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Saudi’s Crown Prince Hails Cooperation with Beijing

On February 22, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. Xi thanked Bin Salman for promoting the development of bilateral relations. Bin Salman praised the numerous remarkable achievements resulting from Chinese and Saudi cooperation. He expressed that one day would not enough for him to name them.

The Crown Prince launched the visit to Asian countries after the Khashoggi incident. Agence France-Presse quoted Najah al-Otaibi, a senior analyst at the pro-Saudi think-tank Arabia Foundation, “Riyadh wants to strengthen alliances in Asia — especially now — with the continuing fallout with the United States over Khashoggi’s murder as well as other issues and attempts by the EU to put Riyadh on a black list over money laundering allegations.”

Saudi Arabia had signed an agreement to form a $10 billion Saudi-Chinese joint venture to develop a refining and petrochemical complex in northeastern Liaoning province. Saudi also announced the signing of 35 non-binding memorandums of understanding, including deals related to energy, mining, transportation, and e-commerce. China is Saudi Arabia’s largest trading partner.

Source: Radio France International, February 22, 2019
http://rfi.my/3huK.T

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend

China’s Surveillance Industry Produces New Generation of Billionaires

The Chinese surveillance industry, a network of hundreds of millions of cameras, is generating more and more tycoons. The four billionaires with the largest amount of money have total assets exceeding $12.1 billion.

Gong Hongjia, founder of Hikvision, has a net worth of 7.2 billion. Dai Lin, chairman of the board of Tiandy’s, is estimated to have a personal wealth of 1.4 billion. The other two billionaires are Fu Liquan, the chairman of Dahua Tech, and Huang Li, the head of Wuhan Guide Infrared Co.

In 2015, Dai Lin developed the industry’s first infrared-free 24-hour full-color camera and in 2016 he launched the Ultra-Low Light Box Camera, which delivers high resolution color pictures in a dark environment at 0.0008 lux illumination. Dai Lin’s facial recognition system, which was developed in 2017, can achieve a recognition accuracy of more than 90 percent.

Human rights organizations worry that China’s use of surveillance technology for big data collection is used to strengthen social control and intensify the government’s suppression of civil rights. Out of national security considerations, the U.S. government has blacklisted products from Hikvision and Dahua from official purchases.

China plans to implement a comprehensive and real time public security monitoring network by 2020. According to official data, the Chinese government’s domestic security spending in 2017 accounted for 6.1 percent of total government spending, or about 1.2 trillion yuan (US$180 billion).

Source: Central News Agency, February 23, 2019
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/201902230205.aspx

Briefings | | |   Information/Technology

Chinese Student Uses Robot to Do His Homework

Recently a junior high school student in China bought a handwriting robot to do his homework. The robot is able to mimic the user’s handwriting. The media exposure caused a buying spree for the product.

According to a mainland Chinese media report, a woman surnamed Zhang said that she found out that her daughter, a third year junior high school student, completed her handwriting homework within only two days and that the writing was neat and had no typos or even edits. While cleaning her daughter’s room, Zhang found the robot machine. The instruction manual said that it could imitate various handwriting styles. After she was questioned, her daughter admitted that she purchased this handwriting robot for 800 yuan (US$120) on the Internet.

Now there are hot sales online for a number of writing robots. The price ranges from 400 yuan (US$60) to 1,200 yuan (US$180). Once the software is downloaded, it allows the machine to recognize the user’s handwriting. If you place a pen on the front end, it can start mimicking the user’s handwriting on paper and write the specified content. A store said that after the Chinese New Year, most of the customers who inquired about the handwriting robots were students. They were concerned about whether the imitation of the writing style was good and whether the teacher would be able to discover that it was a robot’s writing.

Source: Central News Agency, February 21, 2019
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/201902210042.aspx

Briefings | | |   Information/Technology

WeChat Banned over 40,000 Official Accounts in 2019

WeChat is a Chinese multi-purpose messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. Counting monthly active users, it is one of the world’s largest standalone mobile apps; it has over 1 billion monthly active users. On February 23, WeChat released a statement that the platform has severely resisted vulgar and harmful content and fraud activities and has blocked more than 40,000 official accounts. WeChat users can register for an official account, which enables them to push feeds to subscribers, interact with subscribers, and provide them with services.

In the announcement, WeChat said that the vulgar and false exaggerated content hurt the user’s aesthetic and reading experience and affected the ecological health of the platform. In this regard, so far since the beginning of 2019, WeChat has banned and processed 966 official accounts that sent pornographic and violent information and deleted 2,267 related articles; it has blocked 36,556 official accounts for sending vulgar content and deleted 73,318 related articles; it has banned 3,070 official accounts for spreading exaggerated and misleading information and deleted 3,447 related articles.

Source: The Paper, February 24, 2019
https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_3032502

Briefings | | |   Information/Technology

Putin to Launch “Independent Internet”

In his annual state of the nation address on Wednesday, February 20, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia must guard against the possibility of Western countries blocking Russia from the global Internet, and that (therefore) it is necessary for Russia to create its own cyberspace.

Putin endorsed legislation now working its way through parliament that would authorize the state to control the exchange points that connect Russia’s Internet resources to those of the outside world. On February 12, the State Duma adopted the first reading of this “Internet-isolation” bill.

Once the bill is finally approved, the legislation will require the local Internet, known as the RUnet, to pass through exchange points managed by Russia’s telecommunications regulator, Roskomnadzor. Once in force, the system will protect Russia in the event of a cyberwar while also filtering Internet traffic to the country.

Russian media reported on February 11 that a test, which will cut off all data routes connecting Russia to outside cyberspace, will occur before April 1, though a firm date has yet to be set.

Source: The Paper, February 21, 2019
https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_3018136

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend

China to Levy Farmland Occupation Tax

Since 2006, the Chinese government has not collected the agricultural tax. However starting from the second half of 2019, it will resume imposing a levy of a farmland occupation tax on farmers. Chinese President Xi Jinping issued a presidential decree at the end of last year, announcing that on September 1, 2019, the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Farmland Occupation Tax will become effective. As the official media is low-key about the bill, many farmers are still in the dark.

According to article 3 of the law, “the farmland occupation tax shall be calculated on the basis of the area of the farmland actually occupied by a taxpayer and shall be paid in a lump sum under the applicable tax rate as prescribed. The tax payable shall be the area of farmland (in square meters) actually occupied by the taxpayer multiplied by the applicable tax rate.”

In 2004, then Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao proposed that the agricultural tax rate be reduced gradually, at an average annual reduction of at least 1 percentage point, with a goal of completely abolishing the agriculture tax within the next five years. As of today, Wen’s policy has remained in place for 15 years.

Source: Radio Free Asia, February 19, 2019
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/shehui/ql1-02192019092253.html

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources

African Swine Fever Found in China’s Top Brand of Pork Dumplings

Mainland Chinese media reported that the frozen pork dumplings that Sanquan Food Co., Ltd. produced were found to contain the African swine fever virus. After the news was published, the stock price of the leading Chinese frozen food company fell by 3.58 percent. Sanquan Foods has now removed all the related series of dumplings from its official website.

Chinese netizens are also circulating a government document that shows that Gansu Province has also detected the same virus in 83 pork products from 11 manufacturers, including Sanquan Foods. Among them, Henan Kedi Frozen Foods had 67 products with positive reactions. The Gansu provincial government clarified that this was only a preliminary test.

Despite a litany of incidents of African swine fever virus being found in mainland China’s food products, the authorities have been persistently telling the public that African swine fever will not infect human beings and will not affect food safety.

Source: Central News Agency, February 16, 2019
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/201902160101.aspx

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources

Chinese Economist: Easy Monetary Policy Has Little Effect on Economic Growth

At a China Entrepreneurs Forum held at Yabuli, Heilongjiang Province from February 16 to 18, Wang Xiaolu, an economist at the National Economic Research Institute under the China Reform Foundation, commented on the effectiveness of China’s monetary policy.

Wang recalled the history from 2000 to 2018, with an observation that China’s real GDP increased by 3.8 times, but M2, a key measure of money supply, grew by 12.6 times. “China’s easy monetary policy didn’t start from 2008, but has been there for a long time. The growth of money is much higher than the growth of GDP.”

“The long-term monetary easing has brought about the series of structural problems that the Chinese economy now faces.” Wang said that one of the serious problems is the ever-rising debts. In addition, due to excessive investment, including the government’s investment in urban expansion and infrastructure construction, many projects are economically inefficient. Wang is concerned that a considerable part of the investment is ineffective. “It is a waste.”

Although the officially published GDP growth rate is 6.6 percent, Wang believes “the real situation is much worse.” “The easy monetary policy has become less and less effective in stimulating economic growth. It is almost nonexistent now, but the negative effect is very obvious. The money oversupply will rush into real estate, causing a housing bubble and introducing other problems”.

Source: Sina.com, February 17, 2019
https://finance.sina.com.cn/hy/hyjz/2019-02-17/doc-ihrfqzka6600697.shtml

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources