This week’s News on China.
• China condemns “heinous attack” on Gaza hospital
• 3rd Belt and Road Forum
• Record number of state visits to China
• Young people go to community kitchens
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
-
-
There has always been something impressive, if slightly idiosyncratic, about political ideas emanating from Pacific states. In recent years, on the world’s largest body of water, the various island states seeing themselves as part of the Blue Pacific have tried to identify a set of principles by which to abide, forming an understanding of the environment that threatens to submerge them. Some sixteen states and territories in the Pacific became the second grouping to establish a nuclear free zone in 1985 via the Treaty of Rarotonga, first proposed by New Zealand at the South Pacific Forum meeting in Tonga in July 1975. Since then, climate change has taken centre stage.
Given that this vast aqueous area has again become an area of great power competition, it is time for the leaders, some cheeky, a number reckless, and all open to persuasion, to come to some arrangement to neutralise such competition even as they exploit it. Sitiveni Rabuka, Fiji’s coup burnished Prime Minister, has put up his hand in this regard. As he put it in his October 17 address to the Sydney-based Lowy Institute, “For us in the Blue Pacific, history may be calling, it might be our manifest destiny to carry banners for peace and speak out for harmony in our time and forever.”
This is daringly opportunistic, as it should be. Doing so means that bulky, cloddish powers such as the United States and China may be discouraged from going to war, one that would be incalculably ruinous across the Indo- and Asia-Pacific. Afterall, once the missiles start flying between Beijing and Washington, notions of a tranquil Blue Pacific can be filed in the cabinet of oblivion.
In the words of Rabuka, “Rivalry between the two most powerful nations, the US and China, looks to be intensifying.” The PM could only wonder, for instance, what would happen in instances where Chinese and Filipino ships confronted each other in the South China Sea. “Will this bring the US into an encounter with China?”
Concerns were also expressed about the deteriorating state of affairs regarding Taiwan. “Tensions over Taiwan are escalating with the potential for an armed face-off, or worse.” With this in mind, “Fiji’s position was clear. We are friendly with China and the US and do not want to be caught in the struggle between the superpowers.” The leaders in the Pacific, he warned, should not be made to choose sides.
With apostolic virtue, Rabuka suggested something of a different, middling formula: an “Ocean of Peace”. Such an idea was first aired in his September address to the United Nations General Assembly, where he urged “nations to come together” in tackling a whole set of crises, from great power competition to climate change.
This contemplated “Zone”, involving the major powers and Pacific Island states, would refrain “from actions that may jeopardise regional order and stability” and maintain “respect for each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”. Such an arrangement might also have immediate, tangible benefits, such as the deployment of Fijian peacekeepers to Papua New Guinea to quell tribal conflict, or brokering peace talks between West Papua and Indonesia. “There would be a continued emphasis on the Pacific way of dialogue, diplomacy and consensus,” he explained. “Protection and conservation of the environment would be central – a positive element for more harmony and peace.”
Rabuka’s ideas on peace and order are bound to cause a snigger over the canteen meals in foreign affairs departments. This was a man not averse to leading his own disruptive actions in undermining the very things he now redemptively extols. The ABC’s eternally looking adolescent, Stephen Dziedzic, was mature enough to note the obvious fact that Rabuka, “once nicknamed ‘Rambo’ – illegally seized power in a 1987 military coup”. A gentle exoneration follows, as Rambo “has since publicly apologised for his actions, and won a tight election 10 months ago to take Fiji’s top job once again.”
On that score, Fiji’s leader has much to apologise for. His coup (technically two coups staged over a few months) ensured the overthrow of the elected government of Timoci Bavadra in May 1987. He then daringly deposed Queen Elizabeth II as Queen of Fiji the following September, despite having been made an officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1981 for showing “imagination and innovation” in confronting and restraining the activities of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation in Lebanon. (He had done so commanding the first battalion of the Fiji Infantry Regiment, which was serving with the UN Interim Force in Lebanon.)
With such a resume, Rabuka tried to be penitent to his audience. He had “repented” and was “reborn. My past cannot be removed, but I can compensate to some extent for what I did.” Along the long road of political stuttering, he “became a convinced democrat … and now this democratic politician will do what he can to be an apostle of peace.”
Rabuka, like some of his Pacific nation colleagues, continues to be an irrepressible tease in dealings with Australia, China and the United States. “We are more comfortable dealing with traditional friends that have similar systems of government, that our democracies are the same brand of democracy, coming out of the Westminster system of parliament, and also based on British law that we inherited.”
Having previously shown a glorious contempt for that system, he is perfectly placed to cash in on his continuing relationship with Canberra and, by extension, Washington, while dancing with the emissaries of Beijing. And what better way to do that than through a solution that seeks preservation rather than suicidal annihilation?
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
-
In a joint statement, 51 countries, including the United States, expressed deep concern to the United Nations on Wednesday over Chinese human rights violations of Uyghurs in its far-western Xinjiang region.
The move comes after China was elected to the U.N. Human Rights Council for the 2024-2026 term – despite its poor track record in protecting rights.
“Members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim minorities in Xinjiang continue to suffer serious violations of their human rights by the authorities of the People’s Republic of China,” said the statement, which was delivered by James Kariuki, Britain’s U.N. ambassador.
It urged China to respond to an August 2022 report issued by the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, or OHCHR, which concluded China’s mass detentions of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities on a large scale in Xinjiang “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”
The report found that “serious human rights violations” have been committed in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region amid the Chinese government’s claims of countering terrorism and extremism.
The assessment cited evidence of invasive surveillance on the basis of religion and ethnicity, restrictions on cultural and religious practices, torture and ill-treatment of detainees, forced abortion and sterilization of Muslim women, enforced disappearances, family separations, and forced labor, the statement noted.
“Over a year has passed since that assessment was released and yet China has not engaged in any constructive discussion of these findings,” said the statement issued at the U.N.’s Third Committee, which meets annually in early October to deal with human rights, humanitarian affairs and social matters.
In its recommendations, the OHCHR had called on the Chinese government to release detainees from camps and other detention facilities, issue details about the location of Uyghurs in Xinjiang who have been out of touch with relatives abroad, allow travel so families can be reunited, and investigate allegations of human rights abuses.
‘Strong remedial action’
At the most recent session of the U.N’s Human Rights Council in September, Volker Türk, the current high commissioner for human rights, called on China to follow the recommendations of the assessment and take “strong remedial action.”
Maya Wang, associate director of the Asia division at Human Rights Watch, said maintaining pressure on China is part of a continued effort to hold the country accountable for its actions in Xinjiang.
“Suffice it to say that moving a government as abusive and powerful as China’s takes a lot of effort and time, and that pressing the U.N. to keep prioritizing human rights in its interactions with China is part of this long and hard effort,” she told Radio Free Asia.
Women walk past a propaganda slogan promoting ethnic unity in ‘the new era,’ in both Chinese and Uyghur languages, in Yarkand, northwestern China’s Xinjiang region, July 18, 2023. Credit: Pedro Paro/AFP 
The New York-based right group called on U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday to press Chinese President Xi Jinping to end crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other serious rights abuses in China, during a visit to Beijing to attend the third Belt and Road Forum on Oct. 17-18.
“Since becoming secretary-general in 2017, Guterres has shown reluctance to publicly criticize the Chinese government for its severe and worsening repression,” HRW said in a statement.
Growing number
Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, welcomed the joint U.N. statement, noting that a few African and South American countries have signed this year’s statement condemning China’s atrocities against Uyghurs.
“In 2019, there were only 20 countries that signed on to the joint statement,” he said.
“Despite China’s efforts to spread disinformation to cover up it genocide against Uyghurs by increasing tourism, inviting friendly diplomats and journalists to the region, the fact that there are more countries signed on to this joint statement this time proves the complete failure of China’s disinformation campaign,” he said.
Luke de Pulford, executive director of Inter-parliamentary Alliance on China, said the latest statement should not be confused with action.
“We shouldn’t be fooled,” he told RFA. “It’s good that the U.K. should be applauded for taking some symbolic action, but these statements do not achieve accountability. It shouldn’t be confused and conflated with accountability.”
Xinjiang regional expert Adrian Zenz agreed that “writing a letter was good, but it cost you nothing,” he tweeted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“You are not paying any actual price for your values,” he wrote. “Actions speak louder than words. Actions could include: Effective forced labor ban. Legal atrocity determination. Sanctioning higher level officials.”
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Gulchehra Hoja and Adile Ablet for RFA Uyghur.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
In a joint statement, 51 countries, including the United States, expressed deep concern to the United Nations on Wednesday over Chinese human rights violations of Uyghurs in its far-western Xinjiang region.
The move comes after China was elected to the U.N. Human Rights Council for the 2024-2026 term – despite its poor track record in protecting rights.
“Members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim minorities in Xinjiang continue to suffer serious violations of their human rights by the authorities of the People’s Republic of China,” said the statement, which was delivered by James Kariuki, Britain’s U.N. ambassador.
It urged China to respond to an August 2022 report issued by the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, or OHCHR, which concluded China’s mass detentions of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities on a large scale in Xinjiang “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”
The report found that “serious human rights violations” have been committed in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region amid the Chinese government’s claims of countering terrorism and extremism.
The assessment cited evidence of invasive surveillance on the basis of religion and ethnicity, restrictions on cultural and religious practices, torture and ill-treatment of detainees, forced abortion and sterilization of Muslim women, enforced disappearances, family separations, and forced labor, the statement noted.
“Over a year has passed since that assessment was released and yet China has not engaged in any constructive discussion of these findings,” said the statement issued at the U.N.’s Third Committee, which meets annually in early October to deal with human rights, humanitarian affairs and social matters.
In its recommendations, the OHCHR had called on the Chinese government to release detainees from camps and other detention facilities, issue details about the location of Uyghurs in Xinjiang who have been out of touch with relatives abroad, allow travel so families can be reunited, and investigate allegations of human rights abuses.
‘Strong remedial action’
At the most recent session of the U.N’s Human Rights Council in September, Volker Türk, the current high commissioner for human rights, called on China to follow the recommendations of the assessment and take “strong remedial action.”
Maya Wang, associate director of the Asia division at Human Rights Watch, said maintaining pressure on China is part of a continued effort to hold the country accountable for its actions in Xinjiang.
“Suffice it to say that moving a government as abusive and powerful as China’s takes a lot of effort and time, and that pressing the U.N. to keep prioritizing human rights in its interactions with China is part of this long and hard effort,” she told Radio Free Asia.
Women walk past a propaganda slogan promoting ethnic unity in ‘the new era,’ in both Chinese and Uyghur languages, in Yarkand, northwestern China’s Xinjiang region, July 18, 2023. Credit: Pedro Paro/AFP
The New York-based right group called on U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday to press Chinese President Xi Jinping to end crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other serious rights abuses in China, during a visit to Beijing to attend the third Belt and Road Forum on Oct. 17-18.
“Since becoming secretary-general in 2017, Guterres has shown reluctance to publicly criticize the Chinese government for its severe and worsening repression,” HRW said in a statement.
Growing number
Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, welcomed the joint U.N. statement, noting that a few African and South American countries have signed this year’s statement condemning China’s atrocities against Uyghurs.
“In 2019, there were only 20 countries that signed on to the joint statement,” he said.
“Despite China’s efforts to spread disinformation to cover up it genocide against Uyghurs by increasing tourism, inviting friendly diplomats and journalists to the region, the fact that there are more countries signed on to this joint statement this time proves the complete failure of China’s disinformation campaign,” he said.
Luke de Pulford, executive director of Inter-parliamentary Alliance on China, said the latest statement should not be confused with action.
“We shouldn’t be fooled,” he told RFA. “It’s good that the U.K. should be applauded for taking some symbolic action, but these statements do not achieve accountability. It shouldn’t be confused and conflated with accountability.”
Xinjiang regional expert Adrian Zenz agreed that “writing a letter was good, but it cost you nothing,” he tweeted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“You are not paying any actual price for your values,” he wrote. “Actions speak louder than words. Actions could include: Effective forced labor ban. Legal atrocity determination. Sanctioning higher level officials.”
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Gulchehra Hoja and Adile Ablet for RFA Uyghur.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
In a joint statement, 51 countries, including the United States, expressed deep concern to the United Nations on Wednesday over Chinese human rights violations of Uyghurs in its far-western Xinjiang region.
The move comes after China was elected to the U.N. Human Rights Council for the 2024-2026 term – despite its poor track record in protecting rights.
“Members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim minorities in Xinjiang continue to suffer serious violations of their human rights by the authorities of the People’s Republic of China,” said the statement, which was delivered by James Kariuki, Britain’s U.N. ambassador.
It urged China to respond to an August 2022 report issued by the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, or OHCHR, which concluded China’s mass detentions of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities on a large scale in Xinjiang “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”
The report found that “serious human rights violations” have been committed in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region amid the Chinese government’s claims of countering terrorism and extremism.
The assessment cited evidence of invasive surveillance on the basis of religion and ethnicity, restrictions on cultural and religious practices, torture and ill-treatment of detainees, forced abortion and sterilization of Muslim women, enforced disappearances, family separations, and forced labor, the statement noted.
“Over a year has passed since that assessment was released and yet China has not engaged in any constructive discussion of these findings,” said the statement issued at the U.N.’s Third Committee, which meets annually in early October to deal with human rights, humanitarian affairs and social matters.
In its recommendations, the OHCHR had called on the Chinese government to release detainees from camps and other detention facilities, issue details about the location of Uyghurs in Xinjiang who have been out of touch with relatives abroad, allow travel so families can be reunited, and investigate allegations of human rights abuses.
‘Strong remedial action’
At the most recent session of the U.N’s Human Rights Council in September, Volker Türk, the current high commissioner for human rights, called on China to follow the recommendations of the assessment and take “strong remedial action.”
Maya Wang, associate director of the Asia division at Human Rights Watch, said maintaining pressure on China is part of a continued effort to hold the country accountable for its actions in Xinjiang.
“Suffice it to say that moving a government as abusive and powerful as China’s takes a lot of effort and time, and that pressing the U.N. to keep prioritizing human rights in its interactions with China is part of this long and hard effort,” she told Radio Free Asia.
Women walk past a propaganda slogan promoting ethnic unity in ‘the new era,’ in both Chinese and Uyghur languages, in Yarkand, northwestern China’s Xinjiang region, July 18, 2023. Credit: Pedro Paro/AFP
The New York-based right group called on U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday to press Chinese President Xi Jinping to end crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other serious rights abuses in China, during a visit to Beijing to attend the third Belt and Road Forum on Oct. 17-18.
“Since becoming secretary-general in 2017, Guterres has shown reluctance to publicly criticize the Chinese government for its severe and worsening repression,” HRW said in a statement.
Growing number
Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, welcomed the joint U.N. statement, noting that a few African and South American countries have signed this year’s statement condemning China’s atrocities against Uyghurs.
“In 2019, there were only 20 countries that signed on to the joint statement,” he said.
“Despite China’s efforts to spread disinformation to cover up it genocide against Uyghurs by increasing tourism, inviting friendly diplomats and journalists to the region, the fact that there are more countries signed on to this joint statement this time proves the complete failure of China’s disinformation campaign,” he said.
Luke de Pulford, executive director of Inter-parliamentary Alliance on China, said the latest statement should not be confused with action.
“We shouldn’t be fooled,” he told RFA. “It’s good that the U.K. should be applauded for taking some symbolic action, but these statements do not achieve accountability. It shouldn’t be confused and conflated with accountability.”
Xinjiang regional expert Adrian Zenz agreed that “writing a letter was good, but it cost you nothing,” he tweeted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“You are not paying any actual price for your values,” he wrote. “Actions speak louder than words. Actions could include: Effective forced labor ban. Legal atrocity determination. Sanctioning higher level officials.”
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Gulchehra Hoja and Adile Ablet for RFA Uyghur.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
From racist tweets to rising hate crimes, the media’s anti-China propaganda has created a climate of aggression. Two weeks ago, a man drove a car into the Chinese consulate in San Francisco, yelling “Where’s the CCP?” Arab Americans have been targeted during the Persian Gulf War, the War on Terror, and U.S.-backed atrocities in Palestine. It’s no surprise that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are in the crosshairs of white supremacy as the U.S. targets China. Back in April, a Columbia University found that three in four Chinese Americans said they’d suffered racial discrimination in the past 12 months.
When the Trump administration launched the China Initiative to prosecute spies, the Department of Justice racially profiled Chinese Americans and Chinese nationals. Between 2018 and 2022, the number of Chinese researchers who dropped their affiliation with U.S. institutions jumped 23 percent. The Biden administration has ended the initiative, but the Department of Justice and the congressional anti-China committee are still targeting political leaders in the Chinese community.
As Biden continues the crackdowns of his predecessor, his administration is also escalating in the Asia-Pacific region. From expanding military bases in the Philippines – including one potential base in the works intended to join contingencies in Taiwan – to building a fleet of AI drones to target China, militarists are creating conditions for a hot war in the Pacific. As the U.S. prepares for war, Forbes published an article on September 25 about an aircraft carrier “kill chain” and its potential use in a war with China. In February, CNN journalists accompanied a U.S. Navy jet approaching Chinese airspace. As a Chinese pilot warned the U.S. to keep a safe distance, an American soldier remarked: “It’s another Friday afternoon in the South China Sea.”
Not only are we normalizing U.S. aggression. We’re also relying on the military-industrial complex as an unbiased source. Pro-war propaganda is derailing China-U.S. ties, increasing anti-Asian hate, and hiding the realities of public opinion across the Pacific.
After launching the AUKUS military pact between Britain and Australia in 2021, as well as stiff export controls designed to limit China’s economy last year, the U.S. began 2023 with what appeared to be an olive branch. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was scheduled to visit China in February. Then came the “spy balloon.”
A Chinese balloon was blown off course and eventually shot down by the U.S. military. The Wall Street Journal and NBC uncritically printed and broadcasted statements from US Air Force Brigadier General Pat Ryder about the balloon’s surveillance capabilities. On February 8, citing three unnamed officials, the New York Times said, “American intelligence agencies have assessed that China’s spy balloon program is part of global surveillance.” The same story mentions the U.S. State Department’s briefings to foreign officials that were “designed to show that the balloons are equipped for intelligence gathering and that the Chinese military has been carrying out this collection for years, targeting, among other sites, the territories of Japan, Taiwan, India, and the Philippines.”
On April 3, the BBC and CNN published conflicting stories on the balloon that cited anonymous officials but contained inconsistencies about its ability to take pictures. It wasn’t until June 29 that Ryder admitted no data had been transmitted. In September, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley told CBS the balloon wasn’t even spying. This matched China’s statements about the balloon, as well as that of American meteorologists. But the damage was done. Blinken had postponed his trip to China. He eventually went in June, after a trip to Papua New Guinea, where its student protesters rejected his plans to militarize their country under a security pact.
On May 26, Blinken made a speech, referring to China as a “long-term challenge.” Politico went further, publishing a piece on May 26, called “Blinken calls China ‘most serious long-term’ threat to world order” with a same-day USA Today article also taking the liberty of using challenge and threat interchangeably.
A Princeton University study found Americans who perceive China as a threat were more likely to stereotype Chinese people as untrustworthy and immoral. Intelligence leaks about a China threat combined with the age-old Yellow Peril syndrome have allowed for incessant Sinophobia to dominate our politics.
Misinformation, the other pandemic
In May 2020, Trump told a scared country with 1 million recorded COVID-19 cases and almost 100,000 dead that the pandemic was China’s fault. Again, our leaders cited undisclosed intelligence. For its part, CNN showed images of wet markets after the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Walter Russell Mead called “China Is The Real Sick Man of Asia.” A year later, Politico eventually acknowledged Trump cherry-picked intelligence to support his claims but the Biden administration ended up also seeking to investigate the lab leak theory. And the media went along with it.
For the Wall Street Journal, pro-Iraq War propagandist Michael Gordon co-authored an article claiming that “three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care.” An anonymous source said, “The information that we had coming from the various sources was of exquisite quality.” But the source admits it’s not known why researchers were sick.
The article relies on the conservative Hudson Institute’s Senior Fellow David Asher’s testimony and the fact China has not shared the medical records of citizens without potential COVID-19 symptoms. It is even admitted that several other unnamed U.S. officials find the Trump-era intelligence to be exactly what it is – circumstantial.
A year earlier, during the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries moderated by CNN, Dana Bash asked Bernie Sanders: “What consequences should China face for its role in its global crisis?” She asked the question referencing how Wuhan’s authorities silenced Dr. Wenliang but failed to mention China’s People’s Supreme Court condemned the city’s police for doing so. She also didn’t acknowledge how Wuhan Institute of Virology’s Shi Zhengli revealed in July 2020 that all of the staff and students in her lab tested negative for COVID-19. Shi even shared her research with American scientists. Georgetown University COVID-19 origin specialist Daniel Lucey welcomed Shi’s transparency: “There are a lot of new facts I wasn’t aware of. It’s very exciting to hear this directly from her.”
But from the Page Act of 1875, which stereotyped Chinese as disease carriers, to job discrimination during the pandemic, it is Asian Americans who ultimately pay the price for the media’s irresponsibility and participation in medical racism. They are already among the casualties of the new cold war. But that war not only threatens residents of the U.S. but the entire planet too.
Profit, not principle
This summer, the U.S. armed Taiwan under the Foreign Military Transfer program, reserved for sovereign states only. This violates the one-China policy which holds that both sides of the Taiwan Strait acknowledge that there is one China. Biden is also trying to include Taiwan weapons funding in a supplemental request to Congress. Weapons sales to Taiwan go back to the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, as well as Reagan administration’s assurances that the U.S. will keep sending weapons but not play any mediation role between Taipei and Beijing. In 1996, a military standoff between the U.S. and China erupted in the Taiwan Strait, followed by an increasing flow of lethal weaponry up to the present.
The New York Times published a story on September 18, mentioning Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, which it says was “a show of support for the island.” Never mind that the majority of Taiwan residents surveyed by the Brookings Institute felt her visit was detrimental to their security. The media also often ignores voices from Taiwan who don’t want war, favor reunification, or reject attempts to delete Chinese history in their textbooks.
Still, Fox News continues to give a platform to lawmakers like Representative Young Kim who wrote a piece on September 20 advocating for more military patrols in the South China Sea. On October 17, The Washington Post published a story about the Pentagon releasing footage of Chinese aircraft intercepting U.S. warplanes over the last two years. The story does not share the context of U.S. expansionism or how multiple secretaries of defense have threatened Beijing over its disputed maritime borders. Microsoft is even getting in on the action, with articles from CNN and Reuters last month uncritically sharing the software company’s claims that China is using AI to interfere in our elections, despite no evidence shared with the voting public.
It demonstrates how war profiteers are edging us closer to a conflict. From sending the Patriot weapons system to Taiwan to practicing attacks with F-22 Raptors in the occupied Northern Marianas Islands, Lockheed Martin is raking in lucrative contracts while residents of the region fear an outbreak of war. RTX supplies Israel’s Iron Dome and is now designing engineering systems for gunboats in the Pacific. When arms dealers make money, victims of imperialism die. With strong links to the military, it’s hard to imagine that Microsoft, News Corp, and Warner Bros. Discovery would care as long as their stocks go up too. Intelligence spooks and media moguls don’t know what’s best for people or the planet. And it’s time for a balanced and nuanced understanding of China. That begins with disarming the discourse and keeping the Pacific peaceful.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
-
Updated October 19, 2023, 5:38 p.m. ET
Authorities in China have banned a book about the last Ming dynasty emperor Chongzhen after online comments said its analysis could apply to current Communist Party leader Xi Jinping.
“Chongzhen: The hard-working emperor who brought down a dynasty” by late Ming dynasty expert Chen Wutong recently disappeared from online bookstores, including the website of state-run Xinhua Books, with multiple searches for the book yielding no results on major book-selling platforms this week.
Meanwhile, keyword searches for the book and its author on the social media platform Weibo yielded no results on Thursday.
Current affairs commentators said the book has likely been removed from public view after online comments drew parallels between its analysis of the fall of the 1368-1644 Ming dynasty and China’s current situation under ruling Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping.
Many online comments picked up on a particular line in Chen’s book: “With one bad move following another, the harder he worked, the faster he brought the country to ruin.”
“From the Ming Dynasty all the way to the present day,” chuckled a post on the “Stupid Stuff from China” Facebook page dated Oct. 17.
“It’s obvious what it’s hinting at,” commented one reader.
Another reader likened Xi to several emperors who were the last of their dynasties.
“Chongzhen, Daoguang, Pu Yi, Winnie [the Pooh], so many like this,” the reader said, using Xi’s nickname Winnie the Pooh, whom he is said to resemble.
Current affairs commentator Wang Jian said the book’s ban was likely down to that sentence, which resonates in people’s minds.
“The book wouldn’t have much of an effect on [Xi], except that it reflects what everyone is thinking,” Wang said. “Xi Jinping has been going against common sense and the will of the people in recent years — everyone has reached a consensus about that.”
“[The book shows that] if someone tries to abuse their power, misfortune will befall them, so it has become a sensitive topic,” he said. “It would never have been banned if it didn’t speak to that social consensus and public feeling.”
A copy of the book appeared on second-hand websites for 1,280 yuan (US$175), 27 times the price of a new copy. Credit: Online screenshot provided by Chen Zifei Former Hong Kong bookseller Lam Wing-kei, who now runs a bookshop on the democratic island of Taiwan, said any book in China that carries a potentially political message can be banned at any time.
“The top priority for the [Chinese Communist Party] regime is to maintain its grip on power,” Lam, who was detained for months by state security police for selling political books to customers in mainland China, said.
“As soon as they find a book with ideological implications for the regime or its hold on power, they will list them as banned books,” Lam said, citing the banning of the “Sheep Village” series of children’s picture books in Hong Kong.
“The people in power make the decisions, and also determine the criteria for banning a book, which can’t be rationally understood,” he said.
Current affairs commentator Fang Yuan said it’s common in China, where people can’t express their opinions freely, for public dissatisfaction with the government to emerge indirectly, through historical references.
He said people have seemingly responded to the ban by selling used copies of the book at hugely inflated prices on second-hand book-trading platforms, which are less stringently regulated.
One copy of the book was even listed on the Confucius online second-hand bookstore for 1,280 yuan (US$175), 27 times the listed price for a new copy.
“When there’s no hope of playing hard-ball, the public and civil society expresses its anger by playing a softer game, as a way to curse out the government,” Fang said.
“[This book ban] shows that the situation is very sensitive and has reached a stage where everything is tense and everyone is on guard.”
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Eugene Whong.
Update changes the image to the most recent edition of the book.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Chen Zifei for RFA Mandarin.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
By Matthew Vari, editor of the PNG Post-Courier
Papua New Guinea’s Minister for International Trade and Investment Richard Maru has assured investors in Asia that his government has its sights set on free trade agreements with China and Indonesia.
He said his ministry, in tandem with a new parliamentary committee, would look into the “impediments to business”, with the aim to ease such disincentives to investors coming into the country in all sectors.
“We need to reduce the cost of doing business. Our Parliament last week established a new committee which is tasked to look at how we can reduce the difficulties in doing business and the committee has been established for the first time and they will look into
that aspect,” he said.“How do we make it easier — that aspect of business and the cost of doing business?
“We are now going to undertake a 6-month study on the viability of having a free trade agreement with China.
“I’m working to be in Indonesia in the coming weeks to start the discussions with the trade minister of Indonesia. We want to also undertake the study of Papua New Guinea looking at the viability of a free trade agreement with Indonesia,” Maru said.
He said PNG was serious about growth and economic partnership with the two large economies.
Maru reiterated that while the extractive sectors did raise revenue, they did not generate jobs except in their construction stage.
“Fisheries, forestry, hospitality, tourism — that is where the big jobs are.
“We will start putting trade commissions in cities with trade commissioners right around the world,” he added.
Republished with permission from the PNG Post-Courier.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
-
China has banned the teaching and use of the Tibetan language at elementary and middle schools in two Tibetan-populated regions in southwestern China, sources inside the country said, requiring all instruction to be in Mandarin.
The move could lead to the extinction of the language in the regions – and could endanger its viability across the country, Tibetan activists fear.
The Chinese government ordered the ban in government-run schools in Kardze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture and Ngaba Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan Province, starting with the fall semester that began in September, a Tibetan source said.
Middle school students currently enrolled can finish the next two years of studies in Tibetan, but starting in 2025, all classes will be held in Mandarin, the person said.
Previously, state-run schools in the region taught Tibetan language classes to students, and subjects including mathematics, science, physics, geography, history and social studies were conducted in Tibetan. Mandarin was also taught as a language course.
But now, the Chinese government has expedited the teaching of all school subjects in Mandarin in schools in the 12 counties comprising Ngaba Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in what it said was an effort to raise education standards, teachers and parents of students said.
‘Soft atrocity’
The ban is part of Beijing’s wider “Sinicization” program that has also restricted the language and culture of Uyghurs and other minorities in China – despite protections in China’s Constitution that permit minority groups to use their own language in their own regions.
Another Tibetan source called the step a “soft atrocity.”
“On the pretext of the government’s program, China is trying to completely wipe out the Tibetan language,” said the person who, like others in this report, declined to be identified out of concern for their safety.
“China’s use of soft atrocities, instead of forcible measures, is leading to the complete annihilation of Tibetan society and education, with no scope for revival,” the source said.
Radio Free Asia could not reach the education departments of Ngaba and Kardze for comment.
Reversal
Tibetan is widely spoken not just in the Tibetan Autonomous Region in the far western part of China, but also in neighboring parts of the country with large Tibetan populations. For example, about 90 percent of Karze prefecture’s 1 million inhabitants are Tibetan.
The ban reverses previous moves to promote the Tibetan language in the region.
Under the Karze Area Tibetan Language Regulation adopted in 2015, special emphasis was put on the formation of a Tibetan language task force in the Tibet Autonomous Region, with the promotion of Tibetan-language teaching in schools considered important.
The news came as a surprise to many.
Teachers and parents were not officially informed about this major change in policy, but simply told verbally to implement it at the start of a new academic year, the sources said.
After banning Tibetan instruction at the Chak-sam-kha Middle School, Tibetan language teachers were told to move to other areas where the government allows Tibetan to be used as the medium of instruction, the sources said.
School administrators did not inform students’ parents about the change in the language of instruction from Tibetan to Mandarin in various subjects, and they held a meeting with teachers who were suddenly instructed to teach their subjects in Mandarin, the sources said.
Middle schools in Zoege county, also part of the Tibetan traditional region of Amdo, are widely known for their high standard of Tibetan-language teaching but had to switch to Mandarin as the main language of instruction this year, said a Tibetan source from inside Tibet.
All teachers at Zoege country middle schools have to implement the measure, the source said.
Resentment by the public and educators over a plan in 2020 to change the language of instruction to Mandarin from Tibetan in elementary and middle schools in Ngaba Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture boiled over into a large protest, and the plan was put on hold.
Translated by Rigdhen Dolma for RFA Tibetan. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
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.
-
The ruling Chinese Communist Party is stepping up its monitoring of citizens across the board, from door-to-door monitoring of residential neighborhoods to new rules requiring online celebrities to use their real names.
Local governments across the country have been recruiting thousands of people in recent months as “grid workers” supplying information about residents to the local authorities, according to official websites.
The “grid management” system is so named because it carves up neighborhoods into a grid pattern with 15-20 households per square, and gives each grid a dedicated monitor who reports back on residents’ affairs to neighborhood committees, the lowest rung in the government hierarchy.
Neighborhood committees in China have long been tasked with monitoring the activities of ordinary people in a certain area, but the “grid” system will allow officials to do so even more closely, as well as giving indicators of possible dissent at an early stage.
Grid workers are “information collectors, policy propagandists, liaison [officers] for social situations and public opinion, conflict and dispute mediators,” among other things, according to a recruitment ad posted to the website of the Heshan city government in the southern province of Guangdong.
Multiple job recruitment postings for grid workers are seen on a Shandong civil service website in Aug. 2023. Credit: RFA screenshot
In the eastern province of Shandong, authorities in the provincial capital Jinan posted ads for 1,880 grid worker positions in August, with ads also visible on government websites in northeastern Jilin, southeastern Fujian, the southwestern megacity of Chongqing, and Shandong’s Laizhou city.
Such workers “visit regularly to comprehensively collect basic information on people, events, places, objects, emotions, etc, within their grid,” according to the Heshan recruitment material.
Most ads want to recruit people who live in the district they’ll be monitoring, and only those who “support the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.”
Anyone who has “failed to cooperate” with the government or “implement the party line” in the past isn’t eligible, even if they were merely engaging in passive resistance, according to a recruitment ad posted by authorities in Jilin’s Tonghua city.
Door to door
A photo of a notice posted to social media showed a warning to local residents by the Huanglianqiao Neighborhood Committee in Sichuan’s Deyang city that grid management in the residential district would be starting soon, with grid workers going door to door to “collect personal information from residents.”
“We hope that community residents will actively cooperate,” the Oct. 9 notice said.
Local resident Li Hong said he had received a similar warning from his neighborhood committee, adding that the grid workers are telling people to “be cautious in word and deed.”
“They check the internet and tell adults and children not to go on WhatsApp, not to go on Twitter or Facebook, not to go on Telegram, and not to discuss the war between Hamas and Israel,” Li told Radio Free Asia on Monday. “[Basically] not to speak, and not to comment.”
Calls to the Huanglianqiao Neighborhood Committee rang answered during office hours on Monday.
A member of a neighborhood committee knocks on the door to register locals and ask about their travel history in Jiujiang, Jiangxi province, China, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Feb. 2, 2020. Credit: Thomas Peter/Reuters
A staff member who answered the phone at the nearby Tianyuan Subdistrict Office of the local government said grid workers were also tasked with getting people to download an “anti-fraud” app issued by the government.
“They’re asking everyone to download the anti-fraud app,” the staff member said. “I’m not sure about other tasks.”
Social media footage has emerged in recent weeks of police stopping people at railway stations and streets in Daqing city and in Inner Mongolia and forcing them to download the app, with students at Jiangxi Normal University reporting similar orders.
Online comments have warned that the app continues to work in the background even if it’s deleted by the user, while residents have also told Radio Free Asia that the app contains spyware that tracks all of a phone user’s actions.
‘Hidden risks’
While Radio Free Asia has been unable to verify those technical claims, Professor Yang Haiying of Japan’s Shizuoka University said in an interview on Sept. 27 that the app also prevents overseas contacts from calling people back home in China, citing his own attempts to call relatives in Inner Mongolia since they installed it.
Sichuan’s provincial party politics and law committee described grid work in a March Weibo post as “discovering and reporting hidden risks, reactionary propaganda, cult-related activities, illegal preaching and other political and security risks.”
Grid workers are also tasked with reporting “social issues, damage to public facilities, clues to illegal and criminal activities such as violent debt collection, illegal pyramid schemes, pornography, gambling, drug trafficking, theft, robbery, and the illegal mining of sand and gravel.”
They also play a role in “possible or ongoing cases of individual extremism and mass incidents [protests and demonstrations] … reporting social conditions and public opinion [and] propaganda and mobilization, as well as participating in emergency response activities, policing and stability maintenance,” the article said.
“Grid management is gradually spreading, until it controls the whole of society,” Hunan-based current affairs commentator Yuan Xiaohua told Radio Free Asia. “They are pushing the Fengqiao Experience – grid management is the Fengqiao Experience in a different form.”
Community workers wearing armbands sit by a street as the Third Belt and Road Forum is held in Beijing, Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. Credit: Tingshu Wang/Reuters
Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping mentioned the “Fengqiao Experience” during a visit to Zhejiang ahead of the Asian Games in Hangzhou last month, in a reference to the grassroots mobilization of the early 1960s, when then supreme leader Mao Zedong called on the masses to mobilize to wage “class struggle” across the country. Commentators have interpreted this to mean that similar moves are afoot in today’s China.
As well as the granular monitoring of people’s daily lives and thoughts, government censors are also cracking down on online influencers, bloggers and celebrities, insisting that they use their real names on social media, instead of a pen-name.
The social media platform Sina Weibo recently warned users with followings of more than a million followers that they must display their real names on their accounts by the end of October, while users with more than 500,000 followers must comply by the end of the year.
Real-name registration has long been a requirement for social media users in China, but accounts weren’t required to display a person’s real name openly, although they did have to supply it to the service provider.
“Surveillance in China, including censorship of speech, is comprehensive,” current affairs commentator Bi Xin said. “There are no blind spots.”
Translated with additional reporting by Luisetta Mudie.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Gu Ting for RFA Mandarin.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
The Marshall Islands, an archipelago in the militarily strategic western Pacific, on Monday signed a new economic assistance agreement with the United States that underwrites close ties at a time of increased U.S.-China competition in the region.
The Marshall Islands along with Micronesia and Palau, under agreements known as compacts of free association, give the United States military access to their vast ocean territories in exchange for funding and the right for their citizens to live and work in the U.S.
Palau and Micronesia renewed the funding component of their compacts earlier this year but negotiations between the Marshall Islands and the U.S. were more challenging because of the legacy of U.S. nuclear testing in the 1940s and 1950s at Bikini and Enewetak atolls.
The agreements “are critical to all of our countries and to a continued free and open Pacific based on shared values,” said Congressman Ed Case, who attended the signing ceremony in Honolulu. “I was honored to join,” Marshall Islands and U.S. officials, “for the signing of our renewed Compact of Free Association between the U.S. and the RMI,” he said.
Photos that Case posted on his Facebook account showed that Marshall Islands President David Kabua was present at the ceremony along with Foreign Minister Jack Ading and the U.S. chief compact negotiator Joseph Yun.
“All signed,” Yun said, according to a Reuters report. “I hope they [the agreements] will be enacted soon” by Congress, he told the news agency.
The U.S. State Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Kabua told the United Nations General Assembly in September that an agreement for a renewed compact with the U.S. was achievable, but only if Marshallese believed the long-term legacy of nuclear testing was addressed.
“As a functioning democracy, we cannot ignore the wishes of our people and as the world’s foremost and pre-eminent democracy, the United States needs to understand this reality,” he said in his speech.
Analysts had said the outcome of the negotiations with the compact states would be an important signal of Washington’s commitment to the Pacific region as China presses for greater influence with Pacific Island states.
Over 20 years, the three countries will receive a combined US$7.1 billion, a substantial increase from their previous agreements, subject to Congressional approval, according to the U.S. government.
Home to about 200,000 people, the three countries comprising dozens of islands are spread across a vast area of ocean between the Philippines and Hawaii and are part of the U.S. military’s capacity to project power in the Pacific and East Asia.
BenarNews is an RFA affiliated online news organization.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Stephen Wright for BenarNews.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
Photo Credit: The CradleHamas’ Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was meticulously planned. The launch date was conditioned by two triggering factors.
First was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flaunting his ‘New Middle East’ map at the UN General Assembly in September, in which he completely erased Palestine and made a mockery of every single UN resolution on the subject.
Second are the serial provocations at the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, including the straw that broke the camel’s back: two days before Al-Aqsa Flood, on 5 October, at least 800 Israeli settlers launched an assault around the mosque, beating pilgrims, destroying Palestinian shops, all under the observation of Israeli security forces.
Everyone with a functioning brain knows Al-Aqsa is a definitive red line, not just for Palestinians, but for the entire Arab and Muslim worlds.
It gets worse. The Israelis have now invoked the rhetoric of a “Pearl Harbor.” This is as threatening as it gets. The original Pearl Harbor was the American excuse to enter a world war and nuke Japan, and this “Pearl Harbor” may be Tel Aviv’s justification to launch a Gaza genocide.
Sections of the west applauding the upcoming ethnic cleansing – including Zionists posing as “analysts” saying out loud that the “population transfers” that began in 1948 “must be completed” – believe that with massive weaponry and massive media coverage, they can turn things around in short shrift, annihilate the Palestinian resistance, and leave Hamas allies like Hezbollah and Iran weakened.
Their Ukraine Project has sputtered, leaving not just egg on powerful faces, but entire European economies in ruin. Yet as one door closes, another one opens: Jump from ally Ukraine to ally Israel, and hone your sights on adversary Iran instead of adversary Russia.
There are other good reasons to go all guns blazing. A peaceful West Asia means Syria reconstruction – in which China is now officially involved; active redevelopment for Iraq and Lebanon; Iran and Saudi Arabia as part of BRICS 11; the Russia-China strategic partnership fully respected and interacting with all regional players, including key US allies in the Persian Gulf.
Incompetence. Willful strategy. Or both.
That brings us to the cost of launching this new “war on terror.” The propaganda is in full swing. For Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, Hamas is ISIS. For Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev, Hamas is Russia. Over one October weekend, the war in Ukraine was completely forgotten by western mainstream media. Brandenburg Gate, the Eiffel tower, the Brazilian Senate are all Israeli now.
Egyptian intel claims it warned Tel Aviv about an imminent attack from Hamas. The Israelis chose to ignore it, as they did the Hamas training drills they observed in the weeks prior, smug in their superior knowledge that Palestinians would never have the audacity to launch a liberation operation.
Whatever happens next, Al-Aqsa Flood has already, irretrievably, shattered the hefty pop mythology around the invincibility of Tsahal, Mossad, Shin Bet, Merkava tank, Iron Dome, and the Israel Defense Forces.
Even as it ditched electronic communications, Hamas profited from the glaring collapse of Israel’s multi-billion-dollar electronic systems monitoring the most surveilled border on the planet.
Cheap Palestinian drones hit multiple sensor towers, facilitated the advance of a paragliding infantry, and cleared the way for T-shirted, AK-47-wielding assault teams to inflict breaks in the wall and cross a border that even stray cats dared not.
Israel, inevitably, turned to battering the Gaza Strip, an encircled cage of 365 square kilometers packed with 2.3 million people. The indiscriminate bombing of refugee camps, schools, civilian apartment blocks, mosques, and slums has begun. Palestinians have no navy, no air force, no artillery units, no armored fighting vehicles, and no professional army. They have little to no high-tech surveillance access, while Israel can call up NATO data if they want it.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant proclaimed “a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly.”
The Israelis can merrily engage in collective punishment because, with three guaranteed UNSC vetoes in their back pocket, they know they can get away with it.
It doesn’t matter that Haaretz, Israel’s most respected newspaper, straight out concedes that “actually the Israeli government is solely responsible for what happened (Al-Aqsa Flood) for denying the rights of Palestinians.”
The Israelis are nothing if not consistent. Back in 2007, then-Israeli Defense Intelligence Chief Amos Yadlin said, “Israel would be happy if Hamas took over Gaza because IDF could then deal with Gaza as a hostile state.”
Ukraine funnels weapons to Palestinians
Only one year ago, the sweaty sweatshirt comedian in Kiev was talking about turning Ukraine into a “big Israel,” and was duly applauded by a bunch of Atlantic Council bots.
Well, it turned out quite differently. As an old-school Deep State source just informed me:
“Ukraine-earmarked weapons are ending up in the hands of the Palestinians. The question is which country is paying for it. Iran just made a deal with the US for six billion dollars and it is unlikely Iran would jeopardize that. I have a source who gave me the name of the country but I cannot reveal it. The fact is that Ukrainian weapons are going to the Gaza Strip and they are being paid for but not by Iran.”
After its stunning raid last weekend, a savvy Hamas has already secured more negotiating leverage than Palestinians have wielded in decades. Significantly, while peace talks are supported by China, Russia, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt – Tel Aviv refuses. Netanyahu is obsessed with razing Gaza to the ground, but if that happens, a wider regional war is nearly inevitable.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah – a staunch Resistance Axis ally of the Palestinian resistance – would rather not be dragged into a war that can be devastating on its side of the border, but that could change if Israel perpetrates a de facto Gaza genocide.
Hezbollah holds at least 100,000 ballistic missiles and rockets, from Katyusha (range: 40 km) to Fajr-5 (75 km), Khaibar-1 (100 km), Zelzal 2 (210 km), Fateh-110 (300 km), and Scud B-C (500 km). Tel Aviv knows what that means, and shudders at the frequent warnings by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah that its next war with Israel will be conducted inside that country.
Which brings us to Iran.
Geopolitical plausible deniability
The key immediate consequence of Al-Aqsa Flood is that the Washington neocon wet dream of “normalization” between Israel and the Arab world will simply vanish if this turns into a Long War.
Large swathes of the Arab world in fact are already normalizing their ties with Tehran – and not only inside the newly expanded BRICS 11.
In the drive towards a multipolar world, represented by BRICS 11, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), among other groundbreaking Eurasian and Global South institutions, there’s simply no place for an ethnocentric Apartheid state fond of collective punishment.
Just this year, Israel found itself disinvited from the African Union summit. An Israeli delegation showed up anyway, and was unceremoniously ejected from the big hall, a visual that went viral. At the UN plenary sessions last month, a lone Israeli diplomat sought to disrupt Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi’s speech. No western ally stood by his side, and he too, was ejected from the premises.
As Chinese President Xi Jinping diplomatically put it in December 2022, Beijing “firmly supports the establishment of an independent state of Palestine that enjoys full sovereignty based on 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital. China supports Palestine in becoming a full member of the United Nations.”
Tehran’s strategy is way more ambitious – offering strategic advice to West Asian resistance movements from the Levant to the Persian Gulf: Hezbollah, Ansarallah, Hashd al-Shaabi, Kataib Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and countless others. It’s as if they are all part of a new Grand Chessboard de facto supervised by Grandmaster Iran.
The pieces in the chessboard were carefully positioned by none other than the late Quds Force Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps General Qassem Soleimani, a once-in-a-lifetime military genius. He was instrumental in creating the foundations for the cumulative successes of Iranian allies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Palestine, as well as creating the conditions for a complex operation such as Al-Aqsa Flood.
Elsewhere in the region, the Atlanticist drive of opening strategic corridors across the Five Seas – the Caspian, the Black Sea, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Eastern Mediterranean – is floundering badly.
Russia and Iran are already smashing US designs in the Caspian – via the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) – and the Black Sea, which is on the way to becoming a Russian lake. Tehran is paying very close attention to Moscow’s strategy in Ukraine, even as it refines its own strategy on how to debilitate the Hegemon without direct involvement: call it geopolitical plausible deniability.
Bye bye EU-Israel-Saudi-India corridor
The Russia-China-Iran alliance has been demonized as the new “axis of evil” by western neocons. That infantile rage betrays cosmic impotence. These are Real Sovereigns that can’t be messed with, and if they are, the price to pay is unthinkable.
A key example: if Iran under attack by a US-Israeli axis decided to block the Strait of Hormuz, the global energy crisis would skyrocket, and the collapse of the western economy under the weight of quadrillions of derivatives would be inevitable.
What this means, in the immediate future, is that he American Dream of interfering across the Five Seas does not even qualify as a mirage. Al-Aqsa Flood has also just buried the recently-announced and much-ballyhooed EU-Israel-Saudi Arabia-India transportation corridor.
China is keenly aware of all this incandescence taking place only a week before its 3rd Belt and Road Forum in Beijing. At stake are the BRI connectivity corridors that matter – across the Heartland, across Russia, plus the Maritime Silk Road and the Arctic Silk Road.
Then there’s the INSTC linking Russia, Iran and India – and by ancillary extension, the Gulf monarchies.
The geopolitical repercussions of Al-Aqsa Flood will speed up Russia, China and Iran’s interconnected geoeconomic and logistical connections, bypassing the Hegemon and its Empire of Bases. Increased trade and non-stop cargo movement are all about (good) business. On equal terms, with mutual respect – not exactly the War Party’s scenario for a destabilized West Asia.
Oh, the things that a slow-moving paragliding infantry overflying a wall can accelerate.
- First published at The Cradle.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
-
Illustration: Liu Rui/GTA simultaneous war with China and Russia is a strategic nightmare that sober American strategists such as Henry Kissinger have been warning the US to avoid at all costs, and it is also a topic that some US media outlets have become more and more fond of talking about in recent years. At least from the publicly available information, Washington has never previously addressed it as a formal political agenda, supposedly aware of its seriousness and the terrible risks it carries. But the publication of a report by a congressionally appointed bipartisan panel titled America’s Strategic Posture crossed this “red line” on October 12.
The central point of the 145-page report is that the US must expand its military power, particularly its “nuclear weapons modernization program,” in order to prepare for possible simultaneous wars with China and Russia. Notably, the report diverges completely from the current US national security strategy of winning one conflict while deterring another, and from the Biden administration’s current nuclear policy. It is not a fantasy among the American public, but a serious strategic assessment and recommendation in the service of policymaking.
The 12-member panel that wrote the report was hand-picked by the US Congress from major think tanks and retired defense, security officials and former lawmakers. This report makes us feel that a “strategic nightmare” is sneaking into the US political agenda, but has not drawn due concern and vigilance in Washington, and to a large extent, the American elite group represented by the panel is actively working to make this nightmare come true.
A look at the specific recommendations of this report will send shivers down the spine of those who retain any basic rationality. The report recommends that the US deploy more warheads, and produce more bombers, cruise missiles, ballistic missile submarines, non-strategic nuclear weapons and so on. It also calls on the US to deploy warheads on land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and to consider adding road-mobile ICBMs to its arsenal, establishing a third shipyard that can build nuclear-powered ships, etc.
What depths of insanity is the US sinking to? The US’ military spending accounts for nearly 40 percent of the world’s total defense expenditures, and it has been growing dramatically for several years, with military spending in 2023 reaching $813.3 billion, more than the GDP of most countries, but even that is not enough for these politicians. Such a report full of geopolitical fanaticism and war imagery, whether or not it actually ends up as a “guide” for Washington’s decision-making, is dangerous and needs to be resisted and opposed by all peace-loving countries.
According to some American media, the report ignores the consequences of a nuclear arms race. In fact, the report doesn’t seem to consider this at all and doesn’t suggest any measures other than nuclear expansion to address this issue. In other words, it is a reckless approach. Both China and Russia are nuclear powers, and everyone knows that provoking a confrontation between nuclear powers is a crazy idea. Even promoting a nuclear arms race under the banner of “deterrence” is a disastrous step backward in history. Washington’s political elites, who lived through the Cold War, cannot be unaware of this. However, the fact that such an absurd and off-key report is being presented in all seriousness by the US Congress is both surreal and unsurprising. It is in line with the distorted political atmosphere in Washington today.
The motives behind this exaggeration of threats and creating a warlike atmosphere are highly suspicious. The recent outbreak of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict caused a sharp increase in US defense industry stocks, while American defense industry companies have also been the biggest beneficiaries of the long-standing Russia-Ukraine conflict. The military-industrial complex, like a geopolitical monstrosity, parasitically clings to American society, manipulating its every move, pushing Washington step by step to introduce and even prepare for ideas that were once considered “impossible.” The prosperity of the American military-industrial complex is built upon blood and corpses, and carries a primal guilt. Serving the interests of the American military-industrial complex is unethical.
The reality is that such rhetoric is becoming increasingly politically acceptable in today’s Washington. The idea of “preparing for possible simultaneous wars with Russia and China,” once a fringe fantasy, has gradually made its way into Washington’s agenda, which is deeply unsettling. If Washington were to adopt even a small portion of the recommendations in this report, the harm and threats it could pose to world peace would be immeasurable and would ultimately backfire on the US itself. There is an old Chinese saying: “Those who play with fire will perish by it.” This is something that is worth Washington’s careful consideration.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
-
This week’s News on China.
• China supports the creation of a Palestinian state
• China-Russia trade growth
• Tourism exceeds pre-pandemic levels
• Breakdance on the riseThis post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
-
In the bustling hot city of Siliguri in northeast India, Jitendar Kumar spends his days breaking up and shifting cinder pieces at a coal depot.
The 30-year-old has been working for half his life with coal, a legacy he inherited from his father, who spent 40 years in Ranigunj, India’s first coalfield that traces back to 1774, in West Bengal.
“I also started there but later chose the city over the mines,” Kumar said. “Like many here, coal puts food on our table. I don’t know what else to do.”
India, the world’s second-largest coal producer, has around 337,400 miners in its active mines. Labor activists estimate that this number could quadruple when accounting for informal workers in the sector.
This week, a new report said state-owned Coal India, the world’s largest government-owned coal producer, is facing the biggest potential layoffs of 73,800 direct workers by 2050.
Globally, close to a million coal mine jobs, or more than a third of the coalmining workforce, could vanish by 2050, with the vast majority of these losses expected in Asia, especially in China and India, the U.S.-based think tank Global Energy Monitor (GEM) said.
That means, on average, 100 coal miners a day could face job cuts as the coal industry winds down due to a market shift towards cheaper renewables and planned mine closures, it said.
This infographic shows where potential coal mining job layoffs are by 2050. Credit: Global Energy Monitor
Nearly half a million workers may lose their jobs before 2035, GEM said. The drop in employment, the think-tank added, will likely occur irrespective of particular coal phase-out strategies or climate action since such shifts are probably inevitable due to the market’s inclination towards more economical wind and solar energy options.
