Matt Turpin's China Articles - December 4, 2022
Friends,
One of the drawbacks of writing a newsletter on a routine basis is that sometimes life and breaking news conspire against you.
That happened last week as I finished my issue on Wednesday, November 23rd before Thanksgiving and programmed it to publish on Sunday while I traveled back to the East Coast from California. During that gap, a series of protests broke out across the PRC. In some ways it was the most widespread challenge to the Party’s rule since the student protests which led to the massacre in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.
As I watch the video clips and photos of the protests breaking out across the PRC, I was reminded of Maarva Andor’s speech to the citizens of Ferrix in the season finale of the Star Wars series, Andor. If you haven’t watched the series, I recommend you do. The producer, Tony Gilroy, tells a story of regular people fighting back against choking authoritarianism… there are no Jedis or lightsabers, just fallible individuals trying to rescue some element of dignity).
Regular Chinese people are increasingly fed-up with the indignities visited upon them by an imperious Party elite, an aristocracy that asserts a pseudo-divine right to rule over 1.4 billion people (very Galactic Emprie-esque).
When a fire killed 10 in Urumqi, Xinjiang on November 24th and the city’s fire chief blamed the victims for not rescuing themselves, many Chinese citizens understood that it was the 100-day lockdown of Urumqi, the welding of apartment doors shut, and the zero-COVID road barriers that likely killed those men, women, and children. So, when regular people gathered on Urumqi Road in Shanghai and held candle-light vigils for the victims, they were clearly being pushed to the edge by the seemingly never-ending COVID restrictions and the construction of a nation-wide panopticon.
The fact that Shanghai’s own Party boss, who had overseen a brutal lockdown of the city early in the year had just been elevated to be Xi’s #2, must have seemed like further evidence that the Party has little regard for the lives of hard-working Chinese citizens.
None of this means that these protests will be successful in forcing the Party to backdown, in fact, I suspect it will cause the opposite (just as it does in Gilroy’s Andor series).
The Party will see ‘hostile foreign forces’ everywhere and its leaders will convince themselves that more surveillance and control is the answer… to consider the opposite would be to question the entire premise of the Party’s rule (and, in the minds of leaders like Xi, it would be akin to committing ‘historical nihilism’ and start down the path which led the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to ruin).
For the Party, these uprisings MUST be caused by foreigners and the Chinese people MUST be cleansed of these dangerous ideas about freedom, accountable government, and universal rights.
For the rest of us, these protests should give lie to the Party’s assertions that they enjoy broad-based support and discredit studies like this from respected American institutions that help buttress the Party’s legitimacy (according to Harvard’s researchers, 95.5 percent of respondents were either “relatively satisfied” or “highly satisfied” with Beijing).
Instead, we should understand that it is the calculated use of fear and collective amnesia that keeps the Party in power… to paraphrase Maarva Andor:
The CCP is a disease that thrives in darkness, it is never more alive than when we sleep.
Thanks for reading!
Matt
P.S. On Wednesday, Beijing announced the passing of former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin at age 96.
Will there be an outpouring of public sympathy and nostalgia for the ‘good old days’ under Jiang? Perhaps something similar to what happened after the death of Zhou Enlai in early 1976 or Hu Yaobang in April 1989, which led to the democracy protests and the CCP’s brutal massacre of Chinese students in Tiananmen Square two months later… see #64 below (Toad King vs. Pooh Bear: Jiang Zemin’s death spells trouble for Chinese ruler Xi Jinping).
MUST READ
1. The Real Importance of China’s ‘Zero COVID’ Protests
Shannon Tiezzi, The Diplomat, November 29, 2022
“In China, everyone is one step from becoming a dissident” – and zero COVID has pushed many to make that final step.
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There are complex ethnic dimensions to this particular issue, but more broadly many Han Chinese seem to have little sympathy for the plight of political activists and human rights lawyers arrested by the state. As Foreign Policy’s James Palmer put it in a 2017 piece exploring public opinion in China toward one of the country’s most famous dissidents: “The Chinese think Liu Xiaobo was asking for it.”
As Palmer wrote:
Many Chinese, like other residents of authoritarian states, don’t want to confront what officialdom could do to them at any moment. When the government crushes people, then, it must be the victim’s fault. They should have known what would happen. They shouldn’t have been so arrogant. They should have realized who they were up against.
And that is precisely why the current protests are so powerful: Few think the victims of zero COVID policies were to blame for their own deaths (and pro-regime supporters who suggest otherwise are roundly mocked). Instead, nearly everyone in China can imagine the same ugly fate befalling themselves or their loved ones, through no fault of their own. To paraphrase Palmer, zero COVID has forced the average person to confront what officialdom could do to them at any moment.
One post that went viral on Chinese social media made this explicit, referencing some of the most high-profile tragedies caused by zero COVID:
The one who jumped off a building was me,
The one in the overturned bus was me,
The one who left Foxconn on foot was me,
The one who froze to death on the road was me,
The one who had no income for several months and couldn’t afford vegetables was me,
The one who died in the fire was me,
And if none of these was me, then next time it will be me.
Most Han Chinese felt able to safely ignore the Uyghurs’ plight because they couldn’t imagine it happening to them. But they are deeply afraid of the ways zero COVID has killed people just like them.
In addition, the protests have also weakened one of the CCP’s favorite excuses: that all dissent is fostered by “hostile foreign forces.” That has been the line used by the CCP to dismiss the 1989 pro-democracy movement, recurring ethnic protests in Tibet and Xinjiang, and most recently the 2019 protests in Hong Kong.
When the accusation is used against the Other, it’s easier to accept. When it’s used against you, you see it for the lie it is.
When someone suggested to a protest group in Beijing that there were “hostile foreign forces among us” in the march, protesters were outraged. “Was the fire in Xinjiang set by hostile foreign forces?” one retorted. “Was the bus in Guizhou overturned by hostile foreign forces?”
“Did hostile foreign forces force you to be here?” another asked. The crowd roared back, “NO!”
Yang Hengjun, a Chinese Australian blogger currently in detention in China, once told me that “in China, everyone is one step from becoming a dissident.” He explained that all it takes is a brush with the dark side of the system – an uncle imprisoned for demanding his rightful wages, a family home marked for demolition, a mother beaten by the police for selling vegetables on the street – to demonstrate to people that there are ripe opportunities for abuse but no chance for redress in the current system.
Zero COVID has brought this reality home to a massive number of Chinese people. People have felt the heavy hand of the state press down on their lives – and realized they have no power and no recourse in the face of mistreatment. And now those protesting against zero COVID are facing further abuses: dozens of arrests have been reported, although as of this writing there are no official figures. (Chinese media have remained silent on the protests, preferring to pretend they aren’t happening rather than give them a signal boost by denouncing the demonstrations.)
It’s too early to tell how long the current protests will last, and whether they will bring about any lasting change (my guess, for the little it’s worth: they won’t, both because Xi Jinping truly believes in zero COVID and because he can’t be seen to be swayed by popular discontent). But zero COVID has already had a huge impact on Chinese society by causing a massive uptick in awareness of the injustices wrought by the Chinese government – and the potential for those injustices to fall on any person at any time.
COMMENT – I remember hearing a version of this disdain for the victims of the Party’s wrath and xenophobia around what happened in Hong Kong in 2019 and 2020. For many, they blamed the students who were beaten and arrested because “they should have known what would happen to them.” Blaming “foreigners” is also quite convenient. This combination of pathologies (‘blame the victim’ and xenophobia) are rampant across the PRC and encouraged by the Party to protect itself from criticism.
It will be interesting to see if these protests begin to change this dynamic.
2. Xi Jinping in His Own Words
Matt Pottinger, Matthew Johnson, and David Feith, Foreign Affairs, November 30, 2022
What China’s Leader Wants—and How to Stop Him from Getting It.
United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, November 24, 2022
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) today called on the Peoples’ Republic of China to immediately investigate all allegations of human rights violations in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), including those of torture, ill-treatment, sexual violence, forced labour, enforced disappearances and deaths in custody.
Acting under its early warning and urgent action procedure, the Committee also called on China to immediately release all individuals arbitrarily deprived of their liberty in the XUAR, whether in so-called Vocational Education and Training Centres (VETCs) or other detention facilities, and to provide relatives of those detained or disappeared with detailed information about their status and well-being.
The Committee further:
Urges the State party to immediately cease all intimidation and reprisals against Uyghur and other ethnic Muslim communities, the diaspora and those who speak out in their defence, both domestically and abroad;
Urges the State party to ensure that victims of human rights violations, including Uyghurs and other ethnic Muslim communities, are provided with adequate and effective remedies and reparation;
Recommends that the China undertake a full review of its legal framework governing national security, counter terrorism and minority rights in the XUAR to ensure its full compliance with its obligations as a party to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination;
Also urges the State party to effectively implement its 2018 recommendations, as well as the 2015 Concluding Observations of the Committee against Torture, and the UN Human Rights Office’s assessment of human rights concerns in XUAR of August 2022;
Reminds all States of their responsibility to cooperate to bring to an end through lawful means any serious breach of human rights obligations, in particular serious violations of the peremptory norm of the prohibition of racial discrimination.
4. University Engagement with China: An MIT Approach
MIT China Strategy Group, November 2022
American universities must now prepare for a prolonged period of contentious and potentially confrontational relations between the United States and China. This rivalry centers on competition in science and technology and its convergence with national security, economic competitiveness, and human rights concerns. As the two countries compete for control over strategic technologies, as the boundary between civilian and military applications grows more blurred, and as tensions in the bilateral relationship escalate, internal and external pressures to erect higher barriers to academic research and educational collaborations are building.
The challenge for MIT and other American universities is how to manage these pressures while preserving open scientific research, open intellectual exchange, and the free flow of ideas and people — all of them essential for American universities to remain at the global forefront of research, education, and innovation.
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When researchers at U.S. universities collaborate with individuals or institutions in a country with an authoritarian or autocratic government, the good intentions of their collaborators do not assure good outcomes.
COMMENT – Refreshing to see the Massachusetts Institute of Technology finally taking this issue seriously. I hope MIT follows through with the detailed recommendations of this group, in particular the call to “be prepared for scenarios that would force the termination of these relations [engagement between American research universities and the PRC].” Without serious work to prepare for this unpleasant, but entirely possible scenario, I fear that universities like MIT will simply continue to deepen their dependence on the PRC and remain naïve about the Chinese Communist Party.
Readers should remember that it took concerted effort by Human Rights Watch and other activists to get MIT to end its relationship with a Chinese AI company involved with human rights abuses:
MIT Cuts Ties with a Chinese AI Firm Amid Human Rights Concerns
Will Knight, Wired, April 21, 2020
Some questionable conclusions remain in the report:
Under ‘Gifts from Chinese donors’: “Individuals may have close ties to the state, either as a member of the CCP or through their participation in United Front organizations and quasi-governmental organizations. However, membership in the CCP should not be a disqualifying factor in and of itself, as this does not necessarily signify support of the regime and its military.” (page 32) – In what alternative universe can members of the Chinese Communist Party NOT support the regime and its military, which is of course a “Party” military, not a national one?
Under ‘Travel to China’: “MIT PIs should not take their primary computers and cellphones to China whether there on business or on personal travel, and they are advised not to take their personal phones or laptops, either. MIT should provide PIs with computers and cellphones for temporary use in China. Individuals who take electronic devices to China should assume they will be compromised.” (page 33) – If you have to advise your staff not to take their computers and cellphones to a country because they will almost certainly be compromised, perhaps the university should re-evaluate all travel to that country. This is hardly the hallmark of a reliable research partner. I would note, that the MIT report makes no reference to the fact that for five years, under two Administrations, the U.S. State Department has maintained a travel warning of ‘Reconsider Travel’ to all of the PRC that explicitly warns individuals of “wrongful detentions and using exit bans on U.S. citizens and citizens of other countries.” Why wouldn’t MIT follow the guidance of the U.S. State Department and restrict travel of its employees and students to a country in which “U.S. citizens in the PRC may be subjected to prolonged interrogations and extended detention without due process of law”?
For those who are interested in this topic, I recommend reading Eyes Wide Open: Ethical Risks In Research Collaboration With China by my colleagues Glenn Tiffert and Jeff Stoff. They released their report a year ago, but it remains as relevant as ever and MIT cited it in their own report.
5. China is erasing their culture. In exile, Uyghurs remain defiant.
John Beck, National Geographic, November 22, 2022
Uyghurs are ethnically as well as linguistically Turkic and predominantly Muslim. They make up one of China’s largest minority groups and have faced various forms of persecution for decades. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s renewed attempts at forcible assimilation have included bans on most forms of cultural and religious expression, detentions of more than a million people in prisons plus “reeducation” camps, the sterilization of women, and hauling children to closed boarding schools.
A tiny proportion of Uyghurs who were already outside the country or managed to escape in time have found refuge abroad. The largest population outside central Asia, estimated at around 50,000, is in Turkey. There are smaller, but growing, numbers in North America, Europe, and Australia.
With a process of erasure unfolding in China that the United States government and rights groups have described as genocide, these exiles have been left to preserve what they can of Uyghur identity beyond their homeland. But culture isn’t an ossified set of customs, it’s an ever shifting, living thing shaped by the beliefs, preferences, and circumstances of the people who practice it. And already, ideas of Uyghur identity are shifting in the diaspora—being expressed differently in various geographies, including in forms that some community members say would not be seen in Xinjiang.
6. Apple hobbled a crucial tool of dissent in China weeks before widespread protests broke out
Zachary M. Seward, Quartz, November 27, 2022
Anti-government demonstrations will have to manage without a key communication vehicle.
Anti-government protests flared in several Chinese cities and on college campuses over the weekend. But the country’s most widespread show of public dissent in decades will have to manage without a crucial communication tool, because Apple restricted its use in China earlier this month.
AirDrop, the file-sharing feature on iPhones and other Apple devices, has helped protestors in many authoritarian countries evade censorship. That’s because AirDrop relies on direct connections between phones, forming a local network of devices that don’t need the internet to communicate. People can opt into receiving AirDrops from anyone else with an iPhone nearby.
That changed on Nov. 9, when Apple released a new version of its mobile operating system, iOS 16.1.1, to customers worldwide. Rather than listing new features, as it often does, the company simply said, “This update includes bug fixes and security updates and is recommended for all users.”
Hidden in the update was a change that only applies to iPhones sold in mainland China: AirDrop can only be set to receive messages from everyone for 10 minutes, before switching off. There’s no longer a way to keep the “everyone” setting on permanently on Chinese iPhones. The change, first noticed by Chinese readers of 9to5Mac, doesn’t apply anywhere else.
AirDrop has been an effective communication tool for protestors in Hong Kong, as Quartz previously documented. It’s been used to communicate with other protestors, reach passersby, and spread messages to tourists from mainland China visiting Hong Kong. On the mainland, protestors have also AirDropped protest literature, particularly on college campuses where some of the current protests have broken out. China’s control of the internet has become so strong that dissidents must cling to any crack in the so-called Great Firewall.
Apple didn’t respond to questions about the AirDrop change. It plans to make the “Everyone for 10 Minutes” feature a global standard next year, according to Bloomberg. AirDrops can indeed be a nuisance in normal settings: If you opt into receiving files from everyone and don’t turn it off, you might find yourself on the receiving end of unwanted memes or worse.
But why did Apple rush out the change unannounced, in an unassuming update to iOS in early November, and apply it only to Chinese iPhones? One clue may lie in what happened the month prior, when Xi Jinping’s anointment to a third term as China’s leader was met with rare displays of public dissent.
In the most visible protest, a dissident now known as Bridge Man lit a fire on a bridge in Beijing to draw attention to his protest banners. One read, “Go on strike at school and work, remove dictator and national traitor Xi Jinping.” References to the banners were quickly censored across the Chinese internet, but photos still made their way through private channels. Vice reported that Bridge Man’s messages were spreading on the Shanghai subway via AirDrop.
COMMENT – Great job Apple, good to know that you continue to cave to a draconian surveillance State in order to protect market share and profits, while having little to no regard for the safety of the Chinese people.
Of course, none of this should be a surprise, Apple has been aiding the Chinese Communist Party and betraying regular Chinese citizens for years:
Hong Kong’s protest movement keeps getting stymied by Apple
Mary Hui, Quartz, July 14, 2020
AUDIO – Apple’s Bet on China
Michael Barbaro and Sabrina Tavernise, The Daily, June 14, 2021
He Warned Apple About the Risks in China. Then They Became Reality.
Jack Nicas, New York Times, June 17, 2021
Censorship, Surveillance and Profits: A Hard Bargain for Apple in China
Jack Nicas, Raymond Zhong, and Diasuke Wakabayashi, New York Times, May 17, 2021
Apple Opening Data Center in China to Comply with Cybersecurity Law
Paul Mozur, Daisuke Wakabayashi, and Nick Wingfield, New York Times, July 12, 2017
Apple says it is removing VPN services from China App Store
Cate Cadell, Reuters, July 19, 2017
7. China Military Power Report (CMPR)
U.S. Department of Defense, November 29, 2022
This year's report follows the Defense Department's release of its unclassified National Defense Strategy in October, which identified the PRC as the most consequential and systemic challenge to U.S. national security and a free and open international system. The report covers the contours of the People's Liberation Army's way of war, surveys the PLA's current activities and capabilities and assesses the PLA's future military modernization goals.
AUTHORITARIANISM
8. VIDEO – Awkward silence: China official speechless after question on protests
The Guardian, November 29, 2022
Question from Reuters: “Given the widespread display of anger and frustration at the zero-COVID policies in recent days across China is China thinking about ending it and if so, when?”
Silence… silence… silence… MFA Spokesman, ‘Wolf Warrior Diplomat’ and COVID origin conspiracist Zhao Lijian: “Could you repeat the question?”
Reuters Reporter: “Given the widespread display of anger and frustration at the zero-COVID policies in recent days across China is China thinking about ending it and if so, when?”
Silence… silence… silence… Zhao: “what you mentioned does not reflect what actually happened. China has been following the dynamic zero-COVID policy.”
COMMENT – Here’s an expose on Zhao in the New York Times Magazine from July 2021: The Man Behind China’s Aggressive New Voice. In this clip, Zhao seems uncharacteristically at a loss for words.
9. Clashes in Shanghai as COVID protests flare across China
Casey Hall, Josh Horwitz, and Martin Quin Pollard, Reuters, November 27, 2022
Hundreds of demonstrators and police clashed in Shanghai on Sunday night as protests over China's stringent COVID restrictions flared for a third day and spread to several cities in the wake of a deadly fire in the country's far west.
10. China Protests Break Out as Covid Cases Surge and Lockdowns Persist
Vivek Shankar, New York Times, November 28, 2022
After a weekend of confrontations between officials and demonstrators, video from two sites in Shanghai and Beijing showed a heavy security presence. Here’s the latest on the situation.
11. At the heart of China’s protests against zero-Covid, young people cry for freedom
Nectar Gan and Selina Wang, CNN, November 28, 2022
12. China’s lockdown protests: What you need to know
Jessie Yeung, CNN, November 29, 2022
13. With Intimidation and Surveillance, China Tries to Snuff Out Protests
Chris Buckley, New York Times, November 29, 2022
Communist Party officials are using decades-old tactics, along with some new ones, to quash the most widespread protests in decades. But Xi Jinping is silent.
14. China sends students home, police patrol to curb protests
Joe McDonald, Dake Kang, and Huizhong Wu, Associated Press, November 28, 2022
Chinese universities sent students home and police fanned out in Beijing and Shanghai to prevent more protests Tuesday after crowds angered by severe anti-virus restrictions called for leader Xi Jinping to resign in the biggest show of public dissent in decades.
Authorities have eased some controls after demonstrations in at least eight mainland cities and Hong Kong but maintained they would stick to a “zero-COVID” strategy that has confined millions of people to their homes for months at a time. Security forces have detained an unknown number of people and stepped up surveillance.
With police out in force, there was no word of protests Tuesday in Beijing, Shanghai or other major mainland cities that were the scene last weekend of the most widespread protests since the army crushed the 1989 student-led Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement.
15. New Symbol of Protest in China Roils Censors: Blank White Papers
Liza Lin and Karen Hao, Wall Street Journal, November 28, 2022
16. China plans 'crackdown' after Covid protests
BBC, November 29, 2022
China's top security agency has called for a crackdown on "hostile forces" after rare protests against Covid rules in Chinese cities at the weekend.
The ruling Communist Party's Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, which oversees domestic law enforcement across China, said it was "necessary to crack down on infiltration and sabotage activities by hostile forces in accordance with the law".
The statement, reported by Chinese news agency Xinhua, did not mention the recent demonstrations, which began after a fire in a high-rise block in Urumqi, western China, killed 10 people on Thursday.
Many Chinese believe Covid restrictions in the city contributed to the deaths, although the authorities deny this.
17. Proud, Scared and Conflicted. What the China Protesters Told Me.
Li Yuan, New York Times, November 29, 2022
They went to their first demonstrations. They chanted their first protest slogans. They had their first encounters with the police.
Then they went home, shivering in disbelief at how they had challenged the most powerful authoritarian government in the world and the most iron-fisted leader China has seen in decades.
Young Chinese are protesting the country’s harsh “zero-Covid” policy and even urging its top leader, Xi Jinping, to step down. It’s something that China hadn’t seen since 1989, when the ruling Communist Party brutally cracked down on the pro-democracy demonstrators, mostly college students. No matter what happens in the days and weeks ahead, the young protesters presented a new threat to the rule of Mr. Xi, who has eliminated his political opponents and suppressed any voice that challenges his rule.
Such public dissent was unimaginable until a few days ago. These same young people, when they mentioned Mr. Xi online, used euphemisms like “X,” “he” or “that person,” afraid to even utter the president’s name. They put up with whatever the government put them through: harsh pandemic restrictions, high unemployment rates, fewer books available to read, movies to watch and games to play.
18. What happened to the man who led the chants against Xi Jinping?
Eva Rammeloo, The Economist, November 29, 2022
When Wang first lifted his arm he was nervous. Then he pumped his fist in the air and yelled, “Communist Party?” The crowd answered him: “Down with it!” Next, Wang shouted “Xi Jinping?” The crowd reacted more tentatively to the president’s name; a few looked round to see the bespectacled young man who had dared to shout it. But they answered: “Down with him!” Wang yelled Xi’s name three more times. Each time the crowd’s response was louder: “Down with him!”
Wang (a pseudonym) didn’t even know that he’d been waiting for this moment. Like most young Chinese out on the street in Shanghai, this was his first protest, aged 27. After completing his shift at a cocktail bar, it had been a quick bike ride to join the gathering. People were laying flowers and lighting candles. Many held up blank sheets of paper, a silent protest against covid lockdowns, to represent all that they wanted to say but felt they couldn’t. “We don’t need to write anything,” one person said. “It’s a symbol of the people’s revolution.” (“Blank sheet of paper” and “white paper” were soon among the many terms censored online.)
19. Xi Jinping’s ‘myth of infallibility’ tested as zero-Covid protests rattle China
Tom Mitchell and Edward White, Financial Times, November 28, 2022
Communist party boss must decide whether to relax his signature policy or crush demonstrations.
In 2011, Xi Jinping, China’s then vice-president, told his US counterpart, Joe Biden, that the “Arab spring” roiling north Africa and the Middle East happened because leaders across the region lost touch with their people.
A decade later, and less than six weeks after Xi coasted to a third term as head of the Chinese Communist party and military, the president is in a quandary after repeating their mistake.
Does Xi crack down on the nationwide protests that erupted against his administration’s “zero-Covid” policy over the weekend, risking an even bigger popular backlash? Or does he relent and soften coronavirus controls, potentially unleashing an “exit wave” of cases that could kill hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of elderly citizens over the coming winter?
The latter scenario would puncture Xi’s frequent boasts about the superiority of China’s party-led political system to deal with existential challenges vis-à-vis the US and other democratically governed rivals.
20. China’s rebellious youth has forgotten Tiananmen
Jamil Anderlini, Politico, November 28, 2022
The new generation are victims of forced collective amnesia — with little sense of how hard the state is willing to crush dissent.
“Chinese people should be braver!” the young man with a handful of yellow flowers exhorted the large crowd gathered in central Shanghai on Sunday. “Am I breaking the law by holding these flowers? They don’t dare to arrest us!”
Moments later he was tackled by plain-clothed agents and uniformed police and bundled, struggling, into the back of a cruiser.
As I watched scenes like this on social media over the weekend, it struck me how successfully Xi Jinping’s Communist Party has erased the traces of its brutality — from Mao’s Great Leap Famine and Cultural Revolution to the Tiananmen Square massacre to the crushing of the Uyghur, Tibetan and Hong Kong people.
Each time the authorities grabbed somebody or laid into the crowd, the reaction was disbelief: “They’re beating people!” “We’re all Chinese,” or even, somewhat ironically, “Serve the people!” — the phrase adorning the main entrance to the Zhongnanhai leadership compound in Beijing.
The brave young people who came out on scores of college campuses and on streets of major cities at the weekend are tragic victims of enforced collective amnesia. They have no idea what is in store for them.
As a reporter in China for more than two decades, I witnessed hundreds of protests and acts of civil disobedience. I sought these out to get a sense of the wider mood of the nation. Almost without exception, they involved localized or isolated grievances. All of them ended in a brutal crackdown.
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Every historical injustice at the hands of foreigners is drilled into young minds from kindergarten while libraries, schools and the internet are purged of all mention of the tens of millions who perished thanks to CCP policy.
COMMENT – Now is the time we should be broadcasting far and wide the full scale of CCP brutality and abuse of the Chinese people. Leaders in Washington, across Europe and Asia should be calling on the Party to allow for peaceful demonstrations and demonstrating allyship with Chinese citizens who simply want their human dignity protected. Cultural and religious leaders from around the world should be making the same statements.
By remaining silent on what’s happening inside the PRC, we conspire with the Party to legitimize their monopoly hold on power and snuff out the concerns of regular Chinese citizens… which makes the next piece so frustrating.
21. Biden administration reacts with caution to China protests
Nahal Toosi and Phelim Kine, Politico, November 28, 2022
The Biden administration is responding cautiously to weekend protests across China, reflecting in part a U.S. desire to stabilize a vital but increasingly adversarial relationship with Beijing.
There were no statements or tweets on the protests from President Joe Biden, who met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping this month on the sidelines of the G-20 in a bid to ease tensions. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan also avoided comment, and their official spokespersons didn’t issue any statements by name.
COMMENT – Very disappointing
22. China’s Birth Rate Fell to Another Record Low in 2021, Gov’t Confirms
Yang Caini, Sixth Tone, November 18, 2022
China’s birth rate plunged to its lowest level since the early 1960s last year, with several provinces experiencing negative population growth for the first time in modern history, according to a newly released official report.
The China Statistical Yearbook 2022 states that only 10.6 million people were born in China in 2021, the lowest total since 1961. The country’s population grew by just 480,000, also the lowest figure in decades.
COMMENT – To put these numbers in perspective, 1961 was the height of the ‘Great Leap Forward,’ the disastrous Chinese Communist Party industrial modernization drive that caused history’s worst mass starvation killing 25-40 million Chinese citizens over 48 months… a man-made catastrophe on an unimaginable scale and something that the Chinese Communist Party still refuses to take responsibility for. If there was ever a need for a Chinese ‘truth and reconciliation commission,’ it would be for that horrendous crime perpetrated by the Party on its own citizens.
For those of you who have not read Yang Jisheng’s book Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962, I recommend doing so. Yang uses the unique access he had to Chinese archives as a Party historian to tell the bottom-up story of what Mao’s crimes did to millions of regular Chinese people… needless to say, the Party banned the book.
23. Rishi Sunak signals end of ‘golden era’ of relations between Britain and China
Aubrey Allegretti, The Guardian, November 28, 2022
PM’s first major foreign policy speech warns of the creeping authoritarianism of Xi Jinping’s regime
Recalling a term coined by David Cameron in 2015, the prime minister told dignitaries at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet on Monday night: “The so-called ‘golden era’ is over, along with the naive idea that trade would lead to social and political reform.”
Sunak cautioned that Britain’s adversaries were planning for the “long-term”, and the UK needed to take a “longer-term view on China”.
He said: “We recognise China poses a systemic challenge to our values and interests, a challenge that grows more acute as it moves towards even greater authoritarianism.
24. Canada Calls China Disruptive Global Actor
Paul Vieira, Wall Street Journal, November 27, 2022
Ottawa unveils revisions to foreign policy to account for Chinese assertiveness on economic and security interests, and coercive treatment of other nations.
The comment came as Canada unveiled a revised policy framework for dealing with the Asia-Pacific region, with a particular focus on China. Canada says the new policy is in response to China’s assertive pursuit of economic and security interests, as well as foreign-interference activities, in countries such as Canada, and to what it called China’s “coercive treatment” of other nations.
25. Joseph Torigian on Making Sense of Chinese Politics
Brent Crane and Joseph Torigian, The Wire China, November 20, 2022
What’s the impact of that legacy of neglecting real institutionalization then? Are you suggesting that China has weak institutions today?
Let me put it this way. When Xi Jinping came to power, he inherited an extraordinarily leader-friendly system. Many of the advantages that he wields are very similar to Deng Xiaoping’s. Those strengths include taboos within the Party against factions; a special relationship with the political police and the military; the ability to decide when meetings are held, what the topics will be, and who gets to attend them; a general sense within the Party that it functions best when there is a core who can make final decisions and push them through; no clear rules on succession or age; a fear that any move against Xi Jinping would put the whole system in danger; and also this narrative that has equated the Party’s legitimacy in the figure of Xi Jinping.
In one important sense, Xi Jinping is even more “institutional” than Deng Xiaoping. Deng was the core, certainly. At the 13th Party congress in 1987, there was a decision that Deng would be consulted on major issues. But Deng was never the general-secretary of the party and the division of labor was never totally clarified. Deng was also constantly worried about views that he was “ruling from behind the curtain.” That created a lot of pathologies during the Deng era.
For example, people like Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, these two general secretaries, lost Deng’s trust and were removed in part because it was unclear to them that what they were doing were things that would deeply distress Deng. And Deng also wasn’t involved in day to day decision making, so when he would suddenly make a choice, it was often unexpected and destabilizing. Arguably, none of Xi’s acts, with the possible exception of last year’s regulatory blitz, match Deng’s unpredictable behavior, which included the invasion of Vietnam in 1979, the approval of the SEZs in 1984, the purge of Hu Yaobang in 1987, the disastrous price reform of 1988, the unpopular decision to use force to clear the 1989 protests, and the 1992 Southern Tour.
26. Hong Kong leader asks Beijing to rule on 'blanket ban' on foreign lawyers in national security cases
James Pomfret and Greg Torode, Reuters, November 28, 2022
Hong Kong's leader on Monday asked Beijing to rule on its bid to block foreign lawyers from working on national security cases, after the city's top court ruled that a British lawyer could represent jailed pro-democracy tycoon Jimmy Lai.
John Lee's request follows a series of failed attempts by Hong Kong's Department of Justice and top legal official, Paul Lam, to prevent British barrister Timothy Owen from representing Lai in a landmark national security case that is slated to begin on Dec. 1.
27. China’s World Cup Viewers See Covid-Driven Censorship
Chun Han Wong, Wall Street Journal, November 28, 2022
Soccer fans accuse state television of tweaking broadcasts to avoid showing scenes of maskless spectators.
Some soccer fans have accused Chinese state television of manipulating its broadcasts of the World Cup to maintain the illusion that life in China under its strict zero-Covid rules isn’t too dissimilar from the outside world.
While protesters took to the streets in major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai over the weekend to condemn Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s zero-Covid strategy, viewers at home logged on to social media to castigate state broadcaster China Central Television for allegedly trying to veil the fact that many countries have moved away from tough measures such as mass lockdowns and mask mandates.
When the World Cup, the most prestigious tournament in international soccer, opened in Qatar earlier this month, many Chinese fans watching CCTV’s coverage noticed that stadiums were filled with large crowds mingling and soaking up the festivities without masks—in contrast to how China still generally requires masking up at mass gatherings.
The images jarred with the daily experiences of many Chinese, who face recurrent lockdowns and mass Covid testing as part of Mr. Xi’s zero-tolerance approach. But as the tournament unfolded, some fans noticed a subtle shift in what they saw on screen: Footage of maskless crowds grew increasingly scarce.
On Chinese social media, many fans disparaged what they saw as ham-handed censorship. They juxtaposed clips from CCTV’s World Cup broadcasts with footage from other providers—revealing that moments where foreign channels showed maskless fans were often absent from the Chinese feed, which used alternate angles that focused on players and coaches.
A side-by-side comparison of footage from Saturday’s contest between Tunisia and Australia, widely shared on Weibo, showed CCTV cutting to shots of coaches and players at moments when an English-language broadcast was showing unmasked faces in the crowd.
ENVIRONMENTAL HARMS
28. China Maintains Plans for Massive Additional Coal Expansion
David Blackmon, Forbes, November 15, 2022
Chinese delegates created a stir at the ongoing COP 27 climate conference this week by informing news media present of its plans to continue expanding its already massive fleet of coal-fired power plants. Promising to continue its efforts to advance the growth of wind and solar power simultaneously, the Chinese officials told Bloomberg that the planned new coal plants are part of an effort to beef up the country’s energy security.
Interestingly, the Chinese delegates pointed to the largely self-inflicted and growing energy crisis spreading across Europe as an example of what their government is hoping to avoid in its own efforts to affect a gradual transition to a lower-carbon energy mix. China’s communist regime obviously understands that energy security is one of the most crucial components of national security, a lesson some European governments, like Germany’s, forgot by intentionally placing their societies in a position of dependency on Russia for oil and natural gas needs as they attempted to prematurely subsidize a transition into reality.
29. China on track to hit new clean & dirty power records in 2022
Gavin Maguire, Reuters, November 23, 2022
FOREIGN INTERFERENCE AND COERCION
30. PRC Embassies in Disguise: Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices are Another Overseas Arm of the CCP
Hong Kong Watch, October 13, 2022
COMMENT – Since the Chinese Communist Party ended Hong Kong’s autonomy in the summer of 2020, it is now time to review and potentially close the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices around the world (Brussels, London, Berlin, Toronto, Sydney, New York, San Francisco, and Washington DC). In addition, Hong Kong’s independent status at the WTO and the UN’s International Maritime Organization should be re-evaluated and withdrawn.
31. RCMP investigating Chinese interference in Canadian affairs, Commissioner says
Robert Fife, Globe and Mail, November 28, 2022
The RCMP is investigating broad foreign interference by China in Canadian affairs, says Commissioner Brenda Lucki, but she declined to detail precisely what type of activities are being probed by the federal police force.
In a letter sent on Monday to a House of Commons committee studying possible Beijing interference in the 2019 general election, Commissioner Lucki said Mounties lacked evidence of wrongdoing in that vote but they are looking at wider interference by China, including “interference in democratic processes” in Canada.
“In the context of the 2019 federal general election, the RCMP did not have any criminal investigations into election-related activities as there was no evidence at the time,” she wrote in the letter to the committee on procedure and House affairs. “That said, the RCMP can confirm that it currently does have investigations into broader foreign-actor interference activities.”
Commissioner Lucki said “these investigations are ongoing” and that she could not reveal details that could “reasonably be expected to be injurious to the conduct of international affairs, the defence of Canada or any state allied or associated with Canada.” The letter was obtained by The Globe and Mail.
32. The tragic romance of China and Hollywood
Will Seaton, The China Project, November 21, 2022
33. UK police identify offences committed in Chinese consulate incident
Michael Holden, Reuters, November 21, 2022
34. China Fails to Stop Motion of UN Probe Into Iran's Rights Violations
Iran International, November 24, 2022
China tried but failed to stop a motion on Iran before the UN Human Rights Council Thursday that would have stripped out the main paragraph referring to a new investigative probe into Iran's suppression of mass protests.
The last-minute amendment was rejected with 25 against, six in favor and 15 abstentions.
China's envoy Jiang Yingfeng told the council that the motion led by Germany was "overwhelmingly critical" of Iran. "It obviously will not help resolve the problem," he added, calling for a key paragraph to be deleted.
The paragraph in question would establish an "international fact-finding mission" that would be operational until early 2024. Iran's representatives also repeatedly criticized the motion which it called "completely biased".
Representatives from the dozens of countries backing the motion, including the United States and Britain, criticized the last-minute change and called for the 47-member Geneva council to vote it down.
"(The amendment) denies the survivors, the families, the victims, the right for their suffering to be recorded," said British Ambassador to the UN in Geneva Simon Manley. The US ambassador for human rights Michele Taylor said she was "appalled" by China's last-minute revision.
35. Twitter grapples with Chinese spam obscuring news of protests
Joseph Menn, Washington Post, November 27, 2022
Twitter’s radically reduced anti-propaganda team grappled on Sunday with a flood of nuisance content in China that researchers said was aimed at reducing the flow of news about stunning widespread protests against coronavirus restrictions.
Numerous Chinese-language accounts, some dormant for months or years, came to life early Sunday and started spamming the service with links to escort services and other adult offerings alongside city names.
The result: For hours, anyone searching for posts from those cities and using the Chinese names for the locations would see pages and pages of useless tweets instead of information about the daring protests as they escalated to include calls for Communist Party leaders to resign.
36. French regulator called on to withdraw licence allowing CGTN to broadcast from London
Daniel Boffey, The Guardian, November 29, 2022
Chinese state broadcaster transmits from Chiswick studio despite Ofcom revoking UK licence last year.
France’s media regulator is under pressure to withdraw a licence that allows the Chinese state broadcaster to beam its programmes across Europe from a studio in west London.
Ofcom revoked the organisation’s licence to transmit in the UK last year but the China Global Television Network (CGTN) was able to continue broadcasting following authorisation from the French authority.
The Chinese network has produced English-language programmes, including those presented by a former BBC Wales Today presenter, from its European hub in Chiswick since 2018.
When Ofcom revoked its UK licence, CGTN was able to apply to the regulator in France, the Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel (CSA), due to a contract it has held since 2016 with the French satellite company Eutelsat.
Broadcasting has continued from the London studio, one of its hubs alongside those in Beijing, Washington DC and the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, although the content is only currently available in the UK via the internet.
The French regulator had said when licensing the Chinese network that it would be “particularly attentive” in ensuring that CGTN, previously known as CCTV, provided independent and honest reporting and avoided inciting violence or hatred.
Peter Dahlin, from Safeguard Defenders, the NGO whose complaint led Ofcom to act, said there were multiple grounds for the CSA to now withdraw the organisation’s licence.
He said: “We believe the French CSA, its regulator, needs to take responsibility for its failure to safeguard pan-European airwaves and launch a formal investigation into the allegations which have led other regulators to take action.
“Due to the system in Europe, despite having lost its license to air in the UK, CGTN is now using its French equivalent to continue airing across Europe.
“This is even more important as both CCTV and CGTN are being used extensively to justify mass incarcerations of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region, which may amount to crimes against humanity.”
On Monday, CGTN’s flagship English-language programme, Asia Today, did not mention the recent protests in China but instead led on the visit to Beijing of Mongolia’s president, Ukhnaagiin Khürelsükh.
Safeguard Defenders has highlighted multiple examples of the Chinese network broadcasting forced confessions, including that of British citizen Peter Humphrey and his wife, Yu Yingzeng. Humphrey, a former Reuters journalist, was paraded on CCTV in 2013 after being arrested for allegedly buying and selling personal information in his role as a corporate investigator.
COMMENT – Will Paris cooperate?
HUMAN RIGHTS AND RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION
37. ONE YEAR AGO – China Cannot Silence Me
Nyrola Elima, The New Yorker, December 21, 2021
Each morning, when I wake up, in Helsingborg, Sweden, three thousand miles from my native Xinjiang, I think of my mother, back home. Before my eyes have adjusted to the light, my hand has usually reached for my phone. Since the Chinese government began imprisoning an estimated million people, most of them Uyghurs, in mass-internment camps in the region, in 2017, the need to know that my mother is safe controls me.
The days when no WeChat message from her appears are the most terrifying. Her silence means that she is being visited by the people we call her “relatives.” When my mother is with them, she answers their questions cautiously, as if she were a contestant in a sadistic game show. Each time they visit, my mother painstakingly prepares food for the uninvited visitors, fretting over each meal, making sure it’s neither too Uyghur (which could brand the family as “suspected extremists”) nor too Chinese (which could seem too ingratiating). As they eat, my parents remain quiet as the relatives drone on about their political beliefs and their warm feelings about the government.
In 2009, peaceful street protests in Xinjiang over the deaths of two Uyghur migrant workers in southern China devolved into riots that left an estimated two hundred people dead. Since then, the Chinese Communist Party has deployed relentless propaganda stigmatizing Uyghurs and persuading much of the country’s Han Chinese majority that all members of the ethnic group are potential terrorists. In 2011, I left Xinjiang to study abroad. Since 2016, more than 1.1 million cadres have visited the homes of 1.6 million people of various ethnic groups in the region, according to state-run Chinese media. These visitors drop in without warning and stay as long as they see fit. Their task is to scrutinize the behavior of Uyghurs and note any signs of “extremism.” Some sure markers, according to the government, are Uyghur people speaking their native language, contacting family abroad, and praying.
Before going to bed, the relatives carefully inspect every room of the house, and then they sleep with my parents in their small bedroom. As my mother and father lie in their bed, the relatives sleep on a carpet on the floor a few feet away. My mother’s mind races in the eerie quiet; it is too tense and uncomfortable to sleep. When the sun rises, she is already up preparing the relatives’ breakfast. When the visitors finally leave, my mother escorts them to the gate with all the cordiality she can muster. She fears that her fate depends on it. As they walk away, she stands at the edge of our courtyard, waving with feigned gratitude, until they vanish. Once she’s certain that they are gone, she rushes inside, picks up the phone, and sends a message to me in Sweden: “We are fine, we are safe. Don’t worry.”
“We” includes my cousin’s three children—a girl of nineteen and two boys, sixteen and fourteen. My cousin, Mayila Yakufu, is an insurance saleswoman and a Mandarin tutor. She is forty-four years old, and she has languished in various forms of detention for three and a half years. In March, 2018, government cadres took her to a camp without warning. Then she was moved to a pretrial detention center. I kept silent to protect my parents and my cousin’s three children. That was a mistake; my silence made no difference. Mayila was released twice and then rearrested. On December 12, 2020, the government sentenced her to six and a half years in prison. Her mistake, we finally learned, was sending her parents money to help them purchase a house in Australia, in 2013. The government called it “financing terrorist activities.”
Under Chinese government policy in Xinjiang, the children of Uyghurs and other Indigenous people who have been detained are normally sent to Han-run orphanages or residential schools. None of Mayila’s next of kin, including her ex-husband, dared to provoke the anger of government officials by trying to take custody of her children. But, when cadres came to take the kids away, their pleas prompted my parents to defy them. “They haven’t had a father since they were toddlers, and now their mother is gone,” my mother said. “Let them stay with us.”
My parents, after taking oaths of loyalty to the Chinese government, were given temporary custody. Since then, my parents’ hearts race whenever a cadre knocks on the door, or a government organization calls, or a policeman arrives unannounced. Any official, it seems, has the authority to take Uyghur children away from their relatives. My father clings to the belief that Mayila will be freed soon. On many nights, he sits on a stool in the yard until midnight, waiting to open the door for Mayila. In the early days, my mother tried to persuade him to come to bed, but he continues to wait.
COMMENT – The protests that began a week ago after the fire that killed 10 in Urumqi did not start spontaneously. This piece by Nyrola Elima helps provide the context in which the people of Xinjiang have had to live under the repression of the Chinese Communist Party.
It is worth reading her testament in full.
38. UN committee urges China to free Xinjiang detainees, recommends reparations
Emma Farge, Reuters, November 24, 2022
A United Nations committee urged China on Thursday to release people held in detention facilities in its Xinjiang region and recommended that it provide victims with "remedies and reparation".
The committee's statement adds to pressure on China, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, to enact reforms following a report from the global body's human rights chief in August which said its treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslims may constitute crimes against humanity.
39. Evidence grows of forced labour and slavery in production of solar panels, wind turbines
Adam Morton, The Guardian, November 28, 2022
The Australian clean energy industry has warned of growing evidence linking renewable energy supply chains to modern slavery, and urged companies and governments to act to eliminate it.
A report by the Clean Energy Council, representing renewable energy companies and solar installers, has called for more local renewable energy production and manufacturing and a “certificate of origin” scheme to counter concerns about slave labour in mineral extraction and manufacturing in China, Africa and South America.
Released on Tuesday, the paper said slavery in all supply chains was a global problem. But Australia is on a trajectory towards generating the vast majority of its electricity from solar, wind, hydro and batteries by 2030 and needs to play an active role in addressing it in renewable energy industries.
40. Vatican says China violated pact on bishops, wants explanation
Philip Pullella, Reuters, November 26, 2022
The Vatican on Saturday accused Chinese authorities of violating a bilateral pact on the appointment of bishops by installing one in a diocese not recognised by the Holy See.
A statement said the Vatican learned with "surprise and regret" that the bishop of another district had been installed as auxiliary, or assistant, bishop in Jiangxi.
The unauthorized installation appeared to be one of the most serious violations of a 2018 agreement between the Vatican and Beijing on the appointment of bishops.
41. VIDEO – China: Video shows BBC journalist's arrest during Covid protest
The Guardian, November 27, 2022
Video shared on social media shows the moment BBC journalist Edward Lawrence was arrested by Chinese authorities while covering an anti-lockdown protest in Shanghai. Lawrence was dragged away by police shouting "Call the Consulate, now."
42. UK Summons Chinese Envoy Over Journalist Arrested in Shanghai
Kitty Donaldson, Bloomberg, November 29, 2022
The British government summoned China’s ambassador to the UK amid a diplomatic row over the arrest of a British Broadcasting Corp. journalist covering pandemic lockdown protests in Shanghai.
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly called in Zheng Zeguang over the treatment of cameraman Edward Lawrence, who the BBC said was “beaten and kicked” by police. On Monday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the “golden era” of UK-Chinese relations is over, though he also warned against falling back on “simplistic Cold War rhetoric.”
43. Major funds exposed to companies allegedly engaged in Uyghur repression in China
Geneva Abdul, The Guardian, November 23, 2022
Many of the world’s largest asset managers and state pension funds are passively investing in companies that have allegedly engaged in the repression of Uyghur Muslims in China, according to a new report.
The report, by UK-based group Hong Kong Watch and the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University, found that three major stock indexes provided by MSCI include at least 13 companies that have allegedly used forced labour or been involved in the construction of the surveillance state in China’s Xinjiang region.
In recent years, China has come under increased scrutiny over what the UN has called “serious human rights violations” against Uyghur Muslims in the region, including systemic discrimination, mass arbitrary detention, torture, and sexual and gender-based violence. The Chinese government has denied repeated claims that Uyghur Muslims have been held in detention or re-education camps and rejected the UN report as an anti-China smear.
44. Could your pension plan be funding human-rights abuses in China?
Joanna Chiu and Jeremy Nuttall, Toronto Star, November 21, 2022
45. EU set to renew sanctions on Chinese officials accused of human rights violations in Xinjiang
Finbarr Bermingham, South China Morning Post, November 22, 2022
Sanctions target four officials Brussels identified as architects of ‘large-scale surveillance’ of Muslim ethnic minorities in western region. European Parliament to debate EU-China relations while pushing for listing of more Chinese officials.
46. Autistic Falun Gong Practitioner Sentenced in Hong Kong
Gladys Kwok, Bitter Winter, November 25, 2022
Falun Gong is not (or not yet) banned in Hong Kong but there are subtle ways of harassing it. On November 15, 2022, Chen Guangchi, a judge designated by Hong Kong’s National Security Law, sentenced 23-year-old Chen Taisen to one year in prison.
The case of Chen Taisen, an autistic deliveryman, has attracted the attention of netizens and local media. A Falun Gong practitioner, Chen posted from August 19 to December 13, 2021, messages on Telegram and on the “Lian Deng Discussion Forum” reports on organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience and invitations to participate in unauthorized gatherings of his spiritual movement, including on Christmas Eve. The authorities also claimed that he incited to “revolution” and attacking police officers, and jailed him in December.
INDUSTRIAL POLICIES AND ECONOMIC ESPIONAGE
Chris Miller, The Wire China, October 23, 2022
The U.S. government has slowly realized that one of its best options for protecting America's tech edge is by weaponizing the semiconductor supply chain.
48. Apple Has No Easy Road Out of China
Dan Gallagher, Wall Street Journal, November 28, 2022
Apple Inc.’s short-term problems depend on the patience of its most lucrative iPhone buyers. Its long-term problems will require the patience of a much larger constituency.
Growing unrest in China has affected production of Apple’s devices there. The company warned on Nov. 6 that Covid restrictions at an assembly plant in Zhengzhou were resulting in significantly reduced capacity for producing its iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max models. The situation has only grown worse since, as the lockdowns have helped spark more protests across the country to a level unseen in decades.
49. China's chip industry fights to survive U.S. tech crackdown
Cheng Ting-Fang and Shunsuke Tabeta, Nikkei Asia, November 30, 2022
In the southeastern Chinese port city of Quanzhou, a near-derelict factory hit by U.S. sanctions four years ago has discreetly come back to life.
Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co. (JHICC), a memory chipmaker, had to halt operations after the U.S. accused it of stealing trade secrets in late 2018. But it has been gradually resuming production after a mysterious new client emerged.
COMMENT – Fujian Jinhua is back from the dead… this shouldn’t be that surprising since State-owned Enterprises don’t contend with real commercial forces and Fujian Province was never going to give up on its semiconductor dreams that easily.
CYBER AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
50. ‘Dangerous’ Chinese CCTV cameras to be phased out in Scotland
Mark McLaughlin, Times of London, November 21, 2022
Devices made by Hikvision, a Chinese state-owned company, will be removed in Scotland over national security concerns.
51. Why is Apple limiting Chinese protesters’ use of AirDrop?
Wilfred Chan, Fast Company, November 29, 2022
As mass protests against Xi Jinping’s hard-line “zero Covid” restrictions spread in China, demonstrators have had to contend with social media censorship, location tracking, and facial recognition from the world’s largest state-backed techno-surveillance apparatus.
But not every barrier can be traced solely to the Chinese government: On at least one front, Silicon Valley is involved, too.
Earlier this month, Apple quietly added restrictions to its AirDrop feature for users in China, preventing customers from leaving their devices open to receiving files from passersby. In effect, the tech giant has eliminated Chinese activists’ ability to reach strangers using the widely available peer-to-peer communication tool.
AirDrop allows users to semi-anonymously send files directly using Bluetooth to other Apple users nearby, as long as recipients have their devices set to be discoverable by “everyone.” Before Apple’s update, Chinese activists could use AirDrop to disseminate information to strangers in crowded areas without revealing their own personal details, or going through a centralized platform.
52. FCC Bans Authorizations for Devices That Pose National Security Threat
U.S. Federal Communications Commission, November 25, 2022
53. US Bans Huawei, ZTE Telecom Equipment on Data-Security Risk
Todd Shields, Bloomberg, November 25, 2022
Federal Communications Commission cites security concerns Dahua, Hikvision, Hytera also among companies named by agency.
MILITARY AND SECURITY THREATS
54. Pentagon: China to more than triple its nuclear arsenal by 2035
Lara Seligman, Politico, November 29, 2022
China is continuing to steadily expand its nuclear arsenal and could have 1,500 warheads by 2035, according to a new Defense Department study released on Tuesday.
Beijing’s current nuclear stockpile has surpassed 400 warheads, the Pentagon warned in its annual report to Congress on China’s military might. By 2035, officials expect the People’s Liberation Army to complete the modernization of its military forces.
The latest numbers show that China is on pace with the recent Pentagon estimates, according to a senior DoD official, who requested anonymity to discuss the report ahead of its release. As of January, the independent Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimated that China had 350 nuclear warheads; last year, DoD estimated that China would reach 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030.
While the latest report does not reflect an acceleration from last year’s pace of growth, China’s nuclear buildup over the past few years is a “dramatic acceleration” from the mid-2000s, the official said.
“This is an accelerating trend,” the official said. “We see that with the buildout of the silo fields, the creation of a nuclear triad, what they’re doing with their sea bases and air components as well as the silos and their land mobile forces.”
55. The Menace of a Deepening China-Russia Axis
Chels Michta, CEPA, November 28, 2022
As Vladimir Putin’s military’s fortunes wax and wane, China has emerged as Russia’s key supporter. The existence of a Sino-Russian axis was evident as early as the Putin-Xi summit in the lead-up to the 2022 Winter Olympics, after which the leaders issued a joint declaration underscoring their countries’ opposition to further NATO enlargement.
At the time, Xi stated plainly that China and Russia would support each other’s interests and sovereignty as part of “deepening back-to-back strategic coordination.” He lashed out against “certain countries” that he alleged were trying to impose their standards on other countries — a thinly veiled swipe against the United States — confirming once more the adage that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Since the war began, Beijing has taken important steps to help Russia sidestep sanctions. China has boosted purchases of Russian energy by over 60%, dramatically increasing its reliance on Russia for gas and oil as well as coal. (This year, Russia surpassed Indonesia as the principal supplier of coal to China.) This shift appears to be motivated by a blend of self-interest and a desire to prop up Putin’s regime; it has bought more Russian energy but at cheaper prices, so helping itself while easing the impact of the West’s sanctions on its ally. Given that China is the world’s largest importer of crude oil and second-largest importer of natural gas, it will be all but impossible to isolate Russia so long as Beijing positions itself as its biggest customer.
Xi Jinping has not yet openly defied the West’s sanctions, partly no doubt because of fierce US warnings about the consequences and because — more immediately — he has things to worry about at home, not least a nationwide upsurge of rage against Covid-related restrictions on everyday freedoms.
Yet the China-Russia relationship is now extremely close. As long as Putin remains in power and wedded to the idea of a global illiberal alliance while offering his country as a junior but significant partner, China will have too good an opportunity to miss.
And this is the crux of the matter: the United States is not in competition with Russia and China on two discrete fronts in Eastern Europe and the Indo-Pacific. Rather, it is competing against a new Sino-Russian alliance in which both countries are moving in tandem to threaten the West. The geopolitics of this challenge is daunting, for their alliance raises the prospect that Beijing and Moscow could team up to lock the United States out of Eurasia. Moreover, should Russia defeat Ukraine, and Germany remain reliant on China as its largest trading partner, we may see conditions in Europe that pose a direct challenge to the United States. That anyway has been China’s clear aim for some years, though the 17+1 format in Central and Eastern Europe has ossified, as its current 16+1 status indicates.
56. China boosts efforts to control Western infrastructure, key industries – NATO
Sabine Siebold and Marine Strauss, Reuters, November 21, 2022
Western countries must be careful not to create new dependencies on China as they are weaning themselves off Russian energy supplies amid Moscow's war on Kyiv, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg warned on Monday.
"We see growing Chinese efforts to control our critical infrastructure, supply chains and key industrial sectors," he said on a visit to Spain. Stoltenberg urged allies to increase the resilience of their societies and infrastructure.
57. NATO holds first dedicated talks on China threat to Taiwan
Maria Ponnezhath, Reuters, November 30, 2022
Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization held their first dedicated debate on Taiwan in September, as the United States encourages other members of NATO to pay more attention to the rising threat of China to Taiwan, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.
58. How will America deal with three-way nuclear deterrence?
The Economist, November 29, 2022
59. China Is Deepening Its Military Foothold along the Indian Border at Pangong Tso
Matthew P. Funaiole, Brian Hart, Joseph Bermudez, and Jennifer Jun, China Power, November 28, 2022
China’s recent willingness to tamp down tensions with India at their disputed Himalayan border belies Beijing’s broader strategic ambitions in the region. In September 2022, the two regional powers mutually began to move their troops back from key positions along the hotly contested Line of Actual Control (LAC) near the Gogra Hot Springs. Yet neither side is engaging in a broader pullback.
In fact, satellite imagery reveals that China is investing in a significant, long-term military presence near Pangong Tso, a remote lake that straddles the LAC just 50 kilometers south of the Gogra Hot Springs.
60. Will Taiwan be the Ukraine of Asia?
Roger McShane, The Economist, November 18, 2022
61. Moving Pieces: Near-Term Changes to Pacific Air Posture
Carl Rehberg and Josh Chang, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, November 18, 2022
The threat to U.S. and allied air facilities in the Indo-Pacific region is increasing. Current air force posture is vulnerable to adversary first strike due to insufficient posture resiliency—the ability of deployed forces to survive, operate, and regenerate under adversary attack.
ONE BELT, ONE ROAD STRATEGY
62. Djibouti suspends China and other loan repayments, banks on forgiveness
Jevans Nyabiage, South China Morning Post, November 29, 2022
Djibouti – the tiny nation at the intersection of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden where China has vast commercial and military interests – has suspended debt repayments to two of its main bilateral creditors as it struggles under mounting financing pressures.
In its latest report on Djibouti, the World Bank said the country’s external debt servicing costs tripled in 2022 – from US$54 million last year to US$184 million – and predicted a further increase to US$266 million next year.
Behind the rise is the expiration of the G20’s Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) at the end of 2021, and the start of principal loan repayments for Djibouti’s water pipeline to Ethiopia.
As a consequence of the DSSI, Djibouti’s external arrears increased by 26.4 per cent year on year to US$101 million in June 2022, corresponding to 3 per cent of its GDP.
REDD Intelligence senior credit research analyst Mark Bohlund said the two creditors referred to in the World Bank report were likely to be China and Kuwait, “although it doesn’t matter which the other creditor is, as Chinese debt widely surpasses that owed to other creditors”.
OPINION PIECES
63. Time is Taiwan’s most critical asset
Ryan Hass, Brookings, November 28, 2022
In other words, China is not standing still, even as it continues to operate below the threshold of military conflict. The key question, therefore, is whether Taiwan will use the coming years more effectively than China to strengthen its relative position.
President Tsai has made commendable progress in seeking to strengthen Taiwan’s defense capabilities, enhance societal resilience, deepen connections with major powers, and diversify trade and investment flows. She and her successor will need to accelerate these efforts going forward. There is urgent work to bolster territorial defenses, strengthen Taiwan’s overall military deterrent, and improve Taiwan’s emergency preparedness through investments in stockpiles of munitions, food, medicine, and energy resources. Taiwan also can lower vulnerability by reducing dependencies on China’s market for key products, including upstream inputs for Taiwan’s semiconductor sector, medical supplies, and clean energy technologies.
With clarity of vision and unity of purpose, Taiwan can put itself in a stronger position to protect its democratic way of life. This will be a tough task, but also a worthy national project.
COMMENT – My colleague Ryan Hass makes a valuable contribution with this piece, we should all be focused on buying time for Taiwan.
64. Toad King vs. Pooh Bear: Jiang Zemin’s death spells trouble for Chinese ruler Xi Jinping
Jamil Anderlini, Politico, November 30, 2022
Even in death his timing was impeccable.
Jiang Zemin, the former Chinese president who was vaulted to the top of the Communist Party thanks to the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, died Wednesday at the age of 96 — just as a wave of political protest sweeps the country once more.
For current leader Xi Jinping, the historical echoes could not be more ominous. In April 1989, mass mourning over the sudden death of former Party supremo Hu Yaobang triggered nationwide protests that were eventually crushed by the People’s Liberation Army in June.
Now, as then, it is impossible for the Party to ban mourning or memorial activities for a former paramount leader. But acts of remembrance in the coming days and weeks will provide untold opportunities to express dissent and dissatisfaction over the current state of Chinese politics.
Known for his relaxed, sometimes comical, performances on the world stage, Jiang was not particularly popular while in office. But as China has become more repressive and authoritarian over the last decade under Xi, Jiang’s image has been rehabilitated.
Many now look fondly at the period from 1989 until 2004, when Jiang relinquished his role as head of the Chinese military, as a time of openness and reform – when China was growing rapidly and looking to the West for inspiration and friendship.
That contrasts starkly with Xi’s ethno-nationalist imperial vision of a “great rejuvenation,” in which “all under heaven” bends to the will of Xi and his Party and China asserts itself as an expansionist military power in the world.
A decade of worsening repression and centralization of power have been exacerbated by nearly three years of harsh COVID lockdowns and a stuttering economy.
Over the past week, large protests calling for political reform and the end of Party rule have broken out across multiple cities and on scores of university campuses in a wave of generalized popular dissent not seen in the country since 1989.
65. Xi Bungled One Crisis, So Now He’s Got Three
Mark Gongloff, Bloomberg, November 28, 2022
There’s a famous episode of “The Twilight Zone” — so good they remade it as a movie in 1983 — about a kid who could change reality with just his mind. That included inflicting hellish punishments on anybody who questioned his terrible decisions.
Most viewers see this as horror. Xi Jinping seems to consider it in a completely different way. But here in reality, unlike the Twilight Zone, the tighter you cling to omnipotence the more it slips away.
China’s leader-for-life has been imposing “Xi Thought” on his society for years to diminishing returns, leaving his country diplomatically isolated and economically imperiled. Like little Anthony in the movie version of that “Twilight Zone,” Xi may realize he needs a different approach. Just two weeks ago he started loosening “Covid Zero” restrictions and edging a little closer to the West. Un-banning Winnie the Pooh was surely right around the corner.
But as Matthew Brooker points out, giving oppressed people even an inch of wiggle room can let built-up pressure explode. And that’s just what has happened, with intense protests erupting across China about Covid Zero policies not loosening quickly enough:
This is the most publicly agitated China’s people have been since 1989, and we all know how that ended. Given Xi’s love of authoritarianism, another bloody crackdown may be the likeliest outcome. Still, Clara Ferreira Marques writes, Xi should hope the unrest loses steam on its own. Because more suppression could cause an even bigger backlash.
Given Xi’s track record, the safe bet is that his choice will be the wrong one. As Clara points out in an earlier column, Xi’s long refusal to countenance Western-made Covid vaccines forced him into harsh lockdowns that made everybody mad at him and still can’t stop a devastating omicron wave. We all know it's a bad idea to let little kids have their way all the time, even those without terrifying superpowers. The same applies to grownup authoritarians.
66. Sizewell C ‘confirmed’ again – this time it might be the real deal
Nils Pratley, The Guardian, November 29, 2022
67. Rishi Sunak must stand up to China’s bullying
Mark L Clifford and Damian Green, Times of London, November 29, 2022
The UK’s relationship with China has rightly become a key focus for our foreign policy. Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, and James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, must grapple with how to respond to China’s increasingly erratic aggression, demonstrated recently by its actions towards Hong Kong and Taiwan. This goes further than China’s influence in Asia, the recent exposure of secret Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “police stations” operating on UK soil serves as a timely reminder that it is a threat to all countries.
68. Xi’s Obsession with Control Produced China’s Protests
Howard W. French, Foreign Policy, November 28, 2022
This challenge to the Chinese Communist Party and the state has been building for some time.
Decades ago, Western political scientists began asking a question that has never been fully resolved but has also never seemed more urgent. They noted that since World War II, extremely few countries had joined the ranks of the globe’s truly wealthy nations and almost all that had were already democracies or were in the midst of political transitions that would lead to systems that gave citizens a choice in the selection of leaders. So, they wondered: Could China, the world’s largest country—and, since the Soviet Union’s demise, the most powerful and, in aggregate terms, richest authoritarian society—buck the trend?
