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Category: South Asia

Taiwan hits out at fake news about Chinese warship

Editor06 mins

One of the most widely used photos of the recent drills by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) around Taiwan turned out to be the latest “fake news” in China’s disinformation campaign against the democratic island, a Taiwanese fact-checking organization has claimed. The photo, distributed by Chinese state news agency Xinhua, depicts a PLA soldier observing military drills in the waters near Taiwan through a pair of binoculars.  In the background, a Taiwanese warship without a hull number is clearly visible. Next to it is a chimney, later identified as the smokestack of the Ho Ping Power Plant in Hualien County on the east coast of Taiwan. The Xinhua photo shows many irregularities. CREDIT: Taiwan FactCheck Center The Taiwan FactCheck Center (TFC), a Taipei-based independent organization, conducted a thorough examination of Xinhua’s photo and published the findings on its website on Tuesday. It said there are too many irregularities, calling the proportions of objects in the photo “unreasonable” and saying there were obvious signs of manipulation such as the lack of a hull number on the alleged Taiwanese warship and its outline, which TFC said was “too clean.”  Another photo released by Xinhua in the same batch clearly shows hull number 935 of the Lan Yang, a Taiwanese Navy Chi Yang-class frigate.  Experts and analysts consulted by TFC concluded that the photo is a composite of different images.  Xinhua said the photo was taken on Aug. 5, 2022, the second day of the unprecedented four-day drills conducted by the PLA Eastern Theater Command. The photo led to widespread speculation on Chinese internet forums that a PLA Navy (PLAN) destroyer had come closer than 12 kilometers (6.5 nautical miles) from the coast of Hualien, well within Taiwan’s territorial waters. A state’s territorial waters are defined by maritime boundaries 12 nautical miles (22 kilometers) from its coast. Several Chinese and Taiwanese media outlets reported that PLAN destroyer Nanjing, where the soldier’s photo was taken, was only 11.78 kilometers from the coast of Hualien and the Ho Ping Power Station on Friday morning. The hull number of Taiwanese warship visible on the right, is not present in the image on the left. CREDIT: Taiwan FactCheck Center ‘Hybrid warfare’ The Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense dismissed the news, describing it as “disinformation.” “No PLAN vessel has entered our territorial waters since August 4 when the PLA drill started,” the Ministry said on Twitter. China has stepped up its disinformation campaign and cyberattacks as part of “hybrid warfare” against Taiwan.  Hybrid warfare is a combination of conventional military actions on the ground and hacks, or disinformation campaigns, designed to attack public morale and sow confusion. Maj. Gen. Chen Yu-lin, deputy director of the Political and War Bureau of Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said earlier this week that the current wave of “cognitive operations” started even before the military drills were announced as a response to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit. Pelosi is the most senior U.S. official to visit the island in 25 years. Her visit was condemned by Beijing as a “serious violation of China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”  Chen Hui-min, TFC’s editor-in-chief, told RFA his organization had detected a 30-40% increase in fake reports online since Pelosi’s visit.  “The biggest difference [from the past] is that it seems to be spreading from English-language Twitter,” Chen said. The Taiwanese Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday it had been hit by 170 million cyber attacks per minute during the height of the tension last week.  China considers Taiwan a Chinese province that must be reunified with the mainland at all costs. Meanwhile only two percent of 23.5 million Taiwanese people identified themselves as Chinese, down from 25 percent three decades ago, according to a new study by Taiwan’s National Chengchi University.

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China-led rare earth mining in Myanmar fuels rights abuses, pollution: report

Editor09 mins

China’s outsourcing of rare earth mining to Myanmar has prompted a rapid expansion of the industry there, fuelling human rights abuses, damaging the environment and propping up pro-juna militias, according to a new report published Tuesday by rights group Global Witness. The report, entitled “Myanmar’s Poisoned Mountains,” used satellite imagery to determine that what amounted to a “handful” of rare earth mines in Myanmar’s Kachin state in 2016 had ballooned to more than 2,700 mining collection pools at almost 300 separate locations, covering an area the size of Singapore, by March 2022 — slightly more than a year after the military seized power in a coup. Global Witness found that China had outsourced much of its industry across the border to a remote corner of Kachin state, which it said is now the world’s largest source of the minerals used in green energy technologies, smartphones and home electronics. “Our investigation reveals that China has effectively offshored this toxic industry to Myanmar over the past few years, with terrible consequences for local communities and the environment,” Global Witness CEO Mike Davis said in a statement accompanying the release of the report. The local warlord in charge of the mining territory, Zakhung Ting Ying, has become the “central broker” of Myanmar’s rare earth industry, the report said, along with other leaders of militias loyal to the military regime, making backroom deals with Chinese companies that are illegal under the country’s laws. It said that his militia’s links to the junta mean “there is a high risk” that revenues from rare earth mining are being used to fund the military’s human rights abuses and crushing of dissent. Rights groups say security forces have killed at least 2,167 civilians and arrested more than 15,000 others since the Feb. 1, 2021, coup, mostly during peaceful anti-junta protests. “Rare earth mining is the latest natural resource heist by Myanmar’s military, which has funded itself for decades by looting the country’s rich natural resources, including the multi-billion-dollar jade, gemstone and timber industries,” Davis said. “Since the 2021 coup, the regime has relied on natural resources to sustain its illegal power grab and with demand for rare earths booming, the military will no doubt be spotting an opportunity to fill its coffers and fund its abuses,” he added. A rare earth mining operation in Kachin state, Myanmar, March 2022. Credit: Citizen journalist Global Witness noted that the processes used to extract heavy rare earth minerals have polluted local ecosystems, destroyed livelihoods and poisoned drinking water. It said multiple health issues reported near the rare earth mines in China have also been reported by residents living close to the mines in Myanmar. Meanwhile, civil society groups and community members — including indigenous people — who speak out against the illegal industry or refuse to give up their land to make way for new mines face threats from the militias who run the area, the report said. Supply chain at risk Global Witness said that its findings come amid a huge increase in demand for the minerals as production of green energy technologies ramps up. Sales of processed rare earth minerals for magnet productions are expected to triple by 2035. The group warned of a high risk that the minerals are finding their way into the supply chains of major household name companies that use heavy rare earths in their products including Tesla, Volkswagen, General Motors, Siemens and Mitsubishi Electric. Davis said the report’s findings demonstrate the need for the international community to broaden sanctions against the junta to include rare earth minerals. “The disturbing reality is that the cash that is fuelling the environmental and human rights abuses caused by Myanmar’s rare earth mining industry ultimately stems from the global push to scale up renewables,” he said. “As the climate crisis accelerates and demand for these low-carbon technologies skyrocket, today’s findings must be a wake-up call that the green energy transition cannot come at the cost of communities in resource-rich countries, and must instead be equitable and sustainable, prioritizing the rights of those who are most impacted.” Rare earth ores [left] are burned down before being transported from Kachin state to China. At right, sacks of rare earth ores await transport to China. Credit: Global Witness via AP Global Witness called on companies to stop mining heavy rare earths in Myanmar and ensure that minerals from the country do not enter the global supply chain. It also urged governments to impose import restrictions for rare earths produced in Myanmar, impose sanctions on armed actors illegally profiting from the industry, and introduce stronger policies to reduce the harms associated with extracting the minerals. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that about 240,000 tons of rare earth minerals were mined globally in 2020, with China accounting for 140,000 tons, followed by the United States with 38,000 tons and Myanmar with 30,000 tons. Though China is the world’s largest producer of rare earth minerals, it buys the ore from neighboring Myanmar, exploiting its cheaper labor. Myanmar exported more than 140,000 tons of rare earth deposits to China, worth more than U.S. $1 billion between May 2017 and October 2021, according to China’s State Taxation Administration. In this early 2022 image from video, a creek in Myanmar’s Kachin state is lined with trash, pipes and other construction materials from a former rare earth mining site. Local villagers have said water from the creek is no longer usable for drinking or growing crops and that their skin itches after being exposed to water near rare earth mining sites. Credit: Global Witness via AP

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Junta ‘crimes against humanity’ include assault, torture of women, children: report

Editor012 mins

Attacks on civilians by Myanmar’s junta since its takeover in February 2021 constitute crimes against humanity and include the widespread sexual assault of women and the torture of children, a United Nations investigative unit said in an annual report Tuesday. The Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) said it had gathered evidence that sexual and gender-based crimes, including rape and other forms of sexual violence, and crimes against children have been perpetrated by members of the security forces and armed groups. The IIMM said in its report that children in Myanmar have been tortured, conscripted and arbitrarily detained, including as proxies for their parents. “Crimes against women and children are amongst the gravest international crimes, but they are also historically underreported and under-investigated,” Nicholas Koumjian, head of the IIMM, said in a statement issued by the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights in Bangkok that accompanied the release of the report. “Our team has dedicated expertise to ensure targeted outreach and investigations so that these crimes can ultimately be prosecuted. Perpetrators of these crimes need to know that they cannot continue to act with impunity. We are collecting and preserving the evidence so that they will one day be held to account.” Other vulnerable groups impacted by the crimes include members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex community in Myanmar, according to the IIMM. The IIMM said it has collected more than 3 million pieces of information from almost 200 sources since starting operations three years ago, including interview statements, documents, videos, photographs, geospatial imagery and social media material. Since the Feb. 1, 2021 coup, the IIMM said it had found “ample indications” that crimes have been committed in Myanmar “on a scale and in a manner that constitutes a widespread and systematic attack against a civilian population.” The report found that the geographic scope of the potential crimes had expanded to include Chin, Kayin, and Kayah states, from Yangon, Naypyidaw, Bago, Mandalay, Magway and Sagaing regions a year earlier. Additionally, the IIMM reported the number of instances of potential criminality had also increased from a year ago, including with the junta’s July 25 hanging of four democracy activists in the country’s first judicial executions in more than 30 years, which drew public and international condemnation. Koumjian noted that the report came just two weeks ahead of the five-year commemoration of clearance operations that displaced nearly 1 million ethnic Rohingya from western Myanmar’s Rakhine state, most of whom remain in refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh. “While the Rohingya consistently express their desire for a safe and dignified return to Myanmar, this will be very difficult to achieve unless there is accountability for the atrocities committed against them, including through prosecutions of the individuals most responsible for those crimes,” he said. The IIMM said it is sharing relevant evidence to support international justice proceedings currently underway at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. Myanmar junta troops torched houses in Mu Kan village, Tabayin township, Sagaing region, June 14, 2022. Credit: Tabayin Township Brothers aid group Township targeted The IIMM report came as residents and aid workers in Sagaing region told RFA Burmese that the military had razed around 700 houses from 30 villages in Tabayin township during its scorched earth offensive in the area between Jan. 1 and Aug. 8. Around 4,000 people are in need of assistance as a result of the burnings, they said. A resident of Tabayin, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing security concerns, said junta troops had continued to use arson attacks in their search for opposition forces in the township as recently as Monday, when they burned down Mu Kan village on the road between Ayadaw and Shwebo townships. “The fires started [Monday] morning. Mu Kan is almost gone,” said the resident, who said the perpetrators belong to a military unit that had torched at least one other village in the township since January. “Even though we called it a village, it’s like a big town. It has a hospital and clinics. Currently, the residents are on the run. We heard some people have also been arrested. The army has set up camp there.” Residents told RFA there are more than 800 houses in Mu Kan and said this was the second time the military had set fire to the village, after burning more than 160 houses there in June. A member of the Tapayin Township Brothers aid group said that the estimated 4,000 residents left homeless due to the arson attacks since the start of the year are enduring severe difficulties and “in need of urgent help.” “Residents of 30 villages lost around 700 houses in the fires,” said the aid worker, who also declined to be named, citing a list the group had compiled of military arson attacks in the township. “The situation in Tabayin township is getting worse lately. The villagers’ lives have been disrupted, especially those who lost their homes. They need a lot of help. Everyone in the region has been affected, so aid donations have dwindled significantly.” The aid worker said that a few charity organizations and the shadow National Unity Government (NUG) have provided some assistance to the township, “but it is not enough.” He said his organization had provided 346 houses in 17 villages with 30,000 kyats (U.S. $14) each, but the need for assistance remains substantial. Helpless against attacks A resident of Tabayin’s Ma Ya Kan village, who asked to remain unnamed, said troops are “targeting the villages” and inhabitants are helpless to stop them. Refugees are in need of food, clothing and shelter, he said, adding that the military had also destroyed the crops in their fields. “The military arrests anyone they see in the villages, uses them as porters, and finally kills them. If they see residents wearing earrings on them, they tear them off. That’s how bad it is,” the Ma Ya Kan villager said. “We have no place to live, so…

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U.S. and Taiwan say China is planning invasion, not holding military drills

Editor09 mins

U.S. defense policy makers do not think China could take over Taiwan militarily in the next two years but Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl said China is trying to “salami slice their way into a new status quo” in the region instead. China is continuing its military pressure on Taiwan with more air and naval drills off the back of the major four-day exercise conducted in response to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island. On Tuesday, the Eastern Theater Command of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) “continued to organize practical joint exercises in the sea and airspace around Taiwan Island, focusing on joint blockades and joint resupply logistics,” the Ministry of Defense in Beijing said in a statement. The PLA carried out anti-submarine and sea assault drills in waters around Taiwan on Monday, sending 13 warships, and 39 aircraft, around half of which crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait. Beijing also announced a new series of military drills in the South China Sea, Yellow Sea and Bohai Sea that will continue until next month.  “Clearly the PRC is trying to coerce Taiwan, clearly they’re trying to coerce the international community, and all I’ll say is we’re not going to take the bait and it’s not going to work,” Kahl told a press conference at the Pentagon on Monday, referring to China by its official name the People’s Republic of China. “What we’ll do instead is to continue to fly, to sail and to operate wherever international law allows us to do so, and that includes in the Taiwan Strait,” the undersecretary said, adding that he thinks “there’s a lot of confidence in that U.S. commitment.” That means the U.S. military is set to continue transiting the Taiwan Strait, which it considers international waters, as well as conducting freedom of navigation operations in the South China and East China Seas. President Joe Biden on Monday said he was “not worried” about China’s military exercises around Taiwan but was “concerned that they’re moving as much as they are.” “But I don’t think they’re going to do anything more [than] they are,” he told reporters at the Delaware Air National Guard Base The Eastern Theater Command of China’s PLA conducts a long-range live-fire drill into the Taiwan Strait, from an undisclosed location, Aug. 4, 2022. CREDIT: PLA Eastern Theater Command Handout via REUTERS U.S. keeping watch Kahl also explained the reason behind the Pentagon’s initial hesitance about Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last week. President Biden told reporters ten days before the trip that U.S. military officials believed “it’s not a good idea, for now.” “We’re at a moment of profound international tension… I think there was a sense that… the world didn’t require another instance of rising tensions but it is what it is and the speaker had every right to go and when she made the final decision we were fully supportive,” he said. Beijing reacted angrily to the visit, threatening the “strongest countermeasures” and announcing unprecedented military drills around Taiwan. For the first time, the PLA reportedly fired missiles over Taiwan’s main island, some of which landed in Japan’s exclusive economic zone within 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) from its shores. The U.S. military responded by deploying warships and aircraft in the area.  U.S. Navy’s only forward-deployed aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan and its strike group has been in northern Philippine Sea after being ordered by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to “remain on station in the general area to monitor the situation.” A big deck amphibious assault ship, the USS Tripoli, is also currently in the Philippine Sea, according to the U.S. Naval Institute. Maps showing the USS Howard O. Lorenzen’s position and path. CREDIT: Marine Traffic Data provided by the ship tracking website Marine Traffic show that the missile-tracking vessel USNS Howard O. Lorenzen has been operating in the waters east of Taiwan for several days. Equipped with a sophisticated radar system, “its purpose is to track airborne missiles,” said Gordon Arthur, a military analyst and Asia-Pacific editor of Shephard Media, a defense news portal. “Given its proximity to Taiwan, I’d say that’s exactly what it’s been doing,” Arthur told RFA. Visiting US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi waves to journalists during her arrival at the Parliament in Taipei on August 3, 2022. CREDIT: AFP ‘Prepare for invasion’ “China’s reaction was completely unnecessary,” said U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Colin Kahl, blaming Beijing for “manufacturing” the current crisis across the Taiwan Strait. “We continue to have a One China policy and we continue to object to any unilateral change in the status quo, whether that be from the PRC or from Taiwan,” he emphasized. Taipei said China used Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan as a pretext for pursuing bigger ambitions. Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu called a press briefing on Tuesday morning to lay out his government’s position on China’s latest military exercises. “China has used the drills in its military play-book to prepare for the invasion of Taiwan,” Wu said. “China’s real intention behind these military exercises is to alter the status quo in the Taiwan Strait and the entire region,” the minister said, warning that Beijing’s behavior towards Taiwan is “merely a pretext” and “its ambitions and impact is extending far beyond Taiwan.”

