Friends,
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Exactly a month ago, the Peterson Institute for International Economics held a wonky event in Washington DC. Co-sponsored with a Chinese think tank, the China Finance 40 Forum (CF40), the Peterson Institute hosted a group of economists to analyze U.S.-China relations and the economic outlook of the two countries.
The event featured American and Chinese economists and would likely have gone un-noticed except for the remarks of one Chinese participant, the economist Gao Shanwen. Bloomberg and others reported at the time that Gao said China’s actual growth over the past few years was likely just 2% and wouldn’t grow more than 3-4%.
As a consequence of these remarks, Gao has disappeared, he has left the position at his firm, and his license to practice as an industry analyst has expired.
Gao’s offense was saying the quiet part out loud: the growth figures reported by the PRC Government are false and China is growing much more weakly than Beijing will admit.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal, this enraged Xi Jinping and the Party appears to be taking action against Gao to ensure that no one else steps out of line to challenge Xi’s version of the truth.
We’ve covered this theme before, but it bears repeating: authoritarian regimes, like the one in Beijing, build up alternative realities which they maintain with enormous resources and they defend those alternative realities with force.
Eventually the delta between the regime’s preferred reality and actual reality becomes too difficult to ignore. Courageous individuals speak out and are silenced. That is what has happened to Gao Shanwen.
I suspect trumped up charges will be made against him at some point, probably some kind of “corruption” or something like that. The intention will be to discredit Gao and discourage anyone else from following his example.
In Gao’s honor, here is a performance of Manchester Orchestra’s The Silence.
[Despite its name, this indie band is neither an orchestra nor is it from Manchester. They are from Atlanta and they are worth following]
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Continuing with the topic of the Chinese economy is the tweet of the week.
TWEET OF THE WEEK – From the finance professor Michael Pettis explaining the pathologies of the Chinese economy and amplifying an interview with Barry Naughton, the economist that specializes on China… worth reading what the two of them had to say:
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As this issue goes out, the Packers will face the Eagles in Philadelphia for the NFC Wild Card Game.
This is a rematch of the season opener that was played in Brazil. The Eagles came out on top of that one and their fans are feeling awfully confident today. Both quarterbacks are wounded with Jordan Love suffering a right elbow injury in the last game and Jalen Hurts coming off a concussion.
While the Eagles won their Division and the Packers are third in theirs, the NFC East isn’t the NFC North (the Packers would love to have the Cowboys and Giants to kick around).
The Eagles have a long history of choking and the Packers can will this game, but it is going to be a tough one. One team will go on in the Playoffs and the other’s season will come to an end.
Go Pack Go!
Thanks for reading!
Matt
MUST READ
1. The Global Outrage Machine Skips the Uyghurs
Michael Schuman, Atlantic, January 6, 2025
China grandstands about Gaza while repressing a Muslim community within its own borders. Hardly anyone seems to notice.
China has exploited the crisis in Gaza to present itself as a defender of the Palestinians and a champion of the oppressed. That posture appears to be benefiting China in its geopolitical competition with the United States—even though Beijing is guilty of human-rights abuses against a Muslim community within its own territory. The Uyghurs of China suffer mass detention, population suppression, and cultural assimilation under a brutal authoritarian regime. Yet few protests on university campuses demand their freedom, nor do major diplomatic efforts seek to alleviate their misery.
How does China get away with it? The widespread indifference to the Uyghurs’ predicament exposes double standards, not only among today’s prevailing political ideologies, but also within the international politics of human rights. And it flags the danger that China presents to the very principle of universal values.
The issue is not a matter of which group—Palestinians or Uyghurs—is more worthy of the world’s concern. Both suffer, and their suffering is awful. The Palestinian cause is important and deserves the attention it receives. Yet the Uyghurs could use some outrage too. Isolated in remote Xinjiang, their historical homeland in China’s far west, the Uyghurs have no hope of defending themselves against Beijing’s repression without support from the international community.
COMMENT – This situation should concern all of us and provide even greater impetus to force through the sale of TikTok.
2. What We Know About HMPV, the Common Virus Spreading in China
Stephanie Nolen, New York Times, January 7, 2025
While cases are climbing in China, the situation is very different from what it was when Covid-19 emerged five years ago, medical experts say. HMPV has circulated in humans for decades.
Reports of a surge in cases of a respiratory virus in China have evoked dark echoes of the start of the Covid-19 pandemic almost exactly five years ago.
But despite the surface similarities, this situation is very different, and far less worrisome, medical experts say.
The Chinese cases are reported to be infections with human metapneumovirus, known to doctors as HMPV. Here is what we know so far:
What is HMPV?
It is one of several pathogens that circulate across the world each year, causing respiratory illnesses. HMPV is common — so common that most people will be infected while they are still children and may experience several infections in their lifetimes. In countries with months of cold weather HMPV can have an annual season, much like the flu, while in places closer to the Equator it circulates at lower levels all year long.
HMPV is similar to a virus that is better known in the United States — respiratory syncytial virus, or R.S.V. It causes symptoms much like those associated with flu and Covid, including cough, fever, nasal congestion and wheezing.
Most HMPV infections are mild, resembling bouts of the common cold. But severe cases can result in bronchitis or pneumonia, particularly among infants, older adults and immunocompromised people. Patients with pre-existing lung conditions, such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or emphysema, are at higher risk of severe outcomes.
In higher-income countries, the virus is rarely fatal; in lower-income countries, with weak health systems and poor surveillance, deaths are more common.
…
What is China saying about it?
The Chinese authorities have acknowledged that HMPV cases are increasing, but have emphasized that the virus is a known entity and is not a major concern. The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 was a new pathogen, so people’s immune systems had not built up defenses against it.
At a news conference held by China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention on Dec. 27, Kan Biao, the director of the center’s Institute for Infectious Diseases, said that HMPV cases were rising among children 14 years and younger. The increase was especially notable in northern China, he said. Influenza cases have also increased, he said.
Cases could spike during the Lunar New Year holiday, at the end of January, when many people travel and gather in large groups, he said.
But overall, Mr. Kan said, “judging from the current situation, the scale and intensity of the spread of respiratory infectious diseases this year will be lower than last year’s.”
Official Chinese data shows that HMPV cases have been rising since mid-December, in both outpatient and emergency cases, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. Some parents and social media users were unfamiliar with the virus and were seeking advice online, the outlet said; it urged calm and ordinary precautions such as washing one’s hands frequently and avoiding crowded places.
In a routine media briefing on Friday, a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry reiterated that cases of influenza and other respiratory viruses routinely increase at this time of year but that they “appear to be less severe and spread on a smaller scale compared with the previous year.”
Chinese officials said last week that it would set up a monitoring system for pneumonia of unknown origin. It will include procedures for laboratories to report cases and for disease control and prevention agencies to verify and handle them, the state broadcaster CCTV reported.
What has the public response in China been?
Online, amid comments from people saying they had never heard of HMPV and expressing concern that it was a new pathogen, state media outlets have sought to reassure people, warning them against blindly taking antiviral medications.
Some users have cracked jokes, saying that they could finally use up the masks they had stockpiled during the coronavirus pandemic. Many commenters have discussed a general uptick in illness, not just HMPV: “Why does the flu hurt so much” was trending on Weibo, a social media platform, on Monday.
What does the World Health Organization say?
The W.H.O. has not expressed concern. Dr. Margaret Harris, a spokeswoman for the organization, cited weekly reports from the Chinese authorities that showed a predictable rise in cases.
“As expected for this time of year, the Northern Hemisphere winter, there is a month-over-month increase of acute respiratory infections, including seasonal influenza, R.S.V. and human metapneumovirus,” she said by email.
On Tuesday, the organization put out a statement saying, “W.H.O. is in contact with Chinese health officials and has not received any reports of unusual outbreak patterns.” It added, “Chinese authorities report that the health care system is not overwhelmed and there have been no emergency declarations or responses triggered.”
Should I worry?
The reports coming from China are evocative of those from the first, confusing days of the Covid pandemic, and the W.H.O. is still urging China to share more information about the origin of that outbreak, five years on.
But the current situation is different in key respects. Covid was a virus that spilled over into humans from animals and was previously unknown. HMPV is well studied, and there is widespread capacity to test for it. There is broad population-level immunity to this virus globally; there was none, for Covid. A severe HMPV season can strain hospital capacity — particularly pediatric wards — but does not overwhelm medical centers.
“However, it is also vital for China to share its data on this outbreak in a timely manner,” said Dr. Sanjaya Senanayake, a specialist in infectious diseases and associate professor of medicine at the Australian National University. “This includes epidemiologic data about who is getting infected. Also, we will need genomic data confirming that HMPV is the culprit, and that there aren’t any significant mutations of concern.”
COMMENT – It has been five years since the outbreak of the COVID pandemic and the PRC Government continues to withhold medical data. The risks of biological disasters will continue to be needlessly high until the Chinese Communist Party takes global health as seriously as it does its own image.
3. Xi Jinping Muzzles Chinese Economist Gao Shanwen, Who Dared to Doubt GDP Numbers
Lingling Wei, Wall Street Journal, January 8, 2025
Gao Shanwen questioned Beijing’s ability to boost its economy as threats loom from a property meltdown, burgeoning debt and other challenges.
At a Washington forum last month, a prominent Chinese economist raised doubts about Beijing’s economic management and said China’s economy might have grown at less than half the roughly 5% pace flaunted by authorities.
When Xi Jinping found out, he was furious.
According to people familiar with the matter, the Chinese leader ordered an investigation of Gao Shanwen, chief economist at state-owned SDIC Securities, who has frequently advised the government on economic and financial policies. Xi then ordered authorities to discipline him.
Two comments that Gao made at the forum, hosted jointly by the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a Chinese think tank, angered Xi, the people said.
One questioned the reliability of Chinese growth data. “We do not know the true number of China’s real growth figure,” Gao said at the Dec. 12 event, whose webcast is available on the Peterson Institute’s website and on YouTube. “My own speculation is that in the past two to three years, the real [gross domestic product growth] number on average might be around 2% even though the official number is close to 5%.”
Xi was further incensed to learn that Gao cast doubt regarding Beijing’s ability to take the steps needed to bolster growth.
“Their efforts to stimulate the economy will be very opportunistic,” Gao said at the forum. “In the end, I don’t think they can very confidently deliver what they have promised.”
Xi’s order led to a ban on Gao speaking publicly for an unspecified period, said the people familiar with the matter. For now, he has been allowed to keep his job, they said.
The leader’s reaction to Gao’s criticism highlights the deep sensitivities in Beijing over economic troubles that have mounted on Xi’s watch.
Beijing is trying to quell worries that China is plunging into a prolonged downturn. The country’s economy is being dragged down by a property meltdown that has wiped out $18 trillion in household wealth, a buildup of debt that is approaching 300% of GDP, and severe industrial overcapacity that risks a deflationary spiral.
The gathering gloom also hampers Beijing’s efforts to project strength and prepare to confront head-on tariffs and other threats from the incoming Trump administration.
In recent months, authorities have sought to stamp out any negative talk about the state of the economy.
4. Outspoken economist Gao Shanwen leaves his Hong Kong financial firm: source
Enoch Yu, South China Morning Post, January 10, 2025
Gao’s license in Hong Kong lapsed at the end of last month, and he is no longer working at a financial firm in the city, SFC records show.
Outspoken analyst Gao Shanwen, chief economist at SDIC Securities, left the Hong Kong unit of the company, and his license with the city’s market regulator has expired, according to a person familiar with the situation.
Gao’s departure came after he raised questions about China’s official growth data last month.
According to the website of Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), Gao’s license allowing him to offer investment advisory services as a representative of SDICS International Securities (Hong Kong) lapsed on December 31.
COMMENT – I’m reminded of another Chinese citizen who spoke truth to power five years ago… and was punished for it.
Dr. Li Wenliang on the left, who revealed the severity of COVID, was investigated and silenced by the CCP and just weeks before his death from COVID; and Gao Shanwen on the right at a conference speaking about the severity of problems facing the Chinese economy which prompted investigations by the CCP and his removal from his posts.
I suspect the Chinese Communist Party won’t be happy with this comparison, but I think it is apt.
In both cases, brave Chinese citizens understood it was their duty to speak the truth even if it meant contradicting the Chinese Communist Party. Both were punished with Dr. Li succumbing to the disease he tried to warn the world about.
5. China's Shandong Port, entry point for most sanctioned oil, bans US-designated vessels
Chen Aizhu, Siyi Liu, and Trixie Sher Li Yap, Reuters, January 7, 2025
Ships cannot dock, unload or receive shipping services
Ban on ports including Qingdao, Rizhao and Yantai
May slow imports, push up costs for refiners, traders say
Shandong Port Group has banned U.S.-sanctioned tankers from calling into its ports in the eastern Chinese province, home to many independent refiners that are the biggest importers of oil from countries under U.S. embargo, three traders said.
The province imported about 1.74 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil from Iran, Russia and Venezuela last year, accounting for about 17% of China's imports, ship tracking data from Kpler showed.
If enforced, the ban would drive up shipping costs for independent refiners in Shandong, the main buyers of discounted sanctioned crude from the three countries, the traders added.
Last month, Washington imposed further sanctions on companies and the shadow fleet that deal with Iranian oil. President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, is expected to tighten sanctions further on Iran, as he did during his first administration.
The ban could slow imports into China, the world's largest oil importing nation, traders said.
The Shandong Port notice issued on Monday was obtained from two of the traders and confirmed by a third. It forbids ports to dock, unload or provide ship services to vessels on the Office of Foreign Assets Control list managed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
Shandong Port oversees major ports on China's east coast including Qingdao, Rizhao and Yantai, which are major terminals for importing sanctioned oil.
In December, eight very large crude carriers, with a capacity of two million barrels each, discharged mostly Iranian oil at Shandong, estimates from tanker tracker Vortexa showed.
The vessels included Phonix, Vigor, Quinn and Divine, which are all sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury.
The active shadow fleet transporting Iranian, Russian and Venezuelan oil is estimated at about 669 tankers, said Michelle Wiese Bockmann, principal analyst with maritime data group Lloyd's List Intelligence.
Of that total, 250-300 tankers were typically involved in shipping Russian oil, which excluded Iran’s biggest operator NITC and Russia’s leading tanker group Sovcomflot, she added.
Between October and December, the U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on 35 tankers it said formed part of Iran's "ghost fleet", outside of vessels operated by NITC. In early 2024, Washington slapped separate sanctions on Sovcomflot.
The outgoing Biden administration plans to impose sanctions on over 100 tankers involved in Russian oil, sources told Reuters this week.
A switch to using non-sanctioned ships could inflate costs for refiners in Shandong, which have been struggling with poor margins and sluggish demand, traders said.
Shares in leading tanker operator Frontline jumped over 9% on Tuesday after the port ban news with an expected tightening of tanker availability.
The U.S. Defense Department said on Monday it added China's largest shipping company COSCO to a list of companies it said work with China's military, which could deter use of COSCO's tankers by charterers and add to tightness of ships for hire, shipping analysts said on Tuesday.
The price of Iranian crude sold to China hit the highest in years last month as fresh U.S. sanctions tightened shipping capacity and drove up logistics costs.
Iranian crude oil floating storage has risen to a 12-month high of 20 million barrels and the Iranian export fleet is relatively stretched with a high level of exports per vessel. This has historically been associated with subsequent declines in Iran's crude exports, Goldman Sachs analysts said last week.
The investment bank expects Iran's crude supply to drop by 300,000 bpd to 3.25 million bpd by the second quarter of 2025.
Prices of Russian oil, which rose to about a two-year high, could remain supported as the Biden administration plans to impose more sanctions on Moscow over its war on Ukraine.
COMMENT – Reuters also revealed this week that the PRC Foreign Ministry was surprised to learn that Shandong Port Group had complied with U.S. sanctions on ships involved in carrying sanctioned Russian oil.
China foreign ministry not aware of Shandong Port Group ban on US-sanctioned ships
Reuters, January 8, 2025
China's foreign ministry said on Wednesday it was not aware of Shandong Port Group's decision to ban U.S.-sanctioned vessels from its network of east coast harbours.
The group oversees several major terminals in the province of Shandong, which is the main entry point for Iranian, Russian and Venezuelan oil imported into China. Last year, those embargoed flows were almost a fifth of total oil imports.
If the ban is enforced, traders say it will drive up shipping costs for independent refiners in Shandong, the main buyers of discounted sanctioned crude from the three countries, and could also slow oil imports into China.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said they were not aware of the decision, reported by Reuters on Tuesday, and reiterated China's opposition to U.S. sanctions.
"As a matter of principle, I am not aware of the relevant situation," the spokesperson said at a daily press conference.
"China has always firmly opposed the lack of international law on the part of the United States, illegal unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction without U.N. Security Council authorization," they added.
To me, that is quite interesting.
If Shandong Port Group is complying with U.S. sanctions, it is a violation of the PRC’s Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law (AFSL). This blocking statue, which was rushed through to passage in June 2021, forbids Chinese entities and individuals from complying with foreign sanctions that negatively impact the PRC.
As a MERICS report described, “Article 12 of the AFSL prohibits organizations and individuals – both Chinese and foreign – from helping enforce foreign discriminatory measures against PRC entities, and further gives those affected by sanctions the right to sue for compensation.”
I hope journalists and researchers will watch this one closely. When the AFSL was passed four years ago, it seemed to be designed to prevent a Chinese company from doing what Shandong Port Group has apparently done (comply with extraterritorial sanctions that negatively impact the PRC). Increasingly, the U.S. and the PRC have contradictory laws.
If Shandong Port Group is forced to reverse itself and/or punished for its compliance with U.S. sanctions, this will provide yet one more cautionary tale for companies and investors that try to straddle the U.S. and PRC markets.
This reminds me of the old saying, that a sailor that tries to straddle two boats inevitably gets wet.
6. We Are in an Industrial War. China Is Starting to Win.
Robert Atkinson, New York Times, January 9, 2025
Credit goes to Donald Trump for alerting the world to the dangers posed by China, particularly its efforts to overtake the United States as the world’s most advanced economy. But neither his first administration nor President Biden’s has done enough to combat China’s incursions, which have cost America millions of manufacturing jobs and the closure of tens of thousands of factories, according to data compiled by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, the nonpartisan technology policy think tank I lead. That’s because policymakers on both sides of the aisle are only slowly waking up to the reality: We are already in the middle of an industrial war.
Lawmakers need to understand that for China, a desire to make money — the fundamental driver of trade and of capitalism — is secondary. Its primary goal is to damage America’s economy and pave the way for China to become the world’s pre-eminent power. Countries like China are power traders, called such because their policies and programs are designed not only to advance their power but also to degrade their adversaries’, even at a financial cost to their own economies.
China’s rate of progress in production and innovation across a wide range of industries is striking. If our policymakers don’t work fast and smart enough, they will put at risk America’s workers, economy and place in the world.
History has seen other campaigns like this. From the late 1800s to World War II, Germany illustrated how trade could be weaponized into “an instrument of power, of pressure and even of conquest,” wrote the development economist Albert O. Hirschman.
Like China, Germany mostly focused on importing goods needed for its war machine, redirected trade to friendly or subject nations and sought to control oceanic trade routes, all in an effort to limit development of its adversaries. Like China, the German government kept its currency undervalued (making its goods relatively cheaper for consumers in other countries), leveraged the use of tariffs and subsidized its exports to bolster its position in industry goods such as steel, chemicals and machinery.
Like China, German companies sold goods for less than the cost of manufacture to wrest market share from overseas rivals. Like China, Germans engaged in systemic industrial espionage. Engineers were sent overseas with the explicit order to return with trade secrets for German companies.
There was also the theft of intellectual property, including chemical formulas and machinery plans to give German manufacturers a leg up. “Trademarks are to be pirated,” declared a 1919 New York Tribune article on Germany — a declaration that could have been written today about China.
In short, Germany sought to gain technoeconomic power, especially over its European adversaries, then use that power to dominate the continent. As the French economist Henri Hauser wrote in 1915, “Germany made war in the midst of peace with the instruments of peace. Dumping, export subsidies, import certificates, measures with respect to emigration, etc., all of these various methods were used not as normal methods of economic activity but as means to suffocate, to crush and terrorize Germany’s adversaries.”
For a while, it was successful. Without American intervention in World War I and II, it is quite possible that Germany would have taken over much of Europe, in large part because its industries and hence military were so much stronger than those of other European nations. While America’s industrial revolution continued through the early 20th century, insulated by high tariffs initiated by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, the German trade shock stopped many Eastern and Southern European economies from fully industrializing and spurred the deindustrialization of nations like Britain. Many have not fully recovered.
It seems all the trade lessons from that fraught period have been forgotten. In the postwar glow of American dominance, U.S. legislators and business leaders embraced an idealistic vision of an increasingly wealthy free world. Countries would embrace capitalism and, thus incentivized by self-interest, would trade fairly and freely with the United States, enriching their citizens and naturally leading to a democratic order. Because American companies were so strong, this was seen as a path to expanded U.S. global economic leadership.
As we now know, that vision was never fully realized. Today it is China that is weaponizing its roughly $18 trillion economy, using a vast array of policy tools to distort trade and increase its relative economic power. Wielding such weaponry as export financing and subsidies — almost four times as much as a share of G.D.P. as the United States, according to a study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies — China has already gained global leadership in telecommunications equipment, effectively destroying North America’s industry. It has done the same in solar panels and commercial drones and is close in high-speed rail and batteries.
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation found that in 10 advanced industries — including semiconductors, robotics, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, space and chemicals — China is making progress toward the global leading edge of innovation, backed by extensive intellectual property theft, enormous government subsidies and closed domestic markets. And in some industries, such as electric vehicles and commercial nuclear power, Chinese companies now lead.
China installed more industrial robots last year and has more nuclear power plants under construction than the rest of the world combined. It spent almost $50 billion on subsidies to catch up on semiconductors before the U.S. Congress responded with the CHIPs Act. It is seeking to flood the world with electric vehicles, as well as gasoline-powered models. It has spent as much as three times as much on semiconductor subsidies as the United States. And it is spending billions of dollars more on the development of quantum technology than any other government, according to an analysis by the consulting firm McKinsey. Sales of the C919 by COMAC (a state-owned company) are on pace to make it the top-selling jet aircraft in the world this year, contributing even further to Airbus’s and Boeing's travails. And China accounts for 44 percent of the world’s chemical production, according to my research.
China has demonstrated time and again a willingness to lose money to gain power — decisions that would make little sense under the regular dynamics of profit and loss. Look at the LCD display and OLED display industry (high-definition electronic screens), which are critical to smartphone and television production. In 2023, China’s leading producer, BOE, received more in government subsidies ($532 million) than the company generated in profits. That could explain why, for displays like those used in smartphones, Chinese suppliers are charging just $20 to $23 while rivals charge more than twice that. This is why China accounted for 72 percent of LCD production in 2024, up from virtually nothing in 2004.
U.S. policymakers are starting to wake up. Rush Doshi, formerly the deputy senior director for China on the National Security Council under Mr. Biden, titled his 2021 book “The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order.” And Marco Rubio, the former chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship and Mr. Trump’s choice for secretary of state, issued a report concluding that China was doing more than “breaking the rules” to dominate high-value industrial sectors. This helps explain why, despite a highly polarized political climate, Congress managed to pass the CHIPS and Science Act, which invested billions of dollars to support new semiconductor factories in the United States. Nothing promotes unity like a common and frightening enemy.
But these measures are not enough. America must expand its competitiveness in a range of other industries — including aerospace, biopharmaceuticals and machinery — and lead in emerging ones such as A.I., quantum computing and nuclear fusion.
Instead of across-the-board tariffs, the new administration should take a page from Ronald Reagan and negotiate a major decline in the value of the U.S. dollar vis-à-vis our trading partners, and if that does not work, the Treasury Department should take unilateral steps to drive down the value of the dollar. That would make American exports less expensive and imports pricier without the risk of trade retaliation. Congress should also update U.S. trade law, such as by eliminating the requirement of harm to U.S. companies from foreign unfair trade practices before remedies can be enacted.
America needs closer collaboration among allied nations to push back on China’s predatory power trade practices, including increasing foreign aid to help developing nations avoid their dependency on Beijing. And the United States needs to take advantage of its being a magnet for the best and the brightest globally by making it much easier for scientists and engineers to work here.
America should respect free-trade ideals and hold them dear. But that should not blind us to the harsh reality that the world now is distorted by its strongest power trader. The answer is not deglobalization or protectionism. America depends on too many industries — like aerospace, biopharmaceuticals, software and semiconductors — that cannot thrive without access to global markets. And it is not holding on naïvely to the hopes that free trade could yet prevail if the United States simply ended the trade war. China will not end its power trade regime until it has gained dominance across a wide range of advanced industries. Rather, we need to understand the adversary we face and respond bravely, strategically and expeditiously.
COMMENT – I wish the Biden Administration had directed its considerable effort on this issue over the past four years, as opposed to trying to accelerate the so-called energy transition. I suspect had they focused on that, they could have built a far stronger bipartisan coalition and would have made the U.S. economy even stronger and more resilient.
