cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/804918

The manufacturing sector's woes have left Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, who took power last year, struggling to fulfil his promise of bringing average annual GDP growth to 5% over his four-year term, up from 1.73% in the past decade.

"The industrial sector has slumped and capacity utilisation has fallen below 60%," Srettha told parliament last week. "It is clear that the industry needs to adapt."

Supavud Saicheua, chairman of the state planning agency National Economic and Social Development Council, said Thailand's decades-long manufacturing-driven economic model is broken.

"The Chinese are now trying to export left, right and centre. Those cheap imports are really causing trouble," Supavud told Reuters.

"You have to change," Supavud said, arguing that Thailand should refocus on making products that China wasn't exporting while strengthening its agriculture sector. "No ifs or buts."

The factory closures between July 2023 and June 2024 increased 40% from the preceding 12 months, according to the latest Department of Industrial Works data that has not been previously reported.

As a result, job losses jumped by 80% during the same period, with more than 51,500 workers left without work, the data shows.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/807960

Archived link

Human rights lawyer Kenneth Roth on Xitter:

"The United Arab Emirates government is so contemptuous of human rights that it is holding military exercises with China in Xinjiang of all places, the site of Beijing's mass detention and persecution of Uyghur Muslims."

China and the United Arab Emirates are holding military training exercises this week in Xinjiang, as Emirati-Chinese defense ties see a boost despite US concerns.

The joint air force training exercise, dubbed Falcon Shield, began on Wednesday in the northwest Xinjiang province of China. Officers and soldiers from both countries attended the opening ceremony, including the UAE’s deputy military attache in China.

Xinjiang province, where the exercise took place, is home to China’s Uyghur Muslim community. China has been widely criticized for its treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities there. According to observers such as Human Rights Watch, China has detained up to a million Muslims in Xinjiang in recent years as part of its anti-terror campaign. The United Nations’ Human Rights Office released a report in 2022 detailing human rights issues in the region.

“The extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim groups, pursuant to law and policy, in context of restrictions and deprivation more generally of fundamental rights enjoyed individually and collectively, may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity,” said the UN.

Cross posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/14998436

Archived version

China says it has graduated 320 more monks and nuns this year from the Xizang Buddhism University in Lhasa with the mandate, among others, to promote the Sinicization of Tibetan Buddhism, bringing the total since its establishment in 2011 to more than 1,700. “Xizang” is China’s term for Tibet truncated to the territory of Tibet (Xizang) Autonomous Region.

The graduates “should learn to use the national language and script, infuse Tibetan Buddhism with excellent traditional Chinese culture, actively engage in doctrinal interpretation, promote positive thoughts in Tibetan Buddhist doctrine such as promoting equality and tolerance, poverty alleviation, and helping the needy, and jointly promote the Sinicization of Tibetan Buddhism,” China’s official chinadaily.com.cn Jul 12 quoted Drubkhang Thubtan Khaidrub, the head of the university, as saying.

[...]

The university was established by China outside the rigorous traditional Geshe degree programme to educate Tibetan monks and nuns to promote the Sinicization of Tibetan Buddhism and culture with focus on teaching Mandarin Chinese and the ideology of patriotic loyalty to the communist Party of China-state as the basis for learning Buddhism.

Cross posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/14991388

Archived version

Last week the Economist (“A short history of Taiwan and China, in maps,” July 10) and Al Jazeera both sent around short explainers of the Taiwan-China issue.

The Al Jazeera explainer [...] was fairly standard, and it works because it appeals to the well-understood convention that Taiwan enters history in 1949 when the KMT retreats to it.

Very different, and far more pernicious, was the biased, error-studded production by the Economist. Centering Taiwan against Chinese history, it claimed that “After Japan’s defeat in 1945 Taiwan was ceded to the nationalist government of the ROC [Republic of China]” and that Taiwan became a province of the Qing empire in 1885. Neither is correct: Taiwan was not made a province by the Manchus until 1887, and it was never ceded to the ROC. Moreover, in the best pro-China fashion, Japanese rule in Taiwan simply disappears from the discussion.

