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Category: East Asia
The 1989 Tiananmen massacre – as seen by a new generation of watchful eyes
On the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre last weekend, a group of protesters gathered in London’s Trafalgar Square to pay their respects to the victims of the military crackdown by the Chinese army on peaceful pro-democracy protests. These protesters were of a similar age to the students they commemorated. After decades of political brainwashing under the Chinese Communist Party, which bans any public discussion of the 1989 events, many observers had started to believe that China’s young people had lost touch with the kind of political fervor that gave rise to the student movements of the 1980s. Then, the “white paper” protests came, spreading across China in late 2022 in the wake of a fatal fire in Urumqi and after three years of COVID-19 lockdowns, quarantine camps and compulsory daily testing. The result was to light up the pro-democracy movement in the diaspora, with young people once more taking to the streets of cities around the world to demand better for China, and to remember those who had gone before them. Wang Han, 26, currently studying at the University of Southern California Wang told us in a recent interview that the Tiananmen massacre occupies a similar place in his mind to the three years of stringent lockdowns and travel bans of the zero-COVID policy under President Xi Jinping. Wang, who described himself as deeply involved in the “white paper” movement, said the two are similar because they were the products of the same authoritarian government. “It’s what I’ve been saying to so many people,” he said. “I think everyone needs to stand together in the face of totalitarian tyranny.” “Everyone needs to stand together in the face of totalitarian tyranny,” says Wang Han. Credit: Screenshot from Wang Han video Wang’s politics have evolved since Xi took power in 2012, and amended the constitution in 2018 to allow himself to rule indefinitely. Before Xi consolidated power in his own hands, Wang had allowed himself to hope that China might one day relinquish its authoritarian government peacefully, the way Taiwan did in the 1990s, to become a fully functioning democracy. “Under Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, I didn’t support the Chinese Communist Party, but at that time I naively believed that this country would get better, a bit like Taiwan, with everyone moving forward step by step until finally, (Taiwan’s) Democratic Progressive Party was in power,” he said. “But when Xi Jinping amended the constitution in 2018, that really shocked me,” Wang said. “Then there was the pandemic emerging in Wuhan, and social movements started to inspire me even more.” Since then, Wang has dropped the belief that China will follow Taiwan’s path to democratization. “The Communist Party has done a more complete job of destroying grassroots social organizations in China, and it is more totalitarian” than the authoritarian Kuomintang government that once ruled Taiwan, he said. “I don’t think it is going to evolve away from tyranny through normal demands for reform,” Wang said. “That will only happen through a more determined kind of resistance.” Looking back, Wang sees scant signs of any political evolution at all in the past 73 years of Communist Party rule in China. “It doesn’t matter how different the ideas of Xi Jinping and Deng Xiaoping are,” he said. “The Communist Party and Marxism are totalitarian systems, and the totalitarian consciousness is deeply ingrained in them, and in their ideas.” Xiao Yajie, 23, mainland Chinese who grew up in Hong Kong Xiao, who is working in Los Angeles, grew up hearing about the Tiananmen massacre in Hong Kong, which still had the freedom to hold annual candlelight gatherings every June 4, in Victoria Park. But smaller events were also taking place in the city’s schools, away from the eye of the international media. “Hong Kong’s political direction was still very liberal, and every school would hold June 4 commemorative activities,” she said. “During those years that I was studying in Hong Kong, our school would have spontaneous activities every year, and everyone would go to the auditorium to mourn the students.” “We would have candlelight evenings all through my elementary and high school years,” Xiao said. Xiao Yajie takes part in a rally for the Los Angeles “white paper” movement. Credit: Provided by Xiao Yajie Back then, Xiao didn’t give it much thought — until 2016, when her parents ran into some tourists from mainland China at a vigil in Victoria Park who denied the massacre had ever happened. “My parents told me about this, and I realized how much people in mainland China had been deceived,” she said. “This left a deep impression on me.” When the 2019 protest movement kicked off in Hong Kong, in response to plans to allow extradition of alleged criminal suspects to mainland China, Xiao went back to take part, getting tear gassed by the Hong Kong police, and watching supporters of the Chinese Communist Party throw things at protesters on the street. Xiao continues to take part in local activism, including during the “white paper” movement, which she found inspiring. “This is a democratic movement that is better than the 1989 movement because this group of brave people stood up under huge political pressure [not to],” she said. “Although some of the people who launched the white paper movement may not even have known about June 4, it carried forward what the university students left undone [in 1989],” Xiao said. “That yearning for freedom and democracy from the past — it’s actually in our bones.” Ji Xin, a U.S.-based student from Shanghai in his early 20s Ji was among the few young people to find out what happened on the night of June 3-4 when the People’s Liberation Army entered Beijing in columns of tanks, firing machine guns at unarmed civilians on the streets and putting a bloody end to weeks of student-led protests on Tiananmen Square. He first heard adults talking about it when he was just eight years old. “I was playing…
