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VOA Chinese: Biden’s $1 Billion Airport Renovation Plan Avoids Chinese Products

Voice of America Chinese Edition recently reported that the White House held a briefing not long ago, announcing the Biden administration will propose nearly $1 billion to renovate 85 airports across the United States over the next five years. The plan includes updating equipment such as security checks, baggage handling, and more. A lot of environmental protection and security equipment on the market is made by Chinese companies or in Xinjiang. White House officials told VOA that the supply chain situation has been considered, and equipment made in the United States will be used to ensure U.S. national security. Mitch Landrieu, senior White House adviser and infrastructure project implementation coordinator, said that 5,000 projects are already under construction in this plan, and national security considerations are indeed one of the challenges. President Biden hopes to ensure that all products are Made in the USA. Meanwhile, Brian Deese, Director of the National Economic Council, has been planning for a year, and the White House is satisfied with the results so far. Landrieu said that the Biden administration also adopts the “All Hazards Approach” to ensure that all construction projects are in the national security interests of the United States, including this airport construction plan.

Source: VOA Chinese, July 7, 2022
https://www.voachinese.com/a/us-airport-infrastructure-national-security-china-20220707/6648594.html

Briefings | | |   Information/Technology US-China Relations

Kyodo Chinese: Japan Approved TSMC Plant Construction Plan

Major Japanese news agency Kyodo News recently reported in its Chinese edition that the Japanese government announced, based on the relevant laws,  to support the construction of semiconductor factories in Japan. The global semiconductor giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and others have been approved to build factories in Kumamoto Prefecture. The Japanese government will give a subsidy of up to 476 billion yen (about US$3.5 billion). TSMC will join hands with the Sony Group and Denso to manufacture mainly in order to supply Japanese customers. The factory is expected to make its first shipments in December 2024. The monthly production capacity of semiconductors in the 10 to 20 nanometer scale will reach about 55,000 pieces. According to the plan, the factory covers an area of about 213,000 square meters and employs about 1,700 people. The government believes that TSMC has met the conditions of continuous production for at least 10 years and supplies more than half of the materials purchased in Japan. The Minister of Economy and Industry said at a press conference that the government looks forward to enhancing the resilience of the semiconductor supply chain.

Source: Kyodo Chinese, June 17, 2022
https://china.kyodonews.net/news/2022/06/4abfb33025f7–4760.html

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend Information/Technology

Lianhe Zaobao: Tencent Plans More Layoffs

Singapore’s primary Chinese language newspaper, Lianhe Zaobao, recently reported that, in the second half of this year, Chinese Internet giant Tencent will continue to lay off staff. All business groups will reduce their staff by at least 10 percent and will start laying off more staff from the management levels. In the first half of this year, Tencent “optimized” the personnel of each business group. In the second half of the year, the whole company will continue to lay off employees on the same basis as in the first half of the year. The proportion of layoffs in the different sub-divisions of the Platform and Content Business Group will even reach 40 to 50 percent. A few business groups will face discontinuation. Tencent’s core business groups, including the WeChat Group and the Gaming Group were not touched much in the first half. However, in this upcoming new round, 10 percent or more will also see layoffs. Tencent is currently at a low point in its performance. According to Tencent’s financial report for the first quarter of this year, Tencent’s adjusted net profit fell by 23 percent year-over-year and its net profit has declined for three consecutive quarters.

Source: Lianhe Zaobao, June 23, 2022
https://www.kzaobao.com/shiju/20220623/119811.html   already

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources Information/Technology

China Further Tightens Online Censorship, Mandating Real Name Commenting

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), recently issued a draft version of the “Internet commenting service management regulations.” The country’s top Internet authority mandates that providers of commenting services shall authenticate the real identity of registered users and shall not provide commenting services to users who have not provided real identity information. The “comment service” refers to the Internet platforms that, by means of posting, reply, messaging and other means, provide users the ability to publish text, symbols, expressions, pictures, audio and video information.

