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Category: China

  • How Does Technology Factor in for US Militarism toward China?


    The United States is about militarism. Its economy is largely based on the military-industrial complex. It has hundreds upon hundreds of military bases in lands around the planet. Yet, despite a bloated military budget, the US fails to care for all its citizens, certainly not the millions of homeless, poor, and those unable to afford medical procedures because they are without medical insurance; however, the US does house and feed its soldiers, marines, and air-force personnel abroad. Yet, when it comes to its veterans there is often a price they must pay. Nonetheless, what must not be forgotten is the far greater price paid by the victims of US aggression.

    The US claims full-spectrum dominance. US politicians make bellicose statements about which country the US will attack next. And when a pretext is required the US will fabricate one. (See AB Abrams’s excellent book Atrocity Fabrications and Its Consequences, 2023. Review)

    I asked Wei Ling Chua, the author of 3 books including Democracy: What the west can learn from China and Tiananmen Square’s “Massacre”? The Power of Words vs Silent Evidence, how aggressive US posturing impacts China.

    Kim Petersen: It is clear that the US is waging an economic war against China. However, based on the bombast of several American military and political figures, the US is also pining for a military confrontation. US Air Force four-star general Mike Minihan said his gut warns of a war with China in 2025.  The Chinese claim to most of the South China Sea has caused the US to assert the right to freedom of navigation by sailing its warships off the Chinese coast. But when has China ever denied any ships the right to freely traverse the South China Sea? And as for the disputed territoriality in the South China Sea, why does the US arrogate to itself a supposed right to meddle in the affairs of other countries even those thousands of kilometers from the US shoreline? The Brookings Institute informs that of potential threats worldwide, “China gets pride of place as security challenge number one — even though China has not employed large-scale military force against an adversary since its 1979 war [what even Wikipedia calls a “brief conflict”] with Vietnam.” Consider that the media organ of British capitalism, The Economist, complains that “People’s Liberation Army (PLA) fighter jets keep staging recklessly close, high-speed passes to intimidate Western military aircraft in international airspace near China.” The magazine doesn’t blink at the risible scenario it has described: foreign fighter planes near China. Isn’t there sufficient airspace for American military jets in the US? Or sufficient coastline to practice freedom of navigation with its warships in US waters?

    The US is so fixated on the economic rise of China that it even scuppered a multibillion-dollar deal its ally France had to sell submarines to Australia and replace it with nuclear submarines to be supplied by itself and the United Kingdom — AUKUS. The obvious target of the nuclear subs: China. China’s foreign minister Qin Gang has called on the US to put the brakes on to avoid confrontation and conflict. What does all the militaristic hoopla directed at China portend?

    Nonetheless, SCMP.com reported on 24 March 2023 that China has developed a coating for its submarines — an “active” tile based on giant magnetostrictive material (GMM) technology — that “could turn the US active sonar technology against itself.”

    Also, the Chinese navy has many more ships than the US (around 340 Chinese navy ships to the 300 US navy ships) and that gap is widening.

    Given that the rise of China is not just economic, but that China has also developed a staunch defensive capability, what do the military experts say about China’s capability of defending itself against an American attack? Such an attack would also be insane because war between two nuclear-armed foes is a scenario in which there are no winners.

    Wei Ling Chua: The US is the most warmongering country on the planet with every inch of its territory looted from others. Like former US President Jimmy Carter told Trump in a (2019) phone conversation: “US has only enjoyed 16 years of peace in its 242-year history.”  The US is also the only nuclear power ever to use such a weapon of mass destruction, which it did on 2 populated civilian cities (Hiroshima and Nagasaki). So, any military threat from the US cannot be taken lightly.

    In addition, one should also note that the Chinese military grouped itself into 5 defense regions (Western defense region, Northern defense region, Central defense region, Southern defense region, and Eastern defense region), they are all within China and defensive in nature; whereas, the US military grouped itself into 6 command centers covering the entire world [Africa Command (AFRICOM), Southern Command (covering Latin America), European Command (covering Europe, part of the Middle East and Eurasia), Central Command (covering the Middle East), Indo-Pacific Command (covering the entire Asia Pacific Region, and half the Indian Ocean), and Northern Command (covering the US, Alaska, Canada, Mexico, and Bahamas)]. The US military is obviously imperialistic in nature.

    However, the good news is that after WW2, the US-led military coalition never won any war in Asia. Their military coalition was badly beaten in the Korean War and Vietnam War (both of which involved China). The latest sudden and messy US withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years of brutal occupation demonstrates that the US military is not as powerful as perceived. It appears to be as Mao famously described: “A Paper Tiger.”

    I believe that if the US regime is informed and rational, it will not dare to start a war with China on the Chinese doorstep. The reasons are quite obvious:

    1) After the Korean and Vietnam wars, the US never dared to directly attack any well-armed country such as North Korea, Iran, USSR/Russia, etc. For example, in 2020, Iran fired 22 missiles at 2 US airbases in revenge for the cowardly US assassination of their minister (Qasem Soleimani) while he was on an official diplomatic visit inside Iraq. Despite the Pentagon’s initial playing down of the severity of the Iranian attacks, it was later admitted that 109 US troops had suffered brain injuries. The US did not dare take further military action against Iran.

    My perception from this incident is that the US is too confident — that no one dares to take military action against their military bases across the world.So, they are complacent and failed to invest in underground shelters in those 2 airbases. So, it is reasonable to assume that such weaknesses are likely to be widespread across all the other US military bases across the world.

    2) All the countries the US and NATO attacked after the Korean War and Vietnam War were developing countries. It was only after these countries had been weakened by years of economic sanctions and were without a decent air and sea defense system (e.g., Libya, Syria, Iraq, etc). One should note that the US invasion of Iraq was carried out only after over a decade of UN weapons inspection, disarmament, and economic sanctions. That is after the Iraqi economy and its advanced weaponry were destroyed. As a result, US fighter jets were able to take their own sweet time, flying low, flying slowly to identify targets and bombs. So, the US military weapons have yet to be tested in confrontation with a militarily powerful country, one armed with air and sea defense systems.

    As for the perceived US military might and superior high-tech weaponry, I believe that the following examples will shed some light on whether the US is more militarily powerful or China:

    Firstly, we should thank the United States for its ongoing military actions across the world, and its marketing tactics to promote its image as a superpower, with the intention to sell weapons and to scare the world into submission from its position of strength. Below is a series of US announcements of new weaponry that had frightened the Chinese; as a result, China commissioned her scientists to invent powerful weapons with ideas initiated by the Americans. E.g.,

    Hypersonic Missiles

    • The US is the first country that commissioned a hypersonic bomber program capable of nuking any country worldwide within an hour in the early 2000s. Such an announcement scared the Chinese and Russians. Yet, whereas the US failed miserably and decided to shut down the program in early 2023, we have witnessed that Russia and China successfully developed hypersonic missile technology.  Ironically, given the US failure and China’s success in the technology, the Washington Post published a report titled “American technology boosts China’s hypersonic missile program” to attribute China’s hypersonic missile success to US technology. (When one comes by this type of baseless claim of US technological superiority over China, besides having a good laugh, I am really speechless at the unbelievably shameless nature of the American propaganda machine)

    Laser Guns

    • The US is also the first country which commissioned a laser gun program. In 2014, the US announced that the weapon was installed on USS Ponce for field testing with success. However, in 2023, CBS News reported that the Pentagon spent $1b a year to develop these weapons and stated that  “Whether such weapons are worth the money is an open question, and the answer likely depends on whom you ask. For defense contractors, of course, a new generation of powerful military hardware could provide vast new revenue streams.” The irony is that in 2022, China had already exported its laser guns to Saudi Arabia and that country was reported to have successfully gunned down 13 incoming attack drones.

    One ought to recall what happened to Saudi oil facilities in 2019 when drones attacked. The report at that time was: “US-made Patriot anti-aircraft missiles, the main air defense of Saudi Arabia that was so useless last Saturday, cost $3m apiece.” In addition, there is the recent bad news that the vaunted US Patriot missile system was put out of action by a Russian hypersonic missile in Kiev on the 16th of May 2023. The report’s title was “A Patriot Radar Station and five missile batteries destroyed in Russian hypersonic strikes”. Obviously, the mendacious US military-industrial complex was successfully ripping off a lot of its allies which paid super high prices for their inferior products.

    F-35 “World Most Advanced” stealth fighter

    • The US is a country that loves to boast about its military capability even when the concept is still in an imaginary stage. E.g., introduced in 2006 as the world’s most advanced stealth fighter, the F-35 is also regarded as the US’s most expensive 5th-generation warplane. However, in the past 5 years alone, more than a dozen F-35s crashed across the world despite not operating in a war zone. In 2019, Japan confirmed that an F-35A jet had crashed, causing the remaining F-35s in Japan to be grounded. In 2021, two F-35s were damaged and grounded by a lightning strike in the sky over western Japan. Forbes magazine ran a report titled “Japan is about to waste its F35s shadowing Chinese plane” with this statement: “The stealth fighter is too expensive, too unreliable, and too valuable for other missions to waste it on boring up-and-down flights.” In 2020, The National Interest reported that “The F-35 Stealth Fighter still has hundreds of flaws.” And in 2021, Forbes magazine reported, “The US Air Force just admitted the F35 stealth fighter has failed.” In 2022, the Chinese [People’s Liberation Army] PLA detected an F-35 over the East China Sea and confronted it with their J20 fighter jet, and according to US Airforce General Kenneth Wilbach: “American Lockheed Martin F-35s had had at least one encounter with China’s J-20 stealth fighters recently in the East China Sea and that the US side was ‘impressed’.” These cases demonstrated that the US’s supposedly most advanced “stealth fighter” is visible to Chinese radar technology.

    Space Technology/Rocket Engines

    • Despite the US’s stringent technology bans against China, including even attending international space conferences in the US, China is now the only country to have independently and successfully built its own space station. The International space station (ISS) was created by a number of countries with the Russian contribution being the most crucial part of putting the station and astronauts (with Russian rockets) in space. However, as usual, the American media likes to bullshit to save face. So, in 2020, when the American media reported the news that NASA paid the Russians $90m to send an astronaut to the ISS, the title was: “Despite SpaceX success, NASA will pay Russia $90m to take US astronaut to ISS”. The irony is that in 2022, the US imposed the strictest economic sanctions against Russia including confiscating Russian public and private assets in the West and banning Russia from the SWIFT payment system due to Russia’s military action in Ukraine to prevent NATO expansion. As a counter-US sanction measure, NASA was forced to pay Russia in rubles (2 billion) to take the American astronaut back to Earth. These two incidents should be enough evidence that SpaceX’s space technology is not as advanced as its public relations. The Russians and the Chinese appear more advanced than NASA/Elon Musk’s SpaceX in transporting astronauts to and from a space station.

    Many people may not have noticed that, in 2015, the US ordered 20 rocket engines from Russia. So, in 2022, when Russia counters US-Ukraine war sanctions with a ban on selling their rocket engines to the US, TechCrunch+ reported the situation with an honest title in recognition of the reality: “Russia halts rocket engine sales to US, suggests flying to space on their ‘broomsticks’.”

    GPS Vs Beidou Global Navigation/positioning systems

    • Global positioning technology is a vital part of many advanced weapon systems including land, sea, and air travel: In 1993, the US government falsely accused a Chinese commercial cargo ship with the registered name ‘Yinhe’ of transporting chemical weapon materials to Iran. The US government then cut off Yinhe’s GPS for 24 days to strand them in the Indian Ocean and forced them to allow US officials to board the cargo ship for inspection and nothing was found. Again, in 1996, the PLA conducted a series of missile tests in the Taiwan Strait, and the US again suddenly shut down the GPS used by the PLA. Both incidents led to the Chinese government’s investment in its own Global positioning technology.

    In 2003, the cash-strapped EU invited China to participate in their Galileo navigation satellite project. However, after China transferred €200 million (US$270 million) to the project, in the name of security concerns, China was forced out of major decision-making by the EU in 2007. The irony is that China managed to develop its own Global positioning system (Beidou) faster than the EU’s Galileo project. As a “revenge” perhaps, on a “first-launched, first-served” international wavelength application rule, China successfully registered the use of transmit signals on the wavelength that the EU wanted to use for Galileo’s public regulated service. The New York Times reported the story with a title: ‘Chinese Square off with Europe in Space’.

    One may notice that the US’s aging GPS satellite system has been having a lot of problems in the past years. Just do a web search under GPS breakdown, GPS jamming, GPS outages, GPS error, GPS problems, GPS malfunction, etc., to find out about the reliability of the GPS system.

    Contrariwise, the Chinese Beidou navigation system is a Chinese owned technology with new functions and apparently more precision than the GPS. For example:

    • The Chinese Beidou can be used for text communication between users, while the GPS cannot. So, Huawei became the first company to add satellite texting to their phone device (Mate 50). The significance of such a new communication feature is that, during wartime, the PLA command center or between individual PLA soldiers will be able to communicate with each other with no blind spot. That will enable rapid battlefield intelligence gathering and transmission.
    • In addition, if one ever uses a Beidou navigation device while driving, one should notice that the device’s screen displays the position of the specific car on a specific lane. Should the driver change lanes, the screen will display the changes instantly. That is an indication that Beidou’s navigation system is far more accurate and advanced than the GPS in terms of positioning precision and processing speed. This may imply that the Chinese satellite-guided missiles will be more accurate than the US GPS-guided missiles.
    • A report by Japan Nikkei in 2020 headlined, “Chinese Beidou navigation system has surpassed American GPS in over 165 countries.” That indicates that the Beidou system is a tested, mature navigation technology.
    • A recently published report of a series of computer simulations run by a research team in China revealed that China needs only 24 hypersonic anti-ship missiles to destroy the newest US aircraft carrier and its accompanying warships.

