China

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/2131571

Australian Senators said UN Resolution 2758 does not establish the People's Republic of China's sovereignty over Taiwan and does not determine the future status of Taiwan in the UN.

Taiwan's de facto embassy in Canberra has heaped praise on Australia after the Senate passed a bipartisan motion criticising China's attempts to use a 50-year-old UN resolution to claim Taiwan as part of its territory.

China's government has consistently tried to use UN Resolution 2758 — which recognises the People's Republic of China as the "only legitimate representative of China to the UN" — to advance its claim that it has sovereignty over the self-ruled island of Taiwan.

It has also repeatedly claimed that Australia accepts that Taiwan is merely a province of China, an argument which Australia rejects.

Under the agreement signed by both countries when they established diplomatic ties Australia recognised the PRC as the sole government of China but only "acknowledged" China's claim that Taiwan is part of its territory.

Making up part of the western Pacific Ocean, the South China Sea sits between southern China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Malaysia.

About a third of global maritime trade passes through the 3.5 million square kilometer (1.4 million square mile) seaway annually, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

Around 40% of petroleum products traded globally are delivered via the sea every year.

In 2016, an estimated $3.6 trillion (€3.29 trillion) worth of goods and commodities traveled the seaway, according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)

. Another estimate put the figure as high as $5.3 trillion.

Researchers at Duke University in North Carolina calculated that total trade through both the South China Sea and the East China Sea — which lies between China, the two Koreas and Japan — is worth $7.4 trillion per year.

Tens of thousands of cargo vessels move through the South China Sea every year, carrying around 40% of China's, a third of India's and 20% of Japan's trade with the rest of the world, according to CSIS data.

Out of all of Asia, the three countries' economic security is most closely tied to the smooth running of the waterway. The South China Sea is a vital crossroads for both intra-Asian trade as well as for commerce with the rest of the world, especially Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/2129805

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The 2024 Paris Olympic Games have also turned into a game field for rumors. Though there are some similarities, the rumors circulating in Chinese and English are somewhat different.

[...]

As pro-Kremlin and far-right sources promoted disinformation about potential terrorist attacks on the Paris Olympics and soaring street crime in Paris, Chinese social media echoed the Russian narratives with false stories of frightening crimes and attacks on Olympic athletes in Paris. For example, multiple clips on the Chinese short-video platforms Kuaishou and Douyin conveyed the same story: a boxing coach from an Olympic team was robbed and beaten to death. In a separate incident, the US team's portable air conditioners were stolen, causing an American athlete to suffer from heat stroke and eventually die in the Olympic Village.

As a matter of fact, no American athlete died from heat stroke, nor did a boxing coach have a violent encounter and lose his life to the robbery incident. During the Paris Olympics, a boxing coach from Samoa passed away, but the cause of death was due to natural causes.

[...]

According to the unfounded stories, French President Emmanuel Macron asked China to assist France with Chinese anti-terrorism technology and maintain security during the Olympic games. For the benefit of the entire world, the Chinese government dispatched 1160 anti-terrorism professionals and equipped the Olympic Games with satellite surveillance systems and facial recognition technology based on China's big data system. Due to the superior Chinese anti-terrorism team and technology, 120 terrorists were arrested in Paris. The French police were extremely impressed by China's advanced surveillance and facial recognition technologies. Even Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee, acknowledged China's assistance in keeping the Paris Olympic Games safe.

In reality, the Chinese police did not participate in the multi-national police team at the Paris Olympic Games. According to the Taiwan FactCheck Center's investigation, almost 1,800 foreign police officers from 40 countries were in France to help maintain security. However, China was not one of the 40 countries. As for the arrest of terrorists, the French authorities did arrest one Russian man for plotting an assault on the Olympic Games. However, there was no mention of more than 120 terrorists being arrested in France thanks to China's facial recognition technology.

[...]

The Chinese state media has also broken its silence in recent months, publishing articles questioning whether US swimmers used drugs during the Olympics. For example, CCTV produced an article asking "six shocking questions" about "US doping scandals." One of the questions concerned American swimmers' purple faces. The story stated that American media outlets purposefully changed the color of photos and made American swimmers' faces appear white (the original text is "美媒特意调了色，把自己运动员的紫脸P白了"). The piece then contrasted an "adjusted picture" from AP with one from Reuters.

[...]

In addition to Chinese-language coverage, the English edition of Global Times, China's state media famed for its tabloid-style reporting, published an article about the widespread suspicion caused by American swimmers' purple faces. Later, the Global Times published another item stating that the US Embassy in China had posted a color-adjusted photo on Weibo to congratulate US swimmers.