If it failed to do so, China would be said, in the jargon of experts, to have succumbed to the middle-income trap: a theoretical snare awaiting countries that failed to liberalize their political systems no matter how successful they had appeared during an early phase of economic takeoff.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has been mindful of this challenge and at times has even boasted about his country’s ability not only to break this mold of notional constraints but also to prove the superiority of his version of authoritarian rule. Now, no sooner than Xi has engineered changes in China’s leadership succession rules so that he can preside over his country for life, a crisis that may come to be seen as an ideal test of the middle-income trap theory is upon him.
Its proximate cause appears to have been an apartment block fire in the far western Chinese city of Urumqi that killed 10 people. It reportedly took firefighters more than three hours to put out the blaze, which local officials said was caused by a faulty power strip, causing many on social media to speculate that the city’s ongoing strict COVID-19 lockdown measures may have hampered the response and prevented residents from evacuating. Chinese authorities have denied this and even suggested that blame lay with the apartment dwellers for being slow to flee.
The shocking news of this incident has set off the most serious political protests in China since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crisis, with Chinese people in a rapidly growing number of cities—including the place where Xi himself studied in Beijing, Tsinghua University—coming out in the streets by the thousands to hold up blank sheets of paper, symbolizing censorship, and braving arrest as they chant recently unimaginable slogans such as “Step down, Xi Jinping! Step down, Communist Party!” and “Don’t want dictatorship, [we] want democracy!”
Yet as tempting as it will be for many, it is wrong to see this crisis as solely the result of a spark from Urumqi. This challenge to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the state has been building for some time. The country’s unusually strict and prolonged campaign to contain the COVID-19 pandemic has been a source of deep discontent for many months, leaving many Chinese people feeling disenchanted with Xi, who seems more obsessed with control than any leader since Mao Zedong.
69. How to Compete with China in the South Pacific
Hayley Channer, Foreign Policy, November 29, 2022
70. ‘Stability Maintenance’ Means Repressing the Chinese Spirit
Chen Guangcheng, Wall Street Journal, November 25, 2022
A massive web of agencies work to stamp out the smallest inklings of political discontent.
“What does the Chinese Communist Party fear most?” Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asked me this question during a private meeting in Washington in January. Having been persecuted by Beijing for more than seven years for my human-rights work, I know that it is crucial to ask these fundamental questions. It’s the only way to begin to break down the bulwarks that prop up tyrants everywhere. “What the CCP fears most,” I told Mr. Pompeo, “is that its own illegitimacy will be exposed.”
Even the most strident authoritarian regimes know that real power lies in the legitimacy gained through democratic elections. That’s why many dictators—from Vladimir Putin to Saddam Hussein—make a ritual show of holding elections even when few are convinced the results will be legitimate. Real elections would mean an end to the dictators’ power. The simple truth is that people everywhere want freedom.
The people of China are no different. The communist regime took over by force in 1949; in the subsequent seven decades it has never held free or transparent elections, and instead has subjected the population to a steady stream of state-induced trauma, the reality of which it systematically and violently represses. But repression can’t extinguish the spirit. More often, the greater the repression, the greater the desire to find freedom.
No one understands this paradox more than the Communist Party. That is why in the post-1989 era it has focused on what it calls “stability maintenance” via a massive web of agencies tasked with stamping out the smallest inklings of political discontent. High-level officials are also leaders in propaganda or other domestic security offices. Tactics supported by the regime to achieve stability at all cost include extralegal measures like surveillance and harassment, disappearance and torture.
The idea of stability maintenance involves eliminating any sources of incitement. This can mean snuffing out a protest like the one last month on an overpass in Beijing, where a man held a banner that read: “Remove dictator and national traitor Xi Jinping.” It can mean literally destroying human remains, both to hide evidence of wrongdoing by the authorities and to eliminate a potential location for mass gathering. Dong Jianbiao was detained for protesting the long-term imprisonment of his daughter, who was charged with the “crime” of splattering a photo of Mr. Xi with ink. The authorities blamed Mr. Dong’s sudden death in custody on diabetes, but when family members were taken to the morgue they found his body covered in bruises. The authorities cremated the body five days after his death.
In some years Beijing has reported spending more on stability maintenance than on the military. The Communist Party’s severe response to dissent is perhaps the best evidence of the ability and desire of the Chinese people to demand their rights. Unfortunately, U.S. leaders from both political parties have given the party the legitimacy it craves. In the 1970s the U.S. recognized Beijing diplomatically at the expense of Taipei. In the 1990s the U.S. granted the regime most-favored-nation status and helped it join the World Trade Organization. Decisions like these allowed Beijing to cut lucrative trade deals while dodging criticism of its atrocities.
The U.S. and other democratic nations must stand by the Chinese people and stand up to the Communist Party. Western governments should reach out to dissidents and take a stand for the rights of Chinese citizens, condemning the party’s disregard for human rights and persecution of the Chinese people. American corporations should put principle over profit and stop bowing down to the Communist Party. These steps benefit not only the Chinese people but also the long-term interests of the U.S., encouraging peace and stability.
Every dictatorship has weaknesses that could become its undoing. It doesn’t matter how much pomp is on display at the party’s regularly scheduled meetings. It doesn’t matter which leader comes out on top or who is most insistent on holding on to power. It’s all an illusion. It has nothing to do with the hopes and dreams of the Chinese people, which aren’t any different than those of people around the world. They want freedom and self-governance, which the authoritarians in Beijing are incapable of delivering.
71. Global Tensions Spur a Sea Change in Japan
Walter Russell Mead, wall Street Journal, November 28, 2022
Riots in China, deepening war in Ukraine, continuing upheavals in Iran: It’s been a dramatic week in world affairs. But the quiet revolutions sometimes matter more. Japan is one of the stablest countries on earth, and there are no crowds in the streets as bureaucrats shuffle papers and write reports.
Nevertheless, what is in those reports will have a massive impact on world politics—and could well determine the outcome of the U.S.-China competition.
Germany’s Zeitenwende, or historical turning point—the abandonment of appeasement as the basis of Russia policy and a shift toward greater military spending—has received more attention. But as I learned on a recent visit to Tokyo, the shifts taking place in Japan go further and rest on a wider consensus than anything happening in Berlin.
72. We can gain a critical edge in the great power competition
Peter Newell and Alex Gallo, The Hill, November 26, 2022
We believe the development and adoption of an innovation doctrine is required for the safety and security of Western systems and values. Innovation must become a warfighting function and the development of an innovation doctrine must be a top priority. We can — and we must — accelerate our technological innovation. We cannot wait. The country that continuously innovates at speed and scale will win the next war.
73. Hong Kong’s Jimmy Lai goes on trial soon. So does freedom of speech.
Washington Post, November 29, 2022
“Freedom of speech is a dangerous job,” the Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai wrote by hand in a letter from prison last year. He is founder of Apple Daily, a scrappy tabloid newspaper that became a voice for democracy in Hong Kong. Mr. Lai is fighting specious charges by the authorities under the restrictive National Security Law imposed by Beijing. His trial is to begin this week — and the right to freedom of expression and association will be in the dock with him.
Mr. Lai wrote in his handwritten letter that it is “a journalist’s responsibility to uphold justice” and “it is precisely this that we need to love and cherish. … The era is falling apart before us, and it is time for us to stand tall.”
That era, including the decades in which Mr. Lai rose from poverty to wealth, was one in which Hong Kong stood as a beacon of free speech, free enterprise and rule of law. China pledged to uphold such a system when it took control of Hong Kong in 1997 from Britain. But in recent years, it has betrayed the promise and absorbed the territory into the mainland’s authoritarian system, cracking down on public protests, arresting dissidents and journalists, and shutting down the free press — including Apple Daily, which published its last print edition on June 24, 2021, after the government seized its assets and forced a closure.
74. How China Lost the Covid War
Paul Krugman, New York Times, November 28, 2022
Do you remember when Covid was going to establish China as the world’s dominant power? As late as mid-2021, my inbox was full of assertions that China’s apparent success in containing the coronavirus showed the superiority of the Chinese system over Western societies that, as one commentator put it, “did not have the ability to quickly organize every citizen around a single goal.”
At this point, however, China is flailing even as other nations are more or less getting back to normal life. It’s still pursuing its zero-Covid policy, enforcing draconian restrictions on everyday activities every time new cases emerge. This is creating immense personal hardship and cramping the economy; cities under lockdown account for almost 60 percent of China’s G.D.P.
In early November many workers reportedly fled the giant Foxconn plant that produces iPhones, fearing not just that they would be locked in but that they would go hungry. And in the last few days many Chinese, in cities across the nation, have braved harsh repression to demonstrate against government policies.
I’m not a China expert, and I have no idea where this is going. As far as I can tell, actual China experts don’t know, either. But I think it’s worth asking what lessons we can draw from China’s journey from would-be role model to debacle.
75. China’s Failed Covid Vaccine Nationalism
Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2022
The disaster of China’s zero-Covid policy has many contributors, starting with the Communist Party’s need for political control. One of the byproducts of that control that deserves more attention is Beijing’s vaccine nationalism, and President Xi Jinping’s decision not to offer China’s 1.4 billion citizens access to Western-made mRNA Covid vaccines.