CAC also requires service providers to establish mechanisms to review postings, conduct real-time inspections, and launch emergency responses. The online postings have to be reviewed before being published. Any “illegal and undesirable information” are to be detected, in a timely manner, processed, and reported to the Internet authorities.

CAC also proposed that the service provider establish a user grading system, which conducts a credit assessment of the user’s commenting behavior. Users with serious violations will be blacklisted, deprived of services, and prohibited from re-registering to use commenting services.

Source: Central News Agency (Taiwan), June 18, 2022
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202206180106.aspx

Briefings | | |   Information/Technology

Nike Announced Ending Its Running App Services in China

Shanghai-based Chinese financial news site East Money recently reported that the Nike Running Club (“NRC”), a running app owned by Nike, issued a notice to users of service suspension. The announcement stated that, due to business plan adjustments, the NRC APP will discontinue its services in China starting July 8, 2022. NRC will provide data export services for runners in need. Garmin’s sports equipment will stop synchronizing data with the NRC APP, effective immediately. Since the APP was launched, more than eight million registered users in China have run more than 100 million kilometers together. The Paper advised that, in late May, some runners also reported that the NRC APP displayed a notice on the relevant page that the service would be suspended, informing that the operation in the area where the runners were located would be stopped on June 30. Some Chinese netizens lamented that many foreign brands have withdrawn from China recently, such as Amazon Kindle and Airbnb.

Source: East Money, June 8, 2022
http://finance.eastmoney.com/a/202206082405491532.html

Briefings | | |   Information/Technology US-China Relations

Oriental Daily: Amazon Halted Kindle Business in China

Popular Hong Kong newspaper Oriental Daily recently reported that global E-commerce leader Amazon said it will stop supplying Kindle e-book readers to Chinese retailers and, next year, it will close its Kindle e-book store in China. Amazon announced this decision on its official WeChat account and said the company was adjusting the strategic focus of its business and that other business lines in China would continue to operate. Amazon will cease operating its Kindle e-book China store on June 30, 2023. Customers will not be able to buy new e-books. For e-books already purchased, customers can download until June 30, 2024, and continue reading thereafter. The Kindle app in the Chinese app store will also be removed in 2024. Amazon China’s business includes cross-border e-commerce businesses that include Amazon overseas purchases, Amazon’s global store, Amazon advertising, Amazon global logistics, Amazon cloud technology, Amazon smart hardware and services, and other Amazon products. A spokesman for China’s Ministry of Commerce said earlier that he noticed that Amazon had just announced the closure of its e-book business in China. As the second largest consumer market in the world, China is rapidly developing and emphasizing its products and services. For various market entities, including foreign companies, it is a normal phenomenon in the market economy to adjust products and services accordingly.

Source: Oriental Daily, June 2, 2022
https://orientaldaily.org/news/international/2022/06/02/490430

Briefings | | |   Information/Technology US-China Relations

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

Airbnb Shutting Down Its China Domestic Business

Well-known Chinese news site Sina (NASDAQ: SINA) recently reported that Airbnb will officially close its domestic business in China. Nearly 150,000 listings and experienced businesses in China will be taken offline completely. Only the outbound international business will be retained. This is expected to be completed this summer. Airbnb’s future presence in China will be composed mainly of engineers involved in the research and development of global products and technology projects, as well as the business and customer service teams responsible for Airbnb’s Chinese users’ outbound international travel. The total staffing level will be around several hundred people. In recent years, China’s domestic listings and experience service business has accounted for less than one percent of Airbnb’s global revenue. Airbnb set up a small-scale team in China in 2014. It officially launched its business in the Chinese market in 2015. The Covid pandemic did disruptive damage to the entire travel industry, including online short-term rentals. Airbnb is essentially the last large-scale U.S. Internet business that will have left China.

Source: Sina, May 24, 2022
http://finance.sina.com.cn/tech/csj/2022-05-24/doc-imizirau4437577.shtml

Briefings | | |   Information/Technology US-China Relations