Blinken to travel to China next week: Reports
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Beijing next week, Reuters and the Associated Press reported Friday, as the United States seeks to shore up strained ties with China. Both Reuters and AP said Blinken would be in Beijing on June 18, next Sunday, citing anonymous American officials. AP said he would meet with Foreign Minister Qin Gang and possibly President Xi Jinping. State Department officials would not confirm the reported plans. In February, Blinken abruptly canceled a trip to Beijing just hours before he was set to depart Washington after officials said a Chinese spy balloon was found floating over the United States. China insisted it was a weather balloon that strayed off course. Since then, an unofficial trip by Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen to New York and Los Angeles in March has further inflamed ties. Relations between the world’s two major powers have been tense since August, when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan to the protests of Beijing, which regards the democratic island as a renegade province and has vowed to reunite it with the mainland. There has also been an uptick in near-miss accidents between the two countries’ militaries in the past two weeks in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait, with the Pentagon accusing China’s navy and air force of dangerous maneuvering in front of American vessels.
North Korean diplomat’s wife and son go missing in Russian far east
Russian authorities have issued a missing persons alert for the family of a North Korean diplomat, in what local and international media reports said could be an attempted defection. According to a public notice issued Tuesday, Kim Kum Sun, 43, and her son Park Kwon Ju, 15, were last seen on Sunday leaving the North Korean consulate in Vladivostok, in Russia’s far east, and their whereabouts are unknown. They are the wife and son of a North Korean trade representative in his 60s surnamed Park, sources in Vladivostok told RFA’s Korean Service. Park, considered a diplomat, had returned to North Korea in 2019, they said. Park and his family were dispatched to Russia prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, where they were assigned to earn foreign currency for the North Korean regime by running the Koryo and Tumen River restaurants in Vladivostok, a source in Vladivostok who declined to be named told Radio Free Asia. The missing woman was identified as Kim Kum Sun, who was the acting manager of both restaurants on behalf of her husband, according to a Russian citizen of Korean descent familiar with confidential news involving North Korean state-run companies in Vladivostok. He spoke to Radio Free Asia on condition of anonymity for security reasons. Rode off in taxi On the day they disappeared, the mother and son rode a taxi and got off on Nevskaya Street, which is not far from the consulate, Russian Media reported. The consulate reported to authorities that they had lost touch with the pair after they were not able to contact them. “[The mother and son] had been detained in the North Korean consulate in Vladivostok for several months and then disappeared during the time they had once per week to go out,” the Russian citizen of Korean descent said. “Park said he would return after the restaurant’s business performance review, but he was not able to return because the border has been closed since COVID hit,” he said, adding that the pandemic was rough on business at the Koryo restaurant, that Kim Kum Sun was running in her husband’s stead. “In October of last year, the assistant manager, who oversaw personnel escaped,” the Korean Russian said. The assistant manager of the Koryo restaurant, Kim Pyong Chol, 51 attempted to claim asylum but was arrested. Shortly afterward, the consulate closed the restaurant fearing that others would also attempt to escape, he said. “The acting manager and her son were then placed under confinement inside the consulate in Vladivostok,” said the Korean Russian. “They were allowed to go out only one day a week since they did not commit any specific crime, they just did chores inside the consulate and were monitored.” Fear of returning Rumors about a possible reopening of the North Korea-Russia border have made North Koreans stranded in Russia by the pandemic anxious that they might have to return to their homeland soon, another North Korea-related source in Vladivostok told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely. “They fear that when they return to North Korea, they will return to a lifestyle where they are cut off from the outside world,” the North Korea-related source said. The fear of returning to one of the world’s most isolated countries is palpable among the fledgling community of North Korean dispatched workers and officials in Vladivostok, said Kang Dongwan, a professor at Busan’s Dong-A University, who recently visited the far eastern Russian city. “The North Korean workers I met in Vladivostok were in a harsh situation and were quite agitated,” he said. “If [a border reopening] happens, there is a high possibility that North Korean workers and diplomats’ families will return to North Korea. So they may have judged that the only chance to escape North Korea is now.” According to South Korea’s Dong-A Ilbo newspaper, the presidential office in Seoul has confirmed that the mother and son have gone missing, and the related South Korean agencies are actively searching for their whereabouts. They have not made contact with South Korean authorities. An official from the office told Dong-A that the case is “not yet at the stage where they are trying to seek asylum in South Korea, as far as I know.” Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.
