China

“Aren’t all ethnic groups supposed to be equal? Why, then, is the use of our language, Tibetan, being restricted?” asks a TikTok user who goes by Youga Ga in a video in Mandarin published on the Douyin video platform. The video quickly disappeared from the platform before being republished on other social media sites not censored by the Chinese Communist Party and accessible from abroad.

The Chinese Communist Party has a long history of censoring any political content about Tibetans and other ethnic and religious minorities. At the same time, the Party encourages what might be called cultural content about tourist-friendly things like music, dance and cuisine.

However, in recent weeks, Youga Ga is far from the only person to complain about Douyin’s so-called “ban” on content in the Tibetan language. But like Younga Ga’s video, these posts were quickly removed by the platform.

Douyin hasn’t made a public declaration about banning the Tibetan language, but many posts in Tibetan have been deleted – as have posts about Tibetan culture, according to the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD), an NGO based in Dharamsala, India, the seat of the Tibetan government in exile.

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From South America to Africa to the far Pacific, China has been securing access to restricted national fishing grounds by using business partnerships to register its ships under foreign flags — a process known as “flagging in.”

Of the 80 industrial squid-fishing vessels that fly the Argentine flag, 62 are controlled by Chinese companies. In all, China operates at least 249 flagged-in vessels, including ones that fish off the coasts of Micronesia, Kenya, Ghana, Senegal, Morocco and Iran.

Even before China began putting the flags of other countries on its boats, it reigned supreme in global fishing. It achieved its dominance on the high seas — beyond any country’s jurisdiction — with more than 6,000 distant-water ships, more than triple the size of the next largest national fleet.

The Chinese fleet has a well-documented reputation for violating international laws and standards against overfishing and abusing its crews in the drive to satisfy a growing and unsustainable global appetite for seafood. Amid continuing depletion of the world’s fish stocks, workers on Chinese boats on the high seas have been kept against their will and allowed to die of malnutrition.

The practice of flagging in threatens to make these problems local. In many of the countries China has targeted, governments lack the finances, the coast guard vessels or the political will to board and spot-check fishing ships and enforce the law.

And because seafood is an essential source of protein and fishing provides an important source of employment, experts say the encroachment into national waters by Chinese ships is compromising local food security and jeopardizing local livelihoods.

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China has also displaced fishing vessels from the European Union in the waters of Morocco. In the recent past, dozens of vessels, most of them from Spain, fished with the permission of the Moroccan government. The agreement lapsed in 2023, however, and China now operates at least six flagged-in vessels in Moroccan waters.

And in the Pacific Ocean, Chinese ships comb the waters of Fiji, the Solomon Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia, having flagged in or signed access agreements with those countries, according to a 2022 report by the U.S. Congressional Research Service. “Chinese fleets are active in waters far from China’s shores,” the report warned, “and the growth in their harvests threatens to worsen the already dire depletion in global fisheries.”

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When Chinese fishing companies buy their way into the national waters of other countries, they are not doing it simply to increase their catch.

China has been expanding its influence in Latin America, Africa and the Pacific — and filling a void left by shrinking U.S. and European investment — through a global development program known as the Belt and Road Initiative. In exchange for well over $100 billion in loans to Latin American governments over the last two decades, China has at times received exclusive access to a wide range of resources including oil fields and lithium mines.

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In May 2021, Sierra Leone signed an agreement with China to build a new fishing harbor and fishmeal processing factory on a beach near a national park. Local organizations pushed for more transparency on the deal, which they said would harm the area’s biodiversity, according to a report by the Stimson Center, a foreign affairs think tank. In April 2022, Sierra Leone began purchasing land to build the harbor, despite opposition from locals.

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In Argentina, China has provided billions of dollars in currency swaps over the last decade, providing a crucial lifeline amid skyrocketing domestic inflation and growing hesitancy from other international investors or lenders. China has also made or promised billion-dollar investments in Argentina’s railway system, hydroelectric dams, lithium mines and solar and wind power plants.

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With this investment [from the Belt and Road Initiative] came political influence ...

As Pakistan works on enacting economic reforms under a multibillion-dollar IMF bailout, Islamabad must first figure out what to do with its mountain of debt owed to China

After cash-strapped Pakistan secured a new $7 billion (€6.5 billion) bailout package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in July, Islamabad has started talks with Beijing on reprofiling billions in Chinese debt as it seeks to enact economic reforms.

On the table are proposals to delay at least $16 billion in energy sector debt to China, along with extending the term of a $4 billion cash loan facility due to depleting foreign exchange reserves.

Last week, Pakistani Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb was in Beijing to present proposals on extending the maturity of debt for nine power plants built by Chinese companies under the multibillion-dollar Pakistan China Economic Corridor (CPEC).

