• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

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.

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 eventually 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.

Archived version

Emails sent to a Chinese dissident living in the Netherlands over his petition for asylum for his family members detained last year in Thailand were apparently fake, Dutch authorities said Friday.

The announcement was the first public statement from officials in the Netherlands in the unusual case of Gao Zhi, whose family members were stranded for months at a Thai immigration center while en route to the Netherlands and allegedly accused of sending bomb threats.

Based on emails he said he received, Gao at the time alleged that the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service had revoked his family’s visas, which would have allowed them to travel to the Netherlands.

He showed purported screenshots of the emails to the media, including one that ultimately said visas for his family members were revoked as they were being investigated for bomb threats made in Thailand. It remains unclear who sent the emails.

Gao declined to forward the emails to The Associated Press at the time, saying he feared this could jeopardize his family’s asylum case. The AP could not verify the authenticity of his claims.

On Friday, Britt Enthoven, a spokesperson for the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service, said the “message indeed doesn’t seem to be from” the service.

“I cannot give you any further information about the message,” Enthoven said.

Gao, though critical of the Chinese government online, had never been an activist back home. But his story at the time raised concerns that Chinese authorities may have made the bomb threats in the name of Gao’s family to try and control his political activities abroad.

Gao’s wife and two children were traveling to the Netherlands to join him in June and July last year, and transiting through Thailand. His wife, Liu Fengling, and daughter Gao Han were detained by Thai police for overstaying their visitors visa. His son was not detained.

A spokesperson for the Royal Thai police at the time did not respond to AP queries about the case.

Gao turned to public advocacy to try and get his family out, and was helped by Wang Jingyu, another Chinese dissident living in the Netherlands who had gained prominence after being detained in Dubai for questioning the Chinese death toll figures in the 2020 border clashes with Indian soldiers in the Karakoram mountains.

Gao’s family was released last October, but only managed to travel to the Netherlands with a proper visa earlier this month, he said.

Separately, Gao has since claimed that Wang defrauded him of thousands of dollars while allegedly trying to help him during this process — claims that Wang dismissed as “nonsense” in a message to the AP.

Bob Fu, a U.S.-based activist who runs ChinaAid, a Christian rights organization, and who helped Wang when he was detained in Dubai, said that the group was forced to pay thousands of dollars of phone bills Wang allegedly made while in the Netherlands.

Archived version

Emails sent to a Chinese dissident living in the Netherlands over his petition for asylum for his family members detained last year in Thailand were apparently fake, Dutch authorities said Friday.

The announcement was the first public statement from officials in the Netherlands in the unusual case of Gao Zhi, whose family members were stranded for months at a Thai immigration center while en route to the Netherlands and allegedly accused of sending bomb threats.

Based on emails he said he received, Gao at the time alleged that the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service had revoked his family’s visas, which would have allowed them to travel to the Netherlands.

He showed purported screenshots of the emails to the media, including one that ultimately said visas for his family members were revoked as they were being investigated for bomb threats made in Thailand. It remains unclear who sent the emails.

Gao declined to forward the emails to The Associated Press at the time, saying he feared this could jeopardize his family’s asylum case. The AP could not verify the authenticity of his claims.

On Friday, Britt Enthoven, a spokesperson for the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service, said the “message indeed doesn’t seem to be from” the service.

“I cannot give you any further information about the message,” Enthoven said.

Gao, though critical of the Chinese government online, had never been an activist back home. But his story at the time raised concerns that Chinese authorities may have made the bomb threats in the name of Gao’s family to try and control his political activities abroad.

Gao’s wife and two children were traveling to the Netherlands to join him in June and July last year, and transiting through Thailand. His wife, Liu Fengling, and daughter Gao Han were detained by Thai police for overstaying their visitors visa. His son was not detained.

A spokesperson for the Royal Thai police at the time did not respond to AP queries about the case.

Gao turned to public advocacy to try and get his family out, and was helped by Wang Jingyu, another Chinese dissident living in the Netherlands who had gained prominence after being detained in Dubai for questioning the Chinese death toll figures in the 2020 border clashes with Indian soldiers in the Karakoram mountains.

Gao’s family was released last October, but only managed to travel to the Netherlands with a proper visa earlier this month, he said.

Separately, Gao has since claimed that Wang defrauded him of thousands of dollars while allegedly trying to help him during this process — claims that Wang dismissed as “nonsense” in a message to the AP.

Bob Fu, a U.S.-based activist who runs ChinaAid, a Christian rights organization, and who helped Wang when he was detained in Dubai, said that the group was forced to pay thousands of dollars of phone bills Wang allegedly made while in the Netherlands.

Archived link

Original article behind paywall

China has long sought to discredit Chinese critics abroad, but targeting a 16-year daughter of a Chinese dissident in the United States by falsely portraying her as a drug user, an arsonist and a prostitute, is an new escalation, one security expert says.

• U.S. Federal law prohibits severe online harassment or threats, but that appears to be no deterrent to China’s efforts.

• "They’re exporting their repression efforts and human rights abuses — targeting, threatening and harassing those who dare question their legitimacy or authority even outside China, including right here in the U.S.,” Christopher A. Wray, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, told the American Bar Association in Washington in April.

• Mr. Wray said China was exerting “intense, almost Mafia-style pressure” to try to silence dissidents now living legally in the United States, including activities online and off, like posting fliers near their homes.

• Deng Yuwen, a prominent Chinese writer who now lives in exile in the suburbs of Philadelphia in the U.S., has regularly criticized China and its authoritarian leader, Xi Jinping. China’s reaction of late has been severe, with crude and ominously personal attacks online.

• A covert propaganda network linked to the country’s security services has barraged not just Mr. Deng but also his teenage daughter with sexually suggestive and threatening posts on popular social media platforms, according to researchers at both Clemson University and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.

• The content, posted by users with fake identities, has appeared in replies to Mr. Deng’s posts on X, the social platform, as well as the accounts of public schools in their community, where the daughter, who is 16, has been falsely portrayed as a drug user, an arsonist and a prostitute.

• Vulgar comments targeting the girl have also shown up on community pages on Facebook and even sites like TripAdvisor; Patch, a community news platform; and Niche, a website that helps parents choose schools, according to the researchers. As soon as these posts are deleted, Chinese trolls switch to new accounts to leave attacking text and language again.

• The harassment fits a pattern of online intimidation that has raised alarms in many countries where China’s attacks have become increasingly brazen. The campaign has included thousands of posts the researchers have linked to a network of social media accounts known as Spamouflage or Dragonbridge, an arm of the country’s vast propaganda apparatus.

• China has long sought to discredit Chinese critics, but targeting a teenager in the United States is an escalation, said Darren Linvill, a founder of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson, whose researchers documented the campaign against Mr. Deng.

• Federal law prohibits severe online harassment or threats, but that appears to be no deterrent to China’s efforts.

Archived link

Original article behind paywall

China has long sought to discredit Chinese critics abroad, but targeting a 16-year daughter of a Chinese dissident in the United States by falsely portraying her as a drug user, an arsonist and a prostitute, is an new escalation, one security expert says.

• U.S. Federal law prohibits severe online harassment or threats, but that appears to be no deterrent to China’s efforts.

• "They’re exporting their repression efforts and human rights abuses — targeting, threatening and harassing those who dare question their legitimacy or authority even outside China, including right here in the U.S.,” Christopher A. Wray, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, told the American Bar Association in Washington in April.

• Mr. Wray said China was exerting “intense, almost Mafia-style pressure” to try to silence dissidents now living legally in the United States, including activities online and off, like posting fliers near their homes.

• Deng Yuwen, a prominent Chinese writer who now lives in exile in the suburbs of Philadelphia in the U.S., has regularly criticized China and its authoritarian leader, Xi Jinping. China’s reaction of late has been severe, with crude and ominously personal attacks online.

• A covert propaganda network linked to the country’s security services has barraged not just Mr. Deng but also his teenage daughter with sexually suggestive and threatening posts on popular social media platforms, according to researchers at both Clemson University and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.

• The content, posted by users with fake identities, has appeared in replies to Mr. Deng’s posts on X, the social platform, as well as the accounts of public schools in their community, where the daughter, who is 16, has been falsely portrayed as a drug user, an arsonist and a prostitute.

• Vulgar comments targeting the girl have also shown up on community pages on Facebook and even sites like TripAdvisor; Patch, a community news platform; and Niche, a website that helps parents choose schools, according to the researchers. As soon as these posts are deleted, Chinese trolls switch to new accounts to leave attacking text and language again.

• The harassment fits a pattern of online intimidation that has raised alarms in many countries where China’s attacks have become increasingly brazen. The campaign has included thousands of posts the researchers have linked to a network of social media accounts known as Spamouflage or Dragonbridge, an arm of the country’s vast propaganda apparatus.

• China has long sought to discredit Chinese critics, but targeting a teenager in the United States is an escalation, said Darren Linvill, a founder of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson, whose researchers documented the campaign against Mr. Deng.

• Federal law prohibits severe online harassment or threats, but that appears to be no deterrent to China’s efforts.

Archived link

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service and RCMP are telling private investigators that authorities in Canada and allied countries have observed multiple examples of their profession being hired to gather personal and “pattern of life” information about opponents of foreign regimes, to locate “purported” fugitives and dissidents, to conduct surveillance on or to harass targets. [...]

“Diaspora communities with roots in authoritarian countries are particularly vulnerable,” they say. [...]

Customers approaching private investigators may lie about the reasons for hiring them, alleging the target has committed financial fraud or marital infidelity, CSIS and the RCMP warn in their alert.

“The ultimate aim of the hostile state actor may be to harass, threaten or unlawfully repatriate persons living legally in Canada,” the alert said.

Jolene Johnson, who runs Vancouver-based West Point Investigations Corp., said a CSIS officer approached her on June 17 to discuss concerns that China has been hiring private investigators to track down alleged fugitives who are often critics of Beijing. [...]

Michelle Tessier, former deputy director of operations at CSIS, said China, Iran, Russia and India are increasingly adept at using sophisticated means to hide their involvement while tracking down opponents of their regimes.

Often, Ms. Tessier said private investigators are not even aware that they are being used by a hostile state because they may be hired through law firms or third parties. [...]

The RCMP have been conducting an investigation into facilities in Canada that were used as illegal police stations by China to intimidate or harass people of Chinese origin.

The stations are believed to be among at least 100 operating around the globe in 53 countries, including Canada, Britain and the U.S., according to Spain-based NGO Safeguard Defenders, which monitors human-rights abuses in China.

In a report last year, the non-profit said the illegal police stations are part of efforts by China’s regime to “harass, threaten, intimidate and force targets to return to China for persecution.”

Here is the original link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgjyHwQOUoo

"Last night in Donald Trump's first debate appearance since January 6th, the debate moderators did not ask him what the January 6th committee very much wanted to ask him, what were you doing for those 187 minutes?"

"Instead ... the very first question to Donald Trump was:"

CNN: You want to impose a 10% tariff on all goods coming into the U.S. How will you ensure that that doesn't drive prices even higher?'

TRUMP: It's not going to drive them higher.