英文媒体关于中国的报道汇总 2023-09-26
September 27, 2023 34 min 7157 words
根据所提供的新闻报道,我总结了以下主要内容- 1. 美国进一步限制了三家中国公司因涉嫌使用强迫劳动而进入美国的商品。这是美国努力从美国供应链中消除使用维吾尔少数民族强迫劳动商品的一部分。 2. 中国、日本和韩国同意尽快举行三方会谈,以降低中国对美国在该地区加强安全存在的担忧。中国已经对美国与其两个东北亚盟友日益密切的关系表示了警觉。 3. 韩国承办了日本和中国的会议,因为美国的盟友试图让北京放心。这次罕见的三方会议似乎旨在缓解中国对两国与美国日益紧密合作的担忧。 4. 拜登总统与太平洋岛国领导人举行了第二次白宫峰会,这是一场魅力攻势,旨在遏制中国在美国长期认为是其后院的这个战略地区进一步扩张。 5. 韩国accueilli日本和中国,因为美国的盟友试图让北京放心。这次罕见的三方会议似乎旨在缓解中国对两国与美国日益紧密合作的担忧。 6. 拜登总统向太平洋岛国领导人做出新的承诺,因为中国的影响力越来越大。这是一场魅力攻势,旨在遏制中国在一个战略上的地区进一步扩张,这个地区美国长期以来认为是自己的后院。 我的评论- 1. 限制中国公司进入美国市场需要基于充分证据,不应该以种族歧视为基础。需要公正调查是否存在强迫劳动,而不是盲目认定。 2. 中国、日本与韩国加强三方合作,有利于地区和平稳定。美国不应过度解读,应尊重各国自主外交权利。 3. 三国会谈有助缓解地区紧张局势,美国不应将自己与盟友关系简单等同于对抗中国。 4. 太平洋岛国有自主决定外交方向的权利。美国与岛国交往不能仅出于地缘政治目的,需要尊重岛国利益。 5. 三国会谈的目的是促进地区合作,不应被解读为针对任何一方。美国应理解中国对军事联盟的关切。 6. 太平洋岛国有自主权,美国提供援助不能要求岛国针对中国。美国需要通过对话协商,而不是将中国视为威胁。 整体来说,中国、日本与韩国加强合作有利地区稳定,美国应摒弃冷战思维,通过对话促进互信,不能将一切问题简单化为中美竞争。需要客观公正看待中国发展,充分尊重各国利益。
- US hits Chinese, Russian firms over Moscow military aid
- Exclusive: U.S. exploring potential space force hotline with China, U.S. commander says
- China tells its citizens to be on the lookout for spies | China
- Taliban weighs using U.S. mass surveillance plan, met with China“s Huawei
- Exclusive-Taliban weighs using U.S. mass surveillance plan, met with China“s Huawei
- China drastically cuts seafood imports from Japan in wake of Fukushima water release
- [World] The shadowy Chinese firm that owns chunks of Cambodia
US hits Chinese, Russian firms over Moscow military aid
https://reuters.com/article/usa-china-russia/us-hits-chinese-russian-firms-over-moscow-military-aid-idUSKBN30V1CDU.S. President Joe Biden's administration on Monday imposed new trade restrictions on 11 Chinese and five Russian companies, accusing some of supplying components to make drones for Russia's war effort in Ukraine.
The Commerce Department, which oversees export policy, added a total of 28 firms, including some Finnish and German companies, to a trade blacklist, making it harder for U.S. suppliers to ship them technology.
Nine of the companies, including China's Asia Pacific Links Ltd. and Russia's SMT-iLogic, allegedly took part in a scheme to supply the previously blacklisted Special Technology Center with drone parts for Russia's Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (GRU).
An investigation by Reuters and iStories, a Russian media outlet, in collaboration with the Royal United Services Institute, a defense think tank in London, last year uncovered a logistical trail that spans the globe and ends at the Orlan drone's production line, the Special Technology Centre in St. Petersburg, Russia.
The investigation found that Hong Kong-based exporter Asia Pacific Links Ltd. has been among the most important suppliers to Russia's drone program. The firm, along with import company SMT iLogic, were the target of an earlier round of U.S. sanctions in May.
The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
"We will not hesitate to take swift and meaningful action against those who continue seeking to supply and support Putin’s illegal and immoral war in Ukraine," the Commerce Department's export controls chief Alan Estevez said in a statement.
Another six Chinese entities were added for allegedly procuring aerospace parts for the Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Company that are used to make drones used by Iran to attack oil tankers in the Middle East and by Russia in Ukraine, according to the Commerce Department.
The Special Technology Center in St. Petersburg, Russia, which once made a variety of surveillance gadgets for the Russian government and now focuses on drones for the military, was first targeted by U.S. sanctions after former President Barack Obama said it had worked with Russian military intelligence to try to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The United States has aggressively used a trade blacklist known as the entity list to target China's tech sector and attempt to stymie Russia's war in Ukraine.
Exclusive: U.S. exploring potential space force hotline with China, U.S. commander says
https://reuters.com/article/japan-usa-space-exclusive/exclusive-u-s-exploring-potential-space-force-hotline-with-china-u-s-commander-says-idUSKBN30V0U9The United States Space Force has had internal discussions about setting up a hotline with China to prevent crises in space, U.S. commander General Chance Saltzman told Reuters on Monday.
The chief of space operations said a direct line of communication between the Space Force and its Chinese counterpart would be valuable in de-escalating tensions but that the U.S. had not yet engaged with China to establish one.
"What we have talked about on the U.S. side at least is opening up a line of communication to make sure that if there is a crisis, we know who we can contact," Saltzman said, adding that it would be up to President Joe Biden and the State Department to take the lead on such discussions.
The comments come as the U.S. Space Force looks into establishing a branch in Japan, as China's military ambitions in the Indo-Pacific unnverve its neighbours and the war in Ukraine spotlights the importance of space capabilities in warfare.
Japan has been especially concerned about Taiwan and any lessons China may have drawn from Russia's invasion of Ukraine a year ago. China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, has not renounced the use of force to bring the island under Beijing's control.
Saltzman, who held talks with top Japanese defence officials in Tokyo on Monday, confirmed that the space force was exploring the potential establishment of a local headquarters in Japan.
He did not elaborate on the location or the purpose it would serve, but did say it could look similar to a branch established in South Korea in November last year.
Saltzman added that deeper cooperation with like-minded countries including Japan would be crucial in being able to monitor and understand activity in the space domain to deter China and counter 'grey zone activities' such as jamming satellite signals.
"We have to be able to have those indications and warnings and see what they're doing and call them on the intent. Just being hypersensitive so we don't fall prey to grey zone activities," Saltzman said.
The U.S. Space Force, founded in 2019, also does not have a direct line of communication with its Russian counterpart.
China tells its citizens to be on the lookout for spies | China
https://www.economist.com/china/2023/09/21/china-tells-its-citizens-to-be-on-the-lookout-for-spiesA sea-cucumber farm is not an obvious target for spies. So when a group of foreigners turned up at one in north-east China last year, the owner, Mr Zhang, did not think much of it. According to state media, the guests received permission to install seawater-quality monitors. After they left, Mr Zhang noticed that the equipment was not working properly. It also had a mysterious, beeping antenna attached to it. So he called the authorities. They said it was transmitting strategic data on China’s oceans to “hostile powers”. The foreigners were found and arrested.
Stories like this, true or not, serve the purpose of China’s intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security (MSS). It claims that the kind of espionage discovered by Mr Zhang is rampant—and ordinary Chinese must help to stop it. On August 1st the MSS joined WeChat, a popular messaging app, to implore “all of society” to look out for spies. This followed a comment by William Burns, the CIA director, that America had made progress in rebuilding its spy networks in China a decade after dozens of its sources were killed or disappeared.
The government is doing its part to increase public awareness. It has offered rewards of up to 500,000 yuan ($68,500) for reporting spies. In the city of Zhengzhou, warnings about foreign snoopers have been placed on the back of bus seats. Elsewhere officials are using leaflets, lectures and comic strips to get the message out. In the region of Xinjiang officials produced a short film depicting a spy disguised as an amateur photographer. The spy asks a taxi driver to take him to a military base. The alert driver takes him to the police.
A specific appeal has been directed at young people. The MSS says it wants “the seeds of national security to take root and sprout” in their minds. Local branches of the ministry have joined up with schools to put on classes and exercises. One of these, at Xiamen University earlier this year, saw students play spies and spy-hunters. Middle-schoolers in Shanghai are taught about national security on board a mock aircraft-carrier, while dressed in fatigues.
But things get tricky when students go abroad. Officials worry they will be lured into spying for foreign powers. The MSS has shared cautionary tales on WeChat. In one, a Chinese student in Italy is said to have been recruited by American spooks over fancy dinners and trips to the opera. Another is said to have got too friendly with an American embassy official in Japan. Both of the students returned to China and sold secrets to the CIA; they have since been caught and punished, says the MSS.
The ministry’s campaign has gone down well with some members of the public. Netizens have warned government workers not to share too much about their jobs online, in case spies are reading. A video that claims the CIA was behind the recent deaths of several engineers and scientists has over half a million views.
Others, though, think the government is going too far. Hu Xijin, a well-known nationalist commentator, complained that people are growing increasingly scared to meet foreigners, lest they be reported. On Weibo, a social-media site, some users worried about a return to the days of the Cultural Revolution, a decade of Maoist madness when neighbours, friends and even family members informed on each other. “History is a circle,” said one person. “Tragedies like sons reporting on fathers seem to be getting close again.”
The increased paranoia will make life even harder for foreigners in China. A photo circulating on social media shows an American teacher in Shanghai explaining to his class that he is not a spy. Your correspondent was recently intercepted by officials while on a reporting trip. A member of the public, the officials explained, had seen a foreigner asking questions. Being a good citizen, they had called it in. ■
Subscribers can sign up to Drum Tower, our new weekly newsletter, to understand what the world makes of China—and what China makes of the world.
Taliban weighs using U.S. mass surveillance plan, met with China“s Huawei
https://reuters.com/article/afghanistan-conflict-surveillance-exclus/taliban-weighs-using-u-s-mass-surveillance-plan-met-with-chinas-huawei-idUSKBN30V0A3KABUL (Reuters) -The Taliban are creating a large-scale camera surveillance network for Afghan cities that could involve repurposing a plan crafted by the Americans before their 2021 pullout, an interior ministry spokesman told Reuters, as authorities seek to supplement thousands of cameras already across the capital, Kabul.
The Taliban administration — which has publicly said it is focused on restoring security and clamping down on Islamic State, which has claimed many major attacks in Afghan cities — has also consulted with Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei about potential cooperation, the spokesman said.
Preventing attacks by international militant groups - including prominent organisations such as Islamic State - is at the heart of the interaction between the Taliban and many foreign nations, including the U.S. and China, according to readouts from those meetings. But some analysts question the cash-strapped regime’s ability to fund the program, and rights groups have expressed concern that any resources will be used to crackdown on protesters.
Details of how the Taliban intend to expand and manage mass surveillance, including obtaining the U.S. plan, have not been previously reported.
The mass camera rollout, which will involve a focus on “important points” in Kabul and elsewhere, is part of a new security strategy that will take four years to be fully implemented, Ministry of Interior spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani told Reuters.
“At the present we are working on a Kabul security map, which is (being completed) by security experts and (is taking) lots of time,” he said. “We already have two maps, one which was made by U.S.A for the previous government and second by Turkey.”
He did not detail when the Turkish plan was made.
A U.S State Department spokesperson said Washington was not “partnering” with the Taliban and has “made clear to the Taliban that it is their responsibility to ensure that they give no safe haven to terrorists.”
A Turkish government spokesperson didn’t return a request for comment.
Qani said the Taliban had a “simple chat” about the potential network with Huawei in August, but no contracts or firm plans had been reached.
Bloomberg News reported in August that Huawei had reached “verbal agreement” with the Taliban about a contract to install a surveillance system, citing a person familiar with the discussions.
Huawei told Reuters in September that “no plan was discussed” during the meeting.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said she was not aware of specific discussions but added: “China has always supported the peace and reconstruction process in Afghanistan and supported Chinese enterprises to carry out relevant practical cooperation.”
There are over 62,000 cameras in Kabul and other cities that are monitored from a central control room, according to the Taliban. The last major update to Kabul’s camera system occurred in 2008, according to the former government, which relied heavily on Western-led international forces for security.
When NATO-led international forces were gradually withdrawing in January 2021, then-vice president Amrullah Saleh said his government would roll out a huge upgrade of Kabul’s camera surveillance system. He told reporters the $100 million plan was backed by the NATO coalition.
“The arrangement we had planned in early 2021 was different,” Saleh told Reuters in September, adding that the “infrastructure” for the 2021 plan had been destroyed.
It was not clear if the plan Saleh referenced was similar to the ones that the Taliban say they have obtained, nor if the administration would modify them.
Jonathan Schroden, an expert on Afghanistan with the Center for Naval Analyses, said a surveillance system would be “useful for the Taliban as it seeks to prevent groups like the Islamic State ... from attacking Taliban members or government positions in Kabul.”
The Taliban already closely monitor urban centres with security force vehicles and regular checkpoints.
Rights advocates and opponents of the regime are concerned enhanced surveillance might target civil society members and protesters.
Though the Taliban rarely confirm arrests, the Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 64 journalists have been detained since the takeover. Protests against restrictions on women in Kabul have been broken up forcefully by security forces, according to protesters, videos and Reuters witnesses.
Implementing a mass surveillance system “under the guise of ‘national security’ sets a template for the Taliban to continue its draconian policies that violate fundamental rights,” said Matt Mahmoudi from Amnesty International.
The Taliban strongly denies that an upgraded surveillance system would breach the rights of Afghans. Qani said the system was comparable with what other major cities utilize and that it would be operated in line with Islamic Sharia law, which prevents recording in private spaces.
The plan faces practical challenges, security analysts say.
Intermittent daily power cuts in Afghanistan mean cameras connected to the central grid are unlikely to provide consistent feeds. Only 40% of Afghans have access to electricity, according to the state-owned power provider.
The Taliban also have to find funding after a massive economic contraction and the withdrawal of much aid following their takeover.
The administration said in 2022 that it has an annual budget of over $2 billion, of which defence spending is the largest component, according to the Taliban army chief.
The discussion with Huawei occurred several months after China met with Pakistan and the Taliban’s acting foreign minister, after which the parties stressed cooperation on counter-terrorism. Tackling militancy is also a key aspect of the 2020 troop-withdrawal deal the United States struck with the Taliban.
China has publicly declared its concern over the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), an armed separatist organisation in its western Xinjiang region. Security officials and U.N. reports say ETIM likely has a small number of fighters in Afghanistan. ETIM couldn’t be reached for comment.
The Islamic State has also threatened foreigners in Afghanistan. Its fighters attacked a hotel popular with Chinese businesspeople last year, which left several Chinese citizens wounded. A Russian diplomat was also killed in one of its attacks.
The Taliban denies that militancy threatens their rule and say Afghan soil will not be used to launch attacks elsewhere. They have publicly announced raids on Islamic State cells in Kabul.
“Since early 2023, Taliban raids in Afghanistan have removed at least eight key (Islamic State in Afghanistan) leaders, some responsible for external plotting,” said U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Thomas West at a Sept. 12 public seminar.
A July U.N. monitoring report said there were up to 6,000 Islamic State fighters and their family members in Afghanistan. Analysts say urban surveillance will not fully address their presence.
The Afghan “home base” locations of Islamic State fighters are in the eastern mountainous areas, said Schroden. “So while cameras in the cities may help prevent attacks ... they’re unlikely to contribute much to their ultimate defeat.”
Exclusive-Taliban weighs using U.S. mass surveillance plan, met with China“s Huawei
https://reuters.com/article/afghanistan-conflict-surveillance-exclus/exclusive-taliban-weighs-using-u-s-mass-surveillance-plan-met-with-chinas-huawei-idUSKBN30V0A3KABUL (Reuters) - The Taliban are creating a large-scale camera surveillance network for Afghan cities that could involve repurposing a plan crafted by the Americans before their 2021 pullout, an interior ministry spokesman told Reuters, as authorities seek to supplement thousands of cameras already across the capital, Kabul.
The Taliban administration — which has publicly said it is focused on restoring security and clamping down on Islamic State, which has claimed many major attacks in Afghan cities — has also consulted with Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei about potential cooperation, the spokesman said.
Preventing attacks by international militant groups - including prominent organisations such as Islamic State - is at the heart of the interaction between the Taliban and many foreign nations, including the U.S. and China, according to readouts from those meetings. But some analysts question the cash-strapped regime’s ability to fund the program, and rights groups have expressed concern that any resources will be used to crackdown on protesters.
Details of how the Taliban intend to expand and manage mass surveillance, including obtaining the U.S. plan, have not been previously reported.
The mass camera rollout, which will involve a focus on “important points” in Kabul and elsewhere, is part of a new security strategy that will take four years to be fully implemented, Ministry of Interior spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani told Reuters.
“At the present we are working on a Kabul security map, which is (being completed) by security experts and (is taking) lots of time,” he said. “We already have two maps, one which was made by U.S.A for the previous government and second by Turkey.”
He did not detail when the Turkish plan was made.
A U.S State Department spokesperson said Washington was not “partnering” with the Taliban and has “made clear to the Taliban that it is their responsibility to ensure that they give no safe haven to terrorists.”
A Turkish government spokesperson didn’t return a request for comment.
Qani said the Taliban had a “simple chat” about the potential network with Huawei in August, but no contracts or firm plans had been reached.
Bloomberg News reported in August that Huawei had reached “verbal agreement” with the Taliban about a contract to install a surveillance system, citing a person familiar with the discussions.
Huawei told Reuters in September that “no plan was discussed” during the meeting.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said she was not aware of specific discussions but added: “China has always supported the peace and reconstruction process in Afghanistan and supported Chinese enterprises to carry out relevant practical cooperation.”