Until August 17, when this analysis was written, the US Embassy's Weibo account had posted a statement that the Embassy did not post photoshopped images. (The Taiwan FactCheck Center is still investigating the claim that the US media intentionally made American swimmers’ faces “look white.” [...]) However, social media posts written in English questioning whether the purple faces could be the result of doping appeared on websites such as Reddit, Quora, and TikTok. Some YouTube influencers interviewed experts to explain the causes of purple faces, but others disputed the explanation and argued certain drugs could cause purple faces. The statement from English-speaking YouTubers claiming the purple faces were caused by drugs was again translated into Chinese and quoted by Chinese netizens.

[...]

Thirty-five years ago, the best chance at democratization in China in decades faded quickly when the powerful Tiananmen Square prodemocracy movement was brutally suppressed.

Hu Ping, a leading Chinese dissident, reflects on the mistakes that were made and what it will take to succeed next time.

"Since 2012, with the arrival of Xi Jinping as supreme leader and with new high-tech surveillance technology in his hands, repression has grown even stronger. The authorities are seizing every opportunity to patch their vulnerabilities and press on," Hu says.

"Still, their control cannot be flawless; there still are crevices within which an opposition can survive. The appearance of the White Paper Movement shows as much. The key issue that remains is that the number of participants is low. We need to build confidence in nonviolent resistance."

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Here is the study: Uyghur Race as the Enemy: China’s Legalized Authoritarian Oppression and Mass Imprisonment

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The U.N. and the foreign ministers of concerned democracies should prepare to mark the second anniversary of the OHCHR report by recommitting to the pursuit of justice for millions of Uyghurs.

[...] fresh information about ongoing, systematic, and widespread Chinese government atrocity crimes in the Uyghur region – where millions of people have been arbitrarily detained, tortured, separated from family members, and subjected to cultural persecution, simply because of their distinct identity – demonstrates strong support for the real trend of international accountability.

In a newly published analysis of patterns of incarceration and legal manipulation, scholars Rayhan Asat and Min Kim tallied the number of years of wrongful detention inflicted on Uyghurs: “a cumulative total of 4.4 million years of imprisonment.” Beijing’s genocide and crimes against humanity, the authors argue, also reflect a disturbing attempt at “authoritarian lawfare” – in effect, that the Chinese authorities have continued to try to justify their patently illegal conduct by calling it the opposite. The tactic is designed to minimize international scrutiny and discourage the pursuit of accountability.

[...]

Academics, journalists, and human rights organizations have compiled considerable evidence; the Xinjiang Victims Database is a grim trove of information for a prosecutor’s brief. But democracies continue to prioritize other perceived interests in their relationships with Beijing, refraining from deploying an approach that could have a transformative and deterrent effect.

[...]

Uyghurs and others inside and outside China need strong, coordinated steps toward investigations and prosecutions of Xi and others complicit in atrocity crimes. Those guilty of these heinous abuses should know they will not only face hard questions in the court of public opinion, but also in a court of law.

Russia has held discussions for years about the construction of the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, which would bring 50 billion cubic meters of gas annually from northern Russia to China via Mongolia. However, the Mongolian government's 2024-2028 national development plan leaves out the ambitious project, the South China Morning Post reported on Monday.

A former official at the National Security Council of Mongolia told the newspaper that the pipeline project will likely be delayed.

"We are entering a long pause, where Moscow no longer believes it can get the deal it wishes from Beijing and will probably park the project until better times," Munkhnaran Bayarlkhagva said.

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Of course, Chinese Buddhism is very much Chinese. If “Sinicization” meant adapting Buddhism to Chinese traditions and culture, this was done two thousand years ago. However, for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the United Front, bureaucrat, “Sinicization” means adapting Buddhism to Marxism and the programs and directives of the Communist Party. What is advertised as “humanistic Buddhism” is in fact “Marxist Buddhism.”

Ma Lianmei, a bureaucrat from the United Front, calls for finding and emphasizing in Buddhist scriptures “the aspects that resonate with socialist core values” and enforce the principle of “strict governance” of religious communities, a new slogan that means direct control by the CCP and the United Front without relying only on the bureaucracy of the China Buddhist Association.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/1976184

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Palau’s President Surangel Whipps accuses China of pressuring the nation to cut ties with Taiwan through “weaponising tourism”

Palau is one of just 12 states worldwide that diplomatically recognise self-ruled Taiwan, which China considers part of its territory.

Solomon Islands, Kiribati and Nauru have all switched allegiance from Taiwan to China in recent years, and Palau President Surangel Whipps said China had put pressure on his tiny Pacific archipelago of 18,000 people to follow suit.

"We have a relationship with Taiwan... China has openly told us (that) is illegal and we should not recognise Taiwan," Mr. Whipps told reporters Wednesday.

Speaking during an official visit by New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters, Mr. Whipps claimed China had told Palau that "'the sky is the limit, we can give you everything you need'".

"We need economic development, but at the same time we have values, we have partnerships, and the relationship we have with Taiwan, we treasure," he added.

"We're willing to be China's friend, but not at the expense of our relationship with Taiwan."

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The most important part of the [International Monetary Fund] IMF’s latest assessment of China is—alas—the appendix on China’s new methodology for calculating China’s trade balance.

It at least explains why China’s balance of payments trade surplus diverges from China’s customs trade surplus, and why the gap started to explode around 2022 [...] China’s data doesn't agree with itself. One measure of the goods deficit is a lot bigger than another measure of the goods surplus.

[...]

You might think that a foreign firm producing in China for sale in China (“in China for China” is a thing) would not register in China’s trade data. After all, goods made in China and sold in China never cross a border, and thus should not show up in the customs data.

But in the new balance of payments data, China basically reports a trade deficit with itself because of foreign firms producing in China.

[...]

If a foreign firm contracts with a Chinese firm to manufacture that foreign firm’s goods in China, and then receives delivery of those goods in China, China counts this as an export.

[...]

But the strange turn happens if the foreign firm turns around and sells the good that a contract manufacturer produced for it inside China. Such goods are now being counted as an import in the balance of payments data.

Thus, China exports goods to foreign firms operating in China, and then imports those goods back from the same firm even though the goods never leave China. If the goods are sold at a higher price than the contract manufacturer receives, it ends up being reported as a trade deficit in the balance of payments.

[...]

So Chinese production for the Chinese market by foreign firms is somehow generating a trade deficit in the balance of payments data. This, of course, makes no real economic sense.

[...]

Bottom line: there is no good reason to think that this adjustment in captures anything important about how China’s economy interacts with the global economy. All this “fake” trade deficit does is reduce China’s reported current account surplus—as the goods surplus in the balance of payments is now about $300 billion (over 1.5 percentage points of China’s GDP) smaller than what it should be in the balance of payments data [while the author estimates] the current account surplus to be close to $700 billion even after the drop tied the resumption of tourism in 2023.

[...]

What matters for now is that a large number of analysts are using China's current account data to assess China's impact on the world without realizing that the fall in China's surplus since 2021 is basically an artifact of difficult to justify changes in China's balance of payments methodology. The real story is found in the old fashioned goods data.

Chinese authorities have called for gig workers to be treated with kindness after videos of a delivery rider kneeling before a security guard led to protests by dozens of riders.

Guards stopped the rider from leaving a building in Hangzhou on Monday - saying he damaged railings while scaling them during a rushed delivery.

Worried that his subsequent deliveries would be delayed, the rider got on his knees and pleaded to be let go, the city's police said in a statement.

The incident sparked outrage online, with many urging better protections for workers in the industry.

Some 12 million people work as delivery riders in China, and the pandemic has fuelled explosive growth in the sector.

But the industry - much like in the rest of the world - is notorious for its tight deadlines, where low-wage riders are subject to tough penalties over delays and poor customer feedback.

Many also work long days, earning less than a dollar for each delivery.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/1940986

A brand new China-backed international airport is getting ready to be inaugurated in Gwadar, a port city in Pakistan's restive Balochistan province.

Chinese media reported in June that the airport will be completed and handed over to the local authorities this year.

The airport is part of the multibillion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), part of China's global collection of infrastructure projects and trade networks known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

[...]

The ethnic Baloch, who constitute a majority in the province, have staged massive protests in recent days against the Pakistani government for what they view as unfair exploitation of their natural resources.

The Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), a rights group campaigning for the civil, political and socioeconomic rights of the Baloch, has mobilized people and organized huge rallies across Balochistan.

Mahrang Baloch, the BYC leader, told DW that they were organizing "a movement against Baloch genocide," accusing Pakistani authorities of carrying out thousands of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.

"China or any other country investing in Balochistan is directly involved in the Baloch genocide. The enforced disappearances and forced displacements in the Makran coastal belt are huge. They are looting our resources with no gain to local Baloch," she said.

But the Pakistani military labeled the BYC as "proxies" for what it called terrorists and criminal mafias.

"Their strategy is gathering crowds with foreign funding, inciting unrest among the people, challenging government authority through stone pelting, vandalism, and making unreasonable demands," Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, the head of the military's media wing, told reporters last week.

