• US tensions with China are fraying long-cultivated academic ties. Will the chill hurt US interests?
• India arrests two senior employees of Chinese smartphone maker Vivo
• Strong earthquake in northwest China that killed at least 148 causes economic losses worth millions
• ‘Brave and strong’: Chinese victim of unsolved poisoning case dies, prompting flood of sympathy and anger
• Kenya pins rail hopes on PPP funding from China firms for belt and road project
• Javier Milei’s Argentina looks to veteran diplomat to mend ties with China: reports
• China influencer faces lifelong ban from Thailand after calling Bangkok Nana red light district ‘unsafe’ and full of ‘sleazy’ tourists
• Scientists find first genetic evidence of multiracial population in ancient China
• Singapore remittance clampdown: innocent funds caught in China’s anti-money-laundering crusade, experts say
• As China prepares to commemorate Mao Zedong, hints of what Xi Jinping may have planned
• China’s quest to become a robot superpower | China
• China’s crypto craving: back-door Binance traders look more important to exchange’s future in wake of US conviction
• China’s top 100 storied brands lose 4.5 per cent of their intangible assets value as economic downturn weakens consumer demand: Hurun Report
• China population: reward grandparents, ban antinatalist content to boost tumbling births, demographers say
• Pee power: Chinese superstition believes boys’ urine can ward off evil spirits, is nourishing, enhances efficacy of medicines
• Chinese man charged with trying to steal from passengers on Cambodia-Singapore flight
• Why more Chinese students are looking to Europe – and not the US – for higher education
• Chinese consortium’s ‘smart city’ project raises eyebrows and questions in Brazil

US tensions with China are fraying long-cultivated academic ties. Will the chill hurt US interests?

https://apnews.com/article/china-us-academic-cooperation-science-nih-investigation-44bfd9f18a5f76d8889aa5a30ea165ebFILE - American flags are displayed together with Chinese flags on top of a trishaw on Sept. 16, 2018, in Beijing. Over the past four decades, U.S. universities have educated millions of Chinese students, many of whom have stayed in the country and become top researchers and distinguished professors. The number of Chinese students in the United States is down, and U.S.-Chinese research collaboration is shrinking, with academics shying away from potential China projects over fears that seemingly minor missteps could end their careers. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)

2023-12-23T14:12:30Z

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the 1980s, Fu Xiangdong was a young Chinese virology student who came to the United States to study biochemistry. More than three decades later, he had a prestigious professorship in California and was conducting promising research on Parkinson’s disease.

But now Fu is doing his research at a Chinese university. His American career was derailed as U.S.-China relations unraveled, putting his collaborations with a Chinese university under scrutiny. He ended up resigning.

Fu’s story mirrors the rise and fall of U.S.-China academic engagement.

Beginning in 1978, such cooperation expanded for decades, largely insulated from the fluctuations in relations between the two countries. Today, it’s in decline, with Washington viewing Beijing as a strategic rival and there are growing fears about Chinese spying. The number of Chinese students in the United States is down, and U.S.-Chinese research collaboration is shrinking. Academics are shying away from potential China projects over fears that seemingly minor missteps could end their careers.

This decline isn’t hurting just students and researchers. Analysts say it will undercut American competitiveness and weaken global efforts to address health issues. Previous collaborations have led to significant advances, including in influenza surveillance and vaccine development.

“That’s been really harmful to U.S. science,” said Deborah Seligsohn, a former U.S. diplomat in Beijing and now a political scientist at Villanova University. “We are producing less science because of this falloff.”

For some, given the heightened U.S.-China tensions, the prospect for scientific advances needs to take a back seat to security concerns. In their view, such cooperation aids China by giving it access to sensitive commercial, defense and technological information. They also fear the Chinese government is using its presence in American universities to monitor and harass dissidents.

Those concerns were at the core of the China Initiative, a program begun in 2018 by the Justice Department under the Trump administration to uncover acts of economic espionage. While it failed to catch any spies, the effort did have an impact on researchers in American schools.

Under the initiative, Gang Chen, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was charged in 2021 with hiding links with the Chinese government. Prosecutors eventually dropped all charges, but Chen lost his research group. He said his family went through a hard time and has yet to recover.

Chen said investigations and wrongful prosecutions like his “are pushing out talents.”

“That’s going to hurt U.S. scientific enterprise, hurt U.S. competitiveness,” he said.

The Biden administration ended the China Initiative in 2022, but there are other efforts targeting scholars with Chinese connections.

In Florida, a state law aimed at curbing influences from foreign countries has raised concerns that students from China could effectively be banned from labs at the state’s public universities.

This month, a group of Republican senators expressed concerns about Beijing’s influence on American campuses through student groups and urged the Justice Department to determine whether such groups should be registered as foreign agents.

Miles Yu, director of the China Center at Hudson Institute, said Beijing has exploited U.S. higher education and research institutes to modernize its economy and military.

“For some time, out of cultural, self-interest reasons, many people have double loyalty, erroneously thinking it’s OK to serve the interests of both the U.S. and China,” Yu said.

The U.S.-China Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement — the first major pact between the two countries, signed in 1979 — was set to lapse this year. In August, Congress extended the agreement by six months, but its future also hangs in the balance.

If there is a new agreement, it should take into account new advances in science and technology, Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to China, said recently.

There were only 700 American students studying in China, Burns said, compared with nearly 300,000 Chinese students in the U.S., which is down from a peak of about 372,000 in 2019-2020.

By October, nearly all Confucius Institutes, a Beijing-backed Chinese language and culture program, had closed on American university campuses. Their number fell from about 100 in 2019 to fewer than five now, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

The National Institute of Health in 2018 began an investigation into foreign ties by asking dozens of American institutions to look into whether their faculty members might have violated policies regarding use of federal money, usually in cases involving partnerships with Chinese institutions.

In the case of Fu, then a professor at the University of California, San Diego, his links with Wuhan University were the focus of the NIH investigation. Fu insisted that federal money was never used toward work there, according to the local news outlet La Jolla Light, but the university ruled against him.

In a China Initiative case, Charles Lieber, a former chair of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University, was found guilty in December 2021 of lying to the federal government about his affiliations with a Chinese university and a Chinese government talent-recruitment program.

Chen, the MIT professor, said once-encouraged collaborations suddenly became problematic. Disclosure rules had been unclear, and in many cases such collaborations had been commended, he said.

“Very few people in the general public understand that most U.S. universities, including MIT, don’t take on any secret research projects on campus,” Chen said. “We aim to publish our research findings.”

The investigations have had negative effects on university campuses. “People are so fearful that, if you check the wrong box, you could be accused of lying to the government,” Chen said.

In June, an academic study published in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal said the China Initiative likely has caused widespread fear and anxiety among scientists of Chinese descent.

The study, which surveyed 1,304 scientists of Chinese descent employed by American universities, showed many considered leaving the U.S. or no longer applying for federal grants, the researchers wrote.

An analysis of research papers in the PubMed database showed that, as of 2021, U.S. scientists still co-wrote more papers with scientists from China than from any other country, but those with a history of collaborating with China experienced a decline in research productivity after 2019, soon after the NIH investigation started.

The study, to be published in the PNAS journal by the year’s end, found the impact of U.S.-based scholars in collaboration with China, as measured by citations, fell by 10%.

“It has a chilling effect on science” said Ruixue Jia, the study’s leading researcher, of the NIH investigation. “While researchers tried to finish existing cooperative projects, they were unwilling to start new ones, and the results could become worse. Both countries have been hurt.”

Three months after Fu resigned from the California school, his name appeared on the website of Westlake University, a private research university in the Chinese city of Hangzhou. At Westlake, Fu leads a lab to tackle issues in RNA biology and regenerative medicine.

In August, Fu was joined by Guan Kunliang, a fellow scientist in San Diego, who also was investigated. Guan was banned from applying for NIH grants for two years. Guan didn’t lose his job, but his lab had shrunk. Now, he’s rebuilding a molecular cell biology lab at Westlake.

Li Chenjian, a former vice provost of Peking University, said the talent loss to China is a complicated question and the worry might be overblown because the U.S. remains the go-to place for the world’s best brains and has an excess of talent.

More than 87% of Chinese students who received their doctorates in the U.S. had planned to stay in the U.S. from 2005 to 2015, according to the National Science Foundation. The percentage fell to 73.9 in 2021 but rose to 76.7 in 2022, above the average of 74.3% for all foreign students who had earned research doctorate degrees in the U.S.

Rao Yi, a prominent neurobiologist who returned to China from the U.S. in 2007, said American policies related to the China Initiative were “morally wrong.”

“We will see how long it will take for the U.S. government and its morally upright scientists to correct such mistakes and come around to see the bigger picture of human development, beyond petty-mindedness and shortsightedness,” he said. “Throughout history, it is always the morally corrupt governments which advocate the blocking of scientific communication and persecution of scientists.”

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Associated Press writers Christina Larson and Collin Binkley contributed to this report

India arrests two senior employees of Chinese smartphone maker Vivo

https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/south-asia/article/3246139/india-arrests-two-senior-employees-chinese-smartphone-maker-vivo?utm_source=rss_feed

India’s financial crime-fighting agency has arrested two senior employees working for Chinese smartphone maker Vivo’s India unit, a source directly involved with the case said on Saturday, which the company vowed to challenge legally.

The arrests come two months after the Enforcement Directorate arrested four industry executives, including one Chinese national, working for Vivo’s Indian unit in a case of alleged money laundering, charges the firm has denied.

India has stepped up scrutiny of Chinese businesses and investments following a deadly border clash in 2020.

“We are deeply alarmed by the current action of the authorities,” said a Vivo spokesperson.

Chinese phone brand Vivo vows support for executives arrested in India

“The recent arrests demonstrate continued harassment and as such induce an environment of uncertainty amongst the wider industry landscape. We are resolute in using all legal avenues to address and challenge these accusations.”

The individuals arrested were brought to a Delhi court on Saturday and were then sent to the agency’s custody, said the source, who declined to be named as they were not authorised to talk to the media.

An Enforcement Directorate spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Vivo employees, whose identity Reuters could not confirm, will next appear in court on December 26, the source added.

Strong earthquake in northwest China that killed at least 148 causes economic losses worth millions

https://apnews.com/article/china-earthquake-gansu-qinghai-economic-losses-5f33ca0b89e97391d30f2277b0c086f0

2023-12-23T12:16:39Z

BEIJING (AP) — The strong earthquake that hit northwest China this week, and killed at least 148 people, has caused economic losses estimated to be worth tens of millions in the agricultural and fisheries industries, state media reported Saturday.

Officials in Gansu conducted preliminary assessments that showed the province’s agricultural and fisheries industries have lost 532 million yuan (about $74.6 million), state broadcaster CCTV reported. Authorities were considering the best use of the relief fund, set up days before, for the agricultural sector to resume production as soon as possible, the report said.

The magnitude 6.2 quake struck in a mountainous region Monday night between Gansu and Qinghai provinces and about 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) southwest of Beijing, the Chinese capital. CCTV said that 117 were killed in Gansu and 31 others in neighboring Qinghai, while three people remained missing. Nearly 1,000 were injured and more than 14,000 homes were destroyed.

CGTN, the Chinese state broadcaster’s international arm, said the first batch of 500 temporary housing units had been built for residents in Meipo, a village in Gansu, on Friday night.

Many had spent the night in shelters set up in the area as temperatures plunged well below freezing. Funerals were held, some following the Muslim traditions of much of the population in the affected area.

Most of China’s earthquakes strike in the western part of the country, including Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, as well as the Xinjiang region and Tibet. The latest quake was the deadliest one in the country in nine years.

‘Brave and strong’: Chinese victim of unsolved poisoning case dies, prompting flood of sympathy and anger

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3246122/brave-and-strong-chinese-victim-unsolved-poisoning-case-dies-prompting-flood-sympathy-and-anger?utm_source=rss_feed

A Chinese woman who made headlines nearly 30 years ago as the victim in an unsolved poisoning case has died, triggering an outpouring of sympathy and anger on social media.

Zhu Ling, who turned 50 last month, died on Friday night after a long battle with illness, according to a Weibo post by Tsinghua University, the prestigious Beijing institution she was attending when she was poisoned with thallium three decades ago.

In the message posted on Saturday, the university described her as “brave and strong”.

Zhu fell ill in late 1994, when she was in her third year at the university and majoring in chemistry. She complained she was losing hair and in pain.

It was not until the following April that doctors in Beijing confirmed Zhu had been poisoned with thallium, an acutely toxic substance that is hard to detect. She was diagnosed with the help of the internet after friends exchanged messages about her symptoms with global medical experts in an attempt to get answers.

‘He has destroyed my life’: Chinese doctor ‘poisoned’ by husband seeks justice

The poison left Zhu paralysed, nearly blind and with the mental capacity of a child, and she was cared for by her parents in Beijing after she became ill. The mystery of who poisoned her was never solved.

Her father, Wu Chengzhi, a retired engineer from the China Earthquake Administration and now in his 80s, said he did not feel anger over the lack of justice in her case, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported.

The Chinese public was shocked by the tragedy suffered by Zhu – a bright, attractive young woman who was talented at playing the guqin, a traditional string instrument.

One of Zhu’s university roommates, who was believed to be the only student she knew with access to thallium, was detained for eight hours before being released.

Facing a spate of online accusations, the woman proclaimed her innocence on social media platforms at least three times – in 2005, 2006 and 2013. She even changed her name to avoid attention as internet users continued to point the finger at her.

Zhu’s parents, friends and several members of Beijing’s political advisory body pushed for police to continue with the investigation. However, the police said there was a lack of evidence because it took too long to confirm she had been poisoned.

Interest in the case was revived in 2013 when the poisoning and death of a student at Fudan University in Shanghai echoed the disturbing case of Zhu.

Huang Yang, a doctoral student at Fudan University’s Shanghai Medical Colleg, died in April 2013 from multiple organ failure. He became critically ill hours after drinking water from a dispenser in his dormitory.

A few days later, investigators determined Huang had ingested N-Nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), a toxic compound that is the by-product of several chemical processes. His roommate Lin Senhao, another medical student who had written several papers on NDMA and reportedly had disagreements with Huang, was detained as the only suspect.

In 2014, Lin was convicted and sentenced to death for intentional homicide. He was executed the next year.

The case once again drew attention to the threat of poison as a weapon and fostered hope that justice might also arrive for Zhu.

Chinese teen accused of double murder, attacks at home and school

“The life of Zhu Ling has been accompanied by caring, support and encouragement from many alumni, the society and our university,” Tsinghua University said in the Weibo post.

“We sent heartfelt condolences to her family. We wish Zhu Ling a good journey accompanied by the sound of the guqin.”

The news of Zhu’s death generated more than 12,000 comments on Weibo on Saturday as social media users marked the loss.

“My sadness is beyond words. RIP. You’ll always be the most beautiful girl,” one wrote.

“I’m more than angry! Zhu Ling has lost her life, and the criminal is still at large,” another wrote.

“I was very young when I first heard about the case. So many years have passed and justice has not come,” a third said.

Kenya pins rail hopes on PPP funding from China firms for belt and road project

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3245773/kenya-pins-rail-hopes-ppp-funding-china-firms-belt-and-road-project?utm_source=rss_feed

Kenya is in talks with China to get its stalled rail link back on track under a proposed public-private partnership model that would see Chinese companies source funding to build and operate the railway in a bid to recover their investment.

Kenyan President William Ruto is seeking Chinese financing to get the strategically important project – now halted at Naivasha in the middle of the Rift Valley – extended to Malaba, on the border with Uganda.

Ruto made the request directly to his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping during his visit to Beijing for the belt and road forum in October. The project was originally funded with a US$5 billion loan as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

While the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) is important for Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo – which all rely heavily on Kenyan ports for their imports – Kenya has no headroom to fund its completion with further loans, Ruto says.

Ballooning debt has seen Kenya’s loan repayment costs, mainly to China, skyrocket as the local currency has depreciated. The East African country is also facing a debt crisis, with Eurobond payments falling due next year.

China rail loan terms behind Kenya ban on road freight, deal shows

“We cannot borrow any more,” Ruto said, after Kenya and China celebrated 60 years of diplomatic ties this month.

Instead, Chinese companies could build, operate and then transfer the infrastructure to the Kenyan government after recouping their investments, he said.

In his congratulatory message on the anniversary, Xi said the two leaders “reached important consensus on the future development of relations between the two countries” during Ruto’s October visit.

“I attach great importance to the development of China-Kenya relations and am willing to … work together to build a closer China-Kenya community with a shared future in the new era,” Xi said.

Kenya has about US$8 billion in Chinese loans, mostly used by the previous administration for the SGR’s initial phase linking Mombasa – East Africa’s largest port – on the Indian Ocean with Nairobi and Naivasha, about 80km (50 miles) northwest of the Kenyan capital.

But the planned extension of the 590km track to the Ugandan border has been on hold since China Exim Bank refused to provide further funding without a commercial viability study.

“We have asked China to invest, not to lend us money. We are having that conversation,” Ruto told Kenyan media on Sunday. “We are also having a conversation as to what the timeline is, as to when we want this delivered.”

Kenya’s proposed investment plan is similar to the 27km Nairobi Expressway, which China Road and Bridge Corporation will operate for 30 years to recover its investment, before transferring ownership to the Kenyan government.

If China accepts the public-private partnership funding proposal for the SGR, the project will join a growing trend among Chinese investors who are moving to the financing model to fund Africa’s infrastructure.

In Zambia, President Hakainde Hichilema’s new administration cancelled a US$1.2 billion contract with a Chinese company, agreed in 2017, to build the Lusaka-Ndola dual carriageway.

Why Chinese players are taking private stakes in Africa’s new megaprojects

The project has since been awarded to a consortium of Chinese investors, including AVIC International Project Engineering, that will fund and build the road, operate it for 22 years to recoup the investment, and then transfer it to the Zambian government.

Other projects that have been built under the PPP model include the Lekki port in Lagos, Nigeria, and the first phase of the Port of Kribi in Cameroon, which was financed by China Exim Bank.

The gradual shift in the belt and road plan’s financial governance towards public – private partnerships comes amid reduced bilateral lending for overseas ­projects, as Chinese lenders take a more cautious approach to infrastructure ventures.

With debt finance no longer an option for many African governments, PPPs are being promoted as a viable alternative by Chinese and other actors, according to a recent paper by Kjeld van Wieringen and Tim Zajontz.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative regains momentum

The authors, from the European Parliamentary Research Service in Brussels and South Africa’s Stellenbosch University, respectively, said Beijing’s encouragement of Chinese investments in overseas PPPs was part of Xi’s efforts to further globalise China’s capital accumulation.

“These efforts were significantly stepped up when debt sustainability concerns mounted in several [Belt and Road Initiative] countries,” they wrote, in the open access article published by Sage Journals’ Journal of Current Chinese Affairs.

Landlocked Uganda’s plans for its section of the SGR – from Malaba to its capital Kampala – were also dashed, when China Exim Bank dropped financing for the US$2.4 billion project.

Uganda has since contracted Turkish firm Yapi Merkezi to build the 273km section, with funding expected from Standard Chartered Bank and British export credit agency UK Export Finance.

Uganda chases China after human rights issues see Western lenders leave

But the dream of a railway project that eventually runs from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean is still alive, according to Ruto.

“We approached China for the continuation of the railway as a package. Before I went to China, I had a conversation with [Ugandan President Yoweri] Museveni and we agreed on the strategy to extend the railway,” he said.

Sub-Saharan geoeconomic analyst Aly-Khan Satchu said he was increasingly of the view that Africa would need to look at the PPP model to unlock new funding from China.

“I definitely feel this is a model that can be deployed continentwide to unlock new Chinese lending and make China an equity partner in Africa’s turnaround strategy,” he said. “Yes, the PPP model might well prove a silver bullet.”

Why small is beautiful for China on African belt and road

Mark Bohlund, a senior credit research analyst at REDD Intelligence, said the Ugandan leg of the SGR should improve revenues for its Kenyan counterpart, giving China Exim Bank an incentive to provide financing for the extension from Naivasha to Malaba.

The Kenyan government’s need to prioritise securing budget support to repay the 2024 Eurobond, as well as payments due to China Exim Bank, could mean that a PPP solution comes into play, he said.

According to Bohlund, PPPs have a mixed track record in developed markets because it is hard to foresee and provide for contingency risks associated with these kinds of investment projects.

“It is hard to see that these won’t be present in the case of the Malaba leg. However, the PPP option may be the only option for Kenya to finance [it] … despite the negative headlines in terms of asset-grabbing that it is likely to generate in some Western media,” he said.

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Javier Milei’s Argentina looks to veteran diplomat to mend ties with China: reports

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3246106/javier-mileis-argentina-looks-veteran-diplomat-mend-ties-china-reports?utm_source=rss_feed

Argentina is reportedly planning to name a veteran diplomat as its new ambassador to China as Buenos Aires seeks to ease ties strained by President Javier Milei’s criticism of his country’s second-largest trading partner.

The decision to nominate Marcelo Suarez Salvia, a career diplomat now serving as the top envoy to Trinidad and Tobago, followed several rounds of formal and informal negotiations between Buenos Aires and Beijing, Argentina’s Clarin newspaper reported.

According to the news portal El Zonda, Beijing has received the proposal for Salvia’s appointment and informed Buenos Aires that it would accept it.

Relations between Argentina – one of South America’s biggest economies – and China have been strained since Milei, who campaigned on cutting ties with China, was sworn in two weeks ago.

No Brics for Argentina, says top aide to presidential winner Milei

Milei, a right-wing libertarian, pledged to realign his country with the United States and downgrade relations with China, the top buyer of Argentinian soybeans and beef. China is also a key investor in Argentina’s lithium industry as well as a range of infrastructure, from railways to solar farms.

He called China “an assassin” during the presidential campaign, and suggested that his country would not join Brics, a bloc of the leading emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Brics invited Argentina to join as part of a six-nation expansion announced in August.

Citing sources from Argentina’s previous government, New York-based REDD Intelligence online information platform reported on Thursday that Beijing had frozen a crucial US$6.5 billion currency swap deal with cash-strapped Argentina, an agreement negotiated by former president Alberto Fernandez in October.

Beijing has not confirmed the suspension.

When asked about the reports on Thursday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin did not deny them, saying China remained committed “to cooperate with Argentina on the basis of equality and mutual benefit”.

Sudden rise of ‘Argentina’s Trump’ puts economic ties with China at risk

Milei’s approach is a sharp contrast to the stand by Fernandez, who hailed China as a “true friend” of Argentina during his visit to Beijing in October.

Cui Shoujun, professor and director of the Centre for Latin American studies at Renmin University of China, said Salvia’s appointment could be seen as the latest attempt by Milei’s government to stabilise relations with China.

Salvia is a senior diplomat who coordinated Argentina’s chairmanship of the Group of 77 and China in 2011. He would replace Sabino Vaca Narvaja, a politician who became ambassador in March 2021.

“A career diplomat usually has rich experience in dealing with some thorny issues such as commercial cooperation or ideological differences, which would be helpful to navigate ties between China and Argentina,” Cui said.

Argentina has voted in China critics before. In 2015, Mauricio Macri became president after taking a hard line on Beijing in his campaign. However, during his time in office, he signed tens of billions of US dollars in investment deals with China, ranging from energy, mining, agriculture to transport.

Cui said the two sides had learned to navigate ideological differences and it was unlikely that the newly elected right-wing governments in Latin America would veer too far to the right, especially on economic issues.

“Argentina is facing many practical challenges, for example, how to improve employment rates and boost local economies, which could hardly be overcome without deep cooperation with China,” he said.

China influencer faces lifelong ban from Thailand after calling Bangkok Nana red light district ‘unsafe’ and full of ‘sleazy’ tourists

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/china-personalities/article/3245494/china-influencer-faces-lifelong-ban-thailand-after-calling-bangkok-nana-red-light-district-unsafe?utm_source=rss_feed

A Chinese influencer who posted a video that is said to have damaged Thailand’s reputation as a tourist destination, faces deportation from the kingdom.

Wang Ziyu has a Douyin account under the name of “Thailand 77Seven” with about three million followers.

After she remarked that the Nana red light district in the Thai capital Bangkok is dangerous for tourists, local authorities investigated her for discrediting Thailand.

In a video clip, Wang and a friend are seen sitting at a conference table in a local police station being questioned by a group of Thai officials.

Since Wang arrived in Bangkok on a tourist visa on November 2, she has posted a number of videos about her travel experiences. On December 5 she shared the clip that stirred controversy and attracted the attention of the Royal Thai Police Immigration Bureau.

Wang filmed herself one night at about 11.30pm wandering around the bustling Nana red light district that is world-famous for its nightlife. Not only did she say the area was unsafe, but also stated that “99 per cent” of visitors were “sleazy” and urged women to never visit the area alone.

The online backlash against her remarks was noticed by the Thai government, forcing Wang to delete the video and make a public apology in English, Thai and Chinese.

“I understand that my words may have a negative impact and I deeply regret that and apologise to the Nana district and the Thai people,” Wang also wrote on Facebook.

“Going forward, I am committed to using my platform in a responsible and sensitive way,” she added.

Despite Wang’s sincere apology, Thai police investigated her further and have taken legal action against her for breaking visa rules for another reason, according to a news report.

Pol Maj-General Phanthana Nutchanart, deputy commissioner of the Immigration Bureau, told the media that Wang was found to be working in Thailand without a permit, which violates its visa policy.

Wang could be fined up to 10,000 yuan (US$1,400), deported from Thailand, and even blacklisted from ever entering the country again.

The story divided opinions on Chinese social media.

“She’s simply telling the truth, so she has done nothing wrong,” one person wrote.

“She does anything for traffic. Now she’s paying for that, right?” another wrote.

Stories about the perceived controversial behaviour of online influencers frequently make the news in China.

Earlier this month, a woman in central China who filmed herself practising yoga at a sacred historical site was criticised as “vulgar” and “inappropriate”, triggering a debate about what constitutes appropriate public behaviour.

In another case, in August last year, a travel influencer divided opinion online after hiring men to carry him up a mountain in a sedan chair. Many accused him of “paying money to humiliate others” while others defended him.

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Scientists find first genetic evidence of multiracial population in ancient China

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3246014/scientists-find-first-genetic-evidence-multiracial-population-ancient-china?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese scientists have found the first genetic evidence of a multiracial population in ancient China after studying the DNA of remains found at an important intersection on the Silk Road.

Using palaeogenomic methods, scientists confirmed they have found two humans with an East-West admixture – which occurs when individuals from genetically distinguishable groups produce offspring – while studying remains in a cemetery in the ancient city of Dunhuang.

One person, who was alive during the Cao-Wei dynasty (220-265AD), had West Eurasian genetic components as high as 30 per cent, while the other person, alive during the Tang dynasty (618-907AD), had a West Eurasian genetic component of up to half.

The findings showed that in both cases, it was the person’s mother who was from the West, which differed from the academics’ previous assumption.

It means that the two individuals were more than likely the offspring of local men and “exotic” women from the West – called “Hu Ji” in Chinese classic literature.

Wen Shaoqing, an associate professor at Fudan University in Shanghai and an author of the study, said that with the genome information available, they could not pinpoint the exact location of “the West”, which in modern terms usually refers to Europe.

So for the study, they used a broader scope with the West mainly referring to the area west of Central Asia in the Eurasian continent, while the East referred to the region of East Asia.

Chinese archaeologists find link between pentagram and music in ancient texts

Dunhuang, in the west of modern-day Gansu province, was part of the Hexi Corridor, a narrow, 1,000km (620-mile) passage west of the Yellow River’s Ordos Loop.

A critical part of the ancient Silk Road in northwest China, it served for millennia as a crossroads for interactions between the East and the West.

Cross-continental material and cultural exchange along the Hexi Corridor are well documented, including East Asian millet and painted pottery, West Asian wheat and barley, bronze metallurgy, and domesticated animals – yet little is known about the population dynamics there.

“This is an interesting study that fills the knowledge gap,” said Jin Xin, deputy director of the Institute of Precision Health Research at BGl-Research, a Chinese genomics research centre. Jin was not involved in the study.

The research, published by the peer-reviewed journal Science Bulletin on December 16, was a joint project conducted by researchers from China’s Fudan University, Xiamen University, and the Gansu Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology.

“Silk Road prosperity not only facilitated economic and cultural exchange between East and West but also contributed to the growth of transnational population movements,” the paper said.

Wen has been studying the genetic history of populations in China’s northwest region since he was a graduate student. Around 2014, he began to use palaeogenomics in archaeology, aiming to directly extract DNA information from unearthed burial remains to reflect the genetic evolution of populations. He and his colleagues began this study in 2018.

“The Hexi Corridor stood at the forefront of China’s interaction with world civilisations at that time, so naturally, I hoped to answer some scientific questions, such as when did the population admixture occur there?” Wen said.

The research team analysed the human genome data of 30 individuals found in different parts of the Hexi Corridor from three time periods: before the Han dynasty, from the Han dynasty to the Tang dynasty, and the modern era.

Of those, 17 were from the central Hexi Corridor, dating from the Han dynasty (202BC-220AD), while the other 13 came from the western area, dating from the Cao-Wei dynasty to the Tang dynasty, unearthed from Dunhuang’s Foyemiaowan cemetery. That was where the two multiracial people were found.

“We can determine the age information of ancient skeletons via a technique known as radiocarbon dating, and if we can obtain the DNA information they carry, we can further understand how these genomes change over time, which can help us examine the connections between certain historical events and these genetic changes,” Wen said.

Mixed Eurasian ancestry was “unsurprising” to some degree, Wen said, because Dunhuang was an international hub, with evidence of this already seen in the Dunhuang Grottoes art, which shows merchants from the West.

But this study was proof. Wen said that by looking at the X chromosomes of the two multiracial individuals, the team could see that their mothers came from the western part of the Eurasian continent – also suggesting their mothers were “Hu Ji”.

Additionally, through the DNA analysis of modern populations, the team found that residents in the Hexi Corridor today generally have a genetic make-up that includes West Eurasia, with that ancestral component accounting for about 5-20 per cent.

The present Hexi Corridor includes populations such as Gansu Han Chinese, Dongxiang, Baoan, and Uygur.

The scientists speculate that a large-scale population admixture occurred around 600-1000 years ago, during a period when the most significant historical event was the expansion of the Mongol Empire.

At that time, a large number of military and civilian populations migrated from the West to the Hexi Corridor.

Singapore remittance clampdown: innocent funds caught in China’s anti-money-laundering crusade, experts say

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3246098/singapore-remittance-clampdown-innocent-funds-caught-chinas-anti-money-laundering-crusade-experts?utm_source=rss_feed

Cash remittances sent by locals in Singapore to China may have become intermingled with “dirty” money handled by money mules amid a suspension of the use of nonbank settlement channels in the island nation, cross-border payment experts said.

Earlier this week, Singapore authorities announced that they would restrict the use of nonbank and non-card platforms for remittances to China for three months, starting January 1, after consumers in the city state – mostly Chinese nationals – had their mainland accounts frozen by Chinese officials.

Money transfer or remittance businesses in Singapore can now only use a bank or an operator of a known Chinese card network such as Union Pay to transfer cash to China on behalf of customers.

Cross-border payment experts said innocent money remitters in Singapore were likely caught up in increasingly common money laundering raids by Beijing that freeze Chinese accounts as part of their investigations.

China has been stepping up its crackdown on money laundering activities by criminals such as scammers who use “money mules”, third party individuals or company brokers, to move funds without physical transfers, they said.

What we know so far about Singapore’s US$1.3 billion money laundering case

Mules, or “smurfs” as they are sometimes called, are used by criminals around the globe to launder ill-gotten money, usually through undetectable small deposits into and transfers out of legitimate bank accounts. But many remittance businesses have also used mules to “transfer” funds.

For remittance businesses, mules – some of whom have local licences themselves – are cheaper than official bank handling services, resulting in significant foreign currency savings to consumers. They also get around cross-border payment hurdles such as China’s controls on capital transfers of 50,000 yuan (US$7,000) or more.

The “underground” banking network in China is deep and complex, said Ella Mak, co-founder of Singapore fintech company Aleta Planet, which facilitates global payments through well-known card networks.

The mainland Chinese network also extends into Hong Kong, Singapore and various Southeast Asian countries, Mak added.

“It’s a well-knitted web … but because it’s a web, if you find one party in the web, it could lead to everybody else,” she said.

“Since 2011, Chinese authorities have been actively implementing different policies to weed out these mule accounts. But it’s not a few thousand but millions of accounts … the money exchange business in China is as old as banking.”

Mak said Chinese authorities have been making their way from cracking down on larger deals to those involving small businesses and individuals such as remittance customers.

Chinese authorities will not only freeze a suspicious mule account but all the accounts the mule has been sending money to and taken money from, Mak said.

“This is China stepping up its efforts to combat money laundering, to ensure that funds flowing in and out of China must be legitimate,” she said, adding that these efforts tie in with Beijing’s goal of sharpening its burgeoning economy’s financial systems.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the city state’s central bank, and the nation’s police force said that three remittance businesses – Hanshan Money Express, Samlit Moneychanger and Zhongguo Remittance – as well as 39 customers, were affected in the latest imbroglio.

So far, the police have received more than 670 reports of remittances being frozen amounting to S$13 million (US$9.8 million) but said this was a “small minority of total remittance transactions through remittance companies”.

About 430 of the reports involved Samlit Moneychanger, MAS and the police said.

Singapore’s US$1.3 billion probe exposes Chinese criminals’ paid-for passports

Some of these businesses have assisted in foiling scams in the past but they have also been implicated in recent money laundering cases, according to local media.

These companies might find it hard to recover funds for their customers as they too have paid out the funds, a compliance expert at a Singapore payments service fintech, who did not want to be named, told This Week in Asia. He added that it could be a long time before victims would get their money back.

“The Chinese authorities won’t know how to segregate the clean funds from the dirty funds,” he said.

“[I suspect] the fastest way to get the money back is to bring your receipt, police report, documentary proof and go to China and ask authorities to release the funds.

“It’s beyond Singapore, because the money is already in China,” the compliance expert said.

In the meantime, other countries that have had favourable exchange rates with China could also find themselves implicated in Beijing’s crackdown, he said.

Australia raids ‘sophisticated’ Chinese crime ring operating in ‘plain sight’

Fanson Yip, founder of Money Chain, one of the biggest independent money remittance businesses in Australia, said there had not seen any red flags over Chinese transfers from the country.

However, he said an account freeze by China was likely linked to investigations into illegal activity and any kind of foreign exchange deal that was too good to be true was also possibly “dodgy”.

“I think many use these third parties like a platform and it’s not just China, they do it in India, Pakistan, Malaysia, the Philippines, everywhere,” he said.

A representative of AUSTRAC, the Australian government financial intelligence agency responsible for monitoring financial transactions to identify money laundering and other financial crimes, told This Week in Asia that it had collaborated closely with Chinese authorities on mutual financial crime threats but could not comment on “specific operational matters”.

The latest suspension in Singapore comes after the authorities in August cracked the nation’s biggest money laundering case involving S$2.8 billion (US$1.3 billion) in assets.

As China prepares to commemorate Mao Zedong, hints of what Xi Jinping may have planned

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3246044/china-prepares-commemorate-mao-zedong-hints-what-xi-jinping-may-have-planned?utm_source=rss_feed

Every 10 years, Chinese leaders hold events to commemorate the birth of the late chairman Mao Zedong, who was born on December 26, 1893. The events are an opportunity for the leadership to call for solidarity and rally the nation to address challenges, while reflecting on the legacy of the Great Helmsman.

Authorities across China have been preparing for what will be the 130th birth anniversary of Mao next Tuesday, when the country’s president, Xi Jinping, is expected to hail the late leader’s political teachings amid tensions with the West and economic problems at home.

Earlier this week, in a sign of what might be planned, Mao’s mausoleum in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, where his embalmed body lies, announced an unusual temporary closure.

According to an announcement posted on Monday on the facility’s official WeChat account, the mausoleum will be closed “due to work requirements” from Sunday to Tuesday morning. It did not give further details.

Xi ‘personally’ steering China’s reform process, state media report says

The changes to the facility’s regular opening hours hinted at a possible high-level event that could include senior Chinese leaders.

Ten years ago, Xi led the Communist Party’s Politburo Standing Committee, China’s top decision-making body, in a tribute to Mao, bowing three times in front of the late chairman’s marble statue.

Later that day, Xi, who was just months into his first presidential term, delivered a speech to honour Mao that was closely watched for insights into the party’s new direction under his leadership.

In that 2013 speech, published by state news agency Xinhua, Xi called on the party to learn from Mao’s political thoughts, which have served to guide party doctrine to ensure its rule continues.

He also praised Mao’s belief that China must focus on “staying independent and autonomous” and never rely on “external forces” to achieve its revival, echoing his present day approach to self-reliance in dealing with strategic rivals such as the United States, especially when it comes to trade and access to cutting-edge technology.

Since coming to power, Xi has frequently noted Mao’s political teachings. In 2020, he led the Politburo Standing Committee in 70th anniversary commemorations of the Korean war. The war, which lasted from 1950 to 1953, was officially known in China as “the war to resist US aggression and aid Korea”.

During a speech to mark China’s only military conflict with the US, Xi called on his nation to channel its “Korean war” spirit, and urged citizens to “keep their faith in ultimate victory”.

In a veiled shot at the US, he said the spirit forged during the Korean war would inspire them to “prevail over all enemies”.

This month, a series of state-backed events to commemorate Mao have been held across the country.

In an article this month intended to commemorate Mao’s legacy, Qiushi, a leading party theoretical journal, also hailed what it called the country’s “good fortune” to have Xi as “core of the party and leader of the people” again.

State-run television has been broadcasting television shows and films portraying Mao in his younger years following party doctrine, and leading it to victories such as the defeat of the Kuomintang, which was led by Chiang Kai-shek.

Marxist schools at leading institutions such as Peking University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have also joined efforts to celebrate the occasion by hosting scholarly conferences reflecting on Mao’s legacy and discussing China’s path to a “great rejuvenation”.

Explore the links between Xi Jinping, China’s Communist Party’s inner circles

In recent years, Xi has repeatedly hailed a social management approach known as the “Fengqiao experience”, a teaching of Mao’s that did not enjoy popularity under previous Chinese leaders.

The mechanism is intended to mobilise ordinary people to resolve social conflicts at the grass-roots level to reduce the workloads of higher legal bodies.

Under Xi’s leadership, Chinese authorities have also intensified crackdowns on non-official historical accounts of the Communist Party, especially ones about Mao, adding to a long-standing official ambiguity about the legacy of a leader praised for his role in national independence, but criticised for mistakes in later years, including the Cultural Revolution, a decade of social and political upheaval that ended only after Mao’s death in 1976.

China’s quest to become a robot superpower | China

https://www.economist.com/china/2023/12/20/chinas-quest-to-become-a-robot-superpower

CHINA’S FIRST attempt at building a humanoid robot did not hit the mark. The machine produced in 2000 by a team at the National University of Defence Technology looked like a walking toaster. It had googly eyes and cannon-like protuberances near its crotch. Called Xianxingzhe, or Forerunner, it was mocked in neighbouring Japan, which at the time boasted far sleeker robots. Japanese netizens described it as China’s secret weapon—designed to make its enemies die of laughter.

China has stuck with it, though. In November the government published a plan calling for the mass production of humanoids by 2025. The country’s love of robots goes beyond those that can walk and talk. Last year half of all the industrial robots installed worldwide were fitted in China, according to the International Federation of Robotics, an industry body. It is now the fifth most automated country in the world when measured by robots per worker. Motivated by pride and pressing demographic challenges, China is on a mission to become a robot superpower.

Many of the country’s newly installed robots are mechanical arms that can be programmed to weld, drill or assemble components on a production line. But last year China also produced over 6m “service robots”, which help humans with tasks apart from industrial automation. Such machines scoot around warehouses, moving boxes. Others clean hotels. At a restaurant in the southern city of Guangzhou meals are cooked and served by robots.

Some of this may seem gimmicky, but to the Communist Party led by Xi Jinping robots are serious business. Officials believe China fell behind and was humiliated by Western powers in the 19th century in part because it did not embrace technological revolutions happening elsewhere. Now China aims to stay ahead of the game. Whereas officials once used steel production as a gauge of economic advancement, today they look at the number of robots installed, says Dan Wang of Hang Seng Bank.

What would make the government happy is if China’s robotics industry became more self-sufficient. Local firms still rely on foreign companies for parts and know-how. China is fearful of being shut out of Western markets, for good reason. America has blocked Chinese firms from buying advanced semiconductors and the equipment used to make them (robots require chips, but usually not the most advanced kind). So the government has been trying to stimulate robotics research. In August the city of Beijing announced a 10bn-yuan ($1.4bn) fund for robot development.

Such efforts are having some effect. Last year 36% of the industrial robots China installed were made at home, up from 25% in 2013. Shenzhen Inovance Technology, a big Chinese firm, builds robots that are used to make LED lights and mobile phones. It may be able to source all of the components it needs from Chinese companies within five years, says Zhu Xingming, its chairman.

For most Chinese robotics firms, though, self-sufficiency is still some way off. That is part of the reason why the government is pushing the development of humanoids. These may not be very practical or affordable in the near term. But officials hope the process of manufacturing them will create a domestic supply chain.

One thing the government does not have to worry about is much pushback against its plans. Surveys suggest most Chinese people think robots will create more jobs than they destroy. China, it seems, is a land of techno-optimists. It helps, of course, that independent labour unions are banned. ■

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China’s crypto craving: back-door Binance traders look more important to exchange’s future in wake of US conviction

https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3246047/chinas-crypto-craving-back-door-binance-traders-look-more-important-exchanges-future-wake-us?utm_source=rss_feed

When a Washington Post reporter asked Binance co-founder and then-CEO Zhao Changpeng last year about Chen Guangying – a little-known executive listed as the cryptocurrency exchange’s legal representative in China – the billionaire entrepreneur pushed out a 2,000-word screed on the company blog decrying efforts to paint it as “Chinese”.

According to CZ, as Zhao is commonly known, the reporter was playing into the hands of a competitor that was spreading rumours about Binance to “erode trust in our brand”.

“We don’t have any legal entities in China, and we do not have plans to,” CZ wrote in the piece published on September 1, 2022. “We (and every other offshore exchange) have been designated a criminal entity in China. At the same time, our opposition in the West bends over backward to paint us as a ‘Chinese company’.”

Today, Chen is living in “relative peace” in Europe with little to do with Binance, by CZ’s account. China, though, looks more important than ever to the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange in the wake of a US$4.3 billion fine and criminal conviction in the US, along with tightening crypto regulations across Asia and Europe.

Beyond just the US – where both the company and CZ, who stepped down as CEO, pled guilty to charges that included lax anti-money-laundering enforcement – Binance has been forced to defend itself in a variety of markets including the UK, Germany, Japan and Singapore. It withdrew a licence application in Germany this year and revived one in Singapore. Most recently, the Philippines’ Securities and Exchange Commission moved to block the platform.

In China, the exchange has maintained steady business with little-to-no enforcement action in the country, which has banned commercial crypto activity. While claiming not to officially operate in the country, Binance’s sizeable presence in the local industry comes from a widely-used workaround whereby users sign up from within mainland China by listing their location as Taiwan. Beijing claims the self-governing island as part of China.

A global affiliate programme further incentivises existing users to bring even more people on board. Binance did not respond to repeated requests for comment and questions regarding its operations in China.

With the regulatory landscape shifting around the world, China remains a critical market for Binance. In May alone, China-based customers accounted for a fifth of crypto traded on the platform, valued at US$90 billion, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal, which excluded some very large traders as outliers.

Binance behind Hong Kong crypto exchange seeking virtual asset licence: sources

Online crypto services in China received US$86.4 billion in cryptocurrency in the period of July 2022 to June 2023 based on web traffic data, according to a recent Chainalysis report.

“Two possible reasons for this are that the ban is loosely enforced, and the second being that crypto bans, in general, are just not very effective,” said Chengyi Ong, head of APAC policy at Chainalysis, adding that the full impact of the ban on exchanges like Binance is not entirely clear.

The exact legal danger of trading crypto in China is hard to determine. While the government declared in 2021 most commercial crypto activity to be illegal, local courts, most recently in September, have ruled that cryptocurrency is legally protected as property.

“Using crypto [in China] is a bit like using a VPN [virtual private network]; it could be illegal, but they’ve never really cracked down on it, and there is a grey area,” said a Chinese-British crypto trader and online influencer, who asked the Post to be referred to by his social media moniker, CryptosLaowai.

Binance is also not buying and selling the crypto itself. While it holds the crypto in its own wallets, it facilitates the trades between users. In China, that means users can pay each other in yuan using popular mobile payment platforms like Tencent Holdings’ WeChat Pay or Ant Group’s Alipay. Ant is the fintech affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding, owner of the South China Morning Post.

For traders in China, Binance’s scale is its clear advantage over rivals like OKX and HTX, formerly Huobi, all of which were started in China.

“Binance is not as easy to use as OKX and Huobi,” said one crypto trader in Shenzhen, who spoke with the Post over the Telegram messaging app. “I like Binance because its depth is the best, not its ease of use.”

Binance’s 60 million visitors are about twice the number of its nearest rivals Coinbase, at 35 million, and OKX, at 27 million, according to CoinGecko. That makes it easy to always find buyers and sellers, the person explained.

Users and former employees who spoke to the Post about Binance’s continued ties to mainland China did so on the condition of anonymity because of sensitivities around trading crypto in the country.

Despite warnings on its site that Binance services are not meant for mainland China or Hong Kong, mainlanders determined to use the exchange can still get around know-your-client (KYC) provisions with workarounds. An account created by the South China Morning Post on the mainland using a mainland identification card was approved in less than an hour, despite the inputted personal information – including name, birth date and address – not matching an uploaded image of the ID.

In Hong Kong trading crypto is legal but authorities now require exchanges to be licensed.

A report from CNBC in March found that people identifying themselves as Binance employees and trained volunteers called Angels, had been coaching people on how to get around geographic restrictions from China. Binance told the news organisation at the time that it has “taken action against employees who may have violated our internal policies including wrongly soliciting or making recommendations that are not allowed or in line with our standards. We have strict policies requiring all users to pass KYC by providing us with their country of residence and other personal identification information.”

The Post confirmed that people continue to offer such advice in chat groups, where tens of thousands of Chinese speakers congregate to get tips on how to use the app.

One user of these groups said that some had recently been shut down on WeChat, China’s largest social media platform. Others are still around on Telegram, though, where one called BinanceChinese has more than 150,000 members. Binance links to the group on its website as an “official channel”, but the Post could not independently confirm how or if the people coaching users are tied to the company.

Multiple people in the group could be seen recommending that new users download the app on iOS using a Taiwanese account, noting that Taiwan can also be used for ID checks.

Binance also runs an affiliate programme that rewards members with a commission of 41 per cent of referrals’ spot trades when a person onboards 10 new users who trade 50 bitcoin worth of crypto, according to the company’s website. That goes up to 50 per cent when a person onboards 100 new traders who generate 500 bitcoin in trading volume.

Many of the affiliates are Chinese, and that can come with other perks. CryptosLaowai, a Binance affiliate with 70,000 followers on X, formerly Twitter, said that a recent Binance workshop in the Maldives was held just for Mandarin-speaking affiliates and influencers, most of whom are based in mainland China.

Several attendees could be seen posting photos from the event this month under the hashtag #binancecampus on X. Binance said in a tweet that the event was for “affiliates from Asia”.

For a select few, the affiliate programme can be highly lucrative. Binance’s top affiliate member in 2019 earned US$10.5 million, the exchange previously posted on X.

The Post reviewed screenshots of a WeChat group consisting of other Chinese crypto influencers, where CryptosLaowai said staff sometimes offered influencers merchandise and other paid sponsorship opportunities. The company has never asked an influencer to promote a crypto asset, he added.

Officially, Binance says it has no presence in China. But its status in the country has shifted over the years, according to views expressed by former employees.

According to company lore, Binance was chased out of China less than two months after its founding in Shanghai. After a 2017 crackdown on crypto exchanges, the Chinese government “blocked our platform behind the Great Firewall”, CZ wrote in the same blog post last year. “At this point, most of our employees left China. Only a small number of customer service agents remained by late 2018.”

One former employee said that before he left in August this year, Binance held a team-building event that drew between 200 and 300 local workers. There is no data available on how many, or if, people still work for Binance in China as it officially claims not to operate there. Several LinkedIn profiles still show people claiming to work for the exchange from within the mainland.

When that person joined Binance, he said he signed with an entity in China, but months later he was told to remotely contract with a separate entity based in Singapore.

After the 2021 crypto ban, Binance quickly rolled out a “globalisation strategy” after the government announcement, the former employee said. Most Chinese employees were “encouraged” to relocate, with many who did not agree eventually being laid off, the former employee said. By this year, new Chinese employees were required to agree to a relocation plan at the time, he added.

“Only like two or three weeks after this plan was announced, maybe half of my Shanghai office quickly flew off to Dubai,” the person said. Soon after, the company began shutting down its network of clandestine offices in China, asking employees not to publicise their roles at Binance, he added.

But a strict crackdown or large-scale investigation into Binance never came. Even claims that China blocks Binance are only partially true. Meanwhile, although Binance’s main website is blocked by the Great Firewall in China – its app can be freely used within China without a VPN, as is the case with OKX and HTX.

The main website is blocked by the Great Firewall, but like OKX and HTX, Binance’s app can be freely used within China without a VPN.

As Binance navigates the new landscape of global crypto regulations, all eyes are on newly appointed CEO Richard Teng, a former Singaporean regulator. Will the company, which has never named an official headquarters location, finally put down roots and clear up any ambiguity about where it operates and by whose rules?

Teng has so far shown no sign that the company is on the verge of greater transparency. He previously told Bloomberg TV that the company’s “core team” remains intact. When questioned by the Financial Times at its Crypto and Digital Assets summit in London this month, he refused to share the location of the company’s headquarters and questioned why anyone would “feel entitled” to that information.

However the company’s future plans shake out, China could be too important a market to ignore. And Beijing has so far been tolerating a fair amount of measurable activity in the market.

“The ban hasn’t been completely ineffective, but it has been shown to be highly porous,” Chainalysis’ Ong said, “and we’re still seeing a very material amount of activity in China.”

Additional reporting by Coco Feng.

China’s top 100 storied brands lose 4.5 per cent of their intangible assets value as economic downturn weakens consumer demand: Hurun Report

https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3246069/chinas-top-100-storied-brands-lose-45-cent-their-intangible-assets-value-economic-downturn-weakens?utm_source=rss_feed

The value of China’s top 100 storied brands stretching from liquor to commercial banks dropped 4.5 per cent in 2023, battered by weak consumer sentiment and a gloomy economic outlook, according to the latest research by the Hurun Report.

The consultancy known for its China Rich List found that the intangible assets of the mainland’s 100 most successful indigenous brands with at least 60 years of history were valued at a combined 9.43 trillion yuan (US$1.32 trillion) in 2023, compared to 9.87 trillion yuan the previous year.

The decline resulted from deflationary pressure on the Chinese economy as sluggish domestic demand continued to plague the consumer market, said Eric Han, a ­senior manager at Suolei, an advisory firm in Shanghai.

Total spending on fast-moving consumer goods – expendable items such as food and drink, or clothing – in China slipped 0.9 per cent year on year during the third quarter of 2023, according to a joint study released by global consultancy Bain & Company and market research firm Kantar Worldpanel earlier this month.

Consumers, spooked by concerns about job prospects amid a bleak economic outlook, continue to actively hunt bargains when they purchase consumer goods such as personal care products, the study found.

“The time-honoured brands also fell victim to a slowing economy, but their great history could help them wade through economic turbulence,” said Han.

Brand value is measured by assessing the price premium it generates when compared to a similar but unbranded product or service.

The top brands on the list include liquor distillers Kwei­chow Moutai and Wuliangye Yibin, drug manufacturer Tong Ren Tang, roast duck restaurant chain operator China Quanjude, and China Construction Bank.

“They have brought a lot of inspiration to emerging brands,” said Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher of the Hurun Report. “It is important for the brands to learn how to retain age-long tradition and avoid being eliminated by the market.”

Durability, the value of the intangible assets and cultural heritage are the key elements accounting for the success of the brands, he added.

Yiyuanqing, a vinegar brand originating from Taiyuan, the capital of central China’s Shanxi province, has the longest history of the names on the list, at 646 years.

Some of the brands, such as the bigger banks, have helped shape China’s national economy during the past century, making it into the world’s second-largest economy today.

In recent years, guochao, or “China chic” – a term that refers to the growing enthusiasm for home-grown fashion – has benefited hundreds of Chinese companies as the mainland’s 400 million middle-income consumers spent heavily on beverage and cosmetic products under indigenous brands.

In June 2019, when the trade war between China and the US escalated, milk tea made by celebrated Shanghai confectionery brand White Rabbit sold at a premium of up to about 2,000 per cent, spurred by consumers’ sense of national pride.

Some consumers were willing to pay scalpers as much as 500 yuan for a taste of the milk tea, which normally sells for 19 to 23 yuan, since they had to spend more than two hours queuing for a cup of the famous drink.

White Rabbit’s milk-flavoured confectionery rose to global prominence in 1972, when then premier Zhou Enlai presented some to US president Richard Nixon.

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China population: reward grandparents, ban antinatalist content to boost tumbling births, demographers say

https://www.scmp.com/economy/economic-indicators/article/3246037/china-population-reward-grandparents-ban-antinatalist-content-boost-tumbling-births-demographers-say?utm_source=rss_feed

Demographers in China have called for grandparents who help raise children to be rewarded, and for content that promotes being unmarried and childless to be banned, as part of the latest proposals to reduce the impact of declining births.

Grandparents who share childcare responsibilities with their adult children should be commended, according to an article published in the latest issue of Population and Health magazine.

Li Shuxia and Lei Juan, who work for the Chongqing Population and Family Development Research Centre, also said local governments should promote images of affectionate couples, happy families and quality parent-child moments at densely populated areas, including large commercial districts, industrial estates and wholesale markets.

The latest pronatalist proposals, which came as births in China could hit a new low this year to further undermine the economic recovery, also included a suggestion to address other practical challenges preventing couples from having children.

“Any content advocating being unmarried and childless, or sensationalising gender opposition and fertility anxiety, needs to be strictly prohibited,” Li and Lei said in the article.

A myriad of approaches have already been suggested for how China can boost its dangerously low birth rate after its population suffered a first decline in more than six decades last year.

As births dropped below 10 million for the first time in modern history last year, analysts said births could plunge further to between 7 million and 8 million this year, further clouding China’s demographic outlook.

“Content conducive to fostering a culture of marriage and childbirth should be promoted, while those that hinder the cultivation of this new culture should be restricted and censored,” the article added.

It also said that there should also be more artwork that emphasises the sense of fulfilment and happiness brought about by parenthood.

“It should help young people realise that having children is not only about continuing the family line, but also a crucial pathway to achieving personal life values,” it said.

The suggestions came as policymakers have started to realise the importance and challenges to change public perceptions, as slogans from the one-child policy era are still imprinted on a generation who grew up being told “having only one child is good”.

With births falling, and an accelerating ageing crisis becoming increasingly prominent, China abolished its infamous one-child policy in 2016 in favour of a two-child policy, and then further relaxed its family planning restrictions in 2021 by allowing couples to have a third child.

In addition, the article also pointed out that the support system for having a third child is insufficient, while the public requires more parenting backing.

Except for the lack of an established system for parenting subsidies, making paediatric medical appointments and receiving medical care remain challenging, while routine vaccines for diseases like rotavirus and enterovirus are costly, the authors said.

“The rights protection for full-time stay-at-home mothers is insufficient, and there is a lack of grandparental care and maternity leave for newborns,” the article added.

It also pointed out that China’s education system is not supportive enough, as there are no policies supporting children to enrol in the same primary schools as their older siblings, while kindergarten is also not included in compulsory education.

Moreover, workplaces generally do not allow parents to bring their children to work, and most institutions have not established childcare facilities.

Pee power: Chinese superstition believes boys’ urine can ward off evil spirits, is nourishing, enhances efficacy of medicines

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3245929/pee-power-chinese-superstition-believes-boys-urine-can-ward-evil-spirits-nourishing-enhances?utm_source=rss_feed

There has long been a belief in traditional Chinese culture that the urine of boys possesses a variety of “mysterious powers”. They range from health benefits, such as boosting yang energy and reducing fever, to spiritual advantages that include keeping evil spirits away and boosting good fortune.

To maximise these purported effects, the urine is collected from boys under the age of 10, with the most valued being the first-morning wee from a boy on the day before he turns one month old.

This practice stems from the traditional belief that young boys embody pure yang energy, representing masculinity and infinite vitality.

Historically, alchemists even presented boys’ urine to emperors as “Immortal Water”, claiming it could bestow immortality. The Jiajing Emperor of Ming dynasty (1368–1644) notably used the excretions in his elixir preparations in pursuit of eternal life.

Film lovers might recall the old superstition cropping up in the 1987 film Mr Vampire, when the character of a Taoist priest, played by the Hong Kong actor Lam Ching-ying, uses a boy’s urine to defeat a witch.

But it seems even ancient folklore “cures” have side effects, such as the belief that the diseases of those who use the urine can transfer to the child and that sharing it might shorten the boy’s lifespan.

Today, the tradition continues and can be seen in various practices aimed at enhancing health and luck.

Two recipes from southern China incorporate kiddy wee, which have gained national acclaim: boy’s urine eggs of Zhejiang province and boy’s urine stewed pig’s feet from Fujian province.

The urine eggs, which were recognised as an intangible cultural heritage in Zhejiang province in 2008, are a traditional delicacy particularly enjoyed around the Ching Ming Festival. They are believed to prevent drowsiness in spring and heatstroke in summer.

The preparation involves collecting urine from kindergartens or primary schools using basins and buckets, cleaning fresh eggs, placing them in a pot, and covering them with the urine.

In addition, eggs from different households are cooked together in the same large pot for two days, with each family marking their eggs with charcoal for identification.

The cooking method for stewed pig’s feet is to steam them in a small, covered pot with some of the “magic” liquid. This dish is believed to replenish yang energy, when recovering from a serious illness if you are old or if your body is feeling weak.

Traditional Chinese medicine has long featured the use of human urine. For example, ren zhong bai, a renowned Chinese medicine made of urine sediment, is reputed for its ability to clear heat, reduce swelling, and stop bleeding.

Similarly, mixing urine with water to decoct medicine or adding it after the medicine has been prepared, is believed to boost efficacy.

In the traditional Chinese postpartum practice of “sitting the month,” which is the period in which new mothers rest and recover after giving birth, a boy’s urine is sometimes added to soups consumed by the mothers.

This ancient Chinese prescription is believed to help clear heat, detoxify, remove stasis, and promote blood circulation.

A boy’s urine is sometimes placed in a home, perhaps sealed in a plastic bag, so that its strong yang energy can counteract yin energy, expelling evil, deflecting misfortune, and bringing good luck.

There is no modern scientific evidence to support the effectiveness of this tradition and its continued practice could, in part, be attributed to depictions in Chinese films and popular TV dramas.

Chinese man charged with trying to steal from passengers on Cambodia-Singapore flight

https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/3246012/chinese-man-charged-trying-steal-passengers-cambodia-singapore-flight?utm_source=rss_feed

A Chinese national has been remanded in Singapore on charges of attempting to steal from passengers on a flight from Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh to the city state.

Yi Huaichun, 44, returned to court on Friday to face his three charges. He was first charged on December 16 and has been remanded since.

Yi is accused of trying to steal from three passengers while on Cambodia Airways flight KR751 from Phnom Penh on the morning of December 15.

He allegedly tried to steal from a black haversack belonging to a man around 9.40am (local time), before attempting to steal from a black backpack belonging to another person a few minutes later.

Yi is also accused of attempting to commit theft from a black leather bag from a third person less than an hour later.

Singapore jails Chinese tourist who tried to bribe her way onto Amsterdam flight

Yi’s charges are read with Section 3(2) of the Tokyo Convention Act, which allows Singapore to prosecute a person for an act that is an offence in Singapore, if the suspect committed such an act on board any aircraft that subsequently lands in Singapore with the suspect on board.

When asked to give an indication of his plea on Friday, he said he was not guilty.

He will return to court for a pre-trial conference in January.

If convicted of attempted theft, he faces up to three years’ jail, a fine, or both.

Yi’s case comes after another Chinese national, 52-year-old Zhang Xiuqiang, was charged on Monday with stealing about S$31,000 (US$23,260) from three passengers on a Singapore-bound Scoot flight from Vietnam.

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Why more Chinese students are looking to Europe – and not the US – for higher education

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3245861/why-more-chinese-students-are-looking-europe-and-not-us-higher-education?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese university student Bian is hard at work learning German so she can travel to the European country after she graduates next year, with plans to do a language course and then a graduate degree.

As a student majoring in communication at a top Chinese university, she considered several options for further study, but decided to exclude the US and Britain. Despite having the best communication programmes, tuition fees and costs of living in those countries were beyond her means.

In contrast, Germany had various attractions, including a number of degree programmes with very low or even zero tuition, a stable social environment, and an interesting Western culture.

For the past three years, the number of Chinese students in the United States has fallen, with an increasing number of China’s best students no longer heading there. Instead, Europe is emerging as a popular destination among China’s sea of students heading offshore for further study.

Students have been travelling to Europe for generations, reflecting the idea that learning from the West could help China’s modernisation.

Earlier generations of Communist Party leaders, like Zhou Enlai, made short study trips to Japan, Germany, France and Britain in the 1920s; Deng Xiaoping also spent five years in France when he was a teenager.

In more recent years, China’s science and technology sector, which was lagging behind the West, has benefited by sending students to countries in Europe.

For example, Wan Gang, “the father of China’s electric vehicles”, studied at the Technical University of Clausthal in Germany in 1985 after gaining a master’s degree from Tongji University. In 1991 he got his doctorate and then worked for automotive giant Audi for years.

He returned to China and became the president of Tongji University in 2004, going on to be appointed minister of science and technology three years later.

Over two decades ago, Wan persuaded China’s leaders to develop the then-untested technology of vehicle electrification. Buoyed by his strategy of providing government subsidies to carmakers and consumers, today, over half of the EVs sold around the world are in China.

Similarly, in 1984, Chen Zhu began his studies in France, getting his PhD from the Saint-Louis Hospital Blood Centre Laboratory at Paris Diderot University. In 2007, he became health minister. Chen and Wan were the only two non-Communist Party members serving as ministers at that time.

In the early 2000s, Chen called for Sino-French cooperation in fields like infectious diseases, managing to establish the Institute Pasteur of Shanghai, which ceased operation this year, as well as China’s first P4 biosafety laboratory.

Two decades on, the landscape in China has changed dramatically. It is now a world leader in fields spanning advanced manufacturing, engineering, computer sciences and life sciences.

Nevertheless, Chinese students are still keen to study in Europe today.

“We have not yet finalised the statistics for 2023 of how many students went to European countries, for we lack the official data from embassies. But our preliminary estimate is that it will definitely exceed pre-pandemic levels – the peak in 2019,” said Eva, a practitioner responsible for European study programmes at a well-known overseas study agency in China. She declined to use her name as she was not authorised to speak to the media.

