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Newcastle Ends Sister-City Relationship with Chinese City

Newcastle will end its long-standing twin city relationship with Taiyuan, the capital of China’s Shanxi Province, due to allegations that the government has mistreated Uyghurs.

China has been accused of detaining over one million Uyghur Muslims in what has been called “re-education” camps.

Lib Dem Wendy Taylor, who proposed the motion that was passed unanimously on Wednesday, felt that, given the allegations of “horrific abuses,” Newcastle could not have ties with China.

Since 1985, there has been a partnership with the industrial city of Taiyuan, and delegations have frequently visited Taiyuanside. Regarding the Uyghur people, Ms. Taylor stated, “There is talk of rape, forced sterilization, and even organ harvesting.”

As of 2022, In addition to Newcastle,  Taiyuan has a sister city relationships with 12 international cities, including Nashville in the United States .

Source: Radio Free Asia, November 4, 2022
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/Xinwen/8-11042022154745.html

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend

Joint Venture between China’s State-owned and Private Enterprises

The state-owned telecom giant China Unicom has set up a new joint venture with private Internet giant Tencent, while China Mobile has joined hands with JD.com. China Telecom has also partnered with Alibaba. Scholars analyze that the joint venture program is continuing to expand, and that, next year, more large private companies will be included in the wave of creating joint ventures .

On October 27, the country’s State Administration of Market Regulation released a list of approved businesses, which include the new joint venture between China Unicom and Tencent.

Radio Free Asia quotes a Beijing-based political commentator Wu Qiang who states that the “public-private partnership” that people have been concerned about in the past five years has now entered a substantive stage of implementation. Also, the “strategic cooperation” between three large state-owned telecom companies and three private giants indicates the dawn of an era of full governmental control of the economy.

Source: Central News Agency (Taiwan), November 3, 2022
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202211030339.aspx

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources

State-owned Companies Hold Shares of Kuaishou and Douyin

Following the cooperation between state-owned telecom companies and Chinese internet giants, state-owned media companies have recently taken stakes in two short video platforms, namely, Kuaishou and Douyin.

According to mainland China’s newspaper reports, on October 26th, Kuaishou, a short video-sharing mobile app with a worldwide user base of over 200 million, initiated strategic financing as the investor with the Beijing Radio & Television Station (BRTV), a subsidiary of Beijing municipal government. At present, the two largest shareholders of Kuaishou are Beijing Huayi Huilong Network Technology Co, holding 99 percent of the shares, and BRTV with 1 percent of the shares.

Another short video-sharing platform giant Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, also received an investment from Netinvest Chinese (Beijing) Technology Co. (网投中文北京科技有限公司). At present, Douyin is jointly owned by Douyin Ltd. (99 percent) and Netinvest (1percent).

Netinvest is jointly owned by China Net Investment (Beijing) Technology Co., Beijing Cultural Investment Development Group Co., and China Media Group Mobile. The latter two are both state owned companies, with China Media Group Mobile taking 30 percent of the shares.

There are rumors that the 1 percent of the shares held either by BRTV in Kuaishou or by Netinvest in Douyin is a special management stake with a veto right.

Source: Central News Agency (Taiwan), November 6, 2022
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202211060183.aspx

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources

Berlin May Give Green Light to a Chinese Takeover of German Chip Factory, Ignoring Opposition from Intelligence

On Thursday October 27, the German newspaper Handelsblatt cited government sources that the German Economy Ministry is reviewing a deal that a China-controlled company proposed for German chipmaker Elmos.

Last December, Elmos, headquartered in Dortmund, agreed to sell its production line to Swedish chipmaker Silex, a wholly owned subsidiary of China’s Sai Microelectronics Group. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the country’s chief domestic intelligence agency, gave advanced warning to the government and advised against the deal because China’s mastery of the key technology would enable it to put pressure on Germany. Handelsblatt revealed that the German federal government neglected the advice and was ready to approve the deal.

