George Soros: Investors in Xi’s China face a rude awakening | Financial Times - "SEC chair Gary Gensler has repeatedly warned the public of the risks they take by investing in China. But foreign investors who choose to invest in China find it remarkably difficult to recognise these risks. They have seen China confront many difficulties and always come through with flying colours. But Xi’s China is not the China they know. He is putting in place an updated version of Mao Zedong’s party. No investor has any experience of that China because there were no stock markets in Mao’s time. Hence the rude awakening that awaits them."
China: Spending cuts force officials into driving lessons - "Chinese officials are rushing to take driving lessons after the government cut spending on chauffeur-driven cars, it's reported. Many officials don't have driving licences because they've always been ferried to work by chauffeurs, but since the government targeted "wasteful spending" in late 2014, the privilege has been reserved only for senior officials. That's left many mid-level staff without a ride, and prompted them to seek out driving instructors, Xinhua news agency reports. There have been a few bumps in the road, though. Instructors tell Xinhua that some of the officials - many of whom are in their 50s - have failed their driving tests because they're so accustomed to taking charge that they refuse to obey the rules of the road."
Visegrád 24 on X - "The Chinese ship Newnew Polar Bear has been seen in the Port of Arkhangelsk with its anchor missing. Finnish investigators suspects it lost the anchor by dragging it into the Balticconnector, causing damages to the Finnish-Estonian gas pipeline that will take 6 months to repair"
China’s anti-espionage drive turns ordinary citizens into spy hunters - "As students flooded back into Beijing’s top universities in early September, a propaganda blitz around campuses signalled an ominous addition to their syllabus: a crash course on how to catch spies. At the government-run Tsinghua University, videos were beamed onto faculty screens instructing teachers and students to become a “defence line” against foreign forces, while the Beijing University of Technology threw a national-security themed garden party, according to the nation’s spy agency... As Chinese President Xi Jinping throws up a forcefield of security controls to repel perceived foreign threats to Communist Party rule, Beijing’s message to the public is spooks are everywhere – not just universities. The police in Henan province have urged citizens to quiz neighbours they mistrust on pop culture to ascertain their patriotism, while Shandong province state media published posters with the tagline “spies might be all around you”. The push comes after Mr Xi chaired a National Security Council meeting in May that stressed the importance of “extreme-case scenario” thinking – a phrase the ruling party had previously reserved for describing natural disaster preparedness. China has since passed a new anti-spy law, accused consulting firms of working for overseas intelligence agencies and warned that foreign forces are infiltrating the energy sector... The result is a growing level of mistrust among citizens in a nation where many still remember the effects of asking citizens to snitch on each other. Former leader Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution was a violent period when the public was encouraged to report the slightest hint that a friend, spouse or parent was linked to forces conspiring for the downfall of the Communist Party. In July, one Chinese employee was allegedly reported to the police by his colleagues, after his failing to remember the lyrics to a popular Chinese song at a karaoke night aroused their suspicion. “He turned out to be a you-know-what,” one user who knew the group wrote on social media app Xiaohongshu, named after Mao’s Little Red Book that was used to compel the nation’s population to inform on each other. China offers up to 500,000 yuan (S$95,000) to citizens who successfully report spies. That post, which Bloomberg has not been able to verify, garnered some 16,000 likes as users enthusiastically exchanged tips for spotting spies. Not knowing slang popularised by the annual spring gala broadcast or mnemonic devices taught in mathematics class could all be hallmarks of a spook, they said. The push to root out spies risks targeting innocent people. In a now-deleted post on Xiaohongshu, one person apologised after a suspected foreign agent turned out to be a university student taking photos for their fieldwork research... A hypervigilance around spilling sensitive information is growing in the workplace. State-owned enterprises are running training sessions on state secrets, according to people familiar with the matter. More documents are being marked as state secrets, and can only be browsed at the office, said one of the people, who declined to be named due to fear of state reprisals. The government has also launched an app to help Communist Party members and government employees bolster their knowledge and skills about secret-keeping. The obsession with national security is fundamentally linked to protecting the Communist Party’s future. State Security Minister Chen Yixin in July wrote that national security was about political security. “The core of political security is regime security,” he added. But that drive is also creating a deep suspicion of foreigners that runs counter to the party’s recently stated aim of wooing investors and reinvigorating the private sector. Foreigners are reporting that it is harder to meet with once-friendly officials, as the atmosphere of suspicion grows. Associate Professor Sheena Greitens, from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin, said encouraging citizens to spy on each other would have “damaging consequences” for overall governance in China. “It can lead to false reporting,” she said. “That can backfire for the internal security agencies themselves, because it means they are working from increasingly bad information.”"
J. Michael Cole: China is using our legal systems against us - "the CCP has also begun resorting to lawfare — the use or threat of legal action — to intimidate, silence and impose financial and psychological costs on researchers and journalists who are uncovering facts that Beijing doesn’t want us to know about... This disturbing practice, however, isn’t a recent phenomenon. Well before Xinjiang and Huawei were making headlines, the CCP and its proxies were using libel lawsuits, or the threat thereof, against academics and journalists as part of a campaign of intimidation. Unable to shut down foreign media or think tanks, and without the ability to expel intellectuals not based in China, the CCP has hijacked the legal systems in Canada, Australia, the Czech Republic, Taiwan and elsewhere, to accomplish what it cannot do on its own. In almost all cases, this attempt at extraterritorial censorship was made possible by legal systems that have a low threshold for libel suits, or judges that are willing to accept just about any lawsuit. In some instances, the Chinese plaintiff subsequently found itself in legal trouble abroad over the very activities exposed by the researchers it targeted. Such was the case with the China Energy Fund Committee, a Shanghai-based Fortune 500 company, and its subsidiary in Hong Kong, which threatened or filed lawsuits against researchers in Australia, the United States, the Czech Republic and Taiwan (full disclosure: the latter case involved this author). What many of the cases have in common is the frivolous nature of the lawsuits and their overt attack on free inquiry. In several cases, the plaintiff knew from the outset that it had little, if any, chance of winning in court, but nevertheless chose to proceed with the lawsuit. With nearly limitless financing, plaintiffs linked to an authoritarian regime like China can afford to have a legal case drag on for years, knowing that media outlets, think tanks and universities have much more limited funding at their disposal. Additionally, in some countries like Taiwan, a defendant who prevails against a plaintiff does not recoup his or her legal costs —not even when a case is thrown out by a judge as frivolous, as was the case in this author’s two-year legal nightmare. For Fortune 500 companies, the legal costs constitute pocket change, but this is not true for individuals, who often receive no assistance from their governments. These cases also have a large psychological impact on the defendants and their families, due to the stress, sleepless nights and pressure to self-censor. It is now clear that the CCP wants to silence and punish its critics worldwide. Unless democracies address the blind spots in their legal systems, such incidents will only become more frequent. To prevent this, a few things need to be done."
Laos is spiraling toward a debt crisis as China looms large - "Laos borrowed billions from President Xi Jinping’s administration to finance railways, highways and hydroelectric dams, which has ballooned public debt to over 100% of GDP. Combined with a currency crisis and soaring inflation, Laos is on the brink of economic collapse... Some media reports have warned of a so-called debt trap — a scenario in which Beijing would seize valuable infrastructure assets in Laos — should the latter default or be unable to pay on time. Concerns grew after state-owned energy company Électricité du Laos, which accounts for around 37% of Laos’ external debt, signed a 25-year concession agreement with China Southern Power Grid in 2021"
The Post-Coronavirus Future Is South Korean, Singaporean, and Taiwanese—but Not Chinese - "Mahbubani will lose some of his readers with his hyperbolic kiss-off to democracy, and even more with his apologies for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s autocratic rule. He attributes the mass demonstrations in Hong Kong wholly to poor housing and gets around to mentioning the treatment of the Uighurs only in the very last pages—and then in order to insist that a nation that targets Muslims for assassination by drone has no standing to criticize China for terrorizing and incarcerating an entire population. One has the unmistakable impression that the author does not want to spoil his welcome in Beijing. There is a more serious shortcoming here. It is one thing to say that China has won, and something else again to say that the Chinese model has won. What is most central to that model, in Mahbubani’s telling, is rational, long-term decision-making, a commitment to good government, pragmatism, and suppleness in the face of a turbulent world and a realist restraint in international affairs. But of course that model also includes the unquestioned dominance of the party in all affairs, and the equally unquestioned dominance of the party by Xi. (Mahbubani argues that Xi suspended constitutional provisions limiting the leader to two terms not out of personal ambition but a legitimate concern for China’s future.)