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Myanmar opposition marks ‘8888’ anniversary with protests, vow to fight on

Editor010 mins

Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government (NUG) and activists marked the anniversary of the uprising against former Gen. Ne Win on Monday with protests calling for an end to junta rule and a vow to fight until their goal of a federal democracy is achieved. The “People Power Uprising,” also known as the “8888 Uprising,” was a series of nationwide protests, marches, and riots led by university students against the Ne Win regime, key events of which took place on Aug. 8, 1988. Authorities crushed the movement in mid-September that year. On Monday, the NUG observed the anniversary of the uprising in a ceremony hosted online in which shadow Prime Minister Mahn Win Khaing Than condemned Myanmar’s successive military dictators for their brutal oppression of the country’s democracy activists. He vowed to channel “the spirit of the ‘4-Eights’” in supporting the people’s fight against the current regime, which seized power in a Feb. 1, 2021 coup, and to form a federal union in Myanmar based on democracy and the protection of human rights. This year’s anniversary held special significance for the opposition as it came just weeks after the junta put to death 8888 Uprising leader Ko Jimmy and three other democracy activists in the country’s first judicial executions in more than 30 years. The executions prompted protests in Myanmar and condemnation abroad. In addition to the NUG ceremony, activists held protests in Myanmar’s commercial capital Yangon, the embattled region of Sagaing, and in Laiza, the “capital” of the ethnic Kachin Independence Organization-controlled territory in Kachin state. Anti-junta groups in Yangon held anti-junta flash protests in the morning and carried out pot-banging activities in the evening, sources told RFA Burmese. Nang Lin, a member of the Yangon Anti-Dictatorship Force, described the 8888 Uprising as “a powerful movement … that involved people from all walks of life working together to bring down [a] terrible one-party dictatorship and allowed democracy to flourish.” “Now, we will continue to carry the banner of this uprising,” he said. “We will hold the spirit of that uprising and carry on its work, with determination, to achieve federal democracy, which is the goal of successive revolutions and the goal of this ongoing spring revolution.” Jewel, a member of the Pazundaung and Botahtaung Townships Young People’s Strike Committee in Yangon, told RFA that she and her comrades would continue to carry out the unfinished task of the 8888 democracy movement and “root out” the military dictatorship. “The 4-Eights Uprising was over a long time ago. However, as members of a younger generation, we’ll continue its unfinished work and are determined to eradicate this military dictatorship,” she said. Sagaing and Kachin In Sagaing, the region in which the junta has encountered some of the strongest armed resistance to its rule since the coup, more than 200 residents of Yinmarbin and Salingyi townships joined together and staged a multi-village protest, carrying signs that vowed to “fight to the end to overthrow the military dictator.” Villagers in Sagaing’s Kani and Budalin townships also held protests to commemorate the 8888 Uprising. The All Burma Students Democratic Front (ABSDF), which is headquartered near Laiza, in northern Myanmar’s Kachin state, also held a 34th anniversary event on Monday. A member of the ABSDF Northern Military Region Committee who gave his name as Joshua told RFA that the people of Myanmar can expect more coups in the future unless the military dictatorship is “uprooted.” “We are holding this ceremony as a way of passing on the torch of the 8888 spirit, what the 8888 had wanted and fought for, so that all the young and old can remember why the 8888 Uprising came to be,” he said. “As long as there are military dictators, they will seize power … if they cannot get what they want. They will seize power again in the future if we cannot fight them off for good.” Joshua said that the ABSDF has been fighting successive military dictators with “whatever weapons we could lay our hands on” and that “more than 700” of its members had died in the more than three decades since 1988. In a statement to mark Monday’s anniversary, the ABSDF warned that the political, economic, education, and health sectors of Myanmar are in the midst of “serious deterioration,” while all three branches of government in the country “have collapsed.” Protesters give a three-finger salute signaling their opposition to the junta at a rally in Sagaing region, Aug. 8, 2022. Credit: Citizen journalist Impetus for success Attempts to reach junta Deputy Minister of Information Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun for comment went unanswered Monday. Myanmar political analyst Than Soe Naing told RFA that if the people of Myanmar hope to succeed in their current democratic struggle, they must not forget the 8888 Uprising. “It’s time to make up for the weaknesses of 88 and push for victory in this Spring Revolution,” he said, adding that the movement should use the movement’s goals as an “impetus for success.” Ye Naing Aung, a member of the 88 Generation group of students who led the uprising, told RFA that he believes the people of Myanmar will one day achieve the democracy they desire. “As long as people have an expectation for a better system, we can’t move backwards,” he said. “Even though the change is not here yet, it will take place at some point. I’m absolutely certain that they will enjoy a democratic system.” While authorities claim that only around 350 people were killed in the military crackdown on the 8888 Uprising, rights groups say the death toll is at least 3,000. Security forces have killed at least 2,167 people and arrested more than 15,000 since last year’s coup, mostly during peaceful anti-junta protests, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

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China keeps up war games with anti-sub, sea assault practice near Taiwan

