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Category: Middle East

Tourist rubles ensure warm welcome for Russians in Thailand

Editor023 mins

>>> Read the more on Bear East Ask any Russian person which country in Southeast Asia they have heard about and you’d probably hear “Thailand.” Russian tourists are crowding its beaches, bars and even its Orthodox churches. That’s not just a sign of Thailand’s legendary reputation for hospitality and knack for catering to foreign visitors that has earned the country the moniker “Land of Smiles.” Thailand welcomed 11.4 million foreign tourists in 2022. But with Russians increasingly limited on where they can visit because of international restrictions imposed on Moscow relating to the war in Ukraine, Thailand has kept its doors open. From Russia with love On the southern island of Phuket, some areas have turned into something resembling a resort town on the Black Sea with Russian men and women lounging on the beach, trying to soak up as much sun as possible.  There are signboards in Cyrillic, Russian mothers pushing strollers around and new Russian restaurants that offer a taste of home. Russian real estate agents, tour companies and even Russian tour guides cater to the visitors – which rankles locals in the tourist trade, who say they are losing business. “Russian people love Thailand, the people, the climate, the nature and the delicious food,” gushed Olesya, a young Russian businesswoman. She and her husband, Denis, have been to Phuket five times.  Tourists take photos on Patong Beach in Phuket, June 20, 2023. Credit: Tran Viet Duc/RFA Olesya said they felt welcome here and “have not sensed any negative vibes” against Russians – although they were shy of speaking to a journalist and requested to be identified by their first names only. Thailand is America’s oldest ally in Asia, and was for decades a bulwark against Soviet influence in Southeast Asia during the Cold War, but it’s also a nation with a storied past with Russia.  Diplomatic relations date back 126 years, when the then-Kingdom of Siam’s modernizing monarch, Chulalongkorn, also known as King Rama V, traveled to St. Petersburg in 1897. Despite the international maelstrom over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Thailand has not condemned Moscow and has abstained from several votes against Russia at the United Nations. But perhaps more significantly, there are still ways for Russians to spend their money in Thailand, which relies heavily on tourism earnings. Due to U.S. and U.K. sanctions, Russians can’t conduct transactions via the global SWIFT electronic payment system. But they can still use China’s UnionPay – the world’s largest card payment network – or use cash or cryptocurrencies.  Shops catering to Russian tourists have sprung up in Pattaya, Thailand, June 22, 2023. Credit: Tran Viet Duc/RFA Cornering the condo market The Thai Tourism and Sports Ministry said that between January and June this year nearly 800,000 Russian nationals visited the Kingdom, and the number is expected to reach more than 1 million by the end of the year. The Tourism Authority of Thailand has set an ambitious target of receiving 2 million Russian visitors in 2024. Half of them are expected to fly to Phuket. A free 45-day visitor visa and direct flights between the two countries make the goal easier.  Maetapong “Oun” Upatising, president of the Phuket Real Estate Association, says that the Russian market bounced back quickly after the COVID downturn, both in tourist numbers and property demands. Russian visitors prefer to rent villas and condominiums instead of hotels when staying longer than three months, and the number of rental units in Phuket alone is more than ten thousand a month, he said. There is also a growing number of rich Russians who obtained long-term resident visas that let them stay in Thailand for five to 10 years or more. Those so-called “elite visas” cost at least U.S.$20,000 yet the number of elite visa holders from Russia is increasing steadily.  Between 5,000 and 10,000 wealthy Russians are thought to have obtained long-term visas and become residents in Phuket. Last year Russian buyers purchased nearly 40% of all condominiums sold to foreigners on the island, according to the Thai Real Estate Information Center. Russian investors also put large sums of money into other types of properties, among which luxury villas are the top buy. Those villas come with hefty price tags, starting from 25 million baht ($730,000), according to Maetapong from the Phuket Real Estate Association. Anton Makhrov [left], editor of Novosti Phuketa newspaper, and Jason Beavan, general manager, are seen in their office in Phuket, June 19, 2023. Credit: Tran Viet Duc/RFA Organized crime Phuket even has its own Russian newspaper. Despite the comparative ease with which Russians can travel to Thailand, the paper’s editor gripes that his countrymen get a bad rap. “Right now, it’s legitimate not to like the Russians,” said Anton Makhrov, the editor of Novosti Phuketa, who likens it to a kind of xenophobia against Russians in Thailand. “When you get on Facebook, you’ll see lots of comments such as ‘the Russians are aggressive and arrogant, we don’t like you’ but when you talk to people they all say they have good relations with some Russian friends,” he said, speaking in the weekly paper’s office in a small alley in Kathu district of Phuket. Russian visitors have also often been blamed for bad behavior, as well as petty crime such as drunk-driving and theft. The invasion of Ukraine in 2022 also appears to have dimmed Thais’ perception of Russian people. Katherine Aliakseyeva, principal of the Russian Dance Academy “Katyusha” in Bangkok, says she’s worried about the safety of her staff and students. The school has been regularly taking part in cultural events organized by the Russian Embassy. There are also long-held suspicions that Russian “mafia” operate in Thailand. A December 2009 cable by the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok that was declassified in 2019 said that “Russian organized crime circles established a presence in Thailand in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union.” According to the diplomatic cable, U.S. and Thai law enforcement agencies reported that “criminal networks composed of mostly…

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Vietnamese rescued from Myanmar casinos stuck in war zone

