China Articles - October 2, 2022
Friends,
Sue-Lin Wong at The Economist has put together an excellent 8-episode podcast on Xi Jinping, It is worth listening to.
Also we have some insight into the false coup rumors from just over a week ago. Zeyi Yang at MIT Technology Review tracks down where the rumors started and provides some insight into how they spread.
Thanks for reading!
Matt
MUST READ
1. How Global Public Opinion of China Has Shifted in the Xi Era
Laura Silver, Christine Huang, and Laura Clancy, Pew Research Center, September 28, 2022
2. PODCAST – The Prince
Sue-Lin Wong, The Economist, September 28, 2022
COMMENT: A new podcast by The Economist’s China correspondent, Sue-Lin Wong, about Xi Jinping. Eight episodes were dropped on Wednesday… enjoy some binge listening!
3. What is China’s Global Security Initiative?
Chris Cash, Council on Geostrategy, September 29, 2022
The Global Security Initiative (GSI) was first announced by Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the CCP, in April 2022 during a keynote speech at the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference. Thus far, it is a nebulous geostrategic offering that presents an alternative to the existing geopolitical order, which the CCP perceives as one dominated by liberal-democratic nations and thus skewed against its interests. Dong Chunling, Assistant Research Fellow at China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, described the GSI as ‘a Chinese solution to jointly address increasingly complex and serious common global challenges’.
4. China’s Xi reemerges after trip abroad quashing unfounded ‘coup’ rumors
Nectar Gan, CNN, September 30, 2022
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has made his first public appearance since returning from a trip to Central Asia, quashing unfounded rumors of a “coup” that sparked a frenzy of speculation ahead of a key Communist Party meeting.
5. How the false rumor of a Chinese coup went viral
Zeyi Yang, MIT Technology Review, September 27, 2022
Dissecting how Indian users and Falun Gong media accounts spread a bogus story far and wide on Twitter.
If you are on Twitter and follow news about China, you likely have heard a pretty wild rumor recently: that President Xi Jinping was under house arrest and that there was about to be a major power grab in the country.
First of all, let me be very clear: this report is false and should not be taken seriously. No credible sources on China have bought it. It’s wishful thinking at best, and intentional disinformation at worst.
But it’s interesting to dissect how a ridiculous rumor could be elevated and spread so widely that it made it to Twitter’s deeply flawed trending list over the weekend. So today I’ll trace it back to its roots and unpack how it gained traction.
The story basically went through three stages, brewing in Chinese circles before being translated into English by influencers opposed to the Chinese government and finally being amplified by Indian Twitter accounts.
Stage 1: It’s not rare to see such salacious political rumors if you follow a lot of Chinese-language Twitter accounts. There’s a whole world of commentators and anonymous accounts openly speculating about every faint signal coming out of China’s state media, magnifying every word and gesture, and interpreting it as something groundbreaking.
The rumor that’s going around this time had the benefit of coinciding with a few real news events that were combined into a narrative that may look plausible to people unfamiliar with China. Here are the things that actually happened: (1) a Chinese general, Li Qiaoming, left his commander post after five years, and it hasn’t been reported where he’s heading; (2) a 105-year-old retired high-ranking politician made a rare media appearance to talk about respecting the elders; (3) domestic flights in China were experiencing high cancellation rates—as high as 60% last week; (4) Xi hadn’t appeared in public since he returned from Uzbekistan on September 16.
These were all the materials that conspiracy theorists needed to somehow conclude that Xi must have been under house arrest initiated by the general and the party elder. That story first started circulating among Chinese-language accounts on September 22.
(All these real goings-on likely have much more boring explanations. For example, spiking flight cancellations have actually been common this year, as many Chinese cities have experienced unpredictable covid-related lockdowns. In the three weeks before the rumor started, the weekly flight cancellation rates were 60.1%, 69.0%, and 64.1%, according to a Chinese flight tracker app. But for people who aren’t familiar with how badly daily life has been disrupted in China, the rates seemed like an abnormality right before the 20th National Congress, an event organized every five years to elect the top officials of the Chinese Community Party.)
Stage 2: On September 23, the story broke out of Chinese-language Twitter when it was translated into English by Jennifer Zeng, an activist and self-proclaimed journalist, who has a track record of spreading rumors and misattributed videos.
As a TV host for New Tang Dynasty Television and a contributor to the Epoch Times, both of which are backed by the anti-China religious group Falun Gong, Zeng is a key player in a media network that plays an increasingly important role in conspiracies about China and also about elections in the US. She’s been careful to consistently present the coup story as a “rumor,” but she has since put out over a dozen tweets about it, continuing to drum up speculation.
Stage 3: This is perhaps the most interesting development. Several separate analyses of Twitter activities on the #ChinaCoup hashtag found that starting September 24, a large number of Indian Twitter accounts picked up the report and spread it far and wide.
For example, one analysis of over 32,000 Twitter interactions by Marc Owen Jones, an assistant professor at Hamad bin Khalifa University in Qatar, who researches disinformation and digital media, shows that @Indiatvnews, the account of the Indian nationalist TV channel, is the largest disseminator of the coup rumor. Subramanian Swamy, a prominent Indian politician followed by 10 million people, also talked about the story in several tweets on September 24, describing it as “new rumor to be checked out.”
India has the third-largest number of Twitter users in the world. Considering the long-standing geopolitical tensions between India and China, plus the relative lack of knowledge that average Indians likely have about Chinese politics and how to discern Falun Gong–backed media accounts, it’s not necessarily surprising that they fell for and spread the rumor.
Despite several recent reports on the rise of bot activity originating in India, there’s not yet enough evidence to determine whether this was a coordinated effort to push the coup rumor. There are suspicious signs, like “a lot of new accounts as well as the fact some of the key influencers now [are] suspended,” Jones told me. “This does not necessarily point to it being state-backed—just a lot of inauthentic activities.”
Of course, since this is Twitter, many other accounts are capitalizing on the popularity of this discourse and in turn further amplifying the story. This includes people intentionally trolling unsuspecting users by pairing old videos with the new rumor, and some users in Africa are hijacking the hashtag to gain visibility for their own content—apparently a long-practiced trick among users in Nigeria and Kenya.
By Monday, the rumor had mostly died down. While Xi still hadn’t shown up, recent documents reaffirmed his participation and influence in the coming party congress, demonstrating that he’s very much still in power.
The fact that a completely unsubstantiated rumor, one that basically happens every other month in Chinese Twitter circles, could grow so big and have tricked so many people is both funny and depressing. The bottom line: Social media is still a mess full of misinformation—but you may not notice that mess if you are not familiar with the issue being discussed.
6. U.S. lawmakers want Biden order boosting oversight of outbound investment in China
David Shepardson, Reuters, September 28, 2022
A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday called on President Joe Biden to issue an executive order to boost oversight of investments by U.S. companies and individuals in China and other countries.
The lawmakers including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Republican Senator John Cornyn urged Biden to issue an order to "safeguard our national security and supply chain resiliency on outbound investments to foreign adversaries."
7. Letter to President Biden on Outbound Investment Executive Action
Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Charles Schumer (D-NY), Robert Casey (D-PA), and John Cornyn (R-TX), September 27, 2022
AUTHORITARIANISM
8. Wall Street Banks Prep for Grim China Scenarios Over Taiwan
Natasha White, Bloomberg, September 25, 2022
Insurers hike costs for political risk policies tied to China Withdrawal would represent sharp about-face for global firms
Global financial firms, still smarting from multi-billion dollar losses in Russia, are now reassessing the risks of doing business in Greater China after an escalation of tensions over Taiwan.
Lenders including Societe Generale SA, JPMorgan Chase & Co., UBS Group AG have asked their staff to review contingency plans in the past few months to manage exposures, according to people familiar with the matter. Global insurers, meanwhile, are backing away from writing new policies to cover firms investing in China and Taiwan, and costs for political risk coverage have soared more than 60% since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Political risk around potential US sanctions and the likelihood that China would respond by restricting capital flow has kept risk managers busy,” said Mark Williams, a professor at Boston University. “A sanctions war would significantly increase the cost of doing business and push US banks to rethink their China strategy.”
Heated rhetoric between Beijing and Washington over Taiwan has unsettled firms, coming just months after Russia’s war unexpectedly forced the world’s largest lenders to exit businesses and stop serving ultra-wealthy clients. US lawmakers last week ramped up pressure on banks to answer questions on whether they would withdraw from China if it invaded Taiwan.
While financial services executives who spoke on the condition of anonymity said they view the risk of armed conflict in North Asia as low, they see tit-for-tat sanctions between the US and China that disrupt the flow of finance and trade as ever more likely.
Any withdrawal would represent a dramatic about-face for Wall Street firms, which have poured billions into China after it opened its finance sector in recent years. Lenders ranging from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to Morgan Stanley have taken control of joint ventures and sought more banking licenses, while adding staff until some recent cuts sparked by a drop deals. The combined disclosed exposure of the biggest Wall Street banks in banks in China was about $57 billion at the end of 2021.
9. An investigation into what has shaped Xi Jinping’s thinking
The Economist, September 28, 2022
10. China’s Road Not Taken: How the Chinese Communist Party Rewrites History
Julian Gewirtz, Foreign Affairs, September 29, 2022
On January 18, 2005, tucked away just above a weather report on page four of People’s Daily, the main newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), was a three-line notice reporting on the death of an elderly man: “Comrade Zhao Ziyang suffered from long-term diseases of the respiratory system and the cardiovascular system and had been hospitalized multiple times, and following the recent deterioration of his condition, he was unable to be rescued and died on January 17 in Beijing at the age of 85.”
A casual reader of the newspaper would certainly be forgiven for not noticing the item. The brief obituary was notable mainly for what it left out. It did not mention that Zhao had held China’s top two leadership posts, first as premier of the State Council and then as general secretary of the CCP. Nor did it acknowledge that he had made any contributions to China’s “reform and opening,” the agenda of economic development and openness to the world China pursued soon after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976. The slogan “reform and opening” was still a centerpiece of official policy in 2005, mentioned nearly a dozen times in that day’s newspaper, but Zhao’s central role in shaping it had already been erased from official accounts of this period. Indeed, well before Zhao’s death, the CCP had rewritten the entire history of China’s 1980s—a tumultuous, transformational decade—and subjected it to far-reaching distortion, even though it was one of the most consequential periods in the country’s history.
This historical revision went beyond well-known official spin, such as denying the violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. China’s rulers systematically blotted out many of the most important parts of the 1980s: that major political reforms were openly considered, alternative economic paths were debated, foreign influences were welcomed, and policy contestation itself was encouraged to produce better results.
11. Xi’s Control Room: The Commission for Comprehensively Deepening Reform
Nis Grunberg and Vincent Brussee, MERICS, September 28, 2022
China’s leadership has institutionalized agenda-setting and supervision within policy making around Xi Jinping. A look at the Central Commission for Comprehensively Deepening Reform (CCDR) (中央全面深化改革委员会) – a supra-ministry used to accelerate priority reforms of the Xi leadership – can tell us a great deal about the potentials and pitfalls associated with this trend, explain Nis Grünberg and Vincent Brussee in this MERICS Primer. The analysis is accompanied by a slidedeck that provides context and deeper insights on the topic.
12. Opinion of China in advanced economies sours 'precipitously' under Xi – Pew
James Pomfret, Reuters, September 29, 2022
Public opinion towards China in the United States and other advanced economies has turned "precipitously more negative" under President Xi Jinping, according to a global survey by the Pew Research Center.
13. China growth to fall behind rest of Asia for first time since 1990
Edward White and Mercedes Ruehl, Financial Times, September 26, 2022
China’s economic output will lag behind the rest of Asia for the first time since 1990, according to new World Bank forecasts that highlight the damage wrought by President Xi Jinping’s zero-Covid policies and the meltdown of the world’s biggest property market.
The World Bank has revised down its forecast for gross domestic product growth in the world’s second-largest economy to 2.8 per cent, compared with 8.1 per cent last year, and from its prediction in April of between 4 and 5 per cent for this year.
At the same time, expectations for the rest of east Asia and the Pacific have improved. The region, excluding China, is expected to grow 5.3 per cent in 2022, up from 2.6 per cent last year, thanks to high commodity prices and a rebound in domestic consumption after the coronavirus pandemic.
14. Chinese Regulator Tells Banks to Avoid Political Talk Ahead of Party Congress
Rebecca Feng, Wall Street Journal, September 30, 2022
China’s securities regulator has told investment banks operating in the country to avoid publishing politically sensitive research ahead of a twice-in-a-decade meeting of the Communist Party next month, according to people familiar with the matter.
The China Securities Regulatory Commission recently sent an advisory to multiple securities houses, including the domestic units of large international banks, the people said. The mainland China businesses of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. were among those contacted by the regulator, the people added.
The move reflects the sensitivity of regulators and Chinese government officials in the run-up to China’s 20th National Congress in Beijing, which will kick off on Oct. 16. Chinese leader Xi Jinping is expected to extend his rule for a third term at the meeting, and the party’s senior leadership will map out their priorities for the next five years.
The CSRC’s message has been disseminated internally by some banks. Earlier this week, research strategists at JPMorgan’s private banking arm in Asia were told in an internal conference call not to comment on politically sensitive subjects for the time being, according to people familiar with the matter.
COMMENT: Capital markets require access to information in order to function correctly… that applies most definitely to “politically sensitive research.”
15. The Tech Site That Took on China’s Surveillance State
Timothy McLaughlin, The Atlantic, September 29, 2022
How did a trade publisher in Pennsylvania become a principal source of investigative journalism on the repressive apparatus Beijing uses against the Uyghurs?
Behind Heights Market & Deli (“Home of the Hoagie”) and next to Finishers Mixed Martial Arts gym, in a neighborhood of tidy lawns adorned with reflective gazing balls, sits a mundane warehouse that is the headquarters of an obscure news organization with an equally mundane name: Internet Protocol Video Market. The nondescript location gives little clue about what kind of journalistic enterprise goes on here.
IPVM’s office has no newsroom with reporters clacking on keyboards and TVs playing cable news. Instead, technicians run surveillance cameras and other security equipment through a litany of tests. Some journalist staff undertake more traditional reportorial tasks, digging through company filings and financial documents for reports that appear on IPVM’s website.
For most of its 14 years of publishing, the company existed as a niche, industry-focused outlet, read by professionals and technicians who generally worked in the field of commercial surveillance. In recent years, though, IPVM has delivered a string of highly impressive scoops, many in collaboration with major news organizations such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times, that have revealed alarming and sinister aspects of what Chinese surveillance companies have been up to. A December 2020 report by The Washington Post based on a document unearthed by IPVM detailed efforts by the Chinese tech giant Huawei to develop a face-scanning system that could trigger a “Uyghur alarm”—referring to the mainly Muslim ethnic group of northwestern China that has faced heavy state repression. The article prompted a European executive to resign from Huawei shortly after, and in February 2021 to speak out about the company’s technology.
The same month, the Los Angeles Times published a report based on a user guide found by IPVM in which the Chinese firm Dahua claimed that its camera technology could identify Uyghurs and automatically alert authorities when it did so. The revelation prompted a group of U.S. senators to write to Amazon demanding to know why the company had signed a multimillion-dollar deal with Dahua. Both the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China and the U.S. State Department have noted IPVM’s work in their reports on China.
ENVIRONMENTAL HARMS
16. How China Targets the Global Fish Supply
Steven Lee Myers, Agnes Chang, Derek Watkins and Claire Fu, New York Times, September 26, 2022
Wall Street Journal, September 12, 2022
Beijing is building more coal-fired capacity than the rest of the world combined, U.S. climate lectures notwithstanding.
18. China’s $30 Billion Coal Investment May Be Wasteful Climate Risk
Bloomberg, September 27, 2022
New approvals accelerated in the first half, say researchers
Chinese solar panels pile up unused in European warehouses
19. China's Aug coal imports from Russia, Indonesia soar as heatwave spurs power use
Muyu Xu, Reuters, September 20, 2022
FOREIGN INTERFERENCE AND COERCION
20. Coercion, Capture, and Censorship: Case Studies on the CCP's Quest for Global Influence
International Republican Institute, September 2022
Case studies of how the Chinese Communist Party interferes in the internal affairs of 12 countries.
21. Propaganda Analysis: How different actors in China’s information ecosystem portray the Ukraine war
Yun-ju Chen and Chia Yuan Hsu, Doublethink Lab, September 29, 2022
Key takeaways:
As of March 31, Doublethink Lab’s “Ukraine-Russia War: Chinese Information Operation Observation” feed had monitored 203 items of content, and observed two main discourses: those that rationalize Russia’s military operations, and those that divert the focus to avoid taking a firm position on the war.
Messages focused on rationalization are epitomized by conspiracy theories related to the establishment of a biochemical laboratory in Ukraine, as well as those that replicate Russian justifications that war was necessary to counter NATO’s eastward expansion or liberate Ukraine from neo-Nazis. In shifting the focus, China-sourced content mainly attacked Western countries that supported Ukraine, criticized sanctions, or called for peace and dialogue.
In observing these messages, we did not find any official Chinese actors, members of the government or diplomats, for example, directly condemning or criticizing Russia’s aggression. That said, very few directly supported the Kremlin’s actions. Instead, Chinese actors often position the United States and NATO as the protagonists of their narratives. We infer that the Chinese government’s strategy is to maintain the appearance of neutrality, while leveraging the war to attack Western countries, primarily the United States, and undermine perceptions of democracy.
If we define different “actors” as people and accounts that publish messages, and differentiate them according to their proximity to the center of power, we found a complex division of labor and apparent cooperation across different levels in the information hierarchy.
22. Removing Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior from China and Russia
Ben Nimmo and David Agranovich, Facebook, September 27, 2022
Takeaways:
We took down two unconnected networks in China and Russia for violating our policy against coordinated inauthentic behavior.
The Chinese-origin influence operation ran across multiple social media platforms, and was the first one to target US domestic politics ahead of the 2022 midterms and Czechia’s foreign policy toward China and Ukraine.
The Russian network — the largest of its kind we’ve disrupted since the war in Ukraine began — targeted primarily Germany, France, Italy, Ukraine and the UK with narratives focused on the war and its impact through a sprawling network of over 60 websites impersonating legitimate news organizations.