Internally, the Biden Administration was deeply divided on its priorities… between China and Climate. Some members of the Administration understood the challenge posed by the PRC and sought to make that the priority. But more often than not, their actions were constrained by other members of the Administration who argued for a focus on Climate as the priority and drove the domestic agenda towards accelerating an energy transition.
7. China Takes Aim at Philippine Democracy
Adam Nelson and May Butoy, Project Syndicate, January 3, 2025
A stable, democratic Philippines is vital to US interests and regional security. America and its Indo-Pacific partners and allies must do more to help the country build resilience against Chinese aggression not only in its territorial waters, but also in its politics.
COMMENT – Beijing is openly hostile to democracies that challenge their coercion and seek to undermine them through political interference. We are going to need to find an effective response to this which bolsters these societies and strengthens their institutions.
I suspect that will only be possible if we reduce our collective entanglement with the PRC economy.
8. China Arming Houthi Rebels in Yemen in Exchange for Unimpeded Red Sea Passage
FDD, January 2, 2025
U.S. Intelligence Reveals China-Houthi Network: American intelligence sources reportedly revealed that the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen are using Chinese-made weapons for their assaults on shipping in the Red Sea in exchange for refraining from attacks upon Chinese vessels. After Houthi leaders visited China in 2023 and 2024 to establish a supply chain, the group was able to obtain “advanced components and guidance equipment” for their missiles, according to Israel’s i24 News. The report claimed that the Houthis plan to utilize the Chinese weapons components to produce hundreds of cruise missiles capable of striking Persian Gulf states.
China-Linked Vessels Continue to Navigate Red Sea: Maritime data confirms that “China-associated” ships are continuing to navigate Red Sea shipping lanes without being targeted, though a Houthi targeting error reportedly led to an attack on a China-linked oil tanker in March 2024. The Houthis have previously said they would avoid targeting ships linked to China, which purchases 90 percent of Iranian oil exports, helping counter sanctions imposed on the country’s energy sector.
U.S. Previously Sanctioned China-based Companies for Aiding Houthis: On October 2, 2024, the United States sanctioned two China-based companies for providing “dual use components” to the Houthis that would advance their “domestic missile and UAV production efforts.” Shenzhen Rion Technology Co., Ltd. and Shenzhen Jinghon Electronics Limitedwere designated for having materially supported the Houthis, including shipping “hundreds” of advanced missile-guidance system components.
FDD Expert Response
“We now have credible reports that China’s communist rulers are supplying arms to the Houthi Islamists in Yemen supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran. By now it should be apparent that the West is literally under fire from an Axis of Aggressors: Beijing, Moscow, Tehran and its proxies, and Pyongyang. They are determined to establish a new international order based on their power and their rules. The United States and its European allies have not responded effectively to this reality. Perhaps the incoming administration will do a better job.” — Clifford D. May, Founder & President
“As international scrutiny intensifies on the Houthis due to more than a year of attacks on Israel and commercial shipping, the group is likely seeking to diversify its supply chain to sustain its expanding missile capabilities. Additionally, the Houthis have learned crucial lessons from more than a decade of valuable battlefield experience. They have learned that exerting pressure on key states in the region, especially the affluent Persian Gulf states with their vast oil and gas reserves, may create significant global economic instability.” — Joe Truzman, Senior Research Analyst and Editor at FDD’s Long War Journal
“China’s assistance to the Houthis is yet another signal that Beijing is actively contributing to global chaos and instability. From Chinese firms allegedly providing drones to Russia for its war in Ukraine to now providing support to a proxy group conducting strikes against Israel and the United States, China is cementing its status as an arsenal for autocracies.” — Jack Burnham, Research Analyst
COMMENT – I’m really glad to see that FDD has done the work to research this… but this really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.
Beijing is openly waging proxy wars against us in Europe and the Middle East. The fact that leaders still can’t bring themselves to disentangle their economies from the PRC suggests that the CCP can conduct these efforts without much fear that there will be significant consequences.
Case in point…
Just this week, Rachel Reeves, the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, made her first pilgrimage to Beijing to try to boost economic and financial ties between the two countries.
Immediately following Reeves’ meeting with Vice Premier He Lifeng, His Majesty’s Treasury released a lengthy policy paper titled, “2025 UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue: policy outcomes.”
In this 16-page, 6400-word “policy paper,” guess how many times the word “Ukraine” is mentioned… once, in this sentence:
“Both sides highlight the human suffering and negative added impacts of the war in Ukraine with regards to global food and energy security, supply chains, macro-financial stability, inflation and growth.”
Guess how many times the “Red Sea” is mentioned… also once, in this sentence:
“Both sides are concerned about the risks to global supply chains in the Red Sea.”
The term “human rights” is mentioned twice:
“Both sides are committed to upholding the UN Charter and international law, and all three pillars of the UN system, namely peace and security, development, and human rights.”
“Both sides recognise and respect the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and also commit to contribute to sustainable development goal 8.”
Here are some words and terms that are never mentioned: “cyber,” “Intellectual property theft,” “espionage,” “undersea cables”, “Russia,” “Taiwan,” and “the Philippines.”
Do you want to guess how many times the word “cooperation” appears?
49 times.
The word “climate” appears 20 times.
The word “dialogue” appears 21 times.
I think you get a sense of the UK Government’s priorities.
While reading it, I had to go back and check the date it was published a few times. I could have sworn I was reading a document from a decade ago… perhaps put out by George Osborne, the Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer during David Cameron’s so-called “golden era” UK-China relations.
Reading this gives you the impression that the UK is an ESG-obsessed financial industry with a country attached.
The entire document is an ode to the bygone age of unfettered globalization, in which “[b]oth sides emphasise the importance of supporting the rules-based multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organization (WTO) at its core.”
[I don’t know how the UK Treasury folks could write that line with a straight face]
9. New York’s Chinese Dissidents Thought He Was an Ally. He Was a Spy.
Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, New York Times Magazine, January 10, 2025
Shujun Wang seemed to be a Chinese democracy activist, but an F.B.I. investigation showed just how far China will go to repress citizens abroad.
One morning in late July last year, Shujun Wang shuffled into a courtroom at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn, leaning on his cane as he made his way to the defense table. Settling into a seat next to his lawyers, the 76-year-old Chinese American scholar smoothed his jet-black hair and adjusted his tie, whose red-and-blue pattern, set against his white shirt, vaguely suggested the American flag. After an exchange of greetings with his Chinese interpreter, he surveyed the courtroom with an amused expression, almost beaming at the visitors’ gallery. For someone facing trial on charges of working as an illegal agent for China, Wang looked remarkably cheerful. It was hard to say if he was oblivious to the gravity of his situation or pleased to be the center of attention.
The government accused Wang of having led a double life for years. A historian who migrated to the United States from China in 1994, he had written many books on military and naval history, including one about the heroism of the U.S. Navy in the Pacific during the Second World War. Starting in the mid-2000s, he had also been a member of a community of Chinese dissidents in the United States who oppose the Chinese Communist Party and push for democratic reforms in China. Wang helped organize events and rallies in the greater New York area to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre and protest the authoritarianism of the Chinese government. In 2006, he founded, with a group of prominent dissidents, a nonprofit in Flushing, Queens, called the Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang Memorial Foundation, with the mission of promoting democracy in China. Warm and affable, Wang became a recognizable face within the organization, managing its media relations and working to publicize the foundation’s activities in New York’s Chinese-language newspapers.
Secretly, according to federal investigators, he was working for China’s Ministry of State Security. Evidence presented at trial by federal prosecutors from the Eastern District of New York would show that at the direction of his handlers in the M.S.S., Wang spied on Chinese dissidents in Flushing and the New York area for years. His enthusiastic participation in the Chinese pro-democracy movement appeared to have been a ploy to gain proximity to its leaders and activists and to collect information about them for the ministry. United States authorities say the Chinese government uses such intelligence to intimidate and silence dissidents overseas.
Like other authoritarian regimes, China’s communist government is anxious about potential challenges to its power. Since becoming president in 2013, Xi Jinping has emphasized the need for China to take lessons from the collapse of the Soviet Union, which Chinese scholars have attributed in part to ideological decay brought on by Western influence. An internal directive of the Chinese Communist Party released that year warned its workers to remain vigilant against “Western constitutional democracy” and other corrupting ideas. The document also claimed that the West was trying to engineer “color revolutions” in China — a term for popular uprisings in several former Soviet republics during the 2000s that came to be known by colorful names like the Rose Revolution in Georgia and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.
How intensely China has sought to monitor and counter such perceived threats can be gauged by a series of cases of Chinese spying and influence-peddling in the United States that have come to light in recent years. In November, a man named John Chen was sentenced to 20 months in prison for acting as an unregistered agent for China and bribing an undercover officer posing as an I.R.S. official in a plot directed against U.S.-based practitioners of Falun Gong, a movement that the Chinese government regards as a threat. In September, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment against Linda Sun — a former aide to Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York — charging her with, among other allegations, failing to register as an agent of the Chinese government, from which she received financial benefits amounting to millions of dollars. Sun is accused of using her position to further China’s interests. At the bidding of Chinese officials, for example, she is said to have removed any mention of the plight of China’s Uyghurs from a 2021 speech by Hochul, who was New York’s lieutenant governor at the time. She is also accused of blocking Taiwanese government officials from communicating with Hochul and other senior New York State officers.
Just shy of two weeks earlier, in August, the F.B.I. arrested Tang Yuanjun — a 67-year-old Chinese American living in Flushing — and charged him with spying on Chinese dissident groups in the United States. Like Shujun Wang, Tang had been a part of the Chinese pro-democracy movement for years. He had been imprisoned in China for opposing the Communist Party before defecting to Taiwan in the early 2000s and subsequently being granted asylum in the United States. But in 2019, after seeking permission from Chinese authorities to visit his recently incapacitated parents in China, Tang began — at the direction of M.S.S. officers, according to the Justice Department — to collect information about dissidents. In return, Tang was granted a visa in early 2022 and visited China later that year, by which time his mother had died. In a letter written to pro-democracy activists shortly after his arrest, Tang described the reunion with his father and brother back home as “unforgettable.”
These recent cases follow the unsealing of a federal complaint in April 2023 in which two Chinese Americans were charged with operating a clandestine “police station” in New York out of a building in Chinatown. Last month, one of these men pleaded guilty in a federal court in Brooklyn. The Manhattan “police station” closed down in October 2022 as the F.B.I. was preparing to search its premises. According to one human rights N.G.O., it was one of 102 such outposts that Chinese security agencies established in 53 countries between 2016 and 2022. The Chinese government denies these were police stations; at a news conference in Ottawa in May 2023, a Chinese spokesman described them as service centers to help overseas Chinese nationals renew their driver’s licenses in the wake of pandemic travel restrictions.
Officials at the Justice Department have described these Chinese intelligence operations as attempts to export to the U.S. the repressive tactics that the government employs inside its own borders. In a statement issued after Wang’s indictment in May 2022, Matthew G. Olsen, assistant attorney general of the department’s national-security division, called the charges brought against Wang a reflection of “the Justice Department’s unwavering commitment to hold accountable all those who violate our laws in seeking to suppress dissenting voices within the United States and to prevent our residents from exercising their lawful rights.”
10. Supreme Court Seems Poised to Uphold Law That Could Ban TikTok
Adam Liptak, New York Times, January 10, 2025
The justices are expected to rule quickly in the case, which pits national security concerns about China against the First Amendment’s protection of free speech.
The Supreme Court seemed inclined on Friday to uphold a law that could effectively ban TikTok, the wildly popular app used by half of the country.
Even as several justices expressed concerns that the law was in tension with the First Amendment, a majority appeared satisfied that it was aimed not at TikTok’s speech rights but rather at its ownership, which the government says is controlled by China. The law requires the app’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell TikTok by Jan. 19. If it does not, the law requires the app to be shut down.
The government offered two rationales for the law: combating covert disinformation from China and barring it from harvesting private information about Americans. The court was divided over the first justification. But several justices seemed troubled by the possibility that China could use data culled from the app for espionage or blackmail.
“Congress and the president were concerned,” Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said, “that China was accessing information about millions of Americans, tens of millions of Americans, including teenagers, people in their 20s.”
That data, he added, could be used “over time to develop spies, to turn people, to blackmail people, people who a generation from now will be working in the F.B.I. or the C.I.A. or in the State Department.”
Noel J. Francisco, a lawyer for TikTok, said he did not dispute those risks. But he said the government could address them by means short of effectively ordering the app to, as he put it, “go dark.”
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. appeared unpersuaded.
