Skip to content

All posts by NNL - 65. page

Beijing Asked Foreign Investment Banks To Cut Pay to Their Executives in China

Bloomberg recently reported that China’s regulatory authorities summoned foreign investment banks, including Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, and UBS.  Beijing asked them to lower the total compensation to their executives in China and defer their bonus payments for over three years. The Chinese authorities said their substantial compensation is opposed to the “common prosperity” policy that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) promoted last year.

These foreign investment banks often hire top CCP officials’ children or grandchildren so that they can use their parents’ or grandparents’ power and influence to bring big business to the firm. In return these financial firms pay them decently and feel that pay is well worth it.

Source: Liberty Times, June 14, 2022
https://ec.ltn.com.tw/article/breakingnews/3959213

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources Government/Politics

U.S. Asked Beijing to Stop Putting Fake Statements into U.S. Officials’ Mouths

On June 5, a WeChat account Buyidao (补壹刀) published an article saying that it obtained exclusive information that U.S. officials from the Consulate in Guangzhou, China stating that the U.S. is using the Xinjiang issue to attack China.

The article claimed the information was provided by Mr. R, a supplier of a world-class sports brand, who attended a reception at the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou in 2021. At the reception, Mr. R heard Sheila Carey and Andrew Chira, two U.S. officials from the  Guangzhou Consulate, saying the U.S. was “using the Xinjiang issue to hype up the so-called issues of forced labor, genocide, and human-rights abuses” as part of a “tug of war” with China. The ultimate goal of the “tug of war” was to “completely sink the Chinese government into a quagmire.”

Many of China’s official media, including the Communist Youth League and local governments, reposted the message. Li Yang, Counsellor from the Department of Information, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Chen Xiaodong, Chinese Ambassador to South Africa, and Hua Chunying, spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, also retweeted the message.

On June 7, the U.S. Embassy countered the false claim. It posted the following on Twitter in both English and Chinese, “We call upon the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to stop attributing false statements to U.S. officials or taking other actions that might subject our diplomats to harassment.” “Such action potentially endangers the U.S. officials being named and is inconsistent with the PRC’s obligation to treat United States diplomats with due respect and take all appropriate steps to prevent any attack on their freedom or dignity.”

Sources:
1. Deutsche Welle, June 8, 2022
https://www.dw.com/zh/补壹刀称美外交官承认故意炒作新疆人权-美方反击/a-62066134
2. Twitter

Briefings | | |   US-China Relations

Leadership: CCDI Criticized Several Prime Ministers in Chinese History

Recently, Chinese-language media outside China reported heavily on the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) in-fighting between Xi Jinping and an anti-Xi group. Chinascope is unable to verify some of the claims but will report on these happenings.

The CCP’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) recently published two articles mentioning some prime ministers in China’s history. The CCP has a tradition of hinting about today’s politics using historic stories.

On June 1, The China Discipline Inspection and Monitoring Magazine, a semi-monthly publication by the CCDI, published an article titled “Abandoning Exquisite Egoism.” It criticized two prime ministers: Li Si (李斯) of the Qin Dynasty and Li Linfu (李林甫) of the Tang Dynasty, calling them out for using their skillful acting and carefully created justifications cleverly to conceal their selfish and greedy nature.

On June 7, the CCDI official website published an article titled, “Knowing How To Stop In Front of Your Own Desires.” It asked officials “always to cultivate the virtue of governance, always to think about the harm of greed, always to be disciplined, and always to give up improper ambitions.” It praised two prime ministers Xiao He (萧何) of Han Dynasty and Li Hang (李沆) of Song Dynasty and criticized two prime ministers Yan Song (严嵩) of Ming Dynasty and He Shen (和珅) of Qing Dynasty.

Related postings on Chinascope:

Sources:
1. The China Discipline Inspection and Monitoring Magazine, June 1, 2022
http://zgjjjc.ccdi.gov.cn/bqml/bqxx/202206/t20220601_196499.html
2. CCDI official website, June 7, 2022
https://www.ccdi.gov.cn/pln/202206/t20220607_197538.html

Hot Topics | | |   Government/Politics

Government: Guangxi Province Announced the Death Penalty for Anyone Who Spreads COVID

On June 2, Fangchenggang City, Guang Xi Zhuang Autonomous Region published a public announcement. It stated that any COVID patient who sneaks into China or anyone who organizes or transports known COVID patients into China, and endangers the public safety, can be sentenced to the death penalty, to a fine, or to confiscation of property.

