China Watch Thread

[Yuli Ban]

China overtakes US as the richest country in the world

Global wealth tripled over the last two decades, with China leading the way and overtaking the US for the top spot worldwide, Bloomberg reported.
A report by McKinsey & Co. that examines the national balance sheets of ten countries representing more than 60 per cent of the world's income.
China accounted for almost one-third of gains in global net worth over the past two decades, the report said.
"We are now wealthier than we have ever been," Jan Mischke, a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute in Zurich, said in an interview.
Net worth worldwide rose to $514 trillion in 2020, from $156 trillion in 2000, according to the study.
China accounted for almost one-third of the increase.

[caltrek]

^^^Speaking of S curves, I think this is probably a classic example. As a leading capitalist economy, the U.S. has been at it for quite some time. So, it has reached the top of its S curve and is in a region where that curve has flattened out in terms of continued growth. In contrast, China has relatively recently "thrown off the shackles of Western imperialism" and is now on the steep part of its growth curve.

Note that the article cast things in terms of "total wealth" and NOT per capita income. The U.S. clearly is ahead of China there, although I don't think it is any longer in first place on the world stage. Too many relatively wealthy but also relatively small European countries to keep up with in that regard. Not to mention Singapore, etc.

[Yuli Ban]

Public libraries in Hong Kong have been quietly removing books from the shelves deemed politically "sensitive" under a national security law imposed on the city by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

More than 100 titles -- many of them referencing the 1989 Tiananmen massacre -- are believed to have disappeared from Hong Kong's network of public libraries since the law took effect on July 1, 2020.

While the city's leisure and cultural services department has made a list of more than 70 books deemed to be in breach of the law, which criminalizes public criticism of the Hong Kong and Chinese authorities, regular readers have spotted many more, according to local media reports.

Stand News, the Ming Pao newspaper and the English-language Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP) have listed books by jailed 2014 protest leader Joshua Wong, as well as dozens of books about the 1989 student-led protests in Tiananmen Square, and the June 4 massacre by the People's Liberation Army that ended them.

While some books about the 1989 pro-democracy movement remain on library shelves, the number of copies has been slashed, forcing readers to order them via an inter-library loan scheme, the HKFP reported on Nov. 21.

[Yuli Ban]

A 20-minute video featuring more than a dozen detention facilities in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region has offered fresh evidence and renewed the discussion around China's large-scale crackdown on ethnic minorities in the region.

The video was filmed by a Chinese man named Guanguan, who went to Xinjiang after reading a series of articles from US news outlet BuzzFeed News, indicating the locations of several detention centers in the region.

His video, which was originally posted to YouTube in October, has attracted the attention of researchers and academics who have been focusing on China's large-scale crackdown on ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. Alison Killing, an architect who worked with BuzzFeed News to create a map of satellite images of the camps, said the new information from the video confirms what they believe to be happening in Xinjiang.

"When you are working with satellite images, you are always relying on other sources of information to corroborate what you are looking at," she told DW. "It can be on-the-ground videos, which is what we see here."

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

[BaobabScion]

How can they say that he's gone missing when the tweet that they're quote-tweeting tells you exactly what happened?

My god, the shamelessness of so many in the western media.

[weatheriscool]

China Nears a Reckoning as Property Firms Face Tough Deadlines
Source: New York Times

Evergrande and Kaisa must come up with hundreds of millions of dollars in days. Beijing sought to reassure markets overall, but signaled it might let Evergrande fail.

China’s debt-loaded property market is headed for a reckoning, as China Evergrande Group and another troubled housing developer face deadlines for millions of dollars’ worth of payments in a test of Beijing’s narrative that it can handle the threat to the Chinese economy.

Evergrande, with bills totaling $300 billion or more, will need to come up with more than $82 million in cash by the end of Monday in the United States to fend off creditors. The developer said late last week that it was unable to make a separate payment worth $260 million, an indication investors took to mean the beginning of its eventual demise. Its shares tumbled by 20 percent on Monday in Asia.

The other developer in distress, Kaisa Group, must pay bondholders $400 million on Tuesday after it said it failed last week to get approval from investors to renegotiate the terms.

China’s property sector has kept global markets on edge for months, as developers have struggled to find cash to pay their soaring debts. They have been hampered by slowing demand from home buyers, falling property prices in many Chinese cities and Beijing’s crackdown on excessive bank lending.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/06/busi ... perty.html

[Yuli Ban]

The Uyghur Tribunal cited birth control and sterilisation measures allegedly carried out by the state against the Uyghurs as the primary reason for reaching its conclusion on Thursday.

Sir Geoffrey Nice, a prominent British barrister who chaired the tribunal hearings, said its panel was satisfied China had carried out "a deliberate, systematic and concerted policy" to bring about "long-term reduction of Uyghur and other ethnic minority populations". He added that the panel believed senior officials including the Chinese president Xi Jinping bore "primary responsibility" for the abuses against Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region.

The tribunal's panel was made up of lawyers and academics. Its findings have no legal force and are not binding on ministers, but its organisers said at the outset they intended to add to the body of evidence around the allegations against China and reach an independent conclusion on the question of genocide.

[funkervogt]

A "soft landing" for China's real estate market in the wake of the Evergrande default?

The coming property correction is inevitable, and the extent of the impact on the overall economy depends highly on how it is managed. Just as the Chinese government has managed Evergrande’s default process, we implicitly assume that Beijing will demonstrate relative competence in mitigating systemic risks as part of the property correction.

As such, our baseline scenario is reasonable if not deliberately more aggressive on the downside. For instance, our projection does not account for property demand from replacement of aging property nor factors like monetary easing. Even without accounting for those positive offsets, the overall growth impact is actually similar to that during the US-China trade war.

Therefore, so long as Beijing manages this process well, the Chinese economy will manage through the property correction. Of course, a hard landing is possible if this correction is mismanaged or spins out of control. We will examine the financial risks associated with a hard landing in a future analysis.

https://macropolo.org/analysis/chinas-c ... vergrande/

[Yuli Ban]

Chinese Estates Plunges by Record After Privatization Collapses

[weatheriscool]

Hong Kong pro-democracy news site closes after raid, arrests
Source: AP

HONG KONG (AP) — A vocal pro-democracy website in Hong Kong shut down Wednesday after police raided its office and arrested six current and former editors and board members in a continuing crackdown on dissent in the semi-autonomous Chinese city.

Stand News said in a statement that its website and social media are no longer being updated and will be taken down. It said all employees have been dismissed.

The outlet was one of the last remaining openly critical voices in Hong Kong following the shuttering of the Apple Daily newspaper, which closed after its publisher, Jimmy Lai, and top editors were arrested and its assets frozen.

Police raided Stand News’ office earlier in the day after arresting the six, including popular singer and activist Denise Ho, a former board member, on charges of conspiracy to publish a seditious publication.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/business-med ... 6c6c66feba

[caltrek]

Two Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Activists Charged with Sedition
December 30, 2021

https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2021 ... ition.html

Introduction:

(Kyodo News) Two former top editors of Hong Kong pro-democracy online media outlet Stand News were charged with sedition on Thursday following a raid (see previous article in this thread) on its office the day before, according to the police.

The now-defunct outlet's former chief editor Chung Pui-kuen appeared in court after being charged under the colonial-era Crimes Ordinance with conspiracy to publish seditious publications.

Patrick Lam, who was acting editor-in-chief prior to their arrests Wednesday, faced the same charge but was absent from court as he was in the hospital.

The city's national security police said they would extend the same charge toward the parent company, though no representative was present during Thursday's hearing.

Singer and activist Denise Ho, who was among five others connected with Stand News who were arrested for the same offense, has been released on bail along with at least two others, according to local media reports.

[caltrek]

Muslims in the West Embrace the Uyghur Cause
by Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian
January 2, 2022

https://www.axios.com/muslims-west-uygh ... a758b.html

Introduction:

(Axios) Over the past year, Muslim organizations in the U.S., Canada, the UK, and elsewhere have become outspoken advocates for Uyghur Muslims, who are experiencing genocide at the hands of the Chinese government.

The big picture: Governments of many Muslim-majority countries have faced criticism for their silence in the face of China's repression, but Muslim citizens are organizing and speaking loudly about the issue.

As the Uyghur genocide has gained more international prominence over the past year, the fate of a once little-known ethnic group is becoming an issue of global concern.
What's happening: In September, more than 40 Muslim organizations in the U.S. and abroad announced a boycott of Hilton, after reports that a planned hotel in Xinjiang would be built atop a demolished mosque.

In December 2020, more than 70 Muslim student associations around the world and dozens of Uyghur groups wrote an open letter to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), comprised of 57 member states, urging them to denounce China's abuses.

[wjfox]

Chinese agent infiltrating Parliament, MI5 warns

By Gordon Corera & Jennifer Scott
Security correspondent & political reporter, BBC News

4 minutes ago

MI5 has issued a rare warning to MPs that a Chinese agent has infiltrated Parliament to interfere in UK politics.

An alert from the security service said Christine Ching Kui Lee "established links" for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with current and aspiring MPs.

She then gave donations to politicians, with funding coming from foreign nationals in China and Hong Kong.

It comes after a "significant, long-running" investigation by MI5, Whitehall sources told the BBC.

Home Secretary Priti Patel said it was "deeply concerning" that someone "who has knowingly engaged in political interference activities on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party has targeted parliamentarians".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59984380

[Yuli Ban]

Chinese leaders are under pressure to boost slumping economic growth while they try to contain coronavirus outbreaks ahead of next month’s Winter Olympics in Beijing.

The world’s second-largest economy grew by 8.1% last year, but activity fell abruptly in the second half as the ruling Communist Party forced China’s vast real estate industry to cut surging debt, official data showed Monday.

Growth sank to 4% over a year earlier in the final three months of the year, fueling expectations Beijing may need to cut interest rates or stimulate the economy with more spending on public works construction.

That slump is likely to worsen, leading to “more aggressive measures to boost growth,” Ting Lu and Jing Wang of Nomura said in a report.

[Yuli Ban]

A new report published by a human rights NGO has detailed the methods used by China to force thousands of fugitives to return from other countries, describing the extent of Beijing's operations on foreign soil to control the Chinese diaspora.

Spain-based NGO Safeguard Defenders highlighted three tactics sanctioned by China for this purpose — detaining the fugitive's relatives as a threat, sending agents overseas to illegally intimidate the person in question, or outright kidnapping them.

The organization compiled information related to 62 of these cases in countries including the US, Canada, Australia, Vietnam, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates.


Official data from China suggests nearly 10,000 fugitives have been returned since 2014 under a program codenamed "Operation Sky Net" or "Tian Wang," Safeguard Defenders noted. In 2020 alone, 1,421 fugitives were extradited to China by Sky Net, Chinese state media reported, touting the operation as an anti-graft campaign.

[Ozzie guy]

https://www.thedefensepost.com/2022/01/ ... ilippines/

https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news ... from-china

https://www.shephardmedia.com/news/land ... -military/

https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2022 ... hilippines

https://www.rappler.com/nation/photos-c ... -military/

In order to help the Philippines combat the Communist revolution they are having, China has donated $19.5 Million in Military Equipment. In addition to relief and rescue equipment, the southeast Asian nation will receive drone systems, detectors, explosive ordnance disposal robots, bomb disposal suits, transport vehicles, ambulances, water purification vehicles, fire trucks, and engineering supplies.

[caltrek]

Maritime Conflict Heats up as China’s Fishing Fleet Goes Dark in Argentine Waters
by James Francis Whitehead
January 28, 2022

https://www.courthousenews.com/maritime ... ne-waters/

Introduction:

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (Courthouse News) — Since 2018, foreign vessels have spent close to 1 million hours fishing between Argentina’s maritime border and the high seas, yet spent 600,000 hours ‘in the dark,’ suspected of illegal fishing within Argentine waters in the South Atlantic, according to a report by the ocean conservation organization Oceana.

Going dark refers to when ships appear to disable their electronic tracking devices, or Automatic Identification Systems (AIS), and is associated with illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, which fuels overfishing and undermines efforts to protect the seas and oceans.
IUU fishing draws in global revenues of $10 billion to $36 billion per year and is entangled with other illicit activities such as human trafficking, corruption, and organized crime.

The majority of the ships (69%) detected around Argentine waters were Chinese, with vessels from South Korea, Taiwan and Spain making up another 25%. In terms of the total amount of fishing time in the waters, Chinese vessels made up 70% while Argentine vessels consisted of less than 1%. The dominant vessel used in the region was the squid jigger, which is geared toward catching the lucrative Argentine shortfin squid that is part of the rich and diverse marine life found in Argentina’s vast waters.

Conclusion:

South American countries with maritime grievances, such as Argentina, are looking to navigate these choppy political waters by steering away from direct conflict with China as they manage their ever-increasing relationship with the world's second largest economy.