- contact@ij-reportika.com
Category: Russia
Asia Fact Check Lab: Did NATO donate HIV-infected blood to Ukraine?
During the past two weeks, a conspiracy theory alleging that NATO members had donated HIV and hepatitis-infected blood to Ukraine was originally posted and spread on Weibo by “Guyan Muchan,” an influential account with more than 6 million followers. Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) tracked down and confirmed the pro-Putin Telegram channel Breaking Mash as the disinformation’s source. Further inquiries by the Ukraine-based fact-checking organization StopFake caused the Ukrainian government to release a formal statement debunking the disinformation. On Nov. 3, Guyan Muchan, a widely followed Weibo user, published a post claiming to reveal a tainted blood scandal involving NATO and Ukraine. The statement reads: “Ukraine asked NATO to provide more than 60,000 liters of blood for wounded soldiers in the Odessa, Nikolaev, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov and Zaporozhye regions. NATO member countries provided Ukraine with canned blood. However, Ukrainian medical staff found HIV and hepatitis B and C viruses in the blood after random examinations. Kiev has written to NATO requesting an independent assessment of the donor blood and asking that blood “not be collected on the African continent.” In the first group, 6.3% of the samples had HIV, 7.4% had hepatitis B and 3.2% had hepatitis C. In the second group: 5.9%, 6.8% and 3.1%, respectively. The information is obtained by leaked files after the Ukrainian government office computers were hacked.” The post contained three images. The first was a picture of a statement that hackers allegedly had obtained confidential documents from Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal’s email. The second was an alleged letter from Ukraine’s Minister of Health to Shmyhal. The third was the English translation of the letter. Each image’s background contained the word “mash” as a watermark, which AFCL used to trace the post back to its original source. Guyan Muchan is one of China’s “patriotic” influencers who in recent years rose to fame by pandering to domestic nationalist sentiment. Her post claiming the use of tainted blood was liked by hundreds of people, with other influential social media figures reposting it to millions more. This “news” swiftly spread on a number of Chinese language websites, including the popular internet news portal 163.com. What is the claim’s source? AFCL was unable to find any reports about the claim from credible English media outlets. A few English websites with poor news credibility did repost it, including the pro-Russia website info.news and the gun-lover community forum snipershide.com. A slew of unreliable Twitter accounts have also posted the claim in English. Chief among them is ZOKA, a user with more than 105,000 followers. Marcus Kolga, director at DisinfoWatch, a fact-checking project under the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Canada, told AFCL that ZOKA is a “well-known pro-Kremlin account.” AFCL also found the Russian version of the claim being spread on many websites, forums and social media platforms. After comparing both the publishing time and watermark, AFCL traced the claim back to a post on the Telegram channel “Breaking Mash,” first published at 1 a.m. on Nov. 3. The original post has since gained over 1a million views. Breaking Mash is the official Telegram channel of the Russian-language website Mash.ru. The website’s content is full of lies and is highly aligned with Moscow’s propaganda, according to Christine Eliashevsky-Chraibi, a media veteran and translator at Euromaidan Press. Mash senior staff are suspected of being close to the Russian government, with company executive Stepan Kovalchuk’s uncles, Kirill and Yuri Kovalchuk, marked as “elites close to Putin” by the United States.S. In sum, both the claim’s original Russian source along with the English websites and social media accounts that spread the claim all suffer from low credibility. Is the claim true? AFCL deems the Guyan Muchan post to be false. It came from a pro-Russia Telegram channel with low credibility. The Ukraine Ministry of Health refuted the claim in a statement offering more details about blood donation in Ukraine. The claim alleges that the “scoop” was leaked from the hacked email of Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal. But no credible media outlets reported on the leaked emails.The statements the claim relies on use questionable language that normally would not be appropriate for official documents. For example, the claim alleges that the mMinister of hHealth demanded that NATO’s donor blood “not be collected on the African continent.” The possibility of such racist language appearing in a formal government document is unlikely. Eliashevsky-Chraibi said the alleged government letter is “very suspicious” as there’s “no date, no signature, no stamp” and it was “not formal procedure.” Through the Ukraine based fact-checking organization StopFake, AFCL checked with the Ukrainian government regarding the veracity of this claim. On Nov. 7, the Ukrainian Ministry of Health published a statement on its official website refuting the claim. Ukraine has never requested blood donations from any organization outside of the country, and all donor blood needed for the battlefield comes from within Ukraine and meets European standards, according to the ministry’s statement. Whenever there is an urgent need at a blood center, people respond quickly to requests for donations, negating the need for any supplies from outside of the country. The statement adds that Ukraine does not have a “random sampling” system of donor blood. Instead, it tests all donations to ensure they are safe and reliable. The alleged letter from Ukraine’s Minister of Health is a forgery, the statement says. The allegation about blood donated to Ukraine originated on the Russian telegram channel Breaking Mash [left] and then was picked up by a pro-Kremlin account on Twitter [center] and a few hours later by an account on Weibo [right] with 6.44 million fans. Credit: Asia Fact Check Lab screenshots Background Information In late October, the Kyiv Post, a leading English newspaper in Ukraine, published a report that Russia’s Wagner private military company had recruited Russian prisoners suffering from severe infectious diseases, in particular HIV and hepatitis C. This news bears some similarities with the claim made on the Breaking Mash Telegram channel, including the mention of HIV, hepatitis and the war, but…
Xi steals the limelight at APEC, showcasing China’s regional clout
UPDATED at 5:45 a.m. EST on 11-19-2022. Even as host Thailand passes the APEC baton to its successor the United States, Chinese President Xi Jinping has been busy using the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum to highlight China’s growing clout and push back against U.S. influence in the region. Having secured an unprecedented third term as leader at the Chinese Communist Party’s Congress last month, Xi embarked on his first major foreign tour since the pandemic struck nearly three years ago – to the Group of 20 Summit in Bali, then the APEC Summit in Bangkok that ended Saturday. The APEC summit was the third and final gathering of world leaders in Asia in the space of nine days. With U.S. President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin both absent from APEC, the Chinese president virtually had the stage to himself. During his tour, Xi has for the most part struck a conciliatory tone during his encounters with other heads of states – including U.S. president. The Biden-Xi meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 went some way to tamping down months of rising U.S.-China tensions. “It certainly appears that Xi Jinping and China’s propaganda enterprise are trying to set a softer tone and appear less overtly antagonistic during the G-20 and APEC summits,” said Drew Thompson, visiting senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. While in the Thai capital, Xi met with a host of regional leaders including key U.S. allies. He held bilateral talks with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Singaporean Premier Lee Hsien Loong and Philippine President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr. on a wide range of issues including economic cooperation and security. Xi also met with Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha — although their initial photo op went viral on social media for the wrong reasons because of the appearance that Xi had snubbed Prayuth’s offer of a handshake. “President Xi certainly wants to be a major player,” said Ja Ian Chong, a political scientist at the National University of Singapore, noting the Chinese leader’s confidence in having unscripted interactions with other leaders – like when he chastised Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over alleged leaks of diplomatic conversations at the G-20. But Thompson observed: “The underlying differences between China and its neighbors and trading partners remain deeply entrenched and there are no signs that China is adapting its foreign policy approach and how it pursues its interests.” Chinese leadership Gao Zhikai, vice president of the Beijing-based Center for China and Globalization, said Xi’s attendance at APEC accentuated China’s growing leadership role in stark contrast with the U.S.’s “diminishing relevance.” Biden did in fact attend the G-20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Cambodia that preceded it – a meeting Xi skipped – in an effort to signal U.S. commitment to the region. But when it came to APEC, which focuses on economic cooperation – an area of Asia policy in which Washington is generally perceived as trailing China – Biden had returned home for a family event. “The fact that Biden is not at the meeting shows that the U.S. doesn’t care much about APEC,” Gao told RFA. “Of course, the whole world is aware that his granddaughter is getting married,” said the academic who served as a translator for late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and sometimes acts as de-facto media spokesman for the Chinese Communist Party. “But if there was interest, the U.S. would know how to show it,” he added. ‘Proud Pacific power’ That’s obviously not the narrative conveyed by Washington, which now takes over the rotating chair of the 21-member APEC bloc, which was set up in 1989 to promote free trade. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, who was in Bangkok in Biden’s place, told the summit that her country is “a proud Pacific power” and that “the United States is here to stay.” Harris had a brief meeting with Xi in which she urged the Chinese leadership to “maintain open lines of communication to responsibly manage the competition between our countries.” U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris greets China’s President Xi Jinping before the APEC Leaders’ Retreat in Bangkok, Thailand Nov. 19, 2022. (The White House/Handout via REUTERS) On the theme of economic cooperation, Harris said the Indo-Pacific serves as the market for almost 30 percent of American exports and U.S. companies invest $1 trillion a year in the region. She vowed that the U.S. “will uphold the rules of the road” and “will help build prosperity for everyone.” Her statement clearly struck a chord with some participating nations which want to avoid being caught up in big-power competition between China and the United States. Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc said his country supports “all regional and multilateral cooperation frameworks which are based on international principles and regulations.” Harris appeared to draw a contrast between the U.S. initiative and China’s Belt and Road Initiative that has invested large sums of money in infrastructure across the world, but which critics say can leave recipient countries in heavy debt to Beijing. Xi said that China is considering holding the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in 2023. Reinvigorating APEC Gao contended that Harris’ main purpose at APEC was actually to promote the U.S.-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. The Biden administration launched the IPEF in May as the center of its economic strategy for the region, and the U.S. vice president said the grouping now represents some 40 per cent of the global gross domestic product and is “dedicated to equitable growth and high environmental and labor standards.” It does not include either Russia or China. Gao said he suspects “the U.S. is hollowing out APEC for the benefit of IPEF,” which he described as an “artificial, ill-designed” grouping. “But APEC will remain APEC, a natural, coherent forum of cooperation for all countries in the region,” he said. Ja Ian Chong at the National University of Singapore said “China…
Analysis: Biden-Xi summit delivers calmer tone, reminders of US-China fault lines
Highly anticipated yet viewed with low expectations, the summit Monday between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping improved the tone in bilateral contacts after years of tensions while underscoring how Taiwan looms over efforts to keep a strategic rivalry from spiraling into conflict. After three hours of talks at a resort hotel on the Indonesian island of Bali on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit, Biden said he and Xi were “very blunt with one another,” while a Xi spokesperson described the meeting as “in-depth, candid and constructive.” Those phrases–diplomatic speak for airing sharp differences—came after both leaders, in their first face-to-face meeting since Biden took office nearly two years ago, acknowledged global expectations that the superpowers keep the numerous U.S.-China disputes from deteriorating into conflict. “The Biden-Xi meeting exceeded low expectations, with both leaders clearly expressing a desire to manage differences and work together on urgent global issues,” said Patricia Kim of the John L. Thornton China Center and the Center for East Asia Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution. The White House said Beijing and Washington also “agreed to empower key senior officials to maintain communication and deepen constructive efforts” in areas like climate talks and other global issues, including resuming long-frozen discussions by joint working groups. “The fact that the two sides agreed to reinitiate working level discussions in transnational challenges including climate change, public health and food security is quite promising,” Kim told Radio Free Asia, adding that much hard work remained. Although Biden and Xi go back more than a decade to when they were both vice-presidents, they have spoken only by phone since Biden took office. Face-to-face talks between the leaders of the two powers have value in themselves. “This was the first face-to-face meeting between President Biden and President Xi in about five years, and it occurred at a tense time in the US-China relationship,” said Sheena Chestnut Greitens, the Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. “In my view, the buildup in Chinese military and nuclear capabilities, combined with a relative lack of dialogue to understand China’s intentions and lack of robust crisis management mechanisms, pose significant risks to stability in the U.S.-China relationship,” she told RFA. President Joe Biden and China’s President Xi Jinping meet on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, Nov. 14, 2022. Credit: Reuters Neither ‘more confrontational (nor) more conciliatory’ Among other useful opportunities, Biden was able to size up Xi just weeks after he was reappointed for a norm-busting third term as leader at Chinese Communist Party. “I didn’t find him more confrontational or more conciliatory,” Biden told reporters after their summit. “I found him the way he’s always been, direct and straightforward.” The U.S. president added: “I am convinced that he understood exactly what I was saying and I understood what he was saying.” Among contentious issues Biden raised with Xi were concerns over China’s crackdown since 2019 in Hong Kong, harsh policies against minorities in Xinjiang and Tibet, trade and Russia invasion of Ukraine, the White House said. Although there were no expectations of big policy breakthroughs and there was no joint statement, Biden appeared to make headway in winning oblique Chinese criticism of Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats against Ukraine. Xi is an ally of Putin in a relationship that undercuts China’s claim to be neutral in the Ukraine war. “President Biden and President Xi reiterated their agreement that a nuclear war should never be fought and can never be won and underscored their opposition to the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine,” the White House said. Chinese statements excluded mention of this. “While this particular line did not appear on the official Chinese readout, the fact that the White House readout clearly noted that both leaders affirmed this statement was significant and a critical communication of redlines to Putin,” said Kim of Brookings. Looming largest was Taiwan, the self-ruling island democracy that Beijing views as an inalienable part of China and a domestic affair that no other country has the right to interfere in. Washington has longstanding security ties with Taipei, even as it officially recognizes only the government in Beijing under a one China policy. At their meeting on the sidelines of the G20 Summit, Nov. 14, 2022, President Joe Biden told China’s President Xi Jinping that the U.S. had not changed its one China policy, the White House said. Credit: AFP ‘The core of China’s core interests’ On Taiwan, Biden told Xi that the U.S. had not changed its one China policy, and “opposes any unilateral changes to the status quo by either side,” the White House said. Biden “raised U.S. objections to (China’s) coercive and increasingly aggressive actions toward Taiwan, which undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and in the broader region, and jeopardize global prosperity,” it said. Xi described Taiwan as “the core of China’s core interests,” and “the first insurmountable red line in U.S.-China relations,” and called for the U.S. leader to stick to his commitment in not supporting Taiwanese independence. Beijing has repeatedly accused Washington of giving support to “separatist forces in Taiwan” and retaliated by freezing climate talks and sharply increasing military activities around the island after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited in August. Biden’s denial that there has been any change in U.S. policy follows his statements that Washington would help Taiwan defend itself and comes amid moves by American lawmakers to increase military assistance to Taiwan and expedite current arms contracts. To Beijing, such U.S. actions raise doubts about Washington’s commitment to the status quo, said Chang Teng-chi, head of political science at National Taiwan University in Taipei. “Ultimately … there is no trust between the two sides, so all they can hope to do is dynamic crisis management,” he told RFA. Monday’s meeting in Bali nonetheless left the U.S. “in a better position now than we were before,” said Oriana Skylar Mastro, Center fellow…
Biden gets political boost on eve of key meeting with Xi
Leaders of half the world’s population gathered in Phnom Penh on Sunday but for the traveling White House press corps the big news was breaking half a world away as President Joe Biden’s Democrat Party re-secured control of the Senate in mid-term elections. That provided a political boost to Biden ahead of Monday’s face-to-face meeting in Bali, Indonesia, with China’s President Xi Jinping, which the American leader predicted would be defined by straight-talking between leaders of two rival powers. While the Democrats are still expected to lose control of the lower House of Representatives, which will make it more difficult for the Biden administration to get things done, the outcome was better than expected for the party. Speaking to reporters before attending Sunday’s East Asia Summit at a hotel in the Cambodian capital, Biden acknowledged that domestic politics has an impact on his international standing. The U.S. president’s trip to the region is all about signaling Washington’s commitment to the Indo-Pacific. “I know I’m coming in stronger, but I don’t need that,” Biden said. “I know Xi Jinping. I’ve spent more time with him than any other world leader. I know him well. He knows me. We have very little misunderstanding. We’ve just got to figure out where the red lines are and what are the most important things to each of us.” “There’s never any miscalculation about where each of us stand. And I think that’s critically important in our relationship,” Biden added. Although Biden had extensive in-person meetings with Xi during the Obama administration, and several phone calls with the Chinese leader since becoming president two years ago, Monday’s meeting will be their first face-to-face of his presidency. There are still many issues for him to raise, including China’s recent military exercises off Taiwan, its disputes with neighboring nations over the South China Sea, the crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong, trade and new U.S. restrictions on semiconductor technology. The meeting will take place on the sidelines of the Group of 20 Summit, which is the second installment of November’s Asian summit season. The first chapter ended on Sunday in Cambodia, which was hosting as the chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations – a position that will now be taken for the next year by Indonesia. The East Asia Summit is a gathering of ASEAN’s key dialogue partners in the Indo-Pacific. It comprises the 10 members of ASEAN, along with Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Russia and the U.S. That accounts for about 53% of the world’s population and last year, nearly 60% of global gross domestic product worth an estimated $57.2 trillion, according to the Australian government. The diplomatic impact of Sunday’s summit was diluted by the absence of Xi – China was represented by Premier Li Keqiang – and Russian President Vladimir Putin who sent Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Biden arrived late to the summit on Sunday morning, but later sat at the same table as Lavrov. There was no audio on the official feed of the meeting monitored by a journalist from the RFA-affiliated network, BenarNews, making it difficult to discern immediately if there were sharp exchanges over the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But on Saturday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba to discuss the issue. “The Secretary discussed the United States’ unwavering commitment to assist Ukraine in mitigating the effects of Russia’s continued attacks on critical infrastructure, including with accelerated humanitarian aid and winterization efforts,” the State Department said. The two also talked about renewing the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which expires on Nov. 19 to support global food security and Ukraine’s battlefield continued effectiveness. Blinken told Kuleba the U.S. considers the timing and contents of any negotiations with Russia are entirely Ukraine’s decision. Also Sunday, Biden was holding separate meetings with South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to discuss the nuclear threat from North Korea and other regional stability issues, the White House said. The U.S. has military bases in both countries. Biden’s presence at the summit gave him the opportunity to try to win over more countries into supporting the U.S. Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, an attempt to counter China’s economic and political influence in the region. Biden heads back to Washington after the G-20 while Vice President Kamala Harris takes his place at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, better known as APEC, in Thailand between Nov. 16-19.
Biden steps up engagement with ASEAN amid China rivalry and global conflict
UPDATED AT 06:15 p.m. ET OF 11-12-2022 U.S. President Joe Biden offered rare praise for Cambodia’s authoritarian premier as he encouraged diplomatic support for ending the war in Ukraine and bringing peace to Myanmar at a summit with Southeast Asian leaders on Saturday. Although the control of U.S. Congress lies in the balance back in Washington, Biden signaled commitment to the region by attending an annual gathering of leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. His appearance in Phnom Penh, a day after attending a climate change conference in Egypt, serves as a prelude to the first face-to-face meeting of his presidency with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, which will take place in Bali, Indonesia, on Monday. The U.S. and China vie for influence in Southeast Asia. Although Cambodia has faced some stiff criticism from the U.S. over its suppression of democracy, Prime Minister Hun Sen welcomed the president saying the meeting showed the Biden administration’s commitment to “ASEAN centrality and a rule-based regional architecture to maintain peace and stability in the region.” “We support the engagement of the U.S in our ASEAN community building process as truly important, especially in the context of bolstering ASEAN’s recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, promoting regional resilience as well as addressing many pressing issues such as climate change, food and energy security,” he said, adding that ASEAN planned to extend relations with the U.S. to a comprehensive strategic partnership. That will put the U.S. on level-pegging with China, which already has that status. Cambodia is hosting the summit as it holds the rotating chairmanship of the 10-nation ASEAN bloc. Indonesia takes the chair after this week’s summits. Biden stressed the importance of the partnership, saying the U.S administration would build on the past year’s U.S. $250 million in new initiatives with ASEAN by requesting a further $850 million for the next 12 months. He said it would pay for more Southeast Asian projects such as an integrated electric vehicle ecosystem and clean energy infrastructure to reduce carbon emissions. “Together we will tackle the biggest issues of our time from climate to health security, defend against significant threats to rule-based order, and to threats to the rule of law, and to build an Indo-Pacific that’s free and open, stable and prosperous, resilient and secure,” Biden said. The linchpin of the U.S. push in Southeast Asia is the Indo-Pacific Economic Partnership (IPEF) that is intended to intensify America’s economic engagement in the region. ASEAN is America’s fourth-largest trading partner. Whether the members of ASEAN will be impressed by what the U.S. has to offer is another matter. “I don’t think ASEAN states are much sold on IPEF. It contains parts that are anathema to them and yet isn’t really a trade deal, and does little to actually further regional economic integration. It’s a fairly weak package overall,” said Joshua Kurlantzick, senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. “China is already by far the region’s dominant economy and trade partner and the U.S. isn’t going to materially change that. Southeast Asian states are stuck with China as their dominant economic partner. “For some Southeast Asian states [there is] a desire to build closer strategic ties with the U.S, but the U.S. is not going to now replace China as the region’s dominant trade partner.” CAPTION: U.S. President Joe Biden meets with 2022 ASEAN Chair and Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen at the ASEAN summit in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Nov. 12, 2022. CREDIT: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque In a comment that would have raised some eyebrows among critics of the Cambodian government’s human rights record, Biden on Saturday thanked Hun Sen – for critical remarks about the war in Ukraine and for co-sponsoring U.N resolutions. Earlier this week, Hun Sen met with the Ukrainian foreign minister. He’s also expressed concern about recent attacks on Ukrainian cities and civilian casualties. Russian President Vladimir Putin has skipped the ASEAN summit and sent Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in his place. However, Biden did call for transparency over Chinese military activities at Ream Naval base on Cambodia’s southern coast, and urged Hun Sen “to reopen civic and political space ahead of 2023 elections,” and release Theary Seng, an imprisoned U.S.-Cambodian lawyer and activist. The other conflict that Biden mentioned in his public comments to ASEAN leaders was Myanmar, whose military leader was not invited to the summit. Biden said he looked forward to the return of democracy there. Human rights groups have assailed the Southeast Asian bloc for its failure to put more pressure on Myanmar to end the civil war that followed a February 2021 military coup against an elected government. On Friday, ASEAN leaders took a marginally tougher stand, calling for measurable progress toward the goals of its Five Point Consensus that include restoring democracy and delivering humanitarian aid. On Saturday Antonio Guterres voiced his support for the plan, saying “the systematic violation of human rights are absolutely unacceptable and causing enormous suffering to the Myanmarese people.” Cambodia, which has jailed opposition politicians and environmentalists, was not spared criticism by the U.N. secretary general. “My appeal in a country like Cambodia is for the public space to be open and for human rights defenders and climate activists to be protected,” he said. Biden attends the East Asia Summit on Sunday, also hosted by Cambodia, where he plans once again to discuss ways to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine and limit the global impact of the war in terms of fuel and grain shortages that are fueling global inflation. The U.S. president is also holding talks with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol expected to focus on North Korea’s recent barrage of missiles fired into the seas off the Korean peninsula — including one that passed over Japan. North Korea is also reported to be planning a nuclear test. Biden then heads to the Indonesian island of Bali to attend the Group of 20 leaders’ summit. Ahead of the G20, on…
Well-heeled Chinese plan to flee amid COVID lockdowns, economic shift
A growing share of wealthy and middle class Chinese are making plans to leave the country, citing the government’s stringent zero-COVID policies and a perceived return to the planned economy of the Mao era under leader Xi Jinping, according to online data and Chinese nationals with experience of the phenomenon. The WeChat Index, which publishes search statistics from the social media giant, on Thursday showed around 38.3 million searches using the keyword “emigration.” While the #emigration hashtag wasn’t blocked on Weibo on Thursday, the number of views was in the tens of thousands, with much of the content focusing on the disadvantages of living overseas, suggesting some kind of intervention by the ruling Communist Party’s “public opinion management” system. At their peak, search queries for the keyword “emigration” hit 70 million several times during the Shanghai lockdown between March and May, and 130 million immediately afterwards. The same keyword also showed peaks on Toutiao Index, Google Trends and 360 Trends between April and the end of June 2022. Two highly educated Chinese citizens told RFA in recent interviews that they and their friends are either leaving or planning to leave soon, as the grueling zero-COVID program of rolling lockdowns, compulsory mass testing and tracking via the Health Code smart phone app have taken their toll on people’s mental and physical health, not to mention their livelihoods and the economy as a whole. Gao, a Shanghai-based financial executive who asked for his full name to be withheld for fear of reprisals, said that lately he has been binge-watching YouTube videos in Mandarin from consultants promising to offer Chinese nationals a better life — in the Pacific nation of Vanuatu, in Moldova, even war-torn Ukraine — anywhere, in short, but China. The phenomenon even has its own code name using a Chinese character playing on the English word “run.” “I strongly and strongly encourage everyone to run!” gushes one immigration consultant on a YouTube video viewed by RFA. “Today I will be sharing how easy it is to emigrate to the United States,” the YouTuber promises. “It is very likely that after watching this video, you will start re-examining your life and making plans.” ‘Lost all hope for the future’ Gao, who had absorbed a number of such videos before speaking to RFA, said he has been looking for somewhere else to live for some time now. “The current situation isn’t looking very good,” he told RFA. “Since the 20th party congress [last month], everyone has lost all hope for the future.” “Everyone has looked at their ideas, their values, their policies, the stringency of the zero-COVID policy, the return to a planned economy and heavy-handed suppression [of dissent], and come to their own conclusions,” Gao said, adding that he and his high-earning friends all share the same view. “The fact that we are facing economic collapse — there’s nothing left worth staying on for,” he said. “Everyone is taking a risk-averse approach to planning their future, because the risks associated with staying are getting bigger and bigger.” The night market in Chiang Mai, Thailand. One Chinese activist visited an emigre Chinese arts and cultural community in the town. “There are a lot of cultural types who have congregated there … and who aren’t going back,” she says. Credit: AFP Chinese social activist He Peirong, who has nearly 40,000 followers on Twitter, said she had just left for Japan. “I had been preparing to leave the country since July, but I didn’t let anyone on WeChat know that I was leaving,” she told RFA. “I spent more than 10,000 yuan on home renovations, and I left halfway through.” “China has set off an immigration wave,” she said. “A lot of people are now heading off to live in Japan, Europe and the United States. Where people go depends on their economic situation.” She said she had also visited an emigre Chinese arts and cultural community in Chiang Mai, Thailand. “We would eat, drink and perform together every day; everyone was very happy,” she said. “There are a lot of cultural types who have congregated there … and who aren’t going back.” Before she left, He Peirong had been a vocal critic of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, and was instrumental in aiding the daring escape from house arrest and subsequent defection of blind Shandong activist Chen Guangcheng. She later took supplies to Wuhan to support citizen journalists reporting from the front line of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. She said she decided to leave China after being barred from the railway ticketing system owing to a poor “social credit” rating. “In the fall of 2018, I was blacklisted by the ministry of railways, so I filed a lawsuit against them,” she told RFA. Long waiting lists There are currently very long waiting lists for people hoping to emigrate to Europe, the United States, Canada or Australia, while price tags for investment visas in those countries are also fairly high. Southeast Asian nations are seen as too risky, due to their close ties with China, and willingness to deport Chinese nationals wanted by the authorities back home. Rights groups say China currently engages in illegal, transnational policing operations across five continents, targeting overseas Chinese for harassment, threats against their families back home and “persuasion” techniques to get them to go back, according to a recent report. Hong Kong, itself in the grip of a citywide national security crackdown and mass emigration wave following the 2019 protest movement, is also no longer a safe springboard to overseas residency, Gao said. Gao is now looking at Ukraine, where he already has a friend. “Ukraine is war-torn right now, but that won’t go on for long … there is all kinds of hope and vitality in the future of this country,” he said. “I have a friend living in the westernmost part of the country, where there’s no fighting, and they are living quite peacefully.” “People have told me that you can apply for a…
Putin confirms he won’t travel to Bali for G20 summit
