China

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Philippine defence minister Gilberto Teodoro and Japanese foreign minister Yoko Kamikawa signed the deal in a ceremony in Manila witnessed by Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, presidential communications secretary Cheloy Garafil said in a message.

[...]

The deal, the first of its kind to be signed by Japan in Asia, would take effect after ratification by both countries’ legislatures, officials said.

A Japanese military presence in the Philippines could help Manila counter Chinese influence in the South China Sea, where Beijing’s expansive maritime claims conflict with those of a number of Southeast Asia nations.

An international tribunal in 2016 said China’s claims had no legal basis, a ruling that Beijing rejects.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/535012

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China’s economy has repeatedly disappointed expectations since the end of the Covid pandemic. Consumption is sluggish, the property crisis is a burden and attempts to achieve growth through exports are being met with punitive tariffs from the rest of the world.

Few Western observers know the world’s second-largest economy better than Joerg Wuttke. In an in-depth conversation with The Market NZZ, the long-serving former President of the EU Chamber of Commerce in Beijing talks about China's growth prospects, the problem of overcapacity in the country and explains who calls the shots when it comes to economic policy.--

Joerg Wuttke:

"The property crisis continues to be the biggest drag [for the Chinese economy]. It had been looming for a long time because it was obvious that property prices were significantly inflated."

[...]

"There is also a special feature of China: everything the government announces with big plans ends up creating overcapacity at some point. The best current example is the automotive sector, where around 140 suppliers are fighting each other. This is eroding the profitability of companies and people are struggling to survive."

[...]

"People [who consider buying property] have become cautious. For years, they thought they could buy a flat and sell it later at a higher price. And now they are suddenly realising that they have lost 30%. The government should do more to counter this, it is not doing a good enough job [...] There is no point in the government lowering mortgage rates if I don’t know whether the apartment I have bought will ever be completed or if I have to assume that prices will continue to fall. There are 90 million empty housing units in the country, which is a huge oversupply.

[...]

"Consumption is also restrained when people see that their own family members are losing their jobs. There are many unemployed people in rural areas who have returned to their villages from the big construction sites. Pessimism, which has never really been an issue in the last thirty years, has spread in the last twelve months."

[...]

"Nobody knows for sure [how high the unemployment is]. It is a question of definition, because in the official statistics you are apparently not considered unemployed if you work even one hour a week. Youth unemployment climbed to almost 30%, but then the government changed the statistics. However, you can see a clear trend if you look at the purchasing managers’ indices [...] Companies are holding back on hiring, especially in the private sector.

[...]

"This is the first Third Plenum [which takes off on July 15] that has not triggered any great expectations. Which probably means that markets will hardly be disappointed if not much comes out of the session. We will certainly hear warm words, especially addressed towards foreign companies [...] they are likely to announce plans to reduce protectionism between [Chinese] provinces and open up the domestic market. A market struggling with overcapacity leads to provinces closing themselves off from each other."

[...]

"China accounts for 30% of total global production, but it only accounts for 14% of global consumption. That is a huge imbalance. President Xi Jinping has focussed on the manufacturing sector because he hopes it will also boost innovation. But launching big plans in China always leads to everyone aiming for the goal, everyone seeing a lot of money, and then everyone doing the same thing in 31 provinces and regions. The country has more than 150,000 state-owned enterprises. They all remain on the market, even though many of them are losing money. [...] This [Chinese] economy has a gigantic skew. There needs to be consolidation, and that would require political courage."

[...]

"Probably about ten [among the 140 actors in the automotive sector are profitable]. The top dog is BYD, Tesla is also doing very well, they both have capacity utilisation rates of almost 100%. However, a third of the suppliers have a capacity utilisation of less than 20%. These companies are making huge losses, but they are being concealed and absorbed by local governments."

[...]

"This consolidation [consolidation of the Chinese economy] will be much more painful. It won’t be easy in a country that doesn’t have a well-developed social safety net."

[...]

"Xi [who doesn’t have much sympathy for social security and doesn’t want a welfare state] once told the Danish prime minister that he could not understand these lazy Europeans. In China, people have to work hard. He seems like someone from another time. He tells unemployed young people that they should just go to the countryside and help the farmers. There's a huge generation gap in the country."

[...]

"I think the tariffs [imposed by the EU on Chinese electric Vehicles] are rather low. BYD’s share price rose by 9% when they were announced. That really says it all. The tariffs are not designed in such a way that the Chinese can no longer sell cars in Europe. But this will be an issue worldwide: the US is imposing 100% import duties on EVs, Turkey has added 40%, Brazil is imposing tariffs in the steel sector. There will be more to come. We have to be prepared for the fact that this flood of exports from China will also trigger counter-pressure in the so-called Global South. The playing field for China is getting narrower and narrower.

-Japan confirmed that the Chinese survey ship Xiang Yang Hong 22 set up the buoy in mid-June while monitoring the vessel as it sailed through Japan's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the East China Sea, a government source said. The open-sea area in question is surrounded by Japan's EEZ.

• Japan has urged China not to undermine Japan's maritime interests. It's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told a news conference it was "regrettable" that China has set up a small buoy in the waters off Japan's western main island of Shikoku and north of the southernmost Okinotori Island "without explaining its purpose and other details."

• Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said the buoy, which is to monitor tsunami, was set up in the high seas "for the purposes of scientific research and serving public good.

• Last July, China installed another buoy inside Japan's EEZ near the Tokyo-controlled, Beijing-claimed uninhabited Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, prompting Japan to lodge a protest and demand its immediate removal.

• Mao said that as the islands, which Beijing calls Diaoyu, are part of China's territory and its surrounding waters are under the country's jurisdiction, it is "legitimate and lawful for China to set up hydrological and meteorological data buoys in those areas."

• China has been intensifying its military activities and maritime assertiveness in the regional waters, with Japan protesting against repeated intrusions by Chinese ships into Japanese waters around the Senkakus.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/509125

• South African retailers have urged the government to plug tax loopholes that they fear are being used by Chinese e-commerce platform Temu, and Shein, another Chinese online platform,

• Etienne Vlok, a national industrial policy officer for Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union, said the government should consider urgent changes to tax rules on small items to ensure fair competition for local businesses.

• Temu, the online shopping juggernaut backed by China’s PDD Holdings Inc. has offered huge discounts in South Africa since its launch in January. The firm has expanded its global footprint to 49 countries and recently took out ads at the Super Bowl to try and sustain growth among US consumers.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/508959

Companies consider moving Taiwanese employees out of China after Beijing said it could impose the death penalty on “die-hard” Taiwanese independence advocates

• China's new guidelines have caused some Taiwanese expatriates and foreign multinationals operating in China to scramble to assess their legal risks and exposure. “Several companies have come to us to assess the risks to their personnel,” said James Zimmerman, a Beijing-based partner at the Perkins Coie law firm.

• Zimmerman, who declined to identify the companies or industries for confidentiality reasons, added: “The companies are still concerned that there may be some gray areas, such as whether a benign social media post or voting for a particular political party or candidate in Taiwan elections could be interpreted as engaging in pro-independence activities."

• As of 2022, about 177,000 Taiwanese were working in China, according to the most recent Taiwanese government survey. Taiwanese staff are employed by many multinationals in China, given their linguistic abilities and cultural familiarity with the country.

• Many more work for the myriad Taiwanese firms that operate in China and have, by the Taiwanese government’s estimate, invested more than US$200 billion since 1991, helping fuel China’s growth to become the world’s second-biggest economy.

• Some foreign firms operating in China have held meetings with employees on safety, said the two executives, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/487403

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The French organizers of the Festival Off Avignon, one of the biggest performing arts festivals in the world, said that they received protests and threats from China after selecting Taiwan as its guest of honour country for this year's event.

According to Harold David and Laurent Domingos, co-presidents of the Avignon Festival & Compagnies (AF&C), China's embassy in Paris threatened to withdraw from the event if Taiwan was not dropped as its guest of honour country (‘pays invité d'honneur’).

• Domingos said that they had anticipated such a reaction. “We are not stupid, we understand geopolitics,” he said, adding that they have to bear the responsibility for their choice. While the festival’s board has not made a final decision, David and Domingos said they believed the event, which began on Wednesday, should maintain its independence, autonomy, variety and freedom, and keep Taiwan as the guest of honor.

• Domingos said that the festival is also planning events for the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between France and the People’s Republic of China. The two developments do not conflict with each other, he said.

• Taiwan first participated in the Festival Off Avignon 17 years ago, and the country’s selection as a guest of honor was a tribute to its past contributions to the event, David said. The traits Taiwan shares with the festival include diversity, openness to the world, creativity and freedom of speech, he added.

• Domingos also lauded the creativity that Taiwan has brought to the festival, which runs until July 21. “Taiwan identifies itself with its culture. It is not recognized by the United Nations and many countries as a ‘country,’ so it defines itself with its cultural identity,” he said, adding that the festival itself was a field to exhibit cultural identity.

Archived version

• Communist-run Laos has come to the fore after it opened a high-speed rail line with China in 2021 that cost the landlocked country about $6 billion. While the development is seen by many as the start of a ramp up in infrastructure that directly connects China with Southeast Asia, it has raised concerns of a build-up in debt for Laos and other smaller countries.

• China is by far Laos’ biggest creditor, accounting for about half of the $10.5 billion in external government debt. The tiny nation had $13.8 billion in total public and publicly-guaranteed debt at the end of last year, amounting to 108% of its gross domestic product.

• Laos’ external debt payments in 2023 reached $950 million, almost double the amount compared to 2022,, making the country defer $670 million in principal and interest payments. The World Bank has said in the past that such moves have provided temporary relief in recent years.

• Laos' development is seen by many as a further chapter of China's 'debt-trap diplomacy' as Beijing offers developing countries financial loans under often opaque condition, leaving them grappling with repayments while it supports China’s efforts to expand its economic and political influence in foreign countries.

• For example, Sri Lanka fell into default for the first time in its history back in 2022 after its foreign reserves dwindled. Last month the South Asian nation said it reached final restructuring agreements worth $10 billion, including with an Official Creditor Committee of bilateral lenders and China’s Exim Bank. Sri Lanka's port, however, is now owned by China.

• China dismissed the “debt-trap diplomacy” allegations.

• Indonesia is preparing to impose tariffs and use other means to protect its textile industry from imports from China, the latest in a series of countries and blocs such as the US and the European Union, which are responding to the flood of goods out of the world’s largest manufacturing nation.

• After the government in Jakarta rolled back some import restrictions earlier this year, protests from thousands of textile workers are pushing the government to introduce new curbs. Indonesia imported almost 29,000 tons of imports of woven fabrics made from artificial filament yarn last year. Goods from China accounted for most of that.

• It’s unclear whether the government is considering imposing only safeguard duties or also other tariffs. "We have actually provided many fiscal instruments to protect the textile industry, including safeguard duties and anti-dumping duties, which are usually related to unfair trade that harm the domestic industry,” said Febrio Kacaribu, head of fiscal policy agency at the finance ministry.

• Indonesia has maintained an overall trade surplus for the last four years. However, the surplus with China flipped to a deficit in May, driven by imports of machinery and plastic goods.

Archived version

• Nepal has shied away from signing a plan to implement China’s ambitious Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) in the Himalayan nation. Resisting immense pressure from Beijing, Nepal’s Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal refused to greenlight the signing that would have paved the way for the implementation of nine mega and more than a dozen major BRI projects in Nepal.

• That’s because soon after Nepal signed the BRI framework agreement in May 2017, India launched a massive but silent campaign to educate and explain Nepal’s political leadership, economists, bureaucrats, diplomats, academia, media and civil society leaders the pitfalls of China’s BRI to them, making Nepal’s top politicians and others fully aware of China’s sinister plan to ensnare nations into a debt trap through the BRI.

• PM Deuba eventualky told China that Nepal would only agree to a small component of the cost of BRI projects in the form of loans. However, the interest on such loans should not be more than what multilateral lending agencies like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB) charge for their loans (one per cent per annum).

• This was not acceptable to China which charges more than two per cent on the loans it gives to other countries to finance BRI projects. Also, China insists on the contracts for these projects being awarded only to Chinese companies and refuses to do away with or water down penalty clauses (in case of failure to repay the loans on time).

What also worked against China was Nepal’s experience with the Pokhara International Airport which cost US $ 305 million. China’s Exim Bank provided a loan of about US $ 215 million at 2 per cent interest. Chinese firms were awarded contracts for construction and technical works.

Allegations of shoddy construction, inflated costs and mismanagement by the Chinese have fuelled public anger against China in Nepal. The airport has turned into a huge liability (read this) since no commercial and scheduled flights are operating from there.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/459808

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“What [authoritarian] regimes have in common is their fear of a well-informed public,” Christoph Jumpelt, the head of the international relations unit at Germany’s public broadcaster, Deutsche Welle, said this week in Taiwan.

International media groups like AP, Reuters and PA Media Group cooperate with China's state-controlled agency Xinhua for being able to operate within the country. It should be obvious that such a conditionality has no place in what they say is a “purely commercial” arrangement, not in the least as this does a huge injustice to the thousands of journalists who struggle each day to report the facts.

• Last month Fu Hua, President of China’s official Xinhua News Agency, which sits directly under the country’s State Council, made a whirlwind tour from New York to London, meeting with top executives from AP, Reuters, and PA Media Group, to foster long-standing business relationships.

• Such deals with Xinhua should invite tougher questions about how international media companies with a stated commitment to professional standards should deal with Chinese media giants whose sole commitment — crystal clear in the country’s domestic political discourse— is to strengthen the global impact of Party-state propaganda.

• Xinhua's Fu is not a champion of independent media values, or a partner in tackling the information challenges of the future. Prior to his role at Xinhua, Fu served as a deputy minister of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Propaganda Department. His agenda is that of China’s ruling Chinese Communist Party, the CCP. Plain and simple.

• The partnerships with Western media are part of a broader effort by Xinhua to deepen its global media influence, curtailing criticism of the Chinese government and shaping international discourse that portrays the CCP in a positive light. And yet, year in and year out, Western media executives insist, even against the substance of their own statements, that this type of cooperation is just normal business.

• If it is true, for example, that AP “publishes none of the stories" by Xinhua as it claims, what then is the point of such empty formalities? “Like most major news agencies,” said a former agency head, “AP has an agreement with state-run media in China that allows AP to operate inside the country.”

• And there we have the crux. AP’s relationship with Xinhua, in place since 1972, forms the political foundation on which AP and other major news agencies, including Reuters, are able to operate in China.

• It should be obvious such conditionality has no place in any “purely commercial” arrangement. And as they obscure the true nature of the arrangement, news outlets do a huge injustice to the thousands of journalists who struggle each day to report the facts.

• Western outlets that claim to uphold professional values need to decide where they stand while insisting on the charade of standing with Xinhua, shaking hands and signing on the dotted line.

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A surge of Chinese plastic supply is threatening to overflow in the face of weak domestic demand, morphing into a fresh trade challenge for the rest of the world.

“Everyone in China has this notion that if they are fast enough, if they are the first in the industry, able to burn cash long enough, then they will become the survivor that takes market share. And then they can raise the price,” said Ms Vivien Zheng, Asia chemicals analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence.

• Plants have mushroomed along the country’s eastern coast over the last decade, built in a race to satisfy China’s hunger for plastic and to help refiners counter an expected downturn in transport fuels, as electric vehicles take off. Vast volumes and lacklustre post-pandemic demand mean margins are paper thin – but companies have kept producing, hoping to cling to existing market share.

• “This is yet another example – after steel and solar panels – where China’s structural imbalances are clearly spilling over into global markets,” one expert for Chinese industries said. In an echo of its predicament from batteries to green-energy technology, the world’s second-largest economy is staring down a situation of dramatic industrial excess.

• Factories currently navigate the supply surge with brief shutdowns and low run rates, but as production capacity continues to be added, petrochemical executives and sector analysts say surpluses will grow – enough in many products to turn China into a significant exporter, often selling into a glut and potentially exacerbating existing trade tensions.

• “China’s substantial investments between 2020 and 2027 have reshaped global supply dynamics, leading to a structural surplus in Asia and persistent low or negative profit margins,” said Ms Kelly Cui, principal petrochemicals analyst at Wood Mackenzie. The consultancy estimates that almost a quarter of global ethylene capacity is at risk of closure, even as China is still adding more.

• Between 2019 and the end of 2024, China will have completed construction of so many plants to turn crude oil and gas into products such as ethylene and propylene – materials behind everything from plastic bottles to machinery – that nameplate capacity is now equal to Europe, Japan and South Korea combined, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

• Part of the reason is that smaller plants do not require approvals from Beijing, as large refineries do. The local authorities were quick to see the opportunity to use cheap land and fiscal perks to encourage job creation and investment. All sought to feed demand for a plastic known as polypropylene, used for plastic packaging, automobile parts and electrical appliances.

• But as supply flowed, domestic demand faltered. Now the trouble is that financial and market-share pressures are also adding up.

• China is already a net exporter of polyester products such as PVC and PET, used in clothing or food containers, shipping them to countries like Nigeria, Vietnam and India, according to an expert, again creating or worsening trade surpluses.

• Most of the new facilities in China were installed in the last three or five years despite slowing demand, which makes this economic development harder and harder to sustain.

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Taiwan said the Chinese coast guard boarded a Taiwanese fishing boat Tuesday before steering it to a port in mainland China, and demanded that Beijing release the vessel.

The Tachinman 88 was intercepted by two Chinese vessels Tuesday evening near the Kinmen archipelago, which lies a short distance off China’s coast but is controlled by Taiwan, Taiwanese maritime authorities said in a statement.

Taiwan dispatched three vessels to rescue the Tachinman 88, but the one that got close to the fishing boat were blocked by three Chinese boats and told not to interfere, the statement said. The pursuit was called off to avoid escalating the conflict after Taiwan’s maritime authorities detected that four more Chinese vessels were moving closer, the statement added.

“The Coast Guard calls on the mainland to refrain from engaging in political manipulation and harming cross-strait relations, and to release the Tachinman ship and crew as soon as possible,” the statement read.

The boat had six crew onboard, including the captain and five migrant workers, according to Taiwan’s official Central News Agency. The vessel was just over 20 kilometers (12 miles) away from Jinjiang in mainland China when it was boarded, Taiwanese authorities said.

China claims self-governing Taiwan as its territory and says the island must come under its control. The Chinese military regularly sends warplanes and ships toward the island and staged a large exercise with dozens of aircraft and vessels in May.

Fishermen from both Taiwan and China regularly sail the stretch of water near the Kinmen archipelago, which has seen a rise in tensions as the number of Chinese vessels — including sand dredgers and fishing boats — have notably increased in the area.

In February, two Chinese fishermen were drowned while being chased by Taiwan’s Coast Guard off the coast of Kinmen, prompting Beijing to step up patrols in the waters.

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Over the past 40 years, the Chinese government has carried out several programs to reduce and eliminate extreme poverty in the Country. On 25 February 2021, the National media announced that extreme poverty had been almost eliminated in China.

There were, however, many human rights issues that came up along the way. And many even argue some measures of China's poverty reduction strategy should rather be viewed as a way to gain leverage in its border disputes with its neighbors.

• The Targeted Poverty Alleviation (TPA) program was officially implemented in 2015, it was structured to follow the whole process: from poverty identification to poverty exit.

• TPA developed five core methods to lift the poor out of poverty: industry, relocation, ecological compensation, education, and social assistance. Despite its innovative approach to eradicating extreme poverty, TPA methods have some harsh side effects, especially for ethnic minorities.

• the relocation strategy is not new to the Chinese government. However, after launching the TPA, it was mainly directed toward regions where most people belong to China’s ethnic minorities. Tibet is one of the regions where the mass relocation programs are more controversial, mainly because of the numerous human rights violations perpetrated by China’s government against Tibetans since the creation of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) in 1951.

• the PRC is carrying out a “Sinicization” campaign whose objective is to eradicate any trace of Tibetans’ autonomy’s desire. Mass relocation programs are part of this strategy, even if the government maintains that it is the most effective strategy to reduce poverty and, at the same time, to stop environmental degradation.

• Tibetans are moved to locations where they cannot continue their former livelihoods or lifestyles. Often, for example, herders are moved to farming areas and farmers are moved to urban areas where they will be entering the labor market without the experience to do so. Part of the TPA indeed is to provide relocated people with initial subsidies and social assistance to facilitate their adjustment to new lifestyles, but for what concerns Tibetan herders, this kind of assistance is not enough.

• If Tibetans do not agree to relocate, authorities are allowed to exert different forms of pressure that range from intrusive home visits to implicit threats. After the relocation, the Chinese government demolishes their former homes once they have been relocated to prevent them from coming back. The UN Basic Principles and Guidelines on Development-based Evictions and Displacement provides that states should, when circumstances allow, prioritize the rights of restitution and return.

• In recent years, the relocation of Tibetans has been accurately directed towards villages along the contested territories between China and its neighbors. It involved building 628 border villages called “well-off border defense villages” which were selected for their remote location, very sparse population, and poor conditions.

• For China’s government, these villages have multiple objectives: reduce the poverty rate in the country, and keep an eye on the movements of populations and activities across the border. Moreover, the location of these villages, and the development of bridges and railway lines in the same regions, should be viewed as a way to gain leverage in its border disputes with its neighbors.

• China is particularly concerned about one of its neighbors: India. Although trade between the two nuclear powers surpassed $136 billion in 2023, relations between Beijing and New Delhi remain tense. China reclaims large parts of Indian territory, including the entire state of Arunachal Pradesh which was recently renamed “Southern Tibet” by China’s government.

• The response of the newly elected National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was the renaming of 30 places in Tibet, signaling its willingness to confront China, at least theoretically. Indian and Chinese troops stationed along the border regularly engage in conflict, sometimes resulting in casualties.

• As China focuses more on border defense and security in Tibet, the situation between India and China at the borders is likely to escalate and possibly result in more clashes. China is investing heavily and strategically in border-related infrastructure and in relocating and re-educating residents. The Indian Government may follow suit and bolster its borders by investing more, securing them, and ensuring their safety.

• For India, the Himalayan problem is a bilateral affair, but recently Modi seems more willing to let China know that he is looking for new allies. Modi thanked Lai Ching-te, the newly elected President of Taiwan, for his message of congratulations after being re-elected. Nevertheless, the Taiwan-India relationship remains unofficial, and their political connections seem to be directed at deepening economic cooperation.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/380048

Taiwan's government raised the travel alert for Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau to “orange” level and advised people to avoid non-essential travelling. The Council claimed that because the Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau have continued to amend or issue legal documents relating to national security in recent years, there are reported cases in which Taiwanese travelling to mainland China have been subjected to unlawful detention, retention and interrogation, as the Straits Exchange Foundation deputy secretary general Tsai Meng-chun suggested.

One week ago, China published new judicial guidelines to introduce the death penalty for “particularly serious” cases involving supporters of Taiwanese independence, which included severe punishments for activities deemed as fragmenting the country or inciting secession. According to the Council, this poses a serious threat to the personal safety of Taiwanese travelling to mainland areas. Hence, it strongly recommended that Taiwan people should not enter China mainland, Hong Kong and Macau unless it is necessary, and should avoid discussing sensitive issues, photographing military sites, or carrying books on politics, history and religion.

JD.com founder Richard Liu warned employees against prioritizing work-life balance during a recent video conference, stating those who "put life first and work second" were not welcome at the company. This stance reflects a broader trend in China's tech sector as executives face slowing growth and increased competition.

Major tech firms, including Alibaba and Tencent, have cut tens of thousands of jobs since 2021. Companies are now seeking younger, cheaper workers and demanding longer hours from existing staff. Pinduoduo, an e-commerce group known for its high productivity and grueling work culture, is seen as a model by some in the industry. In 2021, two Pinduoduo employees died in incidents linked to overwork by colleagues.

Older tech professionals, typically over 35, face the greatest risk of redundancy and struggle to find new positions. Employers often view them as expensive and less flexible due to family responsibilities. A 2023 survey of 2,200 professionals in China's largest cities revealed widespread anxiety about career prospects and work-life balance. Many in the industry report experiencing depression and high stress levels.

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The number of writers jailed reached a five-year high, with at least 339 behind bars during 2023, an increase of 9 percent from 2022, according to 2023 Freedom to Write index, a report compiled by Pen America.

China, already the world’s top jailer of writers, registered a significant increase, exceeding 100 writers behind bars for the first time. The majority were jailed for online expression that was critical of official policies or expressed pro-democracy viewpoints.

The crackdown on writers and the creative community continued in Iran, with 13 new arrests and the silencing of previously detained writers through various conditions placed on their release. Women who wrote or advocated against the compulsory hijab remained particularly at risk, and Iran jails the highest number of female writers worldwide.

War and conflict had a significant impact on writers in 2023, as the crackdown on dissent in both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and in Russia resulted in substantial increases in the number of jailed writers, placing both countries in the top 10 for the first time.

A revised state secrets law has come into force in China, prompting Taiwan to warn its citizens against travelling to China and rattling foreign companies amid fears the legislation could be used to punish regular business activities.

The changes to the Law on the Guarding of State Secrets, enacted on Wednesday, come as President Xi Jinping’s government steps up the focus on national security, including by updating China’s anti-espionage law and increasing the scrutiny of firms with foreign ties.

This has included police raids on consultancies and arrests of foreign executives on espionage charges.

Zhang Yongzhen, a virologist, said in an online post on Monday that he and his team had been given a sudden eviction notice from their lab, and guards had barred him from entering it over the weekend. The post, published on Weibo, was later deleted, Associated Press (AP) reported.

Zhang has been sitting outside the lab since Sunday. Photos posted online show a man purported to be Zhang sleeping on the ground.

Zhang published his scientific findings about Covid-19 without government approval in January 2020. He and his team have since been subject to a series of setbacks, demotions and oustings, of which the eviction appears to be the latest.

The Philippines on Tuesday accused China's coast guard of harassment and damaging one of its boats in a disputed area of the South China Sea, and rejected Beijing's position that it had expelled two vessels from the hotly contested shoal.

The Philippine coast guard said its two vessels stood their ground at the Scarborough Shoal, a key battleground in the South China Sea, but one sustained damage from use of water cannon by two Chinese coast guard ships.

"This damage serves as evidence of the forceful water pressure used by the China coast guard in their harassment of the Philippine vessels," Philippine coast guard spokesperson Jay Tarriela said in a statement.

The threat of extending sanctions to banks in China is chilling the finance that lubricates even non-military trade from China to Russia.

This is posing a growing problem for small Chinese exporters, said seven trading and banking sources familiar with the situation.

As China's big banks pull back from financing Russia-related transactions, some Chinese companies are turning to small banks on the border and underground financing channels such as money brokers - even banned cryptocurrency.

"Transactions between China and Russia will increasingly go through underground channels," said the head of a trade body in a southeastern province that represents Chinese businesses with Russian interests. "But these methods carry significant risks."

Making payments in crypto, banned in China since 2021, might be the only option, said a Moscow-based Russian banker, as "it's impossible to pass through KYC (know-your-customer) at Chinese banks, big or small".

Cross posted from: https://feddit.de/post/11498645

Russian firms' efforts to make payments for goods in China as secondary sanctions fears spook local banks have generated a flourishing market for middlemen, four sources told Reuters, with up to half of transactions now handled by intermediaries.

Deterred by the threat, Chinese banks are limiting their dealings with Russian companies, which in turn are rushing to open accounts at the only Russian lender with a Chinese branch, causing a bottleneck at VTB Shanghai.

The sources, including trade consultants, bankers and importers and exporters who all requested anonymity to share sensitive information, said long transaction and shipment delays have seen businesses turn to intermediaries in spite of high fees and risks of shipment seizures in third countries.

"There are a lot of (Russian) businessmen who just go from bank to bank, opening current accounts," said one of the sources. "If their payment doesn't go through, they go to the next one."

Cross posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/13413005

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Last week, the Chinese government ordered Apple to remove several widely used messaging apps—WhatsApp, Threads, Signal, and Telegram—from its app store. Beyond Apple’s allusion to “national security,” why exactly the apps were removed is unclear.

Some sources say that the Chinese Cyberspace Administration asked Apple to remove WhatsApp and Threads because both are home to content that includes “problematic mentions” of Xi Jinping, China’s president. The New York Times also quoted a source as saying that the apps were removed because they platformed “inflammatory” content about Xi and violated China’s cybersecurity laws.

Others claim the move came just a few days after the US Congress resurrected a bill aimed at forcing ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, to either sell the app or be banned from the US (the Senate passed the bill on Tuesday, and President Biden signed it into law yesterday)—timing that suggests possible retaliation on China’s part.

The US and Chinese governments have been playing this kind of tit-for-tat game for some time.

Nor is this the first time that Apple has acquiesced to requests made by the Chinese government. In 2017, the company came under fire for removing dozens of VPN apps that allowed Chinese internet users to circumvent the Great Firewall. In 2020, the company removed more than thirty thousand apps from its store—mostly games—because they did not have a government license either.

Some experts say that Apple’s commitment to helping the Chinese government runs much deeper than app removal—over the past two decades, they say, Apple has integrated its business with China to such an extent that it has effectively partnered with the Chinese government.

China not only assembles most of Apple’s smartphones, but sales to the country and its growing middle class amounted to almost seventy billion dollars last year, equivalent to a fifth of Apple’s annual revenue. When Beijing asks for something, critics argue, Apple can’t really say no—because its business has become so reliant on the Chinese market and on Chinese manufacturers as to make total extrication almost impossible.

Cross posted from: https://feddit.de/post/11475895

The problem of “new yellow journalism” in Chinese cyberspace, which thrives on and profits from sensationalism, is a serious problem that is not limited to self-media. And yet, the issue has received only a smattering of attention. In many cases, state media are among the worst violators, exaggerating social and political ills in the United States and the West to support the idea of the superiority of China’s system.

Examples include “GT Investigates,” a series from the Global Times, a spin-off of the CCP’s flagship People’s Daily, that regularly depicts the US and Western media as false and hypocritical; and “Media Unlocked” (起底), a brand under the state-run China Daily that frequently resorts to sensational attacks on the West.