[...]

China announced the CPEC project in 2015 with an aim to expand its trade links and influence in Pakistan and across Central and South Asia.

The idea behind the project was to connect China's western Xinjiang province with the sea via Pakistan.

This would shorten trade routes for China and help avoid the contentious Malacca Strait choke point, a narrow waterway between Malaysia and Sumatra that links the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

[...]

Some Baloch fear that the Chinese are investing in Gwadar to exploit the province's natural resources. Baloch separatists have also targeted Chinese interests in Pakistan.

[...]

[Kiyya] Baloch [a local journalist who has extensively covered about the region] added that the protests are "unique," pointing to the unprecedented number of women taking part in them.

"Never before have so many women taken to the streets to demand their rights, not only in Balochistan but across this region."

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/1940634

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5,000 AI-Controlled Fake X Accounts Linked to China Disinformation Campaign

Researchers have uncovered a network of at least 5,000 fake X (formerly Twitter) accounts that appear to be controlled by AI in a disinformation campaign linked to China – and the activity appears to be heating up as the U.S. election approaches.

The X disinformation network, dubbed “Green Cicada” by researchers, “primarily engages with divisive U.S. political issues and may plausibly be staged to interfere in the upcoming presidential election.”

The network has also amplified divisive political issues in other democracies, including Australia, western Europe, India, Japan and other democratic countries.

The finding is the latest example of attempted interference in the U.S. presidential election, which just this month has seen reports of increasing activity by Iran.

[...]

The researchers, from CyberCX. [...] said the network is unlikely to be very effective in its current state, but they added that it “is plausible that the network operators are preparing to increase activities in the lead up to the U.S. presidential election.”

Most accounts on the network are currently dormant, but activity increased sharply in July. The network has been rectifying operational errors over time – including reducing malformed outputs – which could make its activities more effective and harder to detect over time.

The network uses a Chinese-language LLM system and links to an AI researcher affiliated with Tsinghua University and Zhipu AI, a prominent Chinese AI company. So far the actors haven’t had specific political leanings, but instead have focused on amplification of divisive content, “consistent with China’s information operation playbook,” the researchers said.

[...]

The researchers said [that] "our findings also indicate** key gaps in X’s willingness and ability to detect inauthentic content. **While we have observed X taking sporadic action against Green Cicada Network accounts during our period of monitoring, we have observed a failure to take systemic action against overtly linked accounts."

“We note that X has reversed initiatives put in place by Twitter to combat inauthentic activity, including efforts to detect, label and/or ban inauthentic accounts.”

The researchers said the network is a sign of things to come, with generative AI able to produce “a significant scale of malicious output with limited human oversight, at low cost and with low barriers to entry. It is possible that the system underpinning the network is operated by high-end consumer-grade hardware and is developed by just one individual.

“We assess that a more mature, future version of the system underlying the Green Cicada Network would be extremely difficult for parties other than X to detect.”

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On August 6, the US Democratic Party’s presidential candidate Kamala Harris finally chose her running mate: the 60-year-old governor of Minnesota, Timothy Walz. Subsequently, the media discovered that Walz had lived in China in his younger years. From September 1989 to July 1990, he worked as a foreign teacher at Foshan No. 1 Middle School in Guangdong province.

In the context of recent Sino-US competition, and given the shift in the most recent administrations between the fierce confrontation of Trump and the competitive risk control approach of Biden, the vice-presidential candidate’s China experience has become a focus of attention both inside and outside China.

How does Walz understand China? What is his position on Sino-US relations?

[...]

For more on Walz’s time teaching English in China, our reporter contacted Ms. Pang, a recently retired Chinese language teacher at Foshan No. 1 Middle School. Pang was a colleague of Walz’s, who she says was the school’s first foreign teacher.

At the time, Pang says, Walz was known to teachers and students as simply as “tīm” (添) — a Cantonese transliteration of his first name. Tīm was well-liked, according to Pang: “Everyone treated him like a celebrity,” she says. “He left a good impression on everyone. He was very young and had a bright smile… Even now when I see pictures of him I recognize that same wide, infectious smile pressing his cheeks up.”

[...]

In an interview at the time, Walz bemoaned the “unbearably hot” Guangdong weather but praised his students’ curiosity about all things American. At Christmas time, he said that students and friends decorated a pine tree and brought it to his room.

“His colleagues would often laugh at him because as soon as he got his pay he went to the school store to buy ice cream,” Pang recalls. Walz didn’t understand Cantonese or Mandarin when he first arrived, Pang says, but he gradually began to learn.

[...]

In terms of his political record, Waltz is far from a “dove” in his approach to China. He is a long-time supporter and advocate of political freedoms in China, and has criticized Beijing on issues ranging from Hong Kong to Tibet.

Both the 1989 student movement and the June 4 incident had a profound impact on Walz.

[...] As he and other volunteers watched the news from Hong Kong [where Walz worked as a teacher] on June 4, many decided to back out of the program. He had other ideas. “I felt it was more important than ever to go to China,” he said. He felt it was important, he recalled, for him to tell this story “so that the people of China knew that we stood with them.”

[...]

Walz also touched on other issues sensitive to China, such as Tibet and Hong Kong. He voiced support for Tibetan autonomy and met with the Dalai Lama, the exiled leader of Tibet. He joined a visit by US lawmakers to Tibet in November 2015 led by Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. [...] In a press release following the visit, the delegation “reiterated the imperative of respect for religious freedom and expression in Tibet; autonomy and democracy in Hong Kong; and respect for human and women’s rights across China. The delegation also expressed specific concerns related to the recent arrest and detention of human rights lawyers and activists.”On the issue of Hong Kong, he was an advocate early on in 2017 for the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, and in August of that year met with now-jailed Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong (黃之鋒), calling him “a true defender of democracy in China.” Pro-democracy activist Jeffrey Ngo Cheuk Hin (敖卓軒), a former member of Hong Kong’s Demosisto party, pointed out earlier this month that at the time of the anti-extradition protests in Hong Kong, Walz was an important advocate for the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act.

[...]

The same report [in the Time magazine] also said Walz is concerned about the gap in trade between the US and China, and wants to improve their trade deficit by demanding that China abide by environmental standards, fair trade, and human rights. At the same time, he has publicly criticized Trump’s trade war footing with China, pointing out that Minnesota’s agricultural sector has been hit hard by slumping exports of commodities like soybeans and pork to China.

crosspostato da: https://beehaw.org/post/15538474

Women's accessories sold by some of the world's most popular online shopping firms contained toxic substances sometimes hundreds of times above acceptable levels, authorities in Seoul said Wednesday.

Chinese giants including Shein, Temu and AliExpress have skyrocketed in global popularity in recent years, offering a vast selection of trendy clothes and accessories at stunningly low prices that has helped them take on US titan Amazon.

The explosive growth has led to increased scrutiny of their business practices and safety standards, including in the European Union and South Korea, where Seoul officials have been conducting weekly inspections of items sold by online platforms.

In the most recent inspection, 144 products from Shein, AliExpress and Temu were tested, and multiple products from all companies failed to meet legal standards.

Shoes from Shein were found to contain significantly high levels of phthalates—chemicals used to make plastics more flexible—with one pair 229 times above the legal limit.

"Phthalate-based plasticizers affect reproductive functions such as sperm count reduction, and can cause infertility and even premature birth," an official from Seoul's environmental health team told AFP.

One such chemical "is classified as a human carcinogen by the International Cancer Institute, so special care should be taken to avoid long-term contact with the human body", they added.

Formaldehyde, a chemical commonly used in home building products, was detected in Shein's caps at double the allowable threshold.

Two bottles of nail polish from Shein were found to have dioxane—a possible human carcinogen that can cause liver poisoning—at levels more than 3.6 times the allowed limit and methanol concentrations 1.4 times above the acceptable level.

[...]

Seoul authorities found sandals from Temu contained lead in the insoles at levels more than 11 times the permissible limit ...

Archived version

The Vietnamese government announced in April 2024 that it aims to start construction of two high-speed railway (HSR) lines in cooperation with China by 2030.

Traversing some of Vietnam’s key manufacturing hubs and FDI destinations, these lines should eventually become part of an expanded cross-country railway network, [and] will be important assets for Vietnam’s economy [...]

The new HSR lines will link up with the recently built lines extending China’s railway network to the Vietnamese border, facilitating imports of Chinese industrial goods and materials [...]

But there are caveats to Vietnam’s HSR project. High-speed railway projects often fall behind their original deadlines and run over projected costs, raising questions about their cost–benefit ratio and financial sustainability. If the project faces delays, cost overruns or burdensome debt, it may not achieve its goals and will likely adversely affect the credibility of the Vietnamese government. Establishing terms that minimise these risks could prove crucial for defining the project’s long-term impact.

Hanoi’s relationship with China is burdened by territorial disputes in the South China Sea and Vietnam’s increasing closeness with the United States and Japan in defence and strategic relations. Making Beijing a stakeholder in a capital developmental project which aims to bring economic and strategic gains to both sides will help counterbalance security and strategic tensions and manage related risks.