Editor010 mins

The Chinese military carried out anti-submarine and sea assault drills in waters around Taiwan on Monday, keeping up the pressure after major four-day drills an angry Beijing staged response to the U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit last week, military sources said. China also announced a series of new military drills in the South China Sea and in the Yellow Sea and Bohai Sea, waters that lie between the Chinese mainland and the Korean peninsula.  The Eastern Theater Command of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) said on its official WeChat account that the Command’s forces “continued to conduct practical joint exercises in the sea and airspace around Taiwan Island, focusing on organizing joint anti-submarine and sea assault operations” on Aug. 8. On Sunday, the last day of the scheduled military exercise announced on Aug. 3, the PLA sent 14 warships and 66 aircraft to areas surrounding Taiwan in attack simulation drills, the Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense said, adding that 22 of the airplanes crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait. The ministry “monitored the situation and responded to these activities with aircraft in CAP (Combat Air Patrol), naval vessels, and land-based missile systems,” it said in a statement. Taiwan military’s Fourth Combat Zone will also hold two large-scale, live-fire artillery drills in Pingtung in southern Taiwan on Tuesday and Thursday this week to test its combat readiness. The drills will include the artillery command, infantry troops and the coastguard, the military said. Eastern Theatre Command of China’s PLA conducts a long-range live-fire drill into the Taiwan Strait, from an undisclosed location, Aug. 4, 2022. Credit: PLA Eastern Theater Command Handout via REUTERS Numerous new exercises On Saturday, China announced a new series of military drills including a month-long operation in Bohai Sea. China’s Maritime Safety Administration released navigation warnings saying live-fire exercises will be held from Aug. 6 to Aug. 15 in the southern part of the Yellow Sea between China and South Korea, and gunnery drills from Aug. 8 to Aug. 9 and Aug. 9 to Aug.11 in the South China Sea.  A navigation warning is a public advisory notice to mariners about changes to navigational aids and current marine activities or hazards including fishing zones and military exercises. A separate military exercise was conducted in the northern part of the Bohai Sea on Friday and Saturday. Local Taiwanese media reported that a month-long military operation will take place in Bohai Sea starting Aug. 8 until Sept. 8. “I think the military exercises aren’t really going to stop,” said Mark Harrison, a senior lecturer in Chinese studies at the University of Tasmania in Australia. “Beijing has used Pelosi’s visit as a pretext to create a “new normal” in the Taiwan Strait,” Harrison added. Nancy Pelosi became the most senior U.S. official to visit Taiwan in the last 25 years last week and Beijing repeatedly warned against the visit, threatening “strongest countermeasures.” Chinese media quoted several analysts as saying that military drills near Taiwan will become routine if “external interference” continues. “The military exercises around Taiwan, although having been quite restrained, are meant to show that Beijing is by no means a ‘paper tiger’,” said Sonny Lo, a veteran political commentator in Hong Kong. “Most importantly, Chinese military exercises near Taiwan are becoming a normal phenomenon, raising the specter of a possible military conflict or accident between the two sides,” Lo said. On Saturday and Sunday, Chinese forces staged what could be seen as simulated attacks on Taiwan. “The focus on Sunday was set on testing the capabilities of using joint fire to strike land targets and striking long-range air targets,” reported the PLA Daily. “Supported by naval and air combat systems, the air strike forces, together with long-range multiple launch rocket systems and conventional missile troops, conducted drills of joint precision strikes on targets,” the paper reported. U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi attends a meeting with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen at the presidential office in Taipei, Aug. 3, 2022. Credit: Taiwan Presidential Office Handout via REUTERS What’s next? This “largest ever PLA air-missile-maritime exercise ever conducted” has provided some insights into China’s potential courses of action and preferences in a China-Taiwan conflict, said Carl Schuster, a retired U.S. Navy captain turned military analyst. “It suggests Beijing would first isolate Taiwan and resort to air and missile strikes in hopes of breaking Taipei’s political will. A costly invasion probably is a last resort,” said Schuster, who also served as a director of operations at the U.S. Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center. “The exercise demonstrated that blockade in a conflict need not require a constant naval presence offshore, but rather, shipping and air traffic can be deterred by air and missile threats in support of a maritime blockade,” the analyst said, adding that it “also reflected the PLA’s improving capacity for joint operations.” During the four days of Chinese military drills, Taiwan saw up to a thousand international flights being affected and the Taiwanese aviation administration had to discuss alternative routes with Japan and the Philippines. A full military blockade would “paralyze Taiwan’s economy and seriously diminish the society’s confidence,” said commentator Sonny Lo in Hong Kong. “However China usually focuses on the “core enemies” such as the leaders of Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, rather than the whole Taiwanese population,” Lo said, predicting that the cross-strait relations will stay tense until at least the next Taiwan presidential election in early 2024. “Taiwan needs to quickly strengthen its international relations and its military capacity,” said Mark Harrison from the University of Tasmania, who argued that Beijing “will wipe out a vibrant democracy if it seizes control of Taiwan.” The Taiwanese government needs to focus on expanding defense resources and to enact smart and effective defense strategies, according to Drew Thompson, a former U.S. defense official and senior visiting fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. “Smaller countries that have great disadvantages have had tremendous success in the…

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Play it loud: The return of Hanoi’s loudspeakers speaks volumes

