Geo-Strategic Trend - 95. page

China’s boycott of imported coal from Australia has affected many domestic industries. In order to save on coal consumption, places including Zhejiang and Hunan provinces have implemented restrictive measures on electricity usage.

Some netizens posted that they received messages that Yiwu city of Zhejiang province has started power rationing and blackouts. Small businesses and workshops in Yiwu have had their power cut off.

A trading company employee told Radio Free Asia that the electricity rationing measures have affected people’s lives: “Zhejiang is now rationing electricity of all enterprises and government entities. Despite the cold weather, it has been ordered to keep the heaters off until the indoor temperature is below 3 degrees Celsius. … It is probably because of Australian coal. Heaters do not consume lot of electricity, as not many Chinese people use heaters in the winter.”

Another netizen posted a message that in some cities in Zhejiang and Hunan, the traffic lights were turned off in the later part of the night.

The Hunan Provincial government recently issued a notice stating that the daily electricity consumption time slots are from 10:30 am to 12:00 pm and 16:30 pm to 20:30 pm. During these time slots, the landscape lighting in the province will be turned off and street lights will be dimmed. Communist Party and government office buildings will turn off the power on weekends. The situation may last until the 2021 Chinese New Year in February. No reason was specified for the power rationing.

Most export-oriented factories in Zhejiang province have received the “power cut and production reduction” notice. A supplier in Wenzhou city posted a notice showing that between December 15 and 31, high energy consumption enterprises are required to implement electricity rationing. During this period, the authorities will conduct 24-hour surveillance of the electricity consumption for production use. Factories that fail to follow the regulation will be forced to cut off their power and stop production for 20 days.

Australia is a major source of China’s coal imports.

Source: Radio Free Asia, December 16, 2020
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/jingmao/ql2-12162020032516.html

On December 10, Harjit Sajjan, Canada’s Minister of National Defense, said that Canada is no longer training with the Chinese military. Prior to this, James Bezan, Opposition Critic for National Defense, questioned why Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would maintain such a relationship with China.

According to the Globe and Mail, the Trudeau administration invited the PLA to a joint military exercise at the Canadian Forces Base in 2019. The exercise was called off following the arrest of two Canadian citizens in China because Canada detained Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s  Chief Financial Officer. Trudeau reportedly raged at the cancellation of the military exercises. For decades, the Canadian armed forces have participated in various joint and regional military exercises with more than 20 Pacific Rim countries. It is unknown whether Canada would consider a joint training with the PLA in the future. The statement that Sajjan issued stated that “our government always stands up for Canadians at home and abroad and this includes our relationship with China, but let me be very clear. We we do not train with the Chinese military.”

The disclosed document also suggested that Trudeau’s administration was concerned that China would take the cancellation “as a retaliatory move related to the Meng Wanzhou case” and it “could also damage Canada’s long-term defense and security relationship with China”

At the same time, the military exercise drew criticism from the Conservative Party. Michael Chong, the foreign affairs critic of the opposition Conservative Party, and James Bezan, the defence critic, said the documents showed a “stunning lack of leadership” from Trudeau and the Liberal government. They said in a statement, “Clearly, the Prime Minister and the Liberal ministers are more concerned about how Beijing might react than they are in defending Canadian interests. The Liberal government has become so timid that it can’t even say no to Chinese soldiers arriving on our territory.”

According to a disclosed memo, the U.S. Pentagon had already pressed the Canadian Armed Forces to rethink interactions with the PLA because that the PLA would benefit from it.

The Canadian Forces Base is located in Petawawa, Ontario, bordering the states of New York, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Source: Radio France Internationale, December 12, 2020
https://rfi.my/6vzV.T

The European Union has agreed to enact a measure similar to the Magnitsky Act in America that will allow the 27 member bloc to sanction those responsible for human rights abuses.

The decision came at a meeting of the European foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday and will allow the EU to freeze assets and impose travel bans on individuals involved in serious human rights abuses.

The new framework is modeled after the Magnitsky Act, a U.S. law named for investor and activist Bill Browder’s late attorney Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Russian jail after uncovering a massive fraud scheme allegedly involving government officials.

The EU said in a statement that the move allows the bloc “to target individuals, entities and bodies — including state and non-state actors — responsible for, involved in or associated with serious human rights violations and abuses worldwide, no matter where they occurred.”

Concretely, the 27 EU nations could ban targeted people from traveling in Europe and freeze the assets of both officials and “entities” such organizations, companies or banks. Europeans will also be forbidden from making funds available to them.

The sanctions would apply to acts like genocide, crimes against humanity, serious human rights violations or to abuses such as torture, slavery, extrajudicial killings, and arbitrary arrests. Other violations can be punished if they are “widespread, systematic or are otherwise of serious concern.”

Source: Radio Free Asia, December 7, 2020
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/junshiwaijiao/cl-12072020143715.html

Global Times recently reported that, in the name of national security, the German government prohibited the Chinese acquisition of a German satellite technology company IMST. IMST developed the critical components of Germany’s TerraSAR-X observation satellite. The acquisition would have resulted in intellectual property loss, which would have benefited the Chinese military. The German government also explained that this acquisition would also damage Germany’s “technological sovereignty” in the future mobile wireless communications field. IMST’s achievements benefited from government public funding. It is problematic to sell China a company funded by tax payer money. However, IMST plans to take this matter to court. The company is strongly against classifying IMST as a military supplier. IMST sold 22 percent of its voting rights to China in 2018. However, starting in 2018, the German government tightened the bar for government intervention from 25 percent to 10 percent of a company’s stake.

Source: Global Times, December 5, 2020
https://world.huanqiu.com/article/40yJwj40bUN

Taiwan’s government recently expelled a reporter from China’s Southeast Television who was stationed in Taiwan. He was expelled for violating relevant regulations that prohibit renting a studio in Taiwan in order to host a political program. The Mainland Affairs Council stated that, since that time, there have been no further violations in Taiwan.

During the regular press conference that the Mainland Affairs Council held, Chiu Chui-cheng, the spokesperson for Taiwan, said that on November 17, the Mainland Affairs Council in Taiwan had contacted the Ministry of Culture to remind Taiwanese media reporters and asked them to inform their affiliated media on the mainland not to set up studios in Taiwan to record such programs.

Source: Central News Agency, December 3, 2020
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202012030326.aspx

A few days ago, Chinese officials confirmed the “Hydropower Development Plan for the Lower Yarlung Tsangpo River,” which is expected to generate 70 gigawatts of electricity, tripling the capacity of China’s largest Three Gorges Dam power station.

The news has caused tension in India. On December 1, a senior official from the Ministry of Jal Shakti (the Indian cabinet ministry in charge of water affairs) told Reuters that India is planning to build a ten-gigawatt hydropower project in the east to offset the impact of China’s upstream dam construction on water flow.

Jagannath P. Panda, a researcher with the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses based in New Delhi said, “This has been a genuine concern for India for a long time.” In 2002, China and India signed a memorandum on cooperation in the field of water conservancy. In 2018 another memorandum on this river was signed for the purpose of sharing hydrological data to help the downstream countries to deploy flood control or ecological protection plans.

Although India expects China to consult India before building any dam upstream and to maintain transparency of information, China has been “selectively” sharing hydrological information over the past years, or refusing to provide information when relations between the two countries became tense. Every year in the rainy season, India, downstream of the river, has been plagued by floods.

The Yarlung Tsangpo River flows through China and many South Asian countries. Originating in Tibet, the river runs more than 2,000 kilometers in China before heading south into India. Indians call it the Brahmaputra River, which is nearly 650 kilometers long inside the country. After entering Bangladesh, it was renamed the Yamuna River and merged with the Ganges in the Bay of Bengal. Its tributaries also flow through Nepal and Bhutan and are the economic lifeline of many countries in South Asia.

On November 26, the Power Construction Corporation of China (PowerChina) confirmed that it has finalized a hydropower development plan for the lower part of the river and plans to launch the project during the “14th Five-Year Plan” period (2021-2025). Yan Zhiyong, Chairman of PowerChina called this project an unprecedented “historical opportunity.” He said that China will benefit from the geographic advantage of the “big bend” on the lower reaches of the river, which gathers nearly 70 gigawatts of technologically developable resources, a scale tripling the capacity of Three Gorges Dam. Chinese officials have done some beautiful math for Tibet: the dam will provide nearly 300 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of clean, renewable, and zero-carbon electricity every year, bringing in 20 billion yuan (US$ 3 billion) in fiscal revenue.

Farwa Aamer, a scholar from the East-West Center, a U.S. think tank based in Honolulu, Hawaii, explains that the deep anxiety of South Asian countries comes from the scarcity of water resources caused by climate change and the possibility that China’s construction of dams may directly affect the agricultural economy and natural ecology of downstream countries. In addition, the relationship between South Asian countries and China is complicated and lacks a platform for cross-country dialogue. South Asian countries are also quite worried about whether water resources will become a strategic tool for China when relations with China are tense.

Source: Radio Free Asia, December 1, 2020
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/huanjing/jt-12012020102607.html