• Uruguay upgrades China ties to match big South American neighbours
• China, Uruguay upgrade bilateral ties in boon for ambitious South American nation
• Taiwan reports Chinese fighters, bombers nearby as election campaign heats up
• Fiji may partner with China to upgrade ports and shipyards, PM Rabuka says
• [World] China: Human Rights Watch accuses Beijing of closing and destroying mosques
• Exclusive: China govt advisers call for steady growth target in 2024, more stimulus
• Merle Goldman, noted scholar of Chinese intellectual dissent, dies at 92
• China closing hundreds of mosques in northern regions, rights group says
• A growing global footprint for China’s space program worries Pentagon

Uruguay upgrades China ties to match big South American neighbours

https://reuters.com/article/china-uruguay/uruguay-upgrades-china-ties-to-match-big-south-american-neighbours-idUSKBN32H0O2

China and Uruguay upgraded their bilateral ties on Wednesday, setting the stage for further trade and investment and elevating the ambitious South American country's relations with Beijing to those of fellow Mercosur members Brazil and Argentina.

Uruguay is seeking to strike deals abroad that it hopes will be more beneficial to it than a local trade bloc, while China has for years sought closer ties with South America, in large part to secure access to raw materials such as grains and oils.

"China is ready to work with Uruguay to take establishing a comprehensive strategic partnership as a new starting point... and enrich cooperation," President Xi Jinping told his Uruguayan counterpart Luis Lacalle Pou at a meeting in Beijing's Great Hall of the People, Chinese state media reported.

China, the world's second-largest economy, is already a major investor in South America and has offered tariff-free access to its huge consumer market to four countries.

Lacalle Pou first proposed a free trade agreement (FTA) with China in 2021 to secure similar opportunities for its exporters as those enjoyed by Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Peru, and to boost exports of raw materials, industrial goods and technology.

But Uruguay faces opposition from other members of the Mercosur bloc who want to settle an FTA with Europe instead.

At present, Beijing has no tariff preference for Uruguayan beef, which constituted 67% of the South American country's exports to China in 2022, a market where there is a 12% tariff on the meat, United Nations COMTRADE data shows.

By comparison, other major beef exporters Australia and New Zealand, which have FTAs with China, pay tariffs at 3.3% and 0%.

Lacalle Pou commented on how China has become Uruguay's main trading partner and told Xi during the meeting about plans to join the Shanghai-headquartered New Development Bank.

China received 27% of Uruguay's exports in 2022, COMTRADE data shows, while Brazil purchased 17% of its outbound shipments, and Argentina and the United States 6% each.

Uruguay cannot easily sign a unilateral FTA with China because it agreed to a 'Common External Tariff' with Mercosur members, not least because the bloc reached agreement in principle on an FTA with Brussels in 2019.

The South American country has applied to join a major trans-pacific free trade pact that China also aspires to join, but Beijing must overcome major political hurdles before it can accede to the agreement and Montevideo faces the same restraints its Mercosur membership places upon it in negotiations.

Uruguay came close to signing an FTA with the United States in 2006, but its government at the time eventually rejected the deal over fears of expulsion from Mercosur if it did so.

Under the Mercosur CET, Chinese exporters must pay tariffs at 9%, should they wish to export to Uruguay, which is better than the 12% Uruguayan ranchers face on beef shipped to China.

According to a study conducted by the National Meat Institute of Uruguay in 2021, if China signs an FTA with Uruguay, the meat industry can implement a 0% preferential tariff, which will reduce tariffs by $150 million.

Xi and Lacalle Pou witnessed the signing of cooperation documents across a range of sectors including agriculture, education, and science and technology, as well as over customs inspections, which could be a boon for Uruguay's meat exports.

Uruguay is one of the few countries to run a trade surplus with China, which last year doubled to $1.5 billion from $766 million in 2021, data from China's National Bureau of Statistics shows.

The elevation of ties with Uruguay to the level of Brazil and Argentina also pushes the remaining Mercosur member Paraguay further outside China's global trade and investment network.

Agriculture-dependent Paraguay, whose main exports include beef and soybeans, is the last South American nation that has ties with democratically governed Taiwan, which China claims as part of its territory, and not with Beijing.

Xi said he hoped to build "a model of solidarity and cooperation between countries of different sizes, systems and cultures" with Uruguay, while Lacalle Pou invited him to visit Uruguay next year.

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China, Uruguay upgrade bilateral ties in boon for ambitious South American nation

https://reuters.com/article/china-uruguay/china-uruguay-upgrade-bilateral-ties-in-boon-for-ambitious-south-american-nation-idUSKBN32H0O2

China and Uruguay on Wednesday upgraded their bilateral ties, setting the stage for further trade and investment, as the tiny neighbour of Argentina and Brazil seeks to strike deals abroad that it deems would be more beneficial than membership of a local trade bloc.

