• China spy agency renews foreign cyber intelligence warning after data breaches
• Why Pakistan’s unstable coalition won’t faze China, IMF: ‘everyone understands army is in charge’
• China aims to plug gap between lab and market in hi-tech push with patent rule changes
• China not expected to let past overshadow relations with Indonesia’s new leader Prabowo Subianto
• China-based propaganda accounts flourish on X as others try to curb them
• China’s Lunar New Year travel rush: extra trains, packed airports and stranded tourists
• India has become a major source of cybersecurity threats in China: security expert
• Determined China mother spends US$180,000 to turn daughter into online star with videos, publicity, demands refund from agent after failure
• Overseas Chinese tourists boost consumer spending in Year of the Dragon as Alipay transactions increase 7 per cent from 2019
• Chinese builder Redsun Properties faces winding-up threat in Hong Kong as debt crisis goes from bad to worse
• China-Australia relations: winemakers up Hong Kong shipments ‘hoping the door will open’ as Beijing ponders lifting tariffs
• China LGBT woman helps grandmother, 73, divorce, says split should encourage others to leave bad marriages, find happiness
• Regina Ip hits back at criticism of domestic national security legislation, insists it will not turn Hong Kong into another mainland Chinese city
• US’ show of strength to China, what to expect from Prabowo, PLA marriage in spotlight: SCMP’s 7 highlights of the week
• China unlikely to cut major policy rate amid inflation, yuan pressure as ‘risk versus reward doesn’t seem attractive’
• Indonesia-China ties: will president-elect Prabowo confront Beijing or maintain Widodo’s economic deals?
• China won’t ‘compete’ with other developing nations during WTO fishing talks, subsidies set to be discussed in Abu Dhabi
• Pacific Island leaders warn US failure to pass funding bill opens door to China
• ‘Fortune beasts’: 5 divine Chinese creatures – dragon, phoenix, qilin, pixiu and turtle that bring power, prosperity and good fortune for life
• Global green transition is re-energising China’s investments in Africa after pandemic slowdown
• Crime in Chinatown has been a focus of arena talks. It’s nearly flat.
• US House passes three bills on China human rights, Asia-Pacific cooperation

China spy agency renews foreign cyber intelligence warning after data breaches

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3252169/china-spy-agency-renews-foreign-cyber-intelligence-warning-after-data-breaches?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s top intelligence agency has issued a renewed warning about foreign cyber espionage, saying data breaches endanger the country’s information and network security.

The Ministry of State Security said that in recent years overseas cyber spies have been attacking critical departments and companies in China and establishing channels to consistently acquire sensitive data.

Foreign hackers usually manage to pilfer data from key Chinese units because they are able to take advantage of a lack of security precautions and negligence, the ministry warned.

“Cyber spies outside China often scan exposed network security flaws in large batches. Once they discover unpatched vulnerabilities on important units, they launch targeted attacks to steal data,” it said, in an article posted on Friday to its WeChat account.

In one case, a military-civilian integration enterprise did not update its software promptly – which the agency described as “a high cybersecurity risk as if the door was wide open”.

China’s spy agency warns of national security threats from AI technology

Hackers then implanted malware disguised as a legitimate programme via the loophole to access the company’s production data and customer information, the agency said.

The breach harmed the development of military equipment and technology, and threatened the country’s military and technological security, it added.

The agency also outlined how hackers target large state-owned enterprises, citing a “suspicious situation” where encrypted data was repeatedly transmitted overseas in the early morning hours and sent to different IP addresses each time.

Investigations found that the company deployed a network system testing device which had different permissions to access the system, but did not take the equipment offline after the test, leaving it operating without proper management.

The cyber intruder used it as a springboard to attack the system and steal the company’s core data, resulting in the loss of critical basic data related to people’s livelihoods in China, the agency said.

Software supply chain companies and their IT staff with administrative permissions are also vulnerable, according to the agency which detailed a case that involved an email system operator who was responsible for providing technical support to customers.

China spy agency widens remit as well as reach with WeChat account

The operator, who had remote access to customer accounts, had the unprofessional habit of recording their passwords – and a system administrator password – on a computer.

The agency said foreign spies attacked the operator’s computer after he was identified through open-source intelligence as a system operator. Using the list of passwords, they obtained internal emails from a thousand systems belonging to key units.

In an earlier warning in November, the ministry said a foreign intelligence agency posing as a software developer offered a Chinese network engineer a substantial fee to help dozens of its products meet China’s security checks.

The software carried malware and was used to obtain data from national defence and military-industrial units, as well as hi-tech enterprises, according to the ministry.

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Why Pakistan’s unstable coalition won’t faze China, IMF: ‘everyone understands army is in charge’

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3252220/why-pakistans-unstable-coalition-wont-faze-china-imf-everyone-understands-army-charge?utm_source=rss_feed

Pakistan’s coalition government formed after a deeply controversial election is not expected to last, analysts said, but major creditors such as China and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will stay the course on current ties despite concerns over further instability.

After the February 8 polls, the country’s powerful military-led establishment herded together six political parties to form the next government – an arrangement observers say is likely to unravel long before its five-year term is up.

“There are plenty of reasons to think this government won’t last long,” said Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Centre, a Washington-based think tank.

There is friction between the two biggest partners in the incoming coalition – the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) of three-time former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and ex-president Asif Ali Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).

The new government would also be under intense pressure from jailed ex-leader Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, which backed independent candidates comprising the single largest grouping in the National Assembly.

Despite being imprisoned, the former cricket star could still upset the applecart by ordering the PTI to boycott parliament, or by confronting the new government and its military overseers with violent public protests against reportedly widespread electoral fraud.

Pakistan’s election results a wake-up call for its military

Few Pakistani governments have served out their full terms and no prime minister ever has. Honeymoons have often given way to “ugly divorces” between the civilian and military leaderships, Kugelman noted.

Additionally, the new multiparty coalition will be “unwieldy and weak, and led by parties that don’t get along”.

“This could all doom it to failure,” he warned.

However, Kugelman said while Pakistan needed renewed, multi-year financial help from the IMF to prevent it from defaulting on its international debt and trade payments – like Sri Lanka did in 2022 – the prospects for a new deal “won’t be damaged by the election controversies” as long as the Washington-based lender “believes Islamabad is committed to seeing through economic reforms”.

During the new coalition’s first few weeks in power, the civilian and military leaderships are “likely to be of one mind in supporting reforms, though for political reasons, [it] may drag its feet and resist new austerity measures”.

For both political and economic reasons, the government and military will have a “strong incentive” to “ensure unrest over widespread electoral fraud is limited”, Kugelman said.

Pakistan set for coalition after troubled election, as Sharif trails rival Khan

According to veteran Pakistani political journalist Nusrat Javed, the leaders of the PML-N and PPP only agreed to join hands under duress from the military establishment.

“They were given an ultimatum to either agree on a candidate for prime minister by Wednesday or have one foisted upon them,” he said in a recent television appearance.

Late on Tuesday, they chose deputy PML-N leader Shehbaz Sharif, who led a similar coalition government that replaced Khan’s PTI administration after a vote of no-confidence in April 2022 and held office until last October.

“In the end, Pakistan’s establishment got exactly what it wanted: a weak coalition led by the military’s preferred parties, and susceptible to the military’s influence,” Kugelman said.

If Shehbaz does head the next Pakistani government, “that could give it a lifeline”, given that he historically has had good relations with the military, Kugelman added. But a pliant leader “may not be enough” to ensure the government’s survival, according to Kugelman, especially if the coalition becomes increasingly strained.

While concerned by the prospect of greater instability, the IMF and foreign investors are not likely to be fazed by Pakistan’s domestic political shenanigans, analysts say.

The IMF is “well aware who’s in charge, and based on what we have seen during the last six months, it appears they don’t have any issues with that set-up”, said Mattias Martinsson, chief investment officer of Tundra Fonder, a Swedish asset management firm focused on frontier and emerging markets.

“Given where we are, in terms of sentiment and valuations, I think there are very few foreign investors that were expecting anything other than what now appears to be the outcome,” he said. “Everyone understands that the army is in charge. Whoever formally represents them carries less significance.”

Financial markets are “cynical, and reward stability and predictability”. It appears the market has “got that in some form, thus I expect an improvement from here”, albeit from extremely low levels, Martinsson added.

The Pakistani military’s stern oversight will also be reassuring to the country’s other major creditors China, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), analysts said.

Although greatly concerned by the legitimacy and longevity of the new Pakistani government, they are expected to continue supporting it with financial assistance and through strategic investments.

China “wants a strong, cohesive and stable Pakistan which can best partner with it as a reliable ally in South Asia”, said Mustafa Hyder, executive director of the Pakistan-China Institute in Islamabad.

29 killed, 40 injured after 2 attacks hit Balochistan before Pakistan election

“A Pakistan with fault lines is a Pakistan that China would definitely be concerned about” because it would mean further inconsistency of policies and instability.

“It would mean a not-as-robust partnership because of Pakistan’s potentially fractured domestic body-politic,” Hyder said.

But he added that “the question mark” about the sustainability and longevity of the incoming government “should not impede China’s perspective on supporting Pakistan”, financially or otherwise, because its relationship “is with the state of Pakistan”.

Irrespective of whichever government is in Islamabad, there “is a clear consensus” in Pakistan, both in the civil and in the military leadership, “on our relationship with China”, according to Hyder.

This special relationship is expected to persuade Beijing “to be forthcoming about reinvigorating” the multibillion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), an envisioned US$60 billion programme of President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative.

China has financed and built about US$28 billion of mostly power generation and infrastructure projects under CPEC since 2016. They were instrumental in overcoming Pakistan’s massive power shortages and improving overland connectivity between the Chinese-operated port of Gwadar on Pakistan’s western Indian Ocean coast and the Xinjiang region.

Hyder said Beijing would be encouraged by the expected reappointment as prime minister of Shahbaz, who “has been a force-multiplier for CPEC” since the programme was launched.

Like China, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are “undoubtedly somewhat unnerved by the tumultuous and controversial election with its dubious results”, said Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.

The disputed Pakistan election result “leaves too much room for instability” among Pakistan’s civilian political class and government “for the tastes of its stability and security-minded Gulf Arab allies”.

Pakistan has long-standing agreements with Saudi Arabia and several of its neighbours to militarily intervene if its territorial integrity were to be endangered by any foreign power.

Ibish said the Gulf monarchies were “highly supportive” of the regional and global status quo, and “do not welcome unrest, particularly in a vital nuclear power” in the Indian Ocean basin, which was also a leading trade partner for them.

Pakistan and India possess formidable nuclear arsenals of similar size.

But anxiety about Pakistani politics “is nothing new” to the Gulf Arab states, he said.

Instead, there is a sense among them that if the situation in Pakistan “really do start to go off the rails”, a return to military rule is “always a distinct possibility”.

As Pakistan pins murder-for-hire plots on India, is their fragile peace at risk?

That would “not necessarily be unwelcome” in Gulf Arab countries that prefer “stable and predictable autocrats over the chaos” produced by polarised and corrupt democratic civilian systems such as Pakistan’s, Ibish said.

So their concerns about the longevity of the incoming Sharif-led coalition government “won’t necessarily” make Riyadh and Abu Dhabi reluctant to extend further financial assistance to Islamabad, or to go ahead with planned strategic investments in Pakistan’s state-owned firms coming up for privatisation.

“That the Pakistani military has served as a backstop against utter chaos, and presumably would do so again if need be, serves as a reassuring idea” that suggests investments even directly within Pakistan itself “will not be fundamentally threatened or altogether lost”, Ibish said.

Financial assistance “may be smiled upon” by the Gulf Arab states “as a way of helping to stabilise Pakistan”, which will be in their interests, he said.

“Much depends on Pakistan’s policies as well as perceived stability,” said Ibish. “If Pakistan continues to act as a largely helpful player, it can expect ongoing support at a fairly high level, at least comparable to recent levels.”

The regional impact of Pakistan’s muddled election would be modest, analysts said.

Foreign policy is in the military’s ambit so Pakistan’s approach to its neighbours after the next government comes to power will be “tethered more to what the army wants to do than to what the new civilian leadership wants to do”, according to Kugelman.

India is currently focused on its general election in May and “not at all interested” in outreach to Pakistan, no matter who leads the next government in Islamabad, he added.

Likewise, Pakistan’s border tensions with Afghanistan and Iran “won’t be impacted” by the election.

Still, the next Pakistani government will have “a major challenge on its hands” trying to manage those tensions even while dealing with severe economic stress and fending off pressure from a PTI-led opposition, Kugelman said.

China aims to plug gap between lab and market in hi-tech push with patent rule changes

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3252217/china-aims-plug-gap-between-lab-and-market-hi-tech-push-patent-rule-changes?utm_source=rss_feed

China is aiming to bridge a long-standing gap between scientific breakthroughs and market adoption by outlining detailed plans for converting patent applications, as it strives to mitigate Washington’s technological curbs while driving sustainable economic growth.

The state-run Economic Daily said in an editorial commentary on Friday that China’s universities and research institutions need to expedite the issuance of high-value patents that align with industrial demands.

“Universities and research institutes have faced a long-standing challenge with the low application rate of patents, both because they tend to produce abundant results with limited precision that can meet industrial needs, accompanied by inadequate channels for transforming patents into market-ready applications,” the report said.

In China, researchers’ academic merits tend to be predominantly gauged by their publication output, impacting their motivation to delve into the commercialisation of their research findings, the report added.

The call came as Beijing grapples with enhancing the industrial utilisation of its hi-tech sector to provide a new avenue of growth amid waning economic momentum and continued efforts to fend off an escalating tech war with the United States.

“As patents based on technological innovation increasingly decide the competitiveness of firms, regions or even nations, this requires us to bring more scientific achievements from the laboratory to the market,” the report said.

The commentary followed Beijing’s issuance of comprehensive guidelines on patent stock inventory for universities and research institutions, which asked for accumulated patents to be uncovered by the end of the year for evaluation by companies.

The guidelines asked research institutions to identify patents with greater potential for market demand, higher economic value and aligned with the needs of key industries, and put them into a database managed by the China National Intellectual Property Administration, according to the document released last week.

China must ‘tolerate failure’ in science and tech to close gap with US

The patents would be provided to companies like high-end manufacturers and hi-tech firms for evaluation regarding the feasibility of market adoption, with assessments and demand communicated to universities and research institutes via the data platform.

The document requires local governments to submit comprehensive implementation plans by the end of the month, finalise the inventory of key universities’ patent stock by the end of June and complete the entire inventory by the end of the year.

It pledged to establish a smooth mechanism for the application of patents oriented to industrial needs and transform a number of high-value patents by the end of 2025.

The administration also said it would cease funding applications for patents and drastically reduce and gradually abolish incentives for patent grants, and instead award individuals or teams that have translated patent results into the market and garnered profits.

“Adjusting incentives to meet market applications can help alleviate such gaps, but Beijing also needs to implement broader reforms for universities such as re-evaluating the way professors are assessed on their publication output,” said Peng Peng, executive chairman of the Guangdong Society of Reform.

“In China, there is a long-standing mismatch between the priorities of university researchers and companies regarding patents, as researchers prioritise publishing papers to secure revenue and higher positions, while companies prioritise patent utilisation in the industry to maximise profits.

“This [means] China has the world’s largest number of patent applications, but very few can be translated to the market.”

China leads global patent race but needs ‘breakthrough’ in AI, chips

According to Peng, Beijing needs to intensify its efforts to address challenges in patent conversion, particularly as it aims to ascend hi-tech value chains and mitigate risks under Washington’s tech decoupling strategy.

Per the 2022 China Patent Survey Report released by the China National Intellectual Property Administration, the industrialisation rate of inventions in China was 36.7 per cent, of which 3.9 per cent was from universities and 13.3 per cent from research institutes.

Although there are no corresponding statistical surveys in the US, based on comprehensive data provided by several universities, Shen Jian, secretary general for science and technology at Renmin University of China, estimated that the rate of conversion of scientific and technological inventions in 2020 was about 50 per cent.

China not expected to let past overshadow relations with Indonesia’s new leader Prabowo Subianto

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3252231/china-not-expected-let-past-overshadow-relations-indonesias-new-leader-prabowo-subianto?utm_source=rss_feed

Future Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto’s controversial past has raised questions inside China about what his approach to Beijing will be, but diplomatic observers broadly expect him to continue the current pragmatic stance.

Prabowo was a special forces general in 1998, when widespread anti-Chinese riots broke out that left over a thousand people dead across the country.

An Indonesian fact-finding team later found that elements of the military had instigated the attacks, which activists said were orchestrated to divert public anger away from the government led by Prabowo’s father-in-law Suharto in the middle of a financial crisis.

Prabowo, now defence minister, has always denied involvement in the attacks, but they dominated discussions about his election on Chinese social media, raising concerns he might try to turn the country against China.

But an article on the social media account of the state-owned Xiwen Evening News dismissed these worries, adding that Indonesians had largely forgiven him for his chequered past, including his role in targeting protesters and dissidents.

Prabowo’s presidency: new chapter in Indonesia-China ties or business as usual?

According to unofficial tallies – which have proved relatively accurate in past elections – Prabowo has secured an unassailable lead over his two opponents in the race to succeed Joko Widodo.

He has signalled he will continue the brand of politics practised by the current president, usually known as Jokowi, and whose son Gibran Rakabuming Raka was his running mate. Most observers expect this to include the approach towards China.

Wang Yiwei, a professor of international relations at Renmin University, said China’s ties with Indonesia had been “troubled” in the past, particularly under Suharto, who adopted an anti-China, anti-Communist stance.

“China is forward-looking,” he said, citing a significant jump in Chinese investments in Indonesia which have included intensive infrastructure investments such as a high-speed rail link on Java that was opened by Widodo.

China is Indonesia’s largest trading partner and it contributed US$3.6 billion in foreign direct investment in the first half of 2022, according to Indonesian government figures, while Chinese Premier Li Qiang committed US$21.7 billion in new investments when he visited Jakarta last September.

Wang Huiyao, founder of the Beijing-based think tank Centre for China and Globalisation, said Prabowo might have had “some history … but the situation has greatly changed” and relations were “much better”.

He said China and Indonesia shared similarities such as belonging to the so-called Global South group of developing economies.

“I don’t think any newly elected leader of Indonesia would treat China-Indonesia relations lightly,” he said. “We need to look at the present and to the future. China-Indonesia relations are at an all-time high.”

The success of the railway project launched last year – which Chinese state media described as carrying “historical significance” – showed the friendship between the two countries, according to Wang.

Lv Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said “history is history” when it came to the former general’s past, but he said this may prove more of a problem in dealing with the United States and other Western nations compared with China.

During the Suharto era, Prabowo’s unit was accused of kidnapping dissidents and student activists, some of whom have never been found.

Prabowo warns of foreign meddling on Indonesian election campaign’s final day

He was dismissed by the military because of his involvement in these disappearances and the US banned him from entering the country until he visited as defence minister in 2020 because of these and other accusations concerning special forces operations in East Timor and Papua.

“This is a bigger problem that he may have to face,” said Lv, arguing that Western countries may “take advantage” of Prabowo’s past to pressure him.

He also expected Washington to try to shift Indonesia from a so-called “swing state” to one that supported the US.

Under Widodo’s leadership, Indonesia – like most Southeast Asian states – has refrained from taking sides in the superpower rivalry and has maintained friendly relations with both.

He said Beijing saw Indonesia as an important bridge with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and expected political and economic relations to continue to develop.

“I personally do not see any negative signs,” he said.

Indonesia analysts also said his past was unlikely to be a stumbling block to closer ties with China.

Muhammad Waffaa Kharisma, a researcher at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, said the 1998 violence was aimed at ethnic Chinese “less so towards China, the state”.

He said Widodo’s foreign policy had been a pragmatic one and “ambitious and friendly” towards China, which has been a “major friend”.

Although Prabowo has pitched himself as offering continuity, Muhammad Waffaa suggested that he could be a more active and present leader on the international stage but may prove more “erratic”.

“We still need to wait until we see how Prabowo’s impulses may shape our foreign policy, too, as it could be that Indonesian foreign policy can be further driven by the more pragmatic element of our free and active doctrine,” he said, referring to the policy of trying to maintain good relations with all sides.

Yohanes Sulaiman, a political analyst at the University of Achmad Yani in West Java, said he did not expect a big change in Indonesia’s foreign policy, but Prabowo is “far more nationalistic” than Widodo and may take a firmer stance on maritime conflicts.

Indonesia has long-standing disagreements with China over its exclusive economic zone off the Natuna Islands near the South China Sea, which Beijing claims almost entirely.

“He still maintains the reputation of a strongman who can get things done and somebody who is decisive … he will not act like Jokowi in the South China Sea,” Yohanes said. “He will be more forceful.”

He said Prabowo needed to show the international community and businesses that he has a “consistent and predictable” foreign policy, but may feel obliged to respond to any provocations in the disputed waters.

Lv from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said as long as Prabowo’s government was sincere, such as in the development of its economy and infrastructure, its relationship with China “will only get better. I really don’t see any difficulties so far”.

China-based propaganda accounts flourish on X as others try to curb them

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/02/16/x-meta-china-disinformation/2024-02-10T01:47:59.354Z

Propaganda accounts controlled by foreign entities aiming to influence U.S. politics are flourishing on X even after they’ve been exposed by other social media platforms or criminal proceedings, a Washington Post analysis shows.

