• Chinese oil giant CNOOC looks underground to store fuel reserves
• Xinjiang: US adds more Chinese officials and companies to sanctions list
• ‘Just wait for death’: China food delivery rider threatens woman at her home, brandishes big stick, says will poison her after poor review
• Chinese scientists use genetics to boost iron content of corn, offer hope to anaemia sufferers worldwide
• After arrests and deportations, Mongolians worry about Chinese reach
• AI reunites son with family but raises questions in China about ethics, privacy
• South China Sea: Chinese coastguard blames Philippine boats for ‘collision’ near disputed Second Thomas Shoal
• Japan battles to protect premium US$100 a bunch grapes ‘stolen’ by China, South Korea
• Smoke her out: new China wedding ritual sees villagers padlock Porsche of groom, demand cigarettes for release so he can reach wife-to-be
• Chinese state media drops ‘Tibet’ for ‘Xizang’ after release of Beijing white paper
• David Cameron urged to tell China to free Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai
• Chinese tourists who refused to stop taking selfies fall into cold Venice canal after gondola capsizes
• Made-in-China still dominates US holiday sales, but do Americans even care?
• Birth-parent bonanza: China abductee, 25, snatched as newborn reunites with rich parents, given 3 flats, car at emotional homecoming
• Property woes loom large over China’s 2024 outlook: economist
• Why China should move beyond wartime past and forge closer ties with Japan

Chinese oil giant CNOOC looks underground to store fuel reserves

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3244560/chinese-oil-giant-cnooc-looks-underground-store-fuel-reserves?utm_source=rss_feed

Work has started in eastern China on a massive underground oil storage facility as part of the country’s drive towards energy security.

State news agency Xinhua reported on Sunday that the Daxie commercial oil reserve project in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, would be the first commercial facility of its kind in the country and more cost-efficient than traditional methods.

Once completed, the water-sealed cavern system excavated in a fractured rock below groundwater level will be able to store 3 million cubic metres, or about 2.5 million tonnes.

Online news outlet The Paper reported the cost of the project to be roughly 3 billion yuan (US$42 million).

The project by state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) will be 20 per cent cheaper to build and cost half as much to operate compared to above-ground oil storage facilities, according to the Xinhua report.

Other storage and transport facilities will be built above ground and construction is expected to be completed and operations begin by 2026.

Liu Daping, chairman of CNOOC Petrochemicals Import & Export, said the project would help ensure energy security in the area.

“It will provide a stable supply of crude oil to eastern China and along the Yangtze River,” Liu said.

“[It will be important] for dynamically balancing local oil supply and demand, responding to major energy supply crises, and the digital transformation of the energy industry.”

China keeps cosying up to Arab states on trade and energy as US watches on

China is the world’s biggest buyer of crude oil and imports most of what it needs.

As a result, energy security is high on its policy agenda, especially with geopolitical tensions fuelling volatility in oil and natural gas prices.

Last year, China imported 508.2 million tonnes of crude oil. Saudi Arabia was its top source of the fuel, supplying 87.5 million tonnes, followed by Russia with 86.2 million tonnes.

To stabilise supplies, China has also made more frequent exchanges with other Gulf states to deepen oil and gas cooperation.

It also established a strategic crude oil reserve in 2007.

While it is not known how big the reserve is, China is widely believed to have stockpiled a significant amount of crude oil when prices plunged in March and April in 2020, and to have increased the rate of stockpiling in recent months.

China has also invested in commercial crude oil reserves and began operating its largest commercial on-the-ground storage facility in eastern city of Dongying in February.

The Dongying facilities, also invested by CNOOC, can store about 5 million cubic metres, or about 4.25 million tonnes, of crude oil.

Xinjiang: US adds more Chinese officials and companies to sanctions list

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3244558/xinjiang-us-adds-more-chinese-officials-and-companies-sanctions-list?utm_source=rss_feed

The United States has sanctioned another two Chinese officials over alleged links to human rights abuses against Uygurs and other ethnic minorities in the far western region of Xinjiang.

The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said on Friday that the sanctions applied to Gao Qi, a former police chief at the Ili Kazakh autonomous prefecture in northern Xinjiang, and Hu Lianhe, an official from the Communist Party’s United Front Work Department responsible for shaping ideology and ensuring social stability in the region.

The office said it had frozen the officials’ US assets and barred any “US person” or anyone located in the US from dealing with the property unless they had permission from the office – permission that is hard to obtain.

Financial institutions and other people who provide money or goods to Gao or Hu could also attract secondary sanctions.

On the same day, the US State Department banned Gao and Hu from entry to the United States.

US seafood supply chain ripe for China human rights violations, panel told

The sanctions were the latest of a string of measures from the US to punish Chinese companies and individuals allegedly involved in the persecution of Uygur people and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang.

Washington added three more Chinese companies to its sanctions list, accusing them of recruiting and exploiting people of ethnic minorities through their labour practices.

One company is involved in sugar production, another in textiles, and the third in electrical supplies and battery accessories.

US restrictions have previously focused on Xinjiang-sourced cotton, tomatoes, textiles and polysilicon – a key material to make solar cells.

Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said China condemned the sanctions.

“Such acts grossly interfere in China’s internal affairs, flagrantly violate the basic norms governing international relations and seriously undermine China-US relations,” he said.

Gao, a career police officer, headed Ili prefecture’s public security bureau as party secretary and chief from 2009 to 2022. He became a deputy secretary of the prefecture’s political and legal affairs commission in 2017.

Hu has been the deputy chief of the United Front Work Department’s ninth bureau since at least 2016.

The department’s WeChat account says the bureau coordinates and directs policy related to ensuring stability, ethnic unity, political ideology, economic development, education and labour in Xinjiang. It is also in charge of researching “important and sensitive issues”.

Hu was one of four officials sanctioned by the US State Department in 2021 on suspicion of human rights abuses.

In 2018, Hu told the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination that “re-education centres” or “counter-extremism training centres” did not exist in Xinjiang.

A 2022 report by the UN human rights office said serious human rights violations were committed in Xinjiang with respect to the authorities’ strategy and policy against terrorism and “extremism”.

The report said vague concepts gave officials wide discretion to exercise their powers with little oversight, leading to the “large-scale arbitrary deprivation of liberty of members of Uygur and other predominantly Muslim communities” between 2017 and 2019 in Xinjiang at facilities including the “vocational education and training centres”.

Beijing has said that no internment camps exist in Xinjiang, only “vocational education and training centres” set up as schools for “deradicalisation” and counterterrorism. It rejected the UN report as “a patchwork of false information”.

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‘Just wait for death’: China food delivery rider threatens woman at her home, brandishes big stick, says will poison her after poor review

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3243883/just-wait-death-china-food-delivery-rider-threatens-woman-her-home-brandishes-big-stick-says-will?utm_source=rss_feed

The behaviour of an aggressive male food delivery rider in China who stood outside a female customer’s home brandishing a stick and threatening to poison her because she gave him a negative review, has divided opinion on mainland social media.

The unidentified customer from Fujian province in southeastern China was terrified by the act of revenge, according to her friend, surnamed Li, who shared the incident online.

In a video clip, the man is seen standing outside the customer’s flat yelling in a temper and holding a long stick menacingly.

“I warn you. I will put rat poison on the food you order next time. You just wait for death,” he shouts.

Li said the reason her friend left a poor review was because the rider failed to deliver the food on time and when he did eventually arrive he left the bag on the doorstep without telling her.

The woman reported the threatening act to the delivery company and the manager sent the rider to say sorry.

The manager also apologised and passed on a letter of apology from his employee. He also compensated the woman for a door lock which was damaged by the rider.

The story sparked a debate on mainland social media.

Many people condemned the delivery driver while others criticised the customer for not respecting his work.

“The rider definitely overreacted,” one person said.

“It’s very violent behaviour indeed,” said another.

However, some took a different view: “Before leaving a negative review, did the customer think of the bad impact it could have on the rider?” one person asked.

“Leaving a negative review is really bad,” added another.

Stories about delivery drivers often attract great interest in China.

In April, a delivery worker in eastern China made a report to police after she felt “psychologically hurt” by a customer who gave her a bogus address, threatened to beat her up, and posted negative feedback about her on the company’s website.

In another case in May last year, a customer in eastern China demanded a food delivery driver bring him a crate of beer, which had not been included in the order. The driver then had to climb six floors to deliver it.

Chinese scientists use genetics to boost iron content of corn, offer hope to anaemia sufferers worldwide

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3244550/chinese-scientists-use-genetics-boost-iron-content-corn-offer-hope-anaemia-sufferers-worldwide?utm_source=rss_feed

A new method to boost the iron content of corn could potentially address deficiencies of the essential mineral worldwide, Chinese scientists behind the discovery said.

The fortified grain was being grown in trials in the central province of Henan, offering hope for high-yielding, iron-rich future harvests, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Sunday.

According to the researchers, their gene-based method helped to increase the iron content of corn kernels to 70.5 mg per kg, or more than double that of existing varieties.

The team from the Institute of Crop Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science and Henan Agricultural University published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal Science last week.

Iron is a key nutrient for development and cell growth in the immune and neural systems, as well as in regulating energy metabolism. The US National Institutes of Health recommends that men take 8mg and women 18mg of iron daily.

Iron deficiency is the most common cause of anaemia, a condition when the body does not have enough healthy red blood cells. It could happen with inadequate intake of dietary iron, increased need during periods of growth and blood loss from parasitic worm infection or menstruation in adolescence.

US-China joint study challenges corn origins theory

The World Health Organization estimates that about 40 per cent of children aged between six months and five years are anaemic, as are more than one-third of expectant mothers and 30 per cent of females aged between 15 and 49 years.

It recommends industrial fortification of staple foods like corn with iron, highlighting that this has been done for years in several countries in the Americas and Africa where corn is a major part of the diet.

In the recently published study, the Chinese team identified a gene that regulates iron concentrations in corn kernels, and found that increasing its expression levels raised the iron content – gene expression being the process by which information stored in DNA directs the formation of cells.

Lead author Li Wenxue, head of corn molecular breeding research at the Institute of Crop Sciences, said the team had been able to load iron into the corn kernels without compromising yield, thereby solving a long-standing problem.

“Taking iron supplements is a feasible solution [for deficiencies] but the cost is quite high,” an institute press release quoted Li as saying.

“Boosting the iron content of daily crops could fundamentally improve the iron nutritional status of a wide population at a low cost, which is of particular significance to developing countries where corn is the staple food,” he said.

International surveys show corn is the third most consumed staple food in the world, after rice and wheat.

A study published last year in the Food Security journal said while people in 161 countries ate corn, this was markedly more common in low and lower-middle income countries and in Africa.

People ate more than 50kg of corn each in nine countries in eastern and southern Africa every year, as well as seven others in South America, the researchers found.

After arrests and deportations, Mongolians worry about Chinese reach

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/10/china-mongolia-language-culture-xi-jinping/2023-06-06T06:20:52.180Z

ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia — All she wanted was for her only child to go to school in her native tongue.

In 2020, the ethnically Mongolian teacher living in the northern Chinese region of Inner Mongolia joined protests against a ban on most Mongolian-language education. Police cracked down hard. She was fired, hauled in for questioning and pushed into exile.

Three years later, her daughter is attending kindergarten here in Ulaanbaatar, where she can learn Mongolian and have pride in her heritage. But the former teacher fears that the Chinese security state could drag them back any day now.

China under Xi Jinping, its most powerful leader in decades, has progressively clamped down on ethnic minorities living on the country’s periphery: Tibetans, Uyghurs, Kazakhs and Mongols have all been targeted as part of Xi’s broader effort to crush dissent and force assimilation into the Han Chinese majority.

This effort has increasingly spread beyond China’s borders. To combat international criticism and silence diaspora communities, Beijing has used economic leverage and political pressure to enlist other countries to support Xi’s quest for absolute control.

Governments on China’s doorstep face a stark choice about how far to go along with Beijing’s global agenda. Shared culture and language make neighboring countries a natural destination for people fleeing China’s borderlands, but theses places are also the focus of efforts to defend against perceived foreign threats.

Beijing views exiles like the small but growing number of China-born Mongolians living in Ulaanbaatar as dangerous pockets of overseas resistance who could incite protest at home. Six people who spoke to The Washington Post all reported varying degrees of Chinese police harassment and intimidation through phone calls, messages and pressure on their families in China.

An emerging network of Mongolian activists and politicians want to protect these people, despite concern from Mongolian officials about angering China, the country’s largest trading partner. As a young democracy concerned for human rights, they argue, the country should be a haven for persecuted Mongols everywhere.

That tussle over influence and values is already underway in Mongolia, a former Soviet satellite state once known as “Outer Mongolia” where, after the fall of Communism in 1990, leaders built a multiparty democracy and reoriented the national identity around Mongol heritage and historical figures like Genghis Khan. The traditional Mongolian script abandoned in the Soviet era will be reinstated as an official language in 2025.

At the same time, the leaders of Mongolia, landlocked and dependent on China and Russia for trade and energy, have sought closer ties with the United States and its allies to shake off those overbearing neighbors.

Beijing has been watching this cultural evolution warily.

The Chinese Communist Party has governed the southern part of the Mongolian homeland — “Inner Mongolia” — since 1947 and is deeply suspicious of resurgent Mongol nationalism. It fears stronger ties of blood and language across the border will undermine assimilation and control.

Some Mongolian activists fear that the Chinese security state could use cross-border policing ties to target critics of China on Mongolian soil. They say that ethnically Mongolian Chinese citizens seeking refuge over the border — activists estimate there could be hundreds — have little to no protection from Chinese police harassment.

The 2020 protests in Inner Mongolia were a “wake-up call” that China wants to “eliminate the great desire and tradition of Mongols to learn their own culture and language,” former Mongolian president Tsakhia Elbegdorj told The Washington Post. “It’s a very dangerous policy.”

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Public Security did not respond to requests for comment about Chinese security interests in Mongolia.

Free to speak Mongolian — but fearful of police

In a cafe on the ground-floor of a trendy apartment complex in southern Ulaanbaatar, where the snarl of traffic and dust fades into tree-covered mountains, the teacher grew pensive when talking about her struggle to stay in the country.

“Life has been very difficult,” she said through tears, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals from Chinese authorities. “Under Chinese rule, we lost our ancestral land and now they are taking away everything. Mongols in China will be Chinese within generations,” she said, suggesting they will be stripped of their identity.

