat to the United States in economy and trade. America didn’t worry about China when it was poor, but now that it’s strong militarily, economically and in technology, America is very concerned and feels that its future, its own leadership, its hegemony in the world is being contested.
Unfortunately, Australia has allowed itself to be drawn into the American contest with China. It’s one provocation after another. If it’s not within China itself, it’s on Taiwan, human rights in Hong Kong. Every opportunity is found by the United States to provoke China, if possible, and lead it into war.
I think, frankly, China will be more careful than that.
China’s problem is that it’s successful. And that’s what America cannot accept. By comparison, China does not make the military threat to other countries that the United States presents.
America is the most violent, aggressive country in the world. The greatest threat to peace in the world is the United States and we’re seeing that particularly now expressed in Israel and in Gaza.
But there’s a history. America’s almost always at war and has been since its independence in 1776. By contrast, China doesn’t have that sort of record and history. It is certainly concerned about security on its borders, and it has borders with 14 countries.
But it doesn’t project its power like the US. It doesn’t bomb other countries like the United States. It doesn’t have military bases surrounding the United States.
The United States has about 800 bases around the world. It’s not surprising that China feels threatened by what the United States is doing. And until the United States comes to a sensible, realistic view about China and deals with it politically, I think they’re going to make continual problems for us.
We have this dichotomy that China is our major trading partner but it’s seen by many as a strategic threat. I think that is a mistake.
ML: But what about your views about the public policy process underlying Australia’s policy in reaching the positions that we’re taking vis-a-vis China?
JM: There are several reasons for it, but I think the major one is that Australian governments, the previous government and now this one, takes the advice of intelligence agencies rather than the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Our intelligence agencies are part of Five Eyes. Of the international intelligence which comes to Australian agencies, 90 percent comes from the CIA and related US intelligence agencies. So in effect we’ve had the colonisation of our intelligence agencies and they’re the ones that the Australian government listens to.
Very senior people in those agencies have direct access to the Prime Minister. He listens to them rather than to Penny Wong or the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. On most public issues involving China, the Department of Foreign Affairs has become a wallflower.
It’s a great tragedy because so much of our future in the region depends on good diplomacy with China, with the ASEAN, with the countries of our region.
Those intelligence agencies in Australia, together with American funded, military funded organisations such as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute have the ear of governments. They’ve also got the ear of the media.
Stories are leaked to the media all the time from those agencies in order to heighten our fear of the region. The Americanisation of Australia is widespread. But our intelligence agencies have been Americanised as well, and they’re leading us down a very dangerous path.
ML: I’m speaking with our guest today on Reno Northern Beaches Community Voices and on the Pearls and Irritations podcast with the publisher of Pearls and Irritations Public Policy Journal, John Menadue, distinguished Australian public servant and businessman.
John, again, it’s one thing to talk about that, but governments, when they change, and we’ve had a change of government recently, very often, as I’m sure you know from personal experience, have the opportunity and do indeed change their advisors and adopt different policies, and one might have expected this to happen.
Why didn’t we see a change of the guard like we saw a change of government?
JM: I think this government is timid on almost everything. It was timid from day one on administrative arrangements, departmental arrangements, heads of departments.
For example, there was no change made to dismantle the Department of Home Affairs with Michael Pezzullo. That should have happened on day one, but it didn’t happen.
Concerns we’ve had in migration, the role of foreign affairs and intelligence with all those intelligence agencies gathered together in one department has been very bad for Australia.
Very few changes were made in the leadership of our intelligence agencies, the Office of National Assessments, in ASIO. The same advice has been continued. In almost every area you can look at, the government has been timid, unprepared to take on vested interests, lobbyists, and change departments to make them more attuned to what the government wants to do.
But the government doesn’t want to upset anyone. And as a result, we’re having a continuation of badly informed ministers and departments that have really not been effectively changed to meet the requirements and needs of, what I thought was a reforming government.
ML: In that context, AUKUS and the nuclear submarine deal might be perhaps a case in point of the broader issues and points you’re making. How would you characterise the nature of the public policy process and decision behind AUKUS? How were the decisions made and in what manner?
JM: By political appointees and confidants of Morrison. There’s been no public discussion. There’s been no public statement by Morrison or by Albanese about AUKUS — its history, why we’re doing it.
It’s been left to briefings of journalists and others. I think it’s disgraceful what’s happened in that area. It’s time the Australian government spelled out to us what it all means, but it’s not going to do it. Because I believe the case is so threadbare that it’s not game to put it to the public test.
