China Articles - February 6, 2022
Friends,
As the Beijing Winter Olympics begin, I recommend looking back at the long history of human rights abuses by the Chinese Communist Party. Last week, China scholar Orville Schell wrote a piece about a segment he helped produce for CBS 60 Minutes back in 1991 which uncovered the web of forced labor camps that were exporting goods to the United States and other countries.
I recommend taking a few minutes to watch the report that Ed Bradley put together back in September 1991 in the CBS 60 Minutes archive, Made in Chinese labor camps (1991). It is particularly disturbing to know that very little has changed in over three decades.
To pull together reporting on the CCP, I rely on the work of countless other China watchers. One such person is Ananth Krishnan, previously the China Bureau Chief for India Today Group and now a Visiting Fellow at Brookings. Krishnan publishes an excellent Substack called The India China Newsletter which I highly recommend. This week, Krishnan wrote about a new history published in the PRC about the 1962 Sino-Indian War, in which Mao Zedong ordered an invasion of India.
For the PRC, the 1962 Sino-Indian War has long been considered a ‘forgotten war.’ As the Sino-Soviet split accelerated in the 1960s, it made sense for the Party to downplay the conflict with India as Beijing sought out diplomatic partners. Additionally, the circumstances of Mao’s decision to invade India in October 1962 proved particularly inconvenient for the Party’s propaganda elements which continuously claim that the PRC has never invaded another country.
This is what makes the Party’s decision to start amplifying the 1962 Sino-Indian War so interesting. It suggests that Beijing sees very little chance for reproachment with Delhi after the 2020 crisis along the PRC-Indian border and the establishment of the Quad.
With the 60th Anniversary of the 1962 Sino-Indian War this October, I agree with Krishnan’s assessment that the Party will increase its efforts to condition Chinese citizens to view India as an aggressor and an enemy (to paraphrase George Orwell’s 1984: “The PRC is at war with India. The PRC has always been at war with India.”)
Thanks for reading!
Matt
MUST READ
1. VIDEO – International investors in Chinese companies face growing risks
Financial Times, January 26, 2022
Financial Times editors James Kynge and Katie Martin discuss the increasing risks of investing in the People’s Republic of China. While some investors have adopted the strategy of investing alongside the Chinese Communist Party, like Chinese military themed funds, but that raises serious moral and ethical risks, to say nothing of opaque governance, accounting and regulatory risks.
2. Changeless China? An odyssey into the world’s most durable gulag.
Orville Schell, The Wire China, January 30, 2022
Journalist and long-time China scholar, Orville Schell recalls the 1991 CBS 60 Minutes report he helped arrange on the PRC’s forced labor camps and how they were used to produce goods exported to the United States.
As the U.S. Government seeks to implement the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, Schell offers valuable insights into the scope and scale of the Chinese Communist Party’s crimes and the danger individuals have put themselves into to make those crimes known to the world. Here is the segment that aired on September 15, 1991.
3. Amid chill in relations, new PLA history returns spotlight to 1962 war
Ananth Krishnan, The Hindu, January 30, 2022
Ahead of the 60th anniversary of the 1962 India-China war in October, official Chinese military researchers have compiled a new history of the war reassessing its significance and legacy, bringing the spotlight back to the war amid the current tensions in relations. Over the decades, this conflict attracted very little attention from Chinese scholars and the PLA, particularly in comparison with the attention shown to the war with Japan and against the United Nations in Korea.
Previous anniversaries of the war received only modest attention in China — far less than in India — and some Chinese military scholars have in the past viewed the war with India as one of China’s forgotten wars. That seems to be changing now with renewed attention following the Line of Actual Control (LAC) crisis which began in April 2020 and particularly after the June 15, 2020 clash in Galwan Valley.
If the normalisation of ties with India was one reason for downplaying 1962 in the past, the recent plunge in relations has coincided with greater interest both in 1962 and on the boundary dispute.
4. VIDEO – FBI Director Wray says scale of Chinese spying in the U.S. 'blew me away'
Pete Williams, NBC News, February 1, 2022
Chinese spying in the U.S. has become so widespread that the FBI is launching a new counterintelligence investigation every 12 hours with over 2000 cases underway, FBI Director Christopher Wray said in an interview with NBC News. “There is no country that presents a broader, more severe threat to our innovation, our ideas and our economic security than China does,” he said. In a speech Monday at the Reagan Library in California, Wray warned that China’s economic espionage has reached a new level, “more brazen, more damaging than ever before.”
5. For Uyghur torchbearer, China’s Olympic flame has gone dark
Huizhong Wu, Associated Press, February 3, 2022
Fourteen years ago, Kamaltürk Yalqun at the age of 17 was chosen by the Chinese Government to help carry the Olympic flame ahead of the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing. After his father was arrested and disappeared into the maw of the Chinese Communist Party’s concentration camps in Xinjiang, Yalqun became an activist in the United States calling for a boycott of the upcoming Winter Games over China’s treatment of his Uyghur ethnic community. Yalqun recalls being proud to participate in China’s first Olympics. Those feelings vanished after his father disappeared in 2016. Yalqun Rozi, an editor of books on Uyghur literature, was arrested and sentenced to 15 years in prison for attempting to “subvert” the Chinese state. Yalqun never saw his father again.
AUTHORITARIANISM
6. As Beijing Olympics begin, exiled Uyghurs fight for families oppressed in China
Alice Su, Los Angeles Times, February 2, 2022
Jessica Batke, China File, January 31, 2022
8. Foreign Journalists in China Say They Face Deepening Intimidation
Dan Strumpf, Wall Street Journal, January 30, 2022
Many said they experienced harassment in the field when reporting, including from ordinary citizens who are increasingly hostile.
Foreign news organizations in China are operating at drastically reduced staffing levels, while the foreign journalists still in the country face intimidation, harassment and threats of legal action there, a Beijing-based journalist group said.
Almost all foreign journalists surveyed by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China in an annual assessment of working conditions said reporting conditions in the country didn’t meet international standards.
“The Chinese state continues to find new ways to intimidate foreign correspondents, their Chinese colleagues, and those whom the foreign press seeks to interview, via online trolling, physical assaults, cyber hacking, and visa denials,” the club said in a report published Monday.
9. ‘Nobody can say anything’: China cracks down on dissent ahead of Olympics
Chris Horton, The Guardian, February 3, 2022
10. Migrant Worker’s Tale of Inequality Grips China, Then Is Erased
Li Yuan, New York Times, January 31, 2022
A man with Covid revealed a parallel universe to well-off Chinese and became a symbol of inequality. The government found him inconvenient to its narrative.
11. Ahead of Winter Olympics, Beijing Moves to Quash Dissent
Paul Mozur, Steven Lee Myers and John Liu, New York Times, January 31, 2022
12. Sport, politics and Covid collide at the Beijing Winter Olympics
Emma Graham-Harrison and Vincent Ni, The Guardian, January 30, 2022
13. Why China’s Global Image Is Getting Worse
Joshua Kurlantzick, Council on Foreign Relations, January 24, 2022
14. VIDEO – Hearing on "CCP Decision-Making and the 20th Party Congress"
U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, January 27, 2022
15. Verdicts from China’s Courts Used to Be Accessible Online. Now They’re Disappearing.
Luo Jiajun, China File, February 1, 2022
16. Hong Kong: One of city's last Tiananmen Square memorials covered up
BBC, January 31, 2022
17. China: Media freedom declining at 'breakneck speed' – report
BBC, February 1, 2022
18. Foreign journalists in China subject to rising intimidation, survey finds
Helen Davidson, The Guardian, January 30, 2022
Report says heightened dangers have prompted at least six to leave and many others to develop emergency exit plans
19. China watching in the ‘New Era’: A guide
Charles Parton, Council on Geostrategy, February 1, 2022
Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and President of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), sees his country as having entered a ‘New Era’. A feature of this ‘New Era’ is the imposition of increasingly harsh restraints on openly available information. To use Winston Churchill’s words on Russian policy, there is a danger of the PRC becoming ‘a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.’
It is not helped by a language in which too few foreigners are competent nor by the CCP’s own peculiar political language. Governments, think tanks, academia and others will need to modernise by using new tools to sift bulk data into accessible sources of information and intelligence.
But they will also have to return to past skills which perhaps have not received sufficient investment over recent years: the diligence and ability to read between the lines of CCP documents, reports and activities.
20. Reform and Crackdown in China: A Red Turn?
Guido Alberto Casanova, Italian Institute for International Political Studies, February 1, 2022
21. From Lantau to Ealing: Hong Kong’s homesick exiles in Britain greet the Year of the Tiger
Stuart Lau, Politico, February 1, 2022
22. Exclusive: Hong Kong leader delays filling post, raising questions about judiciary's independence
Greg Torode, Reuters, January 31, 2022
23. China’s Communist Party Quietly Inserts Itself into Everyday Life
Josh Chin, Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2022
24. China Fortifies Its Borders With a ‘Southern Great Wall,’ Citing Covid-19
Liyan Qi, Keith Zhai and Lam Le, Wall Street Journal, February 2, 2022
Barbed wire, lights and cameras spring up, changing life for locals and making trade cumbersome
ENVIRONMENTAL HARMS
25. Illegal overfishing by Chinese trawlers leaves Sierra Leone locals ‘starving’
Peter Yeung, The Guardian, February 1, 2022
As illegal industrial-scale fishing by foreign fleets pillages fish populations, despairing coastal communities say they feel powerless.
26. There’s a Russia-Sized Mystery in China’s Electricity Sector
David Fickling, Bloomberg, January 31, 2022
Beijing has not broken the back of its carbon addiction or its credit-fueled development model. That puts global efforts to halt climate change at risk.
Here’s a new obstacle that could prevent the world finally turning the corner on climate change: Imagine that over the coming decade a whole new economy the size of Russia were to pop up out of nowhere. With the world’s fourth-largest electricity sector and largest burden of power plant emissions after China, the U.S. and India, this new economy on its own would be enough to throw out efforts to halt global warming — especially if it keeps on growing through the 2030s.
That’s the risk inherent in China’s seemingly insatiable appetite for grid power.
From the cracking pace of renewable build-out last year, you might think the country had broken the back of its carbon addiction. A record 55 gigawatts of solar power and 48 gigawatts of wind were connected — comparable to installing the generation capacity of Mexico in less than 12 months. This year will see an even faster pace, with 93 GW of solar and 50 GW of wind added, according to a report last week from the China Electricity Council, an industry association.
That progress could in theory see the country’s power sector emissions peak within months, rather than the late-2020s date the government has hinted at. Combined with a smaller quantity of hydro and nuclear, 2022’s additional solar panels and wind turbines will probably add about 310 terawatt-hours to zero-carbon generation this year. That 3.8% increase would be sufficient to power the U.K.
Countries that have reached China’s levels of per-capita electricity consumption (already on a par with most of Europe) typically see growth rates at less than half that level. Grid supply could grow at a faster pace than Brazil, Iran, South Korea or Thailand managed over the past decade without adding a ton of additional carbon to the atmosphere.
There’s a problem with that picture, however. If electricity demand grows at an even more headlong pace, there simply won’t be enough renewables to supply the grid. Fossil fuels, overwhelmingly coal, will fill the gap.
Such an outcome looks distinctly possible. Electricity consumption in 2021 grew at an extraordinary rate of 10%, and will increase again by between 5% and 6% this year, according to the CEC. That suggests the country is on pace to match the CEC’s forecasts of bullish grid demand over the coming decade, with generation hitting 11,300 terawatt-hours in 2030. External analysts, such as the International Energy Agency and BloombergNEF, envisage a more modest growth to around 10,000 TWh.
The difference between those two outlooks is vast — equivalent to all the electricity produced by Russia or Japan. If the CEC is right and the IEA and BloombergNEF are wrong, even the furious rate of renewable installations we’re seeing now won’t be enough to rein in China’s power-sector emissions.
27. Low-carbon ambitions must not interfere with ‘normal life’, says Xi Jinping
Vincent Ni, The Guardian, January 26, 2022
China’s ambitious low-carbon goals will not be realised easily and should not come at the expense of energy and food security or the “normal life” of ordinary people, its president, Xi Jinping, has said, signalling a more cautious approach to the climate emergency as the economy slows.
FOREIGN INTERFERENCE AND COERCION
Finbarr Bermingham, South China Morning Post, February 3, 2022
Leaked documents show China’s negotiating position over an inspection of Xinjiang has not changed for years, amid criticism of a ‘mutually convenient stalemate’
The UN human rights commission says there is no timeline to release the report, which has been in the works for three years
The United Nations and China have been accused of fabricating a “mutually convenient stalemate” after its top human rights body confirmed it will not publish a report on alleged abuses in the Chinese region of Xinjiang before this month’s Winter Olympics.
The UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said there was still no timeline to release its first ever report on the region, which has been in the works for three years and is believed to have been ready for publication for much of that time.
The two have also been locked in years of negotiations over an inspection of conditions in Xinjiang by human rights chief Michelle Bachelet.
29. U.N. Chief Rebuffs U.S. Request to Skip Beijing Olympics
Colum Lynch, Foreign Policy, February 1, 2022
U.S. envoy Linda Thomas-Greenfield presses António Guterres to confront China over rights abuses in Xinjiang.
30. CCP’s use of overseas Chinese to influence western democracies
Kalpit A. Mankikar, Observer Research Foundation, January 29, 2022
Western democracies need to be cautious and must guard against the CCP’s ‘charm offensive’ that threatens their interests.
31. The CCP training programme at the heart of Cambridge
San Dunning, The Spectator, February 5, 2022
32. Chinese intelligence officers infiltrate charity inspired by Prince Philip
Jonathan Reilly, The Sun, February 2, 2022
33. How China Intervened in a Maryland Effort to Ban Lead from Children’s Products
Flora Yan, The Diplomat, January 19, 2022
34. For Olympic Sponsors, ‘China Is an Exception’
Alexandra Stevenson and Steven Lee Myers, New York Times, January 28, 2022
35. A Chinese Competitor Tried to Trigger a Backlash Against Chanel. It Backfired.
Trefor Moss, Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2022
36. China may be using Interpol to target dissidents and political opponents based in Britain
Henry Bodkin, The Telegraph, January 29, 2022
South China Morning Post, February 3, 2022
IOC president Thomas Bach criticised ‘the dark clouds of the growing politicisation of sport on the horizon’
38. Riled up by torchbearer, India skips China Olympics opening
Ashok Sharma, Associated Press, February 3, 2022
HUMAN RIGHTS AND RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION
39. VIDEO – Hearing--The Beijing Olympics and the Faces of Repression
U.S. Congressional-Executive Committee on China, February 3, 2022
From minute 20:25-32:30m Speaker Nancy Pelosi testifies about the gross human rights abuses in the People’s Republic of China.
40. A Uyghur gets death sentence, as China bans once OK’d books
Huizhong Wu, Associated Press, February 1, 2022
As the Chinese government tightened its grip over its ethnic Uyghur population, it sentenced one man to death and three others to life in prison last year for textbooks drawn in part from historical resistance movements that had once been sanctioned by the ruling Communist Party.
An AP review of images and stories presented as problematic in a state media documentary, and interviews with people involved in editing the textbooks, found they were rooted in previously accepted narratives — two drawings are based on a 1940s movement praised by Mao Zedong, who founded the communist state in 1949. Now, as the party’s imperatives have changed, it has partially reinterpreted them with devastating consequences for individuals, while also depriving students of ready access to a part of their heritage.
41. ‘Hostage diplomacy’: The case of the Western executive held in China for three years
Simon Foy, The Telegraph, January 24, 2022
42. Richard O'Halloran back in Ireland after being denied exit from China
BBC, January 31, 2022
43. Alexa whistleblower demands Amazon apology after being jailed and tortured
Gethin Chamberlain, The Guardian, January 30, 2022
44. Eradicating Forced Labor from Solar Supply Chains
Eventide, January 2022
Forced labor contaminates solar supply chains. This report examines the scale of the crisis and describes Eventide’s proposed solution.
45. When Olympics Come, Tibetans Suffer
Tenzin Younten, Bitter Winter, January 25, 2022
Tibetan monks arrested in April 2008, wikimedia
46. Kazakhstan: Mass Arrests and Surveillance—With Some Help from China
Laila Adilzhan, Bitter Winter, January 27, 2022
Chinese high-tech equipment plays a significant part in the repression, which also targets those who protested against atrocities in Xinjiang.
47. Book Promoting Atheism Launched with Great Fanfare in China
Peng Huiling, Bitter Winter, January 31, 2022
South China Morning Post, February 1, 2022
49. Video of Mentally Ill Woman Chained in Shack Stirs Anger in China
Vivian Wang and Joy Dong, New York Times, January 31, 2022
INDUSTRIAL POLICIES AND ECONOMIC ESPIONAGE
50. FBI chief: Threat from China ‘more brazen’ than ever before
Eric Tucker, Associated Press, February 1, 2022
The threat to the West from the Chinese government is “more brazen” and damaging than ever before, FBI Director Christopher Wray said Monday night in accusing Beijing of stealing American ideas and innovation and launching massive hacking operations.
The speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library amounted to a stinging rebuke of the Chinese government just days before Beijing is set to occupy the global stage by hosting the Winter Olympics. It made clear that even as American foreign policy remains consumed by Russia-Ukraine tensions, the U.S. continues to regard China as its biggest threat to long-term economic security.
51. Biden Promised to Confront China. First He Has to Confront America’s Bizarre Trade Politics.
Bob Davis, Politico, January 31, 2022
52. George Soros warns China is facing an economic crisis
Charles Riley, CNN Business, January 31, 2022
China is facing an economic crisis after a real estate boom ended with a bang last year, according to investor George Soros.
The billionaire said in a speech at Stanford University's Hoover Institution Monday that President Xi Jinping may not be able to restore confidence in the troubled industry, which has been hit by a series of defaults by developers and falling prices for land and apartments.
China's real estate boom was based on an "unsustainable" model that benefited local governments and encouraged people to invest the bulk of their savings in property, Soros said.
53. China’s Economy Is Heading Toward Stagnation, Not Collapse
Diana Choyleva, Foreign Policy, February 2, 2022
CYBER AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Eliot Chen, The Wire China, January 30, 2022
The supply chains of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei have been crippled by U.S. sanctions over the past couple of years. Now it’s fighting back at home, thanks in part to an investment spree carried out by its wholly-owned fund, Hubble Technology Venture Capital.
At The Wire, we periodically look at prominent firms investing in China, examining their management teams and investments. So far, we’ve featured Yunfeng Capital, Hillhouse Capital, IDG Capital, and 5Y Capital. This week, we take a look at Hubble Technology and how it’s helping Huawei invest its way out of its financial woes.
55. The Great Rectification of China's Cyberspace
Rogier Creemers, Italian Institute for International Political Studies, January 31, 2022
56. The hope and hate around China’s Olympic tech
Zeyi Yang, Protocol, February 2, 2022
57. Drone company DJI obscured ties to Chinese state funding, documents show
Cate Cadell, Washington Post, February 1, 2022
The Chinese firm received funding from several state-backed investors, despite repeated claims that it hasn’t taken money from Beijing.
MILITARY AND SECURITY THREATS
2DF, February 1, 2022 – ORIGINAL IN GERMAN
59. China's ambassador to the U.S. warns of 'military conflict' over Taiwan
Steve Inskeep, National Public Radio, January 28, 2022
60. “Axis of Inconvenience”: China, Russia and the Crisis in Ukraine
Michael Cox, London School of Economics, February 2, 2022
With tensions rising on the Russian-Ukrainian border and Chinese pressure on Taiwan showing no signs of diminishing any time soon, it is perhaps as good a time as any to take stock of the relationship between Beijing and Moscow.
The ever-deepening relationship between China and Russia has played a significant role in the current crisis in Ukraine.
Many in the West see a connection between Russian pressure on Ukraine and Chinese policy towards Taiwan.
Though China seeks a peaceful resolution of the crisis, diplomatically it has supported Russia in its efforts to redraw the European security architecture.
61. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jingping form alliance to defeat sanctions over Ukraine
Marc Bennetts and Didi Tang, Times of London, February 3, 2022
ONE BELT, ONE ROAD STRATEGY
62. China’s Domestic Politics Are Driving the Belt and Road Initiative
Zenel Garcia and Phillip Guerreiro, The Diplomat, January 29, 2022
63. Taiwan’s Diplomatic Offensive in Eastern Europe
Gregory Coutaz, The Diplomat, February 3, 2022
Growing disillusionment with China has created new opportunities for Taiwan in Central and Eastern Europe.
OPINION PIECES
64. VIDEO – Tech Security is National Security: Discussion between HON Keith Krach and LTG (ret) H.R. McMaster
Bipartisan Policy Center, January 27, 2022
George Soros, Project Syndicate, January 31, 2022
66. Watching China in Europe - February 2022
Noah Barkin, German Marshall Fund, February 1, 2022
67. How Beijing Is Playing the Olympics
Evan Osnos, The New Yorker, January 30, 2022
68. The Moral Cost of Doing Business in China
Jillian Kay Melchior, Wall Street Journal, February 2, 2022
69. Use ridicule as a tool to make China squirm
Matthew Syed, Times of London, January 26, 2022
70. Olympic athletes are getting ready to boycott the opening ceremony in Beijing
Josh Rogin, Washington Post, February 2, 2022
71. China’s censors have already won
Benedict Rogers, The Spectator, January 30, 2022
72. China isn’t just ‘authoritarian’ any more. It’s scarier.
Melissa Chan, Washington Post, January 31, 2022
73. China doesn’t just want to be part of the global order – it wants to shape it
Katie Stallard, The New Statesman, February 2, 2022
As the Winter Olympics begin in Beijing amid growing geopolitical tension, Xi Jinping's message is clear: the days of seeking international approval are over.
74. West fears new axis of autocrats
Roger Boyes, Times of London, February 3, 2022
For decades China and Russia were at loggerheads over how to implement a communist revolution. Now, as this week’s Winter Olympics summit between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin is likely to show, they are cementing an alliance to make the world safe for autocrats.
75. The day I was tapped up by Chinese intelligence
Charles Parton, The Spectator, February 3, 2022
76. The Double Integration Doctrine, a Conversation With Sabine Weyand
Sebastian Lumet and Sabine Weyand, Groupe d’etudes geopolitiques, January 31, 2022
77. America Is Stronger Than It Looks
Walter Russel Mead, Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2022