• Chinese migrants lured to Oklahoma are victims of labour, sex trafficking, official says
• Chinese PLA-linked vessels map the Indian Ocean for submarine warfare
• [World] The Taiwan that China wants is vanishing
• China’s economy holds ‘real potential’ in 2024, think tank predicts upbeat 5.3% GDP growth
• Chinese and Finnish Presidents discuss damage to Baltic gas pipeline blamed on Chinese ship
• China’s 280mph high-speed train to be tested this year, CR450 set to enter service by 2025
• Corruption ‘everywhere’ in Chinese football, ex-CFA boss says in TV confession
• China’s Xi Jinping pushes for stable US ties and more exchanges in letter to long-time American friend
• Hong Kong customs arrests woman once more for hiding HK$330,000 worth of Chinese yuan in tailor-made multi-pocket vest
• Can Beethoven, Bach and Mozart help iPhone sales in China? Apple to launch classical music app on mainland amid sluggish demand for its flagship product
• Taiwan’s election explained: What’s at stake, and how will China react?
• Feared failure of Peregrine mission could put US behind China in the moon race, says space policy expert
• ‘Covered in blisters’: China bride faces permanent scarring after wedding guests spray party streamers causing severe burns
• CES 2024: China EV maker Xpeng accepts pre-orders for flying car but notes urban use is far off
• China Evergrande rejects claims it was never profitable in report centred on changes to its accounting method
• With threats, pressure and financial lures, China seen as aiming to influence Taiwan’s elections
• Resignation of Chinese University of Hong Kong’s head, dismissal of vice-president not linked to governing council reform, lawmakers say
• US, Chinese officials remain at odds over Taiwan during military talks, days ahead of election
• We’re hiring a new China correspondent | News
• ‘My heart aches’: China girl, 5, dies of liver disease despite transplant from heartbroken father, triggering widespread public sympathy
• Proactive approach to Taliban helps safeguard security in northwest China: envoy
• China is trying to sell its ‘chubby girl’ transport plane to foreign buyers
• High life: China family of 8 pay US$140 a day to live in luxury hotel, say price and comfort mean they might stay forever
• Poor communication, political naivete cemented Rocky Tuan’s departure as head of Chinese University of Hong Kong, sources say
• Can China halt the exodus from its state health insurance scheme as enthusiasm wanes?
• Communist Party diplomat Liu Jianchao, on US visit, urges ‘correct’ understanding of China
• US and China ambassadors identify areas of cooperation as well as danger zones
• US advances in AI to blunt China military depend on more streamlined Pentagon: senior official
• China joins US and Japan in approving Alzheimer’s drug Leqembi developed by Eisai and Biogen
• Trump muses: Maybe covid-19 was punishment for his tariffs on China?

Chinese migrants lured to Oklahoma are victims of labour, sex trafficking, official says

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3247997/chinese-migrants-lured-oklahoma-are-victims-labour-sex-trafficking-official-says?utm_source=rss_feed

Undocumented Chinese nationals recruited on international websites to cross into the United States are becoming victims of labour and sex trafficking, often on illicit marijuana farms run by Mexican and Chinese syndicates in Oklahoma, the state’s top law enforcement official said on Wednesday.

“These ads, in Mandarin, are thinly veiled offerings to engage in criminal activity,” Gentner Drummond, Oklahoma’s attorney general, said in testimony before the US House Homeland Security Committee in Washington.

One such advertisement “offers jobs for a ‘massage spa’ to people who are ‘able to endure hardships’ and who have ‘good hygiene’,” he said.

Drummond was participating in the Republican-led panel’s first impeachment hearing for President Joe Biden’s top border official, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, over the flow of immigrants coming across the Mexican border. He agreed with his fellow Republicans that the federal government had not done enough to control the influx.

Chinese ‘border crossers’ with ‘no future in China’ seek new life in LA suburb

He said that “every single case” of illegal marijuana growing being investigated in Oklahoma had some level of undocumented labour trafficking, “particularly in operations run by Chinese nationals”.

Drummond narrated what he called the “living horror” of two Chinese women investigators had found while executing search warrants related to illegal drug activity by Chinese nationals.

“Mattresses on the floor of their bedroom were littered with condoms, lotions and other unsavory supplies,” he said, adding that the women spoke no English and had been in the US for months but “could not say where they were”.

“They had not been out of the house since their arrival. They simply awoke every day, worked and went back to sleep,” Drummond said.

The hearing comes as Republicans are blocking funding for Ukraine in its war against Russian invaders and threatening to force a government shutdown as part of their efforts to “secure” the southern border. Immigration remains one of the top issues for conservative voters ahead of the presidential election on November 5.

In 2023, the US Border Patrol arrested about 2 million migrants at the US-Mexico border. During Donald Trump’s presidency from 2017-2021, the year 2019 saw the most migrant arrests at 852,000.

According to US Customs and Border Protection data, US authorities encountered more than 24,000 Chinese nationals at the US-Mexico border over the 12 months ending in October 2023. Only about 2,000 Chinese came to the southern border in the previous year, the data shows.

People who leave China often are trying to escape persecution or poverty at home, reports say, as the nation struggles to restore a measure of pre-Covid growth.

Republican-led US House votes to open impeachment inquiry into Biden

Drummond cited the execution-style murder of four Chinese nationals at an illegal marijuana farm in Oklahoma in November 2022.

The Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics said at the time that close to 80 per cent of the 200 such farms shut down by between 2020 and 2022 were either run or owned by Chinese nationals.

Drummond testified on Wednesday that a “vast majority” of more than 50 “complex, multi-jurisdictional criminal cases” being investigated by Oklahoma’s Organized Crime Task Force, which was established last year, involved Mexican and Chinese drug syndicates.

Chinese PLA-linked vessels map the Indian Ocean for submarine warfare

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/01/10/china-submarine-military-indian-ocean/2024-01-08T22:25:18.733Z

Chinese research vessels with ties to the People’s Liberation Army are conducting sweeping surveys of the undersea floor in the Indian Ocean, collecting data that could be crucial in deploying submarines in a region that is a critical energy supply line for Beijing in the event of a war with Taiwan.

A new analysis of hundreds of thousands of hours of shipping data since 2020 by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies shows that the Indian Ocean is fast becoming one of the biggest domains for Chinese oceanic surveys, which are ostensibly civilian in nature but tied to the PLA and Beijing’s military-civil fusion program — a national strategic plan to advance China’s military by acquiring technology and research from civilian groups.

The types of ocean surveys carried out by the vessels have research applications for energy resources and marine environments, but the data collected can also be used for military purposes, analysts say, including how to maneuver and obscure submarines during conflict.

The CSIS report found that of the 13 vessels undertaking the bulk of survey and research activity in the Indian Ocean since 2020, all have links to China’s military — including organizational ties to the PLA — and have displayed suspicious behavior including docking at Chinese military ports or temporarily turning off tracking devices.

“The Indian Ocean is critical to China’s strategic and economic interests, as well as its geopolitical rivalry with India,” said Matthew Funaiole, a senior fellow at CSIS who worked on the report. “Beijing is serious about fielding a blue-water navy, one that will be active in the Indian Ocean, and blurring the lines between its research ecosystem and its national security apparatus will help it get there.”

China maintains the world’s largest fleet of civilian research vessels, and the CSIS report said that at least 80 percent of 64 such vessels operating globally since 2020 have displayed “warning indicators” that their work is tied to military objectives. Over half of those suspect vessels operated in the South China Sea, but their growing presence in the Indian Ocean has also stoked tensions.

Taiwan urges China to stop ‘destructive’ military sorties as tensions mount

Last week, Sri Lanka declared a moratorium on Chinese research vessels entering its waters under what analysts say was intense pressure from India. New Delhi has aired concerns that the research vessels — some of which have previously docked in Sri Lanka — are being used to monitor waters and installments in India’s sphere of influence. Sri Lanka, which took on nearly $12 billion in Chinese loans between 2000 and 2020, has struggled to balance the competing demands of Beijing and New Delhi, analysts say.

“India has made its displeasure known to Sri Lanka; some of these vessels are too close to Indian territory and Indian interests for comfort,” said Abhijit Singh, a former Indian naval officer and senior fellow at the New Delhi-based think tank Observer Research Foundation. “Crudely put, this is the real fear, that China is going to work on its combat capability by studying the environment in these waters.”

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

With the backdrop of China’s growing military presence, the Biden administration has sought to tighten security ties with India in recent years, including bolstering activity in the Quad — a group including India, Japan, Australia and the United States that focuses on security and economic interests in the Indo-Pacific region.

More recently, the White House has sought to show its ties with New Delhi remain strong, despite a spat over the alleged attempted assassination of a Sikh separatist by an Indian government employee on U.S. soil. Last month, deputy U.S. national security adviser Jon Finer led a delegation to India to fortify partnerships in technology.

Much of the attention on China’s growing military presence in the Indo-Pacific has focused on its massive fleet of naval ships and increasingly assertive aircraft maneuvers near Taiwan. However, beneath the oceans, Beijing is also working to expand a less-visible network of submarine defense systems and ocean monitoring equipment that would be critical in supporting its naval defenses and protecting supply routes in the event of war.

Chinese fighter jets buzz U.S. planes in dramatic new videos

The Indian Ocean is a critical waterway for Beijing’s interests, and in recent years it has built or expanded facilities from Djibouti to Pakistan. While China has made efforts to supplement its ocean supply line with overland alternatives in recent years, a substantial amount of its crude oil and natural gas supplies still need to travel from Africa and the Middle East through the Indian Ocean, including the chokepoint of the Malacca Strait, which connects the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea between Indonesia and Malaysia.

“Some call that the underbelly of China’s strategic interests, simply because if a war in Taiwan erupts, then given that the Indian Ocean is located quite a distance from the Chinese shores it’s easy to disrupt the Chinese energy security supply in the Indian Ocean, and then all war-making ability might grind to a stop,” said Collin Koh, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

China’s fleet of submarines is growing fast. Last year, in an annual report on China’s military power, the Pentagon said Beijing now has about 60 submarines, including 12 that are nuclear-powered, and projects that the total number of Chinese submarines will rise to 80 by 2035. Some of these ships have already made forays into the Indian Ocean.

Last year, the United States, Britain and Australia unveiled plans to equip Canberra with its own nuclear-powered submarines as part of a landmark agreement called AUKUS, designed to counter China’s growing presence in the region.

“If you are serious about wanting to conduct submarine operations in the Indian Ocean you have to have a fairly good knowledge of not only the seafloor, but the currents, the layers of water, the salinity … which is all key to not being seen when you’re in a submarine,” said David Brewster, senior research fellow with the National Security College at the Australian National University.

China is not alone in deploying ocean research vessels, but the opaque ties among its military, civilian and academic groups have raised suspicions that the data collected in the Indian Ocean and elsewhere globally could have dual-use applications. In some cases, the link between the missions and China’s national security goals is made explicit.

In 2020, Chinese research survey vessel Xiang Yang Hong 06 traveled more than 6,000 miles over 110 days, surveying vast swaths of the Indian Ocean. During that time it deployed underwater gliders and floats — devices to capture complex data about the marine environment — as part of a national project called “Two Oceans One Sea,” which, according to descriptions posted by Chinese state research groups, is designed to advance strategic needs including “security and military activities.”

China has acquired a global network of strategically vital ports

In October 2023, another research vessel, Shiyan 06, conducted a four-month mission in the eastern Indian Ocean. The vessel was operated by the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, an institute that has provided technical support to Beijing’s military expansion in the South China Sea.

Analysts say the behavior of the ships in the Indian Ocean and elsewhere gives insight into their affiliation with military groups. “Certain indicators can fill gaps in our knowledge. If a research vessel is owned and operated by a state-affiliated group with close ties to the Chinese military, and that vessel makes regular port calls at naval facilities, it’s a red flag,” said CSIS’s Funaiole. “If a vessel regularly goes dark before entering another country’s exclusive economic zone, it’s another red flag.”

The Pentagon has taken note of the growing PLA navy presence in the Indian Ocean, including its expanded submarine activities. “The PLAN has also conducted submarine deployments to the Indian Ocean, demonstrating its increasing familiarity in that region and underscoring the [People’s Republic of China’s] interest in protecting [sea lines of communication] beyond the South China Sea,” it said in its 2023 military report on China.

[World] The Taiwan that China wants is vanishing

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-67920287?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=KARANGA

China’s economy holds ‘real potential’ in 2024, think tank predicts upbeat 5.3% GDP growth

https://www.scmp.com/economy/economic-indicators/article/3247925/chinas-economy-holds-real-potential-2024-think-tank-predicts-upbeat-53-gdp-growth?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s economy would grow by an upbeat 5.3 per cent this year, according to a top government think tank, despite lingering market concerns and increasing caution from international institutions.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) expected the world’s second-largest economy to stabilise this year in its annual economic outlook issued on Tuesday, while the World Bank maintained its 4.5 per cent projection in its latest report on the same day.

The CAS, the first state think tank to make economic projections for 2024, said China’s economy would start slow, with a growth rate of 5 per cent for the first quarter, before expanding at a faster pace later in the year.

The forecasts were made as China is widely anticipated to have met its “around 5 per cent” growth goal for 2023 despite a bumpy post-Covid recovery last year.

China’s economy, though, is still being dogged by an ailing real estate market, falling global demand for its exports, poor consumer confidence and high debt levels.

Gross domestic product (GDP) growth this year would be driven by domestic consumption and investment – by 3.7 percentage points and 1.9 percentage points, respectively – but dragged down 0.3 percentage point by exports, the CAS report said.

However, the World Bank expected weak sentiment and heightened economic uncertainty to weigh on consumption, while investment growth would remain subdued due to continued weakness in the property sector, the Washington-based international financial institution said in its Global Economic Prospects report.

China’s GDP growth would slow further to 4.3 per cent in 2025, the World Bank said, with structural headwinds including rising levels of debt, an ageing and shrinking workforce and narrowing room for productivity catch-up growth set to weigh on economic activity next year.

Hong Yongmiao, director of the CAS Centre for Forecasting Science, said China has the potential to achieve a faster growth rate as long as it stabilises market expectations.

“There’s still a considerable gap between the actual growth rate we’re seeing now and China’s real potential. We must keep policies continuous and stable,” he said on Tuesday.

In a recent briefing on its 2024 macroeconomic outlook, Swiss investment bank UBS predicted China’s economy would grow by 4.4 per cent in 2024, as the base effects from the post-Covid recovery fade and the property downturn continues to drag.

Fitch Ratings, meanwhile, predicted China’s growth rate would slow from 5.3 per cent last year to 4.6 per cent in 2024, calling 2023 a “temporary boost from the reopening”.

Global GDP between 2020 and 2024 is on track to suffer the worst half-decade of growth in 30 years, with 2024 expected to witness mounting geopolitical tensions, sluggish global trade and tighter financial conditions, according to the World Bank.

“Barring a major course correction, the world is headed for the weakest economic-growth performance of any half-decade since the 1990s,” it said.

Chinese and Finnish Presidents discuss damage to Baltic gas pipeline blamed on Chinese ship

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3247984/chinese-and-finnish-presidents-discuss-damage-baltic-gas-pipeline-blamed-chinese-ship?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Finnish counterpart Sauli Niinisto have held “constructive” talks about a damaged Baltic gas pipeline.

A Chinese container ship was identified by Finnish police as the main suspect after the 77km-long (48-mile) Balticconnector pipeline between Finland and Estonia was shut down last October in an incident in which two telecoms cables were also damaged.

The Hong Kong-flagged NewNew Polar Bear container is accused of dragging its anchor across the seabed and cutting through the critical infrastructures. But Finnish police said last year that it was too early to conclude if it was an accident or a deliberate act.

Beijing has reportedly promised full cooperation with the investigation.

In a video call on Wednesday, Xi and Niinisto noted the constructive dialogue between the sides regarding the incident, the Finnish presidential office said.

Finnish probe links Chinese ship to damaged Baltic Sea gas pipeline

The talks also touched on the war between Russia and Ukraine and its wider consequences, and Niinisto stressed China’s role in bringing about a just and lasting peace, the Finish statement said.

It continued: “The presidents also spoke about the EU-China relations, including recent developments and challenges.”

The meeting took place as tensions between China and Europe are growing over a host of issues from trade to security, and Beijing is seeking to foster ties with individual members of the 27-nation European Union.

According to Chinese state media, Xi praised Finland for its “long-standing friendly policy towards China”, and thanked Niinisto for promoting pragmatic cooperation and friendly exchanges.

He stressed that the China-Finland relations have maintained stable and positive trends with cooperation in areas such as forestry, agri-food products, information and telecommunications, energy, environmental protection, science and technology education as well as winter sports, which “brought tangible benefits to the people of our two countries”.

Xi said that China would like to deepen mutually beneficial cooperation with Finland, jointly advocate multilateralism, safeguard free trade, and make positive contributions to world peace and stability, Chinese state media reported.

“China is willing to work with European countries, including Finland, to see each other from a strategic and long-term perspective, and to maintain and develop China-European relationship,” Xi said, according to state news outlets Xinhua and CCTV.

Finland bolsters military ties with US after Putin warning

“In the current circumstances of international turbulence and instability, the strategic significance and global impact of China-Europe relations have become more prominent.”

Meanwhile, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, the current holder of the EU Council presidency, is expected to arrive in China for a two-day visit that starts on Thursday.

China’s 280mph high-speed train to be tested this year, CR450 set to enter service by 2025

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3247924/chinas-280mph-high-speed-train-be-tested-year-cr450-set-enter-service-2025?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s state railway group said it intends to complete prototype production and testing this year of what could potentially be the world’s fastest high-speed train, as it vowed on Tuesday to further upgrade its already massive network.

The development by the state-owned China State Railway Group, which operates the world’s largest high-speed rail network, marks a breakthrough for the CR450 technological innovation project launched by Beijing three years ago.

The latest model in the Fuxing bullet train series would have an experimental speed of up to 450km/h (280mph), and a commercial operating speed of 400km/h, the operator said during its annual work conference.

Its existing bullet trains can already travel at 350km/h, but the CR450 could potentially reduce the travel time between Beijing and Shanghai – one of China’s busiest routes – from over four hours to reportedly as low as two and a half hours.

China launched its first high-speed rail line in 2008, and the network is considered essential to the world’s second-largest economy and its 1.4 billion population.

The CR450 is expected to enter service by 2025, with a nationwide research project focusing on key rail technology ranging from automatic control and wheel design, to the steering system, rail upgrades and safety measures.

In June, the China State Railway Group completed performance tests on new hi-tech components critical for the CR450, setting a record of 453km/h during a test run – said to be the fastest in the world – marking a “significant milestone” in its development.

The test was carried out on the Meizhou Bay cross-sea bridge, which is one of the major components of the high-speed rail network between Fuzhou and Xiamen in the southeastern province of Fujian.

China State Railway Group said the CR450 is expected to be more environmentally friendly and energy-efficient compared to the existing trains in the Fuxing series.

Separate research by Chinese scientists concluded the carbon footprint of high-speed rail is 6 per cent that of air travel and 11 per cent that of a car.

China plans to boost its railway network to 165,000km (102,500 miles) by 2025, including 50,000km of high-speed rail.

By the end of last year, China’s railway network covered 159,000km, including 45,000km of high-speed rail, officials said during the work conference.

Passenger numbers on China’s national railway network are also expected to rise by 4.7 per cent from a year earlier to 3.855 billion in 2024, they added.

Cargo transport, meanwhile, could reach 3.9 billion tonnes in 2024, up by 0.5 per cent compared to last year.

Corruption ‘everywhere’ in Chinese football, ex-CFA boss says in TV confession

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3247967/corruption-everywhere-chinese-football-ex-cfa-boss-says-tv-confession?utm_source=rss_feed

The Communist Party’s top graft-buster says corruption is holding back Chinese football, revealing details of match-fixing and bribery scandals in a documentary aired on state television.

It included confessions from a former head coach of the national team and the former boss of the Chinese Football Association, who said corruption was rife in the sport.

Chen Xuyuan, who was chairman of the CFA, was charged with taking bribes in September.

“The corruption in Chinese football does not only exist in certain individual areas – it’s everywhere, in each and every aspect,” Chen said in the CCTV documentary on Tuesday.

He said he had received a “congratulatory” 300,000 yuan (US$42,000) each from two club officials the night before he became CFA boss in 2019, which they said was “the old rules of the game”. “If I tried to clean up the environment, wouldn’t I get myself caught?”

‘Tiger hunt’: China’s war on corruption sees record purge of senior officials

The documentary aired after President Xi Jinping told the graft-buster’s plenary session on Monday that they should “show no mercy” in the campaign against corruption, which has entered its 11th year.

A number of high-profile heads have rolled in the past year as a result of an anti-graft investigation across Chinese sport.

The CCTV documentary focused on an investigation into football by the graft-buster – the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection – that began last year after the Chinese team was eliminated during the preliminary stage of the Qatar World Cup.

“We also wanted … to answer the question of why the Chinese men’s football could never do well,” Ding Jintian, deputy head of the CCDI team looking into the sport, said in the documentary.

Chinese leader Xi is known as an ardent football fan who wants the nation to become a superpower in the sport. It had a “golden bubble” from 2010 to 2019, with billions of dollars of investment going into the professional leagues, clubs hiring world-class players and managers, and foreign players becoming citizens so they could compete for China in the World Cup.

But the bubble burst in 2020-21 as some of football’s top investors from the struggling real estate sector withdrew from the sport, and it was hit by harsh pandemic restrictions and an economic slowdown.

“The investigation found that the money-driven atmosphere led by some rich and powerful clubs was an important catalyst for the deterioration of China’s football culture,” the documentary said, naming Guangzhou Evergrande as an example. Property developer Evergrande Group had poured billions into the football club before it reached the brink of collapse in 2021.

Li Tie, head coach of the national team from 2019 to 2021, also appeared in the documentary. He said as a player, he hated match-fixing. But as a coach he realised it could improve his chance of winning – and advance his career.

“Once you achieve success in the wrong way, you become more and more desperate for more success,” Li said. “This way then becomes a habit, and later on you even develop some reliance on it.”

Li was sacked for the national team’s performance in the World Cup preliminaries and was the first from the sport to be placed under investigation by the anti-corruption watchdog, in November 2022. He was charged with several counts of bribery in August.

The former defender had a “miraculous” eight victories out of nine matches in his debut season as manager of Hebei China Fortune, winning the team promotion to the Chinese Super League in 2015. Wuhan Zall Football Club was similarly promoted when Li was its manager in 2018.

But CCDI official Luo Chuan, who was involved in the investigation, said in the documentary that these successes were the result of bribery and match-fixing.

In the final match of the 2015 season alone, Hebei China Fortune spent some 14 million yuan bribing opponents Shenzhen Football Club – from the manager to the players, the Hebei team’s then-president Meng Jing said in the documentary.

Li – through his assistant coach – had asked Shenzhen player Li Fei to share a 6 million yuan bribe with his key teammates to fix the match. Hebei China Fortune won 2-0, finishing runner-up overall to gain promotion to the top league.

But Li Fei had kept the full bribe for himself – a detail that did not come out until the CCDI investigation. “I didn’t bother asking anyone,” he said in the documentary. “[Hebei China Fortune] had many advantages and would have won that match anyway.”

Li Tie also persuaded Wuhan Zall to fix matches to get promoted when he was the club’s manager, according to the documentary.

It said a 2 million yuan payment to CFA chairman Chen, “sponsored” by Wuhan Zall, and 1 million yuan for Liu Yi, the CFA’s secretary general, got Li Tie the job as head coach of the national side.

Li Tie then signed a 60 million yuan deal with Wuhan Zall in exchange for selecting four players for international appearances, “none of whom was good enough to enter the national team”, club president Tian Xudong said. “I felt my face blush with shame when I saw the national squad list that day.”

Du Zhaocai, the former deputy sports minister who was arrested in October, also appeared in the documentary. It said he had covered up match-fixing in a 2022 investigation after receiving tens of millions of yuan.

Breaking down during his confession, Chen said he took “the main responsibility as the chairman of the CFA”. “I must admit my guilt and apologise to all Chinese football fans,” he said.

China’s Xi Jinping pushes for stable US ties and more exchanges in letter to long-time American friend

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3247978/chinas-xi-jinping-pushes-stable-us-ties-and-more-exchanges-letter-long-time-american-friend?utm_source=rss_feed

In a letter to a long-time American friend, Chinese president Xi Jinping praised the role of ordinary people in advancing US-China ties and pushed for more people-to-people exchanges between the two superpowers.

The message to Sarah Lande of Muscatine, Iowa – the small Midwestern city where Xi led a delegation nearly four decades ago – said China was ready to work with the US to push for the steady, sound and sustainable development of bilateral relations.

Xi said the achievements in China-US relations were primarily attributable to the collective efforts of the people of the two countries and expressed hopes that renewed exchanges could lead to mutual understanding and affection between people from both countries.

“China and the US are the world’s largest developing and developed countries, and the future and destiny of this planet demand China-US relations to be more stable and to be better,” Xi told Lande, who is widely recognised as a citizen diplomat who promotes people-to-people exchanges between Iowa and the globe.

Xi added that he welcomed students from Muscatine to participate in friendly exchanges.

Openness needed to bring 50,000 young Americans to China: talent expert

The correspondence came nearly two months after Xi’s meeting with his US counterpart Joe Biden in San Francisco, which paved the way for improved ties after a year of worsening tensions.

During that trip to California, Xi unveiled a plan for 50,000 young Americans to visit China for study and other activities over the next five years in a bid to boost exchanges, which were paused for years during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Communication between the two countries has improved and important exchanges, such as high-level military talks, have resumed following the leaders’ summit. But bilateral relations remain clouded by issues such as the trade war, tech rivalry and Taiwan.

Lande and Xi first met in 1985. Xi, who was 31 years old and the Communist Party secretary of Zhengding county in Hebei province at the time, led a delegation to the city of Muscatine to learn about agricultural production in the US.

That experience and the hospitality Xi received in Iowa left him with a lasting impression.

In 2012, Xi paid a visit to Lande’s Muscatine home as vice-president just months before he took power as general secretary of the Communist Party.

In November, Lande and several of Xi’s other friends from Iowa were invited to attend a welcome dinner for the Chinese leader in San Francisco.

China, US leaders Xi and Biden exchange greetings on 45th anniversary of ties

In a previous letter to Lande in 2022, Xi encouraged her and his friends in Iowa to “continue sowing the seeds of friendship and make new contributions to the friendship” between the Chinese and American people.

Although bilateral ties have improved since the summit between Xi and Biden in San Francisco, Americans still hold broadly negative views of China.

A 2023 survey by the Pew Research Centre revealed that 83 per cent of respondents in the US held an unfavourable opinion of China. Americans also view China as the country that poses the biggest threat to US national security and the economy, according to the survey.

Hong Kong customs arrests woman once more for hiding HK$330,000 worth of Chinese yuan in tailor-made multi-pocket vest

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-and-crime/article/3247976/hong-kong-customs-arrests-woman-once-more-hiding-hk330000-worth-chinese-yuan-tailor-made-multi?utm_source=rss_feed

A 62-year-old Hong Kong woman has been arrested for the second time in a year after bringing in HK$330,000 (US$42,200) worth of Chinese yuan hidden in a tailor-made vest with multiple pockets upon her return from Shenzhen, the Post has learned.

The Customs and Excise Department on Wednesday said the city resident was detained on Tuesday on suspicion of failing to declare the import of the money, an offence punishable by up to two years in jail and a HK$500,000 fine.

The seized cash exceeded HK$120,000, the limit stipulated by the Cross-boundary Movement of Physical Currency and Bearer Negotiable Instruments Ordinance.

Hong Kong customs smashes US$91 million money-smuggling racket, arrests 23

The law, which came into effect in 2018, aims to prevent criminal proceeds and terrorist funding from entering the city.

Travellers in possession of currency or “bearer negotiable instruments” such as cheques or money orders valued at more than HK$120,000 must declare them. Cargo owners are required to make the declaration in advance.

The woman was stopped for inspection at the Lok Ma Chau Spur Line border checkpoint linked to the East Rail line when she returned to the city from Shenzhen around midday on Tuesday.

Hong Kong customs arrests 2 visitors for allegedly smuggling Taiwanese money

Officers first discovered a small batch of undeclared banknotes in local and mainland Chinese currency in an eco-bag she was carrying.

“A large batch of undeclared foreign currency banknotes was found concealed with a tailor-made vest she was carrying during a subsequent personal search,” the department said.

The cash seized from the vest pockets reached nearly 300,000 yuan, a source familiar with the case said, adding the woman was wearing a long jacket to cover the vest.

Customs smashes gang smuggling HK$166 million over Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge

According to the department, the total sum of the foreign currency banknotes is equivalent to about HK$330,000.

The woman was arrested for the same offence last year when she returned to the city from the mainland via the same control point, the insider said.

The suspect was still being held for questioning as of Wednesday afternoon.

“Customs appeals to members of the public to stay alert and not to import or export a large quantity of unknown source of [currency and bearer negotiable instruments] on behalf of another party,” the department said.

Can Beethoven, Bach and Mozart help iPhone sales in China? Apple to launch classical music app on mainland amid sluggish demand for its flagship product

https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3247961/can-beethoven-bach-and-mozart-help-iphone-sales-china-apple-launch-classical-music-app-mainland-amid?utm_source=rss_feed

Apple will soon make its classical music app available in mainland China, expanding the US tech giant’s digital services offering in the world’s largest smartphone market where sales of the iPhone are seeing a deepening decline.

The Apple Music Classical app, which was launched in most markets globally in March last year, will make its mainland debut on January 24, according to the company’s online China App Store. The app – touted by Apple as the world’s largest classical music catalogue, with more than five million tracks – can now be pre-ordered by iPhone users in the country.

On the same date, the stand-alone app will also be available in five other East Asian markets that include Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, according to a post on Tuesday by Apple on X, formerly Twitter.

The app’s launch is likely to bolster Apple’s major digital services business in China, which remains the company’s largest market in terms of App Store-related revenue.

China accounted for US$570 billion, or 51 per cent, of the total US$1.1 trillion in billings and sales facilitated by the App Store ecosystem in 2022, according to a study by consulting firm Analysis Group that was published on Apple’s website in May last year.

By comparison, the United States generated US$273 billion, or almost 25 per cent, of the App Store ecosystem’s overall billings and sales in 2022. Europe accounted for US$119 billion, or 11 per cent, of that year’s total.

Whether the classical music app’s local release would somehow help lift iPhone sales on the mainland remains to be seen, as consumption remains weak across the country and Apple faces stiff competition from major Chinese smartphone rivals.

In the first week of the year, iPhone sales on the mainland were down 30 per cent year on year, according to a Jefferies research note published on Sunday. The brokerage indicated that there was “a big rise in discounts” for the iPhone 14 and 14 Plus models, while the newer iPhone 15 and 15 Plus models saw “a moderate rise” in discounts.

Apple supplier Foxconn sees sales decline in first quarter of 2024 amid weak demand

Chinese smartphone vendors, with Huawei Technologies, Xiaomi and Honor leading the pack, had “much stronger” momentum during the period, with sales delivering “flattish growth” year on year, Jefferies analysts led by Edison Lee wrote in the note.

The iPhone’s total sales volume last year on the mainland was down 3 per cent from 2022, which translated to a 0.4 per cent decline in Apple’s market share, according to Jefferies. It estimated that rival Huawei saw its mainland market share in the December quarter gain 2 per cent from the previous quarter, and 6 per cent year on year.

Apple is expected to see “even higher revenue pressure” on the mainland in 2024, according to Jefferies.

Still, Apple has continued to reassure investors even though iPhone sales have been slowing. In the firm’s earnings call in November, Apple chief executive Tim Cook said: “Over the long term, I view China as an incredibly important market, and I’m very optimistic about it.”

Cook made two visits to the mainland last year, meeting senior government officials, Chinese developers and Apple’s contract manufacturing partners.

Taiwan’s election explained: What’s at stake, and how will China react?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/01/10/taiwan-election-2024-presidential-china/2023-12-18T21:51:26.523Z

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan’s eighth democratic presidential election, to be held Saturday, is gearing up to be its most consequential yet: It takes place amid increasingly frequent warnings from China’s strongman leader Xi Jinping that Beijing’s rule here is “inevitable” — raising the prospect of a conflict that could draw in the United States.

Never mind that Taiwan, an island of 23 million people with a flourishing civil society and raucous political scene, has never been part of the Communist-run People’s Republic of China, and polls show that its citizens decisively do not want to be.

Further proof of that could come Saturday as Lai Ching-te, of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party, is the front-runner for the presidency. If he wins, the DPP will secure an unprecedented third consecutive term — and voters will issue a clear rebuke of closer ties with China.

China has already made its displeasure at the prospect clear. Its military has surrounded Taiwan with fighter jets and warships in recent months, prompting officials in Washington to warn about a heightened risk of confrontation.

As the election has neared, China has also sent balloons, similar to the one that floated over the United States last February, toward the island, leading Taiwan’s Defense Ministry to warn of psychological warfare.

Lai’s main challenger, nationalist Kuomintang candidate Hou Yu-ih, has framed the election as nothing less than a choice between war and peace, warning that the DPP would push Taiwan toward unavoidable confrontation with China.

That would necessarily concern Washington, which views China as a competitor and sells arms to Taiwan for its self-defense, and which is already preoccupied with wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

It could also have economic implications. Taiwan produces most of the world’s advanced computer chips, making it a critical link in the global tech supply chain.

Here’s what to know about one of the first big elections of the year.

Who are the presidential candidates?

Front-runner Lai, who also goes by William, is the candidate most likely to upset Beijing. The Chinese government has branded the incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen an agitator for independence and refused to engage with her — and has warned that it sees Lai, the current vice president, as cut from the same cloth.

Hailing from the activist wing of the DPP, Lai was indeed once an outspoken independence advocate. Now 64, he has tempered that as he has risen up the political ranks, and has lately embraced the status quo of Taiwan’s government having de facto sovereignty over the island without provoking Beijing by declaring independence.

These three men are vying to lead Taiwan — and fend off threats from China

The Kuomintang (KMT) candidate, former police officer Hou, 66, has built his platform around restoring trade and business links with China. Hou argues that more dialogue across the Taiwan Strait will be the key to Taiwan’s future stability.

As the popular mayor of New Taipei City, he has earned a reputation for efficiency, but critics say he has little experience with China or foreign affairs.

Unusually for Taiwan, where the political scene is dominated by two parties, this election is a three-way race.

Ko Wen-je of the upstart Taiwan People’s Party has drawn interest from younger voters for his pragmatic focus on domestic issues like housing.

Ko, a 64-year-old surgeon and former mayor, says he can chart a balanced course between Beijing and Washington, but some doubt whether he could muster the legislative backing to achieve his vision without the support of one of the two establishment parties. Elections for control of the Legislative Yuan, or parliament, will also take place on Saturday.

According to polls released before a blackout period began on Jan. 3, Hou and Ko were closing in on Lai’s lead, narrowing it to a closely fought three-way race.

“People are looking for stability, not necessarily change,” said Wen Liu, a scholar at Academia Sinica, the national academy of Taiwan. “Because of the heated geopolitics, voters are looking for someone who can stabilize the country.”

For many, the vice-presidential candidates are the real draw. Lai is running alongside Hsiao Bi-khim, a former envoy to Washington who has been sanctioned by Beijing for her record of engagement with U.S. officials. And Hou is playing to the KMT’s base with his choice of famous firebrand conservative television host Jaw Shaw-kong.

What are they saying about relations with China?

There has been a sea change in recent years in how Taiwanese politicians across the political spectrum talk about China, coinciding with Xi’s increasingly aggressive posturing.

Even the KMT, which has historically favored closer ties with China, is taking a different tone.

Now, none of the three presidential candidates espouses a China-friendly stance, indicating a decisive shift in Taiwan’s politics, said Chiaoning Su, an associate professor at Oakland University in Michigan who studies Taiwan’s political discourse. “Even if we have a KMT victory, we are not going back to an era with close engagement between Taiwan and China,” she said.

That doesn’t mean any of the candidates, including Lai, are calling outright for independence. All three presidential hopefuls say they are in favor of the status quo.

The Taiwan party toughest on China has a strong lead as election nears

They differ, however, on the question of how to maintain it. In particular, do deep cross-strait economic ties and business links protect Taiwan from Chinese aggression, or make it more vulnerable?

Hou and the KMT say that keeping up business links across the strait is the key to holding off Beijing, while Lai and the DPP are convinced that’s a slippery slope toward integration with China on every level. For his part, Ko has at times embraced Beijing’s talking points but also endorsed building up the military.

“Both the DPP and the KMT say that they are pro-status-quo parties — the difference lies in how they think maintaining the status quo ought to work,” said Lev Nachman, a scholar at National Chengchi University in Taipei. “What they’re ultimately trying to sell to voters is that their solution is the one that will keep the peace.”

What do young people care about?

While older voters remember the chaotic years in which Taiwan’s democracy struggled to its feet after decades of one-party rule, first-time voters have only known Taiwan as a vibrant multiparty democracy.

Analysts say that many voters under 40, fed up with the debate about whether to move closer to Beijing, want politicians to devote more airtime to problems that affect everyday life — such as inflation, wage stagnation and rising housing costs, as well as issues like climate change and reproductive rights for same-sex couples.

