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  • Civil society view of the 55th session of the UN Human Rights Council

    At the 55th Human Rights Council session, 22 civil society organisations share reflections on key outcomes and highlight gaps in addressing crucial issues and situations [see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2024/02/26/human-rights-defenders-issues-at-the-55th-session-of-the-human-rights-council/]:

    The failure of States to pay their membership dues to the United Nations in full and in time, and the practice of conditioning funding on unilateral political goals is causing a financial liquidity crisis for the organisation, the impacts of which are felt by victims and survivors of human rights violations and abuses. … Without the resources needed, the outcomes of this session can’t be implemented. The credibility of HRC is at stake. 

    We welcome the adoption of three resolutions calling for the implementation of effective accountability measures to ensure justice for atrocity crimes committed in the context of Israel‘s decades long colonial apartheid imposed over the Palestinian people, and for the realisation of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination. Special Procedures expressed their profound concern about “the support of certain governments for Israel’s strategy of warfare against the besieged population of Gaza, and the failure of the international system to mobilise to prevent genocide” and called on States to implement an “arms embargo on Israel, heightened by the International Court of Justice’s ruling […] that there is a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza […].”   This session, the Special Rapporteur on the OPT concluded that the actions of Israel in Gaza meet the legal qualifications of genocide. 

    We deplore the double standards in applying international law and the failure of certain States to vote in favor of ending impunity. This undermines the integrity of the UN human rights framework, the legitimacy of this institution, and the credibility of those States. From Palestine, to Ukraine, to Myanmar, to Sudan, to Sri Lanka, resolving grave human rights violations requires States to address root causes, applying human rights norms in a principled and consistent way. The Council has a prevention mandate and UN Member States have a legal and moral duty to prevent and ensure accountability and non-recurrence for atrocity crimes, wherever they occur.

    We want to highlight and specifically welcome the adoption of the first ever resolution on combating discrimination, violence and harmful practices intersex persons. The resolution builds on growing support in the Council on this topic and responds to several calls by the global coalition of intersex-led organisations. The resolution takes important steps in recognising that discrimination, violence and harmful practices based on innate variations of sex characteristics, such as medically unnecessary interventions, takes place in all regions of the world. We welcome that the resolution calls for States to take measures to protect the human rights of this population and calls for an OHCHR report and a panel discussion to address challenges and discuss good practices in protecting the human rights of intersex persons.

    We welcome the renewal of the mandate of the Independent Expert on the enjoyment of human rights by persons with albinism. As attested by human rights defenders with albinism, the mandate played an invaluable role by shedding light on human rights violations against persons with albinism through ground breaking research, country visits, and human rights training, and ensuring that defenders with albinism are consulted and take part in the decision-making. The organisations also welcomed the inclusion of language reflecting the important role played by “organizations of persons with albinism and their families”, and the reference to the role of States in collaboration with the World Health Organization, “to take effective measures to address the health-related effects of climate change on persons with albinism with a view to realizing their right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, particularly regarding the alarming incidence of skin cancer in this population, and to implement the recommendations of the report of the Independent Expert in this regard”.

    We welcome the adoption of the resolution on the renewal of the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. We also welcome the update of the title of the mandate acknowledging the recognition of this right by the Human Rights Council in its resolution 48/13 on 8 October 2021 and the General Assembly resolution 76/300 on 28 July 2022. We also welcome the inclusion of gender-specific language in the text, and we call on the Special Rapporteur to devote a careful attention to the protection of environmental human rights defenders for their strong contribution to the realisation of the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, as called for by several States. We also welcome that the Council appointed for the first time a woman from the global south to fulfill this mandate, and we welcome the nomination of another woman as Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change. 

    We welcome the resolution on countering disinformation, which addresses new issues whilst once again rejecting censorship and reaffirming the ‘essential role’ that the right to freedom of expression plays in countering disinformation. We welcome the specific focus on girls – besides women – as well as risks associated with artificial intelligence, gender-based violence, and electoral processes. We urge States to follow the approach of the resolution and to combat disinformation through holistic, positive measures, including by ensuring a diverse, free and independent media environment, protecting journalists and media workers, and implementing comprehensive right to information laws. Importantly, we also urge States to ensure that they do not conduct their own disinformation campaigns. At the same time, social media companies have an essential role to play and should take heed of the resolution by reforming their business models which allow disinformation to flourish on their platforms. The resolution also mandates the Advisory Committee to produce a new report on disinformation, and it is absolutely essential that this report mirrors and reinforces existing standards on this topic, especially the various reports of the Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression.

    Whilst we welcome the technical renewal of the resolution on freedom of religion or belief, we regret that the parallel resolution on combating intolerance (widely known by its original name Resolution 16/18) was not tabled at the session. Since 2011, these duel resolutions have been renewed each year, representing a consensual and universal framework to address the root causes of hate based on religion or belief in law, policy, and practice. We call on the OIC to once again renew Resolution 16/18 in a future session, while ensuring no substantive changes are made to this consensual framework. We also urge all States to reaffirm their commitment to Resolution 16/18 and the Rabat Plan of Action and adopt comprehensive and evidence-based national implementation plans, with the full and effective participation of diverse stakeholders.

    We welcome the adoption of the resolution on prevention of genocide and its focus on impunity, risks and early warnings, as well as the paragraph reaffirming that starvation of civilians as a method to combat is prohibited under international humanitarian law; however, we regret that the resolution fails to adequately reflect and address serious concerns relating to current political contexts and related risks of genocide. 

    We welcome the adoption of the resolution on the rights of the child: realising the rights of the child and inclusive social protection, strengthening the implementation of child rights-compliant inclusive social protection systems that benefit all children. We also welcome the addition of a new section on child rights mainstreaming, enhancing the capacity of OHCHR to advance child rights mainstreaming, particularly in areas such as meaningful and ethical child participation and child safeguarding.  We remain concerned by persisted attempts to weaken the text, especially to shift the focus away from children as individual right-holders, to curtail child participation and remove the inclusion of a gender perspective.

    We welcome the adoption of the resolution on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment which addresses effective national legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture. We welcome the new paragraph urging States concerned to comply with binding orders of the International Court of Justice related to their obligations under the Convention Against Torture.

    We welcome the adoption of a new resolution on the human rights situation in Belarus. The Belarusian authorities continue their widespread and systematic politically-motivated repression, targeting not only dissent inside the country, but also Belarusians outside the country who were forced to flee for fear of persecution. Today, almost 1,500 prisoners jailed following politically-motivated charges in Belarus face discriminatory treatment, severe restriction of their rights, and ill-treatment including torture. The resolution rightly creates a new standalone independent investigative mechanism, that will inherit the work of the OHCHR Examination, to collect and preserve evidence of potential international crimes beyond the 2020 elections period, with a view to advancing accountability. It also ensures the renewal of the mandate of the Special Rapporteur who remains an essential ‘lifeline’ to Belarusian civil society.

    We welcome the resolution on technical assistance and capacity building in regard to the human rights situation in Haiti and emphasis on the role civil society plays in the promotion and protection of human rights and the importance of creating and maintaining an enabling environment in which civil society can operate independently and free from insecurity. We similarly welcome the call on the Haitian authorities to step up their efforts to support national human rights institutions and to pursue an inclusive dialogue between all Haitian actors concerned in order to find a lasting solution to the multidimensional crisis, which severely impacts civil society. We welcome the renewal of the mandate of the designated expert and reference to women and children in regard to the monitoring of human rights situation and abuses developments, as well as encouragement of progress on the question of the establishment of an office of the Office of the High Commissioner in Haiti. We nonetheless regret that the resolution does not address the multifaceted challenges civil society faces amidst escalating violence, fails to further address the link between the circulation of firearms and the human rights violations and abuses, and does not identify concrete avenues for the protection of civilians and solidarity action to ensure the safety, dignity and rights of civilians are upheld.

    We welcome the adoption of the resolution on Iran, renewing the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran and extending for another year the mandate of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran. The continuation of these two distinct and complementary mandates is essential for the Council to fulfill its mandate of promotion and protection of human rights in Iran. However, given the severity of the human rights crisis in the country, we regret that this important resolution remains purely procedural and fails to reflect the dire situation of human rights in Iran, including the sharp spike in executions, often following grossly unfair trials. It also fails to address the increased levels of police and judicial harassment against women and girls appearing in public without compulsory headscarves, human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists and families of victims seeking truth and justice, and the continued pervasive discrimination and violence faced by women and girls, LGBTI+ persons and persons belonging to ethnic and religious minorities in the country.  

    We welcome the adoption by consensus of the resolution on Myanmar, which is a clear indication of the global concern for the deepening human rights and humanitarian crisis in the country as a result of the military’s over three-year long brutal war against the people resisting its attempted coup. We further welcome the Council’s unreserved support for Myanmar peoples’ aspirations for human rights, democracy, and justice as well as the recognition of serious human rights implications of the continuing sale of arms and jet fuel to Myanmar.

    We welcome the resolution on the situation of human rights in Ukraine stemming from the Russian aggression. The latest report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI) reveals disturbing evidence of war crimes, including civilian targeting, torture, sexual violence, and the unlawful transfer of children. These findings underscore the conflict’s brutality, particularly highlighted by the siege of Mariupol, where indiscriminate attacks led to massive civilian casualties and infrastructure destruction. The report also details the widespread and systematic torture and sexual violence against both civilians and prisoners of war. Moreover, the illegal deportation of children emerges as a significant issue, as part of a broader strategy of terror and cultural erasure. The COI’s mandate extension is crucial for ongoing investigations and ensuring justice for victims. 

    By adopting a resolution entitled ‘advancing human rights in South Sudan,’ the Council ensured that international scrutiny of South Sudan’s human rights situation will cover the country’s first-ever national elections, which are set to take place in De­cember 2024. With this resolution, the UN’s top human rights body extended the mandate of its Com­mis­sion on Human Rights in South Sudan.

    We welcome the resolution on the human rights situation in Syria and the extension of the mandate of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI), which will continue to report on violations from all sides of the conflict in an impartial and victim-centered manner. Syria continues to commit systematic and widespread attacks against civilians, in detention centers through torture, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance and through indiscriminate attacks against the population in Idlib. We welcome that the resolution supports the mandate of the Independent Institution of the Missing People and calls for compliance with the recent order on Provisional Measures by the ICJ – both initiatives can play a significant role in fulfilling victims’ rights to truth and justice and should receive support by all UN Member States. In a context of ongoing normalisation, the CoI’s mandate to investigate and report on human rights abuses occurring in Syria is of paramount importance.

    We continue to deplore this Council’s exceptionalism towards serious human rights violations committed by the Chinese government. At a time when double-standards are enabling ongoing atrocity crimes to be committed in Palestine, sustained failure by Council Members, in particular OIC countries, to promote accountability for crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and Muslim peoples in China severely undermines the Council’s integrity, and its ability to prevent and put an end to atrocity crimes globally. Findings by the OHCHR, the UN Treaty Bodies, the ILO and over 100 letters by UN Special Procedures since 2018 have provided overwhelming evidence pointing to systematic and widespread human rights violations across the People’s Republic of China. We reiterate our pressing call for all Council Members to support the adoption of a resolution establishing a UN mandate to monitor and report on the human rights situation in China, as repeatedly urged by UN Special Procedures. We further echo Special Procedures’ call for prompt and impartial investigations into the unlawful death of Cao Shunli, and all cases of reprisals for cooperation with the UN.

    We regret the Council’s silence on the situation in India despite the clear and compounding early warning signs of further deterioration that necessitate preventive action by the Council based on the objective criteria. The latest of these early warning signals include the recent notification of rules to implement the highly discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government just weeks before the election, along with recent intercommunal violence in Manipur and ongoing violence against Muslims in various parts of India amid increasing restrictions on civic space, criminalisation of dissent and erosion of the rule of law with political interference.

    We further regret that this Council is increasingly failing to protect victims of human rights violations throughout the Middle East and North Africa, including in Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. The people of Yemen and Libya continue to endure massive ‘man-made’ humanitarian catastrophes caused in large part by ongoing impunity for war crimes, crimes against humanity and other grave violations of international law. In Algeria, Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and in other MENA countries, citizens are routinely subjected to brutal, wide-spread human rights violations intended to silence dissent, eradicate independent civil society and quash democratic social movements. Countless citizens from the MENA region continue to hope and strive for a more dignified life – often at the cost of their own lives and freedom. We call on this Council and UN member States to rise above narrow political agendas and begin to take steps to address the increasing selectivity that frequently characterises this Council’s approach to human rights protection and promotion. 