HUMAN RIGHTS AND RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION
23. Why China’s Crimes in Xinjiang Cannot Go Unpunished
Nicholas Bequelin, New York Times, September 30, 2022
For years, China denied committing human rights violations in Xinjiang, denounced its accusers and tried to block a United Nations investigation. Now we know why.
The U.N.’s long-delayed findings, released late last month, confirmed the most chilling allegations by ethnic Uyghurs: systematic mass internment, disappearances, torture, cultural and religious erasure and political indoctrination of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities.
The U.N.’s human right office, which compiled the report, said these allegations may amount to crimes against humanity, the most severe violations, along with genocide and war crimes, under international law. Despite China’s long record of documented human rights abuses, this was the first time it faced such grave accusations from the United Nations.
The international community, working through the U.N., must respond with meaningful steps to end the abuses, free prisoners and hold Beijing to account.
24. Self-exiled Hong Kong democrat Ted Hui sentenced to 3.5 years in jail in absentia
Peter Lee, Hong Kong Free Press, September 29, 2022
25. Tibet: New Re-Education Program for Buddhist Monks and Nuns
Lopsang Gurung, Bitter Winter, September 27, 2022
The “Three Consciousness Campaign” shows that the CCP is concerned about the success of the Tibetan non-violent resistance movement.
INDUSTRIAL POLICIES AND ECONOMIC ESPIONAGE
26. China’s Big Fund corruption probe casts shadow over chip sector
Edward White and Qianer Liu, Financial Times, September 28, 2022
Investment plummets after Beijing’s largesse laid ground for alleged graft and wasteful spending.
The sudden disappearance in July last year of Gao Songtao, the bespectacled former vice-president of government fund manager Sino IC Capital, was a warning of a coming storm.
Months later, the Chinese Communist party’s internal watchdog confirmed that Gao had been under investigation for corruption. Yet it was not President Xi Jinping’s public campaign to eliminate graft from financial markets that was behind the detention.
Instead, the deeply feared and highly secretive Central Commission for Discipline Inspection had been running a different operation. The target: China’s massive semiconductor sector and what has been happening to the tens of billions of dollars raised to invest in it.
Gao was one of the first executives to face corruption allegations in a CCDI crackdown that has sent a chill through the sector. In the process, it has highlighted the heavy-handed role of the state, which some analysts believe has laid the groundwork for graft and wasteful spending to flourish and has delivered a setback to China’s aim of achieving self-sufficiency in chips.
“The anti-corruption campaign is a warning to me and my team,” said a senior official at a local government semiconductor fund in southern China. Corruption had been “nurtured” by civil servants who “do not understand the industry”, they said.
Over the past three months, at least 12 people including fund managers, company executives and one government minister — all with deep ties to the chip industry — have come under investigation or disappeared from public view, according to CCDI announcements and local media reports.
The CCDI’s targeting of senior figures has left the industry disoriented and anxious, according to another government official involved in semiconductor investments in Jiangsu, north of Shanghai.
“We will all be slowing down to see what exactly crosses Beijing’s red lines,” the official said.
27. Professor, NASA researcher pleads guilty in China ties case
Juan Lozano, Associated Press, September 23, 2022
A NASA researcher and Texas A&M University professor pleaded guilty to charges related to hiding his ties to a university created by the Chinese government while accepting federal grant money.
Zhengdong Cheng pleaded guilty to two counts — violation of NASA regulations and falsifying official documents — during a hearing in Houston federal court on Thursday.
COMMENT: This is the 17th or 18th conviction under the ‘China Initiative’ since the start of the Biden Administration.
28. Deloitte’s Chinese Affiliate to Pay $20 Million to Settle Probe into Outsourced Work
Dave Michaels, Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2022
The Chinese affiliate of Big Four accounting firm Deloitte will pay $20 million to settle regulatory claims that it outsourced some audit work to companies whose financial statements it was hired to independently review.
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced the settlement on Thursday, saying Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Certified Public Accountants LLP asked clients to do some work it should have done as part of its review. The Deloitte-China auditors asked clients to pick their own accounting samples for testing and then create records to make it appear there was evidence to support the auditors’ work, the SEC said.
That shortcut created the risk that clients could strategically choose transactions or accounting entries that would pass review, “thereby impairing the reliability of the testing,” the SEC said in a settlement order.
The conduct involved 12 companies, including nine American firms whose financial results in China were reviewed by the China-based audit firm, SEC officials said. Deloitte-China also asked three U.S.-listed Chinese firms to select accounting entries to review and then prepare documents purporting to show that the auditors had independently reviewed them, the SEC said. The SEC didn’t find material accounting problems in the financial statements of those firms, officials said.