People questioned whether a local government has the authority to decide on the death penalty. The authorities removed the announcement on June 3.

Related postings on Chinascope:

Source: Epoch Times, June 4, 2022
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/22/6/4/n13752058.htm

Hot Topics | | |   Social Stability

Communist China’s Propaganda Messages Lead the Search Engines’ Results

Brookings Institution and the Alliance for Securing Democracy reported in May that many of Beijing’s propaganda messages have shown up often at the top of search engine results. A report can be found: https://www.brookings.edu/research/winning-the-web-how-beijing-exploits-search-results-to-shape-views-of-xinjiang-and-covid-19/

The researchers collected search results on two topics that are critical to Beijing’s agenda: Xinjiang and the COVID-19 pandemic. They were collected from five different search engines, Google Search, Google News, Microsoft’s Bing Search, Bing News, and YouTube. The data was collected daily from Nov. 1, 2021, until Feb. 28, 2022.

Chinese state media sends a consistent stream of narratives to the web. They are free of charge and easily available to search. Beijing-backed narratives also take advantage of the algorithms in most search engines that prioritize “freshness.” These contents are also amplified by a huge number of Chinese state actors on social media. For example, they use hashtags like #covid19 and #Xinjiang.

As a result, Chinese state media content frequently appeared in top search results. If one searches for the keywords “Xinjiang,” “terrorism,” or “Xinjiang debunked” on the above platforms, Chinese state media contents appear every day on the first-page of the search results, with the exception of YouTube search, where two days out of the 120 days, it appeared on the second page of the search results.

For neutral terms, such as “kashgar,” “Urumqi,” or “Xinjiang,” ( Kashgar and Urumqi are cities in Xinjiang) Chinese state media content still appeared almost every day on news searches and YouTube searches..

The communist regime also uses influential Westerners  who have lived in China and claim themselves to be “China experts,” to defend Beijing and criticize “Western injustices and biases.”

The report also found a surprisingly large number of seemingly independent news outlets that routinely reposted CCP media reports. The top ten sources that often repost Beijing’s contents are Finland’s helsinkitimes.fi, the UAE’s bignewsnetwork.com, the USA’s msn.com, Pakistan’s dailytimes.com.pk and bolnews.com, Chad’s alwihdainfo.com, India’s indianexpress.com, Ukraine’s ukranews.com, Bangladesh’s tbsnews.net, and Zambia’s iol.co.za.

The report said that, in the early months of 2022, search engines enacted measures to limit the reach of the Russian state media. However, little has been done regarding the Chinese state media.

Source: Epoch Times, May 31, 2022
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/beijing-remarkably-effective-at-exploiting-search-engine-results-report_4501074.html

Briefings | | |   Government/Politics Information/Technology

Beijing Is Beefing Up Its Aircraft Carrier Capability

Several Chinese media reported that Beijing is about to launch its third aircraft carrier into the water. This carrier will be the world’s largest conventional (non-nuclear powered) aircraft carrier. The last U.S. conventional carrier was the Kitty Hawk that was decommissioned in 2009. A Chinese submarine had once “humiliated” the Kitty Hawk. In 2006, a Chinese submarine approached the Kitty Hawk battle group but the U.S. navy wasn’t aware of it at all.

A report said the new aircraft carrier is likely to use three electromagnetic catapults to launch planes, replacing the sliding takeoff mode of the first two carriers. This is “the most advanced aircraft catapult system in the world.”

Also, Guangming Daily reported that China launched the world’s first intelligent unmanned mother ship, the “Zhuhai Cloud” in Guangzhou on May 18.

The ship has a spacious deck and can carry dozens of air, sea, and submarine unmanned equipment, which can be deployed in bulk in the targeted sea area and self-form task-oriented networking groups to achieve dynamic 3D observation of specific targets.

Sources:
1. SINA, June 3, 2022
https://news.sina.com.cn/c/2022-06-03/doc-imizmscu4848118.shtml
2. Guangming Daily, May 19, 2022
https://news.gmw.cn/2022-05/19/content_35746121.htm

Briefings | | |   Defense/Military

China’s Think Tank Report on Sino-U.S. Relations after the Russian-Ukraine War

The Chongyang Institute of Finance at Renmin University of China published a research report on May 30, titled. “The Great Siege: An Assessment of the Progress of U.S. Policy Toward China Since the Russia-Ukraine Conflict and China’s Response.” The report said that the Russia-Ukraine Conflict didn’t delay the United States from implementing comprehensive competition against China. The U.S. recently adopted an “integrated deterrence” strategy against China  and has sped up its strategic containment of China. By May 16, the U.S. had taken  24 actions to suppress China in the fields of the economy and trade, finance, ideology, military technology, and geo-politics. Though the U.S. called its strategic competition “integrated deterrence,” it has actually been conducting a “great siege” against China.