Fiji’s prime minister says policing agreement with China under review
Fiji’s government is reviewing a police cooperation agreement with China, the Pacific island country’s prime minister said Wednesday, underlining the balancing act between economic reliance on the Asian superpower and security ties to the United States. Sitiveni Rabuka, who became Fiji’s prime minister after an election in December broke strongman Frank Bainimarama’s 16 year hold on power, has emphasized shared values with democracies such as U.S. ally Australia and New Zealand. His government also has accorded a higher status to Taiwan’s representative office in Fiji, but has not fundamentally altered relations with Beijing. “When we came in [as the government] we needed to look at what they were doing [in the area of police cooperation],” Rabuka told a press conference during an official visit to New Zealand’s capital Wellington. “If our values and our systems differ, what cooperation can we get from that?” The agreement signed in 2011 has resulted in Fijian police officers undertaking training in China and short-term Chinese police deployments to Fiji. Plans for a permanent Chinese police liaison officer in Fiji were announced in September 2021, according to Fijian media. “We need to look at that [agreement] again before we decide on whether we go back to it or we continue the way we have in the past – cooperating with those who have similar democratic values and systems, legislation, law enforcement and so on,” Rabuka said. China, over several decades, has become a substantial source of trade, infrastructure and aid for developing Pacific island countries as it seeks to isolate Taiwan diplomatically and build its own set of global institutions. Beijing’s relations with Fiji particularly burgeoned after Australia, New Zealand and other countries sought to punish it for Bainimarama’s 2006 coup that ousted the elected government. It was Fiji’s fourth coup in three decades. Rabuka orchestrated two coups in the late 1980s. Last year, China signed a security pact with the Solomon Islands, alarming the U.S. and its allies such as Australia. The Solomons and Kiribati switched their diplomatic recognition to Beijing from Taiwan in 2019. The Chinese embassy in Fiji has said that China has military and police cooperation with many developing nations that have different political systems from China. “The law enforcement and police cooperation between China and Fiji is professional, open and transparent,” it said in May. “We hope relevant parties can abandon ideological prejudice, and view the law enforcement and police cooperation between China and Fiji objectively and rationally.” China also provides extensive training for Solomon Islands police and equipment such as vehicles and water cannons. Solomon Islands deputy police commissioner Ian Vaevaso said in a May 31 statement that 30 Solomon Islands police officers were in China for training on top of more than 30 that were sent to the Fujian Police College last year. Rabuka has expressed concerns about police cooperation with Beijing since being elected prime minister. “There’s no need for us to continue, our systems are different,” Rabuka said in January, according to a Fiji Times report. BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news organization.
Rudd foresees ‘seamless’ AUKUS defense industry
The long-term goal of the AUKUS security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States is a “seamless” defense and technology industry across the three countries, Canberra’s new ambassador in Washington, Kevin Rudd, said on Tuesday. In his first public remarks since assuming the role, the former Australian prime minister said one of his first tasks would be to help shepherd legislation through Congress to enable the March 13 deal for the United States to sell nuclear submarines to Australia. “Our critical tasks during the course of 2023 is to work with our friends in the administration and the United States Congress to support the passage of the key elements of the enabling legislation,” Rudd said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “This is not just a piece of admin detail,” he added. “You’re looking at four or five pieces of legislation, and each with attendant congressional committee oversight. This is a complex process.” Beijing has criticized the AUKUS pact and Australia’s purchase of nuclear-powered submarines from the United States, saying the countries were going down “a wrong and dangerous path.” But Canberra says the nuclear submarines, which can travel three times as fast as conventional submarines and stay at sea for much longer without refueling, are essential to protect vital sea lanes. Unfinished business Negotiations leading to the March 13 deal were at times messy, with Sen. Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island and chairman of the Senate Armed Services, initially opposing the sale of submarines to Australia amid massive backlogs across U.S. shipbuilding yards. In the end, the United States agreed to sell up to five older-generation nuclear submarines to Canberra in the coming years while the Australian, U.S. and U.K. governments develop Australia’s capacity to build its own submarines by the 2040s. But Rudd told the CSIS event that was only the first step. He said the bigger question for AUKUS would be integration. “How do we move towards the creation, soon, of a seamless Australia-U.S.-U.K. defense, science and technology industry?” he asked, adding that success in integration of the industries “could be even more revolutionary than the submarine project in itself.” It would provide, he added, the ability to turn plans, such as submarine deals, into reality “not 15 years, but five years, four years and three years, to remain competitive and therefore deterrent.” U.S.-China relations Rudd, who was prime minister from 2007 to 2010 and again in 2013, said his instructions from Canberra now were to “work like hell to build guardrails in the relationship between the U.S. and China,” over Taiwan and the South China Sea to avoid “war by accident.” But he also said Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong wanted Australia to work with the United States to “enhance deterrence” to “cause the Central Military Commission in China to think twice” about any military action. Rudd said Chinese President Xi Jinping made clear his main strategy was to use “the gravitational pull of the Chinese economy” as leverage, which he said was only interrupted by COVID. “Even though growth has now slowed in China, Chinese strategy is fairly clear, which is to make China the indispensable market that it had begun to become,” Rudd said. “It’s directed to countries around the world in the Global South, and in Europe, and beyond.” Rudd said the U.S. policy of “derisking” its supply chains away from China – without completely “decoupling” the economies – was a natural reaction to that geopolitical strategy, even if Australia, as an island nation reliant on trade, still preferred free-trade policies. Wong, the Australian foreign minister, used in a speech in Washington in December to call on the United States, which pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2017, to return to a focus on trade as it seeks to counter Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific. Rudd said Australia still wanted the United States to return to the trade pact – reworked as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership under Japan’s leadership – but was realistic about domestic pressures on U.S. administrations. “We understand what’s happened in the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. We understand the rise of industrial policy in this country,” Rudd said. “Our job is to work within the grain of U.S. strategic policy settings and to maximize openness.” “Look, this is an old relationship,” he said. “We’ve been knocking around with each other for the last 100 years or more, and in any relationship, there are going to be times when you agree or disagree, but you decide to make the relationship work.” Edited by Malcolm Foster.
Vietnam court sentences music teacher to 8 years in prison
A court in Vietnam’s Dak Lak province has sentenced music lecturer Dang Dang Phuoc to eight years in prison and four years of probation for allegedly “conducting anti-state propaganda,” his wife and one of his lawyers told RFA Tuesday. The 60-year-old instructor at Dak Lak Pedagogical College in Vietnam’s Central Highland, frequently posted on Facebook about educational issues, human rights violations, corrupt officials and social injustice. Police arrested him on Sept. 8 last year, and charged him with “making, storing, spreading or propagating information, documents and items aimed at opposing the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,” which carries a maximum 12-year prison term. Even though Phuoc didn’t receive the maximum sentence, lawyer Le Van Luan said the court should have been more lenient towards his client. “With the circumstances of the case, that sentence is too heavy compared to what Mr. Phuoc did,” he said. Phuoc’s case has drawn international attention, including from Human Rights Watch, who’s deputy Asia director Phil Robertson described the sentence as “outrageous and unacceptable.” “What it reveals is the Vietnamese government’s total intolerance for ordinary citizens pointing out corruption, speaking out against injustice, and calling for accountability by local officials,” he said on hearing the verdict. “Those were precisely the things that Dang Dang Phuoc did in Dak Lak, and now the government claims such whistle-blowing actions are propaganda against the state.” During the past decade, Phuoc has campaigned against corruption and advocated for better protections for civil and political rights. He has signed several pro-democracy petitions and called for changes to Vietnam’s constitution, which grants the Communist Party a monopoly on power. “This unjust prison sentence reveals General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong’s anti-corruption campaign is a sham game that is really more about holding on to power, and marginalizing political rivals, but does not care to address the Communist Party of Vietnam’s widespread malfeasance in its ranks,” said Robertson, comparing Trong with China’s authoritarian leader Xi Jinping. Police kept a close watch on Phuoc’s wife Le Thi Ha ahead of the trial, warning her she would lose her job if she talked about the case on social media. She was allowed to attend the trial, along with Phuoc’s four lawyers. Ha told RFA her husband plans to appeal the verdict. Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn.
China pressures Australian press club to cancel Tibetan exile leader’s speech
China is under fire for attempting to prevent the leader of Tibet’s government-in-exile from giving a speech at the Australian National Press Club in Canberra, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. Chinese Embassy representatives met with press club chief Maurice Reily last week and voiced their opposition to Penpa Tsering’s scheduled appearance on June 20, requesting that his invitation be revoked. China has controlled Tibet since it invaded the region in 1949, and rejects any notion of a Tibetan government-in-exile, particularly the legitimacy of the Dalai Lama, who lives in Dharamsala, India. Beijing has also stepped up efforts to erode Tibetan culture, language and religion. Speeches given at the National Press Club are broadcast on Australian TV and attended by prominent members of the press, so Beijing may be worried about the wider exposure Penpa Tsering would get.. “China expresses strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to Australia, in disregard of China’s position and concern, allowing him to use the NPC platform to engage in separatist activities,” the newspaper quoted a letter from the embassy to Reily as saying. “The Chinese side urges the Australian side to see through the nature of the Dalai clique, respect China’s core interests and major concerns, and take concrete actions to remove the negative effects so as to prevent the disruption of the sound development of China-Australia relations and media co-operation.” Free Speech Despite Beijing’s pressure, Reilly told local media that there were no plans to cancel the appearance, and tickets remain on sale on the website of the press club. He said he told the Chinese Embassy officials that the press club was “an institution for free speech, free media and public debate.” The National Press Club is a stage where everyone is allowed to share their views, Kyinzom Dhongdue, a human rights activist and a former member of the Tibetan parliament in exile, told Radio Free Asia’s Tibetan Service. “We all know how China has worked to build its influence and dependence through trade and economic ties with Australia,” she said. “In the last decade we have seen Australia’s top educational institution cancel a talk by the Dalai Lama, apparently due to pressure from China. But this time, putting pressure on the National Press Club is unimaginable because the National Press Club stands for Freedom of Speech.” Karma Singey, the representative for the Dalai Lama in Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia, said Australia would not cave to Chinese influence. “Australia is a democratic country so we are confident that Australia will not let the Chinese government expand its influence and undermine Australian institutions,” he said. Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.
Tiananmen commemorations in Hong Kong stifled, but other cities keep memory alive
Hong Kong police searched and detained scores of people on Sunday, including four arrested for “seditious” intent, as authorities tightened security for the 34th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. Restrictions in Hong Kong have stifled what were once the largest vigils marking the anniversary of the bloody crackdown by Chinese troops on pro-democracy demonstrators, leaving cities like Taipei, London, New York and Berlin to keep the memory of June 4 alive. Near Victoria Park, the previous site of yearly vigils, hundreds of police conducted stop and search operations, and deployed armored vehicles and police vans. And in Victoria Park itself, pro-China groups held a carnival featuring games, music and products from across China. In Beijing, Tiananmen Square was thronged with tourists taking pictures under the watchful eye of police and other personnel but with no obvious sign of stepped-up security. In democratically governed Taiwan, the last remaining part of the Chinese-speaking world where the anniversary can be marked freely, hundreds attended a memorial at Taipei’s Liberty Square where a “Pillar of Shame” statue was displayed. – Reuters
Beijing seeks ‘dialogue over confrontation’, defense chief says
China’s defense minister said at a major regional security forum on Sunday that Beijing seeks dialogue over confrontation, hours after a Chinese warship was accused of nearly hitting a U.S. destroyer in the Taiwan Strait. General Li Shangfu said at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore that China’s leader Xi Jinping proposed a set of so-called Global Security Initiatives (GSI) which features “dialogue over confrontation, partnership over alliance and win-win over zero sum.” In an apparent reference to the U.S., Li accused “some country” of taking a “selective approach to rules and international laws,” and “forcing its own rules on others.” “It practices exceptionalism and double standards and only serves the interests and follows the rules of a small number of countries.” The minister said it “even attempts to constrain others with a convention itself has not acceded to,” pointing to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 1982 that the United States, while recognizing it, is not a party of. The U.S. and China have been at loggerheads over a number of issues, among them China’s excessive claims in the South China Sea and the U.S. ‘s freedom of navigation operations (FONOP) to uphold its principle of a free and open Indo-Pacific. China has repeatedly accused the U.S. of “navigation hegemony” in the South China Sea. The U.S. military meanwhile said that a Chinese warship on Saturday came close to hitting an American destroyer when the latter was sailing through the Taiwan Strait during a joint Canada-U.S. mission. Near-collision The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement that its guided-missile destroyer USS Chung-Hoon and Royal Canadian Navy frigate HMCS Montreal were conducting a “routine” transit through international waters in the Taiwan Strait. During the transit a Chinese Navy destroyer “executed maneuvers in an unsafe manner in the vicinity of Chung-Hoon,” it said, adding that the Chinese ship “overtook Chung-Hoon on their port side and crossed their bow at 150 yards (140 meters).” “Chung-Hoon maintained course and slowed to 10 knots to avoid a collision.” The Indo-Pacific Command said that China’s actions violated the maritime ‘Rules of the Road’ of safe passage in international waters “where aircraft and ships of all nations may fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows.” China’s Ministry of National Defense claimed the Chinese ship handled the situation “lawfully and professionally” but analysts said they found the event “disturbing” and “probably the worst such reported close maritime encounter in the South China Sea since October 2018,” when a Chinese warship approached the USS Decatur within just 45 yards (41 meters). “China is getting reckless while trying to enforce sovereignty in the Taiwan Strait,” said Richard Bitzinger, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. “Beijing is just trying to force everyone to accept the idea that Taiwan Straits are somehow China’s de facto territorial waters,” the military analyst told RFA. The Canadian Navy’s HMCS Montreal conducted a routine transit through the Taiwan Strait with U.S. Navy destroyer USS Chung-Hoon, June 3, 2023. Credit: Canadian Armed Forces Minister Li Shangfu told the audience at the Shangri-La Dialogue that the U.S. ships are in the region “for provocation.” “What is key now is that we must prevent attempts to use freedom of navigation … as a pretext to exercise hegemony of navigation,” he said. Taiwanese military analysts said that the Saturday transit was a routine operation but the Chinese Navy’s reaction indicated a more resolute stance. “As President Xi Jinping had instructed, senior officials and military leaders should take a tough stance against challenges rather than showing a soft behavior that can be seen as weak,” said Shen Ming-shih, Acting Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research. “That’s what the Chinese Defense Minister demonstrated in his speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue,” Shen said. Military expert Richard Bitzinger said the reason behind this approach may be that “the Chinese are worried that they have a narrow and closing window to exert themselves before the economy tanks and demographics catch up with them.” Using risks as weapons The Chinese minister of defense in his speech lambasted the U.S.’s Cold War mentality. He accused Washington of “expanding military bases, re-enforcing military presence and intensifying arms race in the region” – those actions that reflect its “desire to make enem[ies], stoke confrontation, fuel the fire and fish in troubled waters.” Li also accused the U.S. of “wilfully interfering in the internal affairs of others,” referring to the issue of Taiwan which he said was “core of China’s core interests.” The U.S. and China should seek common ground “grow bilateral ties and deepen cooperation,” he said. “International affairs should not be handled through confrontation,” the minister said, insisting that China is always “seeking consensus, promoting reconciliation and negotiations.” Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Li Shangfu delivers his speech on the last day of the Shangri-La Dialogue, in Singapore, June 4, 2023. Credit: AP Photo/Vincent Thian A day earlier, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said he was “deeply concerned” that Beijing has been unwilling to engage with Washington and refused to hold direct bilateral talks. “The Chinese minister’s speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue and the dangerous action of its warships in the Taiwan Strait are part of the strategy that I’d call ‘riskfare’, which plays on the concerns of the U.S. and other countries for risks,” said Alexandre Vuving, a professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii. “The U.S. emphasizes communication, but China emphasizes risks and is using risk as a weapon in its struggle with the U.S.,” he said. “Washington shows it’s concerned about risks in its competition with Beijing. Beijing sees it and weaponizes this U.S. concern.” The U.S.’s willingness to reopen communications with China is genuine and some analysts believe that, despite the absence of direct contacts between the U.S. and Chinese delegations in Singapore, there are hopes for closer interactions. Baohui Zhang, director of the Centre for Asian…
Comedy and autocracy are made for each other
Last month, Beijing police launched a criminal investigation into stand-up comedian Li Haoshi – who goes by the stage name House – after he sparked public ire with a joke that some said likened feral dogs to People’s Liberation Army soldiers “capable of winning battles,” prompting a nationwide wave of cancellations of other artists, particularly acts from overseas. In a recent commentary for RFA Mandarin, U.S.-based legal scholar Teng Biao says totalitarian regimes are the ultimate source of comedy material, and explains why the ruling Chinese Communist Party views comedy as an existential threat: Tyranny is a major manufacturer of jokes, because autocracy itself is a joke. Those who hold power without winning an election need to rewrite history and whitewash reality, so as to maintain a perfect image of glory and greatness. In 1966, the People’s Daily reported on Mao Zedong’s swim in the Yangtze River. It claimed the 73-year-old Mao had broken the world record, even after making deductions for the effects of the flowing river. More recently, the Red Guards are back, the White Guards [COVID-19 enforcers] are here, and we have ongoing agricultural management and the conversion of forests to farmland. Stand-up comedy company Xiaoguo Comedy’s FaceBook page. Credit: RFA screenshot from FaceBook When the population is 800 million, people are limited to one child per couple. When it reaches 1.4 billion, we can have three. What’s that all about? A diplomat who mouths off to the French media “doesn’t represent the official view.” There’s a real-name registration system for kitchen knives, and police are willing to travel to Thailand to kidnap a guy for publishing some gossipy books about Xi Jinping, whose portrait now hangs in temples and churches across the land. Winnie the Pooh is banned, and Chairman Xi carried a 200-pound of wheat without even shifting to his other shoulder. Anyone not laughing by this point? Jokes dissolve tyranny. Comedy and autocracy are made for each other. Despotism has to hold itself up as pompous, serious, truthful, powerful, and inviolable. And gods, emperors, wealth, ‘truth’, traditions and customs, science, traditional customs, are all grist for the mill of satire, for ridicule and spoofs. Stand-up has been described as “the art of offense,” but under a totalitarian regime, it is deadly. Comrade George Orwell, who saw the underpants of the totalitarian system many years ago, said that every joke is a tiny revolution. Late Chinese dissident and 2010 Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo once wrote: “The political jokes people tell each other in private represent the conscience of the silent majority, and show us just how rotten are the foundations of post-totalitarian rule among the general public.” When we’ve all seen the emperor swaggering down the street stark naked, a burst of laughter is even more subversive than a child telling the truth. A joke that doesn’t pick quarrels or stir up trouble is hardly a joke at all. That’s why the censorship of jokes is never-ending under authoritarian regimes. Notice of show cancellations are placed by the locked doors at the show venue of stand-up comedy company Xiaoguo Culture Media Co that has closed its business in Beijing, China May 19, 2023. Tingshu Wang/Reuters Stand-up comedy, sketches, comic duos and other kinds of comedy have almost totally lost their ability to offer political or social criticism under the Chinese Communist Party, because even social comment can become political. So most comedians avoid them altogether, and limit their material to marriage, family, men and women or celebrities. And they are increasingly punching down, targeting those weaker than themselves, with the poor, farming communities, manual laborers and the disabled the most common targets. Ugly people, ethnic minorities, women, the elderly and black people are also discriminated against. There are even sketches and comic duos who stick to the Communist Party’s “main theme tune” and flatter the government, high-ranking officials, celebrities and the rich and powerful. Under a dictatorship, the consequences of complaining about those in power are serious. The Thought Police are ever watchful and are highly capable of winning battles. Translated by Luisetta Mudie. The views expressed here are Teng’s own and do not reflect the position of Radio Free Asia.