    We regret that once more, civil society representatives faced numerous obstacles to accessing the Palais and engaging in discussions, both in person and remotely, during this session. The UN human rights system in Geneva has always and continues to rely on the smooth and unhindered access of civil society to carry out its mandate. We remind UN Member States, as well as UNOG, that the Council’s mandate, as set out in HRC Res 5/1, requires that arrangements be made, and practices observed to ensure ‘the most effective contribution’ of NGOs. Undermining civil society access and engagement not only undermines the capacities and effectiveness of civil society but also of the UN itself.

    Signatories:

    1. All Human Rights for All in Iran
    2. Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA)
    3. Association Arc pour la defense des droits de l’homme et des revendication democratique/culturelles du peuple Azerbaidjanais Iran -”ArcDH”
    4. Balochistan Human Rights Group
    5. Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies
    6. Child Rights Connect (CRCnt)
    7. CIVICUS
    8. Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI)
    9. Egyptian initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR)
    10. Ensemble contre la Peine de Mort
    11. Franciscans International
    12. Gulf Center for Human Rights
    13. Impact Iran
    14. International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI)
    15. International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)
    16. International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA)
    17. International Service for Human Rights (ISHR)
    18. Kurdistan Human Rights Network
    19. Kurdpa Human Rights Organization
    20. PEN America
    21. The Syrian Legal Development Programme (SLDP)
    22. United 4 Iran

    see also: https://www.eeas.europa.eu/delegations/un-geneva/eu-human-rights-council_en

    https://www.fidh.org/en/international-advocacy/united-nations/human-rights-council/55th-human-rights-council-session-israel-palestine-belarus-iran

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • US-Philippines-Japan Summit to Contain China Described as a “Council of War”

    President Biden hosted Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. at the White House on Thursday, the first meeting of its kind, which comes as the U.S. moves to expand its military presence in the South China Sea to counter China. The Philippines has deepened military ties with both the United States and Japan in recent years as maritime confrontations…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Pacific states could help ‘help prevent’ nuclear war, says advocate

    By Eleisha Foon, RNZ Pacific senior journalist

    Pacific nations and smaller states are being urged to unite to avoid being caught in the crossfire of a possible nuclear conflict between China and the US.

    On the cusp of a new missile age in the Indo-Pacific, a nuclear policy specialist suggests countries at the centre of the brewing geopolitical storm must rely on diplomacy to hold the superpowers accountable.

    Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Ankit Panda said it was crucial smaller states and Pacific nations concerned about potential nuclear conflict “engage in meaningful risk reduction, arms control and broader diplomacy to reduce the possibility of war.”

    “States [which] are not formally aligned with the United States or China were more powerful united,” and this “may create greater incentives for China and the United States to engage in these talks,” the think tank’s nuclear policy program Stanton senior fellow said.

    North Korea and the United States have been increasing their inventories of short- to intermediate-range missile systems, he said.

    “The stakes are potentially nuclear conflict between two major superpowers with existential consequences for humanity at large.”

    The US military’s newest long-range hypersonic missile system, called the ‘Dark Eagle’, could soon be deployed to Guam, he said.

    Caught in crossfire
    A report issued by the Congressional Budget Office last year suggested the missile could potentially reach Taiwan, parts of mainland China, and the North Korean capital of Pyongyang if deployed to Guam, he said.

    “Asia and Pacific countries need to put this on the agenda in the way that many European states that were caught in the crossfire between the United States and the Soviet Union were willing to do during the Cold War,” Panda said.

    In 2022, North Korea confirmed it had test-launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile capable of reaching Guam.

    Guam is a US Pacific territory with a population of at least 170,000 people and home to US military bases.

    Guam’s unique position
    Panda said it could be argued that Guam’s unique position and military use by the US as a nuclear weapons base makes it even more of a target to North Korea.

    He said North Korea will likely intensify its run of missile tests ahead of America’s presidential election in November.

    “If [President] Biden is re-elected, they will continue to engage with China in good faith on arms control.

    “But if [Donald] Trump gets elected then we can expect the opposite. We’ll see an increase in militarism and a race-to-arms conflict in the Indo-Pacific,” he said.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • In China, drones, social media monitor foreign journalists: report

    Chinese authorities use drones to monitor and follow foreign journalists as they report from the country, as well as detaining, harassing and threatening them with non-renewal of their work permits if they report on topics deemed sensitive by the government, according to a new report on journalists’ working conditions.

    Four out of five members who responded to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China annual working conditions survey said they had experienced “interference, harassment or violence” while trying to do their jobs in China during the past year, the FCCC report found.

    Local governments are increasingly using technology to keep track of foreign media workers, the report found.

    “During a trip to Poyang Lake, where we were reporting on the status of the Yangtze River dolphin, we were followed by multiple cars with plainclothes individuals inside,” the report quoted a journalist with a European media organization as saying. 

    “At one point, the plainclothes individuals appeared to use a drone when a blocked sandy road prevented them from getting closer by car,” they said.

    ENG_CHN_ForeignMedia_04102024.2.JPG
    A cameraman from Hong Kong Cable TV is restrained from photographing the crowd waiting to buy tickets for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, July 25, 2008, in Beijing, China. (Robert F. Bukaty/AP)

    Another European journalist reported similar high-tech surveillance when on a reporting trip to two provinces affected by extreme weather events linked to climate change.

    “We were followed by multiple carloads of plain clothes officers,” the report quoted them as saying. “Drones were sent out to follow and observe us when we got out of our vehicle to film/collect interviews. When we moved on foot to a spot, the drones would follow us.”

    Respondents also told the FCCC they had reason to believe the authorities had “possibly or definitely” compromised their WeChat (81%), their phone (72%), and/or placed audio recording bugs in their office or homes, the report found.

    ‘Endless cat-and-mouse game’

    Another journalist with a European newspaper described reporting in China as “an endless cat-and-mouse game.”

    “Whatever strategy you try, the Chinese surveillance and security system adapts and closes the gap,” the report quoted them as saying. “Whatever strategies you use, the space for reporting keeps getting smaller and smaller.”

    A foreign reporter of many years’ experience in China who gave only the surname Lok for fear of reprisals told RFA Cantonese that she expects her communications apps to be monitored at all times.

    “I was talking about an issue with a friend here [in mainland China] … and may have mentioned it on WeChat,” Lok said. “Later, he was called in by the police to ‘drink tea’” – a euphemism for being called in for questioning.

    ENG_CHN_ForeignMedia_04102024.3.JPG
    Journalists crowd a National People’s Congress press conference a day before the opening of the annual session of China’s parliament, in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on March 4, 2019. (Greg Baker/AFP)

    “It turned out that the problem wasn’t him, but the conversation he had with me,” she said. “We have to be careful, because a lot of trouble has come from talking to people on WeChat.”

    A second Hong Kong journalist who gave only the surname Wong for fear of reprisals said it used to be easier for journalists to evade official surveillance than it is now.

    “The Chinese government’s digital surveillance methods are comprehensive,” Wong said. “You could describe them as a dragnet, in which every move the target makes is visible to them.”

    Online surveillance

    Huang Chao-nien, an assistant professor at the National Development Institute of Taiwan’s National Chengchi University, agreed, adding that the government has used online surveillance to target journalists for years.

    The government has long used an internet development model that intervenes in the market to control tech companies … forcing them to cooperate with the government in carrying out political surveillance and controls on public speech, he said.

    More than half of the journalists who took part in the FCCC annual survey said they had been “obstructed” at least once by police or other officials, while 45% encountered obstruction by unidentified persons, the report said.

    Some had been warned not to join the club as it was deemed an “illegal organization,” while others were threatened with non-renewal of their visas and work permits if they didn’t toe the line, the report said.

    Areas deemed particularly sensitive by Chinese officials were even harder to work in, it said, adding that 85% of journalists who tried to report from the far western region of Xinjiang in 2023 experienced problems. 

    “In Xinjiang we were followed the entire time,” the report quoted a European journalist as saying. “It was particularly unpleasant in Hotan, where we counted about half a dozen plainclothes following us by car or on foot.”

    “In Korla, we at some point had six cars following us. When we did a U-turn and then a detour over an abandoned construction site and dust road, they all faithfully followed us,” the journalist said.

    ENG_CHN_ForeignMedia_04102024.4.JPG
    Chinese policemen manhandle a photographer, center, as he photographs a news event near the No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court, in Beijing Sunday, Jan. 26, 2014. (Andy Wong/AP)

    And the definition of “sensitive” areas appears to be expanding.

    “An increasing number of journalists encountered issues in regions bordering Russia (79%), Southeast Asian nations (43%) or in ethnically diverse regions like Inner Mongolia (68%),” the report said.

    More than 80% said potential sources and interviewees had declined to be interviewed because they didn’t have prior permission from their superiors to speak to foreign media. Fear of reprisals is even being felt among experts, pundits and commentators, the report said.

    “Academic sources, think tank employees and analysts either decline interviews, request anonymity, or don’t respond at all,” it quoted respondents as saying.

    Translated with additional reporting by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Lee Heung Yeung and Alice Yam for RFA Cantonese.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • China blocks popular Tibetan-language blog

    The Chinese government has shut down a popular Tibetan-language blog, angering residents of Tibet and members of the Tibetan exile community who rely on it for access to Tibetan content. 

    In a statement issued on April 2, the administrator of Luktsang Palyon, or “Tibet Sheep” in English, said the website and its related WeChat blog had been blocked by authorities for alleged copyright infringement and that he has filed a formal appeal for authorities to restore it.

    “The government has completely blocked access to Luktsang Palyon,” said the administrator, who did not want to be named for safety reasons. 

    Over the past few years, Chinese authorities have ramped up efforts to restrict the use of the Tibetan language, with clampdowns on related blogs, schools, websites, social media platforms, and apps, as Beijing pushes ahead with assimilation policies in Tibet. 

    Collage of logos of the popular online Tibetan-language blog Luktsang Palyon and a screenshot of its April 2, 2024, statement announcing its closure by Chinese authorities and its subsequent appeal for restoration of the blog. (Citizen journalist)
    Collage of logos of the popular online Tibetan-language blog Luktsang Palyon and a screenshot of its April 2, 2024, statement announcing its closure by Chinese authorities and its subsequent appeal for restoration of the blog. (Citizen journalist)

    Even though the administrator has formally requested that authorities reverse the order, there’s little hope that the situation will change, said a person inside Tibet who is familiar with the matter and who also declined to be named.

    If restored, Luktsang Palyon will ensure the rights of writers are upheld, but if the request is declined, it will “fully comply with the decision of the government,” the administrator said in a statement. 

    The platform also emphasized the importance of copyright protection and the authenticity of the content published on its blog.

    Established in March 2013, Luktsang Palyon has focused on topics related to Tibetan language and culture, and has built up a loyal community of readers as a source for writings by Tibetans both inside and outside Tibet. 

    It has published about 10,000 pieces of educational content, Tibetan articles and stories, music lyrics, Tibetan-Chinese translations and audio content.

    The Tibetan-language platform Luktsang Palyon served as a vital hub for content from Tibetans inside and outside Tibet. (Citizen journalist)
    The Tibetan-language platform Luktsang Palyon served as a vital hub for content from Tibetans inside and outside Tibet. (Citizen journalist)

    “Shutting down this platform is a matter of significant loss and concern for the Tibetan scholarly community as it has been a constant source to access content,” said Beri Jigme Wangyal, a literature professor and author at the Central University of Tibetan Studies in Varanasi, India.

    Authorities have blocked other Tibetan-language online platforms in recent years.

    In 2022, the China-based language learning app Talkmate and video-streaming service Bilibili  removed the Tibetan and Uyghur languages from their sites following a directive issued by Chinese authorities. 

    Later that same year, the creators of a popular Tibetan-language short video-sharing app called GangYang shut it down, citing financial reasons.

    Rights groups, however, said the move was likely prompted by a Chinese government order to close the app as authorities ratcheted up efforts to restrict Tibetans from using their own language. 

    Translated by Tenzin Palmo for RFA Tibetan. Edited by Tenzin Pema for RFA Tibetan. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Joshua Lipes.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Show of force in South China Sea before White House summit


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Philippines, US and allies join show of force in South China Sea | Radio Free Asia (RFA)


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Former Taiwan president ‘to meet with Xi Jinping’ during China trip

    Former Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou, who is currently on a controversial tour of China in a bid to ease tensions across the Taiwan Strait, could meet with Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping this week, according to a person familiar with the situation.

    A meeting had been scheduled for Monday, but has now been pushed back to Wednesday, coinciding with the U.S.-Japan-Philippines leaders’ summit in Washington, a person familiar with the negotiations told RFA Mandarin. A Taiwanese political analyst said the date also marks the anniversary of the signing of the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which Beijing opposed at the time.

    Ma, whose Kuomintang party once ruled China, fled to Taiwan after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong’s communists in 1949 and ruled as an authoritarian dictatorship for several decades before being voted out in democratic elections in 2016. He arrived in China on April 1 for an 11-day visit aimed at promoting peace.

    “The meeting between Ma and Xi is at China’s invitation; it was Xi Jinping who decided they would meet,” a person familiar with the situation said. 

    ENG_CHN_MaXiMeeting_04082024.2.jpg
    Former Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, left, meets with Song Tao, director of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, in Shenzhen, China, April 1, 2024. (Ma Ying-jeou Foundation via AP)

    The meeting comes as China seeks to improve relations with key diplomatic partners and ease its growing international isolation, the person said.

    “By meeting with Ma Ying-jeou, Beijing is creating the impression that dialogue between Beijing and Taiwan is still possible,” they said.

    Taiwan has never been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, nor formed part of the 73-year-old People’s Republic of China, and most of its 23 million people have no wish to give up their sovereignty or democratic way of life to be ruled by China, according to multiple public opinion polls in recent years.

    Neither Ma nor Chinese officials have confirmed that he will meet with Xi.

    Beijing has slammed Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen and her ruling Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, as “dangerous separatists” and refused the government-to-government talks stipulated by the Tsai administration as a precondition for cross-Straits negotiations.

    Trips criticized

    Meanwhile, Ma’s repeated trips to China have been criticized by Tsai and her officials as undermining the island’s government, because his insistence on a “Chinese” identity for Taiwan shores up Beijing’s territorial claims.

    In a process that began with inviting Taiwanese politicians to visit China last year, on the condition that they don’t reject Beijing’s territorial claim on the island, Beijing wants to counter the impression made by its “wolf-warrior” diplomacy of recent years, the person said.

    Ma on Monday visited the historic Marco Polo Bridge, where the first shots were fired in the Japanese invasion, and spoke of wanting to weep when considering the heroism of the Chinese people who resisted it.

    “There are no winners in war, and there are no losers in peace,” he told reporters at the site. “Mistakes in war may be forgiven, but historical truth can’t be forgotten.” 

    ENG_CHN_MaXiMeeting_04082024.3.jpg
    Former Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou attends a ceremony at the Mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor in the northern Chinese province of Shaanxi, April 4, 2024. (Ma Ying-jeou’s office)

    Ma last met Xi in Singapore in late 2015 at a landmark summit, shortly before incumbent Tsai won a landslide victory in the presidential election of 2016.

    He remains a senior member of the Kuomintang, or KMT, which lost the presidency to the DPP for the third time in a row in January, but holds no official position in Taiwanese politics.

    Ma’s visit this month coincides with the Qing Ming grave-sweeping festival, and the former democratically elected president used a visit to the Mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor in the northern province of Shaanxi to call on the island’s young people to “remember their Chinese roots,” sparking criticism back home in Taiwan.

    He is also visiting a number of sites linked to the fight against Japan during World War II, in which the Kuomintang government and Mao Zedong’s forces formed an uneasy alliance that descended into civil war after Japan surrendered in 1945.

    “You don’t grieve Taiwan’s earthquake disaster … instead you are a thousand miles away crying over the Japanese invasion in World War II 80 years ago,” DPP lawmaker Wang Ting-yu commented in an April 4 Facebook post.

    “[Yet you] ignore the fact that the Chinese Communist Party to this day hasn’t renounced the use of force against Taiwan,” Wang wrote, accusing Ma, who served two terms as president from 2008-2016, of “echoing” Beijing’s propaganda.

    ‘Anniversary politics’

    Soong Kuo-cheng, a researcher at Taiwan’s National Chengchi University, said the date for Wednesday’s meeting had likely been carefully chosen.

    “It’s not just about disregarding the U.S.-Japan summit in Washington, but also, this date marks the 45th anniversary of the signing of the Taiwan Relations Act,” said Soong, referring to the 1979 Act that requires the U.S. government to take steps to defend Taiwan against aggression, including allowing arms sales.

    “For 45 years, China has regarded the Taiwan Relations Act as an anti-China law aimed at protecting Taiwan,” he said. “Moving the date for the Ma-Xi meeting to April 10 is anniversary politics.”

    The Act has been described as the U.S. Congress’ “gift to Taipei” after the United States broke off diplomatic ties with the Republic of China on Taiwan and switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing.

    ENG_CHN_MaXiMeeting_04082024.4.jpg
    Protesters wearing masks of former Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, left, and Chinese President Xi Jinping perform outside of Taoyuan International Airport in Taiwan, April 1, 2024. (Chiang Ying-ying/AP)

    It was passed “to help maintain peace, security, and stability in the Western Pacific and to promote the foreign policy of the United States by authorizing the continuation of commercial, cultural, and other relations between the people of the United States and the people on Taiwan” following the ending of formal diplomatic ties.

    It also defines any threat to Taiwan as a threat to the interests of the United States.

    Beijing saw the law as a betrayal of U.S. commitments to its “one China” policy.

    Soong said Ma’s repeated message to Taiwan’s people that they share common ancestry with people in China is highly Sinocentric.

    “Ma Ying-jeou is foolish to say that blood is thicker than water,” Soong said. “At a time when the rest of the world sees the Chinese Communist Party as an enemy, and Biden refers to Xi Jinping as a dictator, Ma is the only one crazy enough to think that not only can we trust them, but to thank them too.”

    Translated by Luisetta Mudie.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Philippines, US and allies join show of force in South China Sea

    Ships and aircraft from the Philippines, the United States, Japan and Australia conducted a large-scale joint exercise in the South China Sea on Sunday, just a few days ahead of an unprecedented summit in Washington D.C.

    On April 11, U.S. President Joe Biden, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will hold their first trilateral meeting at the White House to discuss security cooperation.

    The armed forces of the three countries and Australia “successfully conducted the first Multilateral Maritime Cooperative Activity (MMCA) in the West Philippine Sea on Sunday, April 7,” said a statement from the Philippine military, referring to the area within Manila’s exclusive economic zone.

    Six naval ships and four aircraft “performed communication exercise, division tactics or Officer of the Watch maneuver, and a photo exercise.”

    “These activities were designed to enhance the different forces’ abilities to work together effectively in maritime scenarios,” the statement said.

    Manila has recently accused Chinese coast guard vessels of blocking and harassing its resupply missions at the Second Thomas Shoal where it maintains an old warship as a military outpost.

    The Japanese Minister of Defense Minoru Kihara, meanwhile, said that the joint activity demonstrated “our collective commitment to strengthen regional and international cooperation in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

    Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and the U.S. “uphold the right to freedom of navigation and overflight, and respect for maritime rights under international law…” Kihara said in a joint statement. 

    “Every country should be free to conduct lawful air and maritime operations,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin added.

    The spokesperson for the Philippine Armed Forces, Col. Xerxes Trinidad, told reporters in Manila that there were “no untoward incidents” during the joint drills.

    Beijing’s response

    The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) announced on the same day that it also conducted a “joint naval and air combat exercise” in the South China Sea. 

    “All military activities that disrupt the South China Sea and create hotspots are under control,” the PLA Southern Theater Command said in a statement on the microblogging site Weibo. 

    Beijing has accused Washington of using its allies as “pawns” to destabilize the region and threaten China’s surrounding security.

    Recently the Southern Theater Command, whose primary area of responsibility is the South China Sea, has also conducted a real combat training exercise in the South China Sea.

    Edited by Mike Firn and Elaine Chan.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • China promotes ‘no decoupling’ message amid US criticism

    Beijing says the United States has reiterated that both sides do not “seek to decouple” even as the Biden administration intensified criticism of the Chinese for flooding markets with renewable energy products under a policy to stimulate flagging growth.

    China’s state-owned Xinhua News Agency reported Sunday Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, on an official visit to China, said the U.S. “appreciates the progress made in U.S.-China economic dialogue and cooperation, does not seek ‘decoupling’ from China.”

    Xinhua reported that the remarks were made during Yellen’s “candid” meeting with the Chinese Premier Li Qiang at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. It did not mention any reciprocal comment from Li regarding decoupling.

    Yellen’s meeting with Li is also the highest level of contact between the world’s two biggest and rivaling economies since  the phone call between the U.S. President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping last week. 

    The two leaders discussed China’s “destabilizing actions” against U.S. ally the Philippines in the South China Sea, its support for Russia in the war in Ukraine, a new security law in Hong Kong and Taiwan’s upcoming presidential inauguration, a U.S. official had said.

    The phone call came ahead of Yellen’s visit and a pending trip by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken “in the coming weeks,” according to the official.

    Prior to her China trip where her first leg began in the southern city of Guangzhou, Yellen had raised concerns of China’s excess manufacturing capacity, accusing Beijing of “flooding” markets by heavily subsidizing products like electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries and solar panels to revive economic and export growth.

    But during her meeting with Li in Beijing, the Chinese premier pushed back on Yellen’s assertion, according to Xinhua which quoted him as saying the U.S. should “refrain from turning economic and trade issues into political or security issues, and view the issue of production capacity objectively and dialectically from a market-oriented and global perspective.”

    Li stressed that the development of China’s new energy industry will make important contributions to the global green and low-carbon transition. China hopes the two countries, whose economic interests are deeply intertwined, will be partners rather than adversaries for a win-win cooperation, he added.

    According to a U.S. Treasury Department readout Sunday, the meeting between Yellen and Li was “frank and productive,” where she raised issues of concern, including industrial overcapacity in China and the impact that could have on American workers and firms. She also emphasized the importance of working together on global challenges, including debt distress in low-income and emerging economies.

    This year is an election year in the United States, and the Chinese economy is facing a series of severe challenges involving pillar industries such as real estate and exports, as well as debt and employment.

    Sunday’s meeting was Yellen’s second face-to-face meeting with Chinese officials in nine months to discuss thorny U.S.-China trade issues.

    According to international media reports, Yellen told Li that bilateral relations are now more stable because the two sides can have “difficult” discussions. But she stressed, “That doesn’t mean ignoring our differences or avoiding difficult conversations. It means understanding that we can only make progress if we communicate with each other directly and openly.”

    Reuters quoted a senior U.S. Treasury Department official as saying after the meeting that the two sides discussed in detail China’s industrial overcapacity problem and the government support that contributes to the problem. Li has shown a willingness to let the U.S. and Chinese economic teams explore the issue further.

    Translated by RFA Staff. Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Indra Simulator Trains Pilots of Hong Kong’s Air Rescue Service (GFS)

    Indra’s H175 helicopter simulator is now training the pilots of the Hong Kong Government Flying Service, which carries out search and rescue, medical evacuation and firefighting missions. Indra’s system has the highest rating from the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the Hong Kong Civil Aviation Department (CAD). GFS highlights the quality of the visual […]

    The post Indra Simulator Trains Pilots of Hong Kong’s Air Rescue Service (GFS) appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Unprecedented US War Drills and Naval Deployments Raise Fear of War in Korea

    South Korea’s general election will be held on April 10, as candidates compete for the 300 seats in the country’s unicameral National Assembly. The latest polls show a neck-and-neck race between President Yoon Suk-yeol’s right-wing ruling People Power Party (PPP) and the main opposition “liberal” Democratic Party which currently holds a majority. This election will serve as a referendum on Yoon’s…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Aukusing for War: The Real Target Is China

    The occasional burst of candour from US diplomats provides a striking, air clearing difference to their Australian and British counterparts.  Official statements about the AUKUS security pact between Washington, London and Canberra, rarely mention the target in so many words, except on the gossiping fringes.  Commentators and think tankers are essentially given free rein to speculate, masticating over such streaky and light terms as “new strategic environment”, “great power competition”, “rules-based order”.