29. Xi Aide [He Lifeng] Likely to Be Next Economy Czar Stresses Need for Growth
Tom Hancock, September 28, 2022
30. Sand in the silicon: Designing an outbound investment controls mechanism
Sarah Bauerle Danzman and Emily Kilcrease, Atlantic Council, September 14, 2022
CYBER AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
31. AUDIO – Chinese Influence through Technical Standardization Power
Jude Blanchette and Tim Ruhlig, Pekingology, September 29, 2022
32. Chinese Influence through Technical Standardization Power
Tim Ruhlig, Journal of Contemporary China, March 21, 2022
Geo-economic rivalry is back on the international agenda, particularly in the field of high technology. Very often, technical standards are regarded as being a central arena of this competition. Surprisingly ignored is the question, how precisely technical standard-setting (such as Wi-Fi or 5G) empowers China. Based on the analysis of quantitative data, primary sources, and in-depth interviews, this article substantiates the widespread hypothesis that China’s growing footprint in technical standardization empowers the Chinese party-state. It introduces seven proxies to measure influence on standard-setting. Next, it explains how technical standards can be utilized by states to gain economic, legal, political, and discursive influence. Finally, it shows that China’s growing footprint in technical standardization is the result of party-state engagement, which provides leverage to China’s political leadership.
33. How 'China coup' tweets went viral, and what it says about the rapid spread of disinformation
Suzanne Smalley, Cyberscoop, September 26, 2022
34. Taiwan creating backup satellite internet system in case of a Chinese invasion
Steven Chase, The Globe and Mail, September 26, 2022
Taiwan is building a backup satellite internet system so it can communicate with the world, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has done, if the worst-case scenario unfolds.
Should China try to annex the self-governing island, as it has repeatedly threatened, Taiwan says it needs to be able to talk to global leaders, and its own people, in real time.
“As we’ve seen from the Ukrainian experience, real-time video conference is really important,” Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s new Minister of Digital Affairs, said in an interview Monday.
“That’s what enables President Zelensky to speak to the world and for the entire world to know what’s going on, so that rumours and disinformation would not spread.”
Among other measures, the Taiwanese government has set up a pilot project that would create the capability to communicate in high-quality video in case China cuts its undersea internet cables and knocks out its mobile networks. This “proof of concept” program will test satellite internet connections and 700 locations in Taiwan will be outfitted with equipment to communicate.
Taiwan has about 15 undersea cables connecting it to the world and which transmit digital communications such as phone calls and e-mail.
A study published Aug. 29 by George Mason University’s Mercatus Center said these cables come ashore at just three places in Taiwan: the city of New Taipei, the town of Toucheng in the north, and the town of Fangshan in the south. The centre said analysis of open-source data showed submarine cable landing stations are among China’s strategic points of interest when it comes to invasion planning.
MILITARY AND SECURITY THREATS
Christine McDaniel and Weifeng Zhong, Mercatus Center at George Mason University, August 29, 2022
36. The East China Sea: Ten Years After the Senkaku Nationalization Crisis
Christopher B. Johnstone, Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, September 29, 2022
This month marks the tenth anniversary of Japan’s nationalization of the Senkaku Islands, when the Japanese government purchased them from a private landowner in an effort to reinforce administrative control and to prevent private groups from visiting. The Chinese response to Japan’s action—which was controversial at the time—sparked a crisis in bilateral relations; although there had been incidents of Chinese ship incursions into waters around the islands previously, the numbers surged dramatically after September 2012. For the rest of the year and throughout much of 2013, the China Coast Guard (CCG) sustained a heavy presence around the islands, with ships entering the contiguous zone dozens of times each month, and incursions into territorial waters occurring at times almost daily. During this period, Japan deployed nearly half of its entire Coast Guard fleet in response to the challenge.
Ten years later, it is hard to appreciate the level of concern in Washington (and Tokyo) at the time about the risk of a conflict over the islands. In retrospect, the response by Japan and the United States to the 2012 crisis proved to be effective in forcing Beijing to back down and restoring relative equilibrium in the area. PRC pressure on the islands and along the two countries’ maritime boundary in the East China Sea (ECS) continues to this day—as AMTI’s identification of a new permanent oil rig on China’s side of the ECS mid-line demonstrates—and Beijing’s ultimate objective of securing control over the area almost certainly remains unchanged. But Japanese and U.S. actions succeeded in preventing a conflict that seemed imminent at the time, and bought a decade of relative stability thereafter.
