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Category: Americas

U.S. House Speaker meets Taiwan’s president and praises the island’s resilience

Editor010 mins

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen presented U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi with a special award on Wednesday, calling her “one of Taiwan’s most devoted friends” who helped strengthen Taiwan-U.S. relations. Tsai met Pelosi in the morning after the U.S. House Speaker visited the Legislative Yuan, or Taiwan’s parliament. Pelosi praised the island for its success in battling the COVID pandemic and called Taiwan “one of the freest societies in the world.” “Taiwan has been an island of resilience,” Pelosi said in a brief speech during her meeting with President Tsai. “America’s determination to preserve democracy here in Taiwan and around the world remains ironclad,” the U.S. House Speaker stated, adding that her visit made it unequivocally clear that the U.S. “will not abandon our commitment to Taiwan.”  In response, President Tsai Ing-wen said Taiwan “will firmly uphold our nation’s sovereignty and continue to hold the line of defense for democracy.” “Facing deliberately heightened military threats, Taiwan will not back down,” Tsai said, referring to the latest developments across the Taiwan Strait. Locations of Chinese live-fire military drills around Taiwan on Aug. 4-7. CREDIT: Xinhua As Pelosi touched down on Tuesday evening in Taipei, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) announced unprecedented live-fire drills at six locations around Taiwan, some overlapping the island’s sovereign territorial waters as defined in the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. On the same day, 21 Chinese military aircraft, including 10 J-16 fighter jets and two reconnaissance airplanes, flew into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ). ‘Unprecedented military drills’ The PLA’s Eastern Theater Command is to “conduct a series of joint military operations around the Taiwan Island from the evening of Aug. 2,” said Sr. Col. Shi Yi, the Command’s spokesperson. Naval and air joint drills will be carried out in the northern, southwestern and southeastern waters and airspace off Taiwan, while long-range combat fire live shooting will be conducted in the Taiwan Strait and conventional missile firepower test-launched in the waters off Eastern Taiwan, according to Shi Yi. Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense on Wednesday condemned what it calls “the reckless behavior by Communist China of conducting live fire drills in waters and skies close to Taiwan, some of which are in the neighboring waters.” The drills will essentially seal off Taiwan’s airspace and violate its territorial waters, the ministry said.  The Ministry’s spokesperson Sun Li-Fang said China “threatens international aviation routes, challenges the international order, damages the status quo in the Taiwan Strait and destroys regional security.” Activities around Taiwan’s territory are closely monitored, the Defense Ministry said, vowing “appropriate responses when needed.” China dismissed Taiwan’s criticism of the military drills. Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters in Beijing on Wednesday Chinese military actions were legitimate and meant as a deterrent to Taiwan. Taiwan’s Ministry of Transportation and Communications is coordinating with Japan and the Philippines to plan alternative cargo flight routes for goods as the Chinese planned drills amount to an air blockade, the official Central News Agency (CNA) reported. Washington officials said China’s announced military drills were an “overreaction.” “There’s no reason … for Beijing to turn this visit, which is consistent with longstanding U.S. policy into some sort of crisis or use it as a pretext to increase aggressiveness and military activity in or around the Taiwan Strait now or beyond her travel,” national security council spokesman John Kirby said. Grant Newsham, a retired U.S. Marine colonel turned political analyst, said prior to Nancy Pelosi’s visit he did not expect China to launch attacks on the U.S. or Pelosi herself. But, he said, they could lash out at Taiwan. “The Chinese Communists are now willing to apply serious pressure–including possible military force–against America’s friends and partners, and dare the United States to respond,” he told RFA. “That’s what I think we are most likely to see and most likely directed against Taiwan. In other words, making the Americans have to take the ‘first shot’ against the PRC,” added Newsham. “Taiwan’s government needs to do what is necessary to ensure Taiwan can defend itself,” said the analyst.  “It needs to increase defense spending, show its military some respect and improve terms of service, re-institute national service, create an effective reserve defense force and create an effective civil defense scheme.” Taiwanese fighter jets at Taipei Songshan Airport on the last day of Han Kuang military exercise, July 29, 2022.. CREDIT: Taiwan Defense Ministry A new crisis? Beijing considers Taiwan “an inalienable part of China” that must be reunited with the mainland at all costs. Analysts say, however, despite the noisy saber-rattling by Beijing, a new crisis may not happen as “nobody wants war.” “While China has said Pelosi’s visit would challenge its “red line” for Sino-U.S. relations, it’s unlikely that Beijing will do something risky in the Taiwan Strait during her visit,” said Baohui Zhang, Professor of Political Science at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. “Beijing has no interest in triggering scenarios that may lead to miscalculations by all sides and inadvertent military conflicts,” Zhang said, adding: “As a rising power, war is the last thing China wants now.” During the most recent virtual meeting between Xi and Biden, the two leaders both confirmed the need for bilateral efforts to contain and manage crises. In Zhang’s opinion, Pelosi’s visit will have little practical implications for U.S.-China relations, as its trajectory of strategic rivalry has already been set. The Taipei-based China Times cited leaked diplomatic cables from Taiwan’s representative office in Washington DC, saying they showed both the White House and the Pentagon sought to discourage the House Speaker from visiting Taiwan. “The Biden administration is not in favor of the visit and China knows that,” said Baohui Zhang. “So the visit is largely a symbolic event showing rising Congressional support for Taiwan. It will not redefine U.S.-China relations.” Nancy Pelosi is set to meet with Taiwanese human rights and democracy activists before flying out on Wednesday afternoon to continue her Indo-Pacific tour.    

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Taiwan military on alert for China threats on reports Pelosi may visit

Editor08 mins

The Taiwanese military has stepped up its combat readiness to prepare for threats from China ahead of the U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s potential visit to the island, local media reported. At the same time, the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its strike group is operating near Taiwan, a Chinese think-tank said. Taiwan’s official Central News Agency (CNA) quoted anonymous “reliable sources” as saying that from 08:00 a.m. on Tuesday until 12:00 noon on Thursday the military will “strengthen combat readiness” of troops and make adjustments in accordance to the threats from China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Taiwan’s armed forces operate at two levels of combat readiness for peacetime and wartime, each level comprises several stages. It is understood that the current stage of preparedness is still within the peacetime level but could change. The island’s Ministry of National Defense has yet to make any comment on the news that comes as China announced more live-fire exercises in the South China Sea and Bohai Sea. On Tuesday morning several Chinese military aircraft and warships came close to the median line of the Taiwan Strait – the tacit maritime border between Taiwan and the mainland – Reuters said, quoting an anonymous source. This move is “unusual” and can be seen as “very provocative,” the source was quoted as saying. Taiwan’s defense ministry said the island’s military has a “full grasp” of activities near Taiwan and “will appropriately dispatch forces in reaction to enemy threats.” Aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan conducted a replenishment-at-sea in the Philippine Sea on July 31. CREDIT: U.S. Navy 7th Fleet. USS Ronald Reagan in the Philippine Sea Meanwhile on Tuesday the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan has been sailing in the northern Philippine Sea, east of Taiwan, China’s South China Sea Probing Initiative (SCSPI) think-tank said, tracking the latest flight trajectory of the carrier-borne C-2A Greyhound cargo aircraft.  On Monday and Tuesday China announced four more live-fire drills on top of four exercises that ended at the weekend. The first one is being held in the South China Sea near Hainan Island on Aug. 1 until Aug. 6, the same period of Pelosi’s Asia tour. The other three live-fire drills are in the Bohai Sea, the first from Aug. 1 to Aug. 4, the second on Aug. 3, and the third from Aug. 4 to Aug. 6. On Sunday, just one day before Pelosi began her Asia trip, the PLA also conducted mock air combat training after midnight “with the aim of improving the pilots’ ability to quickly enter combat status for abnormal situations at any time,” the state-supported Global Times reported.   RFA sources, and sources cited by local media and America’s CNN, said Nancy Pelosi would make an unofficial trip on Tuesday evening to the island, which is not on her official four-nation itinerary. China issued fresh warnings that the visit “would lead to serious consequences.” “If Pelosi visits Taiwan, the Chinese side will respond resolutely and take strong countermeasures to defend our sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Chinese Foreign Ministry’s spokesman Zhao Lijian told a press conference in Beijing on Monday. “As for what those measures will be, let’s see what happens if she actually goes,” Zhao added.  In Washington, the White House and the top U.S. diplomat said Pelosi’s travel plans were up to her, but urged China not to turn any such visit to Taiwan into a diplomatic crisis. Pelosi’s right to visit Taiwan “The speaker has the right to visit Taiwan, and a speaker of the House has visited Taiwan before, without incident, as have many members of Congress, including this year,” said national security spokesman John Kirby. “There is no reason for Beijing to turn a potential visit consistent with long-standing U.S. policy into some sort of crisis or conflict, or use it as a pretext to increase aggressive military activity in or around the Taiwan Strait,” he told reporters. Kirby said Washington would not be moved by any Chinese effort to raise tensions over Pelosi. “We will not take the bait or engage in saber rattling. At the same time, we will not be intimidated,” he said. Taiwan’s presidential office and foreign ministry have both declined to comment on any visit by Pelosi, although premier Su Chen-chang has said the island’s government, which still uses the name of the 1911 Republic of China, will welcome any foreign VIP guests. The United States does not recognize Taiwan diplomatically, but retains close unofficial ties with Taipei and is obligated by law to provide it with defense capabilities.  Beijing considers the self-ruling, democratic island a breakaway province, to be united with the mainland by force if necessary, and objects strongly to high-level U.S. visits.

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China announces three exercises in S. China Sea as Taiwan issue raises tensions

Editor08 mins

In a regional show of strength China announced three almost-simultaneous military exercises in the South China Sea between July 27 and 31, just as reports emerged that the U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi may embark on her Asia-Pacific tour on July 29. The Guangdong Maritime Safety Administration (MSA) issued three navigation warnings GD70/22, GD71/22, GD73/22 advising ships against entering three designated areas in the South China Sea during time slots starting July 27 and finishing July 31. A navigation warning is a public advisory notice to mariners about changes to navigational aids and current marine activities or hazards including military exercises. Coordinates provided by the Guangdong MSA show three areas close to China’s mainland but one of them lies only some 240km from Pratas Island, claimed by both the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan but controlled by Taipei. Prior to these drills, the Chinese military held two exercises back to back from July 16-20 and July 20-22, also in the South China Sea. One of them covered an area of nearly 100,000 square kilometers (38,610 square miles). China often holds military exercises at short notice as a form of protest in response to U.S. naval activities and political developments that Beijing deems “hostile.” The unusually high frequency of drills this month shows China-U.S. tensions have been raised by Pelosi’s reported Taiwan visit and the presence of the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group in the South China Sea. Six warnings China has responded strongly against the rumored trip which, if confirmed, would be the first visit by a U.S. House Speaker to Taiwan since 1997. In his telephone conversation with U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday Chinese President Xi Jinping warned Washington against “playing with fire” over Taiwan. “Playing with fire will only get you burnt. I hope the U.S. is clear on this,” state news agency Xinhua quoted Xi as saying during the phone call. Before the Xi-Biden meeting, different Chinese government agencies had already issued at least six official warnings against the visit, with the Defense Ministry on Thursday threatening that “actions are the best answer.” Countries in the region are watching these latest developments closely, said Shahriman Lockman, Director of Malaysia’s Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS). “The concern here is how China would seek to retaliate if Pelosi were to visit Taiwan,” Lockman said. “If that retaliation took place in the South China Sea, perhaps in the form of a deployment of combat aircraft to the Spratlys [a disputed island chain], it would underscore to other countries the growing risks of US-China rivalry,” he said. U.S. media reported that Nancy Pelosi, the third most senior figure in the American political system, would depart for an Asia-Pacific tour on Friday.  Both Bloomberg and NBC quoted anonymous sources as saying that the tour would take Pelosi to some U.S. allies in the region, including Japan and Singapore, but whether she would make a stop in Taiwan remained “unclear.” Some leading American China experts have called on the U.S. House Speaker to postpone any Taiwan visit. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaks at the Capitol in Washington on July 21, 2022. U.S. officials say they have little fear that China would attack Pelosi’s plane if she flies to Taiwan. CREDIT: AP Avoid confrontation Bonnie Glaser, Director of the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and Zack Cooper, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote in the New York Times that the event would be seen by Beijing as “a serious provocation.” “Chinese leaders might be willing to risk an escalation such as challenging Ms. Pelosi’s plane or flying military aircraft directly over Taiwan for the first time,” they said. “Leaders on all sides must wake up and find off-ramps to avoid a dangerous confrontation that neither side wants,” the two analysts said, arguing that a crisis in the Taiwan Strait would put the island in a very difficult situation. Shahriman Lockman from Malaysia’s ISIS suggested that, should Pelosi decide to skip Taiwan, the Americans “could attempt to present this as a demonstration of restraint and maturity.” “I think there is a good middle ground here which is for Pelosi to telephone Tsai Ing-wen from Japan so she won’t need to visit Taiwan but at the same time, be able to show her support,” Lockman said. The U.S. does not have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which Beijing considers a Chinese province, but it is obligated by law to provide the island with defense capabilities. During his conversation with the Chinese leader on Thursday Biden made clear that Washington “strongly opposes unilateral efforts to change the status quo or undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” according to a White House press release. The office of Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen on Friday thanked Biden for his continuous support, the official Central News Agency reported. “The Presidential Palace expresses its gratitude … and looks forward to China’s shared responsibility” in maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” the report said. 

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China angry at reported Pelosi Taiwan visit as plan questioned in US

Editor05 mins

China has once again lashed out at the reported plans by the U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi to visit Taiwan, warning Thursday of countermeasures even after President Joe Biden said the U.S. military thinks such visit is “not a good idea.” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a news conference in Beijing that China holds a “stern position on firmly opposing” the visit. “If Speaker Pelosi visits Taiwan, it would seriously violate the one-China principle and harm China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and the political foundation of China-US relations,” Wang said. “If the U.S. insists on going its own way, China will take strong measures to firmly respond and take countermeasures. We will walk the talk,” the spokesperson stressed. On Wednesday, when asked about Pelosi’s prospective trip, President Biden said “I think that the military thinks it’s not a good idea right now.” “But I don’t know what the status of it is,” he added. Pelosi’s office meanwhile declined to comment on Pelosi’s international travel in advance due to longstanding security protocols, according to the Associated Press. Britain’s Financial Times newspaper reported earlier this week that Pelosi is to make a trip to Taipei in August after failing to visit the island in April because she had COVID. If Pelosi makes the trip it would be the first time since 1997 that a U.S. House speaker visited the island, which is democratically ruled but claimed by China as its own territory. One-China policy Taipei has been quiet on talk about Pelosi’s visit with the island’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Joanne Ou insisting that her ministry has not received any information about a planned visit. Taiwan, however, “always welcomes visits by American congresspersons to the country,” she told reporters on Thursday. Meanwhile, the former U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who has been visiting Taiwan since Monday said that China should not be allowed “to dictate the travel schedules of American officials.” Esper, who held office from 2019 to 2020 under former U.S. President Donald Trump, said that he believes that Washington’s one-China policy has “run its course” and should be “updated and modernized.” It is important that the U.S. government develops a fresh perspective regarding its cross-Taiwan Strait policy, Esper said at a press conference in Taipei. Beijing has long reacted strongly to any sign of support given to Taiwan but the U.S should not allow China to arbitrarily expand “the scope of activities translated as supporting Taiwan independence, and by that defining the scope of the U.S. one-China policy,” said Norah Huang, associate research fellow at the Prospect Foundation, a Taiwanese think-tank. “If applying over-generous self-restrictions as it has been the case, it also would encourage the Chinese government to play the nationalist card. This is not helpful for nurturing an understanding civil society which may grow as China develops,” she added.

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Parliamentarians call for sanctions on Chinese firms over sales to Russia

Editor07 mins

An international alliance of lawmakers has called on more countries to blacklist Chinese companies accused of providing military-industrial support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The cross-party Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), whose members hail from 25 parliaments in North America, Europe and Australia, have called on their governments to replicate sanctions made by the U.S. Department of Commerce on Hong Kong World Jetta Logistics, Sinno Electronics, King Pai Technology, Winninc Electronic and Connec Electronic. China claims it doesn’t extend military assistance to Russia, but Chinese customs data showed increased exports of raw materials for military use to Russia. In the first five months of 2022, Chinese chip shipments to Russia more than doubled from a year earlier to U.S.$50 million, while exports of components like printed circuits also recorded double-digit percentage growth. China also exported 400 times more alumina — an important raw material for weapons production and the aerospace industry — to Russia compared with the same period in 2021. “The signatories call for an export control and scrutiny mechanism to target [Chinese] entities providing support to Russia’s military efforts in Ukraine,” the IPAC said in a July 15 statement on its website. “Technologies produced on our shores cannot be allowed to further aid Russia’s senseless war in Ukraine,” they said in a joint letter to their foreign ministries. “As [China is] Russia’s largest single trading partner, ensuring the [its] entities do not act to weaken the impact of international sanctions on Russia is of critical importance,” said the letter, which included U.S. Representatives Congressman Mike Gallagher and Congresswoman Young Kim, German Green MEP Reinhard Bütikofer, and former Conservative Party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP. “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine comes amidst a deepened ‘no limits’ friendship between Moscow and Beijing,” IPAC co-chair Bütikofer said. “The Chinese government is working around the clock to push the Kremlin’s lies and disinformation on Ukraine across the globe, while Chinese companies continue to supply the Russian military with crucial technologies. Companies which service Putin’s senseless war in Ukraine must be named, shamed and face the consequences.” Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) and Chinese President Xi Jinping pose for a photograph during their meeting in Beijing, Feb. 4, 2022. Credit: AFP China Poly Group The Wall Street Journal quoted the Center for Advanced Defense (C4ADS), a Washington-based security threat research organization, as saying that between 2014 and January 2022, it had tracked down 281 undisclosed shipments of goods that could be used for military purposes made by a subsidiary of China Poly Group, to the Russian authorities. China Poly Group is controlled by the Chinese central government and its subsidiaries include a major Chinese arms maker and exporter of small arms, missile technology and anti-drone laser technology. In late January, its subsidiary Poly Technology Group exported a batch of antenna parts to the sanctioned Russian defense company Almaz-Antey. Russian customs records show that antenna parts are used exclusively for radar and are used in Russia’s S-400 surface-to-air missile system, which, according to Russian media reports, has been used in Ukraine. However, the Center for Advanced Defense Research said it hadn’t detected further China Poly shipments to Russian defense companies since the war began. The Commerce Department announced the targeted companies on June 29, saying they had supplied items to Russian “entities of concern” before the Feb. 24 invasion, adding that they “continue to contract to supply Russian entity listed and sanctioned parties.” The agency also added another 31 entities to the blacklist from countries that include Russia, UAE, Lithuania, Pakistan, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. “Today’s action sends a powerful message to entities and individuals across the globe that if they seek to support Russia, the United States will cut them off as well,” Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Alan Estevez said in a statement quoted by Reuters. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman rejected the claim that the companies were exporting goods to aid Russia’s war effort. “China and Russia carry out normal trade cooperation on the basis of mutual respect and mutual benefit. This should not be interfered with or restricted by any third party,” Zhao told reporters in Beijing in response to the announcement. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

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Belt and Road becomes ball and chain for Chinese construction workers

Editor025 mins

They signed up at job fairs to work as carpenters, bricklayers, plumbers and painters at a housing project in the North African country of Algeria and were promised round-trip air fare, room and board, and better wages than they’d earned in China. They thought working for companies serving China’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was a safe bet. When the migrant workers from Sichuan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Henan, and Hebei–China’s relatively poorer inland provinces–arrived in the country, however, they soon found themselves living in sheds without air conditioning in desert heat and facing a nightmare of withheld wages, mysterious extra fees, confiscated passports, and dismal food. Many are trapped in Algeria. Chinese labor lawyers say their treatment not only besmirches China’s reputation, undermining the goals of the nearly 10-year-old Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) of infrastructure projects aimed at boosting Beijing’s global profile, but also constitutes human trafficking under international conventions China has signed. The BRI is seen as Chinese President Xi Jinping’s signature international policy. Following up on tips received from workers who’ve been stranded some 6,000 miles (9,200 km) from home, RFA Mandarin interviewed numerous workers employed in Algeria’s Souk Ahras Province, Chinese diplomats, labor lawyers and an executive of Shandong Jiaqiang Real Estate Co. Ltd, the eastern China-based company the laborers accuse of luring them to Algeria under false pretenses. “When I came here through an agent, I realized the situation is not good. It is worse than in China,” said Worker A, whose name has been withheld to protect him and his family from retaliation. “The contract is good for two years, and the pay listed on the contract is more than 10,000 yuan ($1,480) per month––between 15,000 ($2,220) and 20,000 yuan ($2,960). After landing here, I made less than 10,000 yuan ($1,480) a month,” he told RFA. “The pay is far from what was promised,” said a second man, identified as Worker B.  “It is worse than what we earned in China. Here the monthly pay on average is 3,000 yuan ($444).” When he and fellow workers “arrived here and found out that the situation was far from ideal, we wanted to go home,” said Worker A. “We spoke with the company, and the company said ‘no.’ They said ‘Because you already signed the contract, if you go home now, that is a breach of contract.’” According to Worker A, Shandong Jiaqiang Real Estate Co. Ltd. told the workers to “ask your family to wire 28,000 yuan ($4,145) over to pay for the penalty. After you pay the penalty, then you can go home.” He told RFA wages were only paid every six months, with 70 percent paid, and the other 30 percent withheld until the workers fulfilled their two-year contracts. That pay arrangement meant the workers “usually have no money to live on” and had to borrow advances against their wages. “In the process, the workers were ripped off by other costs,” added Worker A, who said the company profited by loaning money to them at an exchange rate to the local Algerian Dinar currency that was about half the actual rate. A Chinese worker walks by a building at a construction site in Algeria’s Souk Ahras province. Credit: A Chinese worker. ‘Pig food’ and hot sheds Worker B said it took a strike by workers in September 2021 to get the company to pay the 70 percent they were due in the middle of that year. He said the workers were told by the company: “Feel free to sue. We’re not afraid. Just sue us, go back to China to sue us.” But a third worker involved in the dispute said that path was impossible for poor workers to take “The lawsuit costs money. To hire someone costs money. If you file a complaint in China, you’re dragging your family in too. Who can afford to sue? said Worker C. A chief reason the workers had to borrow money was to cook their own meals because the three daily meals they were promised under their contracts was inedible. “To say it bluntly, the food was worse than those given to pigs. Sometimes the food was just impossible to eat,” said Worker B. “In the winter, they gave you marinated cucumber salad or marinated tomatoes, plus two eggs per person. That’s it. Or two eggplants each person,” he said. “The food we ate was mixed with sand and gravel. The noodles were black,” added Worker B. “Workers in many construction sites that this company operates received the same treatment. Why? The company does not want to cook the food well, because if it’s delicious, you’d eat more. By offering lousy food, you’d pay out of pocket to buy your own food and cook your own meals,” Worker A surmised.  The make matters worse, Worker A said, the workforce had to “live in regular sheds, with no air-conditioning, no matter how hot it is.” “In the summer, the temperature goes as high as 41 or 42 Celsius (105 or 107 Fahrenheit),” he added. Food provided to workers by Shandong Jiaqiang Real Estate Co. Ltd. ay its construction site in Algeria. Credit: A worker Overpriced plane tickets, improper visas Another grievance shared by the workers in Algeria who spoke to RFA in recent months was the failure to provide return airfare to China as promised. After checking with the Chinese Embassy in Algiers, workers who were trying to go home were told that tickets to China ran about 22,000 yuan. “The boss has told them that a flight ticket costs ¥42,000 yuan, and we have to pay our own ticket. He wanted us to pay by ourselves,” said Worker D. “It seemed that the ticket was around ¥22,000 yuan, and he charged you more than ¥30,000, said Worker E. “’Immigration clearance fee,’ they said,” he added. Worker D explained that because the company applied for business visas for the workers, when the workers return to China, they have to go through departure procedures at the…

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Cambodian diplomat’s concubines employed by soccer club shareholder

Editor017 mins

There’s another plot twist in Chinese-businessman-turned-Cambodian diplomat Wang Yaohui’s secretive investment in a prominent English soccer club. RFA can reveal that two mothers of his children were employed by a company associated with Yaohui, Chigwell Holdings Ltd.  The company acquired a sizeable stake in Birmingham City Football Club back in 2017. ​Just weeks ago, the English Football League said it was looking into reporting by RFA that Yaohui and a man said by former associates to be a close relative and frequent proxy for Yaohui control a large stake in the club through a series of offshore shell companies.  Yaohui’s undeclared ties to Chigwell Holdings – yet another entity owning shares in the club – is likely to factor into that investigation. Under its rules, the league requires clubs to publicly disclose the identity of any person controlling more than 10 percent. A complicated man Yaohui was born in China but as RFA has reported, became a naturalized Cambodian citizen in 2014 after a checkered business career characterized by secretive dealings and bribery scandals in China and Africa where associates were convicted although Yaohui himself was not charged.  If his corporate interests have been complex, the same can be said of his personal life. Despite having spent the last 15 years or so living as man and wife with Chinese film star Tang Yuhong, Yaohui has had at least five children by two other women in that time. The mothers, Wang Jing and Wang Qiong, were born seven years apart during the 1980s in Sichuan province, China. In 2015, both women approached Henley & Partners, a broker for citizenship-by-investment schemes, seeking to acquire Maltese passports for themselves and their children. Multiple documents obtained by RFA, including the children’s birth certificates, show that their children shared a common father, Yaohui. Wang Qiong’s declaration to the Maltese authorities that while Wang Yaohui is the father of her children, they are “just friends, but not in spousal relationship.” Those documents were part of a tranche of internal Henley & Partners data leaked to the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation, forming the bedrock of the foundation’s “Passport Papers” investigative collaboration with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, which made the data available through its Aleph database in June this year. A review of that data also revealed that from 2015 onwards, the women were both employed in the accounting department of Chigwell Holdings Ltd, a Hong Kong-based real estate holding firm connected to Yaohui, although the detailed biographies provided by both women as part of their Maltese citizenship applications indicated no educational background or employment history in finance or bookkeeping. Regardless of their seeming lack of experience, they were handsomely compensated. HSBC bank statements for an account in Jing’s name show monthly deposits of HKD$36,500 ($4,650) from the company. Statements for Qiong’s account show her receiving the slightly higher HKD$44,500 ($5,670) each month. A letter signed by Chigwell Holdings HR manager Helen Ho attesting to the company’s employment of Wang Qiong, mother of several of Wang Yaohui’s children. Both women also provided letters signed and stamped by Helen Ho, human resources manager at Chigwell Holdings, attesting to their employment by the firm. Ho’s name and phone numbers both appear in Yaohui’s Hong Kong passport as his emergency contact person. Hong Kong corporate records also show that in April 2017 the assets of Chigwell Holdings were used to secure a $40 million loan to Yaohui – suggesting that he has considerable influence over the company’s decision-making and the property under its management. An extract from a Hong Kong corporate filing registering that Chigwell Holdings’ assets have been used as security against a $40 million loan to Wang Yaohui. Buying into the game When eight months later, on Dec. 14, 2017, Chigwell Holdings acquired 500 million shares in a company listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, Yaohui’s name was nowhere on the associated disclosure. Under Hong Kong law, companies owning significant stakes in companies listed on the stock exchange are required to disclose their stakes, as well as the identity of their beneficial owner. The company Chigwell Holdings had bought the 500 million shares in was Birmingham Sports Holdings Ltd, which at the time owned 96.64 percent of Birmingham City Football Club. At the time, Chigwell Holdings’ 500 million shares accounted for 5.97 percent of Birmingham Sports Holdings’ total stock, or 5.76 percent of the club. On the same day, another company bought an even larger chunk of shares in Birmingham Sports Holdings. Registered in the British Virgin Islands, Dragon Villa Ltd also omitted to mention its ties to Yaohui when it acquired just over 714 million shares, equivalent to 8.23 percent of Birmingham City Football Club at the time. However, earlier this year, RFA reported on evidence it had seen strongly suggesting that Yaohui is in fact Dragon Villa’s owner. The key piece of evidence was an affidavit submitted to a Singapore court on behalf of Yaohui’s longtime right-hand woman, Taiwanese-American dual national Jenny Shao. In the affidavit, Shao claimed that Dragon Villa “is beneficially owned by Mr. Wang [Yaohui].” A beneficial owner is a person who enjoys the benefits of owning a company which is in someone else’s name. Her testimony was echoed by multiple former business associates of Yaohui whom RFA spoke with. A wealthy wallflower But why would Yaohui want to obscure his stake in an English football club, something normally considered a prestige purchase? And perhaps more perplexingly, if he does indeed control Chigwell Holdings and Dragon Villa, why go to the trouble of splitting the purchase of shares in Birmingham Sports Holdings between the two companies when they took place on the same day? We may never know the true answer since representatives of both companies have not responded to repeated requests for comment in recent months. The combined stakes of the two companies represent more than 10 percent of Birmingham City Football Club  – therefore exceeding the threshold at which clubs are required to publicly disclose the…

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Dwindling freedoms, rolling lockdowns spark growing desire to ‘run’ from China

Editor013 mins

Linghu Changbing has been on the run from China for three years, using his Twitter account to post an account of a motorcycle trip in Mexico and further travels across the United States, to the envy of many in China. While Linghu, 22, gets roundly criticized by Little Pinks, online supporters of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), for his life choices, he is living a freedom that many back home caught in endless rounds of COVID-19 restrictions can only dream about. His road-movie lifestyle puts Linghu at the cutting edge of a growing phenomenon among younger Chinese people with the wherewithal to leave the country, summarized by a Chinese character pronounced “run” that has come to symbolize cutting free from an increasingly onerous life under CCP rule in an online shorthand referencing the English word “run”. Shanghai white-collar worker Li Bing has been dreaming about emigrating to Japan with his girlfriend and two beloved cats for three years now. Li’s game-plan after graduating from university had been to get rich as fast as possible, but the COVID-19 pandemic and the Chinese government’s draconian zero-COVID policies has thrown several spanners in the works. Li, as a devoted servant to his two cats, was terrified at online video footage of “Dabai” COVID-19 enforcers in white PPE beating people’s pets to death after they were sent to quarantine camps. “One resident showed us through his camera lens those Dabai in PPE beating a pet to death,” Li said. “So my No. 1 nightmare is that my two cats could be disposed of [in that way].” An engineer by training, Li now works as a highly paid copywriter in the tech industry in Shanghai, which he once viewed as a new land of opportunity. But work has been hard-hit by the recent lockdowns, and the money isn’t coming in as frequently as it once did. “Since the pandemic … the interval between payments is getting longer and longer,” Li said. “The lockdown made me even more aware that I can’t afford to wait any longer, because I don’t know what I’m waiting for.” Workers and security guards in protective gear are seen at a cordoned-off entrance to a residential area under lockdown due to Covid-19 restrictions in Beijing, June 14, 2022. Credit: AFP Keyword searches for emigration soar Li, who recently secured a short-term business visa for Japan and wants to apply to study there too, is definitely not alone. Data from the social media app WeChat index showed a huge spike in searches using the keywords “emigration” or “overseas emigration” between March and May, suggesting that “run,” or running, is on many people’s minds. At its peaks, search queries for the keyword “emigration” hit 70 million several times during the Shanghai lockdown and 130 million immediately afterwards. The same keyword also showed peaks on Toutiao Index, Google Trends and 360 Trends between April and the end of June 2022, leading U.S.-based former internet censor Liu Lipeng to speculate that the most recent peak was triggered by a June 27 report in state media quoting Beijing municipal party chief Cai Qi as saying that current COVID-19 restrictions would be “normalized” over the next five years. WeChat’s owner Tencent said searches for “emigration” rose by 440 percent on April 3, 2022, the day CCP leader Xi Jinping told the nation to “strictly adhere to the zero-COVID policy.” A Japan-based immigration consultant who gave only the pseudonym “Mr. Y,” said he had witnessed a massive surge in queries to his business starting in April. “I’m also curious about what’s happened over the past month, and I think it’s amazing,” he said. “How can there be such a positive impact in little more than a month?” Mr. Y said he, like many others in the sector, has started taking to Twitter Spaces to provide listeners with free advice on immigrating to Japan. “I see seven or eight spaces about how to run, all of them with nearly 1,000 people in them,” he said. A Shanghai-based businessman surnamed Meng, who has a U.S. green card, found himself pressed into service as an informal immigration consultant during the Shanghai lockdown. “Only one person asked me about this … before lockdown,” said Meng, not his real name. “All the others came to ask me when we were locked down at home.” In a video clip sent to RFA, Peking University Communist Party Secretary Chen Baojian appeals to students to disperse after Hundreds of students protested in mid-May 2022 on the campus after a fence was put in place segregating them from the rest of the university. Credit: Screengrab of video. Steady erosion of freedom Australia-based writer Murong Xuecun said he had left after correctly predicting the steady erosion of individual freedom in China. “In the past few years … government has become more and more powerful, and the rights of ordinary people have dwindled,” he told RFA. “What kind of China will we see next?” “A more conservative, isolated and poorer China, and I think also a [more unpredictable and violent] China,” he said. “That’s what a lot of people worry about.” Many are aware that since Xi Jinping came to power, the government has made rapid advances in the direction of high-tech totalitarianism. A combination of a nationwide, integrated facial recognition network, a health code app that can prevent movement in public spaces under the guise of COVID-19 prevention, and the use of automated fare collection systems to track people on public transportation have combined to place severe limits on the personal privacy and freedoms of the average person in China. Meanwhile, the population is still struggling with the massive economic impact of rolling lockdowns, compulsory waves of mass COVID-19 testing and inflation that has characterized the pandemic in China. A wave of regulatory policies targeting the private sector, most notably private education and China’s tech giants, has has also taken its toll on the perception of the level prosperity and freedom that is realistically achievable for regular Chinese…

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Investigative Journalism Reportika © March 2022 by Ij-Reportika is licensed under CC BY 4.0