And so we’re continuing in this ludicrous arrangement, this fiscal calamity, which Morrison inflicted on the Albanese government which it hasn’t been game to contest.
My own view is that frankly, AUKUS will never happen. It is so absurd — the delay, the cost, the failure of submarine construction or the delays in the United States, the problems of the submarine construction and maintenance in the United Kingdom.
For all those sorts of reasons, I don’t think it’ll really happen. Unfortunately, we’re going to waste a lot of money and a lot of time. I don’t think the Department of Defence could run any major project, certainly not a project like this.
Defence has been unsuccessful in the frigate and numerous other programmes. Our Department of Defence really is not up to the job and that among other reasons gives me reason to believe, and hope frankly, that AUKUS will collapse under its own stupidity.
But what I think is of more concern is the real estate, which we are freely leasing to the Americans. We had it first with the Marines in Darwin. We have it also coming now with US B-52 aircraft based out of Tindal in the Northern Territory and the submarine base in Perth, Western Australia.
These bases are being made available to the United States with very little control by Australia. The government carries on with nonsense about how our sovereignty will be protected.
In fact, it won’t be protected. If there’s any difficulties, for example, over a war with China over Taiwan, and the Americans are involved, there is no way Americans will consult with us about whether they can use nuclear armed vessels out of Tindal, for example.
The Americans will insist that Pine Gap continues to operate. So we are locked in through ceding so much of our real estate and the sovereignty that goes with it.
Penny Wong has been asked about American aircraft out of Tindal, carrying nuclear weapons and she says to us, sorry but the Americans won’t confirm or deny what they do.
Good heavens, this is our territory. This is our sovereignty. And we won’t even ask the Americans operating out of Tindal, whether they’re carrying nuclear weapons.
Back in the days of Malcolm Fraser, he made a statement to the Parliament insisting that no vessels or aircraft carrying nuclear weapons or ships carrying nuclear weapons could access Australian ports or operate over Australia without the permission of the Australian government.
And now Penny Wong says, we won’t ask. You can do what you like. We know the US won’t confirm or deny.
When it came to the Solomon Islands, a treaty that the Solomons negotiated with China on strategic and defence matters, Penny Wong was very upset about this secret agreement. There should be transparency, she warned.
But that’s small fry, compared with the fact that the Australian government will allow United States aircraft to operate out of Tindal without the Australian government knowing whether they are carrying nuclear weapons. I think that’s outrageous.
ML: Notwithstanding many of the very technical and economic and other discussions around the nuclear submarine’s acquisition, it does seem that politically, at least, and not least from the media presentation of our policy position that we’re very clearly signing up with our US allies against contingency attacks on Taiwan that we would be committed to take a part in and we’re also moving very closely, to well the phrase is interoperability, with the US forces and equipment but also personnel too.
You mentioned earlier, intelligence personnel and I believe there’s a lot of US personnel in the Department of Defence too?
JM: That’s right. It’s just another example of Americanisation which is reflected in our intelligence agencies, Department of Defence, interchangeability of our military forces, the fusion of our military or particularly our Navy with the United States. It’s all becoming one fused enterprise with the United States.
And in any difficulties, we would not be able, as far as I can see, to disengage from what the United States is doing. And we would be particularly vulnerable because of the AUKUS submarines. That’s if they ever come to anything. Because the AUKUS submarines, we are told, would operate off the Chinese coast to attack Chinese submarines or somehow provide intelligence for the Americans and for us.
These submarines will not be nuclear armed, which means that in the event of a conflict, we would have no bargaining or no counter to China. We’d be the weak link in the alliance with the United States.
China will not be prepared to strike the mainland United States for fear of massive retaliation. We are the weak link with Pine Gap and other real estate that I mentioned. We would be making ourselves much more vulnerable by this association with the United States.
Those AUKUS submarines will provide no deterrence for us, but make us more vulnerable if a conflict arises in which we are effectively part of the US military operation.
ML: How would you characterise the mainstream media’s presentation and treatment of these issues?
JM: The mainstream media is very largely a mouthpiece for Washington propaganda. And that American propaganda is pushed out through the legacy media, The Washington Post, The New York Times, the news agencies, Fox News which in turn are influenced by the military/ business complex which Eisenhower warned us about years ago.
The power of those groups with the CIA and the influence that they have, means that they overwhelm our media. That’s reflected particularly in The Australian and News Corporation publications.
