Category: East Asia

North Korea is cracking down on government-run entities that illegally use farmland for other money-making activities, like gold mining and manufacturing, sources in the country told RFA. For a country chronically short on food, allowing farmland to be used for anything but growing food could lead to a public backlash. Authorities are now warning collective farms and revenue-producing arms of various governmental agencies that they could be punished for doing anything except growing food on lands designated for agricultural production. “Late last month, orders were issued from the central government to investigate the destruction and illegal use of agricultural lands meant to produce grain. Investigations are now underway,” an official from the northern province of Ryanggang told RFA’s Korean Service on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “The order highlighted that there are a large number of land violations in the grain producing areas, and this is hindering the country’s grain production plans. Most of the country’s special organizations openly violate agricultural land policies for gold mining or construction projects. These are powerful and reputable organizations,” he said. The special organizations are divisions within government agencies like the Ministry of Defense, Ministry of State Security and parts of the military. They include Office 39, the organization charged with procuring slush funds for the country’s leader Kim Jong Un and his family. The government has limited capability to properly fund itself, and each ministry or agency must go into business in order to function properly. The source said that the special organizations have been ignoring the agricultural designations for land use and “invading” them with new factories, buildings or mining operations. “Each cooperative farm has therefore been ordered to report in detail how the special organizations are using their land, especially for goldmines and construction,” he said. “In principle these organizations cannot do anything other than agriculture on those lands without permission from the state, but it is common for them to use threats or bribery to convince local officials to allow them to use the land for other purposes,” the source said. Entities that legally want to repurpose farmland must go through an arduous bureaucratic process that includes permission from five different organizations: the collective farm, the province’s farm management office, the provincial government, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Ministry of National Territory Environment Protection, according to the source. “Authorities have been taking steps to increase food production in recent years, but they are missing the most important point. The fastest way to solve the long-term food shortage is to give the farmland back to the farmers and allow them to process their own harvest,” he said. Such a move could provide incentive for the farmers to earn a living off of the crops they grow, but it would also go against the ideas collective farming and communal land ownership. Cooperative farms in the northeastern province of North Hamgyong are also under investigation, and authorities are punishing those implicated in bribery, a resident of the city of Hoeryong told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely. “With this order, the organizations that were invading the farmland as well as the officials who took bribes will not be able to sleep at night,” the second source said. “However, this order was only a loud proclamation, and it is ultimately a fruitless measure that will end in smoke.” The Central Committee has a history of talking about strict measures but rarely enforces them, the second source said. “For whatever reason, the organizations that are capable of invading agricultural land and using it for other purposes are powerful, and a lot of the foreign currency that they earn goes into party funds,” he said. Translated by Claire Shinyoung O. Lee and Leejin J. Chung. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Authorities in the former Portuguese enclave of Macau have imposed a series of stringent restrictions and multiple rounds of citywide mass testing for COVID-19 amid a fresh outbreak in the city, prompting criticism of attempts to mimic mainland China’s zero-COVID policy in the tourism-dependent city. Mass testing started at the end of last month, with hundreds of people standing in long queues in the rain and summer heat, as officials told businesses to shut down or minimize operations and the general public to stay home unless absolutely necessary. Secretary for social affairs and culture Elsie Ao said Macau’s current fight against COVID-19 was “even more difficult” than the Shanghai lockdown earlier this year, local media reported. Residents’ movements are being restricted by a COVID-19 health code app similar to that used in mainland China, with 16 buildings classified as “red zones” and more than 70 “amber zones”. Residents of red zones are barred from leaving their homes, while those in amber zones may only leave to pick up essential supplies at designated locations. The city reported 852 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 on July 3. A resident who requested anonymity said he had stood in line for two hours for his most recent PCR test, which are mandatory, along with interspersed rapid antigen tests done from home. “I went to a school on Monday afternoon for a PCR test,” the man said. “There were a lot of people queuing up outside, although the school did have air conditioning.” “I think the government’s arrangements have led to greater concentrations of people, which has very likely actually increased the number of people infected with the virus,” he said. “It happened to be raining heavily while I was standing in line just now, and a lot of people there were criticizing the government.” Tired of stocking up He said many people are tired of constantly rushing to the supermarket to try to lay in supplies of food and other essentials amid sudden shortages. “Everyone has been rushing to buy supplies at the supermarkets every day, mostly rice or cases of instant noodles,” he said. “When I went to a supermarket just now, the instant noodles were all gone.” “People are posting fake news in chats saying that there isn’t enough stock in supermarkets, and telling everyone to rush and buy stuff, even though the government has said repeatedly that there is plenty of supply,” he said. “I think people are frightening themselves.” He said many people are confused by the shifting rules on people’s movements. “The government’s policies seem to change every day,” he said. “I’m in a red zone, and people there are in lockdown and can’t go out.” “They depend on friends and relatives to get supplies, but mine got confused by the information and missed the window set by the government, so my supplies weren’t delivered,” he said. “A lot of people are criticizing the authorities for messing with people.” Waste of money Macau-based journalist Roy Choi said it wasn’t entirely clear how effective the Macau authorities’ approach would be in detecting and eliminating COVID-19, however. “[Mass testing] may randomly detect and confirm more cases, but it also means that citizens have to make appointments, stand in line and take the risk of being around other people, which will increase the number of cluster infections,” Choi told RFA. “It’s not just a major upheaval for people; it’s a waste of public funds and manpower.” “Macau is pretty much at a standstill, and it seems that this has only happened in Macau and some cities in mainland China,” he said. “Is it actually necessary?” “What science is it based on? It even makes people wonder if the authorities are passing on the benefit to certain companies that conduct nucleic acid testing,” Choi said. He said the Macau government, in charge of an economy that is export-based, should move towards living with COVID-19 as soon as possible. “The most embarrassing thing at the moment is that Macau has to follow mainland China’s lead,” Choi said. “This policy is political,” he said. The government is handing out subsidies to eligible employees of 15,000 patacas (around U.S.$1,800), while taxi drivers, tour guides and those who make their living from fishing will each receive 10,000 patacas each. Tax rebates will also be offered on tourism and housing taxes, fees for hotels and catering firms, and a road tax rebate for commercial vehicles, local media reported. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

A former student leader of the 1989 protest movement at Hangzhou University in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang is being force-fed in detention after refusing food and drink, RFA has learned. Xu Guang has been formally arrested on suspicion of “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,” a charge frequently used to target peaceful critics of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), after he protested the confiscation of his mobile phone by police, fellow rights activist Zou Wei said. “Xu Guang is on hunger strike, and his family was a little concerned [about saying anything in public], because the state security police got in contact after my last interview,” Zou said. “I got a call from state security police just 10 minutes after I gave that interview,” he said. “They called me twice.” The news emerged via a defense lawyer who was allowed to visit Xu in detention in mid-June, but who didn’t dare to go public with the information for fear of reprisals from the authorities, Zou said. “They met once, but the lawyer didn’t dare to say anything, and I didn’t say anything either, because the case is so [politically] sensitive.” “The relevant departments got to the lawyer and talked them out of [saying anything],” he said. Xu, 54, was detained after he held up a placard outside Hangzhou’s Yuquan police station demanding his phone back. He had been approached by officers from the Xihu district police department and warned to keep a low profile during the 33rd anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre on June 4. His family received official notification of Xu’s formal arrest on Saturday, Zou said. A friend of Xu’s who gave only the surname Jiang said warnings to stay out of the public eye were common for Xu around the massacre anniversary. “Xu Guang was illegally hauled in for questioning by local police, who confiscated his communications device[s] and issued a warning,” Jiang said. “So Xu went down to the police station with a placard that said ‘overturn the official verdict on June 4’,” she said. “The state security police detained him on the same day.” “According to Xu Guang’s family, he is on hunger strike in the detention center,” she said, adding that everyone is concerned about his health. Repeated calls to Xu’s sister Xu Yan rang unanswered on Tuesday. Xu has previously served a five-year jail term after trying to formally register the China Democracy Party (CDP) as a political party in 1998, and has repeatedly called on the CCP to overturn the official verdict of “counterrevolutionary rebellion” on the 1989 protests. He is currently being held in the Xihu Detention Center. The New York-based Human Rights in China (HRIC) describes the June 3-4, 1989, massacre as a government-backed military crackdown that ended large-scale, peaceful protests in Beijing and other cities during that year. “Despite persistent citizen demands for the truth and an accounting of the bloodshed, the authorities have offered nothing beyond their characterization that the protests were ‘counterrevolutionary riots’ — a  label they later changed to ‘political disturbance’ … suppressed by ‘decisive measures’,” the group says in a standing description on its website. “The Chinese government has never publicly accounted for its actions with an independent and open investigation, brought to justice those responsible for the killing of unarmed civilians, or compensated the survivors or families of those killed,” HRIC said. “In fact, it has never made public even the names and the number of people killed or wounded during the crackdown, or of those executed or imprisoned afterwards in connection with the protests,” it said. Public mourning for victims or discussion of the events of spring and summer 1989 are banned, and references to June 4, 1989, blocked, filtered or deleted by the Great Firewall of government internet censorship. Beauty influencer Austin Li, part of a generation of younger Chinese people who consequently know little of the massacre, had his June 3, 2022, livestream interrupted after he displayed a tank-shaped ice-cream dessert, prompting censors to pull the plug immediately. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

A hacker has claimed to be selling the personal data of one billion Chinese nationals leaked from a Shanghai police database, according to a post by user “ChinaDan” on the hacker forum Breach Forums that was widely shared on Telegram. If the claim is true, the data leak would be one of the biggest in history, Reuters cited tech experts as saying. “In 2022, the Shanghai National Police (SHGA) database was leaked. This database contains many TB of data and information on Billions of Chinese citizen,” the post said. “Databases contain information on 1 Billion Chinese national residents and several billion case records, including: name, address, birthplace, national ID number, mobile number, all crime/case details.” The post had sparked widespread discussion on China’s tightly controlled social media platforms, and censors had blocked the hashtag #dataleak from Weibo by Sunday afternoon, the agency said. The data breach was also referenced by rights activist Fu Xianyi on Twitter, who said the leak was from the “Shanghai public security database,” meaning the police. Cryptocurrency business founder Zhao Changpeng also referred to a data leak involving one billion people’s personal details in an Asian country being up for sale on the dark web. An online security expert who gave only the surname Chang said he believed the reports were genuine, as he had known of the database’s vulnerability before the report emerged. “The information coming out now is true,” Chang said. “There is a high probability that it was leaked last year but is only now being sold,” he told RFA. “The Shanghai authorities are investigating Gong Daoan, a police chief who was fired last year, so perhaps it’s related.” “Most likely it was leaked from Alibaba Cloud.” Major data dump Chang said the data was linked to host oss-cn-shanghai-shga-d01-a.ops.ga.sh, which is a Shanghai police local area network (LAN) that is physically isolated from the internet, using private services from Alibaba Cloud. The breach is likely the biggest to hit China since Communist Party (CCP) rule began in 1949. “The data is linked to one billion people, with everything there,” Chang said. “I saw on Twitter that some people have already started analyzing the population decline, telecom fraud or other research based on the data.” “A lot of people have downloaded some part of it.” The data dump reportedly includes ID card and phone numbers, payment records for online purchases including groceries, ticket sales and hotel bookings, as well as details of age and gender. Current affairs commentator Li Ang said the data dump is highly sensitive, coming as it does ahead of the CCP’s 20th National Congress later this year, at which CCP leader Xi Jinping is expected to seek an unprecedented third term in office. “This isn’t some regular hacker; they must have used very high-tech means to get this data, and to publish it,” Li told RFA. “I don’t think this is an accident.” “The person was already holding this data, and they have chosen this time to publish it,” he said. China has yet to comment on the estimated 24TB of data involved in the leak, and many online comments said the government was unlikely to respond, for fear of encouraging more people to try obtaining data. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Prominent Tibetan monk Jigme Gyatso, who was frequently jailed for protests against Chinese rule, died at his home in northwestern China’s Gansu province at the weekend, sources familiar with his situation told RFA. Jigme Gyatso, a monk at the Labrang Monastery also called Jigme Goril, died Saturday at home in the Kanlho (in Chinese, Gannan) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, a former student said. “During his imprisonment, he has been subjected to severe beatings due to which he has been admitted in hospital for a long time without any sign of improvement,” the former student now living in exile told RFA Tibetan. No cause of death has been given, but sources said he had been in poor health since his release from prison in 2016. “Since May his health took the turn for the worse, and he was taken to a medical facility in Xining, Qinghai province, for a long period but without any success.  The Chinese government is trying to block information regarding Gyatso which is why has become extremely difficult to get a recent photo of him,” said a source in Tibet. Previously detained in 2006, 2008 and 2010, Gyatso was again taken into custody in 2011 and handed a five-year prison term by the Kanlho People’s Intermediate Court on a charge of working “to split the nation.” He was released on October 26, 2016, in Lanzhou prison, “but still the Chinese government kept a close watch on him, restricting his movement and his visit to the hospital, depriving him of medications when he needed them,” said another source in the region. Splittism is a charge often brought against Tibetans who assert their national culture and identity or who protest Beijing’s rule in Tibetan areas, where self-immolations and other protests have led to crackdowns by security forces and the arrests of scores of Tibetans. Gyatso became an instant hero in the Tibetan community after a 2009 video in which he described his brutal treatment in custody was widely circulated on the internet. Translated by Tenzin Phakdon. Written by Paul Eckert.