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Category: East Asia
Malaysia’s Mahathir says Russia may take nuclear option
The world is facing the grim prospect of a nuclear war as the Ukrainian conflict drags on, a former Asian leader has warned. “I don’t think you can make Russia surrender,” said former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad about the ongoing Ukraine war on Friday – the second day of the Future of Asia conference hosted by the Nikkei news group in Tokyo. “They will fight to the end, and in desperation they may resort to the use of nuclear weapons,” said the former statesman who will be 98 in July, adding that not only Ukraine and Russia, but “the whole world will suffer.” Mahathir served as Malaysia’s prime minister from 1981 to 2003 and again from 2018 to 2020. “Nuclear war is the worst kind of war because of the extent of destruction it causes,” he said, reflecting on the end of World War II when two atomic bombs were dropped on Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. A summit of Group of Seven (G7) of the world’s most developed nations was held in Hiroshima last week. “It seems that G7 countries went to Hiroshima trying to persuade the Global South that they should support the West’s efforts in the Ukraine war,” Mahathir said. The Global South is a term generally used for less developed countries in Latin America, Africa, Asia and Oceania, as opposed to more prosperous nations in the Global North including North America, Europe, and Australia, as well as several rich Asian countries like Japan, South Korea and Singapore. “We should not get involved in wars,” the former leader said before criticizing what he called “the mindset of some countries.” “Global North thinks that war is a solution to conflicts between nations,” Mahathir said. “Russia and the West were partners in the war against Germany,” he said, “but immediately after the war the West decided that their new enemy is Russia so they set up NATO.” ‘World government’ The rivalry between the world’s two superpowers China and the U.S. once again was highlighted at the Future of Asia event, in its 28th year this year. Sri Lanka’s President Ranil Wickremesinghe said on Thursday that his country “welcomes the G7’s announcement that they are prepared to build a stable and constructive relationship with China.” Singapore Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong went further adding: “Any attempt either to contain China’s rise or to limit America’s presence in the region will have few takers. Nobody wants to see a new cold war.” Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad (right) at a Q&A session at the Future of Asia conference, May 26, 2023. Credit: RFA/Screenshot from livestream For his part, Mahathir Mohamad urged Asian countries that they “should not take sides to support either the U.S. or China.” “We should support the world that includes the U.S., China and the rest.” “We should free ourselves from the influences by the West both in the economic and political fields,” said the former leader, known for his anti-Western rhetoric. In his opinion, the United Nations as an organization needs to be restructured in order to lead global efforts in dealing with common world problems such as climate change, pandemics and consequences of wars. “We should think of a common approach to deal with world problems, through a kind of world government,” he said. Future of Asia, held by Japan’s Nikkei annually since 1995, is “an international gathering where political, economic, and academic leaders from the Asia-Pacific region offer their opinions frankly and freely on regional issues and the role of Asia in the world.” This year’s theme is ‘Leveraging Asia’s power to confront global challenges.’ Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida delivered a speech Thursday saying Tokyo is “focused on co-creating the future” with its Asian partners. Edited by Mike Firn.
A new big brother for Laos?
The Friendship Shield 2023 war games brought 200 Chinese troops and 700 Lao soldiers together for three weeks near the Lao capital Vientiane for joint military exercises. The drills between the two Communist states gave troops from impoverished, land-locked Laos firsthand experience using modern Chinese weapons, opening the way for the Southeast Asian country to replace its Soviet-era and Russian military supplies. Neighboring Vietnam, Laos’ biggest traditional ally, is believed to be watching the Sino-Lao relationship warily, while the U.S. is also concerned about China’s expanding military influence.
Rights attorney Yu Wensheng, wife Xu Yan ‘could be at risk of torture’ after arrest
Chinese authorities have notified the family of veteran rights lawyer Yu Wensheng and his wife Xu Yan of their formal arrest on suspicion of “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,” a charge frequently used to target peaceful critics of the Communist Party, friends of the couple told Radio Free Asia. Yu and Xu were detained last month en route to a meeting with European Union officials in Beijing, prompting calls for their release from Brussels. U.S.-based rights lawyer Wang Qingpeng said there are now fears that Yu and Xu may be tortured in order to elicit a “confession,” given the amount of international attention generated by their arrests. “The authorities will be concerned about how this case looks … and about international attention,” Wang said. “A lot of lawyers have been warned off representing Yu Wensheng and his wife.” “Many lawyers have been tortured already, including Xie Yang, Wang Quanzhang, Chang Weiping and Zhou Shifeng,” he said. “We have reason to believe that Yu Wensheng and Xu Yan could also be tortured, so as to avoid further outside attention and attempts at rescue.” “There could be further [and more serious charges] to come, for example, ‘incitement to subvert state power,’ which is impossible to predict right now,” Wang said. Chinese courts almost never acquit political prisoners, and the charge Yu and Xu currently face generally leads to jail terms of up to five years. Lawyers warned A friend of the couple who asked to remain anonymous said Yu’s brother received notification of his formal arrest on May 21. “According to what I have learned, Yu Wensheng has put up a great deal of resistance to the authorities since his detention,” the friend said. “His brother has also said [their detention] is unacceptable.” Police informed Yu’s brother of the change of status on Sunday, but had refused to give the family anything in writing, the brother said. “His brother tried to get a photo of the notification of arrest, but the police stopped him,” they said. “Now Yu Wensheng’s family need to find a lawyer to help him, but a lot of lawyers have been warned off doing this by the authorities.” They said police had also told the family not to try to find their own lawyer to represent the couple. Another person familiar with the case, who gave only the surname Shi, confirmed the friend’s account. “They wouldn’t let their [18-year-old] kid instruct a lawyer, and the police were also telling people that Yu Wensheng didn’t want a lawyer, and that Xu Yan had already hired two lawyers,” Shi said. “Then the police visited the law firms [that might potentially represent Yu and Xu] and put pressure on them — the Beijing municipal judicial affairs bureau also stepped up the pressure, threatening the law firms that they would fail their annual license review,” he said. “I don’t know whether they actually revoked any licenses or not — we won’t know until early June,” Shi said. Son alone A friend of the couple who gave only the surname Qin said he is worried about their situation, and also about their son, who is living alone in the family home under strict police surveillance, with no contact with the outside world. “It has destroyed this family, and their kid is still so young with nobody around to take care of them — it’s wrong to arrest both husband and wife together,” Qin said. The European Union lodged a protest with China after police detained veteran rights lawyer Yu Wensheng and his activist wife Xu Yan ahead of a meeting with its diplomats during a scheduled EU-China human rights dialogue on April 13. “We have already been taken away,” Yu tweeted shortly before falling silent on April 13, while the EU delegation to China tweeted on April 14: “@yuwensheng9 and @xuyan709 detained by CN authorities on their way to EU Delegation.” “We demand their immediate, unconditional release. We have lodged a protest with MFA against this unacceptable treatment,” the tweet from the EU’s embassy in China said, referring to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.
Papua New Guinea, United States deepen relations with defense pact signing
The United States signed a defense cooperation agreement on Monday with Papua New Guinea, and announced other security and humanitarian support, in a deepening of its relationship with the most populous Pacific island country. Papua New Guinea’s capital Port Moresby also hosted India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a summit with leaders of 14 Pacific island countries, underscoring the increased geopolitical competition in the vast ocean region where China’s diplomatic relations have burgeoned. The defense agreement is “mutually beneficial,” Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape said at the signing ceremony. “In the context of Papua New Guinea it secures our national interest,” he said, predicting it would help the country, one of the poorest in the region, to develop a “robust economy.” Responding to domestic criticism of the defense agreement, Marape said, “this signing in no way, shape and form encroaches into our sovereignty.” U.S. President Joe Biden had planned to stop over in Papua New Guinea on Monday before attending a meeting in Sydney with the leaders of Australia, Japan and India. He canceled the trip to focus on high-stakes Federal debt-limit negotiations, in an apparent setback for U.S. efforts to exert influence in the Pacific. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who traveled to Port Moresby in the president’s place, said he carried an invitation from Biden to Pacific leaders to visit Washington in the fall. As part of efforts to counter Beijing’s influence in the Pacific, Biden hosted a meeting of Pacific island leaders in September last year in Washington. “Simply put we are committed to growing all aspects of our relationship,” Blinken said at the defense agreement signing ceremony. The pact, he said, would be transparent to the public and make it easier for the two countries’ defense forces to train together and improve the capacity of Papua New Guinea’s military to respond to natural disasters. 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. 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. Modi, in his speech to Pacific leaders, did not specifically mention China but said his country was committed to a “free and open Indo Pacific,” the U.S. terminology for a vast region spanning the Indian and Pacific oceans. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown, speaking at a U.S.