I don’t know how some of those journalists can hold their heads. They’ve been on the drip feed of America for so long. They cannot see a world that is not dominated and led by the United States.
I’m hoping that over time, Pearls and Irritations and other independent media will grow and provide a more balanced view about Australia’s role in our region and in our own development.
We need to keep good relations with the United States. They’re an important player, but I think that we are unnecessarily risking our future by throwing our lot almost entirely in with the United States.
Minister for Defence, Richard Marles is leading the Americanisation of our military. I think Penny Wong is to some extent trying to pull him back. But unfortunately so much of the leadership of Australia in defence, in the media, is part and parcel of the mistaken United States view of the world.
ML: What sort of voices are we not hearing in the media or in Australia on this question?
JM: It’s not going to change, Michael. I can’t see it changing with Lachlan Murdoch in charge. I think it’s getting worse, if possible, within News Corporation. It’s a very, very difficult and desperate situation where we’re being served so poorly.
ML: Is there a strong independent media and potential for voices through independent media in Australia?
JM: No, we haven’t got one. The best hope at the side, of course, is the ABC and SBS public broadcasters, but they’ve been seduced as well by all things American.
We’ve seen that particularly in recent months over the conflict in Gaza. The ABC and SBS heavily favour Israel. It is shameful.
They’re still the best hope of the side, but they need more money. They’re getting a little bit more from the government, but I think they are sadly lacking in leadership and proper understanding of what the role of a public broadcaster should be.
I don’t think there’s a quick answer to any of this. And I hope that we can extricate ourselves without too much damage in the future. Our media has a great responsibility and must be held responsible for the damage that it is causing in Australia.
ML: Well, look, thank you very much, John Menadue, for joining us on Radio Northern Beaches and on the Pearls and Irritations podcast. John Menadue, publisher, founder, editor-in-chief of, for the last 13 years, the public policy journal Pearls and Irritations. We’ve been discussing the role of the mainstream media, independent media, in the public policy processes too in Australia, and particularly in the context of international relations and in this case our relationships with the US and China.
Thank you so much John for taking the time and for sharing your thoughts with us here today. Thanks for joining us John.
JM: Thank you. Let’s hope for better days.
John Menadue, founder and publisher of Pearls and Irritations public policy journal has had a senior professional career in the media, public service and airlines. In 1985, he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for public service. In 2009, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Adelaide in recognition of his significant and lifelong contribution to Australian society. This transcript of the Pearls and Irritations podcast on 10 August 2024 is republished with permission.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Myanmar ruler Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing on Wednesday and highlighted Beijing’s continued support for the military regime, even as the junta had to dispel rumors of a coup.
Pro-junta media reported that the two men held a closed-door meeting in the capital Naypyidaw during which Wang expressed China’s hope for Myanmar’s stability and development, expressed appreciation for Myanmar’s continued endorsement of China’s claim to sovereignty over the democratic island of Taiwan, and pledged China’s steadfast support in international forums.
The meeting came amid calls from junta supporters for the removal of Min Aung Hlaing over his failure to eliminate the armed opposition and rumors circulating on social media that he had been deposed by a fellow general, which the military regime’s True News Information Team denied.
During Wednesday’s talks, Wang emphasized the need for all stakeholders to be represented in an election that the junta has promised for next year, but which critics say will be an illegitimate sham. Wang also offered China’s assistance with election-related matters and technical support for a census in preparation for the vote, media reports said.
Myanmar’s military ousted an elected government led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in early 2021, jailing her and hundreds of party colleagues and supporters, dissolving her party and banning other parties.
The coup touched off a nationwide civil war as the junta sought to cement its control, pitting it against various paramilitary groups and ethnic armies on multiple fronts in the country’s remote border regions. The junta has promised to hold elections but critics say a vote would be meaningless with Suu Kyi and so many pro-democracy politicians and activists behind bars.
At Wednesday’s meeting, Wang expressed Beijing’s opposition to attacks by ethnic armed groups on towns and villages in northern Shan state, which borders China.
Junta officials responded by saying that Myanmar would not permit any actions that could harm China’s interests and is placing special attention on China’s stability, development and security, reports said.
Beijing has not released any information regarding the meeting or discussions with the junta and details of Wang’s statement were not carried by pro-junta media.
‘Push for broad dialogue’
Speaking to RFA Burmese, Kyaw Zaw, the spokesperson for the presidential office of Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government, or NUG, suggested that “China’s statements were misrepresented by the junta” to align with its interests and stabilize the border region.
“The Chinese Embassy has also issued a statement [ahead of the meeting],” he said. “Their primary concern seems to be the border areas of Shan state and aiming to halt the fighting in Myanmar – particularly due to fears about the impact on their own border regions.”
Attempts by RFA to contact junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun for his response to the NUG’s claims went unanswered Wednesday.
In this Kokang online media provided photo, fighters of Three Brotherhood Alliance check an artillery gun, claimed to have been seized from Myanmar junta outpost on a hill in Hsenwi township, Shan state on Nov. 24, 2023. (The Kokang online media via AP)
Hla Kyaw Zaw, an expert on China-Myanmar affairs, said that Wang met with Min Aung Hlaing as part of a bid by the Chinese government to “maintain a positive relationship” with the junta.
“The situation [in northern Shan state] won’t be resolved by a ceasefire alone,” he said. “There is a push for a broad dialogue that includes all stakeholders involved in the Myanmar issue to find a comprehensive solution. But the junta appears to be displeased with this approach.”
RFA sources in Naypyidaw said that Wang Yi’s visit to Myanmar was also scheduled to include meetings with retired Senior Gen. Than Shwe and former President Thein Sein, who led Myanmar’s quasi-civilian government prior to the November 2020 elections that brought Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party to power.
Wang Yi’s meeting with Min Aung Hlaing follows talks he held in June with Myanmar’s former President Thein Sein at the State Guesthouse in Beijing. The Chinese foreign minister’s visit to Myanmar is his second since the military coup, following one in June 2022.
Rumors of coup
The talks in Naypyidaw came amid rumors swirling on social media that Min Aung Hlaing had been detained as part of an internal coup orchestrated by a military adjutant general on Tuesday evening.
The claims, which originated from a social media account called “Captain Seagull,” were quickly dismissed by the junta’s True News Information Team as “baseless rumors spread by fake accounts aimed at destabilizing the country.”
The information team also said that military officials, including Min Aung Hlaing, were continuing to perform their duties as usual.
A former military officer, speaking anonymously due to security concerns, told RFA that the disinformation is part of a broader effort to create social and political instability in Myanmar.
“The notion of a military disintegration due to an internal coup is creating false hope among the public,” he said. “In reality, the political situation remains stagnant. The military, having been built up over decades, cannot be expected to collapse in just three years.”
The rumors come amid frustration from junta supporters over Min Aung Hlaing’s handling of the conflict, which has seen the armed opposition make substantial gains in recent months.
Market shelled
Myanmar’s military has increasingly turned to airstrikes and artillery fire as its troops suffer battlefield defeats, often with deadly results for the country’s civilian population.
During busy hours on Tuesday, at least 11 civilians were killed and 10 others injured when junta troops in Sagaing region’s Monywa township fired a 60-millimeter rocket that landed in a market in Hta Naung Taw village, residents told RFA.
Those killed in the attack included eight women and three men, aged 14 to 50, they said.
A woman who was at the market and witnessed the attack told RFA that it occurred at around 9:00 a.m.
“We heard the explosion followed by huge smoke, and everyone started running, while others stood as if in a daze,” said the woman, who also declined to be named for fear of reprisal.
A local woman was injured by an artillery shell in Hta Naung Taw (South) village of Monywa township, Sagaing region, Aug. 13, 2024. (@MomywaAMyintRoadInformation via Telegram)
Residents no longer dare to sleep in their homes, fearing more artillery attacks, and have taken shelter in concrete bunkers and nearby monasteries, she said.
A member of the armed opposition in Monywa township told RFA that junta troops used to exclusively fire heavy weapons at military positions, but have begun targeting civilians as well.
“Recently, they began intentionally targeting busy areas with tea shops, betel shops, markets, and so on,” he said.
On Sunday, an artillery shell fired from the military’s Ma Au village checkpoint exploded in front of a betel shop near Lin Poe and Lin Pin villages, killing two 40-year-old female pedestrians and injuring nine others.
Attempts by RFA to reach Nyunt Win Aung, the junta’s social affairs minister and spokesperson for Sagaing region, by phone for comment on the attacks went unanswered Wednesday.
According to data collected by RFA, as of the end of May, military airstrikes and artillery fire have killed 596 civilians and injured 823 others in Sagaing region.
Translated by Kalyar Lwin and Aung Naing. Edited by Joshua Lipes.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.
