China

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Here is the study: Uyghur Race as the Enemy: China’s Legalized Authoritarian Oppression and Mass Imprisonment

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The U.N. and the foreign ministers of concerned democracies should prepare to mark the second anniversary of the OHCHR report by recommitting to the pursuit of justice for millions of Uyghurs.

[...] fresh information about ongoing, systematic, and widespread Chinese government atrocity crimes in the Uyghur region – where millions of people have been arbitrarily detained, tortured, separated from family members, and subjected to cultural persecution, simply because of their distinct identity – demonstrates strong support for the real trend of international accountability.

In a newly published analysis of patterns of incarceration and legal manipulation, scholars Rayhan Asat and Min Kim tallied the number of years of wrongful detention inflicted on Uyghurs: “a cumulative total of 4.4 million years of imprisonment.” Beijing’s genocide and crimes against humanity, the authors argue, also reflect a disturbing attempt at “authoritarian lawfare” – in effect, that the Chinese authorities have continued to try to justify their patently illegal conduct by calling it the opposite. The tactic is designed to minimize international scrutiny and discourage the pursuit of accountability.

[...]

Academics, journalists, and human rights organizations have compiled considerable evidence; the Xinjiang Victims Database is a grim trove of information for a prosecutor’s brief. But democracies continue to prioritize other perceived interests in their relationships with Beijing, refraining from deploying an approach that could have a transformative and deterrent effect.

[...]

Uyghurs and others inside and outside China need strong, coordinated steps toward investigations and prosecutions of Xi and others complicit in atrocity crimes. Those guilty of these heinous abuses should know they will not only face hard questions in the court of public opinion, but also in a court of law.

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Of course, Chinese Buddhism is very much Chinese. If “Sinicization” meant adapting Buddhism to Chinese traditions and culture, this was done two thousand years ago. However, for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the United Front, bureaucrat, “Sinicization” means adapting Buddhism to Marxism and the programs and directives of the Communist Party. What is advertised as “humanistic Buddhism” is in fact “Marxist Buddhism.”

Ma Lianmei, a bureaucrat from the United Front, calls for finding and emphasizing in Buddhist scriptures “the aspects that resonate with socialist core values” and enforce the principle of “strict governance” of religious communities, a new slogan that means direct control by the CCP and the United Front without relying only on the bureaucracy of the China Buddhist Association.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/1976184

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Palau’s President Surangel Whipps accuses China of pressuring the nation to cut ties with Taiwan through “weaponising tourism”

Palau is one of just 12 states worldwide that diplomatically recognise self-ruled Taiwan, which China considers part of its territory.

Solomon Islands, Kiribati and Nauru have all switched allegiance from Taiwan to China in recent years, and Palau President Surangel Whipps said China had put pressure on his tiny Pacific archipelago of 18,000 people to follow suit.

"We have a relationship with Taiwan... China has openly told us (that) is illegal and we should not recognise Taiwan," Mr. Whipps told reporters Wednesday.

Speaking during an official visit by New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters, Mr. Whipps claimed China had told Palau that "'the sky is the limit, we can give you everything you need'".

"We need economic development, but at the same time we have values, we have partnerships, and the relationship we have with Taiwan, we treasure," he added.

"We're willing to be China's friend, but not at the expense of our relationship with Taiwan."

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The most important part of the [International Monetary Fund] IMF’s latest assessment of China is—alas—the appendix on China’s new methodology for calculating China’s trade balance.

It at least explains why China’s balance of payments trade surplus diverges from China’s customs trade surplus, and why the gap started to explode around 2022 [...] China’s data doesn't agree with itself. One measure of the goods deficit is a lot bigger than another measure of the goods surplus.

[...]

You might think that a foreign firm producing in China for sale in China (“in China for China” is a thing) would not register in China’s trade data. After all, goods made in China and sold in China never cross a border, and thus should not show up in the customs data.

But in the new balance of payments data, China basically reports a trade deficit with itself because of foreign firms producing in China.

[...]

If a foreign firm contracts with a Chinese firm to manufacture that foreign firm’s goods in China, and then receives delivery of those goods in China, China counts this as an export.

[...]

But the strange turn happens if the foreign firm turns around and sells the good that a contract manufacturer produced for it inside China. Such goods are now being counted as an import in the balance of payments data.

Thus, China exports goods to foreign firms operating in China, and then imports those goods back from the same firm even though the goods never leave China. If the goods are sold at a higher price than the contract manufacturer receives, it ends up being reported as a trade deficit in the balance of payments.

[...]

So Chinese production for the Chinese market by foreign firms is somehow generating a trade deficit in the balance of payments data. This, of course, makes no real economic sense.

[...]

Bottom line: there is no good reason to think that this adjustment in captures anything important about how China’s economy interacts with the global economy. All this “fake” trade deficit does is reduce China’s reported current account surplus—as the goods surplus in the balance of payments is now about $300 billion (over 1.5 percentage points of China’s GDP) smaller than what it should be in the balance of payments data [while the author estimates] the current account surplus to be close to $700 billion even after the drop tied the resumption of tourism in 2023.

[...]

What matters for now is that a large number of analysts are using China's current account data to assess China's impact on the world without realizing that the fall in China's surplus since 2021 is basically an artifact of difficult to justify changes in China's balance of payments methodology. The real story is found in the old fashioned goods data.

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On August 6, the US Democratic Party’s presidential candidate Kamala Harris finally chose her running mate: the 60-year-old governor of Minnesota, Timothy Walz. Subsequently, the media discovered that Walz had lived in China in his younger years. From September 1989 to July 1990, he worked as a foreign teacher at Foshan No. 1 Middle School in Guangdong province.

In the context of recent Sino-US competition, and given the shift in the most recent administrations between the fierce confrontation of Trump and the competitive risk control approach of Biden, the vice-presidential candidate’s China experience has become a focus of attention both inside and outside China.

How does Walz understand China? What is his position on Sino-US relations?

[...]

For more on Walz’s time teaching English in China, our reporter contacted Ms. Pang, a recently retired Chinese language teacher at Foshan No. 1 Middle School. Pang was a colleague of Walz’s, who she says was the school’s first foreign teacher.

At the time, Pang says, Walz was known to teachers and students as simply as “tīm” (添) — a Cantonese transliteration of his first name. Tīm was well-liked, according to Pang: “Everyone treated him like a celebrity,” she says. “He left a good impression on everyone. He was very young and had a bright smile… Even now when I see pictures of him I recognize that same wide, infectious smile pressing his cheeks up.”

[...]

In an interview at the time, Walz bemoaned the “unbearably hot” Guangdong weather but praised his students’ curiosity about all things American. At Christmas time, he said that students and friends decorated a pine tree and brought it to his room.

“His colleagues would often laugh at him because as soon as he got his pay he went to the school store to buy ice cream,” Pang recalls. Walz didn’t understand Cantonese or Mandarin when he first arrived, Pang says, but he gradually began to learn.

[...]

In terms of his political record, Waltz is far from a “dove” in his approach to China. He is a long-time supporter and advocate of political freedoms in China, and has criticized Beijing on issues ranging from Hong Kong to Tibet.

Both the 1989 student movement and the June 4 incident had a profound impact on Walz.

[...] As he and other volunteers watched the news from Hong Kong [where Walz worked as a teacher] on June 4, many decided to back out of the program. He had other ideas. “I felt it was more important than ever to go to China,” he said. He felt it was important, he recalled, for him to tell this story “so that the people of China knew that we stood with them.”

[...]

Walz also touched on other issues sensitive to China, such as Tibet and Hong Kong. He voiced support for Tibetan autonomy and met with the Dalai Lama, the exiled leader of Tibet. He joined a visit by US lawmakers to Tibet in November 2015 led by Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. [...] In a press release following the visit, the delegation “reiterated the imperative of respect for religious freedom and expression in Tibet; autonomy and democracy in Hong Kong; and respect for human and women’s rights across China. The delegation also expressed specific concerns related to the recent arrest and detention of human rights lawyers and activists.”On the issue of Hong Kong, he was an advocate early on in 2017 for the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, and in August of that year met with now-jailed Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong (黃之鋒), calling him “a true defender of democracy in China.” Pro-democracy activist Jeffrey Ngo Cheuk Hin (敖卓軒), a former member of Hong Kong’s Demosisto party, pointed out earlier this month that at the time of the anti-extradition protests in Hong Kong, Walz was an important advocate for the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act.

[...]

The same report [in the Time magazine] also said Walz is concerned about the gap in trade between the US and China, and wants to improve their trade deficit by demanding that China abide by environmental standards, fair trade, and human rights. At the same time, he has publicly criticized Trump’s trade war footing with China, pointing out that Minnesota’s agricultural sector has been hit hard by slumping exports of commodities like soybeans and pork to China.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/1940986

A brand new China-backed international airport is getting ready to be inaugurated in Gwadar, a port city in Pakistan's restive Balochistan province.

Chinese media reported in June that the airport will be completed and handed over to the local authorities this year.

The airport is part of the multibillion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), part of China's global collection of infrastructure projects and trade networks known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

[...]

The ethnic Baloch, who constitute a majority in the province, have staged massive protests in recent days against the Pakistani government for what they view as unfair exploitation of their natural resources.

The Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), a rights group campaigning for the civil, political and socioeconomic rights of the Baloch, has mobilized people and organized huge rallies across Balochistan.

Mahrang Baloch, the BYC leader, told DW that they were organizing "a movement against Baloch genocide," accusing Pakistani authorities of carrying out thousands of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.

"China or any other country investing in Balochistan is directly involved in the Baloch genocide. The enforced disappearances and forced displacements in the Makran coastal belt are huge. They are looting our resources with no gain to local Baloch," she said.

But the Pakistani military labeled the BYC as "proxies" for what it called terrorists and criminal mafias.

"Their strategy is gathering crowds with foreign funding, inciting unrest among the people, challenging government authority through stone pelting, vandalism, and making unreasonable demands," Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, the head of the military's media wing, told reporters last week.

[...]

China announced the CPEC project in 2015 with an aim to expand its trade links and influence in Pakistan and across Central and South Asia.

The idea behind the project was to connect China's western Xinjiang province with the sea via Pakistan.

This would shorten trade routes for China and help avoid the contentious Malacca Strait choke point, a narrow waterway between Malaysia and Sumatra that links the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

[...]

Some Baloch fear that the Chinese are investing in Gwadar to exploit the province's natural resources. Baloch separatists have also targeted Chinese interests in Pakistan.

[...]

[Kiyya] Baloch [a local journalist who has extensively covered about the region] added that the protests are "unique," pointing to the unprecedented number of women taking part in them.

"Never before have so many women taken to the streets to demand their rights, not only in Balochistan but across this region."

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/1940634

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5,000 AI-Controlled Fake X Accounts Linked to China Disinformation Campaign

Researchers have uncovered a network of at least 5,000 fake X (formerly Twitter) accounts that appear to be controlled by AI in a disinformation campaign linked to China – and the activity appears to be heating up as the U.S. election approaches.

The X disinformation network, dubbed “Green Cicada” by researchers, “primarily engages with divisive U.S. political issues and may plausibly be staged to interfere in the upcoming presidential election.”

The network has also amplified divisive political issues in other democracies, including Australia, western Europe, India, Japan and other democratic countries.

The finding is the latest example of attempted interference in the U.S. presidential election, which just this month has seen reports of increasing activity by Iran.

[...]

The researchers, from CyberCX. [...] said the network is unlikely to be very effective in its current state, but they added that it “is plausible that the network operators are preparing to increase activities in the lead up to the U.S. presidential election.”

Most accounts on the network are currently dormant, but activity increased sharply in July. The network has been rectifying operational errors over time – including reducing malformed outputs – which could make its activities more effective and harder to detect over time.

The network uses a Chinese-language LLM system and links to an AI researcher affiliated with Tsinghua University and Zhipu AI, a prominent Chinese AI company. So far the actors haven’t had specific political leanings, but instead have focused on amplification of divisive content, “consistent with China’s information operation playbook,” the researchers said.

[...]

The researchers said [that] "our findings also indicate** key gaps in X’s willingness and ability to detect inauthentic content. **While we have observed X taking sporadic action against Green Cicada Network accounts during our period of monitoring, we have observed a failure to take systemic action against overtly linked accounts."

“We note that X has reversed initiatives put in place by Twitter to combat inauthentic activity, including efforts to detect, label and/or ban inauthentic accounts.”

The researchers said the network is a sign of things to come, with generative AI able to produce “a significant scale of malicious output with limited human oversight, at low cost and with low barriers to entry. It is possible that the system underpinning the network is operated by high-end consumer-grade hardware and is developed by just one individual.

“We assess that a more mature, future version of the system underlying the Green Cicada Network would be extremely difficult for parties other than X to detect.”

Chinese authorities have called for gig workers to be treated with kindness after videos of a delivery rider kneeling before a security guard led to protests by dozens of riders.

Guards stopped the rider from leaving a building in Hangzhou on Monday - saying he damaged railings while scaling them during a rushed delivery.

Worried that his subsequent deliveries would be delayed, the rider got on his knees and pleaded to be let go, the city's police said in a statement.

The incident sparked outrage online, with many urging better protections for workers in the industry.

Some 12 million people work as delivery riders in China, and the pandemic has fuelled explosive growth in the sector.

But the industry - much like in the rest of the world - is notorious for its tight deadlines, where low-wage riders are subject to tough penalties over delays and poor customer feedback.

Many also work long days, earning less than a dollar for each delivery.

crosspostato da: https://beehaw.org/post/15538474

Women's accessories sold by some of the world's most popular online shopping firms contained toxic substances sometimes hundreds of times above acceptable levels, authorities in Seoul said Wednesday.

Chinese giants including Shein, Temu and AliExpress have skyrocketed in global popularity in recent years, offering a vast selection of trendy clothes and accessories at stunningly low prices that has helped them take on US titan Amazon.

The explosive growth has led to increased scrutiny of their business practices and safety standards, including in the European Union and South Korea, where Seoul officials have been conducting weekly inspections of items sold by online platforms.

In the most recent inspection, 144 products from Shein, AliExpress and Temu were tested, and multiple products from all companies failed to meet legal standards.

Shoes from Shein were found to contain significantly high levels of phthalates—chemicals used to make plastics more flexible—with one pair 229 times above the legal limit.

"Phthalate-based plasticizers affect reproductive functions such as sperm count reduction, and can cause infertility and even premature birth," an official from Seoul's environmental health team told AFP.

One such chemical "is classified as a human carcinogen by the International Cancer Institute, so special care should be taken to avoid long-term contact with the human body", they added.

Formaldehyde, a chemical commonly used in home building products, was detected in Shein's caps at double the allowable threshold.

Two bottles of nail polish from Shein were found to have dioxane—a possible human carcinogen that can cause liver poisoning—at levels more than 3.6 times the allowed limit and methanol concentrations 1.4 times above the acceptable level.

[...]

Seoul authorities found sandals from Temu contained lead in the insoles at levels more than 11 times the permissible limit ...

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The Vietnamese government announced in April 2024 that it aims to start construction of two high-speed railway (HSR) lines in cooperation with China by 2030.

Traversing some of Vietnam’s key manufacturing hubs and FDI destinations, these lines should eventually become part of an expanded cross-country railway network, [and] will be important assets for Vietnam’s economy [...]

The new HSR lines will link up with the recently built lines extending China’s railway network to the Vietnamese border, facilitating imports of Chinese industrial goods and materials [...]

But there are caveats to Vietnam’s HSR project. High-speed railway projects often fall behind their original deadlines and run over projected costs, raising questions about their cost–benefit ratio and financial sustainability. If the project faces delays, cost overruns or burdensome debt, it may not achieve its goals and will likely adversely affect the credibility of the Vietnamese government. Establishing terms that minimise these risks could prove crucial for defining the project’s long-term impact.

Hanoi’s relationship with China is burdened by territorial disputes in the South China Sea and Vietnam’s increasing closeness with the United States and Japan in defence and strategic relations. Making Beijing a stakeholder in a capital developmental project which aims to bring economic and strategic gains to both sides will help counterbalance security and strategic tensions and manage related risks.

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Amid international scrutiny for human rights violations, China is now attempting to present Xinjiang as a tourist hotspot, a strategy orchestrated and funded by the Xi Jinping administration, wrote Foreign Affairs & Security Minister of the East Turkistan Government in Exile on social media.

[East Turkistan is a historically used term adopted by various advocacy groups to refer to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).]

Recently, China’s Foreign Ministry highlighted that Xinjiang experienced significant growth in both tourism numbers and revenue in the first seven months of 2024.

[...]

Salih Hudayar, a prominent activist known for his criticism of China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims, condemned this portrayal.

In a social media post, he writes:

“The genocidal Chinese regime is inundating East Turkistan with millions of Chinese tourists in a blatant attempt to obscure and whitewash its heinous campaign of colonisation, genocide, and occupation. This shameless facade is meant to hide the brutal suffering of millions of Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples. The international community must not be misled by China’s deceptive propaganda–China must be held accountable, and its brutal occupation, Uyghur genocide, and state terrorism in East Turkistan must end immediately.”

Reports reveal severe human rights violations in Xinjiang, including the detention of over one million Uyghurs in so-called “re-education camps” or “vocational training centers,” which the Chinese government describes as anti-extremism measures. Additionally, there is significant evidence of cultural and religious repression, such as the destruction of Uyghur mosques and cemeteries and restrictions on religious practices.

The region has been described as one of the most surveillance-intensive areas in the world, with extensive use of facial recognition technology and other forms of monitoring.

There have also been extensive reports and satellite imagery showing the existence of large-scale internment camps in Xinjiang.

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Since Chinese engineers routed a $4.7 billion railway through the Kenyan village of Emurutoto, residents no longer worry about being cut off by flooding. Or being hit by a train. However, work has long since stopped on a Belt and Road project to connect Kenya and Uganda, with China gaining leverage of indebted Kenya's economy.

[...]

By 2017, the first half of the Kenya-Uganda line was operational, though losing money. In April 2019, work in the Great Rift Valley stopped. As alarms were raised about the mounting costs of the line, and secrecy around borrowing terms between Beijing’s banks and other African countries struggling to repay debts, China balked at financing the final 200-mile stretch linking Nairobi to the border with Uganda.

The single most expensive infrastructure project in Africa had become a case study in China swamping poorer nations with colossal debt. “The managers told us there was no more money to finish, and they went,” Shonke said.

[...]

If one policy is synonymous with President Xi’s China, it is the Belt and Road Initiative [...] Descriptions are awash with the Chinese Communist Party’s favourite slogans — “win-win co-operation” and “China meets the world” — but its underlying ideology is Xi’s.

[...]

The “win-win” was obvious. Countries short of cash would receive an infusion of investment, while China would have faster access to natural resources and bigger potential markets for its manufacturing industries.

The side-effects would also, Xi hoped, be useful for China. It would show off Beijing as an alternative “hegemon” to the United States and its western allies — and one that did not ask questions about human rights. It would also confirm the potential of China’s state-led economic model, a more attractive proposition to many governments than the West’s present insistence on privatisation.

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However, just as the Chinese economy has had a poor few years — particularly since Covid-19 exposed flaws in Beijing’s “command, control and no questions asked” system of government — so Belt and Road has also had problems. Kenya’s financial crisis, in part owing to debts incurred on Belt and Road projects, is one example.

Other countries were also taken aback by the unsentimental approach of their Chinese partners. Loans were handed down with tough terms, often disguised from voters by secretive contracts.

[...]

With Chinese banks wondering how many projects would offer a return on their money, and governments growing wary of the leverage China now had over them, the scheme began to wind down, or at least focus on smaller projects.

As with much of Xi’s legacy, many Chinese people are proud of Belt and Road’s results, but it is not only the Chinese Communist Party’s western critics who have noticed cracks starting to appear.

A US Army analyst has pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to sell military secrets to China, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has said.

Sgt Korbein Schultz was arrested in March after an investigation by the FBI and US Army counterintelligence alleged that he was paid $42,000 (£33,000) in exchange for dozens of sensitive security records.

The criminal conspiracy began in June 2022 and continued up until his arrest, officials said.

He is scheduled for sentencing in January.

Sgt Schultz, who held a security clearance to access top secret information, conspired to collect data with someone whom he believed to be living in Hong Kong, according to court documents.

The purported Hong Kong resident asked Sgt Schultz to collect sensitive data related to missile defence and mobile artillery systems, according to court records.

Sgt Schultz also collected data on US fighter aircraft, military tactics, and the US military's defence strategy for Taiwan, based on what it learned from Russia's war in Ukraine.

China's state media has denounced guandan, a popular poker-style card game, over fears it is addictive and distracting people from their work.

The game's popularity has surged in recent years and it has become well-loved by Chinese businesspeople and Communist Party officials.

Now, state-owned newspaper Beijing Youth Daily has slammed the game as "decadent", amid reports state employees have been urged to stop playing the game.

Owing to security concerns, intelligence operatives in the Philippines begin tracking a Chinese man over 'inconsistencies' in his declared work and actual activities.

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A total of 96 trade barrier investigations targeting China were announced by its trading partners from January to July 2024, already exceeding the 63 in the whole of last year [...] Among China’s trading partners, the United States, India and the European Union have issued the most complaints.

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[Now] new trade barriers from ASEAN bloc countries appear to be on the way.

Malaysia’s commerce ministry said this week it would table its proposed anti-dumping legislation in parliament next year to protect industries from “the effects of unfair trade resulting from the massive influx of cheap imported products from countries including China.”

In June, Indonesia’s trade ministry also announced plans to impose tariffs of up to 200 percent on some Chinese-made products to protect its manufacturing industry from dumping practices triggered by Western nations’ trade wars with China.

Indonesia and Japan on Thursday agreed to amendments to an economic deal aimed at reducing or removing trade barriers, Reuters reported.

[...]

The moves by China’s neighbors suggest that the region sees a more imminent need to rebalance some of its trade relationships with China, as a growing proportion of cheaper Chinese imports could hurt their domestic industries.

Heavy production and export ASEAN economies, such as Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand are prime destinations for Chinese exports and companies looking to avoid the impact of the US-China trade war.

[...]

This is a slight increase amid growing accusations of Chinese export overcapacity, potentially exposing China to more trade barriers.

[...]

The share of Chinese exports to developed economies such as the United States, Europe, Japan and South Korea has fallen amid the U.S.-China trade war and calls from governments to eliminate China-related risks in their supply chains.

Yet Beijing officials have repeatedly touted China’s relations with Southeast Asian countries and members of its Belt and Road Initiative as thriving, and since 2020 the ASEAN bloc has overtaken the EU to become China’s largest trading partner.

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• In addition to the 50 new villages, China added new homes to 100 other villages, to house even more people.

• These civilian outposts are one way that Beijing is projecting its power abroad and securing its rule at home.

Qionglin New Village sits deep in the Himalayas, just three miles from a region where a heavy military buildup and confrontations between Chinese and Indian troops have brought fears of a border war.

The land was once an empty valley, more than 10,000 feet above the sea, traversed only by local hunters. Then Chinese officials built Qionglin, a village of cookie-cutter homes and finely paved roads, and paid people to move there from other settlements.

**China’s leader, Xi Jinping, calls such people “border guardians.” ** Qionglin’s villagers are essentially sentries on the front line of China’s claim to Arunachal Pradesh, India’s easternmost state, which Beijing insists is part of Chinese-ruled Tibet.

Many villages like Qionglin have sprung up. In China’s west, they give its sovereignty a new, undeniable permanence along boundaries contested by India, Bhutan and Nepal. In its north, the settlements bolster security and promote trade with Central Asia. In the south, they guard against the flow of drugs and crime from Southeast Asia.

The buildup is the clearest sign that Mr. Xi is using civilian settlements to quietly solidify China’s control in far-flung frontiers, just as he has with fishing militias and islands in the disputed South China Sea.

[...]

The mapping reveals that China has put at least one village near every accessible Himalayan pass that borders India, as well as on most of the passes bordering Bhutan and Nepal, according to Matthew Akester, an independent researcher on Tibet, and Robert Barnett, a professor from SOAS University of London. Mr. Akester and Mr. Barnett, who have studied Tibet’s border villages for years, reviewed The Times’s findings.

The outposts are civilian in nature, but they also provide China’s military with roads, access to the internet and power, should it want to move troops quickly to the border. Villagers serve as eyes and ears in remote areas, discouraging intruders or runaways.

[...]

The buildup of settlements fuels anxiety in the region about Beijing’s ambitions. The threat of conflict is ever present: Deadly clashes have broken out along the border between troops from India and China since 2020, and tens of thousands of soldiers from both sides remain on a war footing.

[...]

Of the new villages The Times identified in Tibet, one is on land claimed by India, though within China’s de facto border; 11 other settlements are in areas contested by Bhutan. Some of those 11 villages are near the Doklam region, the site of a standoff between troops from India and China in 2017 over Chinese attempts to extend a road.

China makes clear that the villages are there for security. In 2020, a leader of a Tibetan border county told state media that he was relocating more than 3,000 people to frontier areas that were “weakly controlled, disputed or empty.”

[...]

Indian officials have previously noted “infrastructure construction activity” by China along the border. Local leaders in Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh have complained to The Times that China was slowly cutting away small pieces of Indian territory.

[...]

Among other findings, the C.S.I.S. [Center for Strategic and International Studies in a] report identified what appeared to be a militarized facility in one such village, known as Migyitun, or Zhari in Chinese, an indication of the settlements’ dual-use nature.

[...]

To persuade residents to move there, Chinese Communist Party officials promised them their new homes would be cheap. They would receive annual subsidies and get paid extra if they took part in border patrols. Chinese propaganda outlets said the government would provide jobs and help promote local businesses and tourism. The villages would come with paved roads, internet connections, schools and clinics.

[...]

Some villagers may be receiving around 20,000 Chinese yuan a year for relocation {according to a government document], less than $3,000. One resident reached by phone said he earned an extra $250 a month by patrolling the border.

[...]

The residents become dependent on the subsidies because there are few other ways to make a living.

[...]

China’s relocation policy is also a form of social engineering, designed to assimilate minority groups like the Tibetans into the mainstream. Tibetans, who are largely Buddhist, have historically resisted the Communist Party’s intrusive controls on their religion and way of life.

[...]

When money isn’t enough, Chinese officials have applied pressure on residents to relocate, an approach that was evident even in state propaganda reports.

A documentary aired by the state broadcaster, CCTV, showed how a Chinese official went to Dokha, a village in Tibet, to persuade residents to move to a new village called Duolonggang, 10 miles from Arunachal Pradesh.

He encountered some resistance. Tenzin, a lay Buddhist practitioner, insisted that Dokha’s land was fertile, producing oranges and other fruit. “We can feed ourselves without government subsidies,” he said.

The official criticized Tenzin for “using his age and religious status to obstruct relocation,” according to a state media article cited by Human Rights Watch in a report.

In the end, all 143 residents of Dokha moved to the new settlement.

Thousands of small business owners stormed the Guangzhou offices of Temu, an online retail giant, earlier this month. They protested the platform's financial penalties and return policies, arguing that these measures are crippling small businesses.

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"Everyone will go hungry,” one taxi driver said of Wuhan drivers competing against robotaxis from Apollo Go, a subsidiary of Chinese technology giant Baidu.

Ride-hailing and taxi drivers are among the first workers globally to face the threat of job loss from artificial intelligence as thousands of robotaxis hit Chinese streets, economists and industry experts said.