    On the occasion of his April 3 visit to Washington’s Center for a New American Security (CNAS), US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell was refreshingly frank.  His presence as an emissary of US power in the Pacific has been notable since the AUKUS announcement in September 2021.

    In March last year, Campbell, as Deputy Assistant to the US President and Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific National Security Council, was unfurling the US flag before various Pacific states, adamant that US policy was being reoriented from one of neglect to one of greater attentiveness.  The Solomon Islands, given its newly minted security pact with Beijing, was of special concern.  “We realise that we have to overcome in certain areas some amounts of distrust and uncertainty about follow through,” he explained to reporters in Wellington, New Zealand.  “We’re seeking to gain that trust and confidence as we go forward.”

    In Honiara, Campbell conceded that the US had not done “enough before” and had to be “big enough to admit that we need to do more, and we need to do better.”  This entailed, in no small part, cornering the Solomon Islands Premier Manasseh Sogavare into affirming that Beijing would not be permitted to establish a military facility capable of supporting “power projection capabilities”.

    In his discussion with the CNAS Chief Executive Officer, Richard Fontaine, Campbell did the usual runup, doffing the cap to the stock principles.  Banal generalities were discussed, for instance, as to whether the US should be the sole show in projecting power or seek support from like-minded sorts.  “I would argue that as the United States and other nations confront a challenging security environment, that the best way to maintain peace and security is to work constructively and deeply with allies and partners.”  A less than stealthy rebuke was reserved for those who think “that the best that the United States can do is to act alone and to husband its resources and think about unilateral, individual steps it might take.”

    The latter view has always been scorned by those calling themselves multilateralists, a cloaking term for waging war arm-in-arm with satellite states and vassals while ascribing to it peace keeping purposes in the name of stability.  Campbell is unsurprising in arguing “that working closely with other nations, not just diplomatically, but in defensive avenues [emphasis added], has the consequence of strengthening peace and stability more generally.”  The virtue with the unilateralists is the possibility that war should be resorted to sparingly.  If one is taking up arms alone, a sense of caution can moderate the bloodlust.

    Campbell revealingly envisages “a number of areas of conflict and in a number of scenarios that countries acting together” in the Indo-Pacific, including Japan, Australia, South Korea and India.  “I think that balance, the additional capacity will help strengthen deterrence more general [sic].”  The candid admission on the role played by the AUKUS submarines follows, with the boats having “the potential to have submarines from a number of countries operating in close coordination that could deliver conventional ordinance from long distances.  Those have enormous implications in a variety of scenarios, including in cross-strait circumstances”.  And so, we have the prospect of submarines associated with the AUKUS compact being engaged in a potential war with China over Taiwan.

    When asked on what to do about the slow production rate of submarines on the part of the US Navy necessary to keep AUKUS afloat, Campbell acknowledged the constraints – the Covid pandemic, supply chain issues, the number of submarines in dry dock requiring or requiring servicing.  But like Don Quixote taking the reins of Rosinante to charge the windmills, he is undeterred in his optimism, insisting that “the urgent security demands in Europe and the Indo-Pacific require much more rapid ability to deliver both ordinance and other capabilities.”

    To do so, the military industrial complex needs to be broadened (good news for the defence industry, terrible for the peacemakers).  “I think probably there is going to be a need over time for a larger number of vendors, both in the United States in Australia and Great Britain, involved in both AUKUS and other endeavours.”

    There was also little by way of peace talk in Campbell’s confidence about the April 11 trilateral Washington summit between the US, Japan and the Philippines, following a bilateral summit to be held between President Joe Biden and Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.  When terms such as “modernize” and “update” are bandied about in the context of an alliance, notably with an eye towards a rival power’s ambitions, the warring instincts must surely be stirred.  In the language of true encirclement, Campbell envisages a cooperative framework that will “help link the Indo-Pacific more effectively to Europe” while underscoring “our commitment to the region as a whole.”

    A remarkably perverse reality is in the offing regarding AUKUS.  In terms of submarines, it will lag, possibly even sink, leaving the US and, to a lesser extent the UK, operating their fleets as Australians foot the bill and provide the refreshments.  Campbell may well mention Australia and the UK in the context of nuclear-powered submarines, but it remains clear where his focus is: the US program “which I would regard as the jewel in the crown of our defense industrial capacity.”  Not only is Australia effectively promising to finance and service that particular capacity, it will also do so in the service of a potentially catastrophic conflict which will see its automatic commitment.  A truly high price to pay for an abdication of sovereignty for the fiction of regional stability.

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  • China Blasts Israel at the UN

    The post China Blasts Israel at the UN first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dissident Voice Communications.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Nuclear Energy Everywhere Costs an Arm and a Leg

    It crackles like a Geiger counter in a uranium mine: in 2023, Emmanuel Macron announced plans for six additional EPR [European Pressurized Reactor] nuclear power plants. Hang on, no, perhaps fourteen in the long term.

    In reviving nuclear in the name of the struggle against global warming, the European Union has followed suit. Japan is promising new developments on the nuclear front. The US is experimenting with miniature reactors. China is building with gusto … All these ‘ionizing’ projects seem to indicate that fission-based nuclear power is in full swing.

    In fact, it is to the contrary. A report of experts published in December 2023, the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2023 [549 p!], using data supplied by the International Atomic Energy Agency and national states, provides the evidence. The part of electricity generation due to nuclear power is the lowest in 30 years (9.2 percent), compared to near double that figure in the 1990s.

    Over twenty years, the cost of a nuclear kilowatt hour has increased slightly, whereas the cost of solar and wind has plummeted (‘melted’), these days coming in at roughly half that of nuclear. In 2022, the report highlights, €35 billion has been invested in nuclear globally, compared to … €455 billion in renewables.

    France is still trying to recover from an annus horribilis in 2022. In addition to higher costs associated with the war in Ukraine, reactor shutdowns have multiplied. In August 2023, 60 % of France’s 56 reactors were dysfunctional. During 2023, production has augmented, but it has stayed at the level of … 1995.

    Showcases of French savoir-faire, the EPR reactors are not ‘making sparks’, accumulating shutdowns, delays (twelve years for Flamanville, on the English Channel, and thirteen years for Olkiluoto, in Finland) as well as cost blowouts (the bill multiplied by 1.7 [for now] at Hinkley Point, in Great Britain, by 3 at Olkiluoto and by 6 at Flamanville!).

    During this time, plutonium (for which every gram is of fearsome toxicity), an essential fuel for these ‘toys’, piles up. The accumulated stock for France has reached an unprecedented level of 92 tonnes.

    Small problem: how can EDF [Électricité de France], which has acquired a debt of €65 billion, finance the announced projects? This question doesn’t stop Brussels from supporting them – in spite of the industrial disaster on course. No matter that, for several years, within the EU, renewable energy (hydraulic, wind and solar) has generated the most electricity, ahead of nuclear, followed by gas and coal.

    South Korea was formerly one of the principal international competitors of EDF for conquering foreign markets. These days South Korea shows itself more reluctant, especially after a calamitous 2022. Kepco, the national electrician, has lost more than €22 billion, adding to a debt of €131 billion – a record. Nuclear contributes 29.6 % to production, currently less than coal. But the promises – within ten years coal’s contribution is supposed to be cut in half and that of renewables tripled. As for nuclear, it will grow by … 5 %.

    Japan only starts to pick up with the atom after the closure of several reactors following Fukushima. To the subsequent shortage of electricity add the financial dimension of the catastrophe: in 2021, the government estimated it at more than €200 billion. Thirteen years after the event, the Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, wants to rekindle nuclear (‘accelerate the particles’) but furnishes no details on new reactors.

    Last year, production in Japan was at its lowest level (equivalent to that of the 1970s), and only 6 % of electricity was of nuclear origin. In spite of announcements, distrust persists, especially since the discovery of misrepresentations (modification of results of chemical analyses, falsification of measures of resistance of materials) of Japan Steel Works, manufacturer of components for reactors, selling them worldwide and notably to France.

    China is the country most committed to the atom. Of 58 reactors currently under construction globally, 23 (40 %) are in the Middle Kingdom. However, if nuclear trots, renewables gallop flat out. Nuclear represents 5 % of electricity, whereas wind and solar furnish 15 %, progressing more quickly than coal, which remains far and away the main ‘source of the juice’. Another vexation: Beijing exports little of its savoir-faire. This is because the US, among others, have blacklisted Chinese enterprises, accused them of having siphoned American technology for its military ambitions. Slanderous!

    The United States remains the champion of nuclear energy but its brainpower has not kept pace (‘their neutrons are not very quick’). In 2022, the contribution of nuclear to electricity generation has fallen to 18.2 % – the lowest rate since 1987 – less than coal and renewables, the latter passed for the first time to pole position. American reactors are on average the oldest in the world (42 years), and only two reactors have been brought into service in the last twenty-five years.

    And what a debut! The AP1000 (variation of the EPR) of Vogtle (Georgia) began operation in March 2023, eight years later than planned and at an estimated cost of €28.5 billion — more than double the initial estimate. [The French business newspaper] Les Echos (25/1/22) has cheekily described the feat as a local ‘Flamanville’. This financial debacle has much contributed to the failure of Westinghouse, a giant of nuclear reactor manufacturing. The event has also provoked the shutdown of the construction site (nine years of work) and of two other AP1000s in South Carolina. Living fossils!

    As a consequence, the US is paying more attention to mini reactors, or SMR [small modular reactors]. Save that NuScale, the champion of the type, last November, cancelled a vast construction program of six of these miniatures, for which the budget had almost tripled …

    Russia is the veritable world champion of the ‘civil atom’. That said, however, it produces only 20 % of the country’s electricity. Rosatom, the Russian EDF, foreshadows a small increase to 25 %, but in … 2045. It is overseas where business is booming. Russia, a nation at war, is building reactors in countries as peaceful as Iran, Egypt, India and Türkiye. Without forgetting China, one of Russia’s best customers.

    Russia’s commercial secret? Its discounted prices, its turnkey packages and, above all, its control of the indispensable enriched uranium. Russia furnishes much of the latter to Europe but also to the US, 31 % of its supplies coming from Russia. All this while imposing sanctions on Putin’s country, which toys with the nuclear threat, going so far as to bomb the vicinity of Ukraine’s nuclear reactor at Zaporizhzhia [Why would Russia bomb a nuclear power plant that it has been in control of since 2022? Also: “Jeffrey Sachs: Biden Needs to Tell Ukraine to Stop Bombing the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant or Face Real Armageddon” — DV ed] – the largest such in Europe.

    Business is business.

    • This article appeared in the French weekly Le Canard enchaîné, 24 January 2024, under the title “Partout dans le monde, l‘énergie nucléaire coûte un pognon de dingue!” It has been translated by Evan Jones and is reproduced with permission.

     

    The post Nuclear Energy Everywhere Costs an Arm and a Leg first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Netflix’s take on ‘Three-Body Problem’ gets mixed reviews in China

    A Netflix adaptation of Chinese sci-fi author Liu Cixin’s “The Three-Body Problem” has sparked mixed reactions in China, with some complaining of a lack of nuance, that much of the action takes place outside of China and that key characters are played by non-Chinese actors.

    But others praised it as a well-made adaptation for Western audiences and had made improvements in female characters.

    The show, which premiered on March 21 just as a man was sentenced to death for fatally poisoning one of its producers, billionaire Lin Qi, was Netflix’s most-watched English TV show from March 25-31.

    It features scenes of a political “struggle session” from the Cultural Revolution under the rule of late supreme leader Mao Zedong, in which physicist Ye Zhetai is beaten to death by Red Guards after being denounced by his own wife, for teaching the Big Bang theory and therefore failing to deny the existence of God.

    The scenes — omitted from a homegrown adaptation of Liu’s books produced by Tencent — are likely one of the reasons that the show is officially blocked in China.

    But viewers in China still discussed it widely after using circumvention tools to get around the “Great Firewall” of government censorship.

    Violence under Mao

    Reports emerged on social media in January that the show would likely be blocked on the orders of the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s Central Propaganda Department.

    While RFA was unable to confirm those reports independently, the political violence of the Mao era remains a highly sensitive topic for the government today, and has gotten other films and TV shows banned before.