“Are we supposed to ignore the fact that the ultimate parent is, in fact, subject to doing intelligence work for the Chinese government?” Chief Justice Roberts asked.
The court has put the case on an exceptionally fast track, and it is likely to rule by the end of next week. Its decision will be among the most consequential of the digital age, as TikTok has become a cultural phenomenon powered by a sophisticated algorithm that provides entertainment and information touching on nearly every facet of American life.
COMMENT – Fingers crossed!
We should all start keeping an eye on Lemon8.
This is another app owned by ByteDance which is emerging as the TikTok alternative.
ByteDance is pushing the app hard across TikTok as the deadline looms for ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban in the United States.
It should surprise no one that Lemon8 is also headquartered in Singapore and most interestingly it shares the same address as TikTok for its headquarters… how convenient.
Authoritarianism
11. China’s Biggest-Ever Bid for Foreign Tourists Is Falling Flat
Jinshan Hong, Josh Xiao, K Oanh Ha, and Danny Lee, Bloomberg, January 8, 2025
The billions of dollars in spending that an unprecedented lifting of visa requirements could have brought simply hasn’t materialized.
China took the unprecedented step of easing visa requirements for scores of countries in 2024, now throwing open its doors to 1.9 billion would-be visitors. Only a fraction of the hoped-for tourists have come.
The influx of foreign tourists and the billions of dollars in spending they could have brought simply hasn’t materialized, a Bloomberg analysis shows. Visitors from the US and most of Western Europe — where political and trade spats with Beijing abound — stayed away. Instead, tourists from nearby Asian countries and less-developed markets came calling.
12. How the Chinese Communist Party manages public opinion
Qian Lang, RFA, January 9, 2025
The party’s ‘public opinion guidance’ system includes tightly controlling the media but also populating social media platforms with views seen as ‘correct’ by Beijing.
Cai Qi, a high-ranking Communist Party official, has called on China’s propaganda workers to “cultivate mainstream public opinion” in a way that rallies the people to “work together in unity,” particularly when it comes to positive economic news.
Cai, a member of the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee under General Secretary Xi Jinping, wants the party to “forge souls” by “upholding the correct orientation of public opinion and strengthening economic propaganda.”
Speaking at the National Propaganda Ministers' Conference on Jan. 4, Cai also called for “a more effective international communication system” to spread Beijing’s ideas to the rest of the world.
A senior journalist who gave only the surname Gao for fear of reprisals said the conference was largely concerned with whitewashing the “hellscape” that is the current economic situation.
“That includes the economic downturn, the fact that they spent so much trying to prop up the stock market, only to have it fall again, and also the continual occurrence of social revenge incidents and car attacks,” Gao told RFA Mandarin in a recent interview.
They believe they can achieve this by manipulating public opinion, he said.
What is public opinion management?
The idea that the Communist Party should ensure that all media are on message when covering breaking news and major events can be traced back to documents in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, criticizing ousted Premier Zhao Ziyang for telling the media it can “open up a little bit.”
This openness was blamed for allowing all manner of public criticism of the government to emerge in state media, and blamed for enabling the protests that were quashed in a bloody crackdown by the People’s Liberation Army on the night of June 3, 1989.
The idea has become a dominant one under Xi, who ordered the media to align themselves completely with the ruling party in a speech made on a landmark visit to several state media outlets.
According to Xi, the party’s news and public opinion mission is to provide guidance, to serve the “overall situation” -- the party’s grip on power -- and to unite and influence the people. It should also communicate with the rest of the world.
“All news reports must adhere to the correct orientation,” he said in his 2016 speech. “Any news report has an orientation. What to report, what not to report, and how to report it all involve positions, views, and attitudes.”
“When a piece of news appears in the newspaper, how much attention will the masses pay? What kind of impact will it have on the people? Will it have a negative impact on social stability and development? These should be the primary considerations,” he said.
Xi is adamant that only views and information that serve the party’s interests should appear in state media outlets, but he has also expanded that policy since taking power in 2012 to cover anything that is posted online, including private posts and comments.
How does the party manage public opinion?
The Central Propaganda Department has long managed state media content with behind-the-scenes phone calls and other directives to editorial staff.
Since the advent of the internet and social media, the government has invested massively in monitoring and policing everything that is posted online, in addition to the Great Firewall of blocks and filters that prevents unauthorized overseas content from being viewed by China’s 900 million internet users.
In 2014, Xinhua announced a certified training course for the “50-cent army” of online propagandists who are paid to manipulate public opinion by posting and retweeting comments favorable to the government.
The exact numbers of people grouped under the “50-cent army” is unknown, and many are employed by separate organizations under different job titles.
But they share the same role: to try to swing the opinions of China’s increasingly frustrated citizens in Beijing’s favor, posting pro-government opinions and trying to deflect criticism and dissent.
Provincial governments have followed suit, with Guangdong rolling out a program to train 10,000 “opinion-makers” in 2012 following mass protests in the rebel village of Wukan.
And it’s not just official bodies that do this. A 2022 directive from the Cyberspace Administration made commercial service providers responsible for monitoring and deleting comments on their platforms, as well as requiring them to hold personal details about users and to take action against anyone causing trouble.
The government is also extending its “patriotic education” program in schools and universities to ensure that the nation’s young people are fully versed in politically “correct” views from kindergarten upwards.
Is everything on the Chinese internet written by the government?
No, and the authorities have been cracking down in recent weeks on “trolls” who post clickbait, false advertising and controversial content to drive traffic to a site for financial gain.
Such “trolls” have been engaging in “homogenous copywriting,” manipulation of comments, hyping up search terms and giving a fake sense of popularity for online stores and celebrities, according to the Cyberspace Administration.
Many pro-government commentators -- known as “little pinks” -- aren’t paid at all, but are expressing a nationalistic fervor they learned from an early age.
While their strident online activity demonstrates to the world that their Communist Party credentials are in the right place, their more extreme comments are sometimes frowned upon by officials if they get in the way of policy priorities.
The authorities are also concerned that Chinese internet users continue look for information on social media that goes beyond what the official media are permitted to report -- people also use circumvention software to get around blocked overseas sites like X and Facebook, where China-related news is more freely available.
The party propaganda machine regards any information it didn’t approve as a “rumor,” and goes to considerable lengths to stop anyone taking on the role of citizen journalist, most notably during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan, when police detained and later jailed several bloggers for reporting from the front line.
The Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission is currently setting up a unified “rumor-refuting mechanism” to “proactively respond to social concerns and authoritatively refute rumors,” which it described at a meeting in December 2024 as “an important measure to maintain online political and ideological security.”
13. China-linked shipowner denies Taiwan accusation of damaging undersea cable
James Pomfret and Yimou Lee, Reuters, January 8, 2025
14. Xi Says China Must Win ‘Tough, Protracted’ Fight Against Graft
Li Liu, Bloomberg, January 6, 2025
15. What really happened in Wuhan
Matt Ridley, Spiked, December 31, 2024
16. The contradictions of Xi Jinping
James Kynge, Financial Times, January 8, 2025
17. Macau independent media outlet pulls article about security measures ahead of Xi Jinping visit
James Lee, Hong Kong Free Press, December 19, 2024
The report was titled “Macau on alert as Xi Jinping visits tomorrow, vending machines and motorcycle parking spaces closed off, netizens laugh: ‘Every tree a soldier’.”
An independent media outlet in Macau has taken down a report about various facilities being shut down before Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s three-day visit to the territory to mark the 25th anniversary of its handover to Beijing.
Online news outlet All About Macau on Tuesday evening issued an apology for taking down the report, just a day before Xi arrived in the territory. Xi will attend the inauguration of Macau’s sixth government on Friday, and swear in former top judge Sam Hou-fai as its leader.
The report was titled “Macau on alert as Xi Jinping visits tomorrow, vending machines and motorcycle parking spaces closed off, netizens laugh: ‘Every tree a soldier’.”
The comment refers to a Chinese idiom literally meaning mistaking trees and grass for enemy soldiers – referring to a state of panic and hypervigilance.
A Thursday morning check showed the link to the report displaying a “page not found” error.
‘Unavoidable’
The report was taken down “due to ‘unavoidable’ reasons,” according to All About Macau’s statement. “We apologise to our readers for [removing the report]. We will continue to follow up on the 25th anniversary of the handover and President Xi Jinping’s visit to Macau,” the statement read.
The paper declined to comment when approached by HKFP to clarify what was meant by “unavoidable” reasons, and whether the deletion was ordered by Macau authorities.
18. China risks catastrophic errors if anti-corruption crackdown eases, Xi Jinping warns
Dewey Sim, South China Morning Post, January 6, 2025
19. China's Xi cites corruption as 'biggest threat' to ruling Communist party
Ryan Woo, Reuters, January 6, 2025
20. China to Restrict Exports of Lithium Battery Technologies
Lu Yutong and Han Wei, Caixin, January 3, 2025
21. China Imposes Trade Ban on 28 U.S. Defense Contractors
Du Zhihang and Han Wei, Caixin, January 3, 2025
22. Authorities arrest influential Tibetan internet entrepreneur
RFA, December 16, 2024
Sonam Choedrub’s detention comes amid a crackdown on Tibetans who have large online followings.
23. Chinese venture capitalists force failed founders on to debtor blacklist
Ryan McMorrow, Wenjie Ding, and Nian Liu, Financial Times, January 6, 2025
24. China’s powerhouse province renews ‘common prosperity’ pledge for 2035
Mandy Zuo, South China Morning Post, January 7, 2025
25. China-focused House committee to continue in new US Congress
Patricia Zengerle and Michael Martina, Reuters, January 6, 2025
26. Chinese censors target writers in nationwide crackdown on online erotic fiction
Zhu Liye, RFA, December 23, 2024
27. Fleeing Xi’s China: following the trail of migrants trying to reach Australia through Indonesia
Helen Davidson and Chi-hui Lin, The Guardian, December 18, 2024
A new and high-stakes escape route has been revealed, through the Indonesian archipelago to a smuggler’s boat
Paul, an Indonesian fisherman, says he was working as a rideshare driver in the dusty streets of Kupang in West Timor when he came across half a dozen Chinese men on the side of the road. They were wet up to their waist, carrying a backpack each, and spoke no Indonesian.
“They had walked from the beach, from the mangrove forest to the main road. They said they had difficulty with their boat engine,” Paul recalls. They asked for directions to a nearby hotel … and went on their way. Paul, a former people smuggler from Rote Island, called the police. “I used to bring people like this.”
Five of the group had flown into Bali on tourist visas and travelled to South Sulawesi, allegedly to meet people smugglers who would take them by boat to Australia, a few hundred miles away. But not far from Kupang the boat ran into trouble, a court would later hear. The passengers were dropped off and they waded ashore, then made their way through a coastal village to the main road where they met Paul.
Environmental Harms
28. The Billionaire Mining Magnate Who Bet Coal Had a Future—And Won Big
Jon Emont, Wall Street Journal, January 7, 2025
The U.K. closed its last coal-powered plant, but 76-year-old Low Tuck Kwong ignored naysayers and built a fortune from the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel.
Deep in Indonesian Borneo, workers laid asphalt on a new 60-mile road being built to transport coal from mines that have never been busier.
At one end of the road, crews built a 40-foot-high conveyor belt that whisks the coal over swampland to a new jetty on the Mahakam River. From there, the coal is funneled onto barges and floated downstream to a private port on the Pacific Ocean. Giant loading machines fill equally massive ships headed for China, India and the Philippines.
Coal, the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel, is booming, and few are profiting more than Low Tuck Kwong, the 76-year-old businessman behind one of Asia’s largest coal-mining complexes. Coal’s resurgence as a cheap and reliable energy source propelled him to a spot on Forbes’s 100 richest people. Low’s wealth is estimated to have swelled to $28 billion from $1 billion in the years since coal was assumed to be headed for the slag heap.
Some experts had concluded that coal consumption peaked in 2013 at 8 billion metric tons. It has since surpassed that level three years in a row. Indonesia, the world’s largest coal exporter, is shipping more of it than any nation in history. In December, the International Energy Agency abandoned projections that coal use would drop in coming years, saying that it will increase through at least 2027 to nearly 9 billion tons.
Western nations have turned away from coal, but emerging economies are taking up the slack, as more nations seek to industrialize, modernize and pull their people out of poverty. A swath of Asia that spans Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines to India, Bangladesh and Pakistan—together home to 30% of humanity—has increased the share of its power supply that comes from coal.
By comparison, the U.K., where coal helped fuel the industrial revolution two centuries ago, shut down its last coal-powered plant in September.
