NNL – Page 71 – Chinascope

National Congress Proposals: Graduate Earlier to Have a Baby Earlier

China finished its National “Lianghui” from March 4 to March 12 this year. “Lianghui,” or the “Two Conferences,” is a common Mandarin Chinese abbreviation for the National People’s Congress and the National Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. It is a rubber stamp process to show there is “democracy” in China: the representatives can review, approve, and comment on the work of the central government and propose policies to the governments, though that has no substantial effect.

A few representatives made proposals this year to encourage more births, indicating that China is facing a serious birth shortage problem.

A university vice president suggested to shorten the education of elementary, middle, and high schools from 12 years to 10 years, so that “people can graduate earlier, start work earlier, get married earlier, and then have babies earlier.”

Another representative suggested to completely lift the birth control policy in Northeastern China. China’s current policy is that a couple can have up to three children. According to Beijing’s 2020 Census, the population in Northeastern China dropped 11 million from 2010 to 2020.

Another proposal was to allow people to retire at the age of 45. The earlier retirement could free up more jobs to young people, so that they have less pressure to focus on their job and delay the time to have baby.

There are also proposals to allow single women to have one child and mandate men to take one month of paternity leave.

Source: Epoch Times, March 10, 2022
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/22/3/10/n13635697.htm

Briefings | | March 17, 2022 | Economy/Resources

Democratic Republic of Congo Halts China’s Control of a Cobalt Mine

Cobalt is a key material in the lithium-ion battery, and critical to electric cars. In the past 10 years, Chinese companies have spent several billion dollars to buy up the cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the largest cobalt supplying country in the world.

Recently a Congo court ordered China Molybdenum Co. to temporarily give up its control of the Tenke Fungurume mine. Gécamines SA, Congo’s state mine company reported that China Molybdenum Co. provided a false, low mine reserve number to the government to evade several million dollars in fees. The Congo authorities stopped the Chinese company’s operation in the mine for six months, until the accounting firm Mazars re-assesses the true value. The investigation has also expanded to a few other Chinese companies.

Last year, Congo President Félix Tshisekedi vowed that his government will continue reviewing mine contracts to ensure the Congo people benefit from the mining. Earlier this year, the Biden administration sent a group to Congo to discuss how the U.S. can obtain cobalt.

Source: Epoch Times, March 12, 2022
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/22/3/12/n13641727.htm

Briefings | | March 17, 2022 | Economy/Resources Geo-Strategic Trend

Pandemic: Shanghai Partially and Shenzhen Fully Locked Down, Jilin Locked Down the Province

The COVID-19 virus is spreading in China. Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen all reported Omicron cases. Authorities reported 3,507 confirmed infection cases and 1,647 asymptomatic cases, or 5,154 cases in total, in one day on March 14; whereas, in the past, the official daily infected count was only in the range of one or a few hundred. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is known for hiding COVID information, so the actual infection count is unknown.

China’s National Health Commission issued a statement on March 15 that from March 1 to 14, the cumulative number of reported infections in China exceeded 15,000 and has spread to 28 provinces and municipalities.

Several cities in China were locked down. The Shenzhen City, Guangdong Province lockdown was from March 14 to 21. Shanghai is also partially locked down: schools, residential communities, and hospitals that had COVID cases or had people in close contact with COVID patients were locked down. All train and long-distance bus stations were closed on March 14, and all elementary and middle schools have changed to online teaching.

Other locked-down cities include Changchun, the capital city of Jilin Province on March 11; Yuchen City, Shandong Province on March 11; Dongguan City, Guangdong Province on March 14; and Langfang City, Hebei Province on March 15. Shengyang City, Liaoning Province shut down its international airport on March 15.

Jilin Province became the first locked down province in this round. It reported 4,067 cases on March 14 and an accumulation of over 8,000 patients since February 28. Authorities announced a lockdown of the whole province on March 14, prohibiting its 24 million residents from leaving the province. Jilin City in the province also built several modular hospitals with 10,000 beds.

Jiangsu Province, next to Shanghai, asked its residents to report any person coming from Shanghai or other infected areas. Wuxi City, Jiangsu published an award policy on March 12: reporting a person who had close contact with a COVID patient but didn’t quarantine himself would receive an award 2,000 yuan (US $315); reporting a person who left home while taking home quarantine – award 1,000 yuan; and reporting a person who came from an infected area but didn’t report himself to the local authorities – award 500 yuan. If any of the reported persons tested positive, the reporter will be awarded another 10,000 yuan. Nantong City, Jiangsu Province also announced an award of 200 yuan for reporting a person coming from Shanghai or other high or medium risk areas that the local authorities are not aware of.

Subnational Infiltration – Ireland Professor Resigned to Protest University’s Pro-Russia and Beijing Stance

Ben Tonra, Professor and Vice Principal of the College of Social Sciences and Law at the University College in Dublin (UCD), resigned to protest the university’s taking a soft position towards Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its backing for the Confucius Institute from China.

“Based on the statements and response of the University’s leadership to the invasion of Ukraine and the role of the Confucius Institute on campus, it is clear to me that I do not share the values underpinnings of the UCD’s global engagement strategy,” he said on Twitter.

Professor Tonra was upset that UCD called Russia’s invasion “the situation in Ukraine.”

The UCD’s Confucius Institute was established in 2006. In 2021, a group of professors expressed strong opposition to a course on Chinese history and politics being delivered by the Confucius Institute which is one of the Chinese Communist Party’s invasive infiltration tools.

A spokesman for the university said the course was delivered by the Irish Institute for Chinese Studies (IICS), an academic center in the university, not by the Confucius Institute at UCD.

However, “a professor pointed out that [IICS and the UCD’s Confucius Institute] were established at the same time, are in the same building, have the same director, the same email address, the same phone number, overlapping senior staff, and share the same mission to promote teaching Chinese studies,”

Propaganda: Chinese Teacher Taught Students: “Ukraine Is a Spendthrift”

An online video showed a Chinese teacher teaching elementary students that Ukraine is a spendthrift and has wasted all of the assets it inherited when it separated from the USSR.

The teacher said Ukraine inherited a large amount of military assets and asked the students what those assets included. The first students answered, “Nuclear weapons.” The second said, “6,000 tanks.” The third said, “Three aircraft carriers fully loaded with planes that could go anywhere.” (Note: Ukraine sold one carrier to China. It became China’s first aircraft carrier.)

Then the teacher asked the students what they learned from the Ukraine incident. Students answered by quoting Xi Jinping’s words, “Each of us must live his life in his own way.” Also, “We must study well so we can [later] build the country and defend the country.”

Source: Yahoo!, March 7, 2022
https://tw.news.yahoo.com影-中國女師罵烏克蘭-敗家子-洗腦學生影片瘋傳-072932351.html

Hot Topics | | March 10, 2022 | Defense/Military Geo-Strategic Trend

Xi Jinping’s Telephone Conference with Putin

The Russia’s Embassy in China posted an article stating that Russian President Putin had a telephone conference with Xi Jinping on February 25, the second day after Russia invaded Ukraine.

“The Russian President informed the Chinese President in detail about the reasons for the decision to recognize the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (two separatists-controlled regions in Ukraine), to conduct special military operations aimed at protecting civilians from genocide, and to ensure the demilitarization and de-Nazification of the Ukrainian state.”

“Xi stressed (that China would) respect the actions taken by the Russian leadership in the current crisis situation.”

“… Both (Presidents) stated that the use of illegal sanctions to achieve self-interested goals of certain individual countries must not be allowed. In the light of this, the two leaders stressed the importance of strengthening bilateral practical cooperation, taking into account the results of their talks in Beijing on February 4.”

“Overall, the call was friendly and constructive, demonstrating that both sides share the same principled positions on key international issues.”

Source: Russian Embassy in China Website, February 25, 2022
https://beijing.mid.ru/zh/news/_00121/

Hot Topics | | March 3, 2022 | Geo-Strategic Trend

The “Chained Woman” Case and the One Million People Missing in China in 2020

The “chained woman” case was exposed in January and quickly became the hottest issue among the whole of China. By February 21, case-related articles on the Internet had been read over 6 billion times. This case was about the crime of trafficking women and turning them into sex slaves.

A woman was kidnapped in 1997 and in 1998, she was sold to a village man in Dongji Township, Feng County, Xuzhou City, Jiangsu Province. The family kept her as a sex slave – though they called her the wife of their first son Dong Zhimin. All of the men in the family including Dong Zhimin, his father, and his brother repeatedly raped the woman. The family locked her up, using an iron chain and pulled out almost all her teeth so that she could not bite any of the sex offenders when They were raping her. Dong has eight children (it is not known whether the woman gave birth to all of them).

After the case was exposed, the Chinese authorities, from the county to city to the central government in Beijing, tried to cover it up. They locked the woman up in a mental hospital. The authorities claimed that she was a missing person, Xiao Huamei from Yunan Province. The public, on the other hand, came up with substantial evidence pointing out that she was Li Ying from Sichuan Province. The reasons that the government denied she was Li Ying were, first, that Li Ying’s father served in the army and the authorities did not want soldiers to feel that they can’t even protect their own families; and second, that Li Ying was kidnapped when she was less than 13 years old. That would mean that Dong’s family group raped an underage girl. The authorities also built walls to block people from entering the village and detained and harassed anyone coming to the township in order to “protect” the woman.

The Chinese people exposed the information that these women trafficking and sex slave cases were common throughout China. In many cases, the whole village helped to guard the kidnapped women and chased them back if they tried to escape. The local authorities acquiesced and even supported the practice, including issuing a fake or illegal residence card, a marriage certificate, and a birth certificate. When kidnapped women went to the court to seek a separation, which was very difficult to accomplish, the judges rejected divorce and asked them to go back to the rapist who kept them as slaves.

An article in the state media “China Daily.” published on February 25, 2021, revealed how severe this human trafficking problem is in China. In 2020 alone, there were one million people missing in China, according to the “China’s Missing People Whitepaper (2020).” This was already a “great improvement” from the 3.94 million who were missing in 2016 and 2.6 million in 2017.

Source: China Daily, February 26, 2021
https://tech.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202102/26/WS60386587a3101e7ce9741248.html

Briefings | | February 28, 2022 | Social Stability

All posts by NNL - 71. page

National Congress Proposals: Graduate Earlier to Have a Baby Earlier

Democratic Republic of Congo Halts China’s Control of a Cobalt Mine

Subnational Infiltration – Ireland Professor Resigned to Protest University’s Pro-Russia and Beijing Stance

Propaganda: Chinese Teacher Taught Students: “Ukraine Is a Spendthrift”

Xi Jinping’s Telephone Conference with Putin

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