On Friday, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif told a federal cabinet meeting that he had written a letter to the Chinese government requesting debt reprofiling, Pakistan's Dawn newspaper reported.

Reprofiling debt differs from restructuring debt in that the amount is not cut, rather, the due date for repayment is extended.

Islamabad is under immense pressure to renegotiate the expensive agreements with power producers, primarily Chinese companies, to bring down electricity prices.

Since CPEC was signed in 2015 and became one of largest components of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Beijing has poured billions of dollars into developing infrastructure in Pakistan.

The value of CPEC projects comes in a $65 billion, with the primary goal of building a shipping connection for Chinese goods from Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea over the mountain border into China's Xinjiang region.

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China breaks with Latin America and BRICS allies over Venezuela election fraud: Beijing's unquestioning support of the Maduro government is out of step with its ambitions in Latin America

Within minutes of the Maduro government declaring victory in the July 28 Venezuelan elections, China congratulated him on “his successful reelection” and for “the smooth presidential election.” China rushed into its verdict even though according to the government only 80 percent of the results had been reported – meaning at least 2 million more votes were yet to be counted.

China’s reaction has been rejected by all Latin American countries except Bolivia, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Cuba. China is also at odds with key BRICs partner Brazil and its Belt and Road partners Chile, Peru, Ecuador, and Uruguay. The major economic powers in the continent – Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Brazil – have called for evidence of what they deem a fraudulent claim of victory. Even Mexico, famous for staying out of controversies, has asked to see the Electoral Council’s voting records.

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A protest banner appeared on an overpass In Xinhua County, Hunan province, China on Tuesday calling for freedom and democracy. The banner hung over a bridge called for freedom and democracy, criticizing Chinese President Xi Jinping as a “dictator” and an “authoritarian.” The message, translated by British-Chinese journalist Cindi Yu, read: “freedom, democracy, elections, protest school, protest work, protest authoritarian traitor Xi Jinping”.

This act of dissent is unusual in China, where free speech and criticism are heavily suppressed. Protests are often met with a strong response from authorities. Observers say that the emergence of this banner reflects a growing discontent with the CPC’s strict control over public expression, particularly since the implementation of the ‘Zero Covid’ policy. This policy has led to sporadic demonstrations against Xi and the CPC’s governance.

In recent years, there have been several instances of public unrest in China. In October 2022, two banners appeared hung over a busy overpass in the capital Beijing One reads: “Go on strike. Remove dictator and national traitor Xi Jinping.” The other read “Say no to covid test, yes to food. No to lockdown, yes to freedom…Don’t be a slave, be a citizen.”

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Taiwan said it’s having difficulty sending staff to its representative office in Macau because the special administrative region’s government is demanding that they sign a commitment to the “One China Principle” to get a visa.

A Taiwan official who was set to be posted to the Macau, which China resumed sovereignty over in 1999, couldn’t get a visa, Mr Liang Wen-chieh, deputy head of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, said at a briefing on Aug 1.

He urged Macau to remove the obstacle and deal with the issue in a friendly manner, but added that Taiwan will “prepare for the worst,” without elaborating.

At issue is Macau’s demand that Taiwan officials commit to the “One China Principle” which states that there is only one China, ruled by the Beijing-based Communist government, and that Taiwan is an inalienable part of the country. That position is anathema to Taiwan, a democratic and self-ruled island, which argues it has the right of self-determination and that it has never been under the sovereignty of the People’s Republic of China.

**Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of Global Times, the Chinese state-owned newspaper, has reportedly been banned from social media for 30 days, after a now deleted blog post by him argued that China has acknowledged the importance of private economy. **

The former editor-in-chief of the Chinese newspaper, mistakenly argued that absence of the reference to “public ownership remains the mainstay” from the recent Third Plenum Communiqué earlier in July, is an acknowledgment of the capitalist economy, according to Foreign Policy.

Hu is famous for championing China’s aggressive foreign policy – known as wolf-warrior diplomacy – while also known for his opinions on issues, which have been outlandish in the past.

Cross posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/15297334

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The Hong Kong Democracy Council (HKDC) and Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) on Tuesday released a new joint report titled “Exporting Repression: Attacks on Protestors During Xi Jinping’s Visit to San Francisco in November 2023”. The report meticulously documents 34 extensive cases of transnational repression (TNR) executed by the supporters of Chinese Communist Party against protestors during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to San Francisco from November 14 to 17, 2023, for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

• Spanning 160 pages, the report provides a detailed chronological narrative of the attacks, drawing primarily from interviews and testimonies of 26 protesters and one journalist, most of whom were victims of TNR. It unveils the mobilisation and transportation of Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) united front groups across the US to San Francisco, where they engaged in acts of assault, harassment, and intimidation.

• This created a pervasive atmosphere of fear and hostility against Tibetans, Hong Kongers, Uyghurs, and Chinese democracy activists, including individuals as young as 16 years old, for demonstrating their opposition to Xi and the CCP.

• The report also scrutinised the response mechanisms of US policymakers and law enforcement authorities at both federal and local levels. “Despite strong awareness of CCP TNR at the federal level and a general commitment to countering it, agencies were unprepared to do so in San Francisco. Local law enforcement authorities exhibited a lack of awareness of TNR, were often unresponsive when alerted to the attacks, and took little and inadequate action in response to the attacks. The result was that protesters were insufficiently protected and perpetrators have not been held accountable,” the report stated.

The report urges the U.S. authorities to investigate whether the united front groups in the U.S. are operating as unregistered foreign agents of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), implementing vetting processes for diplomatic visas issued to PRC applicants, screening for connections to TNR activities, offering protection to groups in the US subjected to TNR, and enacting legislation to create resources to combat TNR.

Cross posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/15296907

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Beijing may soon issue "cyberspace IDs" to its citizens, after floating a proposal for the scheme last Friday. The draft comes from the Ministry of Public Security and the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC).

Although the policy is only open for comments and not certain to be adopted, the IDs would serve to "protect citizens' personal information, regulate the public service for authentication of cyberspace IDs, and accelerate the implementation of the trusted online identity strategy," according to a notice posted by the State Council – China's equivalent of a ministerial cabinet.

The ID will take two forms: one as a series of letter and numbers, and the other as an online credential. Both will correspond to the citizen's real-life identity, but with no details in plaintext – presumably encryption will be applied. A government national service platform will be responsible for authenticating and issuing the cyberspace IDs.

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China is one of the few countries in the world that requires citizens to use their real names on the internet. ISPs are required to collect the real names and ID numbers when customers sign up for services and, since 2017, social media sites like Weibo and WeChat must authenticate accounts with documents – including national ID.

Chinese authorities have reportedly mandated that parents of over 300 students, aged 6 to 14, of Lhamo Kirti Monastery School in Dzoge County in China's Sichuan Province, to enrol their children in state-run boarding schools.

Two sources in Tibet told RFA that parents were compelled to sign documents confirming their children’s enrolment in these state-run braiding schools. They were also instructed not to enrol their children in any other schools or monasteries until adulthood, in accordance with Article 16 of China’s Law on the Protection of Minors. This law states that parents unable to fulfil their guardianship duties must appoint other capable adults to act as guardians.

Additionally, authorities have prohibited Lhamo Kirti Monastery School from reopening since May this year. Despite parents pleading for the school to be reopened, citing compliance with Chinese law, the authorities refused and accused them of brainwashing their children. Efforts were made to allow another 200 students, aged 15 to 18, to continue their education at the monastery school, but only until September, according to one source. The authorities have also imposed stringent restrictions on the monastery, subjecting the students’ parents to various forms of harassment.

A subsidiary of Zhejiang Akcome New Energy Technology Co. was the latest to declare bankruptcy when it was ordered by a court to undertake a reorganizing process after a creditor said the manufacturer “was not able to pay debts” and “clearly lacks solvency,” according to a filing by the parent company on Monday.

While bigger players like Longi Green Energy Technology Co. have so far survived billions of yuan in losses by imposing production halts and layoffs, smaller companies have fewer ways to plug financial gaps. The failure of Zhejiang Akcome Photoelectric Technology Co. comes after another smaller manufacturer, Gansu Golden Solar Co., entered a pre-reorganization process earlier this month.

Akcome has been reporting net losses every year since 2019 and last month had to suspend solar module and cell production in four of its subsidiaries, including the arm that has now been forced into bankruptcy, according to its stock filings. The Shenzhen Stock Exchange terminated Akcome’s listing last month after its shares traded under 1 yuan ($0.14) for 20 consecutive days.

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A ubiquitous Chinese government talking point is the principle of non-interference in other countries. This includes issues of governance where China has long claimed that it does not export its model or encourage foreign nations to emulate its practices.

Yet, this is rapidly changing in China’s engagements in Africa. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has escalated its training of African party and government officials as part of CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping’s “new model of party-to-party relations,” particularly in the Global South.

• The blurred line between the CCP and the Chinese state mirrors the situation in parts of Africa where the interests of the ruling party are self-interestedly conflated with those of the state. China has many venues to advance its governance philosophy and practice. Between 2012 and 2019, the CCP conducted 368 exchanges with African parties (257 in China and 111 in Africa), according to the CCP’s International Department’s metadata.

• An indication of this renewed emphasis is the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School. Launched in 2022, the Nyerere School trains ruling party members from the Former Liberation Movements of Southern Africa (FLMSA) coalition—Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe.

• The Nyerere School - which started in 2019 - is the first in Africa to be modeled after the CCP Central Party School, which trains China’s top cadres and leaders. It is also the first of its kind to cater to multiple African political parties. This school parallels the China-Africa Institute, a continental CCP initiative to train African party and government leaders.

• CCP-supported governance and party training also occurs at the national level as illustrated by the refurbishment of the Herbert Chitepo School of Ideology, the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party school, completed in 2023.

• The non-brick-and-mortar schools of China’s National Academy of Governance (CAG), the external name for the CCP’s Central Party School. Algeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Africa are among the African countries whose governance academies maintain year-round training partnerships with CAG. China’s party exchanges have increased alongside this expanding training. China is expected to receive over 50 African party delegations this year—double the number of party visits hosted in 2015.

• While often overlooked in discussions of party training, Chinese government institutions also run programs in Africa (and the Global South more generally) on “sharing governance experience in governing state affairs” that mirror the CCP initiatives. Many of these trainings place emphasis on party supremacy over the state and government, a concept that is at odds with the multiparty democratic framework required by most African constitutions and AU conventions. Notably, CCP party schools are embedded in the structure of China’s government institutes.

Chinese authorities in Drakkar County, located in Tsolho (Ch. Hainan) Prefecture in the Amdo (Ch. Qinghai) region, have completed the demolition of the 19th-century Tibetan Buddhist monastery, Atsok Gon Dechen Choekor Ling, to make way for the construction of the Yangqu hydropower station on the Machu River (internationally known as the Yellow River).

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According to a report in June by the research group Tibet Watch, the demolition of the 135-year-old monastery began with the imposition of stringent restrictions on the movements of local Tibetans in Drakkar County. Authorities prohibited the public from taking and sharing images or videos of the monastery’s demolition and the construction of the Yangqu hydropower station on social media. Additionally, residents were banned from visiting the monastery and its planned relocation site, while monks were relocated to temporary makeshift iron shelters, and the monastery’s properties were stored in a warehouse in Palkha Township, three to four kilometers away, during the demolition process.

Another report from April noted that authorities held a meeting at the monastery on September 29, 2023, ordering the monks to comply with the government’s decision to relocate them.

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The forced relocation of local Tibetans by authorities to accommodate the construction of a series of hydropower stations mirrors the situation in Derge County, Kham region in Tibet. In February, protests erupted there, demanding a halt to constructing the Kamtok (Gangtuo) Hydropower Station on the Drichu (Yangtze) River, which would displace thousands of residents from two villages and six monasteries.

Over the past 20 years, China has become the largest lender in the Pacific. Now Tonga, Vanuatu and Samoa are spending some of the biggest sums in the world to repay debts to China, as a proportion of their GDP, according to Lowy Institute analysis.

Pacific countries have some of the highest costs in the world in terms of climate adaptation needs, but these are things that have to be deprioritised to deal with the debt. "It's a trade-off and it's not one that's good," Tonga's finance minister says.

Experts say China's EXIM Bank does not forgive foreign debts. "It will ease borrowing terms by extending repayment moratoria or pushing out final loan repayment dates. However, it rarely reduces interest rates," Bradley Parks, executive director of AidData, said.

• Tonga's annual debt repayments to China are nearly 4 per cent of its GDP — the third-highest level in the world. It's a rate that Lowy research associate Riley Duke calls "astronomically high".

• AidData analysis has found 85 per cent of China's loan-financed infrastructure projects in Tonga show signs of debt distress.

• Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Cook Islands also have moderate levels of public debt exposure to China, according to the AidData research lab at William & Mary, a Virginia-based public university in the United States.

• Vanuatu has struggled less with its debts to China and has met its loan repayments, but a series of economic shocks have set the nation back, including three tropical cyclones in 2023 and the collapse of its national carrier in May.

• Loan repayments to China commonly drain resources from public services such as health and education, and other pressing needs in the region. In Tonga's case, the government was spending more on servicing its debt than on health.

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There are bloody conflicts around the globe, in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine, producing in some loose talk of genocide. But for attendees at the International Freedom of Religion Summit Asia, held in Tokyo earlier this month, the discussion was precise and the target clear in what many said was a quiet, de facto policy genocide being carried out by China’s Communist regime in both Tibet and Xinjiang.

“The term ’genocide’ is sometimes misused to get attention,” said Robert Rehak, the Czech Republic’s special envoy for Holocaust Issues, Interfaith Dialog and Freedom of Religion. “It may not be the mass killing of a huge number of people, but if the long-term aim is to end a nation — you can call it genocide.”

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“It makes sense that authoritarian regimes fear faith,” said Katrina Lantos Swett, co-chair of the Tokyo religious freedom summit. “What they need is control of their populations, but if people have acquired convictions, they are much harder to control.”

All religious venues should have permissions, all [religious] teachers should have certifications and have ‘Xi Jinping Ideology.'

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Ethnic identities and religious practices are being replacing with uniform identities and party-approved practices. Among the worst alleged abuses are torture, disappearances and organ harvesting. More mainstream methods of control include heavy police presences and mass detentions in camps.

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The campaign is not limited to adults: Since 2016, Tibetan children as young as five have been wrenched from their families and placed in “colonial boarding schools.”

“When children come out, their connection with their families has changed,” one Tibetan expert says. “They can’t speak Tibetan, they forgot their traditions and are not able to communicate with their families.”

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An AI-monitored security web that synchronizes high technologies, from CCTV camera networks to spyware embedded in personal digital devices, allows for ubiquitous and never-resting monitoring of the population.

“Families cannot communicate with each other,” said Ilham Mahmut, chairman of Japan’s Uyghur Cultural Center. “People got skeptical about each other, even within the family.”

He speaks, he said, from personal experience. “The last time I communicated with my mother was in April 2017. She said, ‘Please don’t call me; I’ll call you if something happens.’”

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Along with the human cost comes repression In the physical space — key structures central to religious culture, notably mosques and monasteries, are being destroyed or repurposed [...]

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A number of recent reports have highlighted the involvement of Chinese nationals in transnational organised crime, though this issue is not new. China has been grappling with trafficking problems for some time, stemming from its now-defunct ‘one-child’ policy, declining birth rate, and ageing population. The geopolitical complexities have rendered China and its neighbouring countries, particularly in Southeast Asia, vulnerable to crimes such as trafficking, gambling, and smuggling, which have assumed a more transnational role and become a global security concern.

A significant contributing factor is linked to China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which now includes around 139 countries, including six in Southeast Asia.

For a long time, China has not only conveniently overlooked but quietly promoted ‘bride’ trafficking, involving the trafficking of young girls and women for marriage and sexual exploitation. This practice is not confined to Chinese provinces but extends to neighbouring countries such as Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and Vietnam. A noticeable increase in bride trafficking cases was observed during the first half of 2020, with Asian countries being the primary source.

Women trafficked from these regions typically come from impoverished, vulnerable communities and are lured or kidnapped across the border to China under false pretences of employment or marriage that promises a better life. For example, the latest report on Bangladeshi women being trafficked to China for prostitution revealed that women from Bangladesh’s indigenous communities are more susceptible to becoming victims of human trafficking to China.

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In addition to human trafficking, a significant China-backed weapons network has been implicated in cross-border arms and drug smuggling. Myanmar, embroiled in civil war since the 2021 coup and experiencing an economic crisis, has become an ideal location for such activities. While China has maintained cordial relations with the military junta, it has also appeased rebel and insurgent groups through arms smuggling to ensure the smooth progress of its ongoing Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects.

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The new infrastructural routes under the BRI have facilitated the transit of illicit trade across Southeast Asia’s borders. For instance, Cambodia’s port town of Sihanoukville, identified as a special economic zone and a flagship BRI project, has been linked to organised crime. Similarly, Myanmar’s Shwe Koko special economic zone, a hub of human trafficking and forced labour run by a Chinese syndicate, was presented as part of a BRI project.

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Chinese state-run media’s reporting on Chinese-linked transnational organised crimes is both calculative and selective. Only high-profile cases are mentioned, where Chinese anti-crime policies are praised, and annual crackdowns on various crimes are highlighted, along with joint efforts with other nations, particularly BRI countries. However, the systemic nature of these crimes and China’s broader complicity in facilitating them across its borders, adding to the complexity of the issue, are not discussed.

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Transnational organised crime linked to China, predominantly based in Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) nations, presents significant governance challenges alongside economic and security concerns. However, there is a notable absence of substantial efforts at the highest levels in affected countries to hold China accountable for the involvement of its nationals and criminal syndicates in organised crime abroad, which poses global security risks. Instead, there are occasional reports of arrests and deportations under pressure, often portrayed as joint efforts with the Chinese government.

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Transnational organised crime linked to China poses not only a security threat to countries where it thrives but also affects neighbouring nations like India. India has expressed concerns over trafficking issues along its porous borders with Bangladesh and Myanmar. Moreover, China’s recent aggressive stance towards India, exemplified by border incursions, suggests that India is a target of Chinese-linked organised crime ...