Cross posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/14985216

Archived version

To be a woman, to be any human in China, is to master the act of double-think, self-censorship, and denial. But to be a woman on the [Chinese] mainland is to work twice as hard at filtering out the disturbing noises produced by the ever-ruling Communist Party.

[...]

Some might even understand the astonishing tracking and surveillance the population was placed under from 2020-2023, unraveling after the White Paper Protests that began in memorial of lives lost in an apartment fire during a months-long lockdown in Urumqi.

But China’s imprisonment of its feminists is often overlooked.

[...]

Censorship in China is effectively a question of wealth. No city-dwelling university-educated white-collar worker needs to live without a good VPN, and stepping outside of the firewall is seamless if you’re willing to buy it. Inside China, it is perfectly possible to be able to see but also to choose to look away.

[...] the young urban women of China did not ignore the #MeToo movement, and the hashtag began trending across the social media islands of Chinese-made and Chinese-monitored apps before being rapidly but unsurprisingly blocked. As the state flexed to bring things under control, the movement collapsed before it had even reached enough height for its downfall to cause reverberations.

[...] Sophia Huang Xueqin, and the Feminist Five: Li Maizi, Wang Man, Wei Tingting, Wu Rongrong, and Zheng Churan. These women form a small, silenced memorial in the face of the patriarchy upon which China is founded, and have faced interrogation and incarceration for speaking out against sexual harassment and domestic violence.

[...]

The silencing of feminists in China seems incomprehensible in the wake of Mao’s too often quoted phrase, occurring in the wake of modern domestic violence laws, in a country with maternity rights some of us could only dream of. To make sense of this incongruity, it is necessary to understand that grassroots feminism, the feminism practiced by Sophia Huang Xueqin and the Feminist Five, stands in direct opposition to Chinese policy on women’s rights and equality and is treated as extremism.

To protest sexual harassment, to demand an end to domestic violence, to highlight the discrimination in academia and the workplace is to turn squarely towards the party and accuse it of failing in its duty to its people. In this sense, China does not have a problem with women as much as it does with being criticized, even implicitly. One does not seek to disrupt the status quo, for to do so is to disrupt the party itself [...]

And so the women must wait, silent and grateful to the party that builds and sustains their world. The women must not ask for their inequalities to be addressed with any more urgency than they currently are, and instead, in a country where Xi Jinping’s name is rarely spoken and silence is the only guarantee of safety, feminism becomes almost extinguished, openly mourned by only a few, and documented by even fewer.

Cross posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/14965748

Archived version

The self-driving taxis have become popular — with Baidu offering super cheap rides to win customers — and the company is eyeing expansion into other Chinese megacities as local governments rush to issue policies in support of the new technology.

But the robotaxi revolution is also causing some public concerns in China, with the issue blowing up on social media after an Apollo Go vehicle ran into a pedestrian in Wuhan last Sunday.

Footage of the incident spread online has sparked a wide debate about the issues created by robotaxis — especially the threat the technology poses to ride-hailing and taxi drivers.

Authorities in Wuhan have felt the need to respond to the “rumors” about problems caused by robotaxis. The city’s transportation bureau told domestic media that the local taxi industry is “relatively stable”.

[...]

In response to video clips showing a pedestrian lying on the road next to an Apollo Go robotaxi which began trending within hours, a Baidu spokesperson told domestic media that the accident was a “mild” collision that had occurred because the pedestrian had been jaywalking.

[...]

In 2019, Baidu was among the first companies to obtain a business license for operating autonomous vehicles in Wuhan. Then, in 2022, it was granted a license to operate its vehicles on public roads without a safety driver.

[...]

But the robotaxis’ growing popularity has also sparked backlash. Wuhan residents have been complaining for months that Apollo Go cars cause traffic jams by driving slowly and stopping unexpectedly. Viral clips on social media show long lines of cars forming behind an Apollo Go vehicle that is blocking the road.

[...]

It’s unclear whether the controversy will affect China’s plans for autonomous driving. Beijing recently issued a draft guideline that would allow self-driving vehicles to be used in the public transportation and ride-hailing industries. Cities including Changsha and Jinan have announced plans to conduct robotaxi testing schemes.

[...]

So far, the publicity appears to be providing an unexpected boost to Baidu’s stock price. The company’s shares achieved their largest daily gain in over a year on Wednesday, and are still up for the week as of Friday afternoon.

Chinese authorities have recently announced legal changes that could impose harsh sanctions, including the death penalty, on individuals working "at separating Taiwan from China." Beijing sees the self-ruled island as part of its own territory and has hinted at the possibility of using violence to subdue any attempts at pursuing indepedence.

Former Taiwanese legislator Chen Jiau-hua, already blacklisted by Beijing as one of the "stubborn separatists," told DW she was not intimidated by the new measures. Instead, the set of guidelines revealed last month simply made her grow "even more resentful" towards China.

"I think Taiwanese people shouldn't be afraid and threatened by these guidelines. Nor should they surrender to an authoritarian regime," Chen said.

Some of the legal changes, however, are not easily dismissed. Beijing courts can now pass sentences, including life imprisonment or the death penalty, to "Taiwan independence" supporters who are convicted of conducting or inciting secession.

China says its new guidelines are targeting a "very small number of diehard 'Taiwan independence' separatists."

Textile waste is an urgent global problem, with only 12 per cent recycled worldwide, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Even less - only 1 per cent - of castoff clothes are recycled into new garments; the majority is used for low value items like insulation or mattress stuffing.

Nowhere is the problem more pressing than in China, the world’s largest textile producer and consumer, where more than 26 million tons of clothes are thrown away every year year, according to government statistics. Most of it ends up in landfills.

And factories like this one are barely making a dent in a country whose clothing industry is dominated by fast fashion  - cheap clothes made from unrecyclable synthetics, not cotton. Produced from petrochemicals that contribute to climate change, air and water pollution, synthetics account for 70 per cent of domestic clothing sales in China.

China's footprint is worldwide: E-commerce juggernaut brands Shein and Temu make the country one of the world’s largest producers of cheap fashion, selling in more than 150 countries.

Archived version

China’s relentless e-commerce price war leaves sellers struggling to make ends meet as shopping platforms compete with ever-more aggressive policies and a domestic economy slowing down

https://theadvisermagazine.com/market-research/stock-market/chinas-relentless-e-commerce-price-war-leaves-sellers-struggling-to-make-ends-meet-by-reuters

A once-thriving e-commerce industry punctuated by shopping bonanzas featuring galas and celebrities is bearing the brunt of a sputtering economy that has seen consumers all but tie knots in their purse strings.

While extreme discounting, influencer-led sales campaigns and generous returns policies did much to enrich the sector, those same practices by which vendors have to abide are now hurting those upon which the sector rests.

“The good times for e-commerce are over,” said Shanghai-based e-commerce operator Lu Zhenwang, who sells everyday items for small vendors. “This year there is fierce competition and I don’t think a lot of sellers will survive another three years.”

Profit margins are being squeezed at big platforms such as those of Alibaba and JD, but also at the thousands of small businesses which joined the e-commerce boom decade that started around 2013.

That boom has left e-commerce accounting for 27% of retail, with 12 trillion yuan ($1.65 trillion) of goods sold annually.

But as the economy slows, so does e-commerce, with the double-digit growth of recent years set to be replaced by single digits, showed data from Euromonitor.

[...]

[One e-commerce shop owner] said major platforms, upon which vendors rely, should not use “consumer first” policies that add to the burden of businesses, many of which have to sell below cost to maintain high positions in search results amid multiple discount events.

Cross posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/14931133

In its daily update on Chinese military activity over the past 24 hours, released on Thursday morning, Taiwan’s defense ministry said it had detected 66 Chinese military aircraft around the island.

Of those, 39 passed to the south and southeast of Taiwan, the ministry said. On Wednesday the ministry said it had detected 36 aircraft heading to the Western Pacific to carry out drills with the Shandong.