Ko’s unexpected appeal to younger voters stems partly from their fatigue with Taiwan’s politics constantly being framed around China, Su said. “People don’t want to think too much about this looming threat, and Ko is the escape for them,” she said.

While Ko says he can bring a pragmatic approach to Taiwan’s domestic and economic challenges, he lacks experience managing international relationships, analysts say. And even the most bread-and-butter domestic concerns still ultimately hinge on Taiwan’s sovereignty and relationship with China.

“Of course Taiwanese people care about the economy,” Nachman said. “But you can’t talk about the economy in Taiwan without also talking about how it will navigate economic growth vis-à-vis China, because so much of Taiwan’s economy is still tied up with the People’s Republic of China.”

Why does the election matter beyond Taiwan?

Taiwan’s status has bedeviled the U.S.-China relationship for decades. Since forging diplomatic relations with China in 1979, the United States has recognized Beijing as the government of China and acknowledges — without endorsing — that Beijing claims Taiwan as part of its territory.

Instability in the Taiwan Strait risks inflaming tensions between Washington and Beijing. President Biden has said repeatedly and emphatically that Washington would come to Taiwan’s aid in the event of a military confrontation with China, departing from decades of “strategic ambiguity” on the issue by previous presidents.

Each time, White House officials have sought to play down Biden’s remarks by saying they did not represent any change in U.S. policy. It is unclear how Donald Trump would approach the Taiwan issue if he wins the presidential election this year.

Last year, Congress authorized up to $1 billion in weapons aid to Taiwan under the Presidential Drawdown Authority, and the State Department approved a $500 million sale of search and track systems for F-16 fighter jets.

---

Feared failure of Peregrine mission could put US behind China in the moon race, says space policy expert

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3247917/feared-failure-peregrine-mission-could-put-us-behind-china-moon-race-says-space-policy-expert?utm_source=rss_feed

An American private lunar lander mission frustrated by technical problems is a setback for the United States’ ambitions to return to the moon cost-effectively, and might leave it behind in the moon race with China, a space policy expert said.

A few hours after the Peregrine spacecraft lifted off from Florida on Monday, carrying scientific instruments and other payload, it suffered a propellant leak, according to Astrobotic, the Pennsylvania-based company that built the craft.

The leak caused the spacecraft’s thrusters “to operate well beyond their expected life cycles to keep the lander from an uncontrollable tumble”, the company said.

The probe, which could have made history by putting the US back on the moon five decades after the Apollo missions, struggled to face the sun to charge its battery, Astrobotic posted to social media platform X on Tuesday.

Namrata Goswami, a professor with the Thunderbird School of Global Management, Arizona State University in Phoenix, said the incident was a blow to American lunar ambition in general.

“There’s a lot of hope that with Nasa’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, the US will be able to achieve its goal of going to the moon in a much more cost-effective way,” she said.

Peregrine is the first in a string of moon missions, established under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services Programme as a partnership between Nasa and space companies in the US. The programme encourages firms to build and fly lunar craft on which Nasa could buy cargo space for its scientific instruments.

Goswami said previous commercial moon landers – including Israel’s Beresheet in 2019 and Japan’s Hakuto-R Mission 1 last year – entered the lunar orbit but failed during the last few seconds before the soft-landing.

“However, the Peregrine ran into major hardware issues within 24 hours after launch,” she said.

Nasa delays astronaut moon landing to 2026 amid spacecraft ‘challenges’

Goswami said such a performance could leave the US behind in the moon race with Beijing, with China getting a number of successful lunar landings under its belt in recent years.

“Especially this year, China is going to launch the Chang’e-6 mission and bring back rock samples from the far side of the moon. It’s a big deal and has never been done before,” she said.

While the US spacecraft may soon become space junk, Goswami said it was a shame to lose its payload, including five scientific facilities from Nasa and rovers from Mexico that would have been Latin America’s first lunar mission.

“One thing Nasa could learn is when it’s a first attempt made by a commercial company, it’s probably a good idea to test out the technologies first, rather than risking losing expensive instruments,” she said.

Space culture in the US was unique in its embrace of failure, she said, adding that repeated testing was believed to be the way to succeed, as shown by SpaceX rockets.

Next up, a second private moon lander under Nasa’s commercial payload programme that was built by the Texas-based company Intuitive Machines is scheduled to launch next month.

This coming mission aims to land in the Malapert A crater near the lunar south pole, which scientists believe could host water ice, a necessity for long-term settlement on the moon.

‘Covered in blisters’: China bride faces permanent scarring after wedding guests spray party streamers causing severe burns

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3247095/covered-blisters-china-bride-faces-permanent-scarring-after-wedding-guests-spray-party-streamers?utm_source=rss_feed

A bride in China who could be disfigured for the rest of her life because of severe burns inflicted by party streamers, has evoked sympathy and ignited an online debate about extreme wedding customs.

The young woman, from Taizhou in Zhejiang province, southeastern China, whose name has not been revealed, can be seen in videos she shared on social media.

On December 23, she posted several joyful photos of herself with her groom, and received a flurry of good wishes from online observers.

But four days later in other videos and photos, she was seen with her face bandaged and with prominent black marks on her eyebrows and cheeks.

The bride revealed to curious and shocked online viewers that the drastic change in her appearance was the result of being burned by “gas-charged streamers” during her wedding celebrations.

One video of the big day shows her emerging from the wedding car dressed in a traditional red Chinese bridal gown and smiling initially, until she was engulfed in streamers, which made it difficult for her to move.

Struggling, she tried to keep her face covered, then attempted to shield herself in the groom’s embrace while smoke could be seen billowing from her hair.

Later, as she walked down the aisle, the expression on her face appeared to show she was in pain.

“At first, it just felt hot on my face, but by the next day, my face was covered in blisters,” the bride said.

One online viewer pointed out that in one photo, blisters could clearly be seen on the bride’s right cheek.

Spraying streamers has become a popular wedding custom in Taizhou in recent years, because, as well as creating a lively festive atmosphere, they are not expensive, are easy to clean up and don’t stick to clothes.

However, they are potentially dangerous because they contain a resin compound dissolved in flammable organic solvents like ethanol or methane.

Once sprayed, they create an aerosol that can quickly ignite on contact with fire.

The incident has triggered both sympathy and concern among on mainland social media.

“Just a spark can ignite these streamers, causing flames to shoot up instantly. With smoking and fireworks common at weddings, this is extremely dangerous,” one commenter said.

“In such cases, is it possible to sue those who sprayed the streamers?” asked another.

“People who play pranks at weddings like this are insane. As long as it doesn’t harm them, they think it’s just playing jokes,” said a third.

“I hope she takes good care of herself and recovers soon,” another concerned viewer said.

CES 2024: China EV maker Xpeng accepts pre-orders for flying car but notes urban use is far off

https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3247942/ces-2024-china-ev-maker-xpeng-accepts-pre-orders-flying-car-notes-urban-use-far?utm_source=rss_feed

Seven years after EHang debuted its first passenger drone, Chinese electric vehicle maker Xpeng entered the market with its own “flying car”, with the goal of delivering the first batch by the fourth quarter of 2025, whether regulations are ready or not.

The company’s subsidiary AeroHT presented two types of flying cars at CES 2024 in Las Vegas on Tuesday. Its modular Land Aircraft Carrier will start taking pre-orders in the fourth quarter this year, with deliveries to start a year later. The sportier AeroHT eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) car made its international debut at the show, having previously conducted flying tests in China.

There is no information on pricing or availability for the AeroHT, which has propellers that pop out of the back. It has been demoed for flying in China, but it did not take flight at CES. Brian Gu Hongdi, vice-chairman and president of Xpeng, suggested it could launch before regulations are in place for city use, but that people could eventually buy one and fly it in areas where the use of aircraft is not regulated.

Hisense and TCL push AI in TVs, chase industry trends like smart cars

“The design of our vehicles is not targeted for urban transportation … [which] requires an extensive regulatory approval process,” Gu said. “That’s why we’re targeting a consumer market, for people to first enjoy the experience of flying and then obviously with the regulatory framework in place, we gradually can move towards urban transportation.”

While Gu said it was too early to say what pricing might be, he expects it to be “similar to buying a luxury performance car”.

Similar products have been in the works for years. EHang made a splash when it debuted the EHang 184 at CES in 2016. In the years since, it has invited journalists to take rides and went public on the Nasdaq.

Xpeng distanced itself from the EHang comparison, saying its products are different and target different buyers. The EV company, which made its debut at CES two years after EHang with its first car, noted that EHang’s products are just aerial vehicles without the ability to be driven on roads. EHang is also targeting enterprise use, while Xpeng is targeting a wider consumer base.

“We are targeting the consumer market, which is very different,” Gu said. “I don’t see another company that’s doing that right now.”

While Xpeng has also highlighted how the Land Aircraft Carrier could be used for public services like emergency rescue, the new eVTOL car is a more stylish option that can conceal its rotors. This will presumably make it more appealing for people to buy, whenever it becomes available, even if they cannot fly it to work every morning.

AI to dominate CES 2024, with glasses for blind, shoes to walk faster

Gu said the company is already in talks with regulators in China but international expansion “takes time”.

Xpeng’s ambitions could face some challenges with current geopolitical tensions, though. Chinese drone tech has been caught in the cross hairs before. Washington put DJI, the world’s largest consumer drone maker, on its Entity List that bars US companies from doing business with it without express approval.

When asked whether this could present some hurdles, Gu said, “I’m not even thinking about that right now … This business is purely focused on the China market right now.”

China Evergrande rejects claims it was never profitable in report centred on changes to its accounting method

https://www.scmp.com/business/article/3247953/china-evergrande-rejects-claims-it-was-never-profitable-report-centred-changes-its-accounting-method?utm_source=rss_feed

China Evergrande Group stood by audited annual reports from 2021, rejecting claims by financial analysts that changes to its accounting methodology suggested the debt-laden property developer was “never profitable” in its years of operations.

“The company’s financial statements for the previous years were audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers and received standard unqualified opinions,” executive director Shawn Siu said in a stock exchange filing on Tuesday. “In PricewaterhouseCoopers’ resignation letter, the revenue recognition in previous years was not questioned.”

The developer belatedly published its 2021 and 2022 annual accounts in August last year. PwC, as the auditor is known, last year, and Evergrande appointed Prism Hong Kong and Shanghai to fill the temporary vacancy.

Evergrande, whose US$20 billion offshore debt reorganisation collapsed last month, changed the revenue-recognition methodology for 2021 to be consistent with the standards under current circumstances, according to the latest filing. The decision was made in light of its liquidity crisis and the substantial loss of staff, it added.

The Guangdong-based developer did not identify the firm or the analysts making the allegations about its profit history.

GMT Research, a Hong Kong-based accounting research firm founded by former CLSA and Nomura analyst Gillem Tulloch, published a report on December 1 focusing on the changes to the developer’s accounting treatments. The firm was among the earliest to raise red flags on the developer more than five years ago, citing many unfinished housing projects.

How Hui Ka-yan plans to rescue Evergrande from China’s corporate graveyard

“Evergrande significantly overstated revenue and earnings, most likely for many years,” the report said. “Contrary to what some people think, Evergrande was not so much a victim of tightened liquidity or a Covid-induced property market downturn. Its problems were far more fundamental – there were never any profits.”

Under its new auditor, Evergrande changed the description of its past practice: it seems revenue had been recognised earlier on the acceptance of the property by the customer, or according to the sales contract, GMT said, which appears to be much more aggressive. Significantly, there was no reference to the property being delivered or completed; deemed acceptance was sufficient, it added.

China Evergrande: key director at EV subsidiary arrested for unspecified crimes

“While we stand by our original report, we do not plan to comment on Evergrande’s recent clarification,” GMT said in an email to the Post.

Evergrande said the data and conclusions lacked direct relevance and did not provide substantive evidence to prove that the company has never been profitable, without identifying the report.

The developer, once China’s biggest home builder by sales, incurred a net loss of 476 billion yuan (US$66.3 billion) for 2021 and 105.9 billion yuan for 2022, according to its stock exchange filings in July. It defaulted on a dollar-denominated bond in December 2022, triggering a wave of cross defaults.

A court in Hong Kong last month adjourned a hearing to January 29 after a creditor filed a petition to liquidate the Chinese developer. The case has been adjourned several times since June 2022 to give Evergrande time to reorganise its debt burden.

With threats, pressure and financial lures, China seen as aiming to influence Taiwan’s elections

https://apnews.com/article/china-taiwanbeing-aelections-ac222a4b2a0af1d0cf03170e597c94e7Protesters against the Chinese Communist Party dress up to depict authoritarian China and Winnie the Pooh representing Chinese President Xi Jinping, dressed as an emperor, and holding a Taiwan island cardboard cutout colored with the Taiwan flag in Taipei, Taiwan, Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024. Using military threats, diplomatic pressure, fake news and financial inducements for politicians, China is deploying a broad strategy to influence voters in Taiwan’s elections to pick candidates who favor unification. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

2024-01-10T05:56:20Z

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Using military threats, diplomatic pressure, fake news and financial inducements for politicians, China is being accused of deploying a broad strategy to influence voters in Taiwan’s elections to pick candidates who favor unification.

China’s ultimate goal is to take control of the self-governing island democracy, whose high-tech economy supplies key components for computers, cellphones and other electronic devices and ships much of the world’s goods out from the Taiwan Strait. Beijing has long insisted Taiwan is part of China and must be regained, by military force if necessary, regardless of the views of the island’s people.

Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu says China’s “global objective is that they want to use Taiwan as a test ground. If they are able to successfully shape the results of the Taiwan elections, they will try to apply their tactics on other countries.”

China has been sending warships and fighter jets near Taiwan on a near-daily basis in recent years, hoping to intimidate the island’s 23 million people and wear down its military, which relies heavily on support from the United States. China has described Saturday’s elections as a choice between war and peace.

While the numbers of such missions have dropped off slightly in recent days, Taiwan has reported a number of suspicious balloons traveling over the island from China. The Defense Ministry also sent out an air raid alert via cell phones about a Chinese rocket launch Tuesday that it later amended to describe as the placement of a satellite into space but on an “abnormal trajectory.” It said the alert was justified by the potential threat to civilians on the ground in Taiwan.

Previous efforts to intimidate Taiwanese voters with missile launches and direct threats were largely seen as backfiring after the election of China critics in 1996 and 2000.

China has also restricted imports from Taiwan and invited local leaders on all-expenses-paid visits aimed at persuading them to press colleagues to support pro-China candidates in the elections for the island’s president and 113-member legislature. Cases have been opened against dozens of ward officials for accepting such gifts in violation of Taiwanese law.

China in general refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of Taiwan’s political institutions in keeping with the Communist Party’s insistence that the democracy does not exit.

In line with that policy, China has not commented on Taiwan’s upcoming elections. However, the head of the Chinese Cabinet’s Taiwan Affairs office, Song Tao, said on Jan. 2 that China would continue to “unswervingly oppose” Taiwan’s independence while also working to “safeguard peace, expand exchanges, enhance cooperation, deepen integration and advance reunification to ensure that cross-Strait relations move in the right direction of peaceful development,” according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

Surveys show most Taiwanese embrace their current de facto independence — including compulsory military service for all men, the ability to travel worldwide on Taiwanese passports, and the right to choose their leaders in democratic elections at all levels.

While the race remains tight, support is strong for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, even though China has refused to engage with the government since President Tsai Ing-wen was elected in 2016. She is unable to run again due to term limits.

The DPP favors closer ties with the United States as a way to preserve Taiwan’s separate status and has refused to agree that Taiwan falls under the sovereignty of the People’s Republic of China, which has never exercised political control over the island or its outlying territories. The DPP’s presidential candidate, current Vice President William Lai, leads most pre-election surveys.

The main opposition Nationalist Party candidate, Hou Yu-ih, is appealing to voters who fear a military conflict with China that could draw in the U.S. and disrupt the global economy. Hou opposes Taiwanese independence and agrees with Beijing’s view that Taiwan is part of China, although under separate governments.

A third candidate, Ko Wen-je of the Taiwan People’s Party, has sought to straddle the differences by appealing to young voters turned off by the rivalry between the Nationalists, also known as the KMT, and the DPP.

However, Taiwanese elections are often decided on the basis of local issues such as housing, employment, education and healthcare that are separate from relations with China.

Taiwan, long a melting pot of Asian and European cultures, was a Japanese colony for 50 years until 1945, when it was handed over to Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese Nationalist government at the end of World War II. The Nationalists relocated their government and military to the island in 1949 after the Communists under Mao Zedong took power on the mainland amid a civil war in which millions were killed and which has yet to be formally resolved.

China accuses the U.S. of encouraging Taiwan to raise tensions between the sides by supplying it with military weapons.

“Any attempt to use Taiwan to contain China is doomed to failure,” Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson Col. Wu Qian said at a briefing in Beijing last week. “Seeking independence by military force is a dead end.”

China’s armed forces would “as always take all necessary measures to firmly safeguard our national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” he added.

The non-profit Taiwan Fact Check Center says fake news linked to the elections has been traced to China and the pressure is increasing. Online postings described as deep fakes have depicted Tsai and Lai as doing and saying things that were entirely fabricated.

“The creators of false information have their own motives,” said the center’s CEO, Eve Chiu. “They are all false accusations related to politics.”

Beijing-sponsored visits to China by district wardens, equivalent to city and county representatives in the U.S., have also raised concerns in Taiwan. Several officials are being investigated on suspicion they accepted free accommodations, travel and entertainment in return for promoting pro-China candidates. That would violate Taiwanese law, which was carefully written to end a legacy of vote buying and voter coercion.

Among the visitors to China was the Nationalist Party’s vice chairman, Andrew Hsia, who traveled there last month, reawakening concerns about private dealings between the party and China’s ruling Communists.

Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, which oversees relations with China, has warned Taiwanese that China is using both economic and political means to impact the vote.

“We advise the Communist Party of China to stop using ineffective means and stop harming relations across the Taiwan Strait,” spokesperson Chan Chih-hung said. He added that China is likely to keep trying to manipulate Taiwanese politics regardless of the election’s outcome.

___

Find more of AP’s Asia-Pacific coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/asia-pacific

Resignation of Chinese University of Hong Kong’s head, dismissal of vice-president not linked to governing council reform, lawmakers say

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education/article/3247927/resignation-chinese-university-hong-kongs-head-dismissal-vice-president-not-linked-governing-council?utm_source=rss_feed

The departure of the head of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and the dismissal of his aide are not linked to a reform overhauling the institution’s governing council, lawmakers behind the controversial restructuring have said.

The trio, who also sit on the university’s governing council, on Wednesday said their scrutiny over the two recent incidents did not target individuals.

Legislator Edward Lau Kwok-fan said that Tuan stepped down due to personal reasons, while Ng was fired because the council no longer believed in his ability to provide the level of governance expected of him.

“The two incidents regarding vice-president Eric Ng Shu-pui and vice-chancellor Rocky Tuan Sung-chi cannot be grouped, they are two separate matters,” Lau added.

Lau and his colleagues Tommy Cheung Yu-yan and Bill Tang Ka-piu put forward the bill to shake up the council at the university by increasing the number of external members and changing how the president is appointed.

The controversial reform was passed after earlier scandals involving governance at the university, which included changes to its emblem in 2022 that were dropped following an outcry. The three lawmakers earlier vowed to look into the incident.

Ng, who signed a petition against the overhaul and was accused of sending out a meeting agenda without the chairman’s consent, was sacked in December last year with immediate effect after the bill’s passage.

‘Lukewarm’, naive: insiders on Chinese University of Hong Kong head’s exit

Tuan on Tuesday said he was quitting because of changes to how the university was governed after the council reform was passed.

“The three of us, no matter if it’s in restructuring the governing council or the incident regarding the school emblem, were focused on the issues, rather than any particular person,” Lau said. “From a standpoint of the long-term benefits of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, we hope the institution can do better.

“Regarding the council reform, it is a structural change, we are not targeting anyone in particular. We hope to improve the governance of the school.”

Some of the biggest changes included cutting the size of the council from 55 members to 34, lowering its proportion of academic councillors and increasing the voting threshold for approving the appointment of the president who also serves as vice-chancellor.

The legislators have also repeatedly denied winning a battle to control the council, with Cheung saying that Tuan’s resignation was a personal decision.

“We do not agree that there was a battle in CUHK,” Lau said. “No one wants to use CUHK as a battlefield, we are just pushing the university to move in the direction of good governance.”

Chinese University of Hong Kong fires vice-president caught up in reforms row

Asked about their expectations for the university’s new vice-chancellor, Tang said the university’s search committee would need to figure out how to strike a balance between tradition and internationalisation for any potential candidate.

“I am a Chinese University of Hong Kong alumnus and in the 60 years of the university that I am familiar with, I have seen that all of their vice-chancellors are top Chinese scholars,” he said.

“At the same time, CUHK and Hong Kong have been emphasising that we must strive towards internationalism regardless of academic development or scientific research capability.”

US, Chinese officials remain at odds over Taiwan during military talks, days ahead of election

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3247934/us-chinese-officials-remain-odds-over-taiwan-during-military-talks-days-ahead-election?utm_source=rss_feed

China and the United States exchanged contrary views over Taiwan at a defence policy meeting that ended on Tuesday, days before the island’s voters select their next president and lawmakers.

At the Defence Policy Coordination Talks in Washington, Chinese officials urged the US to stop arming Taiwan and oppose its independence, while Pentagon officials said Washington was committed to its one-China policy, which requires the US government to sell arms to Taipei for the island’s self-defence.

Taiwan is a highly sensitive and persistent issue in US-China relations. Beijing sees it as a breakaway province to be reunited with mainland China, by force if necessary. The US, in common with most other countries, does not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but it opposes any attempt to take the island by force.

Cross-strait and US-China relations on the line as Taiwan heads to the polls

The two-day meeting was the first of its kind since Beijing suspended such talks in 2022 because then-US House speaker Nancy Pelosi had visited Taiwan and met the island’s President Tsai Ing-wen.

“China will not make any concession or compromise on the Taiwan question and demand the US to abide by the one-China principle,” the Chinese delegation said, according to a statement from China’s defence ministry.

Beijing’s one-China principle says there is only one China and that Taiwan is part of it. Washington does not adopt Beijing’s interpretation of “one China”. Instead, in 1972 it acknowledged – but did not endorse – the position that Chinese people on either side of the Taiwan Strait regard Taiwan as a part of China.

“The US needs to take seriously China’s concerns and do more to contribute to the development of the two militaries’ relationship,” the Chinese statement said.

Michael Chase, the US deputy assistant defence secretary for China, Taiwan and Mongolia, who hosted the meeting, underscored the importance of peace and stability across the strait, the major shipping lane that separates mainland China from Taiwan.

He also said both countries should keep military-to-military lines of communication open to prevent competition from turning into conflict, according to a Pentagon statement. Chase also discussed operational safety in the Indo-Pacific and said the US would continue to operate in areas allowed by international law.

Taiwan reports 17 balloons approaching from mainland China as election nears

Personnel aboard ships and planes of the US and its allies have complained about “unsafe” manoeuvres by the Chinese military in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, over which Beijing lays vast claims.

The Chinese delegation told the US to downsize its military presence in the South China Sea and stop supporting “individual countries” in what Beijing sees as a “violation of its rights” and “provocation”.

“The US should fully recognise the root cause of safety issues in the air and at sea, and strictly restrain frontline troops,” it said.

The Chinese delegation was led by Major General Song Yanchao, the deputy director of the Central Military Commission’s international military cooperation office. The commission is China’s highest military command and is headed by President Xi Jinping.

3 days before Taiwan vote, Beijing offers details on cross-strait ‘model zone’

Taiwan’s elections on Saturday will result in a new president, whose policy will shape US-China and cross-strait relations for the years to come.

Taiwanese Vice-President William Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the election front runner, favours continuing the current status of Taiwan and mainland China, as well as Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s policy towards Beijing.

He said at a news conference on Tuesday that if elected president, there was no need to declare independence because “Taiwan is already an independent country with sovereignty”.

Beijing’s diplomats and military officials have criticised the DPP multiple times in the lead-up to the election, and during Tsai’s tenure, for leaning towards independence.

Lai’s opponents are seen as more Beijing-friendly. Hou Yu-ih, of the Kuomintang party, has said he aimed to resume cross-strait dialogue while keeping Taiwan secure, democratic and respectful of human rights.

The other opponent, Ko Wen-je of the Taiwan People’s Party, also said he was willing to talk to Beijing, so long as Taiwan could keep its political system and way of life, and that dialogue was conducted on the basis of equality and mutual respect.

We’re hiring a new China correspondent | News

https://www.economist.com/news/2024/01/09/were-hiring-a-new-china-correspondent

We are hiring a correspondent to provide ambitious, imaginative and original coverage of China. Candidates should be willing to be based in mainland China. A knowledge of geopolitics and economics is helpful. Applicants should send a CV, a cover letter and an unpublished article of 600 words suitable for publication in The Economist to [email protected]. The deadline is February 23rd 2024. ■

‘My heart aches’: China girl, 5, dies of liver disease despite transplant from heartbroken father, triggering widespread public sympathy

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/social-welfare/article/3247090/my-heart-aches-china-girl-5-dies-liver-disease-despite-transplant-heartbroken-father-triggering?utm_source=rss_feed

The tragic story of a five-year-old girl who died despite having transplant surgery when her devoted father – a single parent – donated part of his liver to her, has triggered an outpouring of online sympathy.

The health of Yiling, the little girl’s nickname, deteriorated rapidly on December 23 and she sadly passed away three days later at a hospital in southwestern China’s Chongqing municipality, according to a report by Red Star News.

The family attracted widespread attention last year when the father, surnamed Liang, who is a migrant worker, donated a section of his liver to give his daughter the chance to recover from her life-threatening illness.

Yiling was diagnosed with cholestasis in July 2022, a disease caused by a genetic mutation.

Her condition was so serious that her liver had become damaged and doctors recommended transplant surgery.

A successful operation took place in October and the little girl was discharged from hospital, returning to live with her father in their village in Wushan, a county administered by Chongqing municipality.

Liang stayed home to look after his daughter, giving up his usual employment to scrape a living selling products on social media and relying on donations to cover Yiling’s medical costs.

The 28-year-old said he and the girl’s mother had divorced in 2020 because they did not get on.

According to Liang’s post on social media, her mother did not visit Yiling at hospital or at home when she was ill.

After the little girl passed away, her heartbroken father wrote about their relationship and his deep love for his daughter on social media.

“Dear Yiling, we have accompanied each other for five and a half years. But now you have gone to a place far away without me,” Liang wrote.

“My heart aches and my home does not exist now that you are no longer in it. How shall I live in future?” he added.

He closed the donation channel and removed all products from his online account because he said it was pointless having money without his daughter to look after. He said he hoped his child would rest in peace.

“My little girl was so poorly. Now she will not suffer the pain of her illness or the treatment,” he said.

Mainland social media empathised with the distraught parent.

“You have cut your own liver. You have tried your best to take her to seek medical treatment. You are a good father, much better than many others. I hope there is no illness in heaven,” read one comment that received 48,000 likes.

“He is a great father. He is so young, but is very responsible,” said another message that received 9,000 likes.

In March last year, the story of a mother in central Hubei province trended on social media after she donated her liver to save the life of her one-year-old son.

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Proactive approach to Taliban helps safeguard security in northwest China: envoy

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3247888/proactive-approach-taliban-helps-safeguard-security-northwest-china-envoy?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s enhanced “proactive position” in Afghanistan over the past decade has helped to safeguard security in the northwestern Chinese region that borders its troubled neighbour, according to Beijing’s special envoy for Afghan affairs.

Yue Xiaoyong said China had “accurately grasped” the issue’s general trend and “proactively” managed Afghan affairs. Beijing has also defused various risks and maintained the strategic security of China’s northwest periphery, he added.

“In the grand picture of our foreign diplomacy, our proactive position in Afghanistan and its neighbouring South Asian region has been strengthened,” Yue told an event at Renmin University’s School of Global and Area Studies in Beijing on Tuesday.

A long-standing concern for Beijing is the potential for its neighbour to harbour terrorist and extremist activities that could pose a security threat, particularly to Xinjiang, which shares a 92.45km (57.4 miles) border with Afghanistan.

In October, the Taliban leadership assured Beijing that it regards threats to China as seriously as a threat against its own country.

Terror threat to Chinese in Afghanistan ‘is challenge to our own’, Taliban vows

While not formally recognising the Taliban regime, China is one of the few countries – along with Pakistan and Russia – to maintain a diplomatic presence in Kabul after the chaotic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan two years ago.

Yue’s comments came amid growing signs that China is continuing to step up its engagement with Afghanistan, including the arrival in Beijing in November of the Taliban’s newly appointed ambassador Bilal Karimi.

That put China among only a handful of nations to host a Taliban ambassador since the Islamic fundamentalist group regained power in August 2021.

Late last month, Karimi met the head of the Chinese foreign ministry’s Asian department Liu Jinsong for a “friendly and in-depth exchange” on the bilateral relationship and cooperation in various fields, according to the ministry.

And in late December, China abstained from a UN Security Council vote advocating the appointment of a special envoy for the war-torn country following an independent assessment report issued in November.

The resolution was adopted, with China calling on UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to be cautious in dealing with the appointment.

‘Vested interests’: why China is backing Taliban regime in Afghanistan

In an explanation of its vote, China’s deputy permanent representative to the UN Geng Shuang said a forcible appointment that disregarded Afghanistan’s views could leave the special envoy “unable to discharge their functions at all”.

It could “also heighten the antagonism and confrontation between the international community and the Afghan authorities,” Geng said.

“It is our hope that going forward, the secretary-general will … continue to strengthen communication and interaction with the Afghan authorities, and strive to find appropriate solutions.”

Analysts have argued that China’s apparently greater role in Afghanistan shows that Beijing is happy to build relations – starting on trade – with the Taliban to fill a void left by the West and seize opportunities for longer-term gain.

In October, the Taliban’s acting minister for commerce and industry Haji Nooruddin Azizi attended the third edition of China’s Belt and Road Forum, meeting Yue in Beijing during the trip.

Afghanistan holds strategic importance for the Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing’s massive infrastructure project. The Central Asian country’s geographic position makes it a potential corridor connecting China with the Middle East and Europe.

The landlocked nation also has rich mineral resources which are of economic interest to China including lithium, a key component in batteries for electric vehicles and smartphones.

China’s involvement in Afghanistan has increased significantly since 2012, when Beijing and Kabul upgraded bilateral relations to a strategic partnership under then-presidents Hu Jintao and Hamid Karzai.

Asked in December whether China has formally recognised the Taliban rulers, foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said that “we hope Afghanistan will … build an open and inclusive political structure, adopt moderate and prudent domestic and foreign policies, firmly combat all forms of terrorist forces”.

China is trying to sell its ‘chubby girl’ transport plane to foreign buyers

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3247848/china-trying-sell-its-chubby-girl-transport-plane-foreign-buyers?utm_source=rss_feed

China is seeking to sell its Y-20 Kunpeng airlifter to foreign buyers, with its manufacturer expanding production capacity in preparation, according to media reports.

The strategic military transport aircraft was put on the international market in November, when the Y-20BE model was shown to visiting Nigerian Defence Minister Mohammed Badaru Abubakar in Beijing, military magazine Ordnance Industry Science Technology reported last week.

The heavy-lift transport plane – nicknamed “chubby girl” for its large fuselage – is comparable to the Soviet Ilyushin Il-76 and America’s Boeing C-17.

According to the report, it will be an opportunity for China “to establish deeper strategic relationships and cooperation with countries once they have the Y-20”.

Its manufacturer, state-owned Xian Aircraft Industrial Corporation (XAIC), has been operating assembly lines for mass production to increase efficiency and enlarge capacity, state broadcaster CCTV reported in November.

Instead of assembling the aircraft at a fixed workstation, its parts are moved along a “pulse line” as work stages are completed – similar to the way cars are produced. These assembly lines are used to build some of the world’s most advanced aircraft, including the Lockheed Martin F-35 and Boeing 787.

China warns military buffs not to photograph classified equipment

More than 90 per cent of the Y-20’s parts are made by a digitalised system, according to the CCTV report, which showed footage from the XAIC plant of robotic arms, remote-controlled manoeuvres, and laser-assisted high-precision assembly work.

The magazine report said the plant’s production capacity could meet demand from both the Chinese air force and international clients.

“The Y-20 production speed is the fastest in the world for its kind,” it said.

The plane – which is 47 metres long and 50 metres wide – has become the workhorse heavy lifter for the People’s Liberation Army since it entered service in 2016. It can carry up to 66 tonnes.

XAIC has delivered nearly 100 planes to the PLA Air Force so far – about half of them in the past two years. It also made the switch from Russian-made Soloviev D-30KP-2 engines to the more powerful Chinese-made Shenyang WS-20 turbofan engines.

Variants have also been developed – the Y-20U aerial tanker, and the Y-20AEW airborne early warning and control aircraft.

High life: China family of 8 pay US$140 a day to live in luxury hotel, say price and comfort mean they might stay forever

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3246985/high-life-china-family-8-pay-us140-day-live-luxury-hotel-say-price-and-comfort-mean-they-might-stay?utm_source=rss_feed

A family of eight who lived in a plush hotel suite room for 1,000 yuan (US$140) per day for 229 days have gone viral on mainland social media.

The unidentified group, from the city of Nanyang in the central province of Henan, gave up living in a flat and decided to make a hotel their home.

For the past 229 days, the family of eight shared a suite with a living room and two twin rooms. They have enjoyed their new way of life so much that they are now planning to spend the their rest of life in luxury, Sina News reported.

A viral video show the hotel living room equipped with a TV, sofas, chairs and tables. The room can been seen filled with daily life supplies like clothes, food and water.

Several family members are seen standing around a table sharing fruit.

“Today is the 229th day of our stay at the hotel,” a member of the family, Mu Xue, says.

“The room costs 1,000 yuan per day. Our family of eight live very well,” she said, adding that it was a long-term rental rate given by the hotel.

Due to the fact that the price was all-inclusive, there were no extra charges for parking, heating, water and electricity.

“We feel happy living here, so we plan to live in a hotel for the rest of our lives,” said Mu.

In a separate clip from Star Video, Mu said that her family have owned six properties and are in good financial health.

Screenshots revealed that Mu has completed several deposits including ones of 100,000, 35,500 and 50,000 yuan.

The cost of living in Nanyang is unclear, but according to the mainland real estate information platform, Anjuke, the average rent for an apartment with two rooms in Shanghai has reached 20,000 yuan a month.

“I never thought this way of living would help save money. I just feel that it makes everything convenient,” Mu told Star Video.

The story sparked a heated discussion on mainland social media.

Some people were captivated by their unconventional lifestyle, while others could not understand their choice.

One person said: “As long as they are happy, that’s fine.”

“I would also want to live in a hotel if I was rich,” said another.

“Eight people squeezed into such a hotel suite, is it really comfortable?” asked a third.

While another online observer said: “This is ridiculous.”

Stories about people living an unconventional lifestyle often divide opinions in China.

In May last year, the story of a 29-year-old man in southwestern China who lived in a tent in an abandoned car park reignited a debate about the “lying flat” culture and its growing appeal among the country’s young people.

Tang Ping, or lying flat culture, is one which involves a personal rejection of societal pressures to overwork and over-achieve

In September 2022, a young couple in southern China who gave up renting an apartment to live in a camper van went viral.

Poor communication, political naivete cemented Rocky Tuan’s departure as head of Chinese University of Hong Kong, sources say

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education/article/3247859/poor-communication-political-naivete-cemented-rocky-tuans-departure-head-chinese-university-hong?utm_source=rss_feed

The departure of Rocky Tuan Sung-chi as head of one of Hong Kong’s most prominent universities although sudden was unavoidable due to his strained relationship with stakeholders caused by a lack of communication and the academic’s political naivete, sources sitting on the governing council and familiar with his leadership style have told the Post.

An influx of new council members drawn from outside the Chinese University of Hong Kong, including the three lawmakers who proposed overhauling the institution’s governance, and the bitter taste that Tuan’s relationship with student protesters in 2019 left in the mouth of many were also cited as reasons for his resignation announced on Tuesday.

A source who worked with the president and vice-chancellor said the scholar did not fully understand how to skilfully handle political matters and so sought to stay out of the spotlight most of the time.

Neither was he cooperative with the new council, taking a stand-offish attitude that stood in stark contrast with his sociability at academic conferences, the insider said.

“He did not realise that those political matters became more complicated when a vice-chancellor took a lukewarm attitude to council members,” the insider said. “I guess he realised it was time for him to step down. He might now want to return to his academic circle and focus back on his research.”

While Tuan has been in the hot seat for months and speculation over his future intensified when his second-in-command was fired last month, the president’s willingness to stay on in the role he had occupied since 2018 seemed apparent when he began his new term on January 1.

“Tuan performed as usual in the recent council meetings, and did not say he will resign,” a council member, who requested to remain anonymous, said. “He told us how the university has performed well and we were all very happy to hear that.”

Tuan on Tuesday said he was quitting after the council was overhauled by an amendment to the ordinance that covered the school’s operations in November, taking the number of members drawn from outside the university to more than half the body’s total.

Chinese University of Hong Kong fires vice-president caught up in reforms row

Calls for change go back to a 2002 government report which suggested that smaller universities governing bodies would be better.

The other government funded universities in Hong Kong went ahead with reforms, but CUHK held out, despite proposals over the years to adjust the council size and ratio of internal and external representatives.

In 2022, after Tuan in April was granted a second term by the council, legislators Tommy Cheung Yu-yan, Bill Tang Ka-piu and Edward Lau Kwok-fan, who all sit on the university council, put forward a bill proposing the latest amendments. The move divided university alumni, and some council members launched an online petition calling for the plan to be scrapped.

The council responded by setting up a task force, which decided instead that reform plans left dormant since 2016 were still fit to go and that the body would trim in size and review whether it needed to cut the number of appointed lawmakers.

Despite the task force’s call, the Legislative Council bills committee proceeded to scrutinise the proposed legislation.

But Tuan refused to attend each of the three separate committee meetings, saying he was ill.

Chinese University of Hong Kong adds 5 heavyweights to governing body

The council member source pointed to that absence from the three committee meetings as an example of Tuan’s failure to communicate with stakeholders, prompting questions about his abilities to lead the university, concerns that council chairman John Chai Yat-Chiu pledged to discuss with Tuan.

“Tuan did not communicate with the Legislative Council and he did not even attend the meeting related to CUHK,” the council member said. “I am sorry for him doing this … He put himself in a difficult situation if he declined to communicate. Others felt so embarrassed when he was absent from every meeting.”

The passing of the bill cut the number of council members from 55 to 34 and adjusted the ratio of external appointees to internal ones to 2:1. About 24 of the 34 members have since been appointed.

The council member said he expected nearly all the members would be on board as soon as the first quarter.

The trio of legislators who proposed the amendment earlier said the passage of the bill was just a “first step”. They had vowed to look into changes to the university’s emblem in 2022 that were dropped after an outcry and look into who “abused the power”.

The poor relationship between Tuan and some of the establishment’s members could also be reflected in the announcement of his reappointment in 2022.

Tuan’s reappointment infuriated the pro-Beijing camp, with former chief executive Leung Chun-ying complaining that it amounted to a reward for the academic’s questionable performance during the 2019 social unrest, when he showed sympathy towards protesting students.

In August, the Independent Commission Against Corruption said it was investigating a medical research centre run by CUHK over allegations of misconduct and misusing funds, with sources saying it was run by Cecilia Lo Wen-ya, Tuan’s wife.

Bailey Chan Chung-hei, vice-convenor of the Joint College Student Unions, also called Tuan’s resignation sudden.

“We understand his decision … We do not know his real reason for resigning and therefore we cannot even comment on whether we feel sorry for his resignation,” he said.

Chinese University head out of sight, but at the centre of storm over council reforms

Chan said the president had wanted to meet the union in August last year, but it was eventually cancelled. The group aims to organise a new student union after the previous one was dissolved in 2021.

“We even do not know if Tuan supported the restoring of the union,” he said, suggesting the successor should spend more time communicating with students.

Heung Shu-fai, a former CUHK councillor who opposed the legislative amendment, said he was saddened by the announcement and that he felt the resignation was “mainly” due to the overhaul.

“When new guys come in with massive power and [are] not hesitant to exercise the power, either you bend over to accommodate them or you leave quietly,” he said. “I believe Rocky chose the latter option.”

Heung added that he felt the reform “did not reflect kindly” on Hong Kong’s image in the international academic community and that it would be difficult for the university to find a replacement with a stature equal to Tuan.

“We lost a star player,” he said. “Now that he’s gone, I don’t know if you can find another academic who can compare.”

Additional reporting by Connor Mycroft and Lilian Cheng

Can China halt the exodus from its state health insurance scheme as enthusiasm wanes?

https://www.scmp.com/economy/economic-indicators/article/3247801/can-china-halt-exodus-its-state-health-insurance-scheme-enthusiasm-wanes?utm_source=rss_feed

A slew of local governments across China have postponed the deadline for enrolment in this year’s state health insurance scheme covering urban and rural residents amid declining levels of participation, which are largely attributed to surging premiums.

Directives issued over the past few weeks have vowed to persuade more people to contribute to the voluntary scheme, which covers roughly just over 70 per cent of China’s 1.4 billion population.

A falling participation rate is threatening the sustainability of China’s state medical insurance system as the country deals with the effects of a rapidly ageing population.

At least seven provincial-level governments, as well as dozens of cities from seven other provinces, have announced extensions for subscribers to join the scheme, which is intended for anyone who is not formally employed and is managed by the local governments.

Serving as one of the two pillars of China’s basic medical insurance system – the other being a mandatory plan for urban employees – the urban and rural residents’ scheme typically requires subscribers to pay the annual premium before the start of the year.

The voluntary scheme, which has been in place since 2003, has a lower fixed annual premium compared to the urban employees’ programme. In recent years, a government subsidy accounted for over 60 per cent of the total premium for the urban and rural residents’ scheme.

Over 25 million people dropped out of the scheme in 2022 due to a combination of factors including rising premiums, lower incomes and a lack of awareness.

The number of subscribers has declined by millions every year since 2019, according to the National Healthcare Security Administration.

Last week, the government in the northwest province of Gansu ordered local officials to target students, migrant workers and newborns to help expand enrolment.

Grass-roots officials were told to check “person by person and household by household”, the Gansu provincial medical security bureau said.

For migrant workers who have left their hometowns, officials should contact the local government of their place of work to ensure participation in the scheme, the bureau added.

In Yuncheng in the central province of Shanxi, the local government vowed to extend the payment period to the end of February to “mobilise enrolment” during the New Year and the Lunar New Year holidays.

A high price to pay: millions drop out of China’s state health insurance scheme

The goal is to ensure “all those that should be covered are covered”, according to a directive issued at the end of last month.

Officials and researchers have warned against dampening public enthusiasm for China’s state medical insurance scheme, which is under mounting pressure amid a shrinking workforce and growing group of retirees.

Hua Ying, a researcher from the Institute of Population and Labour Economics under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the scheme is facing “a crisis of continuously weakening sustainability” because of systematic flaws.

Instead of a lower fixed amount set by the government, the premium for subscribers should be linked with their income to guarantee equality, she argued in a research paper published in the September issue of the China Academic Journal.

The financial burden caused by the premiums for the lowest income group in rural areas is over 20 times compared to the highest income group in urban areas, she noted.

“Our research showed that surging premiums for individuals have aroused complaints among low income people in many regions, significantly impacting their enthusiasm for enrolment and leading to an increasing risk of cancellation,” she wrote.

The minimum annual personal contribution required for the urban and rural residents’ scheme has surged from just 10 yuan (US$1.4) in 2003 to 380 yuan last year.

In a district in Baoji city, Shaanxi province, the participation rate in the urban and rural residents’ scheme has declined for the past three years, falling from 98.5 per cent in 2021 to 96.3 per cent in 2023.

An article published on the website of the province’s political advisory body in November attributed the decline to the increased premium.

“The trend of low interest in the scheme and cancellation is set to continue,” it warned, urging for premium increases to be halted and linked with individual incomes.

Communist Party diplomat Liu Jianchao, on US visit, urges ‘correct’ understanding of China

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3247865/communist-party-diplomat-liu-jianchao-us-visit-urges-correct-understanding-china?utm_source=rss_feed

As China feels the heat of Washington-led “de-risking” efforts amid Western concerns about Beijing’s economic coercion and military aggression, a senior Chinese Communist Party official is visiting the US with a mission to encourage a “correct” perception of his country.

“We’re here to promote dialogues between the governments, legislators and political parties of the two countries, as we believe communication is the only way of increasing common understanding,” Liu Jianchao, who leads the Chinese Communist Party’s diplomatic arm, said on Tuesday in New York at an event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations.

Stressing a “correct” and “good” understanding of China’s “strategic intentions”, Liu said that as the country becomes more powerful militarily and economically, its aim was to “deliver a better life for all the Chinese people”.

He said a “mutually beneficial cooperation” would be possible between the two global powers if it’s understood that China does not have “any hidden agenda” or the goal of “overtaking” the US.

After completing his engagements in New York, including a meeting with United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday, Liu is expected to visit Washington before heading to San Francisco.

Since taking office in June 2022, Liu has held two meetings in Beijing with Nicholas Burns, the US ambassador to China, and visited countries in Asia, Africa and Europe.

Liu, 59, said that there was “no talk” about returning to the confrontational Wolf Warrior diplomacy and that Chinese diplomats were working to forge “warm and cooperative” ties with countries around the world to create a “favourable international environment” for China’s “high-quality development”.

Ex-ambassador takes over as head of Chinese Communist Party’s diplomatic arm

He said Beijing would “keep its door open” and create a “market-oriented and rules-based” business environment that meets an “international standard”, hoping that, in return, Washington would keep its markets open and provide Chinese companies with “a non-discriminatory business environment”.

His remarks came after outgoing foreign direct investment in China exceeded inflows in the third quarter of 2023, the first time that has happened since 1998.

In August, US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said several American companies told her China was becoming “uninvestable” and “too risky” because of new national security regulations.

What does US commerce secretary’s China visit mean for American businesses?

But Liu said “there should not be unnecessary rhetoric” about foreign businesses leaving China because of “anti-espionage” or other “necessary” laws.

“The US has even stricter anti-espionage tools,” he said, adding that China was ready to convince foreign investors that it remained a country with “good opportunities”.

Liu has faced criticism in the West for his role in the Chinese Communist Party’s “anti-corruption” efforts and accusations of transnational repression.

On Tuesday, he said China had received help from the US Justice and Homeland Security departments in extraditing “criminal suspects” on the “basis of the US law”.

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US and China ambassadors identify areas of cooperation as well as danger zones

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3247867/us-and-china-ambassadors-identify-areas-cooperation-well-danger-zones?utm_source=rss_feed

US and Chinese envoys commemorated the 45th anniversary of official diplomatic ties on Tuesday by mixing warm sentiments about last year’s summit between their leaders with warnings about Taiwan and trade restrictions that suggested the two sides are far from understanding each other’s intentions.

Washington’s ambassador to Beijing, Nicholas Burns, addressed an audience at the Carter Centre in Atlanta via video, praising the Chinese government for “concrete action” to block the flow of fentanyl precursors from the US and restarting military-to-military dialogue while underscoring Washington’s hard line on sales of advanced technology to China.

“We’ve seen action, real action, concrete action by the government in Beijing to begin to shut off the flow of precursor chemicals, to take action against those Chinese companies that were involved,” he said, before turning to the need for technology export restrictions.

“We simply are not going to allow the People’s Liberation Army to acquire our most sensitive technology so that it can compete with us militarily, and there’ll be no compromise on those advanced semiconductors, and other technology restrictions that we’ve put into place,” he added.

A string of moves by US President Joe Biden’s administration to restrict the provision of advanced US technology to China has been a bilateral sore point; Beijing contends the actions amount to an effort to undercut the competitiveness of Chinese companies.

In August, Biden announced new restrictions on investments that American companies could make in China in the areas of “semiconductors and micro electronics, quantum information technologies and certain artificial intelligence systems”.

Two months later, the administration expanded restrictions on China’s access to advanced chips and chipmaking tools announced a year earlier, to address efforts by companies like Nvidia to design products that could skirt the rules.

Speaking to the Carter Centre audience in a pre-recorded video address, China’s Ambassador Xie Feng seemed to cite these restrictions as an impediment to better relations.

China to persist with AI development in 2024 despite US chip curbs: UBS

Xie suggested that Washington’s characterisation of China as a “competitor” – a term used by the US State Department to describe some areas in which the two sides engage – as akin to “containment”.

“If one sees the other side as a primary competitor, a ‘pacing threat’ and a target for containment, improving and stabilising bilateral relationship would be out of the question,” he said.

The White House and top Pentagon officials have described China as a “pacing threat”, and Biden told Chinese President Xi Jinping during their summit in November that the two countries “are in competition”.

The two sides also remain far apart on Taiwan, which Beijing pledges to reunite with the mainland by force if necessary, while the US government has increased engagements with officials on the self-ruled island to bolster economic ties.

Differences over Taiwan reached a head in 2022, when then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei, a move that prompted Beijing to cut nearly all high-level bilateral dialogues.

“The US should abide by the one-China principle and the three Sino-US joint communiques with concrete actions, [and] earnestly deliver on the statements by American leaders that the United States does not support Taiwan independence,” Xie said.

Burns called Beijing’s reaction to Pelosi’s visit “excessive” and did not reiterate the oft-stated position that Washington does not support Taiwanese independence.

Most countries, including the US, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but Washington is opposed to any attempt to take the island by force and is committed to supporting its defence capability.

Despite their crosswise comments on Taiwan and tech restrictions, the two envoys appeared upbeat on some fronts in addition to fentanyl and resumption of high-level miliary-to-military dialogue.

They expressed optimism on joint efforts to control the use of artificial intelligence, which Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to during their summit, and hinted that this effort would be aimed at the dangers of incorporating the technology in autonomous weapons.

Bilateral talks on artificial intelligence would be aimed at “enhancing global AI governance and jointly managing risks and challenges brought by the technology so that the ‘Terminator’ scenario, where machines wage war against humans, will not become a reality” Xie said.

However, on that note, Burns suggested that the two sides are still working out who would need to be involved in the talks.

“We have to decide who should be at the table,” he said. “In the case of the United States, I would say obviously, representatives of our government, but also of our private sector, where much of the expertise in artificial intelligence resides.”

US advances in AI to blunt China military depend on more streamlined Pentagon: senior official

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3247868/us-advances-ai-blunt-china-military-depend-more-streamlined-pentagon-senior-official?utm_source=rss_feed

Developing America’s artificial intelligence capability so it can effectively respond to the Chinese military’s “pacing challenge” requires as much focus on restructuring the Pentagon’s bureaucracy as it does on building actual weapons systems, a senior US defence official said on Tuesday.

An early test will be the Pentagon’s Replicator Initiative, which aims to field thousands of autonomous systems across land, sea and air within the next 18 to 24 months, said Michael Horowitz, a US deputy assistant secretary of defence.

Unveiled in August, the initiative plays a central role in countering China’s rapid military build-up.

“We used to think about either you have precision, or you have mass … What we need in many instances is going to be precise mass,” explained Horowitz. “And so the Replicator Initiative is about a process as much as anything else.

“It’s about showing we can do hard things that we can develop, and especially accelerate the fielding of capabilities at speed and at scale.”

That has entailed creating an office, headed by Horowitz, combining previously separate responsibilities covering policy and budgets with those exploiting AI, biotechnology, directed energy and hypersonic weapons, among others.

The realignment “shows that we’re not just thinking about emerging capabilities off in the side as a niche area”, Horowitz said, instead bringing them “into the centre of how we think about planning for what the future of the military should look like”.

But streamlining the Defence Department is a herculean task. As with many militaries around the globe, inertia, turf battles and infighting can halt innovation, no matter how compelling the need may be.

China to persist with AI development in 2024 despite US chip curbs: UBS

Some 27,000 military personnel and civilians work in the Pentagon, supporting 1.3 million active personnel and over 700,000 civilian employees worldwide.

“It’s always wonderful to actually see the [Pentagon’s] policy posture match its budget posture,” said Gregory Allen, a former Defence Department official now with the Washington-based Centre of Strategic and International Studies, where Horowitz spoke on Tuesday. “The disconnect between those two things can get super broken.”

Allen, who directs AI and advanced technologies at CSIS, described the Pentagon as a place where “many hands” worked on AI and autonomous weapons.

Horowitz – a former University of Pennsylvania professor and author of a 2010 book on how the US military can innovate more effectively – has been among those tapped to try and speed up the vast organisation’s ability to tackle America’s strategic priorities.

The Pentagon is improving in its AI adoption, he said, launching initiatives at each step, from investing in science and technology to introducing new weapons in the field to eliminating bureaucratic hurdles that can impede progress.

The inroads include forging closer relationships with private companies, identifying and accelerating the most important priorities and supporting rapid experimentation.

But top US officials have also made clear that developing autonomous weapons cannot come at the expense of safeguards that ensure humans stay engaged in crucial areas like nuclear weapons and that other potentially lethal systems are carefully vetted.

“A weapons system that isn’t safe, that isn’t predictable, doesn’t work,” Horowitz said. “There are evil ways to envision using autonomous weapons systems, but that’s true of all weapons systems.”

Harness AI to tell Chinese stories on ‘global stage’, party newspaper says

Washington has devised a political declaration on the responsible use of autonomous weapons that has been endorsed by 51 countries, and Horowitz voiced optimism that more would join the US’s bid to foster greater international cooperation in this area.

However, it so far lacks the support of China and Russia, not to mention North Korea.

“Nobody wants systems that increase the risk of miscalculation or that behave in ways that you can’t predict,” Horowitz said. “We hope that all countries would sign on to the political declaration.”

Washington will work towards a potential plenary session in the first half of 2024 with those states that have endorsed the political declaration, he added. “And we hope that even more will come on board.”

Horowitz also highlighted the Defence Department’s commitment to cooperate with China on reducing the risk of an unintended clash.

This follows an agreement last November between US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping to resume military dialogue, with a particular focus on security and AI capabilities.

“The more that we can talk and try to understand each other, the better,” he said. “And the Department of Defence has been very, very clear about that.”

Another significant test for AI is shaping up with the Aukus alliance, the security pact uniting Australia, Britain and the US.

Final Pentagon bill features Taiwan, Aukus and counters to China’s influence

The pact seeks to hasten the transfer of US nuclear submarine and other technologies. But it has seen cooperation run up against American export control regulations and Pentagon resistance despite the alliance comprising close Washington allies.

Political pressure by senior Australian officials as well as the three countries’ leaders has helped ease some of the logjams, although reluctance to change is often deep-seated.

“What I said in some discussions with my Australian colleagues was, ‘great, please complain’, because it’s actually kind of useful in fighting the internal bureaucratic battles,” said Allen, recalling his tenure at the Pentagon.

“We need to do right by our partners here and live up to our diplomatic commitments.”

China joins US and Japan in approving Alzheimer’s drug Leqembi developed by Eisai and Biogen

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3247845/china-joins-us-and-japan-approving-alzheimers-drug-leqembi-developed-eisai-and-biogen?utm_source=rss_feed

China has approved a drug to treat Alzheimer’s, becoming only the third country after the US and Japan to fast track its sale to treat the irreversible and progressive brain disorder.

The nation’s drugs regulator on Tuesday said Leqembi, an antibody that has shown to slow progression of the disease for people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, can be sold in the country.

The drug’s joint developers, Eisai of Japan and Biogen of the US, said the drug will be launched in China as early as the third quarter of 2024. It was fast-tracked by the US Food and Drug Administration in July 2023 followed by Japan’s health ministry in September.

Eisai, which is taking the lead on distributing the drug in China, has yet to announce a price for Leqembi in the country.

In the US, the therapy is priced at US$26,500 annually and at about 2.98 million yen (US$20,500) annually in Japan, according to media reports. A fair price for the drug would be between US$8,900 and US$21,500 per year, the US drug cost-effectiveness organisation ICER said in May.

Alzheimer’s disease is a type of dementia that impairs memory and thinking skills. Its symptoms slowly progress and eventually become severe enough to interfere with the patient’s ability to carry out simple daily tasks.

Leqembi binds to and reduces soluble and insoluble amyloid-beta deposits from the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. The deposits are linked to the development of the disease.

It is the first drug in the world that has proven to slow the progression of the disease and related cognitive and functional declines using this mechanism, and the only one that has obtained approval from regulators, according to a statement from the drug’s developers.

Some 10 million people in China currently suffer from Alzheimer’s and related dementias, and the number is expected to approach 40 million by 2050 as the country battles with a rapidly ageing population, according to a research report from BioMed Central, a UK-based for-profit scientific open access publisher under Springer Nature.

From 2020 to 2050, the number of Chinese people aged 65 years and above is expected to more than double from 172 million to 366 million, and their proportion relative to the country’s total population is expected to grow from 12 per cent to 26 per cent during the period, according to estimates.

Eisai said it will distribute its product in China through “specialised medical representatives”, and it will also collaborate with specialists to improve the disease’s diagnostic environment.

The pharmaceutical company said it will offer its services, including early consultations via a third-party medical specialist and follow-up treatments through Yin Fa Tong, an online health platform under Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com.

Trump muses: Maybe covid-19 was punishment for his tariffs on China?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/01/09/trump-china-covid-dobbs-interview/2024-01-09T14:19:02.048Z

It’s useful to contextualize this story by offering some background on its venue and participants.

Former president Donald Trump, the subject of an interview that aired on Monday evening, needs no context. His interviewer may: Lou Dobbs, a fixture in conservative media for decades until his Fox Business show was dumped by the channel after he was targeted in a defamation case focused on claims he’d made about the 2020 presidential election. Dobbs was foaming about the central elements of Trumpian politics even before Trump arrived on the scene; he’s been a devoted supporter of Trump since. In 2022, a Rolling Stone report indicated that Trump might consider Dobbs for a Cabinet post, should he win reelection this year.

Since Dobbs was fired by Fox, you might be wondering where the interview was hosted. The answer is that Dobbs’s show was resurrected for “Lindell TV,” which you have only heard of if you are a deeply dedicated student of the American fringe. It is, as you might expect, a product of pillow-salesman-turned-Trump-promoting-conspiracy-theorist Mike Lindell, a sort of YouTube for the tinfoil-hat set. So Lindell, whose identity is now enveloped in his support for Trump, hired Dobbs (pretty much the same) to interview Trump, the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.

Far from resulting in a bland exchange of pleasantries, though, the format allowed Trump to let down his guard, to whatever extent it’s ever up. He approached it as he would a rally speech, offering expected, worn-smooth rhetoric that he’s presented many times before. (Trump is in his Vegas-residency era, mostly playing his most popular hits for the crowd.) But, feeding off Dobbs’s support, he couldn’t help taking things just a bit further, meaning that he ended up making news when he probably didn’t intend to.

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One example went viral soon after the interview began.

“We have an economy that’s so fragile, and the only reason it’s running now is it’s running off the fumes of what we did. What the Trump admin — it’s just running off the fumes,” Trump said. “And when there’s a crash, I hope it’s going to be during this next 12 months. Because I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover.”

(History will probably suggest that he’s more like Woodrow Wilson, but that’s another story.)

Obviously, blithely suggesting that a crash is coming and he hopes it happens under his likely opponent in November is not the sort of America-boosterism we tend to expect from presidential candidates. But it’s not new for Trump, certainly, whose politics are based on presenting as bleak a picture of a non-Trump-led America as he can. In 2016 and 2020, he said similar things.

“You’ll end up winning okay, we’re going to blame them.” Stuff like that. (Two years later, he would claim that he prevented the crash that he suggested would come.)

Trump also said something else that received less attention.

“I took in hundreds of billions of dollars from China,” he told Dobbs, referring to the tariffs he imposed on Chinese imports. “No president ever took in ten cents. It was a one way deal.”

“And I changed things around a lot,” he continued. “A lot of people think that’s why we had the China virus, frankly, because they never had a problem like they did with me. But I don’t think so. I think it was gross incompetence at the Wuhan lab.”

“There are those people that said they would have done anything to get rid of me,” he said a bit later.

It’s been a while, so we should first point out that the brunt of the negative effects of the tariffs — fees imposed on products imported from China — was borne by American consumers. A study published in May 2019 found that 95 percent of the costs of the tariffs were paid by Americans. Research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York estimated that American households were paying an additional $800 a year thanks to the fees.

We should also note that Trump signed a deal with Chinese leaders in early 2020 committing China to buying an additional $200 billion in exports from America. (The total increase by the end of the deal? Zero.) When the coronavirus emerged soon afterward, Trump repeatedly downplayed it — in part to defend the country with whom he’d just made that deal.

Live updates from the campaign trail as the first contest of 2024 nears

Now, though, everything has changed. The pandemic was a horrifying disaster, and Trump is eager to have people think that none of it was his fault. He was a quick adopter of the idea that the virus was demonstrably a function of activity in a lab in Wuhan, China — in part because renewed scrutiny of the lab allows him to claim that he was “proven right,” one of his favorite rhetorical tactics while in political exile. (It’s been a fascinating social experiment, seeing how careful picking of cherries can seemingly prove anyone to have been a Nostradamus in their own time.)

He told Dobbs that he doesn’t think covid was a punishment for tariffs. But this is how his library of defenses is built: He tests the waters and sees the response. This line takes him from “China is doing its best” to “it was China’s fault not mine” to “China, unlike me, was incompetent” to “China was mad because I was so anti-China” — a transition that fits his needs coming into 2024. At another point, he tried to turn President Biden into the pro-China guy, claiming, falsely, that Biden “got millions of dollars from China.” He also pointed to China’s role in fentanyl production — so being seen as the guy who China is desperate to keep out of power is useful as he talks to Republican primary voters.

It’s all nonsense, as you might expect from a conversation between Trump and a guy fired by Fox News for going to far, hosted on a fake news channel created by a pillow salesman. But Trump has a good shot of being president by this month next year, so it’s worth making very clear that what he’s saying is nonsense and why he’s saying it.

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