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The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is implementing policies of “labour transfer” and “surplus rural labourers” in Tibet, focusing on transitioning Tibetans from primary sector jobs like herding to secondary or tertiary sector roles such as mining according to a report from a New York-based rights group, the Human Rights Foundation (HRF).

The HRF report titled “Undermined: China’s Growing Presence in Tibetan Mining” states that China has exploited “ethnic minorities” for decades in the name of economic growth. To become a global leader in producing and exporting inexpensive goods, China relies on a steady supply of cheap labour, often sourced from its occupied territories (Countries), such as the Uyghur Region (East Turkistan), where over a million Uyghur Muslims have been forced to produce goods. If workers refuse, they are often threatened with imprisonment. These practices have been described by the UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery as possible “enslavement as a crime against humanity.”

The Chinese Communist Party has a history of repression in Tibet, which it invaded in 1949, dissolving its government and subjugating its institutions. The CCP has been forcibly assimilating Tibetans through various repressive tactics, including religious re-education for monks, separating children from their parents, and forcing the youth to attend colonial boarding schools. A key motive behind China’s invasion of Tibet was to seize control of its natural resources. Currently, the CCP is interested in Tibet’s minerals such as copper and lithium, essential for the global shift towards renewable energy.

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China’s mining activity in Tibet began in the 1960s but increased significantly in the mid-2000s, initially through joint ventures with Canadian companies. China later bought out these companies, turning the mines into state-owned enterprises. Recent efforts to develop the mining industry include forcibly relocating rural Tibetans and constructing mines that pollute the land. Protests against these operations have been met with brutal crackdowns.

Labour transfer programs in Tibet mirror those in the Uyghur Region, involving state-arranged employment and door-to-door recruitment by local cadres. This recruitment process raises questions about the voluntariness of Tibetan participation. The rural surplus labour transfer policies contain key phrases identical to those in the Uyghur Region, indicating similar implementation methods. A January 2023 law states that Tibetans who reject state-arranged jobs three times may face reductions or suspensions of their subsistence allowances.

Mining companies such as Zijin Mining Group Ltd. and China Gold International Resources have been linked to labour transfer and poor working conditions. There is a lack of transparency regarding the working conditions in Tibetan mines, but reports suggest difficult work environments and strong security measures to monitor and suppress any “undesired” activity.

Politicians in Bolivia, Colombia, Slovakia, North Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and one other Asian country that declined to be named, say they are receiving texts, calls and urgent requests for meetings that would conflict with their plans to travel to Taipei, in what they describe as efforts to isolate Taiwan.

The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) summit officially begins tomorrow. The alliance is a group of hundreds of lawmakers from 35 countries concerned about how democracies approach Beijing.

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"They [Chinese officials] sent a direct message to the president of my party, to stop me from traveling to Taiwan,” Bosnia and Herzegovina lawmaker Sanela Klaric said. “He showed me the message from them. He said: ‘I will advise you not to go, but I cannot stop you, it’s something you have to make a decision.’”

China routinely threatens retaliation against politicians and countries that show support for Taiwan, which has only informal relations with most nations due to Chinese diplomatic pressure.

Klaric said the pressure was unpleasant, but only steeled her determination to go on the trip.

“I really am fighting against countries or societies where the tool to manipulate and control peoples is fear,” she said, adding that it reminded her of threats and intimidation she faced during the Balkan wars in the 1990s. “I really hate the feeling when somebody is frightening you.”

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In a statement yesterday, IPAC said it “deplores and condemns the PRC’s [People’s Republic of China’s] attempt to interfere in its annual summit.”

“Democratically elected lawmakers are free to visit and support causes of their choosing. This is the normal exercise of their rights and responsibilities as elected officials,” it said.

“The PRC’s actions around IPAC’s Summit are yet another example of their brazen efforts to curtail other nations’ democratic privileges and negate Taiwan’s rights to engage in legitimate diplomatic exchanges,” it added.

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China has been peeling off Taiwan’s diplomatic allies, often with promises of development aid, in a long-running competition between the nations that has swung in Beijing’s favor in the past few years.

The Pacific Island nation of Nauru switched recognition to Beijing earlier this year, a move that reduced Taiwan’s number of diplomatic allies to 12.

However, China’s at times heavy-handed approach has also triggered backlash.

In 2021, Beijing downgraded relations and blocked imports from Lithuania, an EU and NATO member, after the Baltic nation broke with diplomatic custom by agreeing that a Taiwanese representative office in its capital of Vilnius would bear the name Taiwan instead of Taipei, which some other countries use to avoid offending Beijing.

