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Category: East Asia
Impacts of Chinese DWF on the South China Sea littoral states
Historically speaking, China has claimed the majority of the South China Sea as part of its territory which includes the Paracel Islands, Spratly islands, Pratas Island, Vereker Banks, Macclesfield Bank, and the Scarborough shoal. All these places fall under the much disputed “nine-dash line” markings which are based on a 1947 map. In 1946, a map having eleven dashes or dots was published by the Chinese government. However, two dashes in the Gulf of Tonkin were later removed when a treaty was signed with Vietnam. Many of the Chinese neighboring states including Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam have tried to claim these lands as their own, rejecting the questionable map. The main issue with the “nine-dash line” lies in the fact that it is an arbitrary collection of dashes without specific coordinates. Based on this map, China asserts rights to more than 80% of the South China Sea. Any official explanation regarding its origin or even its precise delimitation has never been provided by China. On top of that, the regions claimed by China as part of its territory directly lie in conflict with Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) of multiple countries in the area like Brunei, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, and the Philippines. Despite protests by these countries, China has deployed its distant-water fishing fleet in the EEZs of Vietnam and the Philippines. According to data reported by IJ-Reportika, China has fished for over a million hours last year through its Long-liners, Tuna purse seines, Squid jiggers, and Trawlers. While the Chinese DWF activities are not very significant in the South China Sea, overfishing and climate change have led to the depletion of marine resources in the area. Since 2000, the catch rates have declined by 70% and large fish stocks have depleted by 90% in the region. Despite the declining marine resources in the region, it is surprising that Chinese activities have increased in the area while banning the fishing activities of other countries in the region. Every year since 1999, China imposes a ban on fishing activities from May to August in the area including the Gulf of Tonkin and Paracel islands which are disputed territories. Vietnam condemned this ban and released a statement saying, “Vietnam requests China to respect Vietnam’s sovereignty over Paracel islands…without complicating the situation towards maintaining peace, stability, and order in the East Sea.” The Philippines has shown contempt for the ban saying “This ban doesn’t apply to us. Our fisherfolk are encouraged to go out and fish in our waters in the West Philippine Sea.” Interestingly, this ban does not apply to Chinese fishermen who have an official license to fish in the contested waters. It is worth noting that the Chinese DWF vessels are not only there to fish but also operate as de facto maritime militias under the control of the Beijing authorities. There have also been reports of construction activities being conducted by the Chinese in the Spratly islands over the past decade. Legally speaking, this area is not a part of China’s territory, but that has not stopped the Chinese from building reefs, islands, and other formations and even militarizing them with ports, runways, and other infrastructure. According to multiple media reports and satellite imagery, in the past decade, they have carried out construction activities at four unoccupied features in the Spratly islands. A Chinese maritime vessel was seen offloading a hydraulic excavator which is used in land reclamation projects. It is also reported that new land formations have appeared above water in the Eldad Reef of the northern Spratly islands, which were only exposed during the high tide. The images show large holes, debris piles, and excavator tracks at the site. Similar activities have taken place on Panata Island in the Philippines, where a new perimeter wall was seen around a feature. These activities have resulted in the expansion of some sand bars and other formations in the area by at least ten times. Although any reclamation activities by China are in direct conflict with the 2016 ruling by the International Tribunal, other nations in the region are forced to undertake their own reclamation work. According to a report by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, Vietnam has expanded dredging and landfill work at several of Spratly outposts and have created roughly 1.7 sq. km of new land in 2022. Following the reports of landfill work and mooring by Chinese ships in the area, the Philippines have also increased their military presence in the region. As China continues to foray into the disputed waters despite warnings, it is interesting to see the South China Sea through the lens of strategic geopolitical location. With the growing tension in the area, China has been investing more and more in the Navy and coast guard to defend its claim over this territory and increased its presence in the region through fishing fleets. The area could prove to be of significant military importance if the US decided to jump into the regional war, supporting Taiwan’s fight for sovereignty. It is safe to say that China won’t give up control of the region any time soon, even if it means upsetting a few powerful economies.
Impacts of Chinese DWF on the Asian countries
China’s Distant-water fishing fleet, which operates on the high seas and also in the Exclusive Economic Zones of other countries, is the biggest fleet in the world with an estimated 2,700 ships. The distant-water fishing sector is infamous for being secretive and unregulated as many countries fail to publish their fishing data. This is not surprising given the fact that it is often found guilty of illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing practices, targeting prohibited species and causing irreversible environmental damage as well as intelligence gathering, espionage, and space tracking. The presence of illegal Chinese DWF vessels is felt all over the world, but it is particularly worse in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Countries in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), South China Sea region, as well as East Asian countries, and Russia, are all victims of IUU fishing and violation of EEZ by Chinese vessels. Despite the fact that the IOR has the presence of many countries in the region, the Chinese DWF fleets have increasingly become a hazard, especially in the Northern Indian Ocean region (NIOR). The NIOR is an important region as most of the world’s maritime traffic passes through it, hence the presence of dubious Chinese DWFs raises concern. The NIOR, which comprises countries like India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Iran, and Oman, is seeing a surge in unregistered Chinese fishing vessels. According to the Indian Navy, they monitored more than 392 Chinese IUU fishing incidences in the Indian Ocean in 2021 compared to 379 in 2020. It is also reported that spy ships disguised as fishing boats are being used by the Chinese to gather intelligence data and spy on assets of other countries, including India’s Andaman and Nicobar islands. While the other countries have seen a significant increase in Chinese activities in their EEZ, in Pakistan on the other hand, the presence of China’s DWF is minimal and on a downward slope. Could it be a benefit of being a trading partner and ally to China? The island nations in the NIOR like Sri Lanka and Maldives have reported the presence of Chinese DWF vessels such as squid jiggers, trawlers, and long liners that fish in the area before moving to other target areas like Oman in the Arabian Sea. The Chinese vessels in Oman, according to our report, often misuse the Iranian flag as a disguise and are engaged in fishing at an industrial scale. This activity has increased exponentially since 2016. A similar issue persists in Iran where the trawlers are taking close to 46,000 tons of commercial fish, as stated in a report from the Iranian parliament. This is leading to depletion in numbers of protected species and dolphins which are killed by commercial dragnets. Reflagging themselves under Iran’s flags, these trawlers fish for seahorses, who are then dried and powdered to be used in Traditional Chinese Medicines (TCM). Eastern Indian Ocean Region In the eastern IOR, nations like Indonesia and Malaysia are sea-based economies that are highly dependent on fishing. As Chinese DWFs with huge capacities stay longer in the area, the local fishermen are finding it tough to earn their daily bread and butter. Indonesian laborers, who work on some of these fishing vessels, suffer racial abuse and exploitation at the hands of their Chinese managers. It has been reported that between 2019 and 2020, 30 Indonesian fishermen died onboard Chinese long-haul fishing boats because of substandard food, dangerous drinking water, and excessive working hours. Due to its close proximity to China, East Asian nations like Japan and South Korea are the most vulnerable and the most impacted by Chinese vessels. South Korea has also reported Chinese-flagged ships fishing in their EEZ. The western region neighboring China is the worst affected with over 300K hours of illegal fishing done by Chinese vessels. The governments of South Korea and China have held several talks to smooth out this issue since the beginning of the last decade, which have failed to bear any fruit. Chinese coast guard ships and fishing vessels have been making attempts to change the status quo by coercion in the Senkaku islands. Chinese ships mounted with artillery approached Japanese ships in the Japanese territory. The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has released a statement saying, “The Senkaku Islands are indisputably an inherent part of the territory of Japan in light of historical facts and based upon international law, and are, in fact, effectively under the Japanese control… It is a violation of international law for the China Coast Guard ships to act making their assertions in Japanese territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands, and such acts will not be tolerated.“ Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Quite surprisingly, Chinese trawlers were also spotted in the EEZ of Russia. The vessels have done over a million hours of dark surfing in the Russian far-east. While many countries have strongly opposed the fishing activities by Chinese vessels, some have taken strict measures. Indonesia, for example, has sunk many Chinese ships in the last four years which were dangerously close to their land boundary. The Quad, comprising India, Australia, Japan, and the US have announced a major regional effort under the ambit of Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness (IPDMA) aimed to provide more accurate maritime pictures of activities in the region. As the Chinese distant-water fishing activities are growing rapidly and unsustainably all around the world, it is depleting global fish stocks and disrupting the marine ecosystem. Moreover, it is increasingly becoming a source of diplomatic and environmental tensions with other nations. Hence, it has become imperative to introduce laws, policies, and strict measures to keep it in check.
One of the biggest rebellions in the history of China
From Lhasa and Xinjiang to Beijing and Shanghai, protests have erupted across China and have taken the shape of a colossal rebellion.
Labor Uprising In China’s Zhengzhou against Zero COVID & Apple’s Foxconn factory
A labor uprising over COVID-19 restrictions and contract violations by Apple at Foxconn’s iPhone factory in central China is unfolding in Zhengzhou. The government-deployed security officers are trying to suppress the uprising with violence as shown in the videos circulating on Chinese social media. #LaborUprisingInChina trending on Social Media #LaborUprisingInChina trended for hours in many parts of the world on 23rd November 2022. People on social media showed sympathy towards the suffering laborers at the Foxconn iPhone factory. What is happening in Zhengzhou? Laborers and workers at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou factory held protests on the factory campus, where they have had to stay since a closed-loop system was announced to counter the spread of COVID-19 without compromising productivity under the Zero Covid policy. Videos of the violence in Zhengzhou showed masked laborers facing off police in protective suits. The authorities have used force and severely injured many of them. The violence comes as China tightens once again its COVID-19 measures, making it the only major economy still subscribed to full lockdowns to face virus outbreaks. China’s coronavirus measures have triggered domestic dissent this year. We have covered over 450 protests in China this year. However, near the end of the year, China is beholding a massive labor uprising from one of the most downtrodden classes in the manufacturing hub of the world. Local authorities are continuing to stick to the “zero-Covid strategy” championed by the central government in Beijing. The easing of the restrictive measures imposed on large factory compounds like the Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou is unlikely. Why are laborers at Foxconn protesting? Some workers said they were informed that the bonus that was initially promised to them would be delayed, and the situation in the dormitory, where workers who have been there for weeks were mixed with the newly hired workers, enhances the risk of them being exposed to the coronavirus. Videos of many people leaving Zhengzhou on foot had gone viral on Chinese social media earlier in November, forcing Foxconn to step up measures to get its staff back. To limit the fallout, the company said it had quadrupled daily bonuses for workers at the plant this month. On Wednesday, workers said that Foxconn failed to honor their promise of an attractive bonus and pay package after they arrived to work at the plant. Numerous complaints have also been posted anonymously on social media platforms — accusing Foxconn of having changed the salary packages previously advertised. “the allowance has always been fulfilled based on contractual obligation” Foxconn said in a statement on Wednesday Ij-Reportika reached out to one of the laborers who protested on the 23rd. Under the condition of anonymity, he said, “We are made to live in miserable conditions, we don’t have any rights, we don’t want to work in the Apple factory day in and day out with all our livelihoods destroyed. We are at high risk of getting infected by the virus and on top of all this our contracts are violated and our payments and bonuses are stuck. They offered me 8000 Yuan to leave and go back to my hometown. But I refused to take it!! Protesting Labor at Zhengzhou
Amid growing protests, China cautiously mulls relaxing zero-COVID rules: analysts
There are signs that China is mulling less draconian public health controls amid ongoing protests in the streets and on university campuses, political analysts say. The Chinese government released a package of 20 new policy measures on Nov. 11 aimed at “optimizing” the country’s pandemic response, including slightly relaxed quarantine requirements for people returning home from areas designated “high risk.” The move has generally been seen as a cautious relaxation of the zero-COVID policy, espoused by Communist Party leader Xi Jinping as the only way forward when it comes to containing the virus, and comes amid growing public dissatisfaction with the policy and widespread censorship of dissenting voices. University students in the central city of Zhengzhou protested over long-running restrictions on Nov. 16, according to video clips uploaded to social media sites. One video clip showed masked young people in a heated discussion with an official in a black jacket, urging him to read the students’ demands, a copy of which was also circulating on social media. In a second clip, the Zhengzhou University students start shouting at the official in frustration after he appears to stall. “Looks like you’re not going to address a single one of these issues for us here tonight,” says one protester. Social media posts said the university’s Communist Party secretary came out to talk with students, but a live stream of the conversation was later blocked and student dorms searched by security officials. Protests in Guangzhou, Urumqi and Lhasa The students’ resistance to nationwide campus lockdowns followed street protests by migrant workers who broke out of lockdown in the southern city of Guangzhou, as well as protests in Urumqi and Ghulja in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, and the Tibetan capital Lhasa in recent weeks. Reports have emerged that the northern city of Shijiazhuang could be a pilot zone for a slightly more relaxed approach to mass testing. The Financial Times reported on Nov. 15 that the city is “tiptoeing away from Beijing’s most draconian pandemic measures, in what some see as a test case for a gradual retreat from President Xi Jinping’s strict zero-Covid policy.” People line up to be tested for COVID-19 on Flower City Square in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, China, Nov. 16, 2022. Credit: cnsphoto via Reuters Widespread rumors that the city is gearing up to “live with COVID-19” prompted the city’s party Secretary Zhang Chaochao to deny the move on Nov. 14, promising that the municipal authorities wouldn’t “lie flat” in the face of the threat from the virus. Former Chinese Red Cross Director Ren Ruihong said the government is announcing looser restrictions from Beijing, but leaving it to local officials to decide how best to control the virus locally — an issue that figures highly in government key performance indicators and therefore affects individuals’ career prospects. “The central government will gradually relax its pandemic prevention guidance, even if only to deflect public dissatisfaction from itself,” Ren told Radio Free Asia. “The situation with regard to different opinions [about how to implement the measures on the ground] is pretty chaotic right now, with the central government unwilling to take the blame.” This has left room for variation in local pandemic prevention policies, and caused a “disconnect” from Beijing, Ren said. This has resulted in an ongoing and severe lockdown in the southwestern megacity of Chongqing, while requirements for testing in Shijiazhuang have at least partly been dropped, according to a resident there who spoke to RFA. Still need negative PCR tests People returning to the city from low-risk areas still need a negative PCR test from the past 48 hours, and need the permission of their residential committees to return home. The same requirements apply to anyone leaving the city. While confusion remains over whether kindergarteners still need a recent negative test to attend school, resident Sun Liang said regular testing regardless of a person’s movements has been dropped, while “active testing” is still in place for travel to certain public places. “You still need a negative PCR from the past 24 hours to get into an office building, and a negative result from the past 48 or 72 hours to ride the subway or the bus,” Sun told RFA. Some districts appeared to be just as confused as residents by what was happening in their city, shutting down test stations only to reopen them a day later, according to social media posts. But Sun said the city is likely being used as a guinea pig for the rest of China. “It is indeed being used as a pilot, but it’s just not being totally freed from restrictions as some people have been saying,” he said. “If they totally removed all restrictions, then there might be a backlash in which people think the government doesn’t care what happens to them.” “A lot of pharmacies are now selling drugs you can take orally for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19, which may be an even bigger sort of pilot,” he said. The Financial Times cited several residents of Shijiazhuang as saying that the idea of loosening restrictions made them fearful of catching the virus. Veteran U.S.-based rights activist and political commentator Yang Jianli likened China’s COVID-19 policy to “riding a tiger.” “This is caused by the fact that Xi Jinping and the Chinese government failed to import internationally made vaccines in time in the wake of the Wuhan lockdown,” Yang said. “The Chinese government is in a dilemma right now. They are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.” Translated and written by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.
Asia Fact Check Lab: Did NATO donate HIV-infected blood to Ukraine?