In China, energy demand is growing at such a pace that the amount of coal burned keeps climbing, despite a push toward renewable energy. The uptick defies expectations from a few years ago, when coal consumption in the world’s second-largest economy had stagnated.
Experts had predicted that Beijing’s solar and wind investments, in conjunction with a shift toward less energy-intensive industries, would herald an era of shrinking demand. Instead, coal use in 2021 surpassed the nation’s 2013 peak. China consumes 30% more coal than the rest of the world combined, the IEA reported in December.
For developing nations in Asia, coal is hard to beat. Regional supplies are plentiful, unlike oil and natural gas. In contrast to solar, wind and hydropower, it generates electricity regardless of the weather, providing a dependable anchor for the region’s expanding power grids. Severe droughts in China in 2022 and 2023 reduced hydropower generation, helping spur a coal surge.
COMMENT - I don’t understand why anyone would think that developing countries would choose to forgo the cheapest, most reliable, and plentiful energy source because it happens to be “dirty” from the perspective of progressive climate activists.
Citizens in countries across the Global South want an energy intensive lifestyle (desires that will only grow as CO2 emissions warm certain parts of the globe) and therefore they will seek out the cheapest alternatives to provide that energy.
Many glom onto the theory of an “energy transition” (popularized by folks like Vaclav Smil and his book, Energy Transitions: History, Requirements, Prospects, but also parroted by political leaders and climate activists). The “energy transition” theory goes something like this: old forms of energy get replaced, wholesale, by new ones. The job of “progressive” governments, scientists, and institutions is to accelerate the energy transition to prevent climate change.
Sounds familiar right?
Coal replaced wood, then oil replaced coal, then natural gas replaced oil, then renewables will replace natural gas. All of this fits nicely with ideas of progress, replace old/bad stuff with new/good stuff… a morality tale for energy systems.
Therefore, folks are shocked to see articles like this that seem to fly in the face of the energy transition theory.
But as Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, the French historian of technology and author of More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy conclusively shows, the whole energy transition theory is bunk. [For a quick read of Fressoz’s argument see this interview, “The term ‘energy transition’ must be dropped.”]
As humans we don’t “replace” the old/bad with the new/good, we just use more… of everything. The transition from wood to coal was to have taken place in the 19th Century… but we ended up using more wood for energy during the age of coal than any time before. And we use more wood now than at any point in the past (Europeans burn more wood today than they did in the 18th Century).
To quote Fressoz:
“The statistical observation is clear: we have never consumed as much wood as now, as much coal as now, as much hydraulic or wind power too... All energies are growing, and this is true for poor countries as well as for rich countries. Energies don’t replace each other, they don’t compete on a limited market – they add up and even reinforce each other. And this observation applies to almost all raw materials.”
Unless we, as a species, adopt anti-development policies (i.e. allow large swaths of humanity to starve and live in poverty), humans will continue to consume more of every energy source.
So instead of trying to figure out how to eradicate all fossil fuel consumption (a Sisyphean task, since as certain groups or nations try to stop using them, they become cheaper for others to use which expands and accelerates their use), perhaps we should focus our attention on mitigating the impacts of what increased energy consumption will do.
29. The Dangers of China’s Planned Megadam
Thomas J. Duesterberg, Wall Street Journal, January 2, 2025
30. A dam ignited rare Tibetan protests. They ended in beatings and arrests, BBC finds
Tessa Wong, BBC, December 23, 2024
Hundreds of Tibetans protesting against a Chinese dam were rounded up in a harsh crackdown earlier this year, with some beaten and seriously injured, the BBC has learnt from sources and verified footage.
Such protests are extremely rare in Tibet, which China has tightly controlled since it annexed the region in the 1950s. That they still happened highlights China's controversial push to build dams in what has long been a sensitive area.
Claims of the arrests and beatings began trickling out shortly after the events in February. In the following days authorities further tightened restrictions, making it difficult for anyone to verify the story, especially journalists who cannot freely travel to Tibet.
But the BBC has spent months tracking down Tibetan sources whose family and friends were detained and beaten. BBC Verify has also examined satellite imagery and verified leaked videos which show mass protests and monks begging the authorities for mercy.
31. Why China’s new climate targets matter for everyone
Xiaoying You, Semafor, January 7, 2025
China — the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter — is expected to announce new climate targets in the next few weeks, setting out its first roadmap for a decline in emissions.
Beijing’s announcement, one of the most important moments on this year’s global climate agenda, will have a profound impact on the world’s effort to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius: The country’s huge emissions volume is an obvious reason, but what is more significant is that this climate plan will extend to 2035 and into a period when China moves past peak emissions.
The targets are “incredibly important” in signalling how fast China intends to slash its emissions to achieve carbon neutrality before its self-imposed deadline of 2060, Lauri Myllyvirta, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, a US think tank, told me.
COMMENT – If the PRC can’t be truthful about its economic data, why would anyone assume that the PRC will be truthful about its carbon emissions?
Let me make a prediction: once the CCP has declared that its CO2 emissions are in decline, conveniently the data that Beijing provides to the world will “show” that the PRC’s CO2 emissions are in decline.
32. Distribution of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide in 2023, by select country
Statista, January 6, 2025
Foreign Interference and Coercion
33. China’s Growing Influence in Latin America
Diana Roy, Council on Foreign Relations, January 7, 2025
34. Trump’s Falsehoods Aside, China’s Influence Over Global Ports Raises Concerns
Ana Swanson, New York Times, January 2, 2025
The president-elect inaccurately said that Chinese soldiers operate the Panama Canal. But China’s strategic positions in shipping worry Washington officials.
It was a Christmas message that no one saw coming.
On Dec. 25, President-elect Donald J. Trump went on his social media platform, Truth Social, to wish a “Merry Christmas to all, including to the wonderful soldiers of China, who are lovingly, but illegally, operating the Panama Canal.”
Mr. Trump’s claim is false. The Panama Canal is operated by an agency of the Panamanian government, not by Chinese soldiers. In a news conference, President José Raúl Mulino of Panama disputed Mr. Trump’s statements, saying that there were “no Chinese in the canal” beyond those in transiting ships or at the visitor center.
“There is absolutely no Chinese interference or participation in anything that has to do with the Panama Canal,” Mr. Mulino said.
While Mr. Trump’s claim was inaccurate, the growing influence of Chinese companies and the Chinese government over shipping and global ports, including the Panama Canal, has become a concern for U.S. officials.
The Chinese government has invested heavily in building ports throughout the world. And given that China is the world’s biggest exporter, private Chinese companies now play a major role in shipping and port operations, giving them significant influence over the movement of global goods and strategic positions from which to monitor other countries’ activities.
Brian Hughes, a spokesman for the Trump-Vance transition team, said in a statement that “Chinese control of the Panama Canal absolutely poses a national security threat to the U.S.”
He pointed to congressional testimony last year by Gen. Laura J. Richardson, the head of U.S. Southern Command, that Chinese infrastructure investments serve as “points of future multi-domain access” for the Chinese military.
The Panama Canal was built by the United States at the beginning of the 20th century, but handed back to the Panamanian government in 1999, under the terms of an agreement struck by President Jimmy Carter. That decision has long been a source of consternation for some Republicans including his successor, President Ronald Reagan.
Much of the concern of U.S. officials in more recent times centers on two seaports at either end of the Panama Canal, a channel through which 40 percent of U.S. container traffic runs. Those seaports have been operated for decades by Hutchison Ports PPC, a division of CK Hutchison Holdings, a Hong Kong-based company.
CK Hutchison is a publicly listed conglomerate whose largest owner is a family of Hong Kong billionaires, not the Chinese government. But Beijing has extended its national security laws to Hong Kong, and the Chinese government has recently shown willingness to weaponize supply chains (something that Beijing also accuses the United States of doing).
That has U.S. officials on both sides of the aisle increasingly worried that the Chinese government could exert influence over private companies to shut down commercial and military shipments in a time of war.
In a congressional hearing in May, Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, the Democratic ranking member of the House Select Committee on China, questioned an expert who was testifying before Congress about whether the Chinese government could exert control over Panamanian ports to delay U.S. shipments, for example, in the event of a conflict over Taiwan.
“I share your concern,” Daniel Runde, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, told him. Mr. Runde said that the government of Panama controlled the entire canal, but that in an ideal world, Hong Kong-controlled companies would not be managing the ports next to them.
A recent report by Strategy Risks, an analytics firm, said that no direct links specific to Panama had been found between CK Hutchison and the Chinese Communist Party, but that the company’s involvement in managing the Panama Canal ports raised security concerns due to its parent company’s ties to China. As a Hong Kong company, CK Hutchison is subject to Chinese jurisdiction — including laws that can require companies to assist in intelligence gathering or military operations — and it has cooperated with various Chinese state-linked entities on business projects, the report said.
COMMENT – Given that the PRC operated a police station in Manhattan for a few years, a few dozen blocks away from the New York Times Building, perhaps we shouldn’t be so hasty in dismissing the PRC’s influence over Panama and what kind of security forces they might have there under the guise of a Hong Kong conglomerate.
I don’t think the New York Times has enough evidence to categorically denounce President-elect Trump’s statement as “false” and “inaccurate.”
The evidence that Ana Swanson relies on to make this claim is the statement by Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino at a press conference in which he said: there were “no Chinese in the canal” beyond those in transiting ships or at the visitor center and “[t]here is absolutely no Chinese interference or participation in anything that has to do with the Panama Canal.”
But just six paragraphs below that, Ana Swanson shows that President Mulino’s own statement isn’t true: a Chinese conglomerate (Hong Kong is a city in the PRC) runs the seaports on either side of the Panama Canal.
If I were an editor of this article, I would flag that President Mulino’s statement is “false” and “inaccurate.”
There are plenty of examples of the PRC issuing denials, as well as third countries issuing denials that involve PRC security forces, that we later discover are false.
Let’s examine the port of Ream in Cambodia… both Beijing and Phnom Penh have claimed for years that accusations that the PRC is building and operating a naval base at Ream are false.
The initial denials were that the PLA wasn’t building a naval base, despite the fact that “Chinese troops roamed the base in Cambodian fatigues” (and here).
Once that became untenable (satellites can take photos you know…), Beijing and Phnom Penh changed their story that it would be open to multiple militaries. The New York Times did a great expose on the whole building process, here.
Now that PLA Naval vessels have been parked pier side for months, the Cambodians claim that it isn’t a “permanent” naval base for the PLA Navy.
And of course, the PRC Government still denies all of this stuff in Cambodia.
The PRC’s influence over Panama has been growing for the past decade with extensive investments (aka bribery) in Panama. In addition to the operations of ports by CK Hutchinson Holdings, in 2016, the PRC-based Landbridge Group acquired control over Margarita Island Port in Colon on the northern terminus of the Panama Canal.
For those of you who pay attention to this stuff, the Landbridge Group may sound familiar… this is the same Landbridge Group that acquired a 99-year lease to the Port of Darwin in Australia, just after President Obama announced the rotation of U.S. Marines in and out of Darwin back in 2015.
Of course, Landbridge Group rejects as “myths and mistruths” any accusation that the PRC Government has influence over its operations.
A year after Landbridge made this purchase of the largest port in Panama, guess what happened?
The Panamanian President, Juan Carlos Varela, switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to the PRC, a decision that his two successors (Presidents Laurentino Cortizo and Jose Raul Mulino) have continued.
Landbridge has since turned their Margarita Island Port into the largest container port in the Caribbean and the largest free trade zone in the Western Hemisphere. To do the work of expanding the port, Landbridge brought in the PRC State-owned Enterprise, China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) and its subsidiary, China Harbor Engineering Company (CHEC). Both of these companies might also sound familiar, as they have been sanctioned by the U.S. Government for conducting construction work for the PLA in militarizing artificial islands in the South China Sea, as well as debarred by the World Bank for bribery.
To be honest, I don’t think we should wait until the PRC launches a war of aggression to figure out whether or not the PRC has gained control of the Panama Canal (via control over the Panamanian economy and its political system) and negating the Treaty Concerning the Permanent Neutrality and Operation of the Panama Canal.
I think we should be confronting these obvious problems now (instead of letting them fester) and force the Panamanians to live up to the spirit and letter of the Treaty. Beijing has clearly gained enormous influence over Panama AND the PRC has a long track record of both foreign interference and disregarding the concepts of an “international transit waterway.”
35. China Enticing Taiwanese to Live There Stirs Concern in Taipei
Yian Lee, Bloomberg, January 5, 2025
36. Manhattan man pleads guilty to helping establish secret Chinese police station in NYC
Philip Marcelo, Associated Press, December 18, 2024
A Manhattan resident has pleaded guilty to helping establish a secret police station in New York City on behalf of the Chinese government.
Chen Jinping, 60, entered the guilty plea on a single count of conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government in Brooklyn federal court on Wednesday.
Matthew Olsen, an assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice, said Chen admitted in court to his role in “audaciously establishing an undeclared police station” in Manhattan and attempting to conceal the effort when approached by the FBI.
“This illegal police station was not opened in the interest of public safety, but to further the nefarious and repressive aims of the PRC in direct violation of American sovereignty,” he said in statement, referring to the People’s Republic of China.
Prosecutors say Chen and his co-defendant, Lu Jianwang, opened and operated a local branch of China’s Ministry of Public Security in Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood starting in early 2022.
37. China’s drive to give Taiwanese visitors local IDs alarms Taipei
Kathrin Hille, Financial Times, January 5, 2025
38. United Front: China's 'magic weapon' caught in a spy controversy
Koh Ewe and Laura Bicker, BBC, December 18, 2024
The People's Republic of China has a "magic weapon", according to its founding leader Mao Zedong and its current president Xi Jinping.
It is called the United Front Work Department - and it is raising as much alarm in the West as Beijing's growing military arsenal.
Yang Tengbo, a prominent businessman who has been linked to Prince Andrew, is the latest overseas Chinese citizen to be scrutinised - and sanctioned - for his links to the UFWD.
The existence of the department is far from a secret. A decades-old and well-documented arm of the Chinese Communist Party, it has been mired in controversy before. Investigators from the US to Australia have cited the UFWD in multiple espionage cases, often accusing Beijing of using it for foreign interference.
Beijing has denied all espionage allegations, calling them ludicrous.
So what is the UFWD and what does it do?
'Controlling China's message'
The United Front - originally referring to a broad communist alliance - was once hailed by Mao as the key to the Communist Party's triumph in the decades-long Chinese Civil War.
After the war ended in 1949 and the party began ruling China, United Front activities took a backseat to other priorities. But in the last decade under Xi, the United Front has seen a renaissance of sorts.
Xi's version of the United Front is broadly consistent with earlier incarnations: to "build the broadest possible coalition with all social forces that are relevant", according to Mareike Ohlberg, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund.
On the face of it, the UFWD is not shadowy - it even has a website and reports many of its activities on it. But the extent of its work - and its reach - is less clear.
While a large part of that work is domestic, Dr Ohlberg said, "a key target that has been defined for United Front work is overseas Chinese".
Today, the UFWD seeks to influence public discussions about sensitive issues ranging from Taiwan - which China claims as its territory - to the suppression of ethnic minorities in Tibet and Xinjiang.
It also tries to shape narratives about China in foreign media, target Chinese government critics abroad and co-opt influential overseas Chinese figures.
"United Front work can include espionage but [it] is broader than espionage," Audrye Wong, assistant professor of politics at the University of Southern California, tells the BBC.
"Beyond the act of acquiring covert information from a foreign government, United Front activities centre on the broader mobilisation of overseas Chinese," she said, adding that China is "unique in the scale and scope" of such influence activities.
China has always had the ambition for such influence, but its rise in recent decades has given Beijing the ability to exercise it.
Since Xi became president in 2012, he has been especially proactive in crafting China's message to the world, enouraging a confrontational "wolf warrior" approach to diplomacy and urging his country's diaspora to "tell China's story well".
The UFWD operates through various overseas Chinese community organisations, which have vigorously defended the Communist Party beyond its shores. They have censored anti-CCP artwork and protested at the activities of Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. The UFWD has also been linked to threats against members of persecuted minorities abroad, such as Tibetans and Uyghurs.
But much of the UFWD's work overlaps with other party agencies, operating under what observers have described as "plausible deniability".
It is this murkiness that is causing so much suspicion and apprehension about the UFWD.
When Yang appealed against his ban, judges agreed with the then secretary of state's report that Yang "represented a risk to national security" - citing the fact that he downplayed his ties with the UFWD as one of the reasons that led them to that conclusion.
Yang, however, maintains that he has not done anything unlawful and that the spy allegations are "entirely untrue".
Cases like Yang's are becoming increasingly common. In 2022, British Chinese lawyer Christine Lee was accused by the MI5 of acting through the UFWD to cultivate relationships with influential people in the UK. The following year, Liang Litang, a US citizen who ran a Chinese restaurant in Boston, was indicted for providing information about Chinese dissidents in the area to his contacts in the UFWD.
And in September, Linda Sun, a former aide in the New York governor's office, was charged with using her position to serve Chinese government interests - receiving benefits, including travel, in return. According to Chinese state media reports, she had met a top UFWD official in 2017, who told her to "be an ambassador of Sino-American friendship".
It is not uncommon for prominent and successful Chinese people to be associated with the party, whose approval they often need, especially in the business world.
But where is the line between peddling influence and espionage?
"The boundary between influence and espionage is blurry" when it comes to Beijing's operations, said Ho-fung Hung, a politics professor at Johns Hopkins University.
This ambiguity has intensified after China passed a law in 2017 mandating Chinese nationals and companies to co-operate with intelligence probes, including sharing information with the Chinese government - a move that Dr Hung said "effectively turns everyone into potential spies".
The Ministry of State Security has released dramatic propaganda videos warning the public that foreign spies are everywhere and "they are cunning and sneaky ".
Some students who were sent on special trips abroad were told by their universities to limit contact with foreigners and were asked for a report of their activities on their return.
And yet Xi is keen to promote China to the world. So he has tasked a trusted arm of the party to project strength abroad.
And that is becoming a challenge for Western powers - how do they balance doing business with the world's second-largest economy alongside serious security concerns?
Wrestling with the long arm of Beijing
Genuine fears over China's overseas influence are playing into more hawkish sentiments in the West, often leaving governments in a dilemma.
Some, like Australia, have tried to protect themselves with fresh foreign interference laws that criminalise individuals deemed to be meddling in domestic affairs. In 2020, the US imposed visa restrictions on people seen as active in UFWD activities.
An irked Beijing has warned that such laws - and the prosecutions they have spurred - hinder bilateral relations.
"The so-called allegations of Chinese espionage are utterly absurd," a foreign ministry spokesperson told reporters on Tuesday in response to a question about Yang. "The development of China-UK relations serves the common interests of both countries."
Some experts say that the long arm of China's United Front is indeed concerning.
"Western governments now need to be less naive about China's United Front work and take it as a serious threat not only to national security but also to the safety and freedom of many ethnic Chinese citizens," Dr Hung says.
But, he adds, "governments also need to be vigilant against anti-Chinese racism and work hard to build trust and co-operation with ethnic Chinese communities in countering the threat together."
Last December, Di Sanh Duong, a Vietnam-born ethnic Chinese community leader in Australia, was convicted of planning foreign interference for trying to cosy up to an Australian minister. Prosecutors argued that he was an "ideal target" for the UFWD because he had run for office in the 1990s and boasted ties with Chinese officials.
Duong's trial had centred around what he meant when he said the inclusion of the minister at a charity event would be beneficial to "us Chinese" - did he mean the Chinese community in Australia, or mainland China?
In the end, Duong's conviction - and a prison sentence - raised serious concerns that such broad anti-espionage laws and prosecutions can easily become weapons for targeting ethnic Chinese people.
"It's important to remember that not everyone who is ethnically Chinese is a supporter of the Chinese Communist Party. And not everyone who is involved in these diaspora organisations is driven by fervent loyalty to China," Dr Wong says.
"Overly aggressive policies based on racial profiling will only legitimise the Chinese government's propaganda that ethnic Chinese are not welcome and end up pushing diaspora communities further into Beijing's arms."
COMMENT - This is a pretty useful primer by the BBC on the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front efforts… one wonders if Rachel Reeves read this before her trip to the PRC this week.
Human Rights and Religious Persecution
39. Uyghur intellectual died while in custody of Chinese authorities
Mehray Abral, RFA, December 23, 2024
Ibrahim Dawut had been an advocate for Uyghur language education, but died 2 months after his arrest.
A Uyghur intellectual and educational activist, who was arrested the night before his daughter’s wedding five years ago, died only two months later while in detention, two people familiar with the situation told Radio Free Asia.
Ibrahim Dawut was a former chemistry teacher at a high school in Kashgar, in China’s far-western Xinjiang region, who advocated for classes in the Uyghur region to be taught in Uyghur.
He an outspoken critic of China’s bilingual education system in which some classes were taught in Mandarin and others in Uyghur.
In 2019, Chinese authorities arrested him amid a sweep of mass arrests of mostly Ugyhur men. While the specific charges were unclear, he was taken away because of “his influence on society in Kashgar,” according to a source who had just recently moved to Europe.
Dawut had been tailed by police since 2016 and had been called in for interrogation four or five times, she said.
“The police took him away from his family on the night of July 28th, 2019, and we did not even know what had happened and why they took him,” said the source who requested anonymity for safety reasons.
Dawut was in his late 50s at that time, and his daughter was to be married the following day, she said.
“We looked for him for around 5-10 days and learned that the police arrested around 500-600 men, including him,” the source said.
Dead and buried
On Oct. 6, authorities informed Dawut’s family that he had died, she said, but buried him without showing his body to his family, prompting enormous outrage among his relatives.
The police made his family sign a document which said he died from a heart attack, and they did not allow anyone to visit his tomb, she said.
“When I asked the reason for his death, no one said anything,” she said.
His death was confirmed by a staff member of the No. 6 High School in Kashgar, where Dawut had worked, but the person said he didn’t know any details.
“He died several years ago. As far as I know, he died. The reason for his death is unknown,” he said. “Because details of his death were not reported to the school, we will not intervene in this type of case directly.”
40. Tibetan champion of language preservation dies after release
RFA, December 23, 2024
Gonpo Namgyal, arrested with over 20 others, appeared to have been tortured.
A Tibetan village chief who was detained in May for championing Tibetan language preservation, died three days after his release on Dec. 15, with electrical burn and torture marks found on his body during the cremation service, suggesting he was abused in police custody, two sources said.
Gonpo Namgyal, leader of Ponkor Village in Qinghai province’s Dharlag county, or Dari in Chinese, was arrested with the abbot of Shangtoe Monastery and over 20 other Tibetans in May for engaging in activities to promote the preservation of Tibetan language and culture, said the two sources who spoke on condition of anonymity due to safety concerns.
“The electric burn and torture marks on Gonpo Namgyal show he suffered severe abuse and repeated torture in the past seven months under Golok prefecture police,” said the first source, referring to Golog Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, where the county is situated.
The arrest and detainment of Namgyal and the others come amid heightened efforts by the Chinese government to limit the use of the Tibetan language and to expand the use of Mandarin among Tibetans.
Human rights groups and Tibetans say they fear the measures will result in the eradication of Tibetan language, culture and identity.
COMMENT – It appears that Radio Free Asia is the only media outlet that reports consistently on things like the death of Uyghur or Tibetan activists due to torture at the hands of PRC officials.
41. Chinese police detain artist who supported democracy in Hong Kong
Qian Lang, RFA, January 9, 2025
Fei Xiaosheng, once a familiar figure at Beijing’s Songzhuang Artists' Village, was about to leave the country.
Chinese authorities in Xi’an have detained Fei Xiaosheng, a prominent musician and performance artist who had publicly supported the Hong Kong democracy movement, his friends and fellow artists told RFA Mandarin.
Xi’an police caught up with Fei, 55, on Tuesday, and are now holding him the Beilin Detention Center, according to associates who knew him as part of the Songzhuang Artists' Village scene of dissident and fringe artists in Beijing.
His detention comes as the ruling Communist Party continues to crack down on artists and other creative workers whose work or views are seen as potentially subversive.
Authorities are also holding Gao Zhen, one of the Gao Brothers artistic duo, on suspicion of ‘insulting revolutionary heroes and martyrs,’ after seizing satirical artworks depicting Chairman Mao from his home studio.
“I was shocked to hear that Songzhuang musician and artist Fei Xiaosheng has been detained,” fellow artist Du Yinghong, who now lives in Thailand, said in a social media post on Wednesday.
“Two years ago, we contacted each other a number of times, and he said he envied me [living outside of China],” he wrote. “A few days ago, we had a video call, and I found out he had applied for a passport, gone to Serbia, yet somehow returned to the cage that is our country.”
“He said he planned to leave again soon, and told me to add his European number, but then we heard the bad news that he’d been arrested,” Du wrote.
Devout Christian
Du later told RFA Mandarin that Fei is being held in Xi’an’s Beilin Detention Center, but that the authorities have yet to issue any official notification of his detention.
“This is part of their cultural cleansing operation, and a settling of scores,” he said, adding that Fei had likely been targeted for his public support for the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.
“Fei Xiaosheng is a devout Christian who once expressed solidarity and support for Hong Kong, and was detained for more than 40 days for this,” Du said.
42. Shein’s Lack of Answers on China Forced-Labor Concerns Angers U.K. Lawmakers
Shen Lu, Wall Street Journal, January 7, 2025
43. Dalai Lama says no reason to be angry at China over Tibet quake
RFA, January 9, 2025
Meanwhile, residents conduct their own rescue operations to find more survivors.
In a prayer ceremony for victims of Monday’s earthquake in Tibet, the Dalai Lama told listeners that because it was a natural disaster and “not caused by political tensions,” there was no reason to be angry with Chinese authorities.
The magnitude 7.1 quake left 126 people dead and destroyed 3,600 houses, according to Chinese officials — although Tibetans inside Tibet say the death toll probably exceeds 200.
“Even though it is in our human nature, do not feel dispirited or doomed by such disasters,” the Dalai Lama told more than 12,000 Buddhist clergy members gathered for a ceremony in southern India on Thursday. “It helps to think that events like earthquakes are natural disasters and not caused by political tensions.
“There is no reason to show anger or hatred towards China,” he said. “Hence, Tibetans inside and outside Tibet should develop a kinder, more compassionate heart.”
Still, Tibetans are disturbed that Chinese authorities have called off search-and-rescue operations, promoted the government’s official relief work, and banned them from sharing photos or videos about the quake on social media.
The earthquake was centered around Dingri and Shigatse, close to the border with Nepal, in the southern part of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, controlled by China.
COMMENT – The CCP hates to be reminded of this, but the Dalai Lama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989… it is worth reading the address he gave at the award ceremony.
The world would be a much better place if more folks followed his example.
44. BYD brought hundreds of Chinese workers to Brazil on irregular visas, inspector says
Fabio Teixeira and Luciana Novaes Magalhaes, Reuters, January 8, 2025
45. 3 of Hong Kong’s most-wanted women on their struggles in exile
Ha Syut, RFA, January 9, 2025
Democracy activists Anna Kwok, Frances Hui and Joey Siu all have huge bounties on their heads and can’t go home.
They grew up working hard, getting good grades and thinking they’d likely have careers, maybe marry and have kids, all in the city that formed them -- Hong Kong.
But now, Anna Kwok, Frances Hui and Joey Siu are all in exile in the United States, with no idea of when they will be able to return. Each has a bounty of HK$1 million (US$128,500) on their heads from the Hong Kong government, which has vowed to pursue them for the rest of their lives.
Kwok, executive director of international advocacy group the Hong Kong Democracy Council, was 26 when she was placed on the Hong Kong authorities' wanted list in July 2023.
Hong Kong Chief executive John Lee warned her and others on the list that they would be “pursued for life,” urging them “to give themselves up as soon as possible.”
Hui, the first Hong Kong democracy activist to receive asylum in the United States, and Siu, policy adviser to the London-based rights group Hong Kong Watch, were added to the list in December 2023.
46. Tibetan rights activist Tsering Tso detained for 2 weeks
RFA, December 17, 2024
She posted a video on social media of a police officer rejecting her application for a passport entry and exit permit.
A Tibetan rights activist, known for publicly criticizing Chinese authorities online, was detained for two weeks from Nov. 29 in Qinghai province on alleged charges of “spreading false information” and “causing trouble” on social media, two sources told Radio Free Asia.
Tsering Tso, 39, was held under “administrative detention” from Nov. 29 to Dec. 13 for her activities on social media by the Public Security Bureau in Trika county, known as Guide in Chinese, which said she fabricated facts and posted false statements online in November 2024.
Tso has been detained or harassed at least five times in the past five years, including for allegedly violating COVID-19 restrictions, spreading false information about Chinese officials, and violating internet regulations, sources told RFA.
More specifically, her most recent detention was related to a video Tso posted on social media around Nov. 20, where she filmed a police officer at the Public Security Bureau denying her application for a passport entry and exit permit, saying that she had been listed as having a criminal record.
Tso did not reveal any details about her treatment by officials during her detention and her current condition after release is unclear, the sources said.
Following her release on Dec. 13, a defiant Tso, however, posted on her personal WeChat account saying, “The laws in Qinghai province differ from those in China. Each time I report on the police force’s discriminatory practices and violations of their disciplinary rules, they exert their power to arbitrarily detain and pressure the whistleblower on false charges of creating trouble.”
Industrial Policies and Economic Espionage
47. China Consumer Prices Weaken Further, Adding to Deflation Worries
Bloomberg, January 8, 2025
Consumer inflation decelerated for fourth straight month
Persistent deflationary pressures threaten to curtail spending
China’s consumer inflation weakened further toward zero, decelerating for a fourth straight month in a setback for government efforts to stamp out deflation and revive demand with economic stimulus.
The consumer price index rose 0.1% in December from a year earlier, in line with the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Factory deflation extended into a 27th month, though the producer price index recorded a slower drop of 2.3%, the National Bureau of Statistics said Thursday.
The persistence of deflationary pressures in China is in stark contrast to other major economies, with elevated inflation risks flagged by US Federal Reserve officials and euro-area price growth accelerating last month. The worry for Beijing is that an entrenched cycle of price decreases threatens to hold back household spending for longer and damages corporate revenues so much that it stifles investment and leads to further salary cuts and layoffs.
“Improvement in domestic demand is a necessary condition for reflation,” Citigroup Inc. economists Ji Xinyu and Yu Xiangrong said in a note. “But we would keep our policy expectations realistic,” they said, adding that officials will likely continue to take a reactive approach.
In a more encouraging sign for policymakers, core CPI — which excludes volatile food and fuel prices — picked up for a third month to 0.4% from a year ago, reaching the highest level since July.
48. Record low yields prompt suspension of government bond purchases by China’s central bank
Alice Li, South China Morning Post, January 10, 2025
Analysts say decline in China’s 10-year bond yield last year put pressure on yuan-US dollar exchange rate.
China’s central bank has stepped up efforts to cool the bond market by temporarily suspending its open market purchases of government bonds, following recent warnings and heavy fines targeting bond-trading irregularities amid record low bond yields.
The suspension, which came into effect on Friday, was introduced because demand had exceeded supply in the government bond market recently, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said on its website, adding that its bond purchases would resume at a “proper time”, in accordance with the supply and demand situation.
Analysts said the temporary pause reflected the PBOC’s concern over the recent decline in government bond yields and aligned with its firmer stance in stabilising the yuan’s exchange rate, which was outlined at its fourth-quarter monetary policy meeting last year.
49. Bracing for the US-China trade war to come
Nigel Green, Asia Times, January 3, 2025
50. China’s markets take a fresh beating
The Economist, January 7, 2025
Authorities have responded by bossing around investors.
As Chinese markets came crashing down at the start of 2025, a joke circulated among investors: “What is the most valuable asset in the market?” The answer, they replied with a chuckle, was “retail investors”.
China’s stock markets are dominated by amateurs.
They buy high and sell low, helping the professionals eke out a living. They also seem to be in endless supply, no matter how much money is lost. “They get cut down like chives but grow right back,” goes a popular saying.
51. Taiwan foreign minister vows to work with Trump on 'democratic supply chain'
Thompson Chau, Nikkei Asia, January 7, 2025
52. China may be pressured to hasten economic stimulus in 2025, analysts say
Wataru Suzuki, Nikkei Asia, January 3, 2025
53. China approves the world’s most expensive infrastructure project
The Economist, January 2, 2025
54. China Lets Yuan Weaken After Defending 7.3 Per Dollar for Weeks
Bloomberg, January 2, 2025
55. China Expands Consumer Subsidies to Electronics to Spur Spending
Jiahui Huang, Wall Street Journal, January 3, 2025
56. Cracks appear in China stocks' fragile bull case
Hudson Lockett, Reuters, January 7, 2025
57. China Services Activity Gauge Signals Pickup in Growth
Wall Street Journal, January 5, 2025
58. Quiet on set: China’s film industry fights for relevance in changing media landscape
Daisy Wu, South China Morning Post, January 4, 2025
59. Chinese exchanges ask big fund managers to restrict stock selling
Reuters, January 6, 2025
60. China Expands Consumer Subsidies to Boost Spending as Tariff Risk Looms
Wall Street Journal, January 8, 2025
61. China to subsidise rice cookers and microwaves to boost consumption
Thomas Hale and Joe Leahy, Financial Times, January 7, 2025
62. Chinese airlines rush into Europe as western carriers retreat
Chan Ho-him and Philip Georgiadis, Financial Times, January 7, 2025
63. Wife of China’s fallen minister used shadow firms to wash dirty money, big data shows
William Zheng, South China Morning Post, January 8, 2025
Cyber & Information Technology
Noah Berman, The Wire China, January 9, 2025
The electronics firm has tried to separate its U.S. arm from China as national security concerns mount.
Could an internet router made by a Chinese company — and used in millions of American homes — harm U.S. national security? Three U.S. federal agencies are examining whether products sold by TP-Link could be used to facilitate cyberattacks. The probes could result in a ban that would upend the U.S. consumer router market, in which TP-Link is a top-two player.
The investigations into TP-Link follow years of increasing scrutiny of Chinese telecommunications firms, as hacking threats linked to state actors in China become more common in the U.S. and elsewhere.
In a bid to insulate itself, TP-Link has followed a well-trodden path: it is distancing itself from China. According to its website, the U.S.-registered TP-Link Systems has severed ties with China-based TP-Link Technologies, and now strongly denies any outside influence over its operations.
“As a company headquartered in the United States, no government — foreign or domestic — has access to and control over the design and production of our routers and other devices,” TP-Link Systems’s website says.
But a review of corporate records shows that TP-Link Systems is run by a co-founder of TP-Link Technologies, who divested from the Chinese entity less than a year ago. The U.S. company’s owner is 56-year-old Zhao Jianjun, a Chinese citizen also known as Jeffrey Chao, according to corporate records filed with the California Secretary of State. He took over as chief executive some time in the fall; in November, his name made its first appearance on a form filed by TP-Link’s U.S. entity. A man named Liu Yongsheng had been listed as the firm’s chief executive as recently as July.
Zhao founded TP-Link Technologies in 1996 with his brother, Zhao Jiaxing (Cliff Chao), in Shenzhen, China. After coming to dominate the Chinese market — in 2007 it touted itself as the country’s top market share holder and largest manufacturer of “home and small/medium business networking products” — it entered the United States. TP-Link USA Corp. was registered in Irvine, California the next year; it changed its name to TP-Link Systems six months ago, corporate records show.
The name change followed a larger shift in corporate structure. Until May of last year, the two brothers owned almost all of Shenzhen-based TP-Link Technologies, according to WireScreen. But on May 10, Zhao Jiaxing acquired his brother’s stake in the company.
65. China's 3rd semiconductor 'Big Fund' starts spending $47bn war chest
Shunsuke Tabeta, Nikkei Asia, January 7, 2025
66. China's Honor to enter Indonesian market amid iPhone ban
Cheng Ting-Fang, Nikkei Asia, January 7, 2025
67. TikTok Ban Thrusts Apple, Google into US-China Geopolitical Fray
Alexandra S. Levine and Sabrina Willmer, Bloomberg, January 6, 2025
68. Tencent loses billions in market value after the U.S. accuses the video game giant of links to China’s military
Nicholas Gordon, Fortune, January 7, 2025
69. Chip war: US may unveil new rules limiting China access to AI chips before Biden goes
Che Pan, South China Morning Post, January 4, 2025
70. Tech Industry Raises Concerns Over Upcoming Chip Export Rules
Qianer Lu, Information, January 6, 2025
71. US cloud services firm Akamai to cease CDN operations in China by June 2026
Yi Luo, South China Morning Post, January 7, 2025
72. China’s tech giants vow to fix algorithm issues amid government crackdown
Coco Feng, South China Morning Post, January 4, 2025
73. House of Huawei — inside China’s ‘most powerful company’
Eleanor Olcott, Financial Times, January 7, 2025
Military and Security Threats
74. Chinese Hackers Target Philippine President and Steal Military Data
Jaime Tarabay, Bloomberg, January 6, 2025
75. The maps that show how China’s military is squeezing Taiwan
Lucy Swan, The Guardian, January 7, 2025
76. Chinese navy shadows Canadian warship in East China Sea: media
RFA, January 9, 2025
Canada’s HMCS Ottawa was on an international deployment enforcing UN sanctions against North Korea.
Canadian naval vessel HMCS Ottawa sailing in the East China Sea was closely shadowed by a Chinese warship, according to a reporter from Canada’s CTV television network embedded on the ship.
The hours-long incident took place on Tuesday, when the Canadian Halifax-class patrol frigate with 250 crew on board was on its first international deployment of the year to enforce U.N. sanctions against North Korea, called Operation NEON.
Since then it has moved to Operation Horizon, a multi-nation effort to “promote peace, stability, and the rules-based international order,” according to a press release from the Canadian defense department.
The CTV National News reporter on board HMCS Ottawa said that less than 12 hours after leaving the south of Japan, “the Canadian crew on board quickly learned their ship was being closely watched.”
COMMENT – You know, if the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t like having navies like this patrolling in the East China Sea… the PRC, a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council, COULD use its own Navy to enforce UN sanctions against North Korea.
It refuses to do so because Beijing selectively interprets its responsibilities under the United Nations.
77. Sudden death of top Chinese military drone scientist shocks industry
Zhang Tong, South China Morning Post, January 8, 2025
78. Taiwan suspects China of latest attack on undersea cables
Tom Nicholson, Politico, January 5, 2025
79. U.S. Weighs Ban on Chinese Drones, Citing National Security Concerns
Ana Swanson, New York Times, January 2, 2025
80. How Chinese Hackers Graduated from Clumsy Corporate Thieves to Military Weapons
Dustin Volz, Aruna Viswanatha, Sarah Krouse, and Drew FitzGerald, Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2025
81. US adds Tencent, CATL to list of Chinese firms allegedly aiding Beijing's military
Michael Martina, David Shepardson, and Karen Freifeld, Reuters, January 7, 2025
82. Pentagon Labels More Chinese Companies as Military in Nature
James T. Areddy, Wall Street Journal, January 7, 2025
83. Pentagon to blacklist China’s largest EV battery and tech firms
Ellen Nakashima and Cate Cadell, Washington Post, January 8, 2025
One Belt, One Road Strategy
84. China's top diplomat heads to Africa as West's attention dwindles
Joe Cash, Reuters, January 5, 2025
85. Ecuador’s Evolving Engagement with the PRC
R. Evan Ellis, The Diplomat, December 24, 2024
86. Cabinet approves MoU with China to accelerate Mubarak Al-Kabeer Port
Kuwait Times, December 19, 2024
Opinion Pieces
87. The West's crisis of confidence
Justin Bassi, The Strategist, January 10, 2025
88. Know Your Rival, Know Yourself
Jude Blanchette and Ryan Hass, Foreign Affairs, January 7, 2025
Ever since the United States ascended to global leadership at the end of World War II, American leaders have regularly been stricken by bouts of anxiety that the country is in decline and losing ground to a rival. The Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of the Sputnik satellite prompted such fears, as did Soviet expansionism in the 1960s. In the 1980s, Washington was seized by the worry that American industry was incapable of competing with Japan’s economic juggernaut. Even in 1992, just after the Soviet Union collapsed, an article in the Harvard Business Review asked, “Is America in Decline?”
Today, this perception of decline is wedded to fears about new vulnerabilities in the U.S. democratic system and the burgeoning strength of China. Both of these concerns have merit. Although U.S. voters disagree on the sources of the threats to American democracy, they broadly express an anxiety that their country’s democratic institutions can no longer deliver on the American dream’s promises. An October Gallup poll found that three-quarters of Americans were dissatisfied with their country’s trajectory.
Meanwhile, the story goes, China is powering ahead, pairing ambitious economic and diplomatic agendas with a massive military expansion while the United States staggers under the weight of inequality, stagnating wages, legislative gridlock, political polarization, and populism. Over the past three decades, China has indeed established itself as the factory of the world, dominating global manufacturing and taking the lead in some advanced technology sectors. In 2023, China produced close to 60 percent of the world’s electric vehicles, 80 percent of its batteries, and over 95 percent of the wafers used in solar energy technology. That same year, it added 300 gigawatts of wind and solar power to its energy grid—seven times more than the United States. The country also exerts control over much of the mining and refining of critical minerals essential to the global economy and boasts some of the world’s most advanced infrastructure, including the largest high-speed rail network and cutting-edge 5G systems.
As the U.S. defense industry struggles to meet demand, China is producing weapons at an unprecedented pace. In the past three years, it has built over 400 modern fighter jets, developed a new stealth bomber, demonstrated hypersonic missile capabilities, and doubled its missile stockpile. The military analyst Seth Jones has estimated that China is now amassing weapons five to six times faster than the United States.
89. How to Win the New Cold War: To Compete with China, Trump Should Learn from Reagan
Niall Ferguson, Foreign Affairs, January 2025
Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign very deliberately echoed the one that Ronald Reagan ran in 1980. “Peace through strength” and “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” are the two Reagan slogans that are best remembered today. Less well known is that in 1980, Reagan used the slogan “Make America great again,” including in his convention acceptance speech.
Few commentators have paid much attention to these parallels, partly because the two presidents’ personalities are so different, partly because paying tribute to Reagan has long been a vacuous ritual for Republican candidates. But the analogy is instructive—and Trump should use it to his political and strategic advantage, remembering (as others have forgotten) what exactly “peace through strength” turned out to mean in the 1980s. Although it has become fashionable to credit the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev with ending the Cold War, in truth it was the Reagan administration that forced Moscow down a path of reform that ultimately led to drastic disarmament and the end of the Soviet empire in eastern Europe.
Reagan opened with strength. He boldly reasserted the American rejection of communism as an ideology and Soviet expansionism as a strategy. At the same time, he initiated a major increase in defense spending that sought to exploit U.S. technological superiority. When the right time came, however, he pivoted to a series of summit meetings with Gorbachev that ultimately produced stunning breakthroughs in both disarmament and European security.
As he makes clear in his book The Art of the Deal, Trump lives to bargain. “There are times when you have to be aggressive,” he writes of one real estate coup, “but there are also times when your best strategy is to lie back.” Trump firmly believes that, in a negotiation with a strong adversary, one must open aggressively—but then seek the crucial moment to settle. Today, the United States finds itself in at least the sixth year of a second cold war, this time with China, a confrontation that has become even more dangerous under the Biden administration. In his first term, Trump recognized the American need to contain China’s rise and convinced Washington policy elites, despite their initial skepticism, that this required both a trade war and a tech war. In his second term, he should once again begin by piling on the pressure with a fresh show of American strength. But this should not be an end in itself. His ultimate goal ought to be like Reagan’s: to get to a deal with Washington’s principal adversary that reduces the nightmarish risk of World War III—a risk inherent in a cold war between two nuclear-armed superpowers.
90. Stagnation With Chinese Characteristics: How not to manage a downshifting economy
Paul Krugman, Substack, December 27, 2024
91. 'New class war' comes for Xi's China as public frustration mounts
Tetsushi Takahashi, Nikkei Asia, January 8, 2025
92. America must confront China’s information warfare
Aleksandra Gadzala Tirziu, Washington Examiner, January 7, 2025
China's use of information warfare has become a significant strategic tool in shaping global narratives, with the People's Liberation Army expanding its focus on "discourse power" to influence international perceptions. This approach extends beyond traditional media to platforms like TikTok and other social media. In response, the U.S. must enhance its global messaging efforts by creating a new agency under the Department of Defense to counter China's narrative influence.
93. Did China finally kick its coal addiction in 2024?
Tim Daiss, Nikkei Asia, January 6, 2025
94. Scott Bessent Can Break China’s Stubborn Central Bank, Too
Shuli Ren, Bloomberg, January 7, 2025
95. Nations Prepare for a Post-European World
Walter Russell Mead, Wall Street Journal, January 6, 2025
96. Trump Can Keep America’s AI Advantage
Dario Amodei and Matt Pottinger, Wall Street Journal, January 6, 2025
97. Why Would China Undermine Global Shipping?
Elisabeth Braw, Wall Street Journal, January 3, 2025
Its vessels are suspected of involvement in the sabotage of undersea cables.
A ship allegedly linked to sabotage in the Baltic Sea resumed its voyage on Dec. 21 after spending a month in the waters of Denmark’s exclusive economic zone. In November, North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries’ vessels had followed the bulk carrier on suspicion that it deliberately severed undersea fiber-optic data cables—one linking Germany and Finland and another linking Sweden and Lithuania—by dragging its anchor along the seabed for more than 100 miles. The ship under suspicion bears China’s flag.
China has been less than cooperative with local authorities in Sweden, in whose waters the damage occurred. This is no surprise considering the country’s record of noncompliance with maritime rules in other parts of the world. China seems intent on proving that maritime rules are deficient. That may be so, but the rules are better than maritime disorder.
Officially, the Chinese-flagged Yi Peng 3 is a merchant ship that transports cargo around the world. On Nov. 17-18, when the two Baltic Sea cables in Sweden’s exclusive economic zone were cut, the vessel was in the area. After the incidents, it sailed on toward the Atlantic Ocean. When it stopped in Denmark’s exclusive economic zone, Swedish authorities thought China would help them investigate the severed cables. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which forbids sabotage of undersea infrastructure during peacetime, flag states have such responsibilities. But according to Sweden, instead of cooperating, China barred the Swedish prosecutor from boarding the Yi Peng 3, and the ship sailed away.
This was the second time in recent months that a Chinese merchant ship sailed off after suspected cable sabotage in the Baltic Sea. In October 2023, after two data cables and a pipeline between Finland and Estonia were damaged by an anchor dragged across them, the Hong Kong-flagged, Chinese-registered vessel Newnew Polar Bear was the prime suspect. But when local authorities asked China to cooperate in the investigation, they received no response.
Meantime in the Red Sea, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis are attacking Western-linked ships with powerful weapons, some provided by Iran, and with some targeting data provided by Russia. Even though the Law of the Sea convention grants every merchant ship the right of innocent passage through any waters and the People’s Liberation Army Navy has the world’s largest fleet of active warships, Beijing has done nothing to enforce order in this crucial waterway. Western-linked ships continue to sustain assaults while Chinese ships sail through the Red Sea largely spared from Houthi attacks.
And in the South China Sea, Beijing is increasingly using its impressive maritime power to harass vessels in the waters of neighboring countries—waters that Beijing claims as its own. “First, fishing vessels from the Chinese Maritime Militia swarm a location, and then they’re joined by ships from the Chinese coast guard,” Ewan Lawson, a Manila-based fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a defense think tank, said in a phone interview. “And because the Chinese are using the coast guard, any response by the other country’s navy would be seen as an escalation.” Shortly before relinquishing command of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, U.S. Adm. John Aquilino told reporters last spring: “Philippine coast-guardsmen and service members have been injured. That’s a step up the ladder beyond a pressure campaign.”
Undermining the global maritime order seems an odd strategy for a country that owes its rapid economic rise to the oceans. Until a decade or so ago, Beijing mostly collaborated in the maritime order. When piracy skyrocketed off the Horn of Africa in the early 2000s, Chinese vessels joined Western and Russian ships to deter it. Retired Vice Adm. Duncan Potts of the Royal Navy, who commanded the antipiracy Operation Atalanta in the Indian Ocean in the early 2010s, said in a phone interview that “at that time China participated in an information exchange program with Western navies. We even explored whether Chinese tankers could refuel tankers in the Indian Ocean. But today it’s a very different situation.”
Chinese leaders now publicly dismiss maritime rules as outdated. The Law of the Sea convention “should keep pace with the times to better adapt to international maritime practices,” Foreign Minister Wang Yi argued at the convention’s 40th anniversary event in 2022. Like other agreements and treaties conceived during the Cold War, the maritime pacts contain a large Western footprint. For this reason, Beijing seems eager to refashion them. China is sacrificing ocean safety in its quest for a post-Pax Americana world.
Its recurrent game isn’t as dramatic as a direct naval assault. But it’s even more dangerous. Around 80% of global trade travels by sea and requires protection. Similarly, the vast amounts of data, energy and money that travel via undersea cables and pipelines depend on orderly oceans. By undermining maritime pillars, Beijing is causing disorder that will harm every country that depends on oceans for its prosperity—including China.
Countries from Cambodia to the United Arab Emirates dislike details in existing treaties (and the U.S. hasn’t ratified the Law of the Sea convention, although it adheres to it), but the deterioration of those treaties benefits no one. Beijing’s friends and foes should call out its behavior before the maritime order deteriorates beyond repair.
98. Why China’s industrial giants won’t be damaged by latest US blacklisting
Financial Times, January 7, 2025
99. Trump will put US and China back on collision course
Ian Bremmer, South China Morning Post, January 8, 2025
100. China's economy is far from buried
John Rapley, UnHerd, January 1, 2025
101. Xi has a plan for retaliating against Trump’s gamesmanship
Evan Medeiros, Financial Times, January 4, 2025