China’s border may be nearly 900 miles away, but she is worried Chinese police could soon launch a formal investigation against her, which, under bilateral agreements, could easily result in her being detained and extradited.

Already in 2020, Chinese police seized on her social media posts as evidence of collusion with “hostile foreign forces” and interrogated her about a Mongolian activist, Munkhbayar Chuluundorj, she had barely heard of. Last year, the activist was jailed by Mongolian authorities for a decade on espionage charges. His family alleges the arrest was made to curry favor with Beijing.

More recently, the teacher said her fears intensified after she heard about an ethnic Mongol Chinese citizen, a dissident writer in his 80s, who was sent back to China. His case is at least the fifth instance of a Chinese passport holder being returned involuntarily from Mongolia since 2009, according to Safeguard Defenders, a human rights organization. In most cases, Mongolian authorities detain people and hand them over to China.

These events have made the teacher question whether she is really safe here. But she is determined to stay for her daughter. “If she can’t speak Mongolian, how can she say she is Mongol?” she asked.

A Mongolian jailed for working ‘against China’

The revolutionary statues and imposing colonnaded architecture of Sukhbaatar Square speak to Mongolia and China’s shared Communist history. But unlike Beijing’s heavily policed Tiananmen Square, where calls for democratic reform were brutally crushed in 1989, this expanse in central Ulaanbaatar remains the go-to place for a protest, just as it was in 1990 as the Soviet Union unraveled.

For decades, Munkhbayar, the activist the teacher was questioned about, was a familiar face among the crowds protesting issues such as corruption, pollution and inflation. More often than not, the activist would energetically criticize his country’s close relationship with China.

Then last July, the activist was detained and then sentenced to a decade in jail for “collaborating with a foreign intelligence agency.”

The case, which activists consider the first incident of a Mongolian critic of China being targeted, has become a rallying point for Mongolians who fear China’s growing influence. A famous Mongolian poet, Tsoodolyn Khulan, was jailed for eight years on similar charges in July.

She had criticized the selection of an 8-year-old boy as the reincarnated head of Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolia. China has watched that process closely as it attempts to weaken influence of the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader. Beijing considers him a “separatist.”

In Munkhbayar’s trial, prosecutors argued that Munkhbayar was guilty of espionage because he attended a meeting of activists organized by an Indian diplomat to discuss the crackdown in Inner Mongolia. The convener was an intelligence agent, they claimed, and by speaking to him, Munkhbayar had “worked against China.”

“They used that phrase ‘worked against China’ more than 10 times,” his brother, Munkh-Erdene Chuluundorj, said. How could unwittingly speaking to a foreign agent — about a foreign country — count as espionage? The only possible explanation, he said, is that the charges are politically motivated.

Mongolian authorities and the Indian embassy in Ulaanbaatar declined to comment on Munkhbayar’s case, the details of which are classified.

Munkhbayar’s firebrand advocacy made him an outlier, but he is far from alone in advocating that Ulaanbaatar should do more to defend Mongols in China.

After writing a public letter to Xi criticizing China’s Mongolian-language restrictions in 2020, Elbegdorj, Mongolia’s president from 2009 to 2017, launched the World Mongol Federation, a nonprofit group that speaks up for Mongols facing oppression across the world.

“Our main goal is to keep Mongolian culture and Mongolian identity safe. That should be our right, and we are defending that,” the 60-year-old statesman said.

But Beijing’s hair-trigger sensitivity to issues regarding ethnic minorities makes aiding Inner Mongolians — whether in China or in Mongolia — complicated. Behind closed doors, Beijing has warned the Mongolian government against providing official support, said two people familiar with the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. The Mongolian administration declined to comment on Chinese pressure on Inner Mongolians in the country.

China’s coming showdown with Mongol solidarity

Underlying concern about Chinese influence are deeper fears that hard-line security policies under Xi amount to a wider assault on Mongolian culture and heritage.

Watching Mongols in China fight to protect their heritage sparked sympathy in Mongolia, because “people saw how hard they are trying to preserve their language,” said Zolzaya Nyamdori, executive director of the World Mongol Federation.

Others see a chance that China’s crackdown on Mongolian-language education, combined with its increasingly aggressive actions inside Mongolia, could backfire by spurring on criticism of China and support for Chinese Mongols in Ulaanbaatar.

Muumiangan Tengerleg walks through Ulaanbaatar looking like he just stepped out of the ancient past, when Mongols ruled from the Carpathian mountains of central Europe to the Sea of Japan. An ethnic Mongol from China who came here with a Chinese mining company 15 years ago, he now wears a navy blue deel tunic and traditional yuden hat.

Over a dinner of deep-fried mutton pockets, the 41-year-old said that if the Chinese government pushes too hard it could “bring together their enemies’ enemies,” meaning Mongols in China and Mongolia or elsewhere. “Then we would have a showdown,” he warned.

Among Mongol literati, there are few more potent symbols of their endangered heritage than the dying use of that vertical writing system. Many consider Mongolia’s adoption of Cyrillic in the 1940s a grievous error of Communism. At the time, Mao Zedong let Inner Mongolians keep the script, in part to distinguish them from kinfolk across the border. Now Mongolia is trying to undo that mistake.

Five minutes east of Sukhbaatar Square, a famous paean to the beauty of Mongolian language is painted in brilliant blue graffiti on a two-story whitewashed wall. The artist, who goes by the pseudonym Ochirone, said watching videos of protests in Inner Mongolia during the pandemic inspired him to teach himself the script and incorporate it into his work “as a reminder that language is the biggest part of our national identity.”

For some in Mongolia, China’s crackdown on the Mongolian language brings up unpleasant memories of the Soviet Union’s suppression of Mongolian intellectuals.

“The situation is desperate,” said Mongolian novelist Puvsan Purevdorj, who wants his government to offer visas to Inner Mongolians so they can come teach Mongolians how to write vertically.

“In the past, we achieved independence by standing, carefully balanced, between Russian and Chinese influence. But now that balance is being lost,” he said. “If Russia becomes China’s little sister, what happens to Mongolia then?”

AI reunites son with family but raises questions in China about ethics, privacy

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3244377/ai-reunites-son-family-raises-questions-china-about-ethics-privacy?utm_source=rss_feed

Xie Qingshuai was only three months old when his mother left him sleeping while she went to buy groceries at a nearby store, leaving the gate unlocked.

She returned within 10 minutes, but her baby was gone.

For the past quarter of a century, Xie’s parents, from Xingtai in Hebei province, north China, had been on a quest to find their missing child.

The couple took buses to neighbouring towns, gave money to people who called in with possible leads, and offered a million yuan (US$140,000) cash reward for anyone who could help them track their son.

This month, the desperate parents were finally reunited with Xie, now 25 years old, with artificial intelligence technology helping police to solve the puzzle of his whereabouts.

Shortly after police reports of the reunion became public, AI start-up Beijing DeepGlint Technology said its algorithm had been behind the young man’s return. DeepGlint declined to be interviewed by the South China Morning Post.

In a post on social media platform Weibo on Monday, the company said Xie was the fourth child it had helped authorities to find in the past six months, using an algorithm that compared faces across ages and matched anyone who might be related.

“We hope to help society and individuals solve actual problems with AI technology and make the world a better place,” it said.

Rampant child abductions and cases of missing children in recent years have prompted authorities in China to cooperate with AI companies, letting them tap into police databases to train different AI models.

The kidnappings have often been blamed on the cultural preference for sons, with couples only allowed to have one child under a now-abandoned state policy. It led many to buy children on the black market.

It is unclear how many children have been found, but there has been a stream of reports over the years of cooperation between police and AI firms leading to abduction victims being reunited with their families.

According to Jason Liu, a Shanghai-based developer who works with AI and robotics, the technology itself is simple and has been around for a few years.

An AI model calculates facial characteristics – such as eye size or height of cheekbones – and compares potential relatives for resemblances. The higher the score, the stronger the possibility of being related, Liu said.

“The only drawback of the technology is not having enough data. As long as they tap into the police database, they should have no problem [training the AI model],” he said.

Reports of Xie’s reunion with his parents sparked feverish discussion on Weibo, with many commenters hopeful that the technology could help to find their own missing relatives.

“My older brother went missing 17 years ago. How do I contact someone with this technology?” was one of many similar comments on the platform last week.

While some wondered whether the technology could be used to track down fugitives or benefit the broader public in some way, others questioned the use of AI citing an invasion of privacy. Their voices were drowned out by those in support of the technology.

“They have spent all their money looking for their lost children, would they care about privacy?” one said.

“But other people care about the infringement of their privacy,” another argued.

‘Kinship is irreplaceable’: Chinese mother enlists help of abductor to find son

Experts who have cautioned about ethical and legal issues that must be discussed include Zeng Liaoyuan, an associate professor at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China.

Zeng cautioned against the frequent use of facial recognition on a massive scale, saying it concerned not only technical challenges, but also sensitive information such as genetics.

“It is unclear at the moment [in Xie’s case], whether the company only used photos to find a match, or did they also use police data concerning personal identities, but that would concern personal privacy,” he said.

Zeng pointed out that in other countries, there were few public applications of AI or companies advertising the use of AI models to match people with relatives because of the privacy issue.

He cautioned against using such tools without first having a discussion about the ethical, legal and privacy angles.

“For this family, this is a good application, but if we look at it from a broader level, when we have such technical ability, is it a good tool for the entire society? Can we make sure it can be used in a good way?”

According to media reports, Tencent’s AI lab YouTu worked with Sichuan police in 2017 to train an AI model to generate an image of what missing children might look like after 10 years.

When they tapped into the millions of pieces of police data for the first time, the model matched four out of the 10 missing children they were searching for, all of whom had been abducted a decade earlier.

Search engine Baidu also developed a programme in 2016 to tap into the missing persons database of the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

If people spot elderly persons who might be lost or children they suspect might have been kidnapped, they can upload their pictures on to Baidu, which then instantly compares them with the ministry’s registry of missing persons. They can then find out the identity details of the possible match and ways to contact the families.

South China Sea: Chinese coastguard blames Philippine boats for ‘collision’ near disputed Second Thomas Shoal

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3244530/south-china-sea-chinese-coastguard-blames-philippine-boats-collision-near-disputed-second-thomas?utm_source=rss_feed

The Chinese coastguard took “control measures” against Philippine vessels in disputed areas of the South China Sea for the second straight day on Sunday, blaming them for a collision near a shoal claimed by both countries.

In a statement on Sunday morning, the China Coast Guard said two Philippine coastguard vessels, a public service vessel, and a resupply vessel had “illegally” entered the Second Thomas Shoal also claimed by Beijing.

“The Philippines’ vessel Unaizah Mae 1 ignored multiple serious warnings and infringed the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea by taking a sudden turn in an unprofessional and dangerous way,” the statement said.

It also accused the vessel of “deliberately colliding” with its coastguard ship, causing a scratch on the hull. “The responsibility is all on the Philippines”, it stressed.

The Philippines rejected China’s account of events, raising “grave concern over the deliberate disinformation” and condemning its “latest unprovoked acts of coercion and dangerous manoeuvres against a legitimate and routine Philippine rotation and resupply mission”.

In a statement, the National Task Force of the West Philippine Sea said they were on a routine resupply and rotation mission to the disputed shoal when their civilian supply vessels were subjected to reckless and dangerous harassment at close range by Chinese vessels.

It accused the China Coast Guard of firing water cannons at their vessels.

One vessel suffered serious engine damage, another had its mast damaged, while a third was rammed during the confrontation, the statement said.

The incident came a day after a similar event near the Scarborough Shoal – another South China Sea feature claimed by Beijing.

The Chinese coastguard on Saturday also said it took “control measures” against three Philippine vessels, saying they had illegally “intruded” into waters near the Scarborough Shoal, occupied and claimed by China as the Huangyan Island.

The Philippines in a counter statement “vehemently” condemned the “illegal and aggressive” action against its regular supply ships. It said a boat’s communication and navigation equipment sustained “significant damage” while some Filipino crew experienced “severe temporary discomfort and incapacitation” after suspected use by the Chinese of a “long-range acoustic device”.

Tensions in the South China Sea have heightened in recent months, with the Scarborough Shoal a focal point, after the Philippines carried out a “special operation” to remove a floating barrier installed by China.

Confrontations also flared near the Second Thomas Shoal – a submerged reef that is part of the disputed Spratly Islands and claimed by multiple countries including China and the Philippines.

Known as Renai Reef in China and Ayungin Shoal in the Philippines – this feature lies about 120km (75 miles) from the island of Palawan, within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

Beijing has long upheld its “historical maritime rights” over about 90 per cent of the South China Sea under what it calls its “nine-dash line”, a claim rejected by several neighbours, including the Philippines.

In response to a case filed by the Philippines, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016 ruled against Beijing’s claims to the nine-dash line and said the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea “superseded any historic rights or other sovereign rights or jurisdiction in excess of the limits imposed therein”.

Beijing rejects the ruling as having “no binding force”.

Japan battles to protect premium US$100 a bunch grapes ‘stolen’ by China, South Korea

https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/3244534/japan-battles-protect-premium-us100-bunch-grapes-stolen-china-south-korea?utm_source=rss_feed

The variety of juicy grape that Yuki Nakamura is harvesting as the sun rises over his farm took scientists 33 years to develop and can sell for US$100 a bunch in Tokyo department stores.

But in the view of Japanese farmers and officials, the chunky emerald-green Shine Muscat, one of many fruit varieties created by Japan, has been “stolen” by China and South Korea.

“The great things about Shine Muscat are that each grape berry becomes big, it’s easy to grow, and it’s sweet but not too much,” Nakamura said in the country’s central Nagano region.

Calling the grapes his “partner”, the 35-year-old said he wants to export to places such as Hong Kong and Thailand, where Japanese fruits are popular.

But waiting on the shelves there – and online – are copycats grown by China and South Korea that are nearly the same as Shine Muscat grapes, but much cheaper.

According to the Japanese government, China and South Korea took Shine Muscat seedlings out of Japan and grafted them onto local vines to produce fruit that looks and tastes – almost – as good.

Chinese imports of Japanese carp halt after authorities fail to renew paperwork

Customers definitely “look at the prices”, said Sau, a fruit vendor in a busy market in Hong Kong where Japanese Shine Muscats often cost two or three times as much as their Chinese counterparts, even with a weak yen making Japanese imports cheaper.

“But you can taste the difference,” the vendor, who only gave her first name, said.

“Japanese Shine Muscats are refreshing, sweet, and have stronger grape flavour. Chinese ones are sweet, but lack the grape flavour.”

The Chinese Shine Muscat copycats were discovered in 2016, a decade after the variety’s registration in Japan, when the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO) investigated samples.

But Japan cannot stop China or South Korea from growing the fruit because Tokyo – some say naively – failed to register the variety overseas within the six years required under international rules.

This was confirmed by South Korea’s agriculture ministry, which said that the “current situation permits Shine Muscat grapes to be grown and distributed here without royalty requirements”.

Chinese authorities did not respond to requests to comment.

Japan cannot export grapes to China itself because of Beijing’s quarantine rules, so Chinese growers are not technically cannibalising Japanese sales.

“But we would expect licensing fees … would be over 10 billion yen (US$69 million) a year, assuming we obtained rights in China,” Yasunori Ebihara, director of plant trademark protection at the Japanese agriculture ministry, said.

The ministry admits that Japan also failed to register new kinds of Japanese-origin strawberry, cherry and citrus varieties that have been found in China, South Korea and also Australia.

The first auctions for seasonal fruits routinely attract massive sums in Japan, with a single pair of premium melons fetching five million yen (then US$45,500) in 2019.

“Fruits are special for Japanese people,” Ebihara said.

“Japanese consumers seek sweet, big, beautiful fruits in a fancy box,” he said.

“Therefore, Japanese farmers make efforts to produce better quality, sweeter and more delicious fruits.”

Thailand warns it will destroy cheap fruit sneaked in from Japan, South Korea

Japan has been developing new fruit varieties since the 1920s.

Fuji apples – named for Japan’s famous volcano – emerged in the 1930s as a cross between two varieties and are now among the world’s most popular.

But the full-scale mission started after World War II, and continues to this day at NARO’s research sites across the country.

On a recent sunny autumn day, researchers were harvesting dozens of new pear varieties, measuring their sweetness and hardness with special equipment, as well as with the occasional bite.

Takehiko Shimada, head of NARO’s fruit variety research unit, said it takes years of painstaking work to develop a new variety fit to hit stores.

“It’s normal” that it took over 30 years to produce the Shine Muscat, he said.

The research organisation has begun using DNA analysis to try to catch copycats of new fruit varieties.

“There are genome sequences that only the Shine Muscat has, so we can check whether [a grape] has such a sequence and determine whether it is a Shine Muscat,” Shimada said.

Japan tightened its rules in 2020, prohibiting registered seeds and seedlings from being taken abroad.

Violators can face a prison term of up to 10 years or a fine of up to 10 million yen (US$69,000).

Japan is also making efforts to better protect domestic growers against foreign copycats.

Back on the farm, Nakamura is happy that Shine Muscats are well-known across Asia.

“But I don’t like it when I see that something Japan worked so hard to produce is easily brought overseas and sold there.”

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Smoke her out: new China wedding ritual sees villagers padlock Porsche of groom, demand cigarettes for release so he can reach wife-to-be

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3243880/smoke-her-out-new-china-wedding-ritual-sees-villagers-padlock-porsche-groom-demand-cigarettes?utm_source=rss_feed

A new take on the Chinese wedding tradition of “picking up the bride” has emerged, in which a luxury car is locked using dozens of padlocks, and only unlocked after the gift of several cartons of cigarettes.

The novel custom was thrust into the spotlight when someone from Nantong, Jiangsu province in eastern China, posted a video online showing a black Porsche decorated with wedding flowers – and 40 padlocks on its tyres.

The locks were placed by friends and relatives of the couple who demanded “one carton of cigarettes required to release two locks.”

“Picking up the bride” is a key feature of traditional Chinese weddings, and usually involves the groom participating in games, rituals and challenges which symbolically demonstrate his dedication to his bride.

It is also customary for the groom to give red envelopes with cash inside, confectionery, cigarettes and other gifts as a way of sharing his happiness and bringing good fortune to the guests.

Car-locking is thought to be a contemporary addition to the ancient custom, attracting crowds of bemused onlookers and piquing the curiosity of online observers.

However, some wedding industry professionals in the region claim the practice is part of a long-standing local tradition.

“Years ago, when conditions were poor for everyone, locking the car during the wedding was seen as a way to invite good luck.”

“Nowadays, the locks are for fun and celebration, with no real intention of receiving cigarettes. Typically, the groom will symbolically give a few packs of cigarettes,” said a wedding planner in the province.

A representative from the county government reiterated that the act was indeed in the spirit of fun and that the locks were quickly removed without the exchange of cigarettes.

But the official also offered a note of caution.

“Customs and traditions require guidance and if a wedding car cannot leave the scene, reporting the situation to the police is an option,” the official said.

The tradition has triggered heated online discussions.

One commenter said: “Every place has its own traditions, but it’s important not to go overboard.”

Another online observer questioned the authenticity of the tradition: “A long-standing local custom? Did they even have cars at weddings a century ago?”

“It seems like carrying a cutting tool might come in handy,” remarked a third.

While the intention of traditional wedding celebrations is to share joy and prosperity, it appears some have been exploited for financial gain.

In September, a man in Harbin in northern China halted a wedding car at a hotel entrance, knelt down in front of it and requested money, only leaving after receiving 200 yuan (US$28).

In August 2020, a couple from Shanxi province in the north of China encountered an elderly woman who stopped their wedding car and asked for cigarettes.

Despite receiving several cartons, she remained unsatisfied, exclaiming: “Five is not enough.”

Chinese state media drops ‘Tibet’ for ‘Xizang’ after release of Beijing white paper

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3244176/chinese-state-media-drops-tibet-xizang-after-release-beijing-white-paper?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s official media has dramatically increased its use of the term “Xizang”, rather than “Tibet”, when referring to the autonomous region in western China in English articles, after a white paper on Tibet was released by China’s cabinet, the State Council, in early November.

The white paper, titled “CPC Policies on the Governance of Xizang in the New Era: Approach and Achievements”, outlines developments in Tibet since President Xi Jinping took power in 2012.

It is the latest in a series of white papers on Tibet issued by the State Council Information Office, usually designed to showcase Tibet’s economic, livelihood and cultural development under Communist Party leadership. But it was the first in the series to use “Xizang” as the English translation for the Tibet autonomous region.

“Xizang” is the pinyin, or Chinese romanisation, of the Mandarin script for “Tibet”.

Since the release of the November white paper, “Xizang” has largely replaced “Tibet” in several official Chinese media reports, with “Tibet” now used only in a few scenarios, including translations of already established geographical terms and names of institutions.

Between November 10, the date of the white paper’s release, and Friday, the English-language website of state news agency Xinhua used “Xizang” in 128 articles, while only five used “Tibet”, all of which were in reference to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the geographic term covering most of the Tibet autonomous region.

But before that, through 2023 up to November 10, search results on Xinhua’s English website showed more than 700 results with the word “Tibet”, suggesting that the term was used in a variety of scenarios, including political and economic coverage, while “Xizang” appeared only around 30 times.

Likewise, before November 10, the English website of People’s Daily, the party’s mouthpiece, used both “Xizang” and “Tibet”, with the former appearing less than one-fifth as often as the latter. But from the release of the white paper until Friday, “Tibet” appeared only only in one reposted article from another media outlet and in scenarios where English translations were already fixed, such as the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and Tibet University, while “Xizang” was used more than four times as often as “Tibet”.

China Daily, the English-language mouthpiece newspaper, used “Xizang” along similar lines to the two media outlets after November 10.

Experts say the change reflects Beijing’s emphasis on the sovereignty of Tibet and its efforts to exercise discourse power, but it is likely to have little impact on how the international community refers to the region.

Tibet was incorporated by China in 1950, a year after the Communist Party won the civil war. The Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 and remains Tibet’s spiritual leader in exile.

Beijing blamed the Dalai Lama for unrest in Tibet in the late 1980s and also in 2008, calling the Nobel Peace Prize winner a “separatist” seeking independence for Tibet, a claim the Dalai Lama has denied.

Chinese academics want Tibet to be known as Xizang to help ‘reconstruct’ image

The Tibet autonomous region is home to 3½ million people and will be the focus of international attention after death of the Dalai Lama, now 88, and the search for his successor.

The Dalai Lama has said he will address the question of his reincarnation when he turns 90, but Beijing insists it has jurisdiction over the matter.

In August, a group of Chinese scholars called for the official use of “Xizang” as the English name for Tibet, saying it would help “reshape” the region’s image.

Also in August, the United Front Work Department, which deals with non-party individuals and groups inside and outside China, said on its WeChat account that the term “Tibet” was misleading to the international community because it could be confused with the Dalai Lama’s term “Greater Tibet”, which encompasses areas in provinces neighbouring Tibet, including Sichuan, Yunnan, Qinghai and Gansu.

In October, China’s foreign ministry used “Xizang” as the English translation for Tibet when it published a speech by Foreign Minister Wang Yi at a regional forum in Tibet, but previously it used “Tibet” in most English readouts.

Ecommerce provider Weidian then advised merchants on its platform to use “Xizang” when translating Tibet, otherwise their products may be removed.

The moves by China’s media come as Beijing seeks to foster what Xi has called a “sense of community for the Chinese nation”. This is intended to strengthen national identity in ethnic minority regions, and one way to achieve this is to promote what Beijing calls “standard spoken and written Chinese” – Mandarin.

Barry Sautman, an emeritus professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said the change had little to do with ethnicity.

“The Chinese government’s change in Tibet’s English name does not reflect a stance on ethnicity but on sovereignty,” he said.

“It is to vindicate the sovereign right to use a term derived from China’s official language for a part of China’s territory.”

But he added that the region’s international image “will not likely be affected”.

Robert Barnett, a professor and senior research fellow at SOAS University of London who specialises in contemporary Tibetan history and culture, said the attempt to change Tibet’s English name was part of Beijing’s policy drive to exercise its “discourse power” by “insisting on Chinese terms and frameworks” in media discussions.

Barnett also stressed that the term “Xizang” might not be popular outside China.

Most places in China are referred to in English by the pinyin of Chinese characters, but the minority language pronunciation or internationally known names are also used in some ethnic minority regions.

This scenario includes the use of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region instead of the pinyin, Nei Menggu, and Urumqi and Kashgar, instead of Wulumuqi and Kashi in pinyin, for the cities in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

David Cameron urged to tell China to free Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/10/cameron-urged-to-tell-china-to-free-hong-kong-publisher-jimmy-lai

Foreign secretary David Cameron is being urged to demand the release of newspaper tycoon Jimmy Lai as the British national prepares for a high-profile trial in Hong Kong this month.

Lai, 76, is facing a life sentence, accused of colluding with foreign forces under the draconian national security law introduced by Beijing in 2020 following mass protests.

His son Sebastien has demanded that Cameron, who has faced controversy over his links to China, “stand by my father’s side”. He has been seeking a meeting with the foreign secretary about his father’s plight.

A call by Cameron for his father’s release would send a clear message to China, Sebastien believes. “I have no doubt that Lord Cameron will do right by his country and its citizens,” he said.

Previously the foreign secretary has faced scrutiny about his links to China. The Observer reported last month that Cameron faced calls for full disclosure of his financial interests after questions over his work for Chinese-linked projects.

In September, Cameron spoke at two events in the United Arab Emirates to promote Sri Lanka’s Port City Colombo, an infrastructure project supported by Chinese investment.

The Sri Lankan press reported that Cameron was paid $210,000 (about £167,000) to speak. But a source close to Cameron said his office did not recognise the figures cited.

Jimmy Lai was arrested in August 2020 when Hong Kong police raided the offices of his newspaper, Apple Daily, which had infuriated China by supporting pro-democracy protests.

The European parliament has demanded his release and Washington has criticised a previous conviction of Lai on fraud charges.

At the time of Lai’s arrest, Sebastien was visiting Taiwan, where he now lives, and his father told him not to return to the former British colony. Jimmy Lai has been held in solitary confinement ever since.

Sebastien, 29, said: “It has been made very clear to me that it is not safe for me to return to Hong Kong.

“This is a man who is obviously strong, but nothing can be taken for granted at his age. I can only imagine what it is like being in solitary confinement for more than 1,000 days.”

Since he entered the then British colony as a 12-year-old stowaway, Jimmy Lai has become one of Hong Kong’s success stories. After making his fortune in the rag trade, Lai founded a series of magazines in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, before starting the tabloid-style Apple Daily in 1995. Its closure sounded the death knell of the free press in Hong Kong and the pro-democracy movement.

Sebastien Lai has acted as an advocate and envoy on behalf of his father, whose trial is due to start on 18 December and is scheduled to last 80 days, but has been previously adjourned. However, his father’s UK legal team has been denied access to Lai and subjected to cyber-attacks.

Sebastien Lai said he had been asking to meet the foreign secretary since July 2022. He added: “Lord Cameron is now the third foreign secretary that has received my request, and the third foreign secretary not to respond to it. I have met foreign ministers from other countries, but I have yet to meet with one from the UK.”

A Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) spokesperson said: “British national Jimmy Lai’s case is a priority for HMG, which has been raised on multiple occasions with the Chinese government, most recently when the foreign secretary spoke to Wang Yi this week.

“Mr Lai’s prosecution has been highly politicised - he and others are being deliberately targeted to silence criticism under the guise of national security.”

FCDO sources said that Cameron would be happy to meet with Sebastien when he is in London.

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Chinese tourists who refused to stop taking selfies fall into cold Venice canal after gondola capsizes

https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3244525/chinese-tourists-who-refused-stop-taking-selfies-fall-cold-venice-canal-after-gondola-capsizes?utm_source=rss_feed

A group of tourists in Venice were sent tumbling into the icy waters of the famous canal after flipping their gondola, The Guardian reported, citing local media.

Videos shared on TikTok and Instagram show the group in the water after their gondola capsized near the St Mark’s Square area of the historic city.

The group of Chinese tourists had reportedly ignored calls from their gondolier to sit down and continued to move about while taking photos of the iconic city.

The gondolier was attempting a difficult manoeuvre while trying to steer the gondola under a bridge, and the move required all those on board to balance their weight evenly across the vessel. But they continued to shuffle around until it eventually capsized.

The tourists eventually managed to exit the canal safely and were attended to at the nearby La Fenice theatre.

Venice’s gondoliers’ association did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.

Climate protesters turn Venice’s Grand Canal green

Venice’s gondoliers’ association has taken measures in recent years to reduce the capacity of their boats to accommodate “overweight” tourists, The Guardian reported.

Venice’s canals have been plagued by overcrowding from rising tourist numbers. In recent years, tourists’ sometimes poor behaviour has been chronicled by the Instagram account Venezia Non è Disneyland (Venice Is Not Disneyland).

In March, the mayor of Venice said he wanted to issue a tourist with a “certificate of stupidity” and “a lot of kicks” after he jumped from a three-storey building into a canal.

The unique city built on a lagoon is 2.7 sq miles in size, but it hosted almost 13 million tourists in 2019, according to the Italian National Statistics Institute, per BBC News.

From 2024, Venice, an extraordinary architectural masterpiece and a Unesco World Heritage site, will start charging day trippers five euros (US$5.39) during peak times to control mass tourism.

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Made-in-China still dominates US holiday sales, but do Americans even care?

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3244424/made-china-still-dominates-us-holiday-sales-do-americans-even-care?utm_source=rss_feed

American consumer Rebecca Watts Dean notices the origin of a holiday gift only if she happens to peek at the tag for an unrelated reason – like checking the washing instructions on a piece of clothing.

East-West relations aside, she doesn’t particularly care if a toy or garment for her grandchildren is made in China.

“It’s not like, if something is made in China, I’ll put it back on the shelf,” said Watts Dean, a 55-year-old substitute teacher from the outskirts of Fort Worth, Texas. “I just think that – for a number of years – most of the stuff we have is made in China.”

Watts Dean typifies the American holiday consumer, buying goods that are made-in-wherever. And the ubiquity of such indifference in the States during an especially active shopping season is helping China’s exports to the US hold steady despite years of political and trade frictions.

As China looks to shore up economy, geopolitics, US rate cuts weigh on outlook

Meanwhile, Chinese exporters are so often using third countries, such as Mexico and Vietnam, to ship goods to the US that it can be hard for consumers to know where an item really originated.

“In fact, the trouble with gauging whether American consumers are buying a lot more from places such as Southeast Asia and Mexico is that it’s hard to tell how much of that is, in reality, Chinese goods,” said Christopher Beddor, deputy director for China research at Gavekal Dragonomics. “Any way you slice the data, China is still a major exporter to the US.”

And China’s status is forecast to solidify in 2024.

Goldman Sachs expects 3.1 per cent growth in China’s worldwide exports next year after a 3.4 per cent contraction this year. S&P Global Ratings forecasts an expansion of 4.2 per cent next year from 2 per cent this year on a “turnaround in the tech and electronics cycle”.

China’s exports to the US in the first 11 months of this year fell by 13.8 per cent by value compared with the same period in 2022, though shipments in November rose for the first time since July last year, by 7.35 per cent, thanks to a low base of comparison.

Orders placed to China for holiday shopping would have reached the US in mid-2023, said Douglas Barry, a Washington-based consultant who follows US-China trade.

Barry also teaches Issues and Image Management in the Communications Department at George Washington University. He recently surveyed his 22 undergraduate students this holiday season and found that the countries of origin had little impact on their holiday shopping choices.

“Some aren’t buying fast fashion any more, not because of the country of origin but because of environmental damage and bad labour practices,” he said. “They blame the brands, not the suppliers.”

Doubts trade can provide China’s economic pillar in 2024 even after exports grow

However, Minesh Pore, CEO of the Chinese brand-to-factory sourcing platform BuyHive, said major retailers are finding it tough to “sell” China to the US public. Travel restrictions, he added, have made it harder for brands and suppliers to meet and connect.

According to Pore, Chinese sellers are routing goods through third countries in Latin America and other parts of Asia. And analysts expect those third-country routes to keep US-bound Chinese exports resilient in the years ahead.

Some Chinese factories have set up shop in Mexico to secure overseas orders, and their shipments from Mexico avoid US import tariffs aimed at China. The Latin American country bordering the US exported US$356 billion worth of goods to the American market in the first 10 months of 2023, official US data shows.

Vietnam is another key conduit to the US, and a manufacturing rival of China. The country’s factories primarily export clothing, shoes and consumer electronics.

China registered 94.9 per cent more direct investment in Vietnam in the first nine months of this year than during the same period of 2022, according to the Southeast Asian country’s Ministry of Planning and Investment.

“It’s remarkable how strong [China] has been despite all the efforts to bring it down,” said Jayant Menon, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.

The share of American imports from China has technically dropped from about 22 per cent of the total just before the trade dispute to around 14 per cent today, Beddor said. But “in practice”, he said, the decline has been less steep.

“Despite progress from Mexico, Canada and Vietnam in supplying consumer goods to the US, it’s important to note that China maintains its leading position as the primary source of American imports in this sector,” said Nathan Chow, a senior economist with DBS Bank.

For AliExpress, an online retail service of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, its sales “saw positive growth” on the most recent Black Friday – among the busiest US shopping day each year, taking place immediately after the Thanksgiving holiday when many Americans are off work. A spokesman for the retailer said toys, computer and office supplies, household appliances and furniture were among the top-selling categories. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

Black Friday spending rose nearly 8 per cent, year on year, to about US$10 billion, according to US-based Clarkson Consulting, which attributed the gain to shoppers’ relief over the falling prices of daily expenses such as petrol.

And on November 27 – a day of e-commerce discounts known as Cyber Monday, three days after Black Friday – total spending reached US$12.4 billion, up 9.6 per cent year on year, according to Adobe Analytics.

Analysts say that the stability of the US economy has put Chinese exports on solid footing this year. According to The Conference Board think tank, the US economy should grow 2.4 per cent in 2023, year on year, up from 2.1 per cent in 2022.

Birth-parent bonanza: China abductee, 25, snatched as newborn reunites with rich parents, given 3 flats, car at emotional homecoming

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/social-welfare/article/3243790/birth-parent-bonanza-china-abductee-25-snatched-newborn-reunites-rich-parents-given-3-flats-car?utm_source=rss_feed

A 25-year-old man in China who recently found out he was abducted and adopted at three months old – and his birth parents were multimillionaires – has triggered a heated discussion on mainland social media.

Xie Qingshuai, 25, was shocked when the police told him his birth parents were the wealthy owners of several construction companies in northern China’s Hebei province.

After his adoptive father died when he was little, his adoptive mother remarried and left the family, after which Xie was raised by his adoptive grandparents.

On January 20, 1999, three-month-old Xie was abducted when his mother left him alone in her grocery shop. She thought she would only be gone for 10 minutes and left the front door unlocked.

He was abducted and it was 25 years before she would see her son again.

At a grand reunion ceremony held in his hometown on December 1, his birth father Xie Kefeng said the family had prepared three apartments for the long-lost son, and would buy him a new car the next day.

Xie senior also took him to his company, where hundreds of employees were waiting to greet the son of their boss.

Xie junior was working at an interior design company in Sichuan province, southwestern China, more than 1,000 kilometres away, when he was found.

His father said he planned to teach the younger Xie sales and let him run a family company with his older brother. He would also support him if he wanted to start his own business.

Online observers were happy about the reunion, with some joking they were going to check if they were their parents’ birth child in case their real parents were rich.

Many other parents work hard to find their abducted children and struggle to create better financial conditions which they use as a “bargaining chip” to make the children more willing to return to them.