    ENG_CHN_ThreeBodyREAX_04042024.2.JPG
    Publicity still for the Tencent adaptation “Three Body.” (Baidupedia)

    Nonetheless, enough people were able to see the show to discuss and search for “Three Body beating/hanging scene” on the Weibo social media platform, according to trending searches spotted by RFA this week.

    The hashtag #3BodyProblem# garnered billions of views on Weibo, according to The Guardian newspaper, and notched up a 6.9/10 score on Douban’s review site, compared with an 8.7 score for Tencent’s Chinese-made version of the show, which premiered in January.

    Mixed reviews

    Some appear to have been underwhelmed by the show, which transplants a good deal of the action to the United Kingdom, and changes the genders, ethnicities and names of several major Chinese characters in the book.

    One post complained that all of the best Chinese male leads had been given to non-Chinese actors. The show’s producers have said they wanted the whole world to be depicted.

    Douban user Victor’s Catzz described the Netflix version as “quite good,” adding that it improves considerably on Liu Cixin’s writing of female characters and foreigners, which he thought was “a mess anyway.”

    “What’s wrong with Netflix making reasonable adaptations for English-speaking audiences?” the user wrote in a post titled “A minority opinion.”

    @Rick Ro$$ from Shaanxi disagreed, commenting: “Netflix has switched up a lot of the ideas in the original work. Those ideas were precisely the essence of The Three-Body Problem.”

    One comment thought pro-Beijing “little pinks” had hijacked the show’s rating on public review sites, while others argued over whether the characters were more two-dimensional in the Chinese-made TV show or in the Netflix version.

    @engauge commented from Guangdong that the “melodrama” in the Netflix version had glossed over the “global vision and apocalyptic background to the political and social turmoil in the original work.”

    Sichuan user @Drunken_and_dreamed_98147 wanted to know why, if the show’s setting had been transplanted elsewhere, the writers had kept the Cultural Revolution scenes.

    “Why not change that era to show discrimination against black people in America?” the user wanted to know. “Wouldn’t that satisfy foreign requirements for political correctness even more?”

    Cultural Revolution

    Alexander Woo, executive producer of Netflix’s version of “The Three-Body Problem,” told The New York Times in a recent interview that scenes of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution held a special meaning for him as his family lived through that era, as did the family of the episode’s director Derek Tsang.

    “We give a lot of credit to him for bringing that to life,” Woo told the paper. “He took enormous pains to have every detail of it depicted as real as it could be. I showed it to my mother, and you could see a chill coming over her, and she said, ‘That’s real. This is what really happened.’”

    ENG_CHN_ThreeBodyREAX_04042024.3.jpg
    Publicity still from Netflix’s “The Three-Body Problem” (Netflix)

    Tsang told RFA’s Cantonese service in an interview in January that he felt the depiction of the Cultural Revolution was a key part of the show.

    “It is becoming increasingly difficult to depict that period in any way [in China],” he said. “But it is a very important part of history.”

    “If we are honest, we can all learn from it if we face up to it and take it seriously. It’s important to show everyone how ridiculous that period was,” Tsang said.

    U.K.-based writer Ma Jian said one of the reasons that the Cultural Revolution is still so sensitive in today’s China is that President Xi Jinping is drawing on Mao Zedong’s playbook even now, prompting fears that he is going to drag the country back to that era.

    “Xi Jinping wants a return to the Cultural Revolution, and to imitate Mao Zedong,” Ma said. “[But] the whole world has seen through the horror of totalitarianism.”

    Translated with additional reporting by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Lucie Lo and Wang Yun for RFA Mandarin, Yitong Wu and Chingman for RFA Cantonese.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Janet Yellen to China: You’re producing too much of everything | Radio Free Asia (RFA)


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • US Treasury secretary in China amid ‘overcapacity’ dispute

    U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen arrived in the Chinese city of Guangzhou on Thursday for a five-day visit that comes amid a growing dispute over a program to stimulate China’s flagging economy that American officials say could hinder U.S. growth.

    Yellen last week accused China of “flooding” markets for renewable energy production by heavily subsidizing things like electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries and solar panels as Beijing seeks to turn around economic woes by boosting production of export goods.

    American officials say the cut-price Chinese exports threaten to kill competing industries in other countries before they get off the ground, but China’s government has dismissed those concerns as protectionist and accused the United States of using similar subsidies itself.

    During the trip, Yellen, who was also chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve from 2010 to 2014, will travel to Beijing to meet Chinese Central Bank Governor Pan Gongsheng, Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng and former Vice Premier Liu He, a key economic advisor to President Xi Jinping.

    ENG_CHN_TripsAbroad_04042024.2.JPG
    Chinese workers inspect a solar panel at the Tianxiang Solar Energy Equipment Factory in Huaibei, east China’s Anhui province March 21, 2012. (AFP)

    Yellen plans to “make clear the global economic consequences of Chinese industrial overcapacity undercutting manufacturers in the U.S. and firms around the world,” a Treasury official told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity according to pre-set rules.

    But it’s unclear how receptive Chinese officials will be. 

    Beijing has already largely dismissed the concerns raised by Yellen as hypocritical, pointing to the Biden administration’s tax-breaks tied to electric cars, which exclude many Chinese-made vehicles.

    Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Wednesday that China welcomed Yellen’s trip as a chance to “properly handle differences” and “build up consensus.” But he also rejected complaints about China’s subsidization of emerging and green-energy industries.

    Speaking at a daily press briefing, Wang questioned “whether it is ‘excess production capacity’ that the U.S. is truly concerned about,” or if the United States was just upset its businesses were losing out in competition to China due to the “international division of labor.” 

    “As for who is engaged in non-market practices, the fact is there for all to see,” he said. “The U.S. side has adopted a string of measures to suppress China’s trade and technology development. This is not ‘de-risking,’ but creating risks. These are typical non-market practices.”

    Mushroom for improvement

    It’s Yellen’s second trip to China in a year, with the U.S. Treasury secretary having traveled there in July last year amid the early days of the rapprochement between China and the United States.

    ENG_CHN_TripsAbroad_04042024.3.JPG
    Chinese Vice Premier Liu He listens as former President Donald Trump speaks before signing a trade agreement at the White House in Washington, Jan. 15, 2020. (Evan Vucci/AP)

    During that visit, Yellen told CNN after returning, she mistakenly ate hallucinogenic mushrooms, which she called “delicious,” at a chain restaurant in Yunnan province called Yi Zuo Yi Wang, or “In and Out.”

    “If the mushrooms are cooked properly, which I’m sure they were at this very good restaurant … they have no impact,” Yellen, who is 77, said. “None of us felt any ill effects from having eaten them.”

    Potential psychedelics are less likely to feature on the visit this time, but after nearly a year of warmer ties between Washington and Beijing, the trip does come as cracks are starting to reappear in the relationship between the world’s two biggest economies. 

    Beijing, for instance, has raised its strong concerns about a White House-backed bill currently before Congress that would allow the U.S. president to ban popular social media platform TikTok in America if its Chinese parent company ByteDance does not sell the app.

    ENG_CHN_TripsAbroad_04042024.5.JPG
    U.S. flag and TikTok logo are seen through broken glass in this illustration taken March 20, 2024.(Dado Ruvic/Reuters)

    Xi even directly raised his concerns about the bill during a rare phone call with U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday, according to John Kirby, spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council.

    “Xi raised the issue and President Biden responded,” Kirby said when asked how TikTok came up during the call between the leaders.

    Biden told Xi, he said, that “this was not about a ban on TikTok [but] … about divestiture – that this was about preserving the data security of the American people and our own national security interest.”

    Diplomacy

    Yellen’s visit to China also comes ahead of next Thursday’s high-profile visit to the United States by Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, which is being billed by the White House as the first trilateral meeting of the three countries.

    The trio this week announced joint naval drills in the South China Sea amid an ongoing dispute between the Philippines and China over the sea’s Second Thomas Shoal, which belongs to the Philippines under international law but is part of a vast territorial claim by Beijing.

    A delegation of U.S. lawmakers led by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire, also recently arrived back from a trip to meet officials in the Philippines, Vietnam, Japan and South Korea.

    Shaheen said on Thursday the trip allowed the lawmakers to see first-hand the “threats” from China to other countries with claims to the South China Sea, as Chinese coast guard vessels fired water cannons at Philippine vessels trying to resupply a naval station.

    “The threatening maneuvers [and] the militarization of the islands in the South China Sea are all motivators to continue the cooperation that we have with the countries in the region,” Shaheen said, summarizing the take-aways of the seven lawmakers after the trip.

    “It has significant impacts on not just the potential for mistakes, militarily, that could be misinterpreted and set off a conflict,” she said, “but also in terms of trade and commerce, and the ability to safely navigate those waters and allow trade to move around the world.”

    Also on the trip was Rep. Adriano Espaillat, a Democrat from New York, Democratic senators Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Mark Kelly of Arizona and Michael Bennet of Colorado, and Republican senators Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Roger Marshall of Kansas.

    Edited by Malcolm Foster.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Fleet Force Protection

    The increasing range and potency of A2AD defence, particularly the anti-ship missile threat, is leading navies to reconsider how individual ships as well as the battle group can be better defended. The expansion of Anti-Access Area Denial (A2AD) zones at sea with the deployment of longer-range surveillance systems; air- ship- and land- based anti-ship missiles; […]

    The post Fleet Force Protection appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Did China Coast Guard ships ignore ‘prohibited waters’ around Taiwan’s Kinmen area?

    Tensions between China and Taiwan have flared following the death of two Chinese fishermen near the Taiwan-controlled Kinmen Island in early February. 

    In the wake of that incident, Chinese-language media outlets claimed that China ignores Taiwanese boundaries around the island, and that Chinese Coast Guard vessels entered Taiwan’s “prohibited” waters, closer to the island, during Feb. 25 drills.

    However, a study of open-source intelligence that tracks ship movements showed that the coast guard vessels in fact mostly avoided crossing into “prohibited” waters, briefly doing so only twice between Feb. 25 and March 7. 

    Two zones

    Kinmen, which is just 10 kilometers (6 miles) from mainland China, is surrounded by two zones of ocean that Taiwan has barred mainland Chinese vessels from entering. 

    The zones are identical on Kinmen’s west and north coast, closer to mainland China, but they are split into two zones on the south and east side: an outer zone called “restricted waters” and an inner zone closer to the island called “prohibited waters.”

    The latter line marking is considered a de facto sea border with China.

    Riyue Tantian — a subsidiary social media account of China Central Television, or CCTV — posted a video on Weibo on Feb 26, claiming that its live footage shows China Coast Guard vessels entering Taiwan’s prohibited waters around Kinmen during drills conducted the day before.

    Parts of both the video and accompanying text were taken from two separate coast guard press releases earlier that day. 

    Several Taiwanese news outlets have also made similar claims about the purported intrusion from Chinese vessels, with one political talk show even claiming that China has deployed “paramilitary operations” against Kinmen. 

    But the claims are misleading. Below is what AFCL found.

    Methodology

    To pinpoint Chinese ships’ exact location around Kinmen, AFCL sourced real-time location data for these ships from Marine Traffic – an open-source platform regularly cited by mainstream news outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.

    The platform only displays data for ships that broadcast their location using radio signals, which are typically relayed via satellites, also known as an open Automatic Identification System, or AIS.

    While it’s common for most ships to emit these signals, there are instances where these signals are deliberately deactivated, often by military ships to maintain operational secrecy. AFCL’s analysis focuses on Chinese vessels whose AIS was recorded by Marine Traffic around Kinmen. 

    After taking screenshots of vessel movements, AFCL then manually added lines over screenshots, illustrating the locations of the relevant Chinese ships as well as “restricted” and “prohibited” waters around Kinmen based on official public data from Taiwan. 

    What happened on Feb. 25?

    Seven Chinese Coast Guard, or CCG, vessels are recorded as patrolling around Kinmen on Feb. 25, according to the Marine Traffic data.

    They include two large former military ships (CCG 2202 and CCG 2203) and five normal patrol ships (CCG 14608, CCG 14609, CCG 14513, CCG 14515 and CMS 8027). 

    CMS, or China Marine Surveillance, was originally under China’s Ministry of Land and Resources, but later was integrated into the CCG.