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Amid international scrutiny for human rights violations, China is now attempting to present Xinjiang as a tourist hotspot, a strategy orchestrated and funded by the Xi Jinping administration, wrote Foreign Affairs & Security Minister of the East Turkistan Government in Exile on social media.

[East Turkistan is a historically used term adopted by various advocacy groups to refer to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).]

Recently, China’s Foreign Ministry highlighted that Xinjiang experienced significant growth in both tourism numbers and revenue in the first seven months of 2024.

[...]

Salih Hudayar, a prominent activist known for his criticism of China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims, condemned this portrayal.

In a social media post, he writes:

“The genocidal Chinese regime is inundating East Turkistan with millions of Chinese tourists in a blatant attempt to obscure and whitewash its heinous campaign of colonisation, genocide, and occupation. This shameless facade is meant to hide the brutal suffering of millions of Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples. The international community must not be misled by China’s deceptive propaganda–China must be held accountable, and its brutal occupation, Uyghur genocide, and state terrorism in East Turkistan must end immediately.”

Reports reveal severe human rights violations in Xinjiang, including the detention of over one million Uyghurs in so-called “re-education camps” or “vocational training centers,” which the Chinese government describes as anti-extremism measures. Additionally, there is significant evidence of cultural and religious repression, such as the destruction of Uyghur mosques and cemeteries and restrictions on religious practices.

The region has been described as one of the most surveillance-intensive areas in the world, with extensive use of facial recognition technology and other forms of monitoring.

There have also been extensive reports and satellite imagery showing the existence of large-scale internment camps in Xinjiang.

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Since Chinese engineers routed a $4.7 billion railway through the Kenyan village of Emurutoto, residents no longer worry about being cut off by flooding. Or being hit by a train. However, work has long since stopped on a Belt and Road project to connect Kenya and Uganda, with China gaining leverage of indebted Kenya's economy.

[...]

By 2017, the first half of the Kenya-Uganda line was operational, though losing money. In April 2019, work in the Great Rift Valley stopped. As alarms were raised about the mounting costs of the line, and secrecy around borrowing terms between Beijing’s banks and other African countries struggling to repay debts, China balked at financing the final 200-mile stretch linking Nairobi to the border with Uganda.

The single most expensive infrastructure project in Africa had become a case study in China swamping poorer nations with colossal debt. “The managers told us there was no more money to finish, and they went,” Shonke said.

[...]

If one policy is synonymous with President Xi’s China, it is the Belt and Road Initiative [...] Descriptions are awash with the Chinese Communist Party’s favourite slogans — “win-win co-operation” and “China meets the world” — but its underlying ideology is Xi’s.

[...]

The “win-win” was obvious. Countries short of cash would receive an infusion of investment, while China would have faster access to natural resources and bigger potential markets for its manufacturing industries.

The side-effects would also, Xi hoped, be useful for China. It would show off Beijing as an alternative “hegemon” to the United States and its western allies — and one that did not ask questions about human rights. It would also confirm the potential of China’s state-led economic model, a more attractive proposition to many governments than the West’s present insistence on privatisation.

[...]

However, just as the Chinese economy has had a poor few years — particularly since Covid-19 exposed flaws in Beijing’s “command, control and no questions asked” system of government — so Belt and Road has also had problems. Kenya’s financial crisis, in part owing to debts incurred on Belt and Road projects, is one example.

Other countries were also taken aback by the unsentimental approach of their Chinese partners. Loans were handed down with tough terms, often disguised from voters by secretive contracts.

[...]

With Chinese banks wondering how many projects would offer a return on their money, and governments growing wary of the leverage China now had over them, the scheme began to wind down, or at least focus on smaller projects.

As with much of Xi’s legacy, many Chinese people are proud of Belt and Road’s results, but it is not only the Chinese Communist Party’s western critics who have noticed cracks starting to appear.

A US Army analyst has pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to sell military secrets to China, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has said.

Sgt Korbein Schultz was arrested in March after an investigation by the FBI and US Army counterintelligence alleged that he was paid $42,000 (£33,000) in exchange for dozens of sensitive security records.

The criminal conspiracy began in June 2022 and continued up until his arrest, officials said.

He is scheduled for sentencing in January.

Sgt Schultz, who held a security clearance to access top secret information, conspired to collect data with someone whom he believed to be living in Hong Kong, according to court documents.

The purported Hong Kong resident asked Sgt Schultz to collect sensitive data related to missile defence and mobile artillery systems, according to court records.