    I consider that China is superior in technology to the US. For example, a recent Australian Strategy Policy Institute report acknowledged, “China leads the world in 37 out of 44 critical technologies.”

    Of course, unless the US regime is crazy enough to start a mutually destructive nuclear war, there is little reason to believe that the US would be able to win a war with non-nuclear weapons on China’s doorstep.

    Winning a war is not just about weaponry: the Korean War, Vietnam War, and Afghanistan War have already demonstrated that a coalition of the most militarily powerful imperialistic nations can be defeated by the people of a lesser-armed nation fighting for their freedom. So, beyond the use of advanced weaponry, the factors that determine who will win a war include:

        • the unity of the citizens,
        • the fighting morale of the soldiers,
        • the logistical support,
        • the military strategies,
        • the ability to manufacture more weapons with speed to sustain a long war;
        • the manufacturing supply chains
        • the energy supply and reserve,
        • the food supply and reserve,
        • the money to sustain a war, and
        • the neighboring countries’ attitude toward the warring parties.

    So, when one goes through the above list, one should easily come to the conclusion that the US is in a  disadvantageous position to travel across the Pacific Ocean to attack China on its doorstep.

    *****
    Upcoming: What does US militarism augur in the context of Taiwan?


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • US tells another bedtime story to scare away normal relations with China and Cuba

    This story originally appeared in Peoples Dispatch on June 9, 2023. It is shared here under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

    On June 8, the US media added to its long storybook of tales to scare people away from normal relations with Cuba. The Wall Street Journal published an article on that day claiming that China has plans to set up a “spy base” in Cuba, to “eavesdrop” on the United States and “identify potential strike targets.” WSJ has already published two more pieces since rapidly ramping up its narrative against the Cuban state and fermenting more paranoia as the news spreads across mainstream news outlets in the United States.

    Meanwhile, Cuban officials held a press conference on June 8 to completely deny the allegations. Cuba’s Vice Foreign Minister Carlos de Cossío stated that “All these are fallacies promoted with the deceitful intention of justifying the unprecedented tightening of the blockade, destabilization, and aggression against Cuba and of deceiving public opinion in the United States and the world.” Even John Kirby, National Security Council spokesman who was the former press secretary for the Pentagon, has denied the WSJ report, calling it “inaccurate.”

    This is just one new addition to the long legacy of lies that the United States has been spinning in an attempt to further alienate the Cuban people. One just has to remember the “Havana syndrome” that mysteriously affected diplomats in Cuba; it was first blamed on foreign powers as an attack but was later revealed to have no basis. Or maybe the claims about 20,000 Cuban soldiers supposedly based in Venezuela to maintain the government there, when in reality, the vast majority of Cubans present in Venezuela were medical workers. Or perhaps the idea that Cuban doctors sent across the world are enslaved, when it is simply their understanding that their duty to humanity is to provide health care to those who need it. All of these lies have been told just in the past few years alone.

    These falsified stories all swirl into fomenting the atmosphere of paranoia and suspicion that prevents normal US-Cuba relations. In the wake of the Havana syndrome myth, Trump was able to interrupt the path Obama set toward normalization, setting 243 additional and comprehensive sanctions, and further preventing the island from meeting its basic needs. The United States continues to live out its Cold War fantasies through these lies, at the cost of the Cuban people’s lives and well-being.

    And yet, it maintains its hypocrisy. Cossío was careful to point out that Cuba would never allow a foreign military base on their island, as it is a signatory of the Declaration of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace. Cuba is also currently sponsoring and hosting peace talks between Colombia and the National Liberation Army (ELN). As of today, they have agreed to a cease-fire, ending decades of violence in the country. Cuba already suffers from the illegal US occupation of Guantanamo, to further rub salt in the wound. The United States has its infamous military base there, which is known for the inhumane treatment and torture it deals out to its prisoners. While it accuses China of military expansion, the United States has hundreds of military bases all over the globe.

    Cuba has demonstrated that it desires nothing but peace in the region, and normal relations with its neighbor, the United States. But the United States refuses to accept this proposal. Instead, it maintains the most comprehensive sanctions in history against the small island. Instead, it falsely places Cuba on the state sponsors of terrorism list, even though it is in fact a sponsor of peace. Instead, the US government and its media apparatuses choose to fabricate myths and legends, painting Cuba as the evil monster under the bed. It chooses to scare the US people away from the possibility that normal relations and ending the blockade against Cuba could be good for people from both countries.

    This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

  • Cuba spy base revelations may jeopardize Blinken China visit

    Chinese state media has reacted forcefully to reports of an alleged Chinese “electronic eavesdropping facility” on Cuba, claiming that the “smearing” of China jeopardizes an anticipated Beijing visit by U.S. top diplomat Antony Blinken.

    A Wall Street Journal story on Thursday last week claimed that China has invested in Cuba with the purpose of establishing a listening post there.

    The report was first denied by White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby as “not accurate” but later confirmed on Saturday, by an anonymous Biden administration official, who told Politico that China has operated a spy base out of Cuba since at least 2019, adding, “This is an issue that this administration inherited.”

    The unnamed official said that the base, which can pick up U.S. military and commercial signals, is “an ongoing issue … not a new development.”

    China pushes back

    Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said in a press conference on Friday he was “not aware” of any such arrangement.

    “It is well known that the US is an expert on chasing shadows and meddling in other countries’ internal affairs,” he said, adding that the U.S. has “long illegally occupied Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay for secretive activities and imposed a blockade on Cuba for over 60 years.

    “The US is the global champion of hacking and superpower of surveillance,” Wang said.

    Chinese media claimed that the “media hype” and “smearing” of China put the thawing of Sino-U.S. relations at risk.

    “The U.S. had unilaterally announced that top diplomat Antony Blinken planned to visit China in February of this year, but it was postponed due to the so-called ‘balloon incident,’” the online version of state mouthpiece the People’s Daily said.

    “This time U.S media once again claims Blinken may soon be visiting China, while broadcasting ‘fake news’ that China intends to build an eavesdropping facility in Cuba.”

    Blinken’s visit is tentatively scheduled for June 18 with hopes it might bring about a thaw in China-U.S. relations, but China has yet to agree to the visit and has rebuffed many recent overtures from Washington.

    ‘U.S. politics to blame’

    Chinese press continued that it was difficult not to suspect that “some forces in the U.S. political arena … do not want Sino-U.S. relations to ease [and] are constantly undermining the relationship between the two countries.”

    The English-language tabloid Global Times added that the latest U.S. developments recalled “the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 – one of the fiercest scenes of the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union – [and] could be a new farce staged by the media and some U.S. politicians as ‘good cop, bad cop’ with the purpose of gaining the ‘upper hand’ and pressuring China in any possible dialogue,” a reference to Antony Blinken’s possible visit to China.”

    Improving Sino-U.S. relations still faces great challenges, Chinese media chorused.

    2023-06-08T173006Z_1198142528_RC2451AZVYMS_RTRMADP_3_USA-CHINA-SECURITY.JPG
    A view of the U.S. Embassy beside the Anti-Imperialist stage in Havana, Cuba, May 24, 2023.  Credit: Reuters/Alexandre Meneghin

     

    Han Yang, a former Chinese Foreign Ministry diplomat now in Australia, told RFA that the U.S. had left itself open to the Chinese move by allowing itself to be held hostage by the exiled Cuban community, providing Beijing with an opportunity to set up operations on Florida’s doorstep.  

    “I think … the embargoes have been proved counterproductive and created opportunities for China to invest in Cuba,” Yang said. “The sanctions don’t make any foreign policy sense as the U.S. trades with many nations with worse human rights records than Cuba.”

    Two leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee released a joint statement Thursday, even before the spy base was anonymously confirmed, reported Politico.

    “The United States must respond to China’s ongoing and brazen attacks on our nation’s security. We must be clear that it would be unacceptable for China to establish an intelligence facility within 100 miles [160 kilometers] of Florida and the United States, in an area also populated with key military installations and extensive maritime traffic,” senators Mark Warner and Marco Rubio said.

    An expert on the U.S. told the Global Times on Sunday that while China is open for talks and will not put up barriers to communication, it was still possible that the Biden administration and US politicians could trip over themselves.

    “It’s a highly controversial topic in the US about how to deal with China, and obviously, the Biden administration’s decision-making on the topic is under heavy impact of the U.S.’ internal politics,” said Lu Xiang, an expert on U.S. studies and research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.  

    “By spreading groundless accusations, the Biden administration is actually trying to legitimize its close reconnaissance missions and spy activities around China’s territorial waters and airspace,” Lu said.

    Edited by Mike Firn.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • US Calls China “Aggressive”

    This week’s News on China video, presented by Tings Chak.

    • US calls China “aggressive”
    • Suez Canal investments
    • Multinational pharmaceuticals in China
    • History of bicycles in China

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Blinken to travel to China next week: Reports

    U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Beijing next week, Reuters and the Associated Press reported Friday, as the United States seeks to shore up strained ties with China.

    Both Reuters and AP said Blinken would be in Beijing on June 18, next Sunday, citing anonymous American officials. AP said he would meet with Foreign Minister Qin Gang and possibly President Xi Jinping.

    State Department officials would not confirm the reported plans.

    In February, Blinken abruptly canceled a trip to Beijing just hours before he was set to depart Washington after officials said a Chinese spy balloon was found floating over the United States. China insisted it was a weather balloon that strayed off course.

    Since then, an unofficial trip by Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen to New York and Los Angeles in March has further inflamed ties.

    Relations between the world’s two major powers have been tense since August, when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan to the protests of Beijing, which regards the democratic island as a renegade province and has vowed to reunite it with the mainland.

    There has also been an uptick in near-miss accidents between the two countries’ militaries in the past two weeks in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait, with the Pentagon accusing China’s navy and air force of dangerous maneuvering in front of American vessels.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • China braces for yet another ‘furnace’ summer

    An early heatwave in southern and southwestern China, which saw electricity demand hitting peak levels in May, suggests that China may face another scorcher of a summer – even fiercer than last year’s record-breaking season, according to meteorological reports.

    So far, the heat has reportedly been particularly punishing on animals, with hundreds of pigs perishing in Jiangsu, central China, fish dying in southwestern China’s Guangxi province and Chengdu suffering shortages of rabbit heads – a much-loved Sichuanese street snack.

    Peak electricity demand was recorded in late May, a month earlier than last year, while in Beijing the temperature is expected to nudge at 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) next week and Shanghai recorded a 150-year-record-high temperature for the month on May 29 at 36.7 C (98 F), eclipsing the previous high of 35.7 C (96.3 F) recorded in May 1876.

    Was last year a warm-up?

    Last summer, RFA reported that industry in the Yangtze Region, including semiconductor manufacturer Foxconn, was forced to scale back on production amid a heatwave and drought, in which the authorities prioritized residential electricity supply so that people could run air-conditioning.

    “The Yangtze River delta has never experienced such high temperatures since historical records began, and high temperatures like this are accompanied by drought,” Jiangsu-based current affairs commentator Zhang Jianping told Radio Free Asia at the time.

    The unseasonably hot weather in China comes on the heels of record-breaking temperatures in Southeast Asia during April and May, as RFA reported.

    In Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam and Laos, the heat led to deaths and hospitalizations, closed schools and caused losses to farmers and business-owners. 

    The region saw the mercury reach record highs everywhere, with Thailand’s capital, Bangkok, experiencing its hottest day on record on April 6, 2023, when the city recorded a temperature of 40.2 C (104.4 F).

    The heat index, which measures how hot it feels when humidity is factored in, reached a staggering 50.2 C (122 F) in some areas of Bangkok, according to local news reports.

    The ‘worst heatwave in history’

    Some experts are already calling it the “worst heatwave in history” and it is not just affecting Southeast Asia and China; records are even being broken in high-latitude Siberia, CNN reported.

    Jalturovosk in Siberia had its hottest day in history on June 3 at 37.9 C (100.2 F), according to Maximiliano Herrera, who tracks extreme temperatures across the globe.

    Experts blame it on global warming, El Niño, atmospheric blocking patterns and urban heat island effects.

    But a likely return of El Niño, a weather pattern caused by warming of sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, is of particular concern this year, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

    AP23141211273419.jpg
    Residents cool off along a canal during a heat wave in Beijing, Sunday, May 21, 2023. ( AP Photo/Andy Wong)

    In an update on May 3, the WMO warned that there is a 60% chance for a transition to El Niño during May-July 2023, increasing to about 70% in June-August and 80% between July and September.

    The organization added that the development of an El Niño will most likely lead to a new spike in global heating and increase the chance of breaking temperature records. It advised the world to prepare for the impacts, such as increased rainfall, droughts, heat waves and storms.

    China and beyond

    Back in China, local reports are already warning of possible hardships to come, chiefly focusing on the possibility of a food security crisis involving essential crops such as wheat, which has already been affected by heavy May rain and high temperatures, and rice, which Chinese agricultural experts are warning will likely be affected by high temperatures and drought conditions.   