    Among them, CCG 2202 crossed into Kinmen’s restricted waters a little after 2:00 a.m. while sailing from the southeast towards the southwest.

    Marine Traffic uses Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which is 8 hours behind Taiwan time and 4 hours ahead of Washington time.

    1.jpg
    CCG 2202 entered restricted waters around Kinmen on the morning of Feb. 25. In this and all screenshots below, the purple line marks the shared restricted and prohibited waters along the west and north of Kinmen. Where the zones split along the island’s south and east sides, the blue line marks restricted waters and the red line prohibited waters. (Screenshot/ Marine Traffic) 


      

    At around the same time, CCG 2203 briefly crossed into and made a single pass within the restricted waters alongside the south of Kinmen as the graphic below shows. 

    2.jpg
    CCG 2203 approached restricted waters around Kinmen from the south at the same time CCG 2202 was sailing from the north on Feb. 25. (Screenshot/Marine Traffic)

    Both ships approached but never crossed into Kinmen’s prohibited waters, coming within less than 4 nautical miles of Kinmen at one point before veering off into open water at around 4:00 a.m. and continuing their patrols throughout the rest of the day at a distance. 

    Four of the five other Chinese vessels on patrol near Kinmen on Feb. 25 only entered the island’s restricted waters briefly.

    CMS 8027, however, entered Kinmen’s prohibited waters a little before 1:00 a.m. on Feb. 25, the sole Chinese vessel that AFCL observed to have done so that day. 

    3.jpg
    Amongst five other official ships patrolling around Kinmen on Feb. 25, one of them – CMS 8027, marked in indigo above –  crossed into Kinmen’s prohibited waters. (Screenshot/Marine Traffic)

    Huang Chung-ting, an associate research fellow at the Taiwanese military think tank Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said while the intrusion of CMS patrol ships into Kinmen’s prohibited waters is certainly a provocation towards Taiwan, it is not as strong a challenge as sending former navy vessels such as CCG 2202 and CCG 2203 into these waters. 

    Compared to regular law enforcement vessels such as CCG 2202 and 2203, the surveillance ships [such as a CMS] have the nature of general administrative purpose only, he explained. 

    In contrast, the CCG is still now a branch of China’s armed forces directed by the country’s Central Military Commission, which has led U.S. officials to previously state that they may treat the CCG as a part of the Chinese Navy, Huang added.

    Huang said activities of CCG ships are likely to be concentrated in Kinmen’s south because the separate borders of the restricted and prohibited waters in that area allow China to perform more calculated escalatory naval movements compared to the northwest and west of the island, where the overlapping restricted and prohibited water limit such provocations. 

    After Feb. 25

    While China did launch “regular” patrols in the waters near Kinmen following Feb. 25, six of the vessels checked in this article (2202, 2203, 14608, 14609, 14513, and 14515) only crossed slightly over into Kinmen’s restricted waters or sailed a short distance away from it.

    Marine Traffic data show that CCG 2202 sailed into Kinmen’s restricted waters again on Feb. 27. In the following week, the ship repeated a similar daily patrol straddling Kinmen’s restricted waters while gradually shifting the main course of its daily routes farther and farther towards the open sea southeast of the island.

    4.jpg
    CCG 2202 crossed through Kinmen’s restricted waters several times between Feb. 26 to March 6. The straight line running through the middle of Kinmen indicates that the AIS signal disappeared for a time between 8:54 a.m. and 10:02 p.m. on Feb. 29. (Screenshot/Marine Traffic)

    CCG 2203’s course mirrored CCG 2202 during the same timeframe, entering Kinmen’s restricted waters on Feb. 27 while gradually shifting the main course of its daily patrols further away from Kinmen to the southeast.

    5.jpg
    CCG 2203 also sailed through Kinmen’s restricted waters several times from Feb. 26 to March 6.  (Screenshot/Marine Traffic)

    While CMS 8027 sailed through Kinmen’s prohibited waters again on both Feb. 26 and 27, there was overall very little change in the trajectory of CCG vessels on duty near Kinmen between Feb. 25 and March 7. 

    6.jpg
    CMS 8027 sailed through Kinmen’s prohibited waters between Feb. 26 to March 6. (Screenshot/ Marine Traffic)

    ‘Talk tough and tread carefully’

    Huang from the Institute for National Defense and Security Research told AFCL that he does not believe that the situation represents a “reversal” of the long-term status quo surrounding Kinmen, pointing to China’s decision to avoid sending multiple CCG vessels deep into Kinmen’s prohibited waters as evidence. 

    Huang pointed out that the specific language used in official CCG statements regarding maritime disputes with the Philippines in the South China Sea and with Japan over the Diaoyu Islands highlights a nuanced difference in China’s strategy towards Kinmen. 

    For instance, the CCG emphasizes that it is conducting patrols within “the range of China’s jurisdictional waters” in the South China Sea, but its statement concerning Kinmen only mentions the “waters around the island,” a sign of the Chinese government’s often used “talk tough and tread carefully” approach towards Taiwan, according to Huang. 



    7.jpg
    The CCG statement about Kinmen only declares that the dispute is occurring in the “waters around Kinmen and Xiamen,” while a statement from the organization concerning a dispute with the Philippines in the South China Sea specifically calls the disputed area “China’s Nansha Islands.” (Screenshot/ CCG Official Weibo)

    The variance in terminology and tone suggests that China adopts distinct diplomatic and tactical approaches in its maritime interactions with different neighbors, reflecting tailored strategies based on the unique geopolitical contexts of each dispute.

    Translated by Shen Ke. Edited by Taejun Kang and Malcolm Foster.

    Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) was established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. We publish fact-checks, media-watches and in-depth reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of current affairs and public issues. If you like our content, you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Alan Lu for Asia Fact Check Lab.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • China bans ‘former good friend’ from talking about Hong Kong | Radio Free Asia (RFA)


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • China and Myanmar team up in online scam raids | Radio Free Asia (RFA)


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Hainan pilot’s US plane collision anniversary reminds of South China Sea risks

    On the anniversary of the death of Wang Wei – the Chinese pilot whose fighter jet collided with an American aircraft over Hainan island in 2001 – China’s internet sphere is filled with messages praising his heroism as well as condemning the United States.

    Wang’s Shenyang J-8II, together with another Chinese fighter, were sent from Hainan’s Lingshui airfield to intercept a U.S. Navy’s EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft operating near the island in the South China Sea in the morning on April 1, 2001.

    Chinese and U.S. sides provided different accounts of events leading to the incident that took place at around 9:15 a.m. local time, when Wang’s airplane collided with the EP-3 mid-air, causing him to eject into the sea. His body was never recovered.

    Wang was posthumously awarded the Medal of First-Class Hero and Model, as well as the honorary title of “Guardian of Territorial Airspace and Waters” of China.

    The incident resulted in a serious political dispute between Beijing and Washington then, and now, as the situation in the South China Sea remains precarious, analysts warn of the risks of further confrontation and conflict.

    Fueling nationalism

    The “heroic sacrifice” of Lt. Cmdr. Wang Wei surfaces again this year with bold messages on Chinese public channels against the U.S. “aggressors.”

    On WeChat, a post by Housha from Hangzhou, Zhejiang province – Wang Wei’s birthplace – was read 34,400 times and received 2,700 “thumb-ups”.

    “It has been 23 years since Wang Wei left this world but the South China Sea is still rough and the waves are not quiet,” Housha wrote. “The intention of the U.S. to invade China’s territorial waters and airspace continues but it is now putting the Philippines in the firing line.”

    “I have come to a profound understanding that the U.S. is not China’s “imaginary enemy”, it is undoubtedly THE enemy.”

    Housha added that “happiness and peace need to be defended with life and blood.”

    Another post by ‘Chilling’ on the platform X, formerly Twitter, which is inaccessible inside China and therefore likely aimed at a foreign audience, reads: “He [Wang Wei] represents the blood and strength of the Chinese people and can help people see the true face of the United States!”

    Wang Wei memorial.jpeg
    The memorial of Wang Wei in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. A commemoration ceremony was held for him on April 1, 2021. (Xinhua)

    Ian Chong, a political analyst from the National University of Singapore, said that the “nationalist reaction” may stem from the latest events in the South China Sea, where Beijing has been embroiled in escalating tensions with the Philippines, a treaty ally of the U.S.

    Another analyst, Carl Schuster, former director of operations at the U.S. Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center, said that the 2001 Hainan incident is being used by Beijing as fuel “to feed the tensions”.

    “China’s Communist Party always modified the facts and truth to fit its interests,” Schuster told Radio Free Asia. 

    “They will repeat that “hero” narrative as required to maintain the fiction that the PRC is the victim of aggression, not the perpetrator,” the analyst said, referring to China by its official name the People’s Republic of China .  

    “I see that propaganda based on the incident as a tool to sustain Beijing’s effort to sustain public support and justify its actions,” he added.

    De-escalating the risks

    Since 2001, there have been several occasions when China blamed the U.S. for risking “another Hainan incident.” 

    In August 2014, a Chinese fighter jet intercepted a U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon anti-submarine warfare aircraft at about 135 miles (217 kilometers) east of Hainan Island.

    The Chinese think tank South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative said in a report that the U.S. military’s aerial close-in reconnaissance over the South China Sea increased in both frequency and intensity, with around 1,000 sorties in 2023 alone.

    The U.S. maintains that its ships and airplanes “will fly and sail anywhere international law allows” under the “freedom of navigation” principle of law of the sea.

    The risk of conflict between the two superpowers may become even greater, as “the conditions that allowed for de-escalation may be less available today than in 2001,” according to NUS’s Ian Chong.

    “There remain big questions about the People’s Liberation Army’s command and control and crisis de-escalation efforts,” Chong said.

    The Chinese military has embarked on a major modernization masterplan and the Pentagon’s 2023 Report concluded that “the PRC turned to the PLA as an increasingly capable instrument of statecraft.”

    The U.S. National Security Strategy in 2022 also stated that the PRC “is the only competitor to the United States with the intent and, increasingly, the capacity to reshape the international order.”

    In 2001, to end the dispute over Hainan incident and to secure freedom for the EP-3’s 24 crew members detained by China, the U.S. sent a letter to Beijing saying that it was “very sorry” about the pilot’s death and about the U.S. plane’s landing on Hainan without China’s permission.

    “The incident does tell us there are risks in China’s behavior and some will argue we should back off,” said Schuster from the U.S. Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center.

    “That’’s very similar to the 1930s when U.S. and European ‘experts’ urged the same approach to Hitler’s aggression in the 30s. It did not deter him, it emboldened him,” argued the retired navy captain turned analyst.

    The 2001 incident “does remind us of the risks but it does not justify retreat to avoid them,” he said, adding that would risk something more serious and destructive.

    Edited by Elaine Chan and Taejun Kang


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • China bans ‘former good friend’ from talking about Hong Kong

    China’s former “good friend” economist and ex-chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia Stephen Roach said he was prohibited from discussing Hong Kong in his speech while attending the China Development Forum in Beijing last week.

    Roach was invited to speak at this year’s forum in his capacity as senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, where he had hoped to raise his concerns about Hong Kong’s future. 

    But he told Radio Free Asia that he was stopped, as organizers made it clear before, during and after the forum that they did not want to hear sharp questions, only “views constructive to China.”

    “I’ve written a few articles that raised serious concerns about the future of Hong Kong and those touch on sensitivities in Beijing, and largely for that reason, they asked me not to speak about that at the China Development Forum.”

    In addition, he criticized Hong Kong academic and business representatives at the forum for not truthfully reporting Hong Kong’s situation to Beijing.

    He cited, as an example, his discussions on China’s financial market policies with a 20-year acquaintance and current chairman of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Laura Cha, on a separate occasion on the sidelines of the forum.

    Roach said he had raised three points: Hong Kong and China’s economies are interdependent on each other, concerns about the negative impact of the U.S.-China political conflict on Hong Kong trade, and worries of Hong Kong’s autonomy especially after the enactment of the second national security law, commonly known as Article 23.

    “So I said all three of those will spell trouble for Hong Kong in the years ahead, and Laura Cha agreed with two of my three points – the Chinese economy, the adverse impact of the U.S.-China conflict,” Roach said.

    “But she did not agree with my point on Hong Kong’s political autonomy being compromised by either Beijing or its own,” he said, adding that his argument stemmed from an economic consideration and not politics, which almost no one has disputed. 