Taiwan’s defense ministry released two pictures, a grainy black-and-white image of a Chinese J-16 fighter and a colour image of a nuclear-capable H-6 bomber, which it said were taken recently, but did not say exactly where or when.

More Taiwanese traveling to China, Hong Kong or Macau have been detained or faced trials since Beijing implemented the Anti-Espionage Law and Law on Guarding State Secrets, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday.

Since July last year, 15 Taiwanese have been detained or undergone trials after entering China and the two special administrative regions, while 51 have been interrogated by border officers, Tsai said, adding that the number of cases is increasing.

“We respect the Mainland Affairs Council’s decision to raise the travel alert for China from ‘yellow’ to ‘orange,’ meaning that people should avoid non-essential travel. Other countries have also raised the travel alert for China, which shows that it has become an issue that the international community is monitoring closely,” Tsai said at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee.

Corruption is especially widespread among officials with already high incomes and has a massive impact on earnings. While only seven per cent of officials proven to be corrupt would normally belong to the top one per cent of earners in urban China, the figure would rise to 91 per cent when considering illegal income. However, the far-reaching measures already taken by China with 3.7 million sanctions systematically inhibit corruption.

These are the findings of a study conducted by Germany's ZEW Mannheim with the City University of New York in the U.S. The study is the first of its kind to analyse the financial benefits of corruption for the individual perpetrators, drawing on data from the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party.

Cross posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/14920021

Many middle-class Chinese trekking to the US are college-educated, have an established career or business in China and know how to use a VPN to avoid official censorship and access the free internet.

Mostly in their 30s and 40s, they grew up when China had impressive economic growth and became more connected with the rest of the world. But now they feel increasingly suffocated by the country’s lacklustre economy and the government’s tightening political grip. Many find the US attractive because they see it as an economic powerhouse where there is also political freedom.

For Chinese middle class people, their options for migrating to the US are limited. While more affluent Chinese opt for investor visas, those who are less wealthy struggle to obtain a US visa. The refusal rate for Chinese nationals applying for US tourist and business visas was 27 percent last year, higher than before the pandemic. And due to a huge backlog of applications, the wait time for US visa appointments in China is now more than two months.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/676299

Here is the original You-Tube link

This is how Tim Cook turned Apple into China's biggest ally in their imperial and authoritarian expansion.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/558539

Archived link

Pointing to China’s anaemic private consumption rates, economists have long advocated boosting growth through measures such as expanding China’s parsimonious social safety net. Despite paeans to “common prosperity”, Beijing has shown little inclination to do this.

Instead, China has been focusing unusually strong on export for a very long time. Chinese leaders definitely see strategic utility in ensuring that G7 nations are reliant on China for critical technologies. Yet, with most of China’s population still poor by advanced economy standards, this dynamic can be over-egged when explaining China’s export overcapacity and aggressive push into Western markets.

At the same time, China’s overcapacity has proved corrosive to the industrial ambitions of lower and middle-income countries. Rather than offshoring more labour-intensive industries as has been hoped, President Xi has called for the “transformation and upgrading of traditional industries”. Chinese manufacturing imports from these countries have declined appreciably.--

• Provincial government land markets and local government financing vehicles (LGFVs) may seem arcane and far removed from global trade. But in reality, they have served as the edifice upon which China’s now slowing investment-led growth model has been built.

• With Beijing deeply reluctant to embrace consumption-led growth alternatives, leaders are betting on exports to take up a much larger share of the slack. China invests about 45 per cent of its GDP – an unprecedented figure for any modern economy. Until recently, infrastructure and property have routinely each comprised about 30 per cent of this total. The idiosyncrasies of China’s political economy and fiscal composition mean that much of this investment has been driven by local governments.

• To maintain services provision while meeting aggressive growth targets, local governments have become reliant on non-tax funding – i.e., LGFVs [LGFVs are off-balance financing vehicles used by local governments to circumvent restrictions on issuing conventional bonds] and land sales. The latter constituted 42 per cent of local governments’ general public budget revenue in 2021 – a figure that is still above 20 per cent.

• LGFVs played an essential role in funding China’s colossal infrastructure buildout, which has also helped drive up land prices in what was previously a virtuous growth cycle. In the heady days before China’s real estate collapse, land revenue provided an ostensibly inexhaustible source of largesse for subsidies.

• This growth model was not without its drawbacks. After decades of bingeing, LGFV debt comprises well over half of China’s GDP [some economists claim that LGFV debt has reached almost China's GDP, ed] – a totally unsustainable dynamic when median return on assets has hovered around one per cent. Local governments are now spending around 19 per cent of total fiscal resources on interest payments.

• Earlier this year, Beijing drastically restricted the ability of the 12 most indebted provinces and municipalities (whose cumulative investment comprised 16 per cent of China’s total in 2023) to tap LGFVs for infrastructure spending. Investment in these regions is expected to decline by around one-quarter this year. Restrictions of varying severity have been placed on 18,000 LGFVs across China.

Archived version

Philippine defence minister Gilberto Teodoro and Japanese foreign minister Yoko Kamikawa signed the deal in a ceremony in Manila witnessed by Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, presidential communications secretary Cheloy Garafil said in a message.

[...]

The deal, the first of its kind to be signed by Japan in Asia, would take effect after ratification by both countries’ legislatures, officials said.

A Japanese military presence in the Philippines could help Manila counter Chinese influence in the South China Sea, where Beijing’s expansive maritime claims conflict with those of a number of Southeast Asia nations.

An international tribunal in 2016 said China’s claims had no legal basis, a ruling that Beijing rejects.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/535012

Archived link

China’s economy has repeatedly disappointed expectations since the end of the Covid pandemic. Consumption is sluggish, the property crisis is a burden and attempts to achieve growth through exports are being met with punitive tariffs from the rest of the world.

Few Western observers know the world’s second-largest economy better than Joerg Wuttke. In an in-depth conversation with The Market NZZ, the long-serving former President of the EU Chamber of Commerce in Beijing talks about China's growth prospects, the problem of overcapacity in the country and explains who calls the shots when it comes to economic policy.--

Joerg Wuttke:

"The property crisis continues to be the biggest drag [for the Chinese economy]. It had been looming for a long time because it was obvious that property prices were significantly inflated."

[...]

"There is also a special feature of China: everything the government announces with big plans ends up creating overcapacity at some point. The best current example is the automotive sector, where around 140 suppliers are fighting each other. This is eroding the profitability of companies and people are struggling to survive."

[...]

"People [who consider buying property] have become cautious. For years, they thought they could buy a flat and sell it later at a higher price. And now they are suddenly realising that they have lost 30%. The government should do more to counter this, it is not doing a good enough job [...] There is no point in the government lowering mortgage rates if I don’t know whether the apartment I have bought will ever be completed or if I have to assume that prices will continue to fall. There are 90 million empty housing units in the country, which is a huge oversupply.

[...]

"Consumption is also restrained when people see that their own family members are losing their jobs. There are many unemployed people in rural areas who have returned to their villages from the big construction sites. Pessimism, which has never really been an issue in the last thirty years, has spread in the last twelve months."

[...]

"Nobody knows for sure [how high the unemployment is]. It is a question of definition, because in the official statistics you are apparently not considered unemployed if you work even one hour a week. Youth unemployment climbed to almost 30%, but then the government changed the statistics. However, you can see a clear trend if you look at the purchasing managers’ indices [...] Companies are holding back on hiring, especially in the private sector.

[...]

"This is the first Third Plenum [which takes off on July 15] that has not triggered any great expectations. Which probably means that markets will hardly be disappointed if not much comes out of the session. We will certainly hear warm words, especially addressed towards foreign companies [...] they are likely to announce plans to reduce protectionism between [Chinese] provinces and open up the domestic market. A market struggling with overcapacity leads to provinces closing themselves off from each other."

[...]

"China accounts for 30% of total global production, but it only accounts for 14% of global consumption. That is a huge imbalance. President Xi Jinping has focussed on the manufacturing sector because he hopes it will also boost innovation. But launching big plans in China always leads to everyone aiming for the goal, everyone seeing a lot of money, and then everyone doing the same thing in 31 provinces and regions. The country has more than 150,000 state-owned enterprises. They all remain on the market, even though many of them are losing money. [...] This [Chinese] economy has a gigantic skew. There needs to be consolidation, and that would require political courage."

[...]

"Probably about ten [among the 140 actors in the automotive sector are profitable]. The top dog is BYD, Tesla is also doing very well, they both have capacity utilisation rates of almost 100%. However, a third of the suppliers have a capacity utilisation of less than 20%. These companies are making huge losses, but they are being concealed and absorbed by local governments."

[...]

"This consolidation [consolidation of the Chinese economy] will be much more painful. It won’t be easy in a country that doesn’t have a well-developed social safety net."

[...]

"Xi [who doesn’t have much sympathy for social security and doesn’t want a welfare state] once told the Danish prime minister that he could not understand these lazy Europeans. In China, people have to work hard. He seems like someone from another time. He tells unemployed young people that they should just go to the countryside and help the farmers. There's a huge generation gap in the country."

[...]

"I think the tariffs [imposed by the EU on Chinese electric Vehicles] are rather low. BYD’s share price rose by 9% when they were announced. That really says it all. The tariffs are not designed in such a way that the Chinese can no longer sell cars in Europe. But this will be an issue worldwide: the US is imposing 100% import duties on EVs, Turkey has added 40%, Brazil is imposing tariffs in the steel sector. There will be more to come. We have to be prepared for the fact that this flood of exports from China will also trigger counter-pressure in the so-called Global South. The playing field for China is getting narrower and narrower.

-Japan confirmed that the Chinese survey ship Xiang Yang Hong 22 set up the buoy in mid-June while monitoring the vessel as it sailed through Japan's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the East China Sea, a government source said. The open-sea area in question is surrounded by Japan's EEZ.

• Japan has urged China not to undermine Japan's maritime interests. It's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told a news conference it was "regrettable" that China has set up a small buoy in the waters off Japan's western main island of Shikoku and north of the southernmost Okinotori Island "without explaining its purpose and other details."

• Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said the buoy, which is to monitor tsunami, was set up in the high seas "for the purposes of scientific research and serving public good.

• Last July, China installed another buoy inside Japan's EEZ near the Tokyo-controlled, Beijing-claimed uninhabited Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, prompting Japan to lodge a protest and demand its immediate removal.

• Mao said that as the islands, which Beijing calls Diaoyu, are part of China's territory and its surrounding waters are under the country's jurisdiction, it is "legitimate and lawful for China to set up hydrological and meteorological data buoys in those areas."

• China has been intensifying its military activities and maritime assertiveness in the regional waters, with Japan protesting against repeated intrusions by Chinese ships into Japanese waters around the Senkakus.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/509125

• South African retailers have urged the government to plug tax loopholes that they fear are being used by Chinese e-commerce platform Temu, and Shein, another Chinese online platform,

• Etienne Vlok, a national industrial policy officer for Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union, said the government should consider urgent changes to tax rules on small items to ensure fair competition for local businesses.

• Temu, the online shopping juggernaut backed by China’s PDD Holdings Inc. has offered huge discounts in South Africa since its launch in January. The firm has expanded its global footprint to 49 countries and recently took out ads at the Super Bowl to try and sustain growth among US consumers.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/508959

Companies consider moving Taiwanese employees out of China after Beijing said it could impose the death penalty on “die-hard” Taiwanese independence advocates

• China's new guidelines have caused some Taiwanese expatriates and foreign multinationals operating in China to scramble to assess their legal risks and exposure. “Several companies have come to us to assess the risks to their personnel,” said James Zimmerman, a Beijing-based partner at the Perkins Coie law firm.

• Zimmerman, who declined to identify the companies or industries for confidentiality reasons, added: “The companies are still concerned that there may be some gray areas, such as whether a benign social media post or voting for a particular political party or candidate in Taiwan elections could be interpreted as engaging in pro-independence activities."

• As of 2022, about 177,000 Taiwanese were working in China, according to the most recent Taiwanese government survey. Taiwanese staff are employed by many multinationals in China, given their linguistic abilities and cultural familiarity with the country.

• Many more work for the myriad Taiwanese firms that operate in China and have, by the Taiwanese government’s estimate, invested more than US$200 billion since 1991, helping fuel China’s growth to become the world’s second-biggest economy.

• Some foreign firms operating in China have held meetings with employees on safety, said the two executives, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/487403

Archived link

The French organizers of the Festival Off Avignon, one of the biggest performing arts festivals in the world, said that they received protests and threats from China after selecting Taiwan as its guest of honour country for this year's event.

According to Harold David and Laurent Domingos, co-presidents of the Avignon Festival & Compagnies (AF&C), China's embassy in Paris threatened to withdraw from the event if Taiwan was not dropped as its guest of honour country (‘pays invité d'honneur’).

• Domingos said that they had anticipated such a reaction. “We are not stupid, we understand geopolitics,” he said, adding that they have to bear the responsibility for their choice. While the festival’s board has not made a final decision, David and Domingos said they believed the event, which began on Wednesday, should maintain its independence, autonomy, variety and freedom, and keep Taiwan as the guest of honor.

• Domingos said that the festival is also planning events for the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between France and the People’s Republic of China. The two developments do not conflict with each other, he said.

• Taiwan first participated in the Festival Off Avignon 17 years ago, and the country’s selection as a guest of honor was a tribute to its past contributions to the event, David said. The traits Taiwan shares with the festival include diversity, openness to the world, creativity and freedom of speech, he added.

• Domingos also lauded the creativity that Taiwan has brought to the festival, which runs until July 21. “Taiwan identifies itself with its culture. It is not recognized by the United Nations and many countries as a ‘country,’ so it defines itself with its cultural identity,” he said, adding that the festival itself was a field to exhibit cultural identity.

Archived version

• Communist-run Laos has come to the fore after it opened a high-speed rail line with China in 2021 that cost the landlocked country about $6 billion. While the development is seen by many as the start of a ramp up in infrastructure that directly connects China with Southeast Asia, it has raised concerns of a build-up in debt for Laos and other smaller countries.

• China is by far Laos’ biggest creditor, accounting for about half of the $10.5 billion in external government debt. The tiny nation had $13.8 billion in total public and publicly-guaranteed debt at the end of last year, amounting to 108% of its gross domestic product.

• Laos’ external debt payments in 2023 reached $950 million, almost double the amount compared to 2022,, making the country defer $670 million in principal and interest payments. The World Bank has said in the past that such moves have provided temporary relief in recent years.

• Laos' development is seen by many as a further chapter of China's 'debt-trap diplomacy' as Beijing offers developing countries financial loans under often opaque condition, leaving them grappling with repayments while it supports China’s efforts to expand its economic and political influence in foreign countries.

• For example, Sri Lanka fell into default for the first time in its history back in 2022 after its foreign reserves dwindled. Last month the South Asian nation said it reached final restructuring agreements worth $10 billion, including with an Official Creditor Committee of bilateral lenders and China’s Exim Bank. Sri Lanka's port, however, is now owned by China.

• China dismissed the “debt-trap diplomacy” allegations.

• Indonesia is preparing to impose tariffs and use other means to protect its textile industry from imports from China, the latest in a series of countries and blocs such as the US and the European Union, which are responding to the flood of goods out of the world’s largest manufacturing nation.

• After the government in Jakarta rolled back some import restrictions earlier this year, protests from thousands of textile workers are pushing the government to introduce new curbs. Indonesia imported almost 29,000 tons of imports of woven fabrics made from artificial filament yarn last year. Goods from China accounted for most of that.

• It’s unclear whether the government is considering imposing only safeguard duties or also other tariffs. "We have actually provided many fiscal instruments to protect the textile industry, including safeguard duties and anti-dumping duties, which are usually related to unfair trade that harm the domestic industry,” said Febrio Kacaribu, head of fiscal policy agency at the finance ministry.

• Indonesia has maintained an overall trade surplus for the last four years. However, the surplus with China flipped to a deficit in May, driven by imports of machinery and plastic goods.

Archived version

• Nepal has shied away from signing a plan to implement China’s ambitious Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) in the Himalayan nation. Resisting immense pressure from Beijing, Nepal’s Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal refused to greenlight the signing that would have paved the way for the implementation of nine mega and more than a dozen major BRI projects in Nepal.

• That’s because soon after Nepal signed the BRI framework agreement in May 2017, India launched a massive but silent campaign to educate and explain Nepal’s political leadership, economists, bureaucrats, diplomats, academia, media and civil society leaders the pitfalls of China’s BRI to them, making Nepal’s top politicians and others fully aware of China’s sinister plan to ensnare nations into a debt trap through the BRI.

• PM Deuba eventualky told China that Nepal would only agree to a small component of the cost of BRI projects in the form of loans. However, the interest on such loans should not be more than what multilateral lending agencies like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB) charge for their loans (one per cent per annum).

• This was not acceptable to China which charges more than two per cent on the loans it gives to other countries to finance BRI projects. Also, China insists on the contracts for these projects being awarded only to Chinese companies and refuses to do away with or water down penalty clauses (in case of failure to repay the loans on time).

What also worked against China was Nepal’s experience with the Pokhara International Airport which cost US $ 305 million. China’s Exim Bank provided a loan of about US $ 215 million at 2 per cent interest. Chinese firms were awarded contracts for construction and technical works.

Allegations of shoddy construction, inflated costs and mismanagement by the Chinese have fuelled public anger against China in Nepal. The airport has turned into a huge liability (read this) since no commercial and scheduled flights are operating from there.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/459808

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“What [authoritarian] regimes have in common is their fear of a well-informed public,” Christoph Jumpelt, the head of the international relations unit at Germany’s public broadcaster, Deutsche Welle, said this week in Taiwan.

International media groups like AP, Reuters and PA Media Group cooperate with China's state-controlled agency Xinhua for being able to operate within the country. It should be obvious that such a conditionality has no place in what they say is a “purely commercial” arrangement, not in the least as this does a huge injustice to the thousands of journalists who struggle each day to report the facts.

• Last month Fu Hua, President of China’s official Xinhua News Agency, which sits directly under the country’s State Council, made a whirlwind tour from New York to London, meeting with top executives from AP, Reuters, and PA Media Group, to foster long-standing business relationships.

• Such deals with Xinhua should invite tougher questions about how international media companies with a stated commitment to professional standards should deal with Chinese media giants whose sole commitment — crystal clear in the country’s domestic political discourse— is to strengthen the global impact of Party-state propaganda.

• Xinhua's Fu is not a champion of independent media values, or a partner in tackling the information challenges of the future. Prior to his role at Xinhua, Fu served as a deputy minister of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Propaganda Department. His agenda is that of China’s ruling Chinese Communist Party, the CCP. Plain and simple.

• The partnerships with Western media are part of a broader effort by Xinhua to deepen its global media influence, curtailing criticism of the Chinese government and shaping international discourse that portrays the CCP in a positive light. And yet, year in and year out, Western media executives insist, even against the substance of their own statements, that this type of cooperation is just normal business.

• If it is true, for example, that AP “publishes none of the stories" by Xinhua as it claims, what then is the point of such empty formalities? “Like most major news agencies,” said a former agency head, “AP has an agreement with state-run media in China that allows AP to operate inside the country.”

• And there we have the crux. AP’s relationship with Xinhua, in place since 1972, forms the political foundation on which AP and other major news agencies, including Reuters, are able to operate in China.

• It should be obvious such conditionality has no place in any “purely commercial” arrangement. And as they obscure the true nature of the arrangement, news outlets do a huge injustice to the thousands of journalists who struggle each day to report the facts.

• Western outlets that claim to uphold professional values need to decide where they stand while insisting on the charade of standing with Xinhua, shaking hands and signing on the dotted line.