At a meeting in Beijing's Great Hall of the People, Chinese President Xi Jinping told his Uruguayan counterpart Louis Lacalle Pou that: "China is ready to work with Uruguay to take establishing a comprehensive strategic partnership as a new starting point... and enrich cooperation," according to Chinese state media.

The announcement elevates Uruguay's ties with China to an equal footing with Brazil and Argentina, two other members of the Mercosur trade bloc.

For years, China has sought closer ties with the emerging markets of South America, in large part to secure raw materials including grains and oils for its economy. The world's second-largest economy is also a major investor and has offered tariff-free access to its huge consumer market to four states.

Lacalle Pou in 2021 first proposed a free trade agreement with China to secure similar opportunities for its exporters as those enjoyed by Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Peru, and to boost its exports of raw materials, industrial goods and technology, but faces opposition from other members of the Mercosur bloc who want to settle an FTA with Europe instead.

At present, China has no tariff preference for Uruguayan beef, which constituted 67% of the South American country's exports to the Asian giant in 2022, according to United Nations COMTRADE data, and in which market beef pays a 12% tariff. Australia and New Zealand, two other major beef exporters with FTAs with China, pay tariffs at 3.3% and 0%, by comparison.

Uruguay cannot easily sign an FTA with China because it agreed to a 'Common External Tariff' with the Mercosur members, so cannot unilaterally offer Beijing better terms. Not least because the bloc reached agreement in principle on an FTA with Brussels in 2019.

Under the Mercosur CET, Chinese exporters must pay tariffs at 9%, should they wish to export to Uruguay, which is better than the 12% tariff Uruguayan ranchers face when they ship beef to China.

According to a study conducted by the National Meat Institute of Uruguay in 2021, if China signs an FTA with Uruguay, the meat industry can implement a 0% preferential tariff, which will reduce tariffs by 150 million US dollars.

After the talks, Xi and Lacalle Pou witnessed the signing of several cooperation documents, across a wide of sectors including agriculture, education, and science and technology, as well as over customs inspections, which could be a boon for the Latin American country's meat exports.

Uruguay is one of the few countries to run a trade surplus with China, which last year doubled to $1.5 billion up from $766 million in 2021, according to data from China's National Bureau of Statistics.

The elevation of ties with Uruguay to the level of Brazil and Argentina also pushes the remaining Mercosur member Paraguay further outside of China's global trade and investment network. Agriculture-dependent Paraguay, whose main exports include beef and soybeans, is the last South American nation that has ties with democratically governed Taiwan, which China claims as part of its territory, and not with Beijing.

Xi said he hoped the two sides would work: "to build China-Uruguay relations into a model of solidarity and cooperation between countries of different sizes, systems and cultures."

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Taiwan reports Chinese fighters, bombers nearby as election campaign heats up

https://reuters.com/article/taiwan-china/taiwan-reports-chinese-fighters-bombers-nearby-as-election-campaign-heats-up-idUSKBN32H0I2

Taiwan again reported Chinese military activity around the island on Wednesday, with 11 aircraft crossing the sensitive median line of the Taiwan Strait as the island's election campaign kicked into high gear.

Democratically-governed Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, has complained for the past four years of regular Chinese military patrols and drills near the island, as Beijing seeks to pressure Taipei over its sovereignty claims.

Taiwan holds presidential and parliamentary polls on Jan. 13 and candidates have to register with the election commission this week in order to take part.

The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which Beijing views as separatists, registered its presidential ticket on Tuesday, though the opposition is mired in disagreement about a potential joint bid.

Taiwan's defence ministry said that starting early Wednesday afternoon it had detected J-10 and J-16 fighters as well as H-6 bombers and early warning aircraft carrying out overseas missions.

Eleven of those aircraft crossed the Taiwan Strait's median line flying in airspace to the centre and southwest of the island, working with Chinese warships to carry out "joint combat readiness patrols", the ministry added.

The strait's median line had previously served as an unofficial barrier between the two sides and which Chinese planes now regularly fly over.

Taiwan sent its own forces to monitor, the ministry said.

China's defence ministry did not answer calls seeking comment. China says its activities near Taiwan are aimed at preventing "collusion" between Taiwan separatists and the United States and to protect China's territorial integrity.

Taiwan's government, which has repeatedly offered talks with China, rejects Beijing's sovereignty claims and says only the island's people can decide their future.

Taiwan's main opposition party, the Kuomintang, traditionally supports close ties with Beijing, and has pledged to re-open dialogue with China should it win the election.

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Fiji may partner with China to upgrade ports and shipyards, PM Rabuka says

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/22/fiji-may-partner-china-port-shipyard-development

China may help Fiji develop its ports and shipyards, the Pacific island country’s prime minister said, raising the prospect of stronger ties with Beijing in a key area of its economy.

Prime minister Sitiveni Rabuka, who has been cautious about China’s expanding security footprint in the Pacific, praised Beijing’s record of aid to Fiji in fighting Covid-19, developing agriculture and revamping infrastructure.

The modernisation of Fiji’s port facilities and shipyards is a “key focus” for sustainable economic development, Rabuka told parliament on Wednesday, after meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping last week.

“I anticipate potential collaboration with China in that endeavour,” the Fijian leader said, citing the Asian giant’s “globally competitive shipbuilding” capacity.

Fiji and other Pacific nations have sought to strike a delicate balance as China competes for influence in the region with the United States and its allies.

Rabuka met Xi for the first time on the sidelines of the Apec forum in San Francisco last week. He said on Wednesday Fiji shared China’s vision for global security and that Beijing’s belt and road initiative “aligns with our nation’s development agenda”.

During a visit to Australia last month, Rabuka said he preferred dealing with democratic “traditional friends” when asked about China’s security role in the South Pacific.

An Australian-based ship design company said Rabuka had earlier sought the involvement of Australia, Fiji’s largest aid donor, in the shipyard project. Sea Transport chairman Stuart Ballantyne told Reuters his company had received a request from Fiji for a fleet of commercial ships it could assemble locally.

Fiji Ports referred questions about China’s involvement to Rabuka’s office, which did not respond to requests for comment from Reuters. China’s embassy in Fiji also did not respond to a request for comment.

China has been pushing for greater security and trade ties with Pacific Islands countries, signing a security pact with Solomon Islandswhich raised alarm in the United States. The US then responded by striking a defence deal with Papua New Guinea.

China’s policy on the Pacific Island nations fully respects the sovereignty and independence of those countries without attaching political conditions or empty promises, Xi said after meeting Rabuka last week.

Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

[World] China: Human Rights Watch accuses Beijing of closing and destroying mosques

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-67483202?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=KARANGA

Exclusive: China govt advisers call for steady growth target in 2024, more stimulus

https://reuters.com/article/china-economy-target/exclusive-china-govt-advisers-call-for-steady-growth-target-in-2024-more-stimulus-idUSKBN32H05W

Chinese government advisers will recommend economic growth targets for next year ranging from 4.5% to 5.5% to an annual policymakers' meeting, as Beijing seeks to create jobs and keep long-term development goals on track.

Five of the seven advisers who spoke with Reuters said they favoured a target of around 5%, matching this year's goal. One adviser will propose a 4.5% target, while the other suggested a 5.0-5.5% range.

The proposals will be made next month at the ruling Communist Party's annual Central Economic Work Conference that discusses policy plans and the outlook for the world's second-largest economy.

Reaching such targets would require Beijing to step up fiscal stimulus, the advisers said, given that this year's growth has been flattered by last year's low-base effect of COVID-19 lockdowns.

"We need to adopt expansionary fiscal and monetary policy to stimulate aggregate demand," Yu Yongding, a government economist who advocates for a growth target of roughly 5%, told Reuters.

"Corporate investment demand will not be strong as the confidence of companies has not recovered, so we need to expand infrastructure investment," added Yu, who also favours a budget deficit topping 4% of economic output.

The other advisers spoke on condition of anonymity due to the closed-door nature of the discussions. Top leaders are expected to endorse the target at the December meeting, although it will not be announced publicly until China's annual parliament meeting, usually held in March.

In October, China unveiled a plan to issue 1 trillion yuan ($139 billion) in sovereign bonds by the end of the year, raising the 2023 budget deficit target to 3.8% of gross domestic product (GDP) from the original 3%.

Chinese leaders have pledged to "optimize the structure of central and local government debt", suggesting the central government has room to spend more as its debt as a share of GDP is just 21%, far lower than 76% for local governments.

"We are stepping up fiscal policy support," said another adviser, to make the "difficult" 2024 target "achievable."

Monetary stimulus is expected to play a more limited role as the central bank remains concerned a widening interest rate differential with the West may further weaken the yuan and encourage capital outflows.

"The space for monetary policy could be bigger if we have greater tolerance for exchange rate fluctuations," said Guan Tao, global chief economist at BOC International and a former official at the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE).

China’s economy grew only 3% in 2022, one of its worst performances in nearly half a century. A Reuters poll in October showed that economists expect it to grow 5.0% in 2023 and 4.5% in 2024, although some have since raised their forecasts.

In 2022, President Xi Jinping laid out a long-term vision of "Chinese-style modernisation" at a key party meeting, with a goal of doubling China's economy by 2035 that government economists say would require average annual growth of 4.7%.

The stuttering post-COVID recovery has prompted many analysts to call for structural reforms that tilt the drivers of economic growth away from property and infrastructure investment and towards household consumption and market-allocation of resources.

Absent that, these economists warn, China may begin flirting with Japan-style stagnation later this decade.

Beijing has been trying to reduce economic reliance on property, channelling more resources into high-tech manufacturing and green industries, but has struggled to boost consumer and investor sentiment.

Policy insiders believe more fundamental changes, especially a revival of market-oriented reforms, are unlikely due to the political environment, under which the state has increased its control over the economy, including the private sector.

"If there is no consensus on reforms, we will have to use stimulus to drive growth, even though it will not be sustainable,” a third adviser said.

($1 = 7.2111 Chinese yuan renminbi)

Merle Goldman, noted scholar of Chinese intellectual dissent, dies at 92

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2023/11/21/merle-goldman-china-scholar-dies/2023-11-21T21:20:57.165Z

Merle Goldman, a prominent scholar of Chinese affairs who specialized in the work of writers and dissidents confronting the powerful central state, positing that China’s rise as a global economic force could eventually pry open Beijing’s tight lid on opposition, died Nov. 16 at her home in Cambridge, Mass. She was 92.

Ms. Goldman had Merkel cell carcinoma, a rare skin cancer, said her son, Seth Goldman.

As an author and analyst, Ms. Goldman was among the leading academic voices informing Western understanding and policymaking across more than six decades that shaped contemporary China. She chronicled each step from Beijing’s cautious openings in the 1970s to the current dictum of the Communist Party: giving supercharged modernization and middle-class comforts in exchange for zero tolerance on dissent.

The more than dozen books written or co-edited by Ms. Goldman are considered among the essential compendiums on China’s pro-reform movements. As part of the American delegation to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights from 1993 to 1994, she helped examine China’s systematic purges after authorities crushed pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Yet Ms. Goldman did not see only the state’s heavy hand. She broke ranks at times with other experts on China, offering less-pessimistic views on the country’s possible political evolution. It comes down to what happens when money isn’t enough, she believed.

The vast middle class created by China’s surge to become the world’s No. 2 economy may eventually seek its own political voice that the Communist Party could not easily ignore, she wrote in 1994’s “Sowing the Seeds of Democracy in China.”

She also interpreted China’s Confucian legacy as inherently at odds with centralized power, favoring instead fair treatment by leaders and bestowing responsibility to intellectuals and writers to speak out against the abuse of political power.

“This does not mean that China will become a democracy in the near future,” she reminded an audience at Princeton University in 2006. Think rather in terms of generations or even longer, she said. And keep in mind, she added, a possible Chinese “democracy” with greater political latitude could end up looking very different than a Western model with different parties and agendas.

“[The Chinese] have a greater degree, certainly, of economic freedom,” she told NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” in 2006 after the release of her book “From Comrade to Citizen: The Struggle for Political Rights in China.” “Yet this is still an authoritarian government.”

That assessment was further reinforced in the years since, including China wiping away many of the political and media freedoms in Hong Kong carried over from its handover by Britain in 1997. She also noted a “virulent form of nationalism” emerging among many younger Chinese supporting crackdowns on pro-autonomy groups in Tibet and the sweeping restrictions and abuses on Muslim Uyghurs in western Xinjiang province.

Ms. Goldman’s deep personal connections in China often gave her scholarship added resonance and nuance. She built networks across the country, particularly among intellectuals, writers and others under increasing pressure by the state. Her network, as well as travel within China since the mid-1970s, allowed Ms. Goldman to share stories and insights that went beyond the geostrategic power plays.

In an essay in The Washington Post in 1999, Ms. Goldman described watching a Chinese village cast ballots for local positions within the Communist Party, which described the voting as a step forward in participatory politics. Instead, wrote Ms. Goldman, the party had “turned to village elections as a way of reestablishing control.”

Three candidates were seeking spots in the village in the southwestern Chongqing province: two Communist Party members and a third, Liao Zhenwen, who led a construction cooperative. When Liao’s name was dropped from the final ballot for village chief, his supporters grabbed papers and wrote in his name. Ms. Goldman’s group, observers with the Carter Center, were hustled away. The election results were later invalidated.

“Nonetheless,” she wrote, “the protest demonstrated the villagers’ willingness to express discontent with the election procedures and the party’s inability to manipulate them completely.”

She also displayed the confidence to acknowledge what she didn’t know. In a 2005 article, she began with a shrug.

“Is China’s political environment loosening up, or is the government cracking down?” she wrote. “It’s hard to tell.”

Sino-Soviet studies

Merle Dorothy Rosenblatt was born on March 12, 1931, in New Haven, Conn. Her parents joined with their siblings to open stores selling fabric remnants and doing upholstery work.

She received a bachelor’s degree in 1953 from Sarah Lawrence College and then enrolled at Radcliffe University to pursue a master’s degree in Chinese studies, a relatively new academic field in the United States at the time. She graduated in 1957 and, after her wedding, spent a year in Fort Hood, Tex., during the Army service of her husband, Marshall Goldman.

They both headed to Harvard University: Ms. Goldman earning a doctorate focused on Chinese history in 1964, and her husband continuing with studies into the Soviet economic system. (He would go on to become a noted authority on the Soviet economy and Wellesley College professor.)

Her 1967 book “Literary Dissent in Communist China,” established her as one of the first American scholars to highlight the closing of intellectual freedom in China as Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution took hold.

At Harvard, Ms. Goldman studied with leading figures in Chinese scholarship, including Roderick MacFarquhar and John Fairbank, who both would later collaborate with her on books including 1992’s “China: A New History” (with Fairbanks) and as co-editor with MacFarquhar on “The Paradox of China’s Post-Mao Reforms” (1999).

She was a professor at Boston University from 1972 to 2001 and was on the faculty of Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. She was a frequent lecturer at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute, among other places.

Ms. Goldman’s husband of 64 years died in 2017. Survivors include sons Seth Goldman and Ethan Goldman; daughters Avra Goldman and Karla Goldman; 12 grandchildren and four great-granddaughters.

When Ms. Goldman was deciding on a subject for her doctorate and academic career, she recalled two pieces of advice given by her parents: Do something serious and meaningful, and don’t go into the same field as your husband.

“So, she says that she said, ‘Okay, Marshall is studying the Soviet Union,” recounted her daughter Karla Goldman. “I’ll study China.”

China closing hundreds of mosques in northern regions, rights group says

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/21/china-closing-hundreds-of-mosques-in-northern-regions-rights-group-says

Chinese authorities have closed or altered hundreds of mosques in the northern regions of Ningxia and Gansu, homes to the highest Muslim populations in China after Xinjiang, as part of broader efforts to “sinicise” China’s religious minorities, according to a report.

Researchers at Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the Chinese government was significantly reducing the number of mosques in Ningxia autonomous region and Gansu province.

The Chinese Communist party (CCP) has long maintained a tight grip over China’s religious and ethnic minorities, and since 2016 when Xi Jinping, China’s leader, called for the sinicisation of China’s religions, the pace and intensity of mosque alterations has increased.

In April 2018, Beijing issued a directive stating that government officials should “strictly control the construction and layout of Islamic activity venues” and “adhere to the principle of demolishing more and building less”.

The researchers at HRW analysed satellite imagery to examine the mosque consolidation policy in two villages in Ningxia. It found that between 2019 and 2021, the domes and minarets were removed from all seven of the mosques. Four of the mosques were significantly altered: three main buildings were razed and the ablution hall of one was damaged.

Hannah Theaker, a lecturer at the University of Plymouth who has researched the topic with David Stroup, of the University of Manchester, said the removal of ablution facilities was a way of “basically immediately ensuring that you cannot use them, [so that] it has effectively been removed as a place of worship, without being visible.”

Theaker and Stroup estimate that about 1,300 mosques in Ningxia – a third of the total number registered – have been closed since 2020. That estimate does not include mosques that have been closed or demolished because of their unofficial status, most of which happened before 2020.

HRW was not able to determine the exact number of mosques that have been closed or modified in recent years, but government reports suggest it is likely to be hundreds. In Zhongwei, a city with more than 1 million residents, authorities said in 2019 that they had altered 214 mosques, consolidated 58, and banned 37 “illegally registered religious sites”. In the town of Jingui, authorities said they had “rectified” more than 130 sites “with Islamic architectural features”.

An imam in Ningxia interviewed by Radio Free Asia said the mosque consolidation policy meant that any mosques within 2.5km of each other had to be merged. “When mosques are closed, many young and middle-aged people will no longer go to mosques to participate in religious activities, and the next generation will slowly lose faith and have no confidence in Islam … in this way, Muslims are slowly being sinicised,” he was quoted in RFA as saying.

Maya Wang, the acting China director at HRW, said the “closure, destruction and repurposing of mosques is part of a systematic effort to curb the practice of Islam in China.”

A Chinese government spokesperson said: “People of all ethnic groups in China are fully entitled to the freedom of religious belief as prescribed by law. Following policies that protect freedom of religious belief, China, like other countries, administers religious affairs in accordance with law. We are resolute in rejecting and fighting religious extremism. Believers’ normal religious activities are guaranteed in accordance with law and their customs respected.”

The mosque consolidation policy is not confined to Ningxia and Gansu. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute estimates that 65% of Xinjiang’s 16,000 mosques have been destroyed or damaged since 2017.

In May, hundreds of police clashed with protesters in a Hui Muslim town in Yunnan province, in south-west China, over attempts to dismantle parts of an important local mosque.

A growing global footprint for China’s space program worries Pentagon

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2023/china-space-program-south-america-defense/2023-11-09T12:46:35.137Z

EL ALTO, Bolivia — On a plateau 13,000 feet above sea level in the Bolivian Andes, llama herders and Indigenous farmers share the sparse landscape with an unusual neighbor: a towering cluster of Chinese-built satellite dishes.

The Amachuma Ground Station exchanges data 24 hours a day with Bolivia’s only state-owned satellite, Tupac Katari I, which orbits some 22,300 miles above Latin America. The remote ground station has another, largely invisible, use: It allows Beijing to surveil skies 10,000 miles from China, according to officials from the Bolivian space agency and Chinese scientists and company officials familiar with the program.

The Pentagon is increasingly concerned that China’s growing network of facilities in Latin America and Antarctica for its civilian space and satellite programs has defense capabilities. U.S. officials say the ground stations — which allow countries to maintain uninterrupted communication with satellites and other space vehicles — have the potential to expand Beijing’s global military surveillance network in the southern hemisphere and areas close to the United States.

China already has over 700 satellites in orbit, with plans to expand that number exponentially in the coming years — a project that requires a global constellation of terrestrial facilities to track and communicate with them as they pass over different parts of the planet.

Apart from two ground stations in Bolivia, opened in 2013, China built space facilities in Venezuela in 2008, Peru in 2015, Argentina in 2016 and has at least two stations under construction in Antarctica. It has additional access to facilities in Brazil and Chile through research partnerships. This infrastructure fills a key geographical gap for Beijing’s space program, allowing China to track and communicate with its growing fleet of satellites and space vehicles while also potentially surveilling other state’s assets as they pass over the southern hemisphere.

Ground stations are a critical piece of terrestrial space infrastructure, performing what is called telemetry, tracking and command (TT&C) functions, meaning they are able to track or communicate with the vast web of satellites and space vehicles that fill the sky. They are key to delivering commercial services, including internet connectivity, Earth imaging and the monitoring of civilian space research vehicles.

Ground stations can also play an important role in national security. They facilitate military communications, track missile launches, surveil the space assets of other countries and can play a role in jamming, interfering with or potentially destroying enemy satellites. The importance of satellite networks in war has been underscored since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, where communication satellites and terminals made by Starlink, the satellite internet company operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, have become a lifeline for Ukrainian forces.

China’s international space facilities are still far outnumbered by U.S. stations, but the Latin American and Antarctic sites are just one segment in a growing Chinese global space infrastructure, forged mostly in countries with close diplomatic ties to Beijing.

The Chinese state firm behind Bolivia’s ground stations has, since 2008, built similar projects in Laos, Pakistan, Nigeria and Belarus, while other space-tracking facilities linked to the People’s Liberation Army include sites in Namibia and Kenya. China also maintains a fleet of mobile space support ships that, according to the Pentagon, are used to track satellite and ICBM launches.

This summer, Chinese state media said national records were broken when 67 satellites were launched within just nine days in June. Earlier this year, Chinese military researchers said work has begun on launching a mega-constellation of almost 13,000 low-earth orbit satellites, designed to compete with Starlink, which has its own global constellation of ground stations.

“Their on-orbit armada of satellites can track us, can sense us, can see us … and can now hold U.S. forces at risk in a way we have never understood or had to face to date,” said Maj. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon, deputy chief of space operations for intelligence at the U.S. Space Force, speaking at the Air and Space Forces Association Warfare symposium in March.

Gagnon said that around half of China’s 700 satellites are used for remote sensing and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance purposes, meaning they are equipped to gather sensitive security data.

Ties to Chinese military

At the time of its launch in 2013, the Tupac Katari I satellite — named after a famed Bolivian revolutionary and funded by a $250 million China Development Bank loan — represented something unthinkable to many Bolivians: the prestige of a national space program, connectivity for the country’s remote rural communities and a specialized military communications bandwidth.

But almost 10 years later, the promise of Bolivia’s revolutionary leap into space has faded. While Tupac Katari I has driven more connectivity in remote areas, plans to use the project as a launchpad for the country’s own space industry have been scuttled by economic woes. Much of the Chinese loan remains outstanding, with Tupac Katari I set to be retired into a deep space graveyard within five years.

The ground stations have proved useful as one of several Latin American facilities accessible to China.

“We have rented it to the Chinese to control the launch of [their] other satellites,” said Iván Zambrana, director general of Agencia Boliviana Espacial, the Bolivian space agency, speaking from the expansive glass-fronted building that overlooks the dishes — a glitzy perk of the Chinese loan package.

Zambrana said that under the contracts, Chinese technicians travel to Bolivia about once a year to access the base, usually via a secondary ground station that communicates with Amachuma from the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz. From there, they are able to install technology and track other assets in space. One Chinese technician said Beijing is able to remotely access a number of the overseas stations, including those in Bolivia and Venezuela. “Those agreements were done with the permission of partner governments,” said the technician who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Beijing is not alone in building space TT&C facilities abroad, most of which have legitimate civilian uses, and the country maintains its ground stations in Latin America and Antarctica are used exclusively for peaceful purposes. What sets China’s international commercial space program apart is its close links to the military. The contractors behind China’s space technology — including most of the Latin American and Antarctic facilities — are also the leading state-owned powerhouses behind the missile development, cyberwarfare and counter space defense programs of the People’s Liberation Army.

“All of the [Chinese] agencies that are involved in the information and the data collection at these places are tied back in one way or the other to the Chinese government or to the Chinese military,” said Matthew Funaiole, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, who has studied the expansion of Chinese ground stations in Latin America and Antarctica.

“The way to think about it is, if these sites are or could collect data that is beneficial to the PLA, and the PLA wants it, it’s going to get it,” he said.

‘A security risk’

Beijing has set a goal to become a world-leading space power by 2045 — a program that lays out ambitious targets in national security as well as civilian projects, including a plan to send crewed spacecraft to the moon by 2030 and develop nuclear-powered space shuttles by 2040. Spearheading Beijing’s race toward space supremacy are a cluster of state-owned firms that are either direct units of the PLA or military contractors. Others are private or state enterprises that are part of Beijing’s military-civil fusion program, a national strategic policy drive by the Chinese Communist Party to enrich the military with civilian-developed technologies.

The technology behind China’s space program — including the facilities in Latin America and Antarctica — is dominated by two state-owned enterprises: the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC) and China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp. (CASIC). Both firms originated in the PLA, before being spun off into major state-owned enterprises, and remain top suppliers to the country’s military. CASC, according to company documents, is the country’s sole manufacturer of intercontinental nuclear missiles, as well as a top contractor of military space technology, drones and launch systems.

CASIC describes itself as the “backbone” of China’s aerospace industry, overseeing the development of cruise and ballistic missiles among a vast range of other projects. “CASIC takes ‘empowering the military’ as its first duty and ‘building China into a space power’ as its own responsibility,” according to a description on its website.

Towering over a remote plain in Patagonia, Argentina, is the largest Chinese-made space facility in Latin America. A 35-meter-wide satellite dish at the Espacio Lejano Ground Station is operated by the PLA’s Strategic Support Force (SSF), according to a 2023 Pentagon report and two people who work for a Chinese-state space group and are familiar with the project’s operation. The SSF is the military unit that oversees the PLA’s space, cyber and electronic warfare programs.

Under a contract signed between the two countries, Argentina’s government agreed not to “interfere or interrupt” China’s activities at the ground-station facility.

In Venezuela, a Chinese state-owned company launched a satellite and built two ground stations — the largest of which is located inside Venezuela’s Capitán Manuel Ríos Airbase, a military airport in the country’s central north. The company, China Great Wall Industry Corp. (CGWIC), is the sole entity authorized to provide commercial satellite technology to international partners and is a wholly owned subsidiary of CASC.

The CGWIC also built the ground station in Bolivia and is the group that liaises with Bolivia’s space agency to conduct projects from its Andean base station.

Almost 6,200 miles south, a ground station antenna under construction at China’s Zhongshan base in Antarctica is being built by CASIC, according to Chinese state media. Another Chinese ground station under construction on the remote Antarctic outcrop of Inexpressible Island has drawn concerns from the Pentagon that it could “provide the PLA with better surveillance capabilities … well positioned to collect signals intelligence over Australia and New Zealand,” according to the Defense Department report released last month on military threats posed by China.

The Chinese technician who previously worked as a contractor on overseas projects for the CGWIC told The Washington Post that the lines between civilian and military are fluid in the state-owned firm and in China’s broader international space partnerships.

“They are the same, the same staff … military and civilian, you know in China there is no difference, this is the condition of our country’s space industry,” said the person. “The United States, Western countries, also do this type of work in secret conditions. Why not China?”

The CGWIC did not respond to a request for comment. CASC and CASIC did not respond to emails and calls to their Beijing headquarters.

A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington told The Post that he could not comment on specific country partnerships, but said Beijing is “for peaceful use of outer space.”

Spokesman Liu Pengyu said China is against the “weaponization” of space technology and does not support an “arms race” in outer space. “We promote an outer space community with shared future for mankind,” he said. Liu pointed to China’s cooperation with Brazil, using satellites to surveil earth resources, weather and other civilian applications as evidence of China’s successful role in the region’s space industry.

The Chinese Embassy in Bolivia did not respond to a request for comment.

Asked about the potential for China to use the CGWIC base for military purposes, Zambrana, director of the Bolivian space agency, dismissed the idea. “Go look for yourself,” he said, gesturing toward the nearby Amachuma Ground Station. “You won’t see any military.”

Rogelio Mayta, who spoke to The Post while serving as foreign minister in October, a role he stepped down from last week, said that Bolivia is alert to the potential of satellite technology being militarized, but feels it is unavoidable, and that the benefits to Bolivians outweigh those concerns. “We have to live with that potential reality and the aerospace capabilities of the great powers,” he said. “We know that it can imply a security risk.”

Filling gaps where U.S. was absent

Beijing’s expanding space presence in Latin America has been carved along diplomatic lines, finding success in countries where relations with the United States and its allies have faltered.

As discussions on the formation of Bolivia’s space agency were underway in 2009, the country’s relations with the United States were at a crisis point.

President Evo Morales leveled sweeping accusations that the CIA was plotting against his government. Months earlier, he had expelled the U.S. ambassador and officials from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, accusing them of conspiracy, charges the U.S. Embassy in Bolivia called “absurd.”

At the time, Beijing was not deeply engaged in the country, which was emerging from an economically turbulent decade, but over the next 12 years it would become the country’s top international financier and infrastructure collaborator. In 2017, Bolivia’s vice president said the country would receive a $7 billion credit line from Beijing for infrastructure projects, double the country’s external debt at the time. This year, amid a severe shortage of U.S. dollars, Bolivia began trading in China’s currency, the yuan.

With the loans came expanded access for Chinese companies to the country’s vast natural resources, including lithium, and Bolivia obtained other advanced technology. In 2019, for instance, Bolivia launched the Bol-110 project, equipping police and emergency-response services in the country’s cities with Chinese-made surveillance systems.

When Beijing floated the $250 million loan for the Tupac Katari I satellite project, Bolivian space agency officials said the Chinese proposal was not only more comprehensive than alternative bids, but also represented a welcome alternative from what they perceived to be patronizing treatment from American and European space suppliers who were in contact with Bolivia at the time.

“There was an air of superiority in Americans and Europeans when dealing with Bolivia,” said Zambrana, who has headed the space agency since its inception in 2010, only stepping away from the role when an interim government took power for a year following a political crisis in 2019.

Within 10 months of the founding of the Bolivian space agency, the government signed a contract with the CGWIC for a package that included two ground stations and the Tupac Katari I satellite. As part of the agreement, Bolivia sent 64 scientists to study satellite technology at Beihang University, China’s top civilian and military aerospace university. They then continued their training alongside Chinese engineers at the newly constructed ground stations back in Bolivia.

“In general, there’s been a recognition over the last 10 years that the U.S. needed to up its soft power game to counter some of this,” said Brian Weeden, director of program planning for Secure World Foundation and an expert in space security. “What China was doing was filling in the gaps where the U.S. was not focused.”

Bolivian officials maintain they aren’t wedded to China as their sole space contractor and are actively considering other countries for future projects. They do, however, resent the idea that they would be forced to choose between the West and China.

“We don’t want to be told that we are with God or with the devil,” said Mayta, the former foreign minister. “That is, we believe that we can have a position open to everyone,” he said.

Supremacy in space technologies

In Bolivia, while relations remain strong with China, much of the hype around the original space collaboration has faded. Plans for a second, Chinese funded, Earth-imaging satellite announced by the Morales government in 2017 and lauded for its potential to capture detailed data on the country’s land use, have been shelved indefinitely — deemed too costly.

Elsewhere in Latin America, other countries have continued to buy into a more ambitious vision of a China-led future in space. Venezuela — since its initial pact with the CGWIC in 2008 — has moved ahead with two further Chinese satellites. In September, it became the first Latin American country to formally join the China-led International Lunar Research Station project.

Despite the country’s cratering economy, President Nicolás Maduro vowed during a September state visit to Beijing that he would send “the first Venezuelan man or woman to the moon” with the help of China.

Among Pentagon documents leaked on the Discord chat platform in the spring was one that contained a stark assessment of China’s satellite capabilities in the southern hemisphere. It said the satellites were sophisticated beyond previous estimates, and Beijing already holds the ability to track, jam or destroy U.S. and allied satellites that would collect critical intelligence in the Indo-Pacific in the event of war in Taiwan.

“The PRC’s overall military strategy to establish and maintain information dominance in a conflict drives Beijing’s development of space,” it said.

About this story

Story by Cate Cadell. Photos by Marcelo Perez del Carpio. Story editing by Peter Finn. Project editing by Courtney Kan. Photo editing by Jennifer Samuel. Design and development by Kat Rudell-Brooks and Yutao Chen. Maps by Cate Brown and Laris Karklis. Design editing by Joe Moore. Copy editing by Susan Doyle.