The following year, the EU adopted a resolution criticizing Beijing’s behavior toward Taiwan and took action against China at the WTO over the import restrictions.

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However, [...] the coercive tactics have only made participants more determined to participate.

Miriam Lexmann, a Slovakian member of the European Parliament whose party head was approached by Chinese diplomats, said the pressure underscored her reason for coming to Taiwan.

We want to “exchange information, ways how to deal with those challenges and threats which China represents to the democratic part of the world, and of course, to support Taiwan,” she said.

[Edit title for clarity.]

Archived version

The recently concluded Third Plenum of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 20th Central Committee did not produce any major surprises or unexpected policy shifts. Rather, the conclave was mostly an exercise in reiterating policy priorities announced in the last three years.

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There are at least three reasons to doubt that the means currently employed will produce the desired results. The first is that underlying the push into “new quality productive forces” is the belief that supply creates its own demand, that increasing production (naturally) increases consumption. This assumption is quite suspect; the causal relationship probably runs the other way.

Whatever the case, inadequate consideration of where the demand for all the additional supply will come from is already producing quite predictable but unintended consequences: falling prices of electric vehicles and solar panels globally, falling producer prices and the threat of deflation in China, and a backlash in much of the developed world as China’s trade surpluses balloon.

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[...] even if China’s manufacturers are highly competitive and the country’s export growth remains strong, this is insufficient to offset weak domestic demand. This risk is amplified by the forces pushing toward decoupling.

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The second fallacy that Chinese policymakers subscribe to is that their state-dominated, social-engineering approach to industrial policy will continue to work as well as it has in the past. While industrial targeting and subsidies worked well when China was playing catch-up in manufacturing, they are unlikely to work as well when the economy is near, or already at, the technology frontier.

[...]

The third risk is that when policy is driven by ideologically-motivated directives from the top, rather than by market signals, it tends to lurch from one extreme to another. For example, until 2020, Chinese policy toward the consumer internet industry (e.g., e-commerce, gaming, consumer finance) was largely accommodative, if not highly supportive, even though there were already well-known problems with the industry. Suddenly in late 2020, Chinese regulators received the signal from above that the sector’s growth should be crimped. A heavy-handed regulatory crackdown ensued, resulting in an industry that has since lost more than 60 percent of its market capitalization – and shows no sign of recovering.

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In Laos, the tiny Asian country, China became the largest foreign investor with some $5 billion spread across 745 projects, overtaking Thailand. The China-led strategy was meant to protect countries like Laos from economic shocks — instead, it led to them. Today Laos is struggling to repay the billions it borrowed from China to fund the hydroelectric dams, trains and highways, which have drained the country of foreign reserves. As repayments drag, external debt is rising, a vulnerability exacerbated by the pandemic and rising global fuel and food prices.

The escalating public debt in Laos has sparked global discussions regarding the sustainability within the region. This concern primarily stems from China’s increasing role as a significant financier of Southeast Asian infrastructure projects, raising fears that China might be using debt to gain geopolitical leverage by ensnaring impoverished nations in unmanageable loan agreements.

When President Xi Jinping of China proposed the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in a pair of speeches in 2013, the initiative became popular in the developing world, where almost all countries face infrastructure deficiencies. Beijing has loaned almost $1 trillion to developing nations in the past two decades. But China was specifically providing debt and burdening borrowing countries with high-interest rates they could not repay.

[...]

BRI has also been criticised as an effort to export China’s authoritarian model, as a number of major loan recipients have poor records of democracy and civil liberties like in Cambodia and Laos in Asia.

What then results is called ‘Debt-trap diplomacy (DTD),’ now associated as a Chinese policy tool connected to BRI. The approach to Debt-trap diplomacy begins by China intentionally lending excessively money to low-income indebted states that cannot later repay Chinese debt. Loan taking nations see a rise in public debt. However, it is difficult to say how much Chinese financing is going to infrastructure in Southeast Asia because the Chinese effort lacks transparency. China’s loans are largely coming from the two policy banks: China Development Bank and China EXIM Bank. They borrow on domestic and international capital markets and lend with a spread, so they expect to be financially self-sufficient.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to trample on human rights and religious freedom, arresting political dissidents and religious followers, data compiled by Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) showed. Supporters for Taiwan independence are just one group of targets by Chinese censors, the investigation has find.

• About 20 Chinese nationals were questioned by the Chinese Public Security Bureau after they held a gathering in Chongqing City to celebrate Taiwan President William Lai’s inauguration on May 20. Among them was Li Xuezhi (李學志), who was indicted for posting online footage of people toasting the “democratically elected president of Taiwan,” the council said.