Editor010 mins

Authorities in Hanoi announced recently that the once-ubiquitous loudspeakers, a staple of government news and propaganda, relics of the past and left to disrepair in the early 2000s, would be reinstalled. The late July announcement caught everyone by surprise and has been met with derision. But it speaks volumes about the Communist regime, its insecurities, and the pathways to power. A simpler time For a government which has touted a high-tech future for Vietnam under its “National Strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” the Orwellian monotone does not seem to be a sophisticated way of communication. Why a media anachronism in a time when people have alternative sources of information across multiple platforms on their smartphones? On the simplest level, it’s just that, an attempt by the Party to harken back to a time when the state easily monopolized the information environment. According to international watchdogs, Vietnam has one of the most repressive media environments in the world. Reporters Without Borders ranks it 174. The Committee to Protect Journalists documented 23 arrested journalists in 2021. Freedom House rated its internet freedom at 22 out of 100 – just above worst-ranked Iran, Myanmar and Cuba. Yet despite the concerted efforts to police and censor the internet, the media landscape is more open than one would expect. Vietnam’s internet is not behind a firewall, and there are 76 million Facebook users in Vietnam. Authorities can only focus on the key nodes and influencers. The Vietnamese government’s cyber security law, adopted in 2019, potentially compels data localization from the big tech companies, though policy disputes between the Ministry of Public Security and the economic ministries have meant that it’s not been fully implemented. Nonetheless, according to data reported by Vietnamese authorities, foreign social media firms complied with around 90 percent of government requests to take down media across social media platforms. Hanoi is demanding and getting more corporate compliance in dealing with “malicious content.” And yet, for many in the Vietnam Communist Party (VCP), the media landscape is still too permissive. A pervasive sense of insecurity The re-installation of the loudspeakers also reflects a deep insecurity on the part of the government. And it has much to be insecure about. The VCP’s claim to legitimacy is based on two things: nationalism and economic performance. Recently both have been in called into question due to endemic corruption that has reached the highest levels of government. Despite unflinching Chinese pressure and excessive maritime claims against Vietnam’s national sovereignty, the Coast Guard is mired in corruption. The commander and his predecessor were both sentenced to 17 years in prison for using state assets to protect oil smugglers. The party expelled two other major generals, and disciplined five other major generals and two lieutenant generals. The government will have a very attentive public to respond to the next time the Coast Guard is caught flat-footed against Chinese incursions. Corruption undermines combat readiness. Two other corruption scandals, both involving the until-then stellar COVID-19 response by the previous government, have hit the senior-most leadership and called into question the prime minister’s management.  A scandal over repatriation flights for Vietnamese nationals brought down a deputy foreign minister and a former deputy head of immigration at the Ministry of Public Security, among others.  The Viet A testing scandal felled two members of the elite VCP Central Committee, a former minister of health, and senior members of the vaunted Vietnam People’s Army. To date, the party has investigated over 21 people. Corruption is endemic in Vietnam. And yet these corruption scandals seem all the more concerning than those over the past five to six years when senior officials weaponized police and the prosecutorial service to take down political rivals and their patronage networks. The VCP knows it has a legitimacy crisis. The government recently acknowledged that in 2021 there were 3,725 corruption investigations and criminal proceedings, three times the number in 2020. For an economy stuck between central planning and the market, with soft property rights, where the state controls key inputs such as land and capital, not to mention permits and licenses, there is no shortage of opportunities for graft. But where corruption was once seen as the cost of doing business, it is now viewed as predatory and hindering economic growth. A loudspeaker stands on the roof of a gateway in the suburbs of Hanoi on May 18, 2011. (AFP) Pathways to power But the decision to reinstall the loudspeakers also says something about the pathways to power in Vietnamese politics. The decision was a local one, made by the Hanoi Party Committee. The Hanoi Party chief is a key position and is often held by a member of the elite Politburo, and always a member of the Central Committee. The Hanoi Party Committee has been in turmoil, following the Viet A corruption scandal that saw its chief, Chu Ngoc Anh, expelled from the party and put on trial. The new Party chief is trying to curry favor, while his new deputy is clearly being groomed for greater things. For ambitious Party cadres, keeping clean right now is necessary, but insufficient. General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong continues to make counter-corruption his highest priority. But advancement will require those added flourishes, such as loudspeakers extolling the good works of the Party. Someone, somewhere, actually thought that this was a good idea. While loudspeakers blaring state media, party edicts, and propaganda may not be heard over the cacophony of Hanoi’s congested streets, they will be heard in the corridors of power. Zachary Abuza is a professor at the National War College in Washington and an adjunct at Georgetown University. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of the U.S. Department of Defense, the National War College, Georgetown University or RFA.

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US seeks to dial down tension over Taiwan Strait