Editor012 mins

Scores of Vietnamese nationals trafficked to Myanmar and rescued by security authorities in October are stranded in a war zone near the border with China and cannot leave the Southeast Asian country, according to a video they made and to some of their parents. The 166 Vietnamese, who say they are running out of food and want officials to help them leave Myanmar, recorded a video of themselves chanting that they are Vietnamese citizens and have been stuck in Myanmar for 40 days without food, electricity or water.   “We are now living in cold weather, and our food is exhausted because we have run out of money,” they say on the video, which a relative of one of those stranded sent to Radio Free Asia. “Please help us to return to Vietnam as soon as possible, Vietnamese Embassy! Save us, please!”  RFA could not independently verify the video. A reporter made multiple attempts to contact the stranded people via various messaging applications, but did not receive any responses.  The Vietnamese had been trafficked to northern Myanmar to work for online gambling companies, where they faced harsh working conditions and abuse by their employers.  Myanmar security forces rescued them on Oct. 20 and arranged for them to stay temporarily in an abandoned school in Shan state’s Laukkai township.  When the group stops chanting in the video, a Vietnamese man says the Vietnamese Embassy in Myanmar informed them that it had been able to verify information about them, but no diplomats had yet visited the group or arranged for their repatriation. “I hope the embassy and the Vietnamese government will try to save us and help us return home as soon as possible,” he said.  Trafficked to casinos, scam rings The trapped Vietnamese workers are among the hundreds of thousands of people who have been trafficked by organized criminal gangs to Southeast Asia and forced into working at illegal casinos or online scams, according to a United Nations report issued in August.  The Vietnamese citizens, who say they were tricked into working at fraudulent gambling establishments in Myanmar, faced abuse from their employers. RFA contacted the foreign affairs ministries in Myanmar and Vietnam for comment, but received no response. When RFA called the Vietnamese Embassy in Myanmar on Friday, a reporter was told to contact the Consular Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. An officer in the department’s Citizen Protection Call Center said the “rescue and provision of assistance to stranded citizens in Myanmar are very complicated and time-consuming as the country is undergoing a civil war.”   An officer surnamed Lap in the consular division of Department of Foreign Affairs in Vietnam’s Kien Giang province — home to about 100 of the stranded workers — said the agency received more than 20 petitions from residents who are their relatives. The agency forwarded the petitions to the Foreign Affairs Ministry, but had received no response.  During a Vietnamese Foreign Ministry press briefing on Nov. 9, spokesperson Pham Thu Hang said officials had identified 166 Vietnamese citizens among foreigners rescued from “deceptive casinos” and took them to a safe area in northern Myanmar, bordering China.”  But Vietnam’s access to the stranded people and effort to protect its citizens faced difficulties because of armed conflict in Myanmar’s northern border area and other places, she said.  A man from Kien Giang province, who declined to be named for safety reasons, told RFA that his daughter was among those stranded and that she and others were being held under temporary detention while Burmese authorities conducted an investigation.  Though several months have passed, she does not know why the investigations have not yet been completed, he said. Local police gave him similar information, he said.  A woman from the southern province of Kien Giang whose daughter is among the stranded group told RFA on Friday that her daughter and others were rescued by Myanmar’s army during an administrative inspection at a company with the Vietnamese name Lien Thang Group. The 166 stranded Vietnamese are living in classrooms where the power is on for only one or two hours a day, said the woman who requested anonymity for safety reasons. They do not have access to drinking water, though they receive two meals daily from the Burmese Army, consisting of a bowl of rice and some vegetable soup, she said.  “It’s getting cold these days, but many don’t have warm clothes,” she said.  Phone scams Despite having a stable job at a local restaurant in Kien Giang, her daughter was enticed to leave for Myanmar in mid-August this year to get another job with a lighter workload and better pay, her mother said. The employer promised to pay her 21 million dong, or about US$865, monthly.  “Things were quite pleasant in the first two weeks as they let her go shopping and eat at restaurants,” the young woman’s mother said. “Then, the company signed a labor contract [with her] and started to apply their rules and tighten everything. Even phones were not allowed.” The employers forced the young Vietnamese woman and the other workers to use Facebook to make calls soliciting people to put money into an investment scam, giving her a daily revenue quota of 200-300 million dong (US$8,200-12,400), the mother said.  If they failed to do so, their employers would leave them hungry in the room, beat them or apply electrical shocks. The company forced some of her co-workers to find and entice Vietnamese people to go [to Myanmar] and work for the company,” she said.” They would be beaten and electrocuted if they failed to meet this quota, too.”  The woman said that her daughter and a group of dozens of friends left Vietnam for Myanmar together, and they all worked for a company whose management team speaks Chinese and Burmese. They used Vietnamese translators to communicate with the workers.  The people stranded come from various places in Vietnam, with about 100 from Kien Giang province, she said.  In September, RFA Vietnamese reported on the…

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Kissinger had a consequential, controversial impact across Asia

Editor09 mins

Henry Kissinger, who died on Nov. 30 at the age of 100, was an influential diplomat and strategist who wielded major influence on U.S. foreign policy for more than five decades. President Nixon’s National Security Adviser Henry A. Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, the chief North Vietnamese negotiator at the Paris peace talks, speak to the media in Paris, June 13, 1973. (Michel Lipchitz/AP) Credited for arms negotiations with the Soviet Union and shuttle diplomacy in pursuit of Middle East peace, Kissinger had a great impact on events across Asia.  Presidential advisor Henry Kissinger tells newsmen at the “Western White House” in San Clemente, Calif., that the Cambodia issue is being discussed with Chinese envoy Huang Chen, July 6, 1973. (AP) He was a central figure in President Richard Nixon’s early 1970s U.S. diplomatic opening with China and won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the end of the Vietnam War. President Richard Nixon and Ambassador Agha Hilaly of Pakistan huddle over a newspaper account as they discuss the devastation in Pakistan, at the White House on Nov. 23, 1970. Henry Kissinger [right] is also in attendance. (AP) Critics condemn his role in the bombing of Cambodia and Laos, his backing of Pakistan’s military despite its 1971 campaign of killings and mass rape in East Pakistan, the future Bangladesh.  U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger [left], Chinese Deputy Prime Minister Deng Xiaoping and White House Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld admire the banquet site at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Nov. 25, 1974. (AP) They say he greenlighted Indonesia’s seizure of former Portuguese colony East Timor in 1975 that led to a quarter century of brutal occupation. U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger confers with Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheik Mujibur Rahman in Dacca, Bangladesh, Oct. 30, 1974. (AP) Kissinger, who served as secretary of state and national security adviser in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, led arms control talks with the Soviet Union, and worked to improve relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors through intensive shuttle diplomacy.  Presidential advisor Henry Kissinger chats with Pakistan President Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan in Rawalpindi, July 8, 1971. (AP) He visited China more than 100 times, and met every leader, and advised at least 10 U.S. presidents on foreign policy. U.S. President Richard M. Nixon congratulates Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on his 1973 Nobel Peace Prize award, at the White House in Washington, D.C., Oct. 16, 1973. (AP) His first, secret, visit to Beijing in 1971 opened the door to diplomatic relations between China and the United States seven years later. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is seen at the State Department in Washington, D.C., after the announcement that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize, Oct. 16, 1973. (AP) Improved U.S.-China relations gave Kissinger leverage against the the two countries’ shared Cold War adversary, the Soviet Union, leading to arms control treaties between Washington and Moscow. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger greets Indonesia Foreign Minister Adam Malik during a State Department luncheon in Malik’s honor in Washington, D.C., June 29, 1976. (AP) U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Kissinger’s wisdom “led presidents, secretaries of state, national security advisors, and other leaders from both parties to seek his counsel.” Japanese Prime Minister Takeo Miki gesticulates as he talks with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in Tokyo at Miki’s official residence, Dec. 8, 1975. (Koichiro Morita/AP) Amid widespread mourning by Chinese state media and social media users, Xi and other top leaders sent condolences to Kissinger’s family. A waitress pours a drink for former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at a banquet in Beijing in his honor, Nov. 9, 1985. (Neal Ulevich/AP) “Dr. Kissinger was a good old friend of the Chinese people. He is a pioneer and builder of Sino-U.S. relations,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a regular news conference. Presidential advisor Henry Kissinger [right] reports to President Richard Nixon [center] on his four days of talks in Paris with North Vietnam’s negotiators at breakfast in the family dining room at the White House, Oct. 13, 1972. (John Duricka/AP) “China and the U.S. should carry forward Kissinger’s strategic vision, political courage and diplomatic wisdom… and promote the sound, stable and sustainable development of China-U.S. relations,” Wang added. Presidential advisor Henry Kissinger [right] reports to President Richard Nixon [center] on his four days of talks in Paris with North Vietnam’s negotiators at breakfast in the family dining room at the White House, Oct. 13, 1972. (John Duricka/AP)  Xi called Kissinger “a world-renowned strategist, and a good old friend of the Chinese people.” Secretary of State Henry Kissinger greets China’s Premier Zhou Enlai before the start of their meeting in Beijing, Nov. 12, 1973. (Harvey Georges/AP) The Shanghai Communique paved the way for diplomatic normalization and trade relations between the U.S. and China. China’s President Jiang Zemin [left] talks to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at a luncheon address to U.S. business groups in New York, Oct. 23, 1995. (Jim Bourg/Reuters) His last trip to Beijing featured a meeting with President Xi Jinping in July, shortly after Kissinger’s 100th birthday. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi meets former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Nov. 22, 2019. (Jason Lee/Pool via AP) “Half a century ago, he made a historic contribution to the normalization of China-U.S. relations with brilliant strategic vision, benefiting both countries as well as changing the world,” Xi said in response to Kissinger’s death. Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, July 20, 2023. (China Daily via Reuters)

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Faced with decline in marriages, Xi calls on women to build families

Editor012 mins

Faced with plummeting marriage rates, flagging births and a rapidly aging population, Chinese President Xi Jinping wants the country’s women to step up and embody “the traditional virtues” of marriage and raising children in a bid to “rejuvenate” the nation. The number of Chinese couples tying the knot for the first time has plummeted by nearly 56% over the past nine years, the financial magazine Yicai quoted the 2023 China Statistical Yearbook as saying, with such marriages numbering less than 11 million in 2022. Young people are increasingly avoiding marriage, having children and buying a home amid a tanking economy and rampant youth unemployment, part of an emerging social phenomenon known as the “young refuseniks” – people who reject the traditional four-fold path to adulthood: finding a mate, marriage, mortgages and raising a family.  A recent poll on the social media platform Weibo found that while most of the 44,000 respondents said 25-28 is the best age to marry, nearly 60% said they were delaying marriage due to work pressures, education or the need to buy property. Georgetown University student Chelsea Yao, 22, who hails from the southern city of Guangzhou, said she doesn’t find the prospect of marriage at all enticing after enduring years of restrictions under the zero-COVID policy. “It may look like a peaceful family, but parents actually have a lot of conflict,” she said. “In the end, marriage is about everyone living together … when you grow up and realize what it’s actually like, it seems a little unnecessary,” Yao told RFA Mandarin, adding that antagonism between men and women seems to be intensifying in today’s China. “Rather than making how you feel dependent on another person,” she said, “it’s better to focus on what you want to do.” Backing away Yet Xi, whose 24-member Politburo is the first in decades not to include a single woman, is calling for the political mobilization of women like Yao to step up and compensate. Backing away from his party’s time-honored rhetoric on gender equality that was once a mainstay of its claim to legitimacy, Xi told a recent meeting that women have a “unique” role to play in the nation’s return to family life. China’s President Xi Jinping speaks at an event on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders’ Week in San Francisco, California, Nov. 15, 2023. “We need to … guide women to play their unique role in carrying forward the traditional virtues of the Chinese nation,” he says. Credit: Carlos Barria/Pool/AFP “We need to … guide women to play their unique role in carrying forward the traditional virtues of the Chinese nation, establish a good family tradition, and create a new trend of family civilization,” Xi told a recent meeting with leaders of the party’s All China Women’s Federation in comments reported by state news agency Xinhua. “Only with harmonious families, good family education, and correct family traditions can children be raised and society develop in a healthy manner,” Xi said.  “We need to actively cultivate a new culture of marriage and childbearing,” he said, including “guiding young people’s views on marriage and childbearing” in a bid to reverse the rapidly aging population. Chinese women should be mobilized “to contribute to China’s modernization,” Xi told All-China Women’s Federation leaders. “The role of women in the … great cause of national rejuvenation … is irreplaceable.” Meanwhile, Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang’s speech to the five-yearly Chinese Women’s National Congress also broke with the party’s usual lip-service to gender equality – by not mentioning it at all. Widening gender gap The lack of enthusiasm for women’s rights has had a real-world impact, too.  When Xi Jinping took power in 2012, China ranked 69th in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, which measures policies and suggests measures to address gender inequality. By 2023, the country had fallen to 107th place. While few women have ever risen to the highest ranks of the Communist Party, Xi’s insistence on a domestic role for women is a departure even from the luke-warm, Mao-era rhetoric about gender equality, and the depiction of the party in propaganda films as liberating working class and rural women from the shackles of traditional gender roles, including forced marriage and prostitution. China’s Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang speaks during a meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, July 4, 2023. His speech to this year’s Chinese Women’s National Congress made no mention of gender equality. Credit: Pedro Pardo/Pool via Reuters In May 2021, Beijing unveiled new plans to boost flagging birth rates and reverse population aging, raising the official limit on the number of children per couple from two to three. But Chinese women haven’t been stepping up to solve the government’s population problems as readily as Xi had hoped. And the current emphasis on traditional Confucian culture appears to have exacerbated gender inequality under Xi, who has also offered little in the way of practical assistance, according to Wang Ruiqin, a former member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference from the western province of Qinghai. “The liberation of women … should be fundamentally based on their social status,” she said. “But the Chinese Communist Party’s claim that women hold up half the sky is really about political expediency.” She said that rather than just calling on women to take more responsibility for marriage and childrearing, the government should put its money where its mouth is. “The Chinese Communist Party is aware of these problems … but doesn’t actually have any fundamental measures to remedy them,” Wang said. “There is no women’s liberation, no employment or welfare protections, and the cost of raising children isn’t shared by the government.” Obstacles Chinese women face major barriers to finding work in the graduate labor market and fear getting pregnant if they do manage to get a job, out of concern their employer will fire them, a common practice despite protection on paper offered by China’s labor laws. And the authorities have cracked down hard on…

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Myanmar junta uses pregnant women and monks as human shields

Editor05 mins

Nearly 100 civilians were caught in a battle in western Myanmar on Tuesday, locals told Radio Free Asia. As fighting in Rakhine state between the Arakan Army and junta forces continues over the disputed town of Pauktaw, residents report an increase in abductions and injuries across the region.   Junta forces abducted nearly 100 people, including monks, the elderly, children and pregnant women in Pauktaw to use as human shields. The civilians were abducted on Nov. 16 when the Arakan Army captured Pauktaw’s police station, which was previously occupied by junta troops. In retaliation, the regime attacked the coastal area by firing weaponry from navy ships and aircraft.  By the following week, the junta army and police had re-captured Pauktaw and were patrolling neighborhoods.  The Arakan Army seized control of the city again on Tuesday and rescued the captured civilians, according to a statement the group released. It also stated the regime was frequently using heavy artillery and launching rockets from ships and by aircraft.  The junta stated it had captured Pauktaw before Tuesday, but an announcement by junta spokesman Maj. Gen Zaw Min Tun in military-controlled newspapers did not say anything about the arrested people. Fighting between the two groups is also affecting civilians in the state’s northeast. On Monday evening in Paletwa township on the Chin state border, eight civilians, including five children, were injured in a junta airstrike.  Some of the children are in a critical condition after they were struck by bomb shrapnel while bathing in a creek, said a woman from Mee Zar village, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. “The children were hit when they came back from bathing in the creek down from the village. The adults were hit when they went to pick things up,” she said. “I heard that the injured are in a critical condition. At the moment, we’re hiding when we hear the sound of the plane. I am still afraid it will come again.” All eight victims are currently receiving medical treatment at Mee Zar District Hospital. RFA contacted Chin state’s junta spokesperson Kyaw Soe Win by phone regarding the aerial bombardment, but he did not respond by the time of publication. Mee Zar village is about 10 kilometers (six miles) away from Paletwa township’s Hta Run Aing village, where another clash between the junta army and Arakan Army erupted, locals said. On Monday evening, a Christian church in Matupi township’s Lalengpi town was destroyed during the junta’s airstrike, according to the locals. Eleven residents, including eight children, were killed during an aerial bombardment on Vuilu village in Matupi township on the night of Nov. 15.  Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn.

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China orders financial support for battered property sector

Editor010 mins

The Chinese government has urged banks and financial institutions to back a sputtering real estate sector where the biggest developers have buckled under the weight of tremendous debt and don’t have the capital to complete pre-sold homes to hundreds of thousands of homebuyers. The move underscores Beijing’s dilemmatic position of having to defuse local government debt risks while pumping capital into the real economy to prop up growth. The property sector is particularly precarious not only because it is a major growth driver, but the housing issue is closely tied to social stability.  Authorities told financial institutions that they need to support “reasonable” fund-raising requirements for developers that are “operating normally,” according to a report from the official Xinhua news agency Friday.  The report added that capital raised through credit, bonds and stock issuance has paid off in helping stabilize the real estate market, citing a meeting organized by the central bank, the People’s Bank of China, foreign exchange and stock regulators, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange and the China Securities Regulatory Commission.  The meeting was also attended by officials from the two stock exchanges, policy banks and 18 national commercial banks, five asset management firms and four of the country’s biggest stockbrokers. There is no official tally of the extent of debt chalked up by property developers.  China Evergrande is the world’s most indebted developer with more than US$300 billion in liabilities. It defaulted on its debt two years ago and has yet to come up with a repayment plan. At the end of October, a Hong Kong High Court judge gave the Hong Kong-listed company until Dec. 4 to come up with a plan when a winding-up hearing will be heard. Evergrande is not alone. Country Garden and Sunac are also in hot soup.  The crisis is more pronounced in tier-two cities or below, where most of the 841 demonstrations against property developers since January 2022 to date have occurred, based on data from Freedom House’s China Dissent Monitor. Most of them were staged by homebuyers demanding delivery of their properties with a smaller proportion of construction workers seeking salary payments. Implications of property woes China’s property crisis is a growing concern and a drag on the broader economy – the financial wellbeing of local governments, where traditionally, land sales for real estate projects are a huge contributor to their revenues.  These governments are already under pressure from the cracks of local government fund vehicles that are issued to fund infrastructure like roads and airports but have not generated enough returns to cover their obligations. And massive debts piling up are also fueling concerns of a systemic financial crisis. The Central Financial Commission, the financial watchdog led by Premier Li Qiang, on Monday emphasized in a meeting the need to improve financial services that will help economic development. “It is necessary to comprehensively strengthen financial supervision, the responsibility of managing risks, coordination among departments, heighten control of the risk sources as they are diffused, and boost relevant reforms to improve prevention, warning and management mechanisms,” according to a separate Xinhua report citing a commission meeting that Li chaired. A woman rides a scooter past a construction site of residential buildings by Chinese developer Country Garden, in Tianjin, China August 18, 2023. Credit: Reuters Government debts are expected to account for 83% of China’s gross domestic product in 2023, up from 77% last year, according to data from the International Monetary Fund.  The IMF’s Mission Chief for China, Sonali Jain-Chandra pointed out that more measures are needed to secure a recovery of the property market, which should include ways to accelerate the exit of troubled developers and greater central government funding for housing completion, following a visit to China early this month. According to analysts at Nomura, an estimated 20 million units of unconstructed and delayed pre-sold homes across the country are the biggest hurdle to turning the property crisis around, and about $440 billion will be needed to complete their construction, CNBC reported. In October alone, official data showed that the scale of unsold floor area for residential real estate soared by 19.7%, compared with October 2022. Funds raised by developers dropped 13.8% to 10.73 trillion yuan (US$1.48 trillion) in the first 10 months of the year. Domestic loans into real estate dropped 11% while foreign investments plunged 40.3% in the 10 months. The rating agency S&P Global has forecast China’s property sales to fall as much as 15% this year, with the drop to taper off to 5% for 2024. The continued property slump would hinder the post-COVID recovery of the world’s second-largest economy where real estate and its related industries make up about 30% of GDP. Beijing has also been ramping up measures to prop up the economy. It announced last month a 1 trillion yuan government bond issuance, which allows local governments to frontload part of their 2024 bond quotas. Indications for 2024 Investors and businesses are also watching out for more indications on Beijing’s macroeconomic direction for 2024 at next month’s annual Central Economic Work Conference. “I think they will continue to send similar signals as what we’ve seen in the past couple of quarters. That is, a high priority to supporting private consumption, fighting financial risks including from housing, continued fiscal support and continued support for the private sector and further opening-up,” said Allan von Mehren, China economist for Danske Bank.  “It will be interesting to see if we get any clues about their growth target for 2024.”  Von Mehren pointed out that there is speculation of a 5% target but he sees this as a “quite ambitious target as the base effects will be much less favorable compared to this year.” Beijing has set a growth target of around 5% for this year, which state media has touted this month to be within reach. Last month’s data show China’s recovery to remain uneven. While industrial output and retail sales were on an uptrend, the consumer price index, a gauge of inflation,…

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Russian soldier in Ukraine discusses North Korean weapons in video