During the past two weeks, a conspiracy theory alleging that NATO members had donated HIV and hepatitis-infected blood to Ukraine was originally posted and spread on Weibo by “Guyan Muchan,” an influential account with more than 6 million followers. Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) tracked down and confirmed the pro-Putin Telegram channel Breaking Mash as the disinformation’s source. Further inquiries by the Ukraine-based fact-checking organization StopFake caused the Ukrainian government to release a formal statement debunking the disinformation. On Nov. 3, Guyan Muchan, a widely followed Weibo user, published a post claiming to reveal a tainted blood scandal involving NATO and Ukraine. The statement reads: “Ukraine asked NATO to provide more than 60,000 liters of blood for wounded soldiers in the Odessa, Nikolaev, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov and Zaporozhye regions. NATO member countries provided Ukraine with canned blood. However, Ukrainian medical staff found HIV and hepatitis B and C viruses in the blood after random examinations. Kiev has written to NATO requesting an independent assessment of the donor blood and asking that blood “not be collected on the African continent.” In the first group, 6.3% of the samples had HIV, 7.4% had hepatitis B and 3.2% had hepatitis C. In the second group: 5.9%, 6.8% and 3.1%, respectively. The information is obtained by leaked files after the Ukrainian government office computers were hacked.” The post contained three images. The first was a picture of a statement that hackers allegedly had obtained confidential documents from Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal’s email. The second was an alleged letter from Ukraine’s Minister of Health to Shmyhal. The third was the English translation of the letter. Each image’s background contained the word “mash” as a watermark, which AFCL used to trace the post back to its original source. Guyan Muchan is one of China’s “patriotic” influencers who in recent years rose to fame by pandering to domestic nationalist sentiment. Her post claiming the use of tainted blood was liked by hundreds of people, with other influential social media figures reposting it to millions more. This “news” swiftly spread on a number of Chinese language websites, including the popular internet news portal 163.com. What is the claim’s source? AFCL was unable to find any reports about the claim from credible English media outlets. A few English websites with poor news credibility did repost it, including the pro-Russia website info.news and the gun-lover community forum snipershide.com. A slew of unreliable Twitter accounts have also posted the claim in English. Chief among them is ZOKA, a user with more than 105,000 followers. Marcus Kolga, director at DisinfoWatch, a fact-checking project under the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Canada, told AFCL that ZOKA is a “well-known pro-Kremlin account.” AFCL also found the Russian version of the claim being spread on many websites, forums and social media platforms. After comparing both the publishing time and watermark, AFCL traced the claim back to a post on the Telegram channel “Breaking Mash,” first published at 1 a.m. on Nov. 3. The original post has since gained over 1a million views. Breaking Mash is the official Telegram channel of the Russian-language website Mash.ru. The website’s content is full of lies and is highly aligned with Moscow’s propaganda, according to Christine Eliashevsky-Chraibi, a media veteran and translator at Euromaidan Press. Mash senior staff are suspected of being close to the Russian government, with company executive Stepan Kovalchuk’s uncles, Kirill and Yuri Kovalchuk, marked as “elites close to Putin” by the United States.S. In sum, both the claim’s original Russian source along with the English websites and social media accounts that spread the claim all suffer from low credibility. Is the claim true? AFCL deems the Guyan Muchan post to be false. It came from a pro-Russia Telegram channel with low credibility. The Ukraine Ministry of Health refuted the claim in a statement offering more details about blood donation in Ukraine. The claim alleges that the “scoop” was leaked from the hacked email of Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal. But no credible media outlets reported on the leaked emails.The statements the claim relies on use questionable language that normally would not be appropriate for official documents. For example, the claim alleges that the mMinister of hHealth demanded that NATO’s donor blood “not be collected on the African continent.” The possibility of such racist language appearing in a formal government document is unlikely. Eliashevsky-Chraibi said the alleged government letter is “very suspicious” as there’s “no date, no signature, no stamp” and it was “not formal procedure.” Through the Ukraine based fact-checking organization StopFake, AFCL checked with the Ukrainian government regarding the veracity of this claim. On Nov. 7, the Ukrainian Ministry of Health published a statement on its official website refuting the claim. Ukraine has never requested blood donations from any organization outside of the country, and all donor blood needed for the battlefield comes from within Ukraine and meets European standards, according to the ministry’s statement. Whenever there is an urgent need at a blood center, people respond quickly to requests for donations, negating the need for any supplies from outside of the country. The statement adds that Ukraine does not have a “random sampling” system of donor blood. Instead, it tests all donations to ensure they are safe and reliable. The alleged letter from Ukraine’s Minister of Health is a forgery, the statement says. The allegation about blood donated to Ukraine originated on the Russian telegram channel Breaking Mash [left] and then was picked up by a pro-Kremlin account on Twitter [center] and a few hours later by an account on Weibo [right] with 6.44 million fans. Credit: Asia Fact Check Lab screenshots Background Information In late October, the Kyiv Post, a leading English newspaper in Ukraine, published a report that Russia’s Wagner private military company had recruited Russian prisoners suffering from severe infectious diseases, in particular HIV and hepatitis C. This news bears some similarities with the claim made on the Breaking Mash Telegram channel, including the mention of HIV, hepatitis and the war, but…
Xi steals the limelight at APEC, showcasing China’s regional clout
UPDATED at 5:45 a.m. EST on 11-19-2022. Even as host Thailand passes the APEC baton to its successor the United States, Chinese President Xi Jinping has been busy using the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum to highlight China’s growing clout and push back against U.S. influence in the region. Having secured an unprecedented third term as leader at the Chinese Communist Party’s Congress last month, Xi embarked on his first major foreign tour since the pandemic struck nearly three years ago – to the Group of 20 Summit in Bali, then the APEC Summit in Bangkok that ended Saturday. The APEC summit was the third and final gathering of world leaders in Asia in the space of nine days. With U.S. President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin both absent from APEC, the Chinese president virtually had the stage to himself. During his tour, Xi has for the most part struck a conciliatory tone during his encounters with other heads of states – including U.S. president. The Biden-Xi meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 went some way to tamping down months of rising U.S.-China tensions. “It certainly appears that Xi Jinping and China’s propaganda enterprise are trying to set a softer tone and appear less overtly antagonistic during the G-20 and APEC summits,” said Drew Thompson, visiting senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. While in the Thai capital, Xi met with a host of regional leaders including key U.S. allies. He held bilateral talks with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Singaporean Premier Lee Hsien Loong and Philippine President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr. on a wide range of issues including economic cooperation and security. Xi also met with Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha — although their initial photo op went viral on social media for the wrong reasons because of the appearance that Xi had snubbed Prayuth’s offer of a handshake. “President Xi certainly wants to be a major player,” said Ja Ian Chong, a political scientist at the National University of Singapore, noting the Chinese leader’s confidence in having unscripted interactions with other leaders – like when he chastised Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over alleged leaks of diplomatic conversations at the G-20. But Thompson observed: “The underlying differences between China and its neighbors and trading partners remain deeply entrenched and there are no signs that China is adapting its foreign policy approach and how it pursues its interests.” Chinese leadership Gao Zhikai, vice president of the Beijing-based Center for China and Globalization, said Xi’s attendance at APEC accentuated China’s growing leadership role in stark contrast with the U.S.’s “diminishing relevance.” Biden did in fact attend the G-20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Cambodia that preceded it – a meeting Xi skipped – in an effort to signal U.S. commitment to the region. But when it came to APEC, which focuses on economic cooperation – an area of Asia policy in which Washington is generally perceived as trailing China – Biden had returned home for a family event. “The fact that Biden is not at the meeting shows that the U.S. doesn’t care much about APEC,” Gao told RFA. “Of course, the whole world is aware that his granddaughter is getting married,” said the academic who served as a translator for late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and sometimes acts as de-facto media spokesman for the Chinese Communist Party. “But if there was interest, the U.S. would know how to show it,” he added. ‘Proud Pacific power’ That’s obviously not the narrative conveyed by Washington, which now takes over the rotating chair of the 21-member APEC bloc, which was set up in 1989 to promote free trade. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, who was in Bangkok in Biden’s place, told the summit that her country is “a proud Pacific power” and that “the United States is here to stay.” Harris had a brief meeting with Xi in which she urged the Chinese leadership to “maintain open lines of communication to responsibly manage the competition between our countries.” U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris greets China’s President Xi Jinping before the APEC Leaders’ Retreat in Bangkok, Thailand Nov. 19, 2022. (The White House/Handout via REUTERS) On the theme of economic cooperation, Harris said the Indo-Pacific serves as the market for almost 30 percent of American exports and U.S. companies invest $1 trillion a year in the region. She vowed that the U.S. “will uphold the rules of the road” and “will help build prosperity for everyone.” Her statement clearly struck a chord with some participating nations which want to avoid being caught up in big-power competition between China and the United States. Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc said his country supports “all regional and multilateral cooperation frameworks which are based on international principles and regulations.” Harris appeared to draw a contrast between the U.S. initiative and China’s Belt and Road Initiative that has invested large sums of money in infrastructure across the world, but which critics say can leave recipient countries in heavy debt to Beijing. Xi said that China is considering holding the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in 2023. Reinvigorating APEC Gao contended that Harris’ main purpose at APEC was actually to promote the U.S.-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. The Biden administration launched the IPEF in May as the center of its economic strategy for the region, and the U.S. vice president said the grouping now represents some 40 per cent of the global gross domestic product and is “dedicated to equitable growth and high environmental and labor standards.” It does not include either Russia or China. Gao said he suspects “the U.S. is hollowing out APEC for the benefit of IPEF,” which he described as an “artificial, ill-designed” grouping. “But APEC will remain APEC, a natural, coherent forum of cooperation for all countries in the region,” he said. Ja Ian Chong at the National University of Singapore said “China…
China uses carrots and sticks to boost Uyghur-Han intermarriage-report
China mixes financial, education and career incentives with coercive measures such as threats to families under state policies to promote intermarriage between majority Han Chinese and ethnic minority Uyghurs in the restive Xinjiang region, a new report by a Uyghur rights group has found. The Uyghur Human Rights Project analyzed Chinese state media, policy documents, government sanctioned marriage testimonials, as well as accounts from women in the Uyghur diaspora, that government incentivizes and coercion to boost interethnic marriages has increased since 2014. “The Chinese Party-State is actively involved in carrying out a campaign of forcefully assimilating Uyghurs into Han Chinese society by means of mixed marriages,” said the report. The findings on forced marriage by Washington, DC-based NGO come as Western governments and the United Nations have recognized that Chinese policies in Xinjiang amount to or may amount to genocide or crimes against humanity. Forced labor, incarceration camps and other aspects of China’s rule in Xinjiang have drawn sanctions from Britain, Canada, the European Union and the United States. The study, “Forced Marriage of Uyghur Women: State Policies for Interethnic Marriage in East Turkistan,” draws on state media propaganda films, state-approved online accounts of interethnic marriages and weddings, state-approved personal online testimonials from individuals in interethnic marriages, as well as government statements and policy directives. “The Party-State has actively encouraged and incentivized ‘interethnic’ Uyghur-Han intermarriage since at least May 2014,” the Uyghur Human Rights Project says in the report, released on Nov. 16. Interethnic marriage policies gained momentum after Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a “new era” at the Xinjiang Work Forum in 2014, touting a policy of strengthening interethnic “contact, exchange, and mingling,” the report said. “Uyghur-Han intermarriage has been increasing over the past several years since the Chinese state has been actively promoting intermarriage,” said Nuzigum Setiwaldi a co-author of the report. “The Chinese government always talks about how interethnic marriages promote ‘ethnic unity’ and ‘social stability,’ but these actually are euphemisms for assimilation,” she told RFA Uyghur. “The Chinese government is incentivizing and promoting intermarriage as a way to assimilate Uyghurs into Han society and culture. Carrots include cash payments, help with housing, medical care, government jobs, and tuition waivers. When it comes to sticks, “young Uyghur women and/or their parents face an ever-present threat of punishment if the women decline to marry a Han ‘suitor,’” the report said, citing experiences of Uyghur women now living in exile. “Videos and testimonies have also raised concerns that Uyghur women are being pressured and forced into marrying Han men,” said Setiwaldi. The report cites an informal marriage guide for male Han party officials published in 2019, titled “How to Win the Heart of a Uyghur Girl.” Han men who want to marry Uyghur women are told that the woman they love “must love the Motherland, love the Party, and she must have unrivaled passion for socialist Xinjiang,” it said. Commenting on the report, scholar Adrian Zenz said the Chinese Communist Party’s “policy of incentivizing Han and coercing Uyghurs into interethnic marriages is part of a strategy of breaking down and dismantling Uyghur culture.” Zenz, a senior fellow in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington, D.C., was the first outside expert to document the network of mass internment camp for Uyghurs launched in Xinjiang in 2017 and he has analyzed China’s Uyghur population policies. The intermarriage strategy serves the goal of “optimizing the ethnic population structure, breaking the ‘dominance’ of concentrated Uyghur populations in southern Xinjiang as part of a slowly unfolding genocidal policy,” he told RFA. “It’s important that people pay attention to the different forms of human rights abuses that are taking place in the Uyghur region, particularly those that are underreported, like forced marriages,” said Setiwaldi. “People can raise awareness and push their governments to hold the Chinese government accountable.” China had no immediate comment on the report. Last month, a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement dismissed U.S. efforts to debate the U.N. report, saying, “the human rights of people of all ethnic backgrounds in Xinjiang are protected like never before” and “the ultimate motive of the U.S. and some other Western countries behind their Xinjiang narrative is to contain China.” Written by Paul Eckert for RFA.
North Korean censors destroy more than half of soldiers’ Mother’s Day letters
North Korea’s military ordered soldiers to write letters to their mothers ahead of the country’s Mother’s Day, which was on Wednesday, but military censors destroyed more than half of them for ideological reasons, sources in the country told Radio Free Asia. To make matters worse, the censors even used the contents of some letters to identify and punish problematic soldiers, sources said. “The letters from soldiers of each unit … are opened before they arrive at the regimental postal office, and the ones that contain complaints about the difficulties of military service are sorted out and destroyed,” a source from the northwestern province of North Pyongan told RFA’s Korean Service on condition of anonymity for safety reasons. The number of mothers who aren’t receiving letters is likely in the hundreds of thousands. Every able-bodied North Korean must serve in the military. Until recently, male soldiers spent 10 years in the service, but since 2020, men serve eight years and women five as part of a fighting force estimated by the CIA World Factbook to be 1.15 million strong. From the letters sorted out, the censors made a list of soldiers with “weak ideological wills” – in other words, those who complained about hunger or fatigue, the source said. Those soldiers will be sent to ideological training. Letters written by a unit of soldiers guarding the border with China in the northeastern province of North Hamgyong had to pass through two rounds of censors, a source there told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely. “The letters were first opened and censored by the company security officers, then they were all collected at the regiment and the military’s security authorities inspected them again,” the second source said. Some of the soldiers on the weak ideology list did not even complain. Instead they made the mistake of asking about their mothers’ wellbeing, the second source said. “A soldier sent his regards to his mother and asked her if the house had not collapsed in a recent flood and if the farming was going well,” the second source said. “However, the military security department pointed out that this shows that the soldier … does not trust the Party and speaks weakly instead of trusting that the Party takes care of the lives of all citizens.” Because so many soldiers are now going to be sent to ideological reeducation, they are griping about the authorities’ duplicitous behavior, because they are the ones that ordered them to write the letters in the first place, the second source said. Though Mother’s Day is most commonly celebrated around the world on the second Sunday in May, it falls on other dates in many countries. It is a relatively new holiday in North Korea, introduced in 2012 during the first year of Kim Jong Un’s reign, and became a public holiday in 2015. Authorities chose Nov. 16 in remembrance of an iconic speech about mothers delivered on that day in 1961 by Kim’s grandfather, national founder Kim Il Sung. Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee and Leejin J. Chung. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
“The results may be unpredictable”, said Xi schooling Trudeau over media leaks
Chinese leader Xi Jinping schooled Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit on Wednesday over leaks about their one-on-one meeting, according to a video of the incident. The encounter was apparently sparked after Reuters quoted Canadian government sources as saying that Trudeau had held a side meeting with Xi on Tuesday, their first in more than three years. During it, Trudeau reportedly expressed concerns about Chinese interference in Canadian elections. “Everything we’ve discussed has been leaked to the papers, and this isn’t appropriate,” Xi says while seeming to force a smile in comments translated by an interpreter. “That was not the way the conversation was conducted.” “This isn’t how we go about it, right? If there is sincerity on your part, then we shall conduct our discussions with mutual respect,” Xi said in footage from a break at the G20 obtained by CTV News Channel’s Annie Bergeron-Oliver, a reporter accompanying Trudeau. The Chinese interpreter failed to fully translate the entirety of Xi’s Chinese into English. After Xi said “this is inappropriate” while shaking his head in seeming disapproval, he gave Trudeau one last look, spread both hands and shook his head again while uttering, “otherwise the results may be unpredictable.” Between Xi’s two utterances, Trudeau tried to emphasize the importance of open communication between leaders. “In Canada we believe in free and open and frank dialogue and that is what we will continue to have,” he said. “We will continue to look to work constructively together but there will be things we disagree on.” Halfway through listening to his interpreter’s translation of Trudeau’s speech however, Xi noticed the nearby cameras. Xi then repeated the phrase, “Let’s create the conditions” twice, shook hands with Trudeau and quickly left. A report from Reuters on Tuesday revealed that Trudeau and Xi’s meeting had been preceded by the arrest of an employee from Canada’s largest power company. The man was charged with stealing trade secrets for China. At a routine press conference, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning declined to comment on the incident.