-Pacific island leaders meeting, said there was a “level of disappointment” in Biden’s cancellation. He also said he welcomed the fall invitation. ‘Intrusion’ into PNG affairs The defense cooperation agreement between Papua New Guinea and the U.S. has been criticized by some analysts and groups such as the PNG Trade Union Congress as being overly accommodative to Washington’s interests. Australia’s Sky TV reported on what it said was a leaked draft version of the agreement last week. “It is the processes our government followed and the motivation behind fast tracking the processes with zero public consultation and parliament debate [that] opens up public debate to all sorts of conclusions,” said Anton Sekum, acting general secretary of the Trade Union Congress, in a statement on Monday. “Any agreement that will have elements of intrusion into our sovereignty and may put the country in harm’s way must not be done without all citizens’ consent,” he said. Elias Wohengu, secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs, who was Papua New Guinea’s chief negotiator in the defense cooperation talks, said there was no factual basis to rumors that U.S. military personnel who broke Papua New Guinea’s laws would enjoy immunity from prosecution. Speculation it would preclude defense agreements with other countries and required changes to Papua New Guinea’s laws was also incorrect, he said. “There is no immunity in this agreement for any foreign personnel that will be present in Papua New Guinea,” Wohengu told a press conference on the weekend. “If a crime is committed, punishment will be carried out. So anyone who goes out spreading rumors that we will be providing immunity to offenders is wrong,” he said. The State Department said the text of the defense cooperation agreement would be made public when it comes into force. Papua New Guinea’s Ministry of Defense said it would hold a question and answer session for civil society groups and journalists at its headquarters on Tuesday. Papua New Guinea and the U.S. also signed a shiprider agreement that provides the basis for personnel from the Pacific island country to work on U.S. coast guard and naval vessels, and vice versa, in targeting economic and security weaknesses such as illegal fishing. Among other support announced by the State Department, the U.S. government will supply $12.4 million of equipment to Papua New Guinea’s defense force. It includes $5.4 million of body armor, provided earlier this month, such as ballistic helmets and flak vests with armor plates. Some $7 million will be provided for military dress uniforms for Papua New Guinea’s 50th independence events in 2025. The U.S. is also exploring warehousing of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief supplies in Papua New Guinea. BenarNews is an RFA–affiliated news organization.
In North Korea, ‘Judas’ is nickname for informer and betrayer
‘Judas’ has become a scornful nickname for informers in North Korea. For example, when a girl confided in her friend during the COVID-19 pandemic that she planned to escape North Korea once the border with China reopened, she was brought before authorities and punished. Residents began calling the friend who sold her out “a modern-day Judas,” a woman from Kimjongsuk county, in the northern province of Ryanggang, told Radio Free Asia on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “After this incident, whenever the informant passes by, other people in the neighborhood turn their backs on him and curse him as Judas,” the woman said. “Authorities who encourage the informants are called Judas as well.” The reference to the disciple who betrayed Jesus in the New Testament might be surprising given that Christianity has been illegal in the country for nearly 120 years. It is not a new term because underground Christians – who are persecuted in North Korea – are familiar with it. And Christianity does have roots in the country. Pyongyang was once such a bastion of Christians that it was called “Jerusalem of the East.” Korea was one of the only places in East Asia where Christianity had staying power after it was introduced in the 17th century. But came to an end once the peninsula fell to Japanese rule in 1905 and Shinto became the state religion, pushing believers underground. At the end of World War II in 1945, Christian missionaries returned to Korea, but only in the south, as the Soviet-occupied north forbade religion. Once North Korea was officially established in 1948, Christianity and other religions were completely outlawed, and the church remained underground. Efforts to stamp out Christianity But the nickname does appear to be used more widely these days. The fact that people are still aware of the story of Judas, who betrayed Jesus to the Romans for 30 pieces of silver, indicates that despite North Korea’s best efforts to stamp out Christianity, the religion still maintains a presence there. “People who lack loyalty or who stab their friends in the back are cursed as ‘Judas,’” a man living in Pyongsong, South Pyongan province, north of Pyongyang, told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely. “The five-household propagandist, who reports the movements of people and even trivial words to the police, is also called ‘Judas’ by his peers,” he said. The five-household watch is a sophisticated surveillance system in which paid informants, called propagandists, are tasked with monitoring five households in their neighborhoods. Five-household propagandists are enthusiastic Party members selected from factories and schools for exhibiting traits of loyalty. “As the public sentiment has worsened due to the prolonged COVID-19 crisis, the authorities are focusing on monitoring the residents by mobilizing the informants,” the South Pyongan resident said. “As if that was not enough, the authorities secretly planted more informants in the neighborhoods.” “In response, the residents are criticizing the authorities for creating distrust among the residents, telling them not to trust anyone, because they do not know who could be ‘Judas.’” North Korean authorities have tried hard to eliminate Christianity from the country, but believers are still there – though it’s impossible to know how many. The international Christian missionary organization Open Doors, citing a trusted North Korean source, described how in 2022 dozens of members of an underground church were discovered and executed, and more than 100 of their family members were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee. Written in English by Eugene Whong. Edited by Malcolm Foster.
INTERVIEW: ‘They threatened to arrest us both together’
A Chinese rights activist who openly supported the “white paper” protest movement of November 2022 has applied for political asylum in the Netherlands after learning that he could be targeted as part of an ongoing case against his dissident father. Zhang Hongyuan, son of veteran Wuhan-based rights activist Zhang Yi, flew from Beijing to Amsterdam on April 13 after learning that he was being named as a co-defendant alongside his father, who is being targeted for giving interviews to overseas media organizations during the Wuhan lockdown of 2020. He spoke to RFA Mandarin about his current situation: RFA: Where are you right now? Zhang Hongyuan: I am now in a town in the Netherlands, about a 20-minute drive from The Hague. RFA: When did you leave the immigration detention center? Zhang Hongyuan: They eventually decided to put me in this open camp after I had been in the immigration detention center for 12 days. I had my first interview with the immigration bureau in the detention center. After I stayed in the immigration prison for twelve days, they finally decided to put me in this open camp. I completed [two interviews] with the immigration bureau in the immigration prison. RFA: You shot some video of the “white paper” protest that went viral. Was this the main reason for your political asylum application? #武汉 2022/11/27夜晚11点 中山大道（汉正街站） pic.twitter.com/dAykIJMyAs — 自由亚洲电台 (@RFA_Chinese) November 27, 2022 Zhang Hongyuan: It’s one of the reasons. I did get video from the [police] clearance of the demonstration on Hanzheng Street in Wuhan, although the people who were actually holding up blank sheets of paper weren’t on Hanzheng Street, but on Yiyuan Road. The real reason I am seeking political asylum is that we received news that they are planning to prosecute me alongside my father as a co-defendant because my father gave interviews to foreign media during the pandemic. RFA: How did you come by that information? Zhang Hongyuan: People linked to the case told us, but I can’t disclose the details. RFA: Does that mean someone in the government? Zhang Hongyuan: Yes. RFA: Lots of people spoke to foreign media during the lockdown, so what is so special about Zhang Yi’s case? Zhang Hongyuan: It’s because we were in Wuhan, and he was giving interviews to any foreign media that asked, all the way through lockdown. And because foreign journalists would let him know they wanted to interview him by calling his Chinese cell phone [without messaging first], the police would have known about it straight away, even though we never actually gave interviews on the phone. We found a safer way of giving the interview later. In the end, the police told my father that he had been interviewed by more than 60 different media organizations around the world. My father didn’t even realize how many there were because he didn’t count them. RFA: What is your father’s situation now? Zhang Hongyuan: Right now he’s in Wuhan. First off, the [ruling Chinese Communist Party’s] political and legal affairs committee of Hubei province want to arrest him, and the central political and legal affairs committee [in Beijing] wanted to make it an open-and-shut case and asked the Hubei political and legal affairs committee to find a way. They wanted [me] as his son to be arrested alongside him and charged as a co-defendant. Then they found out I had left the country after you reported that I was seeking asylum, and now my father is under round-the-clock surveillance, with guards at his door. There is a car downstairs outside our apartment building with a team of three people following him 24/7. It seems they are getting ready to detain him at any time. I’ve been able to leave [China], but there’s no way he will be able to. RFA: Was there any other reason why the Hubei government has been keeping such a close eye on Zhang Yi? Zhang Hongyuan: Yes. Because he has been calling for the release of [disappeared pandemic journalist] Fang Bin for the past three years … in interviews with foreign media. Wuhan-based activist Zhang Yi and his son Zhang Hongyuan. Credit: Provided by Zhang Hongyuan RFA: Why did the government take action against you, when it was your father who was giving the interviews? Zhang Hongyuan: Because I’m his weakness. They threaten him by threatening to arrest us both together, I think that’s [official] Chinese logic. Also, I assisted him with the interviews, because all of his encrypted chats required circumvention tools to get around the Great Firewall [of internet censorship]. When he was interviewed by the Voice of America, some of the communication was done via email like Gmail, and I also helped him use software like Skype and WhatsApp. RFA: So it was just technical assistance? Zhang Hongyuan: Yes, technical assistance. But after he was interviewed, when the police came to threaten him, I also shot a video of them that was broadcast by Japanese TV station NHK. RFA: During the “white paper” movement, you said that you witnessed protests on Hanzheng Street? Zhang Hongyuan: Yes. Hanzheng Street is a wholesale shopping mall in Wuhan, and it supports large numbers of people, but under the strict lockdown conditions, they had no way to work and no food to eat. Then came the white paper movement after the Urumqi incident, and the whole country marched together. Even in Wuhan, they began to hold demonstrations against the strict zero-COVID policy. RFA: Were there any political slogans shouted on Hanzheng Street, for example calling on Xi Jinping to step down? Zhang Hongyuan: By the time I got there on Nov. 27, 2022, it was night, and they were clearing the protesters away. I didn’t hear any slogans like that. RFA: How did your escape from China go? Zhang Hongyuan: The process was relatively smooth, although I was very apprehensive as I was leaving. One worry was that the airline would stop me from boarding, and the other was that the border…
Guangdong court jails veteran dissident for 3 years over foreign media reports
A court in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou on Thursday jailed veteran dissident Wang Aizhong for three years after he retweeted foreign media reports on Chinese social media platforms. The Tianhe District People’s Court handed down the jail term after finding Wang guilty of “picking quarrels and stirring up troubles,” a charge frequently used to target peaceful critics of the ruling Chinese Communist Party. The court found that Wang had “used social media platforms to quote and repost false reports in the foreign media about China’s political system.” Wang, 46, also stood accused of “adding false information that seriously damaged China’s image” and of causing “serious public disorder,” it said. Police threw a security cordon around the court building, with plainclothes and uniformed officers patrolling nearby streets, and took Wang’s wife Wang Henan to attend the trial, escorted by state security police, she told Radio Free Asia. “One man and two women from the state security police sent a special car to meet me downstairs from our apartment and take me to the court,” Wang Henan said. “The two women watched me the whole time.” She described the sentence handed to her husband as “a joke.” “It’s an absolute joke, and we totally refuse to accept it,” she said. “His lawyers have argued all along that Aizhong is innocent, because nothing that he said added up to a crime.” ‘A way of keeping me quiet’ Wang Henan said she was prevented from attending the pretrial conference with her husband and his defense team, despite not having seen him in two years. “They don’t want me to know too much about the process and content of the trial,” she said. “It’s a way of keeping me quiet and stopping me from posting something publicly.” “They also want to torture me psychologically because I love Aizhong, and I haven’t seen him for two years,” Wang Henan said. Outside the courtroom, police were stationed on nearby sidewalks in a bid to prevent Wang’s supporters from showing up for him. “There are plainclothes police officers dotted along more than one kilometer from the court gates, all the way to the subway entrance,” a Guangzhou resident who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals told Radio Free Asia. “I’m guessing there are about 70-80 of them in total, and seven or eight of them are currently surrounding me,” he said. “One of them asked to see my ID … then I was told to leave immediately or I would be taken to the police station.” Fellow rights activist Liang Yiming said Wang’s online comments had always been very moderate, and that had only been exercising his constitutional right to freedom of speech. “Take the pandemic in Wuhan,” Liang said. “Wang Aizhong once called on them to disclose the number of deaths, but the authorities felt that this would cause panic.” “They don’t like people to be so proactive, but we as citizens have the right to question them, or why would we pay our taxes and fund a government that just does whatever it wants,” he said. Guangzhou protests The length of Wang’s sentence likely means he will be released in May 2024, after time already served is deducted from the sentence. The family has indicated that it supports him in appealing the sentence. Wang was initially detained at his home in Guangdong’s provincial capital, Guangzhou in May 2021, and his apartment searched by police, who confiscated reading materials and computer devices. He had been a key activist during protests in Guangzhou in January 2013 that were sparked by the rewriting of a New Year’s Day Southern Media Group editorial calling for constitutional government. Activists, journalists, and academics faced off with the authorities for several days after the Southern Weekend newspaper was forced to change a New Year editorial calling for political reform into a tribute praising the Chinese Communist Party. The protest was one of the first overt calls by members of the public for political freedom since large-scale pro-democracy demonstrations were crushed in a military crackdown in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989. He was later detained in 2014 on suspicion of the same charge, shortly before the 25th anniversary of the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen massacre. Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.