In Asia, more than 2.2 million people work in coal mines, according to GEM, with China leading the way.
China is home to over 1.5 million coal miners, responsible for generating more than 85% of the nation’s coal. This represents half of the global coal production. It is followed by India and Indonesia.
GEM said Indonesia, with about 160,000 coal mine workers, is expected to boost production enough to rival India’s output for the first time next year.
The non-government research organization said that China’s Shanxi province alone will likely lose about a quarter million mine jobs by midcentury.
The projections are based on data from the Global Coal Mine Tracker, which offers live information about 4,300 active and proposed coal mines globally, accounting for over 90% of the world’s coal production.
“Coal mine closures are inevitable, but economic hardship and social strife for workers is not,” said Dorothy Mei, project manager for the Global Coal Mine Tracker at Global Energy Monitor.
“Viable transition planning is happening, like in Spain where the country regularly reviews the ongoing impacts of decarbonization,” she said, adding that governments should learn from its success to plan their own “just energy transition strategies.”
To limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius under the Paris Agreement’s guidelines, GEM estimates that only 250,000 coal miners would be needed. This is less than 10% of the current workforce.
Economic impact
Coal mine jobs also greatly influence local economies. Mining towns often depend heavily on coal companies for wages, taxes, and even schools or hospitals.
Past job losses from the 1980s and 1990s bankruptcies had led to economic distress, and future job cuts could have similar effects.
The workers deserve a “just transition” to new employment sectors, particularly those offering well-compensated positions in the clean and renewable energy domain, GEM said.
Mining is in progress at an open-cast mine near Dhanbad, an eastern Indian city in Jharkhand state, Sept. 24, 2021. Credit: Associated Press
In 2016, China’s Ministry of Finance introduced the Industrial Special Fund, designating US$14 billion for the reemployment of 1.8 million workers in the coal and steel industries.
However, with each person estimated to get just over US$6,887, GEM said the fund’s sufficiency is debatable.
China Energy, the nation’s leading mining and energy firm, is among the country’s top five renewable energy investors.
With renewables making up 28.5% of its capacity and coal at 72%, the company aims to boost clean energy to over 50% by 2025, aligning with government goals.
Chance for sustainable future
Following a year marked by devastating mining accidents, significant labor disputes, and public opposition to mining activities, it is essential that coal miners be provided the chance to seek a safer and more sustainable future, GEM said in the report.
Hundreds of workers died from underground blasts, tunnel collapses, and equipment mishaps in mines worldwide.
At least six people were killed when a significant section of the pit wall at the Axla League coal mine in China crumbled in February, with 47 others still missing.
The China Labor Bulletin, an NGO monitoring work-related accidents in China, recorded 69 coal mine-associated incidents and fatalities in 2022, with 23 reported in the current year.
“The coal industry, on the whole, has a notoriously bad reputation for its treatment of workers,” said Ryan Driskell Tate, GEM’s program director for coal.
“What we need is proactive planning for workers and coal communities … so industry and governments will remain accountable to those workers who have borne the brunt for so long.”
Edited by Taejun Kang and Elaine Chan.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Subel Rai Bhandari for RFA.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
The US government has taken some steps to block Chinese imports made with forced labor. Britain and the EU have done shamefully little
Last month, Chinese diplomats sent letters – really threats – to discourage attendance at an event on the sidelines of the UN general assembly spotlighting Beijing’s persecution of Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region. The childish tactic backfired, heightening media interest, but it highlighted the lengths to which Beijing will go to cover up its repression. A recent exposé on the persecution of Uyghurs should reinforce our determination to address these crimes against humanity.
A four-year investigation by the Outlaw Ocean Project pulls back the curtain on the massive use of forced labor in the Chinese government-backed fishing industry. Much of the study focused on people coercively kept on China’s distant-water fishing fleet, which holds workers at sea for months at a time in appalling conditions, often with lethal neglect. But the study also showed that seafood-processing facilities inside China are deploying Uyghur forced labor on a large scale.
Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, is a visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
-
A year after being suspended from the body, Russia will not be returning to the UN Human Rights Council in January, despite its best efforts. Running for one of two seats allocated to countries from Central and Eastern Europe, Russia received only 83 votes, significantly less than competitors Albania (123) and Bulgaria (163).
‘With this vote, States have acted in line with General Assembly resolution 60/251 and stopped Russia’s brazen attempt to undermine the international human rights system,’ said Madeleine Sinclair, co-director of ISHR’s New York office. ‘Russia must answer for a long list of crimes in Ukraine and for its ruthless and longstanding crackdown on civil society and individual liberties at home. We’re relieved voting States agreed that it could not have legitimately held a seat at the UN’s top human rights body,’. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/tag/russia/]
In the only other competitive race, between States from Latin American and the Caribbean, the General Assembly re-elected Cuba, one of Russia’s most consistent allies. Cuba ran for one of three seats for Latin America and the Caribbean, facing three competitors and coming in first, with 146 votes, ahead of Brazil (144), the Dominican Republic (137) and Peru (108).
Results for Asia and Africa were as disappointing as they were predictable, with the election of China and Burundi. Both States ran in uncompetitive races, with only as many candidates as seats available, thus all but assured to win. They were elected with 154 (China) and 168 (Burundi), finishing bottom of each of their respective regional slates with noticeably fewer votes than their direct competitors.
Both countries are objectively and manifestly unsuitable for the Human Rights Council in view of their domestic records, their past actions as Council members, and the very criteria that nominally governs membership of the Council.
ISHR has been campaigning to call on States at the General assembly to vote in accordance with resolution 60/251 and to use their votes to ensure a strong and principled Human Rights Council. ISHR produced a series of individual and regional scorecards examining the records of all 17 candidates running this year.
For more on scoring, see: https://www.universal-rights.org/2023-elections-to-the-human-rights-council-did-ga-members-vote-according-to-human-rights-criteria/
This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.
-
By Lawrence Fong in Port Moresby
Cheaper loans will be a key agenda for Papua New Guinea officials when Prime Minister James Marape leads a delegation of government and business leaders to China for bilateral talks next week.
Treasurer Ian Ling-Stuckey, who is going to be part of the delegation, made the announcement earlier this week when giving an update on preparations for the visit.
The announcement is likely to worry China’s geopolitical rivals Australia and the US, whose interests on loans, according to Ling-Stuckey, are higher than that of China.
“My key goals during this visit [to China] are to work as part of the government team to strengthen our cooperative relations with such a key partner and friend, the government of China,” Ling-Stuckey said.
“The focus of my work is to secure additional, cheaper funding for PNG. Chinese interest rates are currently below those in the US and Australia, and even from many of our multilateral partners.
“I look forward to meetings with China’s Export Credit Bank along with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.”
Two weeks ago, Marape led another delegation to Washington, along with other leaders of the Pacific, to meet with US President Joe Biden.
US aid for Pacific
In that summit, Biden announced that he is planned to work with Congress to request the release of nearly US$200 million (K718 million) for the Pacific island states, including PNG.Ling-Stuckey said government officials were in hectic consultations with Chinese embassy officials in Port Moresby to ensure the visit to China went smoothly, compared to their recent visit to Washington.
Officials said the delegation would hold bilateral talks with senior Chinese officials, including President Xi Xinping, before engaging in the third Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) forum in Beijing.
It is expected that a big part of whatever financial assistance PNG secures from China will be centered around the BRI projects in PNG, which have been gaining momentum since Port Moresby signed up in 2018.
Chinese ambassador Zeng Fanhua a week earlier said China’s development experience and enhanced relations with PNG had laid the foundation for more cooperation and growth, and his government was looking forward to Marape and the PNG delegation’s visit to China.
“This year, we see new development in our bilateral relations. High-level exchanges have resurged,” Zeng said.
“More than a dozen PNG ministers, governors and Members of Parliament have visited China.
New wave of growth
Business and trade cooperation has seen a new wave of growth.In the first half of this year, PNG’s exports to China was nearly US$1.9 billion, up 6 percent year-on-year.”
“China highly appreciates PNG government’s firm commitment to the One-China principle and the decision to close its trade office in Taipei.
“This has laid a more solid political foundation for advancing China-PNG relations and cooperation in all areas.”
Lawrence Fong is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
-
Never underestimate Chinese women
Don’t underestimate them, the Chinese women. They’re not wimps. They are way more strongminded than Chinese men. In China, it is the women who wear the pants. The labour force participation of women in China is the highest of the world. No other country on this planet has so many female engineers, scientists, mathematicians or other STEM graduates as in China. More than half of the Mensa China members are women.
Chinese women are in no way comparable with Japanese women.
The ruling rěn (忍)
The Chinese are way too Confucian-Daoist-Buddhist to express their disillusionment to Westerners’ faces outwardly, but among themselves, they can be quite open about it. From personal experience, I can say that a few rounds of beer or spirits can bring out the truth. I also hear it when speaking Mandarin with them.
Once they realize that I really am on their side, only then, they will vent their spleens, politely I might add. But again, most of the time, Westerners are clueless and kept in the dark. All of this goes back to the ancient notion of rěn (忍) which means to forbear or endure. The top half of the Chinese character is a knife (刃) and the bottom half is the heart (心), as can be seen in the enlarged character here.So, rěn is a knife coming down on top of you. You can’t escape it, and it is cutting into your heart. Not killing you but hurting you, and you have to take it, endure it. The four parts which look like commas represent drops of blood. Rěn is serious business. Rěn is considered the apex of great leadership1 and the ideal civilisation among the citizens, between each other and other nations.
There are dozens of different words and idioms centred on rěn and its concept of endurance, patience and tolerance.
The Chinese endure endless foreign insults with a famous axiom, rěn bēi qiáng xiào (忍悲强笑), which means to endure sadness with a forced smile. Notice the second character for sadness (悲) also has the symbol for the heart at the bottom of the character.
In English, there is a similar saying: ‘grin and bear it’. But Westerners do not base their entire system of governance and people’s civilisation on it. The Chinese do and have been doing so for 5000 years. Confucius codified it into statecraft and sociocultural protocol. Laozi made it into a philosophy (Daoism) and Buddha (albeit an Indian import) turned it into a world religion.2
The way in which Meng Wanzhou, the “Princess of Huawei” has endured the excruciating humiliations of the American rulers is a textbook example of rěn 忍, enduring hardship with a forced smile.
In business
I have met dozens of business women in China. Especially in business negotiations, they’re unfathomable. And unfortunately for the people at the other side of the table, they read you as a book and see through every manoeuvre you make. Moreover, they do not hesitate to use their feminine charms during negotiations. They’re way more relentless and driven than Chinese men.
No other country at this globe has so much female business tycoons as China.
In the PLA
Long gone are the days when female soldiers in the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) only took on duties as nurses. Today they are especially snipers, programmers, scouts, researchers, communications experts, peace keeping forces. Also at the PLA they have discovered the strong and persistent determination of the Chinese women.
Look at their movements, look at their facial expressions. These are fighting machines:
Listen to their decisive and resolute words:
Who will defeat this highly motivated army of women, ready to endure hardship with a smile?
In politics
In the early eighties, there was a saying in China: “During daytime it is 邓小平 Dèng Xiǎopíng who’s ruling the country, but after sunset, it is 邓丽君 Dèng Lìjūn (Teresa Teng) who’s the star of the Great Motherland.”
In Chinese politics, there’s a strong woman behind every politician. Almost all Chinese politicians are engineers or at least STEM graduates, working ten to twelve hours per day. Without the support of their wife, they can’t sustain the pace.
Another Dèng, madame 邓新华 Dèng Xīnhuá, director of the Confucius Institute in Leuven is another example of the unrelenting determination of Chinese women.
The Tiger Mothers
Tiger parenting is a typically Chinese phenomenon. It is a way of strict upbringing of a child, whereby parents, almost always the mother or aunts, highly invest in ensuring the child’s success. Specifically, Tiger Mothers push their child(ren) to attain high levels of academic achievement or success in high-status extracurricular activities such as music or sports.
The term “Tiger Mother” has existed for centuries in China, but it was brought to western public attention by Yale Law School professor Amy Chua in her 2011 memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Do not read the Wikipedia entry on this subject, as it is highly American biased; instead read Amy Chua’s book which is gripping and compelling.
The Shengnu
Shèngnǚ 剩女, commonly known as “leftover ladies” are the 30+ year-old ladies who have deliberately chosen to be single. Almost all of these women are highly educated and well off. Most of them do not live in solitude but are fully integrated into society. Some of them have changing relationships or a permanent toy boy.
Due to rapidly declining birth rates, successive government campaigns have attempted to combat the shèngnǚ phenomenon. But that did not go down well on social media. The Chinese government was forced to stop the anti-shèngnǚ campaigns.
Shanghainese women
The Shanghainese women, those born in Shanghai from Shanghainese parents, are in various ways a breed apart. In China, the phenomenon is known as the “Shanghai Princess.”
Again, it is the Shanghainese mothers who teach and train their daughters to behave like princesses. And likewise bring up their sons to serve their future “princess.”
As per the Shanghainese traditions, it is the men who are responsible for the family income; it is the men who do the daily food shopping and prepare the dinner.
Outside Shanghai, in the rest of China, parents recommend their daughters to try to catch a Shanghainese young man and warn their sons to watch out for Shanghainese princesses.