Editor06 mins

Video of a Russian soldier in Ukraine talking about ammunition supplied by North Korea surfaced on social media this week, apparently debunking denials by Pyongyang and Moscow that the isolated East Asian country is supplying weapons for the war there. A video titled “Multiple rocket launcher (MRL) extended-range shells kindly provided by North Korean comrades have arrived in the NVO zone,” was shared on Nov. 12 on a Telegram channel called Paratrooper’s Diary, which contains frequent posts from Russian troops fighting in the northern front in Ukraine. The video shows a Russian soldier standing in front of a pile of rockets. “Our friends gave us a new type of ammunition similar to the twenty-second,” the soldier said in a possible reference to the rocket’s designation of R-122. “They travel farther distances and hit the target with higher accuracy. The victory will be ours.”   If the weapons are indeed North Korean, it would be proof that Russia is in violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874, which prohibits arms trade with North Korea. The prospect that the rockets were provided by North Korea is very likely, David Maxwell, vice president of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy, told RFA Korean.    “These MRLs are ubiquitous,” Maxwell said. “Since the weapons are so common and so heavily used for indirect fire against tactical Ukrainian targets, the Russians are likely going through their ammunition stocks rapidly and thus need resupply from North Korea.” The rockets in the video were also identified as North Korean by military blogger War Noir on X.  “The rockets appear to be rare R-122 HE-FRAG rockets with F-122 fuzes. These are produced and supplied #NorthKorea/#DPRK,” a Nov. 8 tweet by War Noir, which contained the same video, said.  RFA previously reported that the same blogger had identified North Korean weaponry used by Hamas fighters in attacks on Israel last month.  Russian denials Though both Pyongyang and Moscow have denied that North Korea is supplying Russia with weapons for use in Ukraine, this is not the first time that evidence to the contrary has surfaced. In October, the Ukrainian weapons analysis group ‘Ukraine Weapons Tracker’ released photos showing the Russian military using North Korean-made artillery shells in a tweet on X. But on Tuesday, a spokesman for the Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov, said at a press conference that allegations that Russia was using North Korean weapons were “completely groundless.” “[The allegations] have not been confirmed by anything,” he said. North Korea has also dismissed the idea, calling it an “absurd manipulation of public opinion.” The United States is deeply concerned about “the expansion of military cooperation between North Korea and Russia,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said on Tuesday. “North Korea is providing lethal weapons to Russia.” Meanwhile, South Korea’s Ministry of Unification was also critical of the apparent uptick in military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow at a press briefing last month. “North Korea has repeatedly denied arms trade with Russia, but related circumstances are coming to light one after another,” the ministry’s spokesperson Koo Byoung Sam said. “The true nature of North Korea, which has deceived the entire world, is being revealed to the world.” RFA sent a message to the administrator of the Telegram channel to confirm the veracity of the video which is saying that the Russian military received North Korean weapons but did not receive a response. Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

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APEC 2023: Xi heads for US in closely-watched summit with Biden

Editor010 mins

Even as the world watches keenly as China’s President Xi Jinping meets his American counterpart Joe Biden on Wednesday, expectations of what could transpire in a climate of fraught bilateral relations marred by a tech war and regional tensions are modest. Xi is heading to San Francisco where he is due to meet Biden on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, the first time in a year since the two met in Bali, Indonesia. Some experts, while not anticipating a change in the trajectory of the U.S.-China relationship, are hopeful that the talks will deliver some results such as the formal resumption of military-to-military relations. Diplomatic and commercial dialogues between the two have resumed after the downing of the Chinese balloon earlier this year, pointed out Zhang Baohui, director of the Centre for Asian Pacific Studies at Lingnan University.  “The two sides have even begun strategic dialogues on nuclear and maritime issues. However, the U.S. wants to reopen military to military dialogues to prevent inadvertent incidents. This meeting between the top leaders should remove the hurdle for military-to-military exchanges. “If so, this should be a significant development as the world is very concerned by the prospect of military conflicts between the two countries in sensitive areas like the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea,” Zhang said.  To be sure, the White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters on Monday that both sides will discuss strengthening communications and managing competition responsibly so that the U.S.-China relationship “does not veer into conflict” during the summit.  “The way we achieve that is through intense diplomacy,” said Sullivan. He added that there are areas where “interests overlap,” such as efforts to effectively manage competition that could be done by reestablishing military-to-military communications. Incremental outcomes If there were any outcomes to come from the Xi-Biden summit, Ian Chong, a political scientist from the National University of Singapore believes they would be “incremental, but nonetheless important” to maintain the momentum of expanding dialogue. “Such effects will not be seen immediately after the meeting. Rather, they may unfold as more areas come under discussion in the following months to inject more predictability into the U.S.-PRC relationship to avoid unintended escalation, even as competition continues,” Chong said, referring to China’s formal name, the People’s Republic of China. “Xi probably seeks to press the PRC’s case on Taiwan and the South China Sea, while probing the U.S. on trade and technology and seeking more predictably in the bilateral relationship,” he noted.  “Biden will likely reiterate U.S. positions on Taiwan and the South China Sea, while seeking more stability in the bilateral relationship. They may try to gauge each other’s positions on the Israel-Hamas conflict, Russian aggression in Ukraine, climate, and AI.” U.S. President Joe Biden meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 leaders’ summit in Bali, Indonesia, November 14, 2022. (Source: Reuters) Another area of contention that is expected to be discussed is semiconductors in light of the recent chip export ban by Biden, alongside the push for generative AI in both the U.S. and China, observed James Downes, head of the Politics and Public Administration Programme at Hong Kong Metropolitan University. “The key achievable issues or goals will likely relate to the ongoing tech war between both countries,” said Downes. “The Biden-Xi Summit will be much more successful if both sides focus on economic issues, as opposed to long-term and divisive geopolitical issues.” According to Lingnan University’s Zhang, Xi will no doubt pressure the U.S. to relax technology denial measures against China, but he believes the U.S. is unlikely to yield on this issue.  “Technological competition constitutes a central place in the overall U.S. competition strategy,” he explained. Zhang believes that Xi will try to persuade Biden to return the relationship to cooperation, away from strategic competition, seeking a U.S. commitment that it does not support Taiwan’s quest for independence. Biden, in contrast, will seek to stabilize the competition to prevent “conflict” by pursuing more measures to build “guardrails” for its competition with China, like the resumption of military-to-military dialogues.  “The US will assure Beijing that it will follow the One China principle. Nonetheless, deepening security cooperation between Washington and Taipei will continue to bother Beijing and lead to contentious relations with the US.” Seeking specific outcomes Meanwhile, Sullivan said the U.S. is looking for specific outcomes in the overlapped areas of interests from the summit, which include efforts to combat the illicit fentanyl trade and discussion between the two leaders on critical global issues such as Russia’s war against Ukraine, and the evolving crisis in the Middle East. Given China’s stance on the Middle East conflict, there may be a potential that the leaders may agree-at-large, in expressing the importance of peace in the region. China’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, Geng Shuang, said in New York on Monday that establishing peace in the region was an important task for Beijing.  However, it could be challenging for Biden and Xi to release a joint agreement on criticizing Hamas as Beijing has traditionally shown a less sympathetic stance on Israel, when compared to that of the U.S. This difference in diplomatic approaches may complicate the leaders in reaching a more detailed consensus on the Israel-Hamas war.  In fact, according to Xinhua News Agency, Geng expressed “shock and concern” over statements made by Israeli officials regarding nuclear weapons usage in Gaza Strip, labeling the Israeli remarks as “irresponsible and troubling.” While Geng condemned the idea of using nuclear weapons, largely aligning with the international community and the Non Proliferation Treaty principles, the senior diplomat did not specifically address or criticize the actions of Hamas, which have led to civilian casualties. Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.