Republicans pummel top officials over China policy at Senate hearing
Republicans ripped into Cabinet officials during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on efforts to enhance U.S. security measures and the nation’s ability to compete with China. Three Cabinet members defended President Joe Biden’s budgetary request. The presence Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, a rare triple act, showed the importance of China policy for the White House. Biden administration officials have asked members of Congress for $842 billion in defense spending for the next fiscal year, in part to deter the threat of a potential military conflict with China. This year’s budgetary request is 3.2% more than the one made last year, and approximately 13% higher than the year before that. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, said during the hearing that the president’s budget was inadequate to counter the threat from China, however. He said the proposed budget did not include enough funding for the Navy or other branches of the military. Overall, the budget proposal was a sign of the president’s weak approach to China, said Graham. He used an expletive to describe his assessment of the president’s policy: “This idea that we have a strong China policy is a bunch of [expletive].” Secretary of State Antony Blinken [left] speaks with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., before a Senate Appropriations hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, May 16, 2023. Credit: Associated Press Another Republican member of the committee, Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas, said during the hearing that he has been disappointed in the president’s record on trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In contrast, Moran said, China has been aggressively pursuing trade agreements and gaining a competitive advantage. Tensions between the U.S. and China have escalated in recent months, as both the witnesses at the hearing and the Republicans on the committee agreed. Austin described China’s “bullying and its provocations” in the Indo-Pacific region. U.S. military leaders are now trying to beef up their forces in order to defend Taiwan, if it becomes necessary, and to defend the island nation against the Chinese military. “The United States will soon provide significant additional security assistance to Taiwan,” he said. Earlier this month, as Reuters reported, Biden White House officials had agreed to send $500 million worth of weapons aid to Taiwan. Competition with China Commerce Secretary Raimondo said the president’s proposed budget includes resources that are “critical for national security.” She warned about the danger from Beijing, saying that, “China is doubling down on its competitiveness with the U.S.” Senate Democrats on the spending panel sought to use the threat to frame the broader budget debate in Washington, as the White House and congressional Republicans remain at an impasse in negotiations to raise the nation’s debt limit. Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, met again Tuesday to negotiate an extension without success. According to estimates, the U.S. government could run out of money to pay its bills in two weeks. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray, a Democrat for Washington state, warned that steep budget cuts of the kind House Republicans are pushing, even if they wouldn’t come from the Pentagon, would hand China an edge as it tries to supplant the United States as the dominant world power. “China is not debating whether to pay its debt or wreck its economy,” Murray said.