37. China Installs a New Hydrocarbon Platform in the East China Sea
Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, September 29, 2022
China has installed a new production platform near the median line with Japan in the East China Sea. The platform is the first new permanent platform to be installed in the area since 2015, and its construction has drawn protest from Tokyo, which believes the two countries should share the area’s hydrocarbons under international law.
38. Patrol spots Chinese, Russian naval ships off Alaska island
Mark Thiessen, ABC News, September 26, 2022
A U.S. Coast Guard ship on routine patrol in the Bering Sea came across a guided missile cruiser from China, officials said Monday.
But it turned out the cruiser wasn’t alone as it sailed about 86 miles (138 kilometers) north of Alaska’s Kiska Island, on Sept. 19.
Two other Chinese naval ships and four Russian naval vessels, including a destroyer, were spotted in single formation, the patrol boat, known as a cutter called Kimball, discovered.
The Honolulu-based Kimball, a 418-foot (127-meter) vessel, observed as the ships broke formation and dispersed. A C-130 Hercules provided air support for the Kimball from the Coast Guard station in Kodiak.
ONE BELT, ONE ROAD STRATEGY
39. Xi looks again at Belt and Road Initiative’s ‘debt diplomacy trap’
Richard Lloyd Parry, Times of London, September 28, 2022
After disbursing $1 trillion across Asia, Africa and Latin America, China is taking the first steps to reform its global infrastructure programme
Since President Xi made it the centrepiece of his foreign policy, the so-called Belt and Road Initiative has become a symbol for many of the new China’s imperial ambitions.
According to its proponents it is a benign attempt to increase “connectivity” by helping countries in Asia, Africa and across the developing world by building ports, roads and railways to enable them to sell into the massive, and ever-expanding, Chinese market.
To others it is a thin disguise for “debt diplomacy”, a sinister effort to inveigle susceptible countries into borrowing money that they can never repay on impractical and over-ambitious projects, thus putting them at the mercy of China and its political agenda.
40. Pakistan attack: Chinese national shot dead at Karachi dental clinic
Chris Giles, BBC, September 29, 2022
An armed attacker posing as a dental patient has killed a man and injured two other people at a clinic in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi.
All three were Chinese-Pakistani dual nationals and had operated the dental clinic in the area for 40 years. Detectives say the attacker, who was in his early 30s, "didn't hurt Pakistanis" in Wednesday's incident.
The suspect managed to escape with the help of an accomplice on a motorbike.
Police have identified the victims as Ronald Chow, who worked as an assistant to dentist Richard Hu, 74, and his wife Margaret, 72. According to local media, the couple were wounded in the shooting and are being treated in hospital.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, and the motive is not known.
However, it is not the first attack on Chinese citizens in the south Asian country. In the most recent last April, three Chinese language teachers and their Pakistani driver were killed in an alleged suicide bombing in Karachi, near the city's Confucius Institute.
41. US pledges $210mn to Pacific Islands to counter China’s influence
Financial Times, September 29, 2022
42. Uruguay-China Relations and their Free Trade Agreement
Evan Ellis, Global Americans, September 29, 2022
OPINION PIECES
43. Core Dangers for the Fed and China
Stephen S. Roach, Project Syndicate, September 27, 2022
44. Guarding The Pacific: How Washington Can Counter China in the Solomons and Beyond
Alexander Gray, Texas National Security Review, September 30, 2022
By now, it should be abundantly clear that Solomon Islands, under Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, is abandoning democracy and falling ever deeper into the orbit of the People’s Republic of China. Since coming to power in April 2019, the Sogavare government has taken a series of steps increasingly hostile to the interests of the United States, its allies, and broader regional stability. Fortunately, the dangers inherent in Chinese dominance of the Solomons seems to have aroused Washington to a heightened appreciation of the strategic importance of the South Pacific. Rather than facing the threat of Chinese power projection across Oceania in the event of conflict, the United States should act quickly to strengthen its South Pacific position and aid Canberra and Wellington’s efforts to do the same.
For a relatively small investment, Washington can dramatically up its game in the region. Currently, only three countries in Oceania have standing militaries: Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and Tonga (Vanuatu uses a paramilitary police, the Vanuatu Mobile Force, as its primary armed force). For too long, Beijing has been permitted to gain significant inroads as the security partner of choice for these countries, primarily by filling gaps created when Western powers curtailed support in protest of domestic backsliding. Washington now has an opportunity to set aside past mistakes and enhance these important relationships. To do so, it should deepen its diplomatic engagement, enhance cooperation with the U.S. Coast Guard, and expand the popular State Partnership Program through which host governments can work with National Guard units of U.S. states.
