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Belt and Road becomes ball and chain for Chinese construction workers
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…
Cambodian diplomat’s concubines employed by soccer club shareholder
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…
Dwindling freedoms, rolling lockdowns spark growing desire to ‘run’ from China
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…
Chinese-American author slams movie distributors over lack of ‘One Second’ credit
Chinese-American author Geling Yan has hit out at the companies involved in releasing a Zhang Yimou film based on one of her novels outside China without crediting her. Yan’s name was removed from Zhang’s 2020 film “One Second” despite it being an adaptation of part of one of her novels, after she made an outspoken social media post about a trafficked woman from rural China who was found chained by the neck in an outhouse belonging to her “husband.” Now, the movie is being shown outside China with the collusion of overseas companies not bound by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s strict censorship policies, a move that incenses Yan, who staged a protest with her husband outside the Berlin movie theater where the film premiered at the weekend. “If this issue was confined to China, it would be totally understandable,” she said. “But it’s going too far for them to ignore my intellectual property rights and my moral rights across the whole world.” “And I think that for these companies that are colluding with them to do this, it is a particularly shameful manifestation of their double standards,” Yan said after Sunday’s protest, which was attended by entrepreneurs, musicians, economists, poets, artists, and human rights activists from China. “Civilization [should be] based on allowing people to think freely and publish the results of their thinking freely,” she said. Yan said she had condensed 30 years of lived experience and national trauma into her novel “The Criminal Lu Yanshi,” on which “One Second” is based. “How many works like ‘The Criminal Lu Yanshi’ can a person write across a lifetime? I place huge value on it, then they just strangle and cancel my intellectual property, killing a part of my intellectual life,” Yan said. “A human being needs to fight for her human rights, and a writer needs to fight for her intellectual property rights if they are violated,” she said. Before her comments on social media about the chained woman, Yan’s work was already being banned because of her criticism of the CCP’s response to the pandemic. Yan said she is highly unlikely to start praising the current regime in China, preferring to focus on the dignity and freedom of the individual. “I can pay a higher price and fight for the truth, whether it’s about a virus or a woman in chains,” Yan said. “Or that one of my works has been strangled and castrated.” A scene from Zhang Yimou’s film “One Second,” which was adapted from Geling Yan’s novel “The Criminal Lu Yanshi.” Credit: Geling Yan Censorship victim Yan said she views Zhang Yimou as a victim of the CCP’s censorship system, but she couldn’t accept his taking credit for her work overseas. “There has been enforced censorship of movies for too long in China,” she said. “Every movie includes a very painful process of trying to pass this test.” “Every film-maker has had work banned, and Zhang Yimou [said] he wouldn’t do such a thing to an author if there was any other option; he was forced into it,” Yan said. “But I told him that wasn’t good enough … this helpless attitude of ‘they made me do it’,” she said. “I don’t forgive him for that.” Yan and her husband and agent Lawrence Walker are now suing Zhang’s Beijing Huanxi Chuan Media Group, as well as the film’s international distributors and U.S., French and German producers. “We sent a lawyer’s letter but nothing came of it, and the movie was released anyway,” Walker told RFA. “So we started taking to the streets.” He said China may be a powerful nation, but the CCP shouldn’t be allowed to export their censorship practices, threatening free speech overseas. Chinese citizen journalist Li Tingyu protested alongside Yan and Walker. “Geling Yan has been my favorite author since high school,” Li said. “I read “Lu Yanshi” while I was in the detention center.” “Her books are very popular … but now, because she spoke out for women, and for justice, her name is disappearing and her voice has been obliterated [in China],” she said. Employees who answered repeated calls to the Beijing Huanxi Chuan Media Group on Monday declined to comment. Repeated calls to the personal number of the film’s producer, Zhao Yijun, also rang unanswered. Edits and deletions The saga began with Chinese director Zhang Yimou and Yan signing an agreement in 2011 giving Zhang the movie rights to her novel “The Criminal Lu Yanshi,” which tells the tale of a man sentenced to labor camp for the political crime of being a “rightist.” Zhang then made a movie based on the book called “Coming Home.” However, he also completed a second movie based on the novel titled “One Second,” but deleted any reference to Yan or her work of fiction from the publicity materials. In February 2019, the crew of ‘One Second’ traveled to Berlin for the Berlin International Film Festival. They met at Yan’s house, looking forward to seeing it presented in competition for a Golden Bear award, and entered the venue on the red carpet together with her. But the movie was withdrawn abruptly just one hour before its scheduled media screening, allegedly for “technical reasons.” Further delays ensued before the film was eventually released in November 2020 after Zhang made a number of edits and deletions to satisfy Chinese officials. When the film finally did appear, there was no mention of Yan. Yan and Walker have contacted the Hollywood Screenwriters’ Guild, of which Yan is a member, French film distribution company Wild Bunch of Paris, online platform Mubi, the Toronto Film Festival and the San Sebastian International Film Festival in Spain. Mubi has since reinstated a reference to Yan as the author of the novel that inspired “One Second.” Producer Zhao has told the couple that Yan’s name was removed for political reasons, on orders from the State Administration for Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), and that Huanxi was obliged to implement that order. Zhao…