    On June 2, China’s Meteorological Agency held a press conference, in which experts urged local governments to prepare for the coming heat, warning that densely urban areas are likely to be vulnerable to the so-called “urban heat island effect” and rural areas suffering from heatwaves will also likely experience droughts, the combination of which can devastating to crops.

    Bloomberg reports that China has so far avoided any large-scale power cuts, but shoppers are spurning daytime shopping for night markets and beer and ice cream sales have risen.

    Air conditioner sales are up 95% from last year, according to local Chinese-language news reports.

    A UN report in March warned that “every increment” of global warming will escalate multiple and concurrent hazards.

    According to scientists, the past eight years have been the eight warmest on record globally, with 2016 being the hottest on record. 

    The World Meteorological Organization says that is primarily due to the “double whammy” of a powerful El Niño event and human-induced warming from greenhouse gasses.

    Edited by Mike Firn and Malcolm Foster.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • ASEAN members to hold first joint drills in contested South China Sea

    Southeast Asian nations will hold their first joint military exercises in the South China Sea, ASEAN chair Indonesia said Thursday, amid rising tensions between Beijing and Washington in the disputed waterway and Taiwan Strait.

    The non-combat drills will take place near Indonesia’s Natuna Islands in September as a show of unity among the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Indonesian military officials said.

    “All [ASEAN countries] have confirmed that they will attend,” Julius Widjojono, a spokesman for Indonesia’s armed forces, told BenarNews, adding the drill would be an annual event. However, there had been no confirmation from Myanmar on whether it would take part, Julius said. Strife-torn Myanmar is persona non grata at major ASEAN meetings.

    China claims nearly the entire South China Sea, including waters within the exclusive economic zones of Taiwan and ASEAN member-states Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. While Indonesia does not regard itself as a party to the South China Sea dispute, Beijing claims historic rights to parts of that sea overlapping Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone in and around the Natunas.

    Indonesia’s military commander Adm. Yudo Margono, who proposed the ASEAN drill during a meeting of the bloc’s defense forces chiefs on Wednesday in Bali, said the exercises would enhance regional stability.

    “Indonesia will continue to promote a safe, peaceful and stable region free from any threats and disturbances that threaten the sovereignty of the states,” Yudo said in a statement Wednesday.

    “A safe sea will automatically boost our countries’ economy.”

    ‘Strong message to the major powers’

    The ASEAN drill, dubbed ASEAN Solidity Exercise, or Asec01N, will involve army, navy and air force units from the member-states, and Timor Leste, an observer state. The exercises will focus on maritime security and search-and-rescue operations.

    Khairul Fahmi, a military and security analyst at the Jakarta-based Institute for Security and Strategic Studies, said the exercise was a good initiative by Indonesia.

    “This is a concrete form of defense diplomacy to build trust, reduce concerns and misunderstandings between countries, especially ASEAN. Plus, there will be many challenges and threats to Indonesia’s national interests,” Fahmi said.

    He said Indonesia’s initiative also affirmed its sovereign rights in the North Natuna Sea, which China claims as part of its historical rights marked by a nine-dash line that overlaps with other countries’ exclusive economic zones.

    “This is part of ASEAN’s efforts to jointly play a more strategic role in maintaining regional stability,” Fahmi said.

    “At the same time, it sends a strong message to the major powers that have interests in the region, especially in the North Natuna Sea, not to ignore ASEAN.”

    China has built military installations on some of the islands and reefs it controls in the South China Sea. In 2016, an international tribunal ruled that China’s claims had no legal basis under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), but Beijing rejected the ruling and continues to assert its presence.

    Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia have accused China of disrupting their oil and gas exploration activities with frequent incursions by Chinese coast guard and maritime militia ships, leading to confrontations. ASEAN and China have been negotiating a code of conduct for years to manage disputes peacefully, but progress has been glacial.

    The United States, which is not a claimant but is in a defense treaty with the Philippines, has challenged China’s claims by conducting “freedom of navigation” operations in the waterway.

    While officials from some ASEAN states have expressed worry about the possibility of war breaking out between the superpowers over Taiwan, Washington and Manila earlier this year struck a deal to give U.S. forces expanded access to military bases in the Philippines – a move that angered China.

    BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news organization.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • China pays Tibetans to receive blessings from Beijing-backed Panchen Lama

    The Chinese government is paying Tibetans 100 yuan (about US$14) each to attend visits and receive blessings from the man Beijing has tapped as Tibetan Buddhism’s second-most important spiritual leader behind the Dalai Lama, residents in Tibet told Radio Free Asia.

    Gyaltsen Norbu is the Chinese-backed Panchen Lama, and he is touring parts of the region to give his blessings – but many Tibetans consider him to be an imposter.

    Tibetan Buddhists believe that the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama are reincarnated as children when they die. After the 1950-51 Chinese invasion and annexation of Tibet, Beijing has made an effort to influence Tibetan affairs including the selection of a spiritual successor to the 10th Panchen Lama who died in 1989..

    In 1995, the exiled Dalai Lama chose 6-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima to be the 11th Panchen Lama, recognizing him as the reincarnation of his predecessor.

    The Panchen Lama’s responsibilities include leading a council of high lamas to find the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama after the current one dies.

    The 1995 recognition of the 11th Panchen Lama by the 14th Dalai Lama angered Chinese authorities, who three days later took the boy and his family into custody. They have since disappeared.

    Beijing then installed another boy, Gyaltsen (in Chinese, Gyaincain) Norbu, as their own candidate in his place.

    Unpopular choice

    The Panchen Lama installed by Beijing remains unpopular with Tibetans both in exile and at home because he is perceived as someone foisted on them by Beijing.

    Beijing is giving out a small monetary incentive for people who receive his blessing, a Tibetan resident told RFA’s Tibetan Service.

    “The Chinese government has told the local Tibetans that anyone who attends and receives Gyaltsen Norbu’s blessings will be rewarded with 100 yuan,” the resident said. “The Chinese government has also put in lots of effort to stage Norbu’s visit in Lithang and Bathang as a very grandiose and popular event.”

    The resident said that Gyaltsen Norbu recently completed a tour to Gyalthang (Shangri-La, in Chinese Xianggelila), Lithang (Litang), Bathang (Batang), Markham (Mangkang) and Dhapa (Daba) County in Tibet, where he visited the Gyalthang Sumtsen monastery and Lithang monastery.

    China’s communist leaders are using Gyaltsen Norbu to push their political agenda, said Namrata Hasija, a Research Fellow at the New Delhi-based Centre for China Analysis and Strategy.

    “The Chinese government’s effort and attempt in forcing Tibetans into embracing Gyaltsen Norbu has gone futile because other than just a Buddhist monk Tibetans don’t consider and revere him as the Panchen Lama,” she said. 

    The visit is the third by the Chinese-backed Panchen Lama and the atmosphere is slightly different from his last visit in 2021, another resident said.

    “In July 2021, Tibetans were forced to attend and receive his blessings and there were tight restrictions in those areas where he was,” the second resident said. “Restrictions are not as severe this time compared to his last visit and also there were only a handful of Tibetans who went to see Gyaltsen Norbu in Bathang and Lithang.”

    Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Written in English by Eugene Whong.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Fiji’s prime minister says policing agreement with China under review

    Fiji’s government is reviewing a police cooperation agreement with China, the Pacific island country’s prime minister said Wednesday, underlining the balancing act between economic reliance on the Asian superpower and security ties to the United States.

    Sitiveni Rabuka, who became Fiji’s prime minister after an election in December broke strongman Frank Bainimarama’s 16 year hold on power, has emphasized shared values with democracies such as U.S. ally Australia and New Zealand. His government also has accorded a higher status to Taiwan’s representative office in Fiji, but has not fundamentally altered relations with Beijing. 

    “When we came in [as the government] we needed to look at what they were doing [in the area of police cooperation],” Rabuka told a press conference during an official visit to New Zealand’s capital Wellington. “If our values and our systems differ, what cooperation can we get from that?”

    The agreement signed in 2011 has resulted in Fijian police officers undertaking training in China and short-term Chinese police deployments to Fiji. Plans for a permanent Chinese police liaison officer in Fiji were announced in September 2021, according to Fijian media.

    “We need to look at that [agreement] again before we decide on whether we go back to it or we continue the way we have in the past – cooperating with those who have similar democratic values and systems, legislation, law enforcement and so on,” Rabuka said.

    China, over several decades, has become a substantial source of trade, infrastructure and aid for developing Pacific island countries as it seeks to isolate Taiwan diplomatically and build its own set of global institutions. 

    Beijing’s relations with Fiji particularly burgeoned after Australia, New Zealand and other countries sought to punish it for Bainimarama’s 2006 coup that ousted the elected government. It was Fiji’s fourth coup in three decades. Rabuka orchestrated two coups in the late 1980s. 

    Last year, China signed a security pact with the Solomon Islands, alarming the U.S. and its allies such as Australia. The Solomons and Kiribati switched their diplomatic recognition to Beijing from Taiwan in 2019.

    The Chinese embassy in Fiji has said that China has military and police cooperation with many developing nations that have different political systems from China.

    “The law enforcement and police cooperation between China and Fiji is professional, open and transparent,” it said in May. 

    “We hope relevant parties can abandon ideological prejudice, and view the law enforcement and police cooperation between China and Fiji objectively and rationally.”

    China also provides extensive training for Solomon Islands police and equipment such as vehicles and water cannons. 

    Solomon Islands deputy police commissioner Ian Vaevaso said in a May 31 statement that 30 Solomon Islands police officers were in China for training on top of more than 30 that were sent to the Fujian Police College last year. 

    Rabuka has expressed concerns about police cooperation with Beijing since being elected prime minister. 

    “There’s no need for us to continue, our systems are different,” Rabuka said in January, according to a Fiji Times report.

    BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated 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.

  • From the archive: How Hong Kong caught fire: the story of a radical uprising – podcast

    We are raiding the Guardian Long Read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors

    This week, from 2020: Hong Kong used to be seen as cautious, pragmatic and materialistic. But protests have transformed the city. As Beijing tightens its grip, how much longer can the movement survive?

    Continue reading…

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

  • From the archive: How Hong Kong caught fire: the story of a radical uprising – podcast

    We are raiding the Guardian Long Read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors

    This week, from 2020: Hong Kong used to be seen as cautious, pragmatic and materialistic. But protests have transformed the city. As Beijing tightens its grip, how much longer can the movement survive?

    Continue reading…

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

  • Uvalde and Kent, and values we should shun

    In seeking to justify its decision to enter the AUKUS alliance, the federal government has referred to values shared by the United States and Britain. But are they the values most Australians share, asks Tony Smith?

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • China pressures Australian press club to cancel Tibetan exile leader’s speech

    China is under fire for attempting to prevent the leader of Tibet’s government-in-exile from giving a speech at the Australian National Press Club in Canberra, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

    Chinese Embassy representatives met with press club chief Maurice Reily last week and voiced their opposition to Penpa Tsering’s scheduled appearance on June 20, requesting that his invitation be revoked.

    China has controlled Tibet since it invaded the region in 1949, and rejects any notion of a Tibetan government-in-exile, particularly the legitimacy of the Dalai Lama, who lives in Dharamsala, India. Beijing has also stepped up efforts to erode Tibetan culture, language and religion. 

    Speeches given at the National Press Club are broadcast on Australian TV and attended by prominent members of the press, so Beijing may be worried about the wider exposure Penpa Tsering would get..

    “China expresses strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to Australia, in disregard of China’s position and concern, allowing him to use the NPC platform to engage in separatist activities,” the newspaper quoted a letter from the embassy to Reily as saying.

    “The Chinese side urges the Australian side to see through the nature of the Dalai clique, respect China’s core interests and major concerns, and take concrete actions to remove the negative effects so as to prevent the disruption of the sound development of China-Australia relations and media co-operation.”

    Free Speech

    Despite Beijing’s pressure, Reilly told local media that there were no plans to cancel the appearance, and tickets remain on sale on the website of the press club. 

    He said he told the Chinese Embassy officials that the press club was “an institution for free speech, free media and public debate.”

    The National Press Club is a stage where everyone is allowed to share their views, Kyinzom Dhongdue, a human rights activist and a former member of the Tibetan parliament in exile, told Radio Free Asia’s Tibetan Service.

    “We all know how China has worked to build its influence and dependence through trade and economic ties with Australia,” she said. “In the last decade we have seen Australia’s top educational institution cancel a talk by the Dalai Lama, apparently due to pressure from China. But this time, putting pressure on the National Press Club is unimaginable because the National Press Club stands for Freedom of Speech.”

    Karma Singey, the representative for the Dalai Lama in Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia, said Australia would not cave to Chinese influence.

    “Australia is a democratic country so we are confident that Australia will not let the Chinese government expand its influence and undermine Australian institutions,” he said.

    Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Yangdon Demo and Lobsang Gelek for RFA Tibetan.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • China, US join naval drills in Indonesia amid rising tensions

    The United States and China are taking part this week in a multilateral naval exercise, which kicked off in Indonesian waters on Monday, despite tensions growing between the two superpowers over Taiwan and the South China Sea.

    The three nations are joining 33 others in the Multilateral Naval Exercise Komodo, which Indonesia is hosting through Thursday in the Makassar Strait, a strategic waterway that connects the Pacific and Indian oceans.

    The drills will focus on maritime cooperation, disaster relief and humanitarian operations, officials said. The Komodo Exercise is a series of non-combat drills to build trust and solidarity among naval forces, the Indonesian Navy said, according to a report from BenarNews, an online news outlet affiliated to Radio Free Asia.