45. Beijing’s plan to crush Taiwan under the ‘wheels of history’
Mark Harrison, The Strategist, September 26, 2022
46. The Pope Abandons Cardinal Zen
William McGurn, Wall Street Journal, September 19, 2022
As Hong Kong puts the bishop on trial, Francis still offers no support.
47. China and Biden Oust a Reformer
Mary Anastasia O’Grady, Wall Street Journal, September 25, 2022
Treasury joins in toppling a regional bank head who stood up to Beijing.
Socialist governments in Latin America, along with China, wanted to topple the American president of the Inter-American Development Bank, Mauricio Claver-Carone. But the U.S. owns 30% of the bank and the anti-American left in the region needed the Biden Treasury’s help.
They got it on Thursday, when Treasury’s representative on the IDB’s executive board of directors, Fabiana Jorge, led a vote in favor of Mr. Claver-Carone’s dismissal. The matter now goes to the full board of governors, which is expected to vote this week to end the tenure of the only American president in the bank’s 62-year history.
One notable element of this story is Treasury’s decision to misrepresent the facts about the case and smear Mr. Claver-Carone in its press release last week—more on that in a minute. Character assassination was undoubtedly necessary to justify the overthrow of someone who was implementing policies beneficial to the U.S. and pushing back against China’s privileges at the bank. It’s a loss for Latin American development and a win for Beijing.
Mr. Claver-Carone took the bank’s helm in 2020, and his success in raising private capital for co-financing of projects allowed the bank to reach total financing of $23.5 billion in 2021, well above historic norms. By boosting market confidence in its policies and project design, the bank was able to tap more private money and rely less on government resources. This is explicitly what the Biden administration has asked multilateral banks to do.
But Mr. Claver-Carone also has been breaking rice bowls. The IDB has long served as a slush fund for Latin governments, a dumping ground for politically connected, mediocre economists, and a source of patronage jobs. He ended the practice of reserving key posts for countries that assumed they were entitled to holding them and maintaining designated slots for their lower-level personnel. His refusal to shovel assets out the door to reform-resistant governments won him no friends.
Mr. Claver-Carone took over the IDB from Luis Alberto Moreno, a Colombian, who spent 15 years in the job. In public statements the American claims that in his first year he was able to produce a 30% savings in the office of the president alone.
That’s impressive, although perhaps it wasn’t so hard since Mr. Moreno seems to have enjoyed life on the taxpayer dime. Mr. Claver-Carone claims that in cleaning up after his predecessor, he found, among other extravagances, an $8,114.67 receipt for an 11-person dinner at swanky Cafe Milano in Washington. The tab included two $2,400 bottles of wine.
During Mr. Moreno’s IDB presidency, China had wormed its way into the bank, first becoming a very small nonregional shareholder (0.004%) in 2009. Over the last decade, Chinese firms received 10 times the value of procurement contracts in IDB-sponsored projects as U.S. firms. Mr. Moreno’s effort to hold the IDB’s 2019 annual meeting to mark its 60th anniversary in Chengdu, China—which the Trump administration blocked—was emblematic of the power Beijing had acquired at the bank.
When Mr. Claver-Carone reasserted regional shareholders’ priorities according to their actual paid-in capital, China lost its outsize influence. He also brought Taiwanese financing into the bank, giving Beijing another reason to want his head on a platter.
An anonymous email sent to IDB directors in March alleged that Mr. Claver-Carone has an inappropriate relationship with a staffer and misused funds. The email provided no evidence and both Mr. Claver-Carone and his staffer denied the allegations.
Last week the findings of an investigation into the allegations by Davis Polk & Wardwell were given to the board of directors. Lawyers for the IDB wrote to Mr. Claver-Carone on Sept. 16, telling him that if he formally wants a copy, he has to waive his rights to discuss it with the board, the media or anyone else and waive his rights to take any legal action regarding its content. He was interviewed for more than seven hours by investigators, but his lawyers say his testimony is not in the report. Investigators were also given access to all text messages between him and his staffer.
I have not seen the report, but Mr. Claver-Carone’s lawyers note that it says that there is “no direct evidence” of a romantic relationship. Nor is there evidence he misused funds. Nevertheless, Treasury claims that the investigation found “misconduct that violated the Inter-American Development Bank’s principles and values.” It didn’t say he had violated the bank’s code of conduct. When I asked Treasury to support the accusation with facts from the report, it hid behind “confidentiality.”
It’s an insult to Americans to expect them to buy this hooey. Mr. Claver-Carone is a disrupter and the IDB members, including the Biden Treasury, simply refused to stand for it.
48. The End of Senior Politics in China
Zhuoran Li, The Diplomat, September 26, 2022
Xi Jinping is the first leader since 1978 not to be constrained by powerful elders in the CCP.