Top US diplomat: China, ASEAN should push Myanmar to end violence
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday urged Thailand along with ASEAN members and China to push Myanmar’s junta to end violence against its people and move back toward democracy following a meeting in Bangkok with Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Blinken called on the region’s government leaders to push the junta, which overthrew Myanmar’s democratic government in February 2021, to live up to a plan agreed upon two months later. Earlier, he signed a pair of cooperative agreements with Thailand’s foreign minister. “The United States is working with Thailand and all of ASEAN to push Burma’s regime to fulfill the Five-Point Consensus, end its brutal violence and put Burma back on the path to democracy,” Blinken said, using the old name for Myanmar and the acronym for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. “It is incumbent on China and in China’s interest to see Burma move back to the path it was on,” he also said. While junta government leader Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing agreed to the consensus in April 2021, his government has not implemented it. The consensus included an immediate end to violence in the country, the distribution of humanitarian aid, dialogue among all parties and the appointment of an ASEAN special envoy to Myanmar who would be permitted to meet with all stakeholders. “Unfortunately, it is safe to say that we have seen no positive movement. On the contrary, we continue to see the repression of the Burmese people,” Blinken said, noting members of the opposition are in jail or in exile. “The regime is not delivering what is necessary for the people.” More than 2,065 civilians have been killed in Myanmar since the coup, according to Thailand’s Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. After traveling to Thailand from Bali, Indonesia, where he had attended the G20 foreign ministers meeting last week, Blinken also met with his Thai counterpart, Don Pramudwinai. They signed the U.S.-Thailand Communiqué on Strategic Alliance and Partnership. “Our countries share the same goals – the free, open, interconnected, prosperous, resilient and secure Indo-Pacific. In recent years, we worked together even more closely toward that vision,” Blinken said. “I’m especially pleased to be in Thailand at a time when we have an ally and partner in the Pacific of such importance to us in the region that is shaping the trajectory of the 21st century and doing that every single day.” The communiqué, which noted the nations will celebrate their 190th anniversary of diplomatic relations in 2023, listed long-term goals of expanding and strengthening the strategic partnership to prevent conflict, preserving a peaceful security environment, promoting free expression and civil and political rights, and achieving inclusive, sustainable and balanced economic prosperity. “We pursue these goals as equals, for the benefit of the Thai and American people, as well as for the rest of the Indo–Pacific populations and the wider world. We seek to work together to ensure the resilience of critical supply chains, so that both our nations have access to the goods and resources required to preserve our safety, security and prosperity,” it said. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken (left) and Thai Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai sign a memorandum of understanding at the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bangkok, July 10, 2022. Credit: Stefani Reynolds/Pool via AP Blinken and Don also signed a memorandum of understanding regarding the supply chain between the two nations. “This ensures, strong, resilient and diverse supply chain cooperation, particularly in the category of industrial, technological innovation,” Don said. Bali meeting Blinken’s trip followed a five-hour meeting on Saturday with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Bali and as the two superpowers focus on maintaining their relationships with Thailand and other Southeast Asian nations. Wang visited Bangkok before traveling to Bali. Speaking to reporters in Bali, Blinken said, “What we’re about is not asking countries to choose, but giving them a choice, when it comes to things like investment in infrastructure and development systems. “What we want to make sure is that we’re engaged in a race to the top, that we do things to the highest standards, not a race to the bottom where we do things to the lowest standards.” Wang traveled to Bangkok on July 5 where he held similar meetings with Prayuth and Don. “We both agree on many issues. We agreed to jointly build joint societies for the future of Chinese and Thais, making it a guideline to future joint cooperation for both countries. … The objective of the joint societies is to stress that Chinese and Thai are no strangers but kin. The relationship is robust,” Wang told reporters in Bangkok after meeting with Don. Blinken is to travel to Tokyo where he will offer condolences on Monday to Japanese officials following the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news service. Dandy Koswaraputra in Jakarta contributed to this report.
Protests in China against the Bank Run
Chinese customers opened accounts at six rural banks in Henan and neighboring Anhui province that offered higher interest rates in large numbers. They later found they could not withdraw their funds after media reports that the head of the banks’ parent company was on the run and wanted for financial crimes. “We came today and wanted to get our savings back, because I have elderly people and children at home, and the inability to withdraw savings has seriously affected my life,” said a woman from Shandong province, who only gave her last name. local resident Zhang China heavily misused the COVID-19 tracking app. Many who set out for Zhengzhou to demand action from regulators found that their health status on the application had turned red, preventing them from traveling. Some reported being questioned by police after checking into their hotel about why they had come to the city. Five Zhengzhou officials were later punished. The protesters assembled before dawn on Sunday in front of the People’s Bank of China building in Zhengzhou. Police closed off the street and by 8 a.m. had started massing on the other side. The events were similar to the events that took place during the Tiananmen Square Massacre. The police then announced to the protesters from a vehicle with a megaphone that they were an illegal assembly and would be detained and fined if they didn’t leave. Around 10 a.m., the men in T-shirts rushed the crowd and dispersed them. The witnesses said they saw women dragged down the stairs of the bank entrance. Police was brutal in its ways to crush the protests. A protestor Yang said he was hit by two security officers including one who had fallen off the stairs and mistakenly thought in the chaos that Yang had hit or pushed him. “Although repeated protests and demonstrations don’t necessarily have a big impact, I think it is still helpful if more people get to know about us, and understand or sympathize with us,” Yang said. “Each time you do it, you might make a difference. Although you will get hit, they can’t really do anything to you, right?” The protesters were bused to various sites where they were forced to sign a letter guaranteeing they would not gather anymore. They were beaten and thrashed mercilessly. Ironically, since Chinese media are banned from conducting independent reports about the Henan bank crisis, Chinese netizens are flooding the comment section of the US embassy’s Weibo account, asking American media to cover the case. Several videos of the protests are going on the social media of the protests in China. The horrific state of affairs is similar to those happened in the Tiananmen Square. Image/Videos Credit: Byron Wan
FBI and MI5 team up to warn of the risks of Chinese hackers and spies
In an unprecedented joint appearance Wednesday, the heads of U.S. and U.K. security agencies warned about China’s hacking and economic espionage, which they called “the most game-changing challenge we face.” FBI director Christopher Wray in a speech delivered at the London headquarters of MI5, the British domestic intelligence service, said “it’s the Chinese government that poses the biggest long-term threat to our economic and national security.” He added that Beijing was “set on stealing your technology, whatever it is that makes your industry tick, and using it to undercut your business and dominate your market.” MI5 Director General Ken McCallum said that his agency “has already more than doubled” the effort against Chinese activity of concern in the last three years. “Today we’re running seven times as many investigations as we were in 2018,” he said, adding that MI5 plans “to grow as much again” to counter threats by China. “The Chinese Communist Party is interested in our democratic, media and legal systems. Not to emulate them, sadly, but to use them for its gain,” said the MI5 head. This joint appearance by the two agencies’ heads is seen as a show of Western solidarity and, as Wray put it, “FBI and MI5 are united in this fight.” McCallum meanwhile said: “Today is the first time the heads of the FBI and MI5 have shared a public platform. We’re doing so to send the clearest signal we can on a massive shared challenge: China.” ‘Immense threat’ “Such a joint appearance, focused on the activities of one country, is highly unusual,” said Matthew Brazil, Fellow at the Jamestown Foundation and co-author of the book “Chinese Communist Espionage’. “It indicates that London and Washington think their business communities are insufficiently aware, or even negligent, of technology theft by Beijing’s security services,” said Brazil, who also serves as China analyst for Washington D.C.-based firm BluePath Lab. “This is not hyperbole. The 2021 annual survey of members by the U.S.-China Business Council indicate that American firms may be worried about the bilateral relationship, but they are still making money in China,” he said. The China analyst warned there is a systemic problem with corporations seeking short-term returns and some high-tech businesses being “more focused on being a generation ahead of competitors than losing last year’s technology to a foreign government.” In his remarks to business leaders in Thames House, London, Christopher Wray, who spent 12 years in the private sector, called the threat by China “immense” and “a far more complex and pervasive threat to businesses than even most sophisticated company leaders realize.” “Where we see some companies stumble is in thinking that by attending to one, or a couple, of these dangers, they’ve got the whole Chinese government danger covered—when really, China just pivots to the remaining door left unattended,” the FBI boss said. The FBI and MI5 leaders gave a number of examples of Chinese economic espionage, with Ken McCallum warning that “privileged information is gathered on multiple channels, in what is sometimes referred to as the ‘thousand grains of sand’ strategy.” China’s ambition “The aim here is not to cut off from China – one fifth of humanity, with immense talent,” the MI5 head said. “We’re not talking about Chinese people,” he said, adding that his agency is focused on the Chinese Communist Party and certain parts of the Chinese State, whose “scale of ambition is huge.” The FBI’s Wray was more direct when he said that the Chinese government is “using intimidation and repression to shape the world to be more accommodating to China’s campaign of theft.” “The Chinese Government sees cyber as the pathway to cheat and steal on a massive scale,” he said, adding that China’s “lavishly resourced” hacking program is bigger than that of every other major country combined. The Chinese government has yet to respond but a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington rejected the allegations given in the joint address. Liu Pengyu said in an emailed statement to the Associated Press that China “firmly opposes and combats all forms of cyber-attacks” and called the accusations groundless. Christopher Wray warned about the possibility that China may try to forcibly take over Taiwan, saying “it would represent one of the most horrific business disruptions the world has ever seen.” The intelligence chiefs called for more cooperation to counter imminent threats. The U.K. has shared intelligence about cyber threats with 37 countries, according to MI5’s McCallum who said that security alliances such as the Five Eyes comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States “remain at the heart of our response.”
‘Diplomatic drama’ possible over Russian attendance at G20 meeting in Bali
Group of Twenty diplomats will gather in Bali this week for a meeting that analysts expect will turn into a “diplomatic drama” over the participation of Sergey Lavrov, foreign minister of Russia, which the West has ostracized for invading Ukraine. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese counterpart Wang Yi are scheduled to attend the G20 meeting, which is set to begin on Thursday, and hold talks on the sidelines the next day, but a bilateral meeting between America’s top diplomat and Lavrov is not on the cards, officials in Washington said. Still, analysts warned, divisions over Lavrov’s presence could sidetrack delegates at the Bali gathering hosted by Indonesia, this year’s G20 chair. “It is likely there will be a diplomatic drama, such as statements that criticize Russia,” Riza Noer Arfani, an international relations lecturer at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, told BenarNews. “If the foreign ministers engaged in a diplomatic drama, more substantial issues such as efforts to mitigate the impact of the [Russia-Ukraine] war could be left unaddressed and that would make the meeting fruitless.” Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, Indonesia’s president, has warned that a global food crisis caused by the war would send people in developing and poor countries into “the abyss of extreme poverty and hunger.” Since Russia launched its invasion on Feb. 24, its military forces have blocked all of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports and cut off access to almost all of that country’s exports – especially of grain – sparking fears of a global food crisis. However during a meeting in Moscow last week, Russian leader Vladimir Putin assured Jokowi that he would provide secure food and fertilizer supplies from his country and Ukraine, to avert a global food crisis. While Western countries led by the U.S. have called on Russia to be disinvited from G20 meetings, other members of the grouping such as Indonesia and India refuse to do so and continue to maintain ties with Russia. During a stopover on Wednesday in Vietnam, a close Russian ally, Lavrov said he was not aware of any attempts to stop Russia from participating in G20 meetings. “We have Indonesia’s invitation to attend both a [G20] Foreign Ministers Meeting to open in Bali tomorrow, and a G20 summit there in November,” Russia’s TASS news agency quoted him as saying. “If there have been any such attempts, the Indonesian authorities might have ignored them,” he said. ‘Give us a reason to meet’ Meanwhile, there promises to be plenty of drama at the foreign ministers’ meeting in Bali. Lavrov’s Canadian counterpart has warned she would not shake his hand. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has promised some kind of response, saying “we will not simply let Russia take the stage of the meeting.” “We all have an interest in ensuring that international law is observed and respected,” she said in a statement before departing for Bali. “That is the common denominator.” Blinken plans to shun Lavrov as well. The U.S. State Department said Blinken would not meet Lavrov formally. “We would like to see the Russians be serious about diplomacy. We have not seen that yet,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters during a briefing on Tuesday. “We would like to have the Russians give us a reason to meet on a bilateral basis with them, with foreign minister Lavrov, but the only thing we have seen emanate from Moscow is more brutality and aggression against the people and country of Ukraine,” he said. Meanwhile, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said that all G20 member countries would be represented by their top diplomats. Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah declined to comment on possible tensions over Lavrov’s participation, but said: “We as diplomats must anticipate all possibilities.” He said that the summary of the meeting’s outcome could be in the form of a chair’s statement from Indonesia. Vasyl Harmianin, the Ukrainian ambassador to Indonesia, said he hoped the meeting could spotlight what he called “the continued killing of civilians” in his home country. Preview of G20 summit Jakarta, which has been trying to mediate between Russia and Ukraine, said the meeting would discuss collective efforts to strengthen “multilateralism” and avert a looming food crisis caused by the war. “Rising commodity prices and disruption of global supply chains have had a huge impact on developing countries,” the foreign ministry said in a statement Wednesday. “For this reason, the G20 as an economic forum representing different regions of the world has the power to discuss these issues comprehensively to find sustainable socio-economic solutions.” This week’s meeting could set the tone for the G20 summit in November, according to Agus Haryanto, a professor of international relations at Jenderal Soedirman University in Purwokerta. “It will provide us with an idea of how the G20 summit will go. If the ministerial meeting is successful, it is likely that the summit will be attended by all heads of government,” Agus told BenarNews. The ministers should talk about how to bring peace to Ukraine after Jokowi’s visit to Kyiv and Moscow last week, a senior Indonesian diplomat, Sugeng Rahardjo, told the national news agency Antara. “The positive results from Jokowi’s trip deserve follow-up by G20 members at their meeting in Bali,” Sugeng told the national news agency Antara. BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news service.
Taiwan activist Lee Ming-Cheh says world pressure on his Chinese jailers helped him
Taiwanese NGO worker Lee Ming-Cheh was released from Chishan Prison in the central Chinese province of Hunan on April 15 after serving nearly five years for “attempting to subvert state power.” Lee, a course director at Taiwan’s Wenshan Community College, was a lifelong activist for Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, which Beijing vilifies as a separatist group that rejects China’s claim over the democratic island. Among the accusations he faced at Hunan’s Yueyang Intermediate People’s Court was that he set up social media chat groups to “vilify China.” Lee has been invited to Washington, D.C. to testify before the U.S. Congress and other institutions about human rights conditions in Chinese prisons, the role of international pressure in helping him get slightly better treatment while in jail, and Beijing’s expansion of repressive tactics to Taiwan and around the world. He was unable to enter the U.S., however, because the Chinese-made COVID vaccines that he received while he was in prison are not recognized and approved by the World Health Organization and therefore do not meet Centers for Disease Control regulation for entry. He spoke to Hsia Hsiao-hwa and Paul Tuan of RFA Mandarin about his prison experience, which he describes as “field research” into China’s human rights situation. Lee stressed to RFA that constant activism on his behalf by his wife, American and Taiwanese supporters and U.S. and European Union government entities helped him during his incarceration. On his trial: “Since Xi Jinping took office, mine was the only ‘subversion of state power’ case that was tried in public. There is an upside of an open trial. The prosecutor must lay out the evidence clearly. They cannot smear me as a spy, nor can they claim that I went to China for prostitution. None of the incriminating evidence that China has presented in court was about what I actually did in China. The public trial turned out to be a display of evidence that China has violated freedom of speech globally. China provided self-incriminating evidence. “In political cases, there would be a rehearsal before the trial. The attorneys and the prosecutors rehearsed the entire process of a trial. Even the defense lawyer (who was the then-Hunan delegate to the NPC) that the Chinese government has hired for Peng Yuhua, the co-defendant of the case, questioned how the national security agency can list social media app chat groups as formal organizations and fabricated stories about these groups having solid structures and specific job assignments.“ On isolation under observation: “The prison guards would not let you have any contact with the outside world. There was no formal arrest. There was no lawyer representation. You were not allowed access to any books, magazines, televisions. You were just under full arrest. Twenty-four hours a day, you were being watched by a two-person team, even when you went to the bathroom or took a shower. It caused tremendous psychological stress. Many political prisoners in China suffer from mental health issues because they were severely restricted in terms of their residence locations and conditions of their living quarters. I am very fortunate. Under pressure from the international society, (the situation) only lasted for two months. The damage inflicted on one’s mind and body fits what the United Nations considers as psychological torture.” On prison food and water that left him with polyps in his gall bladder when he was released: “The doctor said what I ate and drank over the past few years had been too dirty. In Chishan Prison, we drank water from the Dongting Lake. There was a lot of sediment in the boiled water. Even the prison guards would not drink it. Many prisoners who served longer terms have suffered from diseases such as urethral stones and kidney stones because of the poor living conditions.” On a letter-writing campaign for Lee led by NGOs in Taiwan: “In China’s domestic propaganda, these people (activists) were cooperating with the US imperialism power and mobilizing color-scheme revolutions to destroy peace in China. If the police officers did not know me, they might have really believed that I was a vicious villain who would become violent when interacting with someone. Yet if you write letters to prisons, the police would know that many people care about this prisoner and that they should not treat him with excessive force. A saying in China goes like this, ‘there is no unconditional love’; ‘there is no unconditional hatred.’ The fact that so many strangers are writing to this person who they do not know would make the prison guard and the warden think again: This person may not be as vicious as they’d thought he would be.” Taiwanese activist Lee Ming-cheh (center) appearing in Yueyang Intermediate People’s Court, in central China’s Hunan Province, Nov. 28, 2017. Credit: Yueyang Intermediate People’s Court On regular visits from his wife, Lee Ching-yu, until the COVID-19 pandemic halted them: “Many families of Chinese political prisoners were deprived of the visitation rights to meet with their loved ones. My wife’s visits helped me physically and mentally. I am able to disclose the obsolete practices in the Chinese prisons. The visitations also allowed me to be more than just an inmate but someone who advocates for human rights and conducts field research on human rights.” On China’s creeping extension of repressive policies and censorship to self-ruled Taiwan and beyond: “China is acting to extend its jurisdiction beyond its borders to Taiwan, over which China has never ruled. China also used comments collected on the Internet as its evidence to find me guilty of ‘subversion of state power’. China clamps down on freedom of speech and on the use of Internet. It extends its jurisdiction to anyone in the world who uses Chinese social media apps.” On China’s crackdown against human rights lawyers, NGO activists and other rights defenders: “Ever since Xi Jinping took office, many were found guilty of ‘subverting state power’ and sent to prison. Specifically, if you look at these NGO activists, none of…