    “This activity is intended to strengthen naval diplomacy and I think this must continue to be nurtured,” Adm. Yudo Margono, commander of the Indonesian Armed Forces, said during an opening ceremony at Soekarno-Hatta Port in Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi province.

    The drills also are intended to foster cooperation in securing the Indonesian sea areas that border 10 countries, Yudo said. 

    The Indonesian Navy said the drills involve 41 warships, 17 of which are from foreign countries, including the United States, China and Russia.

    The drills are taking place against a backdrop of heightened tensions between China and the United States in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea.

    China claims most of the waterway as its sovereign territory. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have territorial claims in the sea. While Indonesia does not regard itself as a party to the South China Sea dispute, Beijing claims historic rights to parts of the waterway that overlap Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone.

    ‘Navigational hegemony’

    Beijing has repeatedly accused the U.S. of “navigation hegemony” in the South China Sea.

    This past weekend, the U.S. military accused a Chinese navy ship of sailing dangerously close in front of the bow of an American destroyer during an intercept in Taiwan Strait waters.

    China’s defense ministry issued a dueling statement saying that Chinese forces had been tracking the movements of the U.S. destroyer, which was sailing with a Canadian warship. Its forces had conducted themselves “lawfully and professionally,” the ministry said. 

    China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has not ruled out using force to bring the island under its control.

    230506_ID_makassar-maritim-exercise.jpg
    Indonesian Navy sailors stand on the deck of the ship KRI Bawal-875 during the International Fleet Review part of the Multilateral Naval Exercise Komodo 2023 event in the Makassar Sea, South Sulawesi, Indonesia, June 5, 2023. [Antara Foto/M Risyal Hidayat/via Reuters]

    The biennial Komodo drills, which began in 2014, also consist of an international symposium, bilateral meetings and a maritime exhibition. Other participants this year include Australia, Brazil, France, Japan, Pakistan and the United Kingdom.

    The United States embassy in Jakarta said the exercise would allow it to “join together with like-minded countries, our allies and partners to work together to solve common challenges” such as humanitarian response and disaster.

    China’s Ministry of National Defense said last week that it would send a destroyer and a frigate at the invitation of the Indonesian Navy.

    On Monday, Indonesian  Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto met with his counterparts from Australia and Germany in Jakarta to discuss defense cooperation.

    Prabowo said Indonesia’s relationship with Australia was supported by mutual trust, transparency and a joint commitment to a stable, peaceful, resilient and prosperous region.

    “Indonesia’s cooperation with Australia can provide an important contribution to regional peace and stability,” he said.

    He also said Indonesia and Germany had enjoyed good bilateral relations and defense cooperation for more than a decade.

    “We are determined to continue strengthening cooperation and I promise to make an honorary return visit to Germany,” he said.

    German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said that he and Prabowo had discussed some issues that were topics at the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual security forum held in Singapore over the weekend. He declined to give details.

    BenarNews is an online news agency affiliated to Radio Free Asia.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • In China, AI cameras alert police when a banner is unfurled

    A widely used Chinese video surveillance company sanctioned by Western governments incorporates an AI technology that automatically alerts authorities if a person is detected unfurling a banner.

    The AI in cameras made by Dahua Technology appears to be explicitly aimed at quelling protests, according to IPVM, a U.S.-based surveillance research company that first reported the technology’s existence.

    Dahua deleted references to the system, called “Jinn,” after IPVM asked the company for comment, but an archived version of its website discusses its use for the purposes of “social safety” and “social governance” – terms frequently used by Chinese authorities to justify surveillance and arrests.

    The detection system is just one example of the growth of AI and government tracking technologies in China that have proliferated over the last several years amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

    A series of mass technology procurements by police forces across China have greatly increased authorities’ abilities to clamp down on social freedoms, control citizens and, critics say, abuse groups targeted by the government.

    ‘An alarm will be generated’

    According to Dahua’s archived webpage, the AI system was launched in 2021 and available as of May 2023. 

    Its debut appears to have coincided with a wave of police investment in geographic information systems across China in 2020. 

    Chinatechsurveillance_02.jpg
    Dahua surveillance cameras installed on the Dahua Technologies office building in Hangzhou, China, May 29, 2019. Credit: AFP

    It is not known what police jurisdictions use this particular Dahua AI, but the company is a major provider of police technology, said Charles Rollet of IPVM. 

    “With the banner alarm – that’s catering to the Chinese enterprise market: the big, usually police, authorities,” he said. “It’s intended for police or some form of city authority … there’s no reason to track them [banners] automatically unless you want to track protests, basically.”

    Perhaps the most recognizable protest in China in recent years – the White Paper protest against strict COVID lockdowns – was started by a man unfurling a banner on a bridge last year — an indication of the possible relevance of the technology for police (though it is not known if unfurling banner tracking was used by police in that particular case).

    Dahua, which is sanctioned by the U.S., U.K. and Australian governments, provides a number of predictive policing AI technologies that can surveil civilians using biometrics data. Previously, internal documents from the company showed that it provides facial recognition AI to track Uyghurs, which led to the Western sanctions. Dahua denied racial targeting.

    A demo of a banner unfurling that AI filmed in 2020 was also posted on Dahua’s website before being deleted. “If a person holding a banner is detected within the camera field and lasts for a certain period of time, an alarm to police will be generated,” the demo explained. 

    Dahua did not respond to a request for comment from RFA.

    Policing tech boom

    The banner unfurling technology is a continuation of “the development of AI and how that technology is becoming really available” to Chinese police, said Rollet.

    China is known to collect vast troves of data on its residents,  and rapidly expanding AI technologies give authorities a new way to gather intel.

    A solicitation for proposals for an AI tracking project from Shanghai police also unearthed by IPVM last month lays out some of the ambitions authorities harbor for using the vast data they have gathered.

    “Traditional police work needs to be transformed into digital, intelligent and convenient simplified online operation,” it said. “The effective management of the model to make it play its biggest role has become an urgent problem in the development of public security technology.”

    Chinatechsurveillance_03.jpg
    A man has his face marked for identification by technologies from state-owned surveillance equipment manufacturer Hikvision on a monitor at Security China 2018 in Beijing, China, Oct. 23, 2018. Credit: Ng Han Guan/AP

    The project aims to create automatic alerts to inform police of movements of particular populations in the Songjiang district of Shanghai, a populous suburb with a large population of academics and university students. 

    The “target populations” the project seeks to automatically track include Uyghurs; foreigners with illegal residence status; faculty and staff members of key universities; foreign journalists stationed in China; foreigners who have visited Xinjiang or other similar areas; individuals with COVID vaccinations; suspected criminals, sex workers, and drug dealers; and families with abnormal electricity consumption.

    According to a notice on its website that was later removed, Songjiang police awarded the project to a technology security firm, the Shanghai Juyi Technology Development Company, that appears to specialize in government contract work.

    The Shanghai Juyi Technology Development Company did not return a request for comment.

    As with Dahua, the Songjiang police removed the notice after IPVM publicized it in May, and RFA was unable to reach the project’s manager listed on the document.

    The limits of Big Brother

    The 26 categories of “target populations” in the Shanghai project are what are considered “focus personnel” by Chinese authorities, according to Maya Wang of Human Rights Watch. 

    “People who are petitioners, people who have a prior criminal record, people who have psychosocial disabilities and so on, … these groups of people are being monitored by the police” both physically and through technologies, Wang told RFA.

    Chinatechsurveillance_04.jpg
    Chinese paramilitary firefighters stand on guard beneath a light pole with security cameras at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, March 8, 2018. Credit: Mark Schiefelbein/AP

    But the way in which AI is used to track people shows both the sophistication and artlessness in how Chinese authorities think about surveillance, said Geoffrey Cain, author of “The Perfect Police State,” a book on Chinese surveillance. 

    The parameters they use – tracking the unfurling of a banner or flagging jumps in household electricity use (in the Shanghai police project) – tend to work backwards from behaviors that might only be vaguely connected to censured activities they are trying to pre-emptively clamp down on, such as protesting or cryptocurrency mining.

    “It reminds me back when this whole surveillance state really got kicking off around 2016 and 2017,” Cain said. “They were going after people who suddenly start smoking or drinking or people who suddenly, you know, purchase the items being used to make a tent. 

    “And it’s not because there’s any specific reason, but the reasons they would give is that those types of behaviors are suspicious. It’s almost like they’ve arbitrarily chosen something that would be unusual,” he said.

    “It’s as if the authorities are moving backwards, putting the cause before the fact.”

    Discrimination and danger

    But there is real impact for the groups targeted.

    Mass surveillance of Uyghurs in particular has been a key factor in enabling their persecution, said HRW’s Wang.

    “Wherever they go in China, Uyghurs are essentially being singled out for discriminatory and targeted policing,” she said. “And that means that they often suffer – they often are unable to find a place to stay, a hotel. Typically, when they take the train, they are subjected to investigation and interrogation and so on.”

    Chinatechsurveillance_05.jpg
    Visitors take photos near surveillance cameras as a policeman watches on Tiananmen Square in Beijing, July 15, 2021. Credit: Ng Han Guan/AP

    According to a May analysis of Chinese police geolocation systems acquisitions by China Digital Times, a specialist media firm, a wave of police investment in these tracking systems was first seen in 2017, and then again in 2020, increasing throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

    “Some contracts coincided with other government purchases of surveillance systems specifically designed to target Uyghurs,” the report noted. “There are also notable concentrations of procurement in regions with significant Uyghur or other minority populations.” 

    More broadly, the concern is that “these [AI surveillance] systems are all empowering authorities to violate human rights in different ways, depending on how they are used,” said Wang.

    “And when they are so cheap and widely available and in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative, given Chinese government Chinese financing, they are spreading with detrimental impact on rights globally,” she said.

    Rollet agreed. “I could see this taking off in other countries,” he said. “I think the bigger risk is that it sets a precedent and gives other countries ideas about what they should do, you know?”

    Edited by Boer Deng


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • In China, AI cameras alert police when a banner is unfurled

    A widely used Chinese video surveillance company sanctioned by Western governments incorporates an AI technology that automatically alerts authorities if a person is detected unfurling a banner.

    The AI in cameras made by Dahua Technology appears to be explicitly aimed at quelling protests, according to IPVM, a U.S.-based surveillance research company that first reported the technology’s existence.

    Dahua deleted references to the system, called “Jinn,” after IPVM asked the company for comment, but an archived version of its website discusses its use for the purposes of “social safety” and “social governance” – terms frequently used by Chinese authorities to justify surveillance and arrests.

    The detection system is just one example of the growth of AI and government tracking technologies in China that have proliferated over the last several years amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

    A series of mass technology procurements by police forces across China have greatly increased authorities’ abilities to clamp down on social freedoms, control citizens and, critics say, abuse groups targeted by the government.

    ‘An alarm will be generated’

    According to Dahua’s archived webpage, the AI system was launched in 2021 and available as of May 2023. 

    Its debut appears to have coincided with a wave of police investment in geographic information systems across China in 2020. 

    Chinatechsurveillance_02.jpg
    Dahua surveillance cameras installed on the Dahua Technologies office building in Hangzhou, China, May 29, 2019. Credit: AFP

    It is not known what police jurisdictions use this particular Dahua AI, but the company is a major provider of police technology, said Charles Rollet of IPVM. 

    “With the banner alarm – that’s catering to the Chinese enterprise market: the big, usually police, authorities,” he said. “It’s intended for police or some form of city authority … there’s no reason to track them [banners] automatically unless you want to track protests, basically.”

    Perhaps the most recognizable protest in China in recent years – the White Paper protest against strict COVID lockdowns – was started by a man unfurling a banner on a bridge last year — an indication of the possible relevance of the technology for police (though it is not known if unfurling banner tracking was used by police in that particular case).

    Dahua, which is sanctioned by the U.S., U.K. and Australian governments, provides a number of predictive policing AI technologies that can surveil civilians using biometrics data. Previously, internal documents from the company showed that it provides facial recognition AI to track Uyghurs, which led to the Western sanctions. Dahua denied racial targeting.

    A demo of a banner unfurling that AI filmed in 2020 was also posted on Dahua’s website before being deleted. “If a person holding a banner is detected within the camera field and lasts for a certain period of time, an alarm to police will be generated,” the demo explained. 

    Dahua did not respond to a request for comment from RFA.

    Policing tech boom

    The banner unfurling technology is a continuation of “the development of AI and how that technology is becoming really available” to Chinese police, said Rollet.

    China is known to collect vast troves of data on its residents,  and rapidly expanding AI technologies give authorities a new way to gather intel.

    A solicitation for proposals for an AI tracking project from Shanghai police also unearthed by IPVM last month lays out some of the ambitions authorities harbor for using the vast data they have gathered.

    “Traditional police work needs to be transformed into digital, intelligent and convenient simplified online operation,” it said. “The effective management of the model to make it play its biggest role has become an urgent problem in the development of public security technology.”

    Chinatechsurveillance_03.jpg
    A man has his face marked for identification by technologies from state-owned surveillance equipment manufacturer Hikvision on a monitor at Security China 2018 in Beijing, China, Oct. 23, 2018. Credit: Ng Han Guan/AP

    The project aims to create automatic alerts to inform police of movements of particular populations in the Songjiang district of Shanghai, a populous suburb with a large population of academics and university students. 

    The “target populations” the project seeks to automatically track include Uyghurs; foreigners with illegal residence status; faculty and staff members of key universities; foreign journalists stationed in China; foreigners who have visited Xinjiang or other similar areas; individuals with COVID vaccinations; suspected criminals, sex workers, and drug dealers; and families with abnormal electricity consumption.

    According to a notice on its website that was later removed, Songjiang police awarded the project to a technology security firm, the Shanghai Juyi Technology Development Company, that appears to specialize in government contract work.

    The Shanghai Juyi Technology Development Company did not return a request for comment.

    As with Dahua, the Songjiang police removed the notice after IPVM publicized it in May, and RFA was unable to reach the project’s manager listed on the document.

    The limits of Big Brother

    The 26 categories of “target populations” in the Shanghai project are what are considered “focus personnel” by Chinese authorities, according to Maya Wang of Human Rights Watch. 

    “People who are petitioners, people who have a prior criminal record, people who have psychosocial disabilities and so on, … these groups of people are being monitored by the police” both physically and through technologies, Wang told RFA.

    Chinatechsurveillance_04.jpg
    Chinese paramilitary firefighters stand on guard beneath a light pole with security cameras at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, March 8, 2018. Credit: Mark Schiefelbein/AP

    But the way in which AI is used to track people shows both the sophistication and artlessness in how Chinese authorities think about surveillance, said Geoffrey Cain, author of “The Perfect Police State,” a book on Chinese surveillance. 

    The parameters they use – tracking the unfurling of a banner or flagging jumps in household electricity use (in the Shanghai police project) – tend to work backwards from behaviors that might only be vaguely connected to censured activities they are trying to pre-emptively clamp down on, such as protesting or cryptocurrency mining.

    “It reminds me back when this whole surveillance state really got kicking off around 2016 and 2017,” Cain said. “They were going after people who suddenly start smoking or drinking or people who suddenly, you know, purchase the items being used to make a tent. 

    “And it’s not because there’s any specific reason, but the reasons they would give is that those types of behaviors are suspicious. It’s almost like they’ve arbitrarily chosen something that would be unusual,” he said.

    “It’s as if the authorities are moving backwards, putting the cause before the fact.”

    Discrimination and danger

    But there is real impact for the groups targeted.

    Mass surveillance of Uyghurs in particular has been a key factor in enabling their persecution, said HRW’s Wang.

    “Wherever they go in China, Uyghurs are essentially being singled out for discriminatory and targeted policing,” she said. “And that means that they often suffer – they often are unable to find a place to stay, a hotel. Typically, when they take the train, they are subjected to investigation and interrogation and so on.”

    Chinatechsurveillance_05.jpg
    Visitors take photos near surveillance cameras as a policeman watches on Tiananmen Square in Beijing, July 15, 2021. Credit: Ng Han Guan/AP

    According to a May analysis of Chinese police geolocation systems acquisitions by China Digital Times, a specialist media firm, a wave of police investment in these tracking systems was first seen in 2017, and then again in 2020, increasing throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

    “Some contracts coincided with other government purchases of surveillance systems specifically designed to target Uyghurs,” the report noted. “There are also notable concentrations of procurement in regions with significant Uyghur or other minority populations.” 

    More broadly, the concern is that “these [AI surveillance] systems are all empowering authorities to violate human rights in different ways, depending on how they are used,” said Wang.

    “And when they are so cheap and widely available and in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative, given Chinese government Chinese financing, they are spreading with detrimental impact on rights globally,” she said.

    Rollet agreed. “I could see this taking off in other countries,” he said. “I think the bigger risk is that it sets a precedent and gives other countries ideas about what they should do, you know?”

    Edited by Boer Deng


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • AUKUS closes gap on China’s critical tech lead

    AUKUS puts the collective research might of the three allies ahead of China in critical technologies like robotics and quantum sensing, and closes the gap in others, new research reveals. But China is still regarded as the leading research nation for all but four of the technologies considered integral to the security pact, with its…

    The post AUKUS closes gap on China’s critical tech lead appeared first on InnovationAus.com.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.com.

  • China Places Country Dangerously Close To US Warship

    Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

    ❖

    The US military has released video footage of a Chinese navy ship cutting across the path of an American Destroyer in the Taiwan Strait over the weekend, reportedly forcing the US vessel to slow down to avoid a collision.

    A statement on the incident from US Indo-Pacific Command says the Chinese ship “executed maneuvers in an unsafe manner” in the presence of US and Canadian warships during a “routine south to north Taiwan Strait transit” by the naval forces of those nations, coming as close as 150 yards from the American vessel.

    Now, I know what you’re thinking: what is a Chinese navy vessel doing in the Taiwan Strait, right where US and Canadian warships are peacefully conducting routine navigation exercises?

    Well I don’t know if this news will be as shocking to you as it is to me, but it turns out that China has somehow managed to place its country immediately adjacent to the Taiwan Strait, and is now only 100 miles from Taiwan itself. This narrow channel of water was the only space the US and Canadian navies were given to travel through, placing them dangerously close to Chinese warships, and to the country of China.

    China has yet to issue a formal apology for menacing the US navy with the unsafe maneuverings of both its battleship and its geographical location.

     

     

    Noting in its statement that it was acting “in accordance with international law” at the time of the incident, US Indo-Pacific Command says that its transit “demonstrates the combined U.S.-Canadian commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” adding that the US military “flies, sails, and operates safely and responsibly anywhere international law allows.”

    Which is of course true. These are international waters after all, and the Chinese navy should therefore stay out of the way of US military vessels traveling through them, just as the US navy would stay out of the way of Chinese military forces traveling a few miles off the coast of California or transiting between the islands of Hawaii. The US is only asking for the same freedom of navigation it would afford anyone else.

    We saw another incident of China’s aggressive and dangerous terrestrial placement on the 26th of May, when a US spy plane was buzzed by a Chinese fighter jet during peaceful surveillance operations over the South China Sea. A statement by US Indo-Pacific Command called the incident “an unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” which interrupted the “safe and routine operations” of the spy plane.

    What the hell is going on here? What is a Chinese fighter jet doing all the way over in the South China Sea?

    Obviously Chinese fighter jets have no business operating in that region, especially when their movements endanger the US spy planes who are flying their peaceful missions there. But as with the Taiwan Strait, the imperialist aggressions of the Chinese Communist Party have been so expansionist in nature that the South China Sea now sits immediately adjacent to mainland China.

    Here’s hoping that China stops with its brazen aggressions against the US military forces who are minding their own business in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, stops endangering poor defenseless warships and spy planes by moving through waters and airspace they have no business entering in the first place, and starts respecting the rules-based global sovereignty of the United States of America.

    ___________________

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon, Paypal, or Substack, buying an issue of my monthly zine, and following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • The Corporate Greed That Ignored The Tiananmen Massacre Still Drives US Policy On China

    The Corporate Greed That Ignored The Tiananmen Massacre Still Drives US Policy On China

    Image: archivenet

    With the blood of Chinese protesters still staining the streets of Beijing (following the June 4 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square and surrounding districts), a covert US delegation; headed by Brent Scowcroft (President Bush’s National Security Adviser) and then Deputy Secretary of State, Laurence Eagleburger, arrived in the Chinese capital.

    Their clandestine mission was about fence-mending. To reassure the Chinese Regime that, despite growing international calls for sanctions against China, it was to be ‘business as usual’. After all the economics were (and remain) key drivers of America’s policy on China. As Henry Kissinger wrote, just a few weeks after China’s murderous crackdown, it would be “too important for America’s national security to risk the relationship on the emotions of the moment“ (emphasis added) Source: Los Angeles Times July 30 1989

    The response of the US Administration exposed its prioritization of commercial and corporate interests over issues of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Although at that time Levi’s pulled its Chinese operations, many corporations continued their profit-seeking presence in China as if nothing had happened. A position facilitated and protected by the President, the State Department and pro-China lobby groups; including those headed by Kissinger’s America-China Society. Which, as chance would have it, included as consultants both Eagleburger and Scowcroft!

    Image: Epoch Times

    Such is the realpolitik of US relations with China, even today it is economic interest which dominates. Which partly explains CIA Director Bill Burns’ undercover trip to China during May this year. We were told it was to ‘reset relations’ and call for ‘intelligence channels to be maintained’, but like the delegation of 1989, his brief would have a key objective, commercial relations with China.

    Meanwhile, the tyranny has not just continued, but intensified to a condition of complete control over virtually every aspect of life, courtesy of mass-surveillance, facial-recognition systems, digitized big-data analysis, bio-metric ID controls and increasingly AI processing. The people of China, and militarily occupied lands of Tibet, East Turkistan and Southern Mongolia are suffocating under an extreme and dystopian totalitarianism. But don’t let that get in the way of business, right Mr Secretary-of-State?

    This post was originally published on Digital Activism Im Support Of Tibetan Independence.

  • Anticipating Monopoly Media Disinformation Deluge about a Tiananmen Square Massacre

    The other day, I counted 20 copies of a book called Forbidden City (1990) in a library. I picked it up and looked at the cover, and I realized it was about the so-called Tiananmen Square massacre. It was written as an on-the-spot account by a CBC news team during that time. By reading the minutiae, it is revealed to be a fictionalized account, as almost all western monopoly media reports of a Tiananmen Square massacre are — fiction.

    As I write this, June 4 is nigh upon us, and that means it is time for the western-aligned media to crank out their discredited myth of a massacre having taken place in Tiananmen Square in 1989. The photos of the Tank Man allegedly blocking tanks from entering Tiananmen Square will form a major part of the disinformation. The fact is that the tanks were leaving the city, and it was the day after the mythologized massacre. The tanks did all they could to avoid colliding with the citizen who placed himself in front of the tanks. (Read Jeff Brown’s  setting the record straight regarding the western monopoly media account of the Tank Man.)

    Alas, the monopoly media disinformation storm is already upon us.

    Human Rights Watch, funded by the anti-communist Georg Soros, published an article about a “bloody crackdown” that demands: “The Chinese government should acknowledge responsibility for the mass killing of pro-democracy demonstrators and provide redress for victims and family members.”

    The United States government-funded Radio Free Asia historizes, “Troops aligned with hardliners shot their way to Tiananmen Square to commit one of the worst massacres in modern Chinese history.” RFA was originally operated by the CIA to broadcast anti-Communist propaganda.

    The CBC quotes “Tiananmen Square survivor” Yang Jianli, now a resident in Washington, DC, who “was at Tiananmen Square in 1989” and spoke of how a “nationwide pro-democracy movement in 1989 ended in the bloodshed of Tiananmen Square massacre.”

    Yahoo!News headlines with “Tiananmen Square Fast Facts,” such as:

    In 1989, after several weeks of demonstrations, Chinese troops entered Tiananmen Square on June 4 and fired on civilians.

    Estimates of the death toll range from several hundred to thousands.

    One wonders which is the fact: several hundred or thousands? Assertions are a staple in western monopoly media, evidence is scant, but the evidence-free assertions persist year-after-year.

    There are complaints of Chinese censorship. This raises the question of whether censorship can be justified and if so under what circumstances. Arguably, there is something more insidious than censorship, and that is disinformation. Professor Anthony Hall articulated the insidiousness of disinformation at the Halifax Symposium on Media and Disinformation in 2004 where it was held to be a crime against humanity and a crime against peace:

    Disinformation originates in the deliberate and systemic effort to break down social cohesion and to deprive humanity of perceptive consciousness of our conditions. Disinformation seeks to isolate and divide human beings; to alienate us from our ability to use our senses, our intellect, and our communicative powers in order to identify truth and act on this knowledge. Disinformation is deeply implicated in the history of imperialism, Eurocentric racism, American Manifest Destiny, Nazi propaganda, the psychological warfare of the Cold War, and capitalist globalization. Disinformation seeks to erode and destroy the basis of individual and collective memory, the basis of those inheritances from history which give humanity our richness of diverse languages, cultures, nationalities, peoplehoods, and means of self-determination. The reach and intensity of disinformation tends to increase with the concentration of ownership and control of the media of mass communications.

    In other words, people must not have a right to freely speak lies that reach the level of crimes against humanity or peace. The disinformation campaign about a Tiananmen Square massacre demonizes China and constitutes a crime against the humanity of the Chinese people. If people wish to allege a massacre by state forces against its citizens, then present the incontrovertible evidence. Where are the photos of soldiers killing citizens? There are plenty of photos of murdered soldiers mutilated by nasty elements outside Tiananmen Square.

    So why does the disinformation persist? Because it works when people unquestioningly accept what their unscrupulous government and media tell them: China is Communist. China is bad.

    Is such rhetoric compelling?

    American expat Godfree Roberts, author of Why China Leads the World: Talent at the Top, Data in the Middle, Democracy at the Bottom answered a Quora question: “There are people that claim nothing bad happened at Tiananmen Square in 1989 What happened to the pro democracy protesters at Tiananmen Square when the tanks and troops with the PLA showed up to suddenly put and end to the protests?” Roberts replied:

    The tanks and troops with the PLA did not show up to suddenly put and end to the protests. Nor did they harm anyone in Tiananmen Square.

    They waited at the railway station for three weeks but began moving into town when rioters–like those we see in Hong Kong today–began killing people in Chang’An Avenue. Even then, the first battalions were unarmed… [emphasis in original]

    Roberts wrote another excellent Quora piece preserved at the Greanville Post.

    Regarding the wider myth created of a massacre at Tiananmen Square, the go-to evidence-based account is the book Tiananmen Square “Massacre”?: The Power of Words vs. Silent Evidence by Wei Ling Chua.

    Kim Petersen: In 2014, I reviewed your important book Tiananmen Square “Massacre”?: The Power of Words vs. Silent Evidence that threw a glaring light on what the monopoly media were saying about a massacre in Tiananmen Square versus the subsequent recantations by western-aligned journalists and the narratives of protestors and witnesses than were contrary to the western media disinformation. In other words, there was no massacre in Tiananmen Square. Nonetheless, people living in the western-aligned world can expect, for the most part, to be inundated with monopoly media rehashing their disinformation about what happened on 4 June 1989, omitting the nefarious roles played by the CIA and NED.

    Recently, AB Abrams included a 29-page chapter, “Beijing 1989 and Tiananmen Square,” in his excellent book Atrocity Fabrications and Its Consequences (2023). It basically lays out what you did in your book (without citing it), but it does present more of a historical basis for the interference of US militarism in 20th century China because of American anti-communist prejudice. Thus, the US supported the Guomindang (KMT) led by the brutal Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-Shek). Abrams reads quite critical of paramount leader Deng Xiaopeng, quoting one student who complained of the increasing corruption under Deng that was not tolerated under chairman Mao Zedong. (p 125) Basically, however, Abrams buttresses what you had already written, pointing a stern finger at Operation Yellowbird’s NED, CIA, and Hong Kong criminal triads who inserted (and extracted) unruly (even bloodthirsty, notably Chai Ling) elements into Tiananmen Square who happened to find themselves well armed and supplied with Molotov cocktails, and who were not hesitant about using lethal force against remarkably restrained PLA soldiers.

    Despite the several recantations by western journalists in Beijing who had reported a massacre and despite the narratives that seriously impugn the monopoly media narratives, why does the myth of a massacre in Tiananmen Square persist? How is it that this fabricated atrocity gets dredged up annually, and why do so many people buy into the disinformation proffered by a source serially revealed to be manufacturing demonstrably false narratives? How can this disinformation be exterminated?

    Finally, massacres should not be forgotten, but if the narratives of massacres are meant to be revisited annually, then shouldn’t the massacres carried out — especially by one’s own side — also be memorialized, as an act of penance and atonement? In the US case, there would be yearly memorials to the massacres of several Indigenous peoples by the White natives of Europe. There are several massacres requiring atonement for the rampant criminality of the White Man. Wounded Knee, the Bear Creek massacre, the Sand Creek massacre, and the Trail of Tears spring readily to mind. There is the Kwangju massacre in South Korea, My Lai in Viet Nam, Fallujah in Iraq (and this is just skimming the surface). What does it say that the US-aligned media unquestioningly reports on fabricated atrocities elsewhere while being insouciant to the crimes of American troops against Others?

    Wei Ling Chua: Since publishing the book Tiananmen Square “Massacre”? The Power of Words vs. Silent Evidence (The Art of Media Disinformation is Hurting the World and Humanity vol. 2) in 2014, I began to use Google alerts to receive daily emails on any news or articles posted on the net with the term “Tiananmen Square Massacre”, and it is depressing to say that the Western media disregards their own journalists’ confessions and have continued to unrelentingly use the term frequently over the past 34 years.

    The following description introduces the book.

    Readers will notice from the table of contents that this book comes in 4 parts:

    1) Screenshot evidence of journalists who confessed that they saw no one die that day (June 4th, 1989) at Tiananmen Square, CIA declassified documents, WikiLeaks, and Human Rights Watch decided not to publish their own eye-witnesses accounts that report that support the Chinese side of the stories… ;

    2) Explanation, with examples, of how the Western media used the power of words to overpower the silent evidence (their own photos and video images) that actually shows highly restrained, people-loving PLA soldiers and the CCP government handling of the 7 weeks of protests.

    3) Explanation of the 3 stage bottle-necks effect of the market economy and how Western nations respond to each stage of such economic hardship created by an uncontrolled market economy. The purpose of such analysis is to remind developing nations’ citizens not to destroy their own countries by allowing Western-funded NGOs to carry out covert operations in their countries to create chaos at times of economic hardship;

    4) Comparing how the CCP handled the 1989 protesters with the US government handling of the 2011 anti-Wall Street protesters [Occupy Wall Street], the book draws a 6-point conclusion to explain why the Wall Street protesters should admire the Tiananmen protesters, and why the PLA deserves a Nobel Peace prize:

    • Freedom of protesters
    • The rule of law
    • The barricade strategy
    • Brutality of authorities
    • Media freedom
    • Government response

    I encourage readers to read the book review by you: Massacre? What Massacre?

    The US and other Western governments are notorious in promoting hatred, fake news, and misleading information about China. As a result, whenever foreigners went to China for the first time, they seemed to be shocked by how advanced, how wealthy, how safe, how green, how friendly, and how beautiful China is. A lot of YouTubers from all over the world voluntarily and passionately produce videos to share their daily impression of China or to defend China against any smear campaigns by the Western media. Below is just a quick pick of a dozen YouTubers:

    As for getting at the truth, the best way to understand a country is to travel there and see it with our own eyes:

    At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a group of American athletes arrived at the Beijing International Airport with masks and later were shocked that the air quality was good and that they were the only ones wearing masks in Beijing. They were also shocked by how beautiful and modern Beijing is compared to American cities. In an embarrassment to America, these young Americans were spot on and held a press conference to publicly apologize to the Chinese people for their mask-wearing insult to China.

    The same thing happened to many Taiwanese, many were so ignorant about China that they thought that the Chinese people were very poor. In 2011, a Taiwanese professor Gao Zhibin told his audience in a TV show that the mainland Chinese are so poor that they cannot even afford to eat a tea leaf egg. That video became a laughing stock and quickly circulated being viewed by hundreds of millions of Chinese people, and even made its way to the Chinese mainstream media across the country as a sort of entertainment. Now, the Taiwanese Professor has a nickname in China: “tea leaf egg professor“.

    Hong Kong also has the same problem. So, after putting down the US-backed violent protests a few years ago, one of the education programs is to take the students for a free trip to the mainland to see by themselves how prosperous, green, clean, modern, friendly, and advanced their mother country is.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Biden Administration Signals Openness to Nuclear Talks With Russia and China

    The United States is ready to engage in bilateral nuclear talks with Russia and China “without preconditions,” according to National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. “Rather than waiting to resolve all of our bilateral differences, the United States is ready to engage Russia now to manage nuclear risks and develop a post-2026 arms control framework,” Sullivan said in a wide-ranging speech at the…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • New York exhibit keeps dream of a democratic China alive – across the generations

    Former student leaders of China’s 1989 pro-democracy movement launched an exhibit of the Tiananmen massacre in Manhattan on Friday in a bid to keep alive the dream of freedom and democracy amid an ongoing information blackout back home.

    The June 4 Memorial Hall’s opening was timed to mark the 34th anniversary of the massacre of unarmed civilians by People’s Liberation Army troops that ended weeks of mass protests on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, which falls on Sunday.

    “1989 was the most important turning point in recent Chinese history,” former student leader Wang Dan told journalists at the launch. “The Chinese authorities … want to cover up that history and have the world forget their crimes.”

    The events of the spring and early summer of 1989 are still a hugely sensitive topic in China, where public discussion is heavily censored and public mourning for victims is banned.

    Wang said remembering the Tiananmen massacre isn’t just about remembering the past, but also about aspirations for freedom and democracy for China’s future.

    ENG_CHN_NYCJune4th_06012023.2.JPG
    A man stands next to the blood-stained shirt of Jiang Lin, a reporter for the army newspaper who was injured by police with electric prods in Tiananmen Square on June 3. Credit: Reuters

    “We must keep up the opposition [to the regime] and hold our power in reserve for the future,” he said. 

    The memorial hall crams photos, contemporary news articles, banners, letters and even blood-stained items of clothing into a small venue on the fourth floor of a Sixth Avenue office building.

    Bao Tong’s calligraphy

    Among them is a calligraphic inscription of the words “June 4 Memorial Hall” in Chinese made specially by former top Communist Party aide Bao Tong shortly before his death in November 2022, which curator Yu Dahai said was beautifully written, but somewhat shaky, revealing Bao’s frail state of health at the time.

    Bao’s last writings to be published by Radio Free Asia in June 2022 gave a detailed description of conversations among top Chinese leaders behind the scenes as a political crisis sparked by the crisis unfolded.

    “The student-led mass popular protests of 1989 are the thing I am most proud to have experienced in my entire life,” he wrote in conclusion.

    “Power gained by evil means is still evil,” he wrote. “And just demands that result in a massacre are still just.”

    ENG_CHN_NYCJune4th_06012023.3.JPG
    A mimeograph machine used by students to print flyers and information during the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989 is displayed at the June 4 Memorial Hall. Credit: Reuters

    One of the exhibits is a heavy mimeograph machine used by former student leader Zhou Fengsuo to crank out notices and information for fellow protesters that was carried out of Tiananmen Square by some students from Tsinghua University – who, along with Zhou, were the last group to leave on the night of June 3, 1989.

    “I asked them why they were bothering to lug along such a heavy item at a time like this, and they said they needed it to keep up the fight,” he said, adding that seeing the machine again was like “being reunited with an old friend.”

    Symbol of Hope

    Zhou, who founded the U.S.-based rights group Humanitarian China, said the collection of more than 100 items is a symbol of hope for his generation, whose dreams of a more democratic China were shattered by the military response.

    “It doesn’t matter how big a defeat we have suffered or the struggles we have been through — we are still hopeful,” Zhou said. “The dream of a democratic China lives on.”

    He said many of the items on display at the exhibit were given to him anonymously by political prisoners he had helped, or their families.

    “The people who took part in these protests wanted these items displayed and preserved, but at the same time, they wanted their identities protected,” Zhou said.

    ENG_CHN_NYCJune4th_06012023.4.jpg
    Members of the June 4 Massacre Memorial Association committee from right to left; Yu David, Wang Dan and Zhou Fengsuo listen to questions during a press conference at the June 4 Memorial Hall on Thursday, June 1, 2023, in New York. Credit: Associated Press

    And it’s not just Zhou’s Gen X veteran dissidents who are inspired by the project.

    Many of those who volunteered their time to ready the exhibit for launch are younger Chinese people who were inspired by the “white paper” protests across China in November 2022.

    One of them, who gave only his surname Dong, served seven months in jail for wearing a T-shirt commemorating the massacre.

    “The mainstream environment in China is dominated by [government supporters],” said Dong, who also took part in the “white paper” movement. 

    “But since I came to New York and found a bunch of like-minded people, I found I wasn’t alone.”

    ‘We all want democracy’

    Many of the exhibits are from later mass movements, including the now-banned candlelight vigils in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park and artwork from the 2019 protests against the city’s diminishing freedoms.

    Wang said there appears to be a direct connection spanning the generations.

    “Our two generations share the same values – we all want democracy for China,” Wang Dan said. “We share the same dream.”

    ENG_CHN_NYCJune4th_06012023.5.JPG
    Men stand next to a poster memorializing those killed during Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989, during a press preview of the June 4 Memorial Hall in New York on Thursday, June 1, 2023. Credit: Reuters

    Wang said the exhibit has already been targeted by an army of pro-Beijing trolls, who have set up large numbers of fake accounts for the June 4 Memorial Hall on Twitter.

    “Online harassment is to be expected,” he said. “A memorial hall like this is clearly going to be a thorn in the side of the Chinese Communist Party … and we have made preparations for this … with the [U.S. authorities].”

    Meanwhile, the government continues to silence any attempts to commemorate the date or talk about what happened among the 1.4 billion citizens within China’s borders.

    “The June 4 crackdown proved that the Chinese Communist Party is essentially a political party that relies on violence to maintain its rule,” Wang wrote in a May 29 commentary for Radio Free Asia.

    “The whole world knows what happened in China, but many Chinese people don’t even know about it,” he said.

    Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Have US comics faced punishment for jokes about the army like in China?

    In brief

    In the face of criticism that China’s government was overreacting by launching a criminal investigation into comedian Li Haoshi for telling a joke about the Chinese military, a pro-government Chinese blogger has defended Beijing’s actions. The blogger, who calls herself Guyan Muchan, compared the case to that of an American stand-up comedian who joked about a U.S. military veteran.

    Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) found Guyan Muchan’s comparison misleading. The U.S. comedian she mentioned aroused controversy, criticism and public discussion by joking about U.S. military personnel. But unlike Li and the production company that employs him, that U.S. comedian was not fined and did not face criminal investigation.

    In depth

    After receiving a public complaint, the Beijing municipal culture and tourism authority announced on May 17  that jokes told at performances by Li Haoshi on the afternoon and evening of May 13 had caused “negative social influence” by “seriously insulting the PLA,” or People’s Liberation Army. A separate investigation into Li’s employer, the Shanghai Xiaoguo Culture Media Company, cited violations of Regulations on the Administration of Commercial Performances. The bureau confiscated from the company 1.32 million yuan ($187,000) of “illegal” income made from the performances, and fined it 13.35 million yuan ($1.89 million). 

    On May 17, the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau also announced that it had launched a case against Li to determine if his actions constituted a criminally liable offense. 

    What did Li actually say? 

    The following excerpt of Li’s joke is based on a recording circulated on the Internet. 

