China

Cross posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/13083518

Chinese firms can often undercut their Western counterparts for many reasons, including cheaper labor and economies of scale. But they also benefit from very generous state incentives, which help to make foreign rivals uncompetitive.

European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager described China's playbook for dominating green-energy sectors during a speech at Princeton University this week. Noting how China first attracts foreign investment through joint ventures, she said the country was "not always above board" in the way it acquired green technological know-how. China then closed its own market to foreign firms before exporting excess capacity to the rest of the world at low, subsidized prices, she says.

"We should prepared to play hardball with China," says Rolf Langhammer, former vice president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW-Kiel).. "For electric cars and green technology, the US and EU are the most important foreign markets, and the Chinese need access."

Cross posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/13072543

While China denies that it is providing Russia with military assistance in its war on Ukraine, evidence suggests that China is exporting a number of items to Russia that could be classed as battlefield goods, for example machine tools," says Natasha Kuhrt, Senior Lecturer in International Peace & Security at King's College London.

"Russia’s industrial sector is now fully dependent on China for machine tools and other parts critical to arms manufacturing," she adds.

China has been importing vast quantities of crude oil from Russia. This is in addition to the oil that is pumped to China via the Eastern Siberian Pacific Ocean pipeline and the gas it receives via the Power of Siberia gas pipeline which almost exclusively goes to China, according to Kuhrt.

Several media groups in the Philippines have released statements condemning claims by Chinese officials alleging that videos showing the maritime tension between both countries in the South China Sea are “manipulated.”

The tension has escalated in recent years after China’s repeated “dangerous maneuvers” against Philippine ships intending to deliver supplies to the Second Thomas Shoal. During numerous occasions, China used water cannons to disrupt the Philippine supply mission. Journalists have been able to document the “near collisions” and the water cannon attacks made by Chinese ships, and these incidents have been reported as well by international media outlets.

During a press briefing on March 28, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian questioned the involvement of the media in the supply operation of the Philippines.

"Whenever the Philippines carries out an operation in the South China Sea, it brings journalists along, including photo journalists from third countries. Why would the Philippines do that?" Lin complained.

Pro-China commentators added that the operations of the China Coast Guard are “legitimate, professional, and restrained.” This was disputed by Filipino officials who accused China of continuously conducting “illegal enforcement operations in the West Philippine Sea to advance their greedy intention and unlawful ambition to occupy the waters that fall within the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone.”

In a video shared on the Chinese video social media platform Douyin by Uyghur users, it shows that Chinese farmers are tilling the lands with tractors while a Uyghur woman films and speaks without showing her face. She is still risking her life by sharing such a sensitive incident in China.

The voice of the video says: “Yaxhsimu Siler Kopchilik (How are you all)? As you see, they forcefully seized all of the lands from local farmers in Ghulja’s Baytoqay town, Chighliq Mazar village, without the permission of the farmers, without paying ten cents. Now they (default meaning Chinese settlers) are tilling there. What do you all think about this? Please remember this.”

Cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/13024804

The Philippines has turned towards its longstanding military alliance with the US after multiple confrontations with China in the waters of the South China Sea.

Manila and Washington have a mutual defence treaty and the US is concerned not only about the South China Sea, a major international trading route, but also Taiwan, which is claimed by Beijing.

“We need to upgrade our defence posture,” Rodrigo Lutao, public information officer for the army’s Northern Luzon Command, which also covers Batanes, told Al Jazeera.

“We’ve realised the islands of Batanes, especially Mavulis, are strategic areas where we can place our forces and defence materials.”

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China’s latest working conditions report “Masks Off, Barriers Remain” describes another challenging year for international media in 2023. Difficulties persisted in spite of an improved reporting environment due to the end of China’s tough “COVID Zero” policy and related restrictions on movement, restoring reporters’ ability to move around the country relatively freely.

No respondents said reporting conditions surpassed pre-pandemic conditions.

Almost all respondents (99%) said reporting conditions in China rarely or never met international reporting standards.

Four out of five (81%) respondents said they had experienced interference, harassment, or violence.

54% of respondents were obstructed at least once by police or other officials (2022: 56%), 45% encountered obstruction at least once by persons unknown (2022: 36%).

Correspondents are accustomed to receiving such treatment in areas the Chinese authorities consider “politically sensitive”: 85% of journalists who tried to report from Xinjiang in 2023 experienced problems. However, the definition of “sensitive” areas appears to be expanding: An increasing number of journalists encountered issues in regions bordering Russia (79%), Southeast Asian nations (43%) or in ethnically diverse regions like Inner Mongolia (68%).