Previously, tech companies including Twitter, Facebook owner Meta and Google’s YouTube worked with each other, outside researchers and federal law enforcement agencies to limit foreign interference campaigns, following revelations that Russian operatives used fake social media accounts to spread misinformation and exacerbate divisions in 2016.

But X has been largely absent from that effort since Elon Musk bought it in 2022, and for months hasn’t sent representatives to biweekly meetings where the companies share notes on networks of fake accounts they are investigating or planning to take down, according to other participants. “They just kind of disappeared," said one.

The result has been that accounts spreading disinformation that the other social media companies took down remain active on X. That allows the disinformation to be spread from there, including back to the other platforms.

“Anyone trying to run a disinformation campaign is going to do it across multiple mainstream platforms,” said Yael Eisenstat, senior fellow at nonprofit Cybersecurity for Democracy. “With foreign influence, we are less protected than we were in 2020.”

The last X representative to attend one of the information sharing sessions was Irish expert Aaron Rodericks, said people familiar with the meetings who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. Rodericks was suspended from X after liking posts critical of Musk and is suing him and the company. Before that, Twitter’s representative was its safety chief, Yoel Roth, who resigned not long after Musk’s takeover and had to flee his home after Musk wrongly implied that he was soft on pedophiles.

One result: In the months since Meta identified 150 arti1ficial influence accounts on X in a series of public reports last year, 136 were still present on X as of Thursday evening, according to The Post’s review. That includes a Turkey-based account with more than 1 million followers and five other accounts that have X’s blue check mark designating them as verified.

Most troubling to some researchers, out of 123 accounts that Meta called out in May, August and December for participating in deceptive China-based campaigns, all but eight remain on X.

Meta said this week that such China-based campaigns have been multiplying: Of 10 networks taken down by the company since 2017, six were identified in past year.

“There has been a markedly increased emphasis in party leadership in taking a much more robust approach to influencing foreign audiences through all tools available at their disposal," said analyst Kieran Green of advisory firm Exovera, who co-wrote a forthcoming study of Chinese censorship and propaganda for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a body Congress created in 2000 to monitor U.S.-China relations.

"Methods include flooding hashtags with junk, impersonating high-profile experts that are critical of the government, and using bot account to give the false impression of social consensus. The object is not necessarily to change hearts and minds but to muddy the discourse to the degree that it’s impossible to form an anti-China narrative.”

Meta and YouTube declined to comment. X did not respond to a request for comment.

The retreat by X is just one of the new challenges in the quest to counter determined foreign interference.

The U.S. government stopped warning social networks about disinformation campaigns in July, after a court ruling barred some communications between the White House and tech companies over censorship concerns. Tech companies have also slashed thousands of workers — some of whom were responsible for guarding their platforms against misinformation — while reversing policies prohibiting some election-related lies.

“The industry has sort of regressed. We staffed up, got everything into what was gonna be the best trust and safety of its time before the 2020 election. And, all of that has now gone back to pre-2016 preparedness,” said Anika Collier Navaroli, a senior fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University and a former senior Twitter policy official.

“You’re seeing the lack of communication between government and companies, the lack of communication between companies and companies. That’s something that took a very long time to work on.”

In addition, probes by House Republicans and lawsuits by conservative activists have forced some disinformation researchers to rethink efforts to study or counter the spread of online misinformation as they battle accusations that their work leads to censorship.

Though some Chinese propaganda is focused on deflecting concerns about its human rights record, treatment of Hong Kong and ambitions in the South China Sea, it has increasingly sought to stoke existing U.S. divisions in the same way Russia has, researchers said. Chinese influence operations have rapidly expanded to more platforms and more languages, Microsoft reported in September.

In the last few weeks, one of the X accounts listed by Meta as part of a covert China-based campaign, @boltinMich2800, has posted links to stories about hot-button political issues on obscure media sites. Some of them covered political events such as the Ohio governor’s veto of a bill restricting transgender care for teens or the qualification of candidates for a televised debate.

Other posts and reposts promoted far-right ideas, including that of “banning” liberal financier George Soros from politics.

Another account in the same network, @JeroenWolf52208, has been posting right-wing takes on race and the Texas border controversy, as well as a story on Israel’s war plans from Russia’s government-controlled RT. The two accounts did not respond to direct messages sent on X.

A separate preliminary analysis from Stanford University researchers of Meta’s November quarterly report on what is known as coordinated inauthentic behavior found 86 of those accounts are still active on X. Of those accounts, two were connected to Russia, three to Iran and the remaining 81 were connected to China.

The analysis, shared exclusively with The Post, found that the majority of the China-based accounts are posing as North Americans, often scraping photos from real Americans’ LinkedIn pages but changing their names. The accounts often post about China, Elon Musk, President Joe Biden and the U.S. election.

“The presence of these accounts reinforces the fact that state actors continue to try to influence U.S. politics by masquerading as media and fellow Americans," said Stanford Internet Observatory technical research manager Renée DiResta. "Ahead of the 2022 midterms, researchers and platform integrity teams were collaborating to disrupt foreign influence efforts. That collaboration seems to have ground to a halt, Twitter does not seem to be addressing even networks identified by its peers, and that’s not great.”

Meanwhile, an account that is accused of being run by the Chinese Ministry of Public Security is still on X 10 months after U.S. prosecutors cited its tweets in a criminal complaint. It posted as recently as Jan. 24.

The Post was able to link the account, @Bag_monk, to the “912 Special Project Working Group” by comparing the text of two of its tweets to those referenced by prosecutors in an April 2023 complaint, which match verbatim.

Prosecutors at the time described the unit as being part of a “broad effort to influence and shape public perceptions of the [Chinese] government, the [Chinese Communist Party] and its leaders in the United States and around the world.”

The account appears to be tied to a dozens of accounts on X and other platforms that post and repost inflammatory messages. On Thursday, the London nonprofit Institute for Strategic Dialogue issued a report connecting some of the indictment’s posts to Spamouflage, a seven-year-old covert influence campaign suspected of being driven by the Chinese Communist Party.

The content includes negative depictions of both Biden and former president Donald Trump, as well as material that “appears aimed at creating a sense of dismay over the state of America without any clear partisan bent. It focuses on issues like urban decay, the fentanyl crisis, dirty drinking water, police brutality, gun violence and crumbling infrastructure,” wrote Institute analyst Elise Thomas.

Some images shared by @Bag_monk and similar accounts have six fingers or body parts that blend together, an indicator that they may have been created with artificial intelligence tools.

The apparent AI-generated images also depict Trump in an orange prison jumpsuit. One such graphic, which also depicted President Biden and his son, Hunter, was posted by 10 separate accounts. Their posts all used the same caption and were published after federal prosecutors last year charged Trump with illegally retaining classified documents. The posts garnered around 16,900 views altogether, according to X’s public tabulation.

Researchers said that China, again like Russia, has also begun planting articles advancing its political views on what appear to be local news sites. One campaign that the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab recently attributed to a Beijing marketing company included 123 websites in 30 countries.

Will Oremus contributed.

China’s Lunar New Year travel rush: extra trains, packed airports and stranded tourists

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3252229/chinas-lunar-new-year-travel-rush-extra-trains-packed-airports-and-stranded-tourists?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese transport authorities were bracing for the busy Lunar New Year travel period to reach its peak on Friday, as holidaymakers make their way home at the end of the break.

On Thursday alone, travellers made 315 million “cross-regional” trips by train, plane, bus, car and boat, according to the Ministry of Transport. That was up from 306 million on Wednesday and 301 million on Tuesday.

More than 1,200 extra train services have been added across the country to cope with the increased passenger numbers, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Friday.

Airports are also busy, with more than 2.35 million flights booked for Friday across China – the most of any day in the coming week, according to the civil aviation authority.

The Lunar New Year is China’s biggest holiday and this year runs for eight days instead of seven, as authorities try to boost domestic tourism and the sluggish economy. The holiday – which ends on Saturday – falls within a 40-day festive travel period, a time when millions make the pilgrimage to their hometowns to see family.

After the break, many travellers will be returning to the country’s more developed, affluent cities such as the capital, Beijing, as well as Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, according to Qunar, one of China’s biggest online travel agencies. Wuhan, Changsha and Hangzhou were also among the popular destinations for returning travellers.

China dad flies daughter, 7, home for Lunar New Year in plane, beats traffic

In the Yangtze River Delta region, an economic powerhouse, more train services have been added for cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Xuzhou to cope with the end-of-holiday rush, according to media reports in Shanghai. Travellers were expected to take some 2.55 million railway trips in the region on Friday.

Meanwhile, first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shenzhen have extended service hours for their subway systems in preparation for the large numbers of travellers heading home.

Chartered planes and trains have also been arranged for some migrant workers who returned to their hometowns for the break, bringing them back to cities including Shanghai, Guangzhou and Wenzhou, according to state media reports.

Many Chinese travellers have flocked to the tropical island of Hainan in the south or “ice city” Harbin in the northeast this Lunar New Year holiday, and their airports were expected to be packed to capacity on Friday.

Some 120,000 trips were expected through the airport in Haikou, the capital of Hainan, and 90,000 at Harbin’s airport, according to local media reports.

The influx of tourists in Hainan over the holiday period has meant those who did not book a return journey are finding it hard to get a plane ticket, with some having to pay for business class to get home. With many travellers stranded, the civil aviation authority is talking to the airlines to put on more flights out of Hainan.

Motorists are also finding it hard to leave the island, with ferry services from all three ports in Haikou temporarily suspended at midnight on Friday due to heavy fog. They were back up and running at around 8am, but there were long waits for cars to get on ferries at the ports. There have also been complaints of ticket shortages for the ferries, prompting the authorities to arrange extra services for people travelling by car in the coming days.

Year of the Dragon may spark short-lived interest in lizards as pets in Hong Kong

This year’s Lunar New Year break has seen a surge in travel compared to 2023. According to the railway authorities, 230 million train trips were taken in the peak travel period from January 26 to February 14.

Some 480 million trips are expected over the whole 40-day travel season – far more than the 348 million recorded in 2023 and the 410 million trips in 2019, before the pandemic.

India has become a major source of cybersecurity threats in China: security expert

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3251536/india-has-become-major-source-cybersecurity-threats-china-security-expert?utm_source=rss_feed

A series of cyberattacks originating from India have been highlighted in recent reports by Chinese cybersecurity firms, with the attacks targeting China and Pakistan, among others.

So far, the foreign ministries of China and India have not issued any responses.

One cyberattack on the Chinese military, which was intercepted by a cybersecurity organisation in China in December, was believed to be orchestrated by a group of hackers from India. The attack bore striking similarities to previous ones in terms of targets and methodologies, suggesting the involvement of the same group.

This group, identified as an advanced persistent threat (APT) and active since at least November 2013, was first discovered and named “Bitter” by American security firm Forcepoint and “Manlinghua” by Chinese company Qihoo 360 in 2016.

Over that time, the increasing exposure of Bitter’s activities has shed light on its political motives, as it primarily targets Pakistan and China, and focuses on government agencies, military and nuclear sectors.

Cybersecurity analysts suspect the group’s origins trace back to India, potentially with state support, based on IP address locations and linguistic patterns observed in the attacks. Moreover, Bitter is believed to be connected with several other groups that are suspected to be Indian, including Patchwork, SideWinder and Donot, among others.

“Contrary to popular belief that China’s cyber threats mainly come from the United States, professionals in the field point out that a significant number of attacks originate from South Asian countries,” said a Beijing-based security expert involved in the investigation of the attacks, who requested not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

China and India, the world’s two most populous nations, have a complex relationship. It is marked by border disputes and ongoing conflicts on the one hand, but also rising bilateral trade on the other.

Amid the cyber offensives, China’s foreign ministry has consistently refrained from public condemnation.

Similarly, the foreign ministry in India has not commented, though Indian media has occasionally criticised Chinese cyber intrusions, such as a December 2022 report by Outlook India alleging Chinese hackers targeted Indian medical research institutes and power grid infrastructure.

Russian hacker Aleksandr Ermakov linked to prominent 2022 Australia data breach

Bitter employs two primary attack strategies: spear phishing and watering hole attacks.

Spear phishing involves sending targeted individuals bait documents or links via email, which, when opened, deploy Trojans to download malicious modules, steal data and allow further instructions from the attackers.

Watering hole attacks compromise legitimate websites to host malicious files or create fake websites to trap victims, usually centred on content of interest to the target person, such as shared forum software tools.

“Despite not being the most sophisticated in technique, Bitter’s customised and varied approaches to different targets have proven effective. Just like telecommunications fraud, although many methods are simple, people are still fooled every year,” said the anonymous expert.

Bitter’s operations, primarily focused on intelligence gathering, may not appear destructive on the surface, but can lead to significant information breaches with immeasurable consequences.

According to disclosures by cybersecurity firms including Anheng, QiAnXin, Intezer, and Secuinfra, there were seven attacks in 2022 and eight in 2023 closely linked to Bitter, targeting Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mongolia and China.

These attacks varied from impersonating the Kyrgyzstan embassy to sending emails to the Chinese nuclear industry. Hackers also posed as military contractors offering anti-drone systems to the Bangladeshi Air Force and even exploited compromised email accounts to spread malicious files under the guise of New Year greetings.

“Given the broad net these attacks cast, it’s likely that such incidents are continually occurring in the background,” the expert said.

“When assessing the impact of cyberattacks, the focus is on the targets and consequences. Sometimes, sensitive industry victims cannot disclose breaches, and at other times, only traces of hackers’ activities are detected without direct losses,” he added.

“The actual harm caused by Bitter is difficult to quantify with the reported incidents. In most cases they cause little harm, but under certain circumstances, the incident represents just the tip of the iceberg of potential risks.”

Determined China mother spends US$180,000 to turn daughter into online star with videos, publicity, demands refund from agent after failure

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3251082/determined-china-mother-spends-us180000-turn-daughter-online-star-videos-publicity-demands-refund?utm_source=rss_feed

A mother in China who spent 1.3 million yuan (US$180,000) over two years in a failed bid to make her daughter an internet celebrity is suing the agent she used to recover her cash.

The mother, surnamed Wu from the southeastern province of Jiangsu, met an agent surnamed Chen, through a mutual connection.

Chen claimed to be a shareholder in film, television and culture companies, and boasted of significant influence within the entertainment industry.

Wu, whose daughter was at art school, viewed this as a chance to propel her to internet stardom and life as an entertainer.

Chen claimed he could help Wu’s daughter create high-quality promotional videos and leverage his industry connections for publicity and fame.

Wu paid 1.3 million yuan for Chen’s team to produce 125 film projects, 28 urban-themed videos, eight original songs and a music video for her daughter.

An additional 200,000 yuan was set aside for further promotions at a later stage.

WeChat records that were made public online, showed Chen’s detailed plans for turning Wu’s daughter into an internet celebrity.

“The first step is to create content. A cultural influencer needs a certain volume of content. Once we have enough, we can focus on promotion in the second stage, integrating trending topics and interactive interviews,” one message from Chen read.

“Our strategy centres on establishing her profile on two key platforms, with other social media accounts following suit. Uploading to every platform from the start proves ineffective,” another message said.

However, despite the well-structured plan, only 50 videos were completed over two years, and 30 uploaded online, with the production quality and click rate falling far short of those needed to make Wu’s daughter a recognised influencer.

Dissatisfied with the results, Wu filed a lawsuit against Chen, seeking to terminate the contract and recover the full 1.3 million yuan she had invested.

However, the court ruled that the agreement constituted a paid commission contract, entitling Wu to terminate the contract but obliging her to compensate Chen for “direct losses” and potential benefits from contract fulfilment.

Eventually, the court valued Chen’s work at 400,000 yuan (US$56,000) and ordered the remaining 800,000 yuan to be refunded to Wu.

The case, reported Litchi News, has elicited a range of reactions from online observers.

“She should have spent that money on cosmetic surgery, fitness, travel, or pets, and then posted about it on Xiaohongshu. That might have been a faster route to becoming an internet celebrity,” one person said.

“To be fair, the daughter aspired to be an internet celebrity, and her mother was willing to spend over a million yuan to help her realise her dream. That is quite admirable. Other parents might simply dismiss such a dream as unrealistic fantasies,” said another.

“Fame is a matter of destiny. It’s pointless to waste money like this,” a third person said.

“The money wasn’t entirely wasted – at least now she has become famous and is trending as the number one topic on Weibo,” said a fourth.

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Overseas Chinese tourists boost consumer spending in Year of the Dragon as Alipay transactions increase 7 per cent from 2019

https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3252187/overseas-chinese-tourists-boost-consumer-spending-year-dragon-alipay-transactions-increase-7-cent?utm_source=rss_feed

The Year of the Dragon may have signalled the return of the overseas Chinese tourist, with preliminary data from popular payment service Alipay showing an increase in transactions this year compared with 2019, the last time international borders were open before the onset of the pandemic.

Alipay operator Ant Group, the fintech business affiliated with Alibaba Group Holding, said in a statement that transactions made overseas by Alipay users from February 9-12 were 7 per cent higher than for the same holiday period in 2019, with a 45 per cent increase in Hong Kong, a clear sign of recovery for the outbound tourism sector.

Meanwhile, the value of Chinese consumer spending overseas recovered to 82 per cent of the 2019 level, according to Ant. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, Thailand, Singapore, South Korea, France, Australia and Canada were the top destinations for Chinese tourists, based on Alipay spending. In Hong Kong, 90 per cent of merchants in the city now accept the payment app.

China retail sales to weaken as falling home prices feed consumer insecurity: UBS

Alipay’s use as an international payment app has been facilitated by the Alipay+ campaign, in which 8 million merchants in over 70 countries signed up, while new policies in Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia that provide visa-free travel for Chinese passport holders also helped promote cross-border spending.

The payment data from Ant is expected to be followed by other data that will paint a picture of solid recovery in Chinese overseas tourism. Shares of Trip.com Group, China’s primary online travel agency, gained 2.5 per cent on Friday on expectations of a rebound in travel during the mainland Lunar New Year holiday period, which officially ends on February 17.

Separately, China’s food delivery and online booking giant Meituan said the daily spending on dining and entertainment by Chinese consumers during the holiday season increased 36 per cent from a year ago, offering hope that consumer spending has started to recover.

In another sign of robust consumer spending, China’s box office revenue during the holiday period exceeded 7 billion yuan (US$979 million) as of Friday, according to the box office tracker Dengta Data.

The Alipay data also revealed new trends among overseas Chinese tourists.

“Chinese globe-trotters are expanding [their] interests from traditional activities like shopping and tourism spot-hopping, to more immersive and unique local experiences,” Ant said.

For instance, the group spent 70 per cent more on food and beverage consumption this year compared with 2019, while money spent on intra city transport saw rapid growth thanks to the passion for “local travel”, Alipay said.

Chinese builder Redsun Properties faces winding-up threat in Hong Kong as debt crisis goes from bad to worse

https://www.scmp.com/business/article/3252178/chinese-builder-redsun-properties-faces-winding-threat-hong-kong-debt-crisis-goes-bad-worse?utm_source=rss_feed

The debt crisis at Redsun Properties Group is going from bad to worse as it has missed payments on several offshore bonds since mid-2022 as China’s housing market struggles to overcome a three-year slump. Some bondholders have now moved to put the developer out of business.

The Bank of New York Mellon (London branch) has filed a winding-up petition against the firm for failing to repay at least US$228.5 million, the company said in a Hong Kong stock exchange filing on Friday. The debt is related to a US$200 million two-year junk bond due in September 2023 plus unpaid interest.

The petition was filed on February 14 in Hong Kong, according to the filing. The hearing date was not disclosed. Redsun said it is seeking legal advice on the matter. The US bank acts as the trustee of the bond, according to the bond offering document published in 2021.

The litigation highlights the swift downfall of the developer based in Nanjing in eastern Jiangsu province, which only listed in Hong Kong less than six years ago. It also shows how some foreign creditors have lost patience with many Chinese builders as home sales have slumped after a liquidity crunch triggered by Beijing’s “three red lines” policy, and were later compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The same Hong Kong court last month granted a winding-up order against China Evergrande Group after it failed to reorganise about US$20 billion of offshore debts. The Evergrande case has been billed as the biggest corporate collapse of a Hong Kong-listed entity, based on its US$337 billion of total liabilities.

Markets see a silver lining for China property in Evergrande’s liquidation order

Since its last repayment of offshore bonds in April 2022, Redsun has defaulted on some of its US$1.5 billion dollar-denominated bonds, including in April and September last year. It hired Haitong International Securities and Linklaters as external advisers in August 2022 to deal with creditors.

“No hearing has taken place in relation to the petition and no winding-up order has been made by the High Court against the company,” the developer said in today’s filing. Redsun said it has been communicating with some bondholders to find a solution.

Zeng Huansha, the company’s chairman and controlling shareholder, is also under pressure. A creditor, Serica Agency Limited, has also filed a petition to foreclose his personal investment vehicle for failing to repay a US$275 million bond, according to an exchange filing last month.

Evergrande’s demise has opened the door for more winding-up petitions against indebted developers, independent market analyst Louis Tse Ming-kwong said. “Some banks are among the creditors, and they are also listed,” he said. “What else can they do but seek recourse from courts?”

Logan Group, which faced a hearing on Friday, was more fortunate. The High Court squashed petitions by creditors to liquidate two key units of the group. A group of bondholders that initially filed the petitions is planning to withdraw its action, after being satisfied with the Shenzhen-based builder’s restructuring proposals.

They were “reasonably happy with the situation”, and no other creditors stepped in to substitute for the original petitioner, Judge Anthony Chan said in his decision.

Additional reporting by Bloomberg News

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China-Australia relations: winemakers up Hong Kong shipments ‘hoping the door will open’ as Beijing ponders lifting tariffs

https://www.scmp.com/economy/global-economy/article/3252171/china-australia-relations-winemakers-hong-kong-shipments-hoping-door-will-open-beijing-ponders?utm_source=rss_feed

Australian winemakers have shipped millions of bottles of wine to Hong Kong in a bet that China will soon lift tariffs on Australian imports and revive a trade worth hundreds of millions of dollars, according to industry figures and trade data.

Australia sent wine worth almost US$800 million to China in the year to November 2020, when Beijing responded to a call in Canberra for an inquiry into the origins of Covid-19 by blocking imports.

But China has been lifting trade barriers on other goods as relations improve and Australian officials and industry expect a review of the wine tariffs begun by Beijing last year will lead to their removal next month.

Australia’s government said in December it was confident the tariffs would be lifted in early 2024. In November, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was the first Australian leader to visit China in seven years, hoping to improve relations.

A diplomatic confrontation over a suspended death sentence given by a Chinese court to an Australian writer should not imperil progress on trade, Australia’s trade minister said this week.

Trade data showed that Australian winemakers sent almost 2.5 million litres worth US$65.5 million to Hong Kong in December, up from around 685,000 litres a month in recent years and the most since September 2019.

Among those shipping to Hong Kong is DMG Fine Wine, whose brands include Handpicked and House of Arras.

Chief executive William Dong said DMG typically sold one or two containers of wine a year in Hong Kong, but now had 10 in the territory, each containing around 12,000 bottles.

Most of the wine is earmarked for China, he said.

“We’re hoping the door to China will open and everything will go in … We are getting everything ready to go,” said Dong.

Hong Kong is a trade hub and potential staging post for deliveries into mainland China. It did not impose tariffs on Australian wine.

The shipments to Hong Kong are far below the roughly 10 million litres of wine a month that Australia sent to China before the tariffs.

The number of shippers was also smaller, with Industry body Wine Australia saying there were 531 exporters to Hong Kong in December, 138 more than a year earlier but less than the 2,366 who exported to mainland China in December 2019.

China’s appetite for wine has fallen in recent years – part of a global trend of declining alcohol consumption compounded in China by a change in preferences towards beer and spirits – and rival exporters such as France and Chile have taken Australia’s share of the market.

The loss of sales to China has contributed to a severe oversupply in Australia, where the amount of wine in storage has risen to more than two billion litres.

But Australian winemakers said they were optimistic that they can become the biggest shipper into China again within a few years.

“Lots of Chinese customers view Australian wine positively,” said Richard Burch, who said his company, Burch Family Wines, had sent around 1,500 bottles to Hong Kong to be used as samples for distributors in China if tariffs are lifted.

While less wine is being sold, Chinese drinkers are moving towards more expensive bottles, preserving margins for winemakers.

The average value of Australian wine sent to China rose from roughly US$4 a litre in 2016 to US$10 in late 2020, and the bottles shipped to Hong Kong in December were worth on average around US$26.50 a litre, customs figures accessed using Trade Data Monitor show.

The value of wine sent to Australia’s two other main export markets, Britain and the United States, is between US$1 and US$3 a litre.

The chief executive of Australia’s largest winemaker, Treasury Wine Estates, said China was a “significant growth opportunity” for Treasury’s higher-priced Penfolds wines.

Tim Ford said Treasury had not shipped wine for China to Hong Kong.

“What we plan to ship in this year ahead is sitting in the warehouses here in Australia,” he told analysts on Thursday.

Other major producers of wine in Australia including Casella Family Brands, Australian Vintage and Pernod Ricard did not respond to requests for comment.

Announcing its agreement with Canberra to resolve the wine tariff dispute in October, China’s commerce ministry said China was willing to meet Australia halfway through dialogue and consultation and to jointly promote the healthy development of economic and trade relations.

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China LGBT woman helps grandmother, 73, divorce, says split should encourage others to leave bad marriages, find happiness

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/gender-diversity/article/3251073/china-lgbt-woman-helps-grandmother-73-divorce-says-split-should-encourage-others-leave-bad-marriages?utm_source=rss_feed

A woman in China has announced the divorce of her 73-year-old grandma on mainland social media to encourage more women to leave unhappy relationships, whatever their age.

The woman from southern China’s Guangdong province, who uses the name Chris on Xiaohongshu, said she accompanied her grandmother to finalise her divorce on February 3.

Chris said her grandfather was cheating on her grandmother, which finally helped her make the decision to leave him after decades of unhappiness.

The woman in her 20s said she was the only one who supported her grandma’s decision.

To file for divorce, the woman needed her household registration booklet, which was at her daughter’s home.

Her son-in-law refused to give her the document and called her a “lunatic”, but relented when she told him how painful it was for her in the marriage.

Chris accompanied her grandmother to retrieve the booklet and persuade the other family members.

She also encouraged her, saying: “Even when the world does not take a woman’s words seriously, we need to stay calm and speak our minds bravely.”

A LGBT woman and feminist, Chris said she was inspired by her grandmother when she was a child.

The woman, who makes her living as an electrician and had very little formal education, taught her granddaughter that women are as capable as men, and need to support each other.

The elderly woman’s divorce story topped the trending list on Weibo, China’s equivalent of X, on February 4, with many congratulating her for “achieving spiritual freedom”.

“People always say the elderly are too old to get a divorce, but it is never too late for a woman to pursue happiness. I respect her,” said a woman on Xiaohongshu.

The divorce rate in China rose from 0.096 per cent in 2000 to 0.31 per cent in 2020.

The country put in place a 30-day cooling-off period for separating couples in 2021, bringing the divorce rate down to 0.2 per cent in 2022.

China’s population is ageing rapidly, with 280 million people. 19.8 per cent of its population, aged 60 or over in 2022.

Meanwhile, the percentage of elderly couples getting divorced is also on the rise. Beijing Xicheng District People’s Court documented that half its divorce cases were filed by people aged 60 or above in 2021.

Regina Ip hits back at criticism of domestic national security legislation, insists it will not turn Hong Kong into another mainland Chinese city

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-and-crime/article/3252161/regina-ip-hits-back-criticism-domestic-national-security-legislation-insists-it-will-not-turn-hong?utm_source=rss_feed

Top government adviser Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee has said domestic national security legislation will not turn Hong Kong into another mainland Chinese city, rebuffing foreign businessmen’s concerns that the proposed law will undermine the city’s judicial independence.

Ip, a lawmaker and the convenor of the government’s top decision-making body, on Friday told a radio programme that foreign countries had the wrong impression that the “one country, two systems” governing principle would disappear once the law was passed.

The governing principle, stipulated in the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution, guaranteed Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy for 50 years after Britain handed it over to China in 1997.

No envoys, business chambers oppose Hong Kong national security law: minister

According to Ip, some foreign countries also doubt the city would still have judicial independence after the passage of the law, which Hong Kong is duty-bound to enact under Article 23 of the Basic Law.

Asked whether Hong Kong’s internet and data operations would be affected after the legislation was enacted, Ip stressed the consultation document did not say it would involve handing over the city’s data to the mainland or vice versa, calling the concerns “completely wrong”.

“What worries many foreign businessmen the most is whether Hong Kong will be turned into another Chinese city. I think we should keep explaining to them,” she said.

Hong Kong’s Article 23 law likely to state maximum penalties for offences: minister

“Over the past few years, all consulates sent their representatives to listen to trials of some big cases. Our courts allowed them to listen and live-streaming services started to be offered. Have they found any irregularities in court? No.”

Ip stressed the relevant legislative work in Hong Kong was being carried out in accordance with the city’s common law system.

“The amended regulations and reference examples are all common laws and regulations, and will not affect judicial independence, the rule of law and one country, two systems at all,” she added.

Secretary for Justice Paul Lam Ting-kwok earlier said he had heard no objections to the proposed law at meetings and that residents and “foreign friends” understood Hong Kong had a constitutional responsibility to enact its own national security legislation.

But some foreign business chambers and diplomats told the Post they were concerned about risks to investment and potential enforcement standards that could affect their nationals under the local security law, despite many of them showing public support for the proposed legislation.

More clarity needed on Hong Kong security law to reassure investors, experts say

A local national security law is mandated by Article 23 of the Basic Law and will create a string of new offences.

These are: treason; insurrection, incitement to mutiny and disaffection, and acts with seditious intention; sabotage; foreign interference; theft of state secrets and espionage.

The legislation will sit alongside the Beijing-imposed national security law, which outlaws secession, subversion, terrorist activities and collusion with foreign forces.

Public consultation on the new legislation will end on February 28 and the government has said it plans to put the bill to the legislature this year.

US’ show of strength to China, what to expect from Prabowo, PLA marriage in spotlight: SCMP’s 7 highlights of the week

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3252085/us-show-strength-china-what-expect-prabowo-pla-marriage-spotlight-scmps-7-highlights-week?utm_source=rss_feed

We have selected seven stories from this week’s news across Hong Kong, mainland China, the wider Asia region and beyond that resonated with our readers and shed light on topical issues. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider .

The US is likely to deploy nearly half of its aircraft carriers in the western Pacific this year, in a signal of deterrence against the increasing military activity in the region by China and North Korea, analysts said.

Weeks after Singaporeans were left fuming from an American lawmaker’s grilling of TikTok’s CEO over his nationality and links to China’s Communist Party, the island nation’s top envoy in Washington has suggested the line of questioning went too far and could tarnish perceptions of the US.

Hong Kong has lost some of its glamour for mainland travellers amid heightened competition from other Chinese cities over prices and number of attractions, industry commentators have said, as many visitors make only day trips to the financial hub during the Lunar New Year holiday.

Widodo, who will hand the presidency over to Prabowo on October 20 is barred by the constitution from a third term, but his influence will still be in play through his son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, Indonesia’s vice-president-elect, making his clan the new guard in the world’s third-largest democracy, analysts said.

Travelling to multiple Chinese cities late last year, Derek Cheung, an investor from Singapore, found himself having trouble making simple, everyday payments in China’s increasingly cashless society.

“Frankly, I see it as a challenge that comes with being a foreign tourist,” Cheung lamented. “China’s payment methods cater largely to locals.”

Thailand’s cannabis industry is lawyering up as the cabinet weighs a bill to roll back legal weed, which industry insiders say is propelled by political calculation rather than sound public health policy.

A man in China has been sentenced to 10 months in prison for destroying a “military marriage” by dating and cohabiting with the wife of a serving People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldier.

China unlikely to cut major policy rate amid inflation, yuan pressure as ‘risk versus reward doesn’t seem attractive’

https://www.scmp.com/economy/economic-indicators/article/3252141/china-unlikely-cut-major-policy-rate-amid-inflation-yuan-pressure-risk-versus-reward-doesnt-seem?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s central bank is poised to keep cash conditions and monetary policy broadly stable as policymakers focus on a weakening currency.

The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) will leave the rate on its one-year policy loans – called the medium-term lending facility (MLF) – steady at 2.5 per cent as soon as Sunday, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of analysts.

Most of the analysts see either a small increase in the MLF issuance, or little changed from the loans maturing this month. Some 499 billion yuan (US$69.8 billion) worth of loans are due to expire.

The PBOC is expected to hold its liquidity operations on the first working day after the Lunar New Year holiday ends, which would be Sunday.

While calls are mounting for Chinese authorities to do more for the economy as consumer prices fall at the fastest pace since 2009, concerns about yuan volatility have tied the PBOC’s hands.

The central bank last month disappointed investors expecting the first cut in MLF since August.

Policymakers later announced a bigger-than-expected reduction in the reserve requirement ratio (RRR) for banks, one of the several measures to boost sentiment.

“It seems too rushed to cut MLF rates” barely two weeks after the RRR cut, said Becky Liu, head of China macro strategy at Standard Chartered.

“It may have limited impact in terms of lowering loan rates, but greater negative implication on yuan. The risk versus reward of a MLF cut now doesn’t seem attractive.”

A renewed recovery? 4 takeaways from January’s manufacturing, services data

China’s sluggish economy and diverging monetary policy from the US is heaping pressure on the local currency.

The offshore yuan sank to a three-month low against the US dollar Tuesday as traders pared bets of an early pivot by the US Federal Reserve following stronger-than-expected inflation data.

Keeping the MLF steady for a sixth straight month may have its risks as sentiment worsens on weakening demand, property market turmoil and capital outflows.

The situation might be dire enough for the central bank to lower the lending rate as early as possible, according to analysts at Everbright Securities and Mizuho Securities.

“A cut can’t be ruled out but that’s not our base case,” said Michelle Lam, Greater China economist at Societe Generale SA. “The PBOC may wait for further evidence on growth slowdown.”

The data so far is giving a mixed picture on the signs of recovery. Loan growth in China fell to a record low last month, underscoring weak borrowing demand, whereas a private gauge of China’s factory activity expanded for a third month in January, contrasting with weakness in official data.

Policymakers have ramped up support in recent weeks amid a rout in the nation’s stock market, but more steps may be needed.

“MLF rate cut is still necessary, but the timing could be later considering currency stability, while market continue to adjust their expectation of Fed rate cut,” said Xiaojia Zhi, head of research at Credit Agricole CIB.

The “concern” is measures taken by China to support the economy may not be “aggressive enough to imminently turn around the market sentiment”.

Indonesia-China ties: will president-elect Prabowo confront Beijing or maintain Widodo’s economic deals?

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3252127/indonesia-china-ties-will-president-elect-prabowo-confront-beijing-or-maintain-widodos-economic?utm_source=rss_feed

Following Indonesia Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto’s projected victory in Wednesday’s presidential election, based on unofficial quick-count results, many are concerned about how the former general will steer the country’s foreign policy, particularly when it comes to China.

While some analysts believe Prabowo may take a more hardline stance towards Beijing, based on his past nationalistic rhetoric and military background, others say he is likely to maintain the pragmatic approach of outgoing President Joko Widodo, who has fuelled much of the country’s rapid infrastructure development over the last decade with Chinese investment.

Tom Pepinsky, a professor and director of the Southeast Asia Programme at Cornell University, said the question of how Prabowo would play off China and the United States was an interesting one, but predicted Jakarta would “continue to be not-aligned in its foreign policy outlook”.

Chinese firms to benefit if front-runner Prabowo seals Indonesian election win

Indeed, Prabowo promised as much when articulating his foreign policy on the campaign trail. During a November talk at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Jakarta, Prabowo told the audience Indonesia would “maintain our independent foreign policy”, saying the country would not join any military or geopolitical bloc while preserving good relations with all of its neighbours.

Nur Rachmat Yuliantoro, head of the international relations department at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, said Prabowo may use Indonesia’s non-aligned position to benefit from both of the superpowers’ competing interests in the country.

“He sees China as a major actor that can be a sufficient counterweight to the power of another major actor, the United States,” Nur said. “Indonesia is likely to continue to take a position in the middle while trying to maximise the benefits of available security guarantees.”

Indonesia has the world’s largest nickel reserves, and in 2020, banned the export of nickel ore as part of a strategy to establish a competitive electric vehicle and battery supply chain. China has been a keen investor, pumping US$3.6 billion into Indonesia’s nickel sector in the first half of 2022 alone.

Chinese investment has also been pivotal under Indonesia’s infrastructure push led by Widodo, notably in projects such as Southeast Asia’s first high-speed rail launched by Jakarta in October.

Several analysts said Prabowo was unlikely to do anything to upend the economic cooperation that Widodo established with China over the years, particularly through Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. China is Indonesia’s largest trade and investment partner.

Nur predicted that Prabowo would continue Widodo’s policies and maintain close ties with Beijing, “especially in the context of investment and infrastructure development”.

He argued that the relationship Indonesia had built up with China during Widodo’s time in office was “too valuable to be drastically altered” and that doing so would “only bring losses to Indonesia”.

During a visit to Jakarta last September, Chinese Premier Li Qiang pledged US$21.7 billion in new Chinese investment for Indonesia, adding to the previous commitment of US$44.89 billion when Widodo met Chinese President Xi Jinping last July.

“My best guess is that in the short term, things remain pretty stable because there’s not much incentive for change and Jokowi remains popular,” Pepinsky said, referring to Widodo’s popular nickname.

“And so for Prabowo, in terms of policy, just pressing forward like this is going to be fine.”

But Pepinsky also said the former general was not likely to get any cosier with China in the hopes of increased infrastructure funding, due to concerns about debt.

“I think he’s aware of the fate of countries like Sri Lanka and Kenya that have found themselves dependent on Chinese investments, and China does not renegotiate those debts.”

During a presidential debate last month, Prabowo said Indonesia was currently in a good position in terms of servicing its foreign debts at a rate that would prevent other countries from subverting its sovereignty.

“It turns out that currently our foreign debt, as a ratio to GDP, is one of the lowest in the world, at around 40 per cent,” he said. “With prudent and good management, and the right economic strategy, especially through downstreaming, we can now strengthen our bargaining position.

“I’m not too worried about other countries wanting to intervene with us. We are highly respected, we never default [on our debt]. We must have a strong defence force so that we cannot be intervened.”

Indonesia’s foreign debt in the third quarter of 2023 was recorded at US$393.7 billion, or 28.9 per cent of its GDP, according to data from the central bank.

But Chinese investments in certain areas of Indonesia have also become heavily scrutinised over issues including the large number of Chinese workers involved in these projects, environmental impacts, and worker safety issues, as in the case of Chinese-operated nickel smelters, which have seen numerous accidents and deaths in recent years.

Ahmad Rizky Umar, a lecturer at the School of Political Science and International Studies at Australia’s University of Queensland, said that such scrutiny had led Prabowo’s economic team “to look for other sources of investment” to diversify the country’s portfolio. However, he noted that as long as Chinese investment remained strong, it would likely be sustained.

One issue Prabowo will certainly face is the South China Sea, which Beijing claims almost entirely as its own. However, in his role as defence minister, Prabowo has expressed a preference for using diplomacy to deal with the territorial disputes between China and Asean members in the resource-rich waters.

In a statement following a 2021 Asean-China defence ministers’ meeting, Prabowo said dialogue and consultations based on mutual trust could resolve all issues in the disputed waterway, and that he supported continued negotiations on a South China Sea code of conduct that would delineate territorial claims and rights between all parties.

“If the South China Sea is well-managed, it will strengthen an equal, mutually beneficial partnership, which is badly needed to create global peace and stability,” he said in the statement.

However, when the topic of the South China Sea was raised during a presidential debate in January, Prabowo emphasised that Indonesia needed to reinforce its maritime defence capabilities so it could defend itself in the North Natuna Sea.

Indonesia walks ‘political’ tightrope with China over weapons trade with Manila

Segments of China’s unilaterally claimed nine-dash line overlap with Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone near the Natuna Islands, and China has claimed fishing rights within the waters, leading to several confrontations in the past. Prabowo’s talk of increased maritime defences suggests that he might be more strident about enforcing Indonesia’s sovereignty in that part of the ocean.

“I don’t see Prabowo provoking a fight, but it’ll be interesting to see what happens if there’s another incident [in the Natunas], which is almost bound to happen,” said Cornell’s Pepinsky.

Prabowo’s campaign manifesto also describes the South China Sea as a strategic challenge for Jakarta, and that future conflict between the US and China over the disputed waterway should be anticipated to minimise potential threats to Indonesia.

That minimisation may come in the form of further diplomacy. Pepinsky suggested that if China continued to pose strategic challenges to Indonesia’s Southeast Asian neighbours in the South China Sea, Prabowo might attempt to play a more “conciliatory” role.

“He’s going to be eager to be seen as the type of person who can sit down with Xi Jinping or any other Chinese head of state,” he said.

On foreign policy in general, the University of Queensland’s Umar said Prabowo would want to take on a more proactive international role than his predecessor.

For example, at a security dialogue in Singapore in June, Prabowo went off script when he put forward a peace proposal for the war in Ukraine without consulting Widodo. Ukraine described Prabowo’s proposal, which included a referendum on disputed territories, as “a Russian plan”.

Biden hails ‘new era’ in US-Indonesia ties as Jokowi appeals for Gaza ceasefire

Umar also argued that Prabowo would like “strengthen relations with the US at the defence level, especially in the context of the South China Sea”. Like many Indonesian generals, Prabowo gained extensive experience in the West as part of his military training. He received part of his education in the US’ Fort Bragg, now called Fort Liberty, as well as in Germany, illustrating Indonesia’s decades-long ties with the US when it comes to defence, something that would not be replicated by China soon.

“Prabowo will maintain the balance [in the US-China rising rivalry] by building stronger relations with the US in the defence sector, especially in the context of the modernisation of Indonesia’s defence equipment,” Umar said.

Indeed, something the former general has often talked about, both as a politician and as defence minister, is the importance of strengthening Indonesia’s military might, to turn it into a powerful country that is capable of defending its own interests. It remains to be seen if the interests he prioritises during his time in office align with or conflict with those of China.

China won’t ‘compete’ with other developing nations during WTO fishing talks, subsidies set to be discussed in Abu Dhabi

https://www.scmp.com/economy/global-economy/article/3252130/china-wont-compete-other-developing-nations-during-wto-fishing-talks-subsidies-set-be-discussed-abu?utm_source=rss_feed

China said it would not behave irresponsibly towards developing nations when countries try to strike a new World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement on combating overfishing later this month.

“We will not compete with other developing members,” Li Chenggang, Beijing’s ambassador to the WTO, told a press conference on Thursday.

After more than two decades of negotiations towards banning harmful subsidies that encourage overfishing and threaten the sustainability of the planet’s fish stocks, a deal was finally sealed at the WTO in 2022.

The agreement bans subsidies that contribute to fishing that is illegal, unreported or unregulated, or of overfished stock.

The deal also recognises so-called special and differential treatment for developing countries.

But some issues were left untouched, and the WTO’s 164 members hope to conclude a second package on subsidies contributing to overfishing and overcapacity at the global trade body’s 13th ministerial conference (MC13), to be held over four days in Abu Dhabi later this month.

It is down to states themselves to decide whether they are classed as developing or developed countries at the WTO. China is registered as a developing country.

As stipulated in the organisation’s rules, the draft agreement on fisheries provides flexibilities and advantages for developing countries, but some of them – notably India – are demanding greater flexibility.

Ahead of the meeting in Abu Dhabi, Beijing’s approach is being closely watched by many diplomats who believe China – one of the main countries granting fishing subsidies – should not take advantage of its status as a developing country but instead submit to the strictest rules provided for in the draft agreement.

“China is a responsible developing member,” Li said Thursday.

“We will make our own contribution commensurate with our capability, especially on SDG issues,” he said, referring to the UN’s sustainable development goals.

While some observers fear that India will derail the negotiations, “on fish subsidies, China remains committed to delivering a phase two agreement at MC13”, said Li.

“I believe we could reproduce the success of the MC12 [in 2022] if the delicate balance is drawn … and also the respective red lines and key concerns of members are appropriately addressed”, Li added.

Pacific Island leaders warn US failure to pass funding bill opens door to China

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/16/pacific-islands-us-funding-bill-china-relationship-joe-biden

Leaders of Pacific Island countries allied with the US have become increasingly anxious about the US congressional budget impasse that has delayed approval of vital new funding packages and warned that China is actively seeking to shift their allegiances.

The Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), the Marshall Islands (RMI) and Palau agreed to new 20-year funding programs with the United States last year under which Washington provides economic assistance, while gaining exclusive military access to strategic swaths of the Pacific.

But despite bipartisan support for the new programs, known as Compacts of Free Association (COFA), the funding is yet to be approved by Congress months later – even though the additional amount currently needed is a relatively small $2.3bn.

Republican James Risch, of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, led a 24-senator bipartisan group in sponsoring an amendment to include COFA funding in the contentious $95bn wartime aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan which was passed by the Senate this week.

Congressional aides say they are still working to find other ways of approving the funding, including by possibly adding it to emergency spending bills in March, but add there is no guarantee of success

The presidents of the three COFA countries have written repeatedly to congressional leaders stressing the need to approve the legislation, according to copies of the letter seen by the Reuters news agency.

In a joint letter to Senate leaders, dated 6 February, they said the legislation was needed to “strengthen our associations and enable them to endure.”

It warned that the delay had “generated uncertainty among our peoples” and “resulted in undesirable opportunities for economic exploitation by competitive political actors in the Pacific.”

“We … cannot overstate the importance to all of our nations of final approval by the U.S. Congress,” they wrote.

A 9 February letter from Palau’s president, Surangel Whipps, was explicit in warning that any delay played into the hands of China and politicians in Palau who wanted to accept Chinese economic inducements to shift the island nation’s diplomatic recognition of Taiwan to Beijing.

Letters dated from 12 and 13 February from the Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine carried similar warnings.

Copies of the letters from the individual leaders were made available to Reuters, but their recipients were not disclosed.

“There have been ‘carrot and stick’ efforts from the PRC to shift our alliances – including discontinuing support for Taiwan,” Heine wrote, referring to the People’s Republic of China. “Further delay … threatens to undermine confidence in the U.S. and to encourage some to agree to PRC enticements.”

The letters stressed the strategic importance of the COFA states, noting that they cover an expanse of the Pacific larger than the 48 contiguous United States and that Palau has hosted US missiles and early warning radars, while the Marshall Islands has the main US intercontinental ballistic missile testing range.

The Biden administration has repeatedly urged Congress to approve the COFA funding and stressed that China is waiting to take advantage.

“We reiterate our call on Congress to pass Compacts-related legislation as soon as possible,” a state department spokesperson said when asked about the delays.

The White House’s senior director for east Asia, Mira Rapp-Hooper, told the US Institute of Peace thinktank on Thursday that getting the COFAs funded was “really second-to-none in terms of our strategic tasks that we have to take on this year.”

“It just simply must be done,” she said.

‘Fortune beasts’: 5 divine Chinese creatures – dragon, phoenix, qilin, pixiu and turtle that bring power, prosperity and good fortune for life

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3250972/fortune-beasts-5-divine-chinese-creatures-dragon-phoenix-qilin-pixiu-and-turtle-bring-power?utm_source=rss_feed

The Year of the Dragon began on February 10.

The fire-breathing mythological beast, which is the fifth sign in the Chinese zodiac cycle, is considered a symbol of power, fortune, and prosperity in Chinese culture.

It is also one of the five auspicious creatures in ancient China folklore along with the phoenix, the turtle, pixiu, and qilin.

Here, the Post explains their special powers, and how to best utilise their power in daily life to bring good fortune.

Dragon

One of the earliest creatures of ancient Chinese legend, the dragon has thousands of years of history behind it.

It was believed to live in the water or the clouds, reveal itself during thunder and lightning, and display the power to control the forces of nature.

The earliest links of dragons to rain makes them a totem of ancient people, whose lives depended on agriculture.

It is said that the dragon’s early image, which features a combination of deer horns, a horse’s head, the eyes of a hare, a snake’s body, and carp’s scales, derived from various images of dragon totems of different ancient tribes.

It later became the symbol of imperial power and was worn exclusively on the robes of emperors.

An idiom still largely in use today, wang zi cheng long in Mandarin, means “hope one’s child will become a dragon”, and is used to describe parents who have lofty ambitions for their children.

Phoenix

This is a divine bird from ancient Chinese mythology that stands for love and immortality.

It was often paired with a dragon, symbolising the empress, the emperor’s only legitimate wife and most powerful woman in the imperial harem.

Pixiu

In Chinese mythologies, pixiu is a fierce beast with a giant mouth that consumes nothing but treasures.

Legend has it that the pixiu once irritated the Jade Emperor by eating too much at his birthday feast and relieving itself in his palace.

The emperor hit it on the bottom as a punishment, but accidentally removed its anus.

What was originally an unfortunate incident for the naughty pixiu was later considered as a blessing, as it suggested the creature could attract huge wealth but lose none.

It is common to see statues of the mythical creature in front of shops and pixiu charms on people’s wrists, as a symbol thought to bring good fortune.

Qilin

Also known as the Chinese unicorn, this is a single-horned colourful chimerical creature with the body of a deer, an ox’s tail and the hoofs of a horse.

The creature is said to be tender and never hurt anything living.

It rarely reveals itself and for this reason is considered an exceptionally auspicious omen.

Chinese folklore believes qilin has the power to bring them children, and some superstitious couples hang illustrations of it with the baby in their bedrooms in the hope that it would help them get pregnant with healthy children.

Turtle

Ancient Chinese people believed that turtle shells harbour the secret of the universe. Renowned for their longevity, turtles were also seen as a blessing to elderly people.

In modern days, people keep turtles at home, and let them wander freely in the domestic space to bring good feng shui to the house.

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Global green transition is re-energising China’s investments in Africa after pandemic slowdown

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3252032/global-green-transition-re-energising-chinas-investments-africa-after-pandemic-slowdown?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s increased appetite for metals and minerals to power its industries is fuelling a boom in Chinese investments and construction deals in Africa, after years of slowdown partly caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

African countries that have a Belt and Road Initiative cooperation agreement with China saw a 47 per cent jump in Chinese construction contracts and a 114 per cent increase in investments last year compared with 2022, according to the China Belt and Road Initiative Investment report for 2023 by the Griffith Asia Institute at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia.

The increase in 2023 saw Africa become the largest recipient of Chinese engagement, worth US$21.7 billion, overtaking Middle Eastern countries which saw US$15.8 billion in engagement.

Meanwhile, East Asian belt and road countries expanded their intake of Chinese investments by 94 per cent to US$6.8 billion in 2023, according to the report, which was produced in collaboration with the Green Finance & Development Centre of the Fanhai International School of Finance at Fudan University, Shanghai.

Observers expect the upward trend for Chinese investments in Africa to continue, though they say they will not reach the same levels that were seen a decade ago.

Powering the recovery is the race for raw minerals that are vital in the global transition to green energy.

Major players in this transition are the electric vehicle, battery and renewable energy industries, referred to as the “New Three” by the report’s author Professor Christoph Nedopil Wang, a director at Griffith Asia Institute.

He said the jump in belt and road investments in Africa has been “driven by the metal and mining sector” – such as in Botswana, where China’s MMG Ltd, which is controlled by the state-owned China Minmetals Corp, acquired Khoemacau copper mine owned by Cuprous Capital for US$1.88 billion in November last year.

Other resource-rich African countries including the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Namibia, Zimbabwe and Mali have all witnessed a rush by China to secure minerals, in particular raw materials such as cobalt and lithium which are essential for making electric vehicle batteries and electronics.

As well as leading the charge for vital minerals, Chinese companies have also won construction deals in energy, railways, roads and real estate in various African countries.

Nedopil Wang said these construction deals have been fuelled by the transport industry, such as in Tanzania, where Chinese companies are building major railways.

Last year, China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation and China Railway Construction Corporation won a second contract worth US$2.2 billion to build the sixth phase and final portion of a 2,561km (1,591 mile) standard gauge railway (SGR) in Tanzania, according to the China Global Investment Tracker by the American Enterprise Institute.

‘Clear need’ for China’s Belt and Road Initiative funding to go green in 2024

The Chinese companies will build the 506km line connecting the towns of Tabora in the mid-west of the country with Kigoma, on Lake Tanganyika near the Burundi and DRC borders. In 2021, the two Chinese entities were also appointed to construct the fifth phase of the SGR line, about 250km long, connecting the town of Isaka with Mwanza, the second-largest city in Tanzania.

Meanwhile, Chinese companies, including China National Petroleum Corp, China Energy Engineering Corporation, and China Communications Construction Company, last year won construction projects worth US$930 million in Tanzania. Plus Chinese firm Weihai Huatan is investing US$110 million to build the East Africa Commercial and Logistics Centre there.

Nedopil Wang, who is also a director at Green Finance & Development Centre, said the top destinations for investment and construction engagement were Tanzania, the DRC, Nigeria, Botswana, Algeria, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia.

In particular, in Zimbabwe, billions of dollars have been pumped into the production and processing of lithium, while in the DRC, which is the world’s largest producer of cobalt and a major source of copper, massive investments have been made by Chinese companies.

Chinese firm JCHX Mining, China Molybdenum, which is China’s largest producer of molybdenum, used to make alloys, and Contemporary Amperex Tech, the world’s largest battery producer, last year announced plans to invest more than US$4 billion in the DRC, according to China Global Investment Tracker data.

In Algeria, too, Chinese companies, including State Construction Engineering, China National Petroleum Corp and China Communications Construction won construction projects worth US$1.2 billion last year.

Nedopil Wang predicts a further recovery of belt and road investments and construction contracts in 2024. He said there is a clear need for investments to boost growth in support of the green transition both in China and in belt and road countries.

“This provides great opportunities for mining and minerals processing deals, technology deals such as electric vehicle manufacturing, battery manufacturing and green energy,” Nedopil Wang said.

What’s more, he said, continuing post-Covid investments by global banks, including development finance institutions such as the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and AIIB, will provide infrastructure opportunities for Chinese contractors.

But the Griffith Asia Institute’s report only talks about construction and investment, and does not comment on Chinese financing.

Yun Sun, co-director of the East Asia Programme and director of the China Programme at the Washington-based Stimson Centre, said: “As China reopens, investment will resume, but loans have always been the more significant portion of Chinese financing.”

Why China is on track to control African mineral transport route via Tazara line

Sub-Saharan geoeconomic analyst Aly-Khan Satchu said that Chinese investments are rebounding after a period of slowdown.

“The China-Africa engagement is self-evidently not the fair-weather variety but long-term and strategic,” he said.

“China increased its lending to those countries which were diligent about paying their debts during the recent tough times in a type of quid pro quo.

“I expect a further acceleration as African countries find it easier to access funds [such as Ivory Coast and Benin Eurobonds] and China continues to look at a longer term horizon.”

Mark Bohlund, a senior credit research analyst at REDD Intelligence, said Chinese lending to Africa is likely to pick up, but it will remain well below the levels that were seen in 2010-2015.

He said this is primarily because most African governments are now managing considerably higher debt loads, both to domestic and external creditors, and are unable to absorb much new lending.

“So I expect new debt disbursements to be connected to principal repayments on previous loans for countries like Angola, Cameroon and Kenya, which already owe Chinese creditors significant sums,” Bohlund said.

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Crime in Chinatown has been a focus of arena talks. It’s nearly flat.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/02/15/chinatown-dc-crime-arena-leonsis/2024-02-15T16:14:56.057Z

D.C.’s Chinatown has long been a kaleidoscope of humanity.

The perfume peddlers, the Black power guys with their mics, the drunken hockey fans, the scalpers, the Asian grandmothers with the giant wheelie shopping bags, the toddler meltdowns because Mommy wouldn’t buy the $20 spinning-light thing at the arena’s ice skating show have all been there.

And that’s just the stuff I’ve seen over the past 25 years.

“There used to be this homeless Caucasian guy who grabbed at all the women I worked with, on their way to the office right there,” said Byron Sullivan, who used to work in the accounting department of a nonprofit right next to the magnificent Chinatown arch he pointed to on Thursday, before shrugging. “It’s the city.”

Sullivan was headed to check out the diner that recently opened inside the Crimson Whiskey Bar when he stopped to puzzle at a new storefront that seemed a strange addition to the entertainment district.

There, under the arch, was a hub for police and social service providers that the city opened to fanfare this week. It’s an attempt by Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) to address elements of Chinatown that have always been around, but are now in the spotlight over Monumental Sports & Entertainment CEO Ted Leonsis’s efforts to move the Wizards and Capitals from the Capital One Arena to Northern Virginia.

“These hubs are one more way we can bring city services closer to the community and stay connected to residents and businesses in the neighborhood,” Bowser said at the hub’s opening on Monday. “When we talk about a whole-of-government approach to public safety, these are the people and teams who are working together every day to keep our city safe and healthy, and we are grateful for their wide range of expertise, compassion, and commitment to our community.”

Ever since the sports tycoon announced he’s leaving D.C., crime in Chinatown has been under a microscope — in part because of public comments he and his staff have made.

And yes, total crimes in Police Service Area 101, which includes the arena, are up in the past year, comparing most of 2023 to 2022.

By how much?

Four. Four incidents.

The Crime Card stats from D.C. police show that between Feb. 15, 2022, and Feb. 15, 2023, there were 597 crimes reported.

Between Feb. 15, 2023, and Feb. 15, 2024, there were 601.

Over that same time, violent crime went down by eight incidents — there were fewer assaults with a deadly weapon and robberies than in the previous year.

The thing that went up was property crime — there were two more burglaries, 41 more thefts and three more cars stolen.

We’re not even counting the legal crimes that happen inside Capital One Arena — $6 bottles of water and $17 tall boys of beer.

In other words, Chinatown is not the deadly pit of violent hell that would make two huge franchises escape to Virginia.

If you want to play the crime statistic game, a quick search of the Alexandria police district that Leonsis is proposing as the new home of the Caps and the Wizards — a sprawling 181L which includes shopping centers and vacant land — returns more than 500 incidents in the past year.

And if you really want to talk about crime in Chinatown, let’s look back at the times before the arena opened in 1997. Waaaay back.

“Chinese gunmen, of a type more daring and cunning than the American gangster and racketeer, have killed with impunity in the Nation’s Capital during the last decade,” wrote William E. Peake, in the July 21, 1929, edition of The Washington Post.

One night on Oct. 14, 1928, “spouting automatics shattered the quiet early Sunday night,” killing two members of rival gangs in Chinatown, bringing the total to seven unsolved murders in the neighborhood.

Nothing like this is happening in today’s Chinatown.

The neighborhood did have a police substation that closed before the pandemic and Michael Shankle, chairman of an Advisory Neighborhood Commission in Chinatown, said they’ve been fighting to get it back. He sees the new hub as an answer to their requests, especially because it has a social services aspect.

But the public focus on the neighborhood right now is distorting the truth. This is not about crime, although Leonsis and his employees floated that as the reason they’re fleeing.

“One of the things I lived in fear of?” Leonsis said in an interview with NBC4 News last week. “A fan gets injured. A fan is robbed.”

Oops, maybe he’s forgetting that the biggest story of a fan getting injured at the arena was when he allegedly assaulted a jeering Jason Hammer, who was a 20-year-old hockey fan when Leonsis grabbed him by the neck and threw him to the ground after Hammer led a mocking chant against the Caps owner in a 2004 loss to the Flyers.

Though Hammer didn’t press charges after Leonsis called to apologize, the National Hockey League fined the owner $100,000 and suspended him for a week.

Leonsis has walked back his finger-pointing at crime as the reason. It’s been laid out by many journalists that it’s a super-sweet deal for Leonsis to move his teams to Virginia, where taxpayers will foot much of his bill.

But shining the light on crime the way he did and the way his employee did at a town hall meeting last summer gave too many businesses the green light to blame crime for their decisions to leave D.C.

We’re a downtown struggling with the new world of white-collar workplaces upended by the pandemic and the shift to hybrid schedules.

The restaurant industry cited that massive population shift as one of the key reasons in so many restaurant closures. But they also cite rising food costs and staff shortages that are a crisis across the country.

More than 50 restaurants closed in D.C. last year

D.C. went through a similar panic when Zengo and Fuddruckers pulled out of Chinatown almost a decade ago (was anyone besides my 9-year-old really upset that Fuddruckers and their sneeze-guard garnish bar left in 2017?).

While crime is increasing in pockets of the city, and no amount of crime is okay, the conversation changes the perception of a city, which in turn frightens tourists, consumers and investors away.

The community safety hub that Bowser opened on H Street here wasn’t very busy this week.

The guys who stand at the top of the Gallery Place Metro said they won’t go check it out. Maybe they will, eventually.

US House passes three bills on China human rights, Asia-Pacific cooperation

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3252124/us-house-passes-three-bills-china-human-rights-asia-pacific-cooperation?utm_source=rss_feed

Three pieces of US legislation focused on China’s human rights situation and US security cooperation with Asia-Pacific allies cleared the Republican-controlled House of Representatives on Thursday.

The first of the three, introduced by California Republican Young Kim, authorises further action to protect China’s Uygur populations from alleged human rights abuses, including appointing a “special coordinator for Uygur issues” in the US State Department. It passed 414-6.

The second, sponsored by Massachusetts Democrat Jim McGovern, amends the Tibetan Policy Act of 2002 – which codified much of US political and programmatic support for Tibet – to authorise efforts to counter Beijing’s disinformation about the autonomous region. It passed 392-28.

The third, sponsored by the lead Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Gregory Meeks, establishes an inter-parliamentary working group between Washington and the three other member countries of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue: Australia, India and Japan. It passed 379-39.

This follows the House’s passage of a bill on Tuesday that restricts funds from the State Department and America’s international development agency (USAID) from flowing into China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

Now the bills must pass the full Democratic-controlled Senate before heading to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.

Speaking on the House floor earlier in the week, Kim stressed that her bill, The Uygur Policy Act of 2023, would address shortcomings in the US’s existing approach to human rights abuses in Xinjiang, home to most of China’s Uygur population.

In addition to authorising funding for advocates to speak in majority-Muslim countries, the bill mandates Uygur language instruction at the State Department’s training institute for its diplomats.

It further directs the US government’s overseas media agency to disseminate information about Beijing’s violation of Uygur human rights – violations that Beijing has repeatedly denied.

China to more tightly control ethnic minority discussion to temper ‘risks’

“Chairman Xi is trying to rebrand Xinjiang as a business and tourist destination and seeks to erase Uygurs from the international community’s memory,” Kim said, referring to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

In supporting McGovern’s bill, Kim noted that the same erasure was being imposed on Tibetans.

The Promoting a Resolution to the Tibet-China Conflict Act would make it official US policy that “Tibet” refers not only to the autonomous region as defined by the Chinese government but also the Tibetan areas of Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces.

While Washington considers Tibet part of the People’s Republic of China, it does not hold that Beijing’s control over the region is consistent with international law.

Meeks, speaking earlier in the week about his bill, Strengthening the Quad Act, said “China’s growing global influence and authoritarian model is serving to undermine freedom in the Indo-Pacific and beyond”.

Sino-American ties competitive despite being ‘notably stabilised’: US envoy

“We need to work with fellow democracies in the region to showcase open markets and open societies,” he added.

The Quad was established in 2004 for humanitarian and disaster relief efforts, but remained largely dormant until 2017.

Resurrected by then-US president Donald Trump as a group of democracies against an “autocratic” China, the alliance has since been embraced by Biden as part of his Indo-Pacific Strategy.

In March 2021, Biden elevated the group to the leaders’ level and hosted the first-ever Quad leaders’ summit.

Meeks on Wednesday said his bill would “help sustain political support and adequate resources for the Quad in all four countries”.