    “We picked up two wild dogs from a mountain near our home. I wouldn’t say rescue, because on that mountain those two were really at the top of the food chain and didn’t need our help at all. The first time I saw them it didn’t even really feel like watching two dogs, but was more like a scene from some animal film set, with two cannonball-like dogs chasing a squirrel. Now normally when you see dogs, you think ‘cute’, ‘cuddly’ and all that; but when I saw these two, the only eight characters that came to my mind were ‘Zuo feng guo ying, neng da sheng zhang’ (‘Maintain exemplary conduct, fight to win.’) Classic. People are in awe when I walk those two dogs through Shanghai.”

    The phrase, ‘maintain exemplary conduct, fight to win’, is a quote from a speech given by Chinese President Xi Jinping to deputies of the PLA in March 2013, in which he told the army to “listen to the Party’s command.” 

    In this undated screenshot, stand-up comic Li Haoshi performs. His employer, a Chinese comedy agency, suspended Li after he sparked public ire with a joke which some said likened feral dogs to soldiers of the People's Liberation Army. Credit: Screenshot from Tencent Video Talk show
    In this undated screenshot, stand-up comic Li Haoshi performs. His employer, a Chinese comedy agency, suspended Li after he sparked public ire with a joke which some said likened feral dogs to soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army. Credit: Screenshot from Tencent Video Talk show
    The authorities who took up Li’s case didn’t specify the legal justification. But Article 32 of China’s Law on the Status and Protection of Rights and Interests of Military Personnel explicitly states that no organization or individual shall defame, insult or slander the honor of military personnel. Article 65 further decrees that if military personnel are intentionally defamed, insulted or slandered through mass media, relevant government departments can order the offensive content to be corrected.  

    Xiaoguo Culture Media rushed out an apology admitting that the joke was an “inappropriate comparison” and terminated Li’s work agreement. Comedy performances by the company were also suspended across many parts of China.

    What did Guyan Muchan claim about such cases in the U.S.? 

    Even as voices in China and abroad criticized China’s government for overreacting to Li’s joke, influential public supporters defended the government’s handling of the situation. 

    Guyan Muchan, a pro-Beijing Weibo blogger with nearly 7 million followers, stated in posts on Twitter and the popular Chinese social media site Weibo on May 17 that even in the U.S. there exists a red line that military personnel cannot be insulted. 

    Guyan Muchan cited a controversy resulting from a 2018 Saturday Night Live (SNL) episode in which cast member Pete Davidson mocked Republican congressman Dan Crenshaw – a former U.S. Navy SEAL who lost his right eye while serving in Afghanistan – as resembling “a hitman in a porno movie.” 

    Guyan Muchan’s post sparked discussion amongst Chinese netizens, with one user commenting that “people who praise American freedom never mention America’s red line.” 

    AFCL identified another case in which a U.S. stand-up comedian stoked controversy with a joke about the U.S military. The comedian, Bill Burr, was performing in Reno, in the western U.S. state of Nevada, when he said that calling catapult officers on aircraft carriers heroes was a bit of a stretch, given that they often are doing nothing more than “warrior one” yoga poses.


    Are the situations faced by Davidson or Burr comparable to that of Li? 

    AFCL found that although both Davidson or Burr faced criticism and stirred controversy for joking about the U.S. military, neither encountered the kind of punishment faced by Li. 

    Davidson’s joke prompted some netizens to boycott SNL. Democrat and Republican officials condemned the remarks as inappropriate and the then-White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer publicly called for SNL producer Lorne Michaels to be fired. 


    Stand-up comedian Bill Burr [right] joked in 2018 that calling U.S. Navy catapult officers [left] on aircraft carriers heroes is a bit of a stretch, given that they often are doing nothing more than “warrior one” yoga poses. Credit: Associated Press [right]; AFP
    Stand-up comedian Bill Burr [right] joked in 2018 that calling U.S. Navy catapult officers [left] on aircraft carriers heroes is a bit of a stretch, given that they often are doing nothing more than “warrior one” yoga poses. Credit: Associated Press [right]; AFP
    But Davidson was not fired and did not face any legal consequences, and in fact the controversy had an uplifting ending. Rep. Crenshaw himself appeared in an SNL skit one week later. In the skit, Crenshaw was given an opportunity to mock pictures of Davidson before delivering a short monologue about the importance of forgiveness and the need for solidarity amongst American civilians and veterans. In that monologue, Crenshaw called Davidson’s father – a New York firefighter who died in the first wave of responders to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks – a hero. The two men ended the skit by shaking hands in mutual respect. 

    In the case of Burr, an audience member did express anger at his comments and asked him to show more respect toward the military. Other audience members who were veterans supported letting Burr finish his skit. 

    Burr didn’t apologize. In fact, he publicly berated his critics several times for trying to use the banner of patriotism to accuse him of hating America. Despite his unapologetic stance and controversial statements on other sensitive topics, Burr continues to host a podcast and perform stand-up gigs. 

     

    The fundamental reason why neither of the comedians faced legal consequences is that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution defends the right of free speech. That makes it highly unlikely that a U.S. government agency would attempt to press charges against a comic or satirist for comments made during a performance. Any ‘red lines’ that exist in humor are shaped by public opinion, not determined by law.  

    In conclusion

    Guyan Muchan’s reference to U.S public opposition to stand-up comedians joking about the military appears to be based on an invalid comparison between the U.S. and China, where there is far less tolerance of criticism of state institutions. It fails to mention the key difference between the two systems: The U.S. government lacks the authority to punish comedians for the content of their performances, let alone launch a judicial investigation against them.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Resurrecting the Concept of the Triad

    Yayoi Kusama (Japan), Infinity Mirrored Room – The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away, 2013.

    Yayoi Kusama (Japan), Infinity Mirrored Room – The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away, 2013.

    At the close of the May 2023 Group of Seven (G7) summit in Hiroshima (Japan), the foreign ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States and the High Representative of the European Union (EU) released a long and informative statement. In a section titled ‘China’, the eight officials wrote that they ‘recognise the importance of engaging candidly with and expressing our concerns directly to China’ and that they ‘acknowledge the need to work together with China on global challenges as well as areas of common interest, including on climate change, biodiversity, global health security, and gender equality’. The diplomatic tone of the statement stands out in comparison to the heated rhetoric that these countries have adopted in recent years and is much softer than the language used at the G7 meeting itself, where the heads of government bandied about the phrase ‘economic coercion’, indirectly aimed at China.

    A close reading of the speeches at the meeting suggests that there are differences of opinion amongst the leaders of the G7 countries, particularly when it comes to China and their own domestic industrial policies. Certainly, several European states are uneasy about the domestic economic consequences of prolonging the war in Ukraine and of a possible military conflict over Taiwan. It is perhaps this uneasiness that prompted US President Joe Biden to say, ‘We’re not looking to decouple from China, we’re looking to de-risk and diversify our relationship with China’.

    For Europe, the notion of decoupling from China is inconceivable. In 2022, EU figures show that China was the third largest partner for goods exported from the region and the largest partner for good imported to the region, with most of the goods imported by China being high-end, value-added manufactured goods. Europe’s domestic economies have already been grievously injured by the West’s refusal to negotiate a peace agreement in Ukraine; being cut-off from the burgeoning Chinese market would be a fatal blow.

    Georg Baselitz (Germany), The Brücke Chorus, 1983.

    Georg Baselitz (Germany), The Brücke Chorus, 1983.

    The G7 meeting reveals the gaps between the United States and its allies (Europe and Japan), but these differences of interest and opinion should not be overestimated. As part of our work at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, we have been researching and analysing the nature of the cooperation between the United States, Europe, and Japan – the ‘Triad’, as Samir Amin called them; while our research is still ongoing, we present some of the data in this newsletter.

    Following the end of the Second World War, the United States built an international system that was premised on the subordination and integration of Japan and Europe. This process of subordination and integration was evident in the military apparatus constructed by the United States, with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) established in 1949 and US-Japan Security Treaty of 1951 being the lynchpins. Establishing a system of US military bases in the defeated powers – Germany, Italy, and Japan – allowed Washington to set aside any talk of a sovereign military or diplomatic project for either Europe or Japan (tantrums from France, inspired by Charles De Gaulle’s grand sense of French destiny, led not to a withdrawal from NATO but only to a removal of French forces from the alliance’s military command in 1966).

    There are currently 408 known US military bases in the Five Eyes countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and – because they share intelligence with each other – Israel), in Europe, and in Japan. Stunningly, Japan alone has 120 US military bases, while Germany hosts 119 of them. It is important to understand that these bases are not merely instruments of military power, but also political power. In 1965, Thomas Hughes of the US State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research authored an important memorandum, ‘The Significance of NATO – Present and Future’. NATO, Hughes wrote, ‘remains essential to the US as a well-established and easily available instrument for exercising American political influence in Europe’ and ultimately ‘it is important for the protection of American interests in Europe’. Such a system had already been put in place in Japan, as detailed in this US military memorandum from 1962. The network of US military bases in Europe and Japan are the symbol of their political subordination to Washington.

    Yinka Shonibare (Nigeria), Scramble for Africa, 2003.

    Yinka Shonibare (Nigeria), Scramble for Africa, 2003.

    With the signing of the US-Japan Security Treaty in 1951, Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida accepted the dominance of the US military over his country but hoped that the Japanese state would be able to focus on economic development. Similar doctrines were articulated in Europe.

    In the post-war era, an economic bloc began to form between the United States, Europe, and Japan. In 1966, Raymond Vernon published a significant journal article, ‘International Investment and International Trade in the Product Cycle’, in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in which he showed how the large international corporations built a sequential structure: goods would be first produced and sold in the United States, then in Europe, and afterwards in Japan, after which they would finally be sold in other parts of the world. In 1985, Kenichi Ohmae, managing director of the global consulting firm McKinsey’s Tokyo office, shed further light on this arrangement in his book Triad Power: The Coming Shape of Global Competition. Ohmae illustrated how international corporations had to operate simultaneously in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan; increasing capital intensity, high research and development costs, a convergence of consumer taste, and the rise of protectionism made it essential for international corporations to work in these countries, which Ohmae collectively called the Triad, and then seek markets and opportunities elsewhere (where seven-tenths of the world lived).

    André Pierre (Haiti), Ceremony with Issa and Suz, ca. late 1960s/early 1970s.

    André Pierre (Haiti), Ceremony with Issa and Suz, ca. late 1960s/early 1970s.

    Samir Amin used that term – Triad – for a very different purpose. In 1980, he wrote of the ‘gradual consolidation of the central zone of the world capitalist system (Europe, North America, Japan, Australia)’, and soon thereafter began to refer to this ‘central zone’ as the Triad. The elites in Europe and Japan subordinated their own national self-interest to what the US government had begun to call their ‘common interests’. New institutions and terms emerged in the 1970s, giving shape to these ‘common interests’, including the Trilateral Commission (set up by David Rockefeller in 1973 with headquarters in Paris, Tokyo, and Washington) and the concept of ‘trilateral diplomacy’ (which brought together Western Europe, Japan, and the United States under one unified diplomatic worldview).

    Intellectuals in these trilateral circles saw the United States as the central power with its vassal states (Europe and Japan) empowered to maintain control over the tributary states (such as South Korea) in order to keep the rest of the world stable. Much harsher language was used by Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the architects of the Trilateral Commission and National Security Advisor to US President Jimmy Carter. In The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (1997), Brzezinski wrote, ‘To put it in terminology that hearkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together’. You can guess who the barbarians are in Brzezinski’s imagination.

    Dan Mills (USA), Current Wars & Conflicts… (with, by continent, Belligerent and Supporter groups marked with black and red circles respectively, and Asylum Seekers, Internally Displaced, Refugees, and Stateless marked with a letter for every million, and killed marked with a letter for every 250k), 2017.

    Dan Mills (USA), Current Wars & Conflicts… (with, by continent, Belligerent and Supporter groups marked with black and red circles respectively, and Asylum Seekers, Internally Displaced, Refugees, and Stateless marked with a letter for every million, and killed marked with a letter for every 250k), 2017.

    In recent years, the concept of the Triad has largely fallen out of favour. But there is a need to recover this term to better understand the actual world order. The imperialist camp is not solely geographically defined; both the older term, Triad, and the more currently used term, Global North, are geopolitical concepts. The majority of the world – the Global South – now faces a US-led and dominated imperialist system that is rooted in an integrated military structure. This system is composed of three groups: (1) the United States, the United Kingdom, and other Anglo-American white settler states; (2) Europe; and (3) Japan. The Global North is home to a minority of the world’s population (14.2%) but is responsible for a clear majority of global military spending (66.0%). According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, total world military spending reached $2.2 trillion in 2022, with the Triad and its close partners responsible for $1.46 trillion of that amount (China’s military spending is $292 billion, while Russia spends $86 billion). It is this immense military power that allows the Triad to continue to assert itself over the world’s peoples, despite its weakening hold on the world economy.

    In recent years, the United States has encouraged a Japanese rearmament and a German military build-up, both of which were discouraged after the Second World War, so that these ‘vassals’ can strengthen Washington’s parochial New Cold War against Russia and China as well as the newly assertive states of the Global South. Although some elites in Europe and Japan are able to see the domestic crises in their countries that are being accelerated by the US foreign policy agenda, they lack the cultural and political confidence to stand on their own two feet.