Russian President Vladimir Putin officially confirmed he won’t be coming to Bali to attend the G20 summit next week, a senior official of host country Indonesia said Thursday, adding the decision was for “the best for all of us.” Minister Luhut Pandjaitan was echoing analysts’ comments that Putin’s presence could cause tensions with Western leaders who oppose Russia’s war in Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will go to Bali in Putin’s place, said Luhut, the coordinating minister of maritime and investment affairs “We have been officially notified that the Russian president will not come,” Luhut told reporters, according to BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service. “We have to respect it. Whatever happened to Russia’s decision, it is for our common good and the best for all of us.” Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” said this week that 17 leaders had confirmed their participation at the summit, including the American and Chinese presidents. Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy will likely participate in the Bali summit via a video link, a local television channel quoted the presidential spokesman as saying on Tuesday. Ukraine is not a G20 member and its president will be participating as an observer. Last week, Zelenskyy said he would not attend the Bali summit if Putin were present. In March, U.S. President Joe Biden urged Jokowi to invite Ukraine as a guest if Russia was not expelled from the Group of Twenty for invading its smaller neighbor in late February. As this year’s holder of the rotating G20 presidency, Jokowi has sought unity within the grouping of industrialized and emerging economies ahead of the summit. Western countries have condemned Russia for invading Ukraine while other G20 members including China, Indonesia and India have refused to follow suit and maintain ties with Moscow. Russian setback in Ukraine Putin’s decision not to attend the summit in person came a day after the withdrawal of Russian troops from Kherson, the city on the Dnipro River that is the front line of fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces. A potential stalemate in fighting over the winter could give both countries an opportunity to negotiate peace, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday, the Associated Press news agency reported. Indonesian Minister Luhut did not give a reason for Putin’s absence from the summit, merely saying “maybe it’s because President Putin is busy at home, and we also have to respect that,” AP reported. Political analysts, however, attribute other motives for the Russian president’s decision to stay home. “Putin’s absence from the G20 meeting in Bali is a net positive – every party stands to benefit,” Greg Barton, a professor at Deakin University in Australia, told BenarNews. “Putin is fearful of a Kremlin coup – leaving Moscow at the moment is just too risky,” he said, adding that many members of the Russian elite wanted to see him go. Radityo Dharmaputra, a political analyst at Airlangga University, echoed Barton’s observation. “There are many considerations. There may be elements seeking to overthrow him because he hasn’t won the war,” he told BenarNews. BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service.
German leader broaches human rights in China, but activists wish he went further
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz briefly addressed human rights while in Beijing on Friday for a meeting with Chinese leaders, but Uyghur and other rights groups said he didn’t go far enough. Meeting with Communist Party leader after Xi Jinping, who last month began his third five-year term in office, Scholz urged China to stand up for the international order and put pressure on Russia to end its war against Ukraine, according to a report by Politico Europe. At a joint press conference Friday with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, Scholz told reporters that he was concerned about China closing off sectors of its international economy to foreign competition and not respecting intellectual property, the report said. Scholz also called on China to respect human rights, saying Beijing could not escape the international ramifications of its treatment of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang by calling it an internal matter. “Human rights are interference in international affairs,” he said, according to Germany’s Suddeutsche Zeitung. Later Friday, the Group of Seven foreign ministers, which includes Germany and the United States, issued a statement in Münster, Germany, that touched on China’s human rights record. “We will continue to raise our concerns with China on its reported human rights violations and abuses, including in Xinjiang and Tibet,” the statement said. “We reiterate our concerns over the continued erosion of Hong Kong’s rights, freedoms and autonomy, and call on China to act in accordance with its international commitments and legal obligations.” Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, expressed dismay that Scholz touched only briefly on the topic of human rights, and that his accompanying delegation included only business representatives and no human rights experts. “It is extremely disappointing to state that the genocide of the Uyghurs is due to a different understanding of human rights,” Isa said in the statement. “Germany must now act together with its international partners to hold the Chinese government accountable.” The World Uyghur Congress as well as Tibet Initiative Germany, Freiheit für Hongkong e.V. and the Society for Threatened Peoples criticized Scholz’s entire trip to China, saying that reporters at the news conference were not given an opportunity to ask questions. Earlier this week, 70 human rights organizations issued an open letter urging Scholz to reconsider his trip to China amid growing human rights concerns. They noted that an accompanying delegation of several top German executives implied that Berlin was increasing its economic dependence on an authoritarian government at the expense of democratic principles, including upholding human rights. “The invitation of a German trade delegation to join your visit will be viewed as an indication that Germany is ready to deepen trade and economic links, at the cost of human rights and international law,” they wrote in the memo, published by Germany-based World Uyghur Congress. In calling for Scholz to reconsider his visit, the groups said: “This would send the clearest signal that Germany, as one of the leading members of the European Union, will not offer its tacit endorsement to the ongoing oppression of Uyghurs, Hong Kongers, Tibetans, and other groups within and outside the PRC’s borders,” using the initials for the People’s Republic of China, the country’s formal name. The United States and several Western parliaments have said China’s mistreatment of the Uyghurs, including mass arbitrary detentions, torture and forced labor, amounts to genocide and crimes against humanity. A damning report issued by the U.N.’s human rights chief in late August documented widespread rights abuses in Xinjiang and said the repression “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.” Later on Monday, when a reporter at a regular news conference asked Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian if the two leaders discussed issues related to human rights and the rights of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, he said China had issued a readout about the meeting. But the document made no mention of the Uyghurs, Xinjiang or human rights.
Netherlands tells China to shut down overseas offices accused of targeting activists
The Dutch government says it has ordered China to shut down its overseas “service centers” that have reportedly been used to target and harass dissidents overseas. “Because no permission has been requested from the Netherlands for this, the ministry has informed the ambassador that the stations must close immediately,” Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra said via his Twitter account. “In addition, the Netherlands is also conducting research into the stations in order to find out their precise activities.” Hoekstra’s tweet came after reports by RTL Nieuws and website “Follow The Money” alleged that two Chinese “service centers” had carried out official functions, including remotely renewing Chinese citizens drivers’ licenses without official diplomatic status. Spanish-based rights group Safeguard Defenders reported in September that Chinese police are operating from “service centers” across Europe, targeting exiled dissidents for harassment and putting pressure on them to go back to China. Chinese police are currently running at least 54 “overseas police service centers” in foreign countries, some of which work with law enforcement back home to run operations on foreign soil, the Sept. 13 report found. A growing number of governments including Canada, the United Kingdom and Spain, have said they are investigating the reports, while the Netherlands, Portugal and Ireland have ordered Chinese “service centers” in their respective territory to close. Overseas 110 Safeguard Defenders researcher Chen Yen-ting said the service centers are linked to an overseas police website called Overseas 110, which enables people to report crimes to Chinese law enforcement while located overseas. “Overseas 110 is an online platform set up by the Fuzhou police department that allows people to report crimes from overseas,” Chen said. “They have set up many such service stations overseas, basically combining online and physical sites. These are all in the public domain, and have contact numbers and addresses in the cities listed by [police in] Fuzhou.” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian denied that the centers had any law enforcement functions. “The organizations you mentioned are not police stations or police service centers,” Zhao told a regular briefing in Beijing on Wednesday. “Their activities are to assist local Chinese citizens who need to apply for expired driver’s license renewal online, and activities related to physical examination services by providing the venue.” A number of reports on official news websites in China have also reported on the service centers, with a June 6, 2022, report listing service centers run by police in the southeastern city of Fuzhou as having “police work” within their remit. Chinese national Wang Jingyu, who is seeking asylum in the Netherlands after a harrowing escape from Chinese agents last year that spanned the Middle East and eastern Europe, said he was targeted by calls he believes came from the “service center” in Rotterdam earlier this year. “I hope the Dutch government will sanction, arrest or expel these so-called overseas Chinese police,” Wang told RFA on Wednesday. “The Dutch foreign ministry has also previously said that Dutch police are making plans to protect us.” Wang told RFA last week that he received a call from someone in the Rotterdam service center claiming to be a wealthy overseas Chinese businessman looking to support dissidents. “The Chinese police and overseas Chinese service station in Rotterdam tried to meet with me in February, pretending to be this rich man saying he supports dissidents,” Wang told RFA shortly after the RTL report was published. “He wanted me to meet with him somewhere in Rotterdam, so I ignored him,” he said. “He was so angry that he started repeatedly calling me to harass and abuse me. This harassment continued until March. Tracking “suspects” Chen Yan-ting said Wang’s experience is by no means unique. “These overseas service stations are used to track people designated ‘suspects’ by the Chinese Communist Party, to put pressure on them and to force them to return to China,” Chen said. “We also suspect they may have an intelligence-gathering function, as a way to show Chinese people overseas how powerful their government is, and that they will be forced to return to China to face judicial proceedings and punishment, no matter where in the world they escape to,” Chen said. Netherlands-based China commentator Lin Shengliang said Beijing has been extending unofficial law enforcement activities around the world for some time now. “Regardless of where in the world they seek refuge, Chinese dissidents and rights activists may not be safe,” Lin told RFA. “The Chinese government will do whatever it takes to extend its suppression to every country in the world.” “This is a multi-pronged operation that can be packaged as contact with overseas Chinese associations linked to a person’s hometown, overseas student associations and even some churches, so it’s hard to escape,” Lin said. The Chinese Communist Party’s law enforcement agencies routinely track, harass, threaten and repatriate people who flee the country, many of them Turkic-speaking Uyghurs, under its SkyNet surveillance program that reaches far beyond China’s borders, according to a report from Safeguard Defenders in May 2022. Between the launch of the SkyNet program in 2014 and June 2021, China repatriated nearly 10,000 people from 120 countries and regions, according to Safeguard Defenders. Just 1% of them were brought back to China using judicial procedures; more than 60% were just put on a plane against their will, the group reported in May 2022. Experts said last month that authoritarian regimes including China and Russia are also increasingly making use of regional cooperation organizations like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to bolster each others’ regime security in the name of counter-terrorism. Chinese embassies and consulates have also been implicated in Beijing’s attempts to wield law enforcement power far beyond its borders. Pulling hair China’s Consul General in the northern British city of Manchester admitted on Oct. 20 to assaulting a Hong Kong pro-democracy protester inside the grounds of the diplomatic mission as a peaceful protest gave way to attacks at the weekend. Consul General Zheng Xiyuan told Sky News that he was the gray-haired man in…
Southeast Asia remains world rice bowl as pockets of region suffer crop disasters
Rice crops in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar have taken a hit from flooding and conflict this year, casting a shadow on a mostly sunny outlook for Southeast Asia’s output of the key grain as the region deals with other potential longer term supply troubles, farm officials and researchers say. Poverty and hunger are stalking some rural communities in peninsular Southeast Asia, also called Indochina, as a result of lost crops, hitting populations still struggling to recover from lost income and other fallout from widespread economic disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, the poorest Southeast Asian nations, are not major players in rice production in a sector dominated by Thailand and Vietnam, which lead the world in exports of the grain. Southeast Asia accounts for 26 percent of global rice production and 40 percent of exports, supplying populous neighbors Indonesia and the Philippines, as well as Africa and the Middle East, according the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. But their harvest shortfalls have to be made up from other suppliers, and any serious deterioration in rice output could have ripple effects on import-dependent countries in Asia. The challenge is more acute at a time of deepening worries over food security and rising food prices in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has removed those countries’ key grain exports from global supplies. A man transports bags of rice in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Oct. 17, 2019. Credit: AFP Cambodia’s National Committee for Disaster Management reported early this month that floods inundated some 770 villages in 22 provinces, including Banteay Meanchey, Battambang, Pursat, Siem Reap, Kampong Thom and Preah Vihear. More than 150,000 hectares of rice paddies were flooded more than 100,000 families were affected by the floods, a committee official told local media. Banteay Meanchey farmer Voeun Pheap told RFA that floods destroyed more than four hectares of his farm and brought immediate hardship to his family as it wiped out his crop and the hope of paying off what he borrowed to plant. “I couldn’t make much money, I lost my investments, and I am in debt,” he said. In Laos, an agriculture and forestry official in Hua Phanh province told RFA that flooding in two districts had wiped out rice crops and left 200 families with no harvest to eat or sell. “Sand is covering the rice fields all over due to heavy rain, which destroyed both rice paddies and dry rice fields,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity for safety reasons. “Families that have been affected will go hungry this year. The damage is so enormous that villagers will have to seek food from the forest or sell other crops that were not affected,” the official added. People reach out to buy subsidized rice from government officials in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, March 27, 2008. Credit: AFP Fear, fighting leave fallow fields More than 18 months after a military coup toppled a popular civilian government and plunged Myanmar into political and military conflict, the country of 54 million faces security threats to its rice supply on top of the environmental and economic problems faced by its neighbors. “I am too afraid to leave my home,” said Myo Thant, a local farmer in the town of Shwebo in the Sagaing region, a farming region in central Myanmar that has been a main theater of fighting between ruling army junta forces and local militias opposed to army rule. “I can’t fertilize the fields and I can’t do irrigation work,” he told RFA “The harvest will be down. We will barely have enough food for ourselves,” added Myo Thant. Farmers groups told RFA that in irrigated paddy farms across Myanmar, planting reduced due to the security challenges as well as to rising prices for fuel, fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. Growers are limiting their planting to rain-fed rice fields. “Only 60 percent of (paddy) farms will grow this year, which means that the production will be reduced by about 40 percent,” Zaw Yan of the Myanmar Farmers Representative Network told RFA. Senior Gen Min Aung Hlaing, the Myanmar junta chief, told a meeting August that of 33.2 million acres of farmland available for rice cultivation, only 15 million acres of rainy reason rice and 3 million acres of irrigated summer paddy rice are being grown. Brighter regional outlook This year’s flooding has caused crop losses and concern in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, but so far it doesn’t appear to have dented the regional outlook for the grain, thanks to expected big crops and surpluses in powerhouse exporters Thailand and Vietnam. World stocks have been buoyed by India’s emergence as the top rice exporter of the grain. In this June 5, 2015 photo, workers load sacks of imported Vietnam rice onto trucks from a ship docked at a port area in Manila, Philippines.Credit: Reuters Although Myanmar is embroiled in conflict and largely cut off from world commerce, Cambodia exported 2.06 million tons of milled and paddy rice worth nearly $616 million in the first half of 2022, a 10 percent increase over the same period in 2021, the country’s farm ministry said in July. Laos was the world’s 25th largest rice exporter in 2020. A report released this month by U.S. Department of Agriculture saw continued large exports from Thailand and Vietnam likely into 2023, offsetting drops in shipments of the grain from other suppliers. While the USDA has projected that Southeast Asia’s rice surplus will continue, a research team at Nature Food that studied rice output in Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam suggested the region might lose its global Rice Bowl status. The threats include stagnating crop yields, limited new land for agriculture, and climate change. “Over the past decades, through renewed efforts, countries in Southeast Asia were able to increase rice yields, and the region as a whole has continued to produce a large amount of rice that exceeded regional demand, allowing a rice surplus to be exported to other countries,” the study said. “At…