Self-driving technology remains experimental, but China has moved aggressively to green-light trials compared with the U.S, which is quick to launch investigations and suspend approvals after accidents.

Just a few weeks ago, the robotaxi revolution was causing public concerns in China with the issue blowing up on social media after an Apollo Go vehicle ran into a pedestrian in Wuhan. Footage of the incident spread online has sparked a wide debate about the issues created by robotaxis — especially the threat the technology poses to ride-hailing and taxi drivers.

Authorities in Wuhan have felt the need back then to respond to the “rumors” about problems caused by robotaxis. The city’s transportation bureau told domestic media that the local taxi industry is “relatively stable” and that Apollo Go only operates 400 robotaxis in the city, rather than 1,000 as many have claimed online.

Despite the safety concerns, fleets proliferate in China as authorities approve testing to support economic goals. Last year, President Xi Jinping called for “new productive forces,” setting off regional competition.

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Earlier, in Jun 2024, China issued judicial guidelines for trying and sentencing to death in absentia what it calls “diehard” advocates for Taiwan independence. “This judicial document surely serves as a blow to President Lai Ching-te and his fellow separatists,” China’s official Xinhua news agency then said Jun 22.

The guidelines on imposing criminal punishments on diehard “Taiwan independence” separatists for conducting or inciting secession were jointly issued by the Supreme People’s Court, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, and the ministries of public security, state security, and justice and took effect upon release, said a Xinhua report Jun 21.

The new sections, which appeared on Aug 7, include a list of “Taiwan independence diehards”, namely Su Tseng-chang, You Si-kun, Joseph Wu Jau-shieh, Hsiao Bi-khim, Koo Li-hsiung, Tsai Chi-chang, Ker Chienming, Lin Fei-fan, Chen Jiauhua and Wang Ting-yu.

Su and You are former chairmen of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Wu is a former head of external affairs, and Hsiao is the deputy head of the island. The rest are all current or former senior officials of the island’s “independence-touting” authorities, said China’s official chinadaily.com.cn Aug 8.

Apart from the list, the sections provide a tip-off mailbox [... for the gathering of information on the listed “separatists’ criminal activities” and clues on any new “die-hard Taiwan independence separatists” suspected of serious offenses.

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China has become Africa's largest trading partner and creditor in recent years under the Belt and Road Initiative [...] Beijing's economic focus on Africa, especially for the latter's raw minerals, has restarted full-scale in the post-COVID years. China's relentless hunt for critical minerals is driving its new initiatives inside Africa. Meanwhile, it also continues to maintain its old ones such as infrastructure construction.

Further, according to findings by Australia's Griffith Asia Institute, new Chinese investment in Africa increased by 114% in 2023. However, it remained heavily focused on minerals, coupled with Beijing's plans to revive its own flagging economy.

All efforts to boost other imports from Africa seem to be faltering. This has resulted in the continent's ballooning trade deficit with China. In fact, the value of Africa's exports to China has fallen by 7% and its trade deficit has widened by 46%. Carrying one of Africa's largest trade deficits with China, Kenya is fast becoming a critical case study in this context.

Official Narratives vs Economic Realities

Despite these hard data-based realities, China's official Xinhua News Agency still harps on how numerous construction companies from Hubei and Hunan provinces have ventured into Africa. Xinhua claims that these companies are undertaking diverse engineering projects, for instance, in Kenya. Some sectors it mentions are energy, transportation, municipal construction, housing, telecommunications, and metallurgy. Furthermore, there are other projects in agricultural technology, equipment manufacturing, and fish-processing infrastructure. But the trade exchanges with Africa are anything but "thriving" as Xinhua puts it.

Beijing makes tall commitments worth billions of dollars for new construction projects. However, data also reveals a mercantile and extractive kind of Chinese strategy and approach towards Africa. According to the Global China Initiative at Boston University, ports built by Chinese companies, hydropower plants, and railways across the continent peaked in terms of annual lending worth $28.4 billion USD in 2016. These are financed mainly through sovereign loans.

[...]

China's Africa strategy in the past decade finds its foundation in the Belt and Road Initiative, whose deals are based on opaque agreements on multiple counts. Beijing aggressively pursued repayment of its debts from many African countries in the past. However, this approach created real problems for China's international standing and approach towards developing nations.

[...]

The pattern of how China uses its economic leverage for achieving politico-strategic ends at a later stage has been well displayed across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In fact, this has become a predictable pattern in China's toolkit. An added phenomenon to this strategy is the application of blunt coercion in the case of many lesser-developed and impoverished African economies.

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Here is the stuy: The CCP’s Digital Charm Offensive

TikTok Stacking Algorithms in Chinese Government’s Favor, Study Claims

A study published on Thursday asserts TikTok’s algorithms promote Chinese Communist Party narratives and suppress content critical of those narratives, a claim the embattled company forcefully denied to KQED.