    In 2016, the European Union’s High Representative Federica Mogherini laid out the concept of Europe’s ‘strategic autonomy’ from the United States in the EU Global Strategy. Three years later, France’s Emmanuel Macron said that NATO was suffering ‘brain death’ and that ‘Europe has the capacity to defend itself’. Today, it is clear that neither assertion – Europe’s strategic autonomy nor its capacity to defend itself – holds any water. Modest returns of Gaullism in France do not offer the kind of courage required by European and Japanese leaders to break with the trilateral bargains that were set up seventy-eight years ago. Until that courage arrives, Europe and Japan will remain entrenched in their conditions of vassalage, and the Triad will remain alive and well.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • No dialogue between US, China defense chiefs in Singapore

    A major regional security forum is underway in Singapore amid rising tensions in the South China Sea and East Asia, with in-person communication between defense chiefs from China and the United States remaining shuttered.

    U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had invited his Chinese counterpart, General Li Shangfu, to a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore but the Chinese minister declined.

    China’s decision is “unfortunate,” Austin said before arriving in the city state which has been hosting the annual event since 2002.

    “You’ve heard me talk a number of times about the importance of countries with large, with significant capabilities, being able to talk to each other so you can manage crises and prevent things from spiralling out of control unnecessarily,” the U.S. defense secretary was quoted by news agencies as saying in Tokyo on Thursday.

    “I would welcome any opportunity to engage with Li,” Austin said. “I think defense departments should be talking to each other on a routine basis or should have open channels for communications.”

    Li Shangfu.jpg
    Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Li Shangfu (center) inspects the honor guard with Singapore Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen (right) during his official visit to the defense ministry in Singapore, June 1, 2023. Credit: AP

    For its part, China said that “dialogue cannot be without principles, and communication cannot be without a bottom line.”

    Chinese Ministry of Defense spokesperson Tan Kefei said on Wednesday that the “current difficulties in the exchanges between the two militaries are entirely on the U.S. side.”

    “On the one hand, the U.S. keeps saying that it wants to strengthen communication, but on the other hand, it ignores China’s concerns and artificially creates obstacles, seriously undermining the mutual trust between the two militaries,” Tan said.

    The spokesperson did not elaborate on the obstacles but the U.S. Indo Pacific Command on Tuesday accused a Chinese J-16 fighter jet of performing an “unnecessarily aggressive” maneuver during the intercept of a U.S. Air Force RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft last week.

    Beijing responded by calling it a hyped-up accusation, saying the U.S. spy plane “made an intrusion” into the Chinese army’s training zone in the South China Sea and its “aerial forces … professionally dealt with the situation in accordance with law and regulation.”

    The Chinese defense minister, who took office in March, has been on the U.S. sanction list since 2018 for the purchase of SU-35 combat aircrafts and S-400 missile system-related equipment from Russia.

    This could be another obstacle for an official meeting between Gen. Li and Secretary Austin.

    Focal points

    In 2019 the then-Minister of National Defense Wei Fenghe had his first in-person meeting with his U.S. counterpart Patrick Shanahan. 

    Wei also met with Lloyd Austin on the sidelines of Shangri-La Dialogue in 2022 when the forum returned after a couple years of disruption because of COVID-19.

    Analysts say the absence of a U.S.-China bilateral meeting reflects the difficulties in the military-to-military relations between the two powers.

    Yet “the U.S.-China competition is a focal point of the Shangri-La Dialogue, since it shapes so much of the dynamics in the region and beyond,” said Ian Chong, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

    The Global Times, a sister publication of the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece People’s Daily, in an editorial on Thursday said that the ball is in the U.S. court. 

    “Frankly speaking, the outcome and effectiveness of the Shangri-La Dialogue largely depend on how the U.S. behaves during the conference,” it warned, accusing the U.S. of always trying “to take center stage and set the tone” for the forum.

    There are still hopes that, despite the rhetoric, the two delegations from the United States and China would meet “unofficially under a low-key format”, said Hoang Thi Ha, Co-ordinator for the Regional Strategic and Political Studies Program at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.

    Southeast Asian countries “are keen to see whether the U.S. and China would renew their communication especially via the military and defense channel,” Ha told RFA.

    “It is in everybody’s interest that Washington and Beijing tone down their hostile posturing towards each other,” the analyst said.

    Lloyd Austin (1).JPG
    U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin speaks at the First Plenary Session of the 19th Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore June 11, 2022. Credit: Reuters/Caroline Chia

    Li Shangfu and Lloyd Austin, separately, plan to make speeches at the forum. Li will speak of China’s new security initiatives and Austin on the U.S. leadership in the Indo-Pacific. 

    During the three days of the Shangri-La Dialogue, 600 delegates from 49 countries will examine the complex security environment in the Asia-Pacific and the war in Ukraine. 

    “Other topics of discussion are the situation in Myanmar and the war in Ukraine, especially when it comes to the issue of food security,” NUS’s Ian Chong told RFA.

    In his opinion, the rising tension in the Taiwan Strait will also be discussed, as “any Taiwan crisis will affect the region quite directly because of supply chains, shipping lanes, air lanes, and submarine cables going to Northeast Asia.”

    “The problem, however, is that Taiwan has only a token quasi-official presence at the forum,” the analyst said, noting that China, which considers Taiwan one of its provinces, would resolutely object to any official Taiwan attendance.

    “More exposure to Taiwanese experts in the Shangri-La Dialogue certainly could provide deeper insights into the situations across Taiwan Strait,” said Norah Huang, research fellow from Taiwanese think tank Prospect Foundation.

    The think tank’s president, Lai I-chung, is attending the forum as a guest of the organizer, the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

    The Shangri-La Dialogue, in its 20 years, is “a unique meeting where ministers debate the region’s most pressing security challenges, engage in important bilateral talks and come up with fresh approaches together,” according to IISS.

    Speakers at this year’s event include the ministers of defense from Germany, Australia, the U.K., Canada, Sweden, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia and Cambodia.

    Two key Southeast Asian players – Malaysia and Vietnam – are keeping low profiles and not making any addresses at the forum. Vietnam has also scaled down its presence, sending only a small delegation headed by a vice minister of defense.

    Edited by Mike Firn.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Profit Seeking Capitalists Hold Back US Empire China Hawks

    It’s odd agreeing with Terence Corcoran, Robert Friedland, Barrick Gold’s CEO and other leading capitalists. But they are the main force checking the out-of-control intelligence agency/military industrial complex/US Empire faction of Canada’s ruling class promoting conflict with China. Canadian foreign policy is broadly driven by two main factors: support for empire (historically British and today US) and More

    The post Profit Seeking Capitalists Hold Back US Empire China Hawks appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Yves Engler.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Profit Seeking Capitalists Hold Back US Empire China Hawks

    It’s odd agreeing with Terence Corcoran, Robert Friedland, Barrick Gold’s CEO and other leading capitalists. But they are the main force checking the out-of-control intelligence agency/military industrial complex/US Empire faction of Canada’s ruling class promoting conflict with China. Canadian foreign policy is broadly driven by two main factors: support for empire (historically British and today US) and More

    The post Profit Seeking Capitalists Hold Back US Empire China Hawks appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Yves Engler.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • China pressures Myanmar to proceed on port project amid community concerns

    China is racing to complete a deep sea port project in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state, despite concerns from residents who rely on the area’s waterways and say it will destroy their livelihoods.

    The Kyaukphyu deep sea port and special economic zone is one of several China-backed megaprojects in Myanmar, along with the New Yangon City urban planning project, the Mee Lin Gyaing Energy Project in Ayeyarwady region and the Letpadaung Copper Mine in Sagaing region.

    On May 24, Chinese Ambassador Cheng Hai urged junta Legal Affairs Minister Thidar Oo to speed ahead with the US$1.3 billion special economic zone, which is expected to begin construction following the completion of an environmental and social impact assessment in July. 

    The zone’s US$7.3 billion-dollar port project will be built in three phases and encompass 370 acres of land on Maday Island and 237 acres on neighboring Ramree Island.

    Local fishermen’s houses and boats at the foreground of the Chinese oil pipeline project building on Maday island, Kyaukpyu township, Rakhine state, Myanmar Oct. 7, 2015. Credit: Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters
    Local fishermen’s houses and boats at the foreground of the Chinese oil pipeline project building on Maday island, Kyaukpyu township, Rakhine state, Myanmar Oct. 7, 2015. Credit: Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters

    But while Myanmar authorities promise that such projects will bring opportunities to the communities where they are located, residents are less sure. They say the projects will upset their livelihoods while generating cash the junta uses to maintain its grip on power and oppress the people.

    Activists have long campaigned for a halt to the deep sea port, saying that the project was started without the consensus of residents and has failed to address the concerns of local fishermen, who say it will impact area fish stocks and cut off access to key bodies of water.

    “If the projects proceed, Maday Island residents will not even be able to access the river because of the deep sea ports,” a resident of Kyauktan village on Maday Island told RFA Burmese, speaking on condition of anonymity. 

    “People who rely on the sea for their livelihoods like us are going to face a lot of trouble then. If they cannot create jobs for us, we are going to face a lot of difficulties.”

    Some 70% of Maday’s population of about 3,000 people fish to earn a living.

    ENG_BUR_ChinaRakhinePort_06012023.map.png

    A fisherman from Maday’s Ywar Ma village, who also declined to be named, echoed concerns about the local fishing industry, which he said “will face major difficulties” because of the project.

    “Fishermen like us will definitely go out of business because ships and vessels will be entering the port everyday,” he said. “It would be better if they can provide fishermen with suitable employment such as daily wage-based jobs or skill-based jobs.”

    In addition to the port’s potential impact on fishing, the Kyaukphyu special economic zone is expected to force as many as 20,000 people to relocate, according to a report by the International Commission of Jurists.

    Tun Kyi, a spokesperson for the Maday Island District Development Association, said that it is not yet known exactly what kind of compensation will be provided for residents adversely affected by the projects.

    “There have been discussions between residents and President Myint Thein of the Kyaukphyu special economic zone,” he said. “I asked how they would implement regional development, how they would create job opportunities for our region and how the local residents will fit in their projects, but no one has given specific answers for my questions.”

    Key corridor project

    The Kyaukphyu deep sea port and zone economic zone are key projects in the 1,700-kilometer (1,000-mile) China-Myanmar Economic Corridor, which will connect the Chinese city of Kunming in Yunnan province to Myanmar’s economic centers of Muse, Mandalay, Yangon and Kyaukphyu.

    According to ISP-Myanmar, an independent research group, there are 35 China-Myanmar economic corridor projects to be implemented by China in Myanmar, including railways, motor ways, special economic zones, ports and new city projects.

    Oil tanks at China's oil pipeline project on Maday island, Kyaukpyu township, Rakhine state Oct. 7, 2015. Credit: Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters
    Oil tanks at China’s oil pipeline project on Maday island, Kyaukpyu township, Rakhine state Oct. 7, 2015. Credit: Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters

    A local observer of Chinese projects, who did not want to be named for security reasons, said that the Kyaukphyu deep sea port project is critical for landlocked Yunnan province.

    “It is a key project … as it will open an outlet to the Indian Ocean,” he said. “But the deep sea port project will not do the work alone. The railways have to be built to connect mainland China to the trade route.”

    Than Soe Naing, a political analyst, noted that China has stepped up pressure on the junta to proceed with the project barely two weeks after Cyclone Mocha made landfall in Rakhine with sustained winds reaching over 220 kilometers per hour (137 mph), killing more than 400 people and decimating much of the state.

    “China’s communist government has no accountability for democracy and human rights,” he said. “Despite the devastation caused by Cyclone Mocha in Rakhine state, China is solely focusing on the successful implementation of the Kyaukphyu deep sea port project, risking the livelihoods of Myanmar’s people for its own interests.”

    Attempts by RFA to contact the Chinese Embassy in Yangon for more details about the project went unanswered Thursday.

    Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Chinese and US jets tangle over South China Sea

    A Chinese J-16 fighter jet last week carried out “an unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” near an American reconnaissance plane that was flying above the South China Sea, the U.S. military said on Tuesday.

    The incident, which occurred Friday, follows a near collision of Chinese and American jets late last year over the same contested waters. 

    A video released by the U.S. military shows the Chinese fighter jet approaching the American plane at a high altitude before turning sharply, veering away suddenly and disappearing in the distance. The cockpit of the American plane appears to shudder as the Chinese jet passes.

    The pilot of the Chinese jet “flew directly in front of the nose of the RC-135, forcing the U.S. aircraft to fly through its wake turbulence,” the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement, vowing to continue flying above the waters Beijing claims as sovereign territory.

    “The United States will continue to fly, sail, and operate – safely and responsibly – wherever international law allows, and the U.S. Indo-Pacific Joint Force will continue to fly in international airspace with due regard for the safety of all vessels and aircraft under international law,” it said. “We expect all countries in the Indo-Pacific region to use international airspace safely and in accordance with international law.”

    Beijing claims sovereignty over most of the South China Sea despite a 2016 ruling in a case brought by the Philippines at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague that rejected China’s expansive claims. 

    Six other Asian governments have territorial claims or maritime boundaries in the South China Sea that overlap with the sweeping claims of China. They are Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. While Indonesia does not regard itself as party to the South China Sea dispute, Beijing claims historic rights to parts of that sea overlapping Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone.

    The United States is officially neutral in the dispute but rejects China’s vast claim and has called for sovereignty claims to be resolved peacefully. U.S. forces also frequently carry out “freedom of navigation” operations through international waters in the sea, which includes shipping lanes in the South China Sea through which more than $5 trillion of goods pass each year. 

    RFA has sought comment from the Chinese Embassy in Washington.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.