Editor012 mins

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Saturday said Beijing had acted irresponsibly in halting cooperation with the United States on topics including defense and climate change, as he sought to reassure Southeast Asian countries over raging tensions in the Taiwan Strait. Meanwhile, China pressed forward with its major military exercise around Taiwan for a third day on Saturday, with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) apparently staging a simulated attack on Taiwan’s main island, Taipei’s Defense Ministry said. “Since their missile launches, Beijing has taken an irresponsible step of a different kind:  They’ve shut down eight different areas where our two countries have been able to work together,” the top U.S. diplomat said during a press conference Saturday in Manila. Beijing announced the “countermeasures” on Friday in response to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent visit to Taiwan, freezing bilateral dialogue on several military-to-military channels as well as talks on the climate crisis, repatriation of illegal immigrants, counter-narcotics and legal assistance in criminal matters. “The world’s largest carbon emitter is now refusing to engage on combating the climate crisis.  Suspending climate cooperation doesn’t punish the United States; it punishes the world, particularly the developing world,” Blinken said.  While Beijing appeared to have halted live-firing exercises around Taiwan, multiple Chinese military aircraft and vessels operated near Taiwan on Saturday, some of them crossing the median line dividing the Taiwan Strait, the ministry said in a statement. The Taiwanese military sent warnings, scrambled aircraft and deployed defense missile systems to track the Chinese military planes, the statement said. Blinken, traveling from Cambodia where he attended ASEAN meetings, said that the U.S. government was determined to avoid a crisis and to deescalate the tensions. “The United States is not going to engage in any provocative actions of our own,” Blinken told the Voice of America in an interview late Friday in Phnom Penh, transcripts of which were released to the press Saturday. “We think the seas should be calmed.” “The Taiwan Strait is of vital importance to virtually every country in the region.  So much commerce goes through there.  If that were interrupted, it would have a terrible impact on the global economy and on everyone’s desire to recover from COVID,” Blinken stressed. “So I think it’s incumbent upon all countries – the United States, but also China – to act responsibly and not use the visit of a member of our Congress as a pretext for engaging in potentially dangerous and destabilizing actions,” he added.  Nonetheless, he noted that the U.S. House Speaker had every right to make the recent trip to Taiwan, and that China’s reaction by launching 11 ballistic missiles and deploying its ships around the region “is so disproportionate and so dangerous.” Meeting with Marcos The U.S. diplomat met with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Saturday morning, and underlined the two sides’ long-standing alliance. Blinken is the highest-ranking U.S. official to travel to the country since the inauguration of Marcos, the son and namesake of the late dictator whom Washington helped flee into exile in Hawaii after a 1986 “people power” uprising. “We’re committed to the Mutual Defense Treaty. We’re committed to working with you on shared challenges,” Blinken said, referring to a 1951 pact between Manila and Washington that binds both sides to come to each other’s aid in times of aggression from outside forces. The U.S. government has repeatedly cited that partnership in the face of continued Chinese buildup in the disputed South China Sea region, where Beijing’s maritime claims overlap with those of the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries. He assured Marcos the United States would honor its commitments to the decades-old joint defense pact. “The alliance is strong and I believe can grow even stronger,” Blinken said. Marcos, for his part, stressed the importance of the alliance amid the volatile outlook in the region even as he stated that Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan “did not raise the intensity” of tensions in the Taiwan Strait.  “But nonetheless, this just demonstrates how volatile the international diplomatic scene is, not only in the region,” Marcos said. “So again, this just points to the fact of the importance of the relationship between the United States and the Philippines.” He said that the MDT “is in constant evolution” while noting that the Philippines and the United States enjoyed a special relationship linked by shared history. Marcos succeeded President Rodrigo Duterte in May after six years of a somewhat rocky relationship with Washington that saw the Philippines pulling away from its traditional ally in favor of Beijing.  After meeting with Marcos, Blinken held a virtual meeting with his counterpart, Enrique Manalo, who earlier this week announced that he had contracted COVID-19. Manalo likewise reiterated the ties that bind the two nations, and the importance of keeping the peace over the Taiwan Strait. “The Philippines continues of course to look at the big powers to help calm the waters and keep the peace,“ Manalo stressed. “We can ill afford any further escalation of tensions in the region.” Blinken responded by saying that Washington was ”determined to act responsibly, so that we avoid crisis, we avoid conflict.” Beijing considers the self-ruling, democratic island a breakaway province, to be united with the mainland by force if necessary, and objects strongly to high-level U.S. visits. The United States does not recognize Taiwan diplomatically, as part of a One China policy demanded by Beijing, but retains close unofficial ties with Taipei and is obligated by law to provide it with defense capabilities. Myanmar situation worsens Meanwhile, Blinken said that the situation in Myanmar had deteriorated sharply, with the military regime there “totally unresponsive” to international calls for it to resolve the crisis there peacefully. “Well, I think what we’ve seen, exactly as you say, is a situation that’s gone from bad to worse, including with the heinous act of executing four members of the democracy movement despite pleas from ASEAN, from Cambodia, from many others not to do that,” Blinken said, according to…

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Japanese VTuber, a virtual anime pop idol and show host , sets Taiwan alight