Technology plays an increasingly important role in the surveillance toolkit deployed by the Chinese authorities to monitor and interfere in the work of the foreign journalist community. For the first time, respondents told the FCCC of authorities using drones to monitor them in the field.

A majority of respondents had reason to believe the authorities had possibly or definitely compromised their WeChat (81%), their phone (72%), and/or placed audio recording bugs in their office or home (55%).

82% of respondents reported they had interviews declined by sources who stated they were not permitted to speak to foreign media or required prior permission.

More than a third (37%) of respondents said reporting trips or interviews already confirmed were canceled last minute because of official pressure (2022: 31%).

Beijing often states that there are about 60 million people of Chinese origin living abroad in nearly 200 countries and regions, presumably excluding those living in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, the self-ruled island that the CCP claims as its own. People of Chinese ethnicity can trace their roots back centuries in countries like Malaysia, where they make up some 23 percent of the population, and Thailand and Indonesia.

In the telling of China’s story, Xi has recently highlighted the role that “Chinese sons and daughters at home and abroad” must play in “uniting all Chinese people to achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”.

According to Associate Professor Ian Chong Ja, who teaches Chinese foreign policy at the National University of Singapore, Xi’s language suggests that the CCP sees ethnic Chinese across the world as a vehicle to mobilise support and advance Beijing’s interests, even if those people are not nationals of China and have no allegiance to the country.

Under President Xi Jinping, the Chinese government has called for “telling China’s story well” and spreading “positive energy”.

Since Xi came to power in 2013, the media environment has tightened. Internet freedom has also declined.

In Freedom House’s 2023 report on internet freedom around the world, China was rated “not free: with a score of only nine points out of 100, one point less than the year before.

In RSF’s World Press Freedom Index, meanwhile, China fell four spots compared with 2022, ranking second to bottom and just above North Korea. More journalists are currently in jail in China than anywhere else in the world.

“There has been a very clear development towards greater state control over the media in China in recent years leaving very little space for media,” Alfred Wu, a scholar of public governance in China at the National University of Singapore, told Al Jazeera.

This development has also affected state media, according to Yuan at Rutger’s University.

“Under the rule of President Xi Jinping, state media in China have been consolidated and aligned closer with the ideology of the CCP,” he said.

"This involves regular ideological education and training, aiming to make sure that reporting reinforces Xi Jinping Thought [Xi’s ideology] and the objectives of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and this is why we are witnessing foreign staff members resigning from media outlets like [formerly more independent media company] Sixth Tone.”

Freely accessible archived version.

"The actions of mine that were deemed treasonous [by China] involved writing about China’s concentration camps, which hold up to a million Uighurs, and forced Uighur labour that implicated global supply chains," says Vicky Xu, an Australian journalist and researcher, previously with The New York Times and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

"In the visit of Chinese Foreign Affairs Minister Wang Yi last month, there was positive talk of trade and bilateral relations between Australia and China but nothing about me or the many other Australian citizens and residents targeted by the Chinese state on Australian soil. I thought I’d remind people of our existence and present my point of view."

"It has grown tiresome for me to recount how my life has been ruined by the Chinese state, how my family and friends were taken away as a result of my journalistic work on China. In Australia I’ve been followed around. Strange East Asian men stood in front of my apartment complex like voluntary doormen. I changed my number, got new email addresses, installed home security systems, moved again and again. Counter-surveillance has been a full-time job. As I write this, I do not have a stable home address because my current solution to the problem is leading a nomadic lifestyle to stay a step ahead of Chinese Communist Party goons. I don’t know what their plans are if and when they catch up with me again. I’m not the only China scholar who lives in fear of abduction or assassination."

Capacity utilization rates in China have declined over the past couple of years in every surveyed manufacturing sector except non-ferrous metals. Products linked to the property sector, such as plastics and non-metal minerals, are experiencing severe overcapacity because of weak demand in their downstream markets. But many other sectors are seeing declining capacity utilization, too, from machinery to food, textiles, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals.

But the drop in capacity utilization rates observed in the past few years is only one aspect of a more profound phenomenon that should draw equal concern for policymakers in Brussels and other economies—China’s growing domestic production surplus. Chinese companies, across a wide range of sectors, now produce far more than domestic consumption can absorb. This domestic surplus can produce low factory utilization rates. But it can also find its way into foreign markets, creating a growing trade surplus and, at times, global redundancies that threaten industrial ecosystems in other countries.

Those imbalances are not new, but they have reached unprecedented levels since the pandemic.

It defaulted on its overseas debt last year and faces a winding-up petition.

In January, rival real estate giant China Evergrande was ordered to liquidate by a Hong Kong court.