Never underestimate Chinese women
Chinese women rule their families, rule China and soon will rule the world
ENDNOTES
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
-
Over a fortnight, a Uyghur folklorist missing since 2017 was revealed to be serving a life prison for “separatism,” while another Uyghur scholar who had vanished into Chinese custody years earlier appeared on shortlists and oddsmakers picks for the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize.
The cases of ethnographer Rahile Dawut, whose life conviction in December 2018 was uncovered by a U.S. NGO only last month, and economist Ilham Tohti, put away for life on similar charges in 2014, share key similarities that highlight the personal and family tragedies behind China’s relentless assimilation policies in the northwestern Xinjiang region.
Both Dawut, who was born in 1966, and the 53-year-old Tohti built their academic careers inside the Chinese system, teaching at prestigious universities and releasing their work through major state publishing houses. The two scholars collaborated with and were respected as authorities by their Chinese and international peers.
Uyghur professor Rahile Dawut talks with a man in northwestern China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in an undated photo. Photo courtesy of Akide Polat/Freemymom.org Dawut created and directed the Xinjiang University ‘s Minorities Folklore Research Center and wrote dozens of articles in international journals and a number of books on the region and its culture.
An economist at the Central University for Nationalities in Beijing, Tohti ran the Uyghur Online website, set up in 2006, which drew attention to the discrimination facing Uyghurs under Beijing’s rule over Xinjiang and its increasingly restrictive religious and language policies.
The families of Dawut and Tohti share the common fate of not having heard anything from their jailed loved once since 2017, the year that China’s harsh crackdown in Xinjiang went into overdrive, with the establishment of a network of internment camps for Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Turkic minorities.
“My first reaction was that I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t believe it at all,” Dawut’s U.S.-based daughter, Akide Polat, told Radio Free Asia last month.
“None of my mother’s work, nor the way she went about it, nor anything in her personal life had anything to do with ‘endangering state security,’” she said of the charges on which her mother was convicted.
‘No intellectual resistance’
The Dui Hua Foundation, which revealed Dawut’s life sentence, noted estimates of as many as several hundred Uyghur intellectuals who have been detained, arrested, and imprisoned since 2016.
RFA Uyghur has documented scores of disappearances and detentions of Uyghur writers, academics, artists and musicians in recent years.
“What we’ve seen inside the Uyghur region of China is what is often termed ‘eliticide,’” said Sean Roberts, a Central Asia expert at The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs in Washington, D.C.
“There’s a particular focus on the intellectual elites, many of whom were working at state institutions, have been loyal to the state, did not did not present any sort of real resistance. Their only crime was basically maintaining the idea of a Uyghur nation and identity,” he told RFA Uyghur.
Akida Polat holds a photo of her mother, imprisoned Uyghur folklore expert Rahile Duwat. Credit: X/@Kuzzat_Altay Roberts said eliticide “is often identified as occurring at the beginning of a genocide, where there’s an attempt to get rid of the entire political, economic and intellectual elite to ensure that there is no intellectual resistance to the erasure of a people and their identity.”
In early 2021, after years of cumulative reports on the internment camp system in Xinjiang, the United Nations, the United States, and the legislatures of several European countries, officially branded the treatment of Uyghurs as genocide or crimes against humanity.
China has angrily rejected the genocide charges, arguing that the “reeducation camps” were a necessary tool to fight religious extremism and terrorism, in reaction to sporadic terrorist attacks that Uyghurs say are fueled by years of government oppression.
Beijing has also waged an information counterattack, with a global media influence campaign that spreads Chinese state media content to countries in Asia and beyond, invites diplomats and journalists from China-friendly countries on staged tours of Xinjiang and promotes pro-China social media influencers.
Awareness-raising on genocide
Last month, the pushback saw Chinese diplomats pressuring fellow United Nations member states not to attend a panel on human rights abuses in Xinjiang sponsored by a think tank and two rights groups on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York.
Tohti, who has been nominated for the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s Peace Prize since 2020, was listed by the U.S. news outlet Time as one of top three favorites to win the medal this year, following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Tohti was given higher odds on many of London’s famed betting sites of winning the prize than the recipient, jailed Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi.
“There are many human rights issues around the world that are equally as important as the suffering that the Uyghurs are going through, but the international status and power of the perpetrators of these human rights abuses aren’t considered equal,” said Jewher Ilham, Tohti’s daughter.
“The Chinese government is known to have a much more powerful political and economic influence than the Iranian government in the western world,” she told RFA Uyghur.
Jewher Ilham holds a photo of her father, Ilham Tohti, during the Sakharov Prize ceremony at the European Parliament, in Strasbourg, France, Dec. 18, 2019. Credit: AP Photo It is not clear that that China would be moved by a Nobel Prize to release Tohti or moderate policies in Xinjiang, where Communist Party chief Xi Jinping appears to be doubling down on draconian security measures and policies to suppress Uyghur culture.
Beijing lashed out at the Nobel Committee and imposed trade sanctions on Norway after the Nobel 2010 went to Chinese dissident writer Liu Xiaobo.
With Liu in jail, the Chinese capital Beijing won the right in 2015 to host the Winter Olympics, and Beijing largely shrugged off the global outcry when in 2017, Liu became the first Nobel laureate to die in jail since German journalist and Nazi opponent Carl Von Ossietzky perished in custody in 1938.
For Jewher Ilham, the mention of her father as a Nobel contender is “still a huge recognition for his work and also an opportunity for awareness-raising on the broader Uyghur genocide problem.
“I hope more people will learn about Ilham Tohti, and will learn what is happening to hundreds of thousands of Uyghur families,” she told RFA Uyghur.
Reported by Nuriman Abdureshid and Alim Seytoff for Radio Free Asia Uyghur.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Paul Eckert for RFA.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
Parliamentarians from 15 countries urge reduction in vote to signal disapproval of country’s crackdown on Uyghur population
An effort is under way to drive down the Chinese vote at the UN human rights council this week in an attempt to show continuing worldwide disapproval of its human rights record.
The elections on to the world’s premier human rights body take place by secret ballot on Tuesday with China guaranteed a seat in one of the uncontested seats from its region, but human rights campaigners are working to lower the level of Chinese support to show pressure on the country is not dissipating.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
-
Illustration: Liu Rui/GT
The Philippines is regarded as a key component in the US Indo-Pacific Strategy. But compared to Tokyo and Canberra, which take on more aggressive roles, Manila, in the heart of Washington, is merely a stick used to muddy the waters of the South China Sea. In other words, the US aims to use the Philippines to continue escalating the China-Philippines dispute in the South China Sea and disrupt the friendly atmosphere of consultation between China and Southeast Asian countries on the South China Sea issue.
The Philippines on Friday condemned China, stating that a Chinese coast guard ship on Wednesday came within a meter of colliding with a Philippine patrol ship near Ren’ai Reef. It accused China of conducting “the closest dangerous maneuver.”
Beijing and Manila have already had several rounds of clashes in the South China Sea in recent months. This time, the Philippines’ actions have once again confirmed a concerning trend: It has joined forces with the US to stir up new troubles in the South China Sea, becoming a destabilizing force in the Asia-Pacific region.
Under the general context of the Joe Biden administration’s push for military and political cooperation with the Philippines based on the US Indo-Pacific Strategy, Philippine President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr abandoned his predecessor’s rather friendly policy toward China after he came to power. Instead, he focused more on using the enchantment of ties with the US to promote the development of his country’s military capabilities, hoping to consolidate domestic support. In addition, by constantly provoking troubles with China in the South China Sea, Manila wants to test how strong the US-Philippines alliance is.
As tensions between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea grow, Washington and Manila kicked off Maritime Training Activity Sama Sama 2023 off the Philippine coast on Monday. The main character in these military drills that will run through October 13, in fact, is still the US, which is purely exploiting the Philippines’ close geographic location to China and its South China Sea disputes with China. Under the pretext of “addressing a spectrum of security threats and enhancing interoperability,” Washington is targeting China through the Sama Sama drills.
Seeking to form more closed, confrontational minilateral mechanisms in the region similar to the Quad and AUKUS, Washington is glad to see Manila play a certain role in the vision of its Indo-Pacific Strategy. However, once the Philippines decides to tie itself up to the US’ chariot, it will certainly go against the idea of ASEAN as a whole – These countries don’t want the region to become a battleground for great power competitions, nor do they want to become proxies for great powers.
During the Rodrigo Duterte administration, the pragmatic and win-win cooperation between China and the Philippines has contributed much to the development of China, and the Philippines especially. If the Marcos Jr administration continues to drift off course in the South China Sea, turning the region into a sea of instability and driving China-Philippines relations into the vortex of conflicts, a disaster for the Philippines is inevitable, which will bring new uncertainties to bilateral ties and regional stability.
Chinese military expert Song Zhongping told the Global Times that if the Philippines, at the instigation of the US, turns into a bridgehead against China, it could become a battleground if the conflict escalates and this will plunge the country into the abyss of irretrievable losses. Therefore, the Marcos Jr administration needs to realize that the Philippines is only a pawn of the US and that Washington cannot be trusted.
It is not China that has pushed the Philippines toward the US, but the US that has forced ASEAN countries, particularly those that have disputes with China, to pick a side. China has never and will never pressure any ASEAN country, including the Philippines, to make a choice between siding with China or the US. As a peace-loving country, it always pursues to set aside the disputes in the South China Sea. At the same time, the direct communications channel between China and the Philippines over the South China Sea issue is still open, while Beijing has shown willingness to proactively engage in dialogues with Manila.
China and ASEAN countries should carry on with consultations on the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea, to strengthen bilateral cooperation and turn the South China Sea into a sea of peace, stability and win-win cooperation, instead of becoming a region of conflict and trouble under the constant involvement of extraterritorial countries.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
-
Wu Fang (China), 行走 (‘Journey’), 2017.
In his 1963 book, Africa Must Unite, Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president, wrote, ‘We have here, in Africa, everything necessary to become a powerful, modern, industrialised continent. United Nations investigators have recently shown that Africa, far from having inadequate resources, is probably better equipped for industrialisation than almost any other region in the world’. Here, Nkrumah was referring to the Special Study on Economic Conditions and Development, Non-Self-Governing Territories (United Nations, 1958), which detailed the continent’s immense natural resources. ‘The true explanation for the slowness of industrial development in Africa’, Nkrumah wrote, ‘lies in the policies of the colonial period. Practically all our natural resources, not to mention trade, shipping, banking, building, and so on, fell into, and have remained in, the hands of foreigners seeking to enrich alien investors, and to hold back local economic initiative’. Nkrumah further expanded upon this view in his remarkable book, Neo-Colonialism: the Last Stage of Imperialism (1965).
As the leader of Ghana’s government, Nkrumah devised a policy to reverse this trend by promoting public education (with an emphasis on science and technology), building a robust public sector to provide his country with infrastructure (including electricity, roads, and railways), and developing an industrial sector that would add value to the raw materials that had previously been exported at meagre prices. However, such a project would fail if it were only tried in one country. That is why Nkrumah was a great champion of African unity, articulated at length in his book Africa Must Unite (1963). It was because of his determination that African countries formed the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) the same year as his book was published. In 1999, the OAU became the African Union.
As Ghana and Africa made small strides to establish national and continental sovereignty, some people had other ideas. Nkrumah was removed from office in a Western-backed coup in 1966, five years after Patrice Lumumba was ejected as prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and then assassinated. Anyone who wanted to build a project for the sovereignty of the continent and the dignity of the African people would find themselves either deposed, dead, or both.
Guo Hongwu (China), 革命友谊深如海 (‘Revolutionary Friendship Is as Deep as the Ocean’), 1975.
The Western-backed governments that followed these coups often reversed the policies to exercise national sovereignty and build continental unity. For instance, in 1966, the military leaders of Ghana’s National Liberation Council began to gut the policy of establishing quality public education and an efficient public sector with industrialisation and continental trade at its centre. Import-substitution policies that had been important to the new Third World states were rejected in favour of exporting cheapened raw materials and importing expensive finished products. The spiral of debt and dependency wracked the continent. This situation was worsened by the International Monetary Fund’s Structural Adjustment Programmes, set in motion during the worst of the 1980s debt crisis. A 2009 research paper from the South Centre noted that ‘the continent is the least industrialised region of the world, while the share of sub-Saharan Africa in global manufacturing value added actually declined in most sectors between 1990 and 2000’. Indeed, the South Centre paper referred to the situation in Africa as one of ‘de-industrialisation’.
In April 1980, African leaders gathered in Lagos, Nigeria, under the aegis of the OAU to deliberate about the harsh climate created by the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Programmes, which targeted their fiscal policies but did nothing to change the adverse international credit markets. Out of this meeting came the Lagos Plan of Action (1980–2000), whose main argument was for African states to establish their sovereignty from international capital and to build industrial policies for their countries and for the continent. This was, in essence, a renewal of the Nkrumah policy of the 1960s. Alongside the Lagos Plan of Action, the United Nations established the Industrial Development Decade for Africa (1980–1990). Towards the end of that decade, in 1989 the OAU – cognisant of the policy’s failure due to the deepening of neoliberal approaches that slashed budgets and intensified the export-oriented theft of African resources – worked with the United Nations to establish 20 November as Africa Industrialisation Day. The failure of the Industrial Development Decade for Africa was followed by a second decade (1993–2002) and then a third (2016–2025). In January 2015, the African Union adopted Agenda 2063 to combine the imperative of industrialisation with Africa’s commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals. These ‘decades’ and Agenda 2063 have become merely symbolic. There is no agenda to undo external debt and debt servicing burdens nor any policy to create a climate to advance industrial development or finance the provision of basic needs.
Pan Jianglong (China), 撒哈拉以东 (‘To the East of the Sahara’), 2017.
At the China-Africa Leaders’ Dialogue, held on the side-lines of the fifteenth BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-
South Africa) summit in Johannesburg, China launched the Initiative on Supporting Africa’s Industrialisation ‘to support Africa in growing its manufacturing sector and realising industrialisation and economic diversification’. The Chinese government pledged to increase its funding to build infrastructure, design and create industrial parks, and assist African governments and firms in developing their industrial policies and industries. This new initiative will build off of China’s commitments at the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation to strengthen infrastructure on the continent, share its own experiences with industrialisation, and support a development project that emerges out of the African experience rather than one forced upon African states by the IMF or other agencies. 
This week, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and Dongsheng launched the third issue of the international edition of the journal Wenhua Zongheng (文化纵横), entitled ‘China-Africa Relations in the Belt and Road Era’. This issue features three articles, written by Grieve Chelwa, Zhou Jinyan, and Tang Xiaoyang. Professor Zhou, concurring with the South Centre report, notes that ‘African countries were essentially de-industrialised’ since the 1980s and that whatever growth African countries experienced was a consequence of high commodity prices for exported raw materials. She points out that Western countries – offering debt, aid, and structural adjustment – are ‘not motivated to promote African industrialisation’. Drawing heavily from the UN Economic Commission for Africa and analysing the industrial policies of most African countries, Professor Zhou highlights four important points: first, the state must play an active role in any industrial development; second, industrialisation must take place on a regional and continental level – not within African states alone, given that 86 percent of Africa’s total trade is ‘still conducted with other regions of the world, not within the continent; third, urbanisation and industrialisation must be coordinated so that cities on the continent do not continue to grow into large slums filled with jobless youth; and fourth, manufacturing will be the engine of African economic development rather than the fantasy of service sector-led growth.
These points guide Professor Zhou’s assessment of how China can support the process of African industrialisation. In sharing its experiences with African countries, she notes that ‘China’s failures’ are as important as its successes.
Zhao Jianqi (China), 回望故乡 (‘Longing for Home’), n.d.
In his essay, Professor Tang tracks the record of the Chinese-led Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) on the continent. Established in 2013, the BRI is only a decade old, which barely allows enough time to fully assess this massive, global infrastructural and industrial development project. At the second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (April 2019), UN Secretary-General António Guterres said, ‘With the scale of its planned investments, [the BRI] offers a meaningful opportunity to contribute to the creation of a more equitable, prosperous world for all, and to reversing the negative impact of climate change’. In 2022, the UN released a report on the role of the BRI called Partnering for a Brighter Shared Future, which noted that the BRI – unlike most other development projects – provided significant funding for infrastructure projects that may form the basis for industrialisation in regions that had previously been exporters of raw materials and importers of manufactured products.
Building on such assessments of the BRI, Professor Tang offers three practical ways in which the BRI has promoted industrialisation on the African continent: first, by constructing industrial parks with integrated power sources and creating industrial clusters of interconnected firms; second, by building industries to supply infrastructural materials; and third, by prioritising production for local markets rather than for export. Unlike the IMF policies that are forced on African countries, Professor Tang argues that ‘China encourages each country to follow its own path of development and to not blindly follow any model’.
Neither Tang nor Zhou nor Chelwa indicate that China is somehow the saviour of Africa. Those days are gone. No country or continent seeks its salvation elsewhere. Africa’s path will be built by Africans. Nonetheless, given its own experiences of building manufacturing against a structure that reproduces dependency, China has a lot to share. Since it has enormous financial reserves and does not impose Western-styled conditionality, China can, of course, be a source of financing for alternative development projects.
In December 2022, African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina said that ‘Africa’s prosperity must no longer depend on exports of raw materials but on value-added finished products’. ‘Across Africa’, he continued, ‘we need to turn cocoa beans into chocolate, cotton into textiles and garments, coffee beans into brewed coffee’. To keep in step with the times, we might add that Africa must also turn cobalt and nickel into lithium-ion batteries and electric cars and turn copper and silver into smartphones. Inside Adesina’s statement is Nkrumah’s dream: as he wrote in 1963, we have here, in Africa, everything necessary to become a powerful, modern, industrialised continent.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
-
As China arrives with a splash in Honduras, the US wrings its hands.
— Washington Post, October 2, 2023
In a break from its hysterical coverage of the existential threat posed by Donald Trump, the Washington Post – house organ of the Democratic National Committee – cautions us of the other menace, China. “When the leader of this impoverished Central American country visited Beijing in June,” we are warned, “China laid out the warmest of welcomes.”
Apparently in a grave threat to US national security, the president of Honduras attended a state banquet and actually ate Chinse food. What next for the country the Post affectionately describes as “long among the most docile of US regional partners”?
Honduras changes its China policy
In a classic example of do-as-I-say-and-not-as-I-do diplomacy, the US was miffed when Honduras recognized the People’s Republic of China as the sole representative of China in March. Curiously, the US implemented its one-China policy 44 years ago.
Today, a mere baker’s dozen of the world’s countries still recognize Taiwan as sovereign. Among them, Guatemala will switch Chinas if president-elect Bernardo Arévalo is allowed to assume office in January. Another holdout, Haiti, literally does not have an elected government of its own but may soon be receiving a US-sponsored occupying army.
China has emerged as South America’s leading and the wider Latin American region’s second largest trading partner, with over twenty states joining Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. This provides a substitute to monopolar dependence on commerce with Uncle Sam. Russia, too, has been pushing under the greenback curtain. The BRICS+ alliance with China and Russia also includes Brazil and Argentina among others.
“US aid and investments throughout the region are historically seen as slow in coming,” the Post explains as the cause for the trade and diplomatic shifts seen in the region and reflected in Honduras.
The Post hastens to add with a straight face that US investments come with “significant stipulations on human rights and democracy.” Supporting this ridiculous claim, the Post notes: “Honduras, long known for violence and corruption, has been subject to particular US scrutiny.”
The Post, it should be noted, proudly runs the tagline “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” So they should know what form the “particular” US scrutiny took.
Tellingly omitted from the Post’s story is mention of the 2009 US-backed coup that deposed the democratically elected president of Honduras, Manual Zelaya. In her memoires, then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took credit for preventing Zelaya’s return to his elected post. That was in the original hardcover version of the vanity book. The subsequent paperback expunged the boast.
Xiomara Castro, who first rose to prominence after the coup that overthrew her husband Manual Zelaya, became the first female president of Honduras in January 2022.
Her predecessor, Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), was immediately extradited to the US for drug trafficking proving beyond doubt that hers was a victory over a nacro-dictatorship. JOH was the last of a line of corrupt golpistas (coup mongers) that the US had propped up for the last dozen years. So much for the Post’s vaunting of US support for human rights and democracy.
And then, almost as an afterthought, the Post acknowledges that indeed US aid and investments have other strings attached to them; namely, “a preference for the private sector and nongovernmental organizations.” Concluding: “In contrast, China’s offers of trade and investment, with few strings attached, have increasingly outweighed traditional ties or ideology in the region.”
Peru – Chinese on the 20-yard line in our homeland
There’s cause for concern down in Peru too. Pedro Castillo, the elected president from a left-wing party, was imprisoned last December in a parliamentary coup backed by the military and the US. The de facto government imposed a state of emergency when demonstrations were mounted. Castillo was seen by the poor and indigenous as one of their own in a society with deep fissures of class and race
Disproportionate use of force against the protests, including firing live ammunition, has resulted in some 80 people killed. The US immediately voiced support for the coup regime and later deployed troops to Peru to bolster the unpopular government. (In neighboring Ecuador, the US recently struck a deal to send troops there in support of another faltering right-wing regime.) Peru’s economy is in recession and local communities are resisting major foreign mining projects.
So what’s the problem? According to an article in the Financial Times, based on the word of an “anonymous” US official and bolstered by the testimony of a nameless “source” close to the Peruvian government, there is a weighty peril. But it is not any of the above.
Apparently the Peruvian government is “not sufficiently focused” on the threats to their country posed by Chinese investment in infrastructure.
A possible reason for the insufficient focus by Peru’s president is she is being charged with committing crimes of genocide, aggravated homicide, and abuse of authority by Peru’s attorney general’s office.
Had she been paying attention, she would have noted that in April the Italian energy firm Enel announced it would sell its Peruvian electricity business to a Chinese company. Previously, another Chinese firm invested in the Lima’s electricity supply and some hydroelectric dams.
The danger doesn’t stop there. Cosco, a Chinese state-owned company, has a 60% stake in proposed deepwater port in Peru with construction slated for late next year. As the Financial Times warns, while the port is designed for cargo ships, it is “large enough to be used by Beijing’s navy to resupply warships.”
If a few hundred more deals like this were transacted and subsequently somehow weaponized, the Chinese could remotely in the distant future be on their way to create the equivalent of what BCC calls the complete arc of US military bases that presently surround China.
With such infrastructure projects and their 5G mobile networks, according to the head of the US Southern Command, the Chinese are already “on the 20-yard line to our homeland.”
What’s next for America’s backyard – upgraded to “front yard” by Mr. Biden – in this the 200th year of the Monroe Doctrine? China may soon export fortune cookies with subversive messages or, more threatening yet, launch another weather balloon over the Pacific. It is reassuring that the US seventh fleet, including its “ghost” drone warships, still patrols the coast of China with its message of peace.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
-
ISHR and Freedom House hosted a group of young defenders from the diaspora for a training on UN human rights mechanisms and joint advocacy meetings in Geneva.
Eight activists working on Uyghur, Tibetan and Hong Kong rights across six countries, including Canada, Germany, India, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States, participated in the United Nations Advocacy Training (UNAT) program to learn and strategise together on ways to hold the Chinese government accountable for its human rights violations at the international level.
Why a training for youth diaspora activists?
Young activists play a critical role in diaspora movements to address and counter the Chinese government’s persecution of peoples from the Uyghur region, Tibet, and Hong Kong. When capacity building and support are available to them, they can meaningfully engage their host governments and international institutions, like the UN, to hold the Chinese government accountable for its ongoing abuses against their communities inside the People’s Republic of China, and acts of transnational repression outside Chinese borders. Unfortunately, youth diaspora activists don’t have many opportunities to convene and collaborate in those international spaces.
Working together as allies and partners, these groups can help increase the confidence in their efforts and improve impact and sustainability. Opportunities to network, train together, and work on joint advocacy efforts will help individual diaspora groups communicate and coordinate more effectively amongst themselves and with other relevant local and international groups to amplify and sustain pressure on the Chinese government for meaningful human rights change.
Aged between 19 and 28 years old, this was the first time that young activists from these communities came together in Geneva to work on cross-cutting community issues and build solidarity. Participants are engaged in rights advocacy through their work with established groups like the Hong Kong Democracy Council, Free Uyghur Now, and the Uyghur Human Rights Project or have founded impactful youth led organisations in their host countries, such as Students for a Free Tibet, Harvard College Students for Uyghur Solidarity, and Uyghur Youth Initiative. They are working toward better visibility and accountability towards violations outlined in the UN’s Xinjiang report published last August 2022, including the curtailment of free assembly and expression, mass surveillance, forced labour, and cultural and religious persecution.
During the interactive training programme, participants engaged with one another through peer check-in sessions, with human rights experts and advocates through live Q&As, discussions on the Human Rights Council, Special Procedures, Treaty Bodies and the Universal Periodic Review, and considered how to engage in advocacy activities at the UN in order to effect change for their communities.
The in-person training was designed to coincide with the 54th Session of the Human Rights Council so that the participants could attend the United Nations for the first time in their careers. As well as receiving additional advocacy training modules on all the UN human rights mechanisms from a range of experts, participants had the opportunity to build networks in Geneva and around the world, engage in meetings with UN member States and UN staff, and produce a powerful solidarity video statement which summarises their call to action to the UN States members.
#Training #UN #Statement @ISHRglobal @freedomhouse
— Salome_ISHR (@salome_ishr) September 20, 2023
Young #Uyghur, #Tibetan, and #HongKonger activists demand accountability to China for their relatives who are facing terrible persecution and injustice for their beliefs, culture, desire for freedom. WE MUST STAND WITH THEM
pic.twitter.com/Hrxz1KvizsAll of the participants expressed they were satisfied with the training and increased their skills and networks to engage in advocacy at the UN. Freedom House and ISHR will continue to support these participants as they develop joint advocacy initiatives and build solidarity among their communities.
Participants in front of the flags of UN Member States, at UN Office, Geneva
This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.
-
Chinese authorities in the northern region of Inner Mongolia have cut the number of weekly Mongolian language classes from schools across the region, Radio Free Asia has learned.
The move comes as schools complete the phasing out of Mongolian in favor of Mandarin as a medium of instruction for non-language classes including history, math and science — a policy that sparked mass protests by parents and students followed by a regionwide crackdown when it was first announced in September 2020.
Mongolian language classes have also now been banned from kindergarten, and reduced from seven timetabled classes a week to just three, according to people familiar with the matter.
Following on from the policy announced in 2020, the education bureau in the regional capital, Hohhot earlier this year ordered primary and secondary schools across the city to ensure they are using only Mandarin as the language of instruction from the start of the academic year on Sept. 1.
A school teacher in Inner Mongolia’s Ordos city who gave the single name Uyunqimg told RFA that Mongolian language classes have also been cut in many schools, and that the Mongolian language test will be removed from college entrance exams in the region.
“Mongolian language teaching hasn’t all been canceled, but that may happen gradually,” she said. “The ultimate goal is definitely canceling all of it, because the Mongolian-lanauge test is being removed from the college entrance exam.”
Mongolians protest China’s plan to introduce Mandarin-only classes at schools in the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia, at Sukhbaatar Square in Ulaanbaatar, capital of Mongolia, on Sept. 15, 2020. Credit: Byambasuren Byamba-Ochir/AFP
An ethnic Mongolian living in the region who is familiar with the matter but asked not to be named for fear of reprisal, confirmed that high school entrance exams will use Chinese only from 2025, while Mongolian will disappear from the college entrance exam by 2028.
“The trend in the future will be for the Mongolian language to gradually disappear from textbooks,” the person said. “However, there are still Mongolian language departments in Chinese colleges and universities, so it’s hard to say what will happen in future.”
Uyunqimg said some kindergartens have also stopped teaching students Mongolian children’s songs, replacing them with songs in Chinese.
“As far as I know, kindergartens now no longer teach Mongolian children’s songs, and teach children Chinese songs instead,” she said. “This is true in some places, but not necessarily in all places.”
“In some places, Mongolian language teachers have to teach other classes because there are obviously fewer Mongolian language classes,” Uyunqimg said.
Region is losing autonomy
The New York-based Southern Mongolia Human Rights and Information Center has also reported that the Chinese authorities are enforcing a total ban on the Mongolian language in all schools across Inner Mongolia.
“All Mongolian schools — including kindergartens — are now required to use Chinese exclusively as the medium of instruction for all subjects,” the group said in a Sept. 1 report on its website.
It quoted an ethnic Mongolian parent as saying in a WeChat discussion group that Beijing is “spreading misinformation and brainwashing the Mongolians.”
“Our autonomous region has lost autonomy entirely,” another said, while another said homeschooling wasn’t an option either.
“Refusing to send your children to school is not allowed,” they commented on the discussion.
“This is not just a denial of our right to our mother tongue,” said another WeChat comment. “This is a threat to the survival of our Mongolian nation and people.”
Plainclothes policemen in front of the Horqin Mongolian School in Tongliao in China’s northern Inner Mongolia region, Sept. 10, 2020, following protests over China’s bilingual education policy. Credit: Noel Celis/AFP
The report said the move was a facet of “cultural genocide” by the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
Yang Haiying, a professor at Shizuoka University in Japan, said the moves are all in line with the “cancellation” of the bilingual culture that once existed in the region’s schools.
“They are starting to implement Mandarin-medium teaching in line with the cancellation of the bilingual policy that was released in June 2020,” Yang said.
“There are very few Mongolian language classes now, and they just teach them how to write their own name and say greetings and so on.”
Exam points handicap
The Inner Mongolia Admissions and Examination authorities will also slash examination points handicaps for ethnic Mongolians, Daur, Oroqen, Evenk and Russians from 10 points to five with effect from 2026, according to the region’s official examinations and admissions website.
Yang said the move will widen inequality between ethnic minority students and majority Han Chinese, who get much bigger handicaps if they take the test in ethnic minority areas.
“If you’re Han Chinese and take the exam in the [Inner Mongolia] autonomous region, in Mongolian, you can get a handicap of 100 points,” he said.
Germany-based ethnic Mongolian activist Xi Haiming said the authorities are also using other methods to force ethnic Mongolian children to abandon their native language in favor of Chinese, often by putting pressure on parents at their place of work.
“Parents who send their kids to a school that teaches Mongolian can get fired, which is a lot of pressure,” Xi said.
“This coercive insistence on Chinese-medium teaching imposed on Mongolians by the authorities is really inhumane.”
Translated with additional reporting by Luisetta Mudie.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Gu Ting for RFA Mandarin.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
By Aubrey Belford, Kevin G. Hall and Martin Young
A pair of Chinese scam artists wanted to turn a radiation-soaked Pacific atoll into a future metropolis. They ended up in an American jail instead.
How they got there is an untold tale of international bribery and graft that stretched to the very heart of the United Nations.
The stakes could scarcely have been higher for Hilda Heine, the former president of the Marshall Islands.
- READ MORE: Flashback: The Rongelap and the boat and the bomb story
- The full OCCRP investigation
- Other reports on Rongelap and the scam
A new OCCRP investigation reveals details of how Chinese-born fraudsters Cary Yan and Gina Zhou paid more than US$1 million to UN diplomats to gain access to its headquarters in New York, before embarking on a controversial plan to set up an autonomous zone near an important US military facility in the Pacific Ocean.
For years, Hilda Heine’s remote archipelago nation of just 40,000 people was best known to the world for Cold War nuclear testing that left scores of its islands poisoned.
Sitting in the centre of the Pacific Ocean, the country was a strategic but forgotten US ally.
But the arrival of a couple of mysterious strangers threatened to change all that. With buckets of cash at their disposal, the Chinese pair, Cary Yan and Gina Zhou, had grand plans that could have thrust the Marshall Islands into the growing rivalry between China and the West, and perhaps fracture the country itself.
Public controversy
First proposed in 2017, while Heine was still president, Yan and Zhou’s idea raised public controversy.With backing from foreign investors, the couple planned to rehabilitate one irradiated atoll, Rongelap, and turn it into a futuristic “digital special administrative region.”
The Marshall Islands Journal’s front page on 9 September 2022 reporting Cary Yan and Gina Zhou being extradited from Thailand to the US to face bribery and related criminal charges in New York. Image: MIJ screenshot/APR The new city of artificial islands would include an aviation logistics center, wellness resorts, a gaming and entertainment zone, and foreign embassies.
Thanks in part to the liberal payment of bribes, Yan and Zhou had managed to gain the support of some of the Marshall Islands’ most powerful politicians. They then lobbied for a draft bill that would have given the proposed zone, known as the Rongelap Atoll Special Administrative Region (RASAR), its own separate courts and immigration laws.
Heine was opposed. The whole thing reeked of a Chinese effort to gain influence over the strategically located Marshall Islands, she told OCCRP.
A map of Rongelap Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Image: Credit: Edin Pasovic/James O’Brien/OCCRP The plan was unconstitutional and would have created a virtually “independent country” within the Marshall Islands’ borders, she said.
The new Chinese investor-backed zone would also have occupied a geographically sensitive spot just 200 km of open water away from Kwajalein Atoll, where the US Army runs facilities that test intercontinental ballistic missiles and track foreign rocket launches.
Became a target
But when President Heine argued against the draft law, she became a target herself. In November 2018, pro-RASAR politicians backed by Yan and Zhou pushed a no-confidence motion to remove her from power.She survived by one vote.
Even then, the president said she had no idea who this influential duo really were. Although they seemed to be Chinese, they carried Marshall Islands passports, which gave them visa free access to the United States. Nobody seemed to know how they had obtained them.
World Organisation of Governance and Competitiveness representatives Gina Zhou (left) and Cary Yan (center) at a restaurant in New York. Image: OCCRP “We looked and looked and we couldn’t find when and how they got [the passports],” Heine said. “We didn’t know what their connections were or if they had any connections with the Chinese government.
“But of course we were suspicious.”
The plan came to an abrupt end in November 2020, when Yan and Zhou were arrested in Thailand on a US warrant. After being extradited to face trial in New York, they pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to bribe Marshallese officials.
Both were sentenced earlier this year. Zhou was deported to the Marshall Islands shortly after her sentencing, while Yan is due for release this November.
But although the federal case led to a brief burst of media attention, it left key questions unanswered.
Who really were Yan and Zhou? Who helped them in their audacious scheme? Were they simply crooks? Or were they also working to advance the interests of the Chinese government?
OCCRP spent nearly a year trying to find answers, conducting interviews around the world and poring through thousands of pages of documents.
What reporters uncovered was a story more bizarre — and with far broader implications — than first expected.
Aubrey Belford, Kevin G. Hall and Martin Young are investigative writers for the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). Republished with permission.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
-
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will lead a bipartisan group of six senators on a trip next week to China, South Korea and Japan, with reports they hope to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing.
The delegation will include Democrats Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Jon Ossoff of Georgia, according to an announcement from Schumer’s office. Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, will be joined by Sens. Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy, both Republicans of Louisiana.
The trip to China was scheduled with the goal of “advancing U.S. economic and national security interests in the region,” the document says, and will also include business leaders from both countries.
“Leader Schumer will focus on the need for reciprocity in China for U.S. businesses that will level the playing field for American workers, as well as on maintaining U.S. leadership in advanced technologies for national security,” the document says. It also lists fentanyl, human rights and China’s “role in the international community” as topics.
The announcement does not provide dates for the trip – or details about South Korea and Japan legs – but says it will take place during next week’s Senate recess, which begins Friday and ends Oct. 16.
Xi meeting
A report by Bloomberg, citing anonymous courses, said the senators hope to meet with Xi while in China, and plan to discuss a ban on the sale in China of products made by U.S. chipmaker Micron, which was unveiled in June amid the ongoing U.S.-China “chip war.”
Crapo’s office confirmed the planned trip to RFA but declined to comment further on the itinerary. Schumer’s office did not respond to a request for comment. The Chinese Embassy in Washington welcomed the trip but also declined to comment on any Xi meeting.
“China welcomes people from all walks of life in the United States, including members of the Congress, to visit China so as to have a better understanding of China, promote exchanges between the two countries, and inject more positive energy into the China-U.S. relationship,” said embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu.
Next week’s trip comes amid an attempted thaw in the relationship between China and the United States that is now four months old.
Over that time, four members of President Joe Biden’s cabinet have visited Beijing, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. However, a senior member of China’s government is yet to make the reverse trip to Washington.
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.
-
After the South Korean prime minister visited China last month, a claim circulated in Korean-language posts that Chinese media outlets “did not cover the prime minister’s visit at all” in protest against Seoul’s recent efforts to strengthen ties with the United States and Japan.
But the claim is false. Keyword searches found Han Duck-soo’s visit was widely covered by Chinese media, including the People’s Daily and Xinhua News Agency. His meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping also garnered significant media attention in China.
The claim was shared here on Facebook in a group with more than 70,000 members who mostly maintain anti-U.S, pro-China view.
“South Korean media outlets have been heavily promoting the S Korean PM’s visit to China as if it’s a big deal. But there is zero coverage by the Chinese media. Nothing. If S Korea wants a proper summit with China, Yoon [referring to the South Korean President] must apologize to China first for upsetting it [with latest moves to cement ties with the U.S. and Japan],” reads the post.
It was shared by a user who claims to be a head of South Korea-based NGO “Green Transport Policy Institute.” Further searches found the user has often spread Chia-related misinformation online.
Similar claims have been shared in other Korean-language Facebook posts that claimed both Xinhua News Agency and People’s Daily did not cover South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo’s visit to China.
Screenshot of the misleading Facebook post, taken on Sept. 27, 2023 The claim began to circulate after Han arrived in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou on Sept. 23 to attend the opening ceremony of the Asian Games and meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the sporting event.
During his two-day visit, Han attended a luncheon hosted by Xi for the leaders of countries competing in the Asian Games and held talks with Xi ahead of the opening ceremony later in that day.
South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported that Xi, who has not visited South Korea since 2014, told Han that he will seriously consider visiting South Korea as part of efforts to support peace and security on the Korean Peninsula.
Han was the first high-level South Korean official to meet with Xi since President Yoon Suk Yeol met with him on the sidelines of a Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, in Nov. 2022.
But the claim is false.
Keyword searches of Han’s Chinese name in simplified Chinese, used in mainland China, show Chinese media outlets have been heavily covering Han’s visit to China and his meeting with Xi as seen on CCTV, China News Agency, Xinhua, etc.
Both People’s Daily and Xinhua News Agency also covered the news in their Korean language service.
Screenshots of reports from People’s Daily and Xinhua News Agency, captured on Sept. 27, 2023Yoon, a conservative, has endeavored to align Seoul’s foreign policy with that of the United States in order to counter global challenges such as North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. Yoon has prioritized strengthening its military and economic cooperation with Washington and Tokyo to this end.
South Koreans are largely divided on Yoon’s policy, with conservatives applauding the approach because they believe it could effectively promote North Korea’s denuclearization. Liberals, including the main opposition Democratic Party, contend that such an approach exacerbates tensions on the Korean Peninsula, citing the possibility of jeopardizing relations with China.
Han’s visit to China has become a source of disinformation among pro-China online users who support the DP. In addition to the false claim that Chinese media outlets ignored Han, users claimed that Xi was intentionally rude to Han to “teach him a lesson” and that Chinese authorities “mistreated” South Korean delegates in a protest against Yoon.
Edited by Malcolm Foster.
Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) is a branch of RFA established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. Our journalists publish both daily and special reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of public issues.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Taejun Kang for RFA.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
Tell me, what planet are we actually on? All these decades later, are we really involved in a “second” or “new” Cold War? It’s certainly true that, as late as the 1980s, the superpowers (or so they then liked to think of themselves), the United States and the Soviet Union, were still engaged in just such a Cold War, something that might have seemed almost positive at the time. After all, a “hot”…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