It listed five points related to the U.S. actions:

  1. Speed up building a small “Indo-Pacific economic and trade circle” (excluding China).
  2. Apply financial pressure on Chinese companies listed on the U.S. stock markets; threaten to freeze China’s assets outside China, and restrain American companies from investing in China.
  3. Attack China on the grounds of ideology .
  4. Stir up the Taiwan issue using the “salami slicing” method (advancing the U.S. position in small increments).
  5. Suppress China’s advancement in the military technology field.

Overall, the Biden Administration defines the Sino-U.S. relations as competition and its hard-line position will not change in a short period. The chance of a China-U.S. collision is increasing. There are three possibilities for the China-U.S. game:

  1. A high intensity game: China and the U.S. have a A full military confrontation.
  2. A mid-level intensity game: China and the U.S. gradually decouple.
  3. A low intensity game: The tension between China and the U.S. becomes the norm.

The report made the following recommendations:

  1. Create an anti-blockade and anti-sanction plan in the economic, trade, and finance fields. Develop Asia-Pacific regional cooperation to counter the U.S. Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF).
  2. Create a strategy to strengthen domestic finance.
  3. Speed up progress toward energy independence  and create a strategy to build self-sustained energy.
  4. Proactively define the agenda to lead the rhythm of the Sino-U.S. media fight.
  5. Talk to the world about the damage that would result from “Taiwan Independence” to prevent the U.S. from playing the Taiwan card against China.

It calls on China to give up the illusion that it can avoid strategic competition against the U.S., develop a bottom-line plan in case of a military showdown with the U.S., and proactively build the Sino-U.S. relations while adapting to the new norm of tense relations.

Sources: SINA, June 1, 2022
https://finance.sina.com.cn/china/2022-06-01/doc-imizmscu4593936.shtml?cre=tianyi&mod=pchp&loc=35&r=0&rfunc=30&tj=cxvertical_pc_hp&tr=181,

Briefings | | |   US-China Relations

China’s Attempts to Influence the Pacific Islands

China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, visited the Pacific Islands from May 26 to June 4. However, Beijing failed to convince the island countries to sign key cooperation treaties at the Second China-Pacific Islands Foreign Minister Meetings on May 30.

Reuters reported that China drafted two treaties for the meeting. One was the “China-Pacific Islands Countries Common Development Vision.” The second was a five-year development plan. China said it will provide millions of dollars in aid to the ten island countries and establish a free trade agreement (FTA) to let them enter China’s market of 1.4 billion people. In return, China will have a big influence over these countries. China will train police for these ten countries, set up forensic labs, participate in local network security work and intelligent customs, develop political connections, conduct sensitive marine mapping, and obtain more local natural resources.

On May 20, Micronesia’s President Panuelo sent a letter to state heads of 21 countries in the Pacific. He said that his cabinet asked him to carefully consider Beijing’s suggestion and considered that China’s FTA recommendation was dishonest. President Panuelo warned in his letter that China’s recommendation will in essence tie the economy and the society of the island countries to Beijing.

The foreign ministers of these islands countries didn’t sign China’s two documents on May 30.

In the past, China has been working on the Pacific Islands:

  1. In 2002, China convinced Nauru to cut its diplomatic ties with Taiwan.
  2. China set up an economic office in the Pacific Islands to secure economic and trade relations, as well as its fishing business with these countries.
  3. China, through the military medical system, gradually provided equipment and built medical facilities in the name of military medical humanitarian aid in the three countries that have defense departments: Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and the Kingdom of Tonga.
  4. China has built a large number of tourist hotels in the Federated States of Micronesia and Fiji.
  5. China has gradually taken control the mines in these countries.
  6. In April this year, China signed a secret treaty with the Solomon Islands which allowed China to have police exchanges and a possible naval base on the Solomon Islands.

Sources:
1. BBC, June 1, 2022
https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp/chinese-news-61651994
2. Epoch Times, June 4, 2022
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/22/6/4/n13752471.htm

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend