A component in Huawei network appliances could be used to take down Germany’s telecoms networks
Billionaire investor Mark Mobius says he cannot take money out of China - "Billionaire investor Mark Mobius told FOX Business he cannot take his money out of China due to the country's capital controls, cautioning investors to be "very, very careful" about investing in an economy under a tight government grip... "I can't get an explanation of why they're doing this ... They're putting all kinds of barriers. They don't say: No, you can't get your money out. But they say: give us all the records from 20 years of how you made this money ... This is crazy."... Mobius led emerging market investment at Franklin Templeton Investments for three decades and is known for his bullish view on China. Now, though, he said, he "would be very, very careful" investing in the country. "The bottom line is that China is moving in a completely different direction than what Deng Xiaoping instituted when they started the big reform program"... "Now you have a government which is taking golden shares in companies all over China. That means they're going to try to control all of these companies ... So I don't think it's a very good picture when you see the government becoming more and more control-oriented in the economy." Mobius, who calls himself "the Indiana Jones of Emerging Market investing", told FOX Business he's increasing exposure to alternative markets such as India and Brazil."
Bao Fan: Why do Chinese billionaires keep vanishing? - "The disappearance last month of technology industry dealmaker Bao Fan has rekindled interest in a recent Chinese phenomenon - vanishing billionaires. The founder of China Renaissance Holdings - with a client list that has included internet giants Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu - is seen as a titan in the country's tech sector. Mr Bao's case has followed a well-trodden path: he went missing for days before his company announced that he was "co-operating in an investigation being carried out by certain authorities in the People's Republic of China". As has also become customary, there has been no word yet on which government body is carrying out the probe, what it is about or Mr Bao's whereabouts The mystery shrouding his disappearance comes after a number of Chinese business leaders have gone missing in recent years, including Alibaba boss Jack Ma. While vanishing billionaires tend to get much more attention, there have also been a number of less publicised cases of Chinese citizens going missing after taking part in, for example, anti-government protests or human rights campaigns. Mr Bao's disappearance has once again shone a spotlight on the view that this is one of the ways that President Xi Jinping is tightening his control of China's economy... In 2015 alone, at least five executives became unreachable, including Guo Guangchang, chairman of conglomerate Fosun International, which is best known in the West for owning English Premier League football club Wolverhampton Wanderers... Chinese-Canadian businessman Xiao Jianhua was taken from a luxury hotel in Hong Kong. He had been one of China's richest people and last year was jailed for corruption. In March 2020 billionaire real estate tycoon Ren Zhiqiang vanished after calling Mr Xi a "clown" over his handling of the pandemic. Later that year, after a one-day trial, Mr Ren was sentenced to 18 years in prison on corruption charges. The most high-profile disappearing billionaire was Alibaba founder Jack Ma. The then-richest person in China vanished in late 2020 after criticising the country's financial regulators. The planned mega-listing of shares in financial technology giant Ant Group was shelved. And despite donating almost $10bn (£8.4bn) to the 'Common Prosperity' fund, he has not been seen in China for more than two years. He has also not been charged with any crimes... The Chinese government insists the actions taken against some of the country's richest people are purely on legal grounds and has pledged to root out corruption. But Beijing's actions also come against the backdrop of decades of liberalisation of what is now the world's second largest economy. This opening up helped to create a swathe of multi-billionaires who, with their immense wealth, had the potential to wield considerable power. Now, some observers say, under Mr Xi, the Chinese Communist Party wants that power back and it is going about the task in ways that are often clouded in mystery. The theory goes like this: Big business, especially the technology industry, saw its power grow under the policies of Mr Xi's predecessors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. Prior to that, Beijing's focus had been on traditional centres of power, including the military, heavy industry and local governments. While maintaining a tight grip on these areas, Mr Xi has widened his focus to bring even more of the economy under his control. His Common Prosperity policy has seen major crackdowns in much of the economy, with the technology industry coming in for particular scrutiny... Some China watchers suggest the government risks deterring new business talent."