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Cambodia’s Hun Manet goes up against the private sector

Editor014 mins

On November 13, Cambodia’s princeling prime minister, Hun Manet, will meet with Cambodia’s aggravated private sector for his administration’s first Government-Private Sector Forum which his nascent government has been preparing for months. There has already been a public furore over the likely rise in taxation, which Hun Manet has denied will happen, but anyone with sense knows it must happen.  The property sector is in a very bad way. Worse is the banking sector, where high private debt has everyone on alter and is leading to sleepless nights amongst the middle classes—domestic credit to the private sector stands at 182 percent of GDP as of last year, according to a World Bank report from last month (p. 46). By comparison, in China, it was 220 percent. Hun Manet greets supporters during a campaign rally in Phnom Penh in July 2023. Prime Minister, Hun Manet, will meet with Cambodia’s aggravated private sector for his administration’s first Government-Private Sector Forum in November which his nascent government has been preparing for months. Credit: Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP Wetting our appetites, Hun Manet has suggested that he will announce new policies, including for the property sector, later this month. One could be to allow foreigners to buy villas in gated communities (boreys), where most of the toxic credit in the property sector seems to be.  At the same time, however, Hun Manet will be being told by his elders—including his father, Hun Sen, Cambodia’s ruler for almost four decades—that he cannot give away too much to the private sector. Hun Manet is an inexperienced, slightly hollow leader whose legitimacy is tied to being his father’s chosen successor, not any of his own achievements (yet). No ‘social bargain’ The upcoming forum will be a moment when some people in the private sector—those expected to fund the lavish lifestyles of the political nobility and the increasing tax burdens of the state, but without getting an actual seat at the political table—think they can gain an advantage.  There is no “social bargain” in Cambodia between the political nobility and commoners. If the economy goes pear-shaped, the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) won’t voluntarily resign from power, nor would it allow the masses to openly protest on the streets. However, there is a delicate bargain between the political nobility and the private sector. The task for all authoritarian regimes is this: how do you ensure that the private sector pays the piper but doesn’t call the tune? After all, why maintain the political nobility (which is rentier in nature) when the private sector isn’t getting something in return? Why not go over the heads of the political rent-seekers?  A man rides a cart in Phnom Penh, Sept. 2023. Credit: Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP This dynamic isn’t specific to Cambodia. In China and Vietnam, the defining policies of Xi Jinping and Nguyen Phu Trong, the two communist parties’ general secretaries, have been a mammoth crackdown on the private sector that reasserts the communists’ monopoly on power as part of vast anti-corruption campaigns. Why? Because authoritarian governments only have to be good at one thing: denying space for any alternative to their authority. But private sectors would be an alternative if they weren’t constrained, as seemed to be the case in both communist states before 2012, the year Xi and Trong came to power. Indeed, businesses and tycoons might start demanding the predictability of the rule of law and private property rights; they might want a direct say in politics; they might start to publicly criticize their political masters (think Jack Ma of Alibaba!); and they might protest by denying the state the taxation it needs to survive.  Splurging on titles How do you rectify this? You co-opt the private sector; you turn a blind eye to its dodgy actions; you create policies favorable to its advancement; you intermarry your political nobility with the economic elites; you arrest outspoken individuals for corruption to set an example of what happens if someone steps out of line. During its succession process this year, the CPP in Cambodia has tried to appease the private sector. It has splurged on the number of oknha titles it awarded; as of June 2023, there were 1,299 people with the honorific, although the number grew after the July general elections The number of land concessions and other corrupt practices also boomed. The Cambodia Oknha Association was launched in June by Cambodia’s most prominent tycoons, with Hun Sen as honorary president. Ostensibly a way for the ruling party to collect “charitable” donations, it is actually a way for the most powerful oknha to constrain their lessors and do Hun Sen’s bidding. Hun Manet’s government now has 1,422 secretaries or undersecretaries of state, more than double the number his father’s government had. Many of these positions are bought and allow the occupiers to extract patronage payments. Moreover, the new administration has vowed to run the country in a more technocratic and economic-minded manner.  A woman on a motorcycle laden with goods rides past a Rolls-Royce at a car dealership in Phnom Penh in 2014. Credit: Samrang Pring/Reuters The apparent insinuation is that it will focus on finances, not playing at geopolitics. It has maintained or appointed ministers whom the private sector trusts. Aun Pornmoniroth, the powerful finance minister, kept his job and is now the real architect of government policy. Sok Chenda Sophea, formerly the head of the Council for the Development of Cambodia, the government body tasked with attracting and managing foreign investment, is now foreign minister. Keo Rottanak, the new Minister of Mines and Energy, was managing director of the state-owned electricity provider Electricite du Cambodge. Chheang Ra, the new health minister, was director of the state-run Calmette Hospital. However, constraining the private sector and economic barons will become a lot more difficult. Things were easier in the past when the lifestyles of the political nobility were relatively cheap (a few billion dollars) and when the Cambodian state had a small budget that was primarily funded by foreign…