Clearly, Xi Dada's single-minded pursuit of power and closing off of China from the outside world is rational, long-term decision-making, a commitment to good government, pragmatism, and suppleness in the face of a turbulent world, and wolf warrior diplomacy is a realist restraint in international affairs
The author raises the spectre of covid and climate change being reasons to restrict individual freedoms - weird, I thought that was a paranoid far right conspiracy theory and misinformation
China's Next Epidemic Is Already Here - "Authorities are covering up the spread of antibiotic-resistant pneumonia."
With Two Wars Raging, China Tests US in Asia - "Already facing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, U.S. President Joe Biden can ill afford a third geopolitical crisis. Yet, in late October, he was forced to warn China not to attack the Philippines after Beijing initiated a series of dangerous maritime incidents that escalated tensions in the South China Sea—raising the prospect of Washington having to fulfill its treaty commitments to come to Manila’s aid. “The United States defense commitment to the Philippines is ironclad,” Biden said. “Any attack on Filipino aircraft, vessels, or armed forces will invoke our mutual defense treaty.”... Its Coast Guard has been canny at public communication, producing compelling images and videos of aggressive Chinese behavior. In October, Manila revealed footage of a Chinese ship ramming a smaller Philippine vessel during an attempted resupply mission. In February, China deployed a military-grade laser against the crew of another Philippine ship. For its part, Beijing’s behavior reflects unhappiness over Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and his moves to draw closer to Washington, effectively abandoning the pro-Beijing policies of his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte. In February, Marcos greenlit plans to give the United States access to four military bases in the Philippines. In April, Manila and Washington staged their largest-ever joint military exercises. Shortly after the base deal, Chinese President Xi Jinping assailed the United States for pursuing a policy of “containment, encirclement, and suppression of China”—a process in which he now sees Manila playing an increasingly important role."
Those who think the US spends way too much on defence, and those who advocate isolationism, forget the lessons of World War II
Weird how China claims it doesn't interfere in other countries' internal affairs, but claims that other countries' internal affairs are “containment, encirclement, and suppression of China”
How China is tearing down Islam - "Beijing’s crackdown on Islam has spread to almost every region of the country... A visual investigation based on satellite images of thousands of mosques before and after modification reveals a widespread policy of stripping buildings of Arabic features, and in some cases replacing them with traditional Chinese designs. Some have even been torn down... The government says the changes are to modernise the mosques and “harmonise” them with Chinese culture... China is home to an estimated 20mn Muslims. While the Uyghurs in Xinjiang are probably the best known, more than half belong to the Hui ethnic group — often referred to as “Chinese” Muslims. James Leibold, an expert on China’s ethnic policies at La Trobe University in Australia, characterises the Hui, in the eyes of the Chinese state, as the “good Muslims”, who “speak the Chinese language, abide by core elements of its culture, and thus can be trusted”... Scholars say the turning point in China’s religious policy came after Xi Jinping became president in 2013... “Xi started to promote Han ethnic nationalism in the name of socialism with Chinese characteristics,” says Haiyun Ma, who researches Islam in China at Frostburg State University. “No Communist party leader before had done such a thing.” In 2014, Xi placed fresh emphasis on cultural unity in remarks at the Central Ethnic Work Conference. The following year he called for the “sinicisation” of religion in China. Xi, says Leibold, “views Islamic architecture and symbolism as a threat to the ideological purity and cultural security of its imagined Han Chinese race-state”. “Xi sees it as dangerous because it is Islamic, foreign and anti-Han,” he adds... “The overall impression of government policy you get is that no Islam will ever be Chinese enough,” says Theaker. Mohammed, a Hui man from Ningxia, a region in northwestern China, recalls the domes of the mosques around his home village being demolished, despite farmers turning up with shovels to “protect their sanctuary”. Communist party slogans were added to the walls. “Now, whenever a prayer starts, it’s not the words of Allah in the Koran, it’s a long speech by the imam on how the Communist Party of China is the single legitimate source of power,” he says of services at a mosque near him. The experiences of Hui Muslim communities have been corroborated by procurement documents from local governments. Other religions have also been targeted. The government removed crosses from the roofs of over a thousand Christian churches and demolished a vast church — the Golden Lampstand Church in Shanxi province — in 2018. The destruction of Buddhist monasteries in Tibet began before the implementation of the sinicisation policy. Beyond the external changes, the government has influenced and restricted the activities of mosques. In 2018, the government-run Islamic Association of China asked mosques to organise patriotic activities, such as raising the national flag, and set up study groups on the constitution, socialist values and traditional Chinese culture. The government has also forbidden online material that advocates religions to minors, with some local authorities circulating notices banning under-18s from entering religious sites, or even practising religion at all. In many areas, officials have told current and retired civil servants that their benefits will be taken away if they worship more than a few times per year, according to Hui human rights campaigner Ma Ju. Mosque-goers say these new policies have reduced the number of people attending prayers."
Damn CIA-doctored satellite images!
So much for the claim that Hui Muslims are untouched because they don't cause trouble
Melissa Chen on X - "While the West faces constant accusations of Islamophobia despite not just allowing Islam to thrive and flourish in its lands but downplaying the intolerance and sometimes even violence done in its name… Meanwhile, in China… *crickets* on the streets of London"
They just hate the West
China Congratulates Argentina’s Milei Despite ‘Assassin’ Insult - Bloomberg - "After an unexpected primary victory in August, Milei said he’d freeze relations with China. The outsider candidate said at the time that “people are not free in China, they can’t do what they want and when they do it, they get killed.” He added: “Would you trade with an assassin?”"
A humbled China may be looking to de-escalate tensions with the West as its economy falters, analysts say - "The U.S. push to redirect, or “friendshore,” its international trade has resulted in improved trade relations with countries such as Vietnam and Mexico, with the latter eclipsing China as the top U.S. trading partner in 2023. The United States has also attempted to move closer to India, which borders China, is the world’s most populous nation, and is considered to be a future superpower. “The problem [Xi] faces is that after resolving to become less reliant on China, and finding that this is indeed possible, the U.S. and its allies are unlikely to return to the status quo ante,” says Mulroney. “What’s even worse for Xi is that those same countries have now also been immunized from believing in China’s ability to defy economic gravity forever.” Charles Burton, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, has been monitoring China’s state-controlled media. He’s noticed a changed in tone to emphasize stable and productive relations with the United States—a departure from the more hawkish tone that had been used in tandem with China’s recent aggressive foreign policy stance, known as “wolf warrior diplomacy,” which Burton believes was an effort to paper over domestic concerns. Burton says there are indications that China wants to reverse this trend due to growing economic difficulties within China. “The Chinese real estate sector is in serious trouble, and there’s also high levels of youth unemployment and concern that these could lead to instability in China,” he says. China’s real estate market, which accounts for a quarter of the economy, is in the midst of a major crisis. Nikkei reported that sales have fallen 11 percent by volume since last year, with two of China’s largest developers defaulting on their loans. As a result, banks and other lenders who helped finance many now-stalled projects may be forced into a credit crunch. China’s overall economy has also slowed significantly after decades of rapid growth. Analysts have singled out factors such as worsening international relations and disruptive COVID-19 lockdowns. They also point to a more cautious private sector after Xi’s drive for “common prosperity,” which involves greater state redistribution of wealth to grow the Chinese middle class. “I think that he’s hoping to stem the outflow of capital from China and encourage a revival of U.S. investment in China,” says Burton. In August, global asset managers rapidly sold off Chinese onshore stocks, leading to a $900 billion loss in market value driven by concerns over poor growth prospects, weak stimulus, and ongoing geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China... “In terms of the economic downturn, one could associate it with Mr. Xi’s increasingly Leninist policies of suppressing the role of successful entrepreneurs in China and causing a crisis of confidence in the business community inside China,” he says. Since becoming general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, Xi has centralized power around himself. This means, says Burton, that he will take the blame for any economic downturns."
Yaqiu Wang 王亚秋 on X - "Well, rumor turns out to be true, and reality seems to be even more dramatic. So China's chief wolf warrior diplomat had a child who is an American citizen via surrogacy which is illegal in China. The hypocrisy of these political elites is amusing."
Chinese TV presenter linked to missing foreign minister had surrogate child in US | Financial Times - "A high-profile Chinese television presenter who was in a relationship with the country’s ousted foreign minister had a child last year with the help of a surrogate mother in the US, people familiar with the matter have said. Fu Xiaotian, 40, was in a relationship with Qin Gang, according to six people close to Fu and China’s foreign policy establishment. She told a close associate about the surrogate pregnancy last year, the person told the Financial Times. Two other people familiar with the matter also said she had a child via a surrogate. Surrogacy is illegal in China."