There are over 62,000 cameras in Kabul and other cities that are monitored from a central control room, according to the Taliban. The last major update to Kabul’s camera system occurred in 2008, according to the former government, which relied heavily on Western-led international forces for security.
When NATO-led international forces were gradually withdrawing in January 2021, then-vice president Amrullah Saleh said his government would roll out a huge upgrade of Kabul’s camera surveillance system. He told reporters the $100 million plan was backed by the NATO coalition.
“The arrangement we had planned in early 2021 was different,” Saleh told Reuters in September, adding that the “infrastructure” for the 2021 plan had been destroyed.
It was not clear if the plan Saleh referenced was similar to the ones that the Taliban say they have obtained, nor if the administration would modify them.
Jonathan Schroden, an expert on Afghanistan with the Center for Naval Analyses, said a surveillance system would be “useful for the Taliban as it seeks to prevent groups like the Islamic State ... from attacking Taliban members or government positions in Kabul.”
The Taliban already closely monitor urban centres with security force vehicles and regular checkpoints.
Rights advocates and opponents of the regime are concerned enhanced surveillance might target civil society members and protesters.
Though the Taliban rarely confirm arrests, the Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 64 journalists have been detained since the takeover. Protests against restrictions on women in Kabul have been broken up forcefully by security forces, according to protesters, videos and Reuters witnesses.
Implementing a mass surveillance system “under the guise of ‘national security’ sets a template for the Taliban to continue its draconian policies that violate fundamental rights,” said Matt Mahmoudi from Amnesty International.
The Taliban strongly denies that an upgraded surveillance system would breach the rights of Afghans. Qani said the system was comparable with what other major cities utilize and that it would be operated in line with Islamic Sharia law, which prevents recording in private spaces.
The plan faces practical challenges, security analysts say.
Intermittent daily power cuts in Afghanistan mean cameras connected to the central grid are unlikely to provide consistent feeds. Only 40% of Afghans have access to electricity, according to the state-owned power provider.
The Taliban also have to find funding after a massive economic contraction and the withdrawal of much aid following their takeover.
The administration said in 2022 that it has an annual budget of over $2 billion, of which defence spending is the largest component, according to the Taliban army chief.
The discussion with Huawei occurred several months after China met with Pakistan and the Taliban’s acting foreign minister, after which the parties stressed cooperation on counter-terrorism. Tackling militancy is also a key aspect of the 2020 troop-withdrawal deal the United States struck with the Taliban.
China has publicly declared its concern over the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), an armed separatist organisation in its western Xinjiang region. Security officials and U.N. reports say ETIM likely has a small number of fighters in Afghanistan. ETIM couldn’t be reached for comment.
The Islamic State has also threatened foreigners in Afghanistan. Its fighters attacked a hotel popular with Chinese businesspeople last year, which left several Chinese citizens wounded. A Russian diplomat was also killed in one of its attacks.
The Taliban denies that militancy threatens their rule and say Afghan soil will not be used to launch attacks elsewhere. They have publicly announced raids on Islamic State cells in Kabul.
“Since early 2023, Taliban raids in Afghanistan have removed at least eight key (Islamic State in Afghanistan) leaders, some responsible for external plotting,” said U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Thomas West at a Sept. 12 public seminar.
A July U.N. monitoring report said there were up to 6,000 Islamic State fighters and their family members in Afghanistan. Analysts say urban surveillance will not fully address their presence.
The Afghan “home base” locations of Islamic State fighters are in the eastern mountainous areas, said Schroden. “So while cameras in the cities may help prevent attacks ... they’re unlikely to contribute much to their ultimate defeat.”
China drastically cuts seafood imports from Japan in wake of Fukushima water release
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/25/china-drastically-cuts-seafood-imports-from-japan-in-wake-of-fukushima-water-releaseChinese seafood imports from Japan have plummeted following Beijing’s ban on marine products from its neighbour in response to the discharge of wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Imports fell by 67% in August from the same month a year earlier, to about ¥3bn ($20.2m), the public broadcaster NHK said, citing data from Chinese customs.
The decision by Beijing and Hong Kong to suspend all imports of Japanese marine products in late August has sparked a diplomatic row and a rise in anti-Japanese sentiment in China, with Japanese businesses and diplomatic offices receiving a huge volume of abusive calls.
The operator of the Fukushima plant, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) began pumping more than 1m tonnes of water into the sea on 24 August, drawing criticism from China and local fishing communities concerned about damage to the reputation of their catch.
The water is treated to remove most radioactive substances, but contains tritium, an isotope of hydrogen that cannot be easily separated from water.
Scientists have pointed out that China’s own nuclear power plants release wastewater with higher levels of tritium than that found in Fukushima’s discharge, and that the levels are all within boundaries not considered to be harmful to human health.
Tepco and government officials say the discharge – a process that will take at least 30 years – will not affect the marine environment or human health as the heavily diluted water contains levels of tritium that are well within safety levels, echoing the findings of a recent report by the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The seafood ban did not go into effect until late last month, but the latest figures indicate the significant effect it is already having on exports. China imported Japanese seafood worth 149.02m yuan ($20.43m) in August, the data showed.
China, Japan’s biggest market for seafood, has condemned the discharge, with the customs agency saying it risks the “radioactive contamination of food safety”. China’s foreign ministry said it was an “extremely selfish and irresponsible act”.
Britain and the US have voiced support for the water release and the European Union commended the Japanese authorities for “providing regular updates on the Fukushima status in a timely and transparent manner”. South Korea’s government has said it accepted the science behind the IAEA’s report, despite safety concerns among a large section of the South Korean public.
The US ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel, drew an angry response from Beijing after he accused China of using “economic coercion” in imposing the seafood ban while its own boats continued to fish off Japan’s coast.
“Economic coercion is the most persistent and pernicious tool in their economic toolbox,” Emanuel said last week. “China is engaged right now in fishing in Japan’s economic waters while they are simultaneously engaged in the unilateral embargo on Japan’s fish.”
In response, China’s foreign ministry said Emanuel should stop encouraging Japan’s “irresponsible” behaviour.
Tokyo protested against the ban in a document it submitted this month to the World Trade Organization, describing it as “totally unacceptable”.
The ban is already having an impact on businesses in Japan, where there are reports of scallops and other seafood piling up in freezers at processing plants in the northernmost main island of Hokkaido, where 64% of seafood exports went to China.
The Fukushima water became contaminated after it was used to cool three nuclear reactors that melted down after Fukushima Daiichi was struck by a powerful tsunami in March 2011.
[World] The shadowy Chinese firm that owns chunks of Cambodia
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-66851049?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=KARANGAThe highway runs through the forest like a black ribbon, down to the sea and to what must be one of the world's largest tourism projects.
Fifteen years after it began, there is still not much to see of the Dara Sakor Seashore Resort in southern Cambodia.
It is a grandiose scheme by a Chinese company to build a self-contained tourist city. A Chinese colony, some have called it a venue for "feasting and revelry", according to the company, complete with international airport, deep-sea port, power stations, hospitals, casinos and luxury villas.
The airport is still unfinished. A single casino, with an attached five-star hotel and apartments, sits alone near the sea, fronted by an unmade road, and surrounded by a construction site.
As a tourist business it has barely got started. But it has already had a damaging impact on one of Asia's richest natural environments, and on the thousands of people who live there.
China's economic footprint in Cambodia now dwarfs that of any other country. It provides half of all direct investment and most of its foreign aid.
Cambodia is an enthusiastic partner in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), President Xi Jinping's strategy for expanding Chinese built-and-funded-infrastructure around the world. A lot of this is clearly beneficial. But a great deal of Chinese investment is speculative, rushed and poorly planned.
The once quiet coastal town of Sihanoukville, for example, across the bay from Dara Sakor, was transformed in just a few years into a huge construction site to feed Chinese demand for casinos.
It fuelled a crime wave and then a collapse of the gambling economy during Covid, littering the town with half-built, empty tower blocks. There are good reasons to fear Dara Sakor may suffer similar problems.
"It's like baking without flour," says Sophal Ear, a Cambodian academic at Arizona State University. "You cannot rely on unsustainable practices to achieve sustainable development. What about the Chinese real estate bubble? When China sneezes, Cambodia will catch a cold."
Development, Hun Sen-style
Dara Sakor is the kind of development favoured by Cambodia's former prime minister Hun Sen.
It is on a massive scale, yet it was conceived in almost total secrecy. The BBC has found that there was minimal consultation or evaluation of the human and environmental cost.
The Chinese companies involved provide very little information about themselves, and some have dubious track records. The project has also seeded international suspicion of what other goals China might have in this part of Cambodia.
China's "ask-no-questions" approach to aid and investment appealed to Hun Sen, a self-styled strongman who, after bringing three decades of devastating war and revolution to an end in the 1990s, pushed for breakneck growth to help his country catch up with its neighbours.
But much of this growth has been achieved by giving generous concessions, in particular huge parcels of land, to favoured cronies and foreign companies.