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Israel-Hamas war: How tech, social media spur misinformation

Editor012 mins

The adage “The first casualty when war comes is truth” remains as relevant today as it did when the U.S. Sen. Hiram Johnson first said it more than a century ago. The recent conflict between Israel and Hamas serves as a reminder of how truth can be overshadowed by falsehoods and propaganda during times of war. In the month since violence erupted, a second invisible battle has emerged online. Both sides are involved in spreading disinformation and fake news. Old images are being passed off as new. Video game footage is presented as reality. Credible news outlets like The New York Times have faced backlash over flawed reporting. While disinformation campaigns are nothing new in war, their efficiency today is unparalleled. Advances in AI have made it cheaper and simpler to generate deceptive, but convincing fabrications. As a result, impartial audiences find themselves grappling with the challenge of distinguishing fact from fiction. Faced with this flood of propaganda, numerous reports have examined its impact on domestic and international audiences. AFCL has reviewed several of these reports, highlighting how technology and social media enable online users and governments to take advantage of religious divides and cultural intolerance by spreading misinformation. The findings paint a troubling picture of truth obscured and tensions inflamed by the digital tools of modern war. AI muddles fact and fiction The weaponization of AI is muddying the waters of truth in the Israel-Hamas conflict. As revealed by Reuters, several viral images purporting to show support for Palestians or Israelis were actually AI-generated fakes, for instance, and these are only a tip of the iceberg.  A widely shared image of Israeli citizens hanging flags off balconies was proven to be generated by AI. (Original image saved by Reuters Fact Check team, annotated by AFCL) Furthermore, advanced “deepfake” technology has enabled the creation of fabricated footage, such as a video of the U.S. President Joe Biden claiming he would send American troops to aid Israel. More dangerous than the false information itself, experts warn these AI fabrications sow doubts about even verifiable facts.  As one AI researcher told The New York Times: “The real power of this technology is how it undermines truth and trust.” In an already polarized conflict, these insidious digital deceptions risk inflaming tensions by making truth itself seem unknowable. ‘Verified users’ lead in spreading misinformation Social media platforms have become hotbeds of misinformation amid the Israel-Hamas war. Services like X, formerly known as Twitter, are rife with unsubstantiated claims and outright falsehoods disseminated by both anonymous and supposedly “verified” users. On these digital battlegrounds, propaganda and lies gain traction faster than truth. One illustrative example comes from X user “Sprinter.” Originally blocked for spreading pro-Russian disinformation, Sprinter was reinstated under Elon Musk’s ownership and granted a blue verification checkmark. The user then falsely claimed the Wall Street Journal had reported that U.S.-made bombs were dropped on Gaza’s AI-Ahli Hospital. Ironically, this false claim received nearly six times more views than the American daily’s genuine tweet about the story earlier that day.  According to internet monitoring group NewsGuard, nearly three-fourths of the 250 most popular tweets containing misinformation in the first week of conflict were posted by verified users.  Jack Brewster, one of the authors of the report, told AFCL that unlike past wars which involved large amounts of automated accounts, he believes “overwhelmingly real individuals” are behind the current wave of disinformation. The X user Sprinter (right), spread misinformation that The Wall Street Journal had reported an attack on a Gaza hospital was conducted with U.S.-made artillery shells. X  afterwards annotated the post to include a rebuttal of the claim by the WSJ itself. (Screenshot/Sprinter’s and official WSJ X accounts) Business model for monetization In their quest to maximize revenue, social media platforms have instituted business models that reward viral lies over verifiable facts, and experts warn these profit-driven decisions fundamentally undermine platforms’ role as trusted spaces for public discourse. NewsGuard cited X’s new business model as an example. X users who subscribe to a premium account can obtain the blue checkmark while also having their posts prioritized in other users’ feeds. The company further announced in July 2023 that premium users with at least 500 followers who received 5 million impressions on their posts within three months would be eligible for ad profit-sharing. Mike Caulfield, a specialist in social media and disinformation at the University of Washington, told AFCL that online misinformation will become more prevalent as long as businesses can profit from it.  Leveraging social media  Beyond the direct combatants, social media users across the world leverage platforms to advance favored narratives about the Israel-Hamas war. Their agenda-driven posts flood networks with biased misinformation. Pro-Hamas voices spotlight Gaza hospital bombings to paint Israel as evil, a disinformation expert told Reuters, while pro-Israel users accuse Palestinians of faking injuries to discredit their suffering. Even supposedly neutral parties take sides online. The Digital Forensic Research Lab, a division of the Atlantic Council, found that at least 25 X accounts claiming to be located in India coordinated posting identical tweets and videos about the conflict at nearly the same time.  Though mostly pro-Israel in content, some accounts bizarrely shared pro-Palestine messages shortly after pro-Isreal messages. By flooding platforms with contradictory claims, these users advance their own agendas, irrespective of consistency or truth.  The Digital Forensics Research Lab found multiple X accounts claiming to be based in India had released coordinated posts containing identical disinformation about the war. (Screenshots taken from The Digital Forensic Research Lab) Despite its large Muslim population, anti-Muslim sentiment among India’s Hindu majority runs high. Islamophobic rhetoric backed by the country’s ruling right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party and current Prime Minister Narendra Modi is creating anti-Palestinian attitudes and a flood of misinformation during the current conflict, according to an Al Jazeera article.  Meanwhile, misinformation coming out of Indonesia is heavily pro-Palestinian. As Voice of America analysis found, the country’s Muslim majority population and widespread pro-Palestine views among Indonesian leaders shape social media narratives…

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Investigative Journalism Reportika © March 2022 by Ij-Reportika is licensed under CC BY 4.0