Titled “The CCP’s Digital Charm Offensive,” the study by the Rutgers University-based Network Contagion Research Institute argues that much of the pro-China content originates from state-linked entities. ByteDance, a Chinese technology company, owns TikTok.

Institute co-founder Joel Finkelstein wrote that includes media outlets and influencers, such as travel vloggers who post toothlessly about Chinese regions like Xinxiang, where the government has imprisoned more than 1 million Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities.

“This manipulation is not just about content availability; it extends to psychological manipulation, particularly affecting Gen Z users,” Finkelstein wrote.

[...]

An NCRI analysis published in December looked at the volume of posts with certain hashtags — like “Uyghur,” “Xinjiang,” “Tibet” and “Tiananmen” — across TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. That report found **anomalies in TikTok content based on its alignment with the interests of the Chinese government. **For example, researchers wrote, hashtags about Tibet, Hong Kong protests and the Uyghur population appeared to be underrepresented on TikTok compared with Instagram.

It was the first time the Philippines has complained of dangerous actions by Chinese aircraft, as opposed to navy or coast guard vessels, since President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. took office in 2022.

Two People's Liberation Army Air Force aircraft executed a dangerous maneuver and dropped flares in the path of a NC-212i Philippine Air Force propeller aircraft conducting a routine maritime patrol over the Scarborough Shoal around 9 a.m. Thursday, the AFP said in a statement.

It "endangered the lives of our personnel undertaking maritime security operations recently within Philippine maritime zones," said AFP chief General Romeo Brawner Jr., adding that the Chinese aircraft interfered with lawful flight operations and violated international law on aviation safety.

The pilot and crew "safely returned" to Clark Air Base in Pampanga at 10 a.m. Thursday, Brawner said.

Within hours of Tim Walz being declared winner of the Democratic "veepstakes", Republican accusations that he is pro-China came thick and fast.

"Communist China is very happy," Donald Trump's former ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, said on Twitter/X. "No one is more pro-China than Marxist Walz."

Mr Walz's personal relationship with China does indeed extend back decades. It began in 1989 when, fresh out of college, Mr Walz began a Harvard University volunteer programme teaching American history and English [in] China. He later set up a business with his wife Gwen organising annual summer educational trips to China.

[...]

But if anything, Mr Walz has been pretty hawkish towards its [China's] government, particularly on human rights.

As a congressman, he met the Dalai Lama and – before his jailing – the high-profile Hong Kong democracy activist, Joshua Wong. Both men would place at the top of the Chinese government’s list of public enemies.

In terms of his congressional record, there is not much for China to like.

He spent over a decade on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China – a body focused on scrutinising the Chinese government’s human rights abuses.

[...]

Hong Kong

Mr Walz lent his strong backing to the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which imposed sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials for human rights abuses during the city's democracy protests.

Jeffrey Ngo, a democracy activist now based in the US, has praised Mr Walz's commitment to getting the legislation passed in 2019.

"We knocked on every door when the #HKHRDA lacked momentum," he wrote on X after Mr Walz was confirmed as the Harris VP choice. "Only Walz answered his."

Mr Ngo praised Mr Walz as "the sole House Democrat willing to keep co-sponsoring the bill". Republican Chris Smith was the bill's other sponsor.

The Chinese reaction

Mr Walz's elevation to the Democratic ticket has prompted interest on Chinese social media.

[...]

One Weibo user pointed out that Walz's "unique background gives him a real perspective on China", and he could "promote cultural exchanges when... relations are extremely difficult".

But others wondered whether that may be assuming too much.

The fact that his teaching posting took place in 1989 - the year of the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing - was not lost on some.

The Chinese cannot say much about the massacre for risk of getting censored. They refer to it obliquely - one comment simply said "if you know, you know".

Foreigners who were in China at that time "are the most anti-China", said another user.

Indeed, Mr Walz has often spoken publicly about his horror at the crushing of the Tiananmen protests, and in 2009 he co-sponsored a resolution in Congress marking its 20th anniversary.

His wife Gwen has said that the events had such an effect on Walz, that he chose 4 June - the day Beijing sent the troops in - as the date of their wedding five years later. She said that "he wanted to have a date he'll always remember".

[...]

Far from being pro-China, [Mr Walz] has spoken of the need for dialogue and cooperation [with China] on issues such as trade and climate change - but remains fiercely critical when it comes to human rights.

That stance was in evidence from the very start of the relationship. When returning to Nebraska after his year in China, he told a local newspaper that there were "no limits" to what the Chinese could accomplish.

"If they had proper leadership," he added.