China’s Xi goes full Stalin with purge - "Something is rotten in the imperial court of Chairman Xi Jinping. While the world is distracted by war in the Middle East and Ukraine, a Stalin-like purge is sweeping through China’s ultra-secretive political system, with profound implications for the global economy and even the prospects for peace in the region. The signals emanating from Beijing are unmistakable, even as China’s security services have ramped up repression to totalitarian levels, making it almost impossible to know what is really happening inside the country. The unexplained disappearance and removal of China’s foreign and defense ministers — both Xi loyalists who were handpicked and elevated mere months before they went missing earlier this year — are just two examples. Other high-profile victims include the generals in charge of China’s nuclear weapons program and some of the most senior officials overseeing the Chinese financial sector. Several of these former Xi acolytes have apparently died in custody. Another ominous sign is the untimely death of Li Keqiang, China’s recently retired prime minister — No. 2 in the Communist hierarchy — who supposedly died of a heart attack in a swimming pool in Shanghai in late October, despite enjoying some of the world’s best medical care. Following his death, Xi ordered public mourning for his former rival be heavily curtailed. In the minds of many in China, “heart attack in a swimming pool” has the same connotation that “falling out of a window” does for Russian apparatchiks who anger or offend Vladimir Putin. Since his reign began in 2012, Xi Jinping’s endless purges have removed millions of officials — from top-ranked Communist Party “tigers” down to lowly bureaucratic “flies,” to use Xi’s evocative terminology. What’s different today is that the officials being neutralized are not members of hostile political factions but loyalists from the inner ring of Xi’s own clique, leading to serious questions over the regime’s stability. With such a febrile atmosphere in the celestial capital of Beijing, there are fears that an isolated and paranoid Chairman Xi could miscalculate, provoke armed conflict with one of its weaker neighbors or even launch a full-scale invasion of democratic Taiwan in order to distract from his domestic troubles... In recent weeks, the country’s leading investment bank banned negative macroeconomic or market commentary, as well as any behavior that could suggest its bankers lead “hedonistic lifestyles.” Not long after he ascended to chairmanship of the Communist Party in 2012, Xi began purging his real and perceived enemies in an “anti-corruption” campaign that never really ended. Hundreds of senior officers in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), as well as thousands of top Party officials, have been arrested, disappeared or “suicided” (driven to commit suicide or killed in circumstances made to look like suicide). The beneficiaries of this perennial purge have been provincial bureaucrats who worked with Xi earlier in his career and whose main qualification is unquestioning loyalty to the “people’s leader.”... One such loyal figure was Qin Gang, a former spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry whose career went stratospheric after he became China’s chief protocol officer, overseeing most of Chairman Xi’s interactions with foreign dignitaries between 2014 and 2018. After a brief stint as a vice foreign minister, Qin was named ambassador to Washington in July 2021 and foreign minister barely 18 months later — a uniquely rapid rise that Chinese officialdom attributed to his proximity and personal favor with the “core leader.” On June 25 this year, barely six months after becoming minister, Qin held meetings in Beijing with the foreign ministers of Sri Lanka and Vietnam, as well as Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko. Then he vanished. According to several people with access to high-level Chinese officials, Rudenko’s real mission in Beijing was to inform Xi that his foreign minister and several top officers in the PLA had been compromised by western intelligence agencies. Following his disappearance, lurid tales emerged of Qin’s affair with a reporter for Chinese broadcaster Phoenix TV called Fu Xiaotian, with whom he allegedly fathered a son who is a U.S. citizen. The stories circulated widely online with the apparent consent of Chinese cyber censors... At almost the same time Qin went missing, the top commander of the rocket force, Li Yuchao, along with his deputy Liu Guangbin and former deputy Zhang Zhenzhong, all also disappeared. Several other senior serving and former officers from the force were likewise detained and at least one former deputy commander died of unspecified illness, according to state media reports. The missing commanders were eventually formally fired and replaced by officers from the navy and airforce, a very rare development since top commanders of the rocket force have almost always been promoted from within the service. Not long after the rocket force purge was officially acknowledged, Li Shangfu, the man Xi picked as China’s defense minister in March this year, also vanished... Wang Shaojun, commander since 2015 of the Central Guard unit that protects China’s top leaders and oversees Chairman Xi’s personal bodyguard, had died three months earlier due to “ineffective medical treatment.”... Two of these people claim that Qin died, either from suicide or torture, in late July in the military hospital in Beijing that treats China’s top leaders... That paranoia extends into all parts of the bureaucracy and economy and seems to have tarnished anyone seen as too Westernized or too close to “hostile Western forces.”... This seems to be the inevitable fate of anyone who engages too eagerly with foreigners and should serve as a warning to those who still believe China is open for business with the West."