Cambodian court warns Kem Sokha, on trial for ‘treason,’ not to get political
A court in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh warned opposition leader Kem Sokha not to engage in any further political activities after the prosecution played a recorded conversation he held with supporters ahead of recent local elections, the latest wrinkle in his trial that started more than two years ago on unsubstantiated charges of treason. The deputy court prosecutor demanded Kem Sokha’s arrest after alleging that he had met with allies in the northwestern province of Siem Reap prior to the June 5 vote for commune council seats and discussed politics. Kem Sokha was released from pre-trial detention to house arrest in September 2018 and granted bail in November 2019 by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court, the terms of which allowed him to travel within Cambodia but restricted him from taking part in any political activities. An undercover investigator recorded one of the conversations, which was used as evidence in Wednesday’s proceedings. Kem Sokha was allowed to return home when the court session ended at 2 p.m. His lawyer, Pheng Heng, told RFA’s Khmer Service that Kem Sokha would be more careful about interactions in order to avoid new charges as the trial unfolds. “He didn’t make any political speech,” said Pheng Heng. He said that Kem Sokha has participated in public gatherings, like weddings, Buddhist ceremonies and a feast, none of which were political. “The deputy prosecutor thought it was political activity, but the defense thinks otherwise,” Phen Heng said. Kem Sokha is not part of any political party recognized by the Ministry of Interior. The Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) — which he co-founded with Sam Rainsy, who is living in self-exile in France — was dissolved by Cambodia’s Supreme Court in November 2017, two months after he was arrested over an alleged plot backed by the United States to overthrow the government of Hun Sen, who has ruled Cambodia for more than 35 years. Kem Sokha therefore could not have been engaging in politics, his lawyer argued. Wednesday’s hearing was the 46th session of the trial that started prior to the coronavirus pandemic. While the trial was delayed by the court’s closure during the height of the pandemic, critics believe that since then the authorities have been stalling in an attempt to keep Kem Sokha out of the public sphere to curb his political influence. During the 46th session, the court did not address the underlying charges against Kem Sokha, but focused instead on his recent activities. The case against Kem Sokha is clearly politically motivated, Yi Sok San, a senior monitor for the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association (Adhoc), told RFA. “I urge the government to differentiate between politics and law,” he said, adding that it was not fair to raise the new allegation against Kem Sokha without informing the defense. CPP spokesperson Chhim Phall Vorun told RFA that the government’s case is not politically motivated. Experts condemn mass trial U.N. human rights experts on Wednesday requested a review of a June 14 mass trial where 43 defendants with connections to the CNRP were convicted on charges of plotting and incitement, receiving sentences of up to eight years. U.N. officials Vitit Muntarbhorn, who monitors human rights concerns in Cambodia, Clement Nyaletsossi Voule, who tracks freedom of peaceful assembly issues, and Diego Garcia-Sayan, who promotes the independence of judges and lawyers, signed the statement. “The outcome of this first instance trial reinforces a troubling pattern of political trials peppered with judicial flaws,” the experts said in a statement. “We urge the government to urgently review and remedy the process to ensure the defendants’ access to justice.” Among the convicted activists is Cambodian American lawyer Theary Seng, who was recently moved from a prison in Phnom Penh to a more remote location, which the experts said makes family or consular visits more difficult. “On these grounds, the government is urged to review these convictions — and all pending similar cases — and to ensure future judicial proceedings adhere to international obligations,” the experts said. “This is critical to ensure the trend of shrinking civic and democratic space in Cambodia, aggravated by these trials, is reversed. A hindered access to justice not only infringes the rights of the victims, but has an overall chilling effect on society, discourages participation in assemblies and associations, and contributes to the dangerous trend of closing of civic space,” they said. Cambodia’s mission to the U.N. rejected the assessment of the trial as “misleading news.” The mission asserted that the trial was not politically motivated and said calling it as such was “unfounded and prejudicial.” It said that the experts’ narrative “one-sided and biased.” Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