In February, Chinese media outlet Jiupai News reported that Mei Zhiqiang, 27, returned to his multimillionaire birth family from his billionaire adoptive family, who treated him badly after buying him from human traffickers because “money can’t buy happiness”.

On December 3, another father who has been searching for his son, who was abducted 22 years ago, said he had worked hard to possess six apartments and four companies, in a desperate bid to encourage more people to provide DNA data for the police to make a match.

Xie junior said his adoptive grandparents had treated him even better than their birth grandchildren.

He had not told them about his return to his birth family fearing the news might break their hearts, but he promised to continue looking after them.

Property woes loom large over China’s 2024 outlook: economist

https://www.scmp.com/news/article/3244509/property-woes-loom-large-over-chinas-2024-outlook-economist?utm_source=rss_feed

Sustained property woes will continue to be the biggest drag on the world’s second-largest economy next year, with potential buyers hesitant to purchase and developers struggling for cash, according to a prominent economist.

“The real estate sector does show some signs of stabilising, but has it bottomed out? I don’t think we can make such a conclusion right away,” Lu Ting, chief China economist at Japanese investment bank Nomura, said in Beijing on Saturday.

Lu said that with delayed delivery of roughly 20 million presold homes – mostly in lower-tier cities where many private developers have been ensnared – there was a “negative feedback loop” between a public reluctance to buy new homes and a lack of cash among developers to build homes.

It also led to lower income for local governments, which rely heavily on land sales revenue, which in turn meant pay cuts for public sector workers and further drop in new home purchases, he added.

“Without cleaning up the mess [from undelivered presold homes], the real recovery of the property sector still faces a huge obstacle,” Lu said.

Beijing has implemented a series of stimulus measures to prevent the property market from further falls in the second half of the year, but sales have remained sluggish and prices dropped.

Without power from the traditional growth engine, some emerging economic drivers might also come to a standstill in 2024, including the investment boom in the new energy sector and the pent-up demand in the domestic service sector, Lu said.

“The rebound of consumption in the travel and catering sectors may slow down notably, because of the fading of a low base,” he said.

Investment in green energy industrial chains such as solar panels and electric vehicles – which were among the few export bright spots this year – might slow due to overcapacity and rising trade barriers in key overseas markets such as Europe, Lu added.

And weakening external demand as well as lasting geopolitical tensions would further weigh on China’s export sector and foreign investment, he said.

Despite the worsening global slowdown, falling yields in developed economies and a weaker dollar could give Beijing more space to ramp up its fiscal spending, with funding either from markets or its own central bank, according to Lu.

“Weak external demand also limits inflation and leaves more room for the [People’s Bank of China’s] money-printing, which might be essential for rescuing many projects left unfinished by developers,” he said.

He added that neither commercial banks nor local governments had the ability to put an end to the property crisis.

To save the economy, “first, the real estate sector is critical. Second delivery of presold homes is critical. Third, it should be financed by the central government.”

Why China should move beyond wartime past and forge closer ties with Japan

https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3244109/why-china-should-move-beyond-wartime-past-and-forge-closer-ties-japan?utm_source=rss_feed

December 13 will be the 86th anniversary of the rape of Nanking. After all these years, the relationship between China and Japan is still trapped in the long shadow of history. On each side, public opinion of the other is close to rock bottom. Amid strained relations, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met in San Francisco last month, their first face-to-face meeting in a year, to pursue mutually beneficial ties.

It was a move in the right direction. When both countries face so many common challenges – from economic woes and demographic problems, to the growing scourge of climate change and regional security issues – they have to ask themselves whether persistent tensions or closer collaboration would be better, not just for each other, but also for Asia and ultimately the world.

History has played a role in the less-than-warm relationship. China sees the root of the problem as Japan’s failure to properly apologise for its war crimes. And yet the apology issue is itself complex. In the decades immediately after the Second Sino-Japanese war (1937-1945), China did not seek an apology from Japan as it considered itself the victor.

But its attitude changed after 1989 as Beijing placed more emphasis on nationalism. Since then, Tokyo has apologised and expressed regret on many occasions for the war crimes of imperial Japan.

But to Chinese ears, most of it, with the choice of weak words, sounds insincere – a reflection of the feelings of some senior conservatives in Japan who simply did not want to apologise.

What has not helped Chinese feelings are the visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, dedicated to commemorating Japan’s war dead, by Japanese leaders including prime ministers Yasuhiro Nakasone and Shinzo Abe, and what many see as Japan’s whitewashing of its history textbooks.

Meanwhile, many Japanese have come to feel that Beijing wants to keep the apology issue alive simply as a political tool with which to batter Tokyo.

China and Japan also face geopolitical differences. As the world’s second- and third- largest economies respectively, China and Japan both harbour regional leadership ambitions. They also have a long-running dispute over an uninhabited island chain in the East China Sea that China calls the Diaoyu Islands, and Japan the Senkaku Islands.

Unsurprisingly, there is very little trust between the two nations.

Richard McGregor, author of Asia’s Reckoning: China, Japan and the Fate of US Power in the Pacific Century, believes Japan has been a great failure in China’s foreign policy. “If China had been able to reassure Japan and build trust, then the Japanese would no longer support the stationing of US troops in their country,” he told me in an interview. The implication is that US power in Asia would have been finished.

That is one possibility. Back in the 1990s, plenty of Japanese politicians would have liked to befriend China as they saw that their future was in Asia. Beijing’s hostility, however, pushed them to embrace America wholeheartedly.

It’s time for Beijing to walk out of the past and forge closer ties with Tokyo. Beyond the fact that China is Japan’s largest trading partner, it has many reasons to be on good terms with this neighbour. As an Asian country with a long history with China, Japan can potentially play a role in softening crises, such as over Taiwan.

Reduced tensions would lessen the overall threat perception and allow a relaxation of all actors’ security positions in the region. An amicable Sino-Japanese relationship is vital for regional stability and prosperity. If the two remain hostile, it will play into the US’ hands.

Official ties between the two nations remain bleak, but so does the relationship among the two peoples. Anti-Japan sentiment has been running high in China over the past few decades, and this has not been improved this year by Japan’s decision to release treated waste water from its Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Although many experts said it was safe to do so, Beijing thought otherwise. There was an outpouring of anger on social media. One barbecue shop owner in Dalian even took things a step further, putting up a sign saying: No Japanese customers, please.

In recent years, public anger against Japan has been such that even wearing a kimono can get a person attacked and labelled unpatriotic or a lackey of Japan. Bashing Japan has become fashionable. In my view, behaviour such as putting up “no Japanese” signs and attacking kimono wearers are childish and uncivilised, and hurt China’s image as a rising global power.

I am not suggesting that Chinese people should forget the pain we suffered at the hands of the imperial Japanese. I, for one, shall not forget. As a Nanjing native, I still remember the harrowing stories my grandma told me. Back in 1937, as she tried to flee the city, her infant daughter in her arms, a bomb fell nearby. A neighbour only metres away disappeared, blown to pieces by the blast.

Tokyo should apologise unequivocally and unreservedly for the atrocities committed in China and apologise specifically for the Rape of Nanking.

While it is understandable that so many Chinese feel resentful towards Japan, it is unwise to let this anti-Japan sentiment spiral out of control. National interests should come before personal feelings, and it is in China’s best interests to improve its relationship with Japan.