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Category: East Asia
Kissinger meets China’s President Xi
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday met with veteran diplomat Henry Kissinger in Beijing, in what some see as a snub to U.S. climate envoy John Kerry, who left the Chinese capital the previous day. However, the South China Morning Post, quoting a “source,” said the “private visit” had been planned months earlier and the fact that it coincided with Kerry’s trip was coincidental. The source said that the 100-year-old Kissinger would share his impressions of talks with China’s senior leadership with the U.S. government when he returns home. Xi met Kissinger at the Diaoyutai state guest house in Beijing, where he told Kissinger Chinese people place a high value on friendship. “[W]e will never forget our old friend and your historic contribution to promoting the development of US-China relations and enhancing the friendship between Chinese and American people,” Xi said. Kissinger played a key role in normalizing U.S.-China relations when he was then-president Richard Nixon’s secretary of state in the 1970s. He continues to be held in high regard in China. In this Thursday, May 3, 1973 photo, Henry Kissinger, President Nixon’s foreign affairs adviser, briefs newsmen on Nixon’s annual State the World report to Congress at the White House in Washington. Credit: AP Photo Kissinger met with sanctioned Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu on Tuesday, and on Wednesday he met with Wang Yi, China’s top foreign affairs official. Wang reinforced China’s position on Taiwan, telling Kissinger independence was “incompatible with peace across the Taiwan Strait,” according to a statement by China’s foreign ministry. It is likely that China is nostalgic for a time when it could seemingly do no wrong, and Kissinger is seen as the right man to call on Washington to be more conciliatory. “The current U.S. policy toward China is eager to transform China or contain China, which will not succeed and it is doomed to fail. Wang delivered this message to the Biden administration through the talks with Kissinger, urging the incumbent US officials to have the political courage to adjust their China policy,” Wu Xinbo, director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University, told the Global Times on Wednesday. The U.S. State Department indicated that Kissinger was not representing the U.S. in Beijing. “I will say he was there under his own volition, not acting on behalf of the United States Government. And I don’t have any further updates on his trip,” said State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller. Miller added that it was not his understanding that Kissinger’s meeting violated any sanctions. “In fact, we have said that we believe … our own secretary of defense could meet with the sanctioned defense minister, and that would be appropriate to do so,” Miller added. Political demands During John Kerry’s climate talks in Beijing this week, Xi warned that China will not have its path to curb emissions dictated by others. “The path, method, pace and intensity to achieve this goal should and must be determined by ourselves, and will never be influenced by others,” Xi said at a national conference on environmental protection, according to state broadcaster China Central Television. In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, left, shakes hands with Chinese Vice President Han Zheng during a meeting in Beijing, Wednesday, July 19, 2023. Credit: Xinhua via AP But Vice President Han Zheng, who met with Kerry on Wednesday, said that Beijing would be willing to work with the U.S. to mitigate the climate crisis, as long as its political demands are met. Han told Kerry that addressing climate change was “an important aspect of China-U.S. cooperation,” but was predicated on mutual respect, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. He said it must proceed “on the basis of U.S. attendance to core issues that concern both parties, fully engaging and exchanging ideas.” It is not unusual for China to seek leverage even in areas of shared or global interest, as is the case in global warming. The two countries are at odds on multiple fronts – China’s claims on Taiwan and the South China Sea, its human rights record and over technology transfers, which the U.S. wants to restrict in its national interests. U.S.-China relations have frequently in recent months been described as being at a historically unprecedented ebb. Edited by Mike Firn.
Russia grounds plane, arrests North Korean mother and son on the run
Russian authorities grounded a Moscow-bound flight to arrest a North Korean diplomat’s wife and son who went missing from the far eastern city of Vladivostok last month, residents in Russia familiar with the case told Radio Free Asia. RFA reported on June 6 that Russian authorities announced that they were searching for Kim Kum Sun, 43, and Park Kwon Ju, 15, who had last been seen on June 4 leaving the North Korean consulate in Vladivostok. Kim had been working as the acting manager of two North Korean restaurants in the city in place of her husband, considered a diplomat, who traveled to North Korea in 2019 but was unable to return to Russia due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On July 7, the day after the announcement, Kim and Park were arrested after boarding a Moscow-bound flight departing from the central Russian city of Krasnoyarsk, a resident of Vladivostok, who requested anonymity for personal safety, told RFA’s Korean Service. “Their flight to Moscow departed from Yemelyanovo International Airport located on the outskirts of Krasnoyarsk as normal, but to arrest the mother and the son, the Russian public security authorities forced the plane to return to the airport,” he said. “When the plane landed …, the authorities arrested them.” They would have gotten all the way to Moscow if not for the consulate getting Russian authorities involved, the Vladivostok resident said. As of Tuesday, Russian media has made no mention of Kim and Park’s arrest. RFA was not able to confirm with Russian authorities that they grounded the flight to arrest the pair. Higher priority? It was also not clear if Kim and Park had been accused of any crimes. But it is standard procedure for the North Korean consulate to fraudulently accuse missing personnel of crimes so that Russian authorities place a higher priority on the case, a Russian citizen of Korean descent from Krasnoyarsk, who requested anonymity for security reasons, told RFA. “North Korea reports missing people by framing them for crimes,” he said. “So the escapees are in danger of being executed without the protection of the local state and the international community.” But if they were accused criminals, the runaways would not be eligible for international protection, he said. The Krasnoyarsk resident confirmed that the authorities ordered the plane to return to the airport to arrest Kim and Park. “There has been an increasing number of escape attempts among North Korean trade officials and workers in Russia recently,” he said. They may have been inspired by other North Koreans who successfully fled, including a computer engineer, a work unit manager, a work site manager, a doctor and a soldier from the General Staff Department of the North Korean military. “The United Nations and the international community must take an active role in helping those who risk their lives to escape from the dictatorship,” the Krasnoyarsk resident said. “Instead of [arresting them] as demanded by the North Korean authorities and sending them to a place where death awaits them, [Russian authorities] should open the way for them to receive refugee status according to the regulations set by the United Nations.” Translated by Leejin J. Chung. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.
Deep-sea mining has long-lasting impact on marine ecosystems, research shows
A deep-sea mining test that lasted only two hours might have decreased fish and shrimp populations in the surrounding vicinity significantly even after a year, research in Japan showed. Deep-sea mining is the extraction of valuable minerals from the ocean below 200 meters (650 feet), potentially impacting fragile ecosystems. Lately, it has become a contentious issue, as several countries and companies have joined the global race to mine resources including cobalt, copper, and manganese amid increasing demand for renewable energy and consumer electronics. The research was based on an investigation into the environmental impact of Japan’s first successful test in 2020 to extract cobalt crusts from the top of Takuyo-Daigo deep-sea mountains, in the northwest Pacific Ocean, to mine cobalt, a vital mineral in electric vehicle batteries. The data, examined by the researchers one month before and after, as well as a year following the experiment conducted at the site, showed that the mined areas became less habitable for ocean animals and created a plume of sediment that spread through the surrounding water, according to the study published Friday in the Current Biology journal. One year after the mining test, researchers observed a 43% drop in fish and shrimp density in the areas directly impacted by sediment pollution, a statement accompanying the study said. They also noted a 56% drop in the fish and shrimp density of surrounding areas, adding the research team thinks it could be due to the mining test contaminating fish food sources. “’Enough to shift things’ Even a brief two-hour test could have long-lasting consequences on the marine life in a particular area, the research said, adding further study is needed. “I had assumed we wouldn’t see any changes because the mining test was so small,” said the study’s first author Travis Washburn, a marine ecologist who works closely with the Geological Survey of Japan. “They drove the machine for two hours, and the sediment plume only traveled a few hundred meters. But it was actually enough to shift things.” A Greenpeace activist holds a sign as he confronts the deep sea mining vessel Hidden Gem, commissioned by Canadian miner The Metals Company, as it returned to port from eight weeks of test mining, off the coast of Manzanillo, Mexico, Nov. 16, 2022. Credit: Reuters. The study concluded that “although highly mobile swimmers likely simply leave the area, resulting in little loss of biodiversity, this may not be possible if multiple mining operations occur at similar times resulting in a very large, cumulative deep-sea mining areal footprint.” Experts say seabed ecosystems are not yet fully explored, so the impact of deep-sea mining on marine ecosystems is unknown. Friday’s research authors said they would need to repeat the study several times to understand better how deep-sea mining impacts the ocean floor. They said that multiple years of data should be collected before a mining test occurs to account for any natural variation in ocean animal communities. “These data are really important to get out,” Washburn said in the statement. “A set of regulations is supposed to be finalized soon, so a lot of these decisions are happening now.” “We’ll have to look at this issue on a wider scale, because these results suggest the impact of deep-sea mining could be even bigger than we think.” Lasting impact James J. Bell, a professor at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand who was not involved in the study, said the “results demonstrate just how susceptible the marine communities associated with seamounts might be to the impacts of mining and that these impacts could be long-lasting.” “Importantly, this study also shows that even very small-scale mining activity can have lasting impacts. Until we have a full understanding of what the impact of mining is on these ecosystems, we should take a very cautious approach,” Bell said, especially given that seabed mining is being considered by many states worldwide. Commercial deep-sea mining has not yet begun, though exploratory licenses have already been granted by the United-Nations-backed regulator International Seabed Authority, or the ISA, which has authority over seafloor resources outside a given country’s jurisdiction. It has yet to finalize a set of deep-sea mining regulations. The ISA started global discussions in Jamaica on Monday to possibly adopt mining regulations, with talks expected to continue until the end of July. Many countries, the seafood industry, marine conservancy groups, and scientists have called for a “pause” to proceed in developing regulations and complete them before granting any licenses to mine seabed thousands of feet under the ocean’s surface. Kat Bolstad, an associate professor at the Auckland University of Technology, said deep-sea mining could be “catastrophically destructive to the immediate seafloor, and producing noise, vibrations, clouds of sediment, and other impacts that we cannot yet fully predict.” “The effects of large-scale deep-sea mining are likely to be substantial, longer lasting, and more complex than we can anticipate,” she said. “There is widespread scientific agreement: We need a far greater understanding of deep-sea ecosystems before we can make responsible decisions.” Edited by Malcolm Foster.
Facing abuse, teenage Uyghur girls are forced to work in a Xinjiang garment factory
About 90 Uyghur teenage girls are locked up in a Chinese-run garment factory in Xinjiang, where they are forced to toil 14 hours a day, seven days a week, and routinely face verbal and physical abuse, an investigation by Radio Free Asia has found. The Wanhe Garment Co. Ltd. in Maralbeshi county has a secret agreement with the nearby Yarkant 2nd Vocational High School under which female students aged 16 to 18 are sent to work at the factory against their will, according to four sources, including a village chief and the factory’s security chief, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to speak freely. Local authorities have pressured parents not to object to sending their children to work at the factory, said the village chief, a woman who was responsible for coaxing the parents to let the girls go. Workers at the plant, which also employs about a dozen women in their 30s and 40s as well as some men, are prevented from leaving. They sleep in dormitories on the factory compound. Most are Uyghurs, but about 15 are Chinese who came from elsewhere to work. The girls are kept in line by a middle-aged Uyghur woman named Tursungul Memtimin – called “teacher” by the workers – who regularly insults and criticizes them, and sometimes hits them with a bat, said the village official. “The ‘teacher’ is known to have a very bad temper. She physically assaults the workers using a bat as a means of inflicting harm,” she said. “The workers live in fear of her, and due to this intimidating environment, no one dares to make an escape,” the official told RFA. Forced labor in supply chains The revelation comes amid mounting evidence of Uyghur forced labor in Xinjiang and allegations that forced labor is used in the supply chains of major companies. Inditex, owner of the Zara clothing chain, and Uniqlo parent Fast Retailing, as well as carmakers Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and BMW have all come under increased scrutiny to ensure that they aren’t using Uyghur forced labor. In the United States, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, signed into law in December 2021, requires American companies that import goods from Xinjiang to prove that they have not been manufactured with Uyghur forced labor at any stage of production. Repeated requests by RFA to Wanhe factory officials for an interview have been ignored. A Uyghur woman drives a scooter past a billboard showing China’s President Xi Jinping joining hands with a group of Uyghur elders at the Unity New Village in Hotan, northwestern China’s Xinjiang region, Sept. 20, 2018. Credit: Andy Wong/AP Despite the intense security around the factory, some workers have managed to escape – but not for long. Last April, during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, four girls slipped out of the compound and returned to their families in the village of Charibagh in Yarkant county, the village chief and factory security guard said. Within a few days, Memtimin and some other factory officials went to the village to forcibly bring the girls back. They threatened to send their parents to “re-education” camps if they didn’t turn over their daughters, the village official said. The village chief said she proposed to Memtimin that the girls work at a larger factory in Charibagh, but the manager refused. “So we packed their belongings and took them to the train station,” she told RFA. “Their parents were scared that Tursungul would send them for re-education, so they handed over their daughters.” Once back inside the factory, the girls underwent “criticism and education,” the security chief said. Long hours, meager pay The garment factory employs residents who mostly hail from Maralbeshi, or Bachu in Chinese, in Kashgar province, the largest cotton-producing county in Xinjiang. Ranging in age from 16 to 45, the workers toil from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. in three shifts, with hour-long breaks for lunch and dinner, the security chief said. They are paid monthly salaries of roughly 300 yuan (US$42) or 400 yuan (US$56) at best, the guard and village chief said. “The government forcefully brought those workers to the factory to work, and they could not leave the factory of their own will,” said the guard. A Chinese husband-and-wife team oversees the factory, and gives orders to Memtimin and to the security chief, who jointly manage the workers, the village chief said. Secret agreement The village official said that about 90 students were first transferred from Yarkant 2nd Vocational High School – for students ages 15 to 18 – to the factory in February 2017 based on a private contract. She said she saw a contract that was signed by Wanhe officials and the school’s two principals, surnamed Qurbanjan and Abdurusul. Neither the workers nor their families were aware of the agreement’s content, she said. “Tursungul Memtimin speaks Chinese, so the Vocational High School invited her to work for them. She does not teach at the school, but she manages the workers at the factory,” the village official said. “Her monthly salary is 6,500 yuan (US$910). The school gives her 3,000 yuan, and the factory gives her 3,500 yuan,” she said. “I saw the signatures of Qurbanjan and Abdurusul on the contract,” she said. “They are the presidents of the 2nd Vocational High School.” Attempts to reach school administrators were unsuccessful. But two officials at the Yarkant County Education Bureau described the contract’s content as “a state secret,” and that they were aware of the workers’ situation. “I know the contract between the Vocational High School and Wanhe clothes factory,” said the education bureau chief, insisting he not be named for security purposes. “But it is considered a state secret, so we cannot say anything about it hastily.” The factory security guard also confirmed the existence of a secret contract. “The workers complained about Tursungul because she has a terrible mouth and curses them,” he said. “We cannot say Tursungul has a right to condemn and beat the workers, but she…
Interview with Dolkun Isa (President of World Uyghur Congress)
Interview with Dolkun Isa the President of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) on various issues concerning the Uyghurs in China.
Myanmar’s central bank revokes licenses of 10 forex companies
The junta-run Central Bank of Myanmar has revoked the licenses of 10 foreign exchange companies, state-controlled newspapers said Thursday. In Wednesday’s announcement, the bank said the forex firms had not complied with the central bank’s orders and instructions. It named the companies as Kannan Trading; Net Change; Thiri Aung Si; Riverwood Group; Global Myanmar Services; D-Gold; Aurum Image; Hi Welcome Travel; & Tours Sweeties Pearls; and Chase Travels & Tours. Although the statement said the licenses were revoked according to a decision of the executive committee, it did not mention what orders and instructions were violated. RFA contacted the companies whose licenses were revoked but they did not respond. An entrepreneur holding a foreign exchange license, who did not want to be named for security reasons, called the central bank’s current forex policy “unstable.” “They shut [companies] If they want to. We do not know what for,” he said. “But there is one thing that they should explain. Why was it not in accordance with the rules and regulations?” At present, the central bank allows foreign exchange companies to exchange one U.S. dollar for 2,100 Myanmar kyat. Firms are not allowed to change more than $10,000 per day and must be able to show the transactions list during investigation. Last March, the business licenses of 20 money exchange companies were revoked for failing to comply with the central bank’s orders and instructions. And on June 21, the U.S. Treasury Department announced it was adding the junta’s Ministry of Defense, and the regime controlled Myanma Foreign Trade Bank (MFTB) and Myanma Investment and Commercial Bank (MICB) to a sanctions blacklist in connection with the Myanmar military’s purchases of arms from foreign sellers “including sanctioned Russian entities.” The dollar rose 7.3% against the kyat in the following 24-hours. U.S. dollars and Myanmar kyat. Credit: RFA Two days later, the central bank said authorities had arrested 51 people for allegedly trying to cash in on the sudden spike in the price of dollars. It said foreign exchange speculators in Yangon and Mandalay, foreign currency dealers, people transferring money and officials from three companies had been prosecuted. The Central Bank of Myanmar said its currency market monitoring team took action in accordance with the anti-money laundering and foreign exchange management laws. Also on June 23, in a move aimed at slowing the outflow of foreign currency the junta’s commerce ministry announced that importers at northeastern Myanmar’s border with China would have to pay for goods using their local bank accounts from Aug. 1. Junta Deputy Information Minister, Major Gen. Zaw Min Tun, told state-controlled media last month that the U.S. sanctions were aimed at triggering a political and economic crisis in Myanmar. Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn.
Crossing the nine-dash line
Vietnam has banned the release of the Warner Bros feature film “Barbie” because its trailer includes a crude cartoon map that Vietnamese netizens believed depicted China’s “nine-dash line” territorial claims in the emotive South China Sea maritime territorial dispute. The decision mystified the studio, which said the map that prompted Hanoi to pull the movie was a “child-like crayon drawing” that traced Barbie’s travels and carried no political message.
More than 2 dozen bodies of Uyghur inmates released in Kashgar prefecture
Authorities at a prison in the Xinjiang region released the bodies of at least 26 Uyghur inmates before the Eid al-Fitr holiday in late April, police in various towns have told us. We contacted 10 police stations in Kashgar prefecture’s Maralbeshi county to confirm that authorities at Tumshuq Prison had released the bodies. Five of the inmates were elderly and died of heart and lung diseases, while one other died of diabetes, sources said. A Maralbeshi resident said many of them died of starvation because the inmates fasted in secret during Ramadan and couldn’t eat during breakfast or after sunset because of jail rules. Officials contacted by us did not comment on the matter. In June, a source told us that authorities at the prison had released the bodies of dozens of individuals, including that of his brother, just before the Islamic holiday marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. To obtain more information, we followed up by contacting police in the 10 towns, including speaking to officials in Sériqbuya, Awat and Chongqurchaq. When we contacted the police station in Awat, a Maralbeshi market town, to inquire about the body distribution on the eve of Eid al-Fitr, one officer said he was aware of the distribution of 18 bodies of dead prisoners, but he declined to disclose any information regarding the identities or their respective family members. “We have knowledge of the events and circumstances surrounding their deaths as they were under our supervision, but I am unable to share further information,” he said. “I believe the overall count of deceased individuals amounts to 18,” he said. “However, I am unable to disclose their identities.” The police officer did not say whether prison authorities took the bodies directly to family members of the decedents, to the police station, or to a mortuary. We previously reported that other bodies were taken to a police station before being handed over to families. The process took place under the supervision of county, village, and people’s committee officials and police. Additionally, authorities monitored the families for several weeks. Tumshuq Prison housed locals arbitrarily arrested during the 2017 crackdown on prominent and ordinary Uyghurs alike, jailing them in “re-education” camps and prisons for alleged extremist behavior, such as previous trips or contacts abroad or religious activities. China has come under harsh international criticism for its severe rights abuses of the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs, including forced labor. The U.S. government and several Western parliaments have declared that the abuses amount to genocide or crimes against humanity. A police officer from Seriqbuya told us in April that prison authorities delivered five bodies to his police station, and that most of them had been in their 70s or 80s and had been ill. “It appears that most of them passed away due to ineffective medical treatments,” he said. The police officer also confirmed that one of the corpses was that of Abdugheni Qadir. A person familiar with the situation told us that Abdugheni Qadir from Seriqbuya was the son of Qadir Toxti, principal of Sériqbuya Primary School. Authorities arrested him in 2017 while he was doing business in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The other three dead prisoners were Memettursun Metniyaz, Haji’ahun and his wife Mehpiremhan. Metniyaz was a Uyghur motorcycle repairman jailed in early 2017 for completing the hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, years before. He died of diabetes in jail and his body was delivered to his family, a local residential committee member who oversaw the return of his corpse told us in a May report. Haji’ahun, a hatmaker, and his spouse Mehpiremhan, residents of Maralbeshi county, were each sentenced to 10 years in Tumshuq Prison in 2019 for “illegal” religious activities, people with knowledge of the couple’s situation told us in a June report. Translated by us Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Matt Reed.
Vietnam’s communists are constrained domestically in choice between the US and China
It wasn’t the Communist Party that lifted the Vietnamese out of poverty; the people did it themselves. The country’s free-market revolution was the result of bottom-up pressure from the masses who broke the command-economy so much that the communist government had to accept a private sphere of business. Their pilfering from state-run companies and trading on the black market, and their ability to own more and more surplus produce after the state took its share, meant the government simply couldn’t handle the collectivized economy that had left Vietnam one of the world’s poorest countries in the 1980s. When the communist government gave an inch, the people demanded more. “The idea that economic success stems from a strategic shift in Party thinking [in 1986]… is actually a myth,” the economist Adam Fforde wrote. “Success instead drew upon systematic violations of Party ideology dating from the late 1970s, if not earlier.” The party’s economic reform package of 1986 (doi moi, or “renovation”) is common knowledge. Less so the promises of political renovation. Nguyen Van Linh, the incoming party general secretary that year, told writers and journalists that they should ‘stick to the truth’. One of those who took Linh at his word was Bao Ninh, a young novelist and war veteran from the North. “So much blood, so many lives were sacrificed for what?” he wrote in his 1990 book, The Sorrow of War. The poet and translator Duong Tuong called Bao’s work the “first truthful book about the war.” Truthful because it neither glorified victory against the Americans (“In war, no one wins or loses. There is only destruction”), nor regarded Communist Party leaders as the only heroes. Bao argued most Vietnamese were fighting for national peace, nor for Marxism. Naturally, the book was banned. Vietnam’s Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh (R) gestures to U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris in the Government office in Hanoi on August 25, 2021. Credit: Manan Vatsyayana / Pool / AFP The point is that even in a one-party, communist state, ordinary people can exert power. Today, the government still severely represses its citizens. There is no free media. There are no genuine elections. But the Communist Party is genuinely worried about the thoughts of the common man. Those domestic pressures are difficult to assess and frequently in debates on policy, such as about Vietnam hedging between the United States and China, it’s far easier to focus on “externalities”. The position at one extreme of that foreign policy debate, for instance, argues the Vietnamese government is denied any agency whatsoever because of material conditions: China is Vietnam’s main trading partner and principal aggressor; the United States is Vietnam’s main export partner and security “guarantor.” So by more closely aligning with either, Vietnam risks war or economic ruin. The other extreme says the Communist Party has a good deal of agency, and what shapes foreign policy is a shared ideology that makes it friendly with China, factional struggles within the party, and the whims of certain government officials. But consider a speech given in 2021 by Nguyen Phu Trong, now three-term Communist Party general secretary. Any nation “has to deal with two basic issues, internal and external,” he stated. “These two issues have an organic, dialectical relationship…[they] support each other like two wings of a bird, create positions and forces for each other, connect and intertwine more and more closely with each other.” Foreign policy today, he added, is a “continuation of domestic policy”. He said a little later: “Foreign affairs must always best serve the domestic cause.” That domestic cause for Trong is the survival and virality of the Communist Party. Domestic concerns dictate The other importance of The Sorrow of War was as an early sign nationalism was tumbling out of the hands of the Communist Party, which had staked its legitimacy on having led victory over the French, then Americans and then Chinese. But it was starting to lose its grip in the early 1990s when it struck peace with Beijing. Further anger flowed from the public as Chinese capital began flowing into Vietnam. In 2006, national hero General Vo Nguyen Giap (the “Red Napoleon”) accused the regime of selling off Vietnamese land for exploitation by Chinese bauxite speculators. Years-long protests turned “the nationalist tables on the Party by accusing it of caving in to the Chinese at the very time the latter were expanding their territorial claims against Vietnam in the South China Sea”, wrote the historian Christopher Goscha. That process has only expanded over time. One could say that the Communist Party is now scared of nationalism. Chinese academics seem especially taken with the idea that all nationalist protests in Vietnam are directed by the Communist Party. That is rarely the case. The party follows events; it seldom leads them. Netizen anger drove the recent cases of the Hollywood film “Barbie” being banned in Vietnam over a crude map that some said showed China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, and threats to boycott concerts by the South Korean K-Pop band BlackPink. During the Vanguard Bank standoff in 2019, when the Chinese military was once again harassing Vietnamese vessels in the South China Sea, officials in Hanoi reportedly discussed whether to allow some limited protests. “But, warned some other officials, demonstrations must be tightly controlled. If not, the protests might be taken over by individuals and groups in Vietnam, specifically democratization advocates”, wrote Ben Kerkvliet in Speaking Out in Vietnam, a study of political activism. That remains a concern. If the party takes a strong stance against China, that risks setting off nationwide nationalist protests that the party cannot control and which might quickly be whipped up into anti-communist agitation. Between June 9 and 11, 2018, more than 100,000 protesters demonstrated across Vietnam, arguably the largest nationwide protest seen in decades, as the National Assembly debated a bill to create three special economic zones (SEZs) along Vietnam’s coastline. The investment minister said publicly…
Yellen woos China with chopstick diplomacy, talks tough on business
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen touched down in Beijing on Thursday and ate at a popular Yunnan restaurant with the U.S. ambassador before meeting with key officials on Friday. Yellen met with China’s central bank governor Yi Gang, former economy point-man Liu He and State Premier Li Qiang on Friday to discuss the global, U.S. and Chinese economies. In prepared remarks, Yellen told Li she hoped her visit would spur more regular channels of communication between the world’s two largest economies, adding that both countries had a duty to “show leadership” on global challenges such as climate change. She said Washington would “in certain circumstances, need to pursue targeted actions to protect its national security,” but disagreements over such moves should not jeopardize the broader relationship. “We seek healthy economic competition that is not winner-take-all but that, with a fair set of rules, can benefit both countries over time,” she said. Separately, speaking at the American Chamber of Commerce on Friday, Yellen noted concerns in the U.S. business community. “I am communicating the concerns that I’ve heard from the U.S. business community, including China’s use of non-market tools like expanded subsidies for its state-owned enterprises and domestic firms, as well as barriers to market access for foreign firms,” she said. Meanwhile, in a sign of a possible thaw in China-U.S. relations, the usually provocative nationalist state tabloid Global Times asked in a tweet, what’s Yellen’s “preferred choice of food while in China? “It seems that Yunnan cuisine takes the top spot, as a popular Yunnan restaurant in Beijing’s Sanlitun area recently shared a picture of Yellen using chopsticks to enjoy a meal shortly after her arrival in Beijing on Thursday.” Yellen is in Beijing amid a flurry of visits aimed at breaking the ice between Washington and Beijing after the U.S. military shot down a Chinese government balloon over the United States. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Beijing in late June and U.S. climate envoy John Kerry will visit Beijing later this month Bloomberg reported. Mediating influence Yellen has a near “mission impossible” – to convince China that its measures in the interests of state security, restricting technology exports to China, are not intended to harm China’s interests as a rising nation state. But Chinese state media showed signs that Beijing may be in the mood for compromise – at least when it comes to trade and investment. China’s Global Times, in an uncharacteristically positive turn, editorialized that even though U.S. officials are downplaying any expectations from Yellen’s visit, “Chinese experts believe that one major point of significance of Yellen’s trip is to keep high-level communication channels open, which may help bilateral relations walk out of their downward spiral.” U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen walks after arriving at Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing, China, Thursday, July 6, 2023. Credit: Mark Schiefelbein/Pool via Reuters Ahead of Yellen’s visit, in a response to restrictions on China’s access to high-technology semiconductor chips, on Monday, China announced it was restricting exports of two critical components in the chips that modern life runs on. “This is just the beginning,” Wei Jianguo, a former Chinese vice-minister of commerce, told the China Daily. “China’s tool box has many more types of measures available.” The trade and investment entanglement of China and the U.S. makes what the U.S. is now referring to as “de-risking,” rather than decoupling, hugely complex due to the entangled nature of the two nations’ trade. Firm on security It’s likely Beijing may think that accepting Yellen’s visit and appearing to be more receptive, as opposed to the cooler reception Secretary of State Antony Blinken received, could give the U.S. pause for thought about its tech restrictions. But Yellen reiterated that her mission, like Blinken’s, was to open up lines of communication and avoid a catastrophic confrontation between the world’s two leading superpowers. “I am glad to be in Beijing to meet with Chinese officials and business leaders. We seek a healthy economic competition that benefits American workers and firms and to collaborate on global challenges,” Yellen said in a tweet. “We will take action to protect our national security when needed, and this trip presents an opportunity to communicate and avoid miscommunication or misunderstanding.” A possible thaw “Yellen is a more rational voice on China issues within the Biden administration,” Wu Xinbo, dean of the Institute of International Studies at Shanghai’s Fudan University told The Wall Street Journal. But her visit comes amid “unsafe” moves in the South China Sea, a war of words over Chinese fentanyl exports, revelations of a multibillion-dollar Chinese spy base in Cuba and daily military harassment of Taiwan. Wendy Cutler, a former diplomat and Vice President at the Asia Society Policy Institute, talking to Taiwan +, an English-language TV news service, said of Yellen’s visit, “No 1, she has to go through the list of U.S. grievances, including their recent announcement of [export restrictions on] two critical minerals, the way U.S. companies are being treated in China and recent legislation to create more uncertainty in the business climate.” Cutler added that, as Yellen has previously pointed out, the U.S. doesn’t seek to decouple the two superpower’s economies, but “there are sectors of national security concern [and] we’re not going to be shy about protecting that.” Back to business Yellen took a jab at China’s planned economy, saying that Beijing should return to the era of market reforms that former leader Deng Xiaoping ushered in and which led to decades of rocket-fueled economic growth. “A shift toward market reforms would be in China’s interests,” Yellen told U.S. business executives on Friday, according to reports. “A market-based approach helped spur rapid growth in China and helped lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. This is a remarkable economic success story,” Yellen added. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen meets with representatives of the U.S. business community in China, in Beijing, July 7, 2023. Credit: Reuters/Thomas Peter Yellen said that China’s vast middle-class was a market for American…