“We attended an event organised by the Irish Department of Education this year, and the figures we obtained were that Ireland had issued over 1,000 more visas to Chinese students than before the pandemic.”

In the Netherlands, China has been the only non-European Economic Area country in the top 10 source countries since 2021-2022, coming in at fourth place. In 2022-23, there were 5,610 students from China, up 5.3 per cent, according to official data.

And according to state-owned China Daily in March, 12,571 Chinese students enrolled in higher education programmes in Spain in 2020, nearly double the number from 2015.

Number of Americans studying in mainland China falls sharply

In Germany, according to the data provided by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), over the past 10 years, students from China have been an important part of the nation’s international students. Numbers of Chinese students have far exceeded those from other countries, with about half of them choosing to study engineering-related subjects there.

And although for the 2022 winter semester the numbers of students from India have outnumbered those from China for the first time in over 20 years, the gap is negligible.

Meanwhile in France, despite a 2 per cent fall in the number of international students from China registered for the 2021-22 academic year, China still ranked third among major source nations.

Eva said one major reason putting students off going to France was the strict visa policies for Chinese students intending to apply for free programmes taught in French, though in fact, there was a noticeable increase in the courses in English.

She suggested that the latest data from Germany and France reflected more of a temporary fluctuation and more time was needed to see if it was a trend.

But compared to the most appealing countries for students, such as the US and Britain, many European countries had their own particular advantages in academic disciplines as well as other unique features, Eva said.

For example, Germany is renowned for its mechanical and electronic engineering programmes, while France leads globally in mathematics and art education, and Hungary is famous for its comprehensive medical courses.

Among the programmes taught in English in this region, those in Ireland were the most popular, she said, as the employment rate for international and local graduates was exceptionally high. This is a significant advantage for Chinese students facing intense competition in the domestic job market.

Thanks to low taxes, geographical privileges, a young pool of hi-tech talent and a robust industry chain, Ireland is an international hub for the biomanufacturing industry, home to more than 85 multinational biopharmaceutical companies and over 300 local medical technology companies, which offer many job prospects.

But another factor boosting their intake of Chinese students is probably the deteriorating relationship between Beijing and Washington.

Eva said she did not have specific data but one applicant, for example, was applying to ETH Zurich in Switzerland because there were problems obtaining US visas for his major.

Visa policies as well as friendly environments are expected to become increasingly important factors for Chinese students when deciding where to study abroad, according to the “Annual Report on the Development of Chinese Students Studying Abroad (2022)”, a blue book jointly compiled by the Beijing-based think tank Centre for China and Globalisation and the Bank of China last year.

“There is a possibility of a shift in study demand towards Europe and Asia,” the report said. “France and Germany are gradually introducing favourable policies for Chinese international students, indicating great potential for overseas study and exchanges.”

On top of that, more Chinese households are struggling as the economy slows, prompting them to consider less-expensive options for their children’s education and their family’s immigration plan. In that respect, European countries stand out when compared to places like the US and Canada, according to Eva.

Germany recently announced that it has overtaken Australia in the list of the most popular study destinations and now ranks third worldwide, securing the first spot among non-English-speaking countries.

In 2020, a survey on German language learning data showed rapid growth in the number of Chinese learners of German. In Chinese secondary schools, the number of students learning German has almost doubled in the past five years.

However, getting admission to European academic institutions was not easy, Eva said. She interviewed several students studying in France and found that those who were able to enrol in prestigious French schools had outstanding proficiency in French, high IELTS (International English Language Testing System) scores and GPAs.

Generally, the brightest students, such as those graduating from Tsinghua University and Peking University, who want to study abroad are still largely heading to the best-known institutions in the US – such as its Ivy League universities – as well as Britain.

How will US fare as Indian students overtake Chinese in hi-tech talent pool?

“However, students who can attend German colleges are outstanding as well because the graduation requirements there are very strict,” said Wu Huiping, deputy director of the German Research Centre at the Tongji University in Shanghai. She obtained her PhD in Germany around 20 years ago.

Chinese families were no longer as enthusiastic about studying abroad as they were two decades ago, Wu said, but for nations like Germany, its high-quality education system – especially in engineering-related majors – international campuses and very low tuition fees, remained very attractive.

Wu said that to attract the “smartest minds”, German higher education institutions, which used to to be relatively independent, began about two decades ago to actively take part in several major international rankings to become more competitive. In some highly ranked German universities, Chinese students were visible everywhere, she said.

Today, external factors such as unstable international relations and the dynamics of scientific power between China and the West have led to subtle shifts in attitudes and policies regarding Chinese students in Europe.

For instance, in mid-2023, Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Bavaria, told staff in an internal message that as of June 1 it had decided to indefinitely suspend collaboration with holders of scholarships awarded by the China Scholarship Council “to reduce the risk of industrial espionage”.

“Besides competitors and collaborators, Germany is increasingly viewing China as a systemic adversary,” Wu said.

She said Sino-German scientific cooperation was in an adjustment phase but talent flow and academic exchanges continued.

Germany’s DAAD said: “Germany has always been open to Chinese students and all international students.

“In 2019, we laid down the latest policy that Chinese students can directly apply for bachelor’s programmes at German universities with their scores from China’s National Higher Education Entrance Exam, which to a large extent lowers the age for studying abroad in Germany.”

In a joint announcement with Germany’s Ministry of Education and Research in November, DAAD launched a pair of initiatives to boost the retention of foreign graduates of German universities and to attract foreign degree holders to live and work in the country.

“After all, we urgently need more bright minds and hard-working hands for growth and prosperity in our country,” Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger said.

But with the rapid development of domestic technology and manufacturing industries, as well as the continuous improvement in university rankings, China is unlikely to advocate for its elite citizens to study in the West “as loudly as it did decades ago”, Wu said.

However, many Chinese students still go to Europe, keen to broaden their horizons and enrich their experience and educational background.

“We need scientific collaboration now more than ever before. Only by working together can we solve the major problems of mankind,” Klaus Birk, a director of DAAD, said.

“The best way for us to develop together is for us to enable young people to communicate with each other in order to find solutions to international problems.”

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Chinese consortium’s ‘smart city’ project raises eyebrows and questions in Brazil

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3246087/chinese-consortiums-smart-city-project-raises-eyebrows-and-questions-brazil?utm_source=rss_feed

A Chinese property development consortium’s pledge to invest nine trillion Brazilian real (approximately US$1.85 trillion) in a new “smart” city in Brazil, has sparked excitement in the country – as well as scepticism.

That’s not a typo. The investment, nearly equivalent to Brazil’s 2022 gross domestic product of US$1.92 trillion, is allegedly targeted for Mataraca, a town in the northeastern state of Paraiba with a population of just 8,000.

Brasil CRT, a joint venture between Brazilian and Chinese interests based in the state of Minas Gerais – almost 2,200km (1,367 miles) from Mataraca – announced the project last week.

Plans for the smart city, which would span more than 27,000 acres, include residential, commercial, and industrial buildings, leisure facilities, educational institutions, hospitals, a stadium and an “offshore” style harbour. The company said that it would accommodate 250,000 residents and draw up to 1 million tourists annually.

Jurandi Calaciano, Mataraca’s public works secretary, said that discussions with the consortium have been extensive.

“We had been talking to them about it for over three years, but we only met them in person last week when they visited the town,” Calaciano said.

The “smart city” project garnered widespread media attention in Brazil and became a sensation online. It made front-page news across Paraiba’s leading newspapers and TV Paraiba, a Globo affiliate, Brazil’s top television network, covered the project’s public announcement, including an interview with Rudian Tchen, identified as a Chinese representative of Brasil CRT.

Speaking Portuguese, Tchen shared plans to extend the company’s reach to Bahia, another northeastern Brazilian state. Online, a video detailing the project amassed over 130,000 views in just two days.

Chinese investment in Brazil drops 78% to 13-year low: report

However, suspicions arose after the video of the project – allegedly developed by the Copenhagen-based design firm Henning Larsen – turned out to be a duplicate of a video showcasing the firm’s project in Shenzhen in China.

Following media reports casting doubt on the project’s legitimacy, Brazilian YouTubers posted numerous videos investigating the Chinese participants’ identities and the investment’s authenticity.

Further investigations by the South China Morning Post revealed other inconsistencies. The Chinese consulate in Recife found no records of Brasil CRT, and the Chinese embassy in Brasilia had not been contacted regarding the investment.

Wang Ke, the acting Chinese consul general in Recife, said he “has no information regarding this company or the project mentioned and has no contact” with Brasil CRT.

A spokesperson from Henning Larsen also denied any company involvement with the Chinese group.

Tchen could not be reached for comment.

China’s ambassador to Brazil makes Belt and Road Initiative pitch

The Mataraca City Hall did not respond to several telephone and email inquiries. Speaking to the local press, Mayor Egberto Madruga said that he did not know about Shenzhen and that the Chinese involved in the Mataraca project had never mentioned the city in their proposal.

Public database searches indicate that Brasil CRT’s registered address is an unused parking lot, and its contact numbers are linked to an unrelated auditing firm.

In response to the controversy, Paraiba Governor Joao Azevedo Lins Filho cancelled a scheduled meeting this week with the Chinese group. The state press office and Chinese diplomatic missions have yet to identify the Chinese participants in the project.

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