Aniessa Andresen, Chairperson of the Hong Konger in Germany, told Radio Free Asia that Germany continues to sell its own infrastructure projects and key technological companies to China, even though it has realized that it cannot rely on China. It is puzzling and worrying that the chip deal is still going forward even after warnings from German intelligence agencies. Andresen called on Germany not to become a pawn of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

German Economy Minister Robert Habeck, who resisted the acquisition of the Hamburg port terminal by the Chinese state-owned COSCO Group, did not take the same tough stance in the chip deal, giving the reason that “Elmos” technology was “obsolete” and of little value, and that the Chinese could not acquire the needed technology to drive its development.

Taiwanese political researcher Li Youtan pointed out that the “Elmos” incident is similar to China’s acquisition last year of the UK’s chip plant Newport Wafer Fab through the Dutch firm Nexperia, which is controlled by China’s Wintel Technology Corporation. Li believes that the CCP showed its ambition to dominate the world after the 20th National Congress, but is thwarted by its lack of chip technology. If Germany allows the Elmos deal to go through, it will become a weak link in the democratic world.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will travel to China and become the first EU leader to meet Xi Jinping since the 20th CCP Congress. This comes after he drew criticism for backing Chinese state-owned COSCO’s stake in the Port of Hamburg amid a boycott by six federal cabinet ministers.

Source: Radio Free Asia, October 28, 2022
https://www.rfa.org/cantonese/news/de-acquisition-10282022112232.html

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend

VOA’s Interview of the Chair of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China

As the 20th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress came to an end on Sunday October 23, Xi Jinping, the Party’s general secretary, not only won his third term as expected, but installed his cronies and supporters in the Standing Committee of the Politburo, the CCP’s highest authority. The result has worried many executives of the foreign companies that operate in China.

In an interview with the Voice of America, Joerg Wuttke, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, was pessimistic about the future of the Chinese economy. Wuttke is considered to be one of the most knowledgeable Westerners about China. He went to China in 1982 and has lived there on and off for 33 years.

He stated, “It’s definitely a surprise. I had a completely different line-up in mind (of the new leadership). I had of course the Prime Minister Li Keqiang as the head of parliament. I thought about two candidates for Prime Minister. I know both candidates quite well. It was a surprise to see that basically all of them were rooted out. Also, of course, the visual realization that president Hu Jintao was sent out of the room has already painted a picture that an era is gone. We have a greater clarity now that it is obviously Xi Jinping who is calling the shots to an extent which we did not see before. He has aligned a group of people that are totally loyal to him. We have basically left this sphere of achievements and meritocracy. It’s all about loyalty. We have to see where this group of people are leading China.”

“My struggle is I am trying to be realistic in order to give it a taste of which direction this might go. Obviously, Monday (October 24) was a very pessimistic market reaction, and reflects what many of my colleagues are thinking. But again, we have not entered the space in which we know where we are heading.”

“I am a child of the 90’s. I have been here about 30 years. I grew up in the opening up mode of Deng Xiaoping. My first party Congress I witnessed personally was in 1982, where Deng Xiaoping was trying clearly to integrate China and open up. Maybe at the tail of my career in China, I have to witness China actually closing up again to some extent. So, in a way it’s a full circle, which is, of course, disappointing. But at the same time, its their country; it’s their choice.”

“So many of them (the business leaders) put their operation on auto pilot. We have not seen companies moving away, and I don’t expect this. But we have noticed this –  that new investment and new additional activities from those companies that normally would come up in China has been rerouted to other regions. So we see more interest in Thailand, Southeast Asia, India, but even close to home in Turkey and eastern Europe, for the simple fact that executives can fly there in and out easily.”

“They have also realized that the world bank has predicted China will grow this year at 2.8 percent, and rest of Asia 5.3 percent. These leaders follow the money. Hence there will not be an exodus of European business out of China, but we will definitely see an underachiever given the potential of this economy.

Source: Voice of America, October 28, 2022
https://www.voachinese.com/a/voa-interview-joerg-wuttke-china-party-congress-20221028/6810661.html

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources

Student Informer Reported on Chinese University Professor

On October 27, Xu Songyan, a professor at China’s Southwest University (SWU) located in the city of Chongqing, posted on Weibo, a Twitter-like Chinese microblogging platform, that a student informer who, after secretly sitting in his class, told him that Xu will be questioned (by the authorities). The post, which was subsequently deleted from Weibo, received attention from millions of Chinese netizens.

Chinese universities have what are called “information officers,” who are students appointed by the school to collect information on teaching activities, and who regularly file reports with the university. These student “informers” also report faculty members’ views and opinions to the university’s Communist Party and administrative authorities. The academic fields are under close watch including programs of literature, history and philosophy.

Xu Songyan is currently a professor at SWU’s School of History and Culture, where he teaches ancient Greek and Roman history. Recent years have seen criticism of the promotion of ancient Greek culture in mainland China, as ancient Greece was known as the birthplace of western democracy. Communist Party chairman Xi Jinping once said that the “path to socialism with Chinese characteristics must be deeply rooted in the fertile soil of Chinese culture, that one should have a firm confidence in Chinese culture, and that one should not ‘always talk about Greece.’”

This is not the first time that a student “information officer” reported a professor. In May 2018, Zhai Juhong, a professor at the Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, was reported by a student informer and expelled from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) by the CCP Committee of the university. She was also dismissed from her position and disqualified as a teacher because of her comments on constitutional amendments, the state-owned enterprises and the institution of the People’s Congress.

Source: Ming Pao (Hong Kong), October 28, 2022
https://news.mingpao.com/pns/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9C%8B/article/20221028/s00013/1666895213286/

Briefings | | |   @CS Social Stability

Consulate Calls for Essays on CCP’s Congress from Princeton’s Chinese Students

An anonymous Chinese student at Princeton University told Radio Free Asia that the Association of Chinese Students and Scholars at Princeton University (ACSSPU) had posted a notice on its WeChat group that the Chinese Consulate in New York issued a call for essays from these students. The Consulate organized an essay contest to “welcome the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).” It asked the Princeton students to write a 1000-word essay on their study of the CCP Congress, incorporating their overseas experiences.

According to the screenshot provided by the source, the sender of the essay contest message is Wu Yu. The ACSSPU’s official website hosted the notice on Princeton’s website. Wu Yu is the organization’s Director of Propaganda.

Teng Biao, a law scholar and adjunct professor at the City University of New York, said in an interview with RFA that, in addition to diplomacy, Chinese embassies and consulates have a very important role to play, which is to infiltrate and conduct overseas propaganda. The Chinese Students and Scholars Association receives money from the embassies and consulates in cooperation with the CCP’s United Front work. “The United States has laws targeting these agents. We have been calling for these Chinese Students and Scholars Associations to be declared as foreign agents of the Chinese Communist Party.”

Source: Radio Free Asia, October 24, 2022
https://www.rfa.org/cantonese/news/us-article-10242022112043.html

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend

China to Build More Coal-fired Power Plants

According to mainland Chinese media, the National Development and Reform Commission, the government’s macroeconomic management agency, held a meeting in September to ensure the supply of coal, pushing the newly added capacity of coal-fired electricity generating units to a total of 165 million for the coming two years. It is widely believed that the main problem is a serious power shortage that will come in the winter and summer of next year.

Coal-fired power generation dominates China’s thermal power generation. According to the official data, as of August this year, coal-fired power accounted for 85.4 percent of the country’s 1.3 billion kilowatts of installed capacity. Coal-fired power is also the most important supporting source in China’s current power system. By the end of 2021, 1.11 billion kilowatts of coal power provided 60 percent of the country’s electricity generation capacity and supported over 70 percent of the peak load of the power grid.

In April last year, to achieve the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals, the Chinese authorities proposed the strict control of coal power projects. Many places in China were experiencing power shortages during the winter of 2021. The government had to reverse its policy direction, and approve more coal power projects.

During the summer of this year, extreme high temperatures and dry weather reduced the amount of hydroelectric power generation, further highlighting the role of coal power. From January to August of this year, China approved 31.98 million kilowatts of new coal power projects, a significant increase of 413 percent in approved capacity over the same period last year.

Source: Central News Agency, October 14, 2022
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202210140241.aspx

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources