• Flood of Chinese imports could renew trade tensions, threaten U.S. jobs
• [World] More couples are saying 'I do' in China
• Covid pushed foreign students out of China. Will politics, red tape and poor job prospects keep them away?
• China and New Zealand are a ‘force for stability’ in a turbulent world, says Foreign Minister Wang Yi
• China’s former anti-terrorism chief Liu Yuejin under investigation for corruption
• Europe moves to join China and the US in the Arctic gold rush
• China food security: 530,000 new germ plasma resources collected during largest-ever survey
• Taiwan’s concerns grow over Quemoy waters as mainland China steps up ‘normal’ patrols
• China-Russia ties set to deepen with another presidential term for Putin
• China international flights are finally starting to bounce back, buoyed by easing of border controls and need to elevate economy
• Talented China girl, 12, teaches college-level maths online, attracts 2.9 million followers and sparks debate about child prodigies
• Gut bacteria could play a role in eye disease, China-UK study finds
• South China Sea: could Japan be drawn to help defend Philippines in 3-way summit with US?
• Chinese team’s ultra-black coating could make camera, space telescope images better
• Cambodia urged to target ‘key figures’ as Chinese scam gangs defy crackdowns in ‘sin city’
• Risk warning as new China ‘blind box socials’ trend sees growing numbers of young people meet up with strangers for activities
• Beijing visit shows China and Angola are redefining economic relationship for a post-oil, post-loans era
• China’s corruption watchdog zeroes in on cadres’ fake business investments
• Filipino mail-order brides trafficked to China: alarm in Philippines over links to Chinese organised crime
• China’s economy rebounds at start of 2024, but property drag continues
• Hong Kong’s Gaw Capital bets on ‘China plus one’ opportunities in Vietnam and Mexico, AI-boom driven US office market growth to offset mainland woes
• ‘Sexual shame’: China holds online professional circumcision contest to correct misconceptions, promote positive attitudes, levels of acceptance
• CATL, the little-known Chinese battery maker that has the US worried
• ‘All ethnic groups matter’: new Chinese textbook cites splits in the West to justify Beijing’s integration policies
• Russia-China relations will become stronger, Putin says in post-election victory speech
• China’s focus on hi-tech, advanced sectors could hold key to revival

Flood of Chinese imports could renew trade tensions, threaten U.S. jobs

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/03/18/china-imports-trade-cars-electronics/2024-03-14T18:37:49.267Z

Chinese factories are flooding global markets with cars, appliances, computer chips and electronics, setting the stage for a fresh round of trade tensions with the United States and Europe, economists said.

China’s output dwarfs its domestic needs — especially with a property bubble weighing on the economy — so prices for its goods are falling. In February, U.S. imports from China cost 3.1 percent less than one year ago, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said on Friday.

That helps the Federal Reserve’s fight against inflation. But those low-priced Chinese goods may cost American manufacturers sales, threatening the Biden administration’s election-year hopes of boosting the number of factory jobs. China’s factory output in the first two months of the year rose 7 percent over the same period in 2023, the government said on Monday.

“You just have expanding Chinese capacity in a range of sectors, some sectors that are strategic, other sectors that are priorities for the U.S. and Europe. And that’s generating tension,” said economist Brad Setser, an Obama administration Treasury Department official. “The rest of the world also wants to produce manufactured goods.”

Beijing over the past few years invested in new factories to meet demand from American consumers who splurged on imported goods during the pandemic and to develop high-tech industries such as electric vehicles and batteries, which the Chinese government sees as essential.

Since the end of 2019, China’s manufacturing output, already No. 1 in the world, has expanded by roughly one-quarter, according to Capital Economics in London. U.S. factory production over the same period was flat and remains 7 percent below its 2007 peak.

The result, according to various measures of China’s trade performance, has been a growing imbalance in global trade. China’s current account surplus as a percentage of global output, one broad indicator, is larger now than during the period that preceded President Donald Trump’s imposition of tariffs on most Chinese imports and is close to an all-time high, according to Neil Shearing, chief economist for Capital Economics.

“There is a need to better balance global trade,” he said.

China’s surplus in manufacturing goods trade as a share of the global economy, a second measure, is almost twice as large as Japan’s in the late 1980s, when many Americans feared the Japanese economy was destined to become the world’s largest, according to Setser’s calculations.

As China’s global manufacturing dominance swells, the stakes are high for automakers, especially in Europe. China in recent years has emerged from auto industry obscurity to pass Germany in auto exports.

Chinese factories can churn out 40 million cars each year, 15 million more than are needed to satisfy domestic demand. The 5 million cars China exported last year were roughly five times its 2020 total, according to Michael Dunne, a San Diego-based industry consultant, who said that figure could double in coming years.

Chinese automakers already are Mexico’s top supplier. China’s BYD, backed by Warren Buffett, sells one electric model for about $15,000, which helped it overtake Tesla late last year as the world’s largest EV producer.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said earlier this year that Chinese companies would “pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world” unless they face new trade barriers.

The battle for auto industry supremacy is just one element of a worsening trade climate between China and its major customers in Europe and the United States.

European officials said this month that an ongoing trade probe found “sufficient evidence” that China was subsidizing production of electric vehicles in a manner that could harm Europe’s automakers. A decision on initial tariffs could come by July.

The U.S. auto market is already shielded by tariffs. Under the USMCA trade agreement, vehicles also must meet regional rules of origin that would prevent Chinese companies from exporting to the United States cars made in Mexico.

But Chinese vehicles eventually might land here via South Korea or other nations that have free-trade agreements with the United States, analysts said.

A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington dismissed concerns about the country’s swollen manufacturing sector.

“Excessive production capacity is a relative concept. One cannot limit demand to one country or region, but need to see things in the context of economic globalization,” said Liu Pengyu, head of the embassy’s information and public affairs section.

Concerns over Chinese manufacturing dominance flared last week, as the United Steelworkers union petitioned the office of U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai seeking an investigation of China’s shipbuilding industry.

The steelworkers, backed by four other unions, said China had employed “nonmarket policies” in a deliberate 20-year strategy to dominate global shipbuilding. Tai has 45 days to decide whether she will pursue an investigation, which could authorize the president to levy tariffs on Chinese vessels.

Chinese economic planners have long favored state-owned firms in scores of industries, with cut-rate financing, cheap or even free land, reduced electric bills and other assistance. In total, the generous aid — equal to more than 1.7 percent of China’s economy — is more than twice as large as in other countries, including the United States, according to a study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

In 2019, China spent more on industrial subsidies than it spent on national defense, the report said.

The International Monetary Fund warned last month that China’s manufacturing subsidies were diverting state funds to ventures offering subpar returns and were creating “significant domestic challenges.” Such measures could create “excess capacity” and tilt the economic playing field in favor of state enterprises rather than private companies, the fund said in its latest review of the Chinese economy.

In December, Chinese leaders meeting in their annual central economic work conference acknowledged problems including a lack of domestic demand and “overcapacity in some industries.”

China’s economy has typically emphasized investment in industrial facilities and real estate developments. Consumer spending accounts for just 40 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) compared with roughly 70 percent in the United States.

The combination of weak consumer demand and robust factory production leaves China with a surplus of goods that it needs to unload on global markets.

The solution to the country’s lopsided trade profile lies in boosting the purchasing power of Chinese consumers, enabling them to buy more of what Chinese factories produce. To do that, the government in Beijing would need to redirect financial support from the politically powerful state enterprises to Chinese households. And it shows no sign of doing that.

Instead, amid a property market crash and slowing domestic growth, Chinese leaders are betting on exporting their way out of economic trouble.

Flooding foreign markets with surplus goods should help ease global inflation. Lower-cost Chinese goods likely trimmed 0.15 percentage points off the U.S. inflation rate last year and will remain a relative bargain for U.S. shoppers through the first half of this year, according to Goldman Sachs.

But the excess production threatens a handful of industries that are key to the administration’s hopes of spurring a manufacturing revival, said economist Eswar Prasad of Cornell University, former head of the International Monetary Fund’s China division.

China’s emergence as a global manufacturer at the start of the 21st century involved a range of products across numerous industries: clothing and textiles, electronics, furniture, and industrial equipment. More than two decades later, China is the world’s top manufacturing nation, accounting for 31 percent of global manufacturing value added, according to the United Nations.

The United States is a distant second, with 17 percent.

“China’s economy is much larger than it was a couple of decades ago. So this shock could be even larger than the previous one,” Prasad said.

The irony is that China’s current export boom comes as both Beijing and Washington are promoting greater self-reliance. The Biden administration, reacting to shortages of medical gear and computer chips during the pandemic, is using tax credits and government subsidies to spur domestic production. And Chinese President Xi Jinping wants to reduce his economy’s dependence on foreign demand even as he makes foreigners more dependent on China.

But after more than four decades of growing ties, it is proving difficult to thin the commercial relationship.

The impact of China’s colossal manufacturing output is being felt in some unexpected ways.

China last year opened 17 new plants that convert oil or gas into virgin resin, the raw material used to make plastic water bottles. The expanded production has driven down global prices, making recycled plastic less attractive to bottle manufacturers, said Steve Alexander, head of the Association of Plastic Recyclers.

“That’s a huge deal. That changes the economics, and we’re just beginning to see the impact of that in the marketplace,” he said.

One Midwestern recycler is considering closing its doors, after losing a pair of recent contracts to a company using the lower-cost material. It may be a sign of what’s to come.

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[World] More couples are saying 'I do' in China

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-68552103

Covid pushed foreign students out of China. Will politics, red tape and poor job prospects keep them away?

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3255815/covid-pushed-foreign-students-out-china-will-politics-red-tape-and-poor-job-prospects-keep-them-away?utm_source=rss_feed

In the past few weeks, China has come up with a series of measures to revive the number of inbound travellers and students to pre-pandemic levels. In the first of a two-part series, Meredith Chen looks at why some overseas students are hesitant to sign up for study in China.

When China abandoned its Covid-19 restrictions and reopened its borders a year ago, hopes were high that international students would return.

New enrolments were at an all-time high in 2019 just before the pandemic hit but within a year that number had halved.

Some students have since returned and analysts are optimistic the number will climb this year, citing a time lag for fresh enrolments and the gradual restoration of flights, academic programmes and logistics.

But prospective students appear to be cautious. They, along with present and former students in the country, say geopolitical tensions, campus interactions, red tape and gloomy employment prospects have dampened their enthusiasm for studying in the country.

‘Confusion’ over China’s spy laws could be deterring foreign students: academic

Amy Gadsden, executive director of China initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania, said that with shrinking foreign investment in the country, China experience was no longer valued as much as before.

“It used to be that many students wanted to go to China, study China, and understand Chinese because they thought it would give them an advantage in the job market,” Gadsden said. “That was a big driver of student interest all through the 2010s. But that’s no longer there.”

“There’s not a sense that your job prospects are going to be greatly enhanced by having spent time in China in a way that was true 15 years ago.”

And for students who are interested in China from a national security perspective, they must balance their interest in spending time in the country with concerns that it could affect their ability to get a security clearance for future jobs, she added.

Chinese security agencies tell students studying abroad to beware of spy risk

Jack Allen, a British graduate of a two-year programme at the Yenching Academy of Peking University, said there were varying degrees of concern among his cohort that time spent in China might become a stumbling block for future job opportunities upon returning home.

“Even before applying, I remember reading articles about former Yenching scholars being questioned by the FBI about their studies upon their return to the US,” said the 25-year-old, who had considered a career path in public service.

“I did, in the back of my mind … worry about how my experiences would be looked at and received by future employers.”

He considered himself “lucky so far”, having secured a position as an events and communications executive for the British Chamber of Commerce in China after graduating last July.

But the risk has deterred many of his peers from setting foot in mainland China to study, with some choosing “safer and easier options” such as short-term visits or studying at language centres in Taiwan, Allen said.

He says the situation is paradoxical. At a time when in-depth knowledge of China is sorely needed, talented students are discouraged from gaining first-hand experience because of concerns that time spent in the country could be viewed negatively.

While no official figures have been released for the 202223 academic year, US ambassador to China Nicholas Burns estimated there were only about 350 American students in China in 2022.

That was a dramatic drop from a high of almost 15,000 in the 2011-2012 academic year, according to data from the Institute of International Education, a New York-based non-profit sponsored by the US Department of State.

According to data released by the Chinese Ministry of Education, the number of international students freshly enrolled in higher education institutions peaked in 2019 with a total of 172,571. The figure dropped to 89,751 in 2020 when the pandemic hit before slowly climbing to 114,112 in 2022.

Chinese embassy cautions students after ‘interrogating, harassing’ at US airport

The fall was greatest in the number of American and South Korean, according to Richard Coward, founder and CEO of China Admissions, a platform that helps international students apply to universities in China.

Coward noted that when China opened its borders in January of last year, it was in the middle of the enrolment cycle, and many prospective students had already decided on their study destinations without considering China, since the country was closed for all of 2022 with uncertainty about when it would reopen.

“Students need on average about eight months before getting the initial spark of interest to [apply], and then some time before enrolling, so there is a time lag,” he said.

But he remained optimistic about the figures for the coming September as he said interest had gradually grown each month.

China urged to ease rules for scholars on overseas events and speaking to press

Jia Qingguo, former dean of Peking University’s international relations school, said geopolitics was not solely responsible for the plunge in international students’ interest in China since the number of Chinese students studying in Western countries remained strong post-pandemic.

Uncertainty over academic boundaries was one of the major factors behind the drop in foreign students, he said in a proposal submitted to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference during the advisory body’s annual meeting two weeks ago.

Specific regulations for implementing new laws related to foreigners had yet to be issued, “leading to some confusion”, he said.

For example, he said, no implementation rules had been issued in relation to China’s recently introduced counter-espionage law, making it unclear what information could be collected and how it could be done so without breaking the law.

A lack of clarity about the law and other difficulties in data collection are especially difficult for postgraduate students doing research in the country.

Gadsden said doctoral students had to find alternative research methods as China made it very difficult to collect data and conduct surveys and interviews – “all these things that are the cornerstones of academic work … that a generation of PhD students before them had been able to do”.

“China has increasingly strict data protection laws … so for researchers who are looking at large bodies of data to analyse, that’s harder. It’s also harder to do research collaborations.”

For Allen, the Yenching Academy graduate, bureaucracy was another headache, particularly in applying for a work permit.

When he and his classmates graduated in July last year, they had 30 days to obtain a job offer and another 30 to prepare documents, which for some required going home for a background check.

“For a lot of people, it was providing more documents than we’d already provided when we had been admitted,” Allen said. “It was very challenging to meet all those expectations so quickly after graduation, balancing it with study.”

Wang Huiyao, founder and president of the Beijing-based think tank Centre for China and Globalisation, noted that many of the elements required for international students to study in China – from flights and payment methods to courses and programmes – were still in the midst of resuming operations.

“For example, an international programme had been discontinued for several years, and its revival required the re-establishment of faculty and the development of new curriculums. It needs a process of recovery,” he said.

China’s youngest millennials deemed too old for jobs, and elder Gen Z are next

Anny Laghari, a 33-year-old from Pakistan who earned an MBA in China in 2017, applied to a PhD programme in management science, hoping to return to the country.

However, she is now hesitating about whether she should accept a full scholarship offer with a monthly stipend of 3,500 yuan (US$486) due to worries that she might not land a job at a Chinese company after graduation.

“If I continue PhD [studies], that would take five to six years, and I would be [around] 40 years old then,” she said.

“Chinese care about age too much – once you cross thirties, they think you are getting older, and most of the time they do not adjust with foreigners due to culture differences.”

She added that the country’s faltering economy meant even young Chinese workers faced a harsh reality in the job market, which would make it harder for her to get a work visa to stay.

“I’m considering all the reasons and I’m not sure if [taking the offer] could bring any positive change in my future,” she said.

“I feel really bad. I really wanted to stay in China for a long, long time. I had a lot of memories there. I liked living there. I hope in the future there can be [changes] for people like me.”

Hospitality professional Muhammad Shahid, 25, who is from Pakistan but lives in Dubai, left China in January after quitting a master’s degree programme in the southwestern city of Chengdu after one semester.

“It was like wasting my time only taking classes and [doing] homework,” said Shahid, who studied enterprise management. “They focused more on the academic side than skills. No new things.”

“In class, we were sitting like strangers,” he added. “We had some presentations – but Chinese students with Chinese and international students with international ones. No learning, no sharing ideas … I [got] fed up with these kinds of things.”

He completed undergraduate studies in Chengdu from 2017 to 2021 at Sichuan University and loved his life there. But when he headed back to China last year, he found the student visa application more difficult than before.

“A lot of requirements [were added],” he said. “And at the Chinese immigration [it was] completely complicated in terms of technology.

“China is more advanced than other countries but when it comes to this, [it was still] far away. This is the ground reality.”

China’s technical expertise touted as new vehicle for progress on belt and road

The number of Americans studying in China is expected to remain relatively low, but there is greater interest from students from Southeast Asia and belt and road countries, according to Wang with the Centre for China and Globalisa­tion.

More than half of the international students in China come from countries taking part in the Belt and Road Initiative, according to an article published by Guangming Daily in October.

Ghezio Rosario Ribeiro, 21, from East Timor in Southeast Asia, is studying for a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering at Beihang University in Beijing.

Growing up, he saw China emerge as a leader in nation-building, which motivated him to apply to study in a country that he said provided “the best education”.

The 21-year-old said his country still needed human resources, especially in construction and design.

“I would be very happy to return to my country and work there [after graduation]. Considering a lot of Chinese companies are [there], my Chinese skills will be a bonus point for me,” he said.

He said he enjoyed his life in China, even before the lifting of Covid restrictions, but he wished the scholarship offered by the Chinese government were higher as he had to work part time to cover the cost of living in Beijing despite the scholarship’s 2,500 yuan monthly living allowance.

According to Ribeiro, a group of more than 100 students signed and submitted a proposal to his university’s international student office to ask for an increased stipend.

Not spy devices claims university as students object to stress-causing cameras

While geopolitical tensions have weighed on the decisions of some prospective students, many with experience in the country say the benefits of spending time in China outweigh the negatives.

Allen, the Yenching alumnus, said his first-hand experience in the country enabled him to “push back against a simplistic vision of a monolithic nation”, and to hear a diverse set of perspectives from China.

Gadsden noted that people-to-people ties, and student exchanges in particular, had always been foundational to US-China relations.

“There are very few questions that don’t have a China angle or dimension to them,” she said. “We do ourselves a disservice when we don’t dive into that and study that.”

“It takes more than our leaders at the highest levels, making statements about the importance of education,” she said.

“It takes the work of universities, faculty, administrators, people who do this for a living like me, to create the opportunities and to show and explain why it’s important to go and why it’s valuable to go.”

China and New Zealand are a ‘force for stability’ in a turbulent world, says Foreign Minister Wang Yi

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3255852/china-and-new-zealand-are-force-stability-turbulent-world-says-foreign-minister-wang-yi?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s ties with New Zealand are “a force for stability” in a turbulent world, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Monday, as he began a five-day tour that will also include a visit to Australia.

On Monday Wang held meetings with the country’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his New Zealand counterpart Winston Peters in the capital Wellington and hailed the government’s “rational, pragmatic, and a positive policy” toward China, according to The Post, a local newspaper.

Luxon, a former airline executive who took office in November, said that his government looks to “build our relationships with renewed energy and renewed urgency to make sure that we continue to grow our prosperity and also our security”.

He said working with China was “really critical to us in building our relationships out across the region”.

At the start of the meeting, Wang said: “The international and regional situation is changing and turbulent, and the relationship between China and New Zealand is a force for stability in the world.”

Earlier Wang told Peters, who is also the deputy prime minister, that the two countries “had neither historical grudges nor real disputes but shared … broad common interests”, adding that they should “continue to respect each other’s social system and take care of each other’s core interests and major concerns”.

New Zealand begins talks on joining Aukus defence pact

According to the Chinese foreign ministry, he also said “China is willing to work with New Zealand...so that the China-New Zealand relationship will continue to be at the forefront of China’s relations with developed countries”. He added that Beijing was willing to cooperate in areas such as infrastructure, the green and digital economies, innovation and climate change, as well as boosting cultural exchanges.

Wang also urged New Zealand to “safeguard the safety and legitimate rights and interests of Chinese students and tourists”.

Peters said Wang’s visit – his first to the country since 2017 – was a “valuable opportunity to reflect on the challenges and opportunities” facing the two countries.

“Alongside areas of cooperation, it was important to acknowledge areas of difference such as human rights, including the situation in Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Tibet,” said Peters.

The two sides also discussed regional and international issues, and Peters also raised concerns over “increasing tensions in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait”.

“New Zealand follows developments in the Pacific closely and emphasises the importance of engaging through existing regional institutions and arrangements, in particular on regional security matters,” Peters said.

“New Zealand places great importance on supporting the current international rules-based order. We emphasised the constructive role China can play in responding to regional and international security challenges such as the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas conflicts and deescalating tensions on the Korean peninsula.”

The two said they looked forward to further high-level visits between China and New Zealand this year and committed to holding talks on foreign affairs, trade, consular issues, the Pacific, climate change, and human rights.

The two countries are looking to strengthen their economic ties despite the tensions caused by New Zealand’s potential engagement with the Aukus security partnership between Australia, Britain and the United States which China views as part of the efforts to contain its growing influence in the Indo-Pacific.

Beijing has repeatedly criticised Aukus for encouraging nuclear proliferation. Last month the Chinese defence ministry warned Wellington not to “harm its own security interests” after New Zealand, a member of the anglophone “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance, expressed an interest in working with Aukus on areas such as cyber warfare, artificial intelligence and hypersonic weapons.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the signing of a comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries. China is now New Zealand’s largest trading partner, accounting for 28 per cent of goods exports in 2022, while two-way trade reached US$23.55 billion in the year ending September 2023, according to Wellington’s official figures.

Chinese developers pull back in Australia, New Zealand as property boom ends

New Zealand was also the first developed country to sign a free-trade agreement with China in 2008.

And as part of that deal, China removed tariffs on all New Zealand dairy products at the start of this year.

The country is now China’s largest supplier of dairy products in a trade worth around NZ$8 billion (US$4.9 billion) a year over the past three years. Around half of this trade was in milk powder.

China’s former anti-terrorism chief Liu Yuejin under investigation for corruption

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3255839/chinas-former-anti-terrorism-chief-liu-yuejin-under-investigation-corruption?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s first counterterrorism commissioner Liu Yuejin has been placed under investigation on suspicion of corruption as part of an ongoing drive targeting the security sector.

Liu, 65, who also served as assistant minister of public security, is suspected of “serious violations of party discipline and law” – the usual euphemism for corruption – according to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Communist Party’s top graft-busting agency.

Liu, who stepped down from the anti-terror role in 2020, is the latest senior security official to fall following President Xi Jinping’s promise to “drive the blade inward”.

In 2022, former deputy security minister Sun Lijun, who was accused of leading a “political clique” and being disloyal to Xi, was jailed for life. In the same month, former justice minister Fu Zhenghua, once one of China’s most powerful police chiefs, was also jailed for life.

In 2020, Meng Hongwei, the former head of Interpol who was detained on a trip back to China, was sentenced to 13 and a half years in jail for corruption and fined 2 million yuan (about US$290,000).

‘Voice of China’ echoes Xi’s call to double down against corruption

Liu became the country’s first anti-terror chief in December 2015 following a series of attacks across China, particularly one in March 2014 in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province.

Dozens of people were killed after a gang of knife-wielding attackers rampaged through the city’s main railway station in an attack Beijing blamed on Xinjiang separatists.

In 2017, Liu took part in a People’s Armed Police rally in the western region, home to the Uygur minority, where more than 10,000 members of the force took an oath to fight terrorists and “maintain social stability”.

Liu emphasised that all levels of public security offices should always think about anti-terrorism and maintaining stability. “We should chase and suppress the terrorists, dig out those who are in hiding, fight them thoroughly and resolutely, in order to create peace and stability,” he said.

China’s Xi calls for loyalty and honesty from younger officials amid low morale

Before taking on the counterterrorism post, Liu, who described himself in interviews as a “grass-roots police officer”, spent more than 20 years tackling the drugs trade and became chief of the China National Narcotics Control Commission in May 2015.

He worked on many high-profile cases, including one in 2011 when he led a special task force that hunted down the Golden Triangle drug lord Naw Kham after his group murdered 13 Chinese sailors on a stretch of the Mekong on the border between Myanmar and Thailand. Naw Kham was executed in Yunnan in 2013 for his role in the killings.

Europe moves to join China and the US in the Arctic gold rush

https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3255776/europe-moves-join-china-and-us-arctic-gold-rush?utm_source=rss_feed

Greenland is about 80 per cent ice-capped and until the 1940s was a protected, isolated society. Today, the growing geopolitical and geoeconomic focus on the Arctic Circle has made the world’s largest island a major prize for powers including China, Russia, the United States and the European Union.

As the region’s melting ice caps expose unclaimed ocean and land, what has been called a new gold rush has commenced for the Arctic’s territory, natural resources and strategic position. The economic value of this is obvious. However, the geopolitical dimension is also key, given the Arctic’s critical location between North America and Eurasia.

In this context, the 810,000 square-mile Greenland is an increasingly prominent player with huge potential. This is not least as it boasts the world’s northernmost territory off its coast, which is the closest point of land to the North Pole.

In recent decades, Greenland, with a small population of fewer than 60,000, has become a largely autonomous territory of Denmark. These days, Denmark – which is one of 27 European Union states and also a member of Nato, the transatlantic security alliance – retains only control of the island’s monetary policy and foreign relations.

One sign of Greenland’s growing prominence came in 2019 when Donald Trump, then president of the United States, floated the idea of buying the huge island. This was dismissed by Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen as “absurd”.

Nonetheless, the United States soon after reopened a consulate on the island in 2020. The United States has had military assets on the island since World War II, including Pituffik Space Base, which was built as Thule Air Base in 1951 and has a ballistic missile early warning system and satellite tracking.

China too had interest in building airports and mining facilities in Greenland in the 2010s, but eventually withdrew its bids. Beijing’s interest in the region is, in part, related to development of trade through new North Atlantic shipping lanes that are opening due to melting ice caps. These could significantly decrease voyage times, compared to the current reliance on the Suez and Panama canals for maritime trade and transport around the globe.

Given US and Chinese interest in Greenland, it is no surprise that the EU is also raising its profile there too. The 27-member bloc is especially alert to the island’s vast natural resources, including coal, zinc, iron ore and rare earths. Europe tends to lack access to both supply and processing of raw materials, and is seeking to reduce its reliance on China, which dominates production of rare earths and other critical minerals.

To this end, the EU and Greenland last November signed a memorandum of understanding for a strategic partnership to develop sustainable raw materials value chains needed for the transition to low-carbon energy. More than two-thirds of the 34 critical raw materials identified by the European Commission as strategically important for the bloc’s industry and the green transition are located in Greenland.

China is moving up the rare earth value chain. The West is trying to catch up

As part of the EU’s Global Gateway strategy, Brussels has also recently established similar strategic partnerships on raw materials with Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Namibia, Argentina, Chile, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The partnerships enable trade and investment in secure, sustainable and resilient raw materials value chains, key to achieving the transition to climate-neutral and digitalised economies.

Such is the importance that Brussels places on its deepening relationship with Greenland, the EU’s first Arctic office was opened there last Friday by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who was joined by Frederiksen. The visit included a stop-off in the Faroe Islands, another self-governing territory of the Kingdom of Denmark.

The EU-Greenland memorandum of understanding may evolve into one of the EU’s Green Alliances, akin to those with Canada, Norway and Japan. It will contribute to the development of sustainable projects along the raw materials value chains, and to the deployment of infrastructure required to develop them.

The memorandum establishes particularly close cooperation between Greenland and the EU in five areas starting with economic and industrial integration of value chains for critical and other raw materials. This includes developing projects jointly, creating and promoting new business models, attracting investments, supporting access to finance, facilitating trade linkages, as well as developing and integrating support for economic diversification.

In terms of next steps, the European Union and Greenland are set to develop a joint road map with multiple actions to put the strategic partnership into practice. This helps Europe to deliver on its Green Deal and to secure a diversified sustainable supply of raw materials, especially critical raw materials, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As part of the action plan for the EU Critical Raw Materials Act, the bloc has committed to developing strategic international partnerships and associated funding with places like Greenland.

Thus, von der Leyen’s trip helps to cement the new EU-Greenland MOU, and may provide a big boost to ties. As world powers’ interest in the Arctic grows, the bloc is keen to double down on relations, not only to seize new economic opportunities on the horizon, but to also boost the EU’s geopolitical standing in the region.

China food security: 530,000 new germ plasma resources collected during largest-ever survey

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3255816/china-food-security-530000-new-germ-plasma-resources-collected-during-largest-ever-survey?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s largest-ever survey of germ plasma resources collected over 530,000 new types of genetic material over the past three years amid Beijing’s heightened focus on the seed industry’s pivotal role in ensuring food security.

The survey, which took place more than a decade after the previous edition, for the first time also added aquatic resources to its original scope of crops and livestock, the People’s Daily said on Sunday.

The findings expanded the variety of crop germ plasma resources in the national resource repository by 21.4 per cent, pinpointed 51 livestock and poultry germ plasma resources with potential use value and identified the biological characteristics of 312 pivotal aquaculture species, according to the newspaper.

“These newly collected resources have significant potential for industrial development, with some harbouring excellent genes and some exhibiting distinct regional characteristics,” said Li Lihui, the deputy director at the office of the Third National Agricultural Germ Plasm Resources Census.

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Germ plasma resources are seeds, plant or animal tissues that are kept for the genetic material they contain and are used in breeding programmes and for research.

Agricultural experts also highlighted the survey’s significance in attaining technological self-reliance in the seed industry, as well as keeping China’s germ plasma resources “independent and controllable”.

During the survey, China also built a relatively comprehensive protection system for germ plasma resources, which could meet its strategic needs for the next 50 years.

The national crop and marine fishery germ plasma repositories have begun operation, while a system for livestock and poultry is under construction, the People’s Daily added.

The developments came amid Beijing’s escalating efforts towards self-reliance in the seed industry, which is positioned as “strategic and fundamental” to agriculture despite being acknowledged as a vulnerable aspect of China’s growing push for food security.

China’s Seed Law came into effect in March 2022, aimed at addressing the over-reliance on imports from major exporters, including the United States, and a lack of innovative breeding technologies.

The government also strengthened the revitalisation of the seed industry and addressed core agricultural technologies in this year’s work report during the “two sessions” annual parliamentary meetings earlier this month.

“The collection in the survey is the first step in conserving and leveraging germ plasma resources, with the ultimate goal being their utilisations,” added Li, who is also a researcher from the Institute of Crop Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

“It is imperative to speed up the conversion of resource strengths into innovative and industrial advantage.”

Sun Haoqin, an inspector from the Department of Seed Industry at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, said the focus would be pivoted to the precise identification and shared use of germ plasma resources to support China’s food security from its sources.

He proposed to ramp up identifying usable superior genes in seeds for breeding purposes and to facilitate a shared information system, as well as encouraging local use of high-quality germ plasma resources to develop speciality industries.

“Many newly discovered germ plasma resources are in a precarious state and require simultaneous and effective protection to prevent loss after discovery,” said Sun, who added that urgent conservation is under way for 746 endangered crop germ plasma resources.

Taiwan’s concerns grow over Quemoy waters as mainland China steps up ‘normal’ patrols

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3255841/taiwans-concerns-grow-over-quemoy-waters-mainland-china-steps-normal-patrols?utm_source=rss_feed

The “normalising” of patrols by mainland China’s coastguard in waters around Quemoy has raised concerns in Taiwan over Beijing’s attempt to justify its jurisdiction over the narrow waterway.

Eight mainland Chinese coastguard vessels sailed into the waters near Quemoy – a Taiwanese defence outpost close to the mainland city of Xiamen – on Friday and Saturday to perform what Beijing described as “normal” and “regular law enforcement” patrol missions.

The move came after the mainland coastguard announced on Friday it would step up patrols around Quemoy, also known as Kinmen, following a series of fishing incidents.

Mainland Chinese and Taiwanese coastguards save capsized fishing boat crew

They included the deaths of two mainland fishermen who had been on board an unregistered speedboat trying to evade the island’s coastguard after the boat entered the waters near Quemoy on February 14. In a separate mishap blamed on bad weather, two other fishermen died and two others were missing after their boat capsized on Thursday in the same area.

The mainland coastguard said on Friday that its patrols were legal that it would “continue to step up patrols to protect the legitimate rights and interests, safety and property of Chinese fishermen, including those from Taiwan”.

Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office also said the increased patrols were a “normal act” as “Taiwan is a part of China and regular law enforcement in waters near Quemoy is the duty of the mainland coastguard”.

The TAO accused the government of Taiwan’s independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party for the “trampling of human life” and “failing to repent” over the fatal boat pursuit incident.

Taiwan’s coastguard said it warned off four ships on Friday and four others on Saturday when they approached the waters near Quemoy.

“The move has seriously impacted traffic and safety. To avoid triggering naval incidents we urge them to stop such behaviour,” the island’s coastguard said on Saturday.

Beijing – which sees Taiwan as territory that must be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary – accused the island’s coastguard of using “violent and dangerous methods” in the pursuit.

The mainland has carried out regular coastguard patrols around Quemoy since the February 14 incident, with six to seven ships operating around Quemoy and Matsu, another Taiwanese defence outpost close to Fuzhou.

Last month, mainland coastguard officers boarded a Taiwanese tourist boat to check the vessel’s licence and captain’s certificate, further stoking cross-strait tensions.

A US State Department official said Beijing’s “continued provocations” in waters close to Quemoy “revealed its intention to unilaterally change the status quo”.

Fatal fishing boat crash echoes earlier tragedy that tested Xi in Taiwan Strait

“Maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait is in line with our consistent interests and is crucial to regional and global security and prosperity,” a US official was quoted as saying by Taiwan’s semi-official Central News Agency on Saturday

The official called for the two sides to exercise restraint and resolve the issue peacefully.

The US, like most countries, does not recognise the self-ruled island as independent, but is opposed to any forcible change to the status quo and is committed to arming the island.

Observers said Beijing had tried to use the incident to erase Taiwan’s jurisdiction over the Quemoy area.

“By normalising its patrol missions in the waters around Quemoy, Beijing aims to gradually create the impression that such missions are legitimate before eventually establishing its de facto jurisdiction over the area,” said Chieh Chung, a security researcher at the National Policy Foundation, a think tank affiliated with the main opposition Kuomintang party.

He said the Taiwanese coastguard must send at least two larger vessels to regularly patrol the waters around Quemoy to counter Beijing’s attempts.

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Su Tzu-yun, an analyst at the Institute for National Defence and Security Research, a government think tank based in Taipei, said Beijing’s increased patrols were part of its “systematic use of grey zone [non-military] tactics to undermine the sovereignty” of the island.

He said Taipei must step up its risk management for unintended incidents that could spark a potential conflict.

Meanwhile, two Taiwanese men who had been fishing in waters off a Quemoy beach were rescued by the mainland coastguard after their boat ran out of fuel and drifted to a bay near the mainland city of Quanzhou on Monday, according to Taiwan’s coastguard administration.

China-Russia ties set to deepen with another presidential term for Putin

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3255840/china-russia-ties-set-deepen-another-presidential-term-putin?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese President Xi Jinping congratulated his Russian counterpart in his re-election, promising on Monday to strengthen a partnership that observers say will only deepen as relations with the West worsen.

Vladimir Putin is set to rule Russia for another six years after partial results pointed to a landslide win in the presidential election on the weekend.

Xi said the results showed the Russian people’s support for Putin amid the country’s “challenges”.

“China attaches great importance to the development of China-Russia relations and is willing to maintain close communication with Russia to promote the sustained, healthy, stable and in-depth development of the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination in a new era,” state news agency Xinhua quoted Xi as saying.

Wang Yiwei, a Renmin University professor specialising in Europe affairs, said the results aligned with China’s expectations.

“China hopes that its relationship with Russia will be stable. As long as it is under the leadership of Putin, China-Russia relations will definitely continue to consolidate,” Wang said.

“The leaders have had a profound working friendship for more than 10 years. Trust between the leaders is very important.”

Xi and Putin have met 42 times since Xi came to power in 2013. They last met in October during the belt and road forum in Beijing, where they reaffirmed deepening political trust between the two countries.

The two leaders are expected to meet again several times this year, according to Chinese ambassador to Moscow Zhang Hanhui, who last month announced Putin’s plan to visit China this year.

One opportunity for the two to talk will be when Russia hosts the Brics summit in Kazan in October, a year after the group expanded from five members to 11.

Xi and Putin are also expected to attend the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Kazakhstan later this year.

In his victory speech, Putin said his “good personal relations” with Xi enabled advances in bilateral ties, a relationship he described as a “factor of stability” in international relations.

The presidential election was held against the backdrop of Russia’s grinding conflict with Ukraine in which neither side has shown interest in entering serious peace talks.

Fears of a spillover of the conflict have grown in Europe, with French President Emmanuel Macron signalling a possible deployment of Nato troops.

China has also been criticised by the West over its economic support for Russia and a number of Chinese companies have been sanctioned by the European Union for helping Russia to circumvent sanctions.

Amid those sanctions, trade between China and Russia reached a record US$240 billion last year. The two countries have also stepped up currency cooperation, conducting more than 90 per cent of their transactions in either yuan or roubles.

Putin warns West a Russia-Nato conflict is just a step from WWIII

Wu Fei, a Jinan University professor specialising in Russian studies, said China’s policy towards Russia would remain highly “stable” following Putin’s re-election.

“There is still a lot of room for cooperation between China and Russia, both economically and geopolitically,” he said.

Björn Alexander Düben, an assistant professor specialising in China-Russia relations at Jilin University in northeast China, agreed, saying Beijing’s ties with Moscow would remain strong despite Western scrutiny.

However, China’s close relations with Russia and its rivalry with the United States have complicated Beijing’s efforts to improve ties with EU countries.

“This is a very difficult balancing act for China … If Beijing was to visibly distance itself from Moscow, this would probably make it easier to [rebuild] cooperative relations with the EU countries, but I don’t think that Beijing would be willing to engage in such a trade-off at Russia’s expense,” Düben said.

Wang, from Renmin University, said there was a lot of misunderstanding about China’s ties with Russia, a partnership that Beijing usually describes as “non-alliance, non-confrontation and not targeting any third party”.

“The purpose of closer relations between China and Russia is not to confront Nato, the United States, or the West. This is not what China hopes,” he said.

“The Chinese especially do not want Russia to be used as a bargaining chip against the West, because China still hopes to maintain a relatively good relationship with the West. This is different from Russia, which already has very tense relations with the West.”

China international flights are finally starting to bounce back, buoyed by easing of border controls and need to elevate economy

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3255824/china-international-flights-are-finally-starting-bounce-back-buoyed-easing-border-controls-and-need?utm_source=rss_feed

As China strives to make border crossings easier, with an eye on elevating economic growth in the face of considerable headwinds, international flights have seen a steady rise in recent months. And the numbers are getting closer to what was seen before the pandemic.

Passenger loads coinciding with the travel-intensive Lunar New Year holiday last month also reflected what analysts say has been a gradual rekindling of interest among Chinese travellers in foreign destinations following the country’s reopening of borders early last year.

The nation logged 4.9 million passenger trips on international flights last month, or 82 per cent of such trips taken in February 2019, according to figures reported by state broadcaster CCTV at the weekend and attributed to the Civil Aviation Administration of China.

And in January and February combined, international fliers reportedly took about 9.26 million trips. That marked a massive 707 per cent increase over the same period in 2023 while reaching roughly 77 per cent of the first two months in 2019.

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John Grant, a senior analyst with British aviation intelligence firm OAG, told the Post that “the rebound is built around China’s very late announcement to reopen in January 2023, and then a very tightly controlled easing of travel restrictions and entry requirements”.

“We are only, in the last four to five months, seeing any significant changes and recovery,” he said, noting that the Lunar New Year festivities were “a major catalyst”.

Zhang Chen, vice-president of Fliggy, the online travel platform of Alibaba Group, which owns the SCMP, touched on what the increase in travel interest could mean.

“We believe that independent [overseas] travel, and small-group tours, will continue to experience rapid growth in market share,” Chen said. “Consumer demand for trips with higher levels of freedom and a more personalised experience is expected to increase significantly.”

A Post review of government data found that direct round-trip flights linking China to other countries numbered 4,782 per week at the end of last year, up from fewer than 500 when the mainland reopened its borders at the beginning of last year.

According to UN World Tourism Organization data, China had become the world’s biggest tourism source market by 2019, accounting for 6 billion annual trips domestically and generating US$255 billion in tourism spending overseas.

Over the past half year, Chinese officials have relaxed visa rules to attract more visitors, in line with intentions to stimulate a national economy beset by a property crunch, employment hurdles and hesitant consumer spending.

Economic data, including retail sales and industrial output, also rebounded in the first two months of the year.

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Authorities with the National Immigration Administration met on Thursday to set out “requirements” for easier border crossings.

Traveller documentation and “experiences” at the borders should be improved for “convenience”, and as a means of smoothing economic cooperation, it said on its social media account.

It also vowed to “promote a deepening and merging of innovation chains, industrial chains, supply chains, finance chains and talent chains”.

From December 1, China began allowing citizens of specific countries to visit for 15 days without a visa. That policy now extends to 11 European nations and three in Southeast Asia.

But travellers from some of the world’s largest and wealthiest countries, including Japan and the United States, still need visas.

Meanwhile, China’s reputation as a destination for foreign investment and tourism has taken a hit amid Beijing’s stepped-up efforts to ensure national security, and against the backdrop of rising nationalism and tensions with the West.

When travelling to China to visit family in December, Lena Ong found that little had changed at the borders or in hotels. The 49-year-old Indonesian businesswoman has visited China since the 1990s, including in the years immediately preceding the pandemic. She said it still takes five days to get a visa through a travel agency.

“The difference is that China is more and more tourist-friendly,” Ong said. “The places are cleaner – even cleaner than most countries I have visited. No more littering and spitting.”

The rising number of international flight passengers in early 2024 reflects a “base effect” rather than a big leap in interest among travellers headed into or out of China, said Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist for Asia-Pacific at French investment bank Natixis.

Lingering Covid-19 restrictions in 2023, and the impact of the US-China trade war that began in 2019, kept travel relatively light in both of those years, she said.

Talented China girl, 12, teaches college-level maths online, attracts 2.9 million followers and sparks debate about child prodigies

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/china-personalities/article/3254785/talented-china-girl-12-teaches-college-level-maths-online-attracts-29-million-followers-and-sparks?utm_source=rss_feed

A highly talented 12-year-old girl in China who teaches college-level maths online has amassed 2.9 million followers on social media and sparked a discussion about child prodigies.

In her educational videos, the girl, surnamed Gu, stands in front of a whiteboard with a marker pen in hand.

She eloquently explains various maths problems, ranging from geometry to functions and even calculus, and primarily focuses on levels of difficulty typical for first-year college students.

In December 2023, she received plaudits when she successfully simplified a complex university-level maths problem using a method students said they used three days later during the postgraduate entrance exams.

“Thanks, Teacher Gu, for helping me earn an extra five points,” one college student commented below her video.

Gu’s exceptional mathematical abilities at a young age stem from her deep interest in the subject.

She posts videos to spread her approach to mathematics while exploring different learning methods.

“Initially, I encouraged her to record videos explaining problems to enhance her own understanding of mathematics,” Gu’s mother said.

This approach to learning is known as the Feynman Technique, which was developed by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman.

It states that people are able to acquire knowledge more efficiently if they are “teaching to learn”.

In 2022, Gu’s first video featured a secondary school maths problem. In the maiden video her tone was vibrant, if naive.

Now, an increasing number of people seek advice from her, and she records the process of solving the problems in daily videos that range from three to five minutes.

One of her followers said: “Some high school problems used to baffle me, but after watching her videos, it all became clear.”

Another person joked about “relying on a 12-year-old girl to explain maths to me” even though they are in college.

Gu is reportedly still attending primary school and is considering competing in the International Mathematical Olympiad, a global maths competition for pre-university students.

Her success has sparked an online discussion about gifted children.

One person doubted her skills and said: “Geniuses come once in a century; surely, there must be a team behind her.”

But some disagreed: “The problems Gu tackles are challenging. If she didn’t understand these mathematical concepts herself, she would not be able to explain them.”

Meanwhile, a five-year-old boy, Yu Guo, has 740,000 followers on Douyin and teaches coding basics entirely in English.

Gut bacteria could play a role in eye disease, China-UK study finds

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3255746/gut-bacteria-could-play-role-eye-disease-china-uk-study-finds?utm_source=rss_feed

Gut bacteria could be contributing to a group of eye diseases that can cause loss of vision and even blindness, researchers from Sun Yat-sen University and University College London have found.

That means they could potentially be treated with antibiotics, according to the study published in peer-reviewed journal Cell on February 26.

The eye diseases – known as inherited retinal degenerations – have more than 250 associated genes.

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“The onset of [disease] typically varies from birth to early adulthood, with lifelong implications for patients and their families,” said the research team, led by Professor Wei Lai from Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou and Professor Richard Lee from UCL.

One gene found to cause this type of eye disease has been identified as the Crumbs homology 1, or CRB1 – and that is where the researchers found a link to gut bacteria.

“We found CRB1 was expressed both in the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) and in the gut,” the paper said, referring to the pigmented layer of the retina.

Inherited retinal degenerations have long been considered solely genetic eye conditions. But during their eight-year study, the researchers found that the CRB1 gene was expressed not just in the retinal barrier, but also in the epithelium – a thin, protective layer of cells – of the colon.

The gene plays a key role in maintaining barriers in both the eyes and the gut. If there is a mutation that affects the gene they are vulnerable, and bacteria could travel from the lower gastrointestinal tract to the retina through the bloodstream, causing loss of vision.

Gene therapy is used as the main treatment for CRB1-linked retinal degenerations to try to reintroduce normal gene expression.

But in the study, the scientists found in experiments on mice that antibiotics could clear out the bacteria and stop the eye disease from progressing.

They said antibiotics would not repair damage to the eyes but they could help treat the disease.

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The connection between the gut microbiome and other organs in the body, including the brain, has increasingly been in the spotlight in recent decades, with researchers highlighting the link between gut health and overall health.

The latest study findings could have “broader significance”, Wei said in the paper.

“We believe that this mechanism could also exist in other retinal diseases,” he said, referring to bacteria reaching the eye from the gut.

South China Sea: could Japan be drawn to help defend Philippines in 3-way summit with US?

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3255832/south-china-sea-could-japan-be-drawn-help-defend-philippines-3-way-summit-us?utm_source=rss_feed

Leaders of the Philippines, Japan and the United States are set to meet next month for a first-ever trilateral summit that could draw in Tokyo to help Manila defend its maritime rights in the South China Sea – an issue now regarded by the Southeast Asian country as “the real flashpoint” for a military conflict with Beijing.

Escalating tensions in the disputed waters have led the Philippines to pronounce the issue as “the real flashpoint” for a military conflict with Beijing, while Chinese President Xi Jinping last month ordered the military to be “prepared to respond” due to “stormy seas” ahead.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Manila this week in a visit aimed at thrashing out the details of the maritime cooperation summit in Washington, to be held between by US President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr, according to Japan’s Asahi newspaper and Philippine media reports.

The Asahi earlier reported Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa would also be going to Manila to meet with her US and Philippine counterparts, but a source said on Monday this might not happen due to scheduling concerns. However, the April trilateral was still on the table.

Malacanang Palace in Manila has not announced any US trip for the Philippine president, but said he would be holding talks with Blinken on Tuesday.

Blinken’s office also confirmed he would meet Marcos Jnr and his counterpart, Foreign Affairs Secretary Enrique Manalo, to discuss broadening cooperation on a range of issues, including regional peace, human rights, economic prosperity, semiconductors and the digital economy.

Earlier this month, Department of National Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro said his department and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) had pivoted from counter-insurgency to an external defence strategy to protect the country’s maritime interests and borders.

“We are developing our capability to protect and secure our entire territory and exclusive economic zone (EEZ), in order to ensure that our people … shall freely reap and enjoy the bounties of the natural resources that are rightfully ours within our domain,” he said on March 8 in a statement, without elaborating on the details.

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The trilateral summit could potentially lead Manila to further expand its defence cooperation and capabilities by drawing Japan into its closest circle of military allies, according to Renato Cruz De Castro, an expert on US foreign policy in Asia.

De Castro said in an interview on Saturday with This Week in Asia that the Philippines’ strategic defence shift involved a recognition that Manila could not do it alone and needed external allies. That was why it was relying on the US’ “ironclad” commitment to come to its aid if any of its forces, vessels or territory was attacked.

“And that is why the Philippines and Japan are negotiating a reciprocal access agreement (RAA)” that would enable members of the Japan’s defence forces to help the AFP upgrade its maritime capability with training and more equipment, donated or sold at friendship rates, he said.

De Castro noted that the RAA would not be in place during the joint Balikatan military training exercises in May, with the full text expected to be finished later this year. However, he cited a source telling him that “only one paragraph needs to be addressed” in the ongoing talks.

This Week in Asia contacted sources in the Philippine Senate last Friday who said the proposed RAA had not yet been submitted by the presidential palace for the Senate’s concurrence, which the 1987 Philippine constitution requires.

Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri told reporters last November, two days after Kishida addressed a joint session of Philippine Congress, that the RAA would only be “for training” and would not allow Japanese forces to have a permanent rotational presence like the American troops.

However, as in the case of the US, the RAA could be expanded in the future to include that, analysts said.

As early as November last year, AFP chief of staff General Romeo Brawner Jnr said he hoped a “quad” grouping could be formed to conduct joint military exercises and patrols in the Philippines’ EEZ.

Beijing continues to claim areas within Philippine waters as part of its nine-dash line, even after it was ruled by an arbitral court in 2016 to have no basis under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Will stronger Manila-Canberra ties lead to Western support in South China Sea?

Brawner said the US and Australia had expressed “a desire” to join such a quad, but added there remained “no commitment” from Japan, with whom the Philippines had begun negotiating a security agreement.

Beijing would likely condemn such a development as Washington’s devious plan “to encircle” China, De Castro said.

While the Philippines’ bid to form these defence groupings “might possibly lead to a Nato-type alliance, which is China’s greatest fear”, De Castro said Beijing only had itself to blame.

“If China were not aggressive, coercive and expansionist, there would be no reason for [the Philippines] to form these minilaterals,” he said.

The Philippines was an ideal maritime partner for the countries because of “its archipelagic nature that could accommodate forward-deployed forces from the US and even from Japan, and, of course, because of its proximity to Taiwan”, he added.

The international-studies professor from De la Salle University said that while the three-way maritime strategy was being proposed so near the US elections in November, he did not think Washington’s Indo-Pacific policy to counter China would change even if Republican candidate Donald Trump were to get elected.

“Because that’s the only thing that unites Americans – the China challenge. But they’re divided regarding Russia and Ukraine,” he said.

Chinese team’s ultra-black coating could make camera, space telescope images better

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3255747/chinese-teams-ultra-black-coating-could-make-camera-space-telescope-images-better?utm_source=rss_feed

A team of scientists in Shanghai have developed an ultra-black coating that they say can improve the image quality of cameras and space telescopes.

The material can absorb most of the unwanted scattered light that can enter a camera lens and create veiling glare or unintended bright spots in photos, according to the team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Shanghai Institute of Ceramics.

They said the thin film could absorb 99.3 per cent of light across a wide range of wavelengths – from violet light at 400 nanometres to near-infrared at 1,000nm.

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The light spectrum visible to the human eye ranges from 400nm to red light at 780nm.

“The film is promising for application in precision optics under harsh environmental conditions,” the researchers wrote in an article published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A last week.

“This robust ultra-black film … provides an effective solution for achieving broadband absorption properties on large curvature or irregular surfaces, which is promising in various applications such as astronomical observation and precision optics engineering.”

To create the extremely dark film, the team used alternating layers of titanium-aluminium-carbon composite – a black-coloured material that absorbs light – and silicon dioxide, which serves as an anti-reflection layer.

They said the two materials worked in tandem to trap light and stop nearly all of it from reflecting off a coated surface.

Study author Lu Lin, an associate professor at the institute’s Key Laboratory of Inorganic Coating Materials, said there could be wide applications in precise optics for the new material.

“Stray lights often interfere with the light we actually need, resulting in a blurry photo. After we apply the film onto areas of the cameras where stray light could be present, it will be absorbed and stop reflecting,” she said. “This way, image quality will be improved.”

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Lu said the material was highly durable and able to withstand friction from sandpaper and erasers, as well as repeated tests under extreme temperature changes – from minus 100 degrees Celsius to 100 degrees, and in hot, humid environments.

She added that the material could be adjusted to absorb light from different wavelengths depending on the needs of the application.

Cambodia urged to target ‘key figures’ as Chinese scam gangs defy crackdowns in ‘sin city’

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3255797/cambodia-urged-target-key-figures-chinese-scam-gangs-defy-crackdowns-sin-city?utm_source=rss_feed

Cambodia’s continued crackdowns in Sihanoukville show the coastal “sin city” is still likely powered by the scam industry, observers said, despite mounting pressure on the government to eradicate the predominantly Chinese crime gangs that have made billions of dollars from cyber fraud.

During the latest raid March 9-10, officials arrested more than 450 people who were allegedly part of illegal online gambling and “pig-butchering” scam businesses thriving behind the fronts of authorised casinos.

Many foreign criminal networks have penetrated Cambodia over the past several years through such operations, with most controlled by Chinese mafia groups that centre their scams in semi-lawless Sihanoukville. Many condominiums and commercial buildings have been hastily erected to be used as worker dormitories, offices and other support sites from which to run cyber fraud businesses.

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While the investigations showed the “increased level of concern” from local authorities, the efforts were not extensive enough to extinguish the scam operations, said Benedikt Hofman, deputy representative for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

“The focus on law enforcement and raids will most likely lead to geographic shifts rather than lasting impact,” he added. “If past experience is any indication, business will be back in a few months.”

According to local reports, some Chinese workers who had caught wind of the coming raids avoided being rounded up by delaying their return to Cambodia from China, where they had been on a Lunar New Year break. Others reportedly checked into hotels to avoid being caught at their work stations.

Police raids usually target relatively small and obscure scam operations, said Huang Yan, a Chinese reporter based in Cambodia who monitors scam-related news for the Chinese-language news outlet Angkor Observer, including workers believed to be scamming their nationals in Thai, Vietnamese and Khmer languages.

But after the crackdown, Sihanoukville’s governor Kuoch Chamroeun appealed on Facebook for information about Zhong Huokun, a Chinese national suspected of owning one of the two raided premises.

“Before this crackdown, they always arrested the low-level staff members, but they did not catch many general managers of the scam groups, and they never reached the level of the scam compound owners,” Yan said. “This is the first time, so it’s very interesting.”

Thailand helped transfer 900 scam victims from Myanmar to China: PM Srettha

In recent years, authorities have cleaned Sihanoukville’s beaches of rubbish, backpacker bars and cheap hostels, as the city centre filled with restaurants and stores catering to the Chinese and Southeast Asian expat populations. The city remains littered with skeletons of skyscrapers – the vestige of the surge of investments which fell apart as Cambodia banned online gambling in early 2020 and the pandemic decimated tourist arrivals.

Cambodia instead emerged in 2021 as the hub for the scam crisis which has ripped through the world, initially targeting Chinese nationals but swiftly moving to anyone with an internet connection.

The UN Office on Drugs on Crime has described the Mekong casino sector as a parallel banking system aiding underground businesses to launder billions of dollars – money all heavily enabled by fast and largely obscured cryptocurrency trades.

Scam businesses have since emerged in other hubs, including the Philippines, Myanmar, Laos and even Dubai, but operators have learned to move quickly to new compounds to evade government crackdowns. Most recently, scam workers in Myanmar were reported to have crossed into Cambodia after a Chinese government-led crackdown on towns hosting major scam parks.

Under pressure from Southeast Asian neighbours as well as top regional investor China, Cambodian officials have carried out investigations, causing a temporary slowdown on the coastal town’s enterprises.

But the scam gangs refuse to leave the kingdom, among the poorest countries in the region.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, the son of long-serving premier and ruling party president Hun Sen, in February said he wanted to suspend gambling licences and that he had ordered provincial governors to “inspect gambling venues at the local level of their jurisdiction”.

Though he did not elaborate on who could face increased regulatory scrutiny, an official from the Economy and Finance Ministry told This Week in Asia that none of the nearly 200 permanent and temporary casino licences already issued had been suspended.

Cambodians are banned from gambling, but the sector thrives through casinos attracting foreigners, as well as the underground gambling, sports betting and scams conducted online.

Cambodia’s scam businesses reportedly slowed after a series of raids in 2022, but Sihanoukville now appears to be back in business.

How crypto investigators uncover scammers’ blockchain billions in Asia

Anecdotally, there are more foreigners coming into Cambodia for work, from both nearby countries such as Indonesia, as well as from African nations such as Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia and Egypt, with fears the available work may ultimately be in cyber scams.

Ros Phirun, of the Economy and Finance Ministry’s commercial gambling department, said he expected there would be better control over the sector after Cambodia reformed its licence requirements to include higher fees and revenue to gain gambling permits.

“Of course, we understand that the quantity of licensees will be reduced, but the quality ones will be enhanced,” he said.

But renewed attention on their activities does not seem to have spooked the Sihanoukville scam businesses, according to a representative for CyberScamMonitor, an open-source platform that has played a key role in mapping the evolution of the global scam and online gambling industry.

“While some have been leaving over the past few days, we have not yet heard any reports of the same kind of exodus this time,” the representative added, requesting anonymity given the dangers of the work.

The CyberScamMonitor source said the industry had deeply embedded in Cambodia, with evidence of “powerful elite actors” benefiting from it and ensuring its survival.

“To truly tackle the industry and address the reputational damage it has done, a comprehensive and sustained crackdown is needed, along with legal action against the key figures running or protecting the industry.”

Risk warning as new China ‘blind box socials’ trend sees growing numbers of young people meet up with strangers for activities

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3254778/risk-warning-new-china-blind-box-socials-trend-sees-growing-numbers-young-people-meet-strangers?utm_source=rss_feed

An emerging trend among young people in China which sees them actively engage with strangers outside of their traditional social circles has received a mixed reaction on mainland social media.

For some, the so-called “blind box socials” phenomenon – which involves meet-ups for meals or activities with hitherto unknown individuals where expenses are shared equally – is a positive development because it broadens the horizons of those taking part.

However, others fear that the trend, which has been enabled by social media, could eat away at the traditional fabric of society, and even pose a risk to the personal safety of those who participate.

Many young people are attracted to the trend because it offers unpredictable and fresh experiences with new people in a fast-changing society.

The name of the trend derives from so-called “blind box” products which are sold in opaque boxes, meaning customers do not know exactly what they are buying.

One enthusiastic participant, Gaibao, said she joined a “blind box socials”event in October 2023 because she could not convince her existing friends to join her in her outdoor adventures.

To her surprise, her approach quickly gathered the attention of hundreds of people, prompting her to create a WeChat group for organising outdoor events with strangers.

The group now has more than 500 members, and in less than six months, they have successfully organised seven “blind box socials”, including hide-and-seek, frisbee and a New Year’s Eve gathering.

Fans of the movement say it reduces traditional social pressures to behave in a certain way and allows participants to be themselves.

The decades of baggage that come with traditional interactions are dispensed with, making conversations easier, as is the fear of making a damaging social faux pas.

Another “blind box socials” devotee is Xiaoao, a new arrival to a city where his primary interactions have been with colleagues.

He told Beijing Youth Daily: “Because everybody involved is a stranger, I don’t have to worry about getting along poorly. If I were interacting with people I know, I would have to consider their feelings, but with strangers, I don’t need to worry so much. We can gather if we want and leave just as freely.”

However, the downside to such gatherings is that they might not turn out the way an individual expected or desired, much like blind box products.

According to Zhang Xiaoyuan, the former dean of the Journalism Department at Sichuan University in southwestern China, any gathering of complete strangers carries risks.

“It is important for organisers and participants to be aware of the risk of being deceived. Engaging in social interactions with strangers might also lead to encounters with fraudsters or malicious individuals,” Zhang said.

Wang Xueren, an event organiser, recounted an incident where a man initially behaved well, bringing homemade snacks to a gathering. However, after consuming too much alcohol, he started harassing female participants.

Gaibao said she attends women-only events if she thinks physical contact is unavoidable for the activity.

The trend has attracted a mixed reaction on mainland social media.

“I am afraid to make such unknown friends in case I wake up the next day without my money, phone, ID, or even my kidneys,” said one online observer.

“Young people are cutting ties with relatives back in their hometowns while engaging in such activities with strangers in the city. It’s so odd,” said another.

However, a third person understood the appeal of the trend and said: “These people are simply tired of socialising with long-time acquaintances and have sought something fresh and thrilling.”

Beijing visit shows China and Angola are redefining economic relationship for a post-oil, post-loans era

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3255766/beijing-visit-shows-china-and-angola-are-redefining-economic-relationship-post-oil-post-loans-era?utm_source=rss_feed

For two decades, oil has been the crux of Sino-Angolan relations, but Angola is now putting its mining, agriculture and manufacturing sectors forward to redefine the nation’s economic engagement with China in a post-oil and post-loans era.

On Friday, while hosting Angolan President Joao Lourenco for bilateral talks in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China would help Angola “achieve agricultural modernisation, industrialisation and economic diversification”.

China will help Angola strengthen cooperation in mining and agricultural development and further value add in those sectors, including animal husbandry industries. According to a joint statement released after the meeting, Beijing will encourage Chinese enterprises to take part in “investment projects that support the upgrading of Angola’s industrial chain”.

And Xi and Lourenco also announced the elevation of bilateral ties between the two nations to a comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership.

Attracting Chinese private investment is part of Angola’s plan to cut its excessive reliance on oil, most of it exported to China to repay loans advanced during the country’s rebuilding period.

China’s major inroads into Angola can be traced to 2002 at the end of the 27-year Angolan civil war when former president Jose Eduardo dos Santos invited Beijing to invest in Angola after Western governments declined to help with its reconstruction.

Angola and Chinese lenders pioneered the concept of oil-backed loans to access Chinese funding to build infrastructure, in what came to be known as the “Angola model”. It was successful until oil prices fell, forcing the country to pump more oil to service its debts.

According to Boston University, between 2000 and 2022 Angola borrowed US$45 billion – about a quarter of China’s total lending to African countries – which it repays in the form of oil shipments. Currently, Angola owes Chinese creditors about US$17 billion, most of it to the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China.

Dominik Kopinski, an associate professor in the Institute of Economics at the University of Wroclaw and senior adviser at the Polish Economic Institute, said Lourenco’s visit to China related to the country seeking to diversify and cultivate links with a wide range of partners.

“Those who thought the recent recalibration of Angola’s foreign policy meant ditching China and embracing the West will feel disappointed,” Kopinski said.

Kopinski said that with little chance for new loans like those seen under dos Santos, and a continued infrastructure extravaganza, Lourenco has been trying to shift gears to attract private investment, which is reflected in his China trip schedule.

Lourenco’s four-day state visit that started on Thursday included talks with executives of major Chinese companies, including China Gezhouba Group Corporation which is building the Caculo Cabaca hydroelectric plant in Angola’s Cuanza Norte province, and Hebei Huatong Cable Group, which is building an aluminium production factory in Angola.

Tim Zajontz, a research fellow in the Centre for International and Comparative Politics at Stellenbosch University, said Angola and China were still redefining their economic relationship in a post-oil and post-loans era.

Zajontz said Lourenco promoted Angola as a destination for Chinese investment in the hope it could boost the country’s troubled economy.

“It is also likely that Angola’s debt will be discussed behind closed doors,” Zajontz said.

Focused on Global South, China upgrades ties with Angola

Lourenco, in a speech during talks with Xi, pleaded with China to help it ease its debt troubles.

“We addressed the problem of Angola’s debt to China, our desire to continue honouring our commitments and obligations as a debtor, but also the need for the creditor to help us get out of the suffocating situation,” Lourenco said in a speech published in the Luanda-based Jornal de Angola.

He revealed that at a meeting with China’s premier, Lourenco sought financing for a refinery in the port city of Lobito, a petrochemical plant and a military air force base.

Lourenco thanked China for its help during Angola’s reconstruction.

“When we were in urgent need of large financial resources for national reconstruction, China was the only country in the world that truly came to our aid to rebuild the main infrastructure and build new [projects] that were equally important for the economic and social development of Angola,” he said.

As China’s relationship with Angola grew tense because of the Chinese loans that weighed it down, the United States has attempted to push back on China’s influence in Angola. The US pledged US$1 billion to refurbish the Lobito Atlantic Railway, its first major project in Africa in decades, which will stretch 1,300km (807 miles) through mineral-rich Zambia and the Democ­ratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to create a logistics corridor to the port of Lobito.

But China’s economic influence in Angola runs deep and Beijing is not ready to let go of its key diplomatic ally. Angola still needs China to fund the construction of the major infrastructure projects such as the 2,172 megawatt Caculo Cabaca hydropower station and the Lobito oil refinery.

Kopinski said it would be natural to associate Lourenco’s trip to China with the Lobito Corridor rail upgrade, which was won by a consortium led by Trafigura and partly financed by Americans.

He said that despite the recent decline in Chinese investment and loans in Africa, “this doesn’t indicate China’s retreat from the continent” but it instead reflected pragmatic experimentation – evaluating what works and what doesn’t, and then adapting accordingly.

Kopinski said the Lobito Corridor revamp was not a “China-free” project, with China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) having a 32.4 per cent stake in Mota-Engil, one of two big members of the consortium.

Zajontz, who is also a lecturer in global political economy at the University of Freiburg, said there could be no doubt that Beijing was closely watching Western investment plans along the Lobito Corridor.

He said the US government identified Angola as the preferred gateway to critical minerals in the DRC and Zambia but the Chinese government had no interest in leaving the field to Western firms.

Mark Bohlund, a senior credit research analyst at REDD Intelligence, said Lourenco’s meeting in Beijing was arguably more important for Angola because of the high level of payments to Chinese creditors which weighed on the balance of payments and government finances.

He said Lourenco was probably seeking some way to reduce these, most likely by lengthening the term of the loans.

Africa is key in China’s bid to de-risk its iron ore supply

Bohlund said the most important factor for Beijing was likely to be keeping Angola on board in servicing Chinese debt without more aggressively seeking better terms, which could have knock-on effects in other African debtor countries.

He said the race for access to copper and other rare earth minerals in the DRC and Zambia had accelerated with the Lobito Corridor project.

Bohlund said Chinese officials would want to ensure their support for “upgrading the rail route from Zambia through Tanzania to the Indian Ocean does not disrupt their relations with Angola”.

China’s corruption watchdog zeroes in on cadres’ fake business investments

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3255694/chinas-corruption-watchdog-zeroes-cadres-fake-business-investments?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s top anti-graft watchdog is targeting cadres who take bribes in the form of “dividends” from fake business investments, a type of corruption that authorities say is becoming more common, secretive and complex.

The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said on Sunday that in these cases, the officials take “returns” from the business without actually investing in the enterprise or being involved in its operations.

In many cases, the invested company has no actual operations or profits and distributes dividends only to a handful of shareholders who are the officials or their proxies.

As an example, the CCDI cited the case of Yang Degao, former vice-president of the Hubei branch of China Development Bank.

The commission said that from 2005 to 2014, Yang took advantage of his position in CDB to help a company obtain a loan from his bank.

Yang and four accomplices also invested 2 million yuan (US$280,000) in the firm, becoming shareholders and receiving fixed dividends every year.

The group received 8 million yuan in “dividend payments” and took back their “principal” of 2 million yuan in just the next few years, with Yang receiving over 3.74 million yuan more than his rightful amount, according to investigators.

In January 2023, Yang was sentenced to 12 years in prison for accepting over 31 million yuan bribes.

The campaign against such bribery is part of the CCDI’s priority this year to crack down on “corruption involving political and business collusion”, particularly in the finance sector, state-owned enterprises and the energy, tobacco, healthcare and infrastructure industries.

Beijing has repeatedly warned its millions of Communist Party cadres to stay away from investing in private equity to avoid ownership situations that are ripe for corruption.

The party’s internal rules clearly prohibit officials from having stakes in unlisted companies, restricting them to investments in listed shares.

Officials are also required to report their family’s investments including shares, property and insurance to the disciplinary watchdog every year.

In addition, the Civil Servant Law also stipulates that public officials shall not “violate relevant regulations to engage in or participate in for-profit activities or hold concurrent positions in enterprises or other for-profit organisations”.

The CCDI said that to get around these rules and avoid investigation, officials often named family members or other third parties as shareholders of the companies.

Hundreds in net as China’s top prosecutors intensify financial crime crackdown

President Xi Jinping has made tackling corruption in the sprawling party a signature issue since taking power more than a decade ago.

Over the years the campaign has brought down more than 1½ million government officials. This year alone, the CCDI’s crackdown on the US$61 trillion financial sector has brought down more than 100 executives and officials.

Some 110,000 party officials faced disciplinary action last year, the CCDI said in January, a 13 per cent increase from the previous year.

Last year, the commission opened corruption investigations against a record 45 senior officials, according to a tally by the Post.

And there is little sign that it will end soon. In his instructions to the CCDI in January, Xi said he regarded the efforts as critical to the party’s long-term governance as well as its “advanced nature and purity”.

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Filipino mail-order brides trafficked to China: alarm in Philippines over links to Chinese organised crime

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/people/article/3255738/filipino-mail-order-brides-trafficked-china-alarm-philippines-over-links-chinese-organised-crime?utm_source=rss_feed

A recent warning from the Philippines’ immigration agency regarding a new sophisticated scheme to traffic Filipino women to China as mail-order brides suggests a “concerning” connection to Chinese organised crime and trafficking syndicates, experts say.

The Bureau of Immigration revealed in early March that immigration officers had intercepted a 20-year-old Filipino woman and a 34-year-old Chinese man who were attempting to travel to Shenzhen on February 28 as a married couple.

“This is obviously another case of the mail-order bride scheme that has resurfaced recently,” said bureau Commissioner Norman Tansingco in a press release.

The pair were able to provide a genuine Philippine marriage certificate, but officers became suspicious after noticing inconsistencies in their statements, according to the release.

The woman later admitted that no marriage had occurred, and that she had paid 45,000 pesos (US$810) – more than twice the average monthly income in the Philippines – for an agent to process the document.

In another incident from February, officers barred a Filipino woman from leaving the country with a Chinese national who had been working in the Philippines and claimed to be her husband. The pair also provided a seemingly authentic marriage certificate showing they wed in the southern Philippines in 2022, yet an inspection of the man’s travel records revealed he was not in the country at that time.

The man later admitted to paying a China-based agency 40,000 pesos to process the documents.

Four such couples have been intercepted so far this year, according to immigration officials, who expressed particular concern over their ability to produce authentic documents.

Initial investigations by the immigration bureau’s anti-fraud section showed the certificates were “seemingly original”, deputy spokesman Melvin Mabulac told media on March 7, prompting the Department of Justice, as head of the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking, “to further conduct a probe on how these documents have been released”.

This Week in Asia has contacted the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking and Bureau of Investigation for comment.

Nathalie Africa-Verceles, a professor at the University of the Philippines’ Department of Women and Development Studies, said the presence of legitimate marriage documents suggested the involvement of organised crime groups in the trafficking scheme.

“What the Bureau of Immigration should investigate is who is issuing these marriage certificates,” she said, adding that the number of women being trafficked into marriage could be much higher than the recent interceptions suggest.

“The fact that [the Filipino woman and Chinese national] had a legal document is concerning, because there was obviously some corruption there, because how else do you obtain a legal marriage certificate?”

Limited resources and training could hamper law enforcement agencies’ ability to identify trafficking cases, especially if organised crime syndicates are involved, according to Ross Tugade, a human rights lawyer and professor of international law at the University of the Philippines.

“It might be the case that authorities are better equipped to identify cases involving forced labour or obvious sex trafficking, but might miss more nuanced scenarios like mail-order bride exploitation,” she said, adding that China’s gender imbalance could be driving demand for mail-order brides.

“Traffickers also constantly adapt their methods. They shift operations, move online, and find loopholes to exploit. Laws often struggle to keep up with these tactics.”

The Philippines has laws specifically designed to combat human trafficking. The Anti Mail-Order Bride Law of 1990, and its replacement the Anti Mail-Order Spouse Act of 2016, prohibits the business of organising or facilitating the marriage of Filipino women to foreign men by matchmaking services. There is also the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003, which was expanded in 2022 to provide authorities with more oversight and enhanced penalties for violations.

But experts say these laws are only as good as their implementation.

Trafficking, ‘love scams’: inside raided Chinese gaming firm in the Philippines

“Do a lot of women know about these laws? Or, given their economic exigencies [needs], do these laws even matter to them? We have a lot of laws and if they were implemented properly, it would really improve the condition of Filipino women,” Africa-Verceles said.

She said young women on low incomes with low educational attainment, particularly those who had been internally displaced, were the most vulnerable to being trafficked.

Jean Enriquez, executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women – Asia-Pacific, told This Week in Asia that the marriage trafficking scheme could be connected to the surge in Chinese investments into Philippine offshore gaming operations (POGO) that reached its height under the previous administration of former president Rodrigo Duterte.

At its peak, the POGO industry employed around 300,000 Chinese workers in the Philippines taking advantage of loose regulations on gambling businesses to cater to customers in mainland China. It has been linked to a slew of crimes and controversies, from cases of abduction, tax evasion and bribery to sex dens, prostitution rings, and torture chambers being uncovered by authorities.

A March 13 raid on a POGO compound in Tarlac province, around 100km north of Manila, uncovered a potential hub for love scams, with 373 Filipinos being rescued amid allegations of human trafficking and illegal detentions.

In November, authorities also rescued 15 Filipino women – including five suspected to be underage – from an alleged prostitution den in Pasay City catering to Chinese POGO workers.

Women are lined up in “aquarium”-like chambers at such facilities to be picked out by “POGO employees and their bosses” and used as “sex slaves”, Philippine Senator Risa Hontiveros told a November Senate hearing after touring a raided POGO hub. “I could hardly stop crying when I saw,” she said.

Anti-trafficking campaigner Enriquez said the revelations about raided POGO hubs “point to the targeting of Filipino women by customers from China for sexual exploitation”.

Women being trafficked to China was a “historical phenomenon rooted in China’s patriarchal demand”, she said, with Southeast Asian nations “such as Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam used as source areas for women to be sexually exploited”.

China’s one-child policy, which began in 1980 and ended in 2016, resulted in there being an estimated 35 million more men than women in the country, making it challenging for Chinese men to find a wife, Enriquez said.

“The supply side is pushed by the women’s poverty in source countries like the Philippines and the neighbouring Mekong subregion, which is being exploited by traffickers and buyers, as patriarchal stereotypes prey on the pressure for women to marry and save their families from poverty through marriage,” she said.

Enriquez said trafficking will continue to be an issue until the Philippines starts to hold the buyers of women accountable. “Until now, those convicted are third-party traffickers and we have yet to hear of male procurers being punished, even as the practice has been normalised,” she said, citing the example of websites offering catalogues of Filipino “brides” available for purchase. She said the owners of such websites could be prosecuted under the 2022 anti-trafficking law.

China’s one-child policy and the millions of ‘missing girls’

But ultimately, Enriquez said, curbing trafficking cases is a two-way street.

“While the Philippines must create local sustainable jobs and ensure that accessible support is provided for susceptible communities of women and girls, China must address its own demand side – patriarchal policies and culture which socialises men as perpetrators.”

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China’s economy rebounds at start of 2024, but property drag continues

https://www.scmp.com/economy/economic-indicators/article/3255731/chinas-economy-rebounds-start-2024-property-drag-continues?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s economic data for the first two months of the year rebounded on the back of the Lunar New Year holiday, although there were little signs that the property market downturn was coming to an end.

Retail sales rose by 5.5 per cent year on year, according to National Bureau of Statistics on Monday, compared to a prediction by Chinese data provider Wind for an increase of 5.4 per cent. Retail sales growth had stood at 7.4 per cent in December.

Industrial output continued to improve in the first two months of the year, rising by 7 per cent from a year earlier, compared to a rise of 6.8 per cent in December.

But despite an acceleration in property policy easing, property investment continued to struggle and fell by 9 per cent in January and February. Property investment had dropped 9.6 per cent year on year in 2023.

China’s urban unemployment rate for January and February stood at 5.3 per cent.

China’s economic figures for January and February are combined to smooth out the impact of the Lunar New Year holiday, which falls at different times during the two months in different years.

More to follow …

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Hong Kong’s Gaw Capital bets on ‘China plus one’ opportunities in Vietnam and Mexico, AI-boom driven US office market growth to offset mainland woes

https://www.scmp.com/business/banking-finance/article/3255703/hong-kongs-gaw-capital-bets-china-plus-one-opportunities-vietnam-and-mexico-ai-boom-driven-us-office?utm_source=rss_feed

Gaw Capital Partners, one of Hong Kong’s biggest real estate private-fund management firms, is focusing on logistics in Vietnam and Mexico, as well as the artificial intelligence (AI) sector bailing out distressed office assets in the United States, amid challenges to an economic recovery in mainland China.

The US-China trade tensions could continue to be an issue for the next 10 to 15 years, said Goodwin Gaw, the firm’s founder and managing principal. “I want to invest in countries that are the biggest beneficiaries of ‘China plus one’ [strategy],” Gaw said.

China plus one seeks diversification for manufacturers by reducing reliance on the mainland as a production base. The world’s second-largest economy is also the largest manufacturer globally, with the most extensive supply chains.

Vietnam, India and Mexico are seen as countries most likely to capture business from China.

“Vietnam and Mexico are easier as these two countries welcome [Chinese firms] setting up production facilities,” Gaw said. “But India doesn’t like domestic investment from China.

“The biggest beneficiaries will be those who allow Chinese factories to open up and hire local labour to produce the same goods for foreign clients.”

Peak distress: Hong Kong luxury property owners turn to pricey private loans

The latest investment strategy at Gaw Capital comes amid a sputtering economic recovery in mainland China.

The country’s office market has been tough, Gaw said, with vacancy rates rising to 80 per cent in some cases and rents continuing to underperform because of budget cuts at companies. Data centres are also under pressure from a combination of low demand due to a slowing economy, as well as disruption in the supply of chips, Gaw added.

China’s office sector will remain a tenants’ market in 2024, forcing landlords pressured by an economic downturn and new supplies to continue lowering rents through the year to spur demand, according to JLL China.

Gaw Capital turns to Hongkongers to sell flats near Foshan-West Kowloon line

The economic situation in China will have an impact on Hong Kong, as the city remains a financial gateway to the mainland and relies on its economy. “If mainland China’s economy does not stabilise, there will be no stimulus for Hong Kong to improve its economy,” Gaw said.

The company will invest in the logistics sector in Vietnam and Mexico, with its team in California covering strategies for the latter.

Gaw Capital, which has raised US$22.3 billion in equity since 2005, has invested in four million square metres of logistics space across all countries. Its investments span the entire spectrum of the real estate market, including residential developments, offices, malls, serviced apartments, hotels and logistics warehouses. It had US$33.7 billion in assets under management as of the third quarter of 2023.

Gaw Capital eyes more Japan property deals amid TSMC expansion

In the US, Gaw Capital is eyeing the distressed office market as an investment strategy and is betting on AI development in the next 10 years.

The prices of US offices have fallen sharply due to high interest rates and elevated vacancies since the coronavirus pandemic. “The office asset class has dropped the most,” Gaw said. “For example, in San Francisco, we bought a property at a price that was only a third of what it was in 2019.”

Gaw Capital closed a deal for a 293,347 sq ft office project in San Francisco’s Embarcadero Square at the end of last year.

Meanwhile, AI is going to change the way people work, it will increase productivity and change many sectors, including offices, Gaw said. AI firms will start their businesses in mainly three places: San Francisco, Seattle and Cambridge in Massachusetts.

There will be a big wave of office demand from these AI companies. “If you buy at the right price, hold it for five years without debt stress, there’s a big upside to be captured,” Gaw said.

There is a nine-month window for buying distressed office assets at reasonable discounts in major cities for technology, such as Seattle, San Francisco and, to a certain extent, New York, Gaw said.

“The [US] office market is definitely not bottoming out [yet],” he said. “Leasing is still weak, interest rates are still high and banks are not willing to lend. But because it’s not yet bottomed out, we are able to purchase these [distressed assets].”

Gaw said he did not see an interest-rate cut any time soon. “They don’t have such pressure,” he said. “The US economy is very strong. The S&P, stocks and company earnings – they don’t have pressure for a hard landing.

“If there is no hard landing, why will the Federal Reserve cut rates.”

The Fed could cut rates by 25 percentage points in June, and by 50 to 75 percentage points by the end of the year, totalling a 1 per cent reduction this year, Gaw said.

‘Sexual shame’: China holds online professional circumcision contest to correct misconceptions, promote positive attitudes, levels of acceptance

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/gender-diversity/article/3254592/sexual-shame-china-holds-online-professional-circumcision-contest-correct-misconceptions-promote?utm_source=rss_feed

Surgeons in China have hosted a competition to showcase their circumcision skills, with the doctor being praised for his “exceptional technical expertise” and “compassionate patient care”.

Circumcision is a procedure that removes the foreskin from the human penis.

In the most common form of the operation, the foreskin is extended with forceps, then a circumcision device may be placed, after which the foreskin is excised.

More than 100 of China’s most skilled surgeons took part in the three-hour-long online contest in December 2023.

Two months after the competition was completed, a spectator shared the unique event on mainland social media platforms.

Each doctor who took part presented a pre-recorded six-minute circumcision video with live commentary.

Judges evaluated the surgery based on technique, explanation and innovation.

Some contestants showcased innovations in technique, such as homemade post-operative penile protection devices and meticulous application of post-operative ointments.

The winning doctor, urologist Jiang Qiqi, spelled out the value of circumcision using comic illustrations, earning praise for demonstrating the humanistic care which is rarely present with Chinese doctors.

Organisers, Guo Tao and host Wang Xin, also urologists said their aim was to raise awareness of male health.

The contest was live streamed, and viewers had to undergo a strict identity verification process to confirm that they were “serious observers”.

One female viewer said: “At first, seeing so many male reproductive organs made me feel a bit curious and embarrassed, but I quickly adapted and focused on the surgeries.”

In China, the cost of circumcision at a regular hospital ranges from 2,000 to 4,000 yuan (US$270 to US$550), with the procedure usually lasting about 30 minutes and not requiring hospitalisation.

For many people in the mainland, circumcision is viewed as an exercise is “shameful body modification” and there is a lack of accurate understanding of the procedure.

Jiang, the champion doctor, said: “In traditional Chinese beliefs, anything related to ‘sex’ tends to be sidelined.”

One contestant shared the case of a patient who suffered severe penile pain during sexual intercourse, leading to extreme self-doubt and a 30-year absence from home.

After undergoing an examination, it was discovered that penile cancer resulted from excessive foreskin.

In 2022, one mainland man thought that circumcision would enhance sexual function but felt “too embarrassed” to visit a hospital.

Instead, he purchased tools online to circumcise himself, leading to painful injury.

“There is a common misconception in China, in fact circumcision doesn’t necessarily equate to enhanced sexual function,” said Wang Xin, the host of the contest.

Wang Xiang, a urologist at the Fudan University in Shanghai, suggests that not all cases of excessive foreskin require circumcision.

“Consulting a doctor is essential before making a decision,” said Wang.

It is estimated that one-third of men worldwide have undergone the procedure either for religious or health reasons, or as part of tradition.

The male circumcision rate is relatively low in China, with an overall prevalence of 14 per cent reported in 2016.

CATL, the little-known Chinese battery maker that has the US worried

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/18/catl-chinese-battery-maker-evs-electric-vehicles

The world’s two superpowers are so intricately linked that it’s hard to think of a pillar of the economy that hasn’t been strained by tensions between the US and China.

And the next frontline in the economic conflict may be the most fundamental yet: a fight for power itself.

A Chinese company that most people have never heard of is at the heart of the global race to store the clean energy needed to power the green transition in the US and the rest of the world.

China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Limited, or CATL, is an energy storage specialist that is the world’s largest battery maker for electric vehicles (EVs). But despite the fact that the company controls nearly two-fifths of the world’s EV battery market – and has powered cars made by brands including Tesla, Volkswagen and BMW – it has long flown under the radar of US politics. Until now.

In February, Duke Energy, a US energy company that serves more than 8 million customers, said it was phasing out the use of CATL batteries. Duke said it would replace the CATL products with technology from a “domestic or allied nation supplier”.

The decision came after lawmakers had raised concerns about the use of CATL batteries at a Marine Corps base, Camp Lejeune, in North Carolina. Duke, which provides electrical infrastructure to the military base, disconnected the CATL batteries in December and now plans to decommission them entirely, as well as phase them out from civilian projects.

Ford has also come under fire for doing business with CATL. A deal between the two companies to build a factory in Michigan to produce low-cost lithium iron phosphate batteries for EVs using CATL technology has repeatedly been questioned by US lawmakers. Marco Rubio, the vice-chairperson of the Senate intelligence committee, said the plan would bring “America’s greatest geopolitical adversary into the heartland” . In November, Ford scaled down its plans for the plant, reducing its capacity by about 40%.

“This is new,” says Tu Le, the founder of Sino Auto Insights, a consultancy, of the recent scrutiny on CATL. “This is not something that had been talked about or discussed by the US government. There were never any concerns before.”

US is ‘years behind’

Le says there is an increasing pressure on US companies not to use any Chinese batteries, “but if the US is going to be competitive on the global stage with EVs, through 2030 they’re going to have to use Chinese batteries”.

Critics are worried that using CATL batteries may create a dependence on Chinese technology that could become a vulnerability in the event of souring relations between Washington and Beijing. There are also concerns that US tax subsidies for green technology could flow towards Chinese entities.

Regardless, experts agree there is no clear roadmap for the US to decarbonise its streets without cheap Chinese EV batteries – most likely from CATL or its main rival, BYD.

Michael Dunne, the founder of Dunne Insights, an EV consultancy, says the US is “years behind when it comes to batteries, battery supply chains, critical minerals. This is where our cupboard is bare.”

Dunne says there is now a “sense of urgency” in the US to build up domestic battery capacity but that it would take between five and 10 years to catch up with China. That may not be fast – or cheap – enough to achieve Biden’s goal of two-thirds of new car sales being EVs by 2032.

Last week, energy secretary Jennifer Granholm told a discussion panel: “We are very concerned about China bigfooting our industry in the United States even as we’re building up now this incredible backbone of manufacturing.”

But Granholm also acknowledged that “we need to understand that it is important for people to buy electric vehicles in an affordable fashion,” something that experts say is impossible in the current market without Chinese batteries.

A highly charged political climate

The pushback in the US is already having an impact. Research recently published by Rhodium Group concluded that “Chinese EV and battery companies are increasingly stuck between a rock and a hard place” as they try to navigate their rising unpopularity in the US while Beijing pushes them to internationalise. Between 2022 and 2023, Chinese overseas investment in the EV supply chain in north America decreased from $4.8bn to $2.7bn, according to Rhodium, “driven by regulatory uncertainty and fears over political backlash”.

Le says: “The national security aspect of it needs to be examined. That’s part of due diligence. But we also know that we don’t want to cut our nose off to spite our face either.”

CATL declined to be interviewed, but referred the Guardian to a statement published in December: “Accusations about CATL batteries posing security threats are false and misleading. As a global technology company, CATL welcomes responsible discourse on important safety and security issues, and we take questions about our business seriously. CATL’s business and products in the US do not collect, sell, or share data, and cannot directly interact with electrical grid or any other critical infrastructure.”

Le says many Chinese companies are “anxious” to see who the US will elect as their next president in November. But although Washington is unlikely to look favourably on firms such as CATL any time soon, US companies may struggle to find alternatives. Tesla is reportedly planning to open a new battery factory using CATL machinery in Nevada this year.

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‘All ethnic groups matter’: new Chinese textbook cites splits in the West to justify Beijing’s integration policies

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3255567/all-ethnic-groups-matter-new-chinese-textbook-cites-splits-west-justify-beijings-integration?utm_source=rss_feed

A new textbook to be taught at Chinese universities cites political division in the West to justify Beijing’s ethnic integration policies, whose focus has shifted from minorities to “all ethnic groups”.

The book, An Introduction to the Community for the Chinese Nation, was published in February and will soon be listed as a compulsory text at many universities, as is the case with courses on Marxism and Xi Jinping Thought.

Observers say it is the most direct articulation of China’s ethnic integration policies since President Xi Jinping first coined the term “a sense of community for the Chinese nation” in 2014.

They also say it signals that affirmative action for ethnic minority groups will be further rolled back as Beijing backs down from emphasising the distinctive qualities of those groups.

The book argues that after the 1970s, under the influence of neoliberalism in the West, “antagonisms between various groups based on subnational and subcultural identities have continued to grow, with racial and ethnic tensions being particularly intense”.

It cited “political divides” and “social cleavages” in the United States as examples, and referred to the attack on the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. The textbook said in the US lower-middle class white people “blame people of colour and ethnic minorities” for the wealth gap brought by economic globalisation.

It also listed the “national identity dilemma” faced by different regions – including Europe, Africa, the US and India – and concluded that policies in other countries all failed to address it.

“Neither the harmonising ‘melting pot’ policy nor the ultra-diverse model of ethnic governance works,” the authors wrote.

The book was jointly written by around a dozen Chinese scholars known for advocating ethnic integration.

Its chief editor is Pan Yue, the director of the National Ethnic Affairs Commission, responsible for drafting laws on China’s ethnic minority policy and enforcing those laws and regulations.

How Inner Mongolia is emerging as a model for China’s ethnic affairs policy

Beijing’s ethnic integration policies accelerated after 2014 when Xi spoke of “a sense of community for the Chinese nation”. At a conference in 2021, he said that building this sense of community should be at the heart of all ethnic minority policies, and he urged local authorities to take more proactive measures.

These included promoting the use of “standard spoken and written Chinese” – meaning Mandarin.

The textbook also details how the present ethnic policies differ from those practised in China before Xi’s presidency.

The changes include an emphasis on the wholeness of the “Chinese nation” and a shift in special focus from ethnic minorities to “all ethnic groups” and “all regions”.

The book said previous policies were mainly concerned with “managing the stomach” – meaning making people rich. But now both the “stomach” and the “brain” had to be managed – meaning intervening in the mind.

It also offered critiques of China’s ethnic policies in the past which were modelled on those from the former Soviet Union.

Some outdated measures, it said, “have deviated from the original intent, entrenched ethnic differences, fostered a narrow sense of ethnicity and given rise to the erroneous thesis of ethnic minority exceptionalism”.

This would lead to a path dependency of “seeking special policies with special status”, referring to the affirmative policies towards ethnic minority groups.

While some Han, the largest ethnic group in China, were upset with those affirmative policies – such as exempting some ethnic minority groups from the one-child policy and allowing them more relaxed university admission criteria – some in ethnic minority groups “looked to the West for their ethnic roots and to foreign countries for their cultural origins”.

Lai Hongyi, associate professor of social sciences at the University of Nottingham, said the book seemed “to present a new and broad perspective of China’s ethnic issues, from the evolution of the Chinese nation throughout history to the present”.

Lai said it suggested affirmative action cultural privileges granted to ethnic minorities would be “dramatically rolled back”.

The book did not name any ethnic groups in China but it is common to see China’s ethnic minority groups, especially on the periphery, share historical and cultural proximity with groups beyond the Chinese border, including Uygurs, Tibetans and Mongols.

In the text, the authors say pan-nationalism, ethnic separatism and religious extremism from foreign countries were still affecting China.

Ma Haiyun, an associate professor of history at Frostburg State University in Maryland, said these statements showed that “former-Soviet inspired communist policies on nationalities and ethnicities had been abandoned”.

He added that the present policy goal “geared towards not only a political unity but also a cultural assimilation”. However, if the concept “is narrowly defined as Han, then such policy practice will create more tension than harmony”.

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

James Leibold, a specialist in China’s ethnic politics and a professor at Melbourne’s La Trobe University, said the book was “the most frank assessment of the need for a policy U-turn” since 2012 that he had read.

The authors maintain that since ancient times, all ethnic groups had embraced the concept of zhonghua – meaning Chinese culture or civilisation.

The book tries to redefine the concept of minzu in Chinese, saying it encompasses the triple meaning of race, ethnic group and nation in English, and argues that China’s ethnic policies are superior to those of Western countries.

Aaron Glasserman, who researches China’s ethnic policies at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies at Harvard University, said intellectuals from ethnic minority groups were once encouraged to “study and develop their peoples’ distinctive cultures, traditions, history”.

But he said: “On this intellectual front, the old system has already been abandoned, and this new textbook is a nail in the coffin.”

An academic who teaches anthropology at a university in eastern China, and who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the issue, said he and his colleagues expected it would be difficult to teach the course because of the large content and the fact that some of its Chinese history interpretations differed from those in previous history textbooks.

One example is the book’s description of the decades of fighting between five nomadic groups and the Han regimes at the beginning of the fourth century as a mingling of nationalities, but not wars that impeded the development of the country, as they were previously described.

It is a point Pan Yue, from the National Ethnic Affairs Commission and chief editor of the textbook, had made in 2021.

Russia-China relations will become stronger, Putin says in post-election victory speech

https://www.scmp.com/news/world/russia-central-asia/article/3255724/russia-china-relations-will-become-stronger-putin-says-post-election-victory-speech?utm_source=rss_feed

Russian President Vladimir Putin has praised China for its success on the world stage, forecasting that Russia-China relations would become stronger in the coming years.

Putin was speaking in central Moscow on Sunday after partial results showed he had won Russia’s presidential election by a landslide.

He said China is very successful on the global arena and sanctions against China are doomed to fail.

In the late-night address after exit polls and early results showed him on track to secure 88 per cent of the vote, Putin said: “I want to thank the citizens of Russia … who came to the polling stations and voted.”

Preliminary turnout was put at 74.2 per cent. That is the highest since Boris Yeltsin became president in 1991 after the Soviet Union’s collapse, and well above the 67.5 per cent turnout recorded in 2018. At least six Russian regions claimed turnout was above 90 per cent.

Putin said police would take action against those who spoiled their ballots.

“People who spoiled their ballot papers … These kinds of people have to be dealt with,” he said.

Putin wins Russian election with 88 per cent of vote, exit poll shows

Supporters of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny had called on Russians to turn up at polling stations for a “Noon against Putin” protest to show their opposition to a leader they describe as a corrupt autocrat. Putin said the action had “no effect” but that those who had prevented other people voting by acts of vandalism should be punished.

Putin said the death of Navalny was a “sad event”, and that he had been ready to release him in a prisoner exchange.

Using his name in public for the first time in years during the televised news conference, Putin said: “As for Mr Navalny. Yes, he passed away. This is a sad event.”

He added: “A few days before Mr Navalny passed away, some colleagues told me … there was an idea to exchange Mr Navalny for some people who are in prison in Western countries … I said ‘I agree’.”

The Russian president said the main condition for the exchange was that Navalny would not return to Russia.

Navalny was Putin’s fiercest domestic opponent. His allies accuse Putin of having him murdered, something the Kremlin denies.

On the war in Ukraine, Putin told reporters that Russia’s priority must be to solve the tasks associated with what he calls Moscow’s “special military operation” in Ukraine and make the army stronger.

He said he would do everything he could to solve those tasks and the targets that Putin and his administration consider a priority.

He said Russia’s armed forces were advancing in Ukraine every day and that Moscow’s forces held the initiative on the battlefield, expressing “special words of gratitude to our soldiers … who fulfil the most important task of protecting our people”.

Putin said his country would not be intimidated.

“No matter who or how much they want to intimidate us, no matter who or how much they want to suppress us, our will, our consciousness – no one has ever succeeded in anything like this in history. It has not worked now and will not work in the future. Never,” Putin said in his address.

He said the presence of Western troops in Ukraine could lead the world to the brink of World War Three, but that he did not think that anyone was interested in such a possibility.

Russia election: calls for massive protests as Putin set to extend his rule

Putin also said Russia was ready for talks on a French proposal for a ceasefire in Ukraine during the Paris Olympics, but would need to take Russia’s interests on the front line into account.

Ukraine reported dozens of attacks by Russia near their shared border on Sunday. Moscow has accused Kyiv of election sabotage with days of strikes on Russian infrastructure, one of the most sweeping air operations on Russian territory since Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine two years ago.

In Russia’s Belgorod region earlier in the last day of voting, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said Ukrainian shelling killed one man and wounded 11 others. He said a 16-year-old girl had been killed in the border region after a Ukrainian shell set her house on fire earlier in the day.

The military administration in Ukraine’s Sumy region reported 60 shelling incidents of border territories and settlements. It also said the city of Konotop suffered a rocket attack but no injuries were reported.

One person was killed and another injured in Velykopysarivska community, authorities in Sumy said. Buildings or infrastructure were also damaged there including a hospital department, a kindergarten, a library, a multi-storey building and a gas pipeline, it said.

Ukraine’s emergency services said Russian aerial bombs hit a residential area in Vovchansk in the nearby border region of Kharkiv, igniting a fire that covered an area of 200 square metres and damaged buildings and cars. No injuries were reported.

Earlier on Sunday one man was killed and at least eight people were wounded in a Russian missile attack on the Black Sea port city of Mykolaiv, Ukrainian officials said, after an overnight strike on Odesa.

Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse, Bloomberg

China’s focus on hi-tech, advanced sectors could hold key to revival

https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3255483/chinas-focus-hi-tech-advanced-sectors-could-hold-key-revival?utm_source=rss_feed

The “two sessions” held annually in Beijing, which for this year concluded last week, have captured global attention because of the interconnection between China’s economic recovery and the growth of the world economy.

With an ambitious 5 per cent growth target set for 2024, the Chinese government faces significant challenges, as acknowledged by Premier Li Qiang during the National People’s Congress meeting. While China’s GDP growth of 5.2 per cent last year is commendable, ordinary citizens have not experienced the anticipated economic rebound.

Consumption remains weak, entrepreneurs lack confidence to invest and foreign direct investment has declined. These obstacles pose significant threats to China’s economy, which is burdened by issues ranging from overcapacity and a sluggish housing market to a mounting debt crisis. Moreover, this year began with a stock market rout and deflation levels not witnessed since the global financial crisis in 2008-09.

This year is the Year of the Dragon, and it is fascinating how a single letter like “D” on a number plate could command a staggering price of HK$20.2 million (US$2.6 million) in Hong Kong. However, despite the auspicious connotations traditionally associated with the dragon, the letter “D” does not augur well for China this year. Instead, it represents a series of challenges facing the country.

The first is deflation. China’s economy experienced deflation last year. This deflationary trend, although temporarily offset by a rebound in consumer prices during the Lunar New Year holiday, stands in contrast to the inflationary pressures faced by other major economies.

Deflation is worrying as it can dampen economic growth, worsen unemployment and exacerbate provincial government debt problems.

The second problem is debt. China’s debt-to-GDP ratio reached a record high of 287.8 per cent in 2023, marking a substantial 13.5-percentage-point increase from the previous year, according to a report by the National Institution for Finance and Development. Notably, the debt ratio for households rose to 63.4 per cent, while government debt climbed to 55.9 per cent.

The third “D” represents the demographic crisis. In 2023, the number of people aged 60 and over in China reached a staggering 296.97 million, accounting for around 21 per cent of the total population.

While some might argue against concerns of a labour shortage amid high youth unemployment, it is undeniable that a rapidly ageing society will strain China’s current pension system, necessitating adjustments to address potential future challenges.

The fourth “D” represents decoupling, which refers to the ongoing process of reducing economic interdependence between the United States and China. This decoupling is expected to intensify as the tech war between the two nations unfolds. The US government is tightening tech controls and impeding China’s access to cutting-edge technology.

Finally, the fifth “D” signifies deglobalisation, which marks the end of the post-Cold War era of globalisation. Instead, a new global order led by the US and China is emerging, characterised by differing ideologies and strategic competition. In the post-pandemic era, a new global supply chain is taking shape. Notably, the ongoing chip war between the US and China exemplifies this shifting dynamic.

Given these challenges, where can China find its new driver for economic growth? China’s leadership recognises the imperative to depart from the old growth model and unleash “new productive forces”. The country’s new strategy aims to achieve a new leap forward by prioritising the development of hi-tech sectors.

What does Xi’s hi-tech push mean for China?

China is striving for self-reliance in science and technology. This underscores the necessity of adopting a new model of economic development centred around innovation in advanced sectors.

From this perspective, there are serious doubts about the likelihood of a quick recovery for China’s economy. While China’s rapid growth during the past two decades has heavily relied on the real estate sector, the shift towards advanced sectors could prolong the transformation of China’s economy. The hopes pinned on hi-tech sectors are not without challenges, particularly in the face of fierce competition with the US.

Artificial intelligence is an area where China’s industry is often seen as a strong rival to the US. However, concerns are growing about the widening gap between Chinese and American competitors, especially after the impressive capabilities demonstrated by OpenAI’s Sora and ChatGPT.

Despite restrictions imposed by the US on China’s access to advanced semiconductors, China remains determined to forge ahead with the development of large language models and generative AI systems.

Battery-powered vehicles have been hailed as China’s new hope for driving exports and fuelling its economy. China has made significant strides and outpaced traditional auto powerhouses such as Germany and Japan in the electric vehicle market. Chinese-made cars have gained popularity not just domestically but also in overseas market.

Meanwhile, semiconductors are an area where China’s industry has faced significant challenges because of the US tech restrictions. The US government’s tech sanctions have severely restricted China’s access to advanced chip-making tools and AI processors.

However innovative, China needs a network to become chip self-sufficient

Although China’s semiconductor sector has weathered a tough year, it is important to acknowledge the limitations imposed by these restrictions. While Huawei’s breakthrough during the visit of US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo was seen as a victory for China, it remains to be seen whether this momentum can truly alter the global economic landscape.

China’s new focus on innovation-driven development offers hope for sustainable development and avoiding the middle-income trap. While some are disappointed at the lack of stimulus to boost the economy, it is important to note the most crucial stimulus for China is confidence. A technological breakthrough in advanced sectors can be the decisive driver in transforming the country’s future.

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