Missing Chinese banker was working to set up Singapore family office - Nikkei Asia - "Officials in China have not addressed Bao's disappearance. China Renaissance executive Cong Lin was detained in September last year not long after the Shanghai branch of China's securities regulator called in Cong for a "supervisory discussion" about alleged violations in the group's securities unit. Bao's disappearance has sent a chill through international financial and business circles in China at a time when Beijing is trying to project a more business-friendly image since relaxing harsh pandemic curbs. Bao had made China Renaissance one of China's top financial institutions, often winning tech deals from larger Wall Street rivals."
More sophisticated censorship at play in aftermath of Beijing hospital fire - "When a hospital in a busy Beijing suburb caught fire last Tuesday, news of the fiery blaze appeared online only about eight hours later. The lapse seemed impossible in the age of smartphones and social media. But the initial blanket ban – and subsequent deletion of videos related to the fire – illustrates how China has refined its censorship apparatus... The Covid-19 pandemic, a deadly fire in a Xinjiang apartment complex in November 2022 and the subsequent protests it triggered have also offered Internet administrators multiple opportunities to fine-tune their information control techniques. Shortly after news of the Beijing fire broke close to 9pm last Tuesday, searches for the term “Beijing Changfeng hospital fire” were banned on social media platform Weibo, and returned a message that results could not be found “according to relevant laws, regulations and policies”. When videos of the fire started surfacing on Tuesday, they were taken down within minutes, only to be replaced by new posts – a cat and mouse game between Internet users and censors that went on all night. Searches on other sites like Baidu and Sohu showed numerous results, but closer inspection revealed that these were all state-linked or state-aligned media reporting in line with the government’s narrative. Comments that the authorities’ information could not be trusted as they had tried to keep the fire under wraps for hours were also deleted... In the case of the recent hospital fire, content from a certain geographical area had possibly been banned from getting uploaded, or certain keywords were blocked until a pre-determined time... Last year, superapp WeChat – which is used for everything from work communications to payment and health tracking – suspended hundreds of users for sharing footage of a one-man protest on Sitong Bridge in Beijing and barred them from participating in group chats or adding new friends... Besides the simple banning of certain keywords, censorship at China’s tech giants has become increasingly sophisticated. Artificial intelligence means algorithms now recognise pictures and videos that are deemed problematic, and take them out of circulation immediately. But there is also incentive for firms to ensure the censorship is less obvious, said The Citizen Lab’s Mr Knockel. “Part of the increase in sophistication is that there is also a lot of business incentive for the platform operators to create the illusion that there is no censorship. If you perform a search and there are no search results, then the user might switch to and try the search on another platform,” he said. “The platform operators are naturally motivated to try to keep users on their platforms as long as possible.”"
China tries to play down balloon dispute with censorship and memes - "China may be eager to put the balloon behind it. Officials appeared to have been caught off guard by the incident, as shown by their rare expression of regret when first publicly confronted about it."
The West must face down China and finally burst Beijing’s balloon - "Whichever way one looks at it, a US missile shredding a Chinese spy balloon monitoring sensitive American military sites is a grim portent of escalation between opposed nuclear superpowers. It goes without saying that unless Western responses are based on sober, robust assessment of what led to this debacle, Chinese provocation will have achieved its purpose of sowing fear and discord. If Xi Jinping deliberately authorised a spy balloon flight directly ahead of the (now postponed) visit of United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken visit to China, the obvious inference would make this a test of US resolve. But such a crude challenge has its own consequences. In such a situation, President Biden was honour-bound to destroy the intruder and to halt the Blinken visit. What else did Beijing expect? Such a crass provocation would suggest that Beijing set little store by what the reduction in tensions Blinken’s visit was meant to achieve and either sought to have the opposite effect or seriously miscalculated. Neither is encouraging. What other such blunders might Xi unleash? A more worrying notion is that Xi could have been unaware of the balloon mission. The Chinese chain of command is clumsy – perhaps someone overstepped. Or, more concerning, what if a belligerent faction within the Chinese state carried out the operation, seeking to further drive a wedge between West and East?... Though there are exceptionally bright people, they are currently purged and bullied in an echo-chamber for Xi’s dystopian visions of a “China Dream” and a “New Era”. The West should do more to encourage the more moderate elements. China’s real weakness lies in its economic dependency. Determined Western leverage of economic realities can protect the norms and standards on which global peace and prosperity are founded. The West must be clearer as to what its red lines are. Give the CCP an inch and it could, quite literally, take a mile."
Meme - "*NSDAP*
>Be a socialist party formed in the early 1920's
>Distincitve red flag design
>Believe that an allied coalition of foreign nations is responsible for oppressing and Humiliating Nation in the past
>Believe that present economic hurdles are left over from the unfair actions of european empires like France and the UK
>Espouse extreme nationalism, Militarism, and xenophobia
>Believe the superiority of own nations culture and history destines it to dominate the world
>Claim rightful ownership of neighboring provinces and territories on the basis of the borders of former empire
>Be allied at first with Union of Soviet Socialist Republics before turning on and fighting a war with the same
>Practice hybrid economic model where private property is preserved, but corporations serve the interests of the state and take directives from the party and serve as de facto state run enterprises
>exploit the appeasement/naivete of western powers, who let the nation take what it wants to avoid a confrontation
>secretly persecute religious minorities in camps run far from the capital, on the edges of the territory the nation occupies
>Be the Communist Party of China
>Pic unrelated"
A Million People Are Jailed at China's Gulags. I Managed to Escape. Here's What Really Goes on Inside - "Such is life in China’s reeducation camps, as reported in rare testimony provided by Sayragul Sauytbay (pronounced: Say-ra-gul Saut-bay, as in “bye”), a teacher who escaped from China and was granted asylum in Sweden. Few prisoners have succeeded in getting out of the camps and telling their story. Sauytbay’s testimony is even more extraordinary, because during her incarceration she was compelled to be a teacher in the camp. China wants to market its camps to the world as places of educational programs and vocational retraining, but Sauytbay is one of the few people who can offer credible, firsthand testimony about what really goes on in the camps... Much of what she said corroborated previous testimony by prisoners who had fled to the West... "There was an old woman in the camp who had been a shepherd before she was arrested. She was taken to the camp because she was accused of speaking with someone from abroad by phone. This was a woman who not only did not have a phone, she didn’t even know how to use one. On the page of sins the inmates were forced to fill out, she wrote that the call she had been accused of making never took place. In response she was immediately punished. I saw her when she returned. She was covered with blood, she had no fingernails and her skin was flayed.”... Testimony from others incarcerated in Chinese camps are similar to Sauytbay’s account: the abduction with a black sack over the head, life in shackles, and medications that cause cognitive decline and sterility. Sauytbay’s accounts of sexual assaults has recently been significantly reinforced by accounts from other former inmates of camps in Xinjiang published by The Washington Post and The Independent, in London. A number of women stated that they were raped, others described coerced abortions and the forced insertion of contraceptive devices... “The Chinese claim that these are vocational retraining camps and that the inmates are not there by coercion is a complete lie,” says Nimrod Baranovitch, from the University of Haifa’s Asian studies department. “I know directly and indirectly of hundreds of people who were incarcerated in the camps and have no need of vocational retraining. Intellectuals, professors, physicians and writers have disappeared. One of them is Ablet Abdurishit Berqi, a postdoctoral student who was here with us in Haifa. I hope he is still alive.”"
Damn CIA!
Chinese men take to modeling lingerie on livestreams after China bans females from doing so - "This was the result of a law created to prevent the spread of obscene material online. Female models weren't the only ones affected by the law, either. Reuters reported that China's campaign to cleanse their media of entertainers "polluting" the minds of society and cultivate a "patriotic atmosphere" saw idols with "incorrect political positions" and "effeminate" styles being froze out... Male models being used to sell women's products isn't a new thing. A 41-year-old businessman Wu Nan from Sichuan makes roughly US$900,000 (S$1 million) selling high heels that he models himself. 28-year-old influencer Austin Li Jiaqi, better known as China's "口红一哥" ("lipstick king"), also makes bank modelling lipstick shades and reviewing luxury goods."
Analysis: Jack Ma downfall spells end of China's golden age - Nikkei Asia - "For the past decade under Xi's rule, philosophy has come before economic rationality... He has been staying in Japan since before the Chinese Communist Party's national congress last October, unable to return to China... Ant did not have any major management problems. Instead, it was precisely its success, and the influence that accompanied that success, that came under increased scrutiny from the Xi regime. Ma was eventually deprived of his control of the company. Around the same time as Ant's announcement on Jan. 7, photos of Ma taken in Bangkok surfaced on social media. Since moving to Japan, Ma has occasionally traveled overseas. Each time, he has returned to Japan, not to China, keeping a low profile. Following Ma's loss of control of Ant, an investment company affiliated with the Hangzhou government became a major shareholder. Suddenly, Ant became a company under the direct influence of the party and Chinese government through voting rights. This influence over Alibaba will strengthen and the fact that the Hangzhou government and Alibaba have become strategic partners is significant. Deprived of their leeway, Alibaba and Ant will face an extremely high hurdle to rapid growth. It was on Nov. 2, 2020, that a masterpiece by Kaii Higashiyama, Japan's most celebrated contemporary artist, was used to imply the perilous situation Ma now finds himself in. State-run Xinhua News Agency's WeChat account published a column accompanied by a landscape painting by Higashiyama featuring a horse-shaped white cloud in a blue sky. Jack Ma was born as Ma Yun, which literally means "horse" and "cloud." The Xinhua column, in effect, warned that the horse-shaped cloud in the painting was doomed to disappear after being swept away by a blast of wind. Its publication came after Ma was summoned by Chinese authorities for questioning. A day after the controversial painting was posted, the postponement of Ant's initial public offering was announced. Ma probably saw the article as a prank played by Xi to flex his muscle or as a form of bullying at the hands of the party and state. Now, two years and a few months on, it is clear that the printing of Higashiyama's painting was no joke. It was a statement of intention. That the dismantling of the Alibaba empire came right after the death of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin in November is too much of a coincidence. Ma founded Alibaba in Zhejiang province in 1999 when Jiang was China's top leader. The following year, Jiang announced a policy of allowing private-sector entrepreneurs to join the party, which had previously been regarded as the domain of workers and farmers. But with Jiang's innovative Three Represents ideology incorporating private-sector entrepreneurs into the party, big-idea executives gained freedom and expanded their sphere of activity. Ma was the poster child. The Chinese economy had remained stuck in the doldrums after the deadly Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy student demonstrators on June 4, 1989... under the policies of Xi, the final curtain is falling on an era when people at major private companies walk with their heads held high. China's market-economy governance seems to have retreated to the days before the Jiang era and turned its back on a golden age brought on by nearly three decades of liberalization. Even before the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, Chinese authorities did not restrict the freedom of fledgling individual business operators or seize their legally acquired personal assets. What happened with Ant -- which unfolded outside the framework of legal measures -- is a clear break from the path China has pursued since the reform and opening-up policy was introduced at the end of the 1970s. While the radical buzz phrase, "the prevention of the disorderly expansion of capital," is no longer uttered as often as it once was, the fundamental way of thinking remaining unchanged with Xi at the helm. China's economy now faces another headwind, a declining population"
Analysis: China's elderly pay ultimate price for COVID missteps - Nikkei Asia - "The deaths of 25 retired professors, teachers and other faculty members were announced on Jan. 3 by a university in the northeastern city of Dalian. An expert who has long analyzed social trends in China calculates that the number of retiree deaths recently announced by universities across China are at least three- to sixfold compared with the previous years. Since the beginning of the year, the number of daily funeral hall cremations in an area of Fujian Province has surged five- to sixfold, compared with an average year. The deaths of teachers and other staff, primarily retirees and their family members, at universities in Fujian are said to be nearly 10 times what might have been expected before last year. The death cause is usually not mentioned, out of a consideration for the central government. But there is little question that they were COVID-related... When an earthquake devastated Sichuan in 2008, nongovernmental organizations stepped in to distribute medicines and conduct relief operations. At the time, these fledgling NGOs gave hope to the people that civil society was beginning to work in China. Fifteen years on, the situation has regressed. Since era of President Xi Jinping, NGOs have not been allowed to freely conduct activities because they typically have Chinese Communist Party cells in them. "There are almost no volunteer relief operations amid the current explosion of infections," one observer said. "Clearly, civil society is retrogressing."... At a certain point, questions will arise over the mishandling of COVID. Bad policies have had consequences in China before. Mao Zedong's disastrous decisions to proceed with the Great Leap Forward (1958-1961) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) caused upheavals so vast they distorted the nation's population pyramid, later research proved. This time around, there was a way to prevent such levels of death. China might have been able to save many of the elderly if it had introduced mRNA vaccines from the West and mass-produced them at home... What the Chinese government should have been doing is to administer an effective vaccine to the public multiple times, primarily to the elderly, and to prepare large amounts of medicines such as fever reducers. Instead, it was busy declaring victory in the fight against COVID, trying to make the government's response look good. After wasting precious time, the Chinese government was forced to abandon the zero-COVID policy, abruptly."
Analysis: As COVID soars, China has 2 chains of command - Nikkei Asia - "In warfare, when an army retreats, a rear-guard unit is left behind to hold off the chasing enemy. "China has now abandoned the zero-COVID policy without taking any such protective measures," the source said. "All at once, everyone began to flee, with no orderly plan."... Another big issue is the chain of command over China's COVID policy. Confusing orders were delivered to local governments across the country, leaving bureaucrats panic-stricken, not knowing who to listen to and what to do... The absence of coherent policy hints at the fact that the zero-COVID policy was abandoned quickly at Xi's orders... Local bureaucrats who receive orders from the central government feel it difficult to act on them since there are two command centers in Beijing -- one led by Premier Li and the other by Li Qiang. As it is unclear whose orders they should obey, the best way to protect oneself is to do nothing -- a typical survival strategy among Chinese bureaucrats."
From December
Analysis: China's female protesters break nation free from zero-COVID - Nikkei Asia - "In the 1980s, International Human Rights Day was taught at Chinese schools. At the time, the Communist Youth League, a gateway to party leadership, played a major role in human-rights education. Although "human-rights education" in China significantly differs from that in free nations, there was at least an effort to discuss the subject. Now Chinese students are no longer allowed to even refer to Human Rights Day -- an anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the U.N. General Assembly on Dec. 10, 1948... the easing of the zero-COVID policy is, without doubt, a concession. The first student-led social movement since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests extracted an unequivocal concession from the authoritarian regime... The perception is that Xi had no choice but to swallow his pride and make a concession, that not doing so might have created an even fiercer movement -- one calling for his resignation... One notable element of the white paper movement was that women were at the forefront... Contemporary Chinese men tend to be conservative, sometimes unwilling to take bold action for fear of hurting their ability to gain and maintain social status as well as their future job prospects... What made the white paper protests tricky for Xi was that they reflected the various contradictions pervading Chinese society. It was difficult to create a narrative to crack down on them. The zero-COVID policy, once touted by China as a great success, is now causing new problems on the social policy front. Pent-up frustration among Chinese women is also due to sexual harassment and sexual violence in the country."
