This week’s News on China.
• Alibaba Cloud will broadcast 2024 Olympics
• Taiwanese leader’s popularity slumps
• World’s largest hydro-solar power plant
• Village basketball and football championships
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says New Zealand’s largest ever trade delegation to China has been “knocking on open doors”.
Hipkins held a media briefing yesterday on the final day of his week-long trip to China.
Hipkins has headed the trade delegation to China and has had successful meetings with top-ranking politicians, including Chinese President Xi Jingping.
He said it had been a great trip, and he had been heartened by the positive reaction business leaders in the delegation had received.
“There is a huge market here for New Zealand products and services and so I think for me one of the big insights was the door is wide open.”
Hipkins said he had had the opportunity to see just how thriving the relationship between New Zealand and China was, “particularly building on a very successful event last night which had hundreds of local and New Zealand business people able to get together”.
The relationship with China was “in good heart”, he said.
He said he had navigated the relationship with China in the same way New Zealand always had, “to be open, to be candid, to be transparent and to be consistent in our position”.
Watch the media briefing:
Visa issues
Hipkins said the government had been well aware of difficulties with visas for a long time.
“We knew it was going to be a bit of a bumpy road when we reopened the border and had this huge backlog to work our way through — particularly in areas like international student visas for example, which can be quite time consuming to process because there’s a lot more in them.
“The timeliness around international student visa applications is looking pretty good, the timeliness around business visas is improving, the timeliness around visitor visas remains a challenging area for us because there’s a high volume of them and obviously the frequency with which they are flooding in continues to put the system under pressure.”
He said things like identity verification were causing delays, but “certainly we’re working hard to try and speed that up”.
A ‘very positive vibe’
Sealord chairperson Jamie Tuuta, the head of the business delegation, said there had been a “very positive vibe”.
“It’s been wonderful to be part of the delegation, really promoting Aotearoa New Zealand as one and I think it’s been a real success.”
He said the fact the prime minister had access to the top three politicians in China had been very important for business in China and economic relationships.
“I think it really just demonstrates the longstanding relationship that New Zealand has had with China.”
He said New Zealanders probably did not understand the level of coverage the trip has brought to the Chinese people in the media and social media, and said the large size of the delegation has been very beneficial.
Tuuta said the feedback from everyone on the trip is that it has been “a great success and the nature of the conversations that have been had are warm and constructive, are such where actually it’s positioned us well as a country and as businesses to grow trade and to work constructively with our customers and market”.
He said looking at other countries doing business in China, New Zealand businesses did punch above their weight.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
In 2018, Le Le Farley took his first steps to a stand-up career with two nervous, and he says, poorly received, performances in China. Back then, Farley was among a vanguard of young entertainers experimenting with what was a relatively new form of comedy in the country.
Much has changed in the five years since. Farley, an American who spent most of his 20s in China, is back in the States, where his comedy routines have grown more sure-footed. His YouTube videos, which often feature Chinese-related content, are viewed by hundreds of thousands of people, mostly fans in Taiwan and other countries overseas.
But back in China where he started, stand-up faces a more uncertain future. A joke last month by the comedian “House” prompted canceled shows and a nearly US$2 million fine for Xiaoguo Culture, the production company that employs him.
Farley, whose real name is Lawrence, equated doing comedy in the country with “playing football in a minefield.”
“You just don’t know how many things you’re not allowed to say,” he said. (Farley does know one thing not allowed: he says this bit got his performances banned in China.)
July 1 is International Joke Day (and, for what it’s worth, International Chicken Wing Day), but one main source of punch lines in China – the stand-up – has effectively been placed on hiatus.
House’s arrest has had a “deadening effect” on joke-telling, according to an American China scholar who has performed crosstalk, a comedic style with a much longer tradition in the country.
Stand-up is “still a very popular form, but now everyone’s kind of waiting to see if it’s going to have to go through some changes,” he said.
So sensitive is the environment now that the scholar, who lives in China, asked not to be named. Even figurative spotlights are shunned these days.
Comedy’s evolution
Comedy with Chinese characteristics has always been a bit of an uneasy fit.
Historically, crosstalk comedians were known to push the boundaries of good taste. (In crosstalk, one performer plays it funny while another plays it straight, like the “Who’s on First” routine made famous by Abbott and Costello.) But once the Communist Party took over, crosstalk shows, like other creative endeavors, were told to focus on promoting government ideology.
In the Cultural Revolution, they became “very unfunny,” the scholar said. “You couldn’t say anything.”
Comedians got a little more room to maneuver in the decades after Mao’s death, as rules were loosened under the “socialism with Chinese characteristics” paradigm, the phrase coined by Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping.
But it wasn’t really until the past decade that stand-up, a Western style of comedy known for its tradition of provocation, began to flourish. There were around 18,500 shows at 180 stand-up clubs in China in 2021, according to the China Performance Industry Association’s annual report. The $54 million those performances generated represented a 50% jump from 2019.
Xiaoguo Culture in particular came to dominate the stand-up scene. It produced a popular variety show called “Roast!,” which drew inspiration from celebrity roasts seen in the U.S. on Comedy Central, and the Stand-up Comedy Talent Show, where many of the country’s best known comedians got their start.
Dogs, squirrels and soldiers
But in May a Weibo user shared a post expressing discomfort with a stand-up segment the user alleged had insulted the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
In the offending bit, House, whose real name is Li Haoshi, drew a parallel between his dogs chasing squirrels and the phrase “possessing a good fighting spirit and winning battles.” Chinese leader Xi Jinping once used the phrase to call for a capable and disciplined military.
Authorities subsequently fined Xiaoguo nearly $1.9 million and charged House with “depicting severe insults towards the People’s Liberation Army, resulting in a negative societal impact.”
He was also accused of willfully altering approved content.
In China, public performance scripts are heavily scrutinized. The country’s “Regulation on the Administration of Commercial Performances” says that shows performed and broadcast can’t have a negative impact on the nation, its ethnicity, social stability or traditions.
Organizers of commercial shows must submit an application to the local authorities before performances, to include a word-for-word transcript and a video of the artist presenting the script.
Joke inspectors on the job
There is little room for improvisation. According to one report, Xiaoguo Culture sent in text for one show that extended to 1,000 pages. In another instance, authorities found that a Xiaoguo comedian had included approximately 10-20% of content that had not been approved. Company representatives were called in for questioning, which in China typically means a warning from authorities.
In Shanghai’s Huangpu District, where more stand-ups perform than anywhere else in China, a volunteer brigade of censors recruited by government cultural authorities actually go out into the city to monitor shows.
Inspection reports, which volunteers are required to complete on the night of the performance, should include at least three on-site photos, a summary of the show, and an assessment of how well it aligned with the preapproved script, according to job announcements posted in 2021 and 2022.
A volunteer told Chinese media that she tries to be “sneaky” observing the comedian, using a hat or scarf to shield any light from her phone as she reads the word-for-word transcript to make sure it matches what she’s hearing.
A man and a woman walk into a bar
Despite the guardrails, Chinese comedians still find ways to be funny, just as American comics in the 1960s when cultural norms were more conservative and legal rules regarding obscenity were tougher than today.
Chinese stand-ups rely on self-deprecation and anecdotes about life’s absurdities to make their audiences laugh, while steering clear of politics or issues known to be important to the Communist Party, like the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
The American scholar gave this example as a typical joke: A man and his date drive to dinner, then they drive to a bar for a drink, then to a park for a short walk, and finally back to her place.
Feigning dizziness at all the driving, the woman asks the man to help her upstairs to her apartment. But instead of recognizing the opportunity, the man gets angry at the suggestion he’s a bad driver and speeds off, dangerously.
“They just naturally kind of wiggle their way into a sort of semantic space where they can be very funny but without being dirty or political,” the scholar said.
The list of offenders grows
Comedians have occasionally pushed against the boundaries of their craft – and paid a price.
There have been at least two other instances where cultural officials found performances that strayed too far from their scripts since 2021, but in these cases the fines were relatively minimal: around $7,000 USD each. The nearly $2 million fine imposed on Xiaoguo Culture suggests a rising level of concern within the government.
Chizi, whose real name is Wang Yuechi, was reportedly banned on multiple online platforms in February after a stand-up tour in North America where he reportedly talked about taboo topics such as China’s epidemic prevention policies and censorship rules.
Meng Chuan, who appeared on the Stand-up Comedy Talent Show from 2019 to 2022, was prohibited from performing after expressing support for White Paper protesters last fall.
And Kamu, a Uyghur from Xinjiang whom the American comedian Farley considers to have been among the edgiest stand-ups in China, was arrested in 2020 for what the police said was facilitating drug use. He received an eight-month prison sentence. He is active on Chinese social media but isn’t allowed to perform offline or appear on television.
In China, jokes travel
Comedians who may want to press their luck face another issue, beyond just the chance of being identified by a cultural investigator: the audiences themselves.
“What is said in the comedy club doesn’t stay in the comedy club,” said Jocelyn Chey, a University of Sydney professor and an expert on Chinese culture, including its humor.
Humorous events can acquire a range of “political factors or vortexes which rapidly engulf the comedian or cartoonist,” said Mark Rolfe of the University of New South Wales.
“A whole lot of other people pile their agendas on.”
As the House case shows, a cancel culture monitored by citizens exists in China as it does in the United States.
The difference, of course, is the role the government plays.
‘There is power in funny’
Rhetoric experts say authoritarian governments like China’s are particularly fearful of humor because of its effectiveness as a communications tool. Understanding a joke requires a shared knowledge base, so sharing a laugh is an easy way to find someone with a similar outlook (see Let’s Go Brandon memes).
Humor can also help convey complex or difficult issues more simply or palatably.
Comedians can “couch very serious matters in humorous terms without losing the intended message,” said Beck Krefting, a professor at Skidmore College in New York who studies comedy. “Humor, as they say, helps the medicine go down.”
In the U.S., stand-ups have a history of joining other cultural arbitrators to push social changes, said Krefting, who is a part-time stand-up herself.
The civil rights movement, for example, “was aided and abetted by stand-up comedy and comedians, specifically [those] … who had established a presence with black audiences but were also welcomed by white audiences,” she said.
But comedy is equally powerful in reinforcing an ideology, said Matthew Meier, an associate professor at DePauw University in Indiana.
“The point at which I’m laughing at things, I have taken the premise of those things so for granted that they must be true,” said Meier, who edited a book of essays on comedy called Standing Up, Speaking Out: Stand Up Comedy and the Rhetoric of Social Change.
“Authoritarianism wants to control what is and isn’t funny because there is power in funny. And the power is, at least in part, its capacity to become viral.”
Xi has a sense of humor … just ask him
That desire for control extends beyond comedy. Chey said the case involving House reminded her of China’s recent crackdown on foreign consulting firms that analyze the country’s economic climate.
“In many areas I think people are very careful and are very conscious of increasing restrictions on what they can say and what they can repeat,” Chey told RFA.
This isn’t to say – the Chinese government would like it known – that the party or Xi Jinping himself doesn’t have a sense of humor.
CGTN, China’s foreign-language news propaganda channel, made a video showcasing Xi’s “light-hearted moments,” and the Central Propaganda Department endorsed a Shanghai government produced a “popular theory-based stand-up comedy show.” (Chinese citizens displayed their own sense of humor in the comment section: “Please display instructions on the screen for when and how loudly to laugh, and indicate the maximum number of teeth I can reveal when laughing,” one said.)
“Xi Jinping’s humor is a reflection of wisdom and self-confidence,” said a 2018 propaganda piece intended to promote the leader’s funny side.
“Whether among the masses or among leaders at all levels, Xi-style humor is ubiquitous.”
Given the government’s response to House, it may be the only style left.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Mary Zhao and Jim Snyder for RFA Investigative.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Merchants at Myanmar’s border with China say the junta’s trade policy is too unstable and that a new pay-by-bank system announced last week will severely restrict their ability to import goods.
On June 23, the junta’s commerce ministry announced that importers at northeastern Myanmar’s border with China will have to pay for goods using their local bank accounts beginning on Aug. 1.
Those who have been granted a license will receive a one-month grace period and must complete their imports by Aug. 31 or their license will be invalidated, the announcement said.
The move comes days after the U.S. Treasury Department imposed new sanctions on two junta-controlled banks in connection with the Myanmar military’s purchases of arms from foreign sellers, in a bid to restrict foreign currency transactions.
Analysts said the junta hopes that its new pay-by-bank system at the Chinese border will slow the outflow of foreign currency amid the tightening of sanctions.
On Tuesday, the World Bank noted in a report that, over the six months leading up to June, Myanmar has pursued “a further expansion of export and import license requirements, increased regulation of fuel imports, and additional administrative restrictions on outbound financial transfers.”
“The authorities have announced that imports will be subject to additional scrutiny, with the intent to promote import substitution with domestically produced goods,” the Bank said.
An official from the junta’s Department of Economy and Commerce, who declined to be named because he wasn’t authorized to speak about the subject to the media, framed the pay-by-bank system as a way to “strengthen trade between the two countries and reduce money laundering.”
But Min Thein, the vice president of the Muse Border Rice Association in Shan state, told RFA that the new banking system will “create challenges” for traders, as they will be required to submit proof of purchase via original bank statements and information about the income they generate to the junta’s trade department.
Additionally, the Department of Commerce will only grant import licenses based on the total amount of money in an applicant’s bank account. Also, 65% of foreign currency income from exports must be sold to the regime at the central bank’s currency exchange rate, which is substantially lower than the market rate.
As of Tuesday, the official exchange rate for the U.S. dollar hovered around 2,250 kyats, while the market rate was 3,200 kyats. On Thursday, the official exchange rate for the Chinese yuan was 290 kyats, while the market rate was 435 kyats.
Controlling foreign currency
A trader at the border who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on condition of anonymity, citing security concerns, told RFA that the junta’s directive is aimed at controlling all foreign currency used for trading.
He said requirements on the reporting of income and selling of 65% of foreign currency to the junta at the official exchange rate “won’t work for traders,” and will likely lead to a trade decline.
A similar pay-by-bank system was put into place by Myanmar’s former junta, which ruled the country until 2011, but was later rescinded after traders complained that it forced them to deposit money in advance of their deals, requiring more personal outlay and leading to trade delays.
A trader at the border in Shan state’s Chin Shwe Haw township, which is one of Myanmar’s five official border trade posts with China, said the junta’s frequent changes to the country’s trade policy had left importers and exporters scrambling to keep up.
“We don’t exactly know which way to go,” he said. “The trade system changes too often. When one system was announced not long ago, another new system was ordered to replace it. Importers and exporters are all confused.”
Other sources told RFA that if the new system slows trade, those who rely on the exchange of goods will also suffer.
A trucker at the border said that his line of work would also be impacted by the new policy.
“If traders have to pay too much to the government, we truckers will be out of work, too,” he said. “We will have to wait and see how it’s going to turn out, as the new policy was just announced, but I expect that the flow of goods will definitely be slowed.”
Junta officials have pointed to the success of a similar pay-by-bank system implemented along Myanmar’s border with Thailand since Nov. 1.
But a trader working along that border told RFA that the success is largely due to the strong banking connections between Thailand and Myanmar, while in some cases there aren’t even banks on the Chinese side of the border with Myanmar.
Slowing trade
Trade along Myanmar’s 2,200-kilometer (1,370-mile) border with China mostly takes place in the border towns of Lweje and Kanpaikti in Kachin state and in Muse and Chin Shwe Haw in Shan state.
Trade with China was steady prior to 2019, but was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the political crisis in the aftermath of Myanmar’s Feb. 1, 2021 military coup d’etat.
According to the junta’s Department of Commerce and Industry, exports to China from Muse – which sees the heaviest flow of trade across the border – amounted to US$3 billion in the fiscal year from 2019-2020, while imports were worth US$1.8 billion.
As of May for the current fiscal year, exports had reached US$274 million, while imports were valued at US$157 million.
Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Matt Reed.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.
The boom in renewable power projects in China will likely help the country reach its 2030 target five years early, boosting the effort to limit global carbon emissions far faster than expected, a new study said.
China is on track to double its solar and wind power capacity and shatter Beijing’s ambitious 2030 target of 1,200 gigawatts (GW) five years ahead of schedule if all prospective projects are successfully built and commissioned, said the Global Energy Monitor (GEM) report, released on Thursday.
Solar panel installations alone are growing at a pace that would increase global capacity by 85% and wind power by nearly 50% by 2025, said GEM, a San Francisco-based non-governmental organization that tracks energy projects worldwide.
China has approximately 379 GW of large utility-scale solar and 371 GW of wind capacity projects that have been announced or are in the pre-construction and construction phases. They will likely be finished by 2025, adding roughly the same amount of currently installed operating capacity.
The report projected that China would likely achieve the provincial targets of approximately 1,371 GW for wind and solar, which is higher than the 1,200 GW President Xi Jinping announced his government would install by 2030.
“This new data provides unrivaled granularity about China’s jaw-dropping surge in solar and wind capacity,” said Dorothy Mei, project manager at Global Energy Monitor.
“As we closely monitor the implementation of prospective projects, this detailed information becomes indispensable in navigating the country’s energy landscape.”
Half global renewable capacity in China
China has emerged as the frontrunner in global renewable energy, leveraging a blend of incentives and regulatory policies to host approximately 50% of the world’s operational wind and solar capacity.
The report said the ambitious renewable push has been geographically widespread, with every province and most counties developing large-scale solar and wind power.
China’s operating scale solar capacity has reached 228 GW, more than the rest of the world combined.
According to the report, China’s northern and northwest provinces have the largest number of solar projects. Shanxi, Xinjiang, and Hebei are the top three regions with the highest utility-scale solar capacity.
Meanwhile, China’s combined onshore and offshore wind capacity has doubled since 2017, surpassing 310 GW, with the highest concentration of projects in the northern and northwestern regions, including Inner Mongolia, Hebei, and Xinjiang.
China’s offshore wind capacity, which accounts for just 10% of its total wind capacity, is more than Europe’s offshore operating capacity.
On Sunday, China successfully commenced operations of the Tibetan plateau’s largest hybrid solar-hydro power plant, Kela, which can generate 2 billion kilowatt hours of electricity annually, equivalent to the energy consumption of over 700,000 households.
Currently boasting a capacity of 20 GW, the plant is projected to expand and achieve approximately 50 GW capacity by 2030.
In the past, China has said that its greenhouse gas emissions will peak in 2030 before slowing down to reach net zero by 2060.
“Ramping up wind and solar capacity plays an essential role in China’s carbon emissions from the power sector,” Mei told Radio Free Asia.
“When China reaches its emissions peak will essentially depend on how soon the growth of clean energy can start to outpace the increase in total energy demand, which could happen in the next few years given the current solar and wind boom.”
China’s reliance on coal continues
Among the top 10 power sector emitters, China led the world by three times more than the U.S., the second-biggest carbon dioxide emitter, with fossil fuel power plants generating two-thirds of China’s electricity in 2022.
In April, another energy research organization Ember said in a report that China produced the most CO2 emissions of any power sector in the world in 2022, accounting for 38% of total global emissions from electricity generation.
Mei said that while China had made significant progress in renewable energy deployment, it continued to heavily rely on coal for power generation “due to its reliability and consistent electricity supply.”
“The power supply model being adopted at the renewables bases in the northwest deserts still largely relies on new coal power plants to provide a steady, reliable flow of electricity through the long-distance direct current transmission lines to end users,” Mei said.
In 2022, China alone accounted for 53% of the world’s coal-fired electricity generation, showing a dramatic revival in appetite for new coal power projects.
Recent record heatwaves and drought have also renewed focus on China’s energy security concerns, as factories had to be shut down due to power shortages, forcing authorities to increase reliance on coal.
Last year, Beijing approved the highest new coal capacity in eight years. It continues this year, with environmental group Greenpeace saying in April that China had approved at least 20.45 GW of new coal capacity in the first three months of 2023, according to official approval documents.
“As electricity demand during extreme weather events increases, China must resist turning to coal and should instead prioritize more optimal solutions to manage the variability of demand and clean power supply,” Mei said.
Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Subel Rai Bhandari for RFA.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The Chinese government has denied compensation for residents, including Tibetan nomads, affected by the construction of the world’s largest hydro-solar plant, residents living near the plant told Radio Free Asia.
Chinese state media reported Monday that the Kela mega hydro-photovoltaic complementary power station began full operation Sunday. The sprawling solar plant, which covers 16 million square meters, or more than 2,000 soccer fields, has a hydropower component that helps stabilize energy supply due to shifting weather conditions.
It is capable of generating 2 billion kilowatt-hours each year, and can fully charge 15,000 electric vehicles with a range of 550 kilometers (340 miles) in just one hour.
But nomadic Tibetans who once grazed their cattle in the area now covered by a sea of solar panels were forced away and offered nothing in return, a Tibetan resident living near Kela told RFA’s Tibetan Service.
“The Chinese government has begun operating the largest solar power station along with the hydropower dams in Nyakchu county in Kardze [in Chinese, Ganzi] beginning June 24,” the resident said, referring to a separate hydropower project.
“In order to build and facilitate these power plants, the Chinese government has displaced the local Tibetans in these regions in a land-grab and has not given any compensation yet.”
The resident said that the displaced Tibetans were never informed before the project started.
“Instead, police were stationed near these power plants and locals were not permitted near them,” the person said. “Though the authorities told the local Tibetans that these power plants would be beneficial to livestock and their pastures, but now the Tibetan nomads are being displaced and pushed away to other places.”
The nomads had filed complaints with the Chinese government to no avail, another Tibetan resident said.
“In April this year, the local Tibetans pleaded with the Chinese authorities to stop these projects,” the second person said. “However it is very clear that no opposition to displacement and resettlement is possible and that local Tibetans have no choice but to comply with the government’s orders.”
The power plants pose a serious threat to Tibet’s fragile environment, Lobsang Yangtso, an environmental researcher at the San Francisco-based Tibet International Network.
“China’s policies and the expansion of infrastructure in Tibet are the cause of earthquakes, floods and various types of irreversible damage to the ecosystem,” she 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 Sangyal Kunchok for RFA Tibetan.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
After instigating a series of diplomatic disputes and displaying “toughness” toward China, Seoul’s attitude seems to have suddenly changed in the past couple of days, with a high-profile emphasis on “China-South Korean friendship.” On June 25, South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin stated in a news program that the basic stance of the Yoon Suk-yeol government is to advance South Korea-China relations into that of a mature and healthy one based on mutual respect, reciprocity and common interest, and the Yoon government sees “no reason to antagonize China and has no will to do so.” He further expressed that Seoul will continue to strengthen strategic communication to promote friendship between South Korea and China.
This statement has sparked discussions in both China and South Korea. From the perspective of Chinese society, we certainly welcome and hope that the two countries meet each other halfway. However, to be frank, many Chinese people have doubts about Seoul’s sincerity: Is it a realization of the overall trend or a measure of expediency? These doubts are not unfounded. An important “coincidence” is that South Korea’s denial of “antagonizing China” happened to occur after the visit of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to China.
Actually, after the official announcement of Blinken’s visit to China, there has been a wave of voices in South Korean public opinion hoping to repair relations with China, because “China-US relations are entering a phase of easing tensions,” and South Korea should follow suit. Therefore, even though the stated intention is to enhance “China-South Korean friendship,” it still gives the impression of dancing to US’ tune. The effectiveness of such a “friendly gesture” is questionable.
A government that cannot maintain independence and autonomy in foreign affairs will find it hard to help pull the China-South Korea relations out of a dilemma. Currently, when Washington wants to ease tensions, Seoul immediately responds with a “warm breeze.” However, if Washington wants to tighten the situation in the future, wouldn’t Seoul follow suit with immediate snowfall? The key issue is not just a matter of attitude. South Korea has cooperated with the US in damaging China’s interests on issues such as THAAD and chips. The consequences of these actual actions are not something that can be resolved by simply blowing some “warm breeze.”
Frankly speaking, since the inauguration of the Yoon government, China-South Korea relations have been deteriorating, and it seems they have not yet hit the bottom. Many insightful individuals in South Korea are expressing deep concerns about the unnecessary difficulties that China-South Korea relations are experiencing due to external or emotional factors. They have also criticized the South Korean government for its actions.
It is worth noting that China has never concluded or made the judgment that there is a reason for China and South Korea to antagonize each other. The self-defense of South Korea appears to be more of an attempt to ease domestic dissatisfaction and resentment toward the immature and unbalanced diplomacy of the Yoon government.
Regardless of the reason, having the willingness to improve relations is always better than exchanging harsh words, but ultimately it depends on the actions of South Korea. For example, when it comes to the Taiwan question, can South Korea return to its original position as an “outsider?” In Washington’s strategy of “decoupling from” and containing China, does South Korea play the role of a communicator or an accomplice? In terms of security issues, does it want to maintain common peace or pave the way for an Asia-Pacific NATO? These will be important yardsticks for measuring whether the Yoon government truly wants to improve or stabilize China-South Korea relations.
Of course, South Korea has the right to develop friendly relations with other countries. Whether it wants to develop relations with the US and Japan based on equality and mutual benefit, sacrifice its own interests, or engage in “humiliating diplomacy,” the Chinese people do not really care. However, if South Korea regards its relations with the US as a “guidebook” for developing relations with China, follows the US’ lead, parrots Washington’s tone, deals with China from a position of strength that is no longer what it used to be, or learns the bad US habit of “saying one thing while doing another,” it will be inevitably difficult for the Chinese people to have a good impression of Seoul. If trust is lost, how can “China-South Korean friendship” be discussed?
In addition, South Koreans with a certain historical background will easily think of deeper issues. Some Korean media claimed that the US enjoys the logic of a great power, mobilizing the world to confront China while secretly seeking dialogue with China itself. Many South Koreans are worried that they may be “sold” by the US. As is well known, Japan has had a nightmare of “overhead diplomacy,” which is also true for South Korea. Under the “America First” doctrine and the US’ great power logic, the dilemma and nightmare of allies such as Japan and South Korea being abandoned have always existed. The more closely tied to the US, the more independence will be lost, and the heavier this nightmare will become.
China and South Korea share significant common interests, which even the most conservative political groups in South Korea cannot deny or ignore. We have observed that the Yoon government has recently tilted heavily in diplomacy, but there has also been a significant backlash within South Korea. Returning to rationality and pragmatism will be the only correct option that the Yoon government will eventually have to face. We hope that this shift will occur voluntarily rather than being forced upon South Korea.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
This story originally appeared in Peoples Dispatch on June 22, 2023. It is shared here under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.
Labor leaders and organizers are banding together to demand justice for Chinese-American unionized worker and activist Li Tang “Henry” Liang. Liang was indicted and then arrested in early May in Boston in retaliation for exercising his free speech rights. “The federal government has targeted Liang for advocating peaceful relations between the US and China,” say labor activists in the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance of the AFL-CIO, the largest trade union in the US.
As a hotel worker, Liang was an active member in his union, UNITE HERE Local 26. He is also an activist in the Chinese-American community, rallying against the US’s propaganda war against China. He previously served on the board of directors for Chinatown Main Street, an organization promoting Chinese-American small businesses in Boston’s Chinatown, and the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association of New England, which “serves as the umbrella organization for the Chinese communities of New England” according to its website.
“Li Tang has been a participant in important fights for workers rights, including going on strike with his co-workers for 46 days in 2018,” Mike Kramer, Executive Vice President of Local 26, told Peoples Dispatch. “Despite working long hours as a hotel worker, he has dedicated his free time to being active in his community and to the service of others. The charges being brought against this man are a shameful, racist attack.”
“Following his indictment, his employer placed him on indefinite suspension, unfairly depriving his family of income and assuming his guilt without due process,” reads APALA’s petition. “Someone undergoing trial should not be presumed guilty and should have the right to due process and the right to livelihood.”
Liang has advocated for China’s reunification with regions such as Taiwan and peace between the US and China. He was indicted by a federal grand jury for “conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government without prior notification” and “acting as an agent of a foreign government without notice to the attorney general.”
“Having a political view doesn’t make you an agent of a foreign government,” said Amrita Dani, unionized teacher in Boston and APALA member.
Liang’s charges come in the context of the United States’ New Cold War against China. “Liang is facing charges under the Foreign Agents Relations Act (FARA),” states APALA. “In recent years, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) has used FARA to intimidate peace activists, journalists, and others for voicing opposition towards hawkish US foreign policy.”
With the rise of challenges to US hegemony by China and Russia, the United States has grown increasingly paranoid and has lashed out in various ways against these two countries. One way is the billions of dollars in funding funneled to the Russia–Ukraine war, or with the military drills in Chinese waters along with US bases strategically surrounding China. Part of the ongoing effort to rally mass support for the New Cold War is the persecution and repression of free speech in the Chinese-American community.
Waves of Chinese-Americans and Chinese nationals including students, academics, researchers, and activists have been targeted for repression by the FBI due to the US’s orientation against China. In 2020, Trump signed an executive order to expel thousands of Chinese university students purportedly for having ties to the People’s Liberation Army, although many of these students had ties to civilian universities who merely provided scholarships through the PLA. The US is still to this day denying visas based on this proclamation.
“[The US is] fighting tooth-and-nail to prevent, not countries that want to make war with them, but countries who want to develop their economies, to protect their people and sovereignty, and to have a multilateral world, not a unipolar world,” said Marxist militant Ronnie Kasrils, former Minister of Intelligence of South Africa, during a recent webinar. “The Yankees are panic-stricken… for the way their control [over these nations] are breaking down.”
APALA is calling for Liang to be reinstated at his job, for the Department of Justice to stop racially profiling and restricting freedom of speech, and for the DOJ to drop all charges against Liang.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
A discussion featuring Yakov Feygin, Daniela Gabor, Ho-fung Hung, Thea Riofrancos, and Quinn Slobodian.
Chinese authorities in Tibet are randomly searching monasteries and forcing monks to sign documents renouncing all ties to the “separatist” Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism’s foremost spiritual leader, Tibetan sources living in exile told Radio Free Asia.
The Dalai Lama is widely regarded by Chinese leaders as a separatist intent on splitting Tibet, a formerly independent nation that was invaded and incorporated into China by force in 1950, from Beijing’s control.
The Dalai Lama, who now lives in exile in India, says only that he seeks a greater autonomy for Tibet as a part of China, with guaranteed protections for Tibet’s language, culture and religion.
RFA reported last year that China began requiring Tibetans working in official government positions to renounce all ties to the Dalai Lama as a condition of employment. Authorities appear to be including monasteries under this rule.
Beginning this month, Chinese authorities conducted searches of monasteries in Shentsa (in Chinese, Shenzha) and Sok (Suo) counties on the premise of maintaining security, a Tibetan living in exile, who requested anonymity for security reasons, told RFA’s Tibetan Service.
“The authorities search all the residences of the monks and the main shrines in the monasteries,” the exile said. “The monks of Shartsa Monastery are also forced into renouncing ties with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and be a part of anti-Dalai Lama groups.’
In a photo received by RFA from Tibet, the Shartsa monks are seen signing their names on a board on the wall.
The text on the board states that “We will rigorously take part in opposing the Dalai Lama clique and will remain loyal and devoted to the country [China].”
As part of their searches, the authorities have been scrutinizing the monks’ prayer manuscripts and books, and removing prayer flags from shrines, said another exiled Tibetan, who declined to be named.
“They did not give any sort of warning before conducting these random searches,” said the second exile. The monks in these monasteries were summoned for a meeting where they were forced to sign documents renouncing the Dalai Lama and separatism.”
Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Sangyal Kunchok for RFA Tibetan.
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
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There’s a frenzied rush by the Australian political/media class to both propagandise Australians as quickly as possible into supporting preparations for war with China, and to ram through legislation that facilitates the censorship of online speech.
Australia’s Communications Minister Michelle Rowland is set to release draft legislation imposing hefty fines on social media companies who fail to adequately block “misinformation” and “disinformation” from circulation in Australia, a frightening prospect which will likely have far-reaching consequences for political speech in the nation.
Sydney Morning Herald reports:
class=”mk ml mm”>Under the proposed laws, the authority would be able to impose a new “code” on specific companies that repeatedly fail to combat misinformation and disinformation or an industry-wide “standard” to force digital platforms to remove harmful content.
The maximum penalty for systemic breaches of a registered code would be $2.75 million or 2 per cent of global turnover — whichever is higher.
The maximum penalty for breaching an industry standard would be $6.88 million, or 5 per cent of a company’s global turnover. In the case of Facebook’s owner, Meta, for example, the maximum penalty could amount to a fine of more than $8 billion.
Those are the kinds of numbers that change a company’s censorship protocols. We’re already seeing social media censorship of content in Australia that the Australian government has ruled unacceptable; here’s what the transphobic tweets embedded in a right-wing article about Twitter censorship looks like when you try to view them on Twitter from Australia, for example:
These tweets were reportedly hidden from Australians on the platform at the behest of the Australian government. Australians could wind up seeing much more of this sort of Australia-specific censorship from social media platforms if this “misinformation” legislation goes through. Or they could just start censoring it for everyone.
The problem with laws against inaccurate information is of course that somebody needs to be making the determination what information is true and what is false, and those determinations will necessarily be informed by the biases and agendas of the person making them. I can substantiate my claim that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was provoked by NATO powers using an abundance of facts and evidence, for example, but there’s still a sizeable portion of the population which would consider such claims malignant disinformation with or without the supporting data.
When the government involves itself in the regulation of speech, it is necessarily incentivized to regulate speech in a way that benefits itself and its allies. Nobody who supports government regulation of online mis- and disinformation can articulate how such measures can be safeguarded in a surefire way against the abuses and agendas of the powerful.
Under a Totalitarian Regime, your government censors your speech if you say unauthorized things. Under a Free Democracy, your government orders corporations to censor your speech if you say unauthorized things.
At the same time, Australian media have been hammering one remarkably uniform message into public consciousness with increasing aggression lately: there is a war with China coming, Australia will be involved, and Australia must do much more to prepare for this war as quickly as possible.
Australians are remarkably vulnerable to propaganda due to the fact that ownership of our nation’s media is the most concentrated in the western world, with a powerful duopoly of Nine Entertainment and Murdoch’s News Corp controlling most of the Australian press.
Both of these media conglomerates have been involved in the latest excuse to talk about how more military spending and militarisation is needed, this time taking the form of a war machine-funded think tanker publishing a book about how we all need to prepare for war with China.
Nine Entertainment’s Sydney Morning Herald and The Age have an article out titled “Military expert warns of ‘very serious risk’ of China war within five years” by the odious Matthew Knott, who is best known for being told to drum himself out of Australian journalism by former prime minister Paul Keating for his appalling war-with-China propaganda series published earlier this year by the same papers. Readers who follow Australian media would do well to remember Knott’s name, because he has become one of the most prolific war propagandists in the western press.
The “military expert” who warns of the need to prepare for an imminent war with China is a man named Ross Babbage, who as Knott notes is “a non-resident senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.” What Knott fails to disclose to his readers is that the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments is funded by every war profiteer and war machine entity under the sun, the majority coming straight from the US Department of Defense itself.
As we’ve discussed many times previously, it is never, ever okay for the press to cite war machine-funded think tankers for expertise or analysis on matters of war and foreign policy, and it is doubly egregious for them to do so without at least disclosing their massive conflict of interest to their readers. This act of extreme journalistic malpractice has become the norm throughout the mainstream press, because it helps mass media reporters do their actual job: administering propaganda to an unsuspecting public.
The Murdoch press has also been using Babbage’s book release as an excuse to bang the drums of war, with multiple Sky News segments and articles with titles like “Military analyst Ross Babbage warns Australia of potential war with China in coming years,” “National security expert Ross Babbage warns ‘strong possibility’ of war with China in latest book,” and “‘Running out of time’: Xi may move on Taiwan in next few years.” Again, not one mention of Babbage’s conflict of interests.
All for a news story that (and I cannot stress this enough) is not a news story. A war machine-funded think tanker saying he wants more war is not a news story — it’s just a thing that happens when the war machine is allowed to pay people to be warmongers.
“War Machine-Funded Warmonger Wants More War.” That’s your headline. That’s the one and only headline this non-story could ever deserve, if any.
Propaganda and censorship are the two most important tools of imperial narrative control, and it’s very telling that Australia is ramping them both up as the nation is being transformed into a weapon for the US empire to use against China. Steps are being taken to ensure that the Australian populace will be on board with whatever agendas the empire has planned for us in the coming years, and judging from what we’re seeing right now, it isn’t going to be pretty.
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All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. 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 on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. 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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Featured image via Adobe Stock.
In the repertoire of foreign policy combatants in Washington’s corridors of power, there is a time-tested ploy: Conservatives in the military or intelligence bureaucracy leak damaging information to force the (usually Democratic) president into a more confrontational approach with a foreign adversary, derailing any effort to reduce tensions. The bureaucrats’ allies on Capitol Hill immediately…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
On the heels of China’s weather/spy balloon downed by a US F-22 comes a report of the construction of a Chinese listening post in Cuba. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., supports the Biden administration’s claim that China is setting up a spy station in Cuba. Gaetz calls it a “stationary aircraft carrier right off the coast of Florida.”
That is pretty rich given that the US is arming Taiwan (which the present US administration confirms is a province of the People’s Republic of China), and certainly Taiwan’s location makes an excellently situated listening post for the CIA. Thus it appears more so, using Gaetz’s analogy, that Taiwan is being made to serve as a stationary US aircraft carrier right off the coast of Fujian. Nonetheless, China’s presence in Cuba does not violate American sovereignty. Contrariwise, the US’s meddling in Taiwan is viewed as objectionable and provocative by Beijing.
And where is the evidence for Gaetz’s claim?
Western media asked Wang Wenbin, spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for comment on 9 June 2023:
AFP: Reports by US media outlets say that China and Cuba have agreed to set up a Chinese spy facility capable of monitoring communications across the southeastern part of the US. Officials in Washington and Havana have said these reports are not accurate. Does the Chinese foreign ministry have a comment?
Wang Wenbin: I am not aware of what you mentioned. It is well known that the US is an expert on chasing shadows and meddling in other countries’ internal affairs. The US is the global champion of hacking and superpower of surveillance. The US has long illegally occupied Cuba’s Guantánamo Bay for secretive activities and imposed a blockade on Cuba for over 60 years. The US needs to take a hard look at itself, stop interfering in Cuba’s internal affairs under the pretext of freedom, democracy and human rights, immediately lift its economic, commercial and financial blockade on Cuba, and act in ways conducive to improving relations with Cuba and regional peace and stability, not otherwise.
And again on 13 June 2023:
Prensa Latina: Although China and Cuba denied the recent reports, the US government said over the weekend that it had information about this alleged spy center that they say China has been operating in Cuba. What is your comment about it?
Wang Wenbin: I made clear China’s position on this last week. Over the past few days, we have seen self-conflicting comments from US officials and media on the so-called allegation of China building “spy facilities” in Cuba. This is another example of “the US negating the US.”
What is true can never be false, and what is false can never be true. No matter how the US tries with slanders and smears, it will not succeed in driving a wedge between two true friends, China and Cuba, nor can it cover up its deplorable track record of indiscriminate mass spying around the world.
Thus, Gaetz has once again revealed the absurdity/mendacity of American politicians. Besides, what does it matter if China is building a listening post in Cuba? Is there any country on the planet that believes that the US is not spying on them? What is it that the Five Eyes are doing? What are all those eyes in the sky doing? Do US embassies and consulates not function as intelligence gathering bases? The US collects intelligence on friends and foes alike.
It even surveilles its own citizens. Don’t Americans know this? That is why Edward Snowden faces arrest should he return home. It is a moral contradiction that a whistleblower who exposes government illegality would be arrested by that same government for exposing its illegal actions.
This plays into another US narrative of the Threat of China. (See Paolo Urio, America and the China Threat: From the End of History to the End of Empire, 2022. Review.) Fox News cites an unnamed Biden administration official on the awareness
of a “number of” efforts by the People’s Republic of China “around the world to expand its overseas logistics, basing, and collection infrastructure.” These outposts would allow the People’s Liberation Army “to project and sustain military power at a greater distance.”
That is the rules-based order writ large. The US can do whatever it pleases. It can build military bases around the world and listen in on whoever it wants. But there are rules for the rest of the world to obey.
What does Gaetz propose doing? He supports “an Authorization for Use of Military Force to take out the Chinese assets in Cuba.”
I support an Authorization for Use of Military Force to take out the Chinese assets in Cuba.
We should be a lot more concerned that China is functionally turning Cuba into a stationary aircraft carrier right off the coast of Florida. pic.twitter.com/rH0WIpU5rV
— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) June 22, 2023
Is this what American citizens need now, another war with a powerful country their government chooses to regard as an adversary — all this while the US and its NATO minions are going down to ignominious defeat in Ukraine?
Beijing issued a “red” alert level Friday, a day after the city’s temperature soared to a record for June, weather authorities and local media said, as northern China suffers a scorching heat wave expected to extend into next week.
Already, several monthly heat records have been broken across China, which has prompted fears of a looming energy crisis.
On Thursday afternoon, Beijing’s temperature reached 41.1 degrees Celsius (105.9 F), a record since data collection started in 1961, according to the municipal weather observatory. It was also Beijing’s second-highest level in history, just below the 41.9 C (107.4 F) registered on July 24, 1999.
This week’s scorching heat has coincided with the annual Dragon Boat Festival holiday, which started on Thursday, when millions of Chinese travel to visit relatives or for tourism.
Authorities urged residents to remain indoors.
“Citizens and tourists are reminded to reduce the time for outdoor activities during high-temperature periods, pay attention to heatstroke prevention and cooling, and replenish the water frequently,” the state-owned China Weather Network said in a warning Friday.
Last summer, China faced its most severe heat wave and drought in many decades, resulting in extensive power deficits and significant food and industrial supply network disruptions.
Humans contributing
According to a scientific report last month, the record-breaking heat wave that hit parts of Asia in April was made at least 30 times more likely due to human-induced climate change.
The temperatures were at least 2 degrees Celsius hotter due to climate change, which has seen average global temperatures rise 1.2 degrees since 1900, the World Weather Attribution (WWA) study said.
Experts have said clear and dry conditions now have exacerbated the current heat wave.
It was the first time that Beijing, home to more than 21 million people, issued a “red” alert in its four-tiered warning system since the new system was introduced in 2015.
On Friday, Beijing’s temperature hit 40.3 degrees C (104.5 F), the first time on record that China’s capital rose to more than 40 degrees, the Beijing weather observatory’s chief forecaster, Zhang Yingxin, told a press briefing, according to media reports.
China’s National Meteorological Center said temperatures in parts of Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei and Shandong rose rapidly over 40 C (104 F), with a total of 19 observatories in four regions reporting record-high temperatures, Zhang Fanghua, its chief forecaster said, according to CWN.
In the northern port city of Tianjin, the temperature reached 41.2 C (106.16 F), a record high for the region.
The temperature reached 43 C (109.4 F) in coastal Shandong on Thursday, according to the meteorological center.
Local authorities in northern and eastern Chinese cities have issued heatstroke and dehydration warnings, advising people not to work outdoors during the hottest parts of the day.
Meanwhile, in southern China, authorities issued the lowest “yellow” alert for rainstorms on Friday, with heavy rains projected to hit parts of Guangxi Zhuang, Fujian, Guangdong and Yunnan in the coming days.
Edited by Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Subel Rai Bhandari for RFA.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
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Voting in a western “democracy” is like that bit in the opening intro of The Simpsons when Marge is driving with the baby and the baby has a toy steering wheel. The baby thinks she’s driving the car but it’s just a fake toy to keep her busy and let her feel like she’s participating.
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All the worst atrocities in human history have been perpetrated or permitted by the government of the people who perpetrated them. None of the world’s most evil people are in prison. The law isn’t there to protect you from bad people, it’s there to protect bad people from you.
That’s why you should always, always, always be distrustful of all efforts to extend the law and expand government power over you. It’s not happening because your government wants to help you. Your government is not your friend.
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Republicans push war with China while sometimes acting as skeptics on Russia warmongering, Democrats push war with Russia while sometimes acting as skeptics on China warmongering. This creates the illusion of opposition while giving the war machine everything it wants.
Which happens to be the job of the two-party system: creating the illusion of having a democratic choice between two opposing parties while ensuring that both parties advance the same overall agendas.
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The best advice I can offer about US-China tensions is to ignore the words and watch the actions. Ignore what officials say about wanting peace and supporting the One China policy, and just watch all the US war machinery that’s being rapidly added to the areas surrounding China.
The US empire is better at international narrative manipulation than any power structure that has ever existed in human history, but what they can’t spin away is the concrete maneuverings of solid pieces of war machinery, because they are physical realities and not narratives.
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Trump’s recent comments about taking Venezuela’s oil are another good illustration of the real reason major factions of the imperial blob dislike Trump. It’s not because he’s “anti-war” or “fighting the Deep State” (he isn’t) — it’s because he’s a sloppy empire manager who makes the machine look as ugly as it is and can’t be trusted to keep the quiet parts quiet.
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Gotta hand it to the empire for successfully duping rightists into believing anti-communism is somehow an anti-establishment position and not the exact same pro-establishment position that was propagandized into their parents, their grandparents, and their great-grandparents.
“Oh you’re an anti-establishment rebel are you? What does that look like in practice?”
‘Hating communism, being mean to people whose sexuality is different from mine, and voting Republican.’
“Ah. So pretty much just being a conservative and supporting the establishment, then?”
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It’s actually kind of adorable how the Pentagon has gotten so comfortable sucking out funds for killing Russians that it’s now at a point where it just goes “Oh hey look, we just found a few billion dollars lying around on the ground! Oh well, might as well throw it at Ukraine!”
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Many people who are suspicious of our ruling power structures hold an assumption that our world is being micromanaged by a shadowy cabal of elite “Them”s whose sinister plans dictate every major event in our world, but it really doesn’t work like that. Conspiracies among the powerful happen of course, but most of the ugly things we see are more the result of a blind confluence of mutually reinforcing forces like capitalism, the US empire’s push for unipolar hegemony, war profiteering, and partisan politics.
It’d probably actually be better for us if the world really was being tightly controlled by a small cabal of elites instead of being blindly driven by a convergence of unthinking power interests, because at least such a cabal wouldn’t be imperiling their own lives by pushing nuclear brinkmanship and environmental destruction like a bunch of idiots.
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Inner work is a social responsibility for everyone who is capable of it. Humanity’s evolutionary and historical heritage has left us all full of trauma and dysfunction, and if you’ve got the time and resources to help clear your share of that from our species you really should. I’m not saying you have to spend years in the Himalayas, or even go to therapy if that’s not where it’s at for you, but you ought to do something to bring consciousness and healing to your inner processes rather than just letting unconscious conditioning pilot your whole life.
It also happens that working on yourself and clearing your unconscious bullshit will make you a lot happier and lead to much wiser decisions and a much better life. So there’s really no reason you should keep coasting along and still be the same person ten years from now that you are today.
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All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. 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 on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. 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.
On 3 April 2023, deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh announced the United States expanding into four new military sites in the Philippines.
“In addition to the five existing sites, these new locations will strengthen the interoperability of the United States and Philippine armed forces and allow us to respond more seamlessly together to address a range of shared challenges in the Indo-Pacific region, including natural and humanitarian disasters,” said Singh.
A day later, 4 April, the US embassy in the Philippines announced a joint US-Philippines military exercise, Balikatan-2023, to be held from April 11 to 28. It was billed as the largest military manoeuvres in the history of the Philippines, with more than 5,000 Philippine troops and more than 12,000 US troops taking part.
To anyone familiar with the world map, it jumps out immediately that the Philippine’s geographical proximity to Taiwan and the South China China is exactly what the US is looking for in its Pivot to Asia (specifically China): a location where the US can try and impose containment on China.
This realization was clear to China, and China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Yi responded guardedly: “China has sent a signal to the Philippines to not allow third parties to sabotage the friendly relations between the two countries.”
Helping Those in Need
More recently, on 16 June, the Philippines news website Inquirer.net ran a piece on a request put out by Philippines president Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr to help his country procure affordable fertilizer.
Did the US step up?
China stepped up and donated 20,000 metric tons of urea fertilizer to the Philippines.
“This donation that came from China was a product of our request from all our friends around the world during the crisis when fertilizer — well, what we are still feeling now when fertilizer prices went up and the availability was also because of the supply chain problems that we are experiencing with our usual suppliers and China did not think twice and immediately came up,” said Marcos.
Relationships Based in Dialogue
China does not base its relationships with other countries through force of arms.
Regarding disputed territory in the South China Sea, China seeks to solve this through negotiation. One point of contention is a dispute over fishing in the South China Sea. China says the fishing ban from May to August is to sustain fish stocks and improve the marine ecology. The Philippines is opposed to this imposition.
Regarding this, Marcos said, “We already have coordination with them (China) when there is a fishing ban so there won’t be a sudden fishing ban. At least we can have a plan. We are making some progress in that regard.”
A stark Difference between the US and China vis-a-vis Philippines
Following the Spanish-American War, the US sought to recolonize hitherto Spanish colonies, one of which was the Philippines. The Philippines resisted US imperialism. So the US waged a bloody war against the Philippines from 1899 to 1902. The estimates of Filipino fatalities ranges from 200,000 to 3 million.
According to one researcher on the US genocide in the Philippines:
200,000 to 300,000 dead just can not be correct. A People’s History of the United States (1980) [by Howard Zinn, p. 308] cites 300,000 Filipinos killed in Batangas [a province in Luzon, south of Manila] alone, that alone proves the figures wrong, William Pomeroy’s American Neocolonialism (1970) cites 600,000 Filipinos dead in Luzon alone by 1902. This is backed up by General Bell himself, who said “we estimated that we killed one-sixth of the population of the main island of Luzon — some 600,000 people.”
How Was a Marcos Returned to Malacanang Palace?
During the period when I lived in the Philippines in 2000, a Filipino colleague who had worked at the US naval base in Subic Bay expressed approval at the US departure, citing the breakdown in cultural morale and rampant prostitution. Now US service personnel are returning to Subic Bay as a result of Marcos’s renewed ties with US militarism.
Yet, the election of Marcos is puzzling. His father, the dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr, had been toppled by a People Power Revolution. The kleptocratic family was sent into exile in Hawai’i.
The current president, however, refuses to apologize for the sins of his father. Fair enough if he had no part in his father’s sins. But he could and should deplore the atrocities of his father’s regime. People of good conscience deplore atrocities regardless of who the perpetrator is. Bongbong doesn’t. Neither has the ill-gotten wealth of the Marcos family been returned to the Filipino people.
It is an electoral conundrum that speaks more to the psyche of the masses. When the masses are mired in poverty and hold illusions of better times under martial law, then logic often goes out the window. Sadly, the admonition about people who don’t remember their history bodes ill for the poor masses.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Zoulikha Bouabdellah (Algeria), Envers Endroit Geometrique (‘Geometric Reverse Obverse’), 2016.
It is difficult to make sense of many events these days. France’s behaviour, for instance, is hard to square. On the one hand, French President Emmanuel Macron changed his mind to support Ukraine’s entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). On the other hand, he said that France would like to attend the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) summit in South Africa in August. Europe is, of course, not an entirely homogeneous continent, with problems afoot as Hungary and Turkey have refused to ratify Sweden’s desire to enter NATO at its annual summit in Vilnius (Lithuania) in July. Nonetheless, the European bourgeoisie looks westward to Wall Street’s investment firms to park its wealth, yoking its own future to the regency of the United States. Europe is firmly wedded to the Atlantic alliance with little room for an independent European voice.
At the No Cold War platform, we have been carefully studying these elements of Europe’s foreign policy. Briefing no. 8, which will form the bulk of this newsletter, has been drafted along with European Parliament member Marc Botenga of the Workers’ Party of Belgium, or PTB–PVDA. You will find it below.
The war in Ukraine has been accompanied by a strengthening of the US’s grip and influence on Europe. An important supply of Russian gas was replaced by US shale gas. European Union (EU) programmes originally designed to fortify Europe’s industrial base now serve the acquisition of US-made weapons. Under US pressure, many European countries have contributed to escalating war in Ukraine instead of pushing for a political solution to bring about peace.
At the same time, the US wants Europe to decouple from China, which would further reduce Europe’s global role and run counter to its own interests. Instead of following the US’s confrontational and damaging New Cold War agenda, it is in the interests of Europe’s people for their countries to establish an independent foreign policy that embraces global cooperation and a diverse set of international relations.
Europe’s Growing Dependence on the US
The Ukraine war, and the ensuing spiral of sanctions and counter sanctions, led to a rapid decoupling of EU-Russia trade relations. Losing a trade partner has limited the EU’s options and increased dependence on the US, a reality that is most visible in the EU’s energy policy. As a result of the war in Ukraine, Europe reduced its dependence on Russian gas, only to increase its dependence on more expensive US liquefied natural gas (LNG). The US took advantage of this energy crisis, selling its LNG to Europe at prices well above production cost. In 2022, the US accounted for more than half of the LNG imported into Europe. This gives the US additional power to pressure EU leaders: if US shipments of LNG were diverted elsewhere, Europe would immediately face great economic and social difficulty.
Reza Derakhshani (Iran), White Hunt, 2019.
Washington has started pushing European companies to relocate to the US, using lower energy prices as an argument. As German Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action Robert Habeck said, the US is ‘hoovering up investments from Europe’ – i.e., it is actively promoting the region’s deindustrialisation.
The US Inflation Reduction Act (2022) and the CHIPS and Science Act (2022) directly serve this purpose, offering $370 billion and $52 billion in subsidies, respectively, to attract clean energy and semiconductor industries to the US. The impact of these measures is already being felt in Europe: Tesla is reportedly discussing relocating its battery construction project from Germany to the US, and Volkswagen paused a planned battery plant in Eastern Europe, instead moving forward with its first North American electric battery plant in Canada, where it is eligible to receive US subsides.
EU dependence on the US also applies in other areas. A 2013 report by the French Senate asked unambiguously: ‘Is the European Union a colony of the digital world?’. The 2018 US Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data (CLOUD) Act and the 1978 US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allow US companies extensive access to EU telecommunications including data and phone calls, giving them access to state secrets. The EU is being spied on continuously.
Cle?ment Jacques-Vossen (Belgium), Lockdown, 2020.
Rising Militarisation Is Against the Interests of Europe
EU discussions on strategic vulnerabilities focus mostly on China and Russia while the influence of the US is all but ignored. The US operates a massive network of over 200 US military bases and 60,000 troops in Europe, and, through NATO, it imposes ‘complementarity’ on European defence actions, meaning that European members of the alliance can act together with the US but not independently of it. Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright famously summarised this as ‘the three Ds’: no ‘de-linking’ European decision-making from NATO, no ‘duplicating’ NATO’s efforts, no ‘discriminating’ against NATO’s non-EU members. Furthermore, in order to guarantee dependence, the US refrains from sharing the most important military technologies with European countries, including much of the data and software connected to the F-35 fighter jets they purchased.
For many years, the US has been calling for European governments to increase their military spending. In 2022, military spending in Western and Central Europe surged to €316 billion, returning to levels not seen since the end of the first Cold War. In addition, European states and EU institutions sent over €25 billion in military aid to Ukraine. Prior to the war, Germany, Britain, and France were already amongst the top ten highest military spenders in the world. Now, Germany has approved €100 billion for a special military upgrading fund and committed to spend 2% of its GDP on defence. Meanwhile, Britain announced its ambition to increase its military spending from 2.2% to 2.5% of its GDP and France announced that it will increase its military spending to around €60 billion by 2030 – approximately double its 2017 allocation.
This surge in military spending is taking place while Europe experiences its worst cost of living crisis in decades and the climate crisis deepens. Across Europe, millions of people have taken to the streets in protest. The hundreds of billions of euros being spent on the military should instead be redirected to tackling these urgent problems.
Decoupling from China Would Be Disastrous
The EU would suffer from a US-China conflict. A significant part of EU exports to the US contains Chinese inputs, and conversely, EU goods exports to China often contain US inputs. Tighter export controls imposed by the US on exports to China or vice versa will therefore hit EU companies, but the impact will go much further.
The US has increased pressure on a variety of EU countries, companies, and institutions to scale down or stop cooperation with Chinese projects, in particular lobbying for Europe to join its tech war against China. This pressure has borne fruit, with ten EU states having restricted or banned the Chinese technology company Huawei from their 5G networks as Germany considers a similar measure. Meanwhile, the Netherlands has blocked exports of chip-making machinery to China by the key Dutch semiconductor company ASML.
In 2020, China overtook the US’s position as the EU’s main trading partner, and in 2022, China was the EU’s largest source for imported goods and its third largest market for exported goods. The US push for European companies to restrict or end relations with China would mean limiting Europe’s trade options, and incidentally increasing its dependence on Washington. This would be detrimental not just to the EU’s autonomy, but also to regional social and economic conditions.
Georgi Baev (Bulgaria), Name, 1985.
Europe Should Embrace Global Cooperation, Not Confrontation
Since the end of the Second World War, no single foreign power has wielded more power over European policy than the US. If Europe allows itself to be locked into a US-led bloc, not only will this reinforce its technological dependence on the US, but the region could become de-industrialised. Moreover, this will put Europe at odds not only with China, but also with other major developing countries, including India, Brazil, and South Africa, that refuse to align themselves with one country or another.
Rather than follow the US into conflicts around the world, an independent Europe must redirect its security strategy towards territorial defence, collective security for the continent, and building constructive international links by decisively breaking away from paternalistic and exploitative trade relations with developing countries. Instead, fair, respectful, and equal relationships with the Global South can offer Europe the necessary and valuable diversification of political and economic partners that it urgently needs.
An independent and interconnected Europe is in the interests of the European people. This would allow vast resources to be diverted away from military spending and towards addressing the climate and cost of living crises, such as by building a green industrial base. The European people have every reason to support the development of an independent foreign policy that rejects US dominance and militarisation in favour of embracing international cooperation and a more democratic world order.
Aida Mahmudova (Azerbaijan), Non-Imagined Perspectives, 2018.
The No Cold War briefing above asks an important question: is an independent European foreign policy possible? The general conclusion, given the balance of forces that prevail in Europe today, is no. Not even the far-right government in Italy, which campaigned against NATO, could withstand pressure from Washington. But, as the briefing suggests, the negative impact of the Western policy of preventing peace in Ukraine is being felt daily by the European public. Will the European people stand up for their sovereignty or will they continue to be the frontline for Washington’s ambitions?
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
By Don Wiseman, RNZ Pacific senior journalist
A Papua New Guinean academic says the new security deals with the United States will militarise his country and anyone who thinks otherwise is naïve.
In May, PNG’s Defence Minister Win Barki Daki and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken signed the Defence Cooperation Agreement and the Shiprider Agreement.
Last week they were presented to PNG MPs for ratification and made public.
The defence cooperation agreement talks of reaffirming a strong defence relationship based on a shared commitment to peace and stability and common approaches to addressing regional defence and security issues.
Money that Marape ‘wouldn’t turn down’
University of PNG political scientist Michael Kabuni said there was certainly a need for PNG to improve security at the border to stop, for instance, the country being used as a transit point for drugs such as methamphetamine and cocaine.
“Papua New Guinea hasn’t had an ability or capacity to manage its borders. So we really don’t know what goes on on the fringes of PNG’s marine borders.”
But Kabuni, who is completing his doctorate at the Australian National University, said whenever the US signs these sorts of deals with developing countries, the result is inevitably a heavy militarisation.
“I think the politicians, especially PNG politicians, are either too naïve, or the benefits are too much for them to ignore. So the deal between Papua New Guinea and the United States comes with more than US$400 million support. This is money that [Prime Minister] James Marape wouldn’t turn down,” he said.
The remote northern island of Manus, most recently the site of Australia’s controversial refugee detention camp, is set to assume far greater prominence in the region with the US eyeing both the naval base and the airport.
US fighter jets now (21.06.23) at Jacksons International Airport, Port Moresby.
Walen Parange pic.twitter.com/EVrOV7CWZ3
— Bobby Jr (@tambijr_4rmPNG) June 21, 2023
Kabuni said Manus was an important base during World War II and remains key strategic real estate for both China and the United States.
“So there is talk that, apart from the US and Australia building a naval base on Manus, China is building a commercial one. But when China gets involved in building wharves, though it appears to be a wharf for commercial ships to park, it’s built with the equipment to hold military naval ships,” he said.
Six military locations
Papua New Guineans now know the US is set to have military facilities at six locations around the country.
These are Nadzab Airport in Lae, the seaport in Lae, the Lombrum Naval Base and Momote Airport on Manus Island, as well as Port Moresby’s seaport and Jackson’s International Airport.
According to the text of the treaty the American military forces and their contractors will have the ability to largely operate in a cocoon, with little interaction with the rest of PNG, not paying taxes on anything they bring in, including personal items.
Prime Minister James Marape has said the Americans will not be setting up military bases, but this document gives them the option to do this.
Marape said more specific information on the arrangements would come later.
Antony Blinken said the defence pact was drafted by both nations as ‘equal and sovereign partners’ and stressed that the US will be transparent.
Critics of the deal have accused the government of undermining PNG’s sovereignty but Marape told Parliament that “we have allowed our military to be eroded in the last 48 years, [but] sovereignty is defined by the robustness and strength of your military”.
The Shiprider Agreement has been touted as a solution to PNG’s problems of patrolling its huge exclusive economic zone of nearly 3 million sq km.
Another feature of the agreements is that US resources could be directed toward overcoming the violence that has plagued PNG elections for many years, with possibly the worst occurrence in last year’s national poll.
But Michael Kabuni said the solution to these issues will not be through strengthening police or the military but by such things as improving funding and support for organisations like the Electoral Commission to allow for accurate rolls to be completed well ahead of voting.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Tibetans would willingly accept Chinese rule if granted true autonomy by Beijing, the leader of Tibet’s government-in-exile said Wednesday.
“If those kinds of autonomies are granted to the Tibetans, they will be happy to live under the framework of the People’s Republic of China’s constitution,” said Sikyong Penpa Tsering, the head of the Central Tibetan Administration, referring to the status of Scotland and South Tyrol within the context of British and Italian rule.
“It is not a matter of who rules; it is the quality of the rule,” he said, speaking to the Australian National Press Club in Canberra on “resolving Sino-Tibet conflict and securing peace in the region.”
Penpa Tsering reiterated the Central Tibetan Administration’s commitment to resolving the Sino-Tibet conflict through the “Middle Way Approach” formulated by Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. The strategy promotes true autonomy for Tibetans under Chinese rule, as written in China’s constitution.
But he highlighted the historically independent status of Tibet and said that unless that status is recognized, China would have no reason to negotiate with the CTA.
Embassy lobbying efforts
Penpa Tsering’s hour-long address, which also touched on the Chinese government’s attempts to control the reincarnation process of the Dalai Lama, surveil Buddhist monasteries and restrict the movement of Tibetans, took place despite Beijing’s best efforts.
Earlier this month, Chinese Embassy representatives met with press club chief Maurice Reily and voiced their opposition to Penpa Tsering’s appearance at Wednesday’s event, 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, and observers suggested Beijing may have lobbied Reily because it was worried about the wider exposure Penpa Tsering would get.
“I want to thank the Chinese government for always being the best publicity agent,” Penpa Tsering said at Wednesday’s event, implying that Beijing’s efforts did more harm than good.
Visit to parliament
Earlier on Wednesday, Penpa Tsering delivered a speech on the geopolitical significance of Tibet at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
On Tuesday, the Sikyong observed proceedings at the Australian parliament, where lawmakers Sophie Scamps and Susan Templeman detailed the situation inside Tibet under Chinese rule. He also met with several Australian MPs.
Speaking to RFA Tibetan, Kalsang Tsering, the president of the Australian Tibetan Community Association, welcomed Penpa Tsering’s visit on behalf of the estimated 2,500 Tibetans living in Australia.
“The honor that Sikyong Penpa Tsering has received here in Australia and in the Australian parliament has been overwhelming and it is evident that there is so much support from the parliamentarians for the Tibetan cause,” he said.
Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Tibetan.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
In Brief
Legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and a Senate committee in the first half of this year seeks to change China’s label of developing country used in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Chinese officials have responded by reaffirming that China is still a developing country under international law.
Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) found that there is no clear and uniform definition of a “developing country” within the international community. Different classifications systems used by the UN and World Bank refer to China respectively as a “developing economy” and an “upper middle-income country,” while the WTO allows countries to self-identify as a “developing country.”.
In addition, China’s classification as a “developing country” in certain international treaties does not imply that there is a universal set of international laws which define China as a “developing country.”
In Depth
The U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations approved the Ending China’s Developing Nation Status Act on June 8. The bill requires the State Department to attempt to “stop China from being classified as a developing nation by international organizations” and specifies the World Trade Organization (WTO) as one international organization in which the People’s Republic of China (PRC) receives “beneficial treatment” as a result of its status as a developing country.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Wang Wenbin responded to the bill at a press conference on June 9, saying that “China’s status as the world’s largest developing country is rooted in facts and international law” and that “the rights that China is lawfully entitled to as a developing country” will not be deprived by US politicians.
Wang had earlier claimed at a press conference on May 12 that China’s status as a developing country should not be changed due to the WTO recognition.
Who decides whether a WTO member is “developing or not?”
Wang Wenbin’s claim that China’s status as a developing country is recognized by the WTO is false, as the organization allows individual member states to decide for themselves whether they are a developing country or not.
The WTO does not provide specific definitions for “developed” and “developing” countries. It is up to individual members to declare their own categorization. However, other members have the right to question the decision of a member country to utilize provisions meant for developing countries.”
How do the World Bank and the UN classify China’s economy?
Both the UN and the World Bank use gross national income（GNI） per capita as the defining criteria to measure a countries’ economic development.
The UN World Economic Situation and Prospects report classifies different countries’ economies into four categories: developed, developing, least developed and economies in transition. China’s economy is classified as developing.
The World Bank, on the other hand, does not use the word “developing” at all, but instead divides the world’s countries into four tiers: low, lower-middle, upper-middle and high. China stands on the border between upper-middle income and high income countries, with nominal per capita income at $11,880 as of 2021. While a huge leap from forty or even twenty ago, this number is still well below that of other widely recognized developed economies such as Japan, the U.S., Germany, France or Taiwan.
Does international law entitle China to remain a developing country?
The Chinese foreign ministry claims that the basis of China’s status as a developing country in international law cannot be denied. The ministry pointed to the recognition of such status in international treaties such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Montreal Protocol as proof of its acceptance by the international community. Wang’s statement that the U.S. was attempting to “deprive China of its developing country status” would seem to further imply that China’s status as a developing country is permanent.
Such claims are misleading.
“There are no authoritative definitions of ‘developing country’,” Steve Chanozits, an associate professor of law at The George Washington University, tells AFCL. “There is no consensus definition in international law. Countries can self-assess their own progress toward their development goals and the international community can also make such an assessment.”
While there are many international treaties which divide countries into different categories based on income, with each category bearing different obligations, Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, told AFCL. These categories and their cutoff points are determined after negotiation amongst the relevant parties, Kenny says.
Therefore, China’s status is not permanent or “lawfully entitled” as China’s foreign ministry indicated, but it has a certain time limit and must undergo regular review or redefining by member states in the institutions, Chen-en Sung, an expert on international law and director of the Taiwan Constitutional Foundation, told AFCL. China’s developing status shouldn’t be generalized, but must instead be viewed in light of the respective provisions of the cited treaties, along with the rights and obligations of countries labeled under different statuses.
Why does it matter whether a country is labeled as developed or developing?
In certain international organizations such as the WTO, the designation of being a developing country allows a country to seek (but not necessarily to obtain), “special rights or extra leniency.”
“Various categorizations are used for purposes including who gets financial support to achieve various global objectives, or who gets greater leniency when it comes to international trade rules or who is eligible for ODA [Official development assistance], there are reasons why countries might want to put themselves in the ‘developing’ category,” Kenny says.
Furthermore, the label of a “developed” country often carries a responsibility to help poorer countries in tough economic straits and to abide by more stringent regulations on issues of global importance such as climate change.
“The PRC often uses its status as a middle-income country to excuse itself from global responsibilities – including fighting climate change and in the provision of debt relief in the current debt crisis. However, the sheer size of the PRC’s economy means that it is impossible to deliver global public goods in climate or in staving off the current debt crisis in many developing countries if it continues to avoid its responsibilities or adherence to international norms,” a United States Agency for International Development spokesperson told AFCL.
Conclusion
AFCL found that China’s economy qualifies as developing and upper middle income according to the respective standards set by the UN and the World Bank. Currently, within the WTO organization, China is recognized as a “developing country.”
However, the status in the WTO is based on self-declaration, and it may be subject to uncertainty in the future due to its own development or challenges from other members, according to WTO rules.
China’s foreign ministry’s statement that China’s status as a developing country “rooted in facts and international law” is misleading.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Shen Ke.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Indonesia is moving the first planned military exercise with other Southeast Asian nations away from disputed South China Sea waters, where Beijing has increasingly been asserting its sweeping territorial claims.
The Indonesian military announced Wednesday a change of location for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations exercise, scheduled for Sept. 18-25. The non-combat drills were originally planned to take place in the North Natuna Sea, which lies within Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) but parts of which China claims.
Indonesia is this year’s holder of the rotating ASEAN chairmanship.
The new ASEAN exercise locations “include Batam [near Singapore] and the waters of South Natuna that are part of Indonesia’s archipelagic sea lane,” military spokesman Col. Suhendro Oktosatrio said. He was referring to designated areas where foreign ships are allowed passage while transiting through those waters innocently.
These new locations were chosen because they were suitable for non-combat drills such as joint maritime patrols, medical evacuation and disaster relief, said another Indonesian military official, Rear Adm. Julius Widjojono.
“Priority is given to areas that are prone to [natural] disasters,” he said.
Indonesia renamed the southern reaches of the South China Sea the North Natuna Sea in 2017, to emphasize its sovereignty over those waters, which encompass natural gas fields.
Indonesia does not have any territorial disputes with China, but it has repeatedly lodged protests against Chinese fishing boats and coast guard vessels entering its EEZ near the Natuna Islands.
China has claimed “traditional rights” over fishing resources in the area. 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.
In 2016, a U.N. arbitration court ruled that China’s nine-dash line, a boundary used by Beijing on Chinese maps to illustrate its claim, was invalid. But Beijing has rejected the ruling and insisted it has jurisdiction over all areas within the dashed line.
Chinese officials said back then that the nine dashes were “for security and order at sea.”
China has built artificial islands and military installations on some reefs and shoals in the South China Sea, raising concerns among other claimants and the United States.
The United States has regularly conducted “freedom of navigation” operations in the South China Sea to challenge China’s claims and has urged ASEAN countries to stand up to Beijing’s assertiveness.
Indonesia’s military commander Adm. Yudo Margono, who proposed the ASEAN drill during a meeting of the bloc’s defense forces chiefs in Bali earlier this month, said the joint drills would enhance regional stability and “boost our countries’ economy.”
‘Afraid of clashing’
But Cambodia and Myanmar, two ASEAN members with strong ties to China, did not take part in an initial planning conference for the exercise on Monday, according to military spokesman Suhendro. It was not clear whether they would join the drills.
The Indonesian military said it sent official invitations for the planning meeting to the Cambodian and Burmese defense attachés in Jakarta but got no response.
Myanmar, which has been wracked by violence since the military ousted an elected government in 2021, is persona non grata at major ASEAN meetings.
Cambodia’s defense ministry said earlier this month it had not decided on participation in the ASEAN joint exercise, saying that it was still waiting for more information from Indonesia, according to media reports in that country.
Arie Afriansyah, an expert in international sea law at the University of Indonesia, said there could be many reasons for the change of the locations, such as safety and security considerations.
“Maybe they are afraid of clashing with other countries. If it is conducted in South Natuna, Indonesia has full control in that area,” Arie told BenarNews.
“It would be a shame if fear of China is the reason, because this exercise is a way for ASEAN countries to show their unity on the North Natuna and South China Sea issue, which Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines also support,” he said.
The joint ASEAN drill is planned as an effort to maintain regional stability, Khairul Fahmi, a military and security observer from the Institute for Security and Strategic Studies, told BenarNews.
“The message will not come across well if some ASEAN countries are not on board,” he said.
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 scores better on food, health and housing, while crackdowns have worsened Hong Kong’s ratings
China has been ranked as the worst country in the world for safety from the state and the right to assembly, in a human rights report that tracks social, economic and political freedoms.
The Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI), a New Zealand-based project, has been monitoring various countries’ human rights performance since 2017.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Chinese Communist Party officials appear to be distancing themselves from detained gambling tycoon She Zhijiang, whose casinos have been linked with massive human trafficking and online scam operations in the region, and who faces imminent repatriation to China after being arrested by Thai police in August 2022.
She, who owns property and gaming ventures in Cambodia, Myanmar and the Philippines, stands accused of “running illegal online gambling operations,” and will likely face repatriation very soon coinciding with the expiration of his 30-day appeal period, according to an official statement and a person familiar with the case.
A deputy spokesman for Thailand’s Supreme Prosecutor’s Office announced that the court had issued a deportation order for She on May 25. However, the order allowed 30 days for She to appeal the decision.
Shortly afterwards, Thailand’s Provincial Electricity Authority said it would cut off the power supply to Shwe Kokko, the site of She’s $15 billion real estate and casino mega-project that has become notorious as a bastion of illegal activity, including drug trafficking, amid violence and unrest in post-coup Myanmar.
Meanwhile, officials linked to Beijing’s international outreach and influence operations are now claiming he has no connection with a key organization carrying out its “United Front” work among overseas Chinese.
While official reports show She attending top-level meetings in Beijing in 2019 hosted by the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, a known United Front organization, officials at the body said they had “no knowledge” of She’s case when contacted by Radio Free Asia, and that it fell under the remit of the China Federation of Overseas Entrepreneurs instead.
However, an official at the entrepreneurs’ organization said She, as a former high-ranking officer in the organization, would still be the business of the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese.
As Chinese officials appeared pass the buck on She, a Thailand-based dissident who shared a detention center cell with him in Bangkok told Radio Free Asia that the former gambling tycoon is desperate to avoid repatriation to China amid an ongoing crackdown on human trafficking and online scams that have netted thousands of victims across the region in recent years.
According to court documents shared with the dissident by She, he had once been a valued collaborator for the Chinese authorities, and was put in touch with state security police in the southern island province of Hainan and given a handler to provide intelligence for Beijing.
United Front darling
She, a former Cambodian national who was granted Chinese citizenship during his 2019 Beijing trip, now fears that his most basic human rights won’t be protected and is calling on the international community to help prevent his repatriation to China, the dissident, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, said.
She wouldn’t be the first former darling of the United Front system to face repercussions back home amid an ongoing anti-corruption and anti-espionage campaign that typically nets people who have fallen out of political favor under general secretary Xi Jinping, or who are considered insufficiently loyal to China’s supreme leader.
In May, a court in the eastern city of Suzhou handed down a life sentence to 78-year-old American citizen John Leung, who headed a Beijing-backed overseas Chinese community group, after finding him guilty of “espionage.” Leung had also previously been photographed alongside high-ranking Communist Party officials.
“She Zhijiang made his name and fortune in Myawaddy, an extremely sensitive area in the hands of the Chinese,” the dissident said, referring to an area in southeastern Myanmar’s Kayin state, where She’s Yatai Corp is a major investor in the Shwe Kokko Special Economic Zone.
![A youth being forced to work at the Casino Kosai in Myanmar is tied to a column and tased [left]. Injuries to his back are seen at right. Credit: Screenshots from video provided to RFA](https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/myanmar-tycoon-06202023145223.html/eng_chn_shezhijiangrendition_06202023-2.jpg "ENG_CHN_SheZhijiangRendition_06202023.2.jpg")
According to the dissident, She believes that his army of some 5,000 mercenaries and his deep connections in the local area should protect him from the worst form of political retaliation on his return to China. Yet he still fears he could receive the death penalty.
“I told him he has been abandoned by the Communist Party, who can easily deal with other people under his command,” the dissident said, adding that She had handed over copies of hundreds of pages of court trial records and other documents and asked him to make them public.
Much of the material details close cooperation between She and Chinese Communist Party officials, including his recruitment as an agent by the state security police.
They also allege that he paid up to two million yuan in bribes to An Chen, secretary-general of the China Federation of Overseas Entrepreneurs.
Personal fiefdom
According to the dissident, She ran afoul of Beijing after he grew extremely powerful in Myawaddy, and wanted to run the Asia-Pacific City complex in the Shwe Kokko Special Economic Zone as his personal fiefdom, something that the Chinese Communist Party couldn’t countenance owing to the strategic importance of the area, which is close to the border with Thailand.
Chinese state media reports from the time of She’s arrest described She as the “Asia-Pacific City online scam king,” whose operation in Myawaddy had attracted more than 100 casino and scam companies to Asia-Pacific City.
“Amid a vast network of vested interests and transactions, crimes like smuggling, kidnapping, human trafficking, fraud, assault, extortion are densely intertwined and span Southeast Asia and China,” the August 2022 Phoenix News report on She’s arrest said.
“She Zhijiang, who has changed his nationality and who has multiple pseudonyms, rules the roost like an emperor.”
According to the dissident, none of these activities could have taken place in Myanmar without the knowledge and collusion of the Chinese Communist Party.
“You can’t do this stuff with no backing – behind them are governments and warlords,” he said. “The Chinese Communist Party controls 100% of this place.”
Another person familiar with organized crime in the region agreed that the Chinese government is heavily involved with organizations carrying out criminal activities in the region, including in Myawaddy, Sihanoukville and the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone, a gambling and tourism hub catering to the Chinese and situated along the Mekong River where Laos, Myanmar and Thailand converge.
“There’s a man called Zhao Wei in the Golden Triangle SEZ who has leased a piece of land for 99 years, and the place is full of gray-to-black operations,” the person said. “The entire area is under his control … and he is engaged in scams, human trafficking and wild animal trafficking around there.”
“Basically 80% of the scamming industry in Southeast Asia is run by people from Fujian [province],” he said.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Paul Eckert.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Chen Jun for RFA Cantonese.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Authorities in Beijing have stepped up their harassment of rights attorney Wang Quanzhang and his family, cutting off power to their new apartment and forcing his wife and child to leave.
Forced to leave their old apartment in the middle of the academic year and find somewhere else to live, the family thought they had finally found a new home in a Beijing suburb, but instead the harassment escalated.
The family has been watched and harassed by a group of unidentified men since they relocated to the northern Beijing suburb of Changping after being forced to leave their previous apartment, according to video clips posted to Wang’s Twitter account.
“Are you telling me what to do?” says one, when Wang opens the front door to find them outside. “Yes of course, because this is our front door,” Wang replies.
“So is this your private property? You are violating my right to privacy,” the man retorts.
Overseas activists have called on the authorities to stop, saying it is a continuation of an operation targeting rights lawyers and public interest law firms that began in 2015.
Wang’s wife Li Wenzu said via her Twitter account that the power to the apartment was cut off on Sunday, and that the power company had refused to reconnect it.
“I called the power supply bureau at 1800 on June 19, 2023, to file a request for repairs,” Li wrote on Monday. “At 1830, a member of staff from the Changping supply station called me back and promised to deal with it immediately.”
“But when I called them back at 1900, they told me the property management company had said this was an internal matter … I told them this should be their responsibility.” she wrote.
24-hour siege
Li told Radio Free Asia that she has now left the apartment and has sent the couple’s child to stay with friends for the time being.
“They’ve cut off our power again, and the door of the meter box has been sealed with a big lock,” she said. “There are many unidentified men in front of the building every day.”
“We are under 24-hour siege, and couriers can’t get through to deliver anything — they are constantly escalating their harassment of us, using different methods to stop us from living a normal life,” she said.
![Li Wenzu, Wang Quanzhang’s wife, told RFA that the meter box for their apartment has been locked [shown]. Credit: 709liwenzu Twitter](https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/lawyer-harassment-06202023143156.html/eng_chn_harassedlawyers_06202023-2.jpg "ENG_CHN_HarassedLawyers_06202023.2.jpg")
“We kept moving around during the month when we were forced to relocate, and there have been frequent incidents of violence and intimidation such as the police coming to our door in the middle of the night, which left the kid severely frightened, and he became ill during that time,” she said.
“I felt desperate and powerless with all of that happening every day, I could even live the most basic normal existence, and our son couldn’t attend school,” she said. “And now he has to be separated from us.”
Li said she expects the water and gas to be cut off next.
An overseas-based rights group called on the authorities to end the official harassment of Wang Quanzhang and fellow rights attorney Li Heping and their families.
“The authorities are requested to implement and guarantee the implementation of the Civil Code and … immediately stop all inappropriate and illegal acts that smear and trample on the law,” the China Human Rights Lawyers Group said in a statement dated June 19.
Petition to end harassment
It called for an investigation into officials and police officers who had entered the lawyers’ homes illegally.
Luo Shengchun, wife of jailed rights lawyer Ding Jiaxi, said she had signed a petition calling for an end to the harassment of rights lawyers and their families.
“They have forced Li Wenzu and [Li Heping’s wife] Wang Qiaoling to leave their homes, and my anger is indescribable,” Luo said. “Government agencies in China have degenerated to the point where they just hire a group of thugs to do this stuff — it’s crazy. They don’t treat ordinary people as human beings, and it’s getting worse.”
U.S.-based rights activist and legal scholar Teng Biao said the persecution dates back to a 2015 police operation that targeted hundreds of rights lawyers, fellow activists and their families, during which many were jailed for subversion, with Wang Quanzhang “disappearing” for around three years.
“A lot of lawyers got their licenses revoked during the July 2015 crackdown, and many were sentenced,” Teng said. “Now they want to totally silence any defenders of human rights, and so they are using these thuggish methods.”
“China has now upgraded to a high-tech totalitarian system with total disregard for the rule of law and the most basic standards of human rights,” he said.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Paul Eckert.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Chen Zifei for RFA Mandarin and RFA Cantonese.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The 53rd session of the UN Human Rights Council started 19 June (to end on 14 July 2023). Thanks to the – as usual – excellent documentation prepared by the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) I will highlight the themes mostly affecting HRDs.
To stay up-to-date you can follow @ISHRglobal and #HRC53 on Twitter, and look out for its Human Rights Council Monitor. During the session, follow the live-updated programme of work on Sched.
Here are some highlights of the session’s thematic discussions
The Council will consider a resolution on the human rights of migrants this session, where a big problem is the criminalisation of the provision of solidarity and support, including rescues at sea, by migrant rights defenders.
..States raising cases is an important aspect of seeking accountability and ending impunity for acts of reprisal and intimidation against defenders engaging with the UN. It can also send a powerful message of solidarity to defenders, supporting and sustaining their work in repressive environments.
This month ISHR launched a new campaign regarding five cases. ISHR urges States to raise these cases in their statements:
At this 53rd session, the Council will discuss a range of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights through dedicated debates with the mandate holders and the High Commissioner, including:
In addition, the Council will hold dedicated debates on the rights of specific groups including:
#HRC53 | Country-specific developments
The Human Rights Council will hold its Enhanced Interactive Dialogue on Afghanistan, with the Special Rapporteur on the situation in Afghanistan and the Working Group on Discrimination against Women in Law and Practice. The joint report of the two mandates follows up from an urgent debate held last year on the situation of women and girls in the country. Their visit to the country concluded that there exist manifestations of systemic discrimination violating human rights and fundamental freedoms in both public and private lives. ISHR has joined many around the world to argue that the situation amounts to gender apartheid, and welcomes the call of the two mandate holders to develop normative standards and tools to address this as “an institutionalised system of discrimination, segregation, humiliation and exclusion of women and girls”. The gravity and severity is urgent, and requires that States act on the ongoing calls by Afghan civil society to establish an accountability mechanism for crimes against humanity.
On 15 June, fifteen activists and peaceful protesters will face trial in Algiers on the basis of unfounded charges which include ‘enrolment in a terrorist or subversive organisation active abroad or in Algeria’ and ‘propaganda likely to harm the national interest, of foreign origin or inspiration’. The activists were arrested between 23 and 27 April 2021, and arbitrarily prosecuted within one criminal case. If convicted of these charges, they face a prison sentence of up to twenty years. This case includes HRDs Kaddour Chouicha, Jamila Loukil and Said Boudour who were members of the LADDH before its dissolution by the Administrative Court of Algiers following a complaint filed by the Interior Ministry on 29 June 2022. We urge States to monitor the prosecution closely, including by attending the trial. We also urge States to demand that Algeria, a HRC member, end its crackdown on human rights defenders and civil society organisations, amend laws used to silence peaceful dissent and stifle civil society, and immediately and unconditionally release arbitrarily detained human rights defenders.
The recent findings of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in March, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in May, and the seven key benchmarks on Xinjiang by 15 Special Rapporteurs add up to wide range of UN expert voices that have collectively raised profound concern at the Chinese government’s treatment of Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers and HRDs in mainland China. Seldom has the gap between the breadth of UN documentation on crimes against humanity and other grave violations and the lack of action by the Human Rights Council in response to such overwhelming evidence been so flagrant: the Council’s credibility is at stake. ISHR calls on the Council to promptly adopt a resolution requesting updated information on the human rights situation in Xinjiang, and a dialogue among all stakeholders on the matter. Governments from all regions should avoid selectivity, put an end to China’s exceptionalism, and provide a meaningful response to atrocity crimes on the basis of impartial UN-corroborated information.
The recent convictions of prominent rights defenders Ding Jiaxi and Xu Zhiyong to 12 and 14 years in jail respectively, and the recent detention of 2022 Martin Ennals awardee Yu Wensheng and his wife Xu Yan for ‘subversion of State power’ a year after his release, point to the need for sustained attention to the fate of HRDs in China. States should address in a joint statement the abuse of national security and other root causes of violations that commonly affect Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers and mainland Chinese HRDs. States should also ask for the prompt release of human rights defenders, including human rights lawyers Chang Weiping, Yu Wensheng and Ding Jiaxi, legal scholar Xu Zhiyong, feminist activists Huang Xueqin and Li Qiaochu, Uyghur doctor Gulshan Abbas, Hong Kong lawyer Chow Hang-tung, and Tibetan climate activist A-nya Sengdra.
Since the joint statement delivered by States in March 2021 at the HRC, there has been no significant improvement in the human rights situation in Egypt despite the launching of the national human rights strategy and the national dialogue. The Egyptian government has failed to address, adequately or at all, the repeated serious concerns expressed by several UN Special Procedures over the broad and expansive definition of “terrorism”, which enables the conflation of civil disobedience and peaceful criticism with “terrorism”. The Human Rights Committee raised its concerns “that these laws are used, in combination with restrictive legislation on fundamental freedoms, to silence actual or perceived critics of the Government, including peaceful protesters, lawyers, journalists, political opponents and human rights defenders”. Egyptian and international civil society organisations have been calling on the HRC to establish a monitoring and reporting mechanism on the human rights situation in Egypt, applying objective criteria and in light of the Egyptian government’s absolute lack of genuine will to acknowledge, let alone address, the country’s deep-rooted human rights crisis.
Civil society continues to call on the OHCHR to implement, in full, the mandate provided by HRC resolution 31/36 of March 2016 with regards to the UN database of businesses involved in Israel’s illegal settlement industry. The resolution mandated the release of a report containing the names of the companies involved in Israel’s settlement enterprise, to be annually updated. The initial report containing a list of 112 companies was released by the OHCHR in February 2020, three years after the mandated release date and despite undue political pressure. Since then, the UN database has not been updated. UN member states should continue to call on the OHCHR to implement the mandate in full and publish an annual update, as this represents a question of credibility of the Office of the High Commissioner and the Council.
The Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel will present its second report to the Council on 20 June. Member states should continue to support the work of the CoI to investigate the root causes of the situation in line with its mandate with a view to putting an end to 75 years of denial of the Palestinian’s people inalienable rights to self-determination and return. As the Palestinian people commemorate 75 years of Nakba (the destruction of Palestinian homeland and society), the CoI needs to address the root causes of the situation, including by investigating the ongoing denial of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and the return of refugees, as well as the ongoing forcible displacement of Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line in the context of Israel’s imposition of a system of colonial apartheid.
In addition, on 10 July, the Council will hold an interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.
In light of the ongoing diplomatic rehabilitation of crown prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi authorities’ brazen repression continues to intensify, as ALQST has documented. Some notable recent trends include, but are not limited to: the further harsh sentencing of activists for peaceful social media use, such as women activists Salma al-Shehab (27 years), Fatima al-Shawarbi (30 years and six months) and Sukaynah al-Aithan (40 years); the ongoing detention of prisoners of conscience beyond the expiry of their sentences, some of whom continue to be held incommunicado such as human rights defenders Mohammed al-Qahtani and Essa al-Nukheifi, and; regressive developments in relation to the death penalty, including a wave of new death sentences passed and a surge in executions (47 individuals were executed from March-May 2023), raising concerns for those currently on death row, including several young men at risk for crimes they allegedly committed as minors. We call on the HRC to respond to the calls of NGOs from around the world to create a monitoring and reporting mechanism on the ever-deteriorating human rights situation in Saudi Arabia.
Continued attention should be paid by States at the HRC to the steadily worsening situation in Nicaragua. On 2 June, the spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights raised ‘growing concerns that the authorities in Nicaragua are actively silencing any critical or dissenting voices in the country and are using the justice system to this end’. The OHCHR reports 63 individuals arbitrarily detained in May alone, with 55 charged with ‘conspiracy to undermine national integrity’ and ‘spreading false news’ within one single night, without access to a lawyer of their choosing. States should express support for the monitoring and investigation work of the OHCHR and the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua (GHREN), and call on the Nicaraguan government to release the remaining 46 political prisoners, revoke its decision to strip deported political prisoners off their nationality, and take meaningful measures to prevent, address and investigate violence by armed settlers against Indigenous Peoples and Afro-descendants.
Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has also been accompanied by a domestic war of repression against human rights defenders, independent journalists and political dissent. Most recently, Russia has adopted a sweeping new law criminalising assistance to or cooperation with a range of international bodies, including the International Criminal Court, ad hoc tribunals, foreign courts and arguably even the UN Human Rights Council itself. This law is manifestly incompatible with the right to communicate and cooperate with international bodies, and a flagrant and institutionalised case of reprisal. With Russian authorities having been found by a UN-mandated Commission of Inquiry to be possibly responsible for crimes against humanity and war crimes, and having a closed and highly repressive environment for civil society (ranking 17/100 in the CIVICUS Monitor), Russia is plainly unfit to be elected to the UN Human Rights Council and should be regarded as an illegitimate candidate. States should support and cooperate with the mandate of the new Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Russia, as well as with the Commission of Inquiry into human rights violations and abuses associated with Russia’s illegal war of aggression against Ukraine.
Since the beginning of the war in Sudan on 15 April 2023, increasing numbers of Sudanese WHRDs are receiving threats and subject to grave danger. WHRDs are facing challenges in evacuating from Sudan and face further protection risks in neighboring countries. Sudanese women groups and WHRDs are risking their lives to provide support, solidarity, and report on the rising numbers of sexual and gender-based violence crimes. Many survivors are trapped in fighting areas unable to access support, and the occupation of hospitals by RSF is hindering women’s access to health services. The Council must urgently establish an international investigation in Sudan with sufficient resources, including to investigate the threats and reprisals against WHRDs for their work, and to document sexual and gender-based violence. During the debate with the High Commissioner and designated expert on Sudan on 19 June, we urge States to condemn sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). States should highlight the impacts of the war on women and girls, including sexual and reproductive health as well as lack of support services for survivors of SGBV. States should reaffirm the importance of participation of women and their demands, and amplify the critical work of WHRDs on the ground despite the imminent risks to their lives and safety. States should also condemn the increasing threats against WHRDs and demand their effective protection.
On 5 July, the High Commissioner will present his report on the human rights situation in Venezuela, which will include an assessment of the level of implementation of UN recommendations already made to the State. The Council focus on Venezuela remains critical at a time when some States’ efforts to normalize relations with Venezuela risk erasing human rights from key agendas. Council members and observers should actively engage in the interactive dialogue with the High Commissioner to make evident that the human rights situation in the country remains at the heart of their concerns. The human rights and humanitarian situation in the country remains grave. Human rights defenders face ongoing and potentially increasing restrictions. We urge States to:
Civil society organisations have raised alarm at the escalating pattern of human rights violations and the rapidly worsening situation in Tunisia following President Kais Saied’s power grab on 25 July 2021 leading to the erosion of the rule of law, attacks on the independence of the judiciary, a crackdown on peaceful political opposition and abusive use of “counter-terrorism” law, as well as attacks on freedom of expression. The High Commissioner has addressed the deteriorating situation in the three latest global updates to the HRC. Special Procedures issued at least 8 communications in less than one year addressing attacks against the independence of the judiciary, as well as attacks against freedom of expression and assembly. Despite the fact that in 2011 Tunisia extended a standing invitation to all UN Special Procedures, and received 16 visits by UN Special Procedures since, Tunisia’s recent postponement of the visit of the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, is another sign of Tunisia disengaging from international human rights mechanisms and declining levels of cooperation. The upcoming session provides a window of opportunity for the Council to exercise its prevention mandate and address the situation before the imminent risk of closure of civic space in Tunisia and regress in Tunisia’s engagement with the HRC and its mechanisms is complete.
On 5 July, the Council will hold an interactive dialogue with the Commission of Inquiry on Syria. In a report to the Human Rights Council in 2021, the Commission of Inquiry on Syria called for the establishment of a mechanism to reveal the fate of the missing and disappeared. On 28 March 2023, during the 77th session of the UN General Assembly, the Secretary-General and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights briefed UN Member States on the situation of the missing in Syria, and the findings of the study conducted by the Secretary-General as mandated by Resolution UNGA 76/228. The study concluded that in order to address the situation of the missing in Syria and its impact on families’ lives, it is necessary to create an institution to reveal the fate and whereabouts of the disappeared and to provide support to their families. As discussions are taking place in the UNGA to adopt a resolution establishing a humanitarian institution to reveal the fate and whereabouts of the disappeared, civil society, led by the Truth and Justice Charter, urges States to support the families of the missing to know the truth about the fate and whereabouts of their loved ones by voting in favour of the resolution at the UNGA.
The High Commissioner will present the annual report on 19 June. The Council will hold an interactive dialogue on the High Commissioner’s annual report on 20 June 2023. The Council will hold debates on and is expected to consider resolutions addressing a range of country situations, in some instances involving the renewal of the relevant expert mandates. These include:
The President of the Human Rights Council has proposed candidates for the following mandates:
At the organisational meeting on 5 June the following resolutions (selected) were announced (States leading the resolution in brackets):
During this session, the Council will adopt the UPR working group reports on Argentina, Benin, Czechia, Gabon, Ghana, Guatemala, Japan, Pakistan, Peru, Republic of Korea, Sri Lanka, Switzerland and Zambia.
During each Council session, panel discussions are held to provide member States and NGOs with opportunities to hear from subject-matter experts and raise questions. 5 panel discussions are scheduled for this upcoming session:
This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.
Shanghai-based CellX’s new funding comes by way of a collection of strategic investors. The funding propels CellX toward the pilot-scale production of its cultivated meat products. To date, the company’s funding totals over $20 million — making it China’s highest-funded cellular agriculture startup.
CellX, which launched in 2020, is focused on constructing platform technologies with a multi-species approach. The company is actively collaborating with leading global universities and companies to expedite the commercialization of cultivated meat, particularly in the APAC region.
“Meat is a commodity that needs to be consistently produced at a competitive cost and large scale,” Ziliang Yang, Co-founder and CEO of CellX, said in a statement. “Each year, China alone consumes 100+ million tons of meat, more than a quarter of global meat consumption. For cultivated meat to have a meaningful impact on our global food supply chain, production at low cost and at scale is key.”
Established in 2020, CellX has constructed R&D platforms across four crucial technological sectors of lab-grown meat: cell line development, media optimization, innovative bioprocess design, and end product creativity. Earlier this year, CellX revealed its intent to construct China’s premier pilot production facility for lab-grown meat, housing several thousand-liter bioreactors.
“We have successfully developed 10+ cell lines from various species, adapted 5+ of them into suspension culturing, and the leading cell line has now entered pilot stage,” Dr. Chen, the R&D Director at CellX, says. “Besides, we have also developed multiple serum-free media and improved the yield significantly, enabling us to drastically reduce the production cost. We are currently working on scaling up to 2,000L.”
CellX’s forthcoming pilot production facility is a joint venture between CellX and Tofflon, a public biotech and food equipment company. Apart from accommodating multiple thousand-liter bioreactors, the facility will also act as an interactive zone for customers to sample CellX’s demonstration products. This initiative will inaugurate China’s first “transparent food space” dedicated to cultivated meat R&D, pilot production, and public tasting.
“Unfortunately, no company in our space has fully cracked the puzzle of production at low cost and scale, yet,” Yang said. “This is where CellX and China can add value. Thanks to China’s booming biopharma industry and fermentation sector, there is already a good ecosystem in place, including media and equipment at competitive pricing, as well as a large pool of talented bioprocess engineers. All of which enables companies to produce cultivated meat at a significantly lower cost in China.”
CellX says cultivated meat companies that have pilot production facilities operating at a thousand-liter scale are becoming more important to China’s future due to the critical role they play in carbon reduction and food security.
At the start of 2022, cultivated meat and “future foods” were included in China’s 14th 5-Year plan by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. President Xi also emphasized China’s need to adopt “a ‘Greater Food’ approach” to nutrition during his address at the annual session of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, underlining the importance of ensuring a stable supply of all staple food groups.
Yang sees a strong future for globalization in cellular agriculture. “At the end of the day, carbon and sustainability are global issues that humanity faces together. It’s one of the few areas where there is common understanding.”
The post CellX, China’s Most Funded Cellular Agriculture Startup Lands $6.5M in Series A+ Round first appeared on Green Queen.
The post CellX, China’s Most Funded Cellular Agriculture Startup Lands $6.5M in Series A+ Round appeared first on Green Queen.
This post was originally published on Green Queen.
Papua New Guinea’s Trade Minister Richard Maru has complained that his country’s trade deal with Australia has been skewed in Canberra’s favour for decades, and suggests the country will trade more with China.
Minister Maru said Beijing should be PNG’s focus for trade and investment opportunities because not enough was being done to assist PNG’s agriculture exports to Australia.
Maru is particularly unhappy with agriculture exports, which account for less than two percent of PNG’s exports to Australia, while minerals dominate.
“Enough is enough,” he said. “Starting this year, we are moving on. We will partner with whatever country that will help us achieve that.
“We are friends to all and enemies to none. We are not interested in geopolitics.
“Our main priority is securing the future of our people.”
Australia is supporting bolstering PNG’s agriculture exports, with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese earlier this year promising assistance to improve the biosecurity regime that would enable farmers and producers to access international markets.
To deepen trade with China, a feasibility study is underway to assess the possibility of a free trade agreement (FTA).
While Australia is PNG’s largest trade partner, China is a close second, coupled with PNG enjoying the largest trade surplus of any of its other trade partners.
Australia is also pursuing an FTA with Port Moresby, with its own feasibility study to be concluded this month.
Bougainville flexes legal muscles
Meanwhile, the President of the autonomous Papua New Guinea region of Bougainville says his government will not allow foreign investors to breach its laws to exploit its people and resources.
President Ishmael Toroama made the statement as the Bougainville Executive Council refused to grant a mining licence application for a joint-venture involving Wyndale Holdings and its local partners.
The joint venture wanted to mine in the Eivo/Torau areas as well as the Jaba River middle to lower tailings areas.
The Bougainville government said in a statement that Wyndale was a private Australian company with links to Australian Nic Zuks which, it said, claimed to have been issued mining licences by the autonomous government.
President Toroama said the applicants failed to meet the requirements provided by the Bougainville Mining Act 2015.
He said the ABG would not entertain companies and individuals which used “duplicitous means” to exploit Bougainville’s mineral resources.
The President also cautioned investors to be wary of being misled and that the ABG would not be held liable for losses incurred as a result of fraudulent misrepresentations.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
During the economic crisis in 2008, the United States sought China’s aid. US treasury secretary Hank Paulson conferred with Chinese officials, and China agreed to increase the value of the RMB and to stop selling US T-bills which it had been doing at that time.
Paulson said, “It is clear that China accepts its responsibility as a major world economy that will work with the United States and other partners to ensure global economic stability.” But the notion that China was acting in a selfless fashion was also dispelled by Paulson who stated China helps when it is in their own interest.
Paulson depicted the US position during the crisis as “dealing with Chinese from a position of strength…”
That same attitude was repeated by the US State Department in March 2021 during the first face-to-face meeting with president Joe Biden’s administration in Anchorage, Alaska: “America’s approach will be undergirded by confidence in our dealing with Beijing — which we are doing from a position of strength — even as we have the humility to know that we are a country eternally striving to become a more perfect union.” [emphasis added]
Given the baleful US shenanigans against China, Chinese high-ranking officials were ill-disposed to meet with their American counterparts. Chairman Xi Jinping was not interested in meeting with Biden after the US shot down a Chinese weather balloon. The Pentagon sought a meeting between defense secretary Lloyd Austin and China’s minister of national defense Li Shangfu, but the latter reportedly ghosted Austin in Singapore.
Finally, secretary of state Antony Blinken managed to secure a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Qin Gang in Beijing. The official readouts for each country, however, reveal a glaring gap between them.
The Chinese readout noted that “China-U.S. relations are at their lowest point since the establishment of diplomatic ties…” Other excerpts read:
China has always maintained continuity and stability in its policies towards the United States, fundamentally adhering to the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation proposed by President Xi Jinping. These principles should also be the shared spirit, bottom line, and goal that both sides uphold together.
Qin Gang pointed out that the Taiwan question is at the core of China’s core interests, it is the most significant issue in China-U.S. relations, and it is also the most prominent risk. China urges the U.S. side to adhere to the one-China principle and the three China-U.S. Joint Communiqués, and truly implement its commitment not to support “Taiwan independence”.
That the US and China were not on the same page was clear from the oft-heard banality in the American readout:
The Secretary made clear that the United States will always stand up for the interests and values of the American people and work with its allies and partners to advance our vision for a world that is free, open, and upholds the international rules-based order.
That the US side made no comment on China’s core interest was a glaring brush off. Instead the US side pushed its “international rules-based order,” which is about rules defined by the US for others to follow. In other words, China does not decide what rules apply to its province of Taiwan.
The readouts made crystal clear that China and the US view the world through different lenses.
China is about peaceful development and win-win trade relations. The US is about waging war, sanctions, bans on trading, and an immodest belief in its indispensability. Because of this, China and Russia with the Global South are each forging their own way, a way that respects each country’s sovereignty. In future, it will be increasingly difficult for the US to use loans to impoverish other nations and plunder their wealth through the IMF’s financial strictures. Sanctions, freezing assets, and blocking financial transactions through the SWIFT system have pushed countries away and toward de-dollarization, joining BRICS, taking part in the Belt and Road Initiative, and using other financial institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank based in Beijing. Even companies in countries nominally aligned with the US are pulling back from the harms of adhering to US trading bans. The US pressure tactics have resulted in blowback, and there is sure to be growing apprehension within empire.
The US is a warmaker. It flattened Iraq, Libya, and would have done the same to Syria had not Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah intervened at the invitation of the Syrian government. Nevertheless, the US still illegally occupies an enormous chunk of Syria and plunders its oil, revealing its true nature to the world.
China is a peacemaker; for example, the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement, the Syrian-Arab League reunion, a ceasefire between Yemen and Saudi Arabia, a proposal for peace between Russia and Ukraine that was rejected by the US, and currently China is playing an honest broker to try and solve the Israeli-Palestinian impasse, something the US has failed miserably at solving (not that it was ever interested in solving this besides, perhaps, a brief interregnum under Jimmy Carter).
China has stood steadfastly with Russia during its special military operation in Donbass and Ukraine. China knows that if the US-NATO would succeed in their proxy war, the plan is “regime change” and a carve up of Russia to exploit its resource wealth. This would pave the way for further “regime change” in China.
The Blinken-Qin meeting has been an abysmal failure in diplomacy. Communist China is ascendant, and the capitalist US is in economic decline, but it still believes that it can bully and fight its way to the top by keeping the others down.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with leading Chinese officials, including President Xi Jinping, in Beijing on Monday in what was portrayed by both sides as an effort to ease increasingly dangerous tensions between the two nuclear-armed powers. Blinken met with Xi for roughly 35 minutes on Monday after speaking to Wang Yi, China’s top foreign policy official, for several hours earlier in…
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken started a high-stakes visit to China on Sunday, meeting top Chinese officials for talks Washington hopes can reopen regular communications with Beijing after years of rising tensions.
Blinken is the first secretary of state to visit China in five years, amid China’s strict coronavirus pandemic lockdowns and strains over the self-governing island of Taiwan, Russia’s war in Ukraine, Beijing’s human rights record, assertive Chinese military moves in the South China Sea and technology trade.
The top U.S. diplomat began two days of meetings with extended talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and other officials and a working dinner at Diaoyutai State Guesthouse. Neither Blinken nor Qin made any substantive comments as they began their talks.
Blinken is slated to have further talks with Qin, as well as China’s top diplomat Wang Yi, director of the Central Foreign Affairs Office, on Monday. Observers see a possible meeting with President Xi Jinping as a barometer of Beijing’s willingness to re-engage with Washington after years of frosty ties.
The visit comes after almost a year of strained relations between the Biden administration and Beijing, which began with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan in August.
Other irritants include China’s diplomatic and propaganda support for Russia for its war against Ukraine, and U.S. allegations that Beijing is attempting to boost its worldwide surveillance capabilities.
Blinken postponed a planned February trip to China after a suspected Chinese spy balloon flew over U.S. airspace and was shot down. This visit went ahead despite the revelations early this month of a multibillion-dollar Chinese spy base in Cuba.
‘Legitimate differences’
Blinken told reporters before leaving Friday that Washington wants to improve communications “precisely so that we can make sure we are communicating as clearly as possible to avoid possible misunderstandings and miscommunications.”
President Joe Biden told White House reporters Saturday he was “hoping that over the next several months, I’ll be meeting with Xi again and talking about legitimate differences we have, but also how … to get along.”
U.S. defense officials say Chinese officials have refused phone calls since Blinken canceled a planned trip to Beijing in February due to the Chinese spy balloon. Beijing asserts it was a weather balloon.
Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu also declined to meet with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore earlier at the start of the month, with Li instead using the forum to accuse the United States of “double standards.”
There have been recent high-level contacts, including a trip to China by CIA chief William Burns in May, a visit to the U.S. by China’s commerce minister, and a meeting in Vienna Austria between Wang and Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
In a pre-meeting phone call between Blinken and the Chinese foreign minister on Wednesday, however, Qin indicated China would not budge on its “core interests,” including that the self-governing island of Taiwan will be reunited with the mainland, according to a readout issued by China’s foreign ministry.
Qin said Washington should “show respect, stop interfering in China’s internal affairs and stop undermining China’s sovereignty, security and development interests,” the readout said.
Autumn summit opportunities
Reuters news agency quoted a senior State Department official as telling reporters during a refueling stop in Tokyo that Washington and Beijing understand they need to communicate more.
“There’s a recognition on both sides that we do need to have senior-level channels of communication,” the official said.
“That we are at an important point in the relationship where I think reducing the risk of miscalculation, or as our Chinese friends often say, stopping the downward spiral in the relationship, is something that’s important,” the official said.
“Hope this meeting can help steer China-U.S. relations back to what the two Presidents agreed upon in Bali,” tweeted Chinese assistant foreign minister Hua Chunying.
Biden and Xi met face-to-face on the sidelines of a summit of the Group of 20 big economies in November and agreed to try to restore dialogue despite sharp differences.
The two leaders have opportunities to meet later this year, including at the Group of 20 leaders’ gathering in September in New Delhi and at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November in San Francisco.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Paul Eckert for RFA.
