US-China Relations - 32. page

United Daily News (UDN), one of the primary Taiwanese news groups, recently reported that the Mainland China regulatory authorities are considering mounting pressure on companies with a large volume of data. If companies want to go public in the United States, they must hand over data governance and supervision rights to a third-party. The Chinese regulatory authorities prefer the third-party information security companies to have a government background and to be responsible for managing and supervising the data owned by those companies that intend to conduct IPOs in the U.S. The method can effectively limit the IPO companies’ ability to transfer data to foreign countries. China worries that those companies may be forced to hand over some of their data to foreign institutions when listing overseas, which will undermine China’s national security. This plan is one of the several proposals being considered. In recent months, China has strengthened its control over domestic Internet platforms which caused a significant drop in the stock market and severely affected investor confidence.

Source: UDN, August 20, 2021
https://udn.com/news/story/7333/5688489

In July, a group of Republican and Democratic congressmen introduced the Open Translation and Analysis Center Authorization Act. This legislation establishes a new Federally Funded Research and Development Center called the Open Translation and Analysis Center (OTAC).

OTAC would be charged with translating important open source foreign-language material from the People’s Republic of China, Russia, and other countries of strategic interest into English. The translated material would be available on a public website, serving as a key resource for the U.S. and allied governments, media outlets, and academicians and analysts around the world.

The bill was introduced by Democratic congressmen Joaquin Castro and Bill Keating, and Republican congressmen Mike Gallagher and Brian Fitzpatrick. “By translating foreign-language materials into English and making them publicly available, the Open Translation and Analysis Center will enhance America and its allies’ ability to compete on the world stage, while also serving as a tremendous resource for academicians, journalists, and other members of civil society,” said Rep. Castro.

OTAC got its idea from the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), which was created during World War II to intercept, translate, and publish broadcasts from the axis powers. The documents were regularly distributed to war agencies.

Ryan Fedasiuk, an analyst from Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), told Radio Free Asia, “Many Chinese companies, non-profit organizations and government agencies deliberately hide information, assuming that foreigners do not know Chinese.”

In May Fedasiuk co-authored a report titled “China’s Foreign Technology Wish List,” which analyzed the 642 reports filed by the S&T directorates of Chinese embassies and consulates from 2015 to 2020. He noted, “These are Chinese language materials. The Chinese government or some agencies can talk openly and freely in Chinese about topics that they would never dare to discuss in English.”

Source: Radio Free Asia, August 16, 2021
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/junshiwaijiao/xx-08162021102203.html

On August 9, three Chinese think tanks published a report titled, “‘America Ranked First’?! The Truth about America’s fight against COVID-19.” The three think tanks were The Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China, and the Taihe Institute and Intellisia Institute – in Beijing.

The report was developed into five chapters as follows: “For partisan competitions, not for people’s lives,” “Anti-science and against common-sense measures,” “System failures result in the pandemic being difficult to control,” “The pandemic exacerbated the social gap,” and “The Willful destruction of global resistance to the pandemic.”

The report criticized the U.S. response in several areas, including political infighting, monetary policy, hatred against Asians, “allowing” the spread of the virus, and the “creation” of international conflicts.

The portion ‘America Ranked First’ refers to Bloomberg’s June 28 report. “The U.S.’s Stunning Turnaround in the Pandemic,” which claimed that the U.S. has surged to No. 1. in Bloomberg’s Covid Resilience Ranking.

The report concluded, that “the U.S. well deserves to be called the world’s No.1 anti-pandemic failure, the world’s No. 1 country of political blaming, the world’s No. 1 country of virus spreading, the world’s No. 1 country of political division, the world’s No. 1 country of abusive currency issuance, the world’s No. 1 country of turmoil during the pandemic period, the world’s No. 1 country of disinformation, and the world’s No. 1 country of origin for tracing terrorism.”

Source: China Central Television, August 9, 2021
http://m.news.cctv.com/2021/08/09/ARTIsfOioJpzCdUoxLzKie9V210809.shtml

On August 4, 2021, People’s Daily, a media mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) published a strongly worded commentary against the United States. From July 20 to August 4, 2021, the CCP’s mouthpiece issued a total of 16 anti-U.S. commentaries, one a day. According to analysts, this is extremely rare in the 42 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States. These commentaries are under the pen name “Zhong Sheng” (or central voice, the homophone in Chinese, i.e., the voice of the CCP Central Committee).