• In a separate case, a Chinese farmer, Zhang Liping (張立平), was last month detained and interrogated by Chinese police who demanded that he recant a message he wrote in an open letter in support of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and asking people to donate to Kyiv.

• Chinese online platforms Douban, Weibo and others have removed all mentions of Chinese director Lou Ye’s latest work, An Unfinished Film, a docufiction film focusing on the lockdown in Wuhan during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• More than 100 parents whose children perished during the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake when the main building at Juyuan Junior High School in Dujiangyan City came crashing down were chased away by plainsclothes police when they recently gathered to commemorate the loss, the council said.

• Religious oppression persists, with Bishop Peter Shao (邵祝敏), leader of the Roman Catholic Yongjia Diocese, being arrested again for refusing to join the state-sponsored Catholic Patriotic Association.

Cross posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/15144651

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On July 1, 2024, the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party launched a probe into Harvard University, seeking answers after student protestors were violently dragged, interrogated, and followed by Chinese individuals during an April protest of Chinese Ambassador Xie Feng’s speech at the Harvard Kennedy School.

The Select Committee expressed grave concerns about transnational repression by the Chinese government and the involvement of international students from China in acts of harassment and intimidation condoned by the Chinese government against its critics. In a letter to Harvard University’s President Garber, the Select Committee requested that Harvard provide it with a briefing and answers to a series of questions.

[...]

After this incident, the student victims at Harvard felt terrified, unsupported, and unsafe. Their peaceful protest of the Chinese government’s human rights abuses resulted in violence and threats as well as disciplinary action from the university. The injustice and censorship of an authoritarian regime have permeated this democratic country and been condoned at one of America’s most prestigious academic institutions.

Unfortunately, this case is not an isolated one. The CCP has increasingly applied its surveillance and censorship capabilities to monitor, deter, and punish protesters and activists overseas. Numerous human rights organizations [...] have released detailed reports documenting transnational repression at American universities and issued guidelines for universities to best protect their students and staff. Unfortunately, current practices at Harvard and elsewhere fall far short of these guidelines.

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Analysts say China faces pressure to act on decade-old economic policy promises that it repeated at its leadership meeting last week.

With imbalances in China’s economy deepening, threats of lingering deflation, plus weak demand at home and increased hostility towards its export dominance abroad, national leaders chose policy continuity rather than any structural shifts at the twice a decade political event known as a plenum.

[...]

Analysts say China faces pressure to act on decade-old economic policy promises that it repeated at its leadership meeting last week.

With imbalances in China’s economy deepening, threats of lingering deflation, plus weak demand at home and increased hostility towards its export dominance abroad, national leaders chose policy continuity rather than any structural shifts at the twice a decade political event known as a plenum.

[...]

Huge inequalities, credibility deficit

China’s pledges to boost domestic demand, reform a Mao-era internal ‘hukou’ passport system blamed for huge rural-urban inequalities, strengthen rural land rights or improve social security also date back to at least 2013.

In reiterating a policy agenda with a mixed track record, Beijing faces a credibility deficit it did not have a decade ago and will need to act with more urgency if it wants to lift business and consumer sentiment from near-record lows, economists say.

Unusually for a plenum, as they tend to be vague on implementation timelines, Beijing committed to meet its policy goals by 2029. But the concrete deadline failed to inspire investors.

[...]

China is betting on high-tech export products becoming a new driver of growth that compensates for the dwindling returns on infrastructure investment and the growing writedowns it faces after its giant real estate bubble popped in 2021.

That bet is unnerving Washington, Brussels and other capitals that argue Beijing is driving industrial overcapacity in various sectors that cheapen Chinese exports and threaten manufacturing jobs around the world.

It also concerns many economists who have argued the world’s second-largest economy needs to reduce its over-reliance on external markets and debt-fuelled investment and stimulate household consumption instead.

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Surangel Whipps Jr, President of Palau, a Taiwanese ally, has accused China of interference and criticized Beijing for blocking a travel industry delegation's visit to Macau, Taiwan News reported. Whipps also accused China over two cyberattacks faced by Palau this year.

In an interview with Nikkei Asia, Whipps said that China was taking its actions against Palau to a "new level." He further said that a Palauan delegation aimed to participate in an international travel industry conference in Macau in May but was denied visas due to Palau's diplomatic relationship with Taiwan.

[...]

Whipps said that in March, thousands of government documents were stolen and released on the dark web, with an investigation tracing the suspects back to China.

He added that the second cyberattack in July targeted the country's customs and border protection system, probably to try and disrupt the country's tourism industry. He further said that the second cyber incident could not be confirmed as coming from China, but in both instances, ransomware was involved.

Notably, Palau will have presidential and legislative elections in November this year.