    Roach stated that “Hong Kong is over” in a February commentary published in the Financial Times, attributing the demise of the city, an international financial center, to its domestic politics, China’s structural problems and the worsening U.S.-China tensions.

    He also then claimed the turning point of Hong Kong’s decline was when former Chief Executive Carrie Lam introduced the extradition bill that triggered large-scale democratic demonstrations in 2019. He described Beijing’s subsequent imposition of the national security law in 2020 to have “shredded any remaining semblance of local political autonomy.” 

    Last month, the Hong Kong government swiftly passed Article 23, which expanded the scope of what constitutes a breach of national security by creating new offenses and increased punishment for offenders. 

    A transformed platform

    The first China Development Forum was opened in 2000 by then Premier Wen Jiabao. But it was conceived by Wen’s predecessor, the reformist premier Zhu Rongji, as a platform for Chinese leaders to debate and discuss policies and issues in the presence and participation of foreign experts.

    In previous years, the forum also featured a closed-door discussion with foreign chief executives where China’s number two in power, the Chinese premier who has traditionally held the economic portfolio, entertained questions from foreign investors. The premier’s meeting was canceled this year.

    ENG_CHN_Roach_04022024_2.jpg
    Former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, center, listens to a speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping during the opening session of China’s 19th Party Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2017. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP)

    Roach has attended the forum for 24 consecutive years, since the first edition in 2000. He said in the Zhu era, issues could be discussed freely and openly, recalling a session at the 2001 forum in which Zhu sat in and participants openly debated on issues.

    “I urge current Chinese and Hong Kong leaders to do likewise. Debate on issues and not based on personal political agendas.”

    Roach’s recent “Hong Kong is over” theory has incited fury among the establishment, including former Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying and Executive Councilor Regina Ip. Still, he vowed to continue to speak out for the benefit of Hong Kong and China.

    When asked whether he would be worried about not being able to return to Hong Kong after Article 23 was passed, the economist paused before responding.

    “If constructive criticism causes uncomfortable reactions from politicians and business people, they need to look at themselves,” he said.

    Should he be unwelcomed to return, he stressed that he will continue to write and speak to tell the truth, as “debate is more important than personal pressure.”

    According to Roach, foreign investors are seriously assessing the risks of doing business in Hong Kong, amid the uncertainty of how Article 23 will be enforced and interpreted, which has cast a shadow on the city’s autonomy under the one county, two systems principle. 

    Compounded by the U.S.-China spat, capital outflows may intensify, he warned.

    Since the beginning of 2020, the U.S. has announced three rounds of sanctions, sanctioning a total of 18 Beijing and Hong Kong government officials, including Chief Executive John Lee, Chief Secretary Eric Chan, Security Secretary Chris Tang, and Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Secretary Erick Tsang. 

    U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced last Friday his intention to impose entry restrictions on more Hong Kong government officials. 

    This year’s China Development Forum was attended by more than 200 delegates, including eight representatives from Hong Kong. 

    Business leaders apart from Laura Cha included Johnson Cha, chairman of C.M. Capital Advisors, Jacob Kam, chief executive officer of MTR Corporation, Vincent Lo, chairman of Shui On Group, and Richard Li, chairman of Pacific Century Group. 

    From academia, there were Lawrence Lau, economist and former vice-chancellor the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), Zheng Yongnian, founding director of the Institute for International Affairs at CUHK Shenzhen, who is regarded as one of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “national mentors”, and Li Cheng, a political scientist at the University of Hong Kong.

    Translated with additional reporting by RFA Staff. Edited by Taejun Kang and Mike Firn.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Kwong Wing for RFA Cantonese.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • China court jails ‘tortured’ rights activist Xu Qin for four years

    Authorities in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu have handed a four-year jail term to veteran rights activist Xu Qin, after repeatedly delaying her trial and sentencing despite concerns over her deteriorating health, and amid reports of torture from a prominent rights group.

    The Yangzhou Intermediate People’s Court sentenced Xu, a key figure in the Wuhan-based China Rights Observer group founded by jailed veteran dissident Qin Yongmin, to four years’ imprisonment on March 29 for “incitement to subvert state power,” a charge frequently used to target peaceful critics of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, the Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch rights website reported.

    It quoted Xu as telling the sentencing hearing: “I’d like to thank everyone for their care and support, and also thank my husband for his help and support. Regardless of whether it’s futile or not, I must appeal. This is my right.”

    An award-winning activist in a number of high-profile human rights cases, including that of detained human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng, Xu was detained under “residential surveillance at a designated location” in 2021, a form of incommunicado detention rights groups say puts detainees at greater risk of torture and mistreatment.

    Her family told RFA in earlier interviews that Xu is a stroke and heart attack survivor who suffers from high blood pressure, among other ailments.

    But according to the Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch rights website, many of Xu’s health problems were caused by her torture and mistreatment in detention.

    “During her detention and interrogation, Xu Qin was brutally tortured to extract a confession, and was held in solitary confinement for a long period of time,” the website said in a report about her sentencing published on Sunday.

    “Xu already suffered from multiple health problems including stroke, heart attack and hypertension, and as a result [of the torture], she was left paralyzed and unable to stand,” it said.

    Since she was locked up in the detention center, Xu has started using a wheelchair, according to her lawyer.

    Chinese human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng and his wife Xu Yan are seen in an undated photo. (xuyan709 via X)
    Chinese human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng and his wife Xu Yan are seen in an undated photo. (xuyan709 via X)

    Xu told the court on Friday that she would appeal the sentence, which came after more than two years in pretrial detention at the Yangmiao Detention Center in Yangzhou city, where she held intermittent hunger strikes in protest at a loss of communications privileges as well as a months-long ban on meetings with her lawyer, Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch said.

    Repeated calls to Xu’s lawyer rang unanswered during office hours on Monday.

    Trial was delayed

    Xu’s trial was delayed several times following her initial detention in May 2021, with the authorities citing only “unavoidable circumstances.”

    But her family says it was delayed due to her refusal to provide the state security police with a “confession.”

    The trial was eventually held on Nov. 7, 2022, but the verdict and sentencing were also repeatedly delayed until now.

    New York-based rights lawyer Chen Chuangchuang, who also heads the U.S. branch of the banned China Democracy Party, said Chen has always been an extremely tenacious activist.

    “The trial was held a long time ago, but the verdict and sentencing were delayed multiple times, which is a deliberate form of torture used by the Chinese Communist Party,” Chen told RFA on Monday.

    Chen said that one of the purposes of the authorities’ repeated delay in pronouncing the sentence was to get Xu Qin to plead guilty, and that she had been especially targeted due to her association with Qin Yongmin.

    According to the Weiquanwang rights website, the charges against Xu listed her participation in Qin’s China Rights Observer and its sister organization Rose China as evidence against her.

    Qin was sentenced in July 2018 to 13 years’ imprisonment for “incitement to subvert state power,” the latest in a string of long sentences for his peaceful dissent and attempts to build the banned China Democracy Party.

    A contemporary of exiled dissident Wei Jingsheng, Qin was sentenced to eight years in prison for “counterrevolutionary propaganda and subversion” in the wake of China’s Democracy Wall movement in 1981.

    He served a further two years’ “re-education through labor” in 1993 after he penned a controversial document titled the “Peace Charter.”

    Qin then served a 12-year jail term for subversion after he helped found the China Democracy Party in 1998 in spite of a ban on opposition political parties.

    Xu was honored with the Lin Zhao Freedom Award for her human rights advocacy in 2022, and the Oscar China Freedom Human Rights Award last month.

    Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Roseanne Gerin.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • China court jails ‘tortured’ rights activist Xu Qin for four years

    Authorities in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu have handed a four-year jail term to veteran rights activist Xu Qin, after repeatedly delaying her trial and sentencing despite concerns over her deteriorating health, and amid reports of torture from a prominent rights group.

    The Yangzhou Intermediate People’s Court sentenced Xu, a key figure in the Wuhan-based China Rights Observer group founded by jailed veteran dissident Qin Yongmin, to four years’ imprisonment on March 29 for “incitement to subvert state power,” a charge frequently used to target peaceful critics of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, the Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch rights website reported.

    It quoted Xu as telling the sentencing hearing: “I’d like to thank everyone for their care and support, and also thank my husband for his help and support. Regardless of whether it’s futile or not, I must appeal. This is my right.”

    An award-winning activist in a number of high-profile human rights cases, including that of detained human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng, Xu was detained under “residential surveillance at a designated location” in 2021, a form of incommunicado detention rights groups say puts detainees at greater risk of torture and mistreatment.

    Her family told RFA in earlier interviews that Xu is a stroke and heart attack survivor who suffers from high blood pressure, among other ailments.

    But according to the Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch rights website, many of Xu’s health problems were caused by her torture and mistreatment in detention.

    “During her detention and interrogation, Xu Qin was brutally tortured to extract a confession, and was held in solitary confinement for a long period of time,” the website said in a report about her sentencing published on Sunday.

    “Xu already suffered from multiple health problems including stroke, heart attack and hypertension, and as a result [of the torture], she was left paralyzed and unable to stand,” it said.

    Since she was locked up in the detention center, Xu has started using a wheelchair, according to her lawyer.

    Chinese human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng and his wife Xu Yan are seen in an undated photo. (xuyan709 via X)
    Chinese human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng and his wife Xu Yan are seen in an undated photo. (xuyan709 via X)

    Xu told the court on Friday that she would appeal the sentence, which came after more than two years in pretrial detention at the Yangmiao Detention Center in Yangzhou city, where she held intermittent hunger strikes in protest at a loss of communications privileges as well as a months-long ban on meetings with her lawyer, Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch said.

    Repeated calls to Xu’s lawyer rang unanswered during office hours on Monday.

    Trial was delayed

    Xu’s trial was delayed several times following her initial detention in May 2021, with the authorities citing only “unavoidable circumstances.”

    But her family says it was delayed due to her refusal to provide the state security police with a “confession.”

    The trial was eventually held on Nov. 7, 2022, but the verdict and sentencing were also repeatedly delayed until now.

    New York-based rights lawyer Chen Chuangchuang, who also heads the U.S. branch of the banned China Democracy Party, said Chen has always been an extremely tenacious activist.

    “The trial was held a long time ago, but the verdict and sentencing were delayed multiple times, which is a deliberate form of torture used by the Chinese Communist Party,” Chen told RFA on Monday.

    Chen said that one of the purposes of the authorities’ repeated delay in pronouncing the sentence was to get Xu Qin to plead guilty, and that she had been especially targeted due to her association with Qin Yongmin.

    According to the Weiquanwang rights website, the charges against Xu listed her participation in Qin’s China Rights Observer and its sister organization Rose China as evidence against her.

    Qin was sentenced in July 2018 to 13 years’ imprisonment for “incitement to subvert state power,” the latest in a string of long sentences for his peaceful dissent and attempts to build the banned China Democracy Party.

    A contemporary of exiled dissident Wei Jingsheng, Qin was sentenced to eight years in prison for “counterrevolutionary propaganda and subversion” in the wake of China’s Democracy Wall movement in 1981.

    He served a further two years’ “re-education through labor” in 1993 after he penned a controversial document titled the “Peace Charter.”

    Qin then served a 12-year jail term for subversion after he helped found the China Democracy Party in 1998 in spite of a ban on opposition political parties.

    Xu was honored with the Lin Zhao Freedom Award for her human rights advocacy in 2022, and the Oscar China Freedom Human Rights Award last month.

    Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Roseanne Gerin.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • US, allies to conduct joint patrols to counter China

    The United States, Japan and the Philippines are launching joint naval patrols in the South China Sea in a move seen as countering China’s increased aggression in the region.

    The trilateral exercise is part of a “package of initiatives” that top leaders of the three countries will announce at their first-ever summit on April 11, according to the U.S. news outlet Politico, which was the first to report on the plan.

    While the Philippines and the U.S. have already been conducting regular joint drills, this will be the first time that the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force takes part in such activity, to be held “at the earliest” possible date, said Japan’s Asahi Shimbun. 

    The Asahi quoted unnamed Japanese government sources as saying that the move is made “in response to China’s growing naval presence in the region.”

    There are no further details on the joint plan, but Politico said that it would be “a show of force designed to show Beijing its belligerence won’t be tolerated.”

    In recent months, China’s coast guard has stepped up its campaign of harassment near some disputed reefs in the South China Sea, using water cannons against Filipino vessels. 

    Philippine boat.jpg
    Philippine resupply vessel Unaizah May 4, left, is hit by two Chinese coast guard water cannons as they tried to enter the Second Thomas Shoal, locally known as Ayungin Shoal, in the disputed South China Sea, March 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

    Beijing’s tactics will be high on the agenda at the summit between U.S. President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as the three countries form a regional “security triangle.”

    “On the South China Sea … the three allies are deeply aligned,” said a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a U.S. think tank.

    “Japan is well positioned to play a linking role among Indo-Pacific countries,” it noted.

    “Japan views the East and South China Seas as a connected theater,” CSIS said, adding that Tokyo believes that helping Southeast Asian countries confront China in the South China Sea “is part and parcel to pushing back on Chinese revisionism across the region, including in the East China Sea, where China directly threatens Japanese interests.” 

    Radio Free Asia learned earlier this year that the Japan International Cooperation Agency is also preparing a 10-year maritime security support plan for four ASEAN nations – Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam – to boost security in the South China Sea.

    ‘Ship riddled with bullets’

    The planned joint patrols have met with angry responses from China. 

    The Global Times newspaper called the move the “latest case of U.S. intention to deplete allies and weaken China” as Washington “recruits Japan” to further destabilize the region and threaten China’s surrounding security.

    It quoted a Chinese analyst as warning U.S. allies and partners, including Japan and the Philippines, that “they are all pawns for the U.S. to benefit from.”

    “Beijing’s narrative is that every time the situation escalates it is due to its opponents’ “provocations”, and so it bears no responsibility for any of its aggressions,” said Ray Powell, a maritime security analyst at the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation, Stanford University.

    The Chinese military’s Southern Theater Command, whose primary area of responsibility is the South China Sea, has just conducted a real combat training exercise in the South China Sea, according to the Ministry of National Defense.

    The exercise, held on unspecified dates “in early spring,” aimed at enemy targets, such as “armed fishing boats harassing China in its sea areas,” and Philippine Coast Guard vessels, according to Hu Xijin, Global Times’ former editor-in-chief.

    Hu posted a video clip of the training exercise on social media platform X with a stern warning to Manila that “Once the Philippines fires the first shot, I fully support China’s PLA (People’s Liberation Army) in making [the] Philippine ship riddled with bullets.”

    “I believe most Chinese people will support it by then,” added the Chinese political commentator.

    “China’s strategy is to escalate until its adversaries give up, so beating the war drums is intended to cause them to back off,” Powell from Stanford University told RFA.

    The analyst said that with its current assertive transparency campaign, Manila is reaching out and forming partnerships with more like-minded nations despite Beijing’s threats.

    Edited by Mike Firn and Elaine Chan.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Why Are U.S.-imposed Problems the Main Headwind China Faces?

    In 2023, China achieved a strong 5.2 percent GDP growth rate, leading major global economies and driving worldwide economic growth, despite facing a complex and severe economic landscape. Yet, what challenges lie ahead for China’s enduring economic growth? In the special edition of The Hub, Wang Guan talks to Jeffrey Sachs, professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. “The U.S. is trying to put sticks to the spokes,” he said, adding that the main headwinds China is facing are U.S.-imposed problems, including high tariffs and technology bans. He also highlighted China’s leadership in technology and its efforts to enhance global ties.

    The post Why Are U.S.-imposed Problems the Main Headwind China Faces? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Returning from China, North Korean workers are paid in dubious IOUs

    North Korean workers returning from China with hopes of a big payday are incensed because the government is not paying them in cash. Instead, it’s giving them bank-issued money vouchers, which the workers are worried might end up being worthless, residents told Radio Free Asia.

    The vouchers, essentially IOUs, were issued in 2021 in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Authorities explained that they could be used just like cash, and that they would be phased out once the pandemic ended. 

    Until then, the vouchers – printed on lower quality paper than the currency –  are supposed to be traded with cash on a 1:1 ratio, but nobody knows how long they will be good.

    North Koreans are already distrustful of their government on money matters because in 2009 it revalued the won, issued new currency and limited the amount of older currency that could be traded for the newer one, wiping out the life savings of many. 

    Since then, faith in the won has been shaky, so dollars, euros and yuan are therefore freely traded in North Korean marketplaces. Faith in the vouchers is even shakier than the won.

    “Most of the workers feel like they have returned empty-handed, so they are angry,” a resident of the northwestern province of North Pyongan told RFA Korean on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

    “Although the party emphasizes that the money vouchers should be used without restrictions like cash, people distrust them because the authorities clearly stated that they are a temporary measure due to the prolonged COVID-19 crisis,” she said.

    Assumptions

    When workers are sent overseas – mostly to China – there’s already an understanding that the lion’s share of their wages will be forwarded to the cash-strapped government in Pyongyang. 

    The remainder, however, is several times more than what they would earn doing the same job in North Korea. 

    So the Chinese companies get cheap labor, the government gets a lot of foreign cash, and the workers still come out ahead – or such was the assumption.

    The workers, mostly young women working in factories, had been in China since before the pandemic, some for six years or more.

    Because they were earning yuan in China the workers thought they would be paid in yuan upon their return.

    But they are now told to accept payment in money vouchers, which the people have very little confidence in, the North Pyongan resident said.

    Red tape and unfair exchange rates

    On top of this, the government appears to be exploiting the workers further through red tape and unfair exchange rates, the sources said. 

    “The market exchange rate is 1,700 to 1,800 won per Chinese yuan,” she said. “But the announced rate is fixed at 1,260 won per yuan, so the workers are getting screwed.”

    The Chinese companies paid 2,500 yuan (about US$350) for each worker every month, but about two-thirds of this money was sent to the state. 

    The workers were said to be earning about 800 yuan ($110) per month, but then red tape fees cut into even that amount.

    “There’s management fees at headquarters, maintenance costs at the consular department, insurance costs, social subsidies, and accommodation fees,” the resident said. “When all is said and done the workers are said to be getting between 100 and 300 yuan (US$13-41) for the whole month.”

    Remarkably, that is still above the paltry salaries for government-assigned jobs in North Korea.

    Another North Pyongan resident said that the workers are getting a raw deal after putting in 14-hour days in China and now have to accept payment in money vouchers.

    “The selection of workers dispatched overseas is still ongoing these days, but not many workers are willing to go to China,” she said. “The poor working environment and intensive labor exploitation in China, as well as the fact that the payment is not properly compensated, have become widely known facts.”

    She said that some of the workers who returned this time gave up all of their wages and returned with nothing, after the authorities compelled them to donate to various funds and subsidies.

    These include supporting national and local construction projects, condolence donations for the late former leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il on their death anniversaries, and funds to strengthen national defense.

    “They won’t see even a single yuan coin for all their hard work in China,” the first resident said.

     Translated by Claire S. Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Indonesian President-elect Prabowo to visit China in first official post-polls foreign trip

    Indonesian President-elect Prabowo Subianto will visit China next week at the invitation of President Xi Jinping for what will be his first official overseas visit since his election last month, the Chinese foreign ministry said on Friday.

    By inviting Prabowo – currently Indonesia’s defense minister – Beijing is trying to gain an edge over Washington and strike first in wooing the future leader of Southeast Asia’s largest economy, analysts in Jakarta said.

    During Prabowo’s three-day visit starting Sunday, Xi will hold talks with the Indonesian president-elect on bilateral relations and issues of mutual interest, Lin Jian, China’s foreign ministry spokesman, told a regular daily press conference in Beijing on Friday.

    “At the invitation of President Xi Jinping, Indonesia’s President-elect Prabowo Subianto will visit China from March 31 to April 2,” Lin said, according to a transcript posted on the ministry’s website.

    “Mr. Prabowo’s visit to China will be his first overseas visit as president-elect. It fully demonstrates the robustness of China-Indonesia ties.”

    The Indonesian Defense Ministry spokesman also confirmed Prabowo’s China visit, saying its aim was to strengthen bilateral relations and increase cooperation in the defense sector.

    “This visit is part of the two countries’ ongoing efforts to strengthen strategic dialogue and cooperation, which is vital for regional security and stability,” Brig. Gen. Edwin Adrian Sumantha told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated news service.

    ID-Prap-pic-TWO.jpg
    President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo (second from right) walks with Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto (left), military chief Gen. Agus Subianto (second from left), and police chief Gen. Listyo Sigit after a meeting with high-ranking military and police officers at military headquarters in Jakarta, Feb. 28, 2024. [Bay Ismoyo/AFP]

    Regional political observers see Prabowo’s upcoming visit to China mostly in the context of Sino-U.S. competition for influence in Southeast Asia, and Beijing’s investment of billions of dollars in Indonesia.

    During the nearly decade-long presidency of outgoing leader Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, Indonesia and China drew closer, many analysts said.

    Al Azhar University Defense Analyst Raden Mokhamad Luthfi cited China’s big projects in Indonesia.

    “One example is the Belt and Road Initiative project in the form of the Jakarta-Bandung Fast Train and the nickel downstreaming industry,” Raden told BenarNews.

    He was referring to China’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative project, the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed train, which began commercial operations in October 2023.

    Nickel downstreaming refers to domestic processing of nickel ore, that is, to refine commodities at home to make exports more valuable. Chinese-linked companies dominate the nickel smelter industry in Indonesia.

    Another reason for China’s invitation to Prabowo was that Beijing wanted to ensure that under Prabowo, Indonesia does not move closer to the United States and the West.

    “I suspect that China wants to ensure that Prabowo continues the foreign policy that Jokowi previously carried out,” he said.

    China is invested in the Prabowo presidency because it wants its projects in Indonesia to stay on track, Raden said.

    However, he doesn’t approve of China being Prabowo’s first stop as president-elect.

    “Prabowo’s visit to China is too soon. It would have been better if he had waited until he was inaugurated first, then visited a foreign country,” Raden said.

    “Visits to foreign countries by the newly inaugurated Indonesian president should first be to neighboring ASEAN member countries such as Malaysia, considering that Indonesia’s interests are much greater in ASEAN than in other countries,” Raden said, referring to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

    ID-Prab-pic-THREE.JPG
    Chinese President Xi Jinping (right) talks with Indonesian President Joko “Joko” Widodo after the 29th APEC Economic Leaders Meeting during Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation 2022 in Bangkok, Nov. 18, 2022. [Rungroj Yongrit/Pool/via Reuters]

    Prabowo has bucked tradition in another way as well with his overseas trip, according to Zulfikar Rahmat, director of the China-Indonesia Center of Economic and Law Studies (Celios).

    This is the first time that a president-elect – one who has not been sworn in – has accepted a foreign government’s invitation to visit, Zulfikar told BenarNews. Prabowo is to be inaugurated as president in October.

    “There are two reasons for this. The first is, of course, that Prabowo sees China as a partner in the economic sector. We know that in recent years, China has been Indonesia’s number one trading partner,” he said.

    “Second, I see that Prabowo wants to continue Jokowi’s legacy, which is [being] close to China.”

    Like Jokowi, Prabowo puts Indonesia’s economy front and center, which brings it closer to China, Zulfikar said.

    Muradi, a politics and security analyst at University of Padjadjaran in Bandung, said Prabowo had an interest in seeing how China carries out its defense modernization, which is expected to be completed in 2027.

    “[That’s] because China devotes almost 12% of GDP to their defense budget. So, China is one of the countries on the continent that has modern ships other than India,” Muradi, who goes by one name, told BenarNews.

    “Why did Prabowo go straight to China instead of ASEAN countries first? … Because Southeast Asian nations were not seen as very strategic by Prabowo. Instead, assume China is the current strategic power,” Muradi said.

    “Why didn’t Prabowo go to the U.S. first? Because until now, it is not clear who will win the November election – Biden or Trump. … Prabowo didn’t want to go to [meet] Biden, [if] Biden lost. Or to Trump, if it turned out Trump lost,” he said.

    Muradi predicted that after China, Prabowo’s next overseas stop would be in Russia, because its election, as it were, has concluded with Vladimir Putin being re-elected.

    “Maybe Prabowo will only go to the U.S. in January or February 2025,” Muradi said.

    BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Pizaro Gozali Idrus.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.