Remembering late Tibetan film director Pema Tseden’s ‘weighty’ life
Pema Tseden, the renowned Tibetan director, died of a heart attack on May 8th, and many hearts worldwide are broken. As a professor of Chinese politics (and Tibet) at Cornell University I have shared his films with my students, and when I informed the current ones of this news they too were pained by his passing. To better understand why Pema Tseden’s death is so significant one can, fittingly, turn to one of his most important films, Tharlo. The first thing one sees in the remarkable 2015 movie as the opening credits fade is a lamb being fed as it sits comfortably in a bag. The camera slowly pans out to reveal that the film’s titular character, Tharlo, is nourishing the lamb. The herder is in a small rural police station, standing across from an officer, both men are Tibetan, but their lives are quite different. The officer has been integrated into the People’s Republic of China, Tharlo has not. The impetus for their meeting is this liminal status, as he does not even have an “residence identity card”, a foundation of citizenship in the PRC. And yet, for the first few moments of this scene, the two men are not discussing the steps Tharlo must take to rectify this shortcoming. Instead, the herder is reciting, from memory (and in a lyrical style redolent of the way many Tibetans chant Buddhist mantras and prayers) Mao Zedong’s highly influential 1944 speech known as “Serve the People”. The central question in the Chinese leader’s talk is what constitutes a life well lived. More specifically, Mao asks (channeling the renowned Chinese historian, Si Maqian, what determines if a death is “weightier” than Mount Tai, or “lighter than a feather”. The answer in the speech, and pondered throughout the film by Tharlo, is that if an individual has “served the people” his death will have true heft (and the life before it meaning). The true weight of Pema Tseden’s death does not simply stem from his promotion of Tibetan art and culture. This is as despite how prolific the Tibetan director was, and as glowing as its critical reception, it would be hyperbole to assert his work is universally known and beloved. It alone did not have the weight of a mountain. What does is his unceasing effort to write fiction and make movies inside the PRC. And to do so during a period in which Beijing has ruled Tibet with an increasingly heavy hand, and the divide between the Tibetans and Chinese has yawned particularly wide. This is not to assert that Pema Tseden was able to bridge such the gap between the two sides. On the contrary, all indications are that such a task is well beyond the reach of anyone. But it is to call attention to the Tibetan director’s efforts to operate in such a perilous in-between space. To stand then not as a conduit for solving the Tibet-China conflict, but rather to persist and even flourish artistically in the most contested of spaces. Operating there may not have endeared Pema Tseden to everyone, but it does constitute “serving of the people”. Given the harm Mao caused to Tibet through making sure it became a part of the PRC, there is an admittedly bitter irony in framing the Tibetan director’s significance using his words. But this is an irony that Pema Tseden himself implicitly acknowledged in Tharlo. The main character’s recall of the speech not only opened the film, but his inability to recite it again during his haunting return to the police station comprised the next to last scene in the movie. Tibetan filmmaker Pema Tseden sits in the Beijing Film Academy theater in Beijing before a screening of his film “Tharlo,” Nov. 12, 2015. Credit: AFP The Tibetan director then did not serve Mao’s imagined proletariat, but rather the Tibetan people (in all their various stations). He gave voice to their lived experience. He shed light on the complex moral dilemmas they faced in a society that has been shaken not only by the Chinese state, but also through the economic forces of modernization and globalization. He illuminated how mundane aspects of their everyday lives were laden with meaning and often fraught with wide-ranging consequences. The situation inside China today, though, is quite bleak. Under the leadership of Xi Jinping the country has turned in the direction of a sharper brand of authoritarianism than was practiced by his immediate predecessors at the helm of the Chinese state. And the chill this has caused within China has been felt more acutely in Tibetan regions within the country as policies in such places have tilted more and more toward assimilation (rather than autonomy). As a result, there are very few Tibetans left who will be able to replicate what Pema Tseden accomplished in his lifetime. The space for this has been so sharply curtailed, and the risks of doing so have grown. The death of the Tibetan director is then surely weightier not only than Taishan, but more aptly Mt. Everest. When someone dies in Tibet people tend not to say “sorry for your loss” to the bereaved, but rather “may your heart be mended”. This sentiment is particularly warranted in response to the Tibetan director’s untimely passing. Allen Carlson is an associate professor in Cornell University’s Government Department and serves as director of the school’s China and Asia Pacific Studies program. The views in this article are his own and do not reflect the position of Cornell University or Radio Free Asia.
Wolf out the door
China and Canada have carried out tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats, with Beijing responding in kind after Ottawa showed the door to a Chinese diplomat who was found trying to intimidate a Canadian politician and his family. The ethnic Chinese lawmaker had drawn Beijing’s wrath over his sponsorship of a Canadian parliamentary motion condemning China’s rough treatment of its Uyghur minority group. Sharp-elbowed, sharp-tongued “Wolf Warrior” diplomats have stoked concerns about Chinese influence operations in a number of host countries with their efforts to stifle exiled critics and opponents.