"There are no institutions," says Sebastian Strangio, who has written what is perhaps the definitive book on Hun Sen's Cambodia. "The system relies on keeping powerful people contented."
This is the first in a series of stories that examines Chinese investment abroad 10 years after Xi Jinping launched the Belt and Road Initiative.
The Dara Sakor project dates back to early 2008, when UDG, a private Chinese construction company based in the northern city of Tianjin, secured a 99-year lease - the maximum term allowed under Cambodian law - with a single deposit of $1m. This was for the right to develop 36,000 hectares initially, with 9,000 more added later.
UDG was required to pay nothing more for 10 years, and after that only a paltry $1m a year - a breathtakingly generous arrangement for control of one-fifth of Cambodia's entire coastline.
As the land was inside the Botum Sakor national park, and greatly exceeded the legal limit of 10,000 hectares for any one project, it would have been very controversial - had anyone else known about it.
But because there was no information published about the deal at the time, there was no discussion of it in the Cambodian media.
Som Thy, a local fisherman, took the BBC on his motorbike along sandy tracks through the forest to see where he used to live, inside the UDG area. Much of the tree cover has now gone. In some places a few lonely giants still stand, surrounded by a denuded wasteland.
Since 2008 the national park has lost almost 20% of its primary forests, according to the NGO Global Forest Watch. More than 1,000 families have been uprooted and forced to abandon their villages. One of those families was Som Thy's.
"It brings tears to my eyes to see it like this, all overgrown," he said, looking out over what used to be his home and rice fields. A few cashew nut trees were still left from the orchard his family used to rely on to supplement their income from farming and fishing.
Like the other inhabitants of the 12 villages displaced by Dara Sakor, Som Thy was moved in 2009 to a small wooden house built by the company several kilometres from the coast.
In those first years there were many protests. Today Som Thy is one of a small group which still refuses to accept the company's compensation package.
He says it is impossible to make a living from the small plots of land they have been given, and that the sums of money they were offered are just a fraction of their original land's real value.
He sometimes sneaks back into Dara Sakor to take his boat out fishing. He has also travelled to Thailand in search of work. His continued opposition to the project means he cannot get a job, as his brother has done, on the building sites around the casino.
UDG has produced some dazzling brochures for prospective investors, with alluring images of manicured golf courses, orderly rows of villas, and happy families enjoying seaside leisure. There are complicated maps laying out the different parts of this model holiday city - the Science and Education New Town Zone, the World Trade City Center and the Forest and Elegance Zone.
But all this is a far cry from the stripped forests, displaced people and half-finished roads and buildings that you still see today.
According to the Chinese environmental organisation GEI, which published a detailed study of Dara Sakor in 2016, there is no evidence that the company has conducted any environmental impact assessments, as required by Cambodian law.
Nor could GEI find any information about how the forests, which were supposed to be protected, were redesignated as suitable for development. GEI says it presented its concerns to UDG.
"They did not respond to these points," programme director Ling Ji told the BBC. "They just insisted that they had followed all relevant laws and regulations. They don't see the problem. This has a very bad effect on China's image. Many countries will think that Chinese companies are here just to plunder resources. Chinese companies do not have the awareness or ability to handle local grievances in other countries, because in China these are always dealt with by the local government. Overseas, it is very different. This is still a learning process for them."
Chasing Chinese influence
The sheer size of the project has also rung alarm bells in the United States.
In 2020 the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on UDG, citing human rights abuses against those evicted from their villages, but also the potential military use by China of the new airport. This has a runway far longer than needed for the smaller airliners expected to serve what is quite a remote tourist destination.
The US was already concerned about a naval base near Sihanoukville which is being renovated with Chinese state funding, and which Washington believes may be used in the future by the Chinese navy.
The US has become increasingly uneasy over Chinese-built infrastructure because of Mr Xi's emphasis on dual civil-military use - what China calls "military-civil fusion" - in its economic planning, and the official requirement for Chinese overseas projects to meet military standards.
"The PRC has used UDG's projects in Cambodia to advance its ambitions to project power globally," said the statement accompanying the sanctions.
UDG has called the sanctions unjustified. The company says the US is acting on "fabricated facts and rumours", saying it "always religiously followed procedures required by law", and that those living inside its concession were illegal settlers.
It says the airport is being built on this scale to make Dara Sakor a "global transportation hub". It has backed this with some very ambitious targets. By 2030, the company's website says, it aims to have 1.3 million long-term residents, nearly seven million tourists visiting every year, and to provide employment for one million people.
These are staggering numbers considering that tourist arrivals for all of Cambodia are still well below the peak of six million who came in 2019. UDG also took issue with the US description of it as a state-owned entity - we are a privately-owned company, it said.
This may be true, but there has been strong backing from Chinese state agencies from the earliest stages of the project.
China's top economic planning body, the National Development and Reform Commission, gave its approval even before the deal was signed, and has continued to monitor it. The Communist Party boss in Tianjin, Zhang Gaoli, was also involved early on, travelling to Cambodia at the end of 2008 to take part in the contract signing ceremony.
Mr Zhang would later rise to become one of China's most senior leaders, and from 2015 he ran the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Although Dara Sakor predates the BRI by five years, it is now officially described as a showcase BRI project.
UDG has also built close relationships with senior figures in the Cambodian ruling party. It has made several large donations to the Cambodian Red Cross, which is run by Hun Sen's wife Bun Rany, and gave a million dollars to fund the construction of a monument glorifying Hun Sen's achievements.
It has particularly close ties with the former defence minister Tea Banh, who heads one of the most powerful political factions in Cambodia.
The company issues very little information about its finances, though, which makes it difficult to assess its capacity for running a project this large.
One of the few known investments in Dara Sakor was a bond issue in 2017 underwritten by the China Development Bank. But that was for only $15m, a fraction of the nearly $4bn UDG has promised to invest.
And UDG's leading role now appears to have been taken over by another company, China City Construction Company or CCCC. It was almost unknown outside China when in 2014, for reasons that are still not clear, it inserted itself into the Dara Sakor project.
Executives from CCCC now play a leading role in UDG, and CCCC states that it, not UDG, is responsible for "the design of the overall programme for the planning and development of this special tourism zone".
Burst bubble
CCCC is a state-owned enterprise. But it is also a troubled company.
In 2016, then under the control of the ministry of housing, it sent shockwaves through the Hong Kong financial markets after it suddenly announced it was being privatised on the orders of the Chinese government. It said it was being taken over by a little-known equity fund called Huinong.
This panicked investors who had bought hundreds of millions of dollars of CCCC's so-called "dim sum bonds" - bonds issued in Hong Kong to get around Chinese capital controls. They tried to redeem the bonds, but CCCC could not raise sufficient cash to cover the payments.
CCCC has continued to struggle financially. It now has a tarnished credit rating and has been forced to sell off some of its more promising businesses.
It has also been revealed that Huinong, the mysterious fund which took over CCCC in 2016, is indirectly owned by the finance ministry, making CCCC technically state-owned again. This kind of opacity makes it very difficult to assess the real financial health of CCCC, which is likely to have been affected by the recent collapse of the Chinese property market.
"There was a binge of outward investment in the initial Belt and Road initiative period, 2014 to 2016," says Victor Shih, director of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California San Diego. "By 2016, though, the Chinese government had become a lot more careful. They were no longer throwing money and approving projects left and right."
Another investor in Dara Sakor is a Chinese entrepreneur called She Zhijiang, who has gained notoriety for running casinos along the Thai-Myanmar border, where large-scale human trafficking and scam operations have been uncovered. He is currently being detained in Thailand awaiting extradition to China.
Several people, from Thailand, Taiwan and the Philippines, have had to be rescued after saying they were being forcibly held in scam centres operating inside the Dara Sakor complex.
Publicity over scam centres operating in Chinese investment zones in Cambodia is now deterring Chinese tourists from visiting. As a result the anticipated recovery in tourism, one of Cambodia's most important sources of income, has been much slower than expected.
But a different approach under the new Cambodian PM - Hun Manet, Hun Sen's Western-educated son - is unlikely, according to Sebastian Strangio.
"He will be a prisoner of this system. He will have limited power to rein in its excesses, even if he should wish to do so," he says.
Last week, just a month after succeeding his father, Hun Manet visited Beijing to meet Mr Xi and assure him that the China-Cambodia relationship is rock solid.
Dara Sakor is in fact just one of several very large land concessions in the area, most of which have been awarded to local Cambodian businesses allied to the ruling party.
The sheer weight of vested interests in the rapacious model of development followed in Cambodia until now makes it very hard to change.
Eighty percent of the national park is now being exploited commercially, and little heed is being paid to the repeated warnings from environmental activists that the country is on the verge of losing one of its most important natural habitats.
One of those activists, a young woman in her 20s, travelled with us to see Dara Sakor. She is currently out on bail after being given an 18-month prison sentence in 2021 for trying to organise a protest against another land grab.
She had taken a big risk coming with us to the UDG concession. "We don't have a choice," she said, as we looked out over yet another stretch of ripped-up forest.
"We have to risk going to jail, or worse, to try to protect what's left for the next generation."