China's planned changes to espionage law alarm foreign businesses - Nikkei Asia - "China is preparing to restrict transfers of any information related to national security under an updated counterespionage law, raising fears of a stepped-up crackdown on foreign individuals and companies here... The measure will expand the scope of the law -- now limited to state secrets -- to cover all documents, data, materials or items related to national security and interests. It does not provide further details on what constitutes national security and interests... "Foreigners will surely be detained again," said Ichiro Korogi, a professor and modern-China expert at Japan's Kanda University of International Studies. "The only thing businesses can do is tell employees to avoid bringing computers and smartphones with them whenever possible, and to avoid even small talk on Chinese politics.""
Analysis: Heavyweight Xi Jinping gives himself a lightweight cabinet - Nikkei Asia - "The assigning of economic portfolios dismayed many observers at a time when the world is watching to see how China will fire up its faltering economy... The diminishment of the State Council would have been unthinkable on the watch of President Hu Jintao from 2003 to 2013, when there were separately defined roles for the party and the executive... There remains only one heavyweight in China, and anything anyone else has to say carries less weight than before. Going forward, the world will increasingly be listening to Xi alone."
Xi Jinping Is Suffering From Cerebral Aneurysm: Report - "Chinese President Xi Jinping is suffering from 'cerebral aneurysm' and had to be hospitalized at the end of 2021, media reports said. It is learnt that he preferred to be treated with traditional Chinese medicines rather than going for surgery, which softens the blood vessels and shrinks aneurysm. Of late, there have been speculations about Xi's health as he had avoided meeting the foreign leaders since the outbreak of COVID-19 till the Beijing Winter Olympics. Earlier in March 2019, during Xi's visit to Italy, his gait was observed to be unusual with a noticeable limp and later also in France during the same tour, he was seen taking support while trying to sit down. Similarly, during an address to the public in Shenzhen in October 2020, his delay in appearance, slow speech and coughing spree again led to speculation about his ill health."
From 2022
Analysis: Xi no longer described as 'people's leader' in China - Nikkei Asia - "One month after the Chinese Communist Party's 20th national congress, Chinese state media have stopped calling President Xi Jinping "the people's leader." None of the newly published material on Chinese government websites contain the phrase. It is a surprising development, considering that the phrase was repeatedly used in the lead up to, and during, the national congress... perceptions toward China have changed in the more than two and a half years Xi opted not to travel abroad for the coronavirus. The number of countries that are truly enthusiastic about the China-led Belt and Road Initiative has declined. China did not even refer to the initiative in statements it issued about bilateral talks between Xi and foreign leaders held during his Southeast Asia tour. The same is true of the Chinese diplomatic slogan "a community with a shared future for humanity." China was able to declare that it shared the same fate with only a few countries in its bilateral diplomacy. As for the "Global Security Initiative" Xi proposed in April, it was only taken up during Xi's meeting with Argentine President Alberto Fernandez, in Bali. China has a less powerful international voice than it possessed before the coronavirus pandemic. Xi did not have bilateral meetings with some high-profile foreign leaders, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and new British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Relations with India are especially chilly. In June 2020, China and India saw their first deadly border clash in 45 years. Although Xi and Modi both attended a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, or SCO, in Uzbekistan in mid-September, they did not have a meeting. Top diplomat Wang spoke of a "lovable" China when he explained Xi's return to the international stage during his Southeast Asian tour. The truth is that Xi himself had spoken of a change in direction toward a "lovable" China at a meeting of senior party officials in May 2021 as he was worried about the country having a bad reputation for its hard-line "wolf warrior" diplomacy. But Xi himself gave the world a glimpse of wolf warrior diplomacy at the G-20 summit in Bali. He lectured Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau through a translator in front of the camera over alleged leaks of their informal meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit... There is no press freedom in China. Imposing the Chinese way, one that works only within the country, on other nations is wolf warrior diplomacy, pure and simple. Although Xi put on a smile for now under the banner of a "lovable" China, traits of a wolf have not dissipated."