Country Garden said "due to the continuous volatility of the industry, the operating environment the Group confronting is becoming increasingly complex", when it announced its earnings report would be delayed.

A team of researchers at Chinese, German and Canadian universities have tracked the impacts of deteriorating air at that time. They found that particle pollution deaths in China were increasing at about 213,000 a year and peaked at 2.6mn people in 2005.

More positively, the impact of rapid improvements in China’s air pollution were also seen, with decreases of 59,000 deaths a year from 2013 to 2019.

Air pollution in China is still far worse than in many developed countries. In 2019, about half of China’s cities failed to meet their own national standards, let alone those from the World Health Organization.

[Edit typo.]

Cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/12948582

CSIS director David Vigneault says his agency had intelligence ahead of the 2019 federal election that the government of China attempted to funnel — through a network of “threat actors” — approximately $250,000, possibly to interfere in Canadian elections.

The document was shown Thursday at Canada’s inquiry into foreign election interference, which is examining attempts to meddle in Canadian democracy during the 2019 and 2021 elections. Global News first reported on these allegations in 2022, citing national security sources.

The CSIS summary says, “11 political candidates and 13 political staff members were assessed to be either implicated in or impacted by this group of threat actors.”

Cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/12938714

A strong statement emerged from Volker Turk, the current United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, who, during a global update to the U.N. human rights council a few weeks ago, directly challenged the Chinese government to accompany poverty alleviation with “reforms to align relevant laws and policies with international human rights standards.”

The U.N. has been roundly criticized in recent years for its failure to achieve much in China other than more effective methods of smothering dissent, in part because it seems institutionally compromised by the Chinese Communist Party regime. Turk’s comments do at least acknowledge that crimes are happening, but more than just words are required for change to be expected.

Taiwan on Thursday condemned China as “shameless” after Beijing’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations thanked the world for its concern about a strong earthquake on the island.

China claims democratically-governed Taiwan as its own territory and also claims the right to speak for it on the international stage, to the fury of Taipei given Beijing’s communist government has never ruled the island and has no say in how it chooses its leaders.

On Wednesday, after the 7.2 earthquake hit eastern Taiwan, killing 10 people, China’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the U.N., Geng Shuang, mentioned at a meeting about children’s rights that another speaker had brought up the quake in “China’s Taiwan”. China is concerned about the damage and has expressed condolences to Taiwan and offered aid, he said, according to a transcript of his remarks carried on the Chinese mission to the U.N.’s website.

“We thank the international community for its expressions of sympathy and concern,” he added.

Taiwan’s foreign ministry expressed anger at the remarks.

The ministry “solemnly condemns China’s shameless use of the Taiwan earthquake to conduct cognitive operations internationally”, it said, using Taiwan’s normal term for what it views as Chinese psychological warfare.

This shows China has no goodwill towards Taiwan, the ministry added.

Taiwan’s government has already thanked governments and leaders around the world for their messages of concern and offers of support, including from the United States, the island’s most important international supporter despite the lack of diplomatic ties.

Cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/12913117

In its submission to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab gives recomnendations to hold Chinese and U.S. firms accountable for their involvement in online censorship and assisting victims of digital abuse and intimidation.

A slowing economy, shrinking government benefits and a decades-long one-child policy have created a creeping demographic crisis in in Xi Jinping's China.

The pension pot is running dry and the country is running out of time to build enough of a fund to care for the growing number of elderly.

Over the next decade, about 300 million people, who are currently aged 50 to 60, are set to leave the Chinese workforce. This is the country's largest age group, nearly equivalent to the size of the US population.

Who will look after them? The answer depends on where you go and who you ask.

China repays states for co-alignment variously. Its “no limits” partnership with Moscow was this week bolstered by Beijing’s propaganda outlet Global Times serving Russia’s narrative that the recent terrorist attack in its capital city may be connected to the United States of America and Ukraine, against the latter of which it is attempting to justify a war of invasion.

Making no reference to obvious use of torture, the Global Times’ English-language service tweeted that the Russia’s “investigation and interrogation” of terrorism suspects reveals a “complicated” situation and implied possible involvement from Washington and Kyiv.

Beijing also sought to keep the Maldives, one of its more recent allies, happy with the March delivery of one million bottles of glacial meltwater from colonially occupied Tibet. For years, civil society organizations have highlighted how Tibetan pastoralists are being removed from their traditional lands to facilitate resource exploitation by Chinese companies, including for bottled water.

Extraction of water is reportedly exacerbating environmental degradation and conflict in tandem with a flurry of dam construction that saw major protests earlier this year in Dege County, currently part of China’s Sichuan province. The hundreds of protesters arrested during that incident have been released, but not before suffering deprivation of water, overcrowding and sometimes severe beatings in custody. Moreover, the wider picture suggests that not all of the detainees have been set free; some remain unaccounted for; several younger monks have been sent to government schools since the demonstrations; and restrictions on movement in Dege are still in place.

Meanwhile, far from gifts of water, other countries that are not regarded on quite such friendly terms by Beijing like New Zealand, the U.S., U.K. and members of the European Union have instead been the victims of widespread cyber-attacks. Attributed to two entities known as APT 31 and APT 40, which are considered to be affiliated with the Chinese state, the attacks focused on targets such as the British Electoral Commission, companies of strategic importance, dissidents, journalists, parliamentarians and other politicians critical of China.

Long before eye doctor Li Wenliang sounded the alarm on COVID-19 and succumbed to the virus in early 2020, Dr Gao Yaojie was China’s best-known whistleblower. Her decision to expose the source of China’s AIDS epidemic made her an exile for the last 14 years of her life.

At 81, Gao was the oldest dissident ever to have fled China. Barely one month after her death, prominent economist Mao Yushi set a new record. Mao, whose liberal think tank known for advocating market reforms was shut down by officials, shared pictures on social media of his 95th birthday celebrations in Vancouver, Canada, not long after he fled China.

Gao kept writing books into her last days, and she never took her final years in exile for granted.

“The US is no paradise,” wrote Gao, but she added: “Had I never left [China], I wouldn’t have lived past 90.”

She died last December at the age of 95 in New York.

"If I change the name of your house, will it become mine?” Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, the Indian foreign minister, said.

The Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs said it had “standardised” the geographical names of 30 locations in Zangnan, the Chinese name for Arunachal Pradesh.

“Arunachal Pradesh was an Indian state, is an Indian state and will remain so in the future. Nothing will be gained by changing names.”

Tensions have been ramping up along the Line of Actual Control that separates India and China since May 2020, when soldiers from each side engaged in hand-to-hand combat and beat each other with nail-studded bats.

At least 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese soldiers died in the skirmish.

Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/10665013

China's foreign minister Wang Yi, at a joint press event with his French counterpart, Stephane Sejourne, said China hoped that Europe's de-risking policy was not targeted at specific countries.

"We are constantly relaxing market access, including promoting the flow of cross-border data," Wang said, adding that China will do more to address French companies' market access concerns.

Europe has been pursuing a de-risking strategy and reducing dependency on China to retain its industrial edge and competitiveness.

Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/10664796

After years of rapid growth spurred by government support, the world’s biggest EV market is facing a slowdown as consumers cut spending in an uncertain post-pandemic economy. As carmakers slash prices further to sustain their sales, some car owners are seeing the value of their vehicles plummet months or even weeks after their purchases. Several EV companies are also in financial crises, leaving thousands of buyers unable to access after-sales and software maintenance services.

EV startups HiPhi, the Baidu-backed WM Motor, and the Tencent-backed Aiways have run out of funds to sustain their operations. Other brands including Levdeo and Singulato Motors have entered bankruptcy proceedings.

The satellite images reveal a layout of streets strongly resembling the Bo’ai Special Zone, a restricted area in Taipei’s Zhongzheng District that houses Taiwan’s most important state buildings, including the presidential palace, the supreme court, the ministry of justice and the central bank of Taiwan.

The Bo’ai Special Zone is subject to specific regulations, including a strict ban on overflight.

He Jiankui's experiments sent shockwaves through the medical and scientific world. He was widely condemned for having gone ahead with the risky, ethically contentious and medically unjustified procedure with inadequate consent from the families involved.

The court found that He had forged documents from an ethics review panel that were used to recruit couples for his research.

He said he had used a gene-editing procedure known as Crispr-Cas9 to rewrite the DNA in the sisters’ embryos – modifications he claimed would make the children immune to HIV.

Taiwan's outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen plans to flee in a U.S. plane if war erupts with China, according to an unsubstantiated report first published in 2021 and echoed in the run-up to the island's January 2024 general election.

Another story said Tsai had given her confidantes VIP "runaway" passes.

They are among the many unsupported tales of Tsai's preparations to escape harm that have been fed into the island by Chinese state media outlets, according to an analysis conducted by the Information Environment Research Center (IORG), a Taiwan-based non-government organisation.

The IORG analysis revealed that the narrative that Tsai planned to flee if war broke out with China, and that Taiwan’s military drills were rehearsals for this, originated with an outlet controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in June 2021, and was quickly repeated by other official Chinese news sources.

Taipei has repeatedly said the reports are false. The government has not publicly detailed its plans for the leadership in the event of conflict. Reuters could not independently determine the existence of any such escape plans.