In his article on August 5, 2021, Dr. Wang Youqun, the primary speechwriter for Wei Jianqun, former CCP  Politburo standing member, explained the reasons behind China’s intensive anti-U.S. campaign. The recent anti-U.S. propaganda campaign launched by the CCP is part of the CCP’s new strategy to confront the United States and it helps to avert attention from the escalating domestic conflicts the CCP is facing.

According to Dr. Wang, the CCP’s strategy toward the United States has gone, roughly, through three stages: confronting the United States from the establishment of the CCP in 1949 to the visit of U.S. President Nixon on February 21, 1972; manipulating the United States from 1972 until the overall deterioration of Sino-US relations in 2020; confronting the United States from 2020 to the present.

In 2020, when the COVID-19 (or “CCP virus”) spread from Wuhan to the United States, it caused the worst blow since World War II to all aspects of the U.S. economy, politics, and social life. Meanwhile, in 2020, the CCP made several moves against the United States. These actions  include the CCP warship military exercise at Midway Island in the Pacific Ocean from January to February 2020; the announcement of the completion of the “Fortress Area” for strategic nuclear submarines in the South China Sea in March 2020; the announcement of the completion of deployment of China’s spacecraft in June 2020; the launching of the most intensive military exercises in more than 40 years from the Bohai Sea, to the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea, the South China Sea, and the mainland in July 2020.

On January 11, 2021, Xi Jinping delivered a speech at the Party School of the Central Committee. He stated, “The world today is undergoing major changes unseen in a century.” The general trend of the world is “rising in the east and falling in the west.” “but the times and trends are on our side” and “the side of the world today. The biggest source of chaos is in the United States.” “The United States is the biggest threat to my country’s development and security.” . . .

These statements set the official tone for the CCP’s strategic shift toward confronting the United States. During the Sino-U.S. Tianjin talks on July 25-26, 2021, the CCP fiercely bombarded the United States, indicating that the CCP’s strategy against the United States has taken shape.

Dr. Wang also believed that the CCP launched the recent anti-U.S. propaganda campaign to divert attention from domestic conflicts.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. For centuries, the CCP has suppressed its people with “high pressure” means.  Today, the following social, economic and political conflicts have reached an unprecedented level in a number of ways:

• Conflicts among top CCP leaders and factions, Xi Jinping, Jiang Zemin, the Communist Youth League group, the CCP elders, CCP princelings, and others on the redistribution of power at the 20th National Congress of the CCP;
• Conflicts between the current CCP leadership and those senior officials investigated and disciplined for corruption;
• Conflicts between the CCP and business interests such as those behind Ant Group who are prohibited from listing in Shanghai and Hong Kong, those behind the Didi Chuxing Company that the CCP cracked down on within days of its IPO in Wall Street, and the investors behind the education and training companies recently restricted from public financing;
• Conflicts between the very few powerful families of the CCP leadership that have monopolized China’s most profitable industries and the more than 600 million people with a monthly income of only 1,000 yuan ($154.24);
• Conflicts with the Hong Kong people; and
• Conflicts with the persecuted groups such as the Uyghurs, Christians, Falun Gong, human rights lawyers, private entrepreneurs, citizen journalists, the 1989 Tiananmen massacre survivors, pro-democracy activists, and many other groups.

Source: Epoch Times, August 4, 2021

https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/21/8/4/n13139401.htm

China’s state-run media published an editorial describing how to break the alliances between the U.S. and other Western countries. Below is an excerpt from the article:

“The U.S. has been instigating controversies together with its key allies over areas such as human rights. Recently, Washington has been pushing WHO to conduct political traceability investigations as a focal point to attack China. Its allies remain as Its main support. At the heart of this circle are the U.S., Europe and Australia, plus Japan, which are often referred to as the “West.” Recently, the Chinese have constantly been using the new term ‘U.S.-West.’

“The United States is trying hard to turn the conflict with China into a conflict between the West and China and the Biden administration is particularly dedicated to this goal.

“The United States strives to take the ideological conflict as a starting point and turn its conflict with China into a struggle between the West and China.

“However, this strategy of the United States has a fatal weakness. That is, it promotes the polarized opposition between China and the West. It goes against the tide of globalization and requires Western countries to sacrifice their own development opportunities and their substantial actual interests.

“This gives China an important opportunity to break the united front between the United States and the West. It is entirely possible for China to use a series of efforts to weaken the consensus on the attitudes of the United States and the West toward China substantially and to turn a large part of the Sino-Western conflicts that the United States hopes to create into contradictions between the United States and other Western countries.

“For this reason, China should first adopt different policies toward the United States and its allies and, at the same time, adopt different policies towards the “Five Eyes Alliance” countries and other Western countries. In the past, China paid more attention to maintaining Sino-US relations. In the future, we should use more resources in this area to deal with European countries and to achieve a directional change in diplomatic strategy.

“We must try to minimize the “China-West conflict” and talk more about the ‘China-U.S. conflict.’ …

“Constantly expanding the scale of Sino-Western economic cooperation is the key. In the past, the United States was the first priority for cooperation. In the future, more attention will go to upgrading the cooperation with Western countries other than the United States. We can now be fully confident that general ideological conflicts cannot stop European countries such as Germany and France from continuing to cooperate with China because the interests involved are too great for those European countries. We must continue to increase the attractiveness of the Chinese market to Western countries, and must not let it stagnate or even shrink.

“China needs to strengthen its efforts to work on the developing countries and continuously increase its bargaining chips in dealing with the West. As China’s national power continues to increase, our ability to do so will also increase. China should unite Russia and the vast number of developing countries to find appropriate opportunities and issues to crush the U.S.’s prestige. That way, most Western countries will see that the United States is not ‘omnipotent’ and ‘permanent.’

“For example, at the (U.N.) Human Rights Council, China has repeatedly defeated anti-China bills that the U.S.-West initiated. It did so  by uniting the developing countries. In the future, we should try to make some proactive attacks and jointly strike the United States to give it a blow in the field of human rights.”

Source: Global Times, August 3, 2021
https://opinion.huanqiu.com/article/44Cxd6d47eI

Jin Canrong, a professor at Renmin University of China, is known for his aggressive anti-American stance. He has national fame as an “anti-American pioneer” and a diehard advocate for the Chinese Communist Party.  Many people put him alongside Fudan University professor Zhang Weiwei and Global Times editor-in-chief Hu Xijin.

For example, on July 20, heavy rains in Henan flooded the Zhengzhou subway and the entire Beijing-Guangzhou tunnel. According to local authorities, hundreds of cars were submerged with at least 300 fatalities.

On the morning of July 23, Jin Canrong posted on weibo, “In addition to natural disasters and man-made disasters, we need to be wary of another possibility; that is, an attack by weather weapons of a hostile country.” He meant that the United States may have triggered the Henan flood using weather weapons.

On the evening of the same day, Jin surprised many with a weibo posting that showed  him having dinner with a U.S. embassy diplomat.

He was “invited to have dinner with the new political officer of the U.S. Embassy, ​​Mr. Su Weiguang [the Chinese name of the diplomat], and they exchanged views on Sino-US relations and the Taiwan issue. …”

Jin Canrong also posted a photo of himself and the U.S. diplomat.

Jin Canrong’s aggressive stance on the United States is well known such that his two postings have caused an uproar in public opinion among Chinese netizens.

“What a day Jin Canrong had! He was tough as a nail when scolding the American imperialist during the day and thoroughly enjoyed a big dinner that the American imperialist paid for at night. Work hard at sunrise and rest at sunset.”

“During the day, everything is work as part of his official duties. At night it is life and a personal relationship!”

In response to public criticism against the posting on the U.S. weather weapon, Jin Canrong defended it. “I just saw the posting. I did not know who wrote it.” Jin’s weibo account is maintained by Beijing ceskywebsolutionsco., ltd., of which Raojin owns 97 percent.  Jin said that the posting on U.S. weather weapons was ghost-written by his fan at the direction of Raojin.

Fang Zhouzi, a well-known science writer, had a question:

“Has Jin Canrong rebelled? He posted a weibo suggesting that the heavy rain in Henan was an attack that the U.S. ‘weather weapon made.’ After having dinner with a U.S. political officer, he came out clean, saying that the weibo posting was written by his team partner, and he did not know anything about it. What other microblogs he posts are ghost-written by others? That team seems to be Hu Xijin’s partner’s team. Are Hu Xijin’s postings also ghost-written by someone else?”

Source: Radio France Internationale, July 27, 2021

https://rfi.my/7bdr