Editor012 mins

In May 2022, a Japanese-style anime girl started appearing in advertisements shown on Taiwan’s MRT subway network. Green-eyed, pink-haired with buns and bangs, Momosuze Nene, sprints away from the viewer’s gaze, heading towards “millions of subscribers” on her YouTube channel. Fans of Nene can sign on to a special website to learn more about her, while the ads hope to spread the word among her growing fanbase in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Australia and the U.S., as well as her native Japan. And there’s one thing that helps this dirndl-miniskirted YouTuber stand out from her crowd of competitors for the time being: she’s not real. Part of a growing phenomenon of virtual YouTubers (VTubers), Nene is “a girl from another world” who nevertheless plays video games like her contemporaries, commenting and laughing as the game progresses, and chatting in real time with viewers leaving messages at a rate of several a second in the chat window. She also sings and dances, chats with viewers and reads out their messages. While her shows are in Japanese, her anime persona and upbeat attitude have made her a hit far outside of Japan. And her expansion is being funded by fans like tattooed Taipei resident Chiu Wei-chun, 31. “The advertising agency has no faith in us,” Chiu said. “They said the average fan would likely donate between 30,000 and 50,000 Taiwan dollars.” An advertisement of the Taoling Yinyin Million Support Project was drawn by a number of fans. On the day of the fan meeting on May 23, the artist Sipu (Internet nickname) took a photo with the character he drew. Credit: Yang Zilei Pop idol approach When he went to the bank to pay in his donation in person, the bank teller said taking money on behalf of a virtual character was a first. “In my 25 years as a teller, I’ve never heard of such a request,” Chiu quoted her as saying. Many VTubers are the creation of two Japanese companies — Hololive and Rainbow Club — and tend towards a pop idol approach, although virtual hosts are also found in other genres of video, including technology videos. With an energy similar to that of an actor playing a cartoon character at a theme park, and motion-capture technology similar to that used to generate Gollum in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies, these VTubers are actually played by human actors behind the scenes. Many VTubers draw heavily from anime, and come in all shapes and sizes, from vampire nurses to mafia bosses to demons and pirate captains, as well as the ubiquitous sexy anime girl. They can do pretty much anything a real, live YouTuber can do, including singing, playing games, making art and chatting with their audience in real time. Others talk about their favorite comics or play on variety shows, or go to uninhabited islands as a survival stunt. The idea of a virtual pop idol isn’t a new one in Japan. Miku Hatsune is a Vocaloid software voicebank developed by Crypton Future Media, represented in live performance by the image of a 15-year-old teenage girl with long, turquoise twintails. The act has opened for Lady Gaga and performed at Coachella, will soon be getting her own animated series. The outbreak of COVID-19 has accelerated the development of the industry in Japan, and it has quickly caught on in neighboring Taiwan. Chiu Wei-chun is one of the main planners of the fan board. He saw the influx of fan sponsorships from overseas, and members from Malaysia, Hong Kong, the United States, Taiwan and other places responded to the project, and he felt the huge influence brought by VTuber even more. Credit: Yang Zilei From white-collar dads to high-schoolers It’s the potential for personal interaction with VTubers that makes them so popular, and they make liberal use of fan sponsorship to take their programming to the next level via the graded, color-coded SuperChat donation function on YouTube. The highest donations buy fans stickier messages, increasing the likelihood that the host will see the message and interact with the viewer in some way. The fan base includes white-collar dads to high-schoolers, with some people willing to pay out half their monthly salary on their favorite virtual idol. Chiu’s first encounter with Nene was in September 2020, since then he has been a dedicated fan. The biotech production line manager estimates that he spends a good chunk of his monthly disposable income on sponsoring Nene, and wonders aloud if he needs to rein it in somewhat. “I’m going to be marrying my girlfriend next year, so I need to save a bit more,” he says. “But I will still need to invest some money in Nene, naturally.” He said he’s drawn to the character for her childish innocence and relaxed attitude. “Kind of like a daughter; maybe I’m practicing how to spoil my own daughter,” Chiu said. According to YouTube’s Super Chat sponsorship rankings for the whole of 2021, only one of the top 10 is a real person. VTubers are mostly female, and mostly broadcast in Japanese, English, Chinese, Indian languages or Korean from a number of countries. In April, the singer bought a theme light box for Vox’s birthday at Taipei MRT Zhongshan Station, and she showed us the light box picture. In addition to expressing their feelings in the live broadcast appeal, Vox also used this picture as a live broadcast schedule. It is a common way of interaction for VTuber to refer to the secondary creation of fans. Credit: Yang Zilei ‘Different voices, different genders’ The most popular VTuber in the world today is the English-language VTuber Gawr Gura from Hololive, with more than four million subscribers. Otaku culture expert Liang Shih-you, says VTubers are popular because they’re so much fun. “VTubers let you play a completely different self from the get-go, different voices, different genders, anything, so it creates a multitude of possibilities,” Liang said, citing the example of VTuber Uncle Fox, who looks like…

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China’s military exercises near Taiwan continue as drones fly over Kinmen islands

Editor06 mins

China’s major military exercise around Taiwan entered day three Saturday, with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) apparently staging a simulated attack on Taiwan’s main island, Taipei’s Defense Ministry said. Multiple Chinese military aircraft and vessels operated near Taiwan on Saturday morning, some of them crossed the median line dividing the Taiwan Strait, the ministry said in a statement. The Taiwanese military sent warnings, scrambled aircraft and deployed defense missile systems to track the Chinese military planes, the statement said. A Taiwan Air Force air defense missile troop monitoring the situation, Aug. 6, 2022. CREDIT: Taiwan Defense Ministry On Friday night, four Chinese drones were spotted flying over the Kinmen islands near China’s Fujian province, the defense ministry said.  During the day on Friday, Chinese military aircraft made a record 68 incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ), many of them crossed the median line, which serves as a de facto border between Taiwan and the mainland. This is the highest number of incursions in one day. The previous single-day record was 56, on Oct. 4, 2021.   By “squeezing the median line,” the PLA intends to make its encroachments on Taiwan’s air space and waters routine, therefore changing the status quo in the Taiwan Strait and making it a Chinese inner sea,” said Shen Ming-Shih, acting deputy chief executive officer at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a government think-tank. The unprecedented drills are set to continue until noon on Sunday local time and Chinese media reported that a Chinese aircraft carrier group, featuring at least one nuclear-powered submarine, would take part in the first carrier deterrence exercise. Details however remain sketchy and the whereabouts of both Chinese carriers, Liaoning and Shandong, were unclear as of Saturday. Sailors aboard the USS Ronald Reagan participate in flight operations on the ship’s flight deck while sailing through the Philippine Sea, Aug. 3, 2022. CREDIT: U.S. Navy USS Ronald Reagan returns The U.S. Navy’s only forward-deployed aircraft carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan, seems to have returned to east of Taiwan from a position near its Japanese home port, several sources said. The amphibious assault ships USS Tripoli and USS America were also heading to waters near Taiwan, the U.S. Naval Institute reported. The carrier and other ships are expected to conduct maritime transit through the Taiwan Strait in the coming weeks, according to U.S. National Security Spokesperson John Kirby who added that the U.S. “will take further steps to demonstrate our commitment to the security of our allies in the region.” On Friday China released a set of eight “countermeasures” in response to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, freezing collaboration on three sets of military dialogues with the U.S., as well as from talks on the climate crisis, repatriation of illegal immigrants, counter-narcotics and legal assistance in criminal matters. The breaking off of the wide range of bilateral talks came after Beijing announced sanctions against Pelosi and her direct family members, accusing her of “vicious and provocative actions.” Pelosi is the most senior U.S. official to visit Taiwan in 25 years. On Thursday Japan said it had lodged a diplomatic protest after five ballistic missiles fired by China appear to have landed inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), which stretches 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) from the outer limits of Japan’s territorial seas. Beijing rejected the complaint saying China and Japan have not carried out maritime delimitation in the waters and China’s missile test-launch in the area was “consistent with international law and practices.”

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