Sgt Schultz also collected data on US fighter aircraft, military tactics, and the US military's defence strategy for Taiwan, based on what it learned from Russia's war in Ukraine.

China's state media has denounced guandan, a popular poker-style card game, over fears it is addictive and distracting people from their work.

The game's popularity has surged in recent years and it has become well-loved by Chinese businesspeople and Communist Party officials.

Now, state-owned newspaper Beijing Youth Daily has slammed the game as "decadent", amid reports state employees have been urged to stop playing the game.

Owing to security concerns, intelligence operatives in the Philippines begin tracking a Chinese man over 'inconsistencies' in his declared work and actual activities.

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A total of 96 trade barrier investigations targeting China were announced by its trading partners from January to July 2024, already exceeding the 63 in the whole of last year [...] Among China’s trading partners, the United States, India and the European Union have issued the most complaints.

[...]

[Now] new trade barriers from ASEAN bloc countries appear to be on the way.

Malaysia’s commerce ministry said this week it would table its proposed anti-dumping legislation in parliament next year to protect industries from “the effects of unfair trade resulting from the massive influx of cheap imported products from countries including China.”

In June, Indonesia’s trade ministry also announced plans to impose tariffs of up to 200 percent on some Chinese-made products to protect its manufacturing industry from dumping practices triggered by Western nations’ trade wars with China.

Indonesia and Japan on Thursday agreed to amendments to an economic deal aimed at reducing or removing trade barriers, Reuters reported.

[...]

The moves by China’s neighbors suggest that the region sees a more imminent need to rebalance some of its trade relationships with China, as a growing proportion of cheaper Chinese imports could hurt their domestic industries.

Heavy production and export ASEAN economies, such as Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand are prime destinations for Chinese exports and companies looking to avoid the impact of the US-China trade war.

[...]

This is a slight increase amid growing accusations of Chinese export overcapacity, potentially exposing China to more trade barriers.

[...]

The share of Chinese exports to developed economies such as the United States, Europe, Japan and South Korea has fallen amid the U.S.-China trade war and calls from governments to eliminate China-related risks in their supply chains.

Yet Beijing officials have repeatedly touted China’s relations with Southeast Asian countries and members of its Belt and Road Initiative as thriving, and since 2020 the ASEAN bloc has overtaken the EU to become China’s largest trading partner.

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• In addition to the 50 new villages, China added new homes to 100 other villages, to house even more people.

• These civilian outposts are one way that Beijing is projecting its power abroad and securing its rule at home.

Qionglin New Village sits deep in the Himalayas, just three miles from a region where a heavy military buildup and confrontations between Chinese and Indian troops have brought fears of a border war.

The land was once an empty valley, more than 10,000 feet above the sea, traversed only by local hunters. Then Chinese officials built Qionglin, a village of cookie-cutter homes and finely paved roads, and paid people to move there from other settlements.

**China’s leader, Xi Jinping, calls such people “border guardians.” ** Qionglin’s villagers are essentially sentries on the front line of China’s claim to Arunachal Pradesh, India’s easternmost state, which Beijing insists is part of Chinese-ruled Tibet.

Many villages like Qionglin have sprung up. In China’s west, they give its sovereignty a new, undeniable permanence along boundaries contested by India, Bhutan and Nepal. In its north, the settlements bolster security and promote trade with Central Asia. In the south, they guard against the flow of drugs and crime from Southeast Asia.

The buildup is the clearest sign that Mr. Xi is using civilian settlements to quietly solidify China’s control in far-flung frontiers, just as he has with fishing militias and islands in the disputed South China Sea.

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The mapping reveals that China has put at least one village near every accessible Himalayan pass that borders India, as well as on most of the passes bordering Bhutan and Nepal, according to Matthew Akester, an independent researcher on Tibet, and Robert Barnett, a professor from SOAS University of London. Mr. Akester and Mr. Barnett, who have studied Tibet’s border villages for years, reviewed The Times’s findings.

The outposts are civilian in nature, but they also provide China’s military with roads, access to the internet and power, should it want to move troops quickly to the border. Villagers serve as eyes and ears in remote areas, discouraging intruders or runaways.

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The buildup of settlements fuels anxiety in the region about Beijing’s ambitions. The threat of conflict is ever present: Deadly clashes have broken out along the border between troops from India and China since 2020, and tens of thousands of soldiers from both sides remain on a war footing.

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Of the new villages The Times identified in Tibet, one is on land claimed by India, though within China’s de facto border; 11 other settlements are in areas contested by Bhutan. Some of those 11 villages are near the Doklam region, the site of a standoff between troops from India and China in 2017 over Chinese attempts to extend a road.

China makes clear that the villages are there for security. In 2020, a leader of a Tibetan border county told state media that he was relocating more than 3,000 people to frontier areas that were “weakly controlled, disputed or empty.”

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Indian officials have previously noted “infrastructure construction activity” by China along the border. Local leaders in Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh have complained to The Times that China was slowly cutting away small pieces of Indian territory.

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Among other findings, the C.S.I.S. [Center for Strategic and International Studies in a] report identified what appeared to be a militarized facility in one such village, known as Migyitun, or Zhari in Chinese, an indication of the settlements’ dual-use nature.

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To persuade residents to move there, Chinese Communist Party officials promised them their new homes would be cheap. They would receive annual subsidies and get paid extra if they took part in border patrols. Chinese propaganda outlets said the government would provide jobs and help promote local businesses and tourism. The villages would come with paved roads, internet connections, schools and clinics.

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Some villagers may be receiving around 20,000 Chinese yuan a year for relocation {according to a government document], less than $3,000. One resident reached by phone said he earned an extra $250 a month by patrolling the border.

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The residents become dependent on the subsidies because there are few other ways to make a living.

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China’s relocation policy is also a form of social engineering, designed to assimilate minority groups like the Tibetans into the mainstream. Tibetans, who are largely Buddhist, have historically resisted the Communist Party’s intrusive controls on their religion and way of life.

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When money isn’t enough, Chinese officials have applied pressure on residents to relocate, an approach that was evident even in state propaganda reports.

A documentary aired by the state broadcaster, CCTV, showed how a Chinese official went to Dokha, a village in Tibet, to persuade residents to move to a new village called Duolonggang, 10 miles from Arunachal Pradesh.

He encountered some resistance. Tenzin, a lay Buddhist practitioner, insisted that Dokha’s land was fertile, producing oranges and other fruit. “We can feed ourselves without government subsidies,” he said.

The official criticized Tenzin for “using his age and religious status to obstruct relocation,” according to a state media article cited by Human Rights Watch in a report.

In the end, all 143 residents of Dokha moved to the new settlement.

Thousands of small business owners stormed the Guangzhou offices of Temu, an online retail giant, earlier this month. They protested the platform's financial penalties and return policies, arguing that these measures are crippling small businesses.

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"Everyone will go hungry,” one taxi driver said of Wuhan drivers competing against robotaxis from Apollo Go, a subsidiary of Chinese technology giant Baidu.

Ride-hailing and taxi drivers are among the first workers globally to face the threat of job loss from artificial intelligence as thousands of robotaxis hit Chinese streets, economists and industry experts said.

Self-driving technology remains experimental, but China has moved aggressively to green-light trials compared with the U.S, which is quick to launch investigations and suspend approvals after accidents.

Just a few weeks ago, the robotaxi revolution was causing public concerns in China with the issue blowing up on social media after an Apollo Go vehicle ran into a pedestrian in Wuhan. 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 back then 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” and that Apollo Go only operates 400 robotaxis in the city, rather than 1,000 as many have claimed online.

Despite the safety concerns, fleets proliferate in China as authorities approve testing to support economic goals. Last year, President Xi Jinping called for “new productive forces,” setting off regional competition.

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Earlier, in Jun 2024, China issued judicial guidelines for trying and sentencing to death in absentia what it calls “diehard” advocates for Taiwan independence. “This judicial document surely serves as a blow to President Lai Ching-te and his fellow separatists,” China’s official Xinhua news agency then said Jun 22.

The guidelines on imposing criminal punishments on diehard “Taiwan independence” separatists for conducting or inciting secession were jointly issued by the Supreme People’s Court, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, and the ministries of public security, state security, and justice and took effect upon release, said a Xinhua report Jun 21.

The new sections, which appeared on Aug 7, include a list of “Taiwan independence diehards”, namely Su Tseng-chang, You Si-kun, Joseph Wu Jau-shieh, Hsiao Bi-khim, Koo Li-hsiung, Tsai Chi-chang, Ker Chienming, Lin Fei-fan, Chen Jiauhua and Wang Ting-yu.

Su and You are former chairmen of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Wu is a former head of external affairs, and Hsiao is the deputy head of the island. The rest are all current or former senior officials of the island’s “independence-touting” authorities, said China’s official chinadaily.com.cn Aug 8.

Apart from the list, the sections provide a tip-off mailbox [... for the gathering of information on the listed “separatists’ criminal activities” and clues on any new “die-